World's End (21 page)

Blain was so lost in thought he didn't hear Evelle's answer. ‘Kiown's off to Levaal South. He said there's someone there he's got to speak with. It's all very exciting, Blain. Isn't it?'

Dyan shot through the sky like an arrow fired, now and then dipping or swerving to catch gusts of wind for a boost to their speed. Sitting aboard him was so natural that Kiown felt like a limb moulded to his back. It was still hard to believe that this mighty creature actually obeyed him; it could turn and slay him with ease at any second. Shilen had explained the amulet would not allow it.

She had also told him what was expected of him. As long as he played his role – to be a lord of men, in opposition to the Pilgrim and Aziel – he was free to act as he would, or so she'd claimed.

Well, he would see if she truly meant it …

They'd crossed World's End many hours back, with no ceremony and no noticeable effect. Nightmare was still patrolling the skies near the boundary, although he'd clearly failed in his attempt to stop the stoneflesh giants from crossing. Near the boundary Kiown had seen two, both standing motionless in the southern realm. Other than the haiyens themselves, there was no indication yet that anything had crossed back in response.

As they flew he tried to compare the worlds of North and South. From the skies, Levaal North seemed like a sculpture
assembled by whimsical forces not concerned with cohesion or beauty. The South was a more finely made sculpture, formed by an artist … but over time set upon and trampled by something huge, mindless and destructive. The range of mountains they'd just flown over had shapes too deliberate not to have been
crafted
by something quite conscious of its work; but a mountain-sized pile of loose shattered stone through the middle of the range ruined the picture. Blankets of sparkling green forest laid out in twisting patterns had vast crushed swathes through them, leaving blackened indentations where nothing had grown back.

The strangest thing to Kiown was the sense that this had all happened long ago, this damage to the South world. And yet natural processes had not covered the tracks of whatever had done it. Was time different here? Indeed there seemed no darkening of day and night by which to keep track of his journey. So it was he could not have said how many hours or days they'd flown.

Still, all this was not as strange as Kiown's brief glimpse of Otherworld, with its peculiar points of light in the night sky. Could it really be true, he wondered yet again, that a world existed with no magic in it? ‘Is there magic here?' Kiown asked Dyan.

The dragon's voice seemed to rumble from its gut, carrying despite the buffeting air: ‘There is magic, as we know it. But it comes from the North, has been trapped here since the Wall was built. That kind of magic is no longer used here for spell craft. The beings here know that my elders can sometimes perceive what gets cast, and by whom, when the airs cycle back through them. That's how dragons manipulate humankind from afar. The fuel your mages use passes through the dragons' minds.
And dragons can fuse their intentions into those very airs, well before your mages use them for spells.'

Kiown knew Dyan was now effectively human in the eyes of his own kind, regarded as lower than a drake. He'd been banished, cut off for good. Still Kiown had not expected Dyan to reveal such things openly.

‘As water cycles from the sky to the ground and back, so do the airs cycle all through the realms,' said Dyan. ‘It was how my elders caused war among the gods, and provoked Inferno's madness.'

‘Shilen didn't say a thing about that.'

‘Indeed not. It is a well-kept secret, that dragons do much to change the world beneath. Such manipulations are difficult – we lesser dragons can hardly participate. Even among the Eight, far more of their designs fail to manifest than succeed. It is one reason they find it necessary to distribute charms among humans.'

‘Have you been to this country before, Dyan?'

‘Long ago.' But Dyan would answer no more questions about the place, as if the subject were traumatic.

Kiown ordered him to find a safe place to land. He descended to a high bare plateau with a good view of the plains beneath. Nothing living could be seen and there were great rends and cracks in the ground, very much like the results of enormous hammer blows.

Kiown held aloft the amulet. The desire to fondle it in peace was one reason he'd wished for a break from flight. ‘You are unable to lie to me, when I possess this,' he said. ‘Is that so?'

‘There are some secrets I may not tell you. In all other matters, the choice to betray you is one I cannot make.'

‘You may not tell? Why not? The other dragons have exiled you. You're no longer one of them.'

‘The words would not pass my lips, if I attempted to tell you.'

‘The charm does that?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then tell me this. I am going to meet the haiyens of the South. I may say things to them the other dragons won't like. I may
do
things the dragons won't like. Will this—' he shook the amulet by its chain ‘—inhibit me? Will it betray me to them?'

Dyan peered closely at the charm. It was some time before he answered – Kiown was getting used to the idea that dragons were seldom in the hurry that humans were. ‘There are natural laws,' he said at last, as if this answered the question.

‘Which means what?'

‘Your choice shall remain yours. Dragons may inhibit your freedoms, they may kill you. But such actions count against them. If our Parent wakes, those dragons who have offended against the laws to a high degree may be punished. They may be slain, or worse. We may be punished collectively or as individuals. We shall not know until it happens. This gift of yours was given freely, and does not restrict your freedom. If Shilen learns of your plans – whatever those plans are – she may decide to take action. But it will have nothing to do with your charm.'

‘So I can do what I want. This charm will aid me in whatever I do. Even if the “brood” won't at all like the actions I choose. Is that right?'

Dyan's head lowered:
Yes.

Kiown paced for a while, thinking of the conversation with Domudess. There was something in this realm that had slain some of the dragons, back in ancient times. But other than the damage to the land itself, he'd seen no sign of it. Was Dyan telling the truth now? He could not tell. But if Kiown was truly
to be a lord among men, he refused to rule at the behest of the dragons.

(Vous, my love – I am yours, yours for all time, whatever it is you have become, he thought. His throat burned up. Quickly he snuffed out such thoughts and emotions, or tried to. Dyan could sense moods, and at times it almost seemed he could hear certain of Kiown's thoughts.) Kiown said, ‘How far to fly now? How long till we reach the lost haiyens?'

‘I have not been in this country since the split formed among the haiyen people. But we have come a long way south. There are powers in this region I do not understand. They are becoming aware of us as we linger here. We should fly.'

‘Are they things you could not handle, if it should come to a battle?'

‘Should not a warrior take care with his finest weapon?'

Kiown laughed. He moved to get back on Dyan but suddenly someone was standing between them. A haiyen. Kiown's sword was in hand in a heartbeat.

The haiyen spread his hands, showing them as empty. ‘I bring a warning,' it said.

‘I'm listening.'

‘What you intend to do is known.'

‘Prove it. Say what it is I intend to do.'

‘You mean to fly to a city of the lost ones. You mean to bargain with them, for their help. If you do this, they will deceive you.'

Kiown moved two paces closer to the haiyen so that he was within striking distance. ‘Go on. Deceived in what way?'

‘They claim they have control of the entities they brought to this land, the entities which slew dragons here, long ago. The truth is they are under control of those entities.'

Kiown watched the haiyen silently for a moment. He could
not tell whether it spoke truly or not. ‘Dyan. Leave us be for a moment. Go for a brief flight, but be ready to return quickly.'

‘Are you sure?' said the dragon.

‘Is this haiyen the only one here?'

‘He is all that I perceive close to us. But I did not perceive him until he revealed himself. Those things further away show no sign of approaching yet.'

‘Then go.' Dyan spread his wings and launched from the platform. When he'd flown out of hearing range, Kiown said, ‘The lost ones, as you name them. Did they or did they not defeat the dragons who came to your realm, long ago?'

‘At too high a cost.'

Kiown laughed. ‘Do you know the land we live in? Do you know the way we have lived? There is little to risk for us. It is already war-ravaged.'

‘Your actions affect more worlds and planes than just your own.'

Kiown laughed again. ‘Then those other worlds should have done more to aid us in our plight.'

‘Others cannot make your choices for you.'

‘Your “lost ones” must have been desperate, to do what they did. How exactly did they slay the dragons?'

‘They brought beings into the world, beings who should not exist here. Those beings are worse than dragons.'

‘How so?'

‘They have no consciousness. They cannot be communicated with. They simply
are.
And they destroy.'

‘Have you a better way to deal with dragons?'

‘Yes. Some of my people have ventured into your lands to teach these ways.'

‘Thanks. You've told me all I need to know.' Kiown's arm
whiplashed through the air; his blade cut through the haiyen's neck with such liquid ease he didn't feel its swing impeded at all. He kicked the fallen head over the ledge then rifled through the pockets of its gown. There was nothing worth keeping. He waved his arms to get the dragon's attention as it circled above the platform. ‘Dyan! Let's go.'

It was not much further before the city of the lost haiyens came into view. Dyan slowed his flight as they took the sight in. Great climbing spires rose like a huge crown on the landscape, high as mountains, made of something like polished black glass. All the country beneath, far out of reach of the city, was trampled and cracked. Something unthinkably huge – something to make stoneflesh giants seem insects, by the look of things – had come trampling through here many, many times. The tall city seemed the only thing not cracked and broken.

Kiown breathed deep, and felt the kind of pleasure one feels coming home after a long voyage. Those towers! Nothing had been built like them in all the North. He thirsted for such a tower to call his own, marvelled at the high platforms and bridges stretching from peak to peak. He saw haiyens strolling on those platforms as Dyan flew nearer, saw them pause and turn their faces up, frozen in their steps, likely amazed to see a dragon in their sky.

Kiown sensed Dyan's nervousness. He understood it: a human gambling his life was gambling but a few decades. A dragon was gambling far, far more. He patted Dyan's neck and said, ‘Trust me.'

As all this occurred Eric wandered, not happy but at peace, and glad to be free of other people. Now and then in the clouds above him – grey slabs moving over their background white – were fleeting forms of Invia dancing and diving between clouds, following his movements but never coming close enough to speak.

Whether word had spread or not that a new power had assumed control of the castle, people began to return to the northern lands. None knew who now ruled, nor which cities it was safe to return to, for tales of genocide in Aligned cities had spread far, tales so brutal and senseless few truly believed them until they saw the ditches and piles of bones with their own eyes.

Eric camped one night beside a road leading to Athlent, one place where such massacres had occurred. Soon two men approached his fire, wearing the white of the castle's army. ‘You ride a drake,' said one of them. ‘Like he from the fables, named Shadow. But surely you are not he?'

Eric held aloft the amulet, not knowing what would happen, and said: ‘Both of you are Favoured.'

The two looked at each other for a moment, then one of them
cried out: ‘A lord has come, a lord has come! We will tell the citizens of your realm, Lord, we will tell them! What is your name, Lord?'

‘Batman,' Eric said, and he laughed.

‘We will tell them your name, Lord! Have you a lady?'

‘I do. Alas, it is Aziel. But I suppose it could be worse.'

‘We will tell them you have come, Lord!' the men said. They departed, their lord helpless with laughter for a good while after they'd gone.

From then on, whenever he encountered people on the roads or in small towns, he said those same words –
You are Favoured –
and got similar reactions. None asked what it meant to be ‘Favoured' and in truth he didn't truly know either … but all who heard those words were similarly affected. Many would pack their things and head straight for the castle as if he'd set important tasks before them.

He had no wish to return there. Days of freedom stretched out behind and before him. He lived from the land, catching the wild but docile poultry with his hands, roasting them over fires, sharing food freely on the edge of the woods with a man who had at first tried to rob him. He told the man he was Favoured. The man tearfully swore he would find and slay all of Eric's enemies. ‘All of them, Shadow, my master, every one.'

‘Get to it. Leave none of them alive, my son.'

Eric set traps here and there using sticks and rocks the way Siel had taught him. He threw the amulet off into the woods, amused by the way it scuttled back every time through the leaves and twigs, always returning no matter how far he threw it. Once he put it in a makeshift boat of sticks and bark, and set it adrift in a fast-gushing stream. For most of a day it was gone and he'd begun to wonder if he'd perhaps done a grievously
stupid thing. When at last the charm returned, he knew that Shadow was no longer imprisoned within it. He didn't know how he knew, but he did.

One night when he'd made his fire and was singing songs to his sleeping drake, Shilen returned to him in human form. Case did not stir. To look at her, it seemed impossible she had ever been other than this tall Amazonian woman, leather clinging to her full body. There was no hint now of the white shape so graceful on the water, one wing raised to catch the air and a head snapping down to end Anfen's life.

Eric poked the fire with a stick, stirring a small red storm of embers. ‘I thought you dragons needed a human to hide inside. That's how it was with Dyan.'

She sat down across from him. Her large eyes shone with firelight through a veil of flaxen curls. ‘It has been considered safer to travel disguised within a human. Things change. The natural laws are more relaxed than they once were. We test the laws, little by little. When Dyan was partially hidden within a human, he went near the castle. To go there is forbidden to dragon and Spirit both. And yet nothing untoward happened.'

‘Why is it forbidden?'

‘Because the castle is the place where human rulers dwell. As our Parent designed. We are not to go near, and never to go inside it. Dyan was told to go close, hidden inside a human body. Our Parent did not stir. I went near the castle in a thinner disguise, hiding in no human body, instead merely changing my shape. Again, our Parent did not stir. You helped us test the laws further, by summoning Hauf inside the castle. And then our Parent
did
stir.'

‘I see. So that was as far as you could go.'

‘It was much further than we dared expect,' she said, a gleam in her eyes as if they were both in on the scheme from the beginning. ‘I do not know the next test the great ones plan.'

‘They'll come themselves, won't they? But that's not a test, is it? That's the real thing – what you've all been waiting for.'

‘Yes. It may be soon, or it may not. Life in your realm must continue as if it is a century away, though it may be only days. You have chosen some Favoured ones?'

He lay back with one leg crossed over the other and smiled. ‘Sure have.'

She leaned towards him, hair almost hanging in the fire. ‘Why the amusement?'

‘I'm smiling at my selection criteria. Everyone I've seen I've declared Favoured. Drunks, wanderers, this old crippled woman. One guy I think was dying. They're all in the club now.'

He saw in her anger a faint hint of slitted eyes. Just for an instant. ‘I advise you to think through your choices,' she said. ‘Those selected are going to aid your realm, when aid is needed. You are not permitted infinite numbers. Those you choose will be protected from the dragons, and they gain a small measure of power.'

‘What sort of power? They become wizards?'

‘No! Their strengths are accentuated, that is all. Only slightly. They keep their vices and flaws. If you Favour all thieves, your realm will be filled with very skilled thieves. It is unwise to be careless.'

He dropped the stick in the fire, puffing up another burst of sparks. ‘These aren't my rules.'

‘This is your realm now, Eric. Who else makes the rules?'

‘You do. You gave me a limited range of choices and claimed
it was freedom. Now I act within the limits you imposed, and you don't like that either.'

‘So you do this just to test the value of my promise that you are free.'

‘Guess so. There's one thing I can't get past. You and all your kind are infinitely greater than us. I might not like it, but I admit it. The lowest dragon does things no human can. Why then are you so concerned with us? Why do we matter to you at all?'

She hissed an angry breath. ‘Imagine for a moment that animals could understand your speech, and see as you can see. If you approached animals with a show of your power and knowledge, they would be greatly impressed. Would they not? You would be like gods to them. Would it then be true for those animals to assume that you are perfect beings, with no problems of your own to solve?'

He laughed, surprised and delighted by the truth in it. She went on, ‘And that these gods before them had surely moved on beyond war and division among themselves?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘So, do dragons know no division and conflict? The Eight are truly united only in their desire to be free of the cage. More goes on here, man-lord. Ever more than you are allowed to perceive. And you have a role in it. I dare not tell you everything here and now, however much it would make things easier for us both. Concern yourself with your realm, and heed my advice only, never another dragon's. And never
any
Spirit's. Business occurs that affects your realm, Eric. I was sent to return and tell you of it.'

‘Sent by whom?'

She hesitated. ‘Vyin sends me. Among that which I may not
tell you are ill tidings.' She put her forehead in her hands, the distress convincing enough to make him believe it was genuine. ‘The slain warrior's breastplate is important,' she said. ‘I intended Vyin to have it. It contains magic which allows entrance into a plane we had not been able to get to before. Now we can enter that hidden place. We had once thought it to be just a myth of men. The hidden realm is real! The slain warrior Anfen called it “the quiet”. Valour can go there as he wishes. That place, Eric, may hold the answer to unlocking our prison. When we first spoke in the skies, it seemed at least a human lifetime before our likely freedom. Now it is imminent.'

‘So why do you look so upset?'

‘I am powerful in your eyes. Dyan is also. Yet he and I are not of the Eight. In Takkish Iholme I was waylaid. In the Gate. If they are watching it, going unnoticed is … difficult. The wrong dragons took the breastplate from me. One of the brood consumed it, and now digests the knowledge.'

‘You mean swallowed it?'

‘Yes. Soon he will send forth a key he shall create, and it will be for me to go to the hidden realm and do their work. My task is to destroy their cage. I can do so.'

‘There is, I would suggest, extremely little I can do about all this, Shilen. I am but the head bird in your human poultry pen.'

‘As you say it, it shall be,' she spat.

He sat up, surprised by her anger. He had supposed she was here once more to steer him to a destiny laid out already, moving with the volition of a pinball bouncing. Had she come to him for
advice
? ‘What do you want from me, Shilen?'

‘You govern the affairs of men. For that, gifts were given to you. A god of flame, diminished but restless, shall have his embers warmed by foolish men who wish to play with power.
You will say we dragons could stop it. You can stop them waking Inferno but I cannot. Hauf's test showed our Parent's sleep grows shallower. The castle rumbled? Then you felt it stirring. We dragons dare not break more rules of interference at this time, not until all have descended.

‘And your realm has other business. A rival lord for you rises in the south. He too has been granted gifts, of a kind I know not. He will take your throne, if he proves worthier of it than you. You will not love his rule, if you did not love how Avridis ruled. This new lord will be a tyrant of great cruelty. You asked for freedom. I shall not interfere. If you are defeated, it will be so. And your early actions indicate your defeat is likely enough.'

She leaned forwards, the crackling fire shining in her eyes. The woods behind them seemed to listen to her words. ‘You appear to treat all this as a game. Think of this: two great wrestling beasts push up against each other. Their strength is equal. Ah, but if one only had an insect's strength more, he would win, his foe collapsed at last. If you are but an insect, Eric – or as you put it, poultry in a pen – you have now entered the grand ancient battle. And your tiny serve of strength may make a great beast collapse.'

Eric sat up, began to ask a question, but she was gone. If she'd meant to kill his light mood, she'd succeeded. The night's quiet was watchful. Something shifted in the woods behind him, fleeing with quick steps when he turned.

That night he dreamed of a thousand war mages being eaten by Shâ, dreamed of the whole land filled with them falling dead and thick as raindrops. Dreamed of a dragon's jaws opening bigger than the sky to devour the world, which tilted like a table, sliding everything down into the closing maw.

*

Come morning, there was a distant rumbling he thought was thunder. The ground shivered.

Something struck the dirt nearby. Another object fell, and another. Hailstones the size of coins landed all about him.

He got to his feet, inspecting a small chunk of quartz-coloured lightstone. It faintly shone, growing slightly brighter in the gloom of early morning, just as the vast acres of the same stone across the sky too began to lighten. Another broken piece fell into the grass some distance away.