Rainbow's End - Wizard (33 page)

He turned serious again. ‘People all over the unive
rse look the same, Bryan Stone - admittedly with some variations: They might be a lot taller or shorter, with a stronger or weaker bone structure, due to lesser or increased gravity; very fat or thin, depending on their diet; paler or darker skins - their sunlight might be a lot stronger, or weaker, than the Earth’s. Also - some planets have very long or very short days and nights.’ He laughed again, disdainfully, without mirth. ‘But no green or yellow, or little blue men,’ he said.

He was quiet for a while -
introspective. ‘And then of course,’ he said, ‘there are the gods and the demi-gods. And their children…’

*

Later… ‘I have a sister,’ Kraylle said and took a rook with a bishop. ‘She lives... she
exists
, at a place called Rainbow’s End.’ He sat back and inspected the game.

The chess
board was green and white marble and the pieces the same: three inches tall, their small features almost life-like; Kings and Queens with crowns and sceptres; Bishops with bow and arrow; the Knights rearing horses; Rooks squat with ball and chain; the Pawns an inch shorter, carrying spears.

Bryan gaped at him, surprise having halted his hand in mid-air.

‘
You...
have a sister?’ he repeated, stupidly, and Kraylle nodded, matter of fact. ‘And is she also a god?’ asked the boy. With half of his concentration gone, he put his opponent in check with his queen.

‘Demi-god
,’ Kraylle corrected, removing the threat with the same bishop. ‘Or Demi-
goddess
. We are the only two in this galaxy.’ His black eyes lifted to Bryan’s. ‘It
is
quite small you know, this galaxy; when compared to others.’

Bryan frowned. ‘Are there many…?
’ he asked. ‘Many other galaxies, I mean?’

‘Millions,’ said Kraylle. ‘
Maybe billions. The universe is immense; immeasurable. I spent more than six-hundred of your years travelling through it at close to the speed of light, and I have traversed only the merest fraction.’ He answered Bryan’s next question before the boy could ask it.

‘
For every hundred years
you
age, Bryan Stone, I age one... more or less. In Universal time, I am not yet twenty. In your Earth time, around two thousand years.’ His black gaze brooded and his lips compressed in a thin line. ‘I have spent almost fourteen-hundred of them here, on Desolation.’

‘
But why aren’t you together?’ asked Bryan. ‘You and your sister?’

The hulking demi-god’s voice
lowered to a soft, cruel hiss; the hate in his eyes like burning coals. ‘I was not
called
,’ he spat, and his tone dissuaded any further probing in that direction.

Bryan knew when to leave well enough alone, and they played in silence for a while
, before he ventured another question. ‘This place you speak of? This… Rainbow’s End?’ Kraylle gave a slight nod and Bryan went on - ‘Is it nicer… is it better than here?’

The demi-god pondered his young general’s question
for a few seconds, eyes on the chessboard. When at last he looked up, his eyes made the boy shiver. Implacably cold and cruel; his laugh soft and terrible. He moved his queen forward. ‘Check-mate,’ he said, then, in a matter of fact voice, ‘It is better, Bryan. Much, much better.’ His eyebrows lifted and his bloodless lips turned up at the corners. ‘There is
so much to destroy
,’ he said.

The pieces on the board re
arranged themselves.

*

Later… ‘Boring,’ said Kraylle a few games on. ‘This game is boring,’ He leaned back in his huge chair. ‘Back on Roussous 3, the Ri-Ti-Ri taught the children of the gods and demi-gods a game called Zan-Bac. The principle is the same as this,’ he waved at the chessboard, ‘but it is played on a much larger scale. Novices start with a hundred and twenty-eight pieces; advanced or expert players use up to five hundred and twelve. Two thousand and forty-eight squares… A game can take a very long time... Weeks…’

‘What about sleep?’ asked Bryan,
agog.

‘Gods don’t need sleep,’ said Kraylle disdainfully.

‘Will you teach me?’ Bryan asked.

Kraylle snorted. ‘No,’ he said
, simply. Then, after a minute, taking some small pity on the boy’s downcast look, explained. ‘I have tried, Bryan. I have tried teaching some boys. Some of them, and I cast no asperity on
your
intelligence; some of them had intelligence levels to match those of great mathematicians or physicists on your planet. A few became very famous,’ he interjected, then laughed softly, as if at a private joke. ‘Or rather,
infamous
,’ he said, then continued, ‘Some of them, not all, mastered the basic principles of the game, but none could grasp its finer points, its depths, its intricacies…’

‘Anyway,’ he offered a carrot, ‘it takes years just to master the basics, and we do not have that sort of time.’
A skull-like grin. ‘I have much bigger plans for you,’ he said.

They sat in silence for a while, both simply staring at the marble playing surface between them
.

‘Like who?’
Bryan asked then. Kraylle frowned, not understanding the question, and the boy expanded, ‘Who have you tried teaching? Which famous persons?’

Kraylle gave the boy in front of him a long, thoughtful look and then sat back in the large chair again, stretching his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. He brought his hands together on top of his flat stomach
, interlaced long fingers. ‘You must remember that we are talking of a period lasting almost fourteen-hundred years,’ he said, ‘so I will only give you some names you might recognise.’

An
enigmatic smile, and Kraylle looked at the grey ceiling overhead, thinking.

‘My all-
time favourite was little Adolph,’ he said. He was the perfect little pageboy; so eager to please… And a real little backstabber.’ He noted Bryan’s blank look, and supplemented, ‘Hitler, Bryan. Adolph Hitler.’ The boy’s mouth fell open and this time Kraylle laughed, amused; and continued: ‘Benito was a fat little slug and a bully.’ He nodded at the question in Bryan’s eyes. ‘Mussolini,’ he confirmed. ‘And Genghis Khan: the other boys called him “Genie” - he loved knives… Iosef was here for a long time. He changed his name, like you. Called himself Joseph Stalin, “Man of Steel”.’ Kraylle snorted. ‘He was a cry-baby…’

Sadd
am Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic - he had the evilest little eyes; Josef Kramer, Heidrich, Ceausescu… They were all here,’ said Kraylle. ‘Name them: Almost every man who was ever responsible for atrocities against humankind back on your Earth... they have been here - at Desolation.’

They were quiet again and Kraylle sat up; pic
ked up one of the chess pieces - a queen, and silently studied its tiny features.

Bryan ask
ed, for want of something else - ‘Do all the boys go back? Eventually, I mean. To the Earth…?’

Kraylle’s flat black gaze
met the boy’s pale-blue one again, and probed behind them for a long time. ‘No,’ he said then, and carefully, studiously replaced the figurine on its open square. He sat looking at it for a long time, but his eyes were unfocussed, turned inward.

Then, suddenly, got to his feet
and said, ‘Come,’ to Bryan Stone, and in a swirl of white robes, strode from the room.

*

There
was
a door in Kraylle’s castle: A huge thing of heavy black wood, invisible in the dark gloom at the end of the passage passing his icy throne chamber. It was split vertically down the middle; the two panels each at least ten feet high and four wide. Up close there was enough light for Bryan to see an image of a gargoyle carved into each; one a thin, cruel face with bulging eyes and a single horn in the centre of its forehead; the other a werewolf. Both had their lips drawn back in snarls, their long fangs exposed.

Kraylle waved a negligent hand and the heavy
panels crashed open, smashing loudly against the walls behind. He halted and motioned Bryan to his side. Dark steps of stone fell away and out of sight in the murk ahead; it seemed suddenly warmer, and far away, below, reddish light glowed, ethereal. The giant looked at him, and the boy saw the black eyes smoulder with the same fiery gleam as that from below.

‘Welcome to
the heart of Desolation, Bryan Stone,’ his master said. He clapped his hands once, very loud, and a hundred torches lining the descending steps burst into instant flame, reminding of ancient streetlights: those closest stronger, further away weaker and fading, as in mist. They started down in silence; the only sound the boy’s boots on the wide, dimly-lit steps; Kraylle’s ghostly still, as if gliding. ‘The steps are for you,’ he said to Bryan. ‘I don’t need them.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Be very careful, young Stone. If you fall and reach the bottom before me - even if you are not killed by the impact, you will wish you had been. You will die a quick but horrible death.’

All around seemed to be endless space: closer - dimly luminous in varying shades of grey; further away - progressively darker until utterly black. The steps had no visible support, and it might have been his imagination, but Bryan thought they each rocked slightly when he put his weight on them. Stalactites - some three or four metres in length, hung on either side, eerily suspended from an unseen roof, translucent and weeping slow rivulets of pale fluid. When he looked down, there was just a gaping abyss; the dark infinitely deep and thickly threatening.

Time passed in a mesmeric daze: it could have been a mere minute, or several of them; step followed swaying step interminably, and the red
gloam below got slowly stronger, the heat more palpable. And then there were stalagmites as well, the same sickly grey colour as their hanging ilk, but these rising from beneath: some hugely round and thick, others flattish and thin, some with blunt tips and others needle-sharp; grotesque shapes with their bases hidden on an elusive floor covered in slowly swirling red mist.

And then, suddenly, there were no more steps. The smoky mist parted and dissipated before Kraylle’s boots and his swinging white coat. Bryan followed close behind the giant, who obviously knew his way around; striding unhesitatingly through the smaller stalagmites rising from the floor. To Bryan’s amazement, one or two of these rock-hard formations simply crumbled to dust before his master’s huge strides.

They stopped suddenly and Kraylle held out one arm to block his young protégé’s forward progress. Only after the boy had come to a halt, did he remove his arm and allow him to step to his side. There was a hole in front of them
; large: five or six metres across and its depths impossible to gauge. ‘Very, very deep,’ Kraylle answered his question. It was what Bryan’s demented old grandmother would have called the pit of hell.

He
’d met her only once, when he was still quite small. She was in a home; a little sparrow of a woman, Irish, with wide wild eyes and no teeth; scraggly sparse hair. The remaining wispy strands she pulled out herself with long horny fingernails, and stuffed into her mouth - endlessly gumming them. She spoke about hell a lot, and even now, Bryan remembered  plenty of it: The depths of hell; the gates of hell; straight from hell or straight to hell; the fires of hell; the food and staff of the nursing-home were all from hell… so were the Chinese and the Eskimos and Africans…and on, and on…

The heat emanating from the hole was stupendous: the rocky rim reddish-pink with it, making it impossible to get closer than ten metres or so; for fear of bursting into flames oneself. The red smoke, slowly drifting along the floor of the massive cavern, came leisurely roiling from it, joined by strange, disturbing sounds: crackling and the occasional “boom” as loud as a high calibre rifle shot; and sizzling and hissing and the boiling of lava. The very rock under their feet seemed to groan at times.

Bryan looked at Kraylle and found the demi-god watching him with amused assessment. ‘What is that noise?’ he asked
, and his voice sounded trembly to himself.

‘Desolation,’ said Kraylle. ‘Desolation’s heart.’ He stepped right up to the red-tinted rim of the pit and stared down it. Any mortal would have
burst into instant flame, but Kraylle - not even his clothes, were as much as slightly singed; the pale skin of his face merely flickered a reddish hue.

‘Imagine
Desolation as a planet, Bryan - just a very small one. It is really; it does circle your galaxy’s sun - albeit at its own time, and not close enough for its heat to provide any succour. As with most other planets, Desolation’s core is lava, molten rock. The sounds you hear are the cracking and bursting of rock melting.

‘
Also, remember that beneath the crust of Desolation, lies billions of litres of water.’ He turned away from the living hole and said, ‘It is, after all, my Life-Force. Thousands of litres spurt through faults and fissures in the rock every second, cooling down the superheated core of our little kingdom. The steam, the humidity, and the red colour of the rock down here - all of that causes this.’ He waved a hand at the low-swirling, crimson clouds.