Epiphany of the Long Sun (26 page)

Men thought themselves good or evil; but the gods-the Outsider especially-must surely know how much depended upon circumstance. Would Musk, whose needler he had nearly drawn a few seconds before, have been an evil man if he had not served Blood? Might not Blood, for that matter, be a better man with Musk gone? He, Silk, had sensed warmth and generosity in Blood beneath his cunning and his greed, potentially at least.

Something dropped from the sky, lighting on his shoulder so heavily he nearly fell. "Lo Silk! Good Silk!"

"Oreb! Is it really you?"

"Bird back." Oreb caught a lock of Silk's hair in his beak and gave it a tug.

"I'm very glad-immensely glad you've returned. Where have you been? How did you get here?"

"Bad place. Big hole!"

"It was I who went into the big hole, Oreb. By the lake, in that shrine of Scylla's, remember?"

Oreb's beak clattered. "Fish heads?"

The Blind God

O
reb had eyed Dace's corpse hopefully when Urus let it fall to the tunnel floor and spun around to shout at Hammerstone. "Why we got to find him? Tell me that! Tell me, an' I'll look till I can't shaggy walk, till I got to crawl-"

"Pick it up, you." Without taking his eyes off Urus, Hammerstone addressed Incus. "All right if I kill him, Patera? Only I won't be able to carry them both and shoot."

Incus shook his head. "He has a
point,
my son, so let us consider it.
Ought
we, as he inquires, continue to search for our friend Auk?"

"I'll leave it up to you, Patera. You're smarter than all of us, smarter than the whole city'd be if you weren't living there. I'd do anything you say, and I'll see to it these bios do, too."

"Thank
you, my son." Incus, who was exceedingly tired already, lowered himself gratefully to the tunnel floor. "Sit
down,
all of you. We shall discuss this."

"I don't see why." Tired herself, Chenille grounded her launcher. "Stony there does whatever you tell him to, and he could do for me and Urus like swatting flies. You say it and we'll do it. We'll have to."

"Sit
down.
My daughter, can't you see how very
illogical
you're being? You
maintain
that you're forced to obey in
all things
, yet you will not oblige even the simplest request."

"All right." She sat; and Hammemtone, laying a heavy hand on Urus, forced him to sit, too.

"Where Auk?" Oreb hopped optimistically across the damp gray shiprock. "Auk where?" Although he could not have put the feeling into words, Oreb felt that he was nearer Silk when he was with Auk than in any other company. The red girl was close to Silk as well, but she had once thrown a glass at him, and Oreb had not forgotten.

"Where
indeed?" Incus sighed. "My daughter, you invite me to be a
despot,
but what you say is true. I might lord it over you both if I chose. I need not lord it over our friend.
He
obeys me very willingly, as you have seen. But I am
not,
by inclination, training, or
native character
inclined toward despotism. A holy augur's part is to lead and to advise, to
conduct
the laity to rich fields and
unfailing
springs, if I may put it thus
poetically
.

"So
let us
review our position and take
council
, one with another. Then I will lead us in prayer, a fervent and
devout
prayer, let it be, to all the Nine,
imploring
their guidance."

"Then we'll decide?" Urus demanded.

"Then
I
will decide, my son." By an effort, Incus sat up straighter. "But
first,
allow me to dispel certain fallacies that have already crept into our deliberations." He addressed himself to Chenille.
"You,
my daughter, seek to accuse me of despotism. It is
impolite,
but courtesy itself must at times give way to the
sacred duty
of
correction
. May I remind you that
you
, for the space of nearly
two days, tyrannized
us all aboard that miserable boat? Tyrannized
me
largely by means of our unfortunate friend, for whom we have already searched, as I would think, for nearly half a day?"

"I'm not saying we ought to stop, Patera. That was him." She pointed to Urus. "I want to find him."

"Be
quiet,
my daughter. I am not yet finished with
you.
I shall come to
him
soon enough.
Why,
I inquire, did you so tyrannize us? I say-"

"I was possessed! Scylla was in me. You know that."

"No, no, my daughter. It won't
do.
It is what you have
maintained,
deflecting all criticism of your conduct with the same
shabby
defense. It shall serve you no longer. You were
domineering, oppressive
, and
brutal
. Is that characteristic of
Our Surging Scylla?
I affirm that it is
not
. As we have trudged on, I have reviewed all that is recorded of
her
, both in the
Chrasmologic Writings
and in our traditions likewise.
Imperious?
One can but agree.
Impetuous
at times, perhaps. But
never
brutal, oppressive, or
domineering
." Incus sighed again, removed his shoes, and caressed his blistered feet.

"Those
evil traits, I say, my daughter,
cannot
have been
Scylla's.
They were present
in you
when she arrived, and so deeply rooted that she found it, I dare say, quite impossible to
expunge
them.
Some
there are, or so I have heard it said, who actually
prefer
domineering women,
unhappy
men twisted by nature beyond the natural. Our poor friend Auk, with all his manifest excellencies of
strength
and
manly
courage, is one of those unfortunates, so it would seem. I am
not
, my daughter, and I thank Sweet Scylla for it! Understand that for
my
part, and for our tall friend's here, as I dare to say, we have not sought Auk for your sake, but for
his own
."

"Talk talk," Oreb muttered.

"As for
you,"
Incus shifted his attention to Urus,
"you
appear to believe that it is only because of my loyal friend
Hammerstone
that you obey me. It that not so?"

Urus stared sullenly at the tunnel wall to the left of Incus's face.

"You are
silent,"
Incus continued. "Talk and more talk, complains our small
feathered
companion, and again, talk, talk and
talk.
Not impossibly you concur. No, my son, you
deceive
yourself, as you have deceived yourself throughout what I feel
certain
must have been a most unhappy life." Incus drew Auk's needler and leveled it at the silent Urus. "I have but little
need
of my tall friend Hammerstone, where
you
are concerned, and should this endless
talk
that you complain of end, you may find yourself less pleased
than ever
with that which succeeds it. I invite a
comment
."

Urus shook his head. Hammerstone clenched his big fists, clearly itching to batter him insensible.

"Nothing? In that case, my son, I am going to take the opportunity to tell you something of
myself
because I have been pondering that, with many other things, while we walked, and it will bear upon what I mean to do, as you will see.

"I was born to poor yet
upright
parents, their
fifth
and
final
child. At the time they were
wed,
they had made
solemn pledge
to Echidna that they would furnish the immortal gods with an augur or a sibyl, the ripest
fruit
of their union and the most
perfect
of all
thank offerings
for it. Of my older brothers and sisters, I shall say nothing.
Nothing
, that is to say, except that there was nothing to be hoped for from
them
. No more
holy piety
was to be discovered in the four of them than in four of those
horrid beasts
with which you, my son, proposed to attack us. I was born some
seven years
after my youngest sibling, Femur. Conceive of my parents'
delight
, I invite you, when the passing
days, weeks, months
, and
years
showed ever more plainly my
predilection
for a life of
holy contemplation
, of
worship
and
ritual
, far from the
bothersome exigencies
that trouble the hours of most men. The schola, if I may say it, welcomed me with
arms outspread
. Its
warmth
was no less than that with which I, in my turn, rushed to
it
. I was together
pious
and
brilliant
, a combination not often found.
Thus endowed
, I gained the friendship of
older men
of tastes like to
my own
, who were to extend themselves
without stint
in my behalf following my
designation
.

"I was informed, and you may conceive of my
rapture,
my
delight,
that no less a figure than the
coadjutor
had agreed to make me his prothonotary. With all my heart I entered into my
duties,
drafting and summarizing letters and depositions, stamping, filing, and retrieving files, managing his
calendar of appointments
, and a hundred like tasks."

Incus fell silent until Chenille said, "By Thelxiepeia I could sleep for a week!" She leaned back against the tunnel wall and closed her eyes.

"Where Auk?" Oreb demanded, but no one paid him the least attention.

"We are all
exhausted,
my daughter. I not
less
than you, and perhaps with more
reason,
because my legs are not so
long,
nor am I, by a decade and
more,
so young, nor so well fed."

"I'm not even a little bit well fed, Patera." Chenille did not open her eyes. "I guess none of us are. I haven't had anything but water since forever."

"When we were on that
wretched
little fishing boat, you
appropriated
to yourself what food you
wished,
and
all
that you wished, my daughter. You left to
Auk
and Dace, and even to
me,
an anointed augur, only such
scraps
as you disdained. But you have
forgotten
that, or say you have. I wish that I might forget it, too."

"Fish heads?"

Chenille shrugged, her eyes still closed. "All right, Patera, I'm sorry. I don't suppose we'll ever find any food down here, but if we do, or when we get back home, I'll let you have first pick."

"I would
refuse
it, my daughter. That is the
point
I am
striving
to make. I became His Eminence's prothonotary, as I said. I entered the
Prolocutor's Palace
, not as an awestruck
visitor
, but as an
inhabitant
. Each morning I sacrificed
one squab
in the
Private chapel
below the reception hall, chanting my prayers to empty chairs. Afterward, I enjoyed that same
bird
at my luncheon.
Upon a monthly basis
, I shrove Patera Bull, His Cognizance's prothonotary, as
he me
. That was the whole compass of my duties as an augur.

"But from time to time, His Eminence assigned to
me
such errands as he felt, or
feigned
to feel, overdifficult for a
boy.
One such brought me to that miserable village of
Limna,
as you know. I was to search for
you,
my daughter, and it was my
ill luck
to succeed. Your own life, I suppose, has been, I will not say
adventurous
, but
tumultuous
. Is that not so?"

"It's had its ups and downs," Chenille conceded.

"Mine
had not, with the result that I had assumed myself
incapable.
Had some god informed me," Incus paused to thrust Auk's needler back into his waistband, then contemplated his scabbed hands, "that I should be forced to serve as the
entire crew
of a fishing vessel,
bailing, making sail, reefing
, and all the rest, and this during a
tempest
as severe as any the Whorl has ever seen, I should have called it
quite impossible
, declaring roundly that I should
die
within an hour. I would have informed this wholly supposititious divinity that I was a man of
intellect
, now largely affecting to be a man of prayer, for my early piety had long since given way to an advancing
scepticism
. Had he suggested that I might
yet
become a man of action, I would have declared it to be
beneath
me, and thought myself profound."

Urus said, "Well, if you didn't have a needler 'n this big chem, we'd see."

Incus nodded his agreement, his round, plump little face serious and his protuberant teeth giving him something of the look of a resolute chipmunk. "We would
indeed.
Therefore, I shall
kill
you, Urus my son, or order Hammerstone to, whenever it appears that I am liable to lose either."