The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World

by Brian Stableford

  Either way, the lamia sang… and sang… and sang.

  Ewan played while his fingers ached and their tips were shot with pain. Helen played while her lips were numb and her throat began to hurt. But they played and played and didn’t mind that the lamia danced so light and free, not tiring at all, and sang without words or any hint of a name escaping into the sound.

  They played and played while Ewan wondered just who was trapped and who—if anyone—was free. They played and played while the dawn—the dawn that would change the lamia back into a snake—did not come and could not come. They played and played, in their tiny place outside of time.

  Finally, Helen paused again—not resting this time, but stopping because neither her fingers nor her throat had the power to continue.

  Ewan faltered.

  “Ask her now!” whispered Helen. “Ask her name!” Ewan came to his feet, slurring a note or two but not losing the rhythm of the dance, and recited:

  Where the towers of Ora Lamae stood

  a lamia waits to drink your blood—

  what secret name is in her bred?

  What secret name is in her bred?

  The words mingled with the tune, and suddenly the forked tongue was writhing from the lamia’s mouth, parting her lips and shaping the stream of liquid sound that spilled from her very being. It was not only the lamia that answered, but the shadowed host entranced at the fringes of the ring of light. A thousand half-voices joined, strained to their utmost, called out—and summoned up the merest whisper. So slight was their hold on half-life, so tenuous their half-being, that all as one they could only just make themselves heard.

  Ewan’s fingers lifted from the strings, but the strings continued on their own, not masking the chorus but adding to it, shaping the curling of the lamia’s tongue, forming the syllables.

  “Cas… cor… ia…” was the sound that came, as all the voices fused.

  The music died, and the silence, so long deferred, seemed suddenly absolute.

  The lamia, released, did not pause in her flowing movement, but came straight towards the boy, her arms

  held wide to embrace him. The crowd, still and silent, watched.

  Ewan knew now what was required. Names are power. In the naming of a night-creature there is the power of command.

  “By the name of Cascoria,” he said, his voice no more than slightly tremulous, “I command you to eternal rest. The embrace was never sealed. The candle in the lamp guttered and died. Then the dawn came.

  Later, Ewan and Helen managed to find a building which had not quite been rendered into a heap of slag. It still had a doorway and a couple of wrinkled windows. The hallway within was no longer square at any of its corners, and the walls were buckled, but it was shelter nevertheless.

  It was raining—not the torrential rain that had scoured Mirasol, but a lazy, mild rain.

  Both Ewan and Helen were utterly exhausted. The threw themselves on the polished floor. The grey mare which had brought Ewan to the Forbidden City, was too tall and wide to come through the crumpled doorway but was content to stand outside and get slightly wet.

  “Well,” said Ewan. “We did it.”

  “We certainly did,” agreed Helen.

  They sounded neither joyful nor triumphant, and this was not entirely due to their tiredness. They felt somehow overcome by the whole night’s work. It had left them spiritually as well as physically exhausted.

  “Those shadows…” whispered Ewan. “I never dreamed there could be so many.”

  “They aren’t just innocent travellers picked off in Ora Lamae,” said Helen. “Not, at any rate, since the city was destroyed. They’re the victims of a thousand years, maybe more. A retinue gathered in all the places she’s ever been.”

  Ewan shuddered and touched the wooden body of the guitar, gently—as though for reassurance.

  “It’s strange,” he said. “When I turned the signpost round the whole of Methwold forest was transformed. But Ora Lamae didn’t come back to life.”

  “Nor did Castle Mirasol,” said Helen. “The rain washed it clean of old enchantments and the foul dirt that old enchantments gather, but it didn’t mend the cracked stone. The ghosts went on to somewhere else—they didn’t return to life. Only the birds came alive. Here, the lamia and her ghosts and gaunts are all gone, but the old palaces won’t grow out of the wreckage, and the people in their coloured silks can’t be recalled. These are ruins, built by men, destroyed by men… and ruins are ruins, whether magic helped to make them so or not. We can disenchant the natural, but the artificial can only be destroyed or remade.”

  “I see,” said Ewan. And he did see. He was beginning to understand.

  There was a pause—a languid, sleepy pause. It was finally interrupted by Ewan, who said: “What now?”

  “Fiora,” said Helen.

  “I know that,” answered Ewan. “But when? I don’t like the way that time keeps jumping about. And we’re entitled to some more help, I think. I need some sleep … and I think we ought to wait for Wynkyn, or whoever comes in his place–-“

  “I should think so, too!” said a new voice, which Ewan recognized instantly as belonging to the ghostly poet.

  He sat up, shaking off his tiredness. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m nowhere yet,” complained the voice. “Really, I’m expected to materialize in the most awkward places. It’s daylight you know, and I’ve never been here before, and this shadow is definitely substandard.”

  “Move away from the door,” said Helen to Ewan. Then, to Wynkyn: “I think we can get into one of the inner rooms, where there won’t be as much light. This way.”

  She beckoned to Ewan, and they went through a doorway to the interior of the building, finding a room whose window had closed right up like a winking eye as the outer wall on that side had sagged terribly. The ceiling of the room slanted dramatically, but there was room to stand on the side that they went in, and some good, deep shadow caught in the mutilated angle of the walls.

  The silver glow began to grow immediately, and Wynkyn managed—not without some difficulty—to shape himself and get into focus.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “You didn’t waste much time, did you?” asked Ewan.

  “There isn’t much time to waste,” replied the apparition. “I’m on overtime, you know. I’m very sorry and all, but there simply isn’t time for you to sleep out the day. The interference with time is strictly regulated, you know. You haven’t actually moved back or forward at all… just stepped outside for a while. The night you saw from the clearing in Methwold was false night—an attribute of the forest itself. Anyhow, the powers-that-be think that Zemmoul has to be taken care of today; so that you can get to the third verse during tonight. It’s something to do with the spell building up momentum, so that it has to move faster all the time, like a falling stone or a snowball rolling down a mountain. It’s no good asking me to explain it—I’m a poet, and have no time for all that nasty mathematical, scientific stuff.”

  “We’re very tired,” said Ewan. “Did anyone promise you it was going to be easy?” asked Wynkyn.

  “No,” admitted the boy.

  “Then you’ve no grounds for complaint, have you?”

  “Please,” said Helen, “let’s not bother with the arguments. The spell is building up power, that’s all. You can’t just do these things… you have to do them right. We understand.”

  The apparition gave her a tiny bow and a nice smile.

  “Excellent,” he said. “So let’s get on. I’m afraid that the guitar has to come back, now.”

  Ewan opened his mouth as if to protest, but thought better of it, recognizing the inevitable. He looked back through the doorway, to the spot where he had abandoned the guitar, close to the outer door. It was already gone.

  “However,” the spectral poet went on, “there’s a new present for the young lady. On temporary loan only, of course.” So saying, he reached behind him into the t
hickest part of the shadow and slowly drew forth a sword with an ornate hilt and a long, glittering blade. It was still insubstantial, and glowed with the usual silvery light. Wynkyn laid it down on the floor. “Now what was that verse?” he muttered.

  There was a long pause.

  “Marvellous,” commented Ewan. “A poet who can’t remember a verse.”

  Wynkyn sniffed. “I never have any trouble with my own,” he said. “But I write real poetry, not this stupid spell doggerel. My poetry has life, and wit and elegance and…”

  “I read Synchronous Sonnets last night,” said Ewan, coolly.

  “Really!” said Wynkyn. “What did you think of it?”

  “I think we ought to make a bargain,” said Ewan. “You don’t tell me what you think of my guitar playing, and I won’t tell you what I think of your poetry.”

  Wynkyn winced. For a moment, he looked very hurt. Then he gathered himself together, drew himself up to his full (but rather inadequate) height, and said: “Peasant!”

  “Thanks,” said Ewan.

  Helen kicked him on the ankle.

  “I’m sure that it was excellent poetry,” she said, “for those who have sufficient poetry in them to respond to it. But for the moment, we still need a doggerel verse to materialize the sword.”

  Wynkyn beamed at her. “It’s a great pleasure,” he said, “to find someone who understands. For you, my dear—it is, after all, your sword—I shall be able to recall the verse…. I have it now!”

  “About time,” muttered Ewan.

  Wynkyn pointedly ignored him. He chanted:

  “Zemmoul comes to take a lure, which motionless must lie; strike but once and strike him sure, above the baleful eye.”

  The sword solidified. Its hilt darkened through pale blue to indigo, and finally to ebony black. The blade remained silver but lost its glow.

  “And I hope you like your part,” said Wynkyn to Ewan, with rather more than the usual gleam in his eye, before he began to slowly fade out.

  Helen knelt to pick up the sword, while Ewan frowned.

  “What did he mean?” he asked.

  Helen was testing the weight of the sword, and finding—much to her surprise—that it was light and comfortable in her two-handed grip. She didn’t answer.

  Ewan let the spell-rhythm run through his head again, and an awful suspicion dawned on him. “How big is this monster?” he asked. “Very,” she replied. “And what does it eat?”

  “For preference,” she said, “people. But I suppose it doesn’t get many these days and has to live on mud.”

  “So… er… what kind of bait are we supposed to use to tempt him out of his bottomless pool? What’s the lure mentioned in the spell?”

  She thought about it for a moment or two, and then the same answer occurred to her.

  It was too dark for them to exchange glances where they stood, but Ewan was looking hard at where Helen was standing, and he imagined that she was doing likewise.

  “Oh, well,” said Ewan. “I suppose yours is the difficult bit. All I have to do is lie still.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When there was no answer to his knock, Sirion Hilversun entered his daughter’s bedroom. It was as he thought. The bed had not been slept in.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, aloud. “Oh, dear. Where….”

  He crossed the room to the dressing table, looking around for some evidence of where Helen might have gone, or why. Everything was neat and orderly, and quite unhelpful. He was about to turn round and go out again when he saw that the top left-hand drawer was not quite closed. Although this did not seem particularly odd or significant he reached out and opened it a little further.

  Inside, there was an envelope. It had been opened, but the letter had been shoved back inside. He recognized it as the letter which had come from the palace a few days before—the letter containing Prince Damian’s first question. The enchanter took the folded sheet of paper out of the envelope, and opened it.

  My dearest Helen, he read.

  The words written upon the stone beneath the signpost at the heart of Methwold forest were:

  TURN THE SIGNPOST ROUND.

  Then he skipped to: on Faulhom’s horn… in Mirasol’s haunted banquet hall?

  He didn’t bother with the rest.

  “Mirasol?” he said to himself, softly. “She went to Mirasol. But she came back. It was the next day….”

  Then the thoughts began to strike him like the strokes of a tolling bell.

  Methwold forest… turn the signpost round… disenchanted. Mirasol’s banquet hall… the giant’s horn….

  “Oh, no,” murmured Sirion Hilversun, realizing what the juxtaposition of these things signified. “Oh, no! Not the will…. Jeahawn Kambalba….”

  The enchanter’s face went as white as the paper he held in his trembling fingers. He looked up and saw his reflection in the magic mirror, staring at him with wide eyes.

  “Where is she?” he whispered. “You have to say: ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall,’” said the mirror. “It’s in the rules.”

  “Where is she!” yelled the enchanter, at the top of his voice.

  “All right, all right,” said the mirror. “I didn’t realize you felt like that. I don’t know. I’m only her mirror.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, you lousebound looking-glass!” howled Sirion Hilversun. “When I ask you a question you give me an answer, you hear!”

  The mirror quailed in its frame, distorting the image of the enraged enchanter horribly.

  “I’m sorry!” it wailed. “I don’t know, I tell you. Ever since that interference a few days ago I haven’t been able to keep track of her.”

  “What interference?” asked the enchanter, icily.

  “Didn’t she tell you? I’m sure I don’t know. We were talking quite amicably about difficult questions and all of a sudden I came over all peculiar. Overridden by another channel, if you ask me. I don’t know what went on—I went out like a light. Had a headache ever since. Proper poorly, I’ve been.”

  “You…” hissed the enchanter, pausing as words failed him and lifting his fist in a gesture of furious menace.

  “It’s my duty to warn you,” babbled the mirror, “that breaking me carries an automatic fine of seven years bad luck. Calm down, please.”

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t smash you into little pieces,” commanded the enchanter.

  “Hold on,” blustered the mirror. “Just hold on a minute. Wait… on reflection, it seems to me that perhaps I might be able to help you after all. On reflection…

  The mirror paused to giggle at its unconscious pun. It was not a diplomatic moment. The enchanter raised his arm still higher.

  “Waitwaitwait…” gurgled the mirror. “I saw her writing the reply. I couldn’t help reading it… well, it was reflected in me, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if I peeked. … And she asked something about a lamia in Ora Lamae.”

  “I know that,” said Sirion Hilversun. “That’s the second verse of the will. That doesn’t help at all.”

  “But don’t you see?” said the mirror, urgently. “That must be where she went. To check up on the prince, in

  case he was cheating. She went to Ora Lamae and heaven only knows what happened…. Maybe the lamia got them both–-Don’t hit me!”

  But Sirion Hilversun lost control at the suggestion that Helen might have been taken by the lamia. One of his fingers spat lightning, and the mirror shattered in its frame. As the pieces tinkled on the tabletop they chattered: “Seven years…”

  “Don’t you threaten me,” murmured the enchanter, as his wild anger ebbed quickly away, draining out of him like water from a leaky bucket. “You couldn’t force bad luck on me if you were the great mirror of the sea itself.”

  His fingers crushed the letter that he held into a ball, and he dropped it on to the shards of the mirror. He turned, and strode from the room with a purpose that his ancient legs had not found in forty years.

  �
�Amnesia or no amnesia,” he said, “I’m not dead yet. Not by a long way. Caramorn will regret this! If I don’t get my daughter back I’ll curse that land for a thousand years… and turn their precious prince into a slime-mould!”

  It was late afternoon when Ewan and Helen reached Fiora. They had ridden the grey mare together—as neither of them was overweight the horse had not been seriously inconvenienced, and they had not asked more of her than a steady walk.

  The waterfall tumbled from the heights of a great craggy cliff that lay between the precipitous mountains of southern Caramorn and the lands of World’s Edge. The water fell into a great pool nearly a quarter of a mile across. But while the water that cascaded down was white and clean, the pool itself was all but black. Save for the place where the fall hit the surface, the pool was unnaturally still, the ripples that spread from the cascade moving slowly and quickly being damped and extinguished as they escaped the turbulence. The pool seemed to contain a thin, foul mud rather than pure water.

  At the pool’s further rim the outflow was a slow-running deep stream, which ran away across the magic lands to the edge of the world itself.

  “The stream is gobbled up by the Great Grey Chaos that girdles the world,” said Helen. “The water is dissipated into the mists that always envelope the edge itself. It used to be said that all the fresh, clean rain that falls from the sky all over the world is gathered and delivered here into this black pit, where the body of Zemmoul turns it foul. But I don’t believe that. The world is so big, and so much rain falls. Once, so legend has it, there were many more things like Zemmoul—Chaos creatures that haunted every sea and lake, krakens and great seaworms, jelly things with a million tentacles. Sometimes, in the very old times, some of them—especially the seaworms and the hippocampi—could assume the forms of men or horses, and come ashore riding the breakers on stormy days.”

  “You know some delightful stories,” said Ewan, dismounting from the mare. As he released the reins he winced slightly.