The Shattered Goddess (2 page)

Intensely, passionately, recovering some control of his rhetoric, Hadel begged as he had months before, to be allowed to smother the little enigma before worst came to worst

“You waste my time,” sighed Tharanodeth. “Go away. This whole interview borders on blasphemy. You could not have come at a more inopportune moment”

“But, most
dread lord,” continued Hadel, “to have such a mysterious influence in our court can never come to good. I have sensed danger with my magic.”

“Hmm. Has the brat got a name?”

“I... don’t think so.”

“Then his name shall be Mystery.”

“Let him be called Ginna. In the speech of the hill people the word means ‘mystery.’ Ginna ne Ai Hanlo.”

“No! Never! That cannot be!”

Tharanodeth grew angry. “What makes you so sure of what can and cannot be? I rule here. For the last time, no harm shall come to the child. I do not think him dangerous. If anything, he intrigues me. Now, if I were not as patient as those who sing my praises claim, you might not be safe from harm much longer. Have you considered that?”

Hadel’s moustache quivered. His eloquence fled away.
He was barely able to speak at all.

“I... only mean... I mean to say, that is, that I mean—meaning no disrespect—that if this... ah, unusual infant bears
Ai Hanlo
in its name, well, it isn’t proper. I mean you don’t know
where
the boy is from, and he might be of low birth actually. I mean—”

“You mean. So be it Just Ginna then.”

The Rat made the gesture of Blessing Received and
backed out of the room, his head bowed, bumping into the doorway as he did. He was glad to have accomplished something, even if the squirming intrusion would have to live. It irked him to settle for second best.

CHAPTER 2

Like the Child

As the days went by, Kaemen turned out to be a veritable monster, the terror of his nurses, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed at an astonishingly early age, and wholly lacking the grace and moderation of his father. His teeth came in early. He learned how to use them. It nearly cost an old woman a finger.

Like the child, so shall the man be
was a proverb
of Randelcainé. Despite his name, tie was not the bright hope of anyone.

Ginna was ignored for the most part He was not brought to meals with the high-born children of court, nor did he eat in the kitchen with the servants. Occasionally someone would leave scraps by the door of his room. He was not even taught how to keep himself clean until the stench disturbed Kaemen.

All were forbidden
to enter that bare room. Rumor had it a deformed monster was kept there. Once the boy learned to walk, this was to his advantage. He was properly shaped, if undersized, filthy, and pale for want of sunlight. When he wandered about he was often not recognized.

At first the only places he knew were a few musty rooms, a corridor, and the entrance to Kaemen’s nursery, beyond which he was not
permitted to pass. He often heard cries and shrieks coming from the nursery, dishes crashing to the floor, and the bare feet of the servants padding back and forth. Those same feet would kick him whenever he tried to investigate, so after a time he learned to keep to himself.

There was a girl who came to play with him, who said she would pretend to be his big sister. She was very big, twice
as tall as he. He didn’t know her age, all ages being unimaginable, but she was much wiser than he. She taught him many new words, and how to count on his fingers. He decided he was most happy when she was around, and wished she would be around always.

But then she came no more. Months later he saw her in the hall, straining under a yoke from which two buckets of water hung. A massive woman
twice her size walked behind her and glowered. He called her name, but she turned her face away. He never saw her again.

One day a bird came to his window, stood between the bars, and began to sing. It seemed to Ginna that tins song was even more beautiful than any the girl had sung, and more mysterious for not having any words. This was surely the most wondrous creature he had ever encountered.

He stood on a stool and reached for it, but it vanished into the unknown blue void beyond, and then he had a new desire. He wanted to go where it had gone, away from things familiar.

He was three and a half then. He had heard of a world outside but knew nothing about it, and he was aware of his ignorance.

At the end of a certain hallway there was a huge door, too heavy for him
to open. It was always kept shut, but sometimes someone was careless. Occasionally he caught glimpses of a stairway on the other side of it, spiraling down into someplace he had never been.

When the young prince bawled that his bathwater was too cold that night, and swore that he would have everyone flayed alive when he was a little older, Ginna saw his chance. There was much scurrying about,
and two burly men came through the door with a new tub of steaming water. In their haste they left the door open.

Ginna found the steps too large for his short legs, so he went down backwards like a man on a ladder, dropping from step to step.

He knew he was in a tower from the way he was going down, down, farther than he had ever imagined he would go. The stairs curved away above
him until he could no longer see the door. He had truly ventured out of his world.

* * * *

At last the stairway ended. There was a damp stone floor at the bottom, which was cold beneath his feet. A lantern hung from above on a chain, driving the darkness away from a doorway. Over this were two portraits of the same woman, but in each she was different. In one she wore a long black
gown sprinkled with stars, and held a serpent in either hand. Lightning flickered above her head. At her feet was a boiling cloud in which hundreds of writhing figures were visible: homed men, serpents, toads with the heads and claws of lions. He had never seen such things. The girl had told him about many animals and described them, but these went well beyond the range of her descriptions. Many were
just shapes to him.

The other picture showed the lady in brilliant white, astride a dolphin. Or Ginna thought it was a dolphin. It looked vaguely like a fish, and he had seen a fish before, swimming in a bottle being taken into Kaemen’s room. He was able to guess that the bright thing in the lady’s right hand was the sun. In the left was a tree.

He liked the lady of the second picture
more than the other. He smiled at her. He pressed his hands together, as he had done so many times before, and opened them. A bubble of light floated up where the lady could see it. The girl had always seemed happy when he did that He hoped the lady would too.

* * * *

Just then the whole place was flooded with light. Someone had opened the door.

Ginna tumbled back and looked
up at the most mountainous individual he had ever beheld, who peered down at him impassively from beneath a winged helmet He had a red moustache and a beard as big as a blanket

“Well, by The Goddess, what have we here?”

Ginna spoke a few of the words he knew, but the man didn’t seem to understand.

“You belong back upstairs, not down here.” The giant bent over to pick him up,
and he stared, not sure whether to be afraid or not. To please the man he made a glowing ball which floated into his face.

The man recoiled before it touched him.

“Witchcraft!”
he gasped, and backed away hurriedly.

Ginna had wondered many times before why no one else made lights in his presence, but he’d assumed they were too busy, or didn’t think him worth the bother. After
all, they ignored him in every other way. It was the natural order of things, as far as he was concerned.

But now, for the first time, he understood that he was not like the others. Perhaps he was the only one who could do the thing.

Alone once more, he closed and opened his hands, and watched the light bubbles rise, then slowly drift to the floor. A draft from beneath the door made
them roll in the air.

A while later he made his way back up the stairs. Fortunately the upper door was still open.

* * * *

Two years passed, and a serving woman came for him in his room and led him down those stairs again. It was an astonishing journey through many new corridors, and he caught glimpses of rooms vaster than any space he could imagine. There were pictures on the
walls, often of the twin ladies, sometimes of men in winged helmets and armor, with battles going on in the background. He wanted to stop and look at everything, but 5ie woman dragged him on. Thick rugs lay underfoot in some stretches, muffling sound. For the most part the way was deserted. Twice he saw groups of wholly unfamiliar people going off on unimaginable errands.

The greatest wonder
of all came when they emerged into an open courtyard beneath a bright blue sky. He had never seen the whole sky before, just pieces of it through small windows. He planted his feet firmly and refused to move until he had gazed more fully at this spectacle, but the woman slapped him on the ear, grabbed him under the arms, and carried him.

He was left in a new place, so distant from where
he had been that he never saw anyone he had known before. He was among keepers of animals and workers of iron, and fascinated to watch both. The furnaces crackled merrily and were splendid if one kept a safe distance from them, and the animals were more so. Horses were mountains of flesh on legs, but huger still were creatures called
katas
, which stood on their hind legs twice as tall as any horse.
They were hairless, greyskinned, with tiny forelimbs and even tinier seven-fingered hands, and small, narrow heads. He was never allowed near a
kata
, because they were rare and expensive and because one could smash him to mush with a flick of its tail, or so the keepers claimed. Where it joined the body, the tail was as thick as the man who warned him, and he was broad-shouldered. At the tip grew
three spikes of white bone.

Ginna did not really know how to be a part of the society of stable hands and smiths. He didn’t know what to say. Their children played incomprehensible games. So he stayed out of the way and watched most of the time, learning, peeking out of corners until someone called him “The Mouse”. The name stuck.

He was better fed and clothed than before. Like everyone
else he wore a simple tunic, and like the other children, he went barefoot.

He saw no one else making balls of light with their hands, so he thought it best to do this only in private. He did not like to draw attention to himself.

Eventually he made a friend. She was half a year older than he. Her name was Amaedig, which means Cast Aside. She did not seem to have any parents, but wandered
from place to place as he did, sleeping wherever there was room. She was not good looking, and her back was slightly crooked, but he found her pleasant to be with. They played together among the metal scraps, and sometimes climbed atop something to watch the men feeding slices of meat to the
Katas,
or even trying to ride them in a small, fenced-off yard.

After a while he swore her into secrecy
with as terrible an oath as he could think of (“If I tell this secret, I hope terror and doom will come upon me, and my arms and head fall off, and extra toes grow out of my empty neck!”), then took her into a closet and showed her how he made light balls.

“Can’t you do it?” he asked, as she gazed in amazement.

“No, but I wish I could.”

“Then try.”

She did. Nothing.

“How did you learn to do it?”

“I didn’t. I always could. I used to think everyone could, and then I thought maybe only grownups couldn’t, but now you can’t either. I don’t understand. Maybe I’m special.”

More spheres floated up, to the top of the closet. “They’re pretty,” she said.

* * * *

Ginna was seven when The Guardian first sent for him, and suddenly he was someone
important. All faces were turned toward him. All hands helped as he was scrubbed and shorn and brought fresh clothing. All eyes looked after him as he was taken away and Amaedig ran up to him as he was leaving and said, “Will you come back? Will you?”

“I hope so,” was all he could say.

He came back. It was the first of many visits. Tharanodeth was in his declining years by then, and
he sent for Ginna often. When the boy was still small he sat him on his knee and sang songs to him, or bade him sing other songs back. They traded riddles. The old Guardian even read to him from an ancient book, which from the date marked on its clasp had not been opened for fifty years. It told of the deeds of the remote forebears of the people of Ai Hanlo, how they had come out of the mountains
and out of the desert to found the Holy City, which stood in the middle of a fertile plain in those days.

“It was a golden age,” said The Guardian of The Bones. “Men were content then, and the Earth was calm. It was before the death of The Goddess.”

“How did she die?”

“I don’t know, my boy. I don’t know. Does that surprise you? It has been prophesied that someone will find out,
but all I can tell you is how it was discovered that she was dead. The age of peace ended. Suddenly all the world was in turmoil, even more than it is today. There were two suns in the sky and the land burned. Then winter lasted all the months of the year and it froze. The oceans froze too, but then they melted and rushed over the land. Invading hordes tore down cities mightier than our own. But
this was not enough to let them know that The Goddess was dead. Pestilence, earthquake, and war had come before. No, it was discovered in this wise: a certain holy man, the holiest of all men living, who was sort of a guardian back before there were any bones to guard over, took a bone, an ordinary bone, the leg bone of one of his order who had died, and he wrote a message to The Goddess on it,
begging for her help in the time of trouble. Then he cast the bone into a fire. The Bright Aspect of The Goddess could be made manifest through fire. But when he drew the bone out again, there were no cracks on it and the message was erased. No answers because there was no one to answer. By that he knew that The Goddess was dead.”

“But where did The Bones come from?”

“That, young man,
is a holy mystery, which only I may know. I can’t tell even you. Now you are dismissed.”

Another year passed. The manner of the visits began to change. Ginna was brought in secret to The Guardian, and told not to speak of what went on. So he confided only in Amaedig.

It was during his eighth year that he was ushered into the private chambers of Tharanodeth and he found The Guardian
dressed in heavy shoes and a travel cloak, with a staff in his hand.

“We are going somewhere,” the old man said. “We are going now, while I can still make the journey.”

Ginna’s heart leapt. So far in his life he had never been beyond the walls of the palace, and there was much within those walls he had never seen. Beyond the palace there was the lower city, beyond that—

He could
not imagine what was beyond that. He had seen a little, but only from windows. It was very far away. So were the stars.

It was after midnight then, well into the stillest hours of the night Ginna no longer dressed in fine clothes to visit The Guardian, and he was in his usual plain tunic, and without shoes. He was not ready for any journey, but he went. Tharanodeth took him down a long,
winding staircase, through a secret passage, until they had descended for so long he was sure they were at the center of the Earth.

The stone floor was intensely cold beneath his feet. Damp slime squished between his toes. Then the floor ended and there was only rough stone. He trod gingerly.

“Get up on my back,” said The Guardian. “I’ll carry you.”

He did, and the old man staggered
and let out an “oompf!” but he carried him for miles. Once Tharanodeth looked up at the dripping stalactites and said, “We are no longer in the palace, but underneath the city itself.” Then the way sloped down sharply. “We are at the heart of the mountain,” he said. A long while afterwards, as they began to move up again, he said, “Now we are just barely in sight of Ai Hanlo. We are well beyond
the walls.”