The Wizard by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page B

think about it. Kulili was thousands of creatures, but she had no friends. She made the Aelf to keep her company, shaping bodies of vegetable and animal tissues and chaining elementals in them to speak and think. They're long-lived." Toug nodded reluctantly. "Much longer-lived than we are. But short-lived as we are, we're immortal. Our spirits don't die. It's not like that for the Aelf. Dead, they're gone completely." I spoke to Baki. "Is that why you embraced heresy?" "No," she said. "Why did you? You have to tell me that. I don't know." As Baki drew breath, Toug said, "I still don't understand about Gylf, and I'd like to." "You will. Maybe you know that there are seven worlds. This is the fourth." Toug nodded. "Mythgarthr." "Right. Baki, start with the creation of the worlds." "Do you think it is really . . . ? All right. The High God made them. First He made servants for Himself, as Kulili did later. Then He gave them their own world. It was a reward for things they had done for Him. There was some evil in it. I don't know why." I said, "It had to differ from Him. Since He's perfect, anything that differs must be wrong some way. Go on." "They did not like that, so they collected as much as they could and put it into a place He made under theirs. Now we call their world Kleos, the World of Fair Report, because it is so nice. The world under it is Skai." "Where you were?" Toug asked me. "It didn't seem evil. It sounded wonderful." "I spoke of the Giants of Winter and Old Night." "I said evil," Baki continued, "but I should have made it clear that much was merely badness, imperfection. It was all one thing at first, a giant named Ymir, alone, violent, and miserable. Some servants of the Highest God surrendered their places in Kleos and went down to kill him. They did, but they could never go back." For half a minute, perhaps, all of us were silent. The voices of muleteers floated up from below, with noises made by horses and mules. The flickering light of the muleteers' lanterns shone up through the hatch and the cracks in the floorboards. I got up and went to the hatch. "You're worried about the uproar," I called down. "You don't have to be. They're over their fright, and it won't happen again." "I don't understand," Toug said when I sat down. "What does killing a giant have to do with making her well?" "Baki?" "The servants of the High God have His ear in Kleos." Seeing he was expected to speak, Toug said, "All right." "Those who left no longer had it. They had to ask their brothers to intercede. They multiplied, and their children knew no other place. Their brothers became their gods." Mani touched my arm with a tentative paw. "What about the giants up there. Sir Able? Where did they come from?" "From the body of Ymir. When Ymir died, pieces of him still lived. Ymir was vast beyond our imagining." "The Highest God made another world below Skai," Baki told Toug. "It is where we sit talking now. Mythgarthr, the Clearing Where Tales Are Told." I said, "The Overcyns, by which we mean our own gods in Skai, needed a place to throw what remained of Ymir, you see. That was the plea they made their brothers, and they promised they'd cleanse their own world of evil as far as they could, casting it into Mythgarthr, with the rotting flesh of Ymir, his blood, and his bones. We call his bones rock, his flesh earth, and his blood the sea." "That's horrible!" I shook my head. "The living giant was horrible, as those parts that lived on are horrible still. A dead man is horrible. Have you ever seen one? Not a man newly dead, but one who has begun to decay?" Slowly, Toug nodded. "But a dead man returns as trees, grass, and flowers. So with Ymir. It's useless to condemn the evil he was. That is gone. The good he has become remains. If we won't bless it with our lips, we must bless it in our hearts every time we see a sunrise or a flowering meadow." "You said the Lady lived in a meadow," Toug reminded me. "A meadow where flowers bloom all the