George Martin - Songs of the Dying Earth

The presence of the Red, Shrue knew, changed everything. How has this little homunculus ever managed to summon and bind a Red — or survive the process? wondered the diabolist. Aloud he said, “Welcome, Faucelme. I came for our dawn meeting, as you requested.”

The thief-magus grimaced a smile. “Oh, yes… rug merchant? If the best you can do is that simpering daihak, then perhaps you truly are only a carpet peddler.”

Shrue shrugged. He could feel Derwe Coreme’s poised readiness next to him, but the Myrmazon leader had little chance even with a Yellow, none with a Green or Purple, and less than none with Faucelme and his apprentice, much less with a Red. KirdriK’s attention was focused — through and across twelve dimensions of perception — totally on the Red. Shrue could feel the daihak strain against a century’s worth of invisible bindings like a wolf on a leash. KirdriK’s sublimated snarls were not on any frequency that human ears could hear, but both the two Purples and the single terrible Red were showing row upon row of what would be called fangs on lesser entities as they heard KirdriK’s challenge.

“I’ve already had my insects peer in at the rock that used to be Ulfänt Banderōz,” continued Faucelme. “Since I already have an adequate paperweight for the desk in my study, I have no use for the dead librarian. But I do want his…ho!.. who is this rat that’s joined your ranks, diabolist?”

Meriwolt had been cowering behind Derwe Coreme but now poked his long snout and wide eyes around her armored hip. The diminutive Mauzman’s mouth hung open in awe or horror or terror or all three.

“Merely a possible new servant I am interviewing,” said Shrue. “You started to say that you wanted…to go down to the village with us to have breakfast? Or would you and your entourage rather enter the Library and pay your last respects to Ulfänt Banderōz while we return to Dirind Hopz?” Still smiling, Shrue jinkered the little carpet to life and floated it close.

The Red twitched his six onyx-taloned hands, and Shrue’s rug — a family heirloom from a time when the sun burned yellow — exploded in heatless crimson flames. The ash scattered in a rising breeze as the red sun struggled to rise across the river in the east.

“Thus to any attempts to jinker skyward,” hissed Faucelme. “Your wares wagon and other carpets are already ash, Shrue. I want the Finding Crystal and I want it now . “

Shrue’s left eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly. “Finding Crystal?”

Faucelme laughed and held his hand out as if ready to release the Red. “Shrue, you’re a fool. You’ve just figured out that Ulfänt Banderōz kept the volumes here unreadable by phase-shifting them in spacetime…but you still think there is a second library. There is only this one, the Ultimate Library, displaced in space and time. When I collapse that phase-shift, the magical lore of a million years will be mine. Now give me the Finding Crystal.”

Shrue reluctantly removed the crystal from his robe with both hands, but kept his long, gnarled fingers around it as it glowed in his palms. Beneath them, the granite of Mount Moriat shook as the sun struggled to rise, its bloated red face flickering and spotted.

“Faucelme, it is you who’ve not thought this through,” Shrue said softly. “Don’t you understand? It’s Ulfänt Banderōz’s careless tampering with timespace, this very Ultimate Library, that is unstable. This …” He took one hand off the mesmeric Finding Crystal and gestured toward the vibrating stone of the Library behind him. “…is what is causing the Dying Earth to die even before its short allotted final days have come to pass.”

Faucelme laughed again. “You must think I was born yesterday, diabolist. Ulfänt Banderōz has kept this library stable but timespace separated longer than you — or even I — have been alive. Hand me the crystal at once.”

“You must understand, Faucelme,” said Shrue. “It was not until I came here that I understood the true cause of the world’s current instability. For whatever reason, Ulfänt Banderōz lost control of the two Libraries’ phase shift in the months before he died. The closer the Libraries come in time, the greater the spacetime damage to the red sun and the Dying Earth itself. If you bring the two Library realities together, as you and your Red propose to do, it will bring about the end of everything…”

“Nonsense!” laughed Faucelme.

“Please listen…” began Shrue but saw the madness flickering in the other magician’s eyes. It was not, he now understood, a question of whether Faucelme would release the Red. Faucelme was more the Red’s puppet than vice versa, and the Elemental cared not a terce whether the millions upon the Dying Earth survived another day. In desperation, Shrue said, “There is no guarantee that your Red — even with the Purples in support — can defeat a sandestin-daihak hybrid from the 14 thAeron.”

Faucelme’s eyes were flickering red. It was not an illusion or a reflection of the shaking sunrise. Something ancient and inhuman had taken possession of the small human shell and was literally burning to get out. “You are correct, Shrue the diabolist,” said Faucelme. “There is no guarantee that my Red shall prevail — only overwhelming odds. But you know as well as I what the outcome will be in thirty seconds if we both unleash our entities — you your daihak, I my Elementals. You might even survive — it’s conceivable. But the whore and the rodent will be dead before five of those thirty seconds have passed, as will be all eight thousand people in the valley below. Decide, Shrue. I demand the Finding Crystal… now .”

Shrue the diabolist tossed the crystal to Faucelme. Suddenly, Shrue seemed to shrink, to become little more than a tall but thin and frail old man in spidersilk robes, his spine curved under the burden of age and a terrible weariness.

“I’d kill you all now,” said Faucelme, “but it would be a waste of energy I need for the voyage.” Barking in a language older than the mountain upon which they stood, Faucelme commanded the two Purples to remain behind and to keep Shrue and his entourage from leaving the Library. Then Faucelme, his apprentice, the vibrating Red, and the three Yellows and three Greens mounted their mutated pelgranes and rose into the sky.

Even from a distance, Shrue could see Faucelme in the saddle, bending over his glowing Finding Crystal as the eleven giant pelgranes flapped their way southeast until they were lost in the soft red glare of the sunrise.

“Come,” Shrue said wearily. “The Purples may allow us to live a little longer and we might as well find something to eat in the Library.”

Derwe Coreme opened her mouth as if to speak angrily, looked sharply at the stooped old man who had been her energetic lover just hours earlier, and disgustedly followed Shrue into the Library. Mauz Meriwolt and then KirdriK — the daihak moving reluctantly and jerkily and not under his own volition — followed. The demon’s multidimensional gaze never left the two Purples.

Once inside, Shrue’s demeanor changed completely. The magus loped through the library stacks and bounded up stairs as if he were a boy. Meriwolt’s black bare feet slapped on stone and Derwe Coreme had to run to keep up, her right hand holding her scabbard and iberk’s horn in place to keep them from clanking. “Did you think of something?” she called to Shrue as the diabolist burst into Ulfänt Banderōz’s death chamber again. Derwe Coreme was panting only slightly from the exertion but she noticed with some small vexation that Shrue was not breathing heavily at all.