Small Gods

A breeze rattled the thorn-bushes and stirred the sand. Om thought he could hear the taunting, mocking voices of all the small gods.

St Ungulant, on his bony knees, smashed open the hard swollen leaf of a stone plant.

Nice lad, he thought. Talked to himself a lot, but that was only to be expected. The desert took some people like that, didn’t it, Angus?

Yes, said Angus.

Angus didn’t want any of the brackish water. He said it gave him wind.

‘Please yourself,’ said St Ungulant. ‘Well, well! Here’s a little treat.’

You didn’t often get Chilopoda aridius out here in the open desert, and here were three, all under one rock!

Funny how you felt like a little nibble, even after a good meal of Petit porc rôti avec pommes de terre nouvelles et légumes du jour et bière glacée avec figment de l’imagination.

He was picking the legs of the second one out of his tooth when the lion padded to the top of the nearest dune behind him.

The lion was feeling odd sensations of gratitude. It felt it should catch up with the nice food that had tended to it and, well, refrain from eating it in some symbolic way. And now here was some more food, hardly paying it any attention. Well, it didn’t owe this one anything …

It padded forward, then lumbered up into a run.

Oblivious to his fate, St Ungulant started on the third centipede.

The lion leapt …

And things would have looked very bad for St Ungulant if Angus hadn’t caught it right behind the ear with a rock.

Brutha was standing in the desert, except that the sand was as black as the sky and there was no sun, although everything was brilliantly lit.

Ah, he thought. So this is dreaming.

There were thousands of people walking across the desert. They paid him no attention. They walked as if completely unaware that they were in the middle of a crowd.

He tried to wave at them, but he was nailed to the spot. He tried to speak, and the words evaporated in his mouth.

And then he woke up.

The first thing he saw was the light, slanting through a window. Against the light was a pair of hands, raised in the sign of the holy horns.

With some difficulty, his head screaming pain at him, Brutha followed the hands along a pair of arms to where they joined not far under the bowed head of—

‘Brother Nhumrod?’

The master of novices looked up.

‘Brutha?’

‘Yes?’

‘Om be praised!’

Brutha craned his neck to look around.

‘Is he here?’

‘—here? How do you feel?’

‘I—’

His head ached, his back felt as though it was on fire, and there was a dull pain in his knees.

‘You were very badly sunburned,’ said Nhumrod, ‘And that was a nasty knock on the head you had in the fall.’

‘What fall?’

‘—fall. From the rocks. In the desert. You were with the Prophet,’ said Nhumrod. ‘You walked with the Prophet. One of my novices.’

‘I remember … the desert …’ said Brutha, touching his head gingerly. ‘But … the … Prophet …?’

‘—Prophet. People are saying you could be made a bishop, or even an Iam,’ said Nhumrod. There’s a precedent, you know. The Most Holy St Bobby was made a bishop because he was in the desert with the Prophet Ossory, and he was a donkey.’

‘But I don’t … remember … any Prophet. There was just me and—’

Brutha stopped. Nhumrod was beaming.

‘Vorbis?’

‘He most graciously told me all about it,’ said Nhumrod. ‘I was privileged to be in the Place of Lamentation when he arrived. It was just after the Sestine prayers. The Cenobiarch was just departing … well, you know the ceremony. And there was Vorbis. Covered in dust and leading a donkey. I’m afraid you were across the back of the donkey.’

‘I don’t remember a donkey,’ said Brutha.

‘—donkey. He’d picked it up at one of the farms. There was quite a crowd with him!’

Nhumrod was flushed with excitement.

‘And he’s declared a month of Jhaddra, and double penances, and the Council has given him the Staff and the Halter, and the Cenobiarch has gone off to the hermitage in Skant!’

‘Vorbis is the eighth Prophet,’ said Brutha.

‘—Prophet. Of course.’

‘And … was there a tortoise? Has he mentioned anything about a tortoise?’

‘—tortoise? What have tortoises got to do with anything?’ Nhumrod’s expression softened. ‘But, of course, the Prophet said the sun had affected you. He said you were raving — excuse me — about all sorts of strange things.’

‘He did?’

‘He sat by your bed for three days. It was … inspiring.’

‘How long … since we came back?’

‘—back? Almost a week.’

‘A week!’

‘He said the journey exhausted you very much.’

Brutha stared at the wall.

‘And he left orders that you were to be brought to him as soon as you were fully conscious,’ said Nhumrod. ‘He was very definite about that.’ His tone of voice suggested that he wasn’t quite sure of Brutha’s state of consciousness, even now. ‘Do you think you can walk? I can get some novices to carry you, if you’d prefer.’

‘I have to go and see him now?’

‘—now. Right away. I expect you’ll want to thank him.’