As he awaited his interrogation by Master Ek, Froissart began to sweat. What did the old monster want? A fly settled on Froissart’s face and began feeding on his sweat. He brushed it away. It returned with allies. That was the tropics through and through. Life swarm-ping, breeding, ramping without order. Not for the first time, Froissart longed to be in Wen Endex in deep-frozen winter, that part of the year’s cycle when so many things die out of the world, thus making possible spring with its rushing renewals, the sudden flowers, the joy of life awaking.
Spring.
Untunchilamon would never know such a change.
And joy?
Surely there was no joy to be found in this pestilential climate, always so hot that the mere possession of a skin was an almost unendurable burden.
Angrily, Froissart slapped his own face. Mashed a fly.
‘Master Ek will see you now.’
That from an acolyte. Froissart rubbed at the fly, removing mashed entrails from his sweating skin as best he could. All too soon, he was face to face with the High Priest.
‘I hail the lord who serves the Lord of Lords,’ said Froissart.
Master Ek looked up from the corpse on which he was working, smiled, and invited his guest to inspect the meat.
‘Interesting, is it not?’ said Ek, prying at a delicate membrane with a needle-sharp hook.
‘Yes,’ said Froissart, fascinated by the interwriggling blue and red veins which snaked through the pink-grey of the membrane.
‘Ah,’ said Ek. ‘Interesting indeed.’
And he pulled, and the membrane tore, and Froissart saw into the organ below, saw into a ripeness where something writhed, and was assailed by the stench of rotting meat, and gagged, and had to strive to keep himself from vomiting.
‘Trasilika,’ said Ek, the word abrupting into Froissart’s distress. ‘Who is he?’
‘Who he claims to be,’ said Froissart. ‘Manthandros Trasilika is the true wazir of Untunchilamon. Aldarch the Third gave him his appointment.’
‘If you are lying…’
‘My tongue is green,’ said Froissart.
Ek seemed to accept this assertion, at least for the moment. The High Priest wiped his hands on a bloody rag then led Froissart into an interrogation chamber. Two chairs awaited, a low table between them. Froissart sat at Ek’s invitation.
‘Cigarette?’ said Ek.
Froissart was not sure whether to accept or not. He knew the tobacco Ek smoked to be a narcotic drug, a drug which produced an addiction which was almost unshakeable. But how quickly did the drug gain control of its victim? Was it a hallucinogen? Or what?
‘Try it,’ said Ek, extending one of his paper tubes of tightly rolled tobacco.
Froissart took the cigarette. An acolyte produced a hot coal, holding it with a pair of tongs. Froissart, who had some experience of smoking opium, got the cigarette alight and puffed on it slowly. Then Ek said, abruptly, without preambles:
‘Who was Mishlin?’
‘Author of the Book of Hot Iron,' answered Froissart, speaking automatically, without needing to think.
Silence.
Then:
‘In which city was the word of Zoz first proclaimed?’
‘In no city,’ answered Froissart. ‘Rather, in the mountain temple known as Qo.’
Another silence. Ek smoked, studying Froissart all the while. Those eyes of pale orange flecked with green had the potential to be grossly disturbing. Inhuman eyes. A mutant’s eyes. But Froissart was not worried. He knew now why he had been called to the Temple. Ek feared him a false priest, and was determined to prove him a fraud by testing his knowledge.
But Jean Froissart could easily pass any such test.
Though Froissart was a child of Wen Endex, he had gone to Ang and had been converted to the worship of Zoz the Ancestral. Why? Because he had truly Believed. At a crucial stage in his life, he had been granted a vision of horror. He had Believed, as an iron certainty, that Zoz existed.
He had converted.
He had worshipped.
He had obeyed.
And, as an outsider among the Janjuladoola, he had studied twice as hard as his fellow priests, thus winning a minimal acceptance from his superiors. He had explored the histories of the martyrs and saints, the revelations of the mystics who had proclaimed the benefits of applied algetics, and the intricate realms of theological thought and speculation which were impossible in the coarse-tongued Toxteth of Wen Endex.
Later, Froissart had lost his faith. He had become an agnostic: a secret doubter, but never an open apostate.
Why did Froissart lose his faith?
Partly because, as the uncertainties of youth had been replaced by the confidence of manhood, he had lost his need to believe so fervently in anything. Then he had met with a wandering Korugatu philosopher who had wrecked his faith by long conversation over many nights of drinking.
(A mystery, this, since the Korugatu philosophers are based in Chi’ash-lan. How did such a one come to Yestron? Here your storyteller would fable some farfetched explanation, but the honest historian must confess ignorance.)
Froissart’s Korugatu philosopher acknowledged, of course, that the gods exist. This is beyond dispute, for deities prove themselves often by working miracles, manifesting themselves upon battlefields and answering prayers. Adroit sacrifice will nearly always bring results from Above, or from Below, or from the Sideways Realms. Therefore we cannot doubt that the Higher Ones (and the Lower Ones, the Sideways Ones and the Inverted Ones) do exist (and perhaps will continue to exist in the future).
But, claimed the sage, that the gods exist in the forms humanity attributes to them is far less certain. It is the way of priesthoods to pretend to a certain knowledge of the minds of the gods. But to know our own minds is near impossible, so how can we be so sure of those of beings alien to us?
In the face of these arguments and much alcohol, Froissart’s faith had at last collapsed. But still he retained his knowledge, hence was easily able to survive a viva voce examination by Master Ek.
‘Why do we worship Zoz the Ancestral?’ said Master Ek.
‘Because He is the greatest power,’ said Froissart.
‘How do we worship Him?’ said Ek.
‘By satisfying His demands for pain and death,’ said Froissart.
‘Why does Zoz demand pain?’ said Ek.
‘Because it proves His power.’
‘And why death?’
‘Because that proves His power likewise,’ said Froissart.
‘What is the greatest good?’ said Ek.
‘To yield to power to prevent pain.’
The catechism proceeded along such lines for some time, until at last Master Ek seemed satisfied.
‘Wait here,’ said Ek.
Then he withdrew, leaving Froissart to sweat. Which Froissart did, in both a physical and a metaphysical sense. Ek had another trick up his sleeve. But what?
At last the High Priest returned and said:
‘A sacrifice has been prepared. You are to sacrifice a vampire rat to the greater glory of Zoz the Ancestral.’
Jean Froissart was conducted to the naos of the Temple, where a rat was waiting for sacrifice. Froissart passed this test perfectly.
