The Enchantress of World's End

“Time enough for that later,” she said crossly. “I want to carry you to safety first. This is my rescue, and I am in charge! As soon as I get you over the border, I’ll come whizzirtg back for the others. Serve that old geezer right, to make him wait a bit and stew in his own juices! Always tying me up to trees or chimneys, and leaving me behind while the rest of you go zipping off to have adventures together, with never a thought for the poor old faithful Bazonga, your tireless steed! Come, child, get into my cockpit and let’s be off—”

“Well … all right, then … I guess you know what you’re doing,” said Silvermane a bit dubiously. He stepped into the swaying cockpit of the peculiar craft and settled down in the first seat. The bird-vessel thrust herself clear of the wall with a flick of her magnetic waves, then curved sharply about and sped off in a southerly direction, bound for the borders of Chx.

Night had fallen by now, and the streets were full of carousing mobs happily assaulting each other, looting shops and getting drunk. Nobody seemed to pay the slightest attention to the winged bronze bird as she soared over the rooftops-and hurtled gaily into the south. So rapid was her flight that in less time than it takes me to tell, the scarlet walls of Chx dwindled in her wake. The landscape, neat, trim checkerboard of cultivated farmland, sped by beneath her keel. Ahead yawned vast empty pits which were sometimes occupied, and sometimes not, by the Vanishing Mountains.

“I find it simply amazing, the facility you poor humans have for constantly getting into trouble,” groused the Bazonga bird as she traversed the farmlands like an immense arrow loosed from some colossal bow. “However do you manage to do it? I no sooner get tied to a tree or whatever, then you are off getting jailed for one reason or another. The last time this happened, if I recall correctly, you and that nice girl were sold into slavery …”

“Yes, that was in Horx,” said Ganelon. “I don’t understand it either, Bird, to be frank. Ever-since father and mother found me wandering about in the Blue Rain, it’s been one predicament after another …”

The vacant roots of the Vanishing Mountains were beneath them now. Ahead stretched a dark, grim landscape of tumbled stone and sterile sand, with the mighty ramparts of the Mountains of Dwarfland to the south, marching from horizon to horizon. The sight reminded Ganelon that the Death Dwarves were their enemies, and on at least one occasion, they had sought to capture them. There was that tune when they had been flying across the Voormish Desert, bound for Karjixia, the Kingdom of the Tigermen, when the little green abominations had sought to ensnare them in a monstrous metallic net stretched directly in their path between the twin peaks of Mount Luz.

“Why are we flying in this direction?” he asked uneasily. “You’re going south, and we want to travel north, towards Jemmerdy.”

“Because the nearest border is south of Chx, that’s why,” replied the Bird tartly. “That nice innkeeper back at the hospice told me. The sun was down by then, you see, and he was more than delighted to aid and abet a jail-break.” She giggled at the odd ways of humans.

Just beyond the empty row of enormous pits, the Bazonga floated down to the ground and let Ganelon jump out.

“You stay right here, now,” she said severely. “Don’t go wandering off and get into any more trouble, mind! Ill just be a little while, finding your master and that nice girl—”

“And Prince Erigon, too,” said Ganelon. “I’m sure master will want to rescue him, as well.”

“Quite right, whomever you mean,” the Bird said in her careless fashion. She rose up from the ground and spun about to go back in the same direction from which she had just flown.

“And don’t forget my sword!” Ganelon yelled as she drifted aloft. “I’m sure master will be able to find it somewhere in the building, and I’d be lost without it.”

“Yes, yes, I shan’t forget! Now, you be a good boy, mind, and don’t go wandering away; m expect to find you right here when I return!”

Ganelon nodded and waved goodbye. The ungainly vehicle shot off to the north, towards Chx, and he stood watching her for a moment The immense glowing orb of the Falling Moon had risen up over the world by this tune, flooding the landscape with brilliant silvery luminance. By the moonlight, the terrain about him looked even more barren and sterile than it had from above. He repressed a slight shiver which came over him for some reason. Then he sat down on the stone slab to patiently await the return of the vehicle.

The Vanishing Mountains, which form the southerly borders between the country of Chx and the Dominion of the Death Dwarves, are a phenomenon unique to Gondwane in the current Eon. Nature, in a state of flux, persists in devising new, novel forms of matter and kinds of life (such as the Dwarves themselves). The prevailing theory by which the Gondwanish savants explain such curiosities, as these off-again-on-again mountains which flicker back and forth between existence and non-existence, is that the atoms whereof the rocky barrier is composed consist half of normal electrons and protons, and half of contraterrone particles, with a single phi-meson on the dividing line. The phi-meson, of course, is a particle of dubious reality, whose genuineness is a matter of statistical probability. Part of the time the meson really odsts, and thus so do the Mountains; the rest of the time the finicky little particle simply isn’t there at all, and neither are the Mountains.