It was one story high, made of leather and poles. If you can imagine a leather labyrinth, that's what it was. Smelly and hot. The others knew what to expect because they'd been there before, but all the way in I was shivering from the sanctity and thinking I would never find my way out again. The middle was open, a big courtyard: sand underfoot and the sky overhead. There was a paved place for making sacrifices. The priests were waiting eagerly, because they would have red meat for supper afterward. And there was a small, round tent in one corner. A yurt, I think they're called. That was the house of the god. If there was an image of him, it was in there. All we could see was the tent.
I was introduced as D'ward Roofer and put in the front. We all knelt down on the sand and bowed our heads and the ceremony began, chanting and praying and so on. In a few minutes I looked up. The flap of the tent had been pulled aside, and there was a little man standing there, holding it. He smiled at me and beckoned, and I knew that he was the numen himself, Krobidirkin. I could see no alternative, so I just stood up and walked over, and the priests did not notice. I was surprised they couldn't hear my knees knocking.
He took me inside, and the inside was much larger than the outside. There were several rooms to it, and flaps of the roof had been opened to let in the air and light. There were rugs and cushions. It smelled of spices. Someone was playing a zither or something softly in another room, and I could not hear the temple priests doing their awful wailing. It was exotic, but quite pleasant.
"Do sit down, Liberator,” he said. “I regret that I cannot offer you tea, but I have a reasonable substitute."
We settled on the cushions, and he poured from a silver pot that stood on a brazier. The cups were beautiful porcelain.
You can't tell how old a stranger is from his appearance. They have a sort of agelessness. Krobidirkin was small, as I said, but tough and wiry looking. He had the serenity of a landscape and could have been eighty, but he had the skin of a youth. He wore only the local leather loincloth, and his face was quite the ugliest I had ever seen, all slanty eyes and squashed nose. His ears stuck out, and his mustache turned down at the ends. He had a whimsical grin that I found reassuring.
It took me a minute or two to find my voice. This numen was a vassal of Karzon's, remember, and therefore an ally of Zath, the god of death, whom I was prophesied to kill and who had been doing his level best to kill me. I had met Tion and escaped unharmed, but he was not allied with the Chamber. This Krobidirkin must be. He had immolated Kalmak Carpenter and his family, and here he was offering me tea!
"I am honored to meet you, sir,” I said, or some such nonsense.
He chuckled. “No, the honor is mine. May I say that your father would be proud of you?"
I spilled half a cup of scalding tea down my chest.
"You knew my father, sir?"
The little man was much amused by my reaction. “Yes, indeed. I met him several times. A good man. He made a special journey all the way from his home world to consult with me. He even gave me a picture of you."
I think that was probably the biggest surprise I have ever had in my life. There I was, an infinite distance from home, a stranger in a very strange land indeed, and this all-powerful local god handed me a photograph of the station at Nyagatha! It showed the mater, and you, Alice, and me. We were sitting on the veranda. The gramophone was there, and the parrot's cage, and all sorts of details I had forgotten. I was about three, I suppose. I had never seen that picture before. I made rather an ass of myself over it.
Of course Krobidirkin was pleased, because that was the effect he had wanted to produce. He refilled my cup.
And then I said, “But surely this is impossible! I thought nothing could cross over except people?"
He chuckled, as if he had been waiting for me to work that out in my dim-witted way. “Memories can cross over,” he said. “And there is mana.” He took the photograph from me—it did seem to be a real, honest-to-god photograph, black-and-white, not colored—and he turned it over. I expected to see the photographer's name there, but it was blank. Then he waved his hand and the back showed another picture. It was the guv'nor, sitting in that very tent, where I was sitting, wearing a Nagian loincloth and smiling.
Well, that floored me.
"May I guess?” I said when I recovered. “He had been put in charge of some people who had once had a society very similar to the Nagians', and he knew that you had managed to preserve their institutions in the face of progress, so he came to ask your advice?"
Krobidirkin's ugly face split in a wide grin. “Of course! Unfortunately, it takes mana to guide such a development, and in the post he then held, Kameron was only another native. A culturally advanced native, and a well-intentioned one, but not a stranger in his own world."
"You have been a good father to your people, sir,” I said. “You also are from our world?"
He smiled and nodded. “A very long time ago, yes. I can recall very little of my youth, I am afraid. One forgets. A new world brings a new life, and the old days become unimportant when one decides one will never return. I do remember that my people were very warlike. We had a notable leader, named ... I forget. He led us against a civilization of great cities, and we were badly defeated. The next year he tried again, and this time he was turned aside by an army led by a priest. The mana was very strong, and he retreated before it, knowing that he could not win against the god power. He died not long after."
That may have been the second worst shock, I suppose. It is one thing to know intellectually that strangers live a long time. To run into a man who remembers battles fought fifteen hundred years ago—that brings it home with a vengeance. “Was his name Attila?” I asked.
The little Hun clapped his hands and said, “That's it! A wonderful leader of men! Great native charisma."
So we sat and talked about the battle of Châlons—which was fought sometime in the middle of the fifth century, in case you forget—and Pope Leo, who somehow persuaded the Huns to withdraw from Italy the following year. How he did it has always been a great historical mystery. My host was delighted to learn that his comrades in arms were still remembered after so long, but I was careful not to go into details about their reputation. He probably wouldn't have minded. Krobidirkin had been a sort of medicine man with the horde, and in his old age he had accidentally crossed over to Nextdoor and become a god.
He soon eased the conversation around to the Filoby Testament and the Liberator.
"I greatly regret what happened to the carpenter and his family,” he said. “I had direct orders, and I dared not disobey them. One hates to treat one's people so, however misguided their heresies."
"And what of me?” I asked. “Have you direct orders about me?"
"Oh, yes. But you are the son of my old friend Kameron! Zath does not know where you are. He does not know that I know, and he is furious that you have escaped him. He is a very frightened god!"
"He need not be,” I said. “I have no plans to kill him."
The little man chortled. “The prophecy says you will! Zath has tried everything he can think of to break the chain of events and failed every time. So he fears you, and rightly so."
"What of Karzon?"
He screwed up his ugly little face, making it even uglier. “He fears Zath! And that brings me to the reason I invited you here, D'ward. Zath has decreed that there must be war, and more war. War brings him mana, and he is hungry for all the mana he can get, because the Liberator is a threat to him. Now it has begun—in Narshia, which was part of Joaldom, but lies between Thargvale and Lappinvale. Lappinvale has been a Thargian colony for half a century, you know? But recently the Randorians have been stirring up trouble there, urging rebellion and independence."