Jack Vance - The Dying Earth

The guards were wide awake, nervously watching the opening.

"Boldness, now!" said Ulan Dhor. He sent the boat darting across the walls and pits and seething moat, settled beside the podium, snapped the dome back, sprang out. He seized the tablet as the guards came roaring forward, spears extended. The foremost flung his spear; Ulan Dhor struck it down and tossed the tablet into the boat.

But they were upon him; he would be impaled if he sought to climb within the boat. He sprang forward, hewed off the shaft of one spear, chopped at one man's shoulder on the back-sweep, seized the shaft of the third spear, and pulled the man into range of his sword point. The third guard fell back, shouting for help. Ulan Dhor turned, leapt into the boat. The guard rushed forward, Ulan Dhor whirled and met him with the point of his sword in his cheek. Spouting blood and wailing hysterically, the guard fell back. Ulan Dhor threw the lift lever; the boat rose high and moved toward the opening.

And presently the alarm horn at Cazdal's Temple was adding its harsh yell to the sound from across the city.

The boat drifted slowly through the sky.

"Look!" said Elai, grasping his arm. By torchlight men and women crowded and milled in the streets— Greens and Grays, panicked by the message of the horns.

Elai gasped. "Ulan Dhor! I see! I see! The men in Green! It is possible ... Have they always been ..."

"The brain-spell has broken," said Ulan Dhor, "and not only for you. Below they see each other, too ..."

For the first time in memory, Greens and Grays looked at each other. Their faces twisted, contorted. In the flicker of torches Ulan Dhor saw them drawing back in revulsion from each other, and heard the tumult of their cries: "Demon! ... Demon! ... Gray ghost! ... Vile Green Demon!.. "

Thousands of obsessed torch-bearers sidled past each other, glowering, reviling each other, screaming in hate and fear. They were all mad, he thought—tangled, constricted of brain ...

As by a secret signal, the crowd seethed into battle, and the hateful yells curdled Ulan Dhor's blood. Elai turned sobbing away. Terrible work was done, on men, women, children—no matter who the victim, if he wore the opposite color.

A louder snarling arose at the edge of the mob—a joyful sound, and a dozen shambling Gauns appeared, towering above the Greens and Grays. They rended, tore, ripped, and insane hate melted before fear. Greens and Grays separated, and ran to their homes, and the Guans roamed the streets alone.

Ulan Dhor tore his glance away and held his forehead. "Was this my doing? ... Was this a deed of mine?"

"Sooner or later it would have happened," said Elai dully. "Unless Earth waned and died first..."

Ulan Dhor picked up the two tablets. "And here is what I sought to attain—the tablets of Rogol Domedonfors. They pulled me a thousand leagues across the Melantine; I have them in my hands now, and they are like worthless shards of glass ..."

The boat floated high, and Ampridatvir became a setting of pale crystals in the starlight. In the luminescence of the instrument panel, Ulan Dhor fitted the two tablets together. The marks merged, became characters, and the characters bore the words of the ancient magician:

"Faithless children—Rogol Domedonfors dies, and so lives forever in the Ampridatvir he has loved and served! When intelligence and good will restore order to the city; or when blood and steel teaches the folly of bridled credulity and passion, and all but the toughest dead:—then shall these tablets be read. And I say to him who reads it, go to the Tower of Fate with the yellow dome, ascend to the topmost floor, show red to the left eye of Rogol Domedonfors, yellow to the right eye, and then blue to both; do this, I say, and share the power of Rogol Domedonfors."

Ulan Dhor asked, "Where is the Tower of Fate?"

Elai shook her head. "There is Rodeil's Tower, and the Red Tower the Tower of the Screaming Ghost, and the Tower of Trumpets and the Bird's Tower and the Tower of Guans—but I know of no Tower of Fate."

"Which tower has a yellow dome?"

"I don't know."

"We will search in the morning."

"In the morning," she said leaning against him drowsily.

"The morning ..." said Ulan Dhor, fondling her yellow hair.

When the old red sun rose, they drifted back over the city and found the people of Ampridatvir awake before them, intent on murder.

The fighting and the killing was not so wild as the night before. It was a craftier slaughter. Stealthy groups of men waylaid stragglers, or broke into houses to strangle women and children.

Ulan Dhor muttered, "Soon there will be none left in Ampridatvir upon whom to work Rogol Domedonfors' power." He turned to Elai. "Have you no father, no mother, for whom you fear?"

She shook her head. "I have lived my life with a dull and tyrannical uncle."

Ulan Dhor turned away. He saw a yellow dome; no other was visible: The Tower of Fate.

"There." He pointed, turned down the nose of the air-car.

Parking on a high level, they entered the dusty corridors, found an anti-gravity shaft, and rose to the top-most floor. Here they found a small chamber, decorated with vivid murals. The scene was a court of ancient Ampridatvir. Men and women in colored silks conversed and banqueted and, in the central plaque, paid homage to a patriarchal ruler with a rugged chin, burning eyes, and a white beard. He was clad in a purple and black gown and sat on a carved chair.

"Rogol Domedonfors!" murmured Elai, and the room held its breath, grew still. They felt the stir their living breath made in the long-quiet air, and the depicted eyes stared deep into their brains ...

Ulan Dhor said, " 'Red to the left eye, yellow to the right; then blue to both.' Well—there are blue tiles in the hall, and I wear a red coat."

They found blue and yellow tiles, and Ulan Dhor cut a strip from the hem of his tunic.

Red to the left eye, yellow to the right. Blue to both. A click, a screech, a whirring like a hundred bee-hives.

The wall opened on a flight of steps. Ulan Dhor entered, and, with Elai breathing hard at his back, mounted the steps.

They came out in a flood of daylight, under the dome itself. In the center on a pedestral sat a glistening round-topped cylinder, black and vitreous.

The whirring rose to a shrill whine. The cylinder quivered, softened, became barely transparent, slumped a trifle. In the center hung a pulpy white mass—a brain?

The cylinder was alive.

It sprouted pseudopods which poised wavering in the air. Ulan Dhor and Elai watched frozen, close together. One black finger shaped itself to an eye, another formed a mouth. The eye inspected them carefully.

The mouth said cheerfully, "Greetings across time, greetings. So you have come at last to rouse old Rogol Domedonfors from his dreams? I have dreamed long and well— but it seems for an unconscionable period. How long? Twenty years? Fifty years? Let me look."

The eye swung to a tube on the wall, a quarter full of gray powder.

The mouth gave a cry of wonder. "The energy has nearly dissipated! How long have I slept? With a half-life of 1,200 years—over five thousand years!" The eye swung back to Ulan Dhor and Elai. "Who are you then? Where are my bickering subjects, the adherents of Pansiu and Cazdal? Did they kill themselves then, so long ago?"

"No," said Ulan Dhor with a sick grin. "They are still fighting in the streets."

The eye-tentacle extended swiftly, thrust through a window, and looked down over the city. The central jelly twitched, became suffused with an orange glow. The voice spoke again, and it held a terrible harshness. Ulan Dhor's neck tingled and he felt Elai's hand clenching deep into his arm.

"Five thousand years!" cried the voice. "Five thousand years and the wretches still quarrel? Time has taught them no wisdom? Then stronger agencies must be used. Rogol Domedonfors will show them wisdom. Behold!"