Songs of the Dying Earth

If Whisper Bird must go slow and silent, so T’sais Prime must go fast and quick, and if never a bird had she been, it would have been to her benefit to be one. She arrived in the UNDERHIND known as The Place of Maddening Glass after “nightfall,” when only the faint green glow from far above signaled the ceiling of this place, the light bleeding off from the level above, where Whisper Bird labored in his quest as she in hers. She was surrounded by a hundred thousand jagged gleaming surfaces — cracked sheets of mirror, giant purple-tinged cusps — reflecting such a welter of images that she could not tell what was real and what was not.

Ghoul bears and Deodands were fast-approaching, hot to her scent. Not built for the adventure of close combat, T’sais used her first spell, of Flying Travel, to summon Twk-Men. They descended from the sky on their dragonflies, here as large as small dragons.

Four bore her upward upon a raft of twigs lashed together and set between them, the space between the flickering dance of the dragonflies’ wings so slight that T’sais thought they must surely overlap, and, out of rhythm, plummet to the jagged surface. But they did not.

At first, the Twk-Men seemed so solicitous and friendly that she wondered aloud why they had been banished to this place.

“I dared to ask for a thimbleful more of sugar for giving Sarnod information on his enemies,” said one.

“I dared to fly over the lake while he watched,” said the second. “It was summer and I was feeling lazy and desired to skim the surface, dip my dragonfly’s wings into the water.”

“I cannot remember why I am here,” said the third. “But it seems not that much different than being on the surface. We die here and we die there, and though we cannot see the true sun, we know it dies, too.”

The fourth Twk-Man, the leader of them all, would have none of her questions, though, and asked, “Whither do you go, and why, and do you have a pinch of salt for us?”

“I am seeking these two exiles,” T’sais Prime replied, and projected the images of Vendra and Gandreel into all four minds of the Twk-Men, which set them to talking amongst themselves in the lightning-fast speech typical of their kind.

“We know one of them. The woman,” the lead Twk-Man said. “How much salt will you give us to be led to her?”

T’sais’ heart leapt, for she did not wish to spend longer in this place than necessary.

“A pinch of salt here is either a boulder, or, if it came with me, too small even for you to barter for,” T’sais Prime said. “You will have to content yourself with the compulsion of the spell.”

“Fair enough,” the Twk-Man said, although he did not sound happy, and the buzz of his dragonfly’s wings became louder.

“Where can I find her, Twk-Man?”

The Twk-Man laughed. “She lies upon a raft carried through the air by four unfortunate Twk-Men.”

“Surely this is some form of joke,” T’sais Prime said.

“Perhaps the joke is played on you,” the Twk-Man said grimly. “Perhaps your quest is different than you think.”

“Tend to your flying, and take me somewhere safe, lest I unleash another spell,” T’sais said, although she needed to hoard all that Sarnod had given her.

Smiling savagely, the Twk-Man turned in his saddle and held up a mirror to T’sais’ face. “In this place Sarnod has banished us to, we all see each others’ faces everywhere. But perhaps in your world, you cannot see yourself?”

And it was true, she saw with shock — how could she not have realized it before? — Sarnod’s former lover shared every element and description of her own face. Was she sent, then, by trickery into her own oblivion, or was there truly a quest for a Vendra, for a Gandreel?

“I do not like your tricks, Twk-Man,” T’sais said. “I do not like them at all.”

“It is a dark night,” the Twk-Man said, “to fall so far, should your spell fade before we leave you.”

The ill-fated gaun proved truthful in his directions. No bigger than a man’s fist, the Bloat Toad sat in the middle of a vast and empty cavern that was covered with dull red splotches and smelled vaguely of spoiled meat. In Whisper Bird’s imagination, the Bloat Toad had been as large as a brontotaubus and twice as deadly. In fact, except for its glowing gold eyes and the prism of blue-and-green that strobed over its be-pimpled skin, the Bloat Toad looked ordinary.

Whisper Bird stood in front of the creature in that cathedral of dust motes and dry air: invisible shadow confronting placable foe.

It stared back at him.

Was it oddly larger now?

Or was Whisper Bird smaller?

Whisper Bird took a step to the side of the Bloat Toad, and as his foot came down—

KRAAAOOCK

— was lifted up by the leathery skin of an amphibian suddenly rendered enormous — and smashed against the side of the cavern. All the breath went out of Whisper Bird’s delicate chest. Even though he existed in two places at once, it still hurt like a hundred knives. The Bloat Toad’s tough but doughy flesh, which stank of long- forgotten swamps, held him in place for several horrible moments.

Then the pressure went away. Whisper Bird fell limply to the ground.

When he had recovered, Whisper Bird saw that the Bloat Toad sat once more in the center of the room. The toad was again small, strobing green-blue, blue-green.

Now Whisper Bird understood the nature of the splotches on the walls. Had he existed in just this one world, he would already be dead.

After many minutes of reflection and recovery, twice more Whisper Bird tried to pass the Bloat Toad — once creeping stealthy, once running fast without guile. Twice more, impervious to accompanying spells and with croak victorious, the Bloat Toad filled the cavern, re-crushing Whisper Bird. Until it felt to him as though he were a bag of sand, and the sand was all sliding out of a hole.

Bent at a wretched angle, hobbling, and badly shaken, he eventually stood once more before the Bloat Toad.

Now, in the extremity of his pain, Whisper Bird turned as much of his attention as he could to his second self in Embelyon, experiencing its forests, its rippling fields that changed color to reflect the sky. There, his family, wife and infant son, had lived in a cottage in a glade deep in the forest where they grew food in a garden and counted themselves lucky to be beneath the notice of the mighty princes and wizards who struggled for dominion over all. They did not care that the Earth was dying, but only that they were living. Who knew now how old his son was, whether there were streaks of gray in his wife’s hair? Nor whether either would recognize him as human.

At some future moment, Whisper Bird might be whole and be once more with them, but for that he must move past this moment now.

As before, Whisper Bird stared at the Bloat Toad and the Bloat Toad stared at Whisper Bird.

“Do you talk, I wonder, Bloat Toad? Are you mindless or mind-full? Is there nothing that will move you?” Whisper Bird said, already flinching in anticipation of his words activating the toad’s power.

But Bloat Toad cared no more for words than for the particulars of Whisper Bird’s servitude. The creature stared up at Whisper Bird and made a smug croaking sound. Kraaoock…

A more direct soul would have tried to smash the Bloat Toad to death with a hammer and danced on his pulped remains. But Whisper Bird had no such weapon; all he had as a tool was his ghostly assassin-like absence.

And this gave him an idea, for Whisper Bird could split himself again if he so chose, an act of will only possible because he held the knowledge of his Essential Sundering within him like a half-healed wound.

Thus decided, Whisper Bird stood in front of the Bloat Toad — and leapt to both sides at once, like two identical wings with no body between them. It felt like deciding to die.

Bloat Toad, rising with incredible speed, gave out a confused croak — each eye following a different Whisper Bird — and winked out of existence.