Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance Read Free Book Online Page A

with great effort; for T'sais was of a passionate nature and not given to restraint. She looked down at the flowers below her horse's feet—pale daisies, blue-bells, Judas-creeper, orange sunbursts.
    No more would she stamp them to pulp, rend them from their roots. It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself. Swallowing her vast enmity toward the butterfly and the flowers and the changing lights of the sky, she continued across the meadow.
    A bank of dark trees rose above her, and beyond were clumps of rushes and the gleam of water, all changing in hue as the light changed in the sky. She turned and followed the river bank to the long low manse.
    She dismounted, walked slowly to the door of black smoky wood, which bore the image of a sardonic face. She pulled at the tongue and inside a bell tolled. There was no reply. "Pandelume!" she called.
    Presently there was a muffled answer: "Enter." She pushed open the door and came into a high-ceilinged room, bare except for a padded settee, a dim tapestry.
    "What is your wish?" The voice, mellow and of an illimitable melancholy, came from beyond the wall.
    "Pandelume, today I have learned that killing is evil, and further that my eyes trick me, and that beauty is where I see only harsh light and evil forms."
    For a period Pandelume maintained a silence; then the muffled voice came, replying to the implicit plea for knowledge.
    "That is, for the most part, true. Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft. ... As for the other, the fault is not with you.
    Beauty lies everywhere free to be seen by all—by all except you. For this I feel sorrow, for I created you. I built your primal cell; I stamped the strings of life with the pattern of your body and brain. And in spite of my craft I erred, so that when you climbed from the vat, I found that I had molded a flaw into your brain; that you saw ugliness in beauty, evil in good. True ugliness, true evil you have never seen, for in Embelyon there is nothing wicked or foul . . . Should you be so unfortunate to encounter these, I fear for your brain."
    "Cannot you change me?" cried T'sais. "You are a magician. Must I live my life out blind to joy?"
    The shadow of a sigh penetrated the wall.
    "I am a magician indeed, with knowledge of every spell yet devised, the sleight of runes, incantations, designs, exorcisms, talismans. I am Master Mathematician, the first since Phandaal, yet I can do nothing to your brain without destroying your intelligence, your personality, your soul—for I am no god. A god may will things to existence; I must rely on magic, the spells which vibrate and twist space."
    Hope faded from T'sais' eyes. "I wish to go to Earth," she said presently. "The sky of Earth is a steady blue, and a red sun moves over the horizons. I tire of Embelyon where there is no voice but yours."
    "Earth," mused Pandelume. "A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge.
    Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time. . . . Earth is dying and in its twilight..." he paused.
    T'sais said doubtfully: "Yet I have heard Earth is a place of beauty, and I would know beauty, even though I die."
    "How will you know beauty when you see it?"
    "All human beings know beauty . . . Am I not human?"
    "Of course."
    "Then I will find beauty, and perhaps even—" T'sais faltered over the word, so alien was it to her mind, yet so full of disturbing implication.
    Pandelume was silent. At last:
    "You shall go if you wish. I will aid you as I may. I will give you runes to ward you from magic; I