Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  He disappeared into his own singularity.

  _____

  They began at the great range of mountains. They sped through a gap and there Sassraline fell like a diving hawk, into the heart of a citadel, a place perched over twin falls at the limit of the upper lands. The buildings spread out as hey sped, down at the shingled roofs.

  Ashley’s plan was simple. He was sure he’d be able to identify Tabitha from the air if he was close enough, using the advantages of his mind, because the people he had encountered were odd; their thoughts, cultures and memories so very strange. He was sure he would recognise the worldview of an Eyrian within the strangeness. They would stand out like beacons of normality in the chaos. He sent his awareness outward and rushed like a wave through the many minds.

  He struck gold in the citadel. He found memories of Garyll Glavenor, Gabrielle and Prince Bevn in the minds of others, bright images framed with the blinding fear of the wildfire strikes that followed. They had been there, in the citadel the inhabitants called Slipper, but despite the vivid psychima which made Ashley speed north-west, he soon lost the trail. Some faint memories that might have been left by Gabrielle and Prince Bevn lingered in the lowlands. Garyll Glavenor had not been seen again. He couldn’t find memories of Tabitha Serannon at all.

  Sassraline flew on, ranging over the hills and marshes in lazy loops and, as she flew, he sat still and quiet, trying to extend his awareness further and further through the minds he encountered, straining for omniscience. He wished he could sit close to Sassraline’s neck to avoid the icy blast, but she clutched him like prey with her mighty talons. She flew fast, too fast, covering great distances, and the farther they went, the more Ashley worried that they’d passed Tabitha and the others. They couldn’t have come so far, so fast. The daylight died in the west, and Sassraline began to tire, but he pushed her on into the night. He would not abandon his friends. The wild lowlands rolled on far beneath his feet.

  As the moon burst from the crowded clouds, they passed over a pale plain where hundreds of small figures toiled westward, as if on a march to some common goal. He stayed in his fugue, searching through the fine threads of the many minds below. He urged Sassraline lower and lower. The concentration of sifting through so many minds drained his strength. Hunger raged in his belly. It had been a long time since he’d eaten.

  Sassraline wheeled and dived over the crowds. Suddenly a flame issued forth from her snout, a giant tongue of yellow fire that parted the mob and set them to running. She gave another great belch of fire, this time from close enough to scorch the slow-witted tail-enders. The plainsfolk screamed and ran.

  He had communicated his hunger to Sassraline, he realised. She was obeying his command.

  A LITTLE HUMAN, JUST THE RIGHT SIZE FOR A SNACK.

  The figures looked upward, straining to follow them in the dark night sky.

  “Sassraline,” Ashley called out. “Sassraline!” His little voice whipped away in the wind.

  I’LL LET THOSE TASTIES RUN A BIT, TAKE THEM AT THE HILL.

  The doomed figures fled. Ashley stepped into her mind. “Oh great and mighty dragon, they are honoured to witness you. Don’t kill them yet, they would behold your beauty a moment longer.”

  He had the horrible feeling his flattery wasn’t going to work. The wind battered his face as his dragon dived.

  LITTLE SPEAKER! NAUGHTY HUMAN. WHERE DID YOU GO?

  He projected his thoughts strongly. “Wondrous and magnificent dragon, your skin looks so perfect, brushed by the light of the stars.” To the people below, she would be a dark formless immensity overhead. “Your wings are so full, the tips are so sharp. They must be entranced by every detail.” She had banked, but nothing about her shape was entrancing. Sassraline was a deadly hulk, swooping lower. “Surely only one dragon can be so beautiful? Surely no other has the splendour of Sassraline?”

  Sassraline croaked, a joyous sound despite its awful volume.

  IT IS I!

  “Leave them be! Leave the people. They are not good food.”

  YOU WOULD NOT EAT THEM? WHY DO YOU NOT EAT EACH OTHER?

  “I eat fruit, and breads, and vegetables.”

  I DO NOT KNOW THESE THINGS. MEAT?

  “I suppose I do eat meat, but something like sheep is better.”

  SHEEP? THE LITTLE MORSELS COVERED WITH THE FIREFLUFF?

  Ashley supposed that was an accurate definition for a dragon. He looked to the hills and saw a few clusters of goats, huddled upon a high slope, their fleeces silver in the moonlight.

  That thought became the end of many goats.

  He did manage to teach Sassraline to cook one properly, by using a gentle bubbling whisper instead of a scorching blast. He had nothing else to supplement his meal, and Ashley was too hungry to care. They shared a meal of meat. He supposed if he asked Sassraline to find him vegetables, she’d come back with a chicken.

  He was too tired to fly any farther that night. He lay curled up against her side, just behind the forelegs. It was the least smelly place he could find. He didn’t want to admit it to Sassraline, but she really stank, especially at the front and back end. At least she was warm and, with his belly full at last, he settled down and began to fall toward a welcome sleep.

  I HAVE TRIED YOUR DREAMING, BUT IT DOES NOT WORK.

  Ashley spoke to her without opening his tired eyes. “When you close your eyes, what do you see?”

  NOTHING. HOW CAN THERE BE ANYTHING THERE? IT IS DARK UNDER MY EYELIDS.

  “Well that’s what dreaming is. You have to think of something that isn’t there, like a golden sunrise, or a cloud. I don’t know. Make something up, like a pink butterfly flying above your head. That’s the beginning of a dream.”

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND. THERE IS NOTHING ABOVE MY HEAD.

  “Here, try this.” He imagined a pink butterfly for her and extending his mind into her cavernous consciousness.

  OH! “Now follow that around. Make up other things. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  Some time later, just as he was dozing off at last, Sassraline shifted against him. STILL NOTHING.

  He sighed and allowed his mind to seep into hers again. The dragon had no imagination at all.

  He dreamed for her instead.

  The night crept past him and his mind wandered onto the plains. He encountered the dreams of the pilgrims where they camped around flickering fires. They were unsettling dreams, dark and strange, and Ashley felt as if he’d ventured into a place he’d rather not be, like diving into a pool of black oil. Visions erupted into one mind, then another, then all of them together, so the dreams were shared and wherever he drifted, the dream was the same: insistent; demanding. He tried to claw his way back but the dream drew him in, like a hungry swamp. One shared dream ruled their minds, a composite face, like a picture he’d seen once in Stormhaven painted on many canvasses. Only once he’d seen the many canvasses together did the true picture emerge.

  Warm darkness swirled around him, and he sank into a dizzying depth. He tried to flail his arms but he couldn’t use them. He fell and, as darkness whipped past him, a great face formed, a dark face, with fire-dappled skin and a singular silver eye that watched him with a dreadful awareness. He fell toward it, but it was so vast he came no closer to the scorched skin. The world tipped and the face rose over him, yet it still felt as if he was falling, falling. Gravity made no sense. Time slipped away, and he ached, oh how he ached, all over, inside and out.

  The face filled his vision. One dark eye watched him. The other socket was terribly hollow.

  He knew mortal fear. He wanted to refuse, but his own lips betrayed him in the dream, beginning a mantra shared by so many minds. “The world is a vapour, an illusion in my mind, we shall be wrenched from our folly to join the emptiness behind. We shall be broken by your will, life will burst and bend, for this world never was. What has begun shall end. What has begun, shall end.”

  Who was this great and dreadful being? But he knew, as the plainspeople knew
. The watcher was a primitive force; he had been there since before Ashley had been born, he’d be there after. He was the ender of things, the ruin of the universe, the Destroyer. Apocalypse. How long have you been standing there in the corner of my mind, waiting for this moment when I recognise you?

  The voice, in a sonorous awesome volume of an ancient language, shook him through and through.

  “Prøssŋ çaess ÿ.”

  The words whipped into his mind like arrows; the meaning of the words infused the sounds and resonated in his bones. Pilgrim, I see you. Ashley trembled before the timeless face. He could feel the fragility of his own existence; he knew how impermanent he was. A tide of worthlessness flooded over him, as if he was drowning. He understood that everything would be ended, that everything had been ended in the moment it had begun. He was alive only within the illusion. He wasn’t truly alive at all. Life as he knew it was a brief stutter of energy, just one blink of a firefly in the vastness. The reality was the emptiness that surrounded life; life itself was an aberration. But, if he passed into the Apocalypse, when he crossed the threshold, he would become something everlasting.

  “I don’t want to be here,” he said.

  “Barenðingåda.” I understand. That great voice was like an audible form of rock and fire and thunder blended together; it swept him away. “Karãkel ÿ.” You will be counted.

  “Why me?” Ashley asked, knowing his question was echoed across the plain.

  The Destroyer watched him through slit lids, silver patterns quivering in his great black eye. You will be made a God.

  A rush of visions swept across his mind, prophesies or fantasies he couldn’t tell, things brought to the surface from the minds of many pilgrims—shattered trees, broken bridges, falling walls, dances with death where attackers were clubbed down, people obliterated, civilisations collapsed, houses on fire, hills on fire, skies that rained rocks, earth torn open to the lava beneath, a fist that could smash everything that stood in its way. He felt the perverse surge of pleasure that came with the annihilation. It was a very human trait, he understood, that capacity for destruction. What would the pleasure be like when whole worlds were demolished? The howling appeal of ruin spanning the universe, the inevitable end of all things: the scale of the Destroyer’s lust was so immense it was overwhelming.

  The time for faith has come.

  It was an unavoidable element of being human—to be able to nurture, one had to be able to neglect, it was the flip side of the capability. If one could give life, one could take it away. He could be a destroyer, just like everyone else. Denied, repressed, ignored, and now, revealed.

  You will be mine. Let none stand in your way.

  “No!” Ashley cried. “I will not be a wrecker, I will never be yours!”

  But the Destroyer just boomed with laughter, and he was swept forward on a great avalanche. He felt what it was to be destroyed, to be truly ended, with no memory and no significance, to have no time and no place, to be erased. He felt the utter dismay of death in emptiness. Non-existence was an unspeakable horror.

  If he was shown this for long enough, he knew eventually he would choose any other way, even the altered life the dark God hinted at. That was the dream of the people, the pilgrims. He knew now why they walked west. They walked toward the promise. They understood ruin. They understood rage. Many of them hadn’t even needed the dream in the first place. They walked toward the moment of transcendence when they would embrace the Apocalypse.

  Ashley tumbled out of the dream to lie gasping on the ground.

  He was alive. He existed. He was Ashley.

  The ground vibrated gently in a rhythmical manner. A wall of green scales rose around him. The green was dull, but when he rubbed across it with his leather sleeve it glistened.

  Sassraline nudged him with her snout.

  I DON’T THINK I LIKE DREAMING.

  The dawn was coming. The light ran first through the cracks in the sky, exploring the empty veins between the altered panels of various hues. Already broken, he realised. This world was falling apart, and there was worse than Chaos waiting for them all at the end of it. He tried to ignore the pit of panic the dream had left within his guts, and set his mind to the task of finding Tabitha.

  With no warning at all, Sassraline snatched him up. He had long ago forgotten to continue the mental dialogue of praise that kept her tame. Before he could grasp at her mind to prevent her eating him, she had flipped him onto a cluster of spines high on her neck. The spines were uncomfortable, but dull-edged enough that they wouldn’t cut him. He was to ride on top.

  They took to the wing. Sassraline wanted to cool off and Ashley couldn’t agree more. He hadn’t designed his leathers to be opened, and down in these lowlands, even so early in the day, he was sweltering.

  The dawn seeped into the sky like a swirl of blood above the great canvas of the lowlands. The dark countryside slid by beneath his feet, fast and fluid. They sped over the rumpled ground. In places, ruins made great patterns. From the air it looked as if some grand designer had been scribing plans across the landscapes of Oldenworld. However, when they came close to the designs, he could see the roads, pipes and networks were broken. Abandoned. Plants were reclaiming what industry had built. As they went farther west the vegetation became more rampant, the ground wetter, the air warmer. They passed none of those coppery lampposts anymore, and Sassraline became grumpy because there was nothing else tasty to snack on that Ashley would allow, while he rode. She also didn’t like the growing heat.

  The ground below them festered. Figures moved across it, that constant staggering flow of humanity and inhumanity, things that looked fearfully over their hunched shoulders then scattered when they saw him. They drew their way forward with their tall sticks and fluttering red pennants. The great pilgrimage was afoot, and Ashley followed the many minds, searching for someone unique.

  He knew Tabitha was heading for the Sorcerer’s Pillar, and every mind shared that singular goal. The great call that had been made to the populace was to come to Turmodin, and although every creature had a personal compass pointing like a needle at the accursed source of their various distresses, they walked toward it now with a perverse faith. The great god had promised he would end the Sorcerer; he would end everything. They had faith, and faith, Ashley discovered, didn’t need logic, it didn’t need reason. It needed belief.

  The pilgrims would be mighty and their rage would clean all Oldenworld with fire and wrath. There would be an end to suffering, and a beginning to the punishment of others. What was coming was not just the chance to worship. It was the chance to become a god.

  Ashley could understand the madness of it. He flew and his eyes stung.

  When a god spoke to one personally, one believed, but just because He existed, didn’t make what He aspired to do right. The people had abandoned reason, because they had faith instead. The problem with gods, Ashley decided, was that people wanted to bow down to them. Because they had so much more power than people, people assumed they were right and people wrong.

  What if the god was wrong?

  The day wore on, becoming hot and clammy, the air growing moist and insubstantial under Sassraline’s tiring wings, yet still he found no trace of Tabitha, and as he searched on and on he realised he was following the flow of pilgrims himself. He was carried on the same irresistible current drawing them all toward Turmodin.

  His legs were beginning to hurt. Sassraline’s heat was becoming unbearable. His hands had blistered and flaked. He didn’t think he could spend much more time on her back. Another cluster of pilgrims trudged blindly ahead, and as he swooped down over them, he encountered at last the memory of an unmistakable voice, the trace of a song so sweet it washed all doubt and suffering from his mind. They had heard the voice of the singer! They had heard Tabitha.

  He guided Sassraline toward the source of the song, going back on the concentric imprints in the mental landscape. A song sung and heard across the world. She had sung the Lif
esong, and the memory of it was beautiful. How had she reached the Pillar before him? Tabitha! There was so much about her that was a mystery. They sped toward Turmodin.

  As they neared the coast and the Sorcerer’s great crusted column rushed at them from the horizon, Ashley thought he recognised something in the thoughts below, an Eyrian mind, an aberration in the psychima. They swept down, only to find a singular creature floating to the surface. Strange. It rolled onto its back as they passed, ready to fight; when they had passed it continued swimming downstream, its jagged tail driving it fast and hard. Ashley and Sassraline shot low over the greasy river and carried on, heading for the Pillar and some giant structure on the plains before it—the terminus of the pilgrimage. Bright lightning flashed past them, a ragged whip of warning. They had encounterd Chaos.

  _____

  The monster floated face-down in the river, drowning in his memories, memories that rose on the hot currents, borne up by the gases of this lowland swamp until they burst in his snout like bitter reprimands. He gnashed his teeth against the anger. He was not a man. He was not fit to be a man anymore.

  He remembered a man. A man had believed in justice.

  The water billowed against his face.

  He remembered a woman. He remembered reaching for her, across a divide. And, somehow, in the reaching, he had fallen in the space between, into Darkness, and he had never come back. Anger had taken root in his heart; it festered there and wanted to spread. Rage at the way he had been used. Killing the Darkmaster had not eased the rage, because the rage was at him. He slashed at the water with his clawed hands—so strong, so deadly. He clashed his jaws, made for violence. He flexed his arms, now so immensely strong. He had been changed. On the outside, it was so, but he knew the truth. He hadn’t been changed at all. He had become a monster. That was why he had taken this form in the silver dust. That was why he still lived.

  Rage: he was defined by it. He needed something to fight. He would find vengeance for what had been done to him; vengeance upon the thieving boy who had ruined his life; vengeance upon the Sorcerer who had polluted Oldenworld with his malice. Revenge. He could almost taste their blood. He roared into the water. But he knew such revenge would never lead to peace. It would lead to more chaos. He rose for air. Had the Sorcerer won so easily? Was he serving the ends of another master?