Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  “Then how do you find your way around?”

  “I don’t travel here much. A place is called a name because of what it is, not where it is. There are signs, to find what you seek, if you know what you are looking for.”

  They approached the red clay, but just as they were about to walk upon it, Saladon held up his hand. The wizard bent close to the ground. Then he swirled around, and swirled back the other way.

  “Hah! She has been through here,” he announced. “She has hidden her trail well, but here at the gate her touch disintegrates. Oh you will run, Mystery, but you don’t know the quickest way through this maze. I will pass you by! Then we shall see who is the master and who is not, when you come to Turmodin.” Saladon holstered his axe on his back. “Come!” he commanded. “Be on my either hand. We must step into this together.”

  Bevn didn’t like the way the clay smoked. His hand shook, but Saladon snatched it up and dragged him forward. They passed through the first discontinuity. He endured the feeling of waking up, over and over again, like rising through successive layers of consciousness. Each time, the volume of silence grew, until his breath thundered in his ears. He grew hot all over. The strangest was the sense of time. There was no time in which he felt all the sensations of change, it happened instantly that he stepped into the gate and was at his destination. It was as if the gate in the hills near the river and the new place they found themselves in were in fact one place—the same place.

  The smoke dragged across the new landscape beneath red clouds. Ash swirled, tendrils fought each other in strange vortex patterns. Blackened ruins towered all around them, a city of stupendous size, broken and tumbled by furious destruction. They were inside the city. Far away on the limits Bevn saw giant defensive walls made of plates, like monstrous overlapping shields strapped together. A tortured hiss filled his ears, an endless scream of a city burning. The heat was hard to bear.

  “This was a centre of industry. It was known as Chagrim in old Koraman kingdom. It was broken three hundred years ago, but the fire is caused by the stasis that will not release the steelwork. It will smoke for a thousand years yet. There is nothing to fear here, except that it is all toxic and supports no life. Keep your hands off the surfaces, don’t fall into any water. Keep on the plating and you’ll be all right. We will be gone soon enough.”

  Bevn followed Black Saladon across the parched earth along a metal road. Huge pipes passed overhead in places, cables wound upon them in regular coils. They passed a tall building where gigantic mechanical humanoids stood in rows beneath a high roof. The wizard seemed to be reading the crack-lines in the sky, those parts that were visible through the random gaps in the low dragging clouds. They crossed the metal landscape like fleeing fugitives. Saladon strode fast, his cloak whipping in his wake, Gabrielle loped and Bevn stumbled, whimpered and ran, worried he would be left behind.

  Bevn finally caught up to them at an enormous rusted road-junction. The road seemed to be made to carry a great load, and there were tracks in it, as well as regular hexagonal patterns scribed in green copper and something orange. “What did they make here?” he asked.

  “Everything you could ever want in metal,” Saladon replied. “They were becoming ingenious toward the end of the Age of the Three Kingdoms. Thinflex, pods, higfiber and carbonline. After Kinsfall, everything changed. They tried to make some defences against wildfire here—they lasted longer than most—but once you lose Order you lose commerce and you lose the trade that will support production, so Chagrim was strangled out of existence. They had limited success with silvertails, their decoy-launchers, but in the end they could not innovate fast enough. What you will see today is all the junk and trash of an ordered world gone to chaos. Such waste. Such a mess.”

  The wizard seemed saddened by what had been lost, and it echoed something which had been bothering Bevn for a long time.

  “Then why do we side with the Sorcerer?” Bevn asked. “Isn’t the world better with some order in it?”

  “Yours is not to question why, princeling. For now you only need to know that we must support Chaos. The path we walk upon does not end with the Sorcerer ruling this world.”

  “Who will rule?” asked Bevn, already afraid that he knew the answer.

  The wizard Black Saladon stopped. The dark sky swept over his head. “I shall,” he replied.

  _____

  Later that day, Saladon led them to the second discontinuity and they passed from the martial industrial wastes of Chagrim through the tight moment to a rusty patch of soil at the edge of a settlement that was colourful, collapsed and crowded. People lived there, folk with sun-darkened skins and rough clothes. Flies buzzed about in the heat. Bright fabrics hung on lines and the tilting buildings had been smeared with colour, but the people had a pinched look about them. Their eyes were set too close together, thought Bevn. Some of them didn’t even have proper nose bridges.

  A few noticed their arrival and began to shout and wave at each other, but before they could approach the travellers, a column of hungry-looking figures shuffled between them. They were chanting and carried tall, spindly staffs with limp red rags on their tips, pennants to mark their common purpose, dark coloured like beet-dye, or wine. Or dried blood.

  “Pilgrims,” said Saladon, to himself. “So the word has spread even this far out. These people won’t get there in time, but they will try. Never mind, I shall find a use for them all.”

  “Where are they going to?” asked Gabrielle.

  “They are part of the great movement of people,” replied Saladon. “The Last Pilgrimage. They go to Turmodin the long way, to find absolution for their sins, to find a promised release and an end to suffering. For them it is a chance to do something truly unforgettable, the great honour of climbing in consciousness. The Clerics of Qirrh are leading it, some of the best have already gone before and been transformed, and the ones left are desperate to gain favour and be in the head or heart of what is coming. So they spread the word, and collect more pilgrims, as if by numbers alone they can guarantee a better salvation.”

  Saladon watched them with a kind of satisfaction as the column moved off to the west. “The right words, Bevn Mellar. That is the secret to power. You must learn how to tell a good story. They won’t stop. They will walk night and day. They won’t stop walking until they die.”

  The clamour of the market returned. The villagers moved continually, even those with stalls tugged at their tables and moved their wares, as if too restless to remain in place. Bevn thought it was like watching an ants’ nest he’d kicked open once. Everyone remembered a task, but their route had been taken away from them, and so they scurried about like idiots, among their peculiar name boards.

  “What are the names for?”

  “They label things, before they forget, but they argue all the time about those same labels.”

  The script on the nameplates was curly and difficult to make out, and he didn’t recognise any of the words. People of all kinds were crammed together, talking in raised voices.

  “Traders,” said Saladon. “This place is called Merica.” He kept them to the edge of the crowds, avoiding direct gazes wherever possible. “Our way leads beyond this town. I don’t want to become embroiled in anything local.”

  However, a big man blocked their way as they neared a stairway, a heavy brute almost as wide as he was tall.

  “Kirkajz?” he demanded.

  “Let us pass,” Black Saladon answered. He pointed up the stairway.

  “Kirkajz?” the big man repeated, puzzled. He thrust a big board at Saladon.

  “Ahh,” said Saladon, taking a piece of chalk from the man and writing on the board. “They have lost their spoken word altogether then,” he commented to them. “The spellingrot has hit this place hard since I was last here.”

  Saladon of Menerain, he had written. The big man read the board slowly then snarled. He smeared the board clean with the edge of his stained sleeve.

  Spupiles, he wrote.
“Zpli,” he said. “Zmm?”

  “I think he wants to know what we are trading here in Merica,” said Saladon.

  “What would they trade here?” Gabrielle asked.

  “Serpent-dew from K, rare stones from the Fallen House, a vial of Myrki oil perhaps? It’s difficult to tell what they would place value on here today, it is likely different from before. Food, probably, it all ends with food, when all else of value is lost. This man has one of the larger slateboards, so he must be important, or he believes he is so.”

  “We are not here to trade,” Saladon said. “We are on our way to the gateway.”

  No trade, he wrote.

  The big man seemed angered. He rubbed the writing out with his fist. “Pintly!” he shouted. “Pnit!”

  peantly - ax or wmoan, he wrote, and thrust the board at Saladon again. People began to gather around them, drawn by the conflict.

  “He is demanding a penalty,” Saladon commented. “He seems to think my battleaxe or our vixen here will do him some good. Both will likely kill him, but he hasn’t the sense to realise it.”

  “Penalty? Why does he write it so funny?” Bevn asked.

  “Because of the spellingrot.” He held up his hand to forestall the big man. “Observe what Chaos does to language.” He cleared the board and wrote quickly across the slate, and Bevn read.

  Aoccdrnig to the rscheearch dnoe by the Gyre, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

  Bevn couldn’t believe he could understand what he was reading. When Black Saladon was satisfied Bevn had read it all, he smeared it clear with the back of his hand, and wrote again.

  The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a probelm.

  “This is so because you don’t read every letter by itself but the word as a whole. Still, the Chaos takes over, and once they lose the anchor letters, they lose the words altogether. It begins with saying ‘muvva’ instead of ‘mother’. It ends like this. Although they are descendants of the most literate class of Moral Kingdom, this is effectively a village of idiots. They cannot speak what they write, it makes no sense. You can only read it so. They shout at each other, yet understand nothing. Only in their writing does a little sense of order survive. Oh, it is far worse here than in it was in Slipper.”

  Saladon looked to the sky, where the crack-lines ran—warped assaults on reality. The Chaos broke the world here even more than in Chagrim. The wizard made a small gesture, and a ripple of disturbance passed through the air around him. Bevn held his breath. The filaments of wildfire moved, but didn’t bunch and strike the way Bevn knew they might. Saladon reached into his pocket and withdrew a heavy book. When he passed it to the big man, the man seemed puzzled, but when he opened the cover and took in the first page, his face lit up.

  “Tau, tau!” he exclaimed, nodding his head, and stepping aside to allow them all passage up the stairs.

  “To him, it is a wonder,” Saladon commented. “So many words, properly spelled. It will make him the richest man in this village to some, and the poorest, to others.”

  “Where did you get a book from?” Bevn asked.

  “I know where to reference from,” Saladon replied.

  They left the big man to ponder his fortunes, but they hadn’t walked three steps before the crowd of villagers closed their way. The closest three traders made a wall with their boards, their demands scrawled in hasty print.

  Pnneal. Pty. Plenty.

  “Ah, stuff it, I don’t have time for this,” Saladon muttered. He jumped straight up, and dropped with his great battleaxe in his hands, his hair flicking like a lion’s tale. The vicious blade scribed a hot arc in the air and sliced hard through the closest trader’s slateboard.

  The man’s arms were blown wide by the explosive force, and chips of his board rained out across the crowd. “Plhg, Plhg!” the man cried out, staggering away. The crowd broke and stumbled back away from the angry wizard.

  “Right, now run!” he commanded Bevn and Gabrielle, mounting the steps three at time. “The worst insult in a place like this is to break their board.”

  The stairs opened to a short market street followed by a storage yard littered with abandoned wares and spillage. Birds exploded into flight as the trio ran through them. Saladon ducked into an alley, and they followed. Traders shouted at them as they ran. Some people tried to block their way, but upon seeing Saladon’s battleaxe, they hesitated. Bevn tried desperately to keep up. Then five men in dirty clothes came running behind them, sickle-blades in hand.

  “This is bad,” Saladon shouted over his shoulder. “They are close to ruin here. Those are their robbers, sent to kill us and take whatever we have. I will kill them if I must, but I would rather not spill blood without benefit. So run!”

  The men caught up to them before they had escaped from the village of Merica, because Bevn was too slow, and Saladon was forced to dive behind him, and dispatch them with his great blade, one by one. They didn’t stand a chance against his martial art, yet they fell upon him with a total slashing frenzy and wild baying from the trailing villagers. They had lost their sense of reason, or the understanding of the value of their own lives.

  Saladon’s axe cleaved the last robber’s body from head to tailbone in a sudden shocking cloud of blood. Before the body had even fallen to the ground, Saladon had gathered both Bevn and Gabrielle, and pushed them on. They ran until they were well clear of the border of the village, heading for a tight cluster of angles Bevn recognised as a Gate.

  Saladon allowed them to halt, to gather their breath. Bevn’s lungs burned, and his legs wobbled horribly.

  “Why were they so crazy?” Bevn asked, leaning on his knees. “They could see they shouldn’t fight you!”

  “Chaos. It gets worse than this. These men only have their reason and language eroded. They are not ruled by it yet. Take away everything from a man, and what will remain? What makes a man a man, and not a beast?” He looked hard at Bevn. “When you speak in grunts and moans, when you can no longer remember the day before or think of the day after, who will you be? How much of what you are is what you have been taught, the culture of Order you carry with you. How much is merely your memories?”

  It was a horribly cold thought; it sat in Bevn’s head like a mute judge, forcing him to consider himself.

  “How much is really you?” Saladon asked. “And is it enough to make you a man?”

  “In chaos, is there any identity left at all?” asked Gabrielle.

  “At the heart of it? No. I don’t think so.”

  “Which shall you use? Chaos, or Order?”

  “Whatever gives me the upper hand,” Saladon replied. “Whatever gives me the most power, when I need it. It is time to move beyond the constraints of the third axis. That was our error in the Gyre. Thought should not be limited to a system, because that system is conceived at the limit of the wisdom of the time. The system can never incorporate thoughts that go beyond the system. It can never progress. I have seen the future. It is a blend of Order and Chaos. Neither must be supreme, but using both, I can be.”

  _____

  The monster rose from the deep because it was hungry. It broke the surface quietly, amid the watery weeds, as it knew it must, for on the shore was its prey. The green-skinned creatures lay upon the bank in the late afternoon sun. They looked warily at the river, but the river curved tightly behind them; they looked the wrong way. They would be too slow.

  The monster reached the shallows, finding purchase on the rock; it gripped with a tough, webbed hand. It didn’t wait for a better moment, it just launched hard and fast, using its powerfully hooked hind legs. It took the biggest one off the rock, talons piercing scales, jaws closing on the soft neck, twisting in the air to snap the resistant bones, falling to the river with a splash, taking the meat with it to the safety of the deep.

  It was what its new body demanded, so it ate of the creature’s flesh
. The river ran red in the gloomy crevice, and the sky, so far above, was made red too for a time. The monster was a killer, and there was nothing it could do about it. There was no shame in surviving. Life was easier this way. It rose for a breath at last then thrashed its teeth through the water, cleaning them. It inhaled warm, forest-scented air. It heard bird calls in the woods. It floated. Much later, it saw the stars come out.

  Only when it sank into the cool water again, did it disturb the scales of memory clinging to its back, in the places it couldn’t reach. And it remembered. He remembered. The two white stones, they tumbled down, the two white stones, tumbling, into the cool green dark, past his outstretched hand. And he grieved for the friend who had come before those stones, he grieved and his heart swelled in his chest, and his tears were unto the water borne, and his body was carried on the current, downstream—down, down, to whatever distant end life would take him.

  If there was one thing he would do before he died, it would be to avenge that single unjust act. The one who blighted the sky and ruined the earth must pay for the murder. There would be justice. He felt his body alter as his resolution strengthened. He would hunt his prey, and his prey had a name.

  Ametheus.

  39. AN EYE ON THE MOON

  “Beliefs are breakwaters; they shelter me

  from the fearsome seas of possibility.”—Zarost

  The world lurched around her. The sun had tracked too fast through the sky; it stood close to noon. The angry red clouds wrapped upon themselves, twisting and churning. From the high point of the Pillar, a bright flash bloomed against the clouds.

  Tabitha neared a strange archway guarding the protruding entrance to a tunnel. It seemed to be a sculpture, but it was terribly lifelike. Many human-like figures clutched hold of one another desperately, joined in an arch well above Tabitha’s reach. Their naked bodies were silvered; their flesh looked as hard as granite. They faces were fixed in agony.

  Tabitha shivered as she passed through the tunnel. It seemed to be a sculpture of humanity, as if real people had been forced to create the structure, and once positioned, they had been altered to stone. Some reached out in frozen gestures of appeal. Some of them looked down at her with almost sentient eyes. She came to the end of the gruesome tunnel, to emerge in the gloom of the Pillar.