The apparition raised its head, and the nothingness of its eyes blazed with emotion:
A moment later, and the ringing gongs fell silent; the walls of the drowned city were dark, blind and broken as before.
Manxolio said, “There is a tale of Guyal of Sfere, a boy born bereft of wits. In punishment for his endless curiosity, he was sent forth to seek the mythical Museum of Man beyond the lands of the Saponids. What he found there, none know.”
The youth, now called Guyal of Sferendelume, Curator of the Museum of Man, addressed Manxolio Quinc: “Evidently Guyal of Sfere — if I am he — found the Curator and assumed his post.”
“Nothing else could explain the bizarre expanse of your knowledge. Your ancestral specter spoke words of ominous import. It is the titan Magnatz — a name of terror — who destroyed your ancestral home here, and who approaches now.”
“By what do you deduce this?”
“First, many of the craters here look suspiciously like footprints of vast dimensions; second, rumors spread in my city to the effect that the Sorcerer Iszmagn seeks to extort vast wealth from Romarth, feeding on our fear of Magnatz as a vulture feeds on rancid meat; third, I see between the crest of yonder two hills the motion as of a third hill, but this one covered with hair, not trees, and two lakes suspiciously like eyes. Magnatz is upon us!”
“Since we cannot outrun the event, our choices are limited to seclusion, negotiation, and deterrence.”
The noise of the footfalls was like repeated thunder. Like a rising harvest moon, the head of Magnatz hove into view between the hilltops, huge and pale.
Manxolio draw himself to his full height. “What need have we to talk or run? Does this monstrosity not also threaten Romarth? Then he is my foe as well! Have you not restored this dread weapon, the very Implacable Dark Iron Wand itself? One bolt remains, you said! Hah-La! I have no need of two!”
Unlimbering the Wand to its full length, Manxolio flourished it the direction of the monster, whose shoulders and torso were now visible over the hilltops. A secondary aiming-beam lashed out with a finger of red fire, scorching Magnatz slightly along one cheek. Instead of a beam of furious destruction, a whining note issued from the rod, which plaintively dropped in pitch and trailed off.
“Ah,” exclaimed Guyal, “That was unexpected.”
Magnatz roared in fury, and pulled up the crest of a hill to hurl at them. While the titan was still hefting the broken peak aloft, Manxolio called on the Wand and established a zone of lightlessness like a smothering cloud. Both men sprinted with agility: they heard a noise like the end of the world as numberless tons of rock and dirt, trees and topsoil, fell short and missed them. Only gravel like stinging hail smote them.
Manxolio adjusted the Zone of Primary Nigrescence to position it overhead. To them, it was a roof; to the titan, a lake to wade in.
He displayed the Wand to Guyal. “Examine this. What is the error?”
Guyal communed with the instrument. “No error. It is a safety feature. The aiming register senses that the titan has a charmed life, rendering him immune to fire, fear, iron, pain, or directed energy. Magnatz can neither starve, choke, nor drown, because he is surrounded by a system of runic pulses that ward his vitality in nine directions. The rod will not discharge, as the bolt would have merely returned on its flow path, and slain you.”
“Perhaps we could lure him into a pit of eighty fathoms.”
“The plan is commendable in theory, but otherwise not actionable.”
Manxolio said, “Your Analept! I can see that it seethes with eldritch ultra-dimensional energies. Can it blast Magnatz with a spurt of extraordinary fire, or, failing that, open a port to a far world wherein we might end our days, perhaps as unhappy exiles solacing ourselves with exotic native girls and strange unearthly wines, but end our days, lo, long years rather than short minutes hence?”
Guyal twisted the shining object from a square to a cruciform to a triangle, and between the brass bars of the armature there seemed to hang distant stars in a void. “I fear not. The effluvium of nullity is not anchored on this end, and there is no potentium closer than Romarth wherewith to affix it. If I put tension on the strand through overspace, the mass would merely be drawn to the nearest gravitating body. Portage to Sferendelume this cannot presently supply.”
“Useless geegaw! Then what
“By itself, it has sufficient lifting force to hale a man, nothing more massive, into the upward spaces.”
But there was no more time for speaking. Large as the funnels of two strangely parallel tornados, the legs of the titan were visible beneath the cloudy zone of darkness, wading toward them, a stormcloud of dust and brush and broken stones at his heels.
Then came a sound like the wind being torn in two, and a mighty truncheon, some huge fasci made of bundled pine trunks, came through the nigrescent zone and smote the ground. But the blow went astray: a hundred feet to the east of the two men, there was a cataclysm; the earth puked up a fountain where the bludgeon struck, and now there was a little, barren valley, half a dozen paces across, filled with steam.
Manxolio looked at the Dark Iron Wand. “Well, perhaps negotiation should have been our first attempt. Was there not a second efficacy you restored to this instrument?”
Guyal did not answer him, for the two men heard the noise of the descending bludgeon and took to their heels. The cloak of darkness under which they cowered permitted the two adventurers, for frantic minutes while they hopped and dodged in wild, eccentric leaps, to evade the thunderous blows of the truncheon of Magnatz.
Guyal hissed over the noise of tumbling stones, “Address him! Mask my motions!” and he ran swiftly toward the huge, creaking feet of the giant.
Manxolio, white-faced with terror, for a moment could not bring himself to speak. Then he saw his fastidiously lacquered and brushed hat, which had fallen from his head in his gyrations, laying in tatters in a smoking crater-mouth. That image resolved his courage.
He called out, “Magnatz! Heed me! Destroy me not, for I have news that concerns you!”
The truncheon went above the dark cloud, as if readying for another blow, but instead came words, huge and deep, as if a volcano spoke: “What news of little men could concern me? My life is charmed, and nothing can destroy it. Each year I grow in size. I push up mountains with my stride, fill wide valleys with my spew. I am as vast and as terrible as the sea.”
Manxolio drew a shivering breath, clenching his teeth to prevent them from chattering. “All too true, great Magnatz! And yet I have dire news. The Sorcerer Iszmagn cheats you!”
“My brother? Cheats me how?”
“Iszmagn foretells your coming to quaking towns, and extorts from them rich treasures, women of allure, gold and bezants plentiful beyond count. Does he share these assets with you? He bathes in a tub of porphyry filled with steaming milk, while round-hipped virgins feed him delectable grapes and coo amorous ditties to trifle away the nights! What does he do for you? Where is the gold of Magnatz?”
A laugh answered him, like the gust of a hurricane. “Nay, it is I who cheat him! For all his dreadful lore, he
