City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “You are…Olvos?” he says.

  She smiles at him. “I am, dear. Would you like some tobacco? Or some tea?” She gestures at the stone table behind her, on top of which are a number of strange items he can’t see well in the firelight.

  Sigrud considers the consequences of consuming something offered to him by a Divinity. “I think I am all right.”

  She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

  “You just let me in? Just like that?”

  “What, you thought you’d have to break through every barrier, piece by piece? I suppose you could have, if you were willing to spend a few decades at it. Though I am impressed. Most intruders never get to the wall. Most never even get to the glades. They get turned away well before that. Yet you barged right in, totally unaware of any hazards.” She glances at him, her bright, copper-colored eyes shining. “Curious thing, isn’t it? Here. Let me get a look at you. Why don’t you come around to my side of the fire? I don’t bite, I promise.”

  He hesitates.

  “I understand your previous interactions with a Divinity have not been positive,” she says kindly, “but while I am not wholly pleasant, nor kind, I have no ill intentions for you at this palaver, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson.”

  Sigrud reluctantly walks around the fire, and though he still doesn’t want to sit beside the Divinity, he allows himself to sit on the log to her immediate right.

  “You do have the look of the kings of old. I remember,” she says. “Bold and fierce and merciless. Had the life spans of a marsh fly too. Made lots of babies, though only a handful were produced consensually. I’m glad we’re well clear of those days.”

  “Olvos,” says Sigrud, “I…I feel I must tell you the nature of my visit, which is extremely urg—”

  She waves a hand. “Yes, yes, yes. You’re here to ask me to wade into your ongoing war and establish peace, yes? Swat your enemies down like flies, yes? I’m aware of all that, and you’ll get my answer in due time.”

  “You knew why I was coming?”

  “Oh, yes,” she says mildly.

  “How?”

  She looks at him like she’s suddenly worried about his intelligence. “You know I’m a Divinity, right?”

  “Well, I mean—”

  “I keep an eye on things, at a distance,” she says. “I’m aware of your situation. It also helps that the second you come here you’re in my place, in me, so I see quite a bit about you.”

  “So you know about the children?”

  She nods.

  “And the enemy…He is—”

  “You can say his name here,” says Olvos. “He’s not getting in here. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Nokov,” says Sigrud. After days of dreading its mention, it’s odd to say the name aloud. “You know of him?”

  “I do.”

  “But…But if you know that, if you know how dire things are, then why haven’t y—”

  “I told you you’d get my answer in due time,” she says. “I rather think I hold all the cards in this particular negotiation, dear. Please don’t rush. Are you sure you don’t want any tobacco?”

  “No,” says Sigrud, frustrated. “No, I do not want any tobacco. So my coming here was your intent?”

  “Not quite. I’ve been watching events unfold for a good bit now,” says Olvos. “And I must admit, things have gone largely the way I expected they would—not exactly utopia, but not another Blink. Not very good, but not very poorly either.”

  “If you know about all this,” says Sigrud, “if you knew all this would happen, then…when you met Shara here, after Bulikov…why did you not warn her?”

  “Why didn’t I tell someone that there was a small army of incredibly powerful, very malleable people that could be snatched up at any moment? Why didn’t I tell the one person who was about to speed to the top of the government, the one person who had the one tool that could control and destroy this army?” She laughs scornfully. “I did not think that would go well.”

  “You didn’t trust her.”

  “Shara is one person,” says Olvos. “One person who was going to have to engage with many large institutions of people. Not all of whom, as you’ve learned, are benevolent. I thought it wiser to let things get sorted out on their own, rather than give any ambitious up-and-comers their own little Divine army.”

  “And do you think that has gone well?” asks Sigrud.

  Olvos is silent. She takes a deep breath and exhales, smoke pouring out of her nostrils. “Going well or poorly isn’t the point,” she says quietly. “Those are short-term standards for short-term goals.”

  “The deaths of so many Divine children? So many people? These are short-term goals?”

  She looks at him. For a moment her eyes aren’t right: they don’t look so much like eyes as distant flames, burning somewhere deep within her face. “I have been in existence for a very long time. I have seen many horrible things. As much as it grieves me to say it, yes—I would permit a few small tragedies to avoid catastrophe. I have sat here and watched many things being woven out in the world, many ways the future could go. I think there is a chance, just a chance, that the way of least damage could win out. But it depends on many things. One of which is you.”

  “I have done my piece,” says Sigrud. “I am here speaking with you. The rest depends on you.”

  She slowly shakes her head. “No. You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, are a person of—how shall I put this?—great momentum. You do not stop. You cannot stop. You bowl forward, charge on, wrecking many things in your path. And now here you come, rolling to my doorstep—but you won’t stop here either. You know this. I know this. I have watched you. Very, very closely.”

  Something quivers in Sigrud’s stomach as he hears this. “You have watched me?”

  “Oh, yes,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a remarkably odd creature, Sigrud. Even if you weren’t so intricately wound up in this, I’d still watch you—that’s how fascinating you are.”

  “What do you mean, ‘remarkably odd’?”

  “Do you even have to ask? You have lived through circumstances almost none could survive. You have conquered things many would consider unconquerable. If this were the old days, and were I to look out on my domain, and see some strange, errant mortal carving a path of destruction through the world such as you do now—do you know what I would think?” Olvos leans close. “Why, I would think they were touched by the Divine. By another god. A person miraculous or blessed, twisting reality around them as they moved through it. I would be very suspicious indeed of this mortal. Very suspicious.”

  “I was not touched by a god,” says Sigrud slowly. “I was tortured with a Divine tool, but no more.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But can you think, Sigrud,” says Olvos, “if your torturers ever used that Divine tool again after you overcame it? What was it called, the…the…” She snaps her fingers.

  “The Finger of Kolkan,” says Sigrud.

  “Yes, of course. Awful thing. Did you ever see them force other prisoners to hold it after your brutal session? Maybe not. Slondheim was an awful place, a shifting nightmare, and it must be hard to remember how things were. But I don’t think you saw it used again—did you?”

  He stares into the fire.

  “It’s almost as if that little stone stopped working,” says Olvos offhandedly. “Almost as if the miracle that was in it…left. But of course this makes one wonder—where did it go?”

  Sigrud’s left hand is clenched in a trembling fist.

  “Such a curiosity, you are,” says Olvos. “Never directly touched by a Divinity, yet you seem strangely blessed. But—not quite. You defy the Divine, you defy death, you defy pain and suffering. That’s the cycle of your life, isn’t it? You throw yourself into dangerous, hopeless situations. These situations punish you mercilessly. Yet you overcome them, and live. But at the end of it, after all your trials and tests, you are left alone. A lone savage in the wilderness, helpless and frustrat
ed. A creature of powerless power is what you are, strength rendered impotent by rage. And you’ve lived these past forty years like a man with one foot nailed to the floor, walking forever in circles. That’s been the pattern of your life—ever since that stone kissed your palm, that is.”

  “What are you saying?” whispers Sigrud.

  She smiles. The expression is far from wholly pleasant. “Do you know, back in the old days, when one of your kind showed up, we all killed it immediately? Me and the rest of the Divinities. We didn’t agree on much, but one thing we agreed on was that such things had no right to live. Things like you were too dangerous.” She stares into the fire. “We did that a lot back then. When something threatened us, we met, held a vote, and usually put it down. Odd how power has that effect on the mind, even the godly mind. Some of those choices I regretted. But for things like you—why, I had no qualms at all.”

  “What am I?” says Sigrud softly. “What are you saying that I am?”

  “You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” says Olvos, tapping out her pipe, “are a man that a miracle mistook for a god.”

  Tavaan stands before the huge wooden doors, head cocked, listening. There’s silence from the other side, but…that tremendous crash and clattering couldn’t have been nothing. She places a hand on the doors and shuts her eyes, trying to feel it out.

  “What is it?” calls Komayd from the other side of the room.

  “I don’t know,” says Tavaan. “I’m working on it.” She searches the many paths and devices that lie outside the doors, all the Divine constructs that, invisibly or otherwise, admit or deter entry.

  She feels them falling away, one by one. Someone is blowing through all their security measures as if they were no more than smoke.

  They know how to get in, thinks Tavaan. They knew how to open the hallway. Could it be Voshem? Could he be returning?

  But this troubles her. If it were Voshem, he should have contacted them and told them he was returning. And moreover, why would he be returning unless something was wrong?

  Tavaan grits her teeth. She is, in essence, the Divinity of this little piece of sub-reality. Its walls and floors and windows all give to her touch. If she wished, she could bring the ceiling down with but a thought, or make the furniture dance. But despite her control, there are only two means of exit and entry to the sanctum: the doors before her, and the secret exit on the far side.

  She looks at the secret exit, thinking long and hard. They’ve rarely used it, since it’s far less protected than the main entrance. She could open it up if she wanted to—but what if this is a feint? What if this is the workings of the enemy, and that’s what he wants her to do?

  “What is it?” asks Komayd. “What do we do?”

  Then the doors start to whine and hum like cages full of nervous birds—which they only ever do if someone new is approaching them, someone who’s never been to the sanctum before.

  Tavaan turns to look out on the many beds. “We start waking people up.”

  Sigrud stares at Olvos, who stuffs her pipe and holds it out among the flames again. He swallows. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know what a miracle is?” asks Olvos. “I mean, what one really is. Very few do. Most Continentals didn’t even know back in the days when the world was practically swimming with them.” She puffs at her pipe. “It is like a living thing, a tiny, thoughtless Divine creature, working away below reality like a termite under your floorboards. It lives its life in cycles, just as you do. You wake, you eat, you defecate, you sleep, and so on, and so on….Just like the flora and fauna of a great forest, the background of the world was once thriving with tiny Divine creatures feeding one another, doing things, making things. But the thing about living things is that they change. Rapidly.”

  She stands with a grunt, walks over to the stone table, and begins preparing what looks to be a rudimentary pot of tea. “We’d see it occasionally,” she says. “A rogue miracle, one might say. Usually these just showed up as mistakes in reality, sometimes colossal ones. There was one miracle Taalhavras made to create roads, only it got overexcited and overlaid thousands upon millions of roads in one place, just a giant tangle of roads hovering in the air. But other times…Other times, it was dangerous. Like when a miracle got a hold of a person.”

  She walks back over, and delicately hangs the crude pot over the fire. “What do you know about the Finger of Kolkan?” she asks.

  “I know it hurt,” says Sigrud.

  “Besides that, I mean.”

  “I…I think it was a test of some kind.”

  “Yes. It was just like most of Kolkan’s miracles, which were usually quite punitive. Through pain, through pressure, the miracle was meant to coerce human beings into becoming strong, and pure—but the standards were set so high that no human ever actually passed this test. The pain was too much—they either failed, or perished. Until you came along, that is.

  “When you touched the stone, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, it was a curious moment in your life. You hated yourself. You hated your failures, your impetuousness, your brutish thoughtlessness. These things, you felt, had cost you everything. So you did something the Finger of Kolkan did not expect—you embraced it. You invited it. You felt you had earned its pain. And in doing so, you defeated it.

  “The horrid miracle in that stone was not prepared for this—when Kolkan made it, in his utter ignorance, he did not tell it what to do if a mortal actually passed the test. So the miracle, being small and simple, made an assumption: the being that had just defeated it had to be no one but Kolkan himself. So it changed: it migrated to you, thinking you to be its maker. And ever since, it has been bound to you, worshipping you, giving you many things and altering your very reality. And it has changed in turn.”

  She sits, reaches out, and snatches Sigrud’s left hand. Though he’s much larger than her, he finds he can’t resist her strength.

  She points to his palm. “Do you see? Do you see this part?” He can’t see what she’s pointing to, but she keeps talking. “Punishment. Excoriation. Despair. And through these elements, power. This miracle takes what pain is inflicted upon its bearer, and transmutes this into furious, desperate, righteous anger. A mechanism of terrible retribution. But you knew this already, didn’t you?”

  Sigrud sits hunched on the log. The warmth of the fire is a distant memory.

  The pot of tea begins to bubble. Olvos reaches forward, plucks it off its hanger, and places it on the log beside her. “Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, you are a person who has held his torments very close to his heart,” she says. “You believe, somewhere deep inside of you, that such pain gives you power—perhaps the power to inflict a crude justice on the world, retaliation for all the wrongs that have been done to you. From suffering comes might. And the miracle, which slavishly worships you, rewards that hunger for suffering with all the tools it has available. It is trying so very hard to give you what you want. And the miracle will allow nothing to violate this—not death, or age, or the Divine itself. The miracle is like a jealous lover, preventing all others from touching you—and you encourage it.”

  “You’re lying,” says Sigrud softly.

  “Am I? How many times have you been injured yet recovered? How many times in your life have you fled civilization? How many times in your career with Shara did you hide in isolation, drifting at the edges of society? And why do you know how to do a great many nasty things, Sigrud, more than anyone else alive?” She smiles bitterly. “I know. It is because everyone else died learning them. Perhaps it’s luck that Shara found you, or maybe it’s fate. Working with her put your dark blessing to somewhat good ends. It made you the perfect operative. Such people live very short lives—except for you, of course. What an exception to every rule you are. And at what terrific cost. You survive, yet have no hope. Only torment.”

  “It…It rewrites reality,” he says quietly, “to punish me?”

  “Yes. That is its nature. That is what it thinks you want. In your secret heart, Si
grud je Harkvaldsson, you think yourself terrible and pure in your despair. You believe you reflect the cruelty of the world back upon it, and you think this just. This dark blessing is simply giving you the fuel you desire.”

  There is a long silence.

  “Then…my daughter, Signe…Was her death…” He looks at her, trembling. “Was it natural? Or was it yet more punishment?”

  Olvos is quiet. Then she finally rumbles to life, saying, “It is…difficult for me to see that. The miracle often nudges reality very, very slightly. And there were many Divine currents alive and raging in Voortyashtan. But you feel it was punishment, don’t you? You feel that, because you are a man who has done so many wrongs, it was justice for you to lose the best thing you had ever produced. Don’t you?”

  Sigrud stands. He’s too furious to do the trick with the sword, so instead he pulls out his knife. He holds it just above his left wrist, which he extends above the fire. “I’ll…I’ll cut it off!” he snarls. “I’ll cut it off and be done with it!”

  Olvos shrugs. “Then do so.”

  Sigrud lowers the knife. He grits his teeth, readying for the blade to bite into his flesh, to saw at the bone—yet he hesitates.

  “You can’t do it,” says Olvos. “The miracle will not be gotten rid of that way.”

  Sigrud shuts his eyes, weeping. “I’ll do it. I will. I will!”

  “You won’t,” she says. “This is not a matter that will be resolved with the marring of flesh. You are a creature of constant warfare, Sigrud. You have made a weapon of your sorrow. You have put this weapon to terrible use for many, many years. Only when you set it aside will this miracle release you. Only then will you have any chance of freedom. Freedom to live and die as a normal, mortal man.”

  Sigrud bows his head and lowers the knife. “So until then…I am cursed to keep living, keep suffering.”

  “Probably. You are very hard to kill, Sigrud. You can take abominable punishment. But you are not immortal. If you were to, say, jump off a cliff, or catch a bullet in your skull, I doubt the miracle could do much to save you. And a true Divinity could kill you if they really wanted to. I could do it now, for example. But I won’t. I try very hard not to intervene in such things. It’s not prudent, not anymore.”