It had been a long time since he had been so close to the Sorcerer. He had forgotten how disturbed things could become.
“I understand, I will not try to strike you down,” he said simply, indicating his compliance with open palms. “I will see you.”
The rain slowed. Each droplet tumbled languidly through the air, as if gravity had eased its pull. Zarost knew that was not the case—Ametheus was stretching Time. The fires burned too slowly, swaying instead of flickering. Zarost caught a glimpse of a figure standing in front of the flames, a fleeting shadow, but it was gone. Time slowed further. The figure reappeared, pale metallic clothes shimmering for a fleeting moment.
The instant passed. There was nothing again.
The raindrops hovered in the air, silver jewels hanging on an invisible web.
In the slowed space, nothing seemed to move, but Zarost was aware of time crawling forward. The figure reappeared, blocking the flames, and as Time halted, so the Sorcerer remained. Zarost understood why he hadn’t seen him before. He had been looking too fast. Ametheus was only partially present in Zarost’s world, one fraction of an instant in many. He was cycling from one broken world to another, keeping himself in all of them, and in none.
He was as heavy-set as ever, broad-shouldered, clad in a fraying cloth shirt with a great tooth-studded belt. His trousers were woven thickly to appear as chainmail, or perhaps it was chainmail which he had tried to change to silk. His boots were made from a strong glistening skin, but they were already split at the toes. His red mantle was torn in places. Only his oval headpiece was undamaged, hammered as it was out of bronze. It framed a countenance both handsome and cruel—Seus, the most reckless aspect of Ametheus.
“Well, brother Seus, what do you have to trade?” Zarost asked by way of greeting.
Ametheus smiled. His teeth were white and sharp. “Apart f-from the lives of your f-f-fellows? I have a r-r-riddle ... for you.” The Sorcerer’s stuttered words were distorted by an uneven rhythm, something to do with the warped time. “I t-take a th-thing apart, and k-k-keep all the pieces, yet w-when I put them together again there is always s-s-something missing. What is it?”
Twardy Zarost considered the riddle for a moment. “Anything which lives,” he replied.
“V-very good, Riddler. Now tell me, w-why is that so?”
“Life is not like Matter, it is indivisible. It can only inhabit things which are whole. You cannot dismantle them.”
“Yet we can c-cut off your hand, and y-you will still b-be just as alive.”
“True, but you cannot cut off my head.”
Ametheus looked at Zarost speculatively. “S-so your head holds m-m-more life than your hand?”
“Some things are vital to life, others are not.”
“W-we shall change that.”
“It is impossible to change such rules of life.”
“Hah! W-wizard! Always denying, limiting, p-prohibiting! What if what you s-see is only one k-k-kind of Life, the k-kind which has been imposed upon this universe? I have the m-means to break the rules. Life is about to change and a new God shall have dominion.”
“Who might that be?” asked Zarost, not really wanting to hear the answer. What horror did Ametheus reach for?
“C-count yourself lucky that you w-will be dead before he w-walks Oldenworld.”
“You speak of the Destroyer?” It was as bad as Zarost feared. Ethea had been trapped to raise an even more fundamental God. He had to convince Ametheus that he was wrong. “You believe he will stand beside you? You are wrong. He can never have dominion here. He is a Principle, separated from this plane, with no bridge to cross the divide.”
Ametheus chuckled. “We shall see. We shall see.” His eyes wobbled slightly from side to side, a barely perceptible movement which made Zarost want to look more intently at him—blue eyes, the colour of the sky in spring; beautiful bright eyes. No. He would not allow the Sorcerer to hypnotise him. Madness lay on the far side of those eyes—a mind ruled by Chaos, a place of warped dreams and living nightmares. He shifted his gaze to the Sorcerer’s chest.
“What do you need from me?” Zarost asked.
“I n-need nothing from you, w-wizard!”
“You would not be trying to enchant me now if that were true.”
Ametheus bellowed with laughter. “H-how do you think it is possible for me to m-m-manipulate the world this way? You ... are already enchanted. You believe you live now, but there is no now, no present moment, only before and after. We experience a subset of those times.”
Beyond the edges of the space in which they stood, five shards of altered reality tilted at awkward angles, running from the flames into the surrounding blackness. Six wizards trapped in mirror-glass. Time had halted. What he saw was impossible, but if he was already enchanted, then Ametheus had control of his mind, and that was too terrible to believe. The Sorcerer was feeding on Zarost’s doubts. Zarost found himself focused on the Sorcerer’s blue eyes again. He looked away. “Your power has grown,” Zarost muttered.
“And y-you have grown weak-minded,” Ametheus replied. “Your friends d-d-defend themselves better than y-you do. You are lucky that I am f-feeling generous. I shall g-grant you a dying man’s w-wish. If you could save only one of the w-wizards, who w-would it be?”
The Senior? The Lorewarden? Zarost himself? It was too late for the one who really mattered. Ametheus had taken too much already.
“That choice is no choice at all,” he replied. “How can I choose one wizard over another? Either we all go free, or none of us do.”
“What if it c-could be Syonya?” The world hissed with the static hunger of Chaos. “Yes, I know about S-s-syonya, Riddler. A ... f-f-friend ... told me about your dead s-sister. I have a p-p-piece of time in my c-collectibles that would be v-vvery interesting to you, I th-think. The t-t-time of the election of the second coterie of Kaskanzr.”
Ametheus knew too much. If Zarost could just go back in time to before his sister Syonya was murdered… That was a dream he had tormented himself with forever. He had first studied in the college purely to gain that skill, but discovered to his dismay that shifting time backward would be utter Chaos. How had the Warlock discovered his secret? Zarost was certain Ametheus hadn’t discovered such a personal get on his own. He never took the time to study his enemies, but the Warlock was a different matter altogether.
“I c-can’t g-grant life, but I c-c-can turn back t-time.”
The temptation was terrible. Zarost was trapped in indecision. If Tabitha Serannon had already died then Syonya was the only Lifesinger he could use. Her time was past, but he might have a better chance playing the fates of that time again. He hadn’t done very well with this time, not very well at all. If he could go back, before Syonya’s death, he could have her sing the song differently. Maybe he could save her. Just maybe.
The uncertainty made his toes crawl in the sides of his boots. What if Tabitha had escaped the Sanctuary? He didn’t know enough to risk everything. He couldn’t embrace Chaos the way his adversary could.
Ametheus snarled. “You f-fool, you throw away your last chance. You see, that is the problem with Order. You always try to think for others. You should concern yourself with yourself. You should have p-pleaded for your own life, I might have s-set you free. See how your stupid p-principles work against you? I may return, once I have s-spoken to your friends. If you are still alive, you may wish to b-b-beg for mercy.”
Time turned a fraction of a second forward, and the Sorcerer was gone.
The Lorewarden and the Cosmologer were visible in the nearest shards, where they battled manifestations of Chaos. As Zarost watched, the ends of their jagged slivers of reality shattered into flakes which spun away into the black surrounding mist.
Suddenly the Spiritist was torn in two. The Spiritist, her soft hands thrown up to shield her face, a matronly face, one he’d gown to love over the centuries, painfully innocent in her final moment, her pale eyes wide, her mouth a silent ‘o�
�.
Then the Senior went down.
Zarost couldn’t watch. The Sorcerer was taking the Gyre to pieces. The Senior had been the head of the Gyre, the Spiritist had been its soul and, just like that, their precious heritage of lore was gone. Gone the library, gone the Reliceum; gone the prized examples of Oldenworld technology the Gyre had preserved in the sanctuary. All that the Gyre had valued from the time of Order lay in ashes. Order itself was being broken by the brutal fist of Ametheus.
Zarost’s hope slipped away.
Was this really the end? Would all the centuries of learning and lore end as useless grey dust?
What of the song? Would it ever be sung again?
The offer to return to the time of Syonya was so very tempting. He could play the fates in another pattern and beat the Backcaster, but if there was one thing he had learnt from his years of studying the cards, it was that he couldn’t win with a hand chosen for him by his adversary. He had to play the cards he had. His hand seemed empty. What was he missing?
Laklødder skran ðzak deħrer nihil bloşnihil.
35. A MOMENT OF LIFE
“A cluster of days to call your own
is just a whorl in the giant wind.”—Zarost
A concert played upon a thousand instruments would have sounded poorly beside the depths of the Lifesong Tabitha experienced. The harmony rose to resonant crescendos then dropped to faint whispers, elusive and yet all around her. Each voice followed its own thread of music, and yet it was part of the whole, linked to the Goddess at the Lifesong’s heart. Moving through the song toward Ethea was like being transported along the fibres of a great tapestry, in the way that a dropped stitch might undo itself all the way to the origin. Tabitha felt as if she was moving, but she wasn’t made of anything. She was just a pattern in consciousness.
She was a great mountain, white-crested, immense, thrusting a sharp and perfect outline against the sky. She was a flower opening to the sun. She was a field of flowers, yellow-faced, dancing above a dry land, wanting to live. She had been in the rains that had come before; she was in the rains that would come after. She was an oryx that fought another over its mate, battling on a high slope of rock, life pounding in her veins. She was a lone tree, many arms outstretched, waiting for the delicate touch of pollen from a far and distant other. She was a forest slumbering upon the hills, her feet wet with the decay of growth. She slithered through the leaves, searching for life, and yet she was life, searching, in a million ways, along a million threads. She was carried on the river over great falls and through the lands beyond, she flashed as fish in its depths, and slipped over chuckling rocks, slowing elsewhere on the sucking mud, where an army of worms wriggled through the slime, labouring upward, yearning, striving, to become food for the long-legged storks wading eagerly in the shallows. She was the joy of uncountable births; she was the agony of all their deaths.
She was the end of a beautiful day, and the dark beginning.
Every event could be seen as a sound and as she moved at the right pace, from place to place, from face to face, from bright acts of anger to pale perfected grace, she could suddenly appreciate the rhythm and harmonic resonance of life. It formed a single song: the Lifesong. She lived, she lived everywhere; she lived in all things. She lived because she could live, because there was nothing, besides living. Life was everything, life was all. She sang and, as she sang, she formed new patterns in consciousness.
She was many people, she was a few. She was a boy, breathless, running from danger. She stood in a forest, a spear in her hand and blood at her feet. She rowed a boat in haste, strength flooding her arms. She lay beside a great green creature and felt its hot breath. She laughed at a lover, she scolded a foe. She touched too many lives to comprehend. She gathered it all up and sang a bright melody into a crisp dawn, a little song that was ever-changing, and yet always expressing the secret. And she flew from a branch into an open sky. She flew. She flew.
Tabitha passed beyond the world into the seas of emotion below, so tangible within the music they were colours—a pale and pearly compassion, an aching indigo love, a faint and purpled sadness. Deeper and deeper she went, toward the source of all the songs. She knew a vast melancholy, she knew a great and overwhelming sorrow; she knew loss, dark and intense. Heaviness gathered around her soul and she was besieged by the deepest despair.
The Goddess: her misery like black fire, an assault of raw emotion, an agony to endure in the spirit world. Tabitha fled from the terror. She tumbled from the abstraction of entrancement to the steady forms of the physical. Tabitha found her own body, waiting for her where she’d sent it with the Reference spell. She remembered the familiar comfort of flesh. She had got her life out of order and back into order again as chaos and impossibility had whipped at her heels. Incredibly, she had soul-travelled upon the music and survived the transition. Tabitha gasped as a new assault of sensations rushed at her.
It was dark. The heat was intense, the air clammy. A moaning, wailing, keening, chittering sound filled the air. Beneath her feet the earth shivered with churning, clashing, bashing impacts. Spiralling corkscrews of force rushed hither and thither across her vision, faster and faster, brighter and brighter against a leaden sky. Her lens detected wrongness, dissonance, disorder, pushing against her in a nauseating wave of warnings.
Tabitha was overwhelmed—she wasn’t ready to see the Pillar yet. She couldn’t face seeing the Goddess. She had reached Turmodin but she had to find some calm place within herself or she would go mad. Tabitha breathed in slowly. The air smelled of wet ash. The hot wind threw her hair awry.
three brothers, ’midst fire and smoke and blight,
all of Oldenworld scoured by their dreadful sight
the sky bleeds with wildfire seeds and beasts unholy roar
until the Pillar in the lowlands claims life evermore
The wry prophet of the Revelations had known what it would be like. She could hear the cries of the beasts amid the distant horns and clash of metal. Unholy beasts—if they saw her, they would fall upon her, rend her with their teeth and tear her limb from limb.
Calm yourself! Find the silence between the sounds.
No silence existed in Turmodin, no pause in the ruckus—it went on and on, an ever-changing cacophony. Tabitha felt her will crumbling under the assault. What hope did she have of resisting the Chaos, if the Goddess couldn’t fight it? The wizards of the Gyre had warned her that she wouldn’t be able to cope with it. She hadn’t believed them because she had had no idea of how distressing the collected Chaos could be. She felt it now, all around her—the Chaos—trying to get in, trying to tear her apart. Her own body felt wrong. The space around her felt warped.
The pace of the discordant sounds gathered speed and the earth shook to a frantic rhythm.
Tabitha needed something true and constant to hold onto. She tried humming a single note. The disruptions seemed to settle, but as she allowed her note to fade, Tabitha realised someone was singing softly nearby—softly, oh so softly, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear her. Tabitha knew at once who it was. She was ready to see, at last, as ready as she’d ever be.
The sun was rising into a red sky. It had been a dark night when Tabitha had closed her eyes; a moment that was a lifetime ago. She blinked. The Goddess was revealed in profile, outlined against the sudden brightness of dawn, trapped against the rock wall with her body entombed in water. Only her head and her shackled hands protruded from the pool. The foul waters had risen that far. The tips of her wings, which extended beyond her shackled wrists, were plastered to the cliff face at her back. Birds circled the pool, swooping low past Ethea’s head with forlorn cries. A few white-stained boulders stood poised at odd angles around the rim like old teeth. Overhead, a ribbon of pink cloud turned in the air like a serpent; the slow eddy of a disturbance passed.
Ethea trembled as she stared vacantly across the rising sun, blinded by the light, uncaring.
“Goddess!” Tabitha cried out. S
he tried to run toward Ethea but fell at once. Black mud clung to her feet, gripping her knees and hands as well. Something like an eye opened beside her, a saucer-shaped watery orb within the muck. Tabitha yelped and pushed herself away.
The mud resisted.
No, this is not happening, Tabitha thought. Mud does not try to trap people.
Her feet came free with a loud suck. The eyehole closed over.
“Goddess! I have come!” Tabitha called out as she struggled closer to Ethea.
She had underestimated the scale of things before her. She was some distance from the pool. Ethea was larger than she had thought. Her feathered crest, the only part of her that extended above the rim of the pit, would be at least twice Tabitha’s height. The scoured earth was flooded in front of Ethea, so Tabitha veered toward the higher ground.
“…dess! God! I have come!” came her own voice like a slap in her face, a mocking echo. “Come I! Have come! I ha-ve!” it continued, never really fading, overlapping, destroying itself into a lingering yabber-yammer of disconcerting broken syllables.
It was already warm, despite the low angle of the sun. It would be hotter than a furnace by midday, Tabitha guessed, as hot as a baking house. A surge of warmth passed her by and the ground cracked underfoot. Steam rose around her legs. What had been mud a moment earlier had become a brittle crust of black glass. She took a step forward and the crust splintered again. Tabitha had just thought of heat and the ground had cracked with it, as if her thoughts had some strange power in this place. It couldn’t be true, but she guided her thoughts toward a cooling earth, a solid earth, just in case. Was she losing her sense of reason? She hurried toward Ethea. Tabitha couldn’t trust the altered skin of rock to hold her weight, but there were lumps within it, boulder-sized crystallised knots. She jumped from clump to clump. Some of the edges looked sharp—sharp enough to cut, and she was grateful for the Lûk boots she wore.
Tabitha had almost reached the crest of the cliff when a figure loomed out of the fire-coloured mists at the edge of the pool. He faced her across the water, a great blocky beast of a man, larger even than Ethea. Tabitha slowed, her heart pounding. Was it the Sorcerer? She had hoped she could remain hidden from him. If he was there, in the mists beyond the pool, then she didn’t have much of a chance, but it wasn’t how she remembered him from the Revelations. The figure stood unmoving, but his outline shifted and writhed as the sun’s rays filtered past him. His great shadow fell upon her for a moment then the orange mist hid him again.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 60
