“'The lady has escaped you,” Vramin observes.

“It would seem, but I shall make it as if it had never occurred.”

Then Wakim raises his left hand and advances upon Madrak.

Madrak's staff spins in his grip until it is nearly invisible, then strikes forward.

Wakim dodges the first blow, but the second one is laid upon his shoulder. He attempts to catch the staff, fails. A second blow falls upon him. He attempts to rush Madrak, but is caught by an horizontal moulinet across the chest. Then he falls back, crouches out of range, begins a shuffling circle about his opponent.

“How is it that you still stand?” asks Vramin, who stands aside, smoking.

“I cannot fall,” Wakim replies.

He lunges then, but is beaten back once more.

Madrak moves to attack several times then, but on each occasion Wakim avoids the blow and attempts to seize the staff.

Finally, Wakim stops and retreats several paces.

“Enough of this foolishness! Time goes against my recovering the girl. You are good with that stick, fat Madrak, but it shall not help you now!”

Then, bowing his head slightly, Wakim vanishes from where he stands and Madrak lies upon the ground, his staff broken before him.

Wakim stands now at his side, his hand upraised as if recovering from a blow delivered.

The poet drops his cigarette and his cane leaps within his hands, tracing a circle of green fires about him. Wakim turns to face him.

“Fugue!” says Vramin. “A genuine fugue master! And forward-going! Who are you?”

“I am called Wakim.”

“How is it that you know the exact number of the immortals, that being two hundred eighty-three?”

“I know what I know, and those flames will not save you.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not, Wakim. But I do not oppose the powers of the House of Life and the House of the Dead.”

“You are an immortal. Your very existence is sufficient to give the lie to your words.”

“I am too indifferent to oppose anything on principle. My life, however, is another matter,” and his eyes flash green.

“Before you attempt to turn your power against me, Wakim, know that it is already too late…”

He raises his cane.

“Either the dog or the bird has sent you, and it does not matter which…”

Green fires spray in fountains upward, engulfing the pavilion.

“More than a mere plague-bearer, I know you to be. You are too well-endowed to be any less than an emissary…”

The pavilion vanishes about them, and they stand in an open area in the midst of the Fair.

“Know that before you there have been others, and all of them have failed…”

A green light leaps upward from his cane and arcs like a rocket flare through the sky.

“Two of them fell before the one who now approaches…”

The light overhead persists, pulsates.

“Behold the one who comes upon scenes of chaos, and whose cold metal hand supports the weak and the oppressed.”

He comes, riding down the sky on the back of a great beast of burnished metal. It has eight legs and its hooves are diamonds. It slows with each stride that it takes, covering less and less distance.

“He is called the Steel General, and he, too, is a fugue-master, Wakim. He hearkens to my beacon.”

Wakim turns his eyes upward and beholds the one who had once been a man. Whether it is by Vramin's magic or some premonition of his own, he knows that this will be his first real contest in the thousand years of his memory.

The green fires fall upon Madrak now, and he stirs himself and rises with a moan.

Eight diamonds touch upon the ground, and Wakim hears the sound of a distant banjo.

The Red Witch calls for her Chariot of Ten, and orders her cloak of gold. This day she’ll off across the sky to the Ring where the Midworlds go.

This day shell off across the sky on her own wild ways to show…

There, in the worlds of the Life and the Death, the worlds that she used to know.

Now, some say her name is Mercy and others say it’s Lust. Her secret name is Isis. Her secret soul is dust.

… An eunuch priest of the highest caste sets tapers before a pair of old shoes.

… The dog worries the dirty glove which hath seen many better centuries.

… The blind Norns strike a tiny silver anvil with fingers that are mallets. Upon the metal lies a length of blue light.

PLACE OF THE HEARTS DESIRE

The Prince Who Was A Thousand walks beside the sea and under the sea. The only other intelligent inhabitant of the world within which he walks cannot be sure whether the Prince created it or discovered it. This is because one can never be sure whether wisdom produces or merely locates, and the Prince is wise.

He walks along the beach. His footsteps begin seven paces behind him. High above his head hangs the sea.

The sea hangs above his head because it has no choice in the matter. The world within which he walks is so constructed that if one were to approach it from any direction, it would appear to be a world completely lacking in land masses. If one were to descend far enough beneath that sea which surrounds it, however, one would emerge from the underside of the waters and enter into the planet's atmosphere. Descending still farther, one would reach dry land. Traversing this land, one might come upon other bodies of water, waters bounded by land, beneath the sea that hangs in the sky.

The big sea flows perhaps a thousand feet overhead. Bright fish fill its bottom, like mobile constellations. And down here on the land, everything glows.

It has been said that a world such as this unnamed place with a sea for a sky could not possibly exist. Those who said it are obviously wrong. Positing infinity, the rest is easy.

The Prince Who Was A Thousand is in an unique position. He is a teleportationist, among other things, and this is even rarer than a master of temporal fugue. In fact, he is the only one of his kind. He can transport himself, in no time at all, to any place that he can visualize.

And he has a very vivid imagination. Granting that any place you can think of exists somewhere in infinity, if the Prince can think of it too, he is able to visit it. Now, a few theorists claim that the Prince’s visualizing a place and willing himself into it is actually an act of creation. No one knew about the place before, and if the Prince can find it, then perhaps what he really did was make it happen. However-positing infinity, the rest is easy.

The Prince has not the least idea, not a snowball in hell’s worth, as to where the nameless world is located, anyway, in relation to the rest of the universe. Nor does he care. He can come and go as he chooses, taking with him whomsoever he would.

He has come alone, however, because he wishes to visit his wife.

He stands beside the sea, beneath the sea, and he calls out her name, which is the name “Nephytha,” and he waits till a breeze comes to him from across the waters, touching him and saying the name that is his own.

He bows then his head and feels her presence about him.

“How goes the world with thee, loved one?” he inquires.

There comes a sob upon the air, breaking the surfs monotone turning.

“Well,” comes the reply. “And thyself, my lord?”

“I will be truthful rather than polite, and say ‘poorly.’”

“It cries yet in the night?”

“Yes.”

“I thought of thee as I drifted and as I flowed. I have made birds to be within the air to keep me company, but their cries are either harsh or sad. What may I tell thee, to be polite rather than truthful? That I am not sickened by this life that is not life? That I do not long to be a woman once again, rather than a breath, a color, a movement? That I do not ache to touch thee once again, and to feel once again thy touch upon my body? Thou knowest all that I might say, but no one god possesses all powers. I should not complain, but I fear, my lord, I fear the madness that sometimes comes upon me: Never to sleep, never to eat, never to touch a solid thing. How long has it been…?”