Songs of the Dying Earth

In the morning, he awoke to the sounds of acclamation, as the two enemy lords left the palace to the cheers of their armies. Vespanus bent his mind entirely to the subject of escape. In the confusion of the final assault, he thought, he might be able to swim the river, possibly with Hegadil’s assistance, and then take refuge in a shelter created by the madling while the enemy armies went about their business…

It was a wretched, dangerous plan, but it was the only one that occurred to him.

He rose, broke his fast, and went to the Onyx Tower. A pair of twk-men orbited the Protostrator’s head in gay silence, as out-of-place as a cheerful red cap on the statue of a Deodand. Ambius, his round face by now set in an expression of permanent dolor, gestured toward the armies of Calabrande. Looking from the window, Vespanus saw that a ridge-top, out of range of any of the castle’s weapons, had been perfectly leveled.

“A platform for the Projectors of Halcyon Detonation,” Ambius said. “The twk-men inform me that the barges will arrive at the enemy camp later this morning. Afterwards, it will take the army most or all of the day to drag the weapons from the landing-stage to their position. We may expect the grand assault at dawn tomorrow.”

“It would take a sandestin, or a madling like Hegadil, to level that ridge overnight,” Vespanus said.

Ambius merely shrugged. “Why should they not outnumber us in sandestins, as they do in all else?” he said.

“Perhaps we should find out.”

Vespanus opened his thumb-ring and summoned Hegadil. The creature appeared in the form of a dead twk-man, green skin turned gray, a needle thrust like a spear through his abdomen.

“Abandon this distasteful form,” Vespanus said, “go to the ridge yonder, and discover if you can undermine it and drop the Projectors into a pit of your own creation.”

Hegadil was gone for three or four minutes, and then returned, this time as a dwarfed Exarch, the lord’s habitual superior smile now turned to a deranged leer.

“A sandestin named Quaad guards the platform,” he reported. “He is far stronger than I, and informed me that he would tear me to bits if I attempted any digging.”

Vespanus opended the thumb-ring.

“You may return to your rest.”

When Hegadil was bottled up, Vespanus went to the windows and manipulated their adjustable properties to give himself a closer view of the ridge.

“Those are engineers on the site,” he said. “They employ instruments familiar to me from their uses in architecture and surveying — tripods and alidades, chains and rods, altazimuths and dividing engines. Are they proposing to build something there?”

“The opposite,” said Ambius. “They intend destruction. They measure precisely the distance and angle to the castle, so that the Projectors may be better aimed so as to blast us to ruin.”

Vespanus paused for a moment to absorb the melancholy implications of this revelation. Suddenly, diving into the Dimwer did not seem so dreadful a plan. Ambius, who now seemed very diminished in his grand array, slowly rose to his feet.

“I fear it is time to visit my wife,” he said.

Curious, Vespanus followed Ambius to his quarters. Ambius either did not mind his presence, or was unaware of it. The Protostrator disarmed the various traps on his door, then led Vespanus again into his study.

This time he found himself with a better view of the Protostrate — she was a buxom woman, with wiry hair, and, even at her current size, a piercing voice. From the Protostrator’s attempts to communicate with her, Vespanus gathered her name was Amay.

Amay began abusing Ambius as soon as he entered the room and continued throughout the interview. The gist of her comments — leaving aside the personal references to Ambius, his person, and his habits — was that she would delight in the destruction of the castle, and would not prevent it if she could.

Perceiving that his arguments were futile, Ambius shrugged and walked to a shelf, where he found a vial filled with an amber liquid. Loosening the stopper, he poured a single drop into the neck of the crystal bottle, whereupon Amay staggered, spat, and collapsed into unconsciousness.

“Sometimes it is necessary to think in silence,” he said, as he returned the vial to its shelf, “and this narcotic will guarantee my peace for some hours.”

“Very effective,” Vespanus observed.

Ambius contemplated the supine figure of his wife. “I fear that six years in a glass bowl has given her an unshakable prejudice against me,” he said.

“That would appear to be the case,” Vespanus said. “Would it help if I conducted a private conversation with her?”

Ambius gave him a doleful look. “Do you think it would help?” he asked.

Vespanus shrugged his most hopeless shrug. “Truth to tell, I believe it would not.”

Vespanus went to the buttery and helped himself to bread, cheese, and liquor. He wondered if he might, that evening, hurl himself from the Onyx Tower into the Dimwer and survive, perhaps with the help of Hegadil, and then be carried to freedom by the current.