Raymond Feist - Magician’s End

Suddenly the pinpoint of light blossomed into a cascade of sparkling lights that rapidly blinked out of existence. ‘Despite seeming empty from your perspective, there’s a lot going on here,’ observed Piper. ‘The Fourth Circle is contracting. In … time is a difficult concept … some years, many years, few …? In some amount of time the Fourth Circle will be gone.’

‘One of the Circles will be gone?’ Miranda thought of the ever-expanding void in the centre of the Fifth Circle and asked, ‘Will the Fifth Circle vanish?’

‘I do not know,’ answered Piper.

‘What am I doing here?’ asked Miranda.

‘That I know,’ said Piper. She pointed behind Miranda. ‘Look!’

Miranda turned and where a void had been moments before, a panorama of a massive arc of heaven stood revealed, as if some incredibly large curtain had been drawn aside. A vista of stars was visible and for a brief moment Miranda had a touch of vertigo as the sun rose above it and moved at noticeable speed.

‘This was once a place like those to which you’ve travelled, realms of countless worlds, stars, comets, planets teeming with life,’ said Piper, and hearing a new voice, Miranda turned to discover Piper had changed bodies again. A tall, handsome man of middle years, with a neatly trimmed beard just lightly shot through with grey stood wearing a similar outfit as the last two incarnations had, but this one was in a sable black that looked like velvet, trimmed with gold lamé. ‘Will you stop that?’ said Miranda.

‘Why?’ answered Piper in a deep, melodious voice. ‘Bodies are fun.’

‘You never had one before?’

‘I may have, but I don’t remember. We who are spun out of the Bliss know only what we need to know; whatever pasts we may have experienced are part of the Unity with the One.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘Makes everything new.’

‘Wonderful,’ muttered Miranda. ‘The gods send out curious toddlers to save the universe.’

‘Watch and learn,’ said Piper.

A massive storm of energies erupted across the panorama before Miranda, and Piper said, ‘The Sundering.’

‘What is it?’

‘When the heavens and hells split. Behold the demon host.’

A swarm of creatures flew out of the rip in space and Miranda’s eyes widened. Instead of the seemingly endless variety of shapes of horror Child had known since her birth, this was an army of incredible beings, roughly human in form and beautiful in a way she could barely comprehend. There was not the slightest resemblance between what she knew from her short tenure in the Fifth Circle and what she now observed.

Soon another figure emerged, a being so brilliant she could barely look at it. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

‘Hell’s first king,’ answered Piper and she saw he had reverted to the form she had first seen, the youth in the green-and-yellow garb.

‘He … is beautiful.’ Both Child and Miranda found him an object of stunning form and elegant grace. ‘What is his name?’

‘Name?’ Piper blew a shrill note. ‘That could be his name. “Name!” He has a different name for every race of being that encounters him. Some worship him as a god, and others fear him as the ultimate font of evil. He is, or was, or will be a force of nature. Does calling air that stirs “wind” make it different to when it goes unnamed?’ Piper pointed with his flute. ‘The Shining One, Light Bringer, Fallen Star, First of the Chosen, Accuser, Defiance, so many names in so many languages.’ He gripped her arm lightly. ‘There was a first cause. But this was the second. Remember that. Your father and Pug witnessed the First Cause. You are seeing the second. He was first among those created by the First Cause, Most Beloved, but he challenged his creator, and became the Opponent!’

Miranda could not tear her eyes from the image. There was no scale. Hell’s first king could be the size of a man seen from very close, or a mile tall viewed from many miles’ distance. The human-like face was perfection, without blemish or flaw. If one could imagine perfect proportions of brow to nose to chin, fullness of lips, set of eyes, shape and contour of a male body, then he was perfect. A woman of no small life experience, she was overwhelmed by desire and longing, a need for more than mere physical love, but to be accepted by this being. She said it aloud: ‘He’s perfect.’

Piper laughed. ‘No, but as close as any living thing can get. There was only one perfect being in existence.’

‘Who?’

‘In time. You’re not ready.’ Piper waved his hand. ‘This is the event, or as you would see it … time confuses me. This is the Second Cause.’

Miranda looked at the vista before her, distances beyond her ability to imagine, and in the midst of it, a sea of incandescent gases. Tiny lights dotted the cloud and she knew them to be stars. Five beings like the first one she had just seen, magnificent in every aspect, stood in a pose of confrontation, one facing the other four. No words were heard, but Miranda sensed they were communicating.

‘What am I seeing?’

‘Watch.’

Suddenly one of the four moved to the Shining One and grappled with him; then the Shining One was gone.

‘What was that?’

‘There are many different stories. Here’s what you must know. For every cause there’s a reaction, an opposition; for every force, a counter force. It’s part of a balance so fundamental it surpasses even the First Cause. It is called Equipoise at its most fundamental, and that is what you must first understand. The one who fell was cast out because he questioned his creation and aspired to rise beyond his station. He brooded in solitude for ages and felt rage.

‘Then came envy, and the one who fell created imitations of his brethren. His children were demons. They would serve and worship him, as his brethren served their creator.’

Again Miranda saw what Piper had called the demon host, a legion of beauty on the wing, appearing through a massive rift in the heavens, the Sundering. ‘Am I seeing what he really looks like?’ she asked.

Piper again blew a loud note, spun in a circle and said, ‘Of course not. There are bands of energy coursing through the universes impossible for any physical entity to perceive, let alone grasp. Understanding beyond any one mortal’s capacity is what is needed to grasp the totality of what is before you.

‘Threads of possibility, waves of probability, surges and flows of consciousness, vital forces beyond mortal comprehension.’ In a patronizing tone he added, ‘We have to simplify so you can comprehend. Your feeble mind does what it can to understand, but it’s not sufficient.’

Miranda scowled at being called feeble-minded, but let it go. ‘What are you showing me?’

‘The hosts of heaven.’

‘I thought you said it was the demon legion.’

Piper laughed. ‘Your mind! It is lacking. Angels, demons, they are the same thing, but from different places! Or the same thing seen differently! They just serve different causes. They are opposites, yet they are the same!’

Piper came to stand before Miranda, put his pipe under his arm, then formed a sphere with his two hands. ‘You see things like this! But in truth, they are like this.’ Suddenly he pulled apart his hands, fingers wiggling frantically, and moved his hands in a flurry of motion. ‘There is no higher heaven, lower hell. The first circle is the first circle, or plane or realm or demesne.’ He waved one hand high above his head. ‘Here you call it heaven.’ Then he waved the other down below his waist, letting his flute drop, which he deftly caught with his free hand while he knelt. ‘Down here, the same place, you call hell!’

He walked around behind her. ‘From here, I see you with black hair hanging down your back.’ Before she could turn, he was in front of her. ‘From here I see your face! You look different from before. But you are the same!’