Chapter Two: The Terror of the Gods Returns to The City of the Gods
The rest of the summer after the visit of the gods settled into ordinary routines as the borrowed servants were sent back with generous compensations and the Hall of the Fire Serpent became quiet and empty again. Every so often, Ioan, the young forester's boy, would drop by for a game of hide and seek, or Tera would spend some time talking with Lyko, the somewhat older boy who drove the supply wagon up to the Hall each week, or she would let herself be fussed over by Deyavara, the old charwoman who came up with Lyko each week to look after various housekeeping matters, as she had done for all of Tera's life at the Hall.
Uncle Llew spent much of his time in his workshop, as he often did during summer, although they still met at meals. Sometimes too he would be away for a day, looking after business in the realm of Mizur. Tera herself, when neither Lyko nor Ioan nor Deyavara were around, buried herself in her studies; she had nightmares of reaching The City of the Gods and being shown up as an ignoramus. Flowers and fires were the current subject of study; she enjoyed both subjects more than she had enjoyed most, but she was often frustrated at herself, not feeling that she had any good grasp on either.
"You should relax," said Uncle Llew. "Shifting fire requires a precision that can only be gained by trying and re-trying, and living things are among the most difficult things to shift, since they keep trying to reassert their preferences."
"Even flowers?" asked Tera skeptically.
"Especially flowers," said Uncle Llew dismissively. "Extremely stupid organisms, not at all cooperative." It was the right thing to say; his dry contempt for the cooperativeness of flowers made her laugh, and eased her worries for a while. But she felt at other times as if she must be unusually stupid, despite his firm assurances that most of the gods were much more stupid than she was. Uncle Llew was as dismissive of the rest of the gods as he was of flowers, and she did not quite trust his judgment, or prejudgment, about them.
At dinner the night before they planned to leave for their trip to The City of the Gods, Uncle Llew looked thoughtful and grave for the entire meal. The meal was especially delicious, even for Llew's cooking, so she let him be, certain that he would tell her eventually what was on his mind.
Sure enough, after the meal, he leaned back and said, "This will be the last time for a while that we can really speak alone. The clan is making sure the house is ready, but what that means is that every servant will be a spy in someone else's employ, and most of the building will probably be filled with artificial eyes and ears."
"Are they really that nosy?" asked Tera.
"You have no idea," said Llew. "I am understating it. The City runs on gossip and the family politics of the Davnan run on information. And I am a particularly interesting target for curiosity. For the most part, we will simply have to assume that every conversation is overheard. Given Oracle, we cannot even trust the chariot once we are on our way. So anything we need to discuss privately needs to be discussed now."
He fell silent and said nothing else, until Tera asked, "I am assuming there is something that does need to be discussed privately?"
"Yes," said Uncle Llew, sighing. "I am sorry. It is a difficult topic for me. I have not talked about it with anyone for nearly a thousand years, and the last time, your mother and I had a very serious argument about it. But the story will likely color how others react to us, so you need to know it.
"I suppose the point at which to begin was that there was a longstanding feud between our family and one of the Wenovar families; it was a minor feud, mostly bickering. But then came Mael Four-Dury, who became the Wenovar representative on the Crew, which oversees The City of the Gods, and, as the Wenovar in those days held the captaincy, he became Captain. He was a charming, persuasive man who carried people before him; he was also ruthless and cruel, and he escalated the feud until your mother and I came home one day and found our parents poisoned.
"Poisoning a Davnan is not an easy task; if we can survive it, we will, so it needs considerable care and forethought. It cannot be done accidentally, and it was obvious to us who had done it. But the gods are cowards," Llew said with some bitterness, "and what they most want is not to be bothered. So they attempted to look the other way and pretend that it was merely some natural tragedy.
"Your mother and I were not quiet about it, so Mael tried to kill us, as well. That was his fatal mistake. The whole thing broke out into a brutal war. Mael had managed the matter quite well; many people did not believe at first, and he was a persuasive and manipulative man. The Embiadwe clan stood with us, but only because we were clan; the other four clans were against us. They no doubt thought that the Embiadwe would surrender in short order.
"What actually happened was that we had many more resources than they knew, and our clan brought the other four to their knees. I killed Mael and his accomplices myself."
He was quiet for some minutes, then said, "We would have won, but at the last moment a number of the other Embiadwe families struck a deal with the other clans: hostilities would cease, the Embiadwe rather than the Wenovar would receive the captaincy, and in exchange your mother and I would be exiled for a hundred years. Your mother and I could not agree on what we should do in response, so we left and never returned." He sighed again. "In any case, Davnan memories are long, and there is bad blood between me and almost every family in The City, with nearly a thousand years of non-reconciliation. But now we are going to see if some reconciliation is still possible, for your sake. You should not have to deal with all the consequences of decisions made by your mother and I. I have something I want to give to you."
He held out a pendant on a chain and she took it; the pendant was a pair of wings, connected by a gem, under which in very fine engraving was the symbol for Metal Sun, her mother's emblem-name. " Your mother wore it when she was a little girl. I found it not long ago; I am not even sure why I have it, but it is fortuitous. It is a cleverly made little thing; if you are wearing it, it will prevent some -- not all, but some -- forms of eavesdropping, and there is little lever here around the gemstone -- " -- he took it from her and showed her, a little bit of metal that curved around the side, and then gave it back -- "and if you pull the lever down while wearing it, it will alert me that you are in trouble. I hope you never have to use it, but we can never tell." She put it around her neck.
"All of this is to say, of course," said Llew, "that things will be awkward, and caution is always in order, as long as we are in The City of the Gods."
"I will be careful," said Tera. But later she wondered if she were at all prepared.
The next morning, very early, they flew off. Tera had not flown since the day she had left Davir. She did not remember much of the experience at the time, so it was almost as if it were completely knew when the chariot rose and she looked out the hatch window as first the land, then the clouds, swiftly fell below her. It was exhilarating, it was beautiful, and it somehow made her less nervous for the future.
They were in the air for several hours, so she and Uncle Llew mostly discussed various minor things associated with her studies. As the descent approached, Uncle Llew became busy with something about the chariot controls, and Tera went back to looking at the clouds beneath them. Eventually Llew said, "We are above The City and are approaching First Landing; you should see it in a moment when we get below the cloud cover."
What does one imagine when one hears the name, "The City of the Gods"? Tera had always imagined great spires, gleaming in the sun, adorning a vast city of alabaster and gold, busy and full of traffic, with flying chariots everywhere. The City of the Gods was nothing like this. There were no spires. There was no alabaster and gold, nor any traffic of chariots. In fact, as far as Tera could see once they dropped below the clouds, there was not even any city in The City of the Gods. All she saw were mountains. To be sure, they were extraordinary mountains, beautifully rugged and forested and (in a few cases in the distance) snow-capped. Seeing them from the air was breathtaking. But there was no city. She looked and looked as Llew wove through the mountains, but it could all have been pristine wilderness for all that she could see.
"First Landing is directly up ahead," Llew said. It took a moment but gradually she could make out a number of buildings in the valley ahead. They were not great spire-buildings, although a few were perhaps two or three stories tall. They were not densely clustered, being mostly scattered here and there in pell-mell fashion among what she could now begin to see were orchards and gardens and perhaps small farms. The closest to anything like a city was the small cluster of about a dozen buildings that they were approaching.
"Tiny Hamlet of the Gods," said Tera aloud. "Not much of a city, is it?"
Uncle Llew laughed. "The Davnan come here to get away from what you have in mind. But you are also not thinking on a sufficiently bombastic scale. First Landing is not The City; First Landing, which is this whole valley, is one of the plazas of The City. The City covers this whole spur of the Great Mountains, running from south of First Landing to a bit beyond North Landing, forty miles to the north. Outside of First Landing, North Landing, and Great Lake Harbor, everything is divided into family estates, which of course are not piled on top of each other."
He pointed ahead. "We have to land in the Clearing; chariots are not allowed in The City, except for flying in and out."
They touched down, opened the hatch of the chariot, and stepped out. The air was a bit cooler than it had been in Mizur, but it was fresh and clear. As Uncle Llew removed their luggage from the chariot and closed and locked it, she looked around at the beauty of the mountains rising around the valley.
"Hallo!" someone shouted. He turned out to be a man, brown-haired and with skin that was a golden tan like Uncle Llew's, perhaps a shade darker. Uncle Llew's face on seeing him set into an expressionless mask.
"Llew!" said the man, as he came closer.
"Amaethon," said Llew in a tone of voice that would have frozen a lake. They clasped hands briefly and kissed each other perfunctorily on both cheeks. Llew stepped back and said, "Tera, this is Amaethon Five-Dury, the Captain of The City of the Gods; Amaethon, this is my niece, Tera Three-Tery."
She courtseyed in goddess-princess fashion, which Amaethon seemed to find charming. He clasped her hands briefly the way he had clasped Llew's, and kissed her quickly on both cheeks. "Welcome! It is good to have a new clanswoman!"
He turned back to Llew. "There is a carriage coming to pick up your bags, but in the meatime, the Embiadwe are running the Tavern this half-month, so come and have a pint so we can get reacquainted."
"That would be delightful," said Llew, the chill in his voice again taking on a sarcastic edge that made clear to everyone that he would not find it delightful at all. But they all went to the Tavern, which was a building just north of the Clearing.
The Tavern was full of gods, more than Tera had known in her entire life, and the blizzard of ever-shifting possibilities that came from all of them being together took her breath away. None of them even glanced their way, beyond venturing an occasional greeting for Amaethon, but she felt that when they entered, the entire disposition of the room had changed. Nobody was looking at them, but everybody was paying attention to them.
As for Uncle Llew, being in the presence of so many gods seemed to change him physically. All of the gods seemed preternaturally real, but Llew in their presence became almost overwhelming. The rapid shifting of possibilities that she always sensed around him accelerated to the point of being almost dizzying, so that the gods, so well rounded compared to the occasional Vilim servants who flitted around the room, nonetheless seemed flat next to him.
The three made their way to an empty table in the back and Amaethon ordered small beer from a Vilim barmaid. Then he turned to Llew. "It is good to have you back in The City of the Gods. You have been away far too long."
Llew's demeanor, already cold, became icier still. "I did not leave willingly, if you recall. We were banished."
"You were asked to leave for only a hundred years," said Amaethon, "until things could settle down. Here it is, almost a millenium later, and you only now return. You should not have denied the clan your gifts."
Llew's face grew darker. "What obligations do I have to people who betrayed me and my sister?" This was icily angry in tone, but it was clear that, even so, he was restraining himself.
Amaethon's mouth set in a firm line, and it seemed to Tera like all of the tables around them tensed. "We only sought peace in a feud that was quickly growing worse. And even if it were not so, your obligations to your clan are still your obligations."
"No law binds the gods," said Uncle Llew mockingly. "Is this not the saying? There is no obligation. To support one's clan is a courtesy, in exchange for benefits received from the clan."
"You are as haughty and obstinate now as you ever were. Your clan supported both you and your sister," said Amaethon.
"Yes," said Llew, "until you betrayed us. You deserve no trust, and the loyalty you will have will be commensurate with the good you do us."
Amaethon clearly bit back something he was tempted to say. Then, after looking off into the corner of the room a moment, he said, "Very well, then. Have it your way. But you are also here. And your clan is still your clan, however the past may tangle that up. We are still here for you." He looked deliberately at Tera and then significantly at Llew. "Both of you."
The small beers came at this point. Tera sipped hers, and immediately recognized it as Vilim-made. It was not awful, but it was flat, slightly metallic, in the way Vilim-made food often was. Every god in the Tavern could have made better drink than this. Why make the Vilim do it?
"In any case," Llew was saying, "I am here not for anything to do with myself, but for my niece, so that she might know something of her clan and The City before she is Enrolled."
Amaethon visibly relaxed. "We are glad of it." He smiled at Tera. "You are from a family of extraordinary ability. The daughter of the Metal Sun! I have no doubt that you will be one of the gems of the Embiadwe."
"I doubt that I am so extraordinary," said Tera, "but I am excited to be here."
They all finished their small beers in silence punctuated only by the most inoffensively bland comments. Then Amaethon said, "The Platform at Brickanbreck has been prepared, if you wish to use the public Platform here."
"No," said Llew, "I think we will take a wagon up; this is Tera's first time here, and a wagon will let her see more of The City."
"Of course," said Amaethon, "I also considered that possibility, so there is one ready for you." He smiled ingratiatingly at Llew, but any charm the smile might have been throwing at him bounced off Llew's impervious armor.
Llew thanked Amaethon, not quite as coldly as his manner up to that point had been, and Llew and Tera left the Tavern. Outside, they did indeed find the wagon waiting. Uncle Llew immediately set about examining it closely.
"That was uncomfortable," said Tera to Llew. Llew, engrossed in his examination of the wagon, did not look up as he replied, "Oh, Amaethon is harmless, if irritating; he is not intelligent enough to be a threat." He suddenly stopped, and a smile of almost mischievous delight broke over his face. He put his finger to his lips then pointed at a portion of a beam on the under side of the wagon.
Tera did not immediately see what Uncle Llew meant, but then she caught it. It was a wooden pin or dowel set into the wood. It was in many ways entirely ordinary. It looked like a wooden pin. It was genuinely of wood. It was helping to hold a board in place. But the possibilities associated with it were subtly off. Because it was actually functioning as a pin should, the possibilities associated with that action were more obvious and immediate; but there were possibilities available to the pin that would not have been, should not have been, available to a mere wooden pin. They were the possibilities of something with a memory, something that could record what was said around it; the pin was in fact an artificial ear, set there as a spy. She would have missed it entirely if Uncle Llew had not pointed it out, but now that she saw it, it was obvious.
"Yes," said Uncle Llew gleefully, and very loudly and deliberately. "I've always said that Amaethon is a talentless hack who has spent his entire life failing upward. One might as well feel threatened by a monkey." He climbed into one of the seats of the wagon, and tapped the seat next to him. "Let's be off. Whatever may be said of The City, it is a beautiful place, and I want you to see it while the light is still good."
to be continued