The Story

In the beginning there was light upon the face of the deep, and the light was good.

The waters were gathered, and dry land rose out of them. Green things came up from the ground, each after its kind, and the lights were set in the heavens to rule the day and the night. The sea filled with great creatures, and the sky with birds, and the earth with beasts of every shape and size. Then the first man was formed from the dust, and the breath of life was breathed into him, and from his side the first woman was made. And it was very good.

There was no rain in those days, and there has been none since. A mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground, and so it is still. Out of the east a garden was planted, and a river ran out of the garden and parted into four great heads, and the four rivers went out to water the lands of the world. In the midst of the garden grew the tree of life.

Into that garden came the serpent, the most subtle of all the beasts, and he spoke the first lie ever told: ye shall not surely die. The woman believed him, and the man took and ate, and their eyes were opened, and they knew shame. They were sent out from the garden into the world of thorns and sweat. And at the east of the garden were set the cherubim, and a flaming sword, one tall blade of fire turning slowly upon itself, to keep the way of the tree of life.

That blade still burns at the east gate. By night it stands on the far eastern horizon like a second dawn, and every child of man who sees it feels a homesickness they cannot name.

The first man and woman had sons. The elder tilled the ground, and the younger kept sheep. In time each brought an offering. The smoke of the shepherd's offering rose, and the smoke of the farmer's fell, and the elder brother's face fell with it.

In a field, far from anyone's sight, the elder rose up against the younger and killed him. It was the first death of a man, and it came by a brother's hand.

The murderer was sent away from the presence of his Maker, a wanderer marked so that no one who found him would kill him. He went east, into a land of wandering, and there he did what no man had done before. He laid stone upon stone and built a wall, and inside the wall he built a city, and he named it Hanokh, after his son. In time it would become the gilded city. The first city on earth was raised by the first murderer, and his line has never stopped building since.

His children grew clever. One became the father of all who dwell in tents and keep cattle. One became the father of all who play the harp and the pipe. One became the forger of every tool of bronze and iron. And one, a man named for his pride, stood before his wives and boasted that he had slain a man for wounding him, and swore that if his forefather was avenged sevenfold, he would be avenged seventy and seven. That was the song of the first city. It is sung there still.

But the first mother bore another son, and she said that he was given in place of the brother who was slain. In his days men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

His line kept the old ways. They kept the altar fire burning. They kept the names of their fathers and their fathers' fathers, back to the first man, and they lived long upon the earth, nine hundred years and more. Among them was one who walked with his Maker so closely that one day he was simply not there anymore, for he was taken. The elders still speak of him with wonder, and some still living knew him.

For a long age the two lines lived apart, the one in its altars and fields, the other behind its walls. Then the stars fell.

Long before the first morning there was one among the shining ones, a guardian of great beauty, whose heart was lifted up because of his beauty. He said in his heart that he would make himself like the Most High. He was cast down, and a third of the stars of heaven went down with him. He is the serpent of the garden. He is the father of lies. The faithful call him the Deceiver, because he deceives the whole world, and they will not speak his older names.

He has never fought in the open. He works through others.

In the days of the fathers, a company of the fallen came down upon a high mountain and walked among men, wearing the shapes of men. They were tall and beautiful, and they knew things no man knew. They taught the smiths to make swords, and the women to make charms. They taught the reading of the stars, the cutting of roots, the binding of spirits, and every art that had been forbidden. And they took the daughters of men for themselves, whomever they chose.

Their children were giants. They grew into mighty men, men of renown, and the world bowed to them. At first they ate the labor of men. Then they ate the men.

Now giants sit on thrones of gold, and the earth is filled with violence. The fallen stars who fathered them still walk among men, and most of the time no one can tell. Behind them stand darker powers, spirits that men in their foolishness worship as gods, building them shrines in the groves and burning offerings on high places. Every one of those gods is a demon wearing a mask.

Even the beasts have been corrupted, for all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth. Creatures that once grazed in peace now hunt the roads by night. Wolves run in packs larger than any shepherd has ever seen, and things walk in the marshes that have no name.

And every imagination of the thoughts of men's hearts is becoming more evil, continually.

It is still a wondrous world. That is the bitterness of it.

The sky is bright and hazy and has never held a cloud. Each dawn the mist rises out of the ground and lies white on the fields until the sun burns it away, and the dew hangs on every blade of grass. Water comes up from below, from springs and wells and from the fountains of the great deep, which break the surface in roaring geysers and in pools so hot that only the bravest can swim them.

Life is larger under the old sky. Men live for centuries. Trees grow taller than towers. Great beasts graze the marshes, some gentle and some terrible. The greatest of them all moves his tail like a cedar, and eats grass like an ox, and no man dares approach him. In the deep sea swims a dragon with scales like shields and fire in his mouth, and on rare and dreadful days he rises within sight of the shore, and every soul upon the strand runs.

These are not monsters of the dark. They are creatures of the first days, made with all the rest. Some have been corrupted. Most are simply vast, and wild, and old.

Out of all of this, two cities rise.

In the gilded city a giant named Zadon sits on the throne, and the city is the most beautiful place on earth. Its gilded lowlands are well watered everywhere, like a garden, and its people want for nothing. Pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness are its virtues. It does not strengthen the hand of the poor. It declares its sin openly and does not hide it. Behind the giant stand the fallen, and behind the fallen stands the one who never shows his face.

In the city of cedar, which its people call Erez, the altar fire still burns. The walls are plain, the fields are terraced, and the people work with their hands. They keep their doors open to strangers. They pray and they are answered, and the gifts they carry into battle are gifts, freely given and never owned. At their head walks a man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord, a just man, perfect in his generations, who walks with his Maker as one of his fathers once did. His name means comfort, and he brings very little of it.

Noah warns of things not seen as yet.

He warns that judgment is coming. He never claims to speak for his Maker. He only tells what he has come to fear: that the fountains of the great deep will break, and that water will fall from the sky. The people laugh, because water does not fall from the sky. It has never fallen from the sky. They go on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and they laugh at the old man in the city of cedar.

Whether he is right, and when, is the question that hangs over every road and every hearth in the world. The waters are not near. Not yet. But every soul alive will have to decide what it believes before the first drop falls.

Between the two cities runs a river valley, green and fertile, fed by a spring of the great deep. Faithful farmers till its western bank and pray at a small altar above the ford. On the eastern bank a gilded toll-fort squats in the reeds and taxes every traveler who crosses. Both cities send their young people there to hold their side, and to learn what kind of world they were born into. The two banks have hated each other for a hundred years.

It was dawn, and the mist lay thick and white on the river. Somewhere inside it, something moved that was far too large to be a man. A dog on the western bank stopped barking. Then the horn sounded from the village.

They rode out of the mist on armored beasts as tall as houses, led by a young giant who laughed as he came. They smashed into the ford and burned both banks, tents and terraces and toll-fort alike. The giants have never cared which bank you are from.

In the smoke, a band of raiders from the gilded city seized a young woman of the faithful and dragged her toward a ruined watchtower on the bank. One of the raiders hesitated before he followed his orders. Only for a moment. But someone saw.

At the tower they bound her to a post, and their sorcerer knelt to chalk a binding sign upon the stones at her feet. She did not watch him. She looked east, to where the turning blade of flame stood on the far horizon like a second dawn. A raider raised his bronze blade over her.

An arrow came out of the mist with a sound like a serpent's breath, and the raider with the blade was gone. A hunter of the faithful rose from the reeds with his bow already drawn, and two more raiders fell before they could shout. The sorcerer struck the ground with his serpent-headed rod, and the earth heaved in a ring of sickly violet light that threw the hunter from his feet.

Then a warrior came out of the mist, shield first, straight through the heaving ground. A ward of golden light flared around him, and the sorcerer's blast broke on it like water on a stone. He struck the sorcerer down, and every raider at the tower turned on him at once, and he held them all.

Behind him came a healer in plate, walking calmly through the fighting as if across a courtyard at home. One blow of a war hammer broke the binding sign. One cut freed the cords. One hand laid on the captive, and her wounds closed beneath it. A raider's spear struck at them both and turned aside in the air.

The beaten sorcerer crawled up the ridge to a hooded stranger who had watched it all. The stranger looked down at him, and turned away.

Then the ground began to shake. The young giant was coming back across the ford on his great beast. The freed woman picked her sling up out of the mud and stood with the ones who had saved her.

Between them and the ridge stood the young raider who had hesitated. On the ridge, the stranger held out his hand to him, warm and patient. Why kneel to a God you cannot see? Kneel to me, and live. Across the ford, the woman held out hers, and said nothing at all.