Songs of the Dying Earth

It was as if the mindless, drunken clamour had never been. As if the sinking sun had wiped all trace of it away with the last swipe of a wine-soaked sponge. In utter stillness, eyes wide and lips parted, the village folk sat waiting like ensorcelled children. And Evillo with them; he more than all.

For every hour of that night of ever-unmooned nights, the Fabler told his tales.

They were by turns swift and fearful, glamorous and enmarvelled, mystic, ribald, hilarious, and of a shocking horror. Canja Veck so controlled his captive audience that none moved more than a muscle, gave no sign of life beyond a blink, a gasp, a sigh or flash of laughter. Drink untasted, fire smouldering low, so they sat. While for Evillo, it was as if at last he had found true reality, the world itself, and it was nothing like the cramped cell he had, from two years old, been forced to occupy.

As he outlined the histories of his heroes and heroines, Canja Veck described also the varieties of place that formed a backdrop. Of Ascolais he spoke, and the white, half-ruined city of Kaiin, of Saponid lands, whose golden-eyed peoples dwelled beyond high Fer Aquila. He suggested the oblique Land of the Falling Wall, and wild Kauchique, and such antique metropoli as doomed Olek’hnit, and such occluded and occult regions as the Cobalt Mountains, and that fearsome forest the Lig Thig or Great Erm. He indicated the demonic realm of Jeldred, created only to house evil, which surely it did; Embelyon too, an alter-world the unseeable magician Pandelume had made to conceal himself, whose skies were fluctuant rainbows. And he told of Almery in the south, from whence stalked — less a hero than the transverse of all heroism — Cugel, the self-styled Clever, an arresting person, long of leg, deft of hand, light of finger, blessed by the luck of fiends — and the unluck of one cursed, which two states constantly cancelled each other out. Cugel was, besides, a perfect genius of cunning and razor wit, and also, on ocassion, an utter numbskull.

At last, the black of night grew threadbare in the east. The red sun pulled itself from sleep and glared upon the world that it must still serve, though itself of more than pensionable age.

The spellbound villagers slipped from their enchantment.

They stared eastward to gauge, in the manner of the time, how the solar disc fared. Seeing that it still burned, they looked around again to the rock where Canja Veck had been seated. But he was gone.

Only Evillo, who had not bothered with the sun, had seen him rise up, shake the dew from his robe, and move silently away. Only Evillo, sliding down the daobado, had dared pursue this mage among storytellers away from the rock, the villages, and, without a backward glance, down into the cliffy forests above the Derna.

About Midday, Evillo caught up to Canja Veck, who had paused on a wooded spur. Far below, the river was now visible, splashing like a hurried serpent through the ravine.

“Mighty sir—”

Canja Veck did not turn.

“Sir — great magician—”

To this, Canja Veck responded. “My title is Fabler.”

“Mighty Fabler—” but here Evillo, steeped so long in village concepts, could think of no means to convey his wants. Instead, in embarrassed banality he asked, “But are you not hungry, sir? Have you eaten today?”

“No,” replied Canja Veck gravely, “but I have eaten tomorrow, that tomorrow when the sun goes black. Eaten it entire.”

Evillo waited in great awe.

“By which I mean,” Canja Veck amended gently, “as any story-maker will, that I see the future as well as the past. I think you have not,” he added, “drunk their vile brew of fermented erb berry. Good. It is named, like the similarly styled tea, less for its stimulous than for the sting included in over-imbibition. Since an actual erb, as you may know, is a combination of man, bear, lank-lizard, and demon. Or so certain sorces report.”

“Phandaal’s Purple Book?” hazarded Evillo, referring back to the Fabler’s tales.

Canja Veck shook his head. Mildly, he inquired, “What do you wish from me?”

Evillo felt that he could not speak. He spread his arms and gazed in desperation. “I wish — to live — the life of such a hero as Guyal — or Turjan — or Cugel! Cugel the most.”

“Callous and manipulative Cugel? Clever Cugel the fool?”

Evillo deemed himself incapable of constructing sentences. He put his hands into his filthy hair and tore it in frustration.

“Peace,” said Canja Veck. “Look how far already you have come from your beginnings. If you will be the hero of a story, that fate is yours to conjur. There lies the river, and there the ancient broken road that will lead you to Porphiron Scar, and thence to white-walled Kaiin.”

“And Almery—” whispered Evillo.

“A journey of long months,” said Canja Veck, cool as distant stars. “Unless your transport should be super-normal.”