Part 22 (1/2)

Blain got to his feet with some effort. 'Pilgrim, come. There is something to explain to you. You need not bring the dragon-friend upstairs down to hear this. She knows already. And if she has kept it to herself, she is no friend of yours.'

Blain went to the tabletop map of Levaal and stood at its far side, leaning upon his walking stick. Then he froze and his body stiffened. Stranger materialised from nowhere, a long knife in her hand. In a stride she was upon the Strategist and driving the knife hard into his chest with a sound as if she had simply punched him.

Blain's mouth opened in shock, his angry eyes went wide. He howled. The cry rose on and on, going higher and shriller even after Eric belatedly moved to restrain Stranger. Far Gaze cast something that knocked her on the floor, stiff and convulsing.

Blain the knife handle protruding and seeming to twitch a little with his heartbeats crumbled like old clay. His mouth still howled even as the face about it fell apart.

The real Blain was across the room, hobbling toward the illusion he'd cast. He beat its crumbling remains to pale dust with violent strikes of his walking stick.

3.

'Will she be all right?' said Eric, crouching by Stranger's body.

Far Gaze shrugged. 'Perhaps.'

'I'm curious, what did you do to her?' said Blain. He'd beaten his likeness down to two stumps poking through a mound of soft grey dust. 'That was no combat spell I know of.'

'It was a remedy,' said Far Gaze. 'Too high a dose of it may as well be a combat spell.'

'So this is your dragon-friend,' said Blain, crouching to peer at her. 'Why does she go to such trouble over me?'

'She was to be one of your new mages,' said Eric. 'She was imprisoned in your underground chamber. Maybe that's why.'

Blain scoffed. 'Nothing to do with me, all that. Avridis and his hobbies!' Blain went back to the tabletop map of Levaal. 'A fine device, this. Stand at the opposite side, Pilgrim.' He ran a hand over the edge of the map. They both stared down at the flat blank s.p.a.ce. The miniature world soon emerged and came into sharper focus, the clouds crawling inches above the tabletop, rivers and seas of glimmering blue. A ridge of mountains raised on the map to Eric's left as though to fence humankind in. The Ash Sea appeared, where Inferno dying, dreaming tossed and turned beneath layers of ruin, wrought in his final battle with the other G.o.ds. And there, the castle, enormous and gleaming white like the landscape's crown, sat just before the Entry Point through which Eric had come.

Blain's face showed shock. 'Look!' he whispered. On his half of the map, where it had been blank, there was a small portion of the world now visible: near the boundary, near the Great Dividing Road. 'Something crossed!' he said, glaring around as though seeking some responsible underling. 'Was it ...? A stone-fles.h.!.+' He made that laughing bark again, expressing disbelief. 'It's over! Too much! Too much of a swing! No! I thought we had a year, I thought-'

'Explain yourself,' said Far Gaze.

Blain's head had slumped to one side. Eric looked into the Strategist's eyes, into what seemed a seething ferocious rage, ever burning. 'It's finished, it's over. How this happened I don't know. The G.o.ds should not have allowed it, not so soon. It would have happened eventually, of course. They could stop the big things from crossing, but they could not watch the whole width of the world at once. Out in the far places, elementals and Lesser Spirits would have wandered across ... but a stoneflesh? Too large! How?' Blain took a step toward Stranger as though he meant to strike at her sleeping form.

'Explain yourself,' said Far Gaze, stepping between them with his arms folded. Blain looked genuinely surprised for a moment, a man who gave rather than received orders.

But he went back to the far half of the map, composed himself, and said, 'Pilgrim. Pretend you are the Dragon-G.o.d. If you did not know it yet, you do now: there are two of you. Levaal North has one, Levaal South has its twin. The two Dragons, their minds, push against each other with almost identical force. It is a war ages older than man. Where their willpowers meet is World's End, also called the Conflict Point. The forces are in perfect balance, a balance which resembles peace.

'That is, they were. Until the Pendulum effect began. And Avridis the fool started it, this time.'

'This time?'

'Oh yes, it has swung before, but never when humankind was here to witness it, or be destroyed by it!' Blain laughed his bitter, unhappy laugh. 'When worlds collide, boy, fragile little lives like ours do not live through the shaking, crus.h.i.+ng ruin. Everything will change. We won't survive it if it reaches that point. None of us will survive.

'I do not cast war magic, boy, but I do illusions of vision and sound. Watch!' Blain muttered something, and what looked like a small silver ball, hung from the ceiling by a gossamer-thin thread, appeared in the air above the table. It hung directly over the world map's central divide. 'When the force gets going it swings like a pendulum,' said Blain. 'Each swing represents an intrusion of one world into the other. Small, at first. An insect crawling could begin it. Then two insects crawl back from the other world. The swing a touch more forceful. Back and forth, back and forth it goes. Avridis began it, or made it worse, when he played around belowground, making Tormentors. You know of their making?'

'We are told the beasts are people, warped by bad airs,' said Far Gaze.

'Yes,' said Blain, staring into the distance, leaning on his staff as though exhausted. 'The thinnest trickle of bad airs it was, at first. We believe this particular poison magic is only found deep belowground on the far side. So far we've been proven right, and it's good luck indeed.

'Avridis made the crack bigger, wider. It took great effort, but it was how we learned the Wall could be brought down, with great enough force. No one had floated such ideas before. We discussed ways it could be done, but never agreed to do it!'

'Why did he make the crack bigger?'

'Making one or two Tormentors at a time was not enough. We wanted an army of them! Then we Strategists learned how difficult the creatures are to control, and wanted it to cease. He still wants an army of them; he still creates more of the things.' Blain looked at Eric, and hesitated to speak.

'I'll say it for you,' Eric said. 'He wants to invade my world, when he feels he has finished with this one.' He found the notion absurd, but now he wondered: if Engineers could make guns real, and could even make them in some sense living things, what could they do with other weapons of death brought into Levaal? With nuclear bombs, or magic versions of them far greater?

'You guess well,' said Blain. He spat as if annoyed.

'And you would rather I hadn't,' said Eric. 'You hope, with our help, to fend off whatever new threat may come from Levaal South, then carry out the same plans you had before.'

Blain waved a hand irritably. 'I have not thought so far ahead. Forget that! It won't happen. We won't survive what's coming.' He looked up at the small hanging silver ball and, as though by his thought, it moved fractionally toward Eric's side of the table. 'Here is what happens. The far reality intrudes. A small amount, at first, perhaps long ago. Yet enough to set swinging.' The ball moved a small way back toward the south. 'We even sent people inside Levaal South, deep underground. One or two at a time, at first. A tiny, minuscule intrusion of our reality onto theirs. A small Pendulum swing. Back and forth, back and forth, far below the ground, as we sought advantage in a human squabble we had the hubris to call a war. We set the Pendulum swinging.'

'Did you warn the Arch of this?'

Blain scoffed. 'Of course. It was a fringe theory! For kooks and dragon cultists. I barely believed myself. From our little pushes the Pendulum built momentum of its own, an automatic force like a geological process, expressing itself through our deeds, our actions.

'Avridis thought his motives were his own. He was unhappy with Vous, with the Project, with the G.o.d we were making. He was we all were displeased with the time and energy the war was costing us. Thinking himself the author of events, he formed plans to break down the Wall, believing fool visions fed to us through the Windows, fed by we know not what. My guess? The dragons deceived us.'

'How?' said Far Gaze sceptically.

Blain scoffed. 'Please! If they can send a G.o.d insane, as they did Inferno, they can fool a human mage! The Wall's ruin would solve many of his dilemmas, Avridis thought. But he had no more volition than a chess piece being shoved around a board. The Wall came down. A ma.s.s of our airs intruded on the southern realm. The Pendulum swung.'

The little silver ball grew larger, and swung slowly on its thin chain toward Eric. 'A ma.s.s of foreign airs came in,' said Blain. The ball, growing bigger, swung back toward Blain.

'And now, a stoneflesh giant has crossed,' said Blain with his joyless laugh. The silver ball grew larger yet and swung again toward Eric. Back and forth the growing silver ball swung, moving further each time. Blain leaned forward with his hands upon the map's blank half. 'What comes next, Pilgrim? What comes our way, when the Pendulum swings back? What of when the swings are not the minuscule back and forth of people, or people-sized beasts? Stoneflesh giants are mighty. A like-sized force will cross the barrier from Levaal South. Will it be a lone creature, or an army of small ones? Will it be airs filled with poison, or a mighty lord on his steed? How will it behave? How soon will it come? How do we stop the Pendulum swinging back from this side, so that a further swing is not caused? How do we trap the Pendulum here?'

The now large silver ball stopped on Eric's side of the tabletop.

Blain said, 'What of when the Pendulum swings become G.o.d-sized? What of when Nightmare, Mountain, and the others leave us, to make war on Levaal South? What then ... comes ... here?'

There was silence. Blain's head slumped on his chest as though in grief.

'And now we come to it,' said Far Gaze, a gleam in his eye. 'Eric. You are wondering why the dragons would do such things. Why they would set the Pendulum swinging, if indeed it was their doing? Well, what keeps the dragon-youth imprisoned? They are mighty beasts; why don't they break free?'

'The G.o.ds are their wardens, Pilgrim,' said Blain miserably. 'If the Pendulum swing gets momentum enough, our G.o.ds will cross the boundary. They will not be here to keep the dragons in their prison!'