George Martin - Songs of the Dying Earth

“Not quite yet,” said Puillayne in a steadfast tone. “I understand the burden of your thought: seize the moment, guarantee the consumption while I can. By that reasoning, I should have guzzled it the instant those scoundrels had fallen. But you must remember that I have reserved a higher use for that wine. And the time for that use has not yet arrived.”

“Yes,” said Immiter of Glosz, a whitehaired sage who was of all the members of Puillayne’s circle the closest student of his work. “The great epic that you propose to indite in the hour of the sun’s end—”

“Yes. And I must have the unbroached True Vintage to spur my hand, when that hour comes. Meanwhile, though, there are many wines here of not quite so notable a puissance that are worthy of our attention, and I propose that we ingest more than a few flasks this evening.” Puillayne gestured broadly at the array of wines he had previously set out, and beckoned to his friends to help themselves. “And as you drink,” he said, drawing from his brocaded sleeve a scrap of parchment, “I offer you the verses of this afternoon.”

I bought the first edition of The Dying Earth late in 1950, and finding it was no easy matter, either, because the short-lived paperback house that brought it out published it in virtual secrecy. I read it and loved it, and I’ve been rereading it with increasing pleasure in the succeeding decades and now and then writing essays about its many excellences, but it never occurred to me in all that time that I would have the privilege of writing a story of my own using the setting and tone of the Vance originals. But now I have; and it was with great reluctance that I got to its final page and had to usher myself out of that rare and wondrous world. Gladly would I have remained for another three or four sequences, but for the troublesome little fact that the world of The Dying Earth belongs to someone else. What a delight it was to share it, if only for a little while.

Allowing a stranger to take refuge from the dangers of a dark and demon-haunted night in your house always involves a certain amount of risk for both stranger and householder. Particularly on the Dying Earth, where nothing is as it seems — including the householder and the stranger!

Matthew Hughes was born in Liverpool, England, but spent most of his adult life in Canada before moving back to England last year. He’s worked as a journalist, as a staff speechwriter for the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia before settling down to write fiction full-time. Clearly strongly influenced by Vance, as an author Hughes has made his reputation detailing the adventures of rogues like Henghis Hapthorn, Guth Bandar, and Luff Imbry who live in the era just before that of The Dying Earth , in a series of popular stories and novels that include Fools Errant, Fool Me Twice, Black Brillion , and Majestrum , with his stories being collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories . His most recent books are the novels Hespira, The Spiral Labyrinth, Template , and The Commons .

When next I found a place to insert myself, I discovered the resident in the manse’s foyer, in conversation with a traveler. Keeping myself out of his sightlines, I flew to a spot high in a corner where a roof beam passed through the stone of the outer wall, and settled myself to watch and listen. The resident received almost no visitors — only the invigilant, he of the prodigious belly and eight varieties of scowl, and the steagle knife.

I rarely bothered to attend when the invigilant visited, conserving my energies for whenever my opportunity should come. But this stranger was unusual. He moved animatedly about the room in a peculiar bent-kneed, splay-footed lope, frequently twitching aside the curtain of the window beside the door to peer into the darkness, then checking that the beam that barred the portal was well seated.

“The creature cannot enter,” the resident said. “Doorstep and lintel, indeed the entire house and walled garden, are charged with Phandaal’s Discriminating Boundary. Do you know the spell?”

The stranger’s tone was offhand. “I am familiar with the variant used in Almery. It may be different here.”

“It keeps out what must be kept out; your pursuer’s first footfall across the threshold would draw an agonizing penalty.”

“Does the lurker know this?” said the visitor, peering again out the window.

The resident joined him. “Look,” he said, “see how its nostrils flare, dark against the paleness of its countenance. It scents the magic and hangs back.”

“But not far back.” The dark thatch of the stranger’s hair, which drew down to a point low on his forehead, moved as his scalp twitched in response to the almost constant motion of his features. “It pursued me avidly as I neared the village, growing bolder as the sun sank behind the hills. If you had not opened…”

“You are safe now,” said the resident. “Eventually, the ghoul will go to seek other prey.” He invited the man into the parlor and bade him sit by the fire. I fluttered after them and found a spot on a high shelf. “Have you dined?”

“Only forest foods plucked along the way,” was the man’s answer as he took the offered chair. But though he no longer strode about the room, his eyes went hither and thither, rifling the many shelves and glass-fronted cupboards, as if he cataloged their contents, assigning each item a value and closely calculating the sum of them all.

“I have a stew of morels grown in the inner garden, along with the remnants of yesterday’s steagle,” said the resident. “There is also half a loaf of bannock and a small keg of brown ale.”

The stranger’s pointed chin lifted in a display of fortitude. “We will make the best of it.”

They had apparently exchanged names before I had arrived, for when they were seated with bowls of stew upon their knees and spoons in their hands, the resident said, “So, Grolion, what is your tale?”

The foxfaced fellow arranged his features into an image of nobility beset by unmerited trials. “I am heir to a title and lands in Almery, though I am temporarily despoiled of my inheritance by plotters and schemers. I travel the world, biding my moment, until I return to set matters forcefully aright.”

The resident said, “I have heard it argued that the world as it is now arranged must be the right order of things, for a competent Creator would not allow disequilibrium.”

Grolion found the concept jejeune. “My view is that the world is an arena in which men of deeds and courage drive the flow of events.”

“And you are such?”

“I am,” said the stranger, cramming a lump of steagle into his mouth. He tasted it then began chewing with eye-squinting zest.