Gods & Mortals Read online

  ‘You could try getting up early every day, organising the household, seeing the children are cared for and that our finances do not collapse while you are riddling with fell beings,’ she said. ‘There is purpose there.’

  He harrumphed.

  ‘I am teasing you, my love.’ She yawned.

  ‘I am without goal or cause. I must find out what it is I want,’ he said. ‘Then I shall be satisfied.’

  ‘What of the Realms’ End? You have never been there. It is said all knowledge can be learned where the realms cease to be.’

  ‘A myth,’ he said. ‘I determined long ago that it does not exist. The Realms are vast, perhaps infinite. I have travelled far, but never seen it. Every text I read suggests it is only a story.’

  ‘Then be content with what you have, my darling.’

  ‘Although I have much, the concern dogs me that there is more, if I but knew what to look for,’ he said worriedly. ‘I risk missing my greatest achievement.’

  ‘Surely the gods could help,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask them?’

  She fell asleep. Sanasay Bayla could not. A new idea had come to him complete, and he set about planning its execution.

  His wife probably meant for him to go to the temples, and consult with the priests there. But Sanasay was not like other men.

  In Andamar’s Temple of Teclis the Wise, there was a tower of marble so slender only one person could climb the winding stair. As the stair neared the peak, it grew so narrow that the climber must proceed sideways. Finally, it opened via a thin hole onto a platform big enough for a single person to sit. On every side was a dizzying drop. The tiniest slip would condemn a man to a long fall and a swift death. Sanasay could have cast a spell upon himself, or used one of his marvellous devices, or conjured a great beast to fly to the top of the tower, but the gods dislike those that cheat.

  He crept onto the pinnacle. Wind tugged at him as he unwrapped his mat and laid it on the moist stone, careful not to drop the sacred objects rolled within. When they were laid out in the proper manner, he sat cross-legged in the middle of the pinnacle. He poured a single drop of mona nectar into a silver cup, whispering the necessary incantations, and drank it back. The bitter liquid made his tongue burn, but the sensation quickly passed, and his mind buzzed as it moved to a different plane.

  Sanasay Bayla slipped into a deep trance.

  When he opened his eyes, he was walking upon clouds in a world with five suns. A nearer radiance turned the clouds to gold, forcing his eyes into slits. When he opened them, there was a tall figure not far ahead, made from purest light. His features were similar to man but he was not of his race. His garb was outlandish.

  ‘Great Teclis!’ called Bayla, and fell to his knees on the clouds.

  ‘Sanasay Bayla,’ said Teclis. ‘The quester after knowledge. You are brave to seek out the gods. I and my brother have watched you with much interest.’

  ‘Great Teclis,’ said Bayla, ‘who is the god of wisdom and arcane secrets. I beseech you, in all my–’

  ‘Hush now, Bayla,’ said Teclis in amusement. ‘I know why you look for me. You wish to know if Realms’ End is real, and how you might get there if it is.’

  Bayla was not surprised the god could see into his thoughts. Teclis was the greatest wielder of magic in all the realms.

  ‘You have hunted for this place before, but gave up,’ said Teclis.

  ‘I convinced myself it did not exist. Foolishly, perhaps.’

  ‘I admire your dedication to your art, Sanasay Bayla,’ said the god. ‘I have known only a handful of your species able to learn so much of the ways of magic. But let it be known to you – too much knowledge is dangerous.’

  ‘You warn the forewarned,’ said Sanasay humbly.

  ‘I will tell you, for your motives are pure and your achievements many. Realms’ End exists.’

  Bayla felt an uplifting in his heart. ‘How can I go there?’

  ‘There is a gate in the circling mountains that bound your land, those that no man has crossed. The gate leads into a tunnel that takes a route not of this plane. On the far side, Realms’ End is to be found.’

  ‘I will set out immediately!’ said Bayla.

  ‘There are two things you must know. The gate is locked, and there is no key. Only he who can forge the unforgeable can furnish you with one. On the far side is a monster which only death can kill. Find a way to overcome these obstacles, and Realms’ End will be open to you.’

  ‘I thank you, my lord,’ said Bayla gratefully.

  ‘Sanasay,’ said Teclis. ‘Be warned. This quest will consume you. You will discover your heart’s desire, but you may not like what you find. Perhaps it would be best for you to remain at home.’

  ‘I cannot know what it is until I see it,’ said Bayla sadly. ‘Though the risk is great, I must witness it for myself.’

  ‘Then go with my blessing,’ said Teclis. There was a clap of thunder. Bayla fell through the clouds. He landed hard in his meditating body. It rocked dangerously as he awoke, but he did not fall.

  So it was he set out on his next task.

  His wife pleaded with him not to go. The Iron Temples of the duardin were many years of travel away, and there was no guarantee its guardians would allow him within the precincts.

  ‘I must!’ he said. His young children clustered around their mother, and clutched at her skirts, but he was blinded by anguish, and could not see their tears. ‘What if I turn away, and never realised my full potential?’

  For six years he travelled, through many Realmgates and over hundreds of lands. Finally, older, scarred and weary, he came to the Iron Temples in Chamon’s Ferron Vale.

  ‘You cannot enter,’ said the temple guard, when Bayla had stated his case. ‘This is sacred ground, dedicated to Grungni. No manling may go within.’ So the conversation began, and so it continued, developing into bargaining, then arguing, but the duardin remained unmoved, and they would not let him inside.

  Bayla went high into the mountains, where he could overlook the carved peaks and smoking forges of the Iron Temples. Powerful runes glowed in the rock and metal of its walls. For all his sorcerous ability, the wards of the temple were forever denied.

  Miserable, Bayla descended the mountains into forests of iron-thorned trees. By a wall of rock aglitter with veins of ore, he made his camp and settled down for a night of brooding, staring into the flames of his campfire.

  ‘Won’t let you in, lad?’ said a gruff voice.

  Bayla started. Without his noticing, a duardin had taken a seat on the far side of the fire. His face was hooded, but from the shadows protruded a white beard of impressive length, and he smoked a pipe of bone so ancient it was polished smooth and stained dark with use. Bayla knew enough of Grungni’s folk to recognise an elder when he saw one.

  The stranger chuckled at Bayla’s reaction. ‘Sorry, lad, I have a habit of creeping up on people. My apologies. Do you mind if I share your fire?’

  ‘Of course you may,’ said Bayla, who was wise to the ways of strange encounters. ‘Please, sit. I have a small measure of ale and food that I would gladly share.’

  ‘Well!’ the duardin said in appreciation. ‘Hospitality like that in the wilds, eh? Very good, very, very good.’

  Bayla handed over his ale skin, which the duardin drained to the last drop, and gave over his food, which the duardin shared generously. They ate in companionable silence. When they were done, the duardin sniffed deeply. ‘Not bad. Tasty. I long for a crumb of chuf, but they don’t make that in this time and place.’ He fell silent a space and twiddled with his pipe, lost in his memories. ‘So then,’ he said brightly. ‘What’s a manling like you want with the smith god of my people?’

  ‘I seek a key to the door in the mountains that will lead me to Realms’ End,’ Bayla said. He blinked in surprise. He had not intended to reveal his purpos
e, but there were the words, tripping off his tongue!

  ‘Ahhh, well, Grungni can be a prickly sort. I have known him for, well…’ The duardin laughed again, a sound like rough stones being rasped together. ‘A very long time. Tell you what, why don’t you borrow mine?’

  The duardin reached into his dirty jerkin and pulled out a slender key with five pointed teeth, three on top, two on the bottom, upon a leather thong. His massive fingers should never have been so deft, but he undid the tiny knot in the necklace easily and tossed the key across the fire. Bayla caught it in surprise.

  ‘There you are, lad.’

  ‘Is it real?’ Bayla asked in amazement. ‘I was told there was no key in all existence!’

  ‘An aelf tell you that, did he?’ said the dwarf sourly. ‘Don’t trust them. Besides,’ he added slyly, ‘he never said anything about outside existence, did he?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Bayla said.

  ‘A fair bargain for your kindness, and that ale.’ The dwarf stood up and brushed off his knees. ‘Right then, got to be going. Things to do, people to sneak up on unawares.’ He laughed at his own jest.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Bayla.

  Deep in the stranger’s hood, eyes twinkled. ‘Just a traveller, lad, much like yourself.’ With that, he went into the night, and disappeared.

  Bayla could not know if the key was genuine or not, but he had no choice. By the same tortuous route, the mage returned to Ghyran. The road to the mountains took him far from his home, but he was eager to complete his quest.

  For a further three years he searched for the gate. Only by questioning the local inhabitants carefully did he glean an inkling as to its whereabouts, and even then he wasted many months in fruitless search. Strange lights shone on the far side of the mountains that no mortal had ever crossed, tantalising him unbearably.

  Eventually, by chance it seemed, he came across a door barely big enough to admit him, set high in a cliff-face. With trembling hands, Bayla slid the key home. It fit perfectly and turned smoothly, as if recently oiled. The door swung inward, and Bayla squeezed inside. At first he had to wriggle his way down a tiny tunnel, but it soon opened up into a wide, well-made passageway, with walls of fine masonry. By his magic he lit his way. Soon after his entrance, Bayla’s ears were ­troubled by a thundering rumble, and a hot wind that went in and out – the breath of the monster that guarded the way. Several days of travel later, during which Bayla lived off bitter mosses and water dribbling down the walls, the tunnel opened up into a giant cave. At the centre was chained a wolf of impossible size. Its head was as large as a cathedral, and rested on paws big as houses. Four thick chains ran from its collar, securing it to anchors set in the wall. All through Bayla’s walk the noise of its breathing had become louder. In the cave it howled like a hurricane. It looked asleep, but as he approached, eyes big as pools opened and stared redly at him.

  ‘You cannot pass,’ it said. ‘None can, whether god or mortal. It is the law, of which I am prisoner and guardian both.’

  ‘Then I shall kill you,’ said Bayla.

  The wolf gave out a howling laugh that buffeted the mage back and forth.

  ‘You can try.’

  Bayla had come prepared with every spell of death he could muster. Raising his arms, he flung back his head, and called down the most potent slaughter-curse in the realms.

  The magic released was primordial and deadly. It screamed as Bayla drew it from the rock of the mountain and fashioned it into a spear of crackling power. With a roaring incantation, he cast the energy at the wolf.

  The magic hurtled at the beast, piercing it between the eyes. The wolf cocked its eyebrow, unharmed. ‘You will have to do better than that,’ it said.

  Sanasay Bayla tried. Nothing worked. The wolf was impervious to the direst magics known. Frustrated, Bayla even attempted to stab it in its massive paw with his dagger. The metal shattered. The wolf ­grumbled with mirth.

  ‘I have not had such entertainment in many ages,’ it said.

  Bayla glared at it. ‘Let me pass,’ he said.

  ‘I shall not,’ said the wolf.

  ‘Then you leave me no choice.’ Bayla pulled out a crystal phial, full of a dark liquid. Defiantly looking the wolf in the eye, Bayla threw down the stopper and drained the bottle. ‘Poison,’ Bayla said. ‘Now we shall see who has the last laugh.’

  He fell down, dead.

  The world changed. Bayla’s soul rose from his body. From rocks that now glowed with inner light rose screaming ghosts, luminous scythes in their hands. They rushed at him, fleshless jaws wide, swinging their weapons for the thread that joined Bayla’s body to his soul.

  Bayla had no intention to die completely. As the cavern receded from him at tremendous speed, he fought against the gatherers of souls with his magic, keeping them from severing his connection to the Mortal Realms. Through planes inhabited by the strangest things they sped, thundering down through veils of layered realities towards the Realm of Shyish, where the abode of mortals abut those places beyond even the gods’ ken.

  Bayla burst through a cavern roof, the gatherers swooping around him. Shyish revealed its dreary landscapes. He flew over shadowy villages and moonlit meres, vast bone deserts and forests of trees that shivered with the sorrow of imprisoned souls. Parts of this land were roofed in stone, and from holes gnawed through it tumbled an endless rain of corpses, the dead of many realms come to take their final rest.

  Ahead there was a mighty necropolis, a city of pyramids and bone towers whose edges crackled with a nimbus of soul light. The gatherers redoubled their attacks, their wails draining the warmth from Bayla’s being, their scythes only ever a moment from reaping his soul.

  The battle continued right to the gates in the city’s wall of bone. Bayla halted. A man stood there, cadaverous, but alive. With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the gatherers of souls, leaving the disembodied essence of Bayla alone.

  ‘You are dead, and yet your thread is not cut,’ said the necromancer. ‘Why do you resist the inevitable?’

  ‘I am Sanasay Bayla, of Ghyran. I die because I wish to speak with the Lord of Death.’

  The necromancer smiled, exposing black teeth. ‘Be careful what you wish for, Sanasay Bayla. My lord has been expecting you.’

  Bayla was led through streets of bone and dark granite where the dead were legion. The recently dead were engaged in the never-ending task of expanding Nagash’s city, heaping bone and fashioned stone into new buildings. Skeletal warriors tramped the streets in rattling cohorts. Vampire lords rushed by in dark carriages. But though the city was huge, and populous, there was not a voice to be heard. The dead executed their duties in silence but for the hideous clattering of bones that echoed from every street.

  They went to a black pyramid whose sides gleamed like mirrors, and whose capstone was of pure wyrdstone. Deep inside, past numberless deathrattle regiments, Bayla was brought into a lofty hall. There sat Nagash, Lord of Death, surrounded by the ageless pomp of his court. Ghostly handmaidens circled him, singing mournful songs.

  ‘Who dares to tread the road of death to Shyish, and yet is not dead?’ said Nagash.

  Bayla’s soul stepped forward boldly, the thread of his mortal life held lightly in one hand. ‘It is I, great one, Sanasay Bayla of Andamar in Ghyran. I have come to seek an audience.’

  Nagash’s bony jaws clacked mirthlessly. ‘To beg a favour, I think. What do you seek?’

  ‘I have sought many years to find passage to Realms’ End,’ he said. ‘I have come close to fulfilling my quest, but my way is barred.’

  ‘Afrener, the wolf at the door,’ said Nagash. ‘He keeps guard.’

  ‘I was told only death can kill him. You are death. Strike him down for me, so that I might look into the spaces beyond reality, and discover my true purpose in this life.’

  Nagash stared at him with empty eye sockets. �
�Sanasay Bayla, I know you as I know all mortals. All creatures pass through my domain sooner or later, and echoes of them are here forever. I never grant mortals favours, but for you I will make an exception, if only because you are a mage of awesome power. Agree to serve me for five hundred years and five days after your death, and I shall grant your desire, and slay this beast.’

  ‘And what after five centuries?’

  ‘You shall pass from Shyish, which for all its affinity with the beyond is but a Mortal Realm, into the Unknown Countries past my borders, as all souls ultimately must.’

  Bayla knew better than to make foolish promises to a god, but he was desperate. ‘Agreed!’ he said.

  ‘Then go, and do not forget our bargain,’ said Nagash. He tilted his head to one side. Witchfire flickered in his eyes. ‘It is done. But be swift, such a beast cannot remain dead for long. Awake!’

  Sanasay Bayla returned to life with a moaning breath. He rolled onto his side, his restarted heart banging painfully behind his ribs, and vomited out all trace of the poison in his body. When he was done, he rose shakily, and looked upon the still corpse of Afrener. Mindful of Nagash’s words, he hurried past. Shortly past the beast’s reeking hindquarters, he came to the land of Realms’ End.

  What can be said of a place that defies mortal comprehension? Few have seen the Realms’ End, and all who have have witnessed it differently. Bayla saw the far side of the mountains, sweeping down from unscaleable peaks to a short plain of bare rock. The horizon was close, the space beyond boiling with crimson and gold lights. There was no sky.

  Full of relief that he would soon know his purpose, Bayla began a staggering run towards the edge of the worlds.

  It was not far. He stopped where the land did, and peered down into a maelstrom of noise and fury. Amid roaring networks of lightning, lands were being born, coming into being fully formed, with forests, rivers and cities upon them, and no doubt peoples and histories too. They began as small floating islands, but grew quickly as more land solidified from the energy around them. Enlarged, the worldlets sank under their own weight, spinning slowly back towards the edge of Ghyran. At some preordained depth, they vanished in a burst of light, and so the process continued. Three lands were born while Bayla watched.