Gods of Earth (29 page)

But in another sense, her help with their victory over Hexus made her task even less hopeful, because to save Chance she would have to find some way that she and Chance could escape the Guardian. The boy was caught between the god and the Guardian, and if either had his way, Chance would soon perish. Chance’s only hope, she knew, was to escape not one, but two immortals, both of whom were ancient and powerful and would rather see him dead than free.

She would have to think hard, plan hard and with cleverness, and also be ready for any opportunity that might come to them. That meant she should start preparing Chance.

This thought steeled her resolve. After the others rose and broke fast, she called Chance to her side.

“I read many of the ancient kieferbooks,” she told him, as he sat on the hot sun-baked gray deck beside her and crossed his legs. “I know now what you can expect in the Numin Well. You must know it too.”

Chance nodded. Sarah sat nearby and eyed Thetis with suspicion. Good, Thetis thought; let the girl trust no one.

“The Hall of Ma’at lies at the foot of Yggdrasil. Ma’at, the Guardian of the Gate, also called Judge with Many Voices, will test you for purity—that is, whether you are a Potentiate—and then let you pass.”

“Why ‘many voices’?” Chance asked.

“It is said that one voice gives passage, and the other voices deny passage. Or, so it was written in the kieferbooks. Perhaps that means a person is much more likely to be denied than to be allowed to pass. But I am not sure.… At the end of the Penultimate Age, the guilds sought to check the power of each other, and so Ma’at
was made neither by the Engineers nor the Theogenics, but by the Orderlies. Thus we know little about it.

“Past Ma’at,” she continued, “is the door to Bifrost, the bridge to the Numin Well. On the bridge it will seem that you float among stars, and it will be like swimming to you. You must push your way to the second door—Heimdell’s door or Heimdell’s Gate, some called it. This is the door to the Numin Well.”

The others gathered silently around, listening. Thetis knew that for the Purimen these were blasphemous concepts, but she could see that these concerns also compelled and seduced Chance’s attention. Even the Guardian had turned, and inspected Chance with fierce concentration. The boy just nodded.

“This door will open by sliding aside if you touch a red panel beside it. Now, this door is very dangerous. It is a door between distant and different places, and each side of the door is far from the other side. But they are… fitted together, aligned so that only the very front surface of one door is where the very back of the other door is. For this reason, Heimdell’s Door has no thickness. It is like the sharpest blade imaginable.”

Sarah gripped her sword handles at this thought.

“If you were to even just touch the edge of the door, say as it opened, it would cut your hand in twain. When you open or close the door, stay away from its edge.”

Again, Chance only nodded.

“Past Heimdell’s Door, you’ll be within the Numin Well. You’ll see a series of glowing or shining ovals. These are the Aussersein membranes. They too are doors, through which a Potentiate may pass, but they are also—” Thetis hesitated, searching for words. “They are made of the same stuff as is the eye of Hexus. And in fact the god was
made
—I mean, each god’s body was made—by the door itself producing an Aussersein copy of the soul behind the door. Aussersein cannot penetrate Aussersein—this is why the gods cannot go through these doors, to threaten each other’s souls.”

“How many of these doors are there?” Chance asked.

“Seven. Go through the sixth door—the door should have a six written above it. Time can pass differently on the other side of the door, but while you are there this should not happen. There will be a… like a coffin, of glass, within. And the body of Hexus—his mortal body—will be within that. Open this. Pull him out. He cannot wake. And his form in this world will fade.”

“And that’s all?” Chance said. “I can return then?”

“Yes. You can come back the way you entered.”

“You can do more than come out,” the Guardian said. They all turned, surprised that he had spoken. “You could then go through the other six Aussersein doors and bring out the other souls. You could end forever the threat of the Younger Gods.”

There was a long silence.

“I shall do it,” Chance whispered.

“Is it dangerous?” Sarah asked Thetis.

“I… I don’t think so,” she said, hesitantly. “If he can stop Hexus, it should just be the same thing that he must do at each door.”

Sarah frowned. She and Thetis both looked uneasy. “You place a greater weight on Chance than any had ever imagined,” Sarah said. The Guardian did not answer.

Chance looked at Thetis and said, “Let me be sure I remember it rightly. First Ma’at tests me. Then, the door to Bifrost. Bifrost is a bridge. I cross it to this other door: Heimdell’s Door. I open that door but do not touch it. It is like a knife that cuts between worlds. Beyond that is the Numin Well. There lie seven shining doors, each one covering the coffin of one of the gods.”

“That’s it. You’ve got it,” Thetis said, nodding.

Chance thought a while. “Tell me then about the god. Its powers. It may attack us, if it gets free soon, before we get to the Well. What are its powers?”

Thetis looked involuntarily at the Guardian, but his eyes still fixed on Chance.

“It can change space. Bend space.”

“But I saw it change things that—that were flesh and bone and iron.”

“The difference between all things is how their smallest parts are arranged in space. The difference between this water—” she pointed at the ocean, “and this boat is just the arrangement of the smallest of parts of matter. The god learns to change that.”

Sarah said, “But then why doesn’t it make itself a body?”

“Its power does not extend to the Aussersein, the matter of the god body, which is different from normal matter. That’s also why it cannot change the Guardian’s form.”

“Well, then, why not fix its… Paul’s.…” Sarah paused, looking at Chance. “Well, the man’s body that it is in?”

“It doesn’t know how. It has to learn over time how to use its power. It was that way for all the gods. They are limited far more by their knowledge than by their power. That’s why it cannot yet move quickly through space, and it can only shape things very near to it, and can only shape them in simple ways.”

Chance frowned. “What about thoughts? It touched my thoughts. It made Sarah see things, remember things.” He stole a concerned glance at Sarah. Sarah reached out and put her hand on his arm, reassuring him.

Thetis put a finger against her head. “Memories too are an arrangement of matter in your brain.”

“Well, what about time?” Chance continued. “The Guardian said it can sometimes talk through time.”

“Space and time are one. Eventually, the god learns to talk, then perhaps to move, through time.”

Chance sighed. “It seems you’re going to tell me everything is under the control of space.”

Thetis nodded in sympathy. Surely for him, for a Puriman farmer, she thought, there were too many weird facts here. He would not have believed a word of it, had he not stood before the false god and seen and felt the horror of it.

“Wait,” Sarah asked Thetis. “It grows stronger over time?”

“Yes.”

“And can talk through time?”

“Eventually. Eventually it should be able even to move through time,” Thetis said. “And through vast distances of space.”

“Then why doesn’t it… I don’t know… help itself? From the future?”

“Because we will soon destroy it,” the Guardian said.

Thetis nodded, impressed by Sarah’s question. “If its future is uncertain, then it cannot reach back.”

“Why not?” Chance asked.

“Because it may or may not be there. Each fight with the Guardian made the future uncertain for the god.”

“But.…” Chance struggled for a long while with his thoughts, twisting his hand as if trying to illustrate something to himself with his fingers. Then he spoke haltingly. “The Guardian says that each portion of the god is whole… somehow also the whole. And if there is some other part of it somewhere—” he held a fist at the limit of his reach. “Then can’t that part be safe—I mean, maybe it’s hiding somewhere—can’t that part grow stronger, and give back strength or in some other way help this part?” He brought his fist back to his side to indicate their Hexus.

Seth yipped, sharing Chance’s surprise at this dawning thought. “Li-li-like fallow vines.”

“Right,” Chance said. He explained to Thetis, “At the Vincroft, we had vines that were fruited well. My father took cuttings from these, and started them in clay pots, before planting them in a fallow field he’d set aside for this, where the vines could grow surrounded by dandelions and nettles that kept back the black rot
and the grape flies. This preserved the stock. Why would not the god do the same—take a cutting of itself to keep somewhere safe?”

“It would do more than that,” Thetis said, running with Chance’s thought. “The cutting, as you call it, could communicate with him. It would make him stronger, sharing its wisdom. That’s—” Thetis stopped and touched her lips. “I never thought of that. But… I don’t think it is possible. No one, not even a god, can willingly bear the pain of being divided. So, the god would be looking for the rest of itself, and not for you, if there were anything else left. The rest of it must have been somehow harmed beyond retrieving, in the Great War. That’s why it gets no help from the rest.” Thetis looked at the Guardian, to see if he would agree. He nodded.

“But,” Thetis added. “There is something strange about what happened to Hexus. The eye should be capable of more than it is. It should be capable of being a whole god, all by itself, given time. Whatever the demigod Wervool did to Hexus, to the rest of his body, this attack froze what remains of Hexus. The eye is trapped in its form.”

“Yes,” Chance said. “When the trap was set on Hexus, he said something to me about how this Wervool… broke him, and then bound the parts of his body at the—I think he said, right at the time of his destruction, trapping him like this, like the way he is.”

They were silent a moment. Then Sarah said, “That’s it, then. Hopefully the god will be bound while we do all this. But if not, then the Guardian and the rest of us hold the false god and its army back. Either way, Chance goes in, destroys it.” She glanced resentfully at the Guardian. “And if he
safely
can do so, Chance destroys the others. Then he comes out. And we go home.”

Thetis did not answer. Instead, she stared intently at Chance, trying to catch his eye, trying to get him to think,
what is here that is being unsaid?

“Comes out as he went in,” Sarah added, speaking to Thetis as if challenging her. “He won’t be harmed crossing this…?”

“Aussersein membrane,” Thetis said. “No, it should not harm him.”

But the Guardian stepped forward, two steps thumping on the wooden deck. “Know this, Puriman. You would have to be a god for five hundred years before you had the power to face me, even just to flee me. If you stay in the Well, if you send yourself out a god, I will kill you the very moment you come through the door, before you can even speak a word. Do not—”

“I tell you it does not tempt me!” Chance shouted.

“Do not be drawn to it,” the Guardian continued. “Every Potentiate went into the Well kenning: I will let the world be, I will be just and far from men and do only good. But wielding their strength wrung all human cares from their hearts, and they became world wreckers. I would not give you a moment of godlife.”

Thetis twisted her hands together angrily. Why did the Guardian have to always threaten the boy?

But to her surprise, Chance stood. “Kill me now, Guardian, or stop your threats.” He walked unevenly across the gently swaying deck, till his sling nearly touched the broad gray chest of the immortal. His hand at his side shook, but his voice was clear and unbroken. “I’m tired of this. I’ve followed you and helped you and trusted you—but you’ve done nothing but threaten to kill me, to crush me, to grind me, to break me, to squash me, to pound me—again and again. If you cannot trust me now then kill me now. Kill me or shut up!”

Silence fell. The hair on Seth’s back rose into vexed spikes as the coyote silently crouched to leap at the Guardian. He slipped slowly sideways, lip curled up, his hips low. Sarah stood, grabbed her sword hilts tightly, and slipped a step to Chance’s other side, to have free action.

No one spoke. Waves lapped at the boat. The cords on the sails ticked against the mast.

The Guardian turned and walked to the prow.

Chance huffed angrily, and went below deck. A moment later, Sarah followed. The others dispersed.

But as Thetis looked about, she saw that Seth eyed her closely, his ears flat with suspicion.

The next morning, Sarah woke Chance early and, on the pretense of needing to bathe and change, sent him above deck. She opened the door to their cabin and waited till Thetis came out of the cabin she shared with Wadjet. Their eyes met and Thetis paused in the hall.

“You leave Chance alone,” Sarah said. “I saw how you looked at him yesterday. You leave him alone.”