Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  How the hosts of Dessinga applauded! No doubt they had been carefully schooled to recognize each member of that fabulous procession.

  “You honor us indeed, Master Sarimance,” Eunepheos said. “The greatest ones are well known for both their acute sense of protocol and for their restive natures in matters of place, so that often even the manifestations we have seen today are not always easy together. You have managed to bring us a most harmonious and well-behaved display under the circumstances. I commend and thank you.”

  “I aimed only to please,” Sarimance said, and returned to his place before the dais.

  “Amberlin, to the floor!” Eunepheos cried. “Now we see what you have been holding back! I, for one, can hardly wait.”

  Amberlin gave a smart half-bow, just langorous enough, then took his place and turned. It was his final chance. He would risk everything.

  Without further thought, he invoked Aspalin’s Fond Retrieval, once his greatest display spell, hoping that this time the vowels and articulations held true, or that some new skewing by the Inflect delivered an improvement in scale and majesty.

  The air was split with a resounding thunderclap and lit all over with great stabs of lightning, then a very fine and wholly unexpected vortex began spiralling out in the hall, churning and roaring.

  It boded well and Amberlin dared to feel hope. He watched as the mighty cone of air finally narrowed and funneled down on a single lighted spot.

  The anomaly then vanished in a final clap of thunder, leaving complete silence.

  A lowly earthenware teapot sat upon the paving. It gave a tentative, “Me-Me-Me!” in a broken, throaty voice, then began reciting a bawdy ballad from the Land of the Falling Wall. It had just finished the chorus and was starting on the second verse when the contest time limit was reached and both kitchen utensil and song vanished in a puff of crimson smoke.

  “Great Eunepheos, I can explain everything—” Amberlin began to say, but Eunepheos interrupted.

  “It is after the event,” he said, rising from his throne. “Explain nothing! Now it is time for our judges to deliver their decision. Noble magicians, step out upon the floor one last time, if you will, and face your adjudicators.”

  The three wizards did so, watching as the glass cases behind Eunepheos buzzed and crackled with renewed energies. Finally, when sufficient discussion had transpired, a single thread of force projected from each to penetrate Eunepheos’ body. When he now spoke, his eyes glowed with a lambent white light and his voice was an overlay of three voices made into one.

  “By the order of presentation, we appraise you,” the composite voice said. Eunepheos the Darke stood frozen, only his mouth and jaw moving. “Tralques Iron Star, wonderfully done. You use magic borrowed from your betters, but inheritance is always difficult in magical affairs and you acquitted yourself superbly.”

  Tralques bowed. “Thank you, noble sirs. Your example will inspire me to do better next time, I’m sure.”

  Eunepheos seemed not to hear. “Sarimance the Aspurge, your invocations showed imagination and a truly commendable degree of respect to those who are your betters. You are skilful, strategic and inspiring, if somewhat unforgiving.”

  Sarimance bowed. “Great lords, my relentlessness is inspired by your own discipline and dedication. We can only dream of the time when you were among us and thank you for gifting us with your presence here today.”

  Again there was no acknowledgment from Eunepheos or the remembrance cases.

  “Amberlin the Lesser,” the triple voice said. “Today you have surprised us with the selections you chose for such an important occasion. But you have shown a sense of novelty and the unruly, and there is about you an insouciance and irreverence that we like. In short, you have remembered that since we too are wizards of great power, if only as remembrances, for us magic and magical display are easy and second nature. What is missing from our lives are the elements of absurdity and genuine surprise. You have provided these things in ample measure—and are therefore our winner!”

  Sarimance immediately cried out. “What! Great lords, I protest—!”

  He vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Tralques actually thought to flee, but only managed two steps before he too disappeared, this time in a twist of light.

  Two new scintillants appeared among the thousands on the ceiling of the chamber.

  Amberlin, utterly dumbfounded, went to give thanks, but instead found himself on the riverbank outside the Copsy Door at Venta-Valu with Diffin standing to one side, visibly trembling with what seemed a mixture of relief and fear.

  “Oh, master, it is so good to see you,” the lanky creature said.

  Amberlin managed to regain his composure. “Diffin, why are you here?”

  “Master, I was looking out through the Clever Window as I promised I would when, just like that, it darkened over and a sharp, very frightening face appeared. It said that you had won a great contest of wizards and that the Anto brothers were never to be seen again. Nor were the wizards Sarimance or Tralques to be relied upon as referees in any future employment that I might care to seek.”

  “I see. Anything more?”

  “Nothing, great one. Though I might add that the lillobays and quentians have been freshly watered and that the Holding Book is back in the east tower and seems much happier, so far as books of power can indicate such things, with how the new Diffin comports himself.”

  “Very well,” Amberlin said, adjusting his robes. “Let us take a day or two to see how the new Diffin comports himself.”

  And together they set off to where the towers of the manse Furness stood glinting in the light of the old red sun.

  Afterword:

  Jack’s work had an enormous impact on me as a teenager. I first encountered it when I was fifteen with “The Dragon Masters” in the August 1962 issue of Galaxy magazine, and thereafter quickly tried to find everything by him that I could. He went straight to the top of a small list of distinctive SF and fantasy voices I was discovering at the time, among them Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard, Cordwainer Smith and Philip K. Dick. He seemed to be doing something very special, or, perhaps more to the point, seemed to be doing familiar things in a very special way.

  While I didn’t discover The Dying Earth until ten years later, that linked collection confirmed everything I already loved and admired about Jack’s work: the elegance and euphony of the writing, the distinctive cadences and rhythms, the sheer inventiveness and antiquarian caste, the way less was so often more and how the standard writing corollary of ‘Show Don’t Tell’ effectively became: ‘Don’t Just Show, Suggest.’

  Being introduced to Jack and his family by Tim Underwood at the end of 1980 meant the world to me, and led to the start of a very special friendship, one which has never ceased to be a source of great pleasure. One moment I’m a soldier sitting on a doorstep at the 3TB army base in 1968 reading Star King and The Killing Machine, then thirty years later I’m drifting off to sleep to the words of Night Lamp, Ports of Call, and Lurulu coming through the walls as Jack ‘reads’ through his current work in progress using his talking computer program. One moment I’m a steadfast fan, a fledgling storyteller refining my craft in faraway Sydney, trying to land my first sale, then I’ve become “The Smuggler” and one of Jack’s closest friends, making annual visits to the wonderful house in the Oakland hills, switching on the navigation lights in the bar whenever he announces that the sun is well and truly over the yard-arm, making sure there’s not a trace of zucchini to spoil a meal, taking enormous pains when playing washboard to Jack’s banjo, ukelele, and kazoo always to finish at the same time. As Jack has said on many occasions, usually when several glasses of tipple have come and gone: “Vance deposes, Dowling disposes!” Neither of us is sure what it means, but it makes for a fine toast.

  As well as sharing many unforgettable adventures with Jack and Norma over the years, among them our momentous road trip to Three Rivers in January 1984 where we visited a genuine (we i
nsist!) haunted house, we’ve spent hours discussing projects, process and storytelling in general. In a special sense, “The Copsy Door” is the result of years of rich and sustained exposure to Jack’s work, and of countless hours chatting before the fire, working at the kiln, listening to the Black Eagle Jazz Band, and choosing who, among friends and notables, would make the wholly imaginary voyage from Oakland down to Sydney on the fine Vance ketch, Hinano.

  On a more specific note, I once unwittingly “borrowed” the name Amberlin from Jack’s Rhialto the Marvelous as a name for a café in my Tom Rynosseros stories. Jack in turn took my coining “shatterwrack” for the extinct volcano Shattorak in Ecce and Old Earth (unwittingly, he insists!). It seemed fitting that my contribution to this book had to concern a particular wizard named Amberlin.

  How did the story come about? Why, it was very much a case of painting myself into a corner. I simply had Amberlin step into his workroom one fine morning to deal with something called a Copsy Door, then saw where it went from there. I like to think that, in more ways than one, Jack himself helped with the writing.

  —Terry Dowling

  Liz Williams

  Caulk the Witch-chaser

  British Writer Liz Williams has had work appear in Interzone, Asimov’s, Visionary Tongue, Terra Incognita, The New Jules Verne Adventures, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and elsewhere, and her stories have been collected in Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories. Her books include the critically acclaimed novels The Ghost Sister, Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Snake Agent, The Demon and the City. and Darkland. Her most recent novels are The Shadow Pavillion and Winterstrike. She lives in Brighton, England.

  Here she takes us along with a witch-chaser as he leaves Azenomei and heads down the river Scaum to the open sea, away from Almery and toward the bleak shores of Alster—and also toward, for better or worse, a change of professions…

  Caulk the Witch-chaser

  Liz Williams

  Caulk the witch-chaser came out of Almery on a rising tide, sailing first the brief distance down the Xzan, then the Scaum, towards the coast. Occasionally, he took the strand of hair out of the pouch and studied it: it lay silver in his palm, like the light of the long-lost moon, but he knew that if he looked at it under the sun, it would be the dull scarlet of old blood. Caulk smiled thinly at this thought, opening his coat and adjusting first his thirty nine daggers, then the scalps. The smell of the Scaum rose up, salty and brackish, redolent of unsuccessful poison.

  By midnight, he had reached the mouth of the estuary. He anchored the boat for a few minutes, sent down a fluke-loaded line, then brought it back up writhing with glass eels. He cooked them in a mess in a pan, ate absently, and headed for open sea.

  This had all come about in Azenomei, a month ago, when Caulk had first met the owl-killer. Normally, he would not have bothered with such a person: Caulk had standards of fastidiousness which the owl-killer unfortunately failed to meet. The man—small, balding, with huge pale eyes—had lurched against him in a tavern, spilling cheap ale over Caulk’s high black boots. Caulk clucked in exasperation and the owl-killer leered at him.

  “Bit fussy, aren’t we, for someone who drinks in hovels?”

  “I am here on business,” Caulk replied icily, wiping ale off his boots.

  “Aren’t we all?” The owl-killer cackled and broke into a small capering dance, the feathery pelts flapping at his waist in a manner that was somehow lewd. Caulk blinked, and the owl-killer was gone. Dismissing the matter, Caulk waited for his own appointment, which failed to materialise. In disgust, for it was now twilight and too late to return from Azenomei, Caulk purchased a bowl of leeks, then arranged a room in the inn above and stalked up the stairs to his new residence: a low room, black beamed, with panels of a russet wood. Caulk deemed it acceptable enough, though the bed was lumpy, and, on investigation, the mattress bore faint stains of a suspicious nature. Caulk wrapped himself in the coarse blanket and fell into an uneasy sleep, punctuated by leek-fuelled dreams.

  He woke under attack. A harsh voice assaulted him; something brushed roughly across his face. Throwing the blanket aside, Caulk snatched one of his daggers from beneath the pillow and thrust it in the direction of his assailant. It struck something yielding: there was a startled squawk. An owl dropped dead to the floor, yellow beak gaping. Caulk hissed with annoyance; he was certain he’d left the window closed. On investigation, this proved still to be the case. The owl must have been crouching in the rafters.

  Moments later, someone banged on the door.

  “Be silent!” Caulk commanded. “Do you wish to wake the whole household?”

  “I demand entry!” said a voice that was somehow familiar. “You have trespassed upon my province, I require redress.”

  Irritated, Caulk threw open the door, daggers at the ready, but was immediately rendered nerveless by a bolt of jade light. The daggers dropped from his hands and clattered to the floor. Caulk strove to speak but a muttered pervulsion caused the spell to choke in his throat. Caulk stared in outrage at the owl-killer, who ran into the room, gathered up the round, feathery corpse, and stashed it in a bag.

  “Now,” the owl-killer said, fixing Caulk with a beady glare. “About redress.”

  Caulk, disconcerted by this buffoon’s evident abilities, found himself able to speak. “An accident!”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “I intended no harm! The thing attacked me!”

  “Doubtless you startled it.”

  “I was asleep!”

  “The authorities in Azenomei take a dim view of folk who trample and stamp over the purlieus of others,” the owl-killer mused. “I know of one such who, only last week, was hoisted onto a gibbet of pettish-wood and lambasted by the populace, before being transported to the midst of the Old Forest and obliged to find his own way home. He has not yet succeeded in this endeavour, that I am aware of.”

  “But—”

  “It is doubly unfortunate that my brother, Pardua Mott, happens to be the head of the Azenomei Board of Fair Trading. A man of the most upright and correct rectitude, a respectability so pronounced that he had his own daughter exhibited in the Hall of Reproachable Conduct minus her undergarments, after her branding.”

  “I—”

  “I am, however, a fair man,” the owl-killer Mott went on judiciously. “I am prepared to concede a measure of inadvertency in your actions.”

  “That’s very—”

  “Rather than have you hauled in irons before my relative, which admits little other than a mild form of personal satisfaction, I shall demand an alternative form of reparation. You see,” the owl-killer said, beadily, “I need a particular owl…”

  As he passed the distant humps of the erg-barrows along the upper shore of the estuary, Caulk relived this unfortunate course of events and grew exceedingly sour. White Alster was known to be a dismal place, with little to recommend it, unless one happened to be a connoisseur of remote rocky spars, ruined fortresses, and black sucking bogs. Moreover, Mott had been unreassuringly vague as to the whereabouts of his quarry.

  “Besides,” Caulk had protested, still beneath the unnerving dictates of the pervulsion, “I am a witch-chaser, not an owl-finder. Surely that’s your remit.”

  The owl-killer gave an avian blink. “Indeed, and I am, of course, aware of your profession. Your high boots, the enfoldments of your hat, the multiple hems of your coat, all speak of your calling. However, lamentable circumstances entail that should I set foot on the shores of White Alster, I will activate a locater spell and a vast shrieking will alert the hags to my presence. Besides, all that you are likely to encounter is largely within your own area of expertise. Sea-hags and tarn-wights are witches, after all, not to mention shape shifters.”

  Bitterly, Caulk conceded this to be true.

  “I shall give you an aid—a strand of owl-witch hair. Watch it closely. It will twitch you in the required direction.”

  Steal a witc
h’s hair and you stole a piece of her power. Even novices knew that. Caulk looked narrowly at the strand and asked, “And if I refuse?”

  He did not care to recall what came next: the indignities of a further pervulsion and the contortions it entailed. Mott’s merry laughter still stung his ears. Now here he was, sailing towards White Alster on a following wind and leaving Almery and its manses far behind. Caulk was aware of a pang, from more than the spell, that prodded him onward.

  He sailed for several days, becoming increasingly bored by the dull expanse of choppy sea. Occasionally, bloat-fish rose up from the depths and regarded him with bland white eyes, whereupon Caulk was forced to summon a frothing conjuration and drive them off. Once, a great flapping bird moved ponderously from horizon to horizon, but otherwise there was little sign of life. It was with a relief mingled with apprehension that Caulk saw a broken shore rise up in the far reaches of the sea: White Alster.

  It was not immediately obvious how to approach a suitable landing site, if any existed. What initially appeared to be a range of shattered turrets resolved itself into mere rock; a squat cylinder of stone that had seemed only an outcrop bore windows on its far side, but there was no sign of jetty or pier, and when Caulk looked back, the windows themselves were gone.

  A bleak place, overlain with a sanguine glow in the last light of the dying sun. Caulk had seen worse, but also better. He thought with a shudder of the Land of Falling Wall, its ergs and leucomances. But White Alster, too, was said to have forests: who knew what lay within? Tempting to simply turn back towards Almery—but the pervulsion snagged at his neuronal pathways and Caulk grimaced.