The Shattered Goddess (5 page)

CHAPTER 4

The First Vision

“Amaedig, what is it?”

“Someone is coming. A man in a red cape.”

She peered through 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 he 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.”

“You can confide in us. We won’t tell anyone. No need to be shy about it.”

“But—”

A trumpet blew, followed by a hundred more. Drums thundered. Cymbals clanged. The mumbling roar of the crowd was stilled.

The Guardian
entered the room, held aloft on a throne set on a platform on the shoulders of eight bearers, as he had the last time Ginna had seen him in this room.

The crowd divided like water before the prow of a boat, and The Guardian passed through. Ginna caught a glimpse of him between the shoulder of Kardios and the nose of the wiry man. Kaemen was paler, more pasty-faced than before, and growing
fat His almost white hair stuck to his sweaty forehead beneath the black and white peaked cap he wore. He held the golden staff of office in his right hand, as he apparently did on all public occasions.

Ritual greetings were given. The Guardian pointed his staff at the crowd and moved it from left to right in a slow arch. All present raised a hand to acknowledge the received blessing. Ginna
hid behind the bulk of the general, hoping to be as inconspicuous as possible. He was sure somehow that those pale eyes were searching for him.

For more than an hour after this, Kaemen sat atop a dais above the heads of the multitude, surveying the room, apparently deep in thought, waiting for a certain moment, or so it seemed to Ginna.

“He must be about to announce something,” said
one of the ladies. It was obvious to everyone that they had been summoned for some purpose. People talked in hushed tones, every other glance directed at the seated Guardian. Ginna took some comfort in the way Kardios stood there, drink in hand, as ill at ease as he himself felt.

As last The Guardian rose, thumped his staff for quiet, and every face was toward him.

“Let the woman Saemil
come forward,” he called out.

The silence broke into whispers of “Who?” and starched clothing rustled as people milled about and stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was happening. Ginna noticed movement nearby, heads turning to his left then following something. Bodies stepped back, pressing upon one another like a rippling wave. Someone stepped on his foot and he squirmed free. Now he
was in front of the massive general, behind three short ladies in feather-covered gowns, and he could see clearly.

An elderly woman stood before the throne. She looked familiar. When she turned slightly, in a kind of twitch, he recognized her. He had known so few people in life that he never forgot a face. She was one of the nurses who had overseen his earliest years. He remembered how she
approached him fearfully at first, but after a while developed a completely uncaring attitude, as if he were not more animate than a lump of dough in the hands of a cook. She was also one of the ones who had constantly dashed about, wringing her hands in worry, trying to please the infant who had grown into the boy now gazing down on her from the seat above.

She raised her hand and made
the sign of blessing received, first and fourth fingers upraised, the others held under the thumb, the hand moved in a little square.

“A blessing indeed,” said The Guardian. “Woman, you have lived for the last three years because I forgot about you, but just this morning I remembered. I hope you will accept my apologies for the delay.”

The Guardian made a sign none of his office had
ever made in public before, that of forgiveness humbly begged, and he smiled viciously as he did.

“Your Holy Majesty is... of course... joking... Oh, what a splendid joke!”

She forced a weak laugh.

“No!” He stood up and out of his seat, something else no Guardian ever did. “My Holy Majesty is not joking. I am in complete earnest, and I declare you to be a traitor, a bearer of
ill will against me. There are many here who hate me, and your death shall be an example to them. By my command, you shall not leave this room until you are dead.”