Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

Boyce’s eyes met the old magician’s.

“Six hundred years.”

There was awe and weariness on the bearded face. Tancred nodded.

“So long, then? A very long time indeed. I had not realized quite how many centuries we must have spent in this accursed land where time stands still.” He was silent for a moment again, then he shrugged and said, “You must hear the story, William Boyce. You are the first from our old world to find your way through the fog to our gateway.

“There have been others—a few—from other times and lands. You must not believe yourself the only tool they of the City have tried to use against us! But you will learn enough of that later by yourself, I think.

“We of Kerak lived in Normandy when the Day of Judgment was only a little way behind us.” He laughed. “Perhaps you know that when the year one thousand dawned the world believed its end was near and the eternal Trumpet ready to call us to account My father’s father was a boy then. He told me the story many times.

“We were a credulous people in those days, ready to believe whatever men told us if they spoke with the voice of authority. Well, we lived past the Day of Judgment, but my friends and I fell into a strange sort of Judgment of our own and we linger in it yet, and perhaps will always linger.

“Sir Guillaume was our lord and leader. We took the cross when the Crusade was preached through Normandy, and rode away to free Jerusalem from the infidel. Perhaps you know the story of our ride. We went a long way, for a long, long time, through strange alien lands with every hand against us. We suffered much. There were those of us who died to see Jerusalem.

“We never saw it. We lost our way, like so many others, and in the Valley of Hebron we met a stranger fate, I think, than any band of men has ever met before.

“In the Valley a castle stood. And Guillaume, liking it, thought to make himself its lord. That was the way we went through the eastern lands in those days, taking what we could and holding it until a stronger man came by. So we attacked the castle. I remember it yet—black from foundation to battlement with a scarlet banner flying from its donjon–keep.” He nodded.

“Yes, the banner we fly today from our own donjon. A terrible banner, my friend. We laid siege to the black castle. For many days we camped about its walls, thinking to starve the garrison out if we could not overwhelm the place by force. We did not guess who dwelt there, or what strange powers he had.

“One night a man came secretly to us from the castle, offering, for money, to lead us by a hidden way into the stronghold. We agreed. The next day we mounted and armed ourselves and in the earliest dimness of the day we followed the castle traitor up into the hills where he said the entrance of the secret way was hidden. He led us from a distance, carrying a crimson banner on a stall that we might see to follow.

“Many of our women rode with us. All you have seen here were in that doomed caravan. We rode and rode, through winding ways in the hills, following the red flag in the dawn. We rode a long, long way, for a long, long while, wondering why the sun rose no higher. We began to suspect magic after a time.

“I was a skilled magician even then, though I had much to learn. Presently I knew there was evil in the air, and I persuaded Guillaume to call a halt. We sent esquires ahead to ask of him who carried the flag where we were going and why it took so long.

“After a time the esquires came back, white–faced, carrying the crimson banner. There had been none, they said, beneath it. The flag itself had led us, flying like a great crimson bird through the dawn. We found no men but ourselves in all those hills, in all that misty dimness.

“Well, there was nothing to be done, then. We tried to retrace our steps, but we were lost. We were not to see our own land again, nor the friends we had left behind. We were never to look upon Jerusalem nor upon our homes. We were not to see the blue skies, and in that misty dawn the sun never rose again.

“We built this castle here, as you see it. All the land around us I think—I believe—drifts slowly past the anchor of these hills. In those days there was a strange, swarthy people who came through the fog and traded with us, food for trinkets and labor for a horse or two. We could not speak their tongue nor they ours. Eventually they ceased to come. I think their land drifted too far away.

“By then I had learned more than the people of my own land had ever guessed at. For this is a place of strange power, William Boyce. For him who knows how to look, and when, and where, much wisdom lies open for the taking. I was able to feed and clothe us through powers I had never dreamed of at home. This is a world of magic.”

“Magic?” Boyce said, his voice tinged with disbelief.

“To us, yes,” Tancred nodded. “Because we know only a part of the laws that make such things possible. If we knew all those laws, it would be the science you speak of, not magic. I have learned many things here…I think that there are many worlds. And each has different physical laws. What is possible in some is impossible in others.

“It may be that this is a central world where others converge, so that the lores of many such worlds are mingled here, where there is no time, and where space itself may move. Because we know so little of these alien, strange sciences, we call them—sorcery.”

Boyce nodded. He could understand that. Even on Earth, different physical areas had different laws—if you didn’t know the answer. Water boils at different temperatures at sea level and far above it. Rubber is pliable under normal conditions, but at sub–zero temperatures it is brittle, and in Death Valley it melts. If you know the physical laws that caused these phenomena, you called it science.

And if you didn’t know—it was magic!

“You built this castle,” Boyce prompted. “Then?”

Tancred’s shrug was eloquent.

“After we had finished, we woke one morning to find the crimson banner flying at our donjon–height. There is magic in that banner, but no magic I know how to combat. In a way, perhaps it protects us. We have lost three men who tried to cut it down. Its redness may be the blood of those who have tried in ages past.

“We never knew whose power it was that sent us here. The magician of the black castle is another mystery among all the unanswered mysteries of our lives. And for the most part, our people have ceased to question. There is no day or night here, though we count the hours and call them days, and we sleep and call it night.

“But time itself stands still. There is no way to explain that to you, or how it is we can count the hours and days, and still remain ignorant of the years. Something in the air wipes our minds clean of memory when we try to recognize time as once we knew it. This is an eternal present. We grow no older. We never die of age or sickness.”

Tancred sighed deeply and the stroking hand paused upon his beard. The black eyes were veiled.

“There must be ways in and out of this world,” Boyce said. “I came, for one. And you say I am not the first. And someone, somehow, must have come out of here into my own world and time.”

Tancred nodded.

“There are ways. After we had been here—I cannot say how long—and after enough wisdom had come to me, I discovered how to open the paths outside. If I had learned that sooner, we might have been saved. But it was too late then. Two of our men went through despite my warnings, and when they had passed the gateway they fell into dust.

“All their years came on them in the flicker of an eye and they were in that instant as they would have been had they dwelt in their own world all the time that had passed. So we knew then that there was no returning for us. You, perhaps, could go back, unless you wait too long. But I think it would avail you little. Your problem is here, William Boyce. And here I think you must fight it out.”