by C. L. Roman
She nodded, gripped his tunic with desperate hands and buried her face in his chest. Working frantically to steady himself, he fanned his wings, brought them down in a mighty thrust. Just a moment, an instant of equilibrium, he thought, just enough for a single step. He thrust again, struggling, straining to tread air. The wind shoved at him, wild as any beast intent on smashing him into the sliding cliff face. The rain pummeled his already soaked feathers and the heavier they grew the more difficult it was to stay upright. They were going to hit bottom, there was no way for him to stop it.
Please Sabaoth, please, for her sake.
The wind gathered its breath and in that flash of calm, Jotun stepped through air into the Shift.
Above, on the empty, ravaged plateau a trio of tiny sparks glimmered briefly on the savage wind before disappearing into the deluge.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The hustle and hurry around her reminded Danae of an ant hill she had once observed. It had been years ago. She hadn’t seen more than eight or nine turnings at the time, but she had been impressed by the ants’ seemingly endless industry. They had seemed so full of purpose and energy, those ants, and their efforts had certainly paid off by supplying them with food and shelter. She only hoped that her efforts and those of her family would be equally useful in the end.
She could hear Fomor’s voice in the distance, calling orders and encouragement to her brothers. The wind teased her hair as she packed away the last of the pots into a large wicker basket and set it aside to be loaded onto the boat when the time came. If it came.
Standing tall and easing her back with both hands pressed against the base of her spine, Danae stretched and looked out her front window at Adahna. Seated at a table she had set up outside, her sword weighing down the top edge of the thin goatskin, the angel’s concentration was complete. Danae reflected that, even with her hair bound into a pile on top of her head, a piece of charcoal in her hand and a long, black smudge of the stuff smeared across her cheek, Adahna looked formidable. The goat skin was nearly covered with the strangest drawing Danae had ever seen. Her sister-in-law had described it as a floating house. It would be something to see.
A moment passed and then Adahna flung down her charcoal and sighed. Looking across at Danae, she stood. “It’s finished. Now all we have to do is build it.”
Three splats of water hit the skin in quick succession and Adahna stared down at it. “No, no, it’s too soon,” she protested.
In the next instant chaos erupted. The earth shivered and split, screaming like a man in his death throes. A pit opened between Danae’s house and the table where Adahna had been sitting, swallowing the table whole, plans included. Danae stumbled to the ground, winded but unhurt. Adahna leapt into the air, wings spread, sword drawn but with no enemy she could fight.
Water began to fall from the sky in torrents and the ground quaked into stillness. Water rushed up from the trenches created in the ravaged ground, trees toppled and lightening danced, thunder matching it strike for strike, setting fires that went from flame to smolder in a matter of minutes under the increasing deluge.
Adahna stared at her sister, obviously torn. “Find Zam,” Danae shouted above the rising storm. “Fomor will come for me. You know he will.”
Her sister touched down, nodded briefly and shifted. The last glimpse Danae had of her was a sad smile and a hand raised in farewell.
Looking around her, Danae thought creation truly had gone mad. The ponds each spouted a geyser of water shooting some ten to fifteen cubits into the air even as liquid probed the banks with a hundred hungry fingers before breaking through in a dozen places to snake its way from pond to pond. From the new gullies and trenches made by the tortured earth, streamlets branched, sped and joined turning the new-made rivers into lakes.
The trees bent to the giant hand of the wind pressing them to the Earth. So much for the flood taking time to reach full force, she thought. She might have surrendered to hysterics then, but the groaning of the roof trees in her home gave her no time. Stumbling, tripping, she ran for the door, and found herself wrapped tight in Fomor’s arms without having seen him arrive. He pulled her into the open just as the roof collapsed inward, leaving only a pile of debris and a cloud of dust. Then the wind snatched away the dust and began tugging at the wreckage, filling the air with leaves and bits of thatch, twigs and dirt.
“The caves,” she shouted over the wind, knowing even as she made the suggestion that it was useless. They were full of hidden springs and would already be filling with water. If what was happening to the ponds was any indication, the caves would be the first things to go under.
Fomor shook his head. “We can’t—” his words were cut off as the earth heaved beneath their feet. Straining, wings thrusting, Fomor clutched Danae to him and shot skyward. Claws of screaming wind grabbed and slammed him into a tree. The angel twisted, shielding his wife from the impact and Danae heard the dry snap of breaking bone.
Fomor gave a single, strangled cry and they were hurtling back to the ground, his left wing hanging limp as he struggled frantically to slow their descent with the right. Crashing against tree limbs, scraping against the trunk, they fell. Holding Danae tightly around the waist, Fomor reached out for a limb, thicker than the others, locked his fingers around it and clung.
***
Less than a mile away, the cavern was dark. Deep underground, no sunlight reached this depth.
“Above, all will die.” The idea produced a gleeful chuckle from one, an irritated pout from the other.
‘Who will worship us if they are all dead?” she demanded.
“Don’t worry,” the father assured the child. “The maker will not allow all of his creation to perish. Our time will come again.”
“But I’m bored. And hungry.”
Impatient now, the father tersely instructed the child to go to sleep, but his loud words bounced off the walls of their small, golden home with an unpleasantly sibilant hiss and he reverted to quieter speech.
“This world will need time to recover. For awhile, the humans will cling to their maker out of fear and gratitude. But they are a forgetful, ungrateful lot. Our time will come. They will not remain faithful to Him for long. Until then we can afford to rest here. Is it not lovely, our little golden home?”
She looked around her, taking in the two glowing red apertures near the ceiling. The curved and crenellated walls provided oddly graceful sleeping and sitting arrangements without need of actual furniture. Father has brought soft furs to make it more comfortable, and all the human are dying, even if we won’t be able to eat them.
“It will do,” she huffed. “But how long must we be confined here?”
“As long as it takes,” he said, and she was wise enough to question him no further. She slept and he was left alone with his thoughts. Gaining power over the humans will not be difficult. Given enough time, their worship would provide all the power he needed to keep Asarte safe. With a foot in both worlds, as it were, she would eventually hold a power second only to Sabaoth himself. Even Lucifer would be unable to best her. And I am her beloved father. Who better to guide and protect her? She loved him and rightly so. With his intellect and her raw might, nothing would be able to withstand them. They might even assail Par-Adis itself. All they needed was time.
In the cavern, the water rose, swirled and eddied around the little golden home. It crept through the blackness higher and higher, finally covering the idol, leaving nothing but the red gleam of wicked, gleeful eyes shining through the black water.
***
Fomor hung, battered and groaning above the half obliterated remains of the home he had built for Danae. Halted in their fall, and somewhat sheltered from the building storm by the surrounding branches, Danae took the opportunity to wrap her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck so that his hands would be free.
“Your wing,” she shouted close to his ear, “we have to…”
“No time,” he replied. “And no ch
oice left. We will have to go into the Shift.” The earth shivered below and the tree shuddered around them, groaning in terrible pain. Gritting his teeth against the shards of agony lancing through his shoulder, Fomor began the descent again, branch by sodden branch, moving with as much speed as he could.
Reaching the ground, still now at least for the moment, he cupped Danae’s face between his palms. “We have to go.”
She smiled at him, “I know. It will be all right, Fomor.”
“Danae, while we are between, close your eyes, look at nothing, touch nothing.”
Laying her hand over his, she turned her face into his palm, kissed it and looked back to him with glowing eyes, “Be anxious for nothing beloved, for there is world enough, and time.”
He stared at her for a moment, anxious eyes racing over her features as if he would memorize the lines of her face, and then pulled her closer, kissed her with a desperate passion. With mouths still fused, he lifted her into his arms and stepped into the Shift.
The noise and terror of the stricken Earth ceased suddenly with a wet sucking sound, like water sliding down a stone hole. Swirling black fog surrounded them with a bone shuddering cold that quickly penetrated their wet clothes and set Danae shivering violently. Fomor gathered her closer, wrapping his good wing around her to provide extra warmth, but the fingers of fog curled around, poked and prodded their way past his defenses like malign spirits seeking entry. In the corner of his eye he could see pinpricks of brilliant light dancing in the distance, but he resolutely kept his eyes fixed on the top of Danae’s head. Surely those lights brought only death or insanity. He shivered himself at the memory of mad Ouroboros trying desperately to eat his own flesh.
“We must go to the lights Fomor,” Danae’s teeth chattered as she spoke, but her tone was calm and certain.
He started sharply and looked into the face she tilted up to him. Ice crystals were sparkling in her hair like diamonds. How long can I keep her alive in here? Still…“We can’t. Danae, I’ve seen those who have tried. They did not survive.”
“Because they touched, but did not pass through.” She licked her lips and he saw something move behind her eyes.
“You are not certain of this?”
“I am.”
“But you are afraid?”
She ducked her head. “Yes. I am afraid, but I know this is what we must do. Fomor, I cannot stay in the Shift for any length of time and live. The cold alone will kill me in a few hours.” Her breath misted the air, swirling and lifting before fading into the black fog around them, as if to prove her point.
“I will keep you warm,” he said and set his jaw hard against her effort to persuade him. Fomor looked into the blackness, carefully avoiding any areas where the lights danced.
“And will you feed me too?” Danae’s eyebrow quirked in wry amusement. “Fomor, how long can we stand still?”
The lights were drawing closer, drawn, perhaps, by the warmth of Danae and Fomor’s bodies. He had never stood so long in the Shift, always passing through as quickly as possible, in order to avoid just such a situation.
He needed to get Danae warm. He needed to take her to a place where they could live and the child she carried might be born in peace and safety. A flash of the Earth as he had left it broke through his mind and he blanched. There was no going back, only forward, but how did he get her past the present catastrophe?
The lights surrounded them now, globes of white brilliance, with boundaries at once distinct and ephemeral. Their glow lit scenes of impossible beauty and bloody carnage, giant machines and wide fields.
The lights pulsated, throbbing, dancing to some arcane music that he could not hear, but which pressed against his ears with palpable force. He felt his heart pounding, heard the swish and gurgle of the blood within his veins. The radiance of the lights hovered and merged, driving back the dark and the fog, creating a pocket of warmth within the blackness. His attention caught, entranced, he felt Danae slip from his embrace to stand next to him, felt her hand in his, but he could not look away from the lights.
The air grew steadily warmer, then hot. The couple’s sodden clothes began to steam; the ice crystals in Danae’s hair melted. Before their clothes could actually dry, sweat dampened them again, the humidity in the bubble of light rapidly going from uncomfortable to unbearable.
“We have to choose,” she sounded breathless, and her grip on his hand tightened.
“Choose,” he asked, shouting against the throbbing in his ears. He could see no difference between the lights, which danced so close together now that they seemed almost to be a single, smooth curve of brilliance. Tearing his gaze from that wall of light, he glanced down at his wife and saw that her own eyes were shut tight, and the blood tears were streaming unchecked from beneath her closed lids.
“They are different Fomor. We must choose, or perish here and now.”
The heat intensified, he could see the soft peach of her skin reddening as if she had spent too long in the sun. Her hair was completely dry now and drifted, floating in the hot wind, a black corona around her face. Sweat trickled down her face and neck. Then he felt the wind tug at his own hair and felt a prickle cover his skin as the tiny, fine hairs there stood to attention.
“Choose,” Danae cried; the pain in her voice setting him into motion. He forced his gaze back to the lights, squinting now at their steadily increasing brilliance.
A place of safety and warmth, he thought. Sabaoth please let it be so. He gripped Danae’s hand tight in his and walked forward toward what he hoped was the center of one of the lights. As he moved, he thought he saw something in the light, some color, or movement. What?
He was on his hands and knees, gasping for breath, wet sand beneath him and the thunderous sound of moving water in his ears. The air was soft, the sun gentle and bright. In front of him rose a sheer cliff face of gray stone laced with green moss. He could hear sea birds screaming in the distance and smell salt on the light wind. Earth… the word drifted through his mind, laced with fog but certain.
He stood to his feet and shook his head, trying to clear it, but stopped abruptly as pain lanced down his back. He looked over his shoulder – feathers? Should he have wings? And if he did have wings, why did the left one hurt so much? He scrubbed a hand across his eyes in confusion. Something was missing. He had been with someone. He remembered holding someone’s hand, a woman. She was important. He had to find her. What was her name? Danae.
Memory rushed in on him, images crashing across his mind in tumbled profusion. Danae, her family, their wedding, killing Bansh and burying Nera, battling Molek, burying an entire village and then the furious, fruitless work of building a boat they would never use. Danae, the lights and…
“Danae,” he cried, his frantic eyes scanning the beach until they found a still form lying in the surf. Sight translated into motion, ignoring the pain stabbing through his torso, he sprinted down the beach and slid to his knees beside her. She lay on her back, palms spread as if welcoming the warmth of the sun, the wavelets pushing her hair into wet curls about her face. His shadow spread across her face and her eyes opened.
She smiled at him. “Hello love.” The smile collapsed and she sat up with a start. “Your wing!” Refusing his offer of help she struggled to her feet in the wet sand. Reaching up, she pressed her hands to his chest, urging him away from the water’s edge to a low boulder nearby. “Sit down, let me see.”
He offered her a strained smile and obeyed.
Moving behind him, she examined the damage to his wing and hissed in irritation. “Why isn’t it healing?” she demanded.
He tried to shrug and stopped immediately when a sharp stab of agony lanced down from his shoulder to his hip. “I don’t know. Things don’t heal in the Shift, but now that we’ve left it…this has never happened before.” He tried to look over his shoulder and she gave him a sharp tap on the cheek.
“Stop that. You’re making it worse.”
“Well, make up your
mind. Do you want help or no?”
Danae bit her lip, her eyes narrowed in concern she refused to let him see. The wing hung at a strange angle, the break occurring just above the carpal joint with the two jagged stubs of hollow bone poking out of the skin between bloodied feathers.
“The ends of the break aren’t touching, are they?” It was more of a statement than a question. Fomor shifted impatiently when she didn’t reply. “Spit it out woman! I’m not going to run screaming at the news.”
“Well, you might when I set it,” she retorted.
He nodded grim agreement. “Maybe so. But it seems that it won’t heal until you do, so get on with it.”
“I…” She reached out to touch the wing, but snatched her hands back and he shot her a quick glance.
“What is it Danae? You dug an entire sword out of me not more than a week ago. Something as simple as setting a bone should be easy enough.”
She shivered. “I had help and you were unconscious. This is different.”
He gave a choked laugh. “Well, unless I miss my guess, there’s no help coming and I’m not about to pass out to please you. So do your best not to butcher me, agreed?”
“But—”
“Danae.” He turned, grimacing, to face her and took her hands. “Nothing you will do can make it worse. And there is no one else.”
The pain on his face convinced her as nothing else could have. With mouth set and trembling hands she moved back around behind him.
“Let your arm relax into your lap. Drop your head forward,” she said. Her voice was a mere wisp of sound, but he obeyed. The shaking in her fingers stilled as she took firm hold of the broken ends of bone, straining to support the weight of his extended wing with one hand while steadying the exposed stub at his shoulder. The task was made more difficult by his slick blood under her fingers, and sweat stood out on her forehead as she pushed the ends together. She blanched when he groaned, but did not stop until the bones met and, with a slight click, connected and fused. Tiny capillaries and vessels stretched eagerly toward each other as the skin stitched itself over the wound.