The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  For a little while, indeed, he could almost convince himself that this was to be the last of his journeys, and that his next return would find the places he had known tight in the clutch of time. The borderland between rationality and chaos seemed to be shrinking apace as the harsh constraint of logic settled on this corner of the All. Reason is the stepchild of memory, and memory exists in time, not the arbitrary randomness of eternity.

  Thus, beyond Leppersley the folk remembered Farchgrind, and that being’s chiefest attribute had been that no one should recall his deceits, but fall prey to them again and again. Yet where once there had been a monstrous pile of follies, each a memento to some new-hatched prank – “Build thus and worship me, and I will give you more wealth than you can carry!” or: “Build thus and worship me, and I will restore you the health and vigor of a man of twenty!” (the wealth of course being ore by the ton load and the health that of a paralyzed cripple) – there were sober families in small neat timber houses, framed with beams pilfered from the ancient temples, who said, “Yes, we hear Farchgrind if he speaks to us, but we recall what became of Grandfather when he believed what he was told, and we carry on about our daily business.”

  The traveller talked with Farchgrind almost in sorrow, mentioning this skepticism that had overtaken humankind, and accepted without contradiction the retort.

  “You too,” said the elemental, “are part of the way things are, and I – I am only part of the way things were!”

  Similarly, though there were hoofmarks on the road which Jorkas had patrolled, they were not his; some common carthorse had indented them, and rain tonight or tomorrow would make the mud a palimpsest for another horse to print anew. Moreover, at black Acromel that tall tower like a pillar of onyx crowned with agate where once dukes had made sacrifice to the Quadruple God was broken off short, snapped like a dry stick. In among the ruins fools made ineffectual attempts to revive a dying cult, but their folly was footling compared to the grand insanities of the enchanter Manuus who once had taken a hand in the affairs of this city, or even of the petty tyrant Vengis, whose laziness and greed brought doom on his fellows and himself.

  “Ah, if only I could find the key to this mystery!” said one of them, who had bidden the traveller to share the warmth of a fire fed with leather-bound manuscripts from the ducal library. “Then should I have men come to me and bow the knee, offer fine robes to bar the cold instead of shabby rags, savory dishes instead of this spitted rat I’m toasting on a twig, and nubile virgins from the grandest families to pleasure me, instead of that old hag I was stupid enough to take to wife!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and knocked his staff on the altar-slab the fool was using as a hearth.

  In the chill dawn that followed, his wife went running to her neighbors to report a miracle: her husband was struck to stone, unmoving yet undead. And, because no other comparable wonder had occurred since the departure of the Quadruple God, all transpired as he had wished. His companions set him up on the stump of the great black tower and wrapped their smartest robes about him; they burned expensive delicacies on a brazier, that the scent might waft to his nostrils; and sought beautiful girls that their throats might be cut and their corpses hung before him on chain-stranded gallows – all this in strict conformance with most ancient custom.

  But after a while, when their adulation failed to bring about the favors which they begged, they forgot him and left him helpless to watch the robes fade and the fire die in ashes and the girls’ bodies feed the maggots until nothing was left save bare white bones.

  Likewise, a packman met at Gander’s Well complained in the shade of brooding Yorbeth whose taproot fed his branches with marvellous sap from that unseen spring, and said, “Oh, but my lot is cruel hard! See you, each year when the snows melt, I come hither and with the proper precautions contrive to pluck leaves and fruit from these long boughs. Such growths no sun ever shone upon before! See here, a fuzzy ball that cries in a faint voice when you close your hands on it! And here too: a leaf transparent as crystal, that shows when you peer through it a scene no man can swear to identifying! Things of this nature are in great demand by wealthy enchanters.

  “But what irks me” – and he leaned forward, grimacing – “is a matter of simple injustice. Do those enchanters plod the rocky road to Gander’s Well? Do they risk death or worse to garner the contents of a heavy pack? Why, no! That’s left to me! And what I get I must dispose of for a pittance to strangers who doubtless half the time botch the conjurations they plan to build on what I bring them! Would that I knew beyond a peradventure what marvels can be wrought by using the means that I make marketable!”

  “As you wish,” sighed the traveller, “so be it.” He knocked with his staff on the coping of the well, and went aside to speak to Yorbeth of release – that release which he himself was coming unexpectedly to envy. For there was one sole way to comprehend the applications of what grew on this tall tree, and that was to take Yorbeth’s place within its trunk.

  Where, trapped and furious, the packman shortly found himself, possessed of all the secret lore he had suspected, down to the use that might be made of a shred of the bark when luring Ogram-Vanvit from his lair … and powerless to exploit the knowledge for his gain.

  Yorbeth, naturally, ceased to be. Heavyhearted, the traveller went on.

  II

  In the mountainous land called Eyneran, where folk were above all proud of their fine sheep and goats, he had once incarcerated the chilly elemental Karth, thanks to whose small remaining power one strange valley stayed frozen beneath a mask of ice when all around the summer flowers grew bright and jangly music clanged from the bellwethers of the grazing flocks. Here the traveller came upon a fellow who with flint and steel was seeking to ignite the ice, grim-visaged and half blue with cold.

  “Why,” inquired the traveller, “do you lavish so much effort on this unprofitable pastime?”

  “Oh, you’re a simpleton like all the rest!” cried the man, frenziedly striking spark after spark. “Is it not the nature of ice to melt when hot sun falls on it? Since what is in this valley does not melt, it can’t be ice. Certainly, moreover, it’s not stone. It differs in significant respects from rock-crystal, quartz, adamant and fluorspar. Therefore it must be of an amberous nature, QED. And amber is congealed resin, and resin burns well, as any drudge can say who has lit a stove with pine-knots. Accordingly this so-called ice must burn. Sooner or later,” he concluded in a more dispirited tone, and wiped his brow. The gesture entailed a little crackling noise, for so bitter was the wind in this peculiar valley that the sweat of his exertion turned at once to a layer of verglas on his skin.

  The traveller thought sadly of Jacques of Ys, who also had been persuaded that he alone of all the world was perfectly right, and suppressed his opinion of the would-be ice-burner’s logic. Sensing disagreement nonetheless, the fellow gave him a harsh and hostile glare.

  “I’m sick of being mocked by everyone!” he exclaimed. “Would that the true nature of this substance could become clear for you and all to see!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, realizing that the time of release had come also to Karth. With the cessation of his dwindled ancient power, sunlight thawed the glacier and warm zephyrs fathered water from its edge.

  The man looked, and touched, and tasted, and paddled his hands in it, and cried out in dismay.

  “If this is water, that must have been ice – but that was not ice, therefore this is not water!”

  Spray lashed him; rivulets formed around his ankles.

  “It is not water,” he declared, and stood his ground. But when the pent-up floods broke loose they swept him with his flint and steel far down the hillside and dashed him to death on a rock that was deaf to his entreaties.

  Aloof on a promontory, the black-clad traveller watched the whirling torrent, thinking that he, so aged there was not means to measure his duration, knew now what it meant to say: “I am old.”<
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  So too in Gryte, a fair city and a rich, there was a lady who could have had her choice of fifty husbands, but kept her heart whole, as she claimed, for one man who would not look at her, though he had wooed and conquered maids for leagues around.

  “Why does he scorn me so?” she cried. “He must be hunting for a wife who will give him surcease from his endless philandering! Can he not come to me, who hunger for him?”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and next day the man she dreamed of came a-courting. She pictured all her hopes fulfilled and made him free of her household and her body. And the day after he treated her like all the rest: rose from her couch where he had taken his pleasure, not sparing a kind look or a kiss, and left her to wring hands and moan she was undone.

  * * *

  Likewise there stood a tombstone in the cemetery at Barbizond, under the arch of rainbow signalling the presence of the bright being Sardhin. Grass by it flourished in the gentle never-ceasing rain. The traveller visited it because he owed a particular debt to the man beneath, who full of years and honor had gone to his repose.

  Turning away from Eadwil’s grave, he was addressed by a person in a cape of leaves who might have passed at a glance for seven years of age, either boy or girl.

  “Good morrow, sir!” this person chirruped in a treble voice. “Think you to brace yourself for death by contemplating all these tombs – or have you cause to wish it may overtake some other sooner than yourself?”

  “In the latter case, what?” inquired the traveller.

  “Why, then” – slyly – “I could be of service. For thirty-one years I have been as you see me: dwarfed, sexless, and agile. What better end could I turn such a gift to, than to become the finest assassin ever known in Barbizond? You stand surrounded by testimonials to my skill: here a miserly old ruffian whose daughter paid me half his cofferload, there an elder son who blocked his brother’s way to an inheritance!”

  “You speak openly of this foul trade?”

  “Why, sir, no one is around to hear me save yourself, and would not folk think you deranged were you to claim a child had boasted of such matters to you?”

  “In truth, your childish form is a deep disguise,” the traveller conceded. “But tell me: do you address me merely to solicit new custom, or because that disguise grows oppressively efficient?”

  The person scowled. “Why, I must confess that now and then the very secrecy which benefits my calling does gall my self-esteem. I gain my living in a unique manner, but no one knows I’m the ultimate expert in my trade save those whom I have served, who dare not admit they know the truth. Would I might be famed far and wide as a past master in my profession!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and struck his staff against the side of Eadwil’s tomb. That very evening rumors took their rise in Barbizond, and everyone who had lost a relative in suspicious circumstances, to a poison subtler than a hired enchanter could detect, or a silent noose, or a knife hissing out of shadow, nodded their heads and remarked how marvellously well the appearance of a child of tender years might mask a killer.

  The traveller passed the body next morning, sprawled on a dungheap by the road to Teq.

  Will it be now? The question haunted the traveller as he went his way. With half his being he was apprehensive, for all he had ever known throughout innumerable aeons was the task allotted to him; with the balance, he yearned for it. Karth gone, Yorbeth gone, Jorkas gone – would there shortly also be an end for Laprivan? And if for them, what of the Four Great Ones: Tuprid and Caschalanva, Quorril and Lry, whom he had contrived at best to banish, not to whelm?

  On impulse, when he came to the grove of ash trees at Segrimond which was one of the places where such processes were possible, he constrained Wolpec to enter the customary candle, but when he tried to smoke a piece of glass over its flame and read the three truths therefrom, the glass cracked. With resignation he concluded that this was not for him to learn, and went his way.

  In Kanish-Kulya the wall that had once divided Kanishmen from Kulyamen, decked along its top with skulls, had crumbled until it was barely more than a bank enshrouded with ivy and convolvulus, and roads pierced it along which went the gay carts of pedlars and the tall horses of adventure-seeking knights. Yet in the minds of certain men it was as though the old barrier still stood.

  “Not only,” groused a portly Kanish merchant to the traveller, “does my eldest daughter decline to accept her proper fate, and be sacrificed in traditional manner to Fegrim! She adds insult to injury, and proposes to wed a Kulyan brave!”

  The traveller, who knew much about the elemental Fegrim, including his indifference to sacrifices, held his peace.

  “This I pledge on my life!” the merchant fumed. “If my daughter carries on the way she’s going, I shall never want to speak to her again – nor shall I let her in my house!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and from that moment the merchant uttered never a word. Dumb, he stood by to watch the fine procession in which the girl went to claim her bridegroom, and before she returned an apoplexy killed him, so that the house was no more his.

  But nothing in this was remarkable. Greed, hate, jealousy – these were commonplace, and it was not to be questioned that they should defeat themselves.

  Onward again, therefore, and now at last to Erminvale.

  III

  In that land of pleasant rolling downs and copses of birch and maple, there stood the village Wantwich, of small white farms parted by tidy hedgerows, radiating out from a central green where of a summer evening the young people would gather with a fiddler and a harpist to dance and court in bright costumes ornamented with pheasant-feathers and fantastical jingling bangles. At one side of this green was a pond of sweet water which the traveller in black had consigned to the charge of the being Horimos, for whom he had conceived a peculiar affection on discovering that this one alone among all known elementals was too lazy to be harmful, desiring chiefly to be left in peace. While others older than themselves danced, the village children would splash in the pond with delighted cries, or paint their bare bodies with streaks of red and blue clay from the bank, proudly writing one another’s names if they knew how. In winter, moreover, it served for them to skate on, and well wrapped in the whole hides of goats they slid across it with double wooden runners strapped to their feet.

  Good things were plentiful in Erminvale: creamy milk, fat cheeses, turnips so firm and sweet you might carve a slice raw and eat it with a dressing of salt, berries and nuts of every description, and bearded barley for nutritious bread. Also they brewed fine beer, and on a festival day they would bear onto the green three vast barrels from which anybody, resident or visitor, might swig at will, the first mug always being poured of course to Horimos. Content with that small token of esteem, he slumbered at the bottom of his mud.

  All this was what the girl named Viola had known since a child, and it made her well satisfied to have been born in Wantwich. Where else offered you a better life? By report, great cities were crowded and full of smoke and stinks; moreover, they had more demanding patrons than Horimos, like Hnua-Threl of Barbizond, black with the dried blood of those who had duelled at his altar, or that blind Lady Luck who smiled randomly on the folk of Teq and might tomorrow turn her back for good on the one she had favored yesterday.

  She had heard about Teq from a finely clad rider who had come, a while ago, on a tall roan stallion, twirling long fair mustachios and spilling gold from his scrip like sand.

  He had arrived on the first fine evening of spring, when Viola and her betrothed man Leluak joined all the other young people in a giddy whirling dance around the green, and because it behooved one to be courteous to a stranger – even a stranger who complained about the narrowness of his room at their only inn, and passed unflattering remarks concerning Wantwich beer as against the wines of home – and also, she admitted to herself, because all the other girls would be envious, she had compl
ied with his request to join him in demonstrating some newly fashionable steps from Teq. Instruction took a moment only; she was a skillful dancer, light on slender legs that not even the bleaching of winter had worn to paleness from last summer’s tan. After dancing they talked.

  She learned that his name was Achoreus, and that he served one of the great lords of Teq. She learned further that he thought her beautiful, which she granted, since everyone had always said the same: she had long sleek tresses, large eyes that shifted color ceaselessly like opals, and skin of the smoothness of satin. He declared next that such loveliness was wasted in a backwater hamlet and should be displayed to the nobility and gentry of a great city – meaning Teq. She thanked him for his compliments but explained she was already spoken for. Thereupon he proved that for all his elegant airs he lacked common civility, for without asking her leave he tried to fondle her inside her bodice, at which she marched away.

  Had he acted decently, invited her to stroll in the woods and find a couch of moss, she would naturally have consented; it was the custom of Wantwich to receive all strangers as one would one’s friends. But as things were – so she told Leluak when bidding him good night – he seemed to expect that the mere sight of him would make her forget the boy she had grown up with all her life. What foolishness!

  Accordingly, all plans for her marriage went ahead in the ancient manner, until at sunset the day before the ceremony her father, her mother, her two sisters, and her aunt equipped her in the prescribed fashion for a night she had to pass alone, during which she must visit each in turn of five high peaks enclosing Erminvale and there plant five seeds: an apple, a sloe, a cob, an acorn and a grain of barley.

  With a leather wallet containing bread and cheese, a flask of water, and a torch of sweet-scented juniper, and followed by the cries of well-wishers, she set forth into the gathering dusk.