Songs of the Dying Earth

American Fantasy 2.

They live in Tallahassee, Florida.

In the ornate story that follows, the wizard Sarnod, who has dwelt for untold ages in a lonely stone tower on an island in Lake Bakeel, imperiously dispatches two of his most potent servants on a hair-raisingly dangerous mission to the fabulous realms of the Under Earth, with the odds of success stacked dramatically against them — although if they do succeed, their victory may have consequences that no one could ever have expected.

The morning the Nose of Memory arrived to destroy his calm, the Wizard Sarnod rose as on any other day late in the life of the Dying Earth. He donned his sea-green robes woven from the scales of a monstrous fish and stared out the window that graced the top of his tower. Soon, he would descend for his daily breakfast of salamanders — one served cold for memory, one served hot for his heart, and one served living for his brain — but first he sought the selfish comfort of surveying his lands.

The tower stood upon an island that lay at the center of Lake Bakeel, fed by a lingering finger of the Derna River. Beyond the lake lay the gnarled forests and baleful grasslands through which none, not even erb or Deodand, traveled without his knowledge or permission. Despite this mastery, Sarnod found that each new morning for more than a year had brought an unease, like a hook in his heart, accompanied by a strange thirst. He seemed always dry, his skin itchy and taut. The bowl of water he kept in his chambers did not help. The fresh, moist smell of the lake beyond came through the window like a thing physical, more threatening than the giant fish that roamed beneath its dark surface.

Sarnod lived alone in the tower but for the companionship of his two servants, both of whom he had ensorcelled to his need, using in part his own blood to bind or build them. The first was named Whisper Bird Oblique Beak, and the creature was always somewhere in the room with him, a subtle guardian of his person. The life of Whisper Bird had a poetry to it beyond Sarnod’s ken, the poetry of silence. Whisper Bird lived invisible and remote, Sarnod’s conversation with him ever terse yet ethereal.

At that moment, Whisper Bird spoke in Sarnod’s ear, startling him. Whisper Bird said, “On the golden dais beneath The Mouth a creature has appeared from Below.”

“A creature from the UNDERHIND? Impossible,” Sarnod said.

“And yet…probable,” Whisper Bird replied.

Just as there was an Over Earth, so too there were various Under Earths, one of which, nameless or unspeakable, Sarnod had found and harnessed to his will. He called it simply UNDERHIND, in the Speech of De- emphasis, because it was tiny, and there all the enemies he had punished lived miniaturized amid honeycombs of tunnels and caverns in the full knowledge, as Sarnod liked to think, of the enormity of their defeat.

“I will investigate,” Sarnod said, and as if in response Whisper Bird passed through him to the door in a wave of cold and heat that made him shudder—what manner of ghost, what manner of being, had he harnessed?

Together, man visible and creature invisible, they went to see what had thus intruded on their daily ritual.

Every Morning, Sarnod’s other servant, T’sais Prime, prepared his breakfast of salamanders. But this morning, Sarnod’s salamanders — green-glowing, plucked from the rich mud of the lake — lay forgotten on the kitchen counter, eyeless (for Sarnod did not like to see his food staring at him). The sounds of breathing came from the Seeing Hall beyond, where stood The Mouth and the golden dais.

The Mouth had been part of the tower long before Sarnod had taken up residence there. The two unblinking eyes above its inscrutable lips Sarnod himself had created — each a portal to a section of the UNDERHIND. Just as he did not like his food staring at him, he did not like a mouth without eyes. Under Sarnod’s thaumaturgies, The Mouth now functioned also as a secret portal back from the UNDERHIND.

The Mouth had spoken only three times.

The first time it had said, “Beware the falsehood of memory.”

The second time it had said, “What man can truly know but you?”

The third time it had said, “The fish rots from the head.”

Little else had ever come out of it but stenches and perfumes. Until now.

In the ancient Seeing Hall, The Mouth and golden dais lay at the far end. To the left hung the huge circle of a shimmering window, through which the lake and sky reflected against the white marble in a myriad shades of blue.

Near the dais, T’sais Prime watched over the intruder. Her pale, dark-haired presence both loosened the hook in his heart and sent it mercilessly deep. Arms folded, she stared down at the dais with a blank look. T’sais Prime was the reflection of a woman created in the vats from tales and potions brought from far-distant Embelyon. Nothing of that reflection had ever been his, for she did not want him, and he chose not to coerce her, nor even inform her as to her true nature. She seemed to have none of the passion and fire of the original — some aspect of the formula he’d failed to master and which continued to elude him.

As guarded in her way as Whisper Bird was in his, T’sais only raised one eyebrow upon Sarnod’s approach. That her expression was always half wistful, half sullen, pained him. She was the last from the now-cold vats; frustrated by his failures, Sarnod had turned his energies elsewhere.

“What is this thing that has come to us?” Sarnod asked.

“It has no head and yet it lives,” T’sais said. “It lives, but why?”

“It entered with a blast of cold yet hot air,” Whisper Bird said from somewhere to Sarnod’s left.

Sarnod drew nearer. What T’sais had caught was trapped under a large bell jar upon the gold dais.

Sarnod took out a magnifying glass from his robes. He had found it in the tower, and like everything in the tower it had its own mind. As he trained the glass on the creature, the oval grew cloudy, then clear, the handle suddenly hot. The thing indeed had no head. It had no eyes. It had no mouth. Although Sarnod looked square upon it, the thing seemed to lose focus, move to the corner of his vision. He thought it was curled up, then longer, like a stretching cat.

A strange thought came to him, from memories far distant, almost not his own: of a dusty book, turned to a certain page.

Sarnod said the thought aloud: “It is called the Nose of Memory. It brings a message of a kind.”

“Shall we destroy it?” Whisper Bird breathed from near Sarnod and then far away.

But Sarnod held up a hand in abeyance. “Let us see what it may offer, first. I will protect us from any harm it might bring.” The unease in Sarnod’s heart beat as steady as ever, but he realized he shared T’sais’ malaise. This intrusion made him curious.

“Are you ready, Whisper Bird?” The animating principle behind Whisper Bird, Sarnod believed, had been both owl and heron — one watchful, one motionless, both deadly when called upon.

As T’sais stood back, Whisper Bird said, “Yesssss” from over Sarnod’s left shoulder. For once, he did not flinch.

Sarnod put away the magnifying glass and surrounded the bell jar with a Spell of True Sizing.

Up, up, up came the Nose of Memory in all of its headless glory, rising and rising until it lay lolling over the sides of the dais, squat and grey and placid, about the size of a worry dog and wearing the bell jar as an awkward, teetering hat. It smelled in an unsatisfactory way of milk and herbs and brine.

Now the Nose of Memory at least resembled its name: a huge nose with five nostrils, completing, in a way, the face on the wall. It lay there for a moment, long enough for Sarnod to step forward. Then it snorted in such a thunderous fashion that even Sarnod flinched.

“Do nothing, Whisper Bird,” Sarnod said, readying a spell of No Effect for what might come after.

Through one nostril and then the next and the next, until all five had ruptured, the Nose of Memory sent messages in a brittle blue smoke, writ in curling letters that, once smelled by Sarnod, blossomed into images in his mind. As the tendrils of smoke grew in length, came together, and began to form clouds, the Nose of Memory grew smaller and smaller until it resided somewhere between its unexpected largeness and its former smallness, and then became just a limp, lifeless deformity.