Gods of Earth (25 page)

“I’ve never been unable to see land,” Sarah whispered uneasily.

Chance nodded, and was about to say that he never had either. But just at that moment, Mimir shrieked.

“What is it?” Chance shouted. Sarah grabbed her sword hilts, ready to draw the blades. Mimir writhed in the front of the boat, by the strange, thick mast in the bow. Her faintly ridiculous, impeccably clean formal clothes shone still black and white like new. She looked with her flashing silver eyes at the sky, and around herself, as if searching for something she had lost. Then she turned toward the Guardian, and began clambering back toward him. Her shriek was a complex jumble of sounds. Chance got the impression that she was actually shouting words, talking so quickly it sounded like a cicada’s buzz.

“Yes, makina,” the Guardian said to her. “I have silenced you.”

“Why do you interfere,” she asked, now speaking so that Chance and the others could understand, “and withhold from me my already-diminished connection to the Machinedream? And why do you reduce my ability to hear and see? You impede the efficacy of my assistance, and therefore our efforts!”

The Guardian did not reply. The answer was obvious: he did not trust her. He put both hands on the hammer and leaned on it.

“What is the machine dream?” Chance asked. Mimir’s sudden anger impressed him, after all the hours he had spent with the expressionless makina. Now she leaned forward, and moved her hands as she spoke, her infinite distance from mortal matters suddenly dissolved.

“The Machinedream is the communion of Makine. We have the ability to talk and share some small part of our world over great distances. It is forbidden to commune with the Machinedream in Disthea, as some ancient prejudice against my kind remains there. But it is not forbidden here in the open ocean, where there is no authority to permit or deny. I have endured a long trial in the city, sustained only by my expectation of recommuning with my syndicate, and now the Guardian prevents me.”

Mimir turned to Wadjet, who had walked from the tiller to listen to their debate. “This is your ship. My syndicate can provide assistance. My syndicate can speed this ship, monitor the location of the Hexus and the soulburdened army. It can provide transportation when we land.”

She looked back at the Guardian. “My syndicate will know where we are. You accomplish nothing by this.”

And then Mimir seemed to seethe. Chance jerked his head back in shock as some kind of ripple went through her body, swelling it. Sarah smoothly, almost imperceptibly, slipped her palms around her sword hilts and gripped them firmly. The Guardian set one foot
deep behind himself, a sign Chance now recognized as his preparation for combat, and slowly lifted the hammer. But the Guardian also did something Chance had seen once before: his eyes flashed a deadly white, so that twin ghostly lights, eerie and otherworldly, first cast across the deck, and then narrowed into two beams that fell upon Mimir. Even in the bright diffuse light of the afternoon the beams were visible. It was an ominous sign.

Mimir shrank back. The glow of the Guardian’s eyes faded slowly.

Seth and Thetis gathered around them now.

“Puriman Chance Kyrien,” Mimir said, her voice now slow and calm as it had been in the days before. “The Guardian does not trust me. But should we put all our trust in him? Who is he? Who manufactured him? What are his actual goals?”

Chance frowned. These were the same questions that the false god had asked of him. And he had no answers.

Chance looked at them all, each in turn. “I trust the Guardian,” he said. “But.…” He looked at the gray face. “But, we do deserve to know, from everyone, why they are here. I… I don’t understand why some of us are here. I am here because I alone can kill the god. I will kill it to avenge my parents and because it is the duty of a Puriman to destroy a false god, for the false god will lead all people away from the One True God. After that, I want only to go home. I have no other hopes in this.”

There was a long silence. Water lapped at the bow of the boat as it dipped and rose, striving slowly forward.

Then Thetis said, “I am here because it is my duty as a Mother of the Gotterdammerung. I swore an oath when I joined the guild that I would pledge my life to undoing the harm the Theogenics Guild had done.”

She looked at Sarah. Sarah stared back, defiant. She said, “I am here because as Ranger of the Forest Lakes, I guard the Purimen of Walking Man Lake. And I am here because I love Chance.”

Chance blushed, a hot feeling that spread from his face and then all through him. He was stunned by Sarah’s words, and because she had spoken them aloud.

They looked at Mimir.

“First you must argue with the sea,” Wadjet interrupted. “My ship’s engine can take us no farther. We raise the sails now. When Disthea is far behind us, the Guardian and the makina can tell their stories.”

“Wa-wise words,” Seth yipped. “But before that, even, I-I-I say, fix Chance’s arm. Fix Sarah’s cuts.”

Chance found the setting of his arm more painful than he had expected, a trial of the kind he imagined the old prophets had suffered. The Guardian had told them that he could see through the flesh of Chance’s limb and know whether the bones were set true. Chance bit hard on a cord of rope while the Guardian pulled at his hand, blue now also with bruises. It seemed the Guardian was breaking the bones again, as Chance could feel the sickening grinding of the frayed ends of the break as they rubbed against each other, but after endless pulling and twisting, the Guardian declared the bone placed. Pale, shaking, and drenched in a chilling sweat, Chance lay still on the deck while Wadjet and Thetis used a strange fabric to wrap splints tightly to his arm. Seth looked on in concern.

More difficult had been Sarah’s wound. It had to be sewed shut, Thetis insisted. Sarah bristled, but relented when Wadjet announced she could stitch the three cuts closed. But then, as Sarah sat on the rocking deck, and Wadjet held a strange curved needle in her hand, the woman from the Fricandor lands leaned forward and licked Sarah’s wounds, her snaking tongue darting
out between her fangs and sliding from bottom to top along the open gashes.

Sarah pushed Wadjet away. “What are you doing, unman?”

Wadjet flashed long fangs. Whether this expressed a smile or threat, Chance could not tell.

“Testing your wound,” Wadjet said. “It tastes clean.”

“Be calm, Sarah,” Thetis said. “The Stewards of Fricandor, it is said, can tell many things by tasting blood. Just as they have control over their own blood.”

This did not please Sarah, but she sat again after a moment. “Don’t do it again.”

Wadjet did not speak more, but bent over Sarah with an expression of concentration that looked like a slight, even hungry, smile, as she stitched a black thread through the gaping cuts and pulled each closed. Sarah closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, and made no sound but the sharp draw of her breath through her nose each time the needle pierced her skin, which it did again and again. After each stitch, as the black thread was pulled tight, it lifted her inflamed cheek from her face, giving her a bloated grimace.

Chance held her hand, feeling more nauseas for her wound and these stitches than he had about his own break and its setting. It pained him to watch the procedure, but he felt somehow he would be cowardly, even disrespectful, not to watch carefully, with some pretense of ensuring the stitches were done well.

She’ll be scarred now, he thought, though still beautiful. The fault is mine. Because she defended me she bears this sigil of war and of killing with arms.

He looked away, and caught Seth’s eye. The coyote watched him closely, understanding, it seemed, everything.

Chance had admired large sailboats on his visits to the Freshsea, but those were broad wooden ships, with tall masts bearing white sails. Wadjet’s ship was long and sleek. From two masts, with Thetis and Sarah helping, Wadjet hoisted billowing blue-black sails, spotted everywhere with blue and white patches. Sarah surprised Chance by laughing in delight as the sails bellied, her wounds seemingly forgotten. Her laughter was infectious and Chance looked up now at the sails with her and smiled as the strangely light fabric filled and snapped with wind, the metal eye-rings in their corners tapping at cables.

“There is good wind!” Wadjet shouted. The ship tilted forward. “We launch the skysail!”

From a door in the deck before the foremost mast—the small, thick mast that Chance had wondered about—Wadjet drew out a pile of strange cloth. Chance touched it cautiously. It was sky blue, and impossibly light, but strangely wrinkled and crumpled. Thin cords were attached to the corners and edges, and they united in a single cord. Wadjet attached this to a hook at the top of the stunted mast. She unwound the cloth on the deck, lifted a corner, and the broad rectangle of blue sail caught the wind and opened. She paid out line as it rose into the air.

“It’s like a kite!” Sarah shouted.

For a moment it was a confusing sight, disorienting to see. For the cord paid out quickly, but the kite did not seem to move. Then Chance realized what was happening. “It’s growing!”

As they watched the sail lift into the sky, it also stretched and grew, until its size matched that of the entire ship. It rose high into the air, and finally the line jerked taut.

The Guardian stomped toward them and pointed at the sail with the head of Threkor’s Hammer. “It is a flag marking our place and path through the sea.”

“Faster now,” Wadjet explained.

“And when the wind dies?” he asked.

Wadjet nodded. “Yes, it is hard to drag it from the sea.” She turned to Sarah and Chance. “Come, I’ll show you where we sleep.”

Chance felt a nervous apprehension about sleeping arrangements. He did not know if the previous night—it seemed so long ago!—had set some kind of precedent. He hoped it did but also feared to insult Sarah with any expectation. He and Sarah exchanged nervous glances as Wadjet took them below deck to see the quarters.

A narrow hall with a low ceiling formed a kitchen. Seth wagged his tail when he saw the stacked boxes of food stores. Toward the bow was a short hall with four doors. All but Mimir and the Guardian crowded into the space. Chance fought a slight seasickness as the boat rocked and the small portals along the walls of the galley behind revealed only a diving sea.

One of the doors opened onto a small bathroom. Two others opened onto narrow rooms with two stacked bunks. Each had a long window showing the sea’s horizon.

The Guardian and Mimir did not sleep. Seth insisted he would sleep on the deck.

“I won’t slee-slee-sleep below the sea,” he protested.

So the four bunks would be enough. Chance hesitated, but Sarah said with conviction, when Wadjet opened the door to the port bedroom, “Chance and I will take this room.” She unbuckled her belt and hung it, with her swords, from the corner post of the top bunk.

Thetis and Wadjet then would share the other room.

“What’s in there?” Chance asked, pointing at the door at the end of the kitchen.

Wadjet smiled. She opened the door onto a small triangular room formed by the prow of the ship. The walls, below the water-line, were clear. They could see far out into the clear blue seawater,
where shafts of sunlight fell in shimmering pale blue columns, and faded as they plunged into dark, green depths.