Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  And on the day when, belatedly, Leluak led out his bride to start the dancing proper to a marriage, a person in a black cloak stood with a benign smile in the shelter of a sycamore.

  “Was it not clever, Horimos?” he said under his breath to the imprisoned elemental. “Was it not ingenious to pervert the thinking of rational men into the courses of a gambler, who lacks even the dangerous knowledge of an enchanter when he tampers with the forces of chaos?”

  Unnoticed except by the traveller, the pond gave off a bubble full of foul marshy gas, which might have been intended for an answer.

  “Shu-ut – brr’p – brr’up!”

  “By all means, Horimos,” the traveller murmured, and drained the mug of Brewer Harring’s good beer which he, like all passers-by on a festival day, had been offered. He set the vessel on a handy stump, and the music rose to a frantic gay crescendo.

  When, a little diffidently, Viola came to greet him and ask if he would like to take his turn at partnering her in the dance, there was no trace of his presence save the empty mug.

  FOUR

  The Things That Are Gods

  Lo how smothe and curvit ben these rockes that in the creacioun weren jaggit, for that they haf ben straikit by myriades of thickheidit folk hither ycommen in peregrinage, beggarlie criand after Miracula. And I say one at the leste wis granted em. Was’t not a marveil and a wonder, passand credence, that they helden dull ston for more puissaunt than your quicke man, the which mought brethe and dreme and soffre and fede wormes?

  –A Lytel Boke Againste Folie

  I

  Tipping back the hood of his black cloak, leaning on his staff of curdled light, the traveller paused beneath the midnight sky, wherein the conjunction of four significant planets was manifest to those learned in such study, and contemplated the land where he had incarcerated the elemental called Litorgos. That being loathed both salt and silt; accordingly, here had been a most appropriate choice.

  Half a day’s walk from the edge of the sea the ground reared up to form a monstrous irregular battlemented cliff twenty times the height of a tall man, notched where a river cascaded over the rim of the plateau above. Thence it spilled across a wedge-shaped plain of its own making and developed into a narrow delta, following sometimes this and sometimes that main channel. In principle such land should have been fertile. Opposite the river’s multiple mouths, however, a dragon-backed island created a swinge, such that at spring tide ocean-water flooded ankle-deep over the soil, permeating it with salt. Therefore only hardy and resistant crops could be grown here, and in a bad year might be overtaken once too often by the saline inundation before they were ready to harvest.

  This had not prevented the establishment of cities. One had been founded close to the waterfall, and flourished awhile on trade with the plateau above. A crude staircase had been carved out of the living rock, up which slaves daily toiled bearing salt, dried fish, and baskets of edible seaweed, to return with grain and fruit and sunflower oil. Then the elemental slumbering below stretched to test the firmness of his intangible bonds; they held him, but the staircase crumbled and the city disappeared.

  More recently a port had been built at the mouth of the main channel; it stood on wooden piles brought from the island opposite, which had been thickly forested. With the clearance of the woodland, marble was discovered. Cutting and polishing it, exporting it on rafts poled along the coastal shallows, the citizens grew rich enough to deck their own homes with marble and colorful tiles in patterns each of which constituted a charm against ill fortune. But now the marble was exhausted, and so was most of the timber, and the city Stanguray which had once been famous was reduced to a village. Its present inhabitants lived in the attics and lofts of the old town, and as they lay down to sleep could listen to the chuckle of water rippling within the lower portion of their homes. To pass from one surviving building to another even toddlers deftly walked along flimsy rope bridges, while the needs of the elderly and better-off – for there were still rich and poor in Stanguray – were met by the bearers of reed-mat palanquins, adept at striding down the waterways and across the mudflats on stilts taller than themselves. This mode of transport had no counterpart elsewhere.

  And it was entirely fitting, the traveller reflected, that there should be one thing at least unique about this place. For once the river which here met the ocean had run beside the ramparts of Acromel, and was known as Metamorphia. No longer did it instantly change whatever fell or swam in its waters, it having been decreed that after a certain span of amending the nature of other things, it must alter its own. Yet and still a trace of what had gone before remained, and would forever in the work of all rivers: they would erode mountains, create plains, cause the foundation and destruction of uncounted cities.

  Moreover, in all the settlements along it, including those on the plateau around Lake Taxhling – the first earnest of the inevitable change in the river’s nature, inasmuch as there it spread out and grew sluggish and reed-fringed before it ultimately spilled over the cliff and became the opposite, fast and violent and sparkling – the residual magic of Metamorphia had led to schools of enchantment. Of no very great import, admittedly, nothing to compare with the traditions of Ryovora or Barbizond or the Notorious Magisters of Alken Cromlech, but dowered nonetheless with a certain potency.

  Such matters being of the keenest interest to him, the traveller set onward along riverside paths towards this paradoxical village of marble columns and tiled pilasters. Dawn was breaking before he reached it; clouds in the east were flushing scarlet and rose and vermilion, and fisherfolk were chanting melodiously as they carried their night’s catch ashore in baskets of osier and spilled them into marble troughs, once destined for the watering of nobles’ horses, where women and children swiftly gutted them. The smell of blood was acute in the traveller’s nostrils when he was still a quarter-hour’s walk distant.

  And then it occurred to him that there was no wind to carry it. What slight breeze there was, was at his back: blowing off the land, towards the sea.

  Moreover he perceived of a sudden that it was not just the light of dawn which was tinting pink the water in the channels either side of the crude causeway he was following.

  There must have been an astonishing slaughter.

  The traveller sighed. Last time he had seen a river literally running red in this manner, it had been because of a battle: one of dozens, all indecisive, in the constant wars of Kanish-Kulya. But matters there had been regulated pretty well to his satisfaction, and in any case this was not human blood.

  If it were a precedented event, the inhabitants of Stanguray would presumably be able to inform him concerning this tainting of the flow. The ground being impregnate with salt, one could not sink a sweet-water well; rainfall, besides, was exiguous and seasonal hereabouts. Consequently folk were much dependent on the river’s cleanliness.

  More perturbed by the situation than seemed reasonable, the traveller lengthened his strides.

  II

  When the fish-guts had been thrown to the gulls the people of Stanguray went their various ways: the poorest to the beach, where over scraps of driftwood barely dry enough to burn they scorched a few of the smaller fish, sardines and pilchards, and gobbled them bones and all with a smear of oil and a crust of bread left over from yesterday’s baking; the most prosperous, including naturally all of those who owned an entire fishing-smack with a reliable charm on it, to their homes where a more substantial breakfast awaited them; and the middling sort to the town’s only cookshop, where they handed over a coin or a portion of their catch against the privilege of having their repast prepared on the public fire. Fuel was very short in Stanguray.

  The said cookshop was the upper part of what had formerly been a temple, extended under the sky by a platform of creaky scantlings, water-worn and boreworm-pierced, salvaged from a wreck or a building long submerged.

  Here a thin-faced, sharp-nosed, sharp-tongued young woman in a russet gown and a long apron
supervised a fire on a block of slate whose visible sides were engraved with curlicues and runes. It would have been the altar when the temple’s cult still throve. Presiding over it like any priestess, as well as cooking fish she deigned to dispense hunks of griddle cake and char or stew vegetables brought by those lucky enough to own a farmable patch of ground. Meantime a hunchbacked boy who never moved fast enough to please her meted out rations of sliced onion, vinegar and verjuice to add a quicker relish to the simple food.

  A public fire, plainly, was a profitable operation, for everything about the shop was better appointed than one might have predicted. Though the external platform was fragile, though the variety of the menu was wholly dependent on who brought what, nonetheless the woman’s gown was of excellent quality, and the walls were ornamented with numerous precious relics such as one would rather have expected to find in the homes of wealthy boat-owners. Also, at least for those who paid in money, not only beer but even wine was to be had. The hunchback, lashed on by the woman’s shouted orders, rushed them by the mugful to the customers.

  It was clear that at least one more waiter was not only affordable, but urgently needed.

  However, that – to the traveller’s way of thinking – was not the most curious aspect of this cookshop.

  Having sated their bellies, the homeless poor plodded up from the beach carrying clay jars which they had filled at the point where the estuarial water turned from brackish to drinkable … or should have done. Not long after, a string of children also assembled, bearing by ones and twos full leathern buckets. Some could scarcely stand under the load.

  For a long while the woman in charge seemed not to notice them. The delay grated on the patience of one girl, some twelve or thirteen years old, and finally she called out.

  “Crancina, it’s a foul-water day!”

  “What of it?” the woman retorted, rescuing a roasted turnip from the flames, not quite in time.

  “We had salt eels this morning, and we’re clemmed!”

  “Tell your mother she ought to know better,” was the brusque reply, and Crancina went on serving her other customers.

  Finally, several minutes having elapsed, she stood back from the hearth and dusted her hands. Instantly the people waiting rushed towards her. The poorer got there first, being adult and desperate – despite which they contrived to offer at least a copper coin, which she took, bit, and dropped in the pocket of her apron, while pronouncing a cantrip over their water-jugs. Forced to the rear by those larger and stronger, the children from wealthier homes had no lack of cash, but they tasted the water cautiously after the spell had been spoken, as though fearing that much repetition might weaken it. All satisfied, they took their leave.

  “Are you curious concerning what you see, sir?” a thin voice said at the traveller’s elbow. He had taken pains, as ever, not to be conspicuous, but it was time now for direct inquiries.

  Turning, he found the hunchback boy perched on a table, for all the world like a giant frog about to make a leap. His sly dark eyes peered from under a fringe of black hair.

  “I own I’m intrigued,” the traveller said.

  “I thought you would be, seeing as I don’t recall noticing you before. A pilgrim, are you? Cast ashore by some rascally sea-captain because contrary winds made it too expensive to carry you all the way to the shrine you booked your passage for?” The boy grinned hugely, making his face as well as his body resemble a frog’s.

  “Do you receive many castaway pilgrims here, then?”

  A crooked shrug. “None, to my knowledge! But even that would vary the monotony of my existence. Every day is more or less the same for all of us. Why otherwise would this enchanting of water be remarkable?”

  “Ah: so magic is at work.”

  “What else? Crancina has a sweet-water spell from Granny, all she left us when she died, and so whenever the river pinkens they all come here. It’s making her a nice little pile.”

  “She charges everybody?”

  “Indeed yes! She claims that performing the rite tires her out, so she must be recompensed.”

  “What of those – for there must be some such – who have not even a worn copper to buy her services?”

  “Why, she says they may wait for rain!” The boy essayed a laugh, which emerged as more of a croak.

  “I deduce you are Crancina’s brother,” the traveller said after a pause.

  “How so?” The boy blinked.

  “You spoke of what Granny left to ‘us,’ as though you shared her.”

  A grimace. “In fact, half-brother. I often wonder whether it was Granny’s curse that twisted me, for I know she disapproved of Mother’s second marriage … However that may be!” His tone took on a sudden urgency. “Will you not instruct me to deliver you something, if only a hunk of bread? For I should by now have served her the choicest of last night’s catch, rich with oil and fragrant with herbs, and grilled to perfection on the most odoriferous of our scant supply of logs. Any moment she will tongue-lash me until it stings like a physical castigation – at which, I may say, she is equally adept! Would you inspect my bruises?”

  “There seems to be little love lost between you,” the traveller observed.

  “Love?” The hunchback cackled. “She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word! So long as my father survived, and before our mother became bedridden, I made the most of life despite my deformity. Now she’s my sole commander, mine’s a weary lot! I wish with all my heart that someday I may find means to break free of her tyranny and make my own way in the world, against all odds!”

  Prompt to his prediction Crancina shouted, “Jospil, why have you not set my breakfast on the embers? Costly wood is going up in smoke and all the customers are served!”

  Her shrill reprimand drowned out the traveller’s reflexive murmur: “As you wish, so be it.”

  Cringing, the boy regained the floor and scurried towards her. “Not so, sister!” he pleaded. “One remains unfed, and I did but inquire what he would order.”

  Abruptly noticing the traveller, Crancina changed her tone to one of wheedling deference. “Sir, what’s your pleasure? Boy, make him room and bring clean dishes and a mug – at once!”

  “Oh, I’ll not trouble you to cook for me,” the traveller answered. “Your brother has explained how casting your spell fatigues you, and you must need sustenance yourself. I’ll take a bit of fish from pickle, bread, and beer.”

  “You’re courteous, sir,” Crancina sighed, sinking on a nearby bench. “Yes, in truth these foul-water days do take it out of me. In sum, they’re a cursed nuisance! Over and over I’ve proposed that a band of well-armed men be sent out, to trace the trouble to its source, but it’s on the high plateau, and these fainthearts hold that to be a place of sorcerers none can oppose. Monsters too, if you believe them.”

  “Maybe it’s the one slaughtering the other,” Jospil offered as he set mug and platter before the traveller. “There must come an end of that, when all expire!”

  “It’s not a joking matter!” snapped Crancina, raising her fist – and then reluctantly unballing it, as though belatedly aware she was being watched by a stranger. But she continued, “By all the powers, I wish I knew what use there is in spilling so much blood! Maybe then I could turn it to my own account for a change, instead of having to pander to the wants of these cajoling idiots, fool enough – you heard the girl, sir, I’ll warrant! – fool enough to eat salt eels for breakfast when their noses must advise ’em there’ll be nothing sweet to quench their thirst. Would you not imagine they could keep a day or two’s supply that’s fit to drink? If they can’t afford a coopered barrel, surely there are enough old marble urns to be had for the trouble of dragging them to the surface. But they can’t or won’t be bothered. They’re so accustomed to leaning out the window and dipping in the stream – and sending their ordures the same way, to the discomfort of us who live the closest to the sea – they regard it as a cycle in the natural order, never to be resisted, which if i
t does come right one day will do so of itself.”

  “They pay you for performing your spell,” the traveller said, munching a mouthful of the pickled fish and finding it savory. “There’s a compensation.”

  “I admit it,” said Crancina. “In time I may grow rich, as wealth is counted in this miserable place. Already two widowers and a middle-aged bachelor are suing for my hand, plus, of course, half a share in this cookshop. … But that is not what I want!” – with sudden fierceness. “I’m accustomed to being in charge, and I want that with all my heart and soul, and I’m seeking a way of securing my fate whether or not this dismal half-ruined town crumbles into the sea!”

  So long ago there was not means to measure it, the traveller had accepted obligations pertaining to his sundry and various journeys through the land.

  The enforced granting of certain wishes formed an essential element of the conditions circumscribing him … though it was true that the consequences of former wishes were gradually limiting the previous total of possibilities. Some now were categorically unimplementable.

  But even as he muttered formal confirmation – “As you wish, so be it!” – he knew one thing beyond a peradventure.

  This was not one of those.

  III

  Once it had been permitted him to hasten the seasons of the year and even alter their sequence. But that power belonged to the ages when the elementals roamed at large, their random frenzy entraining far worse divagations from the course of nature. Tamed and pent – like Litorgos under the delta of the river that no longer merited the name of Metamorphia – they were little able to affect the world. Events were tending, in the prescribed manner, towards that end which Manuus the enchanter had once defined as “desirable, perhaps, but appallingly dull.” The day would break when all things would have but one nature, and time would have a stop, for the last vestige of the chaos existing in eternity would have been eliminated.