Petty Pewter Gods

50

Magodor stalked along the foot of a hill about a hundred feet away. She was no shadow. She was set solidly in her nastiest avatar. She looked right at me. She knew I was there. Good old Driver of the Spoil. She didn't look pleased but seemed unlikely to try making my life less pleasant than it was already.

I recalled that people in TunFaire had been unable to see the divine clowns lurking around me. "Cat, you can see these things, can't you?"

"I see Magodor. She sees us, too."

"No. But she knows I'm here. She gave me the cord. She can tell where it is."

"Uhm!" She seemed to have lost interest. Aha! Her mother had arrived. Imara seemed quite regal and totally indifferent to the censure of fellow gods.

The rest of the Shayir and Godoroth arrived, all frozen into their city forms. The anger around us grew palpable. My headache began worsening fast. Among the stragglers I spotted interesting faces. "Cat. Do you know that character there?" I indicated a huge, handsome, one-eyed guy who was neither Godoroth nor Shayir.

"That's Bogge. He's Mom's lover."

"Bogge? You sure?" He looked a lot like Shinrise the Destroyer. "Gets around, don't she?" I wondered if a god would lie to a mortal about his identity. Or if a mother would lie to her daughter. My thoughtless remark earned me a dirty look. I asked, "How about the redhead there? The one who looks like an ordinary mortal." Ordinary, hell. All women ought to look so ordinary. She looked like Star might if she decided to conform to my peculiar prejudices.

"Not in that form." There was a small catch in her voice.

"She got me into this. She was watching my house. I decided to follow her."

"She isn't Godoroth or Shayir."

Indeed. But you do have some ideas...

Nog is inescapable.

Well, of course he was. He kept coming back like an unemployed cousin, Nog did.

I recalled a little old lady at the mouth of an alley and reflected that goddesses were not required to keep one look. "The name Adeth mean anything? Magodor said an Adeth was trying to trap me. I thought she meant that woman."

Nervously, Cat said, "One of the Krone Gods is called Adeth... " and cut herself off.

"What? Give, darling. Look around. We don't need to play games."

"Adeth is one of a bunch of tribal deities from way down south. The people are fur traders and rock hunters. They've never had enough people here to win a place on the Street of the Gods."

Now that rolled off her tongue so smooth it must have been distilled twice.

She said, "I don't see why some primitives like that would get involved. Though her name does mean Treachery, I think."

"There's a lot of that going on these days." That redhead was just too polished to be the wishful thinking of fur trappers still using stone tools. Those guys go for malicious rocks and trees and such. And storm gods. They love gods who stomp around and bellow and smash things up a lot.

Be right at home around here.

Nog is inescapable.

"That boy needs a hobby," I muttered.

The thing itself oozed out of a valley, stopped, turned in place slowly for half a minute, then began to shuffle our way. "Oh, damn," Cat murmured.

A spear blade twelve feet tall slammed into the earth in front of Nog, nearly shaving his nose off. It was slightly transparent but did have a definite impact when it hit. Clods flew a hundred feet. Lightning slithered down the spear shaft. Sparks played tag along the edges of the blade.

One of the very tall, very big-time gods had admonished Nog.

Fourteen was whimpering out loud now. He was down flat on his pudgy belly with his chubby, too short arms trying to cover his head. I said, "I'm beginning to wonder, Cat." She grimaced but didn't answer. Nog considered his situation, decided that since he was inescapable he could afford to wait. He resumed moving along a new course. He joined the rest of the Godoroth gang. Those swinging party guys had gathered at the foot of a slope opposite the Shayir. Both crews looked troubled. And angry, though no actual lightning bolts flew.

The last stragglers must have arrived because all of a sudden most all the gods tried to assume their worldly avatars. About a third were not successful. Maybe there wasn't enough power to go around.

I had an idea. This happens on occasion. "Are the walls between the worlds thinner in the Dream Quarter?"

"Will you stop blubbering?" Cat stuck a toe into the cherub's ribs. Then she looked at me almost suspiciously. She seemed reluctant to answer my questions now.

I said, "It seems reasonable to assume that they would cluster where it would be easiest to tap their sources of power." Which, of course, added meaning to the struggle of the Shayir and Godoroth to remain on the Street. Cat grunted.

There was a change in the painful background racket gurgling down in the bottom of my mind. It faded. I caught the edge of what had to be one big guy really booming. There was no motion at all on the surrounding slopes.

The meeting had been called to order.

I thought about gods and points of power. Seemed likely that in addition to collecting where power was most accessible they would develop caste systems based on ability to grab and manipulate that power. Somebody like my little ankle-biting buddy Fourteen would be way down at the bottom of the pile.

If I have the innate ability to seize sixty percent of the power available and you can grab only thirty percent, guess who is in charge? Assuming we subscribe to the sociopathic attitudes generally ascribed to the gods.

Sudden anger surged along the thought stream I sensed so marginally. With the pure cold voice I had felt no pain, but this anger was a powerful blow, however glancing. It sent me to my knees. I ground the heels of my fists into my temples. I managed not to scream.

Imar came out from the Godoroth team. Lang moved forward, too. They raced to see who could grow big the fastest. Each surrounded himself with all the noisy, dramatic effects demanded by mortal worshippers.

Since I was down already, I settled against a not entirely uncomfortable rock. I patted Fourteen's bottom like he really was a baby and reflected, "I should have brought a lunch. This punch-out is going to take a while."

I saw representatives of the Board called on the carpet while the mirror-image boss gods looked one another over. The mind stream had a blistery touch. The supreme busybodies seemed to want to give everybody a yellow card for unnecessary roughness.

Me, I thought they all deserved big penalties for unnecessary stupidity.

I kept one eye on Imara and another on her boyfriend, whatever name he was using. I kept one on the incipient ruckus out front and another on the redhead Cat was determined to keep mysterious. That didn't really leave a lot of eyes for anything else.