Small Gods

dust and leading a donkey. I’m afraid you were across the back of the donkey.”
    “I don’t remember a donkey,” said Brutha.
    “—donkey. He’d picked it up at one of the farms. There was quite a crowd with him!”
    Nhumrod was flushed with excitement.
    “And he’s declared a month of Jhaddra, and double penances, and the Council has given him the Staff and the Halter, and the Cenobiarch has gone off to the hermitage in Skant!”
    “Vorbis is the eighth Prophet,” said Brutha.
    “—Prophet. Of course.”
    “And…was there a tortoise? Has he mentioned anything about a tortoise?”
    “—tortoise? What have tortoises got to do with anything?” Nhumrod’s expression softened. “But, of course, the Prophet said the sun had affected you. He said you were raving—excuse me—about all sorts of strange things.”
    “He did?”
    “He sat by your bed for three days. It was…inspiring.”
    “How long…since we came back?”
    “—back? Almost a week.”
    “A week!”
    “He said the journey exhausted you very much.”
    Brutha stared at the wall.
    “And he left orders that you were to be brought to him as soon as you were fully conscious,” said Nhumrod. “He was very definite about that.” His tone of voice suggested that he wasn’t quite sure of Brutha’s state of consciousness, even now. “Do you think you can walk? I can get some novices to carry you, if you’d prefer.”
    “I have to go and see him now?”
    “—now. Right away. I expect you’ll want to thank him.”

    Brutha had known about these parts of the Citadel only by hearsay. Brother Nhumrod had never seen them, either. Although he had not been specifically included in the summons, he had come nevertheless, fussing importantly around Brutha as two sturdy novices carried him in a kind of sedan chair normally used by the more crumbling of the senior clerics.
    In the center of the Citadel, behind the Temple, was a walled garden. Brutha looked at it with an expert eye. There wasn’t an inch of natural soil on the bare rock—every spadeful that these shady trees grew in must have been carried up by hand.
    Vorbis was there, surrounded by bishops and Iams. He looked around as Brutha approached.
    “Ah, my desert companion,” he said, amiably. “And Brother Nhumrod, I believe. My brothers, I should like you to know that I have it in mind to raise our Brutha to archbishophood.”
    There was a very faint murmur of astonishment from the clerics, and then a clearing of a throat. Vorbis looked at Bishop Treem, who was the Citadel’s archivist.
    “Well, technically he is not yet even ordained,” said Bishop Treem, doubtfully. “But of course we all know there has been a precedent.”
    “Ossory’s ass,” said Brother Nhumrod promptly. He put his hand over his mouth and went red with shame and embarrassment.
    Vorbis smiled.
    “Good Brother Nhumrod is correct,” he said. “Who had also not been ordained, unless the qualifications were somewhat relaxed in those days.”
    There was a chorus of nervous laughs, such as there always is from people who owe their jobs and possibly their lives to a whim of the person who has just cracked the not very amusing line.
    “Although the donkey was only made a bishop,” said Bishop “Deathwish” Treem.
    “A role for which it was highly qualified,” said Vorbis sharply. “And now, you will all leave. Including Subdeacon Nhumrod,” he added. Nhumrod went from red to white at this sudden preferment. “But Archbishop Brutha will remain. We wish to talk.”
    The clergy withdrew.
    Vorbis sat down on a stone chair under an elder tree. It was huge and ancient, quite unlike its short-lived relatives outside the garden, and its berries were ripening.
    The Prophet sat with his elbows on the stone arms of the chair, his hands interlocked in front of him, and gave Brutha a long, slow stare.
    “You are…recovered?” he said, eventually.
    “Yes, lord,” said Brutha. “But, lord, I cannot be a bishop, I cannot even—”
    “I assure you the job does not require much intelligence,” said Vorbis. “If it did, bishops would not be able to do it.”
    There was another long silence.
    When Vorbis next spoke, it was as if every word was being winched up from a great depth.
    “We spoke once, did we not, of the nature of reality?”
    “Yes.”
    “And about how often what is perceived is not that which is fundamentally true?”
    “Yes.”
    Another pause. High overhead, an eagle circled, looking