The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  “Say you so?” Duke Vaul frowned. “You may be right, for, knowing what a powerful weapon we wield against them – or shall wield, when we unknot this riddle – they may well be trying to interfere with my experiments. Good! Go on!”

  “How so, short of demonstrating what I mean?”

  “You?” The duke jerked forward, clutching his throne’s arms so tightly his knuckles glistened white as mutton-fat. “You can make the idol come alive?”

  The traveller gave a weary and reluctant nod.

  “Then do it!” roared Duke Vaul. “But don’t forget! If you fail, a worse fate awaits you than my chief priest suffered!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” sighed the traveller. With his staff he made a curved pass in the air. The idol moved.

  Agshad in the posture of devotion did not open his clasped hands. But Lacrovas swung his sword, and Duke Vaul’s bearded head sprang from his shoulders. Pellidin let fall the three crushed persons from his hand and seized the body. That he squeezed instead, and the cupped hands of Agshad in the attitude of accepting sacrifice overflowed with ducal blood, expressed like juice from a ripe fruit.

  After that the idol stepped down from the altar and began to stamp on the priests.

  Thoughtfully, having made his escape unnoticed in the confusion, the traveller took to the road again.

  Perhaps there would be nothing worse to witness during this journey than what he had beheld in Acromel. Perhaps there would be something a million times as bad. It was to establish such information that he undertook his journeyings.

  In Kanish-Kulya they were fighting a war, and each side was breathing threatenings and slaughter against the other.

  “Oh that fire would fall from heaven and burn up our enemies!” cried the Kanishmen.

  “Oh that the earth would open and swallow up our enemies!” cried the Kulyamen.

  “As you wish,” said the traveller, “so be it.”

  He tapped the ground with his staff, and Fegrim who was pent in a volcano answered that tapping and heaved mightily. Afterwards, when the country was beginning to sprout again – for lava makes fertile soil – men dug up bones and skulls as they prepared the land for planting.

  On the shores of Lake Taxhling, men sat around their canoes swapping lies while they waited for a particular favorable star to ascend above the horizon. One lied better than all the rest.

  But he lied not as his companions lied – to pass the time, to amuse each other harmlessly. He lied to feed a consuming vanity hungrier than all the bellies of all the people in the villages along the shores of the lake, who waited day in, day out, with inexhaustible patience for their menfolk to return with their catch.

  Said the braggart, “If only I could meet with such another fish as I caught single-handed in Lake Moroho when I was a stripling of fifteen! Then you would understand the fisherman’s art! Alas, though” – with a sigh – “there are only piddling fish in Lake Taxhling!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had accepted the offer of food by their fire. Duly, the next dawn, the boaster came home shouting with excitement about a huge fish he had caught, the same size as the one from Lake Moroho. His companions crowded round to see it – and the mountains rang with their laughter, because it was smaller than most of what they themselves had taken during the night.

  Thus shamed, the braggart fled, and was no more heard of in those parts.

  “I do not wish a man to love me for my looks or my fortune,” declared the haughty daughter of a landed lord in the city Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky owing to the presence of the bright being Sardhin chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.

  “No!” she continually insisted, dismissing suitor after suitor. “I wish to be loved for myself, for what I am!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts organized that this lady might view potential husbands. Nine men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion’s face and gone to supper.

  The next time a tourney was announced, no challenger appeared. Pulling a face, the girl demanded that more heralds be sent forth. Her father summoned a hundred of them. The news was noised abroad in every city. And in each, all the personable young men said, “Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? Ho-ho! I’ve better ways to pass my time, and so’ve my friends!”

  This news was brought to her, and made for misery.

  On learning later, in the way of gossip, how many of those whom she had fancied in her heart of hearts had married other girls – some, even common wenches from a shop or farm – in preference to herself, she felt her pride evaporate. She learned to curb her mocking tongue and hoity-toity ways; she recognized that so behaving had not made her happy, but only fed her vaunting self-esteem.

  One night, at last, a young man was obliged by chance to ask for lodging at her father’s mansion, that on the strength of her ill repute he had intended to avoid, and found not the precocious termagant old friends had warned him of, but a pretty, pleasant, ordinary girl, and married her.

  Thus the journey approached its end. The traveller felt a natural relief that nothing unduly alarming had occurred as he hastened his footsteps towards the goal and climax of his excursion – towards Ryovora, where folk were sensible and clear-sighted, and made no trouble that he had to rectify. After this final visit, he could be assured his duty was fulfilled.

  Not that all was well by any means. There were enchanters still, and ogres, and certain elementals roamed at large, and of human problems there might be no end. Still, the worst of his afflictions were growing fewer. One by one, the imprints of aboriginal chaos were fading away, like the footmarks of travellers on the road above the hill where Laprivan was prisoned.

  Then, as the gold and silver towers of Ryovora came to view, he saw that an aura surrounded them as of a brewing storm, and his hope and trust in the people of that city melted clean away.

  III

  At the city Barbizond, where he had been but recently, there was likewise an aura around the tallest towers. There, however, it was a fair thing and pleasant to look upon, imbued with the essence of bright – if cruel, not the less lovely – Sardhin, chained in his unmoving cloud.

  Since time immemorial, though, Ryovora had been immune from such disadvantageous infestations as elementals, principalities and powers; the citizens prided themselves on being gifted with hard plain sense, sober in the making of decisions, practical and rational and causing a minimum of trouble to the world.

  That something had happened to alter this state of affairs…! There was an enigma to make the very cosmos shiver with foreboding!

  The traveller turned aside from the regular track, making no attempt to unfurrow his forehead, and instead of pursuing a direct course into the city diverged across a verdant meadow in the midst of which hovered a mist like the mists of early morning, but more dense. When its grey wisps had closed around him entirely, to the point where they would have incapacitated the vision of any ordinary trespasser, he dissolved one of the forces which curdled the light composing his staff, and a clear bright beam penetrated the opacity. It had barely sheared the vapor when a quiet voice addressed him.

  “Since you know where you are, I know who you are. Enter my dwelling, and be welcome.”

  The haze vanished, and the traveller advanced across the drawbridge of a castle that reared seemingly to heaven. At each corner rose a tower, haloed with cloud; two dragons chained beside the portcullis bowed their heads fawningly; four manlike persons whose bodies were of burnished steel came to escort him – one before, one behind, one at each side – through the gateway and across the courtyard; as he ascended steps towards the chief tower and the keep, twenty trumpeters sounded a blast from a gallery, and they were as metallic as their instruments.

  There was a scent of magic in the air. Echoes of half-for
gotten cantrips resounded, incredibly faint, from the masonry of the walls. Here and there blue light dripped from a projecting cornice; shadows moved with none to cast them.

  Then a door of oak studded with brass swung open on silent hinges, giving access to a room across which slanted a thick bar of sunlight from a window standing wide. The beam illuminated the shrivelled mummy of a mandrake. In jars covered with black cloth, ranged on an oak shelf, were twenty homunculi. A brazier burned, giving off a thick, very pleasant smell like warm honey.

  From behind a table on which were piled massy books that also served as a perch for a drowsy owl, a personage in dark red robes rose to greet the traveller, and spoke in a tone between delight and resignation.

  “It is traditional that no one shall pierce the mist with which I guard my privacy save an invited guest or one who has a single nature. And, the universe being as it is, the latter class possesses but a single member. As you must know, I am the enchanter Manuus. Be welcome.”

  The visitor bent his head in acknowledgment. A chair was placed for him, not by visible hands; he sat down, disposing his cloak comfortably over its arms. From a cupboard Manuus took a large flask and two pottery mugs ornamented with complex symbols in blue enamel. From the flask – which bore similar symbols, but in green – he spilled a few drops of sparkling liquid, muttering words that made the walls hum faintly. The drops vanished before they reached the floor, and the enchanter gave a smile of satisfaction as he filled the mugs.

  “What business causes you to honor my abode with your presence?” he inquired, resuming his own chair after handing one mug to his caller.

  “There is an aura surrounding Ryovora,” said the traveller. “Before I enter the city I wish to ascertain its cause.”

  Manuus nodded thoughtfully, stroking the wispy beard that clung at his chin. It was as grey as the mist he used to guard his home from casual prying.

  “You will forgive me mentioning the fact,” he said in an apologetic tone, “but it is asserted in one of my books – a volume, moreover, in which I have come to place some degree of confidence – that if your nature is single, then it must logically follow that you answer questions as well as asking them, and that you are obliged to do so one for one.”

  “That is so. And I see plainly that you trust the tome of which you speak. The faceless drinker to whom you just poured libation is not elsewhere referred to.”

  Silence ensued for a space while each contemplated the other. There was, though, a distinction, inasmuch as the enchanter might only study the outward guise of the traveller, whereas the latter examined the totality of his host.

  “Ask away, then,” the traveller invited at length. “And I may say that the more involved your question, the simpler and harder to unravel will be my answer.”

  “And vice versa?” suggested Manuus, his old eyes twinkling.

  “Exactly.”

  “Very well, then. Who are you? Note, please, that I do not ask how you are called. You must have an infinity of names.”

  The traveller smiled. “That is a good question, frankly phrased. So I will answer frankly. I am he to whom was entrusted the task of bringing order forth from chaos. Hence the reason why I have but one nature.”

  “If your nature were such that you demanded honor in full measure with your worth, all the days of my life would not suffice to do you homage,” said Manuus seriously. “Ask now what you would know.”

  “What’s the trouble in Ryovora?”

  Maliciously Manuus countered, “I am not bound by your laws, sir. Therefore I will answer in the human style – simply, to simple questions. There is dissatisfaction with the order of things as they are.”

  “Fair,” the traveller conceded. “Ask away.”

  The enchanter hesitated. “Who,” he resumed at length, “imposed on you –?”

  And his tongue locked in his mouth, while the traveller looked on with an expression blending cynicism and sympathy. When at last Manuus was able to speak again, he muttered, “Your pardon. It was of the nature of a test. I had seen it stated that …”

  “That there are certain questions one is literally and physically forbidden to pose?” The traveller chuckled. “Why, then your test has served to confirm the fact. I, even I, could not answer the question I suspect you were intending to frame. However, a question that cannot be asked is ipso facto no question at all. You may try again.”

  Manuus licked his lips. What had transpired in his head during that moment of involuntary paralysis defied comprehension. He was, though, brave and enterprising, and shortly ventured, “On the other hand, I believe I may legitimately ask: what is the purpose of your undertaking?”

  “You may.”

  “So I do” – leaning back expectant in his chair.

  “Why! When all things have but one nature, they will be subsumed into the Original All. Time will stop. This conclusion is desirable.”

  Manuus looked sourly at the brazier. “Desirable, perhaps – but appallingly dull. Speak again.”

  “In what particular respect are the citizens of Ryovora dissatisfied?”

  Manuus turned the question over in his brilliant mind, seeking a way to milk from it a further opportunity to interrogate his distinguished visitor. He failed, and replied:

  “They are displeased because they have no gods.”

  Three bolts of lightning sheared the clear blue sky beyond the window; three successive claps of thunder made the room re-echo and startled the sleepy owl into giving three little hops across the great book on which he squatted. The traveller ignored these events, taking a further sip from his mug, but on his face a frown was suddenly engraved.

  “Ask a third time,” he invited.

  “Why, this can’t be altogether necessary,” said Manuus in high delight. “But so I will!” He darted his gaze from place to place within the room as though in quest of inspiration, and finally lit on the proper line of inquiry.

  “What was there, before things became as they are now?”

  “I will show you,” said the traveller, and dipped one fingertip into his mug. He drew forth a drop of liquid in which was trapped a sparkling bubble.

  “Regard this bubble,” he instructed. “You will see …”

  In those days the forces were none of them chained. They raged unchecked through every corner and quarter of the cosmos. Here, for instance, ruled Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, capricious, whimsical; when he stared worlds melted in frightful agony. There a bright being shed radiance, but the radiance was all-consuming, and that which was solid and durable – but dull – flashed into fire. At another place, creatures numbering a million strove for possession of a grain of dust; the fury of their contest laid waste solar systems.

  Once – twice – a third time something burgeoned which had about it a comforting aura of rationality, predictability, stability; about this nucleus, time was generated from eternity. Time entails memory, memory entails conscience, conscience entails thought for the future, which is itself implied by the existence of time. Twice the forces of chaos raged around this focal point and swallowed it back into oblivion; then the will of Tuprid and Caschalanva, of Quorril and Lry, and of all the other elemental beings, reigned once more. But none of them was supreme, because in chaos nothing can endure, nothing can be absolute, nothing sure or certain or reliable.

  In that age stars flared up like fires of straw, bright one moment, ash the next. On planets circling uncounted suns creatures who could think struggled to reduce chaos to order, and when they had most nearly achieved it, chance ordained that all their work should go for nothing, absorbed again into the faceless dark.

  “But that was before me,” said the traveller, and squeezed the bubble, so it burst.

  “I have seen,” said Manuus with inexpressible weariness. “But I have not understood.”

  “Man does not comprehend chaos. That is why man is man, and not of another nature.” The traveller smiled. “I wish now to propound my final question; do you grant
that I have well and sufficiently answered yours?”

  “You have only given me another million questions to ask,” sighed Manuus, shaking his grey head. “But that also, I suppose, stems from the nature of mankind. Ask away.”

  “Your supposition is correct. Now my last question: enchanter, what is your opinion of a god?”

  “I do not know what a god is,” said Manuus. “And I doubt that anybody knows, though many think they do.”

  “Fair enough,” said the black-clad traveller, and rose.

  “Have you not even one more question to put to me?” suggested the enchanter with a wan smile.

  “Not even one.”

  Manuus gave a shrug and rose also. He said formally, “Then I can only thank you for having graced my dwelling. Few of my colleagues can have enjoyed the honor of receiving you in person.”

  The traveller bestowed on him a hard, forthright look.

  “I have many names, but one nature,” he said, “Being human, you have one name, and many more natures than two. But the essential two are these: that you shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that you shall strive to take advantage of chaos. Such folk as you are allies of the powers who preceded me.”

  “I resent that, sir,” said Manuus frostily. “Let it not be said that I oppose you now you have informed me of the purpose of your task.”

  “A third component, not of your nature alone, but that of all humanity, is this: that you shall not understand what you are doing. I wish you good day – though whether it will be so is rather up to you than up to me.”

  Leaving his host rapt in thought, with one elbow on a book in front of him, his chin cupped in his hand, his eyes staring vacantly at his pet owl, the traveller set forward, and among the gold and silver towers of Ryovora the populace confirmed what Manuus had said.

  That same argument the enchanter had put bluntly, he heard indirectly phrased before the houses of the great merchant-enchanters who conjured this city’s goods from the far corners of the world; so too in market squares and private homes; so too in theaters and taverns, shops and laboratories and even brothels. When at last he came to stand upon the summit of a high shining tower and overlook the sleeping city in the small dead hours, he was convinced.