Jack Vance - The Dying Earth

A black figure stole into her sight, creeping along the ditch. In the light of the fireflies she saw him—a Deodand, wandered from the forest, a hairless man-thing with charcoal-black skin, a handsome face, marred and made demoniac by two fangs gleaming long, sharp and white down his lip. It was clad in a leather harness, and its long slit eyes were fastened hungrily on T'sais. He sprang at her with an exulting cry.

T'sais stumbled clear, fell, snatched herself up. Wailing, she fled across the moor, insensible to scratching furze, tearing thorn. The Deodand bounded after, venting eerie moans.

Over moor, turf, hummock, briar and brook, across the dark wastes went the chase, the girl fleeing with eyes starting and staring into nothing, the pursuer uttering his wistful moans.

A loom, a light ahead—a cottage. T'sais, breath coming in sobs, lurched to the threshold. The door mercifully gave. She fell in, slammed the door, dropped the bar. The weight of the Deodand thudded against the barrier.

The door was stout, the windows small and crossed by iron. She was safe. She sank to her knees, the breath rasping in her throat, and slowly lapsed into unconsciousness ...

The man who dwelt in the cottage rose from his deep seat at the fire, tall, broad of shoulder, moving with a curiously slow step. He was perhaps a young man, but no one could know, for face and head were draped in a black hood. Behind the eye-slits were steady blue eyes.

The man came to stand over T'sais, who lay flung like a doll on the red brick floor. He stooped, lifted the limp form, and carried her to a wide padded bench beside the fire. He removed her sandals, her quivering rapier, her sodden cloak. He brought unguent and applied it to her scratches and bruises. He wrapped her in soft flannel blanketing, pillowed her head, and, assured that she was comfortable, once more sat himself by the fire.

The Deodand outside had lingered, and had been watching through the iron-barred window. Now it knocked at the door.

"Who's there?" called the man in the black hood, twisting about.

"I desire the one who has entered. I hunger for her flesh," said the soft voice of the Deodand.

The man in the hood spoke sharply.

"Go, before I speak a spell to burn you with fire. Never return!"

"I go," said the Deodand, for he greatly feared magic, and departed into the night.

And the man turned and sat staring into the fire.

T'sais felt warm pungent liquid in her mouth and opened her eyes. Kneeling beside her was a tall man, hooded in black. One arm supported her shoulders and head, another held a silver spoon to her mouth.

T'sais shrank away. "Quietly," said the man. "Nothing will harm you." Slowly, doubtfully, she relaxed and lay still.

Red sunlight poured in through the windows, and the cottage was warm. It was paneled in golden wood, with a fretwork painted in red and blue and brown circling the ceiling. Now the man brought more broth from the fire, bread from a locker, and placed them before her. After a moment's hesitation, T'sais ate.

Recollection suddenly came to her; she shuddered, looked wildly around the room. The man noted her taut face. He stooped and laid a hand on her head. T'sais lay quiet, half in dread.

"You are safe here," said the man. "Fear nothing."

A vagueness came over T'sais. Her eyes grew heavy. She slept.

When she woke the cottage was empty, and the maroon sunlight slanted in from an opposite window. She stretched her arms, tucked her hands behind her head, and lay thinking. This man of the black hood, who was he? Was he evil? Everything else of Earth had been past thought. Still, he had done nothing to harm her ... She spied her garments upon the floor. She rose from the couch and dressed herself. She went to the door and pushed it open. Before her stretched the moor, fading far off beyond the under-slant of the horizon. To her left jutted a break of rocky crags, black shadow and lurid red stones. To the right extended the black margin of the forest.

Was this beautiful? T'sais pondered. Her warped brain saw bleakness in the line of the moor, cutting harshness in the crags, and in the forest—terror.

Was this beauty? At a loss, she twisted her head, squinted. She heard footsteps, jerked about, wide-eyed, expecting anything. It was he of the black hood, and T'sais leaned back against the door-jamb.

She watched him approach, tall and strong, slow of step. Why did he wear the hood? Was he ashamed of his face? She could understand something of this, for she herself found the human face repellent—an object of watery eye, wet unpleasant apertures, spongy outgrowths.

He halted before her. "Are you hungry?"

T'sais considered. "Yes."

"Then we will eat."

He entered the cottage, stirred up the fire, and spitted meat. T'sais stood uncertainly in the background. She had always served herself. She felt an uneasiness: cooperation was an idea she had not yet encountered.

Presently the man arose, and they sat to eat at his table.

"Tell me of yourself," he said after a few moments. So T'sais, who had never learned to be other than artless, told him her story, thus;

"I am T'sais. I came to Earth from Embelyon, where the wizard Pandelume created me."

"Embelyon? Where is Embelyon? And who is Pandelume?"

"Where is Embelyon?" she repeated in puzzlement. "I don't know. It is in a place that is not Earth. It is not very large, and lights of many colors come from the sky. Pandelume lives in Embelyon. He is the greatest wizard alive—so he tells me."

"Ah," the man said. "Perhaps I see ..."

"Pandelume created me," continued T'sais, "but there was a flaw in the pattern." And T'sais stared into the fire. "I see the world as a dismal place of horror; all sounds to me are harsh, all living creatures vile, in varying degrees—things of sluggish movement and inward filth. During the first of my life I thought only to trample, crush, destroy. I knew nothing but hate. Then I met my sister T'sain, who is as I without the flaw. She told me of love and beauty and happiness—and I came to Earth seeking these."

The grave blue eyes studied her.

"Have you found them?"

"So far," said T'sais in a faraway voice, "I have found only such evil as I never even encountered in my nightmares." Slowly she told him her adventures.

"Poor creature," he said and fell to studying her once again.

"I think I shall kill myself," said T'sais, in the same distant voice, "for what I want is infinitely lost." And the man, watching, saw how the red afternoon sun coppered her skin, noted the loose, black hair, the long thoughtful eyes. He shuddered at the thought of this creature being lost into the dust of Earth's forgotten trillions.

"No!" he said sharply. T'sais stared at him in surprise. Surely one's life was one's own, to do with as one pleased.

"Have you found nothing on Earth," he asked, "that you would regret leaving?"

T'sais knit her brows. "I can think of nothing—unless it be the peace of this cottage."

The man laughed. "Then this shall be your home, for as long as you wish, and I will try to show you that the world is sometimes good—though in truth—" his voice changed "—I have not found it so."

"Tell me," said T'sais, "what is your name? Why do you wear the hood?"

"My name? Etarr," he said in a voice subtly harsh. "Etarr is enough of it. I wear the mask because of the most wicked woman of Ascolais—Ascolais, Almery, Kauchique—the entire world. She made my face such that I cannot abide my own sight."

He relaxed, and gave a weary laugh. "No need for anger any more."

"Is she alive still?"

"Yes, she lives, and no doubt still works evil on all she meets." He sat looking into the fire. "One time I knew nothing of this. She was young, beautiful, laden with a thousand fragrances and charming playfulnesses. I lived beside the ocean—in a white villa among poplar trees. Across Tenebrosa Bay the Cape of Sad Remembrance reached into the ocean, and when sunset made the sky red and the mountains black, the cape seemed to sleep on the water like one of the ancient earth-gods ... All my life I spent here, and was as content as one may be while dying Earth spins out its last few courses.