Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (6 page)

The fish, from out of the crag, wandering into the wide ocean, bursting into the air, snatched away by a sea hawk—

—falling among faint lights, false images behind my eyelids, but then stars, as pure and clear as any seen by night over the open plain, as if Kabor Asha had all the universe inside him.

We stopped falling without any impact or even a cessation of motion. My vertigo simply faded slowly away, and after a time I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

He took his robe off me, and I saw that we stood on a little hill before a vast city which rose up tier upon tier, like something carven out of a mountain. Every stone, every wall, every rooftop of it was of dull black stone, and it stood silent and empty against a steel grey sky. As far as I could see the ground was bare and dusty grey. Every color, every trace of life seemed drained out of this place.

“Behold the holy city of Ai Hanlo,” said my guide and captor, “where lie the bones of the Goddess. But this is not the Ai Hanlo to which pilgrims flock, where the Guardian rules over half a million citizens. No, this is one of the shadows of the city, in a world of shadows. Where the bones of the Goddess lie all magic intersects, all powers are centered. All shadows come together here, branching out into separate worlds. Thus, in a sense, all practitioners of deepest magic, not that petty and shallow stuff you yourself use, the sort you can see on any street corner in Zabortash, but the deepest, most secret magic, which partakes of the inner nature of things; all who know this and immerse themselves into it—all these dwell in Ai Hanlo, alone, in some shadow or other, where ordinary men cannot follow. In this particular shadow Emdo Wesa dwells. You must go to him.”

I looked up at the city in dread. It was no city, but some monster, waiting to devour me in the labyrinths of its mouth, to dissolve me utterly.

Dadar though I was, if I had any will, I would resist.

I ran down the hill, away from the city, away from the one who called himself Kabor Asha.

“Stop! Fool!”

The spider in my chest scurried to my heart and squeezed and sank its fangs deep. I screamed once, but the sound broke into gurgling, and the pain filled me.

The next thing I knew the Zaborman was helping me to my feet. I was numb and weak. I could not fight him.

“Don’t try to run away,” he said. “Listen to me. I can still help you. I can be your friend.”

“Who are you really? You didn’t find me just by chance.”

“No, I did not. Let me merely say that I am one who wants to see you complete your mission and go free. I want to help you do what Etash Wesa has sent you to do, and get it over with.”

“You seem to know what I must do.”

“Yes, I do. It is quite simple. You will find Emdo sleeping. Reach beneath his pillow and take out the jeweled dagger you find there. With it, cut his throat from ear to ear.”

“Why should I murder a man I do not know, with whom I have no quarrel?”

“Because you were created for that very reason. Be comforted. You have no more guilt in this than does the dagger.”

“That’s very comforting,” I said bitterly. “What happens to me afterwards?”

“In all honesty, I do not know. You could go on for a while, the way ripples do in a pool, even after the stone that made them comes to rest on the bottom. If so, take that as reward for services rendered.”

So, filled with helpless dread, like a victim led to slaughter, even though I was supposed to do the slaughtering, I let him guide me through the dark gate of this shadow Ai Hanlo, through the wide squares, up streets so steep that steps were cut in them, below gaping empty windows, to that gate beyond which, in the real city, no common man was allowed to go. But no guards stopped us, and we entered the inner city, the vast complex containing the palace of the Guardian and—in all the shadows too?—the bones of the Goddess resting in holy splendor. All the while the air was still and dry, not warm, not cold, giving no sensation at all. There was an overwhelming odor of must, like that of a tomb which had not been opened for a dozen centuries. We came to the topmost part of the palace, the very summit of the mountain, to a great chamber beneath a black dome. In the true city the dome was golden, and was said to glow with the sunset hours after the rest of the world was dark.

In that vast, empty room, by the faint light of the grey sky coming in through a skylight, I could make out two mosaics on the floor, one of a lady dressed in black, with stars in her hair, and another, of the lady’s twin, in flowing white, with a tree in one hand and the blazing sun in the other. The Goddess, in her bright and dark aspects, as she was before she fell from the heavens and shattered into a million pieces, which we know as the Powers.

Where the feet of the two images came together, there was a dais, and on it a throne. A man sat there asleep, his head on an armrest. I had expected him in a bed, the· pillow beneath his head. But, no, he was sitting on it.

We crept closer, climbing the few steps until we stood by the throne. We stood over the sleeping man. He was very thin. I could not make out his features.

“Take the dagger, and do what you must,” said Kabor Asha, and as he spoke he stepped down from the dais. “Do it!” he whispered to me. “Hurry! Fear not; it is a magic weapon, the only one which can pierce him. Now carefully draw it out.”

The hilt was sticking out from beneath the pillow. Delicately, I took hold of it and inched it away. The task was easier than I had expected. The thing slid out of a scabbard, which remained beneath the pillow. Once I froze in abject terror as my victim’s eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake.

“Do what you must!”

I felt as if I were about to slay myself, as if the first prick of the blade would burst me like a bubble. But then I told myself, well, I had been created for this. What years I had lived, I had lived. What man can avoid his appointed doom? My life is done, I thought. There are more painful ways to die than merely winking out of existence.

I took the sleeping man firmly by the hair, and quickly, savagely, before he could react, I slashed his throat so deeply that I felt the blade touch his neck bone.

I winced, and braced myself for oblivion, but nothing happened.

Nothing.

There was no blood from the open throat. Only a little dust dribbled from the wound, and the body deflated, like a punctured waterbag, until it was no more than a crumpled mass.

The one who had brought me here ascended the dais again.

“What does this mean?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he die like a man?”

“I can explain. Give me the knife.” Without thinking, I gave it to him.

He slammed it hilt-deep into my heart. There was—

—I—

—the beginning of pain; a scream, my knees like running sand—

—stood still. He held me up, impaled on the blade, frozen forever in an impossible dance of death.

“Dadar,” he said. “I can explain. He does not die like a man because he is not a man. He is a thing like a dadar, like you. A reflection of a reflection. You have killed one of your own number. Dadar, it should be all clear to you when you understand that I am Emdo Wesa, the one my brother sent you to murder.”

* * * *

Hearing came first. Footsteps. The sound of a small metal instrument being dropped into a glass jar. Breathing. Slowly, images coalesced out of the air. Bright areas became torches set in a wall. A drifting smear became a more unified shape, and wore the face of Emdo Wesa, whom I had known as Kabor Asha the Zaborman.

Was he with me, even beyond death?

I shook my head to clear it, and was aware of my body. I was bound spread-eagled to a table, and was stripped to the waist. Emdo Wesa, holding a sharp knife, bent over me. Impossibly, because I felt no pain, there was an immense gaping hole in my chest. I felt sure he could have ducked his head into it. And yet, I was numb, and blood did not spurt out. I watched almost with disinterest, as if all were part of a remote pageant performed by spirits in some other plane of existence. In the shadows.

“You know,” laughed the wizard, seeing that I was awake, “you could say it was obvious from the beginning that my brother had a hand in this.”

He put down the knife and reached into the cavity. His gloves were off and I could see that he indeed lacked three fingers. In their place light flickered.

He drew out a severed hand, totally covered with blood. From out of my chest. He took a ring off one of the fingers, then threw the hand away like so much garbage.

“Yes,” he said, examining the ring. “It is my brother’s hand. His last one. He used the other to make another dadar. How long ago was that? I don’t remember. Oh, I should tell you something. To make a dadar, the wizard must cut off a piece of his living flesh. You have to amputate something. Dadars are not made frivolously. So far I have had but three enemies I could not otherwise deal with, and each cost me a finger to make a dadar. But my brother, I believe, is more quarrelsome. He has lots of enemies. He has changed himself hideously. I won’t tell you the cause of our feud, because it would go on an on, and I don’t care to spend that much time doing so, but I will say this. The world, all the worlds, would be better off without him. He is a monster.”

“M—monster…”

Emdo Wesa smiled and said softly. “Don’t strain yourself, my friend. Don’t try to speak.”

“Who…? Friend…?”

“Now you have a good mind, for a dadar. I must compliment my brother on his workmanship. Or you shall, when you see him. You are so full of questions. Let me set your mind at rest and answer a few. First, know that sorcery changes the sorcerer. Every act makes him a little less a part of the human world. It has to be done with moderation. Otherwise, like my brother, one will drift like an anchorless ship, far, far into strangeness. He has. I don’t think his mind works at all like a human one anymore. But he is still clever. Why did he create you, and let you live unsuspecting for forty-five years before using you? It is because I have long journeyed outside of time, and forty-five years in this world has no duration outside. When I looked back into time, to see how things were going, at a point years ahead of where I departed, I saw you killing me in my sleep. It was no illusion, but a true thing. So I had to arrange for another to die in my place.
That
was what I had seen. Then I was able to come back some days before the event, encounter you, and make sure things occurred as planned. Thus my brother was thwarted.”

Fear, nausea, and delirium washed over me. I felt like I would vomit out my insides, but nothing came. I screamed my wife’s name.

“Tamda is not with you anymore,” said Emdo Wesa. “It is useless to call her.”

He reached somewhere beyond the range of vision and came back with a still beating heart in his hands.

“No…Tamda! You—monster!”

“Calm yourself. Calm yourself. I didn’t say where I got this. It is for you, that you might live.” He placed it in my chest. “You don’t think I…no, how could you? I am not some inhuman fiend like my brother. I am a man, like anyone else. I am human. I have feelings. I can perceive beauty, know sorrow and joy. I haven’t lost that. I am moved by compassion. I know what love is, even the love of a dadar.”

His breath came out like smoke. By the light of the torches I could see that what I had taken to be tight-fitting scale armor was really his flesh. His three ghostly fingers flickered as he sewed up the wound.

I screamed again.

He walked along the table, toward my face, the knife in hand once more.

* * * *

I thought that my being on the hill outside the shadow city, with Emdo Wesa beside me, was all a dream, something conjured by my desperate mind in my last moments of life. But the scene had duration, and I felt hard ground beneath me, and I touched my body and found that it was real. I groped under my shirt and encountered a tender spot, where the wound had been closed and still had a thread holding it. Much to my surprise I also encountered the dagger my wife had given me. Obviously my new master had nothing to fear from ordinary blades.

One side of my face tingled. There was something subtly wrong with my vision, as if one eye perceived things more intensely than did the other.

I looked at Emdo Wesa. He had a bandage over one side of his face, covering an eye.

Again I was a dadar.

“I am returning you to my brother,” he said. “I shall see everything you see and do. When the time comes, I shall direct you. When your task is completed, I promise you, I shall release you.”

“How can I ever believe that?”

“Why, you have my word, as a human being.”

* * * *

There is another gap in my memory here. I made to answer, when I looked up I saw a clear, blue sky. Surf crashed nearby, the air was filled with spray. I was no longer in the shadow, but on a beach somewhere in the real world, on a bright, day, and the wizard was no longer with me.

I had come to the ocean. I had looked upon lakes before, and but never the ocean. I had only heard of it, from those who had travelled far. Water stretched to the horizon, a vast array of whitecapped waves marching toward me like the ranks of endless army, only to break into foam at my feet. The wonder of it almost overcame the terror of what had gone before. For this, it was almost worth what I had endured. Perhaps, I thought, I had gone mad, and had imagined all that had gone before in my madness, and in my distracted state wandered over the world until at last I came to the shore of the sea. That was how I had come here.