"What?"
The bees had a nest high on the side of a spire of rock. The buzzing could be heard from ground level. There was no possible way up.
"Nice try," said Om.
The sun was up. Already the rocks were warm to the touch. "Get some rest," said Om, kindly. "I'll keep watch."
"Watch for what?"
"I'll watch and find out."
Brutha led Vorbis into the shade of a large boulder, and gently pushed him down. Then he lay down too.
The thirst wasn't too bad yet. He'd drunk from the temple pool until he squelched as he walked. Later on, they might find a snake . . . When you considered what some people in the world had, life wasn't too bad.
Vorbis lay on his side, his black-on-black eyes staring at nothing.
Brutha tried to sleep.
He had never dreamed. Didactylos had been quite excited about that. Someone who remembered everything and didn't dream would have to think slowly, he said. Imagine a heart[9], he said, that was nearly all memory, and had hardly any beats to spare for the everyday purposes of thinking. That would explain why Brutha moved his lips while he thought.
So this couldn't have been a dream. It must have been the sun.
He heard Om's voice in his head. The tortoise sounded as though he was holding a conversation with people Brutha could not hear.
Mine!
Go away!
No.
Mine!
Both of them!
Mine!
Brutha turned his head.
The tortoise was in a gap between two rocks, neck extended and weaving from side to side. There was another sound, a sort of gnat-like whining, that came and went . . . and promises in his head.
They flashed past . . . faces talking to him, shapes, visions of greatness, moments of opportunity, picking him up, taking him high above the world, all this was his, he could do anything, all he had to do was believe, in me, in me, in me-
An image formed in front of him. There, on a stone beside him, was a roast pig surrounded by fruit, and a mug of beer so cold the air was frosting on the sides.
Mine!
Brutha blinked. The voices faded. So did the food.
He blinked again.
There were strange after-images, not seen but felt. Perfect though his memory was, he could not remember what the voices had said or what the other pictures had been. All that lingered was a memory of roast pork and cold beer.
"That's because they don't know what to offer you," said Om's voice, quietly. "So they try to offer you anything. Generally they start with visions of food and carnal gratification."
"They got as far as the food," said Brutha.
"Good job I overcame them, then," said Om. "No telling what they might have achieved with a young man like yourself."
Brutha raised himself on his elbows.
Vorbis had not moved.
"Were they trying to get through to him, too?"
"I suppose so. Wouldn't work. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Never seen a mind so turned in on itself."
"Will they be back?"
"Oh, yes. It's not as if they've got anything else to do."
"When they do," said Brutha, feeling lightheaded, "could you wait until they've shown me visions of carnal gratification?"
"Very bad for you."
"Brother Nhumrod was very down on them. But I think perhaps we should know our enemies, yes?"
Brutha's voice faded to a croak.
"I could have done with the vision of the drink," he said, wearily.
The shadows were long. He looked around in amazement.
"How long were they trying?"
"All day. Persistent devils, too. Thick as flies."
Brutha learned why at sunset.
He met St. Ungulant the anchorite, friend of all small gods. Everywhere.
"Well, well, well," said St. Ungulant. "We don't get very many visitors up here. Isn't that so, Angus?"
He addressed the air beside him.
Brutha was trying to keep his balance, because the cartwheel rocked dangerously every time he moved. They'd left Vorbis seated on the desert twenty feet below, hugging his knees and staring at nothing.
The wheel had been nailed flat on top of a slim pole. It was just wide enough for one person to lie uncomfortably. But St. Ungulant looked designed to lie uncomfortably. He was so thin that even skeletons would say, "Isn't he thin?" He was wearing some sort of minimalist loin-cloth, insofar as it was possible to tell under the beard and hair.
It had been quite hard to ignore St. Ungulant, who had been capering up and down at the top of his pole shouting "Coo-ee!" and "Over here!" There was a slightly smaller pole a few feet away, with an old-fashioned half-moon-cutout-on-the-door privy on it. Just because you were an anchorite, St. Ungulant said, didn't mean you had to give up everything.
Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of oneway prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and holy contemplation and dirt. Many of them liked to make life even more uncomfortable for themselves by being walled up in cells or living, quite appropriately, at the top of a pole. The Omnian Church encouraged them, on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt.
"I was thinking of adding another wheel," said St. Ungulant, "just over there. To catch the morning sun, you know."
Brutha looked around him. Nothing but flat rock and sand stretched away on every side.
"Don't you get the sun everywhere all the time?" he said.
"But it's much more important in the morning," said St. Ungulant. "Besides, Angus says we ought to have a patio."
"He could barbecue on it," said Om, inside Brutha's head.
"Um," said Brutha. "What . . . religion . . . are you a saint of, exactly?"
An expression of embarrassment crossed the very small amount of face between St. Ungulant's eyebrows and his mustache.
"Uh. None, really. That was all rather a mistake," he said. "My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, and then one day, of course, most amusing, someone drew attention to the initials. After that, it all seemed rather inevitable."
The wheel rocked slightly. St. Ungulant's skin was almost blackened by the desert sun.
"I've had to pick up herming as I went along, of course," he said. "I taught myself. I'm entirely selftaught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."
"Er . . . but there's . . . Angus?" said Brutha, stating at the spot where he believed Angus to be, or at least where he believed St. Ungulant believed Angus to be.
"He's over here now," said the saint sharply, pointing to a different part of the wheel. "But he doesn't do any of the herming. He's not, you know, trained. He's just company. My word, I'd have gone quite mad if it wasn't for Angus cheering me up all the time!"
"Yes . . . I expect you would," said Brutha. He smiled at the empty air, in order to show willing.
"Actually, it's a pretty good life. The hours are rather long but the food and drink are extremely worthwhile."
Brutha had a distinct feeling that he knew what was going to come next.
"Beer cold enough?" he said.
"Extremely frosty," said St. Ungulant, beaming.
"And the roast pig?"
St. Ungulant's smile was manic.
"All brown and crunchy round the edges, yes," he said.
"But I expect, er . . . you eat the occasional lizard or snake, too?"
"Funny you should say that. Yes. Every once in a while. Just for a bit of variety."
"And mushrooms, too?" said Om.
"Any mushrooms in these parts?" said Brutha innocently.
St. Ungulant nodded happily.
"After the annual rains, yes. Red ones with yellow spots. The desert becomes really intere
sting after the mushroom season."
"Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing?" said Brutha carefully.
"Good heavens, yes," said the saint. "I don't know why. I think they're attracted by the mushrooms."
Brutha nodded.
"You're catching on, kid," said Om.
"And I expect sometimes you drink . . . water?" said Brutha.
"You know, it's odd, isn't it," said St. Ungulant. "There's all this wonderful stuff to drink but every so often I get this, well, I can only call it a craving, for a few sips of water. Can you explain that?"
"It must be . . . a little hard to come by," said Brutha, still talking very carefully, like someone playing a fifty-pound fish on a fifty-one-pound breakingstrain fishing-line.
"Strange, really," said St. Ungulant. "When icecold beer is so readily available, too."
"Where, uh, do you get it? The water?" said Brutha.
"You know the stone plants?"
"The ones with the big flowers?"
"If you cut open the fleshy part of the leaves, there's up to half a pint of water," said the saint. "It tastes like weewee, mind you."
"I think we could manage to put up with that," said Brutha, through dry lips. He backed toward the rope-ladder that was the saint's contact with the ground.
"Are you sure you won't stay?" said St. Ungulant. "It's Wednesday. We get sucking pig plus chef's selection of sun-drenched dew-fresh vegetables on Wednesdays."
"We, uh, have lots to do," said Brutha, halfway down the swaying ladder.
"Sweets from the trolley?"
"I think perhaps . . .
St. Ungulant looked down sadly at Brutha helping Vorbis away across the wilderness.
"And afterward there's probably mints!" he shouted, through cupped hands. "No?"
Soon the figures were mere dots on the sand.
"There may be visions of sexual grati-no, I tell a lie, that's Fridays . . ." St. Ungulant murmured.
Now that the visitors had gone, the air was once again filled with the zip and whine of the small gods. There were billions of them.
St. Ungulant smiled.
He was, of course, mad. He'd occasionally suspected this. But he took the view that madness should not be wasted. He dined daily on the food of the gods, drank the rarest vintages, ate fruits that were not only out of season but out of reality. Having to drink the occasional mouthful of brackish water and chew the odd lizard leg for medicinal purposes was a small price to pay.
He turned back to the laden table that shimmered in the air. All this . . . and all the little gods wanted was someone to know about them, someone to even believe that they existed.
There was jelly and ice-cream today, too.
"All the more for us, eh, Angus?"
Yes, said Angus.
The fighting was over in Ephebe. It hadn't lasted long, especially when the slaves joined in. There were too many narrow streets, too many ambushes and, above all, too much terrible determination. It's generally held that free men will always triumph over slaves, but perhaps it all depends on your point of view.
Besides, the Ephebian garrison commander had declared somewhat nervously that slavery would henceforth be abolished, which infuriated the slaves. What would be the point of saving up to become free if you couldn't own slaves afterwards? Besides, how'd they eat?
The Omnians couldn't understand, and uncertain people fight badly. And Vorbis had gone. Certainties seemed less certain when those eyes were elsewhere.
The Tyrant was released from his prison. He spent his first day of freedom carefully composing messages to the other small countries along the coast.
It was time to do something about Omnia.
Brutha sang.
His voice echoed off the rocks. Flocks of scalbies shook off their lazy pedestrian habits and took off frantically, leaving feathers behind in their rush to get airborne. Snakes wriggled into cracks in the stone.
You could live in the desert. Or at least survive . . .
Getting back to Omnia could only be a matter of time. One more day . . .
Vorbis trooped along a little behind him. He said nothing and, when spoken to, gave no sign that he had understood what had been said to him.
Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.
The strained strains of Claws of Iron shall Rend the Ungodly faded away. There was a small rockslide, some way off.
"We're alive," said Brutha.
"For now."
"And we're close to home."
"Yes?"
"I saw a wild goat on the rocks back there."
"There's still a lot of 'em about."
"Goats?"
"Gods. And the ones we had back there were the puny ones, mind you."
"What do you mean?"
Om sighed. "It's reasonable, isn't it? Think about it. The stronger ones hang around the edge, where there's prey . . . I mean, people. The weak ones get pushed out to the sandy places, where people hardly ever go-”
"The strong gods," said Brutha, thoughtfully. "Gods that know about being strong."
"That's right."
"Not gods that know what it feels like to be weak . . ."
"What? They wouldn't last five minutes. It's a god-eat-god world."
"Perhaps that explains something about the nature of gods. Strength is hereditary. Like sin."
His face clouded.
"Except that . . . it isn't. Sin, I mean. I think, perhaps, when we get back, I shall talk to some people."
"Oh, and they'll listen, will they?"
"Wisdom comes out of the wilderness, they say."
"Only the wisdom that people want. And mushrooms."
When the sun was starting to climb Brutha milked a goat. It stood patiently while Om soothed its mind. And Om didn't suggest killing it, Brutha noticed.
Then they found shade again. There were bushes here, lowgrowing, spiky, every tiny leaf barricaded behind its crown of thorns.
Om watched for a while, but the small gods on the edge of the wilderness were more cunning and less urgent. They'd be here, probably at noon, when the sun turned the landscape into a hellish glare. He'd hear them. In the meantime, he could eat.
He crawled through the bushes, their thorns scraping harmlessly along his shell. He passed another tortoise, which wasn't inhabited by a god and gave him that vague stare that tortoises employ when they're deciding whether something is there to be eaten or made love to, which are the only things on a normal tortoise mind. He avoided it, and found a couple of leaves it had missed.
Periodically he'd stomp back through the gritty soil and watch the sleepers.
And then he saw Vorbis sit up, look around him in a slow methodical way, pick up a stone, study it carefully, and then bring it down sharply on Brutha's head.
Brutha didn't even groan.
Vorbis got up and strode directly toward the bushes that hid Om. He tore the branches aside, regardless of the thorns, and pulled out the tortoise Om had just met.
For a moment it was held up, legs moving slowly, before the deacon threw it overarm into the rocks.
Then he picked up Brutha with some effort, slung him across his shoulders, and set off towards Omnia.
It happened in seconds.
Om fought to stop his head and legs retracting automatically into his shell, a tortoise's instinctive panic reaction.
Vorbis was already disappearing round some rocks.
He disappeared.
Om started to move forward and then ducked into his shell as a shadow skimmed over the ground. It was a familiar shadow, and one fiIled with tortoise dread.
The eagle swept down and towards the spot where the stricken tortoise was struggling and, with barely a pause in the stoop, snatched the reptile and soared back up into the sky with long, lazy sweeps of its wings.
Om watched it until it became a dot, and then
looked away as a smaller dot detached itself and tumbled over and over toward the rocks below.
The eagle descended slowly, preparing to feed.
A breeze rattled the thornbushes and stirred the sand. Om thought he could hear the taunting, mocking voices of all the small gods.
St. Ungulant, on his bony knees, smashed open the hard swollen leaf of a stone plant.
Nice lad, he thought. Talked to himself a lot, but that was only to be expected. The desert took some people like that, didn't it, Angus?
Yes, said Angus.
Angus didn't want any of the brackish water. He said it gave him wind.
"Please yourself," said St. Ungulant. "Well, well! Here's a little treat."
You didn't often get Chilopoda aridius out here in the open desert, and here were three, all under one rock!
Funny how you felt like a little nibble, even after a good meal of Petit porc rôti avec pommes de terre nouvelles et légumes du jour et bière glacée avec figment de l'imagination.
He was picking the legs of the second one out of his tooth when the lion padded to the top of the nearest dune behind him.
The lion was feeling odd sensations of gratitude. It felt it should catch up with the nice food that had tended to it and, well, refrain from eating it in some symbolic way. And now here was some more food, hardly paying it any attention. Well, it didn't owe this one anything . . .
It padded forward, then lumbered up into a run.
Oblivious to his fate, St. Ungulant started on the third centipede.
The lion leapt . . .
And things would have looked very bad for St. Ungulant if Angus hadn't caught it right behind the ear with a rock.
Brutha was standing in the desert, except that the sand was as black as the sky and there was no sun, although everything was brilliantly lit.
Ah, he thought. So this is dreaming.
There were thousands of people walking across the desert. They paid him no attention. They walked as if completely unaware that they were in the middle of a crowd.
He tried to wave at them, but he was nailed to the spot. He tried to speak, and the words evaporated in his mouth.
And then he woke up.
The first thing he saw was the light, slanting through a window. Against the light was a pair of hands, raised in the sign of the holy horns.
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