Haze and the Hammer of Darkness

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The hammer falls. Falls like thunder, falls like the point of massive lightning. Falls like death.

  The city shakes, as if wrenched by the grasp of a wounded earth giant. Roofs crack, split asunder. Waves on the Lake of Dreams swamp the empty swanboats, spend their force in inundating the gardens bordering the lake.

  The ancient oaks, brought light-years to serve no purpose but the whim of a departed Prince, bend. Bend more, then, as one, snap in two like dry sticks across a kindler’s knee.

  The yellow light flowers lining the paths from the lake to the palace flare, then crumble into black dust.

  The lights of the city fail. Fail, reeling from the stroke of the graystone hammer. Reeling from the power of an ancient god. And darkness pounces, from house to hovel to villa to palace.

  Across the void, behind a golden field, on a planet that is not a planet, the cast of the graystone hammer is felt by those gathered in the air above a sacred mountain. Two gods, a goddess, and a scattering of demigods nod. A certain shore trembles with the turning of a chained being in the depths below.

  In the last nanoseconds before the hammer reaches Martel, the villas around the black temple, their walls already flattened and scattered, are pulverized into particles, and the gray dust rises. Rises to block the receptor screens, to shield the view of the teletales, those few that are self-powered and still functioning.

  Before her screens, a woman finds her view blanked by the swirled dust. The Viceroy finds tears upon her cheeks, tears unsummoned. Tears unknown since before the fall of the Prince Regent, tears unknown in a millennium.

  Somewhere, a red-haired child sobs.

  The man in red smashes a balled fist into his left palm, shaking his head, unaware of the shower of sweat that flies from him.

  The chariot, battle goats pawing, circles the cloud of gray dust, passes over the miles of rubble and fallen towers. Thor leans over, his eyes trying to pierce the gloom where his senses cannot penetrate. His right hand is empty, though his left grasps the red leather of the reins more tightly.

  He gestures with his empty right hand, calls for his hammer.

  The chariot circles, a vulture above the ruins of the Viceregal city.

  The Viceroy waits, not understanding, hoping.

  The man in red leans forward as the dust settles.

  The sun dims, then flares even brighter, and as the dust cloud parts, the black temple emerges. Stands. Stands untouched.

  “I oppose.”

  On the temple steps remains the man in black—not smaller, not larger, not darker, not brighter. He does not smile, nor does he frown.

  In his left hand is a graystone hammer.

  Martel lifts the hammer, lifts it high above his head.

  “I oppose the ways of the gods, and I will break you as I will break your hammer. Behold, agent of the gods, and god no more. Behold. This hammer is your life and your strength, and it is no more.”

  Martel squeezes the haft, and as he does the wood cracks and the stone shatters, and the shards crumble into dust.

  Thor shakes his fist at Martel, turns his battle goats and the chariot into a dive toward the man in black.

  “I am of the Fallen One,” admits Martel conversationally, and yet his words carry through the ruins of the city. “And the Fallen One will not be denied. Nor will He be mocked. Your hammer is gone, Thor, and you have no power over me.”

  The chariot is almost upon Martel, and the hiss of the battle goats is rain in his ears.

  “Guess we have to make it formal, old thunder-god.”

  He raises his left hand again and cracks his voice like lightning across the morning.

  “Begone! Forever!”

  With the words flows a tidal wave of blackness. When the darkness subsides, moments later, the sky is empty.

  The steps of the black temple, the only fully intact structure in the city of the Viceroy, are vacant, and the sirens begin to wail as the power returns.

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  Martel appears in the cart, his feet planted shoulder-width apart.

  The battle goats do not seem to mind, but continue their hissing breath as they paw meaninglessly at the blackness beneath their hooves.

  Martel glances around the square wooden cart. In the corner floor bracket beneath his right shoulder is a built-in quiver, originally bronze, but dulled with a green patina. The horn bow is stringless and would doubtless break if strung, since Thor had never liked archery before he became god of thunder, let alone after.

  If he could smell in the undertime, Martel knows, the goat cart would reek of age, and dust. Not of goat urine, for the battle goats are not goats at all, but focal elementals, harnessed through the field of Aurore.

  He sighs, more of a mental reaction than a physical one, because purely physical actions really do not take place in the subwarp/subtime/subspace corridor that the gods have drilled for Thor’s transit and return. With his own methods, Martel could already have been on Aurore. But then, he could not have returned as Thor.

  His hair goes from black to red and lengthens. A full red beard appears. His stockiness becomes burliness, and were he to speak, his voice would rumble.

  Martel is Thor.

  Presently the chariot emerges above the sacred mountain, begins a circling descent.

  Martel remembers one last detail, conjures up a graystone hammer, and brandishes it, much as Thor would have done.

  On the peak, or rather hovering above it, in an unnecessary expenditure of energy, reflects Martel/Thor, are Apollo, the Smoke Bull, and Emily. Assorted demigods wait beyond them.

  All for the conquering hero. He blocks the thought. Thor would have thought it only his just due.

  “The traitor is no more!” rumbles the returning thunder-god. “He fell under the Hammer of the Gods!”

  Thor vaults across the railing of the goat cart, dispatches it to an outer circle to wait, and takes three giant steps across the cloud tops toward the triad.

  “Welcome back, Thor,” murmurs the Smoke Bull, the darkness falling from his mouth with the words.

  “Welcome,” adds Apollo. And his voice chimes down the mountainside to ring through the towns below.

  Emily nods. Curtly.

  “No welcome from you?” growls the returned warrior. “Ah,” he chortles, “but you were once fond of him.”

  He turns toward Apollo.

  “Martel was a danger. But he didn’t gloat about destruction.” The words of the goddess ring in the stillness.

  Thor turns back.

  “Bitch goddess. Talk not to me of gloating. Talk not to me when more blood has flowed from your hands and your names than mine. Thor am I. Thor am I! Hammer and lightning, like the thunderstorms.”

  “Rather eloquent, Thor,” adds Apollo. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Thor?” asks Emily. “Answer one question. Did you actually see the hammer strike Martel?”

  “He was there. The hammer struck, and he was not. Same as always. No draw on the field since.”

  “What about Karnak?”

  “Flattened,” admits Thor, shrugging. “You knew that would happen.”

  Emily frowns, and Apollo, seeing her expression, clears his throat. Even the half-cough is somehow musical.

  “Is it possible, barely possible, Thor, honored hammer-thrower, that Martel ducked your blow?”

  “I say he was under the hammer, and he was gone. Never has anyone escaped the graystone hammer! Never! NEVER!”

  The three gods wince as the thunderclouds roll in at his voice, and a small tornado touches the edge of Pamyra, destroying an unoccupied cottage.

  “Then it is possible,” observes the Smoke Bull. “Else Thor would not be so angry.”

  “You old fraud!” screeches Emily. “You had him, and you missed him. Destroyed a beautiful city for nothing! Made a fool out of the gods, and left the Viceroy ready to declare war on the entire Aurore system.”

  “YOU LIE!” rumbles Thor, and he lifts the hammer.

/>   “Wait!” commands Apollo, and both Emily and Thor turn to the chimes of his speech.

  “Thor may have destroyed Martel, and he may not have. But one thing is clear. If Martel escaped and did not again confront Thor, then he does fear the hammer. Since the hammer is but one attribute of the gods, Martel may be a difficulty, but one we can handle should he reappear.”

  “I destroyed him,” insists Thor.

  “You did not,” returns Emily.

  “It does not matter,” observes the Smoke Bull. “Apollo is right. Whether Thor destroyed Martel, or whether Martel escaped at the last instant, the result is that Thor was the stronger. Thor, by himself.”

  Emily almost snickers, understanding the implication behind the Smoke Bull’s words.

  Thor raises his hammer again.

  “Put down your toy, Thor. I do not fear your hammer, though Martel may.”

  Thor glares at the Smoke Bull, raises his left hand to recall the chariot, then faces Emily.

  “Bitch, best you fear the hammer of Thor!”

  “Is that a challenge, old blusterer?”

  Thor vaults into the chariot without answering, brandishes his hammer, and the battle goats careen across the heaven-field of Aurore, away from the sacred peak Jsalm.

  “I’m not sure that sending Thor was the best idea, after all,” muses Apollo.

  “How soon before we can confirm what he said?” asks the god of black smoke and guile.

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Only that he flattened the city. No communications from Karnak.”

  “Why doesn’t one of you go to Karnak and see?” snaps Emily.

  Apollo shakes his head.

  “If Thor is telling the truth, there’s no need. If he isn’t, then we can’t afford to leave Aurore to find out.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” says Emily, “with Thor.”

  “Can you?” asks Apollo.

  But Emily is gone, and only the glitter at the end of the rainbow remains, fading moments after she has left.

  “One way or the other, you win, Apollo.”

  “Not if Thor wins.”

  “No. We both lose then. A pity about Martel. Could have been a real help, if he’d only thought more about it. Too tied up in the worldly things.”

  “I wonder. I wonder.”

  “A little late for that, now.”

  The two depart, each in his own fashion, and, following them, so do the demigods.

  The clouds above the sacred peak are empty, and without the gods to shield, they dissipate to allow the faithful below to worship.

  From Pamyra, the conical peak glows green above the shadowed slopes, for the one thing that differentiates the sacred mountain, besides its sacredness, is that its upper slopes are cloaked in shadow, unlike any other peaks on Aurore.

  Thor is not hard to find, Emily discovers.

  Hammer resting on his knees, the thunder-god stares down at the waves crashing against the sheer quartz cliffs that stretch kilos east and west from his vantage point. His location, across the Midland Sea from the Sacred Mountain, is scarcely hidden, though neither Apollo nor the Smoke Bull has ever cared for the White Cliffs. The Goat can sometimes be found nearby.

  “It was a challenge, Thor.”

  The hammer-god does not acknowledge her presence, nor even the concentration of energy that the golden goddess, mistress of the rainbow, gathers about her.

  “A challenge, Thor,” she snaps.

  “No, bitch.” He lets the hammer fall as he stands, and it vanishes. “No challenge. You followed the behest of Apollo and the Minotaur to carry out the execution of another of their enemies. You, who could rule an Empire, cannot rule yourself.”

  “Flame, Thor. Apollo and the Bull rule Aurore. No one stands against them. Not Martel, not me, not you.”

  Thor smiles, and the smile does not suit him.

  “None so blind as will not see, bitch goddess. None so deaf as will not hear.”

  “Quoting Martel won’t help either, old blusterer.”

  Thor shrugs, unfastens the great bronze clasps that hold his bearskin cloak, and lets the skin drop. A gust from the sea wind carries it high over the waves.

  A gesture from the hammer-thrower, and the cloak bunches, becomes a dark bird that spreads its wings and glides toward the calmer water out beyond the ridge of black rock over which the solid gold-green waves are breaking.

  Emily laughs. The harsh notes knife the harmony of the surf noises. As she draws the colors to her the brilliance of the rainbow glitters, iridesces, mounts to eye-sear, a small nova at the top of the White Cliffs.

  Two hundred fifty kilometers across the Midland Sea, the priests at the temple in Pamyra note the strange light and genuflect.

  The rock under the feet of the golden goddess puddles, and she stands in a pool of molten stone.

  “Very pretty, bitch, but is one supposed to be impressed?”

  You talk too much, Thor!

  The thought lances at Martel with the power of an Imperial battle cruiser.

  You have forgotten nothing and learned nothing, Emily, and for that you shall pay. Pay with your memories, pay with service, and pay for the love that has left your soul.

  Strong thoughts … And her sending falters.

  Where is my hammer, Emily? Where is my lightning? And yet bind you will I in darkness, and in time, and away from all you hold dear.

  A small sunburst crashes against Thor’s shoulders. He does not even bend, but darkness rises from the White Cliffs beneath his feet and through his hand toward the miniature sun that is a goddess. As the blackness flows toward her the pool of molten rock traps her feet as it freezes, holds her like a fly in amber.

  Thor takes one step toward the sun that has dwindled to a rainbow, then another.

  Who are you? Who … what …

  The clifftop is empty. No sign remains of the two, except three black footprints in the white rock leading toward a perfectly white and perfectly circular depression melted into the stone.

  A single raven, not native to Aurore, circles, then flaps over the waves inland toward the lowlands.

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  The woman wakes, shaking, from a nightmare. The details fade even as she tries to recall them.

  Her hair is long and black, her waist narrow, breasts high but adequate, certainly not small, nor large enough to merit the term voluptuous.

  All her physical characteristics, from golden eyes to lightly tanned skin, from black hair to oval face, are irrelevant to her at this particular moment.

  She does not know who she is, where she is, or why.

  In the starlight, she looks at her hands. The nails are neatly trimmed, short, unadorned. The hands are uncallused, but not soft.

  She looks down at her body, discovers she is wearing a light blue one-piece coverall of a luxurious material, but without underwear, she can sense, and formfitting boots a shade or two darker than the singlesuit.

  She wonders how she knows the colors in the dim light.

  The gentle terwhit of a bird in the tree above her startles her, and she studies her location.

  First, it is night. That she had realized earlier. Second, she is sitting on the ground. The grass is trimmed short, and there is no undergrowth. To her right, as she looks through the darkness, is a luminous glow, against which she can see the regular outlines of other trees and of a line of bushes, presumably bordering a walk or path that leads … where?

  She wants to bury her face in her arms and cry, but she should not. She is too important for that, she knows. She knows not why, but she feels it nonetheless.

  One moment she is alone.

  The next she is not.

  “It’s time for me to take you to your home,” says the man. A figure in black, he is no taller than she is, but well muscled, despite the swirling black cloak.

  How can she tell what she cannot see? She does not know, but accepts it all the same, as she accepts the kindness in the stranger’s voice. Perha
ps, perhaps he is not a stranger.

  She stands.

  He offers his arm, and they head down the path, which turns out to have a dim light of its own and leads in a sinuous fashion toward the glow she had noticed earlier.

  “Terwhit!”

  She jumps, knowing she should not.

  “The tercels are the only nightbirds the Regent permits in the Park of Summer.”

  “Why?”

  “One would have to ask the Regent, I suppose.”

  The path winds up a gentle incline. The glow in the sky ahead increases, and the girl can see that the path is a pale yellow and that the border shrubs have small yellow flowers with white centers and are evenly spaced.

  She knows that the man in black will be gone before long, and even as she trusts him she fears him. Even as she fears him she knows only he can answer the questions she has and cannot ask.

  “Who…?” she stutters as they approach the top of the hill.

  “Am I?” he asks. He chuckles, as if he finds it amusing, but she hears the bitterness behind the sound. “Who am I? I could tell you who I really am, but that wouldn’t mean anything. If I gave you a name you’d recognize, then I would have to take that, too.”

  She shivers, starts to pull away.

  His grip is like iron, and she finds her feet marching in step with his.

  “Let us say, Lady-to-be, that I am your penance and hope to be your reward, and you mine. But that lies a long time from here and now … if either of us survives. And you will not remember this in any case.”

  The path widens as they come down the hill. The two take a narrower offshoot that leads to a small gate. The main path continues toward a series of towers outlined in ghostly, pervading light. She cannot turn her head toward the towers of light, but understands they are there.

  At the smaller gate stands a sentry in dark blue. His eyes are blank as the man in black leads his charge past.

  “You are Lady Kryn Kirsten, the only daughter and child of the Duke of Kirsten, first loyalist behind the Prince Regent. You have suffered an accident in your return to Karnak.”

  The dark man smiles at her, then wipes his expression blank.