Hero's Manual: Chapter 22
Jan. 16th, 2008 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sickle_storiesA/N: Despite suspicious similarities and outraged villagers, I am not criticizing any religion in particular. One-eyed Larry is from PotC: AWE.
Lucretia's rule for stew is from TPratchett. The Cod/Carp concept came from a typo in an email I received from Josie, titled "Holy Carp!". Things just got a bit out of hand from there, especially with Pratchettian influence*.
I’m really sorry about Freckles.
Chapter 22: How to Serve Gods
The four travelers reached the city square with only a couple false turns and one stubbed toe – Vicky's, victim of a loose cobblestone. His curse was the only word said since Gwen's unanswered questions.
Quasi approached the table with his Master and mortal-enemies-by-association shuffling behind him like shy children. He’d been appointed casserole-porter by virtue of still being, unfortunately, a butler. It was a good choice, however, as Quasi’s training served him well: he might not have known where to put the casserole or whom to give it to, but he knew perfectly well how to stand still with a dish and look questioningly at people. (All butlers develop, as a side-effect of being taught how to be unobtrusive, the ability to make their presence known with the twitch of an eyebrow or a single muffled cough.) Finally one of the villagers felt Quasi’s professional glare and, with a shout of, "Oh! The foreigners! This way, this way!" took the casserole and ushered them into their seats.
From her seat between Hero and Vicky – neither having forgotten the imminent Confrontation – Gwen examined the banquet table. Heaping plates of meat in all manner of sauces crowded around wine jugs. What few vegetables there were seemed to have been cooked by an enthusiastic witch-hunting squad: some barely broke the surface of a large tub of broth, others were skewered onto brochette sticks and charred beyond recognition, and one poor potato huddled by itself in the corner of a meat dish, its skin a ragged mess after apparently having been prodded and poked with needles. Between the steaming plates stood half-a-dozen candles, sputtering and dripping wax onto single woolen socks that had been tied neatly at their bases.
Gwen stared at the socks until Vicky passed her a bowl, its contents indistinguishable. At her horrified expression, Vicky nodded encouragingly. "Stew," he whispered. "Goat. It's all goat." He gestured to the banquet table.
"They must really like goat," said Gwen, letting a spoonful of stew slop back into her bowl.
Quasi leaned forward and looked at Gwen over Vicky’s head. "Actually, they hate goats. 'Goat of Doom' and all that."
Gwen gave Quasi a startled look but, before she could ask him what he'd meant by "of doom", Hero leaned forward and asked, "So why all the goat?"
"It's one of those 'feast on the flesh of your enemies, suck the marrow from their bones' sort of thing."
"A literal scapegoat?" ventured Gwen.
"The Goat of Doom? No, not at all. Freckles over there – that bleating you hear – that's a literal scapegoat. The Gee of Dee is..." Quasi's nonchalant tone turned serious as he seemed to remember something. "Well...it's not a very nice thing. And I've seen 'Not Nice'."
Vicky looked up from his stew. "Unpleasant Harry?"
"One-eyed Larry."
"I always get the two mixed up."
The three finished their stew in silence, Gwen’s eyes swiveling between the socks and each spoonful, ensuring it passed the ‘if you know what it is don’t eat it’ test. It seemed safer than the other way around. She thought back on Lucretia and her menu, which bore a number of strews with neutral names like Herbert’s Surprise and Monday Morning Mess (cheerfully ordered as The Triple M by Lucretia’s regular customers). When Gwen had asked about ingredients, Lucretia had proclaimed loudly, waving a spatula, that stew was stew and if you had to ask what kind, you weren’t hungry enough.
More dishes were passed around by enthusiastic villagers, each pressing the foreigners to take a larger serving, try a bit more of this or that, have another glass of wine while you’re at it. Quasi, the most alert of the group, used all his butler powers to keep the food on their plates to a polite minimum. When a burly man in a butcher’s apron approached them asking whether they’d honour them with their assistance with the ritual sacrifice, he took out his candlestick from within his coat and gently placed it on the table with a steely look on his face. The butcher apologized, of course, they were still eating, no matter, sorry for the trouble.
Gwen kept her eye on the butcher as he wandered around the banquet table, occasionally leaning down to have a word or two with the villagers. A few people and a larger number of children stood up to follow him as he walked around behind a small hut. A moment later, the sounds of a bleating goat could be heard, accompanied occasionally by the shouts and excited laughter of children. The bleating grew louder, with the goat seemingly having no need to breathe as bleat followed bleat without pause.
One by one, the villagers at the table lay down their spoons and grew quiet. Conversations stopped, though the occasional murmur could be heard. From the couple beside Hero, Gwen caught the phrase, "ritual piñata". Freckle’s bleating continued resonating through the city square, drowning out the rustling of an entire village seated down for a banquet. The murmurs stilled and the children behind the hut also fell silent.
Gwen shivered in the candle-light. It was decidedly eerie, sitting in the middle of a village square, surrounded by strange faces that flickered in and out of vision. She could feel the dark pressing in on all sides, the banquet table seemingly an island onto which the night lapped hungrily. No sound could be heard now, no rustling clothes, no sputtering candles, no wooing cycads. No sound, that is, except the endless bleating which rolled in from the darkness with the timeless constancy of breaking waves.
Then, abruptly, the bleating stopped.
The villagers broke out in a great cheer, some leaping from their chairs and waving their spoons.
One by one, the children came out from behind the hut. They raced about, hopping and skipping as they made their way back to the banquet. Gwen noticed that they were all carrying handfuls of something dark on which they chewed happily while juices ran down their wrists. The adults and the butcher remained behind the hut.
"Astrophelians!" cried a man from the height of his chair. "The Black King is dead!" The banquet table thrummed as the villagers cheered. "He bleats no more!" More cheering until the man waved them silent. "What of the dark night?"
"Cast the night into the light!" cried another, and the villagers took up the cry. "Night into light! Night into light!" they chanted as one by one great torches were lit and set in the ground around the table. So many torches were lit that not a shadow remained in the village square: what one torch didn't illuminate, another did.
As the torches forced the walls of darkness back, the feeling of oppression Gwen had experienced before eased. She was far from comfortable, however, as she and her companions sat quietly, surrounded by wildly cheering villagers.
As the last torch was lit and the cheering ebbed to an enthusiastic hum, the man who had ushered the foreigners into their seats rapped loudly on the table. “Fellow Astrophelians! The true feasting will now begin. But we have visitors!" Dozens of fists pounded the table in unison. "Our guests brought with them a dish from their exotic lands. We offer them the honour," he said, bowing in the companion’s general direction, "of beginning the Bright Night's feast with it." He smiled and looked questioningly at the four silent figures.
Quasi glanced at the others staring dumbly at the man speaking. He stood up, grumbling something under his breath, and bowed to the speaker. "We would be honoured," he said, then sat down.
The man's smile flickered and burnt out as he waited for Quasi to say more. When it became obvious that no speech was forthcoming, he bowed stiffly and addressed the young boy beside him. "Get the dish." The boy ran off and came back almost instantly, laden down with the casserole, his face twisted in concentration as he tried not to drop it. The speaker took it and raised it high. "With this dish we open our celebration! Brought to our tables from far lands, let us feast on—" He glanced down at the casserole. "What is this?" he asked Quasi.
"Casserole," answered the butler. He’d been on edge since the butcher had approached them, and nothing he’d seen or heard had helped. He kept a steady gaze on the speaker as he inched his candlestick closer.
"Not-tuna casserole," clarified Gwen.
The speaker continued to stare at them. "Nutoonah?"
"Tu-na" said Vicky, enunciating for all he was worth.
The same vapid stare from the speaker. The rest of the villagers also seemed confused.
"Fish," piped in Hero.
Silence crashed onto the banquet table. The villagers turned as one to stare at the dish. Gwen and Vicky glanced at Hero quizzically. From the dish, the villagers turned their gaze to the foreigners. This was done with such synchronicity and stillness that they seemed a nightmarish giant clockwork set. Quasi lowered his head with a sigh. Gwen shrank back further into her chair.
"Fish?" repeated the speaker, lowering the casserole. His eyes flickered from the travelers to the toasted contents of their dish. "Fish?"
"Cooked fish?" called out a villager.
The speaker sat down, pushing the dish away from him. He pressed his head into his hands, rubbing his face and ruffling his hair in frustration. From behind his fingers he could be heard mumbling, "Cooked fish, cooked fish, why did it have to be fish?"
"We didn’t have much else to offer," explained Hero. "All your stock was reserved for the banquet, so we went into the woods."
The speaker raised his head. "The woods?" His face furrowed. "You went into the woods? For fish?"
"Not particularly, but we found this amazing pool chock-full of fish and figured, 'Hey, casserole!'"
The villagers stiffened in their seats. The speaker leaned forwards, his face shifting from disbelief to anger in one swift stroke. "You took fish. From the pool."
Hero’s helpful grin faded. "Um...yeah?"
If the cheers that had erupted upon the demise of Freckles had been considered deafening, the roars that leapt from the throats of every single man, woman and child seated at the table were on a scale all to themselves. A scrawny dog sitting beneath a chair lifted its head and joined the tumult with a howl.
Quasi lay a steady hand on his candlestick and watched the crowd.
Amidst random animal sounds of outrage, words began to appear. Phrases like, "The Holy Pond!" and "The Sacred Waters!" could be deciphered.
"What? What did we do?" shouted Gwen over their cries.
The speaker waved the crowd silent, which proved only slightly impossible. Eventually, though, the villagers brought their cries of outrage down from 'mob' to 'crowd'. The speaker stood and turned to the four visitors with an accusatory finger. "You have fished from the Holy Pool –"
"Sacred Waters!"
" – the Holy Pool which is filled with the Sacred Waters," added the speaker with a glare down the banquet table. "You have fished our Great God from its temple. You’ve made this – this Nutoonah – and aim to serve us our own God!" The accusatory finger wavered, jabbed, then joined its brethren to form an even-more-accusatory fist. "You want us to eat our God!"
The crowd broke into a new set of wails and angry cries, shouting out variants of "Sacrilege!" and "Blasphemers!"
As the righteously indignant yowls quieted, the "Sacred Waters" voice piped up again. "You cooked The Fish!" it screamed. Apparently, its owner was of a more lenient view when it came to the eating of their god.
"We... We didn't know," mumbled Gwen. On either side of her, Vicky and Hero tried to look contrite. Quasi was busy counting the villagers as he tightened his grip on the candlestick.
"'Didn't know'?" The speaker stared at them, fists unfurled into the universal 'how's that?' gesture. (Or it may have been the 'If my hands make their way around your neck they’ll squeeze, squeeze, squeeze,' gesture. He seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown.) "By the Whiskers of the Holy Carp! How –"
"By the Fins of Great Cod!"
The speaker lowered his hands, shut his eyes and took in a deep breath. Slowly, he turned and faced the villagers, who had fallen completely silent. "Who said that?" he said, his voice steely. "Speak up." He leaned heavily onto the table and stared at each nervous face in turn. No one seemed willing to volunteer.
There are, amazingly, two religions which hold that the supreme deity is a fish. Naturally, they dispute over which fish. One holds that it is the Great Cod, the other that it is the Holy Carp, and that those of the Cod merely misread the scripture. Cod-followers hold that Carpers couldn’t read the scripture of it was burned into their foreheads. Carpers argue the impossibility of seeing your own forehead, but when the Codders offered a demonstration quickly agreed that mirrors would be helpful. Nowadays most believers can be found selling goldfish at the local fair. Excepting, of course, those few remaining believers in Astrophel, where Codders and Carpers have reached an uneasy truce.
"Very well," said the speaker, "we will not discuss that matter now." He picked up a wooden spoon and pointed it at the visitors. "We have guests to deal with."
Taking his lead, the villagers all took up their spoons and stood. The four travelers kicked back their chairs and stepped away from the table. Three of them brandished spoons rather awkwardly, Hero waving it about like a sword. They huddled together, Quasi moving to the forefront of their little group, his faithful candlestick at the ready.
Suddenly, there was a bleat.
The mass of enraged spoon-wielding villagers stopped coalescing around the unlucky four. Accusing glances focused on the butcher, who had returned from behind the hut. He shrugged. "It's not Freckles, that's for sure. That goat’s been honorary-stick tenderized, drawn and quartered." The enticing smell of roasting goat verified his statement.
There was another bleat, closer, coming from somewhere beyond the flickering shadows of the torches.
Spoons were lowered; children whimpered and tugged at the nearest sleeve. Anger receded from the villagers' psyche as fear flowed forth from its superstitious dam.
* In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time)
Lucretia's rule for stew is from TPratchett. The Cod/Carp concept came from a typo in an email I received from Josie, titled "Holy Carp!". Things just got a bit out of hand from there, especially with Pratchettian influence*.
I’m really sorry about Freckles.
The four travelers reached the city square with only a couple false turns and one stubbed toe – Vicky's, victim of a loose cobblestone. His curse was the only word said since Gwen's unanswered questions.
Quasi approached the table with his Master and mortal-enemies-by-association shuffling behind him like shy children. He’d been appointed casserole-porter by virtue of still being, unfortunately, a butler. It was a good choice, however, as Quasi’s training served him well: he might not have known where to put the casserole or whom to give it to, but he knew perfectly well how to stand still with a dish and look questioningly at people. (All butlers develop, as a side-effect of being taught how to be unobtrusive, the ability to make their presence known with the twitch of an eyebrow or a single muffled cough.) Finally one of the villagers felt Quasi’s professional glare and, with a shout of, "Oh! The foreigners! This way, this way!" took the casserole and ushered them into their seats.
From her seat between Hero and Vicky – neither having forgotten the imminent Confrontation – Gwen examined the banquet table. Heaping plates of meat in all manner of sauces crowded around wine jugs. What few vegetables there were seemed to have been cooked by an enthusiastic witch-hunting squad: some barely broke the surface of a large tub of broth, others were skewered onto brochette sticks and charred beyond recognition, and one poor potato huddled by itself in the corner of a meat dish, its skin a ragged mess after apparently having been prodded and poked with needles. Between the steaming plates stood half-a-dozen candles, sputtering and dripping wax onto single woolen socks that had been tied neatly at their bases.
Gwen stared at the socks until Vicky passed her a bowl, its contents indistinguishable. At her horrified expression, Vicky nodded encouragingly. "Stew," he whispered. "Goat. It's all goat." He gestured to the banquet table.
"They must really like goat," said Gwen, letting a spoonful of stew slop back into her bowl.
Quasi leaned forward and looked at Gwen over Vicky’s head. "Actually, they hate goats. 'Goat of Doom' and all that."
Gwen gave Quasi a startled look but, before she could ask him what he'd meant by "of doom", Hero leaned forward and asked, "So why all the goat?"
"It's one of those 'feast on the flesh of your enemies, suck the marrow from their bones' sort of thing."
"A literal scapegoat?" ventured Gwen.
"The Goat of Doom? No, not at all. Freckles over there – that bleating you hear – that's a literal scapegoat. The Gee of Dee is..." Quasi's nonchalant tone turned serious as he seemed to remember something. "Well...it's not a very nice thing. And I've seen 'Not Nice'."
Vicky looked up from his stew. "Unpleasant Harry?"
"One-eyed Larry."
"I always get the two mixed up."
The three finished their stew in silence, Gwen’s eyes swiveling between the socks and each spoonful, ensuring it passed the ‘if you know what it is don’t eat it’ test. It seemed safer than the other way around. She thought back on Lucretia and her menu, which bore a number of strews with neutral names like Herbert’s Surprise and Monday Morning Mess (cheerfully ordered as The Triple M by Lucretia’s regular customers). When Gwen had asked about ingredients, Lucretia had proclaimed loudly, waving a spatula, that stew was stew and if you had to ask what kind, you weren’t hungry enough.
More dishes were passed around by enthusiastic villagers, each pressing the foreigners to take a larger serving, try a bit more of this or that, have another glass of wine while you’re at it. Quasi, the most alert of the group, used all his butler powers to keep the food on their plates to a polite minimum. When a burly man in a butcher’s apron approached them asking whether they’d honour them with their assistance with the ritual sacrifice, he took out his candlestick from within his coat and gently placed it on the table with a steely look on his face. The butcher apologized, of course, they were still eating, no matter, sorry for the trouble.
Gwen kept her eye on the butcher as he wandered around the banquet table, occasionally leaning down to have a word or two with the villagers. A few people and a larger number of children stood up to follow him as he walked around behind a small hut. A moment later, the sounds of a bleating goat could be heard, accompanied occasionally by the shouts and excited laughter of children. The bleating grew louder, with the goat seemingly having no need to breathe as bleat followed bleat without pause.
One by one, the villagers at the table lay down their spoons and grew quiet. Conversations stopped, though the occasional murmur could be heard. From the couple beside Hero, Gwen caught the phrase, "ritual piñata". Freckle’s bleating continued resonating through the city square, drowning out the rustling of an entire village seated down for a banquet. The murmurs stilled and the children behind the hut also fell silent.
Gwen shivered in the candle-light. It was decidedly eerie, sitting in the middle of a village square, surrounded by strange faces that flickered in and out of vision. She could feel the dark pressing in on all sides, the banquet table seemingly an island onto which the night lapped hungrily. No sound could be heard now, no rustling clothes, no sputtering candles, no wooing cycads. No sound, that is, except the endless bleating which rolled in from the darkness with the timeless constancy of breaking waves.
Then, abruptly, the bleating stopped.
The villagers broke out in a great cheer, some leaping from their chairs and waving their spoons.
One by one, the children came out from behind the hut. They raced about, hopping and skipping as they made their way back to the banquet. Gwen noticed that they were all carrying handfuls of something dark on which they chewed happily while juices ran down their wrists. The adults and the butcher remained behind the hut.
"Astrophelians!" cried a man from the height of his chair. "The Black King is dead!" The banquet table thrummed as the villagers cheered. "He bleats no more!" More cheering until the man waved them silent. "What of the dark night?"
"Cast the night into the light!" cried another, and the villagers took up the cry. "Night into light! Night into light!" they chanted as one by one great torches were lit and set in the ground around the table. So many torches were lit that not a shadow remained in the village square: what one torch didn't illuminate, another did.
As the torches forced the walls of darkness back, the feeling of oppression Gwen had experienced before eased. She was far from comfortable, however, as she and her companions sat quietly, surrounded by wildly cheering villagers.
As the last torch was lit and the cheering ebbed to an enthusiastic hum, the man who had ushered the foreigners into their seats rapped loudly on the table. “Fellow Astrophelians! The true feasting will now begin. But we have visitors!" Dozens of fists pounded the table in unison. "Our guests brought with them a dish from their exotic lands. We offer them the honour," he said, bowing in the companion’s general direction, "of beginning the Bright Night's feast with it." He smiled and looked questioningly at the four silent figures.
Quasi glanced at the others staring dumbly at the man speaking. He stood up, grumbling something under his breath, and bowed to the speaker. "We would be honoured," he said, then sat down.
The man's smile flickered and burnt out as he waited for Quasi to say more. When it became obvious that no speech was forthcoming, he bowed stiffly and addressed the young boy beside him. "Get the dish." The boy ran off and came back almost instantly, laden down with the casserole, his face twisted in concentration as he tried not to drop it. The speaker took it and raised it high. "With this dish we open our celebration! Brought to our tables from far lands, let us feast on—" He glanced down at the casserole. "What is this?" he asked Quasi.
"Casserole," answered the butler. He’d been on edge since the butcher had approached them, and nothing he’d seen or heard had helped. He kept a steady gaze on the speaker as he inched his candlestick closer.
"Not-tuna casserole," clarified Gwen.
The speaker continued to stare at them. "Nutoonah?"
"Tu-na" said Vicky, enunciating for all he was worth.
The same vapid stare from the speaker. The rest of the villagers also seemed confused.
"Fish," piped in Hero.
Silence crashed onto the banquet table. The villagers turned as one to stare at the dish. Gwen and Vicky glanced at Hero quizzically. From the dish, the villagers turned their gaze to the foreigners. This was done with such synchronicity and stillness that they seemed a nightmarish giant clockwork set. Quasi lowered his head with a sigh. Gwen shrank back further into her chair.
"Fish?" repeated the speaker, lowering the casserole. His eyes flickered from the travelers to the toasted contents of their dish. "Fish?"
"Cooked fish?" called out a villager.
The speaker sat down, pushing the dish away from him. He pressed his head into his hands, rubbing his face and ruffling his hair in frustration. From behind his fingers he could be heard mumbling, "Cooked fish, cooked fish, why did it have to be fish?"
"We didn’t have much else to offer," explained Hero. "All your stock was reserved for the banquet, so we went into the woods."
The speaker raised his head. "The woods?" His face furrowed. "You went into the woods? For fish?"
"Not particularly, but we found this amazing pool chock-full of fish and figured, 'Hey, casserole!'"
The villagers stiffened in their seats. The speaker leaned forwards, his face shifting from disbelief to anger in one swift stroke. "You took fish. From the pool."
Hero’s helpful grin faded. "Um...yeah?"
If the cheers that had erupted upon the demise of Freckles had been considered deafening, the roars that leapt from the throats of every single man, woman and child seated at the table were on a scale all to themselves. A scrawny dog sitting beneath a chair lifted its head and joined the tumult with a howl.
Quasi lay a steady hand on his candlestick and watched the crowd.
Amidst random animal sounds of outrage, words began to appear. Phrases like, "The Holy Pond!" and "The Sacred Waters!" could be deciphered.
"What? What did we do?" shouted Gwen over their cries.
The speaker waved the crowd silent, which proved only slightly impossible. Eventually, though, the villagers brought their cries of outrage down from 'mob' to 'crowd'. The speaker stood and turned to the four visitors with an accusatory finger. "You have fished from the Holy Pool –"
"Sacred Waters!"
" – the Holy Pool which is filled with the Sacred Waters," added the speaker with a glare down the banquet table. "You have fished our Great God from its temple. You’ve made this – this Nutoonah – and aim to serve us our own God!" The accusatory finger wavered, jabbed, then joined its brethren to form an even-more-accusatory fist. "You want us to eat our God!"
The crowd broke into a new set of wails and angry cries, shouting out variants of "Sacrilege!" and "Blasphemers!"
As the righteously indignant yowls quieted, the "Sacred Waters" voice piped up again. "You cooked The Fish!" it screamed. Apparently, its owner was of a more lenient view when it came to the eating of their god.
"We... We didn't know," mumbled Gwen. On either side of her, Vicky and Hero tried to look contrite. Quasi was busy counting the villagers as he tightened his grip on the candlestick.
"'Didn't know'?" The speaker stared at them, fists unfurled into the universal 'how's that?' gesture. (Or it may have been the 'If my hands make their way around your neck they’ll squeeze, squeeze, squeeze,' gesture. He seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown.) "By the Whiskers of the Holy Carp! How –"
"By the Fins of Great Cod!"
The speaker lowered his hands, shut his eyes and took in a deep breath. Slowly, he turned and faced the villagers, who had fallen completely silent. "Who said that?" he said, his voice steely. "Speak up." He leaned heavily onto the table and stared at each nervous face in turn. No one seemed willing to volunteer.
There are, amazingly, two religions which hold that the supreme deity is a fish. Naturally, they dispute over which fish. One holds that it is the Great Cod, the other that it is the Holy Carp, and that those of the Cod merely misread the scripture. Cod-followers hold that Carpers couldn’t read the scripture of it was burned into their foreheads. Carpers argue the impossibility of seeing your own forehead, but when the Codders offered a demonstration quickly agreed that mirrors would be helpful. Nowadays most believers can be found selling goldfish at the local fair. Excepting, of course, those few remaining believers in Astrophel, where Codders and Carpers have reached an uneasy truce.
"Very well," said the speaker, "we will not discuss that matter now." He picked up a wooden spoon and pointed it at the visitors. "We have guests to deal with."
Taking his lead, the villagers all took up their spoons and stood. The four travelers kicked back their chairs and stepped away from the table. Three of them brandished spoons rather awkwardly, Hero waving it about like a sword. They huddled together, Quasi moving to the forefront of their little group, his faithful candlestick at the ready.
Suddenly, there was a bleat.
The mass of enraged spoon-wielding villagers stopped coalescing around the unlucky four. Accusing glances focused on the butcher, who had returned from behind the hut. He shrugged. "It's not Freckles, that's for sure. That goat’s been honorary-stick tenderized, drawn and quartered." The enticing smell of roasting goat verified his statement.
There was another bleat, closer, coming from somewhere beyond the flickering shadows of the torches.
Spoons were lowered; children whimpered and tugged at the nearest sleeve. Anger receded from the villagers' psyche as fear flowed forth from its superstitious dam.
* In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time)
