《The Alley Gods》


 1: Alleyways

    When Inhei was nine years old, his mother introduced him to the alley gods.


    She chose a bright, hot, cloudless day, while his father was at work on the soaring scaffolds that folded around the temple¡¯s south side. Leaving his older brother in charge of the younger siblings, she led him by the hand across the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge, through the busy tollgate and into the winding maze of western Kursalian.


    Inhei¡¯s sandals kicked up dust and sent pebbles skittering over the worn cobbles as they pressed through the noonday crowds. These streets were familiar to him. He knew the way they rose and fell over the steep hills that Kursalian had grown upon. He was the one his mother always sent to run errands, to buy rolls of flax for her in the Street of Banners, or smoked meat in the Street of Spears. The temple loomed over them all the way, its vast golden dome rising above the ridged rooftops like a squat mountain. When the sun was low, its shadow darkened half the city.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± he asked her, as they wove their way uphill, keeping to the shade of shop-awnings where they could. The markets were teeming today. Inhei had to raise his young voice over the jabbering cries of the hawkers.


    ¡°A little further,¡± his mother replied.


    They passed a wardens¡¯ tower, high and windowless with a gold-domed roof, like the temple writ small. Inhei¡¯s mother gave it a nervous glance. She quickened her stride and tightened her hold on his hand. Inhei let himself be pulled along, higher and higher up the hillside. He looked back over his shoulder, at the patchwork of rooftops sloping away below, clouded by drifts of chimney-smoke. In the far distance, mountains sawtoothed the blue horizon to the west.


    At last, they turned into a tight side-alley between a rundown chandlery and a potter¡¯s workshop. Inhei realised, in mounting confusion, that this was a place he hadn¡¯t been before. The alley was so narrow at first that he and his mother had to walk in single file, until it widened and branched behind the chandlery. The backs of houses leaned together over the rough cobbles, their eaves nearly touching in places. After the heat of the climb, the shade of the alley was pleasantly cool. There was nobody about, only a scrawny grey cat which bristled and leapt for a fencetop when Inhei approached it.


    His mother stopped her purposeful stride by the back door of a shuttered old house. Its roof was missing half its tiles and its plaster was riven by long cracks, but there was a stripe of sunset-orange chalk running above the door¡¯s lintel, vibrant and recent. He asked her why she had brought him here.


    ¡°There are gods here,¡± she told him, in a voice hushed with sudden reverence. She glanced up and down the alley¡¯s crooked length. ¡°They are in the alleys, in all the quiet places of the city. They move on the wind. The temple won¡¯t speak of them. But there are people here who know how to find them. I am one such, and so will you be.¡±


    Like every child in Asequhra, Inhei knew the gods of the temple. He¡¯d learned their names before he learned to walk. The Father-to-All, god of gods, and his sons, the sculptors of the mountains and painters of the sky. He knew by heart the prayers and the chants, the offerings to be made for health and wisdom, the petitions to be made for the dead. He bowed to the black-hooded temple wardens when he passed them in the street. He tied a carmine devotional sash around his waist each morning, and knelt in the temple courtyard for the dusk prayers, along with his parents and siblings and all their neighbours.


    These alley gods, he did not know.


    He learned, later, that they were the gods of his mother¡¯s childhood. She had not been born in Kursalian, like Inhei¡¯s father and siblings and Inhei himself had been. She was the daughter of a herdsman, from a green valley cradled by the great mountain peaks of Asequhra¡¯s southern edge. Out there, the temples of the Father-to-All were little more than gilt-roofed huts, and she had never seen a warden until she came to the city. She had come as an orphan in search of work, scarcely older than Inhei was now. She brought with her nothing but the clothes on her back and the gods of her hometown.


    When he asked her their names, she said they were nameless. Or rather ¨C and she paused here, considering how to explain it to him, a bright child but a child nonetheless ¨C their names could not be spoken, could not be invoked like the gods of the temple. No burnt-offering would earn their favour, no misdeed would draw their wrath. They were things of presence, not of words; sought out, not summoned.


    She asked him if he understood. He lied that he did.


    ¡°When we pray to them, we do not pray aloud,¡± she went on, her voice still soft, furtive. She led him further through the alley, towards a narrow junction shaded by an old olive tree. ¡°We take them into ourselves, in a way. They give us strength. They remember us when we are gone. They remind us of who we are, and that we are not alone, however far from home we may be.¡±


    The alley gods were faceless as well as nameless, Inhei learned. There were no shrines in their honour, no splendidly winged and crowned figures like the carvings on the temple walls. Anything so obvious would have drawn the wardens like crows to a carcass.


    Theirs were simpler icons, glimpses of colour and shape hidden in plain sight. The orange chalk above the doorframe was a common one, but there were many others. A daub of red paint, slashed bright across greying plaster like a blood-splatter. Whorls and hooks of chalky blue and ochre, hidden by a drooping awning. Charcoal-black circles stippling a white wall. A grid of violet ribbons stretched taut between two slanted rooftops. All these, Inhei came to know as the signs of the gods. There were more valley folk in Kursalian than he had ever realised, and it seemed each of them had painted up a god of their own.


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    ¡°Which one is yours?¡± he asked his mother, after she had showed him the god-marks in half a dozen sunbleached alleys.


    She laughed, a sweet sound. She was a young woman, much younger than Inhei¡¯s father, and beautiful, to Inhei at least. ¡°None of them are mine, love. The gods do not belong to anyone, any more than we belong to them. They just are. They are a part of the world, and a part of us.¡±


    ¡°But¡­we pray at the temple. We make offerings. You do it, as well.¡± Inhei looked down at the devotional sash looped around his waist. The words of a hundred rote-learned prayers echoed in his mind. ¡°I thought those were our gods.¡±


    Her jaw tightened suddenly. There was sadness there, deeply-buried, which Inhei had never seen in her before. ¡°Those are foreign gods. They were brought by the temple, when they built Kursalian. But there were gods in the mountains long before that.¡± She took both his hands in hers. ¡°The wardens want them buried. They try to deafen us with prayers and chants until we forget. It is up to us, you and me, to remember.¡±


    Inhei was silent for a moment. He tried to balance, in his mind, the world of the temple he knew and the new quiet world of these alley gods. His mother, kneeling in prayer in the temple courtyard with the rest of the women; his mother, confessing aloud that she was what the wardens called an idolatress. It was like trying to piece the bricks of a crumbled wall back together. He did not yet know that he would be trying to rebuild that wall for the rest of his life.


    He asked her if his father knew of these gods.


    ¡°Yes. When we were courting, I told him,¡± his mother replied. ¡°He said I should not teach you of them. But I told him I must. One child of ours, at least, must learn that there is truth outside the temple. And you are such a clever boy, and quiet. I knew it would have to be you. In time, maybe your brothers and sisters can learn as well.¡±


    They retraced their steps to the chalk-marked house behind the chandlery. The grey cat was toying with a rag in the gutter; it scarpered once more at their approach.


    Inhei¡¯s mother glanced towards the narrow slice of busy street ahead, her eyes watchful and again a little sad. ¡°You can¡¯t speak of this to the neighbours, love,¡± she said, squeezing Inhei¡¯s hand in entreaty. ¡°You know how they gossip. The wardens would hear.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t tell anyone,¡± Inhei promised her, with all the sincerity his nine-year-old heart could muster. His palms were sweaty, not with fear but rather a curious, nameless excitement. The delight at being entrusted with a gift. The joy of keeping a secret.


    *


    On the way home, in the Street of Bells, they came across Chehga, the old yarn-spinner who lived across from them, coming out of a bakery. They heard her before they saw her. She wore long rattling strings of coloured wooden beads around her neck and over her shoulders, a once-popular fashion that had died out for everyone but herself.


    Nobody on their street liked old Chehga. She was rude, sour, a peeker through windows, a spreader of rumours. The other old women avoided her and her clacking beads. The little children whispered that she drank blood.


    Inhei¡¯s mother once told him that Chehga had been a temple servant in her youth, a tender of the flames. ¡°They threw her out, because she loved a priest and made him break his oaths. She begged at the temple doors to be let back in, but the wardens drove her away. Her family disowned her. So she came here, and she¡¯s been here ever since, poor woman.¡±


    ¡°She might¡¯ve chosen a different street to plague,¡± Inhei¡¯s father had muttered to that.


    Occasionally, when Inhei¡¯s mother made more bread than their household needed, she would give a hunk of it to Chehga. The old woman did not thank her for it ¨C she thanked no-one for anything ¨C but she would nod to her, and did not glare at her the way she glared at Inhei himself.


    Chehga gave him that glare now, as he followed his mother down the slanting steps of the Street of Bells. He was glad when they were out of her sight.


    All the way back to the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge, Inhei noticed bright marks in alleys and passageways. He couldn¡¯t understand how he had never noticed them before. His unlearned eyes must have slid over them, taking them for simple decorations. He knew now that he would see them everywhere. When he saw the breeze spin up a little whirlwind of dust in an alleyway near the tollgate, his heart thrilled. They move on the wind, he thought.


    Shops and stalls clung like bright limpets to the sides of the bridge, some with their back rooms hanging out over the river on crooked stilts. The sellers called out to Inhei and his mother, who knew them all well, though they¡¯d seldom bought anything off them. ¡°Salt cod, lovely Mera! Honey cakes for your little ones! Inhei, dear boy, new sandals for you, the best calf-leather! How about a new cloak for your father, to keep the wind off him on the scaffolds?¡±


    They passed on, through all the jabber and the promises of unmissable bargains, to the narrow mouth of their street. The balconies above were crowded railing-to-railing, forming a little avenue of their own across which the women of the neighbourhood swapped stories as they hung out their linen to dry. Inhei had to hide his grin, to act as though everything was normal, while his mother greeted her friends up above.


    Back in the warm stone-tiled confines of their kitchen, his mother set an urn of tea to boil while Inhei played with his younger siblings. He found it hard to focus on their noisy games of pretend, now that the alley gods swooped and flitted through his mind. In his half-formed imagining, they were great silent birdlike things, each adorned with its own pattern of colours. They whirled and soared through the city on tattered wings, scant feet above the heads of the people, mischievously invisible. Already, the secret felt too big to contain.


    He thought he might tell his older brother, who was never so good a scholar as Inhei was, but was dependable, never a boaster or a gossiper. Him first, then, if his mother agreed, the younger ones. He imagined leading them all around the winding alleys across town, showing them each vivid marking and naming the god behind it with priestly authority. That the gods had no names was a slight complication, true, but he was sure he could find a way around it.


    Inhei¡¯s father returned from the scaffolds a little earlier than usual that evening, dusty and bruised but bright-eyed and full of laughter. He brought a cut of spiced lamb bundled under his arm. Inhei¡¯s mother scolded her husband for spending his wage so recklessly, but she smiled as she did it, and the children practically bounced with glee. Lamb was a rare treat for them, and it was a very good cut.


    They thanked the temple gods for the meal, as usual. But during the prayer, Inhei met his mother¡¯s gaze across the kitchen table, and saw the twinkle of mischief in her eyes. He thought he had never loved her so much as he did then.

 2: Lessons

    Inhei¡¯s mother taught him much more in the months that followed. Whenever they went on an errand in the city, she found time to show him a new mark she had discovered, smeared on an alleyway wall or hidden in the shadows beneath a footbridge. Each new glimmer of colour was a shout of defiance against the wardens, and Inhei¡¯s heart swelled with delight every time he saw one.


    His mother told him more about her childhood in the valleys, and the simple rituals and wordless devotions her own mother had taught her. They were not prayers so much as moments of reflection, opening oneself for guidance. ¡°Make your mind quiet, away from the temple¡¯s noise, and you will hear them,¡± she promised him.


    He tried, every day. He listened for the gods in every silence, straining to hear a voice, a call, the sound of wings. He heard nothing. He swore to himself that he would keep trying.


    He didn¡¯t tell his older brother, in the end. His mother did not forbid him, but there was an understanding between them that two minds knowing the secret was risky enough. One day, he thought, I¡¯ll find a way to tell them all.


    The summer wore on, cooling into autumn. Inhei¡¯s tenth birthday came and went, and he began to earn some coins running errands for the shopkeepers on the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge. He was a fast runner and he had a sharp memory, which made him an excellent messenger-boy. One of the coopers was so impressed with Inhei¡¯s quickness that he said he might one day make an apprentice of him.


    Inhei¡¯s father was delighted to come home to that news. ¡°Better a real trade for you than the scaffolds,¡± he said, clapping Inhei warmly on the shoulder. ¡°You can spend your days in a nice cosy workshop, rather than up on the temple roof where the wind cuts like ice.¡±


    ¡°Barrel-making is still hard work, love,¡± Inhei¡¯s mother remarked from the kitchen, where she was kneading dough, her hands speckled white with flour. He could tell she was pleased as well.


    ¡°No barrel-maker ever fell two hundred feet off the top of his barrel,¡± Inhei¡¯s father replied. ¡°As far as I¡¯ve heard, anyway.¡±


    Inhei did not neglect his duties to the temple, of course. He knew not to let appearances slip in front of the neighbours, especially nosy ones like old Chehga. He still bowed when the wardens went past with their iron-studded cudgels. He learned his prayers by heart and was never late making his offerings. In the temple courtyard, he sat and listened along with all the others to long sermons railing against idolatry and warning of the dangers of an unguarded mind.


    ¡°When we stray from the path of the gods, even for a moment, we open the door to evil,¡± a tall, scruffily-bearded young priest told them one chilly morning. His voice echoed over the bowed heads of a thousand prayer-sashed boys. ¡°To ruin and corruption. Do not forget, boys, this city was built by the temple. Before the temple, we were wretched things, mere savages, ignorant and accursed. Without the temple, we would be savages once more. Shall it be so? Shall we give in to wickedness?¡±


    ¡°No!¡± the boys roared in unison. Inhei joined in with as much false enthusiasm as he could muster, mindful of his brother and the neighbour boys sitting around him. All the way through the following prayers, he stared up at the massive dome of the temple. Its golden gleam was almost blinding in the morning sun. He wondered how it would look daubed in a thousand different colours.


    *


    Late in the year, as Kursalian was preparing for the first of the three winter festivals, Inhei and his mother went along the riverside to buy fresh fish near the city¡¯s western wall. As usual, Inhei kept his eyes on the alleymouths they passed, looking for any new god-marks. They seemed to show up wherever he went. He was delighted to think that there were so many who honoured the alley gods in secret. He glanced at the faces of the people in the street, wondering which of them knew the same truth that he knew.


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    They had nearly reached the fishmonger when a cacophony of yells and thuds echoed through the streets. Inhei was snapped out of his daydreams. It was rare to hear such disorder in the city, especially so close to the festival-month. He and his mother exchanged a look of wary curiosity.


    They followed the sounds of commotion through the narrow riverside alleys, to where a small crowd had gathered among the meagre shacks and lean-tos that sheltered in the shadow of the city walls. This was one of the poorest parts of Kursalian, and Inhei had seldom been anywhere near it. Everyone said it was a hive of drunks and cutpurses. The wardens raided it from time to time, to cart off a gang of thieves or a particularly vicious bandit.


    And indeed, the crowd had come to watch a full patrol of wardens at work. They were bashing one of the shacks apart with their cudgels. But the men they were dragging from its ruins were not thieves.


    They were Foresters, the big copper-skinned nomad folk from the eastern steppe. Their clans often came to Kursalian to trade, and a handful of them had settled in the slums, finding work as petty labourers. Inhei had seen them rowing barges on the water and carrying palanquins for the wealthy. They kept to themselves, speaking their own rough tongue, and normally the wardens let them be.


    But these ones had blasphemed, Inhei learned. They had built a shrine to their pagan ancestor spirits, within the walls of Kursalian. An audacious act of defiance against the temple. They had hidden it well inside their shack, but not so well that a neighbour hadn¡¯t spotted them.


    Inhei knew what would happen now. He had heard of such raids many times, but never seen one firsthand before. Those men would be given a choice. Bondage to the temple as menials, perhaps for the rest of their lives, or a swift beheading on the temple steps.


    Most of the Foresters went quietly, heads bowed. One struggled and kicked, cursing the wardens in broken Quhrai. He was a powerfully-built man, and it took four of them to subdue him, battering him with their fists and cudgels until he went to his knees. The watching crowd jeered and spat at him. He was still weakly thrashing when they dragged him away. That one, Inhei was sure, would lose his head rather than renounce his gods.


    When the wardens and their prisoners were gone, Inhei stood staring at the wreckage of the little shack. The flimsy wooden walls had been smashed in and the roof pulled down, everything within ¨C everything that had been sacred to those Foresters ¨C stomped to pieces in the muddy ground. He turned to his mother in helpless, bewildered rage.


    ¡°Why do the gods ¨C our gods ¨C not stop them?¡± he demanded, in a furious whisper. It was all he could do to keep his voice down, knowing that whoever had informed on the Foresters¡¯ shrine could still be skulking about. ¡°Why do they let the wardens do this? Why don¡¯t they bring an end to it?¡±


    ¡°Because that is not what they are here for, love. They teach us to endure,¡± she told him. Her voice shook, her words freighted with sadness. ¡°They teach us that all sorrow will pass, in time. The wardens cannot change that. One day, even the temple will be gone, but the gods will endure, and so will we.¡±


    They cut short their journey to the fishmonger and went home in silence. Inhei¡¯s heart raced with wild anger and fear every time they passed a wardens¡¯ tower. When he got home, his older brother frowned at his wretched expression and asked him what was wrong. Inhei had no answer for him.


    That night, he dreamed that the winged shapes of the alley gods circled high over the city, blown on the mountain winds. No matter how much he called to them, they would not answer him. They rose higher and higher, tatters of colour in the empty sky, until they were out of sight.


    *


    When Inhei was eleven, the wardens came for his mother.


    They came one moonless, windless night, in a flurry of shouts and smashing glass and flickering torchlight. They pulled Inhei¡¯s mother from her bed. They beat Inhei¡¯s father and older brother with their cudgels when they tried to stop them taking her. They threw a shroud of thick black cloth over her head and dragged her from the house with her bare feet scrabbling in the splinters of the kicked-in door. Inhei huddled with his younger siblings in the corner of the front room, too afraid even to cry, and watched her struggling shape grow smaller and smaller down the street, suspended by the arms between two hooded wardens.


    Inhei¡¯s father got up and hobbled after them. ¡°Mera,¡± he called, his voice thickened by the blood in his mouth. ¡°Mera, Mera, Mera-¡±


    One of the trailing wardens turned and struck him a swift backhanded blow that silenced him and sent him to his knees on the cobbles. The wardens took Inhei¡¯s mother across the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge, their torches making tall shadows dance on the shuttered shopfronts. Then they passed through the tollgate on the far side, and the darkness swallowed them.


    When it was quiet, Inhei and his bloodied older brother went out into the street. As they helped their hoarsely weeping father upright, Inhei saw old Chehga leaning on her doorframe, a guttering oil lamp in her bony hand. She was smiling.


    And in that instant, in a rush of rage and horror and hatred, Inhei knew.

 3: Root-of-peace

    Inhei¡¯s father did not live long after the wardens came. His injuries healed, but something of him had gone with his wife, never to return. He ate less and less ¨C though Inhei and his siblings tried their hardest to feed him ¨C and spoke hardly at all. Every evening, he would pull up a chair in the front room, and stare wordlessly for hours at the broken door through which Inhei¡¯s mother had been taken.


    Within a month, he had weakened to the point he could no longer work. He¡¯d always been a thin man. Now his ribs and cheekbones showed sharply through his drawn skin. He lay in his bed and drew shallow, rattling breaths, in and out, like the wind in a dusty alley. He refused the soup Inhei made for him, rarely even accepted tea. Inhei¡¯s older brother scraped together what little money they had left, and went to fetch a physician from the Lower Apothecaries.


    The doctor, a fussy little baldheaded man, came with a wooden case of medicines. He sat by the bedside and sorted through the racks of tinctures and nostrums, thumbing the bottles and muttering to himself. He hardly looked at Inhei¡¯s father, who lay bundled in his blankets, staring at the flyblown ceiling. At last, the doctor took out a vial of some thin reddish liquid, like dilute blood. He held it up to the light.


    ¡°Give this to him,¡± he told Inhei and his siblings. ¡°The whole bottle. You can mix in some honey, for the taste.¡±


    ¡°Will it make him eat again?¡± Inhei¡¯s older brother asked.


    The doctor shook his head. ¡°It is root-of-peace. It will put him to sleep. There will be no pain.¡± He boxed up his medicines and left without a backwards glance.


    They had no money for another doctor. The vial of red death rested on a windowsill, untouched and unlooked-at, for two more weeks, while Inhei¡¯s father withered in his bed. Once in a while, he might faintly groan ¡°Mera¡±. He said nothing else. Having no other choice, Inhei¡¯s older brother went to labour on the temple scaffolds with the other men of their district. Inhei and the younger ones stayed home and tended to their father. Some days, the neighbour¡¯s wife was kind enough to bring them flour and oil, or garden vegetables wrapped in cloth.


    Finally, there came the day when Inhei¡¯s father began to wheeze and shudder. Weak coughs convulsed his chest. He was a skeleton in sheets now, hard even to look at. Inhei¡¯s older brother came home, caked in dust and bloody-knuckled from his work on the scaffolds, and found Inhei kneeling by the bed, biting his tongue to keep the tears back. The younger children had been sent to the neighbour¡¯s house, to spare them.


    Inhei¡¯s brother put his dusty hand on Inhei¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Give it to him,¡± he said quietly.


    They poured the root-of-peace into a bowl of lukewarm tea, and stirred in a spoon of honey, like the doctor had said. Inhei brought it to his father¡¯s lips.


    ¡°Mera,¡± his father whispered. His eyes stared straight ahead, unseeing. ¡°Where¡¯s my Mera?¡±


    Inhei tipped up the bowl, and watched his father drink the tea in slow, feeble gulps.


    *


    The husband of an idolatress could not be buried in the temple grounds. There would be no grave-marker for Inhei¡¯s father, nor any petition to the gods for his spirit. Inhei and his siblings found a boatbuilder on the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge willing to make them a crude raft, so that their father could be set adrift on the river, like the paupers and the pagans.


    The neighbours were kind enough. They brought over bundles of flowers, and a flaxen wrap for the body. But they would not come to the funeral. They did not want the wardens¡¯ eyes to fall upon them, too.


    Inhei and his older brother washed their father¡¯s body and bound him up in the wrap. They forbade the younger ones from helping, even though they begged to. When the wrapping was complete, they lifted the body between them ¨C it weighed so very little ¨C and tied it to the funeral raft, which had been set on a rented grocer¡¯s cart.


    As he and his siblings wheeled the rickety, bumping cart towards the bridge, Inhei was aware of the eyes of the neighbourhood upon them, peeking in silence from a hundred balconies and windows. He did not look up at them, did not take his eyes off the road ahead. His face burned from the effort of keeping in his tears. A few escaped, despite his best efforts, and he could not lift his hands from the cart to wipe them away.


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    Night was falling by the time they reached the river¡¯s edge. A sea of lanterns and lit windows glowed on the hillsides ahead, leading up in twinkling waves to the great dark walls of the temple. Merchants¡¯ barges sat heavy in the quiet water, laden with goods from the western cities, from Om Aledai and Sirethe. Faint laughter and snatches of music drifted over the water from the taverns and smoking-dens on the far side.


    Inhei had never set foot in those taverns, but he knew them well. He had seen the god-marks on their walls.


    He was the one who pushed the raft out across the water. His brothers and sisters wept and prayed aloud to the Father-to-All, on their knees in the river mud, as they¡¯d been taught. But he stayed standing, watching the raft and its white-wrapped cargo drift off downstream, turning in a slow circle, to be lost among the other flotsam in the darkness. He offered up the silent prayer his mother had taught him, the prayer to the alley gods.


    *


    With his older brother now the family¡¯s sole breadwinner, Inhei was left to care for the younger children. He no longer had time to run errands for the shopkeepers; the most he could do was beg the ones who¡¯d liked him best for food. A few of them took pity on him. Others, muttering darkly about idolatry, warned him not to return.


    The neighbours, his mother¡¯s friends, still showed some kindness. They sometimes let the little ones eat at their table, under the strict condition that they kept out of sight if the wardens came near.


    Even with such charity, the money Inhei¡¯s brother brought in was barely enough to keep them from starving. So they sold their parents¡¯ things off, piece by piece, for bread and oil and salt fish. His mother¡¯s festival dress with its colourful tassels, his father¡¯s best razor, a looking-glass edged in real silver that their late grandmother had given them. Before long, there was little left to sell.


    And still, every day, Inhei and his siblings trudged to the temple courtyard for the public prayers. Officially, as children, they were not to blame for the sins of their mother. But the taint was undeniable, an invisible mark on them all. The other children would not sit near them. Whispers and dirty looks followed them wherever they went. Inhei sat through the sermons with his eyes burning with unshed tears, refusing to cry like the younger ones often did. He thought of the alley gods, which had not saved his mother or his father. They teach us to endure.


    The worst thing of all was old Chehga. She sneered from her doorway whenever he went past her house, saying nothing, just watching him like a vulture in rags. He watched her bow and scrape for the wardens, even though they must have hated her as much as everyone else did. He wished they would come for her as they had for his mother.


    A month after his father¡¯s funeral, he finally went to confront her. When his brother was at work and the little ones were with the neighbours, he went across the street to her house. The door stood open to let in the breeze, and he walked straight in, propelled by a black fury.


    Chehga was seated at her spinning-wheel, turning its crank with one hand and working the spun yarn from the spindle with the other. Finished lengths of yarn were draped over a crude wooden frame propped against the wall next to the equally crude bed. Painted stone pots were lined up on the mantelshelf above a simple brick cave of a fireplace. It was a meagre place, Inhei thought, with not even a rug to soften the bare stone floor.


    The old woman glanced his way, without interest, then went back to her work. ¡°Mera¡¯s boy,¡± she said. ¡°Come to trouble me, for what? I have no money to give you.¡±


    ¡°You told the wardens.¡± Inhei¡¯s voice was strange to his own ears, somehow toneless and faraway. This was what real hatred sounded like, he realised. Not shouting and snarling ¨C flat and dead. ¡°After she brought you food, shared our bread with you. You made them take her away.¡±


    ¡°I made them do nothing, boy,¡± Chehga rasped. ¡°The wardens are the hands of the temple. The hands of the gods. All they do is the temple¡¯s will.¡±


    ¡°Father died because of it. He wasted away without her.¡±


    The old woman shrugged her shoulders, making her strings of beads rattle. She did not look up from her spinning-wheel. ¡°The temple¡¯s will,¡± she repeated. ¡°She brought demons into the city. The false gods of the herder-folk. If evil is allowed to make its home in Kursalian, it will never leave. We will all be cursed. Do you understand that, boy? Do you think you know better than the gods?¡±


    Inhei stood in the doorway, listening to the wind whistle down the street and scatter drifts of dust into the alleys. His hands curled into trembling fists as he stared at Chehga, still hunched over her busy wheel, still not looking at him. She was a stick-insect of a woman, a scarecrow of brittle bone and papery skin. He was a strong boy, tall for his age. He could take one of the stone pots from the mantel and bash her skull in, as easily as he could smash the delicate spokes of the spinning-wheel. He could toss her body into the black water beneath the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge, or drag it into the darkest corner of the darkest alley to be a meal for the rats. Nobody would be too bothered. Nobody on their street liked old Chehga. Not even the gods liked old Chehga.


    Don¡¯t, whispered the wind.


    Chehga stopped her wheel and turned her head, a birdlike and suspicious motion. Finally, she raised her beady eyes to his face. ¡°Why are you still here, boy? Get out of my house. Go pray for your mother, if you care so much for her.¡±


    Inhei did as he was told.

 4: Endurance

    The first winter without their parents was the hardest. As the nights lengthened and icy winds began to blow in from the mountains, their money became even more desperately stretched. Day after day, they had to choose between firewood for the hearth and food for the table. Between starvation and freezing.


    Inhei¡¯s older brother continued to work on the temple scaffolds. He never complained about the labour, but Inhei could tell it was taking its toll. Every day, he looked more worn and distant, his face lined and weathered, as though grown old before his time. He spoke little, even to Inhei. His stony silences began to frighten the little ones, who shrank away from him when he came home.


    They must think he¡¯s becoming like Father, Inhei thought.


    The neighbours seldom brought food any more. Inhei didn¡¯t bear them any grudge. Nobody on their street was wealthy, and in the cold months every crumb was jealously guarded. Very occasionally, one of his mother¡¯s friends would leave a bundle of vegetables on their doorstep, just enough to make a pot of thin soup. That was as much a cause for celebration as spiced lamb and honey cakes had once been.


    At night, the siblings all slept huddled together in the same bed. Inhei and his older brother tried to keep the little ones warm between them while they shivered beneath their parents¡¯ old blanket. Many nights, Inhei found he was too hungry to sleep. He would lie awake, grimacing at the endless ache of his empty belly, until the dawn came.


    He did all he could to help. He ran errands along the riverbank and in the outer districts of Kursalian, where the merchants didn¡¯t recognise him or know of his mother¡¯s crime. He swept doorways and scrubbed floors until his hands were red-raw. He carried messages back and forth through the freezing streets, no longer pausing to study the fading god-marks on the alley walls.


    He could not ask the gods for help. All he could do was endure.


    On warmer days, he joined the beggars on the street corners near the temple steps. Burying what was left of his dignity, he learned how to prostrate himself and plead with his eyes. Sometimes, he got a few coins or a heel of bread. More often, he was ignored. There was nothing worse than coming home empty-handed to face the hollow, hungry stares of his younger siblings.


    There were times when he considered becoming a thief. Whenever he passed a baker selling meat-pies beside the tollgate, he dreamed of stealing some from the stall. The smell of cooked food was almost maddening to his starved stomach. He saw full coinpurses clinking on the belts of merchants, coin enough for a month of fine food. It would be so easy to snatch one and run.


    Then he thought of the wardens coming for him with their hard eyes and their iron-studded cudgels. They would beat him like they had beaten his father and brother, maybe even haul him away to the temple. And who would care for his siblings then? The alley gods?


    That winter seemed like it would never end. The little ones were wracked with coughs and sniffles that never went away. They shivered constantly and whimpered with hunger. Listening to his youngest sister cough and cough in the night, Inhei felt a pang of helpless fear. There was no money left for a doctor. If she worsened, he could do nothing to help her.


    But, by the skin of their teeth, they survived. The days grew longer and warmer, and the wind lost its biting chill. Inhei and his siblings went into the spring stick-thin and sunken-cheeked, but alive.


    For the first time since his father¡¯s death, Inhei thanked the gods.


    *


    Things never became easy, but they managed.


    In time, the stigma upon their family faded. There were some in the neighbourhood who never forgave them for being the children of an idolatress. Most, however, were not so hard-hearted. Their mother and father had been well-liked, and once the wardens¡¯ attention was elsewhere, some of the old smiles and greetings began to return. Even so, Inhei made sure his siblings did not miss the daily prayers. He would not see them ostracised again.


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    He continued to work every odd job that came his way. Now that the merchants on the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge no longer scorned him, his hopes of an apprenticeship were revived. He learned a little of a dozen different trades, from baking to knife-grinding, enough to make himself of use and earn a little more. It was exhausting to be such a dogsbody, and he was wracked with guilt whenever he had to leave his younger siblings alone at home. At least he no longer had to beg in the streets.


    When he found the time between jobs, he still wandered the alleys, looking for the signs of the alley gods. He kept in mind the silent devotions his mother had taught him. And when he saw Chehga in the street, rattling along with her strings of unfashionable beads, he gritted his teeth and looked away.


    He did not, in the end, become a barrel-maker. At thirteen, he was apprenticed to a portly copper merchant in the Lower Apothecaries. He found he had something of a talent for minding the old man¡¯s shop, selling pots, saucepans and kettles to the housewives, measures and alembics to the doctors. After so many years as an errand-boy, he had a rudimentary grasp of numbers and letters, which served him well in keeping the accounts. The customers and wholesalers liked him. Before long, his master trusted him to run the shop almost by himself.


    With two steady incomes, their family could once more afford the things they¡¯d done without since their father¡¯s death. Good lamb and chicken, sweetmeats and jasmine tea, new clothes to replace the threadbare things they¡¯d been wearing for years. The little ones no longer had to go barefoot, or shiver in their sleep. Inhei could not help smiling when he saw his youngest sister¡¯s pride in her fine new sandals.


    The wardens did not loosen their grip. The copper merchant¡¯s customers gossiped constantly about raids and arrests. Most took place in the slum districts, though occasionally even a nobleman might be found to have blasphemed. Beheadings were rare ¨C most idolaters chose to serve instead ¨C but when they did happen, they happened with much fanfare. And the alley gods were not ignored by the wardens. Sometimes, Inhei found that a god-mark that had endured many years in a hidden passageway was suddenly gone, hastily scoured away by temple workers.


    There were always new marks, though. Sometimes, an erased mark reappeared within days on the very spot that had been painted over. Inhei never saw who made the marks; nor did he care. All that mattered was that they were made. The alley gods endured.


    Then came the day when his older brother did not return from the scaffolds.


    It was another temple worker who knocked at their door, slump-shouldered and with downcast eyes, to tell Inhei the news. His brother had fallen from the scaffolds in a sudden crosswind. Two hundred feet or more, onto the rooftops clustered around the temple¡¯s southern walls. A quick end, the man said. No pain. And the wardens would pay for the funeral, as the boy had died faithfully in their service, in due atonement for the sins of his mother.


    Inhei wanted to shout and curse at his brother¡¯s friend, to spit on the wardens and their promised funeral. In that moment, he wanted to watch the temple burn to ashes and crumble on top of all its priests and servants. He wanted to hurl old Chehga into the flames and hear her reedy screams as she burned.


    But, with his younger siblings looking on from the room behind him, all he did was nod. ¡°Tell the wardens they have our thanks,¡± he said.


    That night, after his siblings had cried themselves to sleep, Inhei lay awake in the little house that now belonged to him. He did not weep. He did not think he was even capable of tears, any more.


    Instead, by moonlight, he prayed.


    *


    To the other mourners at his brother¡¯s funeral, Inhei must have seemed the most devout boy in Kursalian. He recited the threefold prayers for the dead without missing a word. He brought oil and pomegranate wine to offer up to the Father-to-All and his divine sons. His devotional sash was spotless, and his siblings all chanted along in perfect harmony, as he¡¯d taught them. The priest overseeing the ceremony gave him a broad smile of approval once the body had been laid to rest. As if to say, welcome back to the fold.


    Inhei kept his face blank. He thought of the alley gods looking down upon him, drifting on the wind.


    He knew he could not provide for his siblings alone, not on the meagre pay of an apprentice. They were all still too young to find work of their own, and he certainly would not see them beg in the streets.


    So, on his fifteenth birthday, he arranged for the house to be sold. The last vestige of his parents went with it. He led his siblings through their old street one last time, their few possessions bundled on their backs. They bid the neighbours goodbye, thanking them for all their kindness and promising to visit when they could. Then they set off across the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge beneath a bright summer sun.


    On the way, Inhei saw old Chehga scowling from her doorstep. He ignored her.


    His master owned a fine courtyard-house overlooking the curve of the river. He agreed to let Inhei have one room of it, for a modest rent that he could just about afford. His siblings were expected to help the maidservants about the house, and otherwise to keep themselves out of trouble. Inhei promised that they would.


    ¡°If they¡¯re as sharp as you, maybe one day I can put them to work in the shop,¡± his master remarked as they were settling in. ¡°Make sure they learn from you, boy.¡±


    ¡°I will,¡± Inhei told him.

 5: Something True

    When he was nineteen, Inhei met the girl who would become his wife.


    She was the daughter of a ropemaker from the Street of Bells. The first time Inhei noticed her, he stopped what he was doing to watch her as she wandered past the shop. She seemed to glide through the afternoon crowds, every step sure and graceful. She wore her dark hair long and glossy beneath a sequined shawl that fluttered in the breeze. Her smiling eyes were accentuated with careful dabs of kohl. When she noticed Inhei¡¯s foolish stare from under the shop¡¯s awning, she flashed him a friendly grin, without a hint of arrogance.


    A few days after that, she came to buy copper pans for her mother. At least, that was her excuse.


    By this time, Inhei was running his master¡¯s business from top to bottom. He sold their wares to buyers across the city, using couriers hired from his old district. He sourced good copper and brass from the traders who came in through the mountains from the east. The money was coming in nicely, and though his master took the lion¡¯s share, Inhei had more than enough for his family. For the first time in their lives, they never had to fear going hungry.


    His younger siblings were beginning to pick up the rudiments of the business themselves. They balanced the books and stocked shelves for him while he haggled with the customers. He taught them to recognise flaws in the copper, cracks and bubbles from a bad casting. His youngest sister proved to have a particularly keen eye for that sort of thing. His master joked that she would put him out of a job one day.


    Indeed, it was the diligence of Inhei¡¯s siblings that the ropemaker¡¯s daughter first remarked upon when she wandered up to the counter. ¡°Are these your brothers and sisters? You¡¯ve made quite a little army of them,¡± she told him. Her voice was light and sweet, almost musical.


    ¡°They¡¯re clever children,¡± was all Inhei could manage to say. He found himself idiotically tongue-tied with her, in a way he had never been before with a customer.


    The girl took a very long time choosing her pans. She had plenty of questions for him, about the business, about his family. About him. And, once he got over his initial shyness, it was easy to reply. He had so rarely spoken to anyone other than his siblings about the hard years of his childhood. He took some pride in spinning it into a yarn, lightening the darker moments so as not to sour the mood, deftly serving his other customers while he talked. The girl listened with eager-eyed interest, the gentle smile never leaving her face.


    He stopped short of telling her exactly what had happened to his mother, however. Nor did he mention the alley gods.


    After that, she came back to visit nearly every day. She no longer even pretended she was coming for the copperware. Inhei¡¯s heart thrilled every time he saw her smiling face emerge from the crowds. He started going for walks with her in the evenings, and found to his delight she would hold his hand as they strolled along. His siblings teased him endlessly about it, but he knew they liked her as well.


    Everything he learned about her made her more entrancing to him. She was a fine singer, not just of the usual temple chants but of folk tunes like the ones his mother had once sung. She had a deep knowledge of her father¡¯s trade, easily as well-versed in jute and linen as Inhei was in copper and brass. She had travelled with her parents far beyond Kursalian, selling their wares in the western cities, once even riding with a Forester caravan on the high mountain roads. She knew some tradesman¡¯s jokes far too bawdy to tell in polite company. Fortunately, she did not seem to consider him to be polite company.


    When his master heard about the girl¡¯s constant visits, he bellowed a laugh and slapped Inhei on the back. ¡°Well? Aren¡¯t you going to do something about it, you idiot boy? Quickly, before she finds someone more interesting!¡±


    So, one breezy festival-day, Inhei took the girl to a public garden with a grand view of the mountains, and asked her if she would marry him.


    ¡°You don¡¯t waste any time, do you?¡± she smiled. She didn¡¯t seem the slightest bit surprised. Then she took both his hands in hers, pressed her lips to his, and said softly, ¡°Of course I will.¡±


    The wedding followed within weeks. Her parents were keen for their youngest daughter to be married off, and if they felt her choice of man to be too humble, they stayed quiet about it. Inhei paid as much of a dowry as he could afford.


    For her, he would have paid more; paid anything.


    They were married on the temple steps on a clear and beautiful night, lit by two bright moons that washed the streets below in a pale radiance. By tradition, the father of the groom was supposed to lead the marital procession through the courtyard. But, since Inhei was an orphan, an elderly priest was appointed for the task. The priest chanted his hymns off-key in a croaky, asthmatic voice, and Inhei¡¯s wife had to suppress her giggles with the embroidered sleeve of her wedding-gown.


    Inhei maintained the same fixed, respectful smile through the whole ceremony. He bowed to his new parents-in-law, to the priest, to the temple¡¯s moonlit dome. He said the appropriate prayers out loud, while whispering an entirely different prayer in his head. He looped his devotional sash around his wife¡¯s waist, while she knotted hers around him, to symbolise their joining before the gods of the temple.


    Only when they were home, and heading to their honeymoon bed in a flurry of kissing and unfastening and carelessly-flung clothes, did he allow a wide and genuine grin to spread across his face.


    *


    The first pregnancy was a struggle. Inhei¡¯s wife was a sweet and graceful girl, but she was not robust, and she was wracked with morning-sickness for months. When he heard her groaning and hissing with the pain, some of the old fear returned, that gnawing helplessness which he¡¯d felt watching his father waste away.


    The birth was hard and long and bloody. A brusque midwife from the Lower Apothecaries came to help, ordering Inhei¡¯s sisters around as her deputies while Inhei looked on and prayed to every god he knew.


    After hours of screaming and straining, there was a moment of awful silence, when he feared the worst.


    Then came a baby¡¯s piercing cry, and Inhei¡¯s fleeting terror became wordless joy and relief. He had never seen something so beautiful as the sight of his exhausted, weakly smiling wife cradling their newborn daughter.


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    Their second child, a boy, came somewhat easier, a little over a year later. And then, in the space of three years, two more girls came along. Each one grew to be as much of a delight as the first. Their babbling and cooing and pattering little footsteps were like music to Inhei¡¯s ears. His younger siblings, most of them still children themselves, took to being aunts and uncles with great enthusiasm.


    Inhei¡¯s master scolded him good-naturedly for making so many babies. ¡°Gods above, boy, can¡¯t you control yourselves? The shop¡¯s doing well, but not that well. And they won¡¯t be old enough to earn their keep for years yet!¡±


    Laughing, Inhei apologised. By that point, his wife was already showing the signs of her fifth pregnancy.


    The children did indeed learn the copper trade, just as their aunts and uncles had before them. Inhei¡¯s eldest daughter knew how to clean the tarnish from a pot by the time she was seven years old. Though Inhei loved all his children equally, he took a special pride in her. She was a bright and cheerful girl, quick of wit and kind of heart. Much like her mother, and the grandmother she would never meet.


    Of course, Inhei and his wife made sure that their children attended the temple. They learned their hymns and their prayers, kept their sashes ever immaculate, and bowed to the wardens in the street. Neighbours remarked on what fine and devout children they were, a tribute to the piety of their parents.


    Eventually, Inhei¡¯s master moved away to Om Aledai, to spend his last years in the cooler air there. He had no children of his own, so he left the shop to Inhei. ¡°It¡¯s long been more yours than mine, anyway,¡± the old copper merchant said, when Inhei tried to object.


    Inhei¡¯s children saw his master off tearfully, running after his rattling carriage until it passed out of the city gates and into the dusty hills beyond. The old man had become almost a grandfather to them.


    Inhei prayed that the gods would grant his master a swift and safe journey through the western mountains. He remembered what his mother had taught him. Out there, far from the temple¡¯s reach, they were not alley gods at all; they were on the wind, unbounded, everywhere.


    *


    On a sweltering summer evening, not long after his eldest daughter turned ten, Inhei was walking with her back to their house after closing up the shop. In a wistful mood, he chose a route that took them past the street where he¡¯d grown up. He slowed his pace to glance at those familiar doorways and balconies, looking out for any faces he recognised. It had been some time since he last came this way. A lot of the labouring families had moved away, following the temple work to the other side of the river. Still, a few of the older folk remained, and they would greet him if they saw him.


    His daughter, tired from the day¡¯s work and eager to get home, hurried ahead of him with all the impatience of impending teenagehood. She stopped suddenly halfway across the street, shading her eyes against the setting sun.


    ¡°Father, look.¡± Frowning, she pointed at old Chehga¡¯s door, which stood ajar.


    Inside, Inhei saw what he at first took for a heaped bundle of rags on the floor. Then he saw the tangled strings of coloured beads, and a gnarled, stick-thin arm poking out among them, the fingers twisted out of true by arthritis.


    With his daughter following nervously behind him, Inhei stepped into Chehga¡¯s house, for the first time since the day he¡¯d confronted her all those years ago. The place was even more pitiful now, every surface greyed by dust, spiderwebs filling the mouth of the fireplace. The spinning-wheel was gone, perhaps pawned for food, along with much of the furniture. How long had she lived here, like this, all alone?


    Chehga lay where she had fallen, hours or even days before, the shards of a broken soup-bowl scattered around her. Her eyes were closed. She was still breathing, but slowly, shallowly, groaning feebly with each breath. She looked much like Inhei¡¯s father had in his last days, more bone than flesh. Inhei wondered how many people of the neighbourhood had walked past her door, spotted her, and walked on. Nobody liked old Chehga.


    He knelt down on the dusty stone floor next to her. He was no doctor. He didn¡¯t need to be. He could tell, at a glance, that Chehga was never going to get back up. She might linger there a day or two more, delirious and in worsening agony, until she succumbed to thirst in the summer heat. She had no family, and she had been cast out from the temple; nobody would bury her. In time, when the smell grew too bad to ignore and the corpse began to draw rats, the wardens would send down a couple of porters to throw her in the river.


    Inhei closed his eyes a moment, remembering the faces of his mother, his father, his older brother. He thought of the colours daubed on alley walls, the ribbons bridging rooftops under the shadow of the temple dome. Then he gave his daughter a handful of brass coins, and told her to go with one of her uncles to the Lower Apothecaries.


    ¡°Find a doctor,¡± he said calmly. ¡°Tsanreik is a good one, your uncle Omsar knows him well. His shop is by the Saffron Bridge. Ask him for a bottle of root-of-peace.¡±


    The girl may have had her objections, but she didn¡¯t voice them. She took a last uneasy glance at Chehga, then nodded and ran off up the street, her sandals slapping on the cracked cobbles. Inhei stayed beside Chehga¡¯s wheezing, ancient form. He settled himself back to sit cross-legged.


    Chehga opened one milky, cataract-clouded eye. Her breathing was thin and rattling. Her gaze, such as it was, found Inhei¡¯s face.


    From somewhere, she mustered the strength to speak, though her voice was so faint Inhei had to strain to hear it. ¡°Mera¡­¡± she whispered. ¡°Mera¡¯s¡­boy.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Mera¡¯s¡­boy.¡± The map of wrinkles that was Chehga¡¯s face contorted with the pain of each word. ¡°I¡­I¡¯m¡­sorry.¡±


    Inhei said nothing. He sat there on the bare floor by the old woman¡¯s side, the evening light deepening into darkness around them, until his daughter returned with the glass vial clutched in her hand.


    *


    It was a long summer that year, hot and dry. The river shrank to a trickle, leaving boats stranded at odd angles on the cracked mud of its banks. In the southern valleys, the drought drove ever more of the herdsmen north, into the cities, into Kursalian.


    When he walked the alleys, Inhei began to notice new daubs of colour on the walls. Some were so fresh the paint still dripped. There were symbols he recognised, as familiar to him now as his own face in the looking-glass, but also ones he hadn¡¯t seen before. Suns with bright zigzag rays, butterfly wings that looked real enough to fly, scrawled lines of glyphs very different from the temple script. One day, he spotted a rope hung with fluttering prayer-flags joining two shops in the Street of Bells, mischievously close to a wardens¡¯ tower. The new arrivals had brought their gods, no less precious to them than their bundled belongings.


    He made a study of them, adding them to the wordless scripture in his head. He was no priest, and the alley gods had none anyway. He had become something for which the temple had no name.


    His wife knew about his true faith now, though he hadn¡¯t told her much. Her family had closer ties to the temple than most; one of her brothers was a warden. In her gently understanding way, she let him have this part of his life that was closed off from her. He did not want to draw her into it against her will.


    But he remembered what his mother had said, so long ago. One child, at least, must learn that there is truth outside the temple.


    Just as she had, he chose a bright, clear day, when the markets were bustling and all Kursalian felt warm and alive.


    His eldest daughter was in a jubilant mood when they left the shop that evening. They had been doing a roaring trade for weeks, as the crowds swelled with all the newcomers to the city. Inhei was already thinking of opening a second shop on the Pedlars¡¯ Bridge, perhaps with his younger siblings in charge of it. They had often told him they wished to go back to their old neighbourhood.


    Inhei listened, smiling, to his daughter¡¯s energetic chatter about her favourite customers and the goings-on of her friends. She had never been an outcast, never gone cold or hungry, never been scorned by her neighbours. He swore to himself that she never would be.


    We will be careful. And we will endure.


    ¡°Love,¡± he said, when they were still some way from home. ¡°There¡¯s something I¡¯d like to tell you. Something my mother once told me.¡±


    ¡°A story?¡± his daughter asked, with the weary tolerance of a girl who has heard too many of her father¡¯s stories.


    ¡°No. Something true,¡± he replied.


    He led her through the sloping streets, into the clamouring crowds and the windblown summer dust. The temple dome shone sunset-gold over the rooftops ahead of them. He held her hand tightly, and began to tell her about the gods that had no names.

 [Codex: Blessed Asequhra]

    The known history of Asequhra begins with the arrival of the San Quhr in the hidden mountain valleys of the Great Range, thousands of years before the rise of Greater Kauln. The San Quhr were a nomadic people from the western uplands, forced out of their ancestral lands by drought and famine. They found refuge and plenty in the lush valleys, but also conflict, as they clashed with the mountain tribesfolk who had settled those valleys centuries earlier. In time, the fierce San Quhr killed, enslaved or drove away most of the tribes, and established a patchwork of petty kingdoms spanning five hundred miles of the Great Range. Gradually, through trade, conquest and the spread of a common religion, the region was unified into a theocratic kingdom that came to be known as Blessed Asequhra.


    The religion that has characterised Asequhra for millennia is the Faith of Fathers, which venerates a pantheon of creator gods ruled by a supreme Father-to-All. The kingdom¡¯s major cities are all centred around elaborate temple complexes, and the state and priesthood are effectively one and the same. Asequhra¡¯s priest-kings rule as a triumvirate from Kursalian, the national capital and holiest city, overseeing a semi-feudal society where a small circle of nobles and clerics hold much of the country in demesne. Temple wardens serve as both civil peacekeepers and widely-feared morality police. The lives of the common Quhrai are dominated by prayer, pilgrimage and the making of offerings. A number of localised variants of the Faith of Fathers are tolerated in Asequhra, though any serious deviation from the traditional rites is punished harshly. Other religions, including numerous forms of animism and ancestor worship, are secretly practiced in the most remote regions.


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    It is generally believed that Aede¡¯s dominant Sacramental Faith originated as a monotheistic offshoot of the Faith of Fathers, and indeed the two religions share many similarities in ritual and scripture. However, the modern Sacramental Faith considers the Faith of Fathers to be heretical, while the Quhrai in turn see the Sacramental Faith as a barbaric perversion of their beliefs. Seeking to preserve the purity of their culture as larger empires expanded around them, the Quhrai priest-kings maintained their isolation from the other nations of Aede for centuries, heavily restricting trade and travel, though small numbers of Quhrai settled in Greater Kauln and Esuloa nonetheless. The Quhrai diaspora was almost entirely exterminated by the Salvator regime during the Apostate¡¯s War, though Asequhra itself was largely unaffected due to its great distance from the frontlines.


    In the aftermath of the war, the Kauln granted Asequhra a small measure of independence, as the poor and remote mountain kingdom was not deemed worth conquering by force. In return for promises of allegiance and grants of land for use as airbases and monitoring stations, the priest-kings have been allowed to continue practicing their religion and governing their people. The Quhrai doubtless resent their vassalage, but their obedience to their holy triarchs ¨C and fear of Kauln retribution ¨C has kept them from offering any serious resistance.