We returned to Hiltar in triumph, if the word can be stretched to encompass four men disembarking from a crowded ship in the dead of night. An observer might, I suppose, have noted that one of the four men was somewhat taller than the others and that he was armed with a spear, but there are generally plenty of tall men armed with spears around in ports such as this. Security is a necessity, I am told, for men who make their living buying and selling across the sea.

I wondered if any of them were able to sense some kind of power emanating from the spear. Surely a mythical weapon that could slay gods had to have some manner of aura visible to the sensitive, and yet we passed through the crowd unaccosted. Unless perhaps the sages among them were also sympathetic to Līwam’s cause, which is a possibility I cannot rule out.

“Keep your eyes open, by Ām!” Mimālal said, rather too loudly, in my ear. “He won’t let us get close to him without a fight, if he knows what we’re carrying.”

“But does he, though?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter! He knows who Līwam is! If Līwam’s come to Hiltar, that’s trouble for him!”

It was the priests who came to us first, as I should have expected. They surrounded us again and the look in their eyes was harder than it was last time. It didn’t seem likely to me that they were planning to make any jokes.

“Tell us if you can,” one of the priests chanted. “Where did Īfis make man?” None of us were, I think, in the mood to be tested on our knowledge of the no doubt arcane and complicated theology of the Dūrī, so after a brief awkward silence, the priest answered his own question. “In his mother’s womb, of course! If you don’t know that, you’re a child indeed!”

“You’re still joking, even now?” I asked, unable to help myself. They all laughed.

“We’re trying to wake you up, trying to get you to see! He’ll rise up against you. He’ll crush you and devour you, just as he did your parents.”

“There was a time, long ago, when Dūrī was free from him,” said Līwam calmly. “That was what my parents believed, that is what they taught me, and that is why he murdered them.”

“You’re nothing more than his bad dream,” whispered another one of the priests, who had such a striking appearance that I can still remember it as I write. He was so insubstantial in his flesh that his clothes seemed to be wrapped around a stick, and it seemed to me that if even the slightest wind blew up from the ocean, it would carry him away. I was strongly tempted to pick him up and see if he had any weight to him at all, but that seemed unwise. Most of his companions were much broader than he. “He is troubled as he sleeps, but all he has to do his wink his eye and the bad dream will fade away as all dreams do.”

“Put it to the test, then. Come and see what happens, and if you’re right, watch me perish and know the power of your Crocodile.”

I had not initially assumed that the insubstantial priest would be the leader of this band, but the others all seemed to be looking to him for a response. He chuckled and held out his hands to Līwam. “I would never do anything to stop you. Go and die, if you want. The Crocodile is always hungry.” His words trailed off, as apparently he lacked even the energy to finish his sentence.

Līwam took the insubstantial priest’s hands in his own. “I don’t think it will be I who dies,” he said. “I think I’m going to live, and so are all of you. The shadow is passing away.”

He continued up towards the pool. We trailed after him, and the band of priests trailed after us, making altogether a fairly long and wavering trail. The next group of priests that met us was led by Luāra‘ himself, which I had expected. I had expected him, moreover, to rant and rave, to call down condemnations from heaven upon us. Well, not heaven exactly, I suppose, given what little I knew of Dūrī theology and mythology. It was the Parako who were more apt to do that. But I’m wandering from my narrative.

The important point is that Luāra‘ was neither ranting nor raving, but rather he was pleading with Līwam. I wasn’t close enough to hear the first part of what he said, but I did hear him say, “We were nothing more than sorcerers once, before the Crocodile came north to us. We dared to use the names of the gods for our own dirty, mundane, ends! Please! Once he is gone, we’ll have to go back to that again, or else we’ll have nothing.”

“You’ll have nothing?” Līwam asked in a quiet voice. “You’ll have your power. You’ll have your rations. You’ll have your homes. You’ll have your lives, which is more than his victims can say. If you want to stop me, then draw your sword and fight me. If not, then stand aside.”

Luāra‘’s fingers fumbled at his side, but it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see he was not, in fact, wearing a sword. He threw himself to the ground, where he pulled up a handful of mud and threw it at Līwam. Despite his obvious effort, however, the mud only hit Līwam’s foot, and he ignored it as he walked on.

Mimālal stopped to kneel and face Luāra‘. “Where is all your power now, by Ħūsir? Was it all a lie? Were you just fools and jokers like me?”

Luāra‘ laughed. “I am nothing,” he said. “The Crocodile is everything. What can I do to stop your bold hero that the Crocodile can’t? Līwam knows that as well as I. But I can tell you a last joke, if you like, before the Crocodile ends this. A man fell asleep and dreamed that he was married to a beautiful woman. Don’t go, I promise it’s a short joke, and you’ll have time to catch up to your friend.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But Mimālal was already walking away. Despite our unpleasant first encounter, I felt sorry for Luāra‘ lying in the dirt like he was, so I told him he could finish his joke for me, as the other priests shuffled by.

“At first the man was delighted in his dream-wife, but after a while she began to treat him differently, treating him with more and more scorn until they fought, throwing harsh words back and forth. ‘All right!’ she said at last. ‘This may all be a dream, but when you wake up, you won’t have anyone sleeping by your side. Your bed will be as cold as the night air.’

“‘That’s all very well,’ he replied, ‘but where will you be?’” I suppose there was a kind of humor to that. I laughed politely, then hurried after Līwam and Mimālal.

I was not especially prepared for the sight that greeted me at the pool. There were several priests there, ten or so, which was not surprising. What was both surprising and appalling was the state of their hands, or rather, the lack of their hands. They had mutilated themselves, and stood around the pool with the stumps of their wrists raised to the night sky, blood spurting and running down their arms.

They spoke in voices that were barely human, but full of grating agony. From the pain of their wounds, no doubt, but as I listened it seemed to me almost is if I was listening not to men but to spirits, or to one spirit speaking through multiple mouths. It even took my Bird a few seconds to catch on to their words, or its words.

“You are impudent. You do not even understand how impudent you are. Does the worm rise up against the hippopotamus? Does the dust mote rise up against the sun himself? And they are mightier than you, worm and dust mote alike. Hear the word of the Crocodile! The time to turn back is nearly past. Once the door has closed, you will be shut inside with death.”

“Come forth and face me,” said Līwam, raising his spear above his head, “you bold fish who dared to swallow the sun.”

“I am the Crocodile who made Dūrī.”

“You stole Dūrī. You devoured the Old King and blotted out his name, because you were a murderer from the start. Come forth and face me!”

At this point I began to wonder, probably somewhat late, if it wouldn’t be safer for me to be somewhere else. Unfortunately, there were people crowded in on every side of me.

“I know your power,” Līwam went on to say. “I know its limits. You lost something, didn’t you, in those ancient wars between god and magician that blighted the desert? You work through your priests but lurk in your pool. Why is it that you never come out? Even the beasts from whom you took your form and name are terrifying when they take to the land.”

“I have more hands than you can know.”

At that moment I was knocked down from behind and I spent some time getting back to my feet and figuring out had happened. It took some time, as people were running all around me and I was genuinely afraid of being trampled. But I succeeded, suffering only a crushed finger, which stung but was not serious. Not that my finger is especially important given the events that were occurring at the edge of the pool.

A crowd of the bystanders had rushed forward to drive Līwam back towards the water, but he kept his hands firmly on the spear and his feet firmly on dry land. Mimālal made his way through the crowd to my side, where he said in my ear, “Now it’s my turn! I’m Līwam’s errand boy, I admit, but I haven’t been lazy. By Īfī, I haven’t!”

He began to speak to the crowd in what I feared was a foolish attempt to sway them with reason. While I perhaps was biased by my recent panic and the stinging in my finger, I doubted it would be any easier to sway this crowd than it would be the crowd of Ikkësa warriors at the gates of Tīuame.

One of the bloody priests collapsed near me and I tried to do what I could for him, but I am no surgeon and it wasn’t long before he was dead, the Crocodile’s first victim that day. At least, he was the first that I saw. There were signs that others had plunged into the water, trails of blood all leading to an enormous shadow.

I turned away with a shudder, and then saw to my relief that the crowd was backing away from us. I asked Mimālal later what he had said to deter them. He only shook his head and asked me if I had many friends in Edazzo. “I think so,” I said.

“Then you’ll understand. Līwam’s perfectly happy to sit in his hut in the marsh, and it suits him! But I prefer to spend my time in the city, by Palātu! I know many of these people, I’ve eaten in their homes and exchanged gifts with them. I think I pull more weight with them than that demon in the pool!”

At the time it only seemed to me like a miracle, or a happy dream. But the next moment I felt swallowed up by a nightmare (that seems to be the proper verb somehow) as the shadow rose up out of the water. It seemed larger than the pool that had contained it, a great black writhing shape. My vision clouded over and I saw red streaks in the corners of my eyes. It was enough to send me to my knees, but Līwam remained standing, and he raised the spear above his head. The shadow was taking clearer form, but I cannot describe it. I saw scales and claws and unblinking eyes and then, in an instant, all that was gone. Līwam jumped back, the point of his spear drawing trails of a dark fog behind it. The Crocodile was larger than ever, blocking out the sky, but there was a gap in the cloud through which I could see a single star.

The star brightened for a flash, then vanished entirely, as the wind picked up and howled past my ear down to the sea. The black shape above faded and was gone, and I could see the stars again. The next sound I heard was that of Luāra‘ weeping loudly.

I do feel sorry for Luāra‘. He has not spoken since then, apart from a few words with his daughters, who have come to look after him. I think they’ll bring him back to Turīsū soon. As for the other priests of Hiltar, they have gone various ways, some to Turīsū, some to Bidīnām or other cities of Dūrī, some to the realm of the dead. A few remain to try and prop up the cult of the Crocodile with lies and deceptions. A few say they want to make Līwam king, which only goes to show something or other about the nature of power, as my old tutors were fond of saying, though I believe they were more specific.

But I have no intention of staying to see what became of the Dūrī kingdom. Iddan and I are on our way to the lands of the Maɣarun in the east, whoever they might be, because Rosédan is there. Līwam spoke to me one last time yesterday, thanking me for my help. “If you had not come to Dūrī,” he said, “none of these great things would have been accomplished.”

“I didn’t come of my own will,” I reminded him. He had many things to deal with at the moment and it was no surprise that he’d forget details like that.

“It’s still true, isn’t it?” Līwam asked me, and I supposed this was technically true. “May you too accomplish what you seek to do. May the blessings of the true gods be with you.”

I do not often speak of the Flame to the people of this part of the world, but something told me that it would be appropriate now. “And may the blessings of the Flame burn within you.”