Free Gods of Earth by Craig DeLancey Page B

Sunken City?”
    The Guardian pointed south. Chance watched the horizon over the next half hour as a dark shadow on the sea resolved itself into a black line, with spires of white beyond it. Soon he could discern that the spires were buildings, and that behind the buildings a second black line held back the sea. This was the Crystal Wall that wrapped around the Sunken City, a band or ring that reached nearly the height of the many towers of Disthea. Judging by the depth of the shadowed city streets beyond the wall, which Chance assumed were on what would have been—without the wall—the bottom of the sea, he judged the sea was more than one hundred paces deep around the city. It looked like the wall rose another thirty paces as high again above the waves. Chance had imagined that the famed crystal wall would be bright and shining. But rising from the water, with the city behind it, the wall shone darkly. Waves crashed and foamed against it, white against the black.
    The Sunken City was huge, he realized. He had been told that, but the scale still stunned him. It stretched as long and wide as one of the legs of Walking Man Lake, and towers thrust from it as thick as trees in an ancient forest. Again his heart sank and he thought with dread,
What am I doing here
? He had come too far to have any choice now but to go with the Guardian—he could not run from this airship as he had run from their camp—but doubt again troubled him as he looked at this city made by lost men, during a fallen age.
    The ship began to descend, and more of the city became visible.
    “Why did they build it underwater?” Chance asked the Guardian.
    “It was above water when it was built.” The Guardian pointed. “There, that is the Broken Hand that Reaches, Guild Hall of the Gotterdammerung.”
    In the center of the Sunken City, one building rose higher than all the others. Four sides twisted up toward a flat comb, out of which five broken small towers arose. Each of these ended with a rough patchwork of glass.
    “I saw it before. With the towers.”
    The Guardian snapped his head sideways to peer intently at him. “How?” His voice was deep, shaking the air around them. Seth slipped to Chance’s side, his ears flat.
    Frightened by this reaction, Chance answered in a whisper. “When the false god… It made me see things. In the barn.”
    The Guardian relaxed visibly and looked back out at the city.
    “Then,” Chance continued, “I saw this tower, but the smaller towers on top were not broken. They were there, tall.”
    The Guardian nodded. “The tower is like an arm, and the top of it was shaped first as a hand, reaching for the sky. The pride of the Theogenics Guild, mark of their craft. During the Theomachia the fingers were broken, and the Theogenics Guild was crushed. The Gotterdammerung hooded the broken stumps of the finger towers with glass.”
    “It’s all so large,” Chance said.
    “The city was much larger once. Long ago. This is but the husk of a city.”
    “But ga-good food there,” Seth growled enthusiastically.
    “You think so?” Chance asked him.
    Seth nodded. His tall wagged. He licked his snout with relish.
    Chance could see now that the wall was wide and spotted periodically with short spires. The ship nosed toward one of these, where the wall came closest to the Broken Hand that Reaches. The airship’s engines strained audibly as it struggled against the shifting winds. The short spire turned out to be a silver cone, about twice as tall as a man. They drifted close, and then the rope paid out of the nose of the ship again. To Chance’s surprise, some kind of metal arm lifted from the short tower and grabbed the rope out of the air. The engines fell silent. They turned in the wind but did not drift away.
    The tower reeled them in, till the nose of the airship was tight against it. Mimir cracked open the door. Cool, damp air whistled through, stirring Chance’s hair. She lowered the ramp, which bobbed