The Memory

by Gerrard Cowan

  There came a sound in the air: a great grinding, like the movement of some terrible machine. It reached a screeching pitch, and then fell silent, never to be heard again.

  Memories whispered past Canning. He opened his eyes, and he saw them: the real Brightling, and the real Katrina Paprissi, hand in hand on the hilltop, smiling at him. There was a look in their eyes he had never seen in either of them. They are content.

  But then they were gone. All of it was gone.

  All that was left was the Old Child, on his knees. He looked up at Canning, and he smiled. The memory of Absence danced across his skin, uncontrolled, searing into him.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he said. ‘The First Memory, become the last.’ He lay on the ground.

  ‘No,’ said Canning. He ran to the side of this man, the man he had once known as Charls Brandione. ‘No. I can see you … you are here, despite everything you unleashed. Ruin is gone, but you’re still here. You have such strength!’

  There was a hazy look in the Old Child’s eyes. ‘The god is dead,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a god, too,’ Canning whispered.

  ‘I am dying.’ The Old Child nodded at Canning. ‘The King of the Remnants and the First Memory: together at the end.’

  Canning felt a surge of desperation. The death of the power of memory. The death of my own power. His mind turned to the future, a future where he was just a man. He thought of the things he had done since he’d been a prisoner in the Bowels. All of it would soon be gone.

  He would never know, in later years, where the thought came from. Perhaps it was born from some dark recess of himself. Perhaps it was not his thought at all. But something happened to him, as he stood on that hill, watching the thing that was once Charls Brandione, the last power in the world, slowly dying.

  He knew that he had to stop it.

  He searched within himself, in the deepest recesses of his soul, scrabbling for some trace of that power he had once felt. It was useless. It was gone.

  But then he saw it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Drayn asked.

  Canning hurried across the hill and picked it up: the white mask of Shirkra.

  ‘There’s still some power in this,’ he whispered. He turned to Drayn. ‘It’s the only bit left in the world. This, and him.’ He pointed his finger at the dying Old Child.

  ‘Let it go, Canning,’ Drayn said. ‘The world doesn’t need it any more.’

  But Canning shook his head. ‘It’s our power, Drayn. Those creatures stole it from us. But it’s ours. The Absence gave it to us.’

  He gazed at the mask. With everything he had left, he willed it to respond to him.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ said Drayn. ‘I don’t feel anything any more. It’s all gone.’

  Canning shook his head. ‘I am the King of the Remnants,’ he whispered. ‘I will make this thing of memory obey me.’

  The mask broke into a smile, grinning at Canning. He smiled back. It hears me.

  He turned, and he threw the mask at the Old Child. It changed and grew as it sailed through the air, until it ceased to be a mask at all and became a storm cloud. For a moment, Canning thought he saw words there, repeating over and over: Death. Life. Death …

  The Old Child glanced up with heavy eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me die.’

  But the mask did not listen, and neither did Canning. The cloud fell upon the Old Child and the world filled with light and darkness: the white of the mask, and the black emptiness of the First Memory, twisting together, flickering across the hill.

  When it was over, all that remained was a small ball, white with patches of black, like a pearl the size of a fist. Canning lifted it.

  ‘The power of memory is still in here,’ he whispered. ‘The last power of memory. I’ve got it. It’s mine.’

  Drayn shook her head. ‘Destroy it, as the Old Child wanted.’

  ‘Why? All these years they’ve used the power of memory to control us. Why can’t we use it for ourselves?’ He laughed. ‘We have all the magic left in the world, here – in a prison.’

  ‘It’s just a husk,’ said Drayn, though she seemed unsure of her own words. ‘You won’t be able to do anything with it, except put it on a shelf. There’s nothing there. When I search my memories I feel nothing. They died, and so did their power. So did our power. That’s nothing but a stone.’

  No. She is wrong. Canning could feel something there. Something they could use to start again. And this time, he would control it.

  ‘We will find out. I will study it.’ He glanced at her. ‘For the good of the Overland. For the good of mortals.’ He locked eyes with Drayn. There was such a power in her, or there had once been. There could be again.

  ‘You need to leave,’ he whispered.

  The girl hesitated for a moment, before nodding. She turned away from him, and began to walk away. But she stopped, further along the hill. She stooped to pick something up, before looking back at Canning.

  He could not see what she held in her hand. But it didn’t matter.

  The new world was coming.

  CHAPTER 37

  Cranwyl climbed and climbed, huffing and puffing until he came to the very top of the island: the very top of the world.

  The old tower loomed before him, fat and shadowy against the light of the sun. It was squat and stout. That was appropriate, for once this had been Squatstout’s Keep. The Autocrat had sat here, dispensing his justice, ruling over them all, doing whatever it was that majestic beings like him actually did. It wasn’t any concern of old Cranwyl’s. Oh no. He never asked what they did.

  That was just the way it was. He’d always worked for the families on the island. The families. The great ones. The ones that ran the place. They always needed people like him, and he did what they needed. That’s how it worked.

  The Thonns had been the best of them. Especially Drayn. He liked to think he’d really helped her, over the years. He’d helped her see things the way they were supposed to be seen. Helped her deal with bad thoughts – dark thoughts – things you wanted rid of. He was proud of it. Friends, some people called them. He didn’t like the word. She was his master. Friends were for ale and cards. Oh, she wasn’t a friend.

  That was the way it’d always been, before she’d left the island. And that was the way it was now, after she’d come back.

  A Guard nodded at him before the big door, then shifted out of his way. It still felt odd, seeing these fellas without their big beak masks. But they’re not the same people at all, are they? Silly Cranwyl. They were just normal folk now.

  Cranwyl nodded at the man and moved into the keep. Dusty, strange, horrible place it was. He would’ve preferred they’d managed things from one of the nice houses, a bit further down the island – Thonn House, now that would’ve been ideal. But no, he supposed some traditions had to be kept. After the end of Squatstout, everything had gone bad. Until Drayn had come back, that was. The House of Thonn, back on top. He sucked in a satisfied breath.

  He came to the door of the throne room and gave it a gentle knock.

  ‘Come in,’ she said from beyond.

  Cranwyl grasped the old doorknob (it was shaped in the likeness of Squatstout; they still hadn’t got rid of it – they probably never would, he reckoned) and pushed inside.

  Drayn smiled. She looked the same to him, in many ways, though maybe he just wanted her to look the same. She wasn’t a girl now. Twenty-five years old. In truth, she hadn’t been a girl for a long time, and age had nothing to do with it. All the childishness had been knocked out of her by whatever happened in the world beyond the island. She was sitting at the great table, staring down at a few papers that were scattered around. Messy. Cranwyl hated a mess.

  But he didn’t say anything. He was too busy looking at the stranger who sat at the table with Drayn. He was a funny-looking thing, dressed up like he was going to a costume party, with ribbons in his hair and a fancy blue coat. There was nothing unusual about h
is presence. Drayn was always bringing strangers to this room. Still, there was a lot that felt unusual about him.

  Cranwyl looked to Drayn, and he felt reassured. They’d put her in charge when she came back to the island. A Thonn, they’d said. We need a Thonn. And she’s seen the world outside. There was more to it than that, though. She was a smart one, and everyone knew it. She’d got them on the right path. She’d set up trade with other places. You could even leave the island, now, if you liked, though few ever did, unless they had to.

  ‘Cranwyl!’ Drayn shouted. She still had that happiness in her voice, the joy he remembered from when she was young, chasing after him round the big house. All right, maybe it was different, now: a bit older, a bit wearier. But it was there.

  He gave her a little bow, and he took a seat at the table, at Drayn’s side and opposite the strange man. He glanced around the throne room. Squatstout’s old chair was long gone, now, that thing in the shape of the letter ‘A’. Cranwyl thought it was a pity. Drayn would have suited a throne, not that she’d ever sit in one.

  He nodded at the pair of them, and the strange man grinned back. There was something off about him. He seemed … thoughtfully devious, if that was an expression.

  Cranwyl stuck out a hand. ‘I’m Cranwyl,’ he said. ‘The servant of Madam Thonn.’

  ‘Servant!’ Drayn laughed. ‘So much more than that. My chief adviser.’

  He blushed. ‘If you say so.’

  The man took his hand, and smiled. ‘Wayward,’ he said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Wayward is my name.’

  Cranwyl shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He shifted his focus to Drayn. ‘Anything you need doing today?’ He cast a glance at Wayward. Drayn would know what he meant. Is this man bothering you?

  Drayn gave a slight shake of her head. ‘Something strange happened recently, Cranwyl. It happened, and then Wayward arrived. I don’t think the two are unconnected.’

  Cranwyl glanced between them. ‘What happened?’

  Drayn reached under the table and lifted something up, placing it before them. It was some kind of object, covered by a cloth.

  ‘I found this … back then,’ she said. He knew what she meant, though she rarely talked about it. ‘I took it with me.’

  She pulled the cloth away. Sitting on the table was a mask, shaped into the likeness of a smiling man. It was a strange thing, fashioned from some material that was darker than anything Cranwyl had seen before. No: it wasn’t dark. It was somehow empty.

  ‘This mask,’ said Wayward, ‘is all that remains of an old power. The oldest power: the being that created the world, before trying to devour it. It was destroyed long ago, and this is a shard of its corpse. It’s called the Absence.’

  Cranwyl frowned. There was no good here, in this thing. This was something that would eat him all up, if it could.

  He looked up at Drayn. ‘It has a bit of power in it, doesn’t it? A bit of power like Squatstout used to have.’ He gestured at Wayward. ‘This fella has it too.’ Cranwyl ain’t always so dumb.

  ‘I took it with me, from the Overland,’ Drayn said. ‘And now something is happening to it. It’s always been a bit funny, like it’s watching me. But now … it’s as if it’s alive. There’s such power in it, and it’s growing stronger all the time.’

  ‘Death never dies,’ whispered Wayward.

  Cranwyl looked once more at the mask. As he stared at it, he felt something in his mind, something unwelcome, picking at the core of him.

  The mask of Absence smiled at Cranwyl, and it winked.

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