“Yes, my lord,” this and “Yes, my lord” that. They knew how to grovel, which was only proper, but they didn’t mean it He knew they all hated him. They were out to see him dead. He was sure of it. They had been working against him for a long time.
His earliest memories were of screaming for food or when he’d wet himself in his cradle, and the idiot nurses wouldn’t come. He’d screamed himself hoarse. It was amazing, he told himself when he was older, that he had any voice left at all.
His idea of a perfect world was one in which everybody was dead except himself, and there weren’t even any squawking crows to peck those millions of eyes out Just rotting corpses—no, just bones. He would stroll among them and kick the skulls around like balls, and then pause, and his laughter would shatter the silence.
Anything would be an improvement over what he had to live with. Once he had come back from spending an hour in the cemetery, contemplating the way things should be, when a veritable army of nurses surrounded him, fluttering like silly birds.
“Oh there you are, little one!” they said. “You shouldn’t wander off like that. You mustn’t get yourself dirty playing among those ghastly gravestones. Ugh! The slime and the mold. You’ll get them into your brain if you don’t take care of yourself. Come away now. It’s time for your bath. Scrubba-dub-dub, won’t that be fun?”
He wanted to say that perhaps there was something to be said for slime and mold after all, but didn’t. They dragged him into the palace, past sneering, snickering priests and courtiers, and they even stopped to talk to that sanctimonious asshole he had for a father. (“Oh, he’s been out in the dirt again, Holy Lord, and isn’t he a morbid child; I don’t know what to do with him, and if he were not your son I’d say—I mean it’s his nature, but—”
“You must be patient with him,” said Tharanodeth, but of course he didn’t mean it, the smiling hypocrite.) When they got him into his own chamber (That other boy, who had all the personality of a flowerpot, was across the hall babbling and juggling balls of light) they peeled off his soiled clothing, stirred the bathwater to foam up the soap, and lowered him in.
It was cold! He shrieked and kicked and bit one of the women on the hand until she screamed. They were trying to freeze him with that accursed water, then drown him under the suds. Cold!
“Now, now,” cooed one of the nurses. The water wouldn’t have gotten cold if you hadn’t run off like that. We couldn’t find you.”
“Who brought it? Who?”
“You know who. The two big, strong men who always do. Konduwaine and Tiboth.”
“Then it’s their fault Kill them!”
All the nurses stood back in surprise. He took the opportunity to leap out of the tub. His naked body was already turning blue. He was shaking all over.
“Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” He grabbed a stool by one leg and banged it against the floor until the leg broke off. He brandished the leg like a sword. “I want them dead! Throw them in the furnace and bum them up. If I can’t be warm, they’ll be very warm.”
“Little Lord,’ said one of the women. “We can’t do that. It isn’t right.”
He remembered who he was and stood up straight, trying to cut a commanding figure. Even young as he was, he knew how ridiculous he looked. For years afterwards he played the scene over again in his mind, multiplying the indignities he had suffered.
“I shall be guardian one day,” he said. “I am only a little child now, but when I grow up, unless you do what I say, I shall flay you alive! Go!”
He waved his arms and made a face. They all retreated from the room in confusion. He put on his dirty clothing, just to spite them. After a while they came back, trembling, and the one who had contradicted him said, “We have done as you ordered.”
Liars. He knew they were all liars. He had to find out for himself. He went over to the flue and sniffed. Then he smiled. At last they had done something right. There was flesh burning down below. Two different men brought a new tub of water in, and it was hot enough this time.
But later he saw the culprits working in another part of the palace. He had been tricked. Someone had thrown a heap of old skins into the furnace, and that was what he had smelled.
The most frustrating thing about the whole affair was that when he found out, and complained to his father, the old fool refused to execute Konduwaine and Tiboth.
That was how they had always treated him when he was small. As he grew older, things hardly improved.
No one understood him. No one. He often dreamed of being underground in a dark place, where all he could hear was water dripping. In his dream he tried to move, but his limbs were like stone. He had the distinct impression that not only was it dark, but that he was blind, lime in his dream did not pass the way it did in waking life. He could lie there for days and days, buried and unmoving, and he would return to the world to find that only a few hours had passed.
Once he told Hadel the Rat about it and got back some gibberish about disbalanced vapors in his stomach. “Must be something you ate,” he’d said. “Here, put this powdered herb in your drinks for a while.” But Kaemen wasn’t that stupid. He threw the poison away secretly. Later he cursed himself for being exactly that stupid. He should have saved it and fed it to Hadel first, then the nurses, then Tharanodeth.
And there were times when he knew he was not dreaming, when a lady stood by his bed. She was absolutely black, more like a bottomless hole shaped like a bent old crone than a living creature, and she would lean over him, sink her fingers like blades of ice into his brain, and he would hear her voice inside his head.
“When you are lord, everything will be as you want it to be,” she said, and that was comforting, but she went on to add, “I will be with you.”
Sometimes she said things so terrifying he nearly went mad with the horror of them, and his inability to confide in anyone added to the burden. Afterwards his head would always hurt, and he could never tell anyone why, and he knew that the idiots around him were secretly laughing at his pain, even if they didn’t understand it.
Finally there were those rare intervals, impossible as they might have seemed to him in retrospect, during which he had known calm. The black hag did not always whisper inside his head. Sometimes she went away entirely. Perhaps she was asleep. Then he was free for a little while. It was then that he looked at the people around them and noticed how they smiled without malice, and he saw other children playing among themselves. He envied them. They had mothers who cared for them. His was always so distant, so rarely seen, always followed by a train of gaudily-dressed ladies fluttering fans in front of their faces. He could hardly remember what she looked like when he was older. On top of all her other offenses, she had proceeded to die when he was six.
In these strange moments of weakness he wanted more than anything else to have a real friend. He would wander about the palace crying, asking everyone he met, “Will you be my friend? Truly my friend?’
Of course they would smile and say, “But Little Lord, we are your friends. Everyone loves you.”
Later the black hag would tell him how they all hated him, and he saw she was right. The pains, the dreams would come again. The frigid hands would dip into his skull and pull his spirit out, then carry him away into a midnight land of empty houses and crumbling castles, where bestial, grotesque things crawled and tittered among the ruins. He would open his mouth to scream and darkness would come pouring out, spreading like thick oil until it smothered the whole world.
Only then would there be complete quiet. Only then could he rest
And because no one understood him, because he was alone with no one to turn to, because he hated those around him so bitterly, there could be no defense against that darkness, and, as the years went by, he gave himself over to it absolutely.
CHAPTER 4
The First Vision
“Amaedig, what is it?”
“Someone is coming. A man in a red cape.”
She peered th
rough the crack between the shutters, then opened them an inch for a better view. It was midwinter, the rainy season, and the air was chill and wet at midday, sky slate grey. Both Amaedig and Ginna were fifteen this year, and they had been living in this drafty apartment overlooking one of the countless courtyards of the palace—it seemed every room overlooked a courtyard—for three years.
He joined her at the window.
“It’s one of The Guardian’s messengers.”
“Master, shall I go and greet him?”
He looked at her, disappointed.
You forgot again.”
“Oh—yes.”
“As long as no one can hear us, you don’t have to go through that silly ‘master’ business. You know perfectly well that you are my friend, and I only asked for you as my servant so we could be together when I was moved here.”
“Sorry. It gets to be a habit. And you’re of a higher caste, and maybe The Guardian’s half-brother, or so they say—”
His disappointed look became a glare, somewhere between anger and a show of hurt. One of his greatest fears was that he would come to a high station, and be dragged away from those few people who had been kind to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and even as she did her right hand went halfway into the gesture of Repentance—thumb and little finger up, turned sideways and back straight—before she caught herself.
“The truth of the matter is,” he said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t want to be related to this Guardian in particular—”
There was a thunderous knock on the door. Amaedig ran from the window and raised the latch.
The messenger stood in the doorway, holding a polished disc of stone in his hand. He would not give it to Amaedig, but when Ginna approached, he surrendered it immediately.
The boy turned the thing over in his own hand and stared at it blankly, then looked up at the messenger, puzzled.
“It’s an invitation, you little idiot!” the man snorted. “You are invited to The Holy Guardian’s banquet in the great hall this evening, an hour after sundown. It is a great honor. Be grateful.”
“Tell The Guardian I am indeed grateful and honored,” said Ginna slowly.
The messenger turned on his heel in a smart military manner and left, even before Ginna could think to make the sign of Blessing Received. He made it to the fellow’s back as he vanished down the winding stairs outside the apartment
In truth he considered himself commanded, and he was afraid. Yet there was some thrill to it He felt anticipation. All the lords and ladies of the court would be there. He did not know any of them, and from what stories he had heard of plots, counter-plots, purges, and intrigues, he didn’t want to get to know them, but still they were exciting to watch, like a flock of dangerous, gorgeous, strutting birds.
“Shall I get your best clothing ready, Ginna?”
“Yes. Please do.”
At least the dinner would bring some variety to his life. He knew it was safer being tucked away in a corner and ignored, but this didn’t make his days any less tediously featureless. He was willing to sacrifice safety for variety, even if it meant a chance of being noticed by The Guardian, who even now was being secretly called Kaemen the Sullen and Kaemen Iron Heart.
So it was eagerly, although with some trepidation, that he put on the clothing Amaedig brought to him, the bright blue and red knee-length shirt of water-silk, the tightly fitting hose made from the soft inner skin of the kata, his wooden-soled, beaded slippers which were the most awkward things to walk in but the height of court fashion, and finally a cloak of plain brown cloth with no insignia on it denoting rank or honors bestowed.
“I wish you could come too,” he said.
“What would I do there, among all those high-born people?”
“A good question. What shall I do? I think you’re better off, having your station clearly defined.”
They sat for a while making small talk, waiting for the hour to come. They stared out the window, watching the sun sink over the tilted rooftops. Then it was time for her to draw water from a nearby well, as she did every evening, and she left him. He paged through some poems he had copied out of a book in a library he had only discovered the week before.
He thought about that library, and the strange old man who presided over it. He had found it in an alleyway he had never noticed before. There the librarian sat, frequently all alone, like an extension of the dust that covered everything. It was always twilight in there. Only a single lamp burned. The books were all bound in heavy leafier and linked to the shelves by long chains. You could take them to any desk if other scholars and most of the furniture didn’t get entangled in the meantime.
So he’d sat in there, straining his eyes, making copies of some strange verses which seemed to foretell the coming of a new age, when everything would be different and there would be unfamiliar gods in the heavens. The book he copied was written in an ancient script, in a sort of dialect. There were countless allusions in the text which were opaque to him, and many words he did not know. He couldn’t be sure he understood even the vaguest outline of the meaning. He wasn’t wholly dissatisfied with his life, but he did wish he were better educated. Whenever he tried to discuss anything with the librarian he was met with a barrage of more opaque allusions which told him nothing more than that he was only half literate and very ignorant. According to the old man there were two varieties of people in the world, venerable sages, who were usually several centuries dead, and everyone else, who were only distinguished from animals by the way they smudged and dog-eared book pages if not watched with unfailing vigilance. So Ginna learned little from him. He did not understand what he was reading. But there was nothing else to do while the hour of the banquet approached, so he read.
He was sure he was neither a sage nor venerable.
* * * *
When at last the time came, a great gong rang out from the highest terrace of Ai Hanlo, and Ginna climbed to the entrance to the great hall. The moon had not yet risen. The sky had cleared. The stars and the flickering light of torches made the dome glow a ghostly golden.
All around him were hundreds of other folk dressed in bright costumes, many with gaudy plumes on their hats, headbands encrusted with gems, and flickering, iridescent cloaks and gowns. Many were carried in litters borne by servants more finely garbed than Ginna was. Some were escorted by soldiers in gleaming silver armor carrying ceremonial pikes of clearest glass. He felt out of place among them all, plain and awkward. He hoped he was inconspicuous. When he had watched others do it, he handed his stone disc to a watchman who stood at the entrance, and went in.
He found himself in the room of the blue skylight. Huge flaps in the dome had been turned back, exposing the blue panes, letting the starlight in. There was such a crowd now, most of it taller than he, that all he could see clearly was that skylight. Oil-burning lamps hung from the roof. Braziers flickered atop pillars. Torches lined the walls and colorful paper lanterns were strung overhead on wire.
He was jostled this way and that by brightly draped bodies. Sometimes, when he was in the clear enough to see what was going on, he would notice signs and gestures passing back and forth, an upraised hand, a pause, a lady’s fan before her face, a certain turn of the head. It was as if a second language was being spoken around him, or a whole series of languages, layer upon layer, understood only by the speaker and the spoken to, with all others deliberately excluded.
Eventually he wormed his way to a table along one of the walls, on which various appetizers were spread out. He paused, watching other people take the food, to see if some ritual were involved, but they seemed to be just helping themselves, without regard to rank. So he took one of the little fishes which curled back and caught the stick which impaled it between its teeth. He also took a sweet bun. As he did he noticed a bowl of punch which was bubbling and swirling all out of proportion to the number of times the dipper was used. He leant over and peered into the pink liquid.
As h
e had suspected, something was swimming in it.
A scaly, man-like little head popped up and spat punch into his face. He leapt back, astonished, and collided with an elderly lady.
“It means hurry up and take some punch.” she told him. “The spirits never agree with you unless you drink quickly.”
“The spirits?”
“Yes, the sprite in the bowl, which prevents it from ever being empty. Haven’t you ever—? Oh, I see…” She had noticed the lack of rank indicated by his clothing. Discreetly she submerged into the crowd.
He turned back to the punch bowl, but found his face smothered in the perfumed ringlets of a massive beard belonging to an equally massive man in the uniform of a general of The Guardian’s armies.
“You there! Watch where you—”
“Excuse me, noble sir!” There was no room for any gesturing.
The man looked down at him and smiled, and the fearsomeness of his appearance seemed to vanish in the winking of an eye.
“You seem ill at ease here, young man.” He held out his hand. The boy took it. The grip all but crushed his fingers. I am Kardios ne Ianos, commander of the Nagéan Legion, at your service. And you?”
“Ginna.”
“Of what house? Ginna who?”
“Just Ginna.” He blushed and looked down at the floor to hide his shame at not being anybody.
“But then how—?” A recognition flooded over the man. He called another military figure over, and some ladies. “Look,” he said, “it’s Ginna, the magic boy they talked about years ago.”
“We’ve heard of you,” said the officer.
“I was sure you were entirely mythological,” said one of the ladies flatly.
“Are you really magic? Can you perform some wonder for us here?” asked Kardios.
“No. I’m not really magic. I’m ordinary.”
“Come, come,” said a wiry man with a hooked nose, bending over him. “When you were—er—born, they said you could call up fiery demons by clapping your hands.”
“Well I can’t. I’m sorry.”
The Shattered Goddess Page 4
