World's End (35 page)

Shilen had been speaking while all this transpired, but he'd barely heard her. Now she said, ‘None of the endless kings and conquerors among you ever felt my kind steering them. Only the Spirits ever challenged our influence. Your world has always been ours, man-lord.'

‘You forget, this isn't my world. You never steered
my
world. You never had any influence there.'

Her eyes glittered, and he could practically see her human form before him, smiling. ‘How little you know of us,' she said. She turned and walked back to the other dragons. She gave no sign of seeing the group of people who now skipped and sang as they ran from the Great Dividing Road.

The ground shivered with the huge dragons' steps as they turned around, ran, then flew. A great gust of wind went up. They flew to the south, surely to find Siel. It seemed a stifling weight had been lifted from him, lifted from the very air he breathed … a weight those other happy people had not even felt.

He did not know who to pray to for Siel's safety. So he addressed the prayer to no one and hoped it would find whoever might act upon it.

The world as they flew south seemed to Siel's eyes like a table ruined after a ravishing feast. Even mountains seemed to lie in tumbled messes, destroyed by quakes from falling skystone if not smashed by direct hits. Lightstone pieces large and small glowed, scattered over vast miles. Dark grey skystone slabs had smashed deep holes down into the honeycombed groundman tunnels below the surface.

Those few people they saw on the ground would invariably run for cover upon sight of Dyan above them. All along the Great Dividing Road, where inns and small townships had stood, there was ruin and wreckage as if marauding armies had been through. Siel felt no anger or pain that the dragons had brought this ruin. After what the haiyens had taught her, there was nothing the dragons could do to make her hate or fear them ever again. Now that she knew human life was immortal, it could be said that nothing bad truly ever happened at all. This life was a fleeting borrowed thing, a short time to collect the experiences of suffering through a prison world; that was all. Each person born into it would one day escape it, as surely as they would die a mortal death. How absurd it was that people
held such fear of death! The ultimate blessing perceived as the ultimate curse.

Great as the dragons were in this little sphere of existence, the dragons did not have that part of them: soul. That was why she'd seen none of them marching towards the crystal lake's waters to refresh and cleanse themselves. They would ever be here, or in realms like this. This really
was
their world; what had looked like a man-made hell of war and slavery had all been orchestrated by the dragons from their place of hiding, through their corruption of a few key rulers, just as they'd begun to corrupt Eric and Aziel. The dragons had created the preciousness of human suffering. And that was why Siel had learned to love them not as some trick of the mind, but with all sincerity.

And because she now loved them,
truly
loved them, they could not see her. She even faded at times from Dyan's perception, despite the link between him and the charm which commanded him. He would turn his head back, saying, ‘Are you there, Beauty? I sense the symbol you hold, but I lose sense of you.'

‘I'm here,' she would assure him, and will herself to be more clear to him.

‘Was it true, Beauty, when you said you loved me?'

She laughed. ‘It was true, and is still true. But love means different things to me from what it does to you. And to all your kind.'

Now and then Invia came to examine Dyan, flying briefly beside him and peering with faces seeming more and more grotesque and inhuman. But they did not ever see Siel, nor could they keep up with Dyan's speed for long. ‘You spoke to them?' said Siel after one such visit.

‘I gave them instruction, but they ignored it. Higher powers than I already have them at work.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Finding me, Beauty. For they know I am in service to the symbol you hold. And they are seeking it.'

‘They won't find me.'

‘Perhaps not, Beauty. And yet I may not hide from them forever.'

‘What will they do to you when they find you?'

‘I know not, Beauty.'

Shadow did not stir in the charm about her neck … or if he did, she could not feel it. When they stopped for rest she dreamed of him. He asked her questions in that dream, simple things a child might ask, and she explained as would a patient mother. Why am I here? he had asked her.

In the dream she'd known the answer, and she'd told it to him. But upon waking for another morning's flight, the answer had slipped from her memory.

She reached World's End a little over a day before the dragons came. From the ruins of an old wagon she made a lean-to among thickets bunched on harsh rocky turf, tying thorns and weeds over it for camouflage. A groundman hole nearby was just big enough for her to hide in, should the need arise. On sight of it she wondered with a start what had become of Tii. Perhaps the groundman knew where she'd gone, and was on his way here.

Dyan waited without speaking, his eyes ever on the northern sky, never to the south. He kept his body pressed low to the ground, his scales coloured to blend in with the surrounds. He seemed far more nervous about being at World's End than she was.

That force along the Great Dividing Road – which Anfen had
called the ‘push' – had done much to speed their flight. Now the push had grown so strong it made standing by the Road impossible. Even where she'd set up her camp, two hundred paces away, she could feel the edge of that invisible force. It made the trees and shrubs lean south, and made the stones, sticks and gravel slide slowly across the ground.

A similar force had to be at work in the South, for their clouds too were pushed along their own Great Dividing Road, whatever name the haiyens gave it. Above that point where both Roads met, clouds rushed together with equal speed, creating a huge winding coil of white, grey and black.

If the haiyens supposedly protecting her were there, they were too well-hidden to see. The wind and the soft heavy growl of Dyan's breathing were the only sounds. ‘I can provide you physical pleasures if you should need them to pass the time, Beauty,' he said. ‘I have not lost those talents.'

She laughed. ‘Not necessary.'

‘If you change your answer—'

‘I won't, Dyan. Drop it.'

‘You have faded from me again, Beauty. Your body seems transparent as clear water. Will you tell me yet what magic is at play?'

‘I can't tell you, Dyan. I don't think you would understand.'

‘Are you hungry, Beauty? Shall I hunt game for you?'

‘Please do.'

A ripple went over his scales as the colour went out of them and he became almost invisible. He flew off, only to return within a few minutes with nothing for her to eat. She could tell something had disturbed him. ‘What is it?'

‘Dragons come,' he said. His neck was arched back, and ears were flat to his head as he gazed north. ‘Many of them.'

‘How far are they?'

‘An hour's flight, by their measure. They fly not as fast as I do.'

‘Can you sense them if they are so far away?'

‘There are some among the Eight.
They
can be felt from a long way away. They could keep their presence hidden, but for now they do not trouble to.'

‘The Eight?' She sat up. ‘How many?'

‘I sense four, Beauty.'

‘Four?'

‘There are gods too, surely watching their passage. Beauty, you must not stay here. It will not be safe for you.'

She laughed. ‘They won't see me. What do they want, Dyan?'

Dyan's voice went urgent and his scales turned off-white. She'd not seen that colour in him before, but she knew it meant he was genuinely terrified. ‘Beauty, listen. If it is true that you may hide from Shilen and me whenever you wish, you must know she and I are not of the same stature as those who now approach. They perceive much more than do Shilen and I. Whatever human magic keeps you hidden will not work on them.'

‘They won't see me, Dyan. Trust me on that.'

‘They will know
I
am here, regardless.'

‘If you want to go, go. Until they're gone. Then you must return to me.'

She had hardly said the words before he'd bolted off for the South, a blur across the sky crossing World's End in seconds.

Siel turned her eyes north, watching where the Road met the horizon. For what seemed a long time there was nothing but the wind, blowing in steadily harder gusts. She began to wonder if Dyan had misled her, for more than an hour passed with no
sign of approaching dragons. Then the skies darkened with a rushing shape, with what seemed a cape of black cloud blending out to form long stretched arms and an enormous face like a tribal mask of pale bone. It was Nightmare … but she had never seen his eyes glowing with this blazing red, nor seen lightning flicker this way from his outstretched hands. The Spirit hovered off in the north-eastern sky.

The temperature quickly dropped; the wind picked up. There came a massive continent of cloud from the west with – just vaguely – a face imprinted in it. Perhaps this was Tempest. Siel had never seen that god in person before, but what she now saw reminded her of many depictions.

On the horizon beyond Tempest's clouds, a huge bulky mass of stone had come up where it had not stood minutes before. It had peaks like a crown at its head and a vast mossy stretch of vines hung across stone features just vaguely resembling a face. Mountain did not simply
stand –
it prowled forwards with steps which shook the ground, only to blink out of sight in seconds, its rumbling silenced, the shaking ground still again.

If this place was to be a battleground between the Spirits and dragons, Siel knew she had made a mistake in remaining here. She'd not be able to run far enough now to get to safe ground from the kinds of magic likely to be wielded. It did not greatly matter if she perished now, but she had to wonder why the haiyens had sent her here. What part could she possibly play in a battle such as this?

And at last the dragons lumbered into view. The four great ones flew side by side, all at the same slow pace, their huge wings moving up and down with a motion slow and mechanical, the tips of their clawed feet seeming to scrape the ground. She felt the incredible ancient power emanate from them, felt
the stirring of old familiar fear pulling at her. She closed her eyes and brought herself to a state of love which was reasoned thought as much as it was a feeling; one spark of the flame feeding the other until both burned warm. She bore nothing but gratitude for what these incredible creatures had done for her – they were the hammer and anvil sharpening the blade of her soul, sharpening of all humanity's collective soul, giving humanity wisdom unattainable any other way than by this suffering. She beheld the savage wise beauty in them … she
understood
them, or at least an aspect of them, perhaps better than they understood themselves. And suddenly within her – so suddenly Dyan may well have been right after all to call it magic – there was no fear. Why not go out onto the Road to wait for them?

So she went as close as she could, and though she stood some way from the Road, the push drove her back, her boots sliding on the rocky turf. The wind threw her hair around so that it whipped her face with little stings. For the first time she felt Shadow stirring in his prison. ‘It's all right,' she whispered, cupping the charm in her hands. She had no idea whether or not he could hear her.

Behind the great dragons were a score or more lesser ones, the largest among them about a quarter the size of the greats. Their heads swept the land. They were seeking her, she knew … and seeking Shadow. They wouldn't find her; they wouldn't see her. One of the great ones turned its head and bellowed a warning to the Spirits who watched. Siel laughed in amazement as the power of its voice went through her and shook her bones.

They were upon her. The one who had called out flew right past her, right over her. Its claws dragging on the ground dug
ridges. Siel dropped to her knees, hardly containing her awe and love. Its scales seemed like dull silver at a distance; up close she saw a thousand glittering points of colour all over it. Its claws scraped the ground to either side of her. There were many varieties of its fellows behind it, shapes and colours of otherworldly beauty, power beyond human measure. Their eyes too swept to either side of the Road, swept right over her. She no longer existed in their world. As animals hear sounds beyond human hearing, she was a sight beyond their seeing.

At the same steady pace they went to where the Wall had stood. The gods did nothing. Nightmare howled in helpless rage as the dragons crossed to the South, and at the same steady pace flew beyond the foreign world's horizon.

When Eric returned to Aziel's chamber, Far Gaze sat outside the door with a smile on his face. ‘Banished,' he said with clear pleasure.

‘If she's still lady of this place, I'm still its lord. I hereby unbanish you.'

‘She's about to lose any semblance of authority. You too, most likely, but I doubt you'll grieve for that. Loup and I spoke quietly with Faul. It took ten minutes. The half-giants are equal partners now in our new coalition. The people have overtaken the lower levels anyway. We are just aligning with them as Aziel should have as soon as they began arriving. They're going through the food stores and the armouries as we speak. Faul's people let them in.'

‘None of that matters now. I just spoke with Shilen. I think they're going to wake the Dragon.'

‘Who is?'

He told Far Gaze of his encounter with the dragons. The moment he'd finished it seemed enormous hands lifted the entire castle and wrenched it side to side. Eric fell into the wall, then away, then back into it. It took a long time for the quake to cease. Even then, a faint background shiver remained.

‘Time we departed,' said Far Gaze, rubbing away blood with his sleeve from where his head had struck the doorway. He nodded to where cracks had appeared in the walls, roof and floor. It was as if there'd only been a shell covering them. Parts of that shell now began to peel and fall away. Frowning, Far Gaze went to one such jutting piece about the size of his own torso. He pulled it free. The wall beneath it glittered with many colours, like gems with light run across them. They were large scales, scales the size of those which people crushed up and consumed for visions. The scales mined from the ground at World's End.

Eric tapped them with his knuckle. Colour splashed with the impact. Loup's voice played in his memory:
This little scale, all crushed up, is made of the great god-beast's very stuff …

The walls' and roof's cracks spread further. Far Gaze went to the other wall and wrenched away some more of the white shell, thick as a finger length. There were scales beneath that too. ‘I see,' he murmured.

‘You see what?' said Eric.

‘We are to leave this place, right now. We'll ride your drake.'

‘You see
what
, Far Gaze?'

‘We have been mistaken for a very long time. The Dragon is not
below
the castle. It
is
the castle.'

‘But how …?'

‘I am not the world's only shape-shifter. It's changing form, right now. It is awakening. Take us to the drake. Now!'

‘Aren't you going to tell the others?'

Far Gaze rolled his eyes but followed Eric to the doorway. Within Aziel's chamber, as outside it, the walls were breaking and peeling, revealing colourful scales beneath. ‘Get out,' yelled Far Gaze to those still in the room. To Eric he said, ‘Satisfied? A daring rescue.'

With no more delay the two of them ran through the shaking castle to find Case. Once mounted, they flew up to the high shelf of turf behind the castle, where a green valley sat between two sheer walls. The grass had been littered with corpses when he'd first seen it; now lightstone and skystone rocks were scattered over it, in parts ankle-thick.

Domudess was there already, standing at the top of a set of ancient stairs cut into the sheer cliff face. The wizard's bald head bobbed in polite greeting as Case set down in the lightstone litter nearby, then he gazed serenely as before at the vastness below. Their high vantage point seemed miraculously stable compared with the shivering castle, which made the world shiver along with it. It seemed to happen in bursts, but in the lulls it only ever calmed; the shaking never ceased completely. Now and then the ground rippled with waves they could see, as though it became for brief moments a heaving sea.

‘It could take days to fully awaken,' said Domudess. ‘Or longer.'

‘Or three more minutes,' said Far Gaze.

Unconcerned for all this, Case lay down and went to sleep.

Domudess walked a good way back from where they stood watching and opened his leather pouch. He tipped out the handful of sand therein and spread it across the ground. In a few minutes his tower materialised from the ground up, as if poured from the sky above by invisible hands. The moat's water burbled up through the grass. Domudess went inside; his silhouette was soon visible from the top window.

Eric and Far Gaze stayed at the edge of the world and watched. It was an hour or two before cracks could be seen on the castle's great round domes and towers, spreading all across it in webs. Small pieces of the shell broke away, before great sheets of the wall's outer coating began to slip free and crash to the ground,
revealing a scaled hide beneath. A tower leaned slowly away, then fell in pieces to the ground.

‘I don't understand why the dragons did it,' Eric said.

Far Gaze smiled. ‘Do you think Shilen was liable to tell you the true reason for their waking their Parent? The dragons fear the gods of the South. With good reason. I have seen those gods and they are terrible. If the Pendulum were to swing back and forth to its conclusion, before their Parent woke, they would have to confront That Which Governs Cycles of Events. And the other gods, all of them terrible beyond my power to describe to you, Eric. They surely fear their Parent as much as those gods. No, from their view, it is better to risk their Parent, which they would have to face anyway, and bypass the encounter with those Southern gods. Shilen would not speak to a human of the dragons' fear.
That
is why they have chosen to cross the boundary and wake their Parent early.'

‘It's all about to end, isn't it?'

Far Gaze sighed wearily. ‘It is all about to change. Knowing this world as I do, that cannot be a bad thing.'

‘This world is a small part in the vastness,' Eric murmured, not sure where he'd heard those words before. They seemed right to him, wherever they had come from.

In Levaal South, the world shook just as hard as in the North, for the same doom was upon it.

Blain had said in the tower that there was a Dragon-god in the other world; he was wrong about that, at least in part. An entity of that stature did indeed exist there and, at the same time as the North realm's Dragon-god awoke, the South realm's governing power too was rising from its slumber.

The conflict between these two great forces had never truly
ended. Rather, it had gone to the realms and arenas of thought while their bodies slumbered. Their worlds' creatures, people and events were as immaterial to them as a man's thoughts seem to him. Neither entity controlled all actions and deeds within its world; each had laid out laws of existence which its inhabitants were bound to follow. But although neither entity had complete control of the small parts of their realities, both entities had the ability to sweep from existence all things within the limits of their realm, just as easily as a person sweeps objects from a table to set it with new things, with little care for what may break, and what may survive the change.

Eric, Far Gaze and Domudess were too close to the Dragon when it rose. All those human beings, half-giants, Invia, and others who were also too close, effectively ceased being themselves for a short while. They ceased existing altogether, as if deleted from a story's pages.

There was no measuring the time the Dragon-god's awakening took; for it governed time, it was not governed
by
time. When Eric, Domudess and the others returned to existence and returned to themselves, it may have been centuries, or aeons, or just moments that had passed.

When Eric was aware of himself again, the world's surface seemed completely liquid, coated by no more than a thin layer of colour: mountains and forests bending as wildly as shadows on a disturbed pond. Something moved through it all, something so enormous that it seemed to move slowly. Each step thrust great ripples in all directions. Lightning seemed to flicker from one instant to the next, dark-light-dark-light … great enormous bunches of forked flashing light spearing and flickering to mark each passing second.

The sight of the beast was too much to understand: those watching had nothing in their consciousness to compare it to. They could not even be in awe of it … for now, it was all they knew; it was nature, time, life, death, it was
them
or may as well have been. What were they, but minuscule aspects of it, observing its own motion? It passed now through this realm, whose reality imposed itself through its own incomprehensible dreams. It fed upon the energy of all things here, though none – not even the brood or the gods – knew they were fed from. It was and always had been a nightmare realm, a hell realm for those other observation points who called themselves human, or half-giants, or groundmen, or other names.

It understood the brood a little better. They too were but observation points, albeit from higher places. They knew there
was
no ‘why' to anything, when thought reached past the grappling reasoning of those insects. There was only existence, being, ‘is'.

Ah, but there was also that
opposite
, that rivalry, that dark a light banishes, that light the dark snuffs out …

Light, dark – which of the two entities was which? It didn't matter. Soon, one or the other would be extinguished, for something had been born in one of the worlds to bring about a final change … in
this
sphere of existence, at least. Whichever was the Light and whichever was the Dark, they now moved towards one another at equal pace.

Siel felt them coming long before she saw them. There was light, dark, light, dark, from one moment to the next. The light when it came was so complete that nothing could be seen within it. The dark was so total that it seemed nothing existed where
it fell. Her hand squeezed hard as it could upon the charm where Shadow was trapped.

A desperate voice said, ‘Beauty,' and then something grabbed her and lifted her. Away from the heaving, rolling ground, she could think again.
‘Where do I take you, Beauty?'
said a voice speaking into her mind.

‘Where is safe?'
she said.

‘Nowhere. They are awake again. Soon they will collide and things will change. All shall be changed when it is over.'

‘Take me to the waters,'
she said. ‘
To
the South.'
She knew that whatever changed,
that
place was eternal, and would remain.

Dyan began to fly that way, but then she saw it: the Dragon of the South was not a dragon. It was huge, as huge as the castle … but a golden light burned all around it. Its enormous eyes were fierce but of such beauty she would never have feared them. Huge wings were upon its back but it was not covered in scales. Its enormous face was feline.

Dyan shrieked in fear and turned to the north, but then there was the
other
, the Parent of the Eight, coming towards them with lightning flickering from its gnashing mouth, its eyes alight with savage erupting red fire. The two powers rushed to their collision, faster now that they'd seen one another. A force seemed to draw all things towards the point at World's End where the two would meet. Dyan tried to fly east but he could go nowhere except directly up.

Siel looked down as the two entities met. She was the first human being ever to see this moment. Such energy blasted from that contact where they met that she was blind. She was deaf. She did not know that only the golden glowing love of the feline god kept her and Dyan from being destroyed. She did not hear
Dyan say, ‘Are you alive, Beauty?' From the impact, scales by the million rained over the ground.

She felt Shadow lashing and writhing in the prison she still clenched tight in her hand. She felt rather than saw the two entities – one feline, one dragon – pushing against each other at World's End, where the Great Dividing Road met its twin, where the Wall had stood. Two worlds, two realities ground and pushed against one another.

And Siel understood now. She whispered into her cupped hand, though she could not hear her own voice: ‘Shadow. Come. It's your choice now.'

She threw the amulet away, not knowing which way it flew. It sailed down gracefully, far too small to be noticed by either of the grappling powers, even as it landed on the back of the feline and bounced to the ground behind it.

Neither power knew of Shadow, any more than they knew the names and powers of other minuscule aspects of their respective realities. And Shadow in an instant grasped at last his purpose, the answer to the question no one had ever truly understood. The feline's golden light poured love upon him even as it fought savagely for its own existence against the Dragon-god, for it poured love upon everything it touched. The lightning of the Dragon poured something else, a feeling he was too familiar with: an
unknowing
sense of nothingness, hiddenness, devoid of love and light, just as his life had been.

Shadow made his choice.

The Dragon screamed, not understanding how it could have
two
rivals now. An instant was all it took. Shadow destroyed himself in the same instant he shadowed the Feline-god of the South. But in that fleeting time, the Dragon turned in confusion to face this second rival, which it had not in all its timeless
life perceived before. And that instant's distraction was enough. The Feline-god's jaws closed upon its throat and ripped it away. The conflict – in this part of existence, at least – was now finished.

At World's End, golden light bloomed through the twin worlds, which were twins no more: they were whole.

Not many lived through the falling of the artificial sky. Those few who did saw the stars gleaming like diamonds in the black sea of space. That forbidden distant light reached them at last. A
knowing
flew through all who had remained, filled them all. They
knew
the prison holding them was broken, when before they'd not known it to be a prison at all. They knew that there were other worlds, with souls the same as theirs. Joy poured down from the stars amidst the destruction, as the golden blooming light filled them with warmth.