Songs of the Dying Earth

“Relax the stasis.”

Ildefonse resumed protesting. The yelp of his stasis alarm interrupted. “What happened?” he demanded.

“The engines shadowed me through history.”

Ildefonse had no comment. Neither did the magicians outside.

“Preceptor, Te Ratje did fall at Fritjof’s Drive. The Good Magician here was a follower who salvaged Amuldar and carried on in secret. He made sure the engines will not fail in the lifetime of this universe. Amuldar is no threat to you. It will tend to the sun. It will care for Te Ratje’s beloved daughters. It will protect itself.”

Ildefonse absent his normal semblance could not conceal his inner self. Nor could he hide from Amuldar, which did not withhold salient information from Alfaro.

Morag said, “You all need to understand that none of the things you’re thinking will work. Content yourselves with the status quo.”

“Which is?” Vermoulian demanded.

“We are guests of Amuldar. For so long as Amuldar wishes.” Alfaro flung a thought at the engines. “A buffet is being set out. Follow the young women with the lights. Restrain your lusts. Vermoulian, go. Preceptor, stay. Rhialto, join us in here.” At a thought from Alfaro, the husk of the Good Magician floated away. Morag did not look. He feared it might be watching him as it went.

The dimensions of the library shifted. There was room for three men in three comfortable chairs attended by three implausibly beautiful young women. Alfaro reviewed his own sour history. One vision plagued him: Tihomir’s injury.

Several new girls appeared. They brought wines and delicacies.

Alfaro said, “I’ve been bitten by the serpent whose venom moved Te Ratje. I’ll do as he asked. So, now, the question. What to do about you?”

“Release us,” Rhialto said, distracted. He had a princess on either knee.

“The machine considers that dangerous. It knows your minds. You are who you are. Yet returning you to Ascolais would be my preference.”

Alfaro was amazed. He was talking like the man in charge.

He asked, “Who among you can be trusted?”

Rhialto and the Preceptor instantly volunteered.

“I see. The engines disagree. I want to send for something. But whoever I send is likely to plunder those who stay behind. Excepting Nahourezzin, who would fail to remember his mission. Yes. An excellent strategy. There. And done.”

“What is done?” Ildefonse asked, nervously.

“The sandestins from the whirlways have been enlisted for the task, in return for remission of their indentures.”

“In just such manner did Te Ratje become unpopular, making free with the properties of others.”

“A paucity of otherworldly servants should make actions against Amuldar less practical. Enjoy the wine. Enjoy the food. Enjoy the company.” Alfaro leaned forward to whisper, “I’m doing my best to get you out of here alive.” 

16

Tihomir stared at the gray city, childlike. The sandestins had deposited him, and the contents of the tower beside the Javellana Cascade, in the center of the acre square. Alfaro rushed to greet his brother. Several favorite nymphs followed. He anticipated meeting the others wholeheartedly. Ten thousand of those precious, wondrous gems!

There were no magicians or whirlways in the square.

After embracing his brother Alfaro commenced the slow process of making Tihomir understand their new situation. He worried overmuch. Tihomir would be comfortable so long as he remained near Alfaro. He had arrived frightened only because they had been separated for a time, then strange demons had come to carry him away.

Alfaro Morag. The bad magicians are escaping.

“How can that be?” Though he had noted the absence of the whirlaways, including his own.

The one called Barbanikos propped the way open when the demons returned. The demons themselves had no confidence in your promise to relax their indentures.

Golden-tongued Rhialto and Ildefonse would have leveraged any demonic doubt to adjust notoriously evanescent sandestin loyalties.

There was a reason they were indentured rather than hired.

Alfaro shrugged. He remained irked that his whirlaway had been appropriated — by Mune the Mage, surely — yet here was a problem solved without his having to offend Amuldar. A prodigy. He was free to be the Good Magician and free to make Tihomir whole.

A dozen more girls arrived to help Alfaro move his possessions into his wondrous new quarters, shaped by Amuldar’s engines based on his deepest fantasies.

Not even Ildefonse’s Boumergarth could match their opulence.

He had fallen into paradise.

Paradise was a blade with vicious edges.

Across subsequent centuries, individual magicians, or, occasionally, a cabal, attempted to avail themselves of the riches of Amuldar. Every stratagem failed.

Only Vermoulian the Dreamwalker penetrated Amuldar’s shell — by stalking the nightlands. The Dreamwalker traced the nightmare into which the Good Magician descended.

Alfaro Morag, as all the Good Magicians before him had, discovered that only a few millennia of this paradise left him unable to continue to endure the cost. As had they, he began to yearn for the escape of the beautiful.

The better grounded and rounded Tihomir Morag would gain fame as his brother’s successor.

Afterword:

I entered the Navy out of high school in 1962, severely afflicted by Ambition Deficit Disorder. Nevertheless, when the Navy offered to send me to college for an additional four years of my life I said “Yo-ho-ho!” and went off to the University of Missouri. As a gangly, uncoordinated freshman I lurched about in the wake of a senior keeper whose name I have forgotten but whose greatest good turn remains with me still.

On learning that I favored science fiction, too, he dragged me into the independent bookstore next door to the tavern where we spent our evenings practicing to become sailors on liberty. There he compelled me to fork over the outrageous sum of, I believe, 75 cents (plus tax!) for the Lancer Limited Edition paperback of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth. I was aghast. Paperbacks were 50 cents or, at most, 60 cents at the time. But I got my money’s worth, yes I did. That book is gone, along with a couple of subsequent editions, because I have read and read and read, I cannot say how many times.

I was hooked from the first page. This was intellectual meth. I cannot shake the addiction, nor have I ever lost the tyro’s longing to create something “just like—” What every author feels about favorites who blazed new roads throught the ravines and thickets of literature’s Cumberland Gaps. One of the great thrills of my writing career was being invited to participate in this project. So, for the first time in two and a half decades, I wrote a piece of short fiction, to honor one of the greats who lured me into this field.

Events here chronicled occur at the extreme end of the 21st Aeon, in anotherwise dull epoch some centuries after happenings recorded in Rhialto the Marvellous.

— Glen Cook