Small Gods

‘Something else I remember,’ said Fri’it. It was a lonely memory, out here with nothing but scrubland under a purple sky. ‘The sea is strong there. There are big waves, much bigger than the ones in the Circle Sea, you understand, and the men paddle out beyond them to fish. On strange planks of wood. And when they wish to return to shore, they wait for a wave, and then … they stand up, on the wave, and it carries them all the way to the beach.’

‘I like the story about the young swimming women best,’ said Drunah.

‘Sometimes there are very big waves,’ said Fri’it, ignoring him. ‘Nothing would stop them. But if you ride them, you do not drown. This is something I learned.’

Drunah caught the glint in his eye.

‘Ah,’ he said, nodding. ‘How wonderful of the Great God to put such instructive examples in our path.’

‘The trick is to judge the strength of the wave,’ said Fri’it. ‘And ride it.’

‘What happens to those who don’t?’

‘They drown. Often. Some of the waves are very big.’

‘Such is often the nature of waves, I understand.’

The eagle was still circling. If it had understood anything, then it wasn’t showing it.

‘Useful facts to bear in mind,’ said Drunah, with sudden brightness. ‘If ever one should find oneself in heathen parts.’

‘Indeed.’

***

From prayer towers up and down the contours of the Citadel the deacons chanted the duties of the hour.

Brutha should have been in class. But the tutor priests weren’t too strict with him. After all, he had arrived word-perfect in every Book of the Septateuch and knew all the prayers and hymns off by heart, thanks to grandmother. They probably assumed he was being useful. Usefully doing something no one else wanted to do.

He hoed the bean rows for the look of the thing. The Great God Om, although currently the small god Om, ate a lettuce leaf.

All my life, Brutha thought, I’ve known that the Great God Om — he made the holy horns sign in a fairly half-hearted way — was a … a … great big beard in the sky, or sometimes, when He comes down into the world, as a huge bull or a lion or … something big, anyway. Something you could look up to.

Somehow a tortoise isn’t the same. ‘I’m trying hard … but it isn’t the same. And hearing him talk about the SeptArchs as if they were just … just some mad old men … it’s like a dream …

In the rain-forests of Brutha’s subconscious the butterfly of doubt emerged and flapped an experimental wing, all unaware of what chaos theory has to say about this sort of thing …

‘I feel a lot better now,’ said the tortoise. ‘Better than I have for months.’

‘Months?’ said Brutha. ‘How long have you been … ill?’

The tortoise put its foot on a leaf.

‘What day is it?’ it said.

‘Tenth of Grune,’ said Brutha.

‘Yes? What year?’

‘Er … Notional Serpent … what do you mean, what year?’

‘Then … three years,’ said the tortoise. ‘This is good lettuce. And it’s me saying it. You don’t get lettuce up in the hills. A bit of plantain, a thorn bush or two. Let there be another leaf.’

Brutha pulled one off the nearest plant. And lo, he thought, there was another leaf.

‘And you were going to be a bull?’ he said.

‘Opened my eyes … my eye … and I was a tortoise.’

‘Why?’

‘How should I know? I don’t know!’ lied the tortoise.

‘But you … you’re omnicognisant,’ said Brutha.

‘That doesn’t mean I know everything.’

Brutha bit his lip. ‘Um. Yes. It does.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought that was omnipotent.’

‘No. That means you’re all-powerful. And you are. That’s what it says in the Book of Ossory. He was one of the Great Prophets, you know. I hope,’ Brutha added.

‘Who told him I was omnipotent?’

‘You did.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Well, he said you did.’

‘Don’t even remember anyone called Ossory,’ the tortoise muttered.

‘You spoke to him in the desert,’ said Brutha. ‘You must remember. He was eight feet tall? With a very long beard? And a huge staff? And the glow of the holy horns shining out of his head?’^{11} He hesitated. But he’d seen the statues and the holy icons. They couldn’t be wrong.

‘Never met anyone like that,’ said the small god Om.

‘Maybe he was a bit shorter,’ Brutha conceded.

‘Ossory. Ossory,’ said the tortoise. ‘No … no … can’t say I—’

‘He said that you spoke unto him from out of a pillar of flame,’ said Brutha.

‘Oh, that Ossory,’ said the tortoise. ‘Pillar of flame. Yes.’

‘And you dictated to him the Book of Ossory,’ said Brutha. ‘Which contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations and the Precepts. One hundred and ninety-three chapters.’

‘I don’t think I did all that,’ said Om doubtfully. ‘I’m sure I would have remembered one hundred and ninety-three chapters.’

‘What did you say to him, then?’

‘As far as I can remember it was “Hey, see what I can do!”’ said the tortoise.

Brutha stared at it. It looked embarrassed, insofar as that’s possible for a tortoise.

‘Even gods like to relax,’ it said.

‘Hundreds of thousands of people live their lives by the Abjurations and the Precepts!’ Brutha snarled.

‘Well? I’m not stopping them,’ said Om.

‘If you didn’t dictate them, who did?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’m not omnicognisant!’