The Compleat Traveller in Black

by John Brunner

  He tapped his staff on the wall.

  “As you wish, so be it,” he decreed, and went away. The ceiling of the banquet-hall creaked behind him, repairs to its hammer-beam roof having been too long neglected; its fall freed the greedy pair within a minute from all burdens, life itself not excluded.

  Likewise in Medham, a city noted for its lovely girls, a man sat in a tavern who had enjoyed – or so he claimed – more than a score of them, and bragged of his expertise in the art of seduction.

  “Ah, if I had a mug of ale for every one, I’d hardly be sober again in this life!” he hinted to his listeners, turning over his purse and finding it void of coin. “Why, did not the lady Fretcha come to me on hands and knees, saying I had ruined her? Haw-haw! Begged me, on my oath – literally begged me – to make an ‘honest woman’ of her! Haw-haw-haw! And then there was the lady Brismalet; she did the same – what impudence! And the lady Thespie, and then Padovine … Ho! As I say, did I but have a pint of ale for each –”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said his neighbor, a person clad in black with an unusual staff, and rose. No one noticed him depart. All were too taken aback at the spectacle of the boastful philanderer, belly distended like a hogshead, vomiting disgustingly because, gross as he was, he could not hold ale exceeding twenty-seven pints.

  “You stupid brute!” cried a carter in a hamlet hard by the site of Acromel, and lashed his horse across the hindquarters with a steel-barbed whip. Violent though the blow was, it barely drew blood; he had employed the lash so often, the horse’s back and legs were cicatrized with impermeable scars. Nonetheless the poor beast whinnied and cringed. Therefore he beat it again, and harder still.

  “Ho, that you were blessed with better sense!” he roared. “Would that you could learn how not to spill my load crossing a rut!”

  Still grumbling about his horse’s lack of wit, he went to the back of the cart to retrieve an ill-stowed sack of grain that had tumbled off.

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and the horse reared up, tipping the whole ton-weight of bags on the stooping carter. Then it chewed intelligently through the traces and took its leave, to enjoy lush upland grasses and roam free.

  “By your favor, sir,” said a boy of ten or twelve years, hunting a hedgerow near the village Wyve, “are such plants poisonous or wholesome?”

  Offering for inspection a glabrous brown fungus.

  “Wholesome,” replied the traveller. “They may be fried.”

  With a moue the boy tossed the toadstool aside.

  “Are you not glad to have learned that it’s edible?” asked the traveller. “I took it you were gathering food.”

  “No, sir,” said the boy. His voice and eyes were older than his years. “I seek a poison to give to my mother. She rules me unkindly, and will not let me have my way in anything.”

  He sighed enormously. “Ah, that I might recognize instanter what may be relied on to entrain death!”

  “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, and went on, leaving the boy weeping because he realized: no matter what diet is chosen, sooner or later death ensues.

  Thus, pretty much as might have been expected, the way of the traveller wound on, until that night deeper than other nights which overtook him on the flank of Rotten Tor, in which he discovered why the honest workingman at Gander’s Well had carefully sought tinder to bear on his journey of a single league when it still lacked an hour or more to sundown.

  And why the tinder had to be of a tree that once had drunk a wondrous spring far underground.

  And also one thing far more important: why, when all about him he saw the triumph of the homely everyday virtues, the prevalence only of commonplace vices such as laziness and greed – earnest, if any were to be had, of the impending conclusion of his task – he first should learn the flavor of the new and bitter tang that apprehension can acquire, which turns it into something cruder.

  Fear.

  II

  Truly this was not like an ordinary night! Though she was wrapped in a good plaid shawl, and had moreover mittens to her hands, the woman was dismayed by the solidity of the blackness, by the chill that bit from it through garments be they never so well woven, to the ultimate marrow. Behind her the child Nelva, whom she had not dared to leave at home, was too weary – or too cold – even to whimper.

  At least, however, far ahead, there gleamed one spark: the pole-hung lamp that marked her destination.

  Though going back …

  She shivered so violently her teeth chattered. It was something to be faced, the return, and could not be helped. Bowing her head, though there was no apparent wind, she clutched her daughter’s hand and hurried on.

  Whoever had suffered by the coming of these unseasonable black nights to the Cleftor Fells, it wasn’t Master Buldebrime, who dealt in lamps. He had doubled his production, and his sales.

  Within his shop, lamps were ranked by the score – on the adze-shapen counter facing the door that admitted clients from the street, and on all the pale pine planks doing the duty of shelves that lined the room wherever there was solid wall. There was even a lamp hung on that other door, of boards nailed to a saltire frame, which gave access to the living-quarters of the house.

  And such had been his profit recently that, even though the shop was vacant at the moment, more than a dozen of the lamps were shedding light.

  A couple of them burned candles of good wax and tallow, and rather more of rank stale fat. Others burned wicks floating in sweet oil, but these were few, and none at all were alight from his most expensive range, those that fed on exotic distillations and dispersed into the air not only a luminance slightly tinged with sapphire blue but also a delightful perfume. These last had reservoirs to match their content, fine-wrought in alabaster, amethyst, and orichalcum, and were never lighted save for the wealthiest of customers, those apt to sniff the scent and wave a hand and say, “I’ll take as many as you have in stock.”

  Cold on the road it might be, but shutters had boarded in the shop’s two streetward windows long before, so well sealed at their edges by strips of wetted leather that the air within was past being only warm. Now the room was hot from those flames entrapped by clear glass chimneys, tinted crystal globes, or shields of thin-pared horn. The air was growing rancid with vaporized fat; on their rich diet, the flames appeared almost starved.

  Nonetheless, even now, their glimmering made the coarse roof of overarching beams look like a mine of dismal coal illumined unexpectedly by an irrupting river, that had washed a shaft of sunshine underground and shown that there were also jewels in the rock.

  On the counter a tall time-candle, of bright red wax crossed at thumb-joint intervals by bands of black, told that the hours of trading for today were nearly done.

  Abruptly and in unison the flames bowed, like heads of barley in a field assaulted by a storm, as the outside door slammed open and shut. In dived the woman, her clogs announcing her arrival on the floor flags. Forgetful on the instant of her weariness and chill, the toddler Nelva at her skirts exclaimed with ooh! and aah! at this small wonderland, so warm, so full of light. A rush of burnt-fat stink took to the outdoors like a dying man’s gasp, and there was a cry from beyond the inner wall: “I come apace!”

  Snuffer in hand ready to douse the time-candle and the rest, the owner of the shop appeared in a tallow-stiff smock. Shaven, his red jowls glistened as though he sweated the very fabric of his wares. He was poised to fawn, expecting one of the gentry who came hither by ordinary late in the evening, they being readier than the common sort to brave the dark, what with their covered carriages and palanquins.

  But that lasted a mere eyeblink. Here was only some nondescript poor woman, likely hoping to trade some useless odds and ends against a lamp instead of purchasing one with honest currency.

  “What is it you want?” he demanded.

  She was not, however, quite the person he had thought her, for she snapped back in a tone as sharp as his, “What
would anybody come here for except a lamp?” And added from the corner of her mouth, “Be silent, Nelva!”

  The little girl complied, but her eyes remained enormously round as her gaze flicked from one to the other of the shining lights.

  “Here!” the woman went on, slapping coins on the counter. “Three good coppers, as you see – what’s more, the rims aren’t clipped, or even worn! I need a lamp so I may go abroad by night. We keep some bees, and now and then we kill a sheep, so we have no lack of wax and fat for casting candles, and we contrive our own wicks out of rush-pith. But my man Yarn is sick, and in the dark and cold must huddle by the fire, where smoke so stings his eyes he salts his supper-dish with tears. … Sell me a lamp that I can carry to the field to find stray lambs or gather eggs mislaid in hedgerow roots. For the sake of my sick husband and my bairn, give me the best you can!”

  Arms akimbo, she stood back. Taking up the coins, Master Buldebrime inspected them. As claimed, they were properly round and gave back to the time-candle the proper reddish sheen. He bit each in turn, shrugged, and turned to a shelf of his next-to-cheapest lamps. Selecting one with a thin glass chimney, he said, “This is the best I can offer. Take it or leave it.”

  The woman looked it over cannily. She said, “But there’s a short candle in it, that’s been lit – and Nelva and I have to make out our homeward path!”

  “Then, have a brand-new candle, and my blessings,” the shopkeeper snorted, catching one up at random from a stack and throwing the shortened one to be remelted. “For three coppers that’s the best that I can spare. I wouldn’t part with so much but that yon’s a pretty child.” Leaning forward on the counter, he eyed Nelva lasciviously. “Hmm! Yes! In three-four years you should return here. I’ll prentice her to the lampmaker’s trade. There’s men aplenty who’d wed a wife with such a profitable skill.”

  “None hereabout!” the woman retorted harshly. “We know how ill you brook rivalry in your business! And we hear tales about your apprentices, even where we live hard by Rotten Tor. So you like girls, do you, as well as little boys?”

  The shopkeeper’s face darkened below the saddest ruby of any of his lamps.

  “Get out!” he rasped, and made as though to hurl his brazen snuffer.

  Though the hand that clutched the coins stayed safely on the counter.

  Once more the flames quavered as, faced with the prospect of returning to that dreadful black and cold, Nelva objected to the prospect of departure; shortly, however, her mother dragged her over the threshold and the door banged shut.

  Buldebrime remained for a long moment fuming as foully as his cheapest candles, then mastered his rage and went to bar the entrance. He made the rounds with his snuffer, and resorted at last to his cozy living room, leaving the shop lit only – through a skylight – by the far-off gleam of four crucial conjunct planets wheeling downward from the zenithal line.

  III

  Not right, the traveller decided – not right at all!

  He stood and pondered on the flank of Rotten Tor, a louring crest so friable not even goats might climb it safely, staring in what long familiarity assured him must be the direction of Cleftor Vale. Granted that the entire valley lay in the daytime shadow of the heights, should it not now be lit at least by starshine? Come to that, was not the moon inclining towards its full?

  Yet here was such blackness as only a shout might penetrate – or a scream! Like the one that had just echoed to him, in two parts: beginning with the cry of a child, continuing in a tone louder, deeper, and more heartfelt.

  “Ho, that we were safe at home! Help, if there’s anybody there!”

  The traveller did not need to hide his smile; the blackness performed that function for him. Tapping his way with his staff, he skirted the brink of the rocky torrent which here assured the summertime vegetation of its moisture. Shortly his approach was detected by the woman who had called out.

  “Ah! Friend, whoever you may be!” She caught blindly at his arm. “Save me and my daughter – take us in!”

  “I have no lodging hereabout,” the traveller said. “But you do, surely.”

  “What?” The woman seemed bewildered; then of a sudden recovered herself. “Why, what a fool I must be!” She went forward, groping, and in a moment was heard to knock her fists upon resounding planks. “Home!” she cried. “Oh, praise be!”

  A door creaked on awkward hinges, and a gleam of firelight showed the outline of a cottage originally built of sturdy logs and four-square boards, that now was tilt-roofed and wore a melancholy garb of grey-green lichen. The child darted forward and threw her arms around a man who rose from a bed of coarse bags stuffed with bracken, discarding a blanket of threadbare woollen stuff, but could not speak in greeting for a cough that overcame him.

  “My dear, you’re safe!” he croaked when he recovered. “Oh, you should not have taken Nelva!”

  “You were asleep,” the woman said, embracing him. “And it’s so rarely that you sleep quite sound. … Ah, but I’m forgetting! Yarn, this gentleman who stands at the door: he’s my savior! Come in, sir-do come in!”

  The traveller crossed the threshold at her bidding, with a bow.

  “I was almost lost!” the woman babbled. “It was so dark –”

  “But surely,” Yarn began, and coughed still worse, and tried again. “But surely you went out to buy a lamp?”

  “Indeed, indeed! To Master Buldebrime’s-here, sir,” she added to the stranger, bustling about in search of a stool while child and father sat down side by side on the crude bed, “do you make yourself comfortable, and welcome too! I’d have fallen in the gorge had you not chanced by, so completely was I lost at my own doorstep! Excuse the sparseness of our hospitality, but when I’ve mended the fire, if you fancy such poor fare we can offer a broth of greens, a morsel of bread with ewe-milk cheese, and –”

  “But to buy a lamp, and come home in the dark!” Yarn forced that out in a single breath, before hacking into coughs anew.

  “Hah!” The woman halted in the middle of the floor, where firelight showed her silhouette, and set her hands on her hips. “When I get back to town, shall I ever give Buldebrime a tongue-lashing? That lamp! That lamp! Here!”

  She produced it from the folds of her shawl. “Why, did I not light it to see the path by when returning home? And did it not in the same moment smoke its chimney over, blacker than a barn door?”

  She waved the defective item violently at her husband.

  “Your pardon for my ill temper, sir,” she added to the traveller. “But to be without a lamp these nights is more than a body can bear. It’s as though the dark outside comes creeping in at the chinks of the wall, dulling the fireglow. Yet needs must I sometimes go about after sundown, and do I take a naked candle or a rush-dip torch the flame’s light is sucked into nowhere, like drops of water on a bone-dry cloth. Now this is what to do, our neighbors say, Goodie Blanchett and Goodie Howkle and the rest: go to Master Buldebrime and buy a lamp, his are the best, we have our own and walk abroad secure at night thanks to their warm yellow shine. …” As she talked she was rubbing the smoked-over glass on a corner of her shawl. On the hearth damp logs sputtered a counterpoint to her words.

  “I’ll light it again, to prove my claim,” she said, and bent to pick a splinter from the fire.

  “What’s worst of all,” she added as she applied flame to the twisted wick, “he took coin from me for it, not a pailful of ewe’s milk, or some trifle we could spare. … And it does this! Sir!” – rounding on the traveller – “do you not think it criminal, to take advantage of a poor soul thus?”

  But the traveller was paying no attention. Gazing at the lamp-chimney, which as predicted was on the instant blearing over, he was uttering sad words within his head:

  “Ah, Wolpec, Wolpec! Has it come to this?”

  Once this pallid thing of grimy smoke had been an elemental he – even he – was now and then compelled to consult. There were conditions attached to such inquiry, by which
he – even he – was forced to abide. Here, now, on the chimney of a common lamp, there writhed blurred characters such as formerly had expressed transcendent truths … but who alive could certify the meaning of such messages? Those tongues had been forgotten everywhere!

  Reacting to the concentration of his gaze, the woman ventured, “Sir, you’re not by any chance skilled in the repairing of lamps …?”

  Then, registering the fierceness of his expression, she lapsed into a puzzled silence.

  Some of the old laws, it appeared, still stood, but the under-structure of them must have cracked, as after an earthquake a building may retain its general shape, yet lack huge plates of stucco from its façade and be unsafe to walk the stairways of. For this lamp was showing three truths in the ancient manner, without the ancient and obligatory rites. …

  Of three, the first incomprehensible, in a variety of writing that creatures not quite manlike had employed to record dealings in imponderables. It had been hazarded that the records concerned a trade in souls, but that was barely an approximation. In any case, being an invention of chaos, the symbols had any value anyone cared to assign them.

  And they were fading, and it was time to ask again.

  “How come you to this pass?” the traveller thought.

  Now, the truth debatable, in a single hieroglyph such as might have been seen on the high pillars of Etnum-Yuzup before that metropolis dissolved into dust with thunderclaps. The Grand Five Weavers had grown self-indulgent, and no longer observed the instructions they had issued to themselves in the days of the foundation of their city. This might be read plainly; the traveller read it.