Shimrod in accordance with Murgen’s instructions, called out in an amicable voice: “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Tranquility! After all, I am a guest in your remarkable domain, and I deserve your consideration!”

  One great mountain, seventy-five miles distant, roared in a crescendo: “Others named themselves guests, but instead proved to be thieves and predators! They came to plunder us of our thunder-eggs; now we trust no one. I request the mountains Mank and Elfard to concatenate upon your substance.”

  Shimrod again called for attention. “I am not what you think! The great magicians of the Elder Isles recognize the harms you have endured. They marvel at your stoic patience. Indeed, I have been sent here to make commendations for these qualities and your general excellence. Never have I witnessed magma ejected with such precision! Never before have there been such grotesque gesticulations.”

  “That is easy to say,” grumbled the mountain who previously had spoken.

  “Further,” declared Shimrod, “I and my fellows vie in our detestation of thieves and predators. We have killed several and now wish to restore the booty. Gentlemen, I have here as many of your thunder-eggs as was possible to recover on short notice.” He opened his knapsack and poured out a’ number of river pebbles. The mountains displayed doubt and bafflement, and several began to produce small jets of magma.

  A strip of parchment emerged from Shimrod’s sack. He plucked it from the atmosphere and read:

  “I, Murgen, write these words. You now know that beauty and faith are not interchangeable qualities! After you deceived the witch Melancthe with a hiatus, she worked a similar trick and plucked you clean of your thunder-eggs, so that the mountains might strike you with jets of magma. I suspected such a trick and stood by, to work a third hiatus, during which I replaced in your pouch the thunder-eggs and all else she had stolen. Proceed as before, but go warily!”

  Shimrod called out to the mountains: “And now, the thunder-eggs!” He groped into his pouch and brought forth a sack. With a flourish he spread the contents upon a nearby excrescence. The mountains became at once mollified and gave over their displays. One of the most notable, at a distance of a hundred and twenty miles, projected a meaning: “Well done! Accept our friendly welcome. Do you intend to reside here at length?”

  “Urgent business calls me home almost immediately. I merely wished to restore your property and to take note of your splendid achievements.”

  “Allow me to explain a few aspects of our beloved land. As a basis you must understand that we subscribe to three competing religions: The Doctrine of Arcoid Clincture; the Shrouded Macrolith, which I personally consider a fallacy; and the noble Derelictionary Tocsin. These differ in significant detail.” The mountain continued in this wise for a goodly period, propounding analogies and examples and from time to time gently testing Shimrod’s understanding of the unfamiliar enlightenments.

  Shimrod at last said: “Most interesting! My ideas have been profoundly altered.”

  “A pity you must depart! Do you intend to return, perhaps, with more thunder-eggs?”

  “As soon as possible! In the meantime I would like to take with me a few souvenirs, to keep Irerly fresh in my memory.”

  “No problem whatever. What strikes your fancy?”

  “Well-what about the small glittering objects which show many entrancing colors, thirteen in all? I might well accept a set of those.”

  “You refer to the florid little pustules which accumulate around certain of our orifices; we think of them as chancres, if you will forgive the word. Take as many as you like.”

  “In that case, however many will fit into this pouch.”

  “It will accommodate only a single set. Mank, Idisk! A few of your choicest pustules, if you will! Now, returning to our discussion of teleological anomalies, how do your own savants reconcile the various antic overviews to which we have made reference?”

  “Well-in the main, they take the bad with the good.”

  “Aha! That would be consonant with Original Gnosticism, as I have long suspected. Well, perhaps strong feelings are unwise. You have packed your keepsakes? Good. Incidentally, how will you return? I notice that your sandestins have dissipated into dust.”

  “I need only follow this line to the portal.”

  “A clever theory! It implies a whole new and revolutionary logic.”

  A far mountain ejected high a jet of blue magma, to express displeasure. “As always, Dodar’s concepts almost superstitiously range the inconceivable.”

  “Not so!” declared Dodar stoutly. “A final anecdote to illustrate my point-but no! I see that Shimrod is anxious to depart. A pleasant journey then!”

  Shimrod groped his way along the yarn, sometimes in several directions at once, through clouds of bitter music, across the soft bellies of what he whimsically conceived to be dead ideas. Green and blue winds thrust from below and above, with such force that he feared for the strength of the yarn, which seemed to have acquired a curious resilience. Finally the ball of yarn reached its original dimension and Shimrod knew that he must be close upon the aperture. He came upon a sandestin in the form of a fresh-faced boy, sitting on a rock and holding the end of the yarn.

  Shimrod halted. The sandestin rose languidly erect. “You are carrying thirteen baubles?”

  “So I am, and I am now ready to return.” “Give me the baubles; I must convey them through the whorl.” Shimrod demurred. “Better that I carry them. They are too delicate for the care of a subordinate.”

  The sandestin tossed aside the loose end of yarn and disappeared into green mist, and Shimrod was left holding a useless ball of yarn. Time passed. Shimrod waited, ever more uncomfortable. His protective mantle had frayed to the verge of collapse and his perceptual disks were presenting sets of unreliable images.

  The sandestin returned, with the air of one who had nothing

  better to do. “I am instructed as before. Give me the baubles.”

  “Not one. Does your mistress consider me such a mooncalf?”

  The sandestin departed into a tangle of green membranes,

  looking with sardonic finality back over its shoulder.

  Shimrod sighed. Faithlessness, utter and absolute, had been proved. From his pouch he brought those articles provided by Murgen: a sandestin of that sort known as a hexamorph, several capsules of gas, and a tile inscribed with the spell of Invincible Thrust.

  Shimrod instucted the sandestin: “Lead me back through the whorl, back to the glade by Twitten’s Corner.”

  “The sphincter has been sealed by your enemies. We must go by way of the five clefts and a perturbation. Wear gas and prepare to use the spell.”

  Shimrod surrounded himself in gas from one of the bladders; it clung to him like syrup. The sandestin led him a far way, and eventually allowed him to rest. “Be at your ease; we must wait.”

  Time passed, of a duration Shimrod could not reckon. The sandestin spoke: “Prepare your spell.”

  Shimrod took the syllables into his mind, and the runes faded from the tile, leaving a blank shard.

  “Now. Speak your spell.”

  Shimrod stood in the glade where he had come with Melancthe. She was nowhere to be seen. The time was late afternoon on a gray chilly day of late autumn, or winter. Clouds hung low over the glade; trees surrounding held up stark branches, marking the sky with black. The face of the bluff no longer showed an iron door.

  The Laughing Sun and The Crying Moon on this winter evening was warm and comfortable and almost empty of guests. Hockshank the landlord welcomed Shimrod with a polite smile. “I am happy to see you, sir. I feared that you had suffered a mishap.”

  “Your fears were by and large accurate.”

  “It is no novelty. Each year folk strangely disappear from the fair.”

  Shimrod’s garments were torn and the fabric had suffered rot; when he looked in the mirror he saw haggard cheeks, staring eyes and skin stained the curious brown of weathered wood.

  After his supper he sat brooding by the fire. Melancthe, he reasoned, had sent him into Irerly for one of several possible purposes: to acquire the thirteen spangled gems, to ensure his death, or both. His death would seem her prime purpose. Otherwise she might have allowed him to bring out the gems. At the cost of her virtue? Shimrod smiled. She would break her promise as easily as she had broken faith.

  In the morning Shimrod paid his score, adjusted the feathers to his new boots and departed Twitten’s Corner.

  In due course he arrived at Trilda. The meadow showed dreary and bleak under the lowering clouds. An additional quality of desolation surrounded the manse. Shimrod approached, step by step, then halted to appraise the manse. The door hung ajar.

  He went forward slowly and entered through the broken door, into the parlor, and here he found the corpse of Grofinet, who had been suspended from the ceiling-beams by his lank legs and burned over a fire, presumably that he might be forced to reveal the location of Shimrod’s treasures. By the look of affairs, Grofinet’s tail had first been roasted away, inch by inch, on a brazier. At the last his head had been lowered into the flames. No doubt, in a hysteria, he had screamed out his knowledge, suffering agonies as much for his own weakness as for the fire he dreaded so much. And then, to silence his raving, someone had split his charred face with a cleaver.

  Shimrod looked under the hearth, but the gnarled object which represented his store of magical adjuncts was gone. He had expected nothing else. He knew rudimentary skills, a few charlatan’s tricks, a clever spell or two. Never a great magician, Shimrod was now barely a magician of any sort.

  Melancthe! She had given him no more faith than he had given her. Still, he would have brought her no great harm, while she had sealed the portal against him, so that he should die in Irerly.

  “Melancthe, dire Melancthe! For your crimes you will suffer! I escaped and so I won, but in that absence caused by you I lost my possessions and Grofinet lost his life; you will suffer accordingly!” So raved Shimrod as he stalked about the manse.

  The robbers who had seized upon his absence to pillage Trilda, they also must be captured and punished: who might they be?

  The House Eye! Established for just such contingencies! But no, first he would bury Grofinet; and this he did, in a bower behind the manse, along with his friend’s small possessions. He finished in the fading light of late afternoon. Returning inside the manse he set every lamp aglow, and built a fire in the fireplace. Still Trilda seemed bleak.

  Shimrod brought the House Eye down from the ridge-beam, and set it on the carved table in the parlor, where, upon stimulus, it recreated what it had observed during Shimrod’s absence.

  The first few days passed without incident. Grofinet zealously discharged his duties and all was well. Then, during the middle of a languid summer afternoon the nunciator cried out: “I spy two strangers, of ilk unknown. They approach from the south!”

  Grofinet hurriedly donned his dress helmet and took up what he considered a posture of authority in the doorway. He called out: “Strangers, be so good as to halt! This is Trilda, manse of the Master Magician Shimrod, and at the moment under my protection. Since I recognize no business with you, in courtesy go your way.”

  A voice replied: “We request of you refreshment: a loaf, a bite of cheese, a cup of wine, and we will travel onward.”

  “Come no further! I will bring you food and drink where you stand, then you must go your way at once. Such are my orders!”

  “Sir knight, we shall do as you deem proper.”

  Grofinet, flattered, turned away, but was instantly seized and trussed tight with leather straps, and so began the dreadful business of the afternoon.

  The intruders were two: a tall handsome man with the clothes and manners of a gentleman, and his subordinate. The gentleman was of fine and graceful physique; glossy black hair framed a set of well-shaped features. He wore dark green hunting leathers, with a black cape and carried the long sword of a knight.

  The second robber showed two inches less of stature and six inches more of girth. His features were compressed, ‘twisted, crumpled together, as if smeared. A nutmeg-brown mustache drooped over his mouth. His arms were heavy; his legs were thin and seemed to pain him as he walked, so that he used a careful mincing gait. It was he who worked mischief upon Grofinet, while the other leaned against a table drinking wine and offering suggestions.

  At last the deed was done. Grofinet hung smoking; the involuted box of valuables had been taken from its hiding place.

  “So far so good,” declared the black-haired knight, “though Shimrod has snarled his treasures into a riddle. Still, we have each done well.”

  “It is a happy occasion. I have toiled long and hard. Now I may rest and enjoy my wealth.”

  The knight laughed indulgently. “I rejoice for you. After a lifetime of lopping heads, winding the rack and twisting noses, you have become a person of substance, perhaps even of social pretension. Will you become a gentleman?”

  “Not I. My face tells all. ‘Here,’ it says, ‘stands a thief and a hangman.’ So be it: good trades both, and alas for my sore knees that bar me from either.”

  “A pity! Such skills as yours are rare.”

  “In all truth, I’ve lost my taste for gut-cutting by firelight, and as for thieving, my poor sore knees are no longer fit for the trade. They bend both ways and snap aloud. Still, I won’t deny myself a bit of purse-slitting and picking of pockets for amusement’s sake.”

  “So where will you go for your new career?” “I’ll be away to Dahaut and there I’ll follow the fairs, and perhaps I’ll become a Christian. If you need me, leave word in Avallon at the place I mentioned.”

  Shimrod flew on feathered feet to Swer Smod. A proclamation hung on the door:

  The land is uneasy and the future is uncertain. Murgen must give over his ease that he may solve the problems of Doom. To those who have come as visitors he regrets his absence. Friends and persons in need may take shelter, but my protection is not guaranteed. To those who intend harm I need say nothing. They already know.

  Shimrod indited a message, which he left on the table of the main hall:

  There is little to say other than that I have come and gone. On my travels affairs went according to plan, but there were losses at Trilda. I will return, so I hope, within the year, or as soon as justice has been done. I leave in your care the gems of thirteen colors.

  He ate from Murgen’s larder, and slept on a couch in the hall.

  In the morning he dressed in the costume of a wandering musician: a green brimless cap pointed at the front with a panache of owl’s feathers, tight trousers of green twill, a blue tunic and a nut-brown cape.

  On the great table he found a silver penny, a dagger and a small six-stringed cadensis of unusual shape which, almost of its own accord, produced lively tunes. Shimrod pocketed the coin, tucked the dagger into his girdle, slung the cadensis over his shoulder. Then, departing Swer Smod, he set off across the Forest of Tantrevalles toward Dahaut.

  Chapter 16

  IN A BELL-SHAPED CELL fourteen feet in diameter and seventy feet underground, days were differentiated by the most trivial circumstances: the drip of rain, the glimpse of blue sky, an extra crust in the rations. Aillas recorded the passage of days by placing pebbles on a ledge. Each ten pebbles in the “unit” area yielded a single pebble in the “ten” area. On the day after nine “tens” and nine “units,” Aillas placed a single pebble in the “hundred” area.

  He was fed a loaf of bread, a jug of water and either a bundle of carrots or turnips, or a head of cabbage, every three days, by means of a basket lowered from above.

  Aillas often wondered how long he would live. At first he lay inert, in apathy. At last, with vast effort, he forced himself to exercise: pushing, pulling, jumping, tumbling. As his muscular tone returned, so rose his morale. Escape: not impossible. But how? He tried scratching handholds into the stone wall; the proportions and cross section of the cell guaranteed failure for this approach. He tried to lift the stones of the floor, that he might pile them and so reach the shaft, but the joints were too tight and the blocks too heavy: another program he was forced to discard.

  The days passed, one by one, and the months. In the garden the days and months also passed and Suldrun swelled with the child conceived by Aillas and herself.

  King Casmir had forbidden the garden to all but a deaf-mute kitchen maid.

  Brother Umphred however considered himself, a priest of the cloth, exempt from the ban, and visited Suldrun after about three months. Hoping for news Suldrun tolerated his presence, but Brother Umphred could tell her nothing. He suspected that Aillas had felt the full weight of King Casmir’s wrath, and since this was also Suldrun’s belief, she put no more questions. Brother Umphred attempted a few halfhearted intimacies, at which Suldrun went into the chapel and closed the door. And Brother Umphred departed without noticing that Suldrun already had started to swell.

  Three months later he returned and now Suldrun’s condition was evident.

  Brother Umphred made the sly observation: “Suldrun, my dear, you are becoming stout.”

  Without words Suldrun once more rose to her feet and went into the chapel.

  Brother Umphred sat a few moments in deep reflection, then went to consult his register. He calculated forward from the date of marriage and arrived at a tentative birth-date. Since conception had occurred several weeks before the marriage, his date was just so much in error, a detail which escaped Brother Umphred’s attention. The great fact was pregnancy: how best could he profit from this choice item of knowledge which seemed known only to himself?

  Further weeks passed by. Brother Umphred contrived a hundred schemes, but none gained him advantage and he held his tongue.

  Suldrun well understood Brother Umphred’s calculations. Her concern grew as her time approached. Sooner or later Brother Umphred must sidle up to King Casmir and, in that unlikely mingling of humility and impudence, disclose her precious secret.

  What then? Her imagination dared not venture so far. Whatever might happen would not be to her liking.