Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (26 page)

The eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor can the mind conceive of what awaits.

For just an instant I wondered what had become of Azrethemne, but I felt no passion, just a faint sorrow.

* * * *

The jumble, the swirl of lights, the ending:

It was Azrethemne who saved me. She rushed through the crowd. I saw her face looming over me, her mouth forming words of some sort, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring wind. Something struck my wrist and the dagger went flying. I knelt there, stunned.

And Black Veiada screamed.
All the city cried out in terror and wrath. Lightning exploded out of the dark sky. The ground shook. Masonry fell. Tiles slid from rooftops.

I shielded my dazzled eyes, and when I could see again, the terrace was empty of any crowd, but Azrethemne stood there, a bone in her hand, raised high like a club. Down it came, smashing, smashing—

She struck the corpse-king as he lay there and his head shattered like a porcelain globe. Again Veiada screamed. It had all happened between one second and the next—

Azrethemne struck. The thing in the coffin raised its arms in a feeble effort to protect itself. A forearm exploded into shards. The thing wriggled up, tumbling over the side of the coffin, headless, somehow screaming through the open ruin of its neck, wallowing in ashes, groping about with one arm while the stump of the other waved like a useless flipper.

Black Veiada hurled herself at Azrethemne, howling, transformed, almost an animal now, a hag again, her mouth distended, snapping long fangs like those of a dog. The two of them thrashed among the bones and ashes and corpses. The two of them screamed together.

I don’t know why I did what I did just then. I didn’t have time to think about anything. I merely acted. I seized the headless king. His remaining arm came off in my grasp, and I beat him with it, pounding his body with it, then with my fists, until he was reduced to a shapeless, crumbling worm of not-quite-flesh, writhing in the ash pit. I found a bone, snapped it against the pavement, and used the sharpened end to cut into the chest of the monstrosity.

The cavity was empty. The heart was not there.

But I found it a moment later, glowing in the ashes at my feet like a dying ember. It wasn’t beating. For an endless, awful, eternal instant I held it in my hands, helpless as I realized that I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. I was no surgeon or magician, who could put it back inside Kodos Vion.

Then it burst like a bubble, and my hands were empty.

“It is too late now,” said Black Veiada wearily.

I turned around. She had heaved Azrethemne aside. The girl lay amid the bones, panting. The Queen stood over her, weeping. For the first time she seemed utterly human, and I shared her sorrow.

“Help me,” I said. “If there’s a way. Take my heart and give it to Kodos Vion. It’s too late for you, but—”

She changed even as I watched, like a paper figure curling in a fire, becoming a bent crone. Her eyes met mine, but her gaze communicated nothing. To this day I don’t know if she hated me or pitied me or understood me or merely no longer cared.

She folded the air about herself like a cloak and was gone.

* * * *

Azrethemne helped me to my feet. We stood on an empty, ruined terrace. The torso of the dead king was little more than a ribcage wrapped in tattered gold. The flesh fell away to join the ash around it.

“You are a true hero,” she said. “Don’t call yourself
nothing
ever again.”

I could only weep. My mind was filled with confused, contradictory thoughts. I had won, but I had failed more profoundly than words can say. I had failed Kodos Vion. I had failed myself.

Below us, level upon level of the ruined city was devoured as the sea rose. The island was sinking.

Above, the stars began to go out.

Then cold, oily water washed over our feet.

* * * *

More tangled memories: I was falling, far, far down like a stone in an endless well, into darkness. There was a shock of cold. I gasped and my mouth filled with foul water. My lungs were bursting. I struggled against a current. My ears burned.

I broke the surface, shouting for Azrethemne. Even if I was to die now, there were still things I wanted to explain to her, excuses I wanted to make. I wanted to thank her too, more intensely than I had ever wanted anything. It seemed impossible that I should lose her just now.

Then I saw her, running toward me across the surface of the sea, her pale legs flashing. I called out to her once more, but she did not pause, instead running right past me, toward a bright light. She shouted as she neared it. I think her cries were of joy. When she reached it, the light winked out and she was gone.

I hoped she would remember me, at least.

I could only wait for death, rising and falling with the waves, gazing up at the last, failing stars. My body began to go numb.

Then I saw lights coming toward me over the water. It wasn’t a ship, but a building. That was impossible. I had to be going mad, at last.

Light streamed from windows.

Perhaps mad, then, but not quite ready to die, I decided, I swam with all my failing strength toward the open door. Warm hands caught hold of me and hauled me inside.

I found myself in Korevanos, the Inn of Sorrows. The innkeeper had rescued me.

He sat me in a chair and shook me and slapped my cheeks. He served me warm wine, not the wine of vision this time, but just a beverage. The inn was empty, but for the two of us. In time he hauled me to my feet and led me to a stairway. Above, in the darkness, timbers creaked.

“Most extraordinary,” he said, “for someone to
come back.
You must be special somehow. But you can’t stay here. Go. There are many exits from Korevanos. Some of them will take you back into the world. Climb these stairs. Keep on going until you come to the light. No not pause. Beware. There are many perils.”

He gave me a push and I stumbled up the stairs, weak and dizzy, but determined to go on. It was like climbing the swaying rigging of a ship. I made my way along dark corridors. Indeed, there were many perils, many temptations. Voices from the darkness threatened or beseeched. Faces floated in doorways, calling out to me. Rain, snow, and hot cinders blasted me. Once there seemed to be no floor beneath me, and I was walking on the night sky, kicking up a foam of stars.

At last I saw a light ahead of me, and I ran toward it. A crocodile with the shoulders and face of a woman lay in my path.

“Don’t go,” the creature said. “It is death. Stay here with me.”

I jumped over it as its face distended, flowed, and the snapping jaws just missed me.

Then, stumbling, blinded by sunlight, I collided with someone who shoved me backwards. A low stone wall caught me behind the knees, and I landed in warm water with a splash. For a second I struggled. My hands hit bottom. I was sitting on solid stone. I blinked, and looked, and saw that I was in a fountain, in the middle of a square. Above me, over the rooftops, the golden dome of the Guardian’s palace gleamed in the afternoon sun. I was home, in Ai Hanlo.

I laughed aloud as I stood up, as people backed away, thinking me a lunatic. Then I calmly washed my face and drank, and stepped out of the fountain, dripping, regarding the mass of spectators who had gathered.

I suddenly realized that I was not far from the house of Kodos Vion. I ran. People scrambled to get out of my way.

* * * *

The house of Kodos Vion was
not
decked out in mourning. No funeral platform was set up in front. Instead, the doors and windows were draped with flowers. There was music from within, and laughter.

I shoved a startled servant aside. The great hall of the house was filled with revelers. I grabbed a woman by the arm.

“How can you
do
this? Kodos Vion is
dying
!”

She looked at me strangely, pulled herself free, and laughed. “Oh,
that!
It was nothing. His heart came back. He got well so fast it was a miracle. Nobody knows why. Miracles are like that.”

Now that the Goddess is dead and nothing makes sense
, I thought to add, but didn’t.

I heard Kodos Vion was calling out my name. I stood there, dripping and ridiculous as he pushed his way through the crowd.

“Where in the seven thundering hells have you
been
, boy?” He grabbed me by the shoulder and nearly shook me off my feet. “
Look
at you! Been on a sea voyage? It looks like you forgot to take a boat!
Goddess!
You’re a good lad and all, but my guess is you got so drunk you tried to take a bath with your clothes on.”

He laughed so hard that he bent over, steadying himself on my shoulder. Others joined in. The whole house echoed with this hilarity.

“No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then
what
? You’ll have to write a
poem
about it!”

More thunderous laughter.

I turned my back on him without a word and walked away. The laughter became stunned silence.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

I turned around and looked into the gaping faces.

“I don’t know.”

Then I walked out of the house, along many streets I had known all my life, and out of the city through the Gate of Evening. I kept on going for many days, until finally, delirious with thirst and hunger, I came to the cave of an anchorite, deep in the wilderness.

When I was able, I told the holy man of my adventure, and something of my life before.

“I don’t understand anything,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You reached understanding quite early. You have yet to live by that understanding, though. That is where you must begin.”

Later, I told my story to a priest, who questioned me at length about the worlds beyond the world; and again, I told it to a poet, a real poet, who listened carefully but didn’t ask any questions. I heard him perform the tale once. He had changed a lot, greatly improving the character of the protagonist. Then I came to realize that
I
had to tell the story over and over, not to perform it or to move an audience and receive any reward, or even to convince anyone, but so that I might see it more clearly in my own mind, grasp it, and make it real.

What became of Azrethemne? I believe she is safe. I am sure that she found her way back into the world at last. As for Kodos Vion, as the years went by I still felt a kind of love for him, but he was someone out of a past life, a phantom of memory and nothing more. Except when telling my tale, I never spoke his name again.

IMMORTAL BELLS

Hadday Rona had incurred the enmity of the Brotherhood of Yellow Sashes. Therefore he fled through the streets of Ai Hanlo. He had lived in the holy city for all the twenty years of his life, and he knew the narrow ways, the avenues that were so steep that steps were cut into them as they climbed Ai Hanlo Mountain. He knew the corners, the public squares, the shrines, the rows of shops; but now the familiar was made strange. There was danger everywhere, and he ran in the night, his lungs raw from the damp winter air. Leaning housetops nearly touched overhead, shutting out even starlight. He groped his way, terrified as his boots made sucking noises in mud, sure each sound would reveal his whereabouts to his enemies.

He heard a shutter slam. He jumped into a doorway and stood rigid. There was laughter somewhere, and muted voices. Then silence. He envisioned knives being drawn, and felt the hard gaze of unseen eyes. But when he looked this way and that, he saw nothing, and made his way along a wall. Suddenly there was a burst of light, like the sun roaring in his face. A man came out of an inn bearing a sizzling torch. Hadday covered his eyes and ducked behind a barrel. A cat snarled at him, slashed his boot with a claw, and scampered off.

Hadday ran. He lost all sense of direction. The city became a maze, every street corner, the opening to every alley the same, featureless, filled with darkness and danger and with waiting assassins belonging to the Brotherhood of Yellow Sashes. He had known nightmares like this, in which he fled endlessly, never seeming to get anywhere, as if he ran in place, his legs getting heavier and heavier, while death closed around him. He wished that it would end, even if death were the resolution. He could not go on like this.

He leaned against a post, gasping.

Lights blinded him from every direction. Cymbals clanged. Horns blew. People poured out of the houses, around corners, holding torches and lanterns. A dancer in a black and white costume whirled among them, trailing rags and streamers, shouting the holy names of the Goddess, juggling black and white hammers. Behind the dancer came the core of the procession. A statue of the Goddess was held aloft, a thing of black and white glass, mirrored inside, Hadday knew. It would break into gleaming splinters at the right time and the right place, smashed by the hammers in commemoration of the death and dissolution of the Goddess.