"Don't you see," she had finally said in exasperation, "if I'm right about faith creating reality in this city, what is the truth about our own god? Do we believe in him because he's real, or is he real because we believe in him; and what about all the other deities? If even one of them is genuine, then our own holy terror is a fraud, and we as Kencyrs can't honor a lie. How can you be so calm when the foundation of our whole culture may crumble out from under us at any minute? Living here all these months hasn't your faith been shaken even once?"
Marc had considered this for a minute, then said slowly, "No, I can't say that it has. I never thought we Kencyrs had much choice in the matter, not, at least, since old Three-Face got us by the short hairs. An acolyte did tell me once, though, that some people can decide whether to believe or not. Free will, he called it, and said that faith could be even stronger with it than without, not that I quite see how. You're clever, though; perhaps you understand."
"Clever!"
Moving through the silent streets, Jame remembered her bark of laughter and winced. That afternoon, she had been to the Lower Town to see Taniscent, and the former dancer had hidden from her under the covers, sobbing wildly.
"If I were even halfway intelligent, would I act the way I do? Is there one thing I've done since coming here that hasn't had disastrous consequences? Marc, despite all the time we've spent together, you don't know me. You don't even know my name."
He had looked at her, perplexed. "Why, Jame, short for Jameth."
"No. For Jamethiel."
"Oh." For a moment, it was as if he had just eaten something of a suspicious nature and was not sure how it would agree with him. "Oh!" he said again, stiffening. "What could your sponsors have been thinking of? Better to curse a child outright at birth than to give it such a name!"
"They may have done that too, for all I know," Jame had said wryly, beginning to be ashamed of herself for snapping at him. "Still, there's some distinction of being probably the first to bear that name since Jamethiel of Knorth turned renegade to follow the Master nearly three thousand years ago."
"Snare-of-Souls, Dream-Weaver, Storm's Eye. . ." he had run through the epithets thoughtfully, checking them off on his fingers. "Priest's-Bane. The name is an omen in itself. Servants of God, any god, will be bad luck to you, and you to them. I should have as little to do with them as possible, if I were you, especially with such a one as Loogan. He's too vulnerable."
And she had promised to try.
* * *
THAT HAD BEEN weeks ago. Now here she was in the Temple District again, preparing for another raid on Gorgo's house. Somewhat reassured by Marc's refusal to be alarmed, she had given up testing Loogan; but the matter of Anthrobar's Scroll still haunted her. It was perhaps legitimate to say that the copy as well as the original of the Book had, for some obscure reason, been destined for her hands, but that didn't explain the mechanics of the thing. How in all the worlds had that long-lost manuscript come to be in Gorgo's temple? That was the question that drew her back now, on the one night of the year when she thought she could count on a minimum of interference from both god and priest.
However, the District was not as quiet as she had expected it to be. A murmur filled the air, seeming to rise from all directions and none; low, wordless, urgent. Rapid footsteps coming up from behind made her start. A man slipped hurriedly past and in at the door of a humble temple just ahead, letting the sound roll out around him for a second before the portal closed. The faithful held their vigils, praying for the safety of man and god alike, while the dead prowled outside the gate.
Jame had expected none of this. A year ago, she had entered the District later at night and had supposed, incorrectly, that it was deserted. This time she was spared the feverish power that would soon throb through these streets, but could her errand succeed in the face of so much hidden activity?
At any rate, here was Gorgo's temple. She tried the door and found it unlocked. The hinges protested piercingly. She froze, listening. Cool air slid past her face from the dim interior, bearing no sound. Had no one come to keep watch here through the long night? The outer chamber was empty. She crossed it and listened at the inner door. Nothing. Pushing it open a crack, she slipped through into the sanctuary.
It was cool and dark inside, as she remembered it, but no longer with the feeling of a woodland cave. The moss was brittle on the stones and the walls were dry. A fine patina of dust lay on the ranked benches. It had not occurred to her before what a difference the draining of the temple's reservoir would make.
The image of Gorgo loomed at the far end of the chamber, its shoulders hunched against the upper darkness. Some loving but clumsy hand had mortared together the ruined face. One had the impression that if there had been any water, the lopsided mouth would have drooled. Jame approached it, drawn by the sight of something in the idol's hands. It was another scroll. Wondering what on earth she had stumbled on this time, she carefully lifted it out and unrolled it. The writing was Kessic, the substance, a single column of unrelated objects. It appeared to be someone's shopping list.
She was still staring at it when the sanctuary door opened. Loogan stood on the threshold.
* * *
THE HIGH PRIEST had been in his quarters above the outer chamber, darning his best under-tunic. His acolyte should have tended to it that afternoon but had clearly been too unnerved by the approaching Feast to wield a needle, so Loogan had sent him home. It wasn't likely that there would be work enough to justify keeping him around tonight anyway. There hadn't been, to tell the truth, for several weeks. Soon the boy's father would probably be after him to terminate his son's contract. Well, let him go, let them all go . . . no, no, he didn't mean that. What was a priest without his people—and who would follow him now, with his personal demon, that willow of a girl (or was it a boy?) popping up every few days to sow chaos? Dear Lord of Tears, what had he done to deserve such a fate? It was just as the Reader of Bones had prophesied the very day that gray-eyed imp had first come into his life; but even the Reader had not been able to foresee the end of the matter. Would some of the faithful come tonight? They must. He wasn't sure that his god could survive the Feast without them.
What was that? The hinges of the front door. Someone had come after all.
Hastily, Loogan snapped short the thread and donned the tunic, then a neck cloth, the alb with its embroidered cuffs (merciful god, would he ever get the thing right-side-out on the first try?), the stole, the wool chasuble with its elevated shoulders and contingent of moths like a fitful nimbus, and finally the whole collection of rings, chains, and clinking amulets to which every one of his hieratic ancestors had made a contribution. Quick now, anything else? Ah yes, the diadem. He snatched it up and hurried down the stairs, threw open the inner chamber door—and found his nemesis standing by the altar.
For a moment, astonishment fixed Loogan to the spot, then rising anger broke the trance. He snatched up the tall candle stand near the door, ignoring the clatter as half the candles fell on the floor, and said, "Now I've got you, you thieving blasphemer."
"Why do you always call me that?"
The voice was quiet, even polite. Loogan stopped, blinking. It was his special curse that he could never ignore a question.
"Because you and all your kind profess the Anti-God Heresy."
"What is that?" '
" 'The belief that all the beings we know to be divine are in fact but the shadows of some greater power that regards them not,' " he heard himself say, automatically quoting the New Pantheon catechism.
"How do you know that this belief is false?"
"Because the gods do exist."
"Prove it."
The priest stared at her. Then, with an almost convulsive gesture, he threw aside the candelabrum and said shrilly, "All right, I will!"
Few preparations were needed, and Loogan went about them hurriedly, trying not to think what a rare and dangerous thing it was that he meant to attempt. So the congregation wou
ld stay away tonight of all nights, would it, and this artful tempter come in its place? Well, he would show them, he would show them all. . . but merciful god, how long was it since this ritual had last been performed? Not since Hierarach Bilgore's day at least. He lugged the benches aside, too distracted to notice that another pair of hands helped him. The space before the idol was now clear, and the two basins of water set on their tripods on either side. Loogan gave the small area one last, despairing look, then sank to his knees, took a deep breath, and began to chant.
At first, nothing happened. The singsong voice rushed on, gaining speed as it went like that of a reciting child who hurries lest he forget the words. Then bit by bit the air above the right basin and then the left seemed to thicken as a haze formed. Wisps of mist were reaching out from both sides toward each other. They met before the idol, merging into a slow, vaporish swirl. A form was taking shape. It seemed to move fitfully, and more mist wrapped itself around the half-gesture. Loogan chanted on, eyes closed, the sweat running down his plump face. Once he faltered, and the ghostlike thing before him appeared to flinch. Then he was done, suddenly, on a rising note as if he had not realized until the last second that the end was so near. Cautiously, the priest opened his eyes.
The figure that cowered before him at the feet of the great idol was about his own size and just as pale. Elaborate vestments and length after length of neck chain bowed it halfway to the ground. Webbed fingers, their upper joints encrusted with rings, fumbled helplessly at the enormous diadem that had slipped down over one bulging eye and apparently stuck there. Its wide mouth, drooling a bit, opened . . .
"No!" Loogan heard himself shriek. "No, no, no!"
Gorgo, with a stricken look at his priest, gave a thin, piping wail, sank to the floor, and dissolved.
Loogan was not aware that he had fainted until water from one of the basins hit him in the face. He lashed out wildly at the hand that had thrown it, at the face beyond, drawing blood with one of his heavy rings. Then his wrists were caught and, with difficulty, pinned to the floor. His rage died as suddenly as it had been born.
"I killed him," he said in bewilderment, looking up into those odd, silver-gray eyes. "I killed my god."
"No . . . we did. But don't think about that now. You need a drink, and I'm going to find you one. C'mon."
* * *
NEAR THE TEMPLE district was an inn which, like the Res aB'tyrr, stayed open at least until midnight on Autumn's Eve. Within minutes Jame had secured her charge in a private room with two glasses of neat wine already in him and a third waiting at his elbow.
As the little priest emerged from his daze, he began to talk—rapidly, without a pause, as though afraid of silence. Jame quickly learned that he was not the imbecile she had always taken him for. In fact, there was an excellent brain in that round, balding head; but years of bondage to the often ludicrous rituals of his god had taught him that his only possible dignity lay in unthinking obedience. Now all that effort and self-denial seemed to have been wasted.
"I've let them all down, my god, my ancestors, myself," he said, and then startled Jame by suddenly shouting, "Let them go, let them all go!"
"Quiet!" hissed the innkeeper, sticking his head through the curtains. "D'you want to bring every dead god in town down on us?"
"No, just one of them," said the priest.
Noting that the hour candle on the table had almost burned down to the twelfth ring, Jame hastily paid the reckoning. Loogan tried to break away from her at the door. He wanted to search the streets for Gorgo. She finally managed to get the priest back to his temple and forcibly put him to bed. He was snoring almost before she turned her back.
The front door snicked shut behind her, locking, and she stood at the head of the stairs, shivering slightly, staring at nothing. Somewhere up in the night above the District's architectural tangle, a bell struck, its single, deep note echoing down the corridors of the sky. Another, farther away joined it, then another and another until all were in full voice. The boom of their combined tolling made the stones beneath shake. Then the lead bell subsided, its course rung through at last, the others following it as their turn came. At last only a treble was left, its silvery note shivering against the dark, faltering, dying away.
The Feast of Dead Gods had begun.
Jame left the District and took to the rooftops. Dry thunder grumbled in the mountain passes to the west, lightning edged the ragged clouds with tarnished silver as they came scudding over the peaks. The wind hunted where it pleased. Below, indistinct forms were wandering through the streets, sometimes pausing to scratch softly on this door or that, sometimes fumbling at a key hole, whispering in the dry, worm-gnawed voices of the dead. Corpse lights flickered in ghostly procession through the crossroads, over the roof-beams. Wisps of song and lament rose to mingle with the wind's rushing.
Jame went on. Cloudies in hiding who saw her pass thought she must be mad to walk so slowly on such a night. She didn't even bother to take the shortest route home. Once a water pipe down-roof gave way with a screech, as though something too heavy had tried to climb it. Once a great, misshapen shadow swept over the gables after her, barely missing, and a nightbird, caught under it, tumbled down dead at her heels. She paid no attention. It was long past midnight, nearer to dawn, when she at last came to the back roof of the Res aB'tyrr.
As Jame swung a leg over the loft's sill, she happened to look back and saw a muffled figure standing on the roof below her, looking up. Thinking it was some old woman of the Cloud Kingdom who had been caught away from home by nightfall, Jame signaled her to climb up to the dubious safety of the open loft. Then she crossed to her own pallet, sat down, and was quickly lost again in her own dark thoughts.
Sometime later she looked up. The shrouded figure was sitting opposite her. This surprised Jame because she had not heard the other's ascent. Regarding the stranger more closely, she realized with a sudden tightening of stomach muscles that she was not so much looking at her guest as through her. It was the night of dead gods, and death, at her invitation, had just entered the loft.
Seconds passed, then a full minute. The other still had not moved. The face, tilted downward, was hidden in the shadow of the cowl. The shoulders slumped. Even in this short time, the gnarled hands, hanging limply over the peak of shrouded knees, had become thinner and more transparent. Mortar began to rattle down behind the motionless figure. The poor creature was dying even out of death, and she was taking part of the inn with her.
How far would this go? Jame saw faint lines of erosion begin to furrow the opposite wall. She sensed that the stranger hadn't the strength to leave unassisted and knew that she dared not touch her. For a long moment Jame sat there, watching and thoughtfully gnawing her lower lip. Then she rose slowly and edged past her peculiar guest to the head of the spiral stairs.
The guest rooms on the third floor were empty, their lodgers undoubtedly below in the hall with the rest of the company. Jame descended to the second floor and slipped out onto the gallery. From there, she went down by the far stair to the court and crossed it stealthily to the kitchen door. When Cleppetty left the room for a minute, she quickly entered and took what she required. Actually, the widow would have begrudged her none of it, but it seemed best not to let anyone know who was in the loft or what, with luck, was about to be done about it. Clutching the ends of the large napkin in which her booty was wrapped, Jame retreated to the upper regions.
The drooping figure had not moved. The stones behind it were more visible than before, and more decayed. Dry rot was well advanced in the floor boards, with tendrils of it reaching out into the room.
There was no proper fireplace in the loft, so Marc had built a small one out of bricks against the north wall to be used for warmth. Jame soon had a blaze going in it. Then she unwrapped the napkin and began to separate its contents. By the time she was done, lined up in front of her were morsels of raw venison, beef, and pork, brie tart, two oysters, fried artichokes, a pear coffin fi
lled with cooked lentils, spiced capon, marzipan toads, and finally the soggy piece of trencher bread (colored green with parsley) on which the whole mess had rested. The trick, of course, was to find out if any of these assorted fragments would make an acceptable sacrifice. Jame took the nearest at hand—a ragged chunk of pork—and put it on the grate. Then she withdrew to watch.
The meat began to sizzle over the leaping flames, the odor of its cooking reminding Jame forcefully that she had had nothing but a cup of wine in the hill lord's tent since early that morning. Then it began to burn. The hands of the spectre twitched once, but it made no further move. Several stones fell out of the wall and through the rotting floor. Eventually the bit of pork, reduced to a cinder, fell through the grate and was gone. Jame put the venison in its place.
This process seemed to go on for hours. It must be almost dawn, Jame thought, but she doubted if either the loft or her guest would last that long. The roof groaned and began to sag over the silent, nearly invisible figure. Dust drifted down. The beams overhead had started to disintegrate. Fighting an impulse to bolt below to safety, Jame tried to figure out what she was doing wrong.
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