Gods of Earth (45 page)

“Not lies, Chance. No.”

“Lies!” Chance shouted bitterly. “How can turning away from the false technologies, the false gods, the false life, be part of serving that!” He nodded his head at the god and spat.

Hexus smiled. “Yes, Vark, explain the metaphysics of your ethics to us. I would enjoy hearing that.”

Vark shifted uneasily. “Chance,” he said, his gaze shifting fearfully to the god. “Chance, what I said is true. What the Purimen can teach the world is important. My grandparents were Purimen, of the Usin Valley. That is how I know your ways. I was raised a Puriman—I did not lie about that. And I meant the things I said.”

To Hexus, Chance said, “You’re a fool if you believe this will make me submit.”

“Chance,” Sirach pleaded. “Chance, you always thought you were rejected by other Purimen, made to feel different, made the outsider. But Chance, you
were
different. You
were
the outsider. You see the bigger questions. You have the ability to see and hope and strive for more.”

“No,” Chance said. “I never wanted other than to be a Puriman farmer. To have my stake of land, my vineyards, to make wine. To marry Sarah.”

“That’s not true, Chance. Just think of Seth. Why didn’t you turn him away, then? Any other Puriman would have. Because you knew that would be wrong. You knew the Purimen are wrong in this way they treat the soulburdened.”

The mention of Seth infuriated Chance. “Seth is dead! Because of this thing!” He spat again toward Hexus. “You know what you do here is foul. Foul. This false god would ruin the soul of man. And you serve it.”

“Chance!” Sirach stepped forward.

Chance turned his head to look at Hexus.

“Don’t think that this will weaken me, false god. Stop wasting your time with this. He can’t help you.”

Hexus nodded his head, almost a sign of respect. “There is nothing that can save you now, Potentiate. You had best yield to me.”

“I shall never yield.”

“If you care for this world, if you care for anything, then you will. This battle of ours is costing too much. It is not too late to save Paul, Chance. If you submit, I can share my soul with you quickly, and set Paul free. But if we continue this struggle, all will be lost. Eventually in battle I will kill Sarah, I will kill the others that help you. And far more is at stake. Disthea is in ruins. Next the soulburdened will march south, into the lake lands of your people. Who will ensure that your people are not all slaughtered?”

One of the bears growled, smelling the earth around them warily. Another bear showed its teeth at Chance, as if already savoring the taste of his flesh.

“If we can make the change quickly, the armies can be guided. Peace can be brought to Earth. The cities rebuilt, your people protected, the soulburdened given their due.”

A clank of metal sounded behind Chance. He stole a quick glance. The soulburdened beast he had seen at the riverside, and which he knew now as Apostola, dressed in armor of shining gold, stepped into the clearing. She held aloft a great spear with a gold point.

“But if we fight, there is nothing that can be done. It may already be too late. Everyone, everyone in your farms and villages will die.”

“He speaks the truth,” Sirach said. “I love those lands as much as you. You can save them. You must save them.”

A single tear finally started down Chance’s cheek. He had little faith that giving in to the false god would save his people, but he also thought that what Hexus threatened was likely true. What would the soulburdened do next, now that they knew their strength? Surely march out across the lands, to that fine valley that had long been forbidden them.

The bear at his feet clawed at the ground, and raised its lip as it looked up at him. “Eat them all,” it whispered.

“So evil,” Chance said, looking into Paul’s possessed eyes.

“And there is another matter, Potentiate. Something the Guardian hides from you. Your time is nearly up. You cannot live much—”

Then the head of the bear at Chance’s feet exploded.

The Guardian stood before Chance, Threkor’s Hammer cutting a gray arc through the air as it went up, through the bear, and continued down to strike Hexus. It landed solidly on Hexus’s shoulder.

Chance, who had been straining against the force of Hexus, stumbled forward, suddenly free of his grip. He saw Hexus, partly torn open, fall to the ground. The sight sickened and horrified him: this was also Paul, his brother, oft his rival but still his brother, on the ground, his skin flayed off in a wide swath, his red muscles frayed and split. But the gaping wound began to roughly knit itself closed as he watched.

The soulburdened animals around them screamed.

“Down!” the Guardian said to Chance.

Chance threw himself flat on the ground. Threkor’s Hammer whirled through the air, buzzing and creating a wind that stirred his hair. Three bears and a wolf were torn apart. The heavy shreds of them thudded down in the trees at the edge of the clearing.

“Run, Chance,” the Guardian called.

Chance scrambled to his feet, crouching. Hexus sat up where he lay on the trail before him. Chance ran, crouched over, toward the rocks by the trail’s side, where Sarah had first thought that they might cut through the steep hillside toward the valley, and above which she had been thrown by Hexus.

He saw in a glance that there was someone on the hillside above. Was it Sarah?

Then he slipped, tripped up by some force of Hexus, and landed on his broken arm. The pain was terrible. He rolled over, moaning.

“Far enough,” Hexus said, standing.

Chance looked around the clearing. The ape in shining armor remained, spear pointed at The Guardian, who turned toward Hexus. The other soulburdened were dead. Sirach crouched fearfully in the brush, behind his backpack. Down the trail, Chance saw that other beasts were coming.

Sirach pulled some kind of shining cylinder from the tall bag which lay before him. It had facets of glittering crystal, bound together with black rods of metal. The make looked to Chance like the things of Uroboros: an invention of the Dark Engineers.

“A weapon,” Chance warned the Guardian, pointing. He could not walk: again, Hexus held him, twisting space around his legs. The Guardian did not look, but stalked toward the false god.

Chance reached around in the dirt, found a heavy stone. He flung it at Sirach with all his might, painfully wrenching his shoulder. But it was a good throw: the stone hit Sirach square in the chest. Sirach fell back, crying out.

The ape was on Chance in a second, kicking him back. She planted a heavy, strangely round foot on the bicep of his one good arm.

“Get off,” Chance hissed. He struggled, but he could not kick the beast because his legs were pinned by Hexus. The gorilla looked down at him with black eyes set in a black face. Chance could not read the expression on its face—anger? Indifference? Fear?

The ground shuddered as the immortals flung themselves together in an explosion. The air pulsed with unnatural sounds. The Guardian and Hexus spun around each other, striking out, their motions visible to Chance only as a blur. The ape looked toward the fight. Chance managed to lift his head. The soulburdened he had seen below had still not arrived. It was only himself, the ape, and Sirach watching the battle.

Chance felt the grip on his legs loosen. Hexus could not hold it during the battle. Chance twisted, kicked out, surprising the ape,
and pulled his arm from under the beast. He scrambled to his feet, then backed against the rock for support. The ape lifted her spear.

“Go ahead,” Chance mocked. “Spear the precious Potentiate through.”

As the ape hesitated, Chance saw that behind her Sirach kneeled at the edge of the clearing, holding the crystal cylinder again, carefully pointing one end into the clearing.

Suddenly the fighting paused. The god and Guardian stood close together. The god leapt back. Sirach twisted something on the cylinder and the top of it opened. Even in the harshly bright sunlight of this island, the air dimmed. An otherworldly blue light came from the cylinder, and fell on the Guardian. He leaned forward, straining, but was caught in the power of it, a giant trapped in aqua amber.

Chance remembered the children’s rhyme he had heard sung in the alley in Disthea:
Blue light, blue light, the ashes of dead suns.…

The Guardian laughed without mirth, a long, angry sound.

“One of the lost Numin Jars,” he said.

“We have both, Guardian,” Hexus answered.

“I should have razed Uroboros for their foolishness.”

A bolt of lightning, as tall as a man, shot through the blue light, striking Threkor’s Hammer. The Guardian grunted. Then other bolts crackled from the haft and head of the great hammer, white scars on the blue light. The thunder of them echoed off the hillside.

“It’s—” Sirach called out, but the rest of what he said was drowned in the cracking of the air. For a moment, the god, the man, the ape, and Chance all watched, transfixed, as bolts of raw thunder exploded off of Threkor’s Hammer.

A howling, snarling yelp sounded through the air. Chance saw in the corner of his eye a grey blur of motion. He turned to see the false god tumble to the Earth—and rolling across the ground beyond him—

“Seth!” Chance cried out.

“Run!” the coyote called.

Chance could see the coyote had been sorely wounded. The fur on his back and on his hind legs glistened black with blood. His face was cut. His tail was gone.

“Run!” the Guardian commanded. His voice more powerful, louder than the thunder protesting off of Threkor’s Hammer. “Run!”

Seth leapt as Hexus started to stand, and the coyote set his teeth into the god’s throat.

The ape grunted, raised her spear, aiming uncertainly. Chance sent a wild kick at her side, and was twice lucky: he planted it firmly in the space between armor plates and, stumbling forward, he drove her to the ground. Her head fell to the edge of the blue light emanating from the Numin Jar, her helmet toppled off, and instantly the hair on her scalp started on fire as it was struck by a bolt of white power.

“Run,” the Guardian again commanded.

But Chance could not leave Seth. The ape had dropped her long spear. Chance lifted it, tossed it once in his hand to get the center of its weight. Seth had been thrown back by Hexus. Blood poured from the false god’s open throat. Hexus turned toward the coyote, who crouched and leapt.

And, while Seth again sailed through the air at Hexus’s throat, the air shimmered before the black eye in Paul’s palm. Hexus reached out and closed space, aiming perhaps for the head but getting only the back half of the coyote. He crushed Seth, from the center of his body back. In an instant Chance saw the horrible sight: the beloved coyote nearly torn in half, his hindparts ground to pulp.

It was a mortal wound of such horror—the ground flesh and exploding blood and torn organs flung through the clearing—that Chance’s breath stopped. His heart skipped, and started again only sluggishly, as if his blood had chilled until it thickened. The sounds of the clearing fell away. In the silence, he heard only his first failed
attempt at a breath, and the next shuddering blow of his heart, hammering a beat of reluctant blood through his ears.

In the frozen moment a thousand images came to Chance. The first time he had seen Seth, prowling their vines, head bowed, his eyes looking up at Chance so hopefully. “Hell-hell-hello,” the young coyote had said. The first time Chance touched him, feeling the thick coarse hair between his shoulders. The first time Chance had buried his face in Seth’s neck and cried over some boyish hurt, smelling the wild rich smell of Seth’s coat. Walking the forest together, Seth circling him impatiently. Seth sitting at his feet, bulging eyes looking up. And Seth bounding to his defense against the bears, just as he jumped to his death now.

But Seth, now nearly dead, trailing his torn innards, still made his mark. His teeth found the god’s throat and sank in again. Hexus fell backwards.

The ape had rolled away from the blue light and now she struggled to her feet, slapping her head. Ignoring her, ignoring the thunderous bolts riving the air about the Guardian trapped in the blue light, Chance threw the spear. It planted firmly in Hexus’s side. Hexus gurgled, the attempt at a scream choked in his ruined throat.

“Run!” the Guardian called. “If you want to hurt him, pass Ma’at and choke his soul. Go!” And this last word faded, like the scream of a falling man, as the blue light began to crush the Guardian and draw him back into the glittering crystal tube wielded by Sirach, known as Vark, the traitor of unmen and Trumen and Purimen alike.

Seth was dead. The Guardian was dead or trapped. Chance saw that there was nothing he could do but to follow the Guardian’s counsel, and kill the god in the place where he could be killed. He ran and leapt onto the stones at the side of the clearing, and scrambled to the scrub above. He ran, no longer trying to shield his arm, but letting it swing wildly in its sling as he pumped the other
arm. Sarah was somewhere ahead. He must find her, they must flee to the ship.

“Sarah!” he called out. “Sarah!”

He wept as he ran, unable to think, unable to sort in his head the sorrow of Seth’s death, the horror of seeing Paul further destroyed, his fear of the god, his fear for Sarah, the need to find Sarah, the exhaustion of his flight. He just ran and ran. Branches cut at his face. He tried to keep in view and aim for the peaks that marked the valley entrance, but otherwise he ran heedlessly, screaming for Sarah as he went.

Then he tripped and fell hard on the uneven ground. Someone leapt onto his back. He struggled, kicking out. A hand grabbed tight over his mouth.

“Silence!”

It was Wadjet. She rolled him over. She bared her fangs, angry. “Silence, fool!”

She withdrew her hand when he stopped struggling.

“The false god—”

“I know. I tried to circle round, to warn you, but I was not fast enough.” She stood.

Chance climbed to his feet. “Sarah—”

“Stop!” Wadjet hissed. She pulled him behind a low bush, and crouched beside him. As Chance had climbed, the cover had begun to thin, though looking down the hill they could see nothing coming, and hoped that nothing could see them. “Think! The god does not know where the ship is. It doesn’t even know there is a ship. We must go to the airship. Your mate is wise, and will do the same. We can meet there. If we circle around in these woods, looking for each other, we’ll only lay a scent trail for wolves.”