“Have you ever heard of a country called Istanzia?” said Simony. “It wasn’t very big. It had nothing anyone wanted. It was just a place for people to live.”
“Omnia conquered it fifteen years ago,” said Didactylos.
“That’s right. My country,” said Simony. “I was just a kid then. But I won’t forget. Nor will others. There’s lots of people with a reason to hate the Church.”
“I saw you standing close to Vorbis,” said Urn. “I thought you were protecting him.”
“Oh, I was, I was,” said Simony. “I don’t want anyone to kill him before I do.”
Didactylos wrapped his toga around himself and shivered.
The sun was riveted to the copper dome of the sky. Brutha dozed in the cave. In his own corner, Vorbis tossed and turned.
Om sat waiting in the cave mouth.
Waited expectantly.
Waited in dread.
And they came.
They came out from under scraps of stone, and from cracks in the rock. They fountained up from the sand, they distilled out of the wavering sky. The air was filled with their voices, as faint as the whispering of gnats.
Om tensed.
The language he spoke was not like the language of the high gods. It was hardly language at all. It was a mere modulation of desires and hungers, without nouns and with only a few verbs.
…Want…
Om replied, mine.
There were thousands of them. He was stronger, yes, he had a believer, but they filled the sky like locusts. The longing poured down on him with the weight of hot lead. The only advantage, the only advantage, was that the small gods had no concept of working together. That was a luxury that came with evolution.
…Want…
Mine!
The chittering became a whine.
But you can have the other one, said Om…. Dull, hard, enclosed, shut-in…
I know, said Om. But this one, mine!
The psychic shout echoed around the desert. The small gods fled.
Except for one.
Om was aware that it had not been swarming with the others, but had been hovering gently over a piece of sun-bleached bone. It had said nothing.
He turned his attention on it.
You. Mine!
I know, said the small god. It knew speech, real god speech, although it talked as though every word had been winched from the pit of memory.
Who are you? said Om.
The small god stirred.
There was a city once, said the small god. Not just a city. An empire of cities. I, I, I remember there were canals, and gardens. There was a lake. They had floating gardens on the lake, I recall. I, I. And there were temples. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory.
Om felt sick. This wasn’t just a small god. This was a small god who hadn’t always been small…
Who were you?
And there were temples. I, I, me. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. The glory of. Thousands were sacrificed. Me. To the greater glory.
And there were temples. Me, me, me. Greater glory. Such glory temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid dream temples that reached to the sky. Me, me. Sacrificed. Dream. Thousands were sacrificed. To me the greater sky glory.
You were their God? Om managed.
Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory.
Can you hear me?
Thousands sacrificed greater glory. Me, me, me.
What was your name? shouted Om.
Name?
A hot wind blew over the desert, shifting a few grains of sand. The echo of a lost god blew away, tumbling over and over, until it vanished among the rocks.
Who were you?
There was no answer.
That’s what happens, Om thought. Being a small god was bad, except at the time you hardly knew that it was bad because you only barely knew anything at all, but all the time there was something which was just possibly the germ of hope, the knowledge and belief that one day you might be more than you were now.
But how much worse to have been a god, and to now be no more than a smoky bundle of memories, blown back and forth across the sand made from the crumbled stones of your temples…
Om turned around and, on stumpy legs, walked purposefully back into the cave until he came to Brutha’s head, which he butted.
“Wst?”
“Just checking you’re still alive.”
“Fgfl.”
“Right.”
Om staggered back to his guard position at the mouth of the cave.
There were said to be oases in the desert, but they were never in the same place twice. The desert wasn’t mappable. It ate map-makers.
So did the lions. Om could remember them. Scrawny things, not like the lions of the Howondaland veldt. More wolf than lion, more hyena than either. Not brave, but with a kind of vicious, rangy cowardice that was much more dangerous…
Lions.
Oh, dear…
He had to find lions.
Lions drank.
Brutha awoke as the afternoon light dragged across the desert. His mouth tasted of snake.
Om was butting him on the foot.
“Come on, come on, you’re missing the best of the day.”
“Is there any water?” Brutha murmured thickly.
“There will be. Only five miles off. Amazing luck.”
Brutha pulled himself up. Every muscle ached.
“How do you know?”
“I can sense it. I am a god, you know.”
“You said you could only sense minds.”
Om cursed. Brutha didn’t forget things.
“It’s more complicated than that,” lied Om. “Trust me. Come on, while there’s some twilight. And don’t forget Mister Vorbis.”
Vorbis was curled up. He looked at Brutha with unfocused eyes, stood up like a man still asleep when Brutha helped him.
“I think he might have been poisoned,” said Brutha. “There’s sea creatures with stings. And poisonous corals. He keeps moving his lips, but I can’t make out what he’s trying to say.”
“Bring him along,” said Om. “Bring him along. Oh, yes.”
“You wanted me to abandon him last night,” said Brutha.
“Did I?” said Om, his very shell radiating innocence. “Well, maybe I’ve been to Ethics. Had a change of heart. I can see he’s with us for a purpose now. Good old Vorbis. Bring him along.”
Simony and the two philosophers stood on the clifftop, looking across the parched farmlands of Omnia to the distant rock of the Citadel. Two of them looking, anyway.
“Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I’d smash that place like an egg,” said Simony, leading Didactylos down the narrow path.
“Looks big,” said Urn.
“See the gleam? Those are the doors.”
“Look massive.”
“I was wondering,” said Simony, “about the boat. The way it moved. Something like that could smash the doors, right?”
“You’d have to flood the valley,” said Urn.
“I mean if it was on wheels.”
“Hah, yes,” said Urn, sarcastically. It had been a long day. “Yes, if I had a forge and half a dozen blacksmiths and a lot of help. Wheels? No problem. But—”
“We shall have to see,” said Simony, “what we can do.”
The sun was on the horizon when Brutha, his arm around Vorbis’s shoulders, reached the next rock island. It was bigger than the one with the snake. The wind had carved the stones into gaunt, unlikely shapes, like fingers. There were even plants lodging in crevices in the rock.
“There’s water somewhere,” said Brutha.
“There’s always water, even in the worst deserts,” said Om. “One, oh, maybe two inches of rain a year.”
“I can smell something,” said Brutha, as his feet stopped treading on sand and crunched up the limestone
scree around the boulders. “Something rank.”
“Hold me over your head.”
Om scanned the rocks.
“Right. Now bring me down again. And head for that rock that looks like…that looks very unexpected, really.”
Brutha stared. “It does, too,” he croaked, eventually. “Amazing to think it was carved by the wind.”
“The wind god has a sense of humor,” said Om. “Although it’s pretty basic.”
Near the foot of the rock huge slabs had fallen over the years, forming a jagged pile with, here and there, shadowy openings.
“That smell—” Brutha began.
“Probably animals come to drink the water,” said Om.
Brutha’s foot kicked against something yellow-white, which bounced away among the rocks making a noise like a sackful of coconuts. In the stifling empty silence of the desert, it echoed loudly.
“What was that?”
“Definitely not a skull,” lied Om. “Don’t worry…”
“There’s bones everywhere!”
“Well? What did you expect? This is a desert! People die here! It’s a very popular occupation in this vicinity!”
Brutha picked up a bone. He was, as he well knew, stupid. But people didn’t gnaw their own bones after they died.
“Om—”
“There’s water here!” shouted Om. “We need it! But—there’s probably one or two drawbacks!”
“What kind of drawbacks?”
“As in natural hazards!”
“Like—?”
“Well, you know lions?” said Om desperately.
“There’s lions here?”
“Well…slightly.”
“Slightly lions?”
“Only one lion.”
“Only one—”
“—generally a solitary creature. Most to be feared are the old males, who are forced into the most inhospitable regions by their younger rivals. They are evil-tempered and cunning and in their extremity have lost all fear of man—”
The memory faded, letting go of Brutha’s vocal cords.
“That kind?” Brutha finished.
“It won’t take any notice of us once it’s fed,” said Om.
“Yes?”
“They go to sleep.”
“After feeding—?”
Brutha looked around at Vorbis, who was slumped against a rock.
“Feeding?” he repeated.
“It’ll be a kindness,” said Om.
“To the lion, yes! You want to use him as bait?”
“He’s not going to survive the desert. Anyway, he’s done much worse to thousands of people. He’ll be dying for a good cause.”
“A good cause?”
“I like it.”
There was a growl, from somewhere in the stones. It wasn’t loud, but it was a sound with sinews in it. Brutha backed away.
“We don’t just throw people to the lions!”
“He does.”
“Yes. I don’t.”
“All right, we’ll get on top of a slab and when the lion starts on him you can brain it with a rock. He’ll probably get away with an arm or a leg. He’ll never miss it.”
“No! You can’t do that to people just because they’re helpless!”
“You know, I can’t think of a better time?”
There was another growl from the rock pile. It sounded closer.
Brutha looked down desperately at the scattered bones. Among them, half-hidden by debris, was a sword. It was old, and not well-made, and scoured by sand. He picked it up gingerly by the blade.
“Other end,” said Om.
“I know!”
“Can you use one?”
“I don’t know!”
“I really hope you’re a fast learner.”
The lion emerged, slowly.
Desert lions, it has been said, are not like the lions of the veldt. They had been, when the great desert had been verdant woodland.* Then there had been time to lie around for most of the day, looking majestic, in between regular meals of goat.** But the woodland had become scrubland, the scrubland had become, well, poorer scrubland, and the goats and the people and, eventually, even the cities, went away.
The lions stayed. There’s always something to eat, if you’re hungry enough. People still had to cross the desert. There were lizards. There were snakes. It wasn’t much of an ecological niche, but the lions were hanging on to it like grim death, which was what happened to most people who met a desert lion.
Someone had already met this one.
Its mane was matted. Ancient scars criss-crossed its pelt. It dragged itself towards Brutha, back legs trailing uselessly.
“It’s hurt,” said Brutha.
“Oh, good. And there’s plenty of eating on one of those,” said Om. “A bit stringy, but—”
The lion collapsed, its toast-rack chest heaving. A spear was protruding from its flank. Flies, which can always find something to eat in any desert, flew up in a swarm.
Brutha put down the sword. Om stuck his head in his shell.
“Oh no,” he murmured. “Twenty million people in this world, and the only one who believes in me is a suicide—”
“We can’t just leave it,” said Brutha.
“We can. We can. It’s a lion. You leave lions alone.”
Brutha knelt down. The lion opened one crusted yellow eye, too weak even to bite him.
“You’re going to die, you’re going to die. I’m not going to find anyone to believe in me out here—”
Brutha’s knowledge of animal anatomy was rudimentary. Although some of the inquisitors had an enviable knowledge of the insides of the human body that is denied to all those who are not allowed to open it while it’s still working, medicine as such was frowned upon in Omnia. But somewhere, in every village, was someone who officially didn’t set bones and who didn’t know a few things about certain plants, and who stayed out of reach of the Quisition because of the fragile gratitude of their patients. And every peasant picked up a smattering of knowledge. Acute toothache can burn through all but the strongest in faith.
Brutha grasped the spear-haft. The lion growled as he moved it.
“Can’t you speak to it?” said Brutha.
“It’s an animal.”
“So are you. You could try to calm it down. Because if it gets excited—”
Om snapped into concentration.
In fact the lion’s mind contained nothing but pain, a spreading nebula of the stuff, overcoming even the normal background hunger. Om tried to encircle the pain, make it flow away…and not to think about what would happen if it went. By the feel of things, the lion had not eaten for days.
The lion grunted as Brutha withdrew the spearhead.
“Omnian,” he said. “It hasn’t been there long. It must have met the soldiers when they were on the way to Ephebe. They must have passed close by.” He tore another strip from his robe, and tried to clean the wound.
“We want to eat it, not cure it!” shouted Om. “What’re you thinking of? You think it’s going to be grateful?”
“It wanted to be helped.”
“And soon it will want to be fed, have you thought about that?”
“It’s looking pathetically at me.”
“Probably never seen a week’s meals all walking around on one pair of legs before.”
That wasn’t true, Om reflected. Brutha was shedding weight like an ice-cube, out here in the desert. That kept him alive! The boy was a two-legged camel.
Brutha crunched towards the rock pile, shards and bones shifting under his feet. The boulders formed a maze of half-open tunnels and caves. By the smell, the lion had lived there for a long time, and had quite often been ill.
He stared at the nearest cave for some time.
“What’s so fascinating about a lion’s den?” said Om.
“The way it’s got steps down into it, I think,” said Brutha.
Didactylos could feel the crowd. It filled the barn.
&nb
sp; “How many are there?” he said.
“Hundreds!” said Urn. “They’re even sitting on the rafters! And…master?”
“Yes?”
“There’s even one or two priests! And dozens of soldiers!”
“Don’t worry,” said Simony, joining them on the makeshift platform made of fig barrels. “They are Turtle believers, just like you. We have friends in unexpected places!”
“But I don’t—” Didactylos began, helplessly.
“There isn’t anyone here who doesn’t hate the Church with all their soul,” said Simony.
“But that’s not—”
“They’re just waiting for someone to lead them!”
“But I never—”
“I know you won’t let us down. You’re a man of reason. Urn, come over here. There’s a blacksmith I want you to meet—”
Didactylos turned his face to the crowd. He could feel the hot, hushed silence of their stares.
Each drop took minutes.
It was hypnotic. Brutha found himself staring at each developing drip. It was almost impossible to see it grow, but they had been growing and dripping for thousands of years.
“How?” said Om.
“Water seeps down after the rains,” said Brutha. “It lodges in the rocks. Don’t gods know these things?”
“We don’t need to.” Om looked around. “Let’s go. I hate this place.”
“It’s just an old temple. There’s nothing here.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Sand and rubble half-filled it. Light lanced in through the broken roof high above, on to the slope that they had climbed down. Brutha wondered how many of the wind-carved rocks in the desert had once been buildings. This one must have been huge, perhaps a mighty tower. And then the desert had come.
There were no whispering voices here. Even the small gods kept away from abandoned temples, for the same reason that people kept away from graveyards. The only sound was the occasional plink of the water.
It dripped into a shallow pool in front of what looked like an altar. From the pool it had worn a groove in the slabs of the floor all the way to a round pit, which appeared to be bottomless. There were a few statues, all of them toppled; they were heavy-proportioned, lacking any kind of detail, each one a child’s clay model chiseled in granite. The distant walls had once been covered with some kind of bas-relief, but it had crumbled away except in a few places, which showed strange designs that mainly consisted of tentacles.
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