Magician’s End. Raymond E. Feist

‘Miranda.’

      ‘Predictable,’ answered the youth.

      ‘Who are you?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Piper. ‘Until a few moments ago, I didn’t exist, or if I did, I lack memories of that existence.’ He leaped nimbly from the rock, rose en pointe and flexed his knees slightly. ‘Everything feels new. No creaks, aches.’ A quizzical expression crossed the youth’s face. ‘Lacking experience, I wonder if I would know what creaks and aches are. And then, how do I even know to speak of them?’ A bright expression was followed by, ‘Then again still, how do I even know to speak?’

      Miranda was not amused. ‘Where is this place?’

      ‘We are in the last bastion of a dead race, where they futilely attempted to resist chaos. They were obliterated so many years ago that no sign of their existence remains save these ramps and tunnels.’

      ‘How do you know me?’

      Again, a bright expression was followed by one of wonder. The boy had a perfectly round face save for a slightly pointed chin. He had vivid green eyes and wisps of reddish-blonde hair stuck out under the hat. ‘I don’t know. I just know.’

      ‘What do you know?’

      The brow furrowed for a moment. ‘I am your guide.’

      Lacking patience even in the best of circumstances, Miranda barked, ‘Then guide me!’

      ‘Very well,’ said Piper. ‘We need to go up there.’ He pointed to the dark top of the cavern.

      ‘Give me a moment,’ said Miranda, focusing her concentration on that gloomy destination. She cast a spell of distant vision and her view passed through several levels of lightless tunnels and caverns, only her magic senses giving her a vision in the darkness, until she saw a large hole beneath an open sky hundreds of feet above them. Darkness above indicated a massive cavern above the one in which they found themselves. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Do you need my aid?’

      Laughing, Piper said, ‘Would I be sitting alone in this godsforsaken pit if I didn’t?’

      Miranda found the youth’s penchant towards good humour irritating, and realized that was felt from both her demon half and her human half. With a single step she grabbed Piper around the waist and willed them to the indicated destination.

      She found herself on the lip of a vast crater, and letting go of Piper, she used her demon’s vision to pierce the darkness. The landscape was desolate, without a hint of any living thing. Glancing skyward almost gave her vertigo, for there was no cavern above.

      The sky was empty.

      Where stars should have abounded, only a vast expanse of emptiness sprawled overhead. Miranda felt something akin to panic rising as she pushed her senses outward. Farther and farther she reached and finally she retreated back to where she stood, almost overcome by the experience. There were no stars. There were no comets. No worlds, or any other object of size as far as she could perceive. Instead a fine dust with occasional rocks ranging from the size of a man’s thumb to this slab of granite she stood upon.

      ‘Where is this place?’

      Piper said, ‘You believe it to be the Fourth Circle. A battle of consequence was fought here in ages past.’ He waved a hand lazily at the sky. ‘This is the consequence.’

      ‘Nothing is left?’

      Piper smiled and in the magical corona surrounding Miranda, she couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or sad when he said, ‘There’s a great deal left, but it’s just been ground down to a fine powder in most places.’

      ‘Why am I here?’ she turned to ask, but Piper was gone. In his place stood a young woman with ebony skin, eyes of piercing black, hair tightly gathered in rows that flowed down her neck to her shoulders. She wore a similar costume, but of red and beige rather than green and yellow. ‘Where’s Piper?’ asked Miranda.

      ‘I am Piper,’ said the young woman in a voice as melodic as one could imagine. She picked up the exact same pipe Miranda had seen before and blew the same annoying melody.

      In the span of two lifetimes, one as a human and the other as a demon, the merged being of Child and Miranda had seen many things, shape-changing and conjured illusions being among them, but there was something different about this creature. ‘You change your body at will?’

      ‘Yes, don’t you?’

      ‘Not lately,’ said Miranda, deciding to ignore the body shift. She remembered something Pug had said about one of Kalkin’s visions. Suddenly she realized she didn’t know if it was something he had said to her on Sorcerer’s Island as Miranda, or something since Child had come to this world with Miranda’s memories. ‘I’m losing one of my selves, aren’t I?’

      Piper shrugged. ‘I don’t know about such things. I only know what I know.’

      Miranda was intrigued by that statement. ‘Isn’t that true of everyone?’

      Piper smiled, her teeth brilliant against her dark skin. ‘Some people know things they don’t know they know. But I only know what I need to know. I was formed for a task, nothing more.’

      ‘Formed?’

      ‘I was of the Bliss, at one with the Source, and now I am here with you to provide what you need.’

      Miranda saw something behind Piper’s shoulder and said, ‘What is that?’

      Piper turned and saw a speck of light. ‘An energy adjustment.’

      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.