“And when the tide comes in?”
“Shrewd Etoje! But I meant no trick. Let us say instead, so long as the smallest part of the island of Au stands above the waves. If you feed me well I will certainly have the strength to do all I say and more.”
“Ah,” said Etoje. “You want blood.”
“I want all the rites of the people of Au, all the sacrifices. Declare me, alone, your god. Declare me, alone, the god of your people. Declare me, alone, the god of Au. Any who will not accept this bargain will be outlaws, and I will have their blood.”
“What of the gods already resident on Au? Would they not starve?”
“Do they care now if you starve?” asked the fish.
“You have a point.” And Etoje was silent for a few moments.
“With your help,” said the fish, “I will enter any good-sized stone you bring me—there are several nearby—and you will bring it to Au. Then you will offer sacrifice and free me from the stone.”
“And this sacrifice?”
“I hear the seabirds crying above the waves. They have flown over Ilu and they tell me your brother is not dead, merely injured. Have you considered how much simpler the question of your inheritance would be if he were dead?”
“I must ponder,” said Etoje.
“Certainly. But don’t ponder excessively. This fish won’t last forever.”
“Speaking of which,” said Etoje, “do you need all of the fish for talking? I’m quite hungry, and I’m sure I would think better on a full stomach.”
“Take it all,” said the fish. “In the morning bring another to the spring. Or a seal or bird—fish aren’t made for talking and this is quite taxing.”
“Thank you,” said Etoje. “I’m reassured to find you so reasonable. I will now dedicate this fish to you and indulge in a sacrificial feast, after which I will consider all you have said.”
And Etoje did those things.
In the thousand years after Etoje made his bargain, the village of Ilu became the city of Ilu. It stood at the mouth of a wide, icy stream that tumbled down from the heights of the glacier-covered mountain Mueu. On Mueu’s lower slopes the spring in the cave still steamed, but the god was long silent, either absent or dead. Behind Mueu was the high, cold interior of Au, a wasteland of ice and lava where no one went.
Ilu’s green and brown houses, of turf and stone and skins, spread down to the sea where racks of fish lay drying, where the hunting boats lay each night and left each morning, and where frames of seaweed rose and fell with the tide. In the center of the city was the Place of the God of Au, a sprawling complex of blocks of black lava, rising higher than any other building there.
In days long past, anyone might raid a foreign village and bring his captives to Ilu, feeding the god handsomely and increasing his own standing and wealth. Whole villages perished, or else threw themselves at the feet of Ilu’s rulers and declared themselves faithful servants of the god. Many humble but clever and brave young men made their fortunes in those days. But now the only outlaws in Au were condemned criminals, and only the same several officials, who had inherited the right to dispense justice, could present human victims to the god. No other outlaws were to be found in the land. Every village—for Ilu was Au’s only city—offered its rites and sacrifices to the god of Au alone.
In return, the people of Au prospered. They were healthy and well-fed. Seals, fish, and whales were abundant. It was true that over the years the number of offences punishable by death had increased, but if one was a solid, law-abiding citizen and meticulous about honoring the god, this was of no concern.
There was a man named Ihak, and he lived in the Place of the God. It was his job, as it had been his father’s, and his father’s before him, to receive the outlaw victims intended for the god, and issue receipts to the providers in the form of tokens of volcanic glass carved into the shape of small fish. In former days this had been a position of great influence, but now was merely a ceremonial duty. Ihak was a tall man, almost spindly. He walked with a slight stoop, and his features were pinched and narrow. Though he and his wife had been together for many years, they had produced no children. He had often presented the god with fish, and with his own blood, and once he had even bought a human victim from one of the officials he dealt with, though it had meant a great deal of his savings. Making each sacrifice he had reminded the god of his faithful service, and that of his own ancestors, and he humbly and sincerely begged the god to provide him with that one thing that would complete his happiness. This was the only defect in his otherwise comfortable life.
One day two hunters came to the Place of the God with a dozen injured captives in tow. The gatekeeper gaped in astonishment and tried to turn them away, but they would not move. The captives were dressed oddly, and didn’t seem to understand normal speech, so questions about how they had come to be here, bound and bleeding in front of the Place of the God of Au, went unanswered.
Finally the Speaker for the God came to the gate. He was a dignified man, very conscious of his responsibilities as a descendant of Etoje. Every inch of him, from his thick, curled, pale hair to his immaculate sealskin boots, declared him a man of importance. Too important to be bothered with a couple of hunters, but he had realized as soon as he had heard the message that the situation was a serious one. So he questioned the hunters. Where had these people come from?
“The other day some boats sailed into the islands,” said one hunter. “Large ones, joined in pairs by wide platforms.” He attempted to describe the mast and sail of each boat, but left his listeners perplexed. “Each one had many people aboard. They anchored and began hunting birds. My cousin and I watched them, and saw they weren’t from Au.”
“Where did they come from, if not from Au?” asked the Speaker. As far as he knew, there wasn’t anywhere else to come from. “Did they spring up out of the waves, boats and all?”
“Perhaps,” said one hunter, “the god of Au is tired of a steady diet of criminals.”
“Perhaps,” said the other, with the merest touch of malice, “the god of Au wishes all men to have a chance at riches and nobility, as was the case in former days.”
The Speaker didn’t particularly like hearing this. As the gatekeeper had, he questioned the captives. One spoke, or tried to speak, but something was evidently wrong—no words came out, only meaningless sounds.
By now, passers-by had stopped, and some of them confirmed the hunters’ story—there were strange boats anchored in the islands, carrying strangely dressed people. And though the custom had not been followed for more than two hundred years, the Speaker could think of no immediate grounds on which to deny its fulfillment now, and plenty of grounds for possible retribution later, if it should become a problem. So he sent the hunters to Ihak.
Ihak was no less astonished than anyone else. However, unlike anyone else he had reason to take this development with a fair amount of equanimity. “So, ah, hm,” he said, looking over the captives. “Who captured which ones?”
“We worked equally together,” said the first hunter. “So we should get equal credit.”
“That’s right,” said the second.
“Ah,” said Ihak. “I see.” He looked the line of captives over more carefully. “Ah. Hmm. You say you both participated equally in all twelve captures?” The two hunters assented. “So. Twelve tokens, then, six for each of you. And you may then call yourselves Warriors of Au.”
“I can’t wait to walk through the market,” said the first. “Oh, to see the looks on everyone’s faces!”
“What about the pregnant one? She looks pretty far along. Shouldn’t she count for two?”
“Ah. No,” Ihak said. “I regret to say. The guidelines are quite clear on the matter. So. But aren’t you more fortunate that way? If there were thirteen tokens, how would you divide them without a dispute? Hm?”
So Ihak formally accepted, on behalf of the god, the sacrifice brought by the two hunters, and gave them their tokens. And then he we
nt to speak to his wife.
In due course, a baby girl was born, and Ihak put it about that his wife had given birth at long last. She had been extremely surprised to discover herself pregnant, but this was understandable, as she had long ago stopped looking for signs of it. And everyone knew some tale of a woman who had not realized her condition until nearly the last moment. Clearly Ihak’s wife was one of these.
Ihak held a great feast at which he presented the child to his friends, and he gave extravagant thanks to the god of Au. He named the girl Ifanei, which is to say, the god provided her.
When the period of fasting, vigil, and mortification had passed, each of the six captains of the Godless presided at a feast in honor of the god of this place, who punished us for our recent offence. The day was gray, and the breeze made the constant mist of rain sting. The inhabitants of each boat crowded together on their respective central decks and offered prayers praising the god as the most powerful, the most gracious, rightly the only ruler of the islands and the surrounding sea. “We desire to hear your will!” all the Godless cried, carefully making no other request, and no promises at all, while the captains let blood into the water.
Steq sat, then, and his wound was bound, and the people around him ate, with every bite praising the generosity and bounty of the god. He himself was not particularly hungry, but he knew that he should eat for the sake of his people and because of the blood loss, and so he did.
The Godless had been miserable with cold, and their hearts were sore with the loss of the twelve. Their acts of penitence had only increased their unhappiness. But now, despite the clouds and the rain, and the doubtfulness of their prospects, their spirits began to lift. There was plenty of food, all of it as carefully prepared as their situation allowed. The smiles and laughter began as performance but, as often happens, feelings began to match actions in at least some small degree. Steq could not bring himself to smile, but he was pleased to see the Godless enjoy themselves.
“If nothing else,” called the captain of O Gods Take Pity from his own deck, “we will die with full stomachs.”
This brought a bitter half-smile to Steq’s face. “As always, you speak wisely,” he answered.
Eventually the feast drew to a close, and the Godless began to clear away what was left of the food. Steq sat in thought under his boat’s single square sail, his back to the mast. He sat brooding as people went back to their routine tasks, and as the day grew later the clouds blew away from the western sky, leaving a strip of blue shading down to green and orange, and the setting sun shining gold across the water. Colors that had been muted under the gray light seemed suddenly to glow—the brilliant emerald of island-topping grass, the brown of the boat’s planking, the tattered, wheat-colored sail, the pink of a slab of seal fat the cook was packing away, all shown like jewels. The sun sank further and still Steq sat in thought.
When the sun had nearly set, Steq suddenly stood up and called a child to him. “Go to O Gods Take Pity,” he said, “as quickly as you can. Tell the captain to be on the watch—my skin prickles, and the air is uncanny. Bid him pass my warning on.”
“I feel it, too,” said the child. Before any further move could be made, the other captains came up onto the decks of their ships—Steq had not been alone in his premonition. All work on the boats had halted as well, and the Godless were afraid.
“Fear not,” said Steq. “Either we are about to meet our end, in which case our troubles are over, or we will survive. In any event, we have done all we could and will face our future as we always have.”
As they stood waiting, a jet of water rose up just beyond the stern, and a dead-white tentacle snaked up from the water onto the deck. It ran half the length of the boat and with a thud it curled itself around the mast where moments before Steq had sat in thought. The boat’s stern plunged towards the water. “Bail!” cried Steq, and in the same instant he spoke the Godless were taking up their bailers. Crew without bailers ran to the bows of the double hull, in part to balance the boat, and in part from fear of the glistening, gelatinous tentacles that had come out of the water after the first and wound and grasped at the other end. All around, the crews of the other boats stood watching, bent nearly over the gunwale strakes, crying out in horror and fear.
From the stern came a weird, bubbling noise, which resolved into gurgling speech. “Steq!”
“Don’t answer!” cried one godless.
Steq only walked as steadily as he might to the end of the unsteady deck, stepping cautiously over lengths of suckered flesh. Behind him his own crew except for the bailers froze, hardly daring to breathe, and the watchers on the other boats fell silent.
At the end of the deck, he looked over the rail into the water. There, looking back from the waves, was a huge, silvery-black eye, as large as Steq’s own head. Under this eye the white flesh in which it was set branched out into the tentacles that held his boat, and in the center of those was a beak like a bird’s. “Steq,” the thing gurgled again.
“I am here,” he said. “What do you wish?”
“Let us each speak of our wishes,” it bubbled. “An association would benefit us both.”
“Explain.”
“You are abrupt. Some might consider this disrespectful, but I will attribute it to your ill-treatment at the hands of gods so far. Or perhaps your extreme courage, which would please me.”
The truth was, Steq dared not move lest he tremble and betray his fear. He knew that at this moment every life in the fleet depended on his smallest action, and he bent every effort to keep his voice steady. “You are most generous. I await your explanation.”
The thing gurgled wordlessly for a moment. “Then I will explain. A thousand years ago, on that very island you see before you, I made a deal with a man of Au.”
“Au being the mainland?”
“Yes. I declared that this man and his descendants would be pre-eminent in Au, if only they offered the sacrifices I desired and gave their rites and prayers to no other god. They have kept the terms of the bargain and I have as well.”
“We don’t fall under the terms of this bargain,” Steq observed.
“You do, in a way. The acceptable sacrifice, according to the agreement, is those who are outlawed. In the beginning these were any who did not confine their worship to me. Now there are no such people to be found on Au, and they offer me murderers, robbers, and various petty criminals.”
“I begin to see,” said Steq. “We offered what might be construed as sacrifice to some other god, and were then fair game for your altar.”
“Just so,” bubbled the monster. “Would you prevent this re-occurring?”
“Had I been given the choice in advance, I would have been pleased to prevent its happening at all,” Steq observed, not without some bitterness.
“No matter,” said the thing, its liquid eye unblinking. “We did not know each other then, and past is past. Besides, I offer you something I imagine you hardly dare dream possible.”
“That being?”
“Myself. I have become unhappy with my bargain. I will be frank. I am ambitious, and intended to reign supreme over Au, and from there expand my authority. But once they had conquered their island, the people of Ilu had no inclination to travel any further and arranged things so that they would not be required to do so. You, on the other hand, travel widely.”
The wind was already chill, but it seemed in that moment to blow colder. “You have a binding agreement with the people of Au,” he said.
“The agreement has its limits.”
“As would an agreement with us, I am sure.”
“You are a shrewder man than Etoje of Ilu,” gurgled the thing. “And your people are well accustomed to keeping an advantage when dealing with gods. We will be well-matched.” Steq said nothing. “I am strong with a thousand years of sacrifices,” said the god of Au. “Have you fled from all gods? Have all other nations cast you out? Take me as your god, and be revenged. Take me as your god and your chi
ldren will live in health, not sicken and starve as so many do now. Your fear and wandering will be at an end, and you will sit in authority over all the peoples of the world.”
“At what price?”
“The price I demanded of Etoje: all your rites and sacrifices. Those who will not cease offerings to other gods will bleed on my altar.”
“And when there are no more of those?”
“Ah,” bubbled the monster. “That day is far in the future, and when it comes I will demand no more human victims.”
“What, precisely, was your agreement with Etoje of Ilu?”
“That so long as the smallest part of the island of Au stood above the waters Etoje and his descendants would be pre-eminent in Au, and all those who accepted the terms of the agreement would be under my protection, their fates my special concern. In exchange, the people of Au would offer me the sacrifices I desired, and perform the rites I prescribed, and would make no offerings to any other gods, at any time.”
“And would we enter into this same agreement, or make a new one with you?”
“We would make our own agreement, separate from my agreement with Au.”
The sun had now set. In the east the clouded sky was black, and the body of the monster glowed blue under the water. Steq stood silent for some minutes, regarding it. “We are cautious,” he said, when he finally spoke. “And I would discuss this with my people.”
“Of course.”
“Let us make no long-term commitment at the moment. But we will agree to this much: while we are in your territory we will make no offering to any other god, and you will not require us to bleed on your altar.”
“This is reasonable,” gurgled the god of Au. “Furthermore, it gives us both a chance to demonstrate our goodwill.”
“I am pleased to find you so generous,” said Steq. “It will take some time for us to determine the best course. It is not wise to rush into such things.”
The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2009 Page 28
