He crawled forward, and Ruin saw him. Was the fire in those eyes the same flame that had burned within the cage? Or was it something else – something more? The flames licked their way around the creature, encircling him. Perhaps he was the flame.
Ruin turned towards Canning, and he felt himself shrivel before those eyes. This was the power of the world, now. This thing could burn the Remnants in a moment. He found Canning amusing. The King of the Remnants could see it. He could see Ruin mocking him. He mocked himself. How did I ever believe myself great? How could any mortal, when a creature like this exists?
Ruin blinked, and Canning was somewhere else. A dock. The dock. The place where Annya had fallen, all those years ago. She was on the wall, but this time he was at her side. She looked up at him and, by the Machinery, why am I here, on this wall?
Shirkra appeared then, surrounded by shadow. Two creatures. Not Shirkra alone. Shirkra and Ruin.
‘We are the same, now,’ Shirkra said. ‘I am Ruin, and Ruin is Chaos.’ She walked to him, and pushed a thin finger against his chest. ‘Soon, the Old Place will be Ruin: he will drink it all. And then we will all play together. We can dance to Ruin’s tune.’
‘What is that tune?’ Canning asked. He looked at Annya. ‘This is not a memory. I was never on the wall.’
‘No,’ Shirkra said, shrugging slightly. ‘But you will remember it. And that is what Ruin wants: that pain. That’s what he wants from all of you, forever.’
He felt his hand move beyond his control.
‘No,’ he said.
But his protests did not matter. He could not stop himself, as he pushed Annya into the water.
He was back at the table. Ruin was no longer interested in him.
‘You,’ Ruin whispered. He raised the hand of Brightling and pointed a finger at the Operator of three bodies. ‘Dust Queen. I have seen you, your majesty.’ He said the last two words with a mocking tone. ‘I have seen where you came from, long ago, in the days when the Old Place was young. You were formed from the birth of memories. Almost the First Memory … though not quite.’
The Dust Queen nodded her three heads. ‘I sense great power in you now, Ruin. I knew this day would come, when you would walk free among us: the greatest of us all.’ A dark look crossed her three sets of eyes. ‘Ruin will come with the One.’
Ruin laughed. ‘Wrong. I did not need the One. I do not need anyone.’
The Dust Queen smiled. ‘But it was true, in a way. She went to the door and was the first Operator you saw when you emerged.’
Ruin shrugged. ‘Prophecies, promises, predictions: call them what you will. I have seen so many of them in the great pool of memory. Promises made and broken, over and over again. They are worthless.’
The Dust Queen bowed. ‘Ruin,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘I am the oldest among us. But you are the greatest. You do not understand my intentions.’
Ruin became very still. For once, he seemed surprised.
‘I wanted you to be free,’ the Queen said. ‘I created this moment.’
She turned and looked across the shattered table. She gazed at the mortals who remained, locking eyes on Brandione. ‘We were losing the war. Before long, the mortals would have destroyed us.’ She focused once more on Ruin. ‘I knew what to do: how to end the war, and empower you, all at once. I helped Jandell build the Machinery. I knew you would grow stronger than the Old Place . But more than that, Ruin – I knew you were not a prisoner. I aided you. I saw it would take ten thousand years, for you to reach your true power. Everything I did was aimed at this moment. Everything brought us here, to this place. All your children gathered together, thanks to my words. You have consumed them, and the Old Place is at your feet: all because of me.’
Ruin seemed to hesitate.
‘I saw that if the Old Place were ever to be a god that loved Operators above mortals, then it would have to become an Operator,’ the Dust Queen said. ‘We fought a war against the mortals, and the Old Place did not help us – it simply watched. Perhaps, after time, in one of its moments of clarity, it would even have joined the mortals’ side. But that danger has now passed. The greatest child of the Old Place will consume it. Ruin will become a god.’
And then this great being, this creature of the most undiluted power, fell to her three sets of knees, and bowed her heads before Ruin.
‘I accept your mastery,’ she said. ‘Take me into you.’
Ruin’s eyes widened. ‘She bows before me: the Queen of Dust.’ He nodded. ‘I see, now, that you helped me.’ He went to her, and placed a hand on one of the Queen’s shoulders. He began to mutter, his eyes burning.
And the Dust Queen fell apart.
She did not collapse into dust all at once, as might have been expected. She disintegrated, chunk by chunk, like plaster from a wall, crashing to the ground and shattering into sand. The piles of dust began to swirl, before forming themselves into a single, narrow pillar.
Ruin opened his mouth, and the dust went down his throat. In his place were three old women, ancient hags clothed in rags with parchment skin and watery eyes. These women turned into three Ruins, arms spread wide. And then there was only one, standing alone before the cage, his eyes gleaming. The power of memory burned through him like fire in a forest.
Canning felt a sense almost of pain, as he gazed upon this thing. Ruin was too much for the world. He was too much for them all, and he had only just begun.
Ruin looked to him with a mix of love and disdain. ‘You are a powerful one,’ he said. ‘People like you were the worst. You almost defeated us.’ He shook his head. ‘But never again.’
There was a noise from somewhere amid the rubble, and Canning was reminded that not all the Operators had been sucked into the growing power of Ruin. There was one who stood outside his power, one Canning had known longer than any of the others, along with everyone who had lived in the Overland. It was the one they had called Operator, when they thought there was only one. It was Jandell.
He stood, trembling, his cloak curling around him. He seemed younger now, with long, black hair and pale, unlined skin. But there was a terrible weakness there: almost a kind of sickness.
‘Father.’
When Ruin looked at Jandell, all the hatred from all the ages of the world seemed to gather in his eyes.
‘The boy who betrayed his parents.’ He shook his head. ‘You almost killed your mother, and you made me a prisoner.’
Jandell pointed at the cage, and there was a look of sorrow in his gaze. ‘It would seem not,’ he said.
Ruin shook his head. ‘You meant to keep me there, and burn me forever.’
Jandell nodded. ‘These ten millennia have been a glory of the world, thanks to what we made.’
Ruin laughed. ‘What good has it done you? Ten millennia of glory, while I built myself into this. While I made myself a god. Ten millennia will be a drop in the ocean of my reign.’
Jandell pointed to his cloak. ‘The Queen gave me this, long ago, when she agreed to help me. She said it would remind me of all the terrible things I had done.’ He sighed. ‘I see now what a lie it was. The Queen never helped me. She helped you. I have always been a fool.’
He removed the cloak, and the faces screamed without sound. He grasped it in his hands and tore it into shreds, allowing them to fall into the wind. He was naked before them, under a dark, starless sky.
‘The Bleak Jandell,’ Ruin said. ‘Do you know what your failing is? You lost touch with yourself. Your efforts to help the mortals were foolish: they only led to this moment.’ He pointed at himself. ‘When we are one, I will relish your true self. I will revel in your bleakness.’
Drayn appeared at Jandell’s side and took him by the hand. Jandell turned to the girl and shook his head. She began to back away from him.
‘We will die together, Father,’ said Jandell. ‘Never forget, that I am a weapon as well.’
The Operator – the old Operator, the one they had known forever – swept his arms in
the air, and the remnants of his cloak floated before him. They merged together, becoming a great whip, a length of black rope whose surface writhed with sneering and smiling and yelling faces. Jandell grasped the whip. He pulled his arm back and with a sudden movement sent this weapon searing towards Ruin. That creature laughed at Jandell, but he did not laugh for long; he forgot to leap away, and the whip cracked against him.
Ruin yelled with pain and anger. He snatched a hand into the air, and in a heartbeat the cage fell apart. The remnants of his prison rose upwards, dancing in the air, before crashing down on Jandell. The Operator did not attempt to flee. He simply watched as the ruins of his machine fell upon him.
Something began to emerge from the wreckage: a thin line of blackness. Ruin breathed in, and sucked Jandell into his lungs.
‘I am Ruin,’ he said. ‘The last of the Operators.’
CHAPTER 28
As Ruin stood triumphant, Brandione thought only of the Dust Queen.
She had engineered all of this. She had helped Ruin, and she had joined him. She had betrayed the world. She had betrayed him.
He watched Ruin shift from Brightling to the Dust Queen, then to Jandell, then to those little children, then to Shirkra, on and on, over and over, a monstrosity, all the Operators in one. His fire gathered around him, a cold flame that spoke of agonised memories.
Brandione glanced behind. His army was still there, rank after dead rank. The Queen had sucked them dry over ten millennia, turning them into creatures of sand. He felt a pulse of anger. All this time, I looked to these dead, useless soldiers. I wondered how I would use them. And now – at the end – I see the truth: it was all a trick. She has made a fool of me.
‘It is almost complete.’
Ruin’s voice had changed once again. Brandione thought he could see memories forming in the air around his mouth, like gusts of icy breath.
‘All that remains is the Old Place itself,’ he whispered. ‘I must drink the Old Place.’
He fell to his knees and began to whisper, his eyes closed. All around, the world began to change. The broken shards of his cage melted into a river of blackness, then flowed towards Ruin; he drank it in a gulp. The great slabs of the table, the statues of the Strategist: all of it shattered, all of it gathered together, and all of it made its way to him, the creature in the flames.
The Circus was gone. Only the Portal to the Machinery remained, though it was nothing more than a hole in the ground. Brandione wondered if he had gone to a memory, and was standing in the ancient past, on the Primary Hill as it would have been before the Operator built the Circus. He soon realised that this was the present, drained of all the power of the Old Place and all the glory of memory. The Circus, the See House, and Memory Hall: the Operator himself built them all. They were gone, now. No. Not gone. They are part of him.
Ruin was standing by the Portal, his head twitching as he glanced around with an air of animal fascination. He was seeing the world with new eyes, perhaps. He had been reborn as something new. He ignored them all as he enjoyed the first sense of his new powers, though it would not be long before he gave them his undivided attention.
They were huddled together at the birth of the god: Canning, Aranfal, Drayn, and himself. Lined up behind them was his army of the dead, stretching away in their thousands across the hilltop and down the sides. Ruin paid them no heed. Perhaps they mean nothing to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked his soldiers. There came no reply.
‘Who are they?’ whispered Canning.
‘A gift. An army. Useless.’
‘Make them fight,’ said Aranfal.
But Brandione shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s that kind of army.’
And then they all felt it, all at once. There was a presence in their minds: a parasite, burrowing through their memories. Brandione looked to Ruin, and saw that he was burning once more, engulfed in black and red flame, a creature of cold fire. He could see Ruin’s eyes, in the flame, and they were laughing at him.
All of the Old Place is within me.
The words came from all around and nowhere in particular. Brandione could hear Brightling there as well, her voice mingled with something older by far.
All of the Old Place is within me, so I am within you. I am your memories; your memories are me.
Brandione placed his hands over his ears, as if that could somehow make it stop.
From now, until the end, we will all be together: your memories and me. My memories.
The former General ground his teeth together. He heard a noise, somewhere, a terrible high-pitched whine, as of steam being released or the cogs of a great machine grinding together.
‘Use your army.’
Brandione shook his head. It took a while for him to realise that this was not Aranfal’s voice, or Canning’s, or Drayn’s, or any mortal’s. It was not Ruin’s, either.
It was the Dust Queen.
Some instinct made him close his eyes, and she was there, smiling at him. He had seen her in many guises, this Queen of Dust: a young girl, an old woman, and everything in between. But now she was the being he had first met all that time ago, in a strange little tower in the Prison of the Doubters: three women in middle age, their faces in constant flux, their thrones and their robes formed of grey swirling dust, wearing crowns of glass. He felt a strange pang of nostalgia for that early part of his journey: a time when he had embarked upon the madness, but was not so far from home.
He sensed, then, that there was more to this story than he understood.
‘How do I use them?’ he asked. ‘Can they fight Ruin?’
The Queen shook her heads. ‘No. Only you can do that.’
He felt a spark of anger. ‘You betrayed me. Why should I believe you?’
The Dust Queen smiled. ‘It is true. I knew that Ruin was not a prisoner. I knew that his powers would grow to dwarf us all, and I gave myself to him. But I did it for a reason. I did it to free you all.’
‘Free us? You helped create a new god.’
‘He truly is a god. But that will be his downfall. Memory is the god, and the god is memory. If he is destroyed, the power of memory will die.’
Realisation began to dawn on Brandione.
‘You will die, too, your majesty.’
‘Good. The power of memory has been a curse for mortals. Destroy it. Cherish your memories for what they are. But you can no longer live under their thumb. Destroy Ruin, and set yourselves free of us all.’
‘How?’
She smiled, and for a moment she seemed to solidify into three real women. ‘I told you already. Use your army.’
‘I don’t know how.’
‘You are the Last Doubter. You are the soldier and the scholar.’ She smiled at him. ‘I stripped out their memories, but I did not leave them empty. I put something inside them, one little bit at a time. Something precious. Something I have possessed for ten millennia: something I kept a secret. The only thing that Ruin fears. Look inside your army …’
The Queen faded away. Brandione opened his eyes, and everything was just as it had been. Ruin was in the same position, burning in his fire. Aranfal, Drayn and Canning watched him with agony writ across their faces, as he played with their memories. With his own memories, in truth, for he now was master of them all.
Strange, but Brandione did not feel Ruin within him, in this moment. Had the Queen done something to protect him? Perhaps I have saved myself.
He turned towards his troops. He focused his attention on one of the soldiers, a short creature in a yellow cloak, holding a glass spear. Look inside your army.
A thought struck him. This was his army. These were his soldiers. He would order them to do what he wanted.
‘Army of dust,’ he called.
The soldiers stood to attention, slamming their spears into the ground.
‘Raise your weapons.’
As one, all the glass spears were raised.
What are you doing?
An intense heat flooded him.
I see you. What are you doing with those dead creatures? Do you think they can help you?
Brandione struggled to push Ruin from his mind. He felt the god clawing at him with burning fingers, scrabbling through his memories, searching for something. He was panicking. The realisation gave Brandione a new sense of strength.
He forced himself to focus on the army. He tried to shout, but found that he could not raise his voice. And so he whispered to them, hoping they could hear him.
‘Army of dust, show me what is inside you. I command you.’
At the front of the army, a soldier stepped forward. He saluted, and immediately disintegrated into dust, which floated away around the Circus. But he did not vanish entirely. Something was left behind: a tiny spark of light, flitting through the night air like a firefly.
There was a great murmur through the assembled troops, and they all collapsed into dust, just as the first soldier had done. The spark was joined by hundreds of thousands, millions more, circling each other in the air. Brandione saw that the lights were joining together, forming a greater whole. He knew what he was looking at. The one thing that could destroy Ruin. The weapon he was destined to wield. The Dust Queen had had it in her possession, all this time. She had broken it into little pieces and hidden it within these beings.
It was the First Memory of the Old Place, and it belonged to Brandione.
CHAPTER 29
‘Something great is happening. Can’t you feel it?’
Aranfal swung his head in the direction of the voice. The girl was talking. Drayn. She was staring at Brandione, and whatever he had wrought. There was a strange look in her eyes. It was something unnerving, almost primeval: a kind of hunger.
‘He’s found something, in those … soldiers,’ Aranfal said. But what it is, I do not know. He looked at the one-time General of the Overland, standing on the muddy hill with his hands in the air, staring dumbly upwards at whatever he had unleashed: a twisting haze of lights, slowly dancing together.
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