Snippet 2

“We meet again,” said Ishtier, smiling.
He raised his claw of a hand.  It only had four fingers.  Jame remembered when the priest had chewed off the fifth, in this very room, after he had been so ill advised as to touch the Book Bound in Pale Leather.  As he brought his maimed hand down now, the circle of dancers parted into eddies but never stopped moving.
“I thought you were dead,” said Jame.
“You hoped it, certainly.  Before I left to reclaim my rightful place here, I heard much about you, little to your credit.  The Women’s’ Halls cast you out, did they not?  Then you went to Tentir, of all places.  Truly, Randon standards have become lax in this degenerate age. Have they found you out yet?  If not, rest assured:  they soon will.  But before all such misadventures, there was Tai-tastigon.  Have you told your brother about your sojourn here?”
Jame had shared much with Torisen in these latter days, but not everything.  “He knows what he needs to know.”
“Ha.  Then you have lied by omission.”
“And you, about me, on purpose.”
His sunken eyes glittered.  With anger?  With amusement?  “Priests trust priests.”  He spread both hands.  His mouth lifted in a sneer.  “Behold my faithful followers.”
Titmouse twitched.
“Now that we are here,” said Jame, to distract the high priest, “what do you want with us?”
“Not with him.” Ishtier indicated Loogan with a contemptuous jerk of his pointed chin.  “With you.  Why, as a gift for Master Gerridon, of course.”
Sweet Trinity.
“He’s here?”
“Not yet, but he will come, soon, when he sees what I have to offer him.”
Through a haze of panic, Jame began to work this out. Here, perhaps, at last were the reasons for the city’s plight that had so far eluded her.
“You changed the flow of the temple’s power inward, rather than out.  Why?”
“This is how it always should have been, how it was on all previous worlds.  An old song told me that and an old singer, when he had been induced to perform.  The Priests’ College at Wilden is set up properly. Our temples here, for some reason, are not.  Think about it:  why should we feed power to such jokes as this amphibious godling and his pathetic priest?”
Here he paused to strike a spark in the fire-pit. Loogan squeaked as flames rose to lick the rounded bottom of the glass.  Gorgo goggled.
“The Chain of Creation was meant to serve us, not the other way around,” said Ishtier, ignoring the growing conflagration at his elbow even though it threatened his sleeve.  “We in turn were meant to do what we thought best with it. But that was before our god failed us, oh, so long ago.  To whom should we turn now if not to the shadows?”
Titmouse moved sideways, stumbling a bit over his big boots.  He tapped the shoulder of a fellow priest as if to wake him from a trance.  “Listen.”
“The Arrin-ken, those filthy cats, betrayed us in disowning Gerridon and naming his kinsman Glendar as our leader when we first arrived on this world.  I realized that when his descendent, Ganth Graylord, was driven into exile some thirty years ago.  Surely that could not have happened to a true High Lord; therefore, he was not one.”
“You only say that to justify abandoning him in the Haunted Lands.”
“He was not my lord!” 
It came out almost in a shriek.  More dancers faltered, as did the current in the room.   Ishtier caught himself with a gasp and resumed with a sickly smile meant to show how reasonable this all was, how dim-witted – nay, insane – anyone who questioned it.
He’s mad, thought Jame.
“That honor belongs to Gerridon, who saw the truth about our so-called god and led the way to freedom, to immortality.  Our ancestors were fools not to follow him.”
The water in the bowl began to stream.  Gorgo paddled in it anxiously.  Enough of the past.
“What are you trying to do here?”
Ishtier snorted.  A drop of snot gathered on the tip of his long nose and fell, unnoticed.
“Trying?  What can I do but succeed?  Why do you think all of the other worlds fell?”
Jame felt suddenly sick.  “Oh god.  We drained them.  They had native powers, native gods.  Like Mother Ragga.  Like the Falling Man and the rest of the Four, not to mention the Old Pantheon and the Ancient Ones.  We bled them until they couldn’t protect themselves or their worlds, just as you’re trying to do here in Tai-tastigon, now.  Wait.  All of that was long before Master Gerridon betrayed us.”
“Heh.  Did I say that this was a new thing?  The priests have always known that ours was the power to take, to use.”
“But not wisely.  World after world has fallen.”
“Was that our fault?  Our god betrayed us.  Therefore he … she … it was never meant to win.”
This was more than Jame had expected, more than she could accept.  Tai-tastigon had tried her faith before and nearly broken her.  Was it about to do so again?
“Never meant by whom?”
“Ah.” He threw up his hands dismissively, as if scattering birds of bone upon the air.  “Questions, questions.”
By now Titmouse had tapped perhaps a dozen of his colleagues and they had stumbling out of step, looking dazed.  Jame noted in passing that none of them belonged to the group who had taken her prisoner before.  Were those Ishtier’s supporters, who had followed him on his return here, and therefore not friends of Titmouse?
“No, no, no!” raged high priest.  “Dance, damn you, dance!  We are so close!”
To what?  Jame was still scrambling to make sense out of what she had already heard. “But … dead gods?  Souls?  Demons?”
Ishtier sneered.  “And some fools call you clever.  That was my doing, an extension of my earlier experiments with the Lower Town Monster and the Shadow Thief, both limited, mindless creatures. Incorporating this world’s so-called dead godlings has added the power of personality.  Of purpose.  Besides, as former Old Pantheon gods these demons have already shown their affinity to human sacrifice.  That makes them more deadly to this world than their New Pantheon predecessors, who for the most part only seek that weak thing, faith.”
“Now I’m confused.  Again.  What, then, does our own god require?”
The priest laughed, a shrill, jarring sound. “Faith, he says, but does he give us a choice?”
“Well, yes, if you want it.”
Ishtier waved this away.  “More trickery.”
“Loogan tells me that the real danger lies in taking human souls.  He says they glue together the world.”
Titmouse had circled closer, drawn by their debate. “If here,” he said, “what about down the Chain of Creation?  Is that why the previous worlds fell?”
A colleague drifted up to them, still mimicking the kantirs if not fully committed to them.  “We’ve never understood quite what Perimal Darkling is. What if it uses the souls that it overwhelms to propel it farther down the Chain?”
“To fresh food?” said Jame.  “I can see that. Perhaps when it dissolves the bonds, it creates the energy by which it lives.  It’s a predator, like the demons, who also break down barriers and feed on souls, and it’s always hungry.  Like Gerridon, for that matter.  Is he now also a demon?  What is a demon, anyway?  Dead gods needn’t be involved.  They weren’t with the Lower Town Monster.  What if feeding on souls is enough in itself to make one demonic?”
Ishtier stomped his foot.  “Questions, question, questions!  I go by what I see.  Demons please the Master.  They bring Rathillien closer to the Haunted Lands, to Perimal Darkling itself. Wherever they tread, the shadows rise. Life mixes with death, animate with inanimate.  What an army I bring to serve my lord!  What we do in Tai-tastigon’s strongest city we can surely accomplish anywhere on this world.  What more do you need to know?”
“Oh,” said several voices.  “A lot.”
“Shut up!”
This all had the sickening ring of truth, as far as Ishtier understood it.
“And these demons obey you?”
Ishtier showed the blood-shot whites of his eyes, the yellow of his teeth.  “Of course. I created them.”
“Heliot says that he means to take over this city, this world, solely to feed his appetite.  He’s come back as a demon, thanks to you.  He preys on human souls.  Then too, what about those of Heliot’s kind who are breeding freely?”
“What?  Impossible.”
“I saw it happen when a dead goddess, Kalissan, absorbed a human soul.  You didn’t sanction that, did you?”
“Of course not.  You lie.”
Jame felt, at last, a rising twinge of anger. Her fists clenched, nails pricking into palms.
“Those who know me best do not say such things.”