The Shattered Goddess by Darrell Schweitzer

was no laughter in the world anymore. He had always enjoyed sitting on the battlements, listening to the jokes and songs of the people in the market place in the lower city, but now they went about their business in sullen silence, all eyes averted from the walls above. In the palace itself, men and women passed one another inthe corridors without a word. At meals they whispered and made signs.
    He was almost sure that they too saw shadows when there was nothing to cast them, and recognized the menace in the angry sky. He wondered if others had experiences like the one he had one night while returning from the library.
    He had come across a dark passageway he did not recognize. Wondering if it might not bea short-cut to the level on which his room was located, he entered it. Bare brick walls curved endlessly past heavy doors, all of them barred. Faint flickering light came through slits in one of the walls, from torches and lanterns beyond.
    At last he reached a stairway leading upward. A torch was set in the wall at the base of it. The scene didn’t look right, and he paused until he had figuredout why. Slowly he realized that with the torch there, there should have been light and long shadows cast up the stairs. But the flames were not very bright, and only the bottom three steps were visible, the rest shrouded in impenetrable blackness.
    He put a foot on the lowest step. Something stirred above. The sound was like an enormous rug being dragged across stone. He stood on the secondstep and the thing moved again, drawing away from him. On impulse he leaned forward and plunged a hand into the blackness. He felt a rough, dry surface. It yielded slightly to the touch.
    Suddenly the blackness recoiled from him like a living creature, revealing the fourth step, the fifth, the sixth, stirring up enormous amounts of dust, which stung his eyes. He reeled back down the stairs,then recovered, and for some reason he could not fathom grabbed the torch and pursued the thing until he came to a doorway at the top of the stairs. It led into a corridor. Looking around, he knew where he was: near one of the kitchens, not at all where he wanted to be. The place was dark and empty, but the light of his torch cast normal shadows. Everything seemed in order.
    What had he seen?The impression came to him afterwards of an enormous black snake slithering away at his approach.
    He went back down the stairs, torch in hand, along the winding tunnel until he emerged into the opening beneath the murky, overcast sky. He made his way back to his quarters by the normal route. But even as he did he chanced to look up at the golden dome of the palace. It seemed to glow faintlyagainst the night
    He saw something. He was sure of it There could be no doubt that dim, winged shapes like enormous moths, some of them without any clear outline and little more than drifting patches of darkness, were gathering at the top, around the skylight
    “We have got to leave the city,” he told Amaedig that night. They sat in their room, in the dark. They had no candle. He closedhis hands together and made a ball of light.
    “You’ve been saying that for a week now, ever since poor Hadel did what he did. But where shall we go, and how?”
    “I don’t know. But we’re in danger. Everyone is.”
    “Yes, I know that,” she said quietly. “But it is because the danger is here, coming from The Guardian himself, that you can’t get away. The soldiers would never let you go,even into the lower city.”
    “Me? Just me? You too. Listen: now that Hadel can’t talk anymore and no one is allowed to see him—I went there and there’s a guard in front of his door—and now that all this has happened... you’re the only person I have left. Everyone else is afraid to talk. The Goddess knows I wouldn’t want to talk to Kaemen, although I am sure he would want to listen, particularlyif I were on the rack at the time. So when I go, will you come with me? Please? What good would it