Dus - Seven Altars Of Dusarra Part 12

The matter finally decided, he announced, "We will sleep now." Without waiting to see what Frima thought of this, he stretched himself out as best he could on the straw and fell soundly asleep.

Frima did not immediately follow his example, but instead sat and reviewed the events of the night just ending and the one before it. She had been tending her father's shop while he attended the regular moonlight ceremony at the temple when three large men had entered, claiming a pot they had bought there had a faulty seam; she had known that they were lying, for her father was undoubtedly the best tinker in Dusarra, but had looked at the pot anyway, and found herself gagged, then grabbed, then bound, and carried off in a sack over one man's shoulder. She had spent the following day in a small, cramped cell somewhere, but had been too frightened to sleep for a long time, even though it was obviously after dawn; when at last she had dozed off, it was to be rudely awakened by the same three men, who removed not merely her bonds but her clothes as well, before dragging her, struggling all the way, to the altar of Sai.

She had known, from the instant that the gag was pressed into her mouth, that she was being kidnapped by one of the day-dweller cults; it was a familiar concept, a traditional childhood fear, suddenly become much too real. She had had no real hope of escape; n.o.body ever escaped from the temples. Instead she had tried to behave properly, as befit a true follower of the night-G.o.ddess and the daughter of the city's best tinker. And then, when the ceremony was well under way and she was paying attention to nothing but the pain from the cutting of the priest's knife, this great red-eyed, b.l.o.o.d.y-handed monster had appeared and freed her.

She was familiar with overmen; every so often one would come to the shop, to buy a belt-buckle or have a harness repaired, never to buy the pots and kettles that were, her father's pride. They spoke rudely and carried swords, and had faces like Death himself-or at least like Bheleu, as represented in the little idols she had seen in the marketplace. She did not like overmen; they were big and dangerous and mysterious, and it was said that they laughed at the G.o.ds yet were not struck down, which implied some sorcerous might, although she had never heard of an overman magician.

But then an overman had rescued her, and she suddenly owed her life to an inhuman monster. This creature casually snapped a man's neck with one hand and spoke of killing her as if she were no more than one of the dogs that prowled the alleys, but then fed and clothed her and bathed her wounds. He even declined to rape her; she didn't seriously believe his statement that he couldn't. She was, in fact, still virgin; the high priest of Sai was to have ravished her as part of the sacrificial ceremony, a part that had not yet been reached when she was rescued. Her three captors had not dared to usurp the priest's privilege.

Further, Garth spoke to her in a perfectly civil manner, more so than any overman she had met before, and did not strike her, but merely threatened. Then when he spoke, he claimed to be from some semi-mythical wasteland and said that he planned to take her to someplace in the forbidden land of Eramma, whether she wanted to go or not. It was all very confusing. Overmen came from the Yprian Coast, and rode oxen or great horses, not huge black panthers.

She found the whole affair incomprehensible and was unsure of her feelings toward Garth. He had kidnapped her, but saved her from death; he had threatened her life, but now lay sleeping peacefully a few feet away, trusting her with his own life. What was to prevent her from escaping, or even killing him with his own weapons? She stood.

A low growl reached her, and she sat down again very quickly. She had thought that the huge black beast was asleep, but it was watching her now, its golden eyes gleaming in the pale morning light that filtered dimly in. She stared back.

It blinked, then casually lowered its head and appeared to go to sleep once again.

She stared for a moment longer, then relaxed. There was no point in arguing with the monster. Still thoroughly confused, she settled back, realized that she was in fact exhausted, and fell asleep.

She slept uneasily, and when Garth had rested enough to take the edge off his fatigue, he was awakened by her thrashing about. At first he did not remember his situation very clearly and his hand instinctively went to his axe, but he recalled himself in time to avoid smashing the girl's skull.

It was midmorning; he had slept four or five hours. Frima had not, having kept herself awake until after dawn, and he saw no reason to wake her. Unsettled though she might be, her troubled sleep was probably better for her than no rest at all. Garth suspected it was the discomfort of the dozens of unbandaged slashes that kept her from resting easily; he regretted that he had not been able to bandage them properly-a.s.suming, of course, that she would have allowed it-but at least he had done what he could.

Although he could have used more rest himself, he decided against going back to sleep. Instead he got to his feet and brushed off the straw that stuck to his mail; then he slung his axe on his back, stuffed a sack under his belt and, with a calming word to Koros, left the stall.

Heretofore, all his crimes had been committed at night; he hoped that undertaking his next in broad daylight would make it that much more unexpected. It is to a fugitive's advantage to be unpredictable.

One of the two stable-boys he had spoken with the preceding day sat in the archway, whittling carelessly at a sc.r.a.p of wood with an old table knife; he showed no sign that he was aware of Garth's presence. That was fine with Garth; for the first time, he gave serious consideration to finding some other way out of the stableyard.

The sun was faintly visible, well up in the eastern sky, but obscured by a layer of cloud. Elsewhere the clouds were thicker, and nowhere was the sky any color but gray. Any lingering glow from the volcanoes was submerged in the more powerful drabness of the daylight. It was not raining, but puddles on the packed dirt showed that it had been while Garth slept.

He looked about, studying anew the double row of stalls, the blank wall, the open arch. There was no exit at ground level except the arch. There was no truly compelling reason not to use it. The stable-boy was certainly no threat in and of himself.

Garth looked at the lad again, who was still intent on his lackadaisical carving; it was the boy who had been the more belligerent of the two, who had demanded he explain why he carried a sword. It occurred to him that the boy might think it strange that he no longer carried the blade.

Garth decided he did not want the boy to see him. He did not want anyone to see him leaving the stable; he did not want to make his connection with this place any better known than it already was. Quite aside from logic, he was emotionally and intuitively displeased by the idea. His position had become so complicated that its logic was beyond him, and he resolved instead to rely on his instincts. Accordingly, lend himself another way of leaving the stable.

There was no alternative at ground level unless he wanted to knock out a wall; he had not the time to burrow his way out. That left one direction-up. He swung open the broad door of Koros' stall until it stood out perpendicular to its closed position; it projected out from beneath the roof of the stable. He tested its strength; although it was not as solid as he might have desired, it was adequate. Using the door as a steppingstone, he vaulted upward so that his head, arms, and chest were above the level of the roof's edge; he caught himself, then crawled upward until his full weight rested on the wet red tiles.

He was very pleased to note that he had made the ascent with a minimum of clatter; the lack of his scabbarded sword was an advantage in that respect. He drew himself carefully upright, being sure not to put his full weight upon any part of the roof until he had tested it sufficiently, then surveyed his position.

The roof he was standing on was about ten feet wide and fifty long, sloping toward the stableyard; on the far side of, the yard was another virtually identical to it, and the two were connected at either end by a narrow wall, which looked wide and strong enough to walk on if it became necessary-but not if it remained unnecessary. Beyond the other roof was the wall of the upper story or stories of the Inn of the Seven Stars; along the upper edge of the roof he stood on was a blank wall of gray stone, extending upward at least twenty feet. He wondered what it was; he had not noticed from the street what building occupied that position, and the featureless expanse gave no clue. There was no exit in that direction. The wall was too high to leap, and he was not a very good climber.

On the opposite side, the stone wall of the inn was spotted with windows, half a dozen of them, but all, he was happy to see, shuttered; there was no danger of being noticed by the occupants of those rooms, and having his presence on the roof questioned. That wall was lower; the windows were all in a single tier, and he judged the distance between the roof of the stable and the roof of the inn to be no more than a dozen feet, probably less. The inn's roof was constructed of the same tile as that on which he stood, but was much, much steeper, and there were at least two skylights visible between the chimneypots. There was no exit by that route, either. At the one end, beyond the wall, lay the open street. That left only one direction unexplored; he could not see what lay beyond the blank wall at the stable's inner end. Though the upper stories of other buildings were visible beyond, there was a definite gap immediately behind that wall.

He made his way carefully along the sloping surface, trying to avoid dislodging any of the battered tiles, until he stood within a pace of the edge. He peered over and found himself looking into a small enclosed yard, strewn with garbage and half-flooded by the morning's rain. An unpleasant odor drifted faintly to his slit nostrils.

The far side of the yard was filled by a simple twostory structure, apparently an ordinary house; on either hand walls five or six feet high separated it from similar patches of earth, though due to the angle of his vision he could not see much of either, despite the height of his perch. The left-hand yard was, as far as he could see, cleaner than the central one; of the right-hand yard he could not even see that much.

He paused to consider, and glanced back at the stableyard; from his elevated position he could see that the abandoned trough where he had burned his cloak now held an inch or so of murky rainwater, black with the ashes of his garment.

There was no reason to bother crossing over to the right-hand yard; of the other two, both were accessible from the roof he was on. The central yard spanned the stable yard and perhaps half of each of the roofed-over stables; the left-hand yard extended across the remaining four or five feet.

The left-hand yard would be a longer drop, being below the higher portion of the roof; therefore, he made his way to the bottom corner, where the gray stone of the wall extended out from beneath the red tiles, lowered himself over the outer edge, and let himself drop.

He landed with a splash, and immediately felt water seeping into his right boot through the puncture made by the obsidian in the forecourt of Sai's temple; it was cold and sluggish, probably made up of filthy mud as much as water. He wished he knew how to curse, as humans did; he tried muttering the names of a few G.o.ds but it provided no relief, and he growled instead.

It was hard to judge accurately the depth of the water, because his boots sank into the mud beneath the weight of his armored body; there was at least an inch, though.

He slogged across the little court, his boots thrusting aside decaying fruit peels and muck-coated old bones, and climbed onto a stone doorstep that rose above the water; he could feel the water draining slowly from his ruined boot, leaving a slimy residue and a wet lining.

The door was centered in the wall. There were two narrow windows on either side, all dark and curtained, but with their shutters open. That implied that there was someone somewhere within, but most likely not in these rearmost rooms. He tried the latch. It yielded, and he leaned on the door. It did not yield.

A wordless noise of annoyance burst from him. He leaned harder, letting his left foot fall back into the befouled water the better to brace himself.

The door still did not yield, and in a burst of anger Garth lifted his axe over his head and swung it at the recalcitrant barrier. Splinters flew. He struck again, and felt the blade slice through into the s.p.a.ce beyond. The door was not unreasonably thick.

He pulled the axe free and let it dangle loosely in his right fist as he leaned to peer through the crack he had made.

The room beyond was dark, and he could see nothing. He stood back, and swung the axe again; the wood of the door gave, bursting inward, leaving two wide gaps. He slung the axe on his back once again and ripped out the broken wood between the two slits, giving him an opening wide enough to get his hand through. He reached in and, as he had expected, found that the door was barred; the bar lay only a few inches below the opening, and it was no great feat of dexterity to lift it free and let it drop to the floor inside.

It occurred to him that he was making a great deal of noise, yet so far no one had appeared to question him; luck was apparently with him. It did not occur to him that he might have made less noise going in through one of the windows. He worked the latch and pushed on the door again.

It still did not open. He pressed harder, and it bowed inward but remained closed. There were other bars; judging by the way the door bent, one near the top and one near the bottom.

His patience, which had been in very short supply since his embarra.s.sing display of ineffectuality in the temple of Aghad, ran out, and with a roar he freed his axe again and swung it horizontally into the wood. Splinters sprayed, and a large chunk of one of the boards that made up the door snapped off and fell with a loud splash into the murky water. He struck again, with no thought or care as to the effects of his blow, and the blade wedged itself into the wood, scattering more shards. He ripped it free, bringing most of a plank with it, and let it hang from one hand again while the other reached through the greatly enlarged hole.

He could feel the upper bar, but his forearm was not long enough to allow him to dislodge it; he withdrew, then thrust the other hand in, and used the axe to knock the bar away. It fell with even more noise than the first. He felt for the third bar, and hooked it upward with the corner of his weapon; its fall could scarcely be heard. Then, still angry, and with his hand and axe still thrust within, he tried the latch again.

The door opened a few inches.

He withdrew his hand and slammed the door aside; its shaken frame gave way when it struck the wall behind it, and collapsed, twisting out of shape and leaving a disarrayed ma.s.s of tangled wood, rather than a door, hanging from the bent hinges.

Ignoring it, Garth stepped inside.

He was in a small kitchen; a stone sink stood against one wall, and tables and cabinets abounded. There was no sign of life, but it was reasonably clean, with no acc.u.mulation of dust; the house was not abandoned. Perhaps the owner was deaf; Garth could not imagine any other reason not to investigate such noise as he had just made, if the occupant were there at all and capable of movement.

Perhaps he or she had gone out and not bothered to close the shutters; perhaps he was bedridden. In any case, Garth was not particularly concerned; he had merely wanted some other route out of the stable. He crossed the kitchen, and strode through the open archway that led to a large front room. Unlike the kitchen, this room was the full width of the house, about twenty feet; it was slightly longer than that from front to back, and the low ceiling made it appear even broader. Garth found that he had to stoop. The kitchen had allowed him to stand upright so long as he avoided the beams that supported the upper floor, but this larger room had a plank ceiling.

There was a door in the wall behind him, which he guessed led to a storeroom of some sort beside the kitchen, and along the left-hand wall a stairway led to the upper level. a.s.sorted chairs, rugs; and tables were scattered about; a broad hearth and ma.s.sive fireplace occupied the right wall. The far side had two wide bow windows, with curtains drawn across them, and a heavy oaken door between.

He crossed to the door, drew the lockbolt, and opened it slightly, peering out; it appeared to be a residential neighborhood, with no shops or public buildings visible. He opened the door and stepped out.

The sun had broken through the clouds; the street was deserted. He closed the door behind him but left it unlocked, and headed to his right, the direction he judged would best bring him to the Street of the Temples.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

He had been very fortunate in emerging on an empty street; he found few others as he made his way across Dusarra, but. somehow he reached his goal without being accosted. Several people had cast curious gazes in his direction and a mutter of conversation had frequently followed him, but no one had dared to stop him. Now, he strode openly along the Street of the Temples, hoping his luck would hold.

He was approaching a temple, the third from the overlord's palace; it loomed before him, a huge cube of black stone, dotted with dark windows and topped by a broad dome. Seven shallow steps led to its, open portals; there were no gates, no courtyard, no indication which deity was worshipped here. He was only a few paces from the bottom step when someone behind him cried, "Hold, overman!"

He hastened his pace, hurrying up the steps; he heard running, feet somewhere behind him as he stepped through the doorway into an antechamber.

The room was small, with a wooden floor that gave dangerously beneath his feet, and walls hung with moldering, faded tapestries. He wondered briefly if the place was abandoned; since the daylight cults were secret, one might have died out without anyone knowing it.

There was a door in the inner wall with a rusty iron handle; Garth grabbed it, only to have it crumble in his grasp. He raised a fist to pound on the door, in hope that someone would admit him; to his astonishment, the door burst inward at his first blow, its hinges screaming in protest. Dust flew up in clouds, and a paroxysm of coughing overtook him, but he managed to stumble through. As he did, he realized there were no further sounds of pursuit behind him; instead, a voice exclaimed in dismay, "We can't go in there!"

He stopped. If he were not pursued, there as no need for haste. He wiped the dust from his stinging eyes and looked about.

The door he had entered through stood beside him, and it was immediately obvious why it had yielded so quickly; it had been eaten away from within by termites and rot, so that his blow had merely finished their work. The latch that had held it remained where it was, rusted to the frame, and the wood had turned to powder around it, so that the door's edge now had a gaping hole in it.

He was in a room perhaps fifteen feet across and twenty feet long; like the antechamber, and unlike any of the other temples he had yet visited, it was floored in wood, wood which sagged visibly at the center beneath the weight of a thick carpet. The walls, too, were wooden, except for one end; that was stone and obviously one of the temple's outer walls, since three narrow windows pierced it, providing the chamber with light.

The room's ceiling was upholstered in silk, silk that was discolored with half a hundred old and new stains, that was black with rot in spots. Like the floor, it sagged in the center. Cobwebs hung from every corner.

There were furnishings; two ornate tables adorned the far wall, flanking a doorway, and an a.s.sortment of faded, dusty chairs were strewn about.

Over everything hung the smell, the stench of rot, mold, and decay; Garth suddenly felt quite certain he knew which temple he had entered.

He took a cautious step forward into the room; the floor creaked ominously, and new odors of corruption a.s.sailed his nostrils. He put a hand on a woodpanelled wall, only to s.n.a.t.c.h it away quickly when he felt the wood start to give; like the door, it was riddled by worms and rot. There could be no doubt that this was the shrine of P'hul, G.o.ddess of decay.

"Greetings, stranger." The soft voice came from somewhere to his right; the usual guttural Dusarran accent was modified by a curious lisp. He turned, to see that a gray-robed figure had entered the room.

He started to speak, but stopped as the figure threw back its hood, revealing the reason for the lisp.

"Is something wrong?" The priestess' voice was solicitous.

"No. I was just startled."

The woman's lower lip was a twisted ma.s.s of oozing, festering flesh, and much of her face and neck was swollen and shapeless; one of her hands lacked a finger. Garth recognized the human disease of leprosy and shuddered slightly. His pursuers had had reasons other than religious respect for declining to enter this place.

The priestess smiled, the friendly expression made hideous by her affliction. "Of course. It is customary that the servants of P'hul bear her handiwork upon their flesh, but I suppose it might well startle those not accustomed to such sights. Why have you come? What brings a healthy overman to the temple of decay?" Garth noticed that she was aware of her lisp, and struggled particularly hard to be sure she p.r.o.nounced the name of her G.o.ddess correctly. He felt a twinge of pity.

"I was merely curious."

"I am surprised. We see few strangers here. How may I help to satisfy your curiosity?"

"Tell me of your G.o.ddess, if you would." Garth was not particularly interested in learning about P'hul, but he wanted time to think, and guessed that the priestess, absorbed as she was with her beliefs, would be quite willing to talk for hours about them with only minimal encouragement. Where he would have raised suspicion by questioning her on more mundane matters, he was sure that in the enthusiasm of the true believer she would not find anything strange in his willingness to listen to endless blather about her religion.

"If you wish, gladly! I am sure you know the basic nature of P'hul; she is the cause and essence of all disease and decay throughout our world. She ages us all, she makes us easy prey for death, so that the old will make way for the young. She turns the leaves green to brown, pulls them from the trees; and makes them rot, so that they will feed the earth. She eats away fruit, that the seeds within may flourish. By plague and disease, she removes the unfit and unworthy. The worms of the earth and the lowly insects serve her, devouring all that she gives them, and in turn they feed the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field. She is the handmaiden of death."

As the priestess spoke, her words distorted by her lisp, Garth thought back over recent events; it struck him suddenly that he had been behaving recklessly, almost idiotically, since leaving the temple of Aghad. Marching openly into the temple of Sai had been foolish, even if it had allowed him to save an innocent life. He had not planned well there; even his fight with the priests had been mismanaged, as he should have been able to overpower all three without killing any.

"There are those who say that death is the great evil of our world," the priestess went on, "and that if P'hul serves him, then she must likewise be evil. That is not so; death would exist regardless of P'hul. The G.o.ddess readies us for his touch; is it not better to die old and weary, than to be cut down while still healthy and vigorous?"

His behavior this morning had been even more erratic. There had been no reason to go leaping about on the roof, smashing down the doors of unsuspecting citizens, and so forth. He had merely been responding to the repressed anger that still seethed within him, using up as much energy as possible and finding excuses to destroy anything handy.

"Knowing that one must die after a set number of years, is it not better to know that death will come as the end of a decline, a surcease from decay, than to see it strike abruptly while one is still strong? Our lives are thus in balance, with the ascent from infancy countered by the descent into senescence. Aal, the Eir-Lord of growth, is P'hul's twin and counter; neither could exist without the other. Aal dominates our youth, P'hul our age."

Obviously, he was still resentful of the helplessness he had felt in the temple of Aghad.

"In order that there be growth, there must be decay; for there to be new, the old must make way, else the world would be buried beneath growing things."

It was plain that his effective exile from his homeland at the hands of the Baron of Skelleth, through that stupid oath he had so foolishly taken, still rankled.

"Yet still, even granting the necessity of decay, why should we worship the G.o.ddess?"

Buried still deeper, he knew, was anger at the Forgotten King, who treated him like a foolish child and manipulated him like a marionette, and at the Wise Women of Ordunin, the trusted oracle that had first sent him to Skelleth.

"Because we see the underlying beauty in her works; because we perceive that decay brings peace, and that contentment can be found therein. She provides an end to struggling against our inevitable fate, and a surcease from care."

All, of course, were symptoms of his anger at his own helplessness, his resentment of his insignificance in the cosmos; it was his inability to reshape the world as he chose that underlay his rage at all these manifestations of his lack of omnipotence.

"Every farmer prays to Aal; every parent of growing children worships him. He has no need of the service of such lowly creatures as ourselves amid this flood of adulation. Yet without his sister he would be nothing, and we choose to give her the recognition she deserves, as best we can, in response to her marks upon us."

Early in the priestess' lisping dissertation, she and Garth had both seated themselves upon the nearest chairs; the priestess had ignored the cloud of dust that rose from the cushions, and Garth had tried to do the same even as he hoped that the moldering seat would support his weight. Now the servant of P'hul leaned forward, her chair creaking beneath her, and asked, "Do you have any questions?"

"I..." Garth had not yet given any thought to the matter on hand, that being how he was to rob the altar; he stalled, asking a question he was only vaguely interested in. "I have heard that this is the Thirteenth Age of the world, the Age of Decay, and as such it is ruled by P'hul. Could you explain this? Do not all the G.o.ds prevail over their own concerns in every age?"

"Yes, of course they do. The ages of the world are little more than a theory worked out by the theologians, philosophers, and astrologers, yet they seem to apply in some ways. I do not understand how they are determined, but it is said that certain signs mark each era. Our own age has been one of declining population, fading wealth, and loss of knowledge, and thus is credited as the Age of P'hul, since these are the symptoms of a decay of mankind-and overmankind-as a whole, just as P'hul's diseases cause the decay of individuals. The theologians say that this is because during this age P'hul is at the height of her power, while those G.o.ds equal to or greater than herself are resting, or somehow weakened. Decay progresses faster than growth; but there is still growth, and when this age ends the balance between P'hul and Aal will be restored, and some other deity will temporarily rise above the cosmic balance.

"The astrologers say that the age is ending even now; that the Fourteenth Age may in fact have already begun, or if not it will soon arrive."

That caught Garth's attention; months earlier, the Forgotten King had told him that it was hopeless to try and halt the spread of death and decline while the Age of P'hul lasted. If it were in truth ending, perhaps there were better times ahead, an era in which great things could be accomplished.

"What will the Fourteenth Age be? What G.o.d will predominate?"

"I do not know. The Twelfth Age was the Age of Aghad, marked by great wars and great betrayals, and much of the world's history was lost in that period, which lasted much longer than the three centuries of P'hul's dominance, so that although scholars may know something of the Eleventh Age, I do not. Thus I cannot see any pattern. Perhaps it is time for one of the Eir, the Lords of Life, to flourish; although I serve a Lady of the Dus, I would not regret such a change."

"Might not any G.o.d rule? I have heard of G.o.ds who were not of the Dus, nor, I believe, of the Eir."

"Such G.o.ds, if they exist, are but lesser beings-except for Dagha, of course. There are the seven Dus, the seven Eir, and the G.o.d of Time who created them all; these are the fifteen great G.o.ds, and you may be sure that one of these will represent the world's new age."

"This is the Thirteenth Age; the Fourteenth is soon to begin; but there are only fifteen of these higher G.o.ds. What will happen when each has ruled for an age?"

"Perhaps they will start over."

Garth sat back and considered that. The whole system sounded rather haphazard; ages of varying length, in no known order? Only fifteen possible rulers? Interesting as it might be, and despite the seeming appropriateness of describing the last three centuries as an age of decay and the period ending in the Racial Wars as an age of hatred, he decided the whole system was just another human exercise in meaningless theorizing. After all, men could not even prove the existence of a single one of their myriad deities; how, then, could any trust be put in a system based on those G.o.ds? Besides, if this was currently the Thirteenth Age, then long ago there must have been a First Age; what came before that? He shook his head.

"I am confused. Perhaps you could show me your temple while I digest this new knowledge."

"If you wish." The priestess rose; Garth followed her example, pleased that she was being so cooperative. Any tour of the temple must surely include its altar.