by Brian Lumley
Naxas Niss was busy as hell, selling clothes as quickly as he could hurl them out of his trunk, which he’d almost emptied by the time the questers arrived. Eldin’s black leathers were still there, at least, tossed carelessly on Niss’ folding table, but his shoes and coarse gray shirt had been sold.
“Now, he dies!” Eldin rumbled, forging forward toward the inner circle of bargain hunters. Hero dragged him back.
“No, he doesn’t!” he hissed. “We’re to bring him in, not do him in! You stay here—I’ll get your gear.” And he did, and paid three tonds for it, too. Niss, gathering up tonds like iron filings to a magnet, didn’t notice him at all.
“God, we’ll soon be broke!” Eldin moaned. “And I’m reduced to paying for my own stolen clothes!”
“No,” said Hero, unrelentingly contradictory, “I am. But at least we now know what he does with them. Which makes it theft beyond a doubt. So now we’ve got him on all counts.” He fished out Kuranes’ letter from a pocket, read:
“‘Nakedness, imprudence bordering on madness, possible fraud and probable’ (no, it’s definite now) ‘theft, and a lot of aimless running about.’ Niss is guilty of some and responsible for the rest. Add to that handling and disposal of stolen goods, and making fools of questers, and we can just about throw the book at him.”
“I’d prefer to throw a fist at him!” growled Eldin; but Hero only smiled a wicked smile.
“No,” said the younger quester, yet again. “Let’s make the punishment fit the crime. And not just any crimes—or even all of them—but specifically his crimes against us.”
And so they stood well back and watched Niss flog what was left of his rags, and pack up his trestle and hire a couple of lads to carry his stuff. And off he went chirpy as a cricket in the direction of the village green. Hero and Eldin followed him, stopping for a (quick) drink along the way, and when they got to the green, the yellow tent had already been erected and business was booming—or appeared to be.
“He’s filling his damned trunk again!” Eldin spluttered, outraged.
“But not nearly so quickly,” Hero pointed out. “Tonds are harder to come by here in cow country, old lad. See, he’s pulling the crowd, all right, but your actual takers are few and far between.”
As if to emphasize what he’d said: “What? A tond a tipple?” one onlooker cried. “Man, I only make ten in a week! Too rich for my blood, Naxas Niss, or whatever your name is.” Others muttered low, shuffled their feet, began to drift away. Niss didn’t fit here. Nir’s fair had always been a fair fair, but Niss’ prices seemed just the opposite. He might sell off his secondhand clothes cheaply, but his exotiques were something else. There were only a half dozen takers (one at a time, of course, of whom only four emerged from the rear, two running off like billy-o and two returning for a second pass; only one of whom exited, and then rushed off like billy-o) and then no more. Until Hero approached, wearing his silly hat and false beard. Eldin had meanwhile sneaked round the back.
“A tond a try?” said Hero, putting on a high-pitched voice and jingling coins in his pocket. “I think I can manage that.”
Niss cocked his head on one side and looked at him curiously. His eyes narrowed a tittle—avariciously, Hero hoped, and not suspiciously. Finally the little man said: “But don’t I know you from somewhere, sir?”
“Indeed,” Hero squeaked at once, “for I purchased a good black suit from you just an hour ago. And a very good buy it was! So if these—er, exotiques?—these wines of yours are up to the standard of your hand-medowns, why, there’ll be no complaints here!”
Naxas Niss chewed his lip. So far he’d taken only eight tonds and three sets of togs. He’d do this latest lumphead, and maybe one more, and move on. Nir was a dump anyway; Ulthar should prove far more profitable; he’d get finished here, buy a yak and cart, and be on his way.
Still looking at Hero sideways and wondering where he’d seen him before, Niss ushered the quester inside and went straight into his spiel as before: “There’s this ritual,” the little man began to sing, doing his jig. “Now listen and you’ll see—”
Eldin entered silently through the back flap and crept up behind him.
Hero said: “One wine sends me where I was before I was here—”
Naxas Niss said: “Oops!” He turned and made a leap for his table, fingers straining toward the bottle of black, and galloped straight into the arms of Eldin. Somehow, incredibly, Niss wriggled free, grabbed up his bottle of “medicine” and took a swig. This was more or less what the questers had expected him to try—something like it, anyway—and Hero was quick off the mark. He snatched the bottle from Niss and likewise glugged, then quickly passed it on to Eldin. For if this was Niss’ bolt-hole, then by the many gods they’d surely bolt it for him!
Naxas Niss was already fading out, his tent, table, bottles, and trunk likewise, and Hero was wavering around the edges, when the Wanderer also tossed back a little black. And a moment later they were no longer in Nir, though as yet Hero didn’t know it. The tent, unpegged, began to collapse around them as Niss, unfreezing, shot out through the front flap. But Hero was right behind him, leaving Eldin floundering in yellow silk. Outside the tent:
They were in a great cave of a dungeon, and along one wall stood a workbench supporting fifty or more bottles all of a different hue; and Naxas Niss shrieking and flying for the bottles as fast as his little feet could shift him. Alas for Niss, Hero was somewhat nimbler. The younger quester caught him by his red velvet collar, yanking and twisting at the same time. Niss went right on running, which made it look like he’d stepped on a banana skin; his feet shot up horizontal and his bubble-body spun facedown. And thump he came down on his belly, venting wind from both ends, while Hero jumped astride his fat back like leaping aboard some peculiar wobbly bronco.
Cursing loudly, Eldin ripped his way through the billowing wall of the tent, then stood stock-still and gawped all about; and in his bewilderment he almost took another pull at the black bottle. But:
“Don’t!” Hero barked, from where he sat upon Naxas Niss’ shuddering back. “Unless you’re feeling especially adventurous, that is. Wasn’t one nip enough?”
Eldin wasn’t feeling especially adventurous; he crossed to the bench and put the black bottle down with all the others. And then, with Hero, he continued to gape all about.
The place they were in was literally a dungeon, and a strangely familiar one at that. It was lighted with green crystal glowstones which were imbedded in the ceiling, and with red ones piled in niches in the walls. They lent the place an infernal light. Stone steps cut from the virgin rock climbed one wall and through the ceiling; on the other side more steps descended; in the center of the floor, the raised rim of a dry well was loosely covered over with a heavy, rusty iron grid. And echoing up from below, indeed from that very well:
“Naxas Niss, is that you?” came a trembly old voice. And there was something familiar about that, too.
Eldin took a red crystal from its pile, crossed to the well, wrenched the iron grid aside and peered down into darkness. “Catch,” he said, dropping the crystal. And down below, someone caught. The red glow in the well lit up a face wrinkled as a walnut, framed in shoulder-length white hair and a waist-long white beard, bearing a long white drooping mustache. Rheumy eyes peered, then widened in a glad, almost disbelieving smile of recognition.
“Eldin the Wanderer!” gasped the mage in the well.
“Nyrass of Theelys!” Eldin replied, nodding. “Reach up your arms.”
Nyrass did as instructed, and Eldin clung to the wall’s rim with one hand while dangling the other. And in a moment he’d hauled the ancient wizard to freedom. At which point Hero said: “All right, you two, let’s have some help here. Bind this bugger’s limbs, can’t you, else I’ll be sitting on him for the rest of my life!”
Nyrass found some rope and Eldin tied Niss hand and foot, then rolled him across the floor, propped him up in a seated position and roped him with his back to
the wall of the old well. Silent now, the little crook tugged on his ropes awhile, then sat still and scowled at them all three while the ancient mage hugged Hero and Eldin each in turn. For the questers were his firm friends from a time when they’d helped him destroy Klarek-Yam, the mad First One who’d threatened to release Cthulhu and his kin into both dreamlands and waking world alike. He hugged them, and sobbed a little, too, explaining how he’d spent three months in the well, where Naxas Niss had kept him prisoned. As to how that had come about:
“My wizard ancestor, Soomus the Seventh of the Seventh, brewed many potent wines,” Nyrass started to explain, nodding toward the variously colored bottles arrayed on the workbench. “Wines with a vast variety of properties, not all entirely harmless. Soomus also left a book, explaining their powers; but the book was encoded in Soomus’ own runes, and I’ve never bothered much to decipher the thing. The wines I likewise left alone; left them down here, where they’ve been since those early days of dream, gathering dust and who knows what else to them. I thought from time to time I might destroy them, but even that could prove dangerous, and so I simply let them be.
“Well, one day there was a fair in Theelys, and that one”—he pointed a trembling hand at the trussed Naxas Niss—“had a stall there. There was a game he played with three brass cups and a glittering diamond as big as a robin’s egg, which he called—”
“Find the gemstone?” said Hero, sighing deeply.
“Indeed!” cried Nyrass. “D’you know it?”
“Oh, we know it, all right,” said Eldin. “But Nyrass, d’you mean to say you were taken in by that one? Why, it’s sleight of hand—trickery—a game to filch farthings from the village idiots! And you a magician. Tsk, tsk!”
Nyrass bowed his head and eventually continued. “Well, Naxas also had a betting system called—”
“Double or nothing?” said Eldin. “Aye, an we know that one, too. And how many times did you double your bet, eh, trying to find the gemstone?”
Nyrass hung his head even lower. “A baker’s dozen,” he admitted. “Thirteen times, aye. Unlucky for some, thirteen, and especially me! But how could I lose every single time, eh? I’d seen the village children win, when they were gaming with Naxas Niss for sweetie-sucks and toffee-apples, so why couldn’t I? Impossible that I should lose so often, and consecutively, but I did. Ah, but where the first bet cost me only a tond, the last one—”
“Cost four thousand and ninety-six of’em!” said Hero, who was good at that sort of thing.
“Alas,” said Nyrass, “I never was much of a mathematician.”
“You’re a daft old wizard!” said Eldin, but he put an arm round Nyrass’ shoulders anyway. “What then?”
“I told him I probably had the money at home,” said Nyrass. “He packed up his stall and came back with me. But when I looked I had only a few tonds, which he took, of course. But I did have goods. I offered him a cracked shewstone, not much good but better than nothing. And several books of outworn spells, and a pair of demagicked wands. None of which interested him. But then we came down here, and that was where I made my big mistake.”
“You told him about Soomus’ wines.” Hero could see it all now. “And they did interest him.”
Nyrass nodded. “Apparently he has a talent for translation. He snatched Soomus’ book, tumbled me down the well—wandless and all, and no runebook in easy reach—and set about discovering what he could of the wines.”
“But you’re a wizard!” cried Eldin. “Couldn’t you levitate out of there, or conjure assistance or something?”
“I’m a very old wizard,” Nyrass corrected him, “and the older I get, the more I forget. In fact, I’ve just about forgotten everything! Anyway, as for the rest of it—”
“Let me tell it,” now Niss himself spoke up, his voice sour as vinegar. “Else at this rate it’ll take all day. Soomus’ book started to disintegrate as soon as I opened it. I could only discover the secrets of three of his wines before the thing fell to dust. But I’d learned enough to make a start, at least. So … I took away with me the go-where-you-were, the be-where-you-most-desire-to-be, and the come-you-home—that’s the black one, as you’ve discovered. Just those three, see, for I was cautious. I must walk before I tried running. I used the wines at various fairs and they worked for me like … like magic! But it wasn’t all tonds and treacle, I can tell you. When threatened by the occasional punter who’d been where he desired but really shouldn’t have been, I’d sip black and come back here in a flash, even as you’ve seen it happen. Each time I came back I’d feed the old fool, and attempt to decipher some of the labels on the rest of Soomus’ bottles. Eventually I discovered the return-ye-here and the color-blinder; and with that last one, why, of course the rest were easy! But it was then I discovered how lucky I’d been. Dangerous? Those bottles are murder! The worst of’em contained a liquid purple imp. Only try to sip from that one and he’d drag you in by your tongue, and you’d take his place! I weighted it and dropped it far out to sea, and then I reckoned I’d quit while I was ahead.”
“Three months ago, all this?” said Hero.
“Forty-four fairs ago, aye,” said Naxas Niss, more than a little surly now.
“And you didn’t run out of red, gold, white, green, and black?”
“That’s another of their properties,” said Niss. “They replenish themselves.”
“Bottomless bottles!” Eldin gawped. “Now, that’s what I call magic!”
“But why hasn’t anyone apprehended you before now?” Hero wanted to know.
“I’ve already told you,” said Niss. “Whenever I smelled danger, I’d take a swig of black.”
“But you’d think those you’d fooled would warn their friends, at least,” said Eldin.
“Oh?” said Naxas Niss. “Really? And let on what clowns they’d been? Or how they’d gone through tens of tonds by coming back for one more sip of red? Or tell whose beds they’d found themselves in, naked as babes? And believe me, a forbidden bed isn’t the worst place a man can most desire to be!”
Hero nodded. “And if someone with more guts than most came back to give you a thashing, then you’d simply sip black and slip back here—and your gear with you! Very clever.”
“Too clever far,” said Eldin. And to the magician: “Nyrass, I fancy you’re getting too tottery to be left on your own. You could do with someone to look after you and your place both.”
“A companion?” said Nyrass. “Maybe you’re right.”
Hero spoke up. “There’s a homeless waif in Celephais called Kimp Lootis. He’s a likable lad who lives by his wits, but given a home to call his own I reckon he’d be good as gold. What say we see what he thinks of the idea, eh?”
He ripped through the silk of Niss’ tent to the table and its bottles, found and held up green. Then back to the workbench to retrieve the bottle of black. “Now you two hang on here,” he told Eldin and Nyrass, pouring green into his palm and rubbing it into his jacket, pants, and boots. All done, he pocketed black, took a quick swig of green, and put the bottle down. “And keep your eyes on that one!” were his last words before he disappeared. Last to go was his finger, pointing at Naxas Niss. And … his clothes went with him!
Niss was furious. “He’s not so daft, your spindly pall” he snapped at Eldin. “Even I hadn’t figured that out. Green affects only what it touches. Inside a man, it transports him where he most desires to be. Rubbed on his clothes, it transports them, too!”
Eldin beamed. “Right!” he said. “And right now he most desires to be wherever Kimp is. Not so daft, you say? Brilliant, says me!”
“What’s he like, this Kimp?” Nyrass was uncertain.
“A good lad,” said Eldin. “Needs a father, that’s all.”
“Well”—Nyrass shrugged—“it’s true I’ve been feeling my years lately. They weigh on me like lead. And since I’ve no kin of my own—”
Hero materialized grin-first, likewise Kimp, still smacking his lips from the b
elt of black Hero’d given him.
Following which …
LEAVING NAXAS NISS BOUND (and double-bound) in the dungeon, the questers spent the rest of the day with Nyrass and Kimp. They wandered through the wizard’s great castle and its gardens, tried fruits from a variety of trees; and all the while Nyrass performing small magics for the delight of the waif, and everyone feeling generally very light at heart. From a high turret as dusk began to settle, they watched the lamps flickering into life in Theelys, following which and as the stars also began to light, Eldin brewed tea and made them all a mighty plate of scrambled eggs on toast.
As for Kimp: he couldn’t get over his amaze and delight that he now had a home and a father of his own; and Nyrass knew he’d never be lonely—or fall prey to the likes of Naxas Niss again—not with a lad sharp as Kimp around, he wouldn’t.
Leaving the two to get better acquainted, Hero and Eldin went into town, came back an hour later towing a bunch of flotation bags purchased with the last of their tonds from a sky-ship’s chandler. The bags were inflated, straining lustily inside a net but held down by massive lead weights in a huge wicker basket swaying at the ends of four ropes. And the questers hauled the weighted but weightless device behind them all the way to Nyrass’ garden wall, where they fitted up Naxas Niss in a rope harness and forced a tot of white between his frothing, cursing jaws.
