The Coming Of Wisdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘disastrously.’ ”
    “What does that mean, my lord?”
    “The god wouldn’t say. But Shonsu was driven to the temple by a demon. The priests’ exorcism failed. The Goddess took his soul—and left the demon. Or what Shonsu thought was a demon. It was me, Wallie Smith. Except I wasn’t a demon . . . ”
    He was not telling this very well, Wallie thought, but he was amused by the puzzled nods he was being given. Others might mock at so absurd a yarn, but Nnanji would want very much to believe. Nnanji had a ruinous case of hero worship. It had suffered an agonizing death the previous day, but then the Goddess had sent a miracle to support Her champion, and Nnanji’s adoration had sprung back to life again, stronger than ever. He would grow out of it, and Wallie could only hope that the education would not be too painful, nor too long delayed. No man could live up to Nnanji’s standards of heroic behavior.
    They turned together and began to wander landward again.
    “Another way of looking at it, I suppose, is as a string of beads—that’s one of the priests’ images. A soul is the string, the beads are the separate lives. In this case, the Goddess broke the rules. She untied the string and moved one of the beads.”
    Nnanji said, “But . . . ” and then fell silent.
    “No, I can’t explain it. The motives of gods are mysterious. Anyway, I am not Shonsu. I remember nothing of his life before I woke up in the pilgrim cottage with Jja tending me and old Honakura babbling about my doing a fast murder for him. Before that, as far as I recall, I was Wallie Smith.”
    He did not try to explain language, how he thought in English and spoke in the language of the People. Nnanji would not be able to comprehend the idea of more than one language, and Wallie himself did not know how the translation worked.
    “And you were not a swordsman in the other world, my lord?”
    Manager of a petrochemical plant? How did one explain that to an iron-age warrior in a preliterate world? Wallie sighed. “No, I wasn’t. Our crafts and ranks were different. As near as I can tell you, I was an apothecary of the Fifth.”
    Nnanji shuddered and bit his lip.
    But there had been Detective Inspector Smith, who would have been so horrified by his murdering, idol-worshiping, slave-owning son. “My father was a swordsman.”
    Nnanji sighed in relief. The Goddess was not as fickle as he had feared.
    “And you were a man of honor, my lord?”
    Yes, Wallie thought. He had been law-abiding, and a decent sort of guy, honest and conscientious. “I think so. I tried to be, as I try here. Some of our ways were different. I did my best, and I promised the god that I would do my best here also.”
    Nnanji managed a faint smile.
    “But when the reeve of the temple guard claimed that I was an imposter, he was correct. I did not know the salutes and responses. I did not know one end of a sword from the other.”
    Nnanji spluttered. “But—but you know the rituals, my lord! You are a great swordsman!”
    “That came later,” Wallie said, and went on to relate how he had met the demigod three times, how he had managed to find belief in the gods, and how he had then been given Shonsu’s skill, the legendary sword, the unknown mission. “The god gave me the ability to use a sword, he gave me the sutras. But he gave me none of Shonsu’s private memories at all, Nnanji. I don’t know who his parents were, or where he came from, or who taught him. On those things, I am still Wallie Smith.”
    “And you nave no parentmarks!”
    “I have one now.” He showed Nnanji the sword that had appeared on his right eyelid the previous night, the sign of a swordsman father. “It wasn’t there yesterday morning. I think it is a sort of joke by the little god, or perhaps a sign that he approves of what we did yesterday.”
    Nnanji said he liked the second possibility better. The idea that gods might play jokes did not appeal to him.
    They reached the