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Chapter 14
Untempling of the Gods

IN THE QUIET of the temple, Jame hesitated, looking at Marc's motionless form. Then she put the Book Bound in Pale Leather in Ishtier's hands.

"Now," she said, "keep your word. Wake him."

But the priest seemed to have forgotten both her and his victim. With trembling fingers, he unwrapped the Book and cradled it awkwardly in one arm, his free hand turning the heavy pages slowly as he gloated over each one.

"At last I have it," he murmured, with barely suppressed excitement. "The power, the power to set things right, to bring down the Barriers and restore my people to their rightful lord under shadow's eve. I have it, I have it, I . . ."

"What in Perimal's name are you talking about? Will you rouse him or not?"

"Rouse him?" The priest drew himself up, staring coldly down at her. "You petty-minded little fool, what does that matter now? You don't understand what has happened, do you? Then I will explain it — in Perimal's name — if you think your weak wits can stand it. After all, you still believe that the Kencyrath is the chosen champion of God against the ancient enemy, Perimal Darkling, Devourer of Worlds. Like the rest, you spit on the name of Gerridon, Master of Knorth, whom most call renegade and traitor because he withdrew his loyalty from your divine monstrosity and gave it instead to the Lord of Shadows. But he was right to do so. I went into exile with the Gray Lord. I saw the face of darkness and know that in all the Chain of Creation there is nothing to equal it."

"Wait a minute . . . are you saying that the Gray Lord survived the crossing of the Ebonbane?"

Ishtier flinched away from the question. "Nothing to equal it, I say!" he repeated, his thin voice becoming noticeably shriller.

Jame sensed a change in the flow of power around them, a growing element of instability. The priest's control had begun to slip.

"M'lord . . ." she said sharply.

"Then I came to Tai-tastigon," the priest continued, overriding her, rushing on. "Gods everywhere, hundreds, thousands of them, when we are taught that there is but one. But you think, you presumptuous guttersnipe, that you were the first to ask questions, to experiment with the fabric of reality in this wretched town? Before you were born, I was here, wrestling with the enigma. Seven years ago, the answer was mine at last."

Again, he drew himself up, and an ominous tremor passed through the room. Out in the hallways of the temple, a low moaning began.

"The force embodied in the Three-Faced God, which we are taught to fear and obey, which has controlled the fate of our people these last thirty millennia under the pretense of being the sole source of divinity in all the worlds, this force, I say, is not unique! For three hundred centuries, it has used us, deluded us, kept us from the truth. All this I have proved," he said with a wild laugh. "I! Of what worth is the Kencyrath if it continues to serve such a fraud? What price is godhood itself when any man can create it?"

The chamber door groaned softly. At its foot, the tiles had begun to ripple.

Jame stared at the priest. So his doubts had paralleled her own, but how had he come to such a conclusion? Then, almost against her will, she understood.

"Oh God. So the Townies were right to blame us for their misery. While Theocandi was calling forth the Shadow Thief, you used the same knowledge to create the Lower Town Monster. But Ishtier, it's demon, not god! It lives off the life-force of children, and as for its soul. . . Trinity! No wonder it always followed Bane like a shadow: that's exactly what it was. The timing is right, the characteristics . . .

Butcher of children, are you thinking of me?

The image of a marble seat, dark with blood, crawling with flies, suddenly filled her mind. Once again, perhaps for the last time, her thoughts had crossed his.

"Theocandi couldn't die until his shadow returned to him," she said with rising horror, "and neither can Bane. Ishtier, we've got to help him! He's still alive, and they're taking him to the Mercy Seat."

"Serves him right," said the priest with a malicious snicker. "He should never have betrayed me."

"You betrayed him first, by agreeing to carry his soul and then by using it in such a damnable manner," Jame cried, unconsciously shifting into High Kens as shock changed to fury. Cat's paws of power rippled through the room. The patterns on the floor changed at their touch. "He trusted you because you brought his mother, once the Gray Lord's mistress, down out of the Haunted Lands, because he thought—and you let him think—that you were his father. But Ganth Gray Lord was alive when you deserted him, wasn't he? You've betrayed not only Bane and Anar, your younger brother, but your liege-lord as well. I brand you coward and lack-faith for what you did then, and renegade now for trying to pull down the Kencyrath so that you might hide your shame in its ruins!"

"Who are you," he almost shrieked, spittle flying from his lips, "to pronounce sentence on me? A petty thief and a tavern whore, an outcast from East Kenshold!"

"I am not from the east," she cried, enraged beyond all control. "Like you, I came from the north, and from the same place. The lord you betrayed was my father, the man consigned by you to torture on the Mercy Seat, perhaps my half-brother, and I—I am Jamethiel Priest's-Bane . . ."

". . . WHO SHALL YET BE THY DOOM."

With a look of horror, Ishtier dropped the Book, hands flying to his mouth as though to seal in the words he had just spoken. The god-voice flowed unimpeded, uncontrollable, through his spider-thin fingers, booming prophecy to the far corners of the room.

Jame scarcely heard him. She had suddenly become aware of the changed atmosphere of the room, the growing fury set loose. A demonic howling had begun, the sound of trapped energy moving faster and faster. The walls groaned. Cracks began to lace their smooth surfaces. The three Kencyrs were in the eye of the storm here, protected only by one slowly disintegrating door. Already power flowed around its edges. The floor mosaic shifted again, throwing Jame off her feet. Triangles of green serpentine, lapis-lazuli, and ivory moved under her hand.

". . . WHO MAY YET SAVE THE CHAIN OF CREATION OR DESTROY . . ." Ishtier's altered voice was crying, each word like some great weight crashing down. The priest was on his knees now, hands scrabbling at his face, staring wildly at nothing. The power that he had scorned had him by the throat. No help would come from him now.

Through all of this, Marc had not stirred. Jame staggered to her feet, clinging to him as to a rock in storm-maddened seas. His broad shoulders were warm and steady to the touch. Her dazed mind slowly cleared, then began to focus on what she must do next. When her self-control had fully returned, she carefully stepped away from him, bowed to the towering image of her god, and began to dance.

It was like weaving through fire. The dark joy she had felt in molding the dreams of men turned to agony, a flaying of body and soul. This was the maelstrom where god and man met. The god-head itself was flowing through her, consuming what it touched. She struggled to control it, grimly, desperately.

". . . CHAMPION, FRATRICIDE, TYR-RIDAN . . ."

Tyr-ridan?

No, ignore it, concentrate, concentrate. . . . So much power and no place to channel it. Had the floor begun to shake? They would all die unless she found an outlet here, beyond . . . yes, there was a place, many of them, waiting, filling the night with their hunger. No time to ask what they were, no time for anything but to send the power spiraling out to them through the movements of the dance.

". . . TORRIGION . . ."

That-Which-Creates. (A roaring noise . . .)

". . . ARGENTIEL . . ."

That-Which-Preserves. (Quickly now, increasing, louder. . .)

". . . REGONERETH."

That-Which-Destroys. (Done.)

Ishtier, in his own voice, began to scream. The sound pursued her, ringing down the halls of her failing consciousness until at last the final echo died away. Then all was still.

* * *

MARC HEARD the scream too. it seemed to come from a great distance at first, weaving through his trance-numbed mind, growing rapidly louder. Then he forgot it as memory returned. Was he dead and his pyre somehow neglected? While the body remained, so did the shadow, a soul trapped by death, held naked in the presence of the hated Three-Faced God—or so Marc had been taught. Cautiously, fearfully, he opened his eyes.

A book lay before him, its pallid cover uppermost. The mosaic of ivory and semi-precious stone beneath it had been shaken loose from its pattern. Vaguely, he remembered some upheaval. That must have been when the animal got in, for assuredly there was one somewhere in the room now, its voice raised in a yammering frenzy, broken at intervals by a slobbering sound. He turned stiffly to look for it.

What first met his gaze, however, was a crumpled figure several yards away, lying at the center of a large, well-defined spiral, which certainly had not been there before. Recognition and alarm cleared his wits instantly. He rose painfully, cursing the cramped legs, limped over and knelt beside the still figure. A moment later, Jame's eyes fluttered open.

"Are you all right?" he asked, helping her to sit up. "You look a proper mess."

"I'll bet I do," she said with a shaky laugh, wiping blood off her face. "Like something the cat threw up, probably. I ought to be dead."

"So should I."

Jame gave him a startled, remembering look, then launched into a rapid explanation of the night's misadventures. "And now that that's been cleared up," she said at last, "what in Trinity's name is making that uproar? It scarcely sounds human."

They went to look, and found Ishtier crouching on the far side of the altar, quite mad, trying to gnaw off the hand that had touched the pages of the Book Bound in Pale Leather.

"What do we do about him?" Marc asked, eyeing the priest doubtfully.

"Nothing." The cold hatred in her voice surprised him. He had not, after all, been there to hear her speak to Hangrell in just such a tone. "He brought this on himself and more besides. Let's just get out before something else happens."

She picked up the Book, grimacing at the feel of it and at the darkening patch on the binding where it had hit the floor. "One man dead because of this, another insane, and all it has are bruises," she said with disgust, much to Marc's confusion. "I've a mind to throw it into the first fire we come to, but I won't. Guardians never get off that easily. Besides, the damn thing would probably find some way to come crawling back."

They went out through the ruins of the door, which crumbled to dust at a touch. The outer halls were quiet. Though the directing influence of the priest was gone, it would be weeks before the power here built up again to a dangerous level. By that time, Jame hoped, help would have been sent out by those sensitives in the Kencyrath who, however distant, could scarcely have failed to note the chaos unleashed in Tai-tastigon that night.

She and Marc began to get some idea of it as they stepped out of the temple.

"Something's wrong with the skyline," said Marc, pausing uncertainly on the threshold. "We should be able to see the Tower of Bats near Judgment Square from here, and Fumble's Folly, and look: Edor Thulig is gone."

There were in fact many unfamiliar gaps in the city's skyline, especially near at hand, where whole rows of deserted houses had tumbled down, greatly increasing the circle of ruin about the temple. Beyond, most structures except a few of the tallest still stood—or at least leaned—though over all hung such an unearthly air that it was hard to think of the whole as Tai-tastigon at all. Odd lights played out across the sky, blooming silently from the labyrinth of streets and quickly fading back into it. Hollow, booming sounds were heard in the distance, almost but not quite resolving themselves into words. The odors of incense, burning, and death rode the cross-winds.

The two Kencyrs looked at each other, baffled, then back at the strangely altered city. Marc gave a sudden exclamation. A light was coming toward them, growing steadily brighter. Within seconds, they could distinguish over the intervening rooftops the spark that flew upward from it and the tower of smoke that rose at its heels. Jame gripped her friend's arm.

"Dalis-sar!" she said.

Before he could react, she had thrust the wrapped Book into his arms and was gone, racing off through the mounds of dust toward the approaching blaze. He followed as quickly as he could, with a curse at his still-cramped legs. Jame disappeared around a corner at the circle's rim. When Marc caught sight of her again, she was at the far end of the street, silhouetted against an inferno whose brilliance made him look quickly away, seeing nothing but gigantic wheels of fire rolling slowly on, hearing only the roar of the flames and Jame's voice shouting over and over:

"Bane! Its name is Bane!"

Then the greater light was gone, southward bound. In its wake, everything burned—houses, rubble, even the slight, dark figure that had thrown itself face down on the ground, arms wrapped about its head.

Marc was hobbling to the rescue when something else came down the street. It was about half the size of the first apparition and appeared at first to be nothing more or less than a small ambulatory storm cloud, complete with fitful flickers of lightning and sharp little thunderclaps. The rain it let fall extinguished most of the flames its predecessor had left behind. When Marc came up to Jame, she was on her feet, slapping at the patches of her soaked jacket that still smoldered. Staring down the street after this strange procession, Marc saw that there was something in the heart of the retreating cloud, something that hopped along jauntily in time to its own warlike music and seemed, by what tight there was, to be a particularly vivid shade of green.

"Gorge?" he said incredulously. "But how? What in all the names of God is going on?"

'They're on their way to the Lower Town to destroy its monster," said Jame, still slapping at her clothes. "Armed with fire, water, and its true name, they ought to succeed. Dalis-sar has waited a long time for this. I suspect he sensed from the start that it was a Kencyr affair, but there was nothing he could do about it as long as he remained securely templed. As for Bane, now at last he can die. I suppose in a way it will even be an honorable death, what with Ishtier, Dalis-sar, and myself all contributing to it. Perhaps that was all he ever really wanted from me. Now I will never know."

Marc was still staring after the two gods.

"How did they come untempled?" he asked, bewildered. "I've heard tell of one god breaking loose before, but two at once?"

"I think I know," said Jame, "but let's go home. If I'm right, we'll find out soon enough."

At the first step, she stumbled. Marc, hastily catching her arm, realized then that the light of Dalis-sar's war chariot, so painful even to him at a distance, had temporarily blinded her. Well, if she didn't want to speak of it, they wouldn't, nor of her torn lip, which was clearly the work of someone else's teeth. All in good time. They set out for the Res aB'tyrr with his hand on her shoulder.

The streets of Tai-tastigon presented a curious spectacle. At first, much of the damage there suggested natural causes: an earthquake, perhaps, that had left downed buildings, fissured roadways, and fires casually gutting homes from which all occupants had fled. But there was more to it than that.

Vast, shadowless forms prowled the thoroughfares. Some pulsed with light; others seemed like holes cut out of the fabric of space; many were so nebulous that nothing could be said of them at all except that they moved and, somehow, lived. Whole blocks crumbled with their passage, if they did not turn from stone to crystal, sprout flowers from every cranny, or perform some other unnerving if temporary transformation. Voices boomed in the distance. Overhead, an enormous, grotesque creature scuttled along the walls, leaving a phosphorescent trail and, at intervals, triumphant proclamations in schoolboy Kessic that "Edolph the Bat-Wing was here . . . and here . . . and here."

More often, however, the two Kencyrs came across scenes of consternation. One indistinct form raced wildly around block after block, cutting through the corner houses to the great dismay of their occupants; another frantically tried to creep into a lay-temple half its size; a third simply huddled at the end of a blind alley, whimpering. What had happened was now clear enough, at least in general terms: All the gods had come untempled, and most were finding the experience profoundly unsettling.

" 'All the beings we know to be divine are in fact but the shadows of some greater power that regards them not!" said Jame suddenly as they neared the inn, interrupting Marc's description of a shimmering form that he had just seen flutter past the end of the street, closely pursued by a priest brandishing what appeared to be a giant butterfly net.

"It's the Anti-God Heresy in action," she explained. "When I channeled energy out of the temple tonight, it entered the so-called gods of Tai-tastigon. They must live on it. In fact, I'll bet that they were created out of it in the first place, with their worshippers' faith to give them form and life. Why, they're nothing but parasites, so insignificant that their host doesn't give a damn if they exist or not! The senior priests must have discovered that and called it a heresy to keep their power intact. I don't think the gods themselves knew the truth until tonight, when they suddenly got more power than they could comfortably swallow. Poor things, no wonder they're so upset."

"Look," said Marc abruptly.

They had come to the edge of the Res aB'tyrr's little square, and he was pointing across it at the inn. Jame, whose sight had by now returned, stared in disbelief. Golden light streamed out of every window and up like a beacon from its courtyard into the night sky.

Everyone was in the kitchen, clustered around the open courtyard door, staring out of it incredulously. Cleppetty swung around sharply as they entered the room.

"Bloody, singed, and dripping wet," she said, regarding Jame with fists jammed on bony hips. "Now I know we've got a crisis."

Jame ducked under Sart's arm, around Rothan, and between Kithra and Ghillie, who made room for her without once taking their eyes from the scene outside. A familiar figure was walking back and forth over the flagstones. The black, hooded robe had not changed, but through it shone a golden light, outlining the lithe body within and playing about the beautiful hands as they traced wide circles in the air, as though ecstatically embracing all before them. There was still no face within the hood, only light and more light. When it touched the B'tyrr figures on the wall, they wriggled with joy, stone lips parting in silent laughter, ivy-bound hands flexing, bursting their green bonds.

"I've just one question for you, missy," said the widow's voice belligerently at Jame's elbow. "The last time we had that lady for a guest, the roof almost fell in. So now when does it catch fire?"

"After this," said Jame slowly, "probably never. She's returning your hospitality. I think you've just acquired a resident goddess."

"Look!" said Ghillie suddenly. "She's disappearing!"

They watched as the light slowly faded, the moving figure becoming less distinct. The same thing was probably happening all over the city, to everyone's great relief. It was to be hoped that the other deities would withdraw to their own temples now that they had expended enough energy to fit into them; but the Res aB'tyrr's still nameless guest had no place else to go. Indeed, even when her form had vanished entirely, it was clear that she remained because the walls of the inner court continued to glow, and would, as it turned out, for years to come.

While the others exploded into a babble of excited conversation, Jame tried to explain to the widow what had happened.

"Well," said Cleppetty at last, "with Theocandi out of the way, at least you won't have to go rushing off. A few days' rest will do you good after a night like this."

"I expect it would, but it isn't that simple. Too many people know I was in the Palace trying to get something back from the Sirdan just before he died. No, I've got to leave now, tonight, before the Guild gets its breath back."

"The Talisman is right," said Sart. "If Men-dalis takes power now, he'll need something to get folks' minds off that odd business with his poor brother. A hunt for the murderer of a sirdan should suit him just fine, especially since he seems to hate you anyway. Off-hand, I can't think of anything that would pull the Guild together faster. What I don't see," he said, scratching an ear, "is how you're going to get far enough away fast enough. Come the dawn, they'll be down the Tone after you like a wolf pack."

"Then I won't go that way. There are still the mountains."

"In the middle of the storm season? You haven't a hope of a guide," said the widow, sounding outraged. "And as for proper clothing . . . !"

'There's an outfitter's shop near the Mountain Gate. I'll raid that. As for a guide, one of my own people, an Arrin-ken, lives up there. He may help . . . if I can find him."

"If we can, you mean," said Marc.

She gave him a searching, hesitant look. "You're sure?"

"I never try to commit suicide twice in one night," he said with a slow smile. "We'll get through all right. Anyway, I'll not have it said in the houses of the Kencyrath that you shook me off so easily."

* * *

TWO HOURS LATER, he was still smiling slightly as they left the Vale of Tone and began to climb up into the lower reaches of the Ebonbane. Decked out in a preposterously small mountaineer's jacket (the largest, nonetheless, that the outfitter's shop could provide), he might well have been quietly laughing at himself or at Jame, who, by contrast, looked as if she had been swallowed alive by her new, oversized clothes. The little mound of coins they had left on the counter was probably too large for such dubious comfort, but Jame had been determined that, as a parting gesture, it should be large enough. She never meant to steal again.

Still, awkward fit or not, it was a pity nothing similar could be done for Jorin. He was trotting beside her now, as he had been ever since her silent, anxious call had drawn him to her down from the foothills to the north. She slid a gloved hand over his winter coat, noting its richness. Perhaps, after all, he was better prepared than either of them.

Already the air was much colder.

Jame turned on the slope, looked down through the valley of the Tone for the last time at the city below. At the world and the people she had known, Penari, to whom she had not even said good-bye. Though perhaps he, of all people, would best understand why she left. Every detail of the Res aB'tyrr's warm kitchen came back to her, every word spoken in those last hurried moments; but most of all, she remembered Cleppetty's sudden, almost defiant announcement that since it was a night for surprises, she would contribute one of her own: during the course of their long vigil that evening, Sart Nine-toes had proposed to her and she had accepted. What was more, she believed that Rothan and Kithra had come to a similar understanding.

One leave-taking, two engagements and three—no, four pyres. Jame hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

She had said good-bye to Tubain through the locked door of his "wife's" apartment. To her astonishment, the innkeeper and Abernia had both answered from inside, speaking simultaneously. Taniscent, of course, had had nothing to say at all. Standing at the door, Jame had taken a last, silent farewell, seeing on that narrow cot the symbol of all the lives lost—friends' and foes'—since she had first slipped through the Warrior Gate on that night so many, many days ago.

A very different emotion went through her now as she regarded not memory but Tai-tastigon itself, that marvelous city, flayed with fire and prostrate with terror. A great fissure had split Judgment Square in half, swallowing whole the Mercy Seat and whoever had occupied it, Dally or Bane, in those last minutes when the mob still ruled. She was tired of feeling responsible for things beyond her control, and angry at those whose schemes had unleashed the chaos below, especially at that one who, if her instincts and Sart's were correct, was getting away with murder. But not forever. There would be an accounting for that someday, if she lived to bring it about.

This certainly remained as all else began to slip away, an entire way of life flowing back into the darkness. Was the Gray Lord really her father and she Highborn? In the temple, the thought had seemed almost inspired, but here the possible reality of it was harder to grasp. If it was true, then in Torisen Black Lord, leader of the Kencyrath, she might find her long lost twin brother Tori—miraculously ten years older than herself. Well, stranger things had happened, even within the last hour. Perhaps time moved at a different pace beyond the Barrier, or even near it. Perhaps she had even first fled Perimal Darkling to someplace other than Rathillien: after all, the Master had come searching for his precious book a good two years before her own arrival with it in this world.

Questions, always questions. Still, some answers were at last beginning to emerge. Soon she would know them all, and no longer be a stranger to herself.

Marc was calling her from farther up the path. She took one last look at the city, settled her pack, and turned to follow him. A sudden feeling of happiness lightened her step. Despite the uncertainty that awaited them both, despite fire, ruin, and the snow that had begun to fall, they were going home at last.

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