spears held still. A moment of nothingness that consumes everything.
And then the world trembles. The world explodes. The world dies.
I see, or someone sees, the laws of magic collapse, the chains of the millennia snap, I see the world slither back to its first primordial day, when nothing of what we now call Siala existed yet.
Seas roused to fury annihilate countries, volcanoes spring to life, stars fall from the sky consuming entire cities with their heat, the gates of other worlds open wide and Siala is entered by demons and creatures who are even worse. The entire world swirls around in its final dying dance, its death agony, a blizzard of awoken shadows of ancient times. Conflagrations, insanity, epidemics, famine, wars, and the creatures of darkness destroy the world and clear the way for those who have been waiting so long for this sweet moment—the moment when the balance is disrupted. They emerge from Hrad Spein in a black wave, a black flood, treading on the bones and the ashes of dead races—those the Gray One called Fallen Ones, that I called bird-bears.
I scream. I scream until I go hoarse; the world shatters like a crooked mirror and I awake.…
I woke up in darkness. It was hot, so hot that it was hard to breathe. Every breath threatened to scorch my lungs, my eyes felt as if they were about to pop, and I was genuinely amazed by the miraculous fact that my clothes and hair hadn’t burst into flames. I covered my face with my sleeve, but that didn’t give me any relief, it was still difficult to breathe.
“Thousands of demons!” I muttered. “Where have I ended up this time?”
“Where you’ve been twice before, and now you’re back again. Was it not we who told you that those who have discovered the way to the Primordial World always come back?”
In some incomprehensible fashion I had found my way to the world of Chaos, and been met once again by the last three shadows. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see them, only hear their voices.
“Yes, it was you who told me, my ladies.”
“We are glad that you have not forgotten us. Hello, Dancer.”
“My respects to you. It’s hot.”
“Our world is dying, and what you have brought here is only hastening its final agony.”
I automatically reached out one hand and felt the bag with the Horn in it.
“A dream,” I muttered in relief, recalling the vision in which Siala had died.
One of the shadows laughed bitterly.
“A dream? Perhaps you saw the future? Or the past?”
“Or what will never happen now?” one of her sister shadows put in.
“I don’t know.”
“We don’t know, either, what visions a Dancer might have and where these visions might lead. The pans of the balance are already trembling, and you should hurry.”
“Where to?” I asked the darkness rather stupidly.
“To the final throw of the dice. The place where this round of the Game will finish. It can still be won, even though the Horn has emerged once again from the subterranean halls of the Prison of the Fallen Ones.”
“Go away, Dancer. The presence of the artifact is hastening the death of our house.”
Three rectangles of bright light sprang out of the darkness and I screwed my eyes up in pain. When I opened them again, I saw three exits in front of me, leading out somewhere into a white light.
“What’s this?” I asked, turning to the shadows, who were visible now.
“This? It is your way out of our world.”
“But there are three doors here!”
“We know,” said a shadow—the second one, I think—and laughed. “You will have to choose one of them.”
I sensed some kind of trick.
“There is no trap in this, Dancer. These are simply the doors of Destiny. All subsequent events depend on which door you choose to leave through.”
A fine prospect, no two ways about it!
“What’s behind them?”
“Nobody knows. Choose with your heart and go. Farewell,” said the third shadow.
“Farewell, Dancer.”
“Farewell,” the first shadow repeated like an echo.
Darkness take me! What difference did it make which door I went out of? Everything would turn out badly anyway, I was absolutely sure of that. I stepped toward the door closest to me, the one on the right.
I stopped halfway there. The odd little thought had just come into my head that this time the shadows had shown me the way out of the world of Chaos without being asked. That was probably because of the Rainbow Horn, which was poisoning the Primordial World and threatening it with total collapse. The last time they had asked me to stay, asked me to help them to bring life back to their world, which had turned into a nightmare thanks to the Dancers in the Shadows. This time I hadn’t heard a single word about help from them.
I looked round and saw they had been watching me in silence.
“What will happen to it?”
They understood what I meant.
“The world of Chaos will die. If not today, then tomorrow. It has been clinging to life for too long, but everything comes to an end eventually.”
“And everything must be paid for,” said the third shadow, and I immediately recalled Death saying those words.
The shadows had paid for my life with the death of their world.
“And what will happen to you, ladies?”
No answer. I waited, and eventually the third shadow replied: “This is our world. We are the last and we shall stay here until the end.”
I know it’s absolutely stupid, but I just can’t help it. I don’t like being obliged to anyone, and if there’s a way I can pay back a debt … I turned my back on the exits from the Primordial World, and they were immediately veiled in darkness. But this time the shadows didn’t merge into the gloom, and I could see their silhouettes very clearly.
“You realize you can’t get out of here now?” I could distinctly hear fear in the first shadow’s voice.
“I’ll get out through the fire, like before.”
“The fire has already died, Dancer!”
“Shall we dance, ladies?” I asked, ignoring what they had just said.
When I left that world, it wasn’t under any kind of threat. The crimson primordial flame was roaring, and the fiery snowflakes were swirling round me in a slow, entrancing dance. Between the eternal void and the insanity of the fire there was a little island, overgrown with tall silvery grass. In the middle of the island a small lake had appeared, with water as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the flashes of flame and crimson snowflakes.
Towering over the lake was a young chestnut tree with leaves of ice and fire, covered in a froth of white blossom. Its fruit would soon ripen and give life to hundreds of scraps of land. But for the time being this island was the first brick in the rebirth of the world of Chaos. For the time being I could leave the Primordial World and get on with my own business. That world would live. Together with the three shadows it would wait for me or another Dancer. I paid my debt to the shadows in full.…
I awoke, cautiously sat up, and looked around to try and figure out where I was. Everything suggested that this time I’d ended up in Zagraba. At least, this spot wasn’t anything like Hrad Spein. Fir trees, golden-leafs, yellow grass, a blue sky above my head. By some miracle I had been transported out of the Palaces of Bone to the surface. Some prank of the Rainbow Horn’s, no doubt.
The Horn! I felt all around myself in panic. Sagot be praised, the artifact was lying beside me, under the carpet of fallen leaves. I immediately put the relic away in my bag.
I turned over on my back and looked up at the sky through the half-naked branches of the golden-leafs.
Ah, Sagot bless me, how good this was! After those dark gloomy labyrinths with that musty smell of dead time, the sight of an ordinary sky filled me with childish delight. I didn’t have a blind clue how I’d gotten back to Zagraba from Hrad Spein, but it was a good thing, even if I didn’t know which part of the forest I was in, and how
