Dark Corners

Blades of the Diram Ring

He entered the Diram Ring early upon the first morning of planting. The pitiless sun was in his face, the long shadows of the ilaya trees slicing the weed-choked sand with purple stripes. He was dark, slender, but not frail. He had swum the moat and was almost naked. His skin was young, smooth, and carried no scars.

Strictly speaking, it was forbidden for him to be there. A few of the Mieura, long ago, had placed themselves against the weight of interplanetary greed and had demanded a treaty that would keep at least the Diram Ring free of humans and their video fraud performers. The document had been signed, many pictures were broadcast, and great windy speeches were made. The Mieura claimed the stone circle to be the last remaining temple of the Mieura that had not been profaned, and the human network negotiators guaranteed that the Diram Ring would never be violated. That was long ago. By the time the dark little human approached the circle, both the Mieura and the humans had allowed the Diram Ring to all but pass from memory.

The creature stood at the western entrance to the ring, his dark eyes examining the interior of what some Mieurans still called a “sacred” ring. Strange it was that the gods who had made the rings their temples so many thousands of years ago were regarded as myths, their appellations useful for nothing but oaths, curses, and the names of automobile models. Strange it was how the Mieura and the humans treated words. “Sacred,” not a term of reverence, had become a possessive describing claims to property. “Never” had become a malleable temporal boundary that liquefied at the proper temperature heated by currency fueled fires. It was sham, all so corrupt, a feasting ground for the Gezi; demons who fed upon guilt and avarice.

Meaning, courage, reverence, and honor were blackened, crumbling artifacts tucked away in a forgotten corner of an antiquities dealer’s shop. The gods were dead, everyone presumed, including the gods. No one knew that, when the human came to the ring, the death of the gods was a matter yet to be decided.

The people had grown very small. The blades were no longer the test before the gods. Throwing the blades was now sham sport, attended by the eyes of many worlds, each broadcast contest the object of fool’s wagers on prearranged outcomes for profound sums. The blades were no longer prayers. They had become deceitful instruments of profit and entertainment. Few could recall the last throwing where the supplicants weren’t hiding from their gods beneath armor. Naked beings beneath the flying blades had become a dim memory of a myth, a poor graphic in an unread school text. The present was filled with the huge ring at Araak and the Diteureh League Championships. Where once the ancient champion of the blades claimed his victory in the name of the gods who so honored him, the modern champion used his victory to claim the defeat of the gods, in addition to obtaining payment for commercial endorsements of demeaning rubbish and slow poisons.

These things were on my mind as the boy human squatted at the edge of the ring and placed his skin wrapped brace of blades on the sand. I watched him as my mind was brushed by the memory of Giya, the last of the worthy Mieura to throw blades one hundred and fourteen years before.

The boy human studied the weed grown wall that encircled the ring. Leaving his blades, he stood and walked toward one of the loose cut stones. His walk carried the grace of a plains runner. It was almost a dance. He squatted to pick up the first stone.

Once there had been a party of stonemasons who had thought to save themselves some work and expense by stealing stones from the walls of the deserted Diram Ring. The stone the boy human lifted had been dropped eighty-one years before by a frightened Mieura mason after I had shown him roaring visions of eternal fire and had marked his hands to keep his visions fresh in his memory. Thirty-one years later, a human technician, his arms loaded with instruments, had crossed the moat to detect and measure plasmodial, biochemical, and electromagnetic fields in the ring. After days of intense work, he could get no readings on his instruments and had left the ring in despair, his mind frantically searching for a new thesis topic. He had muttered to himself that the alien gods, if they ever had existed, were dead now. When I heard him utter those words, I cried.

The boy carried the stone to the wall encircling the ring. First clearing the soil and weeds from the top course of stones, he put the heavy block of stone in place. Then he returned for another block. The original mason’s puzzle was almost four thousand years old, and the boy solved it. All of the stones were placed back into their original positions.

When the ring was clear of stones, he began to clear it of sticks and weeds. He was preparing the ring for tossing blades.

I was vaguely puzzled, as if I were coming out of an ancient drugged sleep. I had been in a decades-long meditation and interrupted it only for these questions. Why would a human practice with blades in the crumbled, virtually unknown circle at Diram? The human money interests allowed no humans to compete in the sham contests for fear of having the sport banned from their video networks. Yet why would even a Mieuran come to the Diram Ring? There were no more prayers and no one to whom to pray. I watched the boy.

By early afternoon the boy had cleared the sand, bundled the weeds, and removed them. Upon his return, he brought his wrapped blades into the center of the ring, squatted, and opened the skin. He removed from the bundle two gleaming silver double-edged tossing blades, each one as long as his legs, each one sharpened until the ground edges were polished like mirrors. He placed the first blade, handle toward me, on the sand in the center of the ring. The point of the long blade was toward the niche in the ring’s wall opposite mine. He lowered the second blade and shoved its point into the sand at his feet near the handle of the first blade. He did it with a practiced, confident manner.

“He would have us notice him,” spoke Redgait from the opposite niche.

I was startled at the sound of my brother’s voice. It had been decades since I had heard it. “I thought you had deserted the ring,” I said to him. “It has been such a long time since I last saw you.”

“And I you, Ahnli.” There was bitter humor in his voice as he took form, filling the niche with deep orange light the human could not see. Redgait’s attention wandered to the creature standing in the center of the ring. “Ahnli, what do you think of this misshapen thing?”

I looked at the boy human. He was respectfully motionless beside his blades, his face toward the east. “He has cleared the ring. It needed to be cleared.”

“Leave it to you, my sister, to concern yourself with housekeeping while the universe crumbles around this ruin.”

“The universe is not crumbling, my brother. Change is unchangeable, the stars burn and die, new stars are born.”

Redgait’s spindly black form stood out from the drape of his orange haze. “Where are our brothers and sisters? I have wandered every ring on the world. The niches are filled with Gezi demons, video cameras, and spectators with sticky faces as they swill their poisons and pack their bellies with disgusting goo. The prayers on the sand are now prayers to the Gezi, and the throwers pray not for the test, but for deception, victory, fame, and money. It is all false! A mire of vice. These sham champions of the blades, these exalters of petty demons, now have powers and honors surpassing those of ancient kings. The gods have died and forfeited the Mieura to the Gezi, and you say the universe is not crumbling?”

“The gods have not died, brother. I am alive, as are you.”

“Bah! Two petty spirits of an unknown ring.” The scorn in Redgait’s voice did a poor job of veiling his pain.

“Our brothers and sisters are alive too, my brother.”

“Alive?”

“They are within me, asleep,” I answered.

For once I saw that I had impressed my brother. After a long time he asked, “You hold them? How?”

“I stole them. As each one weakened and quit the Mieura in defeat, I wrapped it in love and peace and stole it. The gods didn’t die, brother. They did what we did: they quit.”

“You have stolen all of the ring gods?”

““All of the gods, Redgait. All but you.”

There was a great silence as Redgait fought with his confusion. “Why do you keep them? No one on Mieura has any use for gods.”

“Unless it’s this one,” I said, pointing at the human.

“You have taken a great deal upon yourself, sister.” Redgait was silent as he studied the repairs and the cleaning the boy had done. “He has replaced the stones in the wall. He did well. That must have been what brought me back.”

I saw my brother’s face fill the niche. His confused look turned to one of mischief. He meant to tease me. “I know what you did to the stone cutters, Ahnli. The Mieura have written books about it and the humans have even made what you did the subject of one of their silly video plays. In Diram Village they say you are an evil spirit.”

“I do not apologize for what I did to the masons.”

“I did not ask for one. Indeed, why did you let them live?”

“Should I have killed them for disrespecting gods that even the gods abandoned?”

“It is no matter.” I had spoiled his game by not getting angry, which had angered Redgait. His orange mist filled the sky as he examined the boy human. “Tell me, Ahnli. Will we guide his blades?” Out of Redgait’s mist I could see a spindly arm of black, a dark face of sadness. Redgait had not grown old, for that we could not do. But he had grown bitter and tired. That is age for a god. “Do we guide his blades or drive the splinters of his bones deep into the sand and end it here and now?”

The boy human stood as still as the blade he had thrust into the sand. He knew how to wait. I reminded myself to ask him who had taught him his manners, should we let him live.

“Let us see.”

As I drew my energy from the sand and stones, Redgait moved from the north niche and allowed the human to see him as a window that flew through fields of stars. The human did not move. I stepped down from my niche in the wall and came up behind him. “We command and are of the universe. You would have us notice you, small one.”

I walked around him as his dark brown eyes remained fixed upon Redgait’s window. “Where you now stand is a place reserved for those who give their lives and their deaths to gods that the gods would return life for life, death for death. If you seek fame, wealth, power over others, or the favor of Gezi, you are in the wrong arena. Flee, boy, while you still live.” I spoke to the human in high dialect Mieuran, the language of the ancient priests and blade throwers. I reached, pulled the upright blade from the sand, and threw it across the other where it rang when it hit like a bell of fine cast silver. They were excellent blades.

“Ahnli, Redgait,” said the human. “I place before you my faith. My faith in return is all I ask,” he answered in high dialect. Someone had taught him well. Did his heart match his words?

“Without acts,” said Redgait from his window on the eastern edge of the ring, “your faith is but a word. As you would test the gods, the gods would test you. Let us test each other.”

The boy human retrieved the blades, stood upright, and with a practiced throw sent both blades whirling high above the ring, directly over his unprotected head and body.

I froze time to look at my brother. “See? They are perfect throws, Redgait. Unless we intervene, his blades will strike and kill him.”

“There is no trick? No plastic tips on the blades, no hidden transmitters allowing the fraud to sneak from beneath his deceitful prayer?” Redgait’s thin black arm reached out of the mist, took the blades from the air, turned, and examined them. “These are Giya’s. They are his blades.”

I took one from Redgait and examined it myself. They were indeed the blades that had once brought Giya to faith, then fame and fortune, then fatality. Sadness filled my every corner. I said to my brother, “He could only have gotten these from one of Giya’s grandchildren.”

“One of his great grandchildren.” Redgait released the blades and we left them whirling in time above the boy human’s head, awaiting our decision. “Ril. He had to be the one. The second son of Giya’s daughter, Jyn. You remember, Ahnli.”

“I remember.”

Redgait turned his gaze from the blades and looked through the blue sky at the stars. “It cannot be. Ril must be dead. If he is alive he must be the oldest Mieuran within memory.”

“He was born the same year Giya died,” I confirmed.

“Ril was to have been secretly buried with his grandfather’s blades. No one but Ril could have supplied these edges, and someone with a lengthy reach to the past schooled the boy human in high dialect and in how to approach the ring.”

“For what reason?”

My brother gave a bitter laugh. “To test the gods? To be tested by the gods? Why else in the world would one toss blades without armor?”

I thought upon it for a moment, wondering if the boy human was the form which a daughter’s revenge against the gods might take. When Giya’s blood soaked into the sand of the Jaffri Ring, Jyn had been there to witness his death. Giya’s daughter was not capable of believing her father had an imperfection. Hence she had seen what she thought to be the failure of the gods to shield Giya from the falling blades. Jyn was dead, her spirit part of the hills above Jaffri. The mob had been outraged at Giya’s failure, but Giya was dead and could not be hurt by their words or sticks. Instead the mob made Giya’s daughter pay for her father. She had been torn to pieces. So long ago.

I held the blades in my hand above the boy’s head and crushed them as I released time. The boy stood there for a long moment, waiting for the blades to strike him, or land harmlessly to his sides. When nothing happened, he glanced around, then looked up in horror at the mass of molten silver whirling above his head. It was not fear for his own life that widened his eyes. To his mentor the blades meant the world and now they were so much liquid.

“Boy, why do you throw in the Diram Ring?rdquo; I asked. There are other places where you could play. Places where they serve beer and where you could preen in front of your kind.”

“Ahnli,” he said to me, “this is the only ring in the world where the gods still live. That is why I came to the Diram Ring.”

The voice was strong, strange, yet touched with the familiar. “What are you called?” I asked.

“Alan.”

“Alan,” I said, “we will keep the blades here, above the ring. Go and bring us your teacher.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Alan turned until the sun was in his eyes, and walked from the ring. As the sun’s orb touched the western horizon, Redgait asked, “Do you believe he will return?”

I watched a horned spider begin its new nest between the stones Alan had placed upon the wall of the Diram Ring. Above, in the sky, were the trails of cargo and passenger ships. On another world a child prayed. “Yes,” I answered. “He will return.”

“And we will wait for him?”

“We will wait.”

“In which case, my sister, we are all of us fools.”

The next day, just as the morning sunlight touched the molten metal above the Diram Ring, Ril, the ancient grandson of the great Giya, came before us. His wrinkled skin was the color and texture of rotted leather. His human, Alan, stood at the opening in the west wall. They had come over the moat upon a raft. Ril was too old to swim. Indeed, he was too old to be alive.

The hairless old Mieuran, his rheumy black eyes looking in dismay at the remains of his father’s precious blades, held out his pitifully thin arms and called, “Ahnli! Redgait! Spirits of the Diram Ring, can you have given over this arena to the Gezi demons, as well? Is there no ring left in the world where gods rule?”

Ril stood directly beneath the whirling globule of metal and turned his face up toward it. In the light reflected from the metal I saw how timeworn Ril was. Redgait and I could never grow old, which is why we always felt terribly ancient.

“You speak as a child,” scolded my brother. “Why did you send the human?” Redgait filled the sky with fire.

Ril lowered his arms and looked first at the northern niche, then turned and stared at me, an expression of astonishment on his face. “Can it be that the gods do not know what has happened to the world? Ahnli,” he cried, his shaking hands extended toward the south niche. “Ahnli, look upon the world. Your people are starving without their gods.”

“I see them,” I answered as I let myself appear to the old Mieuran. To him I appeared as a Mieuran female. “They do not seem hungry to me. They dance to the Gezi’s tune and grow fat and sleek.”

Ril lowered his arms, a hint of anger edging into his voice. “Play me not the fool, Ahnli. You know the starvation of which I speak. The light within each of them grows more dim with each passing moment. It is a hunger of the soul.”

“Why the human?” interrupted Redgait.

Old Ril whirled around and snapped at the north, “No Mieuran could have awakened you! You curl in your niches wallowing in self pity while your world dies the death of the spirit. How else were you to be driven from your cowardly hiding places?”

A great red hand, the palm of which could cover the ring, reached up from the north niche to crush the old Mieuran. My own hand reached up and held Redgait’s until my brother’s temper cooled.

“The balance!” cried Ril as he held his hands up toward the clasped hands of Redgait and myself. “The balance! It is for this that the world starves.” He turned slowly and looked upon his dark little human. “Alan believes in gods. That is why he is here. I believe in those who believe. That is why I trained him and brought him to the Diram Ring. I must see my grandfather’s blades thrown in the consecration once more. I must see the gods live.”

Far above the ring, away from the ears of Ril and his human, I spoke to Redgait. “Where from here, brother? Do we crush them and retire to the peace of our ring?”

With his hand, Redgait touched the molten metal above the ring, fashioning them again into Giya’s sacred blades. He took them and drove them toward Ril’s upturned face and I guided them apart. They both stuck into the sand. Ril reached out his hands, grasped the handles, pulled the blades from the sand, and held them out toward the human.

Alan took the blades. As Ril retired to the edge of the ring, the human stood at the eastern edge of the ring, tossed the blades into the air above the center of the ring, and ran beneath them to the opposite side of the ring. Both blades struck vertically into Alan’s footprints.

“Excellent!” exclaimed my brother, but in a voice only I could hear.

“He is swift and his throw is accurate,” I admitted. “It is different, though, with eight, sixteen, or sixty throwers mixing their blades. He knows where his blades will strike. He cannot predict the others.”

“For that, Ahnli, he has the gods.”

I watched Alan retrieve the blades and throw them again. This time they landed in his path directly in front of him as he reached the far side of the ring. Without a pause he took the blades, touched the edge of the ring with his foot, and threw again, this time catching them by the handles as he reached the opposite side. He was far better than Giya had been. Swift, accurate, graceful, and he had a certain style that said, “Witness my passage. The gods protect me.”

That had been the purpose of the rings and the passage through the blades. It was to bear witness that the gods were there, that they were strong, and that they helped those who sought them. Advertising, a human might have called it.

Redgait and I could protect Alan in the Diram Ring. For Alan to throw in another ring, however, he would need the gods of that ring. As the boy continued to throw, proving his stamina as well, I came before Ril and asked, “Where would you have him throw?”

“The ring at Jaffri.”

“Where the gods killed your grandfather.”

“No. Where my grandfather placed his faith in a paper god who could not protect him. There is where the end of the world began: the end of the blade throwers, the end of the gods, the end of faith.”

I stared in wonder at Ril. Had he spent his many years searching for the proper champion to correct the long forgotten wrongs of his grandfather? Did he think he and his dark little human could alter the direction of the world? Did he think he could replace guile with courage, money with honor, sham with faith? The decision wasn’t mine. Ril would begin his quest in the Jaffri Ring, hence the decisions that needed to be made belonged to other gods.

Lok and Diru were the gods of the Jaffri Ring, and they were still fast asleep deep inside me where I had hidden them. I reached out far beneath the eastern horizon with my sight and looked down upon the great metropolis of Jaffri beneath the morning sun. In the center of the city stood the ancient walls and columns of the Jaffri Ring. The ring itself was identical to the one at Diram, but instead of hundreds, the stands above and beyond the walls at the Jaffri Ring could seat hundreds of thousands.

On the sand the armored contestants warmed up and played with their blades, practicing their movements and falls, keeping fit and practicing their routines for the performance that afternoon. It would be a performance, too. Deaths in the rings, although far from rare, were suspected to be faked. The truth was worse than that. The deaths were newcomers to the rings, inadequately trained fools with their eyes on fame, that the veterans aimed at when they tossed their blades above the ring. It was an unspoken and unwritten rule among the veterans: spare the guild and aim at the beginners. The newcomers got a split second of glory, the veterans got their prize money and commercial endorsements, and there was plenty of gore on the sand for the viewers at home. Something for everyone, as one disgusted human news commentator put it.

Instead of gods, in the niches of the Jaffri Ring there were bored video crews arranging their cameras and patching their signals for the afternoon’s sportscast. Dark smudges of movement behind them spoke of the Gezi demons and their numbers. The filthy creatures were thick in the Jaffri Ring. Only gods could see them, but the humans and phony blade throwers knew they were there, if only in their hearts. Gezi’s feed on fraud, deceit, and greed, and not one of them was losing weight in the Jaffri Ring.

I brought Lok and Diru up. They opened their eyes, looked at their temple, and wept at what they saw below. “Sister,” cried Diru. “Why did you steal me? Why have you awakened me? To witness this?” Her fire flashed out above the Jaffri Ring.

The blade throwers and video technicians below stopped what they were doing and looked up at the sky.

“That!”

“Did you see?”

“What was it?”

“It’s gone now.”

“What was it?”

A shrug, a head shaking, a coach clapping his hands for attention, a sharp word from a camera’s crew chief. Without the flames of their god’s despair singing their brows every moment, the contestants returned to practicing their scripts and the video technicians returned to preparing their equipment. One human, however, leaned upon a camera and continued to stare at the sky. He was someone with a bit of authority and was not barked into action right away.

“See that, Diru,” I commanded. “With the mere flick of your finger you commanded the attention of the entire ring. The human in the south niche, the one with the red hair, is looking for you still. Shall he find you?”

“I who slew Giya and crushed the faith of a world?” Diru held out her hands and blackened the sky for me.

I saw the Jaffri Ring as it was more than a century ago, the Mieuran blade throwers naked before their gods, the humans in the stands gaping at the strange novelty of the tossing. The great Giya strode into the center of the ring. Although he had tossed his white flowers at the southern niche and his blue flowers before Lok at the north, his manner did not witness the balance and protection of the gods. Instead his bearing seemed to say, “Look you at me. See me. See Giya. Celebrate my immortality.”

He came to a halt, bowed toward the north, bowed toward the south, and made one additional bow, the first ever seen in a ring. He bowed toward the west where a lone video camera, the first ever allowed into a ring, was mounted.

Diru saw into Giya’s heart and was horrified. Giya had been offered an incredible ransom for that bow, and for future appearances on the television. Everything in the universe had been granted him when, only days before, the single thing Giya had desired was to be one with his gods and bear witness to that union with his blades on the sand.

Diru’s attention was focused on her own dismay. Giya tossed the blades high above his head, and they did not whirl in the air for him. Instead Lok brought them down before Diru realized that they had even been thrown.

Giya had been the greatest. The throws were perfect. The points of both blades entered his skull, killing him instantly. His was the kindest of many deaths. At the same moment he died, faith died. The heart of a race grew suddenly barren.

The blade throwers who followed Giya that day, individuals and teams, were shaken. There had been no balance. All had seen it. Giya’s faith had been corrupted and there had been no balance. If the great Giya’s faith had been inadequate to balance the gods, whose could be sufficient? Those who had viewed the event on their new televisions asked the same question.

That day more than forty throwers died in the ring before the wardens called off the competitions. Competitions in other rings around the world were also called off when similar numbers of throwers fell. The rings were closed for many days while Mieuran politicians and human network officials made talk. When the rings opened once again, there was armor on the throwers. Soon came the video cameras, promoters, concessionaires, trick blades, and bloodpaint. The Gezis became bloated.

“This we have done to the world,” said Diru solemnly. “This we cannot undo.”

Lok was staring down at the Jaffri ring as the image of the old ring faded and was replaced by the present ring with its cameras, lights, armored competitors, and hoards of fat little Gezis. There were video screens around the inside wall of the ring advertising new gods: athletes, fashions, cosmetics, investments, foods, and medicines. Lok faced his sister and said, “Diru, there is a weightier sin than Giya’s lack of faith in us. It is our lack of faith in ourselves.” He turned toward me. “Ahnli, do you have a thrower?”

I brought them to the Diram Ring where Alan was doing his drills beneath the watchful eye of Giya’s grandson. “A human,” Lok stated.

“Watch him well,” I said. “He is better even than Giya.”

“He is a human,” said Diru. “If Giya’s head could be turned by the humans, what of him?”

Redgait grinned from his niche and said, “Diru, although they are exceptionally good at it, humans did not invent greed. They are capable of the choosing.”

“Show me,” Diru commanded. “Show me the consecration.”

“Ril,” I called to the old Mieuran. Alan halted his drills and stood silently at the edge of the ring as Ril approached the south niche. When he was in front of Diru, Lok, and myself, I said to him, “Present with me are the gods of the Jaffri Ring.”

“I honor them,” said Ril as he bowed deeply.

“Even though they killed your grandfather?”

“Diru knows,” said the old Mieuran, “that Giya’s greed killed him, not the gods of the ring.”

I studied Diru’s face to see if what Ril said would ease her burden. I could see nothing in her face. Instead she simply repeated, “Show me the consecration.”

“Diru and Lok would see the consecration,” I said to Ril. The old Mieuran turned, placed one hand atop another, and held them out toward Alan.

The human approached the center of the ring, crossed the blades and placed them on the sand in the center of the ring. He had no flowers to offer. Nevertheless he bowed toward Redgait and then bowed toward me. Taking the blades in hand, he threw them up directly over his head. Redgait grabbed the blades from the air and drove them down toward Alan’s skull. I reached between the blades and pushed them aside. As though they were describing the arc of a perfect bell, the blades stuck into the sand on either side of the boy.

Diru nodded once and said, “Very well, Ahnli. Bring him to the Jaffri Ring. Lok and I will look into the human’s soul to see if it remains pure.” She turned her face toward me and said, “Faith is easier in the Diram Ring, sister. There are fewer distractions. Here the Gezi would starve. It is different outside these walls.” And then they vanished.

I appeared to Ril and said, “The gods of the Jaffri Ring have agreed to stand at the niches when Alan appears there. How will you get him on the sand? Humans are forbidden.”

The old Mieuran held up a bony finger and said, “Forgive me, Ahnli, but they are not forbidden. Forbidding someone on the basis of race the great law of the many worlds does not allow. Humans killed in the rings, however, might raise viewer protests and risk the loss of vast fortunes; fortunes that are safe for as long as the dying is done only by the Mieura.”

“If they cannot be barred, why do no humans throw the blades? They have no shortage of actors, fools, or murderers.”

“Ahnli, the current rules, as put down by the Diteureh League trustees, state that the armor worn by a competitor must be of a certain size and design and that no other kind or size of armor is allowed. This effectively bars humans since their heads and shoulders are larger than the Mieuran. It does not specifically forbid, however, a competitor who chooses to throw the blades without armor.” He issued a wicked grin. “The humans made up the rules and enforce them through the fortunes they command. We only abide by them.”

A universe of possibilities opened before me. “When will you enter him?”

“I will enter him in the lists tonight. He will throw the blades in the Jaffri Ring tomorrow afternoon.” He held out his open palms and bowed toward me. “My eternal gratitude for your assistance, Ahnli.” He faced the north and bowed again. “My eternal thanks for your assistance, Redgait.”

The boy human withdrew the blades from the sand, crossed them over his chest and bowed to each of us, respectfully thanking us for his life and the manner in which we honored him as demonstrated by his continued existence.

When the ring was again empty, Redgait withdrew into his niche and entered into deep meditation. I looked within myself and called up all of my brothers and sisters, not only of the many rings, but those of the land, skies, winds, and waters, gods of stars, gods of life and love. I had hidden them long enough. Tomorrow would see us all reborn or, perhaps, dead.

Gongs and chimes, somewhat reminiscent of the ancient sounds, began the opening ceremonies at the Jaffri Ring. Even though the music incorporated human instruments and cadences, few paid the sounds any attention. The gods arranged themselves among the spectators around the ring while Lok and Diru took their places in the north and south niches, uncomfortably sharing their spaces with humans, Mieurans, cameras, and Gezis. I joined Diru in the south niche, and there the redheaded human from the day before was observing on a monitor while a human and a Mieuran talked before the camera.

The human was introduced as sportscaster Del Nolan. He was a used up sports entertainment commentator. His employers had dumped him in Mieuran blade throwing until his contract expired. There was no intention of renewing the contract. The Mieuran was introduced as Ti Edge, his humanized name a concession to viewing audiences around the many worlds. He was a retired blade thrower and he and the human seemed to talk knowingly about the day’s competitors. Their forced interest and manufactured enthusiasm as they speculated upon the day’s prearranged outcomes made me wonder at the kinds of beings who had so little of life that they felt they could improve it by watching this decayed shadow of Mieuran blade tossing.

The red headed human was wearing a headset and with his hand he signaled the two conversationalists as he spoke into his headset. Suddenly a new face appeared on the monitor. It was a human female with black hair and skin the color of pale sand. She had been considered beautiful once, but her increasing number of wrinkles and a voice growing shrill had numbered her days before the camera. She too had reached the bottom rung of her profession. Standing next to her was Ril. In the background was Alan. He was wearing the traditional robe of pale blue, symbolizing the balance between north and south, balance between white and midnight blue. Giya’s blades were slung on his back.

“To get around the rules excluding humans, Ril, you plan to send your boy in without any armor at all? Is that correct?”

“No,” answered Giya’s grandson. “That is not correct. Alan is entering the ring without armor because he needs no armor.”

“Alan is pretty nimble, is he?”

Ril looked at the sportscaster and said, “When the gods are balanced, one needs neither armor nor agility.”

“Gods?” For a moment the human female smirked and mugged at the camera as though only she and billions of viewers were in on an immense joke that the old Mieuran didn’t understand. “Of course. Can you tell us anything about Alan — is that his full name?”

“Alan is his name. He is a novice blade thrower. This is his first competition.”

A shred of genuine concern entered the woman’s voice. “You are aware that the life expectancy of an armored beginner is perhaps a second or two after the first throw? Alan will be going in bare, and those aren’t rubber blades.”

This time it was Ril’s turn to smirk. “I am aware that the gods direct the blades today.”

She laughed in exasperation. “But what if they don’t?”

“They do.”

“How do you know that? Are you willing to throw away a human life because of some ancient superstition? What if you’re wrong? I ask you again, how do you know these gods will protect your boy?”

“I’ve seen Alan do the consecration in the Diram Ring. I have seen the gods in balance.”

She frowned at the unknown name and then a signal came to her headset from the red headed man. “Well, good luck to you and to Alan. I’m certain everyone back home is rooting for him.” The female human faced her camera and said, “There you have it. Ril, the trainer for Alan the mystery man, the first human ever to enter the lists. You have to admire this kid’s guts, if not his brains. Ti?”

Another face appeared on the monitor, and it was the retired Mieuran blade thrower, Ti Edge. “Thanks, Micki. I take it the difficulties with the Jaffri Ring trustees and the league trustees are all settled.”

Back to Micki. “Yes, Ti. The rules are pretty clear. In fact the rules had to be bent considerably a century ago to allow the competitors to wear armor. It seems as long as the mystery man appears without armor, he’s entitled to a place on the sand.”

There was talk, endless talk, about possible appeals, who Alan might be, who Ril might be, and even who the gods might be. The chatter continued until the prospect of an afterlife seemed boring, the music ceased, and the blade throwers entered the ring. To the raucous sounds of ribbed horns, they came through the western gate and continued around the circumference until there was a circle of sixty-eight throwers. All save Alan wore armor.

The different suits of armor were of many colors. Veterans wore dark and sand colors while the newcomers were clad in bright pinks, oranges, and reds. It was part of the guild regulations thereby making better targets of the newcomers. Anyone who lasted through a number of competitions was eventually entitled to a more camouflaged suit of plates.

Alan, seemingly tiny in his nakedness, was almost directly opposite the south niche when what the television people called the consecration began.

In the case of the armored lumps surrounding the ring, the consecrations were blade tossing exercises, seeing how close one could come to oneself without actually drawing blood. Most of the veterans were very good at it, but the audience considered the consecrations little more than boring warming up exercises.

I turned and saw the red haired man. He was issuing instructions to the man on the camera, and the lens swept the faces in the ring below while Ti Edge and his human swapped comments about the contenders. Gezi demons were all about, but they didn’t hang off the red haired human the way they did the others. I crept into the man’s mind and found his name: Tomas Holly. In his heart I found desperate, numbing loneliness. In his soul I found the bitter hole that remains after the death of a child’s god. He was every bit as crippled as the people of Mieura, and for the same reasons.

I moved back into his mind and planted there a thought.

“Renny,” he said to the cameraman, “frame the human and keep on him.”

“Are you kidding?” said the man on the camera, although he immediately focused on Alan. “He’s nobody, a pat, a suicide. Who cares?”

“I care.”

“Yeah, but you aren’t the one selling the jock itch spray and yeast infection ointment.”

“Just stay on him.”

“Got it.”

I withdrew from the human and looked at Diru. The goddess of Jaffri’s south niche was concentrating on Alan as was Lok from the opposite side of the ring. Neither one of the Jaffri Ring gods were doing well with the desecration of their niches. I asked them an ancient question: “Diru, Lok, you have the power. Why do you not sweep the trespassers and demons into the ring?”

“The test of the gods,” replied Diru, “is not to show if they can destroy. All beings can destroy.”

“It is to witness,” continued Lok, “that the gods love, assist, and protect those who seek the balance.” A human climbed upon Lok’s seemingly vacant pedestal for a better view and the god of the north niche bumped the creature off of the stand and onto his posterior. The human’s face looked shocked for a moment, then puzzled, then embarrassed that someone else might have seen him fall. A god had just touched him and his main concern was how it might appear to others. The universe was crippled indeed.

Tomas Holly, the assistant director with the hole in his soul, had witnessed the event. His brow wrinkled, he walked to the pedestal centered in the southern niche. It was cracked and split in several places, which is why no one had attempted to site a camera there or use it for an observation platform. It came up to the human’s waist. He lifted his arm and gingerly reached into the space above the crumbling slab of granite.

His fingers seemed to touch something, the something was Diru, and the god of the south niche took it for several moments before she gifted the human with a spark that caused him to withdraw his hand in haste. His frown became deeper.

The stands grew suddenly silent and Tomas Holly faced the ring to see the cause. Alan was walking toward the center of the ring.

“This is an unexpected turn,” said Ti Edge’s voice from the monitor. “Alan, the mystery man, is entering the center of the ring. “It’s almost—”

“Are those flowers he’s holding, Ti?” interrupted Del Nolan.

“Yes, Del. White and blue flowers. I don’t believe it, but, yes. He’s offering the white flowers to the south niche and the blue to the north. To the gods of those niches. He’s going to do the traditional consecration; something this ring hasn’t seen in over a century!”

“You mean like we talked about in the history segment? That’s insane,” said Del Nolan, a genuine note of feeling and concern in his voice. “Micki,” he said, “are you watching this?”

“Yes, Del.” And that was all she said.

Alan crossed his blades, placed them in the exact center of the ring, stood, bowed toward Lok, and then bowed toward Diru. He picked up the blades, and in one fluid motion threw them high into the air directly above him. The ring fell as silent as death. Lok reached out with his powerful hands, grabbed the blades, and drove them down toward Alan’s skull. Diru intervened and again the bell-shaped arc of the blades testified to the balance of the gods.

The stunned crowd exploded with cheers while Micki, Ti, and Del examined instant playbacks from several different angles. There were several interpretations offered by the sportscasters to explain the event that had just taken place before their eyes. Del Nolan spoke of wooden blades called boomerangs that could be thrown by an experienced hand to follow any path the thrower wished. Micki speculated about computer generated images, although she had watched Alan, not one of the monitors. Ti Edge was strangely silent.

Tomas Holly punched a button on his control panel, cutting off the audio signal, and spoke into his headset. “Ti. What was that?”

The Mieuran sportscaster looked around the camera, his eyes dazed. “I don’t know, Tomas. If it was a trick, I cannot see how it was done. Perhaps it was real.”

“If it was?”

The Mieuran shook his head in a very human gesture. “It couldn’t be, Tomas.”

“If it was?” he repeated.

“Then the niches are filled with gods, they are in balance, they controlled the fall of Alan’s blades, and will protect him in the ring.” He waved his hands about encompassing the south niche, the ring, the world, and the known universe. “And all of this — you, me — all is sham.”

The events that took place in the Jaffri Ring that day became legend. As the sixty-eight competitors made their first throw, fully a third of the blades were tossed along Alan’s path. Although eleven novices were taken dead or wounded from the ring after the first throw, not an edge had touched Alan. There was very little sports commentary, although the instant playbacks were run at varying speeds, filling the time until the next throw.

In another throw the remaining nine Mieuran novices were eliminated, along with four veterans who had taken paths too close to the human’s. And that during a throw where two thirds of the blades fell along Alan’s path.

“Burning bush,” muttered Tomas Holly. He blinked and glanced at the pedestal where he had touched a god. “The consecration, the blades, the rings, the whole damned sport.” He looked back at the ring, back at Alan, where another throw was about to commence. Instead of cheering and jeering, as was their custom, the crowd in the stands had been awed into silence, as had been their custom centuries before.

The glittering throwing knives arced above the ring, the competitors raced onto the sand, and Alan halted in the center and extended his hands up to catch Giya’s blades. A cloud of knives fell about him, stuck into the sand, and he simply stood there in that forest of sharpened steel, unharmed, holding his own blades high above his head.

A low moaning came from the stands, and I saw that many of the spectators were bent over with their faces covered, while others stared wide-eyed at Alan. The trustees called off the competition and the blade tossers, spectators, and television people went to their respective homes contemplating matters upon which they never expected to think.

“It is begun,” I said to Redgait after we had returned to the Diram Ring. “There are gods again above the sand at Jaffri. Our brothers and sisters go to reclaim all of the rings, the seasons, the elements, the stars.”

It was dark and Redgait stood until his face was among the stars. “All the gods are in their places, Ahnli. You have awakened them all.”

“I awakened them,” I said. “Alan gave them life. Alan gave life to the many worlds.”

“When Alan becomes corrupted and the blades take him, do we fade again? I already see packs of agents, promoters, and lawyers below, their hands filled with offers, their mouths filled with lies, searching for Alan. There is a renewal in the efforts to develop armor that looks like a naked body from a distance—“ He paused for a moment, then came his voice, low and puzzled. “Ahnli, my sister, we have more visitors at the Diram Ring.”

We came down from the stars and occupied our niches as we watched the western entrance. Two figures crossed the moat upon a raft. Their hands held lights that danced in the darkness. I looked closely and it was Ti Edge and the human, Tomas Holly. The raft struck the bank and the human held the raft against the bank while the Mieuran climbed up and held the rope while the human climbed the bank. At last they stood in the entrance to the ring. I could see that Ti Edge had a long leather case slung upon his back. The retired Mieuran fraud had brought his blades.

Tomas Holly played his light around the interior of the arena. “Someone’s been here,” he said. “It’s deserted now.”

“Deserted?” the Mieuran growled. “Did the Jaffri Ring teach you nothing?”

“I meant I don’t see anyone. Are you sure this is the place?”

“This is the place. There is only one Diram Ring.”

“Maybe you heard it wrong on the playback. It might’ve been something that sounded like that.”

Ti Edge spoke very clearly, “This is the place.”

After an uncomfortable pause, the human walked until he came to the center of the ring. Once there he stopped, examined the sand at his feet, then played his light along the walls, stopping first upon my niche, and then upon Redgait’s. Raising the level of his beam above the wall, he let the light play among the stands, crumbling and overgrown with ilaya trees and great clumps of saw-toothed fina grass.

He turned off his light and said out loud, “Our researchers managed to find out the names of the niche spirits of the Jaffri Ring. Diru and Lok. They will not speak with us. Or is it that they cannot speak with us?” He waited for a long moment. I could see Redgait silently quaking with laughter.

“My sister,” he said at last, “They have come to put us on the television.”

Redgait never was one for looking into someone’s heart. I looked into Ti Edge’s heart and read what was there. I looked into Tomas Holly’s heart and read what was there. Their superiors in the television company had sent them to put “whatever these beings are” on the television, but that was not why they were in the Diram Ring. Each one had his own reason.

I cupped my hand above the ring and flooded it with a dome of light. The Mieuran stopped breathing and the human dropped his lighting device. I appeared to them as a mist and said to the human, “Gods have souls, Thomas Holly. I would not let you steal mine.”

The human withdrew an instrument from his pocket and looked at it. “It doesn’t show anything,” he muttered. Looking up from his instrument he said to me, “It doesn’t show anything. If you are real, and you are what you say you are, show yourselves.”

I could feel the heat of anger coming from the north niche as Redgait appeared as a column of molten metal. “The proof was in the consecration at the Jaffri Ring, human. The proof was in the life of Alan.”

Tomas Holly pressed a button on his instrument and listened. “No audio, no fields, no nothin’.”

Redgait’s spidery black arm reached into the night sky and the instrument in the human’s hands began smoking. Tomas dropped it and watched as the thing melted, burst into flames, and burned away, leaving the sand as clean as Alan had left it. “Now your instrument showed something,” sneered Redgait. “And even that is not sufficient evidence to one who begins his search by assuming the object of his quest does not exist.”

Redgait circled the ring with fire, turned the sand to water, and sent the two creatures to undersea worlds filled with great beauties and equally great horrors. After a moment of this, I saw a shadow of sadness and despair cross my brother’s face. “This is childish of me, Ahnli. Why do you let me go on so?”

“We must have faith in them, my brother. It is no less than what we ask of them.”

“To have faith in them is almost beyond my powers.”

I brought up the creatures and brought the Diram Ring back to the dark, dusty ruin it had been for over a century. As Ti Edge and Tomas Holly gasped on the sand, I said to my brother, “It is perhaps even more difficult for them to have faith in us.”

After a long silence, broken only by the coughing and breathing of the Mieuran and the human, Tomas Holly struggled into a sitting position and said, “Alan has disappeared. No one can find him. The Mieuran who registered as his manager is dead. According to the local records, he’s been dead for years. The offers that are waiting for Alan are too incredible to be believed. If you know where he is you have a responsibility to him to tell me.”

“Ril is dead?” Redgait asked me, allowing the pair on the sand to hear him.

I looked. “Yes, brother. For many years now.”

“There is another among us, then, my sister.”

“Yes.”

“Another what?” demanded Tomas Holly as he got to his feet. “Another what?”

I filled the ring with pale blue light as I took human form and faced the man with the red hair. “What you want most in the universe, Tomas Holly, is the thing you cannot trust yourself to believe.”

“There is another what?” he demanded.

Redgait took human shape and stood beside me. “Another god,” he answered.

“God? Gods?” The human shook his head and held out his hands. “Is this a word that represents a pantheon of supernatural creatures, supreme beings, or perhaps only a race that exists in some part on another plane of existence? Just another race?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And much more and much less.”

The battle that waged behind Tomas Holly’s eyes reached a climax, then his face grew grim, his gaze cast downward. He did not look up as he said, “Where’s Alan?”

“Wherever you need him,” I answered.

“I need him in Araak within the next few days to sign with my network. That’s where I need him.”

“No, Tomas.” I reached out my hand, entered his chest, and put my hand into that great hole that was his soul. “Here is where you need him. Humans have gods, too. Alan is a human god.” I withdrew my hand as the human gaped at me.

“Alan is a god?”

“Search for him, Tomas. It may take the rest of your days, but you will find him.”

I faced the Mieuran, Ti Edge. He was still seated upon the sand, his gaudy clothing soaked. As he looked at me I altered my shape to fit his eyes. “Here I am, Tijia,” I said, using his given name.

He looked down at my feet, his face cast in shame. “For my lifetime, goddess, I have desecrated your temple, used it for fraud, sold its pieces to strangers, and brought murder to its sands. I scorned you, laughed at your legend, ridiculed those who believed. I failed you for I had no faith.”

“We failed you for the same reason, Tijia. We made a blade tosser our god, and when we saw he was not perfect, we turned our backs on the universe. Can we forgive each other?”

He was silent for a moment, then I saw his heart make its decision. He stood, walked to the eastern edge of the ring, dropped his case, and began removing his clothes. When he at last stood naked before the ring, he opened his case and withdrew a set of dull black blades, colored that way to make them more difficult to see when tossed into the path of a novice. In the handles were tiny transmitters to help the thrower in locating and dodging them. Tijia removed the transmitters, tucked the blades beneath his arm, and reached once more into his case. When he withdrew his hand it held two bunches of flowers: white and blue.

“Ti,” said the human. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Do you know what he is doing?” asked Redgait of the human.

Tomas Holly walked to the western entrance, stood at the edge of the ring, and turned around so that he was facing Tijia. Again I looked into his heart. His pain was such that, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he could listen. As Tijia crossed his blades and placed them on the sand, I said to the human, “Begin with a small god, Tomas. As you grow, so too will your god.”

The white flowers were offered to the south niche and I took my place. The blue flowers were offered to the north niche and Redgait was there to accept them. Tijia faced the western entrance, picked up his blades, and paused as his gaze met the human’s and a flock of doubts flew through him. The moment passed and the doubts vanished like the desert mist beneath the eye of the sun. Up went the blackened blades, high above the sand. Tijia’s hands were practiced and the throws were perfect. Redgait took the blades in hand and drove their points down toward Tijia’s skull. I parted them and the human witnessed the bell-shaped arc described by the blades.

Alan was only a small god. We began with him.