Such strangers to our own thoughts can we make ourselves when there seems no scope for them! But the cat was irretrievably out of the bag now. At the mere hearing of these lines, the prelate's heart had mutined against the god, and thrilled to the thought that the giant might actually be imperilled.
He had felt the touch of the god's thought for the first time in his life this morning, and its awful intimacy left him wondering now: How far could the spider's mind see into his own? Would this rebellion in his blood not be detected by the god when he again touched his priest's mind with his own?
The grand stairs in front of him now majestically switchbacked five hundred feet high up the crag-wall. As he began to climb them he could see more and more of the stadium's balustraded upper rim, all drenched with moonlight. Each angle of the rim's oblate octagon wore sculptured pinnacles of bronze, and as he climbed he strove to still the thrum of terror in his heart by studying those bas reliefs while counting his steps, the game being to pinpoint at just what altitude various details of the sculpture became legible to the climber. It collected and concentrated him, and he was heartened by the poise he was able to command.
The city fell away behind him as the well known carvings came clear. At the three-hundred-fifty-ninth step, he could even see the exquisitely carven ships, their little masts and sails . . . Those were temples and domed halls chiselled in the panel adjoining. The City's wealth, the potency of their tower-crowned metropolis, were the sculptor's predictable themes for this most majestic and solemn monument to the spidergod's Covenant with Pandagon's countrymen. The stadium was the very altar of that Covenant, where the contract was resworn, where the city re-purchased the mantle of its lucrative vassalage by the annual tendering of a lot-chosen tithing of human lives . . . always few, in fairness. The blood fee was nigh nominal.
At the crest the stone flights became a smooth-flagged promenade that flowed forth to the mighty pylons of the stadium's City-Gate, and entered between the huge brazen leaves that stood always wide open. The arena's sand floor stretched beyond. Pandagon must now walk out onto that sand, walk straight across the long axis of its vast ellipse, and stand before the Gods Gate, which stood directly opposite the City Gate, but which opened only one night a year, just long enough for the Chosen-by-lot to pass through, out to the god, and the doom that awaited them.
The prelate looked—partingly? he managed to smile to himself—down across lamp-spangled Big Quay, whose sea of roofs mobbed the knees of the cliffs he'd mounted. All the city's ridges and gables and domes seeming to vie like children urgent for notice and favor. Down along the quayside, watch-lanterns hung from jibs and rigging, freckling like fireflies the forested masts of all the ships undressed of sail and bedded down.
Would he indeed return alive to his beautiful, proud city? How could he walk into the A'Rak's presence, and keep hidden from the god's eye-jeweled hugeness, that thrill his spine had sung with at the thought of the god endangered? The god's inhuman thought, this morning, had seemed to go directly up his spine to his understanding. How could his own thought, his purposes, be closed to that millennial monster? Here he was even now thinking his treason unguardedly—and indeed how guard it, now he'd discovered it in himself?
The sacerdotal literature, the breviaries, early annals, constitutional chronicles—all his sources were silent on how deeply the god saw into his priests' minds. Hard and terrible it appeared to him, to walk across that arena's star-bleached sand. Yet he could not choose but do it.
So he passed through the City Gate, and stepped out onto the arena, his pace still deliberate, dignified.
Unheard of, this summons. Something utterly new. A private summons of the Church's Primate to the most
He had felt the touch of the god's thought for the first time in his life this morning, and its awful intimacy left him wondering now: How far could the spider's mind see into his own? Would this rebellion in his blood not be detected by the god when he again touched his priest's mind with his own?
The grand stairs in front of him now majestically switchbacked five hundred feet high up the crag-wall. As he began to climb them he could see more and more of the stadium's balustraded upper rim, all drenched with moonlight. Each angle of the rim's oblate octagon wore sculptured pinnacles of bronze, and as he climbed he strove to still the thrum of terror in his heart by studying those bas reliefs while counting his steps, the game being to pinpoint at just what altitude various details of the sculpture became legible to the climber. It collected and concentrated him, and he was heartened by the poise he was able to command.
The city fell away behind him as the well known carvings came clear. At the three-hundred-fifty-ninth step, he could even see the exquisitely carven ships, their little masts and sails . . . Those were temples and domed halls chiselled in the panel adjoining. The City's wealth, the potency of their tower-crowned metropolis, were the sculptor's predictable themes for this most majestic and solemn monument to the spidergod's Covenant with Pandagon's countrymen. The stadium was the very altar of that Covenant, where the contract was resworn, where the city re-purchased the mantle of its lucrative vassalage by the annual tendering of a lot-chosen tithing of human lives . . . always few, in fairness. The blood fee was nigh nominal.
At the crest the stone flights became a smooth-flagged promenade that flowed forth to the mighty pylons of the stadium's City-Gate, and entered between the huge brazen leaves that stood always wide open. The arena's sand floor stretched beyond. Pandagon must now walk out onto that sand, walk straight across the long axis of its vast ellipse, and stand before the Gods Gate, which stood directly opposite the City Gate, but which opened only one night a year, just long enough for the Chosen-by-lot to pass through, out to the god, and the doom that awaited them.
The prelate looked—partingly? he managed to smile to himself—down across lamp-spangled Big Quay, whose sea of roofs mobbed the knees of the cliffs he'd mounted. All the city's ridges and gables and domes seeming to vie like children urgent for notice and favor. Down along the quayside, watch-lanterns hung from jibs and rigging, freckling like fireflies the forested masts of all the ships undressed of sail and bedded down.
Would he indeed return alive to his beautiful, proud city? How could he walk into the A'Rak's presence, and keep hidden from the god's eye-jeweled hugeness, that thrill his spine had sung with at the thought of the god endangered? The god's inhuman thought, this morning, had seemed to go directly up his spine to his understanding. How could his own thought, his purposes, be closed to that millennial monster? Here he was even now thinking his treason unguardedly—and indeed how guard it, now he'd discovered it in himself?
The sacerdotal literature, the breviaries, early annals, constitutional chronicles—all his sources were silent on how deeply the god saw into his priests' minds. Hard and terrible it appeared to him, to walk across that arena's star-bleached sand. Yet he could not choose but do it.
So he passed through the City Gate, and stepped out onto the arena, his pace still deliberate, dignified.
Unheard of, this summons. Something utterly new. A private summons of the Church's Primate to the most
Similar Books
