Living God

by Dave Duncan

  Sudden, shocking pallor… Silence.

  “Is this information necessary?” the boy asked.

  That cleared away some of the smoke. Mother Iffini placed her pen in the inkwell and left it there. The legionary had been vague as to why exactly the two persons were wanted for questioning and perhaps had not known the reason himself. She had suspected that just possibly the law and the servants of the law might not have been on quite the same bearing. Once in a very long while even the law itself might vary a little from what the Gods required. On a matter of bigamy, however, there could be no divergence and no doubt.

  “You did not bring the funeral certificate?” she asked.

  The girl shook her head and looked in horror at the boy. His expression was bleak — as well it might be — but he was obviously not about to give up. He had probably anticipated that this might happen and he was going to try to bluff it through.

  “The man was lost in battle and his body was not recovered, Mother.”

  Iffini folded her plump, soft fingers together on the weathered old stone table before her. “Then the army issues a special certificate of presumed death. It is not valid for remarriage until three years have passed.”

  “The circumstances are unusual. Mother. You are aware of the goblin invasion?”

  She nodded, wondering if she was about to hear some inspired creative fantasizing. If he had a glib tongue to go with his looks, this Ylo would be irresistible to impressionable young women. She was no impressionable young woman, yet she did not think he was faking his own infatuation.

  “Indeed I have,” she said. She had conducted several special prayer services on the subject of the goblin invasion.

  “There was no formal battle and the man was a civilian, so the army would not be directly involved. He and I were ambushed by the goblins. I escaped, but only just, and his horse fell. Even if he was taken alive by the goblins. Mother, his chances of surviving the day were absolutely zero.”

  Iffini shivered and muttered a prayer. “There were no other witnesses?”

  “No, Mother. I swear this is truth.” The lad’s eyes were steady. If he was lying about this, he was as accomplished a liar as she had ever met.

  “Then you should have sworn an affidavit before the lictor of the district or the military autho —”

  “Mother!” he said reproachfully. “The countryside was in chaos! There were no authorities at all, military or civil.”

  She sighed and stared down at her fingers again while she pondered. A convenient story! The boy moved his chair slightly so he could reach out and grasp the girl’s hand.

  Mother Iffini looked up. “I suppose I could accept your affidavit on the subject. It would be very irregular, though.”

  The girl started to smile and then froze. Her pallor seemed to grow more intense.

  “I will swear any oath you wish,” the boy said calmly, “but I will not reveal the man’s name.”

  The chaplain removed her quill and wiped it. She closed the inkwell. “I think we must discuss this matter further.”

  “There is no alternative, is there?” he said bitterly. “If we seek out another chaplain and my fiancée claims to be a spinster, then the marriage would be invalid?”

  Mother Iffini nodded. “And she would require signed permission from her father, or a brother. I do not make the laws, Master Ylo.” Master Ylo? Again that vague memory! No, there had been a title. Tribune Ylo? Legate Ylo? Something military.

  At that moment the child dropped the bag of crumbs into the fish pool and screamed in frustration. The man jumped up and hurried over to her.

  “Maya!” he said…

  Iffini’s heart missed a beat. Two beats. No! It couldn’t possibly be! Of course a woman with the same name as the future impress might well have chosen to give her child the same name as the future impress’s child. Quite possible! The alternative explanation was untenable. There would not have been a solitary legionary coming around calling on inns and temples, there would have been an Impire-wide hue and cry.

  Wouldn’t there? Or would the sheer magnitude of the scandal have made that course of action impossible even to consider? The impress herself? And the heir to the Imperial throne?

  The girl was staring down at her hands on the table, avoiding eye contact. She was worried now, but she had been worried earlier, though trying to hide the fact. After fifty years of marrying people, a priestess could recognize that anxiety with her eyes closed. Either this Eshiala was pregnant or she strongly suspected she was.

  Mother Iffini decided that she had not merely a problem, but a very serious problem.

  The boy returned, carrying the child. “I am afraid we have wasted your time. Mother. Come, darling.”

  “Sit down,” Iffini snapped. “I need to think a moment.”

  He sat. The little girl squirmed down from his lap, demanding the fish food. He gave the dripping bag to her, and she trotted over to the pool again.

  One possibility was just to ask them if the dead husband’s name had been Emshandar, but that would close off any other avenue of escape. Either they would lie or Mother Iffini would have to pretend to accept extraordinary coincidences. She certainly could not believe that the imperor had been killed by goblins while traveling incognito with a single companion. So she must assume that the incident had not occurred at all or that the man had not been named Emshandar. Why, then, was she so reluctant to ask that simple question? Pretty-boy’s tale of ambush was a very convenient way to cover up abduction or even viler deeds.

  She would not sign a certificate she believed to be false, nor would she perform a bogus wedding ceremony in her temple. Her clear duty was to report this pair to the authorities. No doubt they would then be forcibly separated — but the girl’s fear showed that she desperately needed some hold on that slippery beguiler, and had come to ask the help of the Gods.

  Hesitantly Mother Iffini said, “There is another possibility. It would require that you both swear a solemn oath that you are not committing bigamy.”

  The girl looked up at once, hope shining brightly behind her tears. “I will swear!”

  “I, also,” the boy said.

  Well! Mother Iffini relaxed. She had never doubted where her first loyalties lay. Love should be sanctified even if it was legally irregular.

  They were holding hands again.

  “Yes. Mother?” the girl prompted.

  “There is a very rare service called a Blessing of Union. It may be used when a regular legal marriage is impossible — when documents are missing, for example, or when parental permission has been refused. If you feel compelled to live together as man and wife under such circumstances and are willing to swear before the Gods that you will do so for the rest of your lives, loving and being faithful as if united in legal matrimony, then I may witness your oaths and provide a certificate to that effect. I warn you, though, that it has very little validity in law.”

  She watched as they exchanged smiles and nods and squeezed hands.

  “Oh, thank you. Mother,” the girl said. “Thank you! That is exactly what we need.”

  Mother Iffini sighed. “Then I need another piece of parchment.” She wondered if she was growing soft-headed in her dotage, or if she was carrying her mothering instincts to absurdity. “You are continuing your travels after you leave here?”

  The girl started. The boy’s eyes narrowed.

  “We are,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Recent information. The hostelries around here have developed a very poor reputation. I would advise you to seek accommodation in private dwellings. Farmhouses might be best.”

  “A recent development?” He had a gorgeous smile. “We suspected that, but it is good to have it confirmed. The main roads are very busy and unpleasant, too, I believe.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Oh, bless you. Mother,” the girl said. “Bless you!”

  “Do stop talking nonsense, you feather-headed bird,” said the parrot.


  To the appointed place:

  With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,

  Nor joy not grieve too much for things beyond our care.

  Like pilgrims to th’appointed place we tend;

  The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.

  Dryden, Palamon and Arcite

  THREE

  Merely players

  1

  The watery space between Sysanasso and the Keriths had many names on the charts. Some called it Middle Sea, or the Midsummer Sea, and others No Man’s Sea because three races claimed it. To the merfolk it was always Death Water. They made jokes about those who tried to make a living on Death Water, but humor that could turn so fast to sorrow had a bitter bite.

  Ko-nu-Al was a sailor from East Kerith who had played the odds on Death Water all his life. The God of Chance had granted him favor, and he had risen in middle age to be master and part owner of the trader sloop Seaspawn, carrying a crew of ten and trading to Sysanasso. The ten now included his three sons: Mu-pu-Esh, Po-pu-Ok, and Wo-pu-Al.

  Wo-pu was sixteen. This was his first voyage and his last. The God of Chance had claimed Their due; the boy would never see his mother again.

  Most merfolk trading with other races was done at sea, at times and places established by long tradition, by vessels known to each other. Their crews were all male. There were also a couple of small trader islets where no woman ever set foot. If such simple precautions were observed, mermen could meet in friendship with fauns, elves, imps, or men of any other race, even jotnar, and do business together.

  Seaspawn, though, dealt in a cargo that could not be easily moved from one vessel to another, black sand from the southern coasts of Sysanasso. Such sand lay free for the taking; it was greatly prized by the potters of East Kerith for making their famous green glazes. Although the petty faun princes often tried to tax the trade, there were too many beaches to guard and too many princes to collaborate. Since time forgotten, the merchants of the Summer Seas had merely helped themselves. Ko-nu had prospered by choosing deserted shores and honoring the Gods.

  Until this voyage, he had avoided trouble. This was the first on which he had brought young Wo-pu, last of his children and perhaps the dearest. Now the boy was dying in agony, his screams audible at all hours. His brother Po-pu was going insane with guilt and might well take his own life.

  It was for those reasons that Ko-nu abandoned the caution of a lifetime and sailed into a foreign port. He did not know its name and would not have cared if he had, but the Gods decreed that it be Ysnoss.

  The harbor was impressive, a gorge notched back into the cliffs, safe haven in any wind. The village itself was only a mishmash of ramshackle shanties plastered over the steep hillside, many of them supported on stilts. The hot and breathless afternoon stank of sewage. Belowdecks, Wo-pu had fallen silent, perhaps already into his final coma.

  Seaspawn drifted in with her sails displaying the blue spiral emblem that proclaimed she hailed from the Keriths. Even before she dropped anchor in the center of the still harbor, people could be heard screaming and running. Dogs barked. Parrots and macaws rose shrieking into the air — faun settlements were invariably rife with livestock. As soon as the hands could stand down from their labors, they began a doleful melody on their sitars, chanting an old lament. Merfolk had songs for all occasions, and this one told of lonely death far from home.

  A dory put out from the shore. Ko-nu stalked forward and waited in the bow. The fact that the vessel was holding her stem to the sea suggested that the tide and fragile current would carry her out again when given the chance.

  The dory was manned by four husky youngsters. A shriveled, elderly man in the stem was probably the village headman. None of the five was clad in more than a scrap of loincloth, the illusion that they were all wearing black woolen stockings being merely a characteristic of fauns. As soon as Seaspawn reached hailing distance, the headman cupped his hands and began screaming at the intruder to go away before she was the death of everyone, interspersing those instructions with improbable profanities.

  Ko-nu had expected such a reaction, and he knew enough about fauns to know that mere logic would have no influence on their behavior. He had therefore thought to bring a speaking trumpet. Now he raised it and drowned out the ancient’s shrill wails.

  “I come in peace and in the name of the Gods.”

  “Go away! Begone! Lewd menace, you will —”

  “I am Ko-nu-Al, master of Seaspawn.”

  “I am Shiuy-Sh. Your rotten plague ship is fouling —”

  “Have you a doctor in town?”

  The old man paused in his invective long enough to say “No!” and then continued without drawing breath. The young rowers rested on their oars, smirking and nodding as they appraised their leader’s tirade.

  “An herbalist, then, or one who can provide relief to the suffering?”

  “None, scum of the four oceans…”

  “A priest, then? I must have a priest.”

  “We have no priest, either!”

  Ko-nu’s heart sank. It was entirely likely that so wretched a hamlet might have no priest. On the other hand… “Then who is that man in black dancing up and down on that balcony?”

  The old faun did not even glance around. “He is no priest. He just dresses like one. Now take your bilge-infested barnacle factory out of our harbor before we cleanse it by burning your pestilential —”

  Ko-nu glanced around at his crew, nervously clustered nearby, still humming the dirge. “Does he look like a priest to you?”

  Pale faces nodded.

  “Aye, sir,” said Gi-al-Esh, who had eyes like a jotunn. “And he’s no faun. He’s an imp.”

  “I wish to speak with the man dressed as a priest,” the captain proclaimed.

  Shiuy-Sh became hysterical and incoherent. Apparently the request was unthinkable, for reasons obscure.

  “If you will not bring him to me, then my men and I will come to him!”

  The sailors’ dirge lurched and grew louder. They all knew that their captain was threatening a massacre.

  “Fool!” the headman screamed. “Imbecile! We have no roads out of town. Our women cannot leave!”

  “Then bring me that man dressed as a priest!”

  “Never! We have fire arrows…”

  Ko-nu knew when he was beaten. Fauns were notoriously men of ideas — one each. Threats impressed them no more than arguments and they had called his clumsy bluff, for he knew what would happen if he went ashore. Apparently the priest would not be brought to him. Reason and logic would not change that decision, nor appeals to mercy, either.

  The man on the balcony had disappeared indoors. He now returned with a large wooden chair, which he hurled over the railing. It struck the harbor in a fountain of water and garbage. Then he went after it. This time the fountain was even higher.

  After a suspenseful pause, the man’s head reappeared beside the bobbing chair. Using it as a float, he began to swim toward Seaspawn. The journey would take him all day, even if he did not die of overexertion on the way.

  “Your imp is apparently intent on coming to me,” Ko-nu said firmly. “Now, will you fetch him, or do I come and get him?”

  “You will give him back to us?”

  “Of course. I merely want him to comfort a dying boy.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Shiuy-Sh demanded shrilly.

  The priest was brought in the dory and passed up like baggage to Seaspawn’s waiting hands. He was small, elderly, exhausted, and reeking of untreated harbor. He collapsed in a dribbling heap on the deck and all attempts to raise him failed, for he merely flopped back to his knees. When he had finally caught enough breath to speak, he lifted both hands to Ko-nu in supplication.

  “Save me!” he wailed in cultured Imperial tones. “Take me away from these lunatics, from this pesthole! I have gold. I will pay, but for the sake of all the Gods, I beg you to take me out of here.”

  Ko-n
u could not recall swearing any oaths to Shiuy-Sh. To succor a priest might appease the Gods and preserve the ship from any further harm on this ill-omened voyage. Most important of all, the holy man would be able to spend a decent amount of time with Po-pu and Wo-pu.

  “Up anchor!” said the captain.

  And so it was done.

  2

  Sir Acopulo had not attempted swimming since he was a child and had been very unskilled at it even then. His condition when he was hauled aboard the ship was not improved by the large quantities of indescribable harbor fluid he had ingested. Nevertheless, by the time the ship had cleared the headlands he had disposed of that and been rinsed off with buckets of sea-water and begun to feel better. Not even the onset of inevitable seasickness could dampen his exultation at having at last escaped from Ysnoss.

  He had never met mermen before and had never quite believed that their hair could be truly blue. It was though — a very pale blue, but unquestionably blue. Their eyes were silvery. The crew was entirely male, of course, about impish height, slimly built, with skins as pallid as fish bellies, and about as smooth. There was not a hairy chest aboard. He wondered why the sun did not tan them, and why such bleached wraiths should hold such a notorious attraction for women of other races. They seemed a strangely morose bunch, more like a convocation of undertakers than any other sailors he had ever met.

  He was offered garments like theirs — cloths tied at the waist, hanging to the calf. They had a pearly shimmer as if made of fishskin and they clung like wet cobweb, although they did not seem to restrict their wearers’ freedom of movement at all. He declined them graciously and retained his soaked clerical habit. Imps, he had always believed, should dress like imps. Furthermore, he did not wish these primitives to see the money belt and dispatches he wore around his waist.

  With his damp garments clinging to him in clammy embrace, he was conducted to the captain’s cabin. It was cramped, with barely room for a table and two chairs, although admittedly clean and cozy enough. It had an odd, musky odor, sweetish but not unpleasant. He refused the chair offered him; he moved some books and instruments from a dresser to the bunk and then sat on the dresser. There he was alongside an open window and could breathe deeply of the cool sea wind. Already his stomach registered every dip and roll of the ship. Upstairs, men were singing a jigging chantey that kept time with the motion. He wished they would stop; it didn’t help.