harvest.
What did an ocean want before it would be born? What did it need? More than ten nights of silver rings around a golden moon. More than one year of muddy water as wide as the eye could see. Borys had taken more than an age to finish the destruction the Cleansing Wars had begun. It had only been a handful of years since a dragon stalked the heartland. How many years before Urik’s cavern could hold no more and water began to pool above ground?
Maybe then Hamanu would start to believe in oceans.
“The temples of Andarkin and Ulydeman—”
Temples was a word guaranteed to seize Hamanu’s attention. He didn’t completely forbid the worship of divinities other than himself—the Lion of Urik was neither a god nor a fool—but he didn’t encourage them. As long as priests of the elemental temples stayed in their time-honored place, the Lion of Urik tolerated their presence in his city. Their place didn’t include Enver’s daily list.
Patience had never been Hamanu’s virtue, but he felt exceptionally generous this morning—exceptionally curious, too—and let the dwarf continue without interruption.
“—would proclaim the existence of a demiurge they name Burbote—”
“Mud, dear Enver,” Hamanu corrected with a sigh. “The word is mud. Rummaging through their grimoires looking for words that were old when I was a boy won’t change matters. They want to sanctify mud.”
Enver’s hairless brows pulled together at a disapproving angle. He clutched his scroll between fists that grew white with tension.
After the Dragon’s demise, when change had become inevitable, Hamanu had told his venerable executor the truth: Urik’s Lion-King had been born an ordinary human man in a Kreegill valley thirteen ages earlier. He was immortal, but he wasn’t a god. The dwarf hadn’t taken the revelation well. Enver, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of yellow-robed templars, preferred to believe the lies about divinity—and omniscience—he’d learned in his own youth.
“If you say it is so, Omniscience, then it must be so,” he said stiffly, his chosen response when his god disappointed him. “The priests of earth and water wish to erect a temple to mark the flood’s greatest extent, but surely they will dedicate it to whomever you wish, even mud.”
“Do they claim to have marked the flood’s greatest extent, dear Enver? Have the flood waters begun to recede?”
“Omniscience, I do not know.”
Hamanu could not resist baiting his loyal servant. “Neither do I, dear Enver.”
“I am at a loss, Omniscience.” The dwarf was so stiff it seemed he’d crack and crumble in the slightest breeze.
“What shall I tell them, Omniscience? That they must rename their demiurge? Or should I tell them nothing at all until the floods recede?”
“Nothing, I think, would be the wiser course—for all I know, dear Enver, Burbote might consume all the land between here and the Smoking Crown. He might swell up and drown us all… Burbote is a he, yes? A muddy demiurge that is female, as well—the combination is more than I can bear to contemplate.”
“Very well, Omniscience. As you will, Omniscience. I shall instruct the priests of Andarkin and Ulydeman to interrogate their oracles. They’ve not got the demiurge’s name right, and they must be certain of its maleness… or femaleness… before their proclamation can be read or their temple built. Will that suffice, Omniscience?”
Enver was a paragon of mortal diligence and rectitude, and almost completely devoid of humor. But a god who acknowledged his own fallibility had to tolerate the failings of his associates—or dwell in utter isolation.
“It must, dear Enver. It must.”
Hamanu’s attention began to wander before Enver was three syllables into the next entry on his tightly clutched scroll. Between floods and preparations for war, he’d neglected his minions for the better part of a seventy-five-day quinth. The minions survived, of course—most of them. When he wasn’t living their lives, they lived their own, much as they’d done before he’d woven his curiosity into their being. Casting an Unseen net, Hamanu touched them, one by one. A beggar had died. A nobleman had eaten unwisely and suffered the consequences in a dark, befouled corner of his luxurious home. Lord Ursos entertained an unwilling guest. Cissa’s daughter had another tooth coming in. Nouri Nouri’son had adopted his beggar and put him to work behind the counter of his busy bakery.
Ewer’s recitation progressed from religion to refugees, a subject that did not engage Hamanu’s curiosity or require his attention. Though it pleased the Lion-King to think that the suffering citizens of Raam, Draj, and even far-off Balic would choose