Rhialto the Marvellous

by Jack Vance

  Lehuster hesitated. “Yes. It is a scarab which Calanctus always wore on his wrist. Dress him now in apparel, then I will give him the scarab.”

  Ten minutes later Rhialto and Ildefonse entered the parlour with Calanctus, who now wore a black helmet, a breast-plate of polished black metal, a black cape, black breeches and black boots, with silver buckles and accoutrements.

  Lehuster nodded. “He is as he should be. Calanctus, hold out your arm! I will give you a scarab worn by the first Calanctus, whose identity you must assume. This bracelet is yours. Wear it always around your right wrist.”

  Calanctus said: “I feel the surge of power. I am strong! I am Calanctus!”

  Rhialto asked: “Are you strong enough to accept the sleight of magic? The ordinary man must study forty years even to become an apprentice.”

  “I have the power to accept magic.”

  “Come then! You shall ingest the Encyclopedia, then the Three Books of Phandaal, and if then you are neither dead nor mad I will pronounce you a man strong beyond any of my experience. Come! Back to the work-room.”

  Ildefonse remained in the parlour … Minutes passed. He heard a queer choking outcry, quickly quelled.

  Calanctus returned to the parlour with firm steps. Rhialto, coming after, walked on sagging knees with a green pallor on his face.

  Calanctus spoke somberly to Ildefonse: “I have accepted magic. My mind reels with spells; they are wild, but still I control their veering forces. The scarab gave me the strength.”

  Lehuster spoke. “The time is near. Witches gather on the meadow: Zanzel, Ao of the Opals, Barbanikos, and others. They are fretful and agitated … In fact, Zanzel approaches.”

  Rhialto looked to Ildefonse. “Shall we use the opportunity?”

  “We would be fools if we did not!”

  “My thoughts precisely. If you will take yourself to the side arbor …”

  Rhialto went out on the front terrace, where he met Zanzel, who lodged an emphatic protest in the matter of the missing IOUN stones.

  “Quite right!” said Rhialto. “It was a dastardly act, done at the behest of Ildefonse. Come to the side arbor and I will redress the wrong.”

  Zanzel walked to the side arbor where Ildefonse desensitized her with the Spell of Internal Solitude. Ladanque, Rhialto’s chamberlain, lifted Zanzel to a barrow and wheeled her to the gardener’s shed.

  Rhialto, emboldened by his success, stepped to the front terrace and signaled to Barbanikos, who, following Rhialto into the side arbor, met a similar disposition.

  So it went with Ao of the Opals, Dulce-Lolo, Hurtiancz and others, until the only witches remaining upon the meadow were the absent-minded Vermoulian and Tchamast the Didactor, both of whom ignored Rhialto’s signal.

  Llorio the Murthe dropped down upon the meadow in a whirl of white cloud-spume … She wore an ankle-length white gown, silver sandals, a silver belt and a black fillet to confine her hair. She put a question to Vermoulian, who pointed toward Rhialto, at the front of Falu.

  Llorio slowly approached. Ildefonse, stepping from the arbor, bravely directed a double spell of Internal Solitude against her; it bounced back and, striking Ildefonse, sent him sprawling.

  Llorio the Murthe halted. “Rhialto! You have mistreated my coterie! You have stolen my magic stones, and so now you must come to Sadal Suud not as a witch, but as a servant of menial sort, and this shall be your punishment. Ildefonse will fare no better.”

  From Falu came Calanctus. He halted. Llorio’s taut jaw sagged; her mouth fell open.

  Llorio spoke in a gasping voice: “How are you here? How did you evade the triangle? How …” The voice seemed to catch in her throat; in consternation she stared into the face of Calanctus. She found her voice. “Why do you look at me like that? Faithless I have not been; I now depart for Sadal Suud! Here I do only what must be done and it is you who are faithless!”

  “I also did what must be done, and so it must be done again, for you have ensqualmated men to be your witches; so you have broken the Great Law, which ordains that man shall be man and woman shall be woman.”

  “When Necessity meets Law, then Law gives way: so you spoke in your Decretals!”

  “No matter. Go you shall to Sadal Suud! Go now, go alone, without the ensqualmations.”

  Llorio said: “It is all one; a sorry band they are, either as wizards or witches, and in candour I wanted them only for entourage.”

  “Go then, Murthe!”

  Llorio instead looked at Calanctus with a peculiar expression mingled of puzzlement and dissatisfaction on her face. She made no move to depart, which would seem to be both a taunt and a provocation. “The aeons have not dealt kindly with you; now you stand like a man of dough! Remember how you threatened to deal with me should we meet again?” She took another step forward, and showed a cool smile. “Are you afraid of my strength? So it must be! Where now are your erotic boasts and predictions?”

  “I am a man of peace. I carry concord in my soul rather than attack and subjugation. I threaten naught; I promise hope.”

  Llorio came a step closer and peered into his face. “Ah!” she cried softly. “You are an empty façade, no more, and not Calanctus! Are you then so ready to taste death’s sweetness?”

  “I am Calanctus.”

  Llorio spoke a spell of twisting and torsion, but Calanctus fended it away with a gesture, and called a spell in turn of compressions from seven directions, which caught the Murthe unready and sent her reeling to her knees. Calanctus bent in compassion to lift her erect; she flared into blue flame and Calanctus held her around the waist with charred arms.

  Llorio pushed him back, her face contorted. “You are not Calanctus; you are milk where he is blood!”

  Even as she spoke the scarab in the bracelet brushed her face; she screamed and from her throat erupted a great spell — an explosion of power too strong for the tissues of her body, so that blood spurted from her mouth and nose. She reeled back to support herself against a tree, while Calanctus toppled slowly to lie broken and torn on his back.

  Panting in emotion, Llorio stood looking down at the toppled hulk. From the nostrils issued a lazy filament of black smoke, coiling and swirling above the corpse.

  Moving like a man entranced, Lehuster stepped slowly into the smoke. The air shook to a rumble of sound; a sultry yellow glare flashed like lightning; in the place of Lehuster stood a man of massive body, his skin glowing with internal light. He wore short black pantaloons and sandals, with legs and chest bare; his hair was black, his face square, with a stern nose and jutting jaw. He bent over the corpse and taking the scarab clasped it to his own wrist.

  The new Calanctus spoke to Llorio: “My trouble has gone for nought! I came to this time as Lehuster, thus to leave sleeping old pains and old rages; now these hopes are forlorn, and all is as before. I am I, and once more we stand at odds!”

  Llorio stood silent, her chest heaving.

  Calanctus spoke on: “What of your other spells, to batter and break, or to beguile men’s dreams and soften resolve? If so, try them on me, since I am not the poor mild Calanctus who carried the hopes of all of us, and who met so rude a destiny.”

  “Hope?” cried Llorio. “When the world is done and I have been thwarted? What remains? Nothing. Neither hope nor honor nor anguish nor pain! All is gone! Ashes blow across the desert. All has been lost, or forgotten; the best and the dearest are gone. Who are these creatures who stand here so foolishly? Ildefonse? Rhialto? Vapid ghosts, mowing with round mouths! Hope! Nothing remains. All is gone, all is done; even death is in the past.”

  So cried out Llorio, from the passion of despair, the blood still dripping from her nose. Calanctus stood quietly, waiting till her passion spent itself.

  “To Sadal Suud I will go. I have failed; I stand at bay, surrounded by the enemies of my race.”

  Calanctus, reaching forward, touched her face. “Call me enemy as you like! Still, I love your dear features; I treasure your virtues and your peculiar fau
lts; and I would not have them changed save in the direction of kindliness.”

  Llorio took a step backward. “I concede nothing; I will change nothing.”

  “Ah well, it was only an idle thought. What is this blood?”

  “My brain is bleeding; I used all my power to destroy this poor futile corpse. I too am dying; I taste the savor of death. Calanctus, you have won your victory at last!”

  “As usual, you overshoot the mark. I have won no victory; you are not dying nor need you go off to Sadal Suud, which is a steaming quagmire infested by owls, gnats and rodents: quite unsuitable for one of your delicacy. Who would do the laundry?”

  “You will allow me neither death, nor yet refuge on a new world! Is this not defeat piled on defeat?”

  “Words only. Come now; take my hand and we will call a truce.”

  “Never!” cried Llorio. “This symbolizes the ultimate conquest, to which I will never surrender!”

  “I will gladly put by the symbol for the reality. Then you shall see whether or not I am able to make good my boasts.”

  “Never! I submit my person to no man’s pleasure.”

  “Then will you not at least come away with me, so that we may drink wine on the terrace of my air-castle, and look across the panorama, and speak as the words idly come to mind?”

  “Never!”

  “One moment!” called Ildefonse. “Before you go, be good enough to desqualmate this coterie of witches, and so spare us the effort!”

  “Bah, it is no great task,” said Calanctus. “Evoke the Second Retrotropic, followed by a stabilizing fixture: a matter of minutes.”

  “Precisely so,” said Ildefonse. “This, essentially, was my plan.”

  Rhialto turned to Ladanque. “Bring out the witches. Rank them on the meadow.”

  “And the corpse?”

  Rhialto spoke a spell of dissolution; the dead thing collapsed into dust.

  Llorio hesitated, looking first north, then south, as if in indecision; then, turning, she walked pensively across the meadow. Calanctus followed; the two halted and stood facing each other. First Llorio spoke, then Calanctus, then Llorio; then they both looked together toward the east, and then they were gone.

  II

  Fader’s Waft

  1

  By day the sun cast a wan maroon gloom across the land; by night all was dark and still, with only a few pale stars to post the old constellations. Time went at a languid pace, without purpose or urgency, and folk made few long-range plans.

  Grand Motholam was three aeons gone; the great masters of magic were extinct, each having suffered a more or less undignified demise: through the treachery of a trusted confidante; or during an amorous befuddlement; or by the machinations of a secret cabal; or through some unexpected and horrifying disaster.

  The magicians of this, the 21st Aeon, for the most part resided in the quiet river valleys of Almery and Ascolais, though a few recluses kept to the Land of Cutz in the north, or the Land of the Falling Wall, or even the Steppes of Shwang in the distant east.

  By reason of special factors (which lie beyond the scope of this present exposition) the magicians of the day were a various lot; gathered in colloquy, they seemed an assembly of rare and wonderful birds, each most mindful of his own plumage. While, on the whole, lacking the flamboyant magnificence of Grand Motholam, they were no less capricious and self-willed, and only after a number of unhappy incidents were they persuaded to regulate themselves by a code of conduct. This code, known as ‘the Monstrament’, or, less formally, ‘the Blue Principles’, was engraved upon a blue prism, which was housed in a secret place. The association included the most notable magicians of the region. By unanimous acclaim, Ildefonse was proclaimed Preceptor, and invested with large powers.

  Ildefonse resided at Boumergarth, an ancient castle of four towers on the banks of the River Scaum. He had been chosen Preceptor not only for his dedication to the Blue Principles, but also for his equable temperament, which at times seemed almost bland. His tolerance was proverbial; at one turn he might be found chuckling to the lewd jokes of Dulce-Lolo; the next might find him engrossed in the opinions of the ascetic Tchamast, whose suspicions of the female sex ran deep.

  Ildefonse ordinarily appeared as a jovial sage with twinkling blue eyes, a bald pate and a straggling blond beard: a semblance which tended to engender trust, frequently to private advantage, and the use of the word ‘ingenuous’, when applied to Ildefonse, was probably incorrect.

  At this juncture the magicians subscribing to the Blue Principles numbered twenty-two.1 Despite the clear advantages of orderly conduct, certain agile intelligences could not resist the thrill of the illicit and played mischievous tricks, on one occasion performing a most serious transgression against the Blue Principles.

  The case involved Rhialto, sometimes known as ‘the Marvellous’. He resided at Falu, not far from Wilda Water, in a district of low hills and dim forests at the eastern verge of Ascolais.

  Among his fellows Rhialto, for whatever justification, was considered somewhat supercilious and enjoyed no wide popularity. His natural semblance was that of a proud and distinguished grandee, with short black hair, austere features, and a manner of careless ease. Rhialto was not without vanity, which, when taken with his aloof manner, often exasperated his fellows. And certain among them pointedly turned away when Rhialto appeared at a gathering, to Rhialto’s sublime indifference.

  Hache-Moncour was one of the few who cultivated Rhialto. He had contrived for himself the semblance of a Ctharion nature-god, with bronze curls and exquisite features, flawed (in the opinion of some) by a fulsome richness of mouth and eyes perhaps a trifle too round and limpid. Motivated, perhaps, by envy, at times he seemed almost to emulate Rhialto’s mannerisms.

  In Hache-Moncour’s original condition, he had formed a number of fidgeting habits. When absorbed in thought, he squinted and pulled at his ears; when perplexed, he scratched vigorously under his arms. Such habits, which he found hard to abandon, marred the careless aplomb toward which he so earnestly worked. He suspected Rhialto of smiling at his lapses, which honed the edge of his envy, and so the mischiefs began.

  After a banquet at the hall of Mune the Mage, the magicians prepared to depart. Making their way into the foyer, they took up their cloaks and hats. Rhialto, always punctilious in his courtesies, extended to Hurtiancz first his cloak, then his hat. Hurtiancz, whose heavy-featured head rested directly upon his squat shoulders, acknowledged the service with a grunt. Hache-Moncour, standing nearby, saw his opportunity and cast a spell which enlarged Hurtiancz’s hat by several sizes, so that when the irascible magician clapped the hat on his head, it dropped in back almost to his shoulders, while in front only the bulbous tip of his nose remained visible.

  Hurtiancz tore the hat from his head and studied it from all angles, but Hache-Moncour had removed the spell and nothing seemed out of order. Once again Hurtiancz tried the hat on his head, and now it fit properly.

  Even then all might have been ignored had not Hache-Moncour made a pictorial imprint of the scene, which he subsequently circulated among the magicians and other persons of the local nobility whose good opinion Hurtiancz wished to cultivate. The picture showed Hurtiancz with only the red lump of his nose in sight and Rhialto in the background wearing a smile of cool amusement.

  Only Rhialto failed to receive a copy of the picture and no one thought to mention it to him, least of all Hurtiancz, whose outrage knew no bounds, and who now could hardly speak calmly when Rhialto’s name was mentioned.

  Hache-Moncour was delighted by the success of his prank. Any tarnishing of Rhialto’s repute could only serve to enhance his own; additionally, he discovered a malicious pleasure in Rhialto’s discomfiture.

  Hache-Moncour thereupon initiated a whole series of intrigues, which at last became for Hache-Moncour something of an obsession, and his goal became the full and utter humiliation of the proud Rhialto.

  Hache-Moncour worked with consummate subtlety, so
that Rhialto at first noticed nothing. The plots were for the most part paltry, but always carried a sting.

  Upon learning that Rhialto was refurbishing the guest-rooms at Falu, Hache-Moncour purloined a prized gem from Ao of the Opals and arranged that it should hang from the drop-chain of the commode in the new lavatory at Falu.

  In due course, Ao learned of the use to which his magnificent two-inch tear-drop opal had been put, and his rancor, like that of Hurtiancz, approached the violence of a shivering fit. Despite all, Ao was constrained by Article Four of the Blue Principles, and so kept his resentment within check.

  On another occasion, during Rhialto’s experiments with bubbles of luminous plasm, Hache-Moncour caused such a bubble to settle into a unique harquisade tree which Zilifant had imported from Canopus and thereupon had nurtured by day and by night with intense solicitude. Once within the tree, the plasm exploded, pulverizing the brittle glass foliage and permeating Zilifant’s premises with a vile and persistent odor.

  Zilifant instantly complained to Rhialto in a voice croaking and creaking under the weight of anger. Rhialto responded with cool logic, citing six definite reasons why none of his plasms were responsible for the damage, and, while expressing regret, refused to make restitution of any sort. Zilifant’s convictions were quietly reinforced by Hache-Moncour, who stated that Rhialto had boastfully announced his intention of using the harquisade tree as a target. “Further,” said Hache-Moncour, “Rhialto went on to say, and here I quote, ‘Zilifant constantly exudes such a personal chife into the air that the stench of the plasm may well be redundant.’”

  And so it went. Gilgad owned a pet simiode, of which he was inordinately fond. At twilight Hache-Moncour, wearing a black domino, a black cloak and a black hat identical to the garments worn by Rhialto, captured the beast and dragged it away at the end of a chain to Falu. Here Hache-Moncour beat the beast well and tied it on a short scope between a pair of chastity-plants, which caused the beast an additional affliction.

  Gilgad, taking information from peasants, followed the trail to Falu. He released the simiode, listened to its howling complaints, then confronted Rhialto with the evidence of his guilt.