MLIDEEN


Upon an evening of the forgotten years the gods were seated upon Mowrah
Nawut above Mlideen holding the avalanche in leash.

All in the Middle City stood the Temples of the city's priests, and
hither came all the people of Mlideen to bring them gifts, and there it
was the wont of the City's priests to carve them gods for Mlideen. For
in a room apart in the Temple of Eld in the midst of the temples that
stood in the Middle City of Mlideen there lay a book called the Book of
Beautiful Devices, writ in a language that no man may read and writ
long ago, telling how a man may make for himself gods that shall
neither rage nor seek revenge against a little people. And ever the
priests came forth from reading in the Book of Beautiful Devices and
ever they sought to make benignant gods, and all the gods that they
made were different from each other, only their eyes turned all upon
Mlideen.

But upon Mowrah Nawut for all of the forgotten years the gods had
waited and forborne until the people of Mlideen should have carven one
hundred gods. Never came lightnings from Mowrah Nawut crashing upon
Mlideen, nor blight on harvests nor pestilence in the city, only upon
Mowrah Nawut the gods sat and smiled. The people of Mlideen had said:
"Yoma is god." And the gods sat and smiled. And after the forgetting of
Yoma and the passing of years the people had said: "Zungari is god."
And the gods sat and smiled.

Then on the altar of Zungari a priest had set a figure squat, carven in