His steps are heavy, but they have been heavy since youth, as he descends the three steps from the porch to the hillside. He walks up the grassy slope to the top of the hill that overlooks the small bay. At the crest he pauses.
The spray flings itself upward in misty patches, glistening in the indirect light that gives the breakers themselves a threatening yellow look.
From his vantage point he can see the outward path of at least one riptide.
He shrugs as he starts down the hillside, the shadows gathering around his black-clad form.
A dorle chitters at him, but wings over and glides across the hilltop to perch in one of the quinces and to wait.
Any close observer would note that Martel's feet do not quite touch the grass over which he marches and that there is no direct light to cast the shadows that trail him.
From the grass that does not bend under his tread to the sand that does not receive his footprints he heads straight toward the waters, and they part around him.
He walks through gold-green breakers as if they are not there, and the waters crash over the places where he has been without touching him.
Overhead, a white bird with deep golden eyes and black pupils circles, then vanishes.
His head beneath the water's surface, he follows the line of the sloping beach at least a kilo outward. By now the waves are nearly a hundred meters over his head, yet his hair is still in place, and he moves, bone-dry, over the seabed sands.
At the edge of the rocky shelf he stops, knowing that beneath his feet is the beginning of a slope that will drop nearly a kilo in several hundred meters. By rights, that for which he searches should be near. Out into the nearby waters he casts his thoughts, and on the first cast snares nothing. Nor on the second. Nor on the third. Some little patience has evolved in his years of avoiding what others regard as inevitable, and he changes his cast, refocuses his thoughts, and tries again. And again. At last, a glimmer, a slight tug.
That is enough, and he turns his steps southward, paralleling the dropoff, striding quickly, as if the water were not surrounding him.
Above the sea the white bird, golden-eyed, circles, following his general track.
A giant sea eagle, spotting the smaller avian, stoops to kill, and is brushed aside with a sudden gust of wind. The eagle tries again and is again brushed aside, and circles in confusion before deciding on the easier prey of a flying ray. In midskim from wavetop to wavetop the ray twists. But the intended evasion is too late, and the eagle flaps heavily toward his cliff eyrie with his meal. Circling still, the white bird follows Martel. As Martel proceeds toward his objective the clear water becomes less clear, and then even less so, until eyesight becomes useless. Martel is untroubled and unaffected and disappears into the cloud of sediment and suspended sand. A few hundred strides farther on, he halts. The suspended material whirls from an ever-expanding pit. Although Martel cannot see, he knows that at the center of the pit is a restrained and chained demigod. One suffering the punishment of a major god, and perhaps, placed in such a way as to infuriate the not-quite-major goddess who rules the shallows.
Should he free the chained demigod, the one creating the turbulence in his twin efforts to escape the eternal chains and to fight off the minions of Thetis?
If he frees the unknown demigod, both may turn on him. The former because only by subduing Martel can he return to the good graces of those who chained him. By now Martel has discovered that the demigod is male and that his principal tool is the fire of lava.
In turn, Thetis may attack because Martel will have intruded and robbed her of her due. She would have all thrown to her serve her, for at least a time.
Martel steps forward and descends through the swirls of boiling water and glass rain, down until the only light is the heat that surrounds the captive, light that is dimmed a fraction of a meter from its source. For though the eternal chains are metal, no heat will melt them, no superhuman strength rend the unseamed black links which, no matter how deep the chained one melts away the rock, stretch yet deeper into the depths. Do not free me unless you will pay the price. Martel snorts at the contradiction. Any being who can free the demigod must have power superior to his.
Martel smiles, faintly, knowing the other cannot sense his humor, gathers further his own darkness, his own chill depths, and touches one link, then the other chain.
The metal draws back from his touch, glistens more blackly, if possible, then fades and is gone.
Martel gestures, and the water is crystal-clear again. Of the eternal chains there is no sign.
The onetime captive, dressed in skintight red, reaches forth across the water he has warmed to grasp the man in black. As he does his arms lengthen impossibly. Those arms burn, and the water vaporizes away from them. Fool!
Instead of turning away, Martel glides forward into the heat, into the grasp of Hades, lets the would-be god of fire enfold him. No!
For now Martel holds the other's arms, more tightly than the eternal chains, for yet a moment before he releases the one in red.
He steps away and points. With the shadow he dispatches through the water goes the one in red, wrapped for delivery to the Sacred Peak. Was that wise, Martel?
Still in the depths hollowed by the demigod of fire, Martel looks up the green-glass side of the submarine amphitheater to the one who addressed him. Thetis? Who else?
Your pardon, but the unnaturalness of the waves beckoned. He walks up the glass-smooth slope that would be impassable for most, as if walking up a sheer glass incline a hundred meters undersea and remaining totally dry were not at all unusual. Thetis, at home, in her ocean, is not dry. Rather, the water enfolds her, and her clear green hair flows over her naked shoulders, front and back, like a cloak. In her right hand is a small trident. Her left is open, empty, as Martel approaches.
The unnaturalness was meant to call you. So I waited. To see what you would do.
And?
Why did you not destroy him? He would have done that to you.
And give them a reason?
Your refusal to accept godhood on their terms is reason enough.
Martel shrugs, smiles a small smile. But I would not give them reason were I in their place. That is what is important. She lifts her trident halfway.
Do not, dear Thetis. For I love the sea, and I would grieve.
You mock me. You mock the gods.
No.
The energy gathers around the green goddess. Martel gathers his darkness, the black from the depths out and beyond the field, out and beyond Aurore. The cold and the fire and the remoteness invest him. No longer a mere human figure, no longer merely immortal, he stands apart.
The water draws farther back from him, as if in fear. The sand under his feet shrinks from the soles of the black boots.
His eyes are the depths of the places where there are no stars, the distances from whence stars cannot be seen, and his eyes… they burn. They burn black, with a light that casts shadow across the entire seabed. A light where there should be no light, and a shadow where none should be. Still is the sea, and awful.
The trident drops, and with it the bare knee, followed by the inclined head.
For all this, Thetis, for all this, dear lady, no more am I god than this water, or that boulder. She shivers, though she is not cold. God of darkness, god of night, that you endure where light reigns, that you are, that you triumph, means there are no gods. Not as you would call them.
Martel nods, releases his hold on the darks and on the depths.
That may be. I am no god. Only a man who knows more than many, and a little more than some.
No. Her thought bears sadness. Not just man. Thinking so will bring sorrow to you, to all who surround you. More sorrow than you have experienced. Already you ignore the tears. Is it not so?
He does not answer, except with a short furrow of his brows.
Thetis belts the small trident, blows Martel a kiss, one that crosses the water between them and caresses his forehea
d. If not god, accept what you are, Martel. He salutes the departing sea-goddess with an upraised hand, and, in turn, directs his steps toward the shoreline.
The sea is flat, motionless yet as he emerges, and as his black boots touch the sand. The air is quiet, and hawks, the dories, and the golden sea eagles all perch where perches each, waiting.
When his last step clears the water, when he turns and again salutes the mistress of the sea, only then do the gentle waves resume, the sea breezes flow, and the sea birds fly.
Martel realizes his cheeks are wet, not from the water, for no water has touched him.
In response, he presses lips to fingertips and breathes the kiss back across to the sea, back to Thetis.
* * *
XXXIII
Help!
Martel stumbles, trying to pinpoint the direction of the thought, looking around, glancing up toward the shore and the Petrified Boardwalk.
A scattered handful of people—mostly natives—make their way through the fully lit and evening streets of Sybernal. Not a one of the three within ten meters of Martel has even flinched.
Despite the faintness of the thought, the aura of the plea is familiar. He cocks his head, trying to remember, to make a comparison. Not poor lost Rathe, for even the desperation of the thought holds a hardness that Rathe would never possess. Why dig that up? She's gone. Gone. Martel trots to the next corner, peering around it. No one notices him in the Street of Traders, not even the old man whose boot store is yet open with its green awning overhanging the public way.
Martel darts into the narrow lane around the corner from the bootery, gathers his shadows about him, and rises into the light. He does not notice the looped sign the bootmaker traces in the air as the black raven circles up from the lane, nor the averted glance of the young girl whose balcony he passes as he flaps awkwardly northward, from where he thinks the plea for help has come. Martel! God of the Darkness! Save me! Martel's wings miss a beat, and he loses altitude, then converts his drop into a dive, wings folded. For the desperate prayer has indeed come from the CastCenter. The locked portals open at his touch. Already the center feels empty, devoid of life. Martel's thoughts precede his body through the corridors toward the main control center. An aura of power is fading, an aura that Martel recognizes, from the control room, where Martel knows he will find what he does not want to see.
In the center, in the open space before the console, which is slaved to remote and broadcasting an opera from Karnak, on that open floor are three objects.
The first is a sheet of golden parchment, scrolled, on which a name appears. The name is Martel.
The second is a pile of heavy gray ashes, greasy in appearance, spilling across a golden starburst that has been etched into the permaplast flooring. A starburst, Martel knows, that had not been there the day previous.
The third item, collapsed in and around the ashes, is a pale golden one-piece coverall.
There may be other small objects, such as a sunburst pin, a thin golden chain, mixed in the ashes as well, but Martel does not touch anything. Except for the sheet of parchment, which he stoops to pocket. Martel gestures. The darkness swirls over the control room, and the floor is as it was, unmarked. Ashes, coverall, objects, all are gone, taken into the darkness.
From darkness she came, and unto darkness will she go, now and forever.
The cold knot inside Martel does not dissolve, but reaches to chill his fingers, numb his thoughts. “Flame!”
Darkness has fire, also, and that will I claim, for those who are mine, and those who claim me.
Martel stands, letting time swirl around him, then clamps himself back into reality.
He leaves without touching anything, departs as he came, and even young Alsitar, who is rushing through the main portal in response to the automatic alarm and who passes the one who was called God of Darkness as He steps outside the portal, even Alsitar does not see what he sees. For Martel wills it otherwise.
Believing in a god who will not accept divinity is obviously a dangerous business, reflects Martel. He shivers as his feet carry him along the Petrified Boardwalk.
He strides down the boardwalk until it becomes a patch along the back of the beachline, until Sybernal is behind him, until the roofs are less than smudges on the southern horizon. Then he takes out the golden parchment scroll with the sunburst in the upper right corner.
Until what is proper is done, the followers of those who challenge shall suffer, for an undeclared god is no god, and blasphemy is death.
Martel shakes his head. Rathe he could understand. But Marta Farell?
Does Apollo really think this would force him to take them all on? Won't it?
Yes, but not yet. Not now. Ever? He touches the parchment with shadow, and it is no more.
For a time he regards the ocean in the perpetual light that could be morning or evening, and is both and neither.
At last he turns back to the south. Where his feet touch the sand, each quick step leaves a black print, each grain of once-golden sand now the color of the space between galaxies.
The line of jet footprints on the shimmering golden sands points toward a distant cottage that has become emptier by the absence of one who never lived there, and never would have.
Soon a storm will rise and scatter the dark grains. After that storm, or the next, or the following, some child will look at a black grain and wonder. For all know that the sands of Aurore are golden, and there is no black sand.
* * *
XXXIV
Rathe?
Should he re-create her? The odds are good that he can duplicate her essence. Are they? He twirls the beaker that contains the last of the second bottle of Springfire he has consumed since he began the debate with himself.
Would she be Rathe? Even if I caught everything? Remembered it all? He looks from his chair on the porch up the hillside. The topmost quince is dying, he can tell. Why don't you rejuve the quince? Re-create it? Plants don't rejuve. Then re-create it.
It wouldn't be the same quince. Might as well plant another. He sips what should be the next-to-last sip from the beaker.
Through two bottles the questions have not changed. Neither have the answers. And Rathe? Would your creation be the same? Could you bear not to make changes? Even if you didn't, would she be the same?
He does not answer the questions. Instead, his sip becomes a gulp as he downs the last drops of the Springfire from the jasolite beaker. “Flame! Flame! Flame!”
Even as he stands and gathers the darkness to him, even as he hurls the beaker into the flooring with enough force to shatter it and embed the crystal shards into the wood, he knows the answer. Rathe is dead. Dead is dead.
No miraculous re-creation will restore the woman who loved him.
All you'll have is a duplicate doomed to repeat the mistakes of the real Rathe. A pale copy without the fire of the original. A living doll without the soul of the only Rathe who lived.
“A pale copy? Sure. Just a pale copy! And what are you, Martel? A pale protoplasmic copy of distant ancestors who screwed around!” Say what you will… dead is dead. “Easy enough to say. Easy enough to think. But you're alive.” Exactly.
“You can throw your thunderbolts. You can summon the eternal darkness. You can heal the sick. You can walk on air and on water. So why can't you create a new Rathe?” You can. You just can't bring back the old. “So why don't you?”
The darkness freezes with the question, and even outside the cottage the breeze stills and the dories quiet.
Because she's not strong enough. Because you'd destroy her again.
“Me? You wonderful subconscious, tell me again I destroyed her.”
Didn't you force her to leave and not protect her? Martel does not answer himself in the quiet and dark that wait for his decision. Do you want to spend every moment guarding her from Apollo? Can you make her a goddess? And if you could, would she be Rathe? “Flame!”
His breath comes out in a long hiss, and the sile
nce is broken. Outside, the two dories in the nearest quince chitter. The low waves in the bay across the hill swish once more, and the breeze ruffles his short hair. The darkness ebbs beneath the moment.
At last, he looks down and wills away the crystal shards in and on the floor. The polished wood returns to an unblemished state as the scratches erase themselves.
Although there is another bottle of Springfire in the cooler, he will not need it. Not today, not tonight, though they are one and the same on Aurore. Even gods, even you, have limits, Martel. He would cry, but cannot, as he looks to the hillcrest and the twilight that will be centuries in coming. Instead, he stares at the dying quince.
* * *
XXXV
Time, like a loose-flowing river, does not, will not, flow the same for all individuals, neither mortals nor immortals.
That thought flits through his mind as he takes quick step upon quick step along the narrow pathway that leads toward a white villa.
Technically, the answer is simple. Technically, the answer is not an answer, but chance. Chance alone seems to determine who lives and who dies. Some mortals become gods, and no scientist can determine why. An increasing number of mortals, even within the Empire, do not age, or age far less quickly than others.
“Miracles?” he mutters as the path begins to rise. Any demigod on Aurore can return youth to a mortal, at least in body. But whether the youth remains so for more than a few years depends again on the individual. “My individual?” he asks the trail, both recalling and trying to forget the lady upon whom he had bestowed the gift, recalling also how he had hoped she would remain beautiful in her own way beyond her time. Beyond her time? That time was so short. Had he only made the effort… had he made the effort he had not, for the reasons he can understand but not accept.
Will you ever accept them? Will you ever fight the gods for one individual? You can't fight them all. Won't you have to, sooner or later? Perhaps. But not for one individual.
Then for what? For what, for whom, will you fight, Martel?
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