The Seven Altars of Dusarra

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The merchant, eagerly watching the small pile of silver grow, said, “There’s the Inn of the Seven Stars.”

  “Could you direct me there, then?”

  Pointing without looking up, he said, “Take the first street on the left.”

  “My thanks.” There had certainly been no danger there of being spotted as an overman; neither man had looked at him at all. He returned to where Koros stood, just inside the gate, and told the warbeast to follow him; finding the break in the ring of booths and buildings that marked a street, first one on the left, he led the warbeast through the crowd into the darkness of what proved little more than an alleyway. No one took undue notice of him or his beast; he decided that Dûsarra must be more cosmopolitan than he had thought, if its people were so blasé about such creatures in their midst.

  The alley was unlit and almost uninhabited; after the relative glare of the market it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust. Like their countrymen in the market, the few people who strolled the byway paid Garth and Koros no heed. Here all wore their hoods up and pulled well forward, unlike the market where the bare-headed predominated.

  He made his way carefully through the gloom; the shadows of the buildings on either side kept the moonlight from lighting the way adequately, but the narrow street was clear of obstructions. At least this inn stood on a cleaner street than the King’s Inn, Garth thought.

  He rounded a slight curve, and found the way brighter; light poured from around a second turn, which brought the street back to its original direction. He turned the second corner, and had found the inn; the light poured from its broad front window, and he could hear voices within. The door stood open, not surprising on a warm summer night, and above it hung a sign; the light from the window let him make out seven stars arranged in an oval, white paint on blue. A wide arch just beyond led, he hoped, to an attached stable. He crossed the field of light, and found a boy asleep in the archway. The distinctive odors of horse and ox reached his slit nostrils, convincing him that his hopes were correct. He prodded the boy gently with a booted toe.

  The lad woke up immediately and sprang to his feet, but said nothing.

  “I need stabling for my mount.”

  “One mark the night, sir, and feed is extra.”

  “I have no local currency; will this do?” He produced his smallest gold coin, and dropped it in the boy’s hand. The lad looked at it, then carried it over to the light that spilled from the tavern door.

  He studied it for a long minute, then asked, “What is it?”

  “A northern gold piece.”

  “Gold?” The boy looked at it again, then tested it with his teeth.

  “Of course it’s gold.”

  “Yes, sir; but we see little gold here. Most pay in silver. My apologies for the delay; the third stall is yours, my lord.” He bowed.

  Garth ignored the stable-boy’s obsequiousness and led Koros to the indicated stall, which proved spacious enough and well lined with straw, though not particularly clean. A bucket of passably clear water hung from one side, and in view of its recent feeding Garth saw no need to provide the warbeast with any other sustenance. He removed pack and saddle and placed them to one side, then told Koros to stay and headed for the tavern door. He had no worries that anyone might disturb his supplies; anybody fool enough to try would be ripped to pieces immediately. A warbeast was a very useful thing to have.

  Although from the street the tavern had seemed brightly lit, once inside Garth found it otherwise; the light came from a row of lanterns hung across the window and from two low-burning hearthfires, one at either end of the main room, and from nowhere else, so that most of the room remained dim and shadowed. The chimneys did not seem to draw well either; a haze of smoke seemed to hang over everything.

  A dozen assorted locals adorned the various tables that were scattered about, and there was not a lone innkeeper, as Garth had expected, but two serving-maids and a boy, all adolescent, distinguishable from their patrons by virtue of gray aprons worn over their robes. Probably the innkeeper’s offspring, he decided, and their father must be in the kitchen or ending to rooms upstairs.

  He beckoned to the nearer girl; she scurried over, leaving the spit she had been turning, which held a shapeless lump of meat a foot or so above one of the fires. “Yes, sir?” she said.

  “Bring me ale and meat; and have you any fruit? I could use something sweet.” Garth spoke in a voice well above his natural range and stood stooping to disguise his inhuman height, his hood pulled well forward.

  “Yes, sir.” She hurried off, and he seated himself at a convenient table.

  As he waited for his food and drink he studied his surroundings; he wanted someone to talk to, someone who would tell him about the city and the temples. What he saw were a dozen robed, hooded figures huddled over their tables, speaking little to each other, let alone to a stranger who would not allow his face to be seen. The universal Dûsarran garb made him wonder momentarily if the Forgotten King hailed from this strange city, but on consideration he decided it was unlikely. The King wore yellow, a color he had not seen displayed anywhere in this country, and went in rags despite his claim of royalty, while here, dark colors predominated and most wore clothing in far better shape than his own travel-worn cloak. Further, the King was pale-skinned, while the Dûsarrans, from what he could see, were of a middling shade, lighter than his own hide but browner than the men of Skelleth; and finally, the Dûsarran robes tended to be loose and flowing, while the King kept his garments wrapped tightly about him.

  But of course, Garth suddenly realized, not everyone in the room wore the standard robe and hood; the two serving-maids and their brother; if such he was, wore shorter, low-necked robes with no hoods, dark blue in color. All three were barefoot, with long brown hair tied back in single braids down their backs. The similarity in hair color further convinced Garth that they were siblings, as the shade and texture were almost identical.

  These three might be more willing to converse than their customers; filling an eager ear would surely be more pleasant to such young folk than carting mugs and plates about. He paid them more attention than he had.

  The boy was the youngest, probably well short of his full height, and still totally innocent of any beard; Garth was no judge of human ages, but the lad was plainly far from maturity. As such, he would probably be limited in his knowledge; among overmen, at least, religion and philosophy were not the concerns of children, so Garth guessed that the boy would know nothing of the temples.

  Of the two girls there seemed little to choose, from the overman’s point of view; they were of about the same size, and presumably therefore near the same age. They were as tall as many adult human women; Garth wondered again at the quirk of nature that made men and women so different in size, unlike overman and overwomen. Women seemed such small, fragile things, and oddly proportioned, at that.

  One girl seemed slightly the more active of the two; Garth decided she must be the younger. It was her older sister he had spoken to when he arrived, and it would presumably be the older who would bring his food. In that case, he would simply speak to her when his meal was ready.

  Even as he decided this, the girl emerged from a door at the rear carrying a heaping plate and full mug, which she balanced easily as she crossed the room to set them on the table before him.

  “My thanks.” He kept his face hidden and his voice high as he looked at his meal; beside the expected slices of red meat were three chunks of some pasty yellowish substance, and a curious red fruit, like none he was familiar with, adorned one edge. “What are these?” he asked, indicating these strangers.

  “Roast potato, sir. And our last good apple; we have no other fruit in store at present.”

  Both names were meaningless to the overman; he could not even be sure of their spelling, through the girl’s thick Dûsarran accent. At least Nekutta spoke the same language as Eramma and the other northern lands, even if they spoke it strangely. Still, the “apple”
was plainly a local fruit; the potato was another matter.

  “What is potato?”

  “Ah? Oh, you’re joking!”

  “No; I have traveled far.”

  “It’s ... it’s a root, a vegetable. Eat it, and see.” The girl was flustered; Garth was not sure if that was desirable or not. He did have her talking.

  “Here, sit down; I will try this root of yours, but I have some questions about your city. Perhaps you can answer them.”

  “But...”

  “I am a paying customer, am I not? You can spare a few minutes.” He tapped the table with a gold coin, then suddenly realized that it was a mistake to draw attention to his inhuman hands; he dropped the coin, and drew his hand back out of sight. The girl apparently hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary; she stared at the coin for a moment, then snatched it up and dropped it down the neckline of her robe. Garth was amused. He had never before seen a human keep anything there, but it seemed a logical place for a woman to put a pocket. The coin had been a fullsized gold piece, not one of the little bits such as he had given the stable-boy, and he remarked, “That will cover the meal as well, will it not?”

  “Oh, yes!” The girl dropped herself into the chair opposite him, smiling.

  “Good. Tell me of your city; I am a wanderer from far to the east.”

  “What is there to say?”

  “Ah...” Garth had not expected that response. He was not experienced in dealing with humans. “Why is the marketplace so busy in the middle of the night? And the gate wide open?”

  “It always is.”

  That demolished the religious festival theory once and for all. “But why? In most cities business is a matter for daylight, and the night is given to sleep.”

  “But this is Dûsarra!” Her tone implied, even to the untrained ear of an overman, that he was being purposely dense. He picked up a chunk of potato on his knife and ate it, while considering this; the stuff seemed edible, but not particularly tasty.

  “And what is so special about Dûsarra?”

  “You do not know?”

  “No.”

  “The very name tells you.”

  Garth had paid little attention to the name, assuming it nothing but a noise that represented this particular place; he considered it a bit more carefully, and still saw nothing significant in it. The ending was a standard designation for a gathering place, and the root, Dûs, was completely unknown to him.

  “I do not understand.”

  “’Dûsarra’ means ‘the place of the Dark Gods’ Here we worship the gods shunned by the outside world; mostly Tema, the goddess of night. Perhaps, stranger, you have made a mistake in coming here if you did not know that.”

  “Perhaps I have.” He sat silently for a moment, thinking.

  He should have expected something like this from the Forgotten King. He knew very little about human religions, beyond the fact that no two seemed to agree about anything, but he had heard of the Dark Gods; they were supposed to demand human sacrifices, and to be wholly evil in nature. It had been rumored that the Baron of Skelleth was a secret devotee of theirs, and that had been considered sufficient grounds for immediate execution if proven; it remained only a vague rumor. It was said that, unlike most gods, they still interfered directly in mortal affairs, and would grant their followers special powers and abilities in exchange for gruesome payments of blood, death, and torture. Evil wizards were said to have sold themselves—their souls, to use the human term that overmen did not use—to the Dark Gods.

  And the entire city of Dûsarra worshipped these deities? It seemed incredible. How could a thinking being worship evil?

  “Tell me, then, about these gods.” At least the conversation had taken a turn toward the temples without obviously being steered there.

  “There are seven of them, the seven Lords of Dûs, the counterparts to the seven Lords of Eir worshipped elsewhere. I know very little about most of them; I am a follower of Tema, like the rest of my family.”

  “How did you come to be such?”

  “I was brought up in the faith, of course.”

  “How did the city come to worship these gods?”

  “I don’t know; it always has. My father told me once that it was part of a cosmic balance that these misunderstood and maligned gods should have one city of their own.”

  “Are they not evil?”

  “Tema is not!” Her face was suddenly animated, and Garth was taken aback by her ferocity. “Tema is beautiful! The night is wonderful, cool and calm; I would never be a day worshipper! How can people live with all that glaring light? And all the sweaty heat? And all the beasts roam by day, and insects. The sun is so bright you cannot look at it, and it drowns out all the beauty of the flames. There are no stars in the daytime! I...” She subsided suddenly. “Forgive me.”

  “No, forgive me; I did not mean to offend you. In other lands I have visited, the Dark Gods are thought to be the gods of evil.”

  She shrugged. “They are obviously ignorant heathens. There are no evil gods, really; evil is just misunderstandings between people, or between people and the gods. That’s what the priests say.”

  “I see. You worship the night-goddess. What of the other six?”

  “They have their followers, too, but I do not heed them. I sometimes think that some of them are evil, despite what the priests say. Aghad, for example; his followers make my skin crawl, and his priests frighten me. I have seen them gathering at his temple. And of course, no one worships The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, though he has a temple.”

  Garth began to have a rather unsettled feeling; he had heard of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken. That was the god of death, known throughout the world; it was said that to speak his true name was to die instantly. And they worshipped him here?

  No, the girl had just said that they did not, but that there was a temple dedicated to him. Was it one of the seven he would have to rob?

  It must be; everyone seemed to agree that there were only seven temples in Dûsarra. Although he would not admit to being in any way superstitious, and although his own people insisted that either there were no gods or they did not meddle in the affairs of mortals, he did not care to rob the temple of Death.

  On the other hand, his practical sense told him, if there were no worshippers, it would be unguarded and the easiest of the lot.

  “Tell me who the seven gods are.”

  “You mean the seven who have temples?”

  “Are there others?”

  “Oh, yes; there’s Tema’s daughter Mei, the lady of the moon, and any number of others.”

  “Just tell me the seven.”

  “Bheleu, P’hul, Sai, Aghad, Andhur Regvos, and Tema.”

  “That’s only six, if I heard you rightly.”

  “Well and there’s the Unnamed God. You know.”

  “Oh, of course.” It was apparently considered bad luck to mention the death-god too often even by circumlocution. “I know him, and P’hul, and you have told me Tema is the goddess of the night; who are the others?”

  “Bheleu is god of destruction and war, I think. Andhur Regvos is the god of darkness.”

  “Why has he got two names?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. Go on; what about the other two?”

  “I don’t know; Aghad and Sai are secret. Their temples admit no outsiders. They both ... well, that’s just a rumor. Never mind.”

  “And all the city lives by night, to accord with their religion?”

  “Oh, no! Not all! Only the worshippers of night and darkness. But we’re most of the city. I don’t know anyone who lives by day, but of course that’s partly because I’m asleep all day.”

  “I am interested in this; could I visit the temples?”

  “I don’t know about the others, but I can take you to the temple of Tema.”

  “Good. But first,” he said, realizing that he had been talking while his food grew cold and that he was ravenously hungry, “I wil
l eat.”

  He did so, and found the food and drink good; the girl laughed gaily when he tried to eat the apple core and all.

  Chapter Seven

  The temple of Tema was a massive, imposing structure; most of its area was covered by a looming black dome, which Garth thought was probably the one he had first seen from ten leagues’ distance, and the entrance was through the base of a tower that stood a good hundred feet in height. The entire building was constructed of huge blocks of black stone, finely polished, and with elaborate carvings on either side of the wide, open doorway. The door was reached by climbing a flight of thirteen black stone steps, flanked by balustrades carved into a maze of intertwined black serpents. Garth did not particularly care for the place; although undeniably impressive, he did not like the impression it gave of looming over one, black in the moonlight, and the way its size served to diminish its inhabitants. The robed and hooded figures entering the dark portal looked like little children, out of proportion with their surroundings.

  He also didn’t like the darkness within; not the slightest glimmer of light showed through the door. That was appropriate for the temple of the goddess of night, but he still didn’t like it.

  The tavern girl was beside him as he mounted the steps; it occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t know her name. Of course, she didn’t know his name, either. Ahead of them three other worshippers, robed in midnight blue, vanished into the darkness of the doorway.

  A moment later, he and the girl also stepped into the gloom of the interior. Garth paused for a moment, to let his eyes adjust, and realized he could detect no trace of the three who had entered just ahead of them; no sound of rustling clothing, no footsteps, no odor. His psychic discomfort increased.

  The girl had not hesitated, as he had, and was across the room, an antechamber about forty feet square; he heard her whisper, “Come on!” He came, and rejoined her, standing a pace or two from the inner wall. He had expected a draped doorway, or some other opening into the temple proper, but could make out no sign of one; there seemed to be merely a blank stone wall. Then, with startling abruptness, a portion of the stone wall swung inward; the heavy scent of incense drifted out to him. He made out a figure in the opening, darkly clad, but with pale skin and white hair that gleamed in the faint moonlight that reached it. The darkness within that opening seemed no more absolute than in the antechamber; that was some comfort, anyway. The girl stepped through the opening, and he followed, to find himself in the main temple.