The Changing Land

by Roger Zelazny

  He found himself moving to the left, until he was pressed against that wall, sidling along, finally to halt in the shadowy corner just before the opening.

  He edged forward, gripping the weapon now, and peered into the room. At first he saw nothing within the gloom, but then his eyes adjusted to the inferior light and he made out the large, dark, central area of depression within it. Something stood at its left-hand edge, some small object he could not quite distinguish. It was touched for a moment by the glow he had followed earlier, but this light departed almost immediately and he still could not tell what it was that had been so indicated—though the message seemed clear and imperative to him.

  Still he hesitated, until a slender tentacle rose up out of the dark place and began groping about its edge, near to the thing he was observing. Then, suddenly moist with perspiration, he forced himself to enter, green boots silent upon the flagstone.

  Baran shook his head, spit out a tooth chip, swallowed. The spittle tasted bloody. He spit several times after that and began coughing. His left eye was stuck partly closed. When he rubbed it a dark, caked substance began to flake away. He examined his hand. Dried blood, it was. Then that dully throbbing, seminumb place…

  He raised his fingertips to the spot on his forehead. Then the pain began. He turned his head this way and that. He lay upon his side at the foot of the stair. So that's what happened when it finally got you…

  He shifted his bulk preparatory to rising and immediately lapsed back from the pain in his left arm and leg. Damn! he thought. They'd better not be broken! Don't know any spells for broken bones…

  Trying again, he propped himself only with his right arm and rolled into a seated position, legs extended straight before him. Better, better…

  He began carefully flexing the leg and feeling it. The pain did not diminish, but nothing seemed broken. Only then did he try exercising his sorcerer's disciplines upon it. The ache started to subside after a few leg movements, becoming only a minor twinge. Then he turned his attention to his scalp and repeated the process with the same result.

  Next, he felt along the length of his arm, and a white flash of pain passed through him when he squeezed the left forearm lightly.

  All right.

  Carefully, very carefully then, he fitted his left hand in between his wide belt and wide stomach. He began again the exercise that would diminish the pain. When this was completed, he rose cautiously to his feet, his good hand upon the wall. He breathed heavily for a full minute after this, head lowered.

  Finally he straightened, took several steps, halted and looked about him. Something was very wrong. There should have been a wall to the left, not a marble balustrade. He followed it with his eyes. It ran for eight or ten paces, then halted next to the head of a wide staircase. A good distance farther along, it began again.

  He looked out beyond the balustrade. It was a huge, long room, stone-walled, shadow-hung, with elaborate cornices, with carved capitals atop fluted pilasters. It was furnished in areas, and a dark, long, narrow rug ran its length down the center.

  He crossed over, leaned upon the balustrade. There was no trace of his former vertigo. Perhaps it had been exorcised by the fall. Perhaps it had been a premonition of the fall…

  Strange, how strange… He moved his eyes. There had been no such room here before. He had never seen such a room, in Castle Timeless or anywhere else. What had happened?

  His gaze found the far corner to his left and froze. Behind a group of high-backed chairs, in an area heavy with shadows, something very large and very still and very black was standing, staring at him. He could tell because the eyes shone redly in the gloom, and they met his own, unblinking, across the distance.

  His throat tightened, strangling back a cry that could have continued into hysteria. Whatever the thing was, it was facing a master sorcerer.

  He raised his hand and summoned the calm necessary to precede the storm he was about to unleash.

  A faint light began to play about his fingertips as he rehearsed the spell, speaking only the key words of it. When he brought his fingers together, his hand resembled a conical taper in the light that it shed. When he drew his fingertips apart, a downward-curved plane of illumination remained among them and continued, flaring upward, advancing the line of its arc. It ran back upon itself, forming a blazing white sphere to which he issued a guide-word, then cast directly toward the lurker in the shadows.

  Trailing sparks and burning in its flight, it moved slowly, almost drifting toward its target.

  The shadowy figure did not stir even as it drew near. The light shattered and went out just before it reached it. Then a sweet voice which seemed to come from a point much nearer said, "Very unfriendly, very unfriendly," and the thing wheeled and passed through the adjacent doorway with a quick, clattering sound.

  Baran lowered his hand slowly, then raised it to his mouth as he began to cough again. Damned wight! Who had summoned it, anyway? Could it possibly be that Jelerak had returned?

  He moved away from the balustrade and headed for the stair.

  When he reached the bottom he investigated the corner. In the dust he found the imprint of a cloven hoof.

  Holrun cursed and turned onto his stomach, drawing the pillow over his head and pressing down hard upon it.

  "No!" he cried. "No! I'm not here! Go away!"

  He lay still for a rapid succession of pulsebeats. Then, gradually, the tension went out of him. His hand fell from the pillow. His breathing grew regular.

  Abruptly, his form stiffened again.

  "No!" he shrieked. "I'm just a poor little sorcerer trying to get some sleep! Leave me alone, damn it!"

  This was followed by a growling noise and a clicking of teeth. Finally, his left hand shot forward and drew upon an ivory inlaid drawer set into the head of the bed. It entered, groped a moment, and withdrew carrying a small crystal.

  He rolled onto his back, propped the pillow, and squirmed into a semi-upright position. He balanced the shining ball on his abdomen and looked down at it through half-open, sleep-swollen eyes. It took a long while for the image to form within it.

  "Make it good," he mumbled. "Make it worth the risk of transformation into a lower life form with a loathsome disease, itching piles, and Saint Vitus' dance. Make it worth the demon-tormentors, the plague of locusts, and the salt in the wounds. Make it—"

  "Holrun," said Meliash, "it's important."

  "It better be. I'm tireder than the king's whore come the revolution. What do you want?"

  "It's gone."

  "Good. Who needed it, anyway?"

  He moved his hand, preparatory to breaking the connection, paused.

  "What's gone?" he inquired.

  "The castle."

  "The castle? The whole damned castle?"

  "Yes."

  He was silent a moment. Then he raised himself further upright, rubbed his eyes, brushed back his hair.

  "Tell me about it," he said then, "preferably in simple terms."

  "The changing land stopped changing for a time. Then it started in again, wilder than I'd ever seen it before. I got to a good vantage point to watch. After a while, it stopped again. The castle was gone. Everything is still now, and the hilltop is empty. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened. That's all."

  "Do you think Jel—he was able to move it? If so, why? Or maybe the Old One?"

  Meliash shook his head.

  "I've been talking with Rawk again. He's turned up more material. There is an old tradition that the place is timeless, was just sort of anchored to time and carried along with it. If that anchor were somehow lifted, it would drift away on the river of eternity."

  "Poetic as all hell, but what does it mean?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you think that's what happened?''

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "Shit!"

  Holrun massaged his temples, sighed, picked up the crystal, swung his legs over the bed's edge.


  "All right," he said. "All right. I have to look into it. I've come this far. I've got to wash up, though, and eat something first. You've spoken with the other wardens?"

  "Yes. They've nothing to add to what I saw."

  "Okay. Keep the place under surveillance. Call me immediately if anything new develops."

  "Certainly. Are you going to notify the Council?"

  Holrun made a face and broke the connection, wondering whether the Council could be unanchored and set adrift in eternity.

  Vane had ceased his sobbing, and for a long while he sat deep in thought, no longer looking at Galt, staring instead at the brightness-dimness sequence in the sky beyond the window. Finally, he stirred.

  He lowered Galt's head gently to the floor, then got to his feet. Stooping, he raised his companion's still form into a position across his shoulders.

  He moved forward, coming out of the alcove, looked to the right, winced, turned left. Slowly, he advanced along the gallery until he came to a low stair leading upward to his left. Spying a short corridor with several open doors above it, he mounted there.

  Moving more slowly, more cautiously, he inspected the rooms. None was occupied. The second and third were bedchambers, the first a sitting room.

  He entered the third and, stooping, drew back the coverlet with one hand. He deposited Galt upon the bed and arranged his limbs. He leaned forward and kissed him, then covered him over.

  Turning away, he departed the room without looking back, drawing the door closed behind him.

  Moving to the right, he came to the end of the corridor, where a low archway opened to the right upon a narrow stair leading downward.

  He descended, to find himself in a formal dining room, with four places set at one end of a long table. A basket of bread stood at the head. He seized it and began eating. On a tray beneath a napkin was some sliced meat. He commenced wolfing this down also. An earthen crock nearby contained some red wine, which he drank straight from the pot. Maneuvering about the table as he fed himself, he turned gradually to face back in the direction from which he had come.

  The stairway had vanished. The wall was now solid at the point where he had made his entrance. Still chewing vigorously, he crossed over and tapped upon it. It did not sound hollow. He shuddered as he drew back from it. This place…

  He turned and fled out the double doors at the room's farther end. The hallway was wide, as was the descending stair to which it led. It was decorated with silks and steel, and partly carpeted in green. He reached for the most useful-seeming blade that hung upon the wall—a short, somewhat heavy, double-edged weapon with a simple hilt. As he took it into his hands and turned away to get the feeling of it in motion, he saw that the doors through which he had just departed the dining room had disappeared, to be replaced by a window through which a gentle, pearly light now entered.

  He retraced his steps and peered through the panes. A range of mountains was sinking in a place where there had been no mountains before. The sky was now a uniform dead white in color, with neither sun nor stars, as if varying values of illumination had been averaged out above him. A silvery substance rushed forward, halted, moved again. It took some time for him to realize that it was water, creeping nearer. He pulled himself away from the window and headed for the stair.

  He fought back the panic which had taken hold of him, replacing it with the hatred he felt for the castle and everything in it. When he reached the foot of the stair, he moved through an anteroom elaborately decorated in a style he did not recognize, though he prided himself upon knowledge of such matters. He halted then upon the threshold to the main hall.

  This room also was unoccupied. He was familiar with it from having been brought in this way when captured by the castle's slaves on the slopes below. He and Galt had been dragged before the steward, Baran, routinely abused, and incarcerated below. His hand tightened upon the haft of the weapon as he recalled that day. He moved then, striding across the hall past the great doors, heading toward the sitting room with its smaller entrance to the outside world.

  As he neared it he slowed, puzzled. The tall wooden thing with the circular face surrounded by numerals was making a shrill, whining sound. Approaching to study it, he saw that a round, vibrating area existed immediately above the face. He could not determine its character or cause, though it did not seem threatening. He decided against tampering with unknown magics and passed it by, entering the sitting room.

  Crossing quickly to the door, he placed his hand upon it, then hesitated. Peculiar things were happening outside. But then, the same might be said for inside also.

  He operated the latch and opened the door.

  A shrieking, as of some mighty wind, came to his ears. There was water for as far as he could see in every direction of which he commanded a view. Yet the waves and ripples normally present in a large body of water were not distinct here. Perhaps it was the mist of fine spray which seemed to hover above it all…

  He extended his blade forward, out into the moist haze. An instant later, he jerked it tack.

  Its tip had entirely rusted away. When he touched the oxidized fringe that still clung to the metal, it turned to powder beneath his finger and fell free. The screeching continued, deafening. The sky was still an unbroken, nacreous expanse.

  He closed the door and latched it, stood with his back against it. He began to tremble.

  Having packed the jewels and garments in which she had been buried into a small parcel that now resided beneath the bed, Semirama paced her room deciding whether anything else would be worth taking. Cosmetics?

  There came a knock upon the door. She was near. She opened it herself.

  Jelerak smiled at her.

  "Oh!"

  She reddened.

  "I am going to have need of your linguistic abilities," he stated.

  A pair of rose-tinted goggles hung about his neck. The butt of a scarlet wand protruded from a long, narrow sheath at his belt. He bowed, gesturing toward her left, down the hallway.

  "Please come with me."

  "Yes—Of course."

  She stepped out, began walking alongside him in that direction. She glanced out the window at a pearly sky above an interminable sea.

  "Something is the matter?" she asked finally.

  "Yes. There was—interference," he replied.

  Abruptly, a rushing sound passed overhead, like a clacking of hoofs.

  "A huge, dark-haired man. interrupted me in the midst of my work," he explained.

  "Was that what caused the—spasm? And all these effects?"

  He shook his head.

  "No, someone has released the maintenance spell and we are no longer a part of the normal flow of time."

  "Do you think Tualua did it? Or the stranger?"

  He paused to look out another window. The sea had almost completely receded, and now mountain ranges reared themselves even as he watched.

  "I do not believe that Tualua was in any condition to do that. And I think the stranger was as surprised by it as I was. But I had a glimpse of the stranger's spirit before I lost consciousness. He was something elemental, demonic, which had only taken human form for a time. This was why I fled as soon as I recovered—to obtain certain tools I had cached." He ran his thumb across the top of the wand. "This is my weapon for dealing with beings such as that. You've seen such before, I'm sure, long ago—"

  She gasped. The entire sky flamed a brilliant crimson, became a blinding white. She shielded her eyes and looked away, but it was already dimming.

  "What—what was that?"

  Jelerak lowered his own hand from his eyes.

  "Probably the end of the world," he said.

  They watched as the sky continued to dim, until it became a smoky, yellowish color. This persisted. Finally, Jelerak turned away.

  "At any rate," he went on, "that one has probably removed my original means of accomplishing Tualua's pacification. So"—he touched the goggles— "these. There was a time when I could have ch
armed him with my eyes and voice alone, but now I have need to augment my gaze. You must call him, get him to raise himself, so that for a moment we look at one another."

  "What then?"

  "I must restore the maintenance spell."

  "What of whoever broke it?"

  "I must regain full force next, find that person, and deal with him."

  He began walking again. She fell into step beside him.

  "We're really trapped, then," she said. "Even if you do these things, where will it leave us?"

  He laughed harshly.

  "Even knowledge may have its limits," he said. "On the other hand, I believe that ingenuity is boundless. We shall see."

  They walked on, took a stair, took a turn.

  "Jelerak," she said, "where did this place come from?"

  "We may find that out, too," he replied. "I do not know for certain, though I am beginning to believe that it is—somehow—alive."

  She nodded.

  "I've had a few peculiar feelings myself. If this is the case, whose side might it be on?"

  "Its own, I think."

  "It's powerful, isn't it?"

  "Look out any window. Yes, there are too many powerful things at work here. I don't like it. I once had my will subjugated to a greater force—"

  "I know."

  "—and I will not permit it to occur again. It would be the end of both of us—and of many other things."

  "I do not understand."

  "If my will is broken, your flesh will return to the dust from which I raised it—and other things which depend upon me will fail."

  She took his arm.

  "You must be careful."

  He laughed again.