Small Gods

change of heart. I can see he’s with us for a purpose now. Good old Vorbis. Bring him along.”

    Simony and the two philosophers stood on the clifftop, looking across the parched farmlands of Omnia to the distant rock of the Citadel. Two of them looking, anyway.
    “Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I’d smash that place like an egg,” said Simony, leading Didactylos down the narrow path.
    “Looks big,” said Urn.
    “See the gleam? Those are the doors.”
    “Look massive.”
    “I was wondering,” said Simony, “about the boat. The way it moved. Something like that could smash the doors, right?”
    “You’d have to flood the valley,” said Urn.
    “I mean if it was on wheels.”
    “Hah, yes,” said Urn, sarcastically. It had been a long day. “Yes, if I had a forge and half a dozen blacksmiths and a lot of help. Wheels? No problem. But—”
    “We shall have to see,” said Simony, “what we can do.”

    The sun was on the horizon when Brutha, his arm around Vorbis’s shoulders, reached the next rock island. It was bigger than the one with the snake. The wind had carved the stones into gaunt, unlikely shapes, like fingers. There were even plants lodging in crevices in the rock.
    “There’s water somewhere,” said Brutha.
    “There’s always water, even in the worst deserts,” said Om. “One, oh, maybe two inches of rain a year.”
    “I can smell something,” said Brutha, as his feet stopped treading on sand and crunched up the limestone scree around the boulders. “Something rank.”
    “Hold me over your head.”
    Om scanned the rocks.
    “Right. Now bring me down again. And head for that rock that looks like…that looks very unexpected, really.”
    Brutha stared. “It does, too,” he croaked, eventually. “Amazing to think it was carved by the wind.”
    “The wind god has a sense of humor,” said Om. “Although it’s pretty basic.”
    Near the foot of the rock huge slabs had fallen over the years, forming a jagged pile with, here and there, shadowy openings.
    “That smell—” Brutha began.
    “Probably animals come to drink the water,” said Om.
    Brutha’s foot kicked against something yellow-white, which bounced away among the rocks making a noise like a sackful of coconuts. In the stifling empty silence of the desert, it echoed loudly.
    “What was that?”
    “Definitely not a skull,” lied Om. “Don’t worry…”
    “There’s bones everywhere!”
    “Well? What did you expect? This is a desert! People die here! It’s a very popular occupation in this vicinity!”
    Brutha picked up a bone. He was, as he well knew, stupid. But people didn’t gnaw their own bones after they died.
    “Om—”
    “There’s water here!” shouted Om. “We need it! But—there’s probably one or two drawbacks!”
    “What kind of drawbacks?”
    “As in natural hazards!”
    “Like—?”
    “Well, you know lions?” said Om desperately.
    “There’s lions here?”
    “Well…slightly.”
    “ Slightly lions?”
    “Only one lion.”
    “Only one—”
    “—generally a solitary creature. Most to be feared are the old males, who are forced into the most inhospitable regions by their younger rivals. They are evil-tempered and cunning and in their extremity have lost all fear of man—”
    The memory faded, letting go of Brutha’s vocal cords.
    “That kind?” Brutha finished.
    “It won’t take any notice of us once it’s fed,” said Om.
    “Yes?”
    “They go to sleep.”
    “After feeding—?”
    Brutha looked around at Vorbis, who was slumped against a rock.
    “Feeding?” he repeated.
    “It’ll be a kindness,” said Om.
    “To the lion, yes! You want to use him as bait? ”
    “He’s not going to survive the desert. Anyway, he’s done much worse to thousands of people. He’ll be dying for a good cause.”
    “A good cause?”
    “ I like it.”
    There was a growl, from somewhere in the stones. It wasn’t loud, but it was a sound with sinews in it. Brutha backed away.
    “We don’t just throw people to the lions!”
    “He does.”
    “Yes. I don’t.”
    “All right, we’ll get on top of a slab and when the lion starts on him you can brain it with a rock. He’ll probably get away with an arm or a leg. He’ll never miss it.”
    “No! You can’t do that to people just because they’re helpless!”
    “You know, I can’t think of a better time?”
    There was another growl from the rock pile. It sounded closer.
    Brutha looked down desperately at the