Book 08 - Petty Pewter Gods Read Online Free PDF

remote past, from an age when the temporal
power reigned supreme and was totally paranoid about the worldly
ambitions of priesthoods. Those old emperors had wanted every
priest where he could be watched easily—and could be round
easily at massacre time.
    I looked around. Gods? Right.
    “You know how it works on the Street? It’s all
marketing. If you win a good following, you migrate west to temples
and cathedrals nearer the Hill. If you lose market share, you slide
downhill eastward, toward the river. For three decades we have hung
on by our nails, in the last temple to the east, while the Shayir
holed up across the Street and one place west, with a monotheistic
god named Scubs in the status niche between us. But Scubs won a
family of converts last month. And immigrants from the Cantard have
imported a god named Antitibet who has enough followers to seize a
place a third of the way to the west. Which means a lot of
shuffling around is due. And which also means that either we or the
Shayir will have to leave the Street.”
    Yeah. I understood that. I knew how things worked in the Dream
Quarter. I didn’t have a clue why, or how, the priests worked
it all out amongst themselves, but the results were evident.
    Farthest west are the Chattaree cathedral of the Church and the
Orthodox compound. These are feuding cousin religions that, with
their various schismatic offspring, claim the majority of
TunFaire’s believers. These are rich and powerful cults.
    And at the east end are dozens of cults like this one
represented here, gods and pantheons known only to a handful of
faithful. At that end of the street the temples are really nothing
but worn-out storefronts.
    I thought I understood the situation. Which did not mean I
believed these characters were actual gods and goddesses.
Didn’t mean I didn’t believe, either. You ask me, the
evidence in the god business is always thin and, in most cases,
thoroughly cooked by priests who survive by charging admission to
heavenly attention. But this is TunFaire, the wonderful city where
any damned thing can happen.
    “You are a skeptic,” Magodor observed. She looked
very pretty right then.
    I confessed with a nod. I did not confide my own beliefs, or the
lack thereof.
    Wisps of smoke trailed from the big guy’s nostrils. He was
up to eighteen feet tall. If he got any more perturbed he would run
out of headroom.
    “We will explore your thinking another time. For the
moment let’s just say that we Godoroth are in a situation
both simple and desperate. We or the Shayir are going to leave the
Street. For us that would mean oblivion. The Street has a power all
its own, a manna that helps sustain us. Off the Street we would be
little more than wraiths, and that only transiently.”
    Maybe. The ugly boys looked as solid and eternal as basalt.
    She reiterated, in case her point had gone over my head the past
several times: “If we’re forced off the Street we are
done, Mr. Garrett. Lost. Forgotten.”
    I’m not often accused of thinking before I open my big
yap. I could not be convicted this time, either. “What
actually does happen to gods who run out their string? You have
gods or your own to report to, stand on the scales, be judged and
all?”
    Rumble-rumble.
A crown of little thunderheads rode the
big guy’s head now. He was over twenty feet tall. Too tall
for the cellar, even sitting down. He was bent over, glaring at me
ferociously. I got the impression that, despite being the boss, he
was not too bright.
    Isn’t that a lovely notion? Even in the supernatural world
it isn’t necessarily the cream that rises to the top.
    Lack of brilliance was a suspicion I had entertained concerning
numerous gods. Mostly their myths consist of vicious behaviors
toward one another and their worshippers, spiced up with lots of
adultery, incest, bestiality, parricide, and whatnot.
    “Some just fade till even the ghost is gone. Others become
mortals, prey for time and the worm.” I cannot say