The Emperor of the Ancient Word and Other Fantastic Stories. Darrell Schweitzer

one.

      Tom and Nick jangled their bells, mournfully, by moonlit midnight, as was their custom to reply; but they felt, the both of them, a certain emptiness, a melancholy, and remarked on it without words, for two madmen dreaming the same dream surely do not have to trouble themselves to speak.

      Alas, for great loss.

      Something burning where the heart is broken, where joy is stolen away, like the last spark sputtering when the fireplace is swept clean.

      Aye, and swept clean of all hope, but beautiful in its tragedy, its sorrows like intricately-carven black onyx.

      Is there any other kind?

      You got me.

      They passed through a forest of branchless trees, the naked trunks like enormous, tangled blades of silver grass. A wind rustled through the forest, sighing far away.

      The forest gave way to open country, but like none Tom had ever seen. The ground was white in the moonlight, but not covered with snow; more leathery than earthen. It had a distinct bounce to it.

      Nick did a handstand, bells jangling. He clapped the sides of his soleless shoes and wiggled his dirty toes, then flung himself high into the air as if from a trampoline...high, high...until great black, winged things began to circle him hungrily, eclipsing the Moon as they passed.

      He called out to Tom, who leapt up to catch Nick as he tumbled and caught him by the ankles and hauled him down, out of the clutches of the fiery-eyed, softly buzzing flyers with their gleaming-metal talons; down, down—

      They bounced for several miles, soaring over another stand of forest, coming to rest before what seemed a vast mountain with two oval caves in it, side by side. Here yawned the very Abyss, the darkness which swallows up even madmen.

      Fortunately more of the silvery strands grew thickly about. Tom and Nick clung to them, at the very edge of the abyss, to avoid falling him.

      And standing there, gazing into the depths, Tom O’Bedlam had a vision, as if he were dreaming his own dream within the dream and had now awakened from it.

      He understood, as only a madman could.

      It was this: he and Nick had become as lice. They had travelled for what seemed like hours across an enormous face, through the forest of the beard, escaping the flying peril of the gnats (or perhaps flies) until they found themselves deposited at the very lip of No! No! That wasn’t it. Abysses may have lips but nostrils don’t!

      He and Nick clung desperately to a giant’s nose-hairs as their presence had unfortunate consequences.

      “AH—AH—AH—!”

      Now the wind roared more profoundly than all the world’s hurricanes—profound, yes, though it didn’t actually say anything; for the hurricane is the philosopher among storms, Tom always said, or one day would, or so said in his dreams (some confusion on this point), and its profundity is so profound that even the hurricane cannot fathom it—

      “AH—AH—AH—!!”

      —the one certainty being the thunder of its blast, as the eye of the storm passed, or in this case perhaps you might say it was the nose of the storm; and the winds reversed themselves and Tom and Nick lost their grip and went tumbling into an abyss vaster than any that yawns between the grave and the world, between the world and the stars—

      “CHOOO!!!”

      * * * * * * *

      Burning the midnight oil that would never expire, because this midnight would never pass, Peter the Poet paced petulantly in his drafty garret. He sat down at his desk again.

      His fancies raged. But words would not come.

      His quill scratched across the page:

      Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

      to cast me off discourteously....

      Rubbish, he knew. Anybody could do better than that, even, he fancied, a pair of lice crawling up someone’s nose.

      * * * * * * *

      King Henry sneezed and awoke briefly. He thought of love. His royal wrath roused. He considered shouting for the headsman and finding someone’s head to lop off, just for the exercise, but, no, ‘twas late, ‘twas cold, and he could do it in the morning. For now he turned and sank back into the deep recesses of the royal bed, and dreamed of meat-pies, and so does not figure largely in our narrative.

      “And I have loved you so long,

      delighting in your company....”

      * * * * * * *

      Tom O’Bedlam sneezed and awoke. Nick lay beside him, still asleep, sniffling, but not for long, as the not-so-kindly innkeeper, who hadn’t so much allowed them to stay through the miserable cold of the night as failed to eject them because he was himself entirely too drunk (and customers lay snoring across the tables and benches of the common room; here and there somebody sneeze; a belch; flies or fleas or gnats hovered); verily, i’faith, this same innkeeper, arisen early, unsteady on his feet with an ugly expression on his face, approached them in his thundering, clumping boots with a bucket of slops in hand that he might manage to heave out into the street and then again maybe not, as he would have to step over the recumbent Tom and Nick to make his way to the door—

      “Nick,” Tom said, nudging him.

      Nick sneezed and swatted a louse off his cheek.

      “Nick, we have to go.”

      The innkeeper loomed clumpingly.

      Nick swatted again.

      Just in, as he thought to phrase it, the nick of time, Tom hauled his companion up and out the door and into the street. The innkeeper slipped or tripped, or out of sheer spite threw the slops after them. Foul liquid landed with a splat in the snow.

      * * * * * * *

      Still Peter the Poet gazed out his window into the darkness, which he fancied to be the darkness of his own melancholy.

      The words would not come.

      He scratched more rubbish on the page.

      I have been ready at your hand,

      to grant whatever you would crave.....

      He watched the Moon set. He watched it rise. The night would never end.

      * * * * * * *

      “Is it morning, Tom?”

      “It should be, yes.”

      “But, look—”

      Tom looked. The full Moon was setting in the west, but to the east another Moon was rising where the Sun should be. Birds in the eaves of the houses around them twittered and began to sing, then hesitated, uncertain of what to do next.

      “That’s not right, Tom,” said Nick.

      “No, ’tisn’t.”

      They had to scramble aside as a troop of guards with pikes and armor, with banners flying, with moonlight gleaming off their silver helmets, came tramping down the street, screeching “Make way! Make way for our great lady!”

      They bore their lady in a sedan chair. She gazed out through the curtain, resplendent in her fiery, jewels gleaming, regarding the two madmen through a glass of some sort, which only magnified her hideous face, which was that of a naked skull.

      Her guardsmen screeched because their heads were not those of men, but of ravens and crows.

      “That’s not right either,” said Nick.

      “No, ‘tisn’t.”

      They stared after the company as it passed.

      And so the day passed too, though it was a misuse of the term to call it a day, as there was no daylight in it, as the Moon passed again across the sky amid stars which seemed subtly out of place. And the Moon made to