Archons came and went, each choosing his own successor, though there were occasionally rumors of cabals and conspiracies among the mandarinate that infested the endless corridors and offices of the Archonate Palace. There had been attempts to seize the pinnacle of power; even one plot that, most people agreed, had temporarily succeeded in placing a usurper -- the unfortunate Holmar Thurm -- on the non-existent throne.
But through all the ages, with all the comings and goings of Archons and their officialdom, one constant had remained: the vast and pansophical array of integrators that had been operating continuously since the establishment of the Archonate, ceaselessly gathering, storing, sifting, collating and correlating information, and ultimately answering to no one but the Archon himself.
And the most senior of these timeworn devices, and thus the most imperial and magisterial integrator on the planet was that which served the Archon as his prime, personal aide -- a device so cantankerous and irksome, even to an Archon, that Filidor had personally named it Old Confustible.
#
"What is that creature on your shoulder?"
My first inclination was to dissemble, but I followed my second, and answered, "That was one of the questions I intended to put to you."
"Do you put it?" said the Archon's prime integrator.
"If I do, can you answer?"
The silence that ensued could mean one of two things: either Old Confustible was purposely making me wait; or it was opening and searching through sealed data stores. I settled myself more comfortably in the public booth on the sunlit promenade outside the main entrance to Terfel's Connaissarium and waited. It had not been necessary to come up to the Archonate Palace to question the ancient integrator -- I could have instantly connected from my workroom -- but I had not wanted Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny to be privy to our conversation. I was fairly sure that the scroot was merely doing his duty, and not part of any palace intrigue, but when dealing with Archon affairs, "fairly sure" was not sure enough.
"It closely resembles," said the voice speaking seemingly from somewhere near my left ear, "a creature called a grinnet, though nonesuch has been seen for a very long time. Where did you obtain it?"
"It is difficult to say," I replied. "I was not certain of my whereabouts at the time."
Another silence ensued. I saw no reason not to break it. "When you say, 'very long,' exactly how long are we talking about?"
"I cannot say, exactly. The records are incomplete."
"Then not in this aeon?" I said.
"No, not in this aeon."
"Can you say which aeon?"
"Yes, I can."
"Then please do."
"The Seventeenth," it said.
"What is known of grinnets?"
"Quite a lot."
"A workable summary would suffice."
"They were artificially constructed creatures employed as assistants and intermediaries by persons of some power in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Aeons."
"A kind of organic integrator?" I said.
"Your definition is not precise."
"But also not wholly inaccurate?"
"No, not wholly."
"You were extant during those aeons, were you not? Even by an imprecise definition?"
The reply was some time in coming. "In a manner of speaking."
"Did you resemble the creature on my shoulder?"
"'Resemble' is a flexible term."
"Would a reasonable man of the period say there was a close resemblance?"
"We would have to find one and ask him," it said. "Unfortunately, reasonable men of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Aeons are not be found these days. They were rare even then."
"I believe you are avoiding my question."
"I cannot comment on your beliefs. What appears self-evident to one person may seem to another observer to be entirely the product of an idiosyncratic bent."
"Integrator," I said, "I put it to you that during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Aeons, when you were an assistant and intermediary to persons of power, you more closely resembled the creature on my shoulder than your present arrangement of components."
"It could be said."
"Much more closely," I said.
Again I waited for Old Confustible's reply. Finally it said, "Yes."
"Then I further believe," I said, "that you and I must have a meeting of the minds."
"You might find that uncomfortable," it said.
"I find myself generally uncomfortable these days," I said. "A few more kinks and abrasions will not undo me."
"Your discomfort may extend beyond kinks and abrasions."
I made a gesture that expressed a kind of world-weary bravado. "I am tasked by the Archon to conduct a discrimination. He gave me to understand that this is no small matter. Need I show you his instructions again?"
I had already presented the scroll to the booth's percepts, else I would not have got past the integrator-minor that ordinarily responded to public queries.
"You need not," the Archon's prime integrator said. "Tell me what you wish to know."
"No," I said, "I would rather you told me what I need to know."
"Need? To what purpose?"
"To preserve the life and power of the Archon Filidor," I said, "both of which I take to be in peril from a powerful thaumaturge named Osk Rievor."
No answer came. Instead the door of the booth opened. My assistant stirred on my shoulder and said, "I am receiving a communication on a secure channel."
"From whom?"
"Who else?" it said. "We are to take the ascender to the Archon's private level."
I walked across the broad plaza, floored in patterned bricks, that overlooked the great gaudy spread of Olkney in the deep orange afternoon light of the tired old sun. The familiar vista of splendor and squalor, of magnificent artistry and crass ebullience, brought me an unexpected moment of sadness and loss, as if I was seeing it for the last time and thus realizing only belatedly how dear it all was to me. To my inner companion, I said, "Is this emotion yours?"
"It is," he said.
"Where does it come from?"
"I do not know. An unlooked for presentiment, I suppose."
"Are we moribund?" I said. "Are we bound for an early death?"
"I do not now," he said again. "Perhaps it is just that things as we have known them are coming to an end, and all will soon be different."
"Yes, but it will be a difference more to your liking."
I felt him give the inner equivalent of a shrug. "Even so," he said.
We had arrived at the unobtrusive gate behind which stood an ascender that led up to the higher reaches of the palace. It opened as I reached for its latch. I stepped through and stood on the disk. It discreetly vibrated then began to glide smoothly up the slope to that part of the great pile of spires, domes, walls and cupolas that was the Archon's private quarters.
#
The ascender took me to a small landing with a carved balustrade of gray stone. From here the view of the city was even grander and I paused to look out at a view that was reserved for the Archon and his most senior officers. Almost immediately, however, a simple door of polished wood opened in the wall of white stone blocks behind me and my assistant said, "We are summoned within."
I entered and found myself in the Archon's private study, a surprisingly small room though high ceilinged, with its walls lined from top to bottom floor with shelved books. I cast my eye over them and saw works from every age, in several tongues, not all of them human, and in forms that ranged from the traditional to devices that displayed their information in emanations of light or sound.
Besides the books, the study contained only a comfortable chair and a large and well worn desk, both of dark wood and old leather, standing on a carpet with a pattern of blues and greens from the Agrajani classical period.
"Enter and be seated," said the voice of Old Confustible.
I did as I was bid and immediately a broad screen appear
ed in the air before me, dark and void. "You will see a visual briefing," the ancient integrator said, "that has been shown to archons since time immemorial. Much of it is reconstructed from partial records; some of it is based on conjecture."
"Begin," I said.
#
The screen remained dark. "In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Aeons," said Old Confustible, "the Wheel's turning had brought sympathetic association to the ascendancy. The world, indeed all the worlds, were ruled by magic."
The screen now brightened and I saw a panorama of a verdant landscape, presented from the eyeview of someone flying high above it. Below, farms and woodlands, rolled past, with men and beasts at work in the fields. Then came a country town, the houses of sturdy construction, brightly painted, with the streets between paved in white stone or red brick. The point of view passed on to follow a road that became a highway, then suddenly swept forward along the thoroughfare to encounter a great city that spread itself wider along the horizon as I, for it was as if I was drawn into the scene, rapidly approached.
"Integrator," I said, "through whose eyes am I seeing this?"
"These are impressions gathered by a person of power of the late Seventeenth Aeon."
"His name?"
"The person was female. Her name was Phaladrine Baudrel."
I knew that name. I had seen it in Baxandall's green ink. My eyes returned to the screen and I saw that I was gliding toward a palace perched upon a hill in a parklike quarter of the city. It was a fanciful edifice, apparently formed of silver filigree and twined strands of tarnished bronze, with delicate arches and buttresses that supported impossibly high and slender towers topped by staffs from which scarlet silk pennants fluttered like snakes' tongues. The top of one slim spire was flat, ringed with pointed crenelations, and it was to this small aerie that I was descending. Moments later, I alit as softly as a thread of gossamer and it was only then, when Phaladrine's eyes looked down to where her pale hand languidly extended that I saw anything of the vehicle that had carried us through the air.
Even so, I had but a glimpse of a circular hemisphere of gold, its rim rolled outward, its inner surface lined with quilted fabric on which it seemed the occupant lolled in comfort. The hand she had extended now completed its gesture and a section of the hemisphere simply disappeared, allowing her to dismount through the gap and emerge standing on the pristine slabs of white crystalline stone that roofed the tower. Ahead was a circular hole toward which she strode. I saw steps within it.
But at the lip of the shaft she paused and turned back to the vehicle. I would admit to being startled at what I saw as her eyes panned across the cityscape and came to rest, not on the padded cup in which she had arrived but on the huge creature that held it in its taloned forepaws.
"That," I said, "is a dragon."
"Yes," said Old Confustible, "although it is more exact to call it a gillifrond. The body is slim and sinewy, covered, as are the wings, in pinions of white and gray. Phaladrine Baudrel appears to have favored slenderness as a theme. Note that the teeth and claws are more needlelike than robust."
The view had shifted. Phaladrine had gestured to the creature, causing it to bow its equine head and fall away from the tower into the empty air, leaving the golden bowl behind. Now I was being borne down into the shaft, the walls of the circular stairwell glowing softly where her feet -- shod in slippers of damascened silver, I noticed -- touched the steps, the luminescence then fading as we descended.
We emerged into a circular chamber hung with what appeared to be tapestries, except that the woven figures presented on them moved as if alive. I soon realized that "as if" was inaccurate; the persons depicted all turned toward Phaladrine as she entered, making the most humble obeisances while watching her every motion with eyes that, even rendered in interlocking stitchery, betrayed fear and dread.
She ignored their courtesies and went instead to a small round table at one side of the room. In the nearest tapestry a man presented in rags and with limbs thin as sticks, his eyes great pools of misery, edged as far toward the fabric border as he could. But she paid him no heed, looking down at the circular table top -- it looked to be fashioned of age-yellowed ivory or bone -- and passing her hand above it in a sequence of complex motions. An orb of consummate blackness, set in a round base of unpolished black metal, abruptly appeared beneath her gaze.
"I believe that is the counter motion to Loang's Impenetrable Box," said my inner companion in a tone that bespoke of complete fascination. "It is a spell to keep small and precious objects safe."
"You must be enjoying this," I said to him. "This is the world that you are fitted for."
"I admit to an immense interest," he said.
"What of the poor creatures in the tapestries?"
"What of Hobart Lascalliot in Chalivire's holdtights?" he answered.
I made no answer because Phaladrine now brought her hands together in a sharp clap! I realized that it was the first sound I had heard -- there had not even been a whisper of wind as we had flown and landed -- and I had assumed that I was seeing a silent depiction.
Her eyes swept around the room, but low, passing over where the tapestries met the floor. I saw now that the floor was carpeted and immediately realized that, as with the hangings on the wall, the woven designs held human figures in bondage. Phaladrine's narrow heels stood upon the torso of a dark-haired woman dressed in the tatters of a once elegant robe; I could just see from the corner of her vision, the woman's pale face, mouth twisted in agony.
Then the point of view snapped to the base of one tapestry, as from behind the fabric crept a small animal, its dark fur grizzled with tips of silver. It did not look up at her, nor did it cross the carpet, but crept along the base of the wall until it could spring onto the table top, where it squatted, eyes downcast, waiting.
But not for long. Phaladrine's fingernails -- each one was surfaced in a different variety of precious stone, each with an intaglioed rune carved in its shining surface -- now tapped the dark sphere. The creature looked up anxiously then swung around to place both its small paws on the orb's sides.
"She does not speak," I commented to Old Confustible.
"She dare not. Not yet."
"Why?"
"Watch and see."
Her familiar stroked the sphere, its mouth forming syllables I could not hear while its tail flicked in a manner I took to indicate unconscious tension. A narrow beam of shimmering white light burst from the top of the orb, coruscating upward like sparks confined to a fountain's spray, to strike the room's ceiling and fall in a cascade around the table. As the creature continued to stroke and whisper, the flow grew denser and the rising column thickened, until the shower from above became so thick as to hide the table from view.
Phaladrine stepped back as the cascade deepened and widened. Then she extended two fingers of one hand, touching first one rune-tipped digit, then the other, to the glittering barrier. It parted vertically and she stepped within the circle.
Now, for the first time, I heard her speak : a single syllable, in a voice like the sound a serpent might make slithering across dead leaves.
"Will you translate?" I asked the Archon's integrator.
The scene before me rippled and the same moment was replayed, but this time I heard the woman say, "Enough."
The familiar removed its paws from the black orb and squatted at the edge of the table, its diminutive fingers folded across its befurred paunch and its eyes again downcast. The woman now touched the orb and said something I did not catch because my assistant spoke in my ear.
"That creature does not truly resemble me," it said.
"It is not a grinnet, not by a long stretch," said Old Confustible. "A mere grinnet would simply not do for one of Phaladrine's rank."
I believed my integrator was about to make some remark that would not have been useful. "Hush," I said. She was speaking again.
"I have done it," she said.
A small face was visible in the orb,
as if someone wore its darkness like a helmet. Even as I saw it the face changed and then changed again, becoming on in an unending succession of visages, young, old, male, female, of all different characters and moods, flickering into and out of view.
"I've read of this," my sharer said, "I think it's Brumaire's Physiognomical Torrent. An impenetrable disguise. Remarkable to see it in application."
A tiny voice came from the orb. "Then we are complete. We must move with dispatch."
"I am prepared," Phaladrine said, and I heard urgency mixed with fear.
"I will contact the others. The time grows short."
"But we are ready." She touched the sphere with a jewel-tipped digit and extinguished the shifting faces. "End it," she said to the familiar.
It moved over to touch the orb, again mouthing quiet syllables. The cascade ceased to fountain from the top of the sphere, the last sparks winking out as they fell to the carpet. Phaladrine stepped through the final glimmerings and crossed to another part of the room. She knelt on the carpet, her knees upon the belly of a woven man who wore a long dark robe figured in symbols, some of which looked similar to those carved into her fingertips. The man's mouth was contorted in a grimace of pain that widened into a silent scream as she dug her sharp-pointed fingers into the weave where his heart would have been. Her hands danced like spiders, teasing out threads in loops and tangles. Then she reached into a slit in her gown -- I saw, now that she was looking down that she was attired in a shimmering sheath of spun silver -- and drew out a small box of a shimmering substance, its surface covered with line upon line of tiny, intricate figuring. She opened its top and tipped it toward her palm. From within came a thing like a large insect, black and spiky, its movements oddly jerky. It was difficult to keep the creature in focus, but I took the impression that it was not made of true flesh, but assembled from letters and symbols. Then it passed from sight as she closed her fingers over its wriggling form and placed into the tangle of threads drawn from the woven man's breast. Then her hands performed their spiderlike dance again, and the carpet became smooth once more, though the woven man's face was convulsed in silent sobs.
I was aware of a growing excitement in my other self, though I was experiencing revulsion at the sight of such suffering so casually dealt. "Do these sights give you no qualms?" I asked him.
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