Gehn stood several paces off, watching as Atrus dug the spade deep into the grassy surface of the meadow, using his booted heel, then pushed down on the handle, turning back the turf, exposing the dark richness of the earth beneath.
Throwing the spade aside, Atrus knelt beside the hole. Taking a dark blue cloth from inside his pocket, he lay it beside him, then began to lay out the instruments he needed—spatulas and droppers, scoops and pipettes, and four small capped jars containing variously colored chemicals—removing them one by one from the broad leather belt he wore about his waist.
Finally, he took a slender black case from the inside pocket of his tunic and, opening it, took out four long glass tubes and lay them next to the shining silver instruments. That accomplished, he looked up at Gehn, his glasses glinting in the afternoon sun.
“I’m ready, father.”
Gehn lifted his chin slightly, his own glasses opaqued against the brightness. “Then let us see what has resulted, eh?”
Atrus set to work, using one of the scoops to place a small amount of earth into each of the tubes. That done, he picked up the first of the jars, uncapped it, then set it down again.
Using one of the droppers, he drew up a measure of the clear amber liquid and, taking the first of the tubes, added it to the earth, swilling the mixture around at the bottom of the tube.
Lifting it up into the light, he studied it a while, then, nodding to himself, threw the dropper aside and, taking a cork, sealed the tube.
He went through the motions again, this time taking a heaped spatula of light blue powder to add to the earth in the second tube, mixing the two together thoroughly.
Twice more he carried out the procedure, until all four tubes lay stoppered on the cloth. Pleased with himself, Atrus looked to Gehn once more.
“I think it’s worked.”
“You think?”
Atrus looked down. “I’m pretty sure it has. The reactions certainly correlate with what I expected, but I’d like to make absolutely sure. I’d like to test them again, back at the hut.”
Gehn nodded, then turned away, drawing his cloak about him as he went. “I shall see you there then, in a while.”
Atrus watched his father a moment, then set about packing away his equipment. He had expected more from Gehn, a smile, perhaps, or some small indication, by word or gesture, that he was pleased with what he had achieved, but as ever there was nothing.
Glancing up, he noticed that the young girl, Salar, was watching from the far side of the meadow, and smiled to himself. He was rather fond of her, in a big brotherly kind of way, but she was not the best of company. It was not as if he could really talk to her; at least not the way he had talked to Anna.
He pushed the thought away, determined not to be morose. Not today, anyway. For today, if his further tests did prove him right, he had achieved a great thing.
As he fastened the sample case, then slipped the instruments back into his belt, he allowed himself a smile.
By rights Gehn should have been inordinately proud of him for finding such an elegant solution; but Gehn was Gehn, his distance part of his intelligence. It had been a full week before Gehn had even read the brief phrase he had written for the Age Thirty-seven book. With a shrug, Atrus stood, looking about him a moment, checking he had not left anything. Then, with a brief wave and a smile to Salar, he started back.
They had built a new hut close to the old woman’s, extending it, as he’d suggested, to include a separate room where they could carry out experiments. Gehn was waiting for him there, his own equipment already set up.
“Here,” he said, gesturing to Atrus. “Give me the samples. I shall carry out my own tests.”
“Father…” He bowed, hiding his disappointment, then handed over the slender case.
Ut at least Gehn was taking him seriously. When he had first proposed this, Gehn had ridiculed the idea:
“Why, I have been searching for close to twenty years for such a phrase! And you say you have found one that will solve the problem?”
It was not strictly true. He had not found it in a book, he had worked it out for himself from first principles, after studying the matter for nearly eight months. But Gehn had not wanted to hear his explanation. Gehn was interested only in whether it worked or not.
And now it was his turn to watch as Gehn took a little of each sample and, placing each on a separate slide, began to examine the first of them under the big, gold-cased instrument he had brought with him from D’ni.
For a tense few minutes Gehn barely moved, only the faintest movement of his fingers on the calibrated knobs, then he removed his eye from the long tube and looked across at Atrus.
“The bacteria are different.”
“Not all of them.”
Gehn stared at him silently, as if expecting him to say something more; when he didn’t, he looked away, taking the second of the slides and fitting it into the viewing slot.
Atrus watched him, smiling now. Adding to the mix of different bacteria had been the final touch—the thing that had finally made it work. Years ago, in the cleft, he had tried a much simpler, purely chemical solution to the same kind of problem, and had failed. Here he had tried to look at the whole picture—chemical and bacteriological—and it had worked.
It wasn’t the solution to everything that was wrong—and he had been careful, when he’d first presented it to his father, not to offer any form of criticism of the Age—but it was a start. And maybe, if his father trusted him more after this, he could make further changes.
He longed to see the Age Thirty-seven book to confirm his hypotheses and discuss it with his father, but he knew how sensitive Gehn was.
He let out a long breath, remembering the long hours he had spent researching the subject. Until he had begun to study the composition of soil, he had not understood the full complexity of it. But now he saw it clearly. One had to build worlds from the bottom up, beginning with what was below the soil.
Gehn grunted, then looked across again, giving a terse nod.
“This is good. You must show me the book where you found this. It may have other things we can use.”
Atrus looked down. Maybe Gehn would forget. Maybe he’d be distracted by something else. Or, if the worst came to the worst and he insisted, the “book” could have an accident somehow.
“All right,” Gehn said, taking the slide from the viewer, then beginning to pack away the microscope, “let us clear up and get back to D’ni. I think our work is done here for a time.”
“Done?”
Gehn nodded, then clicked the lid shut on the box that held the microscope. “I think we should leave this Age alone for a week or two and see how things develop. If there are any side effects, they should show up in that time.”
“Side effects?”
But Gehn was impatient to return. “Come, Atrus. Pack your things. I want to be back within the hour.”
§
Two days had passed now since their return from the Thirty-seventh Age, and in all that time Atrus had not seen hide nor hair of his father.
He knew where Gehn was, of course, for the very moment they had linked back, Gehn had rushed up the stairs to his study and locked himself in.
Atrus had thought his father might reappear at mealtimes, but he had not come down even then.
And now the darkness was falling on another day, and still he had no idea of what his father was up to.
Walking over to the desk in the corner of his room, Atrus picked up his journal and, stepping out onto the balcony, opened it at one of the earliest entries; one written when he was barely nine years old:
Anna says that the cleft is an “environment” and that an “environment” is composed of many different elements, all of which have an effect upon each other. She says that though some of those things—the sun, for instance—are not actually in the cleft itself, they must still be taken into account when we look at how the cleft works. Too much sun and plants die, too little and they never grow. I asked her—how do we manage to live here at all?
He sat upon the balustrade, looking out toward the great rock and the city beyond, and sighed. Looking back across the years, it was indeed a wonder that they had survived. How much of a wonder, he had not fully realized until now.
I have come a long way, he thought, but I have still not half the understanding that she had.
Atrus turned, meaning to go back inside and write a line or two, and saw that Rijus was standing in the middle of the room, looking across at him.
He had long ago got used to the man’s silence and to his sudden appearances in rooms, yet he found himself still curious about what the man knew, what secrets he had. Yes, and what it was like to inhabit a world of words one could not penetrate.
Walking through, he set his journal down, then looked across at the man.
“You have a message for me, Rijus?”
Rijus bowed his head, then held out the note.
At last , he thought, knowing it was a summons. What has the man been up to?
He unfolded it and cast his eyes quickly over the elaborate handwriting. It was terse and to the point.
“My study. Now.”
He nodded to Rijus, dismissing him, then went across and slipped the journal into the case he kept it in, locking the clasp with the key. Then, satisfied that all was secure, he hurried out.
Gehn was waiting in his study, ensconced behind his desk. There was a pile of copy books at his elbow, another five spread out along the front of his desk.
With a jolt of surprise, Atrus recognized them. They were his!
“Ah, Atrus,” Gehn said, glancing up, then continuing to write in the open book in front of him, “come and sit down across from me.”
Atrus took the seat, facing his father, watching as Gehn finished the sentence he was writing, then put the pen back into the ink pot.
Gehn looked up at him, then nodded toward the books. “As you see, I have been reading your practice books, and I have selected five which, I fee, have some small merit.”
He waited, tensed now.
“I want you to choose one.”
“Father?”
Gehn passed his hand over the five books. “At present these are but words on paper. But now I am giving you the chance to make one of these books real.”
Atrus blinked.
“Yes. I am giving you a blank book, a Kortee-nea . You will choose one of these five books and write it out properly into the Kortee-nea .”
Here it was, the moment he had dreamed of, and he was unprepared for it.
“Well?” Gehn said, frowning at him. “Which one is it to be?”
Atrus leaned forward, looking to see which books his father had selected, surprised by the choice of two of them. But his main book was there. He reached out and tapped it. “This one.”
Gehn nodded. “A good choice.” Turning in his seat, he reached down, then lifted a big, leather-bound book from the pile beside him, then held it out to Atrus.
Atrus took it, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart pounding. A book! His father had given him a book!
“You must be very careful, Atrus. Any mistakes you make in copying will be set into the Age. You must check every word, every phrase after you have copied it. Yes, and recheck it. And if you do make a mistake, then be sure to bring the book to me.”
He bowed his head. “Father.”
“Good. Now take your copybook and go. And Atrus?”
“Yes, father?”
“You might add that phrase you recently discovered. The phrase about the soil. It will do your Age no harm, after all.”
§
Gehn lay the book flat on the desk before Atrus, then opened it to reveal the empty descriptive box on the right-hand page. Until he linked, it would be blank—or almost so, for there was a chaotic swirl of particles, like a snowstorm—yet as soon as he emerged into the new Age, the image would appear, as if by magic, on the page.
“Shall I go first?” Gehn asked, looking to him, “or would you like that honor?”
Though he had linked many times now—so often that it had almost become a thing of routine—this once he was afraid: afraid because he had made this age.
“Well?” Gehn insisted when he did not answer.
“I’ll go,” he said, then, taking a long, calming breath, he placed his right hand on the empty page.
There was a crackle of static, as though a faint electrical current had passed through his hand. It seemed drawn into the very fabric of the page, then, with a sudden, sickening lurch, Atrus felt himself sucked into the rapidly expanding whiteness of the page.
In that instant he felt the familiar “shifting” sensation of the link. For that brief moment it felt as though he were melting. And then, with a shocking suddenness that never diminished, the blackness seeped through until there was nothing but the blackness.
And as he finally surrendered to that blackness, so he found himself back in his body, standing on the cold damp earth inside a low-ceilinged cavern.
Relieved, Atrus shook himself, then stepped aside, conscious that his father was linking after him.
He waited, expecting Gehn to appear at any moment, for the air to take on that strangely fluid quality it had when someone was linking through—a quality that, looking at it, was like a flaw, an occlusion , in the eye itself.
Strange. Atrus frowned and made to step toward the space he’d just left, even as the air changed and, like a bubble squeezed out of the nothingness, his father appeared.
Gehn looked about him, eyeing the walls critically. “Good,” he said quietly, taking in a deep breath. “The air smells very fresh.”
Atrus watched his father, conscious that he was being judged, that this was a test of sorts.
“You have the Linking Book on you, I assume?”
Slowly, Atrus’s mouth fell open. The Linking Book! In his excitement he had completely forgotten about the Linking Book! He was so used to traveling in Ages where the Linking Books were already in place, that he had overlooked it!
He groaned, the blood draining from his face.
Gehn held out a Linking Book before his eyes. “You forgot. But fortunately I did not.”
Atrus closed his eyes, the thought that he might have trapped them there forever making him tremble.
“I’m sorry…” he began, but Gehn cut him short with a terse little gesture of his hand. His father’s eyes were livid with rage.
“Do not tell me how sorry you are, Atrus. Sorry is utterly inadequate. Sorry is for fools and idiots who cannot think straight. I considered you better than that, but your gross carelessness in this instance is a sign of your immaturity. There was but one single, crucial thing you had to remember, and you forgot!” Gehn huffed out a great sigh of exasperation, then smacked the book against the top of Atrus’s head, his voice rising with controlled anger. “What if I had not thought to bring your Linking Book? What then? Where would we be?”
Herei, Atrus thought. Forever here.
Gehn thrust the book into his hands, then turned away, making for the entrance.
Atrus stood uncertainly, then followed his father across.
“Well,” Gehn said, slowing down to let Atrus catch up, but refusing to look at him. “I suppose you had better show me what you have written.”
He led his father out, through a narrow stone passage that was very different from how he’d imagined it—how he thought he’d written it—and into a cavelike depression that was open to the sky, bright sunlight pouring down into it from the clear blue heavens. There was a pool to one side, surrounded by lush vegetation and a few light-colored rocks, while on the far side a flight of tiered rocks climbed the rock face.
Gehn pulled his glasses down over his eyes then stepped out into the sunlight. For a long while he was silent, almost as if he disapproved of what he saw, but when he spoke, it was with an air of surprise.
“This is good, Atrus. You appear to have chosen the different elements well. They complement each other perfectly.” He turned, looking directly at Atrus, who still stood in the shadow. “Which books did you use?”
As ever, Gehn thought that he had derived the different elements of his Age from various ancient books, the way Gehn himself did. But Atrus hadn’t done that here. This was all his, uniquely his. The greatest trouble he’d had was in finding the right D’ni words to express what he wanted.
That was why it had taken him so long. Why he had had to be so patient.
“I…I can’t remember,” he said finally. “There were so many.”
“No matter,” Gehn said. He glanced at Atrus briefl, then walked on.
Skirting the pool, Gehn paused to look about him, then began to climb the steps. Pulling down his glasses, Atrus hurried after, surprised that Gehn had made no other comment. Didn’t all this remind him of something? Couldn’t Gehn see what he’d tried to do here?
It was the cleft. Simplified, admittedly, and without the buildings that had been in the original, but the shape of it, the physical materials were, as far as he could make it, precisely as he remembered them.
Halfway up the steps he stopped and turned, scanning the floor of the cleft to see whether the one specific he had written in had taken as he’d hoped. His eyes searched a moment, seeing nothing, then, with a jolt of pure delight, he saw them, just there in the deep shadow on the far side. Flowers. Tiny, delicate blue flowers.
He grinned, then began to climb again. It had taken him a lot of time and effort choosing the precise soil type and the balance of minerals in the soil, but it had worked!
Gehn was waiting for him up above, one hand stroking his chin as he surveyed the view.
Joining him, Atrus looked out, seeing, for the first time, the Age he had created.
It was a rolling landscape of hills and valleys, with lush pasture and thick, dark green forests. Rivers threaded their silver way through that verdant paradise, winking now and then into the blue of lakes. To the far left, in the distance, there were mountains—snowcapped and majestic, and beneath them a blue-green stretch of sea.
And over all a rich blue cloudless sky, dominated by a large yellow sun, like the sun of Earth. Atrus stood there, entranced, listening to the peaceful sound of birdsong. For a moment he didn’t even notice, then he half-turned, his eyes widening.
Birds? I didn’t write birds!
His father stepped up beside him. “You should have experimented more.”
Atrus looked to his father, surprised by his comment, which seemed a complete contradiction of his own style of writing.
“You might have tried a different sun, for instance,” Gehn said, pointing to it, “or chosen a different kind of rock to make those mountains.”
“But…”
“Next time you should use a few less conventional touches, Atrus. It would not do to make your worlds too staid.”
Atrus looked down, dismayed by his father’s words. But what about that view? Wasn’t that spectacular? And the air and the soil here—wasn’t it good that they were so healthy? Oh, he knew this Age was simple, but he had planned to take one step at a time. And this world wouldn’t fall apart…
“Still,” Gehn added, “you need not keep this Age. Now that I know you can write, I shall give you other books. You can experiment in them. Then, once you have finally made an Age that I am happy with, you can call that your First Age.”
“But I’ve named this world.”
“Named it?” Gehn laughed dismissively. “That was a trifle premature. I could understand, perhaps, if there were people here, but…”
“I called it Inception.”
Gehn stared at him a moment, then turned away. Walking across, he pulled a leaf from a bush, rolling it between his gloved fingers, then lifted it to his nose to sniff it before he threw it away.
“All right. I think we had better go back now.”
Atrus, who had been about to walk on down the slope, turned to face his father again. “Go back?”
Gehn barely glanced at him. “Yes.”
“But I thought…” Atrus swallowed. “I thought we could see more of this Age. I wanted to take samples of the soil, and catch one of the creatures for study. I wanted…”
“You heard me, Atrus. Now come! If you must, you can come back another time, but right now I must get back. I have a great deal to arrange before the Korfah V’ja.”
Atrus had never heard the term before. “Korfah V’ja?”
Gehn looked to him. “Tomorrow, at noon on the Thirty-seventh Age.” And with that he walked on.
§
Back in the library on D’ni, Gehn closed Atrus’s book and, slipping it beneath his arm, headed for the steps that led up to his study.
“Quickly now,” he said, gesturing for Atrus to follow. “We need to prepare you.”
The room seemed unaltered since Atrus had last seen it. If anything, it was even more untidy than before, with even more books piled about the walls. Gehn’s cloak lay, carelessly discarded, over the back of the chair beside the fireplace, the grate filled with the ashes of a recent fire.
Atrus blinked, imagining his father working here late into the night, the flickering firelight making the shadows in the room dance.
“Sit down,” Gehn said, pointing to the chair across the desk from him. “We have much to do before the morning.”
Atrus sat, watching as Gehn put his book down on the pile at the side of his desk, then peeled the glasses from the top of his head and stuffed them into the drawer beside him.
“Father?”
“Yes, Atrus?”
“What is the Korfah V’ja?”
Gehn barely glanced at him. He took a book from the side, then set out a Writing pen and an ink pot on the desk beside it. “It is a ceremony for a new god,” he answered, sitting down and opening the book.
The book was not blank. It was already written in. From where he sat, Atrus could see that the last two entries had been added to the page only recently.
“I don’t know…”
Gehn looked at him. “Of course you know.”
He took the ink pot and unscrewed the top, then looked across at his son. “You are a true D’ni now, Atrus. A Writer. You have made an Age. That fact ought to be recognized. Besides, it does not do to become too familiar with the peoples of our worlds. They must be reminded of our godhood now and then, and what better way than a ceremony?”
“Yes, but…”
“I am arranging something special for the occasion.”
Gehn hesitated a moment, his eyes half-closed, thinking, then dipped then pen into the pot.
“What are you doing, father?”
“Making changes.”
“Changes?”
Gehn nodded. “Small ones. Things you cannot see.”
“Then that…” Atrus pointed, “is the Age Thirty-seven book?”
“Yes.”
Atrus felt himself go cold. He thought Gehn had finished with making changes. He thought that Age was “fixed.”
“Father?”
Gehn glanced at him distractedly. “What is it, Atrus?”
“What you said, about me being less conventional in my writing. What did you mean exactly? Did you mean I ought to take more risks?”
Gehn looked up, then set his pen aside. “Not risks, so much, as… Well, let me be blunt with you, Atrus: you take too long about things. Far, far too long. These copybooks,” he gestured toward the stack beside him, “there’s barely a thing in most of them! When I gave you the choice of five, I knew which one you would pick, because it was the only one that was even vaguely like a proper Age!”
Gehn stood, leaning over his desk. “Dammit, boy, you should have made a dozen, twenty Ages by now! You should have experimented a little, tried out a few things to see what worked and what didn’t. Sticking to the tried-and-tested, that is all well and good for scribes, but not for us, Atrus! Not for us!”
Atrus stared At Gehn, bewildered by the patent contradiction in his father’s words. Did his father want quick worlds or stable worlds? Or something else entirely?
Gehn huffed, exasperated. “You are no good to me if you work at this pace all the time. I need Ages. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them! That is our task, Atrus, don’t you see? Our sacred task. To make Ages and populate them. To fill up the nothingness with worlds. Worlds we can own and govern, so that the D’ni will be great again. So that my grandsons will be lords of a million worlds!”
Gehn stood there a moment longer, his eyes piercing Atrus, then he sat, shaking his head slowly, as if disappointed.
“You had best go to your room now. I shall send Rijus down to see you. He will bring you the special clothes you are to wear for the ceremony.”
§
Something was wrong. They knew it even as they stepped out beneath the dark, cloud-dominated sky of the Thirty-seventh Age. As they stood there, a warm, unsavory wind blew into their faces, gusting as if from a vent, its normal strong salinity tainted by other, more bitter presences.
Atrus looked to his father and saw how Gehn grimaced then touched his tongue against his upper palate, as if to get a better taste of that unwholesome air.
“What is it?”
Gehn concentrated a moment longer, then, ignoring Atrus’s question, strode on. But he had not gone more than a dozen paces before he stopped dead, his whole face drained of expression, his lips parting the merest fraction.
Atrus walked across and stood beside his father on the ridge, looking out over the village and the lake, shocked by what he saw.
The lake was dry, its exposed surface filled with dark cracks. Two dozen fishing boats lay on their sides in the bone-dry mud.
Atrus turned, looking toward the sea. There, through the gap in the hills, where the channel ended and the sea had once begun, was a ledge of solid rock. Dry rock, crusted with dried up seaweed and barnacled rocks.
Like a desert scrubland , he thought, recalling the first time he had had the thought, in the boat with Tarkuk and his son.
And beyond that ledge…nothing. Only air.
A great sound of wailing and groaning came up to them on the wind. Atrus looked, trying to locate its source in the village, but the village was deserted. Then, suddenly, he saw them, on the other side of the bridge, in front of the meeting hut. They were all there, huddled together in fear, staring out across the gouged eye of the lake or looking woefully up at the black and hostile sky. Only Koena stood, moving among them, bending down to talk to this one or lay his hand upon that one’s arm.
“What’s happened here?” he asked, turning to Gehn once more.
Gehn slowly shook his head. There was a look of disbelief in his face. “It was all right,” he said quietly. “We fixed it. Those phrases…there was nothing wrong with them.”
And yet something was wrong. Something had drained the lake and left the island stranded above the level of the surrounding ocean. Something had caused that. It must have. Because things like this did not happen on their own.
A phrase swam into Atrus’s mind. He made the ocean warm…
Was that it? Had that seemingly small alteration set up a contradiction? Or, to achieve it, had Gehn tampered with some other crucial element in this Age? Had he tilted the axis of the planet, perhaps, to bring it closer to the sun so that the water was warmer? Or was it something else? What if he’d tampered with the plates beneath the ocean? What if Gehn had set up a weakness in the ocean floor that had finally succumbed to the great pressures down there, causing this lowering of the ocean’s level? Or what if he had simply picked a phrase from a D’ni book that referred to a warm ocean without understanding where it came from or what its context was?
He would never know. Not without consulting the Age Thirty-seven book, and Gehn was quite adamant that he was not to read his books.
Great black-fisted thunderclouds were gathering overhead now. There was the low grumble of thunder.
Looking about him, his face much harder than it had been only moments before, Gehn began to walk slowly down the hill toward the village.
§
“But Great Master, you have to help us. You must! ”
“Must?” Gehn turned his head and stared at the kneeling man disdainfully. “Who says I must?”
An hour had passed since they had come and Gehn sat in his chair, at his desk in the great tent, the glowing pipe cradled in his hands.
The first thing Gehn had done was to send the islanders back to their huts, forbidding them to set a foot outside, then he had come here and lit his pipe. Since then he had not moved, but had sat there, silently brooding, his brows heavily knitted.
And Koena had come to petition his Master; afraid to defy his command, yet equally afraid to leave things be. His world was dying and there was only one person who could save it—the Lord Gehn.
Atrus, standing just behind Koena, felt a great wave of respect and admiration for the man swell up in him.
“Forgive me, Master,” Koena began again, his eyes not daring to meet Gehn’s, “but have we angered you somehow? Is this our punishment? If so, tell us how we might make amends. But please, I beg you, save us. Bring back the sea and fill the lake for us, Master, I implore you!”
Gehn slammed the pipe down on the desk and stood. “Enough!”
He seemed to take a long, indrawn breath, then slowly stepped around the table until he stood over the cowering Koena.
“You are right,” Gehn said, his voice cold and imperious. “This is a punishment. A demonstration of my awesome powers.”
Gehn paused, then, turning his back on the man, began to pace the floor. “I thought it necessary to show you what would happen should you ever think to defy me. I felt it…appropriate.”
Atrus stared at his father, openmouthed, in the silence that followed.
Gehn made a slow circuit of the tent, moving behind Atrus as if he wasn’t there. Then, as if the thought followed on from the last, he threw a question at Keona. “Are the preparations complete?”
“Master?” The kneeling man dared the smallest glance.
“The preparations,” Gehn repeated, as if speaking to a child, “for the ceremony.”
Koena blinked, then nodded; then, realizing what he had done, he hastily dropped his head again and said, “Yes, Master. Everything is ready.”
“Then we shall hold the ceremony in an hour. You will gather the islanders on the slope in front of the temple.”
“The temple?” Then Koena understood. Gehn meant the meeting hut. Even so, he seemed rooted to the spot.
“Well?” Gehn said, turning around so that he faced his servant again. “Had you not better go and arrange things?”
“Master?” Koena’s face was suddenly a blank. He seemed bemused, in shock.
“I said go. Gather the villagers and prepare for the ceremony. I do not wish to be kept waiting.”
Koena backed away a little. “But Master…aren’t you going to help us? The lake…”
“Go!” Gehn yelled, his face dark with fury. His hand had gone down to his waist and produced a long dagger from beneath his cloak. “Now! Before I slit you open like a fish!”
Koena’s head jerked up, his eyes staring fearfully at the razor-sharp blade; then, with a tiny bow, he turned and almost ran from the tent.
Atrus took a step toward him. “Father?”
But Gehn wasn’t listening. He stared blackly at the tent flap where Koena had just departed, then made a sour movement of his mouth. He glanced at Atrus, as if looking at a book or some other object he had forgotten he had placed there, then, sheathing the knife, turned and went back to his desk.
Picking up his pipe, he drew deeply in it, then sat back, resting his neck against the back of the chair and closing his eyes.
“Father?”
But Gehn was impervious to words. Pursing his lips, he blew a long stream of smoke into the air.
An hour. The Korfah V’ja—the god-crowning ceremony—was in an hour.
§
Koena had gathered the islanders, all two hundred of them, and made them kneel, heads bowed, on the slope before the meeting hut. Five great torches burned on the top of tall poles that were set into the ground between the people and the hut, their flames gusting and flickering in the wind. Deep shadows danced in that mesmeric light, like an evil spirit searching among that gathered mass for one specific soul to torment.
They were mainly silent, cowering beneath the mass of dark and threatening clouds, yet each growl or rumble of that heavenly chorus provoked a corresponding moan from those frightened souls.
At the prearranged signal, Koena turned and raised his arms, calling upon the god to come down. At once, Gehn stepped from the darkness between the wooden pillars, resplendent in a long, flowing cloak of pure gold thread lined with black silk, his white hair framed by a strange, pentagonal halo of gold that flashed in the flickering torchlight.
“People of the Thirty-seventh Age,” he commanded, his voice booming over the noises of the storm, “prostrate yourselves before your new Master, the Great Lord Atrus.”
Reluctantly, Atrus came down the steps until he stood beside his father. He was wearing a cloak and halo much like Gehn’s, only his were a brilliant red, the material shining transparently, as though it were made of a million tiny rubies.
In genuine awe, the people pressed their foreheads to the earth, murmuring the words the acolyte had had them prepare.
“The Lord Atrus is our Master. He blesses us with his presence.”
Gehn beamed, then called to the two men still inside the temple. “Attendants! Come!”
Slowly, with great ceremony, the two attendants—recruited from among the fishermen—came from within the temple, carrying between them on a velvet cushion an astonishing pendant of precious metals and bloodred jewels and delicate porcelain.
Stepping forward, Koena stood before the two men, passing his hands over the great pendant in blessing in the way Gehn had shown him. Then, moving back, he looked to Atrus, who had turned to face him.
“And now,” Gehn said, his voice echoing across the black and empty lake, “behold the Great Lord Atrus!”
And as Koena lifted the pendant and placed it around Atrus’s neck, careful not to knock the halo, so Gehn pointed up toward the sky.
There was a great clash of thunder and a flash. For the briefest moment Atrus saw the surprise in his father’s face and knew he moment was sheer coincidence. Yet in an instant Gehn’s face changed, swelling with pride, his eyes blazing with a fierce intelligence.
“Behold, the rain!”
And then, as if he really had commanded it, the heavens opened, the torrent so heavy that each drop seemed to rebound from the earth, drenching things in an instant.
The earth trembled like a beaten drum.
Atrus stared, astonished. Before him on the slope, two hundred faces were turned up in awe as the precious water fell on them like a solid weight.
Koena looked to his Master, as if to ask whether or not he should continue, but Gehn seemed undaunted by the downpour. It was almost as if he had planned it.
“The handmaiden…where is the handmaiden?”
Koena turned, then gestured toward the girl Satar, who was clutching a garland of woven flowers, like the one they had presented to Gehn when Atrus had first come to the Age. But Salar could not move. Salar was petrified. She stared up at the sky, her eyes like tiny, startled beads.
Seeing how it was, Gehn strode down and grasped her by the arm, then began to drag her across the muddy slope toward the hissing torches and the temple beyond.
Appalled by his father’s treatment of the girl, Atrus started forward. “Father! Let her go!”
Coming closer, Gehn glared at him, the fierceness in that look enough to make Atrus lower his gaze.
Gehn threw the girl down at Atrus’s feet. “The garland!” he growled. “Present the Lord Atrus with the garland!”
Atrus wanted to reach down to pick the girl up, but his father’s eyes were on him, defying him to help her.
And still the rain beat down relentlessly.
Slowly Salar got up onto her knees. The garland, which she still held loosely in one hand, was ruined now—mud-spattered and ripped in several places. She glanced up at him, frightened now and tearful.
“Lord Atrus…” she began, her voice almost inaudible beneath the noise of the storm.
“Speak up, girl!” Gehn bellowed. “Let’s hear you now!”
“Lord Atrus…” she began again, her voice struggling to keep an even tone.
There was a great flash, a huge thunderclap. The young girl shrieked and dropped the garland.
“Kerath help us!” Gehn said impatiently, then, placing the heel of his boot against her shoulder, pushed her roughly aside and bent down to pick up the ruined garland. He studied it a moment, then, with a grimace of disgust, discarded it.
Gehn turned, looking to Koena. “Dismiss them,” he said. “The ceremony is over!”
But Koena wasn’t listening. Koena was staring at the lake, watching the precious water drain away into the cracks. The rain fell and fell, but it id no good. It would have to rain for a thousand years to fill that lake, for the lake drained into the sea and the sea into the ocean, and the ocean…the ocean now lay a hundred yards or more below that great ledge of rock that once had been a seabed.
Koena turned, looking to Gehn. “Master, you have to save us! Please, Master, I beg you!”
But Gehn, who had seen what Koena had seen, simply turned away. Throwing off his crown, he unfastened his cloak at the neck and let it fall, then, going over to the tent, ducked inside, everging a moment later with his knapsack, into which he quickly stowed his pipe.
“Come,” he said, gesturing to Atrus. “The ceremony’s over.”
Atrus stared a moment, then, casting aside the pendant, ran after Gehn, catching up with him and grasping his arm, turned him so that he faced him, shouting into his face over the sound of the storm.
“We must get back and change things! Now, before it’s too late!”
“Too late? It is already too late! Look at it! I said it was unstable!”
“No!” Atrus yelled, desperate now. “You can change it. You can erase the changes you made and put things right. You can . You told me you can! After all, you are a god, aren't you?”
That last seemed to hit home. Gehn gave the briefest nod, then, pushing past his son, hurried across the bridge, making his way back up the rain-churned slope toward the cave, leaving Atrus to run after him.
15