him pacing through your club, pretending to be no one in particular at first, but shedding the pretense little by little as his impatience grew. And when his back was turned I summoned all my courage, and jumped.”
The innkeeper turned to face him again. “You are fortunate that you became an yddek. I saw the sorcerer turn in surprise the moment you appeared. He sensed your intrusion into his dream, and raced from door to door, to see if it was Macadra who had come. His glance fell on you, but he has seen many yddeks in his time and thought nothing of it. But had you taken this form-”
“He would surely have known me,” said Felthrup, raising his mangled forepaw and twitching his stumpy tail.
“You were fortunate in another way, too,” said Orfuin. “Yddeks have very sharp ears. I assume you heard what they said on this terrace?”
“Much of it, Mr. Orfuin,” said Felthrup, “and all that I heard was terrible. Arunis seeks the complete elimination of human beings from the world! And that woman Macadra seems to share his wish, although she denies it-and something he whispered, something I did not hear, came to her as a brutal shock. Yet I still have no idea who she is. Can you tell me?”
Orfuin took a rag from his pocket and walked to one of the windows looking out onto the terrace. He breathed on a small square pane and rubbed it clean.
“Macadra Hyndrascorm,” he said with distaste, “is a very old sorceress. Like Arunis, a cheater of death. All mages tend to be long-lived, but some are satisfied with nothing less than immortality. None truly attain it. Some, like Macadra and her servants in the Raven Society, deploy all their magical skills in its pursuit. They may indeed live a very long time-but not without becoming sick and bleached and repellent to natural beings. Others, like your master Ramachni, are granted a kind of extended lease: the powers outside of time stretch their lives into hundreds or even thousands of years, but only in pursuit of a very great deed.”
Felthrup jerked upright with a squeak, almost upsetting the little table. “Do you mean that once Ramachni completes his allotted task he will die?” he cried.
“Death is the standard conclusion, yes,” said Orfuin. “But Felthrup, you must hasten to tell me what you came here for. I have a roast in the oven. Besides, my dear fellow, you might wake at any time.”
“That is precisely why I have come!” said Felthrup. “Master Orfuin, my Polylex tells me that the wall between two dreamers is not the only sort of wall. There is also, of course, the wall between dream and waking. But by one of the most ancient of laws, most of what we learn, and all that we collect or are given, must be left on the far side of the gate when we return to waking life.”
Orfuin chuckled again. Then, with an air of scholarly formality, he recited: Never night’s mysteries are exposed
To the weak mortal eye unclosed.
So wills its King, that hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid.
“Or something to that effect. Have you read Poe, Mr. Felthrup? A dlomic writer of some interest; there’s a book of his in the club.^ 6 Yes, it is a balm to the soul, to travel and converse and gain wisdom in the land of dreams. But only mages can carry that wisdom out into the daylight. The rest of us must leave everything but a few stray memories on the far side of the wall.”
“But Master Orfuin, I am denied even those!” cried Felthrup, hopping in place. “If I saw Arunis’ face looming over me, or held on to some brief snatches of his words, then perhaps I could fight him. But he has placed a forgetting-charm upon me. Ramachni told Pazel Pathkendle of this charm, and Pazel told me. But Ramachni cannot dispel it, he said, until he returns in the flesh.
“And that will not do. Here as a dreamer I know all that has happened to me, in waking life and in dreams. But my waking self knows nothing of those dreams, and so I cannot warn my friends. I cannot tell them what I overheard, here on your terrace. That this Macadra and her Ravens are sending a replacement crew-isn’t that how she put it? — to seize the Chathrand. That all the wars, feuds and battles of the North are watched with pleasure, and even encouraged, by forces in the South bent on conquest. I know the most terrible secrets in Alifros! But what good is this knowledge if it vanishes each night at the end of my dream?”
“And you imagine that this old tavern-keeper can help you break what you yourself have just referred to as one of ‘the most ancient of laws’?” Orfuin sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Finish your tea, Felthrup. Come inside and eat gingerbread, listen to the music, be my guest. No matter how many years we’re allotted, we should never squander life in pursuit of the impossible.”
“Forgive me, sir, but I cannot accept your answer.”
Orfuin’s eyes grew wide. Felthrup, however, was possessed of a sudden absolute conviction. “I must take the warning back with me, somehow. I cannot possibly sit down and enjoy your hospitality if that means pretending I don’t know the fate Arunis has in mind for half the people of Alifros. If you will not help me, I must thank you for the tea and the delightful conversation, and go in search of other allies.”
“In your dreams?”
“Where else, sir? Perhaps one of the ghosts aboard Chathrand will help me, since you find yourself unable to do so.”
“There is something you must understand,” said Orfuin. “I am no one’s ally, though I try to be everyone’s friend. This club survives only because it has, since time unfathomable, stood outside the feuds and factions that plague so many worlds. No one is barred who comes here peaceably. Whether the words they exchange are words of peace or barbarism I rarely know. Wars have been plotted here, no doubt-but how many more have been averted, because leaders of vision and power had a place to sit down together, and talk at their ease? It is my faith that the universe is better off for having a place where no one fears to talk. Arunis was right, Felthrup: when I closed the club and threw them out into the River, I was doing something I had never done before, and will not hasten to do again. I was breaking the promise of this house.”
“Because you heard them plotting the murder of millions of human beings!” said Felthrup. “What else could you do at such a pass?”
“Oh, many things,” said Orfuin, rising again from his chair. “I could sell this club, and purchase a home in the Sunken Kingdom, or an apartment in orbit around Cbalu, or an entire island in your world of Alifros, complete with port and palace and villages and farms. I could break my house rule again, and then again, and soon be one more partisan in the endless wars beggaring the universe. Or I could contemplate my tea, and pretend not to have heard anything my guests were discussing.”
Felthrup rubbed his face with his paws. “I will wake soon; I can feel it. I will forget all of this, and have no way of helping my friends. I should not have come.”
Orfuin stepped close to the table and put his hands under Felthrup’s chin, lifting it gently. “You may sleep a little longer, I think.”
And suddenly Felthrup sensed that it was true: the flickering, stirring feeling, the teasing scent of Admiral Isiq’s cigars still clinging to his uniforms, had quite faded away.
“Most visitors to a tavern,” said Orfuin, “don’t come to speak to the barman.”
Felthrup glanced quickly at the inviting doorway. You cannot help me, he thought suddenly, but you spelled it out, didn’t you? What your guests speak of is none of your concern.
“Do you mean, I might yet find-?”
Orfuin released his chin. “Go inside, Felthrup. You’re a talking rat; someone’s certain to buy you a drink.”
6. Orfuin here slightly amends the original, though not perhaps for the worse. He is also mistaken about the artist’s race. Falargrin (in The Universal Macabre) presents conclusive evidence that Mr. Poe was a transplanted selk. -EDITOR.
Confessions
24 Ilbrin 941
