What cup shall we move?

Salbadore turns towards the flames again. "I wouldn’t recognize it if I saw it, my good priest. What few religious advocates I've ever met were irrational, but not entirely inscrutiable. To be sure, they had nothing more complicated in mind than the personification of this or that aspect of the universe."

Resting his elbows on his knees, he explains, "There was a woman who lived in a shack in the foothills of Steepend. When I was still residing in Wolfgramm Woods, I was sent once to fetch medicine from her. The skies were threatening thunderweather when I arrived at the hollow in which she had built her home, and so I was obliged to spend the evening there, in her abode. This proved to be a most interesting encounter, for she allowed me to witness her religion. The next morning, she awoke before daybreak and knelt before the rising sun."

He looks up as if he might apologize. "That was it; that was her religion."

"Before parting ways, we drank tea there, at her little house built right into the cliff. As we talked, we found that we agreed on almost everything about the sun: We agreed that it was a star, and that our planet revolved around it. We agreed upon its life-giving properties, and on its exalted place in the chain of being. Yet she found fit to kneel before it, and I did not."

Salbadore sniffs – "I never saw her again" – and waves the rising smoke away from his eyes. "There was an old man who lived in a stone shed in the Capital. He was a wise and industrious get, whose gift was for building hydraulic devices. Would you think he worshipped the water?" The young genomancer takes a sip of whatever there is to drink. "Nay! Twice a week – and never on work-days – he lit a scented stick, clasped his hands, and bowed his head to a portrait of a chap with an iron staff.

"I saw it once. 'Thou art cowering before an oil painting, sir,' I said to him, thinking I was smart. Cripes – it was just my first year of study, and he was not a meister at the Guildhaus. It was my disgusting custom to be most obsequious, even as I cast derision. Orthos will vouch that it is the state of too many full-hearted collegiates." Salbadore has been slowly leaning forward. Now he shivers a little and straightens his back. "How far I've come!"

"Hence –" Salbadore puts his hands on his hips to pantomime authority "– the mechanic said to me, 'Would I cower before a painting? Nay, I am cowering before the hand that paints.'"

Salbadore sniffs again, and returns his gaze to the fire. A little distractedly, he continues, "There is a child at the Guildhaus – my college, as it were – who spends his life running to and fro in the castle halls making beds, putting things away, sweeping the floors. His name is Bezel. He is the son of one of the cooks and he is paid for his labor, but truly he is an odd little sprite, for he works constantly at keeping everything in the Guildhaus in some imaginary order that only he comprehends. He is quite simple, and almost entirely possessed by his self-imposed tasks. Bezel has no friends of his own – we joke that he must keep company with the mice.

"I can't remember the reason for it, but Sinchi and I once asked the lad if the mice had a mouse god. He was forthright in his reply. 'Why, that is I,' he said!" Salbadore effects his impersonation of the boy by squeaking.

"'Hear, then! Do the mice have a heaven?'

"'Yes, Dorey,' said he.

"I asked the child, 'And what is it like?'"

"I will never remember his exact words, but Bezel made very sure that I would ken his meaning: 'It is very much like this place, Dorey, but it's very different. The mice cannot make it, so I shall do it for them. But . . . What cup shall I have to move? Which leak must I patch?'

"I was denser in those days and I declared to him, 'Oh, my little man! But slash the oat-sack open and the mice will find their heaven.' As luck would have it, he did slash open an oat-sack, and five sacks of grain, and ten of corn. No one was the wiser for a night or two, not until Bezel's mother discovered such a thorough-going infestation in the pantry that she fled from it screaming. It was good-ol Hungred who was made to exterminate every rodent in the room, soft-hearted soul that he is. It goes without saying that the foodstuffs were ruined.

"For all their folly, neither the witch of Steepend nor the master mechanic would have made my mistake, and I learned much from the poor lad Bezel, who was whipped. Mice and men are alike: we are short-lived and we are very good at making the best of what life is available. The sun goes up and the sun goes down, my friends, and because of this men, mice, and the rest of the world do not overgrow. We need not be fearful of the world and the shapes in it. I will not; nor will any right Lebenskrafter.

"We want to know, 'How shall we best tend to the world? How shall we coax its most magnificent bounties into the light?' I say: Bezel has already asked the correct question.

"What cup shall we move? Which leak shall be patched?"