Bone Music by Alan Rodgers

goddess who repented closed the Eye and sealed it shut. Then she set it back into its place above the great wide river, and looked on it, examining her handiwork.
    When she looked on it she had a vision that chilled her to the bone.
    She saw a vision of the world, the Eye, and Hell; she saw hateful ardors growing in the breasts of innocents, and breeding everywhere inside the hearts of men and women.
    Our Lady of Sorrows cried when she saw that vision. She cried because the people are dear to her, and precious — but she did not turn away from it. She knew she didn’t dare.
    When the vision was done she shuddered and sobbed and ran to the arms of the great King, partly for comfort, partly for succor, and partly too because he and his fate were terrible keys to the vision.
    She found him in his Mansion high upon the Mountain, sitting in his study where a roaring fire burned inside the great black stove. She found the Right and Left hands of the Lord, Dismas and Gestas, in his study with him, offering their counsel.
    The Lady ignored them. She went to the King and shed her tears upon his shoulder until her heart could cry no more. Then she said, “I had a vision, King — a terrible terrible vision.”
    The King held her close, and rubbed her softly near the spine. “I saw a glimmer of it too,” he said. “Your sorrow reflected on the jewel.”
    The jewel he meant was a tiny simulacrum of the Eye of the World that hung from a leather cord around his neck. The Lady gave that to him not long before he died; he never removed it under any circumstance.
    “I saw my handiwork undone,” she said. “I saw the Eye would break three times. Once now when I have sealed it; once again when that seal wears away. I saw a way to remake it then — but the only way will cost the world its soul. And even then the binding will not hold! I saw you and yours, everything that we hold dear, cast into the deep pit of oblivion. And no matter how that price was paid, the Eye still broke again. The world will fall into corruption, and then when no one can stand tall enough to stop it, damnation falls onto the world, unstoppably.”
    The King, the Lady, and the good Hands of the Lord stood quiet after that for the longest time, mourning against the destiny that lay before them.
    “If I’m going in the pit, I’ll go there unafraid. But I won’t go without a fight. Is there any hope? Is there nothing we can do to fight the dark?” the King asked at last.
    The Lady shook her head. “Nothing. No hope at all! No matter how we rail against the darkness, it will consume us.”
    And then it got quiet again. Until at last the Left Hand of the Lord spoke to them unbidden:
    “You’re wrong,” he said. “There’s always hope, no matter how it may grow faint.”
    The Lady arched an eyebrow; the King turned to face the Left Hand of the Lord, put a hand upon his shoulder, and spoke to him demandingly. “Tell me,” the great King said. “Tell me what you see.”
    “Hope is a thing,” the Left Hand said, “that grows in the hearts of the faithful as they struggle to survive. No matter how they suffer it never abandons them.”
    The great King laughed. “That’s an easy moral,” he said. “But I never seen a man come to good depending on rules without arrangements. Be forthright for me — tell me what to do.”
    The Right Hand of the Lord shook his head. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” he said. “Salvation is a thing that comes from the heart. No machination we could give you could ever salve the Eye.”
    “Then what do you mean?” the Lady asked. “Riddles aren’t salvation, either.”
    The Left Hand of the Lord sighed impatiently. “Look at the world,” he said. “Look into your hearts. Know the history and the mystery that’s gone before you, and make salvation where you find it. There isn’t any other way.”
    And then the Hands were gone, disappeared as thoroughly as though they’d never sat beside the