World's End by Will Elliott Page B

stone. Nor had she to bother with the trouble of long slow healing, all to go back to a thankless world which would only open its arms to her again like a cruel mother.
    About her limp body in the glen was the hissing slide of swords from their sheaths. There were panicked shouts of the mayor’s men, a fight beginning. But those sounds were just jarring notes against a song which had begun around her. Strange music reached to Siel in her dream. It sought her out from the place she was sliding to; assured her she need not leave this body yet, that her healing need not be painful. There was more to learn here, the music said, more to experience. Worthwhile things – that was a promise. The music played about her as would a stream of warm water; it poured over her as if gushing from the holes of a flute, fat raindrops beating down on drum skins, interspersed with cries like bird calls, full of joy.
    She did not hear the fight breaking out, the men shouting,a body falling into the soft undergrowth nearby. She knew only the music a friend played for her, only the strange and powerful music which coaxed her tenderly back from the brink of death, knitting together where the skin had split and where the bone had cracked.
    Far Gaze had heard Siel crack against the slab of rock, and he’d thought right away that was that. No stranger to violence in a vast number of forms (victim, witness and inflictor), he was nonetheless ill to see her slender body bounce on impact, to actually
bounce.
He knew at once her back was probably broken, maybe her neck too by the way she landed and the tilt of her head.
    Nor was Far Gaze especially prone to sentiment – those who were had picked the wrong world to try and survive in. But as companions went, Siel had not once pestered him to frivolously cast magic, and one could be fairly sure she’d not be the first to flee if a fight went bad. The sight of her lying limp, dead soon if not already, did not please him at all.
    A blur tore across the ground away from her. The trail of heat left behind it was intense enough to be felt for a second or two even from where he stood, at the mouth of the cave. A flash of fire shot up along the trail but on the mossy damp turf it did not last long.
    Far Gaze knew immediately it was Shadow. Shadow too had made those screaming sounds which had brought him and Gorb to the cave mouth in the first place, and had brought the mayor and his men running up the tunnel back towards them (their scuffing feet echoing on the cave walls so it sounded like a hundred or more of them came, rather than a half-dozen).
    Far Gaze ran the short distance down to Siel’s body and sawhis concerns were founded. He contemplated finishing her off in mercy, but true warriors never wanted to die that way – true warriors viewed their whole lives as preparation for their death, and would sometimes curse those who ruined the moment. But he could certainly not heal her. Very few natural illnesses could outwit him, especially in the young and strong, but he knew not enough of healing to instantly mend someone’s spine in two places and patch together a skull. He doubted any mages did. He called to Gorb, ‘Can you heal, giant?’
    Gorb came over, crouched down and ran a thick thumb across her arm. Tears crept down his cheeks’ fat slabs. ‘I’m no wizard. Couldn’t heal my dogs; can’t heal this.’
    â€˜What have you done?’ came the Tantonese mayor’s accusing voice from the cave mouth. Tauk the Strong strode over with his six men in tow, two unsheathing their swords, boots slamming down through knee-high ferns.
    Far Gaze shivered with sour distaste. Mayor of the entire world, he thought. Now was not the time to approach a half-giant with weapons drawn. Quietly he said, ‘Gorb, remain calm, whatever they say or do. These men have been through a lot and are not thinking properly. That mayor owes me massive debts and I mean to