“Hold on, my Goddess, hold on! I have an idea.”
“Are you thinking to confront him? No! You must escape! You must go back the way you came, now I have shown you the song and made you understand. If you are killed, who shall sing the Ending? Who shall begin the next cycle?”
“If I can reason with him, I might not have to sing the Ending at all.”
“Little sister, you can see his madness! It surrounds you.”
“And maybe he doesn’t want it to be like this. Maybe he wishes it was otherwise. You said yourself that part of him fights against this.”
Ethea paused for thought. “But he must like it like this. Why else would he have made it so?”
“Why else would he be summoning the Destroyer? Why else would he want it to end?”
Ethea was silent.
“Maybe I could offer him an alternative, a kind of peace,” said Tabitha. “A kind of healing.”
“You risk many things if you approach him now,” warned Ethea.
“I would put more at risk if I did not.”
She would talk to him, she decided, and if he was too mad to listen she would call out his name and escape. Say his name once, and you call on all three, and being conflicted he cannot get free. It was a slim chance of safety but at least she had something to use in her defence. Tabitha would approach him and if he attacked her, she would call his name and flee with her song-spell, somewhere; anywhere.
She turned and she saw a thousand faces, watching her. She had noticed some of the figures before, scattered around the pool, but they had crept closer while she had been talking to Ethea, and many more had joined them, standing on the slope, jostling in clusters on the hillocks, climbing on each other. They were frightening in their diversity: faces with shocking eyes, faces with lopsided snarls, with slick dark skin or too much hair, faces red with rot, faces with too many teeth. Skin that looked like scales, figures with fists like clubs, tall creatures with sticklike legs that stood swaying in the crowd like windblown trees—blunt things that should be animals but for the intelligence in their eyes.
“Ulaäan ma maar!” shouted a man with a red-tinged helmet, the kind she had seen before on the sacrificers. A piper blew a jarring blast on his horn. The wind whipped it away. “Ulaäan ma maar!”
The crowd went wild, shouting, barking, clashing metal against metal, metal against flesh, hitting, slapping and throwing things into the air and at each other. Yop yip yee they shouted, and there was something that went boomghara, frightening in its brutality.
Then they fell to the ground. The sacrificer led; another five red-helmed figures fell in random places in the crowd. Then all of them did it, falling with arms spread, onto their faces, onto the rocks, onto the others who had fallen before them. Then they picked themselves up and did it again.
“Ulaäan ma maar!” shouted the sacrificer triumphantly.
A pit opened in her stomach. It was as if they recognised her, somehow, they recognised her, as if she had been expected. They were worshipping her, and it wasn’t the worship that was shocking. It was that they had known she would come. Someone had prepared them for this moment.
Ametheus! She had to get to Ametheus.
She took a step and the creatures backed away, as if there was a holy circle they feared to enter.
The sky was moving in a circling storm, swirling over the heads of the multitude. Broken bits clanked and tinkled past in the air. Whirling air currents roamed across the ground, lifting dust, scraps and flocks of tumbling birds.
A great building rose against the sky to the west, a lopsided veined tower with tendon-like protrusions of brine-coated metal that splayed outward through the piles of debris massed around its base. It was built on the shore of a great restless body of water, which threw tall green waves of scum against the litter-choked groynes. A harsh and salty tang filled the warm air. Every time a wave fell upon that broken shore, the strange clang and crash of metal and glass sounded—a regular discordant cacophony.
There seemed to be no end to the water—the blue-green horizon was unbroken. The foaming waves were huge things, a hundred times bigger than the waves Tabitha had ever seen on the shores of the Amberlake in Eyri. They made a thump that shook the earth then they hissed as they drew back upon themselves.
The tower’s many spires and levels were completely off-balanced, stacked atop one another with no guiding geometry. It should have collapsed upon itself, yet the rust-streaked walls rose beyond the base of the low driving clouds. The many odd-sized windows which studded the walls reminded Tabitha of a spider’s hungry eyes. She clenched her stomach against her fear.
The Pillar. Ametheus should be there, probably at the top. She had seen him there when she’d travelled with Zarost through infinity and he’d tried to draw her down. She’d seen him there in the vision in the Revelations. His chamber was nestled in the clouds.
Light shifted overhead. Tight balls of lightning seared the air and where the charge struck ground beyond the Pillar, it bloomed silver and rippled like boiling liquid. The wizards had warned her. She was not ready to face the Sorcerer, but she had no choice. Tabitha ran toward the Pillar.
Heaven help me let the earth be made to run upon; let the Pillar remain standing while I am within it. Let the crowd part and leave me untouched.
The ground crunched underfoot. Jewels! Obsidian pebbles, jade nuggets and blue tumblestones lay in a thick channel like a solidified river. Rubies, moonstones and garnets were strewn over the underlying rock. A purple boulder as tall as her shoulder could have been amethyst, a glittering column sapphire. The crowds thinned as she progressed. The figures became more hunched, misshapen—miserable. They noticed her less, reacted less, until they stood, staring, like clenched threats carved from the rock.
She concentrated on finding a way into the Pillar. A narrow ridge angled steeply upward, entering the Pillar via a fissure which might have been formed by a collapse. She followed the ridge and was soon high above the ground. Below she could see Ethea, trapped in her pool, and the waiting Wicker Man beyond.
Ahead, the Pillar reared to the sky, dark and stained, tilting its many eyes toward her.
36. THE RULER OF THE REVERIE
“A man awoke in a place he had dreamed,
and learnt that his life was not what it seemed.”—Zarost
The wind whistled through the teeth of the high mountains outside. Ashley Logán jerked awake. He had dozed off on the stone floor of the lair. An odd smell hung in the air, sweet, warm and tasty. The cave looked smaller and the ground farther away than it should be. A small leathery figure was curled up against the wall, a figure containing a soft glowing coal of life. A compulsion swelled through his vast stomach—he was ravenous. The little creature before him would make a small morsel, but it was better than nothing. He took a step forward and covered a greater distance than he would have expected. It puzzled him, so he looked down at his feet. They were green and covered with scales.
All at once, Ashley knew who the little figure was against the wall, and who was approaching him with dreadful steps. In his sleep, he had drifted deeply into her thoughts. And somehow he had crawled from his sheltered cubicle, into the main cavern. To get warmer?
“Stop!” he pleaded. “Stop, Sassraline, it’s me! Don’t eat me! Oh great and beautiful dragon, your glistening scales will not protect you, you cannot eat that morsel, it is made of poison.”
She eyed the glowing figure against the wall, but did not step any closer.
AAH, SWEET TALKER, I HEAR YOU LOUD, I REMEMBER YOU, BUT YOU HAVE CEASED, CEASED TO PRAISE ME. DO I PALE, PALE IN YOUR EYES, HAVE YOU RECONSIDERED MY BEAUTY?
“No, great Sassraline, you are gorgeous—a feast for the eyes.” He remembered now, he had been exhausted by hours of praise and yet still she had demanded more, to be appeased. He had worshipped her until he couldn’t any more. “I must sleep, great Sassraline. I must rest.”
NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PRAISING ME. CAN YOU NOT SPEAK, SPEAK WH
EN YOU REST?
“Speak? When I sleep, I must be still. I close my eyes and I can not see your beautiful body to describe it.”
WHY DO YOU NEED TO CLOSE BOTH EYES WHEN YOU REST?
“How can I do otherwise?”
Sassraline tossed her great head. Ashley’s view swirled then grew clear once more.
YOUR KIND IS STRANGE. WHEN YOU REST YOU MUST LOSE YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD? HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOURSELF?
“We don’t protect ourselves, we—dream.”
Sassraline tossed her head again.
DREAM? WHERE IS THAT?
“It is seeing pictures and hearing sounds. Imaginings. When we wake up, we forget what we were seeing. This world takes over and the other vision is gone.”
Sassraline considered this for a long dragon moment.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU ARE AWAKE, AND WHEN YOU ARE DREAMING?
Ashley paused. How did one know?
“The real world always begins again where you left off. You wake up where you lay down. Dreams just begin anywhere and end off suddenly as well. Strange things happen in dreams, things you can’t explain. The real world is ordered.” But as soon as he’d said that, he realised it was no definition at all. He was talking to a dragon, a creature so vast, mighty and utterly alien it confounded his logic, yet he knew she was real. He was somewhere inside her head, using his talent to communicate with her. It was probably the strangest moment of his life, and there was no way he could explain it. Ever since they had crossed the border of Eyri, the world had been one long weird tale—the wastes, his transformation of horse, the ironpig, the dragon. His days had little order. A queer uneasiness crept up his back.
“Dreams change quickly,” he asserted. “Ordinary things look different in dreams.” His view was still the strangely altered vision of Sassraline. He saw himself as a warm glow curled up against the boulders.
He reached out, in thought, for his own body. He opened his eyes and looked up at the fearsome head which peered down at him. He was Ashley again.
SO WHEN DID YOU WAKE, IF YOU HAVE BEEN SHARING WORDS WITH ME ALL THIS TIME?
“I’m awake now. I was ... almost ... dreaming before.”
I SEE. IF I ATE YOU THEN, YOU’D STAY IN MY HEAD. IF I EAT YOU NOW, YOU’LL DIE?
It was a shock to be reminded of the terms of their relationship. “Oh great Sassraline, please I beg you to extend your mercy.” He reached out to the place where he had been, so deep in her mind. He concentrated. “Wonderful dragon, your teeth are as white as snow, as sharp as the jagged peaks of my homeland.”
I HEAR YOU, LITTLE THUNDER! BE STILL OR YOU’LL AWAKEN EVERY DRAGON IN THE WINTERBLADES. I’LL NOT BE SHARING YOU WITH OTHERS.
“My words are too loud?” Ashley asked. She usually complained he was too quiet.
“YES!” she answered, with such intensity he was forced to his knees under the weight and volume of it. ONLY THE ELDER MAY SPEAK THUS.
AND I another awareness announced. Sassraline pulled back from Ashley and flapped her wings in surprise.
FOOL HATCHLING. NOW YOU’VE DRAWN THE WRONG KIND OF ATTENTION UPON US.
“Who was that?”
HE’LL BE HERE SOON ENOUGH NOW THAT HIS INTEREST IS PIQUED.
“Who?”
AKONISS. HE IS AN OBSIDIAN OF THE WORST KIND. HE IS A GREAT DANGER.
Sassraline turned to go, but then looked back at Ashley in his hollow.
I SHOULD HAVE EATEN YOU WHILE I HAD THE CHANCE. She looked almost sad. Those great emerald eyes glistened like wet jewels, polished and perfect. They were truly beautiful. STAY OUT OF SIGHT.
She moved away fast, slithering her great bulk with a fluid grace over the rough stone floor. Even so, she had not quite reached the mouth of the cavern when the newcomer announced his presence with a thunderous roar that rolled through the rock like an earthquake.
WHAT TREASURE DO YOU HIDE IN YOUR NEW LAIR, SASSRALINE?
The voice seemed to fill the cavern, ominous yet insidious. A great wind blew in from the mouth of the cave. The ground lurched then lurched again. Sassraline arched and spewed a vicious spout of fire, but the intruder advanced through the flame. For all its searing heat, her fire caused the other dragon no visible harm. He looked like living rock. Ripples passed along the length of his body as he flexed his scales.
He was a head taller than Sassraline, his high crown of blade-like spines scraping the roof. He was dark, brutal. The edges of his massive shoulders were jagged, his legs facetted, curved and wickedly sharp. Sassraline blew her fire against the roof and rock fell upon him. Flakes of his body fell from his back, scattering on the floor like discarded sickles, and still he advanced on Sassraline, and she was forced to retreat.
WHERE ARE YOUR WHELPS, SASSRALINE? I EXPECTED TO FIND MY CLUTCH WITH YOU BY NOW.
Sassraline leapt suddenly, swinging and twisting in the air, using her outstretched wing to pivot upon, bringing her mighty tail to smash down upon him. She sloughed a spray of chips off his back, but he caught her tail as he fell back and gripped her hard with both forelegs before ripping his talons aside in a slashing movement.
Sassraline squealed and jumped around to face him again as she backed away.
I ATE THEM, Sassraline replied. I WOULD NOT SEE YOUR SPAWN SURVIVE IN THIS WORLD.
Akoniss stamped his talons into the rock and this time the quake lifted Ashley off the ground.
THEN YOU ARE MORE STUPID THAN I GAVE YOU CREDIT FOR. I WILL TAKE YOU AGAIN, AND AGAIN, UNTIL YOU HATCH ME A HUNTING PACK. THE OTHERS ARE NOT SO WILFUL. WHY DO YOU PRETEND TO BE SPECIAL?
Akoniss towered over Sassraline. He had cornered her against the wall of the cavern.
WHY SHOULD I OBEY YOU?
BECAUSE I AM AKONISS!
Sassraline snorted. YOU OBSIDIANS DON’T LAST. I HAVE SEEN YOUR KIND BEFORE. YOU COME AND GO LIKE THE SEASONS. MY KIND LIVE FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS.
Akoniss snaked out a foreleg and snatched her by the neck. She thrashed against his attack, but he was too strong, and he pressed his talons in under her scales. A fiery orange blood oozed down over his limbs, hissing and smoking as it was exposed to the air.
DON’T TELL ME MY KIND IS NOT TRUE! YOU HAVE INCLUSIONS ALL OVER YOU. YOU ARE WEAK. I AM FURY AND FIRE!
He breathed his own fire upon her then, a blinding red vomit of heat. It hit her in the face, but he held her neck firm, and Sassraline couldn’t escape from the barely gaseous assault of magma. The air was too hot to breathe and Ashley cowered to defend himself. When he looked up again, he saw the dark dragon strike Sassraline on her snout. His fire dripped from her head. It left an ugly blue scar down her neck when it cooled.
Her left eye was fused shut and a livid wound ran across her nostrils. Yet still she pretended to be undaunted by his violence. She stood tall and proud, but her voice quivered.
YOU HAVE LESS APPEAL TO ME THAN A LITTLE JASPER.
Akoniss laughed, a menacing and heavy sound, like a slide of boulders.
YOU MAY CALL OUT TO YOUR MOTHER NOW, AS YOU DID BEFORE. THE ELDERS WILL NOT HELP YOU.
Ashley clenched his fists. He couldn’t just sit there, while she was—broken. He sent his awareness probing into the black dragon’s mind. He was instantly amazed. The obsidian was not nearly as intelligent or complex as Sassraline. He was a beast, young and inexperienced. His was a simple world, of violence, feeding and fighting. And fear.
The obsidian had a mortal fear of water. It corroded his skin; it could destroy him. His body was a brittle mass of mineral plates and water was his nemesis. He lived in the desert; he didn’t belong up here on the Winterblades. He was on a mating rampage. He had only dared Sassraline’s mountains because the rain-clouds had cleared. To be caught in the rain would be the death of him. At once Ashley knew how to beat him.
A sudden leak in the roof allowed a small rivulet of water to fall upon Akoniss. He flinched away from it and, giving it a wide berth, rounded on Sassraline on the other side. Then he gripped her with his talons and flipped her over i
n a violent wrestling mass of twisting tails and jaws.
Ashley rejoiced. Akoniss’s reaction to the jet of water confirmed his theory. It had been a trick, no water dripped from the roof, it had not been real. It had been the idea of a rivulet which he had projected at the dragon. It was a simple thing. Once he was in the dragon’s mind and he imagined a thing well enough, it was as if the thing became real for the dragon—it believed the projection, particularly so with a dragon as simple-minded as Akoniss. He was big and brutal, but he didn’t have a mind to match. He crouched over Sassraline, his tail thrashed in the air then whipped out straight.
Ashley stood from behind his boulder. Sassraline was on her back, her head nearest to Ashley. Over her, the dread dragon Akoniss lurked like a vulture, his prey between his knees, his speckled wings covering her like a dirty tent. His ragged teeth were exposed in a snarl of domination and lust, and it was to this snout that Ashley spoke.
“No,” said Ashley. Speckles of fire dripped from Akoniss’s maw. He didn’t raise his head, only his red eyes flicked upward beneath encrusted lids. The split in his irises drew closed as he focused hard on Ashley.
There was a long, slow intake of breath.
Ashley threw his vision at Akoniss. He imagined a crack opening in the roof of the cavern, a waterfall rushing down upon them. Water sluiced down in an unbroken sheet, like the falls above Fendwarrow in Eyri. He used the memory of piercing that waterfall to envision a cascade that pulled at his hair and foamed at his feet. Akoniss howled, his nostrils flaring so wide Ashley could see the fire deep within him. The dark dragon reared back on his hind legs, but his wings fluttered, betraying his fear. Akoniss blew a gout of flame at the waterfall, hitting Ashley with terrifying heat. He almost lost his concentration then, as his hair crisped and his ears stung, but he allowed the waterfall to expand in a great cloud of steam that billowed forward, moist and searching, and behind it he intensified his vision, allowing boulders to tear from the roof as water gushed and sprayed in all directions.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 62
