The Memory

by Gerrard Cowan

  It seemed they were all gathered together, here at the end of the world. The Strategist was a sight to behold: a thing of hungry power. Flickering around her was her servant, Shirkra, that creature in the living mask. Aranfal the Watcher was there, staring at Brandione with a haunted expression. A young boy and girl giggled at the side, laughing at some wretch they held prisoner in a mesh of black chains: Canning, the last Tactician for Expansion.

  Lying before Brandione was a figure he knew very well, whose face he had seen on a thousand paintings and statues. It was the Operator, but he was utterly changed. He seemed broken. Another body lay some distance away: a young girl. He could not tell if she was alive or dead.

  ‘All is at an end,’ the Strategist said. ‘The game is finished. The Machinery is broken.’ She pointed at the Dust Queen. ‘We have played your game. Now take me to the Machinery, so that I may bring forth Ruin, as was foretold.’

  The Dust Queen unleashed a sorrowful moan. ‘I promised you this. But do you know what you truly ask, Strategist? Do you know what Ruin will mean for the world, if he is free? Do you know what he will mean for you?’

  ‘Glory! Honour! The return of my family’s strength!’ The Strategist clapped her hands. ‘Now: take me to it.’

  ‘No,’ the Dust Queen said.

  Shirkra cursed and seemed ready to attack the Queen, but three hands were raised to silence her.

  ‘I will not take you to the Machinery,’ the Dust Queen said. ‘I will bring the Machinery to you.’

  She raised her arms in the air, and the great table rumbled.

  ‘Ah. So it is happening.’

  Wayward had appeared at Brandione’s side. The courtier was at his elegant best, clothed in a white robe, with black ribbons tied through his hair. Behind him, in line upon line, stretching off into the far distance, was the army the Dust Queen had given Brandione, those multitudes of sand soldiers, all of them standing to attention in that strange way of theirs. The one-time General was seized by a desperate urge to take command of these troops, to somehow use them at last. But he did not know how, and there was no time to learn. Not now, at the end of everything.

  The stone quaked with a new intensity. Wayward took Brandione by the arm and guided him gently backwards. The courtier’s eyes were wide, alive with apprehension and excitement. ‘The Machinery is coming,’ he whispered.

  Great cracks appeared across the surface of the table. Like a mountain crumbling to the ground. Slabs of stone began to separate, and something new emerged from underneath.

  Fire.

  They all retreated; all apart from the Strategist, who spread her arms wide before the inferno, welcoming it. This was no ordinary flame. This was the fire of Selection, that burning beauty of the world, that tempest in which the Operator deposited the names of those who had been favoured by the Machinery. But there were no names here. There was something else in the inferno.

  It was a kind of prison cell. No: not a cell. It was a cage, of the sort that might hold a bird, its twisted bars formed of some strange, dark material. Another segment of this material protruded from the cage itself; it appeared to be a kind of pipe, but it was twisted and broken. Over time, something else emerged before Brandione’s eyes: a great wheel, linked to the cage.

  In the centre of this structure, in the heart of the flame, something was moving.

  The Dust Queen addressed the Strategist.

  ‘I warn you once more,’ she said, ‘if you bring Ruin upon us, it may not be what you expect.’

  The Strategist smiled, and moved forward, towards the Machinery. There came a great scream. From all directions there emerged a howling multitude of beings, rushing towards the flame before falling back, then throwing themselves forward again, screeching in agony and ecstasy.

  ‘The little Operators,’ Wayward whispered at his side. ‘They have waited for Ruin to return. They sense the vastness of his powers. They want to be here, when he comes. Perhaps they think he will give them some power. They are dogs, begging at the feet of their master, hoping he drops some scraps.’

  ‘Why aren’t you with them?’ Brandione asked.

  Wayward only smiled.

  As Brandione watched these creatures howling at the side of the burning cage, as he looked upon the Dust Queen, standing before the thing she had made, he felt that old, familiar anger stirring in his gut. Is this what we worshipped, all these years? This thing of metal and the creatures that scrabble at its base?

  ‘This army of mine – can I use it now?’

  Wayward shrugged. ‘You are the Last Doubter, Brandione. The army belongs to you.’

  The General looked at his troops, these dead-eyed hordes, and wondered how he could ever muster them into a fighting force, or if they would even be capable of fighting for him. What would they be fighting? He looked at that dark movement in the fire and wondered what lay within. Ruin, said a voice in his mind.

  The Strategist was at the edge of the flame. She reached out, but the fire did not harm her.

  ‘All of this time, this has been the great nightmare.’ She looked at the Dust Queen and to Jandell on the ground. ‘This is what you made. I feel its strength. But I have thought about it for many ages. I have turned myself into a key. I am ready to open it.’

  She walked around the structure, studying it closely, and then came to a halt before a twisted lever of the dark metal.

  ‘The door,’ she whispered.

  She walked into the flame. She reached out and grasped the lever, turning it to the side, her eyes wide and hungry.

  ‘The time is now,’ she whispered. ‘Ruin is coming.’

  As she struggled with the handle, her face screwed up in bitter confusion.

  ‘It will not open.’ She turned to the Dust Queen. ‘I cannot open it.’

  It did not matter, in the end. The door opened anyway. It opened from the inside.

  CHAPTER 23

  There are so many ways to waken.

  Sometimes the haze slowly dissipates, consciousness gradually emerging from the confusion. Sometimes it is much more sudden, like a door being flung open. And sometimes a person feels awake, yet it is not quite true. It is a dream.

  Drayn Thonn was closer to this final state. She remembered attacking the Strategist and being thrown back by a force unlike anything she had ever encountered. She had felt such things since she met Jandell; she had seen such power. She had defeated Squatstout, one of the oldest creatures of memory. She had found herself to be a creature of memory, a mother of memory, as all humans were the parents of that strange, febrile power. She had grown to know her hold over it, her abilities. But when she confronted the Strategist, her weakness was exposed. She had simply been dismissed.

  ‘I am still asleep, on the ground,’ she said to no one at all.

  ‘Yes,’ said another voice. ‘But your body does not matter, in this place.’

  A light grew from nowhere, and it was before her once again: the Eyeless One. It smiled at her, and for once, that smile seemed real.

  They were standing in an empty space, just the two of them, floating in a vast sea of nothing.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ Drayn asked. ‘Ruin is coming.’

  The Eyeless One nodded, but did not cease smiling. Drayn had many questions for this creature.

  ‘How do I stop it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have the First Memory. No one does. I’d feel it. I know I would.’

  ‘No. No First Memory. But it is not the end.’ The Eyeless One smiled. ‘We had given up. We were waiting for Ruin. But then we looked at the table, and we saw something. We saw you all, gathered together: mortals. The hope of the world. And we realised, that all is not at an end: not while such mortals walk the world. Perhaps the game does not matter. Perhaps even the First Memory does not matter.’

  Something had changed in the Eyeless One. When they had last met, the creature seemed full of despair. Now that was gone, replaced with a light-hearted air that was somehow more unnerving.

  ‘Yo
u can stop it: you, and the others.’

  ‘What others?’

  It flicked a finger, and three men appeared. One was a thin, blond-haired creature, glancing around with a look of weasel-like cunning. The second was a large, bald, ruddy man, but he oozed a sense of power. The third man – dark-skinned, muscular – had an appearance of earned strength: in a physical sense, yes, but something more besides. She wondered if she looked like these men, with that same mix of confusion and hope.

  ‘You are the last hopes,’ the Eyeless One said. Its words were grand, but its delivery was banal, as if it were giving directions to a lonely traveller. It pointed at each of them in turn, beginning with Drayn. Its voice took on a new, heavy tone. ‘This is Drayn Thonn: daughter of a great House. A thing of great courage. Destroyer of Squatstout, and saviour of Jandell.’

  It turned to the blond-haired man. ‘Aranfal the torturer.’ At the last word, the man appeared to wince. ‘One of the greatest of the Overland’s Watchers. A man of two parts: the man he is, and the man he imagines he once was.’

  It turned its attention to the large man; for a moment, it seemed it was actually looking at him. ‘Canning. Here is a man who once was weak, but became a leader of two countries: Tactician of the Overland, and the King of the Remnants.’

  The man called Canning gave a curt nod. Drayn sensed something in him. Pride. New pride.

  The Eyeless One swung towards the last remaining man. ‘Brandione.’ It smiled. ‘The Queen sees such things in him.’

  It raised its arms before them.

  ‘You are all of you standing at the edge of the precipice,’ it said. ‘Our strongest child, our most glorious child, our most beautiful and destructive child, is coming for you all.’

  The Eyeless One now had eyes, balls of fire that burned in its skull. Drayn found herself staring into them. She saw a shadow there. She saw another place, where the shadow loomed over everything, the physical world and the world of her own mind. She saw herself, with that knife, that terrible, bloody blade: she was turning the knife on the ones she loved. She was cutting Cranwyl’s throat. The scene sparkled with a blue light. In the background, the shadow had taken the form of a person, and it was grasping at the light, pulling it into its being. With each moment that passed, the monster appeared to grow stronger.

  ‘We made a creature from all that humanity wanted to forget, for they are the strongest of all memories. We threw that beast against the Absence, until our enemy was torn apart. We did not know what we created.’

  ‘It cannot be stopped.’

  That was the fat man, the one called Canning. There was something fearful about him, Drayn realised. He is a king, yet he gives up so easily.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said the one called Aranfal. His voice was strange. It had an icy quality. ‘But I’m not going willingly down that road.’

  ‘The door opened from the inside,’ said Brandione. ‘Ruin did not come with the One – it came by itself.’

  ‘The prophecy was wrong,’ said Aranfal.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Eyeless One. ‘Perhaps misunderstood. Perhaps a lie, invented for some strange purpose.’

  ‘What purpose?’ asked Canning.

  The Eyeless One ignored him. It raised a spindly hand and pointed to them all in turn. ‘You are all that guards the world: Underland and Overland, Plateau and Habitation and Newlands and everything else that is. We look upon you, now, and we do not see weakness. We see the future.’

  It smiled.

  ‘This moment is over. You will not see us again.’

  It flicked a finger, and Drayn was filled with hope, a sense that all was still possible. She wondered if the Eyeless One had placed that feeling inside her, or if it came naturally, from looking at these men who were her allies, now, at the end. Perhaps it was not important; perhaps all that mattered was the fact that it was there. She looked to the men, and she saw it in their eyes, too. It is not over.

  The Eyeless One nodded to them. ‘Ruin has come; but Ruin has not yet won.’

  The scene faded away.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself.’

  Brightling was sitting before her mirror in her quarters in the See House. Candlelight flickered across the room. Behind her, standing where she always had stood, was Katrina Paprissi. The young woman was running a comb through Brightling’s white hair, as she had so many times before.

  All was familiar, and all was changed.

  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself,’ Katrina said again.

  Ruin was consuming Brightling. Ruin had consumed her. But just now, in this moment, she could not feel him. She felt like herself.

  She looked at Katrina. Beautiful. A child. No, a young woman – but a child to her, always a child, a lovely creature of black hair and pale skin and purple eyes.

  ‘If I blame myself, it’s only because all of it is my fault,’ Brightling said. She saw another mirror on the table before her, a small one. She lifted it by its golden handle and gazed into the glass. A face of shadow and fire smiled back at her. I am falling to him. But I have not fallen yet.

  She turned in her chair, and she grasped Katrina by the hand.

  ‘Who is speaking to me? Is it Katrina, or the Strategist?’

  Katrina smiled. In that moment, Brightling knew who was before her. This was the girl she had always loved.

  ‘There are monsters inside us, my love,’ the former Tactician said. Katrina’s eyes widened, and Brightling knew – she knew with such shame – that the girl’s surprise came not from the mention of monsters, but from the words ‘my love’. She knows about the monsters, but she never knew about the love.

  ‘You didn’t put the monsters there.’

  Brightling shook her head. ‘I didn’t see her, inside you. And I helped her. I formed you in the way she needed. I made you just right for her.’

  Katrina smiled. ‘I did the same to you.’

  Outside, in the night, there came a flash of golden fire.

  ‘Is it too late, now?’ Brightling asked. ‘Are we lost?’

  Katrina walked to the window. Brightling followed, and stared down from the heights of the See House to the world below. The city was gone, and so was the sea. All was fire: golden and purple and cold, so cold, not like any flame in the world. Memories flickered across the inferno: moments of terror, and moments of fierce, destructive love.

  ‘This is all that’s left of me,’ Katrina said. ‘All that’s left of the real me. I boxed myself away here, in this place.’ She glanced around the room, little more than a cell. ‘This is home. Do you understand?’ She took Brightling by the hand. ‘I’ve come home, at the end. And so have you.’

  Brightling shook her head. ‘It can’t be the end.’

  There was a noise beyond the door. Light shone through underneath: purple and golden again, glowing together in the beyond.

  ‘They’re coming for us,’ Katrina said. ‘Our new masters. They know we’ve come here, together. Both come home.’

  Brightling reached out and stroked Katrina’s cheek. ‘We can fight them,’ she whispered. ‘We might lose. But it doesn’t matter. We need to try.’

  Katrina shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. There is no Brightling any more, and there is no Katrina. We are something more.’

  ‘It’s not what I want.’

  ‘It’s not what any of us want. But it’s good.’

  ‘No. It’s … we are horrors.’

  ‘They are horrors. But we must let them take us completely. That’s the only way.’ She looked outside the window again; the flames had now surrounded the tower and were sending thin tendrils in under the door. ‘They think everything is moving according to a plan. Their plan. But I’ve seen things, Tactician. Mortals are the masters of this world, not these creatures.’ She smiled. ‘They can be destroyed. But we must allow them to possess us completely. They must think they have won. That is when they will be vulnerable: when they think they are at their strongest.’

/>   Brightling looked to the door, saw it shaking with the force of whatever lay beyond. ‘Arrogance births hubris, hubris births defeat.’ Katrina smiled at the words. One last Watcher saying, shared between two doomed women.

  Together, they walked to the door. Brightling placed her hand upon the handle.

  ‘I have always loved you, my daughter,’ she whispered.

  Katrina nodded. ‘And I you, my mother.’

  The girl placed her hand on Brightling’s. They pushed the handle down, flung open the door, and vanished into their monsters.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Strategist was lost.

  She stepped back from the fire, and glanced towards Shirkra, her gaze clouded with confusion. Her lips moved; Aranfal wondered if she was saying anything at all. Nothing has gone as she expected. She did so much to reach this point, and it’s all a lie.

  But no one thought of the Strategist for long. No one looked at her at all as the flames faded away, and the door opened from the inside. Something else was climbing from the Machinery. Someone Aranfal knew only too well.

  Brightling.

  There she was, the former mistress of the See House, the woman who had dominated the Overland for a generation. The murderer of Aran Fal and the mother of Aranfal. The one-time Tactician wore robes of blinding red and gold, flowing and twisting like the flames that had recently engulfed her. But this was not truly Brightling, Aranfal knew. His mistress was nothing more than a puppet. This was Ruin. He stood before his cage, smiling amid broken chunks of rock. His eyes were black, with flickers of gold.

  ‘My love,’ said the Strategist, falling to her knees.

  The other Operators followed suit, the great ones like Shirkra and the minor creatures who had scuttled up from the stands, collapsing to the ground and at the sides of the cage, among the broken rubble of the table.

  ‘Father,’ they said in a million jabbering voices. ‘Father, father, father.’

  Father’s gaze twitched between them. He seemed to find the scene amusing, stifling his giggles with Brightling’s hand. His expression changed when his gaze fell upon the Dust Queen. That creature was still standing, her heads slightly bowed.