It wasn’t so much the time taken to ‘refresh’ – the rest, the drink, the food, the general easing of strained muscles – but the apparently far more important need to ‘gain the trust and support of the gods’: for, Frenda assured them earnestly, their journey would undoubtedly be a dangerous one, as it necessarily took them through the lands of rival communities, each one of whom would have to grant permission of safe passage.
Otherwise they would be attacked, under suspicion of being a warring party, or at least a scouting expedition.
Moreover, the gods and their servants were against anyone travelling too far outside of their own domains, for all of the peoples and their realms had been promised protection; and that, of course, included protection from the unwanted intrusion of warriors from any neighbouring communities. Many people who had set off on unannounced journeys had simply vanished, with no trace of them ever found again.
‘And these gods: who are they?’ Sis asked with a shrewdly deceptive innocence. ‘Has anyone ever seen them?’
‘Of course!’ Frenda snapped. ‘Do you take us for fools?’
They were sitting cross-legged upon the ground, eating from a low table that had been placed not far from the fan-like concourse of gaily-decorated poles fronting the temple. Children were rushing excitedly about the area, strewing the posts with even more decorations, even more brightly coloured streamers of embroidered material, of vines, clematis, and branches.
Each pole had been set into the ground within the centre of a geometric shape inscribed into a grounding of painstakingly smoothed rock, the shapes varying from rectangles, triangles, circles, polygons, crescents, and even stars. All of them were drawn and organised so that they neatly abutted each other, forming a complex pattern, a system made all the more elaborate and colourful by the pictographs painted within each shape: birds, animals, planets. It was a pattern that continued up the gentle slope of the pyramid, for rather than a flight of steps granting access to the structure’s apex there was instead a smooth ramp, one becoming increasingly narrow as it strove towards the peak –where, finally, it sprang off out into space, becoming the projection Lil had first noticed when they had earlier approached the looming ziggurat.
Like Sis, Lil slowly ate the food so kindly offered to them, not wishing to cause offence by refusing, not wanting to draw attention to their lack of need for sustenance.
‘Then, if you’ve seen them,’ Sis continued with her sceptical probing, ‘what do they look like?’
‘Like the true, ever-reborn god himself,’ Frenda confidently replied, ‘they are the perfect mix of animal and man – men with the powers of the lion, the eagle, the bull and the bear.’
*
Chapter 10
Sis and Lil exchanged knowing glances, recognising that the mention of lion and eagle men tallied with their witnessing of the fight between the hybrid creatures.
‘We’ve seen these “gods”,’ Sis said, frowning sceptically at Frenda as she disdainfully emphasised the word, ‘seen them fighting each other.’
‘Then you are blessed,’ Frenda replied graciously, ‘for what you saw was the trial of kingship, when the chosen from each of the four houses must decided between themselves who will rule for the next year.’
‘One was killed: hardly god-like,’ Sis continued harshly. ‘When we inspected his corpse, it was obvious he was just a man, someone who had had all his eagle parts grafted onto him when he was younger.’
‘They are the servants of the gods, semi-gods rather than fully divine,’ an unruffled Frenda calmly persisted, displaying neither rancour nor annoyance at Sis’s aggressively disrespectful tone. ‘They are made in the image of the ever-risen god, a state we all aspire to.’
‘So, is he a lion, or an eagle? Or maybe a bear or a bull?’
‘He is all of the four houses at once, choosing only the one form when he first arises, a means of endorsing the victorious new king.’
‘If a lion-man becomes king, this god rises from death as a lion-man too?’
Frenda simply nodded in response to Lil’s query.
‘And people have seen this, this rising from death?’
Sis still refused to temper her irreverential attitude. All this belief in an ever-risen god struck her as an obvious nonsense.
‘Of course!’ Frenda retorted. ‘I have witnessed it myself on many occasions!’
*
Lil was relieved to see that Sis was quite relaxed about the delay to their journey.
(As for the stealing of their horse, Lil wasn’t quite sure how that matter would end up being resolved.)
Of course, Sis might well have been far less complacent about the delay if it hadn’t actually worked in their favour. For one of the two women who had accompanied them when Frenda had first revealed Nasebay’s location had nervously come forward to suggest that there might have been a mistake in presuming it lay on the coast rather than simply lying close to it: indeed, she claimed she had seen these very same ‘marks and figures’ prominently on display a little further inland, a fact she wished to prove by pointing out a similar set of symbols lying on the temple’s precipitous rear.
Getting to the rear of the temple was nowhere near as easy as it would have been before the preparations for the celebrations had got underway. Large metal sheets, burnished to a mirror finish, where being set up each side of the pyramid, a shield wall that also extended to completely encircle the ground to the temple’s rear.
‘When the ceremony starts,’ Frenda explained, ‘this briefly becomes the abode of the gods, and so no one is allowed near.’
The sign the woman pointed out to them all was even smaller than the metallic sheet painted with the word ‘Nasebay’, although it was just as battered, every bit as badly scraped. The place name was even less legible than before, in fact, and yet it was plain enough to see that it was indeed the name they were looking for, another directional sign (if that is indeed what it used to be, it was now unfortunately repositioned and therefore more or less useless) for ‘Nasebay’, the middle letter ‘e’ virtually obliterated but for the remnant’s of its top and bottom curves, its capital almost non-existent.
Yet there were two other words next to it that both Sis and Lil immediately recognised as ones they had come across within the book. The word ‘Community’ came straight after ‘Nasebay’, while above it there was the name of a person rather than a place name; ‘Newton’.
The woman explained that she had tied this sign in with what she had seen while leading a dangerous foraging mission south – as opposed to east, where the coast lay – because she had seen and recognised both these ‘sets of marks’ there. On seeing the marks, however, she had commanded that her warriors should withdraw, as she took them to be symbols related to the gods, going by their positioning on the dark-side of the temple.
‘It seems the gods might approve of this journey after all,’ Frenda had announced with a strange hint of disappointment. ‘But we will see: the ceremony will be our final confirmation as to whether we make this trip or not.’
*
Chapter 11
As they had made their way back towards the table that had been set out with food and drink for them, they passed the men and women setting up poles within sockets carved into the centre of each of the geometric shapes decorating the slope. As soon as a post was secured, excited children would dart forward to drape it with brightly dyed garlands, using either crude ladders or even clambering up onto each other’s shoulders to reach the top.
The garlands weren’t left hanging, however, but were gathered up into bunches on top of the posts, a loose knot securing them, the left–over ends twisted together with what could have been either a sticky pitch or tar.
As Lil observed the elaborate procedures, she noticed that almost all of the posts and garlands adorning both the slope and the concourse were treated in this way, the bunches and their stiffly upright twists appearing from a distance like so many brightly coloured flames. Yet
on the very edges of the concourse, every garland was left hanging down and, unlike all the other posts, they were in every colour of the rainbow.
No doubt sensing Lil’s mix of fascinated curiosity and puzzlement, Frenda explained that every child would be expected to – and indeed, would be eager to – take part in the ceremony, for Sis and Lil’s arrival provided an unexpected opportunity for two of them to be raised up by the gods into the select band of those chosen for greater things.
‘It all begins with every child taking a garland and dancing around the posts, moving on to a nearby pole whenever they can grasp a free garland of a colour they would find lying either side of their own garland on the rainbow.’
‘A game, then: that’s all it is?’ Lil queried with a thankful sigh of relief.
‘Aren’t games sometimes the fairest way of selecting the most deserving of elevation?’ Frenda said with a satisfied grin.
Naturally, Lil couldn’t see how such a chaotic dance could enable any kind of selection unless someone was tasked with rating their individual skills, but before she could ask for any clarification Sis had her own query to make.
‘You say two will be chosen because of our arrival?’ she said sternly. ‘Yet we won’t be staying.’
Frenda couldn’t hide that she was surprised by Sis’s firm assurance that they would be moving on.
‘But where could be better to live than here?’ she said, indicating their pleasant surroundings with a wave of her hand, the food and drink laid out before them with a satisfied gaze. ‘How far have you travelled? Tell me truthfully, have you ever come across any other community more secure than ours?’
Lil found that she had to nod in agreement: it had been a shock that the previous farm had apparently remained undiscovered and therefore completely untouched by marauding gangs, but her surprise had been greater still when she had realised that this much larger and therefore more obvious community had also escaped without the slightest signs of attempted plunder. Moreover, from what Frenda had said earlier about the need to receive permission to safely travel through the other nearby farms and communities, it would seem that a large number of well-established communities had managed to escape completely unscathed.
Could this belief in these bizarre animal gods really offer the worshippers such incredibly high levels of protection?
How did it work?
Did they all rally to the defence of each other when one group came under attack?
Surely this declaration that they all came under the protection of their gods wasn’t any real explanation at all!
Then again, was it possible to explain Frenda’s heartfelt assertion that many had witnessed the death and subsequent resurrection of their god?
Any one who doubted that he had originally been put to death were invited to insert their hands into the bloody wound caused by the spear that had been deliberately plunged deeply into his heart.
To feel, too, the coldness, the clamminess of his rapidly cooling skin. To check that he was no longer breathing, that his blood no longer freely flowed throughout his body.
Once he had been wrapped in a shroud, he was placed on clear display for far less than three hours within a glass coffin.
A man or woman from each community formed the guard, and Frenda herself had once willingly taken on this role.
There was no opportunity for the devious swapping of a corpse for a live person, she had assured a sceptical Sis, an awed Lil.
Indeed, she had seen the shroud itself moving slightly, much as the closely observed cocoon of a transforming pupa might be seen to tremble as the change took place.
And yes, when he arose, he had changed, becoming part lion, bear, eagle or bull.
But what remained of the man, Frenda had hurriedly explained, catching once again the doubt in Sis’s questioning eyes, was still instantly recognisable as the man they had originally interred within the transparent casket.
What’s more, she had added triumphantly, he would soon be taken up to the abode of the gods; and yet when he returned the following year, it was ‘always, always the very same man!’
As Lil once again recalled Frenda’s insistence that the risen god was a real, even tangible being, there most have been something within her expression – wonder, perhaps, maybe even a wish to believe in something so truly remarkable and wonderful – that was not only plain to see but also effortlessly decipherable.
‘Every traveller who passes this way at first refuses to believe that our security is wholly down to the protection of our gods and their servants,’ Frenda said, ‘yet eventually, if not soon, they all come to be the most sincere adherents of our belief
‘“Masters’ commands come with a power resistless,”’ Sis intoned, a line that Lil recognised as a quote from Milton taken from the book; a line proclaiming that subservience was a choice made, ‘“to such as owe them absolute subjection.”’
Naturally, Frenda was completely unaware that it was a quote: yet she surely understood that Sis was insulting her. She glowered back at Sis, a grimace that was also full of suspicion.
‘Our gods have spared us even from this Nemesis I believe I heard you admiringly referring to earlier,’ she snapped.
‘You’ve heard of her?’
Sis was at last curious rather than irate, Lil was relieved to note. She didn’t even bother correcting Frenda’s naturally unintentional misnaming.
‘Hasn’t everyone heard at least one of the ridiculous tales surrounding her?’ Frenda replied aggressively. ‘Isn’t she the one everyone makes themselves submissive to, even before they have actually witnessed for themselves her destructiveness, her mercilessness, her inhumanity to her – no, surely they can’t be her fellow humans? Surely, she’s inhuman; maybe even some goddess herself – which can only mean she’s the Devil incarnate!’
‘Ah, so you too, have heard of this Devil?’ Sis asked with sudden interest.
‘Haven’t I just said that I have?’ Frenda retorted, misinterpreting Sis’s query. ‘This Nemô, as I’ve heard her called, this “dispenser of dues”.’
‘Hah, I’ve heard these versions of the tales, too,’ Sis responded calmly, even jocularly. ‘Yet I find them hard to believe, don’t you? That this girl bothers carrying around with her this Wheel of Fate, this Scourge of an apple branch. What would be the sense in wielding such useless items?’
As she spoke, Sis exaggeratedly opened up her arms, her palms uppermost, as if – Lil thought – she was going out of her way to demonstrate to Frenda that she carried nothing similar to these devices.
Was she, Lil bemusedly wondered, attempting to allay Frenda’s suspicions that she might be linked in some way to these tales of Nemesis? Certainly, Frenda was glaring at Sis in a way that reeked distrust, even great dislike: yet that was perfectly understandable, as Sis’s attitude towards her had been at best constantly disdainful, whereas now it was bizarrely hostile.
In fact, Frenda was now eying them both with undisguised wariness, such that Lil could almost guess what she was thinking: how had two young girl’s not only survived their travels, but had also come through them looking healthy and well-fed? Moreover, how had they come through all those dangerous lands retaining possession of a thoroughbred horse that even the most placid farmer would kill for?
‘Such a tale is one I find hard to believe myself,’ Frenda agreed, ‘and yet we have many travellers arriving here who swear they have witnessed the destruction waged in her name: for that is what I believe these tales really refer to – the callous murders deliberately perpetrated by those who worship her, who may well have been given extra powers to carry out their mayhem!’
Before she could make her accusation any plainer, she was interrupted by an abrupt blare of horns and shrieking reed flutes. There was a sudden onrush of children towards the nearest posts where, each grabbing a hanging garland, everyone immediately whirled into an excitable little dance to the beat of a number of drums of different sizes and tones.
‘You will, of course, be taking part in the game?’ Frenda asked, her tone hard and brooking no disagreement. ‘Or do you fear what the judgement of our gods will be?’
Sis hung back, clearly intending to resist any effort to force her into joining the dance, a move that elicited a similarly irate response from a number of well-armed warriors who had quietly enveloped their little group under the cover of the chaotic surge of children.
Lil, wishing to make amends, wishing Sis hadn’t been so rudely belligerent, jumped up and grabbed the older girl’s hand, dragging her into the throng of children still searching for a garland they could hold.
‘Why are you being so awful to her?’ Lil furiously snapped at Sis as soon as they were out of Frenda’s hearing. ‘What has she done wrong to deserve all that?’
Sis nonchalantly took the garland Lil was forcing into her hand. She even made a half-hearted attempt at looking like she was following the simple dance steps.
‘This, this isn’t a game, Lil!’ Sis stated bluntly. ‘It’s a way to choose which children will be sacrificed to their gods!’
*
Chapter 12
‘So how come you’re suddenly so concerned about these children?’
Lil glared angrily at Sis as they both went through the motions of participating in the dance. Unlike the other children, however, they remained together, keeping a tight hold of their original garlands.
All around them, the other children were gracefully swirling from one post to another, reaching out for any freely hanging garlands of the right colour, joyously joining in with the circular dance of another group before – as soon as they could – moving on to yet another clutch of dancers.
‘You took on the role of being my conscience, remember?’ Sis responded with a wry grin. ‘Bedsides, this is their own children they’re betraying; murdering them for no real purpose. I’m – as the tales correctly tell – simply a “deliver of dues”.’