by Martin Ash
The voice came again, entreating him from within the figure.
'You mean--' Leth cast his eyes about him in stark horror. '--these are not fabulous living statues, or some other form of creature? They are human beings? All of them? Trapped?'
'Voluntarily,' emphasized Lakewander. She gazed around, her face suddenly haggard. 'And not all of these figures contain people. Not any more. Many have long since perished. You see, they are wholly dependent upon the goodwill of passers-by for sustenance, and there are few passers-by hereabouts.' Lakewander lifted a hand to her face, and Leth realised she was brushing away a tear. 'This is not a good place to be, Swordbearer. We should move on.'
'Not until I have done what any decent man would do.' Leth strode to the statue that had spoken and put the neck of his flask to the lipless mouth.
'Are you truly so merciful, Swordbearer?' asked Lakewander. 'This is how the Souls inflict their suffering upon us. They are martyrs, making us pay the price of their devotion, and they know that whatever we do - help them or ignore them - we are wrong. And we are right also. It is we who are trapped, as much as they.'
From within the hollow figure there came a faint scrabbling sound. A straw of rolled grass appeared through the mouth orifice, probing for the life-giving liquid. Pale bluish lips, cracked and scabbed, were pressed against the inner surface of the mouth, and began to draw greedily upon the straw. Leth recoiled, despite himself.
'Do you feel better now, Lord,' Lakewander asked, her voice high and laden with emotion. She passed her arm out again across the plain. 'Where will you stop? How will you stop?'
Even as she spoke there came, from a kneeling statue close by, a voice, this time a man's, similarly pleading. Others joined in: one, then another, then more, until the air was alive with their agonized pleas.
Leth calculated that his flask was now less than one third full. He pulled it away from the Soul's desperate mouth. She gave a wail of distress and begged him for more. Ignoring her he ran to the next metal figure, pressed the flask to the mouth. As before a straw emerged and withered lips began to suck.
'Help me!' shouted Leth. 'Lakewander, bring your flask!'
Lakewander was weeping openly. She slid from her horse, her shoulders and head bowed, and took her flask and walked across to a nearby Soul. The awful cacophony continued, tearing into Leth's heart. He yanked his flask from the Soul he was succouring, ran to another, then another. He realized his flask was empty, and dashed it to the floor. He ran to Lakewander, frantic, almost maddened. 'What can we do?'
Lakewander turned to him. She was shaking, her face gaunt, the tears streaming down her cheeks. 'We can do nothing. Nothing!'
She fell against him, her body racked with sobs. Leth threw his arms around her and held her close. He cried out, his voice almost lost beneath the screams of the dying Souls. He knew that she was right. There was nothing they could do. As with the Sufferer back in the woods, it required the skills and workshop of a smithy - of many smithies - to release these people from their metal shells.
'Why did you bring me here?' he cried.
'I had no choice. It’s the only way. Please, Swordbearer, take me away from here!'
He helped her back to her mount. She was still shaking, as, he realized, was he. He climbed onto Swiftwind's back, pressing his hands to his ears. Lakewander turned a stricken face to him, pointing along the road between the Souls. Then she spurred her horse to a gallop and rode, her face pressed to the mount's neck. Leth, the tears streaming from his own eyes, bent his back and rode after her, the howls and moans of those he was leaving behind seeming to grow even louder.
V
'Can’t we do something? Isn’t there anyone in this region who could help us liberate them?'
Free of the plain of imprisoned Souls, both Leth and Lakewander remained deeply affected by their experience. They rode along a stony path, winding upwards into the ridge that Leth had spied earlier, which seemed to have curved around to lie directly in their path. Behind them, faint now on the breeze, the cries of the imprisoned Souls could still be made out.
'To what end?' asked Lakewander. 'Do you not understand that they choose to subject themselves to this. Free them and they would not thank you. They would drink and eat and have themselves sealed in once more. And they might even charge you with the cost of creating another shell, for those don’t come cheaply.'
'But why? Why do they do this to themselves?'
Lakewander gave a pallid smile, her expression resigned and somewhat cynical. 'They’re fanatics and religious zealots.'
'No! That’s no explanation!'
'They experience themselves as souls incarcerated within flesh, extant and conscious but not knowing why. They seal themselves inside bodies of iron as a physical demonstration of this. They’re literally imprisoned within bodies which, paradoxically, will long outlast their own, and which will stand as reminders for all to witness. The Souls consider themselves living works of art, and examples both to others and to their creator. Their suffering becomes both their art and the physical embodiment of their belief, which are perhaps one and the same thing. Ultimately they believe that at some point, when enough have suffered and perished, their creator will show mercy and will come and set them free, both of their metal prison and the prison of their flesh. Is that sufficient for you, Swordbearer?'
Leth pondered this. 'They await their god?'
She looked askance at him.
'Isn’t it possible,' Leth said, 'that with the Sword of the Orb I might cleave their prisons from them?'
Lakewander gave a sigh. 'You tell us - you insist - that you’re not a god.'
'That’s not what I asked.'
She shook her head. 'No, Lord Swordbearer, you are not the one they wait for. Believe me, you are not. And neither can the Orbsword release them. Even if it could they would, as I have already said, only build themselves new prisons.'
'You don’t like them, do you?'
'They are a menace. They force upon us a terrible moral dilemma - as you have just experienced. We wish to help them, yet whatever action we take will only increase their agony. We must live with ourselves in the full knowledge of this. The Souls are martyrs, and through their suffering they needlessly cause others to suffer. Do you see? Such people are a corrosive influence on our society. They do not deserve respect.'
'That’s a harsh judgement.'
'You have not had to live your entire life knowing and passing among these people.'
'This is wilderness, far from society!' exclaimed Leth. 'The Souls have hardly placed themselves in your midst. No one’s forced to look upon them or be witness to their pleas day in and day out.'
Lakewander bowed her head, shaking it leadenly from side to side. When she looked up again Leth saw that her eyes were wet once more. 'Lord Swordbearer, you know so little. But we are almost at the End of the World. Perhaps then you will see. I will say this, though. I pity the Souls. They are a menace, but they can’t help what they do. It is Ascaria's dreadful influence that makes them torture themselves the way they do. Hence she torments us. When the Orb is rid of her, then, perhaps, will all suffering be done.'
They had come to the lip of a narrow gorge at the bottom of which a fast flowing river raced, foaming and leaping to more level ground far below. Before them was a bridge formed of a single colossal slab of red-toned rock laid longwise across the gorge. On the other side a cavernous opening let into the towering rock face. Leth let his eyes travel upwards, over the sheer face of the ridge, noting the smooth, glistening surface of the rock and its queer, almost fleshlike form.
Lakewander dismounted from her horse and indicated to Leth to do likewise. They tethered both mounts to a nearby tree. Lakewander stepped forward to place herself before the bridge. In a loud voice she called out, 'Bridgekeeper, are you here? We wish to cross.'
She waited a few moments, then called out the same words again. Then once more. 'Bridgekeeper, for the third time I hail you. Two persons wish to
cross. If you hear me, show yourself now, for I won’t speak again and we will cross without toll.'
Something stirred in the cavern's dark maw. A shadow shifted and a huge figure trundled from the gloom to confront them. His arms were long and massively sinewed, his legs squat and wide. A great paunch bulged beneath hirsute and fleshy ribs, and wide, high shoulders supported a head as large as a bull's. Small, dark, deeply sunken eyes were squeezed into a narrow slit between a low, beetling brow and high, prominent wedges of cheekbone. The nose was a huge purple bulb that flopped over a wide mouth with thrusting jaw and large crooked teeth. He wore only a soiled leather codpiece, and dragged an enormous knobbled wood cudgel behind him. He stood before the bridge, blinking at the two.
'So, you are here, as I thought you would be,' declared Lakewander. 'Did you think you would trick me by lying low? You should know I would not forget.'
'Lakewander, is it you?' The huge Bridgekeeper, peering across the chasm, raised a heavy arm and scratched his head. 'It has been such a long time.'
'It has.'
'You look so different. Where do you go? To the Shore?'
Lakewander nodded. 'To the Shore.'
'And who is this who accompanies you?'
'A warrior, fearless and strong, so do not think to cheat us, Bridgekeeper. Here. Here are two pieces of copper for our passage.' She strode forward and pressed two coins into the Bridgekeeper's vast palm. 'Now, let us pass.'
The Bridgekeeper stared for a moment at the coins. He lowered his head and sniffed them with his great purple nose, then shuffled aside. Lakewander beckoned to Leth to come forward.
'How is business, Bridgekeeper?' she asked as she stepped to the other side of the bridge.
The Bridgekeeper shook his head lugubriously. 'Not good. Not good at all. Few pass this way. After all, the only thing to see in this place is Nothing.'
'So travellers no longer come from near and far to gawp in awe at Nothing? Could it be that your reputation has frightened them away? After all, for the uninformed your toll can be excessive, to say the least.'
'Oh no, I am sure that is not the reason,' replied the Bridgekeeper. 'No, I am very fair. I think rather that the wonder of experiencing such a Nothingness has worn thin.'
'Perhaps,' said Lakewander sceptically.
The Bridgekeeper trailed behind Lakewander and Leth as they moved to the cavern mouth. 'You know, I think I may have seen no one since you last came, Lakewander.'
'That is indeed a long time. Haven’t you grown bored, leading such a solitary existence for so long?'
'Yes, it is. And I have. Still, I’ve my amusements. And you are here now. Will you not stop now and sup with me, you and your heroic warrior friend? I have a tasty stew warming in the pot. I will tell you marvellous stories.'
'I regret, Bridgekeeper, we can’t. We are pressed.' Lakewander replied. Aside to Leth she whispered, 'You will pass this way again. Accept nothing from him. Always announce yourself three times and pay his toll. Do not attempt to sneak past; the Bridgekeeper is wilier than he looks. He will catch you out and you will wish he had not. Do not eat his stew, and never listen to his stories. If you do you will never leave.'
'Ah, that is regrettable,' said the Bridgekeeper. 'And surprising, for after all, where you are going, there is Nothing to keep you entertained.'
He seemed to find something highly amusing in this, for he began to laugh, a rumbling sepulchral sound that emerged from deep in his swollen gut and reverberated heavily off the cavern walls. His laughter accompanied them as they passed down a dim flight of steep, deeply cut steps towards a shaft of pale grey light some one hundred feet below.
At the bottom they faced an opening; brilliant daylight from outside dazzled and failed to reveal what lay before them Lakewander laid a cautioning hand upon Leth's arm. 'When you step out, stand until your eyes clear. Do not try to go any further.'
He did as she said. When his eyes adjusted to the unnatural brightness of the day he found he was standing at one end of long narrow beach at the foot of a high headland stretching into the distance. But it was unlike any beach he had ever seen. It extended as far as his eyes could see and was composed of sand and broad streaks of shingle. But both sand and shingle were imbued with soft, hazy colours. It seemed that a blurred iridescence clothed their surface, reflecting an extraordinary light.
But this was not the most remarkable feature. For what Leth saw now made him gasp. He stood transfixed, his mind barely able to take it in. The beach sloped gently towards the waterline, but where the ocean should have begun there was no lapping water, nor continuation of sand, shingle or anything else. There was, simply and most awfully, utter emptiness; a phenomenon wholly resistant to emotional or intellectual grasp, for there was nothing, quite literally no thing, there to be grasped.
'It is the Shore of Nothing,' Lakewander said.
Leth was giddy at the sight, gaping wide-mouthed, shaking his head from side to side. He tried to form words but nothing came. When Lakewander put her hand to his arm he drew in a great, strangled breath. In his mind a yell had been trying to manifest, an involuntary expression of the sudden numbing terror he felt at the sight of this. . . this utter absence of being, which he could find no reference for. Her touch, human and real, brought him back from the brink of the abyss.
Orbelon, I do not want to travel alone!
'Swordbearer, it is the End of the World,' Lakewander said.
Struggling for breath, Leth turned his face to hers. His entire body was trembling and he knew his face revealed everything that was passing through him at that moment, but he could do nothing to conceal his shock. Lakewander gave a small smile of sympathy. 'It’s all right, Lord. It affects everyone like that the first time.' She looked out into the dreadful emptiness. 'Had I been able I would have warned you, but how can you prepare anyone for a sight, a phenomenon such as this?'
'H- how--' Leth began, but he could still not form the words.
Lakewander turned back to him. He saw, without understanding, that her face had been transformed. She looked at him with an expression that spoke of profound personal tragedy. Her eyes swam with tears and her voice shook. 'Ascaria.' She swallowed, inhaled deeply. 'This was once my home. There were lakes and forests here where I played. A town where I was born and grew to adulthood. My family lived here, and many others. But she took it all away.'
Leth only half heard her. His eyes were back upon the shore and the endless void that lay beyond, so close to where he stood. He thought momentarily of the blue void he had wandered across with Jace and Galry. The loneliness of that place had been oppressive, yet its emptiness could not be compared to this. He looked up. The Orb of the Godworld was obscured by the high cliff, but the blue sky extended . . . and then ended, directly overhead, on a line with the shore. Beyond the shore there was no horizon, no feature of any kind, not even direction, up or down. His brain still struggled to qualify what he was witnessing. He felt nauseous. He could make no sense of what lay before him, for it was Nothing, and his mind rebelled.
And then, unbidden, the thought came: the End of the World!
He was rocked with a sudden racing spasm of wild hope. He stepped down from the rock he and Lakewander occupied, and stood upon the beach. The sand was soft beneath his feet, its colours a mist. He stared wild-eyed into the emptiness.
Was it possible? His heart hammered. Could he step from here and find himself back at Enchantment's Reach?
'Will you abandon your children, Swordbearer?'
Her voice broke the spell. Leth let loose a painful breath. His shoulders sagged; he felt himself slump, and wondered for a moment if he had become insane.
'That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?' Lakewander stepped down onto the beach and stood beside him. 'That this might be escape?'
She bent and scooped up a handful of small pebbles.
'You may be correct,' she said. 'Nobody has ever discovered. But look.'
She tossed the pebbles into the void
beyond the shore. They disappeared, without sound or shimmer. 'I’ve seen someone - several people - step from the beach. They have never been seen again. Will you risk it? Even if your children were here. Would you?'
Leth said nothing, knowing, as did she, that he would not.
'Earlier,' said Lakewander after a pause, 'you said that the Souls did not place themselves in our midst, where we must witness them always and be torn by the burden they place upon our consciences. Now that you’ve seen the End of the World I will tell you: upon the plain where the Souls are now there was once a city. The Souls put themselves among the people, on the streets, in the squares and parks. That was their intention, to force us to notice them at all times. And then, one day, Ascaria took our city. It simply crumbled without a sound and was gone, and everyone and everything in it, except for the Souls. They remained. And unlike here, where the land and even the sky were taken, the land was untouched. We don’t know why. But we fear her, Swordbearer. We can’t comprehend her power, we just see what she is capable of.'
Leth thought of Orbelon. This was his world. Did he know that others existed here? He had always spoken as though alone. Was he aware of Ascaria, the Kancanitrix, the Dark Flame? Did she threaten him?
'We should go now,' said Lakewander, stepping back up to the entrance to the stairway. She paused. 'Soon you’ll return here, but you will be prepared.'
'Here?' Leth frowned. 'Why?'
Lakewander raised her hand and pointed along the line of the shore. Far off, in the sky above the point where the headland met the beach at the limit of their vision, Leth spied the glimmer of the World's Agony. It appeared slightly larger now than when he had observed it that morning. Slightly closer. Or might that be illusion?
'That is your guide. Follow it always. It will lead you to her.'
'And what else lies along that route, beyond the far limit of the Shore?'