World's End

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time-- But it is lost, lost in the fire. I feel the life-force building inside me, feel the burning well up in my loins until there is nothing left of me except my need--

I release with a shuddering cry, and as I do she pulls me down on top of her, crushing my lips against her own. "Save me, save me--" she whimpers. My tongue enters her waiting mouth.

Her teeth close on my tongue, tearing it, and her saliva mingles with my blood.

"No--" My cry of pleasure becomes a cry of fear. I try to break free in the sudden excruciating moment when

I realize what she has done. Fire in my blood, icicles in my bones, it is too late-- I feel myself falling, still falling and falling, through rapture into oblivion.

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The voices wake me, a thousand voices murmuring, shouting, whispering to me. I open my eyes; my body is rigid with terror. I am in a room, a strange red-walled room, sprawled on a bed, naked and alone. My body is covered with whorls and stripes of reddish-brown stain. I sit up in a spasm, shaking my head, but the voices remain, jabbering and calling. I hunch over, hiding my nakedness, even though I cannot see who mocks me. I am sick with hunger. My body aches and smarts, my tongue is sore and swollen in my mouth. I whimper, covering my ears with my hands, but the voices are inside my head. "Leave me alone!"

Someone enters the room--a woman, but it is hard to see her through the voices. I feel my own face under my hands, reach out to her like a blind man. I do not feel her touch my hand, she does not touch my hand. But I know her face. I know her face--! I shout the voices down until I can name it. I've seen it a hundred times, but only in a picture. Song. This is Song. And last night I saw her and did not see her as our bodies joined. Like a dream--last night

. . . last night. . . The voices are drowning me; I choke and gasp.

Song's face moves close to mine. I read her lips, her

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voice is lost among a thousand voices: "False sibyl, now you are a real one. Now you know what I know. And now my mother knows what she did to me!" She laughs, holding the trefoil that I wear up in front of my eyes.

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WORLD S END

I try to make words with my swollen tongue, but all

I do is groan. Gods, oh gods . . . infected . . . I'm insane! I push her away and get to my feet, Page 115

staggering across the room to the window. I look out over the town and see Fire Lake stretching to the horizon beneath the glaring blue sky. The thousand voices in my head roar even louder at the sight of it. I fall to my knees, banging my head against the stone sill.

Song is behind me, pulling me up again, shouting into my face. "You hear it? You hear the voice of the Lake!

It wanted you. Now it can eat your mind. It will eat you alive, unless you're stronger than it is."

She pushes me

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to the window. "You belong to Fire Lake now. Look at your kingdom."

I look out over the Lake, and its burning brilliance sucks my mind out of my body like a wail.

The air shimmers above its coruscating surface. The air is alive, it flows through itself in waves. It floods with colors-- now crimson, now sapphire, as the colors fold into nothingness or flower into sight. It is like a window on another world: Mirages move in the heart of the color, phantoms of that other world. The voices rise and fall inside me as the colors bloom and fade.

They might even fit a pattern . . . they might almost make sense--

I bring my fists down hard on the windowsill; for a moment the pain in my hands frees my mind.

And beneath the clamor of voices I feel something else coiled around my thoughts, as formless as the mumbling of the planet's soul. . . . Madness. Everything I see is a lie, infected by madness.

It flashes back and back in the broken mirrors of my mind, until the weight of my own despair crushes me to the floor. My empty stomach heaves, and I sit gagging.

But when I cannot see the flaming mutation of the

Lake, I begin to feel better. After a little I crawl away

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from the window, pulling free of Song's clutching,

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taunting hands, and take a blanket from the bed to cover my nakedness. I fold myself inside it and go out of the tower, down the steps. The guards let me pass; I can barely see them.

I run aimlessly through the still-shadowed levels of the broken town. The tortured buildings seem to shift and fall and reshape themselves before my eyes. There are people everywhere now, before the midday heat. I

smell food cooking, and my stomach aches to be fed. I

enter an open doorway and take the food that I find there, cramming it into my mouth. A shriveled old woman shouts soundlessly at me. I watch her come after me with a cleaver, but I cannot keep my mind on her. I

take another piece of bread. She stops suddenly. She drives the cleaver into a tabletop, and goes out of the room.