She stood dead still, watching the mists, but the figure did not reappear. Could it have been a shadow in the mists? Her vision was disturbed by the lens—so many warnings flashed across her right eye she was almost blinded. How much of what she saw was real, how much imagined? Her ogle-i seemed to be suggesting that there were many people in the mists and not just a single figure. The scribed images were confusing, clustered, conflicting. Things near Turmodin could obviously not be represented very well in terms of Order.
She crept to the edge of the cliff and looked down, her heart still thundering in her breast. Ethea, the source of life, was close enough to touch. She was wrapped in filaments of power, shimmering with delicate colours. Millions of life-threads terminated in Ethea. The vital currents became enhanced by Tabitha’s lens as she focused upon them. It was like looking at the centre of a song, a vast and timeless song, a sad song—a heartbroken song.
“Goddess!” she whispered. “I am here.” The ruckus of lingering sounds drowned out her announcement. She tried again in a louder voice. “Goddess! I have come, as you asked.” Ethea twisted her head to look up at Tabitha, her feathered crest dragging on the rock. Her great green eyes were dull, her falcon-face drawn and her smooth lips blue-tinged—fatigued, weak and helpless, a principle of life trapped in fleshly form. “My singer? Is that you? O-ay-o-ray.” Her voice was like a breeze upon broken wind-chimes.
“Oh Ethea! What can I do? How can I release you?”
Her indrawn breath caused a small gale. “If I knew that, little sister, I would have escaped, escaped this plane.” Her exhalation rumbled. Her voice, only a whisper, rolled like distant summer thunder. “Everything is so heavy. The thing that binds my limbs is called iron, it is stronger than my body and if I try to pull my limbs free, the flesh breaks. This is distressing, so distressing. And I have cravings, cravings I do not understand. I wish to consume things, eat things. Why is that? I am the Goddess. I do not eat, I sing! They feed me when the sun is high, and after I have eaten I feel stronger for a little while. Oh-ay-to-day. The strength always fades, it fades and passes away and the craving returns.” She looked away from Tabitha. “Everything here is so temporary. Especially me! I know that the liquid which rises and rises at my throat is thicker than the substance which I breathe. I will come to an end here, unless, unless… I perform for him. But I cannot. No-no-no-nay.” She looked down into the ruddy water. “I cannot!” she whispered. “Yet I must, to save myself. Oh, how can he make me choose such a thing?”
Tabitha tried not to look at the pool, the dirty slick polluted with the corpses of birds that touched Ethea’s neck. “What does the Sorcerer want from you?”
“I must sing, sing a life into existence, sing the bridge for a terrible one. Only I have the power to summon Him. He is Apocalypse. He is the Destroyer.” She shuddered then looked away.
“When I sing the Ending, I pass all of Creation to Him, to break it, to reduce it, reduce it to Nothingness. When a full cycle of life is done, a new song must begin, and the old must perish, this is what happens during the Ending. Everything is destroyed so that everything can be created anew. I sing Life into the new universe that the Creator produces, as I call upon the Destroyer to break the old one down.”
Ethea looked down at her again. “This is how it has been for all time. This is how it must always be. Life continues, moving from cycle to cycle. What the three brothers want me to do will disrupt this order, disrupt it forever. Don’t you see? There would be nothing that the Creator could make which Apocalypse could not instantly destroy. He will never again need to wait until the time of Ending to begin his work, for he will be here, in this plane, on this side of the bridge, waiting. I see it now, the horror and the ruin. It will be worse than this place of Chaos, far worse. Worlds shall be pulverised in His fists, blood shall run out between His fingers like an ocean tide, until there is nothing, nothing left to infuse with Life…except for Him.”
Tears trickled from her great hooded eyes. “Oh, it is a horror! He will not break me—he will release me first, as they have promised, so that I can fill things with Life only to appease his insatiable hunger. He will do it so he can draw on my power. I cannot deny my song, even if it was only Him. I must sing or Life ends and I cannot finish it with Him in this plane. Oh it is wrong, it is wrong! Then, when all is broken here, and He has gathered all there is to gather, He shall stride across the bridge and face the Creator. There will be a war between them as there has never been. I might remain. I cannot tell. It is a mystery to me. It might herald the End of all Ends, the ultimate triumph for Apocalypse.”
She looked off into the mists. “That is what will happen if I sing life into the effigy. Yet if I do not sing such a song, I will die here in this pool. The Lifesong will be interrupted. This universe shall be the last cycle of Creation with life in it, with only fading echoes of my song as its theme. Who knows how long life will continue in such a world? And it will be the very last world with life. Oh, it will be so empty, after all!” She raised her voice to the sky, and sang a slow lament.
No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No death—no dust—
No love—no lust.
No life—no leaf—
No joy—no grief—
No song—no sound—
No glimmer to be found.
Ethea’s sorrow overwhelmed Tabitha. “I cannot escape by singing,” Ethea added. “I have tried, the music goes awry. I am limited to this place. I need to span all time and space to wield my power. I must be free, but I don’t know how to reverse the change, to return from this heavy flesh to the music, from now to eternity. I have fallen too far. Oh, I have fallen.”
Tabitha wondered what would happen if she dispersed the great avian form using the second stanza of the Lifesong. Would anything be left of the Goddess? Dealing with Ethea was complicated. She was so otherworldly. She tried to think through the problem slowly. The Sorcerer had captured Ethea’s soul and changed it to flesh, drawn her down into the world. She knew that her own soul and body could be separated, but did the same apply to a Goddess? She was God-kind, she didn’t ordinarily have a body and had only the one eternal presence. That presence was now contained by the great spell that had been wrought upon her. If Tabitha sang the second stanza upon her, would she destroy the source of the Lifesong instead of just the body holding her captive?
“Can I sing something to release you, if you taught it to me?” Tabitha asked.
“Our songs do not work here. The sound of this place disrupts everything. The only one who can influence the prison woven around me is the Sorcerer, and he will only do so if I bring the Destroyer to him. I must call to Apocalypse, I must grant Him life, and then the one I summon will grant me freedom.”
Apocalypse. His name alone sounded terrible enough—the destroyer of worlds.
“But will the Destroyer not simply kill you once He is here? Won’t he destroy everything?”
“He will covet the life He has been granted. He has raged against His isolation from the Universe forever. He has tried to enter this plane before. His survival here will depend on my song flooding through His veins. For Him to live in this world, He needs me to be in my power.”
Tabitha was puzzled. “If the Sorcerer could bring you from the plane of the Gods into this world, why doesn’t he summon the Destroyer himself? Why does he need to torture you?”
“The Destroyer is a Prime. He exists beyond the confines of the Universe. He is like the Creator. The Sorcerer could never reach that far into the higher dimensions on his own, but through me, the demi-urge, he can.”
“And yet if you die from his tortures, he loses his chance?”
“The Sorcerer is a—complexity. It is as if part of him doesn’t want to succeed, and that part fights against the others.”
The ground trembled. One of the boulders poised beside Tabitha above the pool, was dislodged by the tremor. It slid down amid an avalanche of stones and plunged int
o the pool. The sickening impact threw a wave toward Ethea and, for a terrible moment, the Goddess was submerged. When she emerged again, her eyes were wide. She spat out a mouthful of bloody water then coughed and coughed.
“Not like this,” she pleaded softly. “Ae-oh-fa-ray-oh. Not like this. I don’t want to end, in this plane. I must call to the Sorcerer. I must call to him and perform his ritual!”
Tabitha began to sing and gather essence. She didn’t care if she drew wildfire upon herself—she couldn’t watch the Goddess drowning, or witness her abandoning hope and acceding to the Sorcerer’s request. She would alter the water—she would turn it to air, or break out the walls of the pool—anything to divert the danger away from the Goddess.
“No!” Ethea cried out. “You will give yourself away! He will sense that you are here, and then he will come to kill you!”
Tabitha stopped. “But Ethea, what else can I do?”
“You cannot save me. This I understand now, the Chaos will not allow it. My only hope rests in the Sorcerer. Only he can grant me freedom. I wanted you to come to me because I need you to learn a verse, the most powerful stanza of them all. It is a great burden I will ask of you, a task beyond your duty.”
“I will do it! Anything! I will sing it for you!”
“Oh my singer, you are so young, you are such a beautiful bird. Maybe it is best that it ends on such a note.” She looked away. “The Sorcerer has promised that he will release me if I bring the Destroyer into your world, but what if he doesn’t? What if the Destroyer doesn’t allow him to? I will be trapped here, out of my power. There will be only one way to right such a terrible wrong.” She turned back to face Tabitha, her green eyes burning. “You must close the cycle of Life by singing the Ending.”
“The Ending?”
“It will be the End of everything. It will threaten the Destroyer with his own end, and he will flee from this plane to take his proper position in the cycle.”
“But why? Why won’t you let me free you instead! I can change things, Ethea, I can sing away your bonds.”
She shook her head. “Your song won’t work here, it will go horribly awry. You must go elsewhere to work it. Besides, it proves nothing to unshackle me, to free me here. I am still trapped in this body. What should I do? Walk the earth in this form? This body is falseness! I am a principle, I am eternal. I should not be here. If the Sorcerer fails to return me to my plane, if I die here and the Destroyer is present in this world, then you must end it.”
“Why can’t you sing the Ending now?” Tabitha asked.
“I am separated from my power here. You have more power than I do in this plane. You have learnt how to reach beyond it.”
That was a surprise for Tabitha to hear. She didn’t know what to say. As she felt Ethea’s grief, rain fell upon them, warm rain, like the tears of the world, washing their pain into the rising pool. She sat beside the Goddess, a small figure in a wet dress, and she sensed the faint sad melody of time fading, and everything, everything, coming to an end.
“What will happen to me if I sing the Ending?”
“I have never passed the Ending to another, so I do not know, but the Lifesong will endure. There will be another Cycle.”
“But what will happen to me?”
“I imagine that you will become a Goddess.”
Tabitha was stunned. The Goddess was sacrificing herself and expecting her to replace her?
“The Ending drains the entire Universe of life,” explained Ethea. “When you sing it, you will gather all that power and own it, ready to infuse the next Creation. You will take my place. You will keep Life and the Destroyer will have to flee and break what is left. It is what he does. This world, this Universe will be gone, and you will sing your own Beginning, in the new Universe made by the Creator.”
Ethea was expecting her to become a Goddess?
“How will I know what to do? I need you, Ethea… I have only just begun to sing the Lifesong. How shall I know all the things I will need to know, without you there to guide me? I’m a singer, not a Goddess.”
“You will learn from yourself, as I learnt, when I was young.”
Tabitha looked away. How could she admit to Ethea that she was not up to the task?
“Oh, little sister, I should not be asking you this,” Ethea declared from below. “Would you really be able to sing the death of all those whom you love? Think hard upon it. This world shall cease. Everything you know shall be gone, but it is the only way to save them from Apocalypse and, because of what the Sorcerer has done, I have no choice but to ask you.”
“I-I could do it, if I had to,” Tabitha declared bravely. She knew at once that she had spoken too soon. Does she really mean the Ending? The life recalled from all living creatures? I’d have to kill Garyll! And Mulrano. And Twardy Zarost. All the wizards. Everyone in Eyri too; everyone, gone, in a wild climax of the Lifesong. And then?
It seemed too extreme. It was a Goddess’s solution, one of ultimate sacrifice and rebirth. Tabitha tried to think on a more human scale. What could she do to change things? Could she stop the Sorcerer from completing his mad plan? Better still, could she convince him to change his mind? She knew so little about Ametheus and his ways. She wished she had someone experienced with her, like Twardy Zarost.
“You said part of the Sorcerer doesn’t want to succeed. Is there a chance to talk him out of summoning Apocalypse?”
“Oh my singer, I doubt it. The brothers have already made the effigy and peopled it.”
“The effigy? What is that?”
“Wait for the mists to part. You will see the scale of the madness.”
The mists did recede then as a gust dragged them away toward the sun, and the looming figure Tabitha had seen before emerged, clearer than before. It was much farther away than she had thought. A thick-hewed figure, ominous, huge: it seemed to be a great structure of interwoven branches, a colossus of straw and wood. A crude face watched her, a great black mask with an open mouth. It was not the Sorcerer after all. It was not to be feared, she realised with relief. It was just a statue.
But, as the light shifted, Tabitha saw the legs that dangled from within the structure, the arms which waved like hairs, the hands which clutched the framework, the faces pressed up against the bars. The moaning, wailing and mournful cries she had heard since her arrival found a focus. They had not been made by any kind of beasts, but by the occupants of the effigy.
“But there are people in there!” Tabitha exclaimed.
“Yes, that is a Wicker Man,” Ethea replied. “The sacrifice to make the flesh of a God. The Destroyer will stand taller than the greatest tree. There are hundreds of priests in there. They called me with their ceremony. I came to answer their call. That was when the brothers cast their spells upon me and tore me from my place. Those priests served the Sorcerer first and now they will be sacrificed, to form the flesh of the Destroyer. They believe it to be an honour, as do the children they have convinced to join them. The others…are captives.”
Tabitha just stared at the structure of imprisoned people. How many days had they been trapped in there? What madness was this?
“Apocalypse shall be born of blood and flame,” said Ethea quietly.
She fought to keep her gorge down. They were to be burnt alive? The Sorcerer was truly insane.
“How did they make you, Ethea?”
Ethea choked on her reply. She looked at Tabitha in pleading and terror, like a trapped thing sinking in mud, like a murderer drowning in grief.
“Ethea?”
Great tears ran on the Goddess’ cheeks.
“Oh my life! Ethea, no! How did they make you?”
She understood Ethea’s despair and it became her own. The rain came harder for a time, stinging her face, driven by the incessant winds that drove distant things around and around in the air, clanking and tinkling, as if everything was whirling in a circle around the twisted heart of the Sorcerer’s domain.
“Teach me the Ending,
” she said.
In case I fail to release Ethea. In case I fail to stop Ametheus. In case those people burn and Ethea is forced to call the Destroyer and witness the devastation He brings. It would not be worth living in a world ruled by such a God. She had to learn how to end it.
Ethea sang a soft and complicated melody, a bittersweet madrigal, one that reached to the depths of Tabitha’s soul.
All creatures in this world and Time,
be they hidden from our sight,
all motions in all earths and oceans;
gathered by this might.
All creatures of the air will fall!
All beasts and beauty slain!
The strings of Life shall be made still,
only silence shall remain.
The strings of Life shall be so still,
until a Singer sings again.
The enormity of the stanza weighed upon her. She sensed there was a great depth to it, a dimension beneath the words that would become accessible to her when she sang it. She knew its result would be final. The death it caused would be universal. It would be almost as much of a disaster as having the Destroyer loose in the world. There had to be another way.
“Where do I find the Sorcerer?” she asked Ethea.
“He comes, he goes. You will hear him when he approaches, he brings his terrible minstrels. He usually comes from behind me, from his tower.”
Tabitha rose from her position on the lip overlooking the pool. There was so much tension in the air, so much lethal energy waiting to be released. It pressed upon her from all sides, the imminent Chaos, waiting to obliterate her. There was only one way to save Ethea. She had to convince Ametheus to change his mind.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 61
