Small Gods tds-13

by Terry David John Pratchett

  Give me that old-time religion . . .

  He squeezed his eyes shut again, and all he could see were the horns of the temple, or fragmented suggestions of the carnage to come, or . . . the face of Vorbis.

  He'd liked that white city.

  Even the slaves had been content. There were rules about slaves. There were things you couldn't do to slaves. Slaves had value.

  He'd learned about the Turtle, there. It had all made sense. He'd thought: it sounds right. It makes sense. But sense or not, that thought was sending him to hell.

  Vorbis knew about him. He must do. There were spies everywhere. Sasho had been useful. How much had Vorbis got out of him? Had he said what he knew?

  Of course he'd say what he knew . . .

  Something went snap inside Fri'it.

  He glanced at his sword, hanging on the wall.

  And why not? After all, he was going to spend all eternity in a thousand hells . . .

  The knowledge was freedom, of a sort. When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror. If he was going to be boiled for a lamb, then he might as well be roasted for a sheep.

  He staggered to his feet and, after a couple of tries, got the swordbelt off the wall. Vorbis's quarters weren't far away, if he could manage the steps. One stroke, that's all it would take. He could cut Vorbis in half without trying. And maybe . . . maybe nothing would happen afterward. There were others who felt like him-somewhere. Or, anyway, he could get down to the stables, be well away by dawn, get to Ephebe, maybe, across the desert . . .

  He reached the door and fumbled for the handle.

  It turned of its own accord.

  Fri'it staggered back as the door swung inward.

  Vorbis was standing there. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, his face registered polite concern.

  "Excuse the lateness of the hour, my lord," he said. "But I thought we should talk. About tomorrow."

  The sword clattered out of Fri'it's hand.

  Vorbis leaned forward.

  "Is there something wrong, brother?" he said.

  He smiled, and stepped into the room. Two hooded inquisitors slipped in behind him.

  "Brother," Vorbis said again. And shut the door.

  "How is it in there?" said Brutha.

  "I'm going to rattle around like a pea in a pot," grumbled the tortoise.

  "I could put some more straw in. And, look, I've got these."

  A pile of greenstuff dropped on Om's head.

  "From the kitchen," said Brutha. "Peelings and cabbage. I stole them," he added, "but then I thought it can't be stealing if I'm doing it for you."

  The fetid smell of the half-rotten leaves suggested strongly that Brutha had committed his crime when the greens were halfway to the midden, but Om didn't say so. Not now.

  "Right," he mumbled.

  There must be others, he told himself. Sure. Out in the country. This place is too sophisticated. But . . . there had been all those pilgrims in front of the Temple. They weren't just country people, they were the devoutest ones. Whole villages clubbed together to send one person carrying the petitions of many. But there hadn't been the flame. There had been fear, and dread, and yearning, and hope. All those emotions had their flavor. But there hadn't been the flame.

  The eagle had dropped him near Brutha. He'd . . . woken up. He could dimly remember all that time as a tortoise. And now he remembered being a god. How far away from Brutha would he still remember? A mile? Ten miles? How would it be . . . feeling the knowledge drain away, dwindling back to nothing but a lowly reptile? Maybe there would be a part of him that would always remember, helplessly . . .

  He shuddered.

  Currently Om was in a wickerwork box slung from Brutha's shoulder. It wouldn't have been comfortable at the best of times, but now it shook occasionally as Brutha stamped his feet in the pre-dawn chill.

  After a while some of the Citadel grooms arrived, with horses. Brutha was the subject of a few odd looks. He smiled at everyone. It seemed the best way.

  He began to feel hungry, but didn't dare leave his post. He'd been told to be here. But after a while sounds from around the corner made him sidle a few yards to see what was going on.

  The courtyard here was U-shaped, around a wing of the Citadel buildings, and around the corner it looked as though another party was preparing to set out.

  Brutha knew about camels. There had been a couple in his grandmother's village. There seemed to be hundreds of them here, though, complaining like badly oiled pumps and smelling like a thousand damp carpets. Men in djeliba moved among them and occasionally hit them with sticks, which is the approved method of dealing with camels.

  Brutha wandered over to the nearest creature. A man was strapping water-bottles round its hump.

  "Good morning, brother," said Brutha.

  "Bugger off," said the man without looking round.

  "The Prophet Abbys tells us (chap. XXV, verse 6): `Woe unto he who defiles his mouth with curses for his words will be as dust,' " said Brutha.

  "Does he? Well, he can bugger off too," said the man, conversationally.

  Brutha hesitated. Technically, of course, the man had bought himself vacant possession of a thousand hells and a month or two of the attentions of the Quisition, but now Brutha could see that he was a member of the Divine Legion; a sword was halfhidden under the desert robes.

  And you had to make special allowances for Legionaries, just as you did for inquisitors. Their often intimate contact with the ungodly affected their minds and put their souls in mortal peril. He decided to be magnanimous.

  "And where are you going to with all these camels on this fine morning, brother?"

  The soldier tightened a strap.

  "Probably to hell," he said, grinning nastily. "Just behind you."

  "Really? According to the word of the Prophet Ishkible, a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue," said Brutha, letting just a tremor of disapproval enter his voice.

  "Does some old prophet say anything about nosy bastards being given a thump alongside the ear?" said the soldier.

  " `Woe unto him who raises his hand unto his brother, dealing with him as unto an Infidel,' " said Brutha. "That's Ossory, Precepts XI, verse 16."

  " `Sod off and forget you ever saw us otherwise you're going to be in real trouble, my friend.' Sergeant Aktar, chapter 1, verse 1," said the soldier.

  Brutha's brow wrinkled. He couldn't remember that one.

  "Walk away," said the voice of the God in his head. "You don't need trouble."

  "I hope your journey is a pleasant one," said Brutha politely. "Whatever the destination."

  He backed away and headed toward the gate.

  "A man who will have to spend some time in the hells of correction, if I am any judge," he said. The god said nothing.

  The Ephebian traveling group was beginning to assemble now. Brutha stood to attention and tried to keep out of everyone's way. He saw a dozen mounted soldiers, but unlike the camel riders they were in the brightly polished fishmail and black-and-yellow cloaks that the Legionaries usually only wore on special occasions. Brutha thought they looked very impressive.

  Eventually one of the stable servants came up to him.

  "What are you doing here, novice?" he demanded.

  "I am going to Ephebe," said Brutha.

  The man glared at him and then grinned.

  "You? You're not even ordained! You're going to Ephebe?"

  "Yes."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Because I told him so," said the voice of Vorbis, behind the man. "And here he is, most obedient to my wishes."

  Brutha had a good view of the man's face. The change in his expression was like watching a grease slick cross a pond. Then the stableman turned as though his feet were nailed to a turntable.

  "My Lord Vorbis," he oiled.

  "And now he will require a steed
," said Vorbis.

  The stableman's face was yellow with dread.

  "My pleasure. The very best the sta-”

  "My friend Brutha is a humble man before Om," said Vorbis. "He will ask for no more than a mule, I have no doubt. Brutha?"

  "I-I do not know how to ride, my lord," said Brutha.

  "Any man can get on a mule," said Vorbis. "Often many times in a short distance. And now, it would appear, we are all here?"

  He raised an eyebrow at the sergeant of the guard, who saluted.

  "We are awaiting General Fri'it, lord," he said.

  "Ah. Sergeant Simony, isn't it?"

  Vorbis had a terrible memory for names. He knew every one. The sergeant paled a little, and then saluted crisply.

  "Yes! Sir!"

  "We will proceed without General Fri'it," said Vorbis.

  The B of the word "But" framed itself on the sergeant's lips, and faded there.

  "General Fri'it has other business," said Vorbis. "Most pressing and urgent business. Which only he can attend to."

  Fri'it opened his eyes in grayness.

  He could see the room around him, but only faintly, as a series of edges in the air.

  The sword . . .

  He'd dropped the sword, but maybe he could find it again. He stepped forward, feeling a tenuous resistance around his ankles, and looked down.

  There was the sword. But his fingers passed through it. It was like being drunk, but he knew he wasn't drunk. He wasn't even sober. He was . . . suddenly clear in his mind.

  He turned and looked at the thing that had briefly impeded his progress.

  "Oh," he said.

  GOOD MORNING.

  "Oh."

  "THERE IS A LITTLE CONFUSION AT FIRST. IT IS ONLY TO BE EXPECTED.

  To his horror, Fri'it saw the tall black figure stride away through the gray wall.

  "Wait!"

  A skull draped in a black hood poked out of the wall.

  YES?

  "You're Death, aren't you?"

  INDEED.

  Fri'it gathered what remained of his dignity.

  "I know you," he said. "I have faced you many times."

  Death gave him a long stare.

  NO YOU HAVEN'T.

  "I assure you-”

  YOU HAVE FACED MEN. IF YOU HAD FACED ME, I ASSURE YOU . . . YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN.

  "But what happens to me now?"

  Death shrugged.

  DON'T YOU KNOW? he said, and disappeared.

  "Wait!"

  Fri'it ran at the wall and found to his surprise that it offered no barrier. Now he was out in the empty corridor. Death had vanished.

  And then he realized that it wasn't the corridor he remembered, with its shadows and the grittiness of sand underfoot.

  That corridor didn't have a glow at the end, that pulled at him like a magnet pulls at an iron filing.

  You couldn't put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place when the inevitable just went and waited.

  And this was it.

  Fri'it stepped through the glow into a desert. The sky was dark and pocked with large stars, but the black sand that stretched away to the distance was nevertheless brightly lit.

  A desert. After death, a desert. The desert. No hells, yet. Perhaps there was hope.

  He remembered a story from his childhood. Unusually, it wasn't about smiting. No one was trampled underfoot. It wasn't about Om, dreadful in His rage. It was worse. It was about what happened when you died . . . the journey of your soul.

  They said: you must walk a desert . . .

  "Where is this place?" he said hoarsely.

  THIS IS NO PLACE, said Death .

  . . . all alone . . .

  "What is at the end of the desert?"

  JUDGEMENT .

  . . . with your beliefs . . .

  Fri'it stared at the endless, featureless expanse.

  "I have to walk it alone?" he whispered. "But . . . now, I'm not sure what I believe-”

  YES?

  AND NOW, IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME-

  Fri'it took a deep breath, purely out of habit. Perhaps he could find a couple of rocks out there. A small rock to hold and a big rock to hide behind, while he waited for Vorbis . . .

  And that thought was habit, too. Revenge? Here?

  He smiled.

  Be sensible, man. You were a soldier. This is a desert. You crossed a few in your time.

  And you survive by learning about them. There's whole tribes that know how to live in the worst kinds of desert. Licking water off the shady sides of dunes, that sort of thing . . . They think it's home. Put 'em in a vegetable garden and they'd think you were mad.

  The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly . . .

  There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.

  What have I always believed?

  That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

  You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.

  Fri'it set out.

  It was a small mule and Brutha had long legs; if he'd made the effort he could have remained standing and let the mule trot out from underneath.

  The order of progression was not as some may have expected. Sergeant Simony and his soldiers rode ahead, on either side of the track.

  They were trailed by the servants and clerks and lesser priests. Vorbis rode in the rear, where an exquisitor rode by right, like a shepherd watching over his flock.

  Brutha rode with him. It was an honor he would have preferred to avoid. Brutha was one of those people who could raise a sweat on a frosty day, and the dust was settling on him like a gritty skin. But Vorbis seemed to derive some amusement from his company. Occasionally he would ask him questions:

  "How many miles have we traveled, Brutha?"

  "Four miles and seven estado, lord."

  "But how do you know?"

  That was a question he couldn't answer. How did he know the sky was blue? It was just something in his head. You couldn't think about how you thought. It was like opening a box with the crowbar that was inside.

  "And how long has our journey taken?"

  "A little over seventy-nine minutes."

  Vorbis laughed. Brutha wondered why. The puzzle wasn't why he remembered, it was why everyone else seemed to forget.

  "Did your fathers have this remarkable faculty?"

  There was a pause.

  "Could they do it as well?" said Vorbis patiently.

  "I don't know. There was only my grandmother. She had-a good memory. For some things." Transgressions, certainly. "And very good eyesight and hearing." What she could apparently see or hear through two walls had, he remembered, seemed phenomenal.

  Brutha turned gingerly in the saddle. There was a cloud of dust about a mile behind them on the road.

  "Here come the rest of the soldiers," he said conversationally.

  This seemed to shock Vorbis. Perhaps it was the first time in years that anyone had innocently addressed a remark to him.

  "The rest of the soldiers?" he said.

  "Sergeant Aktar and his men, on ninety-eight camels with many water-bottles," said Brutha. "I saw them before we left."

  "You did not see them," said Vorbis. "They are not coming with us. You will forget about them."

  "Yes, lord." The request to do magic again.

  After a few minutes the distant cloud turned off the road and started up the long slope that led to the high desert. Brutha watched them surreptitiously, and raised his eyes to the dune mountains.

  There was a speck circling up there.

  He put his hand to his mouth.

  Vorbis heard the gasp.

  "What ails you, Brutha?" he said.

  "I remembere
d about the God," said Brutha, without thinking.

  "We should always remember the God," said Vorbis, "and trust that He is with us on this journey."

  "He is," said Brutha, and the absolute conviction in his voice made Vorbis smile.

  He strained to hear the nagging internal voice, but there was nothing. For one horrible moment Brutha wondered if the tortoise had fallen out of the box, but there was a reassuring weight on the strap.

  "And we must bear with us the certainty that He will be with us in Ephebe, among the infidel," said Vorbis.

  "I am sure He will," said Brutha.

  "And prepare ourselves for the coming of the prophet," said Vorbis.

  The cloud had reached the top of the dunes now, and vanished in the silent wastes of the desert.

  Brutha tried to put it out of his mind, which was like trying to empty a bucket underwater. No one survived in the high desert. It wasn't just the dunes and the heat. There were terrors in the burning heart, where even the mad tribes never went. An ocean without water, voices without mouths . . .

  Which wasn't to say that the immediate future didn't hold terrors enough . . .

  He'd seen the sea before, but the Omnians didn't encourage it. This may have been because deserts were so much harder to cross. They kept people in, though. But sometimes the desert barriers were a problem, and then you had to put up with the sea.

  Il-drim was nothing more than a few shacks around a stone jetty, at one of which was a trireme flying the holy oriflamme. When the Church traveled, the travelers were very senior people indeed, so when the Church traveled it generally traveled in style.

  The party paused on a hill and looked at it.

  "Soft and corrupt," said Vorbis. "That's what we've become, Brutha."

  "Yes, Lord Vorbis."

  "And open to pernicious influence. The sea, Brutha. It washes unholy shores, and gives rise to dangerous ideas. Men should not travel, Brutha. At the center there is truth. As you travel, so error creeps in."

  "Yes, Lord Vorbis."

  Vorbis sighed.

  "In Ossory's day we sailed alone in boats made of hides, and went where the winds of the God took us. That's how a holy man should travel."

  A tiny spark of defiance in Brutha declared that it, personally, would risk a little corruption for the sake of traveling with two decks between its feet and the waves.