by Paula Guran
“I begin to see,” said Steq. “We offered what might be construed as sacrifice to some other god, and were then fair game for your altar.”
“Just so,” bubbled the monster. “Would you prevent this re-occurring?”
“Had I been given the choice in advance, I would have been pleased to prevent its happening at all,” Steq observed, not without some bitterness.
“No matter,” said the thing, its liquid eye unblinking. “We did not know each other then, and past is past. Besides, I offer you something I imagine you hardly dare dream possible.”
“That being?”
“Myself. I have become unhappy with my bargain. I will be frank. I am ambitious, and intended to reign supreme over Au, and from there expand my authority. But once they had conquered their island, the people of Ilu had no inclination to travel any further and arranged things so that they would not be required to do so. You, on the other hand, travel widely.”
The wind was already chill, but it seemed in that moment to blow colder. “You have a binding agreement with the people of Au,” he said.
“The agreement has its limits.”
“As would an agreement with us, I am sure.”
“You are a shrewder man than Etoje of Ilu,” gurgled the thing. “And your people are well accustomed to keeping an advantage when dealing with gods. We will be well-matched.” Steq said nothing. “I am strong with a thousand years of sacrifices,” said the god of Au. “Have you fled from all gods? Have all other nations cast you out? Take me as your god, and be revenged. Take me as your god and your children will live in health, not sicken and starve as so many do now. Your fear and wandering will be at an end, and you will sit in authority over all the peoples of the world.”
“At what price?”
“The price I demanded of Etoje: all your rites and sacrifices. Those who will not cease offerings to other gods will bleed on my altar.”
“And when there are no more of those?”
“Ah,” bubbled the monster. “That day is far in the future, and when it comes I will demand no more human victims.”
“What, precisely, was your agreement with Etoje of Ilu?”
“That so long as the smallest part of the island of Au stood above the waters Etoje and his descendants would be pre-eminent in Au, and all those who accepted the terms of the agreement would be under my protection, their fates my special concern. In exchange, the people of Au would offer me the sacrifices I desired, and perform the rites I prescribed, and would make no offerings to any other gods, at any time.”
“And would we enter into this same agreement, or make a new one with you?”
“We would make our own agreement, separate from my agreement with Au.”
The sun had now set. In the east the clouded sky was black, and the body of the monster glowed blue under the water. Steq stood silent for some minutes, regarding it. “We are cautious,” he said, when he finally spoke. “And I would discuss this with my people.”
“Of course.”
“Let us make no long-term commitment at the moment. But we will agree to this much: while we are in your territory we will make no offering to any other god, and you will not require us to bleed on your altar.”
“This is reasonable,” gurgled the god of Au. “Furthermore, it gives us both a chance to demonstrate our goodwill.”
“I am pleased to find you so generous,” said Steq. “It will take some time for us to determine the best course. It is not wise to rush into such things.”
“Take what time it requires. I am in no hurry. Indeed, I have affairs to conclude before we can make our deal binding. It may be quite a long time before I am able to proceed.”
“How long? We live at sea, but we are accustomed to land fairly frequently, for water and to buy or gather what we need, and to maintain our boats.”
“Take the island you see before you, and the two north of it. All three have springs, and I will see to it that the hunters of Au will not trouble you there.”
“Very well. What name shall we call you?”
“For the moment, call me the god of Au.”
“Surely you have some other name.”
“This one will do. I will speak to you again in the future. In the meantime, be assured of your safety so long as you worship me alone.” And with those words, the tentacle that had coiled about the mast grew limp, and the whole tangle of arms slid into the water. The blue glow had begun to fade, and was nearly gone, and the huge eye was staring and vacant.
“It’s dead,” said Steq, and he called the child to him again. “Take a message to the other boats. We will meet tonight under the covers of the starboard hull of Neither Land Nor Water. Bid her captain lash them securely. No bird or fish will overhear our council.” Then he turned to his crew. “Grab this thing before it floats off. It will feed us all for a week. For which we will offer thanks to the god of Au.”
But whether due to possession by the god or the nature of the creature itself, the meat was bitter and inedible, and after a few foul-tasting bites the Godless cast it all back into the sea.
Ihak and his wife loved Ifanei greatly, and she was a happy child. She did not grow into any great beauty. She was short, and wide-boned, and her dark hair lay flat as wet seaweed. Indeed, she was so unlike her father Ihak that some commented disparagingly. But Ihak said quite frequently, “Ah, it’s true, she looks nothing like me. But she’s the very image of my late mother. So. I love her all the more for it.” And he did indeed dote on the child, and there was no one in the Place of the God who remembered his mother to speak of, and so they held their tongues, and eventually the sight of Ihak going about with Ifanei’s small hand in his became such a common, constant thing that it seemed unthinkable that anyone had ever suggested that she was not his child.
When Ifanei was fourteen, her mother died, and by the time she was sixteen Ihak was old and feeble. The Speaker began showing Ifanei small attentions, and Ihak called her to his bedside and spoke seriously with her. “So,” he said, his voice a thin thread of breath. “Do you wish to be the wife of the Speaker for the God?”
“He only wants the inheritance,” Ifanei said. She knelt on the floor and took her father’s hand, thin and light and fragile as the bones of a bird. Ihak had dwindled away to almost nothing. In the flickering light of the single oil lamp he seemed faded and so completely without substance that one feared a gentle word might blow him away, but for the skin laid across him to keep him warm.
“Ah.” It was a barely audible sigh. “You’ll need a husband one day, and you could do worse than the man with the authority of the god of Au.”
Ifanei turned the corners of her mouth down. “I could do better,” she said. “The wife he already has is beautiful, and proud. She would not welcome any division in her husband’s attentions, and she is altogether too unconcerned about the matter. I would be ignored at best.”
Ihak managed a breathy laugh. “We think alike. So. I only asked because if the prospect had pleased you I would have done my best to secure him for you. Hm. It does not, so we must make other plans.”
Now, Ihak had been a shrewder man than anyone had known. When he realized that the only child the god would grant him was a girl, he had hidden a part of his savings—the stacks of sealskins and volcanic glass blades that were the wealth of Au—in places only he knew. He had seen the resentment of the elite of Au when the two hunters had elevated themselves. He knew that the Speaker would have moved to discontinue the custom if he had not feared the anger of the common people. But further attempts on the strangers had proved futile, and the hopes of advancement had ceased to be real. The threat had receded, but it might reappear one day. Ihak knew that he would almost certainly be the last holder of his office. He also knew that the Speaker would go to considerable inconvenience to gain possession of Ifanei’s inheritance. Thinking of all this, he had planned accordingly.
The day after Ihak’s funeral, when Ifanei was sitting silent and cross-legged o
n the cold stone floor of her quarters, hair unbound and mourning ashes smeared on her face, the Speaker came to see her. “Ifanei,” he said, “I have spoken to the god. Your father’s office is to be discontinued. It is hardly a surprise; if it had been meant to continue, your father would have been granted a fit heir for the position.”
Ifanei knew well enough that the god had never been concerned with petty matters of administration, so long as sacrifices arrived regularly. She did not look at the Speaker but at the floor, and she kept her voice small and tear-choked as she answered. “As the god wills.”
“Poor Ifanei!” said the Speaker. “We will all miss your father, but you will understandably miss him the most. How fortunate you are to have cousins nearby to take care of you.” She said nothing. “Don’t forget, I am your cousin, too, and I regard you highly.” Still Ifanei was silent. “Lovely Ifanei!” said the Speaker then, with no hint of mockery. “When the time comes, you will want to ponder the advantages of a closer connection with me, and at a more appropriate time I will speak to you of my desires.”
In a bag, under Ifanei’s bed, were an undyed hooded sealskin coat and a black glass knife. In her memory were the locations, well away from the Place of the God, where Ihak had cached a significant part of his valuables. In a week, villagers from along the north coast would come to Ilu, bringing their tribute of seals and seabirds to the Place of the God. When they left, who would notice one extra young boy among them?
“I will think seriously on everything you say,” Ifanei said to the Speaker. She still looked steadily at the floor. “My father often spoke of his great respect for you, and I am fortunate to have such a cousin. I am so very grateful for your concern.” She said this with every evidence of sincerity, and the Speaker was pleased with himself when he left her.
It was at this time that the god of Au returned to the Godless, and spoke to Steq, and shortly thereafter Righteous Vengeance ventured by night close to the shore of Au, and Steq went ashore.
Each year the north coast villagers who brought their tribute to Ilu traveled in a long, chaotic column along the sea. The seals, skins, birds, and eggs they brought were piled on sledges, the eggs carefully packed in grass. Each traveler took a turn pulling the offerings of his own village, each village they passed added to their number, and by the time the procession neared Ilu it became a noisy throng, the spirits of the participants undampened by the fact that at least half of them were suffering the effects of too much seaweed beer the night before. Between the crowd and the beer, no one noticed that a stranger had joined their number.
Steq had not been a young man when the Godless had sailed into Au’s waters, and after sixteen years his hair had grayed. But he had not changed otherwise. He did not much resemble the people of Au—his skin was too dark, his hair too fine, his features not quite right somehow, though this may have been only a certain hardness about the mouth that was unusual in a man of Au. He kept the hood of his coat up, and his head down, and those walking next to him thought he must be from some other village, and attributed his silence to last night’s beer, and let him be.
What Steq could see of Au was tall grass sweeping up the skirts of an ice-topped mountain. Here and there a stream was lined with stunted osiers, but there were otherwise no trees. The view was all green grass, black stone, and white ice, with gray clouds over everything. The villages they passed seemed nothing more than turf mounds huddled together, with here and there a whale rib protruding. At each one children ran shouting out of the low houses, clad in sealskin coats and trousers but barefoot in the mud. The whole column came to a swirling semi-halt as men and women followed the children out of the houses with much waving and laughter and handing over of food and skins of what Steq presumed was the ever-present beer. Then as if at some signal Steq was unable to detect a few of the villagers picked up the lines to their own sledges, the crowd moved forward again, and the village was left behind.
From a distance Ilu seemed no more than a bump on the treeless hillside, the Place of the God no more than a pile of stones, and the whole vista was dominated by the same mountain, and the icy blue river that ran down to the sea. Arriving, Steq saw the same tumble of turf houses, the same shouting, barefoot children, and he was nearly at the Place of the God before he realized that he was in the city itself. He had thought they were merely passing yet another village.
The procession broke like a wave onto the whale-rib gates of the Place of the God and spilled into the surrounding streets. Pushed along with the crowd, Steq found himself in a muddy, open square where women wearing coats sewn with seabird feathers and painted white, brown, or muted green began singing out in loud voices. The only word Steq recognized was “beer,” which he had learned in the first hours of his joining the pilgrimage. The women were instantly surrounded and began what appeared to be fierce bargaining, though Steq had not seen anything resembling money. He turned against the flow of the crowd and made his way back to the Place of the God.
By now the sledges were lined up at the gates, and no few sledge pullers were casting glances in the direction of the square Steq had just left. He found a morose-looking man at the end of the line, and put his hand on the braided sealskin rope the man was holding.
The man instantly stood straighter and grinned. He said something—a question by the sound, but Steq knew only a few words of the language of Au. It was possible that yes, no, or beer would answer the man satisfactorily, but it was best not to speak. Keeping his face half-hidden by his coat hood, Steq shrugged towards the square.
The man, still smiling broadly, dropped the line, took Steq by both shoulders, drew him close into a miasma of fermented seaweed, and kissed him on the cheek. He said something else, sending an even stronger waft of beer Steq’s way, and reached into his coat, pulled something out, and pressed it into Steq’s hand. Then, none too steadily, the man walked away. Steq found himself holding a lump of glassy, brownish-golden stone that had been smoothed and rounded into a vaguely animal-like shape that he could not identify. He put it in a pouch under his coat.
By this time it was late afternoon. The line of sledges moved slowly forward and Steq watched each one halt before guards at the gate. One guard examined the cargo of each sledge, counting small, rounded pebbles into a pouch at his waist as he did so, and then waved the man who had towed the sledge through the gates. Other guards appeared and pulled the sledge to the side, where yet others unloaded it and then left it empty in front of the building. A trickle of villagers came back out of the gates, the sledgemen done with their business in the Place of the God and making with all speed for the square where their fellows crowded.
By the time Steq’s commandeered sledge arrived at the gate the sun was setting. The guard looked over the cargo, counted his pebbles, and then waved Steq past with hardly a glance. As he had seen the man before him do, he dropped the tow line and walked into the Place of the God, straight ahead into light and the smell of sweat and burning oil.
The room was small—a dozen people would have crowded it. On the floor were woven grass mats, much scuffed and dirtied. The walls were plain and dark. In the center of the room was a low, blocky table on which sat a single black stone. The man who had preceded Steq in line stood before this, his back to Steq, facing another man, presumably a priest, who spoke at length and then brought out a disk of polished bone from inside his skin shirt and handed it to Steq’s predecessor, who turned and left without another word.
Steq stepped forward. “God of Au,” he said, before the priest could speak. “I am here, as you instructed me.”
The priest frowned, and opened his mouth to say something, and then his eyes grew wide and his body stiffened. “Were you last?” he asked in a dead monotone, in Steq’s language.
“Yes.”
“You have done well,” he said. A tremor passed through the body of the priest. “I am not surprised.”
“How long do we have?”
“Not long,” the priest answered. “I ha
ve withdrawn into the stone once more, and we are in danger until we depart Au.” The man then turned and picked the black stone up from the table. “We go.”
“What, do we merely walk through the streets of Ilu?”
“Yes. No one will stop us. But you must find a boat, and bring us to your fleet.”
“Could you not have taken control of the priest and had him bring us the stone?” Steq asked.
“No. I could not have.”
“I wonder why not.” Steq followed him back out into the night. The guards seemed not to see them, and the area in front of the Place of the God was empty of anyone else.
The priest walked ahead without looking left or right, away from the Place of the God and into the square where that afternoon so many of Steq’s traveling companions had crowded. It was empty now, and dark—there was no light but the glow of an oil lamp from a doorway here and there. In the center of the square the priest stopped abruptly, and Steq nearly ran into him. “Find someone,” the priest said without turning around.
“Someone in particular?”
“Anyone will do,” said the priest. “Between here and the water, where the boats are, is the place where the villagers are camping for the night. Someone strong and healthy would be best, but take anyone you can alive.”
Steq knew without being told what the god wanted with a live person from the camp. “Can we not sacrifice the priest you’re possessing?”
“He has been dead for the last several minutes.”
“That’s inconvenient,” Steq said. “You expect that I will just walk off with someone in the middle of the camp?”
“Yes,” said the priest, and he walked forward again.
“You said nothing of this, when last we spoke.”
“I said you would know more when you came to me in Ilu,” the priest said, still walking forward. Steq hurried to catch up to him. “You accepted that.”
“You promised there would be no difficulties.”