Songs of the Dying Earth

Powerful magicians began to visit the collegeum as rumor spread that Lychenbarr was developing potential rivals. Dringo thought them all uniformly haughty, boastful, arrogant, supercilious, and pompous. These powerful pandalects, without fail, immediately attempted to impose their own distorted imprimatur; and it was obvious to Dringo that Lord Lychenbarr realized that he had made a mistake in allowing such visits. None alarmed him more than when he announced that a communication arrived stating that Iucounu the Laughing Magician would honor the collegeum with an assessment.

Iucounu chose to use a whirlaway of grandiose design. Dringo and his fellow students watched from an upper window as the corpulent wizard bounded from the conveyance, crossed a short expanse of swaying grasses on his stubby legs and called into the manse commandingly, “It is Iucounu. Present yourself before my felicitous thoughts are overtaken by irritation and vex.”

A servant greeted Iucounu and led him inside and up the stairs to the audarium where they all awaited.

Lord Lychenbarr welcomed Iucounu. “Was your journey without trial?”

Iucounu, in his notably squeaky voice, giggled. “One minor annoyance that was quickly dispatched. Nothing of consequence to one such as myself.”

He wore an ill-fitting gown of pale gentian with maroon abstract designs. It did little to mask his rotundity. His large head rode above the silken mass like a boulder perpetually out of balance. “So these are the young mages I hear so much about,” he said, looking about the room. Suddenly, Iucounu screamed a high-pitched invective that tested the upper range of the audible spectrum. He held out an arm with his finger rigid in accusation.

“Cugel. It is you!”

Lord Lychenbarr followed the line of Iucounu’s venomous stare. He turned to him. “You are mistaken. This is Dringo.”

Iucounu squinted. He accessed a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from some hidden reservoir of fabric and walked a few steps closer. “Ahh…. The resemblance is uncanny. The same slender stature. Hair the color of a crow’s wing. The visage of a fox.” Iucounu frowned but seemed to calm.

A stunned Dringo stepped forward. “Then you know my father?” he asked without guile or premonition. “My quest is to seek him out.”

Iucounu squealed, “Do I know your father? Do I know your father? A thief and a trickster. He irritates me worse than a canker on my scrotum.” He raised an arm and rushed forward as if to strike Dringo.

Lord Lychenbarr raced forward and placed himself between the two. “Stop, at once! Iucounu, I will not allow you to disrupt the harmony of this collegeum. Whatever your annoyance, Dringo has done you no mischief. He is—”

Iucounu chanted a spell of spatial transposition hurling Lord Lychenbarr across the room and against the wall with such force that stones loosened and fell, ribbons of dust drifted from the rafters covering Lord Lychenbarr who lay slumped on the floor.

Dringo rushed to his side.

Lord Lychenbarr tried to raise his head but failed. Dringo knelt and cupped the back of his head.

“I’m sorry, Dringo…” Lord Lychenbarr managed in an old man’s voice. His hand searched for Dringo’s and placed an object the size and weight of a glass marble firmly into his palm. “My legacy to you, my dear friend,” he whispered.

Iucounu towered over them. “Dringo, you are too much in your father’s image. You want your father? You shall have him!” He invoked the Agency of Far Dispatch followed by an infliction of the Spell of Forlorn Encystment.

Dringo could hear the sound of Iucounu’s girlish whinny as reality shifted in a dizzying swirl of sky and stars and awareness.

Dringo looked at himself through an ocher err-light, his image distorted further by a strange opaqueness, as if looking through amber. His eyes were open but unblinking. No movement was discernable. Nor was there a trace of sound. He tried to move. It was a sensation beyond the scope of anything he could imagine. Null. Nothingness. An absolute disconnect between mind and body. He sensed no beat of his heart, and he realized at that moment that he did not breathe. There was no pain. There was no cold. There was no heat. Was there life, even? So this was the Spell of Forlorn Encystment. This was worse than being buried alive. Wait! He was buried alive. Forty-five miles beneath the surface of the earth to be exact. But there was no hope even for death to bring a cessation of this perpetual nullity. He turned his mind towards Iucounu. There was hate, at least. But he couldn’t even hold on to that because if it was possible to still “feel” anything, he did still feel the fragility of Lord Lychenbarr’s head as he cradled it in his hand. Was Lord Lychenbarr yet alive? Dringo cried. But he didn’t cry.