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He had many names, but one nature, and this unique nature made him subject to certain laws not binding upon ordinary persons. In a compensatory fashion, he was also free from certain other laws more commonly in force.
“Then are you laughing at me?” thundered the duke, heaving himself forward on his throne so that the boards of the dais creaked and squealed. His eyes flashed terribly. “No, I laugh at the foolishness of humankind,” replied the traveller.
Not that all was well by any means. There were enchanters still, and ogres, and certain elementals roamed at large, and of human problems there might be no end. Still, the worst of his afflictions were growing fewer. One by one, the imprints of aboriginal chaos were fading away, like the footmarks of travellers on the road above the hill where Laprivan was prisoned.
I am he to whom was entrusted the task of bringing order forth from chaos. Hence the reason why I have but one nature.”
“Being human, you have one name, and many more natures than two. But the essential two are these: that you shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that you shall strive to take advantage of chaos. Such folk as you are allies of the powers who preceded me.”
“Whether as Tyllwin or himself, Manuus is—was?—a master of chaos. So are we all in lesser degree. But the greatest master of us all has proved to be a simple stranger lacking all acquaintance with the esoteric arts. Colleagues and friends, magic is of the past. Rationality and logic will rule the future.”
“So where am I?” he demanded. “Or is it a question of when am I?” “Neither. We are speaking of a borderland between chaos, existing in eternity, and reason, existing in time. At this moment the balance is uncertain, but it is tilting, bit by bit. You have been quite invaluable in tipping it beyond a crucial point.”
“No matter. If you did understand the nature of chaos, men being what they are, you would certainly be conceited enough to wish to exploit it. This in fact is what those vain enchanters do: turn the forces of chaos to their own advantage. But, logically, to control chaos with reason is to impose lasting order on it. This implies in turn that sooner or later chaos will reign no longer.”
Time had come to that great city; time, in which could exist order and logic and rational thought. And so it was removed from his domain forever, vanished from the borderland of chaos situated timeless in eternity.
Lost in this plethora of manifestations—somewhere—was precisely and exactly what was needful; that much the traveller was bound to grant. But, as he had warned them, he could not compel anyone to do the right thing. Choice was what he dealt in. And those who chose wrong did so because of what they were.
For a little while, indeed, he could almost convince himself that this was to be the last of his journeys, and that his next return would find the places he had known tight in the clutch of time. The borderland between rationality and chaos seemed to be shrinking apace as the harsh constraint of logic settled on this corner of the All. Reason is the stepchild of memory, and memory exists in time, not the arbitrary randomness of eternity.
Greed, hate, jealousy—these were commonplace, and it was not to be questioned that they should defeat themselves.
Events were tending, in the prescribed manner, towards that end which Manuus the enchanter had once defined as “desirable, perhaps, but appallingly dull.” The day would break when all things would have but one nature, and time would have a stop, for the last vestige of the chaos existing in eternity would have been eliminated. To make way for a new beginning? Possibly. If not, then—in the very strictest sense—no matter, never mind …
From as far back as he could recall it had been the traveller’s intention that the literal interpretation he placed on the wishes he granted should be a means of ensuring justice. If penalties ensued, they should be confined to those who had deserved them. What was awry?
Wolpec was little, though wise; candles had sufficed to pen him. Fegrim was vast, and underlay a mountain. But the traveller had seen among the snag-toothed peaks of Kanish-Kulya how his volcano slumbered now beneath a cap of white, where once it had spluttered smoke a mile high. No ripples stirred the pool of Horimos; as for the river Metamorphia, no trace was left at all of anything whose nature had been changed by it. Housewives rinsed their laundry in the spring at Geirion, and the eldritch song that Jorkas had been used to sing was turned a lullaby with nonsense words to soothe asleep
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“Of all the qualities that I endowed you with,” the calm voice said, “the most potent has proved to be a certain witty elegance. A … a neatness, a sense of practical economy!” “I’ve fostered it,” the traveller agreed. “Having but one nature, I must needs make the most of what I had, and that aspect of me seemed most diametrically opposed to the extravagance and wastefulness of chaos.
Is it not the goal and purpose of the universe that all things shall ultimately have a single nature? I know that to be true, for I decreed it.”
This was what they had not realized at Cleftor Heights: that Tuprid and Caschalanva, Quorril and Lry, and moreover Wolpec and Yorbeth and Farchgrind and Fegrim and Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, and all the countless roster of those elementals, were the fellow natures of the One Who had conceived them in the Age of Chaos; then wearied of the instability of Her creation, and ordained an age in which no being should possess more than one nature. And had sent forth a personage with many names as earnest of that eventual occurrence.
