“Nimbalim of Yoth!” she said in hushed tones of awe. “Not, surely, the same Nimbalim of Yoth who composed the celebrated Notes on a Philosophy of Fatalism?”
The weary features of the old man brightened at her words, and his frail figure straightened proudly.
“Ah, can it be my works enjoy a wider popularity than even I could have hoped?” He smiled. “Thank you, child, for recognizing my name; for I am indeed Nimbalim of Yoth, and the only personage of that name, insofar as I am aware… but you pale and look faint, my child. Are you unwell?”
Niamh shook her head doubtfully, still eyeing the silver-haired old man with amazement, an amazement now touched with something very like fear.
“No,” she said faintly, “it is nothing; it’s just that, that…”
“Pray speak your mind, child,” the philosopher murmured encouragingly. “We keep no secrets from each other in this dismal abode. What is it that disturbs you so?”
“It’s just that… that Nimbalim of Yoth, or at least the famous philosopher of that name who wrote the Philosophy of Fatalism…”
“Yes, yes? Speak up, my dear, don’t be shy! What about Nimbalim so distresses you?”
Niamh drew in a deep breath and faced the frail old man squarely.
“You died almost a thousand years ago,” she whispered.
The old philosopher stroked his long, glistening beard with one thin hand. He cocked his head to one side a little, and watched the princess with eyes dim and oddly gentle.
“Has it been so long, then,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Ah, well! One day, or year, or century, is very like another here in the slave pens of the Flying City… still, it is curiously unsettling and strange to realize that while I have been mewed up here among the Doomed… a thousand years have passed among mortal men in The World Below. How strange, and terrible, and wonderful! How very strange …”
Janchan stepped forward and saluted the bent, frail old philosopher.
“I am Prince Janchan of the House of the Ptolnim, Master Nimbalim,” he said, “and this is the Princess Niamh of Phaolon, queen of the Jewel City. How strange it is to speak to Nimbalim of Yoth in the flesh, if indeed you be he… why, I studied your famous works under my tutor when I was but a child, as did my father before me, and my grandsire in his own day… How can it be true, sir, that you have lived all this while in this remarkable place, while in the lower world, among the treetop cities, fifty human generations have been born and lived and died? Why, your very city of Yoth has vanished from human knowledge in the intervening centuries, destroyed by the Blue Barbarians seven centuries ago, during one of their periodic attacks of racial madness…”
Sorrow flickered in the eyes of the frail ancient.
“Ah!” he cried, lifting one thin hand, transparent as wax, as if to ward off a blow. “Is it indeed so? Yoth of the brilliant palaces, the gardens of laughing youths and maidens, the fragrant groves of flowering chinchalia blooms, the great Academy with its grave scholars and cool arcades… gone? All—gone? Of this I had not heard… so much has befallen the world of my youth in the ages of my imprisonment here in the dungeons of Calidar by the murderous, jet-skinned maniacs—!”
Arjala, who had stood listening to this exchange without comment, scarcely without comprehension, as she never read aught but the theological dissertations of her own Temple scholars, drew herself up superbly at this and made a dramatic gesture.
“Watch your tongue, old fool! You mouth vile blasphemy against those of my own Divine lineage! Beware lest the ever listening, ever-watchful Lords of The World Above smite you with their thunders for such imprudent impieties!”
The old man smiled at her haughty speech and glanced inquiringly at Janchan.
“This is the Lady Arjala of Ardha, high priestess of the Temple and Incarnate Goddess, insofar as the opinions of the Ardhanese go.” The Prince smiled.
Nimbalim nodded respectfully, but there was a glint of mischief in his eye.
“My greetings to you, madam,” he said, smiling. “I fear, however, that you are laboring under a misapprehension; if it is your conception that the rulers of this celestial metropolis are the divinities of your mythology, then pray permit me to correct the error in your thinking. For you could not be more wrong in believing the Skymen of Calidar to be divine beings. Whether the Skymen drew the name of their city from the Heavenly City of our ancient religion, or whether the priests of The World Below borrowed the name of the city of the Skymen for their name of the Heavenly City, I neither know nor care. But it is, simply, a fact that the blackmen who rule here are neither gods nor demigods, but an unspeakably cruel race of human monsters—as I fear you will soon discover from your own experience, unfortunately. No, they are no Divinities, the Skymen of the Flying City; they are, instead, naught but another branch of the tree of mankind—a lost branch, one might say, who domesticated the great wild zawkaw of the high terraces in a remote age, and thus strayed into the marvelous Flying Cities and made them their dominion. They have been separated from the rest of the Laonese race for uncounted ages since, and, due to the effects of a closed system of inbreeding over thousands and thousands of years, they have developed the peculiar black skins, hairless pates, and quicksilver eyes that make them seem so very different from us. Alas, these minor racial differences are the lesser and the least important of the ways in which their solitary way of life here in Calidar have made them to diverge from the common human stock. But they are not gods, I assure you… they have become monsters of depravity, in fact, and inhuman in all but the biological sense.”
Arjala opened her mouth to make some rejoinder to this, but Niamh interrupted; the princess, pleading weakness and fatigue, due to the succession of remarkable events which had so swiftly befallen them, begged for a place to sit down so that she might compose herself.
All contrition, the old philosopher led them to a bench of some peculiar lucent material in a far corner of the hall, saw them seated, and dispatched a young boy in a ragged clout for refreshments. To the surprise of the travelers the boy returned with a heavy tray heaped with fresh fruits, berries and nuts, morsels of delicious cheese, and a large beaker of a cold, refreshing, slightly effervescent beverage. Sampling the drink, which was rather like champagne or sparkling burgundy, the travelers fell to this repast with considerable hunger, while Nimbalim struck up a conversation with Zarqa the Kalood.
The Kalood, who required no nourishment other than an infrequent sip or two of the thick golden mead, found an instant basis for friendship with the old philosopher, who so curiously seemed to share his own immortality. The two conversed excitedly while the others dined, and from their exchange a number of surprising discoveries were soon unveiled.
I had thought it likely, Janchan, the Kalood remarked, once the meal was finished, that this was one of the Flying Cities constructed by my own race before their extinction. During a brief flowering of scientific technology, which only lasted fifty thousand years or so, as I recall, some of the Technarchs experimented with aerial contrivances such as this curious metropolis. The cities fly on the identical system used in rendering weightless the sky-sleds, which is to say, by riding the magnetic lines of force generated by the planet itself. Now the learned Nimbalim confirms me in this opinion.
“That’s very interesting, Zarqa,” Janchan said. “But for what conceivable purpose did the Kaloodha build such amazing devices, and where did they obtain such an enormous supply of metal? Why, also, once built, were the Flying Cities abandoned?”