Koomi raised his hands, imploring. It is said that the hour brings forth the man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant hours, and underneath his bald head certain conclusions were beginning to unfold, like things imprisoned for years inside stone. He wasn’t yet sure what they were, but they were broadly on the subject of gods, the new age, the need for a firm hand on the helm, and possibly the inserting of Dios into the nearest crocodile. The mere thought filled him with forbidden delight.
‘Brethren!’ he cried.
‘Excuse me,’ said the priestess of Sarduk.
‘And sistren—’
‘Thank you.’
‘—let us rejoice!’ The assembled priests stood in total silence. This was a radical approach which had not hitherto occurred to them. And Koomi looked at their upturned faces and felt a thrill the like of which he had never experienced before. They were frightened out of their wits, and they were expecting him — him — to tell them what to do.
‘Yea!’ he said. ‘And, indeed, verily, the hour of the gods—’
‘—and goddesses—’
‘—yes, and goddesses, is at hand. Er.’
What next? What, when you got right down to it, was he going to tell them to do? And then he thought: it doesn’t matter. Provided I sound confident enough. Old Dios always drove them, he never tried to lead them. Without him they’re wandering around like sheep.
‘And, brethren — and sistren, of course — we must ask ourselves, we must ask ourselves, we, er, yes.’ His voice waxed again with new confidence. ‘Yes, we must ask ourselves why the gods are at hand. And without doubt it is because we have not been assiduous enough in our worship, we have, er, we have lusted after graven idols.’
The priests exchanged glances. Had they? How did you do it, actually?
‘And, yes, and what about sacrifices? Time was when a sacrifice was a sacrifice, not some messing around with a chicken and flowers.’
This caused some coughing in the audience.
‘Are we talking maidens here?’ said one of the priests uncertainly.
‘Ahem.’
‘And inexperienced young men too, certainly,’ he said quickly. Sarduk was one of the older goddesses, whose female worshippers got up to no good in sacred groves; the thought of her wandering around the landscape somewhere, bloody to the elbows, made the eyes water.
Koomi’s heart thumped. ‘Well, why not?’ he said. ‘Things were better then, weren’t they?’
‘But, er, I thought we stopped all that sort of thing. Population decline and so forth.’
There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez, the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave which slopped over the balcony.
‘Ah, but maybe the population declined because we stopped sacrificing virgins — of both sexes, of course,’ said Koomi, hurriedly. ‘Have you ever thought of it like that?’
They thought of it. Then they thought of it again.
‘I don’t think the king would approve—’ said one of the priests cautiously.
‘The king?’ shouted Koomi. ‘Where is the king? Show me the king! Ask Dios where the king is!’
There was a thud by his feet. He looked down in horror as the gold mask bounced, and rolled towards the priests. They scattered hurriedly, like skittles.
Dios strode out into the light of the disputed sun, his face grey with fury.
‘The king is dead,’ he said.
Koomi swayed under the sheer pressure of anger, but rallied magnificently.
‘Then his successor—’ he began.
‘There is no successor,’ said Dios. He stared up at the sky. Few people can look directly at the sun, but under the venom of Dios’s gaze the sun itself might have flinched and looked away. Dios’s eyes sighted down that fearsome nose like twin range finders.
To the air in general he said: ‘Coming here as if they own the place. How dare they?’
Koomi’s mouth dropped open. He started to protest, and a kilowatt stare silenced him.
Koomi sought support from the crowd of priests, who were busily inspecting their nails or staring intently into the middle distance. The message was clear. He was on his own. Although, if by some chance he won the battle of wills, he’d be surrounded by people assuring him that they had been behind him all along.
‘Anyway, they do own the place,’ he mumbled.
‘What?’
‘They, er, they do own the place, Dios,’ Koomi repeated. His temper gave out. ‘They’re the sodding gods, Dios!’
‘They’re our gods,’ Dios hissed. ‘We’re not their people. They’re my gods and they will learn to do as they are instructed!’
Koomi gave up the frontal assault. You couldn’t outstare that sapphire stare, you couldn’t stand the war-axe nose and, most of all, no man could be expected to dent the surface of Dios’s terrifying righteousness.
‘But—’ he managed.
Dios waved him into silence with a trembling hand.
‘They’ve no right!’ he said. ‘I did not give any orders! They have no right!’
‘Then what are you going to do?’ said Koomi.
Dios’s hands opened and closed fitfully. He felt like a royalist might feel — a good royalist, a royalist who cut out pictures of all the Royals and stuck them in a scrapbook, a royalist who wouldn’t hear a word said about them, they did such a good job and they can’t answer back — if suddenly all the Royals turned up in his living room and started rearranging the furniture. He longed for the necropolis, and the cool silence among his old friends, and a quick sleep after which he’d be able to think so much more clearly …
Koomi’s heart leapt. Dios’s discomfort was a crack which, with due care and attention, could take a wedge. But you couldn’t use a hammer. Head on, Dios could outfight the world.
The old man was shaking again. ‘I do not presume to tell them how to run affairs in the Hereunder,’ he said. ‘They shall not presume to instruct me in how to run my kingdom.’
Koomi salted this treasonable statement away for further study and patted him gently on the back.
‘You’re right, of course,’ he said. Dios’s eyes swivelled.
‘I am?’ he said, suspiciously.
‘I’m sure that, as the king’s minister, you will find a way. You have our full support, O Dios.’ Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused wholehearted agreement. If you couldn’t depend on kings and gods, you could always rely on old Dios. There wasn’t one of them that wouldn’t prefer the uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it out.
‘And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king’s disappearance. They are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,’ said Koomi.
The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its tail.
‘What rumours?’ said Dios out of the corner of his mouth.
‘So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,’ said Koomi.
Dios wavered.
He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change.
All he could think of, all that was pressing forward in his mind, were the words of the Ritual of the Third Hour, which he had said at this time for — how long? Too long, too long! — And he should have gone to his rest long before, but the time had never been right, there was never anyone capable, they would have been lost without him, the kingdom would founder, he would be letting everyone down, and so he’d crossed the river … he swore every time that it was the last, but it never was, not when the chill fetched his limbs, and the decades had become — longer. And now, when his kingdom needed him, the words of a Ritual had scored themselves into the pathways of his brain and bewildered all attempts at thought.