Gods of Earth (18 page)

Sarah dreamed. Not the fog of dislocated images that had clouded her mind for long days, but a real dream, lucid and sharp.

She stood on the porch of the Kyrien Vincroft. She meant to knock, or just go inside, but the door looked strange to her, like some kind of guild machine. It drew away from her, opening to reveal a dark tunnel spotted with stars.

Chance, she somehow knew then, was in that tunnel. Then she saw him. She started, and stepped back. He looked older, wearied somehow. But what shocked her was that one eye, his left eye, was gone. The empty socket opened onto a starry black void.

“Sarah.”

She turned. But no. Here was Chance. He stood there, on the porch, with his back to her as he peered up toward the Ries fields.

“Chance!”

“What do I care about most, Sarah?”

He turned and looked at her. His left eye was normal, but his right eye was gone. The socket gave unto a black tunnel, spotted with stars. His left eye fixed on her. She had the strange impression that he was empty, that the rest of him was still behind her. Or maybe that what was behind her was now within Chance. She said to herself:
his soul looks out at me from the end of a tunnel of stars.
She felt a thrill of awe and terror, to look into this abyss of black time and distance. But she did not turn away.

“What do I want most to be, Sarah?”

She might fall into those stars. She could be lost there. Was Chance lost there?

“What kind of a man would you love, Sarah?”

He turned away.

“Come to me now,” he said. “Come to me quickly.”

She awoke with a gasp.

Sarah sat up, alert, her head clear. With a wave of revulsion, she realized she could smell herself. She was filthy, her hair an itching, burning thatch of knots, her clothes soiled and reeking of urine, her legs covered with a stinging rash. She spat. Her tongue and gums were swollen. A foul taste coated her mouth. How many days had she lost, how many days had she ridden horseback in a confused nightmare?

The first blue and red of the coming sunrise spread across the sky. Stars were still visible, the brightest remaining while their weaker kin faded into day. Paul lay on a blanket beside her, staring up. The horses huddled together nearby. Hexus stood with his back to her on the bluff, his right hand stretched out so that the god’s eye could observe the waking village below. The stench of his rotting flesh permeated the clearing.

Sarah got to her feet. A strange, powerful tranquility possessed her, as the calm of the dream—and, most of all, the powerful calm of Chance’s voice—remained with her. Her belt with its swords lay in the dirt by Paul. She drew the swords in one fluid movement as she ran at Hexus.

He heard her footsteps and turned. Then, seeing her sword blades in motion, he raised his arm—but Sarah swung at the black limb with both blades. One sword cut into the bicep, the other into the soft interior of the elbow joint. The arm fell at his side, almost cut off. Hexus shouted but before he could form a word, she lifted her blades and drove one tip into his chest, the other into his throat.

Hexus stumbled back. She drove forward, keeping the blades buried in him, pushing them farther. He retreated until he teetered on the edge of the bluff. He looked at her—his neck could not turn
but he strained his eyes—and then his face took on a calm expression, the eyes narrowing into a glare.

Sarah raised her foot and kicked him hard, sending him over the bluff and tumbling into the trees far below.

She knelt quickly, set the points of her swords into the Earth, and said, in a rush, “May God forgive my wrath and sins and have mercy on my soul and on the soul of mine enemy.”

She rose and turned. The whole event was less than ten seconds, but Paul was standing. His lip curled into a grimace, something between weeping and a sneer.

“Get on a horse,” she whispered.

“You killed him,” he said, too loudly. “He was going to save my mother and father. He was going to save us from Chance.”

She strode forward and hit him hard in the chest with the two pommels of her swords. He fell down.

“Enough of that kind of talk. Now think. Your parents are dead. And what does Chance most care about? The ways of the Purimen. He would never betray that. It makes no sense that he would flee the Elders. What does Chance most want? To be a Puriman, to be a farmer, to make wine. Not to flee the valley. This thing lied. Don’t you see that?”

She did not add,
and what kind of man could I love
?
A strong man, an honest one, a pure and determined one. Not a sickly liar
. She trusted her past self to have made the right decision.

Paul started to crawl forward toward the bluff. “He’s coming,” he said. “He’s coming. He can still save us. Save my parents.…”

Some soulburdened beast roared in the forest behind them. Sarah pulled on Paul’s arm, but he jerked away and kept crawling toward the bluff. She could not wait. She grabbed her belt with the scabbards, put the swords into it, still wet with blood, and leapt onto one of the horses, bareback. It awoke with a start. She kicked it, buckling on her belt. The horse huffed in protest but then took off at a run down the trail.

The way was lined with the soulburdened, lying or prowling in the forest. They did not stop her, having seen her ride with Hexus, but raised their heads and growled as she passed. She rode on, kicking at the horse, driving it harder. Branches cut at her face and the face of the horse, but she pushed it on.

The trail opened finally into a field. The snarls of the soulburdened faded behind her. The horse raced down a narrow path through tall brown stalks of corn, past a dark farmhouse, and then out into a road, hooves clattering. She turned and descended toward the river. A long, broad avenue ran above its bank, lined with wooden buildings. A few people were in the streets.

Sarah rode up before a man and woman.

“The soulburdened are coming!”

They looked up at her, uncertain. Nearby others stopped to listen.

“An army has gathered on the hills above. They are about to attack!”

“Go on your way, madwoman,” the man said, embarrassed.

“No,” Sarah implored. “I’ve been their prisoner. I’ve escaped. They’re coming!”

The couple turned away. Sarah realized then what she looked like, with her filthy clothes and her hair a soiled mat. Her shoes were gone; she rode barefoot and bareback. Her hands, and likely her face, were streaked with dirt. Burrs clung in thick, dirty clumps to her torn clothes.

“Oh, you must believe me.”

She rushed toward a group of three men, pulling the mane of the horse hard so that it tossed its head and stepped sideways until it was so close that the men fell back, stumbling.

“I know I look a beggar, but I am a Ranger Apprentice of the Puriman. You have only minutes to prepare.”

The men slipped away, their eyes avoiding hers.

She turned in place, making the horse prance. What could she do?

She must ride to Chance. She must hurry to Chance. To Disthea—that’s where the unman had said Chance would be.

She turned the horse to the north, and kicked it, riding off down the road, shouting as she went, “The soulburdened are coming! An army of the soulburdened attacks!”

CHAPTER

17

“C
hance?” Thetis called. She stood in the great hall of the Broken Hand that Reaches. The fire that had burned in the cupped palms of the statue had been extinguished, making the dim hall darker but also more colorful. The rich lights that fell through the glass ceiling painted everything in pale hues, even the dull gray of the Guardian. Thetis stood in a pool of blood-red light and called out to Chance as he crossed the hall with the Guardian, returning from their daily trip to Uroboros. “Chance, I’d like to show you something.”

Chance looked at the Guardian to see if the ancient would protest.

“Go,” the Guardian told him. “But do not go far. The god wielded its power this morning. It is near. It will strike at us soon.”

Chance followed Thetis behind the statue, past the stairwell, and then through another door. It opened onto yet another set of steps, these narrower and diving steeply down. She stepped without hesitation into the darkness, and lights flickered on as Chance followed.

“This leads to the old libraries and other store rooms,” Thetis said.

At the bottom they pushed through broad wooden doors into a long, low room with gray stone walls. The walls were lined with shelves of simple iron. On them were stacked, from floor to ceiling, and all the way down the long stretch of the room, hexagonal rolls of metal and stone—or so they seemed to Chance. The air smelled wholesome to Chance: wood, and a hint of wet clay, and also something else, perhaps some kind of oil.

“What are these?” he asked, pointing at the shelves.

Thetis lifted one of the scrolls off the nearest shelf and handed it to Chance. It was lighter than he expected, since it looked to be made of limestone and lead.

“These are kieferbooks. Our most important lore is recorded in these.” She took it from him and set it on the floor, and then pushed it over, as if to roll it. It unscrolled onto the floor, the angular corners hinging so that its sides could lay open. Fully extended, it was a long panel or scroll. Characters in the strange alphabet of the Gotterdammerung guild language, and some also in the Common alphabet, were inscribed deeply into the gray surface.

“It is beautiful,” Chance whispered. He put his hand over it, feeling the uneven rough surface of gray and brown. He appreciated, as did all Purimen, fine craftsmanship—when it looked to be made by human hands.

Thetis smiled, pleased that the book impressed Chance. “These books can last many thousands of years. Millions, some say. What we write here cannot be lost to rot or become unreadable if we lose some guild skill.”

Chance nodded. “There are hundreds here.”

“And there are many other halls like this one. I have been searching these last days for knowledge about the Numin Well. But that’s not why I brought you here.”

Chance nodded. He had thought incessantly of Thetis’s warning the previous morning, and had sweated with fear when he awoke this morning after having again the same dream. Had he seen himself in it? he had wondered, uncertain, holding the sheets in his fists.

Now he thought that there must be a secure room down here where they could talk about his dreams, and her threats. “Yes, I hoped we could talk of—”

She gripped his arm. The scratches from the bear attack had scabbed over and were slowly healing, but they hurt still, and her tight grip made him suck his breath in with pain. Thetis narrowed her eyes and shook her head sharply once. The message was clear: don’t speak of that.

“Come,” she said, releasing his arm.

She rolled the scroll up and put it back in its place. She then led Chance back a few steps, to a door underneath the stairs. It opened onto a small dark room. She pulled a cord and lights in the ceiling slowly grew bright. The walls were lined with tilted wooden shelves, covered thickly with dust.

“A vin cellar!” Chance shouted with joy. And most of the bottles were clay. That would mean they were Puriman wines.

Thetis smiled widely. “Seth told me how you loved wine.” Chance walked the length of the room in a rush, looking quickly over the bottles.

“Chance,” Thetis whispered, suddenly earnest. “Look here.” She took his hand and led him into the back of the room. She pointed at some bottles near the floor: dark brown clay jars. Chance recognized the color and texture of the clay immediately. He held his breath and knelt. He lifted up one bottle, cradling it lovingly in one hand as he brushed the dust away with the other.

“It’s, it’s.…” His voice faltered. Tears came to his eyes. The bottle was twenty years old, with a faded paper label partly eaten away by mold. But, unmistakably, his father had penned KYRIEN VINCROFT RIES on it. Chance rubbed the label while he struggled to control his emotions.

His father had gathered these grapes, and crushed these grapes, and fermented and aged the juice, and filled and corked this very bottle. Chance closed his eyes and pressed the hard, cool bottle to his forehead.

And what had happened to this year’s crop? he wondered. Was it rotting on the vine? Or would Elder Johannes or Joshua Hill see to it that it be picked? Who would tend the ageing wines, and top the barrels? What had happened to their house? Were the doors locked, the shutters closed? Were the chickens running wild, wandering into the neighbor’s land? Had someone claimed their horses as his own? He pictured with clarity the empty vinfields at dusk, with bats skimming over the vines, eating the evening’s horde of vine-hungry insects. And below the fields, their house, shuttered and dark, the gray cedar shakes of the roof catching the first evening shadows. The rippled glass of the tall windows would be dark now. The cobblestone chimneys cold. The red barns empty and silent.

“My father was not much older than me when he wrote this,” Chance whispered. Thetis nodded and put her arm over his shoulders.

Chance nodded. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“There are twenty bottles of Kyrien,” she said. “Let’s drink a few. In honor of your parents there.”

He looked over at her, blinking a few tears but smiling. He could not place her age—he had thought she was not much older than him, but then something about her eyes seemed to reveal she had known many more years. And she looked at him fondly, almost wistfully, as if she were much his senior. He realized at that moment that she was beautiful, with her black, black hair, her nearly black eyes, her pale, smooth, almost featureless skin. He got suddenly the impression that she wanted to kiss him. He shifted uncomfortably.

“Let’s do that,” he said.

“I know a special place.”