But the priest saw that the parents would not be comforted. There was little he could do. He hung a charm over the girl’s bed and went away.
Within a few weeks, it was evident that Mora was with child. By the end of the first month, the child began to speak within her womb. The priest returned, with many attendants this time, and they bore her away in a litter.
Aerin, the parents later learned, had been discovered in the very throne room of the Guardian, marvelously transfigured, filled with a kind of fire that did not burn. He spoke much, and shouted and sang and wept. He had many voices, some those of people dead for thousands of years. His parents could not get in to see him. The sentry at the gate of the inner city shook his head sadly and said only that there was a ward in the palace where such people were kept, so that clerks might write down their every utterance, and the priests might study the transcripts and interpret any prophecies that might be found.
Vaenev eventually turned up stuffed in a rain barrel with his throat cut.
* * * *
The parents could not be comforted, even after a year had passed. Often they wept together, or just sat in the darkness at night, listening to the emptiness of their house. It was to them that the Revelation came, not to the priests.
Once, when they sat thus, a voice spoke out of the air, “Mother, Father, do not grieve for me.”
The mother let out a cry. The father said, “Who is there?”
Suddenly the room was lit, as if with a thousand flickering candles, and Aerin appeared to them, floating in the air, transfigured with light. His mother fell from her chair to the floor and covered her face, sobbing. She thought him a ghost.
“Grieve for Vaenev, who saw nothing and understood nothing, and perhaps for Mora, through whom strangeness will enter the world, but not or me. Mother, Father, I shall return to you. The memory of the Goddess is in me now, and I see what she saw. She could look into the past, and into the future a ways, as far as her power was to extend, but not beyond. She could not see the new age. Mother, Father, I see no future at all, as if my face were up against a dark curtain. The new age is upon us. When the divine rises anew, the spirit of the old Goddess shall pass from me, and I will return to you. Mother, get up. Dry your face.”
His mother stood up, and reached out to touch him, but he vanished.
On that night the clerk assigned to him reported that Aerin said nothing, and slept peacefully for the first time.
* * * *
These were the last miracles. The time of the death of the Goddess ended shortly thereafter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darrell Schweitzer admits that he is considerably older today than he was when he wrote the stories in this book, or the novel The Shattered Goddess (1982) to which this volume forms a loose prequel. His others novels are The White Isle (serialized 1980, book 1990) and The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995). Living with the Dead (2008) is a story cycle published as a short book. We Are All Legends (1981) is also a story cycle. He is the author of nearly 300 published short stories, which have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. He has been nominated four times for the World Fantasy Award, once for best novella, twice for best collection, and he won it (with George Scithers) as editor of the legendary Weird Tales, a position he held for nineteen years. He has also edited anthologies, including Cthulhu’s Reign, The Secret History of Vampires, Full Moon City (with Martin H. Greenberg), and That Is Not Dead. He is a critic and scholar of note, and has published books about H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, the writer Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, and the requisite number of literary cats.
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