Gods of Earth (32 page)

Wadjet rose slightly. “What do you say?”

“A
Gorilla sapiens
. And there are others of its kind, and chimpanzees, beyond the Filthealm.”

“Could this be?” Wadjet said. Her eyes were wide with excitement, but the set of her jaw showed skepticism. “Where, do you say?”

Wadjet and Mimir talked of places and landmarks that were unknown, nearly incomprehensible, to Chance. When they paused, Chance told Wadjet, “Mimir said that it was not the false gods, but it was the Leafwage that made the Barren.”

Wadjet looked at the makina. “Our history says the same. The Lifweg had no part in the Theomachia.”

“And they didn’t make the Barren for the false gods?” Sarah asked, surprised.

“My elders tell that they did not,” Wadjet said.

“So,” Chance said. “That is why the Leafwage was destroyed, and all the knights killed. Not because they served the false gods, but because they made the Barren.”

“All were killed but Tre-Tre-Treow,” Seth corrected. “Or so the legend claims.”

“And yet,” the Guardian said, “all but a very few of that guild were guiltless of this wrong.”

They all looked up at the Guardian. Surprised that he had volunteered this observation, they waited now to see if he would continue. When he did not, Thetis finally asked, in her tone of fearful respect, “May I ask, ancient Guardian, what you mean?”

“There were three bands within the Lifweg. One band, the largest, stayed true to the first hope of the guild, and,” he nodded to Wadjet, “like the Stewards, sought to foster life.

“A second band tired of the slow walk of this cause, and fathered the soulburdened, and angered much of the human world by doing this. They hoped that the soulburdened would speak for themselves, and for the forest, and add a new will and strength to the struggle of life.

“A third band, in despair, created the Barren, hoping to cull man, and make room on Earth for the other wild things. This band, banished breakers of faith, acted without the ken of the others of the Lifweg, and brought death to the guild. All the knights died for their hidden crime.”

The hint of land was gone from the east. The last of the sun, a narrow orange band, dipped below the sea there. Stars started to shine in the patches of clearing sky above. Wadjet lit the bow lamp. In the dim glow, the Guardian seemed darker, carved out of shadow where he sat awkwardly cross-legged on the deck.

“How do you know that?” Wadjet asked as she sat again next to Chance. “That is not in our histories.”

The Guardian did not answer. After a minute, Mimir said, “He knows because he is, or he was, Treow, First Knight of the Lifweg. He is the one whom my father sought.”

They sat in their circle, speechless, stunned. In the long silence, a whale, ominously close, blew a plume of salt water. The boat rocked. A cool gust made the sails snap. Sarah reached over and clutched Chance’s left hand.

“Ga-Ga-Guardian,” Seth whispered. “It is time that you tell your story.”

CHAPTER

29

H
ear!

While the Mothers and Engineers worked their craft in blinding cities, dreaming of a last age for men and a new age of gods, the Knights of the Lifweg, The Life Way, strove hard against the drowning tide of man’s way in the world, and wrought in shadowed woods and green dark seas the first hopes of a new path.

Three of these were greatest of the knights.

First, Wulfanga, skilled in craft of the smallest living things. He was fearsome, and angriest among men at the murder of the world.

Second, Wealtheow, greatest in wisdom and greatest in hope, who evened the anger of Wulfanga. She it was who mothered many of the soulburdened—also these gray beasts here by us now that plow the whale road—breaking the laws of the human guilds and their dreams for a last age.

Least of these knights was Treow, myself, leader of the guild, husband to Wealtheow, and kith to Wulfanga. I alone earned the death that the others of the guild died, but I alone lived through the slaughter that ended it.

Not in that time nor after were there three others such as us.

While men grew slow in the sloth of their riches, we wrought the beginnings of a new world. The wondrous dream: a future wilderness more wild than all the past. A future wilderness that saved all the past and made it new.

When the gods were born, careless and lost in their power, we sought still a world where not men alone, but all living things would grow great in strength and thrive.

I tell you: that age was not the Penultimate Age, but the Dreaming Age, the Threshold Age, full with the chance to make a world saved from the wickedness of men.

Hear!

The bleak wreck of the Theomachia was a small loss—weighed against the loss of the many knights of this guild!

The loss of all the wonders of the Penultimate Age a small loss—when weighed against the loss of this dream!

I stood atop Aegweard, the tower of the shore watch, on the Island of Lethebion. The black stones were slick with warm rain. It was late after the noon. The sun would set in an hour. At the foot of the tower, sea crashed on black rocks softened with inlets of churned white sand. The gray waves tossed.

Behind me, neo-albertosaurs, green monsters three times as tall as a man, howled in the dark forests, louder even than the crashing surf as they fought each other for mates, scraping their knife-sized teeth against each others’ skulls.

Far out before me, foaming caps of waves smashed against the white spires of the Sæwall that ringed our island and caged the beasts of Lethebion within, keeping safe the world outside.

Beyond the spires of the Sæwall, a narrow black airship struggled through a dark curtain of rain that fell from a black bank
of cloud. I held a hand to my brow, shielding my eyes from the falling mist so that I could watch. The shape was unmistakable: long, black, with engines far in the back of its hornet tail. This was Wulfanga’s ship.

“You cannot let him land!” a voice behind me demanded. I turned, and there came Erdwight, lead Elder of our guild, huffing as she clambered up the last wet stones of the black stair. Her gray hair was unkempt, as wild as the green roof of the forests that she tended. Her voice often cracked but it was deep and strong. “We allowed banishment on the bond that he would never return.”

“I recall.”

“This is no small matter, Treow. He nearly ruined us. If he had opened the Sæwall as he sought to do, if our beasts had went wild into the world beyond—the wreck, the bane, that we would have earned from the other guilds! All would have been lost! Our guild, Lethebion, everything.”

“He did not plan it, Erd. It was the ill act of ill hour, and he has paid for it. The Lifweg was Wulfanga’s whole life and cause. And we cast him out from it.”

The Elder limped to my side, her bad hip sore after the tall climb. “Ah, you are like a child sometimes in your trust, Treow. This man is forlorn, and all the more fearsome because of it.”

“Erd,” I told her. “You speak the truth. He is forlorn. Something grim has happened, and he fears for his life. He needs me, but swears to me that he will not harbor here for more than a day. ‘I promise you,’ he wrote, ‘that I shall not spend twenty more hours on Lethebion while I live.’”

Erdwight groaned. She frowned at the rain and the wind that fell cold on our skin. Her hair was beginning to fall, bedraggled, into her face. “You have always been too kind to him. You see none of his faults.”

“We all have faults, Erd. But perhaps you.”

“I do not claim—”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “I do not mock you, Elder. I speak with heart. You are the most faultless person I know. But even one as strong as you believes in the right of friends to forgive.”

“Humph,” she said, unhappy but soothed. “He is not to go near the Sæwall, nor near Gestierande-stede.”

“Agreed. He shall be kept from the sea wall and from the lead hall of our work on Lethebion. I’ll keep him here, in Aegweard, with me. Let me hear him out, and feed him, and rest him. Then he shall leave. Trust me to hold him to our writs.”

Wulfanga was out of his ship, standing under its bobbing, sleek black belly, when I clambered out onto the docks. The sun had set, and the dim lamps of the dock were glowing pale green, giving the rain a foggy glow. I best remember him that way now: gaunt, sore and tired, a whip of a man worn out by cares when he should have been his strongest. I wish instead I could best remember the young Wulfanga, full of wisdom and anger, tall and strong, smiling at my side when the guild took sway of the island and named it Lethebion.

The wind broke against him, snapping his black cloak. I clasped him. “Well met, Wulf.”

“Treow.”

He trembled in my arms. I backed up, holding his shoulders. “Are you ill, friend?”

“Most likely. If things are going as planned.”

This answer meant nothing to me. “Come in. In.”

We climbed the slippery black rocks to the tower. In the center hall, where a fire crackled and cast a flickering yellow glow over old carpets, I pushed the doors closed against the rain and took his long coat.

“Wulfanga, what ails you?”

He sat by the fire. “Do not ask me now. I am tired, and I want to tell you in my own way. In the morning.”

I frowned at this. We had little time. But he waved at my concern.

“Please. Trust me. I will tell you in the morning. May I stay in my old home?”

“No. I’m sorry. You need stay here with me.”

“Erdwight’s rules?”

“My own.”

He nodded. I did not like this: the grave message, the sudden coming, and then to put me off. I should have seen that he had something planned. But I did not.

I brought him food and drink, and we sat by the fire and talked a very little about Lethebion, but an awkwardness had settled into our speech. I could see that he could think of nothing else but some dread truth he came to share and yet held back. Finally he asked if he could rest.

“Come.”

I took him to one of the rooms of a guildwoman of the tower. She worked on the far side of the island that night.

“Will this do well?”

He nodded without even looking at the room. He sat on the edge of the bed. There was a long quiet while he seemed to struggle with whether to speak. Finally he shook his head.

“In the morning then,” I said. I turned to leave, but he called to me just as I passed through the door.

“Treow. It lasts, doesn’t it? The forests of Lethebion?”

“Yes. It seems that much of it is steady and will last now.”

“We can redeem ourselves, then. Bring back all the lost life, and redeem even the worst crimes of our ancestors.… If you had more room.”

I nodded. He was stating what was already clear. Lethebion was a large island in a warm sea that had been bereft after wars fought
before the age of the guilds. Those wars had fouled the soil and water of the island. No humans and few animals or plants had remained on it. Over many years, the poisons weakened, and then our guild was able to claim the place, since the risk of dwelling in the poisoned place was one that we would bear. And here we had begun to thwart the undoing of even the most old of beasts. Here we had begun to make again Earth’s wights that were lost, and forge a wild riot of life.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to soothe him by understanding his feelings. “If only we had more room.”

I gripped the handle to the door.

“Erdwight was right, you know.”

“What?”

“I had planned it. I had long planned to open the Sæwall and let the beasts out into the ocean and air.”

A stab of anger went through me. So he had lied, all those years ago. I stood and clenched my jaw, nearly bursting with the urge to shout at him, to berate him for trampling on my trust. But he looked lost and tired, and in the end I just said, “We’ll talk in the morning.”