The Seven Altars of Dusarra

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He had been very fortunate in emerging on an empty street; he found few others as he made his way across Dыsarra, but. somehow he reached his goal without being accosted. Several people had cast curious gazes in his direction and a mutter of conversation had frequently followed him, but no one had dared to stop him. Now, he strode openly along the Street of the Temples, hoping his luck would hold.

He was approaching a temple, the third from the overlord's palace; it loomed before him, a huge cube of black stone, dotted with dark windows and topped by a broad dome. Seven shallow steps led to its, open portals; there were no gates, no courtyard, no indication which deity was worshipped here. He was only a few paces from the bottom step when someone behind him cried, "Hold, overman!"

He hastened his pace, hurrying up the steps; he heard running, feet somewhere behind him as he stepped through the doorway into an antechamber.

The room was small, with a wooden floor that gave dangerously beneath his feet, and walls hung with moldering, faded tapestries. He wondered briefly if the place was abandoned; since the daylight cults were secret, one might have died out without anyone knowing it.

There was a door in the inner wall with a rusty iron handle; Garth grabbed it, only to have it crumble in his grasp. He raised a fist to pound on the door, in hope that someone would admit him; to his astonishment, the door burst inward at his first blow, its hinges screaming in protest. Dust flew up in clouds, and a paroxysm of coughing overtook him, but he managed to stumble through. As he did, he realized there were no further sounds of pursuit behind him; instead, a voice exclaimed in dismay, "We can't go in there!"

He stopped. If he were not pursued, there as no need for haste. He wiped the dust from his stinging eyes and looked about.

The door he had entered through stood beside him, and it was immediately obvious why it had yielded so quickly; it had been eaten away from within by termites and rot, so that his blow had merely finished their work. The latch that had held it remained where it was, rusted to the frame, and the wood had turned to powder around it, so that the door's edge now had a gaping hole in it.

He was in a room perhaps fifteen feet across and twenty feet long; like the antechamber, and unlike any of the other temples he had yet visited, it was floored in wood, wood which sagged visibly at the center beneath the weight of a thick carpet. The walls, too, were wooden, except for one end; that was stone and obviously one of the temple's outer walls, since three narrow windows pierced it, providing the chamber with light.

The room's ceiling was upholstered in silk, silk that was discolored with half a hundred old and new stains, that was black with rot in spots. Like the floor, it sagged in the center. Cobwebs hung from every corner.

There were furnishings; two ornate tables adorned the far wall, flanking a doorway, and an assortment of faded, dusty chairs were strewn about.

Over everything hung the smell, the stench of rot, mold, and decay; Garth suddenly felt quite certain he knew which temple he had entered.

He took a cautious step forward into the room; the floor creaked ominously, and new odors of corruption assailed his nostrils. He put a hand on a woodpanelled wall, only to snatch it away quickly when he felt the wood start to give; like the door, it was riddled by worms and rot. There could be no doubt that this was the shrine of P'hul, goddess of decay.

"Greetings, stranger." The soft voice came from somewhere to his right; the usual guttural Dыsarran accent was modified by a curious lisp. He turned, to see that a gray-robed figure had entered the room.

He started to speak, but stopped as the figure threw back its hood, revealing the reason for the lisp.

"Is something wrong?" The priestess' voice was solicitous.

"No. I was just startled."

The woman's lower lip was a twisted mass of oozing, festering flesh, and much of her face and neck was swollen and shapeless; one of her hands lacked a finger. Garth recognized the human disease of leprosy and shuddered slightly. His pursuers had had reasons other than religious respect for declining to enter this place.

The priestess smiled, the friendly expression made hideous by her affliction. "Of course. It is customary that the servants of P'hul bear her handiwork upon their flesh, but I suppose it might well startle those not accustomed to such sights. Why have you come? What brings a healthy overman to the temple of decay?" Garth noticed that she was aware of her lisp, and struggled particularly hard to be sure she pronounced the name of her goddess correctly. He felt a twinge of pity.

"I was merely curious."

"I am surprised. We see few strangers here. How may I help to satisfy your curiosity?"

"Tell me of your goddess, if you would." Garth was not particularly interested in learning about P'hul, but he wanted time to think, and guessed that the priestess, absorbed as she was with her beliefs, would be quite willing to talk for hours about them with only minimal encouragement. Where he would have raised suspicion by questioning her on more mundane matters, he was sure that in the enthusiasm of the true believer she would not find anything strange in his willingness to listen to endless blather about her religion.

"If you wish, gladly! I am sure you know the basic nature of P'hul; she is the cause and essence of all disease and decay throughout our world. She ages us all, she makes us easy prey for death, so that the old will make way for the young. She turns the leaves green to brown, pulls them from the trees; and makes them rot, so that they will feed the earth. She eats away fruit, that the seeds within may flourish. By plague and disease, she removes the unfit and unworthy. The worms of the earth and the lowly insects serve her, devouring all that she gives them, and in turn they feed the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field. She is the handmaiden of death."

As the priestess spoke, her words distorted by her lisp, Garth thought back over recent events; it struck him suddenly that he had been behaving recklessly, almost idiotically, since leaving the temple of Aghad. Marching openly into the temple of Sai had been foolish, even if it had allowed him to save an innocent life. He had not planned well there; even his fight with the priests had been mismanaged, as he should have been able to overpower all three without killing any.

"There are those who say that death is the great evil of our world," the priestess went on, "and that if P'hul serves him, then she must likewise be evil. That is not so; death would exist regardless of P'hul. The goddess readies us for his touch; is it not better to die old and weary, than to be cut down while still healthy and vigorous?"

His behavior this morning had been even more erratic. There had been no reason to go leaping about on the roof, smashing down the doors of unsuspecting citizens, and so forth. He had merely been responding to the repressed anger that still seethed within him, using up as much energy as possible and finding excuses to destroy anything handy.

"Knowing that one must die after a set number of years, is it not better to know that death will come as the end of a decline, a surcease from decay, than to see it strike abruptly while one is still strong? Our lives are thus in balance, with the ascent from infancy countered by the descent into senescence. Aal, the Eir-Lord of growth, is P'hul's twin and counter; neither could exist without the other. Aal dominates our youth, P'hul our age."

Obviously, he was still resentful of the helplessness he had felt in the temple of Aghad.

"In order that there be growth, there must be decay; for there to be new, the old must make way, else the world would be buried beneath growing things."

It was plain that his effective exile from his homeland at the hands of the Baron of Skelleth, through that stupid oath he had so foolishly taken, still rankled.

"Yet still, even granting the necessity of decay, why should we worship the goddess?"

Buried still deeper, he knew, was anger at the Forgotten King, who treated him like a foolish child and manipulated him like a marionette, and at the Wise Women of Ordunin, the trusted oracle that had first sent him to Skelleth.

"Because we see the underlying beauty in her works; because we perceive that decay brings peace, and that contentment can be found therein. She provides an end to struggling against our inevitable fate, and a surcease from care."

All, of course, were symptoms of his anger at his own helplessness, his resentment of his insignificance in the cosmos; it was his inability to reshape the world as he chose that underlay his rage at all these manifestations of his lack of omnipotence.

"Every farmer prays to Aal; every parent of growing children worships him. He has no need of the service of such lowly creatures as ourselves amid this flood of adulation. Yet without his sister he would be nothing, and we choose to give her the recognition she deserves, as best we can, in response to her marks upon us."

Early in the priestess' lisping dissertation, she and Garth had both seated themselves upon the nearest chairs; the priestess had ignored the cloud of dust that rose from the cushions, and Garth had tried to do the same even as he hoped that the moldering seat would support his weight. Now the servant of P'hul leaned forward, her chair creaking beneath her, and asked, "Do you have any questions?"

"I…" Garth had not yet given any thought to the matter on hand, that being how he was to rob the altar; he stalled, asking a question he was only vaguely interested in. "I have heard that this is the Thirteenth Age of the world, the Age of Decay, and as such it is ruled by P'hul. Could you explain this? Do not all the gods prevail over their own concerns in every age?"

"Yes, of course they do. The ages of the world are little more than a theory worked out by the theologians, philosophers, and astrologers, yet they seem to apply in some ways. I do not understand how they are determined, but it is said that certain signs mark each era. Our own age has been one of declining population, fading wealth, and loss of knowledge, and thus is credited as the Age of P'hul, since these are the symptoms of a decay of mankind-and overmankind-as a whole, just as P'hul's diseases cause the decay of individuals. The theologians say that this is because during this age P'hul is at the height of her power, while those gods equal to or greater than herself are resting, or somehow weakened. Decay progresses faster than growth; but there is still growth, and when this age ends the balance between P'hul and Aal will be restored, and some other deity will temporarily rise above the cosmic balance.

"The astrologers say that the age is ending even now; that the Fourteenth Age may in fact have already begun, or if not it will soon arrive."

That caught Garth's attention; months earlier, the Forgotten King had told him that it was hopeless to try and halt the spread of death and decline while the Age of P'hul lasted. If it were in truth ending, perhaps there were better times ahead, an era in which great things could be accomplished.

"What will the Fourteenth Age be? What god will predominate?"

"I do not know. The Twelfth Age was the Age of Aghad, marked by great wars and great betrayals, and much of the world's history was lost in that period, which lasted much longer than the three centuries of P'hul's dominance, so that although scholars may know something of the Eleventh Age, I do not. Thus I cannot see any pattern. Perhaps it is time for one of the Eir, the Lords of Life, to flourish; although I serve a Lady of the Dыs, I would not regret such a change."

"Might not any god rule? I have heard of gods who were not of the Dыs, nor, I believe, of the Eir."

"Such gods, if they exist, are but lesser beings-except for Dagha, of course. There are the seven Dыs, the seven Eir, and the God of Time who created them all; these are the fifteen great gods, and you may be sure that one of these will represent the world's new age."

"This is the Thirteenth Age; the Fourteenth is soon to begin; but there are only fifteen of these higher gods. What will happen when each has ruled for an age?"

"Perhaps they will start over."

Garth sat back and considered that. The whole system sounded rather haphazard; ages of varying length, in no known order? Only fifteen possible rulers? Interesting as it might be, and despite the seeming appropriateness of describing the last three centuries as an age of decay and the period ending in the Racial Wars as an age of hatred, he decided the whole system was just another human exercise in meaningless theorizing. After all, men could not even prove the existence of a single one of their myriad deities; how, then, could any trust be put in a system based on those gods? Besides, if this was currently the Thirteenth Age, then long ago there must have been a First Age; what came before that? He shook his head.

"I am confused. Perhaps you could show me your temple while I digest this new knowledge."

"If you wish." The priestess rose; Garth followed her example, pleased that she was being so cooperative. Any tour of the temple must surely include its altar.

The gray-robed woman led him through a creaking, cobwebbed door into a dim wood-floored passage hung with ragged, decaying tapestries; he was surprised to see several doors opening to either side. This temple was much more elaborate than some.

"These are the study chambers of our scholars," his guide explained. She opened a door, apparently at random, revealing a small room, little more than a cell, lined with shelves that sagged beneath the weight of hundreds of books, scrolls, and papers, and illuminated by a single miniscule window. A narrow desk stood in the center, with a single rickety chair behind it; more papers were spread out upon it, held in place by a human skull that served as a paperweight.

"The skull is just a reminder of the mortality of mankind," the priestess explained.

"How is it that your…that you maintain such scholars? I have seen no sign of such learning elsewhere in Dыsarra."

"It is the way of our faith. The more we know of the world, the more we know of the gods who created it; and the more we know of the gods, the better we are able to serve our goddess. I have heard that there are many scholars among the followers of Aghad, though perhaps that is more from a wish to harm mankind than to serve the gods; and there is a splendid library in the temple of Tema. The priests of Regvos, of course, are unable to read. The priests of Bheleu have not the patience for study. Of the cults of Sai and the Final God I know nothing."

As she spoke the priestess led her guest away from the uninhabited scholar's cubicle, closing the door behind her. At the end of the passage, ignoring another corridor that ran perpendicularly to the first, she started up a narrow spiral staircase of rusty iron that swayed unsteadily beneath the weight of the two. Garth inquired where the bypassed corridor went.

"The dormitory," she replied.

"Have you some reason not to show me that?"

"I did not think it would interest you; our accommodations are simple. Besides, most of my fellow servants of P'hul are asleep at present, and I did not wish to disturb them. Are we not entitled to our rest and privacy, as much as ordinary people? Our diseases make us outcasts, but we are still human."

"Of course; I meant no offense. Your ceremonies are at night, then?"

"Oh, yes. The Lords of Dыs are, after all, the dark gods; all are nocturnal, whatever the habits of their worshippers." As she said this she emerged from the shaky spiral and waited for the overman to join her.

They stood in a fair-sized antechamber, its far wall dominated by a vast double door; either end was of wood, hung with rotting remnants of cloth so far gone in decay that Garth was unsure whether they had originally been banners, tapestries, or something else. The staircase was in a curved niche in the rear wall, which was of unadorned black basalt, pierced by three narrow lancet windows. The priestess crossed the room with an assured, easy stride, which Garth took note of. The woman might be diseased, but as yet the sickness had not seriously weakened her; she moved as well as most humans. Garth could not guess her age; she was well out of adolescence, beyond doubt, and had not yet acquired the white hair and stooped posture of extreme age, but beyond that he could not see any indication of her years. The ruination of her countenance erased any wrinkles that might otherwise have provided a clue.

She swung open the great doors and the pair stepped into the chamber beyond.

Garth found it necessary to hold his breath until the dust had subsided somewhat.

The chamber seemed vast, larger than it actually was; it extended up the full remaining height of the temple and included the entire inside of the dome. It was approximately square, about forty feet on a side, but its dimensions were distorted by smoke and dust swimming thick in the stagnant air. Dim colored light seeped through dirt-caked stained glass, painting murky patterns on the worn wooden floor and on the intricately carved railings that adorned three tiers of balconies. These extended completely around all sides. A brighter patch of untinted light flooded the center of the room, pouring from a ring of windows at the base of the dome; in the middle of this circle stood the altar, Garth saw hazily. The brilliant sunlight lit it in a blaze of splendor, but simultaneously obscured it behind a wall of equally well-lit cobwebs, incense smoke, and drifting dust.

The altar was a broad, square platform, raised two or three feet off the floor, built of carven wood, its sides upholstered in silk, its edges clad in corroded copper thick with verdigris; the top had strips of faded, moldering carpeting along each side, and a square of plain mahogany in the center.

There was nothing upon it except a thick layer of dust.

Garth stared at it resentfully.

"This, of course, is the temple sanctuary. It is here that we perform our rituals, affirming our devotion to the goddess, asking her to remember us and deal mercifully with us."

She paused, expecting Garth to comment; the room was beautiful, or had been once, and she seemed sure the overman would appreciate this. He, however, was not paying complete attention, and said nothing. Unsure whether this was rudeness, or whether he was too taken by the room to respond, she added, "Many of us like to come here often, aside from the ceremonies, and simply enjoy it."

Garth recovered himself. "Forgive me. I was distracted." He looked at the rest of the room: the webstrewn galleries, the cracked and dirtied colored windows, the smoke-softened column of sunlight. Despite the universal decay, the room was lovely, warm and inviting; perhaps the decay even helped, softening harsh colors, rounding sharp edges, blurring the flaws. It struck him that there was something very strange about such beauty in such a place. Should not the temple of decay be foul and malodorous? Should it not be slimy and rotting?

"It is not what I had expected," he said truthfully, when he saw that the priestess was still awaiting some comment.

"Oh?"

"No. I…I had thought there would be an idol."

"Perhaps there was, once; much of the original interior fell to dust long ago. As is inevitable for our faith, every part of the temple has been refurbished at least once; since we are required to use only perishable materials and to do what we can to promote their decay, eventually they fall away completely and must be replaced if the temple's usefulness is to continue. Save for the stone and some of the glass, I doubt any of the present structure is more than four or five centuries old."

"Four or five…" Garth was dumbfounded; his native city of Ordunin was less than three hundred and fifty years old, the most ancient surviving overman community. "How old is the temple?"

"Oh, it's only about two or three thousand years old, but of course it's not the original either; there has been a temple of P'hul ever since Dыsarra was founded."

"When was that?"

"Nobody really knows."

"Oh." It had not occurred to Garth that the city, or any city, could be more than two thousand years old. He struggled to accept such a concept.

"In any case, there has been no idol in my lifetime."

"Oh." Garth had hoped to somehow bring the conversation to the empty altar unobtrusively, but seemed to be meeting with no success-although these digressions were informative. He decided that a more direct approach was in order.

"I see your altar is empty, while the other temples in the city keep precious objects or ceremonial devices there."

"I know nothing of what the others do. We keep nothing upon the altar. It serves merely as a centerpiece for our rituals. Supplicants sometimes pray atop it; it is said such prayers are especially heeded."

"Has there ever been anything kept upon it, then?"

"Not that I know of, save for the dust; that, of course, is everywhere. Why do you ask?"

Garth saw no reason to deny the truth. "I was asked-by a philosopher of sorts-to see if I could obtain what stood upon your altar."

"Oh, I see." She smiled, the expression all the more horrible in the wash of green light that fell across her from a nearby window. "It must have been a surprise to see it empty."

"Yes, it was."

"You are welcome to take the dust, if you wish."

"Thank you; I appreciate this courtesy."

"It makes no difference to us; we sweep off the altar every few months anyway."

"Oh." Garth pulled the bag from his belt and looked at it dubiously; it was of a moderately coarse weave. It was quite likely it wouldn't hold dust very well.

But then, how much could that matter? It was, all in all, only dust. He knew nothing of magicks, but surely dust was dust. Feeling foolish, he scraped up a heap of dust from the altar, gray fluff of no distinction whatsoever, and stuffed it into the bag. That done, he knotted it shut and shoved it back under his belt.

"Thank you," he said again.

"Is that all you came for, then?"

"Yes."

"So I have spoken to no purpose?"

Garth did not like the tone of the priestess' voice. "I have found your words very interesting, woman. Do not feel that you have wasted your time."

"Have I not?"

"No. This visit has been most informative, truly."

"It may be more than that, of course." Her smile had returned.

"How mean you?"

"You have been in our temple for some time; perhaps the hand of the goddess is already upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"All those who serve P'hul here bear her signs; her priests are the senile, the diseased, those with leprosy and cancer and tuberculosis and all the other wasting sicknesses. The very air of this shrine is rich in disease. You have spoken at length with a leper, where most men flee from my slightest touch. It is very likely that you already carry some illness within you; if not my own, then one of the others."

Garth said nothing; he felt a brief instant of panic, but suppressed it immediately, reminding himself that, despite what this creature might believe, no overman had ever contracted leprosy. Nor were most other diseases worth his concern; very few human diseases could affect overmen, and those that could were either not contagious, or of the more virulent and fast-acting sort, not wasting sicknesses. Overmen had their own ills.

"Shall I escort you out, then? You have what you came for."

"I am in no hurry. I do not wish to offend your goddess by so quickly shunning her shrine."

"Truly? Perhaps I have wronged you in my thoughts."

Garth shrugged.

There was a sound behind them; both turned to see a bent, shuffling figure at the head of the stair, on the far side of the antechamber beyond the still-open doors.

It was a man, clad in the soft gray robes of a priest of P'hul; he was shriveled with age and moved slowly, as if in pain. His hair was white and unkempt, straggling down about his face, tangling indistinguishably with his beard. He blinked at the overman and the priestess.

"Greetings, Tiris. This overman is a visitor to our temple." The priestess spoke loudly, slowly, enunciating every word as carefully as she could with her deformed lip. The old man shuffled nearer; she said softly to Garth, "His hearing is poor. Tiris is the oldest of our priests; he is said to have the special favor of the goddess, to see things that others do not."

Garth was not impressed. He had seen enough of humanity to suspect that men and women were far more gullible than his own people; age and a mysterious manner could be sufficient to create the reputation of a so-called wizard. He could not deny that true wizards existed and that magic was abroad in the world; he had been confronted with the real thing on several occasions. That did not mean that he was willing to bow before every crazed old man with a trick or two on hand. He said politely, "Greetings, Tiris."

The old man stopped and studied Garth thoroughly with squinting blue eyes. Suddenly, in a voice that did not shake, a voice that was far stronger than the man's withered form seemed capable of holding, he announced, "Greetings, Bheleu."