“Or at least until Father agreed to buy it for me.”
“Very good! So what must you do now?”
“Take it back?” Inos wondered if this was how a breaking heart felt.
“Oh, I think it is too late for that.” Mother Unonini sighed a heavy waft of cod. She wiggled her dangling feet. “Mistress Meolorne may have already made arrangements to spend the money you promised her.”
Hope flared in Inos like the brightness of the window. “I can keep it?” Then she saw the look in Mother Unonini’s eye and the brightness of the Good turned to the darkness of the Evil. “No?”
“We must not seek to profit from malefaction, Inosolan. Is this not correct?”
Inos nodded.
“So, what must you do?”
Inos tried to think of the appropriate text. “Find the greatest good?”
The older woman nodded with satisfaction. “Now, as I said, the offering table could do with a new cover—”
“Don’t bully the child!” said a voice with the brazen authority of a trumpet fanfare.
In front of the offering table stood a God, a figure so brilliant as to be unbearable to look on, although it shed no light on the rest of the room.
With simultaneous gasps, Inos and Mother Unonini fell to their knees and bowed their heads to the floor.
Perhaps Sagorn was a sorcerer, Inos thought, or perhaps not; but this was certainly a real God. All her terror came pouring back tenfold and she wished she could melt into the ground.
“Unonini,” said that terrible voice—somehow it sounded like thunder and yet it was not loud and it did not echo, “what do you know about this man Sagorn? “
Mother Unonini made a sort of croaking noise and then whispered, “His Majesty told me that he was coming. That he is a great scholar . . .” She paused.
“Go on!”
“That he was an old friend of his Majesty’s. They traveled together in their youth.” There was a tense silence. That dark and icy chapel should be hot and brilliant from the divine fire, but it was not. The flags were cold and gritty under Inos’s knees. They smelled of dust.
“So?” the God asked in a voice that Inos thought would not be heard outside the door and yet could have laid low the hills.
With obvious reluctance, Mother Unonini said, “So I do not think he is evil, or a sorcerer. I . . . I should have told her that, to reassure her. “
“Yes, you should!”
Inos had covered her face with her hands. Now she opened her fingers just a tiny bit and peered through them. She could see the God’s toes. They blazed so brightly that her eyes hurt, yet the floor beside them was still dark. Greatly daring, she sneaked a glance upward at the glory of the God.
He . . . it . . . she . . . No, They, she remembered. Gods were always ”They.” They were a female figure, or so it seemed. They seemed to be without clothes, but she felt no shock or shame as she would have done if They had been really naked. For one thing, her eyes were watering so much that she could not see Them properly. For another, there was a white rainbow glow about Them, a radiant nimbus that flowed incessantly, a surging tide of iridescence. Within it she seemed to catch glimpses of a female body of incredible beauty and grace, radiating also compassion and affection—
Then suddenly it had a maleness of strength and power, and a terrifying anger that made her very glad she was not Mother Unonini. Inos could feel the chaplain trembling at her side as that divine wrath washed over her.
Her eyes ached so much that she closed them quickly and bent her head again. It had been like trying to see the rocks in a tidal pool when the sun was shining on the ripples, but these ripples were waves of beauty and strength and maleness and femininity and love and splendor—and now anger. Yet in that glimpse of unbearable blazing glory, she had the strange feeling that she had seen familiarity. Her mother, perhaps? Could that have been her mother’s face in Their coldly burning radiance? She did not feel quite so fearful, then. Probably the God was well meaning and just could not help looking so awesome.
“Unonini,” the voice rumbled, and somehow it was now male, also, although the pitch did not seem to have changed, “what is wrong with the cloth on this table?”
The chaplain whimpered. “Nothing, God.”
“So where is the Good and where is the Evil in frightening the girl into making an offering of something she does not own and does not want to offer? ”
The chaplain wailed louder. “God, I was wrong! It was more an Evil than a Good.”
“You are sure? Gods can mislead, also, remember!”
“I am sure, God. I was being spiteful.”
“Very well,” They said, more gently. “Repent!”
The waves of anger faded, to be replaced by something which so wrenched Inos’s heart that she wanted to weep and laugh at the same time. After a moment’s silence, the cowering Unonini began to make very curious noises that Inos eventually decided were sobs.
Then the God spoke again, and this time the voice had returned to being softer, feminine. “Inosolan?” Now it was her turn and she had been on the side of the Evil.
“Yes, God?” she whispered.
“You will have to try a little harder, won’t you?”
Inos heard teeth chattering and realized they were hers. “I shall return the silk, God.”
“No need for that. “
She looked up in astonishment and had to close her eyes at once against the sudden agony. “You mean Father will buy it for me?”
The God laughed. It was simultaneously a quiet chuckle and an awe-inspiring explosion of vast, immortal enjoyment. It should have been deafening and it should have echoed around and around the tiny chapel, but it did neither. ”That and many others. We do not say that you deserve this. We are only making a prophecy. There are hard times ahead for you, Inosolan, but you may find a happy ending if you choose the Good. “
She said, “What must I do, God?” and was astounded to realize that she was questioning Them.
“Seek to find the Good,” They said, “and above all, remember love! If you do not trust in love, then all will be lost. “
And They had gone. Without waiting for a reply or thanks, without demanding praise or prayers, neither worship nor ritual, the God had vanished.
5
Mother Unonini had uttered a great wail and prostrated herself completely.
Inos considered that procedure for a moment and then decided that it was not called for. Nor did the chaplain seem to want to continue their earlier conversation. Come to think of it, old fishy-breath Unonini had been most divinely snubbed and put down.
The God had made Their appearance to save Inos from Mother Unonini’s spite.
Feeling very calm and pleased now, Inos rose and walked out of the chapel, blinking at bright sunshine that was nothing compared to the brightness of a God. She had seen a God! Most people lived all their lives without such an honor. What a pity she had been wearing her dowdy brown worsted, she thought, and then scolded herself for such improper vanity.
Nevertheless, she decided to go back to her room and change. Once she was looking a little more regal and princessy she would see what she could do to patch things up with Aunt Kade and the man who was obviously not a sorcerer. And she must show Father the silk that he was going to buy for her. That and many others, the God had said? Most curious!
She had seen a God! It would be a topic of general interest at dinner.
She headed toward her chamber, walking with her head very high, feeling elevated. Yes, elevated! It was as if she weighed nothing at all and had to reach her toes down to touch the ground as she walked. If she passed anyone on the way, she did not notice. She came to the stairs and began to float up them . . .
But by the time she struggled to the top, her mood had changed totally and she seemed to weigh as much as the whole castle. She dragged her reluctant carcass up the last few steps and could hardly find the strength to open the door. She staggered in and the first thing she saw was herself, in the mirror, her hair still all smeared with cobwebs and her face as white as a seagull, with a seagull’s round, bright eyes.
And behind her reflection, her father was sitting on her bed, waiting for her. She saw an expression of impatience change instantly to alarm. He jumped up and held out his arms and then he was hugging her tight and holding her head as she buried her face in his soft velvet collar and began to sob.