Small Gods

lead again.”
    Trembling, Brutha obeyed. He felt the soft flesh of an outflung arm under his sandal for a moment.
    The pit, he thought. Look into Vorbis’s eyes, and there’s the pit. And I’m in it with him.
    I’ve got to remember about fundamental truth.
    No more guides were patrolling the labyrinth. After a mere million years, the night air blew cool on his face, and Brutha stepped out under the stars.
    “Well done. Can you remember the way to the gate?”
    “Yes, Lord Vorbis.”
    The deacon pulled his hood over his face.
    “Carry on.”
    There were a few torches lighting the streets, but Ephebe was not a city that stayed awake in darkness. A couple of passersby paid them no attention.
    “They guard their harbor,” said Vorbis, conversational. “But the way to the desert…everyone knows that no one can cross the desert. I am sure you know that, Brutha.”
    “But now I suspect that what I know is not the truth,” said Brutha.
    “Quite so. Ah. The gate. I believe it had two guards yesterday?”
    “I saw two.”
    “And now it is night and the gate is shut. But there will be a watchman. Wait here.”
    Vorbis disappeared into the gloom. After a while there was a muffled conversation. Brutha stared straight ahead of him.
    The conversation was followed by muffled silence. After a while Brutha started to count to himself.
    After ten, I’ll go back.
    Another ten, then.
    All right. Make it thirty. And then I’ll…
    “Ah, Brutha. Let us go.”
    Brutha swallowed his heart again, and turned slowly.
    “I did not hear you, lord,” he managed.
    “I walk softly.”
    “Is there a watchman?”
    “Not now. Come help me with the bolts.”
    A small wicket gate was set into the main gate. Brutha, his mind numb with hatred, shoved the bolts aside with the heel of his hand. The door opened with barely a creak.
    Outside there was the occasional light of a distant farm, and crowding darkness.
    Then the darkness poured in.

    Hierarchy, Vorbis said later. The Ephebians didn’t think in terms of hierarchies.
    No army could cross the desert. But maybe a small army could get a quarter of the way, and leave a cache of water. And do that several times. And another small army could use part of that cache to go further, maybe reach halfway, and leave a cache. And another small army…
    It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held…
    You had to have a mind like Vorbis’s to plan it.
    And plan it early. Men were already dying in the desert before Brother Murduck went to preach; there was already a beaten track when the Omnian fleet burned in the bay before Ephebe.
    You had to have a mind like Vorbis’s to plan your retaliation before your attack.

    It was over in less than an hour. The fundamental truth was that the handful of Ephebian guards in the palace had no chance at all.

    Vorbis sat upright in the Tyrant’s chair. It was approaching midnight.
    A collection of Ephebian citizens, the Tyrant among them, had been herded in front of him.
    He busied himself with some paperwork and then looked up with an air of mild surprise, as if he’d been completely unaware that fifty people were waiting in front of him at crossbow point.
    “Ah,” he said, and flashed a little smile.
    “Well,” he said, “I am pleased to say that we can now dispense with the peace treaty. Quite unnecessary. Why prattle of peace when there is no more war? Ephebe is now a diocese of Omnia. There will be no argument.”
    He threw a paper on to the floor.
    “There will be a fleet here in a few days. There will be no opposition, while we hold the palace. Your infernal mirror is even now being smashed.”
    He steepled his fingers and looked at the assembled Ephebians.
    “Who built it?”
    The Tyrant looked up.
    “It was an Ephebian construction,” he said.
    “Ah,” said Vorbis, “democracy. I forgot. Then who”—he signaled one of the guards, who handed him a sack—“wrote this?”
    A copy of De Chelonian Mobile was flung on to the marble floor.
    Brutha stood beside the throne. It was where he had been told to stand.
    He’d looked into the pit and now it was him. Everything around him was happening in some distant circle of light, surrounded by darkness. Thoughts chased one another around his head.
    Did the Cenobiarch know about this? Did anyone else know about the two kinds of truth? Who else knew that Vorbis was fighting both sides of