The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  “Go away!” said the monster with terrible emphasis. “Go away!”

  Whereat the Quadruple God burst his chains, stamped on the torchbearers, and took to his multiple heels.

  Only once was his panicky progress interrupted before he regained the familiar sanctuary of his temple at Acromel.

  That was when a gaunt and scarecrowlike person rushed into his path, crying in a voice which though thin and reedy caused cracks to open in the surface of the land and strange colors to muddy the clear blue of the heavens.

  The Quadruple God trampled this nuisance with three of his eight massive feet, leaving nothing but a smear like a crushed beetle to mark the spot.

  Triumphantly the inhabitants of Ryovora went forward in the wake of those who had come from Acromel, and with their ad hoc weapons they wrought considerable havoc among the laggards. Not the most tongue-tied among them was Brim the locksmith, who expended more breath on shouting praise of his own perceptiveness than on catching up with the rearguard of the enemy.

  But certain of his fellows who had been lukewarm in their acceptance of Bernard Brown as a ready-made god turned aside to surround Brim in a hostile fashion. “Nonsense!” they said emphatically. “If we had not been lured by fools like you away from our customary trust in common sense, we would have seen what he saw and done what he advised anyway!”

  Then they set about Brim with meticulous thoroughness, impressing the extent of his stupidity upon him in such fashion as to ensure he could never again overlook their various mementos. The tools of his trade that he carried in his leather apron proved ideally adapted to the task.

  That chore attended to, and the Acromel party in utter disarray, they returned with satisfaction to their homes. By nightfall the aura of blue depression which had pervaded the atmosphere these many weeks past had dissipated; the cause for rejoicing which this gave them made them forget altogether about Bernard Brown.

  The margrave and his nobles assembled again in the Moth Garden. The people had begun to reclaim the offerings they had set before Bernard’s altar, to feast on them and deck themselves in gaudy ceremonial attire. To preoccupy the nobles, though, there were still problems, and Eadwil spoke of the most pressing when they met.

  He said, “I think, sirs and ladies, that the era of enchantment is passing.”

  The margrave nodded. So did many others. All of them glanced at the place which had been – briefly – Tyllwin’s.

  “Regard it this way,” said Eadwil musingly. “Of its nature enchantment, magic, whatever term you give the art, is a survival of the chaos which we know reigned before time. But the imprint of that chaos is fading from the world. The confusion which causes stone idols to walk, elementals to be personified in storm-clouds, humans to blend with animals, and spirits to speak from fire and water, is gradually succumbing to that same hard plain sense on which we of Ryovora traditionally rely.”

  “Well spoken!” applauded the margrave. Eadwil cast him a sidelong glance and concluded thus.

  “Whether as Tyllwin or himself, Manuus is – was? – a master of chaos. So are we all in lesser degree. But the greatest master of us all has proved to be a simple stranger lacking all acquaintance with the esoteric arts. Colleagues and friends, magic is of the past. Rationality and logic will rule the future.” He bent his gaze below the table. “My feet, I may add, have not pained me since I arrived at this conclusion. So I think I shall forthwith take steps to set right the other disadvantage consequent upon my command of magic. Excuse me.”

  And with a hop and a skip he departed in the wake of a saucy-eyed girl who was bearing fruit from the garden to the feast the people were preparing.

  Another who stood unobserved among the vines and trellises was a black-clad traveller, whose face twitched into a smile when he heard Eadwil’s words. He did not need to wait longer or listen more.

  IX

  On that same knoll from which the spokesman of Acromel’s forces had addressed the margrave, Bernard Brown sat with his chin in his hands, staring gloomily at nothing. His dismal contemplation was interrupted at length by one who was not a stranger, who stood before him leaning on a remarkable staff.

  “I’ve seen you before,” said Bernard slowly. “Well, who are you?”

  The black-clad one chuckled. “He to whom the task was given of bringing order forth from chaos in this corner of the universe. And who are you?”

  “I’m not sure I know any longer,” Bernard admitted after a pause. “Until recently I thought I was Bernard Brown, an ordinary sort of person with an ordinary kind of job. But these past few days people have been telling me so repeatedly I’m a god that I’ve almost been convinced of the idea.”

  The black-clad man clucked his tongue. “I’m afraid that isn’t true at all,” he said. “So – since I was responsible for involving you with all this – I’d better explain.”

  He sat down companionably alongside Bernard, and made a gesture in the air with his staff. A short distance away, in a pleasant meadow, some clinging ground mist cleared to reveal the ruins of a castle, smoking quietly.

  “An enchanter called Manuus dwelt there,” he said. “A person with – so to speak – a vested interest in the chaos which formerly pervaded the All. This sort of thing.”

  He gestured again, and out of a hill a mile or two this side of Acromel a – a – a … Well, a pair of yellow eyes peered for an instant. What could be seen in those eyes defied description. It made Bernard shudder with amazement and repugnance.

  “So where am I?” he demanded. “Or is it a question of when am I?”

  “Neither. We are speaking of a borderland between chaos, existing in eternity, and reason, existing in time. At this moment the balance is uncertain, but it is tilting, bit by bit. You have been quite invaluable in tipping it beyond a crucial point.”

  “I don’t understand,” complained Bernard.

  “No matter. If you did understand the nature of chaos, men being what they are, you would certainly be conceited enough to wish to exploit it. This in fact is what those vain enchanters do: turn the forces of chaos to their own advantage. But, logically, to control chaos with reason is to impose lasting order on it. This implies in turn that sooner or later chaos will reign no longer.”

  Bernard’s face exhibited sudden comprehension. “I see!” he exclaimed. “In other words, these magicians or whatever necessarily destroy what they most desire to preserve.”

  “You grasp the point exactly,” said the one in black.

  “And it’s up to you to ensure things come out right?”

  “That is the case.”

  “Hmm!” Bernard rubbed his chin. “That sounds like a tough chore. Who landed you with it, if I may ask?”

  “You may not. I’m very sorry.” The tone was final; still, the words were succeeded by a chuckle. This black-garbed fellow was really very pleasant, Bernard reflected. Casting around for the other question he had meant to put, he recalled it.

  “Well, then! May I at least ask what it was I did?”

  “That, yes! You see, there was dissatisfaction in Ryovora so long as the people felt they had to have a god. So I gave them one … of a kind. And in the end they realized their god – you! – had done nothing for them which they themselves could not have achieved by using their heads. My compliments, by the way, on the elegant manner in which you demonstrated that.”

  “I was scared silly,” confessed Bernard.

  “But you kept your wits about you, and refused to be overawed by mere size. The universe is a big place, and there are many corners of it where chaos on the grand scale still obtains. This, then, is a valuable attitude.”

  Bernard pondered for a while. At last he shook his head and sighed. “It’s no good. I can’t deal in these terms. Magic – monsters staring out of hillsides – creatures half man, half beast – stone idols that can walk … It’s the stuff of nightmare! Even though I seem to remember seeing it, I don’t believe it’s real.”

  “Thank you,” s
aid his companion dryly. “That you speak thus is an earnest of my eventual success. Sometimes it seems a very long way off.”

  “What will – if this is the right way to put it – what will happen then?”

  “I don’t know,” said the traveller. “Why should I care? I’ll have finished my appointed task. And since you have now concluded yours …”

  When he was alone, the traveller in black stood awhile leaning on his staff of curdled light, contemplating the wreck of Manuus’s castle.

  Chaos.

  He decreed it out of existence. Since Manuus no longer held it tenaciously in being, it disappeared. Across the site the grass grew green and orderly.

  The traveller wished that Bernard had not asked his last question. It was discomforting. Now and then he regretted that he must inevitably find out its answer.

  Yet it was not in his nature – and his nature was single – to undo anything he had done. Therefore, inexorably, he was approaching that ultimate moment.

  He shrugged, and then there was nothing but the knoll and the afternoon sunlight, while people made merry in Ryovora.

  TWO

  Break the Door of Hell

  I will break the door of hell and smash the bolts; I will summon the dead to eat food with the living, and the living shall be outnumbered by the host of them.

  –The Epic of Gilgamesh

  I

  Time had come to Ryovora.

  The traveller in black contemplated the fact from the brow of the hill where he had imprisoned Laprivan, more aeons ago than it was possible to count. Leaning on his staff of light, he repressed a shiver. Single though his nature might be, unique though that attribute certainly was, he was not immune from apprehension; his endowments did not include omniscience.

  Time had come to that great city; time, in which could exist order and logic and rational thought. And so it was removed from his domain forever, vanished from the borderland of chaos situated timeless in eternity.

  Given the task for which his single nature fitted him, one might have expected that he should feel the satisfaction of achievement, or even pleasurable if mild conceit. He did not, and for this there were two most cogent reasons and a third which he preferred not to consider.

  The first, and most piquing, was that his duty lay upon him; this season followed the conjunction of four significant planets hereabout, and he was setting forth, as he was constrained, to oversee that portion of the All which lay in his charge. And he had grown accustomed to terminating his round of inspection at Ryovora. Lapses and backsliding from common sense had occasionally minded him to alter this habit; still, he had never done so, and to discover that Ryovora was elsewhere displeased him somewhat.

  The second reason was worse than displeasing. It was alarming, and dismaying, and unprecedented, and many other distressing epithets.

  “In sum,” the traveller in black announced to the air, “it’s unheard-of!”

  Another city had arisen in the borderland of chaos, and it was stamped all over with the betraying mark of time.

  How was it possible? Carried in some eddy whose flow ran counter to the universal trend, so that from reason and logic it receded to the random reign of chance? Presumably. Yet the means whereby such an eddy might be created seemed inconceivable. Some great enchantment would be required, and in the grip of time such magic was impossible.

  “A contradiction in terms!” exclaimed the traveller, speaking aloud again to distract his mind from the third and least palatable reason for regretting the loss of Ryovora and its substitution by another, unfamiliar, city. It was known to him that when he had accomplished his purpose all things would have but one nature; then they would be subsumed into the Original All and time would have a stop.

  But if an entire city could be shifted in the wrong direction, from time into eternity, from rationality to chaos, it followed that someone, or something, or some impersonal force must be arrayed against him that he had never previously guessed at!

  This conclusion was disturbing. Yet inevitable.

  He glanced around the hillside. As ever, among the sparse and grey-leaved bushes, dust devils were sifting their substance, fine as ashes, over the footprints he had left on the path. Raising his staff, he tapped it on a rock: once, twice, and again.

  At the third tap the elemental Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes heaved in his underground prison and cracks appeared in the road. From these his voice boomed, monstrous, making the welkin echo.

  “Leave me be!”

  “What do you know of the city that stands yonder?” said the traveller in black.

  “Nothing,” responded Laprivan with sullenness.

  “Nothing? You say so to spare yourself the pain of memory! Shall I send you where Ryovora has gone, into the domain of time? There memories cannot be expunged by whirling dust!”

  The whole hill shuddered, and an avalanche of pale rock rattled on its further side. The sourceless voice moaned, “What should I know of yonder city? No one has come from it and passed this way.”

  “Bad,” said the traveller thoughtfully. “Very bad.”

  After that he was silent a long while, until at last the elemental pleaded, “Leave me be! Leave me to wipe clean the slate of yesterday!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller absently, and tapped with his staff again. The cracks in the ground closed; the dust devils resumed their gyrations.

  Ignoring all this, the traveller gazed over the green and gracious meadows of the valley. There the strange city lay in noontide sunlight like a worn-out toy cast aside by a giant-child. The heedless ruin of time was everywhere about it, toothmarks of the greatest leveller on brick and stone and metal. It had been fair and rich, that was plain; its gates were of oak and bronze – but the bronze was corroded green; its towers were of silver and orichalcum – but their bright sheen was overlaid with a dull mist like the foul breath of a swamp; its streets were broad and paved with marble – but the flags lifted to the roots of wild plants, and here and there one found holes filled by rain and noxious with algae and the larvae of biting insects.

  Out of time and into chaos. Almost beyond belief.

  At length he bestirred himself. There was nothing else for it – so he reasoned – but to set off on his journey of obligation, and come at last not to familiar, welcome Ryovora but to this enigma wished on him by fate and boding no good whatsoever.

  Anxiety carried him far and fast, and little by little it was mitigated by relief. To learn that Acromel still stood where it had, albeit altered; to find that they yet fished Lake Taxhling when the proper stars came out, and that the river Metamorphia fed it with strange unspawned creatures, greedy and unwholesome – this was reassuring, an earnest of balance continued in the cosmos.

  And at these places, and many many more, he did what on this as on all his journeys was required of him.

  A lonely hut stood on the shelf edge of a mountain pasture in the land called Eyneran; here, when he paused to ask a crust of bread and a sup of ewe’s milk from the flock high and distant as clouds on the steep meadow, a woman with a frightened face opened the ill-carpentered door to him, and met his request with a silent shake of the head.

  She was wrinkled and worn out beyond her years; yet the hut was sound, a savory smell filled the air, and the clean floor and many copper pots the traveller could see assorted badly with her ragged gown and bare feet. He waited. Shortly a cry rang out, man-deep, yet edged with a spoilt child’s petulance.

  “Mother, come here! The pot’s boiling over! What’s keeping you, you lazy slut?”

  “Mintra!” whispered the woman, and a patter of feet announced the passage of a girl, some twelve years old, across the single room to tend the pot.

  Another cry, still louder: “Mother, I told you to come here! Mintra can’t lift the pot when it’s full, you stupid old bag of bones!”

  “We can’t give you food,” the woman said to the traveller. “All of it is for my son.”

  The tr
aveller nodded, but waited still. Then at last with great heaving and panting the son came into view: bulging-bellied in his apparel of velvet worked with gilt wire and stained with slobberings of food, so tall he nearly scraped the roof with his pate, yet so fat he breathed hard for the simple effort of standing upright. His fist, big as a ham, cracked his mother behind the ear.

  “Why don’t you die, you lazy old cow, and get it over with?” he bellowed.

  “It’d be a merciful relief,” the woman whimpered. “And die I would of my own free will, but that I stand alone between you and Mintra! With me gone you’d take her like a harlot, sister or no!”

  “And wouldn’t she be a tasty bit for my bed?” chortled the son with an evil grin, his tongue emerging thick as an ox’s to stroke his lips lasciviously.

  “As you wish,” said the traveller, “so be it.” And he knocked his staff on the threshold and took his leave.

  That night plague stole silent from the mountain mist, and took the mother as the son had wished; then the girl Mintra fled on light feet down the hill trails and the fever-giddy glutton went calling her among the heedless sheep until his gross weight dislodged a rock and sent him over a precipice to feed the crows.

  In the rich city Gryte a thief spoke to curse the briefness of the summer night, which had cut short his plan to break the wall of a merchant’s countinghouse.

  “Oh that dawn never overtook me!” he cried. “Oh that I had lasting darkness whereby to ply my trade!”

  “As you wish,” said the traveller, “so be it.” And darkness came: two thick grey cataracts that shut the light away.

  Likewise in Medham was another rogue, striving to seduce a lady who feared her charms were passing with the years so that he might win to a coffer of gold secreted in her chamber. “I love you!” declared this smooth-tongued deceiver. “I’d wed you had you no more than rags and a shack!”