“Well,” he said, “does it?”
“Does what?”
“Make a sound. If it falls down when no one's there to hear it.”
“Who cares?”
The party had reached a gateway in the wall that ran around the top of the rock in much the same way that a headband encircles a head. The Ephebian captain stopped, and turned.
“The . . . visitors . . . must be blindfolded,” he said.
“That is outrageous!” said Vorbis. “We are here on a mission of diplomacy!”
“That is not my business,” said the captain. “My business is to say: If you go through this gate you go blindfolded. You don't have to be blindfolded. You can stay outside. But if you want to go through, you got to wear a blindfold. This is one of them life choices.”
One of the subdeacons whispered in Vorbis's ear. He held a brief sotto voce conversation with the leader of the Omnian guard.
“Very well,” he said, “under protest.”
The blindfold was quite soft, and totally opaque. But as Brutha was led . . .
. . . ten paces along a passage, and then left five paces, then diagonally forward and left threeand-a-half paces, and right one hundred and three paces, down three steps, and turned around seventeen-and-one-quarter times, and forward nine paces, and left one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and pause three seconds, and right two paces, and back two paces, and left two paces, and turned threeand-a-half times, and wait one second, and up three steps, and right twenty paces, and turned around five-and-a-quarter times, and left fifteen paces, and forward seven paces, and right eighteen paces, and up seven steps, and diagonally forward, and pause two seconds, right four paces, and down a slope that went down a meter every ten paces for thirty paces, and then turned around seven-and-a-half times, and forward six paces . . .
o;What?”
Om sighed. “If I don't concentrate, I think like a tortoise!”
“What? You mean slowly?”
“No! Tortoises are cynics. They always expect the worst.”
,Why?"
“I don't know. Because it often happens to them, I suppose.”
Brutha stared around at Ephebe. Guards with helmets crested with plumes that looked like horses' tails gone rogue marched on either side of the column. A few Ephebian citizens watched idly from the roadside. They looked surprisingly like the people at home, and not like two-legged demons at all.
“They're people,” he said.
“Full marks for comparative anthropology.”
“Brother Nhumrod said Ephebians eat human flesh,” said Brutha. “He wouldn't tell lies.”
A small boy regarded Brutha thoughtfully while excavating a nostril. If it was a demon in human form, it was an extremely good actor.
At intervals along the road from the docks were white stone statues. Brutha had never seen statues before. Apart from the statues of the SeptArchs, of course, but that wasn't the same thing.
“What are they?”
"Well, the tubby one with the toga is Tuvelpit, the God of Wine. They call him Smimto in Tsort. And the broad with the hairdo is Astoria, Goddess of Love. A complete bubblehead. The ugly one is Offler the Crocodile God. Not a local boy. He's Klatchian originally, but the Ephebians heard about him and thought he was a good idea. Note the teeth. Good teeth. Good teeth. Then the one with the snakepit hairdo is-
“You talk about them as if they were real,” said Brutha.
“They are.”
“There is no other god but you. You told Ossory that.”
“Well. You know. I exaggerated a bit. But they're not that good. There's one of 'em that sits around playing a flute most of the time and chasing milkmaids. I don't call that very divine. Call that very divine? I don't.”