World's End

by Jake Halpern

  "And what about you?" asked the prosecutor. "You who have murdered so many men, including Gilliad Loxoc and his brother, Johno Loxoc. Does your pain give you free license to punish and murder as you please?"

  "I have suffered," replied Kiril calmly. "But I ask for no special treatment or exemption from punishment because of this. I have slain many Dormians, including your precious General Loxoc and his brother, Johno the Wanderer, and I would gladly do it again. I have been at war with Dormia for almost six centuries. And long after you are dead, sir, I will still be at war with your people—if they should be so lucky to still exist."

  CHAPTER 17

  THE GREATER GOOD OF DORMIA

  AT LUNCHTIME, the proceedings were gaveled to a close, and the orderly crowd of Dormians headed for the exits. Josephus approached Alfonso and whispered into his ear, "I believe that Kiril wants a word with you." Alfonso glanced around to look for Hill. He couldn't imagine that his uncle would want him to get very close to Kiril. Hill, however, was making his way out of the amphitheater and was well out of earshot. Even most of the courthouse guards seemed to have temporarily disappeared. The only one who remained was Bilblox, who was blind and unable to see what was going on. Alfonso wondered whether Josephus had planned it this way. It was all very odd.

  "Well?" asked Josephus.

  Alfonso stood up and walked toward the stage. But before he could reach it, several Dormian knights approached him and stood in his way.

  "I'm sorry, Master Great Sleeper," said one of the knights. "But we are under strict orders not to let anyone near the prisoner."

  Alfonso paused, gathered himself, and then asked with all the confidence he could muster, "Who is the head of your order?"

  "You are, sir," replied one of the knights.

  "Then step aside," said Alfonso calmly.

  The knights did as they were told and Alfonso continued on his way to the stage. Kiril watched Alfonso approach but said nothing. His face betrayed no expression. Alfonso drew within five feet of the cage and stopped.

  "You wanted to speak with me?"

  "How's your father?" asked Kiril calmly. "Still presumed dead?"

  Alfonso's gut tightened, but he said nothing.

  "He seemed like an able sort of fellow," said Kiril. "Tremendous stamina he had." Kiril smiled to himself. "We have some unfinished business, he and I."

  "You met him?" asked Alfonso.

  "In a manner of speaking," replied Kiril.

  "Is he alive?" blurted out Alfonso. As soon as he spoke, he regretted sounding so young and eager.

  "Possibly," replied Kiril. "One thing is for certain, though—he made it all the way to Jasber."

  "How would you know?" asked Alfonso.

  "Because I am meticulous when it comes to gathering information about Dormia, and Jasber in particular," Kiril replied evenly. "You see, for the last several centuries, I have dispatched spies to monitor the four ancient Seed Depots. These spies waited for a Great Sleeper to arrive, in the hopes that when one did, we would simply follow him or her back to Jasber. But none ever showed up. I began to suspect that Jasber had perished. I stopped looking for my old hometown. Then, about a decade ago, the first Great Sleeper arrived at a depot. Several came, and we followed each of them, but none succeeded in making it all the way to Jasber. Then, finally, your father arrived. We picked him up in Alexandria and then, well ... we lost him. But no other Great Sleepers came after him. Typically a Founding Tree of Jasber summons Great Sleepers one after another until one of them succeeds in delivering a new tree. No more passed through the Seed Depot in Alexandria after your father. Therefore, he must have succeeded."

  "But his life is in danger?" asked Alfonso.

  "You wouldn't be here otherwise," replied Kiril calmly. "I assume that Josephus told you about the Yablochkov clan from Minsk?"

  Alfonso nodded.

  "Then you understand your purpose," said Kiril. "I don't know what kind of dire situation your father has fallen into, but it's quite apparent to both me and Josephus that you've been summoned to save him."

  "Where is he?" demanded Alfonso. "Still in Jasber?"

  "Yes," replied Kiril. "I believe he's in a very, how shall I put it, remote part of the city."

  "What do you mean?" demanded Alfonso.

  "Patience, my young friend, you must have patience," said Kiril. "Right now there is another matter—it involves the Jasber Gate. Once we pass through it, I know the way through the Fault Roads to Jasber. I can lead you to your father."

  "Why would you do that?" asked Alfonso. "What do you want in return?"

  "You'll have my offer soon enough," replied Kiril. "Naturally, no one will trust me when it comes time to make a deal—no one ever trusts a Gahno—but I thought you might have a slightly more enlightened perspective."

  Alfonso said nothing. His mind was reeling, and, above all, he felt a terrible anxiousness about his father.

  "Perhaps you see through all of this lofty rhetoric about what's right or wrong," said Kiril calmly, almost with the air of a schoolteacher. "In any conflict, both sides always believe that they are the righteous ones, and they come up with elaborate moral justifications to kill other human beings. That's why my family was driven into the snow to die. At the time, that was the 'right' thing to do. This is how leaders manipulate men into fighting wars and doing all manner of horrible things. All of these distinctions we make, these words and titles—Dormian, Dragoonya, Gahno, good, evil—these are just the tools of manipulation. In the end, there is only power. That's all that matters at the end of the day. And the powerful always protect their interests and justify their tactics. You may bristle at this, but deep down, you know I tell the truth."

  "What does any of this have to do with rescuing my father?" asked Alfonso with a sigh of frustration.

  "It has everything to do with it," snapped Kiril. He stepped closer so that he was almost touching the bars on the cage. "Don't you see? They're going to tell you that searching for your father is too great a risk. They'll tell you it puts Dormia in danger, that your father is just one man, that it's not worth it, even if he is a Great Sleeper. But take it from someone who has suffered greatly for the greater good of Dormia. Take it from someone whose family perished unjustly so that Dormia could be safe. In the end, they don't care about you or your father. They only care about their pathetic city of Somnos."

  ***

  Outside of the Tree Palace, Hill, Resuza, and Bilblox stood on the steps amid a vast crowd of Dormians. None of them had yet realized that Alfonso was missing. The crowd was so thick that it was easy to lose sight of someone, even if that person was standing nearby. Nervous energy pulsed through the crowd. Everyone was talking about what Kiril had just said at the trial.

  Despite the steady din of noise, Bilblox was still able to hear the flapping sound that the leaves of the Founding Tree made as they undulated in the breeze. He couldn't see the leaves, of course, but he could picture them in his mind's eye. He could also picture how these leaves might look if they were being consumed in flames. He could picture the purple ash that would waft down from the sky as the leaves burned. And he could imagine what it might feel like if some of this purple ash fluttered down onto his face and dissolved in the moist film of his eyes. These were awful thoughts, and Bilblox hated himself for even conjuring this scenario, but he suspected that the purple ash was the key to making his headaches go away.

  Bilblox had been having his headaches for roughly three years now, ever since he first rubbed the purple ash into his eyes, while crossing the North Pacific on Vice Admiral Purcheezie's boat. Sometimes the discomfort was worse than other times. At its best, the pain was very dull, almost like a low-grade fever. At its worst, the pain was excruciating, and it felt to Bilblox as if someone were sticking needles directly into his brain. The pain had only really gone away entirely on one occasion. This happened when Bilblox had used the purple ash a second time, while crossing the Straszydlo Forest. How good that had felt! His head had felt
warm and tingly and his entire body had felt light, sprightly, and almost weightless.

  In recent months, Bilblox's headaches came with greater frequency, and he often fantasized about using the ash again. Bilblox was ashamed to think such thoughts, but the headaches drove him to think and act strangely. Of course, he shared these thoughts with no one, and he swore that he would never allow himself to relapse and use the purple ash again. He had given his word to Alfonso about this. And Bilblox was a man of his word.

  Eventually, the crowd in front of the Tree Palace thinned out and Alfonso reappeared and joined his friends. They all walked down to one of the nearby canals in search of a gondola. Bilblox, the enormous longshoreman, with his entirely white eyes and his pet wolf, was quite a sight to behold. A small crowd of Dormians stopped to stare. Some of the onlookers obviously recognized Bilblox and knew about his heroics during the Battle of Somnos, but others stared at his white eyes with great suspicion.

  Alfonso and Bilblox made their way to a gondola that was moored on a canal in front of the Tree Palace. Hill, Resuza, and Nance were already waiting for them in the boat. The crowd of onlookers parted for Bilblox and Alfonso, except for a tall, burly man with sunken eyes and thin lips that stretched tight against his teeth.

  "Look at his eyes—they're white!" hissed the man. "It's a Dragoonya!"

  A stir rustled through the crowd.

  Kõrgu growled, bearing her fangs.

  "You're mistaken," said Alfonso in a loud voice. "This is Paks Bilblox, a hero of Dormia."

  "He's got white eyes and he ain't to be trusted!" shouted the man.

  Two of the man's friends, both of whom were fast asleep, stepped out of the crowd and stood behind him with their arms folded. They were unkempt, with dirty clothing, stubble on their faces, and the stink of liquor on their breath. They looked like trouble. Instinctively, Alfonso reached into his pocket for his blue sphere, but realized that he had left it back at Hill's house, under his bed, alongside the rosewood box. Hill had warned him that weapons were not allowed at a trial and so he had come unarmed.

  "Who are you?" demanded Bilblox.

  "The question is who you are," insisted the thin-lipped man. "Why do you have white eyes? Don't you know what patriotic Dormians do to traitors?"

  "I suggest you let us pass," said Alfonso as steadily and coldly as he could. He looked around for Hill, but the crowd had closed in around them, and Hill had disappeared. Meanwhile, the thin-lipped man reached into a satchel tied around his waist and withdrew a slingshot and several jagged rocks. In a lightning-fast movement, he loaded the slingshot, aimed it at Bilblox, and fired. It glanced sharply off Bilblox's head, and he fell heavily to the ground.

  "Drop that slingshot, you blasted fool!"

  Alfonso looked up.

  It was Colonel Treeknot. She was standing directly to Alfonso's right with a loaded crossbow. She wore a long green cloak, the dress of a Dormian military officer, and she had a sword strapped to her waist. Her light blue eyes looked focused but unworried.

  "Of all the stupid and shameful things you could have done, this was surely the worst," said Treeknot calmly to the three men. "You just attacked the Great Sleeper and his companion, a decorated hero of Somnos. How does jail sound to you? I'll escort you there myself or, if you would prefer, I can put arrows through your throats right now."

  The thin-lipped man gave a fearful look and began to speak. "I'm sorry, Colonel, I didn't..."

  "Save it!" snapped Treeknot. She then turned to Alfonso and Bilblox and said, "I'm so terribly sorry. These are emotional times in Somnos, with Kiril being on trial, and it brings out the worst in some."

  Bilblox nodded grimly and got to his feet, but said nothing.

  ***

  Upon returning to his uncle's house, Alfonso felt exceedingly tired. He retreated to his guest room to rest. For a while, Alfonso simply lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. His mind was buzzing and, before long, he found himself rehashing his encounter with Kiril at the Tree Palace.

  Unpleasant as it was to admit, Alfonso knew that there was truth in some of the things that Kiril had said. The age-old conflict between the Dragoonya and the Dormians was not as neat and orderly as it first seemed to be. Alfonso was a Dormian, and this is where his loyalties lay, but it was undeniable that both sides had committed wrongs. It was true that the Dragoonya were the aggressors and that their desire to burn the Founding Trees was both short-sighted and greedy, but did that make them evil? Perhaps it did. But, clearly, the Dormians were also capable of evil, and Kiril's life story was proof of that. It wasn't black and white. Alfonso increasingly felt that this contest between good and evil was not a struggle waged between two opposing armies or two nations, but between two opposing forces within each person.

  Eventually, Alfonso did something that was very rare in Somnos: he closed his eyes and fell into a motionless, thoroughly nonactive sleep. When he awoke, greatly refreshed, he got out of bed and searched around his room for something clean to wear. As he glanced under his bed, he noticed something odd. His blue sphere was where he had left it, but his rosewood box was missing. Alfonso searched every corner of the room, and triple-checked to see if it had been put into a dresser or shoved into his backpack.

  The box was gone.

  Alfonso ran downstairs, found Hill, Resuza, and Bilblox, and explained the situation.

  "Strange," said Hill. "I'm sure it must be around here somewhere."

  "Don't worry," said Resuza. "We'll find it."

  "That's right." Hill nodded. "Look here, I was just about to wake you. We're meeting Josephus on the steps of the Tree Palace at sundown. Some kind of secret meeting is being held."

  Alfonso didn't like the sound of that. "But we have to find that box," he insisted.

  "I'll keep looking while you're gone," said Resuza.

  "Why are ya in such a panic?" asked Bilblox. "This is a big house. It just got misplaced."

  "I hope so," said Alfonso grimly. "My sleeping-self went to Alexandria for that box. I have a hunch it's the key to everything."

  CHAPTER 18

  A MEETING AT TWILIGHT

  HILL AND ALFONSO ARRIVED at the front steps of the Tree Palace at sunset. The plaza in front of the palace was deserted except for an old man who was juggling six knives in his sleep.

  "Who's that juggler?" asked Alfonso uneasily.

  "Oh, just a street performer who has fallen asleep and forgotten to wake up," said Hill casually. "I've seen him out before."

  For a long moment, both Hill and Alfonso watched with great curiosity as the old man tossed his knives high into the air and caught them gracefully, making no sound except for an occasional snore.

  "Hello there, my friends," whispered a familiar voice. They spun around and saw Josephus standing in the shadows of a half-open door. "Come, come, come. The Grand Vizier is wait-ing for you."

  They followed the historian into the Tree Palace and down several hallways until they came to a set of wooden doors with the image of a tree intricately carved into it. "This is the Grand Vizier's office," explained Josephus with a little laugh. "It makes my office look like a broom closet."

  Josephus knocked twice on the door. It swung open and they entered an enormous room outfitted with three fireplaces, several sets of bamboo furniture, a library of leather-bound books, a magnificent crystal chandelier, and a running stream that wound its way through the room. The stream originated from a small waterfall that poured through a hole in the ceiling and then emptied into a series of small fountains, the last of which drained into a large ceremonial basin with gold cups surrounding it. Standing next to the basin were four attendants, all dressed in dark blue robes.

  "Welcome," said the Grand Vizier, who was sitting on a nearby bamboo chair. She pointed to the basin. "The water here is quite fresh, directly from the glaciers that surround Somnos. Please, help yourselves."

  Sitting to the right of the Grand Vizier were two elderly men. The first introduced himself as Dr. Nord Nostrit
e. He was "chief scientist and keeper of the Great Tree." Dr. Nostrite distrusted Alfonso and, even more so, Bilblox. It was Nostrite who had insisted that Bilblox face life imprisonment for putting ash from the Founding Tree into his eyes. Fortunately this sentence was never enforced. In any case, there was no love lost between Alfonso and Dr. Nostrite. The other man introduced himself as General Tadeusz, General Loxoc's replacement as commander of the army of Somnos.

  After introductions, the Grand Vizier motioned for everyone to sit down.

  "I'm sorry for the last-minute nature of this meeting," she said in a quiet voice, "but I wanted to maximize privacy." The Grand Vizier glanced at her attendants and they immediately left the room.

  "As you undoubtedly know, several days ago, a Wanderer named Marcus Firment made his way back to our city's gates," the Grand Vizier began. "During his recent wanderings, Firment claimed to have seen a Dragoonya army of seventy battalions—over a hundred thousand soldiers—right here in the Ural Mountains, near the northern edges of the Sea of Clouds. If this is true, the Dragoonya have amassed a force three times as large as the one that attacked Somnos."

  "Do you think that they will attack Somnos again?" interrupted Dr. Nostrite.

  "No," said the Grand Vizier. "If they knew our location and wanted to attack us, they would have already done so. Either the Dragoonya can't find their way back here or, quite simply, they don't want to."

  "They don't want to?" scoffed Nostrite. "That doesn't make sense."

  "Perhaps they have other plans," replied the Grand Vizier. "Firment said that the Dragoonya appeared to be looking for something. And, as you may well know, the city of Jasber is rumored to exist somewhere in or near the Sea of Clouds."

  The Grand Vizier shot a quick glance at Josephus.

  "I've consulted with Josephus, and he and I agree that it appears as if the Dragoonya are making a massive effort to find Jasber," declared the Grand Vizier.