me on fire, fill me with your seed.”
Giddy in the open air, Charity danced over the pavement and stood beneath it, and there was something in the stone muzzles of the god that made her pause, puzzling out the uncouth words, obscure in any language. “What does it mean?” she asked as the parson staggered up.
Scowling, he turned his head away. Among the refuse of his mind he groped for the continuation of the text, learned in seminary long before, when he was young. And in a little while he found it: “ ‘… For I am yours, my beloved, now especially, while the morning is still sweet, and the morning stars are hidden in a gauze of mist …’ ”
“What does it mean?” repeated Charity.
The parson scowled. “It means the world belongs to us,” he said. “To Starbridges. To you and me.” He flicked his empty bottle away over the stones, and it shattered in a corner of the wall. And as if that were some kind of signal, the doors trembled and grated open with a hollow booming noise, splitting away from Charity as she stood on the threshold, showing her the world for the first time. From where she stood, a small stair led down into the garden of the same temple she had seen from far above, where the gallows stood like a clump of trees, poisoning the air with bitter fruit. Soldiers patrolled the steps, paying no attention to her in her yellow dress, though they saluted the parson as he hobbled down beside her.
The air was warmer here and it was full of smells. That was the first thing she noticed, the air so rich that it seemed hard to breathe, so thick with odors: cinnamon and cloves, urine and gasoline, onions and wet mud. A woman sprawled out on the steps next to the captain of the guard, dressed in the peach-colored uniform of the guild of prostitutes, smoking hashish from a metal pipe, and as Charity passed, she threw her head back and laughed aloud. Farther below, a boy gnawed furtively on a radish. And below him the garden was full of people, clustered around the bases of the gibbets, talking with strange urgency, gesticulating and pointing. Charity stepped down into the mud. Immediately she was surrounded by a mass of people jostling against her, jabbering in languages she didn’t know. Happy and excited, she reached out her hands. The warm air, the sweat on her bare skin, the mud between her toes, all filled her with an ecstasy that was close to nausea, a feeling of pollution more vital than anything she had experienced before. She was ready to begin.
*
In those days it was the fashion for the priests of Charn to mutilate themselves. The bishop’s secretary had approved a new translation of the Song of Angkhdt, and one new verse was widely quoted: “Break me in pieces, oh my beloved. Have I not hands, mouth, eyes, feet, heart … ?” And so all spring the streets were full of flagellants, and priests would mutilate themselves on their own altars, in bloody public rituals. Individually, it gave them some authority. It was an impressive sight to watch an old man get up at the altar rail to preach, his eyes burned out of his head.
But nothing was more pathetic than to see a crowd of priests together, and that morning in the council chamber of the Inner Ear, on October 45th, in the eighth phase of spring, there must have been two hundred slouching in their chairs, rows and rows of blind, footless, fat old men. Many were already dead, mere skeletons wrapped in gorgeous robes, their miters slipping from their polished skulls. Many more were almost dead, carried up from their apartments on the backs of servants. For no one had wanted to miss that meeting, dead or not.
The council chamber was built in the shape of a shallow amphitheater, high in the central tower of the Temple of Kindness and Repair, on a hill overlooking the city. In front of the chamber was a raised dais, and behind it stretched a great flat pane of solid glass, forty feet from edge to edge, mined unbroken in a single piece during the
Giddy in the open air, Charity danced over the pavement and stood beneath it, and there was something in the stone muzzles of the god that made her pause, puzzling out the uncouth words, obscure in any language. “What does it mean?” she asked as the parson staggered up.
Scowling, he turned his head away. Among the refuse of his mind he groped for the continuation of the text, learned in seminary long before, when he was young. And in a little while he found it: “ ‘… For I am yours, my beloved, now especially, while the morning is still sweet, and the morning stars are hidden in a gauze of mist …’ ”
“What does it mean?” repeated Charity.
The parson scowled. “It means the world belongs to us,” he said. “To Starbridges. To you and me.” He flicked his empty bottle away over the stones, and it shattered in a corner of the wall. And as if that were some kind of signal, the doors trembled and grated open with a hollow booming noise, splitting away from Charity as she stood on the threshold, showing her the world for the first time. From where she stood, a small stair led down into the garden of the same temple she had seen from far above, where the gallows stood like a clump of trees, poisoning the air with bitter fruit. Soldiers patrolled the steps, paying no attention to her in her yellow dress, though they saluted the parson as he hobbled down beside her.
The air was warmer here and it was full of smells. That was the first thing she noticed, the air so rich that it seemed hard to breathe, so thick with odors: cinnamon and cloves, urine and gasoline, onions and wet mud. A woman sprawled out on the steps next to the captain of the guard, dressed in the peach-colored uniform of the guild of prostitutes, smoking hashish from a metal pipe, and as Charity passed, she threw her head back and laughed aloud. Farther below, a boy gnawed furtively on a radish. And below him the garden was full of people, clustered around the bases of the gibbets, talking with strange urgency, gesticulating and pointing. Charity stepped down into the mud. Immediately she was surrounded by a mass of people jostling against her, jabbering in languages she didn’t know. Happy and excited, she reached out her hands. The warm air, the sweat on her bare skin, the mud between her toes, all filled her with an ecstasy that was close to nausea, a feeling of pollution more vital than anything she had experienced before. She was ready to begin.
*
In those days it was the fashion for the priests of Charn to mutilate themselves. The bishop’s secretary had approved a new translation of the Song of Angkhdt, and one new verse was widely quoted: “Break me in pieces, oh my beloved. Have I not hands, mouth, eyes, feet, heart … ?” And so all spring the streets were full of flagellants, and priests would mutilate themselves on their own altars, in bloody public rituals. Individually, it gave them some authority. It was an impressive sight to watch an old man get up at the altar rail to preach, his eyes burned out of his head.
But nothing was more pathetic than to see a crowd of priests together, and that morning in the council chamber of the Inner Ear, on October 45th, in the eighth phase of spring, there must have been two hundred slouching in their chairs, rows and rows of blind, footless, fat old men. Many were already dead, mere skeletons wrapped in gorgeous robes, their miters slipping from their polished skulls. Many more were almost dead, carried up from their apartments on the backs of servants. For no one had wanted to miss that meeting, dead or not.
The council chamber was built in the shape of a shallow amphitheater, high in the central tower of the Temple of Kindness and Repair, on a hill overlooking the city. In front of the chamber was a raised dais, and behind it stretched a great flat pane of solid glass, forty feet from edge to edge, mined unbroken in a single piece during the
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