The fetid smell of the half-rotten leaves suggested strongly that Brutha had committed his crime when the greens were halfway to the midden, but Om didn’t say so. Not now.
“Right,” he mumbled.
There must be others, he told himself. Sure. Out in the country. This place is too sophisticated. But . . . there had been all those pilgrims in front of the Temple. They weren’t just country people, they were the devoutest ones. Whole villages clubbed together to send one person carrying the petitions of many. But there hadn’t been the flame. There had been fear, and dread, and yearning, and hope. All those emotions had their flavor. But there hadn’t been the flame.
The eagle had dropped him near Brutha. He’d . . . woken up. He could dimly remember all that time as a tortoise. And now he remembered being a god. How far away from Brutha would he still remember? A mile? Ten miles? How would it be . . . feeling the knowledge drain away, dwindling back to nothing but a lowly reptile? Maybe there would be a part of him that would always remember, helplessly . . .
He shuddered.
Currently Om was in a wickerwork box slung from Brutha’s shoulder. It wouldn’t have been comfortable at the best of times, but now it shook occasionally as Brutha stamped his feet in the pre-dawn chill.
After a while some of the Citadel grooms arrived, with horses. Brutha was the subject of a few odd looks. He smiled at everyone. It seemed the best way.
He began to feel hungry, but didn’t dare leave his post. He’d been told to be here. But after a while sounds from around the corner made him sidle a few yards to see what was going on.
The courtyard here was U-shaped, around a wing of the Citadel buildings, and around the corner it looked as though another party was preparing to set out.
Brutha knew about camels. There had been a couple in his grandmother’s village. There seemed to be hundreds of them here, though, complaining like badly oiled pumps and smelling like a thousand damp carpets. Men in djeliba moved among them and occasionally hit them with sticks, which is the approved method of dealing with camels.
Brutha wandered over to the nearest creature. A man was strapping water-bottles round its hump.
“Good morning, brother,” said Brutha.
“Bugger off,” said the man without looking round.
“The Prophet Abbys tells us (chap. XXV, verse 6): `Woe unto he who defiles his mouth with curses for his words will be as dust,’ ” said Brutha.
“Does he? Well, he can bugger off too,” said the man, conversationally.
Brutha hesitated. Technically, of course, the man had bought himself vacant possession of a thousand hells and a month or two of the attentions of the Quisition, but now Brutha could see that he was a member of the Divine Legion; a sword was halfhidden under the desert robes.
And you had to make special allowances for Legionaries, just as you did for inquisitors. Their often intimate contact with the ungodly affected their minds and put their souls in mortal peril. He decided to be magnanimous.
“And where are you going to with all these camels on this fine morning, brother?”
The soldier tightened a strap.
“Probably to hell,” he said, grinning nastily. “Just behind you.”
“Really? According to the word of the Prophet Ishkible, a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue,” said Brutha, letting just a tremor of disapproval enter his voice.
“Does some old prophet say anything about nosy bastards being given a thump alongside the ear?” said the soldier.
” `Woe unto him who raises his hand unto his brother, dealing with him as unto an Infidel,’ ” said Brutha. “That’s Ossory, Precepts XI, verse 16.”
” `Sod off and forget you ever saw us otherwise you’re going to be in real trouble, my friend.’ Sergeant Aktar, chapter 1, verse 1,” said the soldier.
Brutha’s brow wrinkled. He couldn’t remember that one.
“Walk away,” said the voice of the God in his head. “You don’t need trouble.”
“I hope your journey is a pleasant one,” said Brutha politely. “Whatever the destination.”
He backed away and headed toward the gate.
“A man who will have to spend some time in the hells of correction, if I am any judge,” he said. The god said nothing.
The Ephebian traveling group was beginning to assemble now. Brutha stood to attention and tried to keep out of everyone’s way. He saw a dozen mounted soldiers, but unlike the camel riders they were in the brightly polished fishmail and black-and-yellow cloaks that the Legionaries usually only wore on special occasions. Brutha thought they looked very impressive.
Eventually one of the stable servants came up to him.
“What are you doing here, novice?” he demanded.
“I am going to Ephebe,” said Brutha.
The man glared at him and then grinned.
“You? You’re not even ordained! You’re going to Ephebe?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I told him so,” said the voice of Vorbis, behind the man. “And here he is, most obedient to my wishes.”
Brutha had a good view of the man’s face. The change in his expression was like watching a grease slick cross a pond. Then the stableman turned as though his feet were nailed to a turntable.
“My Lord Vorbis,” he oiled.
“And now he will require a steed,” said Vorbis.
The stableman’s face was yellow with dread.
“My pleasure. The very best the sta-”
“My friend Brutha is a humble man before Om,” said Vorbis. “He will ask for no more than a mule, I have no doubt. Brutha?”
“I-I do not know how to ride, my lord,” said Brutha.
“Any man can get on a mule,” said Vorbis. “Often many times in a short distance. And now, it would appear, we are all here?”
He raised an eyebrow at the sergeant of the guard, who saluted.
“We are awaiting General Fri’it, lord,” he said.
“Ah. Sergeant Simony, isn’t it?”
Vorbis had a terrible memory for names. He knew every one. The sergeant paled a little, and then saluted crisply.
“Yes! Sir!”
“We will proceed without General Fri’it,” said Vorbis.
The B of the word “But” framed itself on the sergeant’s lips, and faded there.
“General Fri’it has other business,” said Vorbis. “Most pressing and urgent business. Which only he can attend to.”
Fri’it opened his eyes in grayness.
He could see the room around him, but only faintly, as a series of edges in the air.
The sword . . .
He’d dropped the sword, but maybe he could find it again. He stepped forward, feeling a tenuous resistance around his ankles, and looked down.
There was the sword. But his fingers passed through it. It was like being drunk, but he knew he wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even sober. He was . . . suddenly clear in his mind.
He turned and looked at the thing that had briefly impeded his progress.
“Oh,” he said.
GOOD MORNING.
“Oh.”
“THERE IS A LITTLE CONFUSION AT FIRST. IT IS ONLY TO BE EXPECTED.
To his horror, Fri’it saw the tall black figure stride away through the gray wall.
“Wait!”
A skull draped in a black hood poked out of the wall.
YES?
“You’re Death, aren’t you?”
INDEED.
Fri’it gathered what remained of his dignity.
“I know you,” he said. “I have faced you many times.”
Death gave him a long stare.
NO YOU HAVEN’T.
“I assure you-”
YOU HAVE FACED MEN. IF YOU HAD FACED ME, I ASSURE YOU . . . YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN.
“But what happens to me now?”
Death shrugged.
DON’T YOU KNOW? he said, and disappeared.
“Wait!”
Fri’it ran at the wall and found to his surprise that it offered no barrier. Now he was out in the empty corridor. Death had vanished.
And then he realized that it wasn’t the corridor he remembered, with its shadows and the grittiness of sand underfoot.
That corridor didn’t have a glow at the end, that pulled at him like a magnet pulls at an iron filing.
You couldn’t put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place when the inevitable just went and waited.
And this was it.
Fri’it stepped through the glow into a desert. The sky was dark and pocked with large stars, but the black sand that stretched away to the distance was nevertheless brightly lit.
A desert. After death, a desert. The desert. No hells, yet. Perhaps there was hope.
He remembered a story from his childhood. Unusually, it wasn’t about smiting. No one was trampled underfoot. It wasn’t about Om, dreadful in His rage. It was worse. It was about what happened when you died . . . the journey of your soul.
They said: you must walk a desert . . .