Working God's Mischief

6. Realm of the Gods: The Tyranny of the Night

The Old Gods all took human form. Even Asgrimmur could not say if that was compelled by the presence of humans or if it was just convenient. Some had trouble keeping the shape. They all shimmered occasionally. Which might explain why, in their prime, they had been called the Shining Ones.

“There’s no power!” one beauty complained. “The magic is gone.”

Most of the revenants had gone out into their world. A few had stayed to watch the mortals. Piper Hecht remained dreadfully uncomfortable, for reasons of offended faith and of concern for his family-though Asgrimmur continued to assure him that there would be no trouble.

“They know they’ve just moved into a bigger prison. They know they’re dead if this world stays closed. They need magic to survive here. There is none. They know bad behavior means no way out. This world will dwindle till, in time, it becomes smaller than a pinprick.”

“All part of the Aelen Kofer design, eh? Those sneaky bastards.”

“This one is the gods’ fault. It’s their design. The Aelen Kofer just built the furniture.”

Hecht backed away from the discussion. However confusing, all things were true inside the Night.

The woman called Sheaf came in. She was eating what looked like an overgrown, deformed crabapple. “Eavijne’s first crop. They’re not good but there are enough to go around. Get one.” She ambled around, looking over shoulders, curious.

Hecht was curious himself. How had she become fluent in modern Firaldian? Those must be potent apples.

The Bastard, Cloven Februaren, and Heris finished readying their first dump of Instrumentality soul eggs. More than a hundred pounds lay in the glass hopper, set to go.

The ascendant was not much use just now. The suggestion that the All-Father’s fall might have been engineered had hit him hard. Had he been manipulated himself? How had he, newly ascended and quite insane, been able to create a pocket world into which he had herded twelve gods?

Asgrimmur kept trying to discuss it with Heris. Heris was busy.

She finally grumbled, “Will you quit stressing about what happened back when? We have problems now. The Trickster ended up in there because what’s inside you spent what was left of him to make it happen. Now help me with the hammer mill.”

Some of the soul eggs were too large for the injection tube. Heris meant to break those up. The eggs would shatter when hit hard.

Anna and the children had been making themselves useful by moving equipment and materials no longer needed out of the chamber. The divinities were not pleased by their indifference.

Two sizable, still-warm soul eggs had been set aside, on a table all their own. Two falcons not so subtly pointed their way. Heris talked about trying to reverse their misfortune.

Hecht would as soon see them all destroyed. To the last and least these entities mocked the religion of his youth and the religion he had adopted since coming west.

His mind might know that all things were true inside the Night but his heart desperately wanted that not to be so. There is no God but God!

“Piper?” Heris asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re daydreaming. Again.”

“Have to. It never gets dark here.” He glanced toward the doorway. The green area boasted a half-dozen Old Gods who looked like ordinary people with anachronistic senses of style. They included one of Red Hammer’s mothers-different myths assigned the honor to different goddesses-and his wife and that wife’s daughter by an unknown father.

They made Hecht nervous.

Cultures that had worshipped the Old Ones had had strange notions of justice.

“In a world of an eye for an eye the last man standing has got the world by the balls.”

Heris said, “Piper?”

“Nothing. Something Pinkus Ghort said.” He checked his family.

They were spent emotionally. Pella had begun spelling them at the falcons. The boy could be a surprise when he set the attitude aside. “How much longer do you want the falcons manned? Asgrimmur says we don’t need them anymore. But I’m more suspicious than him. I can’t help thinking how honorable I’d be if the Old Ones had the upper hand.”

Cloven Februaren said, “You’re the product of thousands of years of the Instrumentalities having had the upper hand. You’d need to live that long with them to grasp their thinking. The simple fact that death is something that only happens to somebody else makes a huge difference.”

Hecht said, “That should be changing.”

“The change started centuries ago. But they got it wrong, which is why we are where we are today.”

“Why did you come over here interrupting, Double Great?”

“I wanted to tell you to get on with your work and stop worrying about the numb-nuts hangers-on.”

“I missed your point. Assuming you had one.”

“Stop worrying about the gods. They can’t interfere. That would be suicidal. You got them by the short hairs. Yank or squeeze, as appropriate, when the mood takes you.”

That did not reassure Hecht till he recalled that the Old Ones were inside their Paradise already, specially constructed by the Aelen Kofer. Suicide would not take them onward to any wondrous eternity.

The Adversary’s cunning termites of doubt kept gnawing at the foundations of his faith.

“If I understand Double Great right, Piper, it’s all right if Anna and the kids take off. All we have left is to dump the trash through the midden hole.” Heris waved. “Let’s do the drop, Renfrow.”

“As you wish.” The Bastard fiddled with petcocks. A thousand amber beads, from pinhead size to an inch in diameter, rolled down through silver glass tubing. A silver ball followed so nothing of the Night could head in the other direction.

The Bastard closed and opened petcocks again. Beads and ball disappeared into Asgrimmur’s pocket universe.

“There’s one load gone,” Heris said. “Let’s get crushing and grinding. We’ll have this done in another hour. In two we’ll be sucking down Aelen Kofer ale.”

Hecht checked his family again. “You’re sure you don’t need fire support?”

“You stay. Pick a falcon.” Heris stepped past him. “You gods get a sudden notion to knock boots with a mortal girl, just remember that their mother, father, and aunt already wrote the last verse for four major Instrumentalities.”

It was more than four but Hecht was not about to start threatening gods. Heris ought to have better sense, too. She should have noticed, as well, that only one of these gods was male.

Hecht was distracted by the novelty of her concern for Lila and Vali.

Some of the divinities did have reputations. Old northern myth and culture valued virginity, chastity, and fidelity much less than did the followers of Aaron of Chaldar. And Chaldareans were less obsessive than Pramans, who stoned somebody if they even thought about sexual congress with anyone but young boys or the renewable virgin houris of Paradise.

Anna and the children left. Hecht leaned on his falcon and brooded about the quirks of religion.

The Founding Family had been crystal clear and bloody fierce in matters sexual. There was no room in the Faith for buggery. But, as people generally do, the Faithful overlooked rules they found inconvenient. Nor did useful pre-Revelation gods vanish in the light of the god who was God. They put on disguises and went to work as ifrits and other spirits, now supposedly in thrall to the Adversary. And the thing about boys …

That had confused and appalled Piper Hecht even when he was young Else Tage.

He thought of Osa Stile, ensorcelled so he would remain a pleasure boy all his life. Osa was still out there, nearing forty, looking a small twelve, still unconvinced that those who had warped him did not deserve his loyalty.

The hammer mill cycled. It shook the chamber. The smash and rattle startled Hecht out of his dark reverie.

Heris joined him. “This is going all right but it’s taking longer than I expected.”

“Everything does.”

“Why? The individual steps aren’t causing complications.”

“My staff call it friction. Natural drag that just slows things down even when there aren’t any problems. Titus Consent has an equation he uses to guess how much friction we can expect in an operation. And, guess what?”

“It doesn’t help?”

“It does. But the attempt to calculate friction causes friction of its own. I suspect an undiscovered law of the universe.”

“And that doesn’t drive you nuts?”

“Of course it does. But if you accept it, don’t fight it, and take it into account, things go fairly well. Most leaders can’t handle friction. They make things worse by screaming, yelling, threatening and punishing. People slow down when they’re afraid to make mistakes.”

“More philosophy. More intellectualization. More friction.”

“You could be right. They’re ready to run another load.”

Februaren had sieved the material processed in the hammer mill. The finer stuff went into the tube for delivery into the void. Big chunks would take another pass through the hammer mill. “If we mixed this with water it would go through faster.”

“Or oil,” the Bastard suggested.

“Oil would create a viscous slurry.” A vigorous debate commenced.

Hecht wrestled his temper. These men, participating in the industrialized destruction of the Instrumentalities of the Night, were bickering over the easiest way to make an end of the last relicts of entities who might have existed for millennia.

Did longevity qualify them for special empathy? Their long lives had provided them untold opportunities to rain down misery on mortals.

“Piper, do you know where you want to point that thing?” Cloven Februaren asked.

“What?”

“Your loudmouth toy. You leaning on it has got the business end pointing at the floor.”

“I was going to skip the shot off the deck.”

“A creative approach. But it might do more damage to the good guys.”

“Upon reflection, I agree. How much longer?”

“Depends on your sister. She wants to wrap everything this one trip. I could use a few hours down in the tavern, though. And a good long nap.”

“Must be a trying life, being a bitter old man.”

“Damned straight it is.”

Heris was right there to hear herself discussed, and to see the ascendant and Bastard nod. She ignored them all.

The hammer mill made the place shake.

* * *

Pella dashed in, pushing his way past indignant divinities. “Dad … The bridge…”

“Get some air inside. Then tell it like it’s old news.”

The boy drew several breaths. “The bridge. That goddess with the apples. She’s stealing the magic from the rainbow.”

“Asgrimmur?”

“Damn! The bridge is the only magic left. But who would think that any of these dimwits could unravel Aelen Kofer work?”

Hecht said, “We could drag one of these boomers down the hall, tilt it out a window, and take a shot.”

“Not necessary. Let me talk to Eavijne. Heris?”

“Go. I’ll stay and figure out how to fly down.”

Hecht’s companions were more cautious once Asgrimmur left. No one turned a back on the divinities. But the Instrumentalities had their own problem. The eldest female gestured. The youngest took off after Asgrimmur. Hecht intuited that she had orders to support the ascendant.

No point escaping prison if you just ended up in a bigger cell.

The senior goddess said something.

The Bastard said, “That’s classical Andorayan. The Old Gods still had a rural following when I was young. I might be able to talk to her.”

Heris said, “Chances are, she’s following everything we’re saying. She wanted to talk to you without the god killers understanding.”

Hecht said, “A leopard is a leopard and a lion is a lion, Renfrow.”

“Folksy, but what does it mean?”

Heris knew from her middle-eastern days. “That you’re deluding yourself if you think a lion or a leopard can be turned into anything but a lion or a leopard. A major Instrumentality, even with his balls in a vise, will go right on thinking like a god.”

“Understood. And understood.” Renfrow faced the goddess. Who seethed, clearly.

Hecht expected nothing more. He thought Heris was trying to domesticate leopards.

Heris picked up the two soul eggs still nearly too warm to touch. “They aren’t gone permanently.” The hammer mill cycled. “But we won’t try to restore them while any of us feel uncomfortable about any of you.”

Ferris Renfrow asked, “We’re taking hostages?”

The goddess responded, “Save the bluster. I’m not Red Hammer. An offense to my dignity won’t shatter my reason. I know we’re dependent on your good will. That’s galling but even the gods themselves bend the knee to needs must.”

“No knee bending required,” Heris said. “Just cooperation. Tit for tat. We aren’t asking for anything beyond our lifetimes.”

“The situation is clear in all its aspects, Godslayer Heris. Go ahead with your work.” She turned.

The lone male deity appeared. He carried maybe fifteen feet of rope.

“Where was that hidden?” Heris grumbled.

“I’ll be damned!” Renfrow said, in pure awe.

“What?” Hecht demanded while Februaren nodded as though he understood, too.

“Geistrier, Commander.”

“Bless you. What’s happening?”

“Geistrier is a rope that’s always as long as it needs to be and so strong the giant Blognor couldn’t break it when it was used to tie him up.”

A beautiful, shining girl turned up carrying a spear. It looked perfectly ordinary, an infantry spear, made for thrusting, not throwing. Shaft eight feet long, blade adding another foot and two inches wide at its hips, its edges sharpened. The spearhead glowed with the opposite of light.

“Heartsplitter,” Renfrow said, clearly in awe.

Soon afterward someone turned up with a horn, then a hammer, ragged silk slippers, and a flute. None of the relics looked like much.

The Bastard muttered, “It’ll be scary as hell getting out if the bridge is gone. But we can do it with their help.”

“I’m still wondering what I’m doing here. I have a big war in the east that I should be getting ready for.”

Pella had not lingered after delivering his shaker. Now Vali rushed in. “Heris, Asgrimmur says to tell you the situation isn’t as bad as he thought. The rainbow is still solid. It’s just not wide enough for carts anymore.”

“I’ll strangle Iron Eyes next time I see him. That stubby prick saw this coming.”

Most mortals had to ride goat carts across because they were not psychologically fit to walk on air. The Aelen Kofer had taken the goats along when they scurried out of the Realm of the Gods. There would be no escapes from the Realm, however inept the overconfident middle-worlder mortal rescuers were.

Whatever happened, no one, mortal or Instrumentality, would depart the Great Sky Fortress without walking the rainbow bridge.

It was there for anyone with the nerve to walk it.

* * *

The hammer mill cycled for the last time. The Great Sky Fortress creaked and shook. Heris made sure every crumb of cracked egg, every recoverable speck of dust, preceded a silver ball into the hidden universe. “All right. Time for a beer. Or three. Or ten. And then a week of sleep. I’ll decide what next when I wake up.”

Nobody asked questions. Nobody wanted Heris thinking of something else that needed doing. Excepting the Trickster.

Even the least sensitive, like Piper Hecht, felt the desperation building as the trapped Instrumentality finally understood that he would not be released.

His peers were indifferent. He had exhausted their patience and friendship.

Hecht watched Heris pack the soul eggs of Zyr and Red Hammer, admiring her detailed and meticulous work, even in circumstances that encouraged haste and sloppiness.

Heris asked, “What should we do about the falcons? We can’t take them with us.”

“Damn! Give me a second to think like Kait Rhuk or Drago Prosek.” The observing Instrumentalities seemed intrigued.

“I’ll fix them so they can only be unfixed by one of my experts.” A challenge to the gods. “Iron Eyes will come back someday. After he gets over the beating I’m going to give him. He can rebuild the rainbow bridge, then haul the falcons out on his goat carts.”

“Make sure they can’t be used against us later, then let’s go drink some beer.”

“Where’s that keg of firepowder? All right. I see it. Go ahead and take off.” He wondered about her thirst as he pounded a sliver of iron into the touch hole of a falcon. Heris was not a drinker, unless she had developed a taste since coming to the Realm of the Gods.

The room shivered. Hecht felt a hint of rage from the trapped Instrumentality. He reflected momentarily. “Better do it. Just in case.” He collected the firepowder keg.

“Dad? You going to futz around all day?”

“Vali. How come you’re back up here?”

Glassware fell, crashed. They both jumped.

“Anna sent me to find out why you didn’t come down when Heris did.”

“Work to do here.” He fiddled with a spring. “I’m almost done.”

“They’ve started crossing the bridge.”

“I didn’t realize I was taking too much time.”

“She’s just worried. You know she worries.”

“Uhm.” He surveyed the falcons. All spiked. Firepowder keg, set to go.

“I mean really worries, Dad. When you’re away.”

“Let’s go.”

The room shivered again. Hecht thought this tremor was weaker. The prisoner had spent his strength and fury.

* * *

Clever gods had made crossing the bridge easy. One took an end of Geistrier across and tied it to a boulder. Heartsplitter, thrust into the fabric of the bridge, supported the rope midway. The near end was tied to an old, green brass post of memorial significance. Nobody remembered of what. Asgrimmur said, “It may have a part in the Twilight War. I’m not sure. You changed everything. A destiny that has been fixed since the beginning just isn’t anymore.”

“I wish I was that important to history. But Anna and Heris are bigger god killers than me.”

“Not true. You forget Seska and the ancients you put down in the Connec. But why worry about that? We have a bridge to cross.”

Hecht had been trying to tame his dread. There were heights and heights. This was the kind where you could not see a place to stop falling.

Nothing in his training had prepared him for this. Such a challenge could not arise because a situation like this could not exist. This was a fever dream of savages not yet blest with the Word of God.

Asgrimmur said, “Just step up to the post, take hold of the rope, close your eyes, and head out. I’ll be right behind you.”

Hecht took a quick look round. Most everyone was across. Lila was halfway over, striding confidently, fingers lightly dragging along the rope. A goddess walked in front of her. Another moved behind. Neither was close enough to help if the girl lost her footing.

Anna was over and waiting. If she could manage, he could.

Vali raced past as he moved toward the head of the bridge, ran out onto the span like it was a mile wide and built of granite. The youngest Shining One, Aldi, was close behind. Her courage flagged when she came to the bridge. Vali ran till she overtook the slow mover behind Lila.

“Say nothing,” the ascendant cautioned softly. “Don’t distract her.”

“No. But I’m not so sanguine about the one chasing her.”

“She’s safe. But I’ll remind her not to irritate the god-killing folk.”

“Good. And the god-killing folk will have a come-to-Aaron meeting with their daughter, in case she did something stupid.”

“There you go.” Asgrimmur sounded like he was having trouble not laughing. “They’re just young people having fun.”

That was plain enough from the body language Vali and Aldi showed.

Hecht ground his teeth, shut his eyes, groped for the rope, grabbed hold, and started walking.

Anna swarmed him when he reached the other side. “You made it.”

“Of course I did. It’s like crossing a creek on a fallen tree.”

“Only it takes you longer to get wet after you slip. Piper, we need to talk to the girls.”

Vali and Lila were just a few feet away, the former striving mightily to look like butter would not melt in her mouth. Meaning it was certain that she had started whatever it was that he had witnessed. “Yes. Where is Pella?”

“He’s still over there. With that Eavijne.”

“Really?”

“It’s a crush that won’t go anywhere. She’s taken.”

“Good. I don’t want any of us getting friendly with these devils.”

“Jealous?”

“Worried about our souls.”

Pella approached the nether end of the bridge. Asgrimmur went back to help.

Hecht asked about that.

“He’s helping everybody.”

“So. I guess that’s a good thing.”

“Better than any of the gods. They won’t even help each other.”

True. Those who were over already were headed down the mountain, indifferent to anything happening behind them.

“Just like real people.”

“More so. They’re much too sure of themselves.”

Ferris Renfrow and Cloven Februaren were on the path downward, too. They had no interest in what was going on behind them.

Pella was deathly pale when he arrived. “Dad, I hope we don’t ever do anything like that again. I’m not good with heights.”

“You and me both. Asgrimmur, who’s still over there?”

“Just Eavijne, trying to nurture her orchard.”

Pella said, “She doesn’t want to believe things turned out the way they did. It’s like she hopes that if she just wishes hard enough the world will be what she wants it to be.”

Hecht said, “Some mortals think the same way.”

Anna opined, “That’s how it is for gods, though, isn’t it? They wish for stuff and that’s what happens.”

“Here she comes,” Asgrimmur said.

Eavijne trudged onto the bridge. She carried a red sack. “Apples,” Pella explained. “Sick apples, all weird and shriveled.”

“Where’d she get the sack?” Hecht asked. “More wishful thinking?”

Heris said, “The dwarves left it. It was used to haul ammunition.”

Eavijne had just grasped the spear Heartsplitter when an explosion ripped a dozen square yards out of the face of the Great Sky Fortress.