Worlds Without End

PART I
1

Across the frozen planes of time I've come. Through fires brighter than a thousand suns. Through darkness. Through the Void. Over the range of the universe I've come.

I've come for you, Aina.

To take you again into my sweet embrace and show you wonders from the darkness of your soul. Then I'll make you yearn for death while I rip open your mind and lay waste to everything you hold dear.

But all that will come later. For we have centu- ries, no, millennia to play our games. Come to me now and let me show you… let me show everything I have to offer.

Last night I dreamt again of Ysrthgrathe.

And when I awoke, the stench of death and cor- ruption still lingered in the air.

Through my bedroom window moonlight poured cold and blue. I rubbed my eyes, trying to convince myself that it had only been a dream. That the de- mons lurking in the shadowed comers were in my imagination. A conjuring of my mind only.

I shoved the covers away, letting the night air send gooseflesh across my arms and down my legs. Here by the sea on the northern coast of Scotland the weather stays chill and damp all year long. It had never bothered me before. But tonight, I felt the cold straight to my bones. All the better to keep me awake, I thought.

My feet shrank as they touched the cold bare floor. Grabbing my thick robe, I wrapped it tightly about me. It was made of real, heavy, woven cash- mere fabric, not that horrid synth stuff they sell nowadays.

I went downstairs and made myself some tea. It warmed my body, but I still felt chilled. I wanted to read, but I hated using the foul contraption Caimbeui had given me. The vidscreen gave me a headache and I could never bring myself to have cyberware implanted. Bodmod, cyberjunk, tickle- wires-whatever they're calling them this week.

Hadn't I done enough of that sort of thing to my- self in the past?

I shuddered as I thought about Ysrthgrathe.

Too soon, I thought. It's too soon.

But I knew it wasn't. The very thing I'd sought to prevent seemed to be happening. That is, if dreams could be trusted.

I dumped the tea into the sink and went and pulled a bottle of scotch from the pantry and splashed a hefty portion into a tumbler. It burned going down and brought tears to my eyes. I suppose the elves in Tir na n6g would be offended at my traitorous choice of beverage, but frag them. I hadn't been on speaking terms with either Tir for quite some time.

But what to do about the dreams?

Perhaps the shamans in NAN would be willing to listen. But then I remembered the dustup we'd had before the Great Ghost Dance. They hadn't been too happy to hear my predictions about the magical fall- out from all the blood they'd planned to spill.

Idiots. If only they'd listened. I suspected then that this would be the result. Like bees to honey, it would draw the creatures again. And we'd had no time to plan. To prepare. This time the monsters from the past would lay waste to the whole world.

Are you waiting/or me? Have you been waiting for me? Does your flesh crave my caress? Do you remember? Remember the centuries of pain and humiliation?

Do you know how I have missed you?

The sound of his voice echoed inside me.

I went to the thermostat and pushed it up. To hell with the regs about fuel waste, I thought. A century ago, Caimbeui had given me a Renoir. I liked to look at it when I felt like this. Afraid and lonely in the dark hours before dawn when the past spreads before me like a black spill of ink.

I flicked my hand and the illusionary wall I'd created long ago vanished. It was a simple enough spell, though in the past few centuries there'd been little enough magic to go around.

That was changing.

The last few years-a human life span-just a drop to me-had seen such a burst of magical en- ergy and growth. The Awakening, they called it on their ugly little trids. Oh, I know Dunkelzahn found this brave new world far too fascinating, but he'd 16

been dreaming for more than five thousand years. What would he know of it? He hadn't seen what the world had become.

I stepped into my room. The walls were win- dowless and covered in heavy oak paneling. Art- work and bookcases covered every available space, crammed full of everything I found precious. Centered on the north wall was the Renoir.

It was of a young woman and a little girl sitting on a balcony. The woman was wearing a brilliant red hat and she had a face of such sweetness that just looking at her almost hurt. I remembered when he'd painted it. A beautiful copy used to hang in the Chi- cago Art Institute, but I think it might have been de- stroyed during the riots in 2011.

So much beauty was lost then.

Here in my secret room I kept the relics of so many dead worlds. Of course dead worlds are all around us. They're just so much a part of our lives that we stop thinking about it. In London, five- hundred-year-old buildings snuggle next to glass columns built yesterday. Asphalt poured in nineteen- fifty is worn down by the wheels of a thousand rigs never dreamed of until five years ago. And the sweetmeats dance in nightclubs with rags on their backs sewn in sweatshops during the eighties. But that was just a momentary madness. A fad. A pass- ing whimsy of fashion.

The things I'd distract myself with at times like that.

And here too were memories from a place and time out of mind. A place as unreal to this world as any trideo fantasy. What possessed me to recreate what I could remember? That time was done. Over. Dust.

Right.

Then why were there pictures painted by artists far greater than I, depicting places described by me? Why had I done it? Why had I asked Francisco Lucientes to recreate those nightmare visions? What madness had I unlocked from his mind? For surely he saw them-saw the demons.

His painting leaned against the wall, face down. I reached out and turned it around. Curators from ev- ery museum of the world would kill to have this lost treasure. Could they have understood it came not from Goya's demented vision, but from mine?

It showed a forest of such expanse that it fled from the viewer's sight back into a ghostly oblivion. Standing in the foreground were two people: a male and a female. She was human, slight of build with a curious face. He was an elf, tall and lithe with dark hair and a small goatee. Growing from his body were thorns.

The skin was puckered where the thorns protruded from his flesh. They ran across his face and showed as stark points across the back of his hands. A thou- sand slashes rent his tunic, letting the thorns escape.

I reached out and almost touched their faces with my fingertips.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks as hot and warm on my face as the blood that once fed that great forest. Blood poured from the wounds of my people.

But that wasn't the worst of what had been in that time.

My own complicity. Could such acts of evil ever be forgiven? Or forgotten?

I tried to push these dark thoughts away. But the dream wouldn't let me go. Wouldn't let me forget. I'd let myself become distracted by worldly matters. I'd forgotten why I was here.

I swallowed the last of the scotch. A pleasant heat had settled into my limbs. Perhaps now I would be able to sleep. With a simple gesture the illusionary wall was once more in place. I went upstairs. After closing the drapes, I settled under the quilts and comforters. But I couldn't bring myself to turn off the light. A childish notion, but it gave me some comfort.

And small comfort was all I would have for a long time to come.

A vast forest stretches out before her. Green and lush. Beautiful and deadly. And there are secrets. Terrible secrets. She steps forward and feels that she is sinking into something. Looking down, she sees her foot being swallowed by a pool of blood.