Come Armageddon

by Anne Perry

  Sadokhar had no idea. He could only hope, and keep in his heart memories of the beliefs Tathea had taught him in their days in the forest of Hirioth, before he had had the least conception of what evil truly was. She had tried so hard to give him the armour against it, but its magnitude was beyond even her words to tell.

  “Yes,” he said with certainty, “Tathea is still alive. I would know if she were not.” They were brave words, and surely they were true? He would know—wouldn’t he?

  “What happened?” Tornagrain repeated, looking at the waste before them. “How could the sea do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Sadokhar admitted. “It must have been a wave bigger than anything we’ve imagined or seen before.”

  “More than a hundred feet high to do this!” Tornagrain marvelled.

  “Perhaps it was.” Sadokhar started to move forward down the jagged path set in the cliff face, picking his way with care. “We must find what wood we can and make a boat. We shall have many miles to go before we reach the Island, but we can do it in one day once we have a craft of some sort.”

  Tornagrain followed him. “Maybe we could find a wreck and patch it up?” he suggested. “It looks as if there used to be a shipyard here once. You’d better pray there isn’t another wave!”

  “So had you!” Sadokhar said tartly. “It plays no favourites.”

  Tornagrain thumped him gently and continued on down.

  They reached the bottom and for the first time realised that the thick mud around them must hide the bodies of a thousand men, women and children who had once lived here. Now there was nothing left but sticks poking out of the desolation, the chimney tops of buried houses, and the bones or an arm raised above the sand like that of a drowning man.

  Tornagrain let out an exclamation of horror, and increased his pace, leaving heavy footprints across the expanse. He ran a little, as if he could escape the pity of it.

  Sadokhar followed after, the slurp of the tide loud in his ears, reminding him of the ever-present sea like a beast crouching for its prey.

  After a full day digging in the mud, hauling planks out of its sucking, choking grip before they could find enough timber to build a boat, they stood exhausted and filthy, staring at their pile of waterlogged planks. It seemed little treasure for so much dangerous and backbreaking labour.

  “It’s waterlogged,” Tornagrain said in disgust. He lifted his gaze and stared at the horizon in every direction. Everything was smashed and laid waste. There were no houses, no trees, only the dark oozing of mud, and behind them the cliff face. “And we’ve nothing to work with,” he added. “We could dig for eternity and never find tools in this!”

  “Anything iron or steel will have sunk anyway,” Sadokhar agreed. “But there’s rope ...”

  “What?”

  “There’s rope,” Sadokhar repeated with a sour smile. “We’ll have to bind the heaviest planks together and make a raft. And don’t make a face like that—unless you can think of something better!”

  Tornagrain shrugged. “At least we won’t run into anyone we know!” he said ironically. “Come on then! Don’t stand there!”

  It took them another day to build it, and then a day and a night of hard rowing before they landed on the Eastern Shore of the Island. They were north of where they had once lived with Aelfrith in what seemed now like another life in a different, simpler age. The darkness of its memories were washed away. They trusted each other with a fierce passion more innocent men could not have known.

  Now in silence they walked up the pale dunes to the sea grasses, nothing but the sound of the waves in their ears where once there had been gulls. The wind drove white clouds high above over the land, shadowing the far rim of the forest.

  They met no one. The few farms and cottages seemed deserted, and only now and again did they see a burned shell of what had once been inhabited. No pollution poisoned the land. Wild flowers made the grasses bright and small animals seemed unafraid of the two men.

  Sadokhar was deep in thought. The beauty of this after the desolation he had seen was dreamlike, and it crossed his mind more than once to wonder if it was some illusion of the enemy’s, built to delude. The great trees resting like green clouds on the swell of the earth could have been drawn from his memory. Even the scent of growing, the whisper of the grass and the brilliance of the air were part of him like the beating of his blood. Iszamber had told Tathea that the Island would stand, even when darkness and havoc covered the rest of the earth, but he had not said it would escape the last destruction.

  Sadokhar understood that it had to be, and yet looking at it now, its loss cut too deeply into him and he ached to hold it a day, even an hour longer. All the wisdom and the faith of years could not take the hurt from losing even one flower or tree, let alone the whole glory of it all.

  They found horses and rode south and inland, reaching Tyrn Vawr two days later. The stones of the city were still bathed in soft light, as if at any moment a watchman would call and welcome. But the tide of war had washed right to the walls, and there was no one left but the Knights of the Western Shore, scarred, wounded and alone.

  Ythiel had ruled in justice, but he could not, nor would he have kept from the people knowledge of the carnage and the desolation that covered the rest of the world. They had fought rebels and invaders on the shores, in the fields and villages, even in Tyrn Vawr itself, and they had won. Now they had completed their part, and lay at peace in the earth. Only the Knights awaited the end.

  Sadokhar and Tornagrain rode in together, staring at the silent streets, the signs of work half done, shops untended, doors closed for a last time as both men and women went out to face the enemy.

  They did not speak; there was nothing for either to say.

  In the centre courtyard Tornagrain took the horses and left Sadokhar to go in alone.

  Sadokhar found Tathea in the same room in which she had first shown him the Book, and he had for a moment seen the dark keys of Asmodeus resting on it.

  Quietly, in bare and simple words she told him of Ishrafeli’s death.

  They stood together, clinging to each other, holding close with an aching gentleness. The Book sat uncovered on the table, open since Ishrafeli had loosed the hasp, its blue Lost Lands cloak in rippling silk beside it. She had been reading it again when he had come.

  She pulled away from him at last. “And the Silver Lords are gone also,” she said quietly. “They tried to use sorcery against the Great Enemy, and he turned it back upon them.” She gave an infinitesimal shrug of her shoulders. “It is his creation! As all who dare the forbidden paths, they drank madness in the end, and destroyed each other, and everyone who crossed their way. The whole of Lantrif is fallen.”

  “Where shall we face Asmodeus?” he asked her.

  “We have yet to confront Yaltabaoth,” she answered. “The earth is dying ...” She saw sorrow in his face. “No ... don’t grieve for it,” she said softly. “It must be. The ability to be born and to die is part of our pathway home—the earth’s as well as ours. That was Ishrafeli’s greatest gift, the release from travail for the world. Now we must face the last battle. It has to be here, on the Island. Yaltabaoth must fight us because we are all who are left. We will find him where we first met, in the Wastelands when everything seemed lost.” She smiled. “How little that was, in reality—and perhaps our one small world is little compared with the creations of God.” She looked away from him suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. “But how infinitely precious!”

  She took the Book with her, wrapped in the blue cloak and bound behind her saddle, and her staff in her hand. She, Sadokhar and Tornagrain rode together with Ythiel, Gallimir and the other Knights of the Western Shore. They came dressed proudly in the helmets and breastplates of their ancestors who had first fought against Yaltabaoth, and won. The scarlet cloaks were ragged now, and the armour polished bright showed the scars of old battles, but the plumes were still high and they tossed with the movement of travel like a de
fiance of grief.

  The Knights passed by the forest of Hirioth, and Tathea looked at Sadokhar and smiled. The past was sweet with uncountable small and beautiful things, laughter and friendship, and a love whose depth was truly understood only now.

  They climbed the steppes of Celidon, its grasses heavy and deep with summer, and passed on to the wild spaces of the Wastelands. Here the dark hills rose like the bones of the earth, mist-shrouded on the skyline, the heather already purple before the bracken should gild the valleys in the year’s waning—except that this summer was the last, even for the Island at the Edge of the World.

  They were joined briefly by a fantastic figure, who came on foot, treading softly so the herbs smelled sweet in his path. He wore a parti-coloured jerkin of purple and gold, and breeches the same. On his feet were ridiculous shoes, one of each colour, with long toes that curled over and had tiny bells attached to them, so they tinkled with every step.

  He smiled at them and spoke only a few words, then he walked beside Tathea, loping easily as if he never tired. They stopped to make camp for the night a little distance from one of the hundred reed-speared tarns, loud with the call of wild birds.

  In high summer as far north as they were, the sun barely dropped below the horizon. The clear sky echoed the light across the arch of heaven and lay mirrored in the shining water.

  Tathea stood alone in the vast stillness of it, breathing the clean, wind-scented air. Menath-Dur appeared beside her; his thin, curious face was filled with peace. He gazed at the sky and the hills and for a long time neither of them spoke. When at last he did, it was what he had always said to her, from the beginning.

  “Hope ... remember, always hope. Though heaven and earth fall away, and tomorrow you meet despair, trust in God and hope.” He smiled, then moved among them all, speaking a word to each man, ending with Sadokhar. He looked again at Tathea. Then, as if some emotion filled him almost more than he could control, he turned and moved away so rapidly it was only moments before the gathering shadows engulfed him, and even the bells on his shoes could no longer be heard.

  In the morning they rose early. No one had been able to sleep. This day they must be prepared to face Yaltabaoth.

  They stood together in a circle for the last prayer, asking only that the Spirit of God be with them. Then they mounted to ride out, Tathea with the Book and the staff, as always.

  By late morning, when the aching blue of the sky was a towering arch above them, they heard the thin, terrible cry of Yaltabaoth like death on the wind. They turned as one man to face him, lances high, ready for the charge.

  He came out of the east, at first only a dark figure on the slope of the hill, but moving swiftly. In moments Tathea could see there were over a score of riders with their black cloaks flying, helmets gleaming in the sun, black lances raised ready, and beyond them, darkening the hills, uncounted numbers more.

  Head high, Sadokhar gave the order and they closed ranks.

  The air was heavy with silence. Not even a horse moved. Slowly the hoof-beats of Yaltabaoth’s men trembled through the ground, then the sound of them was heard and felt in the blood. The vast mass held back, waiting. The first score drove forward, hollow-eyed, skin burned dark by the wind and rain, mouths wide as if drinking the air. Their armour was black, without gleam or polish, and their helmets were plumed in feathers.

  The war cry came again, high and piercing like needles of ice, the wail of lost souls who see the fire and the light of eternity and know it is lost to them for ever.

  Sadokhar looked at Tornagrain, then at Tathea, then he faced forward. “Charge!” he shouted, raising his lance high. Then, levelling it, he spurred his horse forward over the grass.

  The two forces met at full gallop with a crash like breaking seas, and immediately the fallen were trampled as animals wheeled and turned, reared and plunged. Swords slashed left and right. The noise was deafening: the clang of metal on metal, swords against shields, against armour, the scream as they met flesh, and all the time the rising wind and the war cry above it all.

  Tathea fought with all her skills she remembered from the long past. And as they had then, her comrades shielded her, took blows meant for her, and fell at her feet. The scarlet of blood mingled with the scarlet of cloaks and crests.

  She had no idea where Sadokhar or Tornagrain were. Each man fought for himself, and for those beside him. She was battered, bruised and bleeding, her whole body ached, her thigh was torn by the splinters of a lance, but there was no time to heed wounds, only to fight on. The words of Menath-Dur beat in her head and drove her forward, giving strength to her arm and guiding her sword.

  There was slaughter all around her. The grass was mounded dark with the bodies of the dead, the black and the scarlet together. Still she had not crossed swords with Yaltabaoth himself, and when she stumbled over a corpse and scrambled to her feet one last, desperate time, she gazed around her and saw only three other figures left standing among the dead. Sadokhar was twenty feet away from her to the left, and her heart soared to see him. Fifty feet away stood Tornagrain, leaning forward a little, the hilt of his sword in his hand, the blade sheared away. Beyond him was the fearful figure of Yaltabaoth, whose black hair was streaming from his head, his mouth wide, eyes deep in the sockets of his skull gleaming with the passion of the final hatred.

  He looked past Tornagrain to Sadokhar, and to Tathea and he smiled. He took a step forward.

  His vast unused army waited, a mile away, watching.

  Tornagrain moved between them.

  “Stand aside!” Yaltabaoth commanded. “Or I will destroy your soul! I will make you taste the ashes of despair until you pray for oblivion, and it does not come!”

  Slowly a wondrous joy spread across Tornagrain’s face and he lifted both his hands high in the air.

  “I am Tornagrain, the Redeemed of God!” he cried. “And Despair cannot touch me!” And he hurled himself upon Yaltabaoth. The two of them locked together in a clasp that crushed the flesh and broke the bones, and still they did not let go. They swayed back and forth, buckled at the knees and fell, writhing on the ground, and still neither let go.

  Sadokhar and Tathea both ran forward, but they could only watch in helplessness as Yaltabaoth thrashed and kicked and gouged and tore, until, still locked in Tornagrain’s arms, their blood mingled together. Tornagrain yielded up his spirit and Yaltabaoth gasped, drew in an agonising breath, and reached out to loose Tornagrain’s arms from around him.

  But he could not. All the strength of his rage and his hatred was not enough. In death Tornagrain’s arms tightened. Yaltabaoth gasped, choked and very slowly first his limbs then his body dissolved into a black, viscous slime and was swallowed into the earth.

  Tathea and Sadokhar watched in horror as even his skull caved in and seemed to crush beneath its own weight, and the sockets of his eyes gleamed putrescent.

  In minutes there was nothing left. Tornagrain lay alone. His hands eased their grip upon emptiness and a radiance shone around him as of a great and perfect peace.

  Tathea looked at Sadokhar and saw tears on his face. She knew they were grief only in part; there was also gratitude in them, for Tornagrain, and perhaps for himself also because he could mourn without shadow a friendship that had found honour and compassion and a wholeness of heart.

  A mile away the numberless army dissolved into a mist and existed no more.

  Tathea was hardly aware of the air growing colder, and the shadows closing in from the horizon on all sides, even though it was little beyond noon and the sun was high and golden in the blue above them.

  She knew the earth had at last been released from its labour, so the silence of no bees or birds was not strange to her, nor even the absence of all beasts in the grass.

  Sadokhar bent slowly to Tornagrain’s body and touched his face. He bade him farewell in the old way of the warriors of the Eastern Shore, as he had done to Aelfrith years before.

  “Safe harbour,” he whispered gently. �
��Soft seas on the morning tide.”

  It was Tathea who saw the gaunt figure coming towards them through the grass, staggering a little like a wounded bird, her neck forward. The wan light gleamed on her head, bald now but for a few wisps of black hair fluttering like broken feathers. But there was nothing ludicrous about her. She was filled with hate. It was naked in every jerky movement of her, the thrusting angle of her head, the wild scything of her arms as she waded through the heather towards Sadokhar with startling swiftness.

  The darkness was growing. The horizon was almost invisible, as if great clouds of dust had covered all the earth but here, and the chill on the wind woke memory of the land of eternal snows.

  Tiyo-Mah was only yards away; her ancient face, with its curved nose and cruel mouth, was alight with rage. Her body was so emaciated it could only be passion of will which kept her from collapsing.

  Tathea expected to be the victim of her centuries of hate. Their enmity stretched back beyond the beginning of the history of the Book, which was still wrapped in the blue robe beside her on the grass, with the staff. It had begun the day Tathea had arrived as a new bride in Thoth-Moara, and Tiyo-Mah had ceased to be the power behind the Isarch.

  Perhaps it was older even than that? Now in this fading light of the world, Tathea remembered clearly the terrible face of the Oligarch Tallagisto who had ordered her death in Sardonaris, where she had overheard the great Council of Heaven, and chosen to take the Book. It was his burning eyes which now looked out of Tiyo-Mah’s face, and she realised now that it always had been.

  But Tiyo-Mah ignored her, lurching through the heather towards Sadokhar instead, her eyes fixed on him as if she saw nothing and no one else.

  Then with a flash like a light in the mind, blazing in clarity, Tathea understood that she had followed him all the way from Shinabar, through the slaughter of the battlefields, across the sea, over the freezing mountains and snow-drowned forests of Caeva, past the deserted city of Tyrn Vawr, driven by the lust to kill.