The World Raven

by A. J. Smith

  ‘I have a new purpose,’ replied the creature. ‘I have been offered a place in the lands of the Twisted Tree. I will be the Tyrant of these lands. The energy of the Fell is a beautiful bonus. Enough energy to maintain my power for a thousand years. Each dead Dokkalfar leaves a wellspring of thoughts and craft. And the forest itself is majestic in its primeval power. Its energy now nourishes the new world, the Tyranny of the Twisted Tree. There will be other Tyrants, but I will be the first.’

  Nanon could feel it. The Fell was like an empty glass, drained of all its rich liquid. Before him stood a bloated sack of raw energy, gorged on magic too old to truly comprehend. Like a stuffed leech, it strained at the seams, barely able to contain the power it had stolen. Power that would bring men to heel. It could not bring back its caliphate, but it could forge a realm of chaos under the branches of the Twisted Tree.

  ‘I warned you,’ said the Jekkan. ‘I warned you to wait until this battle was done. I warned you that you couldn’t win. Now you pay the price for your ignorant flesh.’

  ‘I’m not ready to die.’ He didn’t shout or spit the words. He kept his focus and whispered them, talking to himself as much as the Jekkan.

  ‘Death?’ replied the Jekkan, making Keisha scream in pain. ‘Death is insignificant. It is a process, not a result. Just a step on an infinite journey. Give yourself to me, knife ears. Become a slave to Shub-Nillurath. I will use you as a weapon against those who displease me.’

  He shook his head, fighting confusion. The Jekkan didn’t need to attack him; its very presence was distorting reality.

  ‘Give yourself... give yourself.’

  Nanon felt as if a weight pushed him down, or maybe his legs refused to keep him standing. The chaos magic of timeless aeons flowed over him, force that would annihilate a lesser being. He couldn’t turn to see how his companion fared, though the Jekkan was not focused on her. Nanon didn’t know what a dark-blood was capable of. Could Keisha withstand the force?

  ‘That’s it, knife ears... fall into a deep, deep sleep.’

  Now his eyes dipped, the lids refusing to stay open. He was on his knees, his hands grasping at the dark grass. Then nothing but empty blackness and oblivion as chaos magic overwhelmed him.

  ***

  Caw. Hello. Apparently my name’s Corvus.

  ‘What? I don’t know...’

  It’s okay if you’re confused, I think you’re nearly dead. Something is consuming you.

  ‘I can still hear, but I can’t see... or feel.’

  I’m here to help. Brytag sent me. Caw.

  ‘The god of luck and wisdom, of the Ranen – I’m... not Ranen, not a man. I have no god. Not any more... where am I?’

  Nowhere... not that you would understand. A moment and a thought, a sliver of reality where death can’t travel. I’m keeping you from falling into forever.

  ‘The Jekkan... it’ll kill Keisha.’

  It is frozen in the same instant as you... your friend is safe. Friends are important. She’s fallen asleep. Her mind and body are strong. She’ll be there when you return... if you return.

  ‘I’m tired. I’m tired... I don’t think I can carry on fighting. Maybe the Jekkan’s right. I’ve lost... it’s not so bad, I’ve lived many lives, I’ve seen many wondrous things. Many dark things too.’

  Caw. You’re a soldier of the Long War. Caw.

  ‘Am I the only one? Cannot another warrior fight this battle? The Jekkan said I couldn’t win. Was it right?’

  We don’t know. The future is closed to us. But we are still fighting nonetheless. As should you, Tyr Nanon. There are others, fighting in their way. Hope is powerful, but not as powerful as despair. Caw.

  ‘I have much of one... and little of the other. Shub-Nillurath almost has his Tyranny. I’ve lost. Just let me fall into forever.’

  If you ask me a second time, I will do as you ask. Caw. But think carefully.

  ‘What am I fighting for? Just answer me that.’

  ***

  Nanon awoke on a rocky beach with a warm breeze caressing his face. He wore loose, grey robes of spun wool and soft leather shoes. Above him, lancing across the blue sky, were sparkling white pathways from horizon to horizon, through which lights of a hundred colours flew. The sea beyond was calm, with a gentle ripple of clear water splashing on to the rocks. It could have been the Drow Deeps, beyond the Lands of Silence, if it weren’t for the sky.

  ‘Is this forever?’ he asked the crisp, clean air.

  ‘Not yet,’ replied a huge black raven, suddenly appearing in the gently lapping waves. It hopped from rock to rock, splashing its feet in the frothy water. ‘But there are rules, old, old rules. I can only pause your demise for so long – beyond that time, you must go... somewhere. I chose here.’

  ‘It looks like the Drow Deeps.’

  ‘By design, I have no doubt. A place you feel comfortable and at peace.’

  ‘I wish to see the Drow Deeps?’ exclaimed Nanon. ‘That’s interesting. I haven’t thought about it for centuries.’

  He took a deep lungful of soothing sea air and scanned his surroundings. Behind him, a far coastline plunged from gently rolling rocky shores to lush, green hills. There was no sign of man or Dokkalfar. No buildings, trees or civilization. Just the beach, the sea and the hills. And above, textured in constantly shifting colours, ran the white pathways.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen things of this kind.’

  ‘Void paths,’ replied Corvus, the words coming from a click of the beak and a flap of the wing, somehow forming recognizable words. ‘Roads... of a kind. They ferry travellers from realm to realm and hall to hall. If you know the way, endless vistas of terror and wonder can be yours. But those paths are barred to you, Tyr Nanon.’

  ‘These are the halls beyond the world,’ Nanon said.Caw

  The raven hopped next to him and he closed his eyes, drinking in the serenity of his surroundings.

  ‘That name is misleading,’ said the bird. ‘The halls are merely realms of the beyond. Old and powerful... but still a part rather than the whole.’

  ‘So where are we?’

  ‘Leng,’ replied Corvus. ‘The very edges of Leng. It is a forgotten place where few beasts of the void deign to hunt. It’s a chaotic realm, easily shaped and manipulated to be as the viewer wishes. We can be at peace here... for a time.’

  ‘Why did you leave the Drow Deeps?’ asked the raven, its beak twisting into a strange frown.

  Nanon pulled himself into a cross-legged position and spun round to look inland. ‘I don’t remember,’ he replied. ‘Age does not guarantee recall. Wait a moment... how can I even be here? I am not a creature of the void. Should my mind not unravel?’

  ‘You underestimate your power,’ replied Corvus. ‘The oldest forest-dwellers are mighty in spirit and mind... and you are the oldest, though you do not remember. We have always liked your people.’

  Nanon thought of Keisha and the frozen moment back in the Fell. The Jekkan was still there, as was the servitor. They waited in the dark forest for him to decide his own fate. But he decided their fates too. Certainly Keisha’s. Much of him just wanted to rest, to give up and fall into forever, but he couldn’t condemn Keisha so lightly. He may have been fighting the Long War for millennia, but the young Kirin girl had barely begun her journey. And he had made her a promise. A promise he didn’t plan to break.

  ‘Do you know how old I am?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure any more. I think twelve hundred years... but much of that is from flashes and images that I’ve just pieced together. It’s half-remembered.’

  The raven flared its wings. ‘You’ve forgotten many more years than you can remember.’

  ‘And how old is Keisha? Yet to see her twentieth year.’

  He looked up at the void paths as he spoke, imagining other beings in other realms, making their own life-or-death decisions for their own reasons. Absently he followed the trajectory of a single path. It began with bright sparkles of dancing red and go
ld, flickering from the horizon into the crisp sky. As it crossed other paths and the colours changed to blue and black, it began to fade. By the time it reached the other horizon, far out to sea, it was a grey shadow, stark against the blue water.

  ‘Why do they fade?’ he asked.

  ‘That one fades because it leads to the fire halls. As belief in Jaa dies, the paths become harder to traverse. The same is true of the stone halls of the One. Belief is finding it harder and harder to reach its master.’

  ‘So answer me this. Can this war be won?’

  ‘There are shades of victory and defeat,’ replied Corvus, appearing to realize how unhelpful he sounded.

  Nanon tilted his head. ‘I suddenly know how Keisha feels. Old things are invariably weird things. Straight answers are clearly a symptom of youth.’

  ‘We cannot see the future... things would be a great deal easier if we could. We can only guess. We did not predict what would happen to your people in the Fell.’

  Sudden sadness engulfed him. He’d been too occupied to think about his fallen brethren. He’d faced down a Jekkan servitor and travelled to the beyond, but now thought and remembrance flooded his head. A thousand Dokkalfar, maybe more. They had all walked willingly into the Shadow Flame and turned to ash. Whatever victories could be had would not bring them back.

  ‘I think I know why I wanted to see the Drow Deeps. It’s the only time I remember not being a soldier of the Long War. But I don’t remember having any friends.’

  ‘Friendships are important to you?’ asked the raven.

  Nanon smiled, a human expression that said a lot on the face of a forest-dweller. ‘Friendships are why I stayed... why I wished I’d found the lands of men in my younger days. I wasted so much time in Imrya and the Nar Scopian Deeps. I spent a century at least in the Wicked Lands of Mordja. I made no friends until I came to Tor Funweir.’

  ‘Many are dead,’ observed Corvus, his beak dropping in a facsimile of anguish.

  ‘Indeed,’ answered Nanon, pushing his memory back over centuries of lost human friends. He wished he could remember each one. Some had died of old age, some at the edge of a blade or through the fog of illness and disease. Tyr Dyus, Dalian Thief Taker and Rham Jas Rami were merely the most recent additions to his memory. Perhaps Lord Bromvy and Kale Glenwood too. In fact, Nanon wasn’t sure that he had any friends left in the lands of men.

  Caw

  Nanon stood and flexed his back. It wasn’t sore, but he felt that it should be, that his encounter in the Fell should have tired him out.

  His grey, woollen robes were unfamiliar. Clothing he’d not worn within memory. They were loose and allowed constant airflow, a stark change from the thick green and black fabrics he usually wore. When in the lands of men, it was wise to wear the garb of men, though he refused to forgo his segmented leather armour. Wearing it under a cloth tunic even gave him a bulk his familiar form lacked.

  ‘Why do you hide yourself?’ asked Corvus. ‘Even here, where form and void are one and the same.’

  ‘It’s not conscious any more,’ he replied. ‘It was harder than I imagined to shrug it off in the Fell. But it’s harder to make friends when your eyes are burning black and you’re ten feet tall.’

  ‘Let me show you something,’ said Corvus, his beak rising in sudden excitement. ‘It will help.’

  ‘Will it bring my friends back or stop Vithar Loth leading the Fell Walkers into the Shadow Flame?’

  ‘You know the answer to that,’ replied the raven.

  ‘Then there’s nothing you could show me that would help.’

  ‘At least one of your friends wouldn’t want to be brought back. His journey continues in death.’

  Nanon tilted his head. ‘You mean Dalian.’

  ‘The Karesian, yes. He has a special place in the Order of Jaa. We don’t know if the Fire Giant is capable of emotion, but we think he likes the Thief Taker.’

  ‘I am glad of this news,’ said Nanon, with no smile. ‘As I’m sure he is – well, as glad as the miserable old sod ever gets.’

  ‘You speak like one friend talking of another,’ said Corvus.

  A slight smile. ‘I always envied Rham Jas his gift of the cutting phrase. I only got the knack by mimicking him.’

  ‘Look to the sky, Tyr Nanon. See that one of your friends endures.’

  Depthless layers of light fell into his eyes as he looked. Multitudes of different realities stretched away as tightly packed bundles of wafer-thin parchment. He half-glimpsed towers, mountains, strange structures not made of stone, wood or metal, and every kind of life and death, playing out beyond the simplicity and natural laws of the physical realm.

  ‘If I look too long, will I lose my mind?’

  ‘You will not. Just look beyond the end of your nose and shift your perceptions.’

  Nanon kept looking, allowing his ancient eyes to see further than they ever had, to let the patterns come and go without being drawn into every passing realm and hall. He felt as if he was using a new part of his brain. Maybe a new nerve in his eyes, awakened by Corvus and the World Raven.

  Then his eyes paused, drifting away from the endless sky to fall upon a plateau of fire and smouldering rocks. The smell of sulphur and ash flooded his nostrils and the air was thick with powerful energy, crackling through the charged atmosphere. It was a realm, or perhaps a hall, that had drawn his eye.

  ‘Where is this?’ he asked, watching plumes of fire rise from the rocks and dance in the air.

  ‘It is further away than the sun that warms your world,’ replied Corvus, now just a voice in his head.

  ‘Wait, I see something!’ exclaimed Nanon, focusing on a jagged line of red-hot rocks. There was a break in the landscape. Just a narrow black crevice, pulsating with gouts of spewed flame.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It is a nostril,’ replied Corvus, as the plateau surged into life.

  The whole landscape shifted and cracked like rocky skin, turning and curving into the snout of an awesome creature. He couldn’t see the rest. To look from the snout to the body would be to look through mist from one coastline to another. If its shape had recognizable form, its features were lost in the far distance of the void. Even the rest of its head was hidden behind ridges so big they’d be mountains in the physical realm.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You were drawn to it,’ replied Corvus. ‘That should tell you much.’

  Nanon kept his eyes focused on the snout, processing its enormity. If he were able to step back and see its expression he imagined he’d see annoyance, as if the Giant had an itch it couldn’t scratch, maybe a sadness that things were just out of reach. He felt empathy for it, though he didn’t know why. The feeling just jumped into his head, suddenly there, letting him share the Giant’s emotions. It was the Great Fire Giant. It was Jaa.

  ‘Don’t be sad, my friend,’ he whispered. ‘You have not yet lost. A being as mighty and timeless as you should not be sad. Your shade still endures.’

  He could feel Dalian, taking small chunks of power from the immense creature, perhaps keeping himself alive as he searched for the exemplar. But it was Dalian. The Thief Taker’s journey was not over, as Nanon had felt it was when he visited him in the hanging cells of Ro Weir. His god saw his worth, his great conviction and piety, and wanted to preserve it. In time, the shade would accomplish great things. As the world broke, the Shade of Dalian Thief Taker would remain to fight any battles that could still be fought. On an empty battlefield, with dead and dying men, Dalian would be there at the last, fighting against hope for his people and his god.

  ‘Good to see you again, Karesian man. Though we’ll never speak again, know that I will always be your friend.’

  ‘It is time to leave,’ said Corvus. ‘If the great Fire Giant notices us, we will be subject to its will.’

  ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ replied Nanon, feeling a tear well up in his eye. ‘If only we were closer and could see the full majesty of the fire halls. I wou
ld slip gladly into forever with such a vista burned into my memory.’

  He pulled back his perception and left the majestic fragment of Jaa to brood on his coming battles. He knew Dalian was at peace, and that knowledge gave him new steel, perhaps a reason to carry on. If the Karesian man could not be stopped by death, who was Nanon to give up at the mere sight of a Jekkan and the loss of the Fell Walkers?

  CHAPTER 6

  FALLON THE GREY IN RO CANARN

  THERE WAS NO border between the realm of Wraith and the duchy of Canarn. The grass didn’t change, the winds still blew and the Red Army still rode at a crawl. There was no texture to the landscape or points of interest to break the monotony.

  He felt like a Red Knight again, swept up in a whirlwind of horses, canvas and cook-fires. Only the presence of Vladimir Corkoson and Al Hasim kept him centred. They found the organized rituals of the Red Knights to be amusing, and their wry humour – frequently accentuated by drink – made Fallon laugh in spite of his instincts.

  Their journey, from South Warden to Ro Canarn, had been a crawl. Armies move as slowly as their slowest element, and the supply carts were like mobile taverns: they moved, but only reluctantly. Fallon had been in the vanguard, but retreated to the bulk of the army when he was tentatively asked to help with nightly watch. Word had spread about him, as it always did among knights, but nothing solid was known. They called him the Grey Knight and knew he was more than a swordsman.

  ‘Set camp,’ came the relay of shouts from each sergeant. The army was stopping within sight of the city. ‘Get to your evening duties. No rest ’til we have stockade and guards on post.’

  Groans and low-key insubordination. Knights of the Red could grumble like no other soldiers. It was instilled in them from their first day in armour. They never complained openly, just bickered among themselves, proclaiming all the things they’d do differently were they in charge. Fallon had been the same, until he was made captain, after which he’d realized how pointless it was to complain.

  ‘I never thought I’d be part of a Red Army of ten thousand knights,’ said Al Hasim, dismounting next to Fallon. ‘Well, maybe as a prisoner.’