Songs of the Dying Earth

“This may be true,” Whisper Bird said, “but, how then is it relevant?”

The sound of shrieking came again. Up popped Vendra from The Mouth, as old now as Gandreel, but still somehow youthful. No familiar trailed behind.

“Now my attendance is doubled in complexity,” Whisper Bird said to Sarnod, who in Vendra’s presence ignored both him and the fading thought of Gandreel’s insult.

“Perfect, perfect Vendra,” he said, to test the effect of these words from his lips. A surge of panic overtook him, for he still felt nothing, nothing at all. No passion. No hatred.

Vendra, for her part, stared only at Gandreel, whose gaze toward her was as deep and loving as Sarnod’s was not. He took Vendra in his arms, his back to Sarnod, and they became reacquainted while Sarnod watched, hesitating in his intent.

“You are more beautiful than ever,” Gandreel told her.

“You are less handsome than before,” Vendra admitted, “but still more handsome than your brother by far. What shall we do, now that we are free?”

“I can play the lute,” Gandreel replied, with mischief in his eyes. “You can sing. We will return to the court of the lizard king, if he and it still exist.”

Vendra laughed, though she had missed his humor. “My love, would you rather perform for coins or rise powerful with our sorceries? I have learned much in the UNDERHIND, and I would put it to good use.”

Gandreel stared at her for a long moment, as if unsure what to make of her, then said, “What does it matter, so long as we are alive, together, and in the wider world?”, and although she seemed to agree, Sarnod could intuit her unhappiness with this question.

Now Vendra turned her attention to Sarnod, her lips curling into a kind of sneer as she stared at him from Gandreel’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her lover as if they would never again be apart.

“Sarnod’s servant did not tell me that a stranger now ruled the tower,” she said. “Who are you? You are not Sarnod.”

To hear this denial from Vendra, even as he felt so little for her somehow, terrified Sarnod. He shouted at her, at Gandreel, who had also turned to look at him, “I am Sarnod, and this is my tower, and you will obey me!” Yet even with this said, Sarnod felt like an actor in a play, and underlying his anger was an odd, slippery confusion. As if each time he claimed Sarnod’s name, it became less and less his own.

He would have made to bring a spell down upon them both, but The Mouth said, “There is little use in arguing with one whose mind is already made up.”

“Nor in serving one whose mind is not made up,” Whisper Bird said, to Sarnod’s annoyance.

A shrieking scream announced a third arrival.

Up came a tall and shadowy figure, wreathed in smoke. As the figure walked forward, the smoke fell away, the face was revealed to Sarnod as…Sarnod’s own!

Sarnod felt a lurch and dislocation deep inside. “What manner of trickery is this? Whisper Bird — is this your doing?”

“The only trickery in me is the doubling life I lead,” Whisper Bird replied. “I am not responsible for this.”

“Trickery?” Gandreel said. “Worse than that, to be lured here under promises from one who had no authority to honor them.”

This new Sarnod glanced at Gandreel, then turned burning eyes and an unpleasant flash of sharp white teeth upon old Sarnod. “Oh, there is nothing of trickery here. I am Sarnod and this is just the giant fish I hooked, ensorcelled, and left here in my stead, armed with nearly all my spells and memories, that none might take undue advantage of my absence. A fish. Nothing more. Or less.”

“Still your tongue!” Sarnod cried out. “You are an imposter!”

But this new Sarnod held up his hand, snapped, “Let your own tongue be still, fish, along with the rest of you! Did you think I would allow my own sorcery to be used against me? Or that you would keep your powers upon my return? Now that you have failed me as both guardian and guard, I decree this misspent year of Fish Misrule at an end!”

Sounds died in old Sarnod’s throat, and there he stood motionless, wordless, before them all, observer and observed only. His panic had no voice, his distress no mannerisms. A kind of madness rose up in him, with no release. Desperate searching: What memory is real and which imposed?

Said Whisper Bird, “I am unsure who to now attend, nor why.”

New Sarnod, turning to wary Gandreel and Vendra, now winced with a pain not physical. “I leave to consult on the subject of my errors in creation with others of my ilk, to correct the defects and deviations that led to her, for example”—and he pointed at Vendra—” and yet here I am, summoned back by knowledge of your presence in my domain, confronted once again by villains thought long exiled. Brother betrayer. Lover unconscionable. By what right do you think to escape exile?”

“Bring forth a spell,” Vendra warned, “and I shall condemn you to a worse hell, I swear it. I am not now released only to return to that place.”

Sarnod sneered. “Idle threat from an idle mind.”

“Brother,” Gandreel said, “let it not be this way.”

“The choice is not yours,” Sarnod said, taking a threatening step forward.

“Gandreel, steel yourself. We must kill Sarnod to be free,” Vendra said. “Both of them.” Even through his alarm, not-Sarnod saw how Gandreel extended to her a look as if she were as a stranger.

“We cannot kill them,” Gandreel said. “Sarnod, even in this state, is my brother.”

“Sometimes it’s a better mercy,” Vendra said.

“Enough!” Sarnod said. “Your betrayal is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday, and if the fish has one hook in his heart, I’ve two. The punishment for your betrayal,” Sarnod said, turning his full regard upon Gandreel and Vendra as not-Sarnod looked on powerless, “is death, as exile is clearly not permanent enough.”

So saying, Sarnod spoke the spell of Revolving Until Force Destroys and attempted to lift Gandreel into the air at great speed. But Gandreel met the spell with four words and an effort that made the veins in his neck bulge. The force of the spell disappeared through The Mouth, released Elsewhere. Gandreel dropped back to the ground from no small distance.

“Your petty sorceries shall not be enough to save you for long,” Sarnod promised Gandreel, who was ashen and bent to one knee.

Sarnod brought forth the spell of Internal Dissolution, to induce great writhing agony in both Gandreel and Vendra.

Even in the midst of her distress, however, Vendra made a sign, spoke words in a tongue unknown to not- Sarnod, and deflected Sarnod’s malice. The aftershock flung her into a pillar. She rose unsteadily with blood spackling her forehead.

“Stay your hand, brother!” Gandreel pleaded. “For the sake of mercy.”

“Mercy? May Kraan hold your living brains in acid!” Sarnod shrieked. “May dark Thial spike your eyes!” If ever his countenance had been imperious, now it was beyond imperial. “My mercy is that you should be carrion together, not apart, for animals to feast upon.” If there was any sadness in the look Sarnod gave Gandreel, the fish did not glimpse it.

Thus saying, Sarnod brought forth a third and more terrible spell, the spell of the Prismatic Spring, which would send many-colored stabbing lines at them, and deliver to them a cruel death. The stabbing lines coalesced above Sarnod’s head at the behest of his raised right arm, and began to glow and brighten, Gandreel and Vendra in desperation bringing forth weaker spells that together suspended but could not abate the formation of the lines.

The wizard laughed like a creature long deranged. “Alas, that you are bereft of allies here. For Whisper Bird is mine and so is the fish. And both while you fend off my spell shall I send against you to break this stalemate.”

So saying, Sarnod turned to not-Sarnod and, with a swift-curling motion of his left hand, cried out, “Let this foolish fish return to what it once was!” The hook left the heart of not-Sarnod, a release beyond imagining. He felt his human flesh melt away, replaced and bulwarked and expanded until he was again, as before, a gigantic fish with blue-green scales, balanced on its tail and fins, with gills that, tortured by air, longed for water. Fading human thoughts met old needs. He gasped and thrashed and tried to speak while the others, dwarfed, looked up at him in amazement.