Look elsewhere. Keep your head down. Nothing new about that. Kopil had been right, months ago. Caleb did not want the world to notice him. Everyone the world noticed, it burned.
Poker worked this way. Bet aggressively, and others will respond in kind. Play as if you have nothing to loose, and you will lose everything. Play quiet, play calm, and win.
Men and women stepped aside for them, and closed after they passed. In the heart of the crowd, someone struck up a chant, and a few hundred others joined: “Hear us! Hear us!”
The shark’s tooth glowed blue. Caleb gripped a line of ice, of fire. His scars cracked and burned, casting shadows into the crowd, and onto Teo.
Don’t look. Don’t see.
They closed half the distance to the Canter’s Shell, and half that distance again.
Hide. Live a good life, safe. Guard against disaster. Wrap yourself in cotton.
Mal’s voice in his ears, flying north to Seven Leaf Lake.
We cushion ourselves against death. We live in ignorance.
The closed eye in his mind pulled against its stitching.
Twenty feet.
Ten.
The crowd thinned as they neared the shell. Only the strongest protesters had reached this point: thick men and determined women, daring to approach eternity. On the other side of the blue shell lay piles of ash that had once been human.
In the crowd near the shell’s edge Caleb saw a yellow smiling face tattooed onto the back of a shaved scalp. He looked again, and saw Balam, the old cliff runner scowling and shouting at the pyramid. “Cowards hide! Cowards run!” Of course. Where else would Balam be as the city fell apart? Sam was here somewhere, too, or else rioting in Skittersill. He did not mention this to Teo. She knew already. She had to know.
They passed within feet of Balam; his drill sergeant voice boomed in their ears. Caleb shivered as the man raged at him, and through him, unseeing. He did not break stride. “Cowards!” Fair enough.
Temoc stopped beside the dome, and released Caleb’s wrist. Caleb did not let go of Temoc’s arm. His father took a leather ribbon from his belt and draped it around Teo’s shoulders like a stole. The leather stank of herbal unguents.
“Dad,” Caleb whispered, as Temoc produced a second ribbon. “What is that?”
“God-bearer,” Temoc replied, and reached for him. Caleb pulled back.
Gods lived beyond the mortal world, beside, above, below, permeating it with their presence. Yet deities had anchors: statues, idols, prayers, and god-bearers, relic holders made from cured human skin.
He tried to find a better way to phrase the question, but settled for: “Who was it?”
“One of the lesser corn gods.”
“I wasn’t talking about the god.”
“Caleb, put it on. We don’t have time to argue.”
Seeing. Not. Seeing.
“Cowards!”
“Caleb,” Teo said. “Do it.”
Stitches strained, burst. The shark’s tooth burned blue.
“He died centuries ago. A sacrifice. This is the only way to pass through that shell. You must carry a god within you.”
“You could have told me before.”
“I hoped to avoid this conversation.”
“Excellent job you’ve done.”
“I have set this city and all our souls at risk out of respect for your reluctance to shed blood,” Temoc said. “Do not balk at a millennia-old death.”
“My
“Caleb,” Teo whispered. “Can we have this conversation when we’re on the other side?”
“Put it on.”
“Fine,” Caleb said, and grabbed the stole.
Temoc stiffened. Teo swore.
Caleb froze with his hand on the leather. He had let go of Temoc’s wrist.
The amulet’s glow guttered and died.
Silence fell over the crowd. A hundred thousand eyes fixed at once on Caleb, Teo, and Temoc. Caleb’s half of the link had failed, but Temoc’s had not—and so the crowd looked upon them, and saw something greater. An immense impossible presence filled the space where they stood.
Couatl screamed overhead, and their wings beat closer. Green light flickered about the serpents’ claws: weapons of Craft, building, burning.
Caleb grabbed Temoc’s wrist, but panic gripped his mind, and he could not blur them to insignificance again.
The burly men and broad women nearby had stopped shouting. Balam curled his massive hands into fists. He saw, they all saw, a target for their rage. He took a step toward them, and another.
The Wardens dove to attack. The green light in their Couatls’ claws sharpened to barbed spears.
Caleb grabbed the god-bearer, wrapped it around his neck, and dove into the blue. Teo and Temoc followed.
42
Imagine a cerulean field that stretches to the farthest star. Plummet through that field. Close your eyes. Forget them. Forget the body that falls, and leave only the sense of falling.
He could not see Teo, or Temoc. Were they near? What did that term mean? Between any two points stretched infinity. Could one infinity be larger than another?
He fell, but he was not alone. Another mind woke within his, powerful and still. Caleb gibbered at empty time, endless space. The stranger did not.
Let me in, the stranger whispered.
At first Caleb shrank from the voice, fleeing across forever. The stranger did not need to pursue. All space and time were equal before it.
You will fall, screaming, through ten thousand ages until your mind breaks and body crumbles, and nothing will endure but a scream. Listen and you can hear them, cries that outlast the throats that gave them voice.
Listen, and let me in.
Caleb heard: high-pitched and low, screams of women and men and children, unending.
He opened his mind.
Sensation pierced him, charring synapses, wiring his body to an engine of pain. He remembered he had lungs, for they spasmed in agony; his flesh shriveled and his mind burst and he
Was golden sunlight on the tip of a blade descending, a knife’s edge drawn over flesh, a spurt of blood and a relieved sigh from upturned faces. Red droplets fell in rain, as a dragon vomited up the sun. The people wept and prayed and interned his corpse in soil to decay and be reborn in wriggling worm and fruitful seed, in the first brave green spear that pressed through the hard earth and swelled into corn.
He was gathered, he was burned, he was beaten and pounded into thin flat bread. Teeth tore him and he became flesh once more, breathing, sighing, loving in a million bodies until the dragon swallowed the sky, the raven stole the sun, and he lay again upon the altar. He writhed in drugged futile struggle against his chains; in his eyes he gathered the world, concentrated its wasted pieces into a perfect image of the universe—and in his death that world grew again from corn.
Death and rebirth became him, a cycle of time stretching back past Dresediel Lex to the Quechal homeland sunk below the sea, and further still, to men and women weeping over a grave in a trackless wilderness,
