World's End

by Will Elliott

  ‘I’m here,’ she would assure him, and will herself to be more clear to him.

  ‘Was it true, Beauty, when you said you loved me?’

  She laughed. ‘It was true, and is still true. But love means different things to me from what it does to you. And to all your kind.’

  Now and then Invia came to examine Dyan, flying briefly beside him and peering with faces seeming more and more grotesque and inhuman. But they did not ever see Siel, nor could they keep up with Dyan’s speed for long. ‘You spoke to them?’ said Siel after one such visit.

  ‘I gave them instruction, but they ignored it. Higher powers than I already have them at work.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Finding me, Beauty. For they know I am in service to the symbol you hold. And they are seeking it.’

  ‘They won’t find me.’

  ‘Perhaps not, Beauty. And yet I may not hide from them forever.’

  ‘What will they do to you when they find you?’

  ‘I know not, Beauty.’

  Shadow did not stir in the charm about her neck … or if he did, she could not feel it. When they stopped for rest she dreamed of him. He asked her questions in that dream, simple things a child might ask, and she explained as would a patient mother. Why am I here? he had asked her.

  In the dream she’d known the answer, and she’d told it to him. But upon waking for another morning’s flight, the answer had slipped from her memory.

  She reached World’s End a little over a day before the dragons came. From the ruins of an old wagon she made a lean-to among thickets bunched on harsh rocky turf, tying thorns and weeds over it for camouflage. A groundman hole nearby was just big enough for her to hide in, should the need arise. On sight of it she wondered with a start what had become of Tii. Perhaps the groundman knew where she’d gone, and was on his way here.

  Dyan waited without speaking, his eyes ever on the northern sky, never to the south. He kept his body pressed low to the ground, his scales coloured to blend in with the surrounds. He seemed far more nervous about being at World’s End than she was.

  That force along the Great Dividing Road – which Anfen had called the ‘push’ – had done much to speed their flight. Now the push had grown so strong it made standing by the Road impossible. Even where she’d set up her camp, two hundred paces away, she could feel the edge of that invisible force. It made the trees and shrubs lean south, and made the stones, sticks and gravel slide slowly across the ground.

  A similar force had to be at work in the South, for their clouds too were pushed along their own Great Dividing Road, whatever name the haiyens gave it. Above that point where both Roads met, clouds rushed together with equal speed, creating a huge winding coil of white, grey and black.

  If the haiyens supposedly protecting her were there, they were too well-hidden to see. The wind and the soft heavy growl of Dyan’s breathing were the only sounds. ‘I can provide you physical pleasures if you should need them to pass the time, Beauty,’ he said. ‘I have not lost those talents.’

  She laughed. ‘Not necessary.’

  ‘If you change your answer—’

  ‘I won’t, Dyan. Drop it.’

  ‘You have faded from me again, Beauty. Your body seems transparent as clear water. Will you tell me yet what magic is at play?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Dyan. I don’t think you would understand.’

  ‘Are you hungry, Beauty? Shall I hunt game for you?’

  ‘Please do.’

  A ripple went over his scales as the colour went out of them and he became almost invisible. He flew off, only to return within a few minutes with nothing for her to eat. She could tell something had disturbed him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dragons come,’ he said. His neck was arched back, and ears were flat to his head as he gazed north. ‘Many of them.’

  ‘How far are they?’

  ‘An hour’s flight, by their measure. They fly not as fast as I do.’

  ‘Can you sense them if they are so far away?’

  ‘There are some among the Eight. They can be felt from a long way away. They could keep their presence hidden, but for now they do not trouble to.’

  ‘The Eight?’ She sat up. ‘How many?’

  ‘I sense four, Beauty.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘There are gods too, surely watching their passage. Beauty, you must not stay here. It will not be safe for you.’

  She laughed. ‘They won’t see me. What do they want, Dyan?’

  Dyan’s voice went urgent and his scales turned off-white. She’d not seen that colour in him before, but she knew it meant he was genuinely terrified. ‘Beauty, listen. If it is true that you may hide from Shilen and me whenever you wish, you must know she and I are not of the same stature as those who now approach. They perceive much more than do Shilen and I. Whatever human magic keeps you hidden will not work on them.’

  ‘They won’t see me, Dyan. Trust me on that.’

  ‘They will know I am here, regardless.’

  ‘If you want to go, go. Until they’re gone. Then you must return to me.’

  She had hardly said the words before he’d bolted off for the South, a blur across the sky crossing World’s End in seconds.

  Siel turned her eyes north, watching where the Road met the horizon. For what seemed a long time there was nothing but the wind, blowing in steadily harder gusts. She began to wonder if Dyan had misled her, for more than an hour passed with no sign of approaching dragons. Then the skies darkened with a rushing shape, with what seemed a cape of black cloud blending out to form long stretched arms and an enormous face like a tribal mask of pale bone. It was Nightmare … but she had never seen his eyes glowing with this blazing red, nor seen lightning flicker this way from his outstretched hands. The Spirit hovered off in the north-eastern sky.

  The temperature quickly dropped; the wind picked up. There came a massive continent of cloud from the west with – just vaguely – a face imprinted in it. Perhaps this was Tempest. Siel had never seen that god in person before, but what she now saw reminded her of many depictions.

  On the horizon beyond Tempest’s clouds, a huge bulky mass of stone had come up where it had not stood minutes before. It had peaks like a crown at its head and a vast mossy stretch of vines hung across stone features just vaguely resembling a face. Mountain did not simply stand – it prowled forwards with steps which shook the ground, only to blink out of sight in seconds, its rumbling silenced, the shaking ground still again.

  If this place was to be a battleground between the Spirits and dragons, Siel knew she had made a mistake in remaining here. She’d not be able to run far enough now to get to safe ground from the kinds of magic likely to be wielded. It did not greatly matter if she perished now, but she had to wonder why the haiyens had sent her here. What part could she possibly play in a battle such as this?

  And at last the dragons lumbered into view. The four great ones flew side by side, all at the same slow pace, their huge wings moving up and down with a motion slow and mechanical, the tips of their clawed feet seeming to scrape the ground. She felt the incredible ancient power emanate from them, felt the stirring of old familiar fear pulling at her. She closed her eyes and brought herself to a state of love which was reasoned thought as much as it was a feeling; one spark of the flame feeding the other until both burned warm. She bore nothing but gratitude for what these incredible creatures had done for her – they were the hammer and anvil sharpening the blade of her soul, sharpening of all humanity’s collective soul, giving humanity wisdom unattainable any other way than by this suffering. She beheld the savage wise beauty in them … she understood them, or at least an aspect of them, perhaps better than they understood themselves. And suddenly within her – so suddenly Dyan may well have been right after all to call it magic – there was no fear. Why not go out onto the Road to wait for them?

  So she went as close as she could, and though she stood some way from the Road, the push drove h
er back, her boots sliding on the rocky turf. The wind threw her hair around so that it whipped her face with little stings. For the first time she felt Shadow stirring in his prison. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, cupping the charm in her hands. She had no idea whether or not he could hear her.

  Behind the great dragons were a score or more lesser ones, the largest among them about a quarter the size of the greats. Their heads swept the land. They were seeking her, she knew … and seeking Shadow. They wouldn’t find her; they wouldn’t see her. One of the great ones turned its head and bellowed a warning to the Spirits who watched. Siel laughed in amazement as the power of its voice went through her and shook her bones.

  They were upon her. The one who had called out flew right past her, right over her. Its claws dragging on the ground dug ridges. Siel dropped to her knees, hardly containing her awe and love. Its scales seemed like dull silver at a distance; up close she saw a thousand glittering points of colour all over it. Its claws scraped the ground to either side of her. There were many varieties of its fellows behind it, shapes and colours of otherworldly beauty, power beyond human measure. Their eyes too swept to either side of the Road, swept right over her. She no longer existed in their world. As animals hear sounds beyond human hearing, she was a sight beyond their seeing.

  At the same steady pace they went to where the Wall had stood. The gods did nothing. Nightmare howled in helpless rage as the dragons crossed to the South, and at the same steady pace flew beyond the foreign world’s horizon.

  53

  SHADOW

  When Eric returned to Aziel’s chamber, Far Gaze sat outside the door with a smile on his face. ‘Banished,’ he said with clear pleasure.

  ‘If she’s still lady of this place, I’m still its lord. I hereby unbanish you.’

  ‘She’s about to lose any semblance of authority. You too, most likely, but I doubt you’ll grieve for that. Loup and I spoke quietly with Faul. It took ten minutes. The half-giants are equal partners now in our new coalition. The people have overtaken the lower levels anyway. We are just aligning with them as Aziel should have as soon as they began arriving. They’re going through the food stores and the armouries as we speak. Faul’s people let them in.’

  ‘None of that matters now. I just spoke with Shilen. I think they’re going to wake the Dragon.’

  ‘Who is?’

  He told Far Gaze of his encounter with the dragons. The moment he’d finished it seemed enormous hands lifted the entire castle and wrenched it side to side. Eric fell into the wall, then away, then back into it. It took a long time for the quake to cease. Even then, a faint background shiver remained.

  ‘Time we departed,’ said Far Gaze, rubbing away blood with his sleeve from where his head had struck the doorway. He nodded to where cracks had appeared in the walls, roof and floor. It was as if there’d only been a shell covering them. Parts of that shell now began to peel and fall away. Frowning, Far Gaze went to one such jutting piece about the size of his own torso. He pulled it free. The wall beneath it glittered with many colours, like gems with light run across them. They were large scales, scales the size of those which people crushed up and consumed for visions. The scales mined from the ground at World’s End.

  Eric tapped them with his knuckle. Colour splashed with the impact. Loup’s voice played in his memory: This little scale, all crushed up, is made of the great god-beast’s very stuff …

  The walls’ and roof’s cracks spread further. Far Gaze went to the other wall and wrenched away some more of the white shell, thick as a finger length. There were scales beneath that too. ‘I see,’ he murmured.

  ‘You see what?’ said Eric.

  ‘We are to leave this place, right now. We’ll ride your drake.’

  ‘You see what, Far Gaze?’

  ‘We have been mistaken for a very long time. The Dragon is not below the castle. It is the castle.’

  ‘But how …?’

  ‘I am not the world’s only shape-shifter. It’s changing form, right now. It is awakening. Take us to the drake. Now!’

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell the others?’

  Far Gaze rolled his eyes but followed Eric to the doorway. Within Aziel’s chamber, as outside it, the walls were breaking and peeling, revealing colourful scales beneath. ‘Get out,’ yelled Far Gaze to those still in the room. To Eric he said, ‘Satisfied? A daring rescue.’

  With no more delay the two of them ran through the shaking castle to find Case. Once mounted, they flew up to the high shelf of turf behind the castle, where a green valley sat between two sheer walls. The grass had been littered with corpses when he’d first seen it; now lightstone and skystone rocks were scattered over it, in parts ankle-thick.

  Domudess was there already, standing at the top of a set of ancient stairs cut into the sheer cliff face. The wizard’s bald head bobbed in polite greeting as Case set down in the lightstone litter nearby, then he gazed serenely as before at the vastness below. Their high vantage point seemed miraculously stable compared with the shivering castle, which made the world shiver along with it. It seemed to happen in bursts, but in the lulls it only ever calmed; the shaking never ceased completely. Now and then the ground rippled with waves they could see, as though it became for brief moments a heaving sea.

  ‘It could take days to fully awaken,’ said Domudess. ‘Or longer.’

  ‘Or three more minutes,’ said Far Gaze.

  Unconcerned for all this, Case lay down and went to sleep.

  Domudess walked a good way back from where they stood watching and opened his leather pouch. He tipped out the handful of sand therein and spread it across the ground. In a few minutes his tower materialised from the ground up, as if poured from the sky above by invisible hands. The moat’s water burbled up through the grass. Domudess went inside; his silhouette was soon visible from the top window.

  Eric and Far Gaze stayed at the edge of the world and watched. It was an hour or two before cracks could be seen on the castle’s great round domes and towers, spreading all across it in webs. Small pieces of the shell broke away, before great sheets of the wall’s outer coating began to slip free and crash to the ground, revealing a scaled hide beneath. A tower leaned slowly away, then fell in pieces to the ground.

  ‘I don’t understand why the dragons did it,’ Eric said.

  Far Gaze smiled. ‘Do you think Shilen was liable to tell you the true reason for their waking their Parent? The dragons fear the gods of the South. With good reason. I have seen those gods and they are terrible. If the Pendulum were to swing back and forth to its conclusion, before their Parent woke, they would have to confront That Which Governs Cycles of Events. And the other gods, all of them terrible beyond my power to describe to you, Eric. They surely fear their Parent as much as those gods. No, from their view, it is better to risk their Parent, which they would have to face anyway, and bypass the encounter with those Southern gods. Shilen would not speak to a human of the dragons’ fear. That is why they have chosen to cross the boundary and wake their Parent early.’

  ‘It’s all about to end, isn’t it?’

  Far Gaze sighed wearily. ‘It is all about to change. Knowing this world as I do, that cannot be a bad thing.’

  ‘This world is a small part in the vastness,’ Eric murmured, not sure where he’d heard those words before. They seemed right to him, wherever they had come from.

  In Levaal South, the world shook just as hard as in the North, for the same doom was upon it.

  Blain had said in the tower that there was a Dragon-god in the other world; he was wrong about that, at least in part. An entity of that stature did indeed exist there and, at the same time as the North realm’s Dragon-god awoke, the South realm’s governing power too was rising from its slumber.

  The conflict between these two great forces had never truly ended. Rather, it had gone to the realms and arenas of thought while their bodies slumbered. Their worlds’ creatures, people and events were as immaterial to them as a man�
�s thoughts seem to him. Neither entity controlled all actions and deeds within its world; each had laid out laws of existence which its inhabitants were bound to follow. But although neither entity had complete control of the small parts of their realities, both entities had the ability to sweep from existence all things within the limits of their realm, just as easily as a person sweeps objects from a table to set it with new things, with little care for what may break, and what may survive the change.

  Eric, Far Gaze and Domudess were too close to the Dragon when it rose. All those human beings, half-giants, Invia, and others who were also too close, effectively ceased being themselves for a short while. They ceased existing altogether, as if deleted from a story’s pages.

  There was no measuring the time the Dragon-god’s awakening took; for it governed time, it was not governed by time. When Eric, Domudess and the others returned to existence and returned to themselves, it may have been centuries, or aeons, or just moments that had passed.

  When Eric was aware of himself again, the world’s surface seemed completely liquid, coated by no more than a thin layer of colour: mountains and forests bending as wildly as shadows on a disturbed pond. Something moved through it all, something so enormous that it seemed to move slowly. Each step thrust great ripples in all directions. Lightning seemed to flicker from one instant to the next, dark-light-dark-light … great enormous bunches of forked flashing light spearing and flickering to mark each passing second.

  The sight of the beast was too much to understand: those watching had nothing in their consciousness to compare it to. They could not even be in awe of it … for now, it was all they knew; it was nature, time, life, death, it was them or may as well have been. What were they, but minuscule aspects of it, observing its own motion? It passed now through this realm, whose reality imposed itself through its own incomprehensible dreams. It fed upon the energy of all things here, though none – not even the brood or the gods – knew they were fed from. It was and always had been a nightmare realm, a hell realm for those other observation points who called themselves human, or half-giants, or groundmen, or other names.