Food of the Gods

by Jess Hyslop

The god surfaced from the water, opened its hungry maw. Inside: darkness without end. It was always the same. However different the gods looked on the outside, however human or inhuman or somewhere eerily in between, inside they possessed the same eternal, yawning blackness.

I fished a prayer out of my satchel, tossed it in. The mouth closed; the little scroll vanished.

The god showed its teeth, blocky and white like the pillars at the temple's gates. Then a tongue, red and glistening, flicked out and ran itself slowly over their pearlescent curve.

"Yum," said the god. "Give me another."

I blinked. "I can't," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Another," the god insisted.

"You'll get another tomorrow."

"Today," the god said.

"I can't." I spread my hands. "It's not possible. They only give me enough for one each. Now please, let me continue."

The god showed its teeth some more.

"Please," I beseeched.

The god slid slowly back into the dark water, grinning. Ripples tracked its path as it glided away. I watched it go, uneasy. But then the next god floated up, and I pulled my mind back to my task as another mouth opened onto blackness.

I fed it a prayer.

My task completed, I retrieved my empty satchel and went to find Father Allun in the Hall of Choosing. My sandals squelched and my robe slapped wetly around my calves as I entered the chamber, yet he did not look up. The week's prayers were all around him, spilling from the collection baskets onto the flagstones, and he was intent on ordering them. Some, after a brief perusal, were cast into one of many slumping sacks beside his desk; others he stacked carefully on the shelves that lined the hall. Some required a longer period of brow-furrowing before he decided where they should be placed.

I knelt on the flagstones and waited for him to finish. My knees were cold and stiff by the time he turned to me.

"Acolyte."

I climbed to my feet, wincing, then bowed and offered the satchel. "They are fed, Father."

He tucked the satchel beside his desk. "Very good. Until tomorrow then, Acolyte."

I hesitated.

His eyebrow quirked. "You are free to leave."

"Yes, Father. But... Father?"

"Yes?" His fingers twitched towards the switch at his belt.

I swallowed. "It's just that... the gods..."

"What about them, Acolyte?"

"They want more prayers, Father. Some of them, anyway. They keep asking. Every day. They are becoming more and more... insistent."

I cowered under the weight of his scowl. "One prayer a day is quite enough for any god," he said coldly.

"Yes, Father," I said. "That's what I told them, Father. But-"

"But?"

I twisted my hands. "They've taken to grinning at me."

I thought Father Allun would rebuke me again, or perhaps laugh, but instead he took pity on me. He put a wrinkled hand on my shoulder. "Do not be daunted by the gods' wiles. Their cunning is infamous, their greed even more so. Gods are selfish and capricious. It is why we must keep them here."

"But surely..." I gestured to the prayers mounting around the hall. "If we gave them more prayers each day, more would be granted?"

Father Allun's scowl returned. "Prayers make gods, boy!" he snapped. "The more we give them the more powerful they become. And if they become more powerful we will not be able to contain them. And then what? They would run amok like in the Age of Chaos, eating whatever prayers they liked. How will we direct them? How to make sure the most crucial prayers are granted-" He swept an arm toward the shelved scrolls around us. "-and the unworthy are not?" His arm dropped to take in the sacks of discarded paper.

I fell to my knees beneath his ire. "I do not doubt your wisdom, Father. But I hear people are starving in the city, while the rich prosper. My mother writes to me, tells me they are still hungry, that my sister suffers badly. Surely a few more-"

"Acolyte." Father Allun's voice was icy as the water of the God-Lake. "You have been granted a privilege, to feed the gods. Do you wish this to be rescinded?"

"No, Father."

"The ways of the temple have been decided by much more enlightened minds than yours."

"Yes, Father."

"If I hear you questioning them again, you will be punished."

"Yes, Father."

"Now get out of here." He turned his back on me. "Tomorrow, you will feed the gods one prayer each. As we have always done."

"Go on, just one more."

It was the same god as before, the one with the teeth like pillars. It squirmed beneath the surface, sending out shivering ripples. The water was black, like the insides of the gods. I never saw more than glimpses of their larger forms beneath the surface.

"Move along now," I said, trying for authority. "One prayer each. You know the rules."

"But I can taste them," the god said. Its tongue flickered out. "I can taste them on the air. So many of them. So close. Why can't you fetch more?"

"They only give me these. Just enough for one each."

"Just enough to keep us alive, you mean."

My cheeks reddened. The god was right. Just one day without a prayer and a god would perish. "That is why I cannot give you more. If I give you another, someone else will go without."

"Convenient, that," the god said, grinning now. "Tell me, boy, have you ever read the prayers you feed us?"

I gasped. "Of course not. Only the highest Orders may read and select prayers worthy of the gods."

"Well," said the god. "I can tell you this, boy: they are all of a flavour. A rich flavour, if you get my meaning."

"I don't understand you," I said, though I feared I was beginning to. "Now please, move along."

The god grinned again, before diving beneath the surface.

That night, I tossed and turned in the acolytes' dormitory. Snores rose about me, but all I could hear were the echoing words of the god. A rich flavour, if you get my meaning...

Finally I could bear it no longer. I rose and tiptoed through the temple's cold corridors, evading the occasional priests who paced the stone floors, swinging their censers on the midnight rounds. The spice-sweet scent of the censer-smoke trailed me as I made my way to the Hall of Choosing and eased the door shut behind me. Fishing a taper from my robe, I lit it and held it aloft. Shelved scrolls loomed on either side, but it was not those I had come to see. Instead, I crouched beside the bulging sacks on the floor. With trembling hands I plucked out a small, bedraggled scroll and, unrolling it, read:

Please save my daughter, oh great one, she is so thin and she wails all the time...

My breath caught. I took another.

Please comfort my wife, oh powerful one. We have lost all our children to the pox, and she does not now leave her bed for grief...

Another and another: tales of grief and poverty and sickness. Quivering, I stood and took three prayers from the shelves at random.

I require the ambassador to accept my trade deal...

Make the Lady Alana accept my hand in marriage, for the match will be most profitable...

Bring that bastard down for me, oh majestic one, for he is my biggest competitor...

My stomach churned. These were the prayers we were granting? These vain, self-gratifying demands? I looked down at the sacks on the floor, the ragged little scrolls so forlorn next to the neat rolls of the shelved prayers. Rage engulfed me, but at the same time I was overwhelmed with helplessness. How I wished I could take the sacks right now to the God-Lake and empty them into the waters, but the gates were locked tight at night. And in the daytime the temple guards would be back, ready to search my satchel, my robes, before I entered the holy place.

I thought of the gods, trapped beneath the icy water, their features so different, the blackness inside so similar. And then another echo came to me.

Prayers make gods, boy.

I had to try. Experimentally, I took up a poor scrap of a prayer from the sack, raised it to my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

Immediately I choked. The scroll stuck in my throat, feeling suddenly hard and dense, more like rock than paper. I doubled over, gasping, and tried to cough the thing up, but it stuck fast. I knew then how badly I had transgressed. These prayers were not for me. I would die here suffocating on this illicit morsel.

Then the strangest sensation came over me. My gullet seemed to open, enlarge even, allowing the prayer to slide down easily. It was as though my body had reconfigured itself around the offering. As though a space had opened inside of me to accept it.

In the darkness, I grinned.

And reached for another.