by Jack Vance
“No. Glyneth, pass me down my wallet, that I may pay Sir Fulgis his due.”
Glyneth wordlessly passed down the wallet. Visbhume now took Fulgis aside and spoke earnestly into his ear. Kul spoke to Glyneth in a husky whisper: “He is betraying us! Start the wole to running!”
“I do not know how!”
Visbhume returned and taking the wole led it into a walled courtyard. Glyneth called sharply: “What are you doing?”
“There are certain formalities which I fear we must endure. Kul may be discovered. If he becomes violent, he will be dealt with harshly. You, my dear, may step down from the pergola.”
Kul jumped from the pergola, seized the wole’s horns and caused it to canter from the courtyard. Warriors ran forward and hurled nooses; Kul was pulled from the wole and lay dazed for an instant; during this time he was bound hand and foot with many turns of rope, then dragged off to a barred cell in the side of the courtyard.
The constable spoke to Visbhume: “Well done! Such a feroce might well have done damage!”
“It is a clever beast,” said Visbhume. “I suggest that you kill it instantly, and make an end to its threat.”
“We must wait for the Lord Mayor, who may well call in Zaxa and provide us some sport.”
“And who is Zaxa?” asked Visbhume indulgently. “He is defender of the law and executioner. He hunts feroce in the Clone Mountains and it is his delight to derogate their prideful savagery.”
“Zaxa will do famously with Kul. Now we must be on our way, since time is short for us. From my esteem, I give you personally two rich tassels, worth many dibbets. Glyneth, we will proceed. It is a pleasure to be rid of that cantankerous beast.”
IV
THE WOLE PACED SMARTLY EASTWARD beside the Road of Round Stones, with Visbhume riding in state high on the top bench of the pergola and Glyneth huddled miserably below. Visbhume, with the wallet once more under his command, made a suspicious inspection to ensure that Glyneth had sequestered none of his properties to her own use. Satisfied that all was as it should be, he brought out the almanac and, discovering a mistake in his computations, made a flurry of new measurements, but discovered nothing to alarm him.
At last reassured, he brought out his fiddle, extended the bow to its almost excessive length, tuned to a call of’Twiddle-dee-doodle-di-diddle-dee-dee!” then played a rousing selection of ear-tickling tunes: tantivets and merrydowns, fine bucking jigs and cracking quicksteps, rollicks, lilts and fare-thee-wells. His elbows swung first high then low, while his feet pounded the floor of the pergola in full justice to the meter. Peasants standing by the side of the road looked in wonder to see the great eight-legged wole running at speed, with Visbhume playing fine music and Glyneth sitting glumly below, and when the peasants returned to their farmsteads, they had much to tell of the strange sights they had seen and the excellent music they had heard.
Visbhume suddenly remembered a new aspect to the calculations, which he had not heretofore considered. He put aside fiddle and bow and made his corrections, to such good effect that, halfway along the road to Asphrodiske, he decided that the black moon afforded him somewhat more than adequate time for all his purposes, which brought him a great exhilaration of spirit.
The road now had entered the fringes of the Dark Woods. Visbhume steered the wole to the side and off across a little meadow of blue grass to the shade of three dark blue trees, where he halted and threw down the anchor. With stately demeanor he descended to the sward, set out the miniature cottage and caused it to expand. Finally he turned to Glyneth, still on the low bench of the pergola. “My dear, you may alight.”
“I prefer to stay here.”
Visbhume spoke crisply, with an overtone of menace in his tone: “Glyneth, step down from the wole, if you please. We have important matters to discuss.”
Glyneth jumped down from the wole, ignoring Visbhume’s hand. With a cool smile, Visbhume signaled Glyneth to the doorway of the cottage. She entered and seated herself, while Visbhume closed the door and shot the bolt.
“Are you hungry?” asked Visbhume.
“No.”
As soon as she had spoken Glyneth realized that she had made a mistake. Any procedure which used time was to her advantage.
“Do you thirst?”
Glyneth gave a noncommittal shrug and Visbhume brought wine from the cupboard and poured full two goblets. “My, dear, we are at last genuinely and intimately alone! Is that not a thrilling thought? I have yearned long for this moment, meanwhile ignoring insults and indignities as befits a knight of chivalry. Such matters-pah! They are the twitchings and squealings of small minds; noblesse allows me to put them aside, as a gallant ship rides over the spatter and spray of the envious waves! Drink now! Let this good vintage bring warmth to your veins! Drink, Glyneth, drink! …. What? You shun the wine; you push aside the goblet? Truly, I am not pleased! Rather than sparkling eyes and excited mouth I find a squint, a hunching, a dyspeptic pinch of nostril, a grim behavior. This is a time for gayety! I am somewhat puzzled by your posture. You crouch and watch me sidelong as if I were a rat eating the breakfast cheese. On your feet, then! Let us act in the manner of dainty lovers! Be so kind as to loose your garments and let them slide, and so to display your lovely supple limbs!”
Glyneth shook her head. “I will do nothing like this.”
Visbhume smiled. “Really? What a pity that I lack a full measure of time so that I might match you at every turn! But time is of the essence; the affair must be effected in a makeshift manner, and first, for reasons which will become clear to you, I must know what I brought you here to learn. Quickly now, that we devote the greater time to our pleasure!”
Temporizing, Glyneth asked: “What did you wish to know?”’
“Ha hah! Can you not guess?”
“Not really. I am puzzled.”
“Then I will tell you exactly! After all, why should you not be told? Surely you will never use the knowledge to my disadvantage! Am I correct in this?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I am correct! Listen then! King Casmir heard a prediction regarding the first-born son of Princess Suldrun. There is mystery in connection with Suldrun’s child. Princess Madouc is a changeling, but what of the boy the fairies took? There was a boy who left Thripsey Shee and who became your companion. His name is Dhfun, but he would seem too old to be Suldrun’s child. Who then is Dhrun’s mother? Where is that boy whom the fairies took and gave Casmir Madouc in return? This boy would now be five or six years old. By the prediction he will sit on Evandig before Casmir or some such affair, and Casmir is anxious to locate him.”
So that he may put the child to death?”
Visbhume smiled and shrugged.
“Such is the way of kings. Now you can understand the import of my curiosity. Do you so understand?”
“Yes!”
“Excellent! Then, in all kindness, I ask that you tell me what you know of the matter, and I therefore put this easy and harmless question to you: who is Dhrun’s mother?”
“Dhrun never knew his mother,” said Glyneth.
“He was raised by fairies and spent a most curious childhood. He once told me the name of Madouc’s mother; she had consorted with men and her name was Twisk.”
“Words, words, words!” cried Visbhume fretfully. “They are not responsive to my question! Once more: who is or was Dhrun’s mother?”
Glyneth shook her head. “Even if I knew, I would tell you nothing, since it might aid King Casmir, our enemy.”
Visbhume spoke sharply: “You try my patience! But I have a remedy!” He brought a little green glass bottle from his wallet. “This, as you will recall, is the true and veritable Potion of Amour. One drop brings yearnings to every nook and cranny the female soul and encourages prodigies of sexual valor in every male. Suppose that I forced you to ingest not just a single sip, but two or even three? In your urgent zeal you would tell me what I wanted to know in a trice, nor would you be at all loath to step from your
garments.”
Tears rolled down Glyneth’s cheeks. What a sorry end for my life! Visbhume clearly intended either to kill her outright, or at best, to abandon her on Tanjecterly. Visbhume came up to her with his bottle. “Come then, open that pretty little mouth. One drop shall I give you; one drop will suffice, and if not, then we shall try another.”
V
IN HIS CELL AT THE TOWN PUDE, Kul rubbed the ropes binding his arms against a sharp edge of the door-frame, and rasp them through. He untied the ropes from his legs, broke open the door to the cell with a single lurch and burst out into the courtyard. A pair of guards jumped up to intercept him but were sent sprawling; Kul took his sword from the gatehouse; then ran out into the street and eastward along the road.
Fulgis the constable organized a party of pursuit, including! the redoubtable Zaxa, a hybrid creature half-man and half-hespid batrache, with arms like baulks of timber, a heavy? gray hide proof against spear, arrow, claw or fang. Zaxa rode a small pacing wole, and carried his fabulous sword Zil, while the others of the party rode steeds of other descriptions.”
The posse set off in hot pursuit and presently overtook Kul who ran into the Deep Woods. The pursuers coursed behind, shouting and hallooing, and exchanging repartee. Kul dropped from a tree into their midst, destroyed eight warriors and ran off. The pursuers came after, more cautiously, consulting among themselves and exchanging terse instructions, with Zaxa in the lead. Kul slid around to their rear and attacking once more, wrought further carnage. By the time Zaxa arrived on the scene, Kul was gone once more, only to leap from the shadows, seize the constable Fulgis and break his head against a tree trunk, but Zaxa at last confronted him.
Zaxa bellowed: “Feroce, you are clever, you are fierce but now you must pay for your murders, and the cost shall be high!”
Kul responded: “Zaxa, allow me to make a suggestion. you go your way and I will go mine. In this case, neither shall take harm from the other. It is a plan which redounds to the profit of both. Can you not perceive the wisdom of this proposal?”
Zaxa stood back blinking as he pondered the concept. At last he spoke: “No doubt there is something in what you say. But I rode this far distance with the express and stated purpose of lopping away your head with my fine sword Zil, and it seems somehow bootless to turn about now and ridt emptyhanded back to Pude. The townsfolk would ask: ‘Zaxa did you not ride from town pell-mell that you might destroy a murderous feroce?’ And I could but answer: ‘True! That was my purpose!’ Then they would say: ‘Ah, the clever brute evaded your search!’ To this I would be forced to answer: “Quite to the contrary! We met and spoke a few civil words to other, then I came home.’ The townsfolk might say nothing aloud, but I feel that I would lose esteem around the neighborhood. Therefore, even at the risk of discomforture I feel myself obliged to kill you.”
“What if you die first?”
Zaxa bellowed and beat his great chest. “Once I lay hands on you, the issue is closed. Prepare to learn the full extent of the infinite hereafter.” The two joined battle. In the end, panting, bloody, and eith one arm mangled, Kul stood above the corpse of Zaxa. He gazed around the forest glade, but the surviving villagers, seeing how the battle went, had departed. Kull looked down at Zaxa’s great gray carcass and almost could feel a pang of pity. Kul took up Zaxa’s magnificent sword Zil, staggered to axa’s mount, climbed to the seat, and set off in search of Visbhume and Glyneth.
Only a mile down the road Kul spied the anchored wole and the house. Keeping to cover he approached, dismounted and went to the door. From within he heard a sudden crash of broken glass.
Kul burst the door wide and stood in the doorway. Visbhume, engaged in tearing Glyneth’s clothes from her body, looked up in a panic. A bottle of green glass lay broken in the place where Glyneth had seized and thrown it. Kul hurled Visbhume against the wall with such force that Visbhume fell senseless to the floor.
“Glyneth ran sobbing to Kul. “What have they done to you? Oh, your poor arm! My dear poor wonderful Kul, you are hurt!”
“But not too badly,” said Kul. “I am alive, and Zaxa is learning the length and breadth of the infinities.”
“Sit in the chair, and let us see what can be done for you.”
VI
AGAIN THE WOLE RAN EASTWARD toward Asphrodiske, beside the Road of Round Stones. In a clothes-press at the back of the cottage Glyneth had found garments to replace those which Visbhume had torn: peasant trousers of striped gray, black and white bast and a blouse of coarse blue linen. She had done her best to ease Kul’s wounds, mending his cuts and slashes and contriving a sling to support his arm until the fractured bone might mend. Zaxa had sunk his fangs into Kul’s shoulder, injecting a poisonous saliva, and the wound had mortified.
“Take the knife,” said Kul. “Cut. Let the blood flow. Then dust on the powder.”
Glyneth, gray-faced, took a deep breath, and holding her hand steady, slashed deep into the wound, releasing a gush of noxious matter and then a flow of healthy red blood. Kul groaned in relief and stroked Glyneth’s hair, then sighed once again and looked away. “At times. I see strange visions,” said Kul. “But it was not intended that I should dream, especially impossible dreams.”
“Impossible dreams come into my head too, sometimes,” said Glyneth. “They confuse me and even frighten me. Still, how can I help but love you, who are so brave and kind and gentle?”
Kul gave a mirthless laugh. “So I was intended to be.” He turned away and gave his attention to Visbhume. “I would kill you at this moment, except that we still need your guidance. How goes the direction of the moon?”
Visbhume painfully rose to his feet. “What if I guide you correctly?”
“You will be allowed to live.” Visbhume showed the caricature of an airy and confident smile. “I will accept that condition. The black moon is close on the quaver. You have loitered overlong.”
“Then let us be away.”
Visbhume made as if to take up his wallet, but Glyneth ordered him to stand back. She reduced the cottage, packed it away. The three climbed aboard the wole and once again rode toward the pink star, now almost in contact with the black moon.
As before, Glyneth rode the high seat in the pergola, Kul crouched by the wole’s horns and Visbhume sat at the hindquarters, looking to the side with eyes as liquid and large as those of a lemur. Glyneth rode in a welter of a dozen emotions, and any one of them, so she felt, might bring her heartbreak. Despite the salves and powders, Kul was not the Kul of old; perhaps, thought Glyneth, he had lost too much blood, for now his skin had taken on a pallor and the crispness had gone from his movements. She sighed, thinking of her return to Earth. Already Tanjecteriy had become the reality and Earth the fanciful land behind the clouds.
League after league fell astern to the thrust of the wole’s running legs, and now the road led across the Plain of Lilies. In the distance appeared a line of low hills, a town of gray houses and, somewhat to the north, a low flat dome of gleaming gray-silver metal.
Visbhume came to stand by the pergola. He spoke to Glyneth: “My dear, I will need the almanac, that I may find the great axis.”
Glyneth removed the key from its socket and handed the almanac to Visbhume, who read the text with attention, then studied a small detail map.
“Aha!” said Visbhume. “Fare to the side of the dome; we should see a platform, and thereon an iron post.”
Glyneth pointed. “I see the platform! I see the post!”
“Then forward in haste! The black moon has sounded the pulse, and here the time is short, without pause or rest.”
At best speed the wole coursed across the countryside and arrived at the side of the dome. “That is an old temple, which may well be deserted now,” said Visbhume. “On to the platform. Glyneth, the key!”
“Not yet,” said Glyneth. “And in any event I will use the key.”
Visbhume made an annoyed chattering sound. “That is not as I planned; it is impractical!”
“Nevertheless, you shall not pass until both Kul and I are safely through the portal.”
“Bah!” whispered Visbhume. “Then up to the platform, and halt! … Glyneth, alight! Kul, down from your perch! To the post!”
Glyneth went to the steps leading up to the platform. Kul wearily stepped down to the ground and followed. Visbhume pulled the pipes from his pocket and played a shrill discordant arpeggio. The wole bellowed in rage and lowering its head charged down upon Kul. Visbhume came dancing with knees high, blowing tones at angry discord. Kul tried to jerk aside, but the spring was gone from his legs. The wole hooked him with its horns, and tossed him high.
Glyneth ran crying back down to the limp form. She looked up at Visbhume in horror and hatred. “You have betrayed us once again!”
“No more than you! Look at me! I am Visbhume! You call endearments to this creature who is half a beast, and only partly a man; it is unnatural! Yet you scorn me, the proud and noble Visbhume!”
Glyneth ignored him. “Kul lives! Help me with him!”
“Never! Are you mad?”
“Now quickly! He lives.”
“shall I call the wole to trample him?”
Glyneth looked up in horror. “No!”
“Tell me: who is Dhrun’s mother? Tell me!”
Kul whispered: “Tell him nothing.”
“No,” said Glyneth. “I will tell him; it can make no great difference. Suldrun was Dhrun’s mother and Aillas his father.”
“How is that possible, with Dhrun now twelve years old?”
“A year in the fairy shee is like ten years of life elsewhere.”
Visbhume gave a crow of exultation. “That is the knowledge I have been seeking!” He snatched the key from Glyneth’s hands, and jumped back as if dancing to some surging music heard by himself alone. He made a flamboyant flourish. “Truly, Glyneth, what a little fool you are! If you had spoken long ago, we would have been saved both toil and pain, from which I profit not at all! Little does Casmir care! He will only commend me for the results and call me efficient.
