Small Gods

The Omnians couldn't understand, and uncertain people fight badly. And Vorbis had gone. Certainties seemed less certain when those eyes were elsewhere.

The Tyrant was released from his prison. He spent his first day of freedom carefully composing messages to the other small countries along the coast.

It was time to do something about Omnia.

Brutha sang.

His voice echoed off the rocks. Flocks of scalbies shook off their lazy pedestrian habits and took off frantically, leaving feathers behind in their rush to get airborne. Snakes wriggled into cracks in the stone.

You could live in the desert. Or at least survive . . .

Getting back to Omnia could only be a matter of time. One more day . . .

Vorbis trooped along a little behind him. He said nothing and, when spoken to, gave no sign that he had understood what had been said to him.

Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

The strained strains of Claws of Iron shall Rend the Ungodly faded away. There was a small rockslide, some way off.

“We're alive,” said Brutha.

“For now.”

“And we're close to home.”

“Yes?”

“I saw a wild goat on the rocks back there.”

“There's still a lot of 'em about.”

“Goats?”

“Gods. And the ones we had back there were the puny ones, mind you.”

“What do you mean?”

Om sighed. "It's reasonable, isn't it? Think about it. The stronger ones hang around the edge, where there's prey . . . I mean, people. The weak ones get pushed out to the sandy places, where people hardly ever go-

“The strong gods,” said Brutha, thoughtfully. “Gods that know about being strong.”

“That's right.”

“Not gods that know what it feels like to be weak . . .”

“What? They wouldn't last five minutes. It's a god-eat-god world.”

“Perhaps that explains something about the nature of gods. Strength is hereditary. Like sin.”

His face clouded.

“Except that . . . it isn't. Sin, I mean. I think, perhaps, when we get back, I shall talk to some people.”

“Oh, and they'll listen, will they?”

“Wisdom comes out of the wilderness, they say.”

“Only the wisdom that people want. And mushrooms.”

When the sun was starting to climb Brutha milked a goat. It stood patiently while Om soothed its mind. And Om didn't suggest killing it, Brutha noticed.

Then they found shade again. There were bushes here, low?growing, spiky, every tiny leaf barricaded behind its crown of thorns.

Om watched for a while, but the small gods on the edge of the wilderness were more cunning and less urgent. They'd be here, probably at noon, when the sun turned the landscape into a hellish glare. He'd hear them. In the meantime, he could eat.

He crawled through the bushes, their thorns scraping harmlessly along his shell. He passed another tortoise, which wasn't inhabited by a god and gave him that vague stare that tortoises employ when they're deciding whether something is there to be eaten or made love to, which are the only things on a normal tortoise mind. He avoided it, and found a couple of leaves it had missed.

Periodically he'd stomp back through the gritty soil and watch the sleepers.

And then he saw Vorbis sit up, look around him in a slow methodical way, pick up a stone, study it carefully, and then bring it down sharply on Brutha's head.

Brutha didn't even groan.

Vorbis got up and strode directly toward the bushes that hid Om. He tore the branches aside, regardless of the thorns, and pulled out the tortoise Om had just met.

For a moment it was held up, legs moving slowly, before the deacon threw it overarm into the rocks.

Then he picked up Brutha with some effort, slung him across his shoulders, and set off towards Omnia.

It happened in seconds.

Om fought to stop his head and legs retracting automatically into his shell, a tortoise's instinctive panic reaction.

Vorbis was already disappearing round some rocks.

He disappeared.

Om started to move forward and then ducked into his shell as a shadow skimmed over the ground. It was a familiar shadow, and one fiIled with tortoise dread.

The eagle swept down and towards the spot where the stricken tortoise was struggling and, with barely a pause in the stoop, snatched the reptile and soared back up into the sky with long, lazy sweeps of its wings.

Om watched it until it became a dot, and then looked away as a smaller dot detached itself and tumbled over and over toward the rocks below.

The eagle descended slowly, preparing to feed.

A breeze rattled the thornbushes and stirred the sand. Om thought he could hear the taunting, mocking voices of all the small gods.

St. Ungulant, on his bony knees, smashed open the hard swollen leaf of a stone plant.

Nice lad, he thought. Talked to himself a lot, but that was only to be expected. The desert took some people like that, didn't it, Angus?

Yes, said Angus.

Angus didn't want any of the brackish water. He said it gave him wind.

“Please yourself,” said St. Ungulant. “Well, well! Here's a little treat.”

You didn't often get Chilopoda aridius out here in the open desert, and here were three, all under one rock!

Funny how you felt like a little nibble, even after a good meal of Petit porc rôti avec pommes de terre nouvelles et légumes du jour et bière glacée avec figment de l'imagination.

He was picking the legs of the second one out of his tooth when the lion padded to the top of the nearest dune behind him.

The lion was feeling odd sensations of gratitude. It felt it should catch up with the nice food that had tended to it and, well, refrain from eating it in some symbolic way. And now here was some more food, hardly paying it any attention. Well, it didn't owe this one anything . . .

It padded forward, then lumbered up into a run.

Oblivious to his fate, St. Ungulant started on the third centipede.

The lion leapt . . .

And things would have looked very bad for St. Ungulant if Angus hadn't caught it right behind the ear with a rock.

Brutha was standing in the desert, except that the sand was as black as the sky and there was no sun, although everything was brilliantly lit.

Ah, he thought. So this is dreaming.

There were thousands of people walking across the desert. They paid him no attention. They walked as if completely unaware that they were in the middle of a crowd.

He tried to wave at them, but he was nailed to the spot. He tried to speak, and the words evaporated in his mouth.

And then he woke up.

The first thing he saw was the light, slanting through a window. Against the light was a pair of hands, raised in the sign of the holy horns.

With some difficulty, his head screaming pain at him, Brutha followed the hands along a pair of arms to where they joined not far under the bowed head of-

“Brother Nhumrod?”

The master of novices looked up.

“Brutha?”

“Yes?”

“Om be praised!”

Brutha craned his neck to look around.

“Is he here?”

“-here? How do you feel?”

"I-

His head ached, his back felt as though it was on fire, and there was a dull pain in his knees.

“You were very badly sunburned,” said Nhumrod. “And that was a nasty knock on the head you had in the fall.”

“What fall?”

“-fall. From the rocks. In the desert. You were with the Prophet,” said Nhumrod. “You walked with the Prophet. One of my novices.”

“I remember . . . the desert . . .” said Brutha, touching his head gingerly. “But . . . the . . . Prophet . . . ?”

“-Prophet. People are saying you could be made a bishop, or even an Iam,” said Nhumrod. “There's a precedent, you know. The Most Holy St. Bobby was made a bishop because he was in the desert with the Prophet Ossory, and he was a donkey.”

"But I don't . . . remember . . . any Prophet. There was just me and-

Brutha stopped. Nhumrod was beaming.

“Vorbis?”

“He most graciously told me all about it,” said Nhumrod. “I was privileged to be in the Place of Lamentation when he arrived. It was just after the Sestine prayers. The Cenobiarch was just departing . . . well, you know the ceremony. And there was Vorbis. Covered in dust and leading a donkey. I'm afraid you were across the back of the donkey.”

“I don't remember a donkey,” said Brutha.

“-donkey. He'd picked it up at one of the farms. There was quite a crowd with him!”

Nhumrod was flushed with excitement.

“And he's declared a month of Jhaddra, and double penances, and the Council has given him the Staff and the Halter, and the Cenobiarch has gone off to the hermitage in Skant!”

“Vorbis is the eighth Prophet,” said Brutha.

“-Prophet. Of course.”

“And . . . was there a tortoise? Has he mentioned anything about a tortoise?”

“-tortoise? What have tortoises got to do with anything?” Nhumrod's expression softened. “But, of course, the Prophet said the sun had affected you. He said you were raving-excuse me-about all sorts of strange things.”

“He did?”

“He sat by your bed for three days. It was . . . inspiring.”

“How long . . . since we came back?”

“-back? Almost a week.”

“A week!”

“He said the journey exhausted you very much.”

Brutha stared at the wall.

“And he left orders that you were to be brought to him as soon as you were fully conscious,” said Nhumrod. “He was very definite about that.” His tone of voice suggested that he wasn't quite sure of Brutha's state of consciousness, even now. “Do you think you can walk? I can get some novices to carry you, if you'd prefer.”

“I have to go and see him now?”

“-now. Right away. I expect you'll want to thank him.”

Brutha had known about these parts of the Citadel only by hearsay. Brother Nhumrod had never seen them, either. Although he had not been specifically included in the summons, he had come nevertheless, fussing importantly around Brutha as two sturdy novices carried him in a kind of sedan chair normally used by the more crumbling of the senior clerics.

In the center of the Citadel, behind the Temple, was a walled garden. Brutha looked at it with an expert eye. There wasn't an inch of natural soil on the bare rock-every spadeful that these shady trees grew in must have been carried up by hand.

Vorbis was there, surrounded by bishops and Iams. He looked round as Brutha approached.

“Ah, my desert companion,” he said, amiably. “And Brother Nhumrod, I believe. My brothers, I should like you to know that I have it in mind to raise our Brutha to archbishophood.”

There was a very faint murmur of astonishment from the clerics, and then a clearing of a throat. Vorbis looked at Bishop Treem, who was the Citadel's archivist.

“Well, technically he is not yet even ordained,” said Bishop Treem, doubtfully. “But of course we all know there has been a precedent.”

“Ossory's ass,” said Brother Nhumrod promptly. He put his hand over his mouth and went red with shame and embarrassment.