THE GOD BOX

by Barry B. Longyear

  "Korvas, a ziusu can see lies that the teller of the lie believes to be true. I think you have a lie such as that."

  "I have been wrong about a great many things in my time, and I will probably be wrong about a few more before I rest my bones," I said. "Which mistake do you have in mind?"

  "What I see is that you did not spend your life not believing in the gods. In fact, you believe in them very strongly."

  I issued an involuntary laugh. "I'm almost inclined to call you a liar, Vyle." I held up a finger toward Tah. "Almost."

  Tah shrugged and said, "You may call him anything you wish. I am his bodyguard, not his censor. Just remember to leave it at pointed words. Pointed instruments are another matter."

  I looked at Vyle. "You were saying?"

  "The lies we tell ourselves," said Vyle, "are the most damaging. In you is much pain, yes?"

  "No."

  "Indeed, that much?" He pursed his lips, nodded, and stroked his beard. "Did you know your parents?"

  "Of course I did," I answered hotly.

  "Only one, then—your father?"

  "How can you know that?"

  Vyle waved an impatient hand. "The important thing is this lie that is strangling your present."

  "I want to know."

  "Very well. You partly lied when I asked you if you knew your parents, hence you knew only one of them. It had to be your father, since you are the Mirror." He saw the puzzled look on my face. "You are the Mirror of the Second, his twin brother, and the Second 'will be chosen by a father's hand.' Now, let us continue. Your mother died in childbirth?"

  "Yes."

  "And something more. Your brother—your twin?"

  "What of him?"

  Lem Vyle rubbed his chin as he studied me. "You feel that he died—no, that he was murdered? Your father killed him—allowed him to be killed. Yet he was not dead, otherwise the Seeker never could have found the Blade. But your brother is dead now." He took a sip of tea and continued. "When we put the pieces together, we have a motherless child who is separated from his twin brother soon after birth. With his father being Ahmritan, the child's skin was very dark and he was raised in the Ahmritan faith, the Ihtari.

  "The child was called by many cruel names, and was beaten by the other children of the street. Not understanding his father's service to an ancient prophecy, the child blamed his father for the persecution, for his brother's death, even for his skin. He blamed his father for it all. Hence, at a young age the child ran away from home and took to the streets. How young were you, Korvas?"

  "Eight," I whispered.

  Vyle sadly shook his head. "There are many horrors awaiting the innocent alone on the streets, and the back streets were where you had to survive. You stole whatever you had to steal to survive. You sold everything from your body to your soul, to survive. You even killed to survive. You have many scars, but most of the scars you carry are on your heart. While you were collecting them upon the street, your father was no longer there to blame. That's when you blamed the universe and, hence, the gods who were responsible for it. You believed the gods hated you, and you wanted your revenge. How does one take revenge upon the gods, Korvas?"

  I felt the hot tears slip down my cheeks. It didn't matter whether they were hidden tears or in my eyes. Lem Vyle could see through the wall I had built about myself. I thought about his question. How does one take revenge against the gods?

  "The only way I could strike back at the gods was to kill them with the only weapon I had. I refused to believe in them and scoffed at those who did."

  Vyle nodded and said, "That is the lie that is crippling your soul, my friend."

  I pushed back my chair, stood up, and without excusing myself, I climbed the ladder to the deck. It had begun to rain and the wind had coaxed up the swells into whitecaps. I stood in the prow and let the rain wash the tears from my face as I cried for the first time in twenty-two years.

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  Late that night, as the storm rocked me back and forth in my bunk, I searched the dark corners of the compartment I shared with the Ounri, Dentaat. The second mate was on watch, which removed much of the discomfort I felt about the fellow's sleeping habits. Before he went on watch he rested by sitting cross-legged on the deck and staring directly at me, never blinking. A few hours of that could give the shakes to Eternity Rock.

  I drove the image out of my mind, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep. Sleep, however, was a thousand miles away. The words of Lem Vyle kept teasing the back of my head. The lie that was crippling my soul. Perhaps I had been wrong about everything, but what could I do about it now? Once the last dart leaves your hand, what good is it to know that it was thrown with a foul aim?

  I thought I saw a green light coming from the porthole.

  I pulled myself naked from my bunk, braced myself against the tossing deck, and went to the porthole. For a moment nothing was visible except for the white tops of the waves. A pale green, glowing mist began forming above the waves, and it swirled, parted, and became as a hundred specters at the King's Ball, dancing against the storm.

  I had seen the glowmist once before, as a child of ten condemned to the evil-smelling fisher shacks in Shantytown on the coast north of Iskandar. For twenty hours a day I cleaned fish for a brute named Halpus who kept me and four other children prisoner.

  There was a storm one night that boiled the Sea of Chara. Through the door of Halpus's shack, I saw the glowmist ghosts dancing above the waves. The other children saw me looking, and they stopped what they were doing and looked. The glowmist was the kind of happening that lifted my heart from the world of mundane brutality long enough to taste the possibility of otherworldly mystery, romance, and adventure.

  Suddenly Halpus was standing in the doorway. With a bellow of rage he stormed into us with a barrel stave. We had been beaten many times before, but always one at a time. The ones who were not being beaten would always concentrate upon their work, thankful that the beating was happening to someone else. This time, however, Halpus lit into all five of us at once. All five of us had our gutting knives, and we jumped him at the same time. We gutted and cleaned Halpus and packed him in his own salt. Then we watched him scream himself to death.

  As I stood in that cabin on the Silk Ghost, I remembered the faces of my four accomplices. The eldest one, a boy named Jopo, drowned that night in the storm, trying to escape in a small coracle. The two other boys, Ciutvi and Lase, were beheaded three years later for a robbery that resulted in the death of a minor bureaucrat. The girl, Tanza, was twelve when we gutted Halpus. She began selling herself to the very old and wealthy. Only last year I saw her begging for half-coppers in an alley, her teeth gone, her skin wrinkled, and her back bent at the age of thirty-one. Her hands shook with the ravages of some horror of a disease.

  "Is it any wonder," I said to the glowmist, "that I hate the gods? Look at this world of yours!"

  The greenish glow above the waves formed into the face I had seen while looking through the god box at the Shrine of Manku. Was that the face of the Destroyer? There was something of the same face when I looked deeply into the image of Captain Shadows. Was Shadows the Destroyer?

  I shook my head at my own foolishness. Why would a god, any god, wish to become Captain Shadows? He was evil, that's true. However, that is only on a human scale. His dungeon tortures affected only a tiny part of the whole of the world's peoples. An evil god, I thought, would want to wreak havoc on a much grander scale. Perhaps all of the gods are evil, and we convince ourselves of the existence of a few good ones in an attempt to wrest a bit of peace and sanity from reality.

  I felt a bit of a chill and pulled the blanket from my bunk and wrapped myself as a thought ate its way into my awareness. Perhaps the gods had no more of a hand in creating this world than did I. Perhaps they do not punish, but were, instead, like Syndia said of the god box: They are th
ere to help avoid or endure calamity. If I choose to do without their help, it is not they, but reality, that punishes. I had done without the help of the gods for many years, and during those years I had been punished a great deal.

  I sat on the edge of my bunk and listened to the ship's wooden beams creak and groan in the darkness. "But what to do about it now?" I whispered.

  There was scratching—no, a quiet knock—on my cabin door. Dentaat wouldn't knock. I stood up, my blanket wrapped about me, and pulled my knife out from beneath my pillow.

  "Who is it?"

  The door opened, and a standing figure was cast into silhouette by the dim oil light from the passageway. Despite the almost nonexistent cobweb of a sleeping gown she wore, I knew, it was Len Vyle's bodyguard, Tah.

  "Korvas, it is Tah," she spoke with a low voice as she closed the door behind her.

  Tah entering my cabin in such a state of dress was a fantasy I possessed neither the time nor the courage to entertain. Before I panicked completely, I decided to ask a really stupid question.

  "What is it?"

  She laughed, and I felt rather than heard her silent footsteps across the cabin's deck. When I could feel the warmth radiating from her entire length, I wheezed my lungs into a semblance of action. "Tah, why are you here?"

  "You are the Guide, Korvas. The one who will lead the Hero to challenge and defeat the Destroyer. I am the Blade you want." Her arms stole beneath my blanket and gently pulled it from me. "Choose me," she said as her hands danced here and there upon my person.

  "The choice has already been made—" I cannot quite describe the moves she made, but the lights flashing in front of my eyes were quite startling.

  "No one, Korvas—man, woman, creature, or god—can defeat me. I have lived off of the tale of the Hero and the Destroyer since I was old enough to swing a blade. This is the challenge I need, Korvas. Lead me to fight the Destroyer."

  My own hands evolved a life of their own, and I noticed right away that her gown, what there had been of it, was now gone. It is Angh's guess where she kept her weapons, but I had no doubt she was armed.

  Honesty, with regret, fought its way to the surface. I managed to hold her at arm's length and retrieve my blanket. "If it was up to me, Tah, I'd be happy to choose you. But the Seeker, my brother, found the Blade. Somehow I'm supposed to guide Abrina to the battle, but my brother Tayu chose the Blade."

  I expected her either to walk out or slit my throat. Instead she pushed me back toward my bunk. "As you seek the Destroyer, Korvas, may I tag along?"

  The back of my legs hit the bunk and I sat down rather more abruptly than I thought dignified. "What about your master?"

  She laughed with the sound of a million silver bells as she straddled me with her knees and bent me back until I was flat on the bed. "Lem Vyle would witness a fight between the Destroyer and a human. He admires a good fight."

  "If Manku won the contest, would Vyle hire the god for his bodyguard?"

  She laughed again as her breasts brushed my chest and her lips prowled around my left ear. "He's wealthy enough to buy a god. But you needn't worry about Lem Vyle. He will want to be there because, as I have heard him say, 'Wherever a god touches the world, money is to be made there'."

  "Your master sounds . . . very spiritual—" By Angh's nose hairs, I was beginning to gibber. Passion, guilt, duty, honesty, and the strange feeling of not knowing whether I did or didn't want Tah—

  —I was cackling like a painted fool. Of course I wanted her. But what—oh, the demons of the underworld be damned, which is a silly thing to say, because by definition the demons are damned and—

  I reached out my hand and touched the god box. In my mind I asked, "What do I need right now?"

  In my mind it answered, "You're getting it."

  Just before I released my hold upon the edge of reality and let myself fall into this chasm of passion, there was a thought. My head said to itself, "Perhaps there are gods after all."

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  The next morning I awakened, smiled, and reached out my hand. There was nothing in the bunk with me except a memory. Had it been real? Had it been a dream? I opened my eyes, and there was Dentaat sitting on the floor staring at me with those unblinking eyes. I turned my back to him, tried to go back to sleep and recapture my images of Tah, but Dentaat's eyes made the back of my neck itch. After a few moments of that nonsense, I got out of bed, dressed myself, and made my way to the deck.

  The storm hadn't abated, but it seemed less fearsome in the gray daylight. Between the whistles of the wind in the rigging and the crashing of the waves against the hull, it promised to be a noisy morning. Above that noise, however, I heard cheering and laughing. Using rigging and railings for handholds, I pulled my way to the center of the deck, where there was a small crowd.

  The captain was there, as was Lem Vyle. In addition there were about fifteen members of the crew. I found an opening and wormed my way through until I could see Tah, dressed in a loincloth of minor imagination. She had a three-foot stick in each hand and was grinning at the five crewmen who surrounded her. Each crewman had a similar stick. All of the sticks had been dipped in some black sticky substance. I knew that because I could see five black-striped crewmen without sticks who were nursing their bruises. Tah was starting on her second batch of the morning.

  I made my way over to Lem Vyle and asked, "Why is she wearing out the good captain's crew?"

  Vyle laughed and pointed at Tah. "This is her exercise. She finds exercise partners by promising herself for the night to anyone who can stripe her." He turned to Abzu. "I believe they are ready, Captain."

  Abzu nodded and said, "Begin."

  In less time than it takes to tell about it, Tah pounded the five crewmen into the deck. As she fought, I detected something strange in Vyle's eyes. He looked worried, afraid for her. It would have made more sense for him, however, to have been worried for the crew.

  "Next five," she called as she laughed. A wave broke over the bow and sprayed everyone on deck. Tah glistening wet was an incredible sight. "Come, pick up a tar stick and play for a night with me."

  Abzu held up his hands. "Dear lady, I am afraid I must call off this sport. The storm seems determined to pick up, and I will be needing the sad remains of my sorry crew." He faced his crew, gave them a sad shake of his head, and said, "Back to your stations, lads, and lend a hand to the halt and lame."

  Tah swung her sticks and said, "I hardly have my breath up!" As the crew departed, she continued swinging at her shadow opponents until Abrina walked from behind me and asked, "May I?"

  Tah stopped and held out one of her sticks to the giantess. "Take this."

  Abrina lifted her ax. "I have mine." She unlaced and removed her leather blouse, went to a cast-iron capstan, drove in the head of her ax down the handle, removing it, and turned to face Tah. "I'm ready."

  Yes, the sight was magnificent, but now I was afraid for both of them. I shook Lem Vyle's sleeve. "Is this such a good idea?"

  Without removing his gaze from Tah, he nodded and said, "Tah has a devil in her. This may be what she needs."

  They circled each other on the deck. Sheer power was with the giantess, while agility went with the bodyguard. Tah pointed at Abrina's ax handle. "You should dip it in the tar. How else will I know when you've touched me?"

  Abrina smacked her hand with the log-sized handle. "You'll know,"

  Again I shook Vyle's sleeve. "Master Vyle, this is insanity. You must stop it."

  He looked at me, and as his lips smiled, his eyes did not. "My dear Korvas, they are fighting over you."

  "Me?" I fear I only mouthed the word, for I hadn't the breath to speak it.

  Vyle nodded and returned his gaze to the two women. "I know my Tah, Korvas. To do battle with a god, she would do anything."

  "Even if that includes betraying you?"

  "Anyt
hing." He nodded. "Tah is not a butcher, Korvas. She craves worthy competition."

  Tah struck with her stick at Abrina's leg, and more quickly than I believed possible the giantess blocked the swing with her ax handle and swung at Tah's head. The bodyguard ducked and returned by thrusting her stick at Abrina's face, another block, another return. Abrina was fast enough and her arms long enough to keep Tah and her stick at a distance, but she was too slow to land a telling blow. On the other hand, Tah was all over the dome of Abrina's defensive reach like an angry hornet, too fast to be killed, but not strong enough to fight her way through the screen.