The New Death and others (14 page)

"Come forth and speak."

"O priestesses," said the stranger, "it is
said in the bazaars that, in the past, zealous and holy folk have
gone to the City of Dust, and there spoken of Averna."

The priestesses nodded.

"It is further said," he went on, "that the
women of the city, in their heathen ignorance, enquired of these
missionaries as to whether Averna or Daba would win in a
fight."

At this the priestesses looked upon the
stranger with a sharper eye. For he had spoken a truth known only
to a few in Telelee, and certainly not the stuff of market
gossip.

"Finally," the man continued, "it is said
that each messenger of Averna declared this question to be
irrelevant at best, and blasphemous at worst; and that there
followed an illustration that the rewards of virtue are not found
in this world, for as soon as they spoke thus the missionaries were
invariably set upon and beaten greatly, and expelled from the
city."

The priestesses, fearing to lie in such a
holy place and on such a holy subject, and unwilling to confirm the
truth of his words, stayed silent.

"O priestesses, my name is Ur-Zaba. I have
not attended this temple long." This the priestesses knew to be so.
In truth, they had never seen him before, though each had a feeling
that they had some acquaintance with him; perhaps that they had not
seen him, but had heard him described by another. "Yet devotion is
not dust, that one may sit still and wait for it to fall. Nor is
virtue a trade that requires one to be first apprentice, then
journeyman, and only then master. On the contrary, he who sits and
waits for righteousness to blossom thereby ensures that it will
not. He is like one who tries to grow cats by burying kittens.
Therefore I will go to the City of Dust, and tell them of the
goddess."

The priestesses tried to turn Ur-Zaba from
his path, for they had no wish to pile failure upon failure, as
wood is piled upon wood in a funeral pyre--not even Ummi-waqrat,
who had argued so fiercely that someone should go when no one
would. Yet it seemed as if he would set out without their blessing.
Since this would cause great shame whether he died or prevailed
they gave him a horse, a well-used traveling cloak, and a few
cowrie shells to buy provisions, and sent him on his way.

Coming to the City of Dust, Ur-Zaba began to
speak in the public square. After a time he gathered a crowd. All
women, they stood around him as silent and still as the idol he
sought to overthrow. When they had listened for many hours, a woman
asked him,

"O man, who would win in a fight between our
Daba and this Averna?"

"If it were possible for Daba and Averna to
fight, then it must be admitted that Daba is a dwarf while Averna
is tall and strong. Is it not, therefore, obvious who would
win?"

At this the women declared their support for
Averna. Soon an empty building became the new temple of Averna.
Soon after that the temple of Daba stood with lamps unlit, the
droppings of the sacred lizards went uncollected, and there was no
one to worship the scowling idol, unless those lizards did so.

---

A priest of one of the many rival gods in
Telelee hurried past the temple of Averna. He kept his face hidden
lest he be recognised, and some of his past mockery be given back
to him. The obscene and voluptuous rites of his deity no longer
thrilled the people. He shared a sympathetic glance with a
priestess of the Crone, who stood in the street chanting one of
that goddess's grim sagas in a defeated voice. In the temple
courtyard the priestesses sat as content as cats who have been fed
and now lie in the sunlight.

"In the bazaar this morning," Ummi-waqrat
remarked, "I heard it said that there has been no triumph such as
ours in ten thousand years."

"So much for Nara," Ninduzu answered,
referring to a heroic scourging of the slave-taking Fin-Folk by the
temple of that god, not twenty years past.

"So much, too, for Iasthes," Yarimlim added.
The temple of Iasthes had recently marked its thousandth year of
feeding and clothing distressed travelers.

"Indeed, those priests who poured derision
upon us are like cooks who prepare poisoned food, only to find it
served to themselves." Ummi-waqrat said with satisfaction. "Ho,
Beketmut!" Ummi-waqrat shouted to the chanting priestess. "We have
had to add another evening ceremony. Our congregation swells like
the belly of a pregnant woman." The courtyard would have rung with
the sound of hand upon hand, had the 'high five' not been entirely
unknown in Telelee. It was at this juncture that a messenger
arrived from the City of Dust.

She came on foot. Horses, camels and
riding-lizards were among the many luxuries not found in her city.
Indeed she disdained shoes; her feet were cracked and blackened
from the road. She knelt before the priestesses, as if in
allegorical representation of the conversion of her people, and
presented the scroll she carried.

"O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read
aloud. "We, your humble parishioners, finding our piety outstrips
our learning, do humbly crave the benefit of your wisdom, in
settling a question which has vexed us greatly; to wit, is the sun
a manifestation of Averna herself, or merely a manifestation of her
benevolence? And if the latter, is it a separate benevolence to
that by which the rest of Nature manifests? The blessings of the
goddess upon you, Ur-Zaba and the believers of the City of
Dust."

"New converts are ever more zealous than
those of many years' faith," Ninduzu said, in a voice too soft for
the messenger to hear. The latter remained kneeling, eyes downcast
and entirely motionless, save for the rise and fall of her
breath.

"You may rise," Ummi-waqrat said. The
messenger did so immediately, as if commanded. The priestesses
noticed that her knee was bloody. No one spoke. The woman's
stoicism, the rivulet of blood snaking down her leg, her silence
and submission, all compelled the priestesses' attention. They felt
a cold shadow in their warm and familiar courtyard. At that moment
they did not feel triumphant.

"We must consult certain texts to ensure a
correct answer to this query," Yarimlim said at last.

"I shall aid you in your research, sister,"
Ninduzu added quickly. The two priestesses left for the temple
library, leaving Ummi-waqrat alone with the foreigner.

"So..." Ummi-waqrat said uncomfortably, "how
goes the City of Dust?"

"Error has been entirely driven from the
city," the messenger replied proudly. "All have accepted Averna. We
worship her daily with martial displays and athletic
competition."

"That sounds very, ah, zealous," said
Ummi-waqrat, who preferred to worship Averna by sitting quietly and
reading, and believed that Averna's dancing and athletics were
largely symbolic.

"Indeed," said the messenger. "It is a stark
contrast to the days of our ignorance, when we were wont to pay
tribute to the detestable Daba with unholy rites."

"Did these rites consist of martial displays
and athletic competition?" asked the priestess. The messenger
gasped at her insight. Ummi-waqrat sighed to herself.

"I suppose the goddess is pleased that they
now perform their contortions in her name," she thought.

At last Yarimlim and Ninduzu returned.

"The Commentaries of the Unimpeachable Sages
give a clear answer to your question," said Yarimlim.

"Well, as clear as a five-hundred-page poem
about seven different aspects of the soul talking to each
other...which, which is to say, very clear to those learned in
theology," Ninduzu said awkwardly.

"The sun is a manifestation of Averna's
benevolence, like the rest of Nature, and differs from it in degree
but not in kind."

"Aha!" the messenger cried. "I knew it! Your
wisdom is like precious oil poured upon my heart, making it shine
like a sword which thirsts for the blood of its enemies." She bowed
to the three priestesses and, wound or no wound, ran from the
courtyard with the joyful spring of a newborn lamb.

---

After a time the priestesses ceased to taunt
their rivals. If they did not grow more humble, they at least grew
secure in their arrogance. It seemed to them the natural order of
things that all other temples should have empty pews, and the
congregations be like suits of clothes that have gone unmended, and
been the food of moths, and grown threadbare.

The three priestesses were again sitting in
the temple courtyard, going over the plans for an extension to the
building, when another messenger ran through the gates. Her bare,
bruised feet fell as silently as the paws of a wolf in the forest.
Perhaps, indeed, it was not another messenger, but the same one.
The priestesses, and Telelee generally, were much concerned with
the people of the City of Dust as a group, and the worshipers of
Averna loved to state the number of them. But there was less
interest in the differences between one woman and another.

She knelt before the priestesses and
presented the scroll she carried.

"O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read
aloud, "We, your humble parishioners, give thanks for your learned
direction on the matter of the sun. We doubt not that our
simplicity, rather than any defect in your wisdom, accounts for our
ongoing consternation. Likewise the raised voices which, of late,
have marred the serenity of our temple are, far from being
testament to any inadequacy in your guidance, demonstration of our
urgent need for it. The following question, trivial though it will
prove to yourselves, nonetheless defeats us. Since the sun differs
from the absence of the sun in the degree to which it manifests
Averna's benevolence, and since sun-drenched lands such as our own
are bitter deserts, is the desert is a sign of Averna's
benevolence? Or is the sun a manifestation of Averna's benevolence
only when taken as a whole and in comparison to its complete
absence, not when one degree of presence is compared to another? We
confidently and urgently pray for a quick resolution to the tumult
the question has raised among us. The blessings of the goddess upon
you, Ur-Zaba and the believers of the City of Dust."

This time all three priestesses went to the
library. When they returned it was evening, and the messenger cast
a long shadow in the courtyard. She sat cross-legged upon the
ground, and her face gave no clue whether she failed to comprehend
the use of the benches before her, despised the softness thereof,
or sat on the ground from humility.

"The presence of the sun," Yarimlim stated,
"though it create a parched desert, is preferable to the freezing
void of space. Therefore a desert is as much a result of Averna's
benevolence as a fertile field. O believers, do not compare the
brown earth to the green, nor the blue sky to the gray, but be
assured that the same sun shines upon them all."

A single tear escaped the messenger's
eye.

"If this is the opinion of you all, there can
be no doubt that it is true and correct," she said. She hauled
herself to her feet and, with the gait of one carrying a heavy
burden, strode from the courtyard. But if she was carrying a heavy
burden, she was not carrying all of it. For the priestesses, too,
felt as if they had picked up a load too great for them, and did
not know when or how they would put it down.

---

No good news ever contains the phrase
'purifying fire'.

After a few weeks, two messengers arrived in
the temple of Averna in Telelee. They did not seem to have come
together, for each looked at the other first with surprise, and
then with hatred. Yet they said nothing. Perhaps each tried to
reach the priestesses first, and to bow lower when handing over
their message.

"O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read. "We
thank you for the water of your teaching, which quenches the thirst
of the pious. Yet to the ignorant, pure water is as poison, and
they are...hmm...let the putrescence of heresy be cut out...great
reckoning of the false believers...oh dear."

"O priestesses of Averna," Ninduzu read from
the other scroll. "We thank you, and so forth...a great argument
arose on how best to punish those who compare the brown earth to
the green...in their perversity, they maintain that mentioning the
sparseness of the desert does not count as comparing it to the
forest, and are therefore the midwives of error and the wet-nurses
of sin...we take up our spears to defend the temple and the
truth..." she, too, trailed off, and let her hand fall, the rest of
the scroll unread.

The messengers knelt, waiting for direction.
But the priestesses had none to give.

---

Thus the temple of Averna in the City of Dust
ended in fire and ruin. No more missions went out from Telelee,
from Averna or any other god.

Ur-Zaba was never again seen alive. It was
said that he had died when the temple burnt down. And in truth,
when the smoke cleared there was no lack of corpses.

Yet a different story was told by a man of
the City of Dust. He said that he saw Ur-Zaba come out of the fire,
apparently unharmed by it. As he walked he became shorter until he
was a veritable dwarf, squat and malignant. And he entered the
temple of Daba. This was widely considered to be a man's idle
chatter. Yet it must be admitted that, when the people again
entered the temple of Daba, some remarked that the idol was not as
they remembered it, but had a new expression of triumph on its
hideous face.

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++++

The Dragon Festival

I had moved to the city only recently, and
there still seemed to be endless room for exploration. I found
myself taking the train to the end of the line, then walking to see
where the road would take me. I expected to find the houses
becoming scarcer as the city turned to country. But in fact I saw
more and more buildings. I might have thought that I'd become
turned around, but for the fact that the road was more or less
straight, and the new buildings unlike those I had left. After a
while I came to a main plaza.