to mud by next spring.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Derk said, “but I am good at making things grow. I’ll come back when the tours are over and make sure you have some crops at least.”
“Penury and disaster will ensue,” said Umru. “No seeds will be sown—”
“Oh no, it won’t be that bad,” Derk assured him. “If you tell the people to plant seeds anyway, I’ll make as many grow as I can.”
“My people too will be trampled underfoot, the women raped, the infants slain. There will be no one to sow the seeds,” Umru proclaimed.
“But,” Derk objected, “you must have hundreds of cellars and crypts for people to hide in!”
Umru sighed. “My friend,” he said, in a noticeably more normal manner, “I think you are not following my drift. If the Dark Lord wishes, he can surely oblige a friend by moving the battles a few miles – say, twenty miles, bringing the site south of the mountains that border my country.”
“Not easily,” Derk hastened to explain. “You see the routes have been very carefully interlocked to bring several tours to the same battle—”
Umru sighed again. “How much?”
“Eh?” Derk found his fingers fiddling with the frayed ends of his cuff. He let go quickly. “If you’re saying what I think you are, then the answer’s—” He stopped short. Money would be very welcome, money to pay that fine, money to cover the huge sum Mara had to have borrowed in order to pay everyone in the village. On the other hand, he needed a god, or no one would get any money at all. And he needed Umru’s help for that. “I don’t take bribes,” he said.
Umru’s face dropped forward on to his stack of double chins. He looked so thoroughly depressed that Derk added, “But, as I was going to say, I’ll see if I can shift the battles south for nothing. It won’t be easy, because they’ve got everyone converging on you this year – you’re supposed to hold the final clue to my weakness – and Barnabas is setting up the main camp for me. I’ll have to give him the wrong map reference, tell him I made a mistake or something. But I’ll do what I can.”
Umru raised his face from his chins and looked deeply at Derk. “You’re an honest man.”
“Well, not—” Derk shifted in his carved chair until it creaked.
“And I admire you for it. With sadness,” Umru said. “I really do have a great deal of money. You needn’t do it for nothing.”
“I will. I’ve said I’ll try,” Derk protested. “After all, I may not be able to do it.”
“Very honest,” sighed Umru. “So. You said I could help you. How?”
With an uneasy feeling that Umru might have been readier to help him if he had accepted a bribe, Derk leant forward in the carved chair and explained about Mr Chesney’s idea for a novelty. And it was worse than Derk had expected. As soon as he mentioned Anscher, Umru’s head tilted back and his mouth became a fat, grim line. His large face became more and more stony, the longer Derk talked. “It was in the contract, you see,” Derk explained. “I know the contract was drawn up when both of us were only children, but Mr Chesney regards it as binding. None of us gets any money this year if we don’t get a god to manifest.”
“Not even for money,” Umru said, very upright in his chair. “It is odd how every man has his sticking-point, Wizard Derk. You have told me yours. You have just met mine. I have done many things for Mr Chesney, for money, but this is one thing I will not, cannot do. We do not command the gods. They command us. Any attempt to coerce the gods is vile.”
This man is truly a devout priest after all! Derk thought. He was completely sure Umru meant what he said. “I see. I accept that,” he said hastily. “But perhaps you could give me a hint about some way I could fake—”
“You don’t see at all, wizard,” Umru interrupted, “or you would not ask. No one who has known a god could even speak of faking. Let me tell you. I was not always as you see me now. I was once a slender young boy, the youngest in my family, and my family was not rich. We lived by the mountains, a long way south of this city. My father had a few cows, some goats and a flock of geese. I was only entrusted with the geese. If I lost those geese, you see, the family would not starve, and I was considered too young to watch the animals. And one day I drove my geese out to feed on a certain swelling green hill. I was sitting there as carelessly as you sit in that chair now, thinking of nothing much, rather bored, but with no ambition in the world except perhaps to guard the cows for once, when Anscher appeared to me. As close as I am to you, wizard, Anscher stood before me. And he was a god, wizard. There was absolutely no doubting it, though it is not a thing I can describe. He smiled at me. He never even asked my name. He never asked me to do anything for him. He just stood in front of me and said, ‘I am Anscher, your god,’ and he smiled.”
Umru stared out into the empty room. Derk could see tears in his eyes.
“The glory of that appearance,” Umru said after a moment, “has been with me every moment of every day, of every year of my priesthood, through everything I have done. I have always hoped he would appear again, but he never has, wizard. He never has. When I first became High Priest and started to raise Anscher above other gods, I made that hill where I saw him into a sanctuary to him. I had an altar set up there. Now I think that was presumptuous. By doing that, I tried to command Anscher to appear to me again, and that was wrong. He will not come to me again now. I am too proud, too old, too fat. No, he will not come.”
Umru’s voice faded away and he sat staring, with tears running down his great cheeks. Derk watched uncomfortably. He sat and watched and Umru sat and stared for so long that Derk began to wonder whether he should simply get up and tiptoe away. But Umru suddenly smiled, wiped the tears off with the sleeve of his expensive gown and said, “You know, I think it’s lunchtime. Will you join me in some lunch, Wizard?”
Derk was thoroughly unnerved. “I – I’d be honoured,” he managed to say.
Umru clapped his chubby hands. Instantly a group of young boys, who had obviously been waiting outside for the signal, came hurrying in with a folding table, beakers, jugs, plates and trays of food. The trays were probably gold. The glassware was exquisite crystal. The food smelt wonderful. Derk had forgotten that the worshippers of Anscher never ate meat, but the various dishes were so beautifully cooked that he hardly noticed they were all made of vegetables. He slipped a particularly fine pasty into his pocket to show Lydda. And when the boys raced in again with bowls heaped with fruit, Derk wanted to take the strangest sort for Elda, but he did not quite like to, not after the pasty.
“Try one of these, Wizard,” Umru said. “You won’t have met this fruit before. I bought them off one of Mr Chesney’s tour agents – we often do little deals on the side, you know. She called them oranges, I believe.”
“They are,” said Derk. “Orange, I mean.”
Umru laughed. “You peel the outside off,” he explained. “Like this. Then the inside splits into pieces, just as if one of their gods had designed them for people to eat. Remarkable, aren’t they?”
“Mm.” Derk was not sure he liked the sharp, definite taste, but he was sure Elda would.
“Take another home with you,” Umru said generously. “I have two dozen. I only paid four gold for them, too.” While
