THE GOD BOX

by Barry B. Longyear

  "No. N-no, I don't believe I ever have."

  "Very painful. It be especially so when the process is repeated upon all of the nails of the toes and fingers. You see, the blister raises fluid, but the nail prevents the blister from rising, creating a considerable amount of pressure."

  "Fascinating," I mumbled.

  Oghar held up his piece of charcoal. "Next?"

  I glanced at Ruuter, swallowed, and looked back at Oghar, "Put—put your desire to have the approval and respect of others on the . . . on the . . ."

  "On the paper?"

  I nodded and silently mouthed the word, "Yes."

  Oghar leaned back in his throne. "Korvas, I do not know what you thought you might accomplish by this exercise, but right now you be a tiny morsel—a crumb—on the dragon's lips."

  "There is one thing more, Great Oghar," I said, a wave of dizziness teasing my ability to stand upright.

  "And that be?" asked Oghar.

  I turned to Kosi and whispered, "He needs a container."

  "What kind of container?"

  "Any kind! Just so it closes!"

  Kosi motioned to a servant who was holding a small lidded bowl. He took the bowl, emptied the candied spiders it contained into the servant's hands, replaced the lid, and held it out toward me. I asked Kosi, "What god protects this house?"

  "Yulus is the guardian of this house."

  I handed my knife and the lid of the bowl to Kosi. "Scratch the name on the lid in your own script."

  When Kosi was finished with the inscription he looked at me. "What now?"

  I took my knife from him, handed him the bottom of the bowl and pointed at Oghar. "Give it to him."

  Kosi groveled up to the throne, handed up the bowl, and groveled back to his place. Oghar the Valiant held up the bowl. "What now, little crumb?" he demanded.

  "Lift the lid, ask Yulus to take the things you have written on the paper, place the paper in the bowl, and replace the lid."

  The chief did so. When he had replaced the lid, he looked at me and demanded, "Well?"

  "Well, Great Chief . . . the shame, the false pride, and the other things?"

  "What about them?"

  "You should be relieved of them."

  "I must admit, Korvas, you have just said the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my many years. If you think merely by—" The chief stood, pointed a finger at me, and then a curious expression came over his face. He lowered his pointing finger and sat back down upon the throne. Oghar, at last, spoke. "It appears, Korvas, that they be gone."

  There was a gasp of happy surprise from the servants and attendants in the lodge. The chief glanced at Kosi, his face darkened with anger, and he shouted, "More paper!"

  A servant slid up to the throne with a new supply. The chief took it, scratched down some words on a piece of paper, folded it, and put it into the bowl. As he replaced the bowl's lid, he looked up for a moment, then returned his glance to Kosi. He smiled. "I placed my anger at you into the bowl, Kosi."

  The chief came down from the raised platform and stood in front of Kosi, who by now was face down on the chief's carpet. He pulled Kosi to his feet and placed a friendly hand upon his shoulder. "My old friend, I be not angry at you, yet you still be not happy."

  "I still be a general without an army, my chief." Oghar faced me. "Korvas, what does my first advisor need?"

  "I would guess, the same thing that you needed, Great Chief: a god box of his own."

  "Excellent." He turned to a servant. "A god box for Kosi." As the servant ran off, the chief resumed his place upon the throne. He nodded at Syndia. "Very well. I will hear your request now."

  Syndia put her arm around Tayu's shoulders. "Great Oghar, we have come here in fulfillment of a prophecy. This one is the Second who will seek out and find the Hero who will fight with Manku the Destroyer."

  The chief lifted his hand and pointed his finger as he remembered. "The prophecy of the Hero and the Destroyer?"

  "Yes."

  "A story for children." He shrugged and held out his hands. "Yet a Nant priestess would not lie." He studied Syndia for a long time. "You seem more than a mere priestess, Syndia." He studied her for a breathless moment. "Will you find the Hero in this valley?" he asked.

  "Tayu, the Second, led us here. I believe he will find the Hero here."

  Oghar looked around his throne room for a face displaying some enlightenment. Finding none, he turned to Tayu and said, "There be no army for years. No training in warrior skills for as long. If you seek a hero among the Omergunts, perhaps you misunderstood the oracle. Oracles be easy for misunderstanding. It be their stock in trade." He glanced at Kosi and held out an impatient hand. "These visitors lifted the chief's anger from your back, wretch. Can you not help them?"

  "I be uncertain, Great Chief. With permission, I must consider."

  "Oghar," interrupted Syndia.

  "Yes?"

  "There is one thing more. We are being followed by a unit of the Heterin Guard under Captain Shadows. They will be at the Pass of Ebell in only a few hours."

  The chief's expression did not change. "And?"

  "I thought you might want to prepare."

  "Prepare? Do the Heterin guards eat butnuts?"

  "No, Great Chief."

  Oghar dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "We be well prepared." He looked at his advisor. "Have you ruminated enough, Kosi?"

  Kosi bowed deeply. "Perhaps, Great Oghar. I think of someone who might help the outsiders. My old war chief, Shamas."

  Oghar snickered. "Shamas be a good choice if this be twenty-five years ago."

  "I was thinking of Abrina, daughter of Shamas."

  Oghar frowned as he pondered Kosi's suggestion. "Abrina the Ax," said the chief in deep thought. He glanced at Syndia, looked away, and rubbed his chin. Oghar nodded. "Very well," he said to Kosi. Turning to Syndia he said, "My first advisor will help you. He stakes his life on it."

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  Back to our horses, we mounted up and Kosi led us back into the village, then north on a heavily rutted road called the Blackwood Trail. The road led into a forest thick with ferns and gigantic moss-hung trees, their bark the color of charcoal. As soon as we entered the forest we began to hear the distant screams of a sawmill. We came upon a pond, and on its far bank sat a mill driven by a water wheel. The lumber stacked in its yard for drying was as black as pitch. Kosi motioned for us to stop at the mill, and he went inside to get directions.

  When he returned he looked up at Syndia and said, "Shamas has his crew logging at the base of the North Mountains. It be a long ride from here. I mention it because of the Heterin guards chasing you."

  Syndia glanced at Tayu, the boy nodded, and the priestess looked over her shoulder. "Sergeant Rosh?"

  "Yes, priestess?"

  "Post yourself at the entrance to the Blackwood where you can observe the trail. When you see Shadows, come and warn us."

  Rosh touched his finger to his forehead, turned his horse, and rode back toward the village. Syndia turned her face toward the trail. "Lead the way, Kosi."

  I rode next to Kosi in front, followed by Syndia and Tayu, with Ruuter bringing up the rear. The deeper we got into the Blackwood, the taller grew the trees. In places there would be clumps of man-sized ferns or a patch of tailed grass, but nothing else but moss grew except where one of the giant trees had died and fallen leaving a great hole in the canopy above allowing the light to reach the forest floor.

  As always, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed specters, spirits, pixies, nymphs, and uncountable creatures of the imagination lurking in the shadows. To move my mind off of the fanged impossibilities of the present, I pondered the problem of our prospective warrior, Abrina, daughter of Shamas.

  "Kosi?"

  "Yes?"

  "This woman you have in mind. Is she a warrior?"

  Kosi k
ept his gaze on the road ahead. "What she be be anyone's guess."

  That seemed rather obscure. "Kosi, the person we need must fight a god: Manku the Destroyer. To hear the legend, Manku is the fiercest god who ever came into the world. We need a man with a sword or cannon. But what you offer us is a woman who is not even a warrior?"

  "That be true."

  "If she's not a warrior, what is she?"

  "She be logger."

  I reined up my horse and glared at Oghar's first advisor, "Are you telling me that this will be some wench from a lumberman's soup kitchen? Whatever were you and Oghar thinking?"

  Kosi laughed loudly and shook his head. "No. Abrina be a logger. She swings an ax."

  "Even so, Kosi. What can she do against the Destroyer with an ax?"

  "Wait, Korvas," Kosi said smugly.

  "Wait for what?"

  "Wait until you see ax."

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  High on the chilly switchback trails of the Great North Mountain foothills, we dismounted before the largest blackwood I have ever seen. As did all of those trees, it extended upward out of sight. The roots were too high for a good jumping horse, and the trunk was as thick as a mansion. Even the ripples in the great tree's bark were wide enough to hide a large man. Kosi led us around the tree until we came to a huge door set into the trunk. The door was easily twice as tall as a man. As Kosi knocked, I caught a glimpse of Tayu, brighter and more alert than I had ever seen him, staring off into the deep woods as though he expected to meet someone.

  A tiny port set low in the big door opened and an angry face covered with a fierce black beard appeared. "What?"

  "It is Kosi, Shamas."

  "Kosi? Why be you here?"

  "We come to speak with Abrina."

  Shamas was a large man, two hands taller than Kosi, and dressed in furs. He examined Syndia, Tayu, and me, and announced, "Abrina be not home. She work." His last comment, coupled with raised eyebrows, appeared to imply that we weren't working and ought to feel embarrassed on that account. He turned to Kosi and said in a low voice filled with danger, "You know Abrina see no one." He jabbed Kosi's chest with a force that would have shattered anyone more brittle. "Why be you here?"

  "Now Shamas, I—"

  There were the sounds of footsteps in the distance. I peered into the darkness of the woods, my eyes straining, until I saw her. She was a magnificent beauty with short black hair and full red lips. She wore a dark brown leather vest, laced in front, over skin-tight leather trousers and boots. She had an ax over her shoulder, and its handle was as long as I was tall. Each step she took was easily three of mine. Abrina was a genuine giantess. My head couldn't even reach her waist. A strange pain crept into my heart made of that first blush of love mixed with outrageous impossibility. Truly, I thought, the gods have a particularly cruel bone to pick with their current plaything, Korvas the fool. My eyes were, beyond doubt, bigger than my—than my—my everything!

  When she saw us in front of her father's home, she was still some distance away. She stopped, took down her ax from her shoulder, and held it at the ready. "Father?" she called with a strong voice.

  "I be here, child," he answered.

  "Why be they here, Father?"

  "They come for see you, Abrina."

  She began to back warily away from us. As she took another step backwards, Tayu began walking toward her. She saw him and paused. The boy didn't do anything but walk, yet Abrina seemed fixed by his approach. Soon he was standing before her, the top of his head almost to her knees. He must have said something, for she knelt down to listen. We saw her head nod once, then Tayu seemed to swoon. The giantess caught him and cradled him in her arms. Her head looked up and she called out, "One of you called Korvas?"

  I jumped. "Yes?"

  "Come you here. Tayu has something to say to you."

  I crossed the space at a run and felt my breath catch as I neared Abrina. Even kneeling over Tayu she was a full two heads taller than I. My brother's face was ashen, and he reached out a tiny hand toward me. I took his hand in both of mine.

  "She is the one, my brother," said the boy. "Abrina is the one to meet Manku. I am done. Now you must be the Guide."

  He slowly closed his eyes and went limp before I could understand what was happening—that he was dying. I looked at Abrina's face. She had dark amber eyes. "What's wrong with him?"

  "Is this your brother?"

  I nodded, "Yes, but I never knew him."

  She held him out to me and I took him in my arms.

  "Your brother is dead, Korvas," she answered, her expression troubled. "I be sorry."

  She stood, hefted her ax, and ran back into the blackwoods.

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  I placed my brother on the bed of evergreen branches, Syndia arranged his robe and anointed his forehead with rose oil. If I ever had doubts about him being my twin brother, they evaporated under the heat of my loss. Syndia sang that same strange hymn that she had sung over Ahjrah's pyre, while I kissed my brother's cheek.

  The boy had had only one function in the grand scheme of the gods: to find someone to stand against the Destroyer. I supposed some rabid temple rat might find in that fact something for which to be grateful, but I didn't have gratitude on my mind right then. I deserved whatever jokes the gods decided to play on me, but Tayu never had a moment past innocence.

  "He did have a choice, Korvas."

  "Eh?" Syndia was standing behind me holding the black smoking torch. "Still reading my mind, priestess?"

  "Tayu had a choice."

  "Bah, what kind of choice could a little boy make?"

  "A very brave choice. Once you can accept that, you will be able to see the disservice you do him now." She held out the torch. "Take it."

  I took the torch and faced the pyre, ashamed. "I apologize, Tayu. Your courage was more than mine. Tell our father, should you meet him, that I apologize to him, as well." I didn't send along any of my apologies to the gods. More than ever I felt that they owed me and especially my brother a few.

  I waited a moment, then touched the torch to the pyre.

  Just as with Ahjrah's pyre, the entire thing went up in a column of flameless black smoke that lasted but a few seconds. It was followed by a black cloud that gathered up the cold ashes and disappeared into the treetops above us, leaving the forest floor as it had been before.

  Syndia touched my arm and said, "Now you must go and find Abrina."

  I turned and looked at the priestess. "I am to go alone?"

  "Only you are the Guide," she said.

  "What about Ruuter and you?"

  "We will wait for you here."

  "What should I say to her, if I do find her?"

  "There is no doubt that you must find her. As to answers . . ." She pointed to where my god box hung. "There are the answers you need, my friend. Keep in mind, though, Korvas: whatever you say to her must be in a hurry if we are to avoid Captain Shadows."

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  I needn't have worried about finding the giantess. The sound of her terrible ax filled the forest. Before I reached her there was a mighty creaking scream of breaking wood followed by the enormous crash of one of those monstrous blackwoods crashing to the forest floor. Moments later the sound of her ax resumed with a passion.

  I walked my horse into the sunlight. There was a haze of dust above the northern edge of the clearing, and I led the horse around the stumps until Abrina came into view. She was standing upon a felled tree cutting the limbs from it. Some of the limbs that she removed with a single stroke were thicker than whole trees I had seen grown men curse and chop at for an hour. If she ever became angry, that would see the end of anything within reach of that blade.

  I wasn't certain whether she had seen me. I tied my horse to a bit of brush that had been left standing and picked up the god box, asking it what I should do.

  Its answer was, "Watch."


  I sat on a stump and watched the giantess denude the tree. She was magnificent. She was like a tireless machine of great precision as she worked her way around the huge trunk, eventually lopping off the top where the trunk was a mere three feet thick. Even though the sun was beginning to hide behind the mountains to the southwest, I felt myself getting warmer and warmer. When what was affecting me finally announced itself, I stood and angrily walked to the opposite side of the stump and sat with my back toward Abrina.