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“I’ve prayed,” Incus managed to gasp as Hammerstone hoisted him, “all morning, prayed upon my knees with tears and bitterest groans — don’t drop me, Hammerstone my son, your shoulders are slippery — for a sign of favor from Surging Scylla or any other god, the smallest morsel of assistance, the most humble crumb of succor in my divinely ordained mission.”
“I’d say maybe you got it,” Auk told him. “What do you think, Terrible Tartaros?”
Briefly, the blind god’s hand tightened on his. “Release the woman, Auk my noctolater. I am about to leave you. I have mended your mind, insofar as I am able.”
Auk turned, although he knew he could not see the god.
“It will heal itself soon of the damage that remains. I have explained your task, and you have learned better than I could have hoped. Direct your gaze to the Sacred Window, Auk my noctolater.”
“This’s the Plan, Terrible Tartaros. Emptying the whole whorl. I can’t do that by myself!”
“Look at the screen, Auk. At the Sacred Window. This is the last instruction I shall give you.”
Auk sank to his knees. Faintly, through the open door, the silver glow shone from the far end of the manteion. “Get out of my way, Hammerstone! I got to see the Window.”
“Farewell, Auk. May neither of us forget the prayers you offered nightside, while I hearkened invisible in your glass.”
Auk stood up, alone.
“You’re crying.” Hyacinth stepped closer to peer at him. “Auk, you’re crying.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.” He wiped his streaming eyes with his fingers. “I never had any father.”
“I do, and he’s a pig’s arse.” Worshippers pushed past them caryying armloads of wood; some paused to stare.
“I got to get up there and do it. You want to go, go on. I won’t stop you.”
“I can leave anytime I want to?”
“Yeah, Hy. Beat the hoof.”
“Then I’m going to — no, that’s abram. G’bye, Bruiser.” Her lips brushed his.
“Auk my son!” Incus stood beside the altar, directing the laying of the fire. “We’ve more wood than we require. Tell them to desist.”
He did, happy to have something to do.
At Silk’s ambion, Incus drew himself up beyond his full height, rising on his toes. “A holy augur’s blessing upon each and every one of you, my children. Silence, back there! This is a manteion, a house sacred to the immortal gods.” It was the hour he had dreamed of since childhood.
“Hammerstone, my son. It is best to offer our pious gifts upon a fire kindled directly from the beneficent rays. This is not accorded us on this day of darkness. If you will look in the sacristy, behind the Sacred Window, you may discover a fire-keeper, a vessel of metal or even lowly terra cotta safeguarding the holy spark against such an hour as this.”
“I’m on it, Patera.”
Incus returned his attention to the congregation. “At this point, my children, I am severely tempted to discover to you my own identity, and the multifarious vicissitudes and tribulations through which I come to you today. I refrain, however. I am an augur, as you see. I am that augur whom Surfeiting Scylla has designated Prolocutor-to-be, charged with the utter destruction of the Ayunta—”
For half a minute, their cheers silenced him.
“I am in addition — might I say comrade, Auk? A fellow sufferer at least of Auk’s.”
From the manteion floor Auk shouted, “A dimber mate!”
“Thank you. Beset, as you should know, by woe and eager for a situation of venerational tranquility, I bethought me of this manteion, the new calde’s own, as a place to which I might retire, pray and contemplate the inscrutable ways of the gods. I had not seen it and had heard much of it during the brief days since Auk, my dear friend Hammerstone—”
“I got it right here, Patera.” Hammerstone displayed a pierced clay pot from which a feeble crimson glow proceeded.
“Auk, are you to assist me? Is that to be our procedure?”
A seemingly disembodied voice called, “He has to kill ’em!”
“Then he shall, and with my blessing. What of the liturgy, however? Auk?”
Auk had climbed the steps to the altar. “I don’t know the words, Patera. You’ll have to do it.”
“I shall. And if Auk is to assist, why need my dear friend Hammerstone be excluded? Put the sacred flame to this fuel, if you will, Hammerstone.
“I obtained the key, journeyed hence, and locked myself in, counting the lock’s blessed squeakings among the treasures of my spirit. I came, I say, in search of quiet, resolved upon prayer and suppication. I found it, as I had hoped, and spent hours upon my knees, the least supplicant of the immortal gods. It is a practice I recommend to you without reservation.”
A tongue of fire had sprung up where Hammerstone fa
“I was safe from all interruption. Or so I thought. Then you arrived, a tumultuous throng, elevating me to this sacred ambion. How clearly the gods speak! Surmounting Scylla had lifted me to the Prolocutorship. Now was I cautioned that the Prolocutor — I — can be no holy recluse, however he may long for peace. Pray for me, my children, as I pray for myself. Let me not forget my lesson!
“Auk, my son. Have you the knife of sacrifice?”
Auk drew his boot knife. “This’s all I got, Patera.”
“Then it must suffice. Bring it to me and I shall bless it.” Incus did so, tracing the sign of addition over the blade. Before he finished, Hammerstone had been forced to step back from the leaping flames.
“In a sacred ceremony more regular, I should now ask their presenters to which of the Nine, or other immortal gods, they wished to offer the fair victims. Today, however—”
Someone shouted, “To Tartaros! He’s always on him!”
“They ain’t black,” Auk told the speaker.
Incus nodded solemnly. “In the present instance that must be dispensed with. None are white. Nor are any black, as my erstwhile comrade has rightly said. Therefore each shall be offered to all the gods.”
After glancing at the first victim, Incus faced the Sacred Window, his arms and his voice raised dramatically. “Accept all you gods, the sacrifice of this fine piglet. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will — will—”
He got no further.
The silver radiance showed flecks of color, faded pastels that might have been shadows or phantoms, the visual illusions of disordered sight, dabs of rose and azure that blossomed and withered, shot with pearl and ebony.
Poised beside the young pig, Auk dropped his knife and fell to his knees. Momentarily it seemed that he could make out a face on the left. Then another, wholly different, on the right. A voice spoke, such a voice as Auk had never heard, filled with the roar of mighty engines. It praised him and urged him to seek something or someone. Now and again, though only now and again, he heard or at least believed he heard, a term he knew: ghost, augur, plan. Then silence.
Incus, too, was on his knees; his hands were clasped, his face that of a child.
The piglet had vanished, drawn perhaps into the Window, or perhaps merely fled through the dim manteion and out into the windy winter morning.