Miranda could not tear her eyes from the image. There was no scale. Hell’s first king could be the size of a man seen from very close, or a mile tall viewed from many miles’ distance. The human-like face was perfection, without blemish or flaw. If one could imagine perfect proportions of brow to nose to chin, fullness of lips, set of eyes, shape and contour of a male body, then he was perfect. A woman of no small life experience, she was overwhelmed by desire and longing, a need for more than mere physical love, but to be accepted by this being. She said it aloud: ‘He’s perfect.’
Piper laughed. ‘No, but as close as any living thing can get. There was only one perfect being in existence.’
‘Who?’
‘In time. You’re not ready.’ Piper waved his hand. ‘This is the event, or as you would see it … time confuses me. This is the Second Cause.’
Miranda looked at the vista before her, distances beyond her ability to imagine, and in the midst of it, a sea of incandescent gases. Tiny lights dotted the cloud and she knew them to be stars. Five beings like the first one she had just seen, magnificent in every aspect, stood in a pose of confrontation, one facing the other four. No words were heard, but Miranda sensed they were communicating.
‘What am I seeing?’
‘Watch.’
Suddenly one of the four moved to the Shining One and grappled with him; then the Shining One was gone.
‘What was that?’
‘There are many different stories. Here’s what you must know. For every cause there’s a reaction, an opposition; for every force, a counter force. It’s part of a balance so fundamental it surpasses even the First Cause. It is called Equipoise at its most fundamental, and that is what you must first understand. The one who fell was cast out because he questioned his creation and aspired to rise beyond his station. He brooded in solitude for ages and felt rage.
‘Then came envy, and the one who fell created imitations of his brethren. His children were demons. They would serve and worship him, as his brethren served their creator.’
Again Miranda saw what Piper had called the demon host, a legion of beauty on the wing, appearing through a massive rift in the heavens, the Sundering. ‘Am I seeing what he really looks like?’ she asked.
Piper again blew a loud note, spun in a circle and said, ‘Of course not. There are bands of energy coursing through the universes impossible for any physical entity to perceive, let alone grasp. Understanding beyond any one mortal’s capacity is what is needed to grasp the totality of what is before you.
‘Threads of possibility, waves of probability, surges and flows of consciousness, vital forces beyond mortal comprehension.’ In a patronizing tone he added, ‘We have to simplify so you can comprehend. Your feeble mind does what it can to understand, but it’s not sufficient.’
Miranda scowled at being called feeble-minded, but let it go. ‘What are you showing me?’
‘The hosts of heaven.’
‘I thought you said it was the demon legion.’
Piper laughed. ‘Your mind! It is lacking. Angels, demons, they are the same thing, but from different places! Or the same thing seen differently! They just serve different causes. They are opposites, yet they are the same!’
Piper came to stand before Miranda, put his pipe under his arm, then formed a sphere with his two hands. ‘You see things like this! But in truth, they are like this.’ Suddenly he pulled apart his hands, fingers wiggling frantically, and moved his hands in a flurry of motion. ‘There is no higher heaven, lower hell. The first circle is the first circle, or plane or realm or demesne.’ He waved one hand high above his head. ‘Here you call it heaven.’ Then he waved the other down below his waist, letting his flute drop, which he deftly caught with his free hand while he knelt. ‘Down here, the same place, you call hell!’
He walked around behind her. ‘From here, I see you with black hair hanging down your back.’ Before she could turn, he was in front of her. ‘From here I see your face! You look different from before. But you are the same!’
‘Perspective,’ she said.
‘Yes!’ He laughed, a clear boyish laugh. ‘You begin to understand.’ He waved his hand and the image changed.
Suddenly the King of Hell was a red-skinned monster with huge white horns that rose from his forehead and curved back over the dome of his skull, an upraised roach of black hair rising between them like the fin of a sailfish, and two enormous black bat wings spreading out from his back.
The host of angel-like demons were now replaced with what Child would have expected to reside in hell. Miranda said, ‘Why …?’
‘You denizens of that region of the spheres, what you call the Fifth Circle, like all beings in one sense or another, are creatures of energy. You look the way you expect to look.’
‘I expected to look like Child?’
‘Language,’ snorted Piper, obviously unhappy with its limits. ‘No, you creatures, all of you, together, over time, you come to believe things and they become so.’ He laughed. ‘Look at this one. It’s wonderful!’
She looked up and instead of figures of demons and angels saw a massive cascade of scintillating lights, so brilliant as to cause her to shield her eyes. Millions of other lights flowed and swirled around the twisting fountain of colour in the middle. It was as if every fireworks display ever conceived had been simultaneously unleashed on a scale to dwarf worlds. Colours darted so quickly, it was a sight to induce madness in a weaker mind than hers.
‘It’s energy, don’t you see?’ asked Piper.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Energy, matter, time, it’s all the same. You just have to know how to look.’
‘Perspective,’ said Miranda.
‘Yes,’ said Piper. He grinned and danced a step.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘Witness,’ said Piper.
Suddenly the entire sky changed. Instead of a window through which to view images conjured by whatever magic Piper or his master employed, Miranda found herself floating over a vast field of stars. There was a glorious harmony to all she beheld. Vast swirling oceans of star-studded gas moved across the heavens in stately progress, while comets blazed their timeless paths around multitudes of stars.
‘This is what the universe looked like from this rock when it was a planet,’ said Piper, ‘before the Enemy came, before the time of madness and chaos.’
Miranda was about to ask a question, then ceased as she noticed an anomaly. In a corner of a starfield, a dark spot had appeared, at first hardly noticeable in the flowing pattern of lights against the darkness around her. But after a moment she saw that there was something different about this blackness. If there could be shades of blackness, this was a depth of it, an absence of even the promise of light or colour.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Watch,’ said Piper.
‘It must be immense,’ said Miranda, ‘and very far away.’
‘Distance, like what I’ve shown you, is illusion. How do you think you move from place to place by thought?’
‘Magic,’ she answered.
‘There is no magic,’ replied Piper. ‘Nakor understands.’ Miranda looked at Piper, who looked quizzically at her. ‘Or he will.’ Piper frowned. ‘Or he has.’ After another moment, Piper said, ‘Time is an illusion, too.’
Miranda had only a rudimentary idea of how vast the distance between stars might be, but she knew, given the size of the sun around which Midkemia spun and how it appeared in the sky, and the size of those tiny pinpoints of light called stars, the distances were vast. Yet the dark spot was growing at an enormous speed. ‘It must be expanding at tens of thousands of miles a minute,’ she muttered. ‘More,’ she amended as entire clusters of stars were suddenly blotted out.
She looked at Piper, who was transfixed by the sight above them. She asked, ‘Is it just blocking out what’s behind it, or …’
‘It’s eating stars,’ said Piper. Then he said, ‘In your home world, the demon rea
lm, the void where the first Kingdoms once were, that’s what it becomes eventually.’
Miranda’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Gods.’ Whispering, she asked, ‘What is it?’
‘The Enemy. The true Darkness,’ answered a voice in the air, and when she turned Piper was gone.
There was a popping sound from behind her and she turned. A vortex awaited. For a moment she hesitated, then she realized she had learned all she would here. She took a step and leaped into the dark vortex.
• CHAPTER EIGHT •
Storm
LIGHTNING SPLIT THE SKY.
Brendan cursed every god of weather in every nation of every world that had gods of weather. He had made an uneventful journey down the coast, staying close and putting in whenever he caught sight of a sail on the horizon. As he moved south of the headlands known as Schull’s Rock, he took his bearing off the rising sun and pushed through straight on to Sarth. He knew the Quegan fleet would not put in that close to the Kingdom coast and felt safe hurrying along.
When he came into sight of Sarth, he took a quick inventory and discovered he had four days of food and five of water on board. Rather than stop at Sarth, he put the helm over to starboard and beat a course dead south. He ran out a Kingdom pennant he had liberated from the mayor’s library in Ylith, used by Kingdom couriers, in case he encountered Kingdom warships that might otherwise stop and board his vessel. It was providential, as twice Kingdom ships altered course to give him a closer look, but catching sight of the snapping guidon in the royal blue and gold and Brendan giving a cheery wave, they returned to their original course, assuming Brendan was seeking out another ship.
Now he was caught up in one of the Bitter Sea’s sudden weather changes. It wasn’t raining yet, but he could smell the moisture in the air. Lightning was cracking overhead, followed by thunderclaps that felt like physical slaps.
The little smack was starting to climb up crests and dive into troughs and Brendan was starting to worry. In clear weather, if the charts and maps he had studied were correct, he should be seeing the smudge on the horizon that would have marked Sorcerer’s Isle, but now visibility was down by half as rain from the south-west formed a curtain on the horizon. If he was lucky, it would pass to the west of him, or only get him a little wet, and prove to be just another sudden squall.
If it was a big storm, he could be sailing and bailing for days, and literally sail right past the island and be halfway to the Keshian coast before he realized his error.
Or he could sail right onto the rocks of Sorcerer’s Isle’s north shore.
Brendan checked his jib and saw it was well extended as the wind picked up, and knew that he would soon have too much sail. He tied off the tiller and quickly lashed the boom with a preventer, a short rope that would keep the wind from suddenly jibbing the boat while he pulled in the jib sail. Normally this type of smack had two masts, but this one had sacrificed the smaller abaft mast for the fish well. Usually two men manned this craft, but Brendan could find no one in Ylith willing to make the journey with him. He was young and had spent his life sailing the Far Coast near Crydee, and felt able to sail her solo. Until now, he realized. Right now a second man to man the sheets or bail out the bilge would have been most welcome. He had a small bailing bucket nearby, and if a wave crested the bow, he could hold the rudder with one hand while dumping some water overboard with the other. But it was tedious, fatiguing, and ineffective.
Dropping the jib, he decided to sacrifice order for speed, wadded up the mass of canvas and dumped it in the fish well. He returned to the rudder, unlashed it and the boom and set his eyes on the horizon.
Lightning flashed and he waited for the following thunder, but there wasn’t any. And then he realized most of the lightning was behind him. Then the lightning flashed again, and he realized it was in the same place as the last time he had seen it.
He kept his eyes focused on the same place, as well as he could with a pitching craft and moving horizon, but after about half a minute, he was rewarded with another flash. Still no thunder.
He tried to judge his direction, for the sky was heavy with clouds that blocked any hint of the sun’s position, save that the light was failing, so he knew it was late afternoon. And with the curtain of rain coming up from the south-west, visibility was dropping by the minute.
Another flash, and this time he could make out what looked to be lightning traces, all near the surface. It was most definitely odd, though he had seen ground lightning ashore once. But at sea? Never. Usually the bolts streaked across the sky, or struck the surface, but … this? It was unlike anything he knew.
Lacking a better guide, he tried to keep the boat pointed off the port side of where he first saw the flash, judging it to be as good a landmark as any he’d likely find.
Slowly the display grew in size, and then in the distance he heard a faint sound, which quickly resolved itself into the crash of waves on rocks.
A sheet of rain struck him like a thousand tiny whips, driving so hard that his eyes stung and water got up his nose; then it passed. Those tiny thunder showers were nothing he hadn’t seen before, but none had been this intense. Now he felt worry, for it was beginning to feel like a major storm was building up all around him.
He cleared his vision and he saw it: the black castle.
And then he saw the lightning.
The castle was perched upon a massive upthrust of rock which formed a table, one separated from the main body of the island by crashing waves and boulders. A single, long drawbridge linked the castle to the bluffs opposite its entrance.
Lighting erupted from the highest tower of the castle – long, actinic, jagged arcs of white with a hint of purple which left the eyes dazzled for a moment and lingered in afterimages of green. Brendan blinked and realized that was the ‘lightning’ he had been seeing for some time.
He ported his helm and pulled hard on the sheets to tack over and move away from this invitation to wreck on the rocks below. From what he had been told, there was a beach on the south shore. He felt the boat fight against a sideways tide and realized he was perilously close to a hidden tide-race.
If the tide was pulling in that direction, it had to be the result of something unseen, either underwater rocks or magic: whatever the reason, it was a death trap for any vessel caught in it.
Brendan ducked under the boom, and turned, tightly holding the boom sheet taut with his hand on the rudder while he loosened the outhaul, and the small craft heeled over. He could hear the mast creak as waves slammed into the hull.
An odd calm settled over Brendan. He knew he could manage this balky craft. He settled into a series of movements, pointing the vessel in the right direction, moving almost casually against a mounting storm, climbing crests and dipping into troughs as the waves grew, keeping one eye on the malevolent marker that was the castle.
Despite its baleful appearance, he had been told it was a showpiece, that the real community he was seeking was inland. Brendan considered the workmanship of the display, for whenever the lightning erupted from the tower he still recoiled slightly. He was now close enough that he could hear the sizzle of energy with the discharge and realized a very powerful magic must be at work. It might not pose a direct threat, but anyone approaching this island would be exposed to a demonstration of danger powerful enough to discourage further exploration.
The artistry was all very well, but Brendan’s concerns turned quickly back to the state of his boat and his personal safety. Everywhere he looked, there were rocks along the coastline and the little craft was hardly able to make headway against both tide and wind. He was forced to take a very long tack away from the island and soon his back and shoulders were burning with the effort of keeping the bow pointed towards land against the combination of tide and wind which was trying to pull him back towards the rocky shore and away from whatever sandy beach was supposed to be there, beyond the surf and the limit of his vision.
Feeling the hull under him moving the wrong wa
y, Brendan yanked over hard on the tiller and ducked under the swinging boom, trying to fill the sail with enough wind to get moving forward again, even if in the wrong direction. But the boat was having none of it. It continued to move backwards while the sail luffed, snapping uselessly in the wind and giving him no momentum. The tiller and rudder caused the skiff to turn slowly on its centre line as the tide pushed it along. The boom continued to swing as Brendan sought to fill the sail with wind, and suddenly the bow of the boat swung around and it began to wallow, keeling over on the lee side, and then the boom tip was in the water.
Brendan let go of the tiller for a moment to yank hard on the boom sheet, and the boat shook, then rolled back as it turned to follow the tide-race. That’s when Brendan knew he was in dire trouble, for he felt the craft take off as if it was a dog leaping after a rabbit.
A tide-race meant shallows where the energy of deep waves was forced over an abruptly-rising sea floor. Which simply meant the mass of rocks he saw between himself and the castle was not starting close into the island, but was under his keel at this moment.
He pulled the boom sheet and grabbed the tiller, pulling them over and trying to pick up speed so he could move off at a tangent to his current course, looping out and coming back in a far bigger circular course, adding hours to the journey if need be. The storm was growing and now he was starting to feel the rain pelt him, and he knew it would be a downpour in minutes. He lacked foul-weather gear, having to rely on the cloak he currently wore, which would soon be soaked.
The bow lifted, and Brendan tried to keep focused and not panic. If the boat crested the wave and came down into the trough, everything would be well. If he heard wood scrape or, worse, splinter, he would be swimming in minutes.
The vessel came down smoothly, and he pulled it over and got it set on a north-east course away from the island. He felt a momentary giddy relief.