The Dread was the void. The void was the Dread. It folded back in on itself, its sense of time and space contracted to the here and now as it faced a foe demanding its undivided attention.
Ashen-Shugar was suspended in time, in a bubble of reality, like a fly in amber, as he gripped the Dread.
The two of them spun down out of Pug’s sight.
Then he felt the vortex.
The hole in the realms was sucking everything around him into the void. Now came the end, for he had to plug that breach. Pug reached out with the power channelled to him and fed it directly into the void, accelerating the collapse of all the matter surrounding it.
The world started to fall in on top of him.
Magnus felt the magic he was funnelling ripped out of his hands, and started hearing screams of pain. The ruby dome imploded down into the ground, sucking every remaining Dread backward, as if they had been yanked with incredible speed by an invisible cord carrying them back whence they had emerged.
The sound was the sound of a thousand earthquakes, a rumbling so deep that it drowned out the thunder from the approaching storm clouds above. Rain came down in sheets and lightning flashed across the sky, and everywhere Magnus looked he saw magicians and priests fallen and writhing in pain, or lying still in death.
The dragons fled, launching themselves skyward on massive wings that cracked the air. The wind from their wings buffeted those still standing and knocked back even the most formidable moredhel warrior or taredhel Sentinel.
Magnus fell to the ground as it heaved under him like a thing alive. He rolled on his back and scrambled to get away from the terrible vortex storm that was building energy by the minute. He turned and saw that those who were able were fleeing up toward the higher meadow. Over his shoulder, he saw the moredhel chieftain Arkan on the ground, unable to get his feet under him. Magnus reached out and Arkan found himself rising into the air, immune to the strong wind being created by the sucking energy of the vortex.
With a motion of his hand, Magnus moved the warrior to where Miranda stood, next to Liallan and a knot of her warriors. Nearby stood Calin and Calis, along with two stunned but still standing Spellweavers. With a single wave of his hand, Magnus indicated it was time for her to take them to safety, and in a blink Miranda and more than a dozen moredhel, eledhel, and taredhel were gone.
Magnus saw that Nakor and Ruffio were also missing, so he assumed they had followed instructions and were ferrying people away. He felt the energy field around him growing in intensity and he reached out mentally to see if he could contact his father, and encountered a strange emptiness, not as if his father was gone, but rather as if he was somewhere close but Magnus couldn’t reach him.
Magnus realized that in all the planning his father had done for this moment, he hadn’t anticipated how the lattice of magic would be severed, and how much damage this spell might cause. They had planned on utilising the energy Magnus no longer controlled to plug the vortex, pulling down mountains if needed, but neither magician had anticipated the surge of magic and their inability to contain it once the Dread had been forced back into the void. There had been a backlash neither Magnus nor his father had anticipated and its effects were devastating. Magicians and priests, Spellweavers and shamans, lay on the ground, their grotesque contortions and vacant eyes clearly marking them as dead. Magnus and Pug had known some magicians might be lost in this, but nothing on this scale. A terrible price had been paid by hundreds, if not thousands, around the world.
But had it been enough? The dome was now gone, and from where he stood he could see trees bending toward the pit in the ground, and knew that in only a few more minutes everything in this area would be sucked into the maw of the pit. The screaming of the wind in his ears deafened him to any other sound, but the vibration beneath his feet made him understand that the very soil and rock under his feet was being pulled toward the pit.
He used his magic to rise above the ground, and suddenly had to struggle against the pull from the vortex. Gauging his position and how much power it took to hold his place, he knew he was looking at mere minutes before he too would vanish into the maw of darkness opening up in the heart of the Grey Tower Mountains. Once more he reached out for Pug, and once more found an emptiness where his father should be. He felt a dark stab of uncertainty, for whatever he could do had been done. Now it only remained to see if their plan worked and if this sucking pit before him could be plugged and sealed.
Pug battled forces he had almost no experience with: walls of magic energy that swept over him, lines of enchantment that would warp reality if they were unleashed into the world, huge waves of rolling intersections between energy and matter, time unwinding and soaring spirals of thought. The crashing forces at play around him were overwhelming to the point at which he could barely retain his own sense of identity, let alone remember his purpose.
From his perspective, Pug was witnessing the consumption of his world by the void, an in-taking of every shred of matter around the now destroyed city of E’bar, from the mightiest tower or lofty tree to the tiniest strand of a spider’s silk or a dust mote. In an increasing volume at accelerating speed, rock, water, soil, plants, and animals were being pulled into the maw of the pit. He shifted his focus and moved along the time stream, back to his mystic marker, so he could return to being in sync with what was occurring on the surface. Fear rose in him as he realized he had grievously miscalculated how he was going to manipulate the power lent him by so many others. If he let things continue as they were, far more damage would be done to this world than had already been inflicted. Pug assumed the alpine valley where E’bar had rested, the site of the original Tsurani rift, was now a gaping hole torn deep into the crust of the world, deepening by the minute as the spinning vortex he had created ripped apart the essential forces binding rock together, shredding granite into fine sand and powder in an instant, liquefying anything less stout and even ripping apart the very air, causing sheets of flame and sprays of water to erupt as gases were torn asunder and recombined in seconds.
The deafening sound that filled the air, drowning out thought at times, was the dying cry of a world.
Magnus!
Here, Father! I thought I’d lost you.
Where are you?
North of the pit, on that large outcropping of rock. It’s taken all my power to hold here. I can’t endure this much longer.
Pug sensed the pain his son was experiencing. You can do no more. It is time for you to cut any remaining tether between me and the world, then flee.
I don’t know if I can, Magnus replied.
You must.
Pug made one last calculation and knew he had to act before he lost any hope of sealing the tear between here and the void.
Now!
Magnus closed his eyes and extended his consciousness for a moment and saw that the energy that had been torn from his control had mostly been torn asunder, but a tiny tether of energy remained between what was left of the worldwide lattice of magic and Pug. I understand, Father, he said at last, and he severed what was left of Pug’s connection with the world.
The entirety of the world shuddered.
Then, for a moment, everything was still.
Suddenly the totality of magic in Midkemia that had been confined and used by Pug recoiled, energies exploding out of the pit, and a massive bolt shot through Magnus as he attempted to disentangle himself from it, so that he was shaken like a rat by a terrier, his screams of agony filling the air; and deep below in the pit, Pug felt his son die.
Darkness crashed down on Pug.
Lightning shot down like a barrage of arrows, as the clouds unleashed so much energy at the ground that the forests of the Grey Towers were set ablaze. Flaming trees moved toward the pit, cascading sheets of fire and embers ripped from their branches, all now sucked downward like a waterfall of fury around the entire rim of the pit, as a massive bubble of angry red magic shot upward from the center of the pit, shooting upward through the c
louds as fast as the swiftest arrow until, miles above the surface of Midkemia, it reached its limit and lost momentum.
The last survivors not evacuated by Miranda, Nakor, Ruffio, and the others stared at the brilliant ruby pillar amidst the chaos of this massive storm. Then the red magic slammed back into the surface and the world heaved and buckled inward.
Where the Grey Towers Mountains had risen since before the coming of man to Midkemia, a crumbling crater rim miles across now marked the limits of Pug’s magic. An inconceivable inversion had forced geology to turn back upon itself and now a mile-deep caldera remained. At the bottom millions of tons of rock and detritus lay beneath a mile-deep cloud of dust.
Rivers now ran into what would come to be known as the Sunken Lands and the planet seemed to groan as it began its transformation.
Then a wave of energy rose up from the mass of debris on the crater floor and magic began to skip and shimmer along the surfaces of the rock. A second backlash of the magic Pug had harnessed now ran free. It gathered itself as if contracting, then shot up into the sky like a shimmering blue fountain. Energy spat upward as if from a volcano and raced around the world, landing at random.
The forest of the Green Reaches, marking the boundary between the Kingdom and Great Kesh, was awash in the blue light: trees began to twist and grow; once-small vines grew massive and thorny. As if becoming sentient, the forest pushed out from the centre and those who had gone to bed in Keshian Jonril the night before, surrounded by open farmland, would arise the next day to see trees towering twenty or thirty feet higher than before. Where pleasant woodlands had once stood, now an impenetrable forest choked every square mile between the mountain ranges known as the Peaks of Tranquillity and the Pillars of the Stars, reaching all the way to the shore of the Great Star Lake. Every caravan route and game trail, famers’ road, and imperial highway was overgrown and vanished in one night.
To the west of the Far Coast a ripple of energy sped through the water and the Sunset Islands began to sink. At first few noticed, but within an hour ships at the docks were riding high and those in the bay off of Freeport were pulling up anchor. Within two hours, people were fleeing for whatever ship would take them and by dawn the next day only open ocean could be seen.
To the south of E’bar, in the mines of the Grey Towers, ancient passages that had once housed the chambers of the Lord of the Eagle’s Reaches, the last of his kind, crumbled into dust and vanished into the crater. Dwarves who had heeded Pug’s warning felt the earth cry out and fled. Many survived, eventually reaching kin in Dorgin or Stone Mountain. Many did not.
The last King of the Dwarves, Dolgan, died that day, and the legendary Hammer of Tholin was lost beneath the rock and soil.
As far to the south as the Isle of the Snake Men, and as far north as the Thunderhell Steppes, unnatural magic scarred the land. A herd of elk was suddenly turned to stone, and a field of poppies bloomed on the ice floes for a few moments before withering from the cold.
A caravan crossing the Jal-Pur from Ipithi to Durbin was struck by a massive wave of sea water that overturned wagons and nearly drowned camels and men before suddenly vanishing, leaving everyone soaked and disoriented, shaken but alive.
In Timons, an elderly man sat up and sang in a language no mortal had heard, bringing tears to the eyes of those who heard him, then he lay back and died peacefully.
In the Free City of Walinor, a massive wall of granite three hundred feet high thrust up from the earth and the town sank two feet, destroying foundations, felling walls, killing dozens of citizens. When the dust had settled, travel west became impossible, and from that day forward the sun would set in mid-afternoon as it dropped behind the eastern rim of the vast crater.
Around the globe the magic raced, arching high into the air to turn clouds golden and pink for a moment, then diving into the ground to cause a spring to form or a marsh to dry up.
A ship in the Sea of Kingdoms saw a creature the size of a mountain rise up out of the water like a whale breaching, a thing of copper scales and golden fins, but instead of falling back into the water, it kept rising until it vanished into the clouds above.
On the other side of the world, the northern half of the escarpment of the continent of Wynet rose an additional two hundred feet. The Saaur warriors and their families felt the upheaval and wondered what new threat had followed them to this world.
Where a mighty range of mountains had once stood, now only hills rose up from the Far Coast and the Free Cities, and those hills surrounded what would ever after be known as the Sunken Lands, a crater of immense size and depth that prevented travel between the two coasts.
At the heart of the rubble, as water sought out new levels, dust settled and strange and alien life fashioned by wild magic began to take root.
Beneath it all came a sound not unlike a sigh. And then there was silence.
• CHAPTER THIRTY •
Aftermath
PUG AWOKE.
At least that was how it felt as he became aware of having a body and an identity. He knew his name, and his history, and if he had held any doubt, he had a headache massive enough to remind him of the consequences of his first foray into Duke Borric’s ale shed.
But he was surrounded by utter stillness and complete and utter darkness. He took a deep breath and was rewarded by the sensation of air entering his lungs, so he did not think he was trapped in the void. Besides, the void was a featureless grey, not this utter black.
Then he saw a pinpoint of light ahead and attempted to will himself toward it. Nothing happened. He tried a different approach and attempted to use the light as a reference and move towards it. Again, nothing happened. He held up his right hand before his face, blocking out the light for an instant, then tried to create light of his own.
Nothing happened.
Then he noticed the light seemed to be growing brighter. After a few minutes he could see it was also growing larger, and he decided to wait. Not that he had any other option, he conceded ruefully.
He had questions, countless questions, but first and foremost, even more than where he now found himself, was: how had he survived? He had pulled half the world of Midkemia down on himself, or at least that was how it had felt. The image that stayed with him was the Valheru and the Dread locked in time, struggling in an instant that would never change, as a mountain fell on him, crushing him …
Pug felt remarkably fit for someone who had just been crushed under a mountain.
As the light grew larger, he realized it was approaching and soon he heard the sound of footfall: a hollow sound, leather slapping on a stone floor. Soon he saw that in addition to coming closer, the light was swaying slightly, and then he could see the shape of a man, or a manlike being.
A man in a robe holding a staff shaped roughly like a shepherd’s crook, from which hung a lantern, walked toward Pug at a steady pace, apparently in no hurry. As he neared, his features began to resolve themselves, but Pug failed to recognize him. He was stocky, rotund even, with an almost cherubic face. His hair was cut in a tonsure fringe and he wore a brown robe with a triple-wrapped brown leather belt. His feet were clad in cross-gartered sandals and his face bore a faint smile.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Didn’t quite end up where you should.’
Pug was still unable to move and now he found he was unable to speak. He was immobilized and none of his magic worked. All he could do was to watch and listen.
The monk motioned with his hand. ‘Come along,’ he said, then turned his back and started walking whence he came.
Pug floated along after him, though floating didn’t really convey how he felt. It was more simply a case that he just was where he was, how he was; and apart from the monk, whom he could barely make out over the toes of his feet as he looked down the length of his body, there was nothing else to see.
Then, abruptly, the darkness vanished and Pug found himself floating above a white tiled floor. The monk waved and Pug felt himself released fr
om whatever paralysis had gripped him, and he started to fall. Reflexively, he tried to use a bit of magic to slow his fall; he couldn’t, and landed on his backside.
‘Sorry about that,’ said the monk.
Pug examined his surroundings as he stood. The whole large room was white and it contained a white table and two chairs of white wood bearing white satin cushions, a white sideboard, and a white canopied bed.
‘You catch me in a white mood,’ said the monk, sitting in one of the two chairs. He indicated that Pug should sit. ‘This happens once in a while. I grow weary of colours and choices.’ He waved his hand and suddenly the floor was cerise and the walls a deep burgundy. The wood of the furniture was black lacquered and the canopy over the bed was rusty brown and there were suddenly golden fixtures on the walls, burning with light. ‘You see?’ said the monk. ‘It’s nice, but one grows bored quickly, and then there’s the endless permutations and matches.’ He waved his hand and the black wood was now blonde with a high gloss, the canopy and covers black, while the floor and walls were of a nicely contrasting honey-coloured wood. At last he gave a wave of the hand and again everything turned white.
‘Who are you?’ asked Pug. ‘And where are we?’
‘Where is something of a matter of conjecture. I have wrestled with that concept for many years and so far I have not achieved a reasonable answer. Just more conjecture and speculation.’ He sighed. ‘I think of this as my waiting room.’
‘Waiting room?’ said Pug, as if the very concept of a room in which you wait was odd.
‘Antechamber?’
‘Ah,’ said Pug. ‘I have waited in antechambers before. I think I see.’ He studied the monk. ‘I assume you know who I am, as you came and got me.’
‘Yes,’ said the monk. ‘Pug, the magician. Known as Milamber on Kelewan before you blew up the planet.’ He shook his finger at Pug. ‘Forgive my presumption, but I thought that was a rather ham-fisted way to deal with the Dread incursion from the third realm.’