World's End (22 page)

Case's lazy flight returned Eric to the castle. By its front gate a ring of half-giants stood guard. Many of them were bigger even than Faul, although some – perhaps juveniles – were small enough to pass as large humans. Crowds of gawkers came to stare, many never having seen a single half-giant, let alone a small army of them. This was the desired reaction. Word would gradually filter back to the most distant cities, likely with great exaggeration of the half-giants' numbers. Avridis was gone, but the cities would know the castle had been claimed, and taking it over would require a bruising fight indeed.

And wonder of wonders, here rode ‘Shadow' on his drake. He had stepped from the story books and become real, to bring a prosperous age with him from Otherworld. Surely he would, no matter that the world seemed to shake now and then, no matter that little pieces of lightstone here and there rained down …

Entering through the window of Aziel's former bedroom, Eric found food for Case and for himself, rested up in her bed, then explored at his leisure the countless luxurious suites of those upper floors. A few possessions and trinkets left behind showed that high-ranking military folk had dwelled here. It was all
abandoned now. There weren't even any grey-robe servants left.

When finally he found the place Aziel had commandeered as her new throne room, he saw she'd gotten on with business quite comfortably. She was a sight to behold, regal and calm while activity flurried around her. Advisors had come from the cities, their best and brightest eager for work. They rattled off figures from sheaves of paper, standing in patient lines outside the chamber, filling it with their quietly excited whispers. A new start. A new age. Here they were, part of its machinery. Proud as parents of the growing new empire. They hardly had a glance to spare for Eric, or for the red drake smelling of beer hobbling along behind him.

‘You'll be pleased to know the food has been distributed,' Aziel snapped at him by way of greeting. ‘The cities will eat. That's what you wanted?'

He couldn't help laughing at her accusing tone. ‘Yes, Aziel. I think people should generally be allowed to eat.'

‘Fine. Now
you
work out how to make the cities behave themselves.'

‘What precisely do you mean by that?'

‘Think of yourself as their father,' said one of the advisors, a hunched older man smiling through yellow teeth. ‘He provides for his children. But he must now and then be stern. A mild, staged uprising with very swift suppression shall do the trick. In two weeks the thing can be done. No youngster will touch the hot stove after the first one has a severe burn or two.'

O Christ, Eric thought. So this is what it means to be Sauron. This is what it means, when Frodo keeps the ring. You get to hear bureaucrat types making it sound pragmatic to fill ditches with bodies. He said, ‘All of you in this room, listen up. I deem you are all Favoured.'

Sudden silence fell, broken by a breeze of excited chatter passing through the chamber. Aziel gaped at him, shocked and angry. The advisors babbled fervently or fell to their knees declaring loyalty. Most needed no further instruction. They ran from the room, filled with new zest and power, certain of their tasks. ‘Why did you do that?' Aziel yelled. ‘We have to know what they're up to. You can't give them run of the realm!' Eric laughed and climbed aboard Case. ‘Where are you going now?' she said.

‘I might go watch them wake Inferno. Should be quite a show.'

‘Didn't Shilen tell you to stop them?'

‘I think it was more of a suggestion. She also said we're free, not her servants or pets. Let's find out if that's true.'

‘Eric, don't you dare leave. I need you here. There is much about rule you need to learn. I'll find a new lord to replace you, if I have to.'

‘You'll have to make sure he's from story books, as I am,' said Eric, smiling. ‘The fable about Shadow is the one reason people will tolerate Vous's daughter being in power. Without me, they'd throw you out of here in five minutes.'

He saw the truth sink in. Her eyes frosted. The gears of her mind clicked over almost audibly:
They never lay eyes on this chamber, young sieur. You could be killed, your death kept secret for decades. For decades, they could think you're still here, alive. I might even find a lookalike to appear on the balcony and wave now and then …

She said, ‘This is no game.'

‘Actually, Aziel, yes it is. That's just what it is.'

As if to state agreement Case leaped out the window and into the sky.

It
was
a game. About his realm he flew. He gladly lost track of the days. When he landed to eat in villages and towns, the
people called him Shadow and honoured him. When the mood struck he declared them Favoured by the dragons. None ever asked what this meant, and indeed he hardly knew himself. Case lapped up buckets of ale people set before him and belched fire. People clapped, delighted. They asked Eric if the times of turmoil were over; he said that was up to them. They said Shadow had stepped from the story books to bring them an age of light. He repeated Shilen's words: ‘As you say it, it shall be.' They nodded as if this were great wisdom. Perhaps it was.

In Aligned cities like Hane, people were being fed again with stores from the castle. Lands about these cities were newly planted with seeds. People were dealing with the gift of freedom with suspicion and great difficulty. Few could truly accept that there was now no tyrant to rule and starve them. But the food deliveries kept coming. Little by little, like lone candles lit in vast dark rooms, a degree of liberty slowly came to the hell holes Vous and the Arch Mage had created in the cities.

The Tormentors were mostly gone from the fields and roads. Now they were as rare a sight as elementals, leaving behind only the grief they'd caused, holes punched into the ground and their broken forms here and there, minus a part or two taken to be studied for its magic, or finger-blades taken to smiths for forging into swords. Who had slain the things or driven them out, none knew. People said Shadow had done it, and by Shadow they meant Eric. Some claimed the last ones had been seen stalking among the cliffs and hills to Elvury City to take refuge there. Indeed many tracks led to that place.

Now and then the sky rumbled – but not with thunder. Chunks of broken-off lightstone fell, sometimes marble-sized, sometimes bigger.

In the place Anfen had called the quiet, where time did not exist, there was a twilit landscape whose purple darkness was broken here or there by frozen explosions of light: magic as crystal forms suspended in the air, expressions of power like the letters of a divine language, written instructions waiting to be hammered into reality's tapestry. They were spells, alive and yet not alive. When the shadowy creatures called Shapers drifted along to read them, Levaal's reality changed – changed as the spell caster intended, and to the spell caster's eye, the change was immediate. Almost no mages knew that when their spells were cast, here in the quiet their casting waited silently outside of time, until the Shapers did their work.

There were woods and fields in that place, hills and mountains too … but in all, they were vague mirrors of what lay in the familiar world where mages played with magic. The Great Dividing Road was here too, like a long solid tattoo binding this place, which might have been the land's soul, to its body, in the day-world. Sometimes people came to this place in their dreams, not knowing where they were and not remembering it at all, come morning. They could be seen like fleeting shadows, hardly more discernible than wind bursts.

Valour guarded this place. When Vous had enraged him, distracted him, and steered him so far across the world he had forgotten the original reason for his rage, Valour had come here to vent his anger.

For the first time, a dragon had come into the quiet.

Shilen had spoken mostly the truth to the man-lord. Mostly, though not always. She found conversation with him distasteful, but managing the kingdoms of men was now her duty.

She had a new task before her. She prowled now in the quiet, her long white body less physical here than it was in the day-world. There was no magic here of the usual kind – the airs held no power, so she could not cast if Valour should happen to find her here. Now and then Shapers could be seen, moving silently and seeming to consume the hung crystal-things. They did not stir when she came near.

It was Tzi-Shu who had swallowed the warrior's breastplate, fused with Valour's magic. His eyes had shone with new knowledge and he had praised her for bringing the object to him, even though she'd meant it for Vyin (which surely he had known). The great and terrible one had warned her to beware of Valour when he'd given her his fashioned key. Tzi-Shu would one day make a meal of Valour, he had said. It was he, after all, who had left a scar upon Mountain, the Spirit the brood most feared.

Shilen knew that discovery of this place had disturbed the mighty Eight. How many other strange hidden realms were there, realms they could not go to? She had sensed their disquiet.

Now and then she saw the last of the Tormentor beings. They hovered like strange puppets made of paper, being blown about by wind. Many had been smashed to pieces. Valour had slain them in huge numbers, coming to this place to vent his fury. He had already tried to cross World's End and set the Pendulum
swinging high. The other Spirits had cooperated to keep him back.

Ah, how much misplaced faith humans put in gods! They would think Valour had slain Tormentors to save their lives, when he was just venting fury like a child throwing tantrums. A mountain of Tormentor corpses was scattered by the Entry Point to Otherworld. The stupid human mage had planned on using them to invade that place. Their Parent would never have allowed
that.
Their Parent may indeed have directed the angry god to slay them.

Shilen paused her prowling steps. In the distance now, there he was: Valour, the angry young god. His steed reared up its kicking legs, bellowed, its voice like thunder, back at the sky. The force of the sound made shimmering waves on that horizon. The Spirit's aura was red with battle lust. Luckily he did not sense Shilen prowling here – but she was nervous.

Valour called a war cry to match his steed's. They turned southwards – luckily – and rode with speed. Shilen watched him slam his great sword into pillars of rock, shattering them. At last he rode further than her sight could follow.

Shilen searched the twilit woods and fields, avoiding the strange life forms when she saw them, never touching the diamond-shaped gleaming things, the magic waiting for the Shapers to make spells become real. At last she found what she had come for. There it was, in the north-west corner, a huge pillar thicker than any tree, stretching up till it touched the sky.

There was a pillar to correspond with each god. Inferno's was mostly crumbled pieces strewn over the ground, broken long ago when the other gods fought him. Mountain's she had seen when she first came here. She had attacked it with all her might but left hardly a mark upon the hard icy white surface.

This pillar, Shilen felt, was Nightmare's. It was less solid, of different make. She may be able to harm this one, perhaps. She opened wide her jaws, bit in and wrenched with all her strength. A cold piece of it broke away.

She was surprised that it came free with such relative ease (however much her jaws now ached). Would not their Parent who designed this place have made the defences of the brood's prison stronger? But then, she supposed this strange realm had not been expecting the company of any dragons. With great effort she tore away another piece, and then another, each piece removed weakening the cage.

In Levaal South where the haiyens dwelled, time and age were not the same. Time in the North and in Otherworld ran like a stream in one direction; in the South, time was a turgid icy whirlpool in a revolving cycle. Siel and Far Gaze learned much and were changed much in that unknown, uncounted stretch of time, under the guidance of the haiyen traveller.

They stepped out of the tunnel of wind and light onto a high platform ridge, which circled a vast flat plane beneath. Archways and pillars all across the ridge crumbled slowly to ruin. Out on the flats was a lake, perhaps in truth an inland sea, its cloudy water as blue as lapis lazuli. Floating above the water was a giant round crystal, held in the air by nothing they could see, its light beaming down in great shafts to the waters, making white smoke waft up where the light beams touched. Here was more beauty than Vous ever dreamed of creating and it made both Siel and Far Gaze want to weep in joy, even though they had no idea what it was they beheld. The lake's far shore was too distant to see.

Their guide – the haiyen with the mark in its forehead – spoke to them with only its thoughts. ‘You have been deceived about the nature of your world, and told nothing of the nature
of ours. Many visitors come to these waters, from other worlds and planes of being across the universe. But visitors no longer come from Levaal North, nor from the world your Pilgrim knows, which you call Otherworld. In
that
world, people are trapped. Even death sometimes fails to free them.'

‘The Pilgrims Eric and Case spoke nothing of this,' said Far Gaze.

‘They knew no more of it than you. Their world and yours are not protected by the Dragon-god, as all your wise men have long believed. Those worlds are held captive by it. The Dragon-god did not create your world; it only changed that world better to suit itself.'

‘Is this world free?' said Far Gaze.

‘No longer.' Their guide's sadness blew over them like a breeze. ‘No longer, but for a few rare parts of it. This is one such free place. Do you see the visitors below, from other planes and worlds?'

As their guide said it, they indeed saw beings moving across the flat plain towards the water. A multitude of them came into sight, now and then materialising below with small lightning-like flickers to join the slow march to the shore. Great numbers milled all along the water's edge, some standing knee-deep, some wading out further into the still blue where the water reached their necks, some swimming or floating languidly out across the surface to the distant shore. The huge round crystal's pulsing light bathed them from above.

It was not only humans wandering across the flats to the shore. Some beings they saw were smaller than groundmen, others large as half-giants, with a few bigger yet. Some things moved on four legs, others were shifting wispy shapes which coiled and twisted through the air. A sense of peace washed
over them from their guide. ‘Guests from many worlds you see below,' it said.

‘For what purpose do they come here?' said Far Gaze.

‘The waters rejuvenate the soul.'

‘Only humans have souls, I was taught,' said Siel.

‘You have been told your soul is a small part of the Dragon-god's thought,' said their guide. ‘And told that when you die, you enter his dreams and are eventually reborn. It is not so. Your soul is even older than that creature. Only your body is young. I brought you here because you have wounds and scars from your prison world. You are invited here to heal them, if that is your wish. Be warned, only once in a lifetime may one enter the crystal lake. Many times you have been here before, though your mind does not permit the memory. A deep part of you knows. It is that deep part which makes you wish to weep at the beauty of it. It is that deep part which recognises this place.'

Their guide did not seem to need his answer straight away. So Siel and Far Gaze watched the display beneath: all manner of forms, all manner of shapes. Some looked like statues made of metal. Others walked like human beings, but were covered in scales and plates. Some wore bodies partly animal: bird people, feline ones, heads with antlers, horns and more. Some seemed kin to trees. Some seemed hardly physical at all; there were orbs of light, clouds like light brush strokes of dark shimmering paint which barely had physical form.

‘Those haiyens who have chosen to part ways with us, whom we call the lost ones, do not see this place any longer,' said their guide. ‘They closed it off from their awareness, long ago. When they did that, it meant these visitors could no longer venture through our realm. Now visitors may only come to places like
this, which the lost ones have forgotten. Long ago, all could come here, and freely travel as they would. Our world was a great exchange of knowledge and information until the Dragon-god came. When it seized the North, Levaal became divided. Still we haiyens waited near the place you call World's End, before the Wall was built. Waited there as guides, to help those who could survive the journey through the Dragon's world of the North.

‘Those brave and strong enough to survive the North's perils would cross World's End. Our kind waited to heal them and guide them through this realm to
our
adjoined world, our Otherworld. Levaal South too has an Entry Point, at its most southern part. Like yours, it too is usually closed off.' A burst of immense sadness came from their guide. ‘We are prevented now from going back to our Otherworld. The lost haiyens guard the Entry Point. Once, we passed back and forth freely. You have questions. Ask them.'

Siel said, ‘Were they human, those you speak of, who survived the journey through the Dragon's world, and came to yours?'

‘Yes,' said their guide. ‘And other races too, many others. These worlds are older than you know. Once, people of the Pilgrim's world knew of Levaal. Some found ways to escape there through a door. Often, they did not know that our world here, a place of healing and purity, waited for them at the end of their journey. They only knew they must escape their prison world, whatever else they found. Those souls who came through were made strong by their journey. We valued and honoured them here.'

‘Did not the Pendulum swing when people crossed?' said Far Gaze.

‘That began only when dragons from the North ventured into
our realm to steal back those who had escaped here. In that time, powerful Spirits – those beings which men call gods – came to protect Levaal South. We do not know where they came from, nor who called them, but they are here still. They are not gentle protectors. They are powerful and dangerous, even to us.'

‘And you have dragons here?'

‘Some dragons came to us from your realm,' said their guide. ‘Before your realm, they came from other places – they have not always been in Levaal.

‘The dragons who crossed World's End first came here to hunt those who'd escaped the North world, just as they hunted in Levaal North for those who escaped from Otherworld. Those dragons learned that visitors from other worlds came here, to the lake's waters and to many temples and other places to learn and exchange knowledge. Those dragons grew wise and were content merely to exist here. They learned much from the visitors; and they taught much. Vyin was one such dragon. Their minds began to roam independently of the limits their Parent had set for them. It was the first time they broke the natural laws.

‘This angered their Parent, who called them back. Their Parent imprisoned them after a battle which destroyed lots of Minor dragons, and killed four of the brood. The destruction of those four meant, in essence, the dispersal of their power. Young gods formed from this loose energy. Perhaps the old gods of the North – Mountain, Tempest and Inferno – helped to create them. In its anger the Dragon-god gave its world over to humankind, creating new natural laws to govern the dragons' imprisonment. It built the Wall, and made sentries to guard it. All this occurred the last time it was roused from slumber. Since that time, it has slept.'

Far Gaze said, ‘Who really destroyed the Wall? And why? The Arch Mage was surely no more than an instrument in that task.'

‘We do not know what being's willpower was truly behind that deed. If it was the Dragon-god, it was done because it feels its opposite power, slumbering in our lands, can at last be defeated. If it was the Eight who had this deed done, it was done only so they could be free of their prison.'

‘Is it true then what Blain says, that there is a Dragon-god in the South?' said Far Gaze.

‘There is a force here of equal power to the Dragon-god of the North. It too shall sleep until the Pendulum swings high, and its opposite awakens. It came here soon after the Dragon-god arrived, to balance that being's power. But it is not a dragon. It is a force of creation, not destruction. We know it to exist, though we have never seen it.

‘Go now, and bathe in the crystal's waters. Those others who have come can see each other, but because of where you come from, they shall not see you. These visitors do not see us, the haiyens, any longer, either. No longer can we speak with them. Go down to the waters. Nourish yourselves. We've more travel ahead of us.'

Siel and Far Gaze climbed down one of many sets of stairs indented on the sheer stone wall. The flat plain they crossed gave a little underfoot, as though it were the skin of something living. The sky was a haze of deepest purple, penetrated by only a few upwards-reaching white beams from the huge suspended crystal. For a time they seemed alone on the plains. About them they gradually sensed, then saw, the others who'd come, and heard whispers of their voices. There were human beings among them with skin of many colours, people green, blue and gold, some larger than half-giants, others wearing wings. Beings like
lizards walked upright, their tongues flickering out of their mouths almost too quickly to see. There were tiny people with silvery skin and black almond-shaped eyes. There was something huge on four legs with a face like an insect's; something dragging itself along with tentacles, its large face almost human atop a long curved body. All moved in a serene, slow walk towards the water.

A being made of what looked like snow faded into view directly ahead of them, its skin or perhaps clothing appearing as patches of white and grey. It moved like liquid. Two small ones just like it moved ahead of it. Siel reached out to touch it, but her hand passed through as it would pass through smoke; the being didn't notice her. A sound she'd thought was gentle flute music turned out to be their voices in conversation.

Siel wept. Far Gaze kept his eyes straight ahead. Part of him recoiled from this strangeness and demanded he flee. He did not know any more whether to believe the haiyen's tales and stories – there seemed no longer any way of knowing the truth. He looked back where they'd climbed down from. Their guide waited and watched on the ridge, just a small black shape against the purple sky. ‘Why do you weep?' he whispered to Siel.

‘All of them, so peaceful,' she said. He looked at her in surprise – he assumed she wept from some kind of fear or disquiet, not this mix of joy and grief. ‘Look how different they all are,' she said. ‘And they're at peace with each other. No fighting. All of them here for the same thing. Allowing each other just to be.'

‘Why should it make you sad?'

‘We are the
same
as one another. War, war and death. We punish each other just for being born in a different city. Why aren't we like this instead?'

Pointless question, he thought. One with no answer.

They came at last to the water, forgot each other and bathed in it. Each of them now felt as if he or she was the only one here, that they'd come to a private reality in which the lake was his or hers alone. Perhaps all who came here felt the same thing. Now and then were glimpses of the others about them like glimpses of ghosts, and brief whispers of conversation. Crystal light beamed into their bodies; it filled them till it poured out and surrounded them in a protective shell of healing light.

There was the sound of rain sweeping over the water, the beautiful sound of a sea's waves lapping, the sound of life itself drawing and releasing breath. They breathed with it, became one with it. There was no need for fearing or even thinking. All would be well; all things were connected to one source of being, like droplets from the same lake flung away only briefly. Come whatever chaos and death to temporarily trouble long, ancient dreams, all would be well for all was eternal, and fleeting troubles were but flavours of experience. The huge round crystal beamed down its shafts in the water to depths beyond sight.

They both found the haiyen's words had been true: a part of them remembered these waters. They were both struck by the idea that all those other beings they had seen, who had walked around them to the waters, were
them
: Siel and Far Gaze, their souls embodied in many past and future selves. In that infinitely beautiful light they were filled with peace; thirsts they'd not been aware of were quenched. The waters assured them with the breathing sound of wind over sea that they'd known long lifetimes of far greater pain than this one, pain all healed or forgotten. What harm would carrying this brief lifetime's burden truly do them? They were eternal.

Gently their bodies floated, their heads above the water. Far
Gaze let his mind go altogether, forgetting everything, remembering everything. In that place, it became true that no pain had ever really hurt him.

Siel dived down, seeing how far she could follow the shafts of crystal light. Huge things moved down there: souls who had come to bathe here and decided to stay, shaping themselves as they liked, dreaming up new lives with the delight of children at play. Would she do the same? She was welcome to stay. The water's depth was infinite. It would gladly share infinity and abundance with her, if she wished.

Not yet, she thought, joyful now to know she was
not
trapped in life. Her life was no longer a prison sentence: it had become a choice. Not yet! But I will return here. And perhaps the next time I come, I will stay …