Gods of Earth (4 page)

The stranger’s hood fell back, exposing the grimacing, hairless face of a man, his skin as ashen white as the belly of a lake bass, red eyes wild and darting around as if seeking an escape, the mouth pressed into an ugly snarl. But the eye in the palm remained fixed on Chance. The strange images pushed more fiercely into Chance’s mind, like dirty fingers that violated his soul.

The cries of Chance’s neighbors and kin, the trampling of their footsteps on the floorboards, reached him as if from a great distance. Chance dragged himself another step forward, still struggling toward his father, but overcome by the continual rush of visions: a smiling face of a woman in a black robe; a towering city full of airships; a white coffin floating among stars; dogs of iron; a black crack in the sky.

Sarah, caught in the corner, pushed her way against the panicked crowd, her swords held high above her head to avoid stabbing anyone.

Then the front doors of the barn exploded. The Guardian leapt through the gaping hole.

Chance tried to focus on him, through the invasive visions. The Guardian spoke in a guild language that Chance did not understand—the sound of it, the tone, was like a voice in intimate conversation, but with a deafening volume.

“O theos, dia ti sou erxomai.”

The ashen man, with his rotting black arm, shrieked and writhed and turned.
“Tode atheos esti, en muthon esti!”

There was a blur, as the Guardian moved as he had moved across the stream bed: in an instant he stood next to the robed figure, his
cloak snapping like a whip as it caught up with him. With one huge fist the Guardian struck the ashen man, sending him soaring backwards, to smack hard against one of the beams of the barn. The ashen man’s face twisted, and he coughed up a great mouthful of blood.

In Chance’s mind, the visions collapsed, and the sounds and sights and smells of the barn rushed back at him. He saw Sarah, swords held straight out before her, circling warily, uncertain how to intervene, as the Guardian strode with thumping footsteps toward his opponent, who lay in a squirming clump on the ground.

Most of the Purimen were gone now. The last poured out of the corner doors, emptying the room. Their screams receded.

Chance ran to his father and knelt. He shuddered with horror as he put his hand on his father’s neck and felt the sharp edges of broken vertebrae protruding against the skin. His father’s open, empty eyes stared at the loft of the barn. Chance began to weep hopelessly. He moaned and looked at the strangers.

The ashen man lifted his black arm. The eye turned on the Guardian.

“Pente theoi apopheretha, ik egei,”
the Guardian said, his voice grim.

“Chance!” Sarah called out.

Chance looked to her, but then the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Air swept into the room. Bits of straw and dust swirled around the barn and began to spin into the space between the two strangers. Out of some useless reflex, Chance lay across his father’s broken body, trying to protect it. A blinding flash of lightning cracked between the black arm of the ashen man and the broad chest of the Guardian. The thunderous explosion shot the Guardian backwards, sent him sailing through the air, straight over Chance and through the shattered front doors of the barn. Where the Guardian had stood a second before, dark smoke rose from charred floor beams.

The ashen man twisted, bones audibly grinding and snapping—snapping back into place, Chance realized. He stood and faced Chance.

“You will come now.”

“No,” Chance whispered. He rose to his feet, hands knotting into painfully tight fists.

The rush of visions returned: a door floating in a starry sky; a coffin full of white ropes; a huge dark man holding a long-handled hammer in one hand. And dimly through these images Chance saw the hideous white figure flail its limbs forward, moving toward him in contortions like a dying spider.

“No!” Chance shouted, terrified and furious. He stepped forward uncertainly. The room grew distant, the sounds receding. He gasped at the air, fighting the urge to vomit, focusing his mind on what was here, in this time and place. The unman was just a pace away now. With a titanic effort, Chance drew one arm back.

“You will come now,” the ashen man hissed again, raising the black rotting hand.

Chance leapt. He threw all his weight into a twisting wild punch, swinging down into the contorted white face. He saw in an instant the red eyes open with shocked surprise as his fist came down and struck, hard, across one sunken cheek.

The ashen man fell back. He thudded down onto the floor.

“You dare!” he shrieked. “You dare!” The hand with the eye in its palm rose up, and something gripped Chance’s legs, binding him as if he were buried up to his waist in stone.

Silver flashed. Two bright streaks. Sarah ran forward, swords swinging. Instantly, without any sign of motion, the ashen man was standing, his back to Chance, outstretched dead arm facing Sarah.

And something else moved out from between the wine barrels—Paul, running forward, a club in his hand.

“Sarah!” Chance shouted. “Sarah, no!”

Sarah stopped in the middle of a leap. Time congealed around her. She floated, frozen, her feet off the ground. The swords suspended two silver arcs of light in the air.

Like an owl’s, the head of the ashen man turned completely around and glared at Chance. A sickening smile buckled the pallid face.

“Yours,” it whispered. Almost a question. The air shimmered, and Sarah disappeared.

“No!” Chance screamed. “Stop it, stop it, stop!” He managed to drag his feet forward two steps. He held his clenched fists out in fury.

Paul had fallen back in shock, but now he rushed forward again, the heavy club held high over his head.

“And kin,” the ashen man said. Paul disappeared.

“Stop,” Chance whispered.

“Give yourself to me,” the ashen man said. “Do not resist me. Release your mind. Then they can go free, brother.”

The Guardian stepped into the barn, smacking the splintered fragments of the door aside loudly. In the next instant, he stood over the ashen man, followed by a clap of imploding air in the wake of the speed of his motion. The ashen man fell backwards on the floor. The Guardian smacked aside the black rotting arm that rose like a snake, then swung a slate-colored fist so fast that a breeze swept the room and there was a sound like a hornet’s buzz. But the fist crashed through floor boards and shattered a stout floor beam. The pale, robed figure was gone.

A wave of dizziness struck Chance. The barn dimmed as the lamps flickered, choking on their own black smoke. He fell backwards, hearing but not feeling his body crash onto the wood floor. As if he could see through the ceiling of the barn, bright and myriad stars turned above him. He floated among them, in a tunnel of stars.

From far, far away, Sarah’s voice called faintly, “Chance! Chance!”

Then all faded into silence and darkness.

PART I

DISTHEA

CHAPTER

4

C
hance woke with a start. Over him, blue sky and clouds turned slowly around. Close to his head, water lapped and lapped methodically.

He sat up quickly, causing a wave of dizziness. He gripped the sore back of his head.

He was sprawled in the bottom of a boat. A small Puriman row-boat, painted oxblood red. Before him, the Guardian sat on the center seat, pulling at a pair of oars. The boat slipped quickly down a river, broad and fast but shallow. Chance didn’t recognize the place. No river like this ran within a day’s walk of the Valley of the Walking Man.

“Where am I?” Chance demanded.

The Guardian did not answer.

Chance looked around. “I know this boat,” he said. “This is the boat of Elder James. I know it.”

“Who are you?” the Guardian asked him.

“I am Chance Kyrien. A Puriman.” He recalled with a cringe that he was not a Puriman—not baptized and confirmed as one. And then the events of the previous evening flooded back to him.

“My father,” he groaned. “My mother and father. And Sarah! I have to save Sarah and Paul!” He tried to stand. The boat rocked, and he fell backward, head reeling.

“You ail,” the Guardian said. He rowed unceasingly, though his expressionless gray eyes remained fixed on Chance. “Your mind’s weary from the work of clinging to itself. The broken god worked to bewield you.” Then he tipped his head slightly, a bow of respect. “Though you are strong. I felt the foul fingers of him stabbing into the mood of your mind. Few men could bear such a thing as you have borne.” He lifted a single finger from the oar handle to point at the water. “Drink.”

Chance’s mouth was dry, his lips cracked. He bent over the gunwale and cupped water to his mouth again and again. The dizziness passed.

“Now,” the Guardian said, “why does the broken god want you, Puriman?”

“I have to go home,” Chance said, breathing hard.

“The doom of the world may rest upon our haste. What hope does the broken god have in you?”

“You mean that unman? The white… rotting man?” Chance asked. “I don’t know.”

“It called you brother.”

“No,” Chance said. “It took my brother. It was talking of my brother. I am a Puriman.” He looked around. This must be the Kilter river, into which fed the creek emptying north out of Walking Man Lake. Elder James had kept his boat on that creek.

“Who were your parents?” the Guardian asked, rowing still.

“John and Eve Kyrien.” Dead. Dead.

A crow cawed nearby, as if mocking Chance. He pulled himself up onto the front seat of the boat and sat. He gripped the sides. He had been dressed in his Sunday suit for his confirmation, and his uncomfortable, oversized shoes—hand-me-downs from his larger brother—were caked with mud, and the too-long cuffs of his pants
were soaked from the water pooled in the bottom of the boat. He noticed only then how the morning cold penetrated his clammy, mud-streak clothes. He began to shiver.

“They were your birth parents?”

After a very long pause, Chance said, “No. I was adopted from the witches. By ancient agreement with their guild, the Purimen raise any orphan boy children the witches bring us and pledge are of true blood.” Chance ran his hands over his face. He sobbed once, but fought the desire to break down into weeping. “I have to go. I don’t know who you are, but all this is… when my parents are… with Sarah and Paul.…”

The Guardian stared.

“Who are you?” Chance finally asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“I am the Guardian.”

That same answer. It meant nothing.

“If you do not know why the broken god wants you,” the Guardian said, “then we must ask the Guild Mothers of the Gotterdammerung.”

“The witches have no guild hall here.”

“We go to Disthea, to the Broken Hand That Reaches.”

Chance stared in disbelief. “What? What? The Sunken City is far from here! Many days’ travel.” Chance had been no farther than the Freshsea, a day to the south. He did not know exactly where the Sunken City was, but he knew it was west and north and it was many times farther than he had ever traveled from Walking Man Lake. “No! I must get out here!”

Chance got his feet under him and leapt to the right, aiming to jump feet-first into the river and strike out for shore.

There was an explosion of water. It crested over the gunwale, and slapped him back into the boat. The Guardian stood in the river before him, the water heaving around his hips. The Guardian’s motion had been so fast, so violent, that Chance had not seen it, but the water had exploded to get out of the way. The Guardian
had one hand on the boat, steadying it, or it would surely have flipped over.

The Guardian walked the boat to the shallows and then climbed in. Soaked, Chance pulled himself up again onto the boat’s front seat.

The Guardian took up the oars and thrust at the water with quick strokes, driving Chance away from all that he loved and desired.

CHAPTER

5

“T
he witch child loves you.”

Sarah struggled to open her eyes. She felt her eyelids tremble, but they would not rise. It’s one of those dreams, she thought. One of those nightmares when you thrash and thrash, but in fact you aren’t moving at all, and you cannot wake.

Slowly, a foul odor crept into her nose. If she could move, if she weren’t paralyzed, she would gag from the cloying stench. She tried again to raise her arms, to open her mouth, to lift her eyelids, but she could not, she could not.…

“Awake,” the voice hissed.

Her eyes snapped up. The pale, robed man stood before her—the man who had attacked them in the barn. The man who had killed John and Eve Kyrien. He dragged in a labored breath, and then looked this way and that before forcing his eyes back to Sarah. “Wake now. Stop dreaming of him.”

“The witch boy,” Paul said, dreamily but with invective.

Sarah lay on a hard, cold floor of packed earth. Paul lay beside her. She pushed herself backwards, in panic, and then scrabbled to
her feet. To her surprise, her swords lay on the ground before her. She looked at them uncertainly.

The pale unman showed no concern. “I am here to help you, to save you.”

She snatched her swords from the dirt, then skipped backwards and held their points out toward the robed man. She glanced quickly around. They were in a dirty room, fifteen paces on a side. Below ground, it seemed, since light streamed in through broken windows near the ceiling that were partly choked with dandelions and other low weeds. Rust-colored grime lay thickly over the floor and over piles of shapeless trash. In the corners, spider webs sagged under years of heavy settled dust.

It was probably an abandoned farmhouse in the old forest, Sarah thought. She might even know the house.

“Stand back,” she said. Then to Paul, “Get up, Paul. We’re leaving.”

“No,” Paul said, still staring off into space.

The air shimmered. The pale yellow light that filtered into the room changed, seemed to thin and waver. The particles of dust that swirled in the low columns of the sun’s rays froze in place. The voice of the horrible cloaked man sounded in her head, though his lips barely moved.