Present Tense [Round Two of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  "Come off it, Edward! That might just as well have applied to Ysian."

  His eyes glinted like razors. “I don't rat on my friends very often. Abandoning Ysian, if that's what I did, was the honorable thing to do. You might like to know the rest of the prophecy, though—Mrs. Boswell the Gypsy also said I'd have to choose between honor and duty, that I could only find honor through dishonor. Explain that one, because I can't!"

  Was there a chink here to work on? “Well, if your duty is to enlist, but the honorable thing is to avenge your parents’ murder—"

  "Never give up, do you?” Even Edward could lose his temper. If that happened she would have lost any hope of making him see reason.

  "You haven't seen Ysian in a year?” The girl was the only bait she had to coax him back to Nextdoor and away from the Western Front.

  He flashed a look of exasperation at her. “Told you,” he mumbled. “She's at Olympus, working for Polly Murgatroyd. She's very nice—Polly, I mean. I wrote to her before I crossed over—to Ysian, I mean.... “He frowned, dabbing at his mouth with the napkin. “As the man who promised to deliver the note then tried to kill me, she probably never got it."

  "You weren't at Olympus?"

  He shook his head, chewing. “I took two years to get there and when I did, I didn't stay long. The Committee decided it was too dangerous, both for me and for everybody else—didn't want Zath sacking the place in the hope of catching me. I was packed off to Thovale, which is very small and rural, but not too far away. I helped set up some chapels there. I became a missionary!” He laughed gleefully. “Holy Roly must have turned in his grave! But we all do ... they all do it."

  "You'd make a good preacher.” She could just imagine him running his parish like a school dormitory.

  "I didn't! I can't ever believe that I know better than everyone else. I don't like telling people what they must think. It's immoral!"

  "Doesn't a stranger make a good preacher?"

  "Yes,” he admitted glumly. “I could pack in the crowds. I converted heathens to the Church's new and improved heathenism. My heart wasn't in it, though. Jumbo Watson can convert a whole village with a single sermon. I've seen him do it."

  Alice abandoned the Ysian campaign. If he could stay away from the girl for a whole year to do something he did not believe in, then thoughts of Ysian were not going to discourage him from enlisting.

  "The Liberator?” she said. “It's a noble title—calls up memories of Bolivar, William Tell, Robert the Bruce. Doesn't it tempt you at all?"

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation at her persistence. “Not too terribly frightfully, no. There were a couple of times—and the Filoby Testament predicted them both. I almost gave in to Tion, because he said he would cure Eleal's limp. That was a very close-run thing! And then in Tharg, the prince—” He popped a jammy, creamy morsel in his mouth and chewed blissfully.

  "What about the prince?"

  "That didn't work either, but it came close, too. That particular prophecy ends, but the dead shall rouse him. That's me, rouse me. And that part did work, Alice, because I saw the dead—in Flanders. How many lives has this war cost?"

  "No way of knowing. What you read in the papers is all censored."

  "Well, the dead speak. They say it's my turn. I have to do my bit, and that's that.” He glanced at his wrist and then at the grandfather clock in the corner.

  She sighed. Two more miles to Harrow. Her legs ached already. “Time to go, isn't it?"

  Edward nodded. “Wish I hadn't eaten so much.” He surreptitiously slid the last scone into his pocket. He grinned sheepishly when he saw that she had noticed. “Another offering."

  Alice shook her head in disbelief. It was Friday afternoon in England and they were on their way to meet a god.

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  46

  SHAME! SHAME! TO THE MAN GOETH D'WARD, SAYING, SLAY ME! THE hammer falls and blood profanes the holy altar. Warriors, where is thine honor? Perceive thy shame.—Verse 266.

  The divinely inspired gibberish echoed and reechoed in Dosh's head as he was swept along a milling street in Tharg. Insects droned, people shoved and jostled; heat and noise and stink. That passage made no sense at all at this point in history. How could the prophecy of D'ward's death be fulfilled before all the others about him? The trouble with the Filoby Testament was that too much of it made sense only after it had happened.

  What about Verse 1098, then? That was the one that intrigued Tion so much. Something about the Liberator being slow to anger, and then, Eleal shall be the first temptation and the prince shall be the second, but the dead shall rouse him. It certainly referred to the Liberator. It might well apply to this very afternoon. Something was about to happen, something so momentous that it had caught the eye of the seeress all those many years ago.

  Tharg was the largest city Dosh had ever seen, bigger even than Joal. It well deserved its reputation as the ugliest. The buildings were of somber stone, with high plain walls and tiny windows, every house a fortress. There was no color, no decoration, not a carving in sight. The men wore tunics of drab brown or khaki, boys yellow or beige, although all had a touch of the sacred colors at the neck. Women were not in evidence. Doors and shutters were tarred, not painted. The streets were narrow trenches, hot and airless, straight as spears.

  They were also thronged with huge crowds of impatient, hustling, urgent freemen, all hurrying in the same direction he was heading, and most of them much taller than he. He was having trouble keeping D'ward in sight. Fortunately the Liberator was taller than most, his distinctive black hair bobbing above the tide like a cork. He was gaining. He seemed not to care that every man in the crowd bore a sword and aggressive jostling might be fatal. Very likely he was deliberately trying to lose his unwanted follower.

  Gods did not make mistakes. That thought, too, Dosh kept repeating like a mantra. Prylis had extracted the Liberator from the army so that the ephors would abduct the wrong leader. When Prylis had released him this morning, had he not known what D'ward would try to do? Because he had let him go, then he must have been certain that it was now too late—mustn't he? Golbfish must be dead already, mustn't he? Could gods make mistakes?

  Maybe a minor god like Prylis could. Everyone was heading for the temple, because there was to be an announcement—Dosh had gathered that much from remarks overheard. He dared not ask questions, lest he be denounced as a foreigner. Thargians were never nice to foreigners, especially Thargians in mobs, and the air stank of dangerous passions already. Angry, armed male mob ... no women, no slaves? The women would all be at home in those narrow-windowed prisons of houses, being mothers.

  Now where was D'ward?

  Dosh rose on tiptoe as he walked, peering through the jungle of heads. Gone! No! There he was.

  He had stepped into an arched doorway, and Dosh was almost past him. He pushed his way across the stream of the crowd, bumping and apologizing, being shoved and cursed and threatened. Thargians never apologized. He reached the wall and was flattened against it by the crush, then began edging his way back to the arch.

  A flash of color above it caught his eye, a festoon of faded blue ropes. Blue was the color of the Maiden, and a net was the symbol of justice. He had always thought that was inappropriate. In his experience, the little ones got caught and the big ones got away. That wasn't what it meant, of course.

  D'ward was speaking through a grille in the door. Ysian stood at his side, her face pale and rigid. She looked up at Dosh and bared her teeth. D'ward passed the abbot's letter through the grating. Dosh eased nearer in the hope of hearing what was being said. As he squeezed by Ysian, a sharp pain stopped him. He glanced down and confirmed his gut feeling that the problem was her dagger.

  "Go!” she whispered.

  He stammered and then decided that he had seen that expression in her eyes once before, when she had threatened to club him senseless. D'ward was still talking, pleading for haste. The pain came again. She could puncture Dosh's bow
els with one swift jab. He stepped back. She followed, urging him on at knifepoint.

  "Go!” she insisted. “Move!"

  He turned into the crowd and was swept away. He felt her hand grab hold of his belt, but at least the dagger was making no more holes in his hide. In moments they were being rushed along the street by the sweaty tide.

  "What do you think you are doing?” he demanded, twisting around to see her.

  She was smirking triumphantly. “I am not entering any flea-infested convent! D'ward will go on to the temple. We are going to catch him before he gets there and stop him making a fool of himself!"

  It wasn't a fool he was going to make of himself, it was a corpse. “By the five gods, girl, how do you ever expect—"

  "Don't you call me a girl!"

  "I call you an idiot! We'll never find him in this—"

  The crowd had slowed to a crawl. Dosh stumbled into the man in front of him, and a vicious elbow rammed into his solar plexus, knocking all the breath out of him. He staggered.

  "Watch where you're going,” Ysian said, pushing him forward again.

  In all cities, the holy places tended to huddle together. Temple Square was just around the corner from the convent. It was now full. Refusing to be balked, the mob in the street continued to press onward.

  It occurred to Dosh that women might well be prohibited by law from entering the Man's holy place. If Ysian's deception was discovered, then he would be held responsible. On the other hand, he was more likely to die in the crush. It was already hard to breathe, and the crowd continued to squeeze tighter and tighter. It oozed ahead like a human glacier, a paste of compressed bodies. He wished he were taller.

  "This will kill us!” he groaned, feeling the start of panic. Two hands gripped his arms and pulled them behind him. “What in eternity are you doing?"

  "Cup your hands!"

  "What?"

  Ysian pushed his hands together. Somehow she squirmed and struggled and got one foot in them. Then she wriggled up his back and seated herself on his shoulders, her fingers locked in his hair and her weight threatening to buckle his knees.

  "There!” she said. “Now I can see. Keep moving!"

  The ancient temple of Karzon in Tharg, dating from the days of the kings, had been built of wood. During the Fifth Joalian War, it had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. This evil omen had caused great despair among the Man's Men on the eve of the final campaign, but the famous Goztikon, thirteen times ephor, had declared the sign to be one of hope. He had publicly pledged his life and the lives of his seven sons that the god was promising renewal for Thargia; the Man's Men would prevail, he swore, and would return to build a new and mightier temple to the glory of their god.

  So it had transpired. The armies of the Joalian Coalition had been crushed in the bloody battle of Suddopass. The survivors had worked out their lives in the quarries to further the building of the temple. Artisans and craftsmen from all over the Vales had spent twenty years on it. The indemnities levied on Joalia by the peace treaty had included the greatest artist of the age, K'simbr Sculptor, who had been specifically requisitioned so he might raise fitting images of the god.

  Gods. Whereas the Man in his primary aspect had always been god of both creation and destruction, he had hitherto been represented by a single likeness. In the new great temple, he was shown twice. One giant image was plated with copper, which would weather to the green of his color. The other was of silver, to turn black. Officially both were Karzon, but the ignorant multitude soon spoke of the second image as being that of Zath, his aspect of Death. The avatar had been promoted to equality.

  Eased forward irresistibly by the bodies pressed in all around him, Dosh shuffled into the southwest corner of the square. Over the shifting oceans of heads he saw the temple towering into the sky, two walls of stupendous pillars running off to east and north. They were so thick and the gaps between them so narrow that from his angle they completely blocked the interior from view. They were oppressive, domineering, overwhelming. The temple of Karzon was a giant gray granite cage, the ugliest structure he had ever set eyes on.

  The crowd pushed relentlessly at his back, urging him closer.

  "Not yet!” Ysian proclaimed, having to shout over the din. She twisted Dosh's head around. “Wait over there!"

  "I can't get out."

  She took hold of his ears and pulled. He yelled, causing his nearest neighbors to look at him in surprise. He blinked away tears.

  "I shall pull them off!” Ysian said, kicking him with her heels.

  She probably meant it. He began to fight his way out of the crowd.

  He broke free of the main current after a considerable struggle and reached the shallows at the edge of the square. There were many people there too, but they were mostly not moving, just staring at the temple, fearing to risk their lives in the compacted mob. He leaned back against the wall, gasping and sweating. His shoulders were breaking.

  "Get down!” he groaned. “You're crushing me."

  "Stop whining! You said you were the toughest man in the army, didn't you?"

  "I'm not a fornicating moa!"

  Other children in yellow tunics floated above the crowd, riding their fathers’ shoulders. None was anywhere near Ysian's size. He would wager that none was a girl, either. Many older youths had clambered upon the plinths of the columns, and some had scrambled even higher, apparently finding toe-and fingerholds within the carvings, clinging there like human lichen. Every few minutes one would lose his grip and fall, dragging others with him, down into the melee. Whatever screams or oaths resulted were lost in the steady, torrential roar.

  Dosh was farther from the corner now. He could see through the closest pair of pillars, and what he saw was the back of the statue of Zath. Silvery black, it stood ten times the height of a man, muffled in a reaper's cloak and ominously stooped, as if to study the multitude huddled around its feet. He was happy not to be there, looking up at the face of Death. Beyond it he could see an edge of the statue of Karzon, mostly just the great hammer he held, his symbol.

  Ysian kicked her heels into Dosh's ribs. “Here he comes!"

  If he had room to move, he could grab her arms and flip her off him, but in this mob she would fall on top of at least one man, probably two, and then there would be reprisals. As it was, his arms were so tightly crushed against his sides that he could not raise them even to defend himself from her attacks.

  "D'ward's coming!” she insisted. “Move. This way.” She took him by the ears again and twisted his head to the left.

  He yielded to the inevitable, starting to shoulder himself forward. He would probably have made no progress at all had Ysian not begun using her feet with deliberate savagery on the innocent bystanders. The inevitable retaliation was all directed at him, of course—he was jostled, jabbed, punched, cursed at. Any minute someone would manage to draw a sword and gut him.

  "Faster!” she demanded. “We'll lose him."

  Of course they would. There was no chance of catching him. D'ward was bigger and taller, and he was the Liberator. He had admitted that he had a special sort of charm. He would charm his way through the crowd. He was not carrying Ysian.

  Yet Ysian did add some weight to Dosh's efforts. He discovered he could lean on the men in front of him and they would pull away to avoid being pushed over and trampled. If he lost his footing, that would happen to him.

  Ysian yanked at his left ear. “That man in green coming! Catch him!"

  In a moment, Dosh saw the man she meant. His green tunic marked him in the drab brown crowd and probably meant that he was some sort of temple flunky—priest or guard. He was very large, very beefy, and obviously very determined to move closer to the temple. That meant closer to D'ward.

  Somehow Dosh managed to slip in at his back, and after that they made better progress. The big fellow did not seem to register that he had acquired two hangers-on as he wrestled his way toward the pillars. Dosh leaned on him, urging him fo
rward.

  The noise was fading, and now there was another sound, a steady drum-beat. Dosh had no idea what was happening inside the temple, but the ominous boom-boom-boom made his scalp prickle. Was Golbfish being brought in now? Human sacrifice? No god of the Vales had demanded human sacrifice in thousands of years. What would they do to him? Cut off his head? Tear out his heart? Burn him alive?

  Poor old Golbfish! He had turned himself from an effete slob into a warrior and a leader. He had made himself worthy to rule the kingdom that was his by right, and now he was dying to save his men. What must he be thinking?

  "Almost there!” Ysian bounced a few times with excitement. Dosh shrieked at her. He thought she meant the great pillars now looming over them, but then he saw the familiar black hair just ahead. Perhaps this madness was going to pay off after all. Then what? D'ward had refused to listen to reason on the boat; he was not likely to be amenable to logic now.

  But Dosh had not been joking when he told D'ward he knew massage. He also knew a few sneaky tricks of self-defense that had come in handy more than once when the romping had become too rough. If he could actually get within reach of D'ward and if he could then work his arms free and if he could put his hands around D'ward's neck—then he could put D'ward to sleep very easily.

  Then ... then D'ward would slump to the ground and be trampled to paste? That part of the plan needed more work. The drums were beating faster. All that was needed was to delay D'ward a few more minutes and it would be too late for him to stop the sacrifice. Now the man in green had caught up with D'ward and was right behind him. He had become a barrier instead of a trailblazer, for Dosh could not get by him.

  They were within a few feet of the pillars when the man in green abruptly caught hold of D'ward's arm and jerked him around. He himself twisted to the right. Dosh stumbled to catch his balance, recovering to the left. The crowd surged back in tightly around them again, packing all three men in together, face-to-face, with Ysian's legs between them.

  The whole congregation had fallen silent under the surging boom-boom-boom of the drumbeat.