Authors: Clark Ashton Smith
Tags: #General Fiction
The woman started as if she had been stung by a wild bee. There was something both eager and severe in the searching gaze that she turned upon Ambrose.
'Azédarac?' she queried. 'What do you know of Azédarac? I was once acquainted with someone by that name; and I wonder if it could be the same person. Is he tall and a little gray, with hot, dark eyes, and a proud, half-angry air, and a crescent scar on the brow?'
Greatly mystified, and more troubled than ever, Ambrose admitted the veracity of her description. Realizing that in same unknown way he had stumbled upon the hidden antecedents of the sorcerer, he confided the story of his adventures to Moriamis, hoping that she would reciprocate with further information concerning Azédarac.
The woman listened with the air of one who is much interested but not at all surprised.
'I understand now,' she observed, when he had finished. Anon I shall explain everything that mystifies and troubles you. I think I know this Jehan Mauvaissoir, also; he has long been the man-servant of Azédarac, though his name was Melchire in other days. These two have always been the underlings of evil, and have served the Old Ones in ways forgotten or never known by the Druids.'
'Indeed, I hope you can explain what has happened,' said Ambrose. 'It is a fearsome and strange and ungodly thing, to drink a draft of wine in a tavern at eventide, and then find one's self in the heart of the forest by afternoon daylight, among demons such as those from whom you succored me.'
'Yea,' countered Moriamis 'it is even stranger than you dream. Tell me, Brother Ambrose, what was the year in which you entered the Inn of Bonne Jouissance?'
'Why, it is the year of our Lord, 1175, of course. What other year could it be?'
'The Druids use a different chronology,' replied Moriamis, 'and their notation would mean nothing to you. But, according to that which the Christian missionaries would now introduce in Averoigne, the present year is A.D. 475. You have been sent back no less than seven hundred years into what the people of your era would regard as the past. The Druid altar an which I found you lying is probably located on the future site of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance.'
Ambrose was more than dumbfounded. His mind was unable to grasp the entire import of Moriamis' words.
'But how can such things be'?' he cried. 'How can a man go backward in time, among years and people that have long turned to dust?'
'That, mayhap, is a mystery for Azédarac to unriddle. However, the past and the future co-exist with what we call the present, and are merely the two segments of the circle of time. We see them and name them according to our own position in the circle.'
Ambrose felt that he had fallen among necromancies of a most unhallowed and unexampled sort, and had been made the victim of diableries unknown to the Christian catalogues.
Tongue-tied by a consciousness that all comment, all protest or even prayer would prove inadequate to the situation, he saw that a stone tower with small lozenge-shaped windows was now visible above the turrets of pine along the path which he and Moriamis were following.
'This is my home,' said Moriamis, as they came forth from beneath the thinning trees at the foot of a little knoll on which the tower was situated. 'Brother Ambrose, you must be my guest.'
Ambrose was unable to decline the proffered hospitality, in spite of his feeling that Moriamis was hardly the most suitable of chatelaines for a chaste and God-fearing monk. However, the pious misgivings with which she inspired him were not unmingled with fascination. Also, like a lost child, he clung to the only available protection in a land of fearful perils and astounding mysteries.
The interior of the tower was neat and clean and homelike, though with furniture of a ruder sort than that to which Ambrose was accustomed, and rich but roughly woven arrases. A serving-woman, tall as Moriamis herself, but darker, brought to him a huge bowl of milk and wheaten bread, and the monk was now able to assuage the hunger that had gone unsatisfied in the Inn of Bonne Jouissance.
As he seated himself before the simple fare, he realized that the Book of Eibon was still heavy in the bosom of his gown. He removed the volume, and gave it gingerly to Moriamis. Her eyes widened, but she made no comment until he had finished his meal. Then she said:
'This volume is indeed the property of Azédarac, who was formerly a neighbor of mine. I knew the scoundrel quite well — in fact, I knew him all too well.' Her bosom heaved with an obscure emotion as she paused for a moment. 'He was the wisest and the mightiest of sorcerers, and the most secret withal; for no one knew the time and the manner of his coming into Averoigne, or the fashion in which he had procured the immemorial Book of Eibon, whose runic writings were beyond the lore of all other wizards. He was master of all enchantments and all demons, and likewise a compounder of mighty potions. Among these were certain philtres, blended with potent spells and possessed of unique virtue, that would send the drinker backward or forward in time. One of them, I believe, was administered to you by Melchire, or Jehan Mauvaissoir; and Azédarac himself, together with this man-servant, made use of another — perhaps not for the first time — when they went onward from the presemt age of the Druids into that age of Christian authority to which you belong. There was a blood-red vial for the past, and a green for the future. Behold! I possess one of each — though Azédarac was unaware that I knew of their existence.'
She opened a little cupboard, in which were the various charms and medicaments, the sun-dried herbs and mooncompounded essences that a sorceress would employ. From among them she brought out the two vials, one of which contained a sanguine-colored liquid, and the other a fluid of emerald brightness.
'I stole them one day, out of womanly curiosity, from his hidden store of philtres and elixirs and nagistrals,' continued Moriamis. 'I could have followed the rascal when he disappeared into the future, if I had chosen to do so. But I am well enough content with ny own age; and moreover, I am not the sort of woman who pursues a wearied and reluctant lover....'
'Then,' said Ambrose, more bewildered than ever, but hopeful, 'if I were to drink the contents of the green vial, I should return to my own epoch.'
'Precisely. And I am sure, from what you have told me, that your return would be a source of much annoyance to Azédarac. It is like the fellow, to have established himself in a fat prelacy. He was ever the master of circumstance, with an eye to his own accommodation and comfort. It would hardly please him, I am sure, if you were to reach the Archbishop.... I am not revengeful by nature ... but on the other hand — '
'It is hard to understand how anyone could have wearied of you,' said Ambrose, gallantly, as he began to comprehend the situation.
Moriamis smiled. 'That is prettily said. And you are really a charming youth, in spite of that dismal-looking robe. I am glad that I rescued you from the Druids, who would have torn your heart out and offered it to their demon, Taranit.'
'And now you will send me back7'
Moriamis frowned a little, and then assumed her most seductive air.
'Are you in such a hurry to leave your hostess? Now that you are living in another century than your own, a day, a week, or a month will make no difference in the date of your return. I have also retained the formulas of Azédarac; and I know how to graduate the potion, if necessary. The usual period of transportation in time is exactly seven huadred years; but the philtre can be strengthened or weakened a little.'
The sun had fallen beyond the pines, and a soft twilight was beginning to invade the tower. The maid-servant had left the room. Moriamis cane over and seated herself beside Ambrose on the rough bench he was occupying. Still smiling, she fixed her amber eyes uyon him, with a languid flame in their depths — a flame that seemed to brighten as the dusk grew stronger. Without speaking, she began slowly to unbraid her heavy hair, from which there emanated a perfume that was subtle and delicious as the perfume of grape-flowers.
Ambrose was embarrassed by this delightful proximity. 'I am not sure that it would be right for me to remain, after all. What would the Archbishop think?'
'My dear child. the Archbishop will not even be born for at least six hundred and fifty years. And it will be still longer before you are born. And when you return, anything that you have done during your stay with me will have happened no less than seven centuries ago ... which should be long enough to procure the remission of any sin, no matter how often repeated.'
Like a man who has been taken in the toils of some fantastic drean, and finds that the dream is not altogether disagreeable, Ambrose yielded to this feminine and irrefutable reasoning. He hardly knew what was to happen; but, under the exceptional circumstances indicated by Moriamis, the rigors of monastic discipline might well be relaxed to almost any conceivable degree, without entailing spiritual perdition or even a serious breach of vows.
IV
A month Iater, Moriamis and Ambrose were standing beside the Druid altar. It was late in the evening; and a slightly gibbous moon had risen upon the deserted glade and was fringing the tree-tops with wefted silver. The warm breath of the summer night was gentle as the sighing of a woman in slumber.
'Must you go, after all?' said Moriamis, in a pleading and regretful voice.
'It is my duty. I must return to Clément with the Book of Eibon and the other evidence I have collected against Azédarac.' The words sounded a little unreal to Ambrose as he uttered them; and he tried very hard, but vainly, to convince himself of the cogency and validity of his arguments. The idyll of his stay with Moriamis, to which he was oddly unable to attach any true conviction of sin, had given to all that preceded it a certain dismal insubstantiality. Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a nediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty.
'I shall not try to hold you,' Moriamis sighed. 'But I shall miss you, and remenber you as a worthy lover and a pleasant playmate. Here is the philtre.' The green essence was cold and almost hueless in the moonlight, as Moriamis poured it into a little cup and gave it to Ambrose.
'Are you sure of its precise efficacy?' the monk inquired. 'Are you sure that I shaH return to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, at a time not far subsequent to that of my departure therefrom?'
'Yea,' said Moriamis, 'for the potion is infallible. But stay, I have also brought along the other vial — the vial of the past. Take it with you — for who knows, you may sometime wish to return and visit me again.'
Ambrose accepted the red vial and placed it in his robe beside the ancient manual of Hyperborean sorcery. Then, after an appropriate farewell to Moriamis, he drained with sudden resolution the contents of the cup.
The moonlit glade, the gray altar, and Moriamis, all vanished in a swirl of flame and shadow. It seemed to Ambrose that he was soaring endlessly through fantasmagoric gulfs, amid the ceaseless shifting and melting of unstable things, the transient forming and fading of irresoluble worlds. At the end, he found himself sitting once more in the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. at what he assumed to be the very same table before which he had sat with the Sieur des Émaux. It was daylight, and the room was full of people, among whom he looked in vain for the rubicund face of the innkeeper, or the servants and fellow-guests he had previously seen. All were unfamiliar to him; and the furniture was strangely worn, and was grimier than he remembered it.
Perceiving the presence of Ambrose, the people began to eye him with open curiosity and wonderment. A tall man with dolorous eyes and lantern jaws came hastily forward and bowed before him with an air that was half servile but full of a prying impertinence.
'What do you wish?' he asked.
'Is this the Inn of Bonne Jouissance?'
The innkeeper stared at Ambrose. 'Nay, it is the Inn of Haute Esperance, of which I have been the taverner these thirty years. Could you not read the sign? It was called the Inn of Bonne Jouissance in my father's time, but the name was changed after his death.'
Ambrose was filled with consternation. 'But the inn was differently named, and was kept by another man when I visited it not long ago,' he cried in bewilderment. 'The owner was a stout, jovial man, not in the least like you.'
'That would answer the description of my father,' said the taverner, eyeing Ambrose more dubiously than ever. 'He has been dead for the full thirty years of which I speak; and surely you were not even born at the time of his decease.'
Ambrose began to realize what had happened. The emerald potion, by some error or excess of potcncy, had taken him many years beyond his own time into the future!