Gods of Earth (9 page)

“What is it?”

“The appearance, and the taste, will probably disappoint. However, it has all the nutrients that a Puriman, or coyote, requires.”

Chance bit into it warily. The taste was alien but mild, closest in his experience to the smell of yeast and starting fermentation. He ate the two bars and then accepted a glass of water.

Mimir showed him then that one of the small doors in the paneled-off section opened onto a bathroom, with a toilet and sink. The far wall was lined with windows. No need to be concerned for privacy at this height, Chance realized.

When he came back out, Chance felt a little better. His face and hands were clean. He had torn some strips of clothes from his ruined coat to tie the soles crudely back onto the front of his shoes. Though the strange food sat in his stomach uneasily, his hands no longer shook. He drank some more water, and then sat on the bench again, drawing the Guardian’s cloak tight around himself. Mimir watched him, unselfconsciously. The Guardian stood still before the bow windows, as fixed as a gray statue, brooding over the green earth that passed below.

“How long till we reach the Sunken City?” Chance asked Mimir.

“This is the Puriman term for Disthea? We shall arrive there before the evening.”

He sighed and nodded impatiently. Only getting off the airship would relieve the gnawing anxiety he felt. He turned and looked back out the window. The river was far behind now, and they were crossing directly over the Sabremounts. The tall hills passed below, covered with trees, through which occasionally a crest of rock was visible on a few peaks.

“It seems so big—the world—from up here.”

“Very big,” Seth growled.

“Once it was a common pronouncement of human beings that the world was small,” Mimir said. “But in that era there were thousands of times more human beings. Perhaps the world seems smaller to your kind when it is crowded.”

Seth yipped.

“Eat more?” the coyote asked.

Mimir went to get him another brick of food.

The night before Chance had slept uneasily on the hard ground, and sitting now on the soft bench of the airship, he was nodding asleep when there was a hard knock at the window. Seth yelped. Chance snapped his head to the side to see a hunched black bird perched on the outside sill.

Not a real bird, he realized as he jumped up, but a mechanical one, such as the Guardian had destroyed, with black wings of scratched metal and glittering glass for a cyclopean eye. Mimir came to the window and slid the glass up, letting through wind and the roar of the engines. The thing waddled inside with the patience and haughtiness of a crow. Mimir closed the window, and the two Makine stared at each other awhile. Chance had the distinct impression that somehow they were communicating. The Guardian came and stood by his side.

Finally Mimir turned to face them. “My syndicate brother has observed the god.”

“Is Sarah with him?” Chance asked. He added, “And my brother?”

“The Hexus rides on horseback, heading west. There are two humans with him, also on horseback. A male and a female.”

“Sarah,” Seth barked. “Pa-Pa-Paul.”

“It must be,” Chance agreed.

“They appear to have suffered no significant trauma,” Mimir added, after facing the bird again.

“Thank the mercy of God,” Chance said. “Thank God.”

Mimir nodded noncommittally, and then lifted the window again. The bird makina waddled out and off the edge of the airship, falling toward the trees below before opening its wings and taking to the sky.

The sun had passed its zenith when they came over a broad sea. The ship turned to the south, following the tall shoreline. Chance went and stood next to the Guardian. He could see nothing before them but a dark blue expanse, touched here and there with white-capped waves. On the horizon, to the west, there appeared to be a stretch of sand, but Chance thought it might instead just be the misting sea air of the distance.

“This is the great Western Salt Sea?”

“Yes, Puriman.”

“Where is the Sunken City?”

The Guardian pointed south. Chance watched the horizon over the next half hour as a dark shadow on the sea resolved itself into a black line, with spires of white beyond it. Soon he could discern that the spires were buildings, and that behind the buildings a second black line held back the sea. This was the Crystal Wall that wrapped around the Sunken City, a band or ring that reached nearly the height of the many towers of Disthea. Judging by the depth of the shadowed city streets beyond the wall, which Chance assumed were on what would have been—without the wall—the bottom of the sea, he judged the sea was more than one hundred paces deep around the city. It looked like the wall rose another thirty paces as high again above the waves. Chance had imagined that the famed crystal wall would be bright and shining. But rising from the water, with the city behind it, the wall shone darkly. Waves crashed and foamed against it, white against the black.

The Sunken City was huge, he realized. He had been told that, but the scale still stunned him. It stretched as long and wide as one of the legs of Walking Man Lake, and towers thrust from it as thick as trees in an ancient forest. Again his heart sank and he thought with dread,
What am I doing here
? He had come too far to have any choice now but to go with the Guardian—he could not run from this airship as he had run from their camp—but doubt again troubled him as he looked at this city made by lost men, during a fallen age.

The ship began to descend, and more of the city became visible.

“Why did they build it underwater?” Chance asked the Guardian.

“It was above water when it was built.” The Guardian pointed. “There, that is the Broken Hand that Reaches, Guild Hall of the Gotterdammerung.”

In the center of the Sunken City, one building rose higher than all the others. Four sides twisted up toward a flat comb, out of which five broken small towers arose. Each of these ended with a rough patchwork of glass.

“I saw it before. With the towers.”

The Guardian snapped his head sideways to peer intently at him. “How?” His voice was deep, shaking the air around them. Seth slipped to Chance’s side, his ears flat.

Frightened by this reaction, Chance answered in a whisper. “When the false god… It made me see things. In the barn.”

The Guardian relaxed visibly and looked back out at the city.

“Then,” Chance continued, “I saw this tower, but the smaller towers on top were not broken. They were there, tall.”

The Guardian nodded. “The tower is like an arm, and the top of it was shaped first as a hand, reaching for the sky. The pride of the Theogenics Guild, mark of their craft. During the Theomachia the fingers were broken, and the Theogenics Guild was crushed. The Gotterdammerung hooded the broken stumps of the finger towers with glass.”

“It’s all so large,” Chance said.

“The city was much larger once. Long ago. This is but the husk of a city.”

“But ga-good food there,” Seth growled enthusiastically.

“You think so?” Chance asked him.

Seth nodded. His tall wagged. He licked his snout with relish.

Chance could see now that the wall was wide and spotted periodically with short spires. The ship nosed toward one of these, where the wall came closest to the Broken Hand that Reaches. The airship’s engines strained audibly as it struggled against the shifting winds. The short spire turned out to be a silver cone, about twice as tall as a man. They drifted close, and then the rope paid out of the nose of the ship again. To Chance’s surprise, some kind of metal arm lifted from the short tower and grabbed the rope out of the air. The engines fell silent. They turned in the wind but did not drift away.

The tower reeled them in, till the nose of the airship was tight against it. Mimir cracked open the door. Cool, damp air whistled through, stirring Chance’s hair. She lowered the ramp, which bobbed uncertainly a few paces above the top of the wall. The ramp folded open again, doubling its length, and the end landed with a clack on the ground. As the ship bobbed in the wind, the ramp rhythmically scraped, then lifted, scraped, then lifted from the wall.

“Come,” the Guardian said. He started down the ramp. Seth followed. Chance looked at Mimir, whose face remained inscrutable, and then together they strode down.

The sea crashed against the wall below. Seagulls hovered over them, shrieking.

“It smells different,” Chance said. “Not like a lake.”

“Saltwater. Sea,” Seth growled. “Nice.”

The wall beneath their feet was covered with a layer of bird dung and dust and sea wrack dropped there by gulls. Chance kicked at it and saw clear crystal below the dirt.

“It really is made of glass,” he whispered.

“It is fabricated of diamond,” Mimir corrected. “The wall is a single unbroken ring of diamond, in one piece.” Mimir pointed off to where the wall faded into mist. “It was an extraordinary engineering accomplishment.”

From this closer view, the towers looked old and weathered, and though taller and much more numerous, not much different from the abandoned towers they had seen in the Sabremounts. Many of the facets on the black and mirrored towers were cracked or even shattered away. The stone buildings had weathered with gray and black streaks. There was no sign of activity in the high peaks of these towers, except for some distant airships that sailed the narrow channels between them.

A small platform of metal stood on the interior side of the wall. Stairs descended from it out of view. The Guardian tested his weight on it. Then, satisfied, he said, “We will go down here, and walk directly to the Broken Hand that Reaches. Chance, Seth, come.”

Chance edged toward the stairs, barely lifting his feet. He did not like the look of the thin metal that formed the steps. The height made him feel a cold sweat in his palms. He looked back and saw Mimir had not moved.

“What about Mimir?” Chance asked.

The Guardian looked at her. “Only as guest of a dweller of Disthea may a makina set foot in the city,” he said.

“Perhaps these are special circumstances,” she said, “meriting that we transgress this rule in order to satisfy a more demanding imperative.”

“Do not claim that I or Chance hosts you, makina. Nor are we dwellers of Disthea.”

Mimir looked at them and said nothing. The silence dragged on a moment. Chance wondered if she were considering whether to enter the city illicitly or to yield to the rule.

Seth yelped softly, getting their attention.

“I, I, I am a citizen,” Seth croaked slowly, struggling to say the words clearly. “She will be, be my guest.”

Chance stared at the coyote in wonder. The Guardian turned and started down the long steps into the Sunken City. Behind Mimir, the ramp to the ship folded up. Mimir gestured toward the stair. Chance followed the Guardian, with Seth and the makina close behind.

CHAPTER

10

C
hance wanted to rest his wobbly legs after the long descent, as they stood on the shining street at the bottom of the monstrous stairs. Condensation from the Crystal Wall rained down on them. But the Guardian immediately strode off down the long street, lined by weathered buildings that seemed to lean over the road and greedily seize all of the sunlight, forming a dusky canyon. They hurried to follow.

“Something i-i-is wrong,” Seth said.

“What?” Chance looked around. There were people in the street, walking back and forth, seemingly unconcerned. People of all ages, men and women. At a glance, they were indistinguishable from Purimen but that their clothes were more colorful, more finely cut. Chance had the strange sense, for a moment, that perhaps they were Purimen, hurrying around in this impure place, looking for something made according to the strictures of Puriman creed. He expected each person they passed to stop, stare, and ask questions of him. Would these people be angry, or even frightened, to see the Guardian and the makina and a soulburdened coyote walking their streets? Such sights in the Valley of the Walking Man would cause
people to gather fearfully, and eventually Rangers would come and drive the strangers away. And yet, no one did more than glance at him. Even the monstrous Guardian, whose hood again covered his head, only earned curious brief stares.