The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [52]
Of course, Anu knew they were there; he had known all along, despite his blindness. Ambassadors had told him.
The power glowed with a light that was impossible to either look at or look away from, just like the stories had said, just like hornblower’s father had told him in sermons. The light illuminated hornblower’s inner self, his secrets, inside and out—illuminated secrets of all the padres. None could ever look away again.
His eyes watered. The roar was like a throbbing heart. On the power’s long face, the large eyes were cracked and dim. Anu’s fingers, the size of branches, flexed and trembled. Close enough now that hornblower could have hit his flank with a stick, had he been so foolish, Anu slowed.
Ambassadors touched Anu’s skin, lingering there for a second, then darting off. Hornblower saw seams on the body of the great power and a series of darker marks, splayed in streaks toward Anu’s outstretched legs where his smooth skin seemed scarred and dented.
The hum rattled hornblower’s teeth.
Next to him, a padre began a sermon: “Decayed friends and awful neighbours . . .”
But his voice trailed off.
Damn Pan Renik! The exile should have been thrown off the edge of the world at birth!
“Anu,” cried leafjoiner, unable to withstand the pressure of the situation any longer, “tell us your intents!”
Renewed gusts of hot air came from under the entity as it shifted, turning away from hornblower. Ambassadors circled in another flurry of activity.
Hornblower muttered a prayer. What else was there to do? Was there the slightest chance that Anu had come down from his skies on a visit of commendation and reward for the devotion of his padres? This did not seem very probable. He thought again about getting to his knees to praise the almighty, and he tried not to think about his indiscretions, or how much pain he might feel if the power finally decided to punish him.
Anu slid through the air until he was only a few metres away, filling the sky. Hornblower reviewed what his own padres had taught him, looking for a maxim to cling to, to save him, or at least give him small comfort in these last moments.
Words seemed so futile now.
Then, suddenly, to his left, padre firelighter dropped to his knees. From the corner of hornblower’s eye, he saw the man pitch forward, face down onto the bark of the great branch. Hornblower could not stop himself from turning, just for a second, to get a better look: red sap leaked from both of firelighter’s ears.
The padre twitched and went still.
Dead.
“Please,” hornblower whispered, unable to keep his silence, “please spare me. Great Anu, power of heaven and the sky and all that is overhead. Please, spare me. Firelighter was weak, it’s true. But I was always speaking for you, in all that I did. Always. I obeyed . . .”
An ambassador appeared instantly, close to hornblower’s face, and froze there.
Anu, it said, buzzing, chooses you.
“Me? For what?”
To retrieve.
Hornblower was stunned. Surely the ambassador was not talking about retrieving Pan Renik? But what else could it mean? The phrase was like cold metal in hornblower’s head. He did not look to see if other padres could hear this, or even if they remained alive. Now he knew the madness of what the power wanted: he had to go beneath the clouds, never come back. He would follow Pan Renik into the afterlife. “Ask Anu not to make me go down there,” he said quietly. “Ask him . . .”
Anu has not taken a human exemplar in a hundred years. But now he chooses you. He can’t go alone. We can’t go. So you will guide him.
Below the ambassador, behind a hundred of them, Anu hovered, stoic, arms out. He did not seem like anything that was ever alive.
The one that jumped took with him a device that belongs to Anu. Anu wishes to get it back.
“But not into the clouds . . .”
You will be Anu’s eyes. Your hands