Gods of Earth by Craig DeLancey Page B

is all. Go to sleep now. The coyote says you need to sleep. Who are we to argue with one who learns to be a Hekademon?” He turned back to the view of the ancient city.
    This meant nothing to Chance, but he knew better than to ask for an explanation. There was a bed in a small cubicle connected to the room. The Guardian showed him how to turn the light on and off—a forbidden guild machine, he noticed with disappointment. Chance took off most of his filthy clothes. As he turned off the light, he felt an oppressive anxiety, sure that the building was not yet right, that it was haunted by those murdered here and polluted by the evil craft of the false god. He knelt at the bedside and prayed for guidance in this forbidden place, and he prayed for the safety of Sarah and Paul, and for the souls of his father and mother. Then he left the door open and stretched out on the strangely soft mattress. He was reassured that from where he lay he could see the Guardianin the next room, immobile before the window, brooding over the night on the Sunken City of Disthea.

    Chance awoke when Seth’s soft paw pressed his shoulder.
    “Chance.”
    He sat up. For a moment he was disoriented, unsure of where he was: white walls, a tall window letting in sunlight, black towers outside. Seth had closed the door. Then Chance slowly remembered.
    “Ah,” Chance said softly. “I had hoped, for a moment, that it was all just a bad dream.”
    Seth nodded and sighed. The coyote sat on his haunches by the bedside. He looked clean, his fur glossy. He wore a kind of gray collar. Chance noticed then that clothes were piled at the foot of the bed: a coarse shirt of white wool, coarse pants dyed so dark blue they were nearly black, a coat of dark leather with rough stitches made by an awl, and brown leather shoes.
    “Some, some in the city buy Purimen clothes. From up-up-upriver. They admire the work.”
    “Thank you,” Chance whispered. A lump rose in his throat, so grateful he felt that the coyote respected him enough to do this. “Thank you.”
    “Welcome.” Seth pointed a bent wrist at the door to the bath. “Wash first.”
    Chance hesitated. “Should I call you… Psuche?”
    “No. Al-always to you Se-seth.”
    Chance touched the collar.
    “Hek-Heka-Hekademon student collar,” Seth explained. “That is my guild. For which I am ap-pa-pa-prentice.”
    Chance nodded. He wanted to say something more, and to ask questions. Why had Seth been there at the Walking Man watching him? Had it been hard to leave the city where he had a life, itseemed, and go where he was hated and even in danger? What did he do here, in the city? How had he come to live in Disthea? What did the Guardian mean, to call him a “philosopher”? But Chance felt awkward, embarrassed, to learn the pet that he had shared secrets with was no pet but somehow a—what? Scholar? Traveler? Spy? Elder?
    He went into the bath.
    When Chance returned, shirtless, Seth pointed with his nose at the gold band that Chance wore on a string around his neck.
    “I-I-I-I’m glad you didn’t lose it,” Seth said.
    Chance nodded. He clutched the gold ring. “Me too.”
    Chance had found this ring with Seth. Though the eldest Puriman son in each family should receive his mother’s wedding ring for his own proposal, his mother had long ago said that her ring would go to Paul. But last year, after the Elders spoke on a Sunday, Chance had used a hunt for wild blueberries as an excuse to his father and wandered far into the black hills east of the Walking Man Lake. Seth followed silently at his heels.
    In those hills, long-abandoned farms from the later ages rotted into damp loam under crowding maples. Chance had a favorite ruin there, not far from the simple hut where Elder Sirach had lived alone: a dark octagonal farmhouse with no roof behind which leaned two rows of gravestones with unreadable pitted faces. Inside the shell of that home, lying in the dim beams of light that filtered green