Three Names of the Hidden God (3 page)
Read Three Names of the Hidden God Online
Authors: Vera Nazarian
Her words held such furious power that once again everyone froze.
Her father, blood pouring from his lips, stared in disbelief at his daughter’s betrayal. “Not you . . . Lealla,” he whispered. “No, not you.” He slumped, released from Khoiram’s hold, and sank on his knees in the mud.
“
All this time, father, you wasted your love on the wrong child,” Lealla hissed. “If you’d only loved you son and not your daughter, you would still be alive now. But you disdained him, since childhood. All his learning, his grace and wisdom, all in vain! And so we have arranged your downfall through occult methods—Khoiram drained the lake by means of sorcery so that you would come unguarded and bound only with curiosity. At my orders, explosive powder was sprinkled. Not some forgotten god, it was I—my will was carried out when they forced the doors, so that you would know terror, so that you would feel weak. For it’s what you are, weak and impotent, an old blind fool. But enough! Now my brother will rule and I will rule at his side. All these years of waiting, all these endless days . . . it is only him I loved.”
The Qalif was on his last moments. “
I have loved you
both
. . . my children,” he said on his final breath. “My son chose not to see it, chose the path of darkness.” He gasped, a whole-body shudder passing through him. And then he raised his gaze and he said, “I do not curse you, my son, my daughter, though it is within my right. Instead, I ask that you see the truth of what you have done. May the sun never set for you until you do.”
And with these words the old Qalif fell motionless into the drying mud of Lake Veil.
Ruogo had been squeezed back by the movement of the crowd together with all the others, and he was now pressed from all sides by terrified men. He watched as brother and sister stood above the body of their slain patriarch, both radiant in wicked, unearthly beauty. And something made him draw his gaze for a moment upon the closest gate of the temple, the one with the carved bird image.
It was softly moving.
The doors fell inward in silence, placing the shapes of the Qali and Qalia in silhouette against the gaping darkness revealed. Then, gasps came from the crowd on all directions of the structure. All four doors had opened, and the crowd noticed that the dark within was like a void, an infinite nothingness that pulled to itself.
Out of that nothingness sounded a voice.
A wrongful death
, it said from all the four entrances, rumbling in deep echoes that sent shudders and raised hair along the skin of everyone in the crowd.
One must now come forth and be punished, or you will all be.
A pause and then there were cries among the multitude. “
The Hidden God speaks!”
The young Qali who s
tood before his father’s slain body, went still. His sister turned to stare at the gaping entrance, while the Qali’s and the late Qalif’s mingled bodyguards still had not reacted, restrained with indecision and split loyalties.
But Lealla quickly searched
the crowd and her gaze rested on Ruogo. She pointed at him suddenly, saying “You!” And then, to the nearest guards, “This one, this birdcatcher—quickly, take him inside the temple to satisfy the God!”
Ruogo had no time to protest. He found himself alone as
the crowd parted on both sides of him. And then two burly warriors of the
qalifate
took hold of his arms and bodily carried him to the temple.
The doorway gaped and then he was pushed inside the ancient structure. And the next moment, doors shut behind hi
m.
Absolute darkness came like an ocean, and he, but a speck of seaweed floating many fathoms deep.
And then the voice of the deity sounded, this time soft and intimate.
You are not the one.
Ruogo blinked, and somehow his stifling terror vanished, effaced
by the cavernous peace of what was around him. Although his eyes were not acclimated to the night, he could almost perceive an outline of
someone
, a silhouette of a lesser degree of darkness among the perfect void.
Ruogo stood, and it never occurred to him
to kneel or make any mortal gestures of obeisance. This was a different,
true
place, requiring no ritual, no superfluous layers of meaning between man and god.
“
I’m not the one—indeed, a no one,” Ruogo said to the god. “I was forced against my will to come before you. Not a hero, not a villain, just the wrong man at the wrong time.”
As soon as you made the choice to open your mouth and speak out in defense of what is real, you were noticed and you became someone
, said the Hidden God.
Now, go back outside and bring me the dead body of the victim and the living body of the true murderer.
“
But,” Ruogo said, “there are guards! They will not allow me! What can I, a poor birdcatcher, do?”
Go!
A thousand needles of pain and excitement hit him simultaneously and Ruogo could do nothing but obey as he turned around in the darkness and sprinted to where he last remembered the door.
He pushed it open with a feather-touch. Remarkable, considering its weight.
On the other side, there was sunlight and . . .
birds
.
The worl
d was filled with them.
The birds blackened the sky like bees from a disturbed hive and covered the mud of the lakebed in varicolored speckled dots. They flew, rose, circled, sat and preened, fluttered around, pecked each other in anger, sped in pursuit, t
eemed in madness. Sparrows, hawks, canaries, falcons, finches, eagles, pheasants, magpies, hummingbirds, parrots, jays, peacocks—Ruogo recognized these breeds and others with his practiced eye.
There were no people.
Only birds.
Ruogo stood petrified at the
entrance of the temple and considered what was to be done, and what miracle the Hidden God had wrought. His glance slid to the place where he had last seen the murderer brother and sister and the fallen Qalif’s body.
Amid the swirling madness of the flyin
g and roosting fowl, he noticed two crows sitting very still, and between them, a fallen third.
And somehow without a doubt Ruogo knew who they were.
But—how to catch them?
Ruogo thought of the lures and ropes in his belt pouch. He thought of seed and brea
d crumbs in the other pouch, of dried worms and netting.
And then he thought,
These are not true birds.
Ruogo took out a knife from his belt, and he used it to cut the palm of his left hand. And then he stepped forward, moving very slowly, and stretched hi
s hand forth, palm down, so that his blood dripped on the mud in a trail of scarlet crumbs.
One of the crows, a raven, rotated its eye then its head to stare. And the next instant it hopped forward, drawn by the spilled blood, by the smell of life-death, a
nd began to peck at the earth.
Ruogo pulled out his net and threw, so that it landed over the raven, and then he tightened it. Too late, the raven flapped its wings for it was now caught.
The other crow screamed in fury, and Ruogo knew exactly what she would do. Not blood here, but love was the lure, love for her brother, no matter how twisted.
And the crow came at him, beating her wings, flying up to peck at his eyes and hands that held her brother captive in the net.
But Ruogo was a master of his trade. With his one free hand he threw a length of rope with a loop, and it caught around her neck, past the beak. He lassoed it, pulled tight, then quickly bound her feet which was how one secured fowl, and the crow was his prisoner just as her brother.
After the
two living crows were secured at his belt, struggling in futility, Ruogo stepped toward the third. He bent over the dead body of the old raven, while the multitudes of birds screamed and roiled around him in the sky, occluding the sun.
With sorrow and car
e he picked up the dead bird and then carried all three back into the temple.
Darkness returned all around, the captured crows screamed in fear, and the dim shape of the God shimmered before him.
You have done well, birdcatcher
, sounded the intimate voice.
And now I will reward you with three of my names. They are Mercy, Wonder, and Fulfillment. I have many other names, but in this world of three dimensions I may only be known by a sequence of three.
“
What must I do with your three names, oh Great One?” Ruogo whispered.
Knowing them you must now observe the world with different eyes. You will now look for my names in all things.
And immediately Ruogo felt the crows disappear from his grasp and instead they were back in human form, somewhere nearby in the darkness. Ruogo knew, in that instant, true wonder.
Lealla screamed, and her brother Khoiram
’s cry also sounded, the lingering echo of a thwarted hunting bird. They were to go unpunished by the God, Ruogo sensed, and with a wrenching in his heart he knew pity and mercy.
Finally, a gasp of divine breath. The dead Qalif
’s body shuddered. And in the darkness he arose and was a corpse no longer.
The God
’s voice filled the temple.
And thus you know fulfillment.
* * *
I
n the world outside, birds returned to human form—or had they ever been otherwise? The Qalif came forth from the temple and was greeted with cries of exultation, for in this
qalifate
he was a man well-loved and his death was deemed a thing of regret and sorrow. Now, his resurrection was a thing of wonder.
Khoiram and Lealla, protected by their father
’s mercy, made their way unhindered through the angry crowds, compelled somehow to keep walking west in the direction of the setting sun. A curious punishment was upon them, for they were driven by no one yet they were in exile. Those who saw them pass later, in other places, other lands, claimed that it always happened at sunset. It was as though they were rushing to catch the sun at the end of its journey across the vault of heaven; indeed, the grim shadow-forms of trudging brother and sister became the stuff of hearsay and legend.
As for Ruogo, he was favored by the Qalif, feasted for a day and then
—since the Qalif was grieving the loss of his son and daughter, and would grieve for the rest of his days—allowed to go on his own way in the world.
Before Ruogo left this land, he made one last stroll across the dry mud of the former lake into the silent temple of the Hidden God that now sat unattended by all but a few devout priests. Ruogo carried with him an
old box of carved wood, with an ancient thing inside it, a desiccated body of a tiny hatchling that he had kept all these years. At the altar in the shadowy cavern within the temple, he placed the dead thing of bones, and he implored the Hidden God one last time.
And in his mind, the God answered.
What’s this? You bring me a tiny lost bit of my heart. And for that reason I grant you a tiny bit in return.
There was a breath of fire, a wash of air and power, and the tiny creature came alive. A fragile running
pulse, and it beat its newborn wings, and then, as Ruogo watched in awe, it managed to take flight, and sped forth into the daylight outside.
You give it a second chance
—the greatest gift. And the chance to have made such a gift was my gift to you, so many years ago. For you found a small worthless thing yet recognized significance while most others in your place would not. And it opened the spaces within you for other things to come. Now, be on your way, go reap these things, all the infinity of things that you will find.
“
But I have so many questions left!” Ruogo said. “Why did this poor creature die so young before it even had a chance to live? Why do any of us die? What of the symbols upon the gates of your temple? What of my own place and the burden of knowing your three names? What must I do now?”
May you spend the rest of your life finding these answers. From this moment onward you begin to know. And it is what makes you.
Ruogo bowed with his soul before the invisible Hidden God, and left the temple with a fevered mind but an easy heart.
Hours later, long after he had clambered out of the lakebed and resumed the caravan route on his own life
’s journey, the waters of Lake Veil returned.
It was said they came rushing out of nowhere, allowing the priests
and worshippers of the temple only moments to escape with their lives before they closed in and flooded the place, covering once again the ancient temple under a smooth mirror surface.
What is hidden will remain.
“Three Names of the Hidden God”
was originally published in the anthology
Heroes in Training
, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines, DAW Books, September, 2007.
It is a completely new story set in the Compass Rose fantasy milieu originally introduced in the novel
Dreams of the Compass Rose
.
If you enjoyed reading this story, please consider buying other books by this author, so that she can continue to write, illustrate, publish, pay the rent, eat, and feed the c
ats so as not to be eaten in turn.
OTHER BOOKS BY VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass
Mayhem at Grant-Williams High (YA)
Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons
Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret
(Forthcoming)
Pagan Persuasion: All Olympus Descends on Regency
Cobweb Bride
* * *
Please see
Vera Nazarian’s Amazon Author Central
page for mor
e:
Thank you for your support!
