2.
It felt like he clutched her loosely and that any moment she"d slip free of his arms. Lights whizzed by, the world whizzed by at impossible speed. The Great Dividing Road was beneath them for a time, dead straight. They veered off from it over downward-sloping plains, across more roads, miles and miles eaten up. She tried to find the air to speak, to tell him to stop, to scream in fear and sickness. Then just as suddenly it was over; she was on the ground gasping, unable to move, sick and dizzy. She threw up while he stood there and watched and waited.
It seemed a long time before she recovered. She wanted to attack him, spit curses at him, but had no power to do it. "You can see back along the axis," he said. "So now I can too, but I can do it better than you. I shadowed you, see? We can look back together. You"re not as hard to shadow as that thing was, in the woods."
"Where are we?" she said.
"It"s where we have to be to learn about the green dress. I cheated. I looked forward on the axis to when we"d learn about it. That"s how I knew to come here. Then we came here and we"ll make it happen, by looking back. It"s like bending a little part of the axis into a circle. Why can"t you do that?"
She looked about, half recognising the country. "Wait you can control when and where to look, in the past and future?"
"Some parts of it," said his deadpan voice. "When you leave, I"ll forget how. I can do more things than you can. But I couldn"t do most of the stuff that thing in the woods could do, when I shadowed it. Do you understand?"
"I think so, Shadow."
"I"ve taken us back along the axis."
"Back in time you mean."
"Time? Sure, call it that."
"How, Shadow? How did you do it? We can"t really be here. But we aren"t in our present time any more either. So where are we?"
"I don"t know. It"s the same as moving around fast. I don"t understand things, I just do them. Look up there if you want to learn." He pointed at the sky where a long shape loomed, visible only because little points of light glinted off its dark flanks.
"A dragon!" Siel"s jaw dropped. It was bigger than a horse, bigger than a drake. It seemed to ripple like a boneless creature swimming through water, with a wide span of pinioned wings, a sleek head. Its long body was of slender proportion but thick with muscle.
It landed near them with the feline grace of a cat"s leap, shook itself like a wet dog, its mane of fins and leathery spikes slapping against its flank with a sound of whipping leather. A serpentine tail snaked out behind it, ridged with spikes. Its long mouth was set in a curved grin. She recognised its eyes, the same ones that had peered at her from the woods. Its head swept around, gazed at where she and Shadow stood ... but if this was the past, a glance back, surely it didn"t see them.
Nonetheless its gaze lingered on their spot, its brow furrowed. It sniffed deeply, frowned at some anomaly. Then its head reared up and with impressive noise it sneezed a white foamy spray into the air, made a gagging sound, cleared its throat of a blockage, spat, yawned.
A Minor personality, Siel thought with amazement which swept aside almost everything else she"d seen and felt tonight. She knew so little of dragons, had only once seen a drake from her father"s shoulders as they walked home, not long before the city"s invasion. It had been so distant she"d doubted since that it had been more than a bird. There were no dragons, not free to roam like this in the human realm!
On four legs, the dragon Smaller than she"d have expected! Weren"t they rumoured to be enormous? moved forward with a crab-like walk, covering ground quickly. Without warning it slipped into a groundman hole she hadn"t even seen.
"I know where it"s going," said Shadow, his voice again making her jump. He grabbed her before she could reply. They sped down the groundman tunnels, right through the slithering dragon"s body, which barely fit through the narrow s.p.a.ces. Suddenly they were in the underground chamber which Anfen had described all too clearly: the place Stranger had taken him. There were those trapped souls, caught up in claw-like hooks on the wall. She did not feel the place"s horrible heat; but she remembered talk of those hot hooks burning the flesh of "new mages" being formed. And there in their midst was Stranger, naked like the rest, her eyes closed, her face like that of a sleeper with troubling dreams. The claws holding her had not wormed their way as deeply into her flesh as had those in the bodies around her.
"Can they hear us?" said Siel.
"No. The dragon"s coming."
They waited. Minutes later, a cloud of smoky light flowed turgidly into the chamber. It crystallised slowly into the dragon"s shape, solidified like mist becoming ice. "It couldn"t fit through the tunnels," said Shadow. "That"s why it changed to gas. It doesn"t like doing that. Hurts it."
The dragon did indeed look nonplussed once it had finally changed back into its true form; it spat and licked its teeth as though it had tasted something vile. It hopped down from the upper perch to the floor level, then strolled up and down the line of bodies, not bothering with the men, but pausing before each of the women to examine them closely. Every so often, it would very gently nudge one with its nose or paw. When it got to Stranger, it gave an odd shiver, stroked her with the dark tip of its tail, then seemed to weigh up a choice: her, or another it had lingered over before, a few bodies back.
It hooked its tail behind the claws pinning Stranger in place and, with a strain that made it shiver for a second or two, ripped them out of the stone wall one by one, also employing its teeth for the task. It caught her arm in its mouth as she slumped to the ground, then laid her carefully down, stroking her from head to toe with the point of its tail.
The dragon turned about, glanced again directly at them, frowned (How human the frown seemed!) in disquiet before examining its prize again.
"You know what it does now," said Shadow.
"What?" she whispered.
"It started with you, till I interrupted it. It makes you its house."
"I don"t understand."
Shadow considered his words. "The dragon wanted to ride inside you. So it can stay hidden. It"s like if you were riding on the dragon"s back. It can only do it if you let it. Like you could only ride its back if it let you. That"s why it was doing what it did to you, making you feel good so you would let it in. I could tell that much when I shadowed it. It only rides women. It likes your bodies. The shape, I guess. I do too. They"re nice."
The dragon"s head bent low. It he, Siel felt quite sure it was male whispered in Stranger"s ear, and she showed signs of stirring. "It has to ask. Has to get permission. She"ll be scared at first, then she"ll agree, and be happy. Until it leaves her for the wolf to find. Then she"ll hate it. I"ve seen enough now. I"m going."
"Wait!"
"What for?"
"Take me back to the tower."
Shadow looked at her with his hole-eyes. "I don"t want to go all the way back there. I want to see what else there is around here."
"Don"t you dare leave me here. Take me back. Like you said you would."
"Only if you make that sound you made. With the dragon, back in the woods. I liked that sound."
"What?" She spat at him instead. Then he was gone and she was alone in the chamber.
HER RAIN FALLS.
1.
Tempest"s mood shifted like the restless pulse and heave of the world"s water. She had many homes. The rivers and lakes were hers.
The skies were hers in part, their wind and rain and cloud. She could be many places. She could be spread thin as scattered raindrops, millions of eyes collecting little glimpses of the world as they fell, to coalesce later and be seen as a whole. Or she would howl in wild temper, lashing down on the further seas where no people went, where there were only wild forces. So-called Vyan"s sea (his no longer!) was a favoured place for wild moods, for smashing glaciers and bergs together, screaming her voice as winds that blasted the heaving waves.
Just occasionally the G.o.dstears A far better name for a sea! would get a good shake too, enough to make its furthest reaching waves lap upon the feet of its villages. Seldom more than that, seldom the tsunamis which swept these polite people into its waters, their polite bodies gently bobbing, feeding the fish they usually ate.
It had been a while; perhaps it was time for another such storm. They provoked, strangely, yet more rituals and prayers, exquisitely polite. Fevers of them for years and years.
Now on those shimmering waves she languidly stretched. The lines of some G.o.dstears fishermen pa.s.sed through the very easternmost part of her. If they could share eyes with the gulls flying overhead, they"d have seen her face: enormous, long and stretched across the heaving blue, bent around the curve of the sh.o.r.e. The fishermen speculated on where she was today, when she would send rain. The water burbled with her laughter she enjoyed hearing herself discussed, politely or otherwise. She summoned a school of big fish for them, set it loose among their lines and nets, and watched, pleased, their delight as they hauled aloft an impressive catch and praised their own handiwork.
Then day ended, the men went home, night came and she moved from there, a breeze taking the sparkle off the water like someone blowing flame from a billion little candles. She was high now, dispersed in the wind and cloud. Off in the northeast, in the fields of Kopyn, a family had made their ritual for rain, clumsily done but polite in intent. She"d heard them previously do something much more elaborate but had not felt like obliging. Now she saw no harm in tossing a handful of wet sky their way. She did so, perhaps a touch more rain than they"d expected, and certainly its arrival more abrupt. No matter! Funny little things.
Why not send more water down? The clouds were hers. The lazy sleeping Dragon may shift them about, but they"d come back to her, they were hers and she"d make them weep if she wanted to, wherever they went. She summoned a thick grey blanket about her, thicker and thicker, turned it dark and poured water down on the castle, beating water on the great stone walls. The window panes streamed in that place where the new Spirit grew, the place the other Spirits never dared go near. Brave new Spirit! Vous its name, weak for now but growing. Its purpose she didn"t understand, so different it seemed from the others, and from her.
But she had no thoughts for it now. She was too caught up in the joy of drenching the world, the pure free joy brought by what looked like falling tears. It was the same feeling as the first ever rainfall. In a way, it was the first all over again. It didn"t matter that the world she drenched had changed, whether dragons or humans roamed about down there: wet, wet, wet! Her laughter pattered down and gushed over the castle"s glistening flanks, gently teasing the Dragon, so close, which did not sense her here, would never know of her jest and laughter.
And many little glimpses the raindrops caught for later as they slid down the castle windows ...
2.
The Arch Mage paced the Hall of Windows, head craned sideways beneath the weight of three horns that had never felt so c.u.mbersome as they did now. He looked over the note-takers" shoulders to read their useless scrawl. And with Vous"s words still clattering through his mind lies, Avridis he watched those Windows to see what they might show him now.
Nothing beyond World"s End. None of the wonders and mysteries they"d been eager to show him before.
In the Windows were glimpses of men fighting in the dark, trebuchets flinging stones at Faifen"s walls, people dragged from homes outside the city, his men having their way with enemy women. The city would fall by morning. Tsith would be his by the week"s end. The rest within a month. Normally all this would be pleasing theatre, to see an enemy crushed.
"Have any of you seen the girl?" he said, knowing to ask was futile. Along the row of grey-robes manning the Windows, all heads swivelled toward him, each expression blank and serene. "Have you seen the girl?" he repeated. "Answer me. Each of you."
"Not I, Arch Mage."
"Not I, Arch Mage."
Dozens of identical answers and their heads turned back to the screens before them.
Rage like a curtain of red fire was pulled over his eyes. The airs about him fluttered in response to it. His fist clenched, shaking, on his staff. He drove its forked point through the neck of the nearest Window-watcher. A grunt, a convulsion, then the mind-controlled thing slumped to the floor and obediently died. The two seated to either side, needing no instruction, stood and dragged the body away, while another fetched a mop to clean the red trail slicked behind it.
The Arch watched the blood get cleaned up, reprimanding himself for the loss of control, then resumed his pacing.
Aziel"s voice: Arch, you know who did it! But ... what is on the other side? Are there people there?
He went to a regular window and gazed through a sheet of rain at the Entry Point"s tall fenced valley, hidden in the dark but its features so familiar he could practically see it. For a long time he stared, wondering if it would ever be necessary to flee there, wondering how that place would handle magic, which it seemed not to possess. How it would handle a shuffling horde of Tormentors pouring through its cities? For that matter, how would it handle a demented G.o.d set loose? (It seemed not to have G.o.ds either.) In the Windows behind him, soldiers taught to scorn Valour"s ideals for war cast open the city gates and rushed in, their blade arms threshing through men, women and children, whether they fought or fled or surrendered, trampling the falling bodies. The grey-robes took notes, observing with expressionless faces as rain washed the city"s blood-slicked streets clean.
3.
Tempest was spread thin and far. She lashed the backs of soldiers marching directly along the Great Dividing Road with the push behind them. They clogged the human-built highways, which branched away from the Road like a river system of pavement. They went with care, these armies, for the foreign things were about, loose from their herders beneath the surface. Or else the creatures had wandered from Elvury, where big numbers of them still held the city as their own. Over there Tempest slapped rain hard on their tough spiked hides, causing a flurry of movement among the dark shapes which had been motionless (and, it seemed, purposeless) as statues. She did not like them very much.
The greedy River Misery gorged itself. And there went yet more armies, the men opening canisters to the sky to collect her flung drops without a word of thanks, on their way to kill others just like them. In Faifen the process was in full swing. A big number of them surrounded the city"s walls, gathered about its main gate. Beyond its eastern fields, hidden in gra.s.s and the cover of night, more of them waited in secret with blades ready to get those who"d flee that way. The roads looked clear and unimpeded but those thirsty knives waited unseen. There came the first wave, and the knives caught them like teeth in closing jaws. Some were allowed to escape the ma.s.sacre and spread the tale. Tempest drenched the fields, washing blood from the gra.s.s and dirt.
She battered window panes of a cabin where the mayor, Liha, sat ashen-faced across from a man in castle colours. He was alone, clean shaven and young, his face expressing grave sympathy. "Those who lay down their arms may flee by the gate, but shall vacate our land at once. They have an hour to fetch their families and treasures. After that ..." He shrugged.
"You will allow them to flee and join the other cities?" the Mayor said sceptically.
"This dispute is my focus."
Liha stood defiantly as she began to reply but Tempest, not interested in this drama, left them.
Sad creatures. The dragons had quarrelled now and then, but rarely done such things as this to their own.
Southward then, and where was Mountain? How good he was at hiding, for one so large. What were his thoughts? Hidden, always hidden! No matter. She stretched across the sky so that nearly all the ground at once got a taste of her water, right down to the very southern parts where Nightmare worked with some difficulty to keep the stoneflesh giants from going past World"s End. The giants felt the same firm push that made the clouds go south, and each longed to cross over. How easily were the young G.o.ds frightened!
Her energy was easing. She folded in on herself, concentrated her rains on a small patch in the middle of the world, randomly chosen. Among other roofs, her heavy drops battered an inn. She looked through windows her water ran down in sheets, but she was dissipating, tiring, and listened to the men inside like someone hearing a story before sleep.
THE WARRIOR"S RETURN
1.
The stool was a tad uneven under Sharfy"s rump, tilting it like a boat in water. Or more like a boat in a tide of beer. Braziers and brands held the night off with a flickering glow that seemed angelic. The world was indeed a fine place, these strangers dear friends, and the tavern"s rowdy babble a warm blanket wrapped around him. Bad memories were balmed or forgotten, or better yet completely rewritten.
Even the innkeeper"s criminally overpriced beer was no issue any more. Everyone had complained until about their fourth or fifth. Sharfy had kept it up till he could barely see how many coins he shoved across the bar top through spilled overpriced puddles of it.
Like inns all down the Great Dividing Road, the place was stuffed with men who had hit on the only worthwhile thing left to do. The sense that all would be soon resolved was as strong as the smell of ale and sweat. Rain drummed the tavern roof, a heavenly sound drunk or sober. It reminded him there was a roof overhead, that time on the road was over, at least until his pockets emptied (and he had not forgotten the art of robbery, should that occur). And in all likelihood, time on the road was over forever. Let the end find him p.i.s.sed or snoring. He drained his cup to that, slammed it down, slurred for another.
World"s End. How that name had revealed its second meaning like a mask falling off someone who had seemed familiar. Sharfy kind of felt he should have understood it long ago, him and everyone else. An omen from the smart-a.r.s.e seer who"d named it, laughing at the distant generations who would one day discover his jest.
The war was certainly lost, whether or not catastrophe crept its way from World"s End. Lost with it was any sense of purpose to Sharfy"s life. These men around him were just as doomed, yet only a few seemed to know it. Around the bar he could spot the ones who didn"t know: grim-faced, they huddled together making plans, mapping out what each Mayor was likely to do, as if it mattered. The ones who had half an inkling were morose or shocked-looking, staring into the distance and draining more than the planners. The ones who really knew were cheerful like Sharfy, almost openly celebrating the life that was forfeit while still they could.
Sharfy drained his mug again, slammed it down too hard, earning a glower from the barkeeper. People looked at him that way so often he barely noticed. He belched and gestured for more, eavesdropping on conversation around him while waiting for his chance to jump in with a war story.
The talk was that nothing had yet come through from beyond World"s End. There was some kind of veil keeping the place hidden from sight. What dwelled in the lands behind it? Some claimed it was people, just like those who lived here. "Perhaps their help could be had in the war."
Some optimistic fools predicted treasures untold lay in mountainous piles for the taking, scales, gems and charms. They were going to go and claim it; who was in?
Others said in that place dragons still roamed free, and would come here to release their cousins from their sky holds ...
All of it rot. A year of life left, Sharfy guessed. It would be spent downing all the beer he"d dreamed of when pulling roots out of the ground or hauling rocks in the slave farm. There were girls for hire in the parlour too, many of them having fled Elvury with no possessions and not natural to this sad trade at all. A buyer"s market. Tempting. Looks alone certainly wouldn"t get Sharfy laid and he"d not thirsted only for ale on those hard days. But he"d seen Kiown like a swine at a feed trough around girls for sale, like a cruel s...o...b..ring dog, and had sworn never to stoop to that (not that he never had). He resolved to slip some coin to one or two of them, maybe with a kind word, for the sole purpose of telling Kiown about it next time they met.