Gods of Earth (59 page)

Before Chance, the snaking path of the Guardian’s life stretched backwards through time and space like a long cord knit of the toils that shaped history. At a furious pace, racing toward eons before, Chance followed the Guardian’s life.

The experience reminded Chance distinctly of something: the one summer that Chance’s father had taken him canoeing for the first time. His father was a master with the canoe, but he sat in the front, facing backwards, his dripping paddle held out of the water, and told Chance what to do. The boy took the advice, and it was good advice, but he acted slowly, unevenly, uncertainly. Chance learned then that you couldn’t know what advice like that really meant until you tried it out for yourself. Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it, and do it well, were different. And so, just as his father had advised him in the canoe, his own future self told him what to do, but could not teach him how to do it. That he had to learn by trial and accident.

He shot backward wildly, clumsily, hurtling nearly out of control, as time lay before him like a vast land, and the Guardian stretched across it to the horizon. No—not like a vast land, but like a river. All of time was a river, he realized. And you could climb out of it, and run along the bank, before stepping back into it. And there were rapids, and still places. And there were moments, like some of the acts of the other gods, which were like boulders in rapids—you couldn’t get near them because the flow of time broke over them and turned you away. His father, who had taught him to canoe a river, and to fish from a canoe, had prepared him well.

Chance kept his distance from the shining, massive life path of the Guardian, lest the immortal see him in this place behind space, but he still marveled at the ages the Guardian had known.

And nowhere in this sweep of vast time could Chance see the One True God.

Chance flew along beside the Guardian, unable to take in the sight of everything—

And then he saw his home, and his father, where the Guardian’s path and that of the Puriman crossed, and in an instant, because his attention shifted to his father and away from the Guardian, Chance was thrown off his course, and he shot along his father’s path—and then, drawing himself up, realizing his mistake, he fell into time and space at the feet of John Kyrien.

He stood near the vines, by the great boulder on the hill. His father stood with a pruning knife in hand, his pants and shirt soiled with soft dirt, his face still caught in an expression of uncertain surprise.

Chance almost cried out, “Father!” But then he realized the danger of that. It was years before his own birth. His own path could be ruined by such an act.

Dusk was spread out across the sky above his house and its fields. Dark storm clouds crowded together overhead and shot quick and low over the hills, threatening dark rain. Wind shook the vines. Chance drew himself back—but not all the way back. He stood, half out, half in, time and space.

“Puriman,” he whispered.

His father stumbled and dropped his pruning knife. He fell to his knees and put one hand on an aged, gnarled Ries vine to steady himself.

“It’s the devil,” he groaned.

Confused, painful emotions roiled through Chance. He felt shame, to be this thing his father found now infernal. But he also felt a surge of near joy, to see his father again. Here was his father, alive and young! Why should this good man be lost?

“I could give you a second life,” Chance said, thinking aloud with wonder or maybe hope about his new powers.

“Only the One True God can give a true second life.”

“That’s right.” Chance hesitated. “It would not be like this life. I could not make it like this. Not yet. But something.”

“Go away, devil,” his father pleaded.

Devil? Chance felt dizzy. Who was he? He feared again that he had lost himself. That he was watching another life through a dream. Or that Hexus had won and he was actually Hexus and had only tricked himself—some part of himself, some fragment?—into thinking that he was Chance.

Who can help me? Chance wondered despairingly.

“Why.…” Chance started. “Why does the One True God not speak to me?”

John Kyrien frowned, uncertain at this question. Finally he said, “Why should he speak to you?”

“To one of my power, perhaps, he should…?”

“You are as small to Him as I am. Why should he speak to you, and not to me, or anyone else?”

Chance nodded. That was right, wasn’t it? At least, it was possible. It was something. A hope. A chance for faith. “You are wise,” he said. In part trying to convince himself.

His father cringed.

Chance closed his eyes. He should cause his father no more fear. His visitation pained the man, and shamed him. Though it was terrible to leave his father a second time, and again without saying goodbye, Chance stepped out of space and time and ran backward. His course was clear to him now. He knew what to do.

CHAPTER

55

T
he bent intrusions into time of other gods were like stones in a stream. Chance could see that it would take the greatest effort even to press close to where the Younger Gods had passed in the world. He found again the Guardian’s history, followed it back, saw also the paths of gods, and avoided them, passing unnoticed, until he came to a black tower—Hroth—in a wet forest, in a world full of machines and people.

Two fearsome, frightening intrusions cut through this time and place, and between them lay only a tight gap where Chance could fit, in a small children’s room. The knot in time’s past he could clearly see stretched back just a short while toward the far south. Primus, the false god. The knot in the future was as black and inscrutable as night: the Old Gods. Chance could not see their path, except that the dim image of it stretched into the future with his own path—they twisted around each other until they both disappeared into darkness.

Another dizzying thought struck Chance: what if I am the Old Gods? In the farthest future?

I do not know how to make a thing like the Guardian, he told himself.

But what if I learned? His own fear answered back.

A nauseating vertigo seized Chance. The forest and tower that lay before him, the dim past and the dim future, all in that instant became brute, intrusive, alien things, absurd in their meaningless solidity, their equally meaningless malleability. Not only could anything be done here in the world, but anything might be done with him. He was free to become, and to do, anything. But did that mean he was nothing?

What could it mean, all this sweep of time, these bright flashes in a vast darkness? There was no up, no down, no anchor. He could walk through walls with a thought—so were they really walls? He could leap through time—so did the past set anything, did the future promise anything? He could build a new world, take away the machines, remove the unmen from Earth—or make them pure, perhaps, if he studied them long enough—but would it mean anything to be a Puriman then?

And where, in all this darkness and possibility, was God? Why didn’t the True God shine like a beacon at the end and beginning of time, showing him the way?

As this despair seized Chance, he fell back into space and time, into the narrow place between the Younger God and the Old Ones.

And there stood Primus, first of the Younger Gods. He held a woman by the throat. She was thin, strong, with severe but beautiful blue eyes. Two children, a boy and girl, trembled in a corner, clinging to each other and to a black and white animal that had wide, frightened eyes.

Chance was in the children’s bedroom. Bright cloth hung down in nets over two low beds. Colorful feathers and flowers were hung here and there on the walls, decorating the dark stone. It would have
been a clean, soothing place at any time other than this murderous moment, when Primus held a woman suspended by her throat, her neck stretched to nearly breaking.

The woman gripped and twisted the pale, unreal flesh of Primus’s forearm. A rush of smells hit Chance: baking bread, the wet humus of the rain forest, a clean scent of rain after a thunderstorm.

In an instant Chance comprehended the entire scene. And in that instant he overcame his despair. He could chose to stand here, with gravity pulling him down, with the floor holding him up, with the walls solid and obscure, with his heart aching for these children. And though it was terrible to know that he would remain free to choose otherwise—and though it was terrible to see further and so see that the One True God was that much more remote, more remote than he could ever have imagined—even so, he would
choose
to act like a Puriman. He could and he would choose, and accept his choice, and keep to his choice.

In that instant Wealtheow spit into the face of Primus.

Primus snapped her neck.

“Ah!” Chance howled. There was nothing he could do. The space around Primus was gnarled, hard, resistant. Chance could not penetrate its past. He could not save the woman.

Primus looked at him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I am the wrath of the One True God,” Chance hissed, furious at the casual murder that he had just witnessed. “And I shall make sure that you shall come to nothing.”

“I have dreamed of you,” Primus said, the boundless arrogance of his voice never wavering. “We shall fight at the end of time.” Primus still held the dead woman, dangling her without concern, indifferent to the bitter finality of her mortality.

“Should God will it, I will crush you out of all creation,” Chance said. He glanced at the children.

Primus saw then how to harm Chance: he snatched at the children, trying to bend space around them. Chance was faster. He leaped for the children, bound them in his own arms, and rushed out of space, and far, far into the future.

Chance exploded into the air behind the Guardian, one second after he had disappeared from the hall of Ma’at. Paul’s body lay in three broken fragments on the floor. His blood was sprayed over the walls. Sarah twitched on the floor nearby.

The Guardian did not hesitate for a thousandth of a second. He turned, swinging Threkor’s Hammer in a savage sweeping blow at Chance.

Chance flung himself against the Guardian, getting too close for the Hammer to hurt him, and, seizing the immortal, ran up the hall and out of the door, nearly out of time again, but spinning, as they both absorbed the force of the hammer’s swing and the great momentum of Threkor’s Hammer set them in motion.

The Guardian reached back one hand and struck Chance’s cheek, hard, smashing the godflesh, the Aussersein. The pain was impossible, but Chance now lived with pain that was infinitely worse, infinitely more impossible. He clung still to the Guardian and sped forward, accepting the blows.

Chance had discovered that Hroth Tower was not far from Yggdrasil, just over the horizon to the north. In moments they were there. He bent space to pass them up into the air and then through massive stone walls—and they fell back into a dark room with a single window covered over with leafy vines. Dust exploded from the ground where they landed on their feet. Chance let go of the Guardian and fell back, flung away. The Guardian raised Threkor’s Hammer far above himself, preparing to strike at Chance.

“Ah!” a child cried out.

Threkor’s Hammer froze. It seemed for a moment that Chance and the Guardian had fallen again into that timeless place behind time and space, while the Guardian stood with the hammer high above his head, frozen, and Chance lay on the floor below. Then the Guardian turned his head. In a dark corner of the desolate ruin of the room, a small girl, a small boy, and a lemur crouched. The Guardian stared at them.

“Some foul, some evil wile,” he whispered.

“No, Guardian,” Chance said. “I saved them from Primus. I would have saved Wealtheow, but that the god was impenetrable to me, his deeds done beyond my power to fix.”

“I.…”

Chance floated away, back, out of the range of the hammer. Slowly, very slowly, the Guardian planted the hammer at his side.

“Beo,” he whispered. “Una.”

The children look at him in terror but also in hope.

“It is I. Treow. It is your father. I know I’ve changed. But it is I. Still me.”

The lemur leapt. The boy reached for it, but too late, it scampered out of his reach and bounded to the Guardian. The lemur climbed the Guardian’s bare leg, ran up on his shoulder, and looked at his eyes.

“Changed,” it piped in a small voice.

“Changed,” the Guardian said. “But still your friend, and still their father.”

The lemur whooped.

The children ran to him then, and clung to his gray legs. The Guardian put his hand on the boy’s head, then the girl’s, looking down at them.

Chance backed away.

“I go,” Chance said. “I must save a young coyote, years ago. And then I must save Sarah, minutes ago.”

“Puriman,” the Guardian said. “Chance.…”

They looked at each other a long time.

“Come for me if you must,” Chance said. “You know where to find me. But first raise these, your daughter and son, heroes of the heroic age. Let them rebuild some part of this world with peace, not with war as the false god had dreamed.”