ECHOES OF THE GREAT SONG by David A. Gemmell

Illusion. It is all illusion, he told himself. The wounds disappeared instantly.

He was holding a rock. Worms were sliding from holes in its surface, eating into his palm, their tiny teeth ripping away his flesh.

Concentrating on the medicine pouch he pictured the ship, seeking a way back. The worms ate their way into his wrist. They were laying eggs in the arteries. He felt them swimming through his veins. The eggs hatched, and more worms began to grow inside his chest and belly, his neck and his loins, bursting through the skin.

He was being eaten alive.

‘Help me, shaman!’ he said. But there was no answer­ing voice.

What if this was all a trick? What if there was no Touchstone here? Had he been lured into a trap?

A worm burst out through his cheek and flopped down his face.

The rainbows were spiralling about him now, and he clung to the rock.

Almost home, he thought. Almost safe.

‘You are hurting me,’ came the voice of Chryssa. Talaban’s eyes snapped open. He saw her fragile body, the splintering cracks running up her crystal arm under the pressure of his hand. ‘Why do you want to hurt me?’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he told her.

‘I was safe among the stars. If you take me back I will turn to glass and dust.’

Squeezing shut his eyes he ignored her and sped on. A great roaring filled his ears. Massive talons ripped into his face, tearing out his left eye and slamming down into his chest. The lion pressed against him, its fangs ripping into his shoulder, snapping the bones.

Still he clung to its black mane.

I am dying, he thought. I cannot survive these wounds.

The blue planet roared up towards him and he felt his head strike the rug on the floor of his cabin.

Beside him Touchstone groaned. Forcing himself to his knees, he shook the tribesman.

Touchstone’s green eyes opened. ‘I sleep now,’ he said, and fell forward.

Talaban dropped the medicine bag alongside the uncon­scious man, then rose and walked back to his desk. There were no marks upon his body, no wounds, no jagged tears. But his mind still reeled from the remembered pain.

That was a foolish thing to do, he told himself.

Chryssa came to his mind. Instinctively he sought to suppress the image, but then realized he no longer felt tormented by the loss of her. Tentatively he summoned the memories of her, their walks together in the high hills, with the spring flowers carpeting the hillsides, and her reluctance to tread on the blooms. She had picked her way carefully among them, her movements delicate and graceful. The memory was warm and very fine. At that moment Talaban finally understood what a fool he had been. By ruthlessly suppressing all thoughts of Chryssa he had buried the joy as well as the despair. You are an idiot, he told himself.

Opening the rear door he stepped out onto his private deck. The stars were bright in the night sky. Suddenly a h’ght appeared to the east. Talaban glanced up …

… to see a second moon shining in the sky.

The sea beneath the ship began to churn and rise. Talaban was hurled to the left. Someone on the decks above him screamed.

Then the second moon vanished and the seas grew calmer. He stood for a moment, transfixed. Then a second surprise shook him.

Floating in the doorway of his cabin was a shimmering translucent figure, an old man wearing a buckskin shirt decorated with fingers of bone. His hair was white and braided with beads and his eyes were deep and knowing. The evil is upon us, Talaban,’ he said.

Then he vanished.

Chapter Thirteen

The king of the gods, Ra-Hel, was troubled by the changing sky. He sought out Old One Young and asked him for a prophecy. The Day of Endings has begun, said Old One Young. And war will rage among the gods. The mighty will fall, the heavens weep, and evil will stalk the land. But he did not speak of the goddess to come, nor the Queen of Death. For the time was not yet upon them.