THE GOD BOX

by Barry B. Longyear

  I puzzled on how the gods were going to get me out of this one. On the other hand, I thought, they may not. The tender mercies of Quaag just might be the kind of spiritual eye-opener the gods think I need to enlighten some shaded corner of my life. Could I find the strength to endure a year of unendurable pain? Could I find the strength to ask the gods for the strength?

  Oh well, I thought, faith that hasn't been tested isn't really faith at all; it's just an opinion.

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  In the dungeons beneath the King's palace, the smell of hot irons in my nostrils, I stood facing the most feared person in the world, the woman responsible for my father's death: the bloody horror herself, First Priestess of the Heterin Temple, First Priestess of the Sacred Flame, Tretia, first advisor to the King, and all-around wicked soul. Although her face brooked no hint of kindness, it carried a beauty of a different sort. It made me think of the magnificence of a tiger or great serpent: Admirable far away but carrying an edge of one's looming demise at close range.

  It was kind of curious to let play through my mind that somewhere and somewhen I was Tretia's husband, father, brother, lover, judge, slave, god, and executioner. Whatever happened to me in this reality, there were still a great many moves to be made. We in this existence have no appreciation of the sheer size, number, and complexity of the contests facing us. Somewhere we lose, somewhere we win, somewhere the match is rained out.

  Tretia sat in an ornate chair examining the god box as an aide whispered in her ear. When the whispering was concluded, the aide slinked off with all of the dignity of a weasel with hemorrhoids.

  Every now and then the priestess would frown. She looked up at me and said, "Speak to me, dog. I want to know the power behind this instrument."

  "I would be happy to tell you what I know, Your Eminence."

  "Proceed. If you lie once I will have your tongue drawn from your mouth with infinite patience."

  I suspected she meant she would have my tongue ripped out very, very slowly. "Please, Your Eminence. I am happy to tell you all that I know. If asked, the god box will take from you what you don't need, and it will grant you what you do need. However, there is a warning: what you need and what you think you need are different creatures."

  She nodded at someone behind me and my right arm was pulled up until I could touch the nape of my neck. Liquid fire poured through my shoulder.

  "Again, dog. Tell me of the power of this instrument."

  "I did!" Then I screamed.

  The priestess crossed her legs as she continued to examine the god box. Directly to the gods I turned over my pain. It then became bearable. Not fun, but bearable.

  "My man Shadows, there, had to chase you not only halfway around the world, thousands of miles at an instant, he had to chase you through time, and apparently through multiple existences. Are you saying this is what this instrument granted you?"

  "Yes."

  "Traveling through time was your request?"

  "No, Eminence. I simply asked for what I needed. The choice was left to the god box."

  She examined the tiny chest of drawers. "This is what this box did for you?"

  "Yes, Your Eminence. Or at least it is what the gods did through the box."

  "The gods? Then this is magic?"

  "How do you mean, Your Eminence?"

  "Magic is the power that coerces the gods to do the magician's bidding. Is this box of yours magic?"

  "Then it is not magic, Your Eminence. It does not coerce the gods but only gives the gods a means through which they can do for you what you need."

  "Need? Who determines these needs?"

  "The gods, Your Eminence."

  "By what lights? What one needs for what?"

  "I know not, Your Eminence. The gods have lights of their own."

  "Why did the gods do all of these things for you, dog? If I am to believe Captain Shadows, you were brought back from death any number of times. Not just from the edge of death, mind you, but back from the stone-cold fly-attracting variety."

  "I suppose, Your Eminence, it is what the gods determined I needed each time, and I can't argue with that."

  "Who are you, dog? What are you? A petty criminal, part of the underwashed and unscented underclass of Iskandar. Why would the gods favor you thus?"

  "The gods favor all of us, Your Eminence. Doesn't the Heterin faith teach that to be so?"

  She leaned back in her chair and observed me down the length of her nose. "You presume to instruct a high priestess in her own faith?"

  "Of course not, Your Eminence. I only—"

  "Be silent." She looked again at the box. "What you needed was a trip through time, eh?"

  "Several, actually—" The pain in my shoulder became a crowd.

  She stood up and looked me in the face. "Dog, I doubt if you have any idea of the significance of the events you have experienced. Let it suffice to say that the only true faith in this world is faced with a grave danger. Unless you immediately place all that you know in my care, there may be no tomorrow for any of us."

  "I beg you to believe me, Eminence. I will do whatever you wish."

  "Will you answer my questions fully, holding nothing back?"

  "I swear it, Your Eminence."

  Another bureaucratic creature slithered out of the masonry and whispered in Tretia's ear. She nodded, whispered something back, and dismissed the thing with a wave of her hand. Her eyes aimed in my direction.

  "You have heard of the Hero and the Destroyer, haven't you, dog?"

  "Yes, Eminence. In the oracle, I am the Mirror of the Second. In the Itkah version—"

  "Enough of this sacrilege!" interrupted Tretia as the crowd of pain in my shoulder became a population.

  "No! I speak the truth! I swear it!"

  She nodded at the guard who was making a twist pastry out of my arm, and the pressure in my shoulder eased a bit. "Answer me, then, Mirror, a few questions."

  "As you command, Your Eminence."

  "Who is the Second?"

  "He was my twin brother, Tayu."

  "Was?"

  "He died shortly after naming the Hero—or Heroine. She is the Blade in the original version of the oracle. I have seen the original version—"

  "Her name, dog."

  "Abrina. Abrina, daughter of Shamas of the Omergunts."

  Everyone laughed at the thought of an Omergunt being able to do anything but stink. Perhaps they were also laughing at Abrina being a woman. That made me mad, and I looked around at the guards. "She could slay the lot of you in an eyeblink."

  "Where is she now, dog?"

  "I last saw her in Ahmrita as she was becoming wed to the Destroyer, Manku."

  "Sacrilege again," declared Tretia. She looked at Shadows. "Captain, what of this?"

  "Chasing him, Your Eminence, I rode the limit of the powers at your command all of the way to the shores of the Sea of Manku before catching up with him in Iskandar. I saw no wedding."

  "Did you see this woman?"

  "I saw no woman there."

  Tretia handed the god box to a servant and folded her arms as she looked at me with eyes as gray as any storm at sea. "You are wasting my time, dog. What can you say to prove to me that any of this you say is true?"

  "Ahjrah was the First."

  The priestess sat up. "That again?"

  "Ahjrah, the Nant priestess whose father and mother were killed by the agents of Pherris, First Priest of the Heterin Temple before you, Great Tretia. Ahjrah was the First of the Oracle of Heteris."

  The priestess studied me for a long time. ''There is no way you could have known that. It is the most closely guarded secret of the Heterin faith."

  "Who can keep secrets from the gods, Your Eminence?"

  "Indeed." She glanced at Captain Shadows for a moment, then nodded at the guards who were holding me. "Release him for the time being." I wiggled my
fingers as the blood returned to them. "Your name again; was it Gorbas?" asked Tretia.

  "Korvas, Your Eminence. With a kay."

  "Very well. Korvas, the Heterin faith honors the goddess Heteris, and it is through her revelations that we have come to know of the greatest test of mankind through the battle of the Hero and the Destroyer. We know that if the Destroyer fails, our goddess Heteris, the goddess of flame and goodness, will die. We will all die with her as did the Elassans and the Mankuas when their gods deserted them."

  "I have learned this much, Your Eminence. The gods never desert us; when we find ourselves alone, we have deserted the gods."

  "The faith of a simpleton," she remarked with just a touch of scorn.

  "Even so, Eminence."

  "The test of mankind, Korvas: What of that?"

  "As I said, Your Eminence, my task was to give away the bride at a wedding. There was no test of mankind invented by the gods. The gods have repeatedly told me that we invent our own tests and their consequences. If the end of the world comes, we will be the ones who bring it and without the assistance of the gods."

  The Heterin priestess laughed. "If that is so, then what purpose do the gods serve?"

  "If we ask for their help, they grant us what we need and relieve us of what we don't need."

  Tretia held up the god box. "The same as this?"

  "Yes, Your Eminence. It is the same for any god box, not just that one. You may even make one of your own."

  "Make my own?"

  "Any kind of container will work, Your Eminence. Once I even used my vest pocket."

  "That time did you receive what you needed?"

  "Every time, Your Eminence. It didn't always look like what I needed at the time it happened, but eventually I saw the need."

  She held the box in both of her hands and turned it over. "I will be frank with you, Korvas. It seems too simple. I've studied formulas, stars, charts, and scriptures for decades to obtain the power of the gods. You have as much as said that I am holding exactly that in my hands right now, and that I need nothing more than to ask for what I want."

  "Not what you want, Your Eminence; what you need. And I think I mentioned what you need and what you think you need are different."

  She nodded. "I remember." She smiled with sly lips and held out the box. "Shadows, ask it for what you need."

  Captain Shadows bowed before the Heterin priestess. "Your Eminence, with all of this talk we are wasting time with this gutter rat. Let me turn him over to Quaag and his hot needles."

  "All in good time, Captain. First, ask the box for what you need."

  Shadows snorted angrily and took the god box in his hands. He laughed through his black beard, and the sound gave my spine a chill. "Little box, little box, this is Pagas Shadows. Give me what I need—"

  The entire room filled with that strange heat shimmer as warps opened on all sides. Through the warps came three, then four, five Captain Shadowses! All of the Heterin captains who had been chasing me through this and that time, this and that dimension caught up to this particular Shadows all at the same time.

  They saw each other and froze for an instant. The dungeon then filled with moaning and screaming more hideous than anything ever imported from the underworld. They all drew their swords and waded into each other cursing, screaming, and hacking. In a moment all of them were down save for the one who had asked for what he needed. He stared at the decapitated bodies on the dungeon floor. All of the heads were still alive, rolling their eyes and snapping their teeth.

  Captain Shadows just stood there, the god box in his hands, his eyes staring blankly at the floor. Tretia came from behind her chair and stood next to the captain. She snapped her fingers in front of Shadows's face.

  "Captain? Captain Shadows? Pagas?" She pushed the captain, and Shadows tipped over backwards and fell flat on the floor, his eyes still fixed open. "His mind has gone," said Tretia. The priestess looked at me, her expression hovering between horror and admiration. "Korvas, what do you suppose the gods thought he needed?"

  I held out my hands. "If I could think as the gods, Your Eminence, I would be the gods." I rubbed my chin and chuckled as a thought entered my mind. "But perhaps they thought what the captain needed was a good look at himself."

  The priestess gestured with her hand, and one of the guards picked up the god box and handed it to her. Tretia held the box and looked at me. "If I should ask it for what I need, would I too be destroyed?"

  I shook my head. "I do not know, Your Eminence. I have seen everything from love and diamonds to death and insanity come from the box. In asking it for what one needs, one might receive a judgment upon one's life. But I am beginning to believe that only men judge. The gods are there to forgive, to pick up the pieces, and to pull lives together. The box never punishes, however all of this butchery might look. Note the captain did all his own chopping."

  Tretia resumed her seat, crossed her legs, and looked at the god box. "What do I . . ." She paused, touched an index finger to a temple, and shook her head. "No. That would be selfish to ask only for myself. After all, I am the first priestess of the Heterin Temple and the close advisor to the King." She stroked the box and with a sly smile said, "Little box, what do I and the people of Iskandar need?" Her sly smile grew into a wide grin. "This way, if I am destroyed, so too will be the people of Iskandar."

  As I was silently thinking of how generous her request had been, a drawer opened. I and the two guards craned our necks to see what was in it. Tretia looked up, a puzzled look upon her face. "Korvas, what are those?"

  I took a step forward and looked. Immediately I praised the wisdom of the gods as well as cursed them for making me almost break my ribs trying to suppress a laugh. There would be no more palace intrigue, for no one would ever whisper to the priestess again. Neither would she be able to approach the King. Hence her power over the King would evaporate. As her ability to exercise clandestine power waned, the yoke of fear would lift from the neck of Iskandar, and the people would get what they needed: freedom.

  As her power eroded, her opportunities to develop personal humility would increase. Thus both the people and the priestess would get what they needed. "They are delicious. Try one, Your Eminence. They are called butnuts."

  "Butnuts?" She repeated, curling a lip. She held the god box toward me. "You first."

  "With pleasure, Your Eminence." I reached toward the drawer.

  "Close your eyes, dog."

  "Of course." I closed my eyes, plucked a nut from the drawer, and popped it into my mouth. When she saw me chewing, the priestess tried one herself. Her eyebrows arched. "These are amazingly delicious!"

  She popped another into her mouth as the two guards frowned, wrinkled their noses, glanced at each other, and began edging away. "This is indeed the food of the gods!" She emptied the tiny drawer into her lap and began tossing them into her mouth. "More of these. I must have more, Korvas." She opened another drawer, and it too was filled with butnuts.

  "Bring me a large bowl," she ordered. Both guards left the dungeon at a dead run to do the priestess' bidding. When they didn't return immediately, I collected the helmets from the snapping heads at my feet and helped the priestess fill them. The god box produced enough nuts to fill four of the helmets. Tretia shook the god box. "It's empty." She looked at me as she stuffed more of the nuts into her mouth. "This will not last me for long! I must have more!"

  "Your Eminence, if you are very very frugal with the nuts you have here, I know where I can obtain more. It will take many days travel, however."

  "Go." She pulled a heavy purse from the folds of her robe and threw it at me. "Spare no expense." She tossed down another handful of nuts as one of her whispering lizards slithered into the dungeon. He came within ten feet of the priestess and stopped as though his face had been smacked with a griddle stone. Tretia snapped at him, "Well? What do you want?"

  The man looked at me as a yellow-green color worked its way up from his throat to his face. "My
most . . . humble apologies, Your Eminence." He backed away a few feet as he said, "I seem to have forgotten what it was I was going to say." He ran from the room.

  "How strange," the priestess remarked. Tretia turned her head and nodded at me. "Never mind about that. Get going, Korvas. If you fail to bring me the nuts, there will be no place in this kingdom where you can hide from me."

  "I will bring them, Your Eminence, and gladly. You may depend on me. May I have my god box?"

  "You are certain that one of my own manufacture will work as well?"