finest sword of the Devourers. I have shared his magic, as I demonstrate now.' At this he would eat of some delicious growing thing, and there would be fearful gasps and exclamations and some laughter, for all expected him to fall down, writhing in his death agonies as did those who, with regularity, ate of the deadly green each spring and died.
'For generations,' the priest told his incredulous audiences, 'the enemy has deprived you of your heritage, your land, and the du-given ability to live off this land of plenty. In all life there is a oneness, for we are of the earth and for the earth, and all that grows from the earth is good, and the brothers of the fields and forests share willingly.' By this time he had lost most of them.
'Moreover, we were once called the Children of the Light, for the good one, Du, sends down the power to create energy from nothing more than his own goodness, and this, too, has been stolen from us by the Devourer teachings that our own Du harms us.'
If a few younger pongs looked up at the sun, as the season changed and there was warmth coming from the fiery 'Du,' that was, at first, the only tangible result of the teachings of the priest. Yet he was tireless, and now and again he would see, as he returned to the outlying settlements, a pong push back his hood and feel the good warmth of Du on his face. He had much ground to cover. There were nine more Farkoian cities, hundreds of thousands of pongs, and many, many weary marches through the growing warmth, the spring rains, and the days of wind and dust. A westward detour occupied weeks of the priest's time. In the mountains he found the free runners, thin and hungry after a long, cold winter, still trying to use their weak, inaccurate bows to feed themselves from the sparse animal life.
'You have seen and heard the Master,' he told them sternly. 'You have seen him sleek and fat and full of life as he lived off the plenty of the earth, and drank in the sun's goodness. You saw the woman, Jai, follow the Master's lead, and you see me now. Am I starving, as you are? No, because I eat of the earth's plenty. Listen to me, runners, listen. The Master is returning. Eat of the plenty. Strengthen yourself so that you can join his holy, victorious army.'
'Tambol,' they said, 'you have exposed yourself to the sun too often, so that the deadly rays have baked away your reason. Leave us with your madness.'
'I cry out truth and only the wilderness hears,' Tambol said sadly, setting off toward the southeast.
After Tambol's preaching in the city of Arutan, momentous events had taken place. A winter fever had taken the High Master, the hereditary ruler, Farko. At his funeral four hundred female slaves were sacrificed, a disobedient male pong was ceremonially peeled and left screaming on a pole in front of the temple. Young Devourers found that the story was true, that the flesh of a pong, when peeled, was so soft that a straw, thrown just so, would embed itself. The feast was generous. Four hundred female bodies made much meat, and females were tenderer than males. Moreover, using the females as sacrifice helped in two ways to ease the population pressure created by the pongs, who, it was generally known, spent all their nights in breeding activity.
A Devourer, who had stolen, was sacrificed by the High Priest himself, and choice cuts were delivered to the table of the new ruler, Elnice of Arutan. She ate in company with her strong right arm, Captain Hata. As he gnawed a rib bone, Hata, his mind actually on the body of his ruler, a body that was beyond description for its sweetness, talked idly.
'When they peeled the pong today it was rather amusing.'
'I can't stand the stench,' Elnice said.
As the priests took the first strip of hide he yelled at them defiantly. He said, 'You kill only my earthly body, for I will join the Master in paradise.'
Then, with the second strip, he yelled, '
' 'The Master has come, and he will return to avenge me.' ' Elnice was savoring the soft, sweet flesh from the dead devourer's bud. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment. 'The Master has come?'
'The prattlings of a dying pong.'
'What else did he say, as they began to really get down to it?'
'He started screaming in pain, of course, and between screams he begged for a quick death, promising to tell all about the Master, and how he was going to give freedom to all pongs.'
'In going over the law and order reports last night,' Elnice said, 'I noticed that more than twenty pongs have had to be lashed for exposing parts of their bodies to the sun, and that only in the last few days.'
'Indeed?' Hata asked, around a mouthful of solid rib muscle.
'It's probably coincidence,' the new ruler said. 'Peel a few at random and see what they say.'
'Shall I save their buds for you, High Master?' She laughed. 'It is a rich diet. A few. But when it comes to buds, I prefer to pick and choose and take them internally in another manner. If you have finished your duties, come to me early tonight.'
'With the greatest of pleasure, my ruler,' Hata said.
