The Shattered Goddess (16 page)

Monster it was. It was definitely alive. The whole river erupted from unseen bank to unseen bank as the creature’s wings emerged. The sky was blotted out as they spread. Their glistening expanse reflected the torch and lantern light. The full length and breadth of
them were too great for Ginna to imagine, as was the size of the body, thicker than he could see, rising endlessly up into the sky like an avalanche of flesh.

The thing bent around and down. An enormous face was visible for a brief moment, with a gaping mouth wide enough to engulf cities, and round, white patches where the eyes should have been.

The creature was blind, he realized.
It was totally oblivious to their torches, their lanterns, their brave sword-waving. Some of the men threw spears at it in their excitement, without visible effect. The neck straightened. The head shot upward out of sight; the body rose like the sheer side of a cliff. Except when a flipper went by (they did not seem to be in pairs) it was hard to tell that the thing was moving. There was another
blast of turbulence as a second set of wings, fully as immense as the first, burst forth and unfolded above the surface.

Ginna heard the leader’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. He was huddled in a waterfall. The railing strained. He felt his grip on it going. He held on with all his strength, but still he was slipping.

Then, suddenly as it had begun, the thundering of the creature’s
passage diminished. The waves were less fierce. He looked ahead and saw the tail of the thing tapering down from the sky like a cyclone. Then it was no longer touching the water. Swiftly it rose out of sight. There was a single clap of thunder from above, and all was still.

The river grew calm almost at once. The ship drifted. Only a few of the torches still sputtered. The lantern had been
swamped. The torches were relighted or replaced with dry ones.

Amaedig climbed up to where he still clung to the railing. She was soaked and shaken, but the terror had passed, leaving her exhausted and shivering with cold. She sat by him for a while, saying nothing. He was silent too as the sailors went about their tasks, putting the ship in order.

“It must have been a mile long,”
he said at last. “Longer. I think it was one of those creatures of the new world. We mean nothing to it. Do you suppose that sometime, when the change is completed, creatures like that will look on the remains of what we knew and wonder, as we did, at the ruins? Tharanodeth and me, I mean. What will they think?”

“I don’t know...”

“I think they’ll remember light, but only as an abstraction.
It will be utterly foreign to them.”

“I suppose so.”

On the lower deck, the men stopped their work. Arshad led a kind of service. His followers chanted, pointing their swords at the sky.

* * * *

The oarsmen were rowing again, singing a low, melancholy song about the hopeless defense of the last tower of the last fortress. “With a sword in my hand and light in my heart till
the end” was the refrain. The lookout joined in, as did the other man now stationed on the foredeck to direct the lantern. Even Ginna and Amaedig sang the refrains. Arshad had returned to his cabin. The ship crept cautiously downriver.

They passed two mountains which came to the water’s edge. The beacon was played over the cliff faces on either side, revealing immense carvings, bulky figures
in armor wearing crowns, a naked superman wrestling a dragon, a school of fishes swirling around a lady with outstretched hands. Beyond the carvings were stone buildings hewn out of the solid rock. Overhead a natural bridge had been shaped to resemble a man-made one. A squat tower stood in the middle of the span. A stone bird was frozen in flight at its top. A gust of wind blew and the bird let
out a long, low wail.

No one knew what place this was. Ginna asked Yanotas if it were all right to call Arshad and ask him, but his sole response was a slightly shocked, “No.”

So they watched in wonder and silence as the river carried them under the bridge, past the walls and houses and towers which grew out of the mountainside like toadstools in the morning. When these things had
passed away behind, and two wide plains stretched away on either side to meet the darkness, the singing resumed. The song was very simple, and after a time Ginna was allowed to lead. After each of his lines came a response and oar strokes in time with it.

Night came on. The western sky went black. The song changed into something braver, to defend the company against the spirit of darkness.

All paused for an evening meal of biscuits and fresh fish. For all the world had changed, the river was still full of fish. A man was catching them with a hook one after another. Ginna noticed there was no bait on the hook, but did not ask how it worked. It occurred to him that the Tashadim had been very kind to him and to Amaedig, but still they were a mysterious order preoccupied with oaths
and secrets, and it might abuse hospitality to inquire too far.

As they sat eating a man came to Ginna, touched him on the shoulder, and said, “The master will see you now.” He rose at once, and Amaedig rose also, but the man shook his head and bade her be seated, then sat down beside her and joined in the meal. Alone, Ginna went to the cabin of Arshad.

He descended the few steps before
the leader’s door, hesitated, then knocked lightly. There was no reply, but the door was swung inward a crack. He pushed it open and entered, closing it again behind him.

The walls of the narrow cabin were hung with intricate tapestries of faded colors, mostly angular, orange figures on blue backgrounds, a style Ginna had never seen in Ai Hanlo. A single lamp hung from the ceiling on a chain.
Shadows shifted with the movement of the river. Everywhere wood was creaking, more so than one heard on deck. There were trunks, leather cases of scrolls, and books lying about. A glittering sword with an immensely wide, curved blade hung on the opposite wall.

Beneath the sword, seated on the bare wood, was the old man, his legs crossed, his back upright. He gazed directly at the youth,
still as a statue, saying nothing. He wore a scarlet robe with the hood pulled up.

Ginna stood before him, expecting a greeting or something. But the man made no response to his presence. He felt awkward and vaguely afraid that he might have transgressed some unknown law of courtesy. He wanted Amaedig at his side. She always seemed to be able to get him out of these situations.

“Nay,
your companion cannot be with ye this time,” said Arshad in a low monotone. “Your own man ye must become in time, and care for yourself.”

Ginna gaped.

“You know what I was thinking!”

Arshad smiled and relaxed.

“There be no magic involved. As I came down the long path into the cabin, I saw ye there, and the rest was plainly revealed. I have watched ye two. She is good for
ye, and I think that is why it has come to pass that she is with ye. She knows more of the world than ye and can guard ye from human dangers, while ye are more of the spiritual world and know more of other things. The two of ye are in balance.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The Master pointed to a spot on the floor before him. “Sit there, but first blow out the lantern, that I may
behold ye by your own light.”

Ginna obeyed, folding his hands together and making a ball of light. He imprisoned it in a cage of fingers.

“Suppose you were to take two of them and press them together? What would happen?”

“When I was little I used to play games with them, and I tried it. They burst.”

“Then the first lesson for ye will be to prevent them from bursting.”

“Master—they call you that; is it right for me to?—you said you were returning to the cabin, as if you had been someplace else. But I saw you sitting here.”

“That will be your second lesson. But let us get on with your first. The creature of the river was surely a sign that there is little time left. For your third lesson, if we ever journey that far, I shall explain to ye why all seeming
coincidences are illusion, linked invisibly by webs of meaning. Consider: if things were random, no man could read the signs or interpret omens. The world would be very confused.”

They sat for hours. Ginna juggled balls of light, sending flickering shadows whirling across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Then he remained still, with one ball between his fingers, and Arshad taught him to truly
see for the first time. It was as if he had been born blind, and now his eyes were opened. He saw the crack between two pieces of planking as a vast chasm, in which a whole tiny world was contained. A knot in the wood was the center of a whirling storm. And he heard for the first time. The creaking of the ship became a crescendo of voices speaking words he couldn’t quite make out.

Then,
somewhere in the course of events, of words, of images, thoughts, sounds and shadows, all flowing slowly past him like the river, he was half aware of making a ball of light, letting it rise, making another, then catching the first. He held both of them. He stared at them. He saw them more clearly than he ever had before, as Hadel of Nagé had described them, as worlds, with tiny ghosts of seas and
continents whirling around. He concentrated on them, willing them not to burst, to become one, and slowly pressed them together. They merged into a perfect sphere, twice as large as either had been.

But the lesson was not over. There was no applause for his feat Arshad commanded him and guided him further, teaching him a formula to be chanted over and over until it became a subverbal, subconscious
rhythm, something which shut out the rest of existence, leaving the mind unfettered for a single task.

He felt power building up in his body. He wanted to stand up, to stretch, to seize the mast of the ship and break it over his knee, all in celebration of his strength.

This feeling passed. After a time he was not aware of his body at all, except for the working of his hands. He made
another ball of light, and another, and another. Somehow the first one did not drop to the floor and pop out of existence. It hung in the air, and he was able to add new ones one by one, until he stretched his arms wide and still could not encompass the glowing, spinning globe. The cabin was filled with its light. His eyes were dazzled; he had not seen such brightness since before everything had
happened, since last he had seen a true sunrise in a blue sky. The thought came to him that he was building a new sun to be released from the ship, to drift into the air and dispel the darkness.

That was not the old man’s intent. He did a most remarkable thing. He reached
through
the bubble and still it did not vanish. He stood inside it, reached out, took Ginna by the wrist, and drew him
in.

They were no longer in the cabin on the ship. Ginna looked up into a hazy sky. Shadows pressed close all around, but the world was suffused with gentle light. They stood on a polished stone floor at the foot of a flight of marble stairs. Each step was easily as high as the boy’s shoulders. The staircase had been built for giants.

“Where are we?”

“Wonder! I have never had
a student so adept, so powerful. Ye stand where many men struggle all their lives to reach and never arrive.”

“But what place?”

“In the realm of the Powers. Ye have climbed a little way.”

“Can I go further? It should be easy now.”

“No, it will take time.”

“But—” And before Arshad could say anything, the boy was running toward the bottom step. As soon as he had moved
at all, and was out of the space enclosed by the bubble of light, the whole scene winked out.

They were back in the cabin, Arshad standing, Ginna still running. At once he fell over a trunk and crashed against the side of the ship in a painful sprawl. He grabbed a shelf to steady himself, but it came loose, showering papers.

“Let that be another lesson for ye this day,” said the teacher
sternly. “Obey always. Do not act rashly. Be glad ye didn’t break a leg for your antics. Now go. We have had enough for now.”

On deck he found Amaedig sitting among the sailors, helping to mend a broken oar by fixing bands of metal around it. It was well past dawn. No one was rowing. The ship glided slowly on the current. The sail was filled with wind. Most of the sailors sat in groups,
talking, working at little chores, or finishing up the remains of a meal. Some were doing something he did not understand, huddled together on a silken rug. They might have been praying.

“Hello,” he said, and his words were like bubbles rising slowly from the bottom of the river. He had not realized how tired he was. The world consisted of the chilly air on his face and dimly moving shapes.
There was a sharp smell of tar.

He slept.

* * * *

When he awoke, the sky was dark. The oarsmen were rowing vigorously in silence. Every few strokes one of them would glance over his shoulder. The helmsman peered intensely into the gloom ahead. At the bow, the shaft of light from the lantern was like a blind man’s cane, groping in the endless night.

Ginna sat up groggily
and leaned against the mast. It occurred to him that the men were tense. They must be expecting something.

Torches snapped and sputtered. The oars creaked. Otherwise the world was quiet, the water still as oil.

He found Amaedig in the prow, sitting with Arshad. They were playing some kind of board game he had never seen before, with carven pegs fitted in holes to represent ships, castles,
and so on. He squatted down beside them.

“So ye are with us again,” Arshad said. “I was about to have ye wakened.”

“Hello,” said Amaedig.

“Hello... Good morning, or evening…”

“It is evening,” said Arshad. He concentrated on the board for a minute, then moved several pieces in a dark strip around the edges. To Amaedig he said, “Behold, and learn a lesson. Ye have taken precautions
in the physical world, but in the spiritual world ye are unprepared. Thus I win the game.”

“What game is it?” Ginna asked.

“Some day I shall teach ye. But not now.” He put the pieces in a leather bag, folded the board, and stood up, holding both. “Come here, ye two.”