The Incompleat Nifft

by Michael Shea

  From a postern near one corner of the glass monolith Dame Lybis marched, her hands still completing behind her head the knot of an embroidered fillet with which she had bound her brow. Coming to stand directly before the first row of pews, and plunging her hands into her apron pouch, she bowed gravely, meeting every man's eyes.

  "Gentlemen, you are most welcome here, and that is putting it mildly. Please forgive a haste that might resemble discourtesy, but this isn't the time for a genuine conference. It's a chance for me to give you the outlines of our situation, and answer the most general kind of question, no more.

  "So first: When I've made the Solicitation and you've learned the task for which we'll want to engage you, then set yourselves the most generous wage that fairness allows you. The Aristarchs will only remain cooperative if they are dealt with firmly and unequivocally from the start.

  "Second: Though we don't strictly know the Flockwarden's will until I have made the Solicitation, I can't pretend to have the least doubt of what it is, and so I can acquaint you with the parameters of the task. For surely, the Goddess' flock is what she herself has wanted since the day their re-emergence became known to her more than a year ago, while they are also the only credible antidote to what ails our city." Lybis gestured ceilingward without withdrawing her eyes from those of the mercenary commanders.

  "So what is the flock? Its numbers aren't clearly known—hundreds, but nowhere near a thousand. They are giant lithivores. I gather they stand about knee-high to the Goddess." (Eyes rose gaugingly. Each of the Flockwarden's legs had three major joints. The lowest was fifteen feet from the floor.) "Their bulk is that of a good-sized whale. They are highly tractable. They've surfaced in the hills of Kairnheim's southern promontory—a region both so mountainous and so jungled that the Prior Kairns have never troubled to annex it. This season it's a ten-day crossing over the Sea of Catastor. And before you start computing the number of crossings needed, know that the beasts are phenomenally tough-bodied, all but undamageable, and that they can live entirely without air. They can, in fact, be lashed together in groups of four or five, buoyed, and towed behind a transport of moderate size, which the while can be carrying one or two more of the beasts packed in its hold."

  She paused and raised her brows to invite remark. One of the infantry commanders, Menodon, murmured: "Twenty ships could carry a hundred and forty a trip. Will we have twenty ships?"

  "We'll have thirty-five. The Aristarchs can levy twenty from our own merchant fleets alone, and they'll willingly underwrite the procural of fifteen more from the Shallows or the Aristoz Islands."

  "Mmm. Forgive me, Dame Lybis, but you must let me rephrase some of your remarks in what I can't help feeling is a more accurate manner. Ages past, the remote ancestors of this flock were highly tractable to the commands of their Flockwardens"—he nodded significantly at the frozen colossus—"but what we must deal with will be beasts which have never known either a Warden or her rule. In this rather different light, let me repeat a question you have already answered by implication. Will the collection and transport of these huge things involve any dangerous difficulty? Please be frank. We don't shrink from danger or hardship, we merely seek to assess it properly and price it fairly. Surely these nomadic, long-ungoverned behemoths will not be tamely tethered, marched into the sea, bound and dragged across it, without offering some opposition. With no offense intended, how can you plausibly promise such a thing?"

  Lybis stood smiling serenely, hands restfully pocketed in her pouch, head slowly shaking a benign negative. "You don't grasp the entire picture, my friend. Toil and difficulty there'll certainly be in crossing the terrain in question. Other claimants to the herd might also be met, and need fighting. These things excrete in purified form whatever metal they ingest, along with very high-quality furnace fuel, man, and if they're noticed they won't go unclaimed! But as for resistance to our will from the flock itself, we shall encounter none at all. For a Flockwarden will be commanding their obedience. What you might think of as the Goddess' voice will prompt their compliance throughout the expedition. For does she not speak from my mouth, and declare her will through my presence, and shall I not be with you? Though speech, in this case, will not be the medium, nevertheless her commands will be channeled through myself and the flock will feel them. And the latter's ilk, however long at large, are so made that they can never be impervious to a Flockwarden's behests."

  There was a fractional silence, in which all eyes posed a question which Lybis, by her smiling silence, benevolently challenged them to articulate, and then Nifft asked: "With apologies, Dame Lybis, do the dead, then, not only reveal hidden treasures, and discover the remote emergences of long-lost beings, but govern expeditions as well, with hourly attention and providence?"

  The Aristarchs had begun to file into the shrine, a subdued group. The priestess did not turn her eyes from Nifft's, which she studied for a moment with an air of speculation. Then she said: "You know that the Goddess does the first two, sir. Whether or not you believe she can do the third is for yourself, and the rest of you gentlemen, to decide, before you accept this commission."

  V

  The assembly was silent. Aristarchs and mercenary commanders alike studied the slack folds of the drawn Veil of Solicitation, which Sexton Minor had closed behind Lybis when she had stepped within it, and before which he now stood, awaiting the priestess' word that the Solicitation had been completed, whereat it was his office to unveil her again.

  * * *

  Though identical in their silent concentration upon those pleated drapes, the Aristarchs watched them with a queasy premonition of painfully large capital disbursements, while the soldiers' faces betrayed a covert complacency as they kept the same vigil. But given this difference of attitude, it could still be said that for both groups, the slightest stirring of the ceremonial curtain emitted the same ghostly sound—the subliminal music of five-lictor gold pieces hefted by the palmful, a melody melancholy to half its auditors, and dulcet to the other half. Meanwhile the eyes of the men in either group showed an identical tendency—whenever they forsook that pregnant drapery—to flicker upward at the coffined giant. Her great antennal bows, plunging to receive her dwarfish petitioner's query, were given looks of uneasy calculation. Seemingly, the Goddess' active sentience was being given some thought by the congregation. A caw of triumph rose from within the Veil:

  "Ha! I knew it! And you shall have it, Mistress, on my very life I swear it! Ha!"

  The Sexton's feet shifted; embarrassment marred the decorous blank of his expression. Near silence followed in which a very faint noise, a soft, erratic pattering and squeaking, was audible from within the Veil. Then Lybis cried: "Her will is known! Her will be done!"

  The Sexton, as his post seemed to require of him at the pronouncement of this formula, turned suavely to withdraw the Veil for the oracle's emergence, but he had no more than turned when the drapes flew apart—one of them rudely enveloping his head and shoulders—and Lybis strode out, holding a wax tablet and a stylus. The stylus she pointed vindictively at herself, while she hammered the tablet against the air at the assembly.

  "Didn't I foretell you this, gentlemen? Eh? Didn't I now?" She stabbed the stylus into her hair, where it vanished. Then she patted the tablet against her free palm with a menacing smile. "Harken," she said. She read from the tablet, her voice dramatic, and clarion-clear:

  From ancient murder buried deep, like seed,

  A harvest has arisen in the sun—

  So men may reap what once they did lay down

  When they entombed the thing that sparked

  the greed

  Their murderous action had been meant to feed.

  In south-most Kairnheim murder is undone;

  If you do but restore to Anviltown

  Her lately un-killed issue, thus you'll speed

  The lifting of that doom that weights you down.

  "Well, gentlemen?" Lybis burst out, as if astonished that they all sat silent afte
r hearing this exhaustively foretold revelation. "Can you really be so chill-blooded? So unmoved by heroic sentiments and cosmic phenomena? Come, you're all playing stoic, as men so love to do. One of you, at least, must show that he has heard me, in token for the rest of you, or else I'll think you're all deaf, or dumb, or both. Mint-Master Hamp! You sir! Let it be you, of estimable, agile-witted Aristarch! Come, Lord Hamp. What did you discover from the Goddess' utterance?"

  The man in question, by allowing only a grey stubble to occupy the pate of his otherwise severely shaven head and face, had made the more manifest an unusual squareness of visage. Hamp regarded Lybis morosely, the glumness of his mouth complaining in advance that his answer was going to be mistreated.

  "I entreat you, Lord Hamp," the oracle urged, "can't we dispose of the obvious with more dispatch? What did the oracle tell you?"

  With the prompting of many supportive gazes, Pozzle's among them, Hamp cleared his throat, and availed himself of his jaw's massive hinge. "Well, what she means essentially, as you predicted she was going to in the Aristarkion, is the interpretation that the way to solve the problem is to go and bring her flock back, which again as you were saying was exactly the same situation of a year ago."

  Hamp cleared his throat again, with a faint note of optimism engendered by Lybis' silent, thoughtful gaze. She shook her head slowly, still looking at him. She grinned. Her head tilted back and she emitted a big, braying laugh. At length she brought herself more or less under control.

  "Oh, my dear Lord Hamp," she said. "Anvil, Staff, and Hammer bless us all! Mind that I don't say this disparagingly, for knowing you and hearing your views has always given me the liveliest kind of pleasure, but that's precisely the kind of cretinous irrelevance I've come to count on from you over the years. Obviously she wants the flock brought back home! What could be plainer? But does no one see what the significance of this will be, once it is accomplished? Why has her thought and will endured throughout the countless centuries of her death? Why has she always helped us? In short, why has she held this posthumous sentinel's post all along, if not precisely for this moment? The return of her flock to its home, the restoration of her world as it was when, anciently, men destroyed it? And whose luck is this? Who inherits those long-lost mountain-makers and mountain-destroyers and mountain-miners now? To think that we had to be forced to accept this staggering enrichment! So greedy you all are in the short term, so lazy and unimaginative!"

  "Yes, forced!" erupted Director Pozzle. "That's exactly what I'm talking about!"

  "Eh? Have you been whispering to yourself, Director Pozzle?"

  Pozzle had surged to his feet with an accusing finger thrust up toward the Goddess, but in the same instant that he struck this posture the huge countenance of the accused caused his legs to wobble slightly, and the voice to leak out of his throat momentarily, as if the Flockwarden's mute giantism confuted anything he could say.

  "Extortion," he managed at last. It came out muted, like a comic attempt at confidentially addressing the whole chamber without the giant's hearing. "It's blackmail. We talked in the Aristarkion." His challenging look elicited some uncomfortable nods and murmurs of support from his fellow Aristarchs. "The Goddess knew about the deceptive support-vein—that it wasn't nearly as thick as it looked from outside. The lode she revealed to us lay deeper, and if she knew about that, she must have known about the support vein we were counting on to—"

  Lybis had held up her hand, and was nodding calmly. "Lord Pozzle. The Goddess doesn't condescend to discuss her divine motivations with her humble servitor, but do you think I'm a fool? Isn't it more or less staring us in the face? And I will say to you what I told myself when I had the same realization: So what? Will you gentlemen undertake to punish her? And if she has seen how to make a mountain bow down above our city, surely she's the only one who can help us decapitate a mountain. Who else will you go to for help? But of course, the city's purse is yours to command. I will leave you to reach whatever agreement you see fit with our military friends here. Do let me know what you decide. I'll be in the atrium."

  Nifft followed the shrine-mistress from the chamber. "Dame Lybis, could I speak with you?" He held out to her a string-tied packet of vellum. "A very dear friend of mine in Karkmahn-Ra, a scholar of the highest reputation, sends you this. Perhaps you have heard of Shag Margold?"

  Her brows rose and she took the packet. "Margold? His History of the Kolodrian Migrations stands on the shelf of my most prized books. Why has he written me?"

  "He's at work on a history of the world's most prominent religious cults. He's always followed yours with interest, and has gathered a fair amount of information on it." Nifft paused, dropped his eyes, and cleared his throat. "He's asked you a number of questions which he hopes you'll be so good as to answer for him, to fill out his account of Pa—of Anvil Pastures. Forgive my impertinence, but that's a charming ring you have on. Is that an anvil?"

  "Yes."

  "It's a beautiful piece of silverwork—by the same artisan as made your staff and hammer?"

  Lybis, whose eyes had grown rather remote, absently touched the latter two miniatures, which hung from a chain around her neck. "I presume so. They are temple heirlooms, made long before my time."

  "Well. I'll be in the city for some time—frankly, I'm looking for a bit of employment—and perhaps you'll find it convenient to answer Shag's letter in time for me to take your reply back with me." Lybis nodded, not speaking. "So! Thank you again. I think I'll go stroll around a bit and take the view from this marvelous plaza outside. Good-bye for now."

  Nifft had loitered outside the temple for perhaps ten minutes when the Aristarchs came out, and after them, the commanders—the former grave, the latter rather buoyant, in a decorous way. Nifft told Kandros to go on without him, and that he would meet him back at the quarters where the mercenaries had been housed. When he had been alone again for perhaps another ten minutes, Dame Lybis came hurrying from the temple, spied him, and made straight for him, wearing a rather strained smile.

  "Still here, then? You know, I'm curious—have you read your friend's letter?"

  Nifft straightened indignantly. "Why—well, certainly not!" His awkward expression did nothing to repair the lack of conviction in his tone.

  "Naturally not," Lybis said. "Forgive me for asking. You know, I'd like to express my admiration for Margold in some more substantial way than merely answering this. You mentioned you were looking for employment? You seem to be a handy and active sort of man—it would be my pleasure to secure you a commission on our expeditionary force, at an officer's pay, if that would suit you."

  "You are extremely kind! I would undertake it most gratefully and faithfully!"

  VI

  The expedition, being lucky in the winds, had crossed the Sea of Catastor and found the nearest suitable anchorage to their goal by the afternoon of their ninth day out of Anvil Pastures, with seven hundred leagues of their journey accomplished. To cross the remaining fifty miles, and then re-cross it with the Goddess' flock in tow, took three weeks.

  This sloth was, in part, due to the mountainous jungle they had to penetrate with every step of their inland journey. Partly, too, it was their mode of pathfinding. On the open sea, the directive emanations of the Goddess—her extended filament of sentience—though attenuated by distance, reached unobstructed over the level seas. But crossing the fernchoked gorges and vine-webbed groves—following the narrow watercourses slick with mist, mud, and moss that were often their sole means of traversing the ridges that opposed them—here, Lybis was often forced to diverge from this psychic connective to the point of so diminishing her sense of it that she must find high ground whence she could relocate its course, and correct their tedious path accordingly.

  And a third circumstance retarded them—the fact that when they reached the flock, they found an army in possession of it, and a second army besieging the first.

  The first army was in possession of the lucrative monsters in a technical
sense only. The beasts were in a kind of fortress of their own making—they had eaten a broad, flat-bottomed gulf out of the flanks of two adjoining hills. Raggedly vertical walls some ninety feet high encompassed them, easily enough descended from the hills with ropes, but impossible as an escape route. Consequently the besiegers bent their main effort against the impressive wood-and-stone wall the defenders had strung across the pit's one open side: the narrow valley-floor whence the herd had approached the hills they found so appetizing. And the defenders possessed the giants only in the sense that those behemoths were gnawing too leisurely at the hills' flanks to be very far away by the time the battle was likely to be decided, and were too torpidly indifferent—if not, indeed, blind—to events of so small a scale as human warfare to contest the claims of the army that had strung the wall behind them.

  They had tough, laquered-looking bodies, plated so that they appeared staved or planked, and they were shaped like the overturned hulls of ships. They hauled themselves along on clusters of crooked, relatively dwarfish legs, and swinishly pushed their black, four-lobed mouthparts—when closed together, they resembled tulips—against the nourishing bones of the earth.

  Both armies were Prior Kairns, natives of the continent's lush, cattle rich southern half, competing for the enrichment of two rival provinces. This was learned from the survivors of the besieging army who, while the mercenaries encamped to debate their approach to the siege, attacked them. They had been alert for the arrival of a relief force expected by their enemies, and in the dense jungle had not recognized that they were engaging—not the small contingent their spies had described—but a force larger as well as more seasoned than their own.