Read Online Downfall of the Gods by K. J. Parker - Free Book Online

waited for him at the crossroads. He hadn’t been gone long when a golden eagle swooped down out of the sky and perched on the finger-post.
    I was mildly surprised. My uncle Gyges is usually a kestrel.
    “What?” I said.
    “You’re in so much trouble.”
    I sighed. “Now what am I supposed to have done?”
    “More what you haven’t,” uncle said. “You do know what date it is?”
    “Not a clue.”
    He clicked his tongue. Eagles can’t do that, but luckily nobody was watching. “Wilfully blind, more like.”
    “Fine. What’s the stupid date?”
    “Yesterday was the last day of the Greater Athanasia.”
    “But that’s not till—” I froze. “What month is this?”
    “Goosefeather.”
    Nuts. I’d lost track of time, plodding through the wilderness. The Greater Athanasia, held on the last three days of Deer Rut, is a huge and extremely important festival in my honour, held at the Great Theatre in Lyconessus. Every year I have to manifest myself as a thirty-foot pillar of fire on the last day. If I don’t, apparently, there will be famine and plague, or the world will come to an end, or something like that. Anyway, an awful lot of mortals will get frightfully upset, probably start doomsday movements and religious wars, burn heretics, make a dreadful fuss generally. I’d never ever missed it, not once, ever.
    “What happened?” I said. “Were there riots?”
    Uncle shook his head. “No, everything went off just fine. One of the best festivals in years, they said.”
    “But I wasn’t there.”
    “Ah.” He pecked under his wing, then went on, “The priests have contingency plans laid on, just in case. Obviously they know you quite well. They’ve got twenty thousand gallons of rock oil in a giant cistern at the back of the Theatre, and a very ingenious syphon arrangement, works by hydraulic pressure or something like that. When it was clear you weren’t going to show, they cranked it up, set light to it and hey presto, divine renewal for another year.”
    I was relieved, naturally, but also somewhat—oh, I don’t know. Disappointed? Offended in some way? I couldn’t say.
    “Well then,” I said. “No harm done.”
    “You’re still in big trouble. He wants to see you, now. Quick sharp. If you won’t come, I’m to drag you by your hair.”
    He was perfectly capable of doing that. “Can’t. I’m busy.”
    My uncle Gyges doesn’t like me very much. “I was hoping you were going to say that.”
    “Yes, but I really am genuinely busy. Dad knows all about it. He approves.”
    I said the last two words in the shape of a dormouse, around which the talons of a golden eagle suddenly closed inexorably. “At least let me leave a note for the human,” I squeaked, but I don’t suppose he heard me over the rushing of the wind.
    D AD WAS SEATED on the Throne of the Sun; always a bad sign. From there, he can look out over every corner of the world, and beyond, to the stars. It gives him a sense of perspective, he says; it reminds him that he really is the epicentre of the universe, master of all he surveys, the single most important entity in existence. I perceive it as a big gold chair, tastelessly overdecorated with prancing lions and anatomically impossible cherubim.
    “You’ve done it this time,” he said.
    “Come off it,” I said. “I missed a festival. The priests covered for me. It’s all right.”
    He shook his head slowly, his beard touching one shoulder, then the other. “Afraid not,” he said. “Really and truly, pumpkin, you’ve gone and made a terrible mess of things.”
    He explained. The festival was not, as I and ninety-nine per cent of the humans attending it believed, a bit of a spectacle and a chance to let off steam. It genuinely was an act of renewal—of the fertility of the earth, the balance of the forces of nature, the covenant between gods and mortals. Yes, the priests had faked it for me, so nobody but them knew that disaster was just around the corner; war,