by Adrian Cole
At last it was over. The Gelders abruptly drew off, fifty of their dead and crippled littering the plain. Perhaps Ubeggi was satisfied and tired of the fight, for the Gelders began to disappear, drawn back to the astral.
Mitsujin and the Voidal regarded each other, both ripped and blood spattered. The Voidal could see that Mitsujin was dying, his chest torn and gaping.
“I remain whole!” snarled the warrior. But he fell to his knees and looked up at the towering mass of the Tree Citadel. “I have rejected my gods and have been rejected by them. I have spurned Ubeggi’s cruel life. I have sought the downfall of Verdanniel. Yet I ask of the Tree god, if he hears me, a last favour in life.” He addressed this to the high ramparts overhead.
A voice drifted across on a light breeze, tired and heavy with unaccustomed pain. “Ask it.”
“I am soon to die. Let me lie here and feed the earth. Let my blood help to atone for the ill I have caused.”
Verdanniel answered. “It shall be so.”
Mitsujin then placed the haft of his largest sword in the ground and fell upon it. His blood watered the charred earth as his life leaked away and the forgiving earth rose up to meet and embrace him.
Orgoom looked around him nervously. The real import of what he had done rushed in upon him like sudden nightfall. “Not for me such an easy exit,” he mumbled.
“Nor for me,” said the Voidal.
They heard a movement among the dying Gelders. One of them rose up, covered in its own blood. “You are cast out!” it spat through its pain. “Both of you! You are loved by none, rudderless and damned! The seas of Chance shall wreck you throughout eternity. Steer clear of the Weaver of Wars, if you can, or he will mete out to you a curse more terrible than any that has ever tortured your dreams before.”
Orgoom rushed over and kicked the body, but the Gelder was already dead. The impetuous gesture amused the Voidal. This Gelder possessed an extraordinary spirit. Could there be stubbornness here to match that of the persistent Elfloq?
“Chance?” said the dark man. “No, it is not Chance that moves me. I would that it were. Though I will seek ways to win the favours of Chance.”
Orgoom, who never smiled, tried to do so. “I’ll take what Chance flings in my face. I’ll sail her stormy sea gladly.”
The Voidal nodded, then turned away in the direction of the Tree Citadel. Orgoom watched his back, then popped into the astral and to his freedom. The Voidal felt the sudden onset of exhaustion, wondering if he would reach Verdanniel and succour there, or if he would sink down into sleep, doubtless to awaken somewhere far, far from here.
Even as the thought took hold, he began to fall. The Dark Gods had acted for good here, he realised. They had thwarted evil. It was not the first time. They opposed evil and their own darkness was not symbolic of it, merely a cloud of mystery about them.
Did I once perform some great evil? He wondered. The crime that I committed, for which they punish me.
Sleep lapped over him. Already the dreams were beginning, smothering the lost secrets anew.
PART TWO: AT THE COUNCIL OF GOSSIPERS
In such a simmering cauldron of chaos as the omniverse, who should one trust? Gods, demi-gods, Man, the creatures that serve, where does faith begin and caution end? Indeed, can one trust oneself?
The Gods know well enough our weaknesses. Being so armed, they manipulate us easily. As they do our humblest of servants.
They certainly knew the mind of Elfloq, regardless of its extraordinary deviousness. And there is no denying, a familiar never changes it scales.
—Salecco, no longer trusted by anyone, probably for good reason.
Lost somewhere in the impenetrable vastness of the astral realms lies an old world of dust and shadows that no longer has a name, a world that was once firmly rooted in one of the many dimensions, but which now has faded not only from human memory but also from corporeal existence. On the astral realm it is real enough, though even here it fades like a neglected memory, or a simple act of no significance beyond recall. Its very obscurity and lack of character have, however, paradoxically won for it a small if occasional band of adherents. These gather here but rarely, having no wish to advertise their coming, or their activities. They are by nature and purpose secretive beings: indeed, their lives are devoted to secrets and the gleaning of forbidden knowledge. Only on the rarest of occasions do they share these secrets with other than their masters. Their visits to this remote extremity take the form of unique gatherings, Councils, for it is for the express purpose of bartering their gleanings that they come. Between themselves, they have no other coin but knowledge, its metal usually of the censored kind.
* * * *
It was at the Inn With No Sign that Elfloq first came upon the Blue Gelder.
This hostelry, if one could describe it so grandly, nestled, so to speak, in a cranny of the astral realm that was truly off the beaten track. Its lack of hubbub and babble suited the withdrawn nature of its customers, most of who came here to escape a dreary life and find solitude of a kind. Elfloq, however, called in from time to time on the off chance that he might just turn over a stone that would otherwise be unmoved.
The familiar found himself drawn to the Gelder almost at once. He knew a little about these beings and even less about their grim master, mostly from rumour and hearsay. Curiosity being one of the great motivators in Elfloq, it naturally prompted him to study the Gelder from the tiny bar, but he was conscious that it was more than this that had snared his attention. Elfloq, not himself being beautiful, discounted the Gelder’s stunted physique, his resemblance to a blue-skinned demon. The Gelder was evidently in something of a state of confusion, not caused by his surroundings, as Gelders used the astral more often than the real dimensions, but by some internal conflict that lent an air of unusually heightened dejection to the being. This seemed doubly extraordinary in a Gelder, beings that were noted for their lack of emotional display.
“Pardon my rudeness,” said Elfloq, mindful of the dreadful miniature sickles that were the Blue Gelder’s elongated fingernails. “I see that you sip refreshment alone and ruefully, and appear to be in no hurry. I likewise have some time on my hands. May I join you?”
The Gelder nodded and muttered a gruff affirmative. Elfloq perceived at once that he was neither suspicious nor guarded. He appeared, rather, distracted.
“Of course,” grinned the familiar, “I have better manners than to ask your current employment. That is your master’s affair entirely. But I notice your diffidence. So out of sorts for one of your, ah, talents. Have you, perchance, fallen upon harsh terrain, so to speak?”
The Gelder sighed, an even sharper indicator that something was highly amiss. “Harsh? Not sure. Obscure, yes.”
Encouraged by the fact that the Gelder had not simply dismissed him with a vicious swipe of those blades, Elfloq extended the conversation. “Your next move presents dilemma?”
The Gelder, typical of his kind, was not given to loquaciousness, but Elfloq was not put off by this, recognising a natural trait rather than an arbitrary one.
“Well,” said the familiar, sharing the mood, “I am also in a dilemma. My master, a rare being indeed, often severs himself from me in such a manner that I have to spend all my energies merely seeking him, or word of him. A tedious business and an absurd waste of my talents.”
“I have no master,” said the Gelder bluntly. “Freed from him.”
“Just so? Well, well.” This is indeed odd for a Gelder. “I have been in such circumstances myself. An unstable predicament for such as you and I. So — you seek a new master?”
“None! Stay free. They are cruel. Find a dark world, live there. Stay.”
Even more surprising, thought Elfloq. “Stay? Life will be short for you. We cannot survive without masters.”
“Was once a man. Changed by evil power. Not like others of the astral places.”
“Even so, life will take no pity on you. Who will protect you?”
�
��Better free than to serve the Weaver. That was bad.”
Elfloq, a master at masking his emotions, feigned indifference. “Ah. The Weaver. Would that be the Light Weaver, or perhaps Stormweave of —?”
“Ubeggi,” said the Gelder.
“The Weaver of Wars,” added Elfloq, heart racing. Then this horrific being does exist! “You say you were freed by him?” Elfloq had actually heard the Gelder say that he had been freed from his master, a dimension of difference, but he continued to play at being naïve.
“Released by another,” corrected the Gelder. “No retribution. Orgoom is free. Strange, to control myself. It has been long. A man long ago.”
“What a blessing, to direct one’s own steps! Who does not wish for such a pass? But, forgive me again, why should anyone take up your case and free you from so terrible a being as the Weaver of Wars? Does Ubeggi so tamely countenance the manumission of his slaves? Or was there a bargain struck?”
“Neither. Power did it. Immeasurable power.”
This time Elfloq’s inner excitement spilled out in nervous movement. “Immeasurable? Surely you exaggerate.”
“Dark, fearful.”
“Dark? Could it be that my very master — I mean, that is to say —” Elfloq looked furtively all about him, but no one in that remote place paid him any heed. He controlled his dancing nerves. “A dark man, perhaps? Green-eyed and bearing an ebon-hafted blade?”
Orgoom stared at him, then shuddered at the memory. It was answer enough.
Elfloq pondered this. This was becoming worryingly like one of those many coincidences that threaded his life. Except that coincidences tended to be something very different. In which case, he wondered, who is weaving what? When he spoke again, it was to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Your past is doubtless intriguing. But you must look to your future. You must savour it, as it is yours alone! Free — the very thought! You are uniquely blessed among our kind. It would be detestable to think of your not capitalising on your opportunity. Let me offer you advice — freely and gladly.”
“Well?”
“I am bound for the Council of Gossipers. You know of it? It is held only occasionally. But there we of the astral exchange news, fables, tales, histories, spells, whatever we can. Why not bring your story along? Deliver it to the Council, sparing no detail, and to you will be imparted such knowledge as you need to construct a solid and curse-free future. Well?”
“Why should you help me?” replied Orgoom, suddenly unleashing suspicion that had evidently been slumbering within him like a guard hound.
“Your story intrigues me. I would hear it all. But naturally I could not expect you to impart it to me for nothing. You must profit by it.”
“Said too much already.”
“Enough to captivate me. But, you see, I have almost nothing to tell you in return. My own life is so dull. But at the Council — why, we can feast on stories. I will spin yarns that will win me a share of the spoils.”
Orgoom evinced a little more animation at this. “Why not?” he said at last, with another of those eccentric sighs, though there was no semblance of a smile.
Elfloq remained baffled. Could it be this easy to manipulate the Gelder? Yet without further ado their irregular companionship was struck and they set out for the Council of Gossipers.
* * * *
As they traversed the astral limbo, Elfloq, whose perceptiveness had been honed to the finest edges by a life of danger and skulduggery of an often insolent nature, began to notice the subtle stirring of some colossal force around him, as though he passed through the chasms of an immense heart, its pumping a deep undercurrent to the entire astral realm and probably well beyond. It did not, he thought, presage an immediate or even imminent presence, but took the substance of some far-flung dimensional disturbance. Of course, he himself had been embroiled in more than a few of these himself. Extreme caution was, therefore, a constant necessity. Even so, his instincts warned him of something abnormally immense, cosmic, implying somehow the inescapable involvement of many things, no doubt himself included.
He thought of his master, and of the Oblivion Hand, which the Voidal had sought to cast from him. Did it yet stir, crawling back inevitably to him? On Intercelestis, he seemed to have won free of it, as Orgoom had won free of his master. But the Dark Gods were fickle. And what of the Sword of Shadows, the key to the Voidal’s soul? Elfloq had been warned from pursuing it, and yet its mysteries lured him, never far from his mind.
He said nothing about any of this to the Gelder. It seemed that a hard life had had an opposite effect on Orgoom, blunting his senses and narrowing his insights, so that he was aware of little of the external worlds, apparently withdrawn and introspective. Elfloq, who had good reason to prefer his own faith in divine interference rather than blind coincidence, may have done better to question his meeting with the Gelder more fully, but his hunger to reach the Council of Gossipers and his greed to unravel more secrets hampered any possibility of cool objectivity.
* * * *
Familiar and Gelder threaded through wispy veils of mist until at last Orgoom looked down and drew in a breath at what he saw. They were above a world, closer to it than he would have guessed, and on its obscured surface could be seen one particular object, raised up like a hill of the most unseemly proportions.
“Ah,” grinned Elfloq, “the Egg of Echoes. Once laid by a messenger bird of the Blind Gods of Allwang. Petrified now like stone, its embryo long since grown to adulthood and departed. Which is just as well.”
It was certainly an egg, but one such as Orgoom had never dreamed of. Its size would have laughed at a substantial palace, castle or fortress, and human engineers would have been at a loss to design and build its twin. The Gelder fought an impulse to contemplate the dimensions of the creature that must have produced such an egg.
As they dropped closer to it, its arc grew and Orgoom saw what he took to be innumerable tattoos and designs all over it, but closer inspection revealed these to be miniature cracks, as if time would at last have its way and disintegrate the vast shell. Elfloq led them to a jagged orifice down in the central shadows, and they went inside.
Internally it was lit by living creatures: hundreds of them lined the walls high up, and if Orgoom had been more travelled, he would have recognised tiny starflies from Emberdoom, fireweed from Xenidorm’s hot worlds and lightworms, all of which cast a shimmering glow like a thousand candles. The immensity of the Egg of Echoes shrank in this ethereal light, so that the gathered host of the Gossipers’ Council did not seem so small. This varied multitude perched, sat and hovered about a central area, a tapestry of eon-toughened wood, the last tree of the world of the Egg. In the shadow it seemed to rise up like a canopy of girders that held together the sweeping, concave walls.
Elfloq guided Orgoom to a place on one of the countless branches, wrinkled and bare of leaf like the skin of an impossibly old crone. They looked and listened. All manner of familiar, elemental and underling had come. Already the self-styled masters of the Council had taken their places and were running things as they saw fit. Foremost of these was Ecclesiastro, a tall and skinny familiar of one of the much-vaunted Priest-Sorcerers of Jagg-Illgash, a particularly powerful world of old magics. The respected familiar (he was taller than most and could claim to have possibly the most exalted master of them all) was talking now in a piercing voice that reached every inch of the cathedral-like eggshell. He struck Elfloq as being almost human, which was doubtless one of his mantles of power.
“I am delighted to see such a great number of you, brethren. How you slip your masters’ bonds to be with us always amazes me, but there it is. Welcome. Let us hope we may all benefit from this particular Council. We will begin, as is traditional, with major issues, and after that you may squabble among yourselves, as is also traditional.” There was polite laughter at this: no one dared to argue with Ecclesiastro, and besides, they were all notorious hagglers, their prerequisite for survival. “Then you may extort from e
ach other whatever particles of information you may.”
Elfloq turned to Orgoom with a wry grin. “And now I suggest we each take a turn to nap. It will be a long time before someone decides to offer what he knows of events in the many dimensions. No one likes to be first. This is one occasion when it is a positive advantage to be last.”
Orgoom shrugged. “I will speak if it will be of benefit. Must leave soon. Too big a gathering to escape ears of the gods.”
Elfloq’s tiny hand clapped over the Gelder’s ugly mouth. “Say no more! Everyone has enchanted ears in this place!” he whispered fiercely. “You know much. So do I — in my way, that is. But we’ll not toss it away for trifles. There is richer profit to be made. Bargaining is a skill, nay, an art form. I pride myself on my mastery of it. I mean to leave here with a library of fresh knowledge. You are part of my collateral. And I yours, for you shall be rich, too. So — listen, say nothing, and wait!”
Orgoom nodded, but for the first time Elfloq saw craftiness in his eyes (and who should be more qualified to recognise it?). Orgoom did not like being bullied in his new life of freedom, but he was not a fool and appreciated the value of knowledge in an omniverse draped in shadow.
Elfloq smiled. “My friend, trust me. Our tales will please the Council. If I did not know so, I would not have brought us here. To render up tales of no merit, thus cheating the Council, brings a heavy penalty and much discredit.”
“Penalty?”
“Better not to dwell on such things. Go to sleep.”
Orgoom grunted, beginning to get Elfloq’s measure. But he closed his eyes, feigning sleep, though listening hard. The familiar’s prediction proved accurate, for silence had fallen. After a protracted period of coughing, stretching of wings, shuffling of feet and claws, yawning and clearing of throats, some of the more powerful familiars came forward. Each spoke for a while on certain topics, mentioning gods, human sorcerers, mages, kings, warriors and all the convoluted workings associated with them, laying bare secrets, strategies and magical concatenations that were not approved for universal consumption.