Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (61 page)

Have you come to walk with me?

Seemed like a good idea. Don't ask me why.

Her fingertips reach out to touch his, and the warmth sends a jolt through him.

She laughs.

I'm not cold-blooded, Martel. Even my mermaids are warm and loving, for all their tails and scales.

He shakes his head, mentally contrasting the goddess beside him to Rathe … both full-bodied, but one he pictures, holds in his mind, as red, and Thetis is green, cool and green, goddess of the sea.

… and capable of storms and cruelty … like the sea?

He feels her stiffen at his unguarded thought, but her fingertips remain with his.

Aren't we all?

He nods, not looking at her, but aware that she is one of the few goddesses he overtops, one of the few he can physically look down at.

Ahead, rising out of the silver sands, sands unmarked by any marine growth, stands a rock cube, each pink face smooth stone, polished and glistening.

Not exactly natural.

No. This is my park, if you will.

Hand in hand, they climb on steps of nothing until they stand on the flat top of the cube.

Martel looks up. The surface of the ocean is at least fifty meters above, and it is indeed twilight where he stands.

Twilight, and it will come in turn for Aurore.

Thetis shivers, and disengages her hand from Martel's, turns to face him.

You could be more terrible than Apollo.

Me?
Me?
Good old Martel the wishy-washy? Who has yet to really lift a hand?

She takes both his hands in hers.

Apollo does not know what suffering is. You suffer, and do not know how to grieve. And when you have suffered enough, all Aurore will grieve.

Martel shakes his head again, strongly enough to fluff his hair out, but he does not remove his hands from hers.

Thetis drops her eyes to the pale pink of the rock underfoot.

You will be so powerful that nothing can touch you, nor your heart, except as you wish. You will have everything, and nothing.

And you?

Thetis does not look up, but shivers again.

And you?
Martel presses.

When you are done, I will have only what you leave me, and a leaden shield, gray in color. Unlike some that I know. And for all his strength …

Thetis is sobbing silently, refusing to look up to Martel.

He frowns.

None of what she has said makes any sense, any sense at all.

… a leaden shield, gray in color?… Whose strength?…

Her arms drop from his hands, and she steps back and stares squarely into his eyes, her own gray eyes clear, while the tears stream down her face.

They stand there silently, both dry, yet deep in the shallows of the sea.

They stand there, neither moving.

Let us suffer together, Martel, for I see what lies before us both. Even with a companion, no one will bear what you must. And I must lose all. So let us join before we separate, for you must give me what is demanded, and I must leave you to the far future.

She steps to him, and her arms draw him down, and the green water flames that have covered her are no more, and her mouth is warm on his in the twilight that cannot elsewhere be found on Aurore.

His arms encircle her, and he tries to forget, for a moment, the ones in red, and the ones in white and blue, and to feel the cool warmth of the green goddess and the heat of her sadness, though he understands not the reasons. He will, he knows.

… for the son will be carried on the shield of the past, and the father on the shield of the future …

His fingers dig into the warm skin of her shoulders as he tries, as he succeeds in blocking away the certainty of her visions, for he knows, whatever she has seen, it will be. And he does not want to know. Not now.

And the green flame and the black flame twine in the twilight of the shallow depths of the green-golden sea, and the fires within both hold back the past and the future.

For now.

 

xxxvii

From his small table overlooking the Great East Beach of Sybernal, Martel can sense a wave of energy approaching the establishment.

Should you make it harder for him?

Why not?
he answers his own question.

With that, he wraps the darkness around him tightly enough that only the closest observer would see him, or sense his presence.

He waits, cradling the untouched beaker of Springfire.

Steps, on the wooden entryway leading to the bar, tap lightly, are misleading, for the man who strides in with a slight wobble to his step is tall, a full head taller than the man who sits shrouded in black.

You expected something of the sort, Martel. But from a mere demigod?

He shakes his head.

The newcomer sits on a high stool at the bar and orders.

“Cherry Flare.” He does not look around the room, but Martel can feel his energies probing.

Martel lets the tendrils of power slide over him, nonreacting, and waits. He takes a small sip from his beaker.

Outside, the regular waves crest, break, foam, and subside, one wave after the other. Crest, break, foam, and subside, and each time the golden-green water slips back under the crisp foam of the incoming breaker like black ice under lace.

The man at the bar, the one wearing peach trousers and tunic offset with a crimson sash, the one with the tight-curled blond hair, taps his glass on the counter.

“Another Cherry Flare. 'Nother Cherry Flare.”

Martel takes another sip from his beaker. The liqueur warms the back of his throat as he swallows.

“'Nother Cherry Flare!”

Martel says nothing as the lady keep refills the younger man's glass.

“You! You in the corner! What do you think?”

Martel raises his eyebrows and says nothing.

“I asked you what you thought!”

“I wasn't thinking, friend. I was listening and looking at the waves.”

“Asked you what you thought!”

Martel sets his beaker on the table.

“So tell me what you think!” demands the man in peach.

“I'd like to hear what you think, friend.” The word “friend” is clearly a courtesy.

“Think you sit there. Sit there like one of those useless gods. Dare me to say what I think.”

Martel shrugs. “I'm no god. Think what you want.” He looks down at the beaker.

“No difference. Gods or no gods. Too many gods. Too many demigods. Never know where they are. Never know where they are.” He gulps the remainder of the second Cherry Flare as if the liquor were water.

Thud!

He slams the heavy glass on the bar. “Cherry Flare! Let's have another, lady!”

This time the woman replaces his glass with a full one almost before he has completed his demand.

“You!” he shouts at Martel. “Think I'm crazy. So do the gods.”

Martel takes another sip from his beaker.

How will he play this out?

“The gods. Too many gods. Too careless. Careless, and care less about us.” He laughs at his pun. “Treat us like dirt. Dirt!”

The heavy glass, still nearly full, comes down on the bar, but the speaker is oblivious to the liquor that slops onto the wood.

The keep hesitates, leans toward a concealed button, her blue eyes narrowing.

“Let him talk, Sylvia,” suggests Martel.

“Very good. Let me talk. Talk about every rich norm that comes to be a god. Throws creds like light. And what we get? Nothing. Nothing but bowing and scraping, and having our brains scrambled every time we think wrong.”

Not much finesse here, Martel.

Does Apollo need finesse?
he responds to his own question.

Martel gestures for the other to continue.

“Even the Regent, bitch she is, doesn't follow you in and out of bed, day on day, waiting, hounding till you think wrong.”

“Neither do the gods,” snaps Sylvia.

“Worse!” The peach-dressed man hops off the stool, well balanced despite the slur in his speech, and wheels toward Martel. His right hand blurs as it slashes down through the heavy wood seat of the adjoining barstool.

For an instant the two halves of the barstool balance, teetering in midair. Then both sides crash to the floor.

“Ha!” The man vaults more than a meter into the air and onto the flat surface of the bar itself. “Behold the remains of Lendl the Terrible! Bar tricks! Once I could do that to any man. But here … here … one can do nothing. Nothing!”

Sylvia retreats to the far corner of the bar, away from the splash of light that sweeps out from the peach-clothed man who bestrides her bar.

“Magnificent show,” comments Martel dryly, “Lendl, or whatever your real name is. Apollo at his cruelest has a sense of restraint and drama. You're merely burlesquing the whole business.”

Martel finally stands, and as he speaks the darkness rises from the wood surrounding him, draws in from the corners of the room to confer a solidity upon him that leaves Lendl a tinsel shape.

“You mock me. Therefore, you mock the gods.” Stars corruscate from the ends of Lendl's peach-lacquered fingertips.

“I mock no one. I merely state what is obvious. Those who consider truth mockery only mock themselves.”

“Meet your end, unbeliever!” The tinsel stars at his fingertips turn brighter before they arc toward Martel.

Another one sent for an ordeal … or to test you, Martel.

Martel smiles, and, seeing that smile, Sylvia makes a sign, that of the looped and inverted cross, and shudders in her corner.

Lendl, lost in his madness, straightens his right arm and flings a blaze of fire at the shadowed figure that is Martel.

The missile, though brighter than the smaller stars that die in the darkness around Martel, slows, dims, and flickers out long before it crosses the short distance to Martel.

A second, even brighter, starbolt flares toward Martel, and, in turn, extinguishes itself. Lendl drags forth another from the field of Aurore.

In turn, Martel reaches for a certain energy, turns it to twist and isolate Lendl from his energies. He steps toward the star-thrower.

“Do you believe in darkness, Lendl the Terrible? Have you seen sunset in a shadow?”

The darkness crashes like a wave, like a falling cliff, over the demigod. As it flows back to the place from which it rose, it carries the paralyzed demigod, lacquered fingers and starbolts included, back with it, back into the depths of time and space.

Releasing his hold on that corner of the universal darkness, Martel sits back down at his table and studies the flattened waves as they break up on the Great East Beach. He sips the last of the Springfire.

As an afterthought, he touches Sylvia's thoughts and removes the memory of a peach-and-crimson-clad demigod. That loss of memory will protect her and confound Apollo. For it has to be Apollo or the Smoke Bull who sends such emissaries.

He lifts the empty jasolite beaker, knowing Sylvia will refill it, waiting for the warmth of the Springfire to drown the memories that the demigod has raised … again.

So easy to strike out … but you don't combat fire with fire … not unless you want to burn both out.

Still, you remember, don't you, Martel?

He nods to his own thoughts and takes a sip from the latest beaker Sylvia has placed before him.

The images flash across the dark screen within his mind.

Kryn, who was spark, and Rathe, who was fire, and Thetis, who is sea, and Emily, who is deceit, and more, and Apollo, who is the cruelty of desert sun, and … and …

He sips the Springfire, and lets the darkness curl around him, settle deeper within.

 

xxxviii

As he walks to the exit portal Martel can sense the morning shift, engineer and faxer, at the other entrance, the land-side one, waiting for the clearance that he has left.

“For all they see, I'm a myth, a creation of the nightly fax show. Martel the mysterious, featured on Path Seven and seen occasionally in Sybernal, if the rumors can be believed.”

The words sound hollow, and he blocks away the memories that accompany them … along with one name.

Farell … Marta Farell.

Someday you'll have to repay that one.

Someday—but not till the time comes.

He touches the plate and steps out into the eternal day of Aurore, though the standard clock indicates it is not quite dawn on Aurore or Karnak Imperial. He pauses.

Someone else is waiting.

“Emily … what a pleasant surprise.” Martel almost laughs as he discovers his voice has involuntarily blunted the sarcasm he meant.

“I thought I would let you recover on your own. You do insist on doing things your way.”

“And you are so different?”

She smiles, and the expression is warm. “We are alike in some ways.”

He nods. “But to what do I owe this unexpected courtesy?”

Goddess or not, as a woman she had approached, and it is to that approach he intends to respond.

“That's what I'd hoped for,” she replies to his unthought words. The sound and thought of silver bells tinkle in his head. He pushes them away, knowing he does not want to, and takes her arm, tanned lightly, as always.

“The North Pier restaurant again?”

“Not this time.” She points to a flitter landing a hundred meters up the Petrified Boardwalk. “Not unless you miss the high cuisine terribly.”

Martel reflects. If he is condemned, he might as well enjoy it. For some reason, the image of Marta Farell flickers through his mind.

“Your fault, but not totally,” agrees Emily.

Martel reinforces his blocks, not only frustrated at her knowing his every thought, but also angry at his own carelessness.