At the abbey, in exchange for their hospitality, I had retailed the gossip of the day. Of course, I had only so much curiosity about their world, and most of that related to my search. But much small talk is picked up in the taverns, which a wanderer like myself, largely shunned by all, is frequently forced to use. I had little interest in the details of these peoples' history. It was raw and unsophisticated compared to that of mine, and I was still Melni-bonean enough to feel a superiority to mortals of most persuasions.
Through my senses Count Ulric had the opportunity to witness the genesis of his clan into a nation, and in his dreams he experienced my dreams as if they were his own. He dreamed my dream as I dreamed his. But he did not live my dream as I did, and
I suspect he remembers even less. How much he chooses to remember is his own affair.
The late summer sun was surprisingly hot on my overarmored head when I became aware of the nature of the landscape changing. The crags were sharper, the cliffs more terraced, and little streams echoed through deep valleys, giving the place an unearthly music. Clearly I had entered the Devil's Garden. The shale became much harder for my horse to negotiate.
The stark landscape was astonishingly beautiful. Little grew here. The smell of the occasional fir invigorated me. The great limestone crags sparkled in the summer sunshine. All the trails were treacherous. Narrow rivers dancing with vivid life poured in falls from level to level among strangely shaped rocks.
The sun cast dense shadows, contrasting extremes of black and white, on the massive glittering cliffs which rose into the sky. Sudden lakes, icy blue beneath the sun, were turned by passing clouds into blinding sheets of reflective steel. Rock pools shone like coral in their delicacy of color. Groves of dark blue pines and fleshy oaks grew in the few spots of soil. Frequently I heard the rattle of loose rocks as a goat leaped for cover. Crumbling earth on worn stone. Ferns and willowherb growing in crevices. These were the familiar landscapes of a childhood when, as von Bek, I had holidayed here with my family, who kept a villa on the coast. It was also reminiscent of the hinterland of Melnibone, where the Phoorn, our dragon allies, had built their first magnificent city from fire and rock and little else.
As the day grew hotter still, the steady blue sky threw extremes of color everywhere. I began to feel an unlikely nostalgia. The experience was not entirely pleasant. All I understood was a sense of invasion, as if other intelligences attacked my own. Not merely my dream self intruded, but something older and heavier, something which reminded me again of Mu Ooria and invoked images, memories of events which perhaps had not yet even occurred in the history of this particular world.
Used to controlling myself in such circumstances, I was still very uneasy. My horse, Solomon, too, was growing nervous, perhaps reflecting my own mood. I wanted to get out of the place as soon as possible. Doggedly, we continued westward, the horse holding with uncanny ease to the path. Loose grey shale skittered and bounced steeply away from us. Sometimes it seemed we clung to the walls of the rock like lizards, staring down at the radically angled slopes, the glittering, weirdly colored waters far below.
That night I camped in a natural cave, having first made sure it was not the castle of an incumbent bear. It had not seen any kind of human settlement. Nothing in this landscape could sustain human life.
I rose early in the morning, watered, fed and saddled Solomon, set my war-gear about me, changed my helmet for a hood, and again was struck by the supernatural quality of the valley. At the far end in the distance was a wide, shimmering lake.
As I urged Solomon forward, I sensed other presences. I knew the smell of them, the weight of them. I had instinctive respect for them even though I was not really conscious of their identity. They were nearby and they were many. That was all I could be sure about. Beings seemingly older than the Off-Moo, who had seen every stage of the Earth's history. They remembered the moment when they had been expelled from the Sun's gassy Eden to begin the forming of this planet.
Even the stars of this world's firmament were subtly different from mine. I knew it would be better to learn what the Devil's Garden had to tell me rather than impose my own Melnibonean speculation on the place. I sensed that this had once been a great battlefield. Here Law and Chaos had warred as they had never warred until now. It was one of the oldest supernaturally inhabited regions in this realm. It was one of the most remote. It was one of the most enduring. I was at last recognizing it for what it was. Its denizens were unaffected by the major movements of human history. They were philosophical beings who had witnessed so much more than any others, and they had seen all human ideals brought low by human folly. Yet they were incapable of cynicism. I knew them, just as I knew their young cousins, still hiding goat-footed in the rocks, still sliding in and out of trees and streams, still asking favors of Nature rather than making demands on her, the old godlings whom the Greeks had known, half-mortals who sensed their own extinction. These ancient creatures had such old, slow thought processes they were all but undetectable, yet they were the Earth's memory.
Their name for themselves took several mortal lifetimes to pronounce. Adepts gave them considerable attention. Few consulted them, though more knew how. Their answers were usually slowly considered, and the one who had asked could be dead before they reached a conclusion. When they slept it was for millions of years. When they awoke it might be for a few seconds. And they never wasted words. I was beginning to understand what Friar Tristelunne had hinted at.
I had passed part of my apprenticeship among such ancients, but I was still uneasy. If Moonglum had been with me, he would have expressed reasonable fear and I should have mocked him for it, but now I was alone. I had survived a hundred great fights with less fear than now.
As I dismounted and led Solomon down to one of the deep valley streams to drink, I looked around me and saw that the sides had widened. I was effectively in a steep, white amphitheater, scarcely touched by vegetation. A few hardy wildflowers grew here and there, but otherwise the great glade was empty save for the carpet of soft green itself. It had that cultivated atmosphere about its lawns which I had noticed in other places where sheep and goats habitually grazed. Here the limestone crags had split away. Much of the rock stood like tall independent heads or figures. Fancifully I thought I detected expressions. Emotions, life of various kinds, stirred in those huge natural pillars. It was easy to see how the region was rife with tales of ogres.
Old maps referred to the place as Trollheim. Half the legendary giants of Europe were believed to originate here. Remembering the redheaded priest's words, I sought for inscriptions on the stones. I could read Greek, Latin, Arabic easily but had far more trouble with some other languages.
I found no inscriptions. As I ran my hands over the surface of
the rock, however, I felt a distinct but very deep vibration, a kind of grumbling, as if I had awakened a sluggish hive. I dropped my hand and stepped back, seeing faces everywhere in the high cliffs, feeling a certain panic. Should these rocks prove sentient and antagonistic, I knew I could not cut myself clear with my sword.
Though my senses were sharper than most mortals', the horse heard the sound before I did. Solomon snorted and whinnied. Then I detected it. A deep, even rumbling, as if from far underground. It rose rapidly to a heavy hum, and the whole valley swayed to it. All the hillsides shimmered with movement. The stones were dancing. They were singing. Then the note deepened again, and I felt a shock as tremendous vitality flooded up to fill the canyon, as if Mother Earth herself were coming awake.
Solomon, who had been unusually quiet, now voiced a huge snort. I could see that his huge back legs were trembling, and his eyes had begun to dilate badly. My brave beast was actually too terrified to move. His enemy seemed everywhere.
My own emotions were quieter. I still found it difficult to coordinate my actions. Then, quite suddenly, the whole vale became suffused with an extraordinary sense of benign good will.
A single enormous throb! The great slow
heart of the world had given a beat. The vibrations filled my body with joy and meaning. My hand fell away from my sword, where it had remained from habit. Now with wizard's eyes I saw their faces. I was an actor on a stage. These stones were my audience. Rank upon rank of them, rising up the flanks of the vale, their eyes hidden in deep shadow, their mouths showing a kind of eternal irony that was not judgmental of humanity yet spoke of a wisdom born of their age. As gases they had been conscious. As molten lava they had been wise. As the still-animate crust of the planet they had been moral. And as mountains they were contemplative. That consciousness, old and slow as it was, carried their experience. Their lives had been devoted, down the millions of millennia, to observation and understanding.
Something of great importance to the fate of the multiverse,
to their world and my own, had stirred them to speak. Little of their words could be heard by any mortal ear.
They spoke four words, and those words took four days to utter; but that was not our only communication. The mighty heads looked down at me. They studied me and compared me and no doubt recalled all the many others who, seeking their wisdom, had come this way. My horse grew calm and cropped at the grass. I sat and listened to these Grandfathers and Grandmothers, the very spirits of our origin, who in their roaring youth had fled away from the parent Sun to form the planets.
Their love of life had slowed, but it had not faded. Their thoughts were as substantially concentrated as their physical forms. Each word translated became several lines in even the most laconic of languages. In comparison old Melnibonean was baroque and clumsy. Only a trained ear could detect the slight differences of tone. I was forced to recall an old spell and slow down my own perception of time. It was the only way to understand them.
With what they communicated supernaturally, I began to understand a little of what they told me. Why these first stone men and women of the world had chosen to speak to me I did not know. I understood, however, that this was an important part of my dream. I sat, and I immersed myself in a strange, but not unpleasant, communication. In those four days, heedless now of Gunnar's imminent leaving, I listened to the stones. The first word the Grandparents spoke was:
WHERE THE WINDS MEET A WOMAN'S HORNS DEFY THE DESTROYER OF DESTINY AND MAKE HER YOUR BEST ALLY
I had an image of a white beast, a lake, a glittering building, the whole lying in another natural amphitheater. I knew this must be my destination, where I would discover the meaning of my dream.
The second word the Grandparents spoke was:
THE BLADE PIVOTS THE BALANCE
THE BOWL SUSTAINS IT
THE DRAGON IS YOUR FRIEND
I had the impression of a sword blade without a hilt, its tip immersed in some kind of basin while in the shadows a great, yellow eye opened to regard me.
The third word the Grandparents spoke was:
ROOT AND BRANCH THE TREE SUSTAINS BALANCE AND ALL LIFE MAINTAINS
I saw an enormous tree, a spreading oak, whose branches seemed to shelter the world. Its roots went deep into the core of the Earth. Its branches covered another image, which was the same thing in a different form. I knew it was the Cosmic Balance.
And the fourth word the Grandparents spoke was:
GO MAKE TRUE
For a fleeting moment I received a glorious image: a great green oak tree against a sky of burnished silver. Then that special vibrancy faded, leaving only the natural grandeur of the stark cliffs and the soft grass below. The Grandparents were silent. Already they returned to sleep. With a sense of added burden rather than revelation I paid them my respects. I assured them I would think upon their words. I admitted to myself that they made little sense. Had the rocks reached a state of senility?
Suddenly I was struck by the stupidity of my excursion. I had crossed the Devil's Garden to save time. I had then lost a day rather than gained one. The Norseman might already be leaving Isprit. From the slowest of mortals, I became one of the fastest. I needed my stallion to do his best.
Solomon had carried me all the way from Acre. I had acquired him from a Lombardian knight who, like so many of my crusader comrades, had joined the expedition entirely for the land it
promised. Finding the promised land a little barren, he had joined the Templars, turned to disappointed drinking and gambling and from there to the inevitable duel. I had let him pick it. I had long coveted his horse. Being of a weakly disposition, I also needed a soul or two for my sustenance and preferred my food ripe.
The religious posturings of these brutes were as corruptly self-deceiving as anything I had witnessed. Religions so at odds with mankind's nature and its place in the natural order only produce a kind of madness, where the victims are constantly attempting to force reality to confirm their fantasies. The ultimate result must be the ultimate destruction of the realm itself. In their histories, wherever the banner of pious Law was raised, Chaos quickly followed.
Though their people were said to have visited Cimmeria, there was still every possibility that the Norseman would not be able to help me. I would soon know.
I had been to Isprit before, but from the sea. The mountains became greener and more forested and the ride to the port pleasant, if hurried. I arrived above the city just before sunset. The Adriatic stretched, tranquil pewter, beneath a golden sun. Protected by a huge promontory, the port had been chosen by Diocletian for its views and air. Parts of walls and columns along the harbor were clearly from Roman times. But where imperial sails had blossomed on bulky triremes, the ships were now traders, fishing craft. There was only one reefed sail on a tall, slender mast, her crow's nest decorated with vivid dragons curling around the tip, where a black flag flew. The sail was recognizable to anyone but an inlander. It was the typical scarlet-and-azure stripes on a white field of the old Norseman. Gunnar was still in port.
From this height the town looked unplanned and ramshackle, a sprawl of huts and badly thatched houses standing among the marble ruins of a vast Roman compound. As you drew closer, the real wonder of the place made itself evident, as did the rather pungent smell of the dust heaps and sewage dumps inland of the harbor. None of this was noticeable, however, when you looked out over a dark blue sea turning to a pool of blood in the dying
sunlight. I rode down the old trade trail from the mountains into that extraordinary port.
Several hundred years before, the emperor had built himself a palace here overlooking his private moorings and the Adriatic. An extensive complex of buildings, its entire purpose was to comfort the abdicated emperor and help him forget the troubles of the world, many of which were his own creation. The walls were high. There were cloisters and fountains; pleasant walks and groves; benches and tables of basalt, marble and agate; temples and chapels. The baths were exquisitely luxurious. When I had last been here the decay was less extensive.
When Rome's power faded, the barbarians' power over Isprit had grown. Byzantium lacked the resources to claim much in the way of sovereignty, so the port had filled with free fishermen, scrap-metal shippers, slavers, timbermen, traders, pirates, furriers and all the other honest and outlaw callings known to men. It was not an important port, strategically, but it was a lively one. The ostentatious palace was now the core of an entire community. They occupied its rooms and galleries, used its gardens for growing food, its halls for trading and meeting, its baths-those still in working order-for supplies of running water. Even to me this infestation of brawling, squabbling, embracing, praying, shrieking, giggling uninhibited human life had a certain charm.
The fountains had long since dried up. Some had been turned into the hubs of dwellings, their fanciful masonry in contrast to the simplicity of the people. Pigs, sheep and goats were kept in pens on the outskirts, so the stench increased as you approached but lessened as you reached the streets.
I rode through shacks and shanties of driftwood and stones which looked like the debris of a dozen sea-raids in which everything of wealth had been taken. Yet there was probably more lif
e here now than when the emperor came. In those imperial ruins the fallen mighty had given way to the vital mob. This was one of the lessons I had tried to teach my countrymen. Their final lesson came when I demonstrated their weaknesses and the strength of the new, human folk who challenged them.
I had led those human reavers. I had destroyed the Dreamer's City. It was no wonder that I preferred this dream. Here I was merely a leprous wizard with a talent for warfare. There I was the prince who had betrayed his own people and left them scattered, homeless, dying from their world's memory. My actions had allowed Jagreen Lern, who always sought to emulate Melnibonean power, to raise the Lords of the Higher Worlds, to threaten the Cosmic Balance in the name of the Gods of Entropy.
The forces of Law and Chaos were not themselves good or evil. It was by their actions that I judged such Higher Lords. Some were more trustworthy than others. My own patron Lord of Chaos, Duke Arioch, was a consistent if ferocious being, but he had little power in this world.
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