King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  Daniel searched the spinning bodies for the other spellcasters. Rana found Havig, Prelg, Baasha, and a creature that might once have been a hobgoblin floating in a foursome and she yanked them apart.

  “The spell!” Daniel shouted, pulling them toward the Tree of Life. The Mikulalim and the priest ran toward the sephirot. But the once-hobgoblin snatched the Horn from Rana’s hands and sprinted into the forest.

  “No!” Daniel screamed.

  “I’ll get it!” Rana shouted, sprinting after the creature. “Start your spell!”

  She vanished into the shadow of the jungle as he took his place at Malchut. He stood beside a rose bush of bright red blossoms, its sharp thorns pricking his arm.

  “Begin!” he said.

  They chanted the first syllables, and their voices rose above the din as power coursed through them. Their hair rose, and his skin felt electrified.

  A sphere, like tinted-red glass, suddenly appeared around him. One appeared around each of the spellcasters, each the same color as their local rose bush. Flowers, stems, trunk, and leaves were cleanly severed where the sphere’s surface had intersected their growth. The glowing rain splattered and rolled down the spheres’ curving surfaces. Random lightning sparked between the the spheres, linking the sephirot with twenty-two lines of power.

  On the surface of each sphere, mammoth conflagrations were reflected that did not exist in the external world. In Daniel’s hands, two pyramids appeared, one upright, the other inverted, just as had happened for the Black Guide. The Merkavah was forming. But where was the Horn?

  In the writhing throng of plants and demons the hobgoblin expertly avoided Rana. He leaped over roots, ducked under shrubs, spun around the bowers of a tree. He dove into the spinning foursome of Mashit, Caleb, and two others and pulled them apart. The four demons collapsed onto the ground. The Horn skidded to a halt several feet away.

  Rana ran for the Horn, but Mashit, fifteen feet tall, swatted her aside. She snatched Rana by the collar of her robe like cat grabbing the scruff of a kitten. Rana flailed as Mashit bent over and reached for the Horn. But Caleb kicked Mashit in the face. She fell back, and Caleb caught Rana before she hit the ground. He placed her down before charging after Mashit.

  The Horn tumbled into a cluster of morning glory, where its vines and purple flowers quickly covered it.

  Rana ran for the Horn, but Mashit reached it first. She tried to grab Rana again, but Caleb tackled her. The two wrestled, trampling flowers, bushes, grass. They slammed into trees, shaking down a rain of seedlings that immediately sprouted into young trees. The two rolled on top of the Horn, pressing it deeper into the tangle.

  Zimri’s sphere wavered. Ahazia’s wavered too. Daniel felt weak, and his sphere was beginning to fade too. They needed the Horn, now. The two pyramids grew to fill his sphere. And clockwork mechanisms spun madly around him, gears turning into obscure dimensions, while rose thorns pressed into his back.

  Mashit tossed Caleb a dozen feet into a sequoia. The trunk split and came crashing down. Rana leaped out of the way. Caleb dove for Mashit, and they tumbled into a foursome of floating demons, breaking their union. The demons blinked, confused. Rana tore madly at the vines until she freed the Horn. She ran toward Daniel with the Horn held above her head, leaping around a thicket, over knotted roots, and under shady bowers.

  Mashit saw Rana with the Horn and screamed. Her crystal belt was impaled in the trunk of an oak tree. She pulled it out and flung the wire strap toward Rana like a whip. It wrapped around the Horn, and Mashit yanked it free of Rana’s hands. The Horn flew into a thicket of forsythia, its yellow blooms turning like a startled flock of birds.

  Rana and Mashit raced for the Horn.

  Daniel was focused on the spell, when something sharp bit into his leg. He skipped a syllable, and his sphere wavered. Mashit’s belt had wrapped his ankle, and one of the crystal facets dug into his skin. Blood spilled from the wound.

  The pain was intense, but he continued the spell.

  “Don’t leave me, Danny!” Mashit wailed as she tugged on the belt’s wire strap, pulling herself closer. He fell to the ground of the Merkavah, but kept chanting as she pulled. “Please, Danny! I love you!”

  She pulled, and he pressed against the Merkavah wall. The crystal cut all the way to bone as he screamed each syllable of the spell.

  Rana, the Horn in her hand, ran up to Mashit, and with a powerful swing slammed the Horn into Mashit’s face. Mashit screamed and flew backwards hundreds of feet.

  The tension released from his ankle, but the pain now worsened as blood poured from him. He grew dizzy, sick. Rana ran to him with the Horn, when Caleb came up behind her. He scooped her up in his enormous hands.

  He pried the Horn of Azazel from her, and she screamed.

  No! Daniel thought.

  Caleb strode over and placed Rana gently down inside the Merkavah, beside Daniel and the rose bush. “I can’t fit!” Caleb shouted. “No! Damn you all, I can’t fit!”

  Caleb looked over his shoulder, and Mashit was sprinting toward them. “It would have been beautiful, Rana,” he said. “I know your world would have been perfect.” Then Caleb—Ashmedai, King of Demonkind—lifted the Horn of Azazel to his lips and blew.

  The Sound!

  Every atom in the Cosmos seemed to awake and take heed. A note like none other, a note in every key. A note made from all other notes. The demons stopped their manic dance. The foursomes split apart. Every cell in every plant paused its mad growth to ponder the triumphant sound. Caleb blew the Horn of Azazel, and up the Mervakah flew.

  Mashit leaped onto Caleb, knocking him over. The note ended, but she was too late. The Merkavah rushed upward like a satellite on its way to orbit, pushing Daniel and Rana to the floor. Mashit’s belt still clung around his ankle, and blood pooled on the floor of the Merkavah. A thousand multidimensional gears spun around them, and a dozen new blooms opened on the rose bush.

  Rana pressed her face to the transparent wall. “Liu!” she screamed. “Liuuuuuu!”

  They sped skyward.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rana screamed. “What’s happening to the world?”

  The desert of Dudael had vanished under a tangled green tapestry. A rainbow palette of enormous flowers blossomed from the receding landscape. If only she had paint and a canvas, so she could capture this scene before it was lost. They rose higher than birds.

  “Liu!” she screamed. “Liuuuuuu!”

  The Jeen, the mad desert, was desert no more. Tall, knotted fungi and twisting white sprouts climbed from the peaty ground. What did the horrid no-things think of all this new life? Did they too fatten and grow?

  Marul! she thought. I remember you! Look at what you’ve done! All this is because of you! But still I love you, and I don’t care if that’s wrong.

  Where the Tattered Sea had been, a great blue sea glimmered—a real sea of so much water. More than Rana had ever seen. Light cascaded over violet waves, while nacreous creatures, as large as cities, breached the waters and splashed down, stirring up clouds of foam and mist.

  The Merkavah rose, and the horizon bent like a bow. The world is bending, she thought, about to break. And she remembered her vision in Azazel’s lair, when she had floated above the blue world, the sky bent like it was just now.

  Daniel had collapsed to the bottom of the Merkavah. His blood pooled on the floor of their sphere. Mashit’s belt had cut deeply into him, and its crystal glowed with hoary light. Beside them a thorny bush was sprouting large red flowers, and the air grew dense with their sweet fragrance.

  Daniel was shivering. She crouched down and they held each other as the sky darkened from blue to black. How fast were they moving? Faster than the tides of the Tattered Sea. Faster than a diving hawk. They hurtled toward a crack in the sky, where rays of brilliant light shone through. It looked as if there was nothing at all on the other side.

  Daniel said weakly, “Rana, you’d better hold on. I think this might—”

/>   And then they were nothing.

  She wanted to scream, but she no longer had a mouth to scream, or even a body. Everything had become dark, silent, and still. She floated in an infinitely vast and empty sea, impossibly cold, impossibly devoid of light. This sea would never change in a thousand eternities. It mocked all notions of time and space.

  And she hated this place with all her being.

  Daniel floated beside her, a point of light, a spark from a fire. Beautiful in his singularity. She was a spark too. The Merkavah’s physical form had vanished, but she felt its presence as a rushing wind guiding them across this horrid black gulf.

  They floated for ten thousand lifetimes, and their journey had only begun. The chasms of space and time that opened beneath her and the vast distances they crossed maddened her. But perhaps they had only been traveling for an instant, and only covered a distance no greater than the width of an eyelash.

  In the everlasting silence came a sound from far away, drawing nearer, century by slow century, like a rush of escaping air, or a waterfall. They approached a sphere of a deep violet color, like the sky after a sunset. Its sides were cracked, like a broken egg, and golden globules floated from it, drifting into the great abyss to splash onto the Shards like they had on Gehinnom, stirring up new life.

  They hurtled toward the broken sphere and entered one of the infinitesimal cracks. And then they were physical again, alive inside the Merkavah’s spherical shell. She gasped at the sudden sensation of form, of time and space, and her mind reeled at her memories of the infinite emptiness. They plunged toward a blue orb, the one she had seen in her vision.

  “Earth!” Daniel said. “Oh, how beautiful you are, my lovely Earth!”

  They plunged through layers of clouds toward an island bounded by two rivers. In the south was an enormous ocean, blue and gleaming, and to the north and west spread a great continent crowded with cities and patches of green land. Huge metal towers filled the island, except for its center, a large rectangle of forest in the midst of the city. Small lakes reflected sunlight as they plunged toward the ground.

  As they sped for the forest they held each other. “Oh Goddess!” Rana said. She closed her eyes as they slammed into the ground. The Merkavah bounced, rolled, and bounced again. As they tumbled end over end, the bush’s thorns sliced her. Daniel’s blood splattered onto her face. On and on they rolled, until eventually the Merkavah came to rest.

  They were covered in blood. Mostly his. The spinning gears vanished. The spherical shell popped an instant later, and they fell a handbreadth to the ground. Daniel gasped.

  She sat up. She was covered with small cuts. The bush lay beside them, still blooming. They were on a field of grass. Smooth black paths curved nearby. Majestic trees surrounded them on all sides. In the distance, people in strange clothing were staring at them.

  “I’m on Earth,” she said. “I’m on another world!”

  She stood. Nearby, a stone tower and two parapets overlooked a small pond. Some distance away, much larger metal towers peeked above the line of trees. Their details were intricate, clever, and she wished she could see them up close. The air smelled different from Gehinnom. Here it was heavy, full of moisture. It carried scents of soil and the sweet exhalations of trees. Within it all, she smelled something noxious and burning.

  Daniel groaned and sat up. The crystal belt still wrapped his leg. He grunted as she helped him yank it out. The cut was deep, life-threatening. He had bandaged her, when the thief had cut her in Azru. That seemed so long ago now. Now it was her turn. She tore a scrap of her robe and used it to wrap his leg. But he needed a healer.

  “Rana,” he said weakly. “Look! You’re glowing.”

  She gasped, because her body glowed as if she were a piece of molten iron removed from the furnace.

  “Help me stand up,” he said.

  He grimaced as she helped him to his feet. The sun, red as embers, reflected off the glass-walled towers. The light made the city look as if it were aflame. The sky was sulfur-yellow, like the sands of Dudael.

  “Something’s wrong with the sky,” Daniel said. “The sun is too dim.” He sniffed the air. “And can you feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The air is much too thin, like were on a mountain.”

  A bough from a nearby tree fell and splintered to pieces. Nearby, a loud creature wailed, and the sound echoed down the city’s wide avenues. “What’s that awful sound?”

  “Sirens,” he said. “Emergency vehicles.”

  Columns of smoke appeared above the tree line. The ground trembled violently, and they both stumbled and fell. Windows popped from their frames and plunged to the ground to shatter with loud crashes. A crack in the ground split the grassy field in half. The crack widened, while the grass quickly died as if a painter was daubing the landscape with an invisible brown brush.

  Two dozen blue-gray birds suddenly fell from the sky, dead. “Your world,” she said. “It’s still broken!”

  “I don’t understand,” Daniel said. “Sunil is gone, but I’m back! I sustain worlds. I’m a Lamed Vavnik!”

  “But are you? Still?”

  He stared at her. “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe Gehinnom changed you. Maybe you’re not the same person who left. Daniel, maybe you’re not a Lamed Vavnik anymore.”

  A wave of despair spread over his face. He slouched forward, looking as if he might pass out. “All of this to get me home, and there’s nothing at all I can do? I can’t accept that! God,” he screamed, “I’m here! I’m back! Why won’t you listen to me? Stop letting the Earth fall apart!”

  The sky turned as red as a smoldering fire. The temperature dropped, and the cold air nipped at her skin. The wind gusted, sour with ash and smoke. Strange, frightened people ran across the field, shouting and crying.

  Mashit’s belt lay on the grass. Light pulsed in waves through its crystal facets. Though the grasses were dead, around the belt the grasses were green and thriving. She wiped blood from the belt and picked it up. Her tired, worried face was reflected back at her.

  “Rana,” he said. “Your feet!”

  To her shock, the grasses were still green and thriving where she stood. She took a step, and where she had been, the grasses remained bright and alive. And new shoots sprouted where she stood now. She took a few more steps, and wherever she went the grasses burst back to life.

  “It’s you,” Daniel said, eyes wide. “You’re the Gu.”

  “What do you mean?” she said. “Why is this happening?”

  “You’re a Gu. A receptacle,” he said. “You catch the life force as it rains down. And it just rained torrents on Gehinnom. Torrents of life, Rana! And you’ve been filled with it.”

  Rana slowly nodded, because she understood, perhaps for the first time, who and what she was. “If I am a receptacle for life, then I need to give it back. She fastened Mashit’s belt around her waist, and its rays shone toward the dying trees. And where the light hit dead matter, new leaves unfurled. The grasses doubled their growth, twisting around her calves. Life flourished wherever she stepped.

  “How?” he said. “How can you give it back?”

  Caleb’s words echoed in her mind. “To heal the world,” Daniel, “I have to sing.”

  And then she did.

  She called to the shattered sky and beckoned the dying sun. She serenaded the dead grasses and becalmed the frightened people. She sang, and her music filled a million holes.

  She walked, and flowers blossomed in her footsteps. The sun grew hot, bright, and yellow-white. A circle of blue burst from the sun to erase the sallow sky. The field exploded anew with life in a mad attestation of green.

  Like a healing scar, the crack in the ground sealed shut. The trees celebrated with a new set of leaves. Brightly colored insects circled Rana’s head. She was so tired. She needed to sleep. But the ground was still frightened and trembling. The mortar had not yet set. If she stopped singing, the world would crumble aga
in.

  She had to give more. In order to save the world, she had to give everything.

  Daniel stared at her, shaking his head, as if he understood what she was about to do. His eyes pleaded with her, and a hint of their former mental bond leaked through.

  Please don’t, Daniel thought to her. Please don’t, Rana!

  But she had to. She had to fill the Earth with music. She filled the Earth with herself. With song she sanctified the trees and their curling leaves. Her melody exalted the skies and their tumbling clouds. With vibrations she blessed the dirt and their hungry worms. Her notes praised the sun for its loving warmth.

  She fell to her knees, trembling. “Goddess . . .” She was so tired. More tired than she’d ever been. She could sleep for an eon and it wouldn’t be enough. She turned to Daniel and said, “Your Earth is so beautiful.”

  “Rana,” he said. “Rana, no . . .”

  She felt airy and insubstantial. Her heart was fluttering erratically. “Daniel, if you ever find my sister, Liu, tell her that I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  She curled forward, unable to hold herself upright. The blades of grass grew tall before her eyes. She remembered Daniel’s memory, what his grandmother had told him: “Beside every blade of grass is an angel that whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’”

  Insects crawled between the grass blades. In the dirt beneath her wiggled grubs and worms. And tiny things, too small to see, ate the dead matter, turned it into food so that the grasses could live again. And beneath the dirt slept mountains of granite, and beneath the granite, molten rock as hot as a furnace. And on the other side of the world, the lava hardened to stone, the stone softened to dirt. The dirt fed the grass, and the grass exhaled the sky. Beyond the sky spread an immensity of stars, all spinning in an expanse so vast the light from distant suns burning for millions of years had not yet reached the Earth. And all of this directly beneath her feet. It would survive for another day.