Niche of Time: The Gods in Flight: An Unfinished Tale

Sorry, I couldn't quite finish my chapter of LOTR today. Too cold and dreary and weary with work. Accept instead this little tale I never quite completed, but which popped into my memory today.

THE GODS IN FLIGHT

Val-Tamri, Lord of the Seven Isles, Master of the Heavens and Father of All Men, looked down in vexation at the scroll he held in one hand and twiddled the ink brush in the other, his eyes almost crossed and his tongue between his teeth. There were necessary changes to be made to the Rite of Harvest, now that his daughter had married an Ascended Mortal and the new god was taking his place in the sacramental pageant. Usually Balianat, the Weaver of Words, Sweet Songster of the Gods, would have taken care of a job like this, but he was unfortunately making his yearly sojourn through the Underworld and wasn't due home for a couple of months. Val-Tamri wondered idly what sort of souvenirs he would bring back this time, and beat his ivory pate over choosing the epithets that could be safely applied to his newly-acquired son-in-law.

At the moment he wanted to call him the Thistle in the Heavenly Garden, Stench in the Nostrils of the Great Host, Pain in the Most Exalted Posterior, but that would have not have redounded much to the credit of the pantheon. It was a regrettable part of the Path of the Gods that every now and then the mortals below developed some fresh refinement of civilization, that one of their numbers through some super-excellence of talent came to embody that refinement, and that that human then Ascended to the Divine Palace to begin their new career.

And this Palniki, turning up after his mortal cremation with the smell of ash and burning still on him, had no sooner arrived than Melandria, the Prompter, the Urgent, had set her cap for him, as she did for any new creature of the male sex that crossed her path, promptly disavowing her last husband, Korda the Warlike, who, as she put it, had not really paid her any attention for the last half-millenium, anyway. Korda, who had been growing rather tame and thoughtful in the extended centuries of peace the Isles had been enjoying, let her go with scarce a murmur.

None of which Val-Tamri gave a rotten calf oblation about, except that it came at a poor time, and imposed upon his tranquility. He tapped his teeth with the handle of the brush, rattled the paper of the scroll to smooth it out, and finally cast both to the silver table at his feet. In the far fields near the slopes of the mountains, shepherds looked up at the clear blue sky and wondered if it was going to rain.

"Summon this Palniki to my presence," the Father of Gods and Men grumbled sourly. "After all, he's some kind of scribe, isn't he? Maybe he can give me a few suggestions. And indeed, he needs to begin earning his keep around here sometime! I suppose I might as well take a look at him now as later at the wedding." He shuddered. "But these new Gods are always so raw!"

"I am glad you are finally condescending to meet him, my dear," said his wife, Jadea, Holy Consort and Mother of the Starry Host, as one of the many talking falcons that surrounded the Throne sped off with the message on rainbow wings. "Melandria has been so anxious for your approval!"

"I don't see why," he said, laying down the smudgy scroll with distaste and shooting his silken sleeves once more to their full length. "She never asks my opinions about her other amours, and at her age she certainly no longer needs my advice about her domestic arrangements. And if her own husband no longer deems her worthy to hold onto ...!" He left the thought hanging in the sweet-scented air.

"Yes, poor Korda. He's been so moody of late. I'm sure the brain of the Drinker of Blood and the Right Arm of Might was not made to have so much time to think about things. Perhaps we could prompt the Emperor's heart to go on a raiding expedition or a punitive visit to the Far Provinces or something ... but shh! Here they are!"

The lower doors of the Chamber of Presence, the ones made only of golden bars set with cinnabar, swung open, and Vel-Tamri hooded his eyes as his daughter and her new consort approached. The upper doors of adamant and iridium (which metal the mortals below had not even discovered yet) were set wide open to catch the pleasing odors of the morning sacrifices, but even these scents were not strong enough, to his mind, to completely drown out the erst-while mortal's scorched odor. It brought back displeasing nursery memories of long ago when he was a simple mountain god just starting his pantheon.

Melandria was as buxom as ever, if anything even more rosy with renewed delight, as she hung onto the newly deified Paliki's skinny arm and guided him up to the Throne. Although he had been clothed in the chiton of surpassing brilliance that was the generally agreed-upon garment of the gods, no-one could say he wore it yet with any ease, and his figure underneath was less than celestial, with scrawny legs and a most undignified pot belly. The irritated Master of the Heavens could tell from the way he peered near-sightedly around the Chamber, taking careful steps up the Crystal Approach and nervously clutching his stylus and wax tablet (symbols of his divine function), that the fellow had not quite grasped that he was beyond mortal frailities and had to get out of these bad habits which he should have left behind with his old body.

The pair came closer, and Melandria stopped on the fifth stair and bowed, head covered, as the protocol of the occasion demanded. "My father," she said, hardly surpressing her giggles, "I present for your overlooking my new husband and your latest vassel, Nikky ... I beg you pardon, Palniki!"

Deprived of her guiding hand the scrawny fellow stumbled blindly forward, tripping on the fourth stair, but somehow managed to turn the fall into a humble prostration at the last moment.

"Oh, Father of Gods and Men," he began breathlessly, in what was obviously a well-rehearsed speech. "Lord of the Seven Isles and Master of Heaven, I humbly present myself and beseech thee..."

"Never mind that," Vel-Tamri said, waving the complements away with an impatient hand. "What rhymes with 'width'?"

Paliki looked up at the the Father of Gods, taken off balance, his face screwed into an expression of startled surprise.

"Biddeth?" he suggested at last, timidly.

Vel-Tamri looked at him wordlessly, eyes inscrutable, then snatched up the scroll again and began reading it almost silently under his breath. He reached a certain point in the ritual and improvised a line aloud, "... if you do as he bidd'th." He rolled it around in his head a few times, then clucked his tongue in an unsatisfied manner. "I suppose it will do for the nonce, if spoken with enough force." He took up the brush and started inserting a note. "You are really causing us some bother up here," he said grimly. "First an apotheosis, and now a wedding, right on its heels! Too bad it couldn't have waited until the spring. That's the proper season for this sort of thing."

"Believe me, O Constrainer of Fate, if I could have put off the final Destiny of Dust and waited another fifty years, I would. The Red Gripe is not a pleasant way to part from life when one has not yet tasted the pleasures of earth for even thirty summers."

Vel-Tamri raised his head from the scroll, thunder gathering on his brow.

"Not even for the eternal felicity of the Divine Palace and the hand of a goddess?"

"No, no, that's not what I meant at all!" the other hastily explained. "But when I was dying, you know, I had no idea that this was to be my ultimate destiny. Even the best placement in the Underworld is described as rather thin fare after the red-blooded pastimes of the Middle Plain. Not that I ever had much chance to enjoy them," he added bitterly. He raised his eyes to his soon-to-be Heavenly Father-in-law.

"I beg your pardon, Dread Lord, but I am still most surprised to find myself here. Personally, I hold my Uncle Yorwelq responsible for my deification. It was he that sacrificed my young life to my career. That man would do anything to see that our family gets on, and getting me promoted into Heaven smacks of his devious statecraft and a nepotism unparalleled."

Vel-Tamri's countenance brightened. "Would you like me to blast him with a lightning bolt or two? I have some just at hand, and it would go far to relieve tensions that I must confess have been building up for a while now ... "

"Oh, no, Dread Lord!" Palniki squeaked in alarm. "Uncle Yorwelq, while being the most greedy and ambitious of men, is, at the present time, the sole support of my widowed mother. And, while I am sure his machinations never accounted for it, he has brought me to the supreme happiness I have found with my beloved Melly!"

He reached back and grasped the slender hand of the Goddess of Love and they exchanged the soppiest look of affection that Vel-Tamri had ever been sickened by in his extended reign. He looked over at his wife to share a murmured word of sarcasm, but was checked by an echoing expression of gormless delight on the Consort of Heaven's doting face. His mouth snapped shut.

Vel-Tamri had wed Jadrea when his victorious people absorbed the matriarchal society of Third Island, and then she had produced Melandria as his first-born child. Thus marriage had entered the Divine Palace before love, but he could not deny the overwhelming effect both had had on his Eternal Nature. The realization came to him, and not for the first time, that he had been conquered more completely than Third Island had ever been. He would tolerate anything that would make these two happy, and right now that meant this pestiferous Palniki.

"Well, we shall let that pass for now. Though you may wish to leave a note with Gak, Judge of the Dead, just to be sure. What concerns us at the moment are your epithets and addresses, titles and attributes." Vel-Tamri shifted wearily on his seat and drew another piece of parchment from out of the air. "Tell me, by what names and titles were you called when you lived on the Middle Plain?"

Palniki smiled wryly.

"The names I heard mostly were Counter of Beans and Picker of Nits," he said. "There were not many honorifics applied to my person in the pursuit of my duties, neither from those above me or those below. What I did hear from all, hardly ever as a compliment, was the scrupulosity of my application of the laws and regulations, the tariffs and the abatements. The dukes and reeves always wanted to get a little more, the peasants to give a little less, and were willing to offer me a little something to grease the wheels. But I never took anything, from high or low."

"I suppose your rectitude of your standards has now been recognized," observed Vel-Tamri. "That is seldom the case of any mortal's pursuits, even looking backwards. May I suggest 'the Inexorable, the Just' as titles? And, er -- just what exactly are you supposed to be the god of, anyway? You're a scribe of some kind, I think?"

Palniki's looked at his betrothed's face in dismay and amazement. He had been under the impression that the Father of Gods and Men kept a closer eye on the minutia of life both below and above than he had obviously been caring to. Melandria squeezed his arm in encouragement and nodded her head. He swallowed and began trying to explain.

He spoke for almost ten minutes.

Vel-Tamri's face grew darker and darker as Palniki talked.

"A bureaucrat? Middle management?" he said finally, scowling, as if tasting the unfamiliar words on a disapproving tongue. "Is this what is deemed worthy of godhood these days? Love, War, Poetry, the Land -- and Book-keeping?"

For a moment Palniki withered under the words, but a hand on his back made him glance behind. Under Melandria's loving look he stood up straighter as he turned back to the Master of Heaven.

"With all due respect, Great Lord, I am afraid it must be. For what is a God but the highest standard to which human endeavor must be held? Love must not be lust, War must not be mere brutality, Poetry must not be simply self-praise, the Land must be held holy and not a cupboard from which one can take and take and not restock. The interweavings of mankind have grown so complex now that the give and take by which a kingdom thrives must be tended like a garden, lest it wither. And these gardeners must be held to a high standard; otherwise, they might turn into plunderers -- how well I know the type! -- or grow cold and indifferent in their office. This thing, this endeavor, has arisen. If it has no God -- no standard -- to guide it, it will continue to grow, heedless and headless. If it has no God, it will be a monster."

Vel-Tamri gazed at him in silence for a moment. The erstwhile mortal had seemed to grow a little taller in his eyes while he spoke, to fill out the shining robe of the chiton somewhat better. Finally he spoke.

"It is not without reason that I titled you the Just." He sighed. "Very well, then," he said grudgingly, "The God of Bureaucrats, the Master of Weights and Measures. There seems to be very little blood in it, though. It is as well that my daughter sees something in you; at least here in the beginning that might attract adherents to your Way." He inked a few words onto the scroll in his hand. "Now as to your part in the Rite of Harvest ... What is that noise?"

An excited murmur that had been growing into a babble of voices as he was speaking crested into a wave that burst against the wall and doors of the Chamber of Presence and suddenly, unceremoniously, the room was flooding with gods and goddesses, demigods and spirits, all talking as fast as they could in fear, excitement, and wonder. Vel-Tamri's rising anger at the serious lack of decorum and respect shown to his Throne was struck cold with amazement when he saw who was leading the route.

It was Balianat, the Weaver of Words, Herald of Heaven, released somehow from his seasonal durance from the unyielding jaws of the Underworld, looking even paler than his yearly lack of sun usually made him, and walking at the head of the crowd as if in a mute trance, his eyes apalled, his jaw slack. He seemed impelled forward up the steps to the Throne by the force of the hurled questions of those behind him. In his hands, instead of his ubiquitous harp, he carried a chest that was, even to the penetration of divine eyes, there and not there, as if it were a mere concept and at the same time more real than simple frangible matter.

Palniki took one look at Balianat's face and shrank aside, out of his way. He had seen an expression like that several times in his mortal life; the worst was when his mother had come to tell him that his father had perished in an accident while inspecting the Bolnian High Pass. He wondered what it could mean here in the felicity of the High Halls.

Balianat took the last steps up to the Throne and stopped before Vel-Tamri. In the long heavy cascade of his beard his mouth twitched a moment, then opened as if he would say something, but no words came out. This filled the Lord of Gods and Men with even more dread that it had before, for if the Singer was struck dumb ...

"Balianat!" he said, voice trembling under the commanding tone. "Balianat, what means this untimely presence in the Palace of Va-Tamri? How came you from the Stone Prison, whose Jailer lets none go ere his sentence be fulfilled? Herald of the Gods, what bear you here before your King?" His voice suddenly broke in appeal. "Damn it all, Bally, what the hell is going on?"

"Dread Lord ...," Balniat began. He swallowed. "Dread Lord ...," he started again. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, raising high the chest, offering it to Vel-Tamri's reluctant hands. "Take, and open," he said hollowly, as if helplessly repeating another's order.

Vel-Tamri reached out his hands, then hesitated. He looked out over the crowd of upraised faces that gazed up at him wildly, silently, then steeled himself and took the thing from Balniat. It sat there a moment, heavy in his hands. Then his thumbs probed up the unseen side, felt the lid, and flipped it open. The world went white.

There was a Voice. It made no sound, yet everyone heard. In seven days, the barbarians of the Neb Coastlands would attack and utterly overwhelm the Seven Islands. Every temple would be overthrown and desecrated, every priest that could be found slaughtered, every holy book burned. The Gods of the Neb Coastlands would become the new gods of the Seven Islands, and Vel-Tamri and his pantheon would be found no more. They must withdraw to the Paradise of Paradises by the time the first foot of the invading force stepped on the shore or face the consequences. This was Willed where what was Willed must Be.

Then the world came back. There was a stunned silence around the Heavenly Throne, then an unholy clamor from the gathered throng of deities that rang across the welkin.

"I don't understand," said Palniki finally. All others, save Jadea, Queen of Heaven, had finally departed the presence of the Father of Gods and Men, to prepare for their imminent discommodation. Only the very inexperienced new deity had the thoughtless temerity to question Vel-Tamri where he brooded on his soon-to-be vacated throne. "I always understood you to be omnipotent."

Vel-Tamri bristled.

"I am omnipotent!" he thundered, frowning angrily. Then he seemed to deflate. "Er, ... as long as there is no one more powerful than I. And not only do these young invading gods have most strong, numerous, and enthusiastic followers in their van, but, as, you heard," and here his voice sank into a dread whisper that Palniki could barely hear, "This has been Willed where what is Willed must Be."

Palniki leaned in earnestly, brows drawn.

"What do you mean?"

"You know," Vel-Tamri hissed. He made a quick furtive gesture upward. Palniki raised his head vacantly towards the rafters of the Divine Palace. The messenger hawks were huddled there like doves in a stormy barn, their rainbow plumage dull with fright. He looked down at Val-Tamri, his incomprehension palpable.

"You know. Him." Val-Tamri said furtively. He jabbed his finger overhead violently twice again, then quickly hid the hand in his sleeve, as if fearful of the lese majeste it had committed. "The One Above."

"The One A...," Palniki began, then stopped. "Can it be?" he asked wonderingly. "Do the gods have a God over them?"

"We do not speak of it," Vel-Tamri said, gesturing him to silence, half in anger, half in fear. He went on in tones that the erstwhile mortal remembered his own father using, when he had spoken about the sacred secrets of whence babies came. "It is not comfortable speech. But yes, we arise, we wield our little scepters for a while and god it merrily, and then comes a time in life when we realize the truth of the matter, and it is not ... comfortable. We do not speak of it, we try to not even think of it, but then ..." He threw up a hand in surrender. He raised his eyes to Palniki.

"Go now. Be with Melandria. You have a week to be a god on earth. And then, the Paradise of Paradises." He shrugged. "We know little about it, as none have ever returned from there. But from what is spoken, it sounds deathly dull. No humans, no chance, no change ..." He shrugged again -- or was it a shiver? "Leave me now. Go to my daughter. The wedding shall take place as planned." He grimaced. "It will do double duty as a farewell party, I suppose. Leave me."

Palniki went silently down the steps to the Heavenly Portal. As he opened the doors he turned and looked and saw Vel-Tamri slumped on the Throne, head bowed in his hands, and Jadea turned, patting his back, trying, with no visible success, to comfort him.

The week that followed was wild and restless, full of strange activity and varied reaction. Some of the inhabitants of the Divine Palace went into a frenzy of packing, gathering up the holy relics and sacred emblems and other hallowed furniture from their halls and stowing them in hastily improvised arks and handcarts for the faring forth. Sapit, God of Thieves, was considered especially fortunate at this time because of his bottomless Sack of Acquiring. Some gods were notably absent as they left to rove over the earth and revisit favorite spots for a final farewell; there were groves and temples at this time perceived by mortals to be especially numinous, and many an earthly lass felt peculiarly honored by a celestial visit in her sleep. Some gods were struck with a great stillness, and stood or sat, overwhelmed with horror or apathy, contemplating the change to their existence that they had known was coming someday, but had, in their pride of life, never truly considered. But there were two deities who seemed to take the notice of eviction in the strangest way of all.

One of these was Korda, the Warlike, the Drinker of Blood, the Right Arm of Might. His mansion had been a strange hub of calm in the chaos. It was not the frozen calm of despair; there was constant activity. But it was not the frenzied activity of preparation for flight, either. Palniki happened to be there when he gave his explanation, for he was accompanying his bride-to-be Melandria on a visit to her ex-spouse, about the disposition of some common property they held and to grab a few things of hers that she still kept in the Hall of Battle.

Vel-Tamri had gone with them, at her request. Korda had been so odd of late these last few centuries, and with the upcoming wedding and this new stress, there was to her mind no telling how he might react, and it made her nervous. She felt it was just as well that Vel-Tamri went with her, for as his leige-lord there was nothing the God of War could do against his will.

As it was, after salutations the iron-gray god kissed her gently on the cheek and sent her to her old apartments, which he had locked away safely and never entered since the day of their parting. Melandria called him an old dear and went skipping away to gather her things, leaving Palniki and the Father of Gods politely and awkwardly standing next to the Throne of Skulls while Korda sat thoughtfully drawing the Sword of Lightning over the whetstone called SharpGrinder.

"So," said Vel-Tamri after a silence. "Three more days."