by Adrian Cole
Scyllarza stood close beside the Voidal, though his tension had distanced him from even her. “Tell me, what will you do when you have won back what is yours?”
The Voidal had been studying the slumped figure of Xatrovul, now in the prow. The dark man’s lips tightened, as if he fought to keep down his anger. “Shape my own destiny.”
“The price may be terrible,” she said, thinking of the countless souls who had poured into Evergreed, even after the slaughter of battle. She could not ignore the pangs of guilt that came with the thought of it. The darker side of her own nature, the demonic element, seemed to be ever subsiding. She welcomed that.
“I must have the truth. I must know,” he insisted, resolute.
“Perhaps it is a path to madness —”
“The Dark Gods have brought all this to pass. Let them be judged,” he said bitterly, directing his anger out at the starless darkness.
A cry from Vulparoon alerted them. He was pointing directly ahead to where clouds boiled out of the darkness, shredding to reveal what appeared to be a tunnel through the very fabric of the dimensions. “We must pass through the Hall of the Fallen!” the Asker cried.
“Keep course for Hedrazee,” the Voidal called back. He studied the shifting clouds ahead as Evergreed sailed into the strange portal. Night gathered itself as the ship entered, thickening and cloying. Yet the deeper they went down this ever-widening tunnel, the more light began to permeate its curved sides, flickering as if it were born aloft on invisible wings. A fierce shout from the distance reached the ship and seemed to be taken up by many voices, all of them deep and stentorian.
As Evergreed sailed down the tunnel towards the growing light, his crew could now see that its walls were lined with rows of huge heads, all of them shouting, mouths stretched wide in fury.
The Voidal leapt up beside Vulparoon. “Keep this ship steady! Hold it in the exact centre of this tunnel. What devils are these?”
“The Fallen,” the Asker told him. “Gods that have been chained here as a penalty for their sins. It is their everlasting fate to rant and roar. They curse all who pass them.” And you most of all.
The ship was easing between the twin rows, the noise of their fury awful. Foul abuse was hurled at the travellers, striking at the ship in gales so that it rocked in the air as though the sounds would pull it apart or blow it off course and into the faces, like a wreck tossed on a reef. Great, baleful eyes widened and mouths gaped. The Fallen spat and hissed: Elfloq and Orgoom scuttled down a hatch to the safety of the hold. Every eye, however, was fixed upon the Voidal and necks craned to try and reach him, teeth flashing as if they would snap on his body or tear the ship apart to get at him.
For answer he stood high up in the prow, holding aloft the blade that held the twelve, which seemed to keep the Fallen back, although its presence served to madden them further.
“Voidal! Voidal!” they screamed in a maniacal chorus. “Most damned in all creation! Set us free and we will devour you a thousand times!”
The dark man looked down at Xatrovul, who had barely moved. But his eyes fixed on the rows of shrieking heads in horror. “Why do they curse me?” the Voidal asked him. “Who are they?”
“They are the ones who lost their godhead at the War of the Falling Gods. And in other wars.”
“They shriek for my blood — why?”
“You made them what they are. You brought them all to this pass.”
“How?” the Voidal shouted above the thunder of sound.
“They will tell you in Hedrazee.”
The dark man would have demanded more of Xatrovul, but the ship had veered too close to one of the heads. Abruptly a tongue snaked out like some colossal sea serpent and wrapped itself about part of the vessel. At once the craft was drawn towards the line of heads and all mouths opened, teeth readying to bite into Evergreed and finish him. The Voidal rushed to the huge tongue and chopped into it with his sword. Great chunks of flesh thudded on to the deck as he cut, so that the tongue released its grip and flopped over the side, dangling from the mouth of the giant. Its eyes glazed over in pain, filling with tears of agony and frustration. But the wall of reverberating sound died at once as the others saw what had happened. The maiming of the giant seemed to have annihilated in an instant all their resistance.
The journey through the endless tunnel of the Fallen was now a silent one, for all eyes were downcast, full of misery, and all mouths were closed. The Voidal rejoined Scyllarza. “It seems that you are the only creature in the entire omniverse who does not despise me,” he told her.
Her eyes flashed, the demon within her momentarily welling anew, eager to be one with him again. “They are afraid. In Hedrazee,” she said.
When they at last emerged on the far side of the Hall of the Fallen, they drifted through another massing of dark clouds, beyond which there seemed to be no stars and no indication of where they might be. Universes and the voids between, the limbo outside the many dimensions, all meant nothing now as Evergreed went on his strange voyage, passing through realms that were no more than half-finished dreams. A kind of lethargy crept over the travellers, so that the Voidal and Scyllarza almost slept.
Elfloq and Orgoom had slipped back on to the deck. “Mad to begin this,” muttered the Gelder.
“If I had known —” Elfloq whispered, seriously doubting the sanity of their having come on this voyage.
“Greed,” said Orgoom, spitting noisily. “For power. All those gods, the same. Too much power. Ends same way. Like Ubeggi.”
Elfloq could not argue. It seemed to be exactly so. Lust for power, even at second hand, had led him into many a predicament. But this was too terrible. He shuddered. Perhaps if he could find a bolthole here on the ship somewhere, he could hide away and not be seen at the end of the voyage.
“We’re surely too insignificant to matter,” he told Orgoom.
“You think so?”
Elfloq did not. But it reassured him to say so.
Below them was another weird landscape, a sea of frozen bones. These were strewn in all directions, millions upon millions of them, some rising up in gigantic structures, contorted and cracked, others sweeping to the horizon like frozen waves. There was no movement, not even a breath of air: a dismal aura of sadness rose up like a lament. Beyond this endless plain of bones were other freakish regions, all as despairing. One was choked with dead trees, leafless and rotting, while another displayed several immense cities, fused into one, as dead as the plain of bones. Evergreed had entered the wilderness of entropy.
Only the sudden light brought the numbed travellers out of their bemusement. It shone about them now, blotting out everything until they were totally immersed in it, drifting, ever drifting, across its shining nothingness.
“Where is this place?” the Voidal asked Vulparoon.
Surprisingly, the Asker left the helm and came down to the deck. He looked immensely tired, his skin cracked and parched, his face haggard, though the hint of madness that had threatened him in Cloudway had evaporated. “Evergreed has no power left. He has come as far as he can. He cannot take us beyond this point.”
The Voidal glared at the Asker. “You have becalmed us. There is nothing here.”
“No,” said Vulparoon, apparently drained of emotion. “We are not alone.”
“Evergreed will have to sail on,” said the Voidal angrily. “Even if I have to feed him more souls.”
Vulparoon gasped. “Have you not done enough!”
“Master!” shouted Elfloq, pointing out into the light.
They all turned to see what had snagged his attention. As one they drew back in horror. Rising up out of the light like some immense being from the depths of an ocean, was a hand, the proportions of which shook the mind. The Voidal instinctively looked at his own right hand, but it was intact. No one spoke as the hand moved sluggishly across the sea of light. Before it could reach the ship, it slipped down beneath the light billows and was gone.
The Voidal lo
oked to Vulparoon for an answer, but the Asker had slumped down, head between his legs, utterly spent.
“What monsters live in this sea?” cried Elfloq. “Can we not rouse Evergreed and begone?” But as he spoke, the ship moved, in a moment recommencing its journey. Elfloq giggled with nervous glee. “You see! He hears us. Once more we are —” He got no further, for they all realised what had happened.
The tip of a huge finger rose up over the side of the ship. The hand was beneath it, carrying it across the limitless sea of light.
The Voidal reached down and gripped the robe of the Asker, shaking him until he stirred and gazed up at him pitifully. “What is this place? Tell me!”
Vulparoon’s voice came out like the last gasp of a dying man. “The journey is over. We are on the threshold of Holy Hedrazee.”
The Voidal released him and he toppled over, his eyes fixed on a point directly ahead of the ship. The others could see something beginning to materialise out of the light. It was as though they were coming to a misty wall of unimaginable proportions. From this projected a long ledge upon which sat pillars that rose up into infinity. Beyond these pillars the light intensified like a sun’s heart.
As the Voidal looked, he realised that Xatrovul was gone: a quick scan of the ship’s deck revealed that he was no longer here. He had either returned to dust, or gone over the side into the infinite emptiness. There was no time to consider it, for the ship was set down on the ledge before the great pillars, resting there, motionless. The dark man and his companions watched as the huge hand withdrew from beneath them and appeared to float away into the middle distances of the sea of light, before slipping down, down and away into depths that none of their minds could begin to fathom.
Beneath them, on the measureless stone ledge, great shadows had formed, thrown forward by the intense light behind them. But these were no giants. The Voidal could discern a group of figures, dwarfed like insects by the mighty pillars behind them. “It is time to leave the ship,” he told the others.
“Surely it is not necessary for me to disembark,” said Elfloq hopefully. “Would I not be better employed in remaining here to ensure that the treacherous Evergreed does not desert us?”
In spite of the situation, the Voidal grinned at him. “All of us will go down. We do not want to disappoint the Divine Askers.”
Thus Elfloq and Orgoom followed the Voidal and Scyllarza down from the ship. Vulparoon did not stir and the Voidal made no further attempt to revive him. His fate no longer concerned the dark man.
As the four of them stepped on to the stone flags, they recognised the red-garbed figures coming to meet them. Elfloq let out a gasp. “Darquementi!”
“Greetings, little familiar! How busy you have been since last we met,” replied the Divine Asker with an enigmatic smile.
The Voidal shot Elfloq a brief scowl, but it was evident that the familiar went in dread of the Asker. The dark man took out his sword slowly and rubbed his fingertips along the flat of its blade. He said nothing. They were all conscious of the immensity of their surroundings, the colossal vaults that stretched back towards the sun-blaze of light. When they did speak, their voices were like crystal bells, clear and precise.
“We have been awaiting your return, dark one,” Darquementi told the Voidal. The scarlet hoods dipped as the Askers bowed, and the Voidal could sense the fear in them. He yet made no reply.
“It has taken many lifetimes,” Darquementi went on, “the birth and death of many universes.”
“I have not come to be judged,” said the Voidal. “So be wary.”
“You have come for what you believe is yours,” the Asker agreed.
“Indeed, and I have not come to beg.”
“No, that was never your way.”
“Well?”
“The Dark Gods, for whom I speak, have instructed me. You have no need to unleash the powers you have already won back. Will you follow?”
The Voidal nodded. As the Askers moved away and out of the blinding light, the four companions followed cautiously. They went along the wide ledge, avoiding the great pillars and climbed a broad flight of stairs beside them to yet another wide area. Darquementi’s companions moved back into shadows, but he stood with the Voidal and his companions. From here they could look out at the limitless sea of light.
Darquementi pointed to it. “The Dark Gods are watching.”
The Voidal narrowed his eyes against the glare. Beyond he saw what he took to be the far walls of a vast circle, as though everything here was inside a ball of staggering dimensions. The curved walls of this ball were made up of shifting, concave surfaces that were impossible to fix on and define, but they gave a fleeting impression of faces. How many there were could not be estimated with any certainty, but the Voidal imagined that he could count thirteen of them. Each face appeared to be looking inward at something that rose up from the very heart of the shimmering sea of light.
“It begins,” said Darquementi. “As you wish, the mystery is here.”
While he spoke, the huge hand came back into view, having grown to an even more monstrous size. It held in its palm a glittering orb that shone and dazzled with myriad bolts of light and energy, proclaiming powers beyond comprehension.
“The prize,” said Darquementi.
Each of the four travellers stared at this perfect sphere, wondering at its beauty, its power and its promise. It brought them all a longing such as they had never known before, a desire that threatened to engulf them. For each of them it had its own meaning, though none of them voiced it.
“There is One Prime God,” said Darquementi. “This is the First Law. All other Gods are his servants. He is Power Absolute.”
“Is that —?” spluttered Elfloq, unable to contain himself, but Darquementi shook his head.
Scyllarza and Orgoom were also transfixed by the distant sphere, but the Voidal remained on his guard, prepared for an attack which he was sure must come upon him at least. He knew that his presence in this place was a blasphemy to this Prime God. As he watched the vaults around him, he saw a movement that appeared to have gone unnoticed by the Askers. Below them, down on the wide ledge where Evergreed had come to rest, something stirred. It was Vulparoon. The discredited Asker was dragging something across the huge flagstones towards the very steps that led up to the huge pillars. Another cautious glance showed the Voidal that it was the rotting carcass of Xatrovul that Vulparoon was so laboriously pulling. For some reason he was anxious to get the carcass through the portal into the furnace of light. His wooden movements suggested that he was urged on by some outside force, his mind no longer his own. But what could so move him? the Voidal asked himself.
He turned his attention back to the gleaming orb, not knowing what it might be, but wondering if it could be his soul, or the remains of his stolen power.
“Everything was created by the Prime God,” said Darquementi. “In His Creation, harmony is the law. But certain lesser deities envied the Prime God His power. Some sought power for themselves. Into the great peace of Creation, there came discord and then a terrible conflict, for many of the lesser Gods joined together the powers that had generously been bestowed upon them and sought to use them to force the Prime God to accede to certain demands. Serving Him was not enough for them. They desired the power to create for themselves. But it was forbidden. None but the Prime God can create. That is the Second Law.
“The lesser Gods had to abide by this Law. Yet the mightiest of them, he who was the right hand of the Prime God, refused to accept this. He had always used the power devolved to him by the Prime God wisely, but in the using of it came to know the pangs of temptation. And he succumbed. He became the renegade, abusing his own powers and encouraging those who chose to put their faith in his rebellion. In secrecy he created what you see before you now — the glittering orb. See how it shines and seduces with its beauty! Who could not admire such a work? Who would not be dazzled by its splendour? But the Prime God was not pleased, for He has forbi
dden all such creations.”
Again, Elfloq could not suppress his curiosity. “But what is it?” he blurted, at once regretting it.
However, there were no recriminations. Darquementi merely smiled. “You see before you the orb that contains the omniverse.”
Elfloq gasped, as did Orgoom beside him and even Scyllarza looked uneasy.
“Everything is there,” said the Asker. “The many dimensions, the countless universes, its gods without number, its demons and demi-gods, its swarming multitudes of mankind. The Rebel God took it upon himself to create it all, filling it with reason, order and beauty. But he balanced it with imperfections, madness and evil. Every god that dwells there, the very worms that crawl — all made by the renegade. And surrounding it, outside it, as you see, is Holy Hedrazee.”
The Voidal listened as attentively as his companions, but saw also that Vulparoon had won his goal and had pulled Xatrovul’s remains through the great pillars of the portal and into the white light beyond to whatever awaited them.
“And so the first flawed creation had come into being. Its perverse creator then fashioned thirteen servants for himself, to help him rule his omniverse. Inevitably, all were brought before the Prime God to be judged. And they were all punished, for the Prime God does not tolerate creation other than His own. Evil thrives in such dominions. The renegade God had created whimsically, randomly and without patience. He had laughed at the unbridled powers, amusing himself with the insouciance of a child. Harsh was the judgement of the Prime God.
“He stripped the renegade of all his powers and scattered them, for they could not be destroyed. He took from the disgraced one his soul, his identity and his memory and had them strewn throughout the unstable omniverse that he had created. He caused him to be in darkness, and of darkness. He caused him to wander endlessly throughout his warped creation, destroying the evils that abounded there in their many guises, as gods and beasts and demons. There were to be no friends, no allies and it was given to the Dark Gods, highest servants of the Prime God, to see that the wanderer in this void did not digress from the path forged for him.