Small Gods

the whole panorama of the world is just a fog compared to the scurrying prey in the grass.
    From his perch on the Horns themselves, the eagle leapt into the sky.
    Fortunately, the same awareness of shapes that made the tortoise so prominent in a square full of scurrying humans made the tortoise’s one eye swivel upwards in dread anticipation.
    Eagles are single-minded creatures. Once the idea of lunch is fixed in their mind, it tends to remain there until satisfied.

    There were two Divine Legionaries outside Vorbis’s quarters. They looked sideways at Brutha as he knocked timorously at the door, as if looking for a reason to assault him.
    A small gray priest opened the door and ushered Brutha into a small, barely furnished room. He pointed meaningfully at a stool.
    Brutha sat down. The priest vanished behind a curtain. Brutha took one glance around the room and—
    Blackness engulfed him. Before he could move, and Brutha’s reflexes were not well coordinated at the best of times, a voice by his ear said, “Now, brother, do not panic. I order you not to panic.”
    There was cloth in front of Brutha’s face.
    “Just nod, boy.”
    Brutha nodded. They put a hood over your face. All the novices knew that. Stories were told in the dormitories. They put a cloth over your face so the inquisitors didn’t know who they were working on…
    “Good. Now, we are going into the next room. Be careful where you tread.”
    Hands guided him upright and across the floor. Through the mists of incomprehension he felt the brush of the curtain, and then was jolted down some steps and into a sandy-floored room. The hands spun him a few times, firmly but without apparent ill-will, and then led him along a passageway. There was the swish of another curtain, and then the indefinable sense of a larger space.
    Afterward, long afterward, Brutha realized: there was no terror. A hood had been slipped over his head in the room of the head of the Quisition, and it never occurred to him to be terrified. Because he had faith.
    “There is a stool behind you. Be seated.”
    Brutha sat.
    “You may remove the hood.”
    Brutha removed the hood.
    He blinked.
    Seated on stools at the far end of the room, with a Holy Legionary on either side of them, were three figures. He recognized the aquiline face of Deacon Vorbis; the other two were a short and stocky man, and a very fat one. Not heavily built, like Brutha, but a genuine lard tub. All three wore plain gray robes.
    There was no sign of any branding irons, or even of scalpels.
    All three were staring intently.
    “Novice Brutha?” said Vorbis.
    Brutha nodded.
    Vorbis gave a light laugh, the kind made by very intelligent people when they think of something that probably isn’t very amusing.
    “And, of course, one day we shall have to call you Brother Brutha,” he said. “Or even Father Brutha? Rather confusing, I think. Best to be avoided. I think we shall have to see to it that you become Subdeacon Brutha just as soon as possible; what do you think of that?”
    Brutha did not think anything of it. He was vaguely aware that advancement was being discussed, but his mind had gone blank.
    “Anyway, enough of this,” said Vorbis, with the slight exasperation of someone who realizes that he is going to have to do a lot of work in this conversation. “Do you recognize these learned fathers on my left and right?”
    Brutha shook his head.
    “Good. They have some questions to ask you.”
    Brutha nodded.
    The very fat man leaned forward.
    “Do you have a tongue, boy?”
    Brutha nodded. And then, feeling that perhaps this wasn’t enough, presented it for inspection.
    Vorbis laid a restraining hand on the fat man’s arm.
    “I think our young friend is a little overawed,” he said mildly.
    He smiled.
    “Now, Brutha—please put it away—I am going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?”
    Brutha nodded.
    “When you first came into my apartments, you were for a few seconds in the anteroom. Please describe it to me.”
    Brutha stared frog-eyed at him. But the turbines of recollection ground into life without his volition, pouring their words into the forefront of his mind.
    “It is a room about three meters square. With white walls. There is sand on the floor except in the corner by the door, where the flagstones are visible. There is a window on the opposite wall, about two meters up. There were three bars in the window. There is a three-legged stool. There is a holy icon of the