Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  His old intelligence, above, battled with his new brutality, below.

  The sky was veined by the red dawn. A great green creature winged over the water toward him, and he rolled onto his back to be ready to fight when it tried to scoop him from the river. It croaked and passed overhead. Then it was gone, heading downstream.

  He turned his face back to his memories. The one that hurt the most blinded his eyes. Tabitha. He had lost her, lost her forever. Her memory had come on fast that morning, swooping on his mind like that winged creature, as if she were watching him from the sky. She could never love what he had become. If she had loved him before, it was because she did not know the truth. He was a monster.

  She had a way of melting his anger, dissolving it with her love. She knew that, she had kept him so close ever since the massacre of Stormhaven, as if her presence alone could heal him. For a while he had believed it was possible. When they had made love he had become part of her heart. It only made the pain more terrible. He would go under with this memory; he would drown in this agony. The only response to such pain he could think of, was to fight.

  A silver-strike impacted the riverbank. He had seen many on his long way down the river, he knew now what to expect. The willow trees jerked and grew suddenly, flinging new limbs to the air. One tree toppled as its roots lifted from the earth, and it entered the water and swam away. The water seething around it was grey and lumpy, and within its flow the monster noted a few creatures which had probably once been fish.

  He had been changed, just as they had been. It was time to set aside his regrets. What was done was done, but there could still be justice. Justice was greater than he was; justice was the single thing that had defined him. If he followed that principle, maybe he could remember what it was to be a man.

  His tail drove him downstream. Little time remained. The sorcerer Ametheus would pay.

  He was not a monster, he decided. He was a weapon. He was justice.

  42. CLOSING MOMENTS

  “Every word must be spoken before it is heard;

  Every song must be sung before it’s a bird.”—Zarost

  There was a gap in time, but since he had no time to measure it against, it was gone in a flash of endless waiting. Twardy Zarost heard the sound of tearing fabric, felt the snatch of gravity, tumbled down someone’s legs and tangled in their feet. He heard a shriek and someone falling. Warmth, light and the sounds of Chaos.

  He jerked around. A fire, there had been a fire, and the wizards of the Gyre had been trapped by Ametheus. He had tried to escape, he had become so small, but… There was Tabitha Serannon, her eyes as wide as a startled calf. He struggled to his feet against a swaying, tipping world. Turmodin! He had experimented with Inference. He would have never discovered the spell had he not been so close to death, and now he was in the heart of Chaos. And there was Tabitha.

  How had she got there? He had thought she had been lost, in the destruction of the Gyre temple.

  Why had he ended up here, of all places?

  Turmodin. Things were going to move very quickly. He would have to keep his wits about him.

  Then he saw the blood on Tabitha’s hand and the mirror shards, and he understood. She had provided the linking point into that strange separated world the Sorcerer had trapped him in. He had used Inference, but she had provided him with a lifeline. She had saved him without realising what she was doing. A lingering scent of smoke hung in the air. Did it come from his own hair? The world stood poised around him, as if time had been frozen, but from Tabitha’s hand three more shards of mirror glass tumbled.

  “A ta ta!” Zarost exclaimed, dancing forward to catch them before they broke on the floor. “Be careful with those!” The shards. He could save the other wizards—only three left.

  A mournful melody rippled through the sounds.

  “Ethea is singing, Twardy! It is happening, now! We must go!”

  “Well then I am not a moment too soon. I too have something interesting for you, a docket—in my pocket.” He pulled the translation out. The one Tattler Jhinny had spent so long over.

  “What is it?”

  “Words from the Book of Is, the words to release the Goddess—the end of the Ceremony of Invocation that was used upon her.”

  Tabitha snatched it from his hand and scanned it. He could see the new patterns upon her right eye, a strange complexity of silver and gold that flickered as she absorbed the knowledge.

  “Your eye. Is it…working?”

  “I don’t know. I see…something…something beyond the page.”

  The page burst into flame. Tabitha squealed.

  “I thought…” Tabitha put her hand to her mouth. “I just thought… There was a face behind it, watching me. A face in black fire.”

  “Then he has been drawn close already, too close,” said Zarost. “He will try to prevent you.”

  “Who?” asked Tabitha, beginning to run.

  “The Destroyer. Apocalypse. He is coming. Can you remember the words?”

  Tabitha looked surprised at herself for a moment. “Yes.”

  “Good. Let us go! You won’t get there fast enough by running.” He cupped his mouth with his hands. “Ziggeroşş!” he barked. The sound rushed ahead of them down the tubular corridor. The hooks bit and they were pulled at the speed of sound. He’d always liked the power words, the ancient language the philosophers of Kaskanzr had stolen from the Gods. He had the feeling he was going to need many more of them in the moments to come. All of them, perhaps.

  _____

  Bevn could not believe his eyes. They had emerged from the Discontinuity into a scene from a fantasy. Worshippers crowded onto every undulation; he could not see the ground. The landscape was made of heads, and they moved like wheat in the wind as they chanted and swayed, their many open mouths releasing sounds like blighted seeds in the wind. Somehow, among all these people, great fires burned, throwing bitter smoke into the whipping wind, swirling into the dreadful sky. A great tree blocked the sky; behind it a tower tilted into the scudding clouds, held at a sickening angle by its weird gravity. It was hot and wet, and the air had a tainted cinnamon scent.

  The Sorcerer was there, unmistakable in his split robe and bronze helmet. He was much more impressive up close; power emanated from him in shuddering waves of disturbance. He stood on a boulder, overlooking a great face—some being trapped in a pool in a way that left her face inches clear of the water. She sang a mournful song, but even though the words had some strange power, Bevn could feel in his blood, he could tell it was a pitiful attempt, as if she lacked conviction.

  “The Goddess Ethea,” Saladon explained in a hushed voice. “She will bring life to the Wicker Man.” He pointed to the tree.

  Bevn looked again. It wasn’t a tree, it was a man-made structure, a giant statue, and it had people inside it. They writhed and wailed, level upon level, body upon body, and at the very top those who populated the great head swayed their fluttering hands, reaching for the sky while at the colossus’s feet worshippers laid great piles of wood.

  “It is progressing as it should,” Saladon declared. “He will soon get what he wants, the end of all things.”

  “And what do you get out of it?” asked Gabrielle.

  “That is none of your business,” replied the Warlock.

  “It is my every business! I am here because of you. You will pay your debts!”

  Her raised voice drew the attention of the Sorcerer. He paused in what he was doing to the Goddess and regarded them with his watery gaze.

  “You are merely a contingency plan, you and the prince,” Saladon replied. “And you were promised gold. Gold you shall have. Enough to entomb you.”

  “Wizard!” shouted the Sorcerer, over the heads of the worshippers. “I thought you had abandoned me! Come help compel this stupid Goddess to sing properly. She resists to the very last moment of her life.”

  “Very well.” Saladon gathered his axe and shouldered through the crowds as if they were made
of straw. “And so the end-game begins,” he muttered under his breath.

  Bevn scampered in Saladon’s wake.

  As they neared the head of the Goddess and the Sorcerer on his rock, Gabrielle spoke up. “I still don’t understand why you are doing this. Why allow him to bring the end of the world? What is your payoff?”

  Saladon gave her a hard look. “He gets his God and the end of this world, and I get the beginning of another.”

  “No, you will get a dead world,” said Ametheus, looking down on them.

  Saladon spun. “That is not the deal! I shall have the Goddess. We agreed!”

  “I decide the terms! Why should I be bound by what I say? These are just words, passed in the wind. Nothing in this world has any permanence. Those who try to make it so force their way against nature.”

  “But the Apocalypse will end this world! What does it matter to you, what happens elsewhere?”

  “Why would I allow you to take the songbird? So you may use her magic to create something else? I am not stupid, wizard. I will keep this precious thing, and you will be gone!”

  “Amyar! You made a vow. We swore on the name of Nå. You remember.”

  “Amyar is not here. I am Seus and I say I will never make a deal with a wizard!”

  “Ethan!” the Warlock exclaimed, as if trying to appeal to another person. “This is not our agreement!”

  “Agreement? Wh-why should I be bound by a w-w-word spoken? A s-sound formed by the lips is as insign-n-nificant as the wind! I-I act as I-I am inspired. You will n-not limit me.”

  “But the Destroyer cannot be contained!”

  “Contain! Contain! Contain! You w-w-wizards always want c-c-containment! Don’t you understand? Chaos is f-freedom. Your Order f-fails because it throttles f-f-freedom.”

  “But you can’t let him destroy her as well! The whole plan was to get rid of the other wizards, to be rid of Order, not to be rid of life altogether!”

  The Sorcerer’s head shook as if he was fighting to keep it straight. “You are in no position to tell me what I can and cannot do. You joined me because you would die if you fought me, yet still you cling to your belief in Order and control! Spit on you! What I do is my own affair.”

  “We were to work together!”

  “Togetherness? That is the way of your Gyre. I do not work as a team! If your actions move the world toward Chaos, then you move with the flow of these times. If you stand in the way of Chaos you will be swept aside.”

  Bevn had seen this kind of argument before, in the court, at home in Stormhaven.. The Warlock was being stupid. Bevn knew that when a petitioner dug his heels in during negotiation, one had to offer something more, even if one took it away again later another way.

  “I can offer you this woman.” He pointed at Gabrielle. “I am her king, so she is my subject.”

  Gabrielle reddened quickly.

  “She will deny it, but she is mine,” Bevn said quickly. “I’ll give her to you.”

  Gabrielle caught Bevn by the throat, but before she could protest his pronouncement, Ametheus spoke. “Thank you for the gift, youngster, but it is not very valuable.” Ametheus seemed amused. “If I cared for a woman with her looks, I could change one of my servants to appear so. I could change you into a creature like her!”

  Gabrielle’s grip tightened. “Creature? How dare you, you freak! You sit there on your soft arse and destroy the world, and you call me a creature? You wreck everything, you ruin life, you are a low-bred bastard. You are not worthy of me.”

  Oh shit, Bevn thought. Nobody challenged Ametheus, not openly, not here. No one who did would live.

  Ametheus thrashed. His head swung from side to side, twisting, revealing other faces. Bevn looked on in amazement. He had three heads, all…connected!

  “You swollen-breasted slut!” the smooth-faced one screamed.

  “Gabrielle, shut up!” Saladon shouted. “Are you so stupid? You have pushed him too far, you’ve awakened all of them in the same moment ... ”

  “I shall break you in half!” shouted the scar-faced one.

  “ ... and throw you in the s-s-sacrifice!” exclaimed the single-eyed second.

  “ ... and let the one half of you watch while I s-screw the other!” screamed the scar-faced third.

  Bevn was bug-eyed, half at the words he was hearing, half at the terror of dying under Gabrielle’s tightening grip. He couldn’t breathe! He kicked frantically against Gabrielle’s shins. She ignored him; her eyes were locked on Ametheus.

  “I wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole,” Gabrielle declared, “even if you offered me all your power!”

  Bevn made a strange mewing sound.

  Ametheus turned and the smooth-faced one said, “What makes you think I won’t disperse you into dust, right now?”

  “Because that would be too predicable. I’ve heard you thrive on chaos.”

  “You presume to anticipate my actions, wench?” His gaze became more intense. “You are a waste of my time. You shall taste the bitter end of your forked tongue.” The air tightened and Gabrielle’s hair blew forward over Bevn’s face.

  “No, wait, Seus!” exclaimed the Warlock. “I will compensate you. I wish to keep her.”

  “Wizard, you are in my realm and not in yours. I fear this awful woman is not yours to give or keep. You are all my prisoners, for as long as I wish to hold you here. This is Turmodin!”

  A spot of light burst into Bevn’s vision, as if a rainbow comet fired toward them from the tower. It wasn’t a hallucination. The Sorcerer noticed it too and turned his oddly shaped head. The light was carrying something, two figures, a woman and a man, moving as if running, but impossibly fast. Light streaked around them in ribbons. With a sudden shock Bevn recognised who the woman was—the singer from Eyri. She was weaving spells in the air, singing, but nothing could be heard above the crowd’s clamour. The Sorcerer turned, Gabrielle’s grip slackened, and Bevn fell to his knees, losing the newcomers from view. He gasped, drawing hot air into his lungs as the light swelled above him and the sounds were suddenly stripped away from startled lips. The lash of a storm parted the crowds.

  Tabitha Serannon’s voice swept over them like a gale, a gale of music, unlike any Bevn had heard before. It resonated in his bones; it made him feel as if he was being dissolved in sound. It brought tears to his eyes, and an aching to his heart. He hated that she had so much power over him.

  Tabitha, the singer. She had changed the atmosphere in an instant. She had replaced the Sorcerer’s frenzy with her own vision of peace and harmony, if only for a few moments. The Sorcerer seemed perplexed, turning his heads backward and forward, shouting arguments at himself, trying to see with his different eyes.

  “Saladon…” Gabrielle began nervously. “That’s the singer from Eyri!”

  “Do you think I wouldn’t have planned for this?” he asked tersely. “I plan for everything. What I didn’t plan on was the Riddler being here. With him here, the brothers might actually survive their stupid plan. He must be removed.”

  Bevn took notice of the man who danced beside Tabitha, the one the Warlock had called the Riddler. He had a beard and he wore a strange hat and moved his hands as if counteracting unseen elements. Then he called to Tabitha and they spoke together, a chant, words formed of strange syllables, words that left hooks and writhing tails in his mind.

  “No!” shouted the Warlock. “No. Stop those words! Be silent!”

  He raised his hands as if to cast a spell but then, as if realising where he was, he dropped his hands again. The air crackled with the potency of the Sorcerer’s Chaos. There was no tolerance for spell-casting in this place, yet somehow the singer and the Riddler were able to work their magic. Bevn didn’t understand it. Saladon strode toward Tabitha, but the man in the hat blocked the Warlock’s advance and her voice carried over their heads. The Warlock swirled against his adversary, catching him up in a complex body-lock. The Sorcerer recovered from his stasis; he dived forward and wrenched Tabitha f
rom her feet with a grip on her throat.

  But it was too late. The words had been spoken.

  The Goddess cried out from the pool and her voice rose in pitch until it felt as if his eardrums would burst. With a jolt, her body became essence. The green flash blinded Bevn and there was a sudden gap in his life, like a narrow but infinitely deep chasm he had passed over. The birds that had been swirling closer and closer turned as one, and they flew out, away, all over Oldenworld.

  “Fuck!” shouted the Warlock.

  The great green face dissolved in the water and the pool steamed with dissipating energy. The sounds rushed back at them, as if Tabitha’s song had pushed the Sorcerer’s world away and it now slopped back like a filthy wave. The debris clanked in the air, the sacrifices screamed, the sea roared and the worshippers wailed with new despair.

  The Warlock struggled with the Riddler, but because he wanted to retain control over the man he had caught, he was limited in what else he could do. His adversary moved and twisted like a ferret, complicating every hold until the Warlock had to devise another body-lock.

  “Seus!” the Warlock shouted. “Keep hold of the singer. She will do just as well, if not better, for your purposes.”

  “Why would she ever do what you want?” asked the Riddler.

  “Because of me,” said someone behind them.

  “Ahh, Mystery, you have arrived,” said the Warlock. “Late, of course, but just in time.”

  Bevn turned to see a wizard, beautiful and pale, clothed in flowing gowns, crowned with a golden circlet, that unmistakable jagged outline of Eyri. The Kingsrim! She radiated power.

  She turned her sanguine gaze upon the big wizard. “Warlock,” she said. “How could I avoid it? I got your note. I see the way the threads clustered her. This is the only path to follow. Yours is the only path to follow to find peace.”