Songs of the Dying Earth

The madling rolled Austeri-Pranz’s eyes at him.

“How do you wish me to proceed?” he asked.

“Rip the bottoms out of the craft. Undermine the riverbank and send it crashing into them. Drop large stones from above. Whatever best suits your talents and imagination.”

“Very well,” the madling said dubiously, and vanished, only to return moments later.

“The barges have magical protections,” he said. “I was unable to sink them, or to drop anything upon them. They travel in the middle of the river, and are not vulnerable to collapsing banks.”

“Build a mound in the center of the river, beneath the waters,” Vespanus said. “Make its height such that the barges can just clear it. Then take some of the spikes from the castle roofs, and plant them in the mound.” He looked at Ambius in triumph. “We will tear out the bottoms of the barges.”

Ambius waved a hand. “Let the attempt be made.”

Hegadil was sent forth again, only to have the barges detour neatly around the obstacle. The attempt was made again, with like result.

Ambius looked bleakly out of the window.

“Continue your plan to sow distrust among our enemies,” he said. “It is all we can hope for.”

“I wonder,” Vespanus said, “if the promise of liberty would motivate your wife into fighting in defense of Castle Abrizonde?”

Ambius considered this for a moment, then shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said.

That night, Hegadil demolished the fortress in which the enemy champions had waited, and built instead a golden-domed structure ornamented at the corners by allegorical figures representing Knowledge, Truth, Sapience, and Insight. The banner overhead said, “For the Wisest.”

Again scouts trooped out, again parties left the armies at sunset. Two magicians, magnificently bearded respectively in copper and midnightblack, approached the structure with their guards, and entered.

In the morning, they marched out again, their beards unruffled, their expressions a little puzzled.

“What next?” asked Ambius. “For the Cleanest? For the Most Fashionable?”

“You shall see,” said Vespanus.

During the day, a wide-ranging, ingenious assortment of ruses were employed to effect the destruction of the barges, but with no success. The barges and their deadly cargo were expected within the day. Hegadil reported that the enemy magicians on the barges now bore identical superior smirks on their faces.

That night, the madling demolished the mansion of the magicians and built instead a palace faced with veined marble, crowned with lacy towers, and with a great flag proclaiming For the Greatest Ruler. Ambius paced the tower room in unsettled silence, chewing his upper lip. Vespanus did his best to sleep.

Shortly before nightfall, the Exarch and the Basileopater, each commanding a battalion of elite troops, crossed to the palace and took their places in what they must have known was a trap. Vespanus rejoiced that their vanity did not permit them to behave otherwise.

Once again, Vespanus had no intention of attacking those in the palace directly. He, and Castle Abrizonde, entirely lacked the means.

Instead, he instructed Hegadil to seal the palace from the outside, and then to plate the palace with enormous sheets of adamantine metal. If Vespanus could not actually kill the inhabitants, he would do his best to seal them inside, after which he would fill the interior with a poisonous vapor.

After he sent Hegadil on his errand, Vespanus paced back and forth on the battlements as he awaited the outcome of his scheme. The field was silent, the night cold. In his mind, Vespanus pictured vast sheets of armor being lowered silently into place, all along the distant palace.

Then there was a sudden flare of light that limned the marble towers of the palace, followed by a rush and a clap of thunder. More flashes followed, red, yellow, and blazing orange, and the air was filled with shrieks, war cries, and the beating of invisible wings.

Vespanus cursed his luck, his ancestors, and every human being for fifty leagues round. Before he was quite finished, Hegadil appeared by his side—once again in the form of Austeri-Pranz, a sight alarming enough without the addition, in this case, of charred, smoking clothing and a singed beard.

“Alas,” Hegadil croaked, “they were prepared. I barely escaped annihilation.”

Disgusted by the turn of events, Vespanus opened his thumb-ring and let Hegadil take his healing rest there. He then took himself to bed.

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 twkmen 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.