The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and bailiffs came to advise the lady that her house and treasure were forfeit on another’s debt. Upon which the liar turned and ran, not staying to hear a city officer hard on the bailiffs’ heels, come to report the honoring of the debt a day past due.

  So too in Wocrahin a swaggering bully came down the street on market day, cuffing aside children with the back of his hand and housewives with the flat of his sword. “Oh that my way were not cluttered with such riffraff!” he exclaimed, his shoulder butting the traveller in the chest.

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the latter, and when the bully turned the corner the street he walked was empty under a leaden sky – and the buildings on either side, and the taverns, and the shops. Nor did he again in all eternity have to push aside the riffraff he had cursed; he was alone.

  * * *

  This, however, was not the sum total of the traveller’s doings as he passed from place to place within his realm. In Kanish-Kulya they had built a wall to keep Kanishmen and Kulyamen apart, and from either side, set into the masonry, grinned down the skulls of those dead in a war for which the reason had long been forgotten. In this strange and dreadful place Fegrim was pent under a volcano; shadowed by its cone the traveller halted and spoke long and seriously with that elemental, and when he was done the country for a mile on every side was dusted with cinders, little and bright as fireflies.

  At Gander’s Well, branched Yorbeth brooded in the guise of a tall tree whose main root tapped a wonderful subterranean spring and whose boughs, fed with miraculous sap, sprouted leaves and fruit the like of which had not been seen under any sun before. The traveller spent an hour in the shade of that tree, and for the questions he asked was constrained to carry away a red twig and later catch a cat and perform a ceremony with these two items – a price he paid with heavy heart, for he had been told nothing of any great use in his inquiries.

  Also he consulted with Farchgrind, and in Leppersley he cast the bones of a girl’s foot to read the runes they formed, and after great labor he incarcerated Wolpec in a candle over whose flame he smoked a piece of glass which thereupon showed three truths: one ineluctable, one debatable, and one incomprehensible. That was in Teq, when the end of his journey was near.

  So presently he came to Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky because of the bright being Sardhin, chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. Three courses remained to him: he might free Sardhin and let him speak, and from here to the horizon nothing would be left save himself, the elemental, and that which was of its nature bright, as jewels, or fire, or the edge of a keen-bladed knife; or he might do as once he had done under similar circumstances – address himself to an enchanter and make use of powers that trespassed too far towards naked chaos to be within his own scope – or, finally, he might go forward in ignorance to the strange city and confront the challenge of fate without the armor of foreknowledge.

  Some little while remained before he needed to take his irreversible decision. Coming to Barbizond, therefore, he made his way down a fine broad avenue where plane and lime trees alternated in the direction of a steel-blue temple. There stood the altar of Hnua-Threl, who was also Sardhin when he chose to be; the people invoked him with daily single combats on the temple floor. They were not a gentle folk, these inhabitants of Barbizond, but they were stately, and died – in tournaments, or by the assassin’s knife, or by their own hand – with dignity.

  A death had lately occurred, that was plain, for approaching the city gate came a funeral procession: on a high-wheeled cart drawn by apes in brazen harness, the corpse wrapped in sheets of lead and gold and interwoven leaves; a band of gongmen beating a slow measure to accompany musicians whistling on bird-toned pipes no longer than a finger; eight female slaves naked to the ceaseless warm rain; and at last a straggle of mourners, conducting themselves for the most part with appropriate solemnity.

  He who passed penultimately of the mourners, however, was a fat and jolly person on each of whose shoulders perched a boy-child, and the two were playing peekaboo around the brim of his enormous leather hat. The traveller stared long at him before stepping out from the shelter of the nearest tree and addressing him courteously.

  “Your pardon, sir, but are you not named Eadwil?”

  “I am,” the fat one said, not loath to let the funeral wend its way to the graveyard without his assistance. “Should I know you as you apparently know me?”

  “Perhaps not,” said the traveller in black. “I’d not expected to see you here; you were formerly one of the chief merchant-enchanters of Ryovora.”

  “A long time ago,” Eadwil answered with a deprecating smile. The children on his shoulders giggled; one of them tried to catch hold of the traveller’s staff, almost lost his balance, and righted himself with the aid of a pat from Eadwil’s broad soft hand.

  “May I ask what brought about your change of residence?” the traveller murmured.

  “My change of employment.” Eadwil shrugged, again nearly dislodging the more venturesome boy. “You spoke of me as a merchant-enchanter; so I was! But when the decision was taken, back in the days of my youth, to let rational thought rule Ryovora and put an end to conjurations there, certain consequences followed. For myself I have no regrets; there was a geas on me which made my feet glow red-hot when I walked, and now nothing worse attends a long tramp like today’s than an occasional blister. And these my grandsons too – hey, you little nuisances? – they’d not be here today if I’d continued to submit to the other main restriction that purchased my powers.” He rubbed the boys’ backs affectionately, and they responded by pulling his ears.

  This was quite true, as the traveller was aware. Eadwil had postponed the growing of his beard until unusually late in life by making the trade on which his command of magic had been founded.

  “So there came an end to my conjuring of spices and fine silks, of rare wines and exotic perfumes!” Eadwil pursed his lips. “And there were, one must confess, certain persons in Ryovora who felt the lack of these luxuries and accused us retired enchanters of – ha-hm! – betraying them. Therefore I removed to Barbizond. It’s a fair city in its way, and even though the local customs are not wholly to my taste, here they do at least have scores of enchanters of their own, so that no one plagues me to be about magical doings. … You have late news of Ryovora, sir? For it comes to my mind that I’ve heard nothing from my old home in quite a while.”

  The traveller gave a wry smile. “It’s a fair span since I set foot there, too. Indeed, I was hoping you might be able to give me certain crucial information which I lack, rather than vice versa.”

  Eadwil looked politely downcast at being of no help; then one of the boys grew impatient and started to fidget.

  “Home?” said his grandfather, and laughed indulgently. “Very well – old Harpentile is in no state to notice that we failed to attend his burying. Good day to you, sir,” he added to the traveller. “It’s been pleasant to renew our acquaintance, and I greatly hope you’ll soon find someone who can aid in your inquiries.”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller under his breath, and a vast weight seemed to recede from his heart.

  II

  That accomplished, there was no more to do than sit and wait until the course of fate worked itself out. The traveller took a chair at a curbside tavern; with his elbows on a green tabletop, protected from the rain by a round blue umbrella fringed with pink, he watched the passers-by and wondered in what guise his helper would appear.

  As the day wasted the avenue grew ever more crowded. Horsemen in bright jerkins came by with armor clanking at their saddlebows, challengers in some tourney for the hand of an heiress; also there were pedlars, and wonder-workers possessed of a few small tricks – for which they had paid excessively, to judge by their reddened eyes, pocked cheeks, limping gait, or boy-shrill voices. … No wonder, the traveller reflected, Eadwil felt his grandsons were the better ba
rgain.

  Women too passed: high-wimpled dames attended by maids and dandling curious unnamable pets; harlots in diaphanous cloaks through which it was not quite possible to tell if they were diseased; goodwives with panniers of stinking salted fish, loaves of fresh bread, and sealed jars of pollywogs for use in the commonplace home enchantments of this city.

  And children likewise: many naked, not necessarily from poverty but because skin was the best raincoat under Barbizond’s light continual shower, others in fantastical costumes to match their parents’ whims – helmets of huge eggshells, bodices of leaves glued like scales, breeches made to resemble plant stems in springtime. With spinning windmills, toy lances, tops and hoops and skipping-ropes, they darted among the adults and left a trail of joyful disorder.

  There was no joy in the heart of the traveller in black – only a dulled apprehension.

  The places at the tables before the tavern filled with customers, until only one was left – the second chair at the table where the traveller waited. Then, to the instant, appeared a curious bewildered figure from the direction of the southern gate: a pale-faced, wild-haired man in a russet cape, clutching a pitiful bag of belongings like a baulk of timber in an ocean of insanity. Time had etched his brow with suffering, and the traveller knew, the moment he clapped eyes on him, that this was the person he expected.

  Abreast of the tavern the stranger stopped. Enviously he scanned the delicacies placed before the customers: fragrant stoups of wine, dumplings in aromatic herbal sauce, mounds of mashed fruit stuck with crisp slivers of the moonbark that only this city’s enchanters knew how to conjure safe across the freezing gulf of space. … Huddling his bag under his arm, he felt in his scrip for money, and produced one solitary copper coin.

  Hesitant, he approached the traveller in black. “Sir, by your leave,” he muttered, “will this purchase anything at your tavern here?” And proffered the coin on a trembling palm.

  Taking it, the traveller turned it over, and was at pains to conceal the shock he felt on seeing the name inscribed on its reverse.

  Ys!

  A city in the realm of time so great and famous that rumors of it had crossed the tenuous border of chaos, running ahead of those who bore its news until the stories were magnified beyond believing, until true prophecies arose caused by the recirculation of those rumors through one corner of eternity and back to time ahead of reality.

  Hmm …!

  “No?” said the stranger sadly, seeing how long the black-clad one spent staring at his only money.

  “Why –!” the latter exclaimed, and rubbed the coin with his fingertips, very lightly. “I should say so, friend! Is it not good gold, that passes anywhere?”

  “Gold?” The stranger snatched it back, almost dropping his shabby bag in his agitation, and scrutinized it incredulously. Through the coppery tarnish gleamed the dull warm yellow of precious metal.

  Without more ado he slumped into the vacant chair beside the traveller. A waggle-hipped servant-girl came promptly to his signal. “Food and drink!” he snapped, letting the miraculous coin ring on the table. “I starve and I’m clemmed with thirst – therefore be quick!”

  Eyes twinkling, the traveller regarded his new acquaintance. “And how are you called, sir?” he demanded.

  “Jacques of Ys is my name,” the other sighed. “Though truth to tell I’m not overmuch inclined to add my origin to my name any longer.”

  “Why so?”

  “Would you wish to be shamed by connection with a cityful of fools?”

  “Considering the matter with due reflection,” said the traveller, “I think – no.”

  “Well, then!” Jacques ran his long bony fingers through his already tousled hair; the rain had been trying to slick it down, but half an ocean would have been unequal to the task. He was a gaunt man, neither old nor young, with burning grey eyes and a bush of tawny beard.

  “So in what way are the folk of Ys so foolish?” probed the traveller.

  “Oh, once they were a great people,” grunted Jacques. “And that’s where the trouble started, I suppose. Once we had a fleet – and not on any landlocked lake, either, but on Oceanus itself, mother of storms and gulls. Also we had an army to guard our trade routes, skillful money-changers, wise counselors. … Ah, Ys was among the noblest cities of the world!”

  “I believe I’ve heard so,” the traveller agreed.

  “Then, sir, your news is stale!” Jacques thumped the table.

  “Listen! There came changes – in the times, in the weather, in the currents of the sea. To be expected, I said, for did not Heraclitus teach us ‘all things flow’? But soft living and much ease had stolen the brains out of the people’s heads! Faced with the silting up of our great estuary, did they turn to it and build dredgers? They did not! Faced with a landslide that closed our chief silk-road, did they send scouts to spy out other routes? They did not! Faced with long winters that killed our autumn wheat in the ground, did they sow barley or the hardy northern oat? They did not!”

  “Then what did they do?” the traveller inquired. “If anything.”

  “Fell first to moaning and wringing their hands, and lamenting their sad fate by night and day; then, when this proved unfruitful and incapable of filling the granaries, turned to a crowning imbecility and invoked the aid of magic. I see you scowl, sir, and well you may, for all the world knows that magic is a vain and ridiculous snare laid by evil demons in the path of humankind.”

  This was a stubborn unobservant fellow, clearly; with his hand closed around a coin that veritable magic – and no petty domestic hearth-spell, either – had turned from copper to gold, he could still make such a blunt assertion. He would not care for this domain in which he now found himself. … Still, there was no help for that.

  “And to what purpose tended their research in – ah – magic?” the traveller asked.

  “To bring back the great days of the past if you please,” said Jacques with majestic scorn, and on the last word crammed his mouth full from a dish the serving-girl placed before him.

  While he assuaged his hunger, his companion contemplated these new data. Yes, such an event as Jacques had outlined would account for the paradox of Ys reversing the cosmic trend and exchanging time for eternity and its attendant confusions. But there must have been a great and terrible lust in the minds of very many people for the change to come about; there must have been public foolishness on a scale unparalleled throughout the All. Thinking on this, the traveller felt his face grow grim.

  Reaching for his staff, he made to depart, and Jacques glanced up with his cheeks bulging. Having swallowed frantically, he spoke. “Sir, did I intrude on your meditations? Your pardon if –”

  “No, no! You merely recalled me to some unfinished business. You are correct in your description of the folk of Ys. They are fools indeed. So do not – if you will take my advice – return there.”

  “Where else am I to go, then?” countered Jacques, and for a second despair looked out from behind his eyes. “I set off thinking no place could be worse than my hometown had now become – yet on this brief journey I’ve seen horrors and marvels that make me question my good sense. I met a creature on the road that was neither man nor beast, but a blending; I saw a shining sprite washing feet like alabaster in a cloud rimmed with rainbows; and once when I bent to drink from a stream I saw pictures in the water which … No, I dare not say what I thought I saw.”

  “That would be the brook called Geirion,” said the traveller, and appended a crooked smile. “Don’t worry – things seen therein can never become real. The folk round about visit it to rid themselves of baseless fears.”

  Jacques glanced over his shoulder at the motley crowd of passersby and shivered with dismay. “Nonetheless, sir, I’m not minded to remain in this peculiar city!”

  “It would be more comfortable for you to adapt to the local customs than go home,” the traveller warned. “A certain rather spectacular doom is apt to overtake Ys, if things a
re as you say.”

  “Doom!” cried Jacques, and an unholy joy lit his face. “I told them so – over and again I told them! Would I could witness it, for the satisfaction of seeing how right I was!”

  The traveller sighed, but there was no help for it now; his single nature bound him to single courses of action. He said sourly, “As you wish, so be it. Go hence towards the city men call Acromel, the place where honey is bitter, but do not enter it. Go rather around it towards the setting sun, and you will reach a grey hill fledged with grey bushes where there are always dust devils, which will wipe out your tracks the moment you have passed. From the top of that hill you may behold Ys at the moment of disaster.”

  “Now just a moment!” Jacques exclaimed, rising. “From my boyhood up I’ve wandered around Ys, and I know of no such hill as you describe!”

  The traveller shrugged and turned away. Jacques caught his cloak.

  “Wait! What’s your name, that you say such strange things and send me on such an improbable errand?”

  “You may call me anything you choose,” the traveller said, shaking off the other’s grip with a moue of distaste.

  “Hah! That’s rich!” Jacques set his hands on his hips and laughed. “But still … Well, sir, for the sake of wanting to see how Ys goes to its doom, I’ll follow your instructions. And my thanks!”

  He parodied a bow, flourishing a hat that was not on his head.

  “You may not thank me more than this once,” said the traveller sadly, and went his way.

  III

  Lord Vengis sat in the Hall of State at Ys and surveyed the nobility assembled in his presence. He tried to ignore the sad condition of his surroundings. Once this had been a building to marvel at: mirrors higher than a man lined its walls, set between pilasters of marble, gilt, and onyx, while the arching roof had been painted by a great master with scenes in eleven bright colors, depicting the birth of Saint Clotilda, the martyrdom of Saint Gaufroy – that one was mostly in red – and the ascension of Saint Eulogos to heaven on the back of a leaping dolphin. Moreover the floor had been carpeted with ermine and bear pelts.