The passing of the gods, p.14
The Passing of the Gods, page 14
Galvus smirked. “The world isn’t going to last that long.”
Omos frowned. “You mean Asawas.”
“Yes.”
Omos returned to his friend and sat beside him, held his hands. “Asawas would be the first person to tell you that you must act as though life will go on forever. He told me that himself, Galvus. He did. If all we thought about every day was that we’re going to die, then we might as well be dead anyway. The death of the world doesn’t mean the end of us. People. Whatever else this means…we will endure. We almost have no choice in the matter, human beings.”
Galvus stared at him, stared into his lover’s eyes and felt again the depths of him, the truth and honesty of him. “You’re right. You’re very right.”
Omos leaned to him and kissed Galvus securely. They embraced and held onto one another as though hoping to endure, themselves.
Omos told Galvus, “I love you very much. I’m part of you. And I’ve always leaned on you. I want you to lean on me when you have to if you think I’m worthy of it.”
“You are.”
“Then we have to start thinking that way. All of us are part of one another. We’re all just parts of one big person.”
“Yes…we do have to think that way.”
Omos again took Galvus’s hands. “If the gods, tomorrow, took everyone on earth except for a few of us, then we’re still alive. It means that all of us are still alive. Even if it means that the gods themselves are going to die, we must plan for tomorrow as if we ourselves are as strong as the gods.”
There, in the quiet early sunlight of Galvus’s chambers, with the passing of the night, with the passing of the long hours of conversation and debate, confusion and doubt, planning and thinking—
Galvus felt profoundly what Omos was telling him.
Just as Omos had learned it from Asawas himself.
“…we must plan for tomorrow as if we ourselves are as strong as the gods.”
* * * * * * *
Early afternoon, and the prophet was somewhere in central Athadia. He did not know where he was; he did not know whether the road that he traveled had a name. This morning a farmer and his son had taken Asawas as far as a small village; there he had been given a meal and had carefully examined the ill child of an important woman in the village. The child had a fever and was suffering terribly; Asawas had felt her face and neck and chest and had muttered, “So many returning now…so many, to help with what is coming.…” and then had prayed for the child’s recovery. When he was certain that On had answered him, Asawas told the woman what to do to ensure the girl’s health, had refused any money, and had continued on his way.
Now, as the afternoon began to darken, Asawas felt the earth beneath him begin to tremble, as though with anger. He paused, leaning on his staff. All around him were dry fields and brown grass; leafless trees sat on low hills that curved away in all directions. Asawas looked up at the sky. It was gray, empty. Suddenly the sky jumped away from him, then pulled quickly toward him. With the shock of it, Asawas was thrown to his knees, pushed onto his side as though by a large, invisible hand.
Ahead of him, farther down the road, three clustered trees, old oaks, danced as the sky jumped, as the earth moved. Screaming and groaning, the trees twisted and pivoted and crashed across the road. Dust and dirt and leaves erupted from many places along the road and in the fields all around.
Followed by silence.
It had lasted for only a heartbeat. A sudden change in the earth, and with it, renewed quiet and calm. Asawas, standing, looked around him and saw only those few signs of damage. But he realized the devastation this must have caused farther away, in cities, in towns.
Facing the east—facing the direction in which he traveled—the prophet held his head low and prayed to On for strength and guidance and hurried on with quickening steps.
* * * * * * *
In Athad, Galvus was just dismissing his council for the afternoon when the earthquake struck. He was rising from his throne as the abrupt tremors pushed him back into his seat. The great chair slid to one side and nearly tipped from the long stone dais. Below him, the heavy tables and chairs of both Pritons creaked and rocked. Two councilors, grabbing onto tables before them, were thrown forward when the heavy stone tables broke into slabs and smashed to the floor, shattering there.
Throughout the hall, the walls and immense pillars trembled and grated—for the space of a heartbeat. The huge oil lamps and chandeliers suspended at the height of the great ceiling rocked and swayed; the chains of one of them snapped and the iron-and-wood chandelier came free. It dropped heavily onto the floor and crashed in a far corner where, by chance, no one was seated. The Khamar who had been standing there only a moment earlier had run to the aid of two frightened ministers.
Upstairs, Adred was reading when the sudden trembling of the capital palace sent his chair skidding across the floor and through the open doors of his balcony. It nearly toppled over the low protective wall. Astonished, Adred grabbed hold of the shaking balustrade. Loud cracking and rupturing sounds below him caused him an instant’s breathlessness; he feared that his entire balcony was giving way. But as the rumbling ceased, he looked down into the gardens: several stone pillars and benches had collapsed into a pile, and part of the garden wall was twisted and broken. Shrieks and screams from somewhere downstairs lifted belatedly in terror.
Orain, bathing in her own chamber across the hall from Adred, screamed in alarm at the first jostling of the tiled floor. One of her windows shattered, and part of the sill creaked and broke; mortar in the wall crumbled free and gave up airy dust. But otherwise, the moment’s quake—that abrupt interruption in the heartbeat of the earth—was come and gone in the space of a whisper.
Adred hurled himself across his room and ran outside into the corridor. Khamars were already scurrying up and down the halls, looking for damage and injury. Some columns were twisted on their bases, walls had cracked, there were wide seams in the marble and stone of the floor, and torches and draperies had been ripped from their supports. But in all, the huge old imperial palace had withstood the moment remarkably well.
Adred jumped into Orain’s room and frantically called for her.
“I’m here, Adred! I’m here, and I’m all right!”
* * * * * * *
In the city itself, damage was widespread, but none of it was of major consequence. Facades had broken from buildings; a few loosely built structures had partially collapsed or been twisted on their foundations; carts and stalls had been tipped over; fountains had broken and burst; wooden scaffoldings and pier pilings had torn loose. Crowds had been thrown against one another, resulting in injury but no deaths.
Still, throngs in the streets screamed in shock and fright. Dogs barked, children cried, horses broke free, and chickens and turkeys shrieked and ran with flapping wings away from their fallen cages. A few fires began in the backs of taverns and restaurants and metal-working shops. Immediately the city patrol charged into the avenues and squares from all directions, causing great confusion as they attempted to restore order.
And as the moment passed and the people began to regain themselves, it seemed to most of them that the startling intrusion the earthquake had made into their common day bespoke something profound. What were the gods saying? This came too closely after that mighty wind of a few months before. It was as though, people decided—as they helped one another to their feet, as they fought to extinguish fires or examined wounds or tried to recapture escaped animals—it was as though the gods for some reason were issuing warnings by means of disruptions and calamities.
But if for some reason—then what reason could it be?
CHAPTER TEN
Erusabad, on the other side of the world, across the wide Ursalion Sea, far from Athad, where West becomes East.
A great city, Erusabad, its history etched in every brick and stone. A crossroads, a port, a city of paths, of businesses, of merchants; city of people and animals; city of prayers and curses; city of windows and lights, of taverns and monuments, of gardens and rivers; city of money lending and thievery; city of sailing ships at rest; and city of a thousand crowds, of voices, of robes and sandals and rings and jewelry, of perfumes; city of faces, hands and feet; city of arts; city of crimes; city of loneliness, city of lovers, a drug, a wineskin, an overflowing vessel, the crossroads of a thousand thousand souls and a thousand thousand wants and hopes, a city of hearts and dust, the city of cities. Erusabad. City, metropolis, home, port, pathway.… With accents and beliefs, with people and peoples, ships and commerce, temples and rooms and inns and libraries. Holy City—elusive and real. City of many cities—cities within one great Erusabad city. City piled to the edge of the waves, city pushed into the fields and land. Foundation. Maker of turbulence, owner of souls, dealer in lives. City between two empires, sharing both, clashing with both, groaning beneath the weight of both. City of East and West, city of West and East. Holy City—uncertain…savior, judge, orphan, warrior, harlot.… City of songs—songs of the docks, songs of the temples, songs of the lost and the damned—city of a two-edged sword, city of no repose, city of destiny: aye, of empire, and a destiny.…
Erusabad, the Holy City, on the late summer evening of the sixteenth day of the month of Elru the Lion, as the people of the West kept their calendar.
Erusabad, with its pleasure barges and fishing boats and transport galleys and house rafts slowly swimming into and away from its hundreds of wharves and quays on both sides of the brilliantly lighted, dusk-darkened, gently flowing River Usub. And just beyond its brilliant lights and pleasure barges and its hundreds of wharves and quays—
Four hundred warships flying the colors and pennants of the Athadian lion and sun and crown. Battle-ready galleys. Biremes. Triremes. War ships. Bristling with steel and bronze, filled with armored men whose weapons, thrust into the shadowed sky and lit by torches and lamps, might have been a hundred thousand fangs and teeth—the fangs and teeth of open jaws, ready to clamp upon the arteries and muscles and bones of the city of destiny, the Holy City, Erusabad.…
* * * * * * *
The ghen’s unarmed messenger returned from the harbor that night with his communication from Elad, King of the Athadians. No parchment or scroll, no message written on a document or order, but only a single sentence:
“Return the Queen of Athadia to her king and her people, or prepare for war.”
Agors’s initial reaction was to laugh at the sheer effrontery of this. The king of the West going to these great lengths, merely to force the return of his wife? Merely to impress the ghen with the importance in which this foolish woman was held? Yet he did not laugh: for the madness of this exploit bespoke its own resoluteness, and the plainness of it did not suggest any shallowness or duplicity. Men, Agors knew, will work patiently and until the end of time over matters of grave import; yet it is from matters seemingly trivial that great events most often grow, like monsters breeding in the forgotten dung of some imaginary beast. The ghen of the Salukads therefore determined to meet this challenge with the directness and severity it demanded. Whereupon he ordered a scribe to him and addressed this message to his foreign intruders:
From Agors, Ghen of Salukadia, to Elad, dog of the Athadians, greetings. You presume much in supposing that Queen Salia is held here as a hostage against her will or in a manner meant to aggravate the tensions between our thrones. You may take her as you wish. Come to me tomorrow morning at dawn, and I will deliver her to you. Come with your retainers and, if such is your desire, bearing sheathed weapons: but know that I do not draw weapons against you and that the hospitality of my home is yours.
This dictated, Agors ordered it delivered immediately to the flagship in his harbor. He then bade come to him his brother Nihim and awaited him in a private chamber of the palace.
* * * * * * *
When Agors’s message was delivered to him, Elad’s initial reaction was to laugh at the sheer effrontery of it. Himself addressed as a dog? Salia not held a hostage? Yet he did not laugh, for the blandness of the writer’s style told him much.
Lord Thomo was greatly relieved to hear the contents of this letter, and he assured Elad that, so far as he could determine from the succinctness of it, it must indeed have originated from the ghen himself.
General Thytagoras was not so certain. And the Imbur Ogodis, predictably, was as outraged by the snide tone of it as he was with the insinuation it contained that his daughter was not the victim of some barbaric eastern plot.
“You don’t believe this, do you?” he snarled at Elad. “You don’t believe that Salia isn’t a prisoner, do you? You don’t believe that he’s going to meet you weaponless, surely?”
Elad showed him a grave stare. “I know your daughter better than you do yourself, Imbur. And as a king, I am the equal of this potentate. I believe that more may have happened here than we can properly assume without learning more. And I believe that it would gain Agors nothing to meet me tomorrow with bared steel or to provoke conflict over some folly of Salia’s that—”
“Some—folly!” Ogodis rankled.
“I will indeed,” Elad told him deliberately, “go to this man’s palace at dawn. And I will indeed take sheathed steel with me—as well as my retainers and, above all, good Lord Thomo.”
A nod, which Thomo acknowledged with a proud lifting of his chin.
Ogodis swore, “And I will certainly—”
“You certainly will not attend this parley! And if you insist upon—”
“He is holding my daughter—”
“And if you insist upon it,” Elad repeated, his voice rising in a strangely convulsive mixture of impatience and real wrath, “I will have you chained to the mainmast of this ship and I will have your mouth stuffed with straw until you cease this adolescent whining! Do you understand?”
Ogodis quavered in shock. Never in his entire life had anyone dared to speak so to him, ever—never in his entire—
Elad looked beyond him to meet the steely gaze of General Thytagoras. “I trust, furthermore, that I am perfectly understood by any others who might look upon this incident as an excuse to further their own interests against the Salukads.”
Thytagoras said nothing.
“I intend, then, to go below now and take my rest until dawn. Lord Thomo—if you will see that I am not disturbed?”
“Certainly, your crown.”
“Good night, then. Have our messenger return to the ghen with my agreement.”
* * * * * * *
“I seem to recall a conversation we had some months ago, brother,” Nihim reminded Agors, “when your infatuation with this woman had not yet begun to wane. You boasted then, as if this were some game of usto, that you were ‘raping the queen’ of the Athadians. No?”
Agors growled underbreath and turned from him, stalked to a chair, slumped, and glowered.
Nihim reproached him with words that bit like acid.
“And what did I tell you last winter, when you so proudly proclaimed your superiority over the ways of the West? ‘Agors, if you think too much like your enemy, you become your enemy. Who then is left to make war upon?’ This is why I play usto with the westerners—not to defeat or humiliate them, but to reach an accord with them, a balance. You have looked at your maps and you have polished your swords and dreamed your dreams of conquest but, o my brother, how can you truly conquer anyone when you have not yet conquered yourself?”
“I did not order you here,” the ghen growled at Nihim, “to allow you to upbraid me!”
“I am not upbraiding you; I merely remind you that when you were as excited and wild as a free river, you failed to consider that there might be rocks or shoals somewhere in the future. Now you are rushing toward the rocks.”
Agors stared at the floor and flexed his hands into fists.
“This action on the part of the Athadian king should not surprise you. Recall something more: recall when I told you that these men of the West, as they bend over the usto board, like children often form strategies in which they sacrifice everything to gain one goal. Would men such as this offer their entire nation on the altar of war over something as foolish as the whimsies and moods of a young woman? They would indeed! Would they not draw weapons upon us, were we to besmirch their pride in some unsavory way? You, too, would do the same, Agors. It is less a difference between East and West, I think, than it is the similarity of men everywhere to deem their pride and ambition worth more than their tolerance. Wrath and anger, intemperance and fury are always easy—see how quickly the skies can cause a storm. And it is left for the patient to clean the wreckage after the storm.”
“You think I am a storm?”
“I think that you believe there is more integrity in the storm than there is in the patience of the victims of that storm. Our mighty father caused storms for a purpose: to take that which awaited the taking. Now his first son is full of woe because there are no more lands upon which he might descend like a storm. So will you create artificial lands? Will you storm upon this city because you lack lands in the West upon which to storm? And why? Because you have made a move on the usto table? Because your dreams and ambitions have reduced themselves to the antics of a foolish young woman? The ghens of Salukadia do not make war upon their enemies because a foolish woman has—”
“Enough!” Agors slapped his hands on his chair and stood. “Enough! You tell me things I know already! Have I decided to go to war with this king of the West? I am no fool!” He began to pace the floor—head bent, eyes burning, arms swinging. “I know what I will do, Nihim. This king of the West, this Elad, comes to me on the dawn for the return of his wife. I have written to him already, consenting to his returning with her to his capital at the other end of the world.”
“Most wise.” The sarcasm in Nihim’s voice was not lost upon his brother.
