Читать книгу The Shattered Goddess - Darrell Schweitzer - Страница 8

CHAPTER 4

The First Vision

“Amaedig, what is it?”

“Someone is coming. A man in a red cape.”

She peered through the crack between the shutters, then opened them an inch for a better view. It was midwinter, the rainy season, and the air was chill and wet at midday, sky slate grey. Both Amaedig and Ginna were fifteen this year, and they had been living in this drafty apartment overlooking one of the countless courtyards of the palace—it seemed every room overlooked a courtyard—for three years.

He joined her at the window.

“It’s one of The Guardian’s messengers.”

“Master, shall I go and greet him?”

He looked at her, disappointed.

You forgot again.”

“Oh—yes.”

“As long as no one can hear us, you don’t have to go through that silly ‘master’ business. You know perfectly well that you are my friend, and I only asked for you as my servant so we could be together when I was moved here.”

“Sorry. It gets to be a habit. And you’re of a higher caste, and maybe The Guardian’s half-brother, or so they say—”

His disappointed look became a glare, somewhere between anger and a show of hurt. One of his greatest fears was that he would come to a high station, and be dragged away from those few people who had been kind to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and even as she did her right hand went halfway into the gesture of Repentance—thumb and little finger up, turned sideways and back straight—before she caught herself.

“The truth of the matter is,” he said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t want to be related to this Guardian in particular—”

There was a thunderous knock on the door. Amaedig ran from the window and raised the latch.

The messenger stood in the doorway, holding a polished disc of stone in his hand. He would not give it to Amaedig, but when Ginna approached, he surrendered it immediately.

The boy turned the thing over in his own hand and stared at it blankly, then looked up at the messenger, puzzled.

“It’s an invitation, you little idiot!” the man snorted. “You are invited to The Holy Guardian’s banquet in the great hall this evening, an hour after sundown. It is a great honor. Be grateful.”

“Tell The Guardian I am indeed grateful and honored,” said Ginna slowly.

The messenger turned on his heel in a smart military manner and left, even before Ginna could think to make the sign of Blessing Received. He made it to the fellow’s back as he vanished down the winding stairs outside the apartment

In truth he considered himself commanded, and he was afraid. Yet there was some thrill to it He felt anticipation. All the lords and ladies of the court would be there. He did not know any of them, and from what stories he had heard of plots, counter-plots, purges, and intrigues, he didn’t want to get to know them, but still they were exciting to watch, like a flock of dangerous, gorgeous, strutting birds.

“Shall I get your best clothing ready, Ginna?”

“Yes. Please do.”

At least the dinner would bring some variety to his life. He knew it was safer being tucked away in a corner and ignored, but this didn’t make his days any less tediously featureless. He was willing to sacrifice safety for variety, even if it meant a chance of being noticed by The Guardian, who even now was being secretly called Kaemen the Sullen and Kaemen Iron Heart.

So it was eagerly, although with some trepidation, that he put on the clothing Amaedig brought to him, the bright blue and red knee-length shirt of water-silk, the tightly fitting hose made from the soft inner skin of the kata, his wooden-soled, beaded slippers which were the most awkward things to walk in but the height of court fashion, and finally a cloak of plain brown cloth with no insignia on it denoting rank or honors bestowed.

“I wish you could come too,” he said.

“What would I do there, among all those high-born people?”

“A good question. What shall I do? I think you’re better off, having your station clearly defined.”

They sat for a while making small talk, waiting for the hour to come. They stared out the window, watching the sun sink over the tilted rooftops. Then it was time for her to draw water from a nearby well, as she did every evening, and she left him. He paged through some poems he had copied out of a book in a library he had only discovered the week before.

He thought about that library, and the strange old man who presided over it. He had found it in an alleyway he had never noticed before. There the librarian sat, frequently all alone, like an extension of the dust that covered everything. It was always twilight in there. Only a single lamp burned. The books were all bound in heavy leafier and linked to the shelves by long chains. You could take them to any desk if other scholars and most of the furniture didn’t get entangled in the meantime.

So he’d sat in there, straining his eyes, making copies of some strange verses which seemed to foretell the coming of a new age, when everything would be different and there would be unfamiliar gods in the heavens. The book he copied was written in an ancient script, in a sort of dialect. There were countless allusions in the text which were opaque to him, and many words he did not know. He couldn’t be sure he understood even the vaguest outline of the meaning. He wasn’t wholly dissatisfied with his life, but he did wish he were better educated. Whenever he tried to discuss anything with the librarian he was met with a barrage of more opaque allusions which told him nothing more than that he was only half literate and very ignorant. According to the old man there were two varieties of people in the world, venerable sages, who were usually several centuries dead, and everyone else, who were only distinguished from animals by the way they smudged and dog-eared book pages if not watched with unfailing vigilance. So Ginna learned little from him. He did not understand what he was reading. But there was nothing else to do while the hour of the banquet approached, so he read.

He was sure he was neither a sage nor venerable.

* * * *

When at last the time came, a great gong rang out from the highest terrace of Ai Hanlo, and Ginna climbed to the entrance to the great hall. The moon had not yet risen. The sky had cleared. The stars and the flickering light of torches made the dome glow a ghostly golden.

All around him were hundreds of other folk dressed in bright costumes, many with gaudy plumes on their hats, headbands encrusted with gems, and flickering, iridescent cloaks and gowns. Many were carried in litters borne by servants more finely garbed than Ginna was. Some were escorted by soldiers in gleaming silver armor carrying ceremonial pikes of clearest glass. He felt out of place among them all, plain and awkward. He hoped he was inconspicuous. When he had watched others do it, he handed his stone disc to a watchman who stood at the entrance, and went in.

He found himself in the room of the blue skylight. Huge flaps in the dome had been turned back, exposing the blue panes, letting the starlight in. There was such a crowd now, most of it taller than he, that all he could see clearly was that skylight. Oil-burning lamps hung from the roof. Braziers flickered atop pillars. Torches lined the walls and colorful paper lanterns were strung overhead on wire.

He was jostled this way and that by brightly draped bodies. Sometimes, when he was in the clear enough to see what was going on, he would notice signs and gestures passing back and forth, an upraised hand, a pause, a lady’s fan before her face, a certain turn of the head. It was as if a second language was being spoken around him, or a whole series of languages, layer upon layer, understood only by the speaker and the spoken to, with all others deliberately excluded.

Eventually he wormed his way to a table along one of the walls, on which various appetizers were spread out. He paused, watching other people take the food, to see if some ritual were involved, but they seemed to be just helping themselves, without regard to rank. So he took one of the little fishes which curled back and caught the stick which impaled it between its teeth. He also took a sweet bun. As he did he noticed a bowl of punch which was bubbling and swirling all out of proportion to the number of times the dipper was used. He leant over and peered into the pink liquid.

As he had suspected, something was swimming in it.

A scaly, man-like little head popped up and spat punch into his face. He leapt back, astonished, and collided with an elderly lady.

“It means hurry up and take some punch.” she told him. “The spirits never agree with you unless you drink quickly.”

“The spirits?”

“Yes, the sprite in the bowl, which prevents it from ever being empty. Haven’t you ever—? Oh, I see…” She had noticed the lack of rank indicated by his clothing. Discreetly she submerged into the crowd.

He turned back to the punch bowl, but found his face smothered in the perfumed ringlets of a massive beard belonging to an equally massive man in the uniform of a general of The Guardian’s armies.

“You there! Watch where you—”

“Excuse me, noble sir!” There was no room for any gesturing.

The man looked down at him and smiled, and the fearsomeness of his appearance seemed to vanish in the winking of an eye.

“You seem ill at ease here, young man.” He held out his hand. The boy took it. The grip all but crushed his fingers. I am Kardios ne Ianos, commander of the Nagéan Legion, at your service. And you?”

“Ginna.”

“Of what house? Ginna who?”

“Just Ginna.” He blushed and looked down at the floor to hide his shame at not being anybody.

“But then how—?” A recognition flooded over the man. He called another military figure over, and some ladies. “Look,” he said, “it’s Ginna, the magic boy they talked about years ago.”

“We’ve heard of you,” said the officer.

“I was sure you were entirely mythological,” said one of the ladies flatly.

“Are you really magic? Can you perform some wonder for us here?” asked Kardios.

“No. I’m not really magic. I’m ordinary.”

“Come, come,” said a wiry man with a hooked nose, bending over him. “When you were—er—born, they said you could call up fiery demons by clapping your hands.”

“Well I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You can confide in us. We won’t tell anyone. No need to be shy about it.”

“But—”

A trumpet blew, followed by a hundred more. Drums thundered. Cymbals clanged. The mumbling roar of the crowd was stilled.

The Guardian entered the room, held aloft on a throne set on a platform on the shoulders of eight bearers, as he had the last time Ginna had seen him in this room.

The crowd divided like water before the prow of a boat, and The Guardian passed through. Ginna caught a glimpse of him between the shoulder of Kardios and the nose of the wiry man. Kaemen was paler, more pasty-faced than before, and growing fat His almost white hair stuck to his sweaty forehead beneath the black and white peaked cap he wore. He held the golden staff of office in his right hand, as he apparently did on all public occasions.

Ritual greetings were given. The Guardian pointed his staff at the crowd and moved it from left to right in a slow arch. All present raised a hand to acknowledge the received blessing. Ginna hid behind the bulk of the general, hoping to be as inconspicuous as possible. He was sure somehow that those pale eyes were searching for him.

For more than an hour after this, Kaemen sat atop a dais above the heads of the multitude, surveying the room, apparently deep in thought, waiting for a certain moment, or so it seemed to Ginna.

“He must be about to announce something,” said one of the ladies. It was obvious to everyone that they had been summoned for some purpose. People talked in hushed tones, every other glance directed at the seated Guardian. Ginna took some comfort in the way Kardios stood there, drink in hand, as ill at ease as he himself felt.

As last The Guardian rose, thumped his staff for quiet, and every face was toward him.

“Let the woman Saemil come forward,” he called out.

The silence broke into whispers of “Who?” and starched clothing rustled as people milled about and stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was happening. Ginna noticed movement nearby, heads turning to his left then following something. Bodies stepped back, pressing upon one another like a rippling wave. Someone stepped on his foot and he squirmed free. Now he was in front of the massive general, behind three short ladies in feather-covered gowns, and he could see clearly.

An elderly woman stood before the throne. She looked familiar. When she turned slightly, in a kind of twitch, he recognized her. He had known so few people in life that he never forgot a face. She was one of the nurses who had overseen his earliest years. He remembered how she approached him fearfully at first, but after a while developed a completely uncaring attitude, as if he were not more animate than a lump of dough in the hands of a cook. She was also one of the ones who had constantly dashed about, wringing her hands in worry, trying to please the infant who had grown into the boy now gazing down on her from the seat above.

She raised her hand and made the sign of blessing received, first and fourth fingers upraised, the others held under the thumb, the hand moved in a little square.

“A blessing indeed,” said The Guardian. “Woman, you have lived for the last three years because I forgot about you, but just this morning I remembered. I hope you will accept my apologies for the delay.”

The Guardian made a sign none of his office had ever made in public before, that of forgiveness humbly begged, and he smiled viciously as he did.

“Your Holy Majesty is... of course... joking... Oh, what a splendid joke!”

She forced a weak laugh.

“No!” He stood up and out of his seat, something else no Guardian ever did. “My Holy Majesty is not joking. I am in complete earnest, and I declare you to be a traitor, a bearer of ill will against me. There are many here who hate me, and your death shall be an example to them. By my command, you shall not leave this room until you are dead.”

“What do you mean? No, you can’t...”

Two soldiers pushed their way through the crowd. They wore no finery at all, but were dressed in simple leather tunics. Long, many-thonged whips hung coiled from their belts. They seized the helpless nurse and ripped her clothing off, until she huddled naked before the court, whimpering.

“I can’t believe this is happening? What is happening?” said one of the women standing in front of Ginna.

“We must all be drunk and dreaming,’ said the hooked-nosed man. “No son of Tharanodeth would ever do such a thing.”

“He has gone mad,” said Kardios. “The dark side of The Goddess is in him.”

With a loud snap a whip struck the old nurse’s bony back, leaving bloody stripes when it was drawn away. This made the whole experience real, more vivid than any bad dream. Another whip, in the hand of the other soldier, descended. She grunted, then screamed, and began to crawl across the floor on all fours. She rose to a sitting position, and one of them lashed her across the face. She screamed again, feeling her eyes, then groped about, obviously blind.

Her screams were not the only ones. The women in the crowd screamed at the sight. Some fainted. Men looked away. Others gazed at the terrible sight, the faces stoic marble masks. These, Ginna knew, would survive the longest in the days to come.

He desperately wanted to be elsewhere. He wanted to look away, but dared not

Behind him, someone was vomiting.

He looked to one door, then another. All exits were guarded by soldiers whose pikes were not ceremonial or made of glass. He had to escape, but could not There was nowhere to go. He edged backwards until he pressed against the refreshment table. Almost without knowing it, he took a glass of punch and gulped it down, then another, and another. He had only brief glimpses of the dying woman now. Most of the people in front of him were taller, but when a lady in a plumed headdress shrieked, covered her face, and began to push to one side, this created an opening, and he was afforded a full view of the huddled, naked form and the bloody smears on the tiled floor all around it. The whips rose and fell with mechanical precision.

He couldn’t taste the punch as he drank it. Only unconsciously did he know what he was doing. This was the only way out He usually avoided such excess, but now the alcohol was making itself felt the room reeled around him. He was very warm. The people around him seemed to have become a mass of sweating, milling, frightened animals.

He found himself studying Kaemen intensely. The Guardian leaned forward in his chair, surveying the scene with rapt fascination. What was happening to his face? Ginna wondered why no one else seemed to see it. The pale blue eyes were gone, replaced by black pits which spread slowly across the cheeks, eating away the flesh. Eventually there was only an oval darkness where the face had been. Then there was another face, outlined in a fiery red in that darkness, a hideous old woman who, or so it seemed to his dizzy imagining, was somehow nourished by the pain and fear, drinking it all in.

Even that face grew soft like melting wax and disappeared. The blackness extended outward grotesquely, until it was nothing human at all. It was the head of a wolf, no, a bottomless abyss, a rip in the fabric of the world in the shape of a wolf, growing out of the front of The Guardian’s head.

All other eyes were on the two floggers and their victim, who now lay still.

Didn’t anyone else see?

The wolf was flowing up out of the boy’s corpulent body. Like a stream of black ink it poured down over his lap and onto the steps which led down from the throne. Then, finding its feet, the wolf scampered to where Saemil lay.

Again there was a rift in the crowd and Ginna could see through. The wolf was lapping up the old woman’s blood. The executioners didn’t seem to notice and went on with their work.

On the throne Kaemen sat, his face gone, his head hollow.

Ginna’s knees buckled. He fell against the table. Grabbing wildly for support, he struck a tray and sent it clattering to the floor. For an instant he was kneeling, his head and one hand against the edge of the table. Then he pitched forward and rolled under it, onto his back, vaguely aware of a vast forest of legs extending in three directions and a wall blocking the fourth.

* * * *

For a long time after that there was nothing but warm haze. Slowly it cleared, until he could see every detail of the great hall. It was empty now, and dark. The crowd had departed. The corpse of the nurse lay sprawled on the stone tiles, atop, curiously enough, a mosaic of the dark aspect of The Goddess like the one on the opposite wall.

He was not quite alone. Kaemen still sat on his throne, still leaning forward. His face was still gone, his head still hollow. But the darkness was stirring inside, slowly rising. It began to pour out of the opening, over his chin, like an underground river suddenly emerging out of a cavern, spilling down the steps and onto the floor. There seemed no end to it. It gathered around the carcass and splashed over it in oily waves, spreading to all comers of the room. Toward Ginna. He wanted to rise and flee, but his body would not respond. In helpless terror he watched the stuff ooze toward him. He counted the squares of the tile as they were covered one by one. The floor was almost entirely hidden, and still the stuff came forth from the Guardian in great gouts.

It was not a substance at all, but a lack of anything. A total void, a dark, limitless emptiness erasing the world.

It touched him on one shoulder, then all along one side. He was numb and cold, so cold. The waves washed over him, covering him until only his face was above the surface.

All sensation faded. He lay there, staring up at the underside of the table for a long time. He had no way of telling how long. It seemed as if his body were gone, and only his face remained. He concentrated. Yes, he could feel the air on his cheeks, and something else. A tingling. A sense of floating.

His face was becoming detached from his head. He could feel it peeling off, flapping as the fluid darkness found its way underneath. The cold was inside his brain now, stabbing, killing. His face drifted free. His awareness seemed to go with it He saw the underside of the table whirling around, or so it seemed. In fact it was he—his face only—which was turning, spinning like a leaf in a swollen stream. The waves caressed his cheeks from beneath. His vision shifted as he rose and fell with the current.

He was in the center of the room, near the dais. The black fountain of Kaemen’s head had not slacked off in the slightest. The level of the flowing void was rising, carrying Ginna’s face with it, past the throne, toward one of the huge brass and wood doors, which stood open. He floated into a corridor, then dropped roughly down a flight of stairs, somehow never capsizing. He was sure that if he did, if what remained of him were touched by the blackness, he would cease to exist altogether.

For an endless time he drifted through deserted rooms and passageways in the palace, until he emerged through a window into a courtyard. The level was still rising. He was lifted up, up, over a wall, past a roof. In the periphery of his sight he could make out a featureless expanse of blackness spreading to the horizon. The sky was clear and filled with stars, but their light did not reflect off the surface. He caught a glimpse of the golden dome of the palace, the highest point of Ai Hanlo, just before it was covered over.

The whole world was flooded. He floated alone. He was somehow aware that he would float for a time, then slowly dissolve, and blackness would rise to blot out the stars, filling the universe. No one would be there to witness the end. He was the last.

The experience of floating was vastly unpleasant, like falling slowly into a bottomless pit of cold air, but all his feelings were dulled. He blinked again and again, trying to remain aware, but the last of his senses were slipping away.

He was conscious next of a hump of land rising above the ebon sea. On it the black wolf stood. The current drew him toward it inexorably. The wolf leaned over, ready to blend in with the greater nothingness. Just as its snout was over his face, he saw it rise on its hind legs and begin to change. It was becoming the hideous bent old woman whose face had replaced Kaemen’s momentarily. The old woman no one else could see.

Still, like the wolf, she was not more than a black outline, a pit without a bottom, but somehow she seemed two-dimensional. Only in profile could he see the hooked nose that almost touched her chin and the wild hair that hung in a matted tangle. When she bent over him as the wolf had, her face was a blurry oval.

“Flesh of my flesh,” she tittered. “My receptacle, my useless, empty vessel through which my revenge was begun, what am I to do with you now?”

Ginna tried to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth. Instead the blackness spurted through the opening from underneath. He was sinking. The cold spread over his chin, up his cheeks, toward his eyes.

The black hag crawled to the edge of the little island, hung on with both hands, and raised a foot to stamp him down under the surface, but paused.

The last thing he saw was the sky beginning to lighten.

She looked even darker in contrast to the dawn.

* * * *

His eyes blinked open. An overturned tray lay by a table leg, a few inches from his face. Astonished, he felt his body to assure himself it was whole. Painfully, stiffly, he rolled over. He could see all the way across the room. The throne was empty. The corpse of the nurse was gone. The faint light of early dawn seeped through the skylight

He crawled out from under the table and staggered to his feet His head hurt as if split by an axe.

He was more disoriented now than he had been at any time before. He knew where he was and when, but was unsure of anything leading up to that instant. How much had really happened? What had he actually seen, and what was delirium?

In the center of the room, before the dais, he found the brown stains of dried blood spread over the image of the dark half of The Goddess. There was also a fistful of white hair and a strip of leather which had come off one of the whips. Here and there across the floor were broken drink glasses, a dropped veil, a trampled flume, a handkerchief, a cap, a walking stick. A large crowd had indeed been here, as he remembered it, and had doubtless departed in a hurry.

When he made his way outside, the world seemed too familiar, too real to have contained such a thing. He looked out over the lower city and the road beyond it. The sun was coming up. A trading caravan from some remote land was approaching Ai Hanlo along the great highway that led to the River Gate.

The cool morning breeze made him shiver. His wooden-soled slippers were awkward and uncomfortable, so he took them off. The paving stones were hard and cold underfoot

He passed members of the night watch making their last rounds. He had seen them all his life, but now, for the first time, they frightened him. They were all his enemies. He did his best to hide any emotion, but was scarcely able to prevent himself from screaming and breaking into a blind run.

When he got back to his room he found Amaedig asleep in a chair. She had tried to wait up for him.