Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time

by Darrell Schweitzer

  Tamliade got down and walked around. He waved his arms, trying to bring feeling into his numb extremities. But he was too tired to keep it up for long.

  Then he stood still, and the flash of a vision came over him, but almost immediately he was back in the cold cave. He had to think back to sort out the images and sensations. He looked up, and saw that the magician was gazing at him with intense interest.

  “Yes.… What was it?”

  “I don’t know, really. I was in darkness. It felt stuffy, close, as if I were buried in a coffin near to the surface of the ground. It sounds funny, but it was very hot. I was in great pain. I burned all over. I think…I think all my limbs had been cut off, and bleeding stumps banged against the sides of the box. I couldn’t see anything. I smelled blood, but it was rotten, putrid, and thick as cold grease. It was washing all over me. I was floating. There was water running outside. I heard the cries of strange birds. Master, it was a terrible thing I saw. What is it?”

  Emdo Wesa forced a grotesque smile, as if someone else had yanked the ends of his mouth up with two fingers. It only disturbed the boy even more.

  “Ah yes,” the magician said. “The swamps of Zabortash. My brother is there. He touched you with his mind.”

  The boy tried to sound cheerful, but deep inside he knew only despair.

  “If he is there…what have we got to worry about? So far away.”

  “So far away. But so near. He is almost upon us.”

  “If only the vision would come.”

  Wesa paused. He stood regarding the boy. He held his hand to his chin and scratched his beard. This gesture somehow comforted the boy. Any ordinary man with a beard did it.

  “Tamliade, I think there is a way to bring on the vision right now. But you must be very brave.”

  “Yes, Master. What must I do?” He spoke like one being led to execution.

  “You must think back to what you saw and felt. You must reach out to my brother. He will draw you out of yourself, into dreams. He is more a dream than a real thing now. Most of him is no longer in the world you live in.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Here is the peril: he will try to take you over, to seize you and your vision, to gain the power of this thing you have seen. If I can hold him off, we can escape into the dream he has opened. Then there is hope. If not, it is the end. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. I will do whatever you say.”

  Emdo Wesa sat. He motioned Tamliade to sit beside him on the rough, frigid cave floor. He reached for the boy’s hand. Tamliade drew away.

  “You said you would do anything.”

  “Please, Master. I didn’t think. But I am afraid to touch your hand.”

  “Even when gloved? Oh, very well.” The magician got up and fetched a cord from the wagon. He tied one end around Tamliade’s wrist, and held the other. Then he said down, closed his eyes, and began to chant, “Psadeu-ma te, psadeu-ma hae, psadeu-ma—” His voice faded away into grey distance. Tamliade was drifting. Deliberately, with all his strength of mind, he forced his thoughts back to the sounds of the swamp of Zabortash, the close, filthy air inside the coffin, the pain—

  Suddenly he felt it again, and he was there. He wanted to scream, but it seemed he had no voice.

  He felt something else. It wasn’t a sensation. It was more something intruding on his consciousness, at first raw, unimaginable power, then intense hatred, overwhelming all thought, all feeling, all awareness, He forgot about his promise to Emdo Wesa. He wanted to get out, to escape this thing. He didn’t care about his vision, about what happened to his master, or even what happened to the world. He had to get out. It was like climbing up the side of a sand pit, the sand falling down, down, faster and faster, burying—

  Etash Wesa had him. Etash Wesa was snuffing out his very self.

  Deep, deep, beyond the hatred, another mind worked and turned in incomprehensible, alien ways. Tamliade was without any means to grasp what it felt, what it thought.

  Something yanked his wrist hard. He tumbled forward, face down into foul-smelling muck, then through it, out of darkness, into red haze, then white light like the burst from the wagon that morning. He tumbled over and over, falling forever. Somehow he was aware that his master was with him.

  He stopped. There was no impact, just a cessation of falling. The light shrank to spots before his eyes, then faded entirely, and he saw that he was inside the city of lights, the city of his vision.

  Emdo Wesa let go of the cord. With both his flaming hands, he seemed to be tying up invisible strings in the air. Tamliade thought of the partition in the wagon.

  “That should keep him away for a short time,” the magician said when he had finished. “But we have only a short time.”

  Wesa led him through the courtyards and galleries, past the towers, the tapestries, the strange machines, along the twisting alleyways.

  The boy craned his neck back. The tops of the towers above him shifted like clouds. Long, thin walkways seemed to trail like spiderwebs in a breeze. He forgot himself for a moment and stopped to stare.

  The magician took up the cord and yanked.

  “Don’t stray from me. The angles here will deceive you. So can the distances. You’d never find your way out.”

  “This place…is it real?”

  “Yes. You have dreamed it. No, no, I don’t mean that. You did not create it. It is objectively here, but here is not on the same Earth you and I know. I think it is something out of a past age, overlooked by time, left behind to gutter out like a candle flame.”

  They walked along a marble corridor. The walls didn’t quite seem solid. The whole place seemed to flicker on the verge of transparency.

  “Is this place like the Old Places, the ruins?”

  “Yes, like those. There are ruins everywhere, as one age piles atop the next. But, this one does not decay into dust and rubble. Consider: before the Goddess there lived another, a god or goddess or some similar thing, and before that one another, and before another. Each presided over a period of time, an age, and when each died, there was a confused interval before another was born. We live in one such. Some of these ages are dark, some glittering and glorious, and they stretch out like the scales of a snake, into eternity. This place is one of the scales broken loose or a fragment of one, or a reflection, or dust, or, in a way, a dadar of the past.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Nor do I. Nor does anyone. It is a thing which can only be half-grasped. Therefore we have no time to discuss it. Hurry. Come along. My brother will be through eventually, and in any case, unless we are successful, and I gain the power to fight him, we cannot leave this place.”

  They came to a broad gallery in which the floor looked solid but gave no sensation at all. Tamliade’s knees buckled, his unconscious mind sure he had just stepped off a cliff, but he did not fall. Uneasily, he walked on. The magician dragged him by the cord. His hand was going numb. He walked a little faster until there was slack, then loosened the loop.

  An animate skeleton floated before them in the air, clad in garments of smoke, with a crown of crystal on its head, its bones glowing like old coals.

  “Fellow,” cried the magician. “Take us to the lady of this place. I know she is here. I have seen her in dreams.”

  The thing drifted like a leaf on a stream, and they followed.

  Gradually their surroundings became more substantial. The walls were smooth and cold to the touch. Their footfalls echoed as they walked. Tamliade gazed down at his own reflection in the polished pavement, and that of his master. The skeleton gave no reflection at all. He looked back to see the way they had come slowly suffusing into panes of light, into flickering shapes, into a soft glow. Emdo Wesa gazed steadily ahead, undistracted.

  The way grew narrower and darker. Soon there was only a faint light, from no discernable source. Their guide glowed ahead of them like a beacon, casting huge, distorted shadows on the walls.

  A double
door opened before them, and they faced another corridor, this one filled with mirrors.

  The spirit rose up and vanished into the gloom. Tamliade wasn’t sure if there was a ceiling up there or not. He looked ahead, at the mirrors. Wesa was studying them intently. Each was perfectly circular, about five feet across; they were held out from the walls on either side by enormous hands, which grasped them between thumb and forefinger. The hands were alternately purest white and darkest black. Tamliade thought they were only carved mounts, but as Wesa dragged him forward and they approached one, the thing turned, angling the mirror for them to see. The hands were alive.

  The magician did not seem to be startled, or even to care.

  They stood before the first mirror. At first it revealed only themselves. Then the scene changed. Beyond was a forest, in the full bloom of summer. The trees had long blue-gray needles. Far away, between the trunks, sunlight glimmered off the surface of a lake. Tamliade knew the place. He had played by that lake many times when he was small. Now he could smell the resinous scent of the trees, and the warm breeze ruffled his hair.

  He gaped in wonder, but Emdo Wesa yanked him away.

  “No, not that one.”

  As he was dragged away he reached out, and touched only cold glass.

  Through other mirrors, as they passed, he saw scenes of cities, deserts, forests, ships at sea, some of them familiar, some of them not. There was a place underground, where water ran down the side of a cavern, and a stone ship lay beached. On its decks crouched creatures half like frogs, half like men, frozen, clad in gowns of flowing stone. Their eyes seemed to follow him. He looked into another mirror and saw himself naked, bound to the post, writhing under the lash. In the next, he was being carried off by the eagle, Emdo Wesa’s dadar. Then he lay on the counter before the astonished tailor. He saw Emdo Wesa’s wagon become thin and slip out through the crack in the Sunrise Gate. Ai Hanlo fell away beneath the horizon. The girls in the town teased him and laughed. The intervals between each mirror decreased. There were three in which he and his master sat beside the same fire. It was the last camp they had made.

  Still Emdo Wesa walked steadily on, dragging Tamliade like a mechanical thing.

  The way was not straight. It twisted and lurched sickeningly at times, turning at impossible angles, up, down, sideways, otherways. The mirrors were always there, turning to be seen, following them.

  He saw the city of lights from the outside, as it had appeared in dreams. Yes, it did look like a ghost of Ai Hanlo. Its dome at the top was a pale red.

  And he saw the apparition before them, leading them to the corridor of mirrors, and he looked into a mirror and saw himself and Emdo Wesa looking into a mirror in which sunlight sparkled off a lake behind some trees. Emdo Wesa dragged him on. They seemed to walk forever. At last they came to a halt, looking into a mirror at an image of themselves looking into a mirror at themselves looking into mirrors, until the images were too small to make out. All the images were of the present time.

  “I think we have found what we want,” said Emdo Wesa. “Behold.”

  The magician pointed, not at a mirror, but to the end of the corridor. Tamliade looked. Far away from them, as he had seen in dreams, a bit of drapery turned in the gloom, and was not drapery at all. Either in a vaster mirror or truly there, the lady stood, veiled in the dawn, clad in a gown of sunset, with the horned Moon in her hair and the stars trailing behind her like a cloak.

  Emdo Wesa began to run, dragging Tamliade. He had never seen the old man move like that. But as they ran, the lady only seemed farther away.

  All the mirrors they passed were dark.

  She was not fleeing from them. It was a trick of distance. She stood, rigid as a statue, and they seemed to be running on a treadmill, the floor ever growing longer before them.

  Then, in the blinking of an eye, she was gone, and they came to a halt at the end of the corridor, Tamliade gasping for breath, his master standing silently.

  There was another mirror before them, far larger than the others, held up by two hands, one dark, one pale and softly glowing. There was no image. The circle of glass was dark at first. But slowly it filled with stars. The outline of a hill appeared. The horned Moon rose over it.

  “Ah, yes,” said the wizard. He removed the glove from his right hand, holding Tamliade’s cord with his left. He reached out to touch the glass surface and it rippled like water. The flaming hand passed through. He stepped into the mirror, pulling the boy after him.

  Tamliade felt another lurch, again as if he had stepped off a cliff, but he did not fall. There was a wash of cold, as if he had been immersed in an icy pool. The night air was frigid. The stars were sharp and bright. They did not twinkle. A stiff wind blew.

  He and the magician climbed the hill. He looked back and saw the city of lights flickering behind them. Once more it looked insubstantial, a thing of sculpted vapors.

  The stars overhead formed no constellations he had ever seen before.

  At last, when the Moon was overhead, they came to the opening of a cave near the top of the hill. Within was a pool of clear, still water, beneath the surface of which lay the lady, asleep, her dark hair spread out in the water like a gently swaying weed.

  Tamliade was afraid, not of danger, but out of awe. He trembled. Emdo Wesa did not seem to react at all.

  “Who is she? What is she?”

  The magician ignored him, let go of the cord, and knelt by the water’s edge. Tamliade took the opportunity to back a few steps away. He waited and listened as the magician, chanting a litany in a strange tongue, reached down into the water with his fiery hand and raised the lady up, She rose like a ghost, like smoke, like a cloud driven across the sky. Her eyes opened. She spoke in a voice that was gentle, distant, dry, like the rustling of leaves in an autumn wind.

  “Thou, rescuer, my salvation, know that I am a reflection, an image, an echo of the Goddess. Yes, as you would say, a dadar of she who has died.”

  “You know my thoughts…” said Emdo Wesa.

  “Indeed, I summoned thee. I dreamed thee into being. I dreamed all the years of thy life, making thee my dadar, so that in the fullness of time my hand would be touched, I would be raised up as thou hast done…to give me the gift of death, for I have lived long, long beyond my time, when she who created me by gazing into a mirror has ceased to be. No, do not seek understanding. You cannot. With her passing, all things created of her became powerless, frozen outside of time. Now with another touch of your hand, your power will pass into me, your magic, and I shall have the strength to sleep the sleep without dreams.”

  “But—but, my lady,” gasped Emdo Wesa, showing more emotion than Tamliade had ever seen in him, “you must give me your power to be added to mine, that I might defeat my enemy. Everything depends on this. Everything. The whole world. You must. That is what I have come for, to get it before he does.”

  “What care I for your world? I live in it no longer. What care I for your quarrels? That is not what I created you for so long ago, my dadar. Did you really not know? Everything you have ever done has been orchestrated toward this end, my end, not yours.”

  Emdo Wesa stood helpless, hands at his side, wheezing and heaving. Tamliade guessed that he was trying to weep, but could not find it within himself to do so.

  The lady gently removed the glove from his left hand, then folded both of his hands between hers. When she let them go, they were the color of dirty smoke, grey and black. They longer glowed.

  Like a mote of light, the lady drifted out of the cave, past Tamliade, apparently unaware of his presence. He turned and saw her rising slowly into the sky, drifting among the stars. For an instant he saw her huge, more awesome, more beautiful, more terrible than anything he could comprehend, stretched across the heavens, clad in the night, holding the Moon, scattering the stars like seed. Then she faded. Briefly, the sky was dark. Then, at the place where she had disappeared, a luminious speck appeared. It grew and quavered, flowing at the edges lik
e a liquid thing pouring into the universe, becoming ever brighter.

  The whole sky exploded in brilliance, and, just before his eyes were dazzled utterly, he saw the lady again cloaked in flame, her gown of purest white, astride a dolphin with the Sun in one hand and a tree in the other.

  He fainted to the ground at the mouth of the cave.

  * * * *

  Tamliade was next aware of something warm and fluid washing over him. He opened his eyes. It was day. The sky was a dull grey above him.

  He brought a wet hand up to his face and screamed aloud when he saw that it was covered with blood.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran back into the cave, sick with the dread of utter disorientation. The blood flowed after him. He and the magician came out again, and climbed to the top of the hill as the cave filled up. The summit alone stood a few feet above the surface of an ocean of blood, which stretched to the horizon in all directions. The city of lights was gone. Everywhere, only the waveless, dark surface. The stench was overwhelming.

  Emdo Wesa stood silently. He pointed. The boy looked and saw something floating far away. It was only a speck at first. He strained to see it. Slowly it drew nearer, carried by some inexorable current. He felt mounting terror as it approached. He ran around in futile circles like a headless chicken. He fell to his knees and covered his eyes.

  “Get up,” said Emdo Wesa sharply. “Look. Have dignity.”

  Startled, he obeyed. The panic left him.

  The thing was nearby now. He could see quite clearly that it was a coffin, bobbing up and down gently on the sea of blood.

  A voice thundered from all directions at once. He felt his bones vibrate with it.

  “Brother, I have found you. I am here.”

  Tamliade looked at his master’s brother. Etash Wesa was pink, wormlike, the ruined bulk of his body twisting around and around inside the lidless coffin, awash in blood. There was an empty-socketed protuberance which might have once been a head, but it seemed smashed and pushed to one side. All three openings alternately spewed gore and babbled as the thing rolled over. He couldn’t tell which had been the mouth. One stubby remnant of an arm thumped against the wooden sides.