I
A Length of Rope
“A curious custom,” said the barbarian, “to cut off your king’s head every five years. I wonder your throne finds any takers!”
On the scaffold, the headsman brushed a whetstone alone the gleaming edge of his ax, dropped the stone into his pouch, squinted along the blade, and touched it here and there with his thumb. Those in the crowd below could not see his satisfied smile because of the black hood, which—save for the eye holes—covered his head. The ax was neither a woodcutter’s tool nor a warrior’s weapon. Whereas its helve, carven of good brown oak, was that of a normal ax, its blue steel head was unwontedly broad, like a butcher’s cleaver.
The scaffold rose in the midst of the drill ground, outside of the walls of Xylar City near the South Gate. Here, nearly all the folk of the city were gathered, as well as hundreds from outlying towns and villages. Around the base of the scaffold, a battalion of pikemen in black meshmail over scarlet coats was ranked four deep, to make sure that no unauthorized person reached the scaffold during the ceremony, and likewise that the victim did not escape. The two outer ranks faced outward and the two inner, inward.
Around the three sides of the scaffold, the notables of Xylar, in crimson and emerald and gold and white, sat on benches. Another rank of soldiers sundered the quality from the commonality. The latter, in brown and buff and black, stood in an expectant, amorphous mass, which filled the greater part of the field.
On the western side of the platform, this multitude surged against the inner ranks of soldiery. Here the throng consisted mainly of young men. Besides the hundreds of mechanics from the city and peasants from the farms, it included a sprinkling of the younger gentry. Hucksters wormed their way through this throng, selling cakes, sausages, fruits, sardines, wine, beer, cider, parasols, and good luck charms. Outside the crowd of spectators, armored horsemen, with the scarlet hourglass of Xylar on their white surcoats, patrolled the edge of the field.
Overhead, a white sun blazed in a cloudless sky. A puffy little wind ruffled the leaves of the oaks and poplars and gums that fenced the field. It fluttered the red-and-white pennants that streamed from the tops of the flagpoles at the corners of the scaffold. A few of the leaves of the gums had already turned from green to scarlet.
Seated among the notables, Chancellor Turonus answered the barbarian’s question: “We have never had trouble in finding candidates, Prince Vilimir. Behold how they throng about the western side of the scaffold!”
“Will the head be thrown yonder?” asked Prince Vilimir around his forefinger, wherewith he was trying to pry loose a piece of roast from between his teeth. Although he was clean-shaven, Vilimir’s long, light, gray-streaked hair, fur cap, fur jacket, and horsehide boots with the hair on gave him a shaggy look. His many massive ornaments of gold and silver tinkled when he moved. He had led the losing faction in an intertribal quarrel over who should be the next cham of the Gendings and hence was in exile. His rival, who was also his uncle, now ruled that fierce nomadic horde.
Turonus nodded. “Aye, and the catcher shall be our new king.” He was stout and middle-aged, swathed in a voluminous azure cloak against the chill of the first cool day of autumn. “The chief justice will cast the thing yonder. It is a rule that the long must let his hair grow long, to give the judge something to grasp. Once a king had his whole head shaven the night before the ceremony, and the executioner had to pierce the ears for a cord. Most embarrassing.”
“By Greipnek’s beard, an ungrateful wight!” said Vilimir, a wolfish grin splitting his lean, scarred face. “As if a lustrum of royal luxe were not enough . . . Be that not King Jorian now?” The Shvenish prince spoke Novarian with fair fluency, but with a northern accent that made “Jorian” into “Zhorian.”
“Aye,” said the chancellor, as a little procession marched slowly through the lane kept open by soldiers between the South Gate and the scaffold.
“He took me hunting last month,” said Vilimir. “He struck me as a man of spirit—for a sessor, that is.” He used a word peculiar to the nomads of Shven, meaning a non-nomad or sedentary person. Among nomads, the word was a term of contempt, but the chancellor saw fit to ignore this. The exile continued: “I also found him a great talker—too much so for his own good, methinks, but amusing to listen to.”
The Chancellor nodded absently, for the procession had now come close enough to recognize faces. First came the royal band, playing a dirge. Then paced the white-bearded chief justice of Xylar in a long, black robe, with a golden chain about his neck. Four halberdiers, in the midst of whom towered the king, followed. All those near the lane through which the party proceeded, and many in other parts of the field, sank to one knee as the king passed them.
King Jorian was a tall, powerful young man with a ruddy skin, deep-set black eyes, and coarse black hair that hung to his shoulders. His face, otherwise shaven, bore a fierce mustache that swept out like the horns of a buffalo. A prominent scar crossed his nose—which had a small kink in it—and continued diagonally down across his left cheek. He was stripped to his slippers and a pair of short, silken breeches, and his wrists were bound behind his back. A crown—a slender band of gold with a dozen short, blunt, erect spikes—was secured to his head by a chin strap.
Prince Vilimir murmured: “I have never seen a crown with a—how do you say it—a strap of the chin.”
“It is needed, to keep crown and head together during the casting of the Lot of Imbal,” explained Turonus. “Once, years ago, the crown came off as the head was thrown. One man caught the crown, another the head, and each claimed the throne. A sanguinary civil war ensued.”
After the soldiers came a small, lean, dark-brown man in a coarse brown robe, with a bulbous white turban on his head. His long, silky, white hair and beard blew about. A rope was wound around his waist, and he bore a kind of satchel by a strap over his shoulder.
“The king’s spiritual adviser,” said Chancellor Turonus. “It seems hardly meet that the King of Xylar be sent off by a heathen from Mulvan, rather than by one of our own holy priests. But Jorian insisted, and it seemed but just to grant his last request.”
“Who—how did the king come to know the fellow?” asked Vilimir.
Turonus shrugged. “For the past year, he has entertained all sorts of queer persons at the palace. This mountebank—your pardon, the Holy Father Karadur—drifted in, doubtless having fled in disgrace from his own land after having been caught in some vile goëtic witchery.”
Then came four beautiful young women, the king’s wives. A fifth had given birth the day before and was judged not strong enough to attend the ceremony. The four present were gorgeous in silks and jewels and gold. After the wives came the shaven-headed, purple-robed high priest of Zevatas, the chief god of the Novarian pantheon; then a score of palace officials, and the ladies-in-waiting. Last of all came Kaeres the joiner, Xylar’s leading director of funerals, and six cronies of the king carrying one of Kaeres’s new coffins on their shoulders.
As the procession reached the foot of the scaffold, the band fell silent. After a low-voiced consultation, the chief justice mounted the steps of the scaffold, followed by two of the four halberdiers.
King Jorian kissed his four wives goodbye. They clung round his neck, weeping and covering his broad, heavy-featured face with kisses.
“Na, na,” said Jorian in a heavy bass voice, with a rustic Kortolian accent. “Weep not, ma pretty lassies.
“The gods, who from their puerile pipes a billion
bubbles blow,
Have blown us here. We waft and wobble, iridesce
and glow,
Then burst; but from these pipes a billion bubbles
more shall flow.
“Within the year, ye’ll all have better husbands than I ever was to you.”
“We do not wish other husbands! We love only you!” they wailed.
“But the weans needs must have stepfathers,” he reminded them. “Now get along back to the palace, so as not to see your lord’s blood flow. You, too, Estrildis.”
“Nay!” cried the wife addressed—though pretty, the least beautiful of the four, stocky and blue-eyed. “I will watch you to the end!”
“You shall do as I say,” said Jorian gently but firmly. “You shall go on your own feet, or I will have you carried. Which shall it be?”
The two soldiers who had remained on the ground laid gentle hands on the woman’s arms, and she broke away to run, weeping, after the others. Jorian called: “Farewell!” and turned back to the scaffold.
As the king mounted the stairs, his gaze roved hither and yon. He smiled and nodded as his eye caught those of acquaintances in the crowd. To many, he seemed altogether too cheerful for a man about to lose his head.
As, with a steady step, Jorian reached the platform of the scaffold, the two halberdiers who had preceded him snapped to attention and brought their right fists up to their chests, over their hearts, in salute. Behind him came the Mulvanian holy man and the high priest of Zevatas.
On the far, western side of the platform, a few feet from the edge, rose the block, freshly carved and shining with new red paint. Between the flagpoles on the western side, a length of netting, a yard high, was stretched to make sure that the head should not roll off the platform.
Leaning on his ax, the headsman stood beside the block. Like Jorian, he was stripped to breeks and shoes. Although not so tall as the king, the executioner was longer of arm and even more massive of torso. Despite the hood, Jorian knew that his slayer was Uthar the butcher, who kept a stall near the South Gate. Since Xylar was too small and orderly a city-state to support a full-time executioner, it hired Uthar from time to time for the task. Jorian had personally consulted the man before approving the choice.
“The great trick, Sire,” Uthar had said, “be to let the weight of the ax do the work. Press not; give your whole attention to guiding the blade in its fall. A green headsman thinks he needs must help the blade; so he presses, and the stroke goes awry. The blade be heavy enough to sever any man’s neck—even so mighty a one as Your Majesty’s—if suffered to fall at its natural speed. I promise Your Majesty shan’t feel a thing. Your soul will find itself in its next incarnation before you wite what has happened.”
Jorian now approached the headsman with a grin on his face. “Hail, Master Uthar!” he cried in a hearty voice. “A lovely day, is it not? By Astis’s ivory teats, if one must have one’s head cut off, I can imagine no fairer day whereon to have the deed performed.”
Uthar dropped to one knee. “You—Your Majesty—’tis a fine day, surely—Your Majesty will forgive me for any pain or inconvenience I cause him in the discharge of my duties?”
“Think nothing of it, old man! We all have our duties, and we all come to our destined ends. My pardon is yours, so long as your edge be keen and your arm be true. You promised that I should not feel a thing, remember? I shouldn’t like you to have to strike twice, like a new recruit hacking at a pell.”
Jorian turned to the chief justice. “Most eminent Judge Grallon, are you ready with your speech? Take a hint and make it not too long. Long speeches bore the hearer, be the speaker never so eloquent.”
The chief justice looked uncertainly at Jorian, who indicated by a jerk of his head that he was to proceed. The magistrate pulled a scroll from his girdle and unrolled it. Holding the stick of the scroll in one hand and a reading glass in the other, he began to read. The wind whipped the dangling end of the scroll this way and that, hindering his task. Nevertheless, being familiar with the contents, he droned on.
Justice Grallon began with a resumé of Xylarian history. Imbal the lion god had established this polis many centuries before; he had also bestowed upon it its unique method of choosing a ruler. The magistrate spoke of famous kings of Xylar: Pellitus the Wise, and Kadvan the Strong, and Rhuys the Ugly.
At last, Judge Grallon came down to the reign of Jorian. He praised Jorian’s bravery. He narrated the battle of Dol, when Jorian had destroyed the horde of robbers that had infested the southern marches of the kingdom and had acquired the scar on his face.
“. . . and so,” he concluded, “this glorious reign has now come to the end appointed for it by the gods. Today the crown of Xylar shall pass, by the Lot of Imbal, into those hands destined by the gods to receive it. And we have been a true and virtuous folk, these hands will be strong, just, and merciful; if not—not. The king will now receive his final consolation from his holy man.”
###
Old Doctor Karadur had been unwrapping the rope from around his waist and coiling it in the center of the platform. From his satchel he produced a little folding brass stand, which he set down beside the rope. Out of the bag came a brazen dish, which he placed upon the stand. Out, too, came a compartmented pouch, whence he sprinkled various powders into the dish. He put away the pouch, took out flint and steel, and struck sparks into the dish.
There was a green flash and a puff of smoke, which the breeze whipped away. A many-hued little flame danced over the dish, sending up streamers of vapor. The high priest of Zevatas looked sourly on.
Karadur intoned a lengthy prayer of incantation—those listening could not tell which, since the holy man spoke Mulvani. On and on he went, until some of the spectators grew restless. True, they did not wish the ceremony over too soon, since it was the biggest event in their calendar. On the other hand, when it came to hearing the unintelligible chant of a scrawny old fakir and watching him bow his forehead to the platform, a little went a long way.
Then Karadur rose and embraced Jorian, who towered over him. The fire in the brazen dish blazed up and sent out a cloud of smoke, which made those on the platform cough and wipe their eyes. Thus they failed to see Karadur, at the moment when his arms were around Jorian’s huge torso, slip a small knife into the hands of the king, which were bound behind him. Karadur whispered:
“How is your courage, my son?”
“Oozing away with every heartbeat. In sooth, I’m frightened witless.”
“Face it down, boy! In boldness lies your only safety.”
Next, the band played a hymn to Zevatas. The high priest, a gaunt, imposing figure in his purple robe, led the throng in singing the hymn, beating time with his staff of office.
Then the priest bowed his head and prayed that the lot of Jorian’s successor should fall upon one worthy of the office. He prayed to the gods to look with favor upon Xylar; he prayed that, in smiting sinners, they would take care not to harm the far more numerous virtuous citizens. His prayer was as long as Karadur’s. The head of the cult of the king of the gods could not let a foreign wizard go him one better.
At last the high priest finished. The chief justice read a proclamation that whereas, in accordance with Xylar’s ancient customs, Jorian’s reign had now come to an end, he willingly offered his head as the means whereby the next king should be chosen. Judge Grallon finished with a sweeping gesture towards the block, indicating that Jorian should now lay his head upon it.
“Will Your Majesty have a blindfold?” he asked.
“Nay,” said Jorian, stepping towards the block, “I will face this with my eyes open, as I did the foes of Xylar.”
“One moment, your honor,” said Karadur in his nasal Mulvanian accent. “I must—ah—it was agreed that I should cast a final spell, to speed King Jorian’s soul to the afterworld, without danger of its being trapped in another incarnation in this one.”
“Well, get on with it,” said the chief justice.
Karadur brought a little brass bell out of his satchel. “When I sound this, smite!” He poured more powders into his dish, which flamed and bubbled.
“Kneel, my royal son,” said Karadur. “Fear nought.”
The crowd surged forward expectantly. Fathers hoisted small children to their shoulders.
Jorian cast a thoughtful look at the old Mulvani. Then he knelt before the block and bowed his head until his throat rested across the narrow, flat place on top. His chin lay comfortably in the hollow that had been cut in the west side of the block. His eyes, swiveling sideways, kept Uthar the butcher in the periphery of his vision. Uthar, bending over him, brushed Jorian’s long, black hair forward to bare his nape.
Karadur uttered another incantation, gesturing with his skinny brown arms. This continued until Jorian’s knees began to hurt from kneeling on the hard boards. Stepping back from the block, Uthar took a firm grip on the helve of the ax.
At last the Mulvani tinkled his bell. Jorian, straining to keep the headsman in sight without seeming to do so, felt rather than saw the ax swing up to the vertical. Then the bell tinkled again, meaning that the ax had started down.
Jorian’s next action required exquisite timing, and he was not at all sure of success—even though Karadur and he had rehearsed for hours in his private gymnasium, with the old wizard wielding a broom instead of an ax. For one thing, Jorian was a little tired because four of his wives had insisted, the night before, on proof of his love for them.
As the ax descended, Jorian cast off the thongs that bound him, which throughout the ceremony he had been discreetly sawing through with the little knife. Simultaneously, he hurled his body to the left, falling on his side. Since the heavy ax had already begun its downward course, the burly headsman was neither quick enough of apprehension nor strong enough of arm to stop it in midcareer. It thudded into the block, sinking deeply into the red-painted wood.
In one swift movement, Jorian rolled to his feet and put the little knife between his teeth. Karadur cast something more into the dish, which flamed and smoked like a little volcano, sending up a swelling column of green smoke shot with red and purple. The wizard uttered a loud cry, flinging out his arms. Thereupon the coiled rope before him sprang erect, like some monstrous serpent. Its end shot up twenty feet or more, and the upper end disappeared into a land of haze, as if it had pierced a hole in the sky. A tremendous cloud of smoke arose from the dish, obscuring the vision of those on the platform and hiding them from the spectators below. Some, supposing the long’s head to have fallen already, set up a cry of “Red and white! Red and white!”
One long stride brought Jorian to the executioner. With the ax in his hands, Uthar the butcher would have been a formidable foe. But, despite his desperate tugs, the head of the ax remained firmly fixed in the block.
Jorian brought his left fist up in a long, swinging, ox-felling blow against the headsman’s jaw. Uthar reeled back against the net and fell off the platform.
A cry from Karadur warned Jorian to turn. One of the mailed halberdiers was lunging towards him, thrusting with his weapon. With the leopard-quick timing that had once already saved his gore, Jorian caught the halberd below the head, just before the spearhead reached his skin. As he jerked the head of the weapon violently to the left, the soldier’s lunge drove it past his body.
Seizing the haft with both hands and turning his back on the trooper, Jorian put the shaft on his shoulder and then bent his back, pulling the head of the halberd down. The halberdier, clinging to the shaft, found himself hoisted over Jorian’s broad back and hurled head over heels off the platform, to fall with a clash of mail to the ground below.
Clutching the halberd, Jorian span to face the remaining soldier, who stood coughing smoke. The chief justice and the high priest of Zevatas scrambled down the stair in such haste that the latter lost his footing and plunged to earth head-first, gravely injuring himself.
Whether for fear or for love of his former lord, the soldier hesitated, holding his halberd at port and neither swinging the ax head nor thrusting with the spear point. Having nothing personal against the man, Jorian reversed his weapon and jabbed the butt against the soldier’s armored ribs. A ferocious push sent the trooper tumbling off the scaffold after his comrade.
Thus, twelve seconds after the headsman’s blow, Jorian and Karadur found themselves the only persons on the platform. A vast murmur ran through the throne. The events on the scaffold had taken place so quickly and had been so obscured by smoke that nobody on the ground yet really grasped what had happened. It was plain, however, that the execution had not gone as planned. People jostled and shouted questions; the murmur rose to a roar. A sharp command rang out, and a squad of pikemen rushed towards the foot of the stair.
Jorian dropped his halberd and sprang to the rope. Not for nothing had he spent months practicing climbing a rope hand over hand, until the muscles of his arms and hands were like steel. As he went up, the rope swayed gently but remained straight and taut. The platform sank beneath him. Somewhere a crossbow snapped, and Jorian heard the swishing hum of the quarrel as it sped past.
Below, the crowd was in a frenzied uproar. Soldiers scrambled up the stair. As they reached the top, Karadur, who had been performing another incantation, dropped spryly off the edge of the platform. Jorian had only a brief glimpse of the wizard; he saw, however, that as Karadur reached the ground his appearance changed. Instead of a deep-brown, white-haired Mulvanian holy man, he was now, to all appearances, a member of the lower Xylarian priesthood, clad in a neat black robe of good stuff. The crowd swallowed him up.
Again came the twang of a bowstring. The missile grazed Jorian’s shoulder, raising a welt. The soldiers had reached the platform and were looking doubtfully at the lower end of the rope. The thought flashed across Jorian’s racing mind that they would try either to pull it down or to climb up after him.
Sweat poured down his face and his massive, hairy torso as he mounted the last few feet of the rope. He reached the place where the rope turned hazy and disappeared. As his head came level with this terminus, he found that the rope remained as solid and clear as ever, while below him the scene became dim and hazy, as if seen through a gathering fog.
A final, heart-wrenching heave, and the scene below vanished. Around him, instead of empty air, stretched an utterly strange landscape. He lowered his feet and felt earth and grass beneath them.
For the moment, he had not time to examine his new surroundings. Karadur had repeatedly warned him of the importance of recovering the magical rope, the upper end of which still stuck up stiffly from the grass to nearly Jorian’s own height. He seized the rope with both hands and pulled. Up it came, as if out of an invisible hole in the ground. As he pulled, the visible part of the rope lost its stiffness, drooped, and hung limply, like any other rope.
Then Jorian felt a check, as if someone below were holding the rope. One of the soldiers must have nerved himself to seize it as he saw it rising into the air. Since the man was heavy, it was all that Jorian, still panting from his climb, could do to haul him up.
Then a better idea struck him. Rather than pull an armed foe up into this new world about him, he let the rope run loosely through his hands, dropping the man at the other end back on the scaffold. Very faintly, he heard a crash and a yell. Then he pulled quickly, hand over hand. This time the rope came up without resistance until it all lay in a neap on the grass before him.
###
Jorian drew his forearm across his forehead and sat down heavily. His heart still pounded from his exertions and from the excitement of this narrow escape. Now that he looked back, he could scarcely believe that he had survived.
Although Jorian was a young man of unusual size, strength, and agility, he entertained few illusions about the chances of a bound, unarmed man’s escaping from the midst of his foes, even with the help of magical spells. Having practiced with arms for years and having fought in two real battles and several skirmishes, he knew the limitations of one man’s powers. Moreover, spells were notoriously erratic and untrustworthy, and Jorian’s break for life required perfect surprise, coordination and timing. Perhaps, he thought, Karadur’s Mulvanian gods had helped after all.
He glanced swiftly about, thinking: So this is the afterworld, whither souls released from our own plane are sent for their next incarnations! He stood on a strip of artificially smooth grass, perhaps forty feet wide. The strip was bounded on either side by a broad strip of pavement, in turn about twenty feet in breadth.
More grass lay beyond these roadways. Beyond these lawns rose tree-covered hills, on some of which Jorian thought he discerned houses. The question struck him: Why should anybody in his right mind build two splendid roads side by side?
Then a swiftly rising, whirring, purring, swishing sound drew his attention. It reminded him unpleasantly of the sound of a crossbow bolt, but much louder. In a flash, his roving glance fixed itself upon the source of the sound.
Along one of the paved strips, an object was hurtling towards him. At first he thought it a monster of legend: a low, humpbacked thing with a pair of great, glaring, glassy eyes in front. Below the eyes and just above the ground, a row of silvery fangs was bared in a fiendish grin.
Jorian’s courage sank; but, as he backed away from the road, drawing the little knife and preparing to sell his life dearly, the thing whizzed by at incredible speed—a speed like that of a hawk swooping at its prey. As the object passed, Jorian saw that it had wheels; that it was, in fact, no monster but a vehicle. He glimpsed the head and shoulders of a man within, and then the carriage was gone with a diminishing whirr and sigh.
As Jorian, disconcerted, stood staring, another whirr behind him made him spin around. There went another vehicle—and yet another, a huge one with a towering, boxlike body and many wheels. In his own world, he was deemed a man of signal courage; but even the bravest loses his assurance in totally strange surroundings, where he knows not whence or in what guise danger may come.
Trapped between the two roads, Jorian wondered how he could ever escape to join Karadur. The roads extended in either direction as far as the eye could reach, neither converging nor diverging. It seemed as though he could walk along the grassy median strip for leagues in either direction without finding a safe means of exit.
After several more vehicles had passed, Jorian realized that one road was for eastbound traffic only and the other for westbound; and that, furthermore, the cars did not leave the pavement. So he was safe for the nonce. It might even be possible, by choosing a moment when no chariots were in sight, to dash across one of the roads to safety.
Jorian nerved himself to approach one of the paved strips. The road appeared to be made of some cement or stucco, with periodic narrow, black, transverse lines of a stuff resembling pitch. He jumped back as a huge vehicle roared past, buffeting him with the wind of its passage.
Jorian was appalled. He hoped that his soul would never have to live out an incarnation on this plane. One of those vehicles could squash him like a bug. How ironic to escape from the headsman’s ax in his own world only to be run over in this! He wondered that anyone here survived long enough to become a driver of these chariots—unless the natives lived their entire lives in them, never setting foot on the ground. Perhaps they had no feet to set on the ground . . .
An approaching vehicle drew up and stopped with a thin, mouselike squeak. A door opened and a man got out. He had, Jorian saw, normal legs, encased in gray pantaloons that hung down to his shoes. He wore a hat with a broad, flat brim; and from a stout belt depended a small leather case. From this case projected the curved handle of some instrument, which Jorian guessed to be a carpenter’s tool.
The man approached Jorian and spoke, but Jorian could make nothing of his words. Although he knew several languages, that of the man in the pantaloons was strange to him.
“I am Jorian of Aradamai, son of Evor the clockmaker,” he said. This had been his name until that day, five years before, when he had innocently caught a human head hurtling through the air and found himself King of Xylar.
Staring intently at Jorian’s golden crown, the man shook his head and said something else. Jorian repeated his statement in Mulvanian and in Shvenic. Looking blank, the man uttered more sounds.
Then another voice sounded, Jorian jumped, for he had not seen anyone else nearby. The voice, speaking unintelligible words in a squawking, metallic tone, seemed to come from the man’s vehicle. The man smiled a forced smile of reassurance, and said something more to Jorian, and went back to his carriage, which soon roared off.
Jorian turned back to his rope and began to coil it around his waist. He recalled his instructions: Walk southeast one league, lower himself back to his own world, and await Karadur, if the holy man had not already reached the rendezvous.
But which way was southeast? Luckily the sky was clear, as it had been in Xylar. The execution had been timed for noon, and little time had elapsed since Jorian had placed his neck upon the block. Soon, however, the sun’s motion would make it useless as a directional guide. He would have to risk crossing one of these roads despite the danger.
Looking along the nearest paved strip to make sure that no more vehicles approached, Jorian darted across. He continued to the edge of the lawnlike sward, where plants grew more naturally. He broke off a stem of long field grass, found a patch of bare earth, and set the stem in it upright. Then, with the point of the little knife, he traced a line where the shadow of the grass stem fell. He drew a transverse line, then bisected the near left angle by still another line. That gave him his direction.
As he set out, Jorian paused now and then to cut a tree seedling and trim it to a wand two or three feet long. The first of these sticks he kept, cutting a notch in it every hundred steps. By thrusting the other sticks into the ground every fifty or hundred paces and back-sighting, he kept in a fairly straight line. Every thousand steps, he checked his direction with the sun.
When he had cut fifty notches in his first wand, he halted in a gully between two wooded hillsides. Although he had seen houses in the distance, he was thankful that his march had not taken him close to any.
He counted the notches to make sure, unwound the rope from his waist, and took a turn with it around a tree. Then he uttered the Mulvanian incantation that Karadur had taught him:
Mansalmu damn, rau antarau,
Nodõ zaro terakh hiã zor rau . . .
He felt his feet sinking, as if the solid ground beneath him were turning to quicksand. Then it gave way, and Jorian fell. He fetched up with a jerk, hanging suspended by the rope between earth—his own earth—and the clear blue heavens.
Above him, the two strands of rope arose, diverging slightly, until they faded out a yard above his head. Below, he was disconcerted to see the dark, stagnant waters of the Marsh of Moru. Karadur had told him that their rendezvous would be near the swamp, but he had not expected to come out right over it. To the north rolled the fields and woodlots of Xylar. To the south rose the foothills of the mighty Lograms, and beyond them the snow-topped peaks of that range, which sundered the Novarian city-states from the tropical empire of Mulvan.
He thought of climbing back up and trying again from another tree but decided against it. He was not sure how long the “soft spot” that his spell had created between the two planes would remain soft. It could not do to have the earth solidify just as he was climbing through it. On the other hand, he was a good swimmer and did not fear the three-foot dwarf crocodiles found in Moru Marsh.
He lowered himself to where the ends of the rope dangled. If he had tied one end around the tree with an ordinary loop, the rope would have been long enough to reach the surface of his world. In that case, however, he would not have been able to recover the precious rope after his descent. Therefore he had applied the middle of the rope to the tree and let both ends hang down an equal distance.
The dark, odorous water lay about twenty feet beneath him. A look around showed no sign of the wizard. Here we go, Jorian thought, and released one end of the rope.
He struck with a tremendous splash. The rope poured down after him, striking the water in loops and coils. Taking one end of it in his teeth, Jorian struck out for the nearest shore.
This proved to be a floating bank of reeds. Jorian hauled himself out, brown water running off his shoulders. When he stood up, the surface beneath him quivered, gave, and sank in alarming fashion. The safest mode of progress, he decided, was on all fours. Trailing the rope, he crept towards higher ground, where willows and dark cypresses grew thickly. At last he felt firm soil beneath him and rose to his feet. A water weed trailed from one of the spikes of his crown.
“Karadur!” he called, pulling loose the weed and scraping the swamp water off his skin with his fingers.
He was not surprised when there was no reply. A league-long hike would be hard on the old fellow, and he might not arrive until nightfall. Since Jorian saw nothing else of a useful nature to do, he found a spot masked by ferns, took off his crown, stretched out, and was soon fast asleep.
###
The sun was farther down in the sky, although still far from the horizon, when a voice awakened Jorian. He sprang up to face Karadur, who stood before him in his normal guise, leaning on a staff and breathing heavily.
“Hail!” said Jorian. “How did you find me, old man?”
“You—ah—snored, O King—I mean, Master Jorian.”
“Are we followed hither?”
“Nay, not so far as my arts reveal. Ah me, I am spent! Suffer me to rest.” The wizard sank with a sigh into the ferns. “Not in years have I been so fordone. Working two spells at once wellnigh slew me, and this march through forest has finished me off.” He rested his head in his hands.
“Where have you hidden the gear?”
“Alack, I am too spent to think. How found you the afterworld?”
“Oi! Ghastly, from what little I saw,” said Jorian. He described the double road of cement and the monstrous vehicles that whizzed along it. “By Thio’s horns, life must be riskier there by far than in our own world, with all its wars, plagues, robbers, sorceries, and wild beasts! I’d rather take a chance on one of your Mulvanian hells, where one has to cope merely with a few nice, bloodthirsty demons.”
“Saw you—met you any of the inhabitants?”
“Aye; a fellow whom I took to a carpenter stopped his carriage and bespoke me, albeit neither could understand the other’s lingo. He stared at me as the Xylarians would stare if a man-ape from Komilakh were to stroll amongst ’em.” Jorian described the man.
Karadur gave a faint chuckle. “That was no carpenter but a peace officer—a man trained in the use of arms but employed solely against evildoers of his own nation instead of against a foreign foe. I believe some of your Novarian city-states possess corps of such stalwarts. It is a plane of great wealth and many curious devices, but I hope never to spend an incarnation there.”
“Wherefore not?”
“Because it is a dimension of base materialism, wherein magic is so feeble as to be wellnigh useless; so what scope were there for an accomplished thaumaturge like myself? Those who pass for magicians on that plane, I am informed, are mostly fakers. Why, even the gods of that world are but debile wraiths, able to work but little weal or woe, beyond causing petty strokes of luck, upon those they love and hate.”
“Have these folk no religion, then?”
“Aye, or say they do. They also patronize magicians—astrologers and necromancers and such. The reason is not that the gods and wizards of that plane can do them much good or ill, but that they come into incarnation there with buried memories of then-previous lives in this world, where such things in sooth are mighty and fell. But, on the whole, the folk of that dimension are blind in spiritual matters.”
Jorian slapped a gnat. “Then I, having no more psychic powers than a head of cabbage, should do right well there.”
“Not so, but far otherwise.”
“Why?”
“Your strength and nimbleness—your strongest resources here—would avail you nought, because all tasks calling for such virtues in this world are there performed by soulless machines. What boots it if you can ride forty leagues between sunrise and sunset, when one of those mechanical cars you saw can cover thrice the distance in that time? Your strength were as useless as my moral purity and knowledge of spiritual forces.”
“I’m not quite a halfwit, even though my thews be a trifle larger than most men’s,” said Jorian. “Natheless, belike you speak truth. In any case, old man, daylight will not last forever. So let us forth to find our cache, if you now be fit for walking.”
“Aye, I am fit; albeit the prospect gives me no joy.” With a groan, the wizard heaved himself to his feet and started poking in the nearest bushes with his staff, muttering, “Now, let me see, where did I hide that accursed thing? Tsk, tsk. It was under the overhang of a boulder, I am sure, with a layer of leaves to conceal it . . .”
“No boulders here,” said Jorian with a touch of impatience.
“True, true; methinks the place lay a furlong or so to the north, on higher ground. Let us look.”
They moved off in the direction indicated and for the next two hours scoured the woods, looking for a boulder. Karadur mumbled: “Let me see; let me see . . . It was a boulder of granite, with patches of moss, about as high as your shoulder, O Jorian . . . I am sure . . . I think . . .”
“Did you not blaze a nearby tree, or otherwise leave a marking to guide our search,”
“Let me think. Ah, yes, I marked three trees, on three sides of the cache. But there are so cursed many trees . . .”
“Why not find it by divination?”
“Because my spiritual powers are spent for the nonce. We must use our material senses or none.”
They went back to the swamp and started off in a slightly different direction. Insects danced in level spears of light, shining through the forest, when Jorian said: “Is this one of your blazes?”
“Why, yes, it is!” said Karadur. “Now, let me see, where are the others . . .”
“There are no more boulders here than there are fishes in the desert of Fedirun.”
“Boulder? Boulder? Why—ah—I remember now! I left it not beneath a boulder at all, but under a tree trunk. There!”
Karadur pointed to a big trunk lying athwart the forest floor. In an instant they had scraped aside the concealing leaves and dragged out a canvas bag. Jorian let a hiss of annoyance escape through his teeth, for the wizard’s vague ways often exasperated him. Still, he told himself, one should not be too critical of a man who has saved one’s life.
###
As the sun set, Jorian arose. He was now clad like any forester, in coarse brown tunic and breeks, high laced boots in place of his tattered silken slippers, and sweat-stained green hat with a battered pheasant’s feather stuck in the band. In his left hand he balanced a crossbow. A short, heavy, hunting falchion, better suited to gutting game and hacking brush than to swordplay, hung at his girdle.
“What shall we do with this?” he said, holding up the crown of Xylar. “It would fetch a pretty stack of lions.”
“Never, my boy!” said Karadur. “If aught would betray you, that surely would. Show it to any goldsmith or jeweler or money changer within a hundred leagues, and with the speed of a pigeon’s flight the news would fly to Xylar.”
“Why not melt it down ourselves?”
“We have no furnace or crucible, and to seek to buy such things would direct suspicion upon us almost as surely as the crown itself. Besides, so ancient a golden artifact ought to have subsumed spiritual qualities from its surroundings, which could prove useful in making magic. It were a shame to destroy these qualities by melting.”
“What, then?”
“Best we hide it here with your discarded garments. If circumstance favor, you can recover these articles someday. Or, belike, you could compact with the Xylarians, your head for directions to find their crown. I thought you had money hidden on your person?”
“I have; one hundred golden lions, fresh from the royal mint, in this belt inside my breeches. Any more would have sunk me to the bottom of the Marsh of Moru. But one can always use a little more.”
“But that is a sizeable fortune, my son! The gods grant that no robbers hear that you bear such wealth upon your person.”
“Well, as things stand, there is no good place where I could bank the stuff for safekeeping.”
“True. In any event, to seek additional gain from this crown were not worth the risk. And now I must trim your hair ere darkness fall. Sit here.”
Jorian sat on the tree trunk while Karadur went over his head with scissors and comb. He repeatedly warned Jorian to stop talking, but the former king could not be stilled for long.
“It grieves me,” said Jorian, “to have robbed my people—my people that was, I mean—of all their fun: the beheading, and the coronation, and the scattering of largesse, and the contests at running and shooting and wrasting and football and hockey, and the singing and dancing, and the feast.”
“Followed, I doubt not, by a most wicked and sinful orgy of drunkenness and fornication,” said Karadur, “so you may have accomplished some good despite yourself. You can always change your mind and go back.” He worked around Jorian’s right ear.
“Na, na. I’m satisfied with things as they are. And the gods must approve my course, or they’d not have let me travel so far along it, now would they?”
“Your argument were cogent if you assumed that the gods concerned themselves with single mortal beings—a point the philosophers have hotly disputed for thousands of years. Methinks the main factors in your escape were my thaumaturgy, reinforced by my moral purity; the favorable aspect of the planets; and your own strength and mettle. But he who seeks a single cause for an event would more easily trim a flea’s whiskers. And, speaking of which, I must needs abate that monstrous mustache.”
“You would jealously rob me of every vestige of my youthful beauty, you old villain!” grinned Jorian. “But the drowning man who seizes a log cannot be fussy about the quality of the wood. Proceed!”
The ex-king’s flowing mane had now become a bristling brush, nowhere longer than a finger’s breath. Karadur trimmed the mustache closely, as he had the hair.
“Now,” he said, “let beard and mustache grow out together, and none shall know you.”
“Unless they noted my height, my weight, my voice, or the scar on my nose,” said Jorian. “Can’t you cast a spell to lend me the semblance of some slender, flaxen-haired stripling?”
“I could, had I not already cast two spells today. But it would accomplish nought, for such illusions last only an hour or two at most. You will meet none between here and the house of Rhithos the smith but an occasional hunter, charcoal-burner, or lonesome cotter. And what good would your disguise do then?”
“It might hinder them from putting the judiciary of Xylar on my track.”
“Aye; but suppose you appeared as a stripling and then resumed your true shape before their very eyes? That, if aught, would arouse suspicion.”
Jorian pulled a large, leathern wallet out of the canvas bag, and out of the wallet produced a loaf of bread and a piece of smoked venison. He ate heartily of both, while Karadur contented himself with a modest morsel of bread.
The wizard said, “You must bridle that voracious appetite, my boy.”
“Me, voracious?” said Jorian with his mouth full. “By Franda’s golden locks, this is but a snack for one of my poundage! Would you think to keep an elephant on one honey-bun a day?”
“Base material appetites were meant to be subdued; and, anyway, those victuals must needs last you until you reach the smith’s abode, where they await your coming. Dig deeper and you shall find a sketch map, showing the trails thereunto.”
“Good, albeit I already know the country hereabouts, from chasing brigands through it. Dol lies not a league hence.”
Karadur continued, “They say Rhithos has a niece or daughter, on whom rakish young oafs like you cast lustful eyes. Avert yours from her, for every sensual sin makes my magical tasks more difficult.”
“Me, sensual?” said Jorian, raising an eyebrow. “With five ravishing young wives, what need have I for venery? Dip me in dung, but I shall enjoy a respite—although I shall miss the toddlers climbing all over me. But let us speak of this Rhithos the smith. What gives you such confidence that he’ll not betray me to the Xylarians? A man could turn a pretty penny by putting them on my trail.”
“Sirrah! No initiated member of the Forces of Progress would be so base as to betray the trust of another member!”
“Natheless, you once implied that this Rhithos belongs to the faction opposed to yours. And my five years as king, if it has taught me nought else, has taught me not to trust any man overmuch.”
“True that he is of the Black Faction, or Benefactors, and so would keep the mighty powers of magic mewed up within our guild, whilst I, of the White Faction, or Altruists, would fain spread it abroad to aid the toiling masses. But, howsoever we quarrel amongst ourselves, we close ranks in dealing with the world outside our learned order, and I am as sure of Rhithos’s honor as of my own.”
“Judging from the names of your factions, you’re all as pure as spring water. Still and all, from what I saw of men during my reign—”
Karadur laid a bony brown hand on Jorian’s knee. “You trusted me perforce in the matter of saving your head, my boy. Trust me likewise in this.”
“Oh, well, you know what you do,” grumbled Jorian. “Holy Father, let me thank you now for saving my worthless head.”
“You are welcome; but, as well you know, you shall yet earn that head.”
Jorian grinned slyly. “What if I find a wizard to work a counter-spell, nullifying that which you and your fellow sorcerers have so unscrupulously put upon me?”
“There is no such counter-spell. I warn you that the combination of our spell with that of some bungling outsider bids fair to be fatal. The geas was laid upon you by the leader of our faction, Vorko of Hendau, and can only be lifted by him.
“Now, forget not: One month from today, we meet at the—ah—the Silver Dragon of Othomae, then on to Trimandilam to fetch the Kist of Avlen, and lastly to the Conclave of my fellow-adepts in the Goblin Tower of Metouro. We must not tarry, for the Conclave meets in the Month of the Pike.”
“That should give us ample time.”
“Nay, but unforeseen events oft spoil the most promising plans. First, howsoever, we must get to Othomae.”
“Why shouldn’t I wend thither with you, instead of wandering through the wildwood?”
“Because the Xylarians will be watching the rods for you, and you need time to let your whiskers grow. Rhithos knows of your coming, so you can tarry there for a few days to rest and replenish your provisions.”
“I shall be there, if no calamity befall. If I be late, leave a message for me with the taverner, under a fictitious name.”
Karadur: “A false name? Tsk Tsk! Not ethical, my son.”
“So? You forget that, ere I was King of Xylar, I served a year in the Grand Bastard’s foot guards. Many in Othomae will remember me if encouraged to do so.”
“You need not fear. The Grand Duke and the Grand Bastard are both alike opposed to Xylar, because the land they rule is wedged betwixt your former kingdom and the Republic of Vindium, which has an alliance with Xylar against Othomae. The lords of Othomae would not turn you over to the Xylarians.”
“Perhaps not, but they might not be able to stop kidnappers from Xylar. The judiciary will stick at nought to complete their bloody ceremony Besides, what’s more unethical about a false name than about coercing me into stealing that damned trunk full of mouldering magical parchments from the king of Mulvan, as your Forces of Progress has done?”
“Why—ah—there are many differences . . .”
“Name one,” said Jorian.
“That were easy—it is to say—oh, you are not spiritually advanced enough to understand. It is a matter of purity of motives—”
“I understand well enough that, if I’m caught between here and Trimandilam because of some silly scruple of yours, you shall get no chest of wizardly screeds. A headless man makes a feckless burglar.”
“Ah, well, your contention has a certain plausibility, although were I not so fatigued I could doubtless think of a counter-argument.”
“What name will you adopt, if you can bring yourself to do anything so unethical?”
“I shall call myself—ah—Mabahandula.”
“By Imbal’s iron pizzle! That’s a mouthful. But I suppose ’twere useless to feign yourself other than a Mulvani.” Jorian repeated the name several times to memorize it.
Karadur winced. “Tsk, tsk. I would you did not blaspheme so freely, even in the names of your pretty local godlets. What shall your name be, if you arrive first?”
“Hmm—Nikko of Kortoli. I had an Uncle Nikko.”
“Why not pass yourself off as a Zolonian? The isle of Zolon is farther away and hence safer.”
“I have never been to Zolon and cannot feign their foul dialect. But I was reared in Kortoli, and a use the Kortolian country speech when a speak without thinking. How now, old kimmer, canst tha riddle me?”
“It is well. If I fail to appear at the Silver Dragon, inquire about the town for the wizardess Goania. She has custody of the instruments we shall need to liberate the Kist of Avlen from the wicked wight who now wrongfully holds it—the so-called King of Kings.”
“Goania, said you? That I will. And you, my friend, do not in your absent way forget the name of the city and wander off to Govannian or Vindium and then wonder why I fail to join you.”
“Never mind my absent way!” snapped the wizard. “Simply follow my injunctions and leave the rest to me. And guard that flapping tongue. On the scaffold, I thought your cheerful chatter had surely undone us. You had better drink nought but water, since wine and beer loosen your tongue at both ends.”
“And if I wander about drinking strange waters, I shall come down with some fearful flux or fever and be wellnigh as useless to you as without my head.”
“Well, at least measure your drinks; liquor and loquacity are your besetting weakness. And now, let us bow our heads in prayer to the true gods: the gods of Mulvan.”
The wise man droned a prayer to Vurnu the Creator, Kradha the Preserver, and Ashaka the Destroyer. Then Jorian uttered a short prayer of his own to Thio, the Novarian forest god. He shook hands with Karadur, who said: “Be wary and discreet; subdue the lusts of the flesh; seek moral perfection and spiritual enlightenment. All the true gods go with you, my son.”
“I thank you, Father,” said Jorian. “I’ll be as discreet as a clam and as pure as a snowflake.”
He strode off into the deepening gloom of the forest. Karadur, looking after him, began winding the magical rope around his waist. The song of nocturnal insects soared through the gathering darkness.