Tomas Holly played his light around the interior of the arena. “Someone’s been here,” he said. “It’s deserted now.”
“Deserted?” the Mieuran growled. “Did the Jaffri Ring teach you nothing?”
“I meant I don’t see anyone. Are you sure this is the place?”
“This is the place. There is only one Diram Ring.”
“Maybe you heard it wrong on the playback. It might’ve been something that sounded like that.”
Ti Edge spoke very clearly, “This is the place.”
After an uncomfortable pause, the human walked until he came to the center of the ring. Once there he stopped, examined the sand at his feet, then played his light along the walls, stopping first upon my niche, and then upon Redgait’s. Raising the level of his beam above the wall, he let the light play among the stands, crumbling and overgrown with ilaya trees and great clumps of saw-toothed fina grass.
He turned off his light and said out loud, “Our researchers managed to find out the names of the niche spirits of the Jaffri Ring. Diru and Lok. They will not speak with us. Or is it that they cannot speak with us?” He waited for a long moment. I could see Redgait silently quaking with laughter.
“My sister,” he said at last, “They have come to put us on the television.”
Redgait never was one for looking into someone’s heart. I looked into Ti Edge’s heart and read what was there. I looked into Tomas Holly’s heart and read what was there. Their superiors in the television company had sent them to put “whatever these beings are” on the television, but that was not why they were in the Diram Ring. Each one had his own reason.
I cupped my hand above the ring and flooded it with a dome of light. The Mieuran stopped breathing and the human dropped his lighting device. I appeared to them as a mist and said to the human, “Gods have souls, Thomas Holly. I would not let you steal mine.”
The human withdrew an instrument from his pocket and looked at it. “It doesn’t show anything,” he muttered. Looking up from his instrument he said to me, “It doesn’t show anything. If you are real, and you are what you say you are, show yourselves.”
I could feel the heat of anger coming from the north niche as Redgait appeared as a column of molten metal. “The proof was in the consecration at the Jaffri Ring, human. The proof was in the life of Alan.”
Tomas Holly pressed a button on his instrument and listened. “No audio, no fields, no nothin’.”
Redgait’s spidery black arm reached into the night sky and the instrument in the human’s hands began smoking. Tomas dropped it and watched as the thing melted, burst into flames, and burned away, leaving the sand as clean as Alan had left it. “Now your instrument showed something,” sneered Redgait. “And even that is not sufficient evidence to one who begins his search by assuming the object of his quest does not exist.”
Redgait circled the ring with fire, turned the sand to water, and sent the two creatures to undersea worlds filled with great beauties and equally great horrors. After a moment of this, I saw a shadow of sadness and despair cross my brother’s face. “This is childish of me, Ahnli. Why do you let me go on so?”
“We must have faith in them, my brother. It is no less than what we ask of them.”
“To have faith in them is almost beyond my powers.”
I brought up the creatures and brought the Diram Ring back to the dark, dusty ruin it had been for over a century. As Ti Edge and Tomas Holly gasped on the sand, I said to my brother, “It is perhaps even more difficult for them to have faith in us.”
After a long silence, broken only by the coughing and breathing of the Mieuran and the human, Tomas Holly struggled into a sitting position and said, “Alan has disappeared. No one can find him. The Mieuran who registered as his manager is dead. According to the local records, he’s been dead for years. The offers that are waiting for Alan are too incredible to be believed. If you know where he is you have a responsibility to him to tell me.”
“Ril is dead?” Redgait asked me, allowing the pair on the sand to hear him.
I looked. “Yes, brother. For many years now.”
“There is another among us, then, my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Another what?” demanded Tomas Holly as he got to his feet. “Another what?”
I filled the ring with pale blue light as I took human form and faced the man with the red hair. “What you want most in the universe, Tomas Holly, is the thing you cannot trust yourself to believe.”
“There is another what?” he demanded.
Redgait took human shape and stood beside me. “Another god,” he answered.
“God? Gods?” The human shook his head and held out his hands. “Is this a word that represents a pantheon of supernatural creatures, supreme beings, or perhaps only a race that exists in some part on another plane of existence? Just another race?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And much more and much less.”
The battle that waged behind Tomas Holly’s eyes reached a climax, then his face grew grim, his gaze cast downward. He did not look up as he said, “Where’s Alan?”
“Wherever you need him,” I answered.
“I need him in Araak within the next few days to sign with my network. That’s where I need him.”
“No, Tomas.” I reached out my hand, entered his chest, and put my hand into that great hole that was his soul. “Here is where you need him. Humans have gods, too. Alan is a human god.” I withdrew my hand as the human gaped at me.
“Alan is a god?”
“Search for him, Tomas. It may take the rest of your days, but you will find him.”
I faced the Mieuran, Ti Edge. He was still seated upon the sand, his gaudy clothing soaked. As he looked at me I altered my shape to fit his eyes. “Here I am, Tijia,” I said, using his given name.
He looked down at my feet, his face cast in shame. “For my lifetime, goddess, I have desecrated your temple, used it for fraud, sold its pieces to strangers, and brought murder to its sands. I scorned you, laughed at your legend, ridiculed those who believed. I failed you for I had no faith.”
“We failed you for the same reason, Tijia. We made a blade tosser our god, and when we saw he was not perfect, we turned our backs on the universe. Can we forgive each other?”
He was silent for a moment, then I saw his heart make its decision. He stood, walked to the eastern edge of the ring, dropped his case, and began removing his clothes. When he at last stood naked before the ring, he opened his case and withdrew a set of dull black blades, colored that way to make them more difficult to see when tossed into the path of a novice. In the handles were tiny transmitters to help the thrower in locating and dodging them. Tijia removed the transmitters, tucked the blades beneath his arm, and reached once more into his case. When he withdrew his hand it held two bunches of flowers: white and blue.
“Ti,” said the human. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Do you know what he is doing?” asked Redgait of the human.
Tomas Holly walked to the western entrance, stood at the edge of the ring, and turned around so that he was facing Tijia. Again I looked into his heart. His pain was such that, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he could listen. As Tijia crossed his blades and placed them on the sand, I said to the human, “Begin with a small god, Tomas. As you grow, so too will your god.”
The white flowers were offered to the south niche and I took my place. The blue flowers were offered to the north niche and Redgait was there to accept them. Tijia faced the western entrance, picked up his blades, and paused as his gaze met the human’s and a flock of doubts flew through him. The moment passed and the doubts vanished like the desert mist beneath the eye of the sun. Up went the blackened blades, high above the sand. Tijia’s hands were practiced and the throws were perfect. Redgait took the blades in hand and drove their points down toward Tijia’s skull. I parted them and the human witnessed the bell-shaped arc described by the blades.