by Alex Bentley
When I am beside him, he glances my way, then stops walking, his mouth hanging slack.
“Oh,” I say. “That. The statue.”
His voice drops to a whisper, and he says, “The Dracafysian.”
“What?”
I do not know the word, but somehow it seems familiar. It fills me with dread, lifting the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck.
“In the old tongue it means ‘She Who Drives Out Monsters’,” says Madec.
“Be careful with my friend,” I say because he looks as if he is about to drop Ethra onto the broken road at his feet.
“We should get to the Library,” he says, lifting Ethra higher and securing her against his chest. “Then we can talk.”
The further east we go, the less rundown everything appears. The buildings cease to sag, the road uncrumbles. There are trees planted along the roadside, and some are in blossom.
“The Glyst lingers here,” says Madec. “But it is not wild Glyst. It is what some Maradyns called ‘mild’ or ‘gentle’ Glyst.” He nods to a tower ahead of us. “We are here.”
The tower is made of the same white stone as the walls. It is four storeys high and capped with a copper dome turned green by the elements. It is twice the diameter of our roundhouse back in Gafol. There are many windows cut into the blockwork, but all are boarded up.
Madec leads us through a small door which opens at his approach. A spiral staircase takes us up through candlelit gloom. We emerge through a hole in the floor in the middle of a large room that is two-storeys tall and lined with dark wooden shelves that reach to the domed ceiling. The shelves are filled with books.
I have seen books before, of course. Once a scholar making a study of the flowers of the North of Abegan stayed over in Gafol. He had two books. One was full of words and illustrations about the flowers of the South of Abegan and had been written by the scholar’s father many years before. The other was only half-filled with our visitor’s accounts of what he had encountered so far of the North’s flora. Then, when I was five or six, a storyteller came to Gafol. He read from a book about the exploits of Derenderlic, the first man who the gods made accidentally while under the influence of Seros’ strongest brew. Derenderlic spent all his days making mischief until the gods sobered-up many years later and created Shiblessi, the first woman, who made the man calm and useful, for the most part.
I have seen books before, of course. But not this many. Hand on heart, I did not think this many books existed in all the world. There must be hundreds of them.
“Most are empty,” says Madec, carrying Ethra to a bed off to one side, with a wooden chest at its foot. Next to the bed there is a small table with a single chair. There is a plate on the table with food still on it, some kind of stew. On the floor near the table and chair is a clay firebowl with an iron pot hanging above it from a three-legged stand. A little steam rises from the pot, and I can see glowing embers in the firebowl. This small area of the room appears to be the only part not dedicated to books and reading. There are chairs and tables scattered about, but all—including most of the chairs—are covered in books.
“The books are empty?” I say.
“Yes, for now.” Madec opens the chest and begins pulling out bottles and jars. “Ah. This.” He holds out a bottle no bigger than his thumb and pulls the stopper from it.
I can smell it from where I am standing, across the room.
“For now?” I say, beginning to feel stupid, and wondering if all my questions are going to be incredulous echoes of Madec’s statements from now on.
“When the Cwalee came, the Maradyns put a Glyst on the books, fearful that their knowledge should fall into the hands of the invaders or even those people of Abegan who might cause untold harm with such learnings. The words vanished. It was as if they were never there. Not so much as a scratch on the paper or parchment, nor an indentation.” He takes the stinking bottle to Ethra and holds it beneath her nose. “This will set her brain to dancing.”
Ethra sits upright, as if her body has always been a right-angle and is simply snapping back into its original shape. Her eyes are wide and terrified.
“A rat!” she yelps. “As big as a gedding horse!”
“You have quite the tongue in your mouth,” says Madec, smiling. “You do not look like a soldier, but you speak like one.”
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Madec Teeg.”
“Are you going to take me to see the Hollow?”
“I would hope not,” he says, replacing the stopper and returning the bottle to the chest. “But if it is what you wish I have helped others.”
“It is what I wish. Where are we?”
“A library,” I say. “Filled with empty books.”
“Most are empty,” says Madec.
“An empty book seems like a silly thing,” says Ethra.
“It does, doesn’t it?” says Madec. “Although, for me, it is more of a frustrating thing. But when the words bloom out of the paper, it is the most wonderful thing.”
“Bloom?” I say. I realise I am echoing his words again and so needlessly add, “What do you mean by that?”
“The Glyst that hid the words is fading, bit by bit. When it does, the books reveal their secrets.”
“How do you know?” asks Ethra, pivoting so her legs are hanging from the bed.
“That’s the frustrating aspect of it all,” says Madec. “It is a page here or there. Sometimes less. A paragraph or even a paltry sentence. And I don’t know which books or pages have yielded up their treasures. I have to work my way through every book, one page at a time.”
I look at the crammed shelves.
“That’s an impossible task,” I say.
“It is,” says Madec. “And, yet, here I am. And here you are.”
He walks toward me, staring, taking in every detail of my face.
“It is you. The Dracafysian. It cannot be a coincidence.” And then he smiles. “I always thought there was a little of El in that statue’s visage. I’d just assumed there was a common fierceness, that was all, and that I was being wishful.”
“Who is the Dracafysian?” says Ethra, standing, then sniffing at the contents of the cooking pot.
“Help yourself,” says Madec. “It’s still warm.” He points to a chair and then says to me, “Sit.”
I clear it of books, placing them on the adjacent table—itself already piled with books—and sit.
“The Dracafysian is your friend here,” Madec says, turning briefly to Ethra, who is already ladling stew into a wooden bowl. “At least, it would very much seem that she is.”
“But who is the Dracafysian?” I ask, failing to keep the impatience from my voice.
“Nobody really knows,” says Madec.
It is all I can do not to roll my eyes and sigh with exasperation.
“There are many conflicting oral accounts and almost nothing written down,” he continues. He glances at the shelves. “At least, little is written as yet.” He pulls a chair up next to mine and sits. “There is one song, a round.”
“She stands at the Gates of Utlath, her finewolf at her side,” I say. “She dies at the Gates of Utlath, her finewolf at her side. And forever more and ever after, every Glyster cried.”
A round. I remember it now, being sung as such. Just the same three lines, over and over.
“There are more lines,” says Madec. “Heard rarely. The Dracafysian comes in the night or day. All of us to save or slay. Smiling, roaring, she becomes our Queen. Or becomes the consort of the Gravene. I don’t doubt there are more lines than this, but they are lost. Or, at the very least, undiscovered, invisible.”
“The Gravene,” I say. “Tell me about the Gravene.”
Chapter 29
Dead Heavens
“You have heard the First Story,” says Madec, sprinkling some dried herbs onto his stew.
“Of course,” I say.
“I told it only a day or two ago,” says Ethra.
“Then you
know how the story sometimes changes a little here and there, as tellers embroider it for entertainment or steer it toward their own views, beliefs and feelings.”
“It is rarely exactly the same twice,” I say. “But always broadly similar. And, at heart, in its foundations, identical.”
“Quite,” says Madec. “There is a version on these shelves, that is very different, that diverges significantly. That version tells of the Glyst. That version tells of the Gravene.”
Again, the name itself chills me. The Gravene.
“Tell it,” I say.
And so he does.
In the beginning, there was nothing
There was no thing and there was no time.
And then arose the Moment.
And being the only thing that was, the Moment was Everything.
And it was Everything all at once.
It was as a roaring, crashing wave, obliterating the nothing in an instant.
But in its violent suddenness, it created, instead of nothing, the shuddering chaos known as the Dwolma.
The Moment sat at the centre of the Dwolma and the Moment was the Dwolma.
And the Moment was afraid and could find no peace.
And so the Moment began to bring order to the chaos, which was the Dwolma, which was the Moment.
It began by creating Heaven.
Heaven was a calmness in the midst of chaos.
But the Moment found the calmness of Heaven only served to accentuate the shuddering chaos beyond its edges.
And so the Moment created another heaven.
But this was not enough; still it only served to accentuate the seething chaos of the Dwolma.
And so the Moment created another heaven.
Even so, it was not enough.
And so the Moment created a multitude of heavens.
And even though there were now so many heavens the Dwolma was as a ribbon threading through the slim places between them, it was still not enough.
And so the Moment created within each heaven a wealth of distractions: mountains, meadows and seas; deserts, forests and swamps; valleys, tundras and plateaus.
And it was not enough. Still, it was not enough.
And so the Moment created the gods of each heaven. And to the Moment’s delight, the gods, because they were of the Moment, began their own makings.
Skies, stars, worlds.
And they made of each world a heaven, with its own mountains, meadows and seas; deserts, forests and swamps; valleys, tundras and plateaus.
And as the Moment had made the gods of each heaven, the gods of each heaven made the peoples of each world.
And as the gods were of the Moment, so the peoples of each world were of the Moment, though the Moment was made weak in them, as blood is made weak in water.
The Weak Moment that is in all the peoples is known as the Glyst.
Madec mops his bowl with a piece of bread.
“There are pages waiting to be filled after that,” he says. “And then a single page, itself incomplete.”
The Dwolma, stretched thin between the Heavens of the Moment’s making and the skies, stars and worlds of the gods’ making, grew resentful. Once, there had only been the Moment and the Dwolma, and they had been of one another. Now the Dwolma seemed hardly anything at all. And resentment turned to anger. Anger to fury. And the Dwolma remembered when the Moment had been afraid of the seething, shuddering chaos. And the Dwolma wished that it were so again.
The Dwolma, having observed the Moment’s makings, had learnt something of the art itself, and so set to forging its own creations.
The Dwolma made its own heaven, which it called Efeld-Drah, which means Web of Dust. And Efeld-Drah was as a thread that wound through the spaces between all the heavens of the Moment’s making. And the Dwolma populated Efeld-Drah with its own gods. And the Dwolma’s gods made their own world, which they called G’medella, which means Madness. And G’medella was not as a sphere, but as a thread that wound through the spaces between all the worlds of the Moment’s gods’ making. And the Dwolma’s gods populated G’medella with its own peoples.
And amongst the peoples of the world created by the gods of Efeld-Drah are the Cwalee.
And chief amongst the gods of Efeld-Drah is the Gravene.
“And that is all the book has yielded so far,” says Madec. “It doesn’t even have a title or an author yet. Just the words I have told to you.”
I realise I haven’t touched my stew and eat a spoonful out of politeness more than appetite.
“We should go,” says Ethra. “It will be dark soon and I would have this done.”
My head is so full of heavens and gods and worlds that it takes me a second to assemble her words into a meaning.
“You are sure?” says Madec. “That you wish to be rid of the Glyst?”
“Not rid,” says Ethra. “Free. Free of it.”
“Then you are right. We should go now.”
“Aren’t you going to try to persuade her otherwise, Madec?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “It is her Glyst. Her life. Her choice. It is not for me or anyone to gainsay that. No matter how much will be lost as a consequence. I have been a slave of bad people and a slave of good people. In both cases, I was still a slave. And to be a slave is to be without choice.”
I think of Cass, the scars on his body. I think of how I fear the Jarl, how even my father, strong and skilled, fears the Jarl.
I sigh.
“If you are sure, Ethra,” I say.
“I am,” she replies.
But, for an instant, I think I see a flicker of doubt.
“You are?”
“I am.”
Perhaps I imagined it.
“I will tell you more on the way to the docks,” says Madec. “I will tell you of the Book of Tungol Witt.”
As we leave his tower, Madec draws his sword and tells me to have my bow ready.
“It is not safe now,” he says.
“It wasn’t safe before,” I say, remembering the rat thing.
“It is less so now.”
“Good to know.” And then I wonder why Madec has his sword drawn when he could set fire to any attackers with ease. “Why the sword?”
“My Glyst is exhausted for the next few hours. Such a feat as the one you witnessed is draining.”
“So, you were bluffing earlier?”
“I was.”
“I could have put an arrow in you and there would have been little you could have done about it?”
“Nothing I could have done about it, in point of fact. The Glyst is unreliable and inconsistent. A certain amount of bluster is sometimes necessary.”
I recall Cass’s blather about Luthyl, the Spirit of Love, and Glystspores. Bluster can indeed be useful.
“Who is Tungol Witt?” I ask.
“Not ‘is’, ‘was’,” says Madec. “He was a prophet. A seer.”
“He saw the future?”
“He fancied he did, And I fancy he was right.”
“And what did he see?”
“Among other things, he saw now,” says Madec. “He wrote many years ago. Decades, perhaps centuries ago. His far future was our present. He wrote of how the Cwalee would come to our world. And he was right. He wrote of how the Cwalee would come and drain the Glyst from all the Maradyns of Utlath, of how they would drain the Glyst from all the Maradyns of the great cities of the world.”
Somewhere, something howls. The howl echoes. Or it is answered by another howl. It is impossible to tell which.
“But the Cwalee invasion was only the beginning, according to Witt’s visions. They did not come because they hungered for the Glyst. They came with the purpose of taking the Glyst from the world.”
“Why?” asks Ethra.
We arrive at the place where the rat thing attacked. There is little left of it now. What hasn’t turned to ash is being devoured by rats of normal proportions, except for their tails, which are absurdly long—ten times the length of thei
r bodies.
“To render the world defenceless,” Madec continues. “So that the Gravene might take it with ease. As it has taken other worlds.”
“Other worlds?”
“Yes. Many. And other heavens. Before it takes a world, the Gravene takes its heaven. Its heaven and its gods. That is its strategy. According to Witt, anyway. The gods are powerful, but they are few. And while the peoples of a world might call upon the gods for support, the gods do not call upon the peoples. First, the Gravene sends the Cwalee to the world, to drain it of its Glyst. The Gravene goes away for a time and forges from the leeched Glyst a weapon. The Bord-e-Lak. Next it turns the Bord-e-Lak on the gods, destroying them and laying waste to their heaven. And then, finally, when all of that is done, it takes the world. Witt wrote that he saw this happen time and again, in waking, fevered dreams. He saw this happen to other worlds and then, in his final vision, to ours.”
“But why didn’t the gods stop the Cwalee from taking the Glyst?” says Ethra. “Then the Gravene would not be able to create this Bord-e-Lak and turn it against the gods.”
“Witt asked this, too,” says Madec. “He wrote that he asked the question of the ghost of a long-dead god. The dead god, ‘in a voice that was as light and music mixed’, told him that the gods have always been troubled by the Glyst, threatened by it, resentful of it, and when the Cwalee came to take it away from the peoples, they were secretly pleased and did nothing, and so were responsible through inaction for their own downfall. Witt calls this the Great Mistake, and he saw it repeated time and again. Dead worlds, dead gods, dead heavens.”
Dead heavens.
I remember what I saw through Eftas Hilder’s eyes. That grey place with its faceless men with bodies seemingly made from sticky, steaming rope. I recall what Cass said, and Ethra and even Hilder himself.
Cass: There were no Unrim. And there was no River of Honey.
Ethra: Tiny grey mushrooms sprouted from everything. I could feel them on my tongue. I could feel them under my eyelids when I blinked. It was silent.
Hilder: I can still taste it. It tasted as it looked, grey and damp.
They were describing a dead heaven.
“How long after a heaven falls does its world follow?” I ask.
