David Zindell - RfHS 1 - The Broken God

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The Broken God

Gene Wolfe declared Zindell as 'one of the finest talents to appear since Kim Stanley Robinson and

William Gibson – perhaps the finest'. His first novel, Neverness was published to great acclaim. A

reviewer in the New Scientist wrote of it in 1992: 'David Zindell writes of interstellar mathematics in

poetic prose that is a joy to read'.

The Broken God, Book One of A Requiem for Homo Sapiens, is a sequel to Neverness. It has been

hailed as Dune for the 1990s and was equally well-received: 'SF as it ought to be: challenging,

imaginative, thought-provoking and well-written. Zindell has placed himself at the forefront of

literary SF'. Times Literary Supplement

The Wild, Book Two of A Requiem for Homo Sapiens was also published to great acclaim: 'A

disturbing vision of the impending collapse of a transgalactic society ... the ideas are hard SF with

philosophical undertones, and the story is compelling'. New Scientist

Zindell has completed A Requiem for Homo Sapiens with War in Heaven, available now, in hardback.

He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Neverness

A Requiem for Homo Sapiens

The Wild

War in Heaven

Voyager

DAVID ZINDELL

The Broken God

BOOK ONE

of A Requiem of Homo Sapiens

Voyager

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

The Voyager World Wide Web site address is

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/voyager

This paperback edition 1998

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Previously published in paperback by

HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy 1994

First published in Great Britain by 1993

The Author asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 0 586 21189 6

Set in Meridien

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow

transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including

this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

PART ONE

Danlo the Wild

CHAPTER ONE

Shaida

All that is not halla, is shaida.

For a man to kill what he cannot eat, that is shaida;

For a man to kill an imakla animal, that is shaida, too.

It is shaida for a man to die too soon;

It is shaida for a man to die too late.

Shaida is the way of the man who kills other men;

Shaida is the cry of the world when it has lost its soul.

– from the Devaki Song of Life

This is the story of my son, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. I came to know him very well, though it was his

fate (and my own) that he grew up wild, a lost manchild living apart from his true people. Until he

came to Neverness, he knew almost nothing of his heritage or the civilized ways of the City of

Light; in truth, he did not really know he was a human being. He thought of himself as an Alaloi, as

one of that carked race of men and women who live on the icy islands west of Neverness. His

adoptive brothers and sisters bore the signature of chromosomes altered long ago; they each had

strong, primal faces of jutting browridges and deep-set eyes; their bodies were hairy and powerful,

covered with the skins of once-living animals; they were more robust and vital, and in many ways

much wiser, than modern human beings. For a time, their world and Danlo's were the same. It was

a world of early morning hunts through frozen forests, a world of pristine ice and wind and sea

birds flocking in white waves across the sky. A world of variety and abundance. Above all, it was a

world

7

of halla, which is the Alaloi name for the harmony and beauty of life. It was Danlo's tragedy to have

to learn of halla's fragile nature at an early age. Had he not done so, however, he might never have

made the journey home to the city of his origins, and to his father. Had he not made the journey all

men and women must make, his small, cold world and the universe which contains it might have

known a very different fate.

Danlo came to manhood among Alaloi's Devaki tribe, who lived on the mountainous island of

Kweitkel. It had been the Devaki's home for untold generations, and no one remembered that their

ancestors had fled the civilized ruins of Old Earth thousands of years before. No one remembered

the long journey across the cold, shimmering lens of the galaxy or that the lights in the sky were

stars. No one knew that civilized human beings called their planet 'Icefall'. None of the Devaki or

the other tribes remembered these things because their ancestors had wanted to forget the shaida

of a universe gone mad with sickness and war. They wanted only to live as natural human beings in

harmony with life. And so they had carked their flesh and imprinted their minds with the lore and

ways of Old Earth's most ancient peoples, and after they were done, they had destroyed their

great, silvery deepship. And now, many thousands of years later, the Devaki women gathered

baldo nuts to roast in wood fires, and the men hunted mammoths or shagshay or even Totunye,

the great white bear. Sometimes, when the sea ice froze hard and thick, Totunye came to land and

hunted them. Like all living things, the Devaki knew cold and pain, birth and joy and death. Death –

was it not a Devaki saying, as old as the cave in which they lived, that death is the left hand of life?

They knew well and intimately almost everything about death: the cry of Nunki, the seal, when the

spear pierces his heart; the wailing of an old woman's death song; the dread silence of the child

who dies in the night. They knew the natural death that makes

8

room for more life, but about the evil that comes from nowhere and kills even the strongest of the

men, about the true nature of shaida, they knew nothing.

When Danlo was nearly fourteen years old, a terrible illness called the 'slow evil' fell upon the

Devaki. One day, during deep winter, the men and women sickened all at once with a mysterious,

frothing fever. It was a fever that stole away sense and lucidity, leaving its hosts paralysed and

leaking fluids from the ears. Of all the tribe, only Danlo and one strange man named Three-Fingered

Soli remained untouched. It fell to them to hunt and prepare the food, to melt snow for drinking

water, to keep the oilstones burning so there might be a little light to warm the sick inside their

snow huts. Danlo and Three-Fingered Soli loved their near-brothers and sisters as they loved life,

and for six days they worked like madmen to perform the hundreds of little daily devotions

necessary to keep their tribe from going over too soon. But since there were eighty-eight Devaki

and only two of them, it was an impossible task. Slowly – for the Alaloi are a tenacious, stubborn

people – slowly Danlo's tribe began to die. His near-sister, Cilehe, was one of the first to make the

journey to the other side of day. And then his near-fathers Wemilo and Choclo died, and Old Liluye

and many others. Soon the cave was full of rotting bodies waiting to be buried. Danlo tried to

ignore them, even though, for the Devaki, the care of the dead is nearly as important as that of the

living. He lavished his energies on his found-father, Haidar, and on Chandra, the only woman he

had ever known as a mother. He made blood-tea and dribbled the thick, lukewarm liquid down their

throats; he rubbed hot seal oil on their foreheads; he prayed for their spirits; he did everything he

could to keep them from going over. But to no avail. At last, the slow evil stole them from life. Danlo

prayed and wept, and he left their hut intending to go outside the cave to find some fireflowers to

put on their grave. But he was so exhausted that he tripped into a

9

snowdrift and fell at once into a deep, dreamless sleep. Later that day, Three-Fingered Soli found

him there, covered with layers of fresh new snow.

'Danlo,' Soli said as he brushed the sparkling soreesh from the boy's furs, 'wo lania-ti? Are you all

right?'

'I was just sleeping, sir,' Danlo said. 'Mi talu los wamorashu. I was so tired.' He rubbed his eyes

with his powdered mittens. Even sitting in the snow, he was tall for a boy thirteen years old; he

was taller, leaner and more angular than any of his near-brothers. In truth, he did not look like an

Alaloi at all. He had the long nose and bold face bones of his father. His eyes were his mother's

eyes, dark blue like liquefied jewels, and even though he was very tired, they were full of light. In

almost any city of the Civilized Worlds, his fellow human beings would have found him fiercely

handsome. But he had never seen a true human being, and he thought of himself as being different

from his near-brothers. Not exactly ugly, but rather strange and delicately deformed, as if he were

a thallow born into a nest of sparrowhawks.

'You should not sleep in the snow,' Soli said as he brushed back his grey and black hair. Like most

Alaloi men, he was large and muscular. Today, he was very tired. His shoulders were slumped, and

there was a faraway, broody look about his eyes. He seemed very worried. 'Only dogs sleep in the

snow.'

'But, sir, I was only going to pick fireflowers,' Danlo said. 'I do not know what happened.'

'You might have slept too long and never awakened.'

Soli pulled him to his feet. They were standing near the mouth of the cave. Thirty feet away, the

sled dogs of twelve families were tied to their stakes in the snow; they were pulling at their

leashes, whining, begging for their evening meal. Danlo couldn't remember the last time he had fed

them. He couldn't remember the last time he had fed himself. It was late afternoon and the sun

was low in the sky. The air was blue cold, as clear as silka, the new ice. He

10

looked out over the valley below the cave. The forest was already lost in shadows of dark green

and grey – tomorrow, he thought, he might hunt shagshay, but tonight the dogs would go hungry

again.

'Haidar and Chandra have gone over,' Danlo said. He looked at Soli.

'Yes, they were the last.'

'Haidar and Chandra,' Danlo repeated, and he wiped a clump of melting snow away from his

forehead. And then he said a prayer for his found-parents' spirits: 'Haidar eth Chandra, mi alasharia

la shantih Devaki.'

Soli rubbed his nose with his three-fingered hand and said, 'Shantih, shantih.'

'And Sanya,' Danlo said, 'and Mahira, they have gone over, too.'

'Shantih,' Soli said.

'And Irisha, Yukio and Jemmu – all alasharu.'

'Shantih.'

'And Rafael, Choclo and Anevay. And Mentina, they have all made the great journey.'

'Yes,' Soli said, 'Shantih.'

'They are all dead.'

'Yes.'

'Ten days ago, all alive and fat with life, even Old Anala, and now– '

'Do not speak of it. Words are only words – there is no purpose.'

Danlo took off his mittens and pressed his eyes; the hot water there burned his cold thumbs. 'I

am so tired,' he said. And then, 'The blessed Devaki – the whole tribe, sir. How can this be?'

Soli turned his face to the north, saying nothing.

Danlo followed his gaze outward, upward to where the pointed summit of Kweitkel rose above

them. It was a great shining mountain marbled in granite and ice, a god watching over them. Four

thousand years ago the first Devaki had named the island after the mountain forming

11

its centre. Generation upon generation of Danlo's ancestors were buried here. He closed his eyes

as the wind came up and whipped his hair wildly about his head. There was ice in the wind, the

smell of pine needles, salt, and death. 'Kweitkel, shantih,' he whispered. Soon he must bury his

people in the graveyard above the cave, and after that, the Devaki would be buried on Kweitkel no

longer.

'It was bad luck,' Soli said at last, rubbing the thick brows of his forehead. 'Yes, bad luck.'

'I think it was shaida,' Danlo said. 'It is shaida for our people to die too soon, yes?'

'No, it was just bad luck.'

Danlo held his hand over his forehead to keep his hair from lashing into his eyes. He had thick

black hair shot with strands of red. 'In all the stories Haidar told over the oilstones, in all your

stories, too, I have never heard of a whole tribe going over all at once. I never thought it was

possible. I ... never thought. Where has this shaida come from? What is wrong with the world that

everyone could die like this? "Shaida is the cry of the world when it has lost its soul" – why is the

world crying of shaida, sir?'

Soli put his arm around him, and touched his head. Danlo wept freely, then, wept for a long time

into Soli's stiff, frozen furs until a cold thought sobered him. He was only thirteen years old, but

among the Devaki, thirteen is almost old enough to be a man. He looked at Soli, whose icy blue

eyes were also full of tears. 'Why us, Soli? Why didn't the slow evil carry us over, too?'

Soli looked down at the ground. 'It was luck,' he said. 'Just bad luck.'

Danlo heard the pity and pain in Soli's voice, and it carried him close to despair. Soli, too, was

ready for death. Anyone, even a child could see that. There was madness and death in his eyes

and all over his haggard, grey face. The wind blowing through the forest and over the icy boulders

all around them was very cold, almost dead cold, and Danlo felt like dying himself. But he couldn't

let himself

12

die because he loved life too much. Wasn't it shaida to die too soon? Hadn't he seen as much of

shaida as he could bear? He blew on his chilled, purple fingers and put his mittens back on. Yes, he

must live because it was not time for him to go over yet, he was still young and full of life, still just

a boy who suddenly knew that he had to find an answer to shaida.

He looked into the cave, at the great, black gash in the side of the hill where Jonath and his

other near-brothers lay entombed. 'It is strange that the slow evil did not take me, yes? Perhaps

the slow evil is afraid of wildness. I have always been a little wild, I think. Haidar used to say I was

wild, with all my talk of driving a sled east into the sunrise. He used to say I listened to you too

much. When I was a boy– '

'Shhh, you talk too much.'

'But I have to ask you this, sir; I must know a thing.'

'What is that?'

'When I was a boy, I wanted to find the bed of Sawel from where he arises each morning to light

the world. Pure wildness, as Haidar always warned. Tell me, sir, you must know – was I born with

this wild face? My face is so different than the faces of my brothers. And they were so much

stronger and hardier in their bodies; they never seemed to feel the cold. Why did they go over and

not I?'

Soli looked at him and said, 'It was fate. Just blind fate.'

Danlo was disturbed by the way Soli spoke of fate. There was galia, he knew, the World-soul, and

one could certainly speak of the wilu-galia, the intention of the World-soul, but how could the

World-soul be blind? No, he thought, only people or animals (or God, himself) could be blind. As

Haidar had taught him, he shut his eyes again and breathed frigid air to clear his inner sight. He

tried to askeerawa wilu-galia, to see the intention of the World-soul, but he could not. There was

only darkness in front of him, as deep and black as a cave without light. He opened his eyes; the

cold needles of wind made him blink. Could it

13

be that Haidar had told him and the other children false stories about the animals, about the birth

and life of the World? Could it be that everything he knew was wrong? Perhaps only full men were

able to see that the World-soul's intention was shaida; perhaps this was what Soli meant by blind

fate.

'It is cold,' Soli said, stamping his feet. 'It is cold and I am tired.'

He turned to step toward the cave and Danlo followed him. He, too, was tired, so tired that his

tendons ached up and down his limbs and he felt sick in his belly, as if he had eaten bad meat. For

thirteen years of his life, ever since he could remember, entering the cave from the outside world

had always been a moment full of warmth, certitude, and quiet joy. But now nothing would ever be

the same again, and even the familiar stones of the entranceway – the circular, holy stones of

white granite that his ancestors had set there – were no comfort to him. The cave itself was just as

it had been for a million years: a vast lava tube opening into the side of the mountain; it was a

natural cathedral of gleaming obsidian, flowing rock pendants hanging from ceiling to floor, and

deep silences. Now, in the cave of his ancestors, there was too much silence and too much light.

While Danlo had slept in the snow, Soli had gathered faggots of bonewood and placed them at

fifty-foot intervals around the cave walls. He had set them afire. The whole of the cave was awash

with light, flickering orange and ruby lights falling off the animal paintings on the walls, falling deep

into the cave's dark womb where the cold floor rose up to meet the ceiling. Danlo smelled

woodsmoke, pungent and sweet, and the firelight itself was so intense it seemed to have a

fragrance all its own. And then he smelled something else layered beneath the smells of wood, fur,

and snow. Touching every rock and crack of the cave, all around him and through him, was the

stench of death. Though he breathed through his mouth and sometimes held his breath, he could

not

14

escape this terrible stench. The bodies of the dead were everywhere. All across the snow-packed

floor, his near-brothers and sisters lay together in no particular order or pattern, a heap of bent

arms, hair, furs, rotting blood, thick black beards, and dead eyes. They reminded Danlo of a

shagshay herd driven off a cliff. Leaving them inside their snowhuts until burial would have been

less work, but Soli had decided to move them. The huts, the fifteen domes built of shaped snow

blocks in the belly of the cave, had kept the bodies too warm. The smell of rotting flesh was driving

the dogs mad and howling with hunger, and so Soli had dragged the bodies one by one to the

cave's centre where they might freeze. Danlo worried that Soli, tired as he was, might have left

someone inside one of the snowhuts by mistake. He told Soli of this worry, and Soli quickly counted

the bodies; there were eighty-eight of them, the whole of the Devaki tribe. Danlo thought it was

wrong to count his kin one by one, to assign abstract numerals to human beings who had so

recently breathed air and walked over the brilliant icefields of the world. He knew that each of them

had a proper name (except, of course, for the babies and very little children who were known

simply as 'Son of Choclo' or 'Mentina's Second Daughter'), and he knew the names of each of them,

and he stood over the dead calling their names. 'Sanya,' he said, 'Yukio, Choclo, Jemmu ... ' After a

while his voice grew thin and dry, and he began to whisper. Finally, he grew as silent as Soli, who

was standing beside him. He couldn't see the faces of everyone to say their names. Some of the

dead lay face down, half buried in the snow. Others – usually they were babies – were covered by

the bodies of their mothers. Danlo walked among the dead, looking for the man he called his father.

He found Haidar next to Chandra, the woman who had adopted him when he was a newborn only

a few moments old. They were lying together, surrounded by Cilehe, Choclo and Old Liluye, and

others of their family. Haidar was a short man, though

15

remarkably broad and muscular; he had always been remarkably patient, canny and kind, and

Danlo could not understand how such a great man had so inexorably died. In death, with his anima

passed from his lips, Haidar seemed smaller and diminished. Danlo knelt beside him, between him

and Chandra. Haidar's hand was stretched out, resting across Chandra's forehead. Danlo took

Haidar's hand in his own. It was a huge hand, but there was no strength there, no tone or vitality.

It was as cold as meat, almost cold enough to begin hardening up like ice. Chandra's face was cold,

too. The hair around her ears was crusted with layers of a pale red fluid. Some of this fluid had

dried days before; the freshest, the blood of her death agony scarcely hours old, was now

beginning to freeze. Danlo combed the thick hair away from her forehead and looked at her lovely

brown eyes, which were open and nearly as hard as stones. There was nothing in her eyes,

neither joy nor light nor pain. That was the remarkable thing about death, Danlo thought, how

quickly pain fled the body along with its anima. He turned and touched Haidar's cold forehead, then,

and he closed his own eyes against the tears burning there. He wanted to ask Haidar the simplest

of questions: why, if death was so peaceful and painless, did all living things prefer life to death?

'Danlo, it is time to ice the sleds.' This came from Soli, who was standing above him, speaking

gently.

'No,' Danlo said, 'not yet.'

'Please help me with the sleds – we still have much to do.'

'No.' Danlo sat down on the cave floor, and he rested one hand over Haidar's eyes, the other

over Chandra's. 'Haidar, alasharia la shantih,' he said. And then, 'Chandra, my Mother, go over now

in peace.'

'Quiet now,' Soli said, and he ruffled Danlo's hair. 'There will be time for praying later.'

'No.'

'Danlo!'

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'No!'

Soli shrugged his shoulders and stared into the depths of the cave where the firelight reflected

off the shiny black walls. His voice sounded low and hollow as he said, 'The sleds have to be iced.

Join me outside when you are done, and we will bury the Devaki.'

That evening, they began burying their tribe. They worked as quickly as they could, stripping the

bodies naked and rubbing them with seal grease from toe to forehead. Danlo knew that it would be

cold on their spirits' journey to the other side of day, and the grease would help against the cold.

Loading the bodies on the sleds and hauling them up to the burial grounds above the cave was

gruesome, exhausting work. Some of his near-sisters had died many days earlier, and their flesh

had run dark and soft as rotten bloodfruit. It would have been less horrible to remove the bodies

all at once and place them in the snowdrifts where they would freeze hard and fast. But there were

bears in the forest and packs of wolves; as it was, they had to gather bunches of dead wood to

keep the cave's entrance fires burning, to keep the wild animals at bay. Of course the sled dogs

were familiar with fire, and they had little fear of it. And so Danlo and Soli decided to spend a couple

of days hunting shagshay while most of their people awaited burial. They had to flay the great,

white, fleecy animals and cut them up for food, or else the starving dogs might have gnawed off

their leashes and gone sniffing for carrion in the cave. After that, they returned to work. One by

one, they placed the bodies on the icy, treeless burial field. They oriented them with their heads to

the north.

They heaped boulders atop each body; they built many stone pyramids to keep the animals away

and to remind them that each living thing must return to the earth from which it is born. Their

labour took ten days. There were too few boulders close to the cave, so they had to tie the dogs to

their traces and drive sleds down through the forest to an icy stream where they found many

smooth, rounded

17

rocks. And then back up to the burial ground again with sleds full of rocks, back and forth for many

trips. When they were finished at last, they found some anda bushes and picked orange and red

fireflowers to place atop the graves. And then they prayed for the dead, prayed until their voices

fell hoarse and their tears were frozen sheets over their cheeks; they prayed far into the night until

the cold off the sea ice chilled their bones.

'Mi alasharia,' Danlo said one last time, and he turned to Soli. 'It is done, yes?'

They began walking down through the dark graves, down through the snowdrifts and the

swaying yu trees. There were stars in the sky, and everywhere snow covered the forest. After a

while they came to the stream where they had built a little snowhut to live in while they did their

work. Never again would they sleep in the cave. 'What will we do now?' Danlo asked.

'Tomorrow, we will hunt again,' Soli said. 'We will hunt and eat and continue to pray.'

Danlo was quiet while he stared at the cold snowhut that would provide shelter for a night, or

perhaps many nights. And then he said, 'But, sir, what will we do?'

They crawled through the tunnel of the hut. The tunnel was dark and icy, and barely wide enough

to allow Soli passage. The main chamber was larger, though not so large that either of them could

stand up without breaking through the top of the little snow dome. In the half-darkness, Danlo

moved carefully lest he knock against the snow blocks that formed the hut's walls. He spread his

sleeping furs atop his bed of hard-packed snow. Soli added chunks of seal blubber to the oilstone,

a bowl of scooped stone which was always kept burning, however faintly. The blubber melted and

caught fire, and Danlo gazed at the small pearly flame floating on a pool of dark oil. Soon the

curved white walls of the hut glowed with a warm, yellow light.

'Yes, what to do now,' Soli said. The oilstone grew

18

hotter, and he began boiling water in a small clay pot. It was his habit to drink some blood-tea

before sleeping.

Danlo thought he was a strange man, at heart a wild man like himself, or rather, like he would be

if he ever became a man. He felt an affinity to this wildness. Hadn't Soli's great-great-grandfather

left the tribe a few generations ago to journey across the southern ice? Hadn't Soli and his

now-dead family returned from the fabled Blessed Isles with fantastic stories of air so warm that

the snow fell from the sky as water? It was told that Soli had once journeyed across the eastern

ice to the Unreal City where the shadow-men lived in mountainous stone huts. Danlo wondered if

these stories were true, just as he wondered at the secret, wild knowledge of numbers and circles

that Soli had taught him. He thought Soli was a mysterious, wild man, and then a startling idea

came to him: perhaps this is why the slow evil had avoided him, too.

Danlo scooped some frozen seal blood out of a skin and dumped the blackish, crystalline mass

into Soli's pot. He said, 'We will have to journey west to Sawelsalia or Rilril, won't we? We have

many far-cousins among the Patwin, I have heard it said. Or perhaps the Olorun – which of the

tribes do you think will welcome us, sir?'

He felt uncomfortable talking so much because it was unseemly for a boy to talk so freely in front

of a man. But he was uncertain and afraid for the future, and in truth, he had always liked to talk.

Especially with Soli: if he didn't initiate conversation, Soli was likely to remain as silent as a stone.

After a long time, Soli said, 'To journey west – that may not be wise.' He took a long drink of

blood-tea. Danlo watched him hold his cup up to his mouth; it seemed that his eyes were hooded

in steam off the tea, and in secretiveness.

'What else can we do?'

'We can remain here on Kweitkel. This is our home.'

Danlo held his hand to his eyes and swallowed hard

19

against the lump in his throat; it felt like a piece of meat was stuck there. 'No, sir, how can we

remain here? There are no women left to make our clothes; there are no more girls to grow into

wives. There is nothing left of life, so how can we remain?'

While Soli sipped his tea silently, Danlo continued, 'It is wrong to let life end, yes? To grow old

and never have children? To let it all die – isn't that shaida, too?'

'Yes, life, shaida,' Soli said finally. 'Shaida.'

Something in the way Soli stared into his tea made Danlo feel a sharp pain inside, over his liver.

He worried that Soli secretly blamed him for bringing shaida to their tribe. Was such a thing

possible, he wondered? Could he, with his strange young face and his wildness, bring the slow evil

to the Patwin tribe as well? He felt shame at these thoughts, then, felt it deep in his chest and

burning up behind his eyes. He tried to speak, but for once, his voice had left him.

Soli stirred his lukewarm tea with his forefinger. The two fingers next to it were cut off; the scars

over the knuckle stumps were white and shiny. 'To the east,' he said at last, 'is the Unreal City.

Some call it the City of Light, or ... Neverness. We could go there.'

Danlo had slumped down into his furs; he was as tired as a boy could be and still remain among

the living. But when he heard Soli speak of the mythical Unreal City, he was suddenly awake. He

was suddenly aware of his heart beating away as it did when he was about to spear a charging

shagshay bull. He sat up and said, 'The Unreal City! Have you really been there? Is it true that

shadow-men live there? Men who were never born and never die?'

'All men die,' Soli said softly. 'But in the Unreal City, some men live almost forever.'

In truth, Soli knew all about the Unreal City because he had spent a good part of his life there.

And he knew everything about Danlo. He knew that Danlo's blood parents were really Katharine

the Scryer and Mallory

20

Ringess, who had also lived in the City. He knew these things because he was Danlo's true

grandfather. But he chose not to tell Danlo the details of his heritage. Instead, he sipped his tea

and cleared his throat. And then he said, 'There is something you must know. Haidar would have

told you next year when you became a man, but Haidar has gone over, and now there is no one

left to tell you except me.'

Outside the hut, the wind was blowing full keen, and Danlo listened to the wind. Haidar had

taught him patience; he could be patient when he had to be, even when the wind was blowing wild

and desperately, even when it was hard to be patient. Danlo watched Soli sipping his tea, and he

was sure that something desperately important was about to be revealed.

'Haidar and Chandra,' Soli forced out, 'were not your blood parents. Your blood parents came

from the Unreal City. Came to the tribe fifteen years ago. Your mother died during your birth, and

Haidar and Chandra adopted you. That is why you are different from your brothers and sisters.

Most men of the City look as you do, Danlo.'

Danlo's throat ached so badly he could barely speak. He rubbed his eyes and said simply, 'My

blood parents ... There are others who look like me, yes?'

'Yes, in the Unreal City. It is not shaida to have a face such as yours; you did not bring this shaida

to our people.'

Soli's explanation cooled Danlo's shame of being left alive. But it brought to mind a hundred other

questions. 'Why did my blood parents come to Kweitkel? Why? Why wasn't I born Devaki as all

Devaki are born? Why, sir?'

'You don't remember?'

Danlo shut his burning eyes against the oilstone's light. He remembered something. He had an

excellent memory, in some ways a truly remarkable memory. He had inherited his mother's 'memory

of pictures': when he closed his eyes, he could conjure up in exact colour and contour almost every

event of his life. Once, two winters

21

ago, against Haidar's warnings, he had rashly gone out to hunt silk belly by himself. A silk belly boar

had found him in a copse of young shatterwood trees; the boar had charged and laid open his

thigh with his tusk before Danlo could get his spear up. He was lucky to be alive, but it wasn't his

luck that he most remembered. No, what he saw whenever he thought about that day was

Chandra's fine needlework as she sewed shut his wound. He could see the bone needle pulling

through the bloody, stretched-out skin, the precision stitching, each loop of the distinctive knot

Chandra used to tie off his wound. Inside him was a whole universe of such knots of memories, but

for some reason, he had almost no memory of the first four years of his life. Somewhere deep

inside there was a faint image of a man, a man with piercing blue eyes and a sad look on his face.

He couldn't bring the image to full clarity, though; he couldn't quite see it.

He opened his eyes to see Soli staring at him. He drew his furs up around his naked shoulders.

'What did my father look like?' he asked. 'Did you know my father? My mother? The mother of my

blood?'

Soli sipped the last of his tea and bent to pour himself another cup. 'Your father looked like you,'

he said. Then his face fell silent as if he were listening to something, some animal cry or sound far

away. 'Your father, with his long nose, and the hair – he never combed his hair. Yes, the wildness,

too. But you have your mother's eyes. She could see things clearly, your mother.'

'You must have known them very well, if they lived with the tribe. Haidar must have known them,

too.'

Danlo closed his eyes again and tried to shut out the wind whispering just beyond the snow

blocks above his head. Inside him, there were other sounds, other whispers. He remembered the

way Choclo and some of the other men would sometimes look at him strangely, the way their

voices would drop into whispers whenever he surprised them in some dark corner of the cave. He

had always

22

imagined that everyone was talking about him when he wasn't there to listen. There were darker

memories, too: He had once overheard Chandra and Ayame talking about a satinka, a witch who

had worked her evil and brought shaida to her people. He had thought the story was of the

dreamtime, the time of the ancestors, the eternal, indestructible time that was at once the history

and the communal dreaming state of his people. He must have been wrong, he thought. Perhaps

there had been a real satinka in the tribe. Perhaps this satinka had bewitched his blood mother and

father.

'Yes, Haidar knew your blood parents,' Soli admitted.

'Then what were their names? Why didn't he tell me?'

'He would have told you when you became a man, during your passage. There is more to the

story, things a boy should not have to think about.'

'I am almost a man,' Danlo said. The set of his face was at once open and pained, innocent and

hard. 'Now that Haidar is dead, you must tell me.'

'No, you are not a man yet.'

With his long fingernails, Danlo scraped frost off the ruff of his sleeping furs. He tried to make out

his reflection in the glazed hut walls above him, but all he could see was his shadow, the outline of

his face and wild hair darkening the milky white snow. 'I am almost a man, yes?'

'Next deep winter, after your passage, then you will be a man.' Soli yawned and then said, 'Now

it is time to sleep. We must hunt tomorrow, or we will starve and join the rest of the tribe on the

other side.'

Danlo thought hard for a while. He had a naturally keen mind made all the keener by the mind

tools Soli had given him in secret. Ever since he could remember, Soli had taken him alone into the

forest to draw figures in the hard-packed snow. He had taught him geometry; he had taught him

about things called spheres and strange attractors and the infinities. Proof structures and

topology, and above all the beautiful, crystalline logic which ordered the

23

universe of number. Logic – even though Danlo found it a strange and wild way of thinking, he

loved to argue logically with Soli.

He held his hand up to his mouth to cover a smile, then said, 'The journey across the eastern ice

to the Unreal City will be long and hard, yes?'

'Yes,' Soli said. 'Very hard.'

'Even a man might not complete such a journey – Totunye, the bear, may hunt him, or the

Serpent's Breath might strike him and kill him with cold, or– '

'Yes, the journey will be dangerous,' Soli broke in.

'What if I were left alone to find the City?' Danlo asked softly. 'Or if the slow evil found you at last

out on the ice? What if the shadow-men in the Unreal City do not know halla? Maybe the

shadow-men would kill you for your meat. If you died before my passage, sir, how would I ever

become a man?'

For Danlo, as for every Alaloi boy, the initiation into manhood is the third most important of life's

transformations and mysteries, the other two being birth and death.

Soli rubbed his temples and sighed. He was very tired but he must have clearly seen the logic of

Danlo's argument, that he would have to make his passage a year before his time. He smiled at

him and said, 'Do you think you are ready, Danlo? You are so young.'

'I am almost fourteen.'

'So young,' Soli repeated. 'Even fifteen years is sometimes too young. The cutting is very painful,

and there have been many boys older than you who were not ready for the pain of the knife. And

then, after the cutting ...' He let his voice die off and looked at Danlo.

'And then there is the secret knowledge, yes? The Song of the Ancestors?'

'No, after the pain, there is terror. Sheer terror.'

He knew that Soli was trying to frighten him, so he smiled to hide his fear. The air inside the hut

was steamy from the boiling tea and from their rhythmic exhalations;

24

it was selura, wet cold – not as absolutely cold as white cold, but cold enough to lap at his skin like

a thirsty seal and make him shiver slightly. He pulled himself down into his furs, trying to keep

warm. All his life, from the older boys and young men, he had heard rumours about the passage

into manhood. It was like dying, Choclo had once said, dying transcendently, ur-alashara; it was like

going over, not to the other side of day, but going over oneself to find a new, mysterious world

within. He thought about what it would be like to go over, and he tried to sleep, but he was too full

of death and life, too full of himself. All at once, his whole body was shivering beyond his control. He

had an overwhelming sense that his life, every day and night, would be supremely dangerous, as if

he were walking a snowbridge over a crevasse. He felt wild and fey in anticipation of making this

eternal crossing. And then, deep inside, a new knowledge sudden and profound: he loved the dark,

wild part of himself as he loved life. Ti-miura halla, follow your love, follow your fate – wasn't this the

teaching of a hundred generations of his people? If he died during his passage, died to himself or

died the real death of blood and pain, he would die in search of life, and he thought this must be

the most halla thing a man could do.

The shivering stopped, and he found himself smiling naturally. 'Isn't terror just the left hand of

fate?' he asked. 'Will you take me through my passage tomorrow, sir?'

'No, tomorrow we shall hunt shagshay. We shall hunt, then eat and sleep to regain our

strength.'

'And then?'

Soli rubbed his nose and looked at him. 'And then, if you are strong enough and keep your

courage, you will become a man.'

Four days later, at dusk, they strapped on their skis and made the short journey to Winter Pock,

a nearby hill where the Devaki men held their secret ceremonies. Danlo was not allowed to speak,

so he skied behind Soli in silence.

25

As he planted his poles and pushed and glided through the snow, he listened to the sounds of the

forest: the loons warbling with bellies full of yu berries; the clicking of the sleekits halfway out of

their burrows, warning each other that danger was near; the wind keening across the hills, up

through the great yu trees heavy with snow. It was strange the way he could hear the wind far off

before he could feel it stinging his face. He listened for Haidar's rough voice in the wind, and the

voices of his other ancestors, too. But the wind was just the wind; it was only the cold, clean

breath of the world. He hadn't yet entered into the dreamtime, where his mother's dying plaints

and the moaning of the wind would be as one. He smelled sea ice and pine needles in the wind; as

the light failed and the greens and reds bled away from the trees, the whole forest was rich with

the smells of the freezing night and with life.

In silence, they climbed up the gentle slopes of Winter Pock. The hill was treeless and barren at

the top, like an old man whose hair has fallen off the crown of his head. Set into the snow around

a large circle were wooden stakes. Each stake was topped with the skull of a different animal.

There were a hundred different skulls: the great, tusked skull of Tuwa, the mammoth; the skulls of

Nunki and long, pointed skulls of the snow fox and wolf; there were many, many smaller skulls,

those of the birds, Ayeye, the thallow, and Gunda and Rakri, and Ahira, the snowy owl. Danlo had

never seen such a sight in all of his life, for the boys of the tribe were not allowed to approach

Winter Pock. In the twilight, the circle of greyish-white skulls looked ominous and terrifying. Danlo

knew that each man, after his cutting, would look up at the skulls to find his doffel, his other-self,

the one special animal he would never again hunt. His doffel would guide him into the dreamtime,

and later, through all the days of his life. Beyond this bit of common knowledge, Danlo knew almost

nothing of what was to come.

26

Soli kicked off his skis and led him inside the circle of skulls. At the circle's centre, oriented east to

west, was a platform of packed snow. 'When we begin,' Soli said, 'you must lie here facing the

stars.' He explained that it was traditional for the initiate boy to lie on the backs of four kneeling

men, but since the men had all gone over, the platform would have to do. Around the platform

were many piles of wood. Soli held a glowing coal to each pile in turn, and soon there were dozens

of fires blazing. The fires would keep Danlo from freezing to death.

'And now we begin,' Soli said. He spread a white shagshay fur over the platform and bade Danlo

to remove his clothes. Night had fallen, and a million stars twinkled against the blackness of the

sky. Danlo lay down on his back, with his head toward the east as in any important ceremony. He

looked up at the stars. The lean muscles of his thighs, belly and chest were hard beneath his ivory

skin. Despite the fires' flickering heat, he was instantly cold.

'You may not move,' Soli said. 'No matter what you hear, you may not turn your head. And you

may not close your eyes. Above all, on pain of death, you may not cry out. On pain of death, Danlo.'

Soli left him alone, then, and Danlo stared up at the deep dome of the sky. The world and the

sky, he thought – two halves of the great circle of halla enfolding all living things. He knew that the

lights in the sky were the eyes of his ancestors, the Old Ones, who had come out this night to

watch him become a man. There were many, many lights; Soli had taught him the art of counting,

but he could not count the number of Old Ones who had lain here before him because it would be

unseemly to count the spirits of dead men as one did pebbles or shells by the sea. He looked up at

the stars, and he saw the eyes of his father, and his father's fathers, and he prayed that he would

not break the great circle with cries of pain.

After a while he began to hear sounds. There came

27

sharp, clacking sounds, as of two rocks being struck together. As the fires burned over him, the

rhythm of the clacking quickened; it grew louder and nearer. The sound split the night. Danlo's right

half knew that it must be Soli making this unnerving sound, but his left half began to wonder. He

could not move his head; it seemed that the eyelight of the Old Ones was streaming out of the

blackness, dazzling him with light. The clacking hurt his ear now and was very close. He could not

move his head to look, and he feared that the Old Ones were coming to test him with terror.

Suddenly, the clacking stopped. Silence fell over him. He waited a long time, and all he could hear

was his deep breathing and the drumbeat of his heart. Then there came a dreadful whirring and

whooshing that he had never experienced before; the air itself seemed to be splitting apart with

the sound. The Old Ones were coming for him, his left side whispered. He dare not move or else

they would know that he was still just a frightened boy. How could Soli be making such a sound,

his right side wanted to know? He dare not move or Soli would have to do a terrible thing.

'Danlo!' a voice screamed out of the darkness. 'Danlo-mi!' It was not Soli who called to him; it was

not the voice of a man. 'Danlo, dorona ti-lot! Danlo, we require your blood, now!'

It was the voice of a terrible animal he had never heard before. It screamed like a thallow and

roared like a bear, all at once. He began to tremble, or perhaps he was just shivering, he couldn't

tell which. Despite the intense cold, drops of sweat burst from his skin all across his forehead,

chest, and belly. The animal screamed again, and Danlo waited motionless for it to tear at the

throbbing arteries of his throat. He held his head rigid, pressing it down into the fur. He wanted to

close his eyes and scream, but he could not. Straight up at the dazzling lights he stared, and

David Zindell - RfHS 1 - The Broken God

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