Through Darkest Zymurgia!

It is several hours before dawn. The Plaza of the Temple of Great Basenis is deserted, and the Temple looms in the darkness. There is a flash of movement between two houses, a lighter spot in the dimness, and then a figure creeps into the square. It is gaunt, and it staggers slightly as it crosses the open space. It looks around itself carefully, keeping nearly still, and then scuttles many yards before stopping and looking again. It is in rags. It carries a sack clutched to its breast.

After many brief halts it reaches the base of the gigantic stairway that leads to Basenis' den in the heart of the Temple. The top of the first step is level with the figure's head. The doorways to either side promise an easier ascent to Basenis' lair, but much greater risk of detection; the figure ignores them. It throws the sack onto the step, and puts its hands on the edge. After a weary time, the figure pulls itself up, getting first one knee and then its entire body onto the step. It lays there, panting, clutching the sack. And then it rises, and throws the sack onto the second step.

Dawn finds it crouched, nearly exhausted, on the next to last step. One more effort, and only a low parapet will separate it from its goal. There is not much time; already the footsteps of the Keepers can be heard within. It is time for Great Basenis to greet the dawn and be presented with the morning's offerings. The figure struggles up the last step, and grabs its sack. After a long time it creeps to the parapet and peers over. Its heart nearly stops as Basenis howls.

Great Basenis stands twenty yards away on a floor of polished stone. The image in the Tomaren temple is but a dim reflection of His glory. Great Basenis, jet black, towers over the Keepers who walk slowly past Him. Each Keeper carries a basket of leaves and twigs and straw, and empties it quickly into a manger of brick which stands before the god. Basenis' blind, staring eyes do not move as His massive head descends and removes a mouthful from the manger. His head rises as His great jaws grind the fodder to bits; the figure can hear the crunch and the rasp. Then, after a time, His head descends again, slowly and inevitably.

The hall is richly carved and decorated, but the figure has eyes only for the god. Basenis straddles a pool cut in the stone of the floor; the pool collects the Aqua Dei, the Water of God, and channels carry the divine fluid away to other chambers. A heap of brown bricks litters the floor behind Basenis; as the Keepers leave they stop and fill their baskets with as many bricks as they can carry.

The figure watches, and bides its time. The line of Keepers is coming to an end. Basenis is on a near-starvation diet, for there is but little food. The figure opens the mouth of its sack and removes the contents. When the last Keeper is refilling his basket, the figure rises, and steps over the parapet. It lurches quickly across the yards of brick and then the yards of stone, its hands filled with brown leaves and withered flowers. It climbs into the nearly empty manger, hands held high over its head, face lifted up in worship, an ecstatic smile on its lips. Basenis' head slowly descends, and His jaws close on the figure. As the Keepers watch in horror, the head rises and the jaws grind on and on....

A shout of terror--my own--split the night as I sat bolt upright on my cot. It had been five days since we had arrived in the Holy City. Thanks to Nabili, it had been two days since I had been able to sleep without nightmares. I do not know how Nabili entered that hall where mighty Basenis broods; his ordeal on the massive stair is the product of my over-eager imagination. The rest of his fate is unquestioned. He had certainly approached Basenis, leaves and flowers in hand, and climbed into the manger as I have described. I was grateful, sitting there on my cot, to reflect that the god had not, in fact, devoured his worshipper. That would have been too much to bear. Not that Nabili had survived his foolishness, not by any means. The mighty jaws had closed over him and raised him high--and then, with a flip of the neck, Basenis cast him aside. He struck the wall of the chamber with great force, and was killed instantly. I remembered vividly the sight of his crumpled body lying at the base of the wall, with dead flowers scattered round and about.

Apparently Nabili had arrived in Basenis Basor several days before we had. After the Bandekuns had sent out their messengers he began to find every door closed to him in town and village. I don't know whether the Holy City had been his ultimate goal all along, though I consider it likely. In any event, he had sought out the Keepers, and tried to warn them of the evil wizards from the Lands Below. He had begged to enter the service of Basenis with them. They responded to his overtures with disdain and contempt, as a few moments of thought would have predicted, and cast him out. He had hovered about the outskirts of the settled area in the days since, growing ever thinner; there is little food in Basenis Basor, and no Keeper would aid him. At last, desperate, he had sought the help of his god, and his offering was rejected. Carbuncle and I were in Carbuncle's workroom in the Temple, but a short distance from Basenis' den, when we heard the tumult and came and saw Nabili's body. He had proved to be my enemy, yet I would not have wished that end upon him. Nevertheless it was fitting: he died as he had lived, in misguided devotion.

Paradoxically, Nabili's death was of great benefit to us, for it convinced the Bandekuns that Basenis' wrath was unlikely to be roused against them. Nabili had trespassed and had not been devoured, but merely cast aside; his subsequent demise was seen as incidental, an indication of divine unconcern with Nabili's fate. And surely if Basenis was angry, others would have been taken and Nabili, his worshipper, spared? Not that the expedition was just a Bandekun show any longer. On our arrival in the Holy City, messages had been sent to the towns to the south and east and west, calling on them to send their representatives to Basenis Basor. These envoys were trailing into the city day by day, and the Zymurgian force was now led by some kind of intertown council. I am unclear on the details, as I was not a member, nor was I generally invited to take part in the council's deliberations. The important thing is that while the council still regarded us with suspicion, they were no longer frightened by our presence. Moreover, having seen the eagerness and industry with which Carbuncle threw himself into his work, they were the less worried that we might skip off, leaving Basenis unmuzzled. This new-found confidence manifested itself in greater freedom for the rest of us, freedom which I immediately used to survey the city as best I could. Carbuncle was dead set against my using the Hansen's geometer without his help, and as his time was fully occupied we were compelled to make do with older methods. I prevailed upon my friend to take one reading, that being the location of our hostel, and with that as our benchmark we did well enough.

It is well that I was able to fill my time with surveying, as it was a long, tedious period we spent in the Holy City. Carbuncle was the only one with much to do, and though he often kept Hodgins or Cadbury or Mukden or all three on the go, finding things out and fetching and carrying, time hung quite heavily on our hands. The only diversion was the evening meal, when Carbuncle would share with us the discoveries of the day.

He began his investigations, to my surprise, not with Basenis himself, but with his bricks. He explained that it was possibly to determine quite a lot about a manufacturing phantasm by examining its products. We accepted his explanation at the time, little knowing what else he had in mind. And indeed, there were several puzzling aspects to Basenis' bricks. First, how had previous generations of Keepers managed to carve them? Hodgins had tried, in the inimitable tradition of travellers everywhere, to carve his initials into the wall of the house in which we stayed our first night in the Holy City, and had been entirely unable so much as to make a scratch. Second, how did they bind them together? In all the city there was no trace of mortar; in any given building the bricks looked as though they had simply been stacked in place. And yet they were immovable; all of our efforts had failed to dislodge even a single one. There proved to be but one answer to these two questions.

Carbuncle brought home several unused bricks and put them on the table after the meal was cleared away. (I should say in passing that the Zymurgians took excellent care of us, even while treating us somewhat as pariahs; the food was of necessity plain, but they did not stint on the quantity or on the service.)

"I've found out how they managed to carve these creatures," he announced. "Observe!" And he took up a carving knife, an ivory-handled affair that had come all the way from Eton's department store by cart, ship, and donkeyback, and examined its edge keenly. We watched with breathless anticipation, looking from the knife to the brick and and back again. He tested the edge with his thumb. Then, taking a whetstone from his pocket, he proceeded to sharpen it carefully. After several minutes he was satisfied, and put the whetstone back in his pocket. Eyes twinkling, he looked around at us. "Would you mind terribly giving me a hand, Leon?" he asked. I hastened to assure him that I would not. "Very good. Would you take this carving knife and put it away? We won't be needing it tonight, but that blunt edge was distressing me." Somewhat nonplussed, I did as he asked, and hurried back to the table. When I returned, he picked up a butter knife, also from Eton's, and dangled it between two fingers about three feet over one of the bricks. "Are you ready?" he asked. We hastened to assure him that we were. "Very well," he said, and dropped the butter knife. The force of the drop drove the dull blade at least an inch into the brick.

"The bricks are really quite soft before they've been cured," he said. "They carve them first, and then set them in place. Once they have been cured, they are as we have seen them."

"And how do they cure them?" asked Fox, who had been watching with great interest.

"The same way they stick them together. Shall I show you?"

"Oh, indeed," said Fox, to be echoed by the rest of us.

"Very well. Leon, could you fetch me a glass of water?"

I fear I grumbled rather loudly as I fetched it. Carbuncle will cater to his sense of drama at times like these, and I have learned that it doesn't pay to balk him.

"Here's your drink," I said gruffly as I handed the earthenware mug to him. "Now can we get on with this?"

"Oh, the water isn't for me, Leon. It's for the bricks." He took two of the bricks, removing the butter knife from one of them, and placed them side by side in front of him. Then, holding the mug carefully, he poured a few tablespoons of water on the top of each, rubbing it around with a finger. When the water was distributed evenly, he picked up one of the bricks, turned it over so that the wet side was on the bottom, and placed it on the other brick. He squared them up neatly, poured more water over the pair of them, turned the pair over, and poured the last of the water on the underside. "There you go," he said. "What Basenis has joined together, no man shall put asunder. When they dry, which won't be long given the air here, they will be fully cured. More than that, they will be permanently attached."

"Really," said Hodgins. "Hand them over here, will you? And one of the uncured ones, too." Taking the butter knife, he tried to dent the wet surface of the bricks, and failed. Then he turned to the uncured brick, which by comparison offered little or no resistance. Using the butter knife, he had soon whittled a little statue of Basenis himself. I had another mug of water ready, unasked, and how some of my colleagues would laugh to see me fetching water for a common seaman! Trimming another block into a base for the statuette was the matter of but a few more minutes; then Hodgins carefully moistened the statuette's paws and the top of the base, and set the one on the other. Then he carefully emptied the rest of the water over the pair, making sure that every surface got wet, and set the statue and its base down on the table.

"Very good, Hodgins, very good indeed," said Carbuncle, examining the statuette carefully. "Do you mind if I pick it up?" Hodgins perforce gave his assent, and Carbuncle studied it carefully. "Now watch," he said. And before Hodgins had time to react, Carbuncle hurled the statuette against the wall with all of his might. So far from shattering, it bounced off the wall and ricocheted into Carbuncle's left shin with a loud thump. Hodgins dove for his creation, swearing mightily, and recovered it from under the table. It was, of course, unharmed, though I could not say the same for Carbuncle's shin.

"What did you go and do that for?" said Hodgins, looking the statuette over for any signs of damage.

"To demonstrate," said Carbuncle, between gasps, "the material's great...durability." He had sat down abruptly and was holding his shin with both hands. "Once it's set...and cured....there's no...shifting it."

Once he had regained his composure, Carbuncle laid out for us his plan of attack.

"The first point, of course, is whether or not the wee beastie can be shut off," he began.

"You said you had a way of doing that," I said. "Are you as mistaken about that as you are about its size? It must be at least twenty-five feet high at the shoulder."

"I have a way of destroying the beastie, which is not the same thing. Once destroyed, it is gone forever." He looked at me from under raised brows. "That would be a great loss. If I can shut it off, though, I can probably turn it on again later. If so, we can satisfy our hosts, and preserve the beastie for study."

"Do you think it likely?" asked Fox, leaning forward.

"Not at all likely. Its builders went to great efforts to make sure it would never go hungry, which implies that if it ever stopped doing what it does it would be difficult or impossible to start it again. Still, I might be mistaken."

Fox pursed his lips, and waved at Carbuncle to go on.

"Next, if it can't be shut off, can it at least be stopped in a non-destructive way? I might at least be able to study it, even if it no longer works." We all nodded.

"Finally," Carbuncle said, "can I duplicate it."

"Duplicate it!" exclaimed Hodgins. "Isn't one of the creatures enough? Wouldn't two of them get hungry twice as fast?"

"Oh, I don't mean on the same scale. Can I build a smaller phantasm that does the same thing Basenis does? If I can build one, I can build another, and it won't matter what happens to our canine friend. Just think about having your own little Basenis about the house. Beer on tap all year long, for price of yard clippings, hey?" Carbuncle's eyes were sparkling. "And think of the commercial possibilities!"

I glanced at Fox. It was clear that he was doing just that.

"Of course," Carbuncle mused, "keeping it fed might be a chore; can't have it roaming the neighborhood devouring curates and small children, can we? Perhaps it could be made to hunt mice...."

"And what is the likelihood of duplicating the phantasm?" Fox again.

"Oh, very likely, very likely. What one phantast can build, another can duplicate; or at least I can. I should be quite sanguine, if I thought I could have whatever time I need."

"And what if our hosts don't give you enough time?"

"I suppose I'll have to tell them how to destroy Basenis anyway."