Man.
“As men from all the lands and continents of Earth gather, your decaying city shall be rich once more with the trade of passersby, both of pilgrims fleeing this dying world, and scholars descending from the stars to gather up the mementos and mysteries of Earth, and buried cities hale aloft from the bottom of the sea. Surely, the lore of the Antiquarians of Romarth will be a signal study, and the treasures of your past no longer need be sold as curios, but shall be properly collected, indexed, and examined by experts.
“I must now depart, before the IOUN stones grow exhausted, and go to my new world, not with my father, as I’d hoped, but alone.
“Tell all men that life on Earth is precarious, and commend to them to seek out the bright fields of the ulterior world: but warn them that, if this world holds no souls curious, like me, to seek the stars, I shall not return, and the path be closed forever. With my people slain, what is there for me? I have other duties and other loves beyond the Pleiades, and I hear the silver song of Sheirl calling me to the stars. Ah! Sheirl! I return to you!”
Manxolio listened to this with growing disquiet, but said nothing. Guyal flung open the dome of the tower’s cupola, ascended into the sky, and vanished in a flare of indigo light.
When Guyal the Curator vanished, there came at that moment the strange three-tone chime of the Analept, even though that instrument was nowhere to be seen.
Now alone, Manxolio spent the afternoon investigating the various periapts and amulets horded in the store of Iszmagn. He discovered a curious property of the lenses of the sorcerer’s emerald coat: seemingly dead, nonetheless a simple pulse of meaning from the Implacable Wand could elicit an image from them, nightmarish, something from the dark under-mind of humankind, along with a disquieting aura.
Manxolio selected the most hideous of these lenses, and buried them, one after another, in a rough circle all about the valley of Sfere. He took care to place more of them near the river, or in any direction that promised an easy approach. He invoked them with his Wand, and at once a legion of specters, half-seen, terrifying, crowded the edges of vision.
He spent an hour cutting warning signs, in as many languages and scripts as he knew, into various rocks and standing walls, or along the bare side of a hill he cleaved in two with the Dark Iron Wand. Blood-curling threats and fanciful implications were abundant. All were warned to stay away, and sinister references were made to the Indigo Path of Death.
Another application of the power of the Implacable Wand, returned him in a whirl of motion to Old Romarth, indeed, to the very stoop of the Admonastic gate.
He strolled with stately stride up the narrow streets of the Antiquarian’s Quarter toward his abode, reflecting with infinite satisfaction on the consequence of events.
“The ancient power is restored to the Implacable Dark Iron Wand of my ancestors. I hold, a single man, the power of a brigade nay, a legion. I have slain a warlock, and a titan, without wound or scar. And, best of all, I now return to the comfortable and expected routine of retiring leisure! The clamor of ten thousand pilgrims, with all their crimes and diseases and strange food flooding into my fair city, has been averted. The learning and wisdom from beyond the stars, which is immense to the point of terror, will not be known on Earth, and the reputation of the Antiquarians will linger undisturbed, and unchallenged.
“And why should any one wish to flee the earth? A few are born here to high position: rulership is our duty and burden. The rest are born to ache and sweat with endless labor. It would be disloyal, nay, treason, for a man to depart the Earth merely because she is dying! Why, what kind of cad would abandon an ailing mother? The case is parallel, the moral maxim is the same!”
As he strolled near the Cleft in the central square of the quarter, he paused, for a strange light was shining up from underground. He heard the noise of the buried world on which the foundations of his house were planted: instead of the weeping and begging of the inhumed, the whines of their children for bread, he heard a solemn song. He could not distinguish words, but the tones were rich with joy.
Next he heard, not in the air, but inside the inner works of his ear, of an unearthly three-toned chime, and he realized that Guyal had established more than one anchor for the Analept.
The first of a countless number of soaring men, women, and children rose weightlessly from the cleft, poised in swan-dive against the infinity of the sky, were wrapped in the shining indigo light, and were gone.
In my long vanished youth, time was abundant and book money was dear, and so each book I owed was read and reread until its contents were nearly memorized.
Paperbacks, which cost (at that time) less than two dollars, were treats bestowed by the indulgence of a parent as rare as an oasis in a wasteland, a green garden-spot to which the imagination could escape the burning sun of reality for refreshment.
I remember the order of my first three fantasy purchases: the first book I ever bought was H.P. Lovecraft’s
I am old enough to remember the days before
Most unalike of all was the fantasy of Vance, where the magic and the superscience were strangely blended. Human nature was on pitiless display, warts and all, but mingled with the finely-mannered and drily ironic affectations of over-elegant speech. It was an unforgettable mix.
Back in those days, fantasy avoided the journalistic prose of Hemingway, the simple straightforward taletelling of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. Clarke Ashton Smith had a voice and vocabulary distinct from that of William Morris, from E.R. Eddison, from Mervyn Peake. These men penned symphonies, arpeggios, arias and arabesques of English language. Most distinctive of all was Jack Vance.
There were many a strange and brilliant idea to be found in these older fantasies. The central problem confronting any author of magical tales was how to write a convincing drama where the magic does not solve too easily any and all dramatic conflicts, and for this Vance had a unique and frankly brilliant solution: wizards can memorize only a certain number of the half-living reality-warping syllables of magical spells per day, and, once expelled from the mouth, the spell vanished eerily from the memory. Of course, this seems as a commonplace today, thanks to Gary Gygax borrowing the idea (and indeed the names of several spells) from Vance, but it is not a commonplace idea. It is still as strange and as brilliant as everything Vance does.
Even now, when fantasy is so common that it outsells science fiction, and every book seems oddly bland and similar, the work of Vance from half a century ago still stands out, an oasis for the imagination, an airy garden in the midst of an overfed swamp.
As I aged, my taste changed in many predictable ways. Few of the books I so adored in youth can I read again with undiminished pleasure. Jack Vance is the great exception.
And now, when book-buying money is abundant, but time is dear, and I have no idle hours to beguile with fantasies, Jack Vance is the author for whom I will always make time, to read and read again.
