“It is a complex issue and not easily distilled,” said Vasker. “In brief, Iucounu the Laughing Magician stole certain of our limbs and organs. We sent Cugel to retrieve them, armed with knowledge that would put an end to Iucounu for all time. Our limbs and organs were restored, but they were returned to us in less than perfect condition. Thus we limp and scratch and shake, and poor Pelasias is forced to communicate his dismay as might a sick hound.”
It seemed to Thiago that Vasker had summarized the matter quite neatly. “And you blame Cugel? Why not Iucounu or one of his servants? Perhaps the manner in which the limbs and organs were stored is at fault. It may be that an impure concentrate was used. Your explanation does not ring true.”
“You fail to comprehend the full scope of Cugel’s iniquity. I can…”
“I know him as well as any man,” said Thiago. “He is spiteful, greedy, and uses people without conscience or concern. Yet never has he acted without reason. You must have done him a grievous injury to warrant such vindictiveness.”
Led by Pelasias’ groaning commentary, the magicians vehemently protested this judgment. Archimbaust was eloquent in their defence. “Our last night together we toasted one another with Iucounu’s wine and feasted on roast fowl from his pantry,” he said. “We sang ribald tunes and exchanged amusing anecdotes. Indeed, Pelasias performed the Five Amiable Assertions, thus consecrating the moment and binding us to friendship.”
“If that is the case, I would counsel you to think well before you dissemble further.” The serving girl set down his tea and Thiago inhaled the pungent steam rising from the pot. “I have little tolerance for ordinary liars and none whatsoever for duplicitous magicians.”
The four men withdrew to the doorway and talked agitatedly among themselves (Pelasias giving forth with plaintive whimpers). After listening for a minute or so, the young man hissed in apparent dissatisfaction. He doffed his hat, releasing a cloud of dark hair, and revealed himself to be a young woman with comely features: a pointy chin and lustrous dark eyes and cunning little mouth arranged in a sullen pout. She would have been beautiful, but her face was so etched with scars, she resembled a patchwork thing. The largest scar ran from the hinge of her jaw down her neck and was wider than the rest, looking as though the intent had been not to disfigure, but to kill. She came toward Thiago and spoke in an effortful hoarse whisper that he assumed to be a byproduct of that wound.
“They claim that while taking inventory of Iucounu’s manse, Cugel happened upon a map made by the magician Pandelume, who dwells on a planet orbiting a distant star,” she said. “The map marks the location of a tower. Within the tower are spells that will permit all who can master them to survive the sun’s death.”
“Cugel’s behavior becomes comprehensible,” said Thiago. “He wished to disable his pursuit.”
The magicians hobbled over from the door. Vasker cast a sour glance at the young woman. “This, then, is our offer,” he said to Thiago. “We will convey you and Derwe to a spot near Joko Anwar, the site of Pandelume’s tower. There you will…”
“Who is this Derwe?”
“Derwe Coreme of the House of Domber,” the woman said. “I ruled in Cil until I ran afoul of your
“Was it Cugel who marked you so?”
“He did not wield the knives. That was the fancy of the Busacios, a race vile both in form and disposition who inhabit the Great Erm. Yet Cugel is responsible for my scars and more besides. In exchange for information, he handed me over to the Busacios as if I were a bag of tiffle.”
“To continue,” said Vasker in a peremptory tone. “Once there you will enter the tower and immobilize Cugel. He must be kept alive until we have questioned him. Do this and you will share in all we learn.”
The serving girl brought the glace — Thiago inspected his plate with satisfaction.
“When we have done with him,” Vasker went on, “you may extract whatever pleasure you can derive from his torment.” He paused. “Can we consider the bargain sealed?”
“Sealed?” Thiago hitched his shoulders, generating a series of gratifying pops. “Our negotiation has just begun. Is that a spell sniffer I observe about Archimbaust’s neck? And that amulet dangling from Disserl’s hat, it is one that induces a sudden sleep, is it not? Such trinkets would prove invaluable on a journey such as you propose. Then there is the question of my fee. Sit, gentlemen. You may pick at my glace if you wish. Let us hope by the time the meal is done, you will have succeeded in satisfying my requirements.”
The forest known as the Great Erm had the feeling and aspect of an immense cathedral in ruins. Enormous trees swept up into the darkness of the canopy like flying buttresses and from that ceiling depended masses of foliage that might have been shattered roof beams shrouded in tapestries ripped from the walls, the result of an ancient catyclysm. Occasionally Derwe Coreme and Thiago heard faint obsessive tappings and cries that could have issued from no human throat; once they saw an ungainly white shape drop from the canopy and flap off into the gloom, dwindling and dwindling, becoming a point of whiteness, seeming to vanish ultimately into a distance impossible to achieve in so dense a wood, as if it had burrowed into the substance of the real and was making its way toward a destination that lay beyond the borders of the world. The hummocky ground they trod broke into steep defiles and hollows, and every surface was sheathed in moss and lichen, transforming a tallish stump into an ogre’s castle of orange and black, and a fallen trunk into a fairy bridge that spanned between a phosphorescent green boulder and a ferny embankment beneath which long-legged spiders with doorknob-sized bodies wove almost invisible webs wherein they trapped the irlyx, gray man-shaped creatures no bigger than a clothespin that struggled madly against the strands of silk and squeaked and thrust with tiny spears as the hairy abdomens of their captors, stingers extruded, lowered to strike.
It was Derwe who first sighted Pandelume’s tower, a slender needle of yellowish stone showing the middle third of its height through a gap in the foliage. From atop a rise, they saw that beyond the tower, the land declined into a serpentine valley, barely a notch between hills, where several dozen huts with red conical roofs were situated on a bend in a river; beyond the valley, the Great Erm resumed. They hastened toward the tower, but their path was impeded by a deep gorge that had been hidden from their eyes by vegetation. They walked beside it for half an hour but found no spot sufficiently narrow to risk jumping across. The walls of the gorge were virtually concave and the bottom was lost in darkness, thus they had no hope of climbing down and then up the opposite side.
“Those fools have sent us here for nothing!” Derwe Coreme rasped.
“Patience finds a way,” Thiago said. “Soon it will be dark. I suggest we camp by the stream we crossed some minutes ago and wait out the night.”
“Are you aware what night brings in the Great Erm? Bargebeetles. Gids and thyremes. Monstrosities of every stamp. A Deodand has been trailing us for the past hour. Do you wish to share your blanket with him?”
“Where is he? Point him out!”
She gazed at him quizzically. “He stands there, in back of the oak with the barren lower limb.”
Thiago strode directly toward the oak.
Not having anticipated so bold an approach, the Deodand, upon seeing Thiago, took a backward step, his silver eyes widening with surprise. His handsome black devil’s face gaped, exposing an inch more of the fangs that protruded from the corners of his mouth. Thiago gave him a two-handed push, adding to his momentum, and sent him sprawling. He caught one of his legs, stepped over it, dropped to his back and, holding the foot to his belly, he braced against the creature’s body and rolled, wrenching the knee from its socket and — though the flesh felt like petrified wood — fracturing the ankle. The Deodand emitted a throaty scream and screamed again as Thiago stood and drove a heel into his other knee. He repeated the action and heard a crack. Unable to stand, the Deodand crawled after him, his breath hissing. Thiago nimbly eluded his grasp and snapped the elbow joints with deft heel- stomps. He kicked him in the head, to no visible affect. However, he kept on kicking and at last a silver eye burst, cracks spreading across it as they might in a sheet of ice, and fluid spilled forth.
The Deodand thrashed about, keening in frustration.
“How can this be? That you, a human, could have bested me?”
He spoke no more, for Derwe Coreme kneeled at his side and pricked his throat with a thin-bladed knife, causing him to gag, whereupon she sliced off his carmine tongue and stuffed it into his mouth. Within seconds, he had drowned, choking on the blood pouring into his throat.
“I could have dealt with the Deodand,” Derwe Coreme said as they retraced their steps toward the stream. “And with far greater efficiency.”
Thiago made an impertinent sound with his tongue. “Yet you gave no sign of doing so.”
