.

He looked at Magnus and reached out, his hand gently touching his face. ‘I’m younger than you, in this body,’ he said with a bitter smile, ‘despite being hundreds of years in memory, I’m but thirty years as the Dasati measure time.’ He took his hand away from Magnus’s face. ‘Around the eyes, you resemble your mother.’ Magnus nodded slightly. Macros’s gaze went from his grandson, to Nakor, then to Pug.

      ‘Start at the beginning,’ said Pug.

      Macros laughed. ‘For this story, the beginning was my ending. As I told you, I died at the hands of Maarg, the Demon King.’ He looked across the garden, and gazed into the distance, focused on memory. ‘When I died …’ He closed his eyes. ‘It is difficult to remember, sometimes … the longer I live as a Dasati, the more … distant my human memories are, the feelings especially, Pug.’ He looked at his grandson Magnus. ‘Forgive me, my boy, but whatever familial ties I should be feeling are absent.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘I haven’t even asked about your mother, have I?’

      ‘Actually, you did,’ said Magnus.

      Macros nodded. ‘Then I fear my memory is fading very rapidly. Ironically, for a human who has lived the span of more than nine hundred years, it would seem that I am dying.’

      Pug’s shock could not have been more evident. ‘Dying?’

      ‘A disease, rare in the Dasati, but not unheard of; should anyone besides our group and our Attenders suspect, I would be killed out of hand for weakness. The human ailments of the elderly are alien to the Dasati. Should the eyes fail or the memory fade, the person so afflicted is killed without thought.’

      ‘Is there anything—’ began Magnus.

      ‘No, nothing,’ said Macros. ‘This culture is about death, not life. Narueen said there may be something the Bloodwitches could do in their enclave, but that’s a continent away and time is of critical importance.’ He smiled. ‘Besides, if you’ve already died once, death is hardly something to fear, is it? And I’m interested to see what the gods have in store for me this time.’ He winced slightly as he shifted his weight. ‘No, death is easy. It’s dying that’s the hard part.’ He looked around. ‘Now, as I was saying, my memory seems to be fading, so I’d tell you what you need to know and then we can see if we can serve a common cause.’ Looking at Nakor, Macros said, ‘The gambler. The one who cheated me! Now I remember.’

      Nakor smiled. ‘I told you how when you revived from your ascension to godhood.’

      ‘Yes … you slipped me a cold deck of cards!’ Macros looked amused at the memory. Then his eyes narrowed and he studied Nakor more closely for a moment. ‘You are more than you seem to be, my friend.’ He hiked his thumb in the direction of Martuch’s home and said, ‘As is your young friend. He has something within his being that is dangerous, very dangerous.’

      ‘I know,’ said Nakor. ‘I think Ralan Bek contains a tiny fragment of the Nameless One.’

      Macros pondered this and then said, ‘In my dealings with the gods and goddesses I have come to understand a little of both their abilities and their limitations. What do you know?’

      Nakor glanced at Pug.

      ‘We believe that the gods are natural beings, defined in many ways by the form of human worship. If we believe the god of fire to be a warrior with torches, he becomes that,’ Pug answered.

      ‘Just so,’ said Macros. ‘Yet if another nation sees that being as a woman with flames for hair, then that is what the deity becomes.’ He looked from face to face. ‘In ancient days, the Dasati had a god or goddess for almost every aspect of nature you can imagine. There were the obvious major gods: the god of fire, death, air, nature, and the rest of it – even a god and goddess of love or at least the fundamental male and female urge to create offspring. But there were also so many minor gods it would give a scholar a throbbing head just to catalogue them.

      ‘There was the goddess of the hearth, and the god of trees, and the god of water was served in turn by the god of the sea, and another god of rivers, a goddess of waves, and another for rain. There was a god for travel, and another for builders, yet another for those who laboured under the ground in mines. As I understand it, there were shrines at every street corner and along the roads, and votive offerings were placed upon them by a worshipful populace who dutifully attended the prescribed public worships, festivals, and dedications.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The Dasati were a race of believers who also had a sense of duty that would shame a Tsurani temple nun. They created a pantheon of thousands of gods and goddesses, and every one had their appointed day of celebration, even if that consisted only of laying a flower on an altar, or hoisting a drink in a tavern in the god’s name.

      ‘It is important to remember that these gods and goddesses were as real as any you’ve encountered in Midkemia, even if their realms were minute. They had a spark of the divine within them, even if their mandate was only to ensure lovely flowers in the field each spring.’

      Of Pug, he asked, ‘What have you learned about the Chaos Wars since we last met?’

      ‘Little. Tomas has a few more of Ashen-Shugar’s memories to draw upon, and I’ve found an odd volume or two of myth and legend. But little substantial.’

      ‘Then listen,’ said Macros. He looked directly at Nakor. ‘The truth.’

      Nakor nodded once, emphatically, but said nothing.

      Macros began. ‘Before humanity came to Midkemia there were ancient races, several of which you know about, such as the Valheru, rulers of that world and masters of the dragons and elves. But other races existed as well, their names and nature lost before the dawn of human memory.

      ‘There was a race of flyers who soared above the highest peaks, and a race of beings living below the oceans depths. Peaceful or warlike, we will never know, for they were destroyed by the Valheru.

      ‘But above all others rose two beings: Rathar, Lord of Order, and Mythar, Lord of Chaos. These were the two Blind Gods of the Beginning. The very fabric of the universe around them was their province, and Rathar weaved the threads of space and time into order, while Mythar tore them asunder, only to have Rathar reweave them, over and over.

      ‘Ages past, Midkemia was a world in balance, the hub of that particular region of space and time, and all was well, more or less.’

      Nakor grinned. ‘If you were a being of incredible power.’

      ‘Yes, it was not a good time to be weak, for it was rule by might and no hint of justice or mercy existed,’ responded Macros. ‘The Valheru were far more an expression of that epoch than they were evil; it can even be argued that good and evil were meaningless concepts during that time.

      ‘But something changed. The order of the universe shifted. More than anything I wished to know the reason for this shift, yet it is lost in time. A fundamental reordering of things took place – it’s impossible to say what the scale of time involved was, but to the races living on Midkemia at the time the result of that reordering seemed abrupt. Vast rifts in space and time appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and suddenly beings unknown on Midkemia entered the world: humanity, dwarves, giants, goblins, trolls and others as well. And races that came but did not endure, as well.

      ‘For years a war raged across the universe, and we mere humans …’ He stopped and laughed softly. ‘You mere humans could only apprehend the tiniest part of it. What we know is legend, myth, and fable. Shreds of history may be enmeshed in them, but no one will really know the truth of it.’

      Nakor laughed. ‘For a man who can travel in time, you had a simple enough means to discover that truth.’

      Macros grinned. ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you? But the truth is I do not have the ability to travel in time, at least not in the fashion you’d imagine.’ Looking at Pug, he said, ‘I remember when you and Tomas came to find me in the Garden, at the edge of the City Forever.’

      Pug remembered. It had been his first encounter with the Hall of Worlds.

      ‘Had