World's End (23 page)

They had little memory of walking away from that shore and climbing the steps back to their guide. For a long while they sat there, not resting, needing no speech or thought. Their haiyen guide waited, then spoke into their minds in a silent whisper: ‘The waters give all who come the choice to remain. You have chosen to return. It is time now to remember again. Remember who you are, why you are here, why you have come. Be at ease with your burdens. This place soon shall become a faded memory in your minds. But deep within you, ever shall you know the divine freedom which waits for you.'

They travelled as if they moved from dream to dream. Their guide took them to where the ground had been pounded and rent by something huge. Craters sunk deep into the ground, the ground which was made not of rock, sand or soil: rather of rubbery skin which shone like glass. Great hammer blows had gouged crevasses and cracked fissures in it.

‘We are close again to World's End,' said their guide. ‘What you call Tormentors resulted from these cracks. Before the Wall was built, the air's magic was thick in our skies too. It came from your realm and we learned never to use it, for dragons
could influence things if we did. We trapped the magic and stored it deep in the ground as buried garbage. When the great stone beast came …'

‘The stoneflesh giant?' said Siel. ‘The first to cross the boundary?'

‘Yes. Many more have since crossed. When the first crossed over, it attacked all it saw. It was what sent up the foul clouds of trapped power, long gone stale, power which had developed its own poisonous consciousness. It had filled itself with curses of hate. This created what you call Tormentors.'

‘The stoneflesh giant – have you dealt with it now?'

‘We did not. But it is dead. Come.' Their guide took them for a short walk till they found a large shape of dark stone, half buried among green growing things, vines which seemed to slither and tighten about it even as they watched. Long winding pieces of stone had detached from the main mass – a stoneflesh giant's fingers. This was one's hand, overcome by what seemed the birth of a small jungle. ‘The most benign of our gods slew it here,' said their guide. ‘The one we name That With Affinity for Growing Things. It is also called the Teacher of Many Arts. If the Pendulum should swing high enough for gods to cross World's End, we have ensured this benign Spirit will be the first to cross into your world. It will do you no harm.'

‘Will you show us this Spirit?' said Far Gaze.

Their guide opened a tunnel of light and wind and took them to a place where a crowd of men in castle colours – who had fled across World's End from the broken siege force at Tanton – stood at the edge of a ravine, staring ahead with awed faces. The cliff they stood upon was level with a stoneflesh giant's chest. They stood closer to it than men had dared to come to the great creatures before, but it did not notice them. It made
a noise of distress. Its huge arm moved so turgidly it looked like something unseen impeded it.

At its feet and all through the gorge lay strewn pieces broken from the many cliff faces up and down the sheer valley. The giant had been pounding the valley to dust before the god found it. Now the giant's long winding fingers had twisted into impossible knots. Green growing things had sprouted from its eyes and from the great cave of its mouth (moaning still in pain, or fear). The basalt grey slab of its torso was slick and wet, just as if it had been lashed by rains.

As they watched, great splits in its torso opened, pushed outwards by green and wooden growths. One part broke free and fell into the valley with the other stone litter – the ground shivered when the piece smashed down. The great creature cried out a final time before the crack stretched from its mouth corners around its entire head, which then slid free and bounced on the slabs of stone beneath, bounced and rolled with tremendous noise. The giant's arms ceased all their motion. The men cheered and began to seek a way down. There was treasure in the head, they told one another. Gold and charms of great power. Already they argued about dividing the spoils they'd find.

‘I didn't know men from our realm had crossed the border,' said Far Gaze. ‘Is there danger in them coming here?'

‘The Pendulum has swung too high now for the passage of humans and haiyens to matter,' said their guide. ‘These men are in danger. There are things here that will find and prey upon them. I cannot help them. We are no longer in the practice of guiding souls to safety. When the lost haiyens parted ways with us, our work became our own survival.'

They watched the men climb down into the valley. One fell to his death, his brief cry echoing off the cliff faces. The others
paused to watch, performed gestures with their hands, then they resumed their descent until they'd reached the stoneflesh giant's head. From up high they seemed like insects crawling over a large stone. They did not look up to see the Teacher of Many Arts shimmer into visibility for no more than a few seconds before fading out again. It was not as tall as the stoneflesh giant had been, but still it towered over them.

Far Gaze tried to catch that fleeting sight and hold it close: he saw two long antlers, not unlike a deer's except they moved and reached through the air. Two large black eyes seemed somehow kind and wise despite their strangeness. A gap for its mouth was partly covered by a blunt beak. Five long twisting legs like vines propped it up, one of which bent and coiled upon itself like a tail. It seemed made of long growing things all twisted together, arms very like tree limbs, with hundreds of branching fingers.

Filling the air for a second or two as the god faded from sight was a trilling note of peculiar song. It sent shivers down their backs, and reminded Siel of the sounds the haiyens had made which had healed her wounds and brought her back from death.

The men below all scurried out from the stoneflesh head, peering around to find what had made the sound. There was nothing for them to see, and no treasure for them in the giant's head.

Their guide said, ‘There are other gods to see. They may disturb you more than this one. But the lords of your land should know their names and faces, lest they cross over to the North.'

Were it not for their healing in the waters, neither Far Gaze nor Siel would likely have been able to cope with the underground places their guide next took them, places where hideous beings of flat and pulsating form clung to the sides of cave
walls and whispered with harsh voices like nails scratching stone. There were ropy clumps of pink glistening flesh, hung down from rock ceilings miles above those lightless places, with skeletons of many shapes now and then stuck to them, and remains beneath them – haiyen cities of underground refuge long ago ruined. Some of the beautiful and strange buildings were still intact though their occupants had all been consumed. Through such lost places, their guide led them in search of a hidden god, one not seen by any haiyen alive today.

And there it was at last, in an opening space unfathomably deep below, huge upon a pool of liquid darkness: That of the Realms Beneath, dozens of huge half-open eyes at the tips of each ropy winding limb, all twisted about its crescent-shaped torso. One of the many eyes turned their way, gazed at them. A sound of sighing breath filled the dank air – in response, a million curious others began to whisper, seeping up from beneath the black surface with thin trails of smoke.

In haste their guide drew them away, his fear so intense they felt it long after they were away from there. It was the first time their guide had been so afraid in their presence. They did not understand why, and when they asked what they'd just escaped, he would not tell them what had been about to happen.

Instead he showed them safer things for a while, such as a group of hooded haiyens making a long trek across hidden plains to where their nests were built: conical wooden-looking things with intricate designs etched on them. The things were reminiscent of the totem pillars the dark-skinned tribes left scattered on the edge of the Unclaimed Lands. A group of five haiyens solemnly poured a part of themselves into holes upon one such nest, energy flowing almost invisibly from their hands into the vessel.

‘Here I show you how we are born,' said their guide. ‘In infancy, we have a small amount of life. The life force within us slowly grows, until we cannot house more of it, just as a cup slowly overflows. When one's life force reaches fullness, it is shared with these nests, and others become born from it. In this way we too can be reborn, if we choose. He who pours all his life force into the vessel loses his body, is remade young and without memory. With songs and other arts, the group he travels with – what you would call his family – will remind him who he was, what work he performed in life. His memories slowly return. With time, fewer choose to be reborn in this place, going instead to other lives and forms. This world may be owned soon by the lost ones. And they may do to your world what they have done to ours.'

Siel and Far Gaze did not know the times before and directly after they encountered the god whose haiyen name meant That of Energies and Other Places. They later had no memory of how they came to the enormous temple built for it. The god was a clutch of shapes so disparate and strange that for a long while after, Far Gaze doubted his eyes could be trusted with
anything
any more. He supposed that among its writhing thrashing shapes was a head, a torso and limbs, but it seemed more a machine, spinning beyond control.

He and Siel saw only a portion of that entity, whatever it truly was. All surrounding memory was lost. There was just incomprehensible strangeness imprinted on them like a streak of light behind eyes squeezed shut. ‘You're trying to drive us mad,' Siel said as they staggered out of the huge temple housing it.

They felt their guide's grief and regret. He said, ‘I will take
you to where we can recover.' Again with no surrounding memory of the journey they were inside a house-sized shell of stone, with moss and soft soil for its floor. Gentle flute music played. Haiyens were whispering in their ears as they seemed to wake from sleep. They whispered of Siel's and Far Gaze's own lives, talking about their memories as if they'd been there watching all of it unfold. ‘Why do you recount my life for me?' said Far Gaze sleepily. ‘I lived it already and didn't much care for it the first time.'

‘You must ground yourselves again,' said the haiyen nearest. ‘Having seen what you have seen, there is danger of losing who you are. To behold one god is confronting enough. You have seen three. Keep your feet in the land's soil for a time. Reflect upon your familiar world and life. You will then be ready for all else you have been brought here to learn.'

‘How to kill dragons,' murmured Far Gaze.

‘Rest then, if
that
is what you have come for,' the haiyen said quietly.

‘I need not know,' said Siel. ‘I want to see no more. If Far Gaze is willing to go alone and leave me to rest here, let him. I want to go home.'

So it was that Far Gaze alone saw That Which Governs Cycles of Events, that same Spirit Eric had glimpsed stalking between the ruined buildings of his home city in the vision shown to him by Shilen in the dragons' prison. The tall, impossible shape moved insect-like through its barren home, one light and one dark orb held aloft in each of its long arms.

Far Gaze saw too the tall desert tower platforms of those haiyens to the deepest south, the cities of the lost ones, who'd sealed their world off from other worlds, and made it a prison
like the North, trapping their kindred with themselves. He saw the vastness of their high valley, the ingenious homes they'd built far above the reach of the foul things they'd summoned to the lands beneath. His guide told him how they had learned to pool consciousness in a way that opened a gate to a terrible world, and what hungry things had come through that gate.

And there was one now: an enormous ball of matter, halfway between flesh and stone. It rolled mindlessly, smashing itself into cliff sides. Only when they went near to it could Far Gaze appreciate the vast thing's size and horror. It was as big as a mountain, rolling slowly above them like an ocean of sickly grey, formed of infinite whipping tendrils of flesh, seeking ever to pull more matter to itself, to grow and grow. Here and there among its vast bulk were eyes and limbs, formed on its surface in mocking parody of the life forms it had subsumed. Far Gaze stood stunned and numb with horror, so numb he did not even particularly wish to flee the thing. He could only stare at it.

‘When these are first summoned here, they are small and formless,' said his haiyen guide. ‘Can you believe, to look upon it now, that this being was once smaller than an insect? They search for dead things, for flesh to borrow. They add living matter to themselves like shreds of clay, warping and preserving it, growing ever larger. The lost ones helped it grow, fed it living things. They sent one like this to our cities. It had not grown so large as this, but we'd not seen its kind before. We had not learned then how to slay them. By the time we learned, it had destroyed our city, and this and two others had grown too large to kill. Three now are god-sized, and no known arts may destroy them. This one claimed this valley and a great area surrounding it. It does not live, it does not die – it just exists and roams its
territory. The Teacher of Many Arts cannot slay it. Perhaps the other gods could, but they show no interest in it. This one has the flesh of dragons in its mass. Now you know how dragons are slain. And you know how the lost haiyens will offer to help you slay them.'

When they were safely away from that place, back in the place of healing and grounding of consciousness, his guide told him how all through Levaal South, the hungry presences had roamed in search of more matter to bring into themselves. And of how the haiyens had once had cities and civilisations the envy of many worlds. Those places were trampled to splinters, trampled along with most of their nests, condemning them to live and breed in hiding.