The Shattered Goddess by Darrell Schweitzer Page A

do you to stay here?”
    “Of course. Of course. I will. I wouldn’t have too much to do without you around. Someone would make me into a drudge.”
    He thought she smiled, but the room was too dark to see.
    He lay awake with her for a while, saying nothing. He juggled balls of light inthe air. After a while they slept.
    * * * *
    On a chilly morning they stood in the Place of the Lion, one of the many rooftop gardens, now neglected, in the middle of which stood an image of the animal carved in green stone.
    “I wish,” said Ginna as he ran his hand over the beast’s mossy paw, “that the two of us could climb on the back on this lion and make him leap over the wallsand carry us away to some distant land or another world. Hadel said there were many worlds where men lived once, up in the sky. I don’t know if they’re still there, but if this lion were alive, I’m sure he could cross the gap between them.”
    “An old woman told me that once they were alive, but only when a guardian willed it. He and the courtiers would play a game with them, using the animalsas pieces and the whole palace as a board. They moved between the squares like this one. But that was a long time ago.”
    “Since then the lion has been stuck here, like us.”
    The two of them walked to the edge of the garden. Looking over the parapet, they could see the whole lower city spread out before them like a map. Nearby, before the Sunrise Gate, were crowds of mendicants, manyof them gathered from the most distant lands of the globe, waiting for some residue of the holiness of The Goddess to touch them and drive their afflictions away. Many were raised naked on platforms, high above the crowd. Even from a distance, Ginna could tell they were shivering in the wind beneath the grey sky. A priest was standing on a wall, his arms upraised, blessing them. This, Ginna knew,was actually a duty of The Guardian, but one nowadays neglected more often than not.
    Elsewhere, some streets were alive with traffic, some empty and silent Smoke rose in a long, thin column from somewhere near the outer wall. Beyond that, nothing. Tilled fields. A few low hills. A highway leading to the horizon. The glistening ribbon of the Endless River, which was reputed to circle theEarth and flow back into itself, like the Worm of Eternity. Then there was the desert, encircling the horizon. Maps had always shown Ai Hanlo to be the center of the land of Randelcainé and Randelcainé to be the center of the world. All roads, all rivers, all mountain passes led ultimately to the Holy City. Other places were colored patches on parchment, some having names, some not. Some were depictedonly with abstract symbols.
    Ginna realized that he knew absolutely nothing about the world outside. He was sure he could find his way through the streets of the lower city somehow, and perhaps by some trick or pretense get out one of the gates, or be lowered over the wall in a basket like some hero in an old tale, but what then?
    If he were living in some fabulous old tale, he was surethese things would take care of themselves. But life, he had discovered, was seldom so neatly planned out “I wish something would happen,” he said after a long silence.
    Amaedig stood beside him, fidgeting with a clump of ivy. “Don’t,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Don’t wish something would happen. If it does, you probably won’t like it.”
    “But I feel so smothered here. Somehow heis watching all of us, and waiting, and making us wait for whatever he plans to do. Hadel said he was making the bones of The Goddess stir. We have to leave but I’m afraid to. Think of it. You and I, what do we know? How do we get food except from a kitchen? There aren’t any kitchens in the deserts. And people say there are unformed things out there, creatures not like anything we know, slowly becomingsomething wholly new. Hadel once said the world gradually transforms itself, and one day mankind will no longer be at home on it when