Tales of the Dying Earth

TALES OF THE THE DYING EARTH

Jack Vance

Fantasy Masterworks Volume 4

Table of Contents

The Dying Earth

1. TURJAN OF MIIR
2. MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN
3. T'SAIS
4. LIANE THE WAYFARER
5. ULAN DHOR
6. GUYAL OF SFERE

The Eyes of the Overworld

1. The Overworld
2. Cil
3. The Mountains of Magnatz
4. The Sorcerer Pharesm
5. The Pilgrims
   1. At the Inn
   2. The Raft on the River
   3. Erze Damath
   4. The Silver Desert and the Songan Sea
6. The Cave in the Forest
7. The Manse of Lucounu

Cugel's Saga

1. FROM SHANGLESTONE STRAND TO SASKERVOY
   1. Flutic
   2. The Inn Of Blue Lamps
2. FROM SASKERVOY TO THE TUSTVOLD MUD-FLATS
   1. Aboard the Galante
   2. Lausicaa
   3. The Ocean of Sighs
3. FROM TUSTVOLD TO PORT PERDUSZ
   1. The Columns
   2. Faucelme
4. FROM PORT PERDUSZ TO KASPARA VITATUS
   1. On the Docks
   2. The Caravan
5. FROM KASPARA VITATUS TO CUIRNIF
   1. The Seventeen Virgins
   2. The Bagful of Dreams
6. FROM CUIRNIF TO PERGOLO
   1. The Four Wizards
   2. Spatterlight

Rhialto the Marvellous

Foreword

1. The Murthe
2. Fader's Waft
3. Morreion

The Dying Earth

1. TURJAN OF MIIR
2. MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN
3. T'SAIS
4. LIANE THE WAYFARER
5. ULAN DHOR
6. GUYAL OF SFERE

The Dying Earth

1. TURJAN OF MIIR

TURJAN SAT in his workroom, legs sprawled out from the stool, back against and elbows on the bench. Across the room was a cage; into this Turjan gazed with rueful vexation. The creature in the cage returned the scrutiny with emotions beyond conjecture.

It was a thing to arouse pity—a great head on a small spindly body, with weak rheumy eyes and a flabby button of a nose. The mouth hung slackly wet, the skin glistened waxy pink. In spite of its manifest imperfection, it was to date the most successful product of Turjan's vats.

Turjan stood up, found a bowl of pap. With a long-handled spoon he held food to the creature's mouth. But the mouth refused the spoon and mush trickled down the glazed skin to fall on the rickety frame.

Turjan put down the bowl, stood back and slowly returned to his stool. For a week now it had refused to eat. Did the idiotic visage conceal perception, a will to extinction? As Turjan watched, the white-blue eyes closed, the great head slumped and bumped to the floor of the cage. The limbs relaxed: the creature was dead.

Turjan sighed and left the room. He mounted winding stone stairs and at last came out on the roof of his castle Miir, high above the river Derna.

In the west the sun hung close to old earth; ruby shafts, heavy and rich as wine, slanted past the gnarled boles of the archaic forest to lay on the turfed forest floor. The sun sank in accordance with the old ritual; latter-day night fell across the forest, a soft, warm darkness came swiftly, and Turjan stood pondering the death of his latest creature.

He considered its many precursors: the thing all eyes, the boneless creature with the pulsing surface of its brain exposed, the beautiful female body whose intestines trailed out into the nutrient solution like seeking fibrils, the inverted inside-out creatures . . . Turjan sighed bleakly. His methods were at fault; a fundamental element was, lacking from his synthesis, a matrix ordering the components of the pattern.