Mazirian the Magician

by Jack Vance

  Copyright © 1944, 2012 by Jack Vance

  All rights reserved. For information, address Tom Doherty Associates, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  eISBN 9781466821941

  First eBook Edition : May 2012

  This title was created from the digital archive of the Vance Integral Edition, a series of 44 books produced under the aegis of the author by a worldwide group of his readers. The VIE project gratefully acknowledges the editorial guidance of Norma Vance, as well as the cooperation of the Department of Special Collections at Boston University, whose John Holbrook Vance collection has been an important source of textual evidence. Special thanks to R.C. Lacovara, Patrick Dusoulier, Koen Vyverman, Paul Rhoads, Chuck King, Gregory Hansen, Suan Yong, and Josh Geller for their invaluable assistance preparing final versions of the source files.

  Digitize: Donna Adams, Paul Rhoads, Format: R.C. Lacovara, Tim Stretton, Diff: Damien G. Jones, Tim Stretton, Tech Proof: Errico Rescigno, Text Integrity: Paul Rhoads, Steve Sherman, Tim Stretton, Implement: Donna Adams, Mike Dennison, Security: Paul Rhoads, Compose: Joel Anderson, John A. Schwab, Comp Review: John A. D. Foley, Andreas Irle, Charles King, Stephane Leibovitsch, Robin L. Rouch, Update Verify: Paul Rhoads, Textport: Patrick Dusoulier, Charles King, Proofread: Mike Barrett, Richard Behrens, Patrick Dymond, Charles King, David Mortimore, David Reitsema, Bill Schaub, Gabriel Stein

  Ebook Creation: Arjen Broeze, Christopher Wood, Artwork (maps based on original drawings by Jack and Norma Vance): Paul Rhoads, Christopher Wood, Proofing: Arjen Broeze, Evert Jan de Groot, Gregory Hansen, Menno van der Leden, Koen Vyverman, Management: John Vance, Koen Vyverman, Web: Menno van der Leden

  Mazirian the Magician

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  I

  Mazirian the Magician

  II

  Turjan of Miir

  III

  T’sais

  IV

  Liane the Wayfarer

  V

  Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream

  VI

  Guyal of Sfere

  I

  Mazirian the Magician

  Deep in thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. An inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes followed the tread of his black-slippered feet. Such was Mazirian’s garden — three terraces growing with strange and wonderful vegetations. Certain plants swam with changing iridescences; others held up blooms pulsing like sea-anemones, purple, green, lilac, pink, yellow. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metal — copper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green iridium. Here blooms like bubbles tugged gently upward from glazed green leaves, there a shrub bore a thousand pipe-shaped blossoms, each whistling softly to make music of the ancient Earth, of the ruby-red sunlight, water seeping through black soil, the languid winds. And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In this waning hour of Earth’s life no man could count himself familiar with the glens, the glades, the dells and deeps, the secluded clearings, the ruined pavilions, the sun-dappled pleasaunces, the gullies and heights, the various brooks, freshets, ponds, the meadows, thickets, brakes and rocky outcrops.

  Mazirian paced his garden with a brow frowning in thought. His step was slow and his arms were clenched behind his back. There was one who had brought him puzzlement, doubt, and a great desire: a delightful woman-creature who dwelt in the woods. She came to his garden half-laughing and always wary, riding a black horse with eyes like golden crystals. Many times had Mazirian tried to take her; always her horse had borne her from his varied enticements, threats, and subterfuges.

  Agonized screaming jarred the garden. Mazirian, hastening his step, found a mole chewing the stalk of a plant-animal hybrid. He killed the marauder, and the screams subsided to a dull gasping. Mazirian stroked a furry leaf and the red mouth hissed in pleasure.

  Then: “K-k-k-k-k-k-k,” spoke the plant. Mazirian stooped, held the rodent to the red mouth. The mouth sucked, the small body slid into the stomach-bladder underground. The plant gurgled, eructated, and Mazirian watched with satisfaction.

  The sun had swung low in the sky, so dim and red that the stars could be seen. And now Mazirian felt a watching presence. It would be the woman of the forest, for thus had she disturbed him before. He paused in his stride, feeling for the direction of the gaze.

  He shouted a spell of immobilization. Behind him the plant-animal froze to rigidity and a great green moth wafted to the ground. He whirled around. There she was, at the edge of the forest, closer than ever she had approached before. Nor did she move as he advanced. Mazirian’s young-old eyes shone. He would take her to his manse and keep her in a prison of green glass. He would test her brain with fire, with cold, with pain and with joy. She should serve him with wine and make the eighteen motions of allurement by yellow lamp-light. Perhaps she was spying on him; if so, the Magician would discover immediately, for he could call no man friend and had forever to guard his garden.

  She was but twenty paces distant — then there was a thud and pound of black hooves as she wheeled her mount and fled into the forest.

  The Magician flung down his cloak in rage. She held a guard — a counter-spell, a rune of protection — and always she came when he was ill-prepared to follow. He peered into the murky depths, glimpsed the wanness of her body flitting through a shaft of red light, then black shade and she was gone … Was she a witch? Did she come of her own volition, or — more likely — had an enemy sent her to deal him inquietude? If so, who might be guiding her? There was Prince Kandive the Golden, of Kaiin, whom Mazirian had bilked of his secret of renewed youth. There was Azvan the Astronomer, there was Turjan — hardly Turjan, and here Mazirian’s face lit in a pleasing recollection … He put the thought aside. Azvan, at least, he could test. He turned his steps to his workshop, went to a table where rested a cube of clear crystal, shimmering with a red and blue aureole. From a cabinet he brought a bronze gong and a silver hammer. He tapped on the gong and the mellow tone sang through the room and out, away and beyond. He tapped again and again. Suddenly Azvan’s face shone from the crystal, beaded with pain and great terror.

  “Stay the strokes, Mazirian!” cried Azvan. “Strike no more on the gong of my life!”

  Mazirian paused, his hand poised over the gong.

  “Do you spy on me, Azvan? Do you send a woman to regain the gong?”

  “Not I, Master, not I. I fear you too well.”

  “You must deliver me the woman, Azvan; I insist.”

  “Impossible, Master! I know not who or what she is!”

  Mazirian made as if to strike. Azvan poured forth such a torrent of supplication that Mazirian with a gesture of disgust threw down the hammer and restored the gong to its place. Azvan’s face drifted slowly away, and the fine cube of crystal shone blank as before.

  Mazirian stroked his chin. Apparently he must capture the girl himself. Later, when black night lay across the forest, he would seek through his books for spells to guard h
im through the unpredictable glades. They would be poignant corrosive spells, of such a nature that one would daunt the brain of an ordinary man and two render him mad. Mazirian, by dint of stringent exercise, could encompass four of the most formidable, or six of the lesser spells.

  He put the project from his mind and went to a long vat bathed in a flood of green light. Under a wash of clear fluid lay the body of a man, ghastly below the green glare, but of great physical beauty. His torso tapered from wide shoulders through lean flanks to long strong legs and arched feet; his face was clean and cold with hard flat features. Dusty golden hair clung about his head.

  Mazirian stared at the thing, which he had cultivated from a single cell. It needed only intelligence, and this he knew not how to provide. Turjan of Miir held the knowledge, and Turjan — Mazirian glanced with a grim narrowing of the eyes at a trap in the floor — refused to part with his secret.

  Mazirian pondered the creature in the vat. It was a perfect body; therefore might not the brain be ordered and pliant? He would discover. He set in motion a device to draw off the liquid and presently the body lay stark to the direct rays. Mazirian injected a minim of drug into the neck. The body twitched. The eyes opened, winced in the glare. Mazirian turned away the projector.

  Feebly the creature in the vat moved its arms and feet, as if unaware of their use. Mazirian watched intently: perhaps he had stumbled on the right synthesis for the brain.

  “Sit up!” commanded the Magician.

  The creature fixed its eyes upon him, and reflexes joined muscle to muscle. It gave a throaty roar and sprang from the vat at Mazirian’s throat. In spite of Mazirian’s strength it caught him and shook him like a doll.

  For all Mazirian’s magic he was helpless. The mesmeric spell had been expended, and he had none other in his brain. In any event he could not have uttered the space-twisting syllables with that mindless clutch at his throat.

  His hand closed on the neck of a leaden carboy. He swung and struck the head of his creature, which slumped to the floor.

  Mazirian, not entirely dissatisfied, studied the glistering body at his feet. The spinal coordination had functioned well. At his table he mixed a white potion, and, lifting the golden head, poured the fluid into the lax mouth. The creature stirred, opened its eyes, propped itself on its elbows. The madness had left its face — but Mazirian sought in vain for the glimmer of intelligence. The eyes were as vacant as those of a lizard.

  The Magician shook his head in annoyance. He went to the window and his brooding profile was cut black against the oval panes … Turjan once more? Under the most dire inquiry Turjan had kept his secret close. Mazirian’s thin mouth curved wryly. Perhaps if he inserted another angle in the passage …

  The sun had gone from the sky and there was dimness in Mazirian’s garden. His white night-blossoms opened and their captive gray moths fluttered from bloom to bloom. Mazirian pulled open the trap in the floor and descended stone stairs. Down, down, down … At last a passage intercepted at right angles, lit with the yellow light of eternal lamps. To the left were his fungus beds, to the right a stout oak and iron door, locked with three locks. Down and ahead the stone steps continued, dropping into blackness.

  Mazirian unlocked the three locks, flung wide the door. The room within was bare except for a stone pedestal supporting a glass-topped box. The box measured a yard on a side and was four or five inches high. Within the box — actually a squared passageway, a run with four right angles — moved two small creatures, one seeking, the other evading. The predator was a small dragon with furious red eyes and a monstrous fanged mouth. It waddled along the passage on six splayed legs, twitching its tail as it went. The other stood only half the size of the dragon — a strong-featured man, stark naked, with a copper fillet binding his long black hair. He moved slightly faster than his pursuer, which still kept relentless chase, using a measure of craft, speeding, doubling back, lurking at the angle in case the man should unwarily step around. By holding himself continually alert, the man was able to stay beyond the reach of the fangs. The man was Turjan, whom Mazirian by trickery had captured several weeks before, reduced in size and thus imprisoned.

  Mazirian watched with pleasure as the reptile sprang upon the momentarily relaxing man, who jerked himself clear by the thickness of his skin. It was time, Mazirian thought, to give both rest and nourishment. He dropped panels across the passage, separating it into halves, isolating man from beast. To both he gave meat and pannikins of water.

  Turjan slumped in the passage.

  “Ah,” said Mazirian, “you are fatigued. You desire rest?”

  Turjan remained silent, his eyes closed. Time and the world had lost meaning for him. The only realities were the gray passage and the interminable flight. At unknown intervals came food and a few hours rest.

  “Think of the blue sky,” said Mazirian, “the white stars, your castle Miir by the river Derna; think of wandering free in the meadows.”

  The muscles at Turjan’s mouth twitched.

  “Consider, you might crush the little dragon under your heel.”

  Turjan looked up. “I would prefer to crush your neck, Mazirian.”

  Mazirian was unperturbed. “Tell me, how do you invest your vat creatures with intelligence? Speak, and you go free.”

  Turjan laughed, and there was madness in his laughter.

  “Tell you? And then? You would kill me with hot oil in a moment.”

  Mazirian’s thin mouth drooped petulantly.

  “Wretched man, I know how to make you speak. If your mouth were stuffed, waxed and sealed, you would speak! Tomorrow I take a nerve from your arm and draw coarse cloth along its length.”

  The small Turjan sitting with his legs across the passageway, drank his water and said nothing.

  “Tonight,” said Mazirian with studied malevolence, “I add an angle and change your run to a pentagon.”

  Turjan paused and looked up through the glass cover at his enemy. Then he slowly sipped his water. With five angles there would be less time to evade the charge of the monster, less of the hall in view from one angle.

  “Tomorrow,” said Mazirian, “you will need all your agility.” But another matter occurred to him. He eyed Turjan speculatively. “Yet even this I spare you if you assist me with another problem.”

  “What is your difficulty, febrile Magician?”

  “The image of a woman-creature haunts my brain, and I would capture her.” Mazirian’s eyes went misty at the thought. “Late afternoon she comes to the edge of my garden riding a great black horse — you know her, Turjan?”

  “Not I, Mazirian.” Turjan sipped his water.

  Mazirian continued. “She has sorcery enough to ward away Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell — or perhaps she has some protective rune. When I approach, she flees into the forest.”

  “So then?” asked Turjan, nibbling the meat Mazirian had provided.

  “Who may this woman be?” demanded Mazirian, peering down his long nose at the tiny captive.

  “How can I say?”

  “I must capture her,” said Mazirian abstractedly: “What spells, what spells?”

  Turjan looked up, although he could see the Magician only indistinctly through the cover of glass.

  “Release me, Mazirian, and on my word as a Chosen Hierarch of the Maram-Or, I will deliver you this girl.”

  “How would you do this?” asked the suspicious Mazirian.

  “Pursue her into the forest with my best Live Boots and a headful of spells.”

  “You would fare no better than I,” retorted the Magician. “I give you freedom when I know the synthesis of your vat-things. I myself will pursue the woman.”

  Turjan lowered his head that the Magician might not read his eyes.

  “And as for me, Mazirian?” he inquired after a moment.

  “I will treat with you when I return.”

  “And if you do not return?”

  Mazirian stroked his chin and smiled, revealing fine white
teeth. “The dragon could devour you now, if it were not for your cursed secret.”

  The Magician climbed the stairs. Midnight found him in his study, poring through leather-bound tomes and untidy portfolios … At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam — Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East — swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated — though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

  Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.

  The following day, when the sun hung low, Mazirian went to walk in his garden. He had but short time to wait. As he loosened the earth at the roots of his moon-geraniums a soft rustle and stamp told that the object of his desire had appeared.

  She sat upright in the saddle, a young woman of exquisite configuration. Mazirian slowly stooped, as not to startle her, put his feet into the Live Boots and secured them above the knee.

  He stood up. “Ho girl,” he cried, “you have come again. Why are you here of evenings? Do you admire the roses? They are vividly red because live red blood flows in their petals. If today you do not flee, I will make you the gift of one.”