Songs of the Dying Earth

Amberlin watched as they hurried off muttering and casting backward glances. Then, even as Joanto stooped to fill his bucket and Boanto discarded one flower after another in his quest for perfect blooms, Amberlin took the green operating coin for the baffle screen in one hand and the yellow eye-coin in the other and slammed them together. The result was a rather spectacular and very satisfactory flash complete with a thunderclap that echoed in the hills and sent reed-birds rising along the Scaum.

The brothers, of course, saw it as a fine conjuration rather than the pyrotechnics accompanying ancient science at work. Even as the thunder faded, they came scrambling back, Joanto discarding his bucket, Boanto throwing aside his fistfuls of flowers along the way.

“No matter! No matter!” Amberlin called. “My simplest Sunderblast has brought Eunepheos’ door undone. Light the torches and let us proceed.”

Boanto wiped his chin again and studied the perfectly round hole where the Copsy Door had been. Its blackness was absolute. “Surely a fine magical glow would be more convenient, your magnificence.”

“Surely it would,” Amberlin countered loftily. “But think on it further, Boanto. You fine robust fellows must continue to play some modest part in this to warrant as much as a quarter share.”

Joanto gave a shrewd sideways look. “But we were the ones who found the old requiem manuscript in that trunk in Solver’s attic while — er — visiting his poor, ill — er — now deceased mother that day, then immediately brought it to you.”

“True, but you brought it to me knowing I valued old manuscripts and syllabaries and was a likely buyer, nothing more. It was I who spent the hours researching Eunepheos and finally learned how to apply that scrap of melody to this fine Copsy Door so we could plot its comings and goings.”

“As you say, master,” said Joanto. “And I like that word ‘we’. ‘We’ is so much friendlier than ‘I’.”

“You’ve been talking to Diffin, I can tell. For now, be satisfied with the generous quarter ‘we’ agreed upon.”

Boanto rubbed his chin. “But what if yonder hole is empty? A quarter of nothing is nothing at all.”

“Indeed. But who knows? Prospective apprentices in training for Furness must seize any opportunity to demonstrate appropriate skills.”

The brothers eyed one another at the thought of access to the impressive and well-appointed manse their informant Diffin had long boasted about.

Joanto quickly set to lighting the torches. “Right you are, master. You conserve your fine magic. Bo and I will light the way to unstinting generosity and open-handed remuneration.”

“To the bottom of a mysterious hole in a riverbank at the very least. But well said, Joanto. In fact, surprisingly said. You will make a fine factotum someday. On you go, brave lads.”

Warily, reluctantly, the brothers stepped one after the other into the hole. Amberlin followed, relieved to find conventional stone steps leading down to an ordinary enough stone-lined corridor cut into the hillside. Whatever Venta-Valu had been above ground, here in the underhill more conventional methods were at work. More importantly, ordinary corridors usually signified ordinary destinations and conventional rewards like treasure troves and prized collectibles.

But while the brothers no doubt thought of gold and gems, perhaps a few of the easier glamors to ease their way in the world, Amberlin longed for spell books and periapts, something, anything, to free him from the debilitating nightmare of Stilfer’s Prolexic Inflect.

He said nothing of this, of course, simply continued by torchlight along a corridor flagged and walled with slabs of finely set teracite, with darkness stretching before and a more unsettling darkness closing in behind.

What had this place been? Amberlin wondered. Not a tomb, surely. Many wizards preferred to self-immolate in a blaze of scintillance before a suitable audience at an exact day and hour, as if in answer to some higher calling only they had cognizance of. Others chose to exit in the solemn pursuance of some marvelous interdimensional quest, so they claimed, something that would ensure a legacy of bafflement and wonder and become the stuff of legends.

Amberlin may have fallen a long way to his present desperate straits, but never for a moment did he forget that any adept’s reputation depended on one part magic to five parts showmanship. As the great Phandaal himself was purported to have said, “A good exit makes up for a good deal.” If the showmanship far outweighed the magic in these days since Sarimance’s curse, then so be it. That too took considerable skill.

At last, the corridor opened into a large stone tholos chamber, completely empty save for a single black mirror set against the far wall. The glass stood in an ornate gilt frame and was nearly the size of a door.