Gods of Earth (3 page)

“Who might you be?”

The stranger exhaled sharply, as if angry, his arms twisting. His eyes grew wide with what looked like fear but his mouth clamped down into a tight line. Elder Zadok took a step back, concerned. Maybe this unman’s disease was catching. But the stranger wrested control of himself long enough to say, “I come from the place of this boy’s birth to offer him a gift.”

Well, that’s a lot of talk that says nothing, Zadok thought. Best to send the unman on his way. The shadows are gone into evening, and I still have a fish to clean. It’ll be such a bother to clean the trout in the dark.

“I don’t know any witchchild,” he said curtly. “We’re all Purimen here.”

“That won’t do. Reconsider.”

“You’d best move along.”

“Oh, oh,” the stranger said. He contorted into near folds before standing straight and tall again. He held out his right arm. The sleeve slipped back, uncovering the wrist and forearm. The skin was black, with pale spots. The stench of rot became overwhelming. The
stranger pointed his fist at Zadok. Slowly he opened the fingers. The palm cupped pallid light.

Elder Zadok squinted and frowned, fear striving against his curiosity for a moment. What was that in the palm of the hand? It began to glow, so slowly that it became visible, but he did not at first understand why he could see it. In the man’s hand something wet and round glistened. It closed for a second—no, it blinked. An eye! In the palm of the man’s hand. Horrified, Zadok stepped back. A single lid, the edge of it red and torn, closed again over the eye in a long slow blink. A vast black pupil in a wet sphere of white—or perhaps the pupil was lost in a black iris. Cold, luminous, and fierce.

“Oh, God protect me,” Zadok whispered.

“No,” the unman said. “This god means to punish you.”

With that, all the bones in Zadok’s arms broke with loud snaps, a sound like green kindling crackling on a fire. His knife fell in the dirt. His arms bent around behind his back and twisted into a knot. He screamed and fell to his knees.

“Silence,” the unman said, the black hand still held out, so that the eye glared at Zadok. The air grew misty between them, and then Zadok realized he could not open his mouth. His breath came only in a loud draw through his teeth. The pain in his arms receded.

“You know the witch boy?”

Zadok nodded. Tears streamed down his face. Where was everyone? Why didn’t anyone come? Were they all at that damned boy’s baptism?

“You know where he is?”

Zadok nodded.

The pressure he’d felt in his mouth changed, disappeared. He could open his mouth again. He could speak. He gasped for air.

“Tell me.” The unman came a step closer. In the dark of late twilight, Zadok saw the stranger’s clothes were those of a beggar, a wanderer, torn and filthy and threadbare. But the eye—don’t look at the eye, he told himself. Too horrible.

“Tell me.”

“Chance Kyrien. At the Kyrien Vincroft. The gray house, with pillars, at the top of the Lake.”

The unman nodded sadly. Zadok watched him, hoping with this nod of approval his ordeal was over. But then the pain in his arms rushed back, and Zadok screamed again.

“Help! Help!”

“Silence.” The hideous eye blinked, and Zadok felt the numbness come over his lips, the sharp pressure grow against his jaw. He fell on his face into the dirt, and his broken arms flopped uselessly to his sides. He tried to scream but he could not.

With his twisted right hand, he managed to touch his face. Between his lips he could feel his teeth, smooth, unbroken, solid from his top gums to his bottom gums, a cage of bone locking his jaw around his tongue.

The unman disappeared into the dark, taking the smell of rotting flesh with him, as Elder Zadok choked on his stifled shrieks.

CHAPTER

3

“I
n an hour you’ll be a man of the Purimen,” Chance’s father said. He set his hands on Chance’s shoulders and smiled. He had finished his third cup of wine, and it had given his cheeks a red flush and made him sentimental.

They stood in the tall wine barn of the Kyrien Vincroft. Oil lamps hung along the walls and flickered softly, giving every face in the crowd a healthy golden glow. The floor had been swept of dust, and people trod pale, clean boards, walking this way and that, greeting each other. Barrels of Kyrien Vincroft’s best Ries and Caffran vintages had been rolled to the edge of the floor, set up on stocks, and tapped.

“I’m proud of you, Chance,” his father said. “Though you’ve been ornery many times, you’ve become a true Puriman, and a fine farmer and winemaker. You’ve grown into a good man.”

Chance gripped his father’s arms and nodded, unable to speak. He felt a surge of gratitude and happiness, even with his mother frowning nearby. She was still angry about the suit. When Chance had come home, the suit crushed into a wrinkled ball in his hands, Paul had already left the house. There’d been another fight, his
parents by turns arguing with each other and mutually scolding him. Chance had hardly cared, since he felt such relief to find his home reassuringly unchanged after his uncanny encounter with the Guardian.

If it had not been the day of his baptism, his punishment would have been severe. But Elders were soon coming, and there had been preparations to make. So his parents had stopped arguing and started cooking, cleaning, rolling out wine stocks, and undertaking in a rush all the other tasks required before guests came. Still, Chance knew, what his father quickly forgave and forgot, his mother remembered forever. His punishment was not over.

His father patted his shoulders and moved on into the crowd. Chance looked through the faces, seeking Sarah. All the Council Elders and many of the other vinfarmers from the north of the lake had come, and their voices filled the barn. There stood his neighbor, Joshua Moriah. He nodded and raised a cup to Chance. There stood Elder John and his wife, talking quietly together. There the entire family of the Samuels, all seven. They had the largest vincroft on the east shore of Walking Man, and Chance respected and liked all of them.

But where was Sarah? Chance knew that she had patrol this afternoon, and might have ridden far up the lake with the other Rangers. But surely she would come soon, even so. Her father, Justin Michael—a tall, thin-faced man with brown eyes hidden under dark brows—stood before a barrel in the corner, frowning at Chance. Paul stood beside him.

When Paul saw that Chance stood alone, he pushed through the crowd and towards the center of the barn. Paul had not changed his clothes since he’d been to the Michaels’ home, no doubt to remind Chance of where he’d been that morning. Paul wore a pair of his father’s pants and one of his father’s old coats. Both were too large. Chance took a deep breath, gathering the courage to apologize. But Paul spoke first.

“That was a dirty trick, witch boy,” Paul whispered, when he was a pace away.

“Paul, I’m—”

“But it didn’t work. I had dinner with Sarah and then her father left us alone, and then I kissed her.” He leaned closed. “Sarah loved it.”

Chance’s heart fell. Could it be true?

Paul smiled. “Yes, it’s true. And now Father isn’t going to give you anything, just that field of stones out by the old shack. It’s already been decided. And Sarah’s mine now. Mine. And see there,” he nodded towards the corner of the barn, where Sarah’s father still stood. “Jeremiah Green’s with me. He’s going to denounce you. He’s going to stop your confirmation.” Jeremiah Green emerged from the shadows behind Mr. Michael. Green forced a laugh at something Mr. Michael said, his eyes indifferent, and then drank from his cup. He looked at Chance, but Chance looked away before meeting his gaze.

“Go on your way,” Chance said.

Paul opened his mouth to speak again, but then Elder Ruth clapped her hands, her cane under one arm. She stood near them, with Elder James gravely bowed beside her. A hush spread through the crowd, from the front of the room to the back. Paul slipped away into the crowd.

At the age of 103, Elder Ruth had lived longer than any other of the Elders who still sat on Council. She kept her long gray hair pinned back in a loose bun. The lips and eyes of her lively, deeply lined face moved quickly when she listened or talked. Her claps sounded out surprisingly loud.

Chance’s father reappeared at his side and led Chance to stand next to the tiny Elder. Chance clasped his hands together and bowed his head.

“We are here to baptize Chance Kyrien,” Elder Ruth intoned, “and confirm him as a Puriman.” A few claps sounded out. Next to her, Elder James lifted the tall baptism cup from the floor.

“Our tradition is old. It comes from the time of the War Against the False Gods. In those years, man was still young, but thought himself a god. Man denied the One True God.”

She leaned heavily on her twisted cane, letting the invocation sink into the silence.

“Though man had the word of God, he said, I am lost. Though man had the guidance of God, he said, I will make a map of my own way. Though man had the covenant of God, he said, I have no purpose, so I will make myself a purpose; I have no soul, but I will make myself an immortal soul. This sowed ruin, and brought the War Against the False Gods, and the Barrenness Plague, and the making of the plague lands. But during this strife, the Purimen turned their back on the unmen, turned toward the True God. They gathered here at the lake of the Walking Man and at the Forest Lakes and along the Usin River, and they pledged themselves to God’s commands.

“We were made of your design, God, and we will keep thy will: we will not remake ourselves. Nature was made of your design, God, and we will keep thy will: we will not enthrall ourselves to man’s machines. This is our creed.”

“Amen,” the crowd intoned.

Elder Ruth continued, “Since that time, coming unto seventeen, each child of our villages is named man or woman, and if of pure blood is confirmed a Truman, and if righteous in our ways, is baptized a Puriman. So it has always been for us. This day Chance Kyrien is of age.”

Now came the call for objections, Chance knew. If none denounced him, he would be confirmed through baptism. And, right after that, his father would be expected to announce Chance’s stake in the croft. Chance’s heart began to hammer. He knelt before Elder Ruth. She moved close to him, so that her long dark skirt pressed against his arm, and she set one hand on his head. With her other hand she passed her cane to Elder James, and then dipped her fingers into the water of the baptism cup.

“We gather to confirm Chance Kyrien. He was born true and has practiced our creed. Are there any who deny it?”

Chance held his breath. If Green were to denounce him on some false charge of impure acts, or if his brother had lost all restraint in wine, now would be the moment they would speak.

Silence.

Chance let his breath out. Of course his brother had only been trying to scare him, to take some revenge for Chance’s trick.

But as Chance breathed in deeply in relief and expectation, a faint scent of something rancid seeped into the barn. Outside, the crickets fell quiet. Then, very faint but unmistakable, came a single canine yelp of pain.

Had someone harmed Seth? Chance started, almost stood, but realized that he could not move now, he could not interrupt the ceremony—not the instant before his baptism. He must remain bowed.

Unable to help himself, he looked up. The great front door to the barn creaked open. He caught through the crowd a glimpse of black folds of dirty cloth slipping through the cracked door. People in the back of the barn shifted uneasily. The air seemed to suck out of the room. The smell of lamp oil, spilled wine, hay, and crowded human bodies was pushed away by a single foul odor. Elder Ruth pressed her hand down on Chance’s head, leaning upon him for support.

“I come for Chance Kyrien,” a choking hiss called out.

The crowd parted, the many Purimen moving back, leaving an aisle between the large front door and Elder Ruth. A figure in a dirty black robe stood before the door, a hood drawn over the head, sleeves falling far below the hands, so that nothing human could be seen of it.

Silence held. Behind the robed figure, Sarah slipped into the barn, dressed in the green and brown clothes of a Ranger. She looked at the intruder, then around at the crowd. Her eyes met
Chance’s for a second. She put her hands on her two sword pommels, and then went to her father, whispering questions to him.

“Who speaks?” Elder Ruth said.

“I come for the boy Chance Kyrien,” the hissing voice repeated. The unseen man under the robe twisted and shivered. He pointed at Chance, the sleeve hiding the hand. “Is that him?” Then he started forward, lurching uneasily, in jerks. Several oil lamps flickered out, guttering black greasy smoke that took on twisted human forms. A sudden surge of nausea and terror gripped Chance.

Chance’s father walked into the aisle, between Chance and the robed figure. “I am John Kyrien, the boy’s father! You will speak to me, if you must speak!”

“Oh,” Eve Kyrien cried. One hand outstretched toward her husband, the other uncertainly over her open mouth, she stepped forward, pushing her way past Elder James.

Chance stood. Elder Ruth let her hand slip from his head. The baptism waters dripped forgotten from her other hand. The air seemed to shimmer, then solidify. The smell of rot thickened.

In the corner, Sarah drew her two swords, the blades ringing:
shing, shing
.

“Only Purimen are welcome here,” John Kyrien said.

The figure held up its right arm. The sleeve fell back, exposing a black hand and arm, spotted with pale sores of gangrene. The open palm faced Chance’s father, a white spot—an eye! Chance thought with horror—glowed on the palm—

With a loud
crack
, his father’s head jerked impossibly sideways and back. Eve Kyrien screamed and stepped forward to catch her falling husband. The air shimmered again. Her neck broke and she toppled.

The Purimen crowded into the barn began to scream. They rushed into the corners, shoving and pulling at each other to get out of the small side doors.

“No!” Chance howled. The hideous eye turned on him. Chance put one foot forward, but could not otherwise move. A fog filled his head. He saw, almost as if remembering, a rush of senseless images: stars, lights, strange faces of stranger children. He tried to push these visions aside. He took another step forward, dragging his foot. He must get to his father and mother.