Compleat Traveller in Black (2 page)

From the vantage point where he sat, he saw Agshad in the attitude of accepting sacrifice: mouth open, eyes closed, hands outstretched and cupped to receive the victims’ blood. On the left Pellidin, who shared Agshad’s body but not his head or limbs, was portrayed in the act of exercising justice: to wit, wringing the life from three persons of indeterminate sex – indeterminate, because Pellidin’s cruel grasp had compressed their bodies into a gelatinous mess and left only their arms and legs sticking out between his carven fingers, much as a child might crush a captured beetle. On the right, Lacrovas was depicted in the mode of obliterating enemies, with a sword in one hand and a morning-star in the other. And finally, facing away from the spot where by preference Duke Vaul had his throne located, there was the second Agshad in the posture of devotion, with hands clasped together and beseeching eyes cast heavenward. That was the aspect of the Quadruple God with which Duke Vaul was least concerned.

Below the dais on which he presided, priests and acolytes by the hundred – predominantly sacrificers, expert in every art of human butchery – wove their lines of movement into traditional magical patterns. Their chanting ascended eerily towards the domed roof, along with the stench of candles made from the fat of those who had earlier hung in the clanking chains before the altar. There was no point in letting their mortal remains go to waste: so held the duke.

But on the other hand there was no point – so far – in any of this ritual. At least, the desired effect had not been accomplished. If even his own consort had not provoked the sought-after reaction, what would? Duke Vaul cast around in his mind.

On impulse, he signalled the deputy chief priest and pointed a hairy-backed finger at the chief priest himself. “Take
him
,”
he directed.

And that was no good, either.

Accordingly, half an hour past noon, he dispatched the temple guard into the city under orders to drive all idle citizens into a courtyard adjacent to the fane. If it wasn’t a matter of quality, reasoned the duke, it might perhaps be a matter of quantity. The second priest – now the chief priest by right of succession – had been consulted, and given as his considered opinion that a hundred all at once might have the desired effect. Duke Vaul, to err on the safe side, had ordained that a thousand should be brought, and had set carpenters and metal smiths to work on extra chain-jangling gallows to accommodate them.

The guardsmen carried out their duties with a will, all the better because they feared the lot might fall on them when Duke Vaul had used up his supply of ordinary townsfolk. They brought in everyone they could catch, and among the crowd was a small man in a black cloak, who seemed to be consumed with uncontrollable merriment.

His hilarity, in fact, was so extreme that it became infectious. The duke, noticing the fact, bellowed across the temple floor in a fit of fury.

“What idiot is that who dares to laugh in such a sacred spot?” his bull voice demanded. “Does the fellow not realize that these are serious matters and may be disturbed by the least misconduct in our actions? Drag him forth and make him stand before me!”

After some delay, because the throng was so dense, the black-clad traveller was escorted to the foot of the dais. He bowed compliantly enough when the rough hand of a guardsman clouted him behind the head, but the cheerful twinkle did not depart from his eyes, and this peculiarity struck Duke Vaul at once.

He began to muse about the consequences of sacrificing one who did not take the Quadruple God seriously, and eventually spoke through the tangle of his beard.

“How do men call you, foolish one?” he boomed.

“I have many names, but one nature.”

“You claim so? Well, we’ll see about
that
! Why are you laughing at these holy matters?”

“But I am not!”

“Then are you laughing at me?” thundered the duke, heaving himself forward on his throne so that the boards of the dais creaked and squealed. His eyes flashed terribly.

“No, I laugh at the foolishness of humankind,” replied the traveller.

“Do you indeed? Hmm! Pray, then, explain in what impressively mirthful manner this foolishness is manifest!”

“Why, thus,” the traveller murmured, and told the story of Tolex and Ripil.

But Duke Vaul did not find the anecdote in the least degree amusing. He commanded that the temple guard should at once search out these two, and fumed while they were hunted down. When they arrived, however, it was as corpses they were laid upon the stone-flagged floor.

“Your Mightiness!” the guardsmen cried respectfully, bowing their heads as one, then let their captain continue.

“Sire, we found these two clasped dying in each other’s arms. Each bore one bloody cudgel; each has a broken skull.”

“Throw them in the river,” snapped Duke Vaul, and resumed his converse with the traveller.

“You arrogate to yourself the right to laugh at human foolishness,” he said, and gave a wicked grin. “Then tell me this: are you yourself entirely wise?”

“Alas, yes,” was the answer. “I have but one nature.”

“If so, you can succeed where all my so-called wise men have failed. See you this idol?”

“I could hardly avoid seeing it. It is a remarkable work of – ah –
art.
”

“It is claimed that a way exists to endow it with life, and when this way is found it will then set forth to lay waste the enemies of this city and execute justice upon them. By every means we have sought to bestow life upon it; we have given it blood, which as you doubtless know is life, from every class and condition of person. Even my consort, who but a few hours ago sat beside me on this throne” – the duke wiped an imaginary tear – “now hangs, throat gashed, on yonder gibbet. Still, though, the idol declines to come alive. We need its aid, for our enemies are abroad in every corner of the world; from Ryovora to the ends of the earth they plot our downfall and destruction.”

The traveller nodded. “Some of what you say is true.”

“Some? Only some? What, then, is false? Tell me! And you had better be correct, or else you shall go to join that stupid chief priest who finally tired my patience! You can see what became of him!”

The traveller glanced up and spread his hands. Indeed it was obvious, what with the second, redly oozing, mouth the priest had lately acquired below his chin.

“Well, first of all,” he said, all trace of laughter fading from his tone, “there does exist a way to bring the idol to life. And, second, yes, it will then destroy the enemies of Acromel. But, third, they do not hide in distant corners of the land. They are present in the city.”

“Say you so?” Duke Vaul frowned. “You may be right, for, knowing what a powerful weapon we wield against them – or shall wield, when we unknot this riddle – they may well be trying to interfere with my experiments. Good! Go on!”

“How so, short of demonstrating what I mean?”

“You?” The duke jerked forward, clutching his throne’s arms so tightly his knuckles glistened white as mutton-fat.
“You
can make the idol come alive?”

The traveller gave a weary and reluctant nod.

“Then do it!” roared Duke Vaul. “But don’t forget! If you fail, a worse fate awaits you than my chief priest suffered!”

“As you wish, so be it,” sighed the traveller. With his staff he made a curved pass in the air. The idol moved.

Agshad in the posture of devotion did not open his clasped hands. But Lacrovas swung his sword, and Duke Vaul’s bearded head sprang from his shoulders. Pellidin let fall the three crushed persons from his hand and seized the body. That he squeezed instead, and the cupped hands of Agshad in the attitude of accepting sacrifice overflowed with ducal blood, expressed like juice from a ripe fruit.

After that the idol stepped down from the altar and began to stamp on the priests.

Thoughtfully, having made his escape unnoticed in the confusion, the traveller took to the road again.

Perhaps there would be nothing worse to witness during this journey than what he had beheld in Acromel. Perhaps there would be something a million times as bad. It was to establish such information that he undertook his journeyings.

In Kanish-Kulya they were fighting a war, and each side was breathing threatenings and slaughter against the other.

“Oh that fire would fall from heaven and burn up our enemies!” cried the Kanishmen.

“Oh that the earth would open and swallow up our enemies!” cried the Kulyamen.

“As you wish,” said the traveller, “so be it.”

He tapped the ground with his staff, and Fegrim who was pent in a volcano answered that tapping and heaved mightily. Afterwards, when the country was beginning to sprout again – for lava makes fertile soil – men dug up bones and skulls as they prepared the land for planting.

On the shores of Lake Taxhling, men sat around their canoes swapping lies while they waited for a particular favorable star to ascend above the horizon. One lied better than all the rest.

But he lied not as his companions lied – to pass the time, to amuse each other harmlessly. He lied to feed a consuming vanity hungrier than all the bellies of all the people in the villages along the shores of the lake, who waited day in, day out, with inexhaustible patience for their menfolk to return with their catch.

Said the braggart, “If only I could meet with such another fish as I caught single-handed in Lake Moroho when I was a stripling of fifteen!
Then
you would understand the fisherman’s art! Alas, though” – with a sigh – “there are only piddling fish in Lake Taxhling!”

“As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had accepted the offer of food by their fire. Duly, the next dawn, the boaster came home shouting with excitement about a huge fish he had caught, the same size as the one from Lake Moroho. His companions crowded round to see it – and the mountains rang with their laughter, because it was smaller than most of what they themselves had taken during the night.

Thus shamed, the braggart fled, and was no more heard of in those parts.

“I do not wish a man to love me for my looks or my fortune,” declared the haughty daughter of a landed lord in the city Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky owing to the presence of the bright being Sardhin chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.

“No!” she continually insisted, dismissing suitor after suitor. “I wish to be loved for myself, for what I am!”

“As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts organized that this lady might view potential husbands. Nine men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion’s face and gone to supper.

The next time a tourney was announced, no challenger appeared. Pulling a face, the girl demanded that more heralds be sent forth. Her father summoned a hundred of them. The news was noised abroad in every city. And in each, all the personable young men said, “Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? Ho-ho! I’ve better ways to pass my time, and so’ve my friends!”

This news was brought to her, and made for misery.

On learning later, in the way of gossip, how many of those whom she had fancied in her heart of hearts had married other girls – some, even common wenches from a shop or farm – in preference to herself, she felt her pride evaporate. She learned to curb her mocking tongue and hoity-toity ways; she recognized that so behaving had not made her happy, but only fed her vaunting self-esteem.

One night, at last, a young man was obliged by chance to ask for lodging at her father’s mansion, that on the strength of her ill repute he had intended to avoid, and found not the precocious termagant old friends had warned him of, but a pretty, pleasant, ordinary girl, and married her.

Thus the journey approached its end. The traveller felt a natural relief that nothing unduly alarming had occurred as he hastened his footsteps towards the goal and climax of his excursion – towards Ryovora, where folk were sensible and clear-sighted, and made no trouble that he had to rectify. After this final visit, he could be assured his duty was fulfilled.

Not that all was well by any means. There were enchanters still, and ogres, and certain elementals roamed at large, and of human problems there might be no end. Still, the worst of his afflictions were growing fewer. One by one, the imprints of aboriginal chaos were fading away, like the footmarks of travellers on the road above the hill where Laprivan was prisoned.

Then, as the gold and silver towers of Ryovora came to view, he saw that an aura surrounded them as of a brewing storm, and his hope and trust in the people of that city melted clean away.

III

At the city Barbizond, where he had been but recently, there was likewise an aura around the tallest towers. There, however, it was a fair thing and pleasant to look upon, imbued with the essence of bright – if cruel, not the less lovely – Sardhin, chained in his unmoving cloud.

Since time immemorial, though, Ryovora had been immune from such disadvantageous infestations as elementals, principalities and powers; the citizens prided themselves on being gifted with hard plain sense, sober in the making of decisions, practical and rational and causing a minimum of trouble to the world.