Magician’s End (46 page)

As they climbed the stairs, Macros said, ‘Pug, in all the years since you and Tomas found me here, did you ever encounter another case of time travel?’

‘I thought I had,’ said Pug, and he explained the forged notes giving him hints and clues of things he needed to do, originally thought to be from a future version of himself, but at last revealed to have been the handiwork of Kalkin, also known as Banath or Ban-ath, the god of thieves, liars, and cheats.

‘Gods are a little different,’ said Macros. ‘Especially that one. He’s unique and plays a key role in all this.’

They reached the upper room of the tower and entered. A cage of crystal bars stood in the middle of the room, within which crouched a figure of smoke and ash. It rose slowly. ‘You return to taunt me, Magician!’

‘No, we return to ensure your torment,’ said Macros, unleashing a bolt of silver energy that sliced through the air like a thin pole of brilliant light. It passed harmlessly through the bars of the cage and when it touched the creature, passed harmlessly through it as well. ‘I thought as much,’ said Macros. ‘Had this been a true Dreadlord, that energy would have made it go up in flames.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘A lesser child of the void,’ said Macros. He cast another spell and the creature moaned – a hollow, echoing sound. ‘This is a dark wight,’ said Macros. ‘It’s not much of a risk to a well-armed man, or to someone of your or Tomas’s power. They ensured you would be engaged enough to think it real, but emerge easily victorious, and find me in the Garden.’ Turning to the creature in the cage, he asked, ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since the beginning,’ answered the creature.

‘How long since you were last visited?’

There was no answer.

Macros looked at his companions. ‘He doesn’t know.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ said Pug. ‘Over a century. From what I can see, there’s no way to gauge the passing of time here.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Macros. With a wave of his hand the cage and the creature inside it vanished. ‘The Dread isn’t a creature or a host of creatures, but a sort of consciousness, one so alien to everything we’ve ever known that even the gods don’t understand it.’

‘It?’ said Magnus. ‘Are we to consider the Dread to be a single entity?’

‘Essentially,’ said Macros. ‘Although it can be in a lot of different forms and places at one and the same time. All the Children of the Void are, in one fashion or another, part of the Dread.’

‘How can that be?’ asked Nakor.

‘It looks at time differently, and uses it differently,’ said Macros.

Miranda said, ‘Now I’m interested. From my experience, what you say makes no sense.’

‘Which is why you are here, D—’ He almost said ‘Daughter’, and smiled instead.

With a wave of his hand, they were in another place.

‘The Pavilion!’ said Pug.

‘Yes,’ answered Macros. ‘Where, if what I’ve been given to understand is correct, your son bullied the Goddess of Death into appearing.’

Nakor looked at Magnus and appeared impressed. ‘You bullied a god?’

‘Persuaded, actually,’ said Magnus.

‘But you are now approaching an understanding that few, if any, clerics, philosophers, or sages on Midkemia possess: the true nature of the gods.’

A voice from behind them said, ‘You are treading on tricky ground, Macros.’

A young man was standing there, with curly brown hair and dark eyes, dressed in the tabard of Krondor. Pug knew this couldn’t be Squire James.

‘Ban-ath,’ said Pug.

The figured bowed theatrically. ‘I chose this appearance out of nostalgia. He was always one of my favourite subjects.’

Magnus asked, ‘Macros, what is it you wish to show us that he—’ he indicated the god in the form of a young man, ‘cautions you against?’

‘That is the most difficult thing to explain, and the hardest to grasp. But it is the most vital part of your preparation to fight against the Dread.’

‘And you don’t want him to?’ Nakor asked Ban-ath.

The god shrugged. ‘I have my limits. I wish for a certain outcome – my survival – yet as gods we must protect certain knowledge.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a contradiction. But then life is full of them. As I said, I do have my limits.’

‘But apparently not as many as the other gods,’ said Pug. ‘Otherwise how could you have interfered in the Dasati realm, or brought Miranda and Nakor back to consciousness through these demons?’

‘You give me too much credit,’ said the being also known as Kalkin. ‘I have the ability to “cheat”, as you say, to circumvent limits preventing my brethren from acting on this world’s behalf, but even I could not cheat enough to give Macros’s memory to that dying Dasati, nor could I blend Miranda’s and Nakor’s minds and memories into a demon of the Fifth Circle. That took the work of all of us.’

With that, the other gods of Midkemia appeared around them, looking down from their thrones. At the back sat four gigantic, motionless figures: the four greater, controller gods.

‘I think no introductions are necessary,’ said Kalkin. ‘The Controllers remain mute, as always.’

Pug looked up into the heavens above the Pavilion, and saw the four silent faces: Abram-Sev, the Forger of Action; Ev-Dem, the Worker from Within; Graf, the Weaver of Wishes; and Helbinor, the Abstainer.

Pug said, ‘I … I understand.’

Kalkin said, ‘What do you understand?’

‘These are the forces that define our universe. They do not interact with mortals because … they
are
the universe.’

Macros looked at Miranda and said, ‘I told you you married a bright lad.’

‘You told me nothing of the sort,’ said Miranda.

Looking at Ban-ath, and then at the other gods, Pug said, ‘You interact with humans because … we made you!’

‘Very bright lad,’ said Kalkin.

As one, the gods stepped down from their thrones and came closer. Kalkin said, ‘We are personifications. We represent elements of the natural order that you, through worship, have given a level of consciousness, one that otherwise wouldn’t exist.’

A frail old woman appeared next to Kalkin. ‘We persist, in one form or another, beyond what is thought of as a mortal existence. We are energy, sometimes vigorous, sometimes faint, but we linger.’

‘Arch-Indar!’ said Nakor, delighted. ‘I had a statue and shrine built for you outside Krondor.’ He looked down, abashed at his own enthusiasm. ‘Or at least the Nakor part of me did.’

‘If enough people return to worship me, I will return to life.’

‘You appeared when I fought to save Caleb,’ said Magnus. ‘How can you say “return to life”?’

‘Because I am not alive,’ she said, smiling. ‘I am a memory.’ She looked at Pug. ‘Zaltais, whom you fought, was a dream, a wish-fulfilment of the sleeping embodiment of evil. The wishes, dreams, and memories of the gods are powerful, Pug.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Magnus, ‘is that you came to aid me in saving my brother.’ He looked at the black-veiled figure of Lims-Kragma, the goddess of death, the deity whom he had faced down. ‘You came into her realm and forced her to comply with my wish to see my brother survive.’

The old woman smiled a sad smile. ‘I didn’t force her. I persuaded her that your cause was good.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Miranda, ‘is how you can have a memory if you’re dead?’

Arch-Indar’s image laughed. ‘I am not a memory of Arch-Indar’s.’

Lims-Kragma said, ‘She is
my
memory of Arch-Indar.’ She moved her pale hand in a circle, palm up. ‘When any of us need to remember “good”, she appears.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Nakor.

Kalkin said, ‘We have an investment here: that should be obvious to you.’

Pug said, ‘For a very long time we assumed the Nameless One was at the root of this.’

‘Nalar – you can say his name without fear here – is as much invested in your success as any of us,’ said Kalkin. ‘If this world perishes, we all perish with it. And there will be no one left to worship us, or even to remember us or dream of us.’

Suddenly the gods were gone, and the room was as silent as a tomb.

Macros said, ‘Pug, what did you mean when you said the Controller Gods were the forces that defined the universe?’

Pug blinked. ‘My head is swimming.’

‘Do
you
know what he’s talking about?’ Miranda asked Macros.

‘I do,’ answered the Black Sorcerer.

‘Then tell us.’

‘I can’t,’ said Macros. ‘I didn’t make the rules here. I think you must discover certain things for yourselves, so that you really understand them.’ He frowned. ‘Damn! If I’m only going to be alive a while longer, why give me a headache?’

‘True learning,’ said Nakor. Then he grinned. ‘I know! Abram-Sev, the Forger of Action, is the force that exploded out of creation, driving everything.’ He made waving motions, wiggling his fingers. ‘Crazy things all over the place, just scattering here and there!’

‘Yes,’ said Pug. ‘He is that outward wave of things, but within a confined set of rules. But not his rules!’

‘Rules beyond mortal knowledge,’ supplied Magnus.

‘Yes, good,’ said Macros.

Miranda looked around. ‘Are we still in the Pavilion?’

‘We are wherever you’d like to be,’ said Macros. ‘But stay here a while longer, for I can guarantee we will not be disturbed here, and here time will not rush us.’

‘Time?’ asked Nakor. ‘You’ve touched on time before.’

Macros nodded. ‘We’ll get there. Let Pug continue.’

Pug said, ‘So if Abram-Sev is the outward force, Ev-Dem is the inward force, the one that tempers Abram-Sev’s chaotic, seemingly random outward burst. That’s where the rules begin.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Macros. He waved his hand and a large chair appeared, on which he sat. ‘I’m feeling old.’

Pug continued, ‘Then Graff is … how our minds interact with that energy, how dreams come to be, or how gods are formed by human perceptions of natural forces, or how you think of a thing, and it suddenly happens.’

‘A simple way to put it, but essentially correct,’ said Macros, obviously delighted with the flow of the conversation.

‘Helbinor?’ asked Magnus. ‘The god who does nothing? How does he fit in?’

Pug said, ‘I do not know.’

Nakor beamed. ‘I do.’

Macros leaned forward. ‘I must hear this.’

‘He only
seems
to do nothing,’ said Nakor. ‘But if the gods are personifications of natural forces, he’s the personification of things we cannot see, things we do not understand. He is the god of true mystery, things yet undiscovered.’

‘Say on,’ said Macros with a grin matching Nakor’s.

‘What we have said about forces of creation and the forces that oppose them, and forces created by the mind – that’s too simple. There must be other forces also at play. Forces not only not understood, but not even perceived or suspected. That’s Helbinor. Remember the City Forever. It’s a plan, like a set of drawings laid out by an architect. We were seeing things of wonder, but what were we seeing?’

‘Go on,’ said Pug.

‘All those things we’ve discussed: the critical importance of mathematics, our limited perceptions, our need for perspective, and most of all, our need to remember the central, important things about being human …’ He paused, and smiled ruefully, and moisture gathered in his eyes. ‘Being human.’ He looked at Miranda. ‘That is our lesson.’

She nodded.

‘We have come to understand that the gods are merely how we see the universe, and that our perspective is limited, incomplete, and flawed – yet it is all we have. It is
how
we understand,’ Nakor went on.

‘Fair enough,’ said Macros.

‘And Ishap, the Balancer, is the most important of all,’ Nakor added. ‘Without him, everything else is chaos.’

‘He’s dead,’ said Miranda.

‘So are a lot of the gods,’ said Nakor. ‘Eortis, God of the Sea; the God of Love, the God of Night, the God of Healing, but other gods take on some of their roles, or remember them, so their influences linger, even if their aspects do not. Ishap, he’s gone, but the others remember him, so that’s why he’s still important. It’s why his impact is still felt.’

‘And why the Ishapians work to make him supreme among the gods,’ said Magnus. ‘To bring him back in order to ensure the balance.’

‘It’s not my nature to ponder such things,’ said Miranda. ‘But what you’ve shown is so extraordinary that even I’m intrigued. Still, I must ask, what has this to do with the Dread and saving the universe?’

Macros stood up. ‘Now we get to the hard part.’ He waved his hand and suddenly the five of them were gone from the pavilion.

A faint breeze blew a curtain and a shadow appeared. Then a second, then a third.

‘Can they do it?’ asked the first shadow. It spoke with the voice of a kindly old woman.

A voice, muffled as if speaking from beneath a mile of a distant planet’s soil, said, ‘We can only hope, old enemy.’

The third shadow balanced what the Goddess of Good and the God of Evil had said and remained silent.

•
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
•

Unveiling

D
RAGONS SCREAMED.

Tomas awoke. His wife, Queen Aglaranna, rose up at his side and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Another dream?’

Tomas sat up and swung his legs out of the bed they had shared for more than a century. ‘I dreamed of dragons again.’ He, the human son of a common cook, had been given the armour of the ancient Dragon Lord Ashen-Shugar, and in donning it had started a process of creating a being that was neither human nor Valheru.

As a youth in the war with the Tsurani, he had come to Elvandar with Dolgan, now the ancient King of the Dwarves, then the Warleader of the Grey Tower Mountains, and had wintered with the elves. A love had grown between the widowed Queen Aglaranna and the changing man from Crydee. At the end of the war they had wed, and against any possible logic they had had a child, Calis.

Softly he said, ‘I must go.’

Aglaranna placed her cheek against his back. ‘Will I see you again?’

‘You sense what is coming,’ he said. ‘It is in the hands of the gods.’