The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World (15 page)

It was huge and round, with a glistening white ring surrounding a red circle with a vertical slit-pupil. The head dipped while the eye focused and began to scan the ground around the pool. There was only one eye, centrally placed in the skull.

Hardly had the scanning begun when it stopped. The head remained perfectly still for a moment or two, looking down.

Zemmoul had seen Ewan.

Then, without more than due pause, the gigantic head began to descend again, the neck looping sinuously.

Zemmoul did not snatch at his intended prey, but let his head down slowly and carefully. When it was halfway down the black sheath split again, as the mouth gaped wide, rimmed with a thousand gleaming teeth, each one a copper-colored dagger as long as a man’s forefinger. Behind the teeth was a cavernous red maw, and flickering within it not one but a whole host of forked tongues-some yellow, some green, some blue and some creamy white.

The open eye, which was set directly over the upper lip, was staring straight at Ewan. The boy, curiously calm despite his terror, noted that above the eye was a rounded bump. There, he thought, is the setting of the gem.

And the heak kept coming down….

And down….

The jaws yawned wide to take him in, to catch him up and impale him with countless deadly needles.

A mere four or five feet above Ewan’s upturned face the head paused momentarily. In that moment Ewan felt the disgusting breath of the monster envelop him, and as he breathed it in himself he felt a dark dizziness welling up in his brain. The breath was foul, but it was also sickly and hot, and it sucked at his consciousness like a powerful anaesthetic.

Time seemed to Ewan to freeze, and though he knew that the head was merely steadying itself for the final grab, not really hesitating at all, it seemed to him that everything was suddenly stilled… sealed within a single instant that might last for ever….

Then the sword cut a glittering arc across his field of vision, and the edge of the blade, carried by all the force of Helen’s overhead swing, cut deep into the black filth which clung still to Zemmoul’s forehead.

The slime parted, and the skin beneath was sliced clean through. Then the blade met resistance and was turned aside, carving out a great mass of thick plastic flesh.

Revealed beneath was a jewel, shaped like a water droplet, whose colour was the deep, rich blue of the pure evening sky.

The monster snatched back its jaws, and the long neck rippled as it recoiled like a whiplash. Up and up into the sky, carried by a horrid convulsive reflex, went the bulbous head. And when the shudder had taken it as far as it would go, there was a single dreadful crack as the spine snapped and the bones were sheared.

Something like a water drop was hurled clear as the head began to tumble, the flaccid broken neck no longer

able to support it. Seconds passed before the mass of flesh and bone crashed into the cascade, and more seconds while it was held by the white wall of water, tossed and buffeted.

In those seconds Ewan and Helen saw the black ooze washed away from the monster’s skin and saw, for a few uncertain moments, the millions of tiny scales that were all the colours of the rainbow. But even as it was revealed the skin began to splinter and shatter, so that every scale fell separate and free. While they fell, like a glitter of hail in the spray of the falls, they became tiny living fishes.

The water in the pool never ceased to boil and bubble, but now the boiling and the bubbling brought countless gleaming silvery shapes to the surface. There must have been millions, catching the roseate light of the cloudy evening as they tossed and tumbled and were carried relentlessly over the lip of the pool, so that the stream which wound its way across the lands of World’s Edge was alive with fishes.

Somehow the black ooze which had beset the pool and its outflow for centuries began, finally, to dissolve. The water did not become clear at once—nor could it, for the ooze was incalculably deep—but for the first time the great clear cascade began to have an effect. Hours hence—perhaps before the night was through— the blackness would have lost its dominance, and in a day or two there would be nothing of it left.

In the meantime, the dead hulk of Zemmoul, whose home the mud had been, was turning into fishes.

Ewan kicked off the broken shackle and rose slowly to his feet. Helen reached down to pick up the blue jewel which had fallen on the ground and was now exposed by the retreat of the black foam. She weighed it in her

hand, and then started with surprise as it began to wriggle. She threw it back into the water, and it swam away, its vivid blueness lost immediately amid the multitude.

“Too bad,” said Ewan. “It was pretty.”

Helen shrugged. “I can conjure jewels out of pebbles any time,” she said. “But conjuring fish is something else. It takes a special talent.”

“I suppose it would,” agreed Ewan.

“Well,” said Helen, “that’s the second stanza done. Two down and one to go.”

“Another twenty-four hours like the last is going to be pretty heavy on the nerves,” Ewan commented. “My nerves, anyhow.”

“I don’t think we have twenty-four hours,” said Helen, bleakly. “I’ll be surprised if we have more than four. I think we’d better start out for the Edge right now. The deadline for spells is always midnight.”

The sun was gone, now, and the darkness gathering.

“I guess we can expect another visit from Wynkyn,” said Ewan.

“Just as soon as it gets dark enough,” agreed Helen.

She tied the sword to the mare’s saddle-horn, and Ewan helped her up on to the animal’s back. Then he mounted up himself.

“One thing,” said Ewan, patting the grey mare’s neck. “She seems to take it all in her stride.”

“If we had her courage,” said Helen, “I don’t think we’d have to worry at all.”

Then they rode off, towards the darkness that was descending from the east.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Also watching the gathering darkness were Sirion Hilversun and Rufus Malagig IV. They were in the great plaza of Ora Lamae, surrounded by a vast circle of shattered pillars, which had once been the world’s finest colonnade but which now resembled nothing so much as a row of damaged teeth.

“Are you sure this is safe?” asked the king.

“Perfectly,” the enchanter assured him. “There’s no more magic here than in the courtyard of your palace. It’s gone. Which means that Helen didn’t fall prey to the lamia. Which may even mean–-“

“Go on,” prompted Rufus Malagig, as the enchanter hesitated.

“They’re at least halfway through the spell,” said Sirion Hilversun, slowly. “The thing is still working itself out. They may be already at Fiora… and if they survive their encounter with Zemmoul… it’s building up.”

“I don’t understand,” complained the king, who was saddlesore, and no longer so sure that he had done the right thing in allowing the enchanter to bring him to this dreadful place.

“The last will and testament of Jeahawn the Judge,” said the enchanter dully. “A spell to change the face of the Earth—to wipe it clean of the scars left by the wars. Helen and the boy are just its pawns, its instruments.”

“Can we stop it?”

“Stop it! Two old men with two horses you borrowed from the local stagecoach, bones that ache and hardly enough energy to wipe the dust from our eyes? Stop it! If I were at the height of my power and you were Emperor of the West we couldn’t stop it. Even Jeahawn Kambalba couldn’t stop it now. He’s wound this enchantment into the very cloth of existence—woven it into the pattern of history. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow this thing will go to its destined end… or, to put it another way, if it doesn’t go through to its destined end the sun very likely won’t rise tomorrow. Or ever again.”

This statement, pronounced in tones as sober and intense as any that Rufus Malagig had ever heard, sent a chill into the king’s bones. He had not enough imagination to allow for any real comprehension of what was going on, but he knew that if Sirion Hilversun thought that tomorrow’s sunrise was in doubt, then it was, indeed, in doubt.

“I only wanted to save the kingdom,” he murmured.

“Our motives were controlled just like our actions,” said the enchanter.

“That’s impossible!” protested the king, as a spark of his old self was ignited.

Sirion Hilversun didn’t deign to reply.

“Then we’re helpless,” said the king.

“No,” replied the enchanter. “We’re not. We can’t stop what’s started, but we can co-operate. We can find a role within the pattern. We have to discover what kind of part we’re permitted to play in all this. We may yet find that there’s a way to save them… after they’ve done what’s required of them.”

“And how do we find out just what we can do and what we can’t?” asked Rufus Malagig IV.

“That’s simple enough,” said the enchanter. “As soon as I get home I’m going to call up the shade of Jeahawn the Judge, and I’m going to ask him.”

Wynkyn appeared while Ewan and Helen were passing through a small wood, which had once been inhabited by dryads and elves but which was now abandoned to the badgers and the voles. He drifted high among the branches and had his usual difficulty getting himself into focus.

“Play fair, now,” he said. “Put out that lantern, please.”

Ewan opened the lantern-glass and blew out the flame. Wynkyn quickly found his shape but ended halfway up a tree, sitting on a bough which certainly would not have borne his weight had he been substantial.

“You did a good job there,” said the poet, to both of them, and then, looking at Ewan, added: “I’ll forget what you said about my sonnets and assume you were affected by the strain.”

“I didn’t say anything about your sonnets,” murmun Ewan. “I couldn’t even find words to describe them.’

Ghosts cannot, by their very nature, give people dark looks, but Wynkyn certainly tried.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take back the sword,” he said. Helen untied it and held it out to him. He could not touch it, but he passed his hand close to it, and it rapidly lost its mass and disappeared.

“What do we get this time?” asked Helen.

“No magic, I’m afraid,” said the apparition, whose voice sounded genuinely regretful. “I wish I could help, but I can’t—not in that way.”

“What can you do?” asked Ewan.

“I can give you a little advice,” answered Wynkyn. “Don’t look down.”

“Is that all?” said Ewan. “Don’t look down. That’s all we get?”

Wynkyn spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s all I can do. You will get help, though… when you most need it… if things go all right.”

“What do you mean, if?” demanded Helen.

“I mean if,” said Wynkyn, impatiently. “This whole thing still has ifs, you know. It’s not automatic. Why do you think humans are involved at all? Because broomsticks and golems wouldn’t do, that’s why. It’s not enough for you to go through the motions—you have to provide the rest as well.”

“And what’s the rest?” asked Helen.

“Courage, fear… a little pain. Determination, effort … everything that goes into living. How can you succeed if there’s no danger of failure? This spell hinges on your success, and because it’s a very, very important spell, there are very, very grave dangers involved. You have every opportunity to fail… because you have to have in order to have every opportunity to succeed. There’s provision in the will for you to survive… if everything goes well. And I can tell you that it’s not just you two who are involved. Others have to recognize and take their opportunities, too. There’s a lot of ifs, and you mustn’t forget that. If you think fate is looking after you no matter what, you’re wrong. All fate has guaranteed you is the chances. You see?” Helen nodded.

Ewan, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded too. “It makes a kind of sense,” he said.

“Well,” said Wynkyn, “I’ll tell you one more thing. I think it’s okay. The rumours seem to have been right, for once. The Vaults Beyond could be packing up forever. No more curses to administer, spells to execute, enchantments to supervise. No more forms or files. The whole lot is to be locked up, and we’ll all go on to our respective eternal rewards, if …I think you know what I mean.”

“We know” said Helen. “You mean if.”

“And I wish you good luck,” said the poet. “I really do.” His little goatee bobbed as he nodded his head for emphasis.

“Thanks,” said Helen, soberly.

“Thanks,” echoed Ewan. “And Wynkyn–-“

The apparition, who had already begun to fade out, brightened again momentarily.

“Yes?”

“Synchronous Sonnets is okay. And the library of Heliopolis will look after it for a thousand years, if….”

Wynkyn beamed magnificently. Then he faded out.

“Well,” said Helen. “That’s that.”

“It certainly is,” Ewan agreed. “How far do we have to go?” While he spoke, he lit the candle again, shielding the flame against the cool breeze as it flickered.

“Just over the next hill,” Helen told him. “Then we’re in the eternal mists. And the world ends at the top of the next slope.”

“At the University of Heliopolis,” said Ewan, “they think the world is round.”

“Who knows?” replied Helen. “This time tomorrow, it might be.”

Rufus Malagig IV was now feeling twice as saddlesore as he had when they had stopped at Ora Lamae. He wished that they had borrowed the stagecoach as well as the horses.

“Why did we have to come back here?” he demanded of the enchanter. “Couldn’t you have summoned up the ghost in Ora Lamae?”

“No,” said Sirion Hilversun, briefly. He was busy making preparations and didn’t want to stop for long discussions. Actually, the reason that they had returned to Moonmansion was quite simple. Sirion Hilversun, in himself, could no longer lay claim to any significant magical power. But Moonmansion was positively saturated with magicality. There was magic in the stone walls and the captive air, and in the greatest collection of magical bric-a-brac surviving anywhere in the world. There were whole grimoires full of unused spells which still retained their own inherent power and needed no injection from their user. They were, for the most part, eccentric and peculiar spells that even an enchanter’s lifetime would never find a use for, but there were still some good ones lurking among the junk.