Chapter 5

“Since we have time on our hands and no one feels the urge to nap...” Borner said, feeling his anxiety ramp up. His bones were aching, almost burning under his muscles. “Perhaps we should visit our pagan brothers and sisters on the main avenue. Surely, they have something to contribute to today’s developments.”

“What are you up to?” Kanner asked with distrust in his voice. “You sound a bit strained.”

“If Urutu finally got around to threatening Sojourner, do you not think that they threatened the others first?” Borner said, picking up his juntu staff. “If this excuse for violence is the best they could offer in the ‘tremble in your sandals’ category, we should see what else they have threatened. My surmise is that we will not be surprised but we will be disappointed.”

Kanner adjusted his belt and closed the doors behind him as he stepped into the garden. “Why the sarcasm?”

“I am not sarcastic but, rather, I am supremely skeptical,” Borner said, twirling his staff with impatience. “He called himself the Guardian of the Fore Altar. Have you ever heard such a load of pompous claptrap in all your days? Everything that I have seen, from the snake fangs to the silly badges, and finally to this obscurantist title, points to contrived, perfumed hogwash.”

“A fake religion?” Kanner asked with his own skepticism.

“A facade and charade with a real purpose,” Borner said. “Maybe Guardian Salkinor believes or maybe he promotes his virile erection by walking around with younger muscle at his beck and call. Consider this observation: who uses snakes outside of medicants and chirurgeons? Yes, there are the cannibal tribes in the far south but their islands, so I have read, are riddled with poisonous snakes. Or look at the matter this way; there are no snakes in these latitudes in the winter because the temperatures are far too cold. So, we are offering up only to a seasonal god? As I said, contrived.”

“Snakes sleep away the winter and thus we have a false god. You are going to get us gutted, burned, and crucified - all in the same day,” Kanner said as they emerged onto the avenue. “Not to mention stabbed with poison-dripping blades.”

“Ah, here we have the sun god,” Borner said, “What is his name in these parts?”

“Payter, from the Kuperian root P-T-R, meaning ‘light’ in the high grammatical form,” Kanner said, but Borner cut him off with a wave of his staff as they climbed the steps to the entrance. The doorway was twice the height of an average man and four times wider than a normal door. Two guards stood at the entrance, resplendent in their bronze breastplates and helmets. Their clothes were red velvet.

They eyed Borner warily but let him pass without comment. He had cloaked himself with an affected air of knowing exactly what he was doing and that, of course, he had the right to be there. He marched right up to the highest looking official he could see and stood directly in front of the man.

“The full eclipse took place this day exactly twenty-five years ago,” Borner said with great insistence in his voice. “How come there is neither an extra votive offering nor sin offering on this ominous anniversary?”

The man blanched.

Before he could speak, Borner waved his staff in front of the man. “Inform your high priest that I wish to speak with him immediately. I shall not wait.”

The man appeared taken aback by the command, but he turned on his heel and disappeared through a doorway beside the altar. Borner took note of the door. Meanwhile Kanner leaned over and asked him how it came to be that he was such a great astronomer.

“Who said I am?” Borner said as he commenced to follow the Payterian official. “Temples are one grand room and rest is function only: they’re all the same. Behind the scenes they are the same shabby hallways, meeting rooms and dormitories. One may turn left to the administrative offices and another may turn right to the same offices. Look for the best windows with the best view and you have the head man’s office. The rest of these officious priests are bureaucrats, toadies even. There is nothing new under the sun. Great pun - get it?”

Kanner looked at him strangely, as if Borner was no longer in his right mind. Maybe he was not, Borner admitted, but he had a mission, and his bones were now jangling. If Urutu carried on without challenge, innocents were going to die. Borner had been unable to stop the slaughter before. This time he was not going to stand idly by and let it happen again. Images of bloated corpses, slashed and skewered, danced in his head, their faces oddly familiar to him. How a waking dream could haunt him so was beyond his experience, but the visions were before his eyes, taunting him. He adjusted his handgrip on his juntu staff and marched forward.

He turned the corner of a drab hallway just in time to see his targeted official close a door and head off down the hallway, away from Borner. He shook his head, the disappearing form confirming that people were simply too predictable in their little temple worlds. It was always better to run away when confrontation was in the offing.

He walked to the door and barged in. “I am here to pay condolences to the last high priest of the sun god before the light is extinguished.”

The man looked up from his desk. His face was surrounded by great silver curls of hair on his head that ran down to meet his magnificently coifed beard. A sweet waft of perfume filled the air that Borner was sure came from the man sitting in front of him.

“Who are you?” the man demanded to know.

“I am Borner, late of the eastern lands,” he said. “Your perfume fails to mask the stench of Urutu in this room. How would you like your funerary prayers to be conducted? I am proficient is quite a number of rites.”

“How dare you,” the man said between clenched teeth.

“How dare I?” Borner replied without waiting for explanation. “They were here. They left unharmed and unchallenged. You offered no meaningful resistance and for that lack, you are going to die, and your temple is going to burn. Unless your vast numbers of worshippers are coming with weapons to protect you, you and your small band of hired mercenaries are already marked and compromised.” Borner paused. “There is no vast wave of congregants, is there, priest of Payter, at least not those so committed as to face the thrust of poisoned swords?”

The man leaned back in his chair and allowed a wave of weariness to creep across his face. “Who are you, O prophet of doom? Why do you torment me with your small, bitter truths?”

“I am the Rememberer of the City of Arches, Andamathea,” Borner answered. “I do not come to torture you but to prod you. Act. Push back. Threaten. The power of light is meant to be used. Use it, for the time is pressing.”

“We have lost our goodly king,” the priest said. “The City Guard has disappeared from our avenue. New weapons appear in the hands of Urutu while the common folk have their weapons confiscated.”

“You have already given up before the fight has even begun?” Borner leaned on his staff with dismay.

“If we truly believe, then Payter will save us,” the priest said. “Payter will save us.”

“We have a saying that I’ve been taught since my youth: Pray as you believe in God, act as you believe in man,” Borner said. “Payter may be the god of all your being but he will not save you, not this time. You must rise up and save yourself to receive his blessings.”

“I have heard your words, O prophet,” the priest said. “They strike at my heart.”

“I did not come to cause you pain, high priest of Payter,” Borner said. “I came to provoke you to action. May Payter grant you all his blessings in your time of need. Good day.”

Borner turned on his heel and left, closing the door gently behind him as Kanner stepped into the hallway. Kanner looked as if he were about to speak, but Borner silenced him with a waggle of his index finger. Quietly they returned to the main sanctuary and its statue of the handsome sun god. Borner paused, taking a good long look at the stature, scanning the grand room. He walked quickly to the entrance and almost ran down the steps.

“We are rich with answers, though poor they be,” Borner said as he walked further up the street.

“What in the name of the sun and star was that little spectacle?” Kanner asked as a rebuke. “You were like a crazed man, trampling propriety and dignity while terrorizing an old man.”

“You mean like a possessed man delivering an oracle?” Borner said, stopping in the street. “Oh man of flesh and bone, I think I need another drink, but my bones ache less.”

“I think you need to sit down and calm yourself before you set the entire avenue on fire,” Kanner said. He was standing in front of Borner with his hip cocked and his arms folded in front of his chest.

“Where is the temple dedicated to the goddess of love?” Borner said, turning his head this way and that. “Maybe they have cult prostitutes to ease the pains of the day.”

“They cost money and my pockets just happen to be empty,” Kanner said.

“Good!” Borner said. “I never pay myself, but I’m always willing to barter, one superstitious bit of nonsense for a bit of religious ecstasy. Besides, we are on a mission to save their souls, or least their scalps - genitals, not so much. Show me the way.”

With reluctance, Kanner led the way up the avenue and onto the stairs of an ornate temple with a small entrance. The walls were whitewashed stone, and the two guards were dressed in white skirts that came down to their knees. Their scabbards were sown leather pieces dyed white and stitched with white thread.