by Anne Perry
Then he looked along the water’s edge and saw the glittering figure of the dwarf walking slowly towards him. He stopped seven or eight yards away from Sardriel. The light shimmered on the diamond-shaped panes of his tunic as the wind moved it.
In spite of the noise of the sea, when Azrub spoke his voice was soft and sibilant, and it fell with perfect clarity, every word as if spoken with no other sound in the world. He smiled; it was an expression of infinite obscenity. “You want to see what I can do for you ... as if you did not already know it in your heart.”
“You can do nothing for me,” Sardriel replied. “But for the world, you could serve truth, instead of lies.”
Azrub’s face did not change by even a flicker. “The truth is that man will always follow the illusion, if it is sweeter,” he answered. “Reality needs courage, and man is a coward. It needs tolerance, compassion and infinite power to forgive, and to hope. But man is narrow of vision, quick to judge and even quicker to condemn.” His voice filled the air. “He forgives nothing, and hopes only for the answer to his own needs. You are a realist, a worshipper at the altar of truth. You know I am right. You have seen it too often to deny. You know it and you know I know it too.”
“Man is all those things,” Sardriel conceded. “Every possibility is there for him, and he has the power to decide. Maybe even you had that ... once.”
Azrub’s smile widened. “So decide, Sardriel! Look at what I can give you, for the rest of your life. All you have to do is take it! Go back to the Island at the Edge of the World, to the beautiful city of Tyrn Vawr, and live out your days. Or take reality,” he went on. “Be alone in the wasting of the world as all creatures wither and die and darkness covers the earth, and the end of all things, until Asmodeus rules. Then you will have nothing! You ... and all your kind.”
The sun fell glittering on his tunic, so bright Sardriel blinked and turned away his eyes. Then he looked again and Azrub was gone. He was alone on the pale sand with the wind and the surf, gentler now, still a glory of blue and white, as pure as the morning of creation, sweet to the taste, the salt like a perfume.
There was a figure walking along the shoreline towards him, slender, moving with infinite grace as if every sense took joy in the living ocean and air and sand. Her dress was somewhere between blue and green, and her hair blew back off her face in the wind. It was Elessar, exactly as he remembered her, with all the laughter, the pain, and the dreams. His heart lurched within him. This was what his life had hungered for since the day they had met; it was the purpose of all his long struggle since then. Friendship had been sweet, but his heart had been alone, disciplined, closed when he dared not look or listen to its pain.
She was just the same: her eyes, her mouth, the curve of her neck just as his soul remembered. He fought to dismiss it, knowing it was Azrub’s delusion, and yet the bliss of it enwrapped him and his heart burned within him, his body shook and he could not breathe.
She was still coming towards him. When she reached him he would feel her touch, smell the warmth and the sweetness of her skin, as he had in imagination, God knew how many times.
Had he the strength to resist it?
Perhaps not. Perhaps his resolve would melt like wax before the fire.
He could hear Azrub’s voice in his ears. “All life long! All life long!”
The words were there on his lips, but without sound.
Elessar was still coming towards him, smiling, eyes soft with the same longing that consumed him in a pain almost beyond bearing. He reached out his arms. She was nearly there.
She touched him. Her flesh was warm, the pulse was beating in her throat.
She was not real! But, dear heaven, every sense in his body was burning with the knowledge of her. She was Azrub’s creation, torn from the dreams of his soul.
He took a step backwards and saw the shadow of hurt across her face.
“No ...” he said.
“Take her!” the voice of Azrub urged. “She is the reason you have kept the laws that restricted you, robbed you of your freedom and your pleasure. She is your reward! Look at her! Touch her.”
“No!” Sardriel shouted, stepping backwards again. The stricken look on Elessar’s face was like a physical blow, even though he knew it was Azrub who created it. “No!” he said again, turning away from the dream and staring out at the wild blue of the sea. The tears in his eyes almost blinded him. He heard rather than saw the thundering foam as the waves broke. “You’re wrong. I love Elessar; to be with her is the blessing I want above all others. But I strove to keep the law because I loved it. It is good in itself, whatever the gain or the loss.”
Azrub screamed at him, but his words were torn away by the wind. Elessar was wavering, as if Azrub could not hold the power to make her real. Azrub was still shouting.
Sardriel looked back at him, the sea washing white and cold around his ankles. “No!” he answered. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. As he watched Elessar she faded, growing thin until only her eyes and the echo of her hair were left. It was like life itself slipping from his grasp.
He hesitated. Could he let it go for ever, dream or not?
Azrub’s voice was in his ears, in his mind. “Keep her ... keep her!”
Sardriel put his hands up to his face. “It’s not real! It’s not Elessar!” He moved back again, and the sea swirled around his legs, drawing him to it in a close, deep embrace. It was not cold any more, only infinitely pure, vast as the tides that sweep the earth, and he welcomed it, sinking into its arms like a pilgrim come home at last to a measureless peace.
The sea breathed a great sigh, filled with all the wild, sweet scent of infinite space, of winds that move for ever, salt-clean, light on water and the fires of heaven. It reared itself up and reached out its shining grasp after the golden dwarf. He was dragged screaming, buffeted, bruised and choking into its devouring mouth. It sucked him down into its belly where there was darkness and no air, deeper and deeper into the silence of its smothering heart. It imprisoned him under the weight of it until his flesh was torn away and his bones were crushed into a tiny space that a child might hold in its hand, but so heavy that even the rocks gave way beneath it, and it was swallowed into the earth.
Asmodeus paced the ramparts of Erebus and cursed Azrub with a raging disbelief that he could have failed! He had had everything, every skill and chance to win! Sardriel had been in his hands! His weakness was glaring, a wound wide open—and still Azrub had not won! It was almost impossible to grasp, and yet as he stared down at Sardriel in the arms of the ocean, his body held in a shining peace, he knew the victory of his soul, as sweet as heaven, a radiance that never fails.
He was consumed with a white-hot rage. Now he would go down there himself! He would accomplish what first Cassiodorus, and now Azrub had failed to do. He would loose such horror as the world had never seen.
Chapter XX
THE SOUTHERN BARBARIANS OF the desert swept north into Shinabar. They were fought at every step by the forces of Tiyo-Mah, led in the field by Mabeluz, most violent of the Lords of the Undead. The carnage was fearful as one city after another fell.
Tiyo-Mah retreated to the secret oases. In the wake of defeat thousands were slaughtered, and Indeg, Lord of the Undead, feasted on disease and spread the filth of pollution over the land and the water, killing birds and beasts.
The Shinabari armies were driven eastwards into Pera, plundering and destroying as they went.
From the steppes of Irria-Kand, cheated of the conquest of Camassia, the northern barbarians swept east and south into the upper borders of Pera, where Balour, most cunning of the Lords of the Undead, arrived and offered his services to create a defence out of the land itself.
Threatened with tidal waves of ruin on all sides, the Perans accepted, and vast, poisonous earthworks were created in a matter of days. Balour showed them how to mine for substances which erupted and turned the lakes to acid, others which tainted the rivers, until hundreds of miles were choked with dead fi
sh and even the plants withered and rotted. Terrible weapons were created out of minerals and salts dug up—explosions which killed a hundred men at a time.
And using such things was the fourth Lord of the Undead, the ingenious Accolon, who had taught even the subtle Tirilisi how better to corrupt the banking systems of the world to get greatest power. The ruin was not only the people but the plants and beasts and the earth itself.
It was Asmodeus’ challenge to Ishrafeli, and if he did not respond, then the Lords of the Undead would go on to befoul ever wider and wider circles until they tainted the whole earth. They were creatures of filth in body and spirit, but they had once been human and he could not simply destroy them, or he forfeited the best in himself also.
This was the moment when at last Ishrafeli began to perceive what it meant that we should call each thing on the earth by name. He could ignore none of it: the great and the infinitesimal, the brave and the cowardly, the glorious and the foul must all be understood and their victory sought, their pain accepted. The words were becoming reality.
He must go to Pera where the tides of war met in the last great convulsion.
He disembarked at the main sea port and travelled inland, pushing his way through the tide of refugees seeking any escape from the horrors of war behind them, a devastation not seen anywhere before. The land was poisoned, corpses of the dead choked the river and disease filled the air. Plants and trees withered. Blight infested the fields.
He pressed south from the sea, passing more people every day, many of them almost at the point of collapse. He saw a woman of about thirty, half holding up an old man who limped so badly his right leg barely touched the ground. Every few steps she spoke to him, and he answered with effort.
A child cried wordlessly, hopelessly, and no one had the strength to comfort it.
A young man with hollow eyes led a group of a dozen or so. When he drew level with Ishrafeli he spoke. “Are you waiting for someone?” He could think of no other reason why anyone would be moving away from the town and the sea where lay escape.
Ishrafeli shook his head. “No. I am going inland.”
“Don’t!” the young man said quickly. “You’ll starve.” He put his hand on Ishrafeli’s arm and his grip was tight. “The land is dying.” His voice cracked. “Poisoned. The rivers stink and nothing grows. Whoever you loved is either dead or they will come this way towards the sea. There is nowhere else.”
Ishrafeli pulled away because there was an air of madness about the man, and the smell of fear clung to him. But his fingers gripped the more. “It’s true,” the man urged.
Ishrafeli had not doubted it, but if he had, looking in the man’s face would have destroyed the last hope. “I believe you,” he said softly. “I must still go.”
“You can do nothing.” It was not a protest but despair. He was simply trying to warn because there was an honesty in him and a pity that would spare another needless pain. “No one can heal this,” he went on flatly. “The land itself is dead ... the water, even the air, for all I know. The smell of death is everywhere. Nothing grows, not even grass. The few creatures that still live now will not last long.”
“What happened?” Ishrafeli asked.
“Mining to build weapons,” the man said grimly. “But the minerals poisoned the rivers. They sent up fumes that clouded the air. Trees died, and winds blew away the good earth. There’s only death left.”
There was nothing to say. Ishrafeli started to walk because there was no point in remaining motionless. He could not go back and he could not help. Whatever there was to do lay ahead of him.
He moved steadily in the dry heat. The road was good, laid by the best engineers in the world, level and straight, paved with tiny bricks even better than the old Camassian ones from the high days of the Empire. The passing feet of refugees fleeing the carnage of war were following in the footsteps of centuries of traders and pilgrims of the past, and made no more impression on the stone than they had.
He met a woman with a troop of children, huddled together at the side of the road, faces gaunt with hunger and exhaustion. Several of them whimpered with misery.
Ishrafeli stopped and went back a step. The woman stared up at him, longing for any word of hope. He had no idea what her beliefs were. All he saw was the same hunger and thirst that he felt, the same pity and the same fear of pain, failure, and loneliness that was common to all humanity.
“I know it hurts,” he said gently. “But it isn’t pointless.”
Her eyes begged him for understanding, but the children were looking to her, and she would not admit to fear in front of them.
“The physical pain is only for a space,” he went on. “Then all will be restored to a wholeness greater than before. This trial is to the bitter dregs of all there is, but we are nearly at the end.”
“Are we? Are you sure?” She searched his face intently.
“Yes,” he said with certainty. “Just a little longer. Don’t give up now. The prize is worth even this ... infinitely worth it, I promise.”
There was authority in his voice, in his bearing, as if he knew some deeper meaning, and she did not question it.
She smiled at him, tears of relief in her eyes. “Thank you.” She started to get up. He held out his hand to help her, and as he pulled he felt the lightness of her body. There was no weight to it under the fabric of her dress. She must have been hungry for weeks, if not months. He had a sudden certainty that she had given most of what she had to the children. Some of them may have been hers, but it was impossible they all were. He passed her the bread he had left, and she took it with thanks. She looked at him for a moment longer, then called the children to her and began to walk towards the city and the sea, her head up, a child by each hand, the rest following close behind.
Ishrafeli increased his own pace, his thoughts growing deeper and more inward. He had known since returning from Kharkheryll the nature of his part in the great plan, but again and again he had been surprised as the depth of it had opened up before him. Always it had become subtler and more dreadful, calling for greater endurance, more profound passion of commitment and sharing of suffering. He began now to wonder exactly what God required of him in this tortured land and if he would be equal to bearing it.
He walked, passing more people who were struggling now, sometimes even one at a time, lonely, broken, often injured. He did what he could to help, but it was desperately little. He could not afford to share the food he had or he would not accomplish his goal. There was nothing to offer except patience, two hands to rewind a bandage, and a calmness inside which for a few steadied the fear and gave an instant’s feeling that they were not alone.
Night came. His legs ached and his feet were blistered walking in the dust and heat. He went off the road to the side. There was no grass, but he found a place where he could create a hollow in the dry ground and try to sleep.
In the cold ashes of a fire he saw the small bones of a domestic animal, probably a pet dog, killed to be eaten. For a moment he was overcome with grief, not for the animal whose suffering he hoped was short, but for those whose hunger had reduced them to such an act. Killing a dog seemed such a betrayal of trust, of the silent companionship given unconditionally, and asking so little in return. It was a sign of the disintegration of the decencies which held life together. Hunger was stripping away the layers of civilisation and leaving bare the soul beneath.
People were crowding each other along the road, many of them with wagons piled with household goods, bedding, clothes, pots and pans. Some even attempted to take with them treasures where others were content with just their lives. Now and again there was a cart carrying sick or injured, or the very old. Children made their way the best they could.
He saw the blind rage of despair and self-pity as well as honour, and those who stole from the weakest and most vulnerable, those who would murder their own to survive.
To the south where Mount Sorah rose above the plain, the horizon was stain
ed with smoke, and the wind carried the smell of burning and of death.
Ishrafeli was in the wake of the Shinabari army now. It seemed that in fury they had scorched the earth itself, poisoning and polluting until nothing could live, friend or foe. Now there was no spoil even for the victors. The plants were withered or uprooted. He saw dead animals by the sides of the road, even dead birds. There was an unnatural silence over the earth except for the occasional buzzing of flies.
A faint wind arose, not enough to stir the dust around his feet.
Then he heard a great cry that came from the heart of the earth and filled his mind and body until he was one with it. “Oh Lord, how long? How long must I endure?”
He was robbed of breath by grief for the innocence betrayed, the perfect loveliness of it wounded beyond healing. He bent to his knees, tears choking his voice.
“Father, let it end! Whatever it costs, help us—let it be over. Tell me what I must do, and let it be soon, please let it be soon!”
And as he kneeled he saw the agony of the world as he had never imagined. Every land was laid waste by the greed of man, plundered of its treasure to feed the wants of a moment. Its creatures were tortured and killed, baited to entertain the cruel, used to exhaustion then slaughtered for their flesh. In their broken bodies he saw the suffering of millions beyond counting.
The charred carcasses of men and beasts, stark in the heat of the sun, and myriad flies carried the message of death. Few were left living, and those that were, wandered stunned and bewildered, prey to scavengers who stole from the weak to feed themselves. Orphaned children cried in terror beside the corpses of their parents. The wounded and maimed struggled to escape, and were left behind as the tides of war overtook them.
In the wake of ruin, starvation stalked the land and men murdered one another to eat the corpses. The stench of plague hung thick in the air. Somewhere around here would be Indeg, but Ishrafeli heard no word of him, even though he asked.
He was drenched with the agony of it. Sweat poured off his body.
