The Shattered Goddess by Darrell Schweitzer Page B

it’s done. Some places are more changed than others. We don’t know how to survive out there.”
    She sighed with resignation. “We’ve been over this before. Either we go or we don’t. We have to decide.”
    “Hadel also told me to seek the lady of the grove andthe fountain. I don’t know if he was laying a charge on me or giving advice or what. He couldn’t be any more specific. Who is she and where is she? There’s no mention of her in the knowledge books, and I was afraid to ask anyone.”
    “Look,” she whispered. “Down there!”
    Something was happening at last. About twenty feet below them a man ran along a narrow pathway between the base of thePlace of the Lion and the palace wall. His dull green gown billowed as he puffed along. He was one of the clerks from The Guardian’s archives. Why a clerk should be running anywhere, Ginna could not guess. He had once been to the place where the records were kept and found it to be inhabited by withered old men who wallowed in dust and scratched on parchments until they went blind.
    For sucha one to be running was a veritable miracle. Surely the world was turned upside down. He scurried past where the boy and girl leaned over to watch so rare a spectacle. He held a scroll in one hand.
    Then he stopped and fell forward, an arrow in his back. Ginna and Amaedig drew back, still watching, but concealing themselves. The archer, one of The Guardian’s special troops, calmly walkedinto view, bent over the corpse, and took the message from a limp hand. Other soldiers joined him, looked at the paper, and all of them hurried off.
    “I wonder what is going on,” said Ginna.
    “Let’s find out.”
    They were halfway down the stairs leading from the roof garden when they heard shouting nearby, followed by the clanging of metal on metal. A clash of arms. With unspokenagreement the two of them hurried back up the way they had come, looking around for a place to hide. They settled on crouching among the overgrown shrubbery behind the stone lion.
    Now all they could do was attempt to piece together what was happening from the sounds they heard. A series of trumpet blasts came from the direction of the great dome. It was useless to look in that direction.A squat tower blocked the view.
    The fighting nearby died down almost at once.
    Several horses clattered along the path below. Then, a distance off, there was another trumpet blast, followed by screams, the neighing of horses, and silence for several minutes thereafter.
    * * * *
    Swords sang their song on shields and helms . The line came to Ginna from an epic poem he had onceread. In the old days, when The Goddess still lived, there were heroes on the Earth, and great deeds were done. Now stuffy old men were shot in the back and all Ai Hanlo suffocated with fear and expectation.
    There was another brief combat somewhere beyond the squat tower. Also, there came sounds of commotion beyond the outer palace wall, from the city of the common folk below.
    Whatwas going on was obvious enough, in a broad sense. Neither of them had to say it. A palace revolution was taking place. Someone, more brave and able than they, was trying to overthrow The Guardian.
    It was only after they ventured forth from the Place of the lion, after the struggle seemed over, that they found out who won, and it was only when the golden dome came into view that Ginna learnedsomething else, equally important, although it did not seem so at the time.
    When he saw the dome, he stopped and stared up at it, a look of horror on his face.
    “What is it?” his companion asked. “What do you see?” What he learned in that instant was that he was as different from other people as Hadel had said and he himself had always suspected. The dome looked normal to Amaedig. Butto his eyes it had changed. Beneath the overcast sky it stood, its gold entirely gone. Blackness poured out of the top, covering the dome entirely, washing down over the palace. It would fill up the