Gods of Earth (24 page)

Sarah clattered down the stairs, Engineering Master Sar behind her. She looked around the room, eyes wide, breathing heavily as she searched for the next attack. A deep cut lacerated her cheek. Chance cringed to see the open flesh, pale but streaming blood, exposed in the gash. Gray dust coated her short hair. She had both swords out, the points down, dripping blood.

Chance again pressed his right arm to his chest, and he reached for her with his left, heedless of the swords. He managed to grip her arm and squeeze.

“It’s done,” he said. “It’s done.”

He clutched her for a moment while she seemed to slowly come to understand.

“It’s over?” she whispered. A single tear fell from one eye, drawing a wet path through pale dust and drying blood.

“Yes. He’s bound. In there.” Chance pointed. “It’s over.”

Sarah knelt, flipped her swords and set the points on the floor, bowed her head, and said very quietly, her voice threatening to break with a sob, “May God forgive my wrath and sins and have mercy on my soul and on the souls of mine enemies.”

“Amen,” Chance whispered.

She stood. “You’re hurt.”

“So are you.”

Seth sprinted down the stairs, taking four steps at a leap. He skidded past the door on the platform outside, and then hurried to Chance, nails scratching on the metal. He brushed against Chance’s leg, obviously relieved to see him alive. Chance knelt and wrapped his left arm around Seth’s neck.

“Airships!” Seth barked. “The sky is full! And b-b-boats!”

“I cannot leave the cage unguarded,” the Guardian said.

“I will gather Threkor’s Engles,” Engineer Sar said. “We will post all five here, surrounding and guarding the cube.”

“Will the Creator allow it?” the Guardian asked.

Sar laughed, and speaking quietly to herself, said, “Let’s see the fat useless worm try to stop me. I’d give him.…” And so she continued as she started up the stairs, her mumbling echoing in the well.

“Then go, you three,” the Guardian told Seth, Sarah, and Chance. “See what is happening. I will come as soon as this place is safe.”

CHAPTER

22

C
hance nodded at Sarah, cradling his arm, as she wiped the flat sides of her swords on her pants, her face grim, and then sheathed the blades. They slowly climbed the stairs while Seth ran ahead.

When they reached the door they had entered from, they found that Sar waited for them. She had finished her task and returned with two bars of soft metal and a tight roll of black cloth. Chance sat on the floor in the hall and Sar bound his arm by gently tying the metal bars to his forearm as Sarah held it still. Then she tied a sling over his neck.

“This must be properly set as soon as it can be done,” the old woman said, her voice a soft whisper. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out what looked to Chance like a square of paper. She pressed it over Sarah’s cut.

Chance looked up at Sar and met her eyes, and he felt suddenly the strange conviction that though she was important to his life, he would never see her again.

“Now I must go,” she added. “May your days be peaceful and inventive.”

She stood.

“Sar,” Chance called. “Engineer. I.…”

She looked down at him, waiting.

“I learned much from you, in these days. About the good that is in Engineers. I thank you.”

She nodded, and set off down the hall at her brisk walk, her heavy robes brushing across the stone.

Sarah helped Chance to his feet. He frowned when he looked at the blood seeping through the patch on her cheek. “We need to mend your cut,” he whispered to her.

“Later.”

They hurried down the hall to the small exit and pushed out into the street. A crowd of Engineers and others had gathered nearby, before the main entrance to Uroboros. Mimir and Wadjet stood with them. Thetis came to Chance’s side. She touched his broken arm. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at him—tears of relief, Chance assumed—but she said nothing. Seth turned in place, looking at them and back at the sky, wild with excitement.

Down the long road that stretched all the way to the Crystal Wall miles ahead, a slot of the sky was visible through the canyon formed by the towers lining the street. Black dots infested the blue sky: airships in the distance, bearing down on Disthea like a swarm of giant insects.

“There must be tens,” Chance said.

“Hundreds,” Sarah explained. “So many I saw in the valley of the Usin River.”

“And more boats,” Seth said. “And ma-ma-many on foot, crossing now the bridge.”

As they waited for the Guardian, the ships drew closer. Some in the front of the assault crossed over the wall now.

“They’re going to-to-to moor on the towers,” Seth said.

“I see their plan!” Chance explained it rapidly to Sarah. “Most of the towers are empty. I mean, the tops of them are empty, because it’s hard to climb up into them, and there’s enough room in the first few floors for everybody here. The soulburdened can enter the tops of the towers, and fill the top floors, without a fight. It will allow them to get many into the city and get organized before they battle.”

The air cracked, and then the Guardian stood with them. He looked at the sky, taking in the scene.

“We must get Chance out of here. We must get to safety. Makina, we go to your ship.”

Mimir bowed her head. “I regret to inform all in our company that my airship was destroyed four minutes ago. The soulburdened crew of an attacking airship boarded it. They successfully cut open all of the air cells.”

“We must take another ship, then.” The Guardian turned, about to stomp off to the eastern side of the Crystal Wall.

“I can take you,” Wadjet called. The way she said it, as she said anything, seemed a challenge.

“How is this, Steward?” the Guardian demanded.

“My boat is docked at the northern pier of the Crystal Wall. There is room enough.”

The Guardian hesitated. “A boat? We go far, Steward.”

“I will take you far, Guardian,” she turned to Thetis. “I will take you if the Mothers of the Gotterdammerung pledge to do as I ask, pledge to seek a cure for the plague that strikes my land, upon our return.”

Thetis nodded. “I pledge it.”

“This course of action is not strategically optimal,” Mimir said. “If we take a boat, then we will need to cross by foot over the modbarrows. The modghasts will attack us. We should instead find an airship.”

“Do you know where there’s an airship for us, makina?” the Guardian asked angrily.

“Modghasts sa-sa-sa-sound bad,” Seth observed. “Cut you up, use the parts.” Hair rose on his back.

“There is no modghast that can face me and survive,” the Guardian said. “Note even a hundred. Let the makina remain here.” He turned to Wadjet. “Show us.”

Thetis called for horses, and after some moments of confusion two Engineers managed to bring them four tired old mares that pulled carts to the market. Chance tried to mount a horse with just his left arm, but he was too exhausted and the pain in his right arm was growing now. Finally the Guardian had to lift him onto the steed. Thetis, Sarah, and the Wadjet mounted the other horses quickly.

Chance noted that Mimir did not move away, but stayed close to him, making it clear she intended to ignore the Guardian’s counsel that she remain behind.

The first few steps of the mare were agony for Chance, bobbing his arm. He cried out involuntarily, but no one noticed. The feel of his bones grinding together was horrible, but he knew it would be worse to walk. He shifted until he found a way to ride so that the rhythm of the horse’s stride did not move the bones.

The Guardian and Mimir and Seth followed on foot, as Wadjet set off at a gallop, first east, and then turning north at the next corner.

People were running in the streets, shouting the names of their loved ones. Behind them, the airships teemed among the black and gray towers of the city, and were tethered to the tallest buildings.

“These poor people,” Chance shouted. “Can we do nothing?”

“It will only be worse for them if we remain, Puriman,” the Guardian called. “Ride on!”

At the far northern end of the city, a long ramp switchbacked up the Crystal Wall, just as at the southern wall. It was crowded
with people rushing up to the bridge and boats at the top. Chance and the others pushed through the throngs as best they could. Airships hovered now above them, watched with fear by the crowds of people ascending.

A numbing dull ache started in Chance’s arm. It was a relief until it started to spread and stiffen his shoulders and chest.

As they reached the last stretch of the road, the crowd of people surged back down.

“Against the wall!” The Guardian shouted. They moved the horses to the side, and the Guardian stood before them, a stone-solid impediment to a stampeding crowd of screaming people. In a moment Chance and the others were surrounded and pressed in a sea of wailing faces and pushing shoulders.

“Bears! Bears and wolves!” someone shouted.

Another person pressed up against Chance’s horse, and then pointed at Seth, who had warily sought refuge under the mare.

“A wolf!” she screamed, but then was pushed on. Suddenly Chance realized the coyote’s danger. He reached down with his left arm. “Jump up, Seth. Jump to me.”

Seth leapt. He hit the saddle and slipped down. Chance could not reach far enough to get his left arm around the coyote. Bending over made his broken arm swing and twist painfully in its sling. Seth leapt again and Chance grabbed the hair and skin behind his neck and pulled. He strained but with Seth’s blunt coyote fingers scraping at the hard leather of the saddle, Chance managed to lift him and then settle him on the horse on the front of the saddle.

Someone else pointed, and shouted, “One of them!”

“No,” Chance called. “It’s just my dog!”

“Sorry,” he added to Seth in a whisper.

Seth yipped.

As quickly as it had come, the mob thinned and passed. The shouts and cries of colliding crowds receded as people pushed back down the switchbacks.

“Come!” the Guardian commanded. They started forward. As they climbed, airships tethered at the top of the wall nearby. Dark forms dropped from their cabins. Then, before the Guardian, at the top of the ramp, three bears ambled out and stood in the way, arms splayed as they roared.

“Woodwardens,” the Guardian called. “Make way! I would not harm you!” His voice rang off the Crystal Wall, piercing their minds.

The bears ambled forward, growling. The Guardian ran at the one in the center, and all three bears leapt at him. A single swing of the hammer sent them all, their spines folded over the weapon, off of the road and far out into the city. The short, last screams of the bears fell down into silence.

A smell of burning wood and something else—an acrid, poisonous, burnt odor—blew up suddenly from the city. The fighting was starting in earnest now.

“Ride!” the Guardian commanded. “Ride!”

They kicked their horses. Hooves clattered loudly as they rode out onto the hard diamond of the wall. There were bears and wolves both before and behind them now.

“Where?” the Guardian shouted.

The Steward pointed at a long white boat, docked against a pier that met the wall a hundred paces before them, at the bottom of a long ramp. A pack of wolves stood between them and the pier. The Guardian ran ahead. This time he did not bother with warnings. When he came close to the wolves he moved in a blur and threw all of them off the ramp, into the sea. They splashed into the cold waves, yelping.

With Sarah leading, they rode quickly ahead. The hoofbeats turned from sharp strikes to soft wooden thumps as they galloped onto the ramp and then the pier. They reined up before the boat. It was at least sixty paces long, with two tall masts and one small mast of strange design in the front. They dismounted and hurried to the
water’s edge. Seen up close, it was clear that the boat had seen much wear. Its paint was chipped, there were deep scratches and gouges in the hull, and the wood of the deck was cracked and split, its dark shellac flaking gray.

Wadjet loosed the moorings. She held out a hand and helped Thetis onto the ship.

“In!” the Guardian shouted. More wolves and bears were gathering on the ramp to the pier. The freed horses turned their wide eyes toward the soulburdened beasts and backed awkwardly down the pier, flanks pressed together.

Seth leaped gracefully over the waves and onto the boat. Chance and Sarah backed up to get a running start, and then hurled themselves over the open water. Chance expected a sharp pain from the hard snap that landing on the deck gave to his broken arm—but instead he felt nothing. Fear followed relief as he realized that the numbness boded ill for the state of his limb.

Wadjet bounded, catlike, just behind them, holding the thick ropes of the mooring. Mimir was next, and then the Guardian came last, holding Threkor’s Hammer above his head, making the boat rock when his great mass crashed onto the back of the ship. His momentum pushed it away from the pier.

The Steward disappeared below deck through a small door. After a moment, an engine hummed, and the boat pulled away. The wolves and bears then ran up the pier and stood snarling at the edge of dock as the ship turned out to sea, bobbing into the waves.

“Look!” Chance pointed. Fires were starting in the south, black smoke rising along the Crystal Wall. Many airships now clung to the peaks of the tallest towers.

“How long till they manage to free the false god?” Chance shouted to the Guardian, straining to be heard over the splash of the prow.

“Perhaps not long,” the Guardian said. “We must sail straight for Yggdrasil, and for the entrance to the Numin Well that sits at its root. You must kill the god’s soul, Puriman, as quickly as you can.” He frowned at the smoke that clotted the sky and darkened the sun. “The doom of the world rests now with you.”

PART II

LETHEBION

CHAPTER

23

A
fter they escaped onto Wadjet’s ship, Chance stood between Sarah and the Guardian in the back of the boat, cradling his arm, as the water churned beneath them. They watched Disthea shrink into the distance. No airship pursued them. After a long while, the Eastern shore fell behind the horizon, and then, moments later, Disthea dipped also out of their view.