Gods of Earth (55 page)

One of the dogs turned its head, emitting a loud, grinding sound of rusted iron on iron.

Chance jumped back in surprise. These, then, were the Anubin warriors. But the dog seemed frozen again, unable to move farther.
Creaks and moans sounded out of the other three dogs now, loud protests of seized metal limbs—they were trying to move, he realized, but time had corroded them into place.

The silver faded from the pillar, revealing a crystal cylinder filled with pink liquid, in which floated knotted gray forms. Chance took another step forward. The things in the pillar looked like ocean creatures from a rosy sea caught in a black and gray net of wires.

Chance stared a moment, not comprehending what he beheld. Then he realized that the complex visceral mess inside was a collection of brains. He had seen, as any farmer’s son would, all the parts of animals. He knew brains, even the brain stem and the long spinal cord that descended from it and rooted in the body. But these were large brains, with long spinal cords floating down like fronds of waterweed in the lake shallows.

Human brains, he realized with horror.

“I am Ma’at,” dozens of voices, some speaking at different times and speeds, said from every corner of the room.

Chance swallowed. He trembled all over. He was exhausted. Hungry. Thirsty. And the energy of his fear evaporated now, leaving just terrified fatigue. It was cool in the room, so that his sweat felt icy on his skin. He wiped the back of his one free hand across his forehead. The skin on skin felt gritty, filthy.

“I am Chance Kyrien.”

“Are you a Potentiate?”

Chance hesitated. He would loathe saying the words, but perhaps he must speak them. “I am a Potentiate. I must pass into the Numin Well.”

“Step into the circle.”

There was a ring of gold on the floor before the cylinder. Chance stepped into it. A thick yellow light fell on him.

“He is a Potentiate,” a single mechanical voice said.

He waited while the light pulsed.

Then the light died.

“You cannot pass,” the collection of many voices pronounced.

“I must pass!”

“Your arm is broken. You have eighty-seven bruises. Three of your ribs are fractured. You are undernourished. There are metallic impurities in your central nervous system. You need to drink water.”

“I must pass! So much depends upon my passing!” If Sarah still lived, alone on that island—or if she were held now, prisoner of the false god! Only by killing Hexus could he hope to then save her.

“Heal your wounds,” the voices said. “And eat properly. Drink water. Then you may pass. Only a Potentiate in perfect health may pass, lest the Aussersein form be flawed.”

Chance ran. He ran around the brains and between two of the frozen dogs of Ma’at. A shrieking grinding of metal sounded from all four of the iron dogs as they struggled to step forward, to chase him, but could not. One managed to turn its head and snap black metal teeth at his passing leg, but nothing more.

Chance ran at the mirror on the far wall. He had recognized the strange otherworldly sheen of it, like the shimmering surface of the Dark Engineers’ trap for Hexus. That, he realized, must be the door to the stars.

He flung himself against the mirrored door—

And hit an immutable surface. He fell to the ground. His broken arm throbbed in pain. “Ah!” he howled in frustration.

“You may not pass,” the many voices said again. “Potentiate, you may not pass.”

CHAPTER

50

S
arah could just see the tops of buildings ahead, when she heard the shriek of metal on metal before them and realized that there were other modghasts now besides the one that, almost timidly, had been following them, just out of view behind them, for a long while.

She and Thetis had run as much as they could, walking only when Thetis needed to slow and catch her breath. The hot dry air of the plain did not help. They sweated profusely and had finished their water. A dark shadow fell on them—“it is only the shadow of Yggdrasil,” Thetis explained when Sarah looked up with fear, expecting another attack from the sky—just seconds before the clattering metallic sounds reached them. Sarah led the way with an extra burst of energy and they mounted one of the barrows.

Just a few hundred paces before them was the long slope that rose to a plateau of shattered buildings and fractured concrete where Yggdrasil was rooted. But between them and that flat place, five ominous heaps of rusted metal, each of different size and shape, scraped through the grass, leaving a broad, torn trail of shredded vegetation and plowed dark earth. Sarah looked to one side and saw
the deer-like modghast that had been following to their left. It now sprinted ahead to join the others. They all seemed to grow—no, to stand and rise. Sarah realized that they were looking at her and Thetis.

“We’ll have to run down, and circle to one side,” Sarah commanded. She dropped the pack of food she had been carrying. Then she drew one sword and took Thetis’s hand in her free hand. “Run!”

They bounded down the barrow, as if fleeing back the way they came, but then cut to the side, to what had been before their right.

Sarah sprinted on her long legs, sword swinging, in the narrow path between barrows.

“Sarah!” Thetis called.

Sarah ran on, not looking back, pulling Thetis along.

“Sarah!” Thetis sounded sharply urgent now. She pulled her hand free. Sarah stopped and looked back.

“We can’t outrun them. Not both of us,” Thetis gasped.

“But.…”

Thetis drew from within her robes a gray metallic egg and held it out, balanced on her palm. “This is something I’d been saving for.…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Sarah didn’t ask. Some weapon, of course. Thetis could have prepared it for the Guardian, for Hexus, for Mimir.

“You must go,” Thetis said. “Save Chance. And tell him… tell him his mother was fearless, in the end.”

“I cannot—”

“Listen, Sarah. I betrayed Seth.”

“What?”

“I could have saved him, and didn’t. No—it’s worse. I… I pushed him off the rocks. I meant to betray him. He knew I was Chance’s mother. I told myself I did it to save Chance, so that I could be on the airship, so that I could prevent the Guardian from learning from Seth that I was Chance’s mother. But really I did it because I was afraid of the Guardian.”

Sarah stood, silent. She did not know what to say. She did not know what to think. Seth!

“But you’ve made me want to redeem myself,” Thetis continued. “You must go. You must. It’s the only way.”

Metal clattered somewhere behind them.

“They’re coming,” Thetis hissed.

Sarah drew her other sword. She turned, took two steps, and then stopped. A preposterous vision came into her head in a flash: she pictured Thetis at the kitchen table of her home in the lands of the Purimen, with her mother and herself, eating pie, sipping wine, talking quietly of Chance and the year’s crop and maybe of a grandchild. And—she believed, just as suddenly—her mother would have liked Thetis. Her mother would have accepted the Junior Mother out of the solidarity of women, and because Thetis was like herself: quiet, a good listener, someone who spoke of her own accord only in intimacy.

Sarah went back to Thetis and fell to her knees in the tall grass before the Junior Mother of the Gotterdammerung. She turned her swords and planted their points, then bowed her head.

“Mother,” she said. “Give me your blessing.”

Tears fell from the eyes of both the women. Thetis put a hand on Sarah’s head.

“Go with my blessing, Sarah Michael—Sarah Kyrien, Ranger of the Purimen, wife of my son… daughter now of mine.”

Sarah sobbed once. And before she lost her will to leave, before she felt unable to quit Thetis to her fate, she snatched up her blades and turned and ran, ran to save Chance.

She heard Thetis calling out behind her, “I’m here, Modghasts! Useful, full of life!”

Sarah turned around one barrow, then another, and was starting up the long slope to the abandoned buildings when a light flashed. She looked back. A shockwave shot across the grass, a white wave of turning blades. It hit her and threw her on her face. Then dirt, and shards of metal, rained down all about her.

When the shower of smoking earth and shattered iron stopped, she rolled over. In the sky above, through a ripple of twisted air, she saw a red airship float over, descending as it sped toward Yggdrasil.

“Damn you, false god!” she shouted. “So many did not die to let you get there first!”

She gripped her swords more tightly, stood, and ran.

Sarah had almost caught up with the red airship, which was turning slowly in the air now as it descended, when she came into a huge square spotted with open wells. She stopped, gasping. At the far end, a huge modghast stood, a spidery heap of sharp and twisted metal. It did not move. Beside it, a disk of metal was bent high into the air, bright cracks of steel showing through the black and gray weathered surface of the metal, indicating that it had been bent and broken recently.

She stole to the side. She would go around. As she came to the edge of the square, crouched over, chest heaving to regain some strength after her frantic run, she got a different perspective on the spidery modghast, and froze. Now she could see that Mimir stood before the modghast, one hand held up, arm outstretched. The modghast also had one of its eight legs held out, the brutal rusted tip of it thrust right through the flesh of Mimir’s upturned palm. They were frozen there, linked where iron pierced makina flesh, both transfixed: Mimir, erect, seeming calm, in her formal black and white suit; the modghast, a still heap of rot and corrosion and refuse.

“Sarah!” a voice called.

She started and turned. The shell of a broken building stood just a few steps away. Wadjet waved to her from one of its gaping windows.

Sarah ran to Wadjet, sheathed her swords, and climbed through the window. Inside she found a stripped, empty space, like all the
other buildings she had passed here. Half of the roof had rotted away. Shadowed clouds shot past overhead. She held out her hand, and Wadjet took it.

“Where’s Chance?” Sarah asked.

“In the Well, I hope. Mimir betrayed us. But I helped Chance escape. How did you get here?”

Sarah told her briefly.

“Then where is Thetis?” Wadjet asked.

“She is dead.”

Wadjet pressed her lips together in frustration.

Sarah pointed toward Mimir and the modghast. “What’s happening? They seem paralyzed.”

“They fight.”

“They’re fighting?”

“A terrible, terrible battle, I suspect. Modghast against makina.”

“Who will win?”

Wadjet shrugged. “If we are fortunate,” Wadjet said, “the god is too late. Chance may already be beyond Earth and deep inside the Well.”

Sarah began to walk toward a hole in the opposite wall. “We’ve had no good fortune. I cannot wait. I must help Chance.”

“But the god.…”

“I’ve faced him before and spitted him on my swords. He said I shan’t do so a second time, but I aim to show him wrong.”

“I.…” Wadjet had not moved.

“You’ve done much,” Sarah said, understanding Wadjet’s reluctance. “Thank you for helping Chance get this far, escaping Mimir.”

This was enough for Wadjet. A reminder of what she hated about the god: he was another builder of cages, another one to bind the boy.

“I’m coming,” she said.

Sarah reached behind and pulled out her knife. She flipped it, held the blade, and offered the handle to Wadjet. The exile of the Stewards took the handle, then tossed the knife, feelings its weight, and said, “It’s a good knife.”

CHAPTER

51

C
hance pulled the gold doors open. The dim hall rose before him to a bright square of sky. Even in the shadow of Yggdrasil, the sky shone brilliant now that his eyes were adjusted to this dim place.

He started up the slope, walking slowly, favoring his suffering broken arm that he had yet again bashed.

It was impossible. His arm would need a month to heal, or more. Nothing to eat or drink could be found in this empty plain. The modghasts roved all this land: the stark, scoured emptiness of the buildings around them revealed how thoroughly the modghasts hunted for anything that they could tear apart and make use of. The danger to Sarah grew each day—each hour—that passed. All this—and the god could not be far behind. Chance could not wait here, to heal. But what else could he do?

Halfway up the long hall, he stooped and picked up the metal rod he had dropped there. He hefted it, slipping his hand down its length, until he had it balanced in his grip.

A shadow fell across the door. Chance looked up. He could see only the figure of a human being, silhouetted against the sky.

“Wadjet?” His voice echoed.

“No, Potentiate,” his brother’s voice responded. “No. It is I, Hexus.”

Another, low figure stepped next to Hexus. The gorilla, in her armor.

Chance took a step backward. And then, instantly, Paul stood before him—Paul’s body stood before him—holding up one arm blistered with running red sores, and in the rotting palm of it the eye of Hexus glared at him.