‘A memory,’ Aranfal said.
‘No,’ said Canning. The former Tactician was on the other side of Drayn, gazing up at the dark sky. ‘It’s not just a memory, Aranfal. Can’t you feel its power? Doesn’t it talk to you?’
‘Yes,’ said Drayn.
‘No,’ said Aranfal. Drayn and Canning saw something he did not. With their magic eyes. Back when he was a Watcher – a million lifetimes ago – he had been a kind of magician, too. But he had a little instrument to help him: a mask, crafted for him in the Underland, a gift that allowed him to see a person’s soul. He knew, now, that it was not their souls he looked at, but their memories, the strange essence of their past. Is it the same thing? That was a kind of power, was it not? Not everyone could use a mask. You had to feel your way into it: the mask was the tool of the Watcher, not the other way around.
He retrieved the raven from his cloak and held it before him: the infamous mask of Aranfal. Once, it had struck such fear into the Doubters of the world: into everyone, truth be told. He lifted it to his face and felt it slide on in that curious way the masks possessed, like a second skin. He turned his gaze upward to the sky, and he concentrated.
The night sky was the same as always, burning with a million stars, a backdrop to the dancing lights. But over time, the picture changed. The lights began to disappear, vanishing inside a growing darkness. This was not the colour of the night. It was not an absence of light. This was a being. It had no physical form that he could easily describe. On the contrary, it was defined by its nothingness.
But the longer he stared at this thing, the more he realised his mistake. This was more than nothingness. It was something different: the memory of a creature. Aranfal felt the great movement of time, there, in the depths of this beast of the cosmos. He saw time for what it was: a pitiless expanse, infinite in scope and, until very recently, empty and unchanging. This was the Universe itself. This was the uncaring, unblinking, unchanging stuff of existence.
It seemed to turn its attention to him. He felt something pawing at his mind, delicately twisting his memories, breaking them apart. Yet it was only a memory. He wondered what this creature must have been in reality, and he shuddered.
There was a noise. He snatched off his mask, and found that he could still see the darkness. He turned and saw Ruin, his fire gone. His eyes were focused on the sky above.
‘I can’t feel his hand on my memories,’ Canning said. ‘Perhaps this thing has weakened him.’
‘No,’ said Drayn. ‘He’s just looking somewhere else. He is focused.’
The darkness spread out across the sky, until everything above them was empty and alive, all at the same time.
‘The Great Absence,’ Canning said, ‘or rather, the memory of it. We are looking at the first thing human eyes gazed upon, long ago. The First Memory. That is what they saw: their Creator. This is what was in the soldiers.’ He laughed. ‘The game was a ruse. No one could have found it, because she had it this whole time.’
The Watcher spat out a laugh. He felt a sense of administrative awe at the sheer planning behind it all.
‘What is happening to him?’ asked Drayn.
She was pointing at Brandione. The darkness of the memory was contracting, floating downwards and gathering around him, until the man was no longer visible under the haze.
Aranfal turned his focus to Ruin, who regarded the scene with a look of horror, the exact expression Brightling had used when chastising a sloppy Watcher. The longer Aranfal stared, the more clearly he saw the future under Ruin’s rule, a world of agonised memories, made exquisite by the power of his imagination. And for the first time, he saw something different in those eyes: fear. Whatever was happening to Brandione, Ruin did not like it at all.
It’s not just fear. It’s surprise. He had thought all the memories of the world were within him, but now he had learned he was missing one. Perhaps the strongest one. The one that can destroy him. Suddenly the future was a choice, not an endless, inevitable march of misery.
When the darkness faded, Brandione stood before them. But he was changed. Something seemed to crawl beneath his skin: a worm from the beginning of time. He had a strange air about him, sick and strong all at once.
‘He is at one with the memory,’ said Canning.
‘He is a host,’ said Drayn.
Brandione turned to face Ruin.
‘You are new,’ Ruin said, stepping carefully forward. ‘Yet you are so old, all at the same time. You are as old as old can be – born of the First Memory.’ He shook his head as he edged across the hill. ‘I am a fool. I should have known she kept it from the Old Place. What power she has! I never thought to look for it when I burned in the memories of old.’ He stifled a laugh. ‘Imagine! I never looked for it!’
He sighed. ‘You are a beautiful creature. Once, I would have kept you at my side, as a companion. But not now. Now, I will possess you. Not even the First Memory is stronger than me. How could it be, when all other memories are one with my soul?’
He slashed a hand through the air and Brandione fell to his knees, grasping at his throat.
‘I thought I was powerful, until this moment. Imagine what I will become when I bring the First Memory into myself.’
He raised a hand, snapped a finger, and plucked a neck shackle out of the air, attached to a chain that came from his own person. The shackle and its chain were constructs of memory, sparkling with the whispers of long ago.
Ruin placed the shackle around Brandione’s neck. He flicked a finger in the air and the restraint appeared to tighten; Brandione’s eyes bulged in their sockets.
‘What will we call you?’ Ruin asked. He reached out a finger and traced it along Brandione’s forehead. ‘You are ancient and new, all at once. What about the Old Child? What do you think?’
He raised his arms, and a great axe appeared in his grip, wide and dark, glowing with tendrils of blue flame, like lightning in the sky.
‘I made this weapon in a moment,’ Ruin whispered, holding the axe aloft. ‘I made it only for you, Old Child.’ He looked at Aranfal. ‘I will make weapons for all of you, torturer. Weapons of memory.’ He grinned. ‘You should understand how wonderful that is, torturer. A special little weapon, for each and every one.’
Torturer. The word flooded Aranfal. Torturer, torturer, torturer. Life was imbalance: the rule of the strong over the weak, and the Selected over all. Torture was this reality in its most extreme form: one person in shackles, waiting for the blow, a victim of time, which only the torturer controlled. That was to be the fate of the world, under this creature: this Ruin.
A moment forced itself into his memory. There was a woman, on the rack. But she hadn’t done anything wrong. No, it was her son … her son had been …
He felt the memory crawl across him, like a great slug. It was now beyond the confines of his mind: it was outside of himself. He felt something within it: power.
Without knowing what he was doing, he focused on that power. He thought what it would be like to hold it, to play with it, as the Shadowthings had done: not to drain it of its essence, but use it against this Ruin. To turn it into a weapon.
Something happened, then. The bounds between imagination and reality began to shift. Aranfal glanced downwards, and saw that he held a staff in his hand, a thing of darkened wood, a thing that burned with the core of the memory.
You are going to die, said a voice within. Make it a good death.
‘Aranfal,’ said Canning, somewhere to his side. ‘That weapon – how did you …?’
But Aranfal was not listening. I will do something good, before the end. And then I hope I suffer, somewhere, for all that I have done. But alone. I hope I suffer alone.
Ruin was smiling at the shackled Brandione. The axe was trembling in his hands.
‘It is time,’ he whispered.
The axe began to fall, moving slowly, as if it was cutting through some unseen barrier. In that moment, the torturer saw things with greater clarity t
han he ever had before.
He leapt forward, his staff extended, and he stopped the axe as it fell. The great weapon trembled, and fell to dust.
Ruin turned his gaze upon him. ‘That was foolish,’ he whispered. ‘I will make a special place for you in my new world, Aranfal.’
‘Aran Fal,’ the torturer replied.
He grinned at the God of Memory, and he was gone.
CHAPTER 30
A sacrifice in vain. The words rattled through Canning’s mind, as he watched Aranfal die. A sacrifice in vain.
The Watcher had stopped nothing. He had merely postponed the inevitable. Canning could feel the power of Ruin. There was no stopping this thing. There was no way to halt its rise.
A sacrifice in vain.
Aranfal had simply vanished under Ruin’s gaze. The god had turned his eyes on the Watcher, and he was gone. But his memories would never die. They would join with all the others: all of them under Ruin’s command, forever, twisted and darkened and turned to bile.
Ruin. He now reminded Canning of the Strategist, when he had first seen her on that dark beach. He was warped out of all semblance of normality, a thin, stretched giant. He was bent over Brandione, the Old Child, who remained on his knees, shackled by the neck. He reached out a hand to his new rival, but he did it slowly, hesitantly.
When Canning thought more of what Aranfal had done, his feelings began to shift. The Watcher had shown that the power of memory could still be wielded by mortals. And he was more powerful in memory than Aranfal had ever been.
He closed his eyes, and he reached out with his mind. Once, he had been able to picture the Underland as a pulsating ball of power. He had been able to snatch power from it, like a cat pulling at a ball of string. Now it was different. The power was there, but it was somehow concentrated, held tight: a balled fist.
Yet as he searched, he saw a weakness. Canning reached out, and he stole a memory from the grip of Ruin.
He was in the Circus once more, though not the giant version with the board. This was the real Circus, or at least the one he remembered, that great lump of misshapen marble with its four statues of Jandell. It was day, and the building was packed full of people. Canning was high above, in his old seat, with all the other Tacticians nearby. There was no sign of Strategist Kane.
A great stage had been built on the lower level, and a woman stood upon it, dressed all in red. Canning knew this moment only too well.
‘Sixty-two years,’ she said. Her voice was deep, somehow masculine. ‘It has been sixty-two years since …’
This was not a memory; it was a wound. It was branded into his being.
A play. Brightling’s play.
And there he was: the stage version of himself, under Brightling’s boot. She had created this scene, long ago. She had portrayed him on the stage as a simpering mess of a man. Surely it had not moved so quickly, in real life: surely the performance took longer to reach this point? But this was a nightmare. It took him where he least wanted to go, and there were no rules.
Brightling did it to impress the Machinery: to demonstrate his weakness, and highlight her strengths. He realised, now, what a backhanded show of respect this was. She feared him as a rival and wished to destroy him. He didn’t see this back then. He wanted to believe the worst of himself, in those days. So much of life is about choices. It had all become so clear. I will never choose to hate myself again.
Yet still this memory held him in its grip. Perhaps a part of him would always be trapped in this moment. Perhaps it would never die.
He looked at the other Tacticians. They were all here, except the only one that mattered. Brightling was not in her usual place, two seats away from him. There was nothing in that chair.
He turned back to the stage, to find that all had changed. Only Canning stood there, now. This was no actor, however. This was the real man, or an image of him. And he was not alone. At his side was Annya, half-mad Annya, the only thing that mattered …
The crowd were cheering. They cheered as the stage Canning lifted his arms. They cheered as he smiled at them. They cheered as he turned his body and kicked out at Annya’s legs, knocking her to the ground.
This was not a memory. This was something new, a creation made to provoke pain, fashioned by a cruel hand. He tried to avert his gaze, but something held his head in place. Now the stage was cast in shadow. Canning was on top of Annya: he held a cushion, a thing of silver, shaped into a half-moon crown, and he was forcing it over his lover’s mouth. Suffocating her.
The shadow on the stage gathered together and rose upwards. It filled Brightling’s chair, forming into a perverse outline of a person.
This will be your life, Canning. The voice was within him. This will be life for all of you.
‘But you have not won,’ said the former Tactician. He had found courage from somewhere, and it was a marvel to him. ‘You will not win.’
You think you have power. Look where we are. I took you here, though you thought you stole it from me. There is no power in you.
The creature began to flicker between Brightling and shadow, over and over. He knew, then, that he hated one more than the other. It was absurd, but it was always Brightling. She had been his ruin long before this creature took her over.
I will destroy her completely. Anger swelled inside him like a pustule, bursting open and flooding him with its bile. She will die: Ruin, Brightling, both of them, forever …
He had seized this memory for a weapon. He had not found one. He had only made her mock him more. But perhaps it was enough. Perhaps the anger of this memory was all that he needed.
She grinned at him. There was blood on her teeth.
CHAPTER 31
You are the heir to the House of Thonn, which has stood for ten thousand years.
Tick, tick, tock.
You will not lose yourself to this place.
The words came to Drayn in her mother’s voice, reaching out from the island. No. From myself. She’s inside me, and she always will be. All of them are in me, all these voices from the past.
Tick, tick, tock.
I’m a Thonn.
Canning was gone. Ruin remained, his hand grasping the chain that led to the Old Child. But his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Perhaps he had taken Canning to some place, some memory. The girl looked upwards, to the sky, wondering if they were out there. Only the stars glimmered back at her.
Tick, tick, tock. It’s time to stop the clock.
A gibberish ditty from childhood. Her thoughts were untethered, as if the anchor that held her to reality was gone, and she was floating away. Floating to nothing. Floating from myself, and the world …
Tick, tick …
She forced herself to concentrate. I was in a great stadium, vast, the size of a country, with four statues staring down. There was a shattered table and a broken cage. They are gone. Jandell is gone.
She suppressed an urge to cry out. Jandell is gone.
She forced the thought away. I am on a hill. One god is killing another.
Gods. The word felt strange, but there was nothing else for it.
The Old Child. He was nearing death.
A tick, and a tock.
She walked to him, studied the shackle that held him in place. It was a gleaming, pointed, dark thing, locked tightly around the neck.
‘How do I release him?’
Tick, tick … Thonn’s time ticks down, down to the end …
She closed her eyes, and Jandell was before her.
‘The power of memories must die. I see that now.’
He smiled at her.
‘No. That power is the glory of the world,’ she said, though she did not believe her own words.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing but the shadows of shadows. You are the glory.’ He closed one of his palms and opened it again: there was a little model there, shaped into a black pyramid. ‘The people of the Overland made this by themselves: it is called the Fortress of Expansion. It still stands, e
ven now, when the things I made from memory are long gone.’
Drayn nodded. ‘Tell me what to do. Tell me how to free that man.’
Jandell closed his palm. ‘He is her prisoner, but she has not yet destroyed him. Remember that memories come from you, and Canning, and all of humanity. You are the gods.’
Her eyes snapped open. Canning had returned. He was at her side, bent over, panting and exhausted.
‘I need your help,’ she said.
His face was a mask of pain.
‘Together,’ he heaved. ‘We will do everything together.’
The white-haired figure had returned in all his power and was bent over the Old Child once more. Ruin’s hands pulled at the black chain and the shackle that coiled around the Old Child, straining at his throat. The scene was changing: the two of them rose into the air. More chains cascaded down, sprung from the darkness and fire of Ruin, crashing around the mortals below. Each chain was a memory of another life. Dark memories. Hidden moments. The treasures of Ruin.
‘We have to follow,’ said the girl. ‘But I don’t know how.’
‘Yes,’ said Canning. He was a strange man, even now. He gleamed with fear; it shone on his skin like sweat. But even so, something pushed him forward, onwards into danger. Anger. Ambition. Hate.
He moved towards the chains, and he ran his fingers along them.
‘She’s crushing him,’ Drayn said.
‘She hasn’t killed him yet. He’s strong. He’s holding her back.’
Drayn looked upwards. ‘Let’s go to him,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s help.’
She grasped the chains, and nodded as Canning did the same.
‘Take us to your mistress,’ she whispered. ‘Take us to Ruin and Brandione.’
And up the chains they went, up through the treasures of Ruin.
Death was near for the Old Child.
They were floating in the night sky, atop the heaped piles of chains. Ruin stood before them, encircled by his fire and his chains; he was bent over, and his white hair covered his face. He was pointing towards Brandione.
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