Gods of Earth (56 page)

“So we come together at the end,” Hexus said. “On the threshold of the new world, the reforging of the Ultimate Age.”

Chance backed away. The gorilla walked down the hall behind Hexus, slow with solemn dignity, her armor clinking.

“And even now, shrinking away from me, you move toward the Numin Well, where I would send you.”

“Where is Sarah?”

“Ah, the Ranger? I do not know. Still on Lethebion, perhaps. Waiting for you to return a god.”

Chance sighed with relief. Sarah was safe. He could die then, here, and she might find still a way back, working with Thetis. He could die and he would not be abandoning her to the will of Hexus.

“Now, come,” Hexus said.

“I will not yield,” Chance whispered.

“Oh, you have no choice, Potentiate. I admire you, I honor your accomplishment. Look at you. The Guardian is bound, your friends are dead or far away; you stand here alone, broken, dirty, starving and thirsty, and yet you made it all this way from your tiny little quiet nursery corner of the world. You have done something heroic. Truly you reveal your heritage.”

The gorilla, now at the side of Hexus, held her spear close in both hands and eyed Chance with her head tilted back. She tightened her grip on her spear, twisting it in her strong black hands as though she longed to thrust it through him. Chance noted that it
was made of ash. Then she sniffed and turned her face away. Her meaning was clear:
I see nothing heroic
.

Chance swung the bar, but before the long sweep of it had crossed half the distance to Hexus, it froze in the air, as if Chance had struck at a mound of sand. The gorilla shouted in outrage.

“Stop,” Hexus whispered. Chance felt the air tighten around him. He could not move.

Hexus stepped forward. Chance saw that his brother’s body now had the appearance of someone mortally ill. The familiar lines of Paul’s face were etched, haggard. He had lost much weight. His eyes were yellow and bloodshot. His hair had thinned to an unhealthy nest of brittle red strands. The breath that fell on Chance’s face reeked of foul, rancid meat.

One, then two bears roared behind them. Their voices echoed down the hall.

Hexus did not take his eye off of Chance, but he turned Paul’s head and told the gorilla, “See what is happening there.”

The gorilla ran back up the ramp.

“I will defeat you,” Chance said. “Even if the final battle is in my soul, where my soul must fight your soul, I will defeat you. I swear to you, as the One True God is my witness, I will not yield. I will not yield.”

“Be careful what you threaten, Potentiate,” Hexus said. “Or I may leave nothing, nothing of you.”

He pressed his hand to Chance’s head. Chance shivered with revulsion as he felt the horrible wetness of the running sores and of the eye pressed against his filthy forehead. A terrible, screaming pain raged through Chance’s skull, a feeling that his brain might explode. Then the visions, and the memories, began to eat their way into his soul.

Hexus released the tight grip on Chance’s body, seeming to put all his effort into cutting through Chance’s mind. Chance fell to the hard ground, the palm of his hand reflexively thrusting out and
scraping hard over the shards of glass across the ground as he fell onto his right shoulder. Hexus crouched down over him so he could press the hand again to Chance’s head. Paul’s eyes were closed.

Writhing, Chance gripped a long narrow blade of crystal. He saw again the tower of the Hand that Reaches, whole and shining in the bright sun, high over a Theopolis teeming with white towers beyond which the Crystal Wall, polished and gleaming, held out a crashing sea. Chance clutched the broken glass so tightly his fingers bled, and the pain in his hand anchored him to this older world, to this empty dirty hall below the ruins of that age.

Then Chance raised the shard and thrust it into his throat.

“No!” Hexus screamed. “No!”

But this voice faded into silence, and Chance’s splashing blood blackened the vision of the white city of Theopolis.

CHAPTER

52

W
adjet saw in a flash, before she even smelled them, the soulburdened. Three bears and a wolf. She and Sarah had leapt over the top steps and onto the small square where the entrance to the Hall of Ma’at opened, and where the red airship was anchored with its tail swinging in the light wind, and there the beasts stood, as if waiting for them.

Sarah ran ahead without stopping, her swords swinging, the hard soles of her boots slapping the flat stones of the square. Wadjet would have hesitated, tried to circle around, but that was not possible now that Sarah plowed ahead. Events flung themselves toward a chaotic collision, and Wadjet had no way to shape them. She could only follow, easily matching Sarah’s pace with her long legs.

One bear saw them. It roared and charged. The others froze a moment, taking the scene in, before roaring themselves. The first bear came on alone, and then, foolishly, it stopped before them and stood to its full height, waving its claws, twisting its nose, howling. Sarah did not slow, but drove both swords into its chest, precisely aimed up under its ribs and into its heart. It clawed at her, scoring
her arms, but fell back. The swords came free. Blood gushed just once from the wounds, and the soulburdened beast was dead.

Sarah pointed to the left. “You go that way. I’ll go this way. We’ll split them. Try to get to the door, to help Chance.”

Wadjet looked to the door. A gorilla in brightly gleaming armor emerged from the dark beyond it and peered over the scene.

Sarah ran off, circling right. The remaining two bears chased her. Wadjet ran in the other direction. The wolf, seeming relaxed, loped toward Wadjet, mouth open so that its tongue lolled out. Wadjet held the knife out toward it, flashing the blade, trying to make the wolf fear her.

The gorilla lifted her spear and started toward Wadjet.

The wolf slowed, looked back, and, seeing the gorilla coming to its aid, slipped to the side.

They will try to get in front and behind me
, Wadjet realized.

Wadjet saw, over and far beyond the wolf, Sarah crossing the square. One bear ran toward her and Sarah feinted, turned, and leapt onto it, driving her twin swords down through its back, just behind the neck. The swords came free as she ran over the beast and tumbled onto the hard ground. She rolled and came up, bloody swords swinging.

Lucky, Wadjet thought. She’s very good but she’s also very lucky. The stupid bears attack her one at a time—that’s lucky. And her every sword strike is hitting its true target—that’s very lucky.

Wadjet slipped to the side, trying to keep the wolf and gorilla on one flank. But this drove her away from the door, toward the steps. The wolf stalked her, head down and pointed slightly off to her side, as if out of politeness the beast did not want to look straight at her.

She backed up until she had to stop at the top of the steps. To be driven back down the stair would be to leave Sarah to fight all of them. She couldn’t allow that. She crouched, held the knife out, and watched her opponents cautiously. Her heart pounded, seeming to
shake her whole body. The shadowed but still powerful sun, and the sun-baked rocks, conspired to make sweat fall into her eyes.

I’ve never been lucky, Wadjet thought. Her master had said just that. When Mjuba had beaten Afukali that last time, Wadjet had found the girl chimpanzee who had been her crib mate crying under green fern fronds. Afukali’s nose had been bleeding, and blood matted the hair on her chest and shoulders. Flies feasted on it. Afukali’s eyes were swollen shut. Wadjet had been unlucky that Mjuba had been right there, nearby, to catch her rage when it burned white hot. Wadjet had been unlucky that Mjuba faked that he felt no regret, and when she showed him her fangs he beat his chest, enraging her even more. She had set on him hard, clawing at his eyes, surprising him long enough that she could sink her teeth into his throat—thinking, he will beat me till I cannot walk if I let go. I must hold him till he is unconscious. She bit hard, tasting blood, while his long hairy black arms beat and beat at her back.

And she had been unlucky that when Mjuba finally fell still, he had been not unconscious but dead. And she had been unlucky that Mjuba’s aunt was on the Council of Stewards. “A Steward must know her powers! She cannot make mistakes!” the old ape had cried.

Now the gorilla and wolf glanced at each other, and then separated further, flanking her. That was bad. They knew what they were doing—again, ill fate. Wadjet pointed the blade at the wolf, but kept her eyes on the gorilla and the gorilla’s spear.

The wolf growled. Wadjet noted, with a kind of distant curiosity, how the wolf was all gray, with gray eyes, just as the gorilla was all black, with black eyes. It was so strange to see here a gorilla, at the base of the Numin Well, as if a creature from Wadjet’s home were transplanted, like her, to this barren and catastrophic place.

“Now I eat you,” the wolf said.

An explosive rattling and clanking roared behind Wadjet. She dared a glance down the steps. The spider-like modghast ran up the steps at her. A clutch of smaller twitching arms bound Mimir
tightly to the front of the modghast, as if the makina were some morsel being drawn into the mouth of a giant crab. Mimir’s eyes were closed. Thin rods of iron had penetrated her clean, trim black and white suit, the first blemish Wadjet had ever seen on it. Whether this meant Mimir had won or lost their battle, or even whether the battle raged on or was over, she did not know.

Wadjet ran, feet skimming the edge of the top step, moving sideways to avoid the ape and wolf. She had not gone ten steps before the wolf jumped at her. But at that same moment, the modghast loomed up above them, and as the wolf leapt at her, one rusted iron leg slammed down out of the air and through the canine’s back, pinning it to the ground with a force that cracked the hard stones. The wolf whined horribly, its back legs scratching away at the hard ground.

The gorilla threw her spear. Wadjet saw the flash of golden wood and dove. The point nicked her back, but passed on, to be lost as it sailed through the air and then clattered down the stone stairs.

Wadjet rolled over—and saw, just in time to roll aside, another of the modghast’s pointed spider legs strike for her. It hit the stone by her hip with a spray of sparks. A third leg struck down at the gorilla, knocking the ape onto her back. The pointed foot of it settled on the gorilla’s armor, pinning her. The rusted iron point twisted and slid against the metal, trying to penetrate the gold plate that protected her chest.

The leg that had just missed Wadjet snapped quickly sideways, striking her, sending her rolling across the stones. She lost her grip on Sarah’s knife and heard it skitter away. Her head hit the ground once, twice, as she spun.

When she came to rest, the world reeled for a moment and she saw the leg strike down at her with swift violence—

And stop.

“Ah!” Wadjet cried. For a long moment, she was sure that the foot had stabbed through her, and that the pain had simply not climbed to her skull yet.

But no. The leg was poised, the tip of it pressed against her but not pushing down. She grabbed the iron limb. Pain shot through her sprained wrists as she tried, without result, to shove it aside, or to shove herself out from under it. Coarse dirt coated the metal, and this close she could see the roots that clung to it and the green streaks of grass stains that had been pressed into the endless tiny scrapes on the metal. A smell of rotten flesh and wet rust and burnt hair filled the air around her.

“I teem with labyrinths, modghast,” a voice called out. Wadjet looked up. Mimir’s eyes were closed, but her lips moved and from both Mimir’s own mouth and the modghast the makina’s calm voice reverberated, so that Wadjet could feel the vibration of the makina’s words in the modghast’s foot that she held.

“Your bitter years cannot plumb my depths. You cannot circle my thoughts.”

The modghast’s foot trembled against Wadjet’s stomach, struggling to overcome some resistance that Mimir manifested, so that it might stab Wadjet. The claw began to sink slowly, slowly, into her stomach.

“I am a god, you fool!” Hexus screamed, a harsh sound that cut through the soothing black silence that surrounded Chance.

Pain returned to Chance. A dull throbbing ache in his skull. Then a sharp pang at his throat. He opened his eyes, and light stabbed at his brain.

“Fool.” Hexus stood before him. Paul’s face was furious. The black eye glowed angrily in the rotting palm held up by his shoulder. “I can fix a simple wound. You only make your suffering last longer.”

Chance looked down. Hexus held him erect, his legs and arm bound. His filthy shirt was drenched with blood. He was dizzy,
light-headed. His vision clouded a second, and only slowly did the dark lines of the hall begin to form again in the gray blur of his sight.

And through this blur he saw Sarah, running toward him. It’s my own dream, he thought. My own dream competing with Hexus’s dream. Hexus is just getting started, and in a few minutes I won’t be myself any more—but I’ll cling to this dream of my wife.…