vines took to hunting for themselves, snapping out to catch any bird or bat so unwise as to fly within their reach.
The enchasmates, having made slings out of sandal-laces, would then fire small stones, striking the vines and causing them to drop their prey, upon which the slingers themselves would then gladly fasten, bearing the small tattered flesh back to the shelters built under the more concave angles of the chasm’s walls. So were they provided with sustenance.
Then it chanced that a mining engineer from Erze Damath displeased Justice Rhabdion in some wise, and was inadequately searched before being thrown down the chasm. Certain tools he had concealed in his boots, and, once resigned to his misfortune, he retreated under the most acute of the leaning walls and there excavated, patiently chipping away at strata of porous aggregate to make yet deeper shelter from winter hail and the melancholy red light of the sun.
In time, his work provided the enchasmates with water, for he broke into a subterranean spring, relieving them thereby of the need to collect the bloody dewfall that dripped from the vines in early mornings — and with currency, for he struck upon a vein of purest gold, which was pounded into roundels and traded amongst them all in exchange for certain favors.
So a kind of society grew up at the bottom of the chasm, with its own customs and pleasures, all unnoticed by Justice Rhabdion, whose eyesight had waned as he grew older. Still he sat on his balcony through the fine purple evenings, chuckling at the occasional howls of despair that rose to his hearing from below.
Cugel, sometimes known as Cugel the Clever, became an enchasmate on the first day of spring, and the boom of the ice floes breaking on the river Scaum echoed off the upper walls of the chasm as he came pin-wheeling downward. He struck the sandy floor with a crash, and awhile lay stunned, long enough for the other inhabitants of that place to come creeping out to see whether he lived or no, and, if dead were the case, whether he had been a well-nourished and sedentary man. Alas for their hopes, Cugel detected their stealthy approach and sat up sharply.
Seeing him alive and whole, the foremost of the unfortunates smiled at Cugel. “Welcome, stranger! How have you offended, to end here?
Cugel scrambled to his feet and looked about him. He saw a score of wretches, some in the rags in which they had arrived, others in coverings of bat or mouse skins torturously pieced together by the use of bird-bone needles and short lengths of dried gut.
“Offended?” said Cugel. “Not in the least. There was a trifling misunderstanding, which was, sadly, blown out of all proportion by a jealous suitor. My advocate was astonished that the matter even came before the Dais of Adjudication. ‘Friend Cugel,’ he said to me, just before I was cast down here, ‘Do not let your fiery spirits dampen! I will appeal your case and these baseless charges shall melt away, even as the ice upon great Scaum.’ So much he said, and I am confident in his powers of persuasion.”
“No doubt,” said the nearest enchasmate, a splay-footed man with red hair, that hung to his shoulders in tangled ringlets. “And what, pray, is the name of your excellent friend?”
“Pestary Yoloss of Cutz is the man,” said Cugel. The massed enchasmates smiled amongst themselves.
“Why, Pestary was
“And mine,” said a swarthy man of Sfere.
“And mine,” echoed many others. They laughed, then, at Cugel’s pale face, and, for the most part turned away to their own affairs. The red-haired man approached more closely, and, drawing a small pouch from his loincloth, opened it with two fingers and worked forth three flattened nuggets of gold, looking less like coins than pieces of trodden farlock dung. These he offered to Cugel, would Cugel but grant him certain privileges of Cugel’s person.
Cugel declined the transaction, though he looked thoughtfully at the gold.
He beat the sand from his clothing and made a slow circuit of the bottom of the chasm, gazing up at the vines of Saskervoy and noting how they twitched at the passing flight of a bird, sometimes lashing out to snap one from midair. He saw, too, how expert certain of the enchasmates were at knocking down the vines’ prey. All the life of the community Cugel observed with shrewd eyes, before settling down with his long back against the chasm’s wall and his long legs stretched out before him. He had been wearing a liripipe hood when he had been thrown into the chasm, sewn with a pattern of red and green diamonds, and he removed it now and delved into the recesses of its long point. At his arm’s length, he found what he sought, drawing forth in his nimble fingers a pair of spotted cubes of bone.
Thereafter, Cugel won himself many a succulent lizard or wren, and accrued a considerable store of gold, in games of chance with the other enchasmates. Seeing, however, that an unpopular man was unlikely to last long in that society, Cugel was at pains to distribute largesse of marrow-bone and pelts to his fellow prisoners, and made himself pleasant in divers other ways, primarily conversation. He found, to his irritation, that none were especially interested in hearing his traveler’s tales; but each man, once encouraged to speak of his own life, went on at great length and seemed to relish having someone to listen.
Some were sycophantic courtiers whose flattery had failed them; some were petty murderers; some had disputed the amount of taxes they owed. Kroshod, the engineer from Erze Damath, had been a visitor unaware of local custom when he had most unwisely failed to tie three lengths of red string to the handle of his innroom door before retiring. To all these, Cugel listened with well-concealed boredom, nodding and occasionally tapping the side of his long nose and murmuring “Ha! What injustice!” or “Monstrous! How I do condole with you, sir!”.
At last, he made the acquaintance of a certain elderly man in rags of velvet, who sat alone, wreathed in violet melancholy. Him Cugel approached with bland affability, inviting a wager on the cast of a single die. The elder looked at him sidelong and chewed his yellowed mustache a moment before replying.
“I thank you, sir, but no. I have never gambled, and have learned, to my grief, to avoid straying outside my field of expertise.”
“And pray, sir, what would that be?” inquired Cugel, seating himself beside the other.
“You see before you Meternales, a Sage, erstwhile master of a thousand librams and codices. Had I been content with what I held for mine own, I would even now be stretched at mine ease, in far Cil; but I yielded to greed and curiosity, and see to what extremity I am brought for my treasure-hunting!”
“Perhaps you would elucidate,” said Cugel, scenting useful information. Meternales rolled a wet eye at him.
“Hast ever heard of Daratello the Psitticist? He was a mage, and a pupil of none less than great Phandaal. Deep and subtle was his power, and prudent his employment of it; yet he was hunted to his death long ago, for reasons which he ought to have foreseen.”
“I do not believe I know the name. Was he slain by thieves? And did they, perhaps, fail nevertheless to obtain his fortune? Which is, by chance, somewhere still concealed for some fortunate wayfarer to find?” said Cugel, hitching himself a little closer to Meternales, in the hope that he would lower his voice and thereby exclude other listeners.
“So it happened,” said Meternales. “But the fortune was not, as you might imagine, in brassbound chests or bags of impermeable silk. His fortune was in spells. I, myself, once owned librams containing one hundred and six spells surviving from the age of Phandaal. Daratello, they say, had preserved double that number, in volumes borne away in stealth from Grand Motholam. Yet Daratello was only a man, as you or I, though a passing clever man. I have spent a life in study and austerities, and still can commit to memory no more than five spells of reasonable puissance at any one time. Daratello could memorize as much, it is said, but no more. His genius lay in the shifts he devised to circumvent his limits.
“There was a merchant traveled from the Land of the Falling Wall, who brought with him a pair of bright- feathered birdlings, and said they could be taught the speech of men. Daratello purchased them from the merchant, and took them away to his isolate redoubt, and there in seclusion taught each one half the spells he had preserved.
“Our human minds cannot contain so much. I hold my five spells after a lifetime’s training; any attempt to memorize more would twist the matter of my brain to madness. Any common man would find his nose running and his eyes crossing were he to fill the hollow of his skull with more than one cantrap, and as many as three would break him in seizures and incontinence. Yet a bird’s mind is bright and empty, heedless of human care or ambition; and it is the delight of green-feathered birds of that sort to memorize and store what they hear.
