Nawut above Mlideen holding the avalanche¹ in leash².

 

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 wont³ 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, writ⁴ 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 forth⁵ 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 blight⁶ on harvests nor pestilence⁷ 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 squat⁸, carven in purple agate⁹, saying: "Yazun is god." Still the gods sat and smiled.

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