Songs of the Dying Earth

The air seemed suddenly colder. He went back inside at once, where he found his host seated upon a mat at the low table, perusing a folio bound in moldering maroon leather.

“My horse has been taken,” Farnol reported, “and I suspect the worst.”

“No doubt you are right to do so. The great worms inhabiting this region are voracious of appetite and devoid of morality. Do not mourn the loss, but cultivate a philosophical detachment. It may be justly argued and supported by logic that the missing horse never truly existed. Now attend. You have done well in seeking my counsel. I have already discovered the requisite spell, a verbal concatenate of no great complexity known as the Swift Mutual Revulsion. You need only commit the syllables to memory, loose them at the appropriate moment — taking care to avoid mispronunciation, misplaced emphasis, transposition, inversion of pervulsion, or indelicacy of locution — and your difficulty is resolved. There before you lie the words. Learn them.”

“I thank you, sir.” Seating himself, Farnol regarded the folio. The yellowing page before him displayed the Swift Mutual Revulsion. The handwriting was faded, but legible, the diacritics plentiful and clear. The lines were ponderous, but not inordinately numerous. Encompassing the whole was no impossible feat. What signified his own unbroken history of failed sorcerous attempts? He had been an inattentive youth, a mere skip-jack. This time, he would apply himself as never before, and this time he would succeed.

Accordingly, he focused his attention and set to work. The silent minutes passed. Deeply immersed in his studies, he failed to note his host’s departure from the table. The syllables of power were bent on defying his efforts. Almost, they seemed to jig and hop on the page, as if to evade his vision — a familiar yet disconcerting manifestation. In the past, such calligraphic acrobatics had defeated him. Today, he persevered, plodding on to capture and store the phrases one by one. Presently, a voice impinged upon his consciousness.

“No doubt you completed your task long ago, and now sit musing. Attention, if you please. It is time to put your knowledge to the test.”

Farnol blinked and looked up. Tcheruke had returned, bearing a fist-sized globular object which he deposited upon the table.

“Observe.” The magician swept an inviting gesture. “I offer you a modest involution, comprising five separate lengths of twine. No doubt you might eventually pick it apart without recourse to magic, but let us imagine for the sake of argument that your time is limited, by something or other. You will employ the Swift Mutual Revulsion, and the five strands, suddenly imbued with intense detestation of one another, will pull apart with great vehemence, thus eliminating the knot. You are ready?”

“I am.” Farnol strove to believe that it was true. He had wrestled long and hard with the lines. Surely they were his. Thus assured, he sang forth the spell. The weight and bulk of the syllables that he had crammed into his mind vanished in an instant, leaving nothing of themselves behind. For a moment, he sat almost bewildered, then recovered and looked to the knot.

It sat before him unchanged, tight and dense as ever. A small chitter of surprise escaped Tcheruke the Vivisectionist, and he shivered his cloak of membranous stuff in the manner of an insect fluttering its wings.

“Remarkable,” observed the magician. “Never have I witnessed such profound inefficacy. I marvel.”

“Ah.” Farnol was sadly conscious of the void in his mind wherein knowledge had lately resided. “Indelicacy?”

“By no means. There is the wonder of it all. Your performance revealed inexperience, but I noted no distinct error, and thus no obvious source of failure. Intriguing. Additional observation is indicated. You must try again.”

“Very well.” Swallowing disappointment, Farnol resumed his studies. This time, memorization came more easily, and at the end of an hour’s effort, he deemed himself master of the Swift Mutual Revulsion. A second attempt to employ the spell revealed the fallacy of this belief. Once again, the tangle of twine proved resistant, lying motionless as befit an inanimate object.

“Again, no apparent error. Interesting. Interesting.” Tcheruke clicked thoughtful fingernails upon his eyepieces. “I must reflect. Set aside the folio, young man — it is useless. Later, perhaps. Well, well, we shall see.” Thereafter the magician fell silent, ignoring all questions and comments.

Farnol followed his host’s advice and set the book aside, but the syllables of the Swift Mutual Revulsion danced maddeningly across his mind. Should Tcheruke the Vivisectionist prove unable to assist him, where then could he go — what could he do? As if in response to a mental poke, the fire inside him flared. Farnol’s lips tightened, and he pressed a hand to his stomach. The syllables of power went up in mental smoke.