The Shattered Goddess (20 page)

“Please spare me further explanations. I’ve had enough.”

“I’ll send for Amaedig.” Something like a hummingbird made of pure light hovered before her face. She spoke to it in a kind of chirping and it darted off.

The two of them remained as they were,
speaking no more, until Amaedig arrived. She emerged from the forest with the messenger flying circles around her head. As soon as it saw the lady, it vanished.

“Hello,” she said, first to the Mother of The Goddess, then to Ginna. She was immediately ill at ease from the look on his face—sorrow, fear, resignation. “What has happened?”

“What had to, I suppose,” he said.

“Now what
sort of miracle do you want to perform?” said the Mother.

“It’s just that... it’s so unfair that she is like she is, because she is really very beautiful. I want to—”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

Amaedig backed away, her mouth forming a wordless “Oh,” her hand covering it There were tears in the corners of her eyes. She looked first at Ginna, then at the lady, then back at Ginna,
half afraid, half comprehending.

The lady stood up. Ginna remained seated.

“Come to us,” she said, and Amaedig hesitantly approached. “Sit down in front of him.” She obeyed. “Ginna, touch your hands to her shoulders, and if this miracle is yours to perform, the rest will come to you.”

He did as he was told. The lady placed her right hand on his shoulder. He felt a force rushing
through him. Amaedig trembled at his touch, and then, subtly, in a manner his eyes could not follow, his hands were not on her shoulders anymore, but within her body, as if he had dipped them into water. His hands met and parted, and light shone through her back, as if her flesh and clothing had become transparent. Slowly the sphere of light rose, like a luminous fish swimming up lazily from die
bottom of a pool, and it passed out of her, into the air, rose a short way, then fell to the ground and burst.”

He released her, and it was only after she stood up and turned to face him he could tell that her shoulders were no longer stooped or crooked. Her face seemed less plain. Somehow he had known it would be so. He felt a deep sense of calm.

“Take a new name,” said the Mother
of The Goddess. “Be called Tamarel. It is a kind of flower which grows among the mountains of Cadmoc. Its pod is knobby and ugly; its seeds are scattered far on the wind; but when it blossoms it is the most beautiful of all. The name means late blooming.”

“This is what I wanted for you,” said Ginna.

She seemed about to say something, but could not. She fell to her knees, then prostrate
before him in an attitude of supplication and thanksgiving.

As a worshipper would before a god.

Now there were tears in his eyes as he raised her up and gazed into her face. He saw not his friend there, but a girl filled with awe, with wonder, and indeed with gratitude, but the gratitude of the inferior for the unearned gift from the infinitely superior. She was saying, without words,
you’re one of them, not like me,
and with that he knew he had lost her, that he never would be a minstrel or any other sort of humble person wandering across the world with her at his side. He had felt that knowledge’s icy threat before and rebelled against it, but now it settled over him gently, like a cloud, and all resistance drifted away.

He began to weep aloud, and Tamarel, who had
been Amaedig, startled and confused at the sorrow of her god, crawled away from him a distance, then got up and ran into the forest

He turned to the Mother, who, even as he watched, was growing older. He had never seen a face as wrinkled as hers or a body as frail. The forest darkened.

Weakly she pointed to a staff leaning against a tree.

“Take it.” Her voice was a faint croaking.
“It contains my daughter’s tears. She wept as you did. It will light your way.”

He rose and took the staff. At his touch the globe at the upper end began to glow, and he saw that it was the carven scepter she had been carrying when first he met her.

Powers came to bear her away.

She is dead
, they said minutes later, their pronouncement echoing through the forest. All light faded
except for the staff, and the Powers themselves, which flickered among the trees.

He was exhausted. He slept, and dreamed of a great wheel taller than any tower. Its spokes were the bones of giants, and out of its rim living hands grew. They came up from beneath the ground as fists, but as the wheel turned they opened, wriggled their fingers, and made strange signs.

The thing was horrible.
He wanted to run away from it, but was drawn toward it, a sick feeling of helplessness growing ever greater, his legs disobeying the commands of his mind. Unwillingly he walked, one foot placing itself in front of the other, across a barren, muddy plain, toward the wheel, which turned with a sucking, slopping sound.

He was naked. The air was cold. The mud oozed between his toes.

The
hands sensed his presence. All of them paused, fingers outstretched, to feel for his approach.

But those which groped for him rose up with the turning of the wheel and were gone; it was a newly arrived hand which reached out quick as a striking viper and caught him by the hair, dragging him up off the ground, dangling like a fish on a hook.

He rose out of darkness into light. The sky
above him became a pale blue and he was carried up toward the blinding disc of the sun, the sun he had not seen in so long and barely remembered. Swarms of birds flew past, singing. The blue gave way to brilliant white and he felt the warmth of the sun touch every part of his body. He was near to the uppermost part of the wheel, and no longer dangled, but lay back on the turning rim, among hands
which touched him gently. The air was thinner up here, or sweeter, for he was filled with a giddy joy and all terror passed away. He was content to lie still and ride with the wheel beneath the sun, drifting from east to west across the world.

Then the downward plunge began, and his feet tumbled over his head and he was dangling again, dropping downward into the darkness and the sucking
mud.

CHAPTER 12

The Final Encounter

When he awoke, it was still night in the forest He did not know how long he had slept. The staff had fallen from his grip. He groped around for it, and it glowed again at his touch. There was a hush over all. No Powers moved in the trees. The only sounds were the rustling of leaves as he stirred and the beating of his own heart.

He stood
up, holding the staff before him, and began to walk steadily, forcing himself to keep his legs moving and not to shorten each stride until he wasn’t moving at all. If he paused even for an instant now, he knew, he would never be able to continue. He fixed his mind on Ai Hanlo, on Hadel of Nagé’s study, recalling that day so long ago when he had first glimpsed this wood and heard the bubbling of its
fountain.

Onward he went, trying to comport himself with courage and dignity, with resignation, but still with the ability to face his fate like a warrior, to grab his doom by the beard and wrestle. Heroes in epics did it that way. But he wasn’t a hero. His life, he had been told, wasn’t an epic. Nothing would come out so neatly. He was afraid. He felt like he was walking to the slaughterhouse.

He imagined the trees to be long-faced, somber old men, with beards down to their ankles, gazing at him as he passed without caring where he went or why.

Ai Hanlo arose in his mind in every detail, every texture.

He passed the fountain. Water no longer flowed from the hourglass. Underbrush grew steadily thicker. He had to force his way through branches and thorns. Then the trees
towered over him, standing close together, until they formed a nearly solid wall. Like a worm, he wriggled through the crevices.

Behind him, the forest began to fill with faint light. He looked back and saw the trees silhouetted like the legs of an army of giants. He turned away from the light, into the darkness. He knew that was the way he had to go.

After a while, he couldn’t see
light anymore. The ground felt less than wholly solid. He closed his eyes once, then opened them with a yelp. He had thought himself falling. He held the dragon-headed staff close to his face, and went on. The darkness and the massive trees closed in around him. He was smothering, but he held the staff like some futile, brief candle and went on. It was as if the whole forest had become one vast,
rotted log, and he were tunneling through it

He thought again of Hadel’s study, and then imperceptibly, as he squeezed through a tight space, the forest became something else. The dark jaws of the earth had closed on him, and he was filled with the paralyzing dread of being stuck there between the forest and the world forever, when he noticed that the tree trunk which pressed against his
back was rounded, covered with rough and mossy bark as usual, but the one in front of him was flat, very regularly pitted, and harder to the touch than any bark.

It was a stone wall.

He wriggled through, his clothing tearing as he went, until he stumbled out onto a wooden floor, crashed into a shelf of books, knocked over a lampstand, and staggered to a halt. There was no light. He
had dropped the staff. He crouched down and groped around for it, found it, and stood up in its light, looking around. He knew where he was. He had spent many hours in this room, in the inner palace of Ai Hanlo, in the land of Randelcainé.

Something stirred beyond the circle of his light

He peered in the direction of the cluttered desk, moving forward carefully, holding the glowing
staff before him.

Clothing rustled. A chair creaked. There was a frantic fumbling. A bottle dropped to the floor.

“Please! No closer! Take that light away!”

He stopped, astonished.

“Hadel? Teacher?”

“Yes, it is I.”

He could only make out the dim outline of a shape behind the desk, and something was
wrong
about it.

“I—I—you can’t imagine how glad I am to
see you alive! And you speak! How? Did you restore your voice by magic?”

“I speak by a means you soon shall know, boy. I cannot say more just now. I am glad you are here. Please back away a few feet and put out that light. Don’t ask me why.”

He did as instructed, slipping the staff through his belt. It glowed sullenly, like an old coal. Now he could see little but himself, and his
hand in front of his face was a shadow.

“Are you well, teacher?”

“Yes, I am. I am in a better state than I ever have been before. You should appreciate it Ginna. You will be like me before long.”

He felt a touch of dread, as if he stood atop a tower which had just shifted half an inch or so, enough to tell him its foundations were being slowly ground to dust.

Hadel’s voice
was not as he remembered it. The low monotone was emotionless. Sometimes words came out slowly or imperfectly, as if the speaker were unused to the mechanism of mouth and throat, or even the technique of language.

“What happened while I was gone?”

“Much... oh, so much... Kaemen has filled the world with darkness, as needs it must be filled. Yes, that is what he did. I did not see the
beginning of the act, though. I locked myself in this room, and he besieged me, first with his guards, then with... others. His magic smothered me like a damp, stinking pillow. I did my best to hold out against it I sealed the doors and windows, the cracks between the floorboards, the chinks in the walls. So I did not look upon his great beginning, but I can imagine how it was. One day the golden
dome was no longer golden and the sky was dark. I can imagine the darkness flowing out of the inner city like water from a fountain. In the mornings the shadows between the houses did not disperse. More and more gathered each night, joining together, and the feeble days could not drive them away. And... in a way I did not merely imagine this... I came to have memories. But only after I had succumbed
to the inevitable. I held out I fought bravely, but it was inevitable. I am not ashamed...”

Now all Ginna’s worst fears were realized. He tried not to weep; he tried to be brave and show dignity, but his voice betrayed him.

“You didn’t surrender. No, you didn’t give up and go over to him. Please tell me you didn’t.”

“You sound so hurt. Can you forgive the weakness of an old man?...
Ah!” Hadel let out a grunt of pain. “... it was not weakness. No, I ran out of candles. That was it I ran out of candles, oil for my lamps, and magic. The room got dark. I was still sealed in, but I dwelt in the darkness for a long time, even as the world did. Yes, yes ... in time I could feel its currents and the cool, soft textures of the shadows that settled upon me. Darkness was a thing
tangible. It spoke to me, first in dreams, but then as I was awake. It mocked me. Then it praised my fortitude. Then it was soothing. And, after a long while I came to love the darkness. I cannot say when. If a cloth is wet, can you tell the very moment has become dry? It was a slow change. That was how I came to speak again.”

“How could you?”

The chair scraped against the floor. Slippers
shuffled, moving around to the front of the desk. Floorboards creaked, as did the desk itself. The old man was leaning on it as he made his way, step by step, slow as a stone statue only halfway brought to life.

“I have just told you how,” the flat voice said. “Now believe me that you will understand what it was like when you have gone through it yourself.”

Ginna backed away. The wall
was solid behind him. No forest, only stone.

“Stay away from me!”

“Why are you afraid?” The dragging footsteps neared him. The voice was very strange. It was not Hadel speaking, he told himself. It was something foul and twisted crouching on Hadel’s shoulders, gibbering in this dry whisper.

“Stop! Tell me one thing first. What happened to everybody else? In the palace. In the
city.”

And the other paused. “Oh, the others? Why they died, or they went mad and then died, or they dissolved into the darkness, I suppose. Only a few of them did as I did and became part of the new world. I only want the best for you, Ginna. I want you to go on living, even as I live.”

The footsteps continued, even more unsteadily beyond reach of the desk.

“Don’t touch me!
I don’t want—”

Ginna’s hand remembered the staff. Before he realized what he was doing, he pulled it out and the end flared to life. He held it into the face of the one who stood within an arm’s length of him.

Both of them screamed, he out of repugnance and horror at what he saw, the other out of agony, like a man burning alive.

Still Ginna held up the light, rapt in ghastly
fascination. Hadel, or what had been Hadel, recoiled and cowered back against the desk. Half of the man’s head was absorbed in a wet, blubbery mass. It was hard to see its color in the brilliant light as the Nagéan writhed and twisted, covering and uncovering the thing, but there was a suggestion of dung, and another of dried blood.

But it wasn’t dried. Still liquid, running, dripping, quivering,
it changed shape even as he watched. He saw that the stuff had flowed over the forehead to cover the eyes, but there it ran thin, and the fear-filled eyes glistened beneath a translucent film. The nose was untouched, but the jelly bubbled out of the mouth, down the chin and neck. Now Ginna knew how Hadel could speak, and why the voice was not his own. It was as if a vast tumor had distorted
the shape of his head, bulging more to the left than to the right, entirely hiding one ear and not the other; but this was an animate thing. It had two membranous, bony wings, on the top, which now flapped furiously in a useless attempt to drive away the light.

Ginna drew his knife. All this had been like a delirious dream of a madman in a fever, but a rational thought came to him. He would
cut the parasite away and free his friend, or, failing that, kill him and free him that way.

Hadel dropped to the floor and lay still, his chest heaving. Ginna knelt down beside him, the staff in one hand, the knife in the other.

The wings were a blur of motion. The blade flashed in the light.

“Nahgg—”
The teacher sat up and rolled over, pushing the boy away with his shoulder.
Ginna fell back, off balance and surprised at the action, still holding the knife and staff. When he recovered, Hadel was under the desk, kicking wildly, burrowing into the debris like some mole dug up by a plough.

Ginna clambered to his feet. He sheathed his knife. He couldn’t bring himself to do what he had to do. He had to get out. He ran for the door, and fumbled with the latch. His
fingers knew it and worked of their own accord.

He swung the door wide and ran into the unlighted corridor beyond. It gaped like a mouth and swallowed him.

* * * *

He heard a woman screaming. He had never heard screams like that before, not even from Kaemen’s burning victims. The level of fear and pain in that voice was beyond anything he could imagine.

He followed the
sound along corridors, across broad rooms, down flights of stairs, through tunnels. He had no idea where he was. He had lived here all his life but now, in the dark, he was lost.

The place was intensely cold. His breath came in clouds. Through the thick soles of his boots he could feel the icy stones beneath him.

He held up the glowing staff to see where he was and willed it to become
brighter. To his surprise, it did, and he remembered what he had been told by Hadel—when he had still been truly Hadel—by Arshad, and by the Mother of The Goddess, about whatever he might meet but then, on reflection, that too seemed a trap. The more he developed strange abilities, the farther he drifted from being himself. He could never forget the look on Amaedig’s face when last he saw her.
No, now she was Tamarel, changed by his hand. He tried to convince himself that once this was all over, things would go back to normal. But he knew he never had been a very good liar.

The screaming came again, impossibly louder.

He neared a wall, and the light revealed writhing, multi-colored serpents all around him, piled upon one another by the hundreds, their scales glistening.
He jumped back, startled, but then saw that they only seemed to wriggle and their scales seemed to sparkle as he moved, as the light from his staff was reflected. He was in a room he had never seen before, the walls and floors of which were entirely covered with serpent mosaics made of tiny, polished bits of tile. In the middle of the room stood a pedestal, on which stood the familiar double image
of The Goddess, two statues back to back, one caressed by black serpents, the other by white.

The screaming came. He had no time to consider what the serpent symbolism might mean. Someone was suffering unspeakable torments as he stood there. So he ran, fumbling among the draperies that blocked the exit from the serpent chamber, his footsteps echoing along another hallway lined with empty
alcoves. He came to another wide room and skipped gingerly among embracing skeletons which covered the entire floor. He climbed a flight of stairs, descended another, and came through an archway into an open space.

* * * *

There was no way he could see that he was outdoors, but the air against his face was even colder and there was a slight breeze. The smell of decay and must decreased.
The place was less close.

The screaming was right there, heart-stopping, ear-splitting, quite overwhelming any urge to rescue anyone. The screaming was a horror in itself, a tangible thing.

He crossed the last few feet of the yard cautiously, his staff outstretched before him, and he saw the source of the hideous noise. It was a woman’s head, the eyes rolled up white, the jaw slack,
the tongue hanging flaccid. It was obviously dead. It could not be screaming.

And yet the sound issued forth like acid from a funnel. A dark hand held it above the pavement. As Ginna approached, his light gave the gloom above and around the head form and substance. The darkness trembled with ponderous motion. A dozen hulking shapes were only suggested: here an arm like carven iron, there
the long, flabby face of a boneless horse with a single eye like a glistening pustule, there again the immense, toothy jaws of a crocodile on the shoulders of a man, there a blind face covered with bony plates. And again, tree-like towers of legs bent in a crouch, unseen wings flapping like sailcloth, and hard, sharp nails clicking on the pavement And here, and here, and here, eyes glowing like red
coals opening all at once at a silent command, floating in the darkness asymmetrically. A putrid wind came wheezing out of a dozen mouths.