The Supercontinent measured fully sixty million square miles from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. And sixty million is rather a lot of square miles, you will agree. Room enough on Gondwane for no fewer than one hundred and thirty-seven thousand kingdoms, empire^, city-states, federations, theocracies, tyrannies, conglomerates, unions, princ.i.p.ates, democracies, republics, plutocracies, realms, nations and countries. So many, in fact, that no one person-not even a professional geographer-could claim familiarity with them all. Which may help to explain why Xarda of Jemmerdy did not know where the kingdom of Valardus was.

Or where it had been, that is. For, having been ground into the dust by the Ximchak Horde, it could no longer be presumed to exist. Such, at least, was the belief of Prince Erigon, or the former Prince Erigon, since homeless exiles enjoy only slender claims to mon-archial t.i.tles.

The old magician was quite interested to hear some firsthand observations concerning the Ximchak Barbarians, from an eye-witness to their horrendous depredations. Quite some time ago he had confided to Ganelon that they comprised, with the Ainnasters of Sky Island and the mysterious Queen of Red Magic, one of the three greatest dangers to the peace and security of this part of Gondwane. Now he eagerly queried the pleasant Prince on their strength, number, equipment, temper, customs, religion and military prowess.

35.

"As to how great their numbers may be, I have no precise knowledge, magister," Erigon replied. "For I was absent from Valardus when they descended upon the kingdom; my royal father, King Vergus, had dispatched me upon a mission of desperate urgency to the neighboring realms about, hoping to solicit forces to make a concerted stand against our common enemy. Alas, the Ximchak patrols were out in force, and cut me off from the pa.s.s through the mountains. I was forced to seek a rather wandering and circuitous route which I followed in a southerly direction. Completely losing my way, I wandered from city to city and realm to realm, eventually rinding myself here in this abominable city of Chx. Like yourselves, my failure to partake in the nocturnal criminalities resulted in mine imprisonment. I am now so far away from my unhappy natal land that I despair of ever finding my way back . . . not that there is likely to be anything left of fair Valardus for me to return home to!"

Ganelon cleared his throat fretfully.

"Master, why are we sitting here talking? Shouldn't we be attempting to escape, before these people execute us for our non-existing crimes?"

"All in good time, my boy, all in good time," chirped the Illusionist in his cheerful way.

"But, magister, the boy doth have a point," argued Xarda firmly. "Whatever are we waiting for-surely, with your mastery of the Arts Magical, 'twould be an easy matter to unhinge yon door and dispeople the entire building-"

The Illusionist clucked her into silence.

"You children, with your constant fretting over time lost, spent or wasted!" he sighed. "As if an hour or two, or even three, mattered when measured against a lifetime! Had I harkened to your urgings, I would have resisted arrest or trial or imprisonment with my small skill-to our considerable detriment, for then we should not have made the acquaintance of Prince Erigon, here!"

"Yes, 'tis true, of course, but-!"

Lin Carter "But nothing, my dear child. We shall be set free when it pleases the good Galendil to free us, and not before," said the old magician, testily. "For one thing, my dear, has it occurred to you that as soon as night falls, Chx will return to her normal routine of murder, arson, burglary, rapine, and other a.s.sorted malfeasances? What better occasion for jail-break, than during that period of the night when such is no longer to be considered a crime?"

The girl knight bunked, as if thunderstruck, then burst out laughing.

"Of course! As soon as night falls, the guards will be withdrawn, so as to partake of the a.s.sorted skullduggeries in which each Chxian must, by law, indulge. Forgive me for doubting you, magister! I fear that I had not fully thought through the implications of Chx's dual legal system . . ."

"Quite all right, my dear; that's what older and wiser heads are for. Now, my dear Prince, to return to our most interesting discussion of the Ximchak savages ... I believe it was your opinion that they descended through the mountain countries, approaching Valardus from the north. Could it not, perchance, have been from the northwest? My own sources of information, you see, suggest a northwesterly course for the Horde, following their destruction last year of the Thirty Cities of the Gompish Regime . . ."

The sun of afternoon declined into the west. However swift the judicial processes of the Chxians might be, the final sentencing certainly seemed a drawn-out and lengthy process. Prince Erigon, they learned, had been condemned to the dungeons beneath the Admin-istratium some four or five days before, on charges of being an un-disturber of the peace. And he still awaited his sentencing.

"Sometimes it is to be chained to labor in the water mines," he told them. "Other offenders are condemned to penal servitude repairing the aqueduct system. A former cell-mate of mine, an Ixlander, I believe, who 37.

acted as a travelling salesman in warlockry with a line of talismans and sigils, ended up serving his term as a sewer-cleanser. An unpleasant task, surely, and a stenchful one, to boot!"

Before sundown, the prisoners were removed from their consnon cell and were escorted by a squadron of monitors so numerous and stoutly armed for resistance to be futile, if not sanguinary, to private cells higher up in the monstrous difice. Ganelon did not care to be separated from his dear friends, but no choice in jail accommodations was offered to him, and his master cheerfully bade him be of good spirits and not to fret. Therefore he complied with docility to the new arrangement, and found himself in a cell somewhat smaller even than before, whose door was a solid panel of adamant. The one factor of comfort in his new quarters was that his cell had a window, albeit one heavily barred, which gave forth on a wide prospect of the rooftops and spires of Chx. From this orifice he peered gloomily out upon the westering sun as it sank to its conflagration in the hills.

He wondered where Xarda and the old magician were housed, and why their cells had been switched, and how long would it be before the Illusionist came to free him from his durance? And whatever had possessed them to seek accommodations for the night in this mad metropolis in the first place.

After a time he dozed.

"YOO-HOO! Is that you, dear boy?" a familiar, if unexpected, voice hailed him through the mists of sleep. For a moment, convinced that he dreamed, Ganelon kept Ms eyes closed. But then a whump shook the walls of his cell with staggering impact, bringing down flakes of plaster from the ceiling in a gritty shower.

He opened his eyes and jumped up to see a beaked bronze head peering at him with brightly inquisitive eye-lenses through the bars of the window. It was the Bazonga bird!

38 Lin Carter "Wh-whatever are you doing here?" he asked, inanely.

The Bird c.o.c.ked a disapproving eye at him and sniffed in a hurt manner. "Tush! You certainly don't seem glad to see me," she complained.

"Well, of course I'm glad to see you; but how . . . I mean, why ..."

"You folks went away and left me all alone," the Bird said accusingly. "I sang little songs to myself, watched the stars go wheeling overhead and counted the leaves on the zooka-zooka tree to which you tied me. Morning came, then mid-morn, then fore-noon, then noon itself. Well, my goodness, I got to feeling lonely! So I decided to come looking for you."

"But however did you find me? Behind all these stone walls, I mean?" The Bird tartly reminded him of her ability to sense the radiations of an individual human aura, and to tell one auric spectrum from another, which was the method by which the Illusionist and she had found him and Xarda in the jungles of Kar-jixia, after their escape from the Air Mines on an earlier adventure.

"Now stand back, do," she carolled. Without further ado, the animate vehicle rammed her bronze beak into the outer wall of his cell in an effort to free him.

Lin Carter - 5bGondwane 025d - The Enchantress of World's End-4.jpg The talking vessel was built of solid bronze and measured some thirty feet, from her parrot-beak to the tip of her peac.o.c.k-tail. When a flying battering-ram of that size, weight and ma.s.s drives itself against a wall of mortared stone, well, something has got to give. In this case, it was the wall.

Bits of stone and chips of mortar sprayed the room, rattling off the walls and floor-tiles. Ganelon shielded his eyes with his burly fore-arm, and as soon as the whirling cloud of stinging rock-dust cleared away, he blinked through watering eyes to see a fairly man-sized hole punched directly through the outer wall of his cell. The Bazonga's battering thrust had carried away the lower portion of the wall in which the window was built. Now the bars waggled uselessly in empty air, and even as he watched, one of them clanked to the gravel-strewn floor.

"Come along, there's a dear," the Bird sang carelessly. Wobbling on her magnetic waves, she maneuvered herself about in such a manner that her c.o.c.kpit now yawned temptingly just beyond the hole in the wall. Ganelon climbed through the opening and stood there indecisively for a moment, not certain whether to go or to stay.

"Come along, smartly now, there's a good boy!" snapped tfte Bazonga. "If you think it's easy holding a steady keel in such a position, let me inform you otherwise!"

"Yes, but-what about master, and Xarda? Shouldn't 40 Lin Carter we rescue them, too, so we can all leave together?" asked Ganelon bewilderedly.

The Bird wiggled her wing-tips impatiently.

"Time enough for that later," she said crossly. "I want to carry you to safety first. This is my rescue, and I am in charge! As soon as I get you over the border, I'll come whizzirtg back for the others. Serve that old geezer right, to make him wait a bit and stew in his own juices! Always tying me up to trees or chimneys, and leaving me behind while the rest of you go zipping off to have adventures together, with never a thought for the poor old faithful Bazonga, your tireless steed! Come, child, get into my c.o.c.kpit and let's be off-"

"Well ... all right, then ... I guess you know what you're doing," said Silvermane a bit dubiously. He stepped into the swaying c.o.c.kpit of the peculiar craft and settled down in the first seat. The bird-vessel thrust herself clear of the wall with a flick of her magnetic waves, then curved sharply about and sped off in a southerly direction, bound for the borders of Chx.

Night had fallen by now, and the streets were full of carousing mobs happily a.s.saulting each other, looting shops and getting drunk. n.o.body seemed to pay the slightest attention to the winged bronze bird as she soared over the rooftops- and hurtled gaily into the south. So rapid was her flight that in less time than it takes me to tell, the scarlet walls of Chx dwindled in her wake. The landscape, neat, trim checkerboard of cultivated farmland, sped by beneath her keel. Ahead yawned vast empty pits which were sometimes occupied, and sometimes not, by the Vanishing Mountains.

"I find it simply amazing, the facility you poor humans have for constantly getting into trouble," groused the Bazonga bird as she traversed the farmlands like an immense arrow loosed from some colossal bow. "However do you manage to do it? I no sooner get tied to a tree or whatever, then you are off getting jailed for one reason or another. The last time this 41.

happened, if I recall correctly, you and that nice girl were sold into slavery . . ."

"Yes, that was in Horx," said Ganelon. "I don't understand it either, Bird, to be frank. Ever- since father and mother found me wandering about in the Blue Rain, it's been one predicament after another ..."

The vacant roots of the Vanishing Mountains were beneath them now. Ahead stretched a dark, grim landscape of tumbled stone and sterile sand, with the mighty ramparts of the Mountains of Dwarfland to the south, marching from horizon to horizon. The sight reminded Ganelon that the Death Dwarves were their enemies, and on at least one occasion, they had sought to capture them. There was that tune when they had been flying across the Voormish Desert, bound for Karjixia, the Kingdom of the Tigermen, when the little green abominations had sought to ensnare them in a monstrous metallic net stretched directly in their path between the twin peaks of Mount Luz.

"Why are we flying in this direction?" he asked uneasily. "You're going south, and we want to travel north, towards Jemmerdy."

"Because the nearest border is south of Chx, that's why," replied the Bird tartly. "That nice inn-keeper back at the hospice told me. The sun was down by then, you see, and he was more than delighted to aid and abet a jail-break." She giggled at the odd ways of humans.

Just beyond the empty row of enormous pits, the Bazonga floated down to the ground and let Ganelon jump out.

"You stay right here, now," she said severely. "Don't go wandering off and get into any more trouble, mind! Ill just be a little while, finding your master and that nice girl--"

"And Prince Erigon, too," said Ganelon. "I'm sure master will want to rescue him, as well."

"Quite right, whomever you mean," the Bird said Lin Carter in her careless fashion. She rose up from the ground and spun about to go back in the sai&e direction from which she had just flown.

"And don't forget my sword!" Ganelon yelled as she drifted aloft. "I'm sure master will be able to find it somewhere hi the building, and I'd be lost without it."

"Yes, yes, I shan't forget! Now, you be a good boy, mind, and don't go wandering away; m expect to find you right here when I return!"

Ganelon nodded and waved goodbye. The ungainly vehicle shot off to the north, towards Chx, and he stood watching her for a moment The immense glowing orb of the Falling Moon had risen up over the world by this tune, flooding the landscape with brilliant silvery luminance. By the moonlight, the terrain about him looked even more barren and sterile than it had from above. He repressed a slight shiver which came over him for some reason. Then he sat down on the stone slab to patiently await the return of the vehicle.

The Vanishing Mountains, which form the southerly borders between the country of Chx zmd the Dominion of the Death Dwarves, are a phenomenon unique to Gondwane hi the current Eon. Nature, in a state of flux, persists in devising new, novel forms of matter and kinds of life (such as the Dwarves themselves). The prevailing theory by which the Gondwanish savants explain such curiosities, as ttiese off-again-on-again mountains which flicker back ajid forth between existence and non-existence, is that the atoms whereof the rocky barrier is composed consist half of normal electrons and protons, and half of contraterrone particles, with a single phi-meson on the dividing line. The phi-meson, of course, is a particle of dubious reality, whose genuineness is a matter of statistical probability. Part of the time the meson really odsts, and thus so do the Mountains; the rest of the time the finicky little particle simply isn't there at all, and neither are the Mountains.

The appearance and disappearance of the peculiar 43.

mountain-range is, after all, a matter of little or no importance to anybody in particular. The cliffy heights are not inhabited by anything more lively than a few scruffy lichens and a small colony of disagreeable land-* crustaceans, or mountain-dwelling lobsters, who for* merly were denizens of the sea. That was a couple of dozen thousand years ago, when the Inland Sea of Voorm occupied most of the barrens about this part of Gondwane. Then the Vanishing Mountains wers forced skywards by geological forces, when the crust of Old Earth buckled hereabouts, and the sea recede^ and finally drained away into the bowels of the planet. Suddenly finding themselves marooned high and dry on the mountain-peaks, the local variety of lobster would doubtless have died out, had it not been for a. sympathetic magician in the neighborhood who cast an. enchantment over them, turning them into mountain^ dwellers.

The magician in question, an affable personnage called Ulph the Unpredictable, had an innate fondness for marine life which was quite understandable, when you pause to consider his lineage (his mother, that is, was one of the Mer-folk).

Even a land-dwelling lobster, by now inured to sudden changes in habitat, finds it difficult to adjust to blinking in and out of Reality. At the period whereof I write, the lobster-colony had been ruminating for some generations a planned migration to the lowlands, away from the Vanishing Mountains. But this is neither here nor there-like the Mountains themselves.

I mention all of this merely to point out the unpredictability of the existence of the Mountains.

They were not there when the Bazonga flew Ganelon to safety; on her return flight, however, the poor creature was less fortunate.

Suddenly, a gigantic wall of rock zoomed up right in front of her nose, so to speak. With a startled squawk, the ungainly animated contraption strove to put on the brakes, but slammed into the rocky wall nonetheless.

Lin Carter Solid bronze is, of course, a tough and durable metal -far less easily broken than steel, for example. Ferrous metals possess a lamentably frangible crystalline structure which permits them to fracture with surprising ease. Hence the bronze bird-vessel was not particularly damaged, even by a head-on collision with a mountain-range.

But her crystalloid brain was somewhat less durable. The impact seemed to stun the poor Bazonga. Her eye-lenses dulling, her beak-jaws wobbling open, she floated back from the impact and drifted idly on the night-breezes, which impelled her to and fro.

From their clefts hi the rocky wall, the mountain-dwelling lobsters surveyed the ungainly creature with stalked eyes a-glare. This was the last straw, certainly! If thirty-foot metallic monstrosities were going to be banging into their mountains from now on, surely it was tune to decamp for the comfort and relative security of the lowlands! Packing theh" supplies of edibles, and rounding up the young ones, the heartily offended crustaceans began to migrate in unison, crawling down the slopes of the Vanishing Mountains and paying no further mind to the vacant-eyed Bazonga as she drifted lifelessly on the wind.

ESCAPE TO JEOPARDY.

From his narrow cell, which was on the interior of the Administratum and, windowless, the Illusionist of Nerelon had no way to judge the moment of nightfall, save for the peculiar behavior of the monitors set to patrol the dungeons.

Promptly at the hour of Moonrise, one of the hard-faced monitors threw down his yarmak, plucked out a bit of chalk from a pocket in his kilt, and began to scrawl something on the wall. Peering interestedly through the bars, the Illusionist could just make out the graffiti. It read: GLASTRO, NURDIX AND PETRAPHAR ARE A BUNCH OF OLD MEANIES!.

His commentary on the rulership of Chx completed, the monitor slunk down the hall to see if he couldn't rob the off-duty' guards, asleep in the barracks.

Grinning to himself, the Illusionist rose to his feet, yawned and stretched lazily, and hurled a minor enchantment at the door of his cell, whose strong metal bars promptly turned to rubber. Stepping out into the corridor, the Illusionist began searching about for his friends. Xarda he discovered, pacing her cell irritably. The girl knight of Jemmerdy was much relieved when the robed and mist-masked magister popped into sight, and even more relieved when the bars of the cell-door wilted like yesterday's asparagus.

Ganelon they could not find at all, but Prince Eri

45.

46.

Lin Carter gon, still locked in the subterranean dungeon, was easily found and freed. Using the Third Eye of occult vision, which functions only on the next highest plane of the Plenum, which is called the Astral, it was simple for the old magician to locate the cells of his companions. Auric spectra are clearly visible on the Astral level, and stone walls happen to be invisible on that plane.

"I can't understand what could have happened to Ganelon," the Illusionist said fretfully. "I've searched the entire area of s.p.a.ce occupied, on the Physical plane, by the Administratium and his aura is nowhere to be seen."

"Could he possibly have escaped, all by himself?" inquired the Skix, a trifle anxiously.

The ma^cian shrugged. "It's possible, I suppose. The dear boy possesses remarkable strength, and the Time G.o.ds outfitted him with more than a few extraordinary powers which are seldom the possession of ordinary humans. Most of these super-abilities remain mere potentials, as yet, but under stress or duress, there is simply no guessing what the Great Lump might not be able to do."

"Well, what are we to do? Just go of! and leave him?" she demanded. The magician shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know what else there is to do!" he confessed. "This is obviously our best opportunity to escape from our captivity and gain the outside world unmolested and unpursued. Once we are free, and have found a place of relative safety, I should be able to ascertain the lad's whereabouts by means of sortilege or divination. Come, then; let us be off."

Xarda chewed her lip unhappily. Then, hefting the huge length of the Silver Sword, she said, miserably: "I suppose you are right. At any rate, we have found his magic weapon for him ..."

Prince Erigon cleared his throat, a small, polite sound.

"I dislike abandoning a comrade as heartily as do you, for all that my acquaintance with the fellow has been very much briefer, but permit me to suggest that, 47.

while we stand here discussing the question, trouble approaches." He gestured; down the hall a crew of rowdies approached, l.u.s.tily swigging from small jugs of brandy, and reciting obscene limericks at the top of their lungs. From their soiled and disarranged tabards, it was obvious that the quarrelsome rabble, during the daylight hours, doubled as civic monitors.

Due to the regular night-time crime wave, everybody that should ordinarily have been on duty at the Administratium was off robbing stores, mugging pa.s.sers-by, tying tin cans to the tails of domestic pets, or committing a malfeasance. The Illusionist, the knightrix, and Prince Erigon of Valardus found it quite easy to escape from the central edifice of the city, with a little help from one of the magician's invisibility spells.

They returned to the Hospice of the Twelve Cardinal Virtues to find the taproom a seething ma.s.s of drunken, struggling men; eluding the several thieves, a.s.sa.s.sins, burglars and footpads who lurked in the shadows, they went around to the back. They entered the courtyard where they had left their peculiar aerial vehicle, tethered by a mooring-line to one of the tall, flowering zooka-zooka trees.

The tether was still there. So was the tree. But as for the Bazonga, it was obvious that the Bird had flown.

"What do we do now, prithee?" demanded the knightrix of Jemmerdy in a fine temper.

Unfortunately, for once the Illusionist had no adequate reply to make.

After a while, Ganelon was weary of sitting on the stone slab and stood up, looking around him. Turning to cast a glance behind him, he blinked with surprise to discover a gigantic range of mountains blocking the landscape to the south. The mountains had not been there when he and the bird vessel had flown hither; these must be the Vanishing Mountains whereof he had 4& Lin Carter heard so much. He eyed the beetling ramparts with interest: considering they were made of stuff which was only half real, at best, they certainly looked solid and substantial to the untutored eye.

He was still admiring the mountains by moonlight when the Death Dwarves fell upon him.

There were thirty-two of the little green devils, although of course he swiftly became too busy to bother with counting them. He had never before seen one of the odd little monsters up close, and was not particularly happy to discover they were every bit as ugly, as formidable, and as vicious as common rumor made them out to be.

Their average height was somewhere between two-and-a-half and three feet, which meant that they hardly reached above Ganelon's kneecap. They were colored a vile, poisonous green, covered with lumps like warts only about the size of doork.n.o.bs. Their tremendous breadth of shoulders and thick, ma.s.sively-thewed arms and barrel chests reminded him of the Indigons he had battled on the Plains of Uth.

Bald and hairless, with bullet heads, they had heavy prognathous jaws and long, lipless, gash-like mouths that made them look rather froggy. Froglike, too, were their ugly, goggling eyes which glistened in the moonlight like puddles of spilt ink.

They didn't wear any clothing to speak of, just odd bits, sc.r.a.ps and pieces of iron armor; but they bristled with weapons. Among these were flint-knives, stone axes, clubs roughly carven from petrified wood, and long spears made from slender stony stalact.i.tes, with obsidian blades for points.

They had no ears, and conversed amongst themselves in clicks, squeaks and hissings. They also had no genitals, just bare tough flesh between their crooked little bowlegs, which terminated hi ugly, four-toed feet. They emitted a vile medicinal stench, like iodine. The insides of their mouths were black. And they had fat white tongues, like plump worms.