‘The earliest personification of the two fundamental forces in the universe – creation and destruction – but what does it show you?’
‘That nothing ends,’ said Pug softly.
Macros beamed with pride. ‘Yes, nothing ever ends. As sentient creatures arose, the multitude of gods arose with them, each offering a reflection of those people. In some cases, like your Dasati, there were literally thousands of gods, since they assigned a deity to even the most mundane aspects of daily life: a goddess of the garden, a god of the hearth, a god of this and that. Others ascribed minor issues to spirits and lesser beings, leaving the gods to personify only the larger aspects of life: love and war, health and wisdom, fortune and nature.’ He shrugged. ‘I know this came about, but I do not know how it happened. There are worlds upon which the gods walk, interact with their worshippers, and worlds like Midkemia where the gods are present, but only a very few such as yourselves encounter them. There are worlds in which the gods exist and are never seen. And worlds where the gods do not even exist.’
‘No gods?’ asked Nakor thoughtfully.
‘You find that interesting?’ asked Macros.
‘Very,’ said Nakor. ‘It means the forces control the gods, not the other way around.’
‘Almost correct,’ said Macros. ‘In some worlds there seems to be a synergy, but for the most part what Kalkin said to you is the root truth: they are merely personifications of natural forces given whatever powers they possess by their worshippers. They have aspects that are perceived by mortals, and attributes they can wield.’
‘Then who or what is responsible for all of this?’ asked Miranda.
Macros smiled delightedly. ‘Daughter, I have never been more proud of your abilities as I am now; you cut to the heart of it.’
He swept his hand and moved them back closer to the image of the Dread, the writhing mass at the centre of the colossal explosion that created the universes. ‘There are cultures whose myths contain the concept of a single god: the Ultimate, the One, the Father or the Mother, the Demiurge …’ He shook his head in resignation. ‘No one will ever know, unless that entity, whatever it may be, chooses to reveal itself, and I for one think that is impossible.’
‘Impossible?’ asked Magnus. ‘For an entity who did all this?’
‘Go have a conversation with a flower, reveal yourself to a butterfly—’
‘The spider,’ said Pug, nodding with understanding.
Macros paused for a moment, then smiled. ‘The lesson I inflicted on you while you were training with the Tsurani, yes.’
The others looked at Pug and he said, ‘If you disturb a spider’s web, the spider will be aware of that disturbance, but it doesn’t understands what’s causing it. Moreover, if a spider is running up your arm and inflicts a bite, does it know who it is biting?’
‘No, of course not,’ answered Miranda.
‘But there is still a causal relationship there,’ said Nakor.
‘Yes,’ agreed Macros.
‘Then we are left with a mystery,’ said Magnus.
‘Not a mystery,’ said his grandfather, ‘but the mystery. The single greatest mystery of all.’
Miranda said, ‘But you have a theory.’
‘Always,’ said Macros. ‘But I am not so audacious as to give it a name. All I can do is to describe it as best I can.’
The tendrils of energy sped closer to them again. ‘These … threads link everything together. I think they are what we would call Mind. There is a higher Mind, a thing some cultures even worship as the God Mind, or name it after a particular deity or prophet or saviour, or simply the universal or higher consciousness. It’s rather like your own mind being very busy while the hair on your arm doesn’t really care much what you’re thinking about: we each have our own tiny bits of mind that we’re concerned with, and leave the universal consciousness, the Mind, to its own devices.’
‘Mind,’ muttered Nakor. ‘It easily accommodates Miranda and me still being here, and you, too.’
‘A slice of Mind,’ said Pug. ‘Kulgan, and you.’
‘If you sliced those tendrils finely enough, and gathered the thinnest slice of their essence, they would heal almost instantly and no one would notice.’
‘But who could do such a thing?’ asked Magnus.
‘We return to the ultimate mystery.’ Macros looked at Pug. ‘If you recall, when travelling the Hall after fleeing the Garden, you asked me what the gods were doing to intervene, and I said we were the intervention, we were doing the gods’ work.’
‘Now I understand,’ said Pug. ‘The gods are our personification of forces. We create them, therefore when we’re working for the gods—’
‘We’re working for ourselves,’ finished Macros.
‘What of the Dread?’ asked Magnus. ‘What are they and how do we best confront them?’
‘Again, you’re mistaking one thing for many. The Dread is a single entity, just like the Mind. Two halves of a coin, two sides of a parchment, two things connected in a profound way.’
‘The Dread is the opposite of Mind?’ asked Magnus.
‘No, the Dread is the other side of Mind,’ Macros replied.
‘Explain, please,’ said Pug.
‘Everything is connected,’ began Macros. ‘So we can speculate why this all took place. Perhaps Mind got curious? I have no idea: my understanding is very limited. But one significant difference is that time was spun out of the ball of everything and allowed to unfold.’
‘Why is that more important than the other aspects of reality being turned loose?’ asked Nakor.
‘Because time is what keeps everything from happening simultaneously!’ answered Macros. ‘Because of time, you can see evolutions and changes …’ He stopped. ‘Let me show you something, and pay close attention, for this is the Dread’s one weakness, their one vulnerability that you must somehow exploit.’
He waved his hand and a stream of water appeared in the air, moving in a downward arc. ‘Consider this jet of water as an analogy for time.’ He pointed to the top. ‘Imagine a single drop to be a moment, which flows from here down to here.’
‘I see,’ said Pug.
‘Now, we are in a drop, our “now”, and we travel along with it, so when we were up here,’ he pointed to the top of the stream, ‘that was yesterday, and when we get here,’ he pointed to the bottom, ‘it will be tomorrow.’
‘So as the drop travels we pass from yesterday through now to tomorrow.’ said Pug.
‘But it’s always now,’ said Nakor. ‘This is all a matter of perception.’
‘True,’ Macros agreed, ‘but it’s necessary for us to see what we see, understand as we do, and learn, for our part of the task is to grow and bring to the Mind our tiny contribution so that it may understand.’
‘Understand what?’ asked Miranda.
‘Itself. We are Mind learning about itself, the totality of the universe trying to understand itself fully. All of us, every conscious being on every world in every reality. We are all connected; nothing dies because what we learn is part of Mind.’
‘I can’t begin to pretend I understand what you’re saying,’ said Miranda, her manner betraying an impatience with the abstract. ‘Tell us about the weakness of the Dread.’
‘The Dread cannot see the now. They see the entirety of time all at once. It was they who set the time trap in the Garden for Pug, Tomas, and me, in the hope we’d simply move to another part of the stream without the means to return, but they couldn’t anticipate we’d take the course we did.’
‘I still don’t see how the Dread’s ability to see the entirety of time is a weakness,’ said Magnus. ‘Why haven’t they done whatever they know will work to bring about the ending they seek?’
‘Because they see this!’ said Nakor, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘They see the entire stream, and yes, they see all the drops in it, but they can’t follow a single drop.’ He started sticking his finger in various parts of the stream. ‘So
they poke here, and there, and try to make this work or that work, and they watch and see results, but there is no coherency!’
‘Exactly,’ said Macros. ‘At various times they’ve attempted to do whatever they could to defeat Mind and what it is seeking.’
‘Why?’ asked Miranda.
Pug said, ‘And why Midkemia?’
‘As for the second, it had to be somewhere. Why not Midkemia? This is where they got lucky in trying to break into your realm. As for the first …’ He waved his hand and Pug and the others saw a high mountain meadow populated by luminous beings floating about the ground, jewel-faceted and lit from within. The Sven-ga’ri. Their language was emotion, and to be near them was to hear music.
‘On many worlds,’ Macros continued, ‘the Dread reached out and placed … markers. For they also understand the limits of their own perception when it comes to time. The Sven-ga’ri are one of these “markers”, a way for them to discover the secret of a continuity of time we take for granted. So profound is the need of the Dread for these markers to endure that they used the powerful arts to protect them.’
‘They made them beautiful,’ said Pug.
‘They speak with feelings,’ said Macros, ‘and they seem gentle and harmless. But even the Dragon Lords recognized them as having terrible potential for danger.’
‘Which is why they placed the elves to guard them?’
‘They created the Quor, or rather they facilitated the creation of the Quor,’ said Macros. ‘The Valheru could not create true life, but only take life and change it. The Quor were once plants – in a sense they’re animated trees – and pre-date even the elves as the oldest sentient beings on Midkemia. Then the elves evolved, and they placed elves to guard the Quor.’
‘Why guard them if they were a means for the Dread to find Midkemia again?’ asked Magnus.
‘Because they didn’t understand them,’ said Macros, ‘and feared that to destroy them might bring terrible danger. The Dragon Lords were capricious and wanton in their destruction, but they were not stupid.’
‘What about the Sven-ga’ri we found on the Island of the Snake Men?’ asked Pug.
‘Destroyed utterly when you sprang your trap. Along, I’m sorry to say, with the entire population of that Pantathian city. It was clear that the Dread put your destruction ahead of keeping the Sven-ga’ri on the island alive.’ He shrugged. ‘They had the ones in the Peaks of the Quor anyway, and perhaps they’ve discovered another way in.’
‘Those Pantathians were a gentle aspect of that race,’ said Magnus. ‘It is tragic.’
‘Nothing dies,’ said Macros. ‘What they are, who they were, returned to Mind and will manifest itself somewhere else at some other time.’
‘That’s hardly comforting to the Pantathians who died in that blast,’ said Miranda.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Macros. ‘But I can share one thing with you. When I was attempting to attain godhood, while my body wandered almost mindless, wasting away on the shore by Stardock, before you pulled me away, and then, again, as I tried to ascend, what I can tell you is that when you join with the Mind, the more you know, the less your sense of self endures. It becomes closer to that moment of bliss you felt when the Sphere of Creation exploded.’ He looked from face to face. ‘They feel no pain, and their minds are with that bliss.’
‘Hardly seems a recommendation for seeking oblivion,’ said Miranda dryly.
‘Life is tenacious,’ said Nakor.
‘Very much so,’ said Macros. ‘I have no knowledge of where my own mind went after I left you. This slice of my existence knows much, but not everything. I do not know what that Dasati holding my memories said and did, though I expect his … my participation was needed.’
‘It was,’ said Magnus.
‘Macros,’ said Pug, ‘you’ve shown us astonishing things, and offered us perspectives beyond imagining. But I still do not see how we are to deal with something as vast as the Dread.’
‘As I said,’ Macros replied, ‘the Dread’s weakness is its perspective on time. What you must do is find a moment, one critical instant, and focus its consciousness there. That will cause it to lose track of its other markers, like the one destroyed in the Pantathian city. And do not forget those in the Peaks of the Quor must be destroyed as well. Once it becomes obsessed, then maybe we shall see the beginning of a slow return to stability between the Dread and Mind.’
‘How do we do that?’ said Pug.
‘That,’ said Macros, ‘is the problem you were given to solve, Pug.’
Pug thought about this while Macros started to make the vista round them return to where it had been before, so that it looked as if stars and galaxies were moving back towards the centre, where lurked the Dread. ‘Oh, Macros,’ he said, ‘one thing. Gathis? What became of him?’
Macros said, ‘He died of old age. When it was his time he just left, as was his kind’s wont. They die apart.’
‘What manner of creature was he?’ asked Pug.
‘As the taredhel wandered the stars, so did goblinkind. His race was highly evolved: poets, scholars, healers, artificers of beauty. He was the last of his kind.’
‘Hearing that makes me wish it true that nothing ever dies.’ Pug had expected that the kindly keeper of Macros’s household on Sorcerer’s Isle was now dead, but hearing it as fact made him sad.
‘Truly,’ said Macros.
‘In all this,’ said Miranda, ‘you’ve never answered the first question: why the Dread wage war on everything.’
‘Really?’ said Macros. ‘Why, I thought it would have been obvious by now.’ He waved his hand and again they floated in white light with a single dark sphere before them. ‘This,’ he said, pointing. ‘This was eternal, or as eternal as something can be with all time contained within it. It was, or is, or will be, everything – past, present, future, matter, light, heart and mind, love and hate, all of it rolled up in this tidy little ball. Then – bang! – Mind and that feeling of perfect bliss sped away from the Dread and left this miserable component behind.’ With a gesture he made the Dread appear again without the rest of the sphere. ‘Whatever impulse drove Mind to seek experience, to put time out in a line, and to learn all that it could about itself, the Dread wants things back the way they were, returned to that perfect, blissful state.’
Nakor didn’t smile. ‘The Dread are lonely.’
‘In a way,’ said Macros. ‘This is the fundamental battle in reality. Nothing is more basic.’
‘Back to basics,’ said Pug softly.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Magnus.
‘You return to Midkemia and finish a battle already begun,’ said Macros. ‘Should you fail and the Dread achieve their goal, then all will return to the primal state and none of what we think of as history will have occurred, for time will be retracted into that sphere and none of the reality we have experienced will have ever happened.’
With a nod of his head, a vortex appeared. Pug glanced at the others, then ran to it, jumping in head-first. Miranda, Magnus, and Nakor followed.
Macros started to follow, but the vortex vanished, leaving him standing in a void of white light
Slowly, he said, ‘It is over?’
An echo in his mind said, ‘Yes,’ and Macros the Black, sorcerer supreme of Midkemia, vanished from view for ever.
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE •
Encounters
LIALLAN HELD UP HER HAND.
The column of moredhel horsemen behind her reined in and the signal was passed back until over five thousand warriors had halted their march. From the west, riders approached across the river that marked the boundary between the outer elven forests and unclaimed land; a dozen or more on horses which were legends among the moredhel – the near-mythical mounts of Elvandar, a breed of horse considered mystical, magical, and untameable. The leader was a mature male elf with dark hair and eyes, and his manner identified him before he drove his mount into the shallow waters. The other horses reached t
he nearby bank and halted, and Liallan noted these had no bridle or saddle. The lead rider threw his leg over his mount’s neck and slid down, then hurried to help a much older elf dismount.
Escorting Janil to the head of the moredhel column, they reached Liallan. The leader of the Snow Leopards looked down and said, ‘You are most certainly Prince Calin.’
He bowed his head. ‘And you are no doubt Liallan of the Hamandien.’
‘You’ve sent no small number of my clan to hunt with our ancestors in the sky,’ she said sternly.
‘Only when it was necessary.’
She actually laughed. ‘So tell me, then, Prince of Elvandar, why are you here? We will honour our pledge to pass by and leave you untroubled.’
‘I would not question your oath, lady,’ he replied. ‘Our eldest Spellweaver needs to speak to one of your clan.’
Liallan looked down at Janil, who said, ‘I need to speak with Cetswaya.’
At a sign from Liallan, the ancient shaman of the Ardanien moved his horse around a group of riders that included the two taredhel, Gulamendis and Laromendis. Calin inclined his head in greeting and the two elves from E’bar returned the gesture. The old elf on horseback continued past Liallan until he looked down on Calin and the ancient Spellweaver and said at last, ‘Janil.’
‘Cetswaya,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’
The old shaman looked at Liallan, who nodded, and he dismounted and went with the ancient Spellweaver.
Calin watched them move away. ‘How do they know one another?’
Liallan laughed. ‘Shamans and Spellweavers, you know how they are, like gossipy old women. No doubt they trade recipes in their sleep with that dream-talk of theirs.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And if your mother hasn’t told you, it’s how she keeps track of me, and how I keep track of her. We may be enemies, but there are times when it’s useful to have a means of communication. When you see her, tell her that letting us pass in peace will not be forgotten.’
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