The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  Vivette and Ormond fainted.

  When they recovered, the figure in armor was gone, but where it had taken shape on the catafalque lay a manuscript book in bindings of leather and brass, open to the page recording the death of Honorius from a contagious fever against which no medicine might serve, in the three-and-thirtieth year of his age.

  Dame Rosa, in her palanquin borne between two white female donkeys, passed the corner on which stood the house formerly owned by Dame Seulte, and drew aside the curtains to peer curiously upward. Sure enough, as her maid had declared, from the window of the room in which Seulte had been accustomed to conduct her experiments, a licking tongue of greasy black smoke had smeared the wall.

  She heaved a sigh. Poor Seulte! Had she but waited one more day she might have enjoyed the fruit of her efforts. That at least was Dame Rosa’s belief; she trusted the promise that the one in black had made, and looked forward with impatience to the earliest opportunity of closeting herself with her books and apparatus and rehearsing with improvements the most relevant of her formulae.

  Her family had in the past been counted among the most lascivious of Ys, and excessive indulgence by its womenfolk in the pleasures of the bedroom had often threatened to overpopulate the resources of their not inconsiderable estates. Accordingly there was a cellar where surplus children had for generations discreetly been disposed of, not by cruel and brutal means but by consigning the problem of their nourishment to the fates. She entered this cellar by a bronze door, which she locked behind her with a heavy key, and passed between rows of wooden stalls in each of which a set of rat-gnawed bones reposed on filthy straw, corroded gyves about each ankle.

  She had chosen this place after much pondering. Surely she reasoned, the point of departure to eternity of so many spirits must be imbued with a peculiar potency!

  Her method of working involved feathers, four liquids of which the least noxious was blood, and long silent concentration while seated on a stool of unique design, with no other covering for her ample frame than her age-sparse hair afforded. Briskly she carried out the introductory rites; then she sat down and closed her eyes, shivering more from excitement than from cold.

  She had, stated the book she most believed in, to keep her eyes shut until she had completed the recital of an extended cantrip that occupied eight whole pages in minuscule script. There were still two pages to go when she heard the first rustlings and clicketings behind her. There was one page to go when the first touch brushed her fleshy thigh. Desperate to know what marvels her work had brought about, she raced through that final page, and hard on the concluding word came the first bite.

  Thirty starving children mad with hunger, their teeth as sharp as any rat’s, left gnaw-marks on her bones too.

  Bardolus trembled as he piled high many curious ingredients on the brazier before his gilt-framed pier-glass. He had selected the mirror spell among the many known to him because he had, after all, come closest to success with it before-even if he had been taken aback to see a manifestation of it in the unconstrained mirrors of the Hall of State. Perhaps, though, that had been due to the intervention of the unwelcome blackclad stranger. …

  He wished he could summon enough resolution to abandon the entire project, but fear and conceit combined to drive him on. He was beside himself with jealousy to think that a slip of a girl like Meleagra – not to mention that coarse peasant type d’Icque, or stupid complacent Dame Faussein! – had mastered magical powers in such a matter-of-fact fashion, while he still cried out in terror at the consequences of his own thaumaturgy.

  He struck a flint-and-tinder spark, and blew. The pile ignited. Saturated with the fat of a sow that had devoured her own farrow, it gave off a choking smoke that veiled the mirror.

  When all the fuel was consumed, the air cleared, and in the glass he recognized a face he knew: that of his mother, who was dead.

  “My darling Bardolus,” she said with fawning sweetness. “Look behind you! There stands an oaken cupboard you have known since you were a child. Press the left knob of the carved design, and a secret drawer will open. Within it lies what gave me power over your father. Accept it as my gift.”

  The image faded. A little puzzled, Bardolus hesitated before doing as directed. He remembered his father only dimly; he had been a strange man, alternating between hysterical gaiety and depression so deep he would sit by the hour contemplating a knife or a dish of poison, plucking up the courage to take his own life, the which at last he did.

  Yet … power.

  He pressed the knob and the drawer slid open, revealing a packet folded of strange yellow paper and sealed with green wax. Convulsively he broke the seal, and a fine powder spurted at his face, seeming to seek his nostrils of its own accord. He tried to dodge, but that was useless; he inhaled it all, and the packet lay empty on his palm.

  Another few seconds, and vast elation filled him. Why, he could do anything! He was ten feet tall, stronger than an ox, more potent than the heroes of legend, and so handsome that no wench he courted could withstand him!

  He let fall the paper and raced into the street.

  From the mirror drifted mists, that coalesced into the shape of his mother, and ultimately grew strong enough to lift the yellow paper in old gnarled fingers and regard it out of bleary eyes.

  “You,” she whispered, “deserve no better fate than the one who got you on my body ’gainst my will! One hour, Bardolus – one hour of delirium! And afterwards despair! For it will be no use hunting for more of this delicious drug! I never compounded more than one dose at a time, and it was by postponing the next mixing for a day that I held power over your brutal, hateful father. There is no one to mix it for you, Bardolus! No one at all!”

  V

  But these were not all the calamities which overtook Ys, that once-fair city. For those whom the black-clad traveller had challenged truly did not know what would rescue them from their predicament, and out of greed and laziness had demanded the utmost they could envisage. Lost in this plethora of manifestations – somewhere – was precisely and exactly what was needful; that much the traveller was bound to grant. But, as he had warned them, he could not compel anyone to do the right thing. Choice was what he dealt in.

  And those who chose wrong did so because of what they were.

  His friends had generally liked Messer Hautnoix, who was engagingly childlike, what with his delight in such toys as the pretty colored bubbles he had displayed in the Hall of State. It was characteristic of him that, compelled to spend five nights under a gallows for the privilege, he passed the entire time drunk to avoid excessive contemplation of his predicament.

  Yet when he repaired beyond the walls to his chosen ground of the execution dock, chuckling while he mumbled charms and strangled a white cock and a black hen, the one who came in answer to his call proved to be the first bearer of his line’s name, professionally the municipal hangman, who had so loved his work that more than once he bought the silence of a witness who could have saved a victim from the rope; this being discovered, they had set him swinging on his own gallows at the last.

  Much time having elapsed since he last performed his office, he seized his chance, and sunset found Messer Hautnoix dangling from a noose while his forebear clumped towards the city gate, rubbing his bloated hands at the thought of what he could look forward to.

  Dame Faussein, who had paid a drowned sailor so generously for the loan of his skin, made further use of her drum when she came home. It was regrettable – and she certainly did regret it, though not for long – that this time the darkness to which its thumping carried her was the musty interior of her family’s ancestral vault, where the warmth of her living body gave strange solace to an aunt and two uncles whose relationship, now as in their lifetimes, was more complex than the conventional ties of kinship. Her eyes continued to perceive darkness after the three of them had gathered sufficient strength to raise the stone lid of their mausoleum and sallied forth to ascertain how things now stood w
ith Ys.

  Messer d’Icque was indeed of peasant stock – in Ys that was no secret. His inclinations were toward country matters, and it has never been any secret anywhere that events transpire in country districts at which the sophisticates of cities would be appalled or nauseated. The whole of his urban residence had been stunk out for weeks by a dungpile he had ordered in its central courtyard, because reportedly it was in the warmth of rotting manure that homunculi enlivened.

  This heap of foulness he ignored today, however, for his mind was set on the proper employment of his stock of animelles, a springtime by-product on farms where they breed sheep and cattle. His plan, moreover, was not to fry and serve them as a seasonal delicacy.

  To him, the ritual completed, came a progenitor who had felt the frustration of an aging wife, racked with childbearing beyond the point where she was capable of assuaging his desires, and who had violated the daughter of his bailiff; it then also being spring. The bailiff happened to return early from the task of which animelles were the outcome, and to avenge the slight on his family’s honor had made prompt use of the implement in his hand. For generations the sufferer had awaited the chance to inflict on another the operation undergone by himself, and he did so without a by-your-leave. Abandoning Messer d’Icque to leak away his life’s blood, he thereafter set out to multiply his trophies from all possible male sources.

  No word of this had been brought to the beauteous Meleagra when she came home. She had never cared for Messer d’Icque, thinking him rough and ill-bred, and the news that he had involuntarily qualified to share her overnight company would have interested her not at all.

  In a boudoir hung with lacy draperies, containing a round golden bed and a mirror abstracted from the Hall of State, as being the largest in Ys – which she had mounted cunningly on the ceiling – she caused her maids first to draw curtains at the many high windows, then to light candles which gave off a fragrant, intoxicating aroma. She suffered them to remove her clothing, to prepare her a bath in which she dissolved a handful of polychrome salts, and to sing in harmony while they sponged her from head to toe. Sweetmeats were brought on a white platter and a silver filigree dish, and twenty-four new gowns were displayed before her on the body of a dumb girl who matched the dimensions of her figure.

  All the while that this was going on, she was musing over a crucial decision: should she, or should she not, act upon the promise the black-clad one had made?

  That he had the power to which he laid claim, she never doubted. Two years before anyone else in Ys saw what needed to be done, she had closed a bargain concerning her virginity which she had scrupulously kept – at first partly from fear, but lately out of simple habit.

  And what she had purchased by the bargain had enabled her to recognize the single nature of their unaccountable visitor.

  A single nature! Surely that must imply that its possessor could neither lie nor deceive! In which case she might now employ her talents to produce results compared to which her previous achievements were dross. Her whole life since the age of eleven had been led on the edge of a precipice – and there were creatures at the bottom of the chasm whom she had eluded only by the most exact preplanning. An uncharacteristic fit of vanity had made her call Ub-Shebbab to the Hall of State; he was the meekest and mildest of the beings she had conjured up, yet her skin prickled when she thought of what might have ensued. …

  No, disasters happened only to fools and bunglers, and she was neither. She reached her decision and dismissed her maids. Them gone, she donned a gown which had not been displayed during her bath, worked all over in gold wire with a single sentence in a forgotten language; then she unlocked a brass chest and brought forth gifts she had exacted from various suitors before information about her inflexible rule was noised abroad.

  There was a twig from Yorbeth, bearing a leaf transparent as glass and a brown, blotched fruit that tinkled like a bell; there was a vial of rainwater caught at the foot of the rainbow overarching Barbizond, that had a trifle of Sardhin’s essence in it; there was a block of pumice from the volcano where Fegrim slumbered; there was a jar of grey dust from the hill below which Laprivan was pent; there were a hair from the head of Farchgrind, an inch of candle that had revealed the secret thoughts of Wolpec but had been allowed to burn one instant longer than was safe, and a drawing of two birds and a crocodile made by a possessed child.

  Also there was a book.

  Following with care the instructions it contained, she danced around her boudoir keening, crawled twice backwards across the floor with a knife between her teeth, and at last cut her forearm and let three drops of blood fall on the carpet. When she looked for them again the stains had vanished.

  Nothing else happened in the room. She had expected that. Humming, she recalled her maids to bind her arm and change her gown for something more conventional, and went down to the dining-hall where supper was due to be served.

  Already as she approached it she could hear the clatter of dishes, the clamor of conversation. That boded a great company. By whatever road, her guests had made amazing time. She hurried the last few steps and flung open the door.

  Every place at her great table – and there were thirty-six – was taken; the servants had pressed into use benches from the kitchen, too, and the sideboards and the serving-tables were alike packed with a hungry horde. For all the scullions and maids could do, the food, brought on trolleys because there was more of it than a man could lift, disappeared within instants of being set down. Still the howl went up for more. The meat had gone, the wine, the bread; now it was boiled turnips and hedge-greens, broth of bones and barley, and beer too new to serve by ordinary.

  Yet that was not all. Behind, between, among those who ate went others looting. The fine brocade drapes had been torn down to clothe naked bodies, leather-backed chairs stripped to afford protection to sore feet, tapestries turned to cloaks and ponchos. One wild-eyed woman, lacking anything else, had smeared herself with gravy to break up the maggot pallidity of her skin.

  Meleagra stood in the doorway for the space of five heartbeats before the chief steward caught sight of her and came running to beg her help.

  “Mistress, what shall we do? They are in every room – five hundred of them at the least count! And all, all have claimed the right to what you have, for they say they are your ancestors and this is their home too!”

  “My ancestors,” whispered Meleagra. Her gaze, drawn as by a magnet, fixed on him who had taken her seat at the head of the table, and a silence overcame the entire company.

  The one at whom she stared was a cross-eyed, ill-favored fellow in a dirty doublet, unshaven and with black around his nails. He gave her a smile that displayed gapped yellow teeth, and spoke in a soft voice with a peasant’s accent.

  “Ah, Meleagra, sure and you set a fine table! This meal which you account an everyday affair matches the grandest feasts we held in times gone by!”

  “Who – who are you?” Meleagra choked out.

  “You know me not?” The fellow cocked an eyebrow traversed by a scar. “Why, Damien, o’course, who built this house and founded the family’s fortune in the earliest age of Ys. And at my side Cosimo, my firstborn here – though I had by-blows aplenty in another town! And Syriax his wife and their children Ruslan, Roland, and Igraine; their children Mark, Valetta, Corin, Ludwig, Matthaus, Letty, Seamus; theirs, Orlando, Hugo, Dianne, twins Nathaniel and Enoch –”

  “Stop! Stop!” Meleagra pressed her hands to her temples; the room seemed to be spinning, and from every side gross faces leered at her, or thin drawn faces gazed with stony regard, or dull faces moped, or …

  “There is no more food!” the steward shouted. “We have killed all the poultry, the larder’s bare, the wine casks are drained, the last carp is gone from the pond, the beer-barrels are exhausted and even the well is dry!”

  “You’ve done this to me?” Meleagra whispered to her remotest ancestor Damien. “But I gave you breath and life, and this new opportu
nity – I invited you here!”

  “Is that,” said Damien with contempt, “the only act of any importance you can boast of? Did we your ancestors not erect this house, construct this city, its fair avenues and fine harbors and full stores? Have you done nothing save parasitize upon our leavings? I read in your eyes that that is so! Here we are alive, who died before you saw the light – do you still call yourself the mistress of this house? Hah! You are a thing not worth the thinking of, less than dust, for dust can be seen to dance in sunbeams. You are the flame of a candle guttering out. So -poof!”

  He blew at the candle closest to him on the great table, and with the extinction of its flame there was no such person as Meleagra – never had been-never could be.

  VI

  Long hours Vengis had paced in the high room above the Hall of State, pondering the day’s events and screwing himself to the point where he would again resume his conjurations. The day wasted; shadows lengthened; evening cold began to permeate the building, and he called for fire and flambeaux.

  He was afraid.

  He had seen in the eyes of the traveller in black a warning which his pride forbade him to heed; he was ashamed because he was afraid, yet shame could not break fear’s grip. He wished to do as his colleagues were doing – what if he alone remained untalented in sorcery when blockheads like Bardolus or half-grown chits like Vivette boasted powers unnamable?

  Nonetheless, he dithered and delayed, and had not yet cast a rune nor recited the first line of a single formula when the sergeant of the guard came stiffly to report a disturbance in the town.

  “Be more precise!” rapped Vengis. “What manner of disturbance?”

  “Why, sir” – and the sergeant rubbed his chin dolefully – “some hours agone there were complaints of desecration in the graveyard by the cathedral, the curate saying that a vault was open and the bones removed. But seeing as we’ve had call for similar extraordinary materials that your lordship required, I decided best not to say anything. Now, though, the affair has ramified. For example, the side wall of this building here is cracked where they entombed alive a woman named Igraine – you’ve seen the plaque – accused of commerce with a familiar spirit in the guise of a cat.”