The Shattered Goddess (14 page)

“Oh Ginna, will
things ever be as they once were?” She was somber all of a sudden, almost pleading. “Or is the world coming to an end? Is this a short reprieve that means nothing when the end comes?”

“I—”

“Well, is it?”

“How should I know?”
he snapped. Then she began to weep and he was suddenly ashamed. “Forgive me, please. I didn’t mean to be angry, not with you. You’re the last person in the
world besides me for all I know. I’m sorry.”

“But—but—you’re magical. You should know. You’re different.”

He folded his hands together and opened them. He watched the tiny sphere of light he’d made vanish into the night sky. It rolled on a faint current of air. Because of the absolute darkness above, it was visible for a long time before it faded.

“If it had become a star,” he
said, “and I could make stars, or if I could sing a secret song and make the sun rise, then you might be right. Then I probably would know. But I can’t and I don’t I don’t understand what is happening or who I am really, or why I am different. What few things I know are all terrible. I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle. I’m not much different from anyone else, and I don’t have any special
way of knowing things. Hadel said I had what some people call the witch sight, and maybe that’s why I’ve had some of my dreams, but otherwise I don’t know any more than you do.”

“Then what are we to do? We can’t go on like this.”

“I think you and I will have to find out what is happening. If there truly is no hope, then evil will overtake us wherever we are, whether we sit here and
do nothing or move on. So what have we got to lose?”

“Help me! I can’t breathe!”
She clutched her throat and heaved forward almost falling into the fire.

“What is it?”

“Like... drowning... smothered... No! Burning inside.” She screamed hoarsely once, then only gasped, unable to draw air into her lungs. She wriggled on the pavement like a beached fish.

“Poison?” was all
he was able to say before he felt it too. His vision clouded. He opened his mouth, but could not speak. There was a fire in his chest, spreading throughout his body, as if his flesh were coming loose from his bones and running like hot wax.

Drowning? She had dreamed of being under water deep enough to get your elbows wet in.

The fountain. Suddenly it seemed to thunder like some enormous
waterfall.

Almost blind, desperately weak, he forced himself to his feet, staggered the short distance to the fountain, then fell. His head was spinning. Still he drew no breath. Red haze filled his vision. With great effort he grasped the side of the fountain and pulled himself up, forcing his leaden arms and legs to move.

His throat was dry; he made a raspy, wheezing sound like sand
ground between ancient parchment. He lurched over the edge of the fountain and his face splashed into the water. He tried to drink, but couldn’t swallow. He found himself staring down at a glowing white ovoid. He reached in until he felt the smooth stone bottom of the pool. His arm was wet up to his elbow. Through some trick of the water or a momentary clearing of his vision, he saw the thing
below him distinctly enough to tell what it was.

It was Amaedig’s head, staring up at him, the eyes wide with terror, the mouth gaping, the lips flapping soundlessly, the skin aglow as if with fire. As he watched the features began to melt and run. Bits of flesh peeled off into the water.

By the fire, on the pavement, Amaedig moaned and coughed.

He looked back at her, absurdly,
to see if she still had a head. She did. He stood up, looked at the thing in the water, glimpsed something to the left in the corner of his eye, lurched in that direction, lost his balance, and fell into the fountain. For an instant he seemed to float and the pain ebbed away. Then he was sinking, and the bottom of the pool was rising to meet him. Something else, glowing: his own head, the eyes
wide more in confusion than fear. The mouth was shouting. A gurgling sound passed through the water. This head also glowed with its own light and it too was slowly melting. Pieces of it broke off, drifted a short ways, and dissolved into nothing.

He flailed about, caught the edge of the fountain with one hand, the bottom with the other. Steadier, he grabbed the image of his head by the hair
and forced himself up out of the water, onto his knees.

He placed the head on the lip of the fountain. Scarcely able to make his body obey him, he moved along the edge, still on his knees, and retrieved Amaedig’s head. He put it by the first. Even as he watched the two of them melted, their substance dripping into the water and down onto the pavement. The features were hardly recognizable.
Hair fell out as the scalp ran and oozed. The eyes dropped out of Amaedig’s sockets, adhering to her cheeks briefly, then falling off into darkness.

He was dimly aware that Amaedig lay still by the fire. It was her head he had there. He couldn’t think of it as merely a copy. Indeed, he watched his cheekbones collapse, his face fold in on itself. He put a numb hand on his cheek, his real
face, he tried to tell himself, and felt nothing.

The two heads were as real as anything. He understood, dimly. It was sorcery of some sort. He had no idea how it worked, but had heard of such things.

Even as he knelt there in the water, hanging onto the edge of the fountain...

His life and hers, running away like hot wax...

Burning with the fire of death...

One of
the eyes in his head dropped out of its socket, into the skull. Suddenly, he was half blind.

He wondered if it might not be possible to destroy the heads by another means, to avert the spell. If not, he would merely die more quickly. A matter of seconds ago he had been saying to Amaedig, what have we got to lose?

He never knew where he got that last reserve of strength which enabled
him to take the heads in either hand, to stand up. As he stood his legs slipped from under him, and he fell forward, out of the fountain, all his weight atop the heads.

They smashed on the flagstones like clay jars. There was a burst of foul-smelling steam. He rolled away, his face and hands already scalded, and lay still, his chest heaving, sucking in die cold night air. Then he felt nothing
at all.

He must have been unconscious only a minute or two. Suddenly while the remains of the heads were still fizzling, he was awake and aware of hard-shod footsteps approaching him steadily, then pausing. Someone stood over him.

A half-remembered voice: “Very clever. I hadn’t thought of that.”

He looked up—both eyes were unclouded and saw a man draped in black bending down.
The magician. The one who had banished his roses. The magician from the caravan.

He sat up, but did not rise when he saw that the man held a dagger which was pointed at him.

“You... how did you get away?”

“Yes, it is I,” the magician said sourly. “The Zaborman your friend made such fun of. You are surprised that you did not kill me with the others. Since you are about to die,
I can tell you my secret I folded space around myself like a cloak. I ceased to exist in this world for a while, and thus escaped the massacre you brought about”

“But I didn’t kill anyone! I barely got away myself.”

“Do you take me for a fool? Reason thus: You are clearly magical. It takes a magician to know. Your tricks with the balls are no mere illusions, but something deeper. You
come from Ai Hanlo. The darkness started there. As you move, the darkness spreads. Well you shall move no more!”

The magician lunged with the dagger. Ginna rolled out of the way, fumbling for Amaedig’s knife, which was still in his scabbard. He got clumsily to his feet. The man came at him again, and even as he did another familiar voice cried out

“Stop! That’s quite enough of this!”

The magician paused, turned, and confronted his challenger. Ginna stepped back and off to one side, then leaned forward to get a better look. They were a good ways away from the campfire, which had burned low, and there was no other light. He saw little more than a silhouette, but by the clothing, the build of the newcomer, and his voice, he knew who it was and was faint with terror.

It was Gutharad, headless, both arms hanging limply at his sides; his voice came from knee level; his head dangled by the hair, held in his left hand.

“What are you?” demanded the magician, his voice quavering but slightly.

“Do not harm them. Let them go.”

The Zaborman shouted a word of power and began to conjure. But before he could do more than raise his arms and point the dagger
at the sky, the apparition rushed forward and, expert as a boxer, slammed a fist into his stomach. As it did the whole of its body flowed out through the sleeve and into the magician’s abdomen. Empty clothing dropped to the ground. The magician clutched his belly, threw his head back to let out a gurgling scream, and then his mouth was a fountain of blood and pulped flesh. While he was yet standing
a black, oily mass forced its way out of him and shot up into the night sky. While he was yet standing he was little more than a ruined, bloody, hollowed-out husk. But he only stood for a second before crumpling to the pavement.

Ginna, still in a daze, thought to look for Gutharad’s head. There was nothing, only the empty clothing which had definitely belonged to the minstrel.

He stood
for a while, breathing deeply, letting his senses clear. Then he went to rouse Amaedig. He understood more fully now that a game was being played. He was a piece moved across the board without any choice of his own. Everyone, even his dire enemy, wanted him to find the lady of the grove. Whoever she was. Whatever powers she might have.

He appreciated that this time he owed his life to Kaemen.
Of course. If he were killed here, mistakenly by some crazed Zaborman, the game would be over.

Light came to the northwestern sky, pale and faint. Ginna always thought of it as dawn, although he realized that it was probably just a part of late afternoon. The sun rose in the east passed unseen through the region of darkness, nearing the edge late in the day, when a little light came through.

Thus the “days” were getting steadily shorter.

Only by this faint illumination could he and Amaedig see their breath coming out in white puffs. By this light they could make out the dark shapes, the long shadows of a town.

He told her all that had happened. She said nothing. She seemed to be withdrawing into herself.

They explored the town. Windows and doors hung open. Nothing
stirred within the buildings. No pigeons roosted on the slate and tile roofs.

There was little food to be had. Mold seemed to grow preternaturally fast in the changed conditions. What few stores they could find had spoiled. There was only a huge block of cheese which he chipped away at, the pieces falling off like chips of wood, until he came to the pure center the size of an apple. What
meat hung in smokehouses was ruined. After a while, they gave up their search.

They did find some clothing, though. Each took a heavier cloak, an extra shirt, and blankets. As sunlight became only a memory, the earth and air continued to cool. The mud of the unpaved side streets was beginning to harden. The ground was freezing.

Only once did they find any trace of the inhabitants of
that place. The severed hand of a child lay on a doorstep, bloodless and icy white.

Ginna did not try to speak to the unresponsive Amaedig. All the world was silent.

He was glad when they were in open country again, following the main road which passed through the town and went well beyond it. The country air seemed easier to breathe. Since his experience the previous night, he took
note of how he breathed. Any pain in his chest caused dread. Each deep, bitingly cold lungful of air was savored.

After a while he thought it best to try to maintain good cheer. He sang and was pleased when Amaedig joined in, but eventually fatigue and a depression he had never managed to dispel made him stop. She did too. His arm had never healed and was beginning to fester.

Eventually,
if it continued swelling, he would have to lance it or purge it with fire, and the remedy could be as bad as the hurt. His hands and face itched where the steam had touched them. His feet ached. He was still wet from having fallen in the fountain, and his teeth chattered. He held the extra cloak more tightly around himself.

They stopped by a roadside shrine to eat some of the cheese. He
noticed that the head of the figure in. the shrine, a local spirit, had been snapped off. Small birds had once nested behind the little statue, but the nest was long abandoned and beginning to fall apart. There was an egg in it, which for an instant he hoped would be edible. But it felt like an empty shell, and when he broke it there was nothing inside but a little dust. He was too tired to care if
this were an omen, a portent, or whatever.

But tired or not, they continued on in the hours of fading daylight. He was sure now that the days were getting continuously shorter overall, but one after another, there was no regular pattern to them. Some seemed to last only an hour, others three or four hours. Something was wrong with the motion of the Earth.

Both of them gasped aloud
one night when the moon attempted to rise in that part of the sky which was not wholly covered over. It was a wonder enough that the moon was rising in the west, but a welcome thing, even if it was only a faint smudge behind the clouds.

They took advantage of the faint light and covered more distance.

“I wonder if it’s a trick of our eyes,” he said.

“No, it’s there. I think ifs
a good sign.”

“I don’t know. Let’s watch.”

And watch they did, walking toward the veiled moon, until a short while later it set in the same direction it had risen.

They came to a hollow in the ground and took shelter there. They lay together, huddled beneath their blankets and spoke of what they’d seen in occasional sentences with long pauses in between, their words like bubbles
rising slowly to the surface of a stagnant pool.

“What was it doing rising in the west?” he said.