Gods of Earth (21 page)

“That is not what most of the Elders say.…” But it was what Sirach had said, he thought. And he had believed his friend Sirach wisest of the Elders.

“Shh.”

Chance felt unsatisfied but it was clear to him that he’d do best to let Sarah have her way in this. And of course part of him wanted her to have her way in this. He had never given ground on any question about the Purimen creed, but there was something in the surety of Sarah’s tone that made him long to believe that she might understand some matters of faith better than he.

They sat a moment in silence. Then, shyly, Sarah whispered, “Chance, can I stay here with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”

“Oh, please. Please.”

After a few awkward twists and turns on the bed, timidly knocking elbows and knees, they lay side by side, clinging together.

“My father won’t approve of this,” she said.

They laughed softly. Then Chance turned serious. “There are a lot of things, Sarah, that I’m going to have to do now, in the coming days, that aren’t right Purimen things. There are things I should turn my back upon, but that I cannot turn my back upon. I’ll have to do some things that I would not do back home.”

“Oh,” Sarah said teasingly, “there’s nothing you wouldn’t do back home.”

Chance laughed softly. “I broke some rules. But it’s a strange thing, Sarah. Once I was away from home, I found myself wanting to keep our creed more strongly than I’ve ever wanted to keep it before.”

“That’s not so strange. Working as a Ranger with Trumen who were not Purimen, I know how you can be impatient with our people when home, and defensive of them when among strangers.”

“Still.…”

“This time will be your springaround,” Sarah said, using the Puriman term for the adolescent years of Purimen children, when lapses from their religious code were expected and forgiven. “Only a little extended.”

“My long springaround,” he said, smiling in the dark.

“Mine too.” She shifted and held him more tightly. “He’ll come soon, Chance.”

Her fearful tone made it clear that she referred to the false god.

“He’ll come tomorrow,” Chance said.

“Oh, Chance, I’m not sure I can face him again.” Her hands began to tremble. “He reached into me and he, he violated my soul, and I don’t think.…”

“Stay here,” Chance whispered. “In this tower. He doesn’t want you. The Guardian can fight him. I will be the bait used to bind him. There is nothing that you need to do. And then the worst will be over.”

“Will it?” she whispered. “Will it?”

CHAPTER

19

“A
re you sure you want to be here?” Chance asked. The morning was cool, and the sky gray. He and Sarah sat on horseback atop the Crystal Wall, looking at the bridge that Sarah had crossed the day before, the Long Walk Bridge. It started just a few paces before them where it met the top of the Crystal wall, sloped two hundred paces down a smooth ramp and then leveled out to an elevated road that stood on pylons of white stone and stretched over the water all the way to the far shore of the Usin River, where it fed a road that turned south into the valley.

Normally, the City Guard had told them, the road would be busy with farmers bringing crops and returning with goods made in Disthea. Today it was empty. Something had happened to the south.

On the inside or city-side of the wall, and straight across from the ramp to the bridge, a broad walkway started down into the city. From the top of the wall down to the street below, it switched back and forth three times, clinging to the wall, and sloping gently so that horses could easily ascend and descend with carts. This too was empty, the city guard holding back the people below.

“Yes,” Sarah said. The hooves of their horses clacked sharply on the diamond as they shifted. “I want to be here. I’m the only Puriman Ranger here, and it is my duty.” She had awoken in the morning strong and angry: the old Sarah, but with a new seriousness. There had been no time to find Puriman clothes for her, so she wore now clothes that Thetis had offered: a tight black shirt and black pants of a strange, strong material, and hard black boots. Over these she had buckled her old belt with her two swords. It disturbed Chance because she looked like a different person, but also because she was so strikingly beautiful in these clothes, the black seeming to darken her hair and eyebrows and eyes, and the tight fit showing the perfect form of her.

Thetis had arranged for horses, and the only Mother of the Gotterdammerung in Disthea sat now on horseback on the other side of Sarah. Sarah stole suspicious glances at her, and Thetis returned them. Seth and the Guardian stood nearby, at the very edge of the wall, looking out over the water warily.

“Here,” Thetis said. She handed to Sarah two black tubes, fixed together. “You look through them like—”

“I know,” Sarah said, lifting them to her eyes. She peeked at Chance. “Some Trumen Rangers use these glasses,” she explained. “They make things far away appear close.” She peered through them at the bridge.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I felt him this hour,” the Guardian said. “The god is close.”

Seth sniffed the sea air, and wandered to the inside edge of the wall, to gaze down the switchback ramp descending to the city street. Uroboros stood, partially visible as a dim black square between two pale buildings, at the distant end of the street below. Seth sniffed again, and circled the group.

“I see something,” the Guardian said. “At the very beginning of the bridge.”

Sarah raised the glasses again. “Yes. I see someone. Alone. He has hair. It’s not Hexus. Wait.”

“He’s on horseback,” the Guardian said.

“Yes. He has red hair. Oh, oh, Chance, I think it’s Paul.”

“Are you sure?”

She watched for a long time. “It’s Paul. Riding fast.”

“It may not be Paul,” Chance said. Despair gripped him. “Not anymore.”

“That’s right,” the Guardian said. “But Hexus would know that we would waver, and wait, given the small hope that your brother did break free. That may be some use to the god. But what use? Why come alone, for just that moment of guile?”

“Hu-who is that?” Seth asked. He pointed with one bent paw along the Crystal Wall. A group of men approached along the top of the wide diamond surface. They were still hundreds of paces ahead, walking with determined strides. The men were dressed in different ways, robed in the uniforms of different guilds. One of them, a tall man with gray hair, held a long, golden cylinder that gleamed even in the dim gray light of the clouded day.

Sarah looked with the glasses. “They carry something. A long golden tube.”

“A weapon,” Thetis said. She looked through her own glasses. “No,” she moaned. “Could it be? The Lance of Kane.”

“What’s that?” Chance asked.

“An ancient weapon.”

“Hieroni!” Seth barked bitterly.

Chance reached toward Sarah and she handed him the looking glasses. He peered through them uncertainly, the wall sweeping this way and that through his vision till he got the feel for steadying them. He found the man with the golden rod. He was tall and muscular, with long gray hair knotted behind his head.

“I know that man, I’ve seen him!” Chance shouted. “He came for Sirach! When Elder Sirach left our village, he left with that man!”

“What?” Sarah asked.

“I ken the wile,” the Guardian said. “Hieroni attack from one side, just as Paul nears, and hope that Hexus may slip by on the
other side while we shield ourselves—and we are fearful that we may harm the Puriman’s brother. But it shall not work. Let us yield them no good of this. I will take the Hieroni first, quickly, and then get onto the bridge. Chance, stay here. If it is the god, he need see only you. Then flee for Uroboros. Let him follow.”

“Yes,” Chance said. He handed the looking glasses back to Sarah.

Sarah watched the bridge. “He’s about half of the way now. He doesn’t seem to breathe hard enough, for all that riding.”

Thetis turned to the Guardian, “But—” she began. Before she could finish her warning, the Guardian disappeared with a snap of his cloak. Sitting on horseback Chance could see the gray blur cross the top of the wall toward the approaching men.

The Guardian appeared ten paces before them.

“Fools!” he shouted. His voice carried clearly over the sound of the sea crashing on the wall. “Go back to your guilds, or die here by my hand.” Threkor’s Hammer gleamed black and silver in his fist.

“They’re lifting the weapon!” Thetis shouted. She watched the Hieroni through the glasses.

“Paul is speeding up. Nearly three-quarters of the way across the bridge now,” Sarah added.

There was a crack like thunder that drew Chance’s attention back from the bridge—

And the Guardian split in two.

“Oh God!” Chance shouted. “Dear God, no! Let it not be!”

The Guardian’s torso, cut from the legs, fell forward hard onto the unyielding diamond surface. The legs followed. Gray ichor splashed around him. Wet shreds of organs, as gray inside as his skin was outside, trailed behind the two halves of the body. Threkor’s Hammer fell with a loud clack onto the wall.

The halves of the Guardian writhed on the ground. The Guardian screamed, a howl that shuddered through the air like an explosion.

Chance turned his horse and leaned forward, about to spur it toward the Guardian.

“No!” Seth barked. “No! No! He-he’s an im-im-mortal. He will live. Run! Run!”

“Ride!” Sarah shouted. She pointed down, at the ramp that reached toward the water below them, where Paul was riding. “He’s coming faster now! Ride!”

“And look!” Thetis called at the same time. She pointed in the distance. Across the water, at the beginnings of the bridge, dark figures were swarming onto the road, pouring out of the forest on the bank, following Paul. Soulburdened animals.

“Ride!” Thetis screamed. Sarah kicked her horse and slapped Chance’s horse as she passed him, galloping hard for the switchback that descended into the city. Chance followed. He could see that the Guardian was reaching—the sight horrified him—for the rest of his body. Then they turned onto the descending way.

Their horses slowed, skidding, as they approached the first turn of the switchback. After they rounded the sharp bend, Chance saw that four men stood in the way, before the next bend. The men separated, two on each side, and held up a net.

“Stay back!” Sarah called to Chance.

“No!” Chance yelled, fearing they had a weapon like those above. But Sarah leaned forward and rode hard, close to the wall, at the man on the far left. The horse hesitated but she shouted at it and drove it on. The man dropped the net and jumped aside before he was ridden down. The man next to him reached for Sarah as she reined back. In a flash, she drew one sword, reaching across her belt, and slashed at his arms. He fell back, screaming.

And then Chance had caught up and his horse leapt a bit over the heaped net and skidded around the next switchback turn. Sarah followed.

The other two men shouted something down the wall in a language Chance did not recognize. Seth suddenly appeared at his side, running hard, ears back.

“When we get to the street,” Sarah called, “if there is trouble, ride ahead. Seth and I will hold whoever is there. We’ll give you a start.”

“No,” Chance said. “Let’s just charge through together!”

“You have to go on,” Sarah shouted. They turned into the last switchback. “It’s you they want. We’ll just slow them and keep on after them when they chase you.”

He opened his mouth to shout but they were coming down the last of the ramp now and several men stood at the bottom. Most of them stepped aside—regular merchants, Chance realized—but two stood in the center of the way. The city guard that they had passed when they ascended the ramp was now nowhere to be seen. Seth took to the air in a great leap and struck into the face of one of the men blocking their way, sending him falling backwards. Sarah rode down the other. A group of men charged out of the crowd then, reaching for her.

Chance rode through, the horse’s hooves cracking loudly against the hard stone of the street. He looked back. He could not see Seth. Sarah was drawing her swords as three men surrounded her. On the switchback above he saw Thetis descending. He reined his horse to a stop.

“Heya!” he called. “I am the Potentiate! Come and get the prize of the false god!”

Silence fell. Then, with a shout, the men who were grabbing at Sarah charged him. Two clambered onto horses waiting nearby. Chance turned and galloped off toward Uroboros.

CHAPTER

20

T
he Guardian dragged his upper body toward his legs, screaming in an otherworldly voice that shook this world and the world behind it. Pain blinded him, but he felt drawn almost magnetically to his legs, knowing that rejoining with them could alone relieve his agony. His gray blood, strewn all over the filthy ground, congealed and began to draw back toward his torso. He reached for his hips, lifting his arm—a crack sounded out—and a chunk of diamond was chipped out of the wall beside him where his arm had just rested.

“Ah!” he howled in anger. But he quickly drew himself together. The legs clung to him, searing into him, struggling for the right join. When he was sure that they were bound enough to hold to him, he rolled quickly to the side—just in time, as another crack sounded out, scorching a molten cut where he had lain.

He rolled off the wall and fell down, face first, onto the switchback below, landing beside the heap of net that Chance had leapt over moments before.

He screamed as the seeking tendrils of otherworldly flesh pushed against and into his viscera. And then it was over; his legs found
their fit. He stood, the blinding pain easing. He howled again, this time in rage, and ran at his fastest speed up the ramp.

In an instant he had snatched Threkor’s Hammer from the ground where it lay beside the gouge in the wall that the Hieroni’s weapon had made. He could feel the god now. Close, pushing through hidden spaces, nearly within reach.

He leapt off the inside of the wall, so that he landed again back down on the switchback, with his feet apart, arms spread so that with one hand the fingers touched the wall, and with the other he held the hammer far out to this side, blocking the way. Paul appeared before him, seeming to materialize. He was on foot. He held aloft a swollen red hand, with an eye in the center of it.