Lord Tophet

THE TALE OF MEERSH AND THE SUN GOD


Back in the early times, when only a single strand of spans graced Shadowbridge, Meersh the Bedeviler took a wife named Akonadi and settled upon Taprobane. Akonadi was a remarkable huntress who could stand in a boat, throw her spear, and skewer a whole school of fish at once. Meersh had married her out of lust, as he did everything, but especially because she kept him well fed. The old saying goes, “When you want to eat, marry a huntress.” And when you want trouble, marry Meersh.

Now, even in the earliest times, Meersh had difficulty staying in one place for very long. This is why he’s known far and wide across Shadowbridge. And even though she looked after him so well, did our Akonadi, he could not resist his peripatetic urges. Thus he went traveling while she remained on Taprobane, hunting and keeping house.

Meersh stayed away a long time, and Akonadi pined for him. She prayed to Edgeworld that he be returned safely to her, for even when they were furious with Meersh, women loved him, and Akonadi loved him the deepest of all, for most of his follies were still to come. Nevertheless, after many months had passed, she began to pray that somebody be delivered to her, whether it was Meersh or not. If any gods were paying her the slightest attention, they offered her no sign.

One day while she was fishing, she sailed farther out than ever before and came to an unfamiliar shoreline, an island she’d never visited. Its shore was rocky, precipitous, and hazardous. Before the sheer cliff face, many stones jutted out of the sea like teeth or tines. One in particular had been worn by the waves into a familiar shape. Upright in the shallows, it looked like Meersh himself. The play of shadow and light chiseled the stone into his recognizable visage, an illusion to be sure, but illusion, she decided, was better than nothing, and she took the rope from her spear and tied it around the shapely pillar. She tugged on the rope and, mighty warrior that she was, dislodged the stone. It tilted farther and farther until it wrenched loose. The rope pulled but she held it and, with the figure in tow behind her, steered a course for home. The wonder is that the weight of the stone didn’t pull her boat under, but by now you might have guessed that there was something unnatural in it all.

She tied up her boat at the base of her span, and then hauled in the stone figure. As it bobbed to the surface and rolled, Akonadi saw that the swirling waters around the island had endowed the figure with another prominent feature of her husband’s, and she was careful not to damage this as she dragged the stone up the many steps to her house. Neighbors saw her and clambered down the steps to help her with it. If they thought anything odd about the stone, they said nothing. They helped her carry it through her house and into her garden, where she stood it upright and let it dry in the sun. In the daylight in her garden, the stone looked less like Meersh, save for that smooth phallus that the water had shaped and polished, an object of ceaseless arousal. That was very like him.

That night, every time she walked past the garden, she found herself glancing at the stone figure. The twin moons cast their light so that once again the facets of it resembled her husband.

Finally, Akonadi’s longing broke free, flooding her thoughts, drowning her senses in need. She rushed to the stone, embraced it, kissed its cold hard lips, its face. She hiked up her skirt, wrapped her legs around it, and slowly, steadily, with immense pleasure, impaled herself upon its most prominent feature. She rode the stone figure for hours. Consciousness fell away and wonderful sensation consumed her. When at last she stepped into the dirt again, her legs would barely hold her up. It was as if her spirit had flown to some other place and returned. She stumbled off to bed, leaving the stone figure glistening in the moonlight. The essence of Akonadi was absorbed into it, permeated it, ran like divine blood through it.

Sated, Akonadi slept soundly. In the morning when she awoke, she was astonished to find that the gray stone figure lay beside her in her bed.

She sat up and scrabbled back the way a crab scurries across a beach. The stone rolled over. Its features were more distinct than before, the face real. A piece of the stone figure seemed to tear loose from the body. It stretched toward her—an arm. Fingers uncurled, invited her. Tentatively, she gave it her hand, and the stone man drew her to him, lifting her up on top of him. She impaled herself once more and began again the previous night’s lascivious ritual. How long it went on, Akonadi didn’t know or care. She succumbed to sensation, lost all thought, all awareness, and only later came to her senses lying beside the stone, now warmed like flesh by the sunlight, and she drifted away to sleep.

For weeks after that Akonadi and the stone man lived in bliss. Each day it seemed he was more alive. He attended to her every need, obeyed her every request, strong but always looking to her satisfaction. The only desire he did not satisfy was her eagerness for conversation. His mouth remained no more than an imperfection in the stone. He said nothing.

Some time later, word arrived from the neighboring span of Valdemir that a great convocation was going to take place to elect sun and moon gods. The span of Valdemir, then newly formed, did not have any, and in those early times Edgeworld was not so cleft from us as it is now—a span could elect its own gods.

The news meant little to Akonadi, but it traveled along the spiral and reached Meersh wherever he was, and he came running home, for the idea had come to him in a besotted epiphany that he might be able to have himself elected a god.

Entering the house at night, he discovered the great stone pillar lying in his place and feigned outrage. “I’m gone a few months and this is how you replace me?”

Akonadi answered, “Husband, you’ve been gone a year and more.”

He brushed aside her defense. “All the same, you replaced me! And with a brute. I’m not at all pleased.”

“You weren’t at all here,” she countered, growing angry. “For all I knew, you had found someone else and weren’t coming back.”

Meersh’s penis stood up and said to him, “She’s right, you know, and hardly far off the mark. Best you’d be contrite.”

Meersh, who had in fact dallied with too many to count, changed tack. “Well, I’m back for now so we must all get along, mustn’t we? What is this hard fellow’s name?”

“I don’t know. He never speaks.” She refrained from telling him how the stone man had come to life, but Penis whispered, “Look at the size of that!” Meersh knew what Penis was looking at.

“You probably just don’t know how to talk to him,” he said. “I have traveled so widely that I know how to speak to anybody. If you’d but asked I would have shown you.”

She marveled at his ability to deny his absence while proclaiming his skill, and only shook her head at the hopelessness of arguing with one for whom reality had no permanent shape.

Meersh unloaded his pack. As always it was full of games, and he drew these out and set them aside—boards and playing pieces, markers of various sorts. From the bottom of it he produced three multicolored, polished pebbles no bigger than his thumb. He held one to his ear and nodded to himself. He pressed that pebble to the stone figure’s face where its mouth should have been. Around the pebble a gap formed, spreading to either side of it. Abruptly, the stone man gave a sucking sound, drawing his first breath, the pebble disappeared into the gap, and Meersh snatched his fingers back before they vanished, too. “There, it’s really very simple,” he said.

“It’s really very simple,” parroted the rock man. His voice creaked and clacked—the sound of stone grinding on stone.

Then Meersh took the two remaining stones and pressed them with his thumbs into the hollows where the Stone Man’s eyes might have been. When he drew his thumbs away, the stones remained, like bright irises embedded in the deep sockets. The pebbles shifted as the stone figure looked from Meersh to Akonadi.

To her, Meersh said, “I know where you found him. There’s enchantment in those isles. I’ve seen it before.” He addressed the Stone Man then. “Hereafter, you can speak, and I’m going to make use of your newfound talent.”

“What do you mean, husband?” Akonadi asked.

“On Valdemir they need a sun god, and I need someone who will nominate me. It’s never a good idea to nominate yourself. It looks suspicious.” He patted the Stone Man’s shoulder.

“And why should he do that for you?” she asked.

“Because he’s in my debt. I’ve given him a voice and much improved his eyesight. Once I’m sun god, who knows what I might do for him? And for you, as well, wife. I’m sure I’ll be a benign sun god.” And he wandered off, contemplating how he would transform Taprobane once he had become a god, and how he would sleep when he wanted to and eat what he wanted to, and no one could gainsay him.

The Stone Man waited until Meersh was out of earshot, then said, “I will do this for him because I am in his debt, but I can tell you, no good will come of it.”

“None ever does,” she said, and was about to turn away when he touched her, a delicate touch for one so huge and seemingly brutish.

He whispered her name then, and the sound came from deep within him. It was thick with all that he felt, that until then he had not been able to express. All he said was “Akonadi,” but the syllables thrummed with the desire all women want to hear when their lover speaks their name, and she embraced him and remained there.



The Stone Man learned his lines. He knew what Meersh wanted and didn’t care. To him such cupidity meant nothing.

At the palace of Valdemir there were hundreds of petitioners on hand in the great hall. Most stood in a circle around the few seats, which had been taken early; and most stood with their backs to the center, as if they were interested in the architecture of the palace. It was impressive: Glass panels decorated the walls and ceiling of the hall. The eastern side, lined with slender columns, became an open balcony overlooking the ocean.

Beyond the crowd something sparkled brightly, and Meersh, magpie-like, was drawn to it. He cozened his way through the crowd. He misdirected some, and wheedled others, slipping through the gaps that appeared as people turned, until finally he could see it.

There in the center hung the robe of the sun god. It so dazzled Meersh’s eyes that they teared immediately. Penis complained, “That’s so bright it could blind a one-eyed mouse!”

Others beside him shielded their faces from its glare. Thus he understood why almost everyone had turned their backs to the center. Far easier to look upon was the robe of the moon, hanging like an afterimage beside it. Meersh saw those robes and knew he had to wear one of them.

Behind him, the Stone Man followed without a word. For his imposing figure the crowd parted immediately. He stood behind Meersh and with his pebble eyes looked upon the robe as if it gave off no light at all. Penis was laughing gleefully at the prospect of becoming a godhead, until the Stone Man’s pebble eyes fixed upon him, and then, unnerved, Penis shrank away.

The governor of Valdemir entered with a small retinue. He surveyed the crowd carefully as he strode before them to a marble rostrum. The chatter grew as he stepped up, and he waved his arms, calling out, “Friends. Neighbors. Please!” The conversations quieted. “I’m glad you have all come.” He glanced at an adviser, who nodded solemnly. “It’s as Edgeworld predicted—so large a body, a group, and somewhere in the midst of you our sun god. It comes to me now—”

Before he could finish, the Stone Man had stepped forward and said, “I would like to nominate my good friend, Meersh, who is certainly worthy of the title.” His voice, raised to a bellow, rumbled about the room. “He is widely traveled across these many spirals. He is widely known.”

“That’s a true statement,” someone interjected. “Widely known, and as widely sought!”

The crowd roared. Penis scolded Meersh, “You should have let me write this.”

Unfazed, the Stone Man continued, “Of all those here, he has seen the sun from more places, more mornings of the world.”

“And more often hanging from a windowsill!” called another member of the crowd. The laughter that followed drowned out everything the Stone Man tried to say. He was treated to slaps on the back, and even the governor and his staff joined in the merriment. Meersh clucked his tongue at outraged Penis. He had anticipated it all. In fact it was as he’d intended.

With the Stone Man drawing all attention, Meersh walked straight to the sun god’s robe. No one could look at it and none paid him the least mind as he shamelessly snatched the robe and placed it upon his shoulders. He strutted about, enjoying the sense of self-importance it conveyed. Let them laugh, he didn’t care. He was going to be divine.

Nobody realized what he had done immediately . . . until he burst into flames. “Aah!” he shouted, and ran in a circle. The nearest of the crowd lurched back from him. “Aah!” he shrieked, and then charged straight at the balcony. “Aah!” he screamed as he flung off the robe and leapt over the railing. “Aahhhhh!” The cry descended through octaves as he plunged from sight and into the sea.



Here Leodora turned the lamp from bright day to cool blue evening and eased the glittering glass-encrusted robe from the screen. She rested while the audience laughed and shouted and applauded. For many it was the first interlude they’d ever seen and they fell silent at the blue glow, where an experienced audience would have known to stretch their legs, to stroll about. The silence told her that they expected her to continue.

She worked quickly to make the changes in the puppet of Meersh, prepared her new props, then craned her neck and gave Diverus a nod.

A note of music took to the air behind her. She lifted Meersh to the bottom of the screen and let him show up just slightly, had him rise and fall, rise and fall, as if floating upon waves. Watching the screen from outside, Soter cleared his throat and continued the tale.


Many hours later, Meersh drew himself out of the ocean. His body was blackly charred; his hair stuck out like burned twigs. Most of his clothing had disintegrated. He had little hope of recouping his loss and would have been better served by slinking away, but Meersh never chose what would best serve him, only what appealed to his appetites.

He climbed the steps up the span to the balcony. His penis, burned as badly as the rest of him, muttered, “You should have asked me, I’d have told you not to touch that robe.”

Meersh’s doubtful response was drowned beneath a great cheer from overhead. A light pulsed from within the palace, its beams shooting out between the rails like a mist, spurring him to climb faster.

At the top he stepped through the rail to discover there in the hall a huge figure wrapped in the robe of the sun god, the robe that should have been his. The incandescence of it had flowed into the figure, whose shaved head glowed now like copper rather than stone. It was only when the figure turned to face him, and he saw the bright pebble eyes, that he recognized what had happened.

“Ah, friend Meersh,” the Stone Man said, his cheeks burnished and smooth. The crowd around him began to laugh at the burned, wild visage Meersh presented, but the Stone Man ignored their caterwauling as he came forward. “You survived, and that’s good. I was going to come resurrect you if you hadn’t, for you do fall under the aegis of the Sun, whether you know it or not.”

“I what?”

“I have to look out for you . . . or, rather, we do.” He turned and gestured back to the robe of the Moon, and who should be wearing it but Akonadi.

“What is this?” asked Meersh, although he’d already gleaned the answer.

“Oh, dear,” said Penis. “I could have told you this was bound to happen while you gallivanted about on the other spans. But would you listen?”

“You?” Meersh snarled at it. “You’re the one led me all about from one debauch to the next.”

“Akonadi has consented to be the Moon,” said the sun god. “I could think of no huntress as skilled.”

“I . . . how could you? You’d take my wife?”

“I’m surprised you remember that she is for all the attention you’ve paid her.”

Meersh glanced about, taking the time to work himself into a state of outrage. He would gain from these events yet. “So that’s how it is. Well, if you’re taking Akonadi with you, then I should be recompensed. It’s only fair.”

The sun god considered him a moment. “All right. Anything you like that I may give you.”

“One thing,” Meersh said, and he reached into the glowing robe, grabbing hold of the smooth copper phallus on the front of the sun god. “I’ll have this.”

The sun god didn’t even flinch. His pebble eyes bored into Meersh, who sensed that they saw all of his plan, and every bit of his scheming soul. “As you wish,” said the god.

“Wait!” cried Penis, the very last sound he made before he was encased. Meersh stared at himself, erect and polished. “Now we’re even.”

The sun god chuckled. “Very well, Meersh.”

Meersh slapped his new member. “This one will do as I say and not taunt me.” The Sun, the governor, and the crowd roared with laughter and taunts of “a suit of armor for his little knight.”

The Sun and Moon stepped hand in hand to the balcony, then opened wide their arms and blended with the evening. The shimmer of their robes hung afterward in the sky as a swath of stars.

Meersh went home. He left behind him a trail of charred bits. He was only mildly dejected by the loss of Akonadi. He had wanted her as he wanted everything he saw, and the wanting had more sway than the having. His spirits were further buoyed by the wine he’d stolen from the banquet in the sun god’s honor. On the way across the spans he strutted proudly to show off his phallus. “Hard as a rock and twice as shiny!” he proclaimed to any women foolish enough to venture near.

Later, seated on his bed, he admired it between drinks of wine. “Now,” he said to himself, “at least I won’t have to put up with the taunts of that evil Penis anymore!” He blew out the candle and settled back to sleep.

A moment after that the candle rekindled as if by magic. The top of the copper sheath rose up like a tiny helmet. Penis peeked around cautiously and, finding Meersh deep in slumber, slipped free of him and scurried off, tittering, in search of more trouble.

“. . . in search of more trouble,” Soter solemnly finished. Leodora turned the lamp to the solid side and the great, lensed screen went dark.

The house had fallen completely silent once more, but this time it lasted for only a moment.

The applause exploded, almost solid in its force. The stage and booth poles shook, jolting Diverus from his trance. He dropped the chimes he’d played and hunched against the rear corner.

As Soter had often described it—as it had happened so often for Bardsham—the audience began to chant not the puppeteer’s name, nor even Meersh’s, but rather: “Pe-nis! Pe-nis!” Even though Soter had recounted it to her dozens of times, Leodora found herself howling with joy at the daft sound of it. She stood to take her bow again, but found that she couldn’t move. A ghost hovered in the booth beside her, hearing the same cacophony from the audience; his hand rested with hers around the rods that controlled the puppet of Meersh. She could not see him clearly but only in the periphery, at the very edge of the visible, where she could just assemble an impression of his sparkling eyes, bright with pleasure, expressing such pride that her breath caught and the heat foretelling tears burned her cheeks. He had stood there—in the very spot—basked in this very afterglow of the performance. She retained no memory of his face, knowing it only from Soter’s descriptions, yet she’d no doubt who was smiling upon her.

She managed to whisper: “Father.”

A hand touched her opposite shoulder. She turned to find Diverus there, and in that instant the sound of the crowd, which had submerged below the strangeness, came roaring over her again.

The ghost of Bardsham was gone.

“Diverus,” she said.

He took a step back. “The audience. Soter.”

The words meant nothing. She couldn’t focus on that. She turned to the open undaya case into which she placed each puppet after its use, grabbed the ribbons at both ends of the top boxes, and lifted them away.

“Lea, what is the matter?” Diverus asked.

“Him. You saw him. You must have.” She handed the boxes to him, stacking them on his arms.

“Saw who?”

She tugged up the false bottom, holding her breath in anticipation . . . but his question penetrated. “You didn’t see?”

Diverus studied her face, back and forth from eye to eye. Then he peered past her, into the box, and her own gaze traveled after his, into the recess where the powdery gray Coral Man lay, silent, calcified. Lifeless.

“I thought—” She broke off. Now the tears came and she couldn’t explain why or what had happened. She wrapped her arms around Diverus, buried her face against his neck. His hands pressed tight to her back to hold her. He asked for no explanation. He let her weep.

The crowd thundered so loudly that the theater shook with their calls for “Jax!”


When Soter stuck his head in and saw them, he yelled, “Are you two insane—get out here!”

Diverus looked across at him, a face Soter had never seen before, one that was cold and protective and challenging. He understood then the nature of the embrace, if not its cause. Then he realized the Coral Man had been exposed and he reeled back. Whatever had happened, he could not venture in to find out its nature. He fled into the protective confines of his role, in which he had only to face the far less intimidating ire of an audience about to be disappointed in its demands. He waved his hands and hoped he could control them.