Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,218

rise, but in the north. Faster than the sun it came on, bright enough to cast shadows that shortened and became more profound as it drew nigh and hovered above the Garden for a time. It could be perceived as a ball of chaos, almost devoid of form or definition, but exceptional in its brilliance. Presently it descended into the Garden, drawing itself together and concentrating itself into a form compact enough to move among the other souls and pass through the doorways of the Palace. Those who hazarded looking directly on it fancied they could see in its brilliance the beginnings of a face, beautiful and stern.

“I chose not to look long or deeply,” Longregard told Egdod after the true sun had risen and the Pantheon had gathered around the Table to confer about the last preparations for the Feast. “Chaos is no new thing to me, but there is about that soul some intensity in which I feared I might be dissolved, and reduced to less than what I am.”

“I have not seen this newcomer,” Egdod said, “but to judge from your description, I would suppose he is another of the wild souls that have lately been making themselves known to us. As other such inhabit mountains or seas or winds, and pattern their forms accordingly, perhaps this one is a creature of the celestial realms that are inhabited by light-giving orbs.”

“This new one puts me more in mind of the brightness of thunderbolts that dazzle and destroy,” put in Greyhame, who had ventured into the Garden to look at the newcomer.

“Many years passed before I acquired the craft of fashioning thunderbolts, and then only with the aid of Thingor,” Egdod pointed out. “The idea of it did not even occur to me until after long meditation on those toils by which we all distinguished ourselves from chaos and maintain our consciousness from one moment to the next. But all you who have looked on the newcomer agree that, bright as he may be, he has only just begun to acquire a face and form, and if he has developed the power of speech he has not yet manifested it. I deem it of little concern that he bears some passing resemblance to the bright thunderbolts Thingor forges in the depths of the Knot.”

This seemed to ease the minds of those of the Pantheon who had not gazed on the newcomer with their own eyes. But just as it seemed the conversation was about to move on, they were interrupted by a new and unfamiliar voice, emanating from a soul that had approached the Table. “The newcomer is a soul the likes of which has never been seen in the Land before, and you would do well to keep thunderbolts near to hand when he is walking up and down in your Garden, O Egdod!”

The music stopped. Egdod and the others of the Pantheon turned and looked to see that these words had come from Daisy. She was shifting uneasily in her pot, stirring the soil and striving to break free so that she could walk. Her long slender green wings fluttered.

“This is a time of prodigies,” Greyhame remarked, “when one so new can ripen so soon.”

“I am but a forerunner of what has now come, so close upon my heels that I have barely acquired the ability to speak in time to warn you,” she said.

“Of what would you give warning, Daisy? The newcomer?”

“My name is Sophia, which is Wisdom,” she returned, “and the name of the newcomer is El and we have both lately come from the world where all of us once lived in the time before we died. There, I knew some of you. The particulars are lost to memory, but you, Egdod, were known to me well.”

“No memory have I of that or anything else, save a few shapes and forms that stir my soul when I see them,” Egdod said. “But this much I will allow, that the form you took when you sprouted in my Front Yard was one I knew.”

“I knew Sophia,” Pluto confirmed. “I sense as much even though I cannot summon up stories of her.”

“Is there one among you called Verna, or Spring?” Sophia asked. “I saw her from a distance yesterday and felt a similar pang of kinship.”

“Spring is busy with the gestation of new souls and prefers to remain alone in her place in the Forest most days,” said Ward. “But I would know more of