Songs of the Dying Earth

The rustics stank of cabbage, so Chimwazle hied to the far side of the room and joined the prosperous fellow with the silver buttons on his vest.” How are your snails?” he inquired.

“Slimy and without savor. I do not recommend them.”

Chimwazle pulled out a chair. “I am the Great Chimwazle.”

“And I Prince Rocallo the Redoubtable.”

Chimwazle frowned. “Prince of what?”

“Just so.” The prince sucked another snail, and dropped the empty shell onto the floor.

That answer did not please him. “The Great Chimwazle is no man to trifle with,” he warned the so-called princeling.

“Yet here you sit, in the Tarn House.”

“With you,” observed Chimwazle, somewhat peevishly.

The landlord made his appearance, bowing and scraping as was appropriate for one of his station. “How may I serve you?”

“I will try a dish of your famous hissing eels.”

The innkeep gave an apologetic cough. “Alas, the eels are…ah…off the bill of fare.”

“What? How so? Your sign suggests that hissing eels are the specialty of the house.”

“And so they were, in other days. Delicious creatures, but mischievous. One ate a wizard’s concubine, and the wizard was so wroth he set the tarn to boiling and extinguished all the rest.”

“Perhaps you should change the sign.”

“Every day I think the same when I awaken. But then I think, the world may end today, should I spend my final hours perched upon a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand? I pour myself some wine and sit down to cogitate upon the matter, and by evening I find the urge has passed.”

“Your urges do not concern me,” said Chimwazle. “Since you have no eels, I must settle for a roast fowl, well crisped.”

The innkeep looked lachrymose. “Alas, this clime is not salubrious for chicken.”

“Fish?”

“From the tarn?” The man shuddered. “I would advise against it. Most unwholesome, those waters.”

Chimwazle was growing vexed. His companion leaned across the table and said, “On no account should you attempt a bowl of scrumby. The gristle pies are also to be avoided.”

“Begging your pardon,” said the landlord, “but meat pies is all we have just now.”

“What sort of meat is in these pies?” asked Chimwazle.

“Brown,” said the landlord. “And chunks of grey.”

“A meat pie, then.” There seemed to be no help for it.

The pie was large, admittedly; that was the best that could be said for it. What meat Chimwazle found was chiefly gristle, here and there a chunk of yellow fat, and once something that crunched suspiciously when he bit into it. There was more grey meat than brown, and once a chunk that glistened green. He found a carrot too, or perhaps it was a finger. In either case, it had been overcooked. Of the crust, the less said, the better.

Finally Chimwazle pushed the pie away from him. No more than a quarter had been consumed. “A wiser man might have heeded my warning,” said Rocallo.

“A wiser man with a fuller belly, perhaps.” That was problem with Twk-men; no matter how many you ate, an hour later you were hungry again. “The earth is old, but the night is young.” The Great Chimwazle produced a pack of painted placards from his sleeve. “Have you played peggoty? A jolly game, that goes well with ale. Perhaps you will assay a few rounds with me?”

“The game is unfamiliar to me, but I am quick to learn,” said Rocallo. “If you will explain the rudiments, I should be glad to try my hand.”

Chimwazle shuffled the placards.

The inn was grander than Lirianne had expected, and seemed queer and out of place, not at all the sort of establishment she would have expected to find along a forest road in the Land of the Falling Wall. “Famous for Our Hissing Eels,” she read aloud, and laughed. Behind the inn a sliver of the setting sun floated red upon the black waters of the tarn.

The Twk-men buzzed around her on their dragonflies. More and more had joined Lirianne as she made her way along the road. Two score, four, a hundred; by now she had lost count. The gauzy wings of their mounts trilled against the evening air. The purple dusk hummed to the sound of small angry voices.

Lirianne pinched her nose and took a sniff. The scent of sorcery was so strong it almost made her sneeze. There was magic here. “Oho,” she said. “I smell wizard.”

Whistling a spritely tune, she sauntered closer. A ramshackle cart was drawn up near the bottom of the steps. Slumped against one of its wheels was a huge, ugly man, bigbellied and ripe, with coarse dark hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He looked up as Lirianne approached. “I would not go up there if I were you. It is a bad place. Men go in. No men come out.”

“Well, I am no man as you can plainly see, and I love bad places. Who might you be?”

“Polymumpho is my name. I am a Pooner.”

“I am not familiar with the Pooners.”

“Few are.” He shrugged, a massive rippling of his shoulders. “Are those your Twk-men? Tell them my master went inside the inn to hide.”

“Master?”

“Three years ago I played at peggoty with Chimwazle. When my coin ran out, I bet myself.”

“Is your master a sorcerer?”

Another shrug. “He thinks he is.”