Taty sighs across the room as she reads her book. “I can’t bear it.”
“I know,” says Ivanya.
“What are we waiting for?” she says. “It’s been hours. Will he call? Will he send a messenger? How long should we wait?”
“He said he didn’t know. I believe him.”
“Believing him isn’t the problem. The problem is that he hardly knows what he’s getting into any better than we d—”
She pauses. Ivanya keeps her eye on the mirror, determined not to look away. “Taty?” she asks.
Silence.
Ivanya looks over her shoulder at the girl. Taty is seated in the chair in the corner, book in her lap, but she’s not reading it: she’s staring straight ahead, eyes dull, mouth open.
“Taty?” Ivanya says again.
Still nothing. The girl slowly blinks.
“What’s wrong? Taty? Say something!” Finally Ivanya stands and walks over to the girl. She kneels before her and shakes her shoulders. “Are you all right? Taty? Come on now, girl, don’t do this to me now….”
Taty takes in a rattling breath. Then she softly says, “Fox in the henhouse…”
“Fox? What?”
“There’s a fox in the henhouse,” she says again. Another slow blink. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, and suddenly Ivanya gets the feeling that Taty is seeing something she herself cannot.
Ivanya’s only seen this once before: in the train station in Ahanashtan, right before Taty somehow predicted that they were being watched.
“He’s going to get in,” she murmurs slowly. “He’s found a way in. They can’t stop him. He’s going to gobble them all up.”
“What?” says Ivanya. “Who? Who’s they?”
“And Mother,” Taty whispers. “Mother…She’s going to die. She’s going to die again….”
“What? Taty…Taty, you…” Grimacing, Ivanya rears back and slaps the girl. She’s not sure if she’s doing it to wake Taty up or because she’s scared as all hells and wants Taty to stop it.
Taty blinks rapidly, her eyes now focused, and touches her cheek. “I…I…”
“Taty,” says Ivanya. “Can you hear me?”
Taty looks around like she’s surprised to find herself here. Then she looks at Ivanya, terrified. “There’s a park!” she says. “A big park, here in Bulikov! A girl’s there, and…We have to go there, now!”
“What? What are y—”
“I don’t understand it, so don’t ask me to explain!” cries Taty. “Just listen! There’s some big park, and a tollbooth there, and a girl outside it—we have to go there, to warn them to get them out, get them out! They’re not safe and he’s coming for them and we don’t have much time, Auntie!”
“A big park? There’s so many that could…” She pauses. She knows that’s not true. There’s only one really big park in Bulikov. “The Seat of the World,” she says. “But who’s there, Taty? Who are we going to try to save?”
“Everyone!” screams Taty. “All of them! We still have a chance, but we need to go now, now, now!”
* * *
—
Deep in the sub-reality of their sanctum, Tavaan walks down the rows of beds, looking out on all her sleeping siblings. Some look peaceful while others look concerned, dreaming with faint expressions of pain on their faces. Tavaan looks at all of them with some sense of wonder—for though she is the Divine spirit of slumber, she herself never truly sleeps, or dreams. Much as a fish does not understand water, Tavaan has no concept of rest.
She walks up to Shara Komayd’s overstuffed chair and sees the old woman is awake, sitting slouched with her eyes half-open. She somewhat resents Komayd: it was Komayd’s idea to build this place, and while Tavaan is in many ways the god of this sanctum, she is also its prisoner, babysitting her sleeping siblings as well as this half-second of an old woman’s life that Malwina has twisted and distorted well past its expiration.
Tavaan watches Komayd for a moment. “Will it work?” she asks.
Komayd draws a rasping breath. “Olvos can be unpredictable. But she is also resolute. It will not be easy.”
“Resolute?”
“She is principled,” says Komayd. “I suppose a god can afford to be principled, if no one else ca—”
Komayd never finishes her sentence. There’s a noise from the other side of the huge wooden doors on the far side of the room: a tremendous, dreadful clanking, like some massive machinery has just irreparably broken, gears being stripped and rods snapping in two.
The noise echoes through the room. The sleepers all stir in their beds, shifting and moaning.
Komayd and Tavaan sit still, listening. No other sounds come.
“That doesn’t sound right,” says Komayd. “Is…Is that right?”
“No,” says Tavaan quietly. “It isn’t.”
* * *
—
Sigrud looks across the fire at the woman. She is the exact woman who met him outside the walls, yet now she looks strangely different. Besides her change in garb, looking at her feels queerly dizzying, like walking up to the edge of a cliff and looking down.
“You are…Olvos?” he says.
She smiles at him. “I am, dear. Would you like some tobacco? Or some tea?” She gestures at the stone table behind her, on top of which are a number of strange items he can’t see well in the firelight.
Sigrud considers the consequences of consuming something offered to him by a Divinity. “I think I am all right.”
She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
“You just let me in? Just like that?”
“What, you thought you’d have to break through every barrier, piece by piece? I suppose you could have, if you were willing to spend a few decades at it. Though I am impressed. Most intruders never get to the wall. Most never even get to the glades. They get turned away well before that. Yet you barged right in, totally unaware of any hazards.” She glances at him, her bright, copper-colored eyes shining. “Curious thing, isn’t it? Here. Let me get a look at you. Why don’t you come around to my side of the fire? I don’t bite, I promise.”
He hesitates.
“I understand your previous interactions with a Divinity have not been positive,” she says kindly, “but while I am not wholly pleasant, nor kind, I have no ill intentions for you at this palaver, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson.”
Sigrud reluctantly walks around the fire, and though he still doesn’t want to sit beside the Divinity, he allows himself to sit on the log to her immediate right.
“You do have the look of the kings of old. I remember,” she says. “Bold and fierce and merciless. Had the life spans of a marsh fly too. Made lots of babies, though only a handful were produced consensually. I’m glad we’re well clear of those days.”
“Olvos,” says Sigrud, “I…I feel I must tell you the nature of my visit, which is extremely urg—”
She waves a hand. “Yes, yes, yes. You’re here to ask me to wade into your ongoing war and establish peace, yes? Swat your enemies down like flies, yes? I’m aware of all that, and you’ll get my answer in due time.”
“You knew why I was coming?”
“Oh, yes,” she says mildly.
“How?”
She looks at him like she’s suddenly worried about his intelligence. “You know I’m a Divinity, right?”
“Well, I mean—”
“I keep an eye on things, at a distance,” she says. “I’m aware of your situation. It also helps that the second you come here you’re in my place, in me, so I see quite a bit about you.”
“So you know about the children?”
She nods.
“And the enemy…He is—”
“You can say his name here,” says Olvos. “He’s not getting in here. Not yet, anyway.”
“Nokov,” says Sigrud. After days of
dreading its mention, it’s odd to say the name aloud. “You know of him?”
“I do.”
“But…But if you know that, if you know how dire things are, then why haven’t y—”
“I told you you’d get my answer in due time,” she says. “I rather think I hold all the cards in this particular negotiation, dear. Please don’t rush. Are you sure you don’t want any tobacco?”
“No,” says Sigrud, frustrated. “No, I do not want any tobacco. So my coming here was your intent?”
“Not quite. I’ve been watching events unfold for a good bit now,” says Olvos. “And I must admit, things have gone largely the way I expected they would—not exactly utopia, but not another Blink. Not very good, but not very poorly either.”
“If you know about all this,” says Sigrud, “if you knew all this would happen, then…when you met Shara here, after Bulikov…why did you not warn her?”
“Why didn’t I tell someone that there was a small army of incredibly powerful, very malleable people that could be snatched up at any moment? Why didn’t I tell the one person who was about to speed to the top of the government, the one person who had the one tool that could control and destroy this army?” She laughs scornfully. “I did not think that would go well.”
“You didn’t trust her.”
“Shara is one person,” says Olvos. “One person who was going to have to engage with many large institutions of people. Not all of whom, as you’ve learned, are benevolent. I thought it wiser to let things get sorted out on their own, rather than give any ambitious up-and-comers their own little Divine army.”
“And do you think that has gone well?” asks Sigrud.
Olvos is silent. She takes a deep breath and exhales, smoke pouring out of her nostrils. “Going well or poorly isn’t the point,” she says quietly. “Those are short-term standards for short-term goals.”
“The deaths of so many Divine children? So many people? These are short-term goals?”
She looks at him. For a moment her eyes aren’t right: they don’t look so much like eyes as distant flames, burning somewhere deep within her face. “I have been in existence for a very long time. I have seen many horrible things. As much as it grieves me to say it, yes—I would permit a few small tragedies to avoid catastrophe. I have sat here and watched many things being woven out in the world, many ways the future could go. I think there is a chance, just a chance, that the way of least damage could win out. But it depends on many things. One of which is you.”
“I have done my piece,” says Sigrud. “I am here speaking with you. The rest depends on you.”
She slowly shakes her head. “No. You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, are a person of—how shall I put this?—great momentum. You do not stop. You cannot stop. You bowl forward, charge on, wrecking many things in your path. And now here you come, rolling to my doorstep—but you won’t stop here either. You know this. I know this. I have watched you. Very, very closely.”
Something quivers in Sigrud’s stomach as he hears this. “You have watched me?”
“Oh, yes,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you are a remarkably odd creature, Sigrud. Even if you weren’t so intricately wound up in this, I’d still watch you—that’s how fascinating you are.”
“What do you mean, ‘remarkably odd’?”
“Do you even have to ask? You have lived through circumstances almost none could survive. You have conquered things many would consider unconquerable. If this were the old days, and were I to look out on my domain, and see some strange, errant mortal carving a path of destruction through the world such as you do now—do you know what I would think?” Olvos leans close. “Why, I would think they were touched by the Divine. By another god. A person miraculous or blessed, twisting reality around them as they moved through it. I would be very suspicious indeed of this mortal. Very suspicious.”
“I was not touched by a god,” says Sigrud slowly. “I was tortured with a Divine tool, but no more.”
“Yes, that’s true. But can you think, Sigrud,” says Olvos, “if your torturers ever used that Divine tool again after you overcame it? What was it called, the…the…” She snaps her fingers.
“The Finger of Kolkan,” says Sigrud.
“Yes, of course. Awful thing. Did you ever see them force other prisoners to hold it after your brutal session? Maybe not. Slondheim was an awful place, a shifting nightmare, and it must be hard to remember how things were. But I don’t think you saw it used again—did you?”
He stares into the fire.
“It’s almost as if that little stone stopped working,” says Olvos offhandedly. “Almost as if the miracle that was in it…left. But of course this makes one wonder—where did it go?”
Sigrud’s left hand is clenched in a trembling fist.
“Such a curiosity, you are,” says Olvos. “Never directly touched by a Divinity, yet you seem strangely blessed. But—not quite. You defy the Divine, you defy death, you defy pain and suffering. That’s the cycle of your life, isn’t it? You throw yourself into dangerous, hopeless situations. These situations punish you mercilessly. Yet you overcome them, and live. But at the end of it, after all your trials and tests, you are left alone. A lone savage in the wilderness, helpless and frustrated. A creature of powerless power is what you are, strength rendered impotent by rage. And you’ve lived these past forty years like a man with one foot nailed to the floor, walking forever in circles. That’s been the pattern of your life—ever since that stone kissed your palm, that is.”
“What are you saying?” whispers Sigrud.
She smiles. The expression is far from wholly pleasant. “Do you know, back in the old days, when one of your kind showed up, we all killed it immediately? Me and the rest of the Divinities. We didn’t agree on much, but one thing we agreed on was that such things had no right to live. Things like you were too dangerous.” She stares into the fire. “We did that a lot back then. When something threatened us, we met, held a vote, and usually put it down. Odd how power has that effect on the mind, even the godly mind. Some of those choices I regretted. But for things like you—why, I had no qualms at all.”
“What am I?” says Sigrud softly. “What are you saying that I am?”
“You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” says Olvos, tapping out her pipe, “are a man that a miracle mistook for a god.”
* * *
—
Tavaan stands before the huge wooden doors, head cocked, listening. There’s silence from the other side, but…that tremendous crash and clattering couldn’t have been nothing. She places a hand on the doors and shuts her eyes, trying to feel it out.
“What is it?” calls Komayd from the other side of the room.
“I don’t know,” says Tavaan. “I’m working on it.” She searches the many paths and devices that lie outside the doors, all the Divine constructs that, invisibly or otherwise, admit or deter entry.
She feels them falling away, one by one. Someone is blowing through all their security measures as if they were no more than smoke.
They know how to get in, thinks Tavaan. They knew how to open the hallway. Could it be Voshem? Could he be returning?
But this troubles her. If it were Voshem, he should have contacted them and told them he was returning. And moreover, why would he be returning unless something was wrong?
Tavaan grits her teeth. She is, in essence, the Divinity of this little piece of sub-reality. Its walls and floors and windows all give to her touch. If she wished, she could bring the ceiling down with but a thought, or make the furniture dance. But despite her control, there are only two means of exit and entry to the sanctum: the doors before her, and the secret exit on the far side.
She looks at the secret exit, thinking long and hard. They’ve rarely used it, since it’s far less protected than the main entrance. She could open it up if
she wanted to—but what if this is a feint? What if this is the workings of the enemy, and that’s what he wants her to do?
“What is it?” asks Komayd. “What do we do?”
Then the doors start to whine and hum like cages full of nervous birds—which they only ever do if someone new is approaching them, someone who’s never been to the sanctum before.
Tavaan turns to look out on the many beds. “We start waking people up.”
* * *
—
Sigrud stares at Olvos, who stuffs her pipe and holds it out among the flames again. He swallows. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know what a miracle is?” asks Olvos. “I mean, what one really is. Very few do. Most Continentals didn’t even know back in the days when the world was practically swimming with them.” She puffs at her pipe. “It is like a living thing, a tiny, thoughtless Divine creature, working away below reality like a termite under your floorboards. It lives its life in cycles, just as you do. You wake, you eat, you defecate, you sleep, and so on, and so on….Just like the flora and fauna of a great forest, the background of the world was once thriving with tiny Divine creatures feeding one another, doing things, making things. But the thing about living things is that they change. Rapidly.”
She stands with a grunt, walks over to the stone table, and begins preparing what looks to be a rudimentary pot of tea. “We’d see it occasionally,” she says. “A rogue miracle, one might say. Usually these just showed up as mistakes in reality, sometimes colossal ones. There was one miracle Taalhavras made to create roads, only it got overexcited and overlaid thousands upon millions of roads in one place, just a giant tangle of roads hovering in the air. But other times…Other times, it was dangerous. Like when a miracle got a hold of a person.”
She walks back over, and delicately hangs the crude pot over the fire. “What do you know about the Finger of Kolkan?” she asks.
“I know it hurt,” says Sigrud.
“Besides that, I mean.”
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 141
