Lyonesse II - The Green Pear and Madouc

by Jack Vance

  Shimrod selected one of the passages leading away from the foyer and so entered Murgen’s private hall.

  At a heavy table sat Murgen, legs outstretched to the fire. Today he appeared in the semblance which so long before he had conferred upon Shimrod: a tall spare form with a gaunt bony face, dust-colored hair, a whimsical mouth and a set of casual mannerisms.

  Shimrod stopped short. “Must you confront me as myself? It is distracting to be instructed or, worse, chided under these circumstances.”

  “An oversight,” said Murgen. “Ordinarily I would not work this prank upon you, but now, as I think of it, the exercise of dealing with unfamiliar concepts from your own mouth may be of ultimate value.”

  “With due respect, I consider the point farfetched.” Shimrod advanced into the room. “Well then, if you will not change, I will sit with my back partially turned.”

  Murgen gave an indifferent wave of the hand. “It is all one. Will you take refreshment?” He snapped his fingers and flasks of both mead and beer appeared on the table, along with a platter of bread and cold meats.

  Shimrod contented himself with a mug of beer, while Murgen elected to drink mead from a tall pewter tankard. Murgen asked: “Have the priests at the temple dealt courteously with you?”

  “You refer to the Temple of Atlante? I never troubled to pay them my respects, nor have they sought me out. Is any gain to be had from their acquaintance?”

  “They have long traditions which they are willing to recite. The steps leading down from the temple are impressive and perhaps merit a visit. On a calm day, when the sun is high, a keen eye can look down through the water and count thirty-four steps before they disappear into the murk. The priests claim that the number of steps above the surface is dwindling: either the land is sinking or the sea is rising: such is their reasoning.”

  Shimrod reflected. “Either case is hard to credit. I suspect that their first count was made at low tide; then later, when the tide was at flood, they made their second count, and so were misled.”

  “That is a practical explanation,” said Murgen. “It seems plausible enough.” He glanced toward Shimrod. “You drink only sparingly. Is the beer too thin?”

  “Not at all. I merely wish to keep my wits about me. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who.”

  Murgen drank from his pewter tankard. “The risk is small.”

  “True. Still, I will keep my head clear until I learn why you have summoned me here to Swer Smod.”

  “Why else? I need your help.”

  “I cannot refuse you, nor would I if I could.”

  “Well spoken, Shimrod! I will come to the point. Essentially, I am irked with Tamurello. He resents my authority and obtrudes his force on my own; ultimately, of course, he hopes to destroy me. At the moment his work is ostensibly trivial or even playful, but, if left unchallenged, it could become dangerous, after this analogy: a man attacked by a single wasp has little to fear; if ten thousand wasps attack him, he is doomed. I cannot give Tamurello’s activity the care it deserves; I would be diverted from other work of great importance. Hence, I assign this task to you. At the very least, your vigilance will distract him exactly as he hopes to distract me.”

  Shimrod frowned into the fire. “It might be wiser to destroy him, once and for all.”

  “That is easier said than done. I would be perceived as a tyrant, so that the other magicians might decide to form a concert of defense against me, with unpredictable consequences.”

  Shimrod asked: “How, then, shall I watch him? What must I look for?”

  “I will instruct you in due course. Tell me how things go in South Ulfland.”

  “There is nothing much to report. Aillas trains an army of lummoxes, and has had signal success; now, when he cries out ‘March right!’, most of them do so. I have attempted a social relationship with Melancthe, to no avail. She feels that I over-intellectualize. No doubt I could win her approval if I chose to sing a fourth part with her choral group.”

  “Interesting! Melancthe then is musical?”

  Shimrod related his experiences on the night of the waning moon. Murgen commented: “Melancthe is woefully confused as to her identity, which Desmei purposely left empty, in derision and revenge against the masculine race.”

  Shimrod glowered into the fire. “I will think no more about her; she is as she is.”

  “A wise decision. Now, in connection with Tamurello …” Murgen issued his instructions, after which Shimrod was once again sent whirling through the sky, this time south and east to Trilda, his manse at the edge of Forest Tantrevalles.

  V

  THE ANCIENT ROAD KNOWN AS OLD STREET traversed Lyonesse from Cape Farewell in the west to Bulmer Skeme in the east. At a place halfway along its length, not far from the village Tawn Twillett, a lane branched off to the north. Up hill and down dale went the lane, by hawthorn hedges and old stone fences, past drowsy farmsteads and across the River Sipp by a low stone bridge. Entering the Forest of Tantrevalles, the lane wound through sun and shadow for another mile, then broke out into Lally Meadow, passed by Shimrod’s manse Trilda, and ended at a woodcutter’s dock on Lally Water.

  Trilda, a stone and timber cottage at the back of a flower garden, was notable for its six dormers in a high gabled roof: two to each of the upstairs front bedrooms. The ground floor included a foyer, two parlours, a dining saloon, four bedchambers, a library and workroom, a kitchen with an attached pantry and buttery, and several rooms of convenience. Four bays with diamond-paned windows overlooked the front garden, and all the glass of all the windows had been enchanted by spells of low magic, so that they remained at all times sparkling and clear, with no trace of dirt, fly-speck, streak, nor the dimness of dust.

  Trilda had been designed by Hilario, a minor magician of many quaint notions, and built overnight by a band of goblin carpenters who took their pay in cheeses. Some time later Trilda became the property of Murgen who eventually gave it to Shimrod. An old peasant couple tended the gardens and ordered the chambers during Shimrod’s absences; they avoided the workroom as if demons stood waiting behind the doors, which was the conviction Shimrod had been at pains to fix into their minds. The creatures who in fact stood there, fangs glistening, black arms raised on high, while resembling demons, were merely harmless phantasms.

  Arriving at Trilda, Shimrod found all in order. The housekeepers had maintained full cleanliness, with not so much as a dead fly on the window-sills. The furniture glowed to the use of bee’s-wax and patient rubbing; in the chests and presses the linens lay crisp and smelled fragrant with lavender.

  Shimrod’s only complaint was over-tidiness. He threw open doors and casements so that air from the meadow might banish the fust of stagnant days and silent nights, then went from room to room shifting this and moving that, to disturb the unrelenting exactitude imposed by his housekeepers.

  Arriving in the kitchen, Shimrod kindled a fire and brewed a pot of tea, using horehound for heart, penny-royal for savor and lemon verbena for zest, then took the tea into his day parlour.

  Trilda seemed very quiet. From across the meadow came the chirrup chi chi chi of a lark. At the end of the song, the silence seemed more profound than ever.

  Shimrod sipped the tea. At one time, so he remembered, solitude had been an adventure, to be enjoyed for its own sake. Since that time events had altered him; he had found within himself a capacity for love, and of late he had become accustomed to the merry company of Dhrun and Glyneth, and, more recently, to that of Aillas.

  Melancthe? Shimrod made an ambiguous sound. In connection with Melancthe, the word ‘love’ would seem to have a most dubious application. Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love: so Shimrod assured himself. Melancthe was a shell, empty inside. Melancthe was no more than a warm breathing symbol of great power, but no more than this. Overintellectualization? Shimrod made a sound of disgus
t. Did she expect him not to think?

  Shimrod continued to drink tea. The time had come when he must put aside his obsession and address himself to the program defined by Murgen: work which might embroil him in more excitement than he had bargained for, so that he would think back upon this placid interlude with longing. Murgen had so warned him: “You will be impinging yourself upon Tamurello’s notice! You will be rudely interrupting his work and arousing his anger! These are not trivial acts: make no mistake! He will find a means, crude or subtle, to retort, and you must be prepared for amazement!”

  Shimrod put aside the tea, which no longer soothed him. He went to his workroom, dismissed the guardians and entered. The room was aptly named. Everywhere, work cried out for sympathetic attention. The center table supported stuffs and articles confiscated from Tintzin Fyral: thaumaturgical equipment, materia magica, books and paraphernalia-all to be inspected, classified, then either retained or discarded.

  First and most urgently, Shimrod must set out monitors to scrutinize Tamurello and his conduct, as required by Murgen. These devices, when they came to Tamurello’s notice, as they inevitably must, would dissuade him from other bold and arrogant mischiefs: so went Murgen’s theory, and Shimrod had no reason to fault it, save that it put him in the position of a goat staked out in the jungle for the purpose of enticing a tiger. Murgen had waved aside Shimrod’s misgivings. “Tamurello’s bravado must be curbed, and this will be the effect of our program.”

  Shimrod had proposed another objection: “When he feels the scurch10, he will merely use new tactics, or a clever subterfuge.”

  “Still, he will be inhibited from truly grandiose ventures, and these are the efforts I fear the most.”

  “And meanwhile he will take pleasure in wreaking a multitude of small harms in such a way that they cannot be imputed to him.”

  “We will estimate his crimes and punish him accordingly, and soon Tamurello will be acclaimed the meekest of the meek!”

  “Tamurello is not one to turn the other cheek,” grumbled Shimrod. “More likely he will send a sandestin11 with a plague of stag-beetles for my bed.”

  “Anything is possible,” Murgen agreed. “Were I you, I would maintain double vigilance. Dangers which can be imagined can be refuted!”

  With Murgen’s dictum in mind, Shimrod surrounded Trilda with a network of sensitive tendrils, to achieve at least a modicum of security. Then, once more in his workroom, he cleared the clutter from one of his work-tables and spread out a sheet of buff-colored parchment provided by Murgen.

  The substance of the parchment merged into the oak, so that the table-top became a great map of the Elder Isles, with each of the domains tinted a different color. At Faroli, Tamurello’s manse, a point of blue light glittered, to indicate Tamurello’s presence. Should Tamurello travel near or far, the blue light would trace his movements. Shimrod had solicited other lights from Murgen, that he might know the movements of other folk; Murgen would hear nothing of this. “You must concentrate your attention upon Tamurello and nowhere else.”

  Shimrod continued to argue. “We should use the instrument to its full scope. Assume that a red light marked your whereabouts. Assume further that one of your lady-loves seduced you into a dungeon, I could find you easily and release you from the cell, to your minimum inconvenience.”

  “The contingency is remote.”

  In such a fashion the map was arranged, and, by the evidence of the blue light, Tamurello remained in residence at Faroli.

  Days passed. Shimrod refined the techniques of his surveillance, using unobtrusive methods which Tamurello, if he so chose, could ignore and still maintain his dignity.

  Tamurello, however, refused to tolerate the inspection gracefully, and attempted several artful mischiefs upon Shimrod, which were vitiated by Shimrod’s protective system. Meanwhile Tamurello worked to blind Shimrod’s optical wisps and shatter his listening shells with concentrations of sound.

  Shimrod, warming to his task, introduced a whole new order of sensitive devices, to cause Tamurello a new set of vexations. Murgen’s strategy, to monopolize Tamurello’s energies with trivial annoyances, seemed generally to be successful.

  The lunar month approached the night of the waning half-moon, and Shimrod’s thoughts irresistibly went to the white villa beside the ocean. For the briefest of moments he contemplated a second visit by midnight to the rocky ledge which thrust into the ocean; as quickly as the idea came it went, and once again Shimrod was left with unwelcome images and the haunting fragrance of violets.

  Shimrod tried to exorcise the visions: “Go! Away! Depart! Dissolve into the void, and never return to disturb me! Were it not absurd, I might think you another of Tamurello’s tricks, as he does to me what I try to do to him!”

  On the night itself, Shimrod became restless, and went out to observe the moon. The meadow was quiet; nothing could be heard but crickets and a few far frogs. Shimrod wandered across the meadow to the old dock on Lally Water, where the moon already had started its decline down the sky. The water was calm and dark; when Shimrod threw a pebble, the expanding ripples gleamed silver. … A watch-wisp floating over his head issued a sudden warning: “Someone stands near; magic has come and gone!”

  Shimrod turned and, not altogether to his surprise, discovered by the shore a slight figure in a white gown and a black cloak: Melancthe. She stood looking up at the moon and seemed not to see him.

  Shimrod, turning away, paid her no heed.

  She came down the dock and stood beside him. “You do not seem surprised to find me here?”

  “I only wonder how Tamurello could induce you to come.”

  “He found no difficulty; in fact, I came of my own volition.”

  “Strange! Tonight you were to sing with your friends on the rocks.”

  “I decided to go there no more.”

  “How so?”

  “It is simple enough. I had a choice: to live or to die. I chose to live, which brought me to new choices. Should I continue as an outcast and sing on the rocks, or should I simulate the ways of the human race? I decided to change.”

  “You do not regard yourself as human?”

  Melancthe said softly: “Tamurello has informed me that I am a neutral intelligence of no great vigor in a female mask.” She looked up into Shimrod’s face. “What do you think?”

  “I think that Tamurello listens and smiles. Wisp: look sharp, high and low: what listens and what watches?”

  “I apprehend nothing.”

  Shimrod gave a dubious grunt. “And what were Tamurello’s instructions to you?”

  “He said that humanity in the main was crass, stupid, boorish and vulgar, and that I could learn at least this much from you.”

  “Some other time. Now, Melancthe, I will bid you good night.”

  “Wait, Shimrod! You told me that I was beautiful, and you took pains to kiss me. Tonight I have come to Trilda and you are the one who now backs away. That is a curious contradiction.”

  “Not at all. I am taken aback, and cautious. Tamurello’s motives are clear enough, but yours are in doubt. I believe that you exaggerate my crassness and stupidity. And now, Melancthe, if you will excuse me-”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Trilda; where else?”

  “And you will leave me alone in the dark?”

  “You have been alone in the dark before.”

  “We will go to Trilda together, since I have no other place to go. And, as I have already mentioned, I came here of my own volition.”

  “You show little overt warmth. It is more as if you had steeled yourself to a great challenge.,”

  “It is a new experience for me.”

  With an effort Shimrod controlled his voice. “I might have welcomed you more gladly had you not told your maid to bar the door in my face. When one is judging the disposition of another, this sort of act would seem a significant straw in the wind.”

  “Possibly so, but the inference might be wrong.
Remember, you had intruded into my life and had troubled my mind with your persuasions. At length I was swayed and now I am here, at your behest.”

  “At Tamurello’s behest.”

  Melancthe smiled. “I am I and you are you. How does Tamurello concern us, one way or another?”

  “Is your memory so short? I have reason for concern.”

  Melancthe looked off across the water. “He gave no orders. He said that you were here at Trilda making a nuisance of yourself. He said that if not for Murgen, he would have long since sent you riding to the far side of the moon on a saw-horse. He said he would be pleased if I beguiled and besotted you until your eyes looked like boiled eggs and you fell asleep at breakfast with your face in the porridge. He said that you had a low-order mind and could deal with no more than one thought at a time, and that if I were at Trilda you would completely forget your meddling, to his great satisfaction, and now you know all of it.”

  “Just as well.” Shimrod looked moodily out over the water. “I wonder what calumnies another five minutes might have brought.”

  Melancthe moved a step back. “Well then, here I am. What is it to be? Shall I go away? Consult the factions of your brain, and perhaps you will find a consensus.”

  “I have already decided,” said Shimrod. “You shall come to Trilda.” And Shimrod, with grim emphasis, added: “There we shall discover who most notably distracts whom, and every morning Tamurello will receive a cheerful greeting… . Notice the waning moon; already it declines into the west. Time that we returned to Trilda.”

  The two went silently back along the lane, and as they walked a new and disturbing possibility entered Shimrod’s mind: might this creature beside him which used the name Melancthe be a guise for another, of a different sort, which at some delicate moment might reveal itself in its true form, and so punish Shimrod for his impudent surveillance?

  The concept was not on its face improbable. Luckily, the trick could readily be detected.