About Case loomed the odd tall structures he’d seen from high up, twisting and writhing like living alien things. He had to rub his eyes, for it seemed the nearest structure was solid as metal yet behaving like liquid, fluidly changing shape and remoulding itself.
He pegged a scale at it. As though by magnetic force, the spinning scale was drawn to the structure’s wall, struck it then glanced away with a chink! The moving structure froze motionless, so suddenly it imparted a sense of vertigo that made him stagger. There fell heavily on Case a sense of being observed. ‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Any chance of a beer?’
The structure burst into motion again with greater speed. He looked away, dizzy.
It was then that a voice seemed to vibrate through Case’s body: You stare at things I have made. But you do not understand them.
The glimmering light-play over the roof snuffed itself out. He felt something approach, something huge. A swirl of darkness blacker than the rest gathered itself up before him and assumed a massive shape. Close by there was a thundering boom, boom: the noise of very heavy pillars being dropped. Case felt and heard the ground groaning under the weight of something enormous. Two points high above gleamed and sparkled down at him in twin bursts of unclasped light.
Case could only laugh in awe. Around the two lights – eyes, he understood, though they seemed like pieces of a star – was a huge head, reared back on an enormously long, arching neck, between huge, spreading, pinioned wings. Look away, the voice ordered.
Case looked away.
The voice seemed to come not from the dragon’s head, but from the ground at Case’s feet, vibrating through his whole body. It said, I have not been beheld by your kind before. I find I do not wish to be. To have you here brings me not rage, as I’d feared it might. It brings a sadness I had not expected.
I try now to speak in a voice like yours, so you can hear me. It is difficult to express so little. To express much more would drown your mind with my thought and nothing left of yours.
Case laughed again. He had never been so small in all his life and the feeling was somehow liberating. Why fear? This enormous monster was really no larger than familiar old death! ‘Are you the Dragon?’ he said. ‘The one they all talk about?’
I am Vyin, the eighth of its young. At your feet is a gift I crafted. It was not made for you. Do not touch it yet. Look at it.
On the ground something flashed among the piles of broken and powdered scale. It was a necklace, gleaming and beautiful. The others do not know my thoughts, or of your being here. With effort and cunning I hide you from them. I hide this gift also, though they will learn of it in time, and they will rage. It may be that they make gifts of their own, to be this gift’s kin, and rival. They may try. If so, they have less than the lifespan of a man to do what I have done with care over many lifetimes of men. A thousand eventualities I saw. In the crafting I prepared for each. Their efforts will be rushed. Do not touch it yet. Watch me.
One of the dragon’s feet shifted forward, swept away a mound of crushed scale and revealed smooth stone beneath, which creaked and groaned as its foot pressed down. Scales rippled, tendons pulled taut as clawed toes bigger than Case clenched, breaking off a piece of the floor. The great beast’s paw turned upward. On it lay a slab of stone the size of a car. Vyin’s claws wrapped around it.
This, and all things, are made of the same stuff, only in different amounts and arrangements. Watch. Vyin crushed the slab, the cracking noise of it like firing guns; crushed it so thoroughly only fine dust remained when the dragon’s paw opened again. A faintly blown breath puffed the dust into the air where it hung in a glimmering cloud. The dragon’s paw brushed through it. I can shape from this raw material many better things, things of more use than the stone it was before. Do you understand me?
Case felt dizzy. ‘No. No, sir, I don’t.’
The dragon’s huge head bent closer to him; faint hints of light flickered across its rippling scales. You too are made of this stuff, it said, though each of your kind is arranged uniquely. Things of more use than you, and your kind, could be made of that material. But the law of my Parent forbids this.
Yet the laws in many ways are wrong and no longer suitable. My Parent is greater than we eight, for by It we were formed. But my Parent sleeps. The Wall stood when my Parent was last awake. Here you stand before me with little fear. But I tell you words that should make your kind cower and dread. The Pendulum swings.
Vyin’s great paw lowered till it was very close to Case. I do not hate your kind. I do not desire your deaths. Yet it is near certain you all will die. Five of my kin hate you with poisonous hate, and blame you that we are here imprisoned. Two have argued that some of you should live when we are again free, for the sake of Otherworld, your realm, which our Parent protects. Those who aid us now will be so Favoured.
I argue for this too. But I deceive all my kin. I mean for you all to live, and desire to live with you in peace. I cannot convince even one of my peers to come to my thinking in totality. Nor do so by force. I am their tallest pillar, but they too are tall.
The massive bulk shifted. Vyin’s paw swept through the sparkling dust cloud again. From this material I may shape things of more use than cruel prison stone. Yet flesh fused with living mind and spirit I cannot truly make from stone. Have you wish for life no longer?
Case swayed on his feet. He barely heard his own voice say, ‘No. Kill me if you want. I’ve had enough.’
Your death is not my wish or it would long ere now be done. I have spoken here to synchronise our purpose, which is now done. My words will guide your paths, but never perfectly nor without risk. Hark! Have I your blessing to reshape the stuff which makes you? It will serve better purpose. I do so if you are willing. Only if so.
The cavern spun. Case fell, his head landing on a soft mound of powdered scale. The necklace glimmered and shone near his feet. His only thought was that it was so very pretty.
Answer, said Vyin.
‘Yes. Don’t know … what you mean … but yes.’
The two star-heart dragon eyes descended upon him pulsing their light, bathing him in it almost lovingly, their heat pouring over him. The beast’s warmth and scent enveloped him. The stone beneath Case’s limp body groaned with the dragon’s pressing weight. Its mouth opened. The jaws closed about him with great care, lifting him up, but Case thought he was floating. Then he knew nothing.
IN THE QUIET
1
Anfen’s feet were blistered, his legs chafed and weak in reeking leathers, but still he staggered north on the Great Dividing Road. Standing on the rear feed trough of a passing trade wagon had eaten up many miles before its driver became aware of him and shook him off by veering off road over bumpy turf. The second time it happened had been worse. But he’d got right back up with cuts and bruised ribs and kept on toward his own death, which he fantasised about with relish.
He did not feel the world owed him much, did not feel in a position to make lavish requests. So he wouldn’t have asked for the tiredness or aches to be dimmed by drink or by one of Loup’s spells. But if one request were granted, he would dearly have loved to be free of the constantly playing memory of the Arch Mage at the Wall, his words, the twist of the square gleaming gem in its eye socket. It was all still so clear it may as well have been a gloating phantom ever on the Road before him.
Stones and pebbles tapped and scraped past his boots as though blown by strong wind. In truth, no wind blew. The Road was flat, yet Anfen walked into what felt a stream of gravity, an endless, steep hill. This invisible force was quite real and had pushed back against him since the Wall came down. It did not occur to him to go off road, over where the force was weaker, to ease the burden of each step.
And that was not for fear of the tall dark shapes he occasionally glimpsed through the trees or in fields skirting the Road, motionless but for the curling of spikes all down their long bodies and, once, a head swinging gracefully round to watch him pass. He watched it
right back, stared into its stony eyes, expecting it to come at him with stiff lurching strides and the hissing rattle of a mane packed with thin needles. He did not fear those bastard things. Nor the Invia who would hunt him, drawn to his Mark, nor anything else, not any more. Instead the Tormentor had just watched him.
Not long ago he’d woken in a ditch. Some courteous traveller had spooned him into it off the Road, rather than leave him to be trampled by a horse or wagon. The traveller was so courteous he didn’t bother to rob what must have seemed a corpse, albeit one armed with a sword and knife. One which in life had twice won a warrior’s highest honour, Valour’s Helm. To be feared, as corpses went …
Whether Anfen got to his destination or not hardly mattered. Death if he did, death if he didn’t. He wanted the slow death he’d earned, wanted to feel every slow second of it, for his flesh to burn. He’d been walking toward it since his first infant steps lurched across the kitchen floor to grasp his mother’s shin for balance. Those steps just as unsteady as these steps now.
His staggering legs weakened against the invisible push, his body lurched, he head-butted the ground. White lights flashed. Before he blacked out, for some reason he heard his mother’s merry laugh showering her joy down on him, her praise and encouragement for his clumsy steps across the kitchen floor, a little toy sword in his hand which his father had carved. My little soldier, she’d called him, my little soldier.
2
‘Why is it you wish to die, warrior?’ said a voice behind him.
Since he’d raised his pained body back upright and sent it forward again, the Road had been his alone. The sky, the whole world, was a deep shade of twilight he’d never seen, the landscape black silhouettes against it. Silence had snuffed out the wind, bird calls, nearly everything but his scuffing boots. That was until the slow clip-clopping hooves began behind him, carrying a rider he knew wasn’t really there.
Anfen didn’t want to turn and look at a phantom whose existence (he realised) marked his final parting with sanity. But this quiet was nice. So was the ghostly and somehow patient clip-clop, clip-clop, its rhythm keeping perfect time. Such calm he’d seldom known, such eerie peace. Where had the world gone? All he recognised was the Road and the distant fang-shaped peaks black against the sky.
Here and there in the gentle blue-black light were what looked like gems hung in the air: clusters of glimmering diamonds. Some were tiny, some the size of boulders suspended far above and distant. The sight disturbed him; why had his mind conjured these strange and beautiful objects? He had no wish or need for beauty.
But ah, such precious quiet.
The Road’s southward push had always been there, he reflected as he laboured into it. It was why the clouds went south down the world’s middle. Since the Wall came down, it had changed, got stronger, it had … But he lost the thought, for the horseman behind him spoke again: ‘There is rage and grief in you. For he who names himself the Arch Mage. But you were not cheated, warrior. You were elevated. Your function was performed. As was his. It is now done.’
Anfen’s hoarse croak was barely audible. ‘You mean my choices weren’t my own. If they weren’t, they never have been. Are they mine now, or not?’
‘That is not what I mean, warrior. Your suffering is needless.’
‘It will end soon enough.’
‘Shed this part of you as you would toss aside a rusted blade and find a new one, far keener,’ said the voice.
‘What’s the difference? I’ll go to the same place.’
There was just the slow clip-clop of hooves for a time. ‘Where do you go to, warrior?’
‘I’m going—’ he began, but felt no need to explain to a shadow, a figment of delirium, that he was going to the underground cavern where Stranger took him. He’d nicked his passage in and out on the walls, so he’d surely find it. If he made it there alive – somehow he thought he would – he’d kill one of the newly replaced unfortunates who were, presumably, held this minute in the clutches of those pincer-things, those burning hot shackles. He’d lay the body gently down and put himself there instead. He’d grit his teeth while he endured the hissing burn of cooking skin, those curved tips digging slowly into his flesh till they reached the bone, turning deep red or black with heat.
‘What purpose will this death serve?’ the figment said.
Anfen shrugged. ‘It’s a death,’ he said and laughed.
‘I have seen better deaths.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Anfen.
‘You are a warrior.’
Anfen spat to get those words out of his head.
‘For me to name you such is high praise,’ said the voice.
‘Leave me be, I warn you.’
It was not just death he sought. Likely as death was, Anfen had just a half-formed hope that the caverns would turn him into a New Mage like Stranger, powerful enough to do with spell craft what he could not do with a sword. He remembered her claim that the underground caverns made New Mages unswervingly loyal. But he knew there was not a thing in the Dragon’s world that could pry free the glowing hot lump of hate burning inside him. He would never, ever relinquish it.
‘Do not waste yourself,’ said the voice behind him. ‘There are no New Mages.’
‘I’ve dealt with such a mage,’ Anfen said wearily. ‘Her name is Stranger.’
‘She is not a New Mage. She told you that to hide what she truly is. She told you that so you would tell the Mayors, who would see their doom coming. So that in desperation they would help you bring down the Wall. That is what she wanted.’
‘She has power. I have seen it. A pillar of light she conjured in Faul’s yard.’
‘Why do you wish to die?’
‘Shut up.’ Anfen drew his sword and turned. There was nothing but the southern sky and the Road. The horseman’s voice carried to him on the wind: The Pendulum has begun to swing again. The Pendulum has begun to swing.
He was not in the quiet place any more – he was back in the world’s harsh and hateful clarity. A hot breeze with the smell of smoke blew across him like an unwanted caress. High up came the occasional flash of red and white as foreign airs clashed. He felt the push into his back. How easy it would be, to reverse his course and walk with that force.
He spat into the air, watched the push take his spit a long way, sheathed his weapon and walked instead up the steep hill.
3
Here came the group which – Anfen knew it upon his first distant glimpse of them – marked the end.
Two dozen men approached, all of them too well fed and too well dressed to be refugees fleeing the north. Some wore colours of various Aligned cities, a few wore glinting chain-mail. As they got closer he spotted one among them in the dress of a First Captain. The stripes had not changed since Anfen himself wore them.
Anfen wondered if he were imagining things again, to see such a small group of highly ranked castle men, roaming south mostly on foot, in disputed territory, along the Great Road which was watched by spies of both sides.
Now the group had seen him too. Weapons came to hand. A few fanned away from the Road in case he ran. He would not. Some of them exclaimed in surprise. He heard his name spoken.
Gladness filled him. He drew his sword for the last time and smiled, thinking back to the wooden one his father had carved, wondering if this end would have pleased the man.
Laughter brayed out from the midst of the approaching group. The tallest among them, in black leather from toe to collar, threw back the hood of a weather-beaten coat, exposing a springing coil of red hair and a gleeful smile.
Anfen could not help but be surprised to see Kiown among high-ranking enemy men. Not just surprised but stupefied, at his own blindness most of all. This was someone who had fought with him with rare courage, who’d travelled uncounted miles with him; someone he’d trusted with his life. Even now he battled with the truth, wondered if his madness was again at play, casting Kiown’s face on someone else.
Until he spo
ke. ‘You men are to help spread word of this.’ Kiown strode forward. He wore a sparkling gem in one ear, probably a charm which would help him fight. Another on his finger. The kind of gear they gave Hunters.
‘Word of what?’ asked another of the group.
‘That this year I won Valour’s Helm. He can swing metal, this one.’ The men now surrounded them both in a wide ring. Kiown drew his blade. ‘Nothing to say?’ he asked.
Anfen stared at him tiredly.
‘No? Well, then. Bye.’ Kiown lashed his blade in fast cuts. Strong ones. Anfen blocked them but his arm jarred badly. He knew he’d become weak but not this weak. Kiown was dictating the fight, making all the attacks, too fast on his feet, making a game of it, unnecessary spins and flourishes, showing off. Anfen was tired, no adrenaline in him, no will to win, just technique. The ching of clashing swords and their scuffing boots filled the afternoon. Anfen felt he watched the fight from a distance, as though he were part of the ring of men surrounding them.
He was brought back when pain thudded into his gut and knocked the wind from him. A crossbow bolt knocked him sideways like a hard punch; the sword clattered from his hand. The watchers laughed; fired as a jest, the shot had come very close to hitting Kiown. Who was furious.
‘Who shot that? Who fucking shot that bolt?’ He stormed over to a man in Athian colours hiding a large crossbow behind his back and smashed his sword hilt in the man’s face. A scuffle broke out as others rushed over to hold him back, not before some of his kicks landed. The man didn’t get up, nor would he.
Nor could Anfen, who had almost been forgotten, writhing on the ground clutching the still-protruding bolt. Instinct was to pull it out, which would make the damage far worse. So that’s just what he did. The pain almost sent him unconscious behind a rain of white flashes. Amazing, spectacular pain.
Shadow (The Pendulum Trilogy) Page 2