by Will Elliott
‘You govern the affairs of men. For that, gifts were given to you. A god of flame, diminished but restless, shall have his embers warmed by foolish men who wish to play with power. You will say we dragons could stop it. You can stop them waking Inferno but I cannot. Hauf’s test showed our Parent’s sleep grows shallower. The castle rumbled? Then you felt it stirring. We dragons dare not break more rules of interference at this time, not until all have descended.
‘And your realm has other business. A rival lord for you rises in the south. He too has been granted gifts, of a kind I know not. He will take your throne, if he proves worthier of it than you. You will not love his rule, if you did not love how Avridis ruled. This new lord will be a tyrant of great cruelty. You asked for freedom. I shall not interfere. If you are defeated, it will be so. And your early actions indicate your defeat is likely enough.’
She leaned forwards, the crackling fire shining in her eyes. The woods behind them seemed to listen to her words. ‘You appear to treat all this as a game. Think of this: two great wrestling beasts push up against each other. Their strength is equal. Ah, but if one only had an insect’s strength more, he would win, his foe collapsed at last. If you are but an insect, Eric – or as you put it, poultry in a pen – you have now entered the grand ancient battle. And your tiny serve of strength may make a great beast collapse.’
Eric sat up, began to ask a question, but she was gone. If she’d meant to kill his light mood, she’d succeeded. The night’s quiet was watchful. Something shifted in the woods behind him, fleeing with quick steps when he turned.
That night he dreamed of a thousand war mages being eaten by Shâ, dreamed of the whole land filled with them falling dead and thick as raindrops. Dreamed of a dragon’s jaws opening bigger than the sky to devour the world, which tilted like a table, sliding everything down into the closing maw.
*
Come morning, there was a distant rumbling he thought was thunder. The ground shivered.
Something struck the dirt nearby. Another object fell, and another. Hailstones the size of coins landed all about him.
He got to his feet, inspecting a small chunk of quartz-coloured lightstone. It faintly shone, growing slightly brighter in the gloom of early morning, just as the vast acres of the same stone across the sky too began to lighten. Another broken piece fell into the grass some distance away.
31
THE LORD RETURNS
Case’s lazy flight returned Eric to the castle. By its front gate a ring of half-giants stood guard. Many of them were bigger even than Faul, although some – perhaps juveniles – were small enough to pass as large humans. Crowds of gawkers came to stare, many never having seen a single half-giant, let alone a small army of them. This was the desired reaction. Word would gradually filter back to the most distant cities, likely with great exaggeration of the half-giants’ numbers. Avridis was gone, but the cities would know the castle had been claimed, and taking it over would require a bruising fight indeed.
And wonder of wonders, here rode ‘Shadow’ on his drake. He had stepped from the story books and become real, to bring a prosperous age with him from Otherworld. Surely he would, no matter that the world seemed to shake now and then, no matter that little pieces of lightstone here and there rained down …
Entering through the window of Aziel’s former bedroom, Eric found food for Case and for himself, rested up in her bed, then explored at his leisure the countless luxurious suites of those upper floors. A few possessions and trinkets left behind showed that high-ranking military folk had dwelled here. It was all abandoned now. There weren’t even any grey-robe servants left.
When finally he found the place Aziel had commandeered as her new throne room, he saw she’d gotten on with business quite comfortably. She was a sight to behold, regal and calm while activity flurried around her. Advisors had come from the cities, their best and brightest eager for work. They rattled off figures from sheaves of paper, standing in patient lines outside the chamber, filling it with their quietly excited whispers. A new start. A new age. Here they were, part of its machinery. Proud as parents of the growing new empire. They hardly had a glance to spare for Eric, or for the red drake smelling of beer hobbling along behind him.
‘You’ll be pleased to know the food has been distributed,’ Aziel snapped at him by way of greeting. ‘The cities will eat. That’s what you wanted?’
He couldn’t help laughing at her accusing tone. ‘Yes, Aziel. I think people should generally be allowed to eat.’
‘Fine. Now you work out how to make the cities behave themselves.’
‘What precisely do you mean by that?’
‘Think of yourself as their father,’ said one of the advisors, a hunched older man smiling through yellow teeth. ‘He provides for his children. But he must now and then be stern. A mild, staged uprising with very swift suppression shall do the trick. In two weeks the thing can be done. No youngster will touch the hot stove after the first one has a severe burn or two.’
O Christ, Eric thought. So this is what it means to be Sauron. This is what it means, when Frodo keeps the ring. You get to hear bureaucrat types making it sound pragmatic to fill ditches with bodies. He said, ‘All of you in this room, listen up. I deem you are all Favoured.’
Sudden silence fell, broken by a breeze of excited chatter passing through the chamber. Aziel gaped at him, shocked and angry. The advisors babbled fervently or fell to their knees declaring loyalty. Most needed no further instruction. They ran from the room, filled with new zest and power, certain of their tasks. ‘Why did you do that?’ Aziel yelled. ‘We have to know what they’re up to. You can’t give them run of the realm!’ Eric laughed and climbed aboard Case. ‘Where are you going now?’ she said.
‘I might go watch them wake Inferno. Should be quite a show.’
‘Didn’t Shilen tell you to stop them?’
‘I think it was more of a suggestion. She also said we’re free, not her servants or pets. Let’s find out if that’s true.’
‘Eric, don’t you dare leave. I need you here. There is much about rule you need to learn. I’ll find a new lord to replace you, if I have to.’
‘You’ll have to make sure he’s from story books, as I am,’ said Eric, smiling. ‘The fable about Shadow is the one reason people will tolerate Vous’s daughter being in power. Without me, they’d throw you out of here in five minutes.’
He saw the truth sink in. Her eyes frosted. The gears of her mind clicked over almost audibly: They never lay eyes on this chamber, young sieur. You could be killed, your death kept secret for decades. For decades, they could think you’re still here, alive. I might even find a lookalike to appear on the balcony and wave now and then …
She said, ‘This is no game.’
‘Actually, Aziel, yes it is. That’s just what it is.’
As if to state agreement Case leaped out the window and into the sky.
It was a game. About his realm he flew. He gladly lost track of the days. When he landed to eat in villages and towns, the people called him Shadow and honoured him. When the mood struck he declared them Favoured by the dragons. None ever asked what this meant, and indeed he hardly knew himself. Case lapped up buckets of ale people set before him and belched fire. People clapped, delighted. They asked Eric if the times of turmoil were over; he said that was up to them. They said Shadow had stepped from the story books to bring them an age of light. He repeated Shilen’s words: ‘As you say it, it shall be.’ They nodded as if this were great wisdom. Perhaps it was.
In Aligned cities like Hane, people were being fed again with stores from the castle. Lands about these cities were newly planted with seeds. People were dealing with the gift of freedom with suspicion and great difficulty. Few could truly accept that there was now no tyrant to rule and starve them. But the food deliveries kept coming. Little by little, like lone candles lit in vast dark rooms, a degree of liberty slowly came to the hell holes Vous and the Arch Mage had created in the cities.<
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The Tormentors were mostly gone from the fields and roads. Now they were as rare a sight as elementals, leaving behind only the grief they’d caused, holes punched into the ground and their broken forms here and there, minus a part or two taken to be studied for its magic, or finger-blades taken to smiths for forging into swords. Who had slain the things or driven them out, none knew. People said Shadow had done it, and by Shadow they meant Eric. Some claimed the last ones had been seen stalking among the cliffs and hills to Elvury City to take refuge there. Indeed many tracks led to that place.
Now and then the sky rumbled – but not with thunder. Chunks of broken-off lightstone fell, sometimes marble-sized, sometimes bigger.
32
IN THE QUIET
In the place Anfen had called the quiet, where time did not exist, there was a twilit landscape whose purple darkness was broken here or there by frozen explosions of light: magic as crystal forms suspended in the air, expressions of power like the letters of a divine language, written instructions waiting to be hammered into reality’s tapestry. They were spells, alive and yet not alive. When the shadowy creatures called Shapers drifted along to read them, Levaal’s reality changed – changed as the spell caster intended, and to the spell caster’s eye, the change was immediate. Almost no mages knew that when their spells were cast, here in the quiet their casting waited silently outside of time, until the Shapers did their work.
There were woods and fields in that place, hills and mountains too … but in all, they were vague mirrors of what lay in the familiar world where mages played with magic. The Great Dividing Road was here too, like a long solid tattoo binding this place, which might have been the land’s soul, to its body, in the day-world. Sometimes people came to this place in their dreams, not knowing where they were and not remembering it at all, come morning. They could be seen like fleeting shadows, hardly more discernible than wind bursts.
Valour guarded this place. When Vous had enraged him, distracted him, and steered him so far across the world he had forgotten the original reason for his rage, Valour had come here to vent his anger.
For the first time, a dragon had come into the quiet.
Shilen had spoken mostly the truth to the man-lord. Mostly, though not always. She found conversation with him distasteful, but managing the kingdoms of men was now her duty.
She had a new task before her. She prowled now in the quiet, her long white body less physical here than it was in the day-world. There was no magic here of the usual kind – the airs held no power, so she could not cast if Valour should happen to find her here. Now and then Shapers could be seen, moving silently and seeming to consume the hung crystal-things. They did not stir when she came near.
It was Tzi-Shu who had swallowed the warrior’s breastplate, fused with Valour’s magic. His eyes had shone with new knowledge and he had praised her for bringing the object to him, even though she’d meant it for Vyin (which surely he had known). The great and terrible one had warned her to beware of Valour when he’d given her his fashioned key. Tzi-Shu would one day make a meal of Valour, he had said. It was he, after all, who had left a scar upon Mountain, the Spirit the brood most feared.
Shilen knew that discovery of this place had disturbed the mighty Eight. How many other strange hidden realms were there, realms they could not go to? She had sensed their disquiet.
Now and then she saw the last of the Tormentor beings. They hovered like strange puppets made of paper, being blown about by wind. Many had been smashed to pieces. Valour had slain them in huge numbers, coming to this place to vent his fury. He had already tried to cross World’s End and set the Pendulum swinging high. The other Spirits had cooperated to keep him back.
Ah, how much misplaced faith humans put in gods! They would think Valour had slain Tormentors to save their lives, when he was just venting fury like a child throwing tantrums. A mountain of Tormentor corpses was scattered by the Entry Point to Otherworld. The stupid human mage had planned on using them to invade that place. Their Parent would never have allowed that. Their Parent may indeed have directed the angry god to slay them.
Shilen paused her prowling steps. In the distance now, there he was: Valour, the angry young god. His steed reared up its kicking legs, bellowed, its voice like thunder, back at the sky. The force of the sound made shimmering waves on that horizon. The Spirit’s aura was red with battle lust. Luckily he did not sense Shilen prowling here – but she was nervous.
Valour called a war cry to match his steed’s. They turned southwards – luckily – and rode with speed. Shilen watched him slam his great sword into pillars of rock, shattering them. At last he rode further than her sight could follow.
Shilen searched the twilit woods and fields, avoiding the strange life forms when she saw them, never touching the diamond-shaped gleaming things, the magic waiting for the Shapers to make spells become real. At last she found what she had come for. There it was, in the north-west corner, a huge pillar thicker than any tree, stretching up till it touched the sky.
There was a pillar to correspond with each god. Inferno’s was mostly crumbled pieces strewn over the ground, broken long ago when the other gods fought him. Mountain’s she had seen when she first came here. She had attacked it with all her might but left hardly a mark upon the hard icy white surface.
This pillar, Shilen felt, was Nightmare’s. It was less solid, of different make. She may be able to harm this one, perhaps. She opened wide her jaws, bit in and wrenched with all her strength. A cold piece of it broke away.
She was surprised that it came free with such relative ease (however much her jaws now ached). Would not their Parent who designed this place have made the defences of the brood’s prison stronger? But then, she supposed this strange realm had not been expecting the company of any dragons. With great effort she tore away another piece, and then another, each piece removed weakening the cage.
33
LEVAAL SOUTH
In Levaal South where the haiyens dwelled, time and age were not the same. Time in the North and in Otherworld ran like a stream in one direction; in the South, time was a turgid icy whirlpool in a revolving cycle. Siel and Far Gaze learned much and were changed much in that unknown, uncounted stretch of time, under the guidance of the haiyen traveller.
They stepped out of the tunnel of wind and light onto a high platform ridge, which circled a vast flat plane beneath. Archways and pillars all across the ridge crumbled slowly to ruin. Out on the flats was a lake, perhaps in truth an inland sea, its cloudy water as blue as lapis lazuli. Floating above the water was a giant round crystal, held in the air by nothing they could see, its light beaming down in great shafts to the waters, making white smoke waft up where the light beams touched. Here was more beauty than Vous ever dreamed of creating and it made both Siel and Far Gaze want to weep in joy, even though they had no idea what it was they beheld. The lake’s far shore was too distant to see.
Their guide – the haiyen with the mark in its forehead – spoke to them with only its thoughts. ‘You have been deceived about the nature of your world, and told nothing of the nature of ours. Many visitors come to these waters, from other worlds and planes of being across the universe. But visitors no longer come from Levaal North, nor from the world your Pilgrim knows, which you call Otherworld. In that world, people are trapped. Even death sometimes fails to free them.’
‘The Pilgrims Eric and Case spoke nothing of this,’ said Far Gaze.
‘They knew no more of it than you. Their world and yours are not protected by the Dragon-god, as all your wise men have long believed. Those worlds are held captive by it. The Dragon-god did not create your world; it only changed that world better to suit itself.’
‘Is this world free?’ said Far Gaze.
‘No longer.’ Their guide’s sadness blew over them like a breeze. ‘No longer, but for a few rare parts of it. This is one such free place. Do you see the visitors below, from other planes and worlds?’
As their gu
ide said it, they indeed saw beings moving across the flat plain towards the water. A multitude of them came into sight, now and then materialising below with small lightning-like flickers to join the slow march to the shore. Great numbers milled all along the water’s edge, some standing knee-deep, some wading out further into the still blue where the water reached their necks, some swimming or floating languidly out across the surface to the distant shore. The huge round crystal’s pulsing light bathed them from above.
It was not only humans wandering across the flats to the shore. Some beings they saw were smaller than groundmen, others large as half-giants, with a few bigger yet. Some things moved on four legs, others were shifting wispy shapes which coiled and twisted through the air. A sense of peace washed over them from their guide. ‘Guests from many worlds you see below,’ it said.
‘For what purpose do they come here?’ said Far Gaze.
‘The waters rejuvenate the soul.’
‘Only humans have souls, I was taught,’ said Siel.
‘You have been told your soul is a small part of the Dragon-god’s thought,’ said their guide. ‘And told that when you die, you enter his dreams and are eventually reborn. It is not so. Your soul is even older than that creature. Only your body is young. I brought you here because you have wounds and scars from your prison world. You are invited here to heal them, if that is your wish. Be warned, only once in a lifetime may one enter the crystal lake. Many times you have been here before, though your mind does not permit the memory. A deep part of you knows. It is that deep part which makes you wish to weep at the beauty of it. It is that deep part which recognises this place.’
Their guide did not seem to need his answer straight away. So Siel and Far Gaze watched the display beneath: all manner of forms, all manner of shapes. Some looked like statues made of metal. Others walked like human beings, but were covered in scales and plates. Some wore bodies partly animal: bird people, feline ones, heads with antlers, horns and more. Some seemed kin to trees. Some seemed hardly physical at all; there were orbs of light, clouds like light brush strokes of dark shimmering paint which barely had physical form.