“The pain will be real enough. If you believe in it you will die.”
Talaban looped the pouch over his head. “I am ready,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I am the One-Eyed-Fox. Take hold of my grandson.” Talaban did so. “Now close your eyes and reach out with your right hand.”
Colors blazed against his eyes, bright, burning and painful. He felt himself floating in a sea of agony and he tried to cry out, but had no voice. Then he was falling, drifting through fire. He heard a voice—many voices, all screaming at him. Phrases burst through the cacophony …
“Loathsome child. Can you not master simple tasks?” My father hated me. He knew the truth.
“There is nothing you cannot do, my son.” My mother adored me. She was the truth.
“He is useless. Good for nothing. It is hard to believe that I sired him.”
“A talent for fighting is not what made the Avatar great, boy. The mind. Use the mind.” Endar-sen, my teacher. Without him I would have been lost.
The sounds grew, voices screaming, shouting, whispering, Talaban fought for sanity amid the noise. Where were the bright stars and the music of the universe?
“They will come,” came the voice of the One-Eyed-Fox. “First you must fall inward and then we will fly outward. Listen to the voices. Know who you are.”
“I know who I am.”
“No. Find what was lost.”
“Touchstone. He is lost.”
“Find first the lost man within yourself, Talaban. Then seek Touchstone.”
“I don’t understand!” But he did understand—and tumbled into an ocean of voices.
“A man must have a dream, Talaban,” said Endar-sen. “Without it we are merely animate. We eat and drink, but we gain no sustenance. We listen and talk but we learn nothing of value. We breathe, but we do not live. What is your dream?”
“There is nothing you cannot do, my son. You are special.”
“I have no dream! There is no dream for me. All dreams died beneath the ice. All hope was buried there.”
“Loathsome child. Can you not master even simple tasks?”
“Come to me, Talaban. I will be yours and yours alone.” Chryssa was the best of them. She loved me. With her I could have built dreams. The sounds faded and he saw again the last meeting, her fragile beauty almost gone, her skin like glass. No one understood the nature of the disease. It afflicted perhaps one in ten thousand Avatars. They called it Crystal-wed. Use of crystals somehow changed the body chemistry. Soft tissue hardened, the body taking on the properties of the crystals themselves. Once it had begun there was no reversing it. Sometimes the process would be slow and agonizing, at others swift and terrifying. Chryssa had thankfully fallen into the latter group. Talaban had sat beside her bed. He could not hold her hand, for fear of breaking her fingers. She had lost the power of speech, and only her eyes—sweet, blue eyes—remained soft and moist. He told her he loved her, would love her for all time. A tear appeared on her crystal cheek, then her eyes hardened, and she was gone.
The world ended then for him, and the fall of the world the following year was an anti-climax.
The pain of the memory was intense. It burned him and chilled him.
That was the day I lost everything, he thought.
“No. That was the day you surrendered everything,” said the One-Eyed-Fox. “Today is the day you reclaim it.”
The voices were gone now and Talaban floated free, high and fast, spinning and turning.
Below him the blue planet shone like a midnight lantern. His speed increased, the planet shrinking to a tiny pebble. Two comets flashed across his path, drawn towards a colossal planet, and plunging deep into the huge storm clouds that swirled around it. Great plumes of fire billowed out.
Talaban flew on.
Now he could hear the music, the heartbeat of the cosmos. He yearned to be a part of it, to let himself go and live among the rhythms of eternity. “Hold fast!” ordered the One-Eyed Fox. “That is the route Touchstone chose.”
Talaban dragged his mind from the music and reached out. There was nothing.
“Close your eyes and picture the medicine pouch. Touchstone will be drawn to you.”
He was no longer spinning. He was floating, suspended amid the stars. Closing his eyes he followed the advice of the shaman. He could feel the medicine bag in his left hand. Something whispered against his fingers. He grabbed at it and missed. It came again—and this time his fingers hooked to the surface. A sharp pain lanced into his arm. Opening his eyes he saw a huge mottled snake, its fangs embedded in his arm. His fingers jerked open, but he overcame his fear and gripped the round body once more. The snake’s fangs flashed for his face, sinking deep, and he could feel the poison seeping into his flesh.
Illusion. It is all illusion, he told himself. The wounds disappeared instantly.
He was holding a rock. Worms were sliding from holes in its surface, eating into his palm, their tiny teeth ripping away his flesh.
Concentrating on the medicine pouch he pictured the ship, seeking a way back. The worms ate their way into his wrist. They were laying eggs in the arteries. He felt them swimming through his veins. The eggs hatched, and more worms began to grow inside his chest and belly, his neck and his loins, bursting through the skin.
He was being eaten alive.
“Help me, shaman!” he said. But there was no answering voice.
What if this was all a trick? What if there was no Touchstone here? Had he been lured into a trap?
A worm burst out through his cheek and flopped down his face.
The rainbows were spiralling about him now, and he clung to the rock.
Almost home, he thought. Almost safe.
“You are hurting me,” came the voice of Chryssa. Talaban’s eyes snapped open. He saw her fragile body, the splintering cracks running up her crystal arm under the pressure of his hand. “Why do you want to hurt me?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he told her.
“I was safe among the stars. If you take me back I will turn to glass and dust.”
Squeezing shut his eyes he ignored her and sped on. A great roaring filled his ears. Massive talons ripped into his face, tearing out his left eye and slamming down into his chest. The lion pressed against him, its fangs ripping into his shoulder, snapping the bones.
Still he clung to its black mane.
I am dying, he thought. I cannot survive these wounds.
The blue planet roared up towards him and he felt his head strike the rug on the floor of his cabin.
Beside him Touchstone groaned. Forcing himself to his knees, he shook the tribesman.
Touchstone’s green eyes opened. “I sleep now,” he said, and fell forward.
Talaban dropped the medicine bag alongside the unconscious man, then rose and walked back to his desk. There were no marks upon his body, no wounds, no jagged tears. But his mind still reeled from the remembered pain.
That was a foolish thing to do, he told himself.
Chryssa came to his mind. Instinctively he sought to suppress the image, but then realized he no longer felt tormented by the loss of her. Tentatively he summoned the memories of her, their walks together in the high hills, with the spring flowers carpeting the hillsides, and her reluctance to tread on the blooms. She had picked her way carefully among them, her movements delicate and graceful. The memory was warm and very fine. At that moment Talaban finally understood what a fool he had been. By ruthlessly suppressing all thoughts of Chryssa he had buried the joy as well as the despair. You are an idiot, he told himself.
Opening the rear door he stepped out onto his private deck. The stars were bright in the night sky. Suddenly a light appeared to the east. Talaban glanced up …
… to see a second moon shining in the sky.
The sea beneath the ship began to churn and rise. Talaban was hurled to the left. Someone on the decks above him screamed.
Then the second moon vanished and the seas grew calm
er. He stood for a moment, transfixed. Then a second surprise shook him.
Floating in the doorway of his cabin was a shimmering translucent figure, an old man wearing a buckskin shirt decorated with fingers of bone. His hair was white and braided with beads and his eyes were deep and knowing. “The evil is upon us, Talaban,” he said.
Then he vanished.
Chapter Thirteen
The king of the gods, Ra-Hel, was troubled by the changing sky. He sought out Old One Young and asked him for a prophecy. The Day of Endings has begun, said Old One Young. And war will rage among the gods. The mighty will fall, the heavens weep, and evil will stalk the land. But he did not speak of the goddess to come, nor the Queen of Death. For the time was not yet upon them.
From the Noon Song of the Anajo
There was excitement in the cities when the two moons appeared, but panic followed when earth tremors cracked the east wall of Egaru and brought down two of the older buildings in Pagaru. The other three cities escaped serious damage, but twenty-six people were killed in Egaru when the buildings fell, with more than seventy others injured.
The Questor General ordered the troops out of their barracks to patrol the streets, and the Vagar authorities mobilized volunteers to dig through the debris seeking other survivors. One old woman and two small children were found alive.
Across the River Luan the main city of the Mud People had been badly struck. Their homes of mud-bricks had collapsed, as had part of the palace. The Luan had burst its banks, bringing floods and a river of silt and mud that swept through the darkness dragging hundreds to their deaths.
In the Valley of the Stone Lion Questor Anu had ordered his 600 workers to move to the high ground one hour before the phenomenon. Not one man was injured when the earth split across the valley, briefly opening an abyss that belched smoke and dust into the night sky.
At the quarry three miles away a section of sandstone weighing more than twenty tons sheared away from the face crushing six workers and two whores. The men had remained behind against the orders of Questor Anu, having previously arranged a rendezvous with the women.
By dawn the land was again quiet, but an emergency meeting of the High Council was called to discuss the astronomical phenomenon and its meaning.
The Questor General did not head the gathering, but rode instead to the valley, seeking out Anu.
The newly young Questor was walking down the mountain, leading his workers in a long column, as Rael rode up.
“We need to talk, my friend,” said Rael, turning his horse and riding out across the grass. Anu walked over as the General dismounted.
“I sense you are annoyed with me,” he said.
“You could have been more forthright. You knew the event was to take place. Was it some kind of illusion?”
“No.”
Trailing the reins of his mount Rael walked to a rocky outcrop and sat down. Anu joined him. “Would you care to tell me why you kept this from me?”
“You would not have believed me, Rael. You would have thought me demented.”
“It would have been pleasant had you allowed me the right to make my own judgment. However, be that as it may, the event has now happened. What does it mean?”
“It will not be easy to explain,” said Anu, rubbing his slender hand through his close-cropped blue hair.
“I have time.”
Anu smiled. “We may have less time than you think. I want you to open your mind, Rael, and listen to what I have to say without any questions. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Our myths tell us that there were once gods who could journey through time, opening gateways to distant lands. You remember the Tale of the Twins? Bezak god of thunder and the twin brother he never knew he had?” Rael nodded. “That myth always baffled me,” continued Anu, “for you would have thought that Bezak’s mother would have known whether she had twins or not.”
“Spare me the myths, Anu.”
“Patience, Questor General. First you must peel back the skin before you find the fruit. The point I am making is that there are other realities, living alongside our own. As we faced the prospect of the Great Fall so did others on their own worlds. But at least one group accepted the conclusions of their wise men, and took action to save themselves. They used the entire power of their civilization in a bid to stave off the tidal wave. It worked—but not in the manner they intended. What they did was open a massive gateway between realities. They moved their capital city, and all the surrounding lands—shifted it to this reality. That is why, for a few heartbeats only, two moons hung in the sky. They are here now. Far across the western sea.
“Know this also, Rael. Thousands of people from our world died as the moons appeared—buried as the city and its hills and mountains appeared, stamping down like a colossal hammer upon the wide plains.”
“You were quite right,” said Rael. “Had you told me this before I saw the two moons I would have thought you demented. Even now I can scarce believe it.”
“I saw the vision,” Anu told him. “I knew what was to come—and what is to come. Within two months a golden ship will sail into the port of Egaru. It will bring messengers from the west.”
“And these people are Avatars like us?”
“Not like us, Rael. Their power is no longer derived from the sun. It comes from ritual slaughter. They are a malevolent people.”
“How many of them survived?”
“Thousands.”
“And they have zhi-bows?”
“No, but they have developed other weapons equally deadly.”
Rael swore softly, then rose and walked towards his horse. Swiftly he mounted. “We few Avatars are clinging to life by our fingertips,” he said. “We are surrounded by enemies who wait like wolves for the kill.” Guiding his horse back to where Anu sat, he leaned on the pommel of his saddle. “I hope you have some good advice for me, Holy One,” he said.
“They must not be allowed to win,” said Anu. “They will plunge the world into darkness and evil.”
“Then find a way for me to defeat them,” said Rael.
“I will—once my pyramid is completed. Until then, Rael, you must use your wits.”
The first few days in Egaru had been difficult for Sofarita. She had visited the city four times with her parents and once with her husband. But each time they had stayed only one night, at a tavern called the Peace Raven. To Sofarita’s dismay the tavern had been closed that spring and she knew nowhere else to stay.
It was close to dusk when she arrived and gave her name to the guards on the eastern gate. Had she known then that the tavern was closed she could have asked them for directions. Instead she found herself sitting upon her pony outside a once-familiar building, made cold and hostile by the boarded-up windows and the plank hammered across the main doors.
Heading deeper into the city she scanned the buildings for sign of a tavern, but saw none.
The streets grew more crowded and the little pony became anxious. Sofarita tried to soothe him, but he was unused to such noise and bustle. A dog darted under his legs and the pony reared. Sofarita clung to the saddle. A burly woman in flowing gowns of gaudy red, yellow and gold moved from the crowd, grabbing the pony’s bridle and stroking its long neck. “Steady now,” she said. “Steady.” Sofarita thanked her. “You can’t ride much further, child,” said the garishly clad woman. “No Vagar riders allowed in the city center. Where are you going?”
“I wish I knew. I’m looking for a place to stay.”
“Do you have coin?”
“Yes. A little.”
“Come then,” said the woman. Leading the pony by the bridle she turned into a narrow side street and through a stable yard into a lantern-lit square. Tables had been set out and candles flickered upon them. Some twenty people were already eating, and serving maids were carrying food and drink on wooden trays to other waiting customers. “Climb down, girl,” said the fat woman.
Sofarita slid from the saddle. Her
back ached from the ride and the inside of her thighs felt stretched and painful. “My nephew owns this place,” said the woman. “He’s a good lad, and you’ll not be troubled here. Where are you from?”
“Pacepta.” The woman looked blank. “It is a farming village close to the lands of the Erek-jhip-zhonad.”
“And you are seeking work in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Well first you will need a permit. Without one you will get no employment. But—and here’s the stupidity of it—if you have no employment you will be refused a permit.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No more do I. Avatar rules, child. They are not meant to be understood, merely followed.” A thickset young man appeared in the doorway. The woman called out a name and he strolled over.
“Take this pony to the stable,” she ordered him, “and then bring this young woman’s belongings inside.”
Leading Sofarita by the arm she made her way through the tables and into the main building. Here too there were diners, and the rich smell of roasting meats came wafting from the kitchens.
A tall young man spotted the pair, gave a wide grin, and came to meet them. He was wearing a white apron the front of which was stained by gravy. “Good evening, aunt,” he said. “Come to check on your investment?”
“You are too thin, Baj,” she scolded him. “Cooks should be sturdy men. It shows that their food is well worth the eating.” He chuckled and looked at Sofarita, his gaze frank and appraising. She felt momentarily discomfited.
“And who is your new girl, aunt?” he asked.
“She is not one of my girls. I found her riding the Avenue in search of lodging. She’s a country lass and quite unspoilt, as far as one can tell. So you treat her with respect, young Baj, or I’ll want to know why. You can also sell her pony for her. She’ll have no use for it in Egaru and I should think the money will be useful.” She turned to Sofarita. “Do not accept less than ten silver pennies for it. You might get as much as fifteen.” She looked hard into the younger woman’s face. “How old are you? Sixteen?”
“Twenty-two,” said Sofarita.