Gods of Earth (19 page)

They climbed stairs. Thetis stopped on the second floor to talk with their new cook, who stole quick glances at Chance but otherwise
made a good show of seeing nothing. The cook nodded, went away, and returned with two brown cups.

“Puriman cups,” Thetis explained. “From the Usin Valley Purimen. We keep them for special occasions.”

“Thank you,” Chance said.

Chance, holding a bottle in each hand, followed Thetis as they climbed another nineteen floors. The way was dark, but less dark than it seemed when they looked up from below. In the higher floors, a narrow trail of dark prints cut through thick dust.

Their history weighs down from the sky, Chance thought. As if always ready to tumble down and crush them.

When both of them breathed heavily from the long climb, Thetis pushed open a door and led Chance down a dim corridor and into another room with a table set before tall glass doors that opened onto a broad balcony. They went out. Chance felt a shiver of fear under his feet as he saw how high they were. Other than in the makina’s airship, and their descent on the stairs against the Crystal Wall, he had never stood so high. He kept a respectful distance from the edge of the balcony. Most of the Broken Hand that Reaches towered high above them. But they had climbed enough that, between two rows of buildings before them, they could see over the Crystal Wall to the dark sea beyond. Cool gusts of wind carried a strong salt smell of the ocean.

“I told them to bring food up here,” Thetis said. “And I got this.” She handed Chance a cork shim. He slipped the cork out of one of the bottles while Thetis pulled two chairs of strange material out onto the balcony. He poured the two cups. They sat and he tasted the wine.

“Not bad.”

“Excellent,” Thetis said.

Chance nodded gratefully. “To be honest, my father had gotten much better with the years.” He poured their cups full, and they drank some more in silence, staring out to the sea. Today the tide
was high and tall waves brimmed at the edge of the Crystal Wall, threatening to spill into the city. “He became the best winemaker in the valley.”

And now he cannot teach me, he cannot guide me, Chance thought.

He took another sip. Was Sarah well? he wondered. Was Paul? The thought took away the taste of the wine.

“You think of your Puriman family?” Thetis asked. She peered at him closely.

“Yes. My brother. And… a woman.”

“Seth told me about both. Were you close to your brother?”

Chance hesitated. “We were brothers. But it was hard for him, having an elder brother, just six months older, who was adopted. It caused much confusion about what would be his, what mine. And he was closer to our mother, and I was closer to our father. That caused strife too. But we were brothers. We are brothers.”

“And the woman?”

Chance nodded. “I must get them both back. I must avenge my parents. End this struggle with the false god. So that we can return to the vincroft.”

“And then?”

“Then.…” The Elders should not name him a Puriman, after what he had learned. He could not know what Sarah or Paul would do or say. The Vincroft would go to Paul. Chance could not even imagine what kind of life he might make for himself if he was not a Puriman, not even, truth be told, a Truman, and not given any stake in the vincroft.

But he could not consider that now. He would continue on as would a Puriman. He must save Sarah, and save Paul, and then get back to the vincroft. If only to make sure all was set right there.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ll decide when I’ve returned home. Maybe I can still make wine, and live among the Purimen.”

“That sounds very nice.”

Chance looked at her and frowned. “You think so? I would have thought it was ignorant, too simple, for a Mother of your guild.”

“No. It sounds like you do something well, and want to do it better, and that it gives many people pleasure. Even here in Disthea. Even
unmen
.” She stressed this last word exaggeratedly.

“I did not mean to say—”

“I jest, Chance Kyrien. But even so, you have brought many people a happy moment.”

“It is a little thing.”

“All of life is little things.”

“Amen.”

They sipped in silence for a few moments.

“You could come here, you know. For a visit. Or longer, if you liked.”

“What?” Chance was confused. The idea was so radical, he had never imagined such a thing. But then, what if everyone in the Valley rejected him when he returned to the lake? Where would he go?

“You would be welcome,” Thetis added.

“What would I do?”

Thetis smiled encouragingly. “You could tell the story of your travels. The guild will want to record that.”

“On those books?”

“Yes, on kieferbooks.”

Chance marveled at the idea. To be written of in an ancient book.

“Then,” Thetis said. “You could study whatever interested you.”

Chance sighed. “I would miss the vineyards too much.” Although he’d been away from home only a few days, he missed already the feel of pushing his hand into soil to test its quality, he missed tending the vines, he missed caring for the wine barrels. That was what he knew how to do, what he liked to do, what made him feel useful. And the thought of the fermenting new wine sitting unattended made him feel uneasy, like he should get up and get to work.

“The winemakers in the Usin Valley might hire you to make wine,” Thetis said.

“Really?”

“The farmers of your lake lands are famous for your wine skills.”

“I, I don’t know,” Chance whispered. He would have rejected the idea without reflection a week before. But now, he surprised himself by finding in the possibility a modicum of hope. Even if he were turned away from the Valley, perhaps there would still be some chance that he could make wine.…

“I will think on it,” he said.

Thetis nodded.

The thought of living outside the Valley of Walking Man turned Chance’s reflections to his own origin. He felt a nervous pressure growing in his chest. There was something he wanted to ask, but he felt afraid to ask it. Finally, though, he blurted it out.

“Do you know who my birth parents are? Can you tell me? Do they live?”

Thetis looked at him and narrowed her eyes in thought. Finally, she said, “I cannot tell you anything about them now. But, if you came to stay here, after this is all over, I think then that you could learn who they were.”

Chance looked away. He felt disappointment and relief. He did not think he had now the strength to face strangers claiming to be his parents. But Thetis’s elusive answer also frustrated him. It made him more curious, and it made him feel guilty for being curious. Part of him felt it was a betrayal of his parents in the Valley, as if he were seeking their replacement. And part of him found in Thetis’s caution the suggestion, which he himself feared, that there was some untoward tale to be told about his birth parents.

“Chance?” Thetis whispered tremulously. “You’re thinking of your parents again? Your Purimen parents?”

“Yes.”

“Chance, the god killed people I love, too. When he was here.”

Chance peered into her dark eyes, which he found now strangely familiar. She hugged herself tightly in the cold wind, hunched over in her chair.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yes. It’s hard. Impossible. So, maybe, I know a little of what you feel. But, Chance, I must tell you, it’s not right that you suffer over being the Potentiate.”

“Please—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I speak the truth. Do you know why our guild has an agreement with the Purimen to bring our male children to them?”

“No.”

“Because we trust the Purimen to remain ever removed from our ways. So, if there ever were a Potentiate, or even just a child who had some of the blood of a Potentiate, he would be far always from the theotechnologies. Only the senior mothers know where the children go. It’s the way you live, not what you inherit, that matters.”

“And why did the Purimen agree to this?”

She thought about it a moment. “The first Purimen wanted to be sure that their members did not have certain—remade features. We alone have the skill to test that. The Purimen of the Usin Valley sometimes still ask for this kind of test. Though it has been many years since the Purimen of the Forest Lakes have asked for our help.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“But, Chance, I spoke the truth. The changes required to make someone a Potentiate are actually few; they are small, compared to those that many others inherit. And, Chance, there is no one wholly original left on Earth.”

“Original!” Chance said with contempt. He took a mouthful of wine, as if to wash away the taste of the word.

“Yes. I cannot use your words—true, pure. These are not the right words. Everyone left on Earth has been changed; everyone left
on Earth has ancestors who were changed. More than this, Chance, every other thing has been changed by the ancient humans. They flattened mountains to get at the stones underneath. They destroyed forever many kinds of animals. They remade nearly every animal, every plant on Earth, for which they had some use. They moved rivers, changed forever the air we breathe, raised and salted the seas, changed—”

“This is no comfort to me, Thetis. You tell me that everything I believe is false.”

“Not false. Just… not simple. And not always the same.”

“Some things are simply true. And they remain always the same truth. There is a true God. One true God. He made us, he made the world, he has a design for us and for the world. I believe this. To me, this is not complicated. It doesn’t change. It’s as certain as the sun rises in the West, and always has risen in the West. It’s as certain as the Walking Man Lake has always been there, full of fresh water.”

Thetis looked out toward the sea.

Chance sighed. “There. Like the Guardian. He does that too, when he scorns something I’ve said as foolish, as not worth even correcting. He looks away and frowns. Even Seth is starting to do it. What would you deny? Tell me.”

“Things change. Even East and West. Even lakes and seas.”

“Not everything changes.”

“Maybe not everything. But who knows what things?”

“I don’t believe you feel that way. Your Mothers here, in this tower, they had faiths. They had things they could not doubt. If the Mothers doubted them, then the Mothers would be different. They would no longer be themselves. Everyone has religion, even the false.”

Thetis shook her head. “I don’t think so, Chance. Do you know our Guild, where it comes from? This was the home of the Theogenics Guild. We were the Theogenics Guild. Our ancestors had faith. The faith that they were culminating human history—that with the
Dark Engineers they would create something absolutely… beyond all human accomplishment and dreaming. And then the war came, and the Guild was destroyed, the Fathers were all slain, and the Mothers were cursed. Cursed to carry on as the Gotterdammerung as long as humanity lived on Earth, ensuring that the very powers they had created were never used again.”

She took the bottle from him and poured some wine into her cup before she continued. “The Gotterdammerung is without faith. We have hopes, we serve as healers, but nothing is certain for us.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s not so bad, Chance. You have to allow that things might not be as you hope, might not be as you believe, but still make something of what remains. And not all the changes, not all the surprises, are bad. Some are good. Some are very good. Meeting you was very good—for me, I mean.”

Chance gave Thetis a brief, embarrassed smile. They were silent a moment. Then, speaking more softly, Thetis said, “Chance, I’m worried. Are you certain that you and the Guardian have some way to trap the god at Uroboros?”

Chance hesitated. The Guardian had been clear: tell no one about the binding cube. But Thetis seemed so sincere in her concern for him. He opened his mouth, considering his words—

But before he could speak, Seth ran out onto the balcony behind them, his nails scratching at the hard floor as he slid and turned. “Cha-Chance,” he barked. “Sarah. Sarah is here.”

Chance leapt to his feet.

“Where?”

“Downstairs.”

CHAPTER

18

C
hance ran the entire way, leaping down steps three at a time, leaving Thetis far behind. Seth followed closely. When they reached the grand hall, they were both gasping. Chance threw himself against one of the front doors and burst out onto the front steps.

The Guardian stood there, on the white stones, holding Sarah in his arms. Mimir stood next to him, expressionless in her formal suit.

“Sarah!” Chance called. He ran to her, Seth at his heels.

The Guardian set Sarah on her feet. Chance grabbed her, wrapped his arms around her.

Sarah pulled back, then pushed him away.

“Sarah? Sarah?”

She reeked of urine and pungent sweat. Her hair was tangled into a gnarled lump, hanging off to one side of her head. Filth smeared her face. She was barefoot, and her feet were dark with dirt. She held her dirty hands up, warding Chance back. “I, I.…”

“What? Are you…?” Chance hesitated again.

“Keep away from me!” she shouted. She shrank back against the Guardian. “Keep away! Get away!”

Chance’s mouth hung open. He stared, not comprehending. “Sarah?”

“Go inside,” the Guardian said.

“Where’s Paul?” Chance asked.

“Go inside,” the Guardian repeated.

Chance stared. Sarah looked on him, horrified, almost unrecognizable through her filth and through the expression of utter fear that she showed him.

Or was it disgust? Chance thought, incredulously.

He turned, his face burning. Thetis stood in the doorway to the Hand, and Chance did not meet her eyes as he pushed past her.