LITMIR.BIZ

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Veltan disagreed. ‘I see that you’re going to need some convincing. Watch closely, fat man, and pay close attention. This is your only chance to avoid my resentment.’ Then Veltan slowly rose up into the empty air above the Ascension to stand on nothing but air.

      Fat Bersla went pale, and his eyes bulged almost out of their sockets.

      ‘I can go higher, if you’d like,’ Veltan said. ‘I could even take you up into the air with me, if that would convince you. I am unlimited, Takal Bersla. If need be, I can carry you all the way up to the moon – but I don’t think you’d like that very much. There’s nothing to eat on the moon, and no air to breathe, so you’d probably die almost immediately.’

      ‘I believe you!’ Bersla declared in a shrill voice. ‘I believe you!’

      ‘Isn’t he just the nicest fellow?’ Veltan mildly asked the others.

      It took the trembling Bersla a while to recover. ‘I pray you, Lord Veltan,’ he said, ‘why have you come here?’

      ‘It should be obvious, priest of my sister,’ Veltan replied. ‘The Creatures of the Wasteland will soon invade my dear sister’s Domain, and I have brought fearless warriors to drive them away.’

      ‘Eternally grateful shall we be if you succeed, Lord Veltan.’

      ‘Were you planning to live eternally, High Priest Bersla?’ Veltan asked with feigned astonishment.

      ‘Ah – we will pass this on to generations as yet unborn, timeless Veltan,’ Bersla amended. ‘May I speak now with the chieftain of these mighty warriors who have come from afar to defend our Holy Aracia?’

      ‘I don’t waste my time speaking with servants,’ Sorgan declared as roughly as he could. ‘Let’s go talk with your sister, Veltan.’

      ‘That cannot be!’ Bersla protested. ‘Holy Aracia’s time is all filled for this day. As you may know, however, I speak for Divine Aracia when it seems necessary.’

      ‘Not to me, you don’t,’ Sorgan declared. ‘I only talk with those who have gold.’

      Sorgan and Veltan conferred briefly, and then a sailor with nothing else to do untied a rope that held a well-built skiff in place, and then he lowered it over the side.

      ‘That is not permitted!’ Bersla declared. ‘No alien ships or boats may go ashore in Holy Aracia’s Domain.’

      ‘You don’t think for one minute that I’m going to ride to the beach in that unstable canoe of yours, do you?’

      ‘It is perfectly sound,’ Bersla declared.

      ‘Of course it is, Sorgan replied sarcastically. ‘At least it might be as long as you leave it on the beach. It’s when you push it out into the bay that it tends to roll over without much warning. How many times has that happened so far this month?’

      Bersla began to splutter a denial, but there was a muscular oarsman sitting just behind the fat priest, and he held one hand up with the fingers stretched wide and two fingers of his other hand clearly visible. Then he winked at Sorgan.

      ‘Let me guess,’ Sorgan said to Bersla then. ‘I’ve got a strong hunch that your tree-stump tub has rolled out from under you seven times already this month.’

      Bersla’s eyes went wide. ‘How did you – ?’ Then he broke off.

      ‘Instinct, fat man,’ Sorgan replied. ‘I’ve spent most of my life at sea, so I know a lot about things that happen out on the water.

      Logs always roll over in the water when you don’t want them to, and seven’s a lucky – or unlucky – number, be it logs or dice.’ He made a slight gesture to the muscular oarsman, and the fellow nodded. ‘Let’s go hit the beach, Veltan,’ Sorgan said then. ‘I want to meet your sister, and then I’ll look around. If I’m going to defend her territory, there are a lot of things I’ll need to know.’

      ‘How in the world did you know that Bersla’s log-canoe had rolled over seven times already this month?’ Veltan asked as Sorgan rowed the skiff toward the beach.

      ‘You weren’t watching very closely if you missed it,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin. ‘When I asked the fat priest how many times his log-boat had rolled over, one of the oarsmen held up seven fingers.’

      ‘Why would he do that?’

      ‘I haven’t got any idea. I’m going to talk with him later and find out, though. It’s entirely possible that he might turn out to be very useful later on.’

      ‘Does he know that you want to talk with him?’

      ‘Of course he does. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Veltan, but you don’t pay very close attention to what’s going on around you. That oarsman gave me a wink when he held up his fingers, and I pointed at my mouth after I threw “seven” into the fat priest’s face. Pointing your finger at your mouth can mean two things – “let’s eat” or “let’s talk.” Everybody knows that.’

      ‘It does make sense, I suppose.’

      ‘Are we going to have any trouble getting in to see your sister?’

      ‘Probably not,’ Veltan replied. ‘Aracia knows who I am, after all, and as soon as she sees me, she’ll know that I’ve got some information for her. I’ll introduce you to her, and then we can get down to business.’

      It had seemed to Sorgan when he’d been on board the Trogite ship out in the bay that there’d been a kind of coherence about Aracia’s temple, but as the skiff came closer to shore he began to see some glaring inconsistencies. ‘I don’t want to sound critical or anything, Veltan,’ he said, ‘but there’s a sort of slapdash quality about your big sister’s palace. Didn’t the people who were building it ever get together and establish some rules? In some places, the stones are very smooth, but in others they’re rough and lumpy.’

      ‘There do seem to be quite a few inconsistencies,’ Veltan agreed. ‘I’d say that the assorted work crews didn’t have anything to do with each other. Some of them appear to have spent a great deal of time polishing the stones, while others concentrated on piling up more rocks.’

      ‘Something on the order of “prettier” or “bigger”, you mean?’

      ‘That probably comes very close, Sorgan. I don’t imagine that Aracia really cared much one way or the other. As long as her temple kept growing, she was probably quite happy.’

      ‘She’s not really very bright, is she?’

      ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far. Aracia has different needs than the rest of us do. She desperately needs adoration, and her priests spend all of their time adoring her. I’m fairly sure that they didn’t spend much of that vital time telling the work crews who were building the temple how to proceed, and that’s what probably led to these inconsistencies.’

      ‘It’s possible, I guess.’ Sorgan turned and looked a bit more closely at the beach. ‘No piers,’ he grumbled.

      ‘Building piers would take the work crews away from expanding big sister’s temple,’ Veltan explained.

      ‘We’ll have to climb all over her right away,’ Sorgan said.

      ‘I didn’t quite follow that.’

      ‘We’ll need piers when we unload the people from about a hundred Trogite tubs, Veltan,’ Sorgan declared. ‘They won’t be willing to swim in the dead of winter, you know.’

      ‘Good point there,’ Veltan said. ‘I think I’ll have to cheat,’ he added glumly.

      ‘Cheat?’

      ‘I’ll make the piers myself. I know what they look like, and I’ll be able to set them up much faster than the temple work crews possibly could. Then, too, if I

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