by James Enge
“Hey! Morlock!”
The whisper came from behind the puppet theater.
Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and stepped behind the theater. He’d have preferred to signal to Aloê, so that she would know where he was going: this looked like an attempt to separate the two vocates. But anyone in Kaen who knew his name was someone he should talk to.
It was the little boy they had first met on coming into town—Rydhböku. He was standing in the puppeteer’s entrance to the theater. His features, veiled by the shadows of the shuttered theater, seemed less petulant, more mature, and more sinister than before. Behind him, deeper in the shadows, stood the woman who had been walking with him earlier. She stood with a slack lifelessness, like a marionette dangling from a nail. The young boy still gripped her hand in his.
“You see,” the boy said slyly, “I knew your name wasn’t Znabnu.”
“I see,” Morlock replied. “But you lied to us, too, Tekätestu. You told us your name was Rydhböku.”
“That is the name of this avatar,” the boy said coolly. “I have many bodies, as well as many mouths. I know how to tell the truth, or tell lies that seem like truth, or truths that seem like lies.”
He released the hand of the woman standing behind him; she collapsed nerveless into the puppeteer’s pit. The boy showed Morlock the red-lipped, needle-toothed mouth on the palm of his left hand, and then the gray-lipped toothless mouth in the palm of his right hand. “I do have many mouths, as you see,” the mouths on the boy’s hands said in unison, while the mouth in the boy’s face laughed.
“Will you worship me, Morlock?” the mouths on the hands asked in concert. “I am a god, and I know your secret name. I could compel you.”
Morlock shook his head. “I feel your attempt to do so. It resembles a simple binding spell. Such magic is only effective on people who have themselves used binding spells.”
The red mouth asked, “And you have never done so? You have never self-bound in an oath?”
“No. I say yes if I mean yes, and no if I mean no. So my father taught me.”
“Merlin taught you well then.”
“I didn’t mean him.”
The gray mouth said, “Oh? How interesting. My visualization excludes most of your life, which is of no real value to me. Almost as little as mine is to you, it seems. I must say you are very self-possessed. Have you met many gods before?”
“I don’t know,” Morlock said, after reflection.
“I didn’t know,” said the woman lying in the puppeteer’s pit. “He isn’t my son. I met him when I was out walking. I didn’t know then . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“Be quiet,” the boy’s face said imperiously, and she never spoke again.
“Morlock,” said the gray mouth, “you please me. You treat words as if they have meaning. Neither my truths nor my lies can have any effect without that belief. I live in accordance with my nature; thus is my tal sustained. If there are things you would know, I will tell them to you, and I self-bind myself to pass them to you without creating any obligation on your part.”
As the gray mouth spoke, the red one whispered the oath. Morlock didn’t hear the words, but he felt the talic impact without even summoning the lowest level of visionary awareness.
“I was wondering . . . ,” Morlock admitted.
“Ask.”
“Why do you tolerate the presence of Anhikh missionaries in the city? Don’t you feel they are a threat to you?”
“They are not Anhikh, you know,” the red mouth said. “They are as Kaenish as I am, as Kaenish as you are not. The national gods have decreed that all the Kaeniar must be free to move from one city to another, to lend their worship to the city god who pleases them best. Thus a city god may become a national god, as their worship spreads from city to city. Thus a city god may be demoted to a country god, or a household god, or may . . .”
May die? Morlock wondered. But he preferred not to wonder aloud.
“Besides,” the gray mouth said, “the missionaries are no threat to me. My people don’t want the truth any more than they want that stinking fish. The truth has to be decorated with many lies before people will accept it. That is why I am a great god. I slew Mädeio with my words like stone daggers, and when the time comes I will destroy the missionaries, too.”
“Besides,” said the boy’s face brightly, “I couldn’t really keep them out, anyway. The tirgan of my city left with all his warrior-priests for greener pastures some time ago, and the Court of Heresiarchs have yet to assign me a new one.”
Morlock nodded as if he understood this.
“The fyor-tirgan of the southwestern coast died recently,” the gray mouth remarked. “Shollumech was his name.”
The red mouth added, “I don’t know if he introduced himself to you before you killed him, Morlock.”
“He did,” Morlock said stiffly.
“Well,” the boy’s face continued, “my late tirgan thought he could improve his station by seizing Shollumech’s lands and abasing himself before Shollumech’s gods. I think he has already learned what a terrible mistake he made, but that won’t save him from my vengeance when my hour strikes, as it soon will.”
Morlock nodded thoughtfully.
“You’re quite wrong in what you’re thinking,” the gray mouth said sharply. “The region is more dangerous to you, not less, because the fyor-tirgan is weak. Where the ruler is weak, the gods are strong. And Shollumech’s gods were strangely fond of him. They are watching for you, Morlock. You must avoid the coast if you plan to go north with your mate.”
“I have no mate,” Morlock said automatically.
“What?” said the boy’s face, startled. “Are you sure?”
“My visualization can’t be so far afield,” the gray mouth muttered.
“Who is the woman approaching the booth?” the red mouth demanded. “She has golden hair and skin darker than yours.”
“My partner, not my mate.”
“Oh, my god,” the god’s three mouths groaned in unison. The boy’s eyes looked with disdain at Morlock. Tekätestu seemed to think Morlock was quibbling.
Morlock felt Aloê’s presence, and he turned to meet her quizzical golden eyes. “Why are you standing here, and who were you talking to?”
Morlock turned back to the theater, but its back door was now closed, and the door itself was sealed with brittle dusty wax, as if it had not been opened in some time.
“A god, I think,” he said, turning back to Aloê.
“Well, well. Saint Morlock, apostle to the Kaeniar.”
He snarled at her, and she grinned back. “Well,” she continued, “we need to get you out of here before those missionaries from Thyläkotröx City recognize you. I’ll need that whole story, by the way. We should head there next; there are Anhikh emissaries in the city, and maybe we can get useful news of the Two Powers from them.”
Morlock said, “Eh,” thoughtfully.
“A little more detail please, partner.”
Had she heard him call her that? He wondered what she thought of it. “We can’t go along the coast,” he said. “That was what Tekätestu’s avatar told me, anyway. The gods there hate me.”
“Well, in their defense, you can be a little irritating sometimes.”
Tekätestu did not need to watch the vocates go with eyes of flesh: he saw them in the most certain range of his visualization-of-the-all. The farther the visualization got from the center of his own city, the less certain it was, and even some of the city was dark to him: for instance, the parts that had been devoted to Mädeio, and those that were now were densely populated with worshippers of the Two Powers.
He had lied to Morlock, or course: that was part of his nature, and he drew strength from it. He blamed Morlock in part for his current troubles, and would be glad to see him suffer for that. But he had lied to him with the truth: Shollumech’s gods were indeed on the watch for young Ambrosius. So were the missionaries of the Two Powers. (May the
y all destroy each other, Tekätestu wished-not-merely-for-rhetoric.) If he could frustrate his enemies and harm Morlock by helping him, deceiving him with truths, he would fulfill his nature and gain in talic strength. Tekätestu pondered the unseen stars in the sky, the season of the world in which he only partly lived, and his memories as a new-shaven priest in the mountains a long age of the world ago. If he had owned a face that was truly his own, he would have smiled. Instead, his avatar nestled its hand with the gray-lipped mouth into the hand of the woman who lay next to it in the darkness of the puppet theater. The woman moaned slightly, pleasingly, and the god fed on her devotion.
“What we need,” Aloê said, “is a map. Or a guide.”
“In a city where lies are prayers?” Morlock asked. “No.”
“I see what you mean,” Aloê conceded. “What do you suggest?”
“Go west into the mountains. Take the first path leading north or northeast.”
“Mountains,” Aloê said uncertainly. She’d spent some time among them in recent years, but never really got to like them. Morlock, on the other hand, had grown up in them, and under them. “You’re sure?”
“We’ll get there.”
“All right. You get to steer for this part of the journey, then. I hope you’re right.”
In the event, he wasn’t.
Klÿgnaru the Unshaven was the archpriest to Khÿmäroreibätu, the Goat-that-bestrides-the-Mountain, and tedious work he found it.
“I spend my days and nights wearing this goatskin cap,” he complained to his friend Gnörymu, as they sat drinking together in the roadhouse of the neutral village of Hoimëdmetheterön. “I have been an archpriest of this horrible little mountain for twenty years. Everyone is so faithful to the Goat that I can’t get a single heresy going, even to develop some decent persecution, much less threaten the town god and earn a chance to join the Court of Heresiarchs. I’ll die on the mountain, and my successor will feed my flesh to the Goat’s avatars, even as I did with my predecessor.”
His friend Gnörymu the Glabrous sympathized with him, none more so. Gnörymu was the archpriest of Öweioreibäto, the Sheep-that-bestrides-the-Mountain, and he had much the same set of problems. He was a little better off: he was physically unable to grow body hair, so he could go without shaving and not draw comment to himself (unlike bristly old Klÿgnaru). Also, he had already resigned himself to the thought that he would never join the Court of Heresiarchs. Still, at one time he had shared Klÿgnaru’s wild dreams, and he knew how hard a dream dies.
He tilted a beaker of fermented sheep-milk and filled up Klÿgnaru’s mug with the stinking intoxicating mess. “Content yourself, old friend!” he said. “Between us, we rule the Mountain. If anyone doesn’t like it, they can lick our elbows and die rabid. Maybe it’s not much, but there’s no one I’d rather share it with.”
But Klÿgnaru went on grumbling. “You think we can at least skip the war this year? I lost a lot of herdsman over the summer. The war will take more of them. A war is really stupid when we have other things to do, anyway.”
Gnörymu smiled and did not look at his friend. In fact, Klÿgnaru had stumbled across a persuasive heresy that might find many adherents among people on both sides of the Mountain: a peace movement. But Gnörymu was confident that, if he waited, Klÿgnaru would talk himself out of the idea.
And he was right: he knew his friend. After a few tense moments Klÿgnaru sighed and said, “I suppose you’re right. I just needed to complain a bit, old friend, to someone who could understand.”
“I do understand,” Gnörymu assured him sincerely.
“Well, where shall we send them to fight? The Crispy Field? No, we used that last year.”
“Two years since, and two years before that. What about the Ringlake Shore?”
“No. Definitely not. That’s my best winter grazing.”
This was why Gnörymu had proposed it. He nodded thoughtfully and waited.
“I’ll tell you what,” Klÿgnaru suggested at last. “What about the Long Curve? They can kill each other there to their heart’s content and it won’t bother my goats or your sheep. Except when their herdfolk don’t return, of course.”
“All right,” Gnörymu said, with feigned reluctance. The Long Curve was a mountain pass, partly artificial, which took a long path around the Mountain, from its southeast corner to its northeast corner. If he could not convince Klÿgnaru to fight on the Ringlake Shore, his preferred option was the Long Curve. And here poor Klÿgnaru was suggesting it.
“Same day as usual all right with you?” Klÿgnaru asked.
“It’s coming up fast,” Gnörymu complained. In fact, his preparations had been almost complete for months.
“Tradition, old friend! What’s the point of this silly war if we don’t keep to tradition?”
Gnörymu had his own ideas about what the war was for, but he gracefully conceded the date, since it was what he preferred anyway.
“Now: who should think up the pretext for the war?” Klÿgnaru asked. “I think I did it last year.”
“Do it again, if you don’t mind,” Gnörymu suggested. “You think up such good ones.”
“Thanks,” Klÿgnaru said, foolishly pleased. “Rather enjoy it.”
In fact, whenever they used Klÿgnaru’s rationalizations for the annual war between the Sheep and the Goat, his own people became discontented and Gnörymu’s people became enraged. Most people know that Klÿgnaru was not sincerely devoted to the annual war, and he never fought in the line himself. So his own fighters were demoralized and Gnörymu’s gained a touch of extra fervor. It was when Gnörymu had noticed this, a few years ago, that he began to reluctantly lay his plans for his friend’s downfall.
Klÿgnaru was a bad priest to his god—neither loyally orthodox nor boldly heretical. The power of his town and god were waning. Most of the goatherds whom Klÿgnaru had lost the last few summers had died from the poisonous bites of a breed of deadly snake-sheep that Öweioreibäto had sent in response to Gnörymu’s prayers. He had hopes that the war this year would decimate the herdsmen of the Goat and result in something like a final victory for Öweioreibäto.
And, of course, a victory for her archpriest. Gnörymu had not been lying when he’d said there was no one he would rather share the rule of the Mountain with than his old friend Klÿgnaru.
But if he could rule it by himself, that was obviously best of all.
So they laid their plans, together and separately, and the annual war began on the traditional date, the first of Bayring.
As Tekätestu had foreseen, this was the day after Aloê and Morlock entered the Long Curve on their ill-fated attempt to reach Thyläkotröx City.
Aloê and Morlock passed many-mouthed idols of Tekätestu all along the road for some considerable way outside of his city. Some were weathered, if well-maintained; some were brand-new, their edges sharp from the stonecutter. Often these newer images stood atop the ruins of older totems.
“The remains of Mädeio?” Aloê remarked to Morlock. He shrugged and nodded. That added up to I guess so from a normal person, or so Aloê guessed.
In the red dry hills above Tekästomädeien they finally stopped seeing idols of Tekästu. Others began to appear—at first sporadically, then more and more frequently. There were two that were most common: one showed a goat standing proudly atop a mountain peak; the other was a sheep doing the same.
“Khÿmäroreibätu,” Morlock read, for Aloê’s benefit. (She was still struggling a bit with written Kaenish, and there was a different set of characters used for inscriptions anyway.) “The other one is Öweioreibäto.”
“The Goat That Forever Stands Upon the Mountain,” she translated into Wardic. “And: The Ewe That Forever Stands Upon the Mountain.”
“Ewe?” Morlock said doubtfully. “I thought it was ‘sheep.’”
“An ewe is a female sheep, and that’s a feminine ending.”
“Oh.”
“You wouldn’t be much of a farmer, Morlock.�
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“Thank you.”
Aloê wasn’t sure at first whether this was ironic or not. But, glancing at the man, she decided he had really taken her mild slam as a compliment. Maybe it was a northern thing. She continued, “I wonder if the gods are friends to each other or enemies? Wherever the sheep-people put up an idol the goat-folk followed suit.”
Morlock shrugged and said, “Friends?” in Kaenish. He seemed to be implying the word had another meaning hereabouts—as well it might.
She didn’t feel like discussing it. They were a long way from the sea, and the air was getting dry and thin. She could deal with it, but she didn’t like it.
The road they were walking was fairly well-maintained, but didn’t seem much-used. Occasionally they met people hurrying the other way, most of whom passed without speaking. The only exception was a panicky neatherd who was driving four solemn cows downhill toward the city just as fast as they would go.
Which was none too fast, in fact. The neatherd was nervous and sweating, but his cattle were cool as icicles, treading the road at their self-chosen pace and calmly ignoring the man’s heckling, shouts, and blows.
“It’s that time of year,” he said apologetically to Aloê and Morlock as he passed, to their complete mystification.
“Time to get them to market?” Aloê wondered after the man had gone by. “Time to get them to a butcher?”
Morlock shrugged. Not the man to go to with your farming questions, Aloê remembered.
“Or does something bad happen in the mountains this time of year?” she continued. “Maybe we should have asked him. Snowstorms?”
“No,” Morlock said. “South winds keep Kaen warm all winter long.”
“That’s the first good thing I’ve heard you say about the place.”
Morlock looked at her, mystified. For him, a warm winter was nothing to brag about, clearly.
“Rains, though,” he continued. “Maybe floods. They can be dangerous in narrow places.”