Gods of Earth Read Online Free PDF

up quickly, causing a wave of dizziness. He gripped the sore back of his head.
    He was sprawled in the bottom of a boat. A small Puriman row-boat, painted oxblood red. Before him, the Guardian sat on the center seat, pulling at a pair of oars. The boat slipped quickly down a river, broad and fast but shallow. Chance didn’t recognize the place. No river like this ran within a day’s walk of the Valley of the Walking Man.
    “Where am I?” Chance demanded.
    The Guardian did not answer.
    Chance looked around. “I know this boat,” he said. “This is the boat of Elder James. I know it.”
    “Who are you?” the Guardian asked him.
    “I am Chance Kyrien. A Puriman.” He recalled with a cringe that he was not a Puriman—not baptized and confirmed as one. And then the events of the previous evening flooded back to him.
    “My father,” he groaned. “My mother and father. And Sarah! I have to save Sarah and Paul!” He tried to stand. The boat rocked, and he fell backward, head reeling.
    “You ail,” the Guardian said. He rowed unceasingly, though his expressionless gray eyes remained fixed on Chance. “Your mind’s weary from the work of clinging to itself. The broken god worked to bewield you.” Then he tipped his head slightly, a bow of respect. “Though you are strong. I felt the foul fingers of him stabbing into the mood of your mind. Few men could bear such a thing as you have borne.” He lifted a single finger from the oar handle to point at the water. “Drink.”
    Chance’s mouth was dry, his lips cracked. He bent over the gunwale and cupped water to his mouth again and again. The dizziness passed.
    “Now,” the Guardian said, “why does the broken god want you, Puriman?”
    “I have to go home,” Chance said, breathing hard.
    “The doom of the world may rest upon our haste. What hope does the broken god have in you?”
    “You mean that unman? The white… rotting man?” Chance asked. “I don’t know.”
    “It called you brother.”
    “No,” Chance said. “It took my brother. It was talking of my brother. I am a Puriman.” He looked around. This must be the Kilter river, into which fed the creek emptying north out of Walking Man Lake. Elder James had kept his boat on that creek.
    “Who were your parents?” the Guardian asked, rowing still.
    “John and Eve Kyrien.” Dead. Dead.
    A crow cawed nearby, as if mocking Chance. He pulled himself up onto the front seat of the boat and sat. He gripped the sides. He had been dressed in his Sunday suit for his confirmation, and his uncomfortable, oversized shoes—hand-me-downs from his larger brother—were caked with mud, and the too-long cuffs of his pantswere soaked from the water pooled in the bottom of the boat. He noticed only then how the morning cold penetrated his clammy, mud-streak clothes. He began to shiver.
    “They were your birth parents?”
    After a very long pause, Chance said, “No. I was adopted from the witches. By ancient agreement with their guild, the Purimen raise any orphan boy children the witches bring us and pledge are of true blood.” Chance ran his hands over his face. He sobbed once, but fought the desire to break down into weeping. “I have to go. I don’t know who you are, but all this is… when my parents are… with Sarah and Paul.…”
    The Guardian stared.
    “Who are you?” Chance finally asked. “Why are you doing this?”
    “I am the Guardian.”
    That same answer. It meant nothing.
    “If you do not know why the broken god wants you,” the Guardian said, “then we must ask the Guild Mothers of the Gotterdammerung.”
    “The witches have no guild hall here.”
    “We go to Disthea, to the Broken Hand That Reaches.”
    Chance stared in disbelief. “What? What? The Sunken City is far from here! Many days’ travel.” Chance had been no farther than the Freshsea, a day to the south. He did not know exactly where the Sunken City was, but he knew it was west and north and it was many times farther