I no longer know, not any more. There was a time when I could look down on this world from this tower and see it all spread out before me. Back then I thought I knew what it would be like to be one of the gods, looking down on this world, on the people going about their lives. Not once, back then, did I ever wonder why the gods would have made us and set us down upon this world to go about our business.
Back down on the ground, as I went about my day in the temple below the tower, I would look up at the sky so far beyond the tower and wonder what the gods were doing. I knew, or at least, I thought I knew, that what I was doing would please them. After all, I am the High Priest and it is me they speak through to the people… or at least, they used to.
I don’t know what has changed. I am not sure if the gods are still there, and that they no longer speak to me. Or whether I imagined everything and there are no gods and they never spoke to me.
I can remember that first day so well. I remember the monk in the school falling to his knees in front of me as the voice came from somewhere both inside me and outside me at the same time, speaking the words of the gods.
Back then, as the monk himself swore, I did not know a single word of the High Language. I knew nothing of the language of the gods. Yet there I was, speaking the words of the books as though I’d been born speaking the language of the gods.
From that day on, for the rest of my life right up until a year ago today, the gods spoke to me, and through, me. But since that day, last year, they have been silent.
Still I do not know if it is me or them that are to blame.
[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]
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