Tales of the Dying Earth (97 page)

For a period the three wandered here and there, and indeed on this occasion Duke Tambasco had outdone himself. Grandees and their charming ladies crowded the halls and galleries, and at four buffets choice viands and fine liquors were deployed in profusion.

The three magicians at last repaired to the foyer of the great ballroom where, stationing themselves to the side, they took note of the beautiful ladies as they passed and discussed the merits and distinguishing characteristics of each. In due course they decided that, while many comely maidens were in evidence, none could match the agonizingly exquisite beauty of the Lady Shaunica of Lake Island.

Ildefonse presently puffed out his fine blond mustaches and went his way. Byzant also took his leave of Rhialto, who went to sit in a shadowed alcove to the side.

Ildefonse found the first opportunity to exert his expertise. Advancing upon the Lady Shaunica he performed a sweeping salute and offered to escort her through the measures of a pavane. "I am profoundly skillful in the execution of this particular dance," he assured her. "I with my bold flourishes and you with your gracious beauty make a notable pair; we shall be the focus of all eyes! Then, after the dance, I will escort you to the buffet. We will take a goblet or two of wine and you will discover that I am a person of remarkable parts!

More than this, I now declare that I am prepared to offer you my fullest esteem!"

"That is most gracious of you," said the Lady Shaunica. "I am profoundly moved. However, at this juncture, I have no taste for dancing, and I dare drink no more wine for fear of becoming coarse, which would certainly arouse your disapproval."

Ildefonse performed a punctilious bow and prepared to assert his charm even more explicitly, but when he looked up, Lady Shaunica already had made her departure.

Ildefonse gave a grunt of annoyance, pulled at his mustaches, and strode off to seek a maiden of more malleable tendency.

By chance, the Lady Shaunica almost immediately encountered Byzant. To attract her attention and possibly win her admiration, By-zant addressed her with a quatrain in an archaic language known as Old Naotic, but the Lady Shaunica was only startled and bewildered.

Byzant smilingly translated the lyric and explained certain irregularities of the Naotic philology. "But after all," said Byzant, "these concepts need not intrude into the rapport between us. I sense that you feel its warm languor as strongly as I!"

"Perhaps not quite so strongly," said the Lady Shaunica. "But then I am insensitive to such influences, and in fact I feel no rapport whatever."

"It will come, it will come!" Byzant assured her. "I own a rare perception in that I can see souls in all their shimmering colour. Yours and mine waver in the same noble radiances! Come, let us stroll out on the terrace! I will impart to you a secret." He reached to take her hand.

The Lady Shaunica, somewhat puzzled by Byzant's effusiveness, drew back. "Truly, I do not care to hear secrets upon such short acquaintance."

"It is not so much a secret as an impartment! And what, after all is duration? I have known you no more than half an hour, but already I have composed two lyrics and an ode to your beauty! Come! Out on the terrace! Away and beyond! Into the star-light, under the trees; we shall discard our garments and stride with the wild innocence of sylvan divinities!"

Lady Shaunica drew back still another step. "Thank you, but I am somewhat self-conscious. Suppose we ran so briskly that we could not find our way back to the palace, and in the morning the peasants found us running naked along the road? What could we tell them? Your proposal lacks appeal."

Byzant threw high his arms and, rolling back his eyes, clutched at his red curls, hoping that the Lady Shaunica would recognize his agony of spirit and take pity, but she had already slipped away. Byzant went angrily to the buffet, where he drank several goblets of strong wine.

A few moments later the Lady Shaunica, passing through the foyer, chanced upon one of her acquaintances, the Lady Dualtimetta. During their conversation the Lady Shaunica chanced to glance into a nearby alcove, where Rhialto sat alone on a couch of maroon brocade. She whispered to the Lady Dualtimetta: "Look yonder into the alcove: who is that who sits so quietly alone?"

The Lady Dualtimetta turned her head to look. "I have heard his name; it is Rhialto, and sometimes 'Rhialto the Marvellous.' Do you think him elegant? I myself find him austere and even daunting!"

"Truly? Surely not daunting; is he not a man?"

"Naturally! But why does he sit apart as if he disdained everyone at Quanorq?"

"Everyone?" mused the Lady Shaunica as if to herself.

The Lady Dualtimetta moved away. "My dear, excuse me; now I must hurry; I have an important part in the pageant." She went her way.

The Lady Shaunica hesitated, then, smiling as if at some private amusement, went slowly to the alcove. "Sir, may I join you here in the shadows?"

Rhialto rose to his feet. ' 'Lady Shaunica, you are well aware that you may join me wherever you wish."

"Thank you." She seated herself on the couch and Rhialto resumed his own place. Still smiling her secret half-smile she asked: "Do you wonder why I come to sit with you?"

"The question had not occurred to me." Rhialto considered a moment. "I might guess that you intend to meet a friend in the foyer, and here is a convenient place to wait."

"That is a genteel reply," said the Lady Shaunica. "In sheer truth, I wonder why a person such as yourself sits aloof in the shadows. Have you been dazed by tragic news? Are you disdainful of all others at Quanorq, and their pitiful attempts to put forward an appealing image?"

Rhialto smiled his own wry half-smile. "I have suffered no tragic shocks. As for the appealing image of the Lady Shaunica, it is enhanced by a luminous intelligence of equal charm."

"Then you have arranged a rendezvous of your own?"

"None whatever."

"Still, you sit alone and speak to no one."

"My motives are complex. What of yours? You sit here in the shadows as well."

The Lady Shaunica laughed. "I ride like a feather on wafts of caprice. Perhaps I am piqued by your restraint, or distance, or indifference, or whatever it may be. Every other gallant has dropped upon me like a vulture on a corpse." She turned him a sidelong glance. "Your conduct therefore becomes provocative, and now you have the truth."

Rhialto was silent a moment, then said: "There are many exchanges to be made between us—if our acquaintance is to persist."

The Lady Shaunica made a flippant gesture. "I have no strong objections."

Rhialto looked across the foyer. "I might then suggest that we discover a place where we can converse with greater privacy. We sit here like birds on a fence."

"A solution is at hand," said the Lady Shaunica. "The duke has allowed me a suite of apartments for the duration of my visit. I will order in a collation and a bottle or two of Maynesse, and we will continue our talk in dignity and seclusion."

"The proposal is flawless," said Rhialto. He rose and, taking the Lady Shaunica's hands, drew her to her feet. "Do I still seem as if dazed by tragic news?"

"No, but let me ask you this: why are you known as 'Rhialto the Marvellous'?"

"It seems to be an old joke," said Rhialto. "I have never been able to trace the source."

As the two walked arm in arm along the main gallery they passed Ildefonse and Byzant standing disconsolately under a marble statue. Rhialto accorded them a polite nod, and made a secret sign of more complicated significance, to the effect that they might feel free to return home without him.

The Lady Shaunica, pressing close to his side, giggled. "What a pair of unlikely comrades! The first a roisterer with mustaches a foot long, the second a poet with the eyes of a sick lizard. Do you know them?"

"Only slightly. In any case it is you who interests me and all your warm sensitivities which to my delight you are allowing me to share."

The Lady Shaunica pressed even more closely against him. "I begin to suspect the source of your soubriquet."

Ildefonse and Byzant, biting their lips in vexation, returned to the foyer, where Ildefonse finally made the acquaintance of a portly matron wearing a lace cap and smelling strongly of musk. She took IIdefense off to the ball-room, where they danced three galops, a triple-polka and a kind of a strutting cake-walk where Ildefonse, in order to dance correctly, was obliged to raise one leg high in the air, jerk his elbows, throw back his head, then repeat the evolution with all briskness, using the other leg.

As for Byzant, Duke Tambasco introduced him to a tall poetess with coarse yellow hair worn in loose lank strands. Thinking to recognize a temperament similar to her own, she took him into the garden where, behind a clump of hydrangeas, she recited an ode of twenty-nine stanzas.

Eventually both Ildefonse and Byzant won free, but now the night was waning and the ball was at an end. In sour spirits they returned to their domiciles, and each, through some illogical transfer of emotion, blamed Rhialto for his lack of success.

Rhialto at last became impatient with the plague of ill feeling directed his way for no very clear reason, and kept to himself at Falu.

After a period, solitude began to pall. Rhialto summoned his major-domo. "Frole, I will be absent from Falu for a time, and you will be left in charge. Here—'' he handed Frole a paper '—is a list of instructions. See that you follow them in precise detail. Upon my return I wish to find everything in exact and meticulous order. I specifically forbid that you entertain parties of guests or relatives on, in or near the premises. Also, I warn that if you meddle with the objects in the work-rooms, you do so at risk of your life, or worse. Am I clear?"

"Absolutely and in all respects," said Frole. "How long will you be gone, and how many persons constitute a party?"

"To the first question: an indefinite period. To the second, I will only rephrase my instruction: entertain no persons whatever at Falu during my absence. I expect to find meticulous order upon my return. You may now be off about your duties. I will leave in due course."

Rhialto took himself to the Sousanese Coast, in the remote far corner of South Almery, where the air was mild and the vegetation grew in a profusion of muted colors, and in the case of certain forest trees, to prodigious heights. The local folk, a small pale people with dark hair and long still eyes, used the word 'Sxyzyskzyiks'—"The Civilized People"—to describe themselves, and in fact took the sense of the word seriously. Their culture comprised a staggering set of precepts, the mastery of which served as an index to status, so that ambitious persons spent vast energies learning finger-gestures, ear-decoration, the proper knots by which one tied his turban, his sash, his shoe-ribbons; the manner in which one tied the same knots for one's grandfather; the proper and distinctive placement of pickles on plates of winkles, snails, chestnut stew, fried meats and other foods; the curses specifically appropriate after stepping on a thorn, meeting a ghost, falling from a low ladder, falling from a tree, or any of a hundred other circumstances.

Rhialto took lodging at a tranquil hostelry, and was housed in a pair of airy rooms built on stilts out over the sea. The chairs, bed, table and chest were constructed of varnished black camphor-wood; the floor was muffled from the wash of the sea among the stilts by a rug of pale green matting. Rhialto took meals of ten courses in an arbor beside the water, illuminated at night by the glow of candlewood sticks.

Slow days passed, ending in sunsets of tragic glory; at night the few stars still extant reflected from the surface of the sea, and the music of curve-necked lutes could be heard from up and down the beach. Rhialto's tensions eased and the exasperations of the Scaum Valley seemed far away. Dressed native-style in a white kirtle, sandals and a loose turban with dangling tassels, Rhialto strolled the beaches, looked through the village bazaars for rare sea-shells, sat under the arbor drinking fruit toddy, watching the slender maidens pass by.

One day at idle whim Rhialto built a sand-castle on the beach. In order to amaze the local children he first made it proof against the assaults of wind and wave, then gave the structure a population of minuscules, accoutered as Zahariots of the 14th Aeon. Each day a force of knights and soldiers marched out to drill upon the beach, then for a period engaged in mock-combat amid shrill yells and cries. Foraging parties hunted crab, gathered sea-grapes and mussels from the rocks, and meanwhile the children watched in delighted wonder.

One day a band of young hooligans came down the beach with terriers, which they set upon the castle troops.

Rhialto, watching from a distance, worked a charm and up from a court-yard flew a squadron of elite warriors mounted on hummingbirds. They projected volley after volley of fire-darts to send the curs howling down the beach. The warriors then wheeled back upon the youths who, with buttocks aflame, were likewise persuaded to retreat.

When the cringing group returned somewhat later with persons of authority, they found only a wind-blown heap of sand and Rhialto lounging somnolently in the shade of the nearby arbor.

The episode aroused a flurry of wonder and Rhialto for a time became the object of doubt, but along the Sousanese Coast sensation quickly became flat, and before long all was as before.

Meanwhile, in the Valley of the Scaum, Hache-Moncour made capital of Rhialto's absence. At his suggestion, Ildefonse convened a 'Conclave of Reverence,' to honor the achievements of the Great Phan-daal, the intrepid genius of Grand Motholam who had systematized the control of sandestins. After the group assembled, Hache-Moncour diverted the discussion and guided it by subtle means to the subject of Rhialto and his purported misdeeds.

Hache-Moncour spoke out with vehemence: "Personally, I count Rhialto among my intimates, and I would not think of mentioning his name, except, where possible, for the sake of vindication, and, where impossible, to plead the mitigating circumstances when the inevitable penalties are assessed."