The Wide World's End

by James Enge

  His voice broke on the last word. Aloê, glancing around the Long Table, saw that many of her peers were visibly moved at Bleys’ performance. That was the first time she suspected that the murderers of Earno would escape exile.

  “The Stone is in its usual place,” Illion pointed out mildly. There were a few laughs at this, but most of the vocates still seemed taken with Bleys’ dramatic performance. He strode over to the dais of the Witness Stone and laboriously climbed the steps to reach it.

  “You will wait for us to establish rapport with the Stone first, Summoner Bleys,” Noreê called down the Long Table.

  “Take your time,” replied the great seer calmly.

  Illion was standing next to the Stone: he placed a hand on it, and his eyes began to glow with rapture. He held out his other hand to Baran, who stood by him. Baran took the hand and closed his eyes. In time, he too showed the signs of visionary ascent.

  It did take time, but one by one the vocates, of varying levels of skill, joined the rapport with the Stone. The only exception was Gyrla, who jumped down contemptuously without saying a word.

  They were one, in the end, though all were different, and Noreê spoke in them and through them, saying, “Put your hands on the Stone, Bleys, and accept rapport.”

  Bleys smiled—they felt rather than saw it—and placed one finger on the stone. Rapport was instantaneous; he was already in the visionary state.

  Bleys said with his mouth, “I am innocent of Impairing the Guard. All I have done, all I have enlisted others to do, I have done to defend the Wardlands.”

  They heard the words only vaguely with their ears. They knew them for truth in their hearts.

  All stood separate in their shared mind for meditation then. Aloê had time to think: What he believes is true is different from what we may know to be true. He may have Impaired the Guard without intent. But she also knew that most of her case against him was already undone, irrelevant in the face of his shocking admission.

  “Why did you murder Summoner Earno?” she finally found the strength to ask.

  The great seer turned his attention toward her, and it seemed that she was alone with him.

  “I have been waiting for someone to ask me that, my dear. Thank you. Once when I was walking the long roads in the empty lands east of the Sea of Stones, I met an odd entity, a sort of unbeing. . . .”

  Aloê later learned that others had asked the same question, or a similar one, and that all the vocates had been drawn into Bleys’ meditation as if each alone was in rapport with him.

  It seemed to her that she could see with his eyes, that she ached with his feet, grew short of breath and chill as shadows rose from the dusty earth of the empty lands. She knew somehow that it had been many years ago—shortly after the death of the Two Powers in Tychar.

  The unbeing came upon Bleys as he was making a fire to warm himself. He sensed it with his insight. It tried to kill him with a weapon that had no name—but she recognized it. It was a kind of mist that came from nowhere and everywhere. It began to break down Bleys into his component selves, as acid breaks down a piece of meat.

  But Bleys was not a piece of meat. He stepped outside of his body into vision and let his body dissolve and reform itself in the presence of the deadly fog, unconcerned with its fleshly agony.

  In vision, Bleys saw-without-seeing the unbeing who attacked him.

  He wove a path of vision around it in fifteen dimensions so that the unbeing was bewildered and could not dispel his mind as it was trying to dispel his body.

  For a timeless time he meditated on the unbeing and its nature. Then he struck back, causing a little fog to condense in the locus where the unbeing presented itself.

  The presence of physical matter distressed and excited the unbeing very much.

  Bleys realized that the unbeing was the same type of entity that Aloê and Ambrosia had encountered in those same lands. (There was a side corridor of memory in Bleys’ meditation where Aloê saw herself as he saw her, and the cool, ironic lechery of his regard made her feel greasy.)

  They duelled that way for a long time with weapons of being and unbeing, of making and unmaking. But eventually their duel became a kind of conversation, where actions bore symbolic meaning.

  Bleys learned that the unbeing was only one element in a class of unbeings beyond the northern edge of the world. They had once been in it, but the advent of sun and of material life had driven them out in repugnance and hatred for the new-made world. The Two Powers had been fashioned as an experiment in destroying material life, but had failed because the unbeing sent to keep them in balance had succumbed to materiality.

  Bleys revealed that he was a member of a class of beings, some of which had defeated the Two Powers.

  The unbeing reiterated its urgent need, shared by all of its cohort, to wipe the slate of the world clean of physical life. Because it had no thought that information should be withheld, it shared various scenarios of world-cleansing.

  Bleys was curious about the domain of the unbeings in the far north. Apparently it was a fragment of this world that they had managed to sever free, redrawing the borders of the sky so that it would not be tainted with light and life. So it persisted, a fragment of a world drifting alongside its former home in the Sea of Worlds.

  A thought came to Bleys that shocked even him. But he tested it over and over, and there was no flaw that he could see.

  He asked the unbeing if it could teach him the skills to redraw the border of the sky and separate a part of the world into its own world.

  The unbeing knew part of that knowledge and shared that with him, but the knowledge was too great for any single element of the unbeings to contain its entirety.

  Bleys told the unbeing that if he and his fellow beings could know those skills, they would no longer resist, would even assist the project of the unbeings.

  That was when the great collaboration began. Bleys and the unbeing fashioned an un-object of many dimensions. With it, he could communicate with the unbeing wherever he was, wherever it was.

  Aloê never found the words to explain the un-object to anyone else, but she didn’t need it explained to her: it hung in lightless luminescence at the center of her own mind.

  With shock, Aloê realized that Bleys had incorporated the un-object into the Witness Stone itself. Even now, even now. . . .

  As she let her awareness expand she became aware of many listeners, the class of unbeings in the far north beyond the wide world’s end, the Sunkillers.

  And over the years Bleys, with increasing single-mindedness, pursued his collaboration with the unbeings. His plan was simple: the ultimate protection for the Wardlands was to remove the adjoining lands from existence entirely. Then the Wardlands could persist as an island in the Sea of Worlds, perhaps with an artificial sun and other conveniences, and the Sunkillers could have the rest of their world to themselves.

  Of course that meant that everyone and everything in the world that lived and felt and was a being would die. That was what had shocked Bleys about his own plan . . . at first.

  But only at first. He was not a purveyor of justice or an avatar of mercy. He did not judge; he defended, and this was the ultimate defense, a final solution to the problem of the unguarded lands.

  He enlisted others in his project: Lernaion, who took a long time to convince. Lernaion took upon himself the task of enlisting Earno, but he had bungled it somehow. Aloê sensed Bleys’ rage more clearly than the details of the failure. But probably Earno was hopeless anyway. He had travelled too much in the world to sacrifice it willingly. He seemed to think he had some obligation to it, or to the people in it, that rivalled his obligation to the Guarded.

  Lernaion and Bleys enlisted Naevros to do their knifework. Bleys had long ago noted Naevros’ susceptibility, and the whirlwind of thoughts surrounding the vocate’s seduction were tinged with cold pleasure in Bleys’ mind.

  Now the unbeings, the Sunkillers, were concerned. They knew from their all
ies in the Wardlands that beings had been sent to investigate the sun’s death and that some of them were those who had destroyed the Two Powers. The unbeings did not understand and would not understand independent agency and free will. They looked on the actions of the beings approaching them as a betrayal by their allies. The unbeings would be angry, extremely resentful, if those others were not stopped somehow.

  To save the Wardlands they must recall their colleagues from the edge of the world and make plans for life after the death of the sun.

  Aloê felt the insidious, inevitable pull of the logic. It vibrated in her mind—in the pattern of the un-object that was party to and basis of their rapport. Aloê resisted it, rejected it. Suddenly she became aware of others doing the same. She fought harder, fought free, was alone in her own mind at last, not subject to rapport.

  She descended from the visionary state.

  As soon as she had pulled the world of matter and energy around her like a blanket, she shouted at Bleys: “Bleys! Break the rapport and let the vocates go or I’ll smash your Stone for you again!”

  “If you like, my dear,” said Bleys warmly, and the light in his eyes died. His smile, however, lived on. The vocates, as they returned to full awareness, began to shout and question and argue, and that went on for hours. But Bleys had already won: he knew it, and Aloê did, too. The vocates were frightened, and the way to drive frightened people was with more fear.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  News from Home

  The four companions stood at the edge of the world and looked down at the letter.

  “A trap, you think?” Morlock asked.

  “Certainly,” whispered Deor in mock terror. “If you pick that up, a thousand Sunkillers will rush out from underneath it and begin biting us on the toes!”

  “I suppose our friend and harven-kin here,” Ambrosia said, “is not aware that many magical traps are set with a kind of bait, and that picking up or accepting the bait activates the trap.”

  “Not his kind of magic,” Morlock agreed.

  “Oh,” Deor said, chastened. “Sorry, Ambrosii. How can we tell?”

  The Ambrosii looked at the glimmering page, the dark writing on it.

  “You’re sure that it’s Aloê’s hand?” Ambrosia said.

  “Yes. Aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t know, brother. She’s never written me a mash note.”

  Morlock shouldered off his pack and went through it, pulling out a tablet and stylus. “Show me what you see,” he said.

  On the malleable surface, Ambrosia deftly sketched an image of the letter, including the script on its first page.

  “That’s what I see,” Morlock said. “It is not an illusion. I see no sign of a physical trigger. Is there a talic presence?”

  “The whole bridge is a talic presence, brother.”

  “Eh. I’m going to open it.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll remember you as you were.”

  Morlock crouched down. Pulling his knife from its sheath on his belt, he used its blade to flip over the first crystalline sheet.

  Beloved, the letter began, good morning, or whatever time it is when you read this. I have had a bad dream. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind I get to wake up from.

  “Aloê wrote this,” Morlock said.

  “Good,” Ambrosia said.

  “Not really,” Morlock said, and continued reading.

  I write you through the agency of the unbeings beyond the northern edge of the world, and at the request of the Graith of Guardians. They ask you to return without attempting the passage of the Soul Bridge or the rescue of the sun.

  I’m going to paint you the whole picture. This is going to take a while.

  It did. Aloê told him about the conspiracy to murder Earno, and how she had uncovered it, and about Bleys’ defense of himself and his colleagues before the Graith.

  The Graith acquitted him, I am ashamed to say, Aloê wrote. At least it was not unanimous: Jordel spoke at length, which is perfectly usual, and quite seriously, which is perfectly unusual and was doubly impressive because of that. Illion pointed out that the Graith has the obligation to defend and avenge its members, and that it is a tactical as well as moral mistake to allow our murders to go unpunished. Gyrla made a powerful case against trusting Bleys under any circumstances whatever. But, in the end, the Guardians were relieved that something was being done, that something could be done, to protect the Wardlands from the impending death of the world, even if it made them complicit in that death. Bleys and Lernaion are summoners again; Naevros and Bavro have sworn off the Graith. The alliance with the unbeings beyond the world has been affirmed, and Noreê and others from New Moorhope are already working on the magics needed to redraw the border of the sky and separate the Wardlands from the dying world.

  The Graith’s message to you is this: on pain of exile, you must return and refrain from harming our new allies or interfering with their plot to kill the sun.

  My message to you is a little different. Come home now. The greatest danger to the Wardlands is not the dying sun, or the unbeings who would kill it and us, but the Graith itself. There is a cancer in the order, and the great task before us is to cut it out—to break the Graith, if need be, before the freedom of the Wardlands is sacrificed to mere safety. We few who see this need you beside us in that struggle.

  Come back to me. I say it like some stupid fisherman’s stupid wife. Come back to me.

  With love and urgency, I remain

  Aloê Oaij, Vocate to the Graith of Guardians

  “I have to think about this,” said Morlock.

  “Of course,” said Ambrosia. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without saying anything.

  Morlock turned away from the others and walked along the ragged edge of the world. The wind from the gulf to the north was cold, but no colder than his thoughts.

  He had defied the Graith before and returned to honor in its ranks. The Graith was not an army, with military discipline; it was the duty, as well as privilege, for the vocates called to Station to think for themselves, to act in accordance with those thoughts.

  But the Graith was changing. He had noticed it himself, and those changes seemed to have gathered momentum in his absence. Aloê thought there was a real risk that he’d be exiled. He had to trust her judgment. If he tried and failed, his life in the Wardlands would be over. What did that leave? Life in the dying world, or escape across the Sea of Worlds to some place he had never known.

  And he would be alone. That was clear to Morlock. She said she wrote as a lovesick fisherman’s wife, but she didn’t, really. She was a Guardian before she was a wife. Her loyalty was to the Wardlands before him.

  On the one side, there was a life with Aloê. On the other side was the death of the world.

  He thought about the Lacklands and their sparse cannibal denizens, the Vraids on the shores of the Sea of Stones, Danadhar and his Gray Folk in burning Grarby, the master makers under the Blackthorn Range, the frightened, shattered city of Narkunden, all the lands he had seen in Laent, and all the lands he had never seen in and beyond it: all those people, dead in a darkness that would never end.

  They would all die someday, it was true, no matter what he did. It was possible that what he was doing was futile anyway. Would he throw away life with Aloê for nothing?

  He wondered what he should do. He wondered what he would do.

  He looked back at Ambrosia, standing with her head held high on the bridgehead of the Bridge of Souls. It occurred to him that she was afraid; she never bothered to look fearless otherwise.

  He walked back to the others. Through the mask, Uthar was staring at him. Deor looked at him and looked away.

  “Morlock,” said Ambrosia briskly, “we’ve talked it over while you were off pondering. Of course, I must go across the Soul Bridge instead of you. Except for the fact that your talic self can bear Tyrfing, that was always the better plan, and I see now it was inevitable. I ask only that you wait here and help the
others retrieve my spirit if things get rough on the other side. Your Graith can hardly object to that. Is that acceptable to you?”

  “No.”

  Half a world away, the Graith stood at Station in their domed chamber. Bleys stood at the Witness Stone, bound and interwoven with the un-object of the Sunkillers. His open eyes were glowing in visionary rapture.

  “Ambrosius is walking beyond the world on the Soul Bridge,” he said. “Summon our champion. We must aid our allies.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ghosts and Shadows

  “The bridge,” Ambrosia said, “is a means for drawing tal out of the world—perhaps from the sun itself. That was why Skellar found it possible to go out but apparently did not make it back once Rulgân abandoned him.”

  Morlock grunted. “I’ll say my goodbyes now, then.”

  “Shut your stupid face. When you go into vision, wait for me. I’ll establish a rapport with you, and we may be able to sustain contact while you pass beyond the world. If we do, I can draw you back.”

  “Then.”

  Morlock took Tyrfing in his hand and lay down in the snow. He looked at Skellar’s eyes, still glowing red beneath the lids, and closed his own. He summoned the rapture of vision.

  Slowly, he felt himself rise from his body, his talic self a torrent of black and white flames. Tyrfing rose with him.

  A non-word impinged on his awareness: he was aware of Ambrosia’s talic presence, a whirlwind of green and gold.

  He ascended the Soul Bridge and followed it northward, into and beyond the sky.

  Time was hard to gauge, so he didn’t. But the bridge grew more solid under his burning feet with each stride he took. That meant there was less matter, more tal. He saw designs in the stones, too—blocks of tal, they must have been, with a smear of matter.