by Jack Vance
The two strolled to the forward part of the pavilion. “You are right!” exclaimed Rhialto. He pointed. “There is Kerkaju; I recognize its scarlet empharism!”
The planet Jangk appeared: a world with a curious dull sheen.
At Morreion’s direction, Vermoulian directed the palace down to Smokedancers Bluff, at the southern shore of the Quicksilver Ocean. Guarding themselves against the poisonous air, the magicians descended the marble steps and walked out on the bluff, where an inspiring vista spread before them. Monstrous Kerkaju bulged across the green sky, every pore and flocculation distinct, its simulacrum mirrored in the Quicksilver Ocean. Directly below, at the base of the bluff, quicksilver puddled and trickled across flats of black hornblende; here the Jangk ‘dragoons’—purple pansy-shaped creatures six feet in diameter—grazed on tufts of moss. Somewhat to the east the town Kaleshe descended in terraces to the shore.
Morreion, standing at the edge of the bluff, inhaled the noxious vapors which blew in from the ocean, as if they were a tonic. “My memory quickens,” he called out. “I remember this scene as if it were yesterday. There have been changes, true. Yonder far peak has eroded to half its height; the bluffs on which we stand have been thrust upwards at least a hundred feet. Has it been so long? While I built my cairns and pored over my books the aeons flitted past. Not to mention the unknown period I rode through space on a disk of blood and star-stuff. Let us proceed to Kaleshe; it was formerly the haunt of the archveult Persain.”
“When you encounter your enemies, what then?” asked Rhialto. “Are your spells prepared and ready?”
“What need I for spells?” grated Morreion. “Behold!” He pointed his finger; a flicker of emotion spurted forth to shatter a boulder. He clenched his fists; the constricted passion cracked as if he had crumpled stiff parchment. He strode off toward Kaleshe, the magicians trooping behind.
The Kalsh had seen the palace descend; a number had gathered at the top of the bluff. Like the archveults they were sheathed in pale blue scales. Osmium cords constricted the black plumes of the men; the feathery green plumes of the women, however, waved and swayed as they walked. All stood seven feet tall, and were slim as lizards.
Morreion halted. “Persain, stand forth!” he called.
One of the men spoke: “There is no Persain at Kaleshe.”
“What? No archveult Persain?”
“None of this name. The local archveult is a certain Evorix, who departed in haste at the sight of your peregrine palace.”
“Who keeps the town records?”
Another Kalsh stepped forth. “I am that functionary.”
“Are you acquainted with Persain the archveult?”
“I know by repute a Persain who was swallowed by a harpy towards the end of the 21st Aeon.”
Morreion uttered a groan. “Has he evaded me? What of Xexamedes?”
“He is gone from Jangk; no one knows where.”
“Djorin?”
“He lives, but keeps to a pink pearl castle across the ocean.”
“Aha! What of Ospro?”
“Dead.”
Morreion gave another abysmal groan. “Vexel?”
“Dead.”
Morreion groaned once more. Name by name he ran down the roster of his enemies. Four only survived.
When Morreion turned about his face had become haunted and haggard; he seemed not to see the magicians of Earth. All of his scarlet and blue stones had given up their color. “Four only,” he muttered. “Four only to receive the charge of all my force…Not enough, not enough! So many have won free! Not enough, not enough! The balance must adjust!” He made a brusque gesture. “Come! To the castle of Djorin!”
In the palace they drifted across the ocean while the great red globe of Kerkaju kept pace above and below. Cliffs of mottled quartz and cinnabar rose ahead; on a crag jutting over the ocean stood a castle in the shape of a great pink pearl.
The peregrine palace settled upon a level area; Morreion leapt down the steps and advanced toward the castle. A circular door of solid osmium rolled back; an archveult nine feet tall, with black plumes waving three feet over his head, came forth.
Morreion called, “Send forth Djorin; I have dealings with him.”
“Djorin is within! We have had a presentiment! You are the land-ape Morreion, from the far past. Be warned; we are prepared for you.”
“Djorin!” called Morreion. “Come forth!”
“Djorin will not come forth,” stated the archveult, “nor will Arvianid, Ishix, Herclamon, or the other archveults of Jangk who have come to combine their power against yours. If you seek vengeance, turn upon the real culprits; do not annoy us with your peevish complaints.” The archveult returned within and the osmium door rolled shut.
Morreion stood stock-still. Mune the Mage came forward, and stated: “I will winkle them out, with Houlart’s Blue Extractive.” He hurled the spell toward the castle, to no effect. Rhialto attempted a spell of brain pullulations, but the magic was absorbed; Gilgad next brought down his Instantaneous Galvanic Thrust, which spattered harmlessly off the glossy pink surface.
“Useless,” said Ildefonse. “Their IOUN stones absorb the magic.”
The archveults in their turn became active. Three ports opened; three spells simultaneously issued forth, to be intercepted by Morreion’s IOUN stones, which momentarily pulsed the brighter.
Morreion stepped three paces forward. He pointed his finger; force struck at the osmium door. It creaked and rattled, but held firm.
Morreion pointed his finger at the fragile pink nacre; the force slid away and was wasted.
Morreion pointed at the stone posts which supported the castle. They burst apart. The castle lurched, rolled over and down the crags. It bounced from jut to jut, smashing and shattering, and splashed into the Quicksilver Ocean, where a current caught it and carried it out to sea. Through rents in the nacre the archveults crawled forth, to clamber to the top. More followed, until their accumulated weight rolled the pearl over, throwing all on top into the quicksilver sea, where they sank as deep as their thighs. Some tried to walk and leap to the shore, others lay flat on their backs and sculled with their hands. A gust of wind caught the pink bubble and sent it rolling across the sea, tossing off archveults as a turning wheel flings away drops of water. A band of Jangk harpies put out from the shore to envelop and devour the archveults closest at hand; the others allowed themselves to drift on the current and out to sea, where they were lost to view.
Morreion turned slowly toward the magicians of Earth. His face was gray. “A fiasco,” he muttered. “It is nothing.”
Slowly he walked toward the palace. At the steps he stopped short. “What did they mean: ‘The real culprits’?”
“A figure of speech,” replied Ildefonse. “Come up on the pavilion; we will refresh ourselves with wine. At last your vengeance is complete. And now…” His voice died as Morreion climbed the steps. One of the bright blue stones lost its color. Morreion stiffened as if at a twinge of pain. He swung around to look from magician to magician. “I remember a certain face: a man with a bald head; black beardlets hung from each of his cheeks. He was a burly man…What was his name?”
“These events are far in the past,” said the diabolist Shrue. “Best to put them out of mind.”
Other blue stones became dull: Morreion’s eyes seemed to assume the light they had lost.
“The archveults came to Earth. We conquered them. They begged for their lives. So much I recall…The chief magician demanded the secret of the IOUN stones. Ah! What was his name! He had a habit of pulling on his black beardlets…A handsome man, a great popinjay—I almost see his face—he made a proposal to the chief magician. Ah! Now it begins to come clear!” The blue stones faded one by one. Morreion’s face shone with a white fire. The last of the blue stones went pallid.
Morreion spoke in a soft voice, a delicate voice, as if he savored each word. “The chief magician’s name was Ildefonse. The popinjay was Rhialto. I remember e
ach detail. Rhialto proposed that I go to learn the secret; Ildefonse vowed to protect me, as if I were his own life. I trusted them; I trusted all the magicians in the chamber: Gilgad was there, and Hurtiancz and Mune the Mage and Perdustin. All my dear friends, who joined in a solemn vow to make the archveults hostage for my safety. Now I know the culprits. The archveults dealt with me as an enemy. My friends sent me forth and never thought of me again. Ildefonse—what have you to say, before you go to wait out twenty aeons in a certain place of which I know?”
Ildefonse said bluffly, “Come now, you must not take matters so seriously. All’s well that ends well; we are now happily reunited and the secret of the IOUN stones is ours!”
“For each pang I suffered, you shall suffer twenty,” said Morreion. “Rhialto as well, and Gilgad, and Mune, and Herark and all the rest. Vermoulian, lift the palace. Return us the way we have come. Put double fire to the incense.”
Rhialto looked at Ildefonse, who shrugged.
“Unavoidable,” said Rhialto. He evoked the Spell of Temporal Stasis. Silence fell upon the scene. Each person stood like a monument.
Rhialto bound Morreion’s arms to his side with swaths of tape. He strapped Morreion’s ankles together, and wrapped bandages into Morreion’s mouth, to prevent him uttering a sound. He found a net and, capturing the IOUN stones, drew them down about Morreion’s head, in close contact with his scalp. As an afterthought he taped a blindfold over Morreion’s eyes.
He could do no more. He dissolved the spell. Ildefonse was already walking across the pavilion. Morreion jerked and thrashed in disbelief. Ildefonse and Rhialto lowered him to the marble floor.
“Vermoulian,” said Ildefonse, “be so good as to call forth your staff. Have them bring a trundle and convey Morreion to a dark room. He must rest for a spell.”
13
Rhialto found his manse as he had left it, with the exception of the way-post, which was complete. Well satisfied, Rhialto went into one of his back rooms. Here he broke open a hole into subspace and placed therein the netful of IOUN stones which he carried. Some gleamed incandescent blue; others were mingled scarlet and blue; the rest shone deep red, pink, pink and green, pale green, and pale lavender.
Rhialto shook his head ruefully and closed the dimension down upon the stones. Returning to his work-room he located Puiras among the Minuscules and restored him to size.
“Once and for all, Puiras, I find that I no longer need your services. You may join the Minuscules, or you may take your pay and go.”
Puiras gave a roar of protest. “I worked my fingers to the bone; is this all the thanks I get?”
“I do not care to argue with you; in fact, I have already engaged your replacement.”
Puiras eyed the tall vague-eyed man who had wandered into the work-room. “Is this the fellow? I wish him luck. Give me my money; and none of your magic gold, which goes to sand!”
Puiras took his money and went his way. Rhialto spoke to the new servitor. “For your first task, you may clear up the wreckage of the aviary. If you find corpses, drag them to the side; I will presently dispose of them. Next, the tile of the great hall…”
Afterword to “Morreion”
I feel rather like a stage magician with a repertory of tricks; we both create illusions. Does he go to great effort to explain his techniques?
—Jack Vance 1977
The Last Castle
Chapter I
1
Toward the end of a stormy summer afternoon, with the sun finally breaking out under ragged black rain-clouds, Castle Janeil was overwhelmed and its population destroyed. Until almost the last moment factions among the castle clans contended as to how Destiny properly should be met. The gentlemen of most prestige and account elected to ignore the entire undignified circumstance and went about their normal pursuits, with neither more nor less punctilio than usual. A few cadets, desperate to the point of hysteria, took up weapons and prepared to resist the final assault. Still others, perhaps a quarter of the total population, waited passively, ready—almost happy—to expiate the sins of the human race. In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford. The proud sat turning the pages of their beautiful books, discussing the qualities of a century-old essence, or fondling a favorite Phane, and died without deigning to heed the fact. The hotheads raced up the muddy slope which, outraging all normal rationality, loomed above the parapets of Janeil. Most were buried under sliding rubble, but a few gained the ridge to gun, hack and stab, until they themselves were shot, crushed by the half-alive power-wagons, hacked or stabbed. The contrite waited in the classic posture of expiation—on their knees, heads bowed—and perished, so they believed, by a process in which the Meks were symbols and human sin the reality. In the end all were dead: gentlemen, ladies, Phanes in the pavilions; Peasants in the stables. Of all those who had inhabited Janeil, only the Birds survived, creatures awkward, gauche and raucous, oblivious to pride and faith, more concerned with the wholeness of their hides than the dignity of their castle. As the Meks swarmed down over the parapets, the Birds departed their cotes and, screaming strident insults, flapped east toward Hagedorn, now the last castle of Earth.
2
Four months before, the Meks had appeared in the park before Janeil, fresh from the Sea Island massacre. Climbing to the turrets and balconies, sauntering the Sunset Promenade, from ramparts and parapets, the gentlemen and ladies of Janeil, some two thousand in all, looked down at the brown-gold warriors. Their mood was complex: amused indifference, flippant disdain, and a substratum of doubt and foreboding—all the product of three basic circumstances: their own exquisitely subtle civilization, the security provided by Janeil’s walls, and the fact that they could conceive no recourse, no means for altering circumstances.
The Janeil Meks had long since departed to join the revolt; there only remained Phanes, Peasants and Birds from which to fashion what would have been the travesty of a punitive force. At the moment there seemed no need for such a force. Janeil was deemed impregnable. The walls, two hundred feet tall, were black rock-melt contained in the meshes of a silver-blue steel alloy. Solar cells provided energy for all the needs of the castle, and in the event of emergency food could be synthesized from carbon dioxide and water vapor, as well as syrup for Phanes, Peasants and Birds. Such a need was not envisaged. Janeil was self-sufficient and secure, though inconveniences might arise when machinery broke down and there were no Meks to repair it. The situation then was disturbing but hardly desperate. During the day the gentlemen so inclined brought forth energy-guns and sport-rifles and killed as many Meks as the extreme range allowed.
After dark the Meks brought forward power-wagons and earth-movers, and began to raise a dike around Janeil. The folk of the castle watched without comprehension until the dike reached a height of fifty feet and dirt began to spill down against the walls. Then the dire purpose of the Meks became apparent, and insouciance gave way to dismal foreboding. All the gentlemen of Janeil were erudite in at least one realm of knowledge; certain were mathematical theoreticians, while others had made a profound study of the physical sciences. Some of these, with a detail of Peasants to perform the sheerly physical exertion, attempted to restore the energy-cannon to functioning condition. Unluckily, the cannon had not been maintained in good order. Various components were obviously corroded or damaged. Conceivably these components might have been replaced from the Mek shops on the second sub-level, but none of the group had any knowledge of the Mek nomenclature or warehousing system. Warrick Madency Arban* suggested that a work-force of Peasants search the warehouse, but in view of the limited mental capacity of the Peasants, nothing was done and the whole plan to restore the energy-cannon came to naught.
The gentlefolk of Janeil watched in fascination as the dirt piled higher and higher around them, in a circular mound like a crater. Summer neared its end, and on one stormy day dirt and rubble rose above the parape
ts, and began to spill over into the courts and piazzas: Janeil must soon be buried and all within suffocated. It was then that a group of impulsive young cadets, with more élan than dignity, took up weapons and charged up the slope. The Meks dumped dirt and stone upon them, but a handful gained the ridge where they fought in a kind of dreadful exaltation.
Fifteen minutes the fight raged and the earth became sodden with rain and blood. For one glorious moment the cadets swept the ridge clear and, had not most of their fellows been lost under the rubble anything might have occurred. But the Meks regrouped and thrust forward. Ten men were left, then six, then four, then one, then none. The Meks marched down the slope, swarmed over the battlements, and with somber intensity killed all within. Janeil, for seven hundred years the abode of gallant gentlemen, and gracious ladies, had become a lifeless hulk.
3
The Mek, standing as if a specimen in a museum case, was a man-like creature, native, in his original version, to a planet of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically as if oiled or waxed; the spines thrusting back from scalp and neck shone like gold, and indeed were coated with a conductive copper-chrome film. His sense organs were gathered in clusters at the site of a man’s ears; his visage—it was often a shock, walking the lower corridors, to come suddenly upon a Mek—was corrugated muscle, not dissimilar to the look of an uncovered human brain. His maw, a vertical irregular cleft at the base of this ‘face’, was an obsolete organ by reason of the syrup sac which had been introduced under the skin of the shoulders; the digestive organs, originally used to extract nutrition from decayed swamp vegetation and coelenterates, had atrophied. The Mek typically wore no garment except possibly a work-apron or a tool-belt, and in the sunlight his rust-bronze skin made a handsome display. This was the Mek solitary, a creature intrinsically as effective as man—perhaps more by virtue of his superb brain which also functioned as a radio transceiver. Working in the mass, by the teeming thousands, he seemed less admirable, less competent: a hybrid of sub-man and cockroach.