They were passing by the bubbling brook. The air was scented with jasmine and frangipani. Terraced fields on the far side of the valley shone gold with rice plants. The air was thick with humidity.
“Would you like that, Gorel of Goliris? This is a place of rare peace in all of the world. A shelter from the wars of others. You could find contentment here. Perhaps, even, enlightenment.”
The offer hung there. Gorel breathed in the scented air. He wanted nothing more, he suddenly realized. To be free at last, to be at peace. And yet, like a pebble in a shoe, one thing prohibited him. His birthright, his home. The question of vanished Goliris.
“I cannot answer all your questions, Gorel. I myself was born far from here, where the Migdal trees grow. Our nests were marvels of harmony, our community was peaceful and prosperous. One day, an attack came from the air. Wild ballooners, a migratory, violent race. We were unprepared. They set fire to our nests, slaughtered my people. I alone escaped. For years I was tortured with the desire for vengeance. I traveled the world, hiring out as a murderer. Much as you do, Gorel of Goliris. It was this desire for blood that led me at last to the Zul-Ware’i mountains. Rumors of weapons beyond compare. Of sorcerous artifacts the likes of which had not been seen in centuries. I climbed to the peaks. I believe now that it was a death wish that brought me here. I sought death, but death eluded me. It was then that they found me, the Invigilators. They brought me here. I believe this may have been a Zul hideout once. But I do not know for sure. I became a novitiate, then a monk. I found peace. At last, when the High Invigilator discombobulated, I took their place.”
The old Avian looked earnestly at Gorel. “Renounce the world, Gorel of Goliris. Let go of your old grievances, let go of your search, and join us. Here you could be free, finally free, of all that has plagued you.”
Gorel nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
And yet that pebble in the shoe. A memory: bursting into the throne room where his father sat on the night-black chair, and a half dozen men faced him, his military wizards, speaking in hushed, angry voices. Gorel made his way toward them, and they ceased from speaking, and his father, always a stern man, nevertheless extended his arms to the boy, and Gorel came forth, and sat on his father’s knee—the closest he’d ever come to occupying the throne.
Then the night when he was taken—the last night he ever saw his mother and father alive.
He was dosed up on faith, he realized. The Black Kiss, which permeated every corner of this monastery, was a trap, a trap that held him. He said, “Excuse me,” and stumbled away from the High Invigilator, and the Avian let him go.
They did not fear him, he realized. This power, this faith, was everywhere, woven into the very fabric of the valley and its keep. But he could see no god here, he could see no—
Then he looked again: looked with new eyes.
It was the same valley as before, this temperate zone with its lush vegetation. And the monastery rose above it, built into the rock, a huge, ancient form…
An ancient form, he thought. He closed his eyes. In the darkness he could see them. The lights, those complex chains, burrowed deep under and through the strata of ice and metavolcanic rocks and gneiss. When he opened his eyes he could see them still, and he could see how everything about him was merely the mimicry of a thing. How the building was not at all a building but a part of a body, how the valley was not so much a garden but part of a vast stomach, how the things living and breathing inside it were…
Bacteria, he thought. Tiny parasites living in somebody else’s gut, convincing themselves that they ruled it.
He saw the monks emerge from the tunnel mouths ahead, with their cargo of black rocks. He went toward them. They paid him no mind. He picked one rock, held it. Warmth coursed through him.
Dust.
No one knew what the Zul and the Ware’i had battled over. No one knew what gods they worshipped. And no one knew what killed them.
But Gorel had the sudden suspicion that he knew.
This impossible valley, sustained as it were in the middle of the murderous mountains—this enchanted paradise—it was a corpse.
The Zul and Ware’i had not just murdered each other.
They had murdered their own gods.
13.
That night, the lights cried out to him in the darkness. All those buried spores. He woke up sweating. He stared out of the window, on the silent, peaceful valley below. The sheer cliff walls. The ceiling of eternal clouds, pressing down.
No wonder they let him roam freely. How could he leave?
The valley was a prison and Gorel its inmate.
In the night, he wandered. He climbed the staircases and sought a door, an exit, but there wasn’t one. He followed the monks into the tunnels, but the tunnels only led deeper into the mountain, and always ended in solid rock.
He visited the library. The boy, Kay, worked there. He’d kept away from Gorel’s company since his betrayal. Not that Gorel cared. He would have done the same—had done the same, before, when the occasion called for it. Betrayal was merely an occupational hazard.
The monastery had many books. “And what of my home?” Gorel said. “Is there a book here that mentions Goliris?”
The boy, reluctant, went to check. He climbed up and down stout wooden ladders. Returned, at last, with an ancient, dusty tome. The wizard Yi-Sheng the Unbeatable’s De Magia Veterum, in the old tongue of the people of Mindano Caliphate, from the century of Archon Gadashtill, the first and greatest of the necromancer-kings of his line.
“Perhaps,” Kay said. He turned the pages, until the book fell open on a map. It was so faded as to be barely legible. It showed a black sea, and at its heart, a black continent. The boy, Kay, moved his hand over the page. The image grew. The library faded.
A voice: “And in the final year of the necromancer-king’s reign, he summoned a great enchantment of a kind that was never before or since seen, and a vortex erupted before his fleet and all his ships passed through it one by one.”
It was Kay; Kay was speaking. And Gorel found himself on the ship, saw the storm rage over that black sea, and he smelled a known smell, the scent of ancient, buried things that were dead and yet alive, and the smell of fungus, and the smell of rot and of primeval forests. And he saw the black rocks jutting ahead, and the ship fell on their sharp teeth, and the dead men drowned, but he alone survived, he swam ashore, and came to the city. A city the likes of which had never been seen, before or since, upon the world. And he alone wandered its empty streets, until he came to the Royal Palace, and stepped inside, and made his way to the throne room, and there he stopped.
The room was old, and cobwebs hung thick in the dark corners, and yellowing bones piled on the floor, but he paid them no mind.
Gorel of Goliris stared at the small, slight figure that sat on his throne.
The boy, Kay, looked back at him with an apologetic smile.
14.
He woke from a nightmare to find that someone was choking him. His mind was still a-twirl from that impossible glimpse of his home. It couldn’t be, he thought; Goliris could not fall. And yet the streets so still and empty, and the cobwebs thick— How many years? he thought. How many centuries?
It was all wrong—it was all just a false mirage. It had to be. He woke, choking, hands around his neck. An old, old man leaned over him, teeth bared in a rictus of exertion. Thumbs, digging into his windpipe. He grabbed the man’s wrists, tried to push him off, but the man was inhumanly strong. Gorel kicked, his mouth opened and closed without sound, at last with a heave of the last of his strength he twisted, his mouth fastened on the man’s arms and Gorel bit down.
The taste of dust—of dust—filled his mouth. A giddy happiness, pure faith, distilled, straight from the source. Gorel suckled at the wound. The pressure on his throat slackened. A backha
nd slap threw him on the floor. Gorel rose, grabbing his guns.
He fired.
The man fell back. Stared down at his chest, grimaced, wiped a hand over his chest, as though wiping off lint. The bullets pinged onto the floor.
His features seemed strangely familiar.
“Just die!” Gorel said uselessly. He fired, once, twice. The old man turned, became a shadow. Fled.
Gorel gave chase.
Down silent corridors of rough-hewn stone, the shadow fleeing, Gorel in chase, all thought forgotten, nothing but the desire to inflict murder. Down and down and down they went.
Down and down and down.
They burst out into moonlight. The clouds overhead parted for just a fraction, and he saw the stars. In the moonlight, the hidden valley lay still as a corpse. Gorel pursued the shadow past the brook, to the place where the rail tracks terminated.
He saw a mound of rocks, rising into the sky. They cried out to him, all those tiny buried lights from the flesh of the mountainside, released again and brought together into the semblance of a thing: the semblance of a life.
He stopped, and stood there, panting. He pointed the guns at the shadow. The shadow turned. The old man’s face again, the gummy, toothless mouth moving wordlessly. The figure changed. It shrunk, grew young. The boy, Kay, looked out at Gorel and smiled in mute apology.
“How…how long?” Gorel said.
“…Trapped,” the boy said. “All the rest of them…scattered. Buried. Only me. here. No power. All gone.”
“Are you Zul? Ware’i?”
“Yes. No.”
“What killed them?”
“They…killed.”
Gorel said, “The final weapon…They murdered their own gods?”
“Yes. No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Make…peace. Make…” He brought his hands together.
Gorel saw the mountains alight with warfare, dragons flying, wizards casting fireballs from icy mountaintops. He saw villages burn, whole cities turned to molten lava. He saw monsters made of ice. He saw the altars, sacrifices, incense, hymns. He saw two figures rise into the sky at last. Two gods, fed on their worshippers’ prayers. Two vast amorphous beings of darkness, bloated, bloodied, sad. They circled in the sky. It had to end. There had to be a peace.
They merged. They came together—mating.
He saw them drop.
He saw them fall from the air.
The brightness of that explosion seared his vision. A cloud like an hourglass rose high into the skies. A wind blew like a whisper. All perished: Zul, Ware’i. The young in one another’s arms, and all the dying generations at their song.
All but the one.
A baby.
“You?”
“Trapped. Alone. So many years…Built this place, in their grave. People came. Stayed. I waited. I wait…But you. You’re from another time and place. Goliris. You can—”
An incomprehensible string of words, a rush of colors, the smell of tar and brine. Gorel covered his ears.
“Complete the Godchain. You hold so much time inside you!”
The figure lurched at him. The ancient black stones sang to him. The shattered bones of dead gods cried out to him to make them whole.
Gorel fired his guns, but they were useless.
“Don’t…resist.”
The mountain of rocks moved. Formed a human shape. Arms like cranes of industry reached out for him. A fist full of boulders. He was doomed.
On his wrist, a sudden burst of heat. A shooting flame of light. He yelled. The flame shot into the air. It broke through the cloud cover and burst overhead in a shower of sparks. High, high above…
Gorel stared at the bracelet. It was the one Kettle had given him, before he left for the climb.
His skin burned. Above him, the rock troll stopped, uncertain. The boy, Kay, stared at Gorel with silent accusation.
“What was that?”
“I don’t…know.”
The giant rock fist moved. It grabbed Gorel. It lifted him into the air. High, high, into the sky. It squeezed him. He saw bright sparks. Thousands of them. All through the mountains, those complex chains. He couldn’t breathe. He knew he was going to die. He saw the clouds part again overhead, banished, and something impossible, a flock of distant shapes, coming down, coming rapidly.
Kay stared into the sky. “Are those fucking eagles?” he said.
Gorel, choking, said, “No, I think they might be albatrosses—”
The stone fist closed around him tight, and he lost consciousness.
15.
He woke up to the sound of a baby crying.
His throat hurt, and his body thrummed with a desperate need.
Withdrawal.
All sense of faith was gone.
He sat up groggily. He was on the valley ground, and the monastery was in ruins. The stone walls were overgrown with ivy.
Corpses littered the valley floor. They were ancient, mummified corpses—as though they had lain there for centuries. The bloodred monks’ robes they’d worn had mostly rotted away.
Gorel blinked, and saw Kettle.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Kettle said.
Gorel stood up. The baby kept crying. Behind Kettle, Gorel could see the giant albatrosses and their riders. He touched the bracelet on his wrist, and the thing disintegrated into nothingness.
“You used me,” he said.
Kettle just shrugged.
“Is this it?” he said.
Gorel followed his eyes. He saw the baby lying there beside the pile of black rocks. He went to it. It was just a baby, and it stared up at Gorel with bright, accusing eyes.
“Sorry, Kay,” Gorel said.
He picked the baby up.
“What would you do with him?” Gorel said. “He’s just a baby.”
“He’s a potential,” Kettle said. “Nothing more.”
“He’s a weapon, is what you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Gorel said. “Do you not have enough power already?”
“No,” Kettle said. “Not yet.”
“But what is it for?”
“Time,” Kettle said. “It’s to do with time, and a plague sweeping over the world. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Gorel of Goliris?”
“I don’t understand.”
The baby gurgled. It laughed now. It laughed at Gorel. Its fat little finger touched Gorel’s cheek. For just a moment he saw something he did not understand: once more he saw that black sea and the continent that lay beyond; once more he was shipwrecked on the jutting rocks and traveled, alone, in that great, abandoned city. He entered the throne room, and it was filled with cobwebs and dust.
But something woke. Something that had long been dormant. Waiting. And as he wandered out of the palace once again he saw them rise: one warrior and then another and another, tall, silent, faceless, clad in black. Soulless automatons. Hundreds he saw, then thousands, then thousands of thousands. And as he watched, they marched, out of Goliris. Out of Goliris, and on to the world.
An army the likes of which the world had never seen.
He whispered, “No…” but already the vision was fading, and the baby laughed and gurgled in his arms. He handed him to Kettle.
“Will you look after him, at least?”
“I will. You know I will.”
“Yes.”
Kettle motioned to his men. They mounted the flying beasts.
“Will you come back with me?” Kettle said. There was a pleading in his voice.
“You know I won’t.”
Kettle nodded. “Gorel…”
“Don’t.”
“Then can I offer you a ride, at least?”
“Yes,” Gorel said. “Somewhere far from here.”
16.
They left him by the side of an old abandoned road on the outskirts of the deadlands, far from anywhere. He watched them go.
When they vanished from sight he reached into his pocket and found a small, twisted packet of paper. He opened it carefully and snorted the last of the dust inside.
After that he felt better.
He hefted his guns, and then he set off along the road. He had traveled the world for a long time, and he was no closer to finding Goliris.
But he would never stop until he did.
◆ ◆ ◆
Greg van Eekhout is a novelist of science fiction and fantasy for audiences ranging from middle grade to adult. His work has been selected as a finalist for the Sunshine State Award, the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the Nebula Award. His novels include Kid vs. Squid, The Boy at the End of the World, Norse Code, and the California Bones trilogy: California Bones, Pacific Fire, and Dragon Coast. He’s also published about two dozen short stories, several of which have appeared in year’s best anthologies. Forthcoming works include the middle-grade novel Voyage of the Dogs, about dogs on a deep-space mission. He lives with his wife and dogs in San Diego, California, where he enjoys beach walks and tacos. Visit his website for more information: writingandsnacks.com.
Here he demonstrates that magic lives deep in the bone…
◆ ◆ ◆
GREG VAN EEKHOUT
Agnes Santiago approaches the entrance to the La Brea Tar Pits and joins the security line. Bubbles bloat and deflate in the black muck as if something alive is under there, breathing. And maybe something is.
“What’s the job today, Aggie?” says the security guard, checking her ID.
“Making magic, Roy.” They’ve been having this exact same exchange every day for two years. Agnes likes it because it’s friendly but brief and superficial.
The Book of Magic Page 40