Chapter thirteen

The Temple at Tlaxapec

 

The thief was angry for a long time. The priest left him alone expect for the daily draughts of potion that slowly turned him corporeal again. He left them in the thief’s little cell every morning at some point when the cell was empty, when the human was washing or walking out in the sunshine.

The thief felt as if he had come back from a distant land, a land that had almost swallowed him up. He had been numb and vague, but slowly he had returned to the world of heat and light and pain. Despite his passionate anger, he was sensible enough to know that he owed his saviour an enormous debt. After maybe a month he had the strength and control to talk to him again. He waited, sitting on the stone shelf where he normally slept, until he came.

‘Pilgrim...’ said the priest, approaching out of the darkness, ‘how are you feeling?’

The thief put his hand out, automatically, to touch his own face,

‘Much more solid...’ he murmured

The Priest smiled gently.

‘I can see that your physical body is becoming well again... I didn’t mean that, though. I meant what I said. How do you feel?’

Something in the Priest’s tone turned aside any initial thoughts that the thief might have had to cover up his real emotions.

‘Angry... betrayed.’ He said; the last of these words was snarled in Tlaxacan. The Priest winced and put his index finger to his lips.

‘Not here’ he hissed

The thief was still perplexed.

‘Why not? Surely here, of all places, should be where our native language should be spoken...’  

The Priest shook his head. His voice still tremored, barely audible.

‘That language is not native to anyone; it is merely the language of greedy gods and their necromancies. It was willed into being – real languages are the work of free people finding common ground’

The thief felt an emptiness; which had been sitting covered, like a trap door above a deep cellar; open up inside him. It was a long way down. Nonetheless, he forced himself to speak in the common tongue of the north.

‘But this is my people and that is my language – they are the things that I have always believed in...’

‘Your people would kill you for their own ends...’

The human had been grappling with this since the moment that his betters’ plans had been revealed.

‘Perhaps those ends were justified – perhaps my sacrifice would have been worthwhile...’

The Priest came closer; he held a lantern up, it produced only a vague greenish light in the face of the strong sunlight that streamed through the cell skylight.

‘If so – why did you let me save you? I wouldn’t have stopped you from returning...’

The thief felt a drumming of pain beginning in his head.

‘I didn’t want to die...’ he admitted, ‘...I was not brave... You promised me life...’

The priest placed his hand on the thief’s shoulder. He had to stretch up slightly to reach him.

‘All that means is that you are a rational being; as we all should aim to be. Your only fault was to serve an entirely irrational cause’

The drumming increased in intensity. He was not at all sure that he knew what this meant.

‘I was selfish...’ he muttered, still wanting to find the fault in himself.

The priest laughed

‘Only a pebble in the scree of their mountainous avarice... We can easily forgive a pebble; even if it were to start an avalanche...’

‘What?’

‘It is of no importance... just an idle thought ‘

The thief swallowed and accepted the depth of his ignorance.

‘What does “irrational” mean? You just used the word...’

‘It means that a being thinks but comes to a conclusion that cannot be reached using the laws of thought applied correctly. It is faulty thinking...’

‘But how can anyone know the laws of thought?’

‘No-one can know them perfectly, I agree, but my mentor has considered them for longer than anyone else, perhaps, and has formulated those laws to a great precision’

‘What sort of laws?’

‘Many of them; and I am happy to share all of them with you in time... but specifically he has developed ideas of how we should value beings with minds’

‘And how should we?’

‘First, and fundamental, that no soul can be weighed above any other. There is no sensible way to place one above, or below, another.  There is no scheme that would fulfil any greater purpose beyond that which values all minds equally’

The thief was shocked. This was clearly blasphemy.

‘But gods are superior to priests; and priests to men; and men to kinaam. Surely this is what our great gods taught. That was what I was taught...’

The priest frowned.

‘So gods say to priests and priests say to men and men shout at kinaam. But they merely assert – there is no basis in such beliefs beyond desire and power. How could there be?’

The thief shook his head; his stomach felt heavy and raw.

‘No – I cannot accept any of this – it is against the natural order of things’

The priest let go of the thief’s shoulder.

‘I understand how you feel. What you have been taught is the way of many, but the Grey Wanderer has thought beyond that...’

He hesitated for a second and looked round at the bare cell.

‘...but there is never an end to thought...so, who knows...’

The priest’s voice trailed off into uncertainty, but he didn’t seem particularly unhappy.

‘You will be whole again in another week, perhaps two; then, if you decide not to help me, you will be well enough to leave’

 The thief didn’t understand this at all, but he knew when a large debt needed to be repaid.

‘You speak in riddles that sound like heresy’ he chided, his new found strength emboldening him, ‘but you also say that you need my help. I will help you in any way that I can – you saved me...’

He glared at the priest.

‘...and I always repay my debts to my superiors’

The priest smiled and shrugged, acknowledging the rebuke. The thief was mildly irritated that he clearly thought his comment a joke.

‘What is it you want me to do?’

The priest pushed his hood back to reveal almost all of his strangely-shaped face. His grey eyes blinked.

‘I want you to impersonate a god’