When Compared With A Shipboard Journey, The Advantages Are Evident, And Even Overland Travel Is Often Impractical

  Despite the breadth of invitation, the scale of the celebration did not reach such a great magnitude as to awe those who read accounts of it later. The entire assemblage could have squeezed itself into the Turtle Palace alone, Lommad's favorite building among her creations. The Turtle Palace existed to house, not a king or potentate, but her architectural fancy. Wide travel with her husband had expanded her knowledge and narrowed her taste, and as a result Lommad thoroughly understood what she liked.

  The result was an edifice unlike any in Egillen. “Where architects fail today is in neglecting the dome,” she said once when asked about the aesthetic sensibilities which informed her decisions. She did not repeat their mistake. No mansion in Yean Defiafi boasted such a grand dome; rather, boasting about something which took up so much space would have been considered rude. Arches of staggering size supported a mass of what appeared bronze on the outside but to the people underneath presented a bewildering composition rendered in every conceivable color of rectangles, rhombuses, triangles, and trapezoids, not to exclude other shapes, which led the eye around in spirals only to eject it toward the rim again impishly. Responses varied. Many looked upward only to turn away in haste, rubbing their eyes and muttering disgruntled expressions. Some, in their attempts to comprehend the patterns, twirled as if performing the Lunar Step until they became dizzy or fell over. A significant minority withdrew after complaining of nausea. Takki thought it was nice.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Atkosol had to have visited us, don't you think? Pavvu Omme Os I mean. I really think it made an impression on Mrs. Atkosol.”

  “The evidence points to it. Ah, hello, Mr. Nalfenk.”

  “Miss Takki. Mr. Dirant. Is that unusual design up above us an example of northern taste, are you saying?” Nalfenk, Dirant, and Takki were all three wearing their best available, which under the circumstances was the same as always with an extra bracelet and the application of a brush. All the residents of Ividottlof who had ever scrubbed a shirt had ended up turning away customers desperate to get some cleaning in as if they were Shtaugirs, who was also present.

  “That is so. Look lower for another example.” By way of demonstration Dirant nodded toward Takki's headscarf, which contained many of the same elements as the ceiling though on a humbler scale. Perhaps he behaved presumptuously in doing so before she pointed at it herself, but since she did eventually, he escaped censure.

  Mr. Nalfenk did as instructed. “Ah, the similarities are evident now that you have brought my attention to them. My understanding of your excellent land has been myopically focused on its scientific output.”

  “That is the most important part, Mr. Nalfenk,” Takki assured him.

  Congenial encounters such as that occurred throughout and around the Palace. Attendees inclined to unseemly excess failed to make it that far; most of the people present had stepped over one or two slumbering lumps in the middle of the street on the way there. Accordingly the nearest thing to rowdiness came when Wiuyo, moved beyond words at the opportunity to attend a banquet not unlike those which featured in many a song or epic poem of the kind which frequently ended in a blood feud declared her intention to recite in their entirety the ballads she knew which dealt with the humans from whom the five strongest underground fairies took their names prior to recent events.

  It seemed that a scholarly triumph was to follow the martial one. Hwohyesus and Odibinks who had at last come to accept the impossibility of a fairy ever divulging anything useful promised outrageous markups to anyone who supplied them with writing implements, and no hour of a stenographer's time would ever be rewarded more than that one. The less profligate, the Dirants, the Silapobants, the Onhavants, and people not employed by Stadeskosken also, worked their way closer to the bard, relying on their memories and the work of others to commit the occasion to history. Veteran reporters applied career-won lessons to sidle, shove, and slide themselves to the front.

  The front as defined by this arrangement was an arc in front of a table on which Wiuyo had chosen to perform. It was a considerate choice, since the audience members unused to genuine fairy bard song would have dragged themselves through a screen of poisonous plants, skipped across the backs of bears lined up, or dashed over a lake they did not yet know to be solid in their fervor to get closer as soon she began. Once she did, the reporters foresaw hours of searching for synonyms for “marvelous” just as they had “savage” earlier.

  The composers of the lays Wiuyo revived from antiquity had allotted regrettably few verses to academic fixations such as exact locations, technology, social organization, the specifics of governance, imports and exports, and what legal defenses were allowed against accusations aside from duels, or whether duels had rules of conduct for that matter. The ancient composers went so far as to presume nobody need be told vulgar facts such as the tribes to which Jiojjil or any of his friends and enemies belonged. They did address of course how far he traveled (farther than any man before or since) and how big was the boar he slew (bigger than any ever born, for this one formed itself out of the stuff which existed before the world), topics of the highest relevance to the story, but not a single point historians wished to know except for the occasional mention of bronze equipment.

  If the Jiojjil cycle offered the past-minded nothing but dregs, Ishtu's tales filled the bowl with spit. He was a peasant who embarked on a series of improbable adventures which, unlike many local folktales, did not purport to explain how a particular rock ended up where it did or why the apples are an unusual color there. Though literary interpretation always was contested even when dealing with an ongoing serial, many gained confidence with each line that listeners millennia ago had not believed the events described had in fact occurred, nor was it intended that they should. While academics interested in the question of the universality of fiction would devour the transcripts, the enthusiasts present wanted to hear about Ertith first, related history second, unrelated history third, and fiction not at all.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The legend of Ydridd mollified them. Learning that the original Ydridd was an Ertithan queen renowned for her beauty gave them three immediate pieces of information subject to multiplication through analysis. First, Ydridd was a sure, unambiguous example of an Ertithan name; the chiselers responsible for the surviving inscriptions had neglected to indicate which words indicated people, which places, and which the god to whose beneficence the relevant blessing was ascribed. Second, it was a name appropriate for someone of high station; the royalty of the time evidently contented themselves with a single word rather than a chain of titles, places, branches, and grandfathers. Third, Ertithans had queens and presumably kings, or at least some did at some times; certain theories that only the degraded later peoples submitted to monarchical forms of government dissolved on the spot, not that they had ever been popular. That ballad expanded knowledge even if it said nothing more aside from the particulars of Ydridd's court and person.

  “Although.” Odibink commenced the discussion during an instrumental portion which Wiuyo announced had been inserted by a later composer for the purpose in modern times fulfilled by an intermission.

  Gabdirn, the human one, groaned. “I have no love for that word. But I have an objection and possibly the same one.”

  “It had something of the, oh, the speculative about it, did it not? The fanciful no less. We may have just heard an Ertithan legend of olden times, olden from their perspective, doubly ancient in fact.”

  “We may have done,” Gabdirn agreed. “Not an Ertithan legend at all. A later people probably did it.” For all his sudden reputation as the greatest Heweker hero of the modern day, he retained his habitual interests.

  “Now, no, now you must acknowledge the style—“ Further discussion, let alone the argument Odibink was starting, was cut off when Wiuyo resumed the meaningful part.

  The distinguishing facet of Ava's story was the involvement of the fairy queen herself. The two Avas were contemporaneous, something not confirmed in song with regard to the others, though the fairy Gabdirn had presented independent testimony of his own relationship with his former namesake. As to the specifics of that period as well as the country, the narrative surpassed the previous three as far as their total absence. In brief, a painter named Ava, born of unnamed parents in an unnamed town (or city, or village, or mountain shack) painted a fairy queen's portrait. She worked so skillfully that the queen promised her any boon she wished. The painter, entranced by her subject, begged to change place with her for a year, and so they exchanged their names and residences. At the end of the agreed time, the fairy, now Ava, allowed the human to keep her old name, which the song did not care to mention.

  “That one is the most promising for a modern adaptation,” Silapobant remarked during another instrumental break. “Has our publishing wing had a success yet?”

  “Silone convinced me I am entirely unaware of what is truly popular,” Dirant said. “He knows it too, and therefore you may include when you write him my opinion that there is no appeal in this story.”

  “Is that your true opinion, or?”

  “It is.”

  “Another shortcoming to fix then.”

  The last set of lays, unless the crowd could prevail upon Wiuyo to expand her program to include Wiuyo, Ksori, Erjjub, Gyund, Tadto, Iyu Voda, and other persons implied by known fairies, dealt with Zatdil. “This may go on for a bit,” the bard warned. “Are you ready?”

  The crowd allowed that it was. She frowned, unused to Adaban audiences and therefore expecting a more vigorous reaction, but her performance lost none of its verve for that, her lack of a visible Verve stat notwithstanding. The contents astonished her listeners. She related in rousing terms battles of thousands against hundreds in which the thousands considered themselves outmatched, for no human save Hacanthu ever matched the strength of an elite verang. She told of the magical pillars which the Omega Masters sank in the earth to draw out the world's circulating energy and how they subsequently apportioned it to their subordinates with a grim hand. The Omega Preservers, Radiators, and Despoilers directly beneath them were few in number but nearly infinite in strength, while the more numerous Fighters, Raiders, and Drudges surpassed most humans in might.

  Some blamed the gods for the calamity and, rejecting them, created their own. Wiuyo avoided details about that to concentrate on people who considered themselves impious if they did not meet the challenge by cultivating their divinely granted abilities. After Hacanthu vindicated that approach by slaying an Omega Master, increasing skill and numerical superiority began to tell against the verangs until all were destroyed save for the Omega Despoilers, invincible in battle. The Ertithans founded an entire city simply to study methods to subdue Omega Despoiler Zatdil, who because of their ingenuity was deceived and imprisoned for all eternity on a spot which would forever remain barren because of the scorching influence of his extraordinary power.

  Between songs, Wiuyo made an aside which confirmed what her audience had already concluded. “Then a cow threw up all over his prison. How fleeting is dignity. Once notes pass through the air, it never reverts. Is the heart the same?”

  Sophisticates who expected remarks of that sort to be relevant to the upcoming musical piece, a custom followed in Chtrebliseu, were reminded Wiuyo had never been to that kingdom. The next song was a treatment of the Zatdil matter which neither reflected the themes they inferred from the introduction nor added detail to the events related in the previous account. Indeed, it mostly recapitulated them, answering none of the audience's questions except those on the topic of whether bald copying was a recent innovation in the entertainment industry.

  “The ballad claims Zatdil the Omega Despoiler was trapped eternally at Cowsick Point. Where then is he? We have seen no superior creature.”

  Wiuyo, perceiving the crowd's commentary as a criticism of the lyrics, addressed it. “Song-writing isn't just art. It's craft. 'Eternal' and 'eternity' fit in a line better in their language than 'for a time longer than the next five years.' That isn't a bad line by itself though. Now hush up because that wasn't the last verse.”

  “Pardon us.”