xxxi
A small, dark-haired girl stands on a half-story balcony and looks to the south. She inclines her head slightly, as if bowing to an unseen presence, then lifts it and stares into the southern distances.
“Derissa?”
She ignores the call and continues to watch the southern heavens, and their eternal gold.
“Derissa!”
The girl makes the sign of the inverted and looped cross and walks back into her bedroom to obey her mother’s call.
… Up the lane, behind closed doors of a workroom, the bootmaker Aldus labors over a pair of black formboots.
He checks the seams of the left upper, squinting as he draws the black leather next to his eye.
He nods and puts it down, begins to check over the right upper.
The door opens behind him.
“How are you doing, dear?”
“So far, so good.”
“Your supper’s ready.”
“I’ll be there in a moment, as soon as I check this one over.”
“You’ve checked, and checked, and checked.”
“It has to be perfect.”
“Would He know the difference?”
“No, probably not, but you never know. And I would. Unlike some of Them, He pays, and pays what they’re worth. Almost, anyway.”
The bootmaker does not lift his eyes from the black leather.
After a time, the woman looks away, shakes her head silently, and retreats to the kitchen.
… On a golden sand beach, across the Middle Sea, a boy, playing on the sheltered beach under the cliff on which his parents’ house rests, scoops up a handful of sand for his castle.
The dark glitter catches his eye. In among the golden and silver grains of sand are black ones, sands so black that each grain seems to absorb the light, but glistens all the same.
He begins to separate the black grains from the silver and gold ones, until at last he has a small handheld heap of mostly black and glittering sand.
“Mom! See what I found!”
His mother wades in from the low surf to meet him in the ankle-deep water.
“See! See how shiny it is!”
“Pierre, put that sand down. The black ones are dangerous.”
“But why?”
“Put it down. All of it.”
“I want to know why.”
“When you’re older, I’ll tell you. Put it down.”
“But why?”
“I told you it was dangerous. When you are older, I will tell you why. Now … put … it … down!”
“All right.” He throws the black glimmerings into the water lapping around his ankles. “All right, but you’d better tell me. You promised. You promised.”
“I will. I will. Now … let’s see if you can still float on your back.”
… In the secret hollowed-out space beneath the old stone house, they begin to gather.
By ones, by twos, the figures drift in and take their places in the small chapel, until the requisite score has assembled.
The man in the brown robe finally approaches the cube, black on all sides, on which stands a single black candle.
He does not light it.
“Oh, hear our prayers, undeclared God of Night. God of Darkness, deliver us from Light.”
“Hear our prayers.”
“Oh, hear our songs, God of the Evening, God of Blackness.”
In time, up wells the familiar refrain:
… And the Hammer of Darkness will fall from the sky;
The old gods must fly, and the summer will die …
The black candle remains unlit on the black stone cube.
“Deliver us from Light; deliver us from the flame of our oppression, from eternal day that lets us rest not, nor slumber. Hear us, and deliver us, thy servants, from the bondage of eternal brilliance…”
xxxii
For the third day running, the waves break over the top of the golden sand beach, and the biting spray reaches over the hillcrest and down to the porch where Martel sits.
As all mortals do, his landlady, Mrs. Alderson, had succumbed to time, even though her life had been prolonged a great deal more than she had expected. For reasons unknown to Martel, who remains uninterested in the finer details of cellular biology, his attempts to rejuvenate the gray-haired woman failed, though she was unaware of his efforts.
Surprisingly, her testament, last declared less than a standard year after he had come to live in the small cottage, had offered him the right to buy either the cottage or the house, or both.
With the continuing royalties from his reruns—both Forgotten Beaches of Aurore and Postulant Communities of Aurore are a steady source of income—he purchased both and rented the house out, preferring to stay in the cottage.
The present occupants of the house are a middle-aged couple on sabbatical from the University of Karnak. Most of Martel’s renters have been outsider norms. Those who decide to stay move elsewhere.
Martel shakes his head. The mannerism is unnecessary, he knows, but he enjoys hanging on to some of his useless habits.
Martel sniffs the air, and the salt tang reminds him of the waves whose muffled crashes he can hear from the other side of the hill.
The continuing waves are unnatural, even on Aurore. After three days, they are not likely to disappear, not until they achieve their purpose.
Another challenge? Or annoyance?
He rises, his face clear, eyes hooded, dark. A stocky man, modest in height, black-haired, lightly tanned, apparently in the health of first maturity.
His steps are heavy, but they have been heavy since youth, as he descends the three steps from the porch to the hillside. He walks up the grassy slope to the top of the hill that overlooks the small bay.
At the crest he pauses.
The spray flings itself upward in misty patches, glistening in the indirect light that gives the breakers themselves a threatening yellow look.
From his vantage point he can see the outward path of at least one riptide.
He shrugs as he starts down the hillside, the shadows gathering around his black-clad form.
A dorle chitters at him, but wings over and glides across the hilltop to perch in one of the quinces and to wait.
Any close observer would note that Martel’s feet do not quite touch the grass over which he marches and that there is no direct light to cast the shadows that trail him.
From the grass that does not bend under his tread to the sand that does not receive his footprints he heads straight toward the waters, and they part around him.
He walks through gold-green breakers as if they are not there, and the waters crash over the places where he has been without touching him.
Overhead, a white bird with deep golden eyes and black pupils circles, then vanishes.
His head beneath the water’s surface, he follows the line of the sloping beach at least a kilo outward. By now the waves are nearly a hundred meters over his head, yet his hair is still in place, and he moves, bone-dry, over the seabed sands.
At the edge of the rocky shelf he stops, knowing that beneath his feet is the beginning of a slope that will drop nearly a kilo in several hundred meters.
By rights, that for which he searches should be near.
Out into the nearby waters he casts his thoughts, and on the first cast snares nothing.
Nor on the second. Nor on the third.
Some little patience has evolved in his years of avoiding what others regard as inevitable, and he changes his cast, refocuses his thoughts, and tries again. And again.
At last, a glimmer, a slight tug.
That is enough, and he turns his steps southward, paralleling the dropoff, striding quickly, as if the water were not surrounding him.
Above the sea the white bird, golden-eyed, circles, following his general track.
A giant sea eagle, spotting the smaller avian, stoops to kill, and is brushed aside with a sudden gust of wind. The eagle tries again and is a
gain brushed aside, and circles in confusion before deciding on the easier prey of a flying ray. In midskim from wavetop to wavetop the ray twists. But the intended evasion is too late, and the eagle flaps heavily toward his cliff eyrie with his meal.
Circling still, the white bird follows Martel.
As Martel proceeds toward his objective the clear water becomes less clear, and then even less so, until eyesight becomes useless. Martel is untroubled and unaffected and disappears into the cloud of sediment and suspended sand.
A few hundred strides farther on, he halts.
The suspended material whirls from an ever-expanding pit. Although Martel cannot see, he knows that at the center of the pit is a restrained and chained demigod. One suffering the punishment of a major god, and perhaps, placed in such a way as to infuriate the not-quite-major goddess who rules the shallows.
Should he free the chained demigod, the one creating the turbulence in his twin efforts to escape the eternal chains and to fight off the minions of Thetis?
If he frees the unknown demigod, both may turn on him. The former because only by subduing Martel can he return to the good graces of those who chained him. By now Martel has discovered that the demigod is male and that his principal tool is the fire of lava.
In turn, Thetis may attack because Martel will have intruded and robbed her of her due. She would have all thrown to her serve her, for at least a time.
Martel steps forward and descends through the swirls of boiling water and glass rain, down until the only light is the heat that surrounds the captive, light that is dimmed a fraction of a meter from its source.
For though the eternal chains are metal, no heat will melt them, no superhuman strength rend the unseamed black links which, no matter how deep the chained one melts away the rock, stretch yet deeper into the depths.
Do not free me unless you will pay the price.
Martel snorts at the contradiction. Any being who can free the demigod must have power superior to his.
Martel smiles, faintly, knowing the other cannot sense his humor, gathers further his own darkness, his own chill depths, and touches one link, then the other chain.
The metal draws back from his touch, glistens more blackly, if possible, then fades and is gone.
Martel gestures, and the water is crystal-clear again. Of the eternal chains there is no sign.
The onetime captive, dressed in skintight red, reaches forth across the water he has warmed to grasp the man in black. As he does his arms lengthen impossibly. Those arms burn, and the water vaporizes away from them.
Fool!
Instead of turning away, Martel glides forward into the heat, into the grasp of Hades, lets the would-be god of fire enfold him.
No!
For now Martel holds the other’s arms, more tightly than the eternal chains, for yet a moment before he releases the one in red.
He steps away and points. With the shadow he dispatches through the water goes the one in red, wrapped for delivery to the Sacred Peak.
Was that wise, Martel?
Still in the depths hollowed by the demigod of fire, Martel looks up the green-glass side of the submarine amphitheater to the one who addressed him.
Thetis?
Who else?
Your pardon, but the unnaturalness of the waves beckoned.
He walks up the glass-smooth slope that would be impassable for most, as if walking up a sheer glass incline a hundred meters undersea and remaining totally dry were not at all unusual.
Thetis, at home, in her ocean, is not dry. Rather, the water enfolds her, and her clear green hair flows over her naked shoulders, front and back, like a cloak. In her right hand is a small trident. Her left is open, empty, as Martel approaches.
The unnaturalness was meant to call you. So I waited. To see what you would do.
And?
Why did you not destroy him? He would have done that to you.
And give them a reason?
Your refusal to accept godhood on their terms is reason enough.
Martel shrugs, smiles a small smile. But I would not give them reason were I in their place. That is what is important.
She lifts her trident halfway.
Do not, dear Thetis. For I love the sea, and I would grieve.
You mock me. You mock the gods.
No.
The energy gathers around the green goddess.
Martel gathers his darkness, the black from the depths out and beyond the field, out and beyond Aurore. The cold and the fire and the remoteness invest him. No longer a mere human figure, no longer merely immortal, he stands apart.
The water draws farther back from him, as if in fear. The sand under his feet shrinks from the soles of the black boots.
His eyes are the depths of the places where there are no stars, the distances from whence stars cannot be seen, and his eyes … they burn. They burn black, with a light that casts shadow across the entire seabed. A light where there should be no light, and a shadow where none should be.
Still is the sea, and awful.
The trident drops, and with it the bare knee, followed by the inclined head.
For all this, Thetis, for all this, dear lady, no more am I god than this water, or that boulder.
She shivers, though she is not cold.
God of darkness, god of night, that you endure where light reigns, that you are, that you triumph, means there are no gods. Not as you would call them.
Martel nods, releases his hold on the darks and on the depths.
That may be. I am no god. Only a man who knows more than many, and a little more than some.
No. Her thought bears sadness. Not just man. Thinking so will bring sorrow to you, to all who surround you. More sorrow than you have experienced. Already you ignore the tears. Is it not so?
He does not answer, except with a short furrow of his brows.
Thetis belts the small trident, blows Martel a kiss, one that crosses the water between them and caresses his forehead.
If not god, accept what you are, Martel.
He salutes the departing sea-goddess with an upraised hand, and, in turn, directs his steps toward the shoreline.
The sea is flat, motionless yet as he emerges, and as his black boots touch the sand. The air is quiet, and hawks, the dorles, and the golden sea eagles all perch where perches each, waiting.
When his last step clears the water, when he turns and again salutes the mistress of the sea, only then do the gentle waves resume, the sea breezes flow, and the sea birds fly.
Martel realizes his cheeks are wet, not from the water, for no water has touched him.
In response, he presses lips to fingertips and breathes the kiss back across to the sea, back to Thetis.
xxxiii
Help!
Martel stumbles, trying to pinpoint the direction of the thought, looking around, glancing up toward the shore and the Petrified Boardwalk.
A scattered handful of people—mostly natives—make their way through the fully lit and evening streets of Sybernal. Not a one of the three within ten meters of Martel has even flinched.
Despite the faintness of the thought, the aura of the plea is familiar. He cocks his head, trying to remember, to make a comparison. Not poor lost Rathe, for even the desperation of the thought holds a hardness that Rathe would never possess.
Why dig that up? She’s gone. Gone.
Martel trots to the next corner, peering around it. No one notices him in the Street of Traders, not even the old man whose boot store is yet open with its green awning overhanging the public way.
Martel darts into the narrow lane around the corner from the bootery, gathers his shadows about him, and rises into the light. He does not notice the looped sign the bootmaker traces in the air as the black raven circles up from the lane, nor the averted glance of the young girl whose balcony he passes as he flaps awkwardly northward, from where he thinks the plea for help has come.
Martel! God of the Darkness! Save me!
The locked portals open at his touch.
Already the center feels empty, devoid of life. Martel’s thoughts precede his body through the corridors toward the main control center. An aura of power is fading, an aura that Martel recognizes, from the control room, where Martel knows he will find what he does not want to see.
In the center, in the open space before the console, which is slaved to remote and broadcasting an opera from Karnak, on that open floor are three objects.
The first is a sheet of golden parchment, scrolled, on which a name appears. The name is Martel.
The second is a pile of heavy gray ashes, greasy in appearance, spilling across a golden starburst that has been etched into the permaplast flooring. A starburst, Martel knows, that had not been there the day previous.
The third item, collapsed in and around the ashes, is a pale golden one-piece coverall.
There may be other small objects, such as a sunburst pin, a thin golden chain, mixed in the ashes as well, but Martel does not touch anything. Except for the sheet of parchment, which he stoops to pocket.
Martel gestures. The darkness swirls over the control room, and the floor is as it was, unmarked. Ashes, coverall, objects, all are gone, taken into the darkness.
From darkness she came, and unto darkness will she go, now and forever.
The cold knot inside Martel does not dissolve, but reaches to chill his fingers, numb his thoughts.
“Flame!”
Darkness has fire, also, and that will I claim, for those who are mine, and those who claim me.
Martel stands, letting time swirl around him, then clamps himself back into reality.
He leaves without touching anything, departs as he came, and even young Alsitar, who is rushing through the main portal in response to the automatic alarm and who passes the one who was called God of Darkness as He steps outside the portal, even Alsitar does not see what he sees. For Martel wills it otherwise.
Believing in a god who will not accept divinity is obviously a dangerous business, reflects Martel. He shivers as his feet carry him along the Petrified Boardwalk.
Haze and the Hammer of Darkness Page 45