Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (10 page)

His father pinched his arm hard. “Look at that. Scrawny. No muscles. Useless. You’ll never be anything but a tramp. Away with you. Wander the roads and follow your vision. And starve for all I care.”

His mother wept.

He sat in the hot dust at a crossroads beneath the glaring sun, rattling a begging bowl.

An old woman led her blind husband up to him, saying, “Holy One, you have been touched by some fragment of the Goddess. Have you the power to heal?”

A bird alighted on the lip of the bowl and began to sing, in words and a voice like that of a little child, of Ai Hanlo the holy city. He had a vision of Ai Hanlo rising against the horizon, its golden dome aflame with sunset when all the plains were dark. He saw himself walking the long and winding road to Ai Hanlo, where lay the bones of the Goddess in holy splendor, where the Guardian, the priest-king who watched over them, would surely be able to explain his vision to him.

But the bird stopped singing and grew into an enormous black eagle and seized him by the hair, carrying him high into the air. He looked down on the city, the road, on the Endless River flowing past like a glittering serpent in the starlight. The sunset was gone. The sky was wholly dark. With a thunder of wings, the eagle shut out the stars, filling the sky. There were mountains below, passing like great whales beneath the sea. Then the land was black and smooth, and before him was the city of lights, ghost of Ai Hanlo, flickering in and out of existence like a mirage seen from different angles.

The bird did not take him there. It alighted in a tree and let go of him. He fell with a bump onto soft loam and ledbya needles. The winged lizards chittered at him.

An old, blind slave, whose face was criss-crossed with the scars of the lash that had taken his eyes, sat beside him, saying, “A man’s fate is a man’s fate, and life is but an illusion. There is no why. Therefore, be comforted.”

Emdo Wesa felt himself failing out of the dream again. Tamliade seemed further and further removed, only a half-remembered echo, like the ringing that lingers in the air long after a gong has become silent.

A bird dropped out of the tree onto the wizard’s knee, followed by another, and another. More landed on his shoulders. In his old body, with his flaming hands, he was naked. The claws of the birds dug into his flesh. The blind slave melted like wax and slowly became a huge, black bird with a beak the color of blood.

“Brother, I have found you,” it said.

“Even the greatest of magicians knows fear when his death is upon him.”

II.

In holiness hear this.

It ends in holiness.

Now the tale is of Tamliade.

* * * *

The boy heard the old, blind slave droning on and on. The voice faded to a whisper, the individual words slowly submerging. Then there was only wind.

Another sound came. The lady was weeping. No, she was singing, and in thousands of voices, fragmented like a statue dashed to pieces. The voices became shriller, harsher, like a million birds crammed into a tiny space and shrieking all at once.

He rose out of his dream, and awoke in the back of the wagon, among the wicker crates.

The million birds still shrieked. The wagon, massive as it was, shook like a toy in the fist of a child.

Countless tiny bodies slammed against the other side of the leather partition. From within, over the thundering cacophony, came the voice of Emdo Wesa shouting, “No, Brother, you haven’t got me yet! And you shall not!” Then the voice cracked in desperation, and there were high screams, almost like those of a woman, interspersed with strange words.

The wagon shook all the more. The birds shrieked louder. Emdo Wesa’s voice was gone.

Tamliade was over the tailgate in an instant, but his foot caught on something in the baggage, and he tumbled down onto the ground. He recovered quickly, but stood there trembling, taking one step this way, another that. He wanted to rescue Emdo Wesa. He wanted to get away. His mind was in confusion, fighting with itself.

Before he knew what he was doing he was off and running. He leapt over the remains of the campfire and the forgotten stewpot and kept going, but when he was a short distance away, he heard the magician call out in a voice louder than anything human, like thunder, shaking the earth, repeating a formula three times. The cries of the birds were drowned out.

Then there was only silence.

The boy stopped and turned around. It was morning, he noticed for the first time. The sky was growing light. But the wagon was glowing more brightly than the sun. It drove off the last of twilight. The glare of it was blinding. He covered his eyes and fell to his knees.

Emdo Wesa spoke clearly, in a voice scarcely louder than ordinary conversation,
“Lady. I give you my hand. Take me now into your dwelling place.”

The light faded. Tamliade uncovered his eyes and was astonished to see that the wagon had not been wholly consumed. It stood as it always did. The horses were hitched to it, impassive as statues.

He rose slowly. His greatest fear now was that the magician had gone off somewhere, leaving him alone, unable to cope with what was happening. He approached the wagon slowly.

“Master?”

The front flap opened and Emdo Wesa crawled wearily out. His clothing was in rags, and he bled from countless cuts. He stumbled, seemed about to fall, and Tamliade ran forward to catch him. But he caught himself, and slid down to the ground, sitting with his head against the front wheel.

“Master?”

Wesa looked at him almost as if he didn’t recognize him. After a time he spoke.

“Oh there you are. I knew you wouldn’t run away again.”

“What happened?”

“My brother. He came through the dream. I’ve driven him away for now.”

* * * *

Tamliade and Emdo Wesa fled from Etash Wesa thereafter, never spending more than a few hours in the same place. It was too dangerous to camp. They would stop for a meal sometimes, then drive all night, one relieving the other at the reins. The horses, fortunately, were tireless.

“I do not think we can elude my brother for long,” magician said. “He has altered himself too much. He moves outside the physical spaces, without regard to distances, and somehow he can sense our presence even if we stop long enough to piss. Do not ask me more. I cannot put a description of him fully into words.”

“Master, is there anything I can do?”

“Only one thing. You must behold the vision clearly one more time, long enough for the two of us to pass into it and gain whatever power is to be had from it. We must hope that my brother will stay away long enough for us to do this much.”

“But the dream just comes. How can I control it?”

“You can’t. Imagine yourself creeping up on a sleeping giant. His hair is long and blowing in the wind, whirling all around. He has one silver hair, his dream hair. Eventually it will blow within your reach. When it does, you must seize it and climb into the great dream. You can’t know when. Just be ready.”

Days turned into weeks, and autumn into winter. They were heading north. The cold came earlier in this part of the world. The hills of Hesh were long behind them. There were rolling plains again for a while, brown and gray and covered endlessly with mud and dead weed stalks, and then the faces of two kings rose up out of the earth, carven out of huge rocks, with sharp features and pointed, towering crowns worn dull by the winds of years. Trees grew on their eyebrows. Tamliade looked back, and saw four low hills behind him, the knees of the kings as they slept beneath a blanket of soil.

Emdo Wesa paid them no heed. He drove the wagon on a straight path between them, and almost at once the ground rose into high, sharp ridges, into cliffs, and there were mountains all around, revealed as they drove through curtain after curtain of low-lying clouds. The air was damp and so cold it was almost painful to breathe.

Out of the grey sky rain whipped into their faces, then sleet, then snow, and the world was white and pale grey and the blue of ice, and everything faded into sameness a short distance away. Only a slight darkening betokened nightfall. Once, when the way was wholly obscured, Emdo Wesa stood up on the wagon seat, took off his gloves, and parted the storm with his flaming hands.

The boy was filled with fear. He was exhausted. He was cold. They hadn’t eaten anything but scraps of cold meat for days. The wizard went on like a thing of clockwork, oblivious to all, his mind caught up entirely, Tamliade was sure, with formulae, stratagems, and enchantments. He wondered if he would be noticed if he froze to death and fell off into the snow.

For a time the storm eased a little, and the wagon crawled up the side of a huge, rolling slope like an insect on the body of a beached whale.

“I think my brother has sent us this storm,” said Emdo Wesa when the tempest returned. “I am sure he has.”

Once, suddenly—Tamliade was not sure if it was day or night—he drew the wagon to a halt and left the boy behind as he stepped off the seat onto an invisible stairway, and climbed into the sky. Lightning flashed for hours amidst the blizzard, and a thunder like the tread of giants shook the land. When the magician came back down all he said was, “My brother is close behind us now.”

In the end they came to a high mountain pass blocked with enough snow to entomb a city. The magician reached out with his burning hands to melt the snow, but it refroze almost immediately. An hour’s worth of trying left a long trail of strangely sculpted ice shapes, but the pass was as blocked as ever. They could not go on. Emdo Wesa spied a cave and drove the wagon into it, leaving the howling storm behind. Tamliade found the darkness comforting, but still it was intensely cold inside. He sat still on the wagon seat, passively awaiting whatever was to happen.

The magician got down and lit a fire with his hand, burning only air for fuel.

“Now we must wait,” he said. “Here, perhaps, shall be our battleground.”

Tamliade got down and walked around. He waved his arms, trying to bring feeling into his numb extremities. But he was too tired to keep it up for long.

Then he stood still, and the flash of a vision came over him, but almost immediately he was back in the cold cave. He had to think back to sort out the images and sensations. He looked up, and saw that the magician was gazing at him with intense interest.

“Yes.… What was it?”

“I don’t know, really. I was in darkness. It felt stuffy, close, as if I were buried in a coffin near to the surface of the ground. It sounds funny, but it was very hot. I was in great pain. I burned all over. I think…I think all my limbs had been cut off, and bleeding stumps banged against the sides of the box. I couldn’t see anything. I smelled blood, but it was rotten, putrid, and thick as cold grease. It was washing all over me. I was floating. There was water running outside. I heard the cries of strange birds. Master, it was a terrible thing I saw. What is it?”

Emdo Wesa forced a grotesque smile, as if someone else had yanked the ends of his mouth up with two fingers. It only disturbed the boy even more.

“Ah yes,” the magician said. “The swamps of Zabortash. My brother is there. He touched you with his mind.”

The boy tried to sound cheerful, but deep inside he knew only despair.

“If he is there…what have we got to worry about? So far away.”

“So far away. But so near. He is almost upon us.”

“If only the vision would come.”

Wesa paused. He stood regarding the boy. He held his hand to his chin and scratched his beard. This gesture somehow comforted the boy. Any ordinary man with a beard did it.

“Tamliade, I think there is a way to bring on the vision right now. But you must be very brave.”

“Yes, Master. What must I do?” He spoke like one being led to execution.

“You must think back to what you saw and felt. You must reach out to my brother. He will draw you out of yourself, into dreams. He is more a dream than a real thing now. Most of him is no longer in the world you live in.”

“Then what happens?”

“Here is the peril: he will try to take you over, to seize you and your vision, to gain the power of this thing you have seen. If I can hold him off, we can escape into the dream he has opened. Then there is hope. If not, it is the end. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand. I will do whatever you say.”

Emdo Wesa sat. He motioned Tamliade to sit beside him on the rough, frigid cave floor. He reached for the boy’s hand. Tamliade drew away.

“You said you would do anything.”

“Please, Master. I didn’t think. But I am afraid to touch your hand.”

“Even when gloved? Oh, very well.” The magician got up and fetched a cord from the wagon. He tied one end around Tamliade’s wrist, and held the other. Then he said down, closed his eyes, and began to chant,
“Psadeu-ma te, psadeu-ma hae, psadeu-ma—”
His voice faded away into grey distance. Tamliade was drifting. Deliberately, with all his strength of mind, he forced his thoughts back to the sounds of the swamp of Zabortash, the close, filthy air inside the coffin, the pain—