by John Brunner
The tramp was a long one, and tricky in the dark, but she had wandered around Erminvale since she was old enough to be allowed out of sight of her mother, and though she must clamber up rocky slopes and thread her way through thickets where nightbirds hooted and chattered, she gained each peak in turn with no worse injury than thorn-scratches on her calves. As dawn began to pale the sky she set in place the final seed, the barley-grain, and watered it from her body to give it a healthy start in life. Then, weary but excited, she turned back singing on the road to home. By about noon she would be safe in Leluak’s embrace, and the feasting and merrymaking would begin.
Still a mile off, however, she started to sense that something was amiss. Smoke drifted to her on the breeze, but it lacked the rich scent of baking which she had expected. A little closer, and she wondered why there was no shrill music audible, for no one had ever been able to prevent Fiddler Jarge from striking up directly his instrument was tuned, whether or no the bride had come back from the hills.
Worst of all, at the Meeting Rock that marked the last bend in the road, the huge granite slab by which the groom traditionally took the hand of his bride to lead her into Wantwich, there was no sign of Leluak.
She broke into a run, terrified, and rounded the rock. Instantly she saw the furthest outlying house, that of the Remban family, which she remembered seeing built when she was a toddler, and almost fainted with the shock. Its fine clean walls were smeared with a grime of smoke, its gate was broken, and the Rembans’ finest plough-ox lay bellowing in a pool of blood.
And there beyond: the Harring house afire – source of the smoke she’d smelled! Her own home with the shutters ripped off their hinges, the front door battered down with an axe from the kindling-pile! Leluak’s, unmarked, but with the door ajar, and no one inside to answer when she shouted through!
Wildly she raced onward to the village green, and there was Jarge’s fiddle broken on the ground. The beer barrels set out for the wedding had been drained. Near them was a patch of scorched grass she could not account for, and all the water of the pond was fouled with the blood of the ducks which daily had quacked there.
Crouched in her chair, from which for longer than Viola could recall she had watched and grinned at the weddings she had witnessed: the only remaining villager of Wantwich, Granny Anderland, who was in fact a great-great-grandmother, toothless and senile.
“Granny!” shrieked Viola. “What happened?”
But all that Granny Anderland could do – all that she had ever been able to do since Viola was a baby – was to expose her gums in a silly grin and rock back and forth on her chair.
Helpless, Viola screamed Leluak’s name till she was hoarse, but eventually she collapsed from exhaustion and horror, and that was how the traveller found her when he chanced that way.
IV
He barely checked his pace as he entered Wantwich, along another road than that which Viola had followed on her return from the five peaks. But his expression grew sterner with every step he took, until when finally he could survey the full measure of the calamity from the center of the green his brow was dark as thunderclouds.
His footsteps were too soft upon the sward for the weeping girl to hear them through her sobs, and it was plain that the old woman near her either had been so shocked as to have lost her reason, or was too senile to understand the world. Accordingly he addressed the girl first.
At the sound of his voice she cringed away, her tear-wet face a mask of terror. But there was little in the appearance of this small man leaning on a staff to suggest he might have connection with the rape of Wantwich. And, for all that he looked furious beyond description, it did not seem that anger was directed at herself.
“Who are you, child?” the traveller inquired.
“My – my name is Viola, sir,” the girl forced out.
“And what has happened here today?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Wringing her hands, Viola rose. “Why should anybody want to do this to us? Monsters of some kind must have done it – devils!”
“There are few such creatures left hereabouts,” the traveller murmured. “More likely it will have been men, if one can dignify them with that name. Were you away from the village?”
“I was to be married today,” Viola choked.
“Ah. So you were walking the five peaks.”
“You’re – you’re acquainted with our customs, sir?” Viola was regaining control of herself, able to mop away her blinding tears and look more clearly at the newcomer. “Yet I don’t remember that I saw you here before.”
“This is not the first time that I’ve been at Wantwich,” said the traveller, refraining from any reference to the number or date of his earlier visits. “But, to pursue the important matter: did this old lady witness what occurred?”
“If she did, she won’t be able to describe it,” Viola said dully. “She has been as you see her for many years. She likes to be talked to, and nods and sometimes giggles, but beyond that …” She gave a hopeless shrug.
“I see. In that case we must resort to other means in order to determine what went on. Girl, are you capable of being brave?”
She stared at him doubtfully. “Sir,” she said at length, “if you can do anything to help get back my man, and right the wrong that has been done to these good people, I’ll be as brave as you require of me.”
“Then come with me,” said the traveller, and took her hand. He led her across the green, past the patch of grass scorched black – at which she cast a puzzled glance – to the rim of the pond.
“Stand firm,” he commanded. “Do not be afraid of what you see.”
“I don’t understand!”
“Better for you that you should not,” the traveller murmured, and thrust his staff into the water. He dissolved one of the forces bonding the light of which it was composed, and a shaft of brilliance lanced downward to the bottom.
“Horimos!” he cried. “Horimos!”
The girl’s eyes grew round with wonder, and then her mouth also, with dismay. For the water heaved and bubbled sluggishly as pitch, and from the plopping explosions a thick voice seemed to take form, uttering words.
“Le-e-eave me-e a-a-lo-o-one …!”
“Horimos!” barked the traveller. “Stir yourself! You’ve slumbered centuries in that soft bed of mud, but you have not forgotten how! Shall I remove you to Kanish-Kulya, make you share the pit of his volcano with Fegrim?”
A noise between a grumble and a scream.
“Yes, he’d be a restless companion, wouldn’t he?” the traveller rasped. “Up! Up! I desire speech with you!”
Beside him Viola had fallen to her knees, all color vanished from her cheeks. Too petrified even to blink, she saw the water where she had so often bathed rise in tumult – yet absurdly slowly, as though time had been stretched out to double length. More bubbles burst, and she could watch their surface part; waves and ripples crossed the pond so slothfully one would have thought to push them into new directions without wetting one’s palm.
And ultimately …
“You may prefer to close your eyes now,” the traveller said didactically, and added, “Horimos! Speak! And be quick – the sooner you tell me what I want to know, the sooner you may sink back to your ooze. What’s become of all the people from this village?”
“Been taken away,” Horimos mumbled. It was not exactly a mouth he used to shape the words – but then, like all elementals, his physical form was somewhat arbitrary.
“How and by whom?” The traveller rapped the bank impatiently with his staff.
“Army marched in this morning,” Horimos sighed. “Went around the village, drove everybody to the green. Most of them were there already, anyhow. Set up a forge there where the grass is blackened, brought a chain, and welded fetters to it for each person. Killed some ducks and hens for their dinner, drank the beer, herded the villagers away. Good riddance, too, say I. Never had a moment’s peace since you put me here, what
with fiddling and dancing and swimming and skating and all the rest of it!”
“Whose was the army? What colors did they fly?”
“Should I know who bears a flag of silver, red, and gold?”
The traveller clamped his fingers tighter on his staff.
“And you made no attempt to intervene?”
“Told you – glad to see the back of them.” Horimos made the whole surface of the pond yawn in a colossal expression of weariness. “And but for you I’d have enjoyed a decent sleep for a while, now I’m alone!”
“For your idleness,” said the traveller softly, “I decree that until the folk of Wantwich are restored to their homes, you shall itch so much you can enjoy no rest. Begone with you. Hope that the matter is speedily set to rights.”
“But –!”
“You argue with me?”
Horimos declined. When once again he had subsided to the bottom of his pond, the water was no longer pellucid and still as before, but roiled continually without a breeze to stir it.
“Who are you?” Viola whispered. “I’d always thought Horimos was … was …”
“Was imaginary?” The traveller chuckled. “Not exactly. But his worst fault is mere laziness, and compared to what faults one finds elsewhere it’s far from the grossest of shortcomings. … As for my own identity, you may call me what you will. I have many names, and only one nature.”
He waited to see whether the information, which he gave only to those who directly demanded it, meant anything to her. Interestingly, he discovered that it did, for on the instant a blend of hope and awe transfigured her pretty face.
“Is it true, then,” she cried fiercely, “that I may require of you my heart’s desire?”
“Think well if you do so!” warned the traveller, raising his staff. “Only you can know what’s in your secret mind! Reflect and ponder!”
“I don’t have to,” she said with terrible certitude. “I want to be reunited with my man!”
The traveller sighed, but as always was resigned to the inexorable course of events. “As you wish, so be it,” he replied.
“What shall I do?” Viola whispered, suddenly overcome with a sense of the finality of her request.
“Wait.”
“No more than wait? Wait here?” She turned frantically, surveying the ravished homes, the slaughtered livestock, the smoke that still drifted over the burning house. “But –”
And when she looked again for the traveller in black, he was gone.
* * *
A little after, when the sun was still high in the sky, there were clopping noises on the road by which the army had arrived, and she roused from her torpor and made to flee. But the horseman easily ran her down, bowing from his saddle to sweep her off her feet and mount her on the withers of his steed, laughing at her vain attempts to break away.
“I missed you when they rounded up the rest of them,” said Achoreus of Teq. “I couldn’t forget a lovely face like yours. Even less can I forget an insult like the one you offered me when first I came here. So I dawdled, thinking you’d be back eventually, and here you are. Not for long, though! You’re going to rejoin your family and friends, and that country bumpkin you preferred to me!”
He set spurs to his horse, and away they galloped in the wake of the miserable gang of captives strung with chains.
V
Laughter rang loud and shrill under the gorgeous canopy that shaded Lord Fellian of Teq from the naked rays of the sun. The canopy was of pleated dragon-hide, bought at the cost of a man’s life in a distant land where chaos and reason had once been less evenly matched, so that strange improbable beasts went about with lion’s claws and eagle’s beaks and wings of resounding bronze. Report held that there were no more such creatures to be found; even their bones had been rejected by reality.
“But I have my canopy!” Lord Fellian would say.
Its shade fell on a floor of patterned stone: marble was the most commonplace of the minerals composing it, outnumbered by chalcedony, jasper, sardonyx, chrysoberyl, and others yet so rare that they had no name save “one of the tiles in Lord Fellian’s gallery.” This was on the very apex of the grand high tower from which Fellian might survey his domain: lands from here to the skyline and beyond which bled their wealth into his coffers.
But on the houseward side there was a high wall, so that when he sat upon his throne of state – made from the ribs of a creature of which the enchanters declared no more than one could ever have existed, translucent as water but harder than steel – not even an absentminded glance over his shoulder might reveal to him the sole building in Teq which outreached his tower. Atop that mighty edifice presided the figure of Lady Luck, the goddess blind in one eye and masked over the other, whose smile dictated the fortunes of those who ruled in Teq.
It was not the custom to look on her. It was said that those who secretly attempted to, in order to discover whither her gaze was bent, would die a fearful death. And indeed the agents of Lords Fellian, Yuckin and Nusk did occasionally deposit in the chief market-square the bodies of men and women who had clearly undergone repulsive torture, and the common folk interpreted these as an awful caution. More often than not, these corpses belonged to persons who had boasted of their favor with the Lady. It was taken for granted that the others belonged to those who had not even enjoyed the brief pleasure of making such a boast.
To look on Lady Luck was the one gamble no lord of Teq would risk. Why should he? Was not affluence itself proof that the Lady bent her enigmatic smile continually on the person who possessed it?
Lord Fellian, on his chair of inexplicable bones cramped with pure gold, robed in satin dyed with the purple of the veritable murex, shod with sandals of the softest kidskin on which had been stamped, again in gold, a series of runes to guide him in the most prosperous of paths; his foppish locks entwined with green ribbons, his nails painted with ground pearls, his weak eyes aided with lenses not of rock-crystal such as his rivals must make do with but of diamond, his lobes hung with amber, his girdle glittering with sapphires: he, Lord Fellian, the greatest winner among all the past and present lords of Teq, laughed, and laughed and laughed again.
His mirth drowned out the soft rattling from the table on which a trained monkey, tethered by a velvet leash, kept spilling and gathering up a set of ivory dice, their values after each throw being recorded by a slave on sheets of parchment; likewise, the humming of a gaming-wheel turned by an idiot – both these, with bias eliminated, to determine whether after fifty thousand throws or spins there would be some subtle preference revealed, that he might exploit in his ceaseless rivalry with Lords Yuckin and Nusk. Furthermore his hilarity drowned the chirrup of two gorgeous songbirds in a gilded cage which he had won last week from Nusk in a bout at shen fu, and the drone of musicians playing on a suite of instruments he had won – along with their players – from Yuckin a year or more past. Those instruments were of eggshells, ebony, and silver, and their tone was agonizingly sweet.
Facing the chair of bones, Achoreus – who had committed himself to the service of Lord Fellian when he was but seventeen and keep complimenting himself on his farsightedness – grinned from ear to ear at the brilliant inspiration of his master.
“Before those fools learn that winning from me costs me nothing,” Fellian declared, “I shall have taken the very roofs from over their heads! They will be shamed if they refuse to match my stakes, and I may climb as high as I wish, while they – poor fools! – struggle to clamber after me. Oh, how I look forward to seeing Yuckin’s face when tonight I bet him a hundred skillful servants, including girls fit for a royal bed! You’ve done well, Achoreus. Torquaida, come you here!”
From among the gaggle of retainers who by day and night attended Fellian, subservient to his slightest whim, there shuffled forward the elderly treasurer whose mind encompassed, so he bragged, even such detail as how many of the copper coins in store had been clipped around the edge, instead of honestly worn, and were therefore re
served to pay off tradesmen.
In no small part, Fellian acknowledged, his victories in the endless betting matches with his peers were due to Torquaida instructing him what they could or could not stake to correspond with his own wagers. He had rewarded the old man suitably, while those who served his rivals in like office were more often punished for letting go irreplaceable wonders on lost bets, and grew daily bitterer by consequence.
“Young Achoreus here,” the lord declared, “has performed a signal service. Thanks to him, we now have one hundred or more extra servants, surplus to the needs of the household, and additionally many children who can doubtless be trained up in a useful skill. How, say you, should this service be repaid?”
“This is difficult to estimate,” mused Torquaida. His ancient voice quavered; Fellian scowled the musicians into silence that he might hear the better. “There are two aspects of the matter to be considered. First, that he has brought a hundred servants – that is easy. Let him have dirhans to increase his stake in the wager he has made with Captain Ospilo of Lord Yuckin’s train; our privy intelligence states that bet is won on odds of nine to four, whereas Ospilo is yet in ignorance of the result. Thereby the winnings may be much enlarged. I’d say: one coin for every healthy servant.”
Fellian slapped his thigh and chortled at the ingenuity of the deceit, while Achoreus preened his mustachios and basked in the envy of those around.
“Beyond that, however,” Torquaida continued in his reedy tones, “it remains to be established what the true value of these servants is. As one should not wager on a horse without inspecting both it and its competition, thus too one must begin by looking over the captives.”
“Let them be brought, then!” Fellian cried. “Clear a space sufficient for them to parade!”
“Sir,” ventured Achoreus, “there were not a few among them who resented the – ah – the invitation I extended to enter your lordship’s service. It will be best to make space also for the escort I detailed to accompany them.”