The Shattered Goddess. Darrell Schweitzer
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gloom. The world was absolutely still. Something had shut out all the sounds of the night
“Ginna.”
“Here I am.” His heart pounded with bewilderment, then terror, then joy when he recognized the voice, followed by terror again. It was impossible that he was hearing that voice now, in this place.
“Ginna.”
Tharanodeth stood in the doorway to the room. He had the carven staff in his hand and he wore a travelling cloak and his walking shoes. His face shone brightly, as if a lantern were held up to it, and yet there was no lantern.
“Ginna, I am on the road now. It is a long way. Goodbye.”
“Wait! Where are you going? Don’t go!”
The light went out like a candle extinguished. The boy leapt up and stumbled out into the hallway which was filled only with the echoes of his shouting.
It was very dark every way he looked, and when he fell silent the night was still.
He walked the battlements until dawn in search of his friend, hoping for another glimpse, but he asked nothing of the few people he met. They couldn’t help him. He dared not tell them what he had seen.
The new day found him in a wide, high hall. The sun touched the blue glass of the skylight, flooding the room with color. On opposite walls were hung portraits for the bright and dark aspects of The Goddess. One, clothed in midnight, remained dark. The other, astride a dolphin, glowed with the brilliance of the sunrise.
Remembering when he had first met her, he placed his hands together, then parted them, and a ball of light rose up for The Goddess to see.
Suddenly trumpets sounded. Cymbals clashed. Many metal-shod feet tramped. Two huge doors swung wide in front of him, and suddenly the room was filled with people. First came the trumpeters, then a squadron of soldiers in full armor, with richly decorated shields and banners trailing from their spears. Drummers drummed. A line of boys Ginna’s age rang bells and chanted. Countless courtiers, lords, and ladies followed, all in their richest attire. In the midst of them was a chair on a platform, held aloft by eight burly men.
Ginna was so bedazzled by this intrusion that he just stood there in the middle of the floor, gaping.
“You there! Brat! Get out of here!” A captain in a scarlet cape and winged helmet came forward waving a sword.
“No. Let him stay. Let him be the first to congratulate me.”
Ginna looked up to see who had spoken. Everyone else looked up too. When that voice was raised, all others fell silent. He recognized the pudgy, pale figure on the platform, even though he had not seen him in years and certainly had never seen him like this, dressed in vestments which were black on one side and white on the other, and holding a golden staff in his hand.
It was Kaemen. He was only a month older than Ginna, but now he was the new Guardian, the holiest person in the world.
The great mass of people divided and flowed around Ginna like a stream around a boulder until the chair of Kaemen drew near him. Then the bearers set it down.
“Come forward,” said The Guardian, his girlish voice cracking in an attempt to be deep and commanding.
Ginna didn’t know what to do. Court etiquette was wholly strange to him. He had never spoken to a guardian in public before, or even with any noble lord.
He fell on his knees, keeping his eyes to the floor.
“You may kiss my hand,” said Kaemen. “Yes, Ginna, I know who you are. They say you are magical and were sent to bewitch me when I was a child.”
“Oh no! I wouldn’t—I could never do that—Dread Lord!”
“Of course you couldn’t. But you tried and you failed. Now it amuses me to see what you will do next”
“Holy One! I would never do anything. I didn’t! Please forgive me!” Ginna desperately hoped he had said the right things. Apparently he had.
“You may kiss my hand and look upon my face. Consider yourself greatly honored.”
Hastily he made one of the few court gestures he knew, that of Blessing Received, and to be sure he repeated it twice more. Then he raised his head, and took Kaemen’s sweaty, soft hand in his own and touched it to his lips.
The Guardian was doing his best to look on impassively, to demonstrate that this inferior did not concern him one way or the other, but he could not completely hide his astonishment when he noticed that Ginna wore Tharanodeth’s ring. And Ginna could not fail to see that flash of pure hatred on his face, even though he recovered almost at once.
Kaemen’s eyes were blue voids, revealing nothing.
The whole of the day and much of the evening were filled with the coronation of the new guardian and the funeral of the old. Countless rituals had to be observed, and officials, called Masters of the Act, oversaw each with scrupulous care. Kaemen alone was able to descend into a certain vault, while his attendants sang a hymn which could never be sung on any other occasion and were accompanied by instruments which could accompany no other song. He was the only one who could bring forth a certain reliquary containing a splinter of bone of The Goddess, and of all the living he alone among them was permitted to touch the inestimably holy corpse of his predecessor, to open the mouth, place the reliquary within, and close it again. This one act, with all its prayers, pauses at preordained stations, and pantomime re-enactments of the highlights of Tharanodeth’s reign, took hours.
Ginna was relieved that The Guardian let him go on his way after that first encounter. He watched the proceedings from a tree at the back of the crowd. The whole population of Ai Hanlo was present, this being the only time when the folk of the lower city were allowed within the forbidden precincts. He had never imagined there could be so many people alive in one place.
Tharanodeth lay on his bier with his travelling cloak wrapped about him, his death-staff in his hand, and his walking shoes on his feet. And yet Ginna knew that his friend had departed the previous night and was already well along his final, perhaps endless road.
He was left behind with his only remaining friend, Amaedig, and with Kaemen, who might be ignoring him for the moment, but had certainly not forgotten him.
CHAPTER 3
The Bright Hope
As far as Kaemen was concerned, what was wrong with the world was that there were so many disgusting people in it. Vile, obnoxious, stupid, every one of them. And then there were the lesser sort—soldiers, servants, common folk. They were just beasts, animals, oafs. Oh, they could give you the time of day and blather about trivia, but they were animals nonetheless.
“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