Songs of the Dying Earth

“Faucelme, it is you who’ve not thought this through,” Shrue said softly. “Don’t you understand? It’s Ulfänt Banderz’s careless tampering with timespace, this very Ultimate Library, that is unstable. This…” He took one hand off the mesmeric Finding Crystal and gestured toward the vibrating stone of the Library behind him. “…is what is causing the Dying Earth to die even before its short allotted final days have come to pass.”

Faucelme laughed again. “You must think I was born yesterday, diabolist. Ulfänt Banderz has kept this library stable but timespace separated longer than you — or even I — have been alive. Hand me the crystal at once.”

“You must understand, Faucelme,” said Shrue. “It was not until I came here that I understood the true cause of the world’s current instability. For whatever reason, Ulfänt Banderz lost control of the two Libraries’ phase shift in the months before he died. The closer the Libraries come in time, the greater the spacetime damage to the red sun and the Dying Earth itself. If you bring the two Library realities together, as you and your Red propose to do, it will bring about the end of everything…”

“Nonsense!” laughed Faucelme.

“Please listen…” began Shrue but saw the madness flickering in the other magician’s eyes. It was not, he now understood, a question of whether Faucelme would release the Red. Faucelme was more the Red’s puppet than vice versa, and the Elemental cared not a terce whether the millions upon the Dying Earth survived another day. In desperation, Shrue said, “There is no guarantee that your Red — even with the Purples in support — can defeat a sandestin-daihak hybrid from the 14^th Aeron.”

Faucelme’s eyes were flickering red. It was not an illusion or a reflection of the shaking sunrise. Something ancient and inhuman had taken possession of the small human shell and was literally burning to get out. “You are correct, Shrue the diabolist,” said Faucelme. “There is no guarantee that my Red shall prevail — only overwhelming odds. But you know as well as I what the outcome will be in thirty seconds if we both unleash our entities — you your daihak, I my Elementals. You might even survive — it’s conceivable. But the whore and the rodent will be dead before five of those thirty seconds have passed, as will be all eight thousand people in the valley below. Decide, Shrue. I demand the Finding Crystal…now.”

Shrue the diabolist tossed the crystal to Faucelme. Suddenly, Shrue seemed to shrink, to become little more than a tall but thin and frail old man in spidersilk robes, his spine curved under the burden of age and a terrible weariness.

“I’d kill you all now,” said Faucelme, “but it would be a waste of energy I need for the voyage.” Barking in a language older than the mountain upon which they stood, Faucelme commanded the two Purples to remain behind and to keep Shrue and his entourage from leaving the Library. Then Faucelme, his apprentice, the vibrating Red, and the three Yellows and three Greens mounted their mutated pelgranes and rose into the sky.

Even from a distance, Shrue could see Faucelme in the saddle, bending over his glowing Finding Crystal as the eleven giant pelgranes flapped their way southeast until they were lost in the soft red glare of the sunrise.

“Come,” Shrue said wearily. “The Purples may allow us to live a little longer and we might as well find something to eat in the Library.”

Derwe Coreme opened her mouth as if to speak angrily, looked sharply at the stooped old man who had been her energetic lover just hours earlier, and disgustedly followed Shrue into the Library. Mauz Meriwolt and then KirdriK — the daihak moving reluctantly and jerkily and not under his own volition — followed. The demon’s multidimensional gaze never left the two Purples.

Once inside, Shrue’s demeanor changed completely. The magus loped through the library stacks and bounded up stairs as if he were a boy. Meriwolt’s black bare feet slapped on stone and Derwe Coreme had to run to keep up, her right hand holding her scabbard and iberk’s horn in place to keep them from clanking. “Did you think of something?” she called to Shrue as the diabolist burst into Ulfänt Banderz’s death chamber again. Derwe Coreme was panting only slightly from the exertion but she noticed with some small vexation that Shrue was not breathing heavily at all.

“I didn’t just think of it,” said Shrue. “I knew it all along. That beautiful Finding Crystal was mere bait. It will lead Faucelme and his Elementals nowhere — or at least nowhere they want to be. My hope is that it will take them to the open jaws of a Lanternmouth Leviathan in the South Polar Sea.”

“I don’t understand,” squeaked Meriwolt, looking at the shards of shattered glass cover where the Finding Crystal had been so prominently displayed. “Why would the Master leave…” The little Mauzman looked at Shrue and stopped.