Songs of the Dying Earth

It’s why you’ve never had one of your own.”

“True,” said Shrue.

“Give me the nose,” demanded Faucelme, “and I may let your pet soldier-whore live. I might even allow the sky galleon to depart in one piece. But for you, Shrue, there is no hope.”

“So my mother often told me,” said Shrue. He reached into his robes and withdrew the nose box. “Do you give me your word, Faucelme…and your word, Elemental Red of the True Overworld’s Eleventh Realm?”

“You have our word,” said Faucelme and the Red in perfect unison.

“Well,” said Shrue, holding the box with the nose’s nostrils toward them, “then it saddens me a little to know that both your words combined aren’t worth a steaming pile of pelgrane shit. KirdriK!”

The tall figure in the blue monk’s robes pulled back its hood and veil with its huge, six-fingered hands revealing its red crest and purple feathers, then ripped the robes to shreds and stepped free. KirdriK’s dorsal flanges flared ten feet wide and glowed orange from internal heat. There were new, raw scars running across the daihak’s white-fuzzed brow and chest and upper thigh, but the creature seemed taller, stronger, more muscled, meaner, and more confident.

“He followed me home during the night,” said Shrue. “I decided to keep him.”

“My Purples,” said the Red even as the two projections winked out.

“Your Purples were good to the last drop of ichor,” rumbled KirdriK. “Their energy is in me now, along with their bones and viscera. Perhaps you can tell, Elemental.”

Faucelme only stared as the Red moved forward quickly in three huge strides. “No sandestin-daihak halfbreed ever decanted can stand up to an Elemental Red of the True Overworld’s Eleventh Realm!” roared the huge shape.

Before the daihak could speak, Shrue said softly, “KirdriK is daihak-bred from the order of Undra-Hadra. Do you really want to gamble your actual existence on the hope you can best him? Is the Ultimate Library so important to you?”

“Pah!!” roared the Red. “The Ultimate Library means nothing to me. All the spells in all the books in all the lost Aeons of the Dying Earth cannot equal the inbred knowledge of a Red fresh out of its egg!”

“Shut up, salamander,” rumbled KirdriK. “And fight. And die….”

Both the daihak and Elemental blurred around their extended edges as they prepared to flash to any of a dozen dimensions.

“Pah!” cried the Red again. “You and your library and your Dying Earth have less than twenty-four hours of existence anyway, diabolist. Enjoy it if you can!” The Elemental made a dismissive gesture and imploded out of existence on the plane of the Dying Earth. The Yellows and Greens followed in less than a second. The pelgranes remained frozen in their block of solidified Temporal Stasis.

Alone, twitching and staggering from the withdrawal of the Red from his nerves and brain and guts and muscles and sinews, Faucelme took a confused step backward.

Shrue allowed himself to grow until he was twenty feet tall. The morning wind rippled his spidersilk robe like a gray banner. “Now,” rumbled the giant, “do you still have business with me, Faucelme, waylayer of vagabonds, murderer of night-guests and cows and old women?”

The short magus shook his bald head and looked around like a man who had mislaid his teeth.

“Go away then,” said Shrue. He waved his arm and Faucelme flew into the air, and in less than five seconds had become a speck disappearing over the western horizon. Shrue resumed his normal size.

Meriwolt had descended the gangplank. His already rubbery-looking legs seemed especially wobbly after the three weeks of sky-galleon flight. Shrue pocketed the nose box, removed a heavy key from his pocket, and turned to KirdriK, Derwe Coreme, and Meriwolt. “Shall we look inside this library now? KirdriK! Bring my traveling chest. “

Everything looked precisely as it had in the first Library: the same benches, shelves, and thin windows, the same indecipherable books in the same places.

There was a scurry and scuttling in the shadows and the female twin of Mauz Meriwolt — Mauz Mindriwolt — came hurrying forward with a shriek to embrace her brother. The two hugged and kissed and passionately embraced with a duration and intensity not totally proper for a brother and sister, at least — if judging by the glance flashing between them — in the opinion of Derwe Coreme and Shrue the diabolist. KirdriK, still carrying his master’s huge trunk, showed no opinion.

After a moment, Shrue cleared his throat repeatedly until the two untangled themselves.

“Oh!” cried Mindriwolt in a squeaky voice only an octave or so higher than that of her brother’s, “I am so glad to see all of you! It has been so terrible — first the Master, Ulfant Banderoz, turning to stone, and then the earthquakes and the fires and the red sun with its poxed face each morning — oh, I’ve been terrified!”

“I am sure you have, my dear, and as the Red Elemental outside reminded us, there’s nothing we can do to stop the reconvergence in time and space of your Library and the first Library within a day or less. The Dying Earth may truly meet its end before tomorrow’s sunset. But we are still alive and should celebrate small victories while we can.”

“We should indeed,” squeaked Meriwolt. “But first we should go up and pay our respects to this stone body of Ulfant Banderoz, Master Shrue.

May I borrow the nose box for a moment? Our Master — Mindriwolt’s and mine — should not lie there without a nose.”

“You are correct, my little friend,” Shrue said somberly. “And if I’d not needed to find this place, I never would have used the chisel in the way I did.” He removed the nose box but hesitated and then pocketed it again. “But at this moment, Meriwolt, my old bones ache from the voyage and my nerves quiver from the terror of the near-showdown with the Elementals. Is there any place in this stone keep where we can step outside into sunlight for a moment of relaxation and refreshment before paying our respects?”

“The terrace at the end of the hallway outside our Master’s bedroom?” said Mindriwolt in her tiny, sweet, uncertain voice.

“That will do nicely,” said Shrue. “Come along, KirdriK. Do not jostle the refreshments.”

The Dying Earth was alive with earthquake tremors. Boulders crashed down avalanche chutes and trees vibrated in the thick forest. The sun was laboring harder than ever to climb toward the zenith and even the flickering sunlight felt uncertain. Still, the morning air was bracing as the Mauz twins, the warrior maid, the daihak, and the diabolist stepped out onto the open terrace. In the clearing and orchard below, the six Myrmazons had set up tents for an overnight stay and were exercising the megillas. Shiolko had moored the galleon to the huge tree near the waterfall and his sons were rolling giant water casks up and down the gangplank as the passengers stretched their legs in the meadow.

“It’s a good day to be alive,” said Shrue.

“Every day is a good day to be alive,” said Derwe Coreme.

“Let’s drink to that,” said the diabolist. Despite Meriwolt’s and Mindriwolt’s impatience, he took his time removing a deep bucket of ice from the large trunk KirdriK had set down. From the ice, he slowly removed a magnum of sparkling goldwine. Then he removed four crystal flutes from their careful padding.

“We should look in on the Master’s body…” began Meriwolt.

“All in good time,” said Shrue. He handed the brother and sister and then Derwe Coreme their flutes, filled theirs with bubbling wine, and then filled his own. “This is the best of my cellars,” he said proudly. “Three hundred years old and just reached its prime. There’s no finer sparkling goldwine in or on all the Dying Earth.”

He raised his flute in a toast and the others raised theirs. “To knowing that every day is a good day to be alive,” he said and drank. The others drank. KirdriK watched without interest. Shrue refilled all of their glasses.

“My dear,” he said to Derwe Coreme, “I’ll be staying here at the Second Library, no matter what happens. Do you have plans?”

“If the world doesn’t end in a day, do you mean?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“Yes,” said Shrue.

Derwe Coreme shrugged slightly and smiled. “The girls and I have discussed it. Our guess is that we’re about