Tales of the Dying Earth (65 page)

Cugel climbed to the quarter-deck. At the horizon he noted a ship which under the lens proved to be that lubberly little cog he had evaded several days before. Even without worms, using clever tactics, he could easily evade so clumsy a craft!

Cugel sheeted the sail hard back to the starboard, then jumping up to the quarter-deck, he swung the wheel to bring the ship around on a port tack, steering as close to north as the ship would point.

The crew of the cog, noting his tactic, veered to cut him off and drive him back south into the estuary, but Cugel refused to be intimidated and held his course.

To the right the low coast of Gador Porrada was now visible; to the left, the cog blundered importantly through the water.

Using the lens Cugel discerned the gaunt form of Drofo on the bow, signaling triple-bait for the worms.

Madame Soldinck and the three girls came from the galley to stare across the water at the cog, and Madame Soldinck screamed officious instructions to Cugel which were blown away on the wind.

The 
Galante,
 with a hull ill-adapted to sailing, made a great deal of leeway. For best speed Cugel fell away several points to the east, in the process veering closer upon the low-lying coast, while the cog pressed relentlessly down upon him. Cugel desperately swung the wheel, thinking to achieve a remarkable down-wind jibe which would totally discomfit those persons aboard the cog, not to mention Madame Soldinck. For best effect he sprang down upon the deck to trim the sheets, but before he could return to the wheel, the ship rushed off downwind.

Cugel climbed back to the quarter-deck and spun the wheel, hoping to bring the ship back on a starboard reach. Glancing toward the near shore of Gador Porrada, Cugel saw a curious sight: a group of sea-birds walking on what appeared to be the surface of the water. Cugel stared in wonder, as the sea-birds walked this way and that, occasionally lowering their heads to peck at the surface.

The 
Galante
 came to slow sliding halt. Cugel decided that he had run aground on the Tustvold mud-flats.

So much for birds who walked on water.

A quarter-mile to sea the cog dropped anchor and began to lower a boat. Madame Soldinck and the girls waved their arms in excitement. Cugel wasted no time in farewells. He lowered himself over the side and floundered toward the shore.

The mud was deep, viscous, and smelled most unpleasantly. A heavy ribbed stalk terminating in a globular eye reared from the mud to peer at him, and twice he was attacked by pincer-lizards, which luckily he was able to out-distance.

Finally Cugel arrived at the shore. Rising to his feet, he found that a contingent from the cog had already arrived aboard the 
Galante.
 One of the forms Cugel saw to be Soldinck, who pointed toward Cugel and shook his fist. At this same moment Cugel discovered that he had left the total sum of his terces aboard the 
Galante,
 including the six golden centums received from Soldinck in the sale of Fuscule's worm.

This was a bitter blow. Soldinck was joined at the rail by Madame Soldinck, who made insulting signals of her own.

Disdaining response, Cugel turned and trudged off along the shore.

CUGEL marched along the foreshore, shivering to the bite of the wind. The landscape was barren and dreary; to the left, black waves broke over the mud-flats; to the right, a line of low hills barred access to inland regions.

Cugel's mood was bleak. He carried neither terces nor so much as a sharp stick to protect himself against footpads. Slime from the mud-flats squelched in his boots and his sodden garments smelled of marine decay.

At a tidal pool Cugel rinsed out his boots and thereafter walked more comfortably, though the slime still made a mockery of style and dignity. Hunching along the shore Cugel resembled a great bedraggled bird.

Where a sluggish river seeped into the sea, Cugel came upon an old road, which might well lead to the village Tustvold, and the possibility of food and shelter. Cugel turned inland, away from the shore.

To keep himself warm Cugel began to trot and jog, with knees jerking high. So passed a mile or two, and the hills gave way to a curious landscape of cultivated fields mingled with areas of wasteland. In the distance steep-sided knolls rose at irregular intervals, like islands in a sea of air.

No human habitation could be seen, but in the fields groups of women tended broad-beans and millet. As Cugel jogged past, they raised from their work to stare. Cugel found their attention offensive, and ran proudly past, looking neither right nor left.

Clouds sliding over the hills from the west cooled the air and seemed to presage rain. Cugel searched ahead for the village Tustvold, without success. The clouds drifted across the sun, darkening the already wan light, and the landscape took on the semblance of an ancient sepia painting, with flat perspectives and the pungko trees superimposed like scratchings of black ink.

A shaft of sunlight struck through the clouds, to play upon a cluster of white columns, at a distance of something over a mile.

Cugel stopped short to stare at the odd array. A temple? A mausoleum? The ruins of an enormous palace? Cugel continued along the road, and presently stopped again. The columns varied in height, from almost nothing to over a hundred feet, and seemed about ten feet in girth.

Once more Cugel proceeded. As he drew near he saw that the tops of the columns were occupied by men, reclining and basking in what remained of the sunlight.

The rent in the clouds sealed shut and the sunlight faded with finality. The men sat up and called back and forth, and at last descended the columns by ladders attached to the stone. Once on the ground, they trooped off toward a village half-hidden under a grove of shrack-trees. This village, about a mile from the columns, Cugel assumed to be Tustvold.

At the back of the columns a quarry cut into one of the steep-sided knolls Cugel had noted before. From this quarry emerged a white-haired old man with stooping shoulders, sinewy arms and the slow gait of one who precisely gauges each movement. He wore a white smock, loose gray trousers and well-used boots of strong leather. From a braided leather cord around his neck hung an amulet of five facets. Spying Cugel he halted, and waited as Cugel approached.

Cugel used his most cultivated voice: "Sir, jump to no conclusions! I am neither a vagabond nor a mendicant, but rather a seafarer who arrived on shore by way of the mud-flats."

"That is not the ordinary route," said the old man. "Practised men of the sea most often use the docks at Port Perdusz."

"Quite so. The village yonder is Tustvold?"

"Properly speaking, Tustvold is that mound of ruins yonder which I quarry for white-stone. The local folk use the name for the village as well, and no great harm is done. What do you seek from Tustvold?"

"Food and shelter for the night. However, I cannot pay a groat, since my belongings remain aboard the ship."

The old man gave his head a disparaging shake. "In Tustvold you will get only what you pay for. They are a parsimonious lot, and spend only for advancement. If you will be satisfied with a pallet and a bowl of soup for your supper, I can gratify your needs, and you may dismiss all thought of payment."

"That is a generous offer," said Cugel. "I accept with pleasure. May I introduce myself? I am Cugel."

The old man bowed. "I am Nisbet, the son of Nisvangel, who quarried here before me and the grandson of Rounce, who was also a quarry-man. But come! Why stand here shivering when a warm fire awaits inside?"

The two walked toward Nisbet's abode: a huddle of ramshackle sheds leaning one on the other, built of planks and stone: the accretion of many years, perhaps centuries. Conditions within, while comfortable, were no less undisciplined. Each chamber was cluttered with curios and antiques collected by Nisbet and his predecessors while quarrying the ruins of Old Tustvold and elsewhere.

Nisbet poured a bath for Cugel and provided a musty old gown which Cugel might wear until his own clothes were clean. "That is a task better left to the women of the village," said Nisbet.

"If you recall, I lack all funds," said Cugel. "I accept your hospitality with pleasure but I refuse to impose a financial burden upon you."

"No burden whatever," said Nisbet. "The women are anxious to do me favors, so that I will give them priorities in the work."

"In that case, I accept the favor with thanks."

Cugel gratefully bathed and wrapped himself in the old gown, then sat down to a hearty meal of candle-fish soup, bread and pickled ramp, which Nisbet recommended as a specialty of the region. They ate from antique dishes of many sorts and used utensils no two alike, even to the material from which they were fabricated: silver, glossold, black iron, gold, a green alloy of copper, arsenic and other substances. Nisbet identified these objects in an off-hand manner. "Each of the mounds you see rising from the plain represents an ancient city, now in ruins and covered over with the sift of time. When I am allowed an hour or two of leisure, I often go out to mine another of the mounds, and often I find objects of interest. That salver, for instance, was taken from the eleventh phase of the city Chelopsik, and is fashioned from corfume inlaid with petrified fire-flies. The characters are beyond my skill to read, but would seem to recite a children's song. This knife is even older; I found it in the crypts below the city I call Arad, though its real name is no longer known."

"Interesting!" said Cugel. "Do you ever find treasure or valuable gems?"

Nisbet shrugged. "Each of these articles is priceless: a unique memorial. But now, with the sun about to go dark, who would pay good terces to buy them? More useful is a bottle of good wine. In this connection, I suggest that, like grandees of high degree, we repair to the parlor where I will broach a bottle of well-aged wine, and we will warm our shins before the fire."

"A sound notion!" declared Cugel. He followed Nisbet into a chamber furnished with an over-sufficiency of chairs, settees, tables, and cushions of many kinds, together with a hundred curios.

Nisbet poured wine from a stoneware bottle of great age, to judge from the iridescent oxides which encrusted the surface. Cugel tasted the wine with caution, to find a liquor heavy and strong, and redolent of strange fragrances.

"A noble vintage," pronounced Cugel.

"Your taste is sound," said Nisbet. "I took it from the store-room of a wine-merchant on the fourth level of Xei Cambael. Drink heartily; a thousand bottles still moulder in the dark."

"My best regards!" Cugel tilted his goblet. "Your work lacks nothing for perquisites; this is clear. You have no sons to carry on the traditions?"

"None. My spouse died long years ago by the sting of a blue fanticule, and I lacked all taste for someone new." With a grunt Nisbet heaved himself to his feet and fed wood to the fire. He lurched back into his chair and gazed into the flames. "Yet often I sit here of nights, thinking of how it will be when I am gone."

"Perhaps you should take an apprentice."

Nisbet uttered a short hollow laugh. "It is not all so easy. Boys of the town think of tall columns even before they learn to spit properly. I would prefer the company of a man who knows something of the world. What, by the way, is your own trade?"

Cugel made a deprecatory gesture. "I am not yet settled upon a career. I have worked as worminger and recently I commanded a sea-going vessel."

"That is a post of high prestige!"

"True enough, but the malice of subordinates forced me to vacate the position."

"By way of the mud-flats?"

"Precisely so."

"Such are the ways of the world," said Nisbet. "Still, you have much of your life ahead, with many great deeds to do, while I look back on life with my deeds already done, and none of them greatly significant."

Cugel said: "When the sun goes out, all deeds, significant or not, will be forgotten together."

Nisbet rose to his feet and broached another jug of wine. He refilled the goblets, then returned to his chair. "Two hours of loose philosophizing will never tilt the scale against the worth of one sound belch. For the nonce I am Nisbet the quarryman, with far too many columns to raise and far too much work on order. Sometimes I wish that I too might climb a column and bask away the hours."

The two sat in silence, looking into the flames. Nisbet finally said: "I see that you are tired. No doubt you have had a tedious day." He pulled himself to his feet and pointed. "You may sleep on yonder couch."

In the morning Nisbet and Cugel breakfasted upon griddle-cakes with a conserve of fruits prepared by women of the village; then Nisbet took Cugel out to the quarry. He pointed to his excavation which had opened a great cleft in the side of the mound.

"Old Tustvold was a city of thirteen phases, as you can see with your own eyes. The people of the fourth level built a temple to Miamatta, their Ultimate God of Gods. These ruins supply white-stone to my needs. . . . The sun is aloft. Soon the men from the village will be coming out to use their columns; indeed, here they come now."