Songs of the Dying Earth. Gardner Dozois
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Amberlin glanced at the antique chronometer floating above his desk. It was well past time to be on his way. Fortunately, the housekeeping and protection spells for Furness required but a single one-syllable word, and today took merely fifteen subvocalized attempts before luck had it safely in place. Amberlin strode briskly down the path, then, with a single glance up at Diffin gazing at a sun that no longer was, he gripped his staff firmly and set off across the water-meadow to where the remains of Venta-Valu stood in the roseate morning light.
THOUGH AMBERLIN’S few remaining spells had become ordeals of frustration and dismay, with even a text as fundamental to sound wizardry as Killiclaw’s Primer of Practical Magic hardly worth the trouble of opening, he possessed other adjuncts borrowed, bought or bequeathed to him through a long lifetime that required no utterances at all. If he were reasonably careful, he could still present as someone to be approached with caution and crossed at great peril.
One such possession was the antique baffle screen the Anto brothers now used to hide both themselves and the cellar Eunepheos had wrought so long ago. As Amberlin strode along the riverbank, he fitted the yellow key-glass coin to his left eye and revealed both the Copsy Door and the brothers wilfully hiding amid the more substantial of the old manse footings.
It was hard to know what passed for humor or wit in those sly, selfserving minds. Now, by remaining quiet, it seemed as if they wanted to make Amberlin lose face by having to ask that they reveal themselves.
“Let us be about it then!” he called, taking care to direct his gaze precisely at where each was concealed, and was pleased at how swiftly the grins left the startled, moony faces. Now both scrambled to their feet and stood, burly, copper-skinned and practically hairless in their humble village work-smocks and thick leather aprons, giving silly grins again.
“Kept it safe, your magnificence,” Joanto said, brushing the grass from his apron. “Did all you said exactly to the letter.”
Boanto wiped his chin with the back of a hand. “Ready and eager to uncover what’s within, your mightiness.”
The Copsy Door itself was a smooth milk-glass lid set at forty-five degrees into the hillside. About it, merging with the grassy bank, were the schattendross relics of old wall and arch footings, a sad handful looming up to become twists and tendrils before fading into nothing. Through them, the old red sun cast a purple light that made the day seem further along than it was. Not for the first time, Amberlin wondered what had possessed Eunepheos to create such a place. There was gloom and shadow enough in these latter days.
Amberlin pushed back his sleeves in the sort of theatrical flourish all wizards practiced in the privacy of their innermost sanctoria, and made as if to study the milky lid. “Joanto, take your water-bucket and fetch fresh water—mind now, free from any impurities. Boanto, go find five red wild-flowers from that meadow there. Flawless, you understand. Not a blemish or this will not work.”
The brothers exchanged glances, clearly displeased at having to miss any part of what the wizard now did, but dared not linger. 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.
Even without his long years of experience with mirrors, Amberlin would have allowed that a spread of reflective darkness in that particular configuration did not bode well. The brothers clearly agreed. Finding the