Cugel tried to decline but Faucelme refused to listen. He brought out a small black bottle and two crystal cups. Into Cugel’s cup he poured a half-inch of pale liquid. “This is my own distillation,” said Faucelme. “See if it is to your taste.”
A small moth fluttered close to Cugel’s cup and instantly fell dead to the table.
Cugel rose to his feet. “I need no such tonic tonight,” said Cugel. “Where shall I sleep?”
“Come.” Faucelme led Cugel up the stairs and opened the door into a room. “A fine cozy little nook, where you will rest well indeed.”
Cugel drew back. “There are no windows! I should feel stifled.”
“Oh? Very well, let us look into another chamber … What of this? The bed is soft and fine.”
Cugel voiced a question: “What is the reason for the massive iron gridwork above the bed? What if it fell during the night?”
“Cugel, this is sheer pessimism! You must always look for the glad things of life! Have you noticed, for instance, the vase of flowers beside the bed!”
“Charming! Let us look at another room.”
“Sleep is sleep!” said Faucelme peevishly. “Are you always so captious? … Well then, what of this fine chamber? The bed is good; the windows are wide. I can only hope that the height does not affect you with vertigo.”
“This will suit me well,” said Cugel. “Faucelme, I bid you good night.”
Faucelme stalked off down the hall. Cugel closed the door and opened wide the window. Against the stars he could see tall thin chimneys and a single cypress rearing above the house.
Cugel tied an end of his rope to the bed-post, then kicked the bed, which at once knew revulsion for the suction of gravity and lifted into the air. Cugel guided it to the window, pushed it through and out into the night. He darkened the lamp, climbed aboard the bed and thrust away from the manse toward the cypress tree, to which he tied the other end of the rope. He gave a command: “Rope, stretch long.”
The rope stretched and Cugel floated up into the night. The manse showed as an irregular bulk below, blacker than black, with yellow quadrangles to mark the illuminated rooms.
Cugel let the rope stretch a hundred yards. “Rope, stretch no more!”
The bed stopped with a soft jerk. Cugel made himself comfortable and watched the manse.
Half an hour passed. The bed swayed to the vagrant airs of the night and under the eiderdown Cugel became drowsy. His eyelids drooped … An effulgence burst soundlessly from the window of the room to which he had been assigned. Cugel blinked and sat upright, and watched a bubble of luminous pale gas billow from the window.
The room went dark, as before. A moment later the window flickered to the light of a lamp, and Faucelme’s angular figure, with elbows akimbo, showed black upon the yellow rectangle. The head jerked this way and that as Faucelme looked out into the night.
At last he withdrew and the window went dark.
Cugel became uneasy with his proximity to the manse. He took hold of the rope and said: “Tzat!”
The rope came loose in his hand.
Cugel said: “Rope, shrink!”
The rope became once more ten feet long.
Cugel looked back toward the manse. “Faucelme, whatever your deeds or misdeeds, I am grateful to you for this rope, and also your bed, even though, through fear, I must sleep in the open.”
He looked over the side of the bed and by starlight saw the glimmer of the road. The night was dead calm. He drifted, if at all, to the west.
Cugel hung his hat on the bed-post. He lay back, pulled the eiderdown over his head and went to sleep.
The night passed. Stars moved across the sky. From the waste came the melancholy call of the visp: once, twice, then silence.
Cugel awoke to the rising of the sun, and for an appreciable interval could not define his whereabouts. He started to throw a leg over the side of the bed, then pulled it back with a startled jerk.
A shadow fluttered across the sun; a heavy black object swooped down to alight at the foot of Cugel’s bed: a pelgrane of middle years, to judge by the silky gray hair of its globular abdomen. Its head, two feet long, was carved of black horn, like that of a stag-beetle and white fangs curled up past its snout. Perching on the bedstead it regarded Cugel with both avidity and amusement.
“Today I shall breakfast in bed,” said the pelgrane. “Not often do I so indulge myself.”
It reached out and seized Cugel’s ankle, but Cugel jerked back. He groped for his sword but could not draw it from the scabbard. In his frantic effort he caught his hat with the tip of his scabbard; the pelgrane, attracted by the red glint, reached for the hat. Cugel thrust ‘Spatterlight’ into its face.
The wide brim and Cugel’s own terror confused the flow of events. The bed bounded as if relieved of weight; the pelgrane was gone.
Cugel looked to all sides in puzzlement.
The pelgrane had disappeared.
Cugel looked at ‘Spatterlight’, which seemed to shine with perhaps a somewhat more vivacious glow.
With great caution Cugel arranged the hat upon his head. He looked over the side and noticed approaching in the road a small two-wheeled cart pushed by a fat boy of twelve or thirteen years.
Cugel threw down his rope to fix upon a stump and drew himself to the surface. When the boy rolled the push-cart past, Cugel sprang out upon the road. “Hold up! What have we here?”
The boy jumped back in fright. “It is a new wheel for the wain and breakfast for my brothers: a pot of good stew, a round of bread and a jug of wine. If you are a robber there is nothing here for you.”
