Gods of Earth (30 page)

Thetis looked toward the hatch, afraid of who might hear them. She stepped into Sarah’s cabin and closed the door. She grabbed Sarah’s arm, hard. Sarah started, surprised at the great strength of Thetis’s thin fingers, which bit into her flesh.

“You don’t understand what’s happening here,” Thetis whispered, intense but barely audible.

Sarah did not flinch again as Thetis’s nails sunk into her skin. “Is that what you tell Chance? That he is a foolish farmer boy, ignorant about your magics and the ancient blasphemies you do?”

“I want what’s best for him. You don’t understand what’s best for him.”

Sarah’s fingers began to tingle, the blood flow squeezed off by Thetis’s cutting grip. She’d had enough.

In one fluid motion Sarah shoved her arm into Thetis. Predictably, by reflex, Thetis pressed back, leaning toward her. Sarah relaxed, letting Thetis totter forward a bit, and in that moment she slipped her arm behind Thetis, knotted her fist tightly into the Mother’s
thick black hair, and pulled her head back, hard. Thetis stumbled, her throat exposed.

With her other hand, Sarah slipped out a long knife that had been sheathed at the small of her back. She pressed the edge against Thetis’s jugular. The small point of the blade gleamed against the Mother’s pulsing skin.

“What you want for Chance is some hope of your witch creed. But Chance wants to be a Puriman, and master of a vincroft. I’m going to see that he survives and he gets home and is baptized a Puriman and is master of his vincroft and lives a long happy life in which he forgets all of this. A long, happy, peaceful life. I’ll not let you stop him.”

“You don’t—” Thetis began. Sarah silenced her with a hard yank of her hair and a twist of the sharp point of the knife.

“It is you who do not understand. I know exactly what is happening here. You have discovered something pure and you want a part of it. I’ve seen it before. I saw it every day. I am a Ranger of the Forest Lakes. You think that the Trumen survive in this world through charity and hope? No, witch. I do hard, cruel things so that Purimen can be pure. I have driven hungry children from food. I have cut the hands of old men who clung, begging, to my legs. After that, I could kill a witch with ease. If it would let a Puriman be pure and have his dream, if it would protect Chance, I would gut you without blinking.”

She jerked hard on Thetis’s hair.

“So. Chance is going to kill this god, and then come back out of that hole in hell you witches opened, and then I’m going to take him home so that he can be the kind and honest farmer and vinmaster he dreams to be, and we’ll never see you again. And if you try to stop me I’ll kill you.”

She pulled hard on Thetis again, tipping her off balance. As Thetis tottered, Sarah slipped the knife away and opened the door to her cabin. She thrust Thetis out into the narrow hall. The Mother
tripped and fell against the door opposite, hitting her head hard on the dark wood. Sarah shut her door and locked it.

Sarah closed her eyes. She took two deep breaths, and then put her trembling hands together in prayer, and whispered, “May God forgive my wrath and sins and have mercy on my soul and on the soul of mine enemy.”

CHAPTER

26

“I
am Vark! Leader among the Hieroni! Vark, known also as Sirach!”

Vark pressed his shoulder against the tall doors of the small and ancient cathedral, nestled between two soaring buildings of Disthea, where he and twelve others of the Hieroni had barricaded themselves. Angry bears clawed at the wood, shredding it, and roared. The doors shuddered, scraping against the two long benches that were wedged against them.

“Stupid beasts,” he spat. His long gray hair was thrown around his shoulders. His voice was hoarse from screaming through the door, screaming at windows, trying to make the soulburdened that laid siege to them understand who they were.

A window shattered above the door. A rock and shards of colored glass fell onto the green stones of the floor. The man beside Vark, an Engineer, cursed.

“They’re going to kill us,” he wailed.

“They’re breaking through!” came screams from the back of the cathedral.

The Engineer wailed again. “Kill us!”

And then the scratching and the howls stopped. A long moment of silence followed. Some of the Hieroni called out for more benches to be used to barricade the doors.

“Quiet!” Vark shouted at the others. “Quiet!”

Panting for breath, he cautiously pressed his ear to the wood. He heard nothing but his own gasping.

After a minute of silence, a hoarse but mellifluous voice called out. “I am Apostola, champion of the god. Open this door.”

“We are Hieroni,” Vark shrieked bitterly. “We serve the god. We serve him. You know us, Apostola. From when you came first to this city. We forged your armor.”

“I know Hieroni,” the voice answered.

The Engineer shook his head frantically. His eyes filled with pleading tears. “Don’t open the doors,” he whispered. “They’ll kill us.”

“We have no choice,” Vark said. “Have courage. Remember the Ascension.” He called out to the others, “Gather here! The champion of the god is come.”

As the bruised and bleeding remainders of the Hieroni came to him, he lifted first one battered bench, then the other, from the doors. The tall portals swung open, dropping splinters of ancient wood.

Three bears exploded into the cathedral, rising up on hind legs. One brought his paws down hard on the Engineer, who screamed as he fell to the floor.

“Stop this!” Vark yelled.

One bear, still standing, hobbled toward him, nose wrinkled as it showed its teeth.

“Stop,” Apostola grunted. The bears set down on all fours. The gorilla strode in behind them, her gold armor dull now with scratches and with blue and crimson streaks of drying blood and gore. “Stop. They serve the god.”

“Yes, we serve the gods,” Vark spat. “And have done so for a hundred generations. And yet you hunt us and would kill us here.”
He pointed at the Engineer, who had not risen from the floor but gripped his shoulder, moaning.

“What have you done?” the Gorilla asked him. She waddled forward until she was less than an arm’s length from Vark. He could smell the slaughter that caked her armor and matted her fur. Her black eyes stared out at him from under her gleaming helmet. “What have you done? We fought war here. We win the great city. We!” She beat her chest twice with her fists, the dull metal ringing. “You hide here. Where is the god? Where is the boy?”

Vark cringed. He had sent the Hieroni after the calling device that Thetis had activated, assuming it was with the boy. Those pursuers had hurried back and forth along the western foot of the Crystal Wall, only to find in the end a wandering horse. Either Thetis had betrayed them, or she had placed the device poorly. But in either case, they could have done no better. The Hieroni had faced the Guardian and failed. They could not have taken the boy from him.

This reflection made Vark angry.

“Four thousand years!” Vark shouted at her. Surprised, the gorilla flinched. “Four thousand years we hid the seed of the Fathers of the Theogenics Guild. Four thousand years of guile and hidden war. You cannot talk to me of doing, of what has been done! And in these last days, many of the Hieroni died facing the Guardian. Seven—seven!—Hieroni died from the swords of that Ranger savage that guards the Potentiate.” He sneered, stood taller, and lifted his chin. “We know what happened—you let the Potentiate escape, over the sea.”

“Where is the god?” Apostola struck his chest with the back of her hand. Vark stumbled back, and as if in sympathy the other Hieroni stumbled back also.

“Trapped or bound—we know not which—in Uroboros.”

“You failed. We win a city. You do nothing.”

Vark looked at the other Hieroni, six men and six women huddled together behind him. They eyed with complete terror the
bears that circled them. Io, a friend of long years past, stood now holding her arm, squeezing shut a deep gash that dripped blood onto the floor at her feet. As Vark watched, a bear smeared its huge pink tongue over the stone floor, leaving a trail of saliva, as it licked up the blood. Io shook, horrified, but frozen in place.

What have we done? Vark thought.

And yet, Vark told himself, if I give in to doubt, what would we have left? Nothing. Worse than nothing. My life, and a thousand deaths, all suddenly a mistake.

He turned back to Apostola. “This man,” he pointed at the Engineer, “is a member of the Guild of Engineers. He may be able to tell us how to free the god.”

They all looked down at the Engineer. He had not moved, and he still gripped tightly his shoulder where the bear had struck him.

“It broke my collarbone,” he said.

When Apostola and Vark both said nothing in reply, the Engineer added, “Whatever they’ve done, it uses much power. Far more power than Uroboros can supply. If we cut the power to the guildhall, then perhaps the god will be freed.”

“How,” Apostola grunted impatiently. “Speak how.”

The Engineer nodded. “There is a place, by the wall, that makes power from the tides. We must go there. We must break the connection between the station and Uroboros.”

“Show us,” the gorilla demanded.

CHAPTER

27

C
hance frowned as cold rivulets of rain poured down the back of his shirt. He stood with Sarah on the top step of the stair going below decks, reluctant to come completely out into the chilling downpour.

“Is it dangerous?” he shouted to Wadjet, who held the wheel and inspected the sky with eyes squinted against the rain. “Will there be a storm?”

“Not now,” she answered.

The rain had started with the dawn. Heavy drops clattered loudly on the deck and tapped against sails, cold in the strong and steady wind that drove the black clouds overhead. But no thunder sounded, and the waves grew only a little taller than they had the day before.

“No sense standing around up here,” Sarah said, and went below deck. Chance followed her.

It lasted three days. The cold drops kept Chance, Thetis, and Wadjet in their quarters, while Mimir and the Guardian remained on the deck, impervious. Seth, undecided, sat at the bottom of the stairs, and sometimes rose into the gray rain, blinking as he peered
about the sea as if seeking a dry patch, before dejectedly returning below. Divided, the group told no more tales. But their fifth day at sea dawned gray, the heavy drops stopped falling, and the wind died. Thick clouds lay low over a lead sea. As Chance emerged onto the deck, following Sarah, she turned to him and said, “The kite is down.”

Only a mere mist of rain fell. Chance chewed a bar of food that Wadjet had given him. He sorely missed now the food they had enjoyed in the Broken Hand that Reaches. He looked around, and saw that Sarah was right: the bright blue skysail was not before them, in the sky. They walked to the bow and saw that the line for the skysail lay on the sea, stretching away out of sight.

“It fell only an hour ago,” Mimir said.

“It’s very lucky it stayed up the whole time we were in the rain,” Wadjet told them. “We made good speed. Now, we must reel it in.” She showed Chance how to operate a hand winch that slowly pulled in the dripping line from the sail. He cranked it with his left arm as Sarah leaned against the mast, squinting in the drizzle. Seth lay nearby, blinking contentedly. “You always liked a light rain,” Chance said to him, laughing.

“It’s warm, for autumn,” Sarah said. “Do you think we’ve come far enough north for it to make a difference in the weather? They say farther north it is always warm and sunny.”

“I don’t know,” Chance said. He looked around at the sea, the empty horizon, the solid gray of the clouds. “I cannot judge how fast we travel. But we’re definitely not somewhere always sunny.”

She laughed.

After a while Chance could see the dark blue of the sail floating on the surface, bloated with water as it dragged toward the boat. He stopped cranking and went to the prow and leaned far over the side.

“I don’t see how we’re going to get that up in here. It’s all full of—ah!”

He fell back from the gunwale.

“What is it?” Sarah asked. She gripped her swords and looked nervously at the water. Chance held to her arm and leaned forward with her. And there it was: an impossibly huge gray and black shape rising in the water beside their ship, at least as large as the boat, with a huge black eye gazing up at them. Below it, awesome, huge shapes of gray moved through the dark depths.

“Leviathan!” Chance managed.

“Too-too-too big,” Seth commented, ears flat against his head as he looked warily out at the huge expanse of dark flesh. The boat rocked—not from being hit but just from the displaced water of the great beast.

The rest of the crew crowded onto the bow. One of the beasts surfaced and blew damp spray into the misty air.

“Humpback whales,” the Guardian said. He had left Threkor’s Hammer below deck, and stood now eagerly leaning forward, both hands on the gunwale. “Soulburdened.”

Chance heard something new in the ancient’s voice and looked up at him in surprise. It was—could it be?—something like joy. Or wonder. A hint of a smile was on the Guardian’s lips. His teeth flashed through it, like bright mineral flakes in a dark stone.

Chance crouched and put his hand on Seth, and Sarah stood behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. They huddled close and watched the huge whales in silence for several minutes. There appeared to be at least five of them, surfacing here and there, coming near and looking at the boat with a single black eye, but mostly keeping a respectful distance. None rubbed against the hull. Chance felt his heart slow into something like a normal beat, though the shock of his initial fear still made his hands shake.

Leviathan!
he thought. He was seeing real Leviathans! They were just as the True Book described, and could surely swallow a man or even a boat. He looked back at Sarah and she nodded at him. He put his hand over hers.

“I do not—I cannot—speak their tongue,” the Guardian lamented. “They had their own tongue even before their burdening. And they are unlikely to speak Lifweg.”