The Shattered Goddess

by Darrell Schweitzer

  He descended the few steps before the leader’s door, hesitated, then knocked lightly. There was no reply, but the door was swung inward a crack. He pushed it open and entered, closing it again behind him.

  The walls of the narrow cabin were hung with intricate tapestries of faded colors, mostly angular, orange figures on blue backgrounds, a style Ginna had never seen in Ai Hanlo. A single lamp hung from the ceiling on a chain. Shadows shifted with the movement of the river. Everywhere wood was creaking, more so than one heard on deck. There were trunks, leather cases of scrolls, and books lying about. A glittering sword with an immensely wide, curved blade hung on the opposite wall.

  Beneath the sword, seated on the bare wood, was the old man, his legs crossed, his back upright. He gazed directly at the youth, still as a statue, saying nothing. He wore a scarlet robe with the hood pulled up.

  Ginna stood before him, expecting a greeting or something. But the man made no response to his presence. He felt awkward and vaguely afraid that he might have transgressed some unknown law of courtesy. He wanted Amaedig at his side. She always seemed to be able to get him out of these situations.

  “Nay, your companion cannot be with ye this time,” said Arshad in a low monotone. “Your own man ye must become in time, and care for yourself.”

  Ginna gaped.

  “You know what I was thinking!”

  Arshad smiled and relaxed.

  “There be no magic involved. As I came down the long path into the cabin, I saw ye there, and the rest was plainly revealed. I have watched ye two. She is good for ye, and I think that is why it has come to pass that she is with ye. She knows more of the world than ye and can guard ye from human dangers, while ye are more of the spiritual world and know more of other things. The two of ye are in balance.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The Master pointed to a spot on the floor before him. “Sit there, but first blow out the lantern, that I may behold ye by your own light.”

  Ginna obeyed, folding his hands together and making a ball of light. He imprisoned it in a cage of fingers.

  “Suppose you were to take two of them and press them together? What would happen?”

  “When I was little I used to play games with them, and I tried it. They burst.”

  “Then the first lesson for ye will be to prevent them from bursting.”

  “Master—they call you that; is it right for me to?—you said you were returning to the cabin, as if you had been someplace else. But I saw you sitting here.”

  “That will be your second lesson. But let us get on with your first. The creature of the river was surely a sign that there is little time left. For your third lesson, if we ever journey that far, I shall explain to ye why all seeming coincidences are illusion, linked invisibly by webs of meaning. Consider: if things were random, no man could read the signs or interpret omens. The world would be very confused.”

  They sat for hours. Ginna juggled balls of light, sending flickering shadows whirling across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Then he remained still, with one ball between his fingers, and Arshad taught him to truly see for the first time. It was as if he had been born blind, and now his eyes were opened. He saw the crack between two pieces of planking as a vast chasm, in which a whole tiny world was contained. A knot in the wood was the center of a whirling storm. And he heard for the first time. The creaking of the ship became a crescendo of voices speaking words he couldn’t quite make out.

  Then, somewhere in the course of events, of words, of images, thoughts, sounds and shadows, all flowing slowly past him like the river, he was half aware of making a ball of light, letting it rise, making another, then catching the first. He held both of them. He stared at them. He saw them more clearly than he ever had before, as Hadel of Nagé had described them, as worlds, with tiny ghosts of seas and continents whirling around. He concentrated on them, willing them not to burst, to become one, and slowly pressed them together. They merged into a perfect sphere, twice as large as either had been.

  But the lesson was not over. There was no applause for his feat Arshad commanded him and guided him further, teaching him a formula to be chanted over and over until it became a subverbal, subconscious rhythm, something which shut out the rest of existence, leaving the mind unfettered for a single task.

  He felt power building up in his body. He wanted to stand up, to stretch, to seize the mast of the ship and break it over his knee, all in celebration of his strength.

  This feeling passed. After a time he was not aware of his body at all, except for the working of his hands. He made another ball of light, and another, and another. Somehow the first one did not drop to the floor and pop out of existence. It hung in the air, and he was able to add new ones one by one, until he stretched his arms wide and still could not encompass the glowing, spinning globe. The cabin was filled with its light. His eyes were dazzled; he had not seen such brightness since before everything had happened, since last he had seen a true sunrise in a blue sky. The thought came to him that he was building a new sun to be released from the ship, to drift into the air and dispel the darkness.

  That was not the old man’s intent. He did a most remarkable thing. He reached through the bubble and still it did not vanish. He stood inside it, reached out, took Ginna by the wrist, and drew him in.

  They were no longer in the cabin on the ship. Ginna looked up into a hazy sky. Shadows pressed close all around, but the world was suffused with gentle light. They stood on a polished stone floor at the foot of a flight of marble stairs. Each step was easily as high as the boy’s shoulders. The staircase had been built for giants.

  “Where are we?”

  “Wonder! I have never had a student so adept, so powerful. Ye stand where many men struggle all their lives to reach and never arrive.”

  “But what place?”

  “In the realm of the Powers. Ye have climbed a little way.”

  “Can I go further? It should be easy now.”

  “No, it will take time.”

  “But—” And before Arshad could say anything, the boy was running toward the bottom step. As soon as he had moved at all, and was out of the space enclosed by the bubble of light, the whole scene winked out.

  They were back in the cabin, Arshad standing, Ginna still running. At once he fell over a trunk and crashed against the side of the ship in a painful sprawl. He grabbed a shelf to steady himself, but it came loose, showering papers.

  “Let that be another lesson for ye this day,” said the teacher sternly. “Obey always. Do not act rashly. Be glad ye didn’t break a leg for your antics. Now go. We have had enough for now.”

  On deck he found Amaedig sitting among the sailors, helping to mend a broken oar by fixing bands of metal around it. It was well past dawn. No one was rowing. The ship glided slowly on the current. The sail was filled with wind. Most of the sailors sat in groups, talking, working at little chores, or finishing up the remains of a meal. Some were doing something he did not understand, huddled together on a silken rug. They might have been praying.

  “Hello,” he said, and his words were like bubbles rising slowly from the bottom of the river. He had not realized how tired he was. The world consisted of the chilly air on his face and dimly moving shapes. There was a sharp smell of tar.

  He slept.

  * * * *

  When he awoke, the sky was dark. The oarsmen were rowing vigorously in silence. Every few strokes one of them would glance over his shoulder. The helmsman peered intensely into the gloom ahead. At the bow, the shaft of light from the lantern was like a blind man’s cane, groping in the endless night.

  Ginna sat up groggily and leaned against the mast. It occurred to him that the men were tense. They must be expecting something.

  Torches snapped and sputtered. The oars creaked. Otherwise the world was quiet, the water still as oil.

  He found Amaedig in the prow, sitting with Arshad. They were playing some kind of board game he had never seen before,
with carven pegs fitted in holes to represent ships, castles, and so on. He squatted down beside them.

  “So ye are with us again,” Arshad said. “I was about to have ye wakened.”

  “Hello,” said Amaedig.

  “Hello... Good morning, or evening…”

  “It is evening,” said Arshad. He concentrated on the board for a minute, then moved several pieces in a dark strip around the edges. To Amaedig he said, “Behold, and learn a lesson. Ye have taken precautions in the physical world, but in the spiritual world ye are unprepared. Thus I win the game.”

  “What game is it?” Ginna asked.

  “Some day I shall teach ye. But not now.” He put the pieces in a leather bag, folded the board, and stood up, holding both. “Come here, ye two.”

  They went as far forward as it was possible to go, till all three held onto the upright end of the long, curving board which formed the ship’s keel. The lantern behind them cast their shadows huge upon the water. White foam churned just below their feet

  “We are on the ocean now. We have left the river behind. In this ocean, not far from the mouth of the river, is the place called the Island of Voices.”

  “Does it speak?” Ginna said.

  “In a way it does. Here it was that men first learned that The Goddess was dead. Long and long ago a ship passed on a dark night, even as we pass, and the wind blew through the limitless caverns which honeycomb the island. The sounds joined together to form a voice which spoke three times, saying, “She is dead.” The message was not understood for a generation, but in time the meaning was clear.”

  “Does it say anything more?”

  “I know not. No voice has been reported, but sometimes ships come too close and are wrecked on its shores, and the ghosts of the mariners call out to other vessels as they pass.”

  “Oh.”

  In silence they watched until at last the bulk of the island loomed ahead of them, the texture of its darkness slightly different from the sea and the sky. The current drew them ever nearer. Now the helmsman and rowers went about their work in deadly earnest. Ginna felt a touch of fear as the cliffs towered above them, but as long as Arshad was confident, he was not afraid, and the old man looked on calmly. Amaedig’s face was rigid. He could not know her thoughts.

  The beam of the lantern revealed gaping caves all along the cliff face. There was no wind, nor any sound but the creakings and clatterings of the ship, and the faint washing of surf at the base of the wall of stone. The island did not speak. In time it slid by and they were alone on the sea again.

  “Nothing,” said Ginna.

  “So it would seem,” the old man replied. “The voices speak not. Perhaps it is too late in the history of the world for further revelations.”

  “Too late! Too late!” came a coarse, croaking voice out of the darkness ahead.

  Arshad was as astonished as anyone else. Suddenly the fear which had hovered above Ginna reached down and clutched his heart.

  “Here! Here!”

  The leader raised his hand. The oars rose in unison out of the water and paused. The ship glided. The lantern probed ahead.

  “Here!”

  Ginna, Amaedig, and Arshad looked straight down. There, clinging to the keel of the ship was a pale, naked man. Only his head and shoulders were visible. Waves broke over his back.

  “What are you?” demanded Arshad, leaning over for a better look. At the same time he pushed Ginna and Amaedig away. They stood back.

  “What I seem to be. Let me aboard, quick!”

  “Foul apparition, ye are no natural thing, nor are ye what ye seem to be, nor shall I let ye up on board! By the name of Tashad I exorcise ye, by the strength of his arm, by the sharpness of his sword, by the—”

  Like a whiplash the creature’s arm reached out, impossibly far, impossibly fast, seized Arshad by the beard and dragged him over the bow. Ginna could not react. The deed came between heartbeats. But Amaedig screamed, and suddenly he was screaming too.

  All around them, the ship was in pandemonium. Ginna staggered back, tripped over something soft and fleshy, and tumbled down onto the rowers. He saw what tripped him. It was like a naked man, pale and deathly white, but not a man, heavy and flat of body, with another set of arms where the legs belonged. Another one appeared, and another, and another, scuttling over the bow like huge, shell-less crabs. They reached out of the water and seized the oars. The sea was alive with them. Ginna had a brief glimpse of rolling waves of limbs and flesh coming at him out of the darkness. There was no sea at all, only millions of deformed bodies. They swarmed over the ship, up the mast and rigging like flames licking up a curtain. The Tashadim drew swords and slashed frantically, but the endless numbers readily replaced the slain.

  Ginna kicked one monster in the face, wriggled free of another, and crawled to Amaedig’s aid. She was clawing at the thing, forcing her fingers into its eyes, and dumbly it held on to her, insensitive to any hurt.

  His hand found a heavy wooden peg in a notch by the railing. The sailors used them to secure ropes. Now he lurched to his feet and rushed forward, holding it like a club, just as the ship shook violently, the sail shredded, and flailing bodies fell onto the deck in a chaos of canvas, rope, and tackle.

  He was on top of the creature which was crushing the girl. He beat it again and again with the peg. Something grabbed his ankles and he rolled over, kicking a soft stomach with both feet. Again he pounded on the bald, blubbery head of the thing until it split open. Still the arms held on like an iron vice. It was only when the whole skull was smashed away and there was little more than a pulpy tatter of skin left at the end of the neck that the creature let go. Blindly, it crawled down among its fellows.

  The deck was cracking under him. There was a loud snap followed by a perpendicular tilt, and suddenly he was falling. He reached frantically for Amaedig and she for him, and tangled in one another’s arms they struck the water. Instantly the cold shock and the silence beneath the surface seemed to convey him into another world. Something was slowly closing down over him, squeezing him out of the world he knew. Then he realized what it was, let go of Amaedig, and swam deeper, struggling to get free of the tom rigging which had almost caught him like a fishnet.

  It was only when his lungs were nearly bursting that he turned upward. He broke into the air with a spout of foam, gasping for breath. Amaedig was beside him, splashing to stay afloat. The sea rolled gently and was quiet. There were no voices, no sounds of the ship’s timbers breaking. There was no trace of anything.

  Both of them tried to tread water, but it was obvious that they could not last. They were land dwellers. Neither really knew how to swim. They were exhausting themselves minute by minute.

  It seemed like a miracle when something solid nudged Ginna’s back. He grabbed for it without fear of what it might be, and touched jagged wood. It was a broken piece of the ship’s mast. He pulled Amaedig over, and each looped an arm over it.

  His legs hung limply down into the water. The cold seeped into him. He tried to move his legs after a time to keep warm, but all feeling had gone out of them. He lost track of time. Slowly he rose and fell with the motion of the sea. His arm was going numb. He switched to the other, but there was hardly any improvement He put both arms over the mast and tried to pull himself up onto it, but it began to roll and he fell back.

  Without a sound, Amaedig lost her grip and disappeared under the surface.

  “No!”

  He reached down, caught her by the hair, and dragged her up again. Dumbly, coughing out sea water, she resumed her place. He felt a little better for the movement and effort, but quickly the cold came back. His teeth chattered. His ears and face hurt intensely, and then stopped hurting at all. They felt like heavy wax.

  He paused to wonder. Tashad had foretold that his followers would die on the island of light at the end of the world, but they had died at sea. Was the ship with its torches the “island?” Had the end come?

  Prophecies and mysterie
s. The world was full of them. He didn’t care. They drifted some more. Darkness seemed to soak into his eyes. His vision was going—

  — briefly he had a terrifying inner glimpse of Kaemen, pale and fat, gripping the arm rests of his throne seated in the great room beneath the golden dome, alone in the darkness, watching—

  From far away, Amaedig’s voice came to him.

  “We’ll make it... to the island. Listen for the surf.”

  The night was still.

  “Hang on,” she said again, an indefinite time later. “We must keep hanging onto...”

  But even as she spoke, dark as it was and dim as his eyes were, he could tell she was losing her grip. With the last of his strength he worked his right arm under hers, so when her fingers finally lost all ability to grip, he had her. She floated with her face barely above the water, while he held onto the mast with his left arm.

  When that arm gave out, they would die.

  At the very last, after what seemed like many hours, when he found himself dropping into a final soft, inviting sleep, he cried aloud.

  “Do you hear me? This is the end. I have had enough. I am ready to die now.”

  And his life moved before his eyes in quick procession, and it seemed mostly filled with horrors. Darkness. Flight Screaming men and women burning upside down on stakes. Gutharad’s corpse dropping from the sky. The heads in the fountain. The child’s hand on the doorstep in the deserted village. The few fleeting, happy moments seemed unreal, half buried memories of mirages and fever dreams.

  The mast was slipping away. He couldn’t move his arm. The cold was in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.

  And somehow Amaedig’s face, floating on the sea like a film, spoke, “No... You must keep trying. Do... something. Make a light...”

  His mind worked like a frozen thing slowly thawing, dripping into dim awareness.

  He remembered the steps in the realm of the Powers. Another place, beyond the world. He remembered the Zaborman magician who had folded space around himself like a cloak.

  Amaedig seemed to understand. She was holding him as much as he was holding her. He let go of the mast. They floated on their backs. He held both hands out of the water, empty, coming together as stiff fingers touched. The hands moved without any conscious will on his part, touching, parting, touching again. A ball of light rose over the sea. There was another, and another. He caught one with his right hand, another with his left, missing a third. He pressed the two together. He was entering a trance. The world withdrew. The ocean, the darkness were no longer with him. The pale oval of Amaedig’s face was a faint, abstract thing.