Padan was just a bit surprised by the level of sophistication Sorgan’s scheme indicated. “Maags aren’t supposed to be that clever,” he murmured to himself.
“I think you’d better come along, Padan,” Sorgan said when they went out onto the deck of the Ascension. “I’m going to be playing a game of sorts, so I might miss a few reactions of Aracia or her assorted priests. If you happen to notice any degree of skepticism, let me know immediately. We don’t want any doubts floating around at this point.” Then he turned to his cousin. “Gather up the men who’ll be going with you and come along. I’ll give you your marching orders right there in the temple. I want Aracia and her priests to see you leave so that they’ll recognize you when you come back. Try to look brave and strong when I send you out, and frightened and timid when you come back. I’ll make an issue of how skilled you are as warriors when you march out. Then, when you come back whimpering, Aracia will believe just about everything you tell her about all the awful-awful you’ve witnessed.”
“This is a side of you I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, cousin,” Torl said. “You’re an excellent deceiver, aren’t you?”
“I’m probably the best,” Sorgan replied. “Let’s go frighten Zelana’s sister for an hour or so, and then I can come back to the Ascension and rest for a while. I’ve been running steadily for about three days now.”
They rowed on to the beach just below Aracia’s temple and then walked on up to the golden door. Evidently word had gotten out, and no priest—or priestess—tried to interfere as they marched on along the corridor that led to the throne room.
The fat priest Bersla was delivering another oration of praise when they entered Aracia’s throne room. His majestic voice faltered when Sorgan marched in, however.
“Are you just about through?” Sorgan asked in a flat, unfriendly tone of voice.
“I was just about to leave, mighty Sorgan.”
“No,” Sorgan said abruptly, “stay. There’s something I want you to see.”
“As you wish, mighty Sorgan,” Bersla replied in a squeaky sort of voice.
Sorgan approached the throne. “I’ve looked around your temple here, Lady Aracia,” he said, “and we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, I think, but for right now we need information—what kind of bugs are coming this way, anything new and unusual approaching, how close they are to where we are right now.” Then he gestured at Rabbit and Torl. “These men are the best, so they’ll be leading the scouting parties. I’m hoping that some of them will live long enough to bring back the information we need. There are many different varieties of bug-people. We know about quite a few of those, but there might be others as well. If there are, I want to know about them. We don’t want any surprises. We already know that bugs can come at us from under the ground, from up in trees, and even out of the empty air. There’s one variety that’s part bug and part bat, and it flies around biting people, and the people die immediately.”
Aracia shuddered. “How in the world did these things come into existence?”
Sorgan shrugged. “Their queen—the one called ‘the Vlagh’—comes up with the idea for these various creatures, and then she lays eggs. When the eggs hatch, there’s a whole new variety of bug. Worse yet, she lays those eggs by the thousands.”
“They’d only be infants,” the priestess Alcevan said. “They wouldn’t be much of a danger for quite some time.”
“I see that you’ve never spent much time around bugs,” Sorgan said. “Bugs only live for about six weeks, and then they die. The infancy of a bug only lasts for three or four days, and then it’s a full-grown adult, and it’ll kill anything the Vlagh wants it to kill. They’re not intelligent enough to be afraid of anything. I’ve seen two or three of them still attacking a fort after we’ve killed thousands of their friends. They just keep coming until they die.”
“That’s absurd!” Bersla declared.
“You’d better be ready for lots of absurd when the bug-people attack,” Torl said. “About the only thing we’ve found that gets their attention is fire. When you set fire to something, it tends to get a little confused.”
Then Sorgan gestured toward the door. “Take your men and go out there and see what you can find out. Don’t get too many of your men killed by taking chances. I need information, not dead friends. Find out what you can and then hurry back, and be very careful. You can die some other time. This time I want live men who can tell me what I need to know.”
Sorgan had moved his main force to the far western side of Aracia’s temple. “If there really was going to be an invasion by the bug-people, they’d reach this part of Aracia’s temple first,” he told Padan. “That means that we’ll need some kind of fort here to persuade Aracia and her priests that we are going to protect them. It won’t have to be too close to a real fort. The temple itself isn’t really that well-built, so the priests wouldn’t recognize real construction even if it walked up and bit them on the nose. We’ll move a few of the building blocks and maybe knock down a tower or two. Then we’ll have the men pretend to be building some kind of fort and let it go at that. What we’ll really be doing will be terrifying Aracia and her priests to the point that they’ll be afraid to come out of the central temple.”
“If this works out the way we want it to, we’ll have pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes of all time, Captain,” Padan said.
“Naturally,” Sorgan boasted. “No matter what I do, I’m always the best.” Then he laughed. “Sorry, Padan,” he said then. “It was just too good an opportunity to let slip by.”
“Where’s Veltan?” Padan asked. “I haven’t seen him for the last few days.”
“He’s nosing around over in the main temple,” Sorgan replied. “I need to know how much of our silly story the priests—and Aracia, of course—have swallowed whole. If there are any doubts over there, we might have to play some more exotic games.” Then he shivered. “Let’s get in out of the weather, Padan,” he said. “I hate winter.”
They went on back inside to a room that had a stove, and it wasn’t too much later when Veltan joined them.
“Well, Sorgan,” he said, “you’ve managed to terrify my sister’s priesthood.”
“That was sort of what we had in mind, wasn’t it?” Sorgan asked. “That’s why we’ve been waving bugs around every time we’re near any priest.”
“It’s you, not the bugs, that has them worried, Sorgan. They’re desperately trying to come up with some way to reduce your grip on Aracia. They’re afraid of you, and they hate you. It seems that you’ve got a tighter grip on Aracia than even we could imagine. I think it all goes back to Bersla. He had Aracia wrapped around his little finger with those stupid orations of his. Then you came along and pushed him back into a corner and threatened to kill him if he said one more word. He’s had Aracia under his control for years now, and then you walked in and took her away from him in just a day or so. Aracia had the title, but Bersla had the power. Now he doesn’t anymore.”
“Poor, poor Fat Bersla,” Sorgan murmured smugly.
“Now we come to the interesting part, Sorgan,” Veltan said. “Bersla wants to kill you—or persuade some lesser priest to do the job for him.”
“They don’t even have weapons, Veltan,” Sorgan scoffed.
“They do have knives, you know. They’re made of stone, but a good hard stab in the back with a stone knife will penetrate your skin and go in far enough to do very serious damage to your vital organs. Bersla’s doing everything he can think of to persuade some minor priest to stab you in the back. Quite a few of them are very interested by the offers Bersla has been waving in their faces. Instant promotion to the higher priesthood sounds very nice to young, ambitious priests who don’t stand too high in the Church of Aracia.”
“It sort of sounds like I should have borrowed one of those iron breastplates from Narasan before I even came down here,” Sorgan muttered.
2
After a bit of thought, Hook-Beak spoke briefly
with his first and second mates, Ox and Ham-Hand, and after that, the two big Maags followed their captain wherever he went in Aracia’s temple. Ox was carrying his huge battle-axe, and any time Hook-Beak spoke with one of Aracia’s overfed priests, the hulking Maag touched up the already razor-sharp axe-blade with a hefty whetstone that made a shrill sound as Ox drew it across the axe-blade.
The priests of Aracia got the point almost immediately.
Veltan, who had frequently demonstrated his ability to listen without being seen, advised Sorgan that the priests of Aracia had stumbled over a truth in their desperate search for some way to loosen Sorgan’s grasp on Aracia. They had taken to denouncing Hook-Beak and his men as opportunistic swindlers. “They keep telling each other that there’s no such thing as a bug-man, Sorgan,” Veltan reported. “They’re claiming that you and your men are waving ‘bug-men’ around as a way to leech more and more gold out of Aracia.”
“That’s ridiculous, Veltan,” Sorgan protested. “I know for a fact that Lady Aracia has actually seen the bug-people. I was standing right beside her down in your Domain when the bug-people and the Trogite priests were busy killing each other.”
“I know,” Veltan replied. “I think big sister has been keeping that to herself. The last thing she wants here is to have all of her priests come down with panic. If they run away, she’ll be all alone here.”
“We’re going to have to do something about this, Veltan,” Sorgan said. “The priests are obviously scraping this off the wall, but it looks to me like they’ve accidentally stumbled over the truth. Bug-people are real, but they aren’t coming through this part of Aracia’s country.” Then he looked speculatively at Veltan. “Maybe it’s time for you to start making people believe that they’re seeing something that’s not really there, can’t you?” he asked.
“If it’s absolutely necessary,” Veltan replied. “I don’t want to do it too soon, though. She can sense things like that if I leave the illusions in place for too long.”
“I think a few brief glimpses might serve our purpose, Veltan. We want to confirm Aracia’s belief that the bug-men are invading this part of her Domain, and to persuade the priests that I’m not lying and that Aracia knows that I’m not. I think I’ll go have a little talk with Torl and Rabbit. If they come running out of that farmland off to the west and there are images of several huge bugs right behind them, Aracia will probably go into hiding and this scheme the priests came up with will fall apart right then and there, wouldn’t you say?”
“I think it’s worth a try, Sorgan,” Veltan agreed. “I’ve briefly touched Aracia’s mind a few times since we arrived, and she’s absolutely convinced that the Vlagh is out to get her personally. She’s sure that the Vlagh wants to kill her, and she’s terrified.”
“She can’t actually die, can she? I mean she’s immortal, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is, but she’s drifting toward senility, so she’s not sure of anything anymore. This has happened several times before. All of us get a little vague when we’re approaching the end of one of our cycles, but Aracia tends to take it to extremes.”
“I had a talk with Torl and Rabbit last night,” Sorgan said the next morning in the cabin of the Ascension. “Now they know about Veltan’s illusions, and they’ll make some show of fighting them off. The only problem we might have is that Aracia has to see this imitation skirmish, and she almost never comes out of that silly throne room of hers.”
“We’ve got some time to play with, Sorgan,” Padan said. “You might want to have your men get started on the fort. Then, when its base is in place, you could invite holy Aracia to come out and have a look.” Padan scratched his bearded cheek. “I suppose that technically you’ll need her permission to continue, so a visit would be very appropriate. If Veltan and your scouts know when she’ll be there, they’ll be able to put on a show for her that’ll send her running for cover—and, after that, she’ll dismiss any priest who tries to tell her that you’re a swindler.” Then he laughed as he remembered something that had happened in Kaldacin several years ago.
“What’s so funny?” Sorgan asked.
“The Church of Amar down in the Empire has a fair number of dungeons scattered about. When a priest blunders and insults one of his superiors, they lock him in a hole in the ground and throw away the key. I’d imagine that Bersla would lose quite a bit of weight if Aracia had him locked up in a dungeon where all he had to eat would be bread and water.”
Sorgan frowned slightly. “I wonder if we could get away with that,” he murmured.
The Maags were busy knocking down walls that afternoon. Padan saw that they were very good at destroying things. Building, however, might cause them a few problems.
A young priest came scurrying out of the central temple with a look of horror on his face. “What are you doing?” he screamed.
“We need a fort to hold off the bug-people,” Sorgan replied. “When we saw that nobody lives here in this part of the temple, we decided to modify it just a bit. There are quite a few similarities between forts and temples. Did you ever notice that? Anyway, things are going along fairly well. Give us a week or so, and the invasion of the bugs will stop right here.” Then he looked rather speculatively at the young priest. “He looks pretty husky to me, Padan. If Lady Aracia wants this fort in place to defend her temple, she might just order all of her priests to come here and lend us a hand. The exercise would probably be good for them, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m sure it would,” Padan agreed. “If we were to sweat some of the fat off them, they’d probably live longer.” He looked at the now-horrified young priest. “If you were to step in and lend us a hand with our fort here, you might even live past your thirtieth birthday. And if you were to really bear down, you might even live to be forty. Look at all the extra life you’ll get out of a few weeks of hard work.”
The young priest turned and fled at that point.
Sorgan laughed. “I think that might eliminate any further objections,” he said. “The notion of doing real work doesn’t seem to sit very well with Aracia’s priesthood.”
“What an amazing thing,” Padan agreed.
Their imitation fort was coming along quite well now that Sorgan had leaned on his men and ordered them to follow Padan’s instructions. They had what looked like a solid base about ten feet tall running along the west side of Aracia’s temple.
“It’s not really all that substantial, Sorgan,” Padan admitted, “but Aracia wouldn’t even recognize a real fort. I don’t know that you want to wait too much longer. I’m sure that her priests are trying everything they can think of to discredit you. Let’s not give them too much more time before she sees the skirmish between your men and the imitation bugs Veltan’s going to conjure up. That’s going to verify our scam and scare Aracia’s stockings off. After that, we’ll be home free.”
“You’re probably right, Padan. I’ll have a quick talk with Veltan, and he can go on out and start Torl and Rabbit this way while you and I go to the throne room and tell Aracia that we want to show her what we’ve accomplished so far.”
“What are you going to do if she refuses to come out here?”
Sorgan shrugged. “I’ll tell her that all work stops until she comes out here and approves of what we’ve done so far. No matter what her priests have been telling her, she’s still terrified by the Vlagh, so she won’t take any chances. She knows that her priests would be useless in a war, so she’ll do just about anything to stay on the good side of me.”
Bersla was orating again, but for once Aracia didn’t even seem to be listening.
“Where have you been?” she demanded of Sorgan when he entered the opulent throne room.
“Off on the west side of your temple, lady,” Sorgan replied. “My men have been building a fort to hold off the bug-people. It looks fairly good to me so far, but maybe you should come there and take a look. My men and I have always specialized in tearing forts down, not building them. If you have any sug
gestions, now’s the time to make them. There’s a fairly significant difference between a temple and a fort that you might want to think about. A temple says ‘come in,’ but a fort says ‘stay out.’ I think you’ll see what I mean when we get there.”
“Holy Aracia is otherwise occupied right now, outlander,” the priestess Alcevan declared arrogantly.
“Listening to Bersla, you mean?” Sorgan asked. “Has he said anything new and different today? I’m sure that Lady Aracia has heard every speech that he’s cobbled together a hundred times or more. You could listen, if you’d like, and then when Lady Aracia returns you can sum them up for her.”
“Do you really need to have me look at this fort of yours, Sorgan?” Aracia asked.
“This is your temple, Lady Aracia,” Sorgan replied. “If the bugs destroy it, your priests will have to build you a new one, and that might take them a while—quite a long while, I’d say, since fat people wear out in just a short time when they’re doing real work. I suppose you could set up your throne in an open field somewhere, but I don’t think very many of your priests would like to make speeches when it’s raining on them. Let me put it to you in the simplest of terms, lady. Come and look, or all work stops. We can’t go any farther without your approval.”
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