Compleat Traveller in Black Read Free Page A

the Kulyamen.
    “As you wish,” said the traveller, “so be it.”
    He tapped the ground with his staff, and Fegrim who was pent in a volcano answered that tapping and heaved mightily. Afterwards, when the country was beginning to sprout again – for lava makes fertile soil – men dug up bones and skulls as they prepared the land for planting.
     
    On the shores of Lake Taxhling, men sat around their canoes swapping lies while they waited for a particular favorable star to ascend above the horizon. One lied better than all the rest.
    But he lied not as his companions lied – to pass the time, to amuse each other harmlessly. He lied to feed a consuming vanity hungrier than all the bellies of all the people in the villages along the shores of the lake, who waited day in, day out, with inexhaustible patience for their menfolk to return with their catch.
    Said the braggart, “If only I could meet with such another fish as I caught single-handed in Lake Moroho when I was a stripling of fifteen! Then you would understand the fisherman’s art! Alas, though” – with a sigh – “there are only piddling fish in Lake Taxhling!”
    “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had accepted the offer of food by their fire. Duly, the next dawn, the boaster came home shouting with excitement about a huge fish he had caught, the same size as the one from Lake Moroho. His companions crowded round to see it – and the mountains rang with their laughter, because it was smaller than most of what they themselves had taken during the night.
    Thus shamed, the braggart fled, and was no more heard of in those parts.
     
    “I do not wish a man to love me for my looks or my fortune,” declared the haughty daughter of a landed lord in the city Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky owing to the presence of the bright being Sardhin chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.
    “No!” she continually insisted, dismissing suitor after suitor. “I wish to be loved for myself, for what I am!”
    “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller, who had come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts organized that this lady might view potential husbands. Nine men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion’s face and gone to supper.
    The next time a tourney was announced, no challenger appeared. Pulling a face, the girl demanded that more heralds be sent forth. Her father summoned a hundred of them. The news was noised abroad in every city. And in each, all the personable young men said, “Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? Ho-ho! I’ve better ways to pass my time, and so’ve my friends!”
    This news was brought to her, and made for misery.
    On learning later, in the way of gossip, how many of those whom she had fancied in her heart of hearts had married other girls – some, even common wenches from a shop or farm – in preference to herself, she felt her pride evaporate. She learned to curb her mocking tongue and hoity-toity ways; she recognized that so behaving had not made her happy, but only fed her vaunting self-esteem.
    One night, at last, a young man was obliged by chance to ask for lodging at her father’s mansion, that on the strength of her ill repute he had intended to avoid, and found not the precocious termagant old friends had warned him of, but a pretty, pleasant, ordinary girl, and married her.
     
    Thus the journey approached its end. The traveller felt a natural relief that nothing unduly alarming had occurred as he hastened his footsteps towards the goal and climax of his excursion – towards Ryovora, where folk were sensible and clear-sighted, and made no trouble that he had to rectify. After this final visit, he could be assured his duty was fulfilled.
    Not that all was well by any means. There were enchanters still, and ogres, and certain elementals roamed at large, and of