World's End

by Will Elliott

  One of the newcomers crouched at the tower moat’s waves, tentatively poking a finger into the water. Another of them paused by Thaun’s body and did something with her hands. Blain did not understand the gesture – some kind of spell? Why bother? Men did not get more convincingly dead than Thaun. Blain squinted for evidence of casting in the airs and saw none. The being removed from her clothing what was apparently a musical instrument, for she blew into it and there came a high reedy sound. For a good while the others watched her blow a few long notes. Nothing else happened. She put the instrument away and all of them stepped into the water.

  ‘Madness,’ said Blain. ‘Nightmare cultists, must be.’

  ‘Their hands,’ said Kiown. ‘Look at their hands.’

  ‘You tell me about their hands, shithead. You’ve got the pretty night-vision charm we gave you, not me.’

  ‘Two fingers, a thumb. Larger fingers than they should be. The fingers also seem to be double jointed.’

  ‘Eh? Spell it out for me, turd. And speak sense!’

  Kiown turned to him, a flicker of violet-white in his eyes, lip curled. ‘They aren’t human, Strategist.’

  Domudess’s bald head was at the window again. The wizard called something down. The four in the water were halfway across. The hems of their gowns floated to the water’s surface. The fish – darting light flashes – seemed drawn to them from elsewhere in the water. Domudess watched them come, then his head withdrew from the window. Withdrew with – Blain suspected, though he could not be sure – a glance directly at him and Kiown. ‘Not human,’ Blain mused. ‘Then what do you suppose they were?’

  If Kiown knew, he kept the answer to himself. Blain fingered the crusty dried Invia blood on his robe-front. Maybe it’s time he parted with that dragon charm, he thought. Far too silent and brooding, he’s become. Not sharing his thoughts. Two more days watching him. Then I’ll slay him and take it, while there’s still some pop in this dried Invia blood. Bury that charm with the Invia body, perhaps. Ugh! If the others could see me now. Me, Strategist Blain, digging holes in the woods and plotting against shithead. Ah, how I miss my chamber in the castle … The people with strange hands disappeared under the arch below the tower. ‘Were you jesting, whelp? They looked human enough to me.’ He turned, but Kiown was no longer beside him.

  *

  Blain waited the night out, tugging anxiously at his beard. His eyes never for a moment left the tower windows, each aglow with soft amber light. The wizard’s head did not reappear. Blain sensed him moving about in there, though just barely. The tower did much to hide him.

  It was not until the first of the morning’s light that Blain discovered the wizard’s visitors had come down from the tower. To his immense shock he saw they’d been silently building something on the grass beyond the water. They had stepped away from it to appraise it: some sort of pole, with a bulbous head that might have been a glass orb. It stood easily twice a tall man’s height. A faint light glowed within the orb.

  Domudess came to the window again. He called out words in a tongue Blain had never heard – troubling, for he’d heard them all, even many varieties of groundman babble. The visitors went back through the tower’s waters and under its archway.

  Blain tugged his beard until a good chunk had come away in his hand. When full daylight came his mage eyes saw what the thing they’d built was for: threads of reddish darkness from the airs were pulled down into the orb. In fact, it appeared the thing was drawing out the foreign airs, such as those Avridis had caught in his airships when the Wall fell. In a thin steady stream, the foreign magic was pulled into the glass and did not flow out again. The orb did not disturb the winding ribbon of power which threaded as always through the tower’s upper window and out through the one on its further side.

  ‘Little shit,’ Blain grumbled, meaning Kiown. Had the Hunter stayed, he’d have seen with his night vision how the device had been built.

  The little shit himself dropped to the ground behind him from a tree branch. Blain wheeled about, immediately splitting into a copy of himself, flinging his real self out of sword range.

  ‘Morning, Strategist,’ said Kiown with a most respectful bow. Blain knew full well the ‘joke’ had been a test of his defences and reflexes – killing him just now would have been perfectly easy. He kept his anger within, also his deep disquiet.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he said peevishly. ‘I’ve had need of your eyes.’

  ‘The mayor of Tanton comes.’

  ‘Good! From where? How far?’

  ‘He’s an hour or two away.’

  ‘You spotted them? If they’re an hour or two away, how’d you get back here before them? Eh?’

  Kiown shrugged. ‘I’m more useful than you supposed, Strategist Blain.’ He looked over at the visitors’ construction, rubbed his chin. One hand went to his pocket where presumably the amulet sat. ‘Do you mean to persuade the mayor to join your cause?’

  ‘Our cause, I hope you mean. If he’s still a mayor, why not?’ Blain eased himself to the ground. ‘His city was meant to be attacked. Could have lost the battle by now. Could be why he’s fled. Why’d he come here? Is our friend Domudess in league with him too? Curse this all! I’m like a household pet trying to fathom its masters’ sport.’

  Kiown did not answer, for he was again no longer there. Little bastard! Blain thought, lashing the ground with his stick. Biding his time. An attack’s coming, I know it, and he’ll have me. Ah, but I’ve played more games than he ever will, the turd. I said two days till his heart stops; let’s make it one. Nervously he fingered the dried Invia blood on his robe and looked back to the spot where its shedder was buried.

  16

  THE SILVER SCALE

  Vous’s storm passed at about the same time as a chorus of dying Invias’ cries began to rain down from directly overhead.

  When that began, Sharfy had at last given up on coaxing Anfen to a safer place for the rest they both sorely needed. Anfen sat on the lawns surrounded by bodies of Vous-things. Now and then his gaze roamed to the castle’s high windows, as if he could see directly into the eyes of whoever was on the other side of the glass.

  Sharfy never claimed (aloud) to be Levaal’s brightest mind, but he knew a lost cause when he saw one. So it was that when the Invia wails grew more numerous and filled him with a terrible dreamlike grief, he abandoned Anfen at last and ran blindly away.

  He woke now to a cold morning and could not remember having lain down to sleep, or even having sought a place safe enough to rest. Hungry and thirsty, he rose, stretched, explored – and found he was still close to the castle, though a few foothills blocked him from it. The roads were unfamiliar but a sign pointed the way to what must have been a military village. This then was the country where favoured Loyalists had dwelled, rich country the envy of the entire world. Now no one was here at all.

  At a guardhouse by the road there were indications people had left in a hurry. Sharfy plundered its cupboards of gourmet meats and breads, all preserved by someone’s spell work, good as fresh from the ovens. He stuffed himself without shame, belched in utter contentment and thought that only a drop of ale could make things more perfect. Then he found the barrel he’d parked his rump on was filled with that very stuff. Even though it was warm, the ale was so good he’d have been glad to drown in it. Instead he got cheerfully drunk and sang songs to himself all afternoon.

  How strange that the finest hours he’d known in years – let alone the finest since being dragged from an inn on this pointless quest to keep a madman alive – should happen here, deep in enemy heartland. To Anfen, he thought meanly, downing yet another cup. He envisioned with pleasure Anfen stuffing dry grass into his starving mouth.

  Valour’s voice sounded sternly in his memory: Serve him well.

  And what’s that job pay? Sharfy thought with sudden rage. Anfen gets a fucking sword at least. Charmed armour! Never seen armour like that. Feels sorry for himself, wants to die. What do I get? What’s the
stupid god do if I disobey? Kill me? Go ahead. In any event, was Valour here? So Sharfy poured another, then jumped and screamed at the sound of flapping wings as a bird swooped past the guardhouse window. For an instant he imagined he’d heard the Spirit’s hooves. ‘Bastard Spirit,’ he spat, shoving the chair into the guardhouse wall, then for good measure kicking it to pieces.

  ‘Anfen?’ he called later, staggering still drunk from the guardhouse with a filled pack of supplies. His beer-soaked vision was blurry. For an hour or two he strolled through the eerily silent countryside. No one about, friend, foe or stranger. The castle loomed over all, seeming closer than it actually was. The clouds swirled uneasily, gathered from east and west and pushed in a straight line south.

  As Sharfy sobered up he knew there was no way around it: he must return to where he’d left Anfen or his own guilty conscience would kill him. ‘Anfen?’ he called over and over. But no one heard him. Wagons, homes and stores were all abandoned. He paused when it pleased him to eat or drink fine food intended for castle Loyalists. Those Loyalists had been Vous-things all along, he reflected – willing to kill, and to share their Friend and Lord’s madness. Only at the end had they looked the part.

  A night and day passed in similar fashion, then another. Only twice did he come across living people, castle men returned from duty elsewhere, wandering dazed through their now-abandoned homeland, unable to comprehend what could have happened here. They looked right through Sharfy as if he were an unconvincing illusion, and they left him alone.

  Having seen those strangers, it was not with total surprise that Sharfy came upon a lone woman in the square of a village township. The pointed wooden signs named the place Loheem. The woman sat upon the stone edge of the water fountain, evidently in deep meditation. It was a particularly pleasant village, if one forgave it the many statues of Vous splayed in various poses (the eyes were all too alive, made of glittering gems none would ever have dared carve out to steal).

  Sharfy had been seriously contemplating retirement here. Apartments and homes had beds which seemed to warm themselves when nights were cold. They had running water – streams which sometimes ran through living rooms of houses, warm enough for bathing on cold days, with fat fish swimming through. There were all manner of little domestic wonders Sharfy had not dreamed of, and which the Mayors’ Command had never provided its most loyal soldiers. Several shops were abandoned with doors open; there was plenty of plunder left to take. There would be more to steal once he figured out how to break into the locked iron boxes, fat and heavy with treasure.

  As he explored his new home, it very much seemed that he was the last person alive, aside from a handful of stragglers whose confused calling voices could now and then be heard, far away. It began to occur to him that all this was his reward for aiding Valour. He had inherited his own perfect village. In fact he began to recall tales of the Spirits granting the noblest warriors a place in some kind of eternal paradise, if their service in life had been worthy.

  And more than that. It now seemed Valour had provided him with company! An ideal companion. The woman sitting on the edge of the water fountain was quite beautiful, in a dark and savage-seeming way. She wore leather of a fashion he’d not before seen, garb the colours of no city. She turned as he emerged through a doorway. Her face showed no fright, but it was clear she’d not expected to see him. Curls of flaxen hair bounced about her shoulders as she quickly stood up.

  Sharfy could not help but be aware of his sword, the fact they were alone, and that should he want her, there was no man close enough to stop him. But that was the kind of thing Kiown would do. That thought was enough to put an end to it.

  He knew better than to smile at her and add to his already convincing ugliness the spectre of stained and broken teeth. He nodded instead, crouched down. ‘Sharfy,’ he said, thumbing his chest. ‘S’not my name, but’s what they call me.’

  She nodded, watching him.

  ‘Been in many battles,’ he said, unsure as always where to begin. He thumbed a scar. ‘See this? Tell you where I got it.’

  ‘I already know,’ she replied.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Word of your swordplay reached the dragons themselves.’

  Although pleased, he pondered this. ‘Why talk of dragons?’

  ‘Why indeed. Warrior, was it your voice I heard yesterday, calling someone’s name?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Would you mind repeating the name for me? I too search for someone.’

  ‘Won’t be the same name, whoever you’re looking for,’ said Sharfy, vaguely annoyed and wanting to get back to tales about Sharfy. ‘Anfen, his name. Won Valour’s Helm. I fought with him. Many times.’

  ‘Where was he, when last you saw him?’

  ‘Why you want to know? Who you looking for?’

  ‘Would it disturb you if I said I seek he whom you named?’

  ‘Yes! He’s my friend. And aren’t you … I thought—’

  ‘I can pay for the information,’ she said. Fingers with long nails dug into a small leather pouch.

  He scoffed. ‘Got money enough. No stores left to sell. Don’t need gold or coin.’

  ‘Of course. Something better.’ From the pouch she produced an object that glowed with silvery light. He had to blink to make sure his eyes really saw it: a large dragon scale. Silver? He’d never heard of a silver scale. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. ‘Can’t crush it,’ he said, bargaining feebly.

  ‘This is not an organic scale,’ she said, holding it before her solemn face. ‘It is rather a kind of charm. It is, however, of dragon-make, and it holds the powers of all the scales’ colours within. It does not need to be crushed, warrior. Simply press it to your forehead, concentrate on its touch, and you would be able to use it over and over. That is, if you wish to use it. I do not advise it. I only tell you what the scale does.’

  Sharfy swallowed. ‘Why not use it?’

  ‘It will show you things forbidden to men’s eyes and minds. Perhaps you are strong enough to see? I cannot say; you alone can. It will show the ancient past, before humans ever came here from Otherworld. Those are times the dragons remember, times the dragons still dream of. Times they walk through, in their memories. Or so it is said.’

  She held it aloft, side on, gleaming like a slit larger than her eye. She said, ‘Whether you use this gift or not must remain your choice. If you choose to use it, heed my warning: do so no more than once per day. Too much knowledge is perilous. The hidden times and places have a certain … allure. But I see you know this already.’ His face of course betrayed him. ‘I see we have an agreement,’ she said.

  He swallowed. ‘Maybe. Yes. Sure. But I mean, he might be dead. Anfen. They might’ve got him. The castle.’

  ‘Such is our agreement. I accept my risk, if you accept yours.’ She came nearer and dropped the scale in his lap. ‘Now, brave warrior. Where is he?’

  So he told her where he’d last seen Anfen, and answered several other questions about him, which he’d not later remember. Then she was gone.

  With trembling hands he took the scale, pouring silver light out through his fingers. He took it to the small but luxurious apartment he’d chosen for a home.

  Days passed. With the silver scale pressed upon his forehead he forgot the apartment’s other, plainer treasures. His mind was filled with scale visions, or something very like them. He never went out of his body (as had happened with his black scale vision at Faul’s house, when he’d been taken to see horrors he had not the faintest ability to comprehend); instead he seemed to see back in time, just as the woman had intimated, to a Levaal where humans had not yet set foot.

  His gaze swept fast along on the winds, sometimes high as the lightstone ceiling. Great dragons roamed free, their enormous bodies pounding into mountainsides to reshape the spilled rubble as they wished. Their claws rent out gouged paths for glittering rivers to run, eating the stone they misplaced as if it were great mounds of chocolate or meat. Like delighte
d children painting, they flung magic through the air, adding colours and energies of their own to those their Parent had already set in swirling motion.

  He saw in his visions that the gods Mountain, Tempest and Inferno wandered the realm in those days too, lived with the dragons. They were not of the same kind at all, but of similar stature; the old Spirits were here observing, not yet given Nightmare, Valour or Wisdom as younger siblings. Observing, watching to see that the dragons did not alter the very rules of the Spirits’ governed elements: ensuring they did not invent a kind of water which did not flow, nor an ice that could not melt, nor fire that could not be extinguished.

  And Sharfy understood in the vision that indeed the great dragons did not do such things, but that this was not for fear of the Great Spirits, whom the twelve great dragons, being greater in number, could band up against and destroy. The rules were followed, rather, as a courtesy. The Spirits were advisors and guides to them, playmates, even allies, ready to fight alongside the dragons, should anything cross over World’s End from the South.

  Sharfy saw that out in some of the unclaimed lands, magic of such potency had been cast that humans could never dwell there. Nor would they ever try, besides a few wandering lost or seeking obscure treasures here and there, things hidden beneath thick layers of ice, stone, and buried in silt on the floors of Vyan’s Sea.

  The great dragons, the brood – Sharfy saw them all. Out in the great frozen wastes they occasionally squabbled over matters Sharfy could not understand. The squabbles were ferocious, but more akin to sport and game-playing than the dead serious warfare of men. Here they were, all Major personalities in glory terrible and wondrous: Vyin and Tzi-Shu, not yet enemies, their heavy bodies prowling, wings only just powerful enough to lift their huge bulk skywards, riots of colour glinting off their scales. He saw Shâ, before that dragon’s being became poisoned with envy of humanity and hatred of imprisonment. And the Minor dragons Sharfy saw swarming through the skies in all the vast array of shapes and forms dragons assumed. The dragons of this age could not know or predict the rage their imprisonment would, so very far into the future, create in their hearts, minds and magic.