Other gods were called into being and the nature of that call took countless forms. A convulsion of natural forces, until the very sludge awakens. Wherever discordant elements clashed, the possibility was born. Life. Intent. Desire and need. But these too were accidental things, in as much as anything could be accidental when all the particles necessary for creation abounded, as they surely did. There were other ways of calling a god into being.

Gather a host of words, a host of words. Gather a host of words. Make them, make them, make them what? Physical, yes, make them physical, from the empty ether to the incision in clay, the stain on stone, the ink on skin. Physical, because the physical created-by its very nature before the eye (or the inner eye)-created and created patterns. And they could be played with played with played with. In numbers and sigils, in astral proportions. They could be coded inside codes inside codes until something is rendered, something both beautiful and absolute. Beautiful in its absoluteness. In its absolution, in its absolved essence, a thing of beauty.

Understand, won’t you, the truth of patterns, how pattern finds truth in the tension of juxtaposition, in the game of meaning meaning the game which is the perfect pattern of language in the guise of imperfection-but what value any of this any of this any of this?

The value is the body of text (hah, the body-the bodies) that in its absoluteness becomes sacred, and in sacredness becomes all that it portrays in its convivial ordering of the essentially meaningless. Patterns where none existed before. Creation from nothing. Awakening from absence of self. And what is the word the beautiful word the precious word and the perfect word that starts the game starts everything everything everything?

Why, the word is birth.

Bodies of text, all these bodies, all this flesh and the ink and the words and the words oh the words. Bodies and bodies, patterns inside patterns, lives and lives and lives all dreaming… all dreaming one dream. One dream. One dream one dream one one one dream. One.

A dream of justice.

‘Let the cosmos quake,’ Kadaspala whispered as he etched sigil inside sigil in-side sigil, as he wove language and meaning, as the ink rode the piercing and (lowed beneath skin pocket by pocket. ‘Quake and quiver, whimper and quaver. A god oh a god yes a god now a god soon a god a god awakens. Lives and lives cut down one and all, cut down, yes, by judgement’s sharp edge-did we deserve it? Did we earn the punishment? Are any of us innocent, any of us at all? Not likely not likely not likely. So, lives and lives and none none none of us did not receive precisely what we deserved.

‘Do you understand? Godling, to you I speak. Listen listen listen well. We are what you come from. The punished, the punished, the victims of justice, the victims of our own stupidity, yes, and who could say that none of us have learned our lesson? Who can say that? Look oh look oh look where we are! Godling, here is your soul, writ in flesh, in flesh, writ here by Kadaspala, who was once blind though he could see and now can see though he is blind. And am I not the very definition of sentience? Blind in life, I can see in death-the definition of mortality, my darling child, heed it and heed it come the moment you must act and decide and stand and sit in judgement. Heed and heed, godling, this eternal flaw.

‘And what, you will wonder, is written upon your soul? What is written here? Here upon the flesh of your soul? Ah, but that is the journey of your life, godling, to learn the language of your soul, to learn it to learn it even as you live it.

‘Soon, birth arrives. Soon, life awakens.

‘Soon, I make a god.’

And even now, the god dreams of justice. For, unlike Ditch, Kadaspala is indeed mad. His code struck to flesh is a code of laws. The laws from which the god shall be born. Consider that, consider that well.

In the context of, say, mercy…

She was out there, down in the basin, on her knees, head hanging, her torso weaving back and forth to some inner rhythm. After studying her yet again, Seer-domin, with a faint gasp, tore his gaze away-something it was getting ever harder to manage, for she was mesmerizing, this child-woman, this fount of corruption, and the notion that a woman’s fall could be so alluring, so perfectly sexual, left him horrified. By this language of invitation. By his own darkness.

Behind him, the Redeemer murmured, ‘Her power grows. Her power over you, Segda Travos.’

‘I do not want to be where she is.’

‘Don’t you?’

Seerdomin turned and eyed the god. ‘Self-awareness can be a curse.’

‘A necessary one.’

‘I suppose so,’ he conceded.

‘Will you still fight her, Segda Travos?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Why?’

Seerdomin bared his teeth, ‘Don’t you start with me, Redeemer, The enemy never questions motivations-the enemy doesn’’t chew the ground out beneath its own feet.’ He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the basin. ‘Site has no questions. No doubts. What she has instead is strength. Power.’

‘That is true,’ said the Redeemer. ‘All of it. It is why those haunted by uncer-tainty must ever retreat. They cannot stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy’s lines-’

‘Where every damned one of them is hunted down and silenced-no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act. Wave the standard or someone else will, and they’ll be coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection-it haunts me still.’

No further words were exchanged then. Seerdomin looked back down to that woman, the High Priestess who had once been Salind. She was naught but a tool, now, a weapon of some greater force’s will, its hunger. The same force, he now suspected, that drove nations to war, that drove husbands to kill wives and wives to kill husbands. That could take even the soul of a god and crush it into subservience.

When will you rise, Salind? When will you come for me?

This was not the afterlife he had imagined. My fighting should be over. My every need made meaningless, the pain of thoughts for ever silenced.

Is not death’s gift indifference? Blissful, perfect indifference?

She swayed back and forth, gathering strength as only the surrendered could do.

Monkrat walked through the pilgrim camp. Dishevelled as it had once been, now it looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. Tents had sagged; shacks leaned perilously close to collapse. There was rubbish everywhere. The few children still alive after being so long abandoned watched him walk past with haunted eyes peering out from filth-streaked faces. Sores ate into their drawn lips. Their bellies were swollen under the rags. There was nothing to be done for them, and even if there was, Monkrat was not the man to do it. In his mind he had left humanity behind long ago. There was no kinship to nip at his heart. Every fool the world over was on his or her own, or they were slaves. These were the only two states of being-every other one was a lie. And Monkrat had no desire to become a slave, as much as Gradithan or Saemenkelyk might want that.

No, he would remain his own world. It was easier that way. Ease was important. Ease was all that mattered.

Soon, he knew, he would have to escape this madness. Gradithan’s ambitions had lost all perspective-the curse of kelyk. He talked now incessantly of the coming of the Dying God, the imminent end of all things and the glorious rebirth to follow. People talking like that disgusted Monkrat. They repeated themselves so often it soon became grossly obvious that their words were wishes and the wish was that their words might prove true. Round and round, all that wasted breath. The mind so liked to go round and round, so liked that familiar track, the familiarity of it. Round and round, and each time round the mind was just that much stupider. Increment by increment, the range of thoughts narrower, the path underfoot more deeply trenched-he had even noted how the vocabulary diminished, as uneasy notions were cast-away and all the words associated with them, too. The circular track became a mantra, the mantra a proclamation of stupid wishes that things could be as they wanted them, that in fact they were as they wanted them.