The Gods Of The Gift

By Arthur Rosch

Collectors are passionate about the things they collect.  There is a legend about a collection that has lit a frenzy among the richest of the rich.  Emperors of galactic civilizations seek out pieces of this collection.  Princes, merchants, interplanetary drug lords all vie for possession of the notorious Puzzle Pieces of The Starwind Communion.  Why are they so valuable that millions of counterfeits float between the stars?

 

The novel's hero,Garuvel Nep Zimrin, is a seeker after spiritual wisdom. He is on the world R'zelfo when he stumbles upon an unusual duel.  The combatants banter as they fight.  Garuvel doesn't  understand what they're talking about.  He hears hints of an ancient conflict, of murder and genocide. The enemies talk about "Planet-People", implying that they, themselves are such beings.  Their worlds were doomed. The orbits of their home stars had been somehow altered.  In a million years, perhaps less, they would be sucked into the galaxy's black hole.

 

How could they emigrate?  How to transfer millions of people to nearby star systems hosting viable planets?  A solution was devised:  each world's population would merge themselves into a single being.  They would become Planet-People.   The peoples of one hundred eight worlds would transform themselves into one hundred eight avatars.  Garuvel was witnessing a pivotal drama in the story that was behind the legends of The Starwind Communion.  Each avatar carried its planet's cultural essence in an object.  These objects were the Puzzle Pieces. 

 

The duelists are named Nutun Utulo and Boraz Bufaisdek.  In reality they are the Planet-People Melolos and Calakadon.  The duel is a trap.  Calakadon will cheat and murder Melolos.  He will take the Puzzle Piece of Melolos and add it to his collection.  His ultimate purpose is to prevent the Puzzle Pieces from being assembled into their whole, their solution.  Something special will happen when the Puzzle is solved.  Calakadon does not want that to happen.  He is the criminal who is responsible for sending the stars of the Communion spinning into the Black Cauldron.  He is enraged that Planet-People emerged as a way to continue the quest to solve The Puzzle Of The Endless Gates.  Now he must murder them again!  He will take their Puzzle Pieces and sell them to dispersed collectors.  He has already thrown several pieces into the Cesspit of Hellbore.  The Puzzle will never be solved!  The deepest mystery of Quantum Physics will never be understood. 

 

           

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur Rosch
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578595061

Arthur Rosch

Arthur Rosch was raised in the suburbs of St. Louis. He attended Western Reserve and Wayne State University, but wasn't much of a student. He worked through his teens and twenties as a jazz and blues drummer. He met a girl who liked poets, so he became a poet. He found that he was attracted to the writing more than to the girl. He began exploring the novel form in the late seventies and wrote his first novel around '77. It was terrible.  In the Seventies Arthur moved to the San Francisco area. His first sale was to Playboy Magazine. The story won "Best Story Of the Year" and he enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame. Since then he's been doing what most writers do: collecting bales of rejections and honing his craft. He has published in EXQUISITE CORPSE, TRUCKIN', SHUTTERBUG, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY and, yes, CAT FANCY. Art loves science fiction and fantasy and much of his writing is inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance. He teaches courses in amateur astronomy and photography through local parks and recreation centers. Arthur Rosch was raised in the suburbs of St. Louis. He attended Western Reserve and Wayne State University, but wasn't much of a student. He worked through his teens and twenties as a jazz and blues drummer. He met a girl who liked poets, so he became a poet. He found that he was attracted to the writing more than to the girl. He began exploring the novel form in the late seventies and wrote his first novel around '77. It was terrible.  In the Seventies Arthur moved to the San Francisco area. His first sale was to Playboy Magazine. The story won "Best Story Of the Year" and he enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame. Since then he's been doing what most writers do: collecting bales of rejections and honing his craft. He has published in EXQUISITE CORPSE, TRUCKIN', SHUTTERBUG, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY and, yes, CAT FANCY. Art loves science fiction and fantasy and much of his writing is inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance. He teaches courses in amateur astronomy and photography through local parks and recreation centers.

Book preview

Prologue

There Are No Miracles

When he was nine years old Garuvel Nep Zimrin discovered that he could disappear. He made this discovery as he was sitting in a gazebo hiding from his bodyguards. The quaint white structure was at the bottom of a huge sloping lawn, screened from The Great House by a stand of slender evergreens.

Garuvel sat on the structure’s wooden floor, beneath the line of the railing, where he couldn’t be seen. As Firstborn of a Great House he was supposedly a target for kidnappers. So far as he knew, there had never been a plot to take him, nor any threat to his safety. All the same, he was constantly watched by a contingent of bodyguards. He hated those damned bodyguards, especially Shreep. He called him Shreep The Creep; there was something really wrong with that fat pig and he didn’t understand how such a person could get the job of bodyguard for a piece of toast much less the Firstborn of a Great House.

Thinking about Shreep led him to another line of thought. He had worked it out over the last few weeks and was now admitting some hard truths. His bodyguards were incompetent layabouts. Every one of them was someone’s second cousin or one of The Baron’s card-playing friends’ bastards. He had finally understood that the surveillance was a sham. His father, The Baron, was all but inviting the kidnapping of his Firstborn. When that happened, and it would be sooner rather than later, Garuvel’s father would suddenly be short of funds. The Baron would run around with great noise and fury, acting the role of a bereft parent.

Oh Gods! the Baron would cry, They want two million zirks by tomorrow evening! I can’t raise that kind of money so quickly! Oh Gods Oh Gods! What will I do? None of the other Magnates will lend me that kind of cash!

What a deadly joke! Garuvel had worked out the facts of life. His younger brother, Verleth, was the Baron’s favorite. He, Garuvel, was a thorn in his father’s side. He had no ambition to run an interplanetary corporation. He had no aptitude for strapping on battle gear and wiping out aboriginals whose land contained deposits of Genzite. Verleth was a much better choice as future magnate and warlord. He could have it, for all Garuvel cared. He was welcome to the legacy of The Firstborn. If he could, Garuvel would just give it to his brother.

It wasn’t so simple. So long as he was alive, the legacy wasn’t his to give. It was an ancient rock-hewn tradition that the Firstborn became Magnate, inherited the leadership of his Great House. Garuvel had to be eliminated carefully. No suspicion could ever splash back to taint Verleth. Otherwise brothers would start killing brothers all over the planet.

Garuvel watched the little finches that nested in the stately evergreen spires. They landed and disappeared, twittering inside the moist branches. On the upper branches there loomed a flock of black-feathered zilfs, waiting for a chance to grab a chick.

Garuvel found a few small rocks in the gravel walk surrounding the gazebo. He threw them to disperse the zilfs. They flapped off in outrage, shouting Wock! Wock! Wock!

He admired the finches. They banded together to prevent zilfs from eating their young. They worked as a team, decoying, confusing, mobbing the zilfs with their bodies.

Garuvel had no such system of defense. With the exception of his mother, his kin seemed bent on pushing him out of the nest so that Verleth could accede to the position of Firstborn.

Garuvel’s desire for privacy reached a level of obsession when there was trouble with his family. The latest blow-up involved one of his brother’s pranks. Verleth had trapped two cats in one of the estate’s outbuildings and put them into a burlap sack filled with white flour. He threw the sack into the stall where Garuvel’s horse was calmly chewing its sprouts. The horse kicked the stall’s gate in terror and escaped. The crazed animal trampled across the Number One tee pad on the Holes Course, just as the Baron raised his club over his shoulder. The horse ruined both the tee pad and the stroke.

Not being a tattler, Garuvel refused to shift the blame when the furious Baron confronted his sons. Verleth’s eyes gleamed with malice and his mocking smile made Garuvel’s fists curl with rage .

No poetry for two weeks! Baron Hatlath Or Zimrin pronounced Garuvel’s punishment. If I catch you with a book of poetry I’ll take away all your books and then what will you do with your wretched life? Hmm?

His father knew how to hurt him. When he was dismissed Garuvel fled from the high-gabled library. His face worked with the effort of holding back his tears. He lowered his head, almost touching his breastbone with his chin, to hide his feelings. His father always said the same things: Why aren’t you more like Verleth? Why was I cursed with such a pathetic Firstborn?

He retreated to the gazebo to nurse his frustration. Garuvel passed through the trees and walked up the steps. He sat and looked out through the painted white slats. As he recalled his father’s acid words, he spoke aloud. His imagination was conjuring a fantasy, a daydream.

He said, Sometimes I wish I could just disappear.

Then he completely disappeared. He could not see himself from the neck down. Maybe his head floated in space, but he looked into a puddle on the floor of the gazebo and nothing looked back at him.

His hands went to his face, and he felt his ears, nose and mouth. He looked down at himself and there was nothing to see: no clothes, torso, legs, feet, nothing. He became disoriented. Then, as his fear mounted, he felt his heart beating in his rib cage, and the terror was oddly comforting because it let him know that he was still in his body, still connected to his consciousness. He was so nauseous that a sudden jet of vomit appeared as if from nowhere, arching across the gazebo and splattering on the wooden platform. He might be invisible, but his puke was not.

He thought, I can’t be invisible, it’s not possible. He cleared his mouth with a bit of saliva and spoke the words aloud, to ascertain that he still had a voice. He instantly re-appeared. He was shaking and his knees felt weak.

Wiping his face with a handkerchief, he decided to experiment. He repeated the phrase, I wish I could disappear, and he was thinking in a visual way about what had just transpired. Again, his body vanished, and he felt an odd sense of being in multiple places simultaneously. There was a barely perceptible sense of one place contracting, and another place expanding. His attention was riveted to more immediate concerns. Does he have control of this thing, can he repeat it at will? He disappeared and reappeared three times. He got used to the odd feelings: they were no more than an itch, nothing to worry about.

It was intuitive; he understood that three separate elements had to come together to form a sort of whirlwind of magic power. He had to imagine that he was invisible, form the image in his mind, then say the words aloud, something like I am invisible, or I have completely vanished. If he did not say his desire aloud, if he did not pre-visualize the result, nothing happened. It took all three things: the thought, the visualization, the spoken words.

He experimented with a fart and produced a satisfying blurp that smelled of digested eggs. He laughed quietly, wickedly, as he thought of the pranks he could play. Then he quickly sobered as he considered the implications of what was happening. He used his handkerchief to clean up the vomit and buried it under rocks and leaves.

Garuvel felt a quiet flush of victory racing through his blood. This was power, this was huge! When he returned to his suite he stood before the mirror doing it over and over again: think it, visualize it, say it. I am invisible. Whoosh! He was no longer in the mirror. He could see nothing when he looked down at himself; not his pleated white shirt, nor his baggy blue pantaloons. No legs, no feet. Nothing at all. The room behind him showed as it was; his bookshelves, his holos, everything was there.

I am visible, he said, but nothing happened, until he remembered that he must hold in his mind the image of being once more visible. He tried it again. He imagined himself as he was before. "I am visible’. Whoosh! He reappeared instantly. True, there was this vague sense of unease each time he utilized this power. Some part of himself contracted, another part expanded. His entire being briefly fragmented and flew across the universe. It caused him concern. He was honest with himself: I do feel this, he thought, and there is something very scary about it.

What was the limit of this power? It surely could do more than produce farts and vanishings. This was a terrifying thought. If he could do other things, what might he become? When he used the power, he felt strange. He felt things shift and dislocate. He also had the eerie sense that someone was watching him; he began to feel as though he was the subject of an experiment.

He shrugged off these feelings. He was old enough to understand that Power came with many side effects. He would proceed conscientiously in exploring this new power.

Let’s try something small, he thought. Something harmless. He looked at himself in the mirror and his first temptation was to make himself stronger, bigger, more athletic. He saw the reflection of his eyes and there was something in them that he wanted to keep. If he made himself stronger, even for a moment, he feared he would lose that thing he saw in his eyes. He feared he would become like Verleth. He didn’t know why, but he felt that being Verleth was actually a horrible thing. In spite of all Verleth’s advantages, there was something terrible and hollow about Garuvel’s younger brother.

He held out his hand and visualized a bell-shaped flower, peach colored with blue borders and green pistils peeking out over the top of slender petals. He would give it a gold pot filled with good fresh dirt. It would be a living thing.

As he formed this image he realized something very important about himself. He, Garuvel Nep Zimrin, lived to find beauty in everything. He knew that beauty was everywhere, even in the face of violence, selfishness and all manner of evil. He, Garuvel, was an artist. He wanted to create beautiful things.

He focused his mind once more, and when the image was clear, he spoke.

This is my flower, symbol of my truth.

It appeared with a slight pop, as it displaced the air in the space it now occupied. In his hand was this delicate creation. It was a living thing, it was real!

Again, there was an opening inside himself and a vision of vast spaces, of moving gaseous forms expanding and contracting.

Now the flower is gone, he spoke, but the truth remains.

Nothing happened. He was startled for a moment before he remembered to make the picture in his mind. He spoke again. Now the flower is gone, but the truth remains.

The flower vanished with a slight hiss.

Until I figure this thing out, he told himself, I think I should limit myself to appearing and disappearing.

Garuvel felt suddenly powerful and needed to take advantage of this power. He began wandering around the family estate, prying into everyone’s secret lives.

He watched his father, the Baron Hatlath Or Zimrin, playing cards with the other magnates of the Great Houses of Vygor. He learned that his father cheated quite deftly. All the Magnates cheated, but his father seemed to be the best cheater of the bunch.

He saw his mother as she watched the Faketron, indulging her passion for soap operas while her lap was full of knitting. Sitting in her big overstuffed chair, with her legs supported on a matching ottoman, she would ring at intervals for her maidservant, who brought little cups of green liquid. Garuvel sat invisibly at her side one day for the entire afternoon. He noticed that as the Baroness drank more cups of green liquid, her comments to the actors on the Faketron grew more raucous. Some of the things she said embarrassed him. He had always seen his mother as genteel and reserved. It was a shock to realize that his mother was not as he had thought. Towards late afternoon, after many hours of soap opera plot twists, she shouted hoarsely at a female character, By the tits of the goddesses, will you fuck the man already!?

Garuvel left the suite, shaken and confused.

He was tempted a few times to appear in his mother’s lap, or to surprise Verleth playing nasty games with the sword-master’s daughter. The more he learned that people’s private actions were different from their public faces, the less he entertained such childish fantasies.

Revealing his secret power would be catastrophic. He was well aware of the political web in which he lived. He was an unpopular Firstborn, a joke to his own father. He needed to find out everything he could about this new faculty, and use it to ensure his safety.

Did he have this power because he was a Firstborn from one of the Twelve Great Houses? Was this some power all the Firstborns held as a secret their whole lives, something that enabled them to maintain their ancient hegemony over the planet?

When other Firstborns came with their magnate fathers, he observed them carefully. He followed Klarvey Nep Waxold for a day. He saw nothing unusual. He scanned the faces of Termo Nep Feevey, Gabilon Nep Vorce, and Frexis Nep Komo, but saw no hint of secret power. Termo was a freckle-faced lout. Gabilon’s tongue twitched across his lips and his eyes followed the swaying of servant girls’ skirts. Frexis drooled from the right side of his mouth and picked boogers from his nose. He flicked these bits of crud indiscriminately off his fingertips.

None of these Firstborns seemed to have any difficulty with the fact that they were destined to run their family’s empires.

Garuvel, on the other hand, was always the victim of Baron Hatlath’s rages. The subject was always the same.

Look! the Baron said, day in and day out, taking Verleth by the elbow and standing both of them in front of a mirror. Look at the size of your brother! Look at his healthy coloring! The Baron squeezed Verleth’s biceps proudly. What an arm! Why were YOU born first? Why am I so fucking bound by this old tradition of Firstborns right of inheritance? It makes no sense but I’m stuck with it. What’s the matter with you, Garuvel? You don’t get enough sun, enough exercise. You should emulate Verleth.

Looking in the mirror, Garuvel accepted his pitiful inadequacy. Though a year younger, Verleth towered over him, radiating aggressive competence. Garuvel regarded his own pale figure. The short pants and monogrammed blazer hung from his skinny frame in wrinkles and pouches. He wanted to get away as quickly as possible, to change out of his dinner uniform and go to Dryad’s Grotto to read a volume of poetry by his hero, Harl Plesniak.

What’s the matter with you? The Baron grew heated. Can’t you do anything right? Why did you bother to be born? If it weren’t for the tests, I wouldn’t believe you came from my loins! My grandfather was the mighty Armin Maximhammer! You take too much after your mother; she spoils and coddles you. What am I supposed to do?

Garuvel’s father wound up the tirade by slapping him on the back of the head with an open fan of playing cards. The blow was hard enough to cause Garuvel to stumble to his knees.

Taking this as his dismissal, Garuvel fled his fuming father and simpering younger brother. He went first to his room, where he got a flashlight. He donned his beret and put on his comfortable loose clothes. He filled a pack with vitta cakes and glorp juice. He easily picked the lock his father had fitted to the book case. Garuvel ran his fingers quickly over his shelf of favorite books. Today he would readStarwinds, by the founder of Noetiphysics, Latif el Rashid. He would also take his favorite book of poetry, Feral Tenderness. It was considered the finest work of the writer Harl Plesniak. Garuvel passionately loved the work of Harl Plesniak. He didn’t care that the man was a Glook addict, that he had stolen King Fornik’s pet Zanziger and ridden it naked through the streets of Toguko. Sometimes a genius must be slightly mad.

Garuvel opened his door a crack and checked for signs of Verleth, the Baron, the sword-master, the sword-master’s son, or any of his bodyguards.

Of course, Floot and Fawzi were on duty, standing idly outside his door, smoking tangaroots. They didn’t see his little reconnaisance. They were talking about women’s anatomy.

Wait a minute. He had forgotten what he could do. Habit ruled him, and he was still behaving as if he needed to sneak down the hall without being seen. It was time for another experiment. The power’s frightfulness had deterred him, had kept him within careful limits. It was time to try something more substantial. He would brave the sense of contraction, expansion, of swooping across light years.

Sooner or later, he admitted, he would have to know how far this power extended. Otherwise he would spend his days cowering, as if some huge toothy animal lived in one of his armoires.

He applied the same mental trick to a different problem. He visualized himself sitting in Dryad’s Grotto with his snacks and his books. I’m in the grotto, feeling safe, a favorite book before my face, he said..

He found himself sitting on his favorite cushion, with a book in his hand and a cup of juice atop a flat rock. He was soothed by the sound of droplets falling musically from the cave ceiling into Celestine’s Pool. There had been a faint whooshing sound followed by a loud bang as the transition became reality, as his sudden appearance displaced air molecules and particles of dust.

He had that odd sensation of being several places at once; contraction, expansion, vast reaches of empty space. Since these sensations had no tangible consequences he put them aside. For the first time in his life, he had real power! Now it was a question of whether he ruled the power, or the power ruled him. He was too young to anticipate that this question would become the dominant theme of his life.

Garuvel experimented. He traveled short distances instantaneously, then longer distances. He extended the limits of the power. Suppose he could make a tree or a rock appear somewhere it had never before existed? Late one night, he climbed out his bedroom window and used the vines and roof gables to let himself to the ground. Vygor’s second moon, Tantol, was almost eclipsing the larger moon, Zevkets. The light the moons cast was an eerie yellow-orange. A bank of clouds obscured the lower half of the twin orbs. The marks and lines on the moons turned them into leering faces. These omens gave Garuvel’s stomach a twitch of fear. Using the power was not to be taken lightly. It seemed to be much larger than his own being. He felt as if he was riding on the back of a jank wolf, a creature that could turn its head and rend his body in an instant.

He rode his fizzlespeed board to a remote corner of the estate. There was a little circular glade, enclosed by drooping Wairaba trees. He stood with his back to a tree well away from the center of the clearing. He concentrated, then spoke, A great Wairaba tree, with branches too many to see! He was trying to make his wishes into verses or epigrams. It gave the act of creation a touch of ritual and dignity.

There were loud pops and smaller explosions as molecules gave way to matter more dense. In the pallor of the moonslight, Garuvel saw his tree. There it was, utterly real, at the center of the glade where nothing before had existed besides grass and elderlion weeds. He touched it, tested the tensile strength of its branches, heard the spatulate leaves rustle as he let the limbs snap back. He climbed to a hefty branch and sat with his legs dangling to each side. He was feeling the unease, the expanding and contracting of his spirit across vast reaches of space. This time the discomfort was more intense, the sense of disturbance more tangible. It seemed that the bigger the change, the bigger was the accompanying effect. Garuvel began to consider putting this power away; it might be something far too potent for a child. It was not a toy! But then, he barely considered himself a child. He had suffered so much, it had etched his soul with unsought gravitas, matured him beyond his years. All the same, he resolved to stop playing games. He would wait and see if some means of discovery presented itself. Where had this thing come from? Why had it come to him? What was it for?

Garuvel needed to consider himself something more than a child. It was an illusion, a conceit, but it had great survival value. It bolstered his self esteem.

One night at dinner, Garuvel wolfed down his favorite dessert, a bowl of Mobo fruit, from the garden planet Eltubi. He ordered a servant to fetch him another bowl, but his mother intervened.

Don’t be so greedy, child, where are your manners? You have gobbled those fruits like a sow grubbing up fallen plums!

Garuvel had been visualizing the Mobo fruit, hanging fat and plump on the vine, in a sunny endless orchard. His appetite for the fruit was so great that he found it unbearable to have it thwarted. In a flash of thoughtless rage he said, I will have all the Mobo fruit I want, if I have to go to Eltubi to get it!

He was whisked to the heart of that world’s famous orchards. He had a moment of terror; he was light years away! He had never before left Vygor! He had to get home! He was in a panic, not thinking clearly, not working things through. His mind whirled, things contracted, expanded, whooshed here and there. In his panic he returned to the dinner table clutching an armful of fruit, his blazer stained purple from the juice.

When he saw the faces of his family, and those of the fourteen servants present in the dining room, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. He had revealed his carefully guarded secret. Oh, how stupid! How childish!

His father’s bodyguards, Gorlo and Wirt, converged upon his place at the table. Too late, he opened his mouth but he couldn’t summon a coherent vision, a fully formed desire. He was too frightened. Things had happened so quickly!

A cloth was clamped over his face. Its smell made his eyes water and his nostrils burn. He tried not to breathe it in, but Gorlo trussed him up roughly, and his breath only came more quickly as he panted with fear. He felt himself being dragged away, and as his consciousness faded, he heard a single dreaded word, a word that on Vygor stood for demonic sorcery: T’vorsh.

No, no! he wanted to cry, I am not T’vorsh. You have it all wrong! I’m only nine years old. I don’t shape-shift and conjure and consort with disgusting things in bottles. I made a mistake, I didn’t realize what I was doing!

It was too late. His tongue was stilled. The last thing he saw before he was taken away was a shared glimpse of muted triumph on the faces of his father and his brother Verleth.

He was given to the Mentechs. They took him to the sinister Hejastra Hospital, a place redolent of screams in the night and sharp whizzing machines.

He was placed on a ward with other real or suspected T’vorshi, sorcerors who specialized in verbal spells and recitations, summoning and combining the four classes of Elementals into material substance. There were so many T’vorshi among wealthy families that the pursuit of sorcery was deemed a mental illness rather than a crime. Still, they were locked away and treated harshly.

Garuvel’s tongue was numbed, his thumbs and forefingers banded together to prevent him from signing or conjuring. He was drugged to keep him from performing mental mischief.

Eight years passed and Garuvel lacked the attention span to know his own suffering. His mind was featureless, his muscles waxy and thin. He might have died in that lonely place, were it not for a medical oversight.

In his seventeenth year, his hormones began to do their inevitable work. In a period of five months he grew four inches and gained fifty pounds.

No one seemed to notice. Garuvel had lain dormant for so long that his treatment was automatic. The drugs that had kept his mind vague and his tongue stilled began to lose their effectiveness. One day as Garuvel lay in his cell he dreamed strange images, things he had never before seen. He twiched so hard that he fell off his cot and cried out in pain. It was the first sound to emerge from his mouth since the fateful dinner with his family. As the weeks passed, his mind cleared. He began to practice speaking into his pillow, late at night. He made pencils and pins appear and disappear, to see if he still had the power.

As his mind returned, he realized that his life had been stolen, that he had lain in a cell for eight years, being fed through a tube, being changed and turned by surly attendants who had no care for the bruises they inflicted upon him. Why was he being kept here at all? Why didn’t they just do away with him? He must be a pawn. If Verleth got out of hand, the Baron could revive his Firstborn and use him as a lever.

Rage burned in his heart like a physical pain. He examined himself late at night, and saw how wasted he had become. He resolved to take his revenge. The ground would tremble, the seas rise up. Mountains would belch flame and poisonous gases. He would watch from high in the air, laughing, then transport himself to the orchards of Eltubi.

Garuvel stood looking out the mesh window of his cell, at the angled rooftops of the hospital. The sickly blue lights of the security lamps showed him a ghostly landscape. Fences of electric razor wire enclosed the hospital and seemed to keep at bay the gloom of the endless forests beyond. Those forests were home to jank-wolves, Ur-bears, hyanx, giant boar. The world Vygor was not worth saving. Carefully, he constructed a sequence of words and visualizations that would put him out of harm’s way as the planet exploded. As he opened his mouth to speak, a dizziness overcame him. He struggled to stand, but as the breath left his lungs he fell to the floor. The walls of his cell began to shimmer and fade. He saw a great pulsing light and heard a sound as of distant horns rolling in across a vast ocean.

‘I’m dying,’ he thought. ‘It’s just as well, for I must be an evil creature after all."

Through the light he saw an entity. It was a tall winged creature , glowing with a nacreous shimmer. Half bird, half man, the being was ten feet tall. There were fingers at the ends of bone-like pin feathers next to its body. The wings vibrated with energy. They seemed to be holding and confining the power of flight so that it could stand and look directly into Garuvel’s eyes. It spoke to him, but the words emerged all at once, not singly as in normal speech. It spread its wings wide, and Garuvel saw six other figures standing within the embrace of the great feathers. Each was of a different race, from a different world. One of them was himself, Garuvel Zimrin, as he might be when he came to full manhood.

The words spoken by the entity began to fall into place in Garuvel’s mind. It had said, We know who you are; it is time for you to know who you are.

Garuvel died, but his death lasted only a second. He was alive again, as someone else, in another life. He lived that life, then died, and was again reborn. His journey through a multitude of lives accelerated: birth, life, death, birth, life, death, until it seemed as if he were inside a revolving drum with pictures on its curved surfaces. He lived every kind of life, on every type of planet, in galaxies that had long since been pulled apart by greater galaxies or swallowed in black holes.

The wheel began to slow. Time relaxed and distended and tightened. He saw the winged being with its six companions. It uttered another of those multi-word sounds.

Garuvel found himself lying on the hard floor of his cell. The sound he had just heard rang like a bell in his mind. As before, its syntax soon asserted itself, and it became comprehensible.

You are one of the Seven. You are a bearer of the Realgift. Any time you use the Gift, we will hear you. Any time one of us uses the Gift, you will hear us. You must know that The Great Balance must be maintained. That is our responsibility. A change here means a balancing change elsewhere. A trillion times you could utilize your gift, and all that will happen is that some cloud of hydrogen many light years away will grow, or shrink. It may be a puff of starwind into space or the burning of a lifeless pebble. We have no control over the Great Balance. Among our kind, some have traveled to many worlds to undo the damage done by the simplest alteration. As you make your change, you will immediately have a sense of that which has balanced. For now this is all you need to know.

The beings began to fade away, growing smaller as if being reeled backwards into a vast distance.

Farewell, the Winged One said. We will always be with you.

It seemed as though tens of billions of years had passed. At last Garuvel understood something about his strange faculty: that he could Realize anything he could imagine. As he contemplated it, he was gripped with pure terror. Instead of being elated and bouyed with feelings of power, he could only think about how very complex things were, and how he sat there within the garden of his desires, knowing that with the slightest mistake, the garden could turn into a swamp of carnivorous weeds that would grow and grow, eating up the entire universe.

He lay there until he regained some composure.

He must get out of the hospital. He thought about what the Great Being had said. Now he understood the sensations that had followed upon each use of the Gift. If there was but a chance in a trillion of endangering lives, then he could not take it. He thought about the immensity of the universe. How much sheer nothingness surrounded each tiny world, each burning star. His choice was suddenly stark. Stay here and die. Chance the Gift, and live. The hospital, being a prison for magicians, was replete with all kinds of detectors. He tried to imagine an escape without resorting to the RealGift. He was stumped.

How could he work his way out using the absolute mininum of power? He went back to his very first discovery: disappearance. He could become invisible. He could insulate his heat signature in the refrigerator of the food delivery van and leisurely ride away from his prison.

He thought carefully before beginning. He did not sleep that night.

In the morning he began his escape. As he made himself vanish, he could feel the Council, inside his mind, sharing each action of the Gift. They were mentors but not judges.

He paid one last visit to the Great House of Zimrin. His mother’s face had wrinkled. His father’s hair had gone grey. The servants winced with fear every time Verleth strode through a room.

Garuvel went to Dryad’s Grotto, where he had secreted money and a few books. As a child he was always planning to leave his home. He had accumulated six hundred golden zirks, a nice little sum on any world. He took two books: Starwinds, by Latif el Rashid, and Feral Tenderness by Harl Plesniak.

At the end of one Vygorian year, he was on the planet Eltubi, walking down a road that passed through miles of Mobo fields. Here there were great manor houses surrounded by mobo plantings. Out-buildings served as tasting rooms for both the fruit and the wine of the elegant growth. Little covered wagons, drawn by shaggy ponies, carried afficionados to these tasting rooms. Now and then Garuvel would step to the side of the road as a carriage passed. Raucous songs and laughter seemed to lift the vehicles off the ground. Legs and arms came through windows, bare toes wiggled, the springs of the carriage smoothed the lurches of the road’s pot-holes.

This roistering pleased Garuvel. It was so different from the status-obsessed dour atmosphere of Vygor.

He was dressed in a leather jerkin and trousers. There was a pouch strapped across his chest, and a fine sword sheathed at his side. His seventeen year old body was strong and healthy. He had experienced the Great Wheel of Life. He now had a strange gravitas for one so young, and a charisma which he wore lightly and without self consciousness.

He knew he had a lot of work to do.

Part One

Chapter One

Duels Of Character

If we become visible to ourselves, we no longer bump into the invisible parts of other people. from the letters of Harl Plesniak

The dawn, like a nurse’s fingers, swabbed the wound of the night away. Garuvel inhaled the morning odors of the planet R’zelfo. His multi-skin was pulled tight against the chill. He had adapted his body to the planet’s conditions, the fast spin and periods when the world’s variable star went dim. He had an extra pair of eyes,covered by a thin membrane, perched upon his forehead. Four up-slanted eyebrows topped the oval slits. The upper pair of eyes had evolved for infra-red vision. This was essential on a planet with four dark winter seasons and extended periods of twilight.

It was now late in the second summer. The sun climbed visibly; the morning unfolded with spectacular abruptness. A rainbow of light glowed like a peacock fan above the waving trees. During the night a blanket of scarlet and purple leaves had blown down to cover Garuvel’s campsite. From inside his multi-skin, he punched upward, and a fountain of leaves blew past his face.

Garuvel wriggled free of his thermal cocoon. He set the multi-skin’s control to Store and it collapsed back to its traveling size, like a handkerchief.

As he brewed a small cup of tea to eat with his arpak, Garuvel thought about the coming day. He would walk twenty or thirty miles to reach the city of Ifyonar. The trails would be rugged and there was always a chance of encountering nasty characters.

He had lived on hundreds of worlds, visited many more. Garuvel had honed his caution about the inhabitants of these worlds. It was no longer possible to categorize sentient races as good or evil or both good and evil, mixed palettes of qualities in moral terms. His credo was simple: be wary. Ignore what beings say. Observe what they do.

Now he was on R’zelfo. There were new constellations to learn; new light, new smells, new people. He had identified this planet as home to a fighting style called Zektila. It was reputed to be the dirtiest fighting style anywhere. It involved kicks, gouges, elbows, knees, thrusts to the genitals (wherever they might be located) and assorted bites and scratches. Yet it was organized, traditional and hierarchical. Garuvel couldn’t afford to be fastidious in this or any universe. He found and apprenticed himself to a master of Zektila.

The air was chilly. The mid, or second, summer season was ending, the sky was growing darker, the winds more cutting and unpredictable. He raised the hood of his native traveling cloak, tucked away his multi-skin and slung his weapons and gear across his back. The road toward the City of Ifyonar was just beyond the next rise. He set out with a pace that would take him there before the blue sun set.

Birds hooted and moaned. It was a doleful sound that blended with notes the wind made as it blew through holes in ancient rocks. The terrain was rough, bent and folded by earthquakes. Garuvel’s senses were alert. There were bandits and psychotics to be met all over R’zelfo.

He walked for several hours, winding his way amongst the crags and slopes of red and purple garaba trees. The sun had risen fast and high; in the distance he could see the cloud-covered slopes of Mount Emerald Fire. The old city of Ifyonar nestled at its base and rose part way up the ancient volcano’s flanks.

He had been here several months and had already slipped into his old activist role: defender of poets and creative oddballs. This journey to Ifyonar was on behalf of his friend Sokenz. The poet’s recitations had irritated a minor warlord, a man who felt slighted because his name was not poetically wreathed with enough heroic deeds. Sokenz was now in a dungeon. The only thing that could free him was a writ from the warlord’s Warlord, The Hefto of Stilril. Garuvel hoped to get an audience, and attempt to sway him with the wit of Sokenz’s erotic sonnets.

Garuvel had a talent for involvement. He thrived on difficulty. He knew that without conflict, there is no evolution. Without pain, there is no growth. Like an oyster dreaming of its pearl, he required that constant irritant.

Mount Emerald Fire was one of a chain of quasi-dormant volcanoes that comprised the Adamantine Range. The land rose and fell like ripples that radiated from the base of these silent giants. Garuvel was climbing one of these ridges, on a trail that switched back and forth, showing the ruts of centuries of wooden wheels. The landscape was full of gigantic rocks lifted high and hurled by the volcanoes over the eons. Creeping vines and trees of cones and needles grew out of the cracks. The gnarled lava forms were etched with faces and signs laid here by men of the ancient times.

It was impossible to see what lay ahead, but something alerted Garuvel’s senses. He cast his eyes over the top of the gaunt rocks where he knew the trail would soon carry him.

There was a glow, a bit of charge in the air that indicated the presence of human acitivity. He left the trail and began to scale the face of the rock so that he could see what lay on the other side. Past the summit, he slithered down through holes and crevices until he could see the trail from above, but not be seen. He found a nook that sheltered him from the wind.

Below him was a scene that resonated from the medieval histories of billions of worlds: a pair of warriors poised in dueling posture. They stood motionless in attitudes of thrust and counter-thrust. They might have been stone icons but for the rise and fall of breathing chests.

The stillness went on and on, minute after minute. One of the swordsmen,whose blade was raised high, wore orange and yellow silken pantaloons tucked into ornamented boots laced up to mid-calf. A buttonless vest was fastened by a gaudy sash, and his helmet curled in burnished hues around his ears. His hands clutched spasmodically around the sword-hilt, and two beads of sweat rolled across his temples to drip slowly toward the tip of his nose.

The other warrior was dressed in a black leather jerkin, loose black pants that were tied with thongs around the ankles, and worn-looking leather sandals. His sword was held low, calmly and loosely. A purple headband barely constrained the spill of his ropy black hair. A second, shorter sword lay in a scabbard tucked through his belt.

What was most striking about this man was the emotion in his eyes. He looked as if he had seen everything there was to be seen of human folly, tragedy and pain. He looked old, impossibly old in his expression, though his body was youthfully vigorous. Garuvel had never seen a face that contained so much content, held such a volume of experience. A deep mournfulness sat in his eyes. Such sadness thrust its way from the tangle of greasy braids; a face like the landscape, full of lines and crags. Despite the intensity of his emotion, his body was relaxed and alert, poised but ready for swift action.

More time passed. Garuvel hardly breathed. He already knew the outcome of the duel; it took no magician to discern abilities of the swordsmen. The wind tugged at the duellist’s clothes. Then the warrior in the fancy clothing uttered a choking sob. He began to crumble, tried to hold himself up by planting his sword blade in the dirt. In a moment he fell dead to the ground. The sword rocked back and forth; gusts of wind blew the man’s vest up to cover his face.

Neither of the blades had met; no blow had been struck.

The man in black heaved a sigh, looked with pity upon his fallen enemy and drew himself out of his combat stance. He turned and raised his head to where Garuvel was concealed. I know you’re there, he said. Come out and show yourself.

Garuvel slowly rose from his crouched position and made his way carefully toward the path, both hands held away from his body.

I mean you no harm; it was just chance that I witnessed your duel. How long have you known that I was watching you?

I heard you long before you climbed the rocks, the mournful warrior said. In any case, you didn’t impair my concentration. I didn’t need much concentration, not for this one. He pointed to the fallen duellist.

Garuvel jumped the last few feet, landing lightly on the trail. For a moment, the two men eyed one another. The duellist took two steps to the right. Garuvel took two steps to the left, so that they continued to face one another in a prepared stance. The sad one’s hands came away from his sheathed sword. You are not one of them, he said. I don’t think I’d care to fight you. I’m not sure I would win; and believe me, I do not think that very often. In fact, I have never thought that until this moment.

This is just an ornament. Garuvel patted the sword slung across his back. I’m far more devoted to poetry than to weaponry.

The stranger snorted with incredulity. That may be so, he mused, but still I’m glad we’re on the same side of the blade. At least for now. He threw a penetrating look at Garuvel, but seemed satisfied that Garuvel’s return look was sincere. His gaze turned to the corpse of his opponent. By unspoken agreement, the pair took the dead man’s extremities and hauled him to a place away from the trail. A shallow grave was dug. He hadn’t even the will to cross my sword, the warrior said, Yet before the day is done, I fear that much blood will spatter the road.

Garuvel extended his arms and looked at the sleeves of his tunic with comic irony . I hope the blood will be neither yours nor mine. I have only two shirts. I expected my errand to Ifyonar to be peaceful.

I, too, am going to Ifyonar, but I doubt that my company will be soothing. It might require several changes of clothes. For a moment, the man seemed to pass into a state of sad revery. Then his eyes regained their focus.

Forgive me, sir, for not introducing myself sooner. I am Nutun Utulo. I have had many professions but at the moment I am an assassin.

And I am known as Rebed Singman, Garuvel replied. Also a man of many professions but at the moment, a poet.

Nutun laughed skeptically. His gaze went to the horizon, where roiling clouds were approaching from over the top of the Adamantine Range, blotting out a third of the purple sky. The assassin wet his finger and painted his cheek with the moisture. With quivering nostrils, he turned his face back and forth.

A brolmin is coming, he said, naming one of the thousands of winds known to the denizens of R’zelfo. I’ve got to go. The fight is just beginning. He set out with a swift pace in the direction of Ifyonar.

Garuvel matched him stride for stride. I’ve always been a curious person. It isn’t always to my benefit and sometimes it turns me into a pest. Still, I cultivate my curiosity for what it teaches me.

For eight or nine paces Nutun said nothing. Very well, he said at last, keeping an alert gaze upon their surroundings. I journey to Ifyonar to assassinate an evil man of great influence and wealth. He knows that I am coming. Part of the reason I seek him out is to recover items that he has stolen from members of my clan. These are vital artifacts that are essential to our culture. I could have ambushed my enemy, but he is not easy to take by surprise. He is well guarded, he is alert. Our battle has been going for eons. At this point, we’re both weary of the constant friction without a resolution. He made me a proposition. We would undertake an ancient form of legal combat, an arrangement called a Chain Duel. Let’s fight and be done with it.

Yes, I have heard of that, responded Garuvel. It was part of the Corzarian Code.

Yes, Nutun explained, The Chain Duel is written in the section of the Code entitled ‘Blood Feuds, Revenge, Ambushes and Single Combat Legal Forms. This particular method allows the challenger to gain his enemy’s powers and possessions rather than having them pass to his heir or estate. I must post the time and route of my attempt. My intended target is allowed to place hirelings in my path in strict sequence: if I defeat one vassal, then two may take his or her place. If I then vanquish two, I must meet three opponents, and so on, until I pass through the gates of Ifyonar. Inside the city, my enemy is then bound to meet me in single combat. It’s an archaic, cowardly arrangement, designed to protect the wealthy and powerful. It can, however, provide a definitive solution to our ongoing enmity.

The clouds had now covered the sky in an undulating waffle pattern. The sleet that accompanied a brolmin began to sting them like cold nettles. Nutun seemed impervious to the change of weather.

Is this why you look so mournful, Garuvel asked. Because your honor has forced you to commit suicide?

Not at all,’ Nutun replied, with a sardonic grin. I will win and I will survive. But I grieve for the families of those who will soon die, because a rich man fooled them into thinking that I would easily be killed."

The brolmin pelted them briefly at full intensity. Then the clouds broke apart, and R’zelfo’s blue star, Shest, again cast shadows upon the rocks and trees.