flitters away his time chasing dream-bubbles, which he captures in living lenses. At my order, he exacts from men, terrified by the rumor of my coming, all the taxation any emperor might require. The gold and women I take to myself, to use or consume in sport. To him, I leave nothing by baubles and trash! Why, just yesterday, following certain dream-signs, we came upon a star-wanderer and robbed him — but Iszmagn took nothing but worthless stones to float round his head. Worthless! For they could protect no one from the strength of my hands. The wanderer we spared, merely so the curiosity of Iszmagn could be sated, to see how long his amnesia would obtain. Our hope was that the press-gangs of Romarth would throw him in the Cleft for vagrancy.”
At that moment, Guyal seemed to fall beneath the feet of Magnatz; or, at least, Manxolio lost sight of him. Then Guyal called out: “The second restored efficacy is the magnific adumbration! Use it now on the Analept!”
Manxolio squinted. The iron pulsed in his grip. The dark zone dispersed. For one terrifying heartbeat of time, the titan reared above them, visible, a vast bulk. At that same moment, from beneath the giant’s toe, issued a strange, piercing, three-toned note. There was a wash of motion, a curtain of upward-rushing dust and wind. Manxolio blinked, caught a last sight of Magnatz the titan dwindling to a mote in the dark blue spaces of the upper sky.
Perhaps a minute later, the pale disk of the full moon formed a new crater, large as Tycho, and rays of moondust scattered far across the airless surface, forming an asterism. The crater was white-hot with the impact of some vast body, but the glow soon diminished through yellow to pink to a sullen red.
Guyal Rose from the footprint-shaped crater of broken rock where he lay, and made his way wearily to the side of Manxolio.
Manxolio spoke: “How did you survive the pressure of the giant’s foot?”
Guyal said, “The Analept was able to produce a repulsive force, under which I hid, like a turtle in a shell. It was not until you employed the many-valued magnific adumbration that the Analeptic lifting energies were augmented to hurl the monster aloft. Unfortunately, I lost my grip on the Analept, and the strand of star-stuff that connected it to Sferendelume in the Pleiades yanked it to an unknown location. Magnatz will not perish, being charmed against suffocation, and neither will he die of old age, so he will remain in the discomfort of decompression, bleeding from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, until entropy halts the universe. How did you know Iszmagn and Magnatz were in league?”
“The honed intuition of an Effectuator. The similarity of names. I told myself that a charmed life implies someone to cast the charm; and the magic which swelled his bulk implied a magician. I asked myself why Iszmagn benefits from the depredations of Magnatz; where there is benefit, might there not be alliance?”
“A correct guess. I am relieved to satisfy, and within moments, the gaes placed by my ancestor, but I am no closer to achieving the resumption of my inner self.”
Manxolio stared incredulously. “Did you not hear? The titan himself described the theft, and identified its perpetrator.”
“I was preoccupied by being trod upon, and so some nuances of the conversation regrettably escaped me,” admitted Guyal.
“The Sorcerer Iszmagn overcame you and took your IOUN stones and your recollections, leaving you alive to study the effects of his experiment in mind-theft. Your dream of revenge is nuncupatory, since so powerful an adversary cannot be overcome.”
“Was it not you who, earlier this day, spoke of the Law of Equipoise, which demands retaliation for each affront?”
“And you denied its self-evident verity.”
Guyal looked up at the sky and uttered a deep sigh.
Manxolio said, “You are resigned, then, to omit this quest? Return with me to Romarth; we will live lives of ease.”
“No, I sigh because we go to our fates with no time to prepare: for the sorcerer manifests the Call of the Violent Cloud to ensnare us.”
There was an noise in the air as of many voices roaring. At once, a column of boiling black smoke hurled down from the sky. Manxolio again commanded the baton to issue the Zone of Primary Nigrescence, which instantly blotted out all sight, but did nothing to impede the Violent Cloud. The two were snatched up, whirled abominably, yanked and jerked in four directions, and then hurled contemptuously to the ground in a spasm of motion.
It was still dark as pitch. Guyal was surprised not to find himself in the crater of a volcano or the midst of a sea of ice, which would have been the most efficient way to extinguish their lives. Instead, he groaned on pavement, aware of his bruises. As he rose to his feet, he heard a peculiar hissing sound, as if white-hot wires were plunged into sizzling wine. The odor of burning, the smell of hot rock and molten metal came from every side.
“Do not yet lift the Zone, Manxolio!” warned Guyal, hoping Manxolio was alert. “Someone employs the Excellent Prismatic Spray against us — while the visual phase of reality remains inoperative, the photonic eruption cannot scald us.”
In a moment, the commotion fell silent. Manxolio lifted the Nigrescent Zone, and visible light returned to the area.
They stood in the courtyard of a tower of onyx and dark basalt, fantastically carved in rococo designs, and upheld by wide flying buttresses. The courtyard held smoldering urns filled with burning floral displays, a dozen cracked statues of glyptodonts from the First Aeon, and a silver-basined fountain, now a mass of boiling steam. The flagstones in each direction were pitted with tiny dark asterisks, evidence of a recent rain of incandescent darts.
A hundred smoldering little streamers led from the courtyard to a high balcony, where the sorcerer Iszmagn stood, hand still raised and fingertips still glowing, a look of dark satisfaction beginning to elongate into an expression of surprise.
He wore a knee-length jacket of green cusps, and in the center of each there flashed and floated colors never seen in waking life. The cusps also blinked and stared in alarm, and showed other evidence that they were animate objects, stirred at least to a mockery of life. In the middle of his forehead was the eye of an Archveult of Sirius grafted to his brow, a tendril root no doubt sunk deeply into his brain-pan.
In a galaxy around his head swarmed and danced the colored polygons of IOUN stones: spheres, ellipsoids, spindles, each the size of a small plum, and vibrant with inner auroras.
With the merest of hesitations, the sorcerer raised his fingers and the syllables of the Instantaneous Electric Effort gushed forth from his mouth. Tridents and biforks of lighting fell from the balcony, but Manxolio manifested a thick disk of the Nigrescent Zone in midair between them, and the fulgurations were absorbed without effect.
While the dark zone hung overhead, obscuring their motions, Guyal pointed to the iron-bound oaken doors leading into the tower. Manxolio placed the heel of the Wand on the stones, and jammed the head beneath an ornamental boss. He unfolded the Wand, and augmented the motive force with the Magnific Adumbration. The locks shattered and the door sagged open.
Manxolio and Guyal crept into the entrance hall. The wonders of the sorcerer’s walls and ceilings were hidden by Manxolio’s cloud of darkness, but the floor was visible: blocks of hollow glass, each one of which held a different brightly-colored fish. To one side, the first few steps of an insubstantial, spidery, curving stairway were
