World's End (11 page)

The poor tired mayor was faced with yet more decisions as the men ate from their provisions. ‘Your counsel, mage?' Tauk said at last, turning to Far Gaze his bloodshot eyes.

Far Gaze spoke in the quiet, ominous and indifferent tones an advisor would use, careful now not to needle the mayor's pride. ‘Your city's fate is now beyond what you do. If you return there, you will find citizens being butchered by the last men ever to fight in castle colours. Or perhaps you'll find the city held its own, without you there to guide it. That brings political consequences you don't need me to spell out.'

‘Say them anyway.'

‘As you like. You'll have missed your city's direst hour in generations. Many will say you are no longer needed. Worse, some will claim you fled in fear, anticipating the city's loss … that you returned only when it was safe. You had best return there in secret, if at all, and then keep a close eye on your generals. If it turns out your city has won, that you return and are by some miracle still accepted as mayor, your next threat is High Cliffs.'

‘Why them?'

‘Simply because they are closest. Then you must worry about
the other cities. When they learn what has become of the castle's armies, I think you may guess what will occur to all the mayors. There is a power vacuum to be filled. You know history well, Tauk the Strong. It's unlucky your city had to bear the final wound of
this
war, right before another begins, without time to rest and feed your weary, wounded men. And without time to replenish your city's food stocks.'

Tauk, if it were possible, looked yet more sober and exhausted. ‘I know you have no need to lie or mislead me.'

‘Indeed not. You owe me your life, and the lives of six trusted men. Expensive lives, all of them. I want you safely in charge of a rich, prosperous city.'

‘Yet it would seem I cannot return there.'

‘Not openly, Tauk. And if possible it must not be known you ever left. And that's
if
Tanton survives the battle it fights while we speak here. The next battles are soon to come, if today's allies become opportunists.'

‘Where go you, mage?' asked one of Tauk's men.

‘To the tower I came from, before I met you all. To speak with the wizard I have heard lives there.'

‘To ask him of the new people?' said another of the men, when the mayor didn't respond.

‘Among much else, yes.'

‘What's to ask?' said Tauk. ‘It's plain we have a new enemy.'

‘Enemies do not heal each other.' Far Gaze looked pointedly at Siel, sleeping under a blanket.

‘Indeed. We do not know what they did to the girl,' said Tauk thoughtfully. ‘Did they enchant her? Possess her? Infect her with something that will spread among all our people? Do you know any more than I do of their magic? If you do, you've not said so.'

‘I know not
whether
they use magic, not as we know it. When it was cast, the airs were not affected.'

‘And that is all you know? Very well. We shall take the girl with us till she is recovered, and observe her. We'll take that body too,' he said, pointing at the corpse of the slain one. ‘And we will depart this hour, before the giant awakens to discover he was poisoned.'

Far Gaze supposed that at least the mayor had not suggested killing Gorb where he lay. And unlike some mayors, he at least seemed willing to digest an unpalatable truth or two. Yet a look had come into Tauk's eyes Far Gaze did not like at all. He'd seen it before: the very moment a man of power has discovered the way a situation may be used, and all else be fed to Inferno. Whether the new people brought immense gifts, or whether they were as the mayor feared a grave threat, from now on any argument would be moot until Tauk had what he wanted.

Far Gaze could quite easily have predicted Tauk's next remarks before they came: ‘The castle threat may have weakened, or gone away altogether. But a new one rises from the South world. The cities need each other, mage. Now more than ever. This is no time to attack Tanton! The other cities will be told of this new threat.'

Far Gaze inclined his head as would an advisor at court. ‘And should we come upon more of the new people, whatever and whoever they truly are?'

‘That is easily answered,' said the mayor, steel in his eyes. He turned to his men, pointed at one of them. ‘Go at once to our city. Take the secret routes. You have the pass tokens? Good. Tell the generals of this new threat.'

‘And if the city is lost?' the man said.

‘Then all is done and nothing more matters.' To another of
his men he said, ‘Go to High Cliffs. Tell Ousan the same, that the new people prepare for war, that we must stand together, or surely we shall fall. Do not tell him where I have been nor who goes with me. Take this, so he knows your words come from my mouth.' Tauk rummaged in one pocket for a specially marked coin. ‘Do this, and you will be a wealthy man for your remaining years. Your grandsons too.'

‘I need no more incentive than love for my city,' the man replied, a catch in his voice.

‘Does he speak truth?' Tauk asked Far Gaze.

Far Gaze rubbed his chin, pretended to appraise the man. ‘He does. Mayor, a word?'

Tauk dismissed the men with a wave. One went to retrieve the dart still stuck in Gorb's hand. Far Gaze said, ‘There is a law, Mayor, penned by no man, woman, wizard, or Spirit. It is called the law of unintended consequences.'

‘The law of survival overrules it,' said Tauk, steel in his eyes again.

‘Verily. You may be breaching
that
law too, if you attack the new peoples, and if you encourage other cities to attack them. You may create an enemy where there was not one before.'

‘Exactly,' said Tauk with a smile.

‘It seems … extravagant, Tauk the Strong, for a hedge against fights with a neighbour, to begin a war between worlds. One's city is an important consideration; surely one's world is a higher one yet. We do not yet know the new people. It may be they are great friends to us, if we allow them to be. You and your city may be the first to welcome them and gain their favour.'

Tauk put a hand on Far Gaze's shoulder, the weight of his arm's muscle heavy. ‘Mage, they have come to
our
world,
our
home. It is not for us to prove them friends.'

‘Perhaps in healing Siel they already have.'

Tauk scoffed. ‘No! They must declare themselves in our tongue. And then prove it! And pay whatever homage we deem they owe for their trespass. You have seen all else that has come from that place, mage! All else brings death, terror and poison.' Tauk's tone said the matter was settled. ‘Whatever way history turns on my decisions, you as a witness may have a hand in its telling, mage. You will speak in truth of what I have done.'

Far Gaze quelled the anger building in him. Men like Tauk, all of them, thought in such terms: as if ‘history' were a living judge ever witnessing their deeds, a damsel to impress, a classroom filled with tomorrow's great rulers, eagerly studying their every word and deed.

‘You will accompany me to the wizard's tower,' said Tauk, squaring his shoulders to show it was an order, not an invitation.

‘Certainly,' said Far Gaze with his advisor's head-tilt again. ‘Although I know nothing of the wizard there. I shall shift form, Mayor. You may tie the girl to my back.'

‘So you may run off with her? No,' said Tauk. Far Gaze had indeed considered doing just that – again he had to hide his flaring rage. ‘I will carry her on my steed, if the beast can be found. And you will remain a man, not a wolf, so that I may speak with you if I need to. We leave at once.'

‘And the half-giant?'

‘He will wake in an hour or two. I wish to be nowhere near him when that happens.'

‘Very wise,' said Far Gaze, bowing low, privately seething.

While the steeds were brought round (a difficult job, finding a safe path for them through the soft and often slippery damp
ground), they examined the newcomer's slain body. The throat had a windpipe for speech, ears for hearing, a nose. Two small neat holes were beneath the ears at the jaw's edge, whose purpose Far Gaze couldn't guess. (Breathing under water? Something else?) The eyes were not blank as they seemed from a distance; they were a slightly lighter shade than the skin, with a dark point in the middle. This one's skin had gone greyish and chalky in death. In life it had been a creamier tone, in places the very lightest shade of brown. It did not seem to possess a sex. Opening the sword wound that had killed it, he saw what must be the heart in the dead centre of its chest. It appeared better protected by a plate of either bone or hard cartilage than was the human heart protected by its sternum.

‘Shall you cast to preserve it, mage?'

‘No. Let's see how it decays, compared to the flesh of Tormentors. Mayor, I suspect they left the body here as a gift for us.'

‘Why would they do such a thing?'

‘For us to do what we are doing now. Examine it and understand them.'

Tauk spat in irritation. ‘They left bodies of my men here too. A generous people. Just how do you know their intent? It may be for religious reasons, to leave one of their slain where he was killed. Some who swear to Valour and Nightmare do similar things. It may be they were simply burdened already, and could not carry more.'

When the horses arrived the men quickly packed, eager to be away from Gorb before he woke. The half-giant hadn't moved at all. Far Gaze itched to leave him a written note but had no materials for it, and the mayor's men were watching him … subtly enough, but they wanted him to know it.

Siel hadn't woken. Far Gaze removed her soiled shirt, dressed her in a fresher one from her pack and insisted upon riding a steed with her until Tauk consented. From then on Tauk's men watched Far Gaze's every move with suspicion. Wise, he reflected.

Half an hour later Gorb woke, stretched, scratched his head and looked about in confusion. An insect had bitten his hand and left a nasty mark. He peered at the wound, trying to judge what had bitten him – an odd-looking bite! Powerful poison. He didn't remember much at all.

Bald's weeping burbled from the cave mouth, the way he cried when he'd had nightmares. It wasn't how he cried when in danger, so Gorb relaxed.

How strange the men had all left without him, and that – as he saw when going back to the cave – they'd neglected to take with them the guns Bald had made. The temptation to take the guns while Gorb slept must have been enormous.

Maybe he'd misjudged the mayor after all, and misjudged his men. Maybe they
were
good people, men of honour. Guilt flushed through him as fast and profound as any rage he'd ever felt. Guess I owe the man a favour, he thought with a sigh. ‘Come on, Bald, it's a long way to Tanton. We'd best head off,' he said. And they did just that.

The stoneflesh giants over each horizon stood motionless, so tall they hardly seemed real. Most faced south, clearly still roused, but they gazed into that foreign land with the same infinite patience they'd had when the Wall stood.

The countryside was a strewn mess of broken wagons, dropped belongings, corpses of humans, horses and Tormentors. The piles of their remains here and there were like funeral displays made from glossy polished black stone. It appeared the bodies had been shattered by tremendous blows.

At a gentle pace for their overworked horses, they went by a trading route which was part paved stone, part beaten-dirt track. To their left, the red veil at World's End had almost entirely cleared, showing a sky the same colour as their own. Beneath that sky were plains of smooth glassy rock, eventually rising up to wall-like hillsides, alive all over with twisting tendrils of fog. Occasional rock structures jutted through the flats, some human-sized, some much larger, all of which seemed to have been sculpted by something's hands rather than by time and nature.

Tauk rode with his face almost completely covered in a hood, lest he be seen by men of other cities and discovered so far from
his home. Only two of Tauk's men remained with them, and both were showing signs of madness, the kind felt by hunted creatures. Their eyes seldom left the new southern land being revealed, as if they expected an army of terrors to charge through the long gaps between stoneflesh giants. Now and then both men furtively glanced at the foreign being's corpse slung on the mayor's horse and covered with blankets. They looked just as anxiously at Siel, who rode with Far Gaze's arms about her, the reins in his hands, her head flopping forwards on her chest.

Further west, Levaal South showed a clutch of sheer hills that leaned towards one another like a conspiring group. A river trickled between them then curled towards the boundary before it turned abruptly away, not wishing to share its water with strangers from the north. Far Gaze did not himself feel the men's fear, but he too felt a certain strange stillness in the south. It was not watchful, not brooding, just stillness itself: the land like an ocean turned to ice or stone, motionless when the eye expected to see motion.

Far Gaze waited for Siel to come fully awake. The new people's healing had kept her asleep, he was sure, for there'd been noise and motion enough to wake her many times. When at last she stirred he whispered in her ear: ‘Maintain the look of someone drugged and dazed. Feign sleep. The mayor and his men are going insane. They watch us closely. They will question you. Now is not the time to speak with them of the unknown. Do not argue with what I'm telling you now, or I won't defend you. Speak with me later. We may need to flee them. But first I need rest as much as they do.'

She gave no indication of having heard. He knew that she had.

*

When the day's ride finally ended it was a mercy. Another full day at that pace would bring them to Gorb's village and the tower. ‘Is this spot safe?' said Tauk of the incline upon which they made camp.

‘Yes,' said Far Gaze solemnly, not knowing whether or not it was, and hardly caring. The night was cold enough to frost their breaths – indeed the weather had got cooler since the Wall fell. The men spoke little, ate from provisions and of foraged roots, their eyes ever suspicious over the embers of a small fire. Far Gaze laid his blanket over Siel. ‘Where does the girl lie tonight?' asked one of the men, his question not as casual as it sounded.

Far Gaze met his eyes. ‘Pass me your food. I'll bless it for taste.'

The man drew back, shielding his bowl. Tauk smiled at Far Gaze and laid a hand on the man's arm. ‘You need not fear my men. These are hard times; the road's been cruel to us. But we'll not forget our honour.'

Far Gaze sipped from his bowl. ‘I never doubted it.'

They put out the fire and soon the men snored. Far Gaze went under Siel's blanket and shook her gently awake. Their heads close together, they spoke in hardly more than breaths. He studied her closer than she probably knew, seeking any sign of change in her. ‘How were you healed?' he whispered.

‘Do you expect me to explain their arts?'

‘I see they have not changed you overmuch. Tell me all that you remember.'

She paused. ‘After I fell … I was dreaming of strange realms. I don't remember much of it now.'

‘Lands in the south?'

He felt her shrug. ‘Then there was something rushing around
me like water from a flood. It was sound, but I could feel it as if it was water.'

‘Was it music?'

‘Yes. It carried me from one dream to another, as if each place we stopped bore a signpost on the way back to here, to being awake and alive. I can explain it no better. The music seemed to promise I would return to those places. It was strange, but it made me happy. Then I woke in pain.'

He hadn't told her the extent of her injuries, but maybe she'd guessed. ‘What was the music like?'

She struggled for words. ‘Different from music we know. Maybe the Pilgrim has heard its like, I don't know. If I concentrate I can still hear parts of it, faintly. It makes me think of lush places where things grow.'

‘And when you woke, what did you see?'

‘There were two of the new people near me. One had a little reed, or something like it. He blew into it. My eyes opened as the last notes came. It did not sound in waking like it had in sleep. It was thin and high, not very pleasant. Seeming to press into my head almost like someone's hands. In sleep it was all around me, sounded very different. The other one, he had something in his hands he wished to hide from me. I didn't see what it was.'

He thought of the little black sphere he'd seen in one of the new people's hands. ‘You are well, now?'

‘Aches, dizziness. I feel strange. Not sick, not well. I hope it passes.'

‘Your thinking? It's as normal?'

‘I don't know.'

‘How do you feel about the new people?'

She didn't answer for a moment or two – fine instincts for
a trap, had Siel. ‘I know nothing of them,' she said. ‘No more than you.'

‘That's not what I asked you.'

‘That's the answer you're getting.'

‘Why did Shadow attack you?'

He felt her shudder. ‘Don't speak of him.'

‘You have seen worse terrors than him, I am sure. Why such fear of Shadow?'

‘He can travel across the world in moments! He's got some sort of … attachment to me. He may come here, tonight. His powers are greater than yours, far greater. You could not stop him if he came here. We must go back to the tower. Now. He cannot reach me within it.'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Lower your voice! If I sneak away, these men will take it as an act of war. Did you not see their mood today? The mayor's city is in dire peril. More accurately, his power is. They say he is a good man, as mayors go. Invite them to leave their high seat, you see a certain … kinship.'

‘I know your opinions of our leaders well enough. Stay if you wish. I'm going.'

‘If they find I've let you leave, they'll cut my throat.' He pondered. ‘Attempt to, anyway.'

‘You fought a dragon. I think you can handle three men.'

A dragon who did not truly wish to kill me, he thought. ‘No mage is immune to an arrow or sword edge when he sleeps. I do not wish to travel in constant alertness! I must be free to meditate.'

‘They'll not hold you accountable for my fleeing. I will take a steed and be four hours ahead of you before they wake,' she
said. He knew there was no point arguing with her. He considered casting to make Siel sleep. ‘What will you do?' she said, already eager to leave.

‘These men are half mad. It would please me to be free of them. But with each day I keep them alive the mayor's debt grows greater. He will remember it when times are less perilous and sanity returns. He will owe me much of his city by the time he returns there. Far more than he can pay.'

‘Do you really feel such a debt is apt to be honoured?'

‘I do indeed. Or he will never have peace for the rest of his days, wondering in what shape and form the oath-breaker's curse will come. Whatever things he treasures most, he will fear most for and never love those things again. Be it his offspring, his wealth, his fate after death, or all of these together. Should he honour a tenth of what I claim, I will be content.' He contemplated the off-chance of Siel meeting up with Gorb again. ‘And of course, I owe the giant a share, which I'll pay. Leave, if you must. Take the grey stallion; they use the other as a pack horse. Go now. And silently!'

‘They go where we go. Why should it matter so much that I leave? Am I free or a prisoner?'

‘Until they know what the new peoples did to you, you are neither. You are regarded as property.'

‘The “new peoples” healed me from death,' she said with feeling.

And made a friend of you, I see, he thought. Aloud he said, ‘Tell the wizard to prepare for guests who are going mad.
If
indeed he allows us back in his home. Take care when you return there. Remember, the waters about the tower can boil.'