World's End

WORLD'S
END

WILL ELLIOTT

Book III of the Pendulum Trilogy

A T
OM
D
OHERTY
A
SSOCIATES
B
OOK
N
EW
Y
ORK

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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Domudess: a wizard

Gorb: a half-giant

Huldeel: a villiage chief

Luhan: a traveller

Shadow: a mythical being

Stranger: a magician of some kind

Stuart Casey, aka Case: a changed man

Mayors' Command:

Anfen: former First Captain of the castle's army

Doon: Faul's nephew, killed by Kiown

Eric: a journalist (and fan of Superman comics) who went through the door

Far Gaze: a folk magician

Faul: a half-giant

Lalie: an Inferno cultist

Loup: a folk magician

Lut: Faul's husband

Sharfy: one of Anfen's band

Siel: a low-level happenstance mage

Tii: a groundman

Castle:

Arch Mage/Avridis: Vous's advisor, confidante, and overseer of ‘the Project'

Aziel: Vous's daughter, imprisoned in the castle; heir to rule, in theory

Blain: a Strategist

Envidis: a Hunter

Evelle: a Hunter

Ghost: a conglomerate of five personalities housed in Vous's mirror (and other glass surfaces)

Kiown: a Hunter

Tauvene: First Captain of Kopyn

Thaun: a Hunter

Vashun: a Strategist

Vous: the Aligned world's Friend and Lord

Council of Free Cities:

Erkairn: spokesman of the Scattered Peoples

Ilgresi the Blind: mayor of Elvury

Izven: mayor of Yinfel

Liha: mayor of Faifen

Ousan: mayor of High Cliffs

Tauk the Strong: mayor of Tanton

Wioutin: advisor to the mayor of Tsith

Gods/Great Spirits:

Nightmare: young god

Valour: young god

Wisdom: young god

Inferno: old god

Mountain: old god

Tempest: old god

Dragons:

Dyan: a Minor personality

Ksyn: one of the eight Major personalities

Shâ: one of the eight Major personalities

Shilen: a minor personality

Tsy: one of the eight Major personalities

Tzi-Shu: one of the eight Major personalities

Vyan: one of the eight Major personalities

Vyin: one of the eight Major personalities

In the doorway of Vous's throne room the Arch Mage leaned upon the forked point of his staff. The odd flash of lightning from outside sent his shadow madly dancing on the floor behind him. His thick curled horns dragged his head down.

Vous was a long way from the young aristocrat of centuries past, lusting madly and without understanding for the very power enveloping him now. A long way even from the tyrant who, with his own hands, throttled out lives rather than share that power. Losing Aziel may have been what burned out the last old shreds of himself; but he had no thought for his daughter now, no memory of both the grief and pleasure with which her sad song had filled him, as it drifted faintly up through his high window each day.

Still the Vous-things scuttled over the lawns far beneath, blood-smeared and mindless. Vous had no thought for these creations either; nor any for the drake in the sky ahead battling the winds with Aziel and the Pilgrim on its back. When she and Eric fell into the sky, when they were drawn by his power through the air towards his balcony … even then, Vous did not see them. The human part of his mind was gone, subsumed by something larger.

Vous's body split into several aspects. Some ran through the castle to the lower floors. Only one remained out on the balcony with its hands splayed to the sky. The Vous before the Arch Mage seemed to float just above the carpet, its thin electric form turning slowly, like a dancer making letters with his curved arms and hands. How thin and fragile the translucent body appeared. As if his skin were thin glass which one flung stone could shatter. A swishing windy sound filled the air, in conversation with itself.

‘Friend and Lord?' the Arch Mage whispered through dry lips. Vous did not seem to hear, but the Arch did not dare speak louder.

The split canisters of foreign airs lay like popped-open seed pods on the ground. He'd thrown them into the chamber in a fit of emotion and did not understand why nothing had happened when they'd burst apart. He did not understand much of anything, any more. The foreign airs should have poisoned the hidden dimension where spells were made manifest, should have changed the entire world and all of history.

A part of him locked away and hidden from sight knew it had been his last desperate play in the game called power. A still deeper part of him knew that the dragons had used him from afar all along. All along, he'd had masters he never even knew he served.

As the Arch Mage watched Vous, four Strategists watched the Arch Mage. Four men ancient in years, hunched and broken by the magic their bodies had abused. They were as dead-looking as statues of burned wood and bone bent into mean shapes; each was dressed in finery but was now only distantly human. It was as though the wars they'd made and the terrible pleasures
they'd indulged in had slowly twisted their very bones. Now and then their hunching shoulders twitched, or their shaking hands would convulsively strangle the staffs they held. Their wheezing breaths filled the silence like whispering snakes.

Vashun – the tallest and thinnest of the Strategists – had stowed the real canisters of foreign airs for transport to his hiding place in Yinfel City, where he had a very good use for them. Those the Arch had flung into Vous's chamber had in fact been filled with ordinary air. The Arch had thought in his arrogance he would rip holes in the past, changing all of reality like a child spilling a bowl of his most hated meal across the table.
Now
Vashun understood why Blain had left the castle while the rest of them were caught in furious squabbles with each other. Clever old Blain!

There are no friends close to a throne. Like the other Strategists, Vashun knew that today was his last within the castle. They all now knew that the Arch Mage had been the one who'd brought down the Wall at World's End. Despite this, Vashun's mood was light. And he sensed humour in the others too, as they watched Vous dance gaily beyond the Arch Mage's outline in the doorway. For power is a game, however seriously played.

So intently was Vashun watching the Arch, enjoying his confusion and suffering (with a skeletal leer uglier than death, bathed in the blooming lustful red of Vashun's Strategist robe), that he hadn't noticed the other Strategists make their discreet exit. It would soon be quite unsafe to stand this close to a god being born. Already the airs were performing in ways he'd never seen, the wild plumes seeming like life forms unto themselves, curls of misty colour flung from wall to wall. ‘Arch,' Vashun said gently, placing a long thin hand on the Arch
Mage's shoulder. ‘It would seem the Hall of Windows has things to show you.'

The Arch Mage slowly turned to him. On his face – one half like melted wax which had cooled again – was the look of someone lost in strange country. Ah! Vashun sipped of his pain and found it exquisite. There was more to come, much more. ‘Come, Arch. There have been … developments. In the war. I suspect you will find events, shall we say, surprising.'

Like a servant given instruction, the Arch Mage hobbled along behind him. Vashun filled the silence with chatter of the books and accounts, and other everyday matters of the castle's running. Each word of it was a careful needle in the Arch's flesh, for it was all over and both of them knew it.