Karl Edward Wagner - The Other One

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The Other One

Karl Edward Wagner

There is a story, so it is told, of certain bandits who took shelter beneath a

tree, and as the darkness and the storm closed over them, they gathered about

their fire and said to their leader: "Tell us a tale, to pass the night hours

in this lonely place;" and their leader spoke to them: "Once certain bandits

took shelter beneath a tree, and as the darkness and the storm closed over

them, they gathered about their fire and said to their leader: "Tell us a

tale, to pass the night hours in this lonely place; 'and their leader spoke to

them: 'Once certain bandits took shelter beneath a tree...'"

Blacker against the darkening sky, the thousand-armed branches of the huge

banyan swayed and soughed before the winds of the storm. Tentative spats of

rain struck the barren stones beyond their shelter--streaking like the ranging

shots of massed archers from the lowering thunderheads that marched toward

them from across the desolate plain beyond.

Someone got a fire going. Yellow flames crackled and spat as the damp twigs

caught; grey smoke crawled through the roof of banyan limbs to be whipped away

by the winds. There were more than ten of them about the fire--outlaws and

renegades whose dirty mail and mismatched matched weapons showed the proof of

hard and bloody service.

Another hundred of them might have gathered beneath the banyan, pressed

between its pillared maze of limbs and roots. The tree had spread its limbs

and stabbed downward its roots, growing upward and outward for imperturbable

centuries. Behind--along the trail the outlaws had followed--lay unbroken

miles of tropical forest. Beyond--toward which their path led--stretched a

miles-wide plain of utter desolation. Beneath the grey curtain of the

approaching storm, could be glimpsed the walls of forest that enclosed the

farther perimeters of the plain.

Across the jungle-girded plain, new forest crept through where a century

before had been carefully tilled fields, crawled over flattened stones and

heaps of broken rubble where once had reared a great city. Of the city, no

walls or towers remained; so utter was its destruction that scarcely one stone

yet stood upon its base. It was an expanse of total annihilation--a wasteland

of toppled stone and fire-scarred rubble. After more than a century, only

scrub and vine and secondary forest had invaded the ruin. More than another

century would pass before the last mound of shattered wall would vanish

beneath the conquering forest.

They gathered about their fire, laying aside their well-worn gear, pulling out

such as they had to make their evening meal. Three days march, or maybe

four--and their leader promised them more plunder than they in might carry.

This night the prospects did not bring the usual chatter of anticipation.

Uneasily, the men watched the closing storm, gloomily considered the plain of

ruins beside which they were camped. For these were the ruins of Andalar the

Accurst, and no man cared to linger in this place.

"The greatest city of the land," one of them murmured pensively. "Nothing now

but broken stone and rotted bone. Not even pickings to tempt a vulture there

now."

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Karl Edward Wagner - The Other One

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