24.Economics of Yaotl
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IN the Place of the Dead, Yaotl sat up and scratched his nose reflectively. The Capricious Lord had put off the putrid appearance of Tal-Cavêpan. He now had the seeming which is his in the heaven called Tamo-Anchan: and as he sat opposite the black stone idol there was no difference between Yaotl and the image of Yaotl. At the god’s navel also shone a green jewel, his face was striped with yellow, and from his ears hung rings of gold and silver. Otherwise he wore nothing at all, but in one hand he carried arrows, and in his other hand was the scrying-stone with long feathers of three differing colors set about it.
“I will now,” said Yaotl, “reveal to you the third refrainment which was put upon you. It was that you must never obey my commands in anything.”
“That,” Coth replied, hotly, “is not a fair refrainment. It gives me no chance to treat you as you deserve. It is a refrainment which strikes directly at the doctrine of free will. It is a treacherous and vile refrainment! For if you will consider just for a moment,—you black and very dull-witted dancing-master!—evenyou will see that, by commanding any self-respecting person to do the exact contrary of your most absurd and tyrannical wishes—”
“I had considered that,” said Yaotl, dryly. “It was quite necessary I should retain some little protection for my real wishes in the lands over which I exercise divine power.” Now the Capricious Lord fell into a silence, out of which by and by bubbled a chuckle. “Well, you tricked me neatly enough, just now, when I was in train to make you the sole ruler over this country. And I was going to have a rather pleasant forenoon, too, with that Vemac! Still, I did make you an emperor: and I have kept in everything the oath of the Star Warriors. So the affair is concluded: I am released from my oath; and you may now return to that home of yours, where people have, in some unimaginable fashion, learned how to put up with you.”
“I shall not give over my searching of the West,” Coth answered, stubbornly, “until I have found my liege-lord, whom I intend to fetch back into Poictesme.”
“But that will never do, because we really must preserve hereabouts some sort of order and rule! And no man nor any deity can hope for actual ease in Tollan as long as you are blustering about like a bald-headed pink hornet.... So do you let me think the thought of the Most High Place of the Gods, and take counsel with the will of Teotex-Calli. About this Dom Manuel of yours, for instance—”
Yaotl sat quite still for a moment, thinking and looking into the scrying-stone. And his thought, which was the thought of the Most High Place of the Gods of Tollan, took form there very slowly as a gray smoke; and a little by a little this pallid smoke assumed the appearance of a tall gray man, clad all in silvery gray armor, and displaying upon his shield the silver emblem of Poictesme: and Coth knelt before his master, in Yaotl’s Place of the Dead.