The Seven Altars of Dusarra

CHAPTER SIX

Something over an hour later he emerged from between two hills to find himself with a clear view of Dыsarra crowning the long, smooth slope that rose in front of him. Moonlight glimmered from the city's domes and towers, a soft silver that seemed to give no light at all; comparing the silhouetted buildings with the smoky red sky behind them, Garth realized that they were all dead black in color, and that therefore even the brightest moonlight could not illumine them. The city was walled, though Garth thought it unlikely any wars were ever fought in such rugged land; the wall, too, appeared to be built of the same black stone. In the poor light Garth could not see where the wall ended and the ground below began; the slope before him appeared to be a smooth sheet of darkness that blended into the city without break. Peering closely, Garth realized that the hillside was, in fact, an ancient lava flow; it was a single vast slab of stone, where nothing grew. The road he followed ended at its foot, leaving the traveler to follow whatever route he chose across that rocky expanse.

He urged his mount forward onto the stone; Koros obeyed without protest. They had come to the end of the fresh cinders a league or so back, where the road had curved toward the north; whichever volcano had thrown them up, it was apparently not the one that towered above Dыsarra, lighting the sky before them a murky red.

As they made their way up the slope, something caught Garth's eye; there was something about the city wall that didn't look right. He stared harder, and saw it again; there was a glimmer of light directly in front of them, apparently in the middle of the wall. Could someone be camped in front of the gate? It was possible, but the light somehow didn't look like a campfire, nor did it look to be on the slope outside the walls. A window in the wall, perhaps, with a lighted guardroom beyond? That might be, except that it must be an inordinately large window to be so visible at this distance; although difficult to judge exactly at night, Garth was sure there was still another mile or so of this rocky slope to be climbed.

A few moments later he realized what it was; the city gates were open, and the square just inside was lit all around with torches.

It was very nearly midnight, yet Dыsarra's gates were wide open, as if it were noon of market day. Garth wondered what kind of strange city he was approaching; could this be some sort of religious festival? Were they so trusting of strangers that they left the gates open at all times? If that was it, then why were the walls maintained, and why was the market lit? No, that could not be the reason, for he could make out vague shapes moving about; there were people there, just exactly as if the city's inhabitants were going about their ordinary business in the dead of night. He began to hope that it was, in fact, some kind of holiday or religious event; that at least would be understandable.

It suddenly struck him that his stealthy nighttime approach wasn't going to make much difference after all. Well, he thought, at least by torchlight it would be less obvious that he was an overman than it would be at noon. But then again, a city that lived by night might well sleep by day, and he might have done better to approach by daylight.

No, that was absurd; there had to be some sane reason for this nocturnal activity. He could not imagine what it could be, but there must be one. He'd know soon enough; he gave up wondering and rode on.

Dыsarra, he decided as he rode through the gate, was a very strange city, at least by his standards; but then, he had not actually traveled that much. Outside his own land he had seen only Skelleth, Weideth, and Mormoreth, and from a distance Ur-Dormulk; Mormoreth was a dead city, Skelleth might as well be, Weideth was only a village, and Ur-Dormulk he had not gone within a mile of. Perhaps Dыsarra was normal, and the others strange. He halted his mount, and looked about the square he found himself in.

It was a fairly conventional marketplace; merchants, stalls lined every side, each with torches illuminating it, one or two torches per stall. The market was busy; men and women strolled about or rushed, haggled over prices, gossiped with friends, and generally did whatever people ordinarily did in a city market. Only the stars overhead and the flickering torchlight made the scene seem unnatural.

Garth noticed with interest that the natives dressed differently from the people of Skelleth; where the men of Skelleth wore tunic and trousers and the women wore blouse and skirt, here both sexes wore long, shapeless robes. The poverty-stricken people of Skelleth could afford only the drabbest of dyes, but here Garth saw many attired in blood-red as well as the more usual browns, grays, white and black. The majority seemed to be wearing a dark blue shade; the current fashion, no doubt, or perhaps representative of some social class. Many had hoods pulled up over their heads.

Well, he should be able to blend in reasonably well; although for most of the journey he had worn openly his breastplate, helmet, and mail, with his sword on his belt-a welcome change from the scratching hilt of his stiletto, which was packed away in his bundle of supplies-he had had the foresight to throw his rough brown cloak on before approaching the city. The trader's hat he had worn in Skelleth was not appropriate here; none of the natives wore any headgear but the loose hood. His cloak naturally included a hood, though he had never had occasion to wear it. He pulled it up, then paused; he would already stand out as remarkably tall, and should do nothing to exaggerate his height. He removed his helmet, then pulled the hood into place before stuffing the headpiece into the pack behind him.

As yet, he had seen no sign that anyone had noticed his presence, which was all to the good; they were all too busy with their own concerns. It was odd that there was no guard on the gate, though.

He dismounted and ambled casually forward, stooping to disguise his height, hoping that in the uneven torchlight no one would notice that he wasn't human. They would, of course, notice Koros; there was no disguising a warbeast. But there was also no cause to object strenuously to a warbeast, most particularly since these people probably had no idea what one was.

Of course, he wouldn't want to take the beast along when he went temple-robbing; he would have to find an inn with a good stable. Besides needing a place to leave Koros, he was hungry and thirsty, and a tavern would undoubtedly be a good place to pick up information about the temples, as well. It seemed reasonable that there would be an inn facing on the square, convenient to the gate but, studying the shadowy stone facades behind the merchants' stalls, he could see no signboards indicating one, nor other evidence of one's existence. With a mental shrug, he stepped up to the nearest stall, where a silk dealer debated the value of a bolt of his best bleached fabric with a would-be buyer.

He waited politely until the two arrived at a mutually satisfactory price; then, while the customer carefully counted out his hoarded coins, he inquired of the merchant, "Is there a good inn to be found near here? I have traveled far."

The merchant, eagerly watching the small pile of silver grow, said, "There's the Inn of the Seven Stars."

"Could you direct me there, then?"

Pointing without looking up, he said, "Take the first street on the left."

"My thanks." There had certainly been no danger there of being spotted as an overman; neither man had looked at him at all. He returned to where Koros stood, just inside the gate, and told the warbeast to follow him; finding the break in the ring of booths and buildings that marked a street, first one on the left, he led the warbeast through the crowd into the darkness of what proved little more than an alleyway. No one took undue notice of him or his beast; he decided that Dыsarra must be more cosmopolitan than he had thought, if its people were so blasй about such creatures in their midst.

The alley was unlit and almost uninhabited; after the relative glare of the market it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust. Like their countrymen in the market, the few people who strolled the byway paid Garth and Koros no heed. Here all wore their hoods up and pulled well forward, unlike the market where the bare-headed predominated.

He made his way carefully through the gloom; the shadows of the buildings on either side kept the moonlight from lighting the way adequately, but the narrow street was clear of obstructions. At least this inn stood on a cleaner street than the King's Inn, Garth thought.

He rounded a slight curve, and found the way brighter; light poured from around a second turn, which brought the street back to its original direction. He turned the second corner, and had found the inn; the light poured from its broad front window, and he could hear voices within. The door stood open, not surprising on a warm summer night, and above it hung a sign; the light from the window let him make out seven stars arranged in an oval, white paint on blue. A wide arch just beyond led, he hoped, to an attached stable. He crossed the field of light, and found a boy asleep in the archway. The distinctive odors of horse and ox reached his slit nostrils, convincing him that his hopes were correct. He prodded the boy gently with a booted toe.

The lad woke up immediately and sprang to his feet, but said nothing.

"I need stabling for my mount."

"One mark the night, sir, and feed is extra."

"I have no local currency; will this do?" He produced his smallest gold coin, and dropped it in the boy's hand. The lad looked at it, then carried it over to the light that spilled from the tavern door.

He studied it for a long minute, then asked, "What is it?"

"A northern gold piece."

"Gold?" The boy looked at it again, then tested it with his teeth.

"Of course it's gold."

"Yes, sir; but we see little gold here. Most pay in silver. My apologies for the delay; the third stall is yours, my lord." He bowed.

Garth ignored the stable-boy's obsequiousness and led Koros to the indicated stall, which proved spacious enough and well lined with straw, though not particularly clean. A bucket of passably clear water hung from one side, and in view of its recent feeding Garth saw no need to provide the warbeast with any other sustenance. He removed pack and saddle and placed them to one side, then told Koros to stay and headed for the tavern door. He had no worries that anyone might disturb his supplies; anybody fool enough to try would be ripped to pieces immediately. A warbeast was a very useful thing to have.

Although from the street the tavern had seemed brightly lit, once inside Garth found it otherwise; the light came from a row of lanterns hung across the window and from two low-burning hearthfires, one at either end of the main room, and from nowhere else, so that most of the room remained dim and shadowed. The chimneys did not seem to draw well either; a haze of smoke seemed to hang over everything.

A dozen assorted locals adorned the various tables that were scattered about, and there was not a lone innkeeper, as Garth had expected, but two serving-maids and a boy, all adolescent, distinguishable from their patrons by virtue of gray aprons worn over their robes. Probably the innkeeper's offspring, he decided, and their father must be in the kitchen or ending to rooms upstairs.

He beckoned to the nearer girl; she scurried over, leaving the spit she had been turning, which held a shapeless lump of meat a foot or so above one of the fires. "Yes, sir?" she said.

"Bring me ale and meat; and have you any fruit? I could use something sweet." Garth spoke in a voice well above his natural range and stood stooping to disguise his inhuman height, his hood pulled well forward.

"Yes, sir." She hurried off, and he seated himself at a convenient table.

As he waited for his food and drink he studied his surroundings; he wanted someone to talk to, someone who would tell him about the city and the temples. What he saw were a dozen robed, hooded figures huddled over their tables, speaking little to each other, let alone to a stranger who would not allow his face to be seen. The universal Dыsarran garb made him wonder momentarily if the Forgotten King hailed from this strange city, but on consideration he decided it was unlikely. The King wore yellow, a color he had not seen displayed anywhere in this country, and went in rags despite his claim of royalty, while here, dark colors predominated and most wore clothing in far better shape than his own travel-worn cloak. Further, the King was pale-skinned, while the Dыsarrans, from what he could see, were of a middling shade, lighter than his own hide but browner than the men of Skelleth; and finally, the Dыsarran robes tended to be loose and flowing, while the King kept his garments wrapped tightly about him.

But of course, Garth suddenly realized, not everyone in the room wore the standard robe and hood; the two serving-maids and their brother; if such he was, wore shorter, low-necked robes with no hoods, dark blue in color. All three were barefoot, with long brown hair tied back in single braids down their backs. The similarity in hair color further convinced Garth that they were siblings, as the shade and texture were almost identical.

These three might be more willing to converse than their customers; filling an eager ear would surely be more pleasant to such young folk than carting mugs and plates about. He paid them more attention than he had.

The boy was the youngest, probably well short of his full height, and still totally innocent of any beard; Garth was no judge of human ages, but the lad was plainly far from maturity. As such, he would probably be limited in his knowledge; among overmen, at least, religion and philosophy were not the concerns of children, so Garth guessed that the boy would know nothing of the temples.

Of the two girls, there seemed little to choose, from the overman's point of view; they were of about the same size, and presumably therefore near the same age. They were as tall as many adult human women; Garth wondered again at the quirk of nature that made men and women so different in size, unlike overman and overwomen. Women seemed such small, fragile things, things, anal oddly proportioned, at that.

One girl seemed slightly the more active of the two; Garth decided she must be the younger. It was her older sister he had spoken to when he arrived, and it would presumably be the older who would bring his food. In that case, he would simply speak to her when his meal was ready.

Even as he decided this, the girl emerged from a door at the rear carrying a heaping plate and full mug, which she balanced easily as she crossed the room to set them on the table before him.

"My thanks." He kept his face hidden and his voice high as he looked at his meal; beside the expected slices of red meat were three chunks of some pasty yellowish substance, and a curious red fruit, like none he was familiar with, adorned one edge. "What are these?" he asked, indicating these strangers.

"Roast potato, sir. And our last good apple; we have no other fruit in store at present."

Both names were meaningless to the overman; he could not even be sure of their spelling, through the girl's thick Dыsarran accent. At least Nekutta spoke the same language as Eramma and the other northern lands, even if they spoke it strangely. Still, the "apple" was plainly a local fruit; the potato was another matter.

"What is potato?"

"Ah? Oh, you're joking!"

"No; I have traveled far."

"It's…it's a root, a vegetable. Eat it, and see." The girl was flustered; Garth was not sure if that was desirable or not. He did have her talking.

"Here, sit down; I will try this root of yours, but I have some questions about your city. Perhaps you can answer them."

"But…"

"I am a paying customer, am I not? You can spare a few minutes." He tapped the table with a gold coin, then suddenly realized that it was a mistake to draw attention to his inhuman hands; he dropped the coin, and drew his hand back out of sight. The girl apparently hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary; she stared at the coin for a moment, then snatched it up and dropped it down the neckline of her robe. Garth was amused. He had never before seen a human keep anything there, but it seemed a logical place for a woman to put a pocket. The coin had been a fullsized gold piece, not one of the little bits such as he had given the stable-boy, and he remarked, "That will cover the meal as well, will it not?"

"Oh, yes!" The girl dropped herself into the chair opposite him, smiling.

"Good. Tell me of your city; I am a wanderer from far to the east."

"What is there to say?"

"Ah…" Garth had not expected that response. He was not experienced in dealing with humans. "Why is the marketplace so busy in the middle of the night? And the gate wide open?"

"It always is."

That demolished the religious festival theory once and for all. "But why? In most cities business is a matter for daylight, and the night is given to sleep."

"But this is Dыsarra!" Her tone implied, even to the untrained ear of an overman, that he was being purposely dense. He picked up a chunk of potato on his knife and ate it, while considering this; the stuff seemed edible, but not particularly tasty.

"And what is so special about Dыsarra?"

"You do not know?"

"No."

"The very name tells you."

Garth had paid little attention to the name, assuming it nothing but a noise that represented this particular place; he considered it a bit more carefully, and still saw nothing significant in it. The ending was a standard designation for a gathering place, and the root, Dыs, was completely unknown to him.

"I do not understand."

"`Dыsarra' means `the place of the Dark Gods' Here we worship the gods shunned by the outside world; mostly Tema, the goddess of night. Perhaps, stranger, you have made a mistake in coming here if you did not know that."

"Perhaps I have." He sat silently for a moment, thinking.

He should have expected something like this from the Forgotten King. He knew very little about human religions, beyond the fact that no two seemed to agree about anything, but he had heard of the Dark Gods; they were supposed to demand human sacrifices, and to be wholly evil in nature. It had been rumored that the Baron of Skelleth was a secret devotee of theirs, and that had been considered sufficient grounds for immediate execution if proven; it remained only a vague rumor. It was said that, unlike most gods, they still interfered directly in mortal affairs, and would grant their followers special powers and abilities in exchange for gruesome payments of blood, death, and torture. Evil wizards were said to have sold themselves-their souls, to use the human term that overmen did not use-to the Dark Gods.

And the entire city of Dыsarra worshipped these deities? It seemed incredible. How could a thinking being worship evil?

"Tell me, then, about these gods." At least the conversation had taken a turn toward the temples without obviously being steered there.

"There are seven of them, the seven Lords of Dыs, the counterparts to the seven Lords of Eir worshipped elsewhere. I know very little about most of them; I am a follower of Tema, like the rest of my family."

"How did you come to be such?"

"I was brought up in the faith, of course."

"How did the city come to worship these gods?"

"I don't know; it always has. My father told me once that it was part of a cosmic balance that these misunderstood and maligned gods should have one city of their own."

"Are they not evil?"

"Tema is not!" Her face was suddenly animated, and Garth was taken aback by her ferocity. "Tema is beautiful! The night is wonderful, cool and calm; I would never be a day worshipper! How can people live with all that glaring light? And all the sweaty heat? And all the beasts roam by day, and insects. The sun is so bright you cannot look at it, and it drowns out all the beauty of the flames. There are no stars in the daytime! I…" She subsided suddenly. "Forgive me."

"No, forgive me; I did not mean to offend you. In other lands I have visited, the Dark Gods are thought to be the gods of evil."

She shrugged. "They are obviously ignorant heathens. There are no evil gods, really; evil is just misunderstandings between people, or between people and the gods. That's what the priests say."

"I see. You worship the night-goddess. What of the other six?"

"They have their followers, too, but I do not heed them. I sometimes think that some of them are evil, despite what the priests say. Aghad, for example; his followers make my skin crawl, and his priests frighten me. I have seen them gathering at his temple. And of course, no one worships The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, though he has a temple."

Garth began to have a rather unsettled feeling; he had heard of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken. That was the god of death, known throughout the world; it was said that to speak his true name was to die instantly. And they worshipped him here?

No, the girl had just said that they did not, but that there was a temple dedicated to him. Was it one of the seven he would have to rob?

It must be; everyone seemed to agree that there were only seven temples in Dыsarra. Although he would not admit to being in any way superstitious, and although his own people insisted that either there were no gods or they did not meddle in the affairs of mortals, he did not care to rob the temple of Death.

On the other hand, his practical sense told him, if there were no worshippers, it would be unguarded and the easiest of the lot.

"Tell me who the seven gods are."

"You mean the seven who have temples?"

"Are there others?"

"Oh, yes; there's Tema's daughter Mei, the lady of the moon, and any number of others."

"Just tell me the seven."

"Bheleu, P'hul, Sai, Aghad, Andhur Regvos, and Tema."

"That's only six, if I heard you rightly."

"Well and there's the Unnamed God. You know."

"Oh, of course." It was apparently considered bad luck to mention the death-god too often even by circumlocution. "I know him, and P'hul, and you have told me Tema is the goddess of the night; who are the others?"

"Bheleu is god of destruction and war, I think. Andhur Regvos is the god of darkness."

"Why has he got two names?"

"I don't know."

"Oh. Go on; what about the other two?"

"I don't know; Aghad and Sai are secret. Their temples admit no outsiders. They both…well, that's just a rumor. Never mind."

"And all the city lives by night, to accord with their religion?"

"Oh, no! Not all! Only the worshippers of night and darkness. But we're most of the city. I don't know anyone who lives by day, but of course that's partly because I'm asleep all day."

"I am interested in this; could I visit the temples?"

"I don't know about the others, but I can take you to the temple of Tema."

"Good. But first," he said, realizing that he had been talking while his food grew cold and that he was ravenously hungry, "I will eat."

He did so, and found the food and drink good; the girl laughed gaily when he tried to eat the apple core and all.