The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  “To meet Cretus the Scribe. I have done that which I was constrained to do; thus and thus. So it was shown to me, and so I have done. But that I may be something more than a wind that has blown you to a strange house without warmth of fire, or to evil, I press my own knife to you. Take it! I took it in tongs living from the fire, and quenched it with my own hands, and as its light faded I laid upon it and my spear deep secrets only I know; therefore it will aid you. More I cannot give, and remain what I have been and am to be.” She breathed deeply, and stood erect and tall against the light from the dark bulk of the castle, and her eyes were darker than the night.

  Meure took the proffered knife by the hilt; it was made of many strips of leather wound around the tang of the blade. A rude weapon, one that had doubtless been used before. He looked at it intently for a long moment, almost as if he hoped some of what she put into it might speak to him. The spirits remained silent. Meure looked up, and felt a chill air moving against his face.

  He said, “I know now much of which you have spoken. But I do not know why. As you said, to meet Cretus. So, then. I have met him, and it answers no questions. I do not know what he wants.”

  “Nor do I, beyond escaping from Cucany.”

  “Then you will return to Ombur?”

  “Yes. We will go that way, and what will come to be will be.”

  “What of the rest of us?”

  “I was commanded to bring you here and return you safely within the limits of my power. Thus I will do.”

  “And me?”

  “You are no longer one of them, and I cannot protect you. You must become a hunter on your own account.”

  Meure felt a shiver pass along his body, one that ended in a sudden spasm of laughter. “Fine, then. I will take my first step. I will walk with you and your party for a time. But let us be gone from Cucany, and this whole land of towers and empty places. I sense that this spirit from the far past needs at least to meet some people from the present.” So saying, he began walking into the darkness, where waited the others.

  Tenguft followed him, and only one thing did she say: “It is said that of old Cretus was no prophet of the waste places, but one who went straightly into the press and the throng.”

  Meure said back over his shoulder, “And the Haydar? Are you a throng?”

  She answered, curiously submissive, “We are but bands of hunters on the face of the wide world.”

  “Are there cities on this world?”

  “In Chengurune the Great, and in Cantou, there are said to be cities . . . I know only Kepture. In this land are settled places, ports, trade-junctions, forts and castles.”

  “What about Glordune, the forth continent?”

  “There are no cities in Glordune. But there is a place in Kepture where many gather.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Mouth of Vast are the lands of the Lagostomes, and it is said that by the river docks can be found the sweepings and ends, and scraps of all peoples.”

  “Can we go there?”

  “You can, if you will, but I will not take you. They are a vile people. We hunt them, and all true men of Kepture strive to keep them pent in the Low Country.”

  “Do they have a city?”

  “Their whole land is city. There is nothing like it anywhere else. Ask of the Embasse; he comes and goes as he pleases.”

  At the end, she had seemed offended that he had shown any interest at all. And she had recommended him to Morgin with the distaste one would use for someone who performed a vital, but to her, a completely degrading act. But they were a long way from the mouth of Vast, and had more immediate problems for the moment. Meure felt a stirring in himself that he could not quiet. A stirring that was, for the moment, only a potential; but he wondered, at the same, if perhaps he would wind up there, whether he willed or not.

  9

  “The word of a Magus is always a falsehood. For it is a creative word; there would be no object in uttering it if it merely stated an existing fact in nature. The task of a Magus is to make his word, the expression of his will, come true. It is the most formidable labor the mind can conceive.”

  —A.C.

  THE GREAT RIVER of Kepture, the Vast, began its journey to the sea toward the west, from the east of the continent, in a range of hills separating Incana from the land to the east, Intance. Except for the hills which separated Incana from Intance, the Vast was the border separating Incana from all other lands, as it passed westward, turned south, and finally ran back to the east for a shorter space before turning once more to the south and its delta between the two landmasses comprising Kepture. Within a frame of reference which could survey all known planets, Monsalvat was not a notable world in its landforms, nor was Kepture an impressive continent; likewise, the river Yast set no records. But it was the greatest river on the planet, and in its season struck awe into the Klesh who lived along its banks.

  Meure vaguely remembered crossing the river; a greater darkness had passed beneath them as they had flown through the night; there had been nothing below to fix the eye on, no reference: the surface below had darkened, and dropped away, and later rose again into the dry hills of Incana.

  Under one’s own power on the surface, however, a viewer saw the great river of Kepture in different perspectives: from a low barge in the midst of its flow, it stretched away glassily to vague, low shores, or along its length, unbroken to the horizon. There was a current, requiring the bargemen, hybrids of unknown parentage, to take no action. The river was unruffled and wave less, but its calm surface was dark and opaque, and was pocked with upwellings, dimples, curious little whirlpools which appeared and vanished without apparent cause. There was an odor of something long-dead, and the sunlight lent no sparkle to the stagnant surface. It was the very image of a river in Hell.

  No one had hindered their departure from Incana; for five days they had walked through an empty, unpopulated land, with the ridges and hills each crowned with a Dzoz of greater or lesser size. The land around them had been vibrant with the messages of heliographs, but they had neither been pursued, harassed, nor stopped. They had reached the river in sight of one of the castles, but such folk as lived along the Great River ignored it, and disregarded the influence of those who lived within.

  Passage across the Vast was prohibitively expensive, owing, so the bargemen averred, to the labor of rowing the distance in the absence of wind. On the other hand, passage down the river was free, and should the Ombur bank be handy, they could debark as Circumstances warranted. There was one barge currently in commission, due to leave, and so they boarded it, after bartering some trinkets Flerdistar and Clellendol had apparently hidden. Morgin procured some loaves of stale bread for them, on the strength of his office as Embasse, but without either Prote or Bagman, it was clear Morgin’s influence was limited.

  As for Tenguft, the bargemen-mongrels kept a respectful distance, but they were not awed by one Haydar. A band might have sent them into the water, howling with fear, but one alone? Let her pass, while they bided their time, for the Great River brought everything to the outcast bargemen.

  There was a haze over the double sun, a film that Tenguft said meant rain. Meure sat atop a pile of faggots and watched the sullen flow of the river. The Haydar girl sat at the opposite end, chin on hands folded upon one knee, staring into the distance. The others had left him alone since the incidents at the castle, although Cretus had made no more overt manifestations.

  Flerdistar and Clellendol climbed up on the pile beside him. The Ler girl broke the silence first. “Have you had any contact?”

  Meure looked at her for a time before answering. “No. Not in so many words. He’s there, all right; but not there, too. I think it’s an effort for him to control me.”

  She nodded, as if she understood. “I see . . . that’s an experience I have no words for.”

  Meure smiled, for once, finding her studiousness amusing. “Oh, yes, there aren’t any. It’s definitely out of the ordinary, rather
unspeakable. You know that since he’s the outsider, he is invisible to me . . . I mean, I can sense that he’s there, but I can’t catch any of his thought or memory. But he can see all of mine; I can tell where he’s been, what things he’s been poking through, because those memories are changed, somehow; as if they had been re-recorded. I suppose in time he could become me if he wanted, but that’s not his way.”

  Clellendol picked up the thought and continued it, “And so Cretus could mimic you so perfectly we’d not know the difference.”

  “Right. But like I said, that’s not his way. He doesn’t want to become me.”

  Clellendol said, “Then you could become him.”

  “Not that, either. That would produce two Cretuses. I could suppress him entirely then. That’s why he hides from me. While he learns.”

  “Learns what?”

  “All about the universe we know, that he doesn’t know and never did. Also Time. He wants to know how long it’s been.”

  Flerdistar asked, “Does he know? Do you?”

  “No, and no. Only that it’s been a very long span of time, and that there’s been little or no change in the nature of the Klesh.”

  She said, “That bothers me; for a long time it was so obvious that I overlooked it, but it’s there, none the less. These people seem to remain essentially static, advancing neither politically nor technologically.”

  Clellendol added, “That and the prevalence of omens and fortunetellers; they seem to be everywhere, and they also seem to work better than the usual sort one meets. . . . Morgin tells me that it’s like that everywhere. The method varies, but the consultation is done and the answers are given. Except when a Prote is being used, the creature the Embasses use for perception and communication.”

  Flerdistar said, “It would seem we have two things to occupy our attentions, besides the original two—to resolve our old question, and get off this planet.”

  Meure looked at her incredulously. “You mean you still have those in mind?”

  “I could hardly forget them. But the Spsom behavior was not to Clellendol’s liking.”

  Clellendol explained, “It is true that Spsom are essentially carnivorous, and that they hunt. However . . . in their natural habitat, they prey on small game, and they are not built for heavy encounters. Moreover, they are inordinately curious, and they seek out Human contacts, the more bizarre the better. That they would stay with the Haydar, while we were off adventuring, makes no sense, especially when they let the Vfzyekhr go with us . . . we don’t know exactly what the relationship is between those two races, but they simply don’t let them go on their own. Flerdistar reads the past and smells a rat; I read the present and smell another. The Spsom wanted to stay in the same vicinity of the crash site.”

  Flerdistar finished, “Which means that a Spsom ship will come for us, sooner or later. And as for the other problem, the one we came here to resolve . . . That’s not over, either.”

  “How could you ever hope to revive that, after what you’ve seen?” Meure stared at the girl blankly.

  “All secrets leave their traces. We have always known that things were not as history had them, for us, the New People, but never what the true picture was. I said to you on the ship that we finally traced the echoes of that discontinuity to this world. We know that the truth was on this world at one time; and we know that historical truths like that leave traces stamped into the very gesture-language, of the people who hide them, willingly or no. And at the last, as a reader of the past, I can feel the answer just as certainly as you can feel the presence of Cretus. It is here.” Here she gestured with a hand all around the barge and the leaden, brassy water of the sullen river. “Here, all around us, if I could but get it out.”

  Meure said, “Which of our problems do you think will resolve itself first?”

  Clellendol said, “Something on this world suppresses change. There are known rates of change for Humans, wherever you find them. When change does not occur, you look for the mechanism causing that lack. I am very concerned about it, because it implies a power on a planet-wide scale. It could be a natural effect, in which case we should not want to blunder into it. On the other hand, it might be something shaped by design. Then we are dealing with an entity, or entities. There is much here that strains probabilities; the lack of change, the success of omens, the isolation by stressed space, of the planet, preventing contact or effective integration with other worlds. And, like you and the Liy Flerdistar, while I can see that my problem’s there, I can’t resolve it any better than the two of you.”

  Meure felt his way along another tack. “About change, among Humans; I am not conscious of any lack of change . . .” He realized as he said it that he had just demonstrated the validity of Clellendol’s concept. “At least, I know of no great changes in the people I’d heard of. And remember, I come from a colonial world. We had change, in the New Lands Program.”

  Clellendol answered, “So Tancred is a pioneer world, settled a few generations back, still being exploited. That I know. What about this fact, that for every new world Humans discover and exploit, they abandon three others, either to Ler, or some non-Human sentient, or in some cases, not all that rare, to the wind. Change is going on indeed, on a grand scale. Now Humans do everything right, but it doesn’t work for them.”

  Meure laughed, “But it’s right there: that we’re right, according to your lights. Maybe we shouldn’t be!”

  “We are now discussing sanity itself,” exclaimed Flerdistar.

  Meure didn’t answer her, but instead abruptly turned his head at an odd angle, and then looked about the landscape with a piercing glance quite at odds with his usual relaxed manner. Then he seemed to shudder, and resumed his normal appearance. Still, he kept silent, with his head cocked, as if listening.

  After a time, he said, “Yes, that’s right, though; it is no great secret. We have long envied the Second People and their ways. You get a steadier progression without the horrific ups and downs we seemed so attracted to in our history. And we always knew that you considered Humans primitive, uncontrolled, rude, unpotentialized. So gradually we quieted down, stabilized ourselves, concerned ourselves with homely things close to us. I had thought it was working.”

  Clellendol said, “That’s the trouble with an interplanetary civilization. The consciousness of the far islands is lost. That’s why there is a colonization program . . . but it has not halted the decline; only slowed it. What has been done has not been enough.”

  Flerdistar interrupted, “Was that Cretus, just now?”

  “Yes. He’s been listening to us. He left me a message to deliver to the two of you to add to your list of things to worry about. Clellendol: you said something was suppressing change here and isolating Monsalvat. Consider this—that we got in, and that a chain of circumstances leads from outside this stellar area right to Cretus.”

  “Cretus said that.”

  “Yes, and that he has his suspicions as well; that is why he is staying as hidden as he can. He says I screen him. From what, he doesn’t say. But he said that his troubles in his original life commenced when he began to suspect the true nature of what Monsalvat harbors.” Meure paused, and added, “I really don’t like what he is suggesting at all. If it’s true, none of this has been accidental; but not one of us knows to what purpose. Not him either.”

  Flerdistar asked, “What is it Monsalvat harbors?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t know, although I sense that he has seen much more that we would like to know as well. It was not on Dawn, with the Klesh when they were made in the deeps of time, it did not come here with them. Somehow, they awakened it, here. But it was not of Dawn.”

  “Cretus has seen Dawn? Impossible. He can’t have been an Original; Morgin talked about him, and Cretus appeared historically after the naming of lands.”

  “He looked. The thing that caused the transfer of him into me; with that he could see other places, other times. . . . He looked back to see where the Kl
esh had come from.”

  “Then he knows what we have come to hear.” There was unmistakable triumph in the Ler girl’s voice.

  Meure smiled. “Perhaps. But until certain questions are resolved, he is as cautious of you as he is of Monsalvat.”

  Flerdistar assumed a more haughty posture, and said, “Neither you nor Cretus know to what lengths we would go to attain the final resolution.”

  Meure stood now, and looked down on Flerdistar and Clellendol as from a great height. And at that moment, they could not be sure which persona was speaking, for he said, “And you do not know what things Cretus has already done, over lesser issues than this one. He who was once Lord of Incana and All Kepture, come there from the street-wisdom of mongrelhood, will protect his refuge. And demand not of him, that he not demand more of you in return. For the moment, leave Cretus and your secret alone; he is capable of setting forces in motion we cannot imagine, the less control.”

  Clellendol said, with some heat, “He is mortal. Cut him, and he bleeds; strike him, and he pains. If worse comes to worse, he can be killed.”

  Meure now said, with chilling assurance, “Do not make the mistake of imagining either one of you could measure up to that.” Then he softened a little, and said, almost apologetically, “You must not force him to activate before his time. Let it be! He knows what he must do.”

  Meure turned, climbed down, and went to stand by the side of the barge, looking out over the greasy reflections on the water. Flerdistar said to Clellendol, in an undertone, “It is clear to me what this Cretus wants; do you see it?”

  Clellendol answered her, “This whole thing has been arranged to get Cretus the Scribe off Monsalvat. By whom or what, I cannot imagine, but it must not be permitted to happen. He is a unique type—a master of historical currents.”

  “Just so. And not only can he ride those currents, but he can, so it appears, steer them, and probably create them as well. He was schooled deeply in the barbarities of Klesh existence. The Humans will follow him into blood and iron again.”