Of the two girls, there seemed little to choose, from the overman's point of view; they were of about the same size, and presumably therefore near the same age. They were as tall as many adult human women; Garth wondered again at the quirk of nature that made men and women so different in size, unlike overman and overwomen. Women seemed such small, fragile things, things, anal oddly proportioned, at that.
One girl seemed slightly the more active of the two; Garth decided she must be the younger. It was her older sister he had spoken to when he arrived, and it would presumably be the older who would bring his food. In that case, he would simply speak to her when his meal was ready.
Even as he decided this, the girl emerged from a door at the rear carrying a heaping plate and full mug, which she balanced easily as she crossed the room to set them on the table before him.
"My thanks." He kept his face hidden and his voice high as he looked at his meal; beside the expected slices of red meat were three chunks of some pasty yellowish substance, and a curious red fruit, like none he was familiar with, adorned one edge. "What are these?" he asked, indicating these strangers.
"Roast potato, sir. And our last good apple; we have no other fruit in store at present."
Both names were meaningless to the overman; he could not even be sure of their spelling, through the girl's thick Dыsarran accent. At least Nekutta spoke the same language as Eramma and the other northern lands, even if they spoke it strangely. Still, the "apple" was plainly a local fruit; the potato was another matter.
"What is potato?"
"Ah? Oh, you're joking!"
"No; I have traveled far."
"It's...it's a root, a vegetable. Eat it, and see." The girl was flustered; Garth was not sure if that was desirable or not. He did have her talking.
"Here, sit down; I will try this root of yours, but I have some questions about your city. Perhaps you can answer them."
"But..."
"I am a paying customer, am I not? You can spare a few minutes." He tapped the table with a gold coin, then suddenly realized that it was a mistake to draw attention to his inhuman hands; he dropped the coin, and drew his hand back out of sight. The girl apparently hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary; she stared at the coin for a moment, then snatched it up and dropped it down the neckline of her robe. Garth was amused. He had never before seen a human keep anything there, but it seemed a logical place for a woman to put a pocket. The coin had been a fullsized gold piece, not one of the little bits such as he had given the stable-boy, and he remarked, "That will cover the meal as well, will it not?"
"Oh, yes!" The girl dropped herself into the chair opposite him, smiling.
"Good. Tell me of your city; I am a wanderer from far to the east."
"What is there to say?"
"Ah..." Garth had not expected that response. He was not experienced in dealing with humans. "Why is the marketplace so busy in the middle of the night? And the gate wide open?"
"It always is."
That demolished the religious festival theory once and for all. "But why? In most cities business is a matter for daylight, and the night is given to sleep."
"But this is Dыsarra!" Her tone implied, even to the untrained ear of an overman, that he was being purposely dense. He picked up a chunk of potato on his knife and ate it, while considering this; the stuff seemed edible, but not particularly tasty.
"And what is so special about Dыsarra?"
"You do not know?"
"No."
"The very name tells you."
Garth had paid little attention to the name, assuming it nothing but a noise that represented this particular place; he considered it a bit more carefully, and still saw nothing significant in it. The ending was a standard designation for a gathering place, and the root, Dыs, was completely unknown to him.
"I do not understand."
"`Dыsarra' means `the place of the Dark Gods' Here we worship the gods shunned by the outside world; mostly Tema, the goddess of night. Perhaps, stranger, you have made a mistake in coming here if you did not know that."
"Perhaps I have." He sat silently for a moment, thinking.
He should have expected something like this from the Forgotten King. He knew very little about human religions, beyond the fact that no two seemed to agree about anything, but he had heard of the Dark Gods; they were supposed to demand human sacrifices, and to be wholly evil in nature. It had been rumored that the Baron of Skelleth was a secret devotee of theirs, and that had been considered sufficient grounds for immediate execution if proven; it remained only a vague rumor. It was said that, unlike most gods, they still interfered directly in mortal affairs, and would grant their followers special powers and abilities in exchange for gruesome payments of blood, death, and torture. Evil wizards were said to have sold themselves-their souls, to use the human term that overmen did not use-to the Dark Gods.
And the entire city of Dыsarra worshipped these deities? It seemed incredible. How could a thinking being worship evil?
"Tell me, then, about these gods." At least the conversation had taken a turn toward the temples without obviously being steered there.
"There are seven of them, the seven Lords of Dыs, the counterparts to the seven Lords of Eir worshipped elsewhere. I know very little about most of them; I am a follower of Tema, like the rest of my family."
"How did you come to be such?"
"I was brought up in the faith, of course."
"How did the city come to worship these gods?"
"I don't know; it always has. My father told me once that it was part of a cosmic balance that these misunderstood and maligned gods should have one city of their own."
"Are they not evil?"
"Tema is not!" Her face was suddenly animated, and Garth was taken aback by her ferocity. "Tema is beautiful! The night is wonderful, cool and calm; I would never be a day worshipper! How can people live with all that glaring light? And all the sweaty heat? And all the beasts roam by day, and insects. The sun is so bright you cannot look at it, and it drowns out all the beauty of the flames. There are no stars in the daytime! I..." She subsided suddenly. "Forgive me."
"No, forgive me; I did not mean to offend you. In other lands I have visited, the Dark Gods are thought to be the gods of evil."
She shrugged. "They are obviously ignorant heathens. There are no evil gods, really; evil is just misunderstandings between people, or between people and the gods. That's what the priests say."
"I see. You worship the night-goddess. What of the other six?"
"They have their followers, too, but I do not heed them. I sometimes think that some of them are evil, despite what the priests say. Aghad, for example; his followers make my skin crawl, and his priests frighten me. I have seen them gathering at his temple. And of course, no one worships The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, though he has a temple."
Garth began to have a rather unsettled feeling; he had heard of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken. That was the god of death, known throughout the world; it was said that to speak his true name was to die instantly. And they worshipped him here?
No, the girl had just said that they did not, but that there was a temple dedicated to him. Was it one of the seven he would have to rob?
It must be; everyone seemed to agree that there were only seven temples in Dыsarra. Although he would not admit to being in any way superstitious, and although his own people insisted that either there were no gods or they did not meddle in the affairs of mortals, he did not care to rob the temple of Death.