by Jack Vance
“I saw Liane vanish from mortal sight — except for the red curled toes of his sandals. All else was as air.”
“Ha!” cried Liane. “Think of it! Have you ever seen the like?”
The Twk-man asked carelessly, “Do you have salt? I would have salt.”
Liane cut his exultations short, eyed the Twk-man closely.
“What news do you bring me?”
“Three erbs killed Florejin the Dream-builder, and burst all his bubbles. The air above the manse was colored for many minutes with the flitting fragments.”
“A gram.”
“Lord Kandive the Golden has built a barge of carven mo-wood ten lengths high, and it floats on the River Scaum for the Regatta, full of treasure.”
“Two grams.”
“A golden witch named Lith has come to live on Thamber Meadow. She is quiet and very beautiful.”
“Three grams.”
“Enough,” said the Twk-man, and leaned forward to watch while Liane weighed out the salt in a tiny balance. He packed it in small panniers hanging on each side of the ribbed thorax, then twitched the insect into the air and flicked off through the forest vaults.
Once more Liane tried his bronze ring, and this time brought it entirely past his feet, stepped out of it and brought the ring up into the darkness beside him. What a wonderful sanctuary! A hole whose opening could be hidden inside the hole itself! Down with the ring to his feet, step through, bring it up his slender frame and over his shoulders, out into the forest with a small bronze ring in his hand.
Ho! and off to Thamber Meadow to see the beautiful golden witch.
Her hut was a simple affair of woven reeds — a low dome with two round windows and a low door. He saw Lith at the pond bare-legged among the water shoots, catching frogs for her supper. A white kirtle was gathered up tight around her thighs; stock-still she stood and the dark water rippled rings away from her slender knees.
She was more beautiful than Liane could have imagined, as if one of Florejin’s wasted bubbles had burst here on the water. Her skin was pale creamed stirred gold, her hair a denser, wetter gold. Her eyes were like Liane’s own, great golden orbs, and hers were wide apart, tilted slightly.
Liane strode forward and planted himself on the bank. She looked up startled, her ripe mouth half-open.
“Behold, golden witch, here is Liane. He has come to welcome you to Thamber; and he offers you his friendship, his love …”
Lith bent, scooped a handful of slime from the bank and flung it into his face.
Shouting the most violent curses, Liane wiped his eyes free, but the door to the hut had slammed shut.
Liane strode to the door and pounded it with his fist.
“Open and show your witch’s face, or I burn the hut!”
The door opened, and the girl looked forth, smiling. “What now?”
Liane entered the hut and lunged for the girl, but twenty thin shafts darted out, twenty points pricking his chest. He halted, eyebrows raised, mouth twitching.
“Down, steel,” said Lith. The blades snapped from view. “So easily could I seek your vitality,” said Lith, “had I willed.”
Liane frowned and rubbed his chin as if pondering. “You understand,” he said earnestly, “what a witless thing you do. Liane is feared by those who fear fear, loved by those who love love. And you —” his eyes swam the golden glory of her body “— you are ripe as a sweet fruit, you are eager, you glisten and tremble with love. You please Liane, and he will spend much warmness on you.”
“No, no,” said Lith, with a slow smile. “You are too hasty.”
Liane looked at her in surprise. “Indeed?”
“I am Lith,” said she. “I am what you say I am. I ferment, I burn, I seethe. Yet I may have no lover but him who has served me. He must be brave, swift, cunning.”
“I am he,” said Liane. He chewed at his lip. “It is not usually thus. I detest this indecision.” He took a step forward. “Come, let us —”
She backed away. “No, no. You forget. How have you served me, how have you gained the right to my love?”
“Absurdity!” stormed Liane. “Look at me! Note my perfect grace, the beauty of my form and feature, my great eyes, as golden as your own, my manifest will and power … It is you who should serve me. That is how I will have it.” He sank upon a low divan. “Woman, give me wine.”
She shook her head. “In my small domed hut I cannot be forced. Perhaps outside on Thamber Meadow — but in here, among my blue and red tassels, with twenty blades of steel at my call, you must obey me … So choose. Either arise and go, never to return, or else agree to serve me on one small mission, and then have me and all my ardor.”
Liane sat straight and stiff. An odd creature, the golden witch. But, indeed, she was worth some exertion, and he would make her pay for her impudence.
“Very well then,” he said blandly. “I will serve you. What do you wish? Jewels? I can suffocate you in pearls, blind you with diamonds. I have two emeralds the size of your fist, and they are green oceans, where the gaze is trapped and wanders forever among vertical green prisms …”
“No, no jewels —”
“An enemy, perhaps. Ah, so simple. Liane will kill you ten men. Two steps forward, thrust — thus!” He lunged. “And souls go thrilling up like bubbles in a beaker of mead.”
“No. I want no killing.”
He sat back, frowning. “What then?”
She stepped to the back of the room and pulled at a drape. It swung aside, displaying a golden tapestry. The scene was a valley bounded by two steep mountains, a broad valley where a placid river ran, past a quiet village and so into a grove of trees. Golden was the river, golden the mountains, golden the trees — golds so various, so rich, so subtle that the effect was like a many-colored landscape. But the tapestry had been rudely hacked in half.
Liane was entranced. “Exquisite, exquisite …”
Lith said, “It is the Magic Valley of Ariventa so depicted. The other half has been stolen from me, and its recovery is the service I wish of you.”
“Where is the other half?” demanded Liane. “Who is the dastard?”
Now she watched him closely. “Have you ever heard of Chun? Chun the Unavoidable?”
Liane considered. “No.”
“He stole the half to my tapestry, and hung it in a marble hall, and this hall is in the ruins to the north of Kaiin.”
“Ha!” muttered Liane.
“The hall is by the Place of Whispers, and is marked by a leaning column with a black medallion of a phoenix and a two-headed lizard.”
“I go,” said Liane. He rose. “One day to Kaiin, one day to steal, one day to return. Three days.”
Lith followed him to the door. “Beware of Chun the Unavoidable,” she whispered.
And Liane strode away whistling, the red feather bobbing in his green cap. Lith watched him, then turned and slowly approached the golden tapestry. “Golden Ariventa,” she whispered, “my heart cries and hurts with longing for you …”
The Derna is a swifter, thinner river than the Scaum, its bosomy sister to the south. And where the Scaum wallows through a broad dale, purple with horse-blossom, pocked white and gray with crumbling castles, the Derna has sheered a steep canyon, overhung by forested bluffs.
An ancient flint road long ago followed the course of the Derna, but now the exaggeration of the meandering has cut into the pavement, so that Liane, treading the road to Kaiin, was occasionally forced to leave the road and make a detour through banks of thorn and tubegrass which whistled in the breeze.
The red sun, drifting across the universe like an old man creeping to his death-bed, hung low to the horizon when Liane breasted Porphiron Scar, looked across white-walled Kaiin and the blue bay of Sanreale beyond.
Directly below was the market-place, a medley of stalls selling fruit, slabs of pale meat, molluscs from the slime banks, dull flagons of wine. And the quiet people of Kaiin moved among the stalls, buying their sustenance
, carrying it loosely to their stone chambers.
Beyond the market-place rose a bank of ruined columns, like broken teeth — legs to the arena built two hundred feet from the ground by Mad King Shin; beyond, in a grove of bay trees, the glossy dome of the palace was visible, where Kandive the Golden ruled Kaiin and as much of Ascolais as one could see from a vantage on Porphiron Scar.
The Derna, no longer a flow of clear water, poured through a network of dank canals and subterranean tubes, and finally seeped past rotting wharves into the Bay of Sanreale.
A bed for the night, thought Liane; then to his business in the morning.
He leapt down the zig-zag steps — back, forth, back, forth — and came out into the market-place. And now he put on a grave demeanor. Liane the Wayfarer was not unknown in Kaiin, and many were ill-minded enough to work him harm.
He moved sedately in the shade of the Pannone Wall, turned through a narrow cobbled street, bordered by old wooden houses glowing the rich brown of old stump-water in the rays of the setting sun, and so came to a small square and the high stone face of the Magician’s Inn.
The host, a small fat man, sad of eye, with a small fat nose the identical shape of his body, was scraping ashes from the hearth. He straightened his back and hurried behind the counter of his little alcove.
Liane said, “A chamber, well-aired, and a supper of mushrooms, wine and oysters.”
The innkeeper bowed humbly.
“Indeed, sir — and how will you pay?”
Liane flung down a leather sack, taken this very morning. The innkeeper raised his eyebrows in pleasure at the fragrance.
“The ground buds of the spase-bush, brought from a far land,” said Liane.
“Excellent, excellent … Your chamber sir, and your supper at once.”
As Liane ate, several other guests of the house appeared and sat before the fire with wine, and the talk grew large, and dwelt on wizards of the past and the great days of magic.
“Great Phandaal knew a lore now forgot,” said one old man with hair dyed orange. “He tied white and black strings to the legs of sparrows and sent them veering to his direction. And where they wove their magic woof, great trees appeared, laden with flowers, fruits, nuts, or bulbs of rare liqueurs. It is said that thus he wove Great Da Forest on the shores of Sanra Water.”
“Ha,” said a dour man in a garment of dark blue, brown and black, “this I can do.” He brought forth a bit of string, flicked it, whirled it, spoke a quiet word, and the vitality of the pattern fused the string into a tongue of red and yellow fire, which danced, curled, darted back and forth along the table till the dour man killed it with a gesture.
“And this I can do,” said a hooded figure in a black cape sprinkled with silver circles. He brought forth a small tray, laid it on the table and sprinkled therein a pinch of ashes from the hearth. He brought forth a whistle and blew a clear tone, and up from the tray came glittering motes, flashing the prismatic colors red, blue, green, yellow. They floated up a foot and burst in coruscations of brilliant colors, each a beautiful star-shaped pattern, and each burst sounded a tiny repetition of the original tone — the clearest, purest sound in the world. The motes became fewer, the magician blew a different tone, and again the motes floated up to burst in glorious ornamental spangles. Another time — another swarm of motes. At last the magician replaced his whistle, wiped off the tray, tucked it inside his cloak and lapsed back to silence.
Now the other wizards surged forward, and soon the air above the table swarmed with visions, quivered with spells. One showed the group nine new colors of ineffable charm and radiance; another caused a mouth to form on the landlord’s forehead and revile the crowd, much to the landlord’s discomfiture, since it was his own voice. Another displayed a green glass bottle from which the face of a demon peered and grimaced; another a ball of pure crystal which rolled back and forward to the command of the sorcerer who owned it, and who claimed it to be an earring of the fabled master Sankaferrin.
Liane had attentively watched all, crowing in delight at the bottled imp, and trying to cozen the obedient crystal from its owner, without success.
And Liane became pettish, complaining that the world was full of rock-hearted men, but the sorcerer with the crystal earring remained indifferent, and even when Liane spread out twelve packets of rare spice he refused to part with his toy.
Liane pleaded, “I wish only to please the witch Lith.”
“Please her with the spice, then.”
Liane said ingenuously, “Indeed, she has but one wish, a bit of tapestry which I must steal from Chun the Unavoidable.”
And he looked from face to suddenly silent face.
“What causes such immediate sobriety? Ho, Landlord, more wine!”
The sorcerer with the earring said, “If the floor swam ankle-deep with wine — the rich red wine of Tanvilkat — the leaden print of that name would still ride the air.”
“Ha,” laughed Liane, “let only a taste of that wine pass your lips, and the fumes would erase all memory.”
“See his eyes,” came a whisper. “Great and golden.”
“And quick to see,” spoke Liane. “And these legs — quick to run, fleet as starlight on the waves. And this arm — quick to stab with steel. And my magic — which will set me to a refuge that is out of all cognizance.” He gulped wine from a beaker. “Now behold. This is magic from antique days.” He set the bronze band over his head, stepped through, brought it up inside the darkness. When he deemed that sufficient time had elapsed, he stepped through once more.
The fire glowed, the landlord stood in his alcove, Liane’s wine was at hand. But of the assembled magicians, there was no trace.
Liane looked about in puzzlement. “And where are my wizardly friends?”
The landlord turned his head. “They took to their chambers; the name you spoke weighed on their souls.”
And Liane drank his wine in frowning silence.
Next morning he left the inn and picked a roundabout way to the Old Town — a gray wilderness of tumbled pillars, weathered blocks of sandstone, slumped pediments with crumbled inscriptions, flagged terraces overgrown with rusty moss. Lizards, snakes, insects crawled the ruins; no other life did he see.
Threading a way through the rubble, he almost stumbled on a corpse — the body of a youth, one who stared at the sky with empty eye-sockets.
Liane felt a presence. He leapt back, rapier half-bared. A stooped old man stood watching him. He spoke in a feeble, quavering voice: “And what will you have in the Old Town?”
Liane replaced his rapier. “I seek the Place of Whispers. Perhaps you will direct me.”
The old man made a croaking sound at the back of his throat. “Another? Another? When will it cease …” He motioned to the corpse. “This one came yesterday seeking the Place of Whispers. He would steal from Chun the Unavoidable. See him now.” He turned away. “Come with me.” He disappeared over a tumble of rock.
Liane followed. The old man stood by another corpse with eye-sockets bereft and bloody. “This one came four days ago, and he met Chun the Unavoidable … And over there behind the arch is another still, a great warrior in cloison armor. And there — and there —” he pointed, pointed. “And there — and there — like crushed flies.”
He turned his watery blue gaze back to Liane. “Return, young man, return — lest your body lie here in its green cloak to rot on the flagstones.”
Liane drew his rapier and flourished it. “I am Liane the Wayfarer; let them who offend me have fear. And where is the Place of Whispers?”
“If you must know,” said the old man, “it is beyond that broken obelisk. But you go to your peril.”
“I am Liane the Wayfarer. Peril goes with me.”
The old man stood like a piece of weathered statuary as Liane strode off.
And Liane asked himself, suppose this old man were an agent of Chun, and at this minute were on his way to warn him? … Best to take all precautions. He leapt up on a h
igh entablature and ran crouching back to where he had left the ancient.
Here he came, muttering to himself, leaning on his staff. Liane dropped a block of granite as large as his head. A thud, a croak, a gasp — and Liane went his way.
He strode past the broken obelisk into a wide court — the Place of Whispers. Directly opposite was a long wide hall, marked by a leaning column with a big black medallion, the sign of a phoenix and a two-headed lizard.
Liane merged himself with the shadow of a wall, and stood watching like a wolf, alert for any flicker of motion.
All was quiet. The sunlight invested the ruins with dreary splendor. To all sides, as far as the eye could reach, was broken stone, a wasteland leached by a thousand rains, until now the sense of man had departed and the stone was one with the natural earth.
The sun moved across the dark-blue sky. Liane presently stole from his vantage-point and circled the hall. No sight nor sign did he see.
He approached the building from the rear and pressed his ear to the stone. It was dead, without vibration. Around the side — watching up, down, to all sides; a breach in the wall. Liane peered inside. At the back hung half a golden tapestry. Otherwise the hall was empty.
Liane looked up, down, this side, that. There was nothing in sight. He continued around the hall.
He came to another broken place. He looked within. To the rear hung the golden tapestry. Nothing else, to right or left, no sight or sound.
Liane continued to the front of the hall and sought into the eaves; dead as dust.
He had a clear view of the room. Bare, barren, except for the bit of golden tapestry.
Liane entered, striding with long soft steps. He halted in the middle of the floor. Light came to him from all sides except the rear wall. There were a dozen openings from which to flee and no sound except the dull thudding of his heart.
He took two steps forward. The tapestry was almost at his fingertips.
He stepped forward and swiftly jerked the tapestry down from the wall.