by Will Elliott
‘BUT WHEN THEY’RE HERE, THOSE DRAGONS?’ said Faul. ‘BAH! NO TELLING WHAT WILL HAPPEN. WILL THEY EVEN BOTHER WITH US? I WOULDN’T IF I WERE THEM, LEST IT WERE SERVED FOR MY DINNER! BUT MARK THIS: THEY’VE A MIND TO COME DOWN VERY SOON, AND THEY SHALL. ANOTHER YEAR? OR MERE DAYS? SOON! BELIEVE IT, LOUP. I HEAR THE BIRDS WHEN THEY SPEAK TO EACH OTHER. SILLY BIRDS THINKING LIKE GROUNDMEN THAT OTHERS CAN’T FATHOM THEIR CHAT. THE DRAGONS COME! AND YOUR SILLY HUMAN WIZARDRY SHAN’T ACCOUNT FOR MUCH THEN.’
Loup smiled – she meant human wizardry in general, he supposed, rather than his own humble craft. He’d never had ambition to ‘change the natural rank of powers’, whatever she’d meant by that. He held aloft a little red berry whose kind he’d not before seen. Faul indicated with her posture that the courtesies were no longer needed. He popped it in his mouth and massaged it with his gums till it spat juice over them.
He didn’t know whether Faul was right or not. Levaal’s guardian, the Dragon-god asleep far beneath the castle, supposedly had laws against the brood returning to the world below. No wonder Dyan had slunk about like that, mostly hiding himself within a woman whom he’d convinced he loved her. Loup pondered all this, unaware he was murmuring wordless sounds through his gums.
‘I’VE EATEN ENOUGH,’ Faul told Lut. ‘PACK IT UP. SOME OF THIS WILL GET US STARTED FOR BREAKFAST.’ She belched loud and long, rattling the windows. It was then – as though in response – that the birdsong came a third time. This time it seemed to surround the house.
Lut, ever calm, went about clearing up the plates and cups with the merest glance out the window. Faul stomped out to the porch, seeming at once wonderstruck and nervous. Visible now, some of the singing birds flew in a circle, others sat facing the house. ‘STRANGE BEAUTY,’ said Faul, listening awhile. ‘IT GLADDENS ME. THOSE BIRDS ARE GLAD. THERE’S LITTLE MEANING TO IT OTHER THAN: GLADNESS! THOSE ARE THEIR TRUE VOICES, LOUP, BUT THEY NEVER SING THIS WAY. THE SONG IS PRETTY, SO I’LL ABIDE IT, IF WHATEVER CAUSES THIS MINDS ITS OWN—’
Then the song played within the house. The caged birds – dozens of them, in the adjoining room – took up the same voice, adding their own spirals of harmonious notes and clicking percussion. ‘NO MORE OF IT!’ Faul boomed, no longer glad at all. ‘NOT UNDER MY ROOF. NO MAGIC COMES HERE WITHOUT MY KNOWING WHO MAKES IT. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S A DRAGON THE CAUSE OF IT! A PINCH AND STING HE’LL GET, SQUASH ME OR NOT.’ She yanked on the same wooden boots Loup recalled her wearing when she’d chased Anfen’s group from her yard. In one hand she grabbed a mallet no man would’ve been able to lift with two. ‘COME!’ she boomed, setting off towards the trees.
‘Easy, Faul,’ said Loup, hurrying after her with Case in tow. ‘None of us knows what done all that. Could be things we never heard of. Or you may be right and it’s a dragon. Best leave it.’ He and Lut hurried in pursuit of her across the brittle yard. The birds near the house scattered and went back to the trees. More of their song came from there, the same place Loup had heard it earlier. Faul headed that way, but before leaving her yard she came over a rise in the ground and paused. The other two caught her up. All three of them stared at some kind of mirage which had sprung up between where they stood and the trees.
There was a fountain, fashioned like a bird with a long neck, made of polished white stuff which gently glowed. Water trickled from its beak to a bowl at its base. Lut went closer to run his hand down its curved neck. He dipped one hand in the pool of liquid, flung water from it off to the side. Where each drop landed, things sprang into being as if the drops had given them life: a winding bunch of flowers, growing from an upwards-thrusting ivy-green vine, its stem catching light as would stained glass. Where another flung drop fell, there appeared part of a garden. A footpath made of polished gold wound through a riot of colours and shades. The way these things appeared was as if shreds of a veil had been pulled from the rough, stony yard to reveal the true beauty hidden beneath it all the while.
More such sights sprang wherever the drops landed. Lut, wonderingly, dipped his hand back into the bird-fountain’s liquid, and splashed the waters in the other direction. More wondrous beautiful things came into being: flowers whose long petals were like carved amethyst curls; leaves and vines which glimmered into a vast new set of shades when viewed from the slightest change of angle. Each colourful thing was spellbinding in its own right. As a chorus, it was irresistible, a riot of beauty. Into the air trickled the sound of a brook – though they could not see it – splashing its gentle waters over stones. The birdsong came again, more quiet and soothing this time, gentle lullabies promising dreams, promising all would be well.
‘NO MORE!’ Faul boomed as Lut’s hand reached to dip back into the fountain’s waters. She gazed suspiciously around at it all. ‘PRETTY, I’LL GRANT IT,’ she said. ‘BUT I NEVER MINDED THE OLD YARD, COARSE AND HONEST AS SHE IS. HERE ARE GIFTS GIVEN BY ONE WE CANNOT SEE. WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?’ She looked at Loup for explanation.
He shrugged, flashed his gums, longing for a chance to fling some of the bird-fountain’s water on the brittle turf and see what it might create. Loup’s only thought was that a Spirit must be behind it, but which? Deeds like this were in no tales of the gods he’d heard before.
A human voice gently worked its way in among the chorus of birdsong. Faul shook herself, grunted, as if to resist being calmed. Then they saw him, dancing through the garden, barefoot, one flank exposed, a slender white hand flinging drops from a bowl held under the other arm. It was Vous. Loup recalled in a flash the glimpse, as he’d flown over the woods, of this very figure standing by a stream.
Vous appeared then vanished with progressive steps of his dance, in and out of the garden of which they could see only part. Loup found his movements hypnotic, simply because of how much pleasure they gave to behold: he was sure the human form had never held itself nor moved with such grace as this. The furious look all of them knew from books and artworks that filled Aligned country was not only absent, the familiar glare seemed quite impossible on this being’s face.
Where the drops he gaily flung fell, more of the half-hidden garden sprang into being. The trickling brook at last appeared, spilling thin threads into a small pool which Loup wanted more than anything else to dive into, whatever may result from it.
Vous hadn’t seemed aware of them until he twirled quite close, his glance sweeping like a light over them all. A soft rustle of echoing laughter played about them, perfectly in place with the gentle birdsong. With a playful sweep of his arm, he invited them to join him, to take up some water from the little fountain, fling it where they would. Loup rushed forwards, but Faul’s fist closed around his arm and yanked him back. It was like being dragged from pleasant sleep. Her other hand, Loup saw, had done the same with Lut.
Vous saw this too, and laughed, joyous bells pealing. His dance grew faster, faster, a few more drops flung here or there, while he himself flashed in and out of visibility. Then with no warning the birdsong ceased, Vous disappeared altogether and did not return. The partly revealed garden remained, with streaks of normalcy left through it: streaks of brittle scrub, rocks and weeds, splashed over a beautiful painting only partly completed. The stream’s trickle was the only sound in the sudden quiet.
Loup, Lut and Faul looked at each other. The air whooshed behind them, something heavy landed, and all three turned, startled, to find Case the drake gazing serenely at what Vous had left here. ‘HE’S GONE!’ said Faul. Then she began striding purposefully into the woods.
‘If he’s gone, what’s the rush?’ Loup called after her. ‘Where you headed?’
‘THE CASTLE,’ she replied. ‘HE’S GONE FROM THE CASTLE, THAT’S WHAT I MEANT. THE CASTLE IS SITTING THERE, LOUP, RIPE NOW FOR THE TAKING. IT’S A MATTER OF TIME TILL SOME FOOL MAYOR LEARNS OF IT, CLAIMS IT, THEN WE’VE A NEW WAR-LOVING LORD TO CONTEND WITH. NOT WHILE I’VE GOT STRENGTH IN ME TO WRING A NECK OR TWO. IF THAT FOOL ARCH MAGE IS ABOUT, HIS IS FIRST FOR WRINGING, AND WITH ALL HE’S DONE TO DESERVE FAR WORSE, CALL HIM LUCKY
IF I SHOULD FIND HIM. HE’S GONE AND MADE HIS GOD, LOUP! I NEVER THOUGHT HE’D DO IT. HOW LONG DO YOU THINK TILL HE BEGINS HIS NEXT? AND THE NEXT WILL BE HIMSELF, IF HE’S NOT STOPPED.’
Lut crouched by the pool of water. Gold light radiated around it. He stuck a finger in just as Faul turned to tell him not to. ‘Warm,’ he called. He cupped a palmful of it to his lips, sipped it. ‘Only water,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Tastes clean. Real clean.’
‘BE WARY!’ Faul cried.
Loup pondered that, but he was suddenly tired of being wary. How many more years of life did he really need? He dived head-first into the golden pool. ‘Water’s warm,’ he called when his head emerged, gums bared in a wide grin. ‘Ease up, Faul. I’ll be out soon, then I’ll come along with you. Back to the castle, fine. But what’s the point in anything, if you can’t stop and admire something pretty, now and then?’ He splashed water at old Case, who’d lowered himself by the stream to cautiously lap at it with his tongue.
‘OH, GO ON THEN,’ Faul boomed at Lut, who looked at her plaintively. ‘TEN MINUTES.’
He smiled through his beard, ran to the pool and jumped in.
8
THE HAIYENS
Siel dreamed. It was a sleep sliding her gently and patiently into death. The deep dreaming part of her which knew of her coming death went along gladly with the slide’s easy, gentle momentum. It put up no fight, for now she did not have to deal with the pain of the wounds Shadow had inflicted when he’d bounced her off the stone. Nor had she to bother with the trouble of long slow healing, all to go back to a thankless world which would only open its arms to her again like a cruel mother.
About her limp body in the glen was the hissing slide of swords from their sheaths. There were panicked shouts of the mayor’s men, a fight beginning. But those sounds were just jarring notes against a song which had begun around her. Strange music reached to Siel in her dream. It sought her out from the place she was sliding to; assured her she need not leave this body yet, that her healing need not be painful. There was more to learn here, the music said, more to experience. Worthwhile things – that was a promise. The music played about her as would a stream of warm water; it poured over her as if gushing from the holes of a flute, fat raindrops beating down on drum skins, interspersed with cries like bird calls, full of joy.
She did not hear the fight breaking out, the men shouting, a body falling into the soft undergrowth nearby. She knew only the music a friend played for her, only the strange and powerful music which coaxed her tenderly back from the brink of death, knitting together where the skin had split and where the bone had cracked.
Far Gaze had heard Siel crack against the slab of rock, and he’d thought right away that was that. No stranger to violence in a vast number of forms (victim, witness and inflictor), he was nonetheless ill to see her slender body bounce on impact, to actually bounce. He knew at once her back was probably broken, maybe her neck too by the way she landed and the tilt of her head.
Nor was Far Gaze especially prone to sentiment – those who were had picked the wrong world to try and survive in. But as companions went, Siel had not once pestered him to frivolously cast magic, and one could be fairly sure she’d not be the first to flee if a fight went bad. The sight of her lying limp, dead soon if not already, did not please him at all.
A blur tore across the ground away from her. The trail of heat left behind it was intense enough to be felt for a second or two even from where he stood, at the mouth of the cave. A flash of fire shot up along the trail but on the mossy damp turf it did not last long.
Far Gaze knew immediately it was Shadow. Shadow too had made those screaming sounds which had brought him and Gorb to the cave mouth in the first place, and had brought the mayor and his men running up the tunnel back towards them (their scuffing feet echoing on the cave walls so it sounded like a hundred or more of them came, rather than a half-dozen).
Far Gaze ran the short distance down to Siel’s body and saw his concerns were founded. He contemplated finishing her off in mercy, but true warriors never wanted to die that way – true warriors viewed their whole lives as preparation for their death, and would sometimes curse those who ruined the moment. But he could certainly not heal her. Very few natural illnesses could outwit him, especially in the young and strong, but he knew not enough of healing to instantly mend someone’s spine in two places and patch together a skull. He doubted any mages did. He called to Gorb, ‘Can you heal, giant?’
Gorb came over, crouched down and ran a thick thumb across her arm. Tears crept down his cheeks’ fat slabs. ‘I’m no wizard. Couldn’t heal my dogs; can’t heal this.’
‘What have you done?’ came the Tantonese mayor’s accusing voice from the cave mouth. Tauk the Strong strode over with his six men in tow, two unsheathing their swords, boots slamming down through knee-high ferns.
Far Gaze shivered with sour distaste. Mayor of the entire world, he thought. Now was not the time to approach a half-giant with weapons drawn. Quietly he said, ‘Gorb, remain calm, whatever they say or do. These men have been through a lot and are not thinking properly. That mayor owes me massive debts and I mean to claim them. You’ll have a share. He’s worth little to us dead.’
Gorb did not seem to have even noticed the men. He still traced a finger gently over Siel’s arm and spilled tears on the mossy stones he kneeled on. Siel’s eyelids fluttered, her face at peace and looking younger than it had before.
‘Answer the mayor,’ demanded one of Tauk’s men.
‘What for? Don’t you trust your eyes?’ said Far Gaze. ‘Clearly the giant and I have committed murder.’
The mayor raised an arm to calm and restrain his men but anger blazed in his own eyes too. ‘We have suffered enough fear and loss on this journey, and I have had enough cheek from you, mage.’
There was not time to shape-shift into his wolf form, which would make either fight or flight an easy enough business. But even in human form there were things Far Gaze could do. He breathed deep through his nose the green glen’s troubled airs. The glen’s magic sat within his body and spirit as a fluttering moth would sit in his cupped hands. The little glen itself seemed to flow into him, all its long lazy days. He knew it intimately, as if he’d spent a hundred or more years among its mossy stones and burbling water. He knew now its morning bird calls, and what things prowled through it at night. He knew which ways he could run, ways where the men – if they chased – would fall, twist their ankles. He knew where to lead them into creatures that would prey on them, if they pursued far enough, knew a dozen nearby places where he could hide himself completely. His normally grey eyes and greying hair tinged with the green of its ferns.
Gorb seemed to notice the approaching men for the first time. He slowly turned, stood, frowned at their drawn weapons. Immediately a small black shape flew at him, stuck on the hand he used to bat it away. A dart. There was time only for the half-giant’s face to cloud with anger before he slumped forwards to his knees and joined Siel in unconsciousness.
Far Gaze’s mouth hung open in disbelief. ‘And what was gained by this?’ he said.
‘A precaution,’ explained the man who’d blown the dart, putting the flute-like instrument away. The man’s eyes were lowered with shame.
‘You had better not be here when he wakes,’ said Far Gaze.
‘He’s right. You will go back to our city,’ said Tauk quietly to the man. ‘Above ground, by road. Say nothing of us, nor where you have been.’
The man looked stricken. ‘He won’t go,’ said Far Gaze matter-of-factly. ‘He’ll abandon you, sell information about you and live as a free man.’ He did not know whether or not this prediction was accurate – it was a guess, no more. The trust people put in magicians’ predictions, promises and threats was a constant source of amusement, and some compensation for being pestered to cast. Far Gaze watched the ensuing argument among the men with pleasure.
Although it was now clear Tauk’s men would not fight him, the spell of
kinship was still active in him. The glen whispered something to him he did not understand. His confusion must have shown. One of the men paused his shouting to look at Far Gaze and say, ‘Now what stirs you, mage?’
‘Something else is here,’ he replied, turning full circle and staring about the glen’s walls of trees and vines. The glen itself seemed watchful, anxious; it seemed to flex and brace itself in resistance to something unknown, as it would to a sudden shift in weather, an unexpected storm. ‘What is it?’ demanded the mayor, sensing more games. ‘You said the Tormentors had all fled north!’
‘It is not those creatures. It is something unknown. The glen itself is nervous …’ But then there they were, as suddenly as if having sprung from the ground. Not Tormentors – they were five, then six beings of slender build. People, it seemed at first glance, each wearing full-length hooded robes of varying green and brown shades. Two of them pulled back their hoods. Their heads and faces bore no hair at all. Their eyes were oval-shaped and larger than human eyes, their ears flat to their heads, their mouths almost lipless. They looked frail, neither feminine nor masculine. They gazed up at the mayor’s men, something discernible only by the backwards tilt of their heads, for those oval-shaped eyes – from a distance, at least – looked blank, the same colour as their skin.
The men stared down at them in turn. Everything was very still. The spell within Far Gaze commanded him to flee, for nature seldom trusts what it doesn’t know, and these things had never in history set foot in these woods, nor (Far Gaze assumed) had they set foot beyond World’s End at all.