Demiurge was celebrating, for he had heard news from the battlefield, a victory over the forces of darkness. He lifted a goblet of water to his pale lips, then leaned to smell the marijuana smoke rising from a silver censer in the middle of the table. Around it, making messes of the food, goblins and grimalkins played leapfrog and danced impudent and vulgar dances, rubbing their fat bellies. The priest laughed out loud.

There was a knock at the door, and instantly Demiurge’s face assumed an exaggerated look of guilt, like a child interrupted in some shameful act by a danger of discovery more apparent than real. It was a parody of an expression, and it mixed well with his laughter. He clapped his hands, and instantly all the gnomes and goblins stopped their sport and ran to hide themselves among his clothes, under his robes, next to his skin, so that all was in order when the door opened.

His disciple stood there, a colorless young man, almost invisible to his blind eyes. “Do you want something? I thought I heard you call.”

“No, I was just . . . amusing myself,” answered the priest, vestiges of laughter still on his face. “But will you sit with me, Corydon? If you have a minute.”

The disciple sat, and the old man continued eating. When he was finished he sat back and smiled, and let an amicable silence grow around them as he prepared a long sinsemillian cigar. He lit it and passed it to his disciple, and then he said, “My grandfather was a banker in this city. He had a relative who married young, according to the customs of the season, a pretty girl, yes, but very ignorant and naive. Very . . .

naive. And her mouth was very small, so small that the nuns of her shrine were worried, for her bridegroom was a strong man, and a very holy man too, matrimonially speaking. At least, he had the same predilections of our Beloved Lord, as we read in Angkhdt 181 through 189, 401, 606 through 610, to cite just a few. This man had only had ten children, rare for that hot weather, very rare. Though he easily could have had many more; he was so well made, it was rumored that his first wife had choked to death.” The priest laughed noiselessly, then continued. “It was just a rumor. Yet this lady’s mouth was very small, and it worried the good nuns, so that they made her practice constantly with plaster models and many kinds of fruit. Many kinds. They taught her to stretch her lips by repeating words like

‘how,’‘where,’‘why,’ questions which otherwise might not have suggested themselves to her . . . rather uninquisitive mind. ‘Who,’ of course, was counterproductive, and as for ‘what’ . . .” He laughed again, a noise like a dry cough. “Catastrophic.”

* * *

His lips curled back, the same expression on his face but without the laughter, Colonel Aspe sat in his tent. The battle was over, the enemy had withdrawn and he had let them go, though he had held them as if in the clutch of his hand. At the moment of victory he had been distracted. On the terrace of St.