darkness.
'We go into the World-Tree, to follow the branches to other worlds,' Math explains.
'It's just a statue,' Hunter replies.
'The depiction of the reality is the reality. Have you not learned anything?' As Math beckons, Baldur hesitantly leads the Aesir into the dark.
Hunter waits until Thor and Freyja come running from the battle-lines. Tears stream down the thunder god's face.
'The Eternal City is falling,' he says. 'How can this be?'
'You'll get your chance to make amends,' Hunter replies. 'This isn't the end.'
Along the western wall, a sheet of flames rises up. They watch it for a moment and then step into the dark. The door that is not a door closes behind them, and the snow fills their footprints, and for the first time there is silence within the walls of the Eternal City.
7
In your dreams, you see these things. Across the worlds, there is a sense of winter approaching, of the dying of the light. The steady rhythm in the ground and behind the sky now sounds less like a heartbeat and more like the ticking of a clock, growing imperceptibly slower.
You see all this. You know. You are now a part of it.
8
You travel across the infinite Far Lands to a point that is neither here nor there, that anomalous place on the distant edge, where the Otherworld breaks up and opens onto another infinity.
Words mean nothing here. Ideas have more substance than things. But you see as you move that numbers underpin everything. Repeating patterns that form the basis of a greater pattern. At a distance, the mathematical complexity creates the illusion of chaos. It is all random, you would have said in another time, under other circumstances.
Move closer and you see the truth. The structure. The plan. You understand the mechanics of Chaos Theory, without needing to know the name, that within seemingly chaotic systems there is a hidden order, masked by a complexity so great our brains cannot comprehend it.
Five, you say. That is one of the numbers. It is familiar by now. Comforting. You know it well.
But there is another important number, too. Hidden till now, waiting to be called into the Light.
Odin, the great god of the Nordic lands, hanged himself on the cosmic ash tree Yggdrasil for nine nights in order to learn the wisdom of the dead. That great tree of life, around which all reality revolves, sheltered nine worlds beneath its branches.
Nine books of wisdom tell a story that is more than a story, in which you now play a part. Nine symbolises completeness in the Baha'i faith. To the Celts, the ninth wave is the boundary between our world and the Otherworld. King Arthur was brought in on the ninth wave. The Chinese consider nine to be lucky because, in their language, it sounds the same as the word for 'long-lasting'. The Japanese consider nine to be unlucky because it sounds like the Japanese word for 'distress' or 'pain'. The cat is believed to have nine lives.
The Forbidden City in Beijing is filled with the number nine. It is linked with the Chinese dragon, a symbol of power and magic. There are nine forms of the dragon. It has nine attributes, and nine children.
There are secrets here, you realise, if only you could divine them.
But you are distracted by a terrible sight. The Fortress of the Void sprawls across a blasted, desolate terrain of rocks and dust. It is bigger than any city you have ever seen, as big as a country, and from a distance it resembles a gigantic squatting insect. Indeed, part of the city appears to be organic. Amongst the walls of fused volcanic glass and the detritus of failed civilisations are areas that appear to be constructed from spoiled meat. It continues to grow by the day, new wings, new towers spreading in all directions, consuming the land.
The Fortress swarms with the worst that the universe has to offer, not just the Lament-Brood, the Redcaps, the Gehennis and Baobhan Sith, but things worse still, things you cannot bear to examine for fear you would be driven insane.
And above it all towers the Burning Man, so close you can feel the heat from its blazing outline. Here is the place where it was born. Within the Burning Man you can see writhing figures being consumed. These are gods, or ones who consider themselves gods, providing the fuel that gives the Burning Man shape, and allowing it to shine like an infernal beacon across all worlds. You cannot hear their screams, but you can see their mouths fixed in a continual 'O'.
On a balcony overlooking the suffering stands a man living a new life of perpetual cruelty, a mirror-image man who still sees echoes of his former existence; but he can discard them, for he is better, at peace now, unlike before. He emphasises his flamboyance, wearing all black like a silent-movie villain, or all white, however the mood takes him. His eyes are blood-red, with no lids, so he can never shut out the horror he sees, the horror he causes. He is wedded to the idea of peace and stability through control, not the torments that come from the uncertainty of free will. He believes hope is a debilitating virus, and love, and that contentment only comes from not looking to the distant horizon. It is a simple philosophy, but many things spin from it.
'They may be the most efficient warriors in all the worlds, but they could do with a few tips on interior design,' the Libertarian says. He takes a deep draught of sour air and turns back to the austere chamber where fires rage continually in the braziers, a futile attempt to bring warmth to bodies that can feel none.
Niamh, former queen of the Court of the Soaring Spirit, now truly queen of the Waste Lands, wears a black headdress with six horns, like the arms of Shiva, and ebony armour etched with silver. She is filled with spiders. She considers a geometric design that resembles a mandala, or a Mandelbrot set, revolving slowly in mid-air. It glows gently with a rich, white light. Though you only see three dimensions, she sees more. It is a map of the worlds, and the trail they make through time. Her brow knits, for what she sees changes continually. Nothing is fixed; everything is fluid. She finds that puzzling.
The Libertarian takes her hand and pulls her away from the map and into his arms. 'Don't you find that all this power and destruction make the sap rise?' he says, pressing his groin into hers.
She smiles, not without affection. 'I find the patterns of Existence a mystery. My heart yearned for you from the earliest times, in your past life, and we danced back and forth across the ages, until it appeared we would never share the same space. Yet here we are.'
'All good things come to those who wait.'
'Together now, and always, and in all time before this moment.'
A headache stabs briefly at the Libertarian, a nagging thought, hardening by the moment, of troubled times ahead, sights, disturbingly, that he cannot see, an area of insecurity, of disconnection.
A tolling bell echoes dully through the Fortress.
'It's time,' he says.
Niamh nods, takes his hand. They make their way along corridors of pulsing meat, down echoing stone steps, until they come to a hall so large that the far walls are not visible.
You will not want to enter. Even in your dreams it affects you, the stink, the feeling of subsonic vibrations in the pit of your stomach, but most potently a dread so terrible it would drive you insane if you lingered. You want to shut it out, pretend you never experienced it, but it will haunt you for the rest of your days. Amidst a seething mass of shrieking foul creatures floats the great god Janus, his two faces switching back and forth, black on white, white on black. He holds aloft the golden key to open the doors and then the ironwood stick to drive away those who have no right to cross the threshold. The monstrous beings shriek louder, the noise rising and falling, and you realise that hideous sound is singing, a form of celebration. In their ecstasy, they fight and tear at each other like animals in a pit. In a circle around Janus's feet lopes the god Loki, part-man, part-wolf, his head rolling as he mouths incantations, lost to the ritual, lost to the dread and the frenzy, round and round in circles.
