Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (21 page)

Etash Wesa had built his fortress on a foundation of smoke. The Goddess was dead. Etash Wesa had embraced what remained of her, an echo, a reflection, a shape the wind creates out of airborne dust, the shadow of a ghost.

Etash Wesa and Tamliade and the Goddess were one, and they were nothing.

* * * *

The mask of Etash Wesa cracked like a broken dish and fell from the sky, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood—

And the blood on the moon drained away, and the moon was purest white—

And the stars of heaven fell into the sea, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, When she is shaken by a mighty wind—

And there was silence in heaven.

* * * *

Tamliade saw his old master, Emdo Wesa, standing by the shore of the sea in the darkness of the starless night. Where his heart had once been burned a bri1liant light, like a beacon, shining through his clothing.

He laughed gently. “You’ve done well, my boy,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

The beacon shone brighter still, turning a part of the night into day.

Then the echo of the Goddess stirred above the waters, and parted the waters from the waters.

* * * *

He never expected to awaken. His first emotion was merely surprise. He sat up and found himself in darkness, on a narrow strip of sand. Waves lapped on either side, slightly luminescent at their crests. This was the only light.

Then a lady stood beside him, her face glowing softly, her gown a brilliant blue. For an instant he thought she was his mother come to look in on him when he had cried out in the night. He thought that everything that had happened from the vision of the feathered star onward was a single nightmare, glimpsed in a few minutes of troubled sleep when he was five years old; that he was still five; that it was over now and he was safe—

At once he saw that she was not a woman at all.

She was translucent. He could see the waves through her.

Her voice came like the wind. “Time is not the same for me, once I became what I am. As if I have eyes on the back of my head, I see both ahead and behind, in time, beyond my own death and before my transformation from mortal life. I still feel the terror of knowing truly for the first time that I was the one, even as I feel the final fading of my death, even as I feel myself projected, as you see me, into the future, like a shout echoing in the cave of time. I have caused you to be the greatest of all dreamers. Therefore you alone can perceive me so far removed from the instant of my death, so near to the beginning of a new epoch, when a new divinity shall arise. But that is beyond my sight.”

“Am I the one?”
Tamliade blurted, then nearly fainted with dread at the realization that he’d interrupted.

“I saw Etash Wesa born. I saw him change and darken and drift into strangeness. I saw him seek to become as I am, and therefore I caused you, the greatest dreamer, to be born so that he might not. You have done well, if you are hearing these words now, if you look on my image after so many centuries. You are not the
one.
Your mission is over. You are free. Now I shall take from you the burden of dreams.”

She reached down and touched his forehead. He felt a pleasant numbness over his whole body. She drew out of his forehead a tiny sphere of light so intense that he had to look away.

When he turned back to her, he saw that she filled the sky, huge above the sea, astride a dolphin, with the moon in her hair and a tiara of stars on her head. And the stars gave birth to stars, and the moon drifted, and then there was only the night sky, darker and more beautiful than he had ever seen it before.

He slept.

* * * *

When next he awoke, he was in a different place. Full physical sensation had returned. It was dark, the air damp and hot and foul. He was lying on his back in greasy mud, nearly naked, his clothing in burnt tatters.

He sat up. As his eyes adjusted he could make out a rectangular opening above him, a doorway at the top of a flight of steps, which were worn with age and covered with vines. He understood that he was in an underground chamber of a ruined building. To one side, an ornate coffin lay tumbled over. Something had spilled out, something pale and shriveled and dead.

There was a broken, corroded bronze mask lying in the mud behind the coffin.

He stood, unsteadily, and nausea came over him, but he managed to stagger up the stairs and out onto a grassy mound. Huge trees towered over him, laden with vines, dangling blossoms. Brightly colored birds and winged lizards squawked and chased one another among the branches. The sun was high in the sky, but shut out by a green canopy. A swamp stretched as far as he could see in all directions.

It was a natural place, not part of a dream, vaster than anything he had ever seen, but still merely part of some tropical country. He was not afraid.

He went down to the water’s edge, thinking to wash himself, but only stood among reeds and watched as two men came by, poling a shallow-bottomed boat. He called out to them and waved. They turned to him, cried out in fright, made gestures, and hurried away. He did not understand, but he was too exhausted to do anything but sit among the reeds in the cool water.

After a while they came back and took him to the house of a holy man, in another part of the swamp. They bowed low as they delivered him, speaking a language he recognized but did not understand:

Emdo Wesa’s language, Zabortashi.

They holy man replied to them in the same tongue, then spoke to Tamliade in the Language of the City.

* * * *

Tamliade dwelt with the holy man for a month as his strength returned and his burns healed. The holy man sat by his bedside at first, and the two of them sat together on a bench later, speaking for long hours.

The holy man gave him a robe to wear.

After a while, he told his host all he could of his visions and adventures.

“Ah yes,” the other sighed. “I think such visions come only to the very young, so that they may have the rest of their lives to work them out. It wouldn’t do any good to start at my age.”

It seemed to Tamliade that the man was ageless, like a gnarled tree.

“What am I to do?” he said.

“I think the course of your life is clear. You should write down all that you have experienced into a book, then become a hermit, and spend the rest of your days trying to discover the meaning of what you have written.”

“No,” said Tamliade. “Maybe I’ll write it all down, but I feel I have been in prison all these years. I want to get out into the world and run and keep on running.”

“That may be so. Where will you go?”

“I want to find Azrethemne. I love her.” The other shook his head sadly.

“She was but a dadar of Etash Wesa, who is dead. She cannot exist further.”

“What am I but a dadar of the Goddess, who is dead? How can I exist further?”

“You grow in wisdom. But if you find her, what will you do?”

“Live. Like anyone else.”

Again, the other shook his head sadly.

“You are not like anyone else. Not even now.” Confused, a little frightened, Tamliade followed the holy man out into the night. In the distance swamp birds called. Nearby, frogs croaked and chirped.

“Look,” the holy man said.

“Look at what?”

“Hold up your hands.”

Tamliade did so. The loose sleeves of his robe fell back, and he saw that his hands and forearms glowed a soft red where he had been burned. He pulled up one sleeve to the shoulder and saw that the skin glowed there too, the imprint of a hand clearly visible.

Then he allowed himself to be led to the water’s edge, and he knelt down to look at his reflection. A spot in the middle of his forehead shone with an intense white light.

* * * *

Later, when he departed from the house of the holy man, he wore the same loose robe, and around his head a band of cloth on which were written the names of the Goddess in Zabortashi script. He went barefoot, but at night or whenever the sky was overcast, or he entered a darkened place, he always put on the long gloves of a Zabortashi magus, which came up over his elbows.

He searched for Azrethemne.

THE STOLEN HEART

My story is about many things: about a queen who was nearly greater than the Goddess, and a maiden whose courage carried her out of the netherworld, back into the land of the living. It is about lost souls, too, thousands of them, wandering in darkness. But more than that, at its core, it is about my transformation, my redemption. It is about how I became a hero, albeit a substandard, unacceptable one. Yet a hero nonetheless.

Listen—

When my friend Kodos Vion was dying, I knew only helpless, hopeless despair, and in my self-pitying grief, I came to a place which isn’t on any Ai Hanlo street map, the Inn of Sorrows, called Korevanos, “the place of holy tears,” where once the Goddess herself wept and time and space were closed off around the place where her tears fell.

You cannot find Korevanos. You can only arrive there, as a stone sinking into a dark lake inevitably arrives at the bottom.

Thus, I arrived.

I must tell this story, all of it, even the parts which bring me hurt and shame.

I must tell it so that my transformation will be complete, and true.

Listen—

I don’t know where to begin, really. The events swirl and blend in my mind, like different colors of paint stirred in a pot.

* * * *

I ran from Kodos Vion’s bedside in terror. I remember that much. I lost myself in the maze of the city.

Then I came upon the corpse of an old man set on a bier in the middle of a street, braziers of perfumed oil sputtering around him. I let out a cry and covered my face, but I was as afraid to run away as to remain, and I approached with the utmost dread, somehow irrationally certain that this was my friend lying here, ready for his spirit to begin its long journey, though I knew him to be elsewhere, back at his house.

It was only a stranger, of course. Again I ran, weeping, then staggered, breathless, gasping, my throat hoarse. I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do. I was behaving like a complete fool. My mind was all a tangle.

And that was when I found myself in Korevanos, the Inn of Sorrows.

* * * *

When Kodos Vion’s illness was upon him, a woman came to my door with the news. I followed her through the city, in the glare of the summer noon. Her dusty black robe flapped in the hot wind. Her veil streamed, so that she had to hold it in place with one hand.

All she had said to me was that Kodos Vion was dying.

I couldn’t believe it. No, he was eternal, like one of those immense bronze figures in the Garden of Statues. They might turn green with age, he a silvery white. But that was all. They would go on forever.

His house I found to be filled with such black-clad women, many of them known to me, the casual lovers of that lusty old scoundrel who could have been my grandfather. Some he had shared with me. Some I had introduced to him. Some both of us had cast off. But they still loved him. I passed among them unnoticed.

I stood for a moment in the great banqueting hall, beneath the frescoed ceiling. I had been there many times, of course. It was here one night, at the height of one of his famously riotous gatherings, that Kodos Vion had directed the attention of his guests to me. Great lords and ladies were there, famous savants and poets, and even a priest or two. He commended me to them as a young man of great promise, the author of verses which would one day be ranked among the greatest of our age. I think he was laughing all the while as he said this, at them, at me, at our age. In the impossible darkness that has followed the death of the Goddess, when even signs and wonders and miracles don’t make any sense anymore, what else is there for us to do?
That
he had explained to me before, laughing as he did. It was his way.

“Knock their brains in, boy,” he whispered to me. “Tear out their hearts. If they have either.”

So, confused, a little afraid, stuttering somewhat—it was not my best delivery—I read my verses to all these distinguished people. They applauded only politely, but after that I was
someone.
I moved in the best circles of society. I never wanted for money or women or admission to the houses of the great, for I was a friend of Kodos Vion.

“Hurry,”
one of the black-clad ladies said, dragging me by the arm. “Don’t just stand there. He will see you now. There isn’t much time.”

Very much in dread, I went in to see Kodos Vion. He seemed insubstantial now somehow, a pale, frail husk sunken deep into his pillows. His white hair, thinner than before, clung to his forehead as if plastered with sweat, but his face was dry, and when I held his hand, it was cold.

His breath wheezed. He lay still, staring at the ceiling of his chamber. Even after I had been there a while, he did not turn to look at me. When he tried to speak, he only mouthed the words. No sound came.