Downfall of the Gods (3 page)

(Pol reckons we abide by the Covenant because, being infinite, at some level we crave containment; for the same reason that, being imperishable, insensitive to cold and heat and definitively waterproof, nevertheless we sleep indoors, under a roof. Among his other titles and portfolios, Pol is God of Wisdom. I think that says it all.)

“Y
OU DO REALISE
,” I said, “that since I got here, you’ve forfeited your right to clemency under the Covenant at least three times. Are you stupid, or what?”

“Maybe I don’t want clemency.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Maybe I don’t want it from you.”

I don’t gasp, but if I did, I would’ve. “I think I’ll go away and come back later,” I said. “When you’ve had time to think.”

“I thought you might say that,” he said. “I expect you’ll leave it right to the very last minute, when they’re putting the rope round my neck.” He yawned. “Play your games if you want to. It’s all right. I know you’ll save me. I have faith.”

“Do you now.”

He nodded. “I know you want something from me. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, if you want something from me, I know I’ll be just fine. Well? Am I right?”

“Let’s wait to the very last moment and find out.”

But he just smiled at me, confident, cocky. Well; it’s not often an immortal gets a chance to try something new. So I decided to be a good loser.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You’ve made your point. Let’s get down to cases. Yes, I’m prepared to grant you clemency. Your life will be spared. More to the point, the sentence of eternal damnation will be lifted. Suspended, anyway. But there are conditions.”

He looked so smug, I could’ve sworn we must be related. “Good heavens,” he said. “Fancy that.”

“You’re going to get another chance. If you can prove that you truly feel remorse for what you’ve done, you will be forgiven and the slate will be wiped clean. If not, you’ll find yourself back here. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.” He waited, then folded his hands in his lap and said, “What do you want?”

A
S
I
LEFT
the prison, I tripped over an old beggar sitting on the steps. He was a horrible creature; one eye, one withered arm, one leg missing from the knee down. “Bless you, sweetheart,” he called out—I’d just trodden on his good hand. “God bless you and keep you.”

The irony appealed to me, so I gave him a coin, one of the two I had on me, and walked on. “Are you mad?” he called out after me. I stopped and turned round.

“Five gulden,” he said, with the coin lying flat on his outstretched palm. “Have you no idea of the value of money?”

I sighed. “Dad,” I said.

He stood up. The absence of his left leg didn’t hinder him. “Five gulden,” he said, “is a fortune to these people, it’s the price of a farm. Even I know that. You can’t just go flinging it around. First thing you know, they’ll have galloping inflation.”

“I earned that,” I told him. “By the sweat of my—”

“I know you did.” He scowled at me. “Well? Did you forgive him, like I told you?”

“Conditionally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dad,” I said, “sit down. People are staring.”

He sat down quickly. “Conditionally,” he said. “What sort of condition?”

“It’s perfectly fair,” I told him. “Just like in the Covenant. Sometimes, when they’ve been really bad or you don’t believe they’re truly sincere, you make them prove themselves. More to the point,” I went on quickly, “how dare you come checking up on me like this? It’s insulting.”

A passer-by dropped a two-groschen in Father’s hat. “Bless you, sir, bless you. The ship you thought was lost will come safe to port in two days’ time.” The man gawped at him for a moment, then hurried away. “Charity is good,” Father said, when I raised an eyebrow at him. “It enriches the giver as well as the receiver. We ought to encourage it. And I wouldn’t need to check up on you if you did as you’re told. What condition?”

N
OW
,
THEN
. A
BOUT
me.

I was born—Sorry, I’ll have to be careful here. Wars have been fought and men have been burnt alive over differences in nuance in accounts of how and when I was born. For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to endorse any one version as against the others. It’s awkward. I love talking about myself, but one has a responsibility to the weak-minded and the faithful.

I live at home. Not all of us do. My uncle Thaumastus lives at the bottom of the sea. Likewise my aunt Feralia, who hardly ever leaves her tastefully appointed palace in the Underworld. They claim they have to be on site at all times for the proper performance of their duties. I don’t believe them. I think they saw an excuse to get away from the rest of us, and grabbed it with both hands. I can make no such claim. Love, laughter and joy are everywhere, as Father constantly reminds me, and home is centrally located, in easy reach of all civilised nations. I have a room of my own, if you can call it that, but we’ve never been great ones for knocking on doors in our family, so I might as well sleep in the Great Hall for all the privacy I can expect. I own the clothes I stand up in, when I wear a body. That’s all. What does a god want with possessions, Father’s always saying. He’s quite right, of course; though that doesn’t stop him hoarding all sorts of junk in the treasury of his temple at Blachernae. He thinks we don’t know about that. The idiot.

Ah well. Naked I came into the world, and what’s the use of owning things when you’re bound to outlast them? If I had a diamond necklace, contact with my soft white breast would wear the stones away in no time. Anyway, what good are things? No attire or ornament could possibly make me any more beautiful than I am already. I do no work, so I need no tools. Nothing in the world, not even being thrown off the ramparts of heaven and digging a mile-wide impact crater, could conceivably harm me, so armour and weapons would be pointless. Cutlery and tableware; we eat with our fingers in our family. We need nothing, have no use for anything. Therefore, we have nothing. Lucky us.

Correction; we do have something. We have each other.

Lucky, lucky us.

“I
WON
’
T DO
it,” Pol said. “Absolutely and definitely not.

No. No way.”

I smiled at him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“You’re mad,” he said. “Anyway, Dad’ll never agree.” “Actually—”

He stared at me. “You’re joking.”

“He thinks it’s a splendid idea,” he said.

“But he can’t. It’s—it’s
wrong
.”

“Define
wrong
. I was always brought up to believe it

means contrary to the will of the gods. Therefore—” “It’s wrong,” he repeated. “It’s one of the things we don’t do. You know that.”

I widened the smile. Not for nothing was I appointed Goddess of Charm in the last reshuffle. “Yes, but it’s not us doing it, is it? That’s the point.”

“Oh come on,” he whined, “that’s just sophistry. No way he can do it without your help. Or mine. Therefore, to all intents and purposes—”

“Pol,” I said. “Please. Pretty please.”

He winced as though I’d slapped his face. “It’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? All this, for some mortal.”

“It’s not for him,” I said, a bit too quickly. “It’s about ethics. Morality. It’s about the meaning of restitution.

We have a duty to teach mortals how to behave.” He gave me his sad look. “What are you up to?” he said. “For crying out loud, I’m not up to anything. Why does everyone always assume I’m up to something?

Believe it or not, my entire life isn’t spent in devising malign schemes of impenetrable complexity.”

“True. From time to time you sleep.”

“Shut up, Pol. And you’re going to help me. Father says so.”

He raised his hands as though in silent prayer. “I give up,” he said. “This family is impossible. Just don’t blame me if it all ends in disaster.”

“Pol,” I said, “don’t be silly. What could possibly go wrong?”

L
ORD
A
RCHIAS WAS
shocked. “You’re joking.”

“No.”

He tried to back away, but he was up against the cell

wall already. “It’s impossible. You can’t do that.” “To the gods—”

He shook his head. “Not that,” he said. “It’s specifically excluded, everyone knows that. To the gods all things are possible, but they can’t raise the dead. It’s— it’s
fundamental
.”

I sighed. “You poor dear,” I said. “You obviously don’t know the first thing about what we can and can’t do. We’re the gods, we can do anything.”

“Including—?”

I nodded. “We choose not to,” I said, “most of the time. But we have the discretion. Besides,” I added, “we’re not going to. You are.”

He gave me a look of pure distilled revulsion. “I can’t.” “With a little help,” I said. “Or maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you aren’t sincerely remorseful after all. In which case—”

“That’s not the point.”

I grinned. The words had come out all in a rush. He was afraid. I’d beaten him. “If you sincerely regret killing Lysippus the musician, you must want him to be alive again.”

“I do.”

“Fine. Then prove it. Go to the Kingdom of the Dead and bring him back.”

Directly behind his head was that wonderful view of the city and the mountains. I looked past them, across the Middle Sea, through the dense forests of the Mesoge, over the White Desert to the Holy Mountain, and met Father’s eye.
I hope you know what you’re doing
, I lip-read.

“There’s no such place,” he said. “There is no Kingdom of the Dead, it’s a human myth.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is it really.”

“Yes. Logically, it must be.”

“Do explain.”

He looked up at me angrily. “The dead don’t come back,” he said. “Therefore, all and any accounts of the Kingdom of the Dead circulating among mortals can’t be based on eyewitness testimony. But the traditional accounts are full of lurid and picaresque detail. They must therefore be lies. Therefore there is no Kingdom of the Dead. Logic.”

“Mphm. It exists. I’ve been there. It’s run by my aunt. She’s not the nicest person ever, but compared to the rest of my relatives she’s not too bad. And you can take your logic and shove it.”

He breathed out slowly. “This is ridiculous,” he said.

He was getting on my nerves. “Do you have to make a fuss about every damn thing?”

He raised his hands in surrender. “There is a Kingdom of the Dead,” he said, “because you say so. If I don’t go there, I die and suffer eternal torment. The way I see it, I’ve got as much choice as a nail.” He looked up at me. “Well?”

“I think you’ve got the gist of it.”

He nodded. “That’s mortals for you,” he said. “We can be trained to perform simple tasks.”

I
ADMIRED HIM
for that remark, though probably I read too much into it. But consider the relationship between gods and men as roughly analogous to that between the man and his dog. The virtues the man ordains for his dog—unquestioning obedience, biting intruders, peeing outdoors, fetching sticks—aren’t the qualities that you look for in a good human; they’re dog virtues. The dog feels moral outrage because it brings back the stick, and then the man throws it away again; idiotic, irrational behaviour. but the man throws the stick to exercise the dog and keep it healthy; and the dog, of course, will never be able to understand all that, because it’s just a dog. The dog shouldn’t presume to pass judgement on the purpose or the merit of the simple tasks it’s trained to perform. from down there, they pass all understanding. from up here; well, it’s just a dog. it’s not like it’s a
person.

“F
IRST
,” I
SAID
, “we’ll have to clear up this mess you’ve got yourself into.”

I made it sound easy. Actually, it wasn’t as straightforward as all that. To put Lord Archias back in the fortunate circumstances he enjoyed before he committed the murder I could reverse time, but then I’d have to edit and redact three months of history, every connection, every consequence: I can do that, but it’s awkward, fiddly work, involving co-operation with other members of my family. I chose a simpler approach.

The cell door blew open and crashed against the wall. a jailer ran up, sword drawn. “it’s all right,” I told him, and smiled. he backed away, looking foolish, and apologised. I led Archias down the long spiral staircase, with guards and warders skipping out of our way as we went. the porter on the main gate was delighted to shoot back the bolts and let us through. we walked briskly up horsefair to the council chamber, where the sentries let us pass without a murmur. as luck would have it the council was in session. we walked in; I cleared my throat. they all stopped talking. I explained that although Lord Archias was guilty as charged of the murder of Count Lysippus, it’d be nice if they pardoned him and restored all his properties, titles and privileges, effective immediately. they were only too happy to agree; carried unanimously.

“Y
OU CAN BUY
me lunch,” I said. “As a thank-you.” I chose a wine-shop I like in the Arches. They do the most delicious sea bass.

“Why use raw power,” I explained, “when you can get the job done so much more easily with charm? Like pigs. You can drag the pig into the cart with a rope round its neck, because you’re stronger. Or you can put a few cabbage-stalks on the tailgate, and he’ll happily go in of his own accord.”

He looked at me over his wine-glass. “But you could drag him,” he said. “You just choose not to.”

“For convenience,” I said. “To the gods all things are possible, but some things are easier than others. Did I mention, I’m the Goddess of Charm?”

“Really.”

“Among other things. It’s significant that charm has two meanings. It really is a kind of magic.”

Archias nodded. “A man sits in the market square,” he said. “He’s got a sign up,
Magic Performed Here
. Someone stops and asks him, what kind of magic? Well, says the magician, pay me two gold coins, I’ll use a magic talisman to make a perfect stranger do exactly what I tell him to. So the magician leads his customer into a baker’s shop, and he hands the shopkeeper a penny and says, Give me a loaf of bread.” He shrugged. “That kind of magic.”