The Shattered Goddess (8 page)

Elsewhere, some streets were alive with traffic, some empty and silent Smoke rose in a long, thin column from somewhere near the outer wall. Beyond that, nothing. Tilled fields. A few low hills. A highway leading to the horizon. The glistening ribbon of the Endless River, which was reputed to circle the
Earth and flow back into itself, like the Worm of Eternity. Then there was the desert, encircling the horizon. Maps had always shown Ai Hanlo to be the center of the land of Randelcainé and Randelcainé to be the center of the world. All roads, all rivers, all mountain passes led ultimately to the Holy City. Other places were colored patches on parchment, some having names, some not. Some were depicted
only with abstract symbols.

Ginna realized that he knew absolutely nothing about the world outside. He was sure he could find his way through the streets of the lower city somehow, and perhaps by some trick or pretense get out one of the gates, or be lowered over the wall in a basket like some hero in an old tale, but what then?

If he were living in some fabulous old tale, he was sure
these things would take care of themselves. But life, he had discovered, was seldom so neatly planned out “I wish something would happen,” he said after a long silence.

Amaedig stood beside him, fidgeting with a clump of ivy. “Don’t,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t wish something would happen. If it does, you probably won’t like it.”

“But I feel so smothered here. Somehow he
is watching all of us, and waiting, and making us wait for whatever he plans to do. Hadel said he was making the bones of The Goddess stir. We have to leave but I’m afraid to. Think of it. You and I, what do we know? How do we get food except from a kitchen? There aren’t any kitchens in the deserts. And people say there are unformed things out there, creatures not like anything we know, slowly becoming
something wholly new. Hadel once said the world gradually transforms itself, and one day mankind will no longer be at home on it when it’s done. Some places are more changed than others. We don’t know how to survive out there.”

She sighed with resignation. “We’ve been over this before. Either we go or we don’t. We have to decide.”

“Hadel also told me to seek the lady of the grove and
the fountain. I don’t know if he was laying a charge on me or giving advice or what. He couldn’t be any more specific. Who is she and where is she? There’s no mention of her in the knowledge books, and I was afraid to ask anyone.”

“Look,” she whispered. “Down there!”

Something was happening at last. About twenty feet below them a man ran along a narrow pathway between the base of the
Place of the Lion and the palace wall. His dull green gown billowed as he puffed along. He was one of the clerks from The Guardian’s archives. Why a clerk should be running anywhere, Ginna could not guess. He had once been to the place where the records were kept and found it to be inhabited by withered old men who wallowed in dust and scratched on parchments until they went blind.

For such
a one to be running was a veritable miracle. Surely the world was turned upside down. He scurried past where the boy and girl leaned over to watch so rare a spectacle. He held a scroll in one hand.

Then he stopped and fell forward, an arrow in his back. Ginna and Amaedig drew back, still watching, but concealing themselves. The archer, one of The Guardian’s special troops, calmly walked
into view, bent over the corpse, and took the message from a limp hand. Other soldiers joined him, looked at the paper, and all of them hurried off.

“I wonder what is going on,” said Ginna.

“Let’s find out.”

They were halfway down the stairs leading from the roof garden when they heard shouting nearby, followed by the clanging of metal on metal. A clash of arms. With unspoken
agreement the two of them hurried back up the way they had come, looking around for a place to hide. They settled on crouching among the overgrown shrubbery behind the stone lion.

Now all they could do was attempt to piece together what was happening from the sounds they heard. A series of trumpet blasts came from the direction of the great dome. It was useless to look in that direction.
A squat tower blocked the view.

The fighting nearby died down almost at once.

Several horses clattered along the path below. Then, a distance off, there was another trumpet blast, followed by screams, the neighing of horses, and silence for several minutes thereafter.

* * * *

Swords sang their song on shields and helms
. The line came to Ginna from an epic poem he had once
read. In the old days, when The Goddess still lived, there were heroes on the Earth, and great deeds were done. Now stuffy old men were shot in the back and all Ai Hanlo suffocated with fear and expectation.

There was another brief combat somewhere beyond the squat tower. Also, there came sounds of commotion beyond the outer palace wall, from the city of the common folk below.

What
was going on was obvious enough, in a broad sense. Neither of them had to say it. A palace revolution was taking place. Someone, more brave and able than they, was trying to overthrow The Guardian.

It was only after they ventured forth from the Place of the lion, after the struggle seemed over, that they found out who won, and it was only when the golden dome came into view that Ginna learned
something else, equally important, although it did not seem so at the time.

When he saw the dome, he stopped and stared up at it, a look of horror on his face.

“What is it?” his companion asked. “What do you see?” What he learned in that instant was that he was as different from other people as Hadel had said and he himself had always suspected. The dome looked normal to Amaedig. But
to
his
eyes it had changed. Beneath the overcast sky it stood, its gold entirely gone. Blackness poured out of the top, covering the dome entirely, washing down over the palace. It would fill up the world, he knew. This was the end, or at least the beginning of the end. The winged shapes hovered thicker than ever.

The running blackness bubbled and gave birth to more of them. By the thousands
they fluttered and scampered down the rooftops, into courtyards and through windows.

“You there! Stay where you are!”

The vision flickered away. The dome was golden once more but neither of them had a chance to look at it. They were surrounded by soldiers with swords drawn and spears leveled.

“Come with us,” one of them said.

“But we haven’t done anything,” said Amaedig.

“Orders.”

They were prodded and poked along. Others joined them. Eventually a large mass of captives, over a hundred in all, were ushered into an unpaved yard Ginna knew from his days of living near the
kata
stables. It was an exercise yard for the
katas
, and also for horses. There was nothing but bare, trampled ground.

Now a group of laborers and stable hands, under the close
supervision of the palace guard, were digging holes and bringing pieces of wood into the yard. Ginna felt sick when he saw the wood. He knew what it was for. Many stakes would be erected here and people would die on them. As the others understood what was happening, women screamed, men shouted, and the soldiers had to club several people senseless to get the crowd again under control.

They
all stood there like pigs in a stall, waiting for slaughter.

After the work had gone on for quite a while, Amaedig whispered to Ginna, then had to kick his shin to get him out of his stupor. His face was pale and blank, like hers. She was struggling to hold back tears.

“It doesn’t make any sense.
Why us?
If he wanted to kill us all, why here, why now?”

“I’m sorry,” said Ginna.

“Sorry for what?”

“For not deciding to leave earlier. This is our last day. If we’d left, we might have lived a little longer.”

“Or we might have been eaten by some monster in the desert. It’s not your fault. There is nothing you can do now.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I. Isn’t that funny?”

She pressed his hand in hers and held on tight. Her eyes
were closed. He looked up at the darkening sky, trying to avoid the sight of the stakes or the golden dome beneath which The Guardian lived.

Tharanodeth.
More than anything else, he longed for Tharanodeth. If the Good Guardian were still reigning, none of this would be happening. It would only be a nightmare, from which he would be awakened by the touch of his friend. The world had been
ordered in those days. There was still goodness left when Tharanodeth was alive. All of it had died with him, all hope too.

A frigid wind blew, whistling among the rooftops and battlements. A tremendous tempest seemed ready to blast forth, but it never did. The whole world was waiting. Clothing flapped. Laborers and soldiers shouted back and forth. The air grew deathly cold. Ginna, dressed
only in a light tunic and baggy trousers, and barefoot, shivered with more than just fear. Amaedig had on a simple smock and thin slippers. The two of them pressed together for warmth.

Hours passed. It seemed the task was deliberately prolonged to make the waiting a special, exquisite torture.

It seemed that they had been there all day. Ginna’s bladder told him hours had passed. Like
others who felt the need but were not allowed beyond the wall of spears surrounding them, he relieved himself upon the ground. Since he was about to die, good manners didn’t seem to matter.

Suddenly many feet were approaching in a measured tread. Another gate, opposite the one they had entered, swung open and, a squadron of The Guardian’s personal troops, the plumes on their helmets taller
than those of the regular soldiers, paraded into the yard in perfect formation. Trumpets blew. Drums beat and bells rang, announcing the coming of The Guardian himself. In came the Lord of Ai Hanlo, Kaemen, Protector of the Bones of The Goddess, carried aloft on his throne as for a state occasion. Behind him were more soldiers leading a long line of exhausted prisoners chained together, with only
a few additional troops bringing up the rear.

Those already in the yard looked at one another with astonishment and some trace of hope. Ginna’s heart leapt Amaedig squeezed his hand so hard it hurt The Guardian was brought before them. Trumpeters on either side of him blew a series of blasts in a special pattern, indicating that he was about to speak.

He put a horn to his mouth to
project his voice.

“All of you hate me,” he said. “All of you are wicked, impious, and unworthy subjects. I should execute you all out of a sense of justice, but my justice is tempered with mercy, and I shall spare you, but only so you may witness the terror of my wrath and learn from it, going away humbled and obedient thereafter.”

“We’re not going to die!” one man near Ginna began
to babble. Someone gagged him. But relief swept over the crowd like a tangible thing. Several of the women fainted, and some of the men. The guards, who had been pointing their spears at the mass of people, now held them upright. A few stood around the periphery of the crowd, but others went to assist The Guardian’s troops in the work that followed.

In numb, helpless horror Ginna watched
as the chained prisoners were stripped naked and nailed to the stakes by their hands and feet, then further secured with more chains. These were the ones who had tried to save Ai Hanlo, but failed. Some screamed. Others endured in stony silence and hopeless resignation. He recognized one man. It was Kardios, the general.

Someone bumped into him.

“Well, what do you think?”

He
turned to face a man he did not know, but whose manner showed him to be no prisoner. Even in the state he was in, and loathing the act of speaking, the boy knew what words were required of him if he were to survive.

“How... fortunate we all are that these traitors were caught. Before they could do any more harm, I mean.”

The man smiled. “By the way, who is the lady of the grove?”

Ginna gaped at him, speechless.

The other chuckled and went away, not waiting for an answer.

The stakes were placed in the holes and the earth around the base of each made firm. The victims hung there, bleeding slowly, upside down. It must have taken an hour to get them all in place.

The Guardian spoke again.

“See what happens to those who hate their lord!”

Now the soldiers began dipping hides and sheets into a pot of pitch some of them had fetched. These they wrapped around the legs of their victims. They moved from stake to stake with ladders. This also took about an hour.

It was definitely well into the evening now. The sun was setting somewhere beyond the clouds, where the world was still unsullied. The sky overhead was black.

Torches
were lit, but not just for illumination. As he realized what was about to take place, there was a sense of dissociation, as if he had fallen into utter madness and none of this were happening in the real world at all. The Goddess herself, even in death, would not allow it.

And yet a soldier ran from stake to stake with a torch, igniting the pitch. The silence of the condemned was broken.
They screamed like mindless, agonized animals. They writhed and tore at their bonds. Some yanked their extremities off the nails in great gouts of blood, but the chains held them. Columns of black, dirty smoke rose into the night sky. The air was thick with the smell of burning pitch and flesh. There was nothing to be heard but the screaming. All the trumpet blasts, all the drums, all the earthquakes
in the world’s history could not have drowned it out.

The ultimate horror was that the victims would not die quickly. The flames burned upward, away from their vital parts. They would suffer for hours or even days before death came to them.

It was like Kaemen’s feast, only worse. People fell to their knees and covered their eyes. They reeled back. They raved at the impossibility of
it all. Screams from the spectators joined the others.

Something in the minds of Ginna and Amaedig snapped simultaneously. Holding one another by the hand, they pushed their way through the dazed crowd and ran to one of the yard’s two gates. Soldiers stood before it, spears crossed. Their minds working as one, they turned to the right, to where a tree grew against a wall. Without hesitation
they let go of one another and made for it. They began to climb, heedless of anyone else. If a thousand archers had drawn bow against them, they would have climbed on. They stumbled onto the top of the wall, ignoring the glass and iron points which tore at their feet. Half jumping, half tripping, completely unaware of what was below, they went over.