God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  "Now, is that or is that not, in unscrambled form, part of the ninth canticle of your evening service?"

  "Yes," said the priest, looking puzzled, "but the name isn't right."

  "That's just the point. It is. Look, I've been going over the religious tracts in your collection this past fortnight, and so far I haven't found one reference to Gorgo, which is ridiculous considering his obvious antiquity. Gorgiryl, however, gets at least a mention from nearly everybody because he was one of the few deities to make the jump from the Old Pantheon to the New essentially unaltered. Then along came your multiple great grandfather Bilgore. It wasn't just Gorgo's name that he changed, either . . . you're looking remarkably blank. Am I going too fast for you?"

  "N-no. I'm told I always look that way just before the rotten eggs hit."

  "Well, this is more on the order of a spinach custard— just as messy but potentially more nourishing. As I was saying, the old attributes seem to have been kept, but not with the same emphasis . . . and that's where things began to go sour for poor old Gorgo—pardon, Gorgiryl. Instead of the tears of life—rain, that is—you have sterile salt water; instead of the world's salvation, endless sorrow. It's the whole myth frozen in the wrong place, with everything distorted to make its lowest point look like its proper end. What easier way to turn a simple, rather dignified religion on its ear? You're still looking blank. Come, I'll show you an example, the best one of all."

  She took him by the arm and led him half against his will to the threshold of the inner chamber. Neither had entered it since the night its occupant had died. The basins were still there, also the short scroll peeking over the idol's webbed fingers; but more vivid than either was the memory of the bowed, bewildered figure in its garish finery that had stood trembling before them for so short a time.

  "As the man that Bilgore made him," said Jame, "he was ludicrous." Then she pointed at the statue looming dark and cool in the shadows. "But as a giant frog . . . ?"

  * * *

  IT WAS EARLY EVENING on a day some three weeks into autumn, and the light was failing rapidly. Marc put down the tiny figure he had been carving. The rough form was there— the cowled head, outstretched arms, even some folds of the enveloping garment—but he didn't trust himself with the finer details at this time of night. Ah, but it felt good to have a bit of work in his hands again. He had almost forgotten the pleasure of making small, cunningly fashioned objects, not to mention his old dream of becoming a master craftsman before necessity and his own remarkable physique had defeated all such gentle ambitions. If he had a hearth of his own, he might have retired to it now to perfect this skill. Instead, all he possessed after a long life of service was his honor—and a few friends to brighten the way.

  Still, one might do worse.

  A mouse scurried across a beam overhead. Boo was getting lazy, Marc thought, staring up contemplatively at another sample of his handiwork. He and Rothan had had quite a time repairing the loft after its midnight visitor. Matters could easily have been worse, though: without Jame, the top two stories would probably have collapsed into the hall.

  She was clever, that lass, but more than a bit strange. Marc knew how afraid many Kencyrs were of people like her, but he himself had seen too much of life to take fright at something a little odd. He wondered idly how much Highborn blood she had, all Shanirs necessarily possessing at least a trace. A quarter at most, probably. Pure Highborn women and even many half-bloods were strictly sequestered and used by their men folk to bind together the ruling houses of the Kencyrath. Those with less Highborn blood, especially if it came with Shanir traits, could receive some pretty rough treatment. That might explain Ishtier's initial hostility toward Jame.

  Ishtier. Strange things certainly happened to Kencyrs in this city, Marc thought, shaking his head. Here he was carving the image of one dead god for a small household shrine while Jame acted as temporary acolyte to another and their own priest set traps to snare them both. Then there was Bane, who acted like a Shanir, but (as far as Marc could tell) wasn't one, and that old Kencyr, Dalis-sar, deified. No wonder few of the Kencyrath stayed in Tai-tastigon longer than they could help.

  So what are you doing here now, old man?

  A wail split the air, breaking his line of thought. Someone's baby? No, cats—squaring off in front of the inn directly below. There was a covered chamber pot near at hand. Marc flipped off the lid and tossed the contents over the parapet without bothering to look down.

  "Hey!" said a familiar voice below in sharp protest.

  * * *

  JAME HAD BEEN in the Lower Town that afternoon, checking on Taniscent. Dusk was gathering and the byways were rapidly clearing of their shabby traffic when she left Patches' home. To save time, she turned down a narrow side street, which, according to the patterns of the Maze, should have been a short-cut to the fosse that bounded the area. Several turns in, however, the lane was blocked to shoulder height with the debris of a collapsed wall. Jame climbed the mound and set off along its spine, expecting the way to open up again somewhere beyond. Eventually it did, but only into a wasteland of fire-ravaged buildings and thoroughfares so choked with rubble as to be quite invisible. To her exasperation Jame realized that she was lost. Her knowledge of the city, theoretical and practical, had made her careless, here where the lack of all customary landmarks made caution most necessary. She had forgotten how quickly Tai-tastigon could revenge itself on those who took its mysteries lightly.

  It was getting dark. Silence clung bat like to the charred rafters, swelled up out of the shadowed hollows in the heaped debris. A rat scratched and snuffled in the ruins, claws scrabbling briefly on a bone-white board. To go back or forward—return to the heart of the lower Town or press on toward the deadly circle of her own temple? Night breathed in her ear, waiting to pounce.

  "Salutations."

  Jame started violently. A dark, elegant figure had appeared on top of a broken wall above her. "Well, look who's perching on the battlements," she heard herself say in a shaky voice. "Come down, gore-crow."

  "Gladly," said Bane, and leaped.

  Jame sprang backward into a defensive pose. Water flowing met fire leaping, channeled its force aside with a blur of moving bodies once, twice, and again. They broke apart, regarding each other, now that the initial shock was past, with something like satisfaction. Neither had been so well matched in a long, long time. When they met again, it was not in the whirlwind fashion of the first round but with more subtlety of attack and response on both sides. Darkness gathered about them, two lithe, shadowy forms tracing the patterns of ritual combat as old as their ancient race.

  Jame could never afterward say when the fight ended and the dance began. No need to ask then where in the night her partner was, for his movements had become an extension of her own. The kantirs flowed together, water and air mingling with touches of dark fire to smolder at nerves' end, fingertips tingling with a nearness that never became contact.

  Where had she done this before, and with whom? . . . a vast chamber as dark as this place was now, surrounded by blazing tripods, a canopied bed, a man dancing, his face . . . no!

  Cloth ripped, and Bane sprang back in a startled exclamation. The left sleeve of his d'hen was split from the inner elbow to the wrist. On the forearm beneath, black in the moonlight, was a thickening line of blood. He regarded it with a slow, secret smile. Jame's throat tightened. Without a word, she turned and climbed the wall of jumbled beams. As she set off through the wilderness beyond, Bane was walking by her side.

  "The old man knows that you helped his grandson escape," he said, as though nothing had passed between them. "I've never seen him so furious."

  "Damn. That will mean assassins lurking under every flowerpot, I suppose."

  "Oh, he wouldn't be so angry if it were as simple as that. At the moment, he's afraid to interfere with you at all. The bones have warned him. According to them, if he's going to win the election, you'll have something to do with it."

  "W
hat, for God's sake?"

  "I shouldn't stop here if I were you," he said. "It's following us."

  "It? Oh." Jame looked back, saw nothing but jagged, darkening shadows and the cusp of the old moon rising. Nevertheless, there was only one thing "it" could be, here in the Lower Town. "You don't seem very concerned," she said, resuming her pace.

  "M'lord Ishtier tells me that I shouldn't be," he said cryptically. "I'm to trust in him and all will be well. But I don't think it is, even now. If that man has betrayed me, kin or not, the next time he deigns to give me an order, the results may surprise him."

  "Bane, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Now will you please tell me how I'm supposed to help Theocandi retain his power?"

  "If he knew, he would have found a way to get rid of you without endangering his own future long before this, if only to stop the nightmares. Remember the statue at the prow of Ship Island? Every night for the past month, he's dreamed that it had your face and was brandishing his head. Have you noticed," he said, examining his arm, "that every time we meet, someone ends up bleeding?"

  "I've noticed. Not very auspicious, is it?"

  "That depends," he said, with an ambiguous smile. "This much at least is clear: If you stay in Tai-tastigon after the election, there'll be trouble—regardless of who wins. Don't trust Men-dalis anymore than Theocandi, despite that baby brother of his. Something nasty is brewing in that quarter, though no one seems to know exactly what. Beware of the Creeper, and also of m'lord Ishtier. Not only does our esteemed priest hate you, but there are rumors that he had more to do with the Sirdan during the last Council than either cares to admit."

  "Oh? In what way?"

  "My spies suggest an exchange of information, probably arcane. Theocandi is a fair Kencyr scholar, and I know that he has several of our 'lost' documents in his library that Ishtier might well have wished to see. Of course, the reverse is true too; remember, this was just before the appearance of the Shadow Thief.

  "And now," he said with a sudden laugh, "having uttered my share of warning croaks, I'll flap off to the nearest rookery. Your way lies in that direction, over the fosse and home. Our murky friend will follow me, I think; it always does. But there's no point in tempting it."

  On the other side of the little waterway, Jame suddenly turned. "That statue of yours . . ." she called after him. "I've just remembered. It carries two heads, not just one. In Theocandi's dream, whose was the other?"

  Bane paused, a black silhouette against the sky. "Oh, didn't I tell you?" he said, the now familiar smile coming back into his voice although the dusk hid his face. "The other head was mine."

  * * *

  KITHRA SANK her jug into the public fountain and heaved it out again, full of water, to balance on the limestone rim. Pretending to check it for cracks, she peered over its round shoulder at the Skyrrman.

  What was that man Marplet up to? He had dragged out the construction of his precious inn for nearly two years, and now, suddenly, everything must be finished at once. Even at this time of night, there were craftsmen at work inside, fitting inlaid panels around the walls. What was he readying the inn for? Kithra checked off the major, upcoming public events in her mind; the Thieves' Guild Council, several festivals in the Temple District, the biennial meeting between the Archiem of Skyrr and the Metalondrin king . . . of course, that must be it. Everyone knew that while their heralds exchanged ritual insults, the two rulers usually slipped off to spend Winter's Eve going from one tavern to another. Marplet must be hoping that they would honor him with a visit.

  Ah, if she could only get the Archiem's attention for half a minute, what stories she could tell him about his "honorable" countryman! Gods, what a chance to gut that sleek pig of an innkeeper . . .

  Niggen dashed out of a side street with a howl. Although he was feigning terror, Kithra recognized that detestable giggle welling up under all his clamor and wished savagely that the Talisman could be induced to knock out a few more of his teeth.

  And here, as though in answer to her thoughts, was Jame herself, standing hands on hips at the mouth of the street from which Niggen had just bolted. The boy was in front of the Skyrrman now, loudly begging his father's servants for protection and casting looks of mock terror back across the square. The apparent cause of this scene regarded it with raised eyebrows and a look oddly compounded of perplexity, amusement, and distaste on her handsome face. Kithra found herself wishing, not for the first time, that the Talisman really was a boy.

  At that moment, two other voices joined the uproar, cutting across it with their undisguised notes of raw hatred. Fang was stalking Boo on the very threshold of the Res aB'tyrr.

  "Oh, for pity's sake," said Jame, and went to the rescue.

  At the last moment, something made her look up. She saw what was falling from the loft and, with a shout of protest, leaped for the doorway, snatching up Boo en route. Fang was not so fortunate. Drenched, he backed rapidly away, shaking his head, then turned and dashed off.

  "Sorry," said Marc, looking down.

  Jame lugged Boo up to the loft, hoping to keep him out of further mischief. The cat continued to whuffle ferociously at nothing in particular up all three flights of stairs. He gave the impression that when set down he would bounce for some time like a clockwork toy.

  When Jame had told Marc about Bane's warnings, the big Kendar said, "He's right, you know. It isn't safe for you here even now, nor for anyone else, I sometimes think. Too much is coming to a boil too fast. We Kencyrs are used to trouble, but this time most of it isn't even our own; and I'm getting too old to enjoy the thing for its own sake. What are we doing here, lass? We don't belong in this city, however entangled we're become with it. We should be going home."

  Home—the broken walls, the doorways that gaped, the waiting dead—no. The images touched Jane's mind only for a second, then faded away. Home . . . no longer a place but a people whose face she barely knew but suddenly wished very much to see. The sun on spear points and the moon on shields, the rathorn cry and the charge that makes the earth shake; scrollsmen walking in their cloisters, thirty millennia of knowledge lying cool and deep in their minds; the hearth on a winter's night when friends meet; Tori . . . a place to belong. It was calling to her here in the dark, stirring her blood as the moon does the sea, and at last—after days, weeks, months of hesitation—she answered its summons.

  "Yes," she said, "we should go home. Trinity knows what will happen to either of us when we get there, but we should go. Soon."

  "Over the Ebonbane? The passes won't be safe for months."

  "True. How about going south, either cross-country or down the Tone to Endiscar? The storm season will end soon. Then, dead water or not, we can take ship around the Cape of the Lost and reach the Central Lands by the sea route."

  "You don't know what it s like down there," said Marc, grimacing. "The land is as rotten as the water, and as haunted as the north in its own way. Still, it may be our best chance at that. When should we leave?"

  "Say, as soon after the election as we can manage. I'd like to set something right before I go, and it will probably take me that long at least . . . if I can bring it off at all," she added to herself, a worried look settling on her face in the darkness.

  * * *

  THE EVENING SERVICE had ended. Jame, by the door, watched the congregation file out, then went down to the front where Loogan was putting his cue cards back in order. Each scrap of paper had part of the revised ritual on it, gleaned from any one of a dozen different sources. With their help, supplemented by some vigorous pantomiming by Jame at the back of the room, he was attempting to replace the old, corrupt words—engraved on his memory by thirty years of use— with the new ones.

  "That went quite well," said Jame, coming up to him. "I'd say that the people were impressed and pleased. They're taking the changes much better than I'd hoped. Gorgo"— they had decided to keep the old name—"probably hasn't been this popular in years."

  "It help
s to be a rain god in the middle of a drought," said Loogan. "Up to a certain point. You know, the people of the Far Isles have a priest-king who they believe can summon the rains at will out of his belly. If he fails, they rip him open."

  "In other words, an impressive performance isn't enough. Hasn't it made any difference, getting all these people to come back?"

  "None," said Loogan heavily. "He's as dead as ever, poor thing, and all that we do in his name is futile. Only a miracle can help him now."

  "Hush."

  A stranger was standing on the threshold, his broad shoulders nearly filled the doorway. "Are you the high priest?" he demanded.

  Loogan drew himself up, some of his old authority returning. "Yes, I am," he said. "How may I serve you?"

  "Huh!" said the man, giving the modest interior of the temple a quick, scornful glance. "I'm part of a delegation of farmers from the Benar Confederation, come up river to petition all the appropriate gods for rain. Damn waste of time, I say, but there you are. We must have it before Winter's Eve or the wheat crop will fail, and that will mean famine throughout the Eastern Lands. I hear that this Gurgle of yours is a rain god. What d'you charge for extra prayers?"