Gods of Earth (43 page)

In the back of the building stood the office of the trader, the door slightly ajar. She knocked on it, pushing it open on the rich smell of tobacco.

The trader was not a Puriman, but a Truman who lived among them and knew them all. Sarah liked him.

“Heya, Joshua.”

“Heya, Sarah Michael.” He smiled, breaking his thin, weathered face into deep wrinkles. He took his wooden pipe from his mouth and cradled it in his lap.

“My father brought a load of Ries grapes down day before yesterday. I don’t see them.”

The Truman nodded. “Sold and transported. Whole lot. Full price. Here.” He set the pipe on the desk to free his hands, then dug in a drawer and brought out an envelope. “That’s for your father. The rest of the payment. Can I trust a Ranger apprentice to get it to him?”

She didn’t answer the joke, but nodded and slipped the thick package into her pocket.

“Who bought them?”

“Can’t say. The buyer asked me not to say.”

“Why not?”

The trader shrugged. He lifted his pipe and with a little wooden stick poked at the bowl nervously.

“Full price?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“No bargaining down?”

“No.”

“And you can’t say?”

“No.” He hesitated a moment, looking over her shoulder to be sure no one was waiting outside. His voice dropped to a near whisper. “I will say this, Sarah. I’ve known you since you were tiny, ye high.” He held a hand by his knee. “And I think I can say this. Those grapes were far too early. No one could make much of a wine with those. Next year, be sure your father doesn’t pick so early. This sale’s a lucky thing, seeing as.…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Sarah knew what he meant: seeing as how her father had debts all over town. Seeing as how he should have stuck to potatoes.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, Sarah. Come visit some time.” He nodded, and put the pipe back into his mouth.

On the dusty road outside, two young men stood together talking in low voices. They worked helping to unload grapes that were brought for sale, or to load those that people purchased. They waited now for the first buyers of the day. Sarah walked straight to the younger of the two.

“I have some grapes to finish up the lot of Ries sold yesterday. Will you be loading them?”

“You need me to bring them down from your farm?”

“Maybe. But will you be around to unload them, I mean, to finish up the sale?”

“Well, when will Chance Kyrien be coming to get the rest?”

“I’ll find out,” she told him. “Thanks.”

Sarah climbed onto her horse.

The boat rocked, waking Sarah. The tide was coming in, lifting the ship from the sand. She climbed carefully over Chance, used the ship’s bathroom, then walked up onto the ship’s deck. Mimir sat immobile in the prow, a stiff gray figure in the moonlight, with the black forests of the island beyond her, and a bright infinity of stars stretched over her head. It seemed to Sarah the makina was watching the stars, looking at them as if hoping to read something out of the book of the universe. Sarah waved at Mimir once out of courtesy.

The ship did not seem about to drift away, as she had feared. The rocking was a slight motion. She returned to the room, and sat at the foot of the bed, and looked at Chance. She could just make out his face, if she did not look directly at him.

How peacefully he slept! His closed eyes were still, his breath came in regular slow draws, his lips were parted slightly and seemed almost to smile.

He had no restless nights. She understood that he felt at fault for much that had happened, but she also knew that he had never knowingly done ill. And only that could hurt the conscience enough to keep a young man awake in the night.

She watched him a long while. Partly she longed to call to him, to wake him, and tell him her own pains. She tried not to count how many she had killed in Uroboros, but the faces of the dying and screaming men and women were seared into her memory: seven. They would have murdered her, they would have enslaved Chance and done worse than kill him, but still it was a terrible thing to have slain them. And it seemed a thing all of the same fabric of brutality out of which a Ranger’s life was woven.

She could wake Chance, and confess the fierce things the Rangers did. How she had never seen an unman before Mimir and Wadjet; how the people she had beat back from the safe and fertile lands of the Forest Lakes were Trumen in all but title. She wanted
to tell Chance that his transgressions were nothing compared to her own—though none dared call her anything but a Puriman.

But that confession would harm the only thing that could redeem her. If anything made it worthwhile to do the things the Rangers did, it was the innocence of this boy, who believed in the Purimen creed and in purity and the world of Elders—and, most of all, who believed in her. Who even believed that she was more innocent that he. One thing could save her from despair: to protect Chance from the hard hopes of these others—from these unmen, each greedily clinging to her or his own ancient, moldy plan for the world. She must return Chance home to Walking Man Lake, still believing, still pure in his heart, and see him vinmaster of Kyrien Vincroft. She must ensure Chance got to live his own plan. Then it would all be worth it.

She reached up and touched with shaking fingertips her swords’ hilts, where they hung from the corner of the bunk. Then she lay close to Chance, careful not to press on his slung arm. Half waking, he wrapped her with his other arm, smiled, and drifted again into sleep.

CHAPTER

38

“I
t looks small,” Chance said, standing before the airship. The cabin was narrow, and not half the length of the cabin of Mimir’s airship. It was made of exposed metal pipes and metal sheets, the weld between them showing in crude beads. The body of the ship lay deflated beside it, a shiny blue-black material threaded with a lattice of silver wire.

Wadjet grunted. She had fumed for hours. Mimir and the Guardian had dug under the stairs in her ship and pulled out strange, complex metal parts, while Wadjet growled in indignation at each thing they lifted away. Then, with each member of their party carrying something, they had hiked for several hours into the hills. The Guardian led the way, showing them a thin path, wide enough only to walk placing one foot in front of the other. It followed along the crest of the hills, along a short stretch of the grassland, and then up a mountain valley where moss and short grass covered white stones. It had taken all of the morning to get there.

The climb had been long and hard, and the morning had quickly grown hot. Both Chance and Thetis had shoes not well made for such a hike, and they formed painful blisters that set them
limping before they had walked far. Chance also felt guilty, as with his broken arm he carried little, at the insistence of both Sarah and Thetis. He walked with a single bag of some light metal parts slung over his good shoulder.

And yet, for all the discomfort, Chance could not but be amazed at this forest. Because the narrow path mostly threaded along the top of steep-sided hills, much of the forest canopy was at their eye level. Huge birds of unimaginable colors glided through the trees, shrieking with strange piercing voices. Monkeys raced from branch to branch. Great dragonflies buzzed overhead. And the trees were monstrous, towering twice as high or more as any in the Forest Lakes. They had huge trunks set into the moss-covered ground with tall, twisting vanes. The whole singing, buzzing, green place made the forests of Walking Man Lake seem but like a field in comparison. Chance had not known that such an overwhelming abundance of life was possible.

“It is small but fast,” the Guardian replied, looking at the airship. Here the narrow mountain pass opened toward the northeast. Below them lay the broad, round plateau, the vast grassland with forest beyond it. Above, the valley rose into high, cold heights where snow dusted the rocks. Only a few scrappy trees and bushes clung to the steep sides. A stream trickled down the center.

The cave where the airship had been hidden was wide and deep. A large metal container stood in the middle of its entry chamber, out of which the Guardian had dragged the airship. Beside that leaned a metal cylinder, rotted through with gaping irregular holes ringed with flaking rust. That had contained the lifting gas.

Mimir and Thetis worked nearby, forming a knotty thatch of wire and piping on a flat stone step beside the stream. Seth wandered up the valley a short way, tail wagging as he sniffed at stones.

“It does look small,” Sarah agreed.

“There,” Thetis shouted. The machinery began to hum. A soft tube that ran from their machinery to the airship twisted suddenly, growing taut.

“The inflation process will require at least four hours to complete,” Mimir said. “Assuming that the airship has no perforations.”

“The ship is small,” Chance repeated. “It’s not large enough.”

The Guardian looked at him. “Yes. Only you and I and one other will be able to go.”

Chance felt a pit form in his stomach. He had feared this as soon as he saw the airship.

“You knew this,” Wadjet shouted. “And yet you took apart my ship!”

“What choice do you see?” the Guardian demanded of her.

Reason did not appease Wadjet. She kicked at the ground, growling and showing her teeth.

“Who?” Chance started. “And what will the others—I mean, those left here…?”

“They can fight and slow the god. Or just wait here. Hide here. It rests on whether the god stops here. And how much time in lead of it we have.”

“No one dies to slow the false god an hour,” Chance said. “Any who stay must hide. But who goes with us?”

The Guardian was silent.

“It’d better be me,” Sarah whispered.

Seth, having just returned, yipped, “I’m light. I don’t count.”

The Guardian acted as if he had heard neither of them.

A long silence fell. This changed everything. Who would go? Who would stay? Chance looked at them all. Mimir was expressionless, as usual. Her black and white formal suit, even more ridiculous here in this forest and valley than it had been on the ocean-plowing ship or in the center of battle, was still somehow without blemish. Wadjet flashed her fangs bitterly, then looked away. Thetis appeared again terrified, as she had not appeared since they had been in Disthea, with shaking hands pressed to her face. Sarah set her jaw in fierce determination. Seth bowed his head in worry.

Would the fight start now, Chance wondered, or later?

“Four hours,” the Guardian told them, settling that matter by giving them a task. “That is time enough for a trip to the shore, and to start on the way back, to bring the rest of the food stores. Mimir will stay here and watch over the ship. The rest of you can begin to climb down. Stay to the trail, and you will be safe. Stay together. I’ll come down and meet you before you have reached the bottom.”

“Where will you be?” Chance asked.

“And how far is the false god?” Sarah asked, concerned that the Guardian talked as if they had time only for one trip down the hill again.

The Guardian pointed up the steep mountainside. To Chance’s surprise, he frowned, betraying worry. “I want to get a better view. I do not know where the god is. I ken him, but cannot ken how far. He has learned to partly hide from me.”

“Hekademon,” the Guardian called to Seth. “You lead. You’ll be able to smell danger.”

Seth yipped and started down the valley. Slowly, each turning aside with private thoughts, they followed.

Seth liked the forest. He could smell that it was dangerous, but it was interesting, too. The sea had been nice because he liked the sea smell and he liked the fish that Wadjet pulled from the waves. Especially the fish. But then there was no place to dig a nice resting spot, and the constant rocking, rocking, rocking of the boat grew to weary him out of any rest. Finally, the smell of the sea was just the same smell all the time and got to be something you could not enjoy or even hardly notice.

And then the stink of whale plume.

He curled his lip. He was glad to be done with the whales. Too big!

Boats were no good, in the end.