Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (27 page)

He had been to this festival many times. Now he only wanted to get away.

Behind the statue came a line of priests, singing, holding aloft boxes containing smoking skulls.

He could do little but allow himself to be swept along with the crowd. He was pushed and dragged by the press of bodies like a chip of wood in a raging torrent.

They came to a square, on the far side of which a man stood on a wagon, surveying the crowd. He wore a yellow sash. His eyes met Hadday’s, and he scowled, reached under his jacket, and jumped down from the wagon, pressing his way through the jostling throng.

Hadday screamed, but his cry was just one more in the tumult. Desperately, like a drowning man trying to swim through water that somehow becomes thicker and thicker, he struggled to the edge of the crowd.

Then once more he was running through empty streets so dark he could see nothing at all in front of him, splashing and slipping through puddles and over muddy cobblestones. Sometimes he thought he heard footsteps behind him, and deep, deliberate breathing.

He came to a street lined with the shops of metalsmiths and jewelers and bell-makers. In the darkness, in his exhaustion and dread, it seemed to ripple and distend, growing infinite in length as he staggered along.

At last, when he could go no further, he turned, and fell down a few stairs against a door. For a moment it seemed to ripple like a curtain and give way. Then it was solid again.

The door swung open, a bell jangling. It was all Hadday could do not to cry out in fright. He crawled inside and closed the door behind him, then sat against it, breathing hard. There were definitely footsteps outside. Someone ran past. Then nothing more.

The inside of the shop was utterly dark, but filled with sounds, the tinkling of tiny bells like wind chimes, and the faint shivering of larger ones. There was an almost subliminal music in the air, as if a thousand sleeping bells stirred and whispered in a language he could never know. He stood up, groped about, and touched cold, smooth, vibrating metal, and as he did the whole rhythm changed subtly, as a spider’s web swaying in the wind might alter its motion ever so slightly when it catches a mosquito.

The young man listened, and the sounds seemed to recede infinitely far, as if there were no end to the place. He heard the beating of his own heart, his breathing, and the scraping of his boot soles as he moved slowly, carefully through the lightless shop.

His foot found a stairway. He climbed, and still the restless bells were all around him. The stairs creaked.

He came to an upper room. Shutters were open, and faint starlight shone through translucent glass. He could barely make out two motionless figures seated at a table. He approached cautiously, reached out, and touched one of them. Stone. It was a statue. His fingers explored the face, found a rough beard, and vastly detailed wrinkles around the eyes.

He stepped back into a mass of bells, which fell to the floor with a clangor. Panic-stricken, he looked around for a place to hide, darted this way and that, colliding with more bells.

Again he was dazzled by light. All around the room candles flared up. Dangling lamps spouted gentle flames. His shadow danced over the walls, over banks and rows of bells of every size and design.

The bearded figure at the table turned to look at him, then turned to the other, an old woman with a shawl, and said, “He can see us. He has the sight of the Anvasas.”

Hadday only stared in astonishment. He had touched a statue. He was sure, if he could be sure of anything. It was impossible for them to be living people now, unless he were going subtly mad, as a result of some poison given to him by the Brotherhood of Yellow Sashes.

The woman smiled in a motherly way.

“Boy, you are tired and hungry. Join us at our supper.”

He sat, and the woman ladled some stew into a bowl and set it before him. The man poured him some wine. Without questioning, he ate and drank. All around him the bells stirred, as if sleepless spirits moved among them.

The man leaned over the table. His face was unfathomable. Hadday was afraid of him. He wasn’t of the woman.

“You do not see as others do, or you would not have found your way here. You have the Eye of the Anvasas.”

And Hadday knew that he was helpless and could hide nothing from these two. He took out the leather bag he wore on a thong around his neck, opened it, and took out a globe of perfectly clear crystal the size of a plum.

The man snatched it from him before he could react, and held it up to a candle, turning it in his hand.

“Yes, it is the Eye of the Anvasas.” He gave it back to Hadday. “It does not come to anyone without a reason. How did you get it?”

“I—I—” He wanted to lie but he knew he could only tell the truth. “I am a thief. I stole it. From the Brotherhood of Yellow Sashes. They displayed it on an altar in front of their lodge. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it, no matter what. Something came over me. I don’t know what drove me. I jumped over the railing and grabbed it, in front of everybody, and fought my way through the crowd. I don’t know how. It’s as if some demon inside me…I can’t explain.…”

The two stared at him without speaking. Stuttering, he went on.

“I can’t—can’t—I don’t even know what it is, or if it’s worth anything. Normally I steal purses, or jewelry from stalls in the marketplace, or.… But this, I—”

“Perhaps it was tired of where it was, and wished to be moved,” the man said. “There is a tangled thread of destiny within it. It goes where it wills, and causes itself to be found…or stolen.”

“But how?”

“Who knows? It is of the Anvasas, by which many things are made possible that could not, otherwise be.”

“The what?”

“You have not heard of the Anvasas, ignorant one?”

“No, I—” Hadday felt more bewildered and helpless than ever.

“Only now, that you have the sight, can you perceive the Anvasas. What is it? Some call it a city, some a country, some a gateway leading out of the world. It is the product of the vast science of men who lived before the time of the Goddess, men who could touch the stars. Now, masterless, the Anvasas goes on, manifesting itself in many ways. There are those who say it is a living thing, like a vast colony of seaweed, always dying at one end and being born at the other, immortal, drifting through seas beyond time and space, outside of the world and the sky and the days and the years, only able to touch the Earth now that the Goddess is gone and there is nothing to keep it away. Holiness lies fallow in our age.
Now
the Anvasas is visible to those with the sight.”

Hadday put the crystal sphere away. He sat rigid, clasping the edge of the table with both hands.

“I don’t understand any of this. What are you talking about? What is going on?”

“We can explain by telling you a story,” the woman said. Again she smiled, and there was something in her smile which calmed the young thief.

“I will begin,” said the man.

* * * *

“In a certain city there dwelt a certain man.”

“His name was Manri,” the woman interrupted. “He lived in the time of the death of the Goddess, as we do, but long ago, here, in Ai Hanlo. He made bells.”

“Yes,” the man continued. “He was the master bell-maker of all the city. It was an ancient art, even then. Its secrets had been passed from his father’s father’s father to him, and no one questioned this, or asked him what it was, nor did they pester his apprentices. Not even the Guardian of the Bones of the Goddess sought out the secret, for all that the fame of the bell-maker spread far. He sold his bells to the Guardian and his court, to all the great families of the city, and to kings and lords and priests in every part of the world.

“What is so special about a bell? Nothing, if it’s the kind you hang around a cow’s neck. But these bells were
perfect.
They were almost holy things. It was within this bell-maker’s power to put a little piece of his soul into each bell. And he was not diminished by this. His soul spread throughout the world. He put a drop of his blood in the metal, too. Then, because his soul and the blood were shared, he was readily able to give each some strange and rare and wonderful shape, and to sculpt the very sounds that would issue from each bell, and give each an inscription which rang in the mind of the beholder even as the bell itself rang with the motion of its tongue.

“I cannot tell how it was done. That was the secret. But the thoughts of the maker of bells were as calm and still as a frigid pool in an underground grotto. By the secrets of his art, by years of discipline and magic, he strove to make himself as perfect as his bells.

“Otherwise none of his bells would have been good enough for the most solemn occasions, for ringing in commemoration of the death of the Goddess, and for summoning her successor to rise, in time, out of the Earth. When the Guardian performs certain rituals, as secret as those of the bell-maker but wholly sacred, he is accompanied by acolytes ringing delicate, perfectly formed bells. Nothing less will do. To ring in holiness, a bell must be perfect. To ring perfectly in joy and sorrow, so too it must be perfect.

“Thus the bell-maker had to achieve perfection, in a sense.”

* * * *

The teller paused, and Hadday stared around the room, at the many bells, wondering if this were just something the old man had made up to glorify his profession, Still, he listened politely. The couple had treated him with kindness. And the Brotherhood of Yellow Sashes was waiting outside.

“Manri was married,” the woman said.

“Yes,” the man said. “A year after he inherited the position of master bell-maker, he took to wife Tirham, a magician’s daughter from Zabortash. She was as exquisite as any of his bells. Her eyes, they say, shone like diamonds, and she was dark and slender, and her hair flowed to her waist, black as night, and gleaming, as if filled with stars. She was gentle, and wise too, and sometimes when she spoke it was as if the hearer had been led into the world for the first time, and his life had truly begun.

“No one ever felt such love as Manri for his bride. You should have heard the bells ringing on their wedding day! All over the city, all over the world, bells broke out in spontaneous peals of joy, often to the astonishment of their owners.

“Tirham’s father came to the wedding, a full Zabortashi magus, clad in black with a tall hat. He folded the air around himself in his home in the far south, and when he unfolded it, he was in Ai Hanlo, without having crossed the distance in between. But he was not a grim and forbidding figure, as many magi are. He was merry. He performed feats of magic for the bride and bridegroom and their guests. He folded the air about himself again at the end, and was gone.”

“Seven years passed,” said the woman.

“They lived together in happiness, in perfection for seven years. They had seven children, three sons and four daughters. The city was at peace. Even the Guardian felt a calm settle over the city. The bones of the Goddess never stirred. There was peace everywhere one of Manri’s bells could be heard. At that time, it was impossible to get a mournful sound out of any of them.

“I think the Powers envied Manri and Tirham after a while. I think that’s why what happened, happened.”

The teller paused again, trembling, as if he had come to a part which was painful to recount. The woman prodded him.

“Then Manri had a dream,” she said.

The man resumed.

* * * *

“A thing like a huge black bird, only covered with hair, and with a human face, came for him in the night, snatching him out of his bed. He cried out for Tirham, but in an instant his soul, his awareness, was out the window, even while his body lay still beside his wife. He dangled by the hair from the thing’s claws as it soared over the city. He felt the pain in his head, the cold of the upper air.

“He was carried to a ruined tower in one of the dead places, where once stood a city older than the Goddess. There were spirits of the waters there, waiting for him, floating like golden skeletons of fish through the walls and floors of the tower, drifting in the air. And there were things of the earth, a monster like a man from the waist up, but beneath it a riot of useless limbs; and something that walked upright, with the head of a crocodile and the wings of a raven, but the beautiful, glowing body of a man. Animate shadows flickered in the periphery of vision, always in motion.

“Manri knew he was in the present of the Dark Powers, surviving splinters of the dark aspect of the Goddess. But he was brave. He did not cower before them.

“The crocodile man spoke first, saying, ‘Tirham shall be ours. We shall take her slowly at first, then all of the sudden, as it pleases us.’

“Manri’s resolve broke when he heard this. He cried out in terror and despair. He begged them to take him instead, but they would not do so. He was still sobbing when he was returned to his bed, and he awoke.

“Tirham comforted him, saying, ‘It is only a dream you had. We are still together.’

“But even as she touched him he could tell she was feverish. She sickened quickly in the following days. There was nothing anyone could do. Manri watched, helpless, wretched, as she declined. Then one night, very late, he was awakened by a sound, and he saw her standing in the doorway of the room in which he slept.