“This, my libation from the seas,” Fwi-Song said to Horza, pointing at the young man, who was quivering and moaning, his eyes rolling about in their sockets and his lips dribbling, “this is my naughty boy; called Twenty-seventh, since his rebirth. This was one of our respected, much loved sons, one of our anointed, one of our fellow morsels, one of our brotherly taste buds on the great tongue of life.” Fwi-Song’s voice chortled with laughter as he spoke, as though he knew the absurdity of the part he was playing and couldn’t resist hamming it up. “This splinter from our tree, this grain from our beach, this reprobate dared to run towards the seven-times-cursed vehicle of the Vacuum. He spurned the gift of burden with which we honoured him; he chose to abandon us and flee across the sands when the alien enemy passed over us yesterday. He did not trust our salving grace, but turned instead to an instrument of darkness and nothingness, towards the soaking shade of the soulless ones, the Anathematics.” Fwi-Song looked at the man, still shaking on the post across the fire from Horza. The prophet’s face went stern with reproach. “By the workings of Fate the traitor who ran from our side and put his prophet’s life at risk was caught — so that he might learn his sad mistake, and make good his terrible crime.” Fwi-Song’s arm dropped. The vast head shook.
Mr First shouted to the people round the fire. They faced the young man called Twenty-seventh and chanted. The ghastly smells Horza had sensed earlier came back, making his eyes mist and his nose tingle.
While the people chanted and Fwi-Song watched, Mr First and two of the women followers dug up small sacks from the sand. Out of them they brought some thin lengths of cloth which they proceeded to wrap round their bodies. As Mr First put his vestments on, Horza saw a large, cumbersome-looking projectile pistol, held in a string holster beneath the man’s grubby tunic. Horza presumed that was the gun fired at the shuttle the day before, when he and Mipp had overflown the island.
The young man opened his eyes, saw the three people in their cloths and started screaming.
“Hear how the stricken soul cries out for its lesson, pleads for its bounty of regret, its solace of refreshing suffering,” Fwi-Song smiled, looking at Horza. “Our child Twenty-seventh knows what awaits him, and while his body, already proved so weak, breaks before the storm, his soul cries out, ‘Yes! Yes! Mighty Prophet! Succour me! Make me part of you! Give me your strength! Come to me!’ Is it not a sweet and uplifting sound?”
Horza looked into the prophet’s eyes and said nothing. The young man went on screaming and trying to tear himself away from the stump. Mr First was crouched before him, on his knees, his head bowed, muttering to himself. The two women dressed in the dull cloth were preparing bowls of steaming liquid from the vats and pots around the fire, warming some over the flames. The smells came to Horza, turning his stomach.
Fwi-Song switched to the other language and spoke to the two women. They looked at Horza, then came up to him with the bowls. Horza drew his head away as they shoved the containers under his nose. He wrinkled his face up in disgust at what looked and smelled like fish entrails in a sauce of excrement. The women took the awful stuff away; it left a stink in his nose. He tried breathing through his mouth.
The young man’s mouth had been wedged open with blocks of wood, and his choking screams altered in pitch. While Mr First held him, the women ladled the liquids from the bowls into his mouth. The young man spluttered and wailed, choked and tried to spit. He moaned, then threw up.
“Let me show you my armoury, my benefaction,” Fwi-Song said to Horza, and reached behind his vast body. He brought back a large bundle of rags, which he started to unfold. Glittering in the sunlight, metal devices like tiny man-traps were revealed. Fwi-Song put one finger to his lips while he surveyed the collection, then picked up one of the small metal contraptions. He put it into his mouth, fitting both parts over the pins Horza had seen earlier. “Zhare,” Fwi-Song said, raising his mouth in a broad smile towards the Changer. “What’oo you shink of zhat?” The artificial teeth sparkled in his mouth; rows of sharp, serrated points. “Or zhese?” Fwi-Song swapped them for another set, full of tiny fangs like needles, then another, with angled teeth like hooks with barbs, then another, with holes set in them. “Goo’, eh?” He smiled at Horza, leaving the last pair in. He turned to Mr First. “Wha’ you shink, Nishtur Shursht? Ehs? Or…” Fwi-Song took out the set with the holes, put in another set, like long, blade-like spades. “Zheze? A ’ink eeg a rar ah nishe. Esh, rert ush zhtart wish eez. Ret’s punish zhoze naughty tootsiesh.”
Twenty-seventh’s voice was becoming hoarse. One of his legs was lifted out in front of him and held by four kneeling men. Fwi-Song was lifted and carried on the litter to just in front of the young man; he bared the blade-teeth, then leaned forward and with a quick; nodding motion, bit off one of Twenty-seventh’s toes.
Horza looked away.
In the next half-hour or so of leisurely paced eating, the enormous prophet nibbled at various bits of Twenty-seventh’s body, attacking the extremities and the few remaining fat deposits with his various sets of teeth. The young man gained fresh breath with each new site of butchery.
Horza watched and didn’t watch, sometimes trying to think himself into a kind of defiance that would let him work out a way to get back at this grotesque distortion of a human being, at other times just wanting the whole awful business to be over and done with. Fwi-Song left his ex-disciple’s fingers until last, then used the teeth with the holes in them like wire-strippers. “’Ery ’asty,” he said, wiping his blood-stained face with one gigantic forearm.
Twenty-seventh was cut down, moaning, covered in streaks of blood, and only semi-conscious. He was gagged with a length of rag, then pinned down flat, face up, on the sand, wooden spikes through the palms of his mangled hands and a huge boulder crushing his feet. He started screaming weakly again through the gag when he saw the prophet Fwi-Song on his litter being carried over towards him. Fwi-Song was lowered almost on top of the moaning form, then he struggled with some cords at the side of his litter until a small flap under his great bulk flopped open, over the face of the gagged, blood-spattered human on the sand beneath. The prophet gave a sign, and he was lowered on top of the man, quieting the sound of moaning. The prophet smiled, and settled himself with little movements of his huge body, like a bird nestling down over its eggs. His vast bulk obliterating all trace or shape of the human under him, Fwi-Song hummed to himself while the emaciated crowd looked on, singing very slowly and quietly, swaying together as they stood. Fwi-Song started to rock backwards and forwards softly, very slowly at first, then faster as sweat appeared in beads on the golden dome of his face. He panted, and made a rough gesture towards the crowd; the two women dressed in the lengths of cloth came forward and started to lick at the trickles of blood which had spilled from the prophet’s mouth, over the folds of his chins and down the expanse of his chest and breasts like red milk. Fwi-Song gasped, seemed to sag and stay still for a moment, and then, with a surprisingly fast and fierce motion, clouted both the lapping women across the head with his mighty arms. The women scurried off, rejoining the crowd. Mr First started a louder chant, which the others took up.
At last Fwi-Song ordered himself to be lifted again. The litter bearers hauled his massive frame into the air, to reveal the crushed body of Twenty-seventh, his moaning silenced for ever.