Nisbet took Cugel outside and pointed to a bluff overlooking the plain. “See where the trees hang past the cliff? At that place a great magician named Makke the Maugifer built a manse and ruled the land with his mauging magic. He mauged east and he mauged west, north and south; persons could lift their eyes to his face once, or with effort twice, but never three times, so strong was his maugery.
“Makke planted a square garden with magic trees at the four corners; the ossip tree survives to this day, and there is no better boot-dressing than wax of the ossip berries. I dress my boots with ossip wax and they are proof against the rocks of the quarry: so I was taught by my father, who learned from his father, and so back through time to a certain Nisvaunt, who first went to Makke’s garden for ossip berries. There he discovered the amulet and its strength.
“Nisvaunt first established himself in the porterage trade and moved goods great distances with ease. He became weary of the dust and dangers of travel and settled on this spot to become a quarryman, and I am the last of the line.”
The two men returned to the work-shed. Under Nisbet’s direction, Cugel took up the ropes and pulled at the ‘Twenty’, so that it slid slowly through the air and out toward the columns.
Nisbet halted at the base of a column marked with a plaque reading:
The Lofty Monument of
CROULSX
“We Exult Only in the Upper Altitudes”
Nisbet raised his head and called: “Croulsx! Come down from your column! Your segment is ready to mount.”
Croulsx’s head, as he peered over the side of the column, was silhouetted against the sky. Satisfied that the calls were intended for himself, he descended to the ground. “Your work has not been swift,” he told Nisbet gruffly. “Too long have I been forced to use an inferior flux.”
Nisbet made light of the complaints. “‘Now’ is ‘now’, and at that instant known as ‘now’ your segment is ready and ‘now’ you can enjoy the upper radiances.”
“All very well with your ‘nows’!” grumbled Croulsx. “You ignore the deterioration of my health.”
“I can only work to my best speed,” said Nisbet. “In this regard, allow me to introduce my new associate, Cugel. I fancy that work will now go with a fling, owing to Cugel’s experience and energy.”
“If such is the case I will now place my order for five new segments. Dame Croulsx will validate the order with a deposit.”
“I cannot acknowledge your order at this moment,” said Nisbet. “However, I will keep your needs in mind. Cugel, are you ready? Then climb, if you will, to the top of Xippin’s column and haul the segment gently on high. Croulsx and I will guide it from below.”
The segment was efficiently set in place and Croulsx immediately climbed to the top, and arranged himself to best advantage in the red sunlight. Nisbet and Cugel returned to the shed and Cugel was instructed in the techniques of shaping, rounding and smoothing the white-stone.
Cugel soon understood why Nisbet was delinquent in his deliveries. First, age had slowed his movements to a degree for which his efficiency could not compensate. Secondly, Nisbet was almost hourly interrupted by visitors: women of the village with orders, demands, complaints, gifts and persuasions.
On Cugel’s third day of employment, a group of merchant traders stopped by Nisbet’s abode. They were members of a dark-skinned race notable for amber eyes, aquiline features and proudly erect posture. Their garments were no less distinctive: pantaloons bound with sashes, shirts with wing collars, under-jackets and cut-away tabards, in the colors of black, tan, fusk and umber. They wore wide-brimmed black hats with slouch crowns, which Cugel considered of excellent address. They had brought with them a great high-wheeled wagon loaded with objects concealed under a tarpaulin. As the elder of the group conferred with Nisbet, the others removed the cloth, to reveal what appeared to be a large number of stacked corpses.
Nisbet and the elder came to an agreement and the four Maots — so Nisbet identified them to Cugel — began to unload the wagon. Nisbet took Cugel somewhat aside and pointed to a far mound. “That is Old Qâr which once held sway from the Falling Wall to the Silkal Strakes. During their high age the folk of Qâr practiced a unique religion, which, I suppose, is no more preposterous than any other. They believed that a man or woman upon dying entered afterlife using that bodily condition in which he or she had died, thereupon to pass eternity amid feasting, revelry and other pleasures regarding which propriety forbids mention. Hence it became the better part of wisdom to die in the full flower of life, since, for example, a rachitic old man, toothless, short-winded and dyspeptic, could never fully enjoy the banquets, songs and nymphs of paradise. The folk of Qâr therefore arranged to die at an early age, and they were embalmed with such skill that their corpses even today seem fresh with life. The Maots quarry the Qâr mausoleum for these corpses and convey them across the Wild Waste to the Thuniac Conservatory at Noval, where, as I understand it, they are put to some sort of ceremonial use.”
While he spoke the Maot traders had unloaded the corpses, laid them in a row, and roped them together. The elder signaled Nisbet who walked along the line of corpses, touching each with his amulet. He then walked back along the line and delivered to each corpse the activating kick. The Maot elder paid Nisbet his fee; there was an interchange of gracious small talk and then the Maots set off to the northeast, the corpses drifting behind at an altitude of fifty feet.
Such interludes, while entertaining and instructive, tended to delay the orders whose delivery was ever more urgently demanded, both by the men, who were invigorated by the upper-air radiance, and by the women, who funded the raising of a column both in the interests of their husbands’ health and also to enhance the prestige of the family.
To speed the work, Cugel initiated several labor-saving short-cuts, thereby arousing Nisbet’s high approval. “Cugel, you will go far in this business! These are clever innovations!”
“I am pondering others even more novel,” said Cugel. “Clearly, we must keep abreast of demand if only to maximize our own profits.”
“No doubt, but how?”
“I will give the matter my best attention.”
“Excellent! The problem is as good as solved.” So declared Nisbet who then went off to prepare a gala supper, which included three bottles of sumptuous green wine from the stores of the Xei Cambael wine-seller. Nisbet indulged himself to such an extent that he fell asleep on a couch in the parlour.
Cugel seized the opportunity to conduct an experiment. From the chain around Nisbet’s neck he unclasped the five-sided amulet and rubbed it along the arms of a heavy chair. Then, as he had seen Nisbet do, he gave the chair an activating kick.
The chair remained as heavy as before.
Cugel stood back in perplexity. In some manner he had misapplied the power of the amulet. Or might the magic be immanent in Nisbet and no other?
Unlikely. An amulet was an amulet.
Where then did Nisbet’s act differ from his own?
Nisbet, the better to warm his feet before the fire, had removed his boots. Cugel removed his own shoes, which were worn almost to shreds, and slipped his feet into Nisbet’s boots.
He rubbed the chair with the five-sided amulet and kicked it with Nisbet’s boots. The chair instantly rebuffed gravity, to float in the air.
Most interesting, thought Cugel. He returned the amulet to Nisbet’s neck and the boots to where he had found them.
On the morrow Cugel told Nisbet: “I discover that I need boots of strong leather, like yours, proof against the rocks of the quarry. Where can I obtain such boots?”
“Such items are included among our perquisites,” said Nisbet. “Today I will send a messenger into the village and call for Dame Tadouc the cobbler-woman.” Nisbet laid his finger alongside his crooked old nose and turned Cugel a mischievous leer. “I have learned how to control the women of Tustvold Village, or, for that matter, women in general! Never give them all they want! That is the secret of my success! In this present case, Dame Tadouc’s husband sits on a column of only fourteen segments, making do with shadows and low-quality flux, while Dame Tadouc endures the condescension of her peers. For this reason, there is no harder-working woman in the village, save possibly Dame Kylas, who fells trees and shapes the natural wood into timber of specified size. In any event, you will be fitted for boots within the hour and I daresay that you will be wearing them tomorrow.”
As Nisbet had predicted, Dame Tadouc came out from the village on the run and asked of Nisbet his requirements. “Meanwhile, Sir Nisbet, I trust that you will give earnest attention to my order for three new segments. Poor Tadouc has developed a cough and needs more intense radiation for his health.”
“Dame Tadouc, the boots are needed by my associate Cugel, whose present shoes are all shreds and holes, so that his toes scratch the ground.”
“A pity, a pity!”
