Songs of the Dying Earth

“My only hope then, which Kateraspex failed to foresee, was that I might find some gullible dunce. For if I could but imbue his noddle with some of my own talents, currently useless to me, he and I would together make up a source of power. Meanwhile, every piece of fair fortune my pupil might expect to encounter would instantly magnetize to my own self, he then suffering a counterbalance of lucklessness. As this happened, my reserves of energy would be recharged.

“Generously, I shall not chide you with the long wait I had, due to your tardy arrival. For though I met many dunderheads, they were too fly to trust me. While the gullible were already so mentally crammed with idiocies my tuition found no room. You, however, were perfection. An imbecile, empty as the night of moon.

“Soon enough you gained my sword, then the garments, and, at length the ring. With each acquisition too you obtained a fleeting glimpse of Undimmoril. Finally, a vision of my land was established in your imagination. Thus primed, the Selfulsions needed lesser and then no intervals between them. Only your intransigent Cugeline fad caused difficulty. In the end, even that did not avail. We achieved Undimmoril. Where, once more on hallowed ground, I reverted to my true persona and emptied your brain of my wisdom. All is now mine. Notice, even the sword has come back to me.”

Khiss laughed with joy. Evillo sensed that his own mind was hollow and confused. Khiss was prompted to one more admission:

“By the by, it was not you at whom that farlock, Pendatas Baard, sat staring at in the prison. He stared at me. He had never seen me, either as prince or snail, yet he sensed some remnant about me of his accursed father. Who, you may be entertained to know, Pendatas himself dispatched, on a rare paternal visit, with a venom of the Saponids. Ever after, Pendatas has sought for Undimmoril himself. With slight success, as we note.”

Exhausted by this far from terse account, as much as by enforced exercise, Evillo plunged face forward in the grass. From this vantage, he grew aware of the palace of Phurn standing close by. It was supplied with pillars of turquoise and many thin towers like sticks of angelica. Gardens garlanded all, crowded with terebinth and myhrhadion, eluent teff and gentians.

In the gateway was the wonderful woman with pink hair. Khiss cried aloud in delight and reined in the clariot. “Behold, my wife, Twylura Phlaim, the only female worthy to partner my splendour!” Glancing back, Khiss added, “Evillo, you may depart. In a moment, I will open a portal, and you will then be propelled back to the fount of your useless and unaesthetic existence.”

Before this was done however, the beautiful Twylura Phlaim mounted a cat-headed chariot, which leapt on hare’s legs up the hill.

“Art thou home so soon?” she exclaimed to her husband, in a peculiarly raucous tone. “Be cautioned, Khiss, in thy long absence, Twylura Phlaim grew bored and ran away with an untypically handsome gleft. Instead I have taken her place.”

“Who then are you?” demanded Prince Khiss.

“The demon Cardamoq. Come thou now and embrace me.” Khiss had grown white. The clariot reared and unseated him. Khiss landed by Evillo.

“Oh, Evillo, dear friend, despite my restored powers, the demon’s strength overwhelms me! Let us therefore at once return to our beloved dying earth—”

“Nay, husband. Thou shalt stay with thy beloved Cardomoq!” screeched the demon unmusically. She had grown two heads, and smoke billowed from the six nostrils of each. “To be sure of it, I shall transfer some of thy powers to the yellow-haired human there. He may keep them as a momento of this happy reunion.”

A blow fell on Evillo’s head. He sensed the portal open in the alter-world of Undimmoril, and wisely knew no more.

In fact, he fell to earth in the red sunlight of Kaiin. A multitude of hands were assisting him to rise, and the air rang with voices detailing how he had been searched for everywhere. Next came the militia and ringed him round.

Tiredly, Evillo anticipated the prison, but instead the throng, cheering and rejoicing, bore him to the palace of Kandive the golden.

“How pleasing that we have refound you, dear boy,” declaimed Kandive. “I am already bereft of sons and nephews; they have such a propensity for extended voyages whereon they vanish. It seems to me, when we have consulted the proper sages, that you will be my direct heir, in default of all the others. For you are the child of my half-sister who, sixteen years before and when visiting an obscure fane above the Derna, mislaid you, through sheer carelessness, near the village of Ratgrad.”

Evillo stood nonplussed. Had his good luck returned? He grasped also that certain powers belonging to the arrogant Khiss had indeed been given to him. Released from Khiss’ personalized Equivalence, Evillo might surely now enjoy them. And not least as heir to white-walled Kaiin.