Gods of Earth (17 page)

“No! The Lifweg changed the living things of Earth to serve the ends of their guild. The Stewards change themselves to serve the ends of the living things of Earth. No, we are more similar by far to the Purimen—alike as the bird and bat.”

Chance felt he could understand what she said: that the Purimen and Stewards had the same ends but different ways of getting there. But how could they have the same ends?

She saw his confusion. “The Stewards seek to foster life. They give up property, and family, and their old bodies, and freedom to become Stewards. They practice silence and watching, and learn to give up their thoughts so that they can know the thoughts of life.”

“I think I see.” And Chance did understand. There were some Elders like this, and he had always admired them and hoped to end his years like them, in simplicity and attentive concentration on God and God’s creation. Chance’s friend, the Elder Sirach, had sometimes spoken of this—it came close to the true meaning of their faith, Sirach had claimed.

“The Stewards would say,” Wadjet continued, “Purimen clear the way of the path so that they may see it plainly, and follow it, while Stewards bend themselves to the path, so that they cannot lose it.”

Chance nodded. “Yes. We believe the True God is in the world. The world is his works, and the works of men can hide this from us. Do you, as a Steward, follow the One True God?”

Wadjet snorted. “I am not a Steward.”

“But I thought you said.…”

“I come from them. But I am an exile. A criminal.” She set the points of her long incisors against her lip for a moment before adding, “I don’t follow anything, true or false.”

“But—the plague—you said you want to help—and—”

“Chance, come!” The Guardian’s voice echoed down the stairwell from above.

Wadjet did nothing to ease Chance’s obvious confusion. She just stepped past him and started toward the vast doors.

Chance hurried to catch up with the Guardian, but when he was nearly at the back of the hall, he stopped and called back to the Steward. “Wadjet! Am I the bird or the bat?”

His question echoed in the vast room. She flashed white fangs over her shoulder.

“You are the dove.”

The next morning, when Chance descended to the dining hall, Thetis alone waited there to breakfast with him.

“Where are the others?” he asked her.

“Mimir is outside, banished by the Guardian who does not trust the makina with you. The Guardian has gone with Seth to talk to some of the City Guard and City Councilors. They are concerned about.…”

“The Hieroni,” Chance said, finishing her sentence. All of them feared that perhaps many people in the city would fight with the god when it returned. Chance had seen Dark Engineers and City Guards talk in hushed tones with the Guardian, unsure of whom they could trust, and unsure about how to prepare for the betrayers in their midst.

“I don’t understand how anyone can serve the false god. After seeing what it did here.”

“Few really know what it did here, Chance. And there are many who have little love for the Gotterdammerung. They accuse us of
hoarding our skills, of not helping people when we could. Of being greedy. Or at least indifferent.” She sighed. “Perhaps there’s some truth to that.”

Chance nodded. It struck him that one could say the same things of the Purimen.

“Both the Guardian and Seth will be back soon,” Thetis added. She gestured towards the chairs. “Come. Eat.”

As they sat, Chance rubbed his eyes.

“You are still tired?” Thetis asked.

“I had strange dreams. This happens often to me, lately.”

“After the god attacked you?”

“Yes. No. They’re more common after that. But they’re dreams I’ve had before. Now and then. Many times.”

Thetis leaned forward. “Tell me,” she whispered.

Chance shrugged. “There are stars. And a door. And I am floating there, before this door. It seems that I’ve been there a long time. But no, that’s not right. I’m floating rather fast, toward the door, so it can’t last long. As if underwater, swimming really—but breathing. Ah, dreams make no sense.”

“Do you see yourself in this dream?” Thetis asked him urgently, in a choked whisper.

Chance lifted his head and furrowed his brow, surprised at her sudden harsh intensity.

“What? See myself? No. Of course not. But then, now that you say that, maybe I do. Or, I think I might, or can. Or should. Something.… As if I were there, just out of view. Isn’t that odd? You seem to have almost awakened a lost memory of the dream. How did you know to ask that?”

Thetis came around the table, grabbed his right hand, and knelt before him. Her nails bit into his palm. “Chance—”

“Hey!”

“Shh! Please, please, shh!” With her free hand she put her palm hard over his mouth. Chance was shocked to see that her eyes
were wide with fear. When he stopped trying to speak, she put her hand behind his head and pulled him forward, so that his forehead touched hers. “Don’t ever speak of this,” she whispered, barely audibly, “ever. The Guardian will kill you.”

“That’s crazy.”

She gripped his hair painfully tight, suddenly angry. With their faces still close together, she hissed so that her hot breath blew on his cheek, “You know almost nothing of what is happening here.
Nothing
. It would be too late if Mimir were here, now. If she is close, or if she planted ears here that I failed to detect, you may die this hour. But if not, you live only if you never tell another being of what you dream. Never. No one.”

“I don’t understand. You can’t—”

“I’m the only one here that cares about you, Chance. Believe that. I’m not here for some grudge or to finish some ancient battle or to make some use of you or even to serve my guild. You can trust only me. But in silence. Silence.”

“What—what—”

“I won’t speak of it again. It’s too dangerous. I won’t.”

She pushed him back, rose, and went to her seat.

They did not speak again for the rest of the meal. Chance sat and stared at his food in stunned silence. Thetis finished her small breakfast, not looking at him. When she stood, the Guardian strode through the door. Chance almost cringed, but the Guardian was his usual self.

“Come, Puriman. We go to Uroboros.” He turned and walked out, leaving Chance to rush to follow.

“Is there any word of Sarah?” Chance asked, as he caught up.

“The makina has word of yesterday. It says that she lives, still following behind the god, on horseback. They have come now to the banks of the Usin River. They are near, Puriman.”

Chance nodded thoughtfully.

CHAPTER

16

A
fter they left the lakeside, Sarah, Paul, and Hexus rode their horses onto the Old Trail, the disused road feared by the Purimen because it went, the Elders claimed, into the heart of the perilous Sabremounts. Their path shrank from a broad wagon road to a narrow path, level and well cut through the landscape, but choked with low weeds. Soon they left the lands of the Purimen. They rode on, not speaking, hardly awake.

Days passed. How many, Sarah could not count, but she had a dim recollection of her and Paul sitting beside a fire, and then of a different morning rising beside a different fire.

Then, one afternoon, as the last rays of the day were falling in the East at their back, a bright glint of light shone through the forest path before them.

“Stop,” Hexus said. They waited.

A shining figure of gold approached, riding on a black horse. Dogs ran at its feet. No: wolves and coyotes. Sarah could see then that the face of the person on horseback was black, covered with fur.

Sarah frowned, uncertain what was happening. She seemed to be waking from a dream. Was she dreaming? She looked at the strange
stinking man mounted beside her, then at Paul, at the horse—she knew this mare, Elder Isai’s youngest horse.

“Why am I here?” she whispered.

The approaching horse pulled up before them. Black fur covered the soulburdened creature that rode it. She was clad in armor of bright gold, wearing a gold helmet with a tall black plume of horse hair. The armor blazed even in the broken light of the shadowed road, gold shafts of reflected sun piercing the forest around them. Wolves—and now Sarah could see bears—trotted beside it.

“Master,” the beast said in a hoarse but feminine voice. She dismounted from her steed and kneeled, the armor ringing. The wolves and bears lay down.

“Rise, Apostola. Rise, inheritors of the Earth.”

“Dogs. Dogs and monkeys and bears,” Paul said, as if talking in his sleep. A thin line of drool slipped from the corner of his mouth. He laughed thinly, with bitterness. He pulled at his sleeves, tried to straighten his torn collar, and ran his hand over his head to push down the stiff peaks of his dirty red hair.

“Yes, what…?” Sarah began.

Hexus turned. “This does not concern you. You need not listen or look.”

And Sarah forgot what she had been thinking. She stared at her horse’s ears, and daydreamed of days when she sat and talked with her mother.

Sarah could not follow the passage of time. They rode on into the hills, and occasionally she would start, gasp as if she were breaking through the surface of the lake after a long plunge under water, and look around. One of these times she sat on the horse, surrounded by the soulburdened, the air heavy with the musty smell of their fur
as the beasts circled back and forth around Hexus, crossing before and behind his horse in their excitement as he rode on. Another time, she awoke while chewing a gritty, dirty mouthful of food, and held in one filthy hand a burnt leg of chicken, in the other a carrot covered still with dirt and the white veins of roots. The next time, she sat by a fire, while in the distance before her a house and barn burned with explosive cracks and booms. The next: she lay on her back in the dark, and Paul sat next to her, awake, looking at his feet with a perplexed expression. And the last: she was sitting at the feet of Hexus, who stood on a high promontory of stone in the center of a grassy field, arms uplifted, as thousands of soulburdened animals shouted and growled and shrieked in a frenzy of joy and anger at his words.

They came finally to the Usin River. In a moment of lucidity, Sarah found herself on horseback next to Hexus, looking out from a hilltop over the great waterway. A large village spread out on the bank below them, and farms, with large white farmhouses and red barns, lined both sides of the river as far as she could see. Airships floated back and forth above the broad traffic of boats.

“It’s as wide as a lake,” she whispered. And then, looking up at the airships, she said, “I had not known there were so many people and ships.”

“They are many to you,” Hexus said. He pointed at the edge of the bluff before them. “We camp here and tomorrow ride into this village.”

The black soulburdened beast was there—why hadn’t she noticed that before? It was as if it had been invisible to her. Or outside of her attention. She stared at it, perplexed. It said, in its coarse but mellifluous voice, “I will prepare the warriors.” Then it pulled back the reins of its great horse, turned, and left them, its shining golden armor clattering.

“What warriors?” Sarah asked.

“Silence. Make camp and then sleep. You want to sleep.”

She nodded. She did want to sleep. That was true.