James D. McEwan

Chapter Five

The noise had ceased. His people were no longer calling to him, and in smothered darkness, he knelt before Arkana. All was still in the world. Under his cloak, shielded from the worst of the dust, the Seer dared to dream it was over. With the gentlest breeze ruffling the fabric, he understood—he had survived. Pride swelling his heart, he allowed himself a small smile. A tentative laugh. Arkana had come.

He stood, the cloak falling from his face. The dust was thick; an obscuring cloud to deny his view. A futile wave of his hand stirred the white mist. The Seer coughed, the dry powder irritating his lungs. He brought the cloak back to his face, and covering his mouth, he stumbled forward. Step after blind step, he walked along a path he didn’t recognise. Under his feet he felt compacted earth. Not cobbles. Perhaps the debris? Layers of dust to smother the street. A strange silence permeated all around. There should be cheering. Where was the jubilation?

‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

Again, he called out. Not even an echo came as a reply. There was an immense emptiness, as though shouting at the wind on a barren plain.

‘We are saved. Arkana has spared us. Come from your homes. Rejoice!’

‘Who is Arkana?’

A woman’s voice. Her words came from all directions, whispers of stone carried in the dust. The Seer turned around, seeking the woman. ‘Arkana. Our Lord.’

‘I know not, Arkana.’

Her voice was gentle, bereft of fear or joy. He did not know it. He asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘I am.’

He couldn’t see for the dust. Agitated and uncertain, the Seer turned in circles. He called out to the woman. ‘Show yourself. Show yourself to me!’

It was the noise of the ocean, of the tide across shingle. As water, the dust fell to earth. The Seer stared. The Rivyn was in the distance; at the shore, it was thick with a grey broth. A blue sky above. Parallel lines of ghostly white trees, some destroyed by fallen masonry, spread out from where he stood. Where was the city? The towers and temples? Irregular mounds of white and grey, as though snowfall across undulating meadows, were all he could see.

‘I am,’ the voice behind him said.

Spinning to face it, the Seer’s stomach convulsed, his heart in his mouth. He fell backwards, landing in a pile of soft chalk. It plumed into the air, only to drop back down as dry rain.

‘You!’

She stood before him. The Terrible Queen of Kalleron. Behind her, in the distance, the white gave way to green. Forested hills rising from lush pastures, and beyond them, the mountains in the north. Confusion addling his thoughts, the Seer scanned all around. The same sight greeted his eyes. Arkalla was gone. Raised into tombs of white dust. As he watched, he thought the ground moved; the hills fading in scale; the earth was absorbing itself. From under dissolving mounds, structures appeared. Here, a broken and twisted wooden staircase; there, an orphaned wooden wall. In the east, something strange. The pauper district. Innocuous among the white; brown shacks battered by the falling stone debris. Damaged, uninhabitable; yet still, they remained. A glimmer of hope to think that some would have survived. Dashed as the Seer imagined the lacerating splinters of wood as the buildings toppled down on top of them.

The Queen spoke.

The Seer, hearing only noise, stared at her. A beautiful thing. Not a woman; for she was not human, but she had a graceful physique. A jewelled and wonderful creature, she was neither short nor tall. A physicality he found difficult to gauge. She appeared tranquil and at peace; not at all wearing the aura of her name, except perhaps the circlet of glass upon her crown. A doubt settling in his mind. Where was the Kallerye army? Where were the machines that had sent destruction to his city: the cannons? The siege towers?

‘Where? Where are they?’

‘They?’

‘Your army? Your machines of war?’

‘I have none.’

The Seer shook his head. ‘You must. To wreak such destruction.’

‘I do not destroy.’

She spoke with conviction. The Seer, blinking his disbelief, raised his arm to the dust. ‘Everything is gone. Annihilated.’

She paced forward; the Seer scrambled backwards through the debris. The dust rose but fell back again as though it had weight. Was he dreaming such madness?

‘I am dead?’

‘Dead?’

He knew he ought to be scared. The cataclysm; perhaps the trauma had brought this heavy fog to his mind. Yet the Queen’s behaviour brought a sobering edge to the moment. Her questions, her denial.

‘Am I dead?’ he repeated.

The Queen stared; her oversized, blood ruby eyes swirled with unknown intelligence. Her finger raised to point; the Seer cowered behind his arm.

‘You exist,’ she said.

He frowned.

She turned her finger to point at herself. ‘I am. You are not. Are you death?’

‘I live, I think.’

Lowering her arm to the side, the Queen continued to stare at the Seer. ‘Kalle has spared you.’

‘Kalle? Blasphemy. Arkana has…’ He stopped. Realised what was now lost. Thousands of voices forever silenced in the dead city. Why would God spare just one life? Why not take him with the rest?

The Queen paced forward again. Once more, the Seer scrabbled away. The creature stopped her advance. ‘This is… fear?’

He stared. Her questions were nonsensical. What was she?

‘You fear me?’ she asked.

Across the tombs of dust and debris, beyond fields of ghosts, the Seer saw no other soul. No army. No machines of war. The Queen, impossible as it was to comprehend, had destroyed his city by will. And although she had taken everything, and her deed was unconscionable and evil; she appeared as innocent as a child. Whatever fear he held, it dissolved away.

His courage returning, the Seer rose to his feet. Surveying the destruction with disbelieving eyes, he held his horror in check. It was all gone. His city, his people. And his God? Why had Arkana stayed silent? What was the purpose of this cruelty? He found one sole reason to keep his faith from further dimming.

He said, ‘Arkana has spared me; he gives me the strength to face you. I have no fear.’

She spoke her reply. Incredulous, he thought he must have misheard.

‘What did you say?’

‘You need not fear me; I mean you no harm.’

This creature. This power before him. He laughed in her face; couldn’t control the flood of emotion coursing through his soul. The Seer doubled over. His laughter turning to tears, and tears to anger, he rallied and faced his foe.

‘You’re a murderer! A maniac! A monster!’ Infused by hatred, he paced forward, halting in disbelief as the Queen paced backward. Was that fear? He grinned; a power, not as any he had known, gripping his soul. Arkana had come to him to smite the evil heathen. He moved toward her, his tongue cursing the Queen’s name.

‘Stop.’

Her word. Spoken with softness. What followed was not. The Seer fell to the ground; a pressure upon his body as though an avalanche collapsing upon him. Screaming in agony, contorting in terror, and with darkness seeping into his periphery, he called out.

‘Please, stop. No more!’

‘I am. I cannot stop.’

‘You’re killing me!’

In an instant, the pressure was gone. As sudden as it had appeared, everything was once again serene. Curled up and shaking on the dusty ground, the Seer stared up at the Queen.

‘I do not kill,’ she said.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, the Seer wiped a mess of chalk onto the back of his hand. Deep breaths to control the sobbing, he composed what remained of his shattered sanity.

‘You have killed everything.’ Tortured by the thought; afraid to say it aloud, the Seer whispered instead. ‘You have killed God.’

‘I take my own, nothing more.’ Her hand pointed to the remnants of his city. ‘I am stone. I am Earth. All of this is me. It is not yours to covet.’

He had thought of her as the Queen. But she was so much more. Now he understood. She was the elemental Earth. The impossible was true. Nobody believed Kalle’s lies; none thought the self-declared immortal had captured the Earth. But here she stood; the brutal hammer held in Kalleron’s devious hand. She was as real as the devastation and death all around.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why kill for him? How can Kalle control you?’

‘I am. I cannot be controlled. You are not. He controls you.’

A shake of his head. ‘No. He commands you.’ The Seer pointed to the rubble. He spoke with passion, shaking as he did. ‘He made you do this. You kill for him.’

The Seer expected a reply, but the Queen became still. Moments passed, and the only sound was the wind scouring the streets. He looked around and saw colour. Shades of vibrant green and silvery brown. The trees; the dust had fallen from the leaves and branches. It was life among the stone ruins of Arkalla. He understood; she had claimed it all back. She had come for her own.

‘My god,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what you do. Do you?’

Silence.

The Seer rose to his feet. He approached, wary of the unnatural power she wielded without thought. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

Nothing.

Another step. Another. Where was she? Within reach, she appeared absent from her sublime form. His hand moved to her face, an irresistible urge to touch the countenance of the Old Gods. He said, ‘Earth?’

Her head moved to stare at his hand. He froze when she spoke. ‘I am curious.’

‘Of?’ The Seer, his hand still extended, held his nerve.

‘You.’

‘Me?’

‘He takes them all; the humans. Why Kalle has spared you, I do not know.’

The Seer brought his hand to his body. The Queen’s ignorance was a disappointment. A weakness in her immortal character. He shook his head. ‘Kalle is not my god. He does not control me. He rules his people by fear and sends you to do what he can’t.’

‘I have seen his truth.’

‘No.’ The Seer struggled to remain calm. ‘He has you fooled. Kalle the Golden is a liar. A manipulator. He is the greatest at doing the very worst that men can do. He deceives to control. And he…’ The Seer shook his head, finding it hard to believe his own conviction. ‘He controls you.’

The Queen appeared adamant. ‘No. I am. He controls you.’

The Seer raised his arms to the side. ‘Then let him take me now.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Asking Kalle to take my soul. I offer my life to his glorious name.’

The Queen stared. The Seer waited. Grains of the hourglass trickling in time. A Kallerye clock ticking its mechanical chime. With a twitch of impatience in his arms, the Seer dropped them to his sides. A new vision appeared; a clarity of thought, of nothingness and the end.

He said, ‘Kalle has no power over me. But you do. You can fix your mistake; what you have failed to finish. Kill me. Kill me now and complete his work.’ It wasn’t a bluff. His world had been an illusion; the elementals were real. Everything he had known and loved, all his devotion and servitude; it was all for nothing. ‘Kill me. Give me peace and send me to my own.’

‘Give me your hand.’

With hesitation, the Seer offered it to her; his palm to the sky. Curious, he watched as she held hers to the side. From the ground, shaking itself free of the dust, a shiny black stone appeared. Stark against the white. It ascended toward her fingers, and as though ripe fruit, she plucked it from the air.

‘To cease to be; this is your wish?’

He looked at his dead city and nodded. ‘Yes. Kill me, as you have the rest.’

‘I do not kill.’

Ready to protest her games, the words forming on his lips; the Queen interrupted him.

‘My sister is not as I. She will grant what you seek.’

‘Sister?’

‘Fire. Find her, and she will give you what I cannot.’

The Queen dropped the stone onto his open palm and took a pace backwards. Mesmerised by its simple beauty, he stared at the black gem. Was it Obsidian? Warm to the touch, it was pleasant against his skin. A sound of the ocean distracted him; a wave across the shore. Closing his fingers around the gift, he looked to the Queen. She was gone. Nothing left but dust scouring the empty streets. Resurrected in the breeze, billowing clouds were blowing across the land. Alone in his dead city, the Seer opened his hand and stared at the Queen’s offering. She had called her sister by name: Fire. The Seer knew of the old texts, but he had dismissed them long ago to choose Arkallon’s other faith. With the Queen’s gift, the old knowledge returned to his mind. Secrets of Fire, and her other name. The Great Destroyer.