Gentle looked around. The air could not have been clearer. There was no sign of motion on the peaks or the snow-fields gleaming below. “If they’re here I don’t see ’em,” he said.
“The worst are the ones you can’t see,” Pie replied. “Shall we go back to the fire?”
They were weighed down by what they’d seen, and the return journey took longer than the outward. By the time they made the safety of their niche in the rocks, to welcoming grunts from the surviving doeki, the sky was losing its golden sheen and dusk was on its way. They debated whether to proceed in darkness and decided against it. Though the air was calm at present, they knew from past experience that conditions on these heights were unpredictable. If they attempted to move by night, and a storm descended from the peaks, they’d be twice blinded and in danger of losing their way. With the High Pass so close, and the journey easier, they hoped, once they were through it, the risk was not worth taking.
Having used up the supply of wood they’d collected below the snow line, they were obliged to fuel the fire with the dead doeki’s saddle and harness. It made for a smoky, pungent, and fitful blaze, but it was better than nothing. They cooked some of the fresh meat, Gentle observing as he chewed that he had less compunction about, eating something he’d named than he thought, and brewed up a small serving of the herders’ piss liquor. As they drank, Gentle returned the conversation to the women in the ice.
“Why would a God as powerful as Hapexamendios slaughter defenseless women?”
“Whoever said they were defenseless?” Pie replied. “1 think they were probably very powerful. Their oracles must have sensed what was coming, so they had their armies ready—”
“Armies of women?”
“Certainly. Warriors in their tens of thousands. There are places to the north of the Lenten Way where the earth used to move every fifty years or so and uncover one of their war graves.”
“They were all slaughtered? The armies, the oracles—”
“Or driven so deep into hiding they forgot who they were after a few generations. Don’t look so surprised. It happens.’1
“One God defeats how many Goddesses? Ten, twenty—”
“Innumerable.”
“How?1′
“He was One, and simple. They were many, and diverse.”
“Singularity is strength—”
“At least in the short term. Who told you that?”
“I’m trying to remember. Somebody I didn’t like much: Klein, maybe.”
“Whoever said it, it’s true. Hapexamendios came into the Dominions with a seductive idea: that wherever you went, whatever misfortune attended you, you needed only one name on your lips, one prayer, one altar, and you’d be in His care. And He brought a species to maintain that order once He’d established it. Yours.”
“Those women back there looked human enough to me.”
“So do I,” Pie reminded him. “But I’m not.”
“No . . . you’re pretty diverse, aren’t you?”
“I was once. . ..”
“So that puts you on the side of the Goddesses, doesn’t it?” Gentle whispered.
The mystif put its finger to his lips.
Gentle mouthed one word by way of response: “Heretic.”
It was very dark now, and they both settled to studying the fire. It was steadily diminishing as the last of Chester’s saddle was consumed.
“Maybe we should burn some fur,” Gentle suggested.
“No,” said Pie. “Let it dwindle. But keep looking.”
“At what?”
“Anything.”
“There’s only you to look at.”
“Then look at me.”
He did so. The privations of the last many days had seemingly taken little toll on the mystif. It had no facial hair to disfigure the symmetry of its features, nor had their spar-tan diet pinched its cheeks or hollowed its eyes. Studying its face was like returning to a favorite painting in a museum. There it was: a thing of calm and beauty. But, unlike the painting, the face before him, which presently seemed so solid, had the capacity for infinite change. It was months since the night when he’d first seen that phenomenon. But now, as the fire burned itself out and the shadows deepened around them, he realized the same sweet miracle was imminent. The flicker of dying flame made the symmetry swim; the flesh before him seemed to lose its fixedness as he stared and stirred it.