“Wha’ is dra-gone?” he asked.
She shook her head helplessly.
He bellowed the same question to the assembled diners. “Wha’ is dra-gone?”
The orchestra fell silent. Every head was bowed, as for the headsman’s axe. No one had an answer for Houdum-Bah. Then, from her place beside the platform, Jory cried in a hag’s shriek: “Oh, great Houdum-Bah. There are dragons upriver. I have seen them myself.”
“Wha’?” he demanded again.
“Big creatures,” she said, coming out into the open space before the platform, curving her skinny arms, extending her bony old fingers, glaring her eyes. “With fangs and spines and plates of hide upon them. And claws, of course. Very fearsome, they are.” She shivered all over, making a sound as though her bones clacked.
The man stared at her for a moment, his nostrils twitching, hanging between amusement and annoyance. Then he roared laughter, and his retinue laughed with him, a howled cacophony.
“Houdum-Bah is not feared of beasts, no matter wha’ fangs it has,” cried one.
“True,” said Jory, capering about as she shrieked laughter. “Great Houdum-Bah need fear no beast, no matter when it comes.”
“Great Lord Chimi-ahm will deal with beasts,” the boss chief declared, rising from his chair. He thrust his arms high and trumpeted into the suddenly silent room. “Great Lord Chimi-ahm will hear of this dra-gone. Now call the priests, so Chimi-ahm will hear!”
The drummers looked expectantly at the doors and pummeled their instruments, making an earthquake summons. The Houm silently left their tables to press against the walls, turning their faces away as though they wished to become invisible. The Murrey ran, falling over one another in their anxiety to get the tables tugged aside to make a cleared space below the platform. Fringe and Danivon pulled the Destiny Machine off the end of the platform and settled among the others of their party, as intent upon being inconspicuous as were the Houm.
“He’s playing at something, is Houdum-Bah,” muttered Jory, barely audible under the thunder of the drums. “He’s violent and arbitrary toward everyone, but I sense an especial animosity toward us. One he’s covering up for the moment.”
Danivon sniffed. “True,” he admitted. “The man means a particular violence toward us. Of course he means enough violence toward the world at large to get a great many people killed. So, what happens now?”
“You’re about to see a dabbo-dam,” Jory said. “So, stay alert.”
“What does it mean?” whispered Nela.
“The words? Ah. Dabbo-dam means approach the god, a ritual during which certain followers get touched or inhabited or, sometimes, eaten by the deity. Keep your wits about you.”
“What will happen?” whispered Fringe.
“God knows.” Jory chuckled humorlessly. “Whatever it is, it cannot hurt you if you do not let yourself be fooled.”
The drums fell silent with the entry of the priests, a dozen of them, bony, dirty, skin-headed, rag-robed, bare-footed. They carried bundles that writhed and stank and torches that smoked, bringing tears to the eyes. They brought an altar with them, a tablelike construction suspended between poles, the gilt-horned altar much stained and scarred. When the poles were taken away, the priests took living creatures from their bundles, killed them upon the altar, doused themselves liberally with the blood, then grasped the horns at the four corners of the altar as they chanted in guttural voices, the smoke of their torches rising in a vaporous chimney toward the distant roof beams. The chant was repetitive, three or four phrases reiterated over and over. The drums took up the rhythm. Several of the Houm added their voices to the chant, then more and more of them until all were swaying and muttering.
“Don’t chant with them,” murmured Jory from the sideshow’s midst. “Move your mouth, but do not say the words. Remember that what you see will not be real. Think about something else if you can. The taste of fruit, perhaps. The pleasures of the bath. I find it useful to think of warm water and soap. I picture it cutting through slime, washing it away.”
Fringe moved her lips and thought, as suggested, of bathing. Danivon moved his lips and thought of cutting Houdum-Bah’s throat. “Boy,” indeed. Curvis moved his lips and concentrated on the coin in his hand that he was making appear and disappear behind Danivon’s back. Bertran saw him and did likewise, controlling his own fear even as he felt Nela’s fear rising inside him, making him quiver. Nela, trembling, shut her eyes and concentrated upon the turtle. Gray wind, gray leaf, gray fog rising. Poor turtle, coming into such danger.
Houdum-Bah left the platform to join the priests. He grasped one of the horns of the altar and blended his own huge voice into the tumult.
Jory whoofed in surprise, as though she had been hit in the stomach. Fringe glanced up to see an expression of astonishment on the old woman’s face and followed her gaze to the smoke where flapping, luminescent flakes had appeared, flakes that gradually joined to one another, coalesced, became a solid thing that shaped itself into a pillar. The pillar gained height and mass, then sprouted roots, branches, became a tree; the tree became a monstrous figure with six arms, six legs, six glaring eyes, six pendulous ears, three sets of great fangs shining from each of its three great mouths that gulped and gulped and gulped again.
“Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” shrieked the priests. “Ah-oh, ah-oh, Great Lord Chimi-ahm!”
“Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” moaned the Houm. “Ah-oh, ah-oh.”
“Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” sobbed the Murrey.
The manifestation pointed its multiple arms, a finger at this one, a finger at that. Here a Houm cried out, shaken by spasms. There another began to jerk and sway. Others then, until several score were in motion. Like puppets, they twitched and danced, inward toward the circling priests, flopping and prancing while, in their midst, the god gamboled awkwardly, triple mouths gaping. Among the dancers, two hounds pushed the young Houm girl toward the altar, Alouez.
The child’s
