The Warrior of World's End, page 7
“And do you consider this Froynox tale to be of small consequence?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Why?”
“Because it has no genuine bearing on our present condition or our future course of action, at least none that I can see.”
The magician looked at him for a long time in silence. Then he said: “You delight and amaze me, Ganelon. You are learning to think; I am impressed with that.” He gestured: stars cleared from the sky, whose dull purple brightened back to noontide brilliance. “Come; it is time for- lunch.”
Ganelon followed obediently.
But he noticed that the Illusionist neither admitted nor denied that he had lied about his ultratelluric origins. And never at any later time did Ganelon learn the truth of the story
12. CONVERSATIONS WITH VLOOB ATZ
His new life at Nerelon soon settled down to routine. In the morning he exercised his strength before breakfast. In the forenoon he partook of certain experiments with the Illusionist which were designed to explore the nature of his powers. After lunch he was free to wander, explore, or otherwise amuse himself just as he wished. During the hours between lunch and dinner the magician closeted himself in his sanctum, busied with matters that bore no direct relation to the mystery of Ganelon Silvermane.
It was not as lonely a life as it sounds. Ganelon was by nature amiable and easy-going, even sociable. He lost his fear of such weird creatures as Fryx the Gyraphont, Azgelasgus the automaton, or the wraith of Vloob Atz. He made friends with them, after a fashion, and with the curiosities in the menagerie of marvels that occupied one entire wing of the Illusionist’s palace.
Among these was a Youk which had been given quasihuman intelligence and even the gift of speech. The immense, spider-limbed thing, clad in an integument of slick, glistening fur, told him many strange tales of the jungled regions of Ongonoga from which it had been captured by hunters.
There was also a river-nix among the creatures in this weird zoo. The Nonhuman aquatic girl had a lissome, mostly transparent body and long green hair, thick and coarse as seaweed. Her face and torso were quite human, however, and even attractive. If you could overlook blue lips and nipples, and gill-slits in either side of her neck. Her name was Alyx.
The Youk and the Flion and the Sky Serpent were happy enough in their captivity, but Alyx pined for her native river, its secluded shores and deep pools, and for the companionship of her eighty-four sisters.
The Flion was named Rowmor. It was a large, shaggy-maned, lionlike beast with rich orange fur and friendly, intelligent eyes yellow as pieces of topaz. Two sets of yellow-feathered wings grew from its body, one set from the burly shoulders, the other from the fat haunches. Sometimes Ganelon was permitted to exercise the Flion in the windy heights above the palace; on such occasions the winged flying lion was tethered to an unbreakable magic bridle, one end of which was sealed to a perdurable column of brass.
The Sky Serpent was named Jebd. It was vaporish and mostly insubstantial, and its kind lived above the clouds, where they slithered among the rainbows and fed from pure ice crystals in the stratosphere.
The Youk had no name.
Ganelon’s best friend at Nerelon was the ghostly Vloob Atz. The wraith loved to talk, and waxed voluble on every conceivable subject Ganelon asked him how he liked his spectral state of existence and, shrugging gossamer shoulders, the shade replied: “Not bad, all things considered. You neither hunger nor thirst, nor do you become weary and require rest or sleep. From neither heat nor cold do you suffer; you feel no emotion strongly, only, as it were, the echo of emotions. Time passes in a dreamy haze. It is very restful, lazy, contented. And it is enormously more pleasurable than spending a few million years in hell, I assure you !”
From time to time Ganelon assisted his master in certain expeditions. Once they flew in the glassy sphere to Yembar Chasm, where the giant lowered the hollow metal figure of Azgelasgus on a heavy chain into the vertiginous deeps of the abyss. There the metal man gathered green fungi which sprouted from the bones of a monster’s skeleton. The sides of Yembar Chasm were glittering vertical planes of lucent crystal. Within the glassy depths, weird figures flitted between the mirrorlike internal rifts and planes. Some of these came close to the outer surface of the chasm and yeeped and yammered soundlessly.
“Ghost-Phexians,” said the Illusionist. They were towering green shapes, which flitted about on elongated nude limbs. Their flat heads were featureless, save for immense, drooling maws and great glowing eyes like sick yellow moons.
“Can’t they come at us here?” inquired Silvermane.
The magician shook his head. “All planar surfaces in the regions which I often visit have been coated with an impenetrable transparent paint through which the Phexians are unable to gain passage. Were it not so, they would be all over you in an instant, sucking the marrow from your bones.”
“How can anything immaterial enough to pass through solid crystal possibly suck my marrow?” Ganelon asked, doubtful.
The Illusionist laughed. “You really are learning to think, my boy! The answer is: they can’t, of .course. But they can make you think they are, because they can touch your mind. The thought that the gaunt, glowing things were sucking out your marrow would drive you mad. That would give them pleasure.”
“How?”
The magician shrugged. “Who knows? They are all mad themselves. Perhaps misery likes company.”
The fungi gathered, Ganelon bent his powerful arms to the task of drawing the automaton up out of the abyss. They left Yembar Chasm in the nembalim, which wobbled erratically from time to time. Mooring the vehicle in its circular hollow, the Illusionist touched the surface of the sphere thoughtfully. The glassy substance was clouded and lusterless, webbed with hairline cracks.
“I fear the globe has reached the end of its usefulness,” he sighed. “It was never designed to cope with such weight as yours. Soon we shall have to seek some other mode of transport, or stay at home in Nerelon.”
That night, chatting with the friendly wraith, Ganelon mentioned the Ghost-Phexians.
Depraved specters!” Vloob Atz sniffed disdainfully. “No decent, civilized apparition would dream of sucking marrow. It is a loathsome and despicable habit! I fear you are not being exposed to the most wholesome influences, child.”
“I suppose not,” said Ganelon. “Still, it’s an education.”
Another expedition followed this one to Yembar Chasm a few weeks later. The nembalim still had energy stores sufficient to carry the Illusionist, but he no longer dared risk transporting Ganelon.
“I dislike letting you go out unattended, master!” the giant protested.
“Nonsense, my boy. I still have my magic, and can call Fryx to me in case of need. But I must gather thunderbolts atop Mount Droom in order to vitalize my newest vat-creature. Tend to your lessons while I am gone, and don’t get into mischief.”
Ganelon nodded reluctantly; the magician left in the glassy globe, which went wobbling off in an erratic manner. The giant returned to his studies; the Illusionist had taught him grammar and punctuation. Now he was learning to cipher.
He was pulling over his arithmetic problems when Fryx snapped into existence.
“Hello, Fryx. What’s twelve times twelve?”
No know, the Gyraphont said hurriedly. You come!
“I’m to stay here and do my lessons.”
The lobster-man clicked his fore-main-upper pincers before Ganelon’s nose with a nasty snikk.
You come. Help master. Quick-quick!
“What’s wrong with master; is he hurt?” said Ganelon, rising to his feet.
No hurt, no. Stuck. Sky ball no good no more. No can come home. Nice boy come along Fryx, quick-quick!
Ganelon tossed aside his slate and began putting on his boots. “I’ll need my war-hamess. And don’t forget my sword!”
Hokay, me fetch. Fryx popped out of sight, returning a moment later with the leathern girdle, torso harness, and war-kilt. The swordbelt of the scabbard was looped about his scorpion-sting.
Ganelon ripped off Ms robe, a lime-green one this time, and began belting his nude body into the harness, buckling the heavy straps under his arms and across his deep chest.
Nice boy, good boy, you come quick now?
“What’s up?” Vloob Atz screeched eerily, his shadow appearing against the tapestried wall.
“I don’t know; the nembalim is inoperable, and I must go help the master.”
“Don’t let anything happen to him, or I’ll be left with no one to talk to but those empty-headed automatons,” said the wraith, worry in his scratchy voice.
“I’ll do my best. Fryx, where is this Mount Droom, anyway? Will I have much climbing to do? Because in that case I’ll need spike boots and a hook-staff…
The Gyraphont rasped his mandibles together in an agony of impatience.
No time for climb. You come along Fryx now—take hold! he said, extending one of the huge central-thorax claws. Ganelon eyed it dubiously; the pincers were big enough to snip him in half.
No be scared; Fryx no hurt. Come, come!
Ganelon swallowed, consigned his safety to Galendil’s keeping, and clasped “hands” with the lobster-thing. They both vanished from sight.
“You go ahead; Til keep the home fires burning,” the wraith said encouragingly. Behind him, Azgelasgus came clanking into the chamber.
“What wrong, wraith? Trouble afoot? Best I trot out my trusty ax and charge off to the rescue!” boomed the metal man. Vloob Atz eyed him sourly.
“You get back where you belong, bucket-head, before somebody decides to use your body for a coal scuttle! I’m in charge around here when the humans are away. Get along with you now, before I give you a case of the seven-year rust—”
The automaton backed out of the room grumbling hollowly.
Ganelon and Fryx snapped into existence near the crest of Mount Droom, to find the Illusionist perched unhappily atop the dead, lusterless sphere, ringed about by snapping yerxels. Seven or eight of them lay dead, their white-scaled carcasses singed and blackened by miniature thunderbolts.
‘Took your time, didn’t you, Fryx?” the Illusionist said wryly as they appeared. He had used up all but three of the thunderbolts he had been gathering that afternoon, and the yerxel pack still had thirty-five members left. They had elongated saurian snouts like dwarf alligators, and three wicked red eyes. They stank of iodine. Ganelon uttered a war-whoop and charged the lot of them, swinging the Silver Sword from side to side with vicious whoof sounds.
In no time he had cut three in half and crushed the skulls of four others. Hissing like a covey of teakettles they sprang upon him, but their claws could not get through the heavy leather straps of his harness to do anything more than merely scratch his tough hide.
Fryx vanished, reappearing immediately in the middle of the pack. Six or seven of his pincers snicked out to cut off heads, snouts, forelimbs, or whatever. They turned on him hissing furiously, but could inflict no damage at all on the Gyraphont. His scarlet chitin was proof to anything this side of steel needles.
The Silver Sword hummed vibrantly through the air, scattering a scarlet spray. Twitching yerxel corpses piled about Ganelon’s feet. Before long, the pack, now considerably thinned out, decided to seek elsewhere for the evening meal, and the repulsive white reptiles vanished around a curve in the trail.
Ganelon helped the Illusionist climb down from atop the sphere. He thanked the Construct and the Gyraphont gruffly, angrily kicking the side of the sphere. The glass was completely opaque by now, and was beginning to crumble away to ash before their eyes.
“So much for the old nembalim! Ganelon, Fryx can only transport us one at a time. I’ll go first, if you don’t mind; I feel a little sick to the stomach. All that blood— ugh, the nasty brutes! Galendil must have been in a vile mood the day he invented yerxels.”
Taking hold of the claw which Fryx first wiped clean on a dead yerxel, then extended to him, the Illusionist vanished. A few moments later Ganelon, too, returned to Nerelon. But the nembalim would never fly again; it shrank visibly, rejoining the elements of the air from which Fabricators of Dirdanx had solidified it, long ago.
13. VITALIZING THE BIRD-MACHINE
It was two days after the disastrous expedition to Mount Droom; Ganelon and the Illusionist were seated in the Great Hall before a bellowing fire. Fryx lurked in the background polishing silver and careful to remain within earshot in case his services should be required. The wraith of Vloob Atz prowled among the folds in a wall hanging, humming to himself, and Rowraor the Flion was stretched out on the hearth, wings folded, snoring like a gigantic dog. The Illusionist fretted and fussed with a tassel.
“It is really most annoying,” he muttered. “By this time I had intended to be looking into conditions up north; I suspect that canny old devil of an Elphod has been making trouble for my friends the Tigermen of Karjixia. But since we can’t fly . .
“The whatmen of where?” asked Ganelon.
The magician repeated the phrase. “You will recall I told you I foresaw three principal dangers that threatened these regions of Northern YamaYamaLand,” he said. “The Queen of Red Magic is certainly one of them, and not the least of them, either; but we can safely set that problem aside until later. Then I had occasion to refer to the Ximchak Barbarians during a conversation with your father. This horde is still very far to the north and it will be years before they get down this far south; but they are coming, and when they get here, it will be touch and go to see if we can break them. They have recently come under the control of a Warlord of advanced military genius, and complete indifference to loss of human life. The combination is an explosive one. No, the most immediate hazard the inhabitants of Northern YamaYamaLand face are the Airmasters of Sky Island. Ever since the fanatic Vlydabec became their Elphod, or spiritual leader, I have feared for the lands to the north. I should have been there by now.”
They ascended to the highest chamber of the palace, a ribbed vault whose windows lay open to the skies. Therein, reposing on the stone floor, lay a remarkable contraption. Ganelon stared curiously at it.
It was shaped like an enormous bird, sculpted from what appeared to be solid bronze, dark with age, and it was about thirty feet from parrot beak to spread peacock tail. The wings were also spread in a position horizontal to the body, and in that body an opening, like a cockpit, was hollowed out between the shoulders.
“What do you think?” asked the magician.
Ganelon remembered to close his mouth. “What is it? It looks like a Bazonga bird.”
“Does it? Then that’s what it is, I guess. This is a flying contraption invented by the late Miomivir Chastovix, a wizard who owned this palace before I did. Most of his equipment is still around here.”
“You mean this contraption can fly? But it looks like solid bronze. If so, it must weigh tons.”
The magician was amused. “It is; and it does. Or it would, were it not for the yxium crystals. Notice the way the metal sparkles? The bronze has been impregnated with ninety million particles of crystallized yxium. You will recall, I have spoken of yxium—the rare metal that reverses gravity, and is usually found only in the cores of distant stars.”
Ganelon nodded somberly. “Yes; it was a meteorite of pure yxium that penetrated beneath the mountains and exploded there, cracking open the Vault; so, I believe, you said to my father.”
“And so I did. Miomivir Chastovix was an alchemist of repute; he synthesized the stuff to pepper his bird-vessel with. The yxium particles completely offset the weight of the solid bronze, and the thing is slightly more than totally weightless. That’s why I have it chained between the pillars, you see.”
Ganelon examined the peculiar object with curiosity. “Why, the eyelids are hinged, and so is the beak! And what is this machine in its throat, where the vocal cords would be on a man?” he inquired.
“A mechanical larynx,” said the Illusionist. “Chastovix hollowed out the bird’s head; notice the latches? The top of the crest opens—and set therein a sentient crystalloid. This is a form of crystalline life sometimes found in the plains around Oth-Yom-Barqa, and the foothills thereabouts. The crystalloids are mineral duplicates of the human brain, with just as many internal electrical connections as our brains have synapses, hence potentially as intelligent as we are, except that they possess no senses or limbs.”
“But why did he do this?”
“He intended for the bird-vehicle to fly itself, once completed. Those lenses duplicate the abilities of the human eye adequately enough, and the vocal apparatus has been connected to electrodes implanted in appropriate sectors of the crystalloid brain. The bird-ears contain tympana as sensitive to sound as our own eardrums.”
“But the wings are solidly attached to the body—how was the thing supposed to fly?”
“Energy storage crystals have been implanted in the center of the body, connected to nexium tubes that run the length of the torso and protrude under the tail. These emit magnetic waves which my esteemed predecessor believed sufficient to propel the vehicle. Other tubes emerge from the front, from the wingtips, and elsewhere, so that the contraption can turn and maneuver in the air. It is all remarkably ingenious, in its way. Chastovix had a gift for such mechanicals … I hope!”
“It has never been flown, then?”
“Never even been tested. Never even been energized, or vitalized. Miomivir Chastovix succumbed to the assault of a great mountain Youk before completing the connections. I have perused his documents, and believe that I can complete them.”
Ganelon dubiously looked over the fantastic vehicle, but said nothing. The Illusionist took up a sheaf of parchments from a table and opened the bird’s metal skull, lifting the lide off by the topknot to expose the crystalloid, which was nestled in a cushioning mass of spun-glass fibers. Of the eighty-three copper electrodes, only four dangled loose. Pausing from time to time to consult the alchemist’s notes, he carefully inserted the electrodes in place, and screwed their caps on tightly. Then he stepped back.
