The Infinity Gate: Darkglass Mountain: Book Three - By Sara Douglass Page 0,1

in this world that mattered, save us. Creation could never manage a more magnificent creature than ourselves.

We were the pinnacle of life, and of learning, and the culmination of all mysteries.

This creed spread rapidly throughout the River Angels. We believed it utterly, and it became part of the fabric of our existence. We pitied every other creature within and without water.

They had no matter in life. No point.

Then another one among us supposed that if they mattered not, and if they had no point, then they should be despised.

That idea, too, gained great currency among the River Angels, and soon we despised all creatures not of our number.

They were pointless, a drain on creation. They marred our world, our very existence.

They needed to go.

Thus began our campaign of murder. It is not what we called it, then, but I have enough wisdom and grace now to see it for what it was. Murder. Rampant massacre.

All other creatures depended on water. They needed to drink of it; they needed to eat the creatures within it; they needed it to dampen their roots.

Everyone came to water, sooner or later.

And, as they did so, we murdered them.

Insects; great hoofed creatures; birds of the sky. As soon as they bent to drink from the water, they were seized in our malicious, prideful hands and slaughtered.

We tore out plants, even great trees of the forests, and drowned them as soon as their roots touched our domain.

No one should be allowed to exist save us.

Oh, we were such disgusting creatures!

Naturally, such wholesale butchery did not go unnoticed. One day our god came to us and he asked us what we did.

We explained. We told him that none mattered save us, and that we intended to rid our world of all creatures that had no point to their existence.

Everyone save us.

And our god, of course. We could tolerate his presence.

Ah, I cannot explain to you the depth of our god’s wrath. Initially, we could not understand it — unbelievable as that sounds — for were we not committed to the most practical of works?

His wrath deepened. He asked us to forbear our madness, but as we did not understand it as such, we could not comprehend our god’s wrath (such shallow creatures we were!), and thus we could not acquiesce to his wishes.

More creatures and plants died.

Thus, our god destroyed us. Such a simple thing to say — four words to describe the most appalling time.

He destroyed us. The water was removed from us, and we could never more touch it. We were condemned to wander within the air, we were condemned to hate the element which had once cradled us and we were condemned to be hated and despised by all who met us.

We became The Hated, and we existed only in horror.

Worst of all, we lost our god, our beloved, and we have spent aeons looking for him again. Sometimes we think we have found him, or something, someone, who might replace him.

But they have never come close to he who we lost.

The god of the waters, who so long ago turned his back on us.

Part One

Chapter 1

Elcho Falling

Elcho Falling lay quiet in the night. Its lord slept in the antechamber off the main command chamber, his lady wife by his side. An hour or so ago he had been dead, murdered through the treachery of a woman he’d once taken to his bed, but now he lay whole and clean and breathing again due to the power and love of his wife, Ishbel.

They lay sleeping, Elcho Falling quiet about them.

All was still, save for the deeper treachery that was about to be enacted against them.

Go! whispered the One, and in Elcho Falling Eleanon and his twelve thousand fighters picked up their weapons and dissolved into invisibility.

A moment later and they were dispersing throughout the citadel, seeking out the units of the Strike Force, an unseen cloud of silent death.

Go! whispered the One, and in the Twisted Tower Josia frowned at the scratching at the door.

He opened it, and stared bemused at the red tabby cat that entered and wound its way about his ankles.

And now I! whispered the One, and he stepped through Eleanon’s Dark Spire, which the Leafast man had placed in the very depths of Elcho Falling, flexed his shoulders, and began the long climb up into the heart of the citadel. As he rose, he began to sing, a triumphal chorus drawn from the depths of darkness.

Infinity had come to claim