Songs of the Dying Earth

beside me if you wish. I am bound for my home, the incomparable palace of Phurn.”

Evillo, seeing nothing else to be done, did as Prince Khiss suggested.

As they advanced then, prince and steed galloping nimbly, Evillo stumbling breathless and groaning alongside, Khiss related his story, and Evillo’s part in it.

“Kateraspex entered the usufructdom of my domain by means of Phandaal’s theoretic Locative Selfulsion, which he, the unworthy Kateraspex, had somehow — and doubtless by accident — realized. Kateraspex then annexed the territory of Undimmoril. I, of course, opposed him. Although myself well-versed in thaumaturgic art, the devil overcame me by a ploy too complex to explain. Since to explain it would exceed our time together, and decidedly your intellect. Suffice it to say, Kateraspex exiled me to the paltry alter-world of the earth, and robbed me, once there, of the ability to reveal my plight. However, owing to the Laws of Equivalence, the villian was yet compelled to allow me to retain certain benefits. These comprised my knowledge and skill in various fields, and those formulas I had mastered of magery. Also he must permit me, albeit haphazardly, to recoup my royal sword, one set of princely clothing, and a ring that marked my status as ruler.

“However again, such was the magician’s vile cunning that he made sure I might not put to use any of these elements. He decreed that, my feet once touching the ground of Earth, I should become a more attractive copy of the first creature I beheld there. Which was, as even you may fathom, a snail.

“My only hope then, which Kateraspex failed to foresee, was that I might find some gullible dunce. For if I could but imbue his noddle with some of my own talents, currently useless to me, he and I would together make up a source of power. Meanwhile, every piece of fair fortune my pupil might expect to encounter would instantly magnetize to my own self, he then suffering a counterbalance of lucklessness. As this happened, my reserves of energy would be recharged.

“Generously, I shall not chide you with the long wait I had, due to your tardy arrival. For though I met many dunderheads, they were too fly to trust me. While the gullible were already so mentally crammed with idiocies my tuition found no room. You, however, were perfection. An imbecile, empty as the night of moon.

“Soon enough you gained my sword, then the garments, and, at length the ring. With each acquisition too you obtained a fleeting glimpse of Undimmoril. Finally, a vision of my land was established in your imagination. Thus primed, the Selfulsions needed lesser and then no intervals between them. Only your intransigent Cugeline fad caused difficulty. In the end, even that did not avail. We achieved Undimmoril. Where, once more on hallowed ground, I reverted to my true persona and emptied your brain of my wisdom. All is now mine. Notice, even the sword has come back to me.”

Khiss laughed with joy. Evillo sensed that his own mind was hollow and confused. Khiss was prompted to one more admission:

“By the by, it was not you at whom that farlock, Pendatas Baard, sat staring at in the prison. He stared at me. He had never seen me, either as prince or snail, yet he sensed some remnant about me of his accursed father. Who, you may be entertained to know, Pendatas himself dispatched, on a rare paternal visit, with a venom of the Saponids. Ever after, Pendatas has sought for Undimmoril himself. With slight success, as we note.”

Exhausted by this far from terse account, as much as by enforced exercise, Evillo plunged face forward in the grass. From this vantage, he grew aware of the palace of Phurn standing close by. It was supplied with pillars of turquoise and many thin towers like sticks of angelica. Gardens garlanded all, crowded with terebinth and myhrhadion, eluent teff and gentians.

In the gateway was the wonderful woman with pink hair. Khiss cried aloud in delight and reined in the clariot. “Behold, my wife, Twylura Phlaim, the only female worthy to partner my splendour!” Glancing back, Khiss added, “Evillo, you may depart. In a moment, I will open a portal, and you will then be propelled back to the fount of your useless and unaesthetic existence.”

Before this was done however, the beautiful Twylura Phlaim mounted a cat-headed chariot, which leapt on hare’s legs up the hill.

“Art thou home so soon?” she exclaimed to her husband, in a peculiarly raucous tone. “Be cautioned, Khiss, in thy long absence, Twylura Phlaim grew bored and ran away with an untypically handsome gleft. Instead I have taken her place.”

“Who then are you?” demanded Prince Khiss.

“The demon Cardamoq. Come thou now and embrace me.” Khiss had grown white. The clariot reared and unseated him. Khiss landed by Evillo.

“Oh, Evillo, dear friend, despite my restored powers, the demon’s strength overwhelms me! Let us therefore at once return to our beloved dying earth—”

“Nay, husband. Thou shalt stay with thy beloved Cardomoq!” screeched the demon unmusically. She had grown two heads, and smoke billowed from the six nostrils of each. “To be sure of it, I shall transfer some of thy powers to the yellow-haired human there. He may keep them as a momento of this happy reunion.”

A blow fell on Evillo’s head. He sensed the portal open in the alter-world of Undimmoril, and wisely knew no more.

In fact, he fell to earth in the red sunlight of Kaiin. A multitude of hands were assisting him to rise, and the air rang with voices detailing how he had been searched for everywhere. Next came the militia and ringed him round.

Tiredly, Evillo anticipated the prison, but instead the throng, cheering and rejoicing, bore him to the palace of Kandive the golden.

“How pleasing that we have refound you, dear boy,” declaimed Kandive. “I am already bereft of sons and nephews; they have such a propensity for extended voyages whereon they vanish. It seems to me, when we have consulted the proper sages, that you will be my direct heir, in default of all the others. For you are the child of my half-sister who, sixteen years before and when visiting an obscure fane above the Derna, mislaid you, through sheer carelessness, near the village of Ratgrad.”

Evillo stood nonplussed. Had his good luck returned? He grasped also that certain powers belonging to the arrogant Khiss had indeed been given to him. Released from Khiss’ personalized Equivalence, Evillo might surely now enjoy them. And not least as heir to white-walled Kaiin.

While he was considering these prospects, he saw amid the crowd the Darkographer Kaiine. Evillo recalled how he had misunderstood the gallant’s warning — not to avoid stepping upon the snail, but simply to avoid the snail altogether.

So easily might one topple into folly. One must have things straight.

He therefore at once asked Kandive, “And is my name Evillo, as I have thought from the age of seven?”

“Not at all,” replied the puzzled Kandive. “By the cyclopaedia, whatever put such an idea in your head?

“What then, sir, is my name?”

“Why, my boy, hear, and thereafter bear with pride your true cognomen, written in the archives of Ascolais. It is Blurkel.”

Evillo staggered. Supposing this due to rapture, Kandive clapped him on the back.

But it was the full weight of the strident three-fold curse of Pendatas Baard, coming home to roost. Vented upon him in the name of Blurkel, the young man felt it attach itself like a swarm of stones.

That very night, as all feasted in the lavish courts of Kandive, the recurrent leucomorph uncharacteristically dropped from a chandelier upon Blurkel. Its attack had been much refined by practice.

Afterword:

For me, Jack Vance is one of the literary gods.

In the earliest ’70’s, when I was in a very unhappy and depressed condition, my magical, wise mother, (who had already turned me on to mythology, history, and SF), bought me Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth. At once I escaped my leaden state and entered the teeming and ironically shining landscape of Vance’s extraordinary, decadently future world.

I still possess this volume — the English Mayflower edition — treasured and often read, though by now its pages are pale brown and many are loose inside the cover. (The spine seems to have been nibbled by a pelgrane).