Hammer of Darkness

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Don't know why I bother,” Martel mutters as he hangs up the gold-and-white tunics and trousers that have been furnished for him. “The colors, you mean?”

  “Um-hmmm. Not mine.”

  “Yours is black.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You said so.”

  “When?”

  “When you were under treatment.”

  “What else did I say?”

  “Who's Kryn?”

  “The girl I loved. The one I thought I loved.”

  “She love you?”

  “No.” Martel folds the collapsible savagely, jams it to the back of the high shelf at the back of the built-in wardrobe. “Don't ask me.” he growls, afraid Rathe will ask more.

  Don't ask me! Don't ask me! He cannot block the thoughts. “I'd like to help.” Her voice is low… have to help… The thought fragment is clear. Martel turns toward Rathe, watches as she unbuttons her blouse, watches as she shrugs out of the tight trousers and stands, breasts firm, nipples erect, arms half outstretched, almost pleading.

  … please… have to… gods are Just… be merciful… Her eyes do not meet his, and he wants to turn away, to bury himself in the memory of Kryn, in cool blue, even she who held a hot stunner instead, he lets his thoughts enfold the red-haired woman, who knows him while he scarcely knows her, lets his mind fall around hers, trying to understand.

  As he takes a step toward her the pictures flood him, first one at a time, then in a tidal wave.

  A red-haired young woman, a girl, swimming with a friend, sunning themselves on a deserted beach with even waves, the friend of a young man. Blond, handsome. An insistent young man, with insistent hands, hands knowing of her desires and her resistance, trying to trigger the former and brush by the latter. Kissing, leading to touching, and her breaking away, out into the water, half laughing, half crying, half wanting, and half turning away. The man's reluctant acceptance.

  More pictures, blurring.

  Another scene, high above the sea, on a ledge over white cliffs, secluded. More kissing, more touching, and again the girl breaks away. This time the man grabs for her, tries to force her back into his arms. She half turns, falls. He falls onto her, breathing hard, and she kicks at him. His feet go out from under him, skitter on the white gravel, and he loses his balance, bounces, and falls. Falls out over the hard rocks and down, down onto the jagged edges and foam hundreds of meters below… his scream… her tears… barely started before the thunderbolt, the god appearing, sunhair so brilliant his features obscured… his judgment… seared into her thoughts… Martel tries to break out of Rathe's thoughts, tries not to, all at the same time, understanding at first/second hand what she alluded to in mere words.

  Let the punishment fit the crime. Because she led on one who wanted her, who loved her in his own way, killed him, even accidentally, she had to pay, and pay, and pay, by easing the hurts of those who are lost, the Martels and who knew how many others, forever and ever and ever… world without end.

  He stands there, his body nearly next to hers, but not touching her naked skin, with his own tears and hers streaming down his cheeks, shaking, wanting to touch her, wanting her to hold him, and unable to bring about either. He touches her hands, finally takes them in his, holds her, and she presses against him, gently, undemandingly, and their cheeks touch, their tears meet.

  After a time he cannot measure, he lays her upon the low bed and holds her more tightly. Lips brush, and more, and they fold and enfold each other.

  After the instants, after the quiet, in the silence that is no longer empty, sleep finds them, finds her.

  In the day-lit time that seems like night, she tries to pull away, but asleep and awake all at once he will not let her go, strokes her short red-silk hair, touches her thoughts, touches the line of judgment within her soul and finds he cannot remove it, finds he can add something, a small something, restore a small sense of pride, and does. Holds her through the day that is morning. And sleeps.

  When he wakes, she is there, dressed, sitting at the foot of the bed. “Leaving?”

  She nods. Touches her fingertips to her lips, then to his forehead. She stands and leaves without a sound, having given, having received.

  Martel wants to cry, cannot, will not, and feels the shadow within him grow.

  After instants that feel like hours, he rolls over, stares at the open doorway.

  More time passes before he sits on the edge of the bed, head down and resting in his palms.

  Should he have let her walk out?

  Martel stands and surveys the room, the empty shelves, the wardrobe where three outfits hang, the window that opens on the grassy hillside with its scattered pines and a single quince.

  Tell me now, and if you can, What is human, what is man?

  The lines of the old song seem singularly appropriate, though he knows not why. He pulls on trousers, tunic, boots.

  The portal, which is really an old-fashioned doorway, beckons, and Martel follows it.

  On his right, as he goes out of his bedroom, is an even more expansive window that frames the hillside running down toward the coast road and the sea beyond. To the left is a set of louvered panels that screen off the small kitchen. Straight ahead are a settee, a low table, and two stretched-fabric chairs. Behind the arrangement of furniture is a dining area with another, higher table and four chairs.

  Walking around one of the fabric chairs, Martel stops in front of the window. “A long day…” A long day…

  He rubs his forehead. The control is not automatic yet, not on this, his first day of return to the land of the living. From five months of drugged existence to a friendly face, a warm person, who greets you in the most intimate way possible, and then feels she must walk out?

  Rathe Firien, Kryn or no Kryn, memories or not, will be part of his life. For now, for who knows how long. And who knows how long for anything? Martel holds two images up in his mind, compares. Kryn: long dark hair, light complexion, high-breasted, slender, blue girl. Mind and thoughts like a knife ready to cut. Fragile and strong as plasteel, uncertain, yet ambitious and ready and willing to stab for hers. Cold, and passionate.

  Set the record straight, Martel, You think she's passionate. He makes the mental correction with a half-smile.

  Rathe: short red hair, narrow-waisted and full-breasted, friendly, open, and vulnerable. Strong… he didn't know, but her mind said she was. Ambitious—no. How could anyone be ambitious with a compulsion like that laid across her soul? Passionate… yes, with reservations. He shakes his head.

  Are the gods really gods? Or men and women with larger-than-life powers playing god over a planet that wasn't really a planet? Playing with Martels and Rathes of Aurore, like toys in an endless game?

  Does he, Martel, really want to find out? And risk the outcome for himself, for Rathe, for Kryn? Does he have any choice?

  And what about Kryn? is she real or an inflated memory? Will she be part of the future? And Rathe? How long? How? He turns from the window.

  Reason would indicate that death either represents no state or a changed state, nothingness or somethingness, if you will.

  Humanoid cultures, almost universally, represent death as a dark and grasping figure, which does not follow logically, is there something about the source of this representation of which we are unaware?

  —The Dark Side

  Sidney Derline.

  * * *

  IX

  A glittermote lands on his left arm, the one sprawled out on the sand next to his head. Without looking up, he knows it is black. The black ones feel different, more attuned to him than the normal white or gold motes that seem to be everywhere.

  He leaves his head on the sand, eyes closed, lets the diffused warmth soak into his bare back. For whatever reason, he can get a light tan at any time of day or night. Logically, whether or not the field diffused light, the tanning effect should have been limited to the technical “day.” As with many things on Aurore, though, logic
is wrong. Martel corrects himself: Apparently sound logic is wrong. Crunching sounds, footsteps, intrude. He lifts his head, rolls over and into a sitting position. A tall man, blocky, black-haired and dark-skinned, dripping ocean, walks from the foam at the water's edge straight up the beach toward him.

  The black glittermote stays perched on Martel's arm. A second mote appears next to the first.

  Martel half smiles… the first time he had seen two together. Black ones, that is. So you're the one.

  Martel blocks the thoughts and answers, “The one what?” “If you want to handle it this way, it's your choice.” The stranger stares at Martel, the sharpness of his study disconcerting.

  Martel stands and wishes he hadn't, as the other towers a full two heads taller.

  “Black glittermotes? Never seen any before. Must be something new, not that there hasn't been time for that.”

  Martel gathers his defenses, mental and physical. Will some sort of assault follow the verbal onslaught? “Who are you?”

  “Just a curious bit player. You can call me Gil Nash, if you want. It's close enough.”

  To what? thinks Martel, simultaneously blocking it from the other while drawing energy from somewhere, somehow.

  A small cloud of black glittermotes appears from nowhere, circles Martel, and a handful array themselves across his shoulders, their feather touch electric.

  “Don't draw any conclusions!” counters the tall man, backing up several steps. “I'm just watching.” Martel shakes his head to clear his sight from the momentary disorientation, focuses on the other's face as a stabilizer, finds himself reaching, evading the other man's sievelike screens, and picking up fragments, mostly images.

  A tall ice-pointed peak… Apollo the sun-god… oceans and brass chains with links to dwarf a man… a sword that flames when drawn… a dark cloud that is a bull and a man and a god…

  Martel retreats from Nash's thoughts, finds he can see the energy of the man, his ties to the field. Those are what the lines of energy have to be.

  Nash retreats another step, far enough down the sloping beach that he and Martel are almost at equal eye level.

  “Take your time, Martel. You have forever, and they don't.”

  “What about you?”

  “Another century of causing tidal waves won't hurt, and that's what I'll get.”

  “What? And who are 'they'?”

  “It's a long story. But since the thunderbolts haven't hit yet, how about a drink?” Martel shrugs.

  None of what the crazy giant says makes sense, but maybe it would. What seems logical isn't. So what isn't might be.

  “My place is up the hill. All I've got is some local beer and Springfire.” He turns and digs his toes into the sand as he starts upward, mentally reaching out and letting the towel sweep itself off the sand and over his arm.

  “I'll take the beer. Springfire's the last thing I need at the moment.” Nash does not comment on the acrobatics of the towel, as if they were only expected.

  Either an esper or familiar with them, reflects Martel, letting his extended perceptions track the bigger man as he follows Martel out of the sand and onto the grassy hillside.

  The two chairs and table on the covered deck wait for them, as well as a beaker of Springfire and a frosted mug of beer.

  Martel gestures to one chair and seats himself in the other, the one closer to the door into the cottage. The nearly dry Nash, wearing only what seems a metallic loincloth, sinks into the chair, which bends, but does not give. Martel revises his estimate of the man's weight and strength up another notch.

  The other downs nearly a full liter in one gulp. “Not the best, but damned fine after all that salt water.”

  “Could you explain?” asks Martel. “None of this makes any sense. Black glittermotes, bit players, thunderbolts, chains, and drinking salt water.”

  “Young one, when you've been around as long as me, you take things for granted, it all seems so simple. Some things I won't tell you, because you won't believe them, and my telling will make it even harder. That'd hurt me. So I won't tell. Some things you're about to learn and half believe, and those I will tell you. And some things you won't understand.”

  Martel waits, but the tall man, who physically does not appear more than a handful of years older than Martel, drains the rest of the mug. Martel refills it without leaving his chair. He does not like using so much esping, but has the feeling that the stranger might disappear if he takes his eyes off him.

  “I might, too—” the man grins—“but not quite yet. It's like this. First, the glittermotes. They're simple. They congregate around those who can or do tap the field. But in… say along while… I've never seen black. Only gold and white, Not even… anyhow, that's the glittermotes.

  “Bit players, demigods, bystanders, all the same. Strong enough to endure, but not to influence the game. Once in a while, we can point things out to the new ones. That's you. My chains rattled free before they were supposed to, and I won't say how, on the condition I have a beer and a chat with you. No illusions about that. I'll be back throwing waves shortly.”

  Martel listens, trying to accept the information, to take what is offered and sort it out later. In the back of his mind, he senses a change in the weather, a storm brewing over the hills to the west.

  “You're educated. Talk about the chains of the sea. I've something to do with that. If you're in the chains of the sea, you drink salt water, and that doesn't do much for your thirst. Now ask why I don't try harder to get free of my chains. I do, every once in a while, for an adventure or two. But I don't stand up well against the storm-gods or their thunderbolts, and they don't stand up well to the Elder Gods, which says where I stand in the grander scheme of things. You're different, or will be, once you get the hang of it. You've got some of them stirred up. Can't see why exactly… seem too peaceful to me.”

  Martel stands, the blackness boiling out of him like night, the glittermotes clinging to him like a shadow cloak. Explain! His command strikes the other like a whip. Young god… and the older gods fear you. You are not ready to face them… by their own laws they cannot strike you down… but will tempt you to your own destruction… or to attack them all…

  The perpetual day turns sudden dark, brooding smoke-yellow dusk, with the swiftness of a razor knife slicing day into night, and the thunder rolls in from the west and down the hillside like a war wagon to shake the cottage. The windows chatter with each quick drumroll.

  Gil Nash freezes whiter than the white roads to Aurore, whiter than the white roofs of Sybernal, whiter than the snows of winter and the sands of Sahara. Nash's eyes dart toward the clouds. Martel throws a mental shell around himself, trying to gather all the energy he can, but as he draws he feels the golden bolt descending from the clouds in a blaze. “Mr. Martel… Mr. Martel…” Coldness, wetness… water across his face. “What…”

  He opens his eyes. He is sprawled on the deck on his back, looking up at the circular charred hole in the roof, and at the gray face of Mrs. Alderson.

  He checks himself over, lets his unsteady perceptions review his body. The report is sound. No overt injuries. He sits up, concentrating on keeping everything in focus.

  The chair where Nash has been sitting is a heap of ashes. The one where Martel sat is untouched. There is no sign of the demigod who called himself Nash, nor any remains.

  “Thought there weren't any thunderstorms on Aurore, Mrs. Alderson.” He sits up.

  “There aren't, less the gods are involved. You be messing with what you oughtn't, young man?”

  Probably, thinks Martel. “Don't think so, but the fellow I met at the beach may have been.”

  Martel stands up, uses the back of his hand to wipe the water off his forehead.

  The table lies on its side, the beaker next to it. The beer mug a glassy lump now, is coated with the ashes from the fired chair, and has rolled almost to Martel's feet.

  The landlady follows his glances, sees the melted mug, connects it wit
h the ashes of the chair and the hole in the roof, and gasps.

  “Called himself Gil Nash. Swam out of the water and asked if he could have a beer. Didn't see any harm in it. He seemed nice enough.”

  “And that goes to show you, Mr. Martel, what happens on Aurore when strange people arrive from the sea. Like as not he was a ruined demigod trying to escape his just punishment. Lucky as not you're an innocent. Knowing mortals who help the wicked uns, the gods have no mercy on them.”

  Martel shakes his head slowly. No innocent, just fast enough with an energy screen… and yet… how long was he unconscious? Certainly long enough for anyone disposed to do him in to do so.

  What had Nash said? Tempting him to strike out? He shakes his head again, more violently. No striking out, period!

  “Luck, I guess,” he answers the waiting woman. “I'll pay, as soon as I can, for the damage. Not on purpose, but, as you said, I should have known better.”

  “No, Mr. Martel, how would you know, being new and all? It's not that I'm short on funds. You are, and I should have warned you. Just be a mite bit more careful what strangers you strike up with. Time comes and you'll sense the queer ones.”

  “I will. Certainly will.”

  He sweeps the ashes into a bag, where he deposits the lump of glass that had been a mug, and carries the bag out to the recycling pickup next to the coast road below Mrs. Alderson's house. By the time he climbs back up the long steps, she has rearranged the porch furniture and placed another chair next to the table. Except for the hole in the roof and a darker shade of decking where Nash's chair had been, the setting is again as it had been—

  Most people, reflects Martel, wouldn't see the difference unless they looked up. And who makes a habit of looking up?

  “Thank you again, Mrs. Alderson.” The words feel awkward, but he doesn't know what else to say.

  “No problem, Mr. Martel. We all have to get used to new places, now, don't we?”

  He nods, trying to repress a smile. Some individuals, like Mrs. Alderson, like Rathe Firien, have a down-to-earth friendliness that puts everything in perspective. Rathe… He purses his lips. “Do you have a directory? For Sybernal?” “Aye, and so do you. Second drawer, under the vid.” She picks up her broom and with quick steps is halfway down the porch steps before he can speak.