[Part 3: Kaleidoscope] Chapter 26

  Part 3: Kaleidoscope

  Thunder and blood and night must usurp our parts, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece.

  - E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

  Solesta, the King’s Comet, became visible from the surface of Infernus once every 27 years. Many considered it an omen of good fortune, for it was composed entirely of pure arda, charged with energy, and it stirred the auroral sweeps of storm season to spectacular new heights with each passing. Yet others, particularly offworlders and Reachers, saw it as a harbinger of doom. For as Solesta fled through the void, so followed the Grim King—greatest, deadliest, and most mysterious of all the many beasts of the void—who some believed ferried the souls of the fallen across the stars to whatever lay beyond, and whose name was oft used synonymously with Death.

  Solesta arrived eight years early, and the Grim King followed close behind. It grew in the sky like an exploding star: first dim, then bright, then huge and luminous, as bright as the moon and brighter still, until it washed all but the strongest stars from the sky with its luminance.

  Solesta had never come this close before; it had never been so bright. Its light confused nocturnal creatures, disturbed photosensitive navigational systems, spread auroras through the atmosphere of Infernus like rainbow paint swirling in water.

  It came close enough that it disturbed the tides, the weather, and the rings of Infernus. The icy crystals of those rings wavered, jostled, broke free from their gravitational moorings. A star shower occurred, the likes of which no living daimon had seen. Countless thousands of shards of arda fell like glittering jewels through the night sky, plummeting to the surface in flare and flame. Some who witnessed it hoped that it might be a renewal of their species, that these might be newfallen daimon, granted by the mercy of Solesta. It was not so. The arda fell like an apocalyptic rain, shattering sea and sky, burning field and forest. Overcharged by the violent auroral sweeps through which they plummeted, their energy released explosively upon impact. Cities were smashed, mountains beaten down, dragons and Iterators alike struck from the skies. Yet this was not yet the end of the world, but only a harbinger.

  Ten of these shards of arda, ten out of many thousands, were different. Imbued by some light from Solesta, they fell not in chaos and destruction as the others did. They fell with purpose, and they changed in their descent. Each crystal struck the earth or sea, and each of these ten, large or small, broke apart in a great flash of light. And from within each of the ten crystals emerged a creature: all eyeless and white as snow, save for one black serpent and one dark shadow.

  *

  The Museum, Zayana’s mysterious friend had called it when they spoke months ago. When Zayana had first stepped into that place in her dreams, slipping into unquiet slumber at last through the pain of her burn, Zayana had spoken to someone. Nearly six months since then, and Zayana had discovered nothing about that white daimon named Kaitlyn Carter.

  It didn’t seem much like a Museum to her, but then again, she was blind. Her blindness followed her into that place, which attested to its reality. She could still see in many of her normal dreams. She could see her friends, the stars, the sky. The beauty of Zsythristria, the beauty of anything.

  A different beauty lay in the Museum—the beauty of dreams, of possibilities, of imagination. “If” and “maybe” were tools with which she could shape the world, paints which she could lay upon canvas, the strings of a harp that she could play at will. She often found a harp waiting for her when she entered that world of doors. She suspected that the mysterious custodian left it for her, and that he listened to her when she played. The whole world listened when she played there. It listened, and it responded, unlike Anthea, whose despondency resisted all of Zayana’s soothing efforts with the harp.

  It was a place of deep magic. She felt like a color priest there, seeing the possibilities—and yes, sometimes she had sight of them, for in the Museum her physical eyes played but a minor part of the process of knowing.

  She gained knowledge there of things which had happened, things which might have happened, things which may yet happen. Too many to remember, but more than enough to make her afraid. She dictated these things to Zsythristria whenever she awoke, for that faithful creature had not left her side since the incident at Guertile.

  She had shared this secret font of knowledge in its entirety only with Anthea. Anthea was still the greatest of them, somehow, even without a Song, without hope, without any emotion but despair. Perhaps it was because of this—that she knew only misery, yet still worked to save them all—that she was great. Anthea claimed to know that they would fail. She claimed to know their fate, and she strongly implied that it was nothing to smile about. Yet still she played the game. She moved her pieces like a general at war. She intended that they all survive the end of the world. And with Zayana’s visions of the future, in which Anthea had total faith, Anthea had made plans. They were ready. They would leave this world before the Grim King could have his way with it; they would step through ten doors into a new story—the one in which they would fail and die, according to Anthea. But, as Derxis would say with a laugh, they could worry about that later.

  She had not shared everything with Derxis. He had become unstable; he radiated chaos. Zayana could see it with the sight that went beyond eyes, the one in which she could sense arda, see it around her like lights in the darkness. It was sharper than ever since her blinding, much sharper. No daimon within miles of her could escape her watchful blindness.

  Not Derxis, and neither Acarnus, for he had changed. Nor Rasmus, nor Fiora, nor Rosma. Not Jeronimy, or Emmius, and certainly not Akkama. No one needed to know everything. No one but Anthea.

  Zayana feared to dream of the Grim King, or even to glimpse him in the Museum. Every time she came near to his presence, even in a dream, he looked back at her. Even sightless, she felt his cold glare. The malice of his gaze crawled over her, and she could almost hear his terrible intent: soon. Soon we will meet without dreams.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  She awoke violently from such a dream, stirred to wakefulness by the gentle hoof of Zsythristria. Zayana thrashed and cried out, alarmed by the thought of the Grim King’s presence, the confusion of waking, the blindness. But she sensed the unicorn’s presence, and it calmed her. She remembered why she could not see. She remembered that the Grim King had been only a dream. She remembered where she was.

  Zayana and the unicorn were on the high plains above her castle. The plains were cold with night, and they smelled of sweet sage and fresh mountain air. A slight breeze carried these scents, caressed her skin, chilled her. She picked up her woolen cloak and wrapped it tight around her. Zayana had flown kites here with Akkama. She had watched the stars with Jeronimy. These plains were beautiful, especially now as winter came on. She would never see them again. But although Zayana could no longer see, she knew they were not dark. They shone with the light of the King’s Comet. She could see that comet, dimly, in the blank arda-scattered expanse within her mind, just as she could vaguely perceive the ring system encircling Infernus. She also sensed rippling curtains of auroral sweeps rushing down upon her from the heights. She braced herself.

  Zsythristria wanted her to know that voidbound were approaching.

  “I see them,” Zayana replied. They were black upon black, void within the void. Drawn to her, a dozen or more, since she was the only daimon for miles.

  She stood gracefully, then stooped to pick up her bow. She had tied purple arda to it so that she could find it. There beside it lay a quiver of arrows, their charged-arda tips like a constellation in the dark.

  She shouldered the quiver, raised the bow, waited for the voidbound. The sweeps arrived first. The colors buffeted her like a strong wind when they struck, though they exerted no physical force. Her skin tingled; her arda shimmered. She held out an arrow tipped with blue arda and let the energy of the sweeps fill it with light, with power, until it was a small blue fire in her mind.

  She nocked and released in a smooth motion. She nudged the trajectory in mid-flight to counteract the disruption of the sweeps. The arrow took a voidbound a hundred paces out. An explosion of blue light and a crunch as the voidbound’s head shattered from the cold and the impact.

  They came on, shambling toward her like cutout shapes moving against a background of the psychedelic lightshow Zayana saw in her mind. The sweeps did not affect the voidbound. They had no light, no color, no arda. Nothing to charge. They were dead, moved only by the Voidlight. A bit like Jeronimy. But really not anything like him at all.

  They fell one by one, cut down by arrowheads charged to bursting with auroral energy. There had never been a danger. Zsythristria was worth a dozen voidbound, and even if a horde had arrived, they could not outrun a unicorn. Zayana had not needed to stand here and destroy the mindless dead. A waste of arrows, in fact.

  A sudden gust of icy air whipped around her, shocking a gasp from her lungs. It came invisibly, in the reverse direction of the sweeps, transposed over the rushing colors of the auras that pulled at her soul. Zayana set down the quiver and arrows, trading them for the thick cloak.

  “Soon, Zsythristria,” she said.

  They waited together, standing side by side in the cold night.

  And soon indeed it began. Zayana saw everything; she did not even have to look up. Solesta’s influence disrupted the rings of Infernus. They fell for minutes, and then they burned in the atmosphere. They broke apart, they collided, they shattered, they caught the auroral sweeps of the upper atmosphere which limned them in bright colors, charged them with energy, made them ride like gemstones ablaze on the wind of the lights. It was like a sky full of fireworks to Zayana, like seeing the stars again. It was beautiful. Zsythristria nuzzled her for a moment, telling Zayana that this was something no one else could see as well as she.

  It did not cease to be beautiful, but on that cold night, when the high plains of Meszria were lit as by a cosmic lightshow, destruction came with it. Near and far, the falling chunks of arda, weaponized into bombs by the auroral energies, established a broad path of devastation across the surface of Infernus. The casualties were likely few, for everyone had known of the coming of this event. Zayana had seen to that personally. Even the Ephathic Remnant had removed most of their super-atmospheric fleets to the poles, to relative safety.

  She sensed someone coming, a green. She knew who it was.

  “Are you certain we are safe here?” Kartha asked when he arrived. He was riding atop the marid, and the Westing cloud came with him. These two, Kartha and the Westing cloud, had saved her life after Guertile. Though Kartha could not heal her eyes, for little had been left of them but char and ash, he had soothed her pain, and for the sake of Thaevrit he had cared for her. As for the Westing cloud, she had endured the loss of her sight by seeing through its own strange eyes. And its love for her, its unfailing loyalty, had sustained her.

  “We are safe,” she replied. Every one of the ten of them would be safe, for each of them had a single star falling just for them. “We need only wait.”

  Kartha accepted this silently, just as he had accepted her as his Majesty, though such a title meant next to nothing anymore. There was no more Kingdom of Meszria. There was scarcely a palace staff. Zayana had dismissed all of them herself. Go, she had said, and do as you will. The scribe-guards had remained, all four of them that still existed, but most of the rest had gone away. Zayana tried not to think about all of this. It was too sad, too lonely. She didn’t like staying in the castle anymore, haunted by the melancholy Kartha, who kept both the shard of the vesta antler and Flibby the flying squid as painful memories of Thaevrit.

  The sky fell around them and the vibrant winds of the sweeps rushed past at cross purposes with the sporadic cold gusts from the mountains.

  And then it came. Somehow, Zayana knew exactly which of the exploding firework stars above it was. It fell directly toward her, and Zayana did not flinch when it struck the earth ten paces away, shuddering the ground beneath their feet with its impact.

  A minute passed. They heard something crack, break, shatter.

  A flash of light. A soft gasp from Kartha. The lightest of touches on the back of her hand. Zayana raised that hand to her eyes, a meaningless habit. She could see it just fine: a tiny spider, white as snow. A spider with no eyes.

  “All right, Jeronimy,” she whispered to herself. “I hope you are nearly finished. For we are nearly out of time.”

  “That’s it?” asked Kartha. She nodded at him and stooped to gather her things before mounting Zsythristria. “And now?” he asked.

  “Now we hurry,” she told him. She smiled softly, sadly. “Lickety-split.”