God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  "Of course!" she said suddenly. "You idiot, you've got the whole thing backward."

  True, most of the dead gods craved sacrifices, but it was lack of faith, not food, that had killed them in the first place. Poor Gorgo's sudden demise proved that. Therefore, offerings were valuable to such beings only for the sake of the devotion that prompted them. That was why it did those out prowling the streets tonight so little good to devour whatever they could find or catch, and why her guest did not prosper now.

  This presented a new difficulty.

  "Goddess," said Jame to the figure, after a moment's hard thought. "I think I know now what you need, but not if I can provide it. I'm a Kencyr, a monotheist, it seems, whether I want to be one or not. If that wasn't true, I would have been able to accept this city on its own terms long ago. As it is, your kind, living and dead, have been a nightmare to me. I still think that in the end I'll find a way to explain you all away, but not entirely. In some quite alien way, you do exist. I believe that now. So, to a certain extent, I suppose I believe in you too, goddess. That's the best I can do. I hope it's good enough."

  And with this, she broke the last of her provisions, the soggy piece of trencher bread, over the fire.

  It blazed up in her face. Half-blinded, choking, she threw herself back from it. The loft stank of burned hair. Through the after-image of flames, she saw the shrouded figure bending over the fire. It opened its hood and the smoke billowed up into it. The hands stopped trembling as the veins sank on them and the flesh returned. The outline of the stones beyond showed only faintly through the figure when it at last turned toward Jame. She shrank from it, wondering belatedly if she had outsmarted herself again. But no. It merely sketched what might have been an obeisance and drifted past her. Somewhere beyond the Old Wall, a cock shut within doors began to crow and was stifled in mid-note. Facing the sun that still swam in seas of mist below the horizon, the goddess raised her hands in welcome to the gray light of dawn and vanished.

  Jame sat very still for a long moment, then sprang to her feet and practically threw herself over the north parapet. She could never remember afterward if she had used the B'tyrr in her descent at all. It was the beginning of a cross-town rooftop sprint that was spoken of with awe for years to come by the few early rising Cloudies who witnessed it. Jame only remembered its start and finish when she fetched up gasping in front of Gorgo's temple, suddenly jarred out of her haze of plans by the solid reality of a locked door.

  Fifteen seconds later the lock was picked and she was tearing up the stairs to Loogan's quarters. Here she pounced on the unfortunate priest and began to shake him vigorously.

  Loogan woke suddenly with all that had happened the night before clear in his mind, a roaring headache, and someone shouting in his ear "Get up, you lie-a-bed. We've work to do!"

  "Please stop that," he said plaintively. "My head is about to fall off . . . what work?"

  "Break out the jubilee wine, old man," cried Jame, doing a double backward somersault that made him wonder if he was still dreaming. "We're going to resurrect your god!"

  Chapter 11

  The Storm Breaks

  WOULD YOU PLEASE, said Loogan, "go over that again?"

  Jame did. It was midmorning by now on the day after the Feast. She was explaining, for the third time, the series of experiments that had led to Gorgo's sudden demise and the theories that had prompted them. Then she told him about her adventures in the loft.

  "As soon as I realized that the dead gods weren't beyond help," she concluded, "it occurred to me that something similar but more extensive might be done for Gorgo: I think your god can be resurrected if only we can restore his peoples' faith in him."

  "That's all very well," said Loogan, "but how do we accomplish that when I wasn't even able to make them keep what little they had left?"

  "That is a problem," Jame admitted, "but I can't help feeling that there's a way. After all, Gorgo must have been a fairly important deity once to have rated even a small temple in the District. Perhaps our answer lies in the past. What was he like in the beginning?"

  "Foolish as it sounds, I don't know. Back during , the Skyrr-Metalondrian War, Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Bilgore, who was high priest then, seems to have made some fairly extensive doctrinal changes. Then, to make sure there would be no turning back, he destroyed the early records and forbade the acolytes and celebrants ever to pass on the old ways again."

  "All the old documents were destroyed? What about those two I found in the idol's hands?"

  "Oh, those," he said. "They have nothing to do with Gorgo directly. You've been interested in them from the start, haven't you, or at least since the night the reservoir was drained. They're part of a secret that only the high priest of the order is supposed to know, but it doesn't matter anymore, does it? No secrets, no priests, no god. If you really want to know, come with me." And he led the way down the stairs, a plump, oddly dignified figure in a darned under tunic.

  They went across the outer chamber and into the little courtyard beyond, with its now-silent fountain. Cracks of blue sky showed above between the overhanging buildings. In the farthest corner, in the deepest shadows, Loogan bent and slid his fingers under the edge of a large flagstone. Obviously counterweighted, it rose easily, disclosing the first steps of a spiral stair dimly lit with light spheres. They descended.

  It was a dizzying way down, farther beneath the streets of Tai-tastigon than Jame had ever imagined that one could go. Plaques set in the outer wall indicated the burial slot of many a hierarch, while squares of rock crystal gave distorted, highly unwelcome glimpses of each occupant. At the bottom, tucked into a widened sweep of the stairs, was a high, conical room lined with shelf after shelf of scrolls, extending up out of sight.

  "These," said Loogan, with a gloomy sort of pride, "are the elder archives of Tai-tastigon. They were hidden here during the last battle of the Skyrr-Metalondrian War when it looked as if the winner, whichever side it was, would celebrate by razing the city. The only ones who knew about the transfer besides the novices who effected it were the Senior Archivist (who was one of us) and Great (times five) Grandfather Bilgore. The novices were given a very handsome wall slot each for their pains. The battle ended quite suddenly when the Archiem of Skyrr and the Metalondrian king decided it would be better to make Tai-tastigon a charter city and have it pay them both for the privilege than for one side to slaughter the other and then destroy the place. The Senior Archivist was brained by a flowerpot upset by a lady on an upper terrace while both were watching events below on the plain.

  "That was when my ancestor began to change things. He seems to have had the idea that just in case anyone else did know where the documents were, the alterations would make them that much harder to find. Also, I think, it was an excuse to arrange affairs more to his liking. He got away with it too, on both counts. You're the first outsider to see this room in nearly two hundred years."

  "But if it was such a secret," said Jame, "why risk betraying it by taking manuscripts up into the temple?"

  "Had to," said the priest with a shrug, beginning to slide back into the depression from which his bit of story-telling had temporarily roused him. "They have to be resanctified regularly to stay here. . . or did. One a day, twenty-two years to a cycle. If you want to stay, stay. I'm going back to bed."

  He departed. Jame heard his slippers shuffle up the steps and felt the dead, earthen silence close in their wake. She was alone in the midst of one of the richest troves of its kind in all Rathillien.

  * * *

  THE SHROUD-LIGHT of dawn lay heavy on the southern plain, giving it the texture of a singularly dull tapestry woven with shadows. Birds flitted over it under a pewter sky. The road to Tai-Abendra, a ribbon of silver in the gloom, stretched away to the south, following the Ebonbane's dark curve. The small caravan was already a long way away. Jame and Dally stood on the battlements of the outer wall, watching it go.

  "Do you suppose," said Dally, "now
that Canden's gotten safely away, the old man might simply let him go?"

  "I doubt it. He'll probably have about two days' grace before his grandfather finds out he's gone, and then maybe two hours more if the Sirdan's spies are slow about picking up his trail."

  "Then we shall have to muddy it a bit for them. There are plenty of people who will be glad to lay some false scents for the Sirdan's hell-hounds. Damn!" he said suddenly, torn between exasperation and amusement. "All these intrigues, all this deceit. Of course, we'll do away with the lot after the election; but Canden is well out of it for now. I almost wish I were going with him."

  "I wish you were too," said Jame, "and myself as well."

  Dally glanced at her sharply, hoping to see one thing, finding another that confused and disconcerted him. What had he said now?

  "Well, it's time we were getting back," said Jame, turning from the parapet. "After all, if we're going to be dragging bagged foxes around town for the benefit of the pack, it won't do to be seen waving good-bye from up here."

  They crossed over to the inner wall on the same rope walk Jame had used when she plunged to Jorin's rescue.

  There was the cattery, there the pool, but (thank God) no man carrying a sack from one to the other. Out in the foothills, the ounce would probably be wondering where she was, since this was the time when she normally brought him some food to supplement whatever he might have caught. He would have to wait a little longer.

  They were on the Rim now.

  "What a night!" said Dally. "I thought they'd never get everything packed. Canden's going to have a fine time with that lot if they're always so disorganized."

  He found he was talking to himself. As he turned to look for his companion, there was a sudden scuffling sound in an alley that he had just passed and then a loud yelp. Running back, Dally found Jame seated on a small rodent-faced individual whose right arm and wrist had achieved an unusual angle in her grasp.

  "Look what I've caught," she said, adding in a dangerously pleasant tone to her victim: "Must I promise to nail the ears of every spy who comes crawling after me to the nearest door in order to be left alone?"

  The little man made violent signs to the negative. By now, virtually no one in Tai-tastigon took the Kencyr's word lightly.

  "But Jame, it's all right," Dally protested, approaching them. "It's only one of the Creeper's men."

  "What?"

  The spy, taking advantage of her start, twisted free and sent her tumbling back into the wall as he scrambled to his feet. She was up almost as quickly as he, but ignored him as he scuttled away.

  "How long has that creature had people following you?" she demanded. "Does your brother know?"

  "Why, I suppose so," said Dally. "It's for my own protection, after all. Mendy worries about me. Stop looking at me like that—it's true. Listen, it's been a long night. Let's go to the Moon and have a drink. Then I can start being devious and you can go on with whatever it is you've been doing in the Temple District this last fortnight. Come on, let's."

  * * *

  "LET'S SEE," Raffing was saying owlishly, "who else will be up for promotion when the Guild Council convenes? You, Darinby, for one. Drink to all candidates for master!"

  "Including Bane?" asked Patches mischievously.

  "Man's a rogue," said Raffing, twisting about in his chair and scowling horrifically at the rest of the Moon's common room, which as usual at this early hour was full of thieves relaxing after their night's work. "A rogue, I say! Bought his commission. Everybody knows it."

  "So they do, old chap," said Darinby soothingly. "You needn't shout it at them. I suppose," he added, trying to return the conversation to its original channel, "that the Talisman will be on the lists too, for a journeyman."

  "Same difference," said an apprentice from the Rim. "Theocandi's pupil uses his father's money; Penari's, his master's secrets. Either way, it isn't fair."

  "Oh, come now. Secrets? What master doesn't pass along his own, if the student is worthy?"

  "You know what I mean," said the other stubbornly. "Look at the work he's done: the Sky King's britches, the Peacock Gloves, and half a dozen other things that no one else has even been able to touch, much less take. That's not common, honest skill, no, not any more than Penari's theft of the Eye of Abarraden was. There's sorcery in it, or worse."

  "Jealousy too, I should think. It may be only a game to him—I mean to her," he corrected himself with a grimace, "but by all the gods she plays it fairly and well."

  "Drink to the Talisman!" roared Raffing, echoed by Patches.

  "I still say it's not right," muttered the Rim apprentice, "and what's more," he added, on a surge of false courage, "if he turns up here tonight, I'll tell him so to his face!"

  "Then let us hope 'he' doesn't," said Darinby softly, remembering the death of Scramp. "For both your sakes."

  * * *

  "ON SECOND THOUGHT," said Jame, "let's not go to the Moon after all. We're closer to home here anyway. If we ask her nicely, maybe Cleppetty will make us honey cakes for breakfast."

  * * *

  IN A ROOM hung with silver and blue, Men-dalis was pacing back and forth. Wherever he walked, the light went with him, clinging softly to his hair and clothes, the god-glow of Dalis-sar's true son. For the thousandth time, he was counting up the odds.

  Masters Gold and Shining were Theocandi's; there was no helping that. Mistress Silver still kept her own council, but was said to be furious with the Sirdan over her son. A pity the boy had only been exiled. The four Provincials were, of course, his. (He would not learn until much too late that one of them was not.) Jewel? The man might jump either way. A show of confidence would have more weight with him than bribes, but not so with Glass or the master thieves' two representatives. There was the crux, for those four votes might well decide the election. Theocandi thought he had bought them. Men-dalis knew that, with the proper backing, the old miser could be outbid; and that backing he would ,have, although not until the very day of the Council. His supporter had been inflexible about that. His integrity was under suspicion, he had said, and he must establish it at least in the public eye before daring to draw such a sum from the city treasury. Something about dispensing justice in an undeclared trade war on Winter's Eve . . .

  With a start, Men-dalis found that the Creeper had entered the room and was walking with him nearly at his elbow. The thin, scratchy voice began its whispered report. Men-dalis listened to most of it without comment, asked a few questions, then suddenly turned on the master spy and said, quite loudly, "What?"

  The information was repeated. He began to pace again, frowning.

  "Well, what of it? If Dally helps that Kencyr hoyden to embarrass Theocandi, all the better. A pity the old man's grandson got away, though; we might have found a use for him later. . . . Yes, yes, I realize that her master is the Sirdan's elder brother. Those two have been at dagger's point for a dog's age. . . . You think their rivalry is all a ruse? Yes, if that were true, the Talisman would make a good agent for Theocandi. No one would ever suspect her of it, not with the old men constantly feuding. . . . Dally? The boy's not very bright, but he can be trusted—I think. Besides, there's been talk of Penari's professional secrets again. If Dally can worm them out of his 'prentice, it will be quite a gem in our crown. . . . In love with her? Well, well, I don't know . . ."

  Back and forth he went, arguing as though with himself while his familiar kept pace one step behind him, its avid face out of his sight. The whispering voice went on and on, and bit by bit the room began to dim.

  * * *

  JAME THOUGHT at first that she had begun to hallucinate. In that silent, underground room, time might have stopped for all one could tell. How many hours had it been since she had parted with Jorin on the hillside and Dally (who had gone out with her) at the gate? Two? Ten? And nearly twenty-four awake before that, helping Canden prepare for his flight. No, one didn't begin to imagine things in that length of time. She read the manuscript again, then
rolled it up and went quickly out of the room and up the stairs with it in her hand.

  Loogan was sitting on the steps to the upper apartment. "Well, it's happened," he said gloomily. "My acolyte's father has gotten the Priests' Guild to annul his contract to me. I can't say that I blame him."

  "Never mind that now. Listen: 'By day and night, the battle raged, wheels of fire dashing over the seared plain while the heavens burned. Lances of lightning had Heliot and Dalis-sar, the moon for a shield. Their swords were tongues of flame, of woven comet's hair their armor. The earth trembled when they met, and the old gods fled to the deep places thereof to shiver in the dark.' "

  "Why read me all this?" said Loogan wearily. "What difference can it possibly make?"

  "Listen, dammit! 'One alone stayed, saw through the green roof of his home the terrible conflict, felt the earth's agony, the forests burning, the waters boiling. And when Dalis-sar had won, Gorgiryl came from his sea-deep house to plead for the scorched earth. Taking pity on him and on the blackened land, the new lord of the sun raised him to the heavens so that his tears falling might restore the sunken seas, bring life to the charred fields.'