Bestion led Silus deeper into the temple complex. As they pa.s.sed through more of the gardens, he saw men tending to the sacred lichens and herbs. He noticed that some of the priests had peculiarly iridescent eyes.
They pa.s.sed through an archway and into a silent hall. No birdsong rang from the walls here and there was no trickling of water. Their footsteps made no sound. Bestion opened a door at the far end and they entered a room bathed in the light of Kerberos.
A stream ran out of an archway on the far side of the room, forming a moat around a stone dais in the centre of the chamber, before exiting through a second archway. On the dais four bra.s.s censers were set at the corners of a carpet woven with symbols not unlike the songlines that had been inked onto Emuel"s body. Above the dais, a wide circular hole in the roof let in the light of Kerberos.
Bestion led Silus over the bridge crossing the moat and gestured for him to be seated on the carpet.
As he sat, Silus looked up and was reminded of that first night with Katya; how they had moored the boat on the subterranean lake beneath the gaze of Kerberos, how he had shared his dreams and fantasies with her. Now that he was actually to come into the presence of Kerberos more directly, Silus wondered whether any of his visions would turn out to be true.
Bestion poured a sparkling powder into each of the censers before lighting them. The smoke that poured from them was bitter and Silus choked as it wreathed itself around him.
"Don"t fight it," Bestion said. "Otherwise this isn"t going to work. Breathe."
The first lungful burned as deeply and painfully as a knife to the ribs and, as Silus fought a growing sense of panic, Bestion put his hands on his shoulders and forced him to be still.
"Breathe, Silus, breathe breathe."
Eventually, the pain subsided and Silus found himself able to breathe without gagging on each inhalation. There was a taste in his mouth that was vaguely metallic, but also sweet. Bestion sat opposite Silus and he noticed that the smoke didn"t go near him. Instead, it seemed to be pouring from the censers and streaming directly into his nostrils.
When the censers were empty Bestion began to chant.
His voice was low and resonated deep within Silus"s chest.
Silus didn"t understand the words, but they seemed to be doing something to him. The taste in his mouth grew more p.r.o.nounced and he felt as though he was going to be sick. He folded himself over the centre of his sickness - trying to hold it in - but a great shudder wracked his body, forcing him upright. When he opened his mouth what came forth, however, was not bile but smoke. It felt like he was being drawn inside-out. Silus tried to scream but he couldn"t. The smoke pouring from his mouth felt like something solid, something living. He looked up and saw the column of smoke reach the hole in the temple ceiling, and he suddenly found himself following it. As he tumbled towards Kerberos he looked down and could see his body below, kneeling with its head thrown back. And as Silus looked at himself, he prayed to the Lord of All that he would be able to return so that life would once more shine behind those eyes.
Chapter Seventeen.
The sound of Bestion"s chanting followed him as the thread tying him to his body unravelled.
Silus rose through the temple roof and, looking up, he could see the great disk of Kerberos expanding as he hurtled towards it.
As the last few words of Bestion"s mantra faded away, Silus found himself moving over the azure planet, the clouds just inches from the soles of his feet.
This silence was bigger than himself, bigger than the stars that blazed above him like a mult.i.tude of jewels strewn across black velvet. Ahead of him, one jewel burned brighter than all the others - its blue-green light reaching him in brilliant cold shards - and Silus knew that he was looking at Twilight. It seemed so fragile, as though if he could reach out and touch it it would shatter.
Remembering his dream, he stared into the clouds below him, expecting to see the spirits of all those who had left Twilight behind, but there was nothing. Just the odd flicker of lightning gave life to the roiling ma.s.s.
Silus felt disappointed. He had expected this to be a profound, spiritual revelation but, instead, he had found that, even close-to, Kerberos refused to give up its secrets.
He felt anger burn through him. Below him the clouds darkened.
Lightning lit the planet from horizon to horizon in a blaze of blinding light.
Silus understood then that Kerberos had just blinked.
Tendrils of cloud rose up around him, caressing him as they drew him down towards the surface.
Silus closed his eyes and sank into Kerberos.
Silus wasn"t sure how much time he had spent in Kerberos"s presence before he found himself rising back up, but he felt as though he might have been conversing for hours. However, he found he could remember very little of what had been said. All his questions and doubts had been replaced with new questions and doubts. He was no more aware than he had been of who was right about the nature of the azure giant; the Final Faith, the followers of the Many Paths, or the priests of the Allfather. In a sense he knew that there was a grain of truth in all of their beliefs but, at the same time, he realised that they all had a long way to go before they could claim to truly know Kerberos.
Silus rose into the void and looked towards Twilight. To his left the sun blazed away, great geysers of fire shooting out into the eternal night. Twilight caught the light and reflected it back and, feeling the pull on his body, Silus moved towards home.
However, something was rising over Kerberos"s horizon. Something that Silus only began to see as a deeper darkness moving against the sea of stars. Then, as it rolled towards him, he could see that it was a pitch-black sphere. It was about an eighth the size of Kerberos and utterly featureless, its smooth surface reflecting the light of the sun like polished onyx.
This was the blight that marred the face of Kerberos.
There was a sudden sense of disorientation and Silus found himself looking down on the black terrain of this strange new world, with Kerberos now looming above him. He tried to will himself towards home and his body, but the dark moon dragged him down until he came to rest on its surface.
He sensed movement behind him then. Silus turned to see an arm reaching up through the ground. No, that wasn"t quite right, he decided. The arm was in fact forming itself from from the ground, the very terrain shaping itself into the semblance of a limb. Another arm rose beside it and then the ground between them bulged as a head, and then a torso, pulled themselves free. the ground, the very terrain shaping itself into the semblance of a limb. Another arm rose beside it and then the ground between them bulged as a head, and then a torso, pulled themselves free.
The thing looked up at him as it coalesced, and its face was as smooth and featureless as the dark moon itself. As it rose to stand over him, the only thing to define it against the night-black background was the reflection of the stars on its obsidian flesh.
Silus prepared to defend himself before realising that there was nothing for the creature to attack. He had no body.
"What are you?"
The thing"s blank face began to form itself into his own.
"Please, don"t do that. You don"t know me."
There was the sound of the ground breaking behind him and he turned to see another figure pulling itself together from the surface of the moon. This one coalesced into Katya"s form. Something crawled out of the ground beside her and when she picked it up, he saw that it was a mockery of his son. As Zac looked at him with its eyes of pitch, fear overtook Silus and he desperately tried to find the link to his body, but when he reached out, there was nothing.
"What do you want with me? What are you?"
We are the Great Ocean. The three figures said with one voice. We are the endless sea. We are the father of the creatures you call the Chada.s.sa. The creatures whose blood run in your veins. We are the endless sea. We are the father of the creatures you call the Chada.s.sa. The creatures whose blood run in your veins.
"But I don"t understand what you want with me."
Silus, your birth was the start. You are the herald for a new age of the Chada.s.sa. The time of the endless ocean.
"How? Look, you have driven me from my home. You have caused the deaths of people I care about deeply. You owe me an explanation."
We agree. Too much has been hidden from you. It is only right that you are made to understand. Maybe then you will submit to us with gladness when you realise just how important you are.
"How can I be so important?"
Look, said the Katya facsimile, holding out the thing that looked like Zac.
Silus didn"t want to look at the thing. It wasn"t his son. But when it smiled and said his name, he found himself falling into the bottomless pits of its eyes.
As Silus was dragged far into the past he tried to scream, but he had no mouth.
It felt as though he fell forever, but he didn"t fall far.
As he came out of his tumble, he saw that Kerberos still turned slowly above him and Twilight still sat against its blanket of stars.
Something was was different though and it wasn"t just that the dark moon was no longer there to cast its shadow on the face of Kerberos. Something made Silus feel that he was further away from home than he had ever been. different though and it wasn"t just that the dark moon was no longer there to cast its shadow on the face of Kerberos. Something made Silus feel that he was further away from home than he had ever been.
Then he had it. He had fallen not through s.p.a.ce, but time.
As Silus wondered why the creature that called itself the Great Ocean had dragged him into the past, there was movement at the edge of his vision and the dark moon drifted towards him. This time, however, it paid him no heed. Instead, it came to rest before Kerberos, hanging in the void.
As Silus began to wonder what great revelation it was that he had been sent here to witness ripples pa.s.sed through the surface of the moon. The black orb convulsed and a great rock erupted from its surface to go spinning towards Twilight.
Silus was dragged into its wake, following it as it sped towards his world.
After the endless silence of s.p.a.ce the booming concussion that the rock made as it entered Twilight"s atmosphere was deafening. Fire erupted from fissures in the stone and gas vented from cracks to surround Silus in billowing steam.
The clouds broke and Silus saw that they were hurtling towards the sea, the water coming up to meet them at a sickening speed.
He braced for impact but the scene changed suddenly, and he found himself beneath the waves rather than falling towards them.
Silus was standing before a beautiful citadel, much like the one he had explored with the crew of the Llothriall Llothriall. But whereas that city had been broken by war and time, this one shone in its perfection. Great towers reached from the seabed - linked by arches that looked like they had been formed from polished quartz - while domes of gla.s.s nestled amongst forests of seaweed, the green fronds alive with the play of brilliantly coloured fish. Shafts of sunlight filtered down through the surface, moving slowly over the scene, picking out the smooth green stone of the buildings one moment and shining from the gla.s.s domes in dazzling coruscations the next.
As Silus looked more closely he could see tiny lights darting through the city like fireflies and when a shaft of light moved to rest on one of them for a moment he saw that they were attached to strange creatures.
They were humanoid in appearance, though thin silvery tails propelled them quickly through the water and small globes of light hung from either side of their jaws, looking much like the lures of anglerfish. Their heads were larger than an average human"s, with great dark eyes staring from above a circular mouth lined with hundreds of needle-like teeth. At the ends of their hands were not fingers but fronds, not unlike those of a sea anemone.
These are the Calma, the voice of the Great Ocean said. A simplistic and mongrel race. A simplistic and mongrel race.
The creatures moved through the city with a balletic grace that was a joy to watch. As Silus saw two of their young race each other to the surface, he realised where he had seen such incredible beings before. His vision in the broken citadel. He had seen himself killing the Calma. He had revelled in their deaths while standing knee-deep in their fallen.
There was a commotion above the city then and Silus saw a host of Calma rushing away from the surface, as though fleeing from something there.
Panic overtook the city as a great shadow fell upon it.
Silus wasn"t sure what had happened but he was suddenly surrounded by a thick cloud of debris. Dark shapes moved past him in the murk, and he could just make out chunks of broken rock and the tangled ma.s.ses of shredded corpses tumbling through the clouds.
Then as rapidly as the cloud had rolled over him it was gone, and Silus now found himself looking at the ruins of a shattered city.
The scene before him blurred, light strobing erratically across it, as though the sun was racing through the sky far above.
Eventually the light stabilised and Silus could see survivors crawling through the ruins.
At the centre of the broken citadel sat the great black rock that he had followed into Twilight"s skies. Dark tendrils were reaching out from the burnt and pitted stone, and where they touched the Calma survivors a horrible and violent change wracked their bodies.
The sheen of their scintillant scales darkened to a pitch black, while the fronds of their hands retracted and stiffened, razor sharp claws bursting from the flesh of their newly forming fingers. The process looked agonisingly painful and the screams of the creatures confirmed the torment they were in.
The creatures got stiffly to their feet as they changed, their toes elongating and sprouting vicious-looking talons that dug into the seabed; their jaws shattered and then slowly reformed, their mouths now lined with long sharp teeth. As the glowing nodes fell away from the creatures" faces, Silus knew exactly what he was looking at.
Chada.s.sa.
The newly birthed Chada.s.sa moved through the rubble, dispatching any of the survivors too weak or gravely wounded to make the change. As they experienced their first kills, Silus could sense their joy. Part of him - for the briefest of moments - even shared in it, but he bit down on this dangerous l.u.s.t, burying it deep.
See the birth of the emissaries of the Great Ocean. See the first tentative steps of your kin.
Silus wouldn"t have called their steps tentative. The Chada.s.sa strode through the broken city killing anything that was not their own kind.
Now witness the rise of the Chada.s.sa.
A great war followed, a wave of destruction wrought across the ocean by this fledgling race, Calma city after Calma city falling to their relentless onslaught.
But there was was some resistance. Through necessity the Calma had to learn the art of war, but such a talent did not come naturally to a race who had lived in peace for most of their lives. Mistakes were made, more of their cities were lost and by the time they began to fight back with anything like success, their populous had been decimated. some resistance. Through necessity the Calma had to learn the art of war, but such a talent did not come naturally to a race who had lived in peace for most of their lives. Mistakes were made, more of their cities were lost and by the time they began to fight back with anything like success, their populous had been decimated.
Some Calma, in their desperation to save themselves, crawled onto land. But they soon found their hides drying out and cracking under the onslaught of the merciless sun.
The inhabitants of Twilight decided to take mercy on them.
Silus saw the sh.o.r.es of Nurn strewn with the bodies of Calma. Moving amongst them were lithe figures with pale skin and almond eyes the colour of Kerberos. Silus realised that they were elves - that ancient and beautiful race that had been dead for millennia - and, as the creatures of legend began to sing, he saw the birth of the human race.
Under the influence of the elven magic the Calma began to change where they lay. Their scales lost their sheen, gaining the soft pastel colours of flesh, their limbs shortened as hands and feet began to form, their tails withdrew into their bodies, their gills closed up and their jaws realigned as hair sprouted from newly shaped skulls. All along the Twilight coast the human race took their first breath and, looking up at Kerberos, they let loose their first cry.
With the change wrought, the elves sang one last song. The song of forgetfulness.
All knowledge of their brethren in the sea was lost to the human race. They forgot the Calma - their legends and culture - and began to form their own communities. In saving them, the elves had severed their roots. But they were satisfied that they had at least partly turned the tide of genocide. Only the few Calma who remained below the waves knew the truth concerning the human race and they guarded the secret as they continued to evade the attentions of the Chada.s.sa.
However, it didn"t take long for the Chada.s.sa to find out the truth.
Silus watched as the sea demons built their empire on the ruins of the Calma"s, growing in strength and breeding with an alarming rapidity. From infants, their growth to maturity took only a couple of years, and they began to reproduce almost as soon as they had shed their youth. Soon they ruled their submarine world with a ruthless efficiency, exploiting the ocean"s resources, devastating whole swathes of seabed in the building of their cities.
As the centuries pa.s.sed, the Chada.s.sa began to feel that the conquest of Twilight"s seas had not been enough. Jealously regarding the land that had been denied to them, they began to mobilise for an invasion.
As they strode from the waves, however, the Chada.s.sa found that the humans had lost the Calma"s propensity for peace, and they fought with an unbridled ferocity that matched the Chada.s.sa"s own.
There was, however, an even greater impediment to the Chada.s.sa"s plans for conquest of land.
As the Chada.s.sa fought on the surface they soon found themselves sickening. They tried to fight on, but after only a brief time their bodies" shortcomings forced them to retreat back beneath the waves.
For generation after generation my creations brooded on their inadequacies, but despite their pleas to me I could not intervene. The voice of the Chada.s.sa G.o.d told Silus. The voice of the Chada.s.sa G.o.d told Silus. For my act of creation I was banished beyond the void, where not even the stars shine, by the being you call Kerberos. But in my absence my children had begun to put a great plan into action. For my act of creation I was banished beyond the void, where not even the stars shine, by the being you call Kerberos. But in my absence my children had begun to put a great plan into action.
The Chada.s.sa reasoned that just as their bodies" inadequacies were as a result of the adaptation of the Calma physique, then these same inadequacies could be remedied by taking on more of the physical attributes of the humans. They resolved to breed a new race of Chada.s.sa.