by Kai Meyer
“I am the Great Serpent,” said the creature, and now he sounded almost as if he were commanding reverence. “I fly on the winds between the worlds and devour the enemies of the Ancient People.”
Soledad knew the myths of the Indians’ serpent god that were told by the native inhabitants of the islands. She’d also seen drawings and reliefs of the winged serpent in the ruins of the jungle temple of Yucatan, where her father had once taken her many years before. Now she wondered if the mythical deity of the Indians was in fact the same as that creature opposite them. That would have been incredible in itself. But to have to accept that it and the shipworm were one and the same creature was completely mad.
“Devour enemies.” Walker repeated the serpent’s words. “Sounds like a good idea.”
The head of the serpent swung, but it wasn’t possible to tell if the movement was supposed to be a nod.
“Can you carry Griffin behind the wall?” Soledad asked.
A mighty gust of wind buffeted her, making her hair dance around her face. But this time it wasn’t the serpent’s wings that were stirring the air by the roof.
“We’ll take care of that,” d’Artois called down from his ray. The animal’s angular silhouette darkened the sky over them, but it cast no shadows because the serpent’s light was illuminating the attic. No one had noticed the rays descending, so fascinated were they all by the serpentine creature.
Two other flying rays, manned by riders and marksmen, hovered in the captain’s party. The serpent god’s glow was reflected in the mussel decorations of their black leather uniforms. The soldiers were staring in distress at the creature in the center of the light. One of the marksmen had aimed his rifle at the serpent, but d’Artois quickly raised a hand and made him lower the weapon again.
“I’ve seen weirder things in this city than a snake with wings,” he said. Soledad shuddered at the picture of what creatures the captain might have met during his years in Aelenium. Even older, even larger than the sea serpent in the undercity?
She had a thought. “You knew what he was going to turn into!” The words were directed at d’Artois, but she was pointing at the flying serpent as she spoke.
“Not when he arrived,” replied the captain. “But when the pupation started…well, let’s just say, Aelenium has quite an astonishing effect on some. It brings out things in some of us that elsewhere might have remained latent.”
And that was such a pertinent observation that they all left it at that, and even Walker refrained from any further remarks. For one thing was clear: D’Artois’s statement didn’t apply just to the worm but in certain ways to each one of them.
There was noise down in the chasm of streets under the ray riders. The gathering in the air over the house had attracted the enemy’s attention, and now the second attack wave of Tyrone’s troops arrived. Shots whistled past, and one of the rays shook itself as a bullet struck its underside. With an animal of this size, a single shot wasn’t necessarily fatal, but several would bring the giant down.
D’Artois shouted commands, and at once the three rays fanned away from each other. As always their movements were phlegmatic, their reactions unhurried. The marksmen opened fire onto the ground—but they weren’t the first to avert the danger.
Like a lightning bolt the winged serpent shot forward, turned in flight between the rays still drifting apart, and whizzed away over the edge of the attic and steeply down toward the street.
Horrifying cries rose from the street, screams from many throats. But when Soledad overcame her paralysis, ran with the others to the edge of the roof, and looked down, the battle was almost over—if you could call what had happened down there a battle at all. The serpent had mowed down the military host of cannibals and pirates in seconds. Soledad got gooseflesh when she saw the remains of a body at both sides of the serpent’s mouth fall to the ground.
A second attack from below never came. If other men from Tyrone’s fleet had been watching what happened, they stayed at a distance. However, Soledad doubted that there were very many witnesses. The serpent’s attack had been swift and thorough, and at greater distances the smoke still veiled the city.
A remarkably pale d’Artois gave a brief command to his men. He guided his ray down, and Buenaventure helped to secure the mumbling but still not completely awake Griffin in the saddle between the soldiers. The animal lifted off again, carrying Griffin away, up the mountain, in the direction of the tumult of battle at the wall.
Soledad, Walker, and Buenaventure divided up on the two remaining rays, and soon they all were sailing away over the coral gables of Aelenium, toward the upper defense wall.
The winged serpent followed a short distance behind them. He had not spoken again since his attack on Tyrone’s people. The light that flickered around him gradually paled, as if that had also been part of his magical rebirth.
It appeared that the transformation of the worm was not yet completed.
The Ghost Trader didn’t notice the departure of the companions for the wall. He’d walked out onto the library balcony alone and was observing the course of the battle between the plumes of smoke. Like termites, the masses of attackers were surging through the streets of the sea star city, and it was this sight that finally decided the issue.
“It’s wrong,” said the Ghost Trader, “and perhaps even stupid and irresponsible. But I will do what must be done.” He said the words aloud, for his next step was too important and momentous for him to want to confide his thoughts to the grave of silence.
He stood there outside, isolated, with flakes of ash whirling around him on the wind and the noise of the battle far, far below him.
The Ghost Trader was in despair, and he could no longer conceal his discouragement.
Forefather had stayed with the books, the thousands and thousands of books that for a long time had been much closer to his heart than the humans he’d once created. His spirit had suffered in all the years. It had begun after the destruction of the first sea star city. Or even earlier? It was not a public decline, nothing that showed in the words or actions of the old man, whose passivity had scarcely changed in the last millennia. Much more it was a vague feeling, a whiff of decline and death, that floated through the halls of books. And since there was nothing else that could die here, there could be no doubt as to where this presentiment originated.
Everything was tending toward the end, one way or the other.
The Maelstrom was about to swallow up the world. And if he didn’t do it, the resurrected gods would.
The Ghost Trader had decided to awaken their spirits again—the spirits of those deities who’d once withdrawn to Aelenium and had died there in the forgetfulness of the humans. He knew no other remedy than to battle the one catastrophe with the other. Jolly and Munk must long since have reached the Crustal Breach, and there was still no sign that they’d defeated the Maelstrom. The defenders of Aelenium had paid a high toll to buy time for the polliwogs.
But the grace period had run out. Aelenium would fall under the assault of the cannibal king, and with him the Maelstrom would reach his goal. For a long time it had no longer been about the masters of the Mare Tenebrosum, as the Trader once assumed it to be: The Maelstrom had served them in order to build up his power, but he had no intention of opening a gate for them. This world was now his, and he would shape it as he wished.
And that included making it a world without humans. The revenge of the girl Aina on her race would be realized.
The Ghost Trader hadn’t decided on his step because he shared Forefather’s weariness and indifference. The fate of humankind was no game. The Ghost Trader had walked among them too long to believe anything different.
And if nevertheless he was now going do what he alone could, then it was only because he was despairing and helpless—perhaps for the first time in his immeasurable existence.
He inhaled the stench of war once more, like an admonition not to weaken now. Then he turned back into the library. His black
parrots fluttered somewhere in the heights of the coral dome. Yet not even they could provide him with solace.
“Have you made your decision?” asked Forefather, looking up from a book whose writing had long ago faded. Forefather knew the words once visible there by heart.
“I will do it,” said the Ghost Trader.
Forefather closed the book and stood up. The sound echoed through the hall like a cannon shot. “I’m not going with you,” he said wearily.
He was silent for a moment before he began to speak again. “My road ends here.”
The Ghost Trader nodded. “I know. You can’t help me.”
Forefather shook his head. “That’s not what I mean,” he said.
The Ghost Trader was startled, but with a wave, Forefather motioned him to be silent. “I’m like the writing on this paper.” He pointed to the book with the empty pages that he’d just closed. “Without even noticing it myself, I’ve been faded for a long time. It only looks as if the writing were still there because we know the words by heart, you and I and a few of the people in this city. But in truth”—he took a deep breath—“in truth, no one can read me anymore.”
The Ghost Trader tried to contradict him, but again Forefather gestured for him to be quiet. “Don’t try to claim that I’m still needed here!” As vehement as these words sounded, the old man punctuated them with a gentle smile. “I created this world, that is so, but I have never been able to protect it—not from dangers from the outside and not from itself. My place is no longer here. Let me depart, old friend, before I must experience the end with my own eyes.”
“I’m to—”
“I beg you to.”
The Ghost Trader took a step back, clutching at a table edge with one hand. His elbow struck against a pile of books and made it fall. Neither of the two men even looked as the heavy volumes fell to the floor in a cloud of dust and lay there like dead doves with outspread wings.
“You alone are able to do me this last favor,” said Forefather urgently. “If I ever knew how to do it myself, it was long ago—I cannot remember how. But you, my friend, you know it.”
Forefather might sound to others as if he were speaking in riddles, but the Ghost Trader understood his every word. Their meaning lay before him as clearly as if someone had cut them into glass with a diamond. And their sound was just as painful to his ears.
“You ask much.”
“No,” said Forefather. “Only resolution.”
“It’s more than that. You are—”
“Old.”
“That we all are.”
“Old and faded. And as good as forgotten. They might revere something of what they believe I am. The nameless creator, the father of all, the word at the beginning of time. But I am not really that. They’ve forgotten the truth, and soon it will fare with me as with all the other forgotten gods, whom I myself once created. I will disappear.”
“You want me to change you into a story? The way I did with Munk’s mother?” asked the Ghost Trader in a trembling voice. “But that’s as if I were to kill you!”
“No. You would give me a future, if there can still be such a thing in this world. Do it, my friend.”
“But it’s wrong.”
Forefather shook his head with an amused smile. “How can stories be wrong? You know better than that. I beg you. And afterwards…”
“You will live on as stories,” said the Ghost Trader somberly. Perhaps Forefather was right. What were they, the gods, in the eyes of men other than stories?
Forefather read his thoughts. “I knew you would understand.” Without waiting for an answer, he sank back onto the chair. He placed his right hand on the binding of the book, as if he felt more connected to its empty pages than ever. “Step behind me,” he said, closing his eyes.
Still the Ghost Trader hesitated. Then he made a conscious effort, took a step behind Forefather, and placed both hands on his shoulders. Tears gathered in his one eye, and it wasn’t long before they were running down his cheek. It was the second time within minutes that he’d wept. Before that, centuries had passed without even one tear appearing, but now they dropped freely on Forefather’s shoulders and were soaked up by his robe.
“I make you into a story,” he said gently. “You will be a story in which light emerges from darkness. In which people are born and die. In which sorrow and injustice happen, but also good fortune and great joy. A story of being born and passing away, of ascent and decline, and the constant hope of a new beginning. Of fathers and sons and spirits and the life in eternity. And of the humans you have created and who will tell themselves these stories, for they are part of them and forevermore one with you.”
The fragile body did not collapse, did not even twitch. But when the Ghost Trader carefully lifted his hands from Forefather’s shoulders, he saw that the life had slipped out of the old man’s body like a young bird leaving its nest. And with it flew the stories of Forefather, out into the world to be told and heard and told again.
“Farewell, my friend,” the Trader whispered, and he bent over and kissed the old man on the forehead. “Your road was hard, but today it is the easier, for it goes on elsewhere without burden and guilt and grief.”
The Ghost Trader buried his face in his hands and wept until his tears finally stopped.
Then he went on his way to the highest point of the city, where Aelenium almost touched the sky. As he walked he drew the silver ring from beneath his robe. His fingers stroked the metal, feeling the invisible current of power.
He did not look back at Forefather as he left the library. He felt as though he were hearing a thousand voices in the distance, and they were all telling one story. And thus it would become true.
The Old Ray
The sound of the battle penetrated Griffin’s consciousness as a distant rumble. First it was a muffled booming and roaring like the wind at night beating against the hull and making the sails flap spookily. Then voices emerged, screams, the clattering of blades, and the thundering of pistol and rifle fire.
Griffin started awake. He was lying on the hard floor of a house, among groaning wounded, who’d been laid out in rows side by side in a field hospital, most of them only on blankets, some—like him—on the hard, bare floor.
Someone had placed a few old pieces of clothing under his head. The air was humid and heavy, the emanations of blood, sweat, and fear of death mixed to a rancid stench.
Griffin got up with difficulty and staggered dazedly once on his feet. He moved drunkenly toward the exit. He had to be careful not to trip over the other men—and a few women—on the floor. A doctor who was bending over a wounded man in soaking bandages cast an exhausted glance toward Griffin, then turned again to the one who was more in need of his help.
The wounds in Griffin’s side hurt, primarily because he’d stood up too quickly. He told himself it wasn’t bad, and he felt ashamed that they’d brought him here because of these scratches.
Had he been so weakened? He could hardly remember. Before his eyes he saw Soledad as she’d leaped from the coral bridge into the middle of Tyrone’s men. And there’d also been Buenaventure and Walker. But then? A desperate battle. Acrid smoke. And some sort of bright light, with something moving inside it that looked like a gigantic snake.
Yes, he remembered the serpent. And its feathered wings.
Very vaguely also the men who’d held him firm on the back of a ray while the turmoil of a battle passed beneath him. Then nothing more. That hadn’t been sleep but unconsciousness.
As he stumbled through the door into the open air, still more images crowded up in his mind. The kobalins in the water. The shape changer dissolving before his eyes into thousands of tiny beetles. And then Jasconius shooting out of the deep with mouth wide open and swallowing the jellyfish boy.
Jasconius, who had sacrificed himself for Griffin and defeated the lord of the kobalins.
Griffin ran out into the street. He was instantly surrounded by the tumult that prevails beh
ind the lines of any battle: Figures swarmed in confusion like ants; wounded who’d been borne from the battlefield, some silent, others screaming; occasional men who’d lost their nerve and now ran frantically back and forth, murmuring wild snatches of conversation or bursting into tears.
In vain he kept his eyes peeled for his friends. Before him lay one of the largest squares of the city. In former times, dealers had offered their wares from tents and stands, wares they’d shopped for in their ships in Haiti or the Antilles Islands. There’d been cheerful crowds, fragrant spices, and exotic foods, even in those last tense days before the invasion.
Today the square was covered with wounded or exhausted fighters who were seeking rest here for a moment. The real battlefield was about fifty yards away, where three broad streets opened into the square.
Griffin turned and looked up at the top of the mountain. There was no smoke rising anywhere. That meant that at least so far the upper third of the city remained undamaged.
Suddenly the dust was whipped up around him, and a mighty shadow sank down onto the square next to him.
“Griffin!” called d’Artois from the saddle of his ray. “You’re on your feet again, then.”
“Yes, Captain. How bad is it?”
D’Artois looked as weary as all the fighters in this battle, but in his exhaustion he registered something that Griffin recognized with dismay as a shade of resignation. “Not good,” said the captain. Behind him his marksman was using the pause to reload his rifles and pistols.
When he’d awakened, in those strange, blurry moments in which thoughts gain a life of their own, one question kept running through Griffin’s head over and over. Now he spoke it aloud. “Why doesn’t the Ghost Trader help us?”
“What’s he supposed to do, boy?”
“He could awaken the spirits of all the fallen and let them fight on our side!”
D’Artois let out something that sounded like a mixture of laughing and yelping and might rather have fitted Buenaventure. “If it were only so simple…. How are the spirits supposed to decide who’s their friend and who’s their enemy? Believe me, this has been talked about more than once, but it’s pointless. The Trader has to explain to each individual ghost who he’s supposed to fight with. If we had an army of conjurors who could keep the ghosts under control…But he alone? Impossible.”