by Dave Duncan
“You’ve been here?” D’ward was limping, panting, with sweat shining on his skin like silver, but Dosh was in no better shape.
“Course.”
“Describe it.”
Between puffs, Dosh tried to do justice to the temple of Visek. The innumerable minor buildings—shrines, barracks, libraries, colleges, refectories, dormitories, observatories—sprawled over many acres of tended parkland, interspersed with lakes and pools. There must be three or four thousand priests, priestesses, monks, nuns, and associated characters in residence.
“The main sanctuary is over there?” D’ward pointed a long arm.
“Probably. Yes, I think so. How’d you know that?”
“I can sense the holiness. What’s it look like?”
“Columns. A rectangle of them supporting a lintel, but no roof. It’s not like that hideous thing of Karzon’s in Tharg, though! Visek’s is bigger, white marble, breathtaking. One of the wonders of the world.”
They trod along a wide avenue flanked by night-scenting shrubbery and tall statuary. To Dosh’s nervous gaze, some of those mysterious figures tended to look very much like waiting reapers, although he was trying to assure himself that Zath would not dare seek out sacrifices in this place.
“How about an altar?” D’ward asked. “A holy of holies?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where’s the god, then?”
“They’re in the middle.”
After a moment, D’ward chuckled. “The Parent—the Father and the Mother? You know, Joalian’s a very handy sort of language! ‘Visek’ is abstract, so applied to a person it can mean masculine or feminine, singular or plural.”
“That’s true in all languages: Sussian, Randorian, Nagian, Thargian….”
“I know some that won’t work that way, but carry on. Where are they?”
“In the middle. On the throne at the top of the steps. Back to back. If you come in from this end, you’re facing the Father. From the other end, you see the Mother.” Dosh pointed. They had come around a curve, bringing the main temple into view, glimmering faintly in the moonlight. Even at this distance, its size was obvious, larger even than he remembered. It made the trees seem tiny.
D’ward muttered, “Mmph!” admiringly. “We’ll deal with the Father, then. Or would you rather wait outside?”
Oh, no! Dosh was too conscious of the lurking shadows in the gardens. His skin crawled and he wanted to stay close to the Liberator. He just kept on walking, trying to match his companion’s greedy strides.
As they neared the pillars, he made out a twinkle of lamps and vague shapes of people moving around just inside. There would be priests in attendance, even at this time of night, and they would certainly have some means of summoning guards. If they knew that the Vales’ most prominent heretic was within the sacred precincts, they would take him faster than a fish snapped gnats. D’ward must know what he was doing, mustn’t he? He must have plans or knowledge that he hadn’t bothered to pass on, mustn’t he?
Dosh worked a painfully dry mouth. “Does he know you’re coming?”
“He claims to be the All-Knowing, so I didn’t bother to write. We have no choice but to walk in the front door? We can’t sneak in through the side pillars?”
“Not unless you’re totally crazy. Nothing attracts attention like furtive.”
“I’ll trust your judgment and experience on that, Brother Dosh.”
“And we’ll have to make an offering, you know! Why didn’t you warn me to bring some money?”
“Because that money was not given for that purpose.”
Crazy! “They’ll still demand an offering,” Dosh muttered. His feet were sore and his legs ached.
Somewhere far off, someone was singing. There was no accompaniment, just a single voice in the night, soaring high in a lonely, wistful anthem, a woman or a boy caroling praise to the greatest of the gods. Or the greatest of the evil enchanters, if you believed D’ward. Dosh didn’t—not here, where the sanctity was as palpable as rock. Even the air felt old and holy.
Side by side, the newcomers mounted the steps—long, shallow steps that did not fit a man’s stride, with uneven risers so he had to watch where his feet were going and could not move with grace or ease. The marble was cold on bare feet, the night air even colder on bare skin and sweat-soaked hair. They reached the bases of the great pillars and entered a black puddle of shadow cast by Trumb. The lamps were obvious now, revealing turbaned, white-robed figures waiting within the entrance. The visitors would be questioned or at least asked to define their business.
Suppose the priests became suspicious? Suppose they began serious interrogation or called in the guards? D’ward would certainly give a false name, so what if poor Dosh were asked to confirm it? Then he would have to decide where his loyalty was and which side he believed in. In Nosokslope they shall come to D’ward in their hundreds, even the Betrayer. This might be where he discovered if he had ranked a mention in the Filoby Testament.
They passed between two marble piers, each larger than a house and taller than a tree. A white-ghost priest took a step toward them, touching his forehead. Dosh automatically responded with the same gesture. He did not quite see what D’ward did, but he thought the movement was not exactly orthodox—more like rubbing an eyebrow. The elderly priest could not have noticed the difference, for he held out his leather bag expectantly and his expression was benevolent…so far.
“Your troubles must be great, my sons, if you seek solace at this hour.”
“Our labors by day make us keep strange hours, Father.” D’ward spoke in Niolian, just as he had in his evening sermon. He never slowed his pace, striding past the priest and onward into the sanctuary.
Dosh sweated along at his side, resisting the temptation to look back. He could not believe it had been that easy!
“I just rang the doorbell,” D’ward murmured in Nagian, which was his preferred dialect.
“What do you mean?”
“Visek probably heard me get by that old fellow…. Never mind. I’m just whistling in the dark.”
He was not whistling and it was not dark! It was not bright either, of course, but Trumb was flooding the great space with light, and large candles burned around the holy figure ahead. They did not look large at this distance, but they must be. The great rectangle of white pillars and polished floor contained nothing except the plinth in the center, a truncated pyramid about half the width of the enclosure and not much over head height. On the top sat Father Visek, a marble god on a marble throne. Dosh had seen other gods much larger—the grotesque colossi of Karzon and Zath in the temple of the Man in Tharg, for example. Visek, he knew from memories of past visits, was scarcely more than life-size, or at least did not seem so from ground level.
The singing came from a boy at a corner of the pyramid, kneeling on the lowermost step. Then another boy walked out of the shadows to kneel at another corner. The first rose, touched his forehead in obeisance, walked away, and the second began to sing. Kids that age ought to have been in bed hours ago. There was no sign of anyone else nearby, but there must be at least a choirmaster skulking in the shadows and doubtless more singers awaiting their cue. The second singer was not as tuneful as the first, unsure of his key.
D’ward continued to stride forward. Dosh shuffled along at his side, wishing he had even an inkling of what was going to happen. He knew the Liberator provoked strange reactions from gods. With his own eyes, Dosh had seen Irepit appear to lend him a hand in Nosokvale only days ago. In a past that now seemed almost historical, Prylis had hailed D’ward like a long-lost friend. Karzon, the Man himself, had punched him on the jaw. That did not mean the Parent would not smite him with lightning or burn out his tongue and cut off his hands, which was the standard penalty for blasphemy.
The Father loomed above them, a majestic seated figure, hands on knees, flowing beard. If the marble had ever been colored, the tints had long since weathered away, but the features were still disce
rnible, stern but loving in the warm glow from the tall gold candlesticks. Reaching the base of the steps, Dosh prepared to kneel—and D’ward kept moving. Dosh grabbed him and hauled him back. “You can’t go up there!” he whispered. “Only the high priest—”
“Come along!”
D’ward seized Dosh’s arm in a painfully powerful grip and urged him up the stairway. The singer missed a note and then continued. Oh, gods! This was forbidden. The priests must be able to see. They would call in the guards. Dosh tried to look around and stumbled when the next step wasn’t where he expected….
Moon and candles had disappeared. He was in a tunnel. No, not a tunnel, for there was carpet under his feet. Somewhere indoors, though, being hurried along a level floor. Where had the god gone? The throne? The temple?
“Where are we?” he squeaked.
“Damned if I know,” D’ward said cheerily. “Watch out!”
Dosh sensed a very large place, a hall. The only light was a faint glow from up ahead, and D’ward released his grip to lead the way along the narrow path, twisting through a maze, a forest of miscellaneous objects, curved or angular, some very large, others small and heaped on top of one another—statues, tables, huge jars, candelabra, chairs, cauldrons, musical instruments, rolls of fabric, piles of what might be clothes, suits of armor, and thousands of other things, all pushed in together in no sort of order and in many places stacked higher than head height. The air was dry and musty. It was a gigantic storeroom, a junk merchant’s cellar run riot.
“What is this?”
“Damned if I know that, either. A museum? A kleptomaniac’s hoard? Offerings, I suppose. People keep bringing things, one must collect a lot of stuff over the centuries.”
Trying not to whimper, poor Dosh followed his guide. Why had he ever let himself get involved in whatever this was he was involved in? He needed to pee.
The light came from a wide doorway. D’ward walked through it. Dosh crept in behind him, trying to be inconspicuous. D’ward stopped.
Dosh peeked over his shoulder. The light would be too dim to read by. It cast no shadows and he could not see its source. The room was large, as big as Bandrops Advocate’s study, and just as cluttered and heaped as the antechamber. The only clear space was roughly triangular, its corners being D’ward himself and two huge chairs, angled toward each other. Everywhere else was packed with the same mindless jumble as the antechamber: furniture, figurines, boxes, pottery, birdcages, crystal, scrolls, weapons, and just about anything else a man could think of or ever want. Gold and gems glittered dimly under layers of dust. The air was stuffy, with the stale, acrid smell of a tomb.
The chairs were occupied. One held a man, the other a woman, both lying back motionless, with their hands folded in their laps. Their hair fell in frozen white waves to lap on their shoulders, their skin was as smooth as vellum, and their robes had long since faded to an indeterminate gray. The man’s beard reached to his waist. He rested his chin on his chest, seeming to stare at the woman’s feet, while she had her head back, gazing fixedly into space above him. Neither was heeding the visitors at all.
Silence. Dosh shivered violently. These could not be real people, of course, merely more images of the Father and the Mother, representations of the same dual god. They must have lain there for years, gathering dust, although they seemed to have escaped the film of cobweb that coated all the hodgepodge and bric-a-brac. Yet what sculptor could shape so convincingly and in what medium? Hair rose on the nape of his neck.
“Who is it?” muttered the man, not looking up, moving nothing but his mustache. His voice creaked, as if it had dried up from disuse.
After a long moment, the woman muttered, “A stranger. Come looking for a job, I expect.” She continued to stare blankly at nothing.
Pause. “Have we any vacant aspects now?”
Longer pause. “Don’t remember.” Very slowly she turned her head to stare at D’ward. Her face was unwrinkled, yet it conveyed a sense of age beyond imagining. Her eyes were dull—not filmed with cataracts, as old people’s often were, just lifeless glass. “Go away…. We are busy…. Come back in a hundred years.”
“I am D’ward Liberator, the one foretold in the Filoby Testament.”
The woman’s head drifted back to its original position.
Even D’ward seemed nonplussed. When nothing more was said, he bristled, putting his fists on his hips. “I am the Liberator! It is prophesied that I shall bring death to Death.”
“A reformer,” the woman muttered.
“Another? It never works. Send him away.”
Dosh’s teeth were trying to chatter. He took hold of his jaw with both hands and held his mouth open. His bladder felt as if was about to burst from sheer terror.
“I am D’ward Liberator. You two are Visek? How long have you been sitting there?”
“Go away,” the woman murmured.
“You are dying of boredom! I offer you a little excitement for a change, something new. I am going to slay Zath.”
The man sighed, stirring the silver hairs of his mustache again. “Who?”
“Zath!” D’ward was not even trying to hide his exasperation. “The one who calls himself the god of death. He sucks mana from human sacrifices. He is evil, a blot upon the Vales and your religion.”
Long pause. With glacial slowness the man looked up, his eyes showing the same dead indifference as the woman’s. “Then go and do it and stop bothering us.”
“I do not yet have the power. I need more mana. I go from node to node, recruiting followers, preaching my purpose, but I need help. Will you aid me? Will you lend me mana?”
Another sigh. “No.”
“Will you at least grant me protection while I am here in Niolvale, so that Zath’s minions cannot—”
“No. You are intruding. Play the Game like the others or pay the penalty. Begone.” The man closed his eyes and lowered his chin again.
“Strewth!” D’ward said angrily. “Play the Game? Zath has more mana than you do! He has more power, probably, than the whole Pentatheon together! What if he decides he would like to be Visek? He’ll kill you and take your place! What do you think of that move? Or don’t you cafe anymore?”
The awful, stuffy room swayed around Dosh. His blood hammered in his ears. These talking mummies could never be divine, so D’ward had been right all along, and the gods were merely human enchanters who had stretched out their lives for untold centuries. Spiders caught in their own web, dying of boredom! Everything he had ever believed was totally false, criminal rubbish. His stomach heaved.
It was the woman who reacted first to D’ward’s taunts, although reluctantly and with irritation. She peered at him. “You blaspheme against Visek.”
“It is the truth! Talk to Karzon or Eltiana or Astina! Damn, talk to crazy Tion if you trust him! Every night more people die so that Zath can suck mana from their deaths. Prylis told me that it was Visek, three thousand years ago, who banned human sacrifice in all the Vales—was that you or one of your predecessors?”
“It was us, I think,” the man mumbled, with the first hint of interest that he had shown. “Wasn’t it, dear?”
D’ward snorted. “Then Zath defies your edict! He is evil and deadly and dangerous to you. The prophecy—”
“We are god of prophecy. Among other things.”
“Others also prophesy. The prophecy says that I will bring death to Death. If the one who calls himself Zath were to become Visek, then he wouldn’t be Death anymore and he would be safe, wouldn’t he?”
“Blasphemy!” the woman quavered. Both of them were looking at D’ward now. Both were showing signs of anger, or at least disapproval.
“Astina will confirm what I say.”
“We must talk with the Maiden one day, dear,” the man mumbled.
“Yes, darling, we must.”
They would never get around to it….
D’ward thumped his fists against his hipbones. “I ask from you only what Astina gr
anted me: first, that she would defend me from his reapers within her domain, second, that she would issue a revelation to her priests to hold back the civil—”
“No,” said the man, closing his eyes again.
The woman uttered a creaky chuckle. “If you can’t defend yourself from those, how can you hope to handle a god?”
“But it will waste mana! You know that the more I have, the faster I will be able to garner more. I need help to build my—”
“Revolution?” The man yawned. “It doesn’t work. We built too well.”
D’ward swore under his breath, words Dosh did not know. “No one has ever managed to preach rebellion in more than two vales, so Prylis says.”
The woman moved her lips for a moment. “True.”
“I am in my fourth! I have lasted almost two fortnights already. I am something new, do you hear? Something you have never seen before! I am foretold by a chain of prophecy Zath has not broken in thirty years of trying. If you won’t guard me in Niolvale, will you at least watch my efforts? Will you watch to see how far I get, when and how I die?”
With glacial slowness, the man raised a hand and scratched at his beard with nails like small horn daggers. “That might be amusing,” he conceded.
“Haven’t seen anything new in a thousand years,” the woman muttered.
D’ward released a deep breath, as if he had won a victory. “Astina promised me one more thing. If I do survive to confront Zath on his node, then she will lend me some mana for the final—”
“Oh, no!” snapped the woman, and this time she actually stirred in her chair. “How could we ever trust you to pay it back? You say that Zath is a threat to us, but if you won, you would be stronger than he.”
“I gave my solemn word that—”
“Dragonshit.” Her pebbly eyes shifted to stare at Dosh, peering around the Liberator, and they seemed to come to life. “Who’s he?” Her voice rose to a screech: “You brought a native into our sanctum?”