by Kai Meyer
“Is there a ray around here anywhere for me?” Griffin looked up at the sky, where fewer than a handful of the powerful creatures floated. Their sharpshooters were firing bullets down onto the attackers from the air.
“Most of us are fighting on the other side of the city,” said d’Artois. “They’ve broken through the wall over there. Count Aristotle has fallen and many good men with him. But as well as we can, we’re keeping Tyrone’s people from the road to the upper quarter from the air. So far we’re still managing.” He looked over his shoulder and saw that his marksman was finished reloading. “Climb on, Griffin! I can set you down on the landing area.”
Griffin didn’t wait to be asked twice. He hurried over the outspread wings of the ray and climbed into the saddle between d’Artois and the marksman. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I’m more useful as a ray rider than on the wall.”
“We may be desperate,” replied d’Artois, as he made the ray ascend, “but we’re only defeated when we give up. You’re a brave fellow, Griffin. I—and many others as well—have heard what you did for us out there. It’s a wonder that you survived—but perhaps there’s more behind it. If you infect us all with your luck and your courage, boy, maybe we still have a chance.”
Griffin had turned red as the captain spoke, and he was glad that neither d’Artois nor his marksman could see his face now.
The ray bore them a little way up the mountain, away from the embattled wall and the broad square. Then it began to circle the coral mountain. Griffin saw that the battle was raging around the entire city like a boiling whitecap. On the other side, the throng of dueling and shooting men had moved up the mountain, but a whole crowd of ray riders were holding the attackers in check. The wall was broken, but Tyrone’s men had no chance against the concentrated attacks from the air. As long as the defensive positions didn’t give in other places so the ray riders had to divide up, the damage below remained limited.
“Captain?” Griffin asked.
“We’re just there. There’ll be a ray for you down in that square.”
“While I was gone, did you hear anything about Jolly?”
The soldier shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“No sign at all? No weakening of the Maelstrom? Or…I don’t know…”
D’Artois shrugged and let the ray descend. “We have no scouts outside anymore. I have no idea what would happen if the Maelstrom were to suddenly close. If the polliwogs’ mission had succeeded and had some sort of direct consequences for us, we’d probably notice it in one way or another, don’t you think?”
Griffin nodded thoughtfully, but in truth his thoughts were already elsewhere: outside over the sea, over a roaring chasm of rotating, foaming masses of water. And with a girl who was opposing that all alone.
The captain let him climb down to the ground and then guided his ray up into the air again.
Griffin waved to him, then turned to the handful of rays lying with wings outspread on the north edge of the small square. Their riders were dead or wounded, and not a few of the animals had been wounded by kobalin lances or pistol shots.
He chose a ray that was only slightly injured, scratched it on its shallow head, and climbed into the saddle.
“Here, catch!” cried one of the stall boys taking care of the animals. He threw Griffin a saber. “We have no more sharpshooters left on the ground. You’ll have to manage alone.”
Griffin shoved the saber into a sheath on the saddle. With a whistle and a whispered command he made the ray rise in a narrow semicircle. Dust puffed up beneath him as the broad wings whipped up the air over the ground.
Moments later he was on his way to the other side of the city. From above he cast a last look at the defenders fighting on the wall. Finally he turned the ray around, flew out over the water, and rode over the fuzzy roof of the fog ring as over a meadow of white grass, until he saw the open sea lying beneath him.
In the far distance mist veiled the horizon like a gray mountain, whose tip constantly shifted, rose, and then collapsed, flowing apart and again taking shape. The creeping fingers of the Maelstrom would soon reach Aelenium.
“Fly as fast as you can,” he cried to the ray, but really it was more a command to himself. “Take me to the Maelstrom.”
Soledad ran a pirate through with her saber as he climbed the wall waving his blade in the certainty of victory.
What a blockhead, she thought bitterly. It’s really an army of blockheads that’s going to defeat us. That made the defeat even more painful, even though the outcome was still the same.
Walker and Buenaventure were fighting on the crest of the wall, as if they’d just hurried fresh into the battle. Yet they were as exhausted as Soledad, and the strength they were using and throwing at their adversaries was nothing but a last spasm.
Many defenders had fallen, first in the battle with the kobalins and now in the battle against the pirates and the cannibals. Parts of the wall, it was said, were already overrun, over on the other side of the city. Count Aristotle, who was leading the defense there, had been killed, and with him several human members of the council. It was only a question of time as to when the first enemies would get up to the top and would storm into the refuge halls in the center. With the women and children, Aelenium’s last hopes would die. What sense would it make to duel for victory on the wall if those for whom they were fighting were killed by the barbarian hordes?
Soledad was accustomed to pirate raids, but she had never seen a battle of this scale. Nothing of all this had to do with honor, with pride, or with heroism.
Soledad didn’t feel like a heroine when she killed an antagonist, only like someone who’d won another minute or two; she doubted that it was any different with her enemies. The cannibals who’d been stripped of all humanity by rumors and legends finally showed themselves to be ordinary men who fought and fell for their cause.
Certainly they were horrible to look at, with their painted bodies and grisly trophies dangling at their shoulders and hips. But in certain ways they resembled the kobalins, for they also were being driven into battle by others.
Tyrone had drawn the leaders of the tribes to his side, had taken part in their rituals, honored their customs, and finally made himself their king.
And now his subjects were dying for him in droves, blinded by his promises, led astray and made use of. Victory might await them at the end, but at what price? The Maelstrom would make no distinction between them and the other humans. He would brush them from the face of the earth before they could recognize the extent of his deceit.
All the while the winged serpent god raged among them like a demon, spreading the same horror among friend and foe. The inhabitants of the city had him to thank that the wall was still standing on this side of Aelenium. Many arrows were sticking out of his scaly body, but his pointed tail and, even more, his fearsome jaws sowed multiple deaths among the attackers.
Soledad had expected that the cannibals would panic at the appearance of the serpent, but that had quickly proven to be rash hope. When the first arrows pierced the serpent skin, the tribal warriors lost their reverence and threw themselves against the creature in desperate waves. Some inflicted wounds on him, others bagged a crimson feather from his wings. But there was no time for any of them to savor the triumph.
Soledad’s arm gradually grew numb, her wounds became harder to ignore. Her entire body hurt, and her sight dimmed even in the midst of a duel. Her reserves were dwindling.
Something had to happen. Otherwise far more than just her life would end on this day.
The ray shelter at the top of the coral mountain cone was empty when the Ghost Trader walked through the great door. Even the young animals were taking part in the battle.
All the stable boys were down in the city with their charges to provide for the wounded rays in squares and in broad streets. All that was left behind up here was a damp, slightly fishy smell.
Outside it was long after noon and the sun was deep, so that
its beams only reached the edge of the circular, fifty-foot-wide opening in the ceiling. Up there the edge glowed like a golden ring and reflected in the pools of water on the floor.
The Ghost Trader strode across the empty hall and approached the stairs that led in a broad sweep up the curving walls to the opening. He’d just climbed the first few steps when his eye fell on one of the pits that gaped all along the base of the walls.
He’d been mistaken when he assumed that all the ray berths were empty. A single animal was still there, in a pit at a slant under the stairs, and even from the steps the Trader could tell by the leathery skin and the wheezing breathing that this was a particularly old ray. Obviously it was too weak to fly outside with the others.
The Ghost Trader hesitated for a moment, then he climbed down the stairs again, went to the edge of the pit, and squatted down. His knees ached with the motion, his entire body seemed to groan and to creak.
The animal was lying comfortably in the water, with outspread wings, through which went a gentle waving motion with each panting breath.
“Well, old fellow,” said the Trader, and he had the irritating feeling that he was talking to himself. “I guess you’d have liked to be outside with the others, wouldn’t you? That’s the hard thing once you learn where and to whom you belong—you can never get free of it, whether you want to or not.” He smiled sadly. “It’s no different with me.”
He looked up and along the course of the stairs to the roof opening. A plateau extended all around it, the highest point of the sea star city. In order to really call up all the spirits of the dead gods, he had to see the entire city spread out below him, with every corner in which one of them had died.
The animal wheezed even louder when it noticed the visitor. The Ghost Trader didn’t know if the ray sensed his meaning. Probably not really, he thought, for he was a god of men, not of animals. This differentiated him and all other gods of Aelenium from the three spinner women, who had arisen from this world itself, from every plant, every stone, and every animal.
They were born of the dreams, wishes, and necessities of every fiber of this world—out of things over which Forefather had never had real influence. He’d created the world, but he hadn’t understood it.
The Ghost Trader knew that Forefather had envied the spinners. They had been this world’s first step into independence from its creator. The child had detached itself from its father and chosen its own way.
He stood up with a sigh, when he saw that the ray was moving on the bottom of the pit. Wearily it tried several beats of its wings, which after several failed attempts finally lifted it from the ground. Water dripped from its body down into the puddles as it rose out of the pit until its head was at a level with the Trader’s face.
“Are you trying to tell me something, my friend?” The Trader felt the gaze of the dark eyes, which still seemed young in comparison to him, yet must be ancient for a ray. A strange excitement seized him as he watched this animal rise above itself and its infirmity.
The ray’s wings beat very slowly, just enough to hold the heavy body over the pit. Now the animal sank a little and turned itself with its left wing toward the Ghost Trader.
“I should mount?” He considered it briefly, then nodded. “Why not? If you carry me up to the plateau.”
He took a seat on the unsaddled back of the old ray and thought once more as he did so how similar he and this animal were. He also was leaning against fate and nature, just like this ray under him. Warmth went through him at the idea and something almost like a feeling of friendship toward the brave animal.
They rose through the opening in the ceiling into the outdoor air. The beams of the late afternoon sun caught them and cast them in bronze as the ray flew forward and set the handler on the edge of the wide plateau. With rattling breath, the animal lay down on the ground again.
A few heartbeats later it was dead. It was not the strain that had ended its life but its own wish: It had been of use one last time, then fell asleep contented and peaceful.
The Ghost Trader crouched down again, stroked the motionless body, and silently took leave of it. If this meeting was a sign, it couldn’t have been any clearer.
It was time to say farewell to everything here.
He stood up and turned his gaze to the north, toward the broad band of whirling mists that announced the monstrous breadth of the Maelstrom. In front of it a dark dot was moving through the air, a ray that was quickly distancing itself from the sea star city and riding toward the Maelstrom. On the ray sat a figure.
The Ghost Trader surmised who it was. Griffin might have felt that things in Aelenium were approaching their end. Probably he couldn’t stand waiting and doing nothing while Jolly wrestled against the powers of the Maelstrom.
If she was still alive.
The Ghost Trader was gradually coming to doubt that.
With the silver ring in his hand, he approached the outer edge of the ledge and began to circle the plateau once. As he went, his eye skimmed over all the quarters of Aelenium, over the roofs and the crooked streets, through the plumes of smoke and swarms of gulls and ray riders.
Murmuring, he began the invocation.
Where All Magic Ends
Rolled up like a baby in its mother’s womb, eyes closed, lips pressed firmly together, Jolly floated inside the glowing pearl just large enough to carry a human being. Warmth surrounded her, a comfortable feeling of safety. She’d reached the place she’d been trying to get to all along, a place where she felt welcome, that filled her with happiness and peace and security.
The magic pearl had broken through the thundering wall of the water column and was now in the heart of the Maelstrom, in a black abyss, which no longer filled Jolly with fear, for the darkness only strengthened the light of the pearl and the beauty inherent in it.
Jolly dreamed once more all the dreams of her former life, rolled up together in a rush of millions of pictures, pressed into one single moment, a powerful explosion of colors, smells, and sounds. Voices in her head, many faces, circling her like mosquitoes around a blazing fire. And yes, she felt herself blazing, burning hot with power, boiling over in the storm of feelings that she had once felt and that now welled up in her again, happiness and sorrow and suffering and—
So much suffering.
Her friends were dying.
Blinking, Jolly opened her eyes, and the light, which until then had only come through her eyelids filtered, blinded her like a glowing blade. Instead of brightness there was suddenly darkness. And in this moment of blindness, of seeing absolutely nothing, she knew the truth.
She was caught. The Maelstrom had swallowed her.
The dreams turned to nightmares, no more pictures, only the bundled power of all anxieties and cares that descended upon her. Memories tormented her, not the emotions of long-forgotten dream images but the thoughts of things just past: Aina’s likeness, which dissolved to a rotating vortex and sucked her into itself together with the pearl. And Munk, who’d called up the pearl, blinded on his part, not by magical light but by the Maelstrom’s enticements. It wasn’t power that he was seeking but—and in that he resembled all others, Jolly too—only his place in the world and a little security.
Jolly opened her mouth and screamed. It was a long, shrill scream, and it broke through the close curvature of the pearl and echoed out into the dense darkness.
She kicked and hit around her, but nothing helped. She saw no up and no down, only emptiness around her. She guessed what this was, recognized that a piece of the Mare Tenebrosum dwelled in the interior of the Maelstrom, whether the whirlpool had repudiated the masters of that world or not. Where did the water go that he sucked into himself? Quite certainly not to the bottom of the sea, for then they couldn’t have approached him for many miles. So there was still a connection to the Mare whether the Maelstrom wanted it or not, and of course, because he himself was the connection. He might live, think, plan the destruction of an entire world—but he’d still be
en created at one time as a passage, as a tool for crossing, as the portal for the masters of the Mare Tenebrosum. Something of them was also in him, and the darkness was part of their world.
Though she couldn’t be certain, Jolly imagined that she was floating between the worlds, in the middle of a whirling tunnel connecting the one plane of existence with the other.
Suddenly she saw a point of light glow in the darkness, become larger, unfold itself. Trapped in the pearl, she had to watch as he rushed toward her.
It was Munk. The glowing brightness surrounding him came from the mussel he was holding in his right hand. It was the same mussel that Aina had given him, the wonderful, dangerous thing that whispered to him when he held it to his ear.
“Jolly, don’t be afraid,” said a voice, which she only recognized as his after a moment. He came to a stop a mere arm’s length away from the pearl, floating in the middle of the darkness. His lips were moving without another word being audible. It was as if she heard what he said before he said it, and it took her a while to understand that the pearl was the reason for it. The glowing sphere that imprisoned her refracted and distorted time; what she heard might be being said at precisely the same time, but what she saw had really happened a little bit earlier. That seemed a meaningless detail, given the situation she was in, but it intensified Jolly’s feeling that she’d been transplanted into a dream.
“I’d never do anything to you.” Munk’s voice sounded in her ears, and only then did his mouth move outside the pearl.
“Where are we?” she asked, after she’d swallowed down the flood of vituperation that had been the first thing to come to her mind.
“Inside the Maelstrom.”
“I know that.” Did she really know that? Anyway, it had been her first supposition. “But what is this, this darkness?”
