by Chris Turner
“This is an unfortunate turn of events.”
“Particularly for the lizards.” Dasbir coughed. “Back to an earlier point. Zespar, the First Magician of Besimark, was pompously disposed, and so consulted Cogiles, the Second Magician, who consigned the task to Besimark’s Third Magician who toiled with all mind and soul. He researched the work of the dwarfs and the mystics of the north, to come across nothing singular except a queer matrix, which purportedly contained the riddles of time, or at least approximated the ‘Secret of Time Corridors’, I suspect. Tenuous concepts, one may think, but very real. Lucklessly, these people had not the ingenuity or engineering know-how as I command, to take the matrix to a new level. That which you see before you is an ‘expanded’ replica of the same blueprint that Cogiles inscribed on tablets, and that I luckily stumbled upon in a crumbling crypt not far from here. I have constructed the machinery to give an influx of energy to the ‘Pattern’. My hope is that I can conquer time at will in a more singular way than the dwarfs did—or at least, will shortly do so, if you care to linger.”
“I most certainly do,” insisted Risgan, “your theory has me enthralled.”
Dasbir peered at him queerly as if wondering if he were not ribbing him. “I cannot help but notice the roughshod pickaxe you carry strapped to your back in so cavalier a manner. What is this for?”
“I have been known to perform the odd salvage work here and there,” explained Risgan casually. “Occasionally I stumble upon a few intriguing items, which I sell to interested persons.”
“This is a fine pastime!” cried the old man. “Perhaps you would be interested in helping me quarry for marstone? The clock bases are in desperate need of it. From yonder hill the Marvars hew rock to slow results. My emprise is seriously compromised! There are many exceptional things to be unearthed—such as this bronze helm of a Kadassian warrior.” He kicked at a corroded helm with his toe, a relic melded into the foot of the nearest pedestal. “Other ancient trophies are to be found.” Risgan saw there were other antiquities scattered at various intervals: strange embedded jewels, scarab beadwork, carved cameos, ornate daggers, a hefty poleaxe without haft.
Risgan’s eyes kindled with interest. “I see these weapons are surely relics from the Sarmani period of the old Torque dynasty. Mind you, somewhat barbarically wrought and in poor condition, as shown by this haft-less axe.
“Come now, wayfarer! One cannot be too selective when dredging up artifacts from ages past.”
Risgan put a finger of erudition to his chin. “This business I know more than any.” He frowned. “This time-leaping of yours—do you believe the possibility actually exists?”
The time-smith’s expression took on a patronizing glare. “Of course it does. I told you so, didn’t I? Time and the world are illusion. What we make of them and what we do with them is our own choice: here today, gone in the blink of an eye! Then they are back again in more terrible forms of misadventure. I am a cosmic experimenter—a humble scientist, hoping to derive richer understanding from a few cack-handed experiments.”
“I daresay.”
“Where did I leave those dratted spectacles?” Dasbir grumbled. “I can barely see a thing without my pince-nez.” He fretted about, muttering and scowling. “Unfortunately, I am absent-minded of late. Too many concepts on a man’s mind leaves him inundated with minutiae, swelling the brain. But a man of your vitality would not experience such malaise?”
Risgan reflected on the recent experiences which had brought about his youthful condition. He cleared his throat and concurred.
The documentarist went on in an assured voice. “The ‘Time Overlord’ or ‘Adjudicator’ has now recently constructed a series of tic-toc engines of his own to make mine look like children’s toys. I like to think that my elaborately-constructed network would soon attract his attention and intersect with the Overlord’s domain. There is a strong flux line positioned here at this exact location of the labyrinth. The ancients knew it. This is the original site of Besimark’s old keep, where the First Magician set up his researches and commissioned the Second and Third Magicians to work day and night to decipher the diagrams and apocrypha writ on the tablets of old.” The time-smith’s eyes blazed. “And here now, Balsar!—” He thrust a finger at the dawdling Mavar sidling nearby. I mention again that you must strike the timepiece’s mallet to tine thus and so.” He stepped over with brisk industry and rapped the tine with a fastidious verve which Risgan thought endearing.
“Poor Balsar is not so smart,” the old architect explained apologetically. “Now Klaricue, here—she is an absolute paragon!” The midget beamed at the mention of her name—a smallish doll sort of creature with cute lashes and poppy cheeks. The Mavar had an exaggerated figure, a pair of honey-coloured eyes and pigtails that sent Risgan into a tizzy.
“Come, young man,” said Dasbir, nudging him in the ribs. “I see you mooning over my fair worker. Are you out to take advantage of my hired help?”
Risgan crinkled his face into a frown. “Not at all. The imputation is galling. My eyes rest on a few fetching curves now and again. What of it?”
“Understandable. Is there anything I can offer you at this time?”
“Perhaps a space for lodging.”
Dasbir clapped his hands. He motioned the relic hunter to the direction of his abode which stood up the hill, a small wooden bungalow with twin chimneys. “Let us repair to my domicile for the day; it has been a tasking day! Busy men must also eat.”
Risgan obliged. In the spartan living room of Dasbir’s residence they dined on tasty roasted grouse. The relic hunter set his feet up on a stool, warming himself by the fire. He noted wryly that the reason for the dwelling’s austerity was that all the excavated curios were moulded into Dasbir’s Fiffiholth for some function or other.
The time-smith soon fell asleep and his snores and raspy breaths kept Risgan awake. But not for long. Risgan curled up on a rumpled old divan and presently drifted off himself.
* * *
The next day Risgan rose early to inspect the Timesmith’s fabulous labyrinth. He was greatly intrigued with the intricacy of the architect’s vision. Perhaps it could reveal additional profit-bringing mementos. Doubtless the old inventor would not miss a trinket or two. Risgan put a hand to brow: that he could claim to conquer time, or some such feat was pure fiction, of course. However, since he had need of some space for layover, he could at least indulge the old man’s fancies.
The relic hunter trudged deeper into Dasbir’s maze. He drew a sharp breath. Both Balsar and Klaricue were working on a marstone statue. Their efforts were strenuous even at this hour. Balsar wielded torque bar and Klaricue set hand lathe in motion, tools used to shave an ungainly abutment from the pedestal.
Risgan extended them an exaggerated wave, which was returned only with a look of blank inquiry. Risgan’s explorations led him farther down a central aisle, flanked with odd clocks, all on stone plinths. They were huge ornate timepieces, graced with hands of chiselled bronze and glass-encased faces writ with cryptic numbers on their faces. The timepieces following were especially singular. Tall, stately statues of austere lords and ladies comprised their bodies, the clock arms of which moved imperceptibly across a wide diameter.
Risgan mused affectedly. Cables connected the clocks, looped ear to ear, with wires straddling the stone corridor, as thick as snakes. On a particularly massive pedestal, Risgan beheld a strange, pink, brass-crafted wheel hiked up like a captain’s wheel.
An astrological symbol? Command disc? Decoration? Risgan thought it ungainly and looked remarkably similar to the central node he had seen yesterday—or perhaps this was only imagination?
He shook his head in bafflement. Reaching out a hand to touch the rotor, he found the strange spoked disc cold to the touch, chiselled with a thousand inscriptions on its outer face. The stone grew warm in his hand. What was it? It would not give as he attempted to give it a turn. There was a reason for the impulse. Underneath the disc showed a strange
hexagonal curio of brass and gold, which could as easily be some ancient relic of considerable value, as a gewgaw worth nothing. If he could dislodge it from its straddle... Sighting a bar-wrench, he attempted to pry the wheel off. Nothing happened. The device sat stubborn as a crow. With more effort, Risgan managed to slip the device a notch and his twitching fingers elicited a squeaking scrape, a grinding tumult somewhere deep within. Risgan perspired in anticipation. He opened his mouth in amazement. The creak of rusting hinges grew to echoing groans from deep within the labyrinth.
Risgan frowned. The tumult was unnerving and more inordinate than he would have guessed for a simple twirl. He began to back away a step. More interesting now, he asked himself, what would come of this impromptu prying? He cared little. He gave the pry bar a stronger pull, driven by hunches that there existed treasures behind this weird symbol-rich console.
“Do not touch that!” came a voice suddenly stabbing out of the dimness. It was the old time-smith, jogging painfully down the cramped aisle at an accelerated rate.
He tripped on a cable just as he grabbed for Risgan’s wrist. The bedrock shuddered. The sky instantly became a dark mass. Thick black clouds came swirling in from an otherwise cloudless sky. Risgan saw to his dismay, a vortex open from the heavens and Dasbir was sucked up like a cork in the immediate time field.
Risgan was hurled back by unfathomable forces. The old man was gone, lifted up within the tempest while Risgan found himself buffeted to the corridor’s fore and aft by unruly winds. Blinding lights and the seething surge of deluges were his world. He covered his ears, threatened by the screeching whine of banshees and tortured metal.
There was a silence and water and wind were gone. With it, came a preternatural stillness.
Risgan shook his head. The wheel was as before, cold, clear and shiny and the hexagon was hidden by the radiating spokes, but the little of it Risgan could see, glinted with a sullen tinge. Feeling that he had overstepped, he took his leave back to the entrance. Balsar, Klaricue and Dardar resided there, clearly having witnessed the entire scene. They gave throaty cries. Ordering Risgan away from the apparatus, they wiggled their ears, stamped their feet and snapped their fingers as if he were a common criminal. Dardar tossed tools at him with an unnecessary resentment.
Risgan dodged the assaults. With poor grace he took to his heels, quickly forgetting about any foraging for relics. His guiltless frown suggested that if Dasbir was to play with elemental forces, then he should employ more safeguards on his machinery.
Thinking along such lines, Risgan allowed himself to recover and followed the threadbare path that wound east through the valley toward sun-baked hills.
Dried-up briar-shrubs and pale grey shale outcrops marked the shallow valley.
The path quickly disappeared. Risgan found himself wandering a plain of stunted cacti where small browned boulders appeared from time to time along the fringes of clumps of slay bushes. Everything seemed bathed in a yellowish hue, dulled around the edges, as if there had been a great filter of dust floating in the air for years. Risgan reached out to grab at the air, but nothing came into his fingers. He gave a disdainful snort: the anomaly was peculiar, likely the by-product of the early initiation of Dasbir’s pet, time engine, Fiffiholth. With pettish annoyance Risgan trotted on.
The hours passed. In a languid cocoon of introspection, old memories popped in and out of Risgan’s head with the most poignant tendency: memories of the oddest things as he strode through the trackless barrens and brooded. The relentless beat of the sun fatigued him. It plunged him into an overall reverie of lassitude.
He stopped short and stared for a long period of time, gawking at a young gecko poised on a boulder. The heat waves shimmered off the turf. He shook himself of his weariness. On he plodded, chiding himself for his sluggishness.
He had not been unaware of nature’s reversal of pattern, that had provided him with a more youthful body. Even though he had endured rough times in Zanthia on the journey to Lim-Lalyn, his skin was fresh and healthy, more rosy than ever, a quality of vitality more known to a twenty year old than a man of forty five. Risgan felt his back was straighter and less wrinkles crawled around the caves of his philosopher’s eyes. His lavender gaze shone with more effulgence than ever before. Small grey tufts that had somehow cropped up here and there over the past years had completely melted away. Risgan assumed that it was the effect of the youth talisman. More worrisome than ever came the question, when would the youthing process complete?
A dark shiver ran up Risgan’s spine. He recalled the unlucky fate of the sorceress Afrid. The relic was useful as a weapon employed on enemies, but certainly a harsh medicine when applied to himself.
Intruding on his thoughts came another scene. Etched into the side of the hill was a bower of cypress where a half dozen youthful maids were taking their leisurely activities in the waters of a natural pool. The women wiped themselves down with silk cloth and laved their sleek bodies with oils and unguents. They were undeniable beauties, harbouring the air of innocence normally attributed to nymphs, or dream seraphim from a sybaritic man’s most indulgent fantasy.
Risgan unobtrusively watched them from safety. Behind a thicket, he listened to them chatter on, giggling as they drank wine and sipped at wholesome nectars from a large tureen while taking sweet fruit from a heaping basket. Risgan felt an absurd flush. They carried on in an aristocratic bearing, which prompted him to believe these damsels to be born of high caste, likely not averse to his picaresque charms, after having lived in the sheltered comfort of posh villas and elegant manors for some time. Risgan nodded assuredly. He saw a great carriage at the edge of the thicket: a jewel-crusted gondola shaped in the guise of a gigantic pink swan.
Risgan sucked in a sharp breath. Obviously their means of transport, but curious that the carriage held no wheels. Where were the draw-beasts?
Risgan frowned in disbelief. The whole scenario seemed dreamlike, as if he were sleep-walking in another’s dream or in the stupor of the lotus, and the words of the time-smith echoed in his mind like a fateful gong: “Time and the world are illusion, wayfarer. What we make of them and what we do with them is our choice, gone in the blink of an eye! Then they are back again in more terrible forms of misadventure.”
Risgan hissed a sceptical breath. He was not so much of a fatalist to give such lofty assertions credence. Yet, perhaps there was something to the old man’s ravings? What with his newfound adolescent vigour it was not such a stretch to conclude that fantastic things could befall a man of his bearing.
But from where did the beauties come? He had glimpsed no habitations or roads on his journey from Dasbir’s maze. The situation seemed impossible.
A snap of a twig had him freezing in midstep—the women’s reverie had been disturbed by something and several maids clasped hands over bosoms and groped for their clothing. They saw only one man slightly bowing his head in shamefacedness. Somehow, it prompted them to lose misgivings.
A valiant maiden, putting aside her fears, made tentative steps forward and invited Risgan to join their ensemble by the bower.
Risgan was touched by the overture of friendliness. A few women still bared unclothed breasts and languorous bodies, which stretched from one luxurious position to the other. Risgan minded not in the least; they lounged aside the magical pool, which not surprisingly was a hot spring.
“I am Relfa,” announced the bold woman, “and this is my cousin Jarmin.” She was a particularly elegant woman with yellow gorse blossoms in wavy hair. “We are the free women of La-El. We take pilgrimage and sabbatical here from our tedious husbands. We mix herbs, indulge in wine, talk about esoteric things, and engage in convivial talk.”
Risgan nodded energetically, very much interested in such a cabal. “La-El is a most beautiful place,” he commented.
“It is, but this is not La-El,” the woman laughed. “It is the Wise-Grove. La-El is an ancient land—timeless, idyllic and serene, etched with vineyards, pergolas, arbours and
sanctuaries. We call it The Good Country.”
Risgan gave his head a brisk nod. “I believe to have heard of this land in passing, a reference perhaps to halcyon realms when I was studying in Bazuur.” Risgan hadn’t a clue about La-El, of course, but if it spawned such beautiful company, so be it.
“Naturally!” they all cried. “La-El is past Dogas, the Land of the Golden Sun and the River of Running Wine.”
“True, true, I should have realized this earlier.”
The women giggled, thinking Risgan odd.
“How then did you arrive from La-El?” Risgan asked with pleasant humour. “If memory serves, ’tis a long ways away.”
“We have our means,” confided Relfa slyly. “Myrna is an accomplished cloud-rider, and Sarap here is a mystic voyager, helmswoman of the Calaste.”
Risgan lifted brows high. “Is she now?” If he were in a dream, better to ride Calaste’s decks than another.
Risgan’s jocularity gave him cause to hesitate. The words of these winsome maids were far from onerous and the world seemed a different place presently and he wondered if his new surroundings had anything to do with the horrid tampering with Dasbir’s time engine.
The idea seemed remote and Risgan chided himself. Besides, he had experienced weird symptoms prior to meeting the time-smith and his fatal machine. But then... perhaps the machine had somehow divined his coming, and the gadget, an instrument of a time-slip and of a sensitivity beyond normal perception, had sucked him into its jaws before his arrival at Fiffiholth?
Risgan gave another inward sigh. He thrust such vagaries from his mind. Ruminating was unproductive and the pleasant ambience of these bosom maids was much more invigorating.
“And your husbands and brothers—they have no problem with my presence?” Risgan asked innocently.
“Of course not!” they chorused. “These men are tiresome as snakes, and jealous creatures too. They watch over us with vulturish spite. We long to be away from their dour rules!”
