Downfall of the Gods (2 page)

The chief culinary officer had been negligent in removing all the bones. One lodged in my throat; I dissolved it, but it takes a second. “What?”

Pol shrugged. “He doesn’t confide in me.”

“Ah well. He’s Him. Everything that happens anywhere in the universe is officially his fault. He
ought
to be worried, all the time.”

He speared a button mushroom out of my stew with a toothpick. “Are you up to something? Honestly?”

I sighed. “I interfere in the destinies of mortals,” I said.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

L
ATER
I
WENT
to visit Lord Archias in prison. I felt I owed him that much, but prisons depress me. I guess that’s the point of them. They’d put him in a tower, with one of the best views in the City; looking out over the Horsefair, with its broad streets and brightly coloured awnings, across to the river and the majestic prospect of the Silver Mountains in the far distance. Lord Archias could gaze out of his narrow, barred window and reflect that, a couple of days ago, he’d owned most of what he could see.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

I’d avoided all the tiresome formalities by walking in through the wall. “If you’re busy,” I said, “I could come back later.”

He was sitting on a stone ledge that presumably functioned as a bed. “Yes,” he said. “Come back in four days’ time.”

I frowned. “Your execution is in three days.”

“Yes.”

I was disappointed. Hurt, even. I turned to go, waiting to be called back. I wasn’t, so I stopped. “I thought you had faith,” I said.

“I did. I have.” He shrugged. “Like they say, be careful what you wish for. I believe in you. But you’re a complete shit.”

“Brave words for a man on the brink of eternity.”

“You’re not going to save me.”

“No,” I said.

“Well, then. You’re a shit.”

I conjured a marble throne and sat down. “That’s interesting,” I said. “A man awaits execution, followed by eternity in perpetual torment. He knows he won’t be forgiven. In the presence of the living goddess, he abuses her.” I looked at him. “Is that usual?”

He laughed. “I don’t think this sort of thing happens often enough for there to be a usual,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “But you know more about human nature than I do. Is this what most mortals would do, in your shoes? Or are you exceptional in some way?”

He sighed. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.

Disappointed, to put it mildly. Last time we were together, hell had been a small price to pay. Now; go fuck yourself. So volatile. So mutable. I’d hoped for better, from a mortal. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I said.

He yawned, lay down on the bench. It didn’t look terribly comfortable. “What can I do for you?” he said. “I assume there’s a reason why you’re here.”

“I wanted to see how you’re getting on.”

“Why?”

“Curiosity.”

He turned his head and frowned at me. “Why won’t you forgive me?” he said. “I repented. I was sincere.”

“You hurt me.”

He laughed. “That’s impossible.”

“You did. You damaged me. You inflicted on me an injury that can’t be healed.”

“Bullshit. To the gods, all things are possible.”

“It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

He shrugged. “What did I do that caused you irreparable harm?”

“You murdered Lysippus.”

“True.” He waited, then said, “So?”

“Lysippus the musician,” I said.

He thought for a moment. “You’re right,” he said, “I remember now, he did write music. Songs and little fiddly bits for flute and strings.” He looked up. “Is that important?”

Members of my family aren’t often lost for words. I nodded.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

“To you, maybe.”

“No, but it is. Lysippus was the third biggest landowner in the Republic. He was a vicious, ambitious political animal. His family and mine have been feuding for twelve generations. He was my only real rival for the Consulate. He was about to stage a coup which would’ve thrown the Republic into chaos. Oh yes, and he was an atheist, which is rather ironic, don’t you think.” He stopped and looked down at his hands. “He was also my best friend. And my wife’s lover.”

If he was expecting me to say anything, he was disappointed.

“He was all that,” he went on, “and I killed him. It was understandable, and probably necessary. It was my duty. It was also wrong. So I repented. I was sorry for what I’d done. Given my time over again, I wouldn’t do it, and not just because of winding up in here.” He breathed out slowly, then in again. “And now you’re telling me I’m damned for all eternity because he wrote
songs?
”

“Very good songs,” I said. “I liked them.”

I’d upset him. “So fucking what?”

“So,” I said, “when he died, his talent died with him. It was unique. There will be no more music like that, ever again. I love music. It’s the only thing in the universe which I perceive to be—” I searched helplessly for the word. Stronger? Better? “The only thing beyond my power to command,” I said.

He stared at me. “Surely not.”

“Quite true, unfortunately,” I told him. “I can inspire anyone I like with divine genius, but what they come up with will be, well, different. It’ll be wonderful, but it won’t be the music of Lysippus. That’s all lost, gone for ever. Because of you.”

“And that’s—”

“Why I won’t forgive you, yes.”

He was stunned. “Why not just raise him from the dead, if it’s such a big deal?”

I shook my head slowly.

“But to the gods—”

“Possible, yes. Allowed, no.”

He considered me for a long time. “Balls,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

T
HERE
,
NOW
. I
F
you can’t trust the Goddess, who can you trust?

Faith is relative, and conditional. Or, if you prefer; just because you believe in me doesn’t necessarily mean you believe me. Why, after all, do you tell the truth? Because it’s the right thing to do, or for fear you’ll be found out? Or because you simply want to impart accurate information?

To the gods all things are possible. So we can lie through our teeth, if we want to. Sometimes, though, we don’t want to. By the same token, there are other things we can do but choose not to. Even if we really, really want to.

But let’s not go there.

H
E
’
D ANNOYED ME
so much I went home.

Is there any point trying to describe something that only a tiny handful of conscious minds in the universe are capable of understanding; and who need no description, since they live there, always have, always will?

Mind you, people have tried. In the cloudy heights (this is one of my favourites) dwell the gods; War Hall is their home. They are spirits of light, and Light-Spirit rules them. Well; that’s close enough for government work. Home for me is a space almost big enough to be comfortable in, except that I have to share it with a dozen members of my family, as big as me or bigger. Fact; some of us are bigger than others. My father, for example, is the biggest of the big; he’s
huge
. Query, in fact, whether there’s any limit to his size. Answer (probably); if he wants there to be one, there is.

Home as I perceive it is a vast castle, bare stone walls, bare stone floor. The dominant colour is sandstone red. The only light slides in sideways through high, narrow windows, or gushes out of hearths. Furniture happens when I want it, then falls away in clouds of dust—indeed; home as I perceive it is dirty, undusted, unkempt. The doors creak, because the hinges are three parts seized. None of the windows open. How the others perceive it I neither know nor care, but I should imagine it’s cleaner and more cheerful.

The generally accepted form of communication in my family is melodrama. I see us as actors performing in a huge auditorium; so far away that unless we shout and make huge, over-the-top gestures, we can’t be seen or heard. All about perspective, I guess. I don’t like my family, and I’m not comfortable talking about them.

Father was in his study. I perceive it as a freezing cold stone box, impossibly high ceiling, dark, gloomy, every surface stuffed and crammed with piles of unsorted books and papers; himself slouched in a massive ebony chair, feet up on the desk, book on his knees, not reading. He looked up and scowled at me. “Where have you been?”

“Out,” I said. “You wanted to see me.”

“No,” he replied, “I wanted to know where you’d got to.”

“Fine,” I said. “Can I go now?”

“Shut up and sit down.”

To the gods all things are possible, but some things aren’t easy, such as finding somewhere to sit in all that mess. I pushed a sheaf of papers off a chair onto the floor, and perched. “What?”

He squinted through what I perceived as gold-rimmed spectacles at a bit of paper. “You refused a mortal’s prayer,” he said. “Why?”

“I felt like it.”

“You don’t deny it, then.”

“No.”

“You felt like it.”

“Yes.”

“It was a properly constituted prayer, correctly phrased and made with sincere intent.”

“So?”

He sighed. “It’s all a question,” he said, “of how it looks from the road, as my father used to say. When a mortal prays in correct form and we don’t answer, it looks bad. Brings us into disrepute. You must see that, surely.”

Please note; Father is head of the family because he bound Grandpa in adamantine chains and imprisoned him at the centre of the earth, where presumably he still is. Quoting Grandpa’s folksy sayings cuts no ice with me. “Yes, and I don’t give a damn.”

“That’s a rather irresponsible attitude.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

I
N OUR FAMILY
, what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it is like a great city in the middle of settled, fertile countryside. There are a great many roads, leading from countless small villages, and sooner or later they all lead to the city; no matter where you start from, here is where you arrive. We still go through the motions—accusation, defence, rational debate, argument, counter-argument, rebuttal, counter-rebuttal, pre-emptive defensive strike—but there is and can only be one culmination; what are you going to do about it?

Well; there’s two things he can do: Throw the offender off the ramparts of Heaven. He or she will fall for three days, and on landing will sink a crater a mile wide and fill the air with a dust-cloud that takes a week to settle. After that, he or she will spend a certain time—hundreds or thousands of years—chained to a mountain being gnawed by eagles, or something of the sort, until Father finds he needs him (or her) back home as an ally in the latest family civil war, or until some mortal hero shoots the eagle and cuts the chain, under the fond misapprehension that members of our family understand about gratitude; or Nothing.

“S
PARE ME THE
drama, please,” he said wearily. “But don’t you agree? It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes us unpopular. And you can see why, you of all people. You’re the one who’s so mad keen on
understanding
them.”

To the gods all things are possible, so I kept my temper. “Wanting to understand them isn’t the same as giving a stuff what they think,” I said. “You should know that,” I added, “of all people.”

He glowered at me. “I’m asking you as a personal favour to me.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Just for once, remember who you are. We have
responsibilities.
”

H
E
’
D GOT ME
. Quite true. Just as a man has a responsibility to his dog, or a little girl to her dolls. Note, by the way, that I can only explain this concept by reference to mortal analogies. In my family, we don’t have the vocabulary.

Didn’t mean I had to like it, though. I had no choice—he’d asked nicely; that’s pretty heavy stuff, in my family—but what I did have was a wide degree of room for interpretation.

Lord Archias was asleep. Imagine that; in twenty-four hours they were going to string him up like onions, and he was sleeping. I prodded him awake. He rolled over and scowled at me.

“Go away,” he said.

Playing right into my hands; I was perfectly within my rights to blow him away straight to hell for talking to me like that. “If you want,” I said. “I came here to forgive you, but—”

I was expecting, and hoping, that he’d collapse, go all to pieces, start grovelling. Instead he frowned. “You’re playing games, aren’t you?”

“Don’t annoy me,” I warned him.

He grinned at me. “You were always going to forgive me,” he said, “you’ve got to, it’s the rules. But you made me believe you were going to let me be damned anyway. Playing games.”

“Careful,” I said. “That’s blasphemy.”

“So’s what you’re doing.”

“Incorrect,” I said. “A goddess can’t blaspheme, like

water can’t get wet.”

“Technicality. What you’re doing is basically the same thing. You’re making a mockery of what is sacred.

You’re pissing on the Covenant.”

I took three long deep breaths to calm myself down.

“I should burn you down where you stand,” I said. “Yes,” he replied casually. “You should. Really, it’s your duty. But I know you aren’t going to.”

“Is that right.”

“Yes. Because you want something from me.

Otherwise yes, I’d be ashes by now.” He looked at me down far more nose than any circumstances could ever justify. “You’re pathetic,” he said.

T
HIS BUSINESS OF
the Covenant.

A mortal who thought he was really clever once posed the question; can God create a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it? Clearly he knew nothing about my family. It’s the sort of thing we do to each other all the time. Because to us all things are possible, we get our kicks, and pass the endless, dreary time, creating rocks the others can’t lift; just to spite them, because we can. As witness my father and me. The rock I can’t lift is when he asks me nicely.

But the Covenant— Do you really think we’d sign up to something that actually restricted us, confined our freedom of choice and action? And for what in return? No, we abide by it because it pleases us to do so. And if it doesn’t please—Well.