2
The Shaper
What is time?
A series of curtains rippling and waving, each one a doorway into past or future. There are many futures. Often I reach for the nearest curtain and pull aside its gossamer fabric, gazing into one of these possible futures. Yet there are so many curtains exactly like this one, shrouds against futures that might be, or will be, or should never be.
At times I fail to pierce the veil of the future, and then I can only stand at the curtain and listen to the echoes of what has not yet come to pass.
What is space?
An infinite void sparkling with the energies of creation. An ocean of glimmering stardust spread across the gulf, taking on shape and form, spilling into comets and spheres and nameless singularities. Endless patterns, spinning through infinity. There are many worlds, worlds within worlds, and yet there is only the one in which I sit and contemplate the angles of possibility. This is the world I chose long ago to inhabit, revere, and sculpt into something greater.
This is my world.
Men call me the Shaper.
Yet there is another world on the other side of this one. In fact, the two worlds are one and the same, two halves of a whole. Yet in many ways they could not be more different. Until yesterday the Kings of Men and Giants did not know that another Shaper exists. I have also shown them the true shape of their world… a sphere… and given them a vision of what is to come. Yet I fear that they will not be able to withstand it.
The Old Breed came into this world when it was young. Our home was the vastness between the stars. Even I cannot remember what drove us from the infinite into the bosom of this tiny mote. We fell as thundering tempests, raging winds, and flaming meteors into the primal seas. We crafted continents and raised up the basest of organisms, birthing sentient races to worship our greatness. We toyed with these early species, casting them into terrible wars, smiling at the grim temples they erected in our honor, laughing at the mortal doom which inevitably came. The curse of Blood and Fire and Suffering. It fascinated us, this mortal delicacy, this predilection for pain and death. Sometimes we slaughtered entire empires and rebuilt them, as a child plays with stones. We reigned over an Age of Chaos.
We strode across the world as its dark Emperors, weaving histories and legends, watching them fade in the mists of time, and we grew bored. Some of us returned to the vastness of the starry gulfs, while others Diminished into the world itself. We became seas, mountain ranges, glaciers, volcanoes, and ceaseless winds. Others fell lower, taking on the forms of those we had created for our own amusement; we exploited our status as monarchs and holy beings among the young races. Tired of playing with the world and its peoples as separate entities, we became them.
And we began to forget ourselves.
Now we forged nations and empires from inside the menagerie we had built. We walked in the bodies of those who came before Men, and each time the red plague of war came and struck us low. We warred among ourselves to prove whose creations were superior. We warred out of boredom and fickle emotions. We lost ourselves in the pain and pleasure of a small existence. Now we were tied to this tiny world, and so we destroyed and rebuilt it again and again.
Now we had learned too much of mortal existence. It had changed us as surely as we had manipulated it throughout the ancient epochs. We began to forget one another, to find our own solitary places to sit and dream away eternity. But not all of us slept.
In the wake of a great slaughter, the one I call my brother came to me. We were no more true brothers than we were true Men, yet there is no other word to express our common origins. He called together the last of the Old Breed who lingered among the mortal realms. A thousand of us gathered like clouds above the plain of blood and bones where the ravens feasted.
The time has come, said my brother. Soon he would take the name of Zyung. The Earthborn have arisen, and they are not of our making. The time of chaos and destruction must end. Now it is plain to me what must be done: This world must be tamed so the Earthborn might prosper. A lasting order must be built. An ultimate domain that cannot fall, a Living Empire that will bring an end to strife and warfare. On this day I will begin shaping this world into an eternal paradise. Who will join me in the pursuit of this great dream?
These are only my memories.
They sometimes fade like night vapors in the light of dawn.
It might have happened differently.
Most of my brothers and sisters chose to serve Zyung. His Living Empire grew across the great continent. He pruned the tribes of Men as a gardener prunes a vine. His shadows cast by his bright light fell across realm after realm. Men called him their God; they conquered and slaughtered in his name.
As the Living Empire grew, I witnessed the death of free will, the elimination of curiosity, the stamping out of higher thought among the Earthborn. Zyung’s everlasting peace could only be gained by enduring a long age of death and domination. I saw proud peoples become little more than slaves, choosing servitude over annihilation. Always the same choice he offered them, and always the dead outnumbered the living.
One day there would be no more death, no more conflict. There would be only Zyung, who would be the world itself, and all those within the world would be Zyung as well.
So I faced my brother and denied him. A handful of the Old Breed joined me in this. Some were eager to shirk the chains of obedience, while others dreamed of forging their own empires as they had done in past ages. There were not many of us, and so we could not stand long against the growing power of Zyung. We built a fleet of ships and gathered a host of Earthborn from the last of the free nations. We led our people across the Cryptic Sea and found a lesser continent on the other side of the world. The tribes we had saved were free to roam its interior and build their own kingdoms.
Yet our new home was haunted by the great Serpents of old. So I raised up the race of Giants from the stones of the earth and set them to slaying the Old Wyrms. Once this was done, our transplanted tribes flourished, eventually giving birth to five great city-states. I will not describe the long ages of each kingdom’s birth and evolution, yet all the while Zyung’s empire grew and grew across the trackless ocean.
A thousand years ago Zyung conquered the last of the lands on the far side of the world. The ancestral lands of the peoples known as Uurzians, Yaskathans, Mumbazans, Sharrians, and Khyreins were now gone, replaced by the homogeneity of the Living Empire. Yet the descendants of these five noble tribes have long forgotten their true origins. To them, the Land of the Five Cities is the entirety of the world itself.
For such a long time I labored to keep them ignorant of the truth.
Now that truth can no longer be denied.
In his quest to build a paradise that encompasses the earth itself, Zyung is coming.
Now the Kings of this land are united at last. Now they must face the Living Empire and I must face my brother. I do fear the greatness of his power. Yet I knew that one day this conflict would fall upon me. For a time I gave up on saving the Land of the Five Cities from Zyung’s dominion. For so very long I had tried and failed to rid mankind of its lust for war. I nearly lost the hope of ever doing so.
Man was doomed to struggle, bleed, and die. There was no hope of changing his essential nature, which was that of a warrior, a direct manifestation of his predatory instinct. I had grown weary of trying to change the Earthborn.
It was the heart of a single brave girl who gave me the strength to try again.
Sharadza.
I clutch at my stray thoughts now and force them back toward Zyung.
I love her.
Now is not the time for such illusions.
The gray-green ocean simmers beneath a scattering of stars. A bank of stormclouds hides the sinking sun, harbinger of the darkness to come. War is a storm that clouds the affairs of Men as well as those who are more than Men. There will be great suffering.
I hover, legs folded, above a crag overlooking the Golden Sea. The evening winds whip at my robes and make the blue flame upon my chest flicker. The black city of Khyrei smokes with ten thousand feast-fires behind me. Its people celebrate their liberation at the hands of Tong the Avenger, a slave who became a revolutionary. As their new monarch, Tong sits restless upon his throne. He must rebuild a fractured kingdom into something better and stronger, a nation freed from the ancient grip of Ianthe the Claw.
Ianthe had crossed the world with me long ago, fleeing Zyung’s power. I was a fool for her charms, which blinded me to her wicked nature. In many ways, she was far worse than Zyung, yet I had set her loose upon the new continent to stoke the fires of the Earthborn’s worst qualities. She became a conqueror, a parasite, a tyrant. To rid the world of her was as difficult as changing the essence of the Earthborn. Yet now her dark kingdom has at last been stolen away from her, and she has left it behind.
I see it now, clear as the rising moon: Ianthe has returned to Zyung, taking Gammir with her. They will feed him many secrets about my half of the world. Ianthe, who built kingdoms and destroyed them on a whim; who revels in the blood of innocents; whose pattern was blended with that of the predator. And Gammir, who was once perhaps her equal, but now is only her slave. Yet both of them will be little more than slaves in Zyung’s world. There is no room for anything else there.
In the Khyrein harbor the double fleet prepares for a morning launch. I might weep for the fools who are doomed to die beneath those sails, but I do not have the luxury. The regal swanships of Mumbaza sit alongside the Yaskathan triremes, an impressive assembly of no less than seven hundred warships. Tong has pledged another hundred Khyrein reavers, newly liberated and pledged into his service. This brings the total close to one thousand vessels.
The Southern Kings think their combined fleets invincible. They are good men, but they are fools. Even after I split the veil of the future and showed them the Hordes of Zyung only days from landfall, they still deny the truth of their weakness.
When those ships sail in the morning, each man on board will be sailing to his death.
One can bring a Council of Kings together, yet still fail to make them listen.
So I sit above the darkening sea, striving to peer deeper into the corridor of the future. Which veil hides the truth from me? I must offer these brave Kings something more before they sail off to die. For the first time, I wonder exactly how much I have Diminished, living among the Earthborn for so long. Perhaps that single glance of what is to come, the golden cloud vision that I offered them, is all that I am capable of giving. Still I must try.
The moon rises, split in half by the earth’s shadow, and no longer can I see the future clearly. The veils are too thick. Too numerous. This has always been difficult, for the future is nebulous and unformed. Yet now it becomes impossible.
Perhaps it is Zyung himself who obscures my vision. Surely he has not forgotten me, or the exodus which I made possible so long ago.
In the war room of Khyrei’s black palace, near to the ruins of Ianthe’s tower, the Kings and their advisors had gathered before sunset. They had all seen the golden cloud on the previous day, the vision of overwhelming forces that had sent even resilient Tyro into a delirious fever. Now they had gathered again, this time to decide a course of action.
How I had hoped they would listen to me.
Yet they are Kings, used to getting their own way.
Prideful Kings, some of them, who would rather face death directly than run from it.
Undutu of Mumbaza, barely nineteen years old, spoke the loudest. This was no surprise to me. “We have assembled the greatest fleet in history,” said the young King. “The only thing that has changed is our enemy.” His eyes, darker than his ebony skin, flashed with boyish bravado. The other Kings saw this na?ve ig norance as nothing less than raw courage.
“Well spoken,” said Tyro, King of Uurz, before I could correct the Mumbazan. “The war we intended to fight against Khyrei shall now be against Zyung. If the wizard’s vision is true—”
“You know it is true,” Sharadza interrupted him. I avoided looking at her emerald eyes. It would not do to be seen fawning over the former Queen of Yaskatha while her husband sat at the same table. “The great horde approaches. You saw it in Iardu’s vision.”
D’zan, King of Yaskatha, rubbed his unshaven chin. A platinum crown sat heavy upon his brow. He knew my powers well; he had no cause to doubt the vision. “Iardu,” he said, “you showed us a vast armada that sails upon the air, and in numbers far greater than even our combined forces. Yet what can you tell us of this God-King’s weakness? How may we best face these invaders?”
The faces of the Kings fell upon me. Brave Tong, whose reign had begun only three short days ago, relied on a quick-witted translator to speak with these royal visitors. Vireon, King of Udurum, sat silent as stone, his great arms folded, a quiet storm brewing in his eyes. He wore now the crown of Angrid, a circlet of heavy iron set with a trio of sapphires; it made him King of All Giants. Tyro was the ambitious Emperor of Uurz, his golden breastplate gleaming bright with emeralds. There was no trace of his earlier wound, or the mad fever that my potions had dispelled. I had worked to assemble the Kings here. Now I must make them listen to me.
“If Zyung the God-King has a weakness,” I said, “it can only be found in his obsession with bringing order and peace to this world. A legion of sorcerers works at his command, supporting the great empire that took him millennia to build.” I sighed and rose to pace about the council chamber. The walls of black basalt were hung with tapestries of Khyrei’s bloody history. “You rulers of six kingdoms must band together as never before. You must fight as one, or there can be no hope for victory.”
“You tell us what we already know, Shaper,” said Undutu. His white smile beamed at me, yet his words carried no trace of mirth. “This man is a wizard, not a warrior,” he said to his fellow Kings. “The fighting of war should be left to soldiers, generals, and Kings.”
“How can we fight such sorcery?” D’zan asked. “Our ships sail on water while they own the sky!”
Sharadza looked at me. Her face was lovely in the soft light of a dozen lamps.
Tell them our plan, she said without speaking. I nodded.
“Only a sorcerer can defeat a sorcerer,” I said. “This old adage is true. Therefore I have asked Khama the Feathered Serpent and Sharadza Vodsdaughter to accompany me on an errand of utmost urgency. We will find the Dreaming Ones, the sorcerers who have lain hidden for ages throughout our world, and convince them to join us against Zyung. I know not how many will pledge to our cause. Yet we three alone cannot stand against Zyung’s ranks of High Seraphim.”
“You’re leaving us?” asked D’zan. “On the eve of this great invasion?”
Sharadza turned to the man she had married and left. I wondered if she still loved him.
“We have little time, but there is no other choice,” she said. “We will try to return before the invasion force makes land. Until then you must prepare your troops for what is to come.”
“Sit here and wait for death?” Undutu rose from his chair, a fist wrapped about the hilt of his cutlass. “No! This is not the way Men protect their homes. We must sail to meet this Zyung. In three days our ships can make the Jade Isles. There we can form a vanguard against these invaders.”
“Would you sail into a hopeless battle?” asked Vireon, speaking for the first time. All eyes turned to the man-sized Giant-King. “What hope have you of bringing down this aerial fleet? My sister speaks truly: We must stay and fortify. To meet Zyung’s armada at the Jade Isles would be folly.”
“Listen to the Giant-King,” I encouraged them. “Let the battle be fought here, at the edge of our continent, far from your great cities. Khyrei itself is already battle-scarred. Tong has only a fraction of its former fleet to offer, but here he has the aid of the fierce Sydathians. You must fight this battle on land, not on sea.”
Undutu’s eyes narrowed. He turned to Khama, who looked as though he might be the Mumbazan King’s grandfather. Perhaps he was. Khama has always kept his own secrets.
“There is only one wizard whose words I trust,” said Undutu. “Khama, what say you?”
Khama met my own gaze with a look of sorrow. He had avoided sending Mumbaza to war for centuries, yet that time of peace was at an end. I knew he loved the young King as a man loves his own son. He knew as well as I that Undutu sought the glory of battle to prove his manhood. I wondered, not for the first time, at the wisdom of letting warriors be made into Kings. Khama lifted a goblet and drank deep of the red vintage of Tong’s hospitality.
“I will follow the will of my King,” said Khama. “The time of long peace is done. This saddens me. Yet the quickest route through the maze of war is a straight line. If you wish to face your enemies, Majesty, then I will accompany and aid you as always. Even unto death.”
My patience had reached its end. I slammed my palm against the table, displacing several cups of wine. My throat ached for a drink of the heady stuff, but I had foresworn it. Now was not the time for drunken self-pity. Now was the time to speak sense to those who chose not to listen.
Undutu faced D’zan, his fellow southern King. Their fleets had circumnavigated the continent in anticipation of a great bloodshed at Khyrei, yet it was not to be. Despite a few isolated sea battles, their bloodlust had not been quenched.
“Do you remember the words of our treaty, D’zan?” asked Undutu.
D’zan nodded, refilling his own goblet. “If Mumbaza sails for the Jade Isles…”–he paused to quaff the wine–“then Yaskatha sails with her.” His green eyes turned toward me, then to Sharadza. “Honor demands it,” he explained. His voice was weary.
Tyro saw his moment. “So be it,” he declared. “The double fleet will meet the invaders at Ongthaia while the armies of Uurz, Udurum, and Khyrei fortify the coast. Do I speak for you in this matter, Vireon?”
The Giant-King nodded. Both monarchs of the north turned their faces to Tong, whose translator strove to keep up with the conversation. After a moment Tong’s pale face broke into a smile. He spoke in his native Khyrein, his message delivered by the translator: “My true friends, our nations will stand together against this Conqueror from the world’s far side. In the red fury to come, let our peoples forge a friendship that will outlast the terrors of war. Although our forces are in disarray and will take some time to assemble, Khyrei stands with Uurz and Udurum.”
“No!” The word burst out of me. I looked from kingly face to face. I felt like a raving old man in the midst of foolhardy youths. “If you do this, if you split your forces, your fleets will be crushed. Three kingdoms will be conquered before Zyung ever sets foot on your soil. Are you prepared for this?”
“Then give us a weapon, Shaper!” demanded Undutu. “Your power is great! Make us mighty. Is there nothing you can do to help us besides speak of doom and death? Give us an army of demons to fight for us. Give us tactical advice that we can use if nothing else. Will you help us resist this horde, or run off and leave us to our fate?”
I looked to Khama, whose face was apologetic.
“The Dreadnoughts of Zyung will not break easily,” I said. “They are creations of sorcery. Demons will only betray mortal Men, King Undutu. I will not unleash a plague of them on this land that is already beset with so many horrors. I will… attempt… to view the future again. To see something that might aid you in this foolish gambit.”
“The rage of my winds might tear these dreadnoughts from the sky,” said Khama. “Drown them in the sea.”
I stared out the chamber window at the double fleet arrayed in and around the Khyrein bay. So many lives. So many deaths.
“Perhaps,” I admitted.
Undutu smiled. “We have the Feathered Serpent with us,” he boasted. “All is not lost.”
Tyro drained his goblet. “A warrior fears not death,” he said. The old saying that led generations of Men into giving up their lives for rash causes: It was at the same time a foolish yet wise statement. Death was not to be feared, but neither was it to be sought after in the name of something as useless as honor. If only the Earthborn Kings could see this, it might have ended differently at the council.
A servant bustled about the table refilling the wine cups.
“I will provide your fleets with nine black hawks,” I told them. “Bring me nine of your most clever soldiers. They will be your eyes upon the seas.” By this they knew I would reshape the soldiers into the forms of hawks for tactical advantage.
“Come with us, Iardu,” said D’zan. “With your power and Khama’s at our side, we will give the God-King pause. Perhaps we can even defeat him.”
I shook my head. The Flame of Intellect flared indigo below my beard. “You listen but you do not hear. Our only chance of resisting this invasion lies in gathering this land’s sorcerers to oppose the thousand who serve Zyung. This is what I must do, if there is to be any hope of survival.”
Undutu turned his head and rolled his eyes. Too young to know truth when he heard it. Eager for the spilling of blood and the seductive songs of death.
The servant refilled the Mumbazan King’s cup.
“I am going with Iardu,” said Sharadza. “We will wake the Dreaming Ones.” My heart raced when she said my name.
“We leave at first light,” I said.
“As will our fleets,” said Undutu.
I shook my head. There was no reaching sense with a young King who wished more than anything to be a warrior. I did not understand Khama’s willingness to indulge the boy’s death wish. Yet Khama was of the Old Breed, and we had built this world apart from Zyung, along with those others who came across so long ago. I must respect his decision.
The servant stood now at Tong’s elbow. From the waist of his robe a dagger of green jade appeared. He thrust it at Tong’s breast. Tong’s powerful legs propelled him backward, knocking over his chair and sending him to the floor. The dagger failed to find its mark.
The translator yelled for a guard while the assassin leaped upon the fallen Tong. I raised a hand to still the would-be slayer. Yet before my spell was cast a white wolf sprang across the table and collided with the knife-wielder. Sharadza. She shredded the man’s wrist with ivory fangs, keeping him on the floor with the sheer weight of her wolfish form. The dagger fell from useless fingers. Tong righted himself as guards rushed into the chamber, and Tyro picked up the jade dagger.
“A Deathbringer,” muttered Tyro, studying the stone blade and the purple hue of its poison. “I have not seen such a dagger since Olthacus the Stone was killed by Khyrein assassins behind the walls of Uurz.”
Tong did not chastise or interrogate his attacker in the presence of his fellow Kings. Guards dragged the man kicking and screaming from the room. Only those who spoke his language heard his words: “Death to the False King! The Claw shall return! Death to Tong!”
The translator righted Tong’s chair and the King of New Khyrei resumed his place at the table. He spoke again through the interpreter: “It seems that not all the Royal Houses approve of a Khyrei free of slavery,” he said. “This is a minor problem that we are looking to solve soon. Until then, Ianthe’s cult of assassins has found some new master.”
“A pity the Deathbringers do not serve their King with such fervor,” said D’zan. “I do not envy you, Tong. There are no assassins lurking in the palace at Yaskatha.”
Tong nodded his understanding. “The traditions of Khyrei are long and deeply held,” he said. “Not all of them will change so quickly.” Sharadza had taken on her womanly form again, and Tong took her hands in his own. “Thank you, Great Lady,” he said.
Sharadza bowed low before him, though she did not need to do so. There was pride and something far more dangerous surging in my heart. Vod’s daughter was everything I had hoped she would become, and so much more.
Thus the council had ended, with a decision to divide our forces and an attempted regicide. There would be more such attempts before Tong managed to quell the rebellious nature of every last Royal House. A revolution does not end in a single day. Like a war, or a disease, it can linger and cause vexation even in the midst of triumph.
Now I sit overlooking the beach, trying to catch another glimpse of the future. I have only until the sun rises and the ships of the southern kingdoms sail off to meet their doom. If only I can offer them something more, one more piece of vital information or a morsel of victory-to-come. Then I might leave them to their fates with a tad less guilt weighing upon my shoulders.
Briefly I had considered going with Khama, waging war upon Zyung at the Jade Isles. Yet in my heart I know that this is a fool’s path. Zyung’s armada will not be stopped by any mortal fleet. The only possible effect of this advance confrontation is to weaken the invasion force before it makes landfall. And perhaps it will buy me a bit more time to gather a few sorcerers willing to stand against Zyung’s legion of High Seraphim; something which may not even be possible. For these merest advantages the Kings will sacrifice a thousand warships and countless lives.
The future waxes cloudy and obscure before me.
Rain sweeps off the sea to drench my robe and hair. Still I hover above the breakers, peering into the murky depths of time.
I see the double fleet, aligned in a tight arc about the Jade Isles. I see fires dropping from above and soaring from below. I hear the screams of dying men and beasts.
I see the decimation of the fleets, the burning timbers and sails, the broken men impaled on foreign lances, drowning in red waters ablaze. The face of Zyung peers back at me with eyes of solar fire.
One last thing I see before I turn from this futile task: A pile of blackened ruins that used to be a city. By the coastal valley and its sluggish river I recognize it as Shar Dni. Where the remnants of the dead city have lain for thirty years, there gathers a mass of shadows, ancient and hungry. Long have they slumbered beneath the blood-spotted stones, after feasting on the blood and souls of innocents during the city’s doom.
Now I see a pale citadel rise from those ruins, a towering edifice of shattered stone and a mountain of ground bones. It grows from the scattered debris that used to be temples, streets, the husk of a charred palace. There at the scene of Khyrei’s greatest crime, Zyung will create his beachhead. About this citadel of bone, his legions of Manslayers and Seraphim will gather and spread across the land like locusts. The ruins of Shar Dni will be the seat of the God-King’s power when he arrives. The carven image of his imperious face dominates the upper half of the structure, and the smokes of a hundred thousand flames fill the valley.
The eyes of Zyung’s stone-wrought visage flare bright enough to blind me.
I see nothing else.
Sharadza finds me then, a white seabird flapping to perch upon my shoulder.
Sunrise comes soon, she says in the language of birds. We must go.
Yes, we must go and rouse those of the Dreaming Ones who will stand with us. If any will do so. Sorcerers cannot easily be swayed. But first I must share what little I have seen.
“Go and find Vireon,” I tell her. “No doubt he sleeps among the tents of his warriors, if he sleeps at all. Tell him this war will begin at the ruins of Shar Dni. Tell him to move his armies north along the coast. The Sharrian valley is the key. We will perform our task and meet him there as soon as we can.”
She flies off to deliver the message, conscious of its deadly significance.
Perhaps I will tell her that I love her before Zyung puts an end to us.
Who knows what we will be after he has reforged us in the fires of his will?
We might become his slaves, or worse. He might bless us with annihilation.
Even we, the Masters of Shapes and Patterns, we who cannot truly die, might be robbed of our very existence. His is the power to make it possible.
I should tell her before it is too late.
Why can I not say the words?