I moved back into his mind and planted there a thought.
“Renny,” he said to the cameraman, “frame the human and keep on him.”
“Are you kidding?” said the man on the camera, although he immediately focused on Alan. “He’s nobody, a pat, a suicide. Who cares?”
“I care.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t the one selling the jock itch spray and yeast infection ointment.”
“Just stay on him.”
“Got it.”
I withdrew from the human and looked at Diru. The goddess of Jaffri’s south niche was concentrating on Alan as was Lok from the opposite side of the ring. Neither one of the Jaffri Ring gods were doing well with the desecration of their niches. I asked them an ancient question: “Diru, Lok, you have the power. Why do you not sweep the trespassers and demons into the ring?”
“The test of the gods,” replied Diru, “is not to show if they can destroy. All beings can destroy.”
“It is to witness,” continued Lok, “that the gods love, assist, and protect those who seek the balance.” A human climbed upon Lok’s seemingly vacant pedestal for a better view and the god of the north niche bumped the creature off of the stand and onto his posterior. The human’s face looked shocked for a moment, then puzzled, then embarrassed that someone else might have seen him fall. A god had just touched him and his main concern was how it might appear to others. The universe was crippled indeed.
Tomas Holly, the assistant director with the hole in his soul, had witnessed the event. His brow wrinkled, he walked to the pedestal centered in the southern niche. It was cracked and split in several places, which is why no one had attempted to site a camera there or use it for an observation platform. It came up to the human’s waist. He lifted his arm and gingerly reached into the space above the crumbling slab of granite.
His fingers seemed to touch something, the something was Diru, and the god of the south niche took it for several moments before she gifted the human with a spark that caused him to withdraw his hand in haste. His frown became deeper.
The stands grew suddenly silent and Tomas Holly faced the ring to see the cause. Alan was walking toward the center of the ring.
“This is an unexpected turn,” said Ti Edge’s voice from the monitor. “Alan, the mystery man, is entering the center of the ring. “It’s almost—”
“Are those flowers he’s holding, Ti?” interrupted Del Nolan.
“Yes, Del. White and blue flowers. I don’t believe it, but, yes. He’s offering the white flowers to the south niche and the blue to the north. To the gods of those niches. He’s going to do the traditional consecration; something this ring hasn’t seen in over a century!”
“You mean like we talked about in the history segment? That’s insane,” said Del Nolan, a genuine note of feeling and concern in his voice. “Micki,” he said, “are you watching this?”
“Yes, Del.” And that was all she said.
Alan crossed his blades, placed them in the exact center of the ring, stood, bowed toward Lok, and then bowed toward Diru. He picked up the blades, and in one fluid motion threw them high into the air directly above him. The ring fell as silent as death. Lok reached out with his powerful hands, grabbed the blades, and drove them down toward Alan’s skull. Diru intervened and again the bell-shaped arc of the blades testified to the balance of the gods.
The stunned crowd exploded with cheers while Micki, Ti, and Del examined instant playbacks from several different angles. There were several interpretations offered by the sportscasters to explain the event that had just taken place before their eyes. Del Nolan spoke of wooden blades called boomerangs that could be thrown by an experienced hand to follow any path the thrower wished. Micki speculated about computer generated images, although she had watched Alan, not one of the monitors. Ti Edge was strangely silent.
Tomas Holly punched a button on his control panel, cutting off the audio signal, and spoke into his headset. “Ti. What was that?”
The Mieuran sportscaster looked around the camera, his eyes dazed. “I don’t know, Tomas. If it was a trick, I cannot see how it was done. Perhaps it was real.”
“If it was?”
The Mieuran shook his head in a very human gesture. “It couldn’t be, Tomas.”
“If it was?” he repeated.
“Then the niches are filled with gods, they are in balance, they controlled the fall of Alan’s blades, and will protect him in the ring.” He waved his hands about encompassing the south niche, the ring, the world, and the known universe. “And all of this — you, me — all is sham.”
The events that took place in the Jaffri Ring that day became legend. As the sixty-eight competitors made their first throw, fully a third of the blades were tossed along Alan’s path. Although eleven novices were taken dead or wounded from the ring after the first throw, not an edge had touched Alan. There was very little sports commentary, although the instant playbacks were run at varying speeds, filling the time until the next throw.
In another throw the remaining nine Mieuran novices were eliminated, along with four veterans who had taken paths too close to the human’s. And that during a throw where two thirds of the blades fell along Alan’s path.
“Burning bush,” muttered Tomas Holly. He blinked and glanced at the pedestal where he had touched a god. “The consecration, the blades, the rings, the whole damned sport.” He looked back at the ring, back at Alan, where another throw was about to commence. Instead of cheering and jeering, as was their custom, the crowd in the stands had been awed into silence, as had been their custom centuries before.
The glittering throwing knives arced above the ring, the competitors raced onto the sand, and Alan halted in the center and extended his hands up to catch Giya’s blades. A cloud of knives fell about him, stuck into the sand, and he simply stood there in that forest of sharpened steel, unharmed, holding his own blades high above his head.
A low moaning came from the stands, and I saw that many of the spectators were bent over with their faces covered, while others stared wide-eyed at Alan. The trustees called off the competition and the blade tossers, spectators, and television people went to their respective homes contemplating matters upon which they never expected to think.
“It is begun,” I said to Redgait after we had returned to the Diram Ring. “There are gods again above the sand at Jaffri. Our brothers and sisters go to reclaim all of the rings, the seasons, the elements, the stars.”
It was dark and Redgait stood until his face was among the stars. “All the gods are in their places, Ahnli. You have awakened them all.”
“I awakened them,” I said. “Alan gave them life. Alan gave life to the many worlds.”
“When Alan becomes corrupted and the blades take him, do we fade again? I already see packs of agents, promoters, and lawyers below, their hands filled with offers, their mouths filled with lies, searching for Alan. There is a renewal in the efforts to develop armor that looks like a naked body from a distance—“ He paused for a moment, then came his voice, low and puzzled. “Ahnli, my sister, we have more visitors at the Diram Ring.”
We came down from the stars and occupied our niches as we watched the western entrance. Two figures crossed the moat upon a raft. Their hands held lights that danced in the darkness. I looked closely and it was Ti Edge and the human, Tomas Holly. The raft struck the bank and the human held the raft against the bank while the Mieuran climbed up and held the rope while the human climbed the bank. At last they stood in the entrance to the ring. I could see that Ti Edge had a long leather case slung upon his back. The retired Mieuran fraud had brought his blades.