Songs of the Dying Earth

architecture and surveying — tripods and alidades, chains and rods, altazimuths and dividing engines. Are they proposing to build something there?”

“The opposite,” said Ambius. “They intend destruction. They measure precisely the distance and angle to the castle, so that the Projectors may be better aimed so as to blast us to ruin.”

Vespanus paused for a moment to absorb the melancholy implications of this revelation. Suddenly, diving into the Dimwer did not seem so dreadful a plan. Ambius, who now seemed very diminished in his grand array, slowly rose to his feet.

“I fear it is time to visit my wife,” he said.

Curious, Vespanus followed Ambius to his quarters. Ambius either did not mind his presence, or was unaware of it. The Protostrator disarmed the various traps on his door, then led Vespanus again into his study.

This time he found himself with a better view of the Protostrate — she was a buxom woman, with wiry hair, and, even at her current size, a piercing voice. From the Protostrator’s attempts to communicate with her, Vespanus gathered her name was Amay.

Amay began abusing Ambius as soon as he entered the room and continued throughout the interview. The gist of her comments — leaving aside the personal references to Ambius, his person, and his habits — was that she would delight in the destruction of the castle, and would not prevent it if she could.

Perceiving that his arguments were futile, Ambius shrugged and walked to a shelf, where he found a vial filled with an amber liquid. Loosening the stopper, he poured a single drop into the neck of the crystal bottle, whereupon Amay staggered, spat, and collapsed into unconsciousness.

“Sometimes it is necessary to think in silence,” he said, as he returned the vial to its shelf, “and this narcotic will guarantee my peace for some hours.”

“Very effective,” Vespanus observed.

Ambius contemplated the supine figure of his wife. “I fear that six years in a glass bowl has given her an unshakable prejudice against me,” he said.

“That would appear to be the case,” Vespanus said. “Would it help if I conducted a private conversation with her?”

Ambius gave him a doleful look. “Do you think it would help?” he asked.

Vespanus shrugged his most hopeless shrug. “Truth to tell, I believe it would not.”

Vespanus went to the buttery and helped himself to bread, cheese, and liquor. He wondered if he might, that evening, hurl himself from the Onyx Tower into the Dimwer and survive, perhaps with the help of Hegadil, and then be carried to freedom by the current.

Unlikely, he thought. The defenders of the castle would only be the first to shoot at him.

He considered those Calabrandene engineers with their alidades and dividing engines, and the smug smiles that had been reported on the faces of the Exarch’s magicians. He considered how the Basileopater and the Exarch had dismissed him as insignificant, and how all his schemes for the defense of the castle had come to nothing.

“Even their sandestins are stronger than mine,” he muttered, which led his thoughts to consideration of the nature of the sandestins, their ability to travel freely in the chronosphere, to visit Earth in any eon from its fiery birth to its long icy sleep beneath the dim stars and dead sun. Then he considered how this ability to travel in time had affected their psychology, had made the sandestins and their lesser cousins, the madlings, extraordinarily accepting of whatever environment in which they found themselves. So different, so wildly diverse, were the scenes which a sandestin could view during the course of its existence, that Vespanus supposed they had no choice but to accept the world with a literalness that, in a human, would prove a serious handicap…

As he considered this, along with thoughts of the engineers and the smug smiles of the enchanters, his mind alighted upon an idea that had him sitting up with a start. He spat out his mouthful of cheese, then liberated Hegadil from his thumb-ring.

“I desire you to visit again the sandestin beneath the platform,” he said, “and inquire if it has been instructed to prevent you from adding to, rather than subtracting from, the structure.”

“I will ask,” Hegadil said.

He was back a moment later.

“Quaad has not been so instructed,” Hegadil said.

“Into the ring, now!” Vespanus said. “For I must visit the Protostrator.”

From the Onyx Tower, Ambius was watching the enemy platform, where the first of the Projectors, still in its cradle, was being dragged into position.

“I have an idea,” he said.

At Vespanus’ instruction, Hegadil slowly added to the substance of the platform, raising the side facing the castle until the platform sloped, very slightly, with the muzzles of the Projectors raised somewhat above their intended angle. The sandestin Quaad observed these actions and — as Hegadil was not undermining anything — did not act.

When the sickly sun began its daily crawl above the eastern horizon, Vespanus and Ambius saw that both armies had been fully deployed, ready to storm the castle once it had been sufficiently reduced. The Exarch’s banner floated above the platform, amid his great Projectors. On the other side of the castle, the Basileopater of Pex stood before a snow-white pavilion, his elite guard ranked before him.

“Any moment now,” Ambius said, and before the last word had passed his lips, the Projectors fired, and the Halcyon Detonation soared over the castle’s towers to explode amid their allies of Pex. The Basileopater’s pavilion vanished in a great sheet of flame and dust. Salvo followed salvo, one enormous thunderclap detonation after another. The Basileopater’s army dissolved beneath a brilliant series of flame-flowers.

Nor did the Exarch or his forces observe this, for Vespanus, utilizing the magics that had served him as an architect, had built an illusory castle wall in front of the genuine wall, one identical to the original. As the Projectors fired round after round, Vespanus created illusory explosions against the wall, along with encouraging floods of debris. To the Exarch, it would look as if he was slowly but surely blasting Castle Abrizonde into the dust.

Vespanus delighted in this glorious demonstration of his art. Let them disregard him again, he thought, and he would serve them likewise!

It was nearly half an hour before word at last reached the Exarch that his plan had miscarried. The Projectors ceased their fire. The Exarch was seen storming about on the platform, lambasting his magicians and thrashing his engineers with his wand of office.

From the army of Pex, nothing was heard except the sounds of cries and wailing.

Thus it stood for the balance of the day. At midafternoon, a twk-man flew to Ambius.

“I bring a message from the Logothete Terrinoor, who now commands the army of Pex,” said the new arrival. “The Logothete and the army of Pex burn with a desire to avenge the death of their lord at the hands of the treacherous Calabrandene,”

“I am interested in any proposal the Logothete may offer,” said Ambius.

“The Logothete proposes to attack the Exarch in the middle of the night,” said the twk-man, “but in order to accomplish this, he will have to pass the army beneath the walls of the castle. May he have your permission?”

Ambius could not conceal his expression of grim triumph. “He may,” he said. “But if there is treachery, we will defend ourselves.”

The twk-man, refreshed with a gift of salt, carried this message back to the Logothete. Thus it was that, in the dead of night, Ambius and Vespanus watched the army of Pex move in silence past the castle and march in silence toward the army of Calabrande. The Calabrandene had scouts and sentries on the perimeter of their camp, so they were not caught entirely unawares, but the soldiers of Pex were filled with fury at the death of their lord, and their charge carried far into the enemy works. The night was filled with the ferocious sound of snaffle-irons and swords, and brilliant with the flashes of deadly spells.

“Look!” said Ambius. “They carry away the Projectors!”

The attackers had detailed soldiers and beasts of burden to drag the Projectors from their platform to their own camp. These great objects were carried off with great labor as the army of Pex was driven slowly back from the enemy works, and as the great weapons passed the castle, a Calabrandene counterattack drove the army of Pex back, and suddenly there was fighting in front of the very gates of Castle Abrizonde.

“Shoot!” Ambius cried to his soldiers. He drew his sword. “Drive them all away! If we can mount the Projectors on the walls of the castles, we will be invulnerable!”

The soldiers of the Protostrator fired from the castle walls into the mass of warriors below, boom-rocks and