Hugh Cook - The Wicked and the Witless

'To hell with her suggestions!' said Sarazin. 'I want my sword! I want it now! Go and get it!'

But Farfalla kept the blade, not trusting him with anything so valuable. On revisiting his bedside she told him so explicitly:

'This city of sin owns many temptations. I'd not have you lose a great treasure to such.'

You treat me as a child,' said Sarazin, all resentment. TsAy father would not treat me thus.'

'Fox is not a party to this argument, and never will be. Fox is banned from your presence, and you from his.' 'You can't do that!' said Sarazin.

'I can,' said Farfalla. 'I do. I must. Fox almost lost his life through radical politics, and almost cost me mine. Because of the dangers of such politics you must never meet.'

As Celadon, Peguero and Jarnel accepted this ban, Farfalla did not believe Sarazin would do otherwise. Until now, Sarazin himself had never thought to seek out Fox, who was but a low-bred farrier. But, his curiosity piqued, he asked: 'What kind of man is he?'

'Fox? He's… his best is excellent. Strength, wisdom, humour. But then… he has his moods. Black moods of anger when he… he wrecks his own work.'

'Did he – did he take Bizzie in such a mood?' said Sarazin.

You a man and you ask me that?' said Farfalla. 'He took her because she was available and I eight months pregnant with you. Oh, I remember. I won't forget. One of your feet must have been jammed beneath my ribs, because its reminder never left me. You were born in winter, I remember, and…'

On and on she went, detailing Sarazin's genesis. This he found intensely embarrassing. He could have discussed sexual intercourse easily, even with his mother, for there a man found power and pleasure both. But birth? No! To have been born: it was, really, demeaning. He was scarcely pleased to be reminded that he had been small and helpless, yolk-wet and toothless, a writhing bundle of hunger- bawling incontinence.

'… but I loved you, not least because you were my first. You cried when they took you, oh, you were so little, only four years old and you cried and cried, it near broke my heart, I cried myself for days…'

This was a different woman from the one Sarazin had seen so far. Not the cold, hard, efficient ruler of the See of the Sun, but his mother. Who wanted him, who needed him, who had longed for him, who was unutterably lonely. Who embarrassed him. With her talk. With what she was. Big bones in her hands and her coarse-featured face. A wrestler's neck, a washerwoman's forearms. Had she no modesty?

Surely only a peasant would talk so frankly of a bond of blood and milk. He had dreamed of a mother elegant, sophisticated and, above all, powerful. And had found instead this near-desperate woman who, it seemed, had nothing to give him. He was offended by the shapeless robes she wore, her unabashed physical strength, and her rude health – which was that of a well-fed peasant.

Farfalla talked long and late with Sarazin, who devoted his own efforts to concealing his shame. When at last she left him, he found his thoughts turning again to his father. Fox. He was intrigued by what he had heard. A man of dangerous politics. -He sought to make himself emperor, perhaps.

Thus thought Sarazin, and resolved to seek out Fox as soon as he was fit to rise from his bed. Which, judging from the condition of his flesh, would be a little while yet.

While Farfalla won the day when Sarazin demanded the return of his blade of firelight steel, she could not always get her own way. For example: despite her objections, a team of army surgeons subjected her son to a medical. They listened to his chest and palpated his spleen without mercy; they thumped his knees with padded mallets and tweaked his ears with tuning forks; they smelt his urine, tasted his ordure, and drew a cup of his blood to weigh against an equal volume of water.

Having done all this and more they diagnosed, variously, malaria, consumption, hepatitis, pneumonia and Favling- skon's disease; their prescriptions included a tincture of squids' ink and basilisk gall, powdered unicorn horn to be taken with gold dust and deer velvet, carefully calculated doses of dwale and hemlock, tablets of chalk and oxidised iron, and disks of sun-baked kaolin (to be chewed slowly then swallowed).

'It is nonsense they talk,' said Bizzie, 'for this is but the river-fever, which cures itself if it heals at all.'

Then that illiterate washerwoman showed her total ignorance of the wonders of medical science by throwing out all the prescriptions – even the most rare and valuable unicorn horn. She fed Sarazin upon honey, boiled skimmed milk, omelettes, and fresh placenta fried up with garlic.

Slowly, he began to get better. So slowly, in fact, that the surgeons deferred his recruitment into the army indefinitely.

'Since science had failed your flesh,' said one, 'I suggest theology. Pray to your god for a cure.' 'But I have no god,' said Sarazin.

This comment was widely reported, and brought Farfalla hastening to her son's bedside. Once she had ensured their privacy she said, with unconcealed alarm: 'Are you an atheist?' 'Of course not,' said Sarazin.

Illness had made him irritable, and being accused of a foible as witless as atheism would have annoyed him even in days of health perfect.

Yet you told the surgeons you were godless,' said Farfalla.

'I was passing an idle comment,' said Sarazin, 'not lecturing on theology. As it happens, Epelthin Elkin has taught me of half a hundred gods all worthy of belief.'

Indeed, Elkin had taught Sarazin many subtle truths about theology. For example, that the gods themselves are subject to evolutionary forces, and, like plants and animals, change down through the ages. This of course explains why deities worshipped in ancient times are so different from those holding sway today.

Where now is the Horn? Where now is Ameeshoth? They, the First Ones, are gone. They are as dead as the snow dragon, once the strongest, wisest and most beautiful of all the dragon breeds, but now gone and forgotten except where arcanely knowledged by a few of the world's greatest living scholars.

Sarazin, therefore, was immune to atheism, a distemper which afflicts only the smallest and narrowest of minds. However, thanks to his excellent education, he knew that the hierarchies of the World Beyond are so complex that anyone claiming absolute authority on religious matters is ignorant, deluded or bluffing. Thus it is difficult to be sure one has chosen the right god to worship, particularly since many low-grade demons can inspire visions, work miracles and so forth. Sarazin, wishing to prosper in the afterlife, was still shopping around. He explained as much to Farfalla.

Your concern for the afterlife must yield to temporal concerns,' said Farfalla. 'Selzirk looks with suspicion upon atheists proven or suspected. You must declare for the sungod today.'

The sungod? A safe, middle-of-the-road choice. An austere, reasonably competent, fairly tolerant god who offered a choice of five different heavens. The sungod's followers had to do something truly abominable to be sent to hell, and the sungod's hell was, in any case, less threatening than most – it was a rainy day which went on forever.

'Why hesitate?' said Farfalla, all brisk efficiency. This is a sure thing I The sungod is one of the Proven Deities, and a good-tempered deity at that. Cheap to worship, too. No need to burn incense, make sacrifices, chastise your flesh or cut off your nose. All you have to do is Declare yourself, then say a couple of prayers every time Mid- summer's Day comes around.' Yes, but,' said Sarazin. 'But what?'

You spoke of temporal considerations. It's precisely those which make me hesitate. You see, I want a god who will help me in the here and now. Everyone knows the sungod doesn't go in for miracles.'