The West Is Dying

by David C. Smith

  “The coast, then. Fortubad is a port.”

  “Return down the mountain and continue east. The coast is but a day distant.”

  The stranger sat beside him, stretched his legs and rubbed them, and frankly studied this young man. “I see indeed that you are a priest, isolated.”

  “In fact, I study far older arts. I am a sorcerer. A young sorcerer, managing my craft.”

  “Who is your master? I may know him.”

  “Indeed?”

  The gentleman nodded. “I myself, in my youth, studied the arts. I attained the path of Shiol before my fortunes changed and I was put out into the world.”

  “I am myself just now learning to descend the path of Shiol. My master is Guburus, feared and respected.”

  “His name is known, even far from here. You must be an able student to have won such a master for yourself.”

  “Sir, he tolerates me, and I drink wisdom at his feet. He is a stern mu-apat, but wise in the paths.”

  The stranger remained silent for a time before asking, “Has Guburus halved the stone, as of yet?”

  Thameron was shocked by the question. “You know of the stone? The gem?”

  A smile in the twilight. “All know of the stone. Some are jealous that it came to Guburus, but we are a brotherhood, and all support his right to learn from it and to gain his chance at halving it.”

  “I have never heard of the brotherhood,” said Thameron.

  “Perhaps that is something else that your master keeps from you until you are sufficiently prepared,” said the stranger. And then he admitted, “I halved it once.”

  Thameron tightened, all of him, becoming angry. “That’s not possible. You’re a liar.”

  “Am I?”

  “I think you must be.”

  His visitor sighed. “No, it is true. It was in another lifetime, long and long ago. But I attained the right to attempt it, and I gained the highest of the Spheres. But even there, I erred and was cast back down to earth to learn again. Do you not believe me?”

  “Such a thing is…possible,” Thameron allowed. “I have learned that much.”

  “Do you not wish to halve the stone?”

  Thameron trembled. “In time,” was his answer. “I am young yet, a neophyte, nothing. I have no right.”

  “Your soul is ancient. You have been alive for many lives. Do you not know this?”

  “I—suspected it,” Thameron said quietly, moving now into his tofi position, sitting with legs crossed.

  “I can feel it in you. You have as much right to attempt it as Guburus.”

  Thameron was quaking with tension. “I have approached him about this, but he refuses me. He claims I am too young and unlearned.”

  “You are a boy in this life, but your soul is at least as ancient as Guburus’s. I know these things. Look you: place your hand upon your forehead, thus.” He demonstrated the gesture for Thameron.

  Thameron did as instructed; Guburus had never shown him this posture.

  The stranger asked him, “O-tomu ra, se sedi ke niu?”

  Thameron did not know the words, but before he had the chance to stop himself, he answered the stranger in the same tongue, “Es sedi no-bu uru, uf suffa omu art.”

  “You see?” the stranger said to him, pulling Thameron’s hand from his face.

  The young sorcerer was shivering and perspiring heavily now. He felt as cold as though he were ill. He didn’t know what he had done or how he had done it, but it was as though waves were pushing inside him, and great winds pulling at him, deep within, something elemental and starlike in him, seeking release.

  “The stone,” the stranger told him, “is easily halved. If you believe a thing to be complex, it is complex. If you expect it to be simple, its essence speaks to you.”

  “Tell me, then,” Thameron whispered, staring at the last of the going sun.

  The stranger looked at him.

  Thameron faced him, his eyes wild, his flesh hot, limbs shaking. “Tell me.”

  The stranger smiled and held up his hands.…

  * * * *

  The morning of sorrows arrives. The dark night of endless suffering is released. I am no longer my own name.

  O Season of Hell, you are a bosom to me, you are a compliant lover. I am divorced from the world, memories lie, what else can I love but that which is without love, being what I am become?

  O deep, deep, deep as the endless reaches of a gulfed infinity, my fallen heart, falling still. There is no weight to shadows, no light in Hell, no light, no light.…

  I no longer have my own light.

  I am now myself and beyond myself, my own prisoner, reduced astronomically within myself, and unable to escape.

  * * * *

  Guburus was crouched before a small table, reading a book by the light of an oil lamp and eating roasted seeds. He looked up, perplexed, as Thameron rushed in, glanced quickly at his master, and then, without uttering a word, hurried on into the farther rooms of the cavern.

  “Thameron!”

  Too late, Guburus rose to his feet and crossed the room, moved toward the tunnel corridor—and was knocked to his knees by a fierce, cold wind that moved into the cavern from outside. Guburus groaned, pushed hard to gain his feet, and yelled into the tunnel, “Thameron! Do not do this, do not!”

  Again the wind came at him, forcing him to his knees. Furious, Guburus pivoted on his boots and looked out the open mouth of his cave. Stars, endless night—

  He pushed out his right hand and aimed his bony fingers at the night.

  “In the Name of the Seven Tosirim, stand you back, guard against my anger, unknown essusus!”

  The wind held back, but Guburus could not be certain that it was because of his warning. Again he stood and faced the tunnel.

  “Thameron, do not—!”

  A scream came to him from the bottom of the tunnel, a powerful scream, a scream of the damned.

  “Thameron!”

  The wind came again into his cave, his home, and Guburus howled in wrath. He directed a fist at his oil lamp and commanded it, “Take the form of my enemy! Fire him to ashes! Isbosutu me teh oro!”

  Immediately the small flame of the lamp leapt into the air, a line of white and yellow blazing inside the cavern. It formed itself into a circle and spun in the center of the chamber like a spokeless wheel, and sent out geysers of smoke. The wheel expanded, still revolving, its edges touching floor and ceiling.

  “Show yourself, emissary of Hell!”

  The flame did exactly that—but only for a moment. Guburus, staring, saw before him the form of an ancient, virulent ashomin. Then it was gone, this demonic spirit, gone to the night. The smoke was pulled out of the mouth of the cave and the flaming wheel reduced itself into a line once more, and returned to Guburus’s lamp.

  Shaking, Guburus turned at the sound of footsteps behind him.

  Thameron.

  At the mouth of the tunnel.

  Facing him, with the stone in his bleeding hands.

  And a look of horror in his eyes.

  Guburus said to him, “You…have…not—!”

  In each red palm, one half of the stone.

  “Damned be you!” he screamed at Thameron.

  Thameron, in shock, seemed little more than corpse. His skin was white and shiny with perspiration, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes alive with yellow terror. Tears came down his face.

  “I—” He could say no more; his voice was broken.

  “O fool!” Guburus shrieked at him. “Fool! Fool! Damned be you! That creature has sold your soul to Hell!”

  “He—” Thameron shook his head as though coming awake. The pieces of halved stone fell from his hands to the floor. The two portions melted there, sending up plumes of yellow smoke, like gas from a furnace. “I am…ancient!” Thameron whispered to Guburus.

  “He has damned you!” the elder yelled. “It was an ashomin! They are as ancient as the gods and as old as the earth! They feast on us! They rise from Gehem on co
ld nights to answer the prayers of soulless! You are trapped, now, Thameron, you are damned! A thousand lifetimes will not release you!”

  Thameron’s eyes were yellow, and they were bright. He stumbled forward, taking one step, then another, and the long tears dropped from his face. “You lie,” he whispered to the sorcerer.

  “You called him forth!” Guburus charged him. “You called him to you! You summoned him from the Spheres! Is your ambitious limitless, that you would sell yourself on the moment for an eternity of—”

  “I am a power now, Guburus!”

  “It is not the power of the paths, Thameron!” his master yelled at him in fear. “Gods of the gods, you are undone!”

  “I am immortal!”

  “You are foul! He has stolen your dream; he has changed you into shadows and flames and darkness.”

  “Guburus, I scream inside with wisdom, with strength.…”

  “It was an ashomin, Thameron! It is foulness! And you called it forth!”

  Thameron moved now, like some corpse reanimated and returning—trembling, awakening, pulling himself into being—Thameron once more, awakening from a spell or self-made trance—or fighting to keep his spirit within him.

  “Let me kill you now,” Guburus said to Thameron. “It is best! Let me kill you now! To free you from this!”

  “It does not hold me, Guburus! I am free already!”

  “You are not! It feeds on your lust and fear. You don’t know what you have done!”

  “I am older than this demon, Guburus, and wiser. I am a sorcerer now indeed, and a mighty power. The door is opened.”

  “Close the door, fool! In the Name of Aeiham, kill yourself now!”

  Thameron hissed at him.

  Quickly Guburus moved to do what was needed. Crouching, he swiveled on his feet and hurriedly traced a circle around him in the dust of the cave floor.

  “No, Guburus!” Thameron threw out a hand.

  Flames licked the old sorcerer’s finger where it touched the earth, and Guburus pulled back his hand, hurt.

  “Thameron, make an end of this!”

  “I am what always was within me, sorcerer. I am your equal. I am beyond you. You saw the strength in me; you knew what I was.”

  “It could not be released at once,” Guburus argued with him. “The power of the gods does not reside in the vessel of youth!”

  “I am as old as the earth, Guburus! I am as old as humanity! I walked the earth when the mountains were groaning and rising from the plains. I have waited for the children of the earth to come to me!”

  “Thameron, you must control this! Your quest is not for power, but for enlightenment. Bithitu!” he screamed. “Do you not believe in your—”

  Thameron snarled at him. Moment by moment, he was becoming himself again—young, proud, but with a shadow on him and darkness in his eyes where there had been light. “This great power slept in me, waiting for me.”

  “All men have it!” Guburus screamed at him. “It is ancient as our souls! Chain it, or it will destroy you!”

  “I…am…Thameron!” he howled, as if announcing his entrance into the Hall of the Gods.

  “Chain it! Name of Omro, chain it, chain it, or you will destroy yourself!”

  Thameron moved toward the old man.

  Guburus fell back. “Thameron,” he whispered, “stand before me. Do this, please.”

  Wary, the young man approached his mentor.

  “The first path, Thameron. Visualize it. The color—the scent. Lift yourself—”

  Thameron’s eyes brightened. “You seek to trap me!”

  “Thameron, you cannot—”

  “You want to kill me?”

  “Free yourself from this evil!” Guburus shouted at him. And then, swiftly, he raised his hands and gestured, drawing power into himself.

  Thameron jumped away and moved his arms, drawing up his defense. “I have all the paths now!” he hissed at his master. “I am more than you, Guburus! Do not embattle me!”

  “Slay yourself now!”

  “Remove your aura, Guburus, or I will destroy you.”

  “I am well learned, Thameron. My strength is old, and it is—”

  “Die,” Thameron said then, and clenched his left hand into a fist, pointed it at Guburus, and spread his fingers.

  Guburus screamed a defense. “Nefusith ala alam!”

  Thameron grunted.

  Guburus’s eyes went wide. A sphere of pink mist came around him. He dropped to his knees, and an expression of terror came over him, filling his eyes. Once more he gestured—but he was unable even complete the movements. Deep sweat broke out on him and ran in long trails down the seams of his face. He gasped for breath. His body, tightening, shook as violently as though he were caught in a storm, fighting for air.

  “What are you?” he screamed at Thameron. Within the pink shell, his voice sounded distant. “What have you become? What demon is this? What are you?”

  Thameron spoke a word at him, whispering it, an ancient word, and it was done. Guburus howled, and the echo of that cry from his soul held in the cave even as his body was lit, as though from within, by a strong red light. The light vanished. The pink sphere evaporated as a mist. And where the sorcerer had knelt, there remained now black bones and parts of bones, smoking as though heated in fire, some of them half eaten, and otherwise, only the dust of his body, and some of the dust crawling, trying to escape, Guburus, still fighting to stay alive.

  Then all movement stopped.

  Slowly, Thameron’s arm fell to his side as he stared at the corpse.

  What have I done?

  Breath returned to him, and strength, his own spirit. He came awake and knew what he had done, but only dimly understood his part in it.

  What have I done?

  A wind blew on him from the mouth of the cave. Thameron looked there to see a brilliant light just outside the cave. Frightened, he turned away.

  The light spoke.

  You are become your destiny, O man. You are chosen, the vessel, the being, the embodiment of the last days. Demand that shadows bow before you and mountains bend in praise, for you are become your destiny, O man beyond men, Prince of Darkness, Master of the Hell of Men!

  The brilliant light lessened and began to fade, even as Thameron continued to stare at it.

  Powerful fear suffused him. Shivering, terrified, and alone, alone, he cried into the night, “What have you done? What have you done to me?”

  But the light was gone, and the voice he had heard—gone.

  Prince of Darkness, Master of the Hell of Men!

  “Tell me!’’ Thameron yelled, and began to sob. He stared at the pieces of bone on the cave floor and wanted to take them back, give them back to the light that had taken them. He wanted Guburus to return and be seated at his table once more, seated before his oil lamp.

  “Free yourself from this evil! Slay yourself now!”

  Sobbing, Thameron dropped to his knees and fell forward onto his hands—and cried out in pain.

  He pulled up his hands. The palms, where they had struck the floor, were burned.

  Thameron stared at his hot palms, for there were marks there.

  “No! No!”

  Branded. He was branded. By the night, by shadows, by the powerful night, by demons?

  On his right palm were two intertwined crescent moons, and on his left, the inverted, seven-pointed star.

  Master of the Hell of Men. As old as the earth, as old as humanity. Waiting for the children of the earth to come to him. Sower of discord, vessel of fear. Ancient evil, house of evil, embodiment of evil, Prince of Darkness.

  Ancient—promised—and now returned.…

  PART FIVE

  THE WEST IS DYING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Alone, he had wandered south through field lands for two days, stopping once at an isolated farm house to buy food and water his horse. “Do you speak Athadian?” The elderly couple there had shaken their heads; but the oldest son,
who had traveled, was able to fabricate with Cyrodian a mutually comprehensible jargon. Ebu—food. Water for my horse. I can pay you in Athadian gold.… When he left them, at twilight, he made sure that one essential message was quite clear to them: If others come after me, others who speak Athadian, tell them I rode north.

  He had been concerned all during the ride that Captain Uvars might kill him. Cyrodian couldn’t believe that Elad hadn’t given the commander such an order. When he had been freed and no threat to his life made, the import was clear: Assassins would come later, or riders had been sent ahead to wait for him. So he journeyed cautiously.

  Two days south; another day brought him to border posts, obelisks that marked the border of the kingdom of Emaria. Cyrodian found shelter in a small huddle of rocks. He waited. There was a lake, so he fished, doing as well as he could, devising a makeshift stick and line without the use of any weapons. But he had flint and steel, and so he was able to keep himself warm with a fire. The days were cool and, here on the open plainfields, chilly with wide breezes. At night, the air turned cold, and Cyrodian was surprised that it did not snow.

  He waited, day upon day, but still there was no indication of riders coming to assassinate him. Neither was there any sign of Umothet or of Umothet’s hirelings bringing him weapons and decent food.

  A week passed. He was becoming ill, surviving only on small fish. He couldn’t understand what delayed Umothet. It occurred to him that their plot might have been uncovered, but Cyrodian dismissed that possibility; they had planned well, and each of them involved in the coup had sworn an oath of silence. Yet his accomplices did not appear. Cyrodian began to wonder whether he was a fool for having trusted anyone.

  Finally, disgusted and hungry, weaponless, he mounted his horse and continued south, into Emaria. He had no map with him, but he had led a sufficient number of campaigns and had surveyed enough maps of the region to know that Lasura, the capital, should be but a week’s ride distant.

  * * * *

  That evening, as the cold wrapped around him and as his horse staggered, he sighted an Emarian fort. It was situated on a low rise, and the land around it had been denuded. Cyrodian approached and watched, amused, as soldiers formed a line atop the wall to observe him. Coming within speaking distance, he hailed them and called, “Iro supeke Athadaki? Do you speak Athadian?”