Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,220

gusts. Cracks spread up from the floor and into the roof, and blades of light shone through them and stabbed down among the tables of the Feast, where souls were obliged to shield their eyes beneath arms or wings. The light did not merely illuminate but cut and burned what it touched. It could now be seen that the Palace’s roof was being unmade by some onslaught directed against it from above.

Egdod’s first thought was of Spring, and so he leapt into the air and beat his wings to propel himself toward the gate that led out to the Garden. But he had scarce become airborne when a heavy weight struck him upon the back, driving his right wing to the floor and pinning it there. He felt the sensation that Spring had identified as pain, though this was worse by far than the sting of a wasp.

The stone that had fallen upon his wing was a fragment of the Palace’s roof. It was, of course, a thing that Egdod himself had summoned forth out of chaos many years before, and so he ought to have had the power of dismissing it. But all eyes were upon him and so he was not able to unmake it so easily, for the same reason that he could not raise the tower in the Park while the souls of Town were all watching. He sought to draw a mist about him, but none would form in the heat and light now beating down upon his back through the widening cavity in the roof. Of dust and smoke there was plenty, though, and so in those he shrouded himself, cloaking his form in darkness in which he might dash the stone into chaos. But as soon as he did, the shroud was blown away by a blast of wind that issued from the lips of El. Words were borne on it: “Behold how the false one cloaks his doings in smoke and filth!”

Egdod lifted his face toward the light and saw a mighty figure bestriding the Palace, which had been wholly unroofed. Ranked about him were lesser souls—angels!—wielding stolen thunderbolts, but instead of hurling them like javelins, they brandished them like fiery swords.

The great figure was El, and he appeared as a giant form, bright and beautiful but wingless. Hands he had though, and with one of them he reached out toward the angel who flew closest to him. The angel handed him a thunderbolt, which El hefted above his shoulder. He swept his gaze across the roofless Palace, seeking his next target. Egdod lay exposed in plain sight. El took little note of him, though. Instead his gaze lit upon the table nearby, where Daisy—Sophia—stood rooted in the clay pot, still unable to break loose from the soil.

Egdod recalled now the strange scenes at the bridge: the angels who feared to trespass on the Front Yard, the stick swinger warning him that it was the Abode of Death, the wall they were throwing up to protect themselves from whatever might come out from the direction of the Fastness.

It had all been because of Daisy. She—not Egdod, not Ward nor any other member of the Pantheon—was the one they feared.

Still pinned under the stone, Egdod could not move. He looked up at Ward, who was in the air above him. Egdod’s broken wing was dissolving into chaos. He reached up with a tendril of it, just as that other soul had once reached out to him, and touched Ward’s ankle. In that moment a stream of impressions passed between them, and Ward understood. He wheeled in midair and dove toward the table just as El was hurling his thunderbolt at Daisy. The blast struck Ward in his midsection and quite nearly unmade him. He was hurled back against the table, where one of his flailing arms struck the clay pot. This flew back and shattered upon the floor. Longregard, who had been taking shelter on that side of the table, sprang forward and flung herself down to shield the fragile new soul. Egdod could not see it but he knew that Daisy was now torn loose from the soil. Another bolt would finish her, and probably several others as well. He ripped the shreds of his wing loose, and got to his feet, and began striding across the wreckage of the Palace toward El.

El seemed loath to turn his attention from Daisy but could not ignore the approach of his most powerful foe.