Gods of Earth (47 page)

Vark hesitated, but Hexus watched him, hand in the air, the god’s black eye glaring. Finally Vark turned. He stood looking at the shuddering blue jar. And then he whispered, so quietly that he thought none could hear him, although Hexus caught his words, “This is what I have always tried to do. To grab hold of thunder, and wield it. How can I say no now? How can I admit I had been wrong?”

And with panicked determination he strode forward and seized the metal handles along the sides of the jar.

His face was lit a moment in the deep, otherworldly blue glow. Again, the bright sunlight seemed to dim.

And then the leader of the Hieroni screamed, and exploded into flames. He fell to his knees, but his limbs clung rigidly fixed to the Jar, as if his hands were unable to release it. He shook with convulsions. His skin bubbled and turned black. White fire shot from his mouth, his nose, finally his eyes. The bears roared and turned in place, terrified. Somehow Vark continued to scream. Blue flames shot across his skin, and turned to yellow fires in his clothes.

Hexus reached out and broke the man’s neck, silencing him.

It seemed a long while before silence settled again into the clearing.

“It is not meant to be like that,” Hexus whispered. Had something broken the Jar, over the years? And yet it had been forged by Threkor himself, to withstand the relentless passage of millions of years.

“Leave it,” Hexus said. “It can work as well here as elsewhere. The Guardian is bound. Let us go. Follow the boy!”

Fearfully, the wolf lowered its head and started up the hillside, smelling at the earth.

When Chance and Wadjet came into the valley, they found the ancient sleek airship fully inflated, its long blue shape rigid with pressure. The cabin’s entrance, where the whole back wall hinged down and lay on the ground, formed a ramp that led into the small cabin. Mimir stood at the bottom of the ramp. She seemed to Chance strangely taller than she had appeared before.

Coughing from the long run, Chance stumbled across the stream and to her side. He put his hand on his knee, bending over, exhausted. Wadjet, beside him, was panting but otherwise unaffected.

“Sa-Sarah?” Chance asked. “Is Sarah here yet?”

“No,” Mimir said.

“Thetis?”

“No,” Mimir said.

“The Guardian.…” he gasped, unable to finish the sentence.

“I feel it,” Mimir said. “I can touch the Machinedream.” And her voice betrayed something like satisfaction. “What has happened to the Guardian?”

“Trapped. In something. A Numin Jar.”

Mimir nodded. “Yes. That explains much.”

Chance stood straight, his knees still trembling. He scanned the top of the valley. “We have to be ready to go as soon as they come.”

“We shall go now,” Mimir said.

Chance turned sharply. He took a step back. “No! Absolutely not. We wait for Sarah.”

“If the god comes, we will be lost.”

Wadjet nodded. “The Makina speaks harsh counsel, but right counsel.”

“No,” Chance repeated. But a spike of fear hit him: the Guardian was not here now. He could not depend upon Wadjet. That meant he was alone with this machine. There she stood, in her clean suit of black clothes, like the preposterous formal dress of some citizen of Disthea on the way to a wedding, and eyed him with cool indifference. Her face and form showed no tiredness, no weakness, no susceptibility to any hardship. Her silver eyes looked on him with a cruel indifference to his pains and cares. He had not feared Mimir when the Guardian had been there. But now, gazing at her, he saw the hint of great and ancient powers, bound to cold purposes.

“I judge it expedient that we leave immediately,” Mimir said calmly. And in a flash she reached forward and grabbed Chance’s shoulder.

Wadjet hesitated, and then ran onto the ship. Chance understood the decision: she would not stay out here and let Mimir decide perhaps to leave her behind.

“No, wait but a moment or two. Sarah must be near,” Chance protested. But Mimir did not answer. With an iron grip she dragged Chance toward the ship.

Chance twisted, and kicked out. His foot struck Mimir’s leg. Mimir’s grip on him slipped, and in a second she was holding only his sleeve. Chance jerked free. The sleeve tore off.

Mimir dropped it. “Consider,” she said. “What would be the likely outcome if you and I fought here until the god found us?”

Chance hesitated. And then in a shot Mimir was on him again. She seized his good wrist this time, and dragged him into the ship. With one arm, she pulled the door closed. Then Mimir merely stared at the controls, and the tethers released, the engines screamed into life, and the ship rose.

She can control it without touching it, Chance thought with horror.

“Let me go!” he demanded. But Mimir held him tightly until they were high above the plateau. Wadjet sat in the back of the cabin, looking back and forth from the windows to Mimir, her dark green eyes wide, betraying fear.

What does Wadjet know, or see, that I don’t? he wondered. Why is she so afraid of Mimir?

Finally the Makina released him, after they were over the churning whitecaps of the sea.

Chance sank to his knees. “Sarah,” he gasped. “Sarah.”

CHAPTER

42

“W
hat is it?” Hexus demanded.

The wolf had stopped on a steep part of the hillside, where gravel broke out of the thin soil.

“Four scents,” it said. “One, two women go up the hill here.” The wolf pointed its snout. “One man, one woman go this way.” He pointed his snout along the side of the hill.

“Follow the boy,” Hexus told him. “The boy.”

The wolf lowered her head in submission. She started forward on the slope, when a dull hum sounded out before them. The bears froze. The wolf lifted its head.

A black airship floated out of the valley before them. Its design was strange, the cabin small and narrow, with two engines as large as the cabin roaring on each side of it. The balloon of the airship was long and dark. It rose quickly, faster than any airship the bears or wolf had seen, and then the ship leaned forward and shot out over the forest, the wind behind it.

Hexus hesitated. He could try running on the air—but as he considered the possibility of attempting the feat, the ship moved
out of sight over the tree tops. It would be bad if he pursued it some distance and then fell into the sea.

“Ah!” he howled in rage. This crippled, rotting body made him so weak, so doubting. And surely the Potentiate was on that airship. Chance had escaped again.

The bears cringed at the shattered howl of Hexus.

“Be calm,” he told them, not wanting to lose their faith. “I am impatient, but the Potentiate goes where we want him to go. Nothing is lost. You four, search the woods. Make sure the Potentiate is gone. Bring me any other humans you find. I will go back to the beach and take one of the other airships and follow this one. You may come later in the others.”

The wolf set off, huge feet padding silently over the hard ground. The bears followed.

Hexus turned and disappeared in a blur.

The ship strained as Sar drove it up against the mountain winds. Perhaps taking it around the mountain had not been a wise plan, for she was not sure it hid her for long—some bear would report to the god soon—and the slow climb against the shifting katabatic winds made the airship drift toward the rocks and cliffs, then back, in unpredictable ways. Below, the forest gave out to shrub and then bare stone.

Finally she maneuvered the ship in among the jagged black peaks of stone. It seemed that the ship stalled there, and might just drift into one of the spires of sharp rock. The engines were on full but only held the ship in the icy headwind—but then the wind shifted and the ship shot ahead, over the lip of a narrow crest, and the black teeth of the peak scraped just below the cabin.

Then the ship flew through clear sky. She had made it over the crest.

The ship descended quickly now into a valley filled with shards of shale, spotted here and there with a tuft of grass.

This was the weakest part of her plan. She hoped that the boy and his group, driven up into the hills, would be between her and the god. She would have to bring the ship down and call out with the ship’s loudspeakers, hoping to get the attention of the sensitive ears of the Guardian or the coyote or even the makina.

The valley sloped gently down, turning as it went. She pointed the engines slightly down also, pushing the ship toward the earth, to keep it low. She had dropped all her ballast to make the quick retreat, so it took the force of the engines to descend.

As she turned around a tall spire, a large green bowl opened before her, and beyond it the valley stretched down to forest and to the grassy plateau beyond. In the center of the bowl, two figures stood back to back, surrounded by a cautiously circling group of bears and a wolf. The humans were women, she could see: one in the black robes of the Gotterdammerung, and the other in pants. The Mother, and the Puriman warrior, Sar concluded.

The Ranger had her swords drawn. The Junior Mother held awkwardly in both hands a heavy stick. The soulburdened beasts seemed unusually wary. All now looked up at the ship. The god did not appear to be nearby.

Sar took a chance. The bears were unlikely to know the guild language of the Gotterdammerung. But Sar could speak it. She fumbled with controls, found the loudspeaker.

“
I am Sar,
” she called out in the Mother’s guild language. “
I stole this airship and am alone on it. I have no anchor. I’ll drive it down near you, and then you must rush the door.
”

She watched as the Mother leaned back, head turned sideways. She was whispering to the girl, translating. Good.

Sar let the ship drift toward them, then abruptly shifted the engines to full downward. The airship protested, the fabric snapping and fluttering loudly in the turbulence. But after a moment
of turning hesitation, the ship dove for the ground. The soulburdened beasts backed up, opening their circle, expecting that there were reinforcements on the airship that they recognized as their own.

The ship hit the ground, hard, scraping on stone. Sar leapt up and ran for the door. She fell when the ship bounced and then slammed into the ground again. Then, on her knees, she threw the door open, revealing the open field, the confused bears, and Thetis and Sarah. Thetis dropped the stick she held for defense and ran for the open portal. Sarah came behind, moving quickly but mostly backwards, swords out.

The bear on that side of the ship howled in anger when it saw the Mother run into the ship, past Sar. He ran for Sarah. But the confusion of the other bears slowed them too much. Sarah was in the doorway by the time the one bear was on her. She leapt back, out of the way of a swipe, and stabbed her points out. The bear fell back, dodging. Sar was in the control seat then and turned the engines over. The ship shot up. The bear leapt and grabbed the frame of the door, but Sarah kicked his paws off the edge, and then pulled the door shut.

“Where are the others?” Sar called.

“Seth is dead,” Thetis said, gripping the edge of Sar’s seat. “The Guardian is trapped, we think. The others are trapped or on another airship, ahead of us.” She pointed north.

“The boy?” Sar asked.

“On the airship,” Thetis said.

“And you say the Guardian is trapped?”

“They had a Numin Jar.”

Sar hissed in anger.

“Wadjet!” Sarah protested. “Mimir! We’re not sure Wadjet or Mimir are on that ship.”

Sar glanced at her. They rose quickly now, racing north.

“But you’re sure the boy is on the ship?”

Sarah held up a strip of cloth. A sleeve. Sar recognized it: a sleeve of Chance’s Puriman-made shirt. “This was on the ground, where the airship had been parked. We saw it leave. He has escaped the false god.”

“Mimir was with the ship. And someone is flying it,” Thetis said. “She must be on it. And we cannot look for the Steward, when she is likely on that airship. Go! Follow! To Yggdrasil!”

Sar nodded. She agreed with Thetis. The boy was what mattered most now.

She saw then the Ranger’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Blood flowed freely down her cheek from her broken scab.