Songs of the Dying Earth

Jeff VanderMeer THE FINAL QUEST OF THE WIZARD SARNOD

The morning the Nose of Memory arrived to destroy his calm, the Wizard Sarnod rose as on any other day late in the life of the Dying Earth. He donned his sea-green robes woven from the scales of a monstrous fish and stared out the window that graced the top of his tower. Soon, he would descend for his daily breakfast of salamanders — one served cold for memory, one served hot for his heart, and one served living for his brain — but first he sought the selfish comfort of surveying his lands.

The tower stood upon an island that lay at the center of Lake Bakeel, fed by a lingering finger of the Derna River. Beyond the lake lay the gnarled forests and baleful grasslands through which none, not even erb or Deodand, traveled without his knowledge or permission. Despite this mastery, Sarnod found that each new morning for more than a year had brought an unease, like a hook in his heart, accompanied by a strange thirst. He seemed always dry, his skin itchy and taut. The bowl of water he kept in his chambers did not help. The fresh, moist smell of the lake beyond came through the window like a thing physical, more threatening than the giant fish that roamed beneath its dark surface.

Sarnod lived alone in the tower but for the companionship of his two servants, both of whom he had ensorcelled to his need, using in part his own blood to bind or build them. The first was named Whisper Bird Oblique Beak, and the creature was always somewhere in the room with him, a subtle guardian of his person. The life of Whisper Bird had a poetry to it beyond Sarnod’s ken, the poetry of silence. Whisper Bird lived invisible and remote, Sarnod’s conversation with him ever terse yet ethereal.

At that moment, Whisper Bird spoke in Sarnod’s ear, startling him. Whisper Bird said, “On the golden dais beneath The Mouth a creature has appeared from Below.”

“A creature from the UNDERHIND? Impossible,” Sarnod said.

“And yet…probable,” Whisper Bird replied.

Just as there was an Over Earth, so too there were various Under Earths, one of which, nameless or unspeakable, Sarnod had found and harnessed to his will. He called it simply UNDERHIND, in the Speech of De-emphasis, because it was tiny, and there all the enemies he had punished lived miniaturized amid honeycombs of tunnels and caverns in the full knowledge, as Sarnod liked to think, of the enormity of their defeat.

“I will investigate,” Sarnod said, and as if in response Whisper Bird passed through him to the door in a wave of cold and heat that made him shudder—what manner of ghost, what manner of being, had he harnessed?

Together, man visible and creature invisible, they went to see what had thus intruded on their daily ritual.

Every Morning, Sarnod’s other servant, T’sais Prime, prepared his breakfast of salamanders. But this morning, Sarnod’s salamanders — green-glowing, plucked from the rich mud of the lake — lay forgotten on the kitchen counter, eyeless (for Sarnod did not like to see his food staring at him). The sounds of breathing came from the Seeing Hall beyond, where stood The Mouth and the golden dais.

The Mouth had been part of the tower long before Sarnod had taken up residence there. The two unblinking eyes above its inscrutable lips Sarnod himself had created — each a portal to a section of the UNDERHIND. Just as he did not like his food staring at him, he did not like a mouth without eyes. Under Sarnod’s thaumaturgies, The Mouth now functioned also as a secret portal back from the UNDERHIND.

The Mouth had spoken only three times.

The first time it had said, “Beware the falsehood of memory.”

The second time it had said, “What man can truly know but you?”

The third time it had said, “The fish rots from the head.”

Little else had ever come out of it but stenches and perfumes. Until now.

In the ancient Seeing Hall, The Mouth and golden dais lay at the far end. To the left hung the huge circle of a shimmering window, through which the lake and sky reflected against the white marble in a myriad shades of blue.

Near the dais, T’sais Prime watched over the intruder. Her pale, dark-haired presence both loosened the hook in his heart and sent it mercilessly deep. Arms folded, she stared down at the dais with a blank look. T’sais Prime was the reflection of a woman created in the vats from tales and potions brought from far-distant Embelyon. Nothing of that reflection had ever been his, for she did not want him, and he chose not to coerce her, nor even inform her as to her true nature. She seemed to have none of the passion and fire of the original — some aspect of the formula he’d failed to master and which continued to elude him.

As guarded in her way as Whisper Bird was in his, T’sais only raised one eyebrow upon Sarnod’s approach. That her expression was always half wistful, half sullen, pained him. She was the last from the now-cold vats; frustrated by his failures, Sarnod had turned his energies elsewhere.

“What is this thing that has come to us?” Sarnod asked.

“It has no head and yet it lives,” T’sais said. “It lives, but why?”

“It entered with a blast of cold yet hot air,” Whisper Bird said from somewhere to Sarnod’s left.

Sarnod drew nearer. What T’sais had caught was trapped under a large bell jar upon the gold dais.

Sarnod took out a magnifying glass from his robes. He had found it in the tower, and like everything in the tower it had its own mind. As he trained the glass on the creature, the oval grew cloudy, then clear, the handle suddenly hot. The thing indeed had no head. It had no eyes. It had no mouth. Although Sarnod looked square upon it, the thing seemed to lose focus, move to the corner of his vision. He thought it was curled up, then longer, like a stretching cat.

A strange thought came to him, from memories far distant, almost not his own: of a dusty book, turned to a certain page.

Sarnod said the thought aloud: “It is called the Nose of Memory. It brings a message of a kind.”

“Shall we destroy it?” Whisper Bird breathed from near Sarnod and then far away.

But Sarnod held up a hand in abeyance. “Let us see what it may offer, first. I will protect us from any harm it might bring.” The unease in Sarnod’s heart beat as steady as ever, but he realized he shared T’sais’ malaise. This intrusion made him curious.

“Are you ready, Whisper Bird?” The animating principle behind Whisper Bird, Sarnod believed, had been both owl and heron — one watchful, one motionless, both deadly when called upon.

As T’sais stood back, Whisper Bird said, “Yesssss” from over Sarnod’s left shoulder. For once, he did not flinch.

Sarnod put away the magnifying glass and surrounded the bell jar with a Spell of True Sizing.

Up, up, up came the Nose of Memory in all of its headless glory, rising and rising until it lay lolling over the sides of the dais, squat and grey and placid, about the size of a worry dog and wearing the bell jar as an awkward, teetering hat. It smelled in an unsatisfactory way of milk and herbs and brine.

Now the Nose of Memory at least resembled its name: a huge nose with five nostrils, completing, in a way, the face on the wall. It lay there for a moment, long enough for Sarnod to step forward. Then it snorted in such a thunderous fashion that even Sarnod flinched.

“Do nothing, Whisper Bird,” Sarnod said, readying a spell of No Effect for what might come after.

Through one nostril and then the next and the next, until all five had ruptured, the Nose of Memory sent messages in a brittle blue smoke, writ in curling letters that, once smelled by Sarnod, blossomed into images in his mind. As the tendrils of smoke grew in length, came together, and began to form clouds, the Nose of Memory grew smaller and smaller until it resided somewhere between its unexpected largeness and its former smallness, and then became just a limp, lifeless deformity.

The smoke brought with it such severe memories that Sarnod forgot his readied spell, and wept, though his countenance remained stern. For he saw Vendra, created to be his lover, and his brother Gandreel, who had betrayed Sarnod with her. The memory lay like a crush of sour fruit in his mouth: intense, clear, and yet fast-fading.

Sarnod had cherished them both, had welcomed Gandreel to his tower after long absence in the service of Rathkar the Lizard King, only to find the two, several weeks later, by the shores of the lake, amid a grove of trees, locked in a carnal embrace. His wrath had turned the surface of the lake to flame. His sadness had changed it to ice, and then the numbness in his heart had restored all to what it had been before.

After, against their pleading, their weeping, Sarnod had banished them to the levels of the UNDERHIND. As with all of his enemies, he used his spells of Being Small, Pretending Small, Staying There, and Forgetting the Past for a Time. Into the UNDERHIND they had gone, and there they had now remained for many years.

Eruptions of hatred had scarred his heart ever since, had disturbed his sleep, made him lash out at every living thing that moved across plains and forest, many a traveler finding himself taken up by a vast, invisible hand and set down several leagues hence, usually in a much worsened condition.

But now, with the vapor of the past so vividly renewing the sharpness of his former love, his former joy, two pains massaged the hook in his heart. The pain physical presaged death. The pain mental presaged the birth of regret, for he had performed many terrible and vengeful deeds throughout his life, even if some seemed to have been committed by another self.

It had been, he realized, a long and lonely time without Vendra and Gandreel, the vats cold and useless, the world outside become stranger and more dangerous. With his desire for the one and his love for the other rose again a parched feeling — a burning need for the cleansing water of the lake. For a moment, he wanted to dive through the great window of the Seeing Hall and into the lake, there to be free.

“You are Sarnod the mighty wizard. That is not in your nature,” he said, aloud.

“This we have now heard,” Whisper Bird replied, with a hint of warning. “After many minutes of peculiar silence.”

“Who could have sent this?” Sarnod asked. A sense of helplessness came over him with the voicing of the question.

“Master, shall we be spared the extent of your not-knowing?” Whisper Bird said, almost apologetically.

T’sais Prime sighed, said, “I am working on a tapestry that requires my attention. May I leave now?”

“Enough!” Sarnod said, rallying his resolve. “It matters not how it was sent or why, just what we should send back to the UNDERHIND.”

“What can we send back?” T’sais Prime asked in a dull voice.

“You,” he said, pointing at her. “And you,” he continued, pointing in the vicinity of where he thought Whisper Bird might be lurking. “Each of you I shall send to the place that best suits your nature. You will find and bring back the woman Vendra and the man who is my brother, Gandreel, long-banished to the UNDERHIND.” Then added, in warning: “Them and them alone—any other brought back shall perish in the journey! A prison the UNDERHIND is and a prison it shall remain.”

Whisper Bird said only, “You will have to make us small.”

“I have always liked the size I am,” T’sais Prime said, “and the work I have been doing.” Sarnod knew she labored solely on tapestries, which she created only because he had placed a spell of Fascination with Detail upon her.

Whisper Bird said something resigned in a language so ancient that Sarnod could not understand it, but it sounded like a creaking gate on a desolate plain.

Sarnod ignored them both equally and, using the half-senile machines that lived in the skin of the tower, made them see the images of Vendra and Gandreel, gone long before he had made T’sais and ensorcelled Whisper Bird. Then he gave them the power to project those images into the minds of any they might meet in their journeys. Then he made T’sais small. Whisper Bird had already reduced himself, and, in that form, was almost visible: a sunspot floating in the corner of the eye.

As they stood tiny on the golden dais looking up at him, Sarnod gave Whisper Bird and T’sais each three spells to use.

“Be wary of my brother Gandreel,” he told them, “for he too was once a sorcerer, if of a minor sort, and he will have found ways to harness those around him to his will. As for Vendra, beware her guile.

“Know too that the minutes may pass differently for you in the UNDERHIND. What is a half-hour for me here may be a year for you, and thus you may return after much adventure to find it has been but a single day for me.” Miniaturization was an uncertain thaumaturgy and it made mischievous play with time.

Sarnod levitated each in turn, and spun each without protest into one of the two open eyes — and thus into the UNDERHIND.

After they were gone, The Mouth grimaced and said, “Much may be lost in the seeking.”

The hook in Sarnod’s heart drove deeper.

The Nose of Memory, now akin to a canvas sack filled with soggy bones, expelled one last sigh.

Whisper Bird neither felt nor cared to feel the foetid closeness of the level of the UNDERHIND known to some as the Place of Mushrooms and Silence — this continuous cave with its monstrous bone-white lobsters waiting in dank water for the unwary; its thick canopy of green-and-purple-and-gray fungus that listened and watched; its bats and rats and blind carnivorous pigs; its huge and rapacious worms like wingless dragons, all of it boiled in a pervasive stench of decay, all lit by a pale emerald luminescence that seemed more akin to the bottom of the sea.

Invisible he might be otherwise, but not soundless, not smell-less, and thus his nerves were on edge. Even his invisibility itself was an illusion, an effect of the spell that had robbed him of his human form and condemned him to live not just on the Dying Earth but in far Embelyon simultaneously — so that he walked forever in two places at once, neither here nor there, his body like an image seen in twinned rows of mirrors facing each other down a long corridor. Even now, as he searched for the man and woman Sarnod had so ruthlessly banished from his life, a part of Whisper Bird explored the plains and forests of Embelyon.

Surrounded by so many watchful ears attached to dangerous bodies, Whisper Bird slowed his thoughts and stretched out his fear so thin that he could barely feel it. Thus fortifie, he continued on until, finally, he became uncomfortably aware of a rising hum, a distant sound that trembled through the ground carried by the uncanny whispers of the creatures around him. The sound marched closer and closer, resolved into the words “bloat toad,” repeated again and again like a warning or chant.

Around him now floated great white fungal boweries that laid down lines like jellyfish trawling for the unwary and wounded. A cloud of whipping mushroom tendrils. A pyramid of screaming flesh. Moving within their poison sting unharmed were horrible visps and also corpse-white gaun: long-limbed, strong, be-fanged, stalking through the perpetual night.

Invoking his first spell, Phandaal’s Litany of Silent Coercion, he brought a gaun close and projected the images of Gandreel and Vendra into it.

Have you seen either one?

The gaun’s thoughts — like spiders with tiny moist bodies and long, barbed legs — made him shudder: I will rend you limb-from-limb. I will call my brothers and sisters, and we will feast on your flesh.

Whisper Bird repeated his question and felt the gaun’s brain constrict from the force of the spell.

Beyond this cavern, beyond the corridor that follows, beyond the Bloat Toad, in the village there, you will find what you seek.

What is the Bloat Toad? Whisper Bird asked.

It is both your riddle and your answer, the gaun replied.

What does this mean?

But the gaun just laughed, and Whisper Bird, not wishing to suffer the retaliation of its fast-approaching brethren, Suggested that the creature batter its head against the corridor wall until it was dead, and then moved on through the darkness.

All around him now came the vibration of a discordant music fashioned from muttered thoughts, rising full-throated and deep from the dark: bloattoad bloattoad bloattoad.

If Whisper Bird must go slow and silent, so T’sais Prime must go fast and quick, and if never a bird had she been, it would have been to her benefit to be one. She arrived in the UNDERHIND known as The Place of Maddening Glass after “nightfall,” when only the faint green glow from far above signaled the ceiling of this place, the light bleeding off from the level above, where Whisper Bird labored in his quest as she in hers. She was surrounded by a hundred thousand jagged gleaming surfaces — cracked sheets of mirror, giant purple-tinged cusps — reflecting such a welter of images that she could not tell what was real and what was not.

Ghoul bears and Deodands were fast-approaching, hot to her scent. Not built for the adventure of close combat, T’sais used her first spell, of Flying Travel, to summon Twk-Men. They descended from the sky on their dragonflies, here as large as small dragons.

Four bore her upward upon a raft of twigs lashed together and set between them, the space between the flickering dance of the dragonflies’ wings so slight that T’sais thought they must surely overlap, and, out of rhythm, plummet to the jagged surface. But they did not.

At first, the Twk-Men seemed so solicitous and friendly that she wondered aloud why they had been banished to this place.

“I dared to ask for a thimbleful more of sugar for giving Sarnod information on his enemies,” said one.

“I dared to fly over the lake while he watched,” said the second. “It was summer and I was feeling lazy and desired to skim the surface, dip my dragonfly’s wings into the water.”

“I cannot remember why I am here,” said the third. “But it seems not that much different than being on the surface. We die here and we die there, and though we cannot see the true sun, we know it dies, too.”

The fourth Twk-Man, the leader of them all, would have none of her questions, though, and asked, “Whither do you go, and why, and do you have a pinch of salt for us?”

“I am seeking these two exiles,” T’sais Prime replied, and projected the images of Vendra and Gandreel into all four minds of the Twk-Men, which set them to talking amongst themselves in the lightning-fast speech typical of their kind.

“We know one of them. The woman,” the lead Twk-Man said. “How much salt will you give us to be led to her?”

T’sais’ heart leapt, for she did not wish to spend longer in this place than necessary.

“A pinch of salt here is either a boulder, or, if it came with me, too small even for you to barter for,” T’sais Prime said. “You will have to content yourself with the compulsion of the spell.”

“Fair enough,” the Twk-Man said, although he did not sound happy, and the buzz of his dragonfly’s wings became louder.

“Where can I find her, Twk-Man?”

The Twk-Man laughed. “She lies upon a raft carried through the air by four unfortunate Twk-Men.”

“Surely this is some form of joke,” T’sais Prime said.

“Perhaps the joke is played on you,” the Twk-Man said grimly. “Perhaps your quest is different than you think.”

“Tend to your flying, and take me somewhere safe, lest I unleash another spell,” T’sais said, although she needed to hoard all that Sarnod had given her.

Smiling savagely, the Twk-Man turned in his saddle and held up a mirror to T’sais’ face. “In this place Sarnod has banished us to, we all see each others’ faces everywhere. But perhaps in your world, you cannot see yourself?”

And it was true, she saw with shock — how could she not have realized it before? — Sarnod’s former lover shared every element and description of her own face. Was she sent, then, by trickery into her own oblivion, or was there truly a quest for a Vendra, for a Gandreel?

“I do not like your tricks, Twk-Man,” T’sais said. “I do not like them at all.”

“It is a dark night,” the Twk-Man said, “to fall so far, should your spell fade before we leave you.”

The ill-fated gaun proved truthful in his directions. No bigger than a man’s fist, the Bloat Toad sat in the middle of a vast and empty cavern that was covered with dull red splotches and smelled vaguely of spoiled meat. In Whisper Bird’s imagination, the Bloat Toad had been as large as a brontotaubus and twice as deadly. In fact, except for its glowing gold eyes and the prism of blue-and-green that strobed over its be-pimpled skin, the Bloat Toad looked ordinary.

Whisper Bird stood in front of the creature in that cathedral of dust motes and dry air: invisible shadow confronting placable foe.

It stared back at him.

Was it oddly larger now?

Or was Whisper Bird smaller?

Whisper Bird took a step to the side of the Bloat Toad, and as his foot came down—

KRAAAOOCK

— was lifted up by the leathery skin of an amphibian suddenly rendered enormous — and smashed against the side of the cavern. All the breath went out of Whisper Bird’s delicate chest. Even though he existed in two places at once, it still hurt like a hundred knives. The Bloat Toad’s tough but doughy flesh, which stank of long-forgotten swamps, held him in place for several horrible moments.

Then the pressure went away. Whisper Bird fell limply to the ground.

When he had recovered, Whisper Bird saw that the Bloat Toad sat once more in the center of the room. The toad was again small, strobing green-blue, blue-green.

Now Whisper Bird understood the nature of the splotches on the walls. Had he existed in just this one world, he would already be dead.

After many minutes of reflection and recovery, twice more Whisper Bird tried to pass the Bloat Toad — once creeping stealthy, once running fast without guile. Twice more, impervious to accompanying spells and with croak victorious, the Bloat Toad filled the cavern, re-crushing Whisper Bird. Until it felt to him as though he were a bag of sand, and the sand was all sliding out of a hole.

Bent at a wretched angle, hobbling, and badly shaken, he eventually stood once more before the Bloat Toad.

Now, in the extremity of his pain, Whisper Bird turned as much of his attention as he could to his second self in Embelyon, experiencing its forests, its rippling fields that changed color to reflect the sky. There, his family, wife and infant son, had lived in a cottage in a glade deep in the forest where they grew food in a garden and counted themselves lucky to be beneath the notice of the mighty princes and wizards who struggled for dominion over all. They did not care that the Earth was dying, but only that they were living. Who knew now how old his son was, whether there were streaks of gray in his wife’s hair? Nor whether either would recognize him as human.

At some future moment, Whisper Bird might be whole and be once more with them, but for that he must move past this moment now.

As before, Whisper Bird stared at the Bloat Toad and the Bloat Toad stared at Whisper Bird.

“Do you talk, I wonder, Bloat Toad? Are you mindless or mind-full? Is there nothing that will move you?” Whisper Bird said, already flinching in anticipation of his words activating the toad’s power.

But Bloat Toad cared no more for words than for the particulars of Whisper Bird’s servitude. The creature stared up at Whisper Bird and made a smug croaking sound. Kraaoock…

A more direct soul would have tried to smash the Bloat Toad to death with a hammer and danced on his pulped remains. But Whisper Bird had no such weapon; all he had as a tool was his ghostly assassin-like absence.

And this gave him an idea, for Whisper Bird could split himself again if he so chose, an act of will only possible because he held the knowledge of his Essential Sundering within him like a half-healed wound.

Thus decided, Whisper Bird stood in front of the Bloat Toad — and leapt to both sides at once, like two identical wings with no body between them. It felt like deciding to die.

Bloat Toad, rising with incredible speed, gave out a confused croak — each eye following a different Whisper Bird — and winked out of existence.

Over the plains of broken glass, the Twk-Men took T’sais Prime. Soon, she understood the true nature of the glass, and why none lived amongst it for very long. Each shard had captured and now reflected the light of some more ancient time, which played out in an insanity of fractured prisms. As they traveled, she saw laid out below her, and identified for her by the Twk-Men, the Gardens of Mazirian, a raging Thrang the Ghoul Bear, impossibly large, and Sadlark in battle against the demon Underherd. She saw Kutt the Mad King leading his menagerie of magically created monsters, Kolghut’s Tower of Frozen Blood, and, most terribly, a forever-replicating scene over many leagues, of Golickan Kodek the Conqueror’s infamous pillaging of the people of Bautiku and subsequent creation of a squirming pyramid of human flesh five hundred feet tall. And, yes, eventually, though she chose to ignore them, many reflections of her own self, some tiny, some huge and monstrous, bestriding the landscape below, brought out from the crazed glass. After awhile, T’sais’ initial horror gave way to such fascination that she could not bear to look down, as if her interest was unwholesome.

“What happens to those who walk the surface?” she asked the Twk-Men as they struggled with their burden. They were headed for what looked like a series of dull, irregular clouds on the horizon.

“They go mad,” one replied.

“They become what they see,” another said.

“They forget to eat or drink.”

“They perish, believing all the time that they dine in the banquet hall of Kandive the Golden or are whispering in the ear of Turjan the Sorcerer.”

“How did Sarnod create the glass?”

The lead Twk-Man laughed in an unpleasant way. “That is beyond Sarnod’s ken. The glass is all that remains of the all-seeing Orb of Parassis, shattered in the War of the Underhinds. Sarnod’s luck is that it inhabits his prison, making the lives of vanquished enemies worse by far than without.”

“And yet,” T’sais replied, “the glass illumines the UNDERHIND.”

Day and night had no meaning in a world with no sun, dying or otherwise. Everything around them existed in a state of perpetual dawn or dusk, depending on the brilliance of the broken glass. The bright flashes of gold and green beneath them as ancient wars were fought, courtly dances re-enacted, and ghost-galleys sailed long dry oceans, now created a kind of weak sunrise.

Soon, T’sais saw that ahead of them the clouds had become strange oblong balloons that moved, their tan hides pulsing, tiny limbs sticking out from the sides, heads mere dots. “Floating mermelants,” the Twk-Men called them, and, strapped to these creatures by means of ropes and cables and pulleys, were the frames of ships, canisters, balconies, and baskets. Even more peculiar, a vast tangled garden of flowers, vines, and vegetables hung from the moist moss-lined hull of each airship.

“Who are they, the people who live here?” T’sais asked.

“Raiders and builders and gardeners,” the head Twk-Man replied. “Murderers and bandits and farmers and sky sailors.”

“How can they be all of these things?”

The Twk-Man smiled grimly. “To be sent here, you must be a rogue of some kind, but to live here you must become something else.”

“What if I do not desire to be taken there?” A sudden sense of helplessness overwhelmed her, despite her spells. To be beholden to the Twk-Men irked her, but to be dependent on strangers not bound to her will would be worse.

“You have no choice. We will not take you by air raft across this entire world; we will risk your already weakening spell if you do not free us. Besides, these people roam everywhere.”

So saying, they increased their speed and soon left her on the deck of one of the ships, the living balloon above snorting and expelling strong yet sweet-smelling gasses.

The ship’s captain waited for her, his crew of ruffians hanging back, although whether from respect or caution, T’sais did not know.

The Captain had two eye patches over his left eye, as if whatever lay hidden there had need of further restraint. The remaining light blue eye made him look younger than his years. A thick black beard covered much of his face. He had the wide, muscular build she favored in a man, and he smelled not unpleasantly of pipe tobacco.

Just as T’sais found it difficult to forget that the living creature above her was all that kept the ship from plummeting to the broken glass below, so too it was difficult to forget that in her world the Captain was smaller than a thimble.

“Welcome to hell,” he said, unsmiling.

“Welcome to a spell,” T’sais replied, with a passion that surprised her — and cast Panguirre’s Triumphant Displasms, meaning to bind him to her.

But the Captain merely chuckled and removed one of his eye patches, whereupon the spell bounced back upon her and she felt an overwhelming urge to obey the Captain’s every desire.

“Do not make me remove the other eye patch,” he told her, although not without a certain humor.

Looking him in his one good eye, fighting the spell even as it mastered her, she asked, “Why? Will I die?”

“No,” the Captain said, “but you would be so revolted by what lives in my eye that you would not sit down to dinner with me.”

Soon, beyond the cavern guarded by the now curiously absent Bloat Toad, Whisper Bird came upon the outskirts of the village where the gaun had said he would find his quarry. The space above extended so far that the distant rock ceiling, glowing green from vast and mindless lichens, was little more than a conjecture. Things, though, could be seen moving there, in shapes that made Whisper Bird wary.

The village itself he at first thought had been built among the old bones of long-dead monsters. But he soon came to understand that it was built from those bones. For this site had clearly seen much violence, if violence distant in time. Amid teetering bone houses traveled such inhabitants as dared leave shelter. Too pale they were, and most so long remaining there that through the generations they had become blind, their eye sockets sunken, their ears batlike, their nostrils huge with secret scenting. They walked slowly and made no noise in doing so, trembling with each step in a way Whisper Bird could not decipher, whether from inbreeding or a terror from anticipation at every step of some unknown predator.

In the middle of the village square, an old man sat sightless atop the skull of some grotesque beast with three eyes and oversized fangs. He wore a beard of pale purple lichen, and the hair on his head swayed, made from tendrils of thin white mushrooms. His robes rippled, and Whisper Bird, shuddering, did not like to look upon them for long.

Whisper Bird came up beside him and said, “Do not be afraid. I seek only a man or a woman.” He projected the images into the old man’s mind. “Do you know them?”

The old man laughed. “Do you know who and what I am? With a flick of my fingers I could kill you. With a thought, your life extinguished.”

“Then proceed, certainly, if that is your desire,” Whisper Bird said. “But while we are exchanging useless threats: I could relieve you of the burden you call a life with the same effort it requires to stand here asking, again, do you know this man, this woman?”

“I am adept at sensing the invisible by now, creature,” the man replied, ignoring Whisper Bird. “I can see your outline in my mind, and you are neither man nor bird but some combination of both.”

“Do not call me creature,” Whisper Bird said.

“Well, then, Not-Creature,” the old man said, “did you know that you are a door?’

“Do not call me that, either,” Whisper Bird said. He was tired. His body feasted on sunlight and sunlight existed only in the other world, not here. Here there was only a dull, thick soup of almost-light. His thoughts had become slow and looping on the one half, fast and bright on the other.

“But you are a door, Not-Creature,” the old man said, laughing. “You have forgotten that. Even without my sight, I can see it: Embelyon, shining through you. As whither the Bloat Toad went, until recently the protector of this village.”

“You know of the Bloat Toad?” Whisper Bird asked, caught by surprise.

“A wise man might suspect I am the one who positioned him there as a watchdog against our enemies.”

“My belief in you is not strong,” Whisper Bird said. “In any part of your story.”

The old man ignored Whisper Bird, and said: “If you were to hold still long enough, I could escape this place through you. Leap through your body to the other side and come out breathing Embelyon’s air.”

“Even if what you say is true, old man,” Whisper Bird said, “you would arrive the same size as an ant, and with the same fate. Would you escape only to be stepped on by the first mouse that crossed your path?”

The old man laughed again. “True words. Ah, but for that glimpse of sunlight, for that glimpse of the surface, perhaps a few moments would be enough.”

“I will not hold still long enough, I promise you,” Whisper Bird said. The thought of his body as a door disturbed him more than he could express.

“Is it not painful to live thusly?” the old man asked.

“Next you will see a barbed feather through your heart if you are not careful.”

A fierce chuckle from the old man. “With such unkindly talk as that to spur me on, what choice have I but to use you as a door and then close you.”

Whisper Bird felt a pressure in his head, a ringing and an echo, and though neither he nor the man moved, a great battle went on between their minds. More than usual, he bridged two sides of a widening divide, being forced opened against his will. Armies of thought met on dark plains and the frenzied, purifying fire of war erupted in the space between them.

Dinner did not much resemble T’sais’s expectations of it. Two lieutenants escorted her, still spell-dazed and trapped in thoughts of deep obedience to the Captain, to a cabin lined with shelves of ancient parchments and books. The books had an unkind legacy, having been scavenged from exiled travelers trapped, mad, and dead, upon the broken glass below. (Much later, she would say to him, “You must have knowledge of many spells,” only for him to reply, “not all books are filled with spells, my love. Nor is a man wise to rely overmuch on them.”)

Thick round windows on the left side of the cabin revealed the sky in flashes of deep greens, blues, and purples. There was a hint of spice in the air that came from the moss growing through the hulls. Always, too, there came from above and through the timbers a sound both slow and calm: the measured hum that was the breathing of the mermelant.

Worn tables and chairs that had seen long and constant service stood in the middle of the cabin. A map of the dying Earth lay upon one such table, and next to that, another map with much of its surface blank, sketches and notes in the margin. This was a map of the UNDERHIND as the Captain knew it, she would later discover.

A third table held evidence of much industry and preparation in the form of a feast of strange fowl, along with vegetables and mushrooms grown in the ship’s hull. The savory smell nearly distracted her from the object of her unnatural adoration.

Once seated at this third table, the two lieutenants disappearing through an oval wooden door, the Captain released her from the reversed spell. Her heartbeat slowed and she could gaze upon the books, the chairs, the windows, without the need to always return her attention to the Captain.

Replacing his eye patch, the Captain said, “I will not take it off again so long as you never cast a second spell. Should you break this rule, I will have you thrown over the side. It is a long way to fall.”

“So I have been told,” T’sais said, utterly defeated. “I am thankful to you for that kindness.”

To which the Captain nodded, then replied, “And I am thankful you have accepted my invitation to this simple dinner, which now demands my full attention.”

Tucking a napkin into his shirt, the Captain said no more for a time as he availed himself of the pleasures of moist drumsticks and steaming potatoes, of crispy skin and boiled mushrooms. T’sais had to admit to herself that despite being plain it was delicious.

As to what else she should admit, T’sais was unsure. She knew not if she were all prisoner, part prisoner and part guest, or all guest — nor knew how much to tell of her purpose, especially with just one spell left to her name. So instead, she sipped from a wine both bitter and pleasant and watched the Captain unleash the force of his passions upon his meal. He was as different from Sarnod as anyone could be, and having had only knowledge of Sarnod for many years, the Captain both puzzled and fascinated her. That his men respected him was certain, and yet she had also seen that he laid no hand upon them nor spoke harshly to them.

Finally, the Captain finished to his satisfaction, wiping his mouth and allowing the plates to be cleared away.

“It is not often that we find such a stranger in our midst,” the Captain said. “Those not native to this place are sent here by the wizard Sarnod and driven mad by the glass long before we ever find them. So I am curious, you who have given your name as T’sais Prime, through what manner of intent do you come to us? Armed with spells, upon a sky raft, escorted by no less than four Twk Men. There is much in this that puzzles me. Puzzlement is sometimes my lot, but puzzlement that puts this fleet in danger I do not tolerate. Should I be concerned?”

During this speech, the Captain held her gaze much longer than necessary, in a manner she would come to desire. But in that moment, at that first dinner, she felt under assault. Should she lie? And yet, if she withheld the truth now, what was left for her?

She stared back into the Captain’s good eye and told him, “I seek Vendra, a woman whose appearance I share, and a man named Gandreel. I would show them to you by projecting both into your mind, but this you might believe to be a spell cast upon you.”

A smile from the Captain, a clear need to suppress greater mirth. “This is true — I might indeed consider such an unnatural intrusion to be a spell. Let us leave aside this question of what you seek. Why do you seek? Who, if anyone, compels you to seek?”

Now his regard had become so serious that T’sais, even released from the spell, gave herself over to the full truth.

“Sarnod,” she admitted.

Did his demeanor darken? She could not tell.

“And what will you do when you have found either or both?”

“I am to bring them with me and leave this place.”

“What if I asked you to take me instead?”

The Captain’s presence across the table from her seemed suddenly to have more weight, more need, and she was terrified.

“I could not do so, even if I wished,” she replied. “Any other would die on the journey. Sarnod has said it is so.”

What now would he do to her? And yet the Captain did nothing, except recede into his seat a little, visibly diminished. He sighed. “It is of no import. I could not leave my crew behind; I am all but wedded to them now.”

Her fear revealed as foolish, T’sais became angry, said, “As for questions, how then did you come to lose your eye?”

“Eh?” the Captain said. “I did not lose it. It was taken from me.”

“What replaced it?”

He ignored her, said, “Sarnod took my eye. And banished me with my crew to this place. Over long years now, we have birthed more mermelants and added to the fleet. Sought escape. Although it never comes.” For a moment, he looked old to her.

But she had her answer. Or thought she did. “Then I am now your prisoner.”

The Captain replied with no small amount of weariness. “Revenge is for fools — and revenge by proxy worse foolishness still. You are a tool, T’sais. I am more concerned by the thought of what this means. This life is already dangerous, and we know not where we are or where it ends, though I have pledged the rest of my days to an answer. Perhaps you are part of that answer…or merely more of Sarnod’s trickery.”

Something in those words brought T’sais close to tears, although she fought them.

“I did not mean to distress you without cause,” he said.

“My distress comes entirely from this place,” she said. “Have you not seen all of the likenesses of me in the broken glass?”

“They are difficult to dismiss.”

“They trouble me. I am just a reflection of a reflection, and not truly my self.”

“And yet,” the Captain said with sudden softness, his voice like a silken glove, “they have only made me more curious to encounter the image in the flesh.”

“The kindness of that does not make me the least less troubled,” she said. “But knowledge might. Do you know my lineage?’

“As it happens, I do,” the Captain said, “from the books that surround us.” He thus proceeded to tell her the story of T’sais and T’sain and all that had happened to them, of Turjan too, and his quest. He was a good storyteller, she thought as she listened, to be horrified and enthralled all at once, to want to know and yet not to know.

When he had finished and they sat once again across from each other and not within the ancient and mysterious world of Embelyon conjured up by the Captain, T’sais said in rising protest, “but I am nothing like what you describe.”

“Are you sure?” That one light-blue eye seemed determined to lay bare her very core with its intensity.

“Certain enough.”

Whereupon the Captain drew a blade from his boot and tossed it past her left ear. To her surprise, she caught it by the hilt as if born to it.

“That was luck,” she said.

Whereupon he hurled an apple at her, which she impaled upon the blade, felt the weight of it held there, red and wounded.

“Yes,” the Captain said. “Luck. If that word has some meaning other than the one I know.”

She frowned. “This I do not want. It is not me,” she said, and realizing it was true dropped the blade, apple bouncing across the floor.

The Captain reached across the table and took her hand in his. He had a callused hand, a rough hand, and she liked the feel of it.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it is enough to know what one has hidden within them. It need not be used to be of use.”

T’sais Prime stared at him as if he had said the one true thing in all the world.

The Captain rose, releasing her.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will join our crew and I will assist you in your quest. As you will assist in ours. For, alas, I know where the one you seek can be found.”

As Battle raged, ebbed and flowed, the pressure in Whisper Bird’s mind an intolerable weight, something inside of him began to burn where nothing had burned before, and he flung his voice into the void and cried out in anguish, and wrenched away the man’s influence.

“I am a door for no one!”

The sound of Whisper Bird’s voice was so loud that it made the slow folk around them seek shelter amid the discolored bones.

Before him, the old man slumped forward, sighed, and admitted to defeat. “I have studied much, I have studied long, for what else is there to do here, and yet it is not enough, I think.”

Whisper Bird saw that the conflict had burned off the man’s beard. The cloudy film had left his eyes, and he was staring right at and into Whisper Bird. Only now did Whisper Bird recognize the depth of the disguise.

“How could I not know earlier?”

Gandreel smiled. “Even you sometimes see only that which is visible.”

“Apparently. Or I am not myself.”

“What is it like now, in the tower?” Gandreel asked. “I remember it as a happy place, at times. When Sarnod was gone visiting the far reaches of his domain, Vendra and I would feast with the people of nearby villages. The tower conjured up for us never-ending food and wine. The music was most joyful.”

“It is as it ever was.”

“How is my brother?”

“Your brother has suffered a change of heart. He wishes for you to return with me.”

“Ha, how you jest!” Gandreel said. “I have lost Vendra because of him and been reduced to bending my sad environs to my will. My brother is vengeful and banishment is the least of his trespasses upon the Dying Earth. I have cast about for many ways to leave this place, but why should I return with you?”

Whisper Bird sighed. “I am but an unwilling servant with no special affection for Sarnod, who would avaunt to Embelyon and be whole and reunited with his family.”

“Will your family recognize you now?” Gandreel whispered, although all attempt at stealth seemed foolish after Whisper Bird’s great cry.

“I will make them recognize me,” Whisper Bird said, and shuddered, for he realized that they might never recognize him, not in the way he wished, or that they might already be dead.

Gandreel looked away, as if Whisper Bird had said something impossibly sad. “I will come with you,” Gandreel said. “And we will meet our fates together. I can see the portal leading back to Sarnod, but am only able to send things through it, not myself. This will not change”

“Was it you then who sent the Nose of Memory?” Whisper Bird asked.

Gandreel nodded. “Yes, in my stead, that it might change Sarnod’s mind. And, perhaps, from what you say, with success.”

“Be that as it may, we must now leave swiftly,” Whisper Bird said, who heard disturbing sounds fast approaching. “I have awakened much from slumber.”

“Yes, this is undeniably true, and more reason still to leave.”

Lurching toward them, from the far-above ceiling, came all the deadly creatures of that place, to which Whisper Bird’s cry had been as loud as the sound of a cliff falling into the sea.

Whisper Bird said the Spell of Unassailable Speed and led Gandreel out of that place.

For three months, two of them as lovers, T’sais Prime and the Captain, who one night whispered his true name to her, traveled across the land of Maddening Glass. For three months, they sought yet never found, with no hint of the woman Vendra but of her essential self always too many; she had only to look down to be aware of ghosts. For three months, she did not guess that the Captain might be delaying their arrival at her destination. There was much to distract her.

Alone together in bed after a frenzied conjoining, her head upon the Captain’s hairy belly, T’sais Prime would ask him, “Why should you have me when there are so many other me’s?”

And he would whisper more quietly than Whisper Bird, “Because you are the only T’sais Prime. This little fuzz upon the back of your neck that I like to kiss is yours alone. That look upon your face of amused puzzlement is yours alone. And this. And this,” and after awhile, again aroused and again satisfied, she would fall into deep sleep contented with the truth of his answers.

Finally, though, they had traveled so far and for so long that, even with the distraction of many daily perils, T’sais Prime could not ignore that whenever they began to approach the far eastern cliffs that lined the edge of their world, the Captain would murmur to his first mate, and by the next day those cliffs would be more distant, not less so.

Thus, eventually she asked that terrible yet tiny question, why?, and from the look in the Captain’s eye, she knew that now the Captain would take her there rather than risk lying to her again.

A week later — alone together in a small ship strapped to an infant mermelant — they came to a place where the broken glass below met a cliff that jutted out toward them. Carved upon the crumbling stone, obscured in part by vines, was a face mirroring T’sais Prime’s own.

“What is the meaning of this?” T’sais asked, turning to the Captain.

“She you seek lives here, within the stone house atop the cliff. Know what is real and what is not,” the Captain said.

“Why do you say that?” she asked as she embraced him.

“Some lives are illusion. Some places are more real thanothers,” the Captain replied. Thus saying, he took off his second eye patch and placed it upon her face. “Use it as you will.”

T’sais understood that he was talking past the cliff, past the stone house.

“You have twenty-seven freckles on your back,” the Captain said sadly as she left the ship for the cliff. “Your left wrist has a scar from where you broke it, bucked from a horse. Your hair smells like lavender in the mornings. You do not like the sound of bees but love the taste of honey.”

In the stone house, T’sais Prime found a woman who looked remarkably like her but for the graying of her hair. She sat upon a flaking gold throne in the middle of a great hall made entirely of starkest marble. Surrounding her were the remains of many skeletons sunken in amid many skulls, some still with flesh upon them. The smell in that place was sickly sweet, as of many attempts to rid it of another scent entirely.

With caution, T’sais Prime approached.

The woman looked up and gave her a wicked smile.

“I see myself approach,” she said, “and wonder why the mirror always moves, though I wish it to be still.”

“Are you Vendra?” T’sais asked as she threaded her way through the bones.

“And lo! the mirror talks,” the woman said. “It tells me my chosen name, not that given to me, although in truth I am always and forever my own reflection. There is no escape for that.”

“Why are there so many bodies here?” T’sais asked of Vendra. She hated the smothering silence, the sense of arriving in the aftermath of something gone terribly wrong.

“Them?” Vendra asked, with a wave of a beringed hand. “They escaped the broken glass to worship me — climbed up the cliff — but they bring the glass with them in their minds and they forget to eat and drink and they die all the same.”

“But why?” T’sais asked.

A hungry smile. “Because to look upon me is to look upon the glass itself — I am a memory of the Dying Earth, a living reflection, just like you. But no matter that they die; others follow. That is the way of shadows.”

“A spell?”

Vendra shrugged. “I cannot leave this hell of my own volition, but I have learned a few spells of my own from those who adore me. Spells built this stone mansion. Spells made the face in the cliff: a beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse…”

But T’sais had sensed the sting behind the nectar and removed the eye patch, so that after several moment T’sais’ urge to lie down and sleep among the corpses faded.

Vendra sighed, and her voice and intonations became normal again, and her gaze directed itself upon T’sais with unnatural intensity.

“I release you from your own spell, and willingly,” T’sais said, “but if you attempt a second, I swear I will throw you off the cliff. It is a long way to fall.”

Vendra took a long and shuddering breath. “Not that I’d kill a man willingly,” Vendra continued as if nothing had happened, unable to look at T’sais. “But you are not a double of a double in your purpose. Why are you here?”

T’sais almost did not tell her. “Sarnod has sent me to bring you back,” she said, although in truth, Vendra horrified her almost as much as the thought of returning to Sarnod as one of his servants.

Vendra laughed bitterly, her amusement like salt upon a wound. “Sarnod is a cruel man, but I suppose he had one kindness within him: he let me choose a name that did not remind me I was a reflection, even if I am now required by my ambition to embrace it.”

“And yet when he created me,” T’sais said, “he named me a reflection but told me naught of my origins, that I might think myself original.”

“One kindness,” Vendra repeated. “One kindness amid so much else.”

“He is much saddened by your absence,” T’sais added, although she did not know the truth of this. In truth, though, Vendra did not seem much like her. This observation made her heart beat faster, made her think of the Captain waiting in his ship. “What will you do?” he had said, and she had replied, “I do not know.”

Vendra’s gaze narrowed. “And Gandreel?” For a moment, Vendra looked younger and without guile.

“Sarnod forgives all. I am here to take you back. Gandreel is also sought.”

Vendra stirred on her rotting throne like something coming back to life. “I would like that,” she said, managing to sound weary and hopeful at the same time. “Even if it is untrue.”

“I have been given the power to send you back,” T’sais Prime said, “but I will not return with you. You can tell Sarnod he would have to kill me first.”

Vendra laughed. “My sad reflection, he wouldn’t kill you. He would just punish you by sending you here.”

After Vendra was gone, T’sais used her last spell to bring the stone house roaring down into dust, to release her own likeness upon the cliff face into faceless oblivion upon the broken glass below.

Then she rejoined the Captain on their ship.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

T’sais Prime smiled, and, handing him his eye patch, said, “You have seventeen scars on your body, four on your left arm, three on your right, two on your chest, three on your back, and the rest on your legs. Seven are from knives, the rest from all manner of spells and other weapons. You wear a beard to disguise your weak chin. You snore in your sleep like a wounded soul. You are as loyal and good as you are stubborn and pig-headed. There is nothing behind your second eye patch but a puckered scar.”

This answer seemed to satisfy the Captain deeply.

The bellowing of The Mouth brought Sarnod startled from a nap on his divan at the top of the tower. He had been dreaming of the cool, deep lake, a vision enhanced by allowing one dry hand to float within the ever-present bowl of water set upon the table next to him.

“They return from the UNDERHIND! They return!”

His heart a nervous patter, Sarnod rose quickly, gathered his green-blue robes about him, and descended to the Seeing Hall, there to stand, waiting, before the two eyes and now-silent Mouth. The sun through the great oval window shed unwelcome heat across the marble floor. The room, so large, felt small and stuffy as a trap.

The Mouth said, “Soon there will be an end to all of this,” in no way reassuring Sarnod.

A sound came as of a screaming across the world.

Up popped his brother Gandreel, looking spry and healthy in white robes, despite the spots on his hands, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Gandreel stared at Sarnod with a puzzlement that Sarnod knew must be mirrored on his own face. For now, seeing his brother, Sarnod felt no outpouring of familial love, no lessening of the discomfort from the hook in his heart. Instead, he felt worse, his sense of unease deepening.

And yet, perhaps this was just the shock of first impressions, made worse by the manner in which they had parted company. Thus thinking, Sarnod stepped forward to greet his brother, saying, “Welcome home, dear brother, after what I know has been a time of much sadness, confusion, and long exile.”

Gandreel’s frown deepened, and he flinched away from Sarnod’s embrace, saying, “Difficult enough to now meet the brother who was my brother, but you are not even Sarnod. Who are you then?” His tone hardened, and in his expression, Sarnod saw no hint of even a friend. “By what right do you come to be here?”

From off to Sarnod’s left came Whisper Bird’s voice, infused with unexpected emotion. “If not Sarnod, then to whom have I been enslaved all these long years?”

“Are you both mad?” Sarnod said, “Has the UNDERHIND robbed you of your senses? I am Sarnod. And you, Gandreel, you are my brother, who I admit I wrongly exiled. And, you, Whisper Bird, you must attend me now or risk great harm, for I am your master.”

“I will attend you, but what would you have me do?” Whisper Bird said, suddenly very close to Sarnod.

Before Sarnod could respond, The Mouth said, “Sometimes reflections become shadows.”

“This may be true,” Whisper Bird said, “but, how then is it relevant?”

The sound of shrieking came again. Up popped Vendra from The Mouth, as old now as Gandreel, but still somehow youthful. No familiar trailed behind.

“Now my attendance is doubled in complexity,” Whisper Bird said to Sarnod, who in Vendra’s presence ignored both him and the fading thought of Gandreel’s insult.

“Perfect, perfect Vendra,” he said, to test the effect of these words from his lips. A surge of panic overtook him, for he still felt nothing, nothing at all. No passion. No hatred.

Vendra, for her part, stared only at Gandreel, whose gaze toward her was as deep and loving as Sarnod’s was not. He took Vendra in his arms, his back to Sarnod, and they became reacquainted while Sarnod watched, hesitating in his intent.

“You are more beautiful than ever,” Gandreel told her.

“You are less handsome than before,” Vendra admitted, “but still more handsome than your brother by far. What shall we do, now that we are free?”

“I can play the lute,” Gandreel replied, with mischief in his eyes. “You can sing. We will return to the court of the lizard king, if he and it still exist.”

Vendra laughed, though she had missed his humor. “My love, would you rather perform for coins or rise powerful with our sorceries? I have learned much in the UNDERHIND, and I would put it to good use.”

Gandreel stared at her for a long moment, as if unsure what to make of her, then said, “What does it matter, so long as we are alive, together, and in the wider world?”, and although she seemed to agree, Sarnod could intuit her unhappiness with this question.

Now Vendra turned her attention to Sarnod, her lips curling into a kind of sneer as she stared at him from Gandreel’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her lover as if they would never again be apart.

“Sarnod’s servant did not tell me that a stranger now ruled the tower,” she said. “Who are you? You are not Sarnod.”

To hear this denial from Vendra, even as he felt so little for her somehow, terrified Sarnod. He shouted at her, at Gandreel, who had also turned to look at him, “I am Sarnod, and this is my tower, and you will obey me!” Yet even with this said, Sarnod felt like an actor in a play, and underlying his anger was an odd, slippery confusion. As if each time he claimed Sarnod’s name, it became less and less his own.

He would have made to bring a spell down upon them both, but The Mouth said, “There is little use in arguing with one whose mind is already made up.”

“Nor in serving one whose mind is not made up,” Whisper Bird said, to Sarnod’s annoyance.

A shrieking scream announced a third arrival.

Up came a tall and shadowy figure, wreathed in smoke. As the figure walked forward, the smoke fell away, the face was revealed to Sarnod as…Sarnod’s own!

Sarnod felt a lurch and dislocation deep inside. “What manner of trickery is this? Whisper Bird — is this your doing?”

“The only trickery in me is the doubling life I lead,” Whisper Bird replied. “I am not responsible for this.”

“Trickery?” Gandreel said. “Worse than that, to be lured here under promises from one who had no authority to honor them.”

This new Sarnod glanced at Gandreel, then turned burning eyes and an unpleasant flash of sharp white teeth upon old Sarnod. “Oh, there is nothing of trickery here. I am Sarnod and this is just the giant fish I hooked, ensorcelled, and left here in my stead, armed with nearly all my spells and memories, that none might take undue advantage of my absence. A fish. Nothing more. Or less.”

“Still your tongue!” Sarnod cried out. “You are an imposter!”

But this new Sarnod held up his hand, snapped, “Let your own tongue be still, fish, along with the rest of you! Did you think I would allow my own sorcery to be used against me? Or that you would keep your powers upon my return? Now that you have failed me as both guardian and guard, I decree this misspent year of Fish Misrule at an end!”

Sounds died in old Sarnod’s throat, and there he stood motionless, wordless, before them all, observer and observed only. His panic had no voice, his distress no mannerisms. A kind of madness rose up in him, with no release. Desperate searching: What memory is real and which imposed?

Said Whisper Bird, “I am unsure who to now attend, nor why.”

New Sarnod, turning to wary Gandreel and Vendra, now winced with a pain not physical. “I leave to consult on the subject of my errors in creation with others of my ilk, to correct the defects and deviations that led to her, for example”—and he pointed at Vendra—” and yet here I am, summoned back by knowledge of your presence in my domain, confronted once again by villains thought long exiled. Brother betrayer. Lover unconscionable. By what right do you think to escape exile?”

“Bring forth a spell,” Vendra warned, “and I shall condemn you to a worse hell, I swear it. I am not now released only to return to that place.”

Sarnod sneered. “Idle threat from an idle mind.”

“Brother,” Gandreel said, “let it not be this way.”

“The choice is not yours,” Sarnod said, taking a threatening step forward.

“Gandreel, steel yourself. We must kill Sarnod to be free,” Vendra said. “Both of them.” Even through his alarm, not-Sarnod saw how Gandreel extended to her a look as if she were as a stranger.

“We cannot kill them,” Gandreel said. “Sarnod, even in this state, is my brother.”

“Sometimes it’s a better mercy,” Vendra said.

“Enough!” Sarnod said. “Your betrayal is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday, and if the fish has one hook in his heart, I’ve two. The punishment for your betrayal,” Sarnod said, turning his full regard upon Gandreel and Vendra as not-Sarnod looked on powerless, “is death, as exile is clearly not permanent enough.”

So saying, Sarnod spoke the spell of Revolving Until Force Destroys and attempted to lift Gandreel into the air at great speed. But Gandreel met the spell with four words and an effort that made the veins in his neck bulge. The force of the spell disappeared through The Mouth, released Elsewhere. Gandreel dropped back to the ground from no small distance.

“Your petty sorceries shall not be enough to save you for long,” Sarnod promised Gandreel, who was ashen and bent to one knee.

Sarnod brought forth the spell of Internal Dissolution, to induce great writhing agony in both Gandreel and Vendra.

Even in the midst of her distress, however, Vendra made a sign, spoke words in a tongue unknown to not-Sarnod, and deflected Sarnod’s malice. The aftershock flung her into a pillar. She rose unsteadily with blood spackling her forehead.

“Stay your hand, brother!” Gandreel pleaded. “For the sake of mercy.”

“Mercy? May Kraan hold your living brains in acid!” Sarnod shrieked. “May dark Thial spike your eyes!” If ever his countenance had been imperious, now it was beyond imperial. “My mercy is that you should be carrion together, not apart, for animals to feast upon.” If there was any sadness in the look Sarnod gave Gandreel, the fish did not glimpse it.

Thus saying, Sarnod brought forth a third and more terrible spell, the spell of the Prismatic Spring, which would send many-colored stabbing lines at them, and deliver to them a cruel death. The stabbing lines coalesced above Sarnod’s head at the behest of his raised right arm, and began to glow and brighten, Gandreel and Vendra in desperation bringing forth weaker spells that together suspended but could not abate the formation of the lines.

The wizard laughed like a creature long deranged. “Alas, that you are bereft of allies here. For Whisper Bird is mine and so is the fish. And both while you fend off my spell shall I send against you to break this stalemate.”

So saying, Sarnod turned to not-Sarnod and, with a swift-curling motion of his left hand, cried out, “Let this foolish fish return to what it once was!” The hook left the heart of not-Sarnod, a release beyond imagining. He felt his human flesh melt away, replaced and bulwarked and expanded until he was again, as before, a gigantic fish with blue-green scales, balanced on its tail and fins, with gills that, tortured by air, longed for water. Fading human thoughts met old needs. He gasped and thrashed and tried to speak while the others, dwarfed, looked up at him in amazement.

“Now, fish, devour my enemies,” Sarnod said, “and you, Whisper Bird, employ your invisible weapons, and between you both, bring this struggle to a close.”

“As you wish, Sarnod,” Whisper Bird said, “but it may take some time for me to cross the floor from fish to reach the foe.”

Fish-Sarnod, meanwhile, propelled by ever-fading thoughts of life as the mighty wizard, confused and frightened and enraged, bellowed, “I am Sarnod!”

These words startled one and all in the Seeing Hall, even Sarnod. The stabbing lines faltered over his head. Gandreel stared at the fish from one knee. Vendra’s glassy, pain-filled gaze affixed him.

“The fish believes it’s you, my brother,” Gandreel said. “Thus perhaps you are truly an imposter of a kind.”

“Perhaps these thoughts can be enhanced,” Vendra said, concentrating strangely upon the fish. “For surely Sarnod’s spell is too far along for him to simply end it to confront new danger.”

Whereupon the fish, staring at these apparitions with their strange sounds, insisted one final time “I am Sarnod!” although it no longer knew the meaning of the words, and, thus saying, concluded all conflict and discussion with a mighty leap forward toward the dimly perceived source of its affliction. In two gulps, it swallowed surprised, protesting Sarnod, the half-formed stabbing lines above him lashing out in blind confusion, then lunged for the huge window, smashed through, and plunged into the cool, deep, sad-dark lake beyond, the waters like a second skin, while from behind it sensed the shock in its wake, all of Sarnod’s spells broken with his last smothered scream — Whisper Bird with a long sigh already returning to Embelyon, and, somewhere far-distant, T’sais sensing some fundamental change — and The Mouth’s further exultations and wisdoms muffled as the fish dove deeper and deeper still, into the thick silt of the lake bed, and as Sarnod’s final quest ended, sought only the oblivion of no-thought, no-dominion, and a feast of salamanders, in that place where the light from the dying sun could not penetrate except as a pale, fast-fading memory.