The Trials of Trass Kathra (37 page)

The dra’gohn ceased breathing and turned, swooping back over the mountain range. Here, they peeled away from each other, some heading to the east, others to the west, and began to breathe again. The somewhat featureless land that they had created on their first pass began to be shaped more now, the weaving patterns of the dra’gohn in the sky creating the shape of a coastline, of river inlets, lakes and valleys and gorges and hills, and when at last they stopped breathing once more, Kali found herself looking not at a strip of land anymore but a landmass that was whole and complete.

A landmass that was as familiar to her as the back of her hand.

The peninsula.

The location of all her adventures.

Home.

“My gods,” Kali said. “It’s all there. The World’s Ridge Mountains, the Sardenne, Vos, Pontaine. All there.”

“Except of course,” Zharn pointed out, “they were not yet known by these names. For as yet there was no one to name them.”

“The Old Races,” Kali said. “But that means that Kerberos
was
their god, because it created them!”

“In a way, I suppose. But Kerberos’s motives were not those of a god, they were those of survival. Knowing how little time it had – relatively speaking, of course – before the Hel’ss reached Twilight, it made the decision that the battle for survival between itself and the Hel’ss could no longer continue as it had. They were the last of their kind and one of them needed to gain the advantage. To this end, it determined to create not one but two races to inhabit its new domain, gifting each with the potential to be more than just mere fodder but to actively assist it in the fight against its old enemy.”

“The elves and the dwarves,” Kali said.

“The elves and the dwarves.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. If Kerberos wanted their help, why create two races that were at each other’s throats for millennia? It was only in their third age that they found any kind of peace at all.”

“You are wrong,” Zharn went on. “Of course the two races fought, but that was exactly why they had been created so. To be diametrically opposed. The el’v, meaning, in the ancient language of the Pantheon ‘of the mind’, and the dwarves, a corruption of dou’arv, hammer and anvil, ‘of the body’. It was only by throwing mind and body into conflict that Kerberos believed they would, eventually, reach their full potential. I suspect it is the same story on a thousand worlds, far beyond the Pantheon. That many of the indigenous races’ greatest achievements come about – can
only
come about – as a result of war.”

Kali stared at a peninsula overrun with soaring towers and factories, fortifications and battlefields.

“The whole of the peninsula was a forge,” she realised.

“A forge for the dwarves, perhaps, a laboratory for the elves. The distinction is immaterial. Each managed, in their own way, to create horrifying weapons of destruction. And the souls of the hundreds of thousands of each race who fell before them across the long years served only to strengthen Kerberos.”

“So wouldn’t it have served Kerberos better if it had created lifeforms with potential for nothing other than destruction? Some kind of a... warworld to supply it with victims for evermore?”

“Even millions of souls would have been insufficient for Kerberos’ needs, so weakened was it. What it needed to recover was the constant ebb and flow of
billions
of souls. The population, in other words, of a full and thriving planet.”

“But,” Kali said, “all there is is the peninsula. It would never support that many people. Are you telling me that there are lands beyond the World’s Ridge Mountains – beyond the Stormwall – beyond the seas?”

“On the contrary. I am telling you there are not.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“Each time one of the Pantheon grants life to a world, it begins, as you have seen, with the creation of a small section of land – in your case, what you call the peninsula, what is to you, in effect, Twilight. This land serves its purpose until the demands upon it begin to exceed its capability, at which time it must expand.”

“The deity having drawn strength from what it’s already created,” Kali gathered.

“You are perceptive.”

“So,” Kali asked, “the dra’gohn return?”

“Yes, the dra’gohn return,” Zharn said. As she spoke Kali’s viewpoint changed yet again, and she found herself so far above her world that she looked down on the peninsula as she might a representation of it on a map. Its coastline was fully visible from end to end, all but featureless at this height, looking almost unreal. Then she became aware of massive shapes that momentarily blocked her vision – the dra’gohn swooping once more from the heart of Kerberos – and when she looked again, these shapes were clearly delineated above the peninsula, heading as one to where a small ripple in the map indicated the presence of the World’s Ridge Mountains. Kali gasped as the heavenly forms flew majestically above the towering range and once more began to breathe their red and yellow threads, and, as they did, land began to form
beyond
that which she knew to be the edge of the world.

And as it formed, as she’d seen in her earlier flight, the World’s Ridge moved with it.

“Wait,” Kali said. “There’s something wron –”

For the first time since their conversation had begun, however, Zharn did not pause in what she was showing to her, as it if were something she
had
to witness. It didn’t matter because, anyway, Kali’s question trailed off into silence. How could it not? She was, after all, seeing something she would likely never see again.

Far below her, as the land grew, the flights of the dra’gohn diverged once more, banking gracefully out to all points of the compass, and where they went, they continued to breathe. Kali’s heart thumped until it felt fit to burst as she watched a vast continent begin to take shape, spreading for thousands and thousands of leagues in every direction, rich with forest and lakes, prairie and desert, rolling hills and mountain ranges that, this time, remained where they were created. A coastline that would take her lifetimes to explore weaved, darted and thrust itself out into the surrounding sea, but even as a multitude of small and large islands began to dot its waters offshore, the growth of the land did not stop, continuing on out of view, far, far beyond the curve of the world.

It
was
a world. A whole, new world.

Kali could hardly breathe. Her eyes ran with tears.

And then the world was gone.

“You had a question,” Zharn prompted gently.

Kali swallowed, gathering her wits before she spoke.

“It’s what I meant when I said something’s wrong. I understand now what the World’s Ridge Mountains are. They’re a
barrier
, aren’t they? A barrier meant to prevent exploration. To prevent people leaving their world before they – before the rest of the world – was ready. Before Kerberos
wanted
them to leave.”

“As, along the coast, was the great elemental barrier – the phenomenon that you call the Stormwall – designed to prevent exploration of the seas. Such exploration would have been, after all, a voyage that would never end...”

Kali suddenly felt very heavy, the weight of ‘the truth’ beginning to hit her.

“But something happened to the Stormwall, didn’t it?” she said. “Just like something happened to the World’s Ridge Mountains.”

Zharn smiled. It was the smile of someone who knew she had chosen her audience well.

“Why do you say that, Kali?”

“Because the World’s Ridge Mountains never
moved
.”

Zharn drew in a trembling breath, and the void in which Kali hung seemed to tremble too.

“It is true,” the elf said, after a second. “What you have just seen was what
would
have been, were it not for the unimaginable tragedy that occurred. Something that broke the cycle of Kerberos, damaging the deity so badly that it might never be restored.”

“What?” Kali said.

“The death of the dra’gohn.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“O
H GODS,
” K
ALI
said. She did, of course, know that the dra’gohn were gone, but she had never learned the circumstances of their demise – or realised they had such an important link to Kerberos or Twilight itself. “How did it happen?”

“The time came when the civilisations of the elves and the dwarves were at their peak, thriving in every sense,” Zharn said. As she spoke, the chamber flared to life again and this time Kali found herself with a far more intimate perspective of the peninsula, swooping down across the land, passing over – and sometimes between – the buildings of towering cities of both elven and dwarven origin, witnessing the wonders that filled them. From the technology on view – steam-powered but nonetheless impressive dwarven engineering; the more organic path that the elves favoured – she guessed that in time she was somewhere very near the end of the second or at the start of the third age of the Old Races, the time where, at last, the two had begun to work together. But it seemed Zharn had been almost understating the facts when she’d said they’d thrived in every sense of the word. Their populations growing with the prosperity that peace between them had brought, both races had spread across the peninsula until there was little of it left, taking with them their phantasmagorical devices, their clockwork chariots and their flying machines, the remains of many of which she had come across in her travels. Kali even recognised the genesis of many of the sites she had explored as ancient ruins: Robor’s Skyway, the Avenue of the Fallen, and on the coast the bay-encompassing Amphibitheatre of Rossox, where now lay Vosburg but where once the Calmamandra had come to play.

It was clearly time for the Old Races to expand, for the land to grow. But as Zharn had already intimated, there was nowhere for them to go.

“Tell me,” Kali said.

Zharn nodded. “Whether it was by accident or design there was an... encounter between the Old Races and one of the dra’gohn,” she said. “The encounter ended with the death of the dra’gohn, its form torn asunder by the weapons and powers that its opponents wielded.”

“The death of one dra’gohn caused the collapse of Kerberos’s plan?”

“Not one, no. It is what happened
after
its death that was to lead to the collapse. Many flocked to the site of the encounter, wishing for whatever reason to observe the remains of the heavenly form, and it was one of these visitors who eventually noticed something very strange. Where the essence – blood or threads, think of it as you will – of the dra’gohn had seeped into the ground, the rock below changed, infused with some kind of energy that made it pulse as if alive.”

“This rock,” Kali asked hesitantly. “It wouldn’t by any chance have been orange?”

“I see you are once more ahead of me, Kali.”

“Amberglow,” Kali said, swallowing.

“Amberglow. What was to become the power source for most of the elven and dwarven machines that followed. The element that sparked the Old Races final era of magical technology.”

“Are you trying to tell me –”

“Its discovery,” Zharn spoke over her, “led to the wholesale slaughter of the dra’gohn. The extinction of the very creatures that were needed to save them. Even as the dra’gohn returned to breathe the land, the elves and the dwarves were waiting for them with their airships, with their mages, their ballistas and their cannon emplacements atop the highest peaks.”

“I can’t believe it. How could they be capable of such greatness and yet so stupid?”

“They were not to know how integral to their future the dra’gohn were. How could they? Besides, if you were handed the power of the Pantheon – the threads, the power of the gods – are you sure you would be able to resist?”

“Of course I –”

Kali stopped. Would she? Would she really? How much had she enjoyed being at the controls of the scuttlebarge? The dwarven mole? Carried into the skies and beyond by the
Tharnak
? Even wielding something as simple as a crackstaff? None of these things would have been possible without amberglow.