The Mentalist looked more than concerned. “Riddler! You cannot play both sides of this axis.”
“Why ever not? It is what we must do with the first and second axis to master them. Why not the third? The Gyre wants everything to be Order. Ametheus wants Chaos complete. There is no resolution to that divide, only conflict between opposing poles, Chaos against Order, as it has been for hundreds of years, thousands. Thus the third axis of magic remains unbalanced, mastered by neither of the poles. We must grasp it in its centre, take command of all the axes.”
“No, Riddler,” boomed the Warlock. “Order must triumph here, or we are doomed.”
“We are doomed if we reach for Order unending. That is how we came to this state of affairs!”
“You!” exclaimed the Cosmologer. “Don’t you dare blame this all on wizardry, Riddler. We did not cause the Chaos!”
“And I have a plan which ends the Chaos,” asserted the Warlock.
“You might be able to strategise more moves than I can, Warlock, but I see the final plays of this game.”
“You and your prophecy! It is as worthless as an old hag foretelling the future in floating leaves.”
“Nonetheless, I see this future and you do not,” replied Zarost. “I see a world governed by the Lifesong.”
“Ugh! I am not going to argue with you academics. The end is upon us just as much here as if we were standing in Turmodin. Do you understand who will be walking in the world in a moment? The Apocalypse will end everything. I must return to complete my plan, or it will all be for nit!”
“Have you forgotten that a Death-duel ties you to us? You cannot leave us to protect your interests. Just like your strategy in Slipper, not so? You should be careful what tricks you use, because they can always be played the other way around.”
“Riddler! Release us! This is madness.”
“No, I think he did something wise, for once.” The Cosmologer raised her hands slowly. The ground buckled as gravity gathered.
“You should have thought first about gaining my trust, instead of the Sorcerer’s,” said the Mentalist. “I do not believe you either.” There was a jolt as the Mentalist gathered the currents of thought.
The Warlock drew his battleaxe into his hands and made a slow rising circle with the tip.
“Well then I shall end it fast, and be back in time to change the play,” he announced.
“And I shall play fast, in time to change the end,” said the Riddler.
They squared off: the Mentalist, the Cosmologer, the Riddler and the Warlock, but where the others saw four sides, Zarost saw five. There was an inside he could use in this battle. The Warlock didn’t know about inference. None of them did. The Death-duel tied them together with its barbed coils. Transference would drag all of them together, they would not escape from each other until the maker revoked its pact, or resolved, leaving one fewer wizard to complicate his plan, possibly two. But inference was a peculiar delight: Twardy Zarost was the only one who could step out of the standoff.
Zarost clapped to a strange rhythm and sang a guttural shamanic invocation. He sang gibberish. Let the Warlock wonder. The Warlock swung his axe in a blazing arc, aiming for Zarost.
“Gịb,” said Zarost, ending his invocation, and he was gone. Let them infer what they could.
And, if anyone had been counting, they would know he had an extra wizard in his pocket.
_____
Tabitha pitied him, the man trapped in his madness, the boy tormented by his brothers, by his nature, but she had seen the future, and she knew the Destroyer would kill him and that it was the only way to end the ruin Ametheus brought upon the world. She would speak the words, and he and his father would be ended. So she knew she must sing.
“Oh Ethan, you didn’t want this, I know!”
First, Tabitha needed silence. Silence to replace the babble, calm where there was discord, so she could sing her song and have it heard without disruption. She needed a foundation of stillness to work from in this strange place where visions of reality had such power, where the world was responsive to her thoughts. She knew she couldn’t find that peace outside of herself, with so many threats competing for her attention: she had to find it within.
It was almost like music, the barks and broken cries, the grinding groans and ratchet cracks, each sound yielding a slightly different tone, each clapping and slapping a different rhythm so the combined volume cycled with a lilting effect, layers and layers of instrumental tapestries, the concert of a broken orchestra. As she focused on the sounds alone, she felt the beat more acutely, a stuttering pressure upon her skin. The rumble in the earth far below became stamping on the floor. She perceived the sound as if it were formed of waves, rushing through the air and wood, converging in a wild place deep within her. She descended into that inner space, a fundamental place of seeing, secret and yet linked to everything. The wall and its rough red plaster grew dim in her eyes.
She saw the sharp peaks and deep troughs of the sound’s interference, as if she was caught upon a raft in a storm with the great swells all around her. Moving with the sounds, she allowed her voice to wander, up and down, faster and faster, matching the movement of the peaked sea dancing in that place of convergence. She understood its nature; she could feel its urgent demand. Then she reversed her movement, sinking as the sea rose, upward as it sank, her voice gathering in volume and command, until the sounds of Turmodin towered over her like a great wave, and she had sunk deep beneath it. Then the sound fell toward her, and she rose to meet it, both sound and song searching toward the stasis, the final note that would cut through that violent sea, equalising the phases, half-way between peak and trough, balancing the brutal disturbance at its midpoint.
“You can’t do it without Saladon here!” shouted Gabrielle, rushing for her with a sudden drawn blade. “Don’t be a stupid bitch. Don’t do it!”
But the Mystery flew across Gabrielle’s path, caught her blade hand, and redirected her charge. She moved like a dancer, touching Gabrielle with gentle nudges, turning her knees, throwing her strikes backward, driving her away. Maybe she was fearful to use her magic so close to Ametheus, but she had a way of foretelling where Gabrielle would move, moving an instant before her. She would buy Tabitha the time she needed.
Tabitha concentrated on the sounds. She wasn’t trying to change the world without, for that was governed by the Sorcerer’s vision. She was trying to change the world within: her world, her vision. Tabitha reached the final note. There was a strange dual tone then her voice and the rough sounds of Turmodin became one.
Tabitha held onto her note, the only note in a new and perfect silence around it.
The cacophony was gone. She allowed her song to drop into the stillness.
The lyre came to life in her hands. Her fingers plucked the notes instinctively as she opened herself to the source of the Lifesong. The air shimmered as her connection with the clear essence expanded. Then the flames shimmered too, and Ametheus, and all the others, those poor doomed figures on the sacrifice, as if they were temporary figures made from clear essence as well, as if their forms were only a pattern and colouring of the underlying clear essence. Her song would give them all release. Their suffering would end. The world became her dream.
The vision shimmered around her, waiting for her command, she kept her mind as still as a pool, willing no change at all. Her music spread like a rising tide, the threads of Chaos were dissolved in her resonant harmony.
Ametheus watched her out of his single eye, entranced. His brothers faced away toward the shimmering form of the Wicker Man, to watch what would come, but Ethan watched her, solitary and sad. The dancing of his eye had slowed; it was steady.
“You knew this moment would come,” she said. “You knew he would come. You knew he would kill you.”
He said nothing, turning the crown over and over in his hands.
“Will you fight for me?” she asked. “Will you fight for life?”
He stepped
forward and placed the crown on her head.
Tears ran down his pasty cheeks. “I think I know why the birds sing,” he whispered.
She sang and allowed the dark God to come up through her mind to inhabit the life she had created for him.
43. ANOTHER VIEW
“The greater the number of ripples in motion
The harder to judge the waves in the ocean.”—Zarost
The sky turned around it, detritus spiralled in the air; even the clouds were whipped around in a sickening circle. The pilgrims were thick on the ground, chanting, stomping, beating metal, excited and desperate to impress. They were a pushing, shoving, fighting, biting and rutting frenzy of devotion.
Then Ashley and Sassraline came past the structure, and he beheld the horror of it, the great figure of a man, blocked out with a colossal wooden frame, a wicker structure crammed with living people, figures that writhed, moaned and cried within, figures that clambered on the outside and lashed more sacrifices onto those beneath. It was horrific; it looked as if some bodies had even been sawn short to fit into the corners. Smoke billowed from the lower levels, flame licking at the flesh, and screams filled the air. In their minds he could see what would come. The Destroyer would be made from their many bodies. He would step into their flesh and stride out of the fires from the Wicker Man to break the world. His presence rose through them, a living nightmare, a fatal possession.
And there, below the threatening God-to-be, stood Tabitha, beside the Sorcerer Ametheus. Her thoughts were hidden from him, but she was singing. He suspected she was being used in the ceremony, used for her magic. The people screamed; she had the power to end their suffering, by granting life to the one they would become. If she tried anything else, she would doom the people to death in flames. She would have to witness their massed death. She was crying, but she couldn’t look away from the rising flames. She was in torment.
In that moment, he knew his target. As he knew it, so did his dragon.
“Sing,” he shouted down to Tabitha. “Tabitha! Sing!”
Ashley and his dragon rose into the roaring sky.
Let the God come. There was one man who would not worship Him.
_____
Ethan saw his father’s face. It was forming before him, in the pool of blood, amid the other dark forms swimming and swirling there, waiting to come through. He remembered the dream and, as he did so, he touched Amyar and Seus, and it became real. Finally, he would be able to rest, for they would all be ended. The wizards would be gone.
The beautiful girl sang the song and the crowds chanted as the priests had taught them to, and the fires burst. Seus jerked wildfire down and Amyar forced their body around so that he could watch the face taking form in the shimmering flesh of the Wicker Man, in the head of many heads, as the change happened in the essence, in the ichor, the blood of the Gods.
Then it was done. The Apocalypse had come, smoking, flaming. Living.
Ethan remembered he was going to do something special, because of the girl, because of beauty, because she had shown him something, but then his father clenched his fist and Ethan was possessed so harshly he lost all idea of what he had been trying to achieve. He only knew that the One before him could stop his heart in an instant. His father. He fell to his knees. Like an egg crushed with a sudden slap, his mind burst. He felt himself leaking out all over the place. The single eye was watching him, watching him, watching him; the single eye was watching, over the space between.
“Baħnk beŋistu km tóm,” his father said.
The world lurched underfoot and disintegrated into a thousand flakes, as if everything Ethan had seen had been only the surface of a painting on a thin sheet of stone, and that stone had been shattered. In one piece he recognised Tabitha’s surprised face, in another a worshipper. The air became tumbling shards. He saw his own body represented on many different pieces. It was the mirror-shard spell, the one his father had shown Seus, but this time it was cast on the whole world. The Destroyer had touched him with a spell Ethan couldn’t begin to understand.
Ethan didn’t feel fear. He had been afraid of the wizards. His father went beyond a threat to be faced or fled—he was a fundamental presence throughout everything. Ethan’s existence was at the whim of his father before him. He would be dead before he began to run, snuffed out by a wish. There was no fear, only acceptance.
Everything snapped back into place. Ethan was whole again, the rock was beneath his feet, and his father was watching, watching, watching, his father was watching, over the space between. A great beast was diving down from the sky, from his blind side. Sparkling and green. Ethan didn’t think his father had seen the threat.
“Very good,” said the Destroyer. “You will not fight me. Come to me.”
Ethan hesitated. If he could resist his father, the girl might have a chance. Tabitha.
“Baħnk beŋistu kalemgårda,” his father commanded, spreading his colossal hands. The world was stripped to pieces, a thousand strings, as if everything Ethan saw had been made of threads writhing away from their places. He had no defence against this assault. His father was too powerful, his magic too fundamental. He didn’t know how to fight. His brothers were too strong; they hauled him toward the union with his father. When that happened, his father would be unstoppable, his power absolute. The singer would die! The song would die! He wished it could be otherwise.
Then there was an animal roar. The world snapped back to a steady state and he saw that the great beast had fallen on his father. It beat its wings against his shoulders; it struck at him with a predator’s jaws—a dragon from the high Winterblades. Someone rode the beast, a man in leathers, high on its head. The dragon vomited flame in his father’s face, and his father roared in anger. It would not beat fire with fire.
He saw another beast attacking—it leapt for him. It had come through the worshippers, from the side. It was green-scaled, muscled, and its one arm ended in a stump, but the other hand was viciously taloned and its jaws were full of pointed teeth. It would slice through flesh faster than any blade. It leapt for him and he had an instant to reach for Seus or Amyar for defence.
He knew what he should do. If he didn’t tell his brothers, if he kept his thoughts private from them and gave them no warning, he would die, and his father would be denied his power. His father would not be complete. Maybe that would be enough to give Tabitha a chance. Maybe it would be enough to give the song a chance. He stood immobile, paralysed by the horror of his seditious thoughts.
He understood it, at last. The understanding was a bright heat, like the sun rising inside his chest. He had never felt anything like it before. It made him happy. It made him want to cry.
“I know why the birds sing!” he exclaimed. He did know, at last.
The green monster fell upon him and tore out his throat.
His brothers summoned the wildfire hard, in a defence that was too late. The sky tightened.
“No, Ethan, no!” Tabitha shouted, running. “Turn the wildfire aside, you must both live!”
But the wildfire came at him from all directions, drawn fast in threads of silver light.
Ethan turned his head to her, forcing his brothers to look away.
“You cared!” he tried to say in surprise, but his voice didn’t work.
And the wretched light struck him and lit him like the sun.
He was Chaos, and he burned bright, and so did the monster who had fallen upon him.
_____
Within, his mind was still, poised and deadly. Everything had become lines and targets to Garyll, distances, speeds and openings. There was no fear. There was no anger. Only a weapon, the blade exposed, and the weapon was Garyll Glavenor. He blurred and struck.
Then his flesh burned with silver fire—the Chaos seethed within him. Visions tore across his mind and, as they did, his fury burst with blinding force and a husk blew away from his soul, a shroud of self-loathing. Garyll Glavenor filled his body. He knew himself. He was justice.
“I have paid enough!” he shouted.
The Sorcerer was dead at his feet. He had paid for his crimes against the world.
He looked up to see Tabitha, the most delicate singer on the most awful battlefield. She was wearing the Kingsrim, and it made her look intense yet beautiful. He wanted to worship her. She stared at him, silent and speechless, her fingers poised on her lyre.
Behind her, the great figure of the dark God fought with the dragon, but the dragon was losing; its fire belched forth in short gasps and its wings dragged on the ground. It lunged at the God but He caught its neck with one hand and the tail with the other, and He folded it in half. There was a wrenching snapping sound, and a high squeal, and the dragon dropped to the ground, dead. A small figure fell from the dragon’s head, no doubt a worshipper who had been hooked up in the violence of the struggle.
The Destroyer turned his eye on them, and the world began to fall apart again.
_____Tabitha caught herself. She had recognised the monster who had fallen upon Ametheus, and the knowledge had petrified her. Then the wildfire bloomed upon him, and she reached out to the Chaos, and a great ringing assaulted her ears. An even greater heat consumed her and she sang one note alone yet it was not enough, and just as her heart drove her voice to break, Garyll appeared before her: in the midst of the blinding colour, as if stepping from a dream—defined by his belief, redeemed by her love. She had risked death in the wildfire without thinking, and she realised in that moment she would do anything to save Garyll, regardless of what he had done, regardless of the consequences. She understood at last what he had done for her in Eyri. He had sacrificed himself, his principles, everything, to save her. That was the essence of love.
She wanted to run to him and hold him, to know that he was real, but at his feet lay Ametheus, dead. He had given her the chance—they both had—to banish the Destroyer. She could do it now. The words shimmered in her memory, dark symbols on a burning parchment, but around that image her thoughts were in chaos, she could not breathe or think or speak. Her heart was in turmoil. Now that Garyll was here, she was terrified she would lose him.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 75
