Come Armageddon

by Anne Perry

  Sadokhar began by telling him about the night he was born and his mother died, and how Tathea had taken him to Hirioth and cared for him and taught him all she could, until it had been time for him to learn the arts of war and leadership which she could not show him alone.

  Tornagrain did not interrupt; much of it was familiar to him because he had been there. Looking back now, knowing what had followed, he saw that the account was also threaded through with the pain of all that he had betrayed and lost for ever. It was a silent and terrible ghost between them.

  They walked rapidly through the dust, side by side. Tornagrain had not the faintest idea where they were going, nor why, but he offered no more argument.

  “Tathea taught me it was my destiny to unite the Island,” Sadokhar went on after a while, “long enough for there to be peace in which we could find and teach the warriors who would fight the final war against the Great Enemy.”

  “Final war? You mean there’ll be peace after that?” Tornagrain was incredulous.

  “No. There’ll be the end of the world in its present state,” Sadokhar answered, not looking at him. “The Great Enemy is not the barbarian, it is far older than any man. It is Asmodeus, the son of God who denied the light and fell to the darkness that has no end.”

  Tornagrain stared at him, slowing to a stop in amazement. “The end of the world?” he repeated through dry lips.

  “Yes. If we win it is ours for eternity. If we lose, then it is Asmodeus’ to turn into a different kind of damnation that would spread to the stars.”

  “How ... how do you fight?” Tornagrain asked. “What can you do?” There was pain in his eyes, and knowledge of the long despair of hell.

  Sadokhar told him how Sardriel and Ardesir were prepared, and that Kor-Assh was coming, and of the Knights of the Western Shore. Then he told him how they had realised that time was Asmodeus’ ally, and thus their enemy. He described the great golden Book, and how Tathea had seen Asmodeus’ keys of the world on it, and for a moment lost her faith and became old and weak.

  Tornagrain listened white-faced, not speaking. Neither of them had begun to walk again.

  “What did you do?” he said hoarsely.

  “I remembered the doorway Orocyno had gone through into the past,” Sadokhar answered, looking sideways at him. “And I thought perhaps I could provoke the angels of hell to start Armageddon now, while we are ready.”

  “Oh God!” Tornagrain gasped as the enormity of it hit him.

  Sadokhar smiled bitterly. “And that is how I came into hell ... alive! And how Tiyo-Mah and the Lords of Sin and the Undead went into the world.”

  Tornagrain stared at him, his eyes dark with horror and understanding.

  Sadokhar started to walk again, impatient with delay. “Come on! We’ve miles to go yet!”

  “If you can go back through it into the world again, why haven’t you?” Tornagrain asked, catching up with him.

  “Because I’ve damned well got to take you with me!” Sadokhar snapped. Anger welled up inside him again at Tornagrain because he did not understand that it was his sin that held them both here. Then honesty compelled him to look at the truth. He lowered his voice a little. “Besides, if we are going to win the war, I’ll need you. Tathea came to me in a vision and told me of the darkness that Tiyo-Mah is spreading through Shinabar and Camassia.”

  Tornagrain matched him stride for stride. “What kind of darkness?” he asked.

  Sadokhar told him all that Tathea had said of the corruption and evil in Thoth-Moara and the City in the Centre of the World, how lies were passed from man to man until no one knew the truth, and fear twisted everything.

  He saw the sorrow in Tornagrain’s eyes, in the lines of his mouth and the tight skin across his cheeks. Even through the dried blood and the darkening bruises, the grief in him was naked. Perhaps only now he was realising how much he loved the earth, now when it was gone from him, and in danger of destruction so nothing would be left of it but its pain. Perhaps too he felt the weight of his own betrayals.

  He walked for a long time in silence, absorbing the enormity of what he had heard, trying to understand it and find some way of bearing it.

  “Who is Tathea?” he said at last. “Who is she really? How does she know these things?”

  If Sadokhar had told him in life, he would have mocked the idea, but here Tornagrain knew the existence of the spirit outside mortality only too achingly well. It was a simple thing to speak to him of Tathea in Shinabar over five hundred years ago, of her journey of the spirit where she had found the Book, and how she had brought it back to the world, and all but a few had rejected it.

  “She kept it?” Tornagrain said in wonder. “For five hundred years?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were born to open it again?”

  “No.” That was difficult to say. “I used to think so, but it was Ishrafeli himself, once he knew who he was, once he understood and was prepared to commit to serve God all his life, with everything he has or will ever have.”

  “And Armageddon?”

  “They are fighting it now.”

  “Will they win?”

  “I don’t know.” It was the first time Sadokhar had admitted that to himself. They were at the mouth of the gorge going down on to the lower plain. Somewhere about a thousand yards away the twitching pieces of Ozmander lay in the dust, still alive, still sentient ... feeling God knew what. Would the whole beautiful world end like that?

  “We have to go down here,” Sadokhar said as calmly as he could. “You will see something repulsive and pitiful. He tore himself apart ... I didn’t do it.”

  Tornagrain did not understand. “Tore himself apart? Who?”

  “Ozmander, one of the Lords of the Undead,” Sadokhar replied, starting down the slope, slipping a little on the loose stones. Surprisingly, he could feel pain again. A sharp chip cut his root and he gasped as the jagged hurt of it shot through him. “He was legion ... a score of damned spirits all locked together in one body, hating each other, always fighting for dominance.”

  “Why did he tear himself apart?” Tornagrain scrambled to keep up with him. “Did you make it happen?”

  “Yes. It was the only way to get past him.”

  “Why did you have to?”

  “To find you, of course!” Sadokhar kept his face forward so Tornagrain could not see it.

  “You were so sure I’d be here?” There was an edge of emotion to his voice but Sadokhar could not tell if it was resentment or pain, or both.

  “Where else would you be?” Sadokhar said with sudden bitterness, then as quickly regretted it. “Tathea told me I couldn’t get out without finding you,” he added.

  “I see.”

  “No you don’t.” Sadokhar knew they were near Ozmander now, but he did not look at Tornagrain. He scrambled over a patch of loose scree, keeping his balance with difficulty. “It began for myself.”

  “And now?” Tornagrain asked. “And if you lie to me I’ll push you the rest of the way down this damn gully!” That was pain too, trying to disguise itself.

  Then Sadokhar heard a gasp as Tornagrain saw Ozmander’s head lying in the dust, hideous, deformed, but still moving, still alive. One arm lay less than a yard away now, and the eyes were looking at it, willing the fingers to drag it closer, worming in the dust, crawling half-inch by half-inch.

  “Come on!” Sadokhar shouted, beginning to run, and jumping from one pile of scree to another.

  “For God’s sake! What is it?” Tornagrain cried out, flailing his arms to keep his balance and leap out of its way.

  “What we become, if we cling on to what is monstrous inside ourselves,” Sadokhar answered. “He’s us, after a thousand years of sin.”

  A shower of rubble spattered around him as Tornagrain slid, landing half on top of him.

  They picked themselves up and kept on, neither turning even once to see what might be behind them.

  Tornagrain’s question still hung between
them, demanding an answer.

  “No, I wouldn’t leave without you, even if I could,” Sadokhar said honestly. “God in heaven, how could you leave anyone here if you knew a way to get them out?”

  They reached the bottom of the gully where it opened on to the plain, and together they started to walk across the broken, lifeless rock.

  There was no way to count time, except as a matter of weariness when legs could endure no more. Then they lay and rested, sometimes drifting into a kind of sleep. It was in one of these half-dreams that Sadokhar acknowledged to himself that he must begin the struggle towards teaching, and to do that he must first understand for himself. He sat up slowly. If he waited until he had the right words he would never begin.

  “You know why I am in hell. Why are you?”

  Tornagrain stared at him, then looked away. “You of all people should know that!”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I know,” Sadokhar answered. “It’s whether you do that matters.”

  “Why? I thought you came to get me out ... for whatever reason!” He still kept his face averted, eyes on the horizon, his mouth tight as he fought to control loneliness, the passionate overwhelming need to be loved, in spite of everything.

  “I did,” Sadokhar said hoarsely, wrenched inside with a hundred memories of friendship before the betrayal. Now only truth, clean and hard, would serve. “And the reason doesn’t matter, except to me. This is about you.”

  Tornagrain swung around to face him. “I thought it was about you getting out so you could fight Armageddon!”

  Sadokhar smiled bitterly. “I can’t get out without you—and you can’t get out without understanding why you are here.”

  There was silence. Nothing moved as far as the eye could see across the endless, grey-white plain.

  “I’m here because I betrayed you,” Tornagrain said at last, his voice very quiet, but there was no hesitation in the words.

  “And Aelfrith,” Sadokhar added. “And everyone else who died, or lost anyone.”

  Tornagrain did not answer for a long time. It was as if a wound inside him was bleeding.

  Sadokhar waited. There was nowhere to go until this was done.

  “I know,” Tornagrain said at last. “I thought you had forgiven me.” He looked at him, “Was I wrong?”

  Sadokhar faced him without blinking. “No. But forgiveness is not enough.” The words were harsh, but now that it was begun it must be completed or it meant nothing; all the pain was wasted.

  “For God’s sake, what more is there?” Confusion filled Tornagrain’s eyes and face as if hope had given him new power to feel despair all over again.

  Sadokhar looked at him steadily. “Understanding ... and change. You have to become different, so that even if exactly the same things were to happen to you, you would never do that again, but far more than that, you wouldn’t want to!”

  Tornagrain stared back at him, eyes narrowed against the glare. Everything in him was pleading for help.

  “Did you want to be Earl of the Eastern Shore so much?” Sadokhar said at last.

  Tornagrain turned away, looking at the horizon. “I did at the time,” he admitted quietly.

  “And now?” Sadokhar pressed.

  “Now I’d give anything to undo it ... but that isn’t enough, is it!” It was not a question. He knew the answer.

  “No,” Sadokhar agreed. “To be sorry is good, it’s necessary, but it isn’t everything. You must see envy for the ugliness it is. You must let go of all selfishness and come to know without question that everyone else is as precious, as real and as important as you are, as capable of joy and pain.” He sighed. “Or if they aren’t, that’s God’s judgement to make, not ours.”

  Tornagrain said nothing for a long time, but his thoughts were clear in his eyes and lips, and the way he moved his hands in the dust.

  “Tell me what has happened in the world since I left it,” he said at last, standing up and stretching, wincing as his muscles cramped.

  Sadokhar rose as well and started walking, conscious of his blistered feet and the abrasions on his legs, and glad of the pain. He began to recount all the history he could think of.

  “Tell me of these warriors,” Tornagrain pressed. “Sardriel and Ardesir. Who are they and what are they like? And Kor-Assh—you said he would come also. How will they fight? Tell me about this Tiyo-Mah, and the Lords of Sin.”

  Sadokhar told him all he could, digging deeply into himself and uncovering a sense of desolation at his own loneliness for those he had loved more than he knew. It lay naked in his words, and he kept his face ahead as they trudged over the dust and climbed laboriously up slithering scree and rubble, and slid down the far side again.

  “What can I do to help?” Tornagrain said when Sadokhar fell silent at last.

  Sadokhar looked at him. “To get out?”

  Tornagrain’s stare was level. “No, to help you fight Armageddon. If you can come here to choose the time of it, I can stay, if that’s what it takes to do my part.”

  Sadokhar stopped abruptly, amazed.

  “You would?” he said in disbelief. “You’d stay here, even if the portal would let you through?” The enormity of such a sacrifice appalled him, and yet the beauty of it scorched away refusal.

  “If I have to.” Tornagrain’s voice trembled. “I want to do something to fight for the world, even if I never see it again. I want it to survive, to have resurrection and glory. I’ll give anything I have for that.”

  Sadokhar looked in his face and believed him. “You must come back into the world with me,” he answered. “There’s nothing to do here.”

  Tornagrain’s voice was high-pitched with hope. “Into the world ... with you?”

  “Yes,” Sadokhar replied, then he looked away; his eyes suddenly swimming with tears. “Now come on!”

  Tornagrain obeyed and they plodded through the clinging dust, leaving a seemingly endless trail of footprints behind them.

  “I wouldn’t mind if it were sand!” Tornagrain said abruptly. “I could fool myself that somewhere at the end of all this there was going to be a great, clean ocean with roaring waves, white spume and a wind that sings in the ears. The only noises here are the ones we make. Have you noticed that?”

  “There’s nothing else alive,” Sadokhar replied. “Man is the only living thing that can deserve hell.”

  Tornagrain shrugged. “I wonder if we all got together, we could make something decent of it?” He smiled suddenly. “That’d be a poke in the eye for damnation—wouldn’t it? Nothing would grow, but what if we built something beautiful out of the stone? Or even told each other stories? What do you think?”

  Sadokhar thought that if they had the will to do that they would not be in hell, but he did not say so. Instead, he entered into the game. “Stories,” he replied. “Definitely. You can’t wake up and find your work undone. The moment you speak it begins to come alive. Do you remember Aelfrith’s stories of his great voyages to the northern seas and the battles?”

  “I remember the monsters!” Tornagrain answered with a grin. “They got bigger and had more legs with every telling!” If the name of Aelfrith caused him any pain it was not in his face, as if his resolve had melted the hurt from it and he could remember the joy. “I never cared whether they were literal,” he went on. “The truth of adventure was what mattered.” He plunged into retelling one as they walked, putting in all Aelfrith’s heart and imagination, and adding a little of his own.

  When he came to the end, Sadokhar began one of his favourites, a wild, roaring battle on the ice of some legendary fjord with glittering peaks against a wan sky and an enemy half man, half beast.

  “They ate them!” he finished.

  “Cooked?” Tornagrain said in amazement.

  “The first time I heard it—yes,” Sadokhar agreed. “Later they were raw!” And he started to laugh as if they were again in Aelfrith’s hall by the fire with the wind and the stars outside, and the sea crashing on the Eastern S
hore in the endless music of the earth.

  Tornagrain started to laugh as well, and they stopped walking and stood still, a little bent over to catch their breath.

  Sadokhar wiped tears and dust off his face and slapped Tornagrain on the shoulder. “A definite poke in the eye!” he said with profound feeling. “Come on!”

  They continued walking steadily. At one point they were obliged to pass between two vast quarries like craters in the rock where once people had laboured to dig their way out just as futilely as those Sadokhar had passed before. They were so huge the ends were invisible and there was no alternative but to pass on a relatively narrow neck of land between them. It was perhaps fifty yards across, and marked with jagged outcrops and towers.

  They were level with one of these when a dozen people, men, women and youths, stepped out from behind and barred their way.

  “We mean you no harm,” Sadokhar said civilly. “Please allow us to pass.”

  A broad-shouldered woman with a bulging stomach stared at him aggressively, hands on her hips, fingers close to a knife in her belt.

  Sadokhar held his hands wide to show that he had no weapon, and Tornagrain beside him did the same. “We mean you no harm,” he said again. “Let us pass. We intend to go, let it be without injury to any of us.”

  “You threatening us?” the woman asked with surprise and anger, her face twisted, mouth ugly.

  Another woman, older, stepped up beside her, and a man came on her heels. A youth rocked back and forth as if to launch himself in an attack.

  “This is ridiculous!” Sadokhar said sharply. “We simply wish to pass. What difference can it make to you if we do or not? We have nothing for you to take, and we want nothing of yours. Stand aside and let us go.”

  “Or what?” the youth demanded. “You’d beat us, stab us? What?”

  “Force our way through,” Sadokhar replied, not certain if they had the strength to do that, but meaning to try. Nothing, even of hell, was going to stop him reaching the portal and taking Tornagrain through it. There was no price too high to pay if it would allow them to join the battle of Armageddon.

  The woman threw her head back and bellowed with laughter. Then without any warning she pulled the knife out of her belt and launched herself at Sadokhar, arms flailing. The blade was dull in the flat light, but he could see its razor edge very clearly.