The girls looked up slack-jawed, then uttered small squeaks of terror, and stood paralyzed, too frightened to run.

Rhialto frowned. “Why do you tremble? Do I seem such a monster of evil?”

One of the girls managed to quaver: “Sir Ghoul, your ugliness is inspiring! Pray give us our lives so that we may appall others with the tale!”

Rhialto spoke coldly. “I am neither ghoul nor demon, and your horror is not at all flattering.”

The girl was emboldened to ask: “In that case, what manner of strange thing might you be?”

A second girl spoke in an awed voice: “He is a Pooner, or perhaps a Bohul, and we are as good as dead!”

Rhialto controlled his irritation. “What foolish talk is this? I am only a traveler from a far land, neither Pooner nor Bohul, and I intend you no harm. Have you never seen a stranger before?”

“Certainly, but never one so dour, meanwhile wearing so comical a hat.”

Rhialto nodded crisply. “I do not care to modify my face, but I will gladly hear your advice as to a more fashionable hat.”

The first girl said: “This year everyone is wearing a clever felt ‘soup-pot’ — so are they called — and magenta is the only suitable color. A single blue ear-flap suffices for modesty, and a caste-sign of glazed faience is considered somewhat dashing.”

Rhialto squeezed the walnut shell. “Osherl, procure me a hat of this description. You may also set out a table with a collation of foods tempting to the ordinary tastes of today.”

The hat appeared. Rhialto tossed his old hat behind a bush and donned the faddish new article, and the girls clapped their hands in approval.

Meanwhile Osherl had arranged a table laden with dainties on a nearby area.

Rhialto waved the girls forward. “Even the most brittle personalities relax at the sight of viands such as these, and pretty little courtesies and signs of favor, otherwise unthinkable, are sometimes rendered almost automatically — especially in the presence of these fine pastries, piled high with creams and sweet jellies. My dear young ladies, I invite you to partake.”

The most cautious of the girls said: “And then, what will you demand of us?”

Another said chidingly: “Tish tush! The gentleman has freely invited us to share his repast; we should respond with equal freedom!”

The third gave a merry laugh. “Dine first and worry later! After all, he can enforce his wishes upon us as he chooses, without the formality of feeding us first, so that worry leads nowhere.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said the first girl. “For a fact, in his new hat he is less ugly than before, and indeed I am most partial to this thrasher pâté, come what may.”

Rhialto said with dignity: “You may enjoy your meal without qualms.”

The girls advanced upon the table and, discovering no peculiar conduct on the part of Rhialto, devoured the viands with zest.

Rhialto pointed across the plain. “What are those curious clouds in the sky?”

The girls turned to look as if they had not previously noticed. “That is the direction of Vasques Tohor. The dust doubtless results from the war now being fought.”

Rhialto frowned across the plain. “What war is this?”

The girls laughed at Rhialto’s ignorance. “It was launched by the Bohulic Dukes of East Attuck; they brought their battle-gangs down in great numbers and threw them without remorse against Vasques Tohor, but they can never prevail against the King of all Kings and his Thousand Knights.”

“Very likely not,” said Rhialto. “Still, from curiosity I will wander northward and see for myself. I now bid you farewell.”

The girls slowly returned to the thicket, but their enthusiasm for berry-picking was gone, and they worked with laggard fingers, watching over their shoulders at the tall form of Rhialto as he sauntered off to the north.

Rhialto proceeded half a mile, then climbed into the air and ran through the sky toward Vasques Tohor.

By the time he arrived on the scene, the battle had been decided. The Bohul battle-gangs, with their memrils and rumbling war-wagons, had done the unthinkable; on the Finneian Plain east of Vasques Tohor the Twenty Potences of the Last Kingdom had been destroyed; Vasques Tohor could no longer be denied to the Bohul Dukes.

The tragic peach-rose light of late afternoon illuminated a clutter of smoke, dust, toppled machines and broken corpses. Legions of long pedigree and many honors had been smashed; their standards and uniforms bedizened the field with color. The Thousand Knights, riding half-living half-metal flyers from Canopus, had thrown themselves against the Bohul war-wagons, but for the most part had been destroyed by fire-rays before they could do damage in return.

The war-wagons now commanded the plain: grim, dismal vehicles rearing sixty feet into the air, armed with both Red Ruin and barb-drivers. On the first tier and wherever they could cling rode assault troops from East Attuck. These were not pretty troops; they were neither handsome, nor clean-limbed nor even dauntless. Rather they were surly veterans of many types and conditions, with only dirt, sweat and foul language in common. At first glance they seemed no more than a rabble, lacking both discipline and morale. Some were old, bearded and pallid; others were bald and fat, or bandy-legged, or thin as weasels. All were unkempt, with faces more petulant than ferocious. Their uniforms were improvised; some wore skull-caps, others leather battle-caps with ear-flaps, others tufted barb-catchers adorned with scalps cut from the blond young heads of the Thousand Knights. Such were the troops which had defeated the Twenty Legions, skulking, hiding, striking, feigning death, striking again, screaming in pain but never fear; the Iron Dukes had long before sated them full with fright.

To the side of the war-wagons stalked rows of memrils: gracile creatures apparently all legs and arms of brown chitin, with small triangular heads raised twenty feet above the ground; it was said that the magician Pikarkas, himself reportedly half-insect, had contrived the memrils from ever more prodigious versions of the executioner beetle.

Tam Tol, King of the Final Kingdom, had stood all day on the parapets of Vasques Tohor, overlooking the Finneian Plain. He watched his elite Knights on their flyers darting down upon the war-wagons; he saw them consumed by Red Ruin. His Twenty Legions, led by the Indomitables, deployed under their ancient standards. They were guarded from above by squadrons of black air-lions, each twenty feet long, armed with fire, gas-jet and fearful sounds.

Tam Tol stood immobile as the Bohul battle-gangs, cursing and sweating, cut down his brave noblemen, and stood long after all hope was gone, heedless of calls and urgencies. His courtiers one by one moved away, to leave Tam Tol at last standing alone, either too numb or too proud to flee.

Behind the parapets mobs ranged the city, gathering all portable wealth, then, departing by the Sunset Gates, made for the sacred city Luid Shug, fifty miles to the west across the Joheim Valley.

Rhialto, running through the sky, halted and surveyed the sky through the pleurmalion. The dark blue spot hung over the western sector of the city; Rhialto proceeded slowly in this direction at a loss for a means to locate the Perciplex quickly and deftly among so much confusion. He became aware of Tam Tol standing alone on the parapets: even as he watched, a barb from the turret of a war-wagon struck up through the afternoon sunlight and Tam Tol, struck in the forehead, fell slowly and soundlessly down the face of the parapets to the ground.

The noise from the Finneian Plain dwindled to a whispering murmur. All flyers had departed the air and Rhialto ran on soft plunging steps a mile closer to the dying city. Halting, he used the pleurmalion once more, and discovered, somewhat to his relief, that the blue sky-spot no longer hovered over the city, but out over the Joheim Valley, where the Perciplex was now evidently included in the loot of someone in the column of refugees.

Rhialto ran through the air to station himself directly below the blue spot, merely to discover a new frustration: the individual with the Perciplex could not be isolated in the crowds of trudging bodies and pale faces.

The sun sank into a flux of color, and the blue spot no longer could be seen on the night sky. Rhialto turned away in vexation. He ran south through the twilight, beyond the Joheim Valley and across a wide meandering river. He descended at the outskirts of a town: Vils of the Ten Steeples, and took lodging for the night at a small inn at the back of a garden of rose-trees.

In the common room the conversation dealt with the war and the power of the Bohul battle-gangs. Speculation and rumor were rife, and all marvelled, with gloomy shakes of the head, at the fateful passing of the Last Kingdom.

Rhialto sat at the back of the room, listening but contributing nothing to the conversation, and presently he went quietly off to his chamber.

12

Rhialto breakfasted upon melon and fried clam dumplings in rose syrup. He settled his account and, departing the town, returned to the north.

A human river still flowed across the Joheim Valley. Multitudes had already arrived before the holy city, only to be denied entry, and their encampment spread like a crust away from the city walls. Above hung the blue spot.

Luid Shug had been ordained a holy place during an early era of the aeon by the legendary Goulkoud the God-friend. Coming upon the crater of a small dead volcano, Goulkoud had been seized by twenty paroxysms of enlightenment, during which he stipulated the form and placement of twenty temples in symmetry around the central volcanic neck. Prebendary structures, baths, fountains and hostels for pilgrims occupied the floor of the crater; a narrow boulevard encircled the rim. Around the outside periphery stood twenty enormous god-effigies in twenty niches cut into the crater walls, each corresponding to one of the temples within the city.

Rhialto descended to the ground. Somewhere among the host huddled before the city was the Perciplex, but the sky-spot seemed to wander, despite Rhialto’s best efforts to bring it directly overhead, in which effort he was sorely hampered by the crowds.

At the center of the city, atop the old volcanic neck, stood a rose-quartz and silver finial. The Arch-priest stepped out upon the highest platform and, holding his arms high, he spoke to the refugees in a voice amplified by six great spiral shells.

“To victims and unfortunates, we extend twenty profound solaces! However, if your hopes include entry into this sacred place, they must be abandoned. We have neither food to feed hunger nor drink to slake thirst!

“Furthermore, I can extend no fair portents! The glory of the world is gone; it will never return until a hundred dreary centuries have run their course! Then hope and splendor will revivify the land, in a culmination of all that is good! This era will then persist until the earth finally rolls beyond Gwennart the Soft Curtain.

“To prepare for the ultimate age we will now select a quota of the choicest and the best, to the number of five thousand six hundred and forty-two, which is a Holy and Mysterious Number heavy with secrets.

“Half of this company will be the noble ‘Best of the Best’: heroes of ancient lineage! Half will be chosen from ‘Nephryne’s Foam’: maidens of virtue and beauty no less brave and gallant than their masculine counterparts. Together they are the ‘Paragons’: the highest excellence of the kingdom, and the flower of the race!