Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (36 page)

Aerin wondered if the priest had ever gotten one, but he dared not ask.

Then the priest blessed them, pressing to the forehead of each a reliquary containing a splinter of a Bone of the Goddess, and he was gone. He left the door open behind him. None of the children rose to close it.

Again, Aerin, Mora, and Vaenev sat in silence for a long time. Mora began to cry. Vaenev took her by the hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said plaintively.

“It’s not that. It’s…just that tomorrow we’ll all be different. We’ll never be like we are now, here, together. I don’t know how, but we’ll change.”

Aerin was shocked to find himself wondering what would happen if he simply ran out the open door and kept going.

Then Vaenev had an idea. He got out a game they had played many times before, an affair with dice and colored balls and a carven board. For the last time, as children together, they played it, and when the time came, they left the game out on the table and went upstairs, each into their separate bedrooms, which were lined up along a corridor. Each had a window opening onto a balcony. They opened the shutters, each of them, and leaned out, pausing at the sight of one another. No one spoke. They went back into their darkened rooms and waited.

II.

I am the oldest
, Aerin told himself. I
must not be afraid.

He lay in the darkness, knowing that he was afraid. He prayed silently to the Goddess, even though she was dead, that her fading power might be enough to bring him safely through this night.

He didn’t know if he slept. He was too tense to sleep, but after a time he seemed to come back to himself out of a blurry dislocation. Perhaps hours had passed, perhaps only a few minutes.

There was a footstep on the balcony outside. Instantly he was completely awake, his heart thumping. He saw nothing, heard no further sound, but he knew in a manner beyond reason that his time had come.

He rose from his bed.

A board creaked on the balcony.

“I am here,” he said weakly. A little dizzy, he walked over to the window. It was intensely dark outside, the night darker and quieter than any night in the city ever could be. He climbed out the window, onto the balcony, groping for the railing. Grasping it, he stood shivering in the frigid air. Beyond was only a void. There was no starry sky. No light burned in any window of the city. There was absolute silence, but for the beating of his own heart and the sound of his own breathing.

He realized with mounting excitement that this darkness, this silence were part of his Revelation.

“I am here,” he said again.

A light exploded into being inches from his face. He reeled back, arm up to shield his eyes, passing through the space where the railing should have been. He hunched his body against the expected fall, but only found himself staggering, bent over, on hard pavement.

The light diminished into a kind of torch. The hand that held it was skeletal, naked bone. He saw the face of a skull enveloped in pale white light, burning faintly like a candle, like a half-living thing with flesh of endless fire.

The thing hissed at him. He took a step toward him, and again he recoiled. It wore what had once been a fine gown, fringed with gold, but was now ragged.

“Aerin. Come.”

He did not run away. This, too, was part of his vision. He looked around once. He did not see the house. The light of the torch revealed dark windows and ledges of buildings he did not recognize.

“Follow,”
the torchbearer said, and he followed, along a street to an intersection. Dark, empty houses loomed above them. Shadows flickered. Footsteps echoed. Above, there was only absolute blackness, as if a canopy had been draped over the city or the stars had been extinguished. The way slanted upward. The street had steps carved in it. Still there was no other light, no other sound. The darkness was like a tunnel. He followed the light of the burning man. Familiar things emerged slowly; a doorstep, a post, a rain barrel, a cart; only to vanish behind in the gloom.

When they came to the great square before the wall of the inner city, the torchbearer stopped. There was another waiting there for them, also bearing a torch in a bony hand. Again there was a skull face covered in gentle flame, flickering softly in the night, but this apparition wore the garments and jewelry of a lady of high birth.

It curtseyed before him. Rings rattled on finger bones.

“I am A-Tanae,” it said.

He nodded slightly, unsure of what to do. The name meant something, and then he understood. There were many old stories that began,
In the days of the first Guardian, a thousand years ago, there lived a girl named A-Kenru…or a boy named Ka-Hadin…
but nobody had had names like that in as long a time.

Others came, from every direction, out of every part of the outer city. He saw their torches far away, mere drifting motes in the darkness. Then they were with him, and each skeletal creature introduced itself. Some had ancient names, some modern ones. Each had a face like a skull soaked in alcohol, burning softly. They wore a fantastic array of jewels and sweeping cloaks and peaked caps and satin and gleaming metal and rags. When there were more than a hundred of them, he realized that he was part of a procession, at the heart of a glowing snake that wove through dark streets and coiled before a huge gate beyond which no commoner might ever pass.

For them, the gate swung open and the inner city was revealed, bathed in the same pale light. Flames flickered from every window and doorway, hissing softly, consuming nothing. The pavement itself burned.

Aerin started forward, determined to be unafraid. The flames touched him and he felt nothing, but as they touched the feet of the skeletal company the fire rose up between the empty bones, giving a semblance of glowing flesh. The faces were like lanterns, too pale and insubstantial to be alive, but the distinct faces of individuals, sculpted out of flame. He saw that he was being led by a square-jawed man with a braided beard. A-Tanae was a long-faced lady with a ring through one nostril, as was the custom in ancient times.

They passed through ivory doors outlined in fire, along beautifully decorated corridors that burned blue. The flames were everywhere, the whole inner city one vast phantasm of shaped vapor. The tiniest details, the furnishings of a room, the draperies, even the pens on a writing desk, were things of living light.

At last they emerged into a vast room beneath a golden dome. Here a vast pit of fire burned silently, and the flames were of gold.

Across them, on the other side of the room, the Herald of the Goddess sat on a throne atop a dais. Aerin knew him by his robe of glittering black and silver scales, his peaked hat, his lantern, and his horn. Their eyes met. The Herald was calling him.

For an instant, the boy paused to wonder, and to be a little bit proud: all these mysteries were for him alone, for his long contemplation. The meaning of his vision would not become clear without years of effort. Did it mean he was destined for some greatness?

The Herald set aside his horn and his lantern and rose from the throne. He descended the dais to greet Aerin, then led him back up to the top and stood beside him, making a sweeping gesture with his arm above the fire pit.

As they watched, the torchbearers filed slowly into the pit, each of them merging with the flames, vanishing into shimmering gold and absolute silence.

When they were all gone and Aerin and the Herald stood alone, the Herald spoke, impossibly, for he had no voice, but Aerin heard him nonetheless. The words formed in his mind.

“Look now, and see the meaning and fulfillment of your vision.”

Something rose out of the flames, as vast as a mountain being born, an enormous skull, blackened, with shriveled flesh clinging to it. A neck and shoulders were revealed, as if a monstrous corpse were sitting up.

“Aerin,” it said. “Come to me, Aerin. You are mine, Aerin.”

Now the boy’s courage left him and he screamed and turned away, but the Herald caught him firmly by both shoulders and turned him back again, like a parent directing a reluctant child.

“You must go to her. You are looking on the Goddess as she is now, in death. Your fate and your future are with her.”

And Aerin, determined not to be afraid, to set an example for his sister and brother because he was the oldest, determined to follow his vision through to the end; and touched with pride and almost dead with terror, he walked slowly down the steps of the dais and into the fire pit.

The flames clothed him and the flames held him up. He walked through them like a spirit across the surface of a lake.

The mouth of the Goddess gaped wide.

* * * *

It was strange, he realized much later, that he was burning all over but there was no pain.

Fire filled him. He opened his mouth and orange flame billowed out, dazzling his eyes. He stretched out his arms, and columns of fire rose from his upturned palms.

He rose with smoke toward the golden ceiling and drifted through a skylight.

Below, the city appeared as it would on any night, a tapestry of soft lights, lanterns in windows, torches on battlements. Beyond, the river called Endless gleamed silver beneath the full Moon.

There were stars in the sky.

He drifted, still enveloped in fire, until the river was beneath him, and he looked down into the Moon’s reflection.

Above, the Moon was full. Below, it was a waning crescent, a tiara worn by a beautiful woman whose flowing black hair sparkled with stars. Her face was, in some way his mind could not grasp, awesome and terrifying beyond anything he had ever known.

Their eyes met. Her memories flooded into him. The past was revealed. In an instant, he knew all the history of the world.

III.

Mora crouched beneath her window, her ear to the wall, listening. The house was silent. She did not know how many hours had passed, but it seemed that most of the night was gone. There was no sound from either of her brothers.

She went from being excited to being afraid to being slightly bored. What if nothing happened? What if she had no vision at all?

There was a footstep on the balcony. She stood up and peered out the window. No one was there. She climbed through and went to the railing, looking out over the familiar streets of the neighborhood, and up the mountainside to the Guardian’s golden dome as it gleamed in the moonlight. She turned back toward the house when she heard the footstep again, to her right. She whirled, and by some transition too subtle to follow was no longer in darkness, but in light, no longer on a balcony, but standing in the middle of a grassy field.

She put her hands over her eyes to protect them from the glare, then let them drop when her eyes adjusted.

The sky overhead was blue, the sun bright. Far away, over miles of waving grasses, a mountain rose, covered with the ruins of a city long abandoned. Beyond the city, a broad, muddy river curved through the land.

“Come. Join us,” a pleasant voice said.

A youth and a maiden stood beside her, both naked and bronzed with the sun. She saw that she was naked, too, but very pale. The sun and the warm air felt good on her skin. She walked along a dusty path. That felt good, too.

The couple led her over a low hill, to a place where statues stood in a circle, hundreds of feet high, all of them so ancient that their features had all but been erased by the wind and the rain and the sun. Only the vaguest outlines of faces remained. Some had no faces, and were just columns of crumbling stone.

Inside the circle, hundreds of naked people, all of them young and flawlessly beautiful, lounged on a soft green lawn, eating fruit, drinking from golden goblets, laughing and joking, or making love. A young man played on a kind of flute. Several women danced around him.

“Here, drink.”

The maiden who had led her gave Mora a goblet filled with red wine. She drank, expectant. The sensation of the wine inside her was intensely pleasant, warm, almost an ecstasy. She felt dizzy. The goblet dropped from her fingers. She sat down on the grass.

When she felt steadier, she looked up. The scene was the same as before, only most of the people were no longer human. They were tall and delicate, and had the heads of birds. Some had soft, downy feathers, growing out of marble-white skin. Only about one in four was as she had originally seen them.

“Come, join us in our celebration,” the maiden said. She helped Mora to her feet. The ground swayed. The statues seemed taller, looming, leaning down upon her. The faces seemed to move, the stone mouths to form silent words. The sky was spinning. the sun a searing, swirling ring overhead.

She was dancing with the others In a great circle among the ruined statues, around a bonfire, all of them drawing ever closer to the fire until her skin ran with sweat and she was faint from the heat and smoke and exertion.

The flames parted like a curtain, and a thing stepped out, something like a man with the black, fierce head of an eagle. She was thrust into its arms. She struggled helpless in the iron grip, choking on the scorched smell of hot flesh. The rough feathers of the creature’s chest scraped her face. Talons cut into her back.