And they said: “If no help cometh from
Yarni Zai then is there no help but from our own strength
and might, and we be Yarnith’s gods with the
saving of Yarnith burning within us or its doom according
to our desire.”
And some more the Famine slew, but others raised their
hands saying: “These be the hands of gods,”
and drave the Famine back till he went from the houses
of men and out among the cattle, and still the men
of Yarnith pursued him, till above the heat of the
fight came the million whispers of rain heard faintly
far off towards evening. Then the Famine fled
away howling back to the mountains and over the mountains’
crests, and became no more than a thing that is told
in Yarnith’s legends.
A thousand years have passed across the graves of
those that fell in Yarnith by the Famine. But
the men of Yarnith still pray to Yarni Zai, carved
by men’s hands in the likeness of a man, for
they say—“It may be that the prayers
we offer to Yarni Zai may roll upwards from his image
as do the mists at dawn, and somewhere find at last
the other gods or that God who sits behind the others
of whom our prophets know not.”
Of the great wars of the Three Islands are many histories
writ and of how the heroes of the olden time one by
one were slain, but nought is told of the days before
the olden time, or ever the people of the isles went
forth to war, when each in his own land tended cattle
or sheep, and listless peace obscured those isles
in the days before the olden time. For then the
people of the Islands played like children about the
feet of Chance and had no gods and went not forth to
war. But sailors, cast by strange winds upon
those shores which they named the Prosperous Isles,
and finding a happy people which had no gods, told
how they should be happier still and know the gods
and fight for the honour of the gods and leave their
names writ large in histories and at the last die
proclaiming the names of the gods. And the people
of the islands met and said:
“The beasts we know, but lo! these sailors tell
of things beyond that know us as we know the beasts
and use us for their pleasure as we use the beasts,
but yet are apt to answer idle prayer flung up at evening
near the hearth, when a man returneth from the ploughing
of the fields. Shall we now seek these gods?”
And some said:
“We are lords of the Three Islands and have
none to trouble us, and while we live we find prosperity,
and when we die our bones have ease in the quiet.
Let us not therefore seek those who may loom greater
than we do in the Islands Three or haply harry our
bones when we be dead.”
But others said:
“The prayers that a man mutters, when the drought
hath come and all the cattle die, go up unheeded to
the heedless clouds, and if somewhere there be those
that garner prayer let us send men to seek them and
to say: ’There be men in the Isles called
Three, or sometimes named by sailors the Prosperous
Isles (and they be in the Central Sea), who ofttimes
pray, and it hath been told us that ye love the worship
of men, and for it answer prayer, and we be travellers
from the Islands Three.’”
