“There is no 'or,' lad. Sadly, I've lived a life where knowing how to eradicate something from existence was knowledge best committed to memory. I wasn’t always a crusty old fart. Once upon a time I was a crusty young fart with the habit of making very bad enemies.”
“Then why bring it at all? The book, I mean.”
“Because I am old now, and trusting my memory seemed like a bad idea.”
He stared at me for a long time. He was young, but he was not a fool. I disliked having to lie to him for that reason, among others. But it was for the best. Finally, he looked away, the unasked, possibly unformed questions plain on his young face.
“Oh. Jessep.”
“Yes, master?”
“I almost forgot. I’m going to need you to copy out the Kharthrd folio again. Ours smells like shit now.”
He sat there for a moment, visibly contemplating the days ahead spent in close proximity to the reeking text.
“You are a terrible, terrible human being,” he finally said.
“You really need to start swearing, lad. ‘You’re an asshole’ would’ve been quicker, and far more satisfying. Trust me.”
He let that soak in for a moment, then said “Master Lhiewyn? Remember when that urchin stole my belt?”
“One of the few bright spots of the night, lad.”
“My purse was on that belt.”
“Very sorry to hear it.”
“Inside the purse was your golden, gem-encrusted chain of office.” He stood up and gave me a smile. “Goodnight, then.”
Once I was sure he was out of earshot, I let the laugh out.
Godhead
IT WAS A LOVELY, COOL autumn morning, spoiled by Lord Morno’s presence.
“What in hells are you doing here?” I asked him. “You’ve never set foot in the temple before.”
“And I wouldn’t have had to now, if you'd bothered to reply to my letters.”
“Never got ’em.”
“The courier would emphatically disagree.”
“All right. After what happened the last time I opened one of your letters, I instructed Jessep to burn them unopened. Actually I told him to eat them unopened, but he refused. Damned youth today.”
Morno’s left eyelid twitched.
“What do you want, Governor?”
“I’ve come to invite you to a dinner party, Lhiewyn. This evening. At the mansion.”
“Sorry, I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Being old and truculent. Run along now.”
“It’s a state dinner. We’re hosting a delegation from the Chagan empire, and I need a god-botherer to be in attendance.”
“You can have Jessep.”
“They’re Chagan. The Chagans have sent emissaries exactly zero times in the history of Lucernia. I need a high god-botherer.”
“I’ll get him drunk first.”
“Don’t insult anyone important,” Morno admonished me. As if I was susceptible to admonishment.
“When you’re my age, the important people list is really very short. You’ll have to be more specific about who I shouldn’t verbally abuse.”
“I’m serious, Lhiewyn.”
“So am I. You want me to go to some formal dinner with some foreign folks. Fine, I’ll go. At least there’ll be free food. But whatever comes out of my mouth is on your head.”
He tssked. “How hard can it be not to aggravate others?”
“You’d be amazed. If you want somebody religious and important who can keep his mouth shut, make Bath’s priest go.”
“Believe me, I would. Sadly, people seem to be put off their appetite when their dinner companion has his lips sewn together.”
“Isin’s high priestess, then. She’s a damned sight more likeable than me. Also much more pleasant to look at.”
“Yes, and she smells better as well. Do you think I didn’t ask her? She can’t. Some sort of acolyte investiture tonight, which is not something that can be rescheduled, I’m led to understand.”
“Hells. Vosto’s high fool, then.”
Morno let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Biginh’s worse than you when he drinks, and he always drinks. No, revered, you’re it. You have the high honor of being the face of Lucernia’s religious community to the Chagan delegation. Wear something appropriate, preferably cleaner than that thing you’ve got on right now. Maybe comb what’s left of your hair.”
“As if you have room to talk.”
“At least I keep what’s left of mine trimmed.” He stood and turned to leave. Turned back.
“I don’t trust them, Lhiewyn. I have no reason not to, but I don’t. I do trust you to notice anything worth noticing that might tell me why.”
“It’s me you shouldn’t trust, after making me wade through sewage to fight a shit demon. At my age!”
“You say that as if I knew what was going to happen.”
“And you say that as if you’d have made somebody else do it if you had known.”
“I might have done, if only to avoid your moaning.” Morno turned again and walked out of the cell. “Fresh robes, Lhiewyn, and a sweeter tongue, or so help me,” he called out as he left.
“Bugger off, Lord Governor.” He may or may not have heard me. I sighed, scratched at the stubble on my chin. Maybe it would be good to get out, I thought, and then I thought about all the inane conversation I would have to endure. And if half the table was Chagan, I’d have to endure it in translation. Joy.
“Jessep!”
“Master?” His voice echoed back from somewhere deep in the stacks.
“See if the moths have left anything of my formal robe.”
“Do you want the hat, too?”
“Do you want boils on your genitals?”
“I guess that’s a no, then.”
“Damned right.” I hated that hat.
“Going somewhere?”
“I may be forced to.”
MORNO DIDN’T TRUST me to make my way to the Governor’s Manse on my own. Three hours later his gilded carriage pulled up outside the temple and his personal body servant Fench, backed by two burly armsmen, invaded Lagna’s sacred space to make sure I was suitably groomed and attired, and on my way in time for the banquet. They were extremely polite about it, and I was not. I was as uncooperative as an old man can be without resorting to the sort of tricks toddlers pull, and Fench still managed to make me look somewhat dignified. But I drew the line at the hat.
“It’s gods-damned nearly as tall as me, Fench, and I’ll be damned to the eleven hells if I wear it.”
“It is part of the formal dress of the High Priest of Lagna, and the Chagans are sticklers for formality, Revered Lhiewyn.”
“Then the Chagans will have one more thing to be disappointed about when they meet me, because I will not be wearing that abomination.”
“Revered—”
“If you thrust that thing at me one more time, I’ll shit in it, I swear to Lagna.”
Fench glared at the guffawing armsmen and snickering Jessep, and set the monstrosity of haberdashery aside. “Then all that’s left is the blood necklace and the chain of office.”
“Son, if I won’t wear a ridiculous hat, what makes you think I’m going to paint blood on my scrawny old neck? You’ve got me dressed, bathed, shaved and combed. Soon you’ll have me in the carriage, your duty discharged. Leave well enough alone.”
He sighed extravagantly. “The chain, then?”
“Well, I would, but my acolyte over there ‘lost’ it.”
“Revered—”
“I’m completely serious, Fench. A little girl kicked him in the balls and took it from him. I wouldn’t make this stuff up. Well actually I would, but happily I don’t have to in this case.”
“Very well, Revered. Shall we go to the banquet now, then?”
“Unless you’d rather go and drink wine down at the docks. I sure as hells would.”
“I’ll do that for you, master,” Jessep piped up.
“You’ll stay here and not burn the place down, boy. If a child can get the best of you, the dockmen would eat you alive.”
THE GOVERNOR’S MANSE was down at the end of the Promenade, as usual. Pretty, as usual. Surprisingly small, as usual, as mansions go. Morno could have expanded it, and probably should have; Lucernis was the largest city in the West, and the governing of it was not a simple matter. But I suspect he was mindful of the prestige of his monarch, and part of that mindfulness was not appearing to exceed the prestige of the king of Lucernia. Not even with a building.
They hustled me out of the carriage. A crier announced my arrival, with all the titles attached, at the entrance, and those who had no choice gave their bows. A liveried servant led me to the banquet hall. There were stairs. They were awful. Then a set of double doors opened to a brightly lit room, and a riot of colors appeared before me.
The Chagans did like their embroidered silk.
I was announced once more, this time in two languages, and everybody bowed.
The Chagans were better at it. Or at least they bowed lower. Maybe they were more flexible. Probably they just didn’t know my reputation like the Lucernan lords and ladies did.
After being announced, one is supposed to nod nobly, and glide forward serenely into the throng of the great and good, silent all the while.
I cleared my throat. “Right, where’s the food?”
IT SEEMED MORNO WANTED to limit the Chagan’s exposure to me, because I was the last guest announced before the banquet formally began and we were all led to our seats. I approved of his foresight. He might be a prick, but he isn’t stupid.
I was seated next to a Chagan woman even older than me, who smelled of some sort of liniment and seemed to sleep upright throughout the entire meal. She wore enough jewelry to ransom a prince. Sadly, she was to my left, and custom dictated I, as part of the host’s retinue, make conversation with the person seated to my right. I’m a big believer in custom when it suits me. It would have suited me to not have to talk. I wondered that Morno hadn’t placed her more appropriately.
My dinner companion to the right was also Chagan, and also female. There the similarities ended. She was young, on the lighter side of her twenties, and very beautiful. She wore only one item of jewelry; a stone of polished jasper set in white gold that rested on her forehead, the chain woven into her raven black hair. She too wore silks, but in such a way that accented her shape rather than hid it.
“It is an honor to meet you, revered,” she said, and inclined her head after the servant helped me into my chair.
“You won’t hurt my feelings if you revise your opinion on that later, girl. But I’m impressed at your command of Lucernan.”
“I studied the Lucernan language and its culture for years in preparation for our journey here.”
“I am professionally bound to approve of study. But you have me at a disadvantage.”
“I am Chang Ying, revered.”
“No family name?”
“No longer, revered. The priests and priestesses of Biyu forsake all family ties.”
I smiled. “So our host decided to put two god-botherers beside each other, to talk shop without annoying the other guests.”
She smiled, and a devilish look sprang up into her eyes. “Actually, I exchanged places with Mistress Bao, to your left. She is thoroughly deaf, and will not eat any of your ‘strange foreign food’. I wished to spare you from boredom, Revered.”
“You may come to regret your kind impulse, girl. But I think there might have been more to it than that.”
“The Revered Lhiewyn of Lucernis is as sage as his reputation indicates. I could not let an opportunity to speak with you pass, as a student of the West.”
“Priestess, scholar – the energy of youth.”
“It is my charge to spread the faith of my god to these shores, Revered. I will not succeed in doing so, if I do not understand the land and its people. And so I would sit at your feet, so to speak, and learn what I can, and listen to what answers you care to give to my questions.”
“Well, since the food is taking a damnably long time to arrive, I find I’ve nothing better to do. What would you like to know?”
She smiled impishly. “My studies led me to believe that the high priest of Lagna, according to custom, wore an improbably tall hat.”
I grunted. “I’m also supposed to paint a line across my neck in virgin sheep’s blood. That’s not happening either.”
Her laugh was high and sweet, with a liquid tone that rivaled birdsong.
I happened to catch Morno’s eye at the head of the table. He was staring at me, and he gave me a deeply suspicious look. Bah. I was charming beautiful women at dinner parties when he was still eating pap in the nursery. I gave him a sunny smile and turned back to my dinner companion.
“I find the Unsettled attitude towards propriety refreshing,” she said.
“Unsettled?”
“Our term for the Dragonsea cultures.”
“Surely it should be the Resettled, by now.”
“The aftershocks of the Cataclysm still rumble throughout the region, do they not? Bellarius seems far from settled, as an example.”
“Bellarius is a shambles, true enough. But I don’t think you can blame the Cataclysm for that. The Syndic was not a good ruler. Discontent has been brewing for decades.”
“Certainly, but why was he such a poor ruler? I believe the inequity that divided, and appears to have doomed Bellarian culture, was there at its inception. The Syndic ruled as he believed his culture allowed him to, and possibly even demanded he should. And Bellaria only exists because of the Cataclysm, and the Diaspora that followed, yes?”
“You may well be right, but for myself, I find it rarely does much good to look beyond proximate causes. Looking back to the Cataclysm to explain Bellaria seems to me to be less about finding a reason, and more about finding an excuse. The Syndic and the Three were bloodsucking leeches, virtually everyone agrees, propped up by the Telemarch’s power. The Gentry benefited from their unjust rule, and most everyone else suffered under it. The cause of their downfall was their own heinous behavior. No one forced them to be tyrants, after all.”
“But someone did force them to stop.”
“And would you say that that, too, was an aftershock of the Cataclysm?”
“I do not know, Sage Lhiewyn. If I were to speculate, I would speculate that it is the unfolding of some even older event.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
An enigmatic smile was her reply. And then the first course finally arrived.
TIME PASSED, FOOD WAS eaten, drink was drunk. Chang Ying was a charming dinner companion. Then all the small talk quietened when the leader of the Chagan delegation rose and toasted Morno in western fashion, with western words. Morno returned the toast, in passable Chagan. It was the signal for the table talk to become general, rather than private. I concentrated on my food. The bloviation of politicians and nobles, augmented by wine, made me annoyed, and always had. I managed to blithely ignore several minutes of it, before one brute of a Chagan rose unsteadily and started speaking a little too loudly. His translator was smooth about it, but obviously uncomfortable. I later learned the speaker was an illegitimate son of the Chagan Emperor’s third son, which made him important and powerless all at once.
“All this talk of gods – a god of secrets, a god of knowledge, gods of preservation and of ruin – a god, it seems, for every purpose or pondering that humanity could articulate, no?”
“I suppose so, yes,” said Morno.
“And yet, I myself have never heard of a creator god. No, I mean a god responsible for the creation of the world, or us, or even the other gods. I have never, in all my days, met a priest or scholar who could enlighten me concerning the origins of life, or reality.”
I decided to stick an oar in, since the man was staring directly at me. “The original Dragonsea peoples had many creation myths, my lord, chief among them being t
hat the world and all that is in it was formed from the corpse of a Great Dragon.”
“But that is not what I speak of – not myths. Certainly not the myths of vanished races, concerning imaginary creatures.”
“Then what exactly is your point?” asked Lord Ott.
“My point is this: if the gods did not create us, or the world we inhabit, do they even deserve to be called gods?”
“What a strange notion you seem to have about godhood, sir,” Ott replied. “Why should it be contingent upon their creating anything? Surely a god is a god, whether or not they are responsible for our existence.”
“It seems as good a measure as any, to my mind. For what is a god? How do we define the notion? Godhood is not based on immortality, I think you’ll grant me, considering all the dead gods that litter history. And if it is power that we are to judge them by, then there are many stories of mages and other beings whose power could very well be described as ‘godlike’. So if they may die as we do, and if at least some of us may rise to their level of power, what is it, exactly, that separates us from the gods, on a fundamental level?”
I didn’t much like this line of inquiry. It was almost inconceivable that anyone would have a clue as to what the gods really were, but I’d spent half a lifetime keeping that particular bit of knowledge safely inside my skull.
“Here’s what I think,” I announced to the table. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say so,” he replied. “I would have thought a priest, and a high priest of the god of knowledge at that, would consider such a question of great interest.”
“Would you have, now? It’s really very simple. The gods don’t care what you think of them, any more than you care what your cat thinks of you. They don’t derive their legitimacy, if that is the correct word, from us mortals, and you won’t suddenly change that by deciding you don’t think they’re godly enough to suit your sensibilities. If you want to redefine godhood, there’s nothing to stop you trying. But the gods won’t notice or care, and so you are, in essence, engaging in theological masturbation – fun enough, but ultimately pointless.”
The Last God Page 4
