Chapter headings

• I. From Shanglestone Strand to Saskervoy
• 1. Flutic
• 2. The Inn of Blue Lamps
• II. From Saskervoy to the Tustvold Mud Flats
• 1. Aboard the Galante
• 2. Lausicaa
• 3. The Ocean of Sighs
• III. From Tustvold to Port Perdusz
• 1. The Columns
• 2. Faucelme
• IV. From Port Perdusz to Kaspara Vitatus
• 1. On the Docks
• 2. The Caravan
• V. From Kaspara Vitatus to Cuirnif
• 1. The Seventeen Virgins
• 2. The Bagful of Dreams
• VI. From Cuirnif to Pergolo
• 1. The Four Wizards
• 2. Spatterlight

Characters

• Cugel – Self-styled "the Clever", the novel's picaresque hero – or anti-hero.
• Master Twango – Avaricious owner of the manse Flutic and a dealer in "treasures of the past", chiefly the scales of the Overworld entity Sadlark, which he exhumes, refurbishes, indexes and sells.
• Weamish – Twango's erstwhile majordomo and "supervisor of operations", a post which in fact involves toiling as an ill-paid general dogsbody.
• Gark and Gookin – Grotesque, goblin-like creatures who enforce Twango's orders and keep a tally of the exorbitant charges he levies on his employees.
• Yelleg and Malser – Workmen employed by Twango to dive for Sadlark's scales in the miry pit at Flutic; Cugels mistreatment of them leads to them stealing Cugel's ill-gotten gains, and they begin a new life as dandies in Saskervoy
• Bilberd – The half-witted gardener at Flutic, who subsequently goes into fashion design after appropriating Cugel's hidden stash of valuable scales.
• Master Soldinck – Importer and exporter, shipping agent at Saskervoy, partner of Master Mercantides. Has a strained relationship with his overbearing wife.
• Master Mercantides – Importer and exporter, shipping agent at Saskervoy, partner of Master Soldinck.
• Bunderwal – Hired by Soldinck and Mercantides as supercargo on the Galante, a trickster whose cunning proves superior to Cugel's
• Wagmund – Former worminger on the Galante.
• Drofo – Chief Worminger of the Galante, prone to mystical speechifying about the sea and the worminger's calling.
• Baunt – Captain of the Galante.
• Lankwiler – Worminger on the Galante, whose laziness in his duties causes conflicts on board.
• Pulk – Worminger resident on the island of Lausicaa.
• Fuscule – Worminger resident on Lausicaa, Pulk's nephew and Cugel's intended replacement
• Turlulia – "Formidable and awesome" woman, to whom Soldinck, wishing to explore Lausicaa's unusual sexual customs, falls victim as a result of a trick played on him by Cugel.
• Madame Soldinck – Wife of Master Soldinck, a harridan who ultimately gets the better of Cugel.
• Tabazinth, Meadhre, Salasser – Daughters of Soldinck.
• Nisbet – Quarryman and column-builder to the village of Tustvold.
• Dame Tadouc – Cobbler-woman at Tustvold.
• Dame Sequorce – Ringleader of the Tustvold women who decide to threaten Nisbet with violence in order to make him speed up delivery of column segments.
• Dame Mupo – Recently married woman from Tustvold, who receives a three-segment starter column for her husband from Nisbet and Cugel.
• Dame Petish – Dame Mupo's aunt, who discovers Nisbet and Cugel's fraudulent scheme.
• Faucelme – Magician of evil repute, whose manse lies on the road to Port Perdusz.
• Wiskich – Ship's captain of the Dilk race, owner of the Avventura.
• Master Sabbas – Known as "Sab the Swindler", formerly the owner of a draying business, now senile, his exploits are viewed with kind amusement by the natives of Port Perdusz; masquerading as a ticket agent, he cheats Cugel of all his money. As his ticket is neither honored nor refunded, Cugel steals the "Avventura" to continue his return home as its "Captain".
• Varmous – Caravan master who plies the route from Port Perdusz to Kaspara Vitatus.
• Nissifer – Passenger aboard the Avventura, in fact a hybrid of bazil and sime, disguised as a middle-aged woman. She is unsociable, especially to Ermaulde and Ivanello.
• Ermaulde – Plump, voluble woman, passenger aboard the Avventura, devoured by Nissifer.
• Gaulph Rabi – Ecclesiarch and pantologist, passenger aboard the Avventura.
• Ivanello – Handsome young dandy, passenger aboard the Avventura, devoured by Nissifer.
• Clissum – Aesthete, author of odes including Gaunt Are the Towers of My Mind, passenger aboard the Avventura.
• Perruquil – Passenger aboard the Avventura, devoured by Nissifer.
• Doctor Lalanke – Wealthy antiquarian, passenger aboard the Avventura. He refuses to assume responsibility for the damage his mimes did to Cugel.
• Sush, Skasja and Rlys – Three "mimes" with silent childlike personalities. They were discovered in an ancient ruin by, and in the charge of, Doctor Lalanke. They throw irreplaceable artifacts, belonging to Cugel, overboard.
• Shilko – Bibulous, garrulous teamster, assigned as lookout to the Avventura.
• Maier – Innkeeper in Gundar.
• Huruska – Nolde of Gundar, intransigent upholder of the Doctrines of the Order of Solar Emosynaries.
• Shimilko – Caravan master entrusted with conveying the Seventeen Virgins to the temple city of Lumarth.
• Chaladet – The Grand Thearch of Lumarth.
• Phampoun – Light-hating demon resident beneath one of the temples of Lumarth.
• Pulsifer – Homunculus growing on the tip of Phampoun's tongue, through which the sleeping Phampoun communicates with his victims.
• Erwig – Impoverished but hospitable native of the village of Samsetiska, who provides Cugel with shelter in his hut.
• Iolo – Dream collector from Lake Let in the Land of Dai-Passant, a character more unscrupulous even than Cugel himself.
• Duke Orbal of Ombalique – ruler of Cuirnif, a connoisseur of marvels.
• Zaraflam – Exhibitor at Duke Orbal's Exposition of Marvels; his exhibit is titled Nimble Squadrons, a military parade of trained cockroaches.
• Bazzard – Son of the Four Wizards; his exhibit, titled Unlikely Musicians, is disqualified from the Exposition of Marvels after his singing fish die when the water drains from their tank.
• Xallops – Exhibits a talking but truculent book, the Compendium of Universal Knowledge, at the Exposition of Marvels.
• Uthaw – Irascible denizen of the otherworld accessible through Cugel's exhibit at the Exposition of Marvels, titled Nowhere.
• The Four Wizards – Disserl, Vasker, Pelesias and Archimbaust, victims of a joke played by Iucounu, they are forced to share a single eye, ear, arm and leg. They form a notably stable alliance with the usually treacherous Cugel.
• Lorgan – Bibulous dealer in fancy embroideries, guest at the Inn of Five Flags in the village Flath Foiry.
• Iucounu – Nicknamed the Laughing Magician, and Cugel's arch-enemy. Iucouno is not only sadistic but considered petty and vain even by the standards set by his fellow mages, an extremely dangerous combination for those around him. He is known to send out familiars to listen for gossip about himself, and punishes those whom he finds are not speaking highly of him.
• Sadlark – a "Demiurge" entity of the Overworld, who split into his component parts during a great battle with the Underworld entity Unda-Hrada. This is the same battle from whence the "Eyes of the Overworld" come.

The sea voyage

Chapter II of Cugel's Saga, "From Saskervoy to the Tustvold Mud Flats", with three sub-chapters: "Aboard the Galante", "Lausicaa" and "The Ocean of Sighs", is structured around one of Vance's favourite narrative themes: description of a voyage by sailing ship. The theme can also be found in Servants of the Wankh (1969), The Pnume (1970), Maske: Thaery (1976), Showboat World (1975), and Lyonesse (1983). Variants of the same theme are the overland sailing wagons of the Wind-runners of the Palga plateau in The Gray Prince (1974) and, in Cugel's Saga, the ship that is towed through the air in chapter IV.2 "The Caravan" after being magically charged with Cugel's gravity-repellent boot dressing.

Otherworlds

Another significant recurring theme in the work of Jack Vance also to be found in Cugel's Saga is that of the "otherworld". In "The Bagful of Dreams" (chapter V.2) a magical blue egg worn by a pelgrane around its neck shatters on the ground creating a portal into an otherworld, which turns out to be an interminable region of undulating "black spongy stuff" whose sole inhabitant is an irascible, gelatinous, tentacular hulk named Uthaw. Similarly, in The Green Pearl, a large part of the narrative is set in the otherworld of Tanjecterly, which Visbhume tricks Glyneth into entering via a hut in the Forest of Tantrevalles. Twitten's Almanack, part of Vance's Lyonesse mythos, describes a number of such otherworlds, of which only Tanjecterly will support human life: Paador, Nith, and Woon; Hidmarth and Skurre, which are "purulent places infested with demons"; Cheng, which might be home to the sandestins; Pthopus, which is a "single torpid soul", and Underwood, which is "empty save for a moaning sound." In "The Seventeen Virgins" (chapter V.1), Cugel enters a subworld, or "demon-realm", inhabited by the photophobic demonic deity Phampoun, who communicates via a homuncular excrescence on the end of his tongue. The narrative device of the journey into the demon subworld is employed at far greater length in Michael Shea's sequel/homage to The Eyes of the Overworld, A Quest for Simbilis (1974),^[2] and in his novellas "Come Then Mortal, We Shall Seek Her Soul" and "The Fishing of the Demon Sea", which form part of Nifft the Lean (1982).^[3] The subworld theme is also present in one of Vance's earliest Dying Earth tales, "Guyal of Sfere" in The Dying Earth (1950), in which the demon-lord Blikdak creates a breach in the vast underground Museum of Man as he tries to rise up from his own subjacent infernal realm.

The Skybreak Spatterlight

At the beginning of Cugel's Saga the eponymous hero takes employment at Flutic, a manse in the land of Cutz, where an archaeological operation is underway to recover the constituent scales of an Overworld entity named Sadlark. During the Eighteenth Aeon, a demon by the name of Underherd is said to have "interfered with the overworld", and Sadlark, in trying to set matters right, plunged into the miry pit now found at the back of Flutic, where he became "disassociated". Master Twango, the owner of Flutic, deals in the scales, selling them to the firm of Soldinck and Mercantides, whose end customer is Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Iucounu, believing himself to be Sadlark's avatar, is in the process of reassembling the Overworld entity, with which he intends to merge himself. Twango's basic reference work on Sadlark's scales is Haruviot's Intimate Anatomy of Several Overworld Personages, which allows him to classify them as "ordinaries" or "specials". The latter, possessing a greater charge of Overworld force, are astringent to the touch. Examples of specials are Clover-leaf Femurials, Dorsal Double Luminants, Interlocking Sequalions, Lateral Flashers, Juncture Spikes, the Turret Frontal Lapidative and the Malar Astrangal, which fits over the elbow part of Sadlark's third arm.

The most valuable and potent scale of all is the Pectoral Skybreak Spatterlight, or "protonastic centrum", whose very touch is deadly, absorbing any living creature with which it comes into contact. Iucounu describes it as follows: "The protonastic centrum is the node which binds the other scales with lines of force. This node is the soul and force of Sadlark. With the node in place, Sadlark lives once again; indeed Sadlark was never dead, but merely disassociated" (Chapter VI.2). Through sheer luck, Cugel obtains the Skybreak Spatterlight from the mire at Flutic, and the scale is the weapon whereby he ultimately defeats his arch-enemy, Iucounu. The Skybreak Spatterlight is central to the plot at a number of points, for example, during Cugel's encounter with the magician Faucelme. It is also by means of the Skybreak Spatterlight that Cugel is able to defeat Nissifer, the monstrous insectoid hybrid of sime and bazil that preys on the passengers of the Avventura. The Skybreak Spatterlight lends an overarching unity to the separate picaresque episodes of Cugel's Saga, with the exception of the chapters "The Seventeen Virgins" and "The Bagful of Dreams", which were written and published earlier than the rest of the book and in which Sadlark's protonastic centrum is not mentioned.

Fantastic ethnologies

One of the defining features of Jack Vance's work is his invention of fictional ethnologies, which encompass culinary, sartorial, marital, economic, architectural, musical, jurisprudential, social etc. customs and practices, as well as, in many cases most importantly, religious beliefs. Significant examples of such fantastic ethnologies in Cugel's Saga are the cultures to be found in Lausicaa, Tustvold, Gundar and Lumarth. The island of Lausicaa (chapter II.2) is notable for its matriarchal social system, which requires that all adult males go "under the veil". At Tustvold (chapter III.1), the women practise trades (cobbler, tanner, butcher etc.), while their husbands pass their time as idle stylites, basking atop columns in the health-giving rays of the dying sun. The height of a husband's column is an index of the wife's position in the social hierarchy. The description of Gundar (chapter V.1) provides a fuller ethnology, including aspects such as architecture and costume, as well as their historical/mythical rationale. Gundar is the last isolated outpost of the Order of Solar Emosynaries, who believe that by focusing the heat of a fire on the solar disk by means of a complicated contraption of lenses they prevent the dying sun from being extinguished. The natives of Lumarth (chapter V.1) are demon-worshippers who hypocritically justify their religious practices using an elaborate doctrine of altruism and benevolence.

Textual variants

The first six paragraphs of the short story "The Seventeen Virgins" published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1974) differ substantially from the chapter of the same title published in Cugel's Saga (1983) in style, content and the characterisation of Cugel. In the earlier version of the text, Cugel is said to have "made a hasty departure" from a place called Julle, where he suffered "indignities" at the hands of his enemies, but also managed to cause them "confusion." In the later version, Cugel has fled from Kaspara Vitatus, at the end of the preceding chapter ("The Caravan"), and the opening two paragraphs cursorily narrate how he baffles the pursuit and then, emerging from hiding, shakes his fist and shouts curses after the distant figures of the angry mob as they return to town. Where the later version briefly narrates Cugel's journey across the wilderness known as the Pale Rugates without any indication as to his inner state - he is described merely as marching for an unspecified number of days, eating "ramp, burdock, squallix and an occasional newt" to fend off starvation - the earlier version explores Cugel's affective reactions to his environment and situation, for example: "The breadth of the sky exalted his soul; the emptiness of the far distances caused him fatigue and despondency." Similarly, in a "spasm of self-assertion", Cugel delivers the following soliloquy in the first version:

"Hear me, all who detect sound, in every realm of the living world! I am Cugel, Cugel the Clever! My courage and resource, my cunning and craft are notorious! I am not to be trifled with!"

A comparison of the following paragraph in its two variants will serve to show how in the later version Vance has honed his prose style, paring away redundant adverbs, descriptive language and psychological details:

On the afternoon of the seventh day Cugel limped down a slope into an ancient orchard, long abandoned. A few withered hag-apples clung to the limbs; these Cugel avidly devoured. Then, discerning the trace of an old road, he set off buoyed by the conviction that the Pale Rugates lay behind him.^[13]
On the afternoon of the seventh day Cugel limped down a slope into an ancient orchard. Cugel found and devoured a few withered hag-apples, then set off along the track of an old road.^[14]