Bersla began to splutter a denial, but there was a muscular oarsman sitting just behind the fat priest, and he held one hand up with the fingers stretched wide and two fingers of his other hand clearly visible. Then he winked at Sorgan.
“Let me guess,” Sorgan said to Bersla then. “I’ve got a strong hunch that your tree-stump tub has rolled out from under you seven times already this month.”
Bersla’s eyes went wide. “How did you—?” Then he broke off.
“Instinct, fat man,” Sorgan replied. “I’ve spent most of my life at sea, so I know a lot about things that happen out on the water. Logs always roll over in the water when you don’t want them to, and seven’s a lucky—or unlucky—number, be it logs or dice.” He made a slight gesture to the muscular oarsman, and the fellow nodded. “Let’s go hit the beach, Veltan,” Sorgan said then. “I want to meet your sister, and then I’ll look around. If I’m going to defend her territory, there are a lot of things I’ll need to know.”
“How in the world did you know that Bersla’s log-canoe had rolled over seven times already this month?” Veltan asked as Sorgan rowed the skiff toward the beach.
“You weren’t watching very closely if you missed it,” Sorgan replied with a broad grin. “When I asked the fat priest how many times his log-boat had rolled over, one of the oarsmen held up seven fingers.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I haven’t got any idea. I’m going to talk with him later and find out, though. It’s entirely possible that he might turn out to be very useful later on.”
“Does he know that you want to talk with him?”
“Of course he does. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Veltan, but you don’t pay very close attention to what’s going on around you. That oarsman gave me a wink when he held up his fingers, and I pointed at my mouth after I threw ‘seven’ into the fat priest’s face. Pointing your finger at your mouth can mean two things—‘let’s eat’ or ‘let’s talk.’ Everybody knows that.”
“It does make sense, I suppose.”
“Are we going to have any trouble getting in to see your sister?”
“Probably not,” Veltan replied. “Aracia knows who I am, after all, and as soon as she sees me, she’ll know that I’ve got some information for her. I’ll introduce you to her, and then we can get down to business.”
It had seemed to Sorgan when he’d been on board the Trogite ship out in the bay that there’d been a kind of coherence about Aracia’s temple, but as the skiff came closer to shore he began to see some glaring inconsistencies. “I don’t want to sound critical or anything, Veltan,” he said, “but there’s a sort of slapdash quality about your big sister’s palace. Didn’t the people who were building it ever get together and establish some rules? In some places, the stones are very smooth, but in others they’re rough and lumpy.”
“There do seem to be quite a few inconsistencies,” Veltan agreed. “I’d say that the assorted work crews didn’t have anything to do with each other. Some of them appear to have spent a great deal of time polishing the stones, while others concentrated on piling up more rocks.”
“Something on the order of ‘prettier’ or ‘bigger,’ you mean?”
“That probably comes very close, Sorgan. I don’t imagine that Aracia really cared much one way or the other. As long as her temple kept growing, she was probably quite happy.”
“She’s not really very bright, is she?”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. Aracia has different needs than the rest of us do. She desperately needs adoration, and her priests spend all of their time adoring her. I’m fairly sure that they didn’t spend much of that vital time telling the work crews who were building the temple how to proceed, and that’s what probably led to these inconsistencies.”
“It’s possible, I guess.” Sorgan turned and looked a bit more closely at the beach. “No piers,” he grumbled.
“Building piers would take the work crews away from expanding big sister’s temple,” Veltan explained.
“We’ll have to climb all over her right away,” Sorgan said.
“I didn’t quite follow that.”
“We’ll need piers when we unload the people from about a hundred Trogite tubs, Veltan,” Sorgan declared. “They won’t be willing to swim in the dead of winter, you know.”
“Good point there,” Veltan said. “I think I’ll have to cheat,” he added glumly.
“Cheat?”
“I’ll make the piers myself. I know what they look like, and I’ll be able to set them up much faster than the temple work crews possibly could. Then, too, if I do it, we won’t have to listen to all the sniveling and complaining we’d get if we pulled the crews away from their ‘Holy’ task of expanding my sister’s temple until it’s fifty or a hundred miles square.”
“Which probably won’t take them much more than a few hundred years,” Sorgan added.
They pulled the skiff up onto the beach and then walked directly up to Aracia’s temple.
When they reached the entrance, however, Sorgan’s heart almost stopped beating. “Is that door made out of what I think it is?” he gasped.
“Oh, yes,” Veltan replied. “There might be a bit of bracing here and there, but most of it is gold.”
“There must be a ton of it!” Sorgan exclaimed.
“More than that, I’d say,” Veltan replied. “Gold is very heavy, and that’s quite a large door.”
“Are you saying that your sister just leaves it right out in the open like that?”
“It’s fairly safe, Sorgan. I doubt if a hundred men—or even two hundred—would be able to pick it up and carry it. Let’s go on inside and have our little chat with my sister, shall we?”
“Who are you, and why have you profaned the temple of Holy Aracia with your presence?” an officious-sounding young lady demanded as Veltan and Sorgan entered the corridor beyond the golden door.
“My name is Veltan,” Sorgan’s friend replied. “You may have heard of me—assuming that my sister remembers the rest of her family. You can go tell her that I’m here—or step aside and I’ll go tell her myself.”
“You would not dare. I am Alcevan, the priestess of Holy Aracia, and I speak for her in all matters.”
“Aracia has women priests now?” Veltan said, sounding more than a little startled. “Does Bersla know about this?”
The young lady sneered. “Fat Bersla only knows what Holy Aracia and I want him to know. He might think that he’s the most important person in Aracia’s Domain, but that’s no longer true. I am the one who speaks for Holy Aracia now, for I am her High Priestess and always will be.”
“That’s very nice, I suppose,” Sorgan told her, “but you’re going to be a doormat if you don’t get out of the way.” He put his hand on his sword-hilt in a threatening gesture.
Her eyes went very wide, and she turned and fled.
“Now that’s something I wouldn’t have expected,” Veltan said. “It seems that things are getting more and more complicated here in Aracia’s Domain.”
“The little lady could have been just making this up,” Sorgan said.
“It’s possible, maybe,” Veltan replied. “I think we’d better keep our eyes open, though. If the young woman was telling us the truth, Aracia’s playing a different game now.” He squinted slightly. “I think maybe you should hold on to this attitude you just threw into Alcevan’s face. Be sort of rough and abrupt. Let’s keep Aracia off balance if we possibly can.”
Sorgan was somewhat startled by the sheer size of the room at the end of the corridor. At the very center, of course, was a massive marble pedestal topped by a golden throne and backed with dark red drapes. Zelana’s sister was sitting on the throne, and the little lady Alcevan was kneeling before her and babbling.
Veltan went directly to the pedestal. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to anything the young lady’s telling you, dear sister,” he said. “We had a slight misunderstanding out in the corridor. I wasn’t
aware of the fact that you were now accepting women as members of your priesthood.”
Aracia straightened, glaring at her younger brother. “Who is this pagan, Veltan?” she demanded. “And why have you profaned my holy temple with his presence?”
“You know who I am, sister of Zelana,” Sorgan declared. “We met in Veltan’s Domain last summer. He brought me here to defend you and your people when the bug-things invade, but since you and your stupid priests don’t appreciate that, I’ll just go back out to the harbor and sail away. From what I’ve seen so far here in the Land of Dhrall, I’d imagine that the Vlagh will have you for breakfast some day very soon.” And then he stormed out of the room, winking at Veltan as he went by.
Veltan’s voice came softly out of nowhere. “Maybe just a trifle extreme there, Sorgan.”
“I think maybe I got carried away just a bit,” Sorgan admitted. “Your sister and that uppity lady-priest of hers irritated me more than a little.”
Veltan’s laugh came out of nowhere. “On second thought, Sorgan, don’t change a thing. I’m quite sure that my sister will come around fairly soon. Go on back out to your ship and wait. I’m almost certain that she’ll send someone out to talk with you before long.”
“I hope you’re right, Veltan,” Sorgan replied. “I didn’t leave myself very much room to wiggle out of this.”
2
The husky oarsman from Bersla’s log-canoe was leaning over the rail of the Ascension when Sorgan rowed his skiff out from the beach. “How did things go in the silly temple?” he asked when Sorgan pulled the skiff neatly in beside the ship.
“Things are sort of up in the air right now,” Sorgan replied.
“If I understood what your signal meant a while back, you wanted to talk with me about something.”
“I’ll be right with you,” Sorgan replied, starting up the rope ladder hanging down from the rail.
“This is a real fancy boat you’ve got here,” the native said.
“It’s not mine,” Sorgan replied, swinging his leg over the rail. “I borrowed it from a friend.” Then he squinted at the beefy native. “I’m just guessing here,” he said, “but I take it that you don’t have much use for that fat priest.”
“He might make pretty good bait if I wanted to go fishing for sharks.”
“It’d take a very big shark to eat that much,” Sorgan said with a grin. “If that’s the way you feel about him, why did you go to work for him?”
“Free food. I don’t have to work very hard, and Fat Bersla makes sure that we get fed regularly. We don’t eat as much as he does, but nobody else in the whole world eats as much as Bersla does.”
“It definitely shows,” Sorgan agreed. “You seem to keep track of how often that log-canoe of his rolls over.”
“That’s only natural, since I’m the one who rolls it.”
“Do you want to run that past me again? I didn’t quite follow you.”
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to do,” the native said with a broad grin. “All I have to do to get poor Fat Bersla soaking wet is lean toward one side or the other. As long as everybody is sitting up straight, the canoe will keep on sitting upright in the water. One quick lean toward one side or the other rolls that thing in the blink of an eye. Any time Bersla starts to relax, I tip his canoe over.”
“What for?”
“I don’t like him. Nobody really likes him. If I don’t roll his canoe every now and then, one of the other paddlers will. Bersla hasn’t gone home dry for about three years now. We get wet, too, but our clothes dry in a hurry. Bersla’s clothes are thick and fancy, so they take at least a week to dry out. That’s a big part of what this is all about. He has to keep on giving us food to eat, whether he goes out in his canoe or not.”
“You and I are going to get along just fine,” Sorgan said. “What’s your favorite kind of food?”
“Meat. Everybody likes meat.”
“I’ll see what I can do to chase down some meat for you.”
“What will you want in exchange?”
“Information, my friend. Information. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Platch,” the native replied. “What’s yours?”
“Sorgan Hook-Beak.”
“How did you ever get a name like that?”
“I had to work for it a long time ago. Let’s go have something to eat, shall we?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Platch replied.
Veltan came into the large cabin at the stern of the Ascension early the following morning. “It took me a while, but I managed to calm my sister just a bit. I explained some of the peculiarities of the Maag culture to her—after she’d sent the priestess Alcevan off on some meaningless errand. I made quite a big issue of what good warriors your people are. Aracia’s very arrogant, but she does know that her priests would be useless in a confrontation with the Creatures of the Wasteland.”
“Unless the bugs happen to be hungry,” Sorgan added.
“I mentioned that, yes. When you get right down to it, though, it’s very unlikely that Aracia or any of her servants will even see any of the servants of the Vlagh. Your scouts will tell the assorted priests that the bugs are out there and that they’re living on a steady diet of people, but all that we’re really doing is diverting their attention from the real invasion—the one that’s pointed at Long-Pass.”
“How would you say I should approach your sister?” Sorgan asked. “I might have been just a little too rough yesterday.”
Veltan squinted at the cabin ceiling. “You might want to be a bit more polite today—not too polite, of course. Swagger a bit and brag about what a great warrior you are and how you defeated the servants of the Vlagh back in sister Zelana’s Domain and helped Narasan in mine. Then tell her that you want to talk about gold. Gold doesn’t mean anything to Aracia, but she’ll probably try to make you lower your price. That’s when you should storm out again and come back out to this ship. Try to make it look like you’re just about ready to sail off and leave her here to fight her own war. This is very important, Sorgan. Don’t ever back down when you’re dealing with Aracia. She will come around when she realizes that you mean what you say.”
“You people play very rough games with each other, don’t you?”
“Indeed we do,” Veltan agreed. Then he smiled slyly. “Fun though,” he added.
Sorgan rowed the skiff back to the beach. Veltan offered to take up a set of oars to help, but Sorgan said “no” quite firmly. “I’m not trying to offend you, Veltan, but things go much more smoothly if there’s only one man rowing. We’d both look sort of silly if we were soaking wet when we went back into that throne room. If we happened to do something wrong, we could tip this skiff over almost as fast as Platch can roll Bersla’s log canoe.”
“Did he ever tell you why he does that every so often?” Veltan asked.
“It takes the wind out of the fat man’s sails,” Sorgan replied with a chuckle. “A man who’s soaking wet and dribbling water all over the floor doesn’t look very important. Platch despises Bersla, so he keeps him wet most of the time.”
Sorgan rowed the skiff up onto the same beach where he had beached her the previous day, and then he and Veltan went on up through the assorted buildings lying outside the temple.
Sorgan looked longingly at the ornate temple door. “I don’t suppose—” He left it hanging.
Veltan shook his head. “Sister Aracia wouldn’t hold still for that, Sorgan. We might encounter the same objections when we tell my sister that we’re going to have to tear down some of the outer reaches of her temple, but that door is much too important in my sister’s eyes for her to agree to it as your price. Then too, how would you move it? It weighs tons, and even if you managed to get your hands on it, the sheer weight would sink any ship you could bring into the harbor. Stick to the gold blocks, Sorgan. They’re much more convenient.”
They passed through the long corridor and entered the throne room. Fat Bersla was del
ivering a flowery speech, comparing Zelana’s sister to a sunrise, a hurricane, and an earthquake. Aracia’s attention, however, seemed to be a bit divided, since the young priestess Alcevan was standing beside the throne whispering on and on. Sorgan sensed a certain competition there. It seemed that Bersla and Alcevan were each doing everything they could think of to get Aracia’s attention.
Sorgan walked up to the marble pedestal and looked Aracia right in the face—which was probably against all the rules. “Well now,” he said. “Veltan tells me that you’re ready to listen to what I say.”
“Not right now,” Aracia replied with a note of irritation in her voice. “Takal Bersla is addressing me now.”
Sorgan drew his sword. “That’s not really much of a problem, you know. He’ll stop talking just as soon as I kill him.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Aracia exclaimed.
“Watch me,” Sorgan suggested in an offhand sort of way. “You’ve got a problem, and I’m here to solve it. Let’s dispense with all this foolishness and get down to business.” He purposefully crossed the marble floor to where Bersla had just stopped talking. The word “kill” seemed to have gotten his attention.
“You have finished your speech, haven’t you?” Sorgan asked, moving the point of his sword back and forth about six inches from Bersla’s face.
Bersla nervously backed away. “Holy Aracia will protect me,” he declared, still backing up.
“How?” Sorgan asked. “You did know that she’s not permitted to kill things, didn’t you? I don’t have those restrictions. I can kill anything—or anybody—whenever I feel like it. You’ve got a very simple choice, fat man. What it all boils down to is shut up or die. The choice is entirely yours, though, but you’d better hurry. My sword’s very thirsty right now.”
Bersla flinched back, and then he ran out of the room.
Veltan was smiling. “I’d say that there’s a certain charm to Hook-Beak’s directness, wouldn’t you, dear sister?”
“I will not tolerate this!” Aracia almost screamed.
“I think you’d better,” Sorgan said bluntly. “I came here to protect you and your people—for money, of course—so let’s get down to business. I’ll start protecting right after you pay me.”
The Younger Gods Page 6