Gods of Earth (11 page)

And then she stopped abruptly, almost tripping over herself. She looked at the Guardian and her face collapsed into an expression of overwhelming grief. She fell flat onto the floor and stretched out.

“
Atheos
!”

She moaned loudly, in despair, and then spoke in her guild language. “
Atheos. Ton anthropon eauton eleeig!
”

The Guardian answered her back in Common.

“Get up, witch. You will call me Guardian. Who still abides here?”

The woman did not rise. She moaned and pressed her black hair into her face with a hand that shook wildly.

“Oh, Antigod, have mercy on humanity. Do not summon the Old Gods.”

“Rise, and call me Guardian, or I’ll hail them right now. Who still lives? Rise, I say.”

The woman rose into a crouch, but would not look up. Her arms shook, her knees trembled.

Does she have reason to fear me so?
the Guardian wondered.

“I’m alone. I’m alone. It killed everyone. I heard them screaming and dying. It killed everyone. And I saw it.” She choked on her words and started to weep. “The Antigod has come,” she moaned.

Seth walked to her side and put a paw on her knee. She hunched her shoulders, as if trying to hide her face, and lifted a hand hesitatingly, unsure of whether to touch the coyote.

Finally she spoke again.

“I couldn’t leave the tower. The doors, all the outside doors, they somehow only opened onto themselves again. I searched everywhere. None of the Mothers who were here, in the Hand—none remain. Just some—parts. I buried those in the vaults. I.…”

“Hexus killed all?”

“They attacked him, with ancient weapons. He fought back, he killed them all.”

“Why not you?”

“I didn’t fight. My superiors forbad it. I’m the only novice in the Hand. I hid.”

The Guardian watched her a long time in silence. Then he said to her, in her own guild language, “
This is Chance Kyrien, bereaved by your guild among the Purimen seventeen years ago. Why does the god want him?
”

The woman snapped her head up, and peered at Chance intently. She hesitated, trembling. “
This is him,
” she whispered, answering in her guild language.

“
Why does the god want him?
” the Guardian demanded again.

With an effort she looked away from Chance, and started to rock back and forth.

“
Do you know the doom of the Earth should I fail?
” the Guardian growled.

Seth furrowed the skin over his snout and glared at the Guardian, a sign of scolding, but said nothing.

The woman looked at Chance again, and her eyes began to well again with tears. “
The Potentiate
,” she whispered.

The Guardian lifted his head back in shock.

“
What?
”

“
He’s a Potentiate.
”

“Speak Common!” Chance demanded. “I can see you’re talking of me. You cannot talk of me this way. Speak Common.”

The Guardian ignored him and continued in the Mother’s guild language. “
How could that be? The Fathers of the Theogenics Guild were slain at the end of the Theomachia. The bloodlines were cut.
”

“
All the children are tested
,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, as she rocked back and forth, still pressing her hair into her face. “
All the children of Gotterdammerung Mothers. It’s an ancient ceremony. He was tested. Found to be a.…
”

“
Who was the mother?
”

The woman rocked back and forth a long time before she whispered, “
All dead.
”

“
Who was the father?
”

She shook her head.

The Guardian gritted his teeth, a loud grinding that echoed in the silent hall. “
And you set a Potentiate out among tribes witless of the lore of the gods? Well it was, perhaps, that you did not slay him for his faultless birth and youth. But the Mothers were fools not to keep him here, where they could have set watch over him.
”

“
It is said there was a watch,
” she answered, her voice quavering.

“
Where? Who?
” the Guardian demanded.

Seth yelped.

The Guardian looked down at the coyote. Seth put his paw down, turned, and bowed his head. “
I too am, am a guardian.
”

“
You have some place in the Gotterdammerung?
” the Guardian asked, incredulous.

“
N-no. I belong to the Hekademon.
”

“Speak Common!” Chance demanded again, this time shouting at Seth.

“
A philosopher!
” the Guardian said. “
What a worthless band I gather.
”

“
Not a philosopher. A, a, a student still.
”

“Speak Common!” Chance repeated.

The Guardian turned back to the Mother, and asked, “
Why does the god want the boy? What good is a Potentiate to it?
”

“Stop,” Seth barked in Common, while the woman hesitated. “Food, drink, clothes, r-r-rest. Chance is tired. I am tired.” He did not add that the woman was in shock, though his glaring at the Guardian, while he again put his paw on the woman’s shoulder, made it clear that she was his real concern.

The Guardian growled in impatient frustration.

“What is your, your name?” Seth asked her.

“Thetis,” she whispered.

“Ta-ta-take us to chambers, Thetis,” Seth said. “Do you have food?”

She nodded. She glanced at the Guardian, but when he did not protest, she rose enough to stand, bowing over awkwardly, and moving half sideways bade them follow as she slipped back through the door from which she had entered the hall. Seth stayed close at her side, half-guiding her as she went.

“What did she say?” Chance asked.

The Guardian only growled, “We have not the time for these cares. But come.”

CHAPTER

12

C
hance was afraid. They were hiding something from him—even Seth was hiding something from him. He resolved that he would leave if they refused again to speak Common.

Thetis led them through a door behind the statue at the end of the hall, which opened to the foot of a broad, winding stair in a towering, circular space that rose up into an indefinite gloom. Each wind of the stair around the cylinder was one tall floor. Chance looked up: the stairs were lit for the first six or seven flights, but after this wound up into darkness.

“My chambers, the free chambers, are up six floors,” Thetis mumbled.

“Good, good,” Seth reassured her.

The woman led them on. Chance followed, looking from Seth to the Guardian and back again. His unease grew slowly into fear. What secret were they keeping from him? He still doubted he had made the right choice in trusting the Guardian, but he had not doubted, till moments ago, that Seth could be trusted. But here was the coyote speaking two different guild languages and sharing
secrets with the Guardian. And all the while, they seemed to be doing nothing to help Sarah.

Chance looked at the woman. She was slightly taller than him, but thinner, and he saw now that she looked to be perhaps a few years older than he. She tried to meet no one’s eyes, but stared fixedly at the stairs before her feet. Yet, a few times, her eyes of very deep brown glanced quickly at Chance. The familiarity of her black hair and nearly black eyes made an uncomfortable thought grow in the depths of Chance’s mind: are these my people? He shivered and whispered to himself, under his breath, “I am a Puriman.” Seth’s ears twitched.

When they came to the edge of the darkness, where the pale lights above them were the last on the ascending stairs, the woman turned and pushed open a gray entrance that gave onto a broad white hallway, lined with doors. A large window formed the hall’s end, its view filled with the streaked gray wall of a building across the road. The woman slipped ahead, looked over her shoulder to be sure they were following, and went to the first door.

“These are novice quarters. Empty. You can use them.” She pointed timidly at a door down the hall. “My room.”

A table stood in the chamber, surrounded by chairs. Two smaller doors to the left opened into a bathroom and a bedroom. A small kitchen filled the opposite corner. The far wall held a broad window that let in sunlight and looked out on the square where the Guardian had howled the world back into submission. Through a crack between two buildings beyond, Chance could see the blue-black Crystal Wall on the western side of the city. The rays of the sun slanted low now, so that only the peaks of the towers were bright. In the distance two airships floated close to another tower.

“Can you eat?” the Guardian asked Thetis.

“There’s some food here.”

“Eat quickly, then. Feed the Puriman. We must go to Uroboros.”

“No,” Seth barked. He sat on his haunches obstinately in the middle of the room, facing the Guardian. “The sun sets, sets. All are tired. Tomorrow.”

“If the god comes and we have not made ready, all these may die, philosopher.”

“We mortals prefer to, to, to die well fed, well clothed, and wi-wi-with our wits our own. Go easy, Guardian. Let them eat and bathe and sleep. Questions tomorrow.” He trotted to the door, then added, “I promised the-the-the guards I would talk with the City Councilors. And I’ll, I’ll, I will return with clothes for Chance.”

The Guardian watched him go. “Leave the makina outside!” he called.

Seth yelped.

“A philosophy student,” the Guardian growled.

Thetis appeared terrified to be left alone with Chance and the Guardian. She divided her glances between the Guardian’s ominous gray form and Chance’s face. Chance was surprised that she paid him any heed, and he became uncomfortable as she seemed more and more to inspect him with a hungry curiosity.

Soon after Seth left, she slipped out of the room, and Chance imagined she had fled, but she returned with snow-white bandages, some towels, and a glass bottle of clear liquid. She pointed at Chance’s arm, where the bear had cut him.

“I cannot use guild works,” Chance said.

“This is cotton. This is alcohol. I do not think they break your creed.”

Chance nodded. He began to strip off his filthy bandages, but she stopped him.

“Let me.”

She reached out and touched his bare arm with trembling, cool fingertips. For a moment she stood like that, just touching him. Chance felt that she seemed almost to believe he wasn’t real—or perhaps that she had expected him and now could not believe he had arrived. When he looked at her pointedly, she blushed and began to slowly peel his bandages off. They had dried into his scabs, and the wide scrapes of the bear claw tore open again as she pulled the brown scraps of cloth away. He cringed but said nothing. She poured on the stinging alcohol, and Chance breathed deeply the sharp smell of it as he bit back a gasp of pain. She wiped the cut clean, poured more alcohol on, and then wrapped the arm in the gauze.

“We can change it again tomorrow,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded. She went away again and returned with a tray of food: walnuts, crisp apples, several wedges of hard cheese, and a loaf of stale bread. They sat at the table then and ate. Cool water that tasted of metal came from a tap in the wall.

“What will happen to Mimir?” Chance asked the Guardian.

“The makina will wait outside,” the Guardian said. “It is no hardship for a machine to wait a day or a year.”

Thetis looked at Chance and then the Guardian with wide eyes, as if surprised that Chance would talk with this dread being in the Common tongue.

A discomfort grew in Chance over the fear and awe the woman felt for the Guardian. He had treated the Guardian as a man—a frightening, powerful unman, but still a kind of man. The woman instead could barely breathe in the Guardian’s presence.

Should he speak differently to the Guardian? Should he not speak to him at all? And yet, looking at him, where he stood by the window, Chance could not muster any of the terror and reverence that the woman felt. The Guardian was scary, even awesome, but to Chance he seemed now, ever since their time by the river after the
fight with the bear, a man for all that. He was quiet, stoic, like fierce old Elder Isai of the Purimen Council. But not unfathomable, not otherworldly.

Seemingly torn between wanting to be away from the Guardian and not wanting to be away from Chance or alone, Thetis finally whispered something inaudible and slipped through the door. The Guardian watched her go, and then turned back to the window, looking out at the few lights of city towers as dusk turned to night.

“She called you Atheos,” Chance said.

“That is an idle name. Do not speak it again.”

“But there is such a… in the
Theopolemein
.”

The Guardian turned his head to look at Chance. “What does a Puriman know of unholy odes?”

“Some of the Trumen read the poem. They talk of it. I have heard tell of its story. I’m not completely ignorant.”

The Guardian said nothing.

“Are you the Atheos, the Anti-god of the poem?”

“There is no Atheos. I am the Guardian. That is all. Go to sleep now. The coyote says you need to sleep. Who are we to argue with one who learns to be a Hekademon?” He turned back to the view of the ancient city.