Small Gods

their intransigence, they surely killed him.”
    “But in the trivial sense of the truth,” said Brutha, picking every word with the care an inquisitor might give to his patient in the depths of the Citadel, “in the trivial sense, Brother Murduck died, did he not, in Omnia, because he had not died in Ephebe, had been merely mocked, but it was feared that others in the Church might not understand the, the deeper truth, and thus it was put about that the Ephebians had killed him in, in the trivial sense, thus giving you, and those who saw the truth of the evil of Ephebe, due cause to launch a—a just retaliation.”
    They walked past a fountain. The deacon’s steel-shod staff clicked in the night.
    “I see a great future for you in the Church,” said Vorbis, eventually. “The time of the eighth Prophet is coming. A time of expansion, and great opportunity for those true in the service of Om.”
    Brutha looked into the pit.
    If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light. He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern.
    He heard himself say, “And with people like the Ephebians, there is no truce. No treaty can be held binding, if it is between people like the Ephebians and those who follow a deeper truth?”
    Vorbis nodded. “When the Great God is with us,” he said, “who can stand against us? You impress me, Brutha.”
    There was more laughter in the darkness, and the twang of stringed instruments.
    “A feast,” sneered Vorbis. “The Tyrant invited us to a feast! I sent some of the party, of course. Even their generals are in there! They think themselves safe behind their labyrinth, as a tortoise thinks himself safe in his shell, not realizing it is a prison. Onward.”
    The inner wall of the labyrinth loomed out of the darkness. Brutha leaned against it. From far above came the chink of metal on metal as a sentry went on his rounds.
    The gateway to the labyrinth was wide open. The Ephebians had never seen the point of stopping people entering. Up a short side-tunnel the guide for the first sixth of the way slumbered on a bench, a candle guttering beside him. Above his alcove hung the bronze bell that would-be traversers of the maze used to summon him. Brutha slipped past.
    “Brutha?”
    “Yes, lord?”
    “Lead the way through the labyrinth. I know you can.”
    “Lord—”
    “This is an order, Brutha,” said Vorbis, pleasantly.
    There is no hope for it, Brutha thought. It is an order.
    “Then tread where I tread, lord,” he whispered. “Not more than one step behind me.”
    “Yes, Brutha.”
    “If I step around a place on the floor for no reason, you step around it too.”
    “Yes, Brutha.”
    Brutha thought: perhaps I could do it wrong. No. I took vows and things. You can’t just disobey. The whole world ends if you start thinking like that…
    He let his sleeping mind take control. The way through the labyrinth unrolled in his head like a glowing wire.
    …diagonally forward and right three-and-a-half paces, and left sixty-three paces, pause two seconds—where a steely swish in the darkness suggested that one of the guardians had devised something that won him a prize—and up three steps…
    I could run forward, he thought. I could hide, and he’d walk into one of the pits or a deadfall or something, and then I could sneak back to my room and who would ever know?
    I would.
    …forward nine paces, and right one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and left two paces…
    There was a light ahead. Not the occasional white glow of moonlight from the slits in the roof, but yellow lamplight, dimming and brightening as its owner came nearer.
    “Someone’s coming,” he whispered. “It must be one of the guides!”
    Vorbis had vanished.
    Brutha hovered uncertainly in the passageway as the light bobbed nearer.
    An elderly voice said, “That you, Number Four?”
    The light came around a corner. It half-illuminated an old man, who walked up to Brutha and raised the candle to his face.
    “Where’s Number Four?” he said, peering around Brutha.
    A figure appeared behind the man, from out of a side-passage. Brutha had the briefest glimpse of Vorbis, his face strangely peaceful, as he gripped the head of his staff, twisted and pulled. Sharp metal glittered for a moment in the candlelight.
    Then the light went out.
    Vorbis’s voice said, “Take the