Gelie had seen with his own eyes the sight of Nietzsche charging into the sky to challenge the god Enlil, and he had a powerful sense that Nietzsche had known all along he would come—had deliberately waited to appear at the very moment he arrived, wanting him to see it, as though through that scene he meant to tell him something.
Perhaps Nietzsche had wanted to prove something important, to seek some answer, but the madman had no way to speak the result aloud himself, and so he needed a bystander to discover the wonder in it. Why had Nietzsche chosen Gelie? Because no one was more suited than Gelie: he was the only grand divine artist who would be there.
Had Enlil really made this flood? Why would the god do such a thing? Carrying these questions that would not leave him, Gelie came into the empty main hall of Xuya Temple and knelt in prayer before Enlil's towering statue. "Great god, great Enlil, tell this believer of yours—why has this flood come to surround the city-state? Why has Duke Town vanished?"
As he prayed, Gelie was suddenly seized by a strange sensation, a pressure on both shoulders, and the statue at the center of the hall seemed to come to life, to be alive, looking down at him. Before today, beneath the gaze of that statue, Gelie would have felt only peace and good fortune, filled with a sense of glory. Now it was utterly different: he felt a terror that raised the hair on his neck, and he kept his grip tight on his staff even as he prayed, secretly rousing all his power and holding it ready.
Gelie's staff had a core of the finest century-old walnut, its grain neat and beautiful, and long years in his hand had given it a smooth, lustrous sheen. Set into its tip was an Eye of the Earth, so cleverly wrapped in the wood grain that no trace of it showed. It looked rather like an old man's walking stick, yet it was exceptionally noble and refined.
"My temple's priest, my devout believer, why do you rouse your power while you pray—do you bear me hostility?"
A voice like thunder suddenly entered Gelie's mind. It was Enlil speaking! Gelie bowed his head and prostrated himself there on the ground, the picture of reverence—but his hand did not loosen on the staff. In his soul he said to that voice, "Enlil, god of gods, was it you who destroyed Duke Town? Was it you who set the flood around Xuya? I want only the answer."
"It was the flood that destroyed Duke Town. It was the heavy rain that brought the flood. It was the warm, wet wind blowing in from the ocean meeting the air currents circling over the Assyrian highlands that caused the rain. It was my divine power that set the highland currents circling. It was my wrath that guided the lightning in the clouds." The god answered his question, his voice majestic and flat, almost entirely without feeling.
There seemed to be another meaning hidden in that answer. Gelie was silent for a while, struggling over something, and at last sighed and said, "The flood has already reached the walls of Xuya. O god, I have taken out every godstone in the city and laid a great formation with them. If you can preserve this city and make the disaster sweeping the city-state of Xuya recede, I will give them all to you as sacrifice."
A note of mockery entered Enlil's voice. "Sacrifice? This is the temple dedicated to me—and have I ever taken any wealth from this temple? Those who accept the people's offerings in my name, aren't they all you temple officials and priests, enjoying them yourselves? How laughable! Now you think of sacrifice. Do you imagine a god can be bought with the wealth of the mortal world?"
Gelie answered reverently, "Great Enlil, this is not a bribe but a prayer. If the flood must inevitably destroy the city of Xuya, then this great divine art formation will be the last strength defending the wall. This is not defiance of the god, but protection for the people here who make offerings to the god—the faith of tens of thousands of them, no matter where this flood came from."
No one in the city of Xuya understood why Gelie had taken out every godstone and arrayed them around the city wall to form a divine art formation. No one could fully unleash the theoretical power of such a formation, not even with every divine artist in the city gathered together. But Gelie asked only that the formation be laid out, merely able to rouse all the godstones and merge them into one with the formation.
He was gambling—gambling that even Enlil could not simply seize the godstones by force!
Above the flood-submerged Duke Town, Gelie had seen many godstones drawn up into the clouds by some strange power, and he guessed that the god might be using godstones to work a mighty divine art. The power of such an art was so vast that a single working might need many godstones to assist it, or to make up its shortfall.
The city-state of Xuya was the Hatti Kingdom's most important source of godstone. The temple's cellars held many godstones stored up over the years, and the vaults of the city-state's treasury held tax revenue belonging to the kingdom as well; Gelie brought it all out. He meant to negotiate with the god: if the god's power could make the flood recede at once, then let the god take these godstones.
If it could not, then the great formation would not merely protect the wall—godstones in a roused state could not be taken by another's mana either. Not even a god could do that. A godstone could be set into a staff, and one who defeated a divine artist could take his staff; but when two divine artists fought with divine arts, neither could simply pluck the godstone from the other's staff, for it was one with the divine artist's power.
Enlil suddenly fell silent. Gelie lay prostrate and waited quietly, and only after a long while did he hear the god's voice again, carrying laughter that echoed in the void. "Poor priest, I wonder how you will face the faith in your heart? You do not understand gods. The people here revere and worship me; I will not take those godstones on the wall—that is wealth the whole city-state accumulated over many years. If I did, everyone would resent me and turn away from me. Would you have me tear down the dignity of my own temple?"
"But what of Duke Town? No one survived the flood!" Gelie cried out in his soul.
"The flood is my blessing upon the city-state of Xuya! I will hear the cheers of the multitude; my temple will be flooded with tides of grateful believers, and soon enough you will understand all of this. ...As for Duke Town, you want to ask why I did not save them in the flood? Why should I save them? ...How absurd, that I should explain such a tedious question to a mortal like you!"
As Enlil's voice spoke, a message suddenly appeared in Gelie's mind, full of sounds and images: the chain of tragedies that had unfolded in Duke Town.
"Priest, do you see? They have already betrayed the guardian god's decree; the goddess Muyun has no reason to keep that place any longer, and so I will bless that land anew. The flood is my blessing—but people cannot demand only to enjoy the god's blessings. There is no need for me to save sinners in a flood." Enlil's voice came again, like a verdict no one could resist.
Gelie was struck dumb for a long while, then struggled out one more question: "But the whole of Duke Town has been destroyed. There must be innocent people in it."
Enlil's voice turned contemptuous. "When sin has spread to every corner, the flood does not sort out who is innocent. There is no need for me to save sin in a flood, and no need to rescue those you call innocent. In my eyes they are all of the one clan of Duke Town, and they have betrayed the protection of the decree."
The brief life of mortals ends in death no matter what; only the manner differs. Do not forget that they are all members of Duke Town, each with a responsibility to bear. They should blame their own clansmen for the disaster they brought, and blame themselves as well—what did they do to make it right? Since in the end it could not be made right, then what perished was an entire boat.
The god's words were not easy to understand. Enlil had actually called the flood his blessing, and said that Duke Town did not deserve to be saved from disaster. Gelie finally raised his head and asked, "Great god, did you bring this flood?"
Enlil said coldly, "I will not answer such foolish, ignorant questions again!"
Gelie asked again, "Then what is to become of the city of Xuya?"
Enlil: "That is for you to ask—you and your own people!" With that he made no further sound. Gelie felt the pressure of the statue's gaze disappear—the god had gone.
Gelie stayed silent in the temple for a long while, carefully savoring the god's words, then carefully recalling the scene of Nietzsche charging into the sky, turning over every detail he had seen in the flood. What had Nietzsche wanted to tell him? What did Enlil mean? He sat in meditation alone all night, and when a thread of light showed on the far horizon, something abruptly became clear to him.
Enlil had set off only a great rain—from what Gelie had seen with his own eyes, perhaps using no more than the simplest air divine art—and yet it had carried divine power that was near boundless. Enlil had used that power to change the direction of the currents circling over the Assyrian highlands, making them clash with the warm, wet wind blowing in off the ocean, and so set off the unbroken torrential rain.
The god above the clouds had manipulated nothing but wind and lightning. Once the high-altitude currents clashed and formed a natural vortex, there was no need for him to use divine power any longer; the torrential rain would simply fall until it ended on its own. To stop the rain would consume far greater divine power than to start it. Enlil had only started it, with no intention of spending greater power to stop it.
In the silent temple Gelie's body trembled as though he were ill. He looked terribly cold, yet his face was flushed bright red. As chief priest of the Temple of Enlil in the city-state of Xuya, a grand divine artist who had sworn an oath before the god, facing all of this he had only three choices—
The first was to devoutly proclaim Enlil's miracle, to believe without a flicker of doubt that this was a blessing on the city-state of Xuya, washing away the sins of Duke Town. As for what Enlil meant by calling a disaster a blessing, Gelie had already guessed a little of it. If he took this path, he would still be the Gelie he had been, nothing changed. But he could not forget the sight of the old madman charging into the sky; that scene had been branded deep into his soul.
The second was to betray Enlil. That would go against his oath and his faith; and once his belief wavered, his achievements in divine arts would likely suffer a heavy blow—he might even lose his power altogether.
The third was the hardest of all: he must look at all of it calmly and rationally, review every experience of his life and of the other people he had met, keep his heart unconfused, and reach a higher state of transcendence. Gelie found himself thinking, for no reason, of the records in the divine art texts. The final trial a divine artist faced in seeking the ultimate ninth-rank achievement—he had never been able to understand it. Could this be what it meant? It was too hard; it would simply swallow the soul!
No one knew how Gelie passed that night in the temple, or how he prayed to the god. When he came out after daybreak, people found that this honored grand divine artist wore an indescribable haggardness, and that a profound helplessness lurked in his eyes.
"The god has given a decree: this is a trial the city-state faces, and after the flood there will be blessings. But whether we can greet those blessings rests entirely with us. Do not ask what the god has granted—come up onto the wall with me and hold back this flood. This is our resistance!" That was what Gelie said to everyone, and then he took up his staff and climbed the gate tower.
When Gelie came again to the wall, the water had already climbed more than two men's height up it, and was still slowly rising. Beyond stretched a vast, strangely clean emptiness; the city of Xuya was like a great lone boat protected by its wall in the flood. The wall looked solid, but the water outside stood higher than the ground within, and it would bear an ever greater lateral pressure—a wall built in this arid land was no dike, after all.
Weak stretches of the wall might not bear that pressure, and as the water soaked it longer and longer and the pressure difference from the water level grew greater and greater, some sections would be steeped soft and loose and would collapse or leak. Here the great divine art formation did its work, binding the whole ring of wall into a single body: either it would all come down, or it would hold intact to the end.
Gelie walked slowly around the city-state, the Eye of the Earth in his staff rousing divine power to reinforce each stretch of wall with the simplest and also most useful of earth elemental divine arts. For the moment he thought of nothing else, nor could he have; he could consider only two things: would the flood finally rise high enough to overtop the lowest point of the wall, and could the flood recede before his strength ran out?
The grand divine artist had not rested for days and nights. His slow steps around the city never stopped; his face was solemn and devout, yet there always seemed to be a glint of something wet in his eyes, and from time to time he raised his gaze to the eastern sky.
In the east where Gelie gazed, amid the deep mountains and high plateaus around the Yudi River valley, in the tribe of the cave-dwelling wild folk, a "god" was weeping aloud as well. He was of course no true god like Enlil, but the tribe looked on him as a "messenger of the gods," and some simply addressed him in reverence as "the god Amon."
The sound of bitter wailing came out of the great mountain cave where a fire burned. Chief Link and the tribespeople looked at one another, and none dared go in and disturb him. Only Schrödinger crouched at the mouth of the cave, watching Amon with a strange look of pity.