“Um. There's something you ought to see. In the . . . in the garden. Brother Nhumrod?”
The master of novices sat up. Brutha's face was a glowing picture of concern.
“What do you mean?” Brother Nhumrod said.
“In the garden. It's hard to explain. Um. I found out . . . where the voices were coming from, Brother Nhumrod. And you did say to be sure and tell you.”
The old priest gave Brutha a sharp look. But if ever there was a person without guile or any kind of subtlety, it was Brutha.
Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.
The Citadel had a lot of underground. There were the pits and tunnels of the Quisition. There were cellars and sewers, forgotten rooms, dead ends, spaces behind ancient walls, even natural caves in the bedrock itself.
This was such a cave. Smoke from the fire in the middle of the floor found its way out through a crack in the roof and, eventually, into the maze of uncountable chimneys and light-wells above.
There were a dozen figures in the dancing shadows. They wore rough hoods over nondescript clothes-crude things made of rags, nothing that couldn't easily be burned after the meeting so that the wandering fingers of the Quisition would find nothing incriminating. Something about the way most of them moved suggested men who were used to carrying weapons. Here and there, clues. A stance. The turn of a word.
er man was in fact there. They were not talking to Vorbis. It was one of those kinds of meeting. Lots of people didn't talk to Vorbis, and went out of their way not have meetings with him. Some of the abbots from the distant monasteries had recently been summoned to the Citadel, traveling secretly for up to a week across tortuous terrain, just so they definitely wouldn't join the shadowy figures visiting Vorbis's room. In the last few months, Vorbis had apparently had about as many visitors as the Man in the Iron Mask.
Nor were they talking. But if they had been there, and if they had been having a conversation, it would have gone like this:
“And now,” said Vorbis, “the matter of Ephebe.”
Bishop Drunah shrugged.[3]
“Of no consequence, they say. No threat.”
The two men looked at Vorbis, a man who never raised his voice. It was very hard to tell what Vorbis was thinking, often even after he had told you.
“Really? Is this what we've come to?” he said. “No threat? After what they did to poor Brother Murduck? The insults to Om? This must not pass. What is proposed to be done?”
“No more fighting,” said Fri'it. “They fight like madmen. No. We've lost too many already.”
“They have strong gods,” said Drunah.
“They have better bows,” said Fri'it.
“There is no God but Om,” said Vorbis. “What the Ephebians believe they worship are nothing but djinns and demons. If it can be called worship. Have you seen this?”
He pushed forward a scroll of paper.
“What is it?” said Fri'it cautiously.
“A lie. A history that does not exist and never existed . . . the . . . the things . . .” Vorbis hesitated, trying to remember a word that had long since fallen into disuse, “. . . like the . . . tales told to children, who are too young . . . words for people to say . . . the . . .”
“Oh. A play,” said Fri'it. Vorbis's gaze nailed him to the wall.
“You know of these things?”
"I-when I traveled in Klatch once- Fri'it stuttered. He visibly pulled himself together. He had commanded one hundred thousand men in battle. He didn't deserve this.
He found he didn't dare look at Vorbis's expression.
“They dance dances,” he said limply. "On their holy days. The women have bells on their . . . And sing songs. All about the early days of the worlds, when the gods-
He faded. “It was disgusting,” he said. He clicked his knuckles, a habit of his whenever he was worried.
“This one has their gods in it,” said Vorbis. "Men in masks. Can you believe that? They have a god of wine. A drunken old man! And people say Ephebe is no threat! And this-