Outside he grabbed Hero, turned him about. “And where, pray, do you think you’re going?”
Hero licked his lips and the vacant look receded. His eyes gradually focused. “Going?” he finally said. “Why, for another drink, of course!”
“Are you all right?” Eldin stared deep into Hero’s eyes.
“Entirely,” Hero nodded. “And you?”
“My eyes sting a bit,” Eldin blinked, “but otherwise—”
“Thank you for your custom, sirs!” cried Naxas Niss, closing the rear flap of his tent on them.
They glanced at each other, gawped, galloped back round to the front just as Niss came out and reversed his sign to read Open. Hero grabbed him by a red velvet shoulder. “Whoa!” he said, dangerously low. “‘Drink as many of my measures as you can,’ you said. And as yet we’ve tried but one.”
Naxas Niss looked astonished. “But … did I ask you to leave? I did not. You walked out of your own free will, and that one ran after you. Now lads, the rules are simple: enter my tent and a tond gets you all you can drink, but once you exit the contract’s broken. Or … p’raps you’d care to try again?”
“Too damned true!” cried Eldin, dragging Hero by the collar back into the tent right on Niss’ heels. And yet again the latter reversed his sign to read Closed—for Now!
“Now sit!” said Eldin, thumping Hero down in the chair in front of the table. “Sit right there, where I can keep an eye on you.” And he stood behind him.
“I can’t think why I left like that.” Hero seemed genuinely astonished. “I certainly didn’t want to. Indeed, I wanted nothing so much as another glass of wine!”
“No problem there,” said Niss, rubbing his hands. “Your tonds, gentlemen, please.” They paid up, however grumblingly. And again Niss went into his song and dance routine:
“Now listen and you’ll see,
You’ll go where you have been,
Or arrive in all innocence where you’d really like to be;
Or you’ll lick your lips and feel the thirst—
And come right on back to me!”
“You missed out the color-blind bit,” said Eldin.
Niss shrugged. “I was in haste,” he explained. “And anyway, I couldn’t make it rhyme.”
Hero looked up at Eldin, and they both looked down at the wines, which Niss had topped up again. “Now, then,” said Eldin to Hero, “you had gold, and apart from acting daft—which isn’t really unusual—you’re okay. So—” And he reached for the red glass again!
Hero put his hand over the glass, stopping him. “That’s red,” he said.
“Eh?” Eldin peered close. “No, no—it’s plainly gold!”
“What, are you color-blind?” Hero cried … and they stared at each other in amaze.
“Or … are you?” said Eldin.
And Naxas Niss grinned.
“What color are my clothes?” Hero demanded.
Eldin glanced at them, cried, “Blue, of course!”—and his mouth at once fell open. “But they should be brown. Which means—I am colorblind!”
“But only temporarily,” said Naxas Niss.
Eldin snapped his fingers. “Hah! But that also means I should know which color’s which. And I do! Green transports you blushing where you most desire to be, and white sends you where you were before you were here. Except, because I’m color-blind, I don’t know which bottle’s which!”
“But I do,” Hero reminded.
“Good!” said Eldin. “So which one’s gold?”
“I don’t see much point in trying gold again,” said Hero, “for I’ve already tried it and ended up back here. It guaranteed my return, d’you see?”
“True,” said Eldin, “but at least we know it’s harmless.”
“Well, if the point of the exercise is not to be harmed,” said Hero, “why drink any of the bloody stuff?”
Eldin, thoroughly confused by now, said, “Eh? Why … because we’ve paid for it, that’s why! Now, then, which one’s gold?”
“That one,” Hero pointed at the green bottle, the while winking at Naxas Niss, who grinned on unabated. For it had dawned on Hero that there was an easy way round the problem, except he needed a guinea pig. Or a not-quite-so-expensive tond pig, as the case was.
Eldin picked up the green glass and stared at it suspiciously. “Gold?”
“Indeed,” said Hero.
“You’re sure you feel okay?”
“Positive,” said Hero. “Me, I’ll try the white.” And white it was.
“Hold!” said Eldin. “That’s green.”
Hero shook his head. “You’re color-blind, remember? It’s white.”
“White?” said Eldin. “But if you drink that you’ll end up where you were before you were here. Like … outside the tent again?”
“That’s how I figure it, yes,” said Hero. “Nothing harmful in that, and all the time we’re narrowing down the field.”
Eldin nodded and they raised the glasses to their lips. And: “Go!” said Eldin. They quickly drank the measures down.
Now, this was Hero’s plan:
They’d tried red and gold. Red made you color-blind and gold sent you staggering about, with a great desire to return. That left green and white. Eldin had swallowed green. He would now be transported (blushing?) where he most desired to be (which with this old pervert might be just about anywhere; Hero dreaded to think!). Hero on the other hand had swallowed white, so he’d likely end up outside the tent again as Eldin had surmised—but nowhere and nothing dangerous, anyway.
The beauty of it was this: that they’d now sampled all of Naxas Niss’ exotiques—except his black medicine, of course. They could probably do him for fraud (forcing folks to come back for more) and possibly even for theft (the way he snapped up tonds must be some kind of theft, Hero felt sure). They might get him for technical aggravated assault, too (making people color-blind and all); but for the life of Hero, he couldn’t see how they could make those other charges of Kuranes’ stick. What, nakedness? Gross imprudence? Aimless running about? He could only hope that all would come to light now that they’d sampled of green and white.
And of course all did come to light, and almost immediately.
Standing behind Hero, Eldin felt suddenly all aflutter. “B’God!” he gasped, and commenced staggering about a little. Hero leaped to his feet—and started running on the spot!
“What? What?” he cried. But he was unable to stop his feet, which went stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, like a squad of Baharna’s regulators on muster parade.
Then Eldin uttered a very small “Eek!” and fizzled out—quite literally—leaving his good black leather clothes floating on air. Unsupported, they flopped to the floor, loose tonds clinking in their pockets.
“Now, what’s all this, Niss?” Hero snarled, but his feet gave Niss no time to answer. They marched him right out the back door of the tent, and hurried him out of the fairground, and ran him wildly across a dusty road, and raced him frantically down an alley toward the harbor. All the way home, they took him, those rebellious feet, and all the time accelerating; until finally they hurled him upstairs to his and Eldin’s garret room, where at last they came to a halt, smoking and blistered inside his quaking boots. Hero would never know it, but he had done the three-and-a-half-minute mile …
AFTER BATHING HIS FEET in cold water for half an hour, and changing his boots for moccasins, Hero returned limping to the fairground. Eldin arrived a little later, dressed in a white sheet which he’d converted into a passable replica of desert raiment.
“If I thought I might attack you here and now,” said The Wanderer out the side of his mouth and almost conversationally, “without losing my sheet and what’s left of my dignity, you’d be dead in a trice. Or if not exactly dead, badly beaten. Unable to walk, at very least. Likewise, when I find him, Naxas Niss, purveyor of exotiques.” And he gloomed down on the square of flattened grass where recently had stood the yellow tent of that last mentioned.
> Hero pointed to his feet, which he could swear steamed visibly through the lace holes of his soft shoes. “As for crippling me,” he growled, “why, I’m already unable to walk! Indeed, I have feet like puddings! So as you can see—and while I admit my behavior left something wanting—I really do consider myself punished quite enough. No major harm done, however, and all wines tasted and effects observed at extremely close quarters. And so—”
They swapped experiences.
Hero’s tale was quickly told, as above, but Eldin’s proved far more interesting. “I drank what I thought was gold,” The Wanderer growled, “but which I now know to have been green, and in the next moment—zzzip!—there I was all naked, and maybe even blushing, in the bed of the young and buxom widow Misha Oosh, owner of the Yellow Yak, where nightly she displays her generous jigglers all bundled up in their blue silk blouse behind the bar.”
Hero nodded knowingly. “So that’s why we’ve been drinking in the Yellow Yak every night for the past week, eh? I fancied you fancied her.”
“And there was Misha herself,” Eldin continued, “taking her afternoon nap, right there in that very bed with me! Except … my arrival woke her up.”
Hero couldn’t suppress a grin. “When do you go up?” he inquired. “Before Leewas Nith, I mean.”
“Eh?” said Eldin. “You think she gave a shriek and kicked me out? Well, and I thought she might, too—at first. But you say you fancied I fancied her? And so I did—except I didn’t know that she fancied me in turn! Throw me out? No, she did not. Oh, she was somewhat agog and all atremble at first, but when she saw who it was …”
“God help the poor woman.” Hero sighed, turning his face away and shaking his head. “She must be desperate!”
“Pup!” Eldin snarled. “Why, I’ve seen you making eyes at her!”
“Anyway,” Hero changed the subject, “what then?”
“Well, we spent a very pleasant hour or so together, and then she said she must be up and preparing her place for evening opening. She loaned me this sheet, and helped me tuck it in a bit here and there, and here I am.”
“She didn’t find your being without your clothes a bit odd? Didn’t she even want to know how come?”
“She did, and I explained all, which she accepted at once. It’s handy being a quester for Kuranes. The king’s much loved, you know. And likewise those who look after him. And after all, her bed was the single place in all the dreamlands where I most desired to be.”
“So why are you so miffed?” Hero asked, acting innocent. “I mean, it seems to me I did you a favor!”
“And if I’d been unwelcome in Misha’s bed?”
“But you weren’t.”
“Huh!”
“Huh, indeed!” said Hero. “And how about me when this case is cracked, eh? Oh, you’ll be okay: free booze and all, and when the Yellow Yak turns out, all comfy and warm in the loving arms of Misha Oosh. But what of poor Hero?”
“You’ve girls aplenty,” Eldin snorted, which was true enough. “You’ll not go short.”
“The fact is,” said Hero, “that I really have done you a powerful favor. And it’s to be hoped you won’t forget it. So let’s have no more of these threats on my life and limbs, if you please.”
“What angers me,” said Eldin, curling his lip a bit, “is this: that there are lots of other places I might have ended up, not all of them in Celephais, and none of’em so comfy! I mean, can you imagine floating naked in a large vat of Lippy Unth’s muth? Or finding yourself propped up, everything adangle, at a bar somewhere in downtown Dylath-Leen? Or in some harem in Kled, with a dozen little black eunuchs after your bits with their curved, razor-sharp knives?”
“God!” said Hero. “It says a lot for your desires!”
“Never mind that!” Eldin snapped. “What about my clothes, eh? You’ve cost me a fine suit, shirt, shoes, and my purse to boot, which contained a hundred tonds!”
“Liar,” said Hero, but without emphasis. “Kuranes’ runner brought us a hundred tonds for expenses, fifty each, two of which you’d spent on Niss’ wines.”
“Well, half a hundred, then,” Eldin grumbled. “But I’ll have it back again, b’God I will, when I catch up with that wretch! Except … where is he, eh?” And again he gloomed on the vacant patch of grass.
“Where indeed?” Hero nodded thoughtfully, chewing his lip. “Where indeed?”
HERO LOANED ELDIN EIGHT TONDS with which to buy himself new if less satisfying togs, and they then split up and went their own ways, combing the city’s markets and thoroughfares for sign or word of Naxas Niss. They paid for and sent out a pair of extra eyes, too, in the shape of the urchin Kimp Lootis, a waif late of the waking world like themselves. Kimp, long-haired as a girl and bright as a fresh-minted tond, however ragged, came to them that night with his report, catching them just before they could enter the Yellow Yak, in the cobbled mews which led to that estimable alehouse.
“Hero, Eldin!” The waif stepped out of the shadows, came between the two and grasped their great hands in his own small ones. “I know where he is, or where he was, or where he most likely will be, anyway.”
“Eh?” Eldin gazed down on a moon-silvered elfin face. “Where he is, was, or will be? You’re sure you’ve not been drinking his wines, Kimp?”
The urchin grinned. “It’s worth a tond or two, I’m sure.”
Hero gave a mock groan, flipped the child a triangular tond that glinted gold, silver, gold and silver again before being snatched unerringly from the smoky evening air. He knew Kimp could use the money, having neither home nor family to call his own. But: “Lord,” he said, “I don’t know who’s the bigger crook: you or Naxas Niss! One tond’s all you’ll get. And now that you’ve been paid twice, less of your riddles and a little more information, if you please.”
Kimp stepped back into shadows. “A caravan passed by, on its way to Nir and Ulthar,” he whispered. “Naxas Niss joined it at a watering hole just outside the city. He paid a pouchful of tonds for passage and protection en route to Nir, which was his destination, and was last seen dragging his large trunk into the back of a covered cart.”
“When was this?” Hero hissed.
“Three hours gone. By now they’re halfway there.”
“Good work!” said Hero, and went to pat what he guessed was a head, which was only a shadow. Soft footfalls fell like a patter of gentle rain in the courtyard, and Kimp Lootis was gone.
“It can wait till morning,” said Eldin, turning his bearded face Yellow Yakward once more.
“No,” Hero denied him, “it can’t.”
“What?” Eldin was alarmed, then aggrieved. “But it could if you’d a lovely creature waiting in there for you, eh?”
“She’s not waiting for you,” said Hero. “She’s serving her customers, feeding and watering them, and she’ll be hard at it till the midnight hour. By which time we’ll be high over Nir. Anyway, the last thing she needs right now is you!”
“She needed me this afternoon!”
“That’s as may be, but now that you’ve laid … claim to her, as it were, what’s the hurry? She’ll go off the boil, d’you think?”
“Unlikely!” Eldin preened.
“Then it’s business before pleasure.” Hero nodded, his mind made up.
As they headed for the harbor, Eldin continued to grumble. “I mean, what’s in a night, eh?”
“Twelve hours,” said Hero. “More, if you had your way!”
“No, no, lad,” Eldin wheedled. “I’d be up bright and early, I promise; and we could skip just as sprightly for Nir in the morning.”
“I could skip sprightly in the morning,” said Hero. “You—you’d be knackered! Love-drugged and aching in every bone, and you know it. Right now we’re sharp-eyed, clearheaded, hot on the trail. So let’s not slack off. When the job’s done, that’s a different matter. Also, the wind’s in our favor; we’ll be in Nir even sooner than I thought. And anyway, I’ve got what’s left of the money.” Which w
as the best bit of his argument. For Eldin had his pride; he knew that if he entered the Yellow Yak without the price of a pint, then that Misha’d think he was only there for the booze!
Their sky-yacht Quester was tied up in the harbor. They boarded her, got the tiny flotation engine going, fed essence to the bags in the keel and up under the reinforced deck. Quester lifted off and Celephais sank below; the lights of hamlets along the coast began to come into view like far crowds of fireflies in the night; a warm, sweet wind off the sea filled out their sail and scudded them along with the clouds for Nir.
And cracking a bottle—just one, and middling stuff, for Hero’s jaw was set—they toasted Naxas Niss’ downfall, and laid their plans to that effect …
ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF NIR they set down in a farmyard, woke up the farmer who grumbled a lot and threatened to turn his bull on them, and placated him with tonds that got scarcer by the minute, or so it seemed. He helped them haul the wallowing Quester into a barn, where with engine stilled she slowly settled to a bed of straw. Then they inquired the way to the house of Mathur Imniss, and set off on foot into town.
Nir was a sleepy place even on big occasions. Tomorrow was one such: Fair Day! “Oh, joy!” (Eldin’s sarcasm dripped like acid.) “There’ll be riproaring cow-milking contests, slimy-pole climbing, roof-thatching orgies—the lot!” And there’d doubtless be Naxas Niss’ tent, too, all yellow and tasseled and seeming perfectly innocuous, standing amidst the shies and sideshows on the village green.
Mathur Imniss was a retired quarrier, stonemason, and builder, and a faithful old friend of the questers. They found his house and got him and his good lady wife out of bed, slapped backs and kissed cheeks for a half hour. They took a bite to eat, then bedded down till morning. It was fortunate that Mathur’s son, Gytherik the Gauntmaster, wasn’t to house, else they’d have been up talking all night.
Early awake, the pair disguised themselves somewhat and sought out Tatter Nees, a troubadour of their acquaintance who lived in the town. Tatter knew everyone and everything; he called himself a wandering balladeer, but as Eldin was wont to have it, if he could sing better he wouldn’t need to travel so much. However that might be, at least he was able to put them in the picture in re all manner of comings and goings. And indeed, yestereve, as dusk turned to dark, a caravan had come; aye, and this morning there was a stall in the market, where one Naxas Niss, a dealer in used clothes, was very cheaply selling off all manner of mannish finery. In their disguises (Eldin had grudgingly shaved off his beard, while Hero had applied one, and a foppish hat), they visited said stall.