Gods of Earth (22 page)

“You cannot defeat me, destroyer,” Hexus spat in his guild tongue.

“Do you think I will spare my wrath because you foul the Puriman’s brother? No. I aim to do him the good of a quick death.”

“I shall overcome you, and then release my brothers and sisters.”

“If that were so, then why are they not here now? Your future is mute. You and I both hear its emptiness. I have already won this battle.”

Hexus hissed at him.

“Time to be beaten back into nothingness, Hexus,” the Guardian answered. He raised the hammer in both hands.

A crack sounded out above and behind the Guardian. And his right arm fell off. The hammer clattered again to the ground. Hexus disappeared in a blur as the Guardian stumbled back, howling and confused.

He looked up, and there the Hieroni stood, their weapon gleaming.

Furious, the Guardian snatched the hammer from the ground with his left hand. He leapt atop the Crystal Wall. He hurtled ahead and in the next instant stood in the midst of the Hieroni. They started and then turned uncertainly in panic. The man with the weapon began to aim the gold rod toward the Guardian.

Then his hands clutched air. The Guardian smashed the gleaming weapon with the hammer, and shining broken fragments of it spun away over the sea.

The Guardian swung the hammer once more. It passed in an instant through all four men’s heads, in a single wide sweep, exploding brains over the black diamond of the wall. Their bodies fell slowly back.

“Damn you,” the Guardian hissed. He leapt back down onto the switchback, set the hammer at his feet, and lifted his arm. He pressed it into the gaping socket of his shoulder. His pain eased. He pushed his palm into the ichor that stained the wood, and the gray fluid drew back into his hand. Then, in an explosion of motion, he snatched up the hammer and pursued the sixth of the Younger Gods.

Chance’s horse began to tire before he was halfway to Uroboros. Chance looked back and saw that the two Hieroni on horseback were nearly on top of him. Sarah was far behind, driving her horse, trying to catch up. Chance could not see Seth.

“Yah!” he shouted at the horse. People coming to the market crowded the street, and he wove through them, trying to slow his pursuers, but looking back he saw that his path slowed him more than it slowed the men chasing him. He leaned farther forward, driving straight up the center of the wide road. Uroboros rose before them, a tall black wall perhaps a mile ahead.

Then one of the men came up at his side. He had a black beard, and dark eyes, squinted with intent. The man drew from his saddle a long metal pole with a claw of iron spikes on the end. He raised it over his head and then brought it down, hard, on the back of Chance’s horse.

His horse shrieked and shook its head, slowing.

“Devil!” Chance howled. The cruelty of this attack enraged him. Their horses tangled, slowing. They pressed side to side, and nearly stopped. The man was older, and stronger, but he held the reins in one hand and clung with the other hand to the metal claw, useless now with Chance so close to him.

Chance had much practice at fist-fighting other Purimen boys. He struck the man hard at close range, first in the face, his knuckles slipping across the dark beard, and then repeatedly in the stomach. The man began to fall back. Chance seized the saddle horn of the man’s horse and raised his inside leg and kicked, stamping down against the man’s ribs, again and again, until the man dropped off the horse, grabbing ineffectually for Chance’s foot. Chance’s horse shifted then and, still holding onto the other man’s saddle horn, Chance almost fell. He pulled himself into the other horse’s saddle. The horse trotted a few paces ahead, leaving the man on the ground behind.

Chance grabbed at the reins, but the second man who had followed him had circled his horse and now reached for Chance from behind. He grabbed Chance’s collar and yanked. Chance almost fell out of the saddle. He clutched again for the saddle horn as he was pulled backwards.

Then Sarah was on them. She drove a sword straight through the man as she rode up and twisted it savagely to pull it free as she passed. Chance managed to turn, and he looked with shock at the surprised, open eyes of his second attacker as the man slowly fell from his horse. He made a slight noise, as if wanting to say something, but then he was gone. He fell hard onto the road.

Sarah pulled to a stop, holding the reins in two fingers so she could still grip both her swords.

“Ride!” she shouted at Chance, who stared at the fallen man and the pool of blood that surrounded him. “Ride!”

Chance looked back. Behind them on the road, Thetis galloped after them, and immediately behind her at least a dozen more men and women were in pursuit on horseback.

Chance shifted in the saddle, getting a good seat, and kicked the horse.

“Yah!”

They sped toward Uroboros. Five Engineers, men and women in black robes, waited in the road before the doors, holding tall hammers. Behind them stood Mimir, appearing calm as always, if not indifferent. Near the makina crouched Wadjet, the woman from the Fricandor lands, frowning at the onrushing horses.

“This way!” Chance called. They rode past the group of Engineers and turned to follow the curve of the building toward the smaller door that Chance knew. When Chance reined up before it, Sarah jumped down first. She still held her swords. Their pursuers had fallen behind, slowed by the Engineers.

“Here?”

“Here.” Chance swung down.

She pushed through the door.

“Follow me!” Chance said, squeezing past her. They hurried down the long hall, now familiar to him. The hall stretched before them, empty, but from somewhere inside Uroboros came a scream of pain, followed by the clang of metal.

Thetis followed past the Engineers as Chance and Sarah raced by on their horses, their faces red with the heat of fighting and with flight. The Engineers closed rank behind her, shouting at her pursuers. Sarah and Chance quickly disappeared around the bend of Uroboros, but Thetis caught up in time to see them leap from their saddles and hurry through a door in the side of the shining black building.

She dismounted and went to their horses, which turned in place by the door, sweating and snorting. The taller of the two looked less spent. She went to its side, whispering to reassure it, and opened
its saddle bag. She looked over her shoulder and found the street still empty. She reached into her robes, pulled out the silver cylinder that Vark had given her, and twisted the top. She put it in the saddle bag.

“Go!” she shouted, slapping the horse’s shank. “Go!”

It took off at a gallop, heading toward the western side of the sea wall.

She pushed the other horses to set them following at a more leisurely pace, and then slipped into the doorway and pulled it mostly closed. Through the crack, she watched as, minutes later, two dozen Hieroni sped by on horseback in such wild pursuit of the lone horse that the shoes on their steeds struck sparks off the hard stones of the street.

Sarah looked down the black, yawning abyss of the well. She leaned far out over the stairs so that she could look at the winding steps below them. “How far?” she asked.

“Down these stairs,” Chance explained. “A short distance. Come on.”

“No. It looks clear. You go. I’ll stop anything… human… that follows.”

“Sarah—”

“Go!”

He hesitated. Then he nodded. “It’s probably better that you are not with me when I face the false god. When I call, you climb up to safety.

Chance hurried ahead, shoes clattering on the metal stairs.

Sarah pulled the door closed, took a few steps up the rusted stairs, and readied herself. She gripped the swords tightly, her palms only now seeming to sweat and slip on the handles. The air here
smelled damp, a mix of rust and wet stone. She held her breath, listening, but could hear only Chance, his steps on the hard metal steps echoing into the black depths of the well.

My mother always told me, Sarah thought, don’t get involved with a man who’s trouble. Get a quiet one, a lucky one, who’s a stranger to calamity.

And here I am, in the middle of horrible calamity. A historically huge calamity.

And I killed that man on the horse.

She knew that, in a while, that would hit her hard. The horror of it.

A door creaked open below. Chance’s voice echoed up the well, “Get clear, Sarah!”

She did not climb farther up the steps, but turned to face the door. She sighed, and to reassure herself in the haunting silence, she whispered, “That boy better be worth—”

The door just below her exploded. She fell back onto the hard steps, almost dropping her swords, but glimpsed Paul’s broad shoulders turning impossibly quickly before he shot down the steps.

She opened her mouth to call out to Chance, but could not speak. The terror of her time with Hexus, the horror of him reaching into her mind, swept over her. Then Hexus was gone, disappeared from view in a descending blur. A rush of shame followed the rush of fear, as she realized she might have condemned Chance by not calling out to warn him.

Two men hurried through the doorway, shirtless, with long, loose pants so wide that they seemed like skirts. They had cut strange symbols into the flesh of their stomachs and chests. Both of them wielded in each hand a long metal rod tipped with a claw. They looked down the stairs, then up, uncertain of which way to go. Seeing Sarah, they hesitated.

Furious at her own cowardice, Sarah leapt up and shouted at them, swinging her swords. The first man fell back and tumbled down the stairs, bleeding from his throat. The second retreated into the doorway, whipping his weapons at her wildly. One claw slipped past her blades and bit into her check, drawing a ragged scar. Sarah howled in outrage and pursued him, drops of blood flinging off of her spinning blades.

CHAPTER

21

C
hance heard the entrance burst open high above when he entered the chamber where the silver rods stood. The metal tumbled noisily down, banging against the edge of the stairwell as it fell. The sound was huge and frightening, obscenely loud after the prior silence. He threw himself across the room, chest heaving. He had one foot on the platform of the control dais when a crack of air exploded behind him.

A hand grasped his shoulder, gently. The size and heft of it were familiar. His brother’s hand. Then another hand settled onto his head.

The world disappeared. Memories not his own flooded into Chance. Four fierce sisters with pale skin and black hair, black eyes, smiling at him. The Sunken City full of airships. The thick clouds of heady incense, shot through with colorful lights, in a hall of The Hand that Reaches. The taste of strange wines.

And after these visions came a deep swell of emotions. Sorrow, melancholy, and hope. He understood the Sunken City now as Hexus saw it: a desolate wasteland, empty, dispirited, tragic nearly beyond his comprehension, nearly beyond what his heart could
bear. Theopolis had been forged with blood and pain and hope over ten thousand years, but only Disthea remained, the derelict wreck of a billion wasted dreams, surrounded by a sea bereft of boats, beyond which stretched a wilderness under empty skies where cruel and stupid men killed the children of the forest for sport.