Free Compleat Traveller in Black by John Brunner Page A

this habit; still, he had never done so, and to discover that Ryovora was elsewhere displeased him somewhat.
    The second reason was worse than displeasing. It was alarming, and dismaying, and unprecedented, and many other distressing epithets.
    “In sum,” the traveller in black announced to the air, “it’s unheard-of!”
    Another city had arisen in the borderland of chaos, and it was stamped all over with the betraying mark of time.
    How was it possible? Carried in some eddy whose flow ran counter to the universal trend, so that from reason and logic it receded to the random reign of chance? Presumably. Yet the means whereby such an eddy might be created seemed inconceivable. Some great enchantment would be required, and in the grip of time such magic was impossible.
    “A contradiction in terms!” exclaimed the traveller, speaking aloud again to distract his mind from the third and least palatable reason for regretting the loss of Ryovora and its substitution by another, unfamiliar, city. It was known to him that when he had accomplished his purpose all things would have but one nature; then they would be subsumed into the Original All and time would have a stop.
    But if an entire city could be shifted in the wrong direction, from time into eternity, from rationality to chaos, it followed that someone, or something, or some impersonal force must be arrayed against him that he had never previously guessed at!
    This conclusion was disturbing. Yet inevitable.
     
    He glanced around the hillside. As ever, among the sparse and grey-leaved bushes, dust devils were sifting their substance, fine as ashes, over the footprints he had left on the path. Raising his staff, he tapped it on a rock: once, twice, and again.
    At the third tap the elemental Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes heaved in his underground prison and cracks appeared in the road. From these his voice boomed, monstrous, making the welkin echo.
    “Leave me be!”
    “What do you know of the city that stands yonder?” said the traveller in black.
    “Nothing,” responded Laprivan with sullenness.
    “Nothing? You say so to spare yourself the pain of memory! Shall I send you where Ryovora has gone, into the domain of time? There memories cannot be expunged by whirling dust!”
    The whole hill shuddered, and an avalanche of pale rock rattled on its further side. The sourceless voice moaned, “What should I know of yonder city? No one has come from it and passed this way.”
    “Bad,” said the traveller thoughtfully. “Very bad.”
    After that he was silent a long while, until at last the elemental pleaded, “Leave me be! Leave me to wipe clean the slate of yesterday!”
    “As you wish, so be it,” said the traveller absently, and tapped with his staff again. The cracks in the ground closed; the dust devils resumed their gyrations.
    Ignoring all this, the traveller gazed over the green and gracious meadows of the valley. There the strange city lay in noontide sunlight like a worn-out toy cast aside by a giant-child. The heedless ruin of time was everywhere about it, toothmarks of the greatest leveller on brick and stone and metal. It had been fair and rich, that was plain; its gates were of oak and bronze – but the bronze was corroded green; its towers were of silver and orichalcum – but their bright sheen was overlaid with a dull mist like the foul breath of a swamp; its streets were broad and paved with marble – but the flags lifted to the roots of wild plants, and here and there one found holes filled by rain and noxious with algae and the larvae of biting insects.
    Out of time and into chaos. Almost beyond belief.
    At length he bestirred himself. There was nothing else for it – so he reasoned – but to set off on his journey of obligation, and come at last not to familiar, welcome Ryovora but to this enigma wished on him by fate and boding no good whatsoever.
     
    Anxiety carried him far and fast, and little by little it was mitigated by relief. To