Gods of Earth (40 page)

The wall grew as they leapt forward again and again off of the choppy waves. The whales had not yet regrouped, or at least not soon enough to catch up with them, as the wall rose, first to obscure the mountains beyond, and then to swallow their view.

“Plume!” Seth barked. “The wa-wa-wa-whales come!”

The boat slowed.

“Do not slow!” the Guardian shouted at Wadjet. “Head for that gray arch before us!”

“The wall!” Wadjet said.

“Drive forward. That is a gate. It shall open.”

Wadjet growled but did as he asked.

The others shrank instinctively back, as it seemed the boat shot toward a collision that would shatter the hull and drown them where the waves crashed loudly against the hard and ancient white wall. As they approached, they could see now the green bottom of it, where the constant reach of the waves had moistened algae. The Guardian raised his arms, but not till it seemed already too late.

“
Sæwall!
” his voice thundered out, otherworldly, shaking their bones. “
Geryme for Treow!
”

A crack appeared under the gray arch, in the center of the section of wall before them, between two spires. It was hardly wide enough for the boat as they shot toward it. The sea was slightly higher on the outside of the wall, and the rushing current grabbed the ship and pulled them forward, steering them evenly through the gap. The sides of the ship scraped loudly as it squeezed through the opening.

“
Betymæth for Treow!
” the Guardian shouted. And with a tremendous creaking, as if the thin doors were about to fold and shatter, the two partitions slowly closed against the mounting sea, shuddered and ground loudly as they pressed together, and then were silent.

Wadjet cut the engines. The ship drifted forward, rocking. They floated in a wind band of clear water, before a beach of white sand.
The black tower cast a shadow over the surf. Behind it, dark forest scaled a steep hill.

“That’s it,” Wadjet said. “It will be days before we can use the engines again.”

“There.” The Guardian pointed at the black tower. “Aegweard. The guard tower. We go there.”

CHAPTER

35

C
hance watched as the Guardian pressed both his hands on a black stone at the base of the round watchtower. The windows and doors of the tower had long ago rotted away, but much of the stone of the tower stood strong and straight. Thick vines trailing drooping bright leaves covered the black masonry. Small, colorful birds flitted among the leaves, crying strange songs.

Chance waited behind the Guardian, cradling his broken arm. He knew the expression on the Guardian’s face. He had seen it in his own father’s face. Many Elders of the Purimen said the house plot of the Kyrien Vincroft was ancient. Some house or another had stood there since centuries and centuries before, long before the War Against the False Gods or before even the Age of the Guilds. His father had once taken Chance and Paul into the home’s cellar. The cool, dark room, with walls and a floor of earth and stone, smelled of mold and damp soil and fermenting wine. Rows of small barrels filled the dim basement, leaving only narrow aisles in which to walk. The flagstones of the floor, and the cobbles of the wall, were all of mixed sizes and colors, the remnants of a dozen broken prior foundations. Their father had pointed at a stone in the corner below
the parlor, scratched and pale gray and round, so that the walls over it did not meet squarely but seemed to roll away into the earth.

Paul, impatient, had fidgeted with stray scraps of cork, twisting them into bits, as their father had spoken.

“This stone is the oldest of the vincroft. It was here under the first house, when men were young and all of them were Trumen and the world had not seen the Guilds or their War of False Gods. It lay here, holding up one house after another, for many hundreds of years. It holds up your house. Think on that, like The Book teaches Purimen: how things pass and how little remains. Build the strongest foundation you can, but don’t expect it to last forever. Don’t even expect it to last long. Only the True God lasts forever.”

Chance had reached out reverently and set his hand beside his father’s on the stone. It was cool and round like the stones smoothed from tossing in the river, but it bore a few deep rough gouges from human industry. They pressed their hands against it in silence a moment, until Paul said, with a volume that made Chance jump a little, “Can we go now?”

Chance looked up at the Guardian.

“You were dreaming,” the Guardian said. He actually smiled at Chance.

“Remembering my father.”

The Guardian nodded.

“It is good for you,” Chance said. “To see your… home again.”

The Guardian hesitated, as if reluctant to admit it, but then said, “Sooth, Puriman.”

The Guardian peered out at the sea. They had beached the ship in soft white sand that collected by a broken stone pier, and then waded ashore through warm clear water up onto a scalding beach. The tower stood on black rocks above the bright shore. Behind the tower, a riot of forest rose up through steep hills and beyond into mountains. One steep mountain started up out of the sea not more than a mile to the west, and waves broke on its cliff face.

“How much time do you think we have?” Chance asked.

Seth and Sarah climbed up next to them. Mimir stayed down at the shore, staring up at the skies. Thetis sat on a stone near Mimir, cleaning her shoes and watching the makina.

“A few days,” the Guardian said.

“Is that enough?”

The Guardian looked up into the forest. “If the airship is whole. We should be able to get it working, and be gone, before the foul god can get here.”

Chance looked down at Wadjet’s ship, leaning to one side where it was beached. Wadjet sat atop the cabin, elbows on knees, chin on her palms. She was bitter over this plan to leave her boat in this place, and seemed to be weighing whether to stay here with it.

“You should be safe here,” the Guardian told Chance. “I will see of the airship. Stay by the tower. Do not wander far into the forest. There were beasts here that could swallow a man in a bite, long ago. Perhaps they still live and hunt here.”

Chance nodded. The Guardian disappeared in a gray blur.

There was a flat platform a few paces away, at the base of the tower, with a low wall on one side that looked over the beach. Chance walked over and sat on a smooth rock beside the tower, shaded by a few stubborn trees that had cracked through the tight spaces between the stones. A cacophony of bird songs fell over them here, from the forest behind. His shoes felt uncomfortable—they had waded ashore bare foot, on Wadjet’s advice, but Chance had put his shoes back on with wet and sand-encrusted feet. He took them off and set them in the sun to dry. Then he leaned far back against the tower and rested his arm in its sling on his stomach. Seth lay down beside him, tongue lolling in the heat.

“No-no-nothing to eat here, I suppose,” the coyote whined.

Sarah put her hands on her sword hilts. “I’ll look around. Maybe there’s something growing that we’ll recognize.”

“Don’t go in the forest,” Chance protested.

She laughed. “I heard the Guardian. I’ll stay along the edge. Or down at the beach.”

She left them. They sat a long while, staring at the waves lapping the beach, and at Mimir standing like a statue. It was the first time Seth and Chance had been alone since Seth had brought him clothes. That had been little more than two weeks before, but it seemed long ago. Chance looked down at his pants, which had been blue and crisp when Seth brought them to him, and were now faded and stained white with salt.

Have I aged so much as these clothes? he wondered. Worn and colored with these weeks, as if the days had been years?

Seth sat, chin on his crossed paws, studying Chance.

“I was wondering,” Chance said, “how much I’ve changed. You don’t seem to have changed at all.”

“I’m thi-thinner,” Seth complained.

Chance laughed.

They were silent again a while, as Chance gathered the courage to overcome his discomfort and say what he wanted to say.

“Seth. I’m.… When we were home—I mean, at the lake. Sometimes, I wasn’t—I didn’t treat you well.”

Seth flicked an ear. “No, no.”

“But.… I yelled sometimes. Or bossed you around. Or didn’t share my food.”

Seth lifted his tail slightly. A coyote shrug. “Pups are rough.”

Chance felt the hint of tears. So easily forgiven.

“Still.…”

“You are my friend,” Seth added, as if that finished it.

There was that. He had not treated the coyote with the respect he deserved, as an equal. But he had not treated him as the Purimen wanted. Seth had been the one instance in which Chance most obviously would not follow Puriman rules. He had never stopped being Seth’s friend, and had never asked the coyote to go away. And Sirach, the old prophet he admired, had told him he was right in this.

“Some Purimen misunderstand the meaning of purity. Perhaps Seth is more pure than any of them,” Sirach had said, with characteristic provocation. “And some Puriman misunderstand the meaning of sacrifice. Perhaps none sacrifices more than Seth.”

Chance nodded now. “Pups can be rough.”

A strange, flat fish swam like a bird through the shallow, clear waters before Wadjet’s boat. Chance watched it circle about and then disappear into the deeper water.

“You’ve always been the best friend I ever had, Seth.”

“You, mine.”

“What will you do if—I mean, when this is over? Will you come back to the lakes?”

“For a while. See you-you-you get denned. Eat good food.”

Chance laughed. “You’ll have a place at our table. We’ll feast.”

Seth slapped his tail. “Purimen will lo-lo-love this.”

“I want roast chicken,” Chance said. “And potatoes. And kale. And a juneberry pie. And four bottles of cold Ries.”

“And eggs,” Seth added.

“Good. And eggs.”

“And chicken.”

“I already said chicken,” Chance told him.

“More chicken.”

Chance laughed again. Then he looked Seth in the eyes. “But you’ll settle in Disthea?”

Seth nodded. “Become Hekademon. I’d li-li-like to find a mate. Have pups of my own.”

Seth deserves that, Chance thought. But he asked, “But you can visit, sometimes, even if you go back to Disthea?”

“The way is long.”

“I think,” Chance said. “That everything will be different now. Even if we stop the false god. I’d like to work at that, Seth. Talk to the soulburdened of the Sabremounts. Sirach had told the Purimen long ago that this needed to be done, and he was right.”

“There will be ma-ma-much work to, to do. My guild would do it. Some of it.”

“Maybe you and I can do some of it. There are perhaps not many friends like us. Soulburdened and human.”

“True,” Seth said. “Perhaps even none.”

Chance nodded. The mention of the Hekademon guild reminded him of a question that had bothered him much. “So, how did you… I mean, why were you watching me?”

“My guild a-a-asked it of me.”

“Why?”

Seth flicked his tail to indicate uncertainty. “Did not trust the Mothers,” he speculated.

Can’t blame them for that, Chance thought. “And, what does your guild do? What do they believe?”

“They study. They do little. They do when they must. Most times, they study.”

Because it was Seth, and Chance trusted the coyote not to treat him as an ignorant country boy, he asked the question that was most natural to him.

“Do they worship.…” And he swallowed the words
one, true
. “Do they worship God?”

“Some do. Most don’t.”

“So, you don’t believe in a supreme God?” Chance tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice but he could not.

“To, to, to become a Hekademon, you first must see that you do not know—you, you do not know much, or any, any-thi-thing. I don’t know, Cha-Chance.”

“Is that why you became a Hekademon?”

Sarah walked up to them then, shaking her head to say
Nothing found
. She sat next to Chance, pulled off her boots, and began to shake out sand.

“Is that why you became a Hekademon?” Chance repeated. “Because you felt doubts?”

“No. I became a Hekademon because… it was my de-de-destiny. I was found by a Hekademon. My master. Ma-master of my guild.”

“Why is that destiny?” Chance asked.

Seth tilted his head, hesitating. Then he croaked, “I will tell you. When I was a pup, three wild dogs hunted me-me into an alley one night. Degenerates, ha-half-souled. They had bitten my legs as I fled. My blo-blood was red on their yellow teeth. I was going to da-die there. Then a light a-appeared above them, and also a stra-stra-strange darkness. Mixed, where the night sky ca-cracked. The dogs fled in fear. I would have fled too, ba-ba-but I was cornered and my legs were hurt.

“Something came out of the light. It said, ‘It is good to see you alive, Hekademon.’ I never forgot that wa-wa-wa-word—‘Hekademon’—though it meant no-no-nothing to me then. When my master found me, a year later, I ye-yelped when he told me of his guild.”

Sarah put her hand on Chance’s shoulder. They listened to the water lap the beach for a moment, thinking on the coyote’s words. Finally, Sarah said, “A strange story. What does it mean?”

“Don’t know.” Seth growled. “But it was not a bad thing. Not bad. It spo-spo-spoke with love. I had never heard before love. I’d ha-had a hard life before. But it spoke with love. A figure of black and white, blinding light and blind bla-bla-black dark. It healed me, made me strong. And then it left.”

Chance shivered under Sarah’s hand. She looked at him and saw him turn pale.

“The fa-fa-first great philosopher had a demon,” Seth continued. “A voice that spoke to him. Perhaps this is my demon.”

Sarah watched Chance closely, but neither he nor the coyote spoke again.