Bone Lord 4, стр. 44

“As long as we are safe from the kraken,” he murmured nervously.

“Here, have a bite, a drink,” I said. “You’ll feel better. After that, I’d like to ask you a few more questions about Yeng.”

He thanked me and ate and drank—bread, water, and wine, our usual seafare—and, with a strange air of dutiful activity, he sat up straight on his bunk and looked up.

“I’m ready,” he said, “if you have any questions. I’ll tell you absolutely everything I know.”

“You said you and many other refugees were fleeing Yeng. Could you tell me more about why you felt compelled to cross this dangerous, wide ocean to escape your homeland?”

Zhenwan swallowed a mouthful of wine and then let out a long sigh. “It is a tale of tragedy, Lord Chauzec, of a land gone mad, of men in high positions selling their souls for greed and power. To simply think of it all rips my heart to shreds… but I will tell it to you. The troubles in Yeng began last year, with the arrival of a new religion.”

“A new god, you mean?”

“No, although there has been much talk of those. The new religion is one without gods.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“I know that it sounds strange to have a religion without a god, or gods,” Zhenwan said, “and we Yengish thought this too. But the High Priest and the Great Prophet both called for the followers of this religion to denounce all the gods.”

“The old gods, like Xayon, or the new god, the Lord of Light?” I asked.

“All of them, old and new,” he answered.

“What are they worshipping then?”

“The Spirit of Prosperity is their ‘deity,’ if you want to call it that. This so-called Spirit, though, is no god, not in the traditional sense of the word. The Spirit requires no prayers, no sacrifices, and there are no scriptures, and only a very simple doctrine. It sounds quite innocuous, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a threat from where I’m sitting,” I said.

“No it doesn’t, and that’s what made it so dangerous, so insidious. The Glorious Emperor of Yeng ignored this little cult, as he has ignored the many other cults which have, in the fertile spiritual soil of Yeng, sprung up fast like weeds but then withered away just as quickly. A few have persisted, like the Cult of the Dragon Goddess, but those select few never became mainstream, never attracted much attention.”

“The Cult of the Dragon Goddess... “

“Yes,” Zhenwan answered. “It’s a cult that’s centuries old, and despite much persecution and bans from the Glorious Emperor, it’s one that stubbornly refuses to die. The Dragon Goddess cultists, though, are harmless, even if they are a little crazy.”

“Can you tell me more about this Dragon Goddess?” I asked.

“I know a lot about the historical figure who later became known as the Dragon Goddess, but as to whether she ever was a real goddess, one can only speculate. The official position of the Glorious Emperor, and therefore by law all of Yeng, is that she is a myth, and the cultists dangerous insurrectionists who deserve nothing but scorn and persecution. However, once you reach Yeng and speak to a few people, you might find there is a lot more to the Cult of the Dragon Goddess than the Lotus Court wishes the people to believe.”

I was very interested in finding out more about this Cult of the Dragon Goddess. If anyone could lead me to the lost Dragon Gauntlet, it had to be them.

“Let us return to the topic of the Spirit of Prosperity,” Zhenwan said, “for this is what has truly sown the seeds of chaos, turmoil, and destruction all across Yeng. As I said, they were not thought to be a threat at all, not when they started out. A humble street magician started the whole thing, some say when he discovered an ancient artifact of great power.”

I couldn’t help sitting up a little straighter. “An artifact? Was it a gauntlet?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that he claimed the object gave him access to a different plane of existence, one in which he could perceive the fabric of our world as a vast mathematical design, written out in a set of complex equations. These equations, he said, allowed him to read all of history going back to the beginning of time but also allowed him to see all the way into the future to the end of time. In addition, he claimed that this object allowed him to perceive the spiritual forces which were at work behind the scenes of our world and that there were simply two of them; there were no gods, no deities, just these formless spirits.”

“Let me guess: Good and Evil?”

Zhenwan shook his head. “No, Prosperity and Decay. Hence the name of the cult he started: the Spirit of Prosperity. Civilization, he said, was always either in a period of prosperity or decay, and by strengthening the Spirit of Prosperity, we could allow our society to flourish. Also, with the mysterious object, he could track a person’s individual destiny by interpreting the equations that supposedly plotted out the past and future of the whole world.”

“And how are people supposed to ‘strengthen the Spirit of Prosperity’ if there are no gods to worship, no prayers to utter, and no sacrifices to be made?”

“Ah, now this is where things get interesting,” Zhenwan said with a strange smile. “He asked for donations of gold to build himself a tower. He also said that anyone who made these donations had to completely reject any other god or cult or religion they followed and believe only in the Spirit of Prosperity. If they did this, he said, they would become one of the Chosen, whose lives would change in magnificent ways for the better and whose donations in gold would be returned to them a hundredfold, after the tower was completed.”

“Sounds like just another