“I take it Martel escaped,” she notes to no one in particular or to the empty air.
“No person was in the room besides yourself at the instant the disruptors focused.”
She turns to the lake vista again, neither frowning nor smiling, to see if she can discern a flicker of black.
“Martel…”
The word dies softly in the empty hall.
li
“He has retraced the steps of the Fallen One,” observes the Goat, shedding light as a proof sheds water.
“Is he the Fallen One?” questions a demigod at the edge of the circle that hovers above the sacred mountain.
“How?” snorts the Smoke Bull. “When the Fallen One toppled the Regency, Martel was an apprentice newsie who had just fled the Grand Duke.”
“But the holos?”
“Holos be flamed! And you, too!” With that the god who has chosen the Bull (or perhaps it is the opposite, for on Aurore those things which are lies elsewhere may be true) makes an unnecessary gesture and trusses the outspoken demigod in ropes of dark smoke that drag the impertinent to the golden-green depths of the ocean. He will emerge a decade or so hence, reflects the Smoke Bull, chastened, strengthened, and more aware of his position.
Apollo releases his hold on the rays of dawn, channels them, and stands, basked in their glow, at the center of the circle.
Cooperatively the Smoke Bull places a wreath of darkness in the air at Apollo’s feet, and the brilliance of the scene creates a contrast only a grand master could fully appreciate, or convey. But there are no mortals present, and the talents of the gods do not run to mere depictions of their realities. This scene, like so many behind history, will go unpainted, unholoed, unrecorded.
“I am not concerned with what has happened, but with what may happen,” begins Apollo, his musical baritone cascading down and out from the mountain.
By the time his voice reaches the resort town of Pamyra, with its homes clustered around the cove fifteen thousand meters below, all that remains is a series of carillon notes, a gentle melody that the locals have called the organ of the gods.
Apollo knows this, has cultivated his voice, and is not displeased.
“For I have monitored the field, and Martel is not drawing on it, though he maintains his link. Yet large mounts of energy are being expended in Karnak, and they center on Martel.”
“Certain?” questions Emily, as curt among the gods as seductive among mortals. Deadly in both places.
“You are welcome to check yourselves. I merely call it to your attention.”
“Let me summon my chariot and my hammer and end this nonsense,” growls the bearded hammer-thrower, and his voice rumbles down the mountainside.
“As you please,” murmurs Apollo. He sweeps his arm to encompass the group. “Should we send Thor after Martel, the hammer-thrower after the hammer?”
“Chaos!” exclaims the Goat, and his hidden red eyes dance. His meaning is not understood, or ignored. Or ignored.
“A hunt,” whispers the other Huntress, savoring the blood that has not been shed … yet.
The handful of demigods, recalling the example of outspokenness that preceded the discussion, either nod in agreement or make no gesture.
“I will wait,” mutters the Smoke Bull, and the storm clouds spin from his words.
“Then it is decided?” asks Apollo, though his tone is rhetorical.
“Decided!” claims Emily.
“Decided,” adds the Huntress.
“Decided,” agrees the Goat. “Decided in chaos.”
The others say nothing, either through their voices or their powers. A demigod wrestles in the bottom of the sea with chains of darkness, and a tidal wave smashes the first line of houses on the beach at Pamyra, the ones reserved for the rich tourists.
“Agreed,” rumbles the god of the thunder, summoning his chariot with a bolt of lightning.
“Agreed.”
Decided and agreed. The thought echoes from the darkness beyond Aurore, splinters the light corona around Apollo, and vibrates in the minds of the gods and demigods.
… decided and agreed …
Emily looks at Apollo, who turns to the Smoke Bull. Their eyes meet, but not their thoughts.
Thor ignores the thought and the three and vaults into his chariot for the trip to Karnak. The goats paw at empty air, and the battle cart is gone.
lii
CLING!
The off-key alarm note of the system jolts her awake instantly. Catlike, she stretches and keys into the full command network even before pulling her lean body into the golden singlesuit.
“Report!”
“Discontinuity. Class four. Vector Aurore to Karnak. Nondrive.” The disembodied voice goes directly into her nervous system through the command implant, but she prefers to believe she has “heard” it.
“Ship class?” she snaps, though a subvocalization would have been sufficient.
“Nondrive. No characteristics of known ships.”
“Defenses on full alert. Response only. Response only, I repeat.
“From Aurore?” she mutters, forgetting to downgrade the commlink.
“From Aurore, Lady.”
The Viceroy downplays the link and finishes drawing on the singlesuit. The full defense belt follows, then boots.
After splashing cool water over her face, patting it dry with the old-fashioned towel, she runs the styler over her hair, adjusts her complexion, and steps from her sleeping rooms into the lift shaft to the command center beneath the palace.
While she plummets, her hands recheck her defense field, and her fingers tap the belt studs one by one, touching the smooth-gritty controls with the force of ingrained habit, hardly noticing the conflicting tactile sensations produced by the smaller field that surrounds the belt itself.
The energy barrier barring the entrance to Karnak’s defense center flickers green as she passes through. With the same flicker, it could annihilate anything short of a full battle cruiser not attuned to the screen.
“Lady, the center is ready,” offers Forde.
“What is it?”
“The source of the discontinuity, you mean?” Forde frowns and lowers a shoulder toward the Marshal for Strategy, who stands a half-pace behind him.
“Ah … yes … Lady and Viceroy … the discontinuity. Could be caused by several phenomena—a new type of ship, a natural occurrence unobserved before, a generator malfunction in an existing ship…” His voice drags to a halt in the face of the Viceroy’s glare.
“Exactly how likely are any of those ridiculous possibilities?”
“Almost nil,” admits Forde, smoothing a wrinkle in the front of his rumpled red tunic.
“Something to do with the gods of Aurore?” suggests the Viceroy, twitching her nose in a frown.
Forde backs off a pace, realizing his fear-drenched sweat may have reached her. He wipes his forehead with the back of his left hand, his right hand resting on the controls of his own shields—futilely, should the Viceroy have decided to terminate his position or him.
“A possibility, admittedly,” offers the Marshal. “The measured field strength might be possible, although, as you know, we have been unable to obtain any accurate readings on the powers of the so-called gods of Aurore, and, so far as we know, none has ever left Aurore.”
“If this is one, Marshal, he or she will be the third,” snaps the Lady.
The Marshal darts a look at Forde. Forde wipes his forehead again.
The Viceroy ignores both, steps around the two, and takes a quick dozen steps into the master control consoles and screens.
Is Martin Martel really the newsie/demigod/god named Martel? Or is Martel the god toying with her? Has he come to repay debts, old debts?
She shivers. Forde has followed her quickly enough to catch the gesture, but draws back again, wiping his sweat-streaming face. The control center air is cool, scented with lemon-orange.
Forde wipes his forehead again as the Viceroy�
��s fingers run over the power displays.
The Marshal steps toward the board, theoretically his to command physically under the direction of the Viceroy.
Forde’s long arm comes up with a snap to stop the military officer’s second step. The Marshal opens his mouth, looks at Forde, then at the stiff back of the woman controlling the center, and shuts his mouth without uttering a word.
“Very sensible, Forde. Very sensible. You gentlemen may sit on the wing consoles, or leave, as you please.”
Forde eases into the left wing observer’s chair, the Marshal into the right.
The screen is centered on the airspace above the temple of the Fallen One, ten kilos east of the palace.
“Nothing yet to see,” comments the Viceroy. “According to the energy board, some minor but nonsystemic sources are building.”
“Götterdämmerung,” mutters the Marshal, dredging the reference from he knows not where.
“Not exactly. More like…” The Viceroy halts. She wants to say Armageddon, but that is not it either. She sniffs. The faintly musky odor is not Forde. Rather Lady Kryn. She is afraid, and she withholds the shiver the thought could bring.
Why?
The questions leap into her head again. One she lets stay. After all, Martel had worn black. Why does she fear men in black? Why poor Martin Martel?
Except—is he still poor Martin Martel, penniless Regent’s Scholar? Or does that Martin even exist? Or was he dust a millennium ago? Who is the real Martel? Does she really want to know?
A locator arrow flicks to the bottom of the screen before her, identifying a new and building energy concentration. Her eyes dart toward the red arrow, and the black dot it identifies.
“Magnification,” she says quietly, heart pounding nonetheless.
She centers the screen on the dot she recognizes as Martel even before the picture is fully focused.
“The same one,” whispers Forde to the Marshal.
The Marshal frowns, then raises his line-thin black eyebrows in a question, as if to ask which one.
Another locator arrow flares, and the Viceroy splits the main screen into two views. The right-hand view holds Martel in dead center, standing inside the laser screens of the temple of the Fallen One on the steps. The left-hand vision refocuses on an object sweeping out of the dawn sun.
“Goats,” mumbles Forde.
“A god of Aurore, apparently,” observes the Viceroy, her voice but a fraction tighter than normal, the tension unnoticed by either subordinate.
Both Forde and the Marshal stare, wide-eyed, at the apparition that fills the left screen.
Two goats, each the size of a bison, red-eyed and yoked to a four-wheeled bronze cart, paw their way through the cloudless morning skies. A red-haired, red-bearded man, armored and complete with pointed and horned helmet, leans forward in the cart and brandishes a graystone hammer in his right hand. In his left are the red leather reins.
The Regent’s hands suddenly begin to play across the power controls.
CLANG! CLANG! RED ALERT! RED ALERT! FULL DEFENSE SCREENS! FULL DEFENSE SCREENS!
Another call goes to the Fifth and Seventh Fleets, not that they could accomplish anything in the space above the Viceregal city itself, but Kryn knows they will be of help after the clash between the two gods. And their records may be of great assistance in documenting the power of the gods of Aurore.
The lights in the control center flicker.
“All power sources outside the palace screens have been diverted,” reports the power center.
“Diverted? Where?” As she speaks she realizes the stupidity of the question. Martel would be grabbing power from wherever he can find it, and that may not be enough if Thor, assuming he is a god from Aurore, can draw on the entire field from that distance.
Half the controls before her are dead. Nothing outside the palace shields is operative.
She watches, merges the two screen visions into one as the goat cart swings down out of the rising sun toward a black marble temple and a man in black. Watches, fists clenched at her sides, not knowing what outcome she wants, not knowing if either outcome is what she wants.
liii
THE HAMMER OF DARKNESS
Though the wind joy-sings, it’s a long way from here.
Though the boughs whisper, they whisper of fear.
Though the leaves linger, they lean to the wind,
And the wind, it is colder for those who have sinned.
The wind it is colder; the wind it is cold;
The wind it is colder for those who have sinned.
The ravens are winging; their wings are so black.
The lightnings are singing; the sun is turned back.
The storm clouds are drawing; the sun grows so dim;
And the dark god is coming; I know it is Him!
The dark god is coming; the dark god is coming;
The dark god is coming; I know it is Him!
Up on the hillside, where the grasses are gold,
The blossoms will fold to the touch of the cold.
The grasses love sunshine; the trees love the shade;
But neither will stand to the cold He has made.
But neither will stand to; neither will stand;
But neither will stand to the cold He has made.
The sunshine we’ve prayed for, but here comes the night.
The darkness is gathering to blot out the light.
The hammer of darkness will fall from the sky;
The old gods must fly, and the summer will die.
The old gods must fly; the old gods must fly;
The old gods must fly, and the summer will die.
Though the wind joy-sings, it’s a long way from here.
Though the boughs whisper, they whisper of fear.
Though the leaves linger, they lean to the wind.
And the wind, it is colder for those who have sinned.
The wind it is colder; the wind it is cold;
The wind it is colder for those who have sinned.
—Hymn, Church of the Fallen One
Composer unknown
liv
Martel waits. Stands on the temple steps. On the steps of the temple where he slept through the night, slept knowing the hammer-thrower has been dispatched after him, carrying the mandate of the gods, particularly of Apollo and Emily.
He does not question how he knows what transpired above Jsalm. Knowing is enough. The time to question will be later, if there is a later. As he feels the instrument of vengeance draw near, he prepares to accept the blows of the hammer-thrower.
One does not fight the blows of a single old god, not when the field of Aurore is massed behind that tottering old god. One fights all the gods.
The goat chariot clatters out of the sun, a black point in the white-gold circle of light, wheels spinning backward, and hums battle chants from a warriors’ tongue forgotten longer than the languages of the obscure poets Martel has made a practice of quoting.
Thrummm! Thrummm, da-dum, da-dumm.
Martel hears the rhythm. Smiles. Husbands the energy he had drawn from his confrontation with the Lady Kryn, readies his shunts from the Viceroy’s power system, and holds his darkness for the assault.
Thrumm! Thrumm, da-dumm, da-dummm.
The sound is nearer, and it rattles the looser shutters of the battered gray villas that border the black temple.
Thrummm! Thrummm, da-dum, da-dummm.
The sun darkens, though no clouds mar the blue-green of the morning sky. The Viceroy has activated the city’s defense screens.
“Hsssst! Hssst!”
The breathing of the battle goats falls like rain across the pavements of the city of the Viceroy, each fragment carrying a sparkle of light that breaks as it strikes the ground or hard surface.
The sun flickers again as the goat chariot and its master hurdle through the defense screens, haloed in the energy that bathes them momentarily.
A violet pencil of light leaps from
a hidden emplacement, stabs at the bearded god, touches the cart, its bronze bosses, its time-darkened wood.
The god, for it is Thor, and his graystone hammer is mighty, lifts that hammer, points it, but does not trouble himself to release it. Along the path he has pointed, back along the searing violet, strikes a bolt of lightning.
The violet light knife is no more, and above the blackened hole a small thunderstorm gathers, raining metal among the boiling water that it drops.
“Behold! Behold!” thunders Thor, his eyes burning red, his beard flaming. “Oppose not the gods!”
His words crash across the city. Two dozen men, five women, and three children die instantly from the sonic concussion. Another 231 will be permanently deaf unless major auditory surgery is performed.
“I oppose,” says Martel, standing on the steps of the small black temple, and his words, scarcely more than a whisper, reverberate through Karnak, even into the sealed chambers of the Viceroy, even through the triple screens of the core-tap power stations, even into the brains of those who cannot hear, and into the awareness of those who cannot reason.
The thunderstorms, the fire vortex, and the glitter rain of the battle goats dissolve into mist at the words of the man in black.
“OPPOSE NOT THE GODS! NOR THE HAMMER OF THOR!” thunders the hammer-thrower. The chariot of the ages and its hiss-breathing goats veer leftward as they rumble down toward the temple.
Another group of unfortunates, somewhat larger now that the thunder-god is near atop the city, perish.
“I oppose.”
And again, the quiet words soothe the injured, damp the thunderstorms, and enrage the hammer-thrower of Aurore.
“THEN PERISH! FALLEN ONE! RETURN WHENCE YOU CAME! BEGONE!”
Thor does not gesture this time. He throws his hammer, that mighty graystone hammer, and he hurls it full at the stocky man in black, who stands upon black marble steps, at that man who would seem slight beside the burliness of the ancient god. In that moment, the sun flickers, and brightens.
Haze and the Hammer of Darkness Page 51
