Finder's Bane - Kate Novak [101]
"So could Yen-Wang-Yeh," Jedidiah replied. "But there is nothing in the Realms he desires. All the gods of the Kara-Tur, even the evil and chaotic ones, have a place in the Celestial Bureaucracy and duties to perform. To step out of one's place, to fail in one's duty, would bring dishonor."
"What is dishonor when one has power?" Walinda declared.
"Of course," Jedidiah replied, "if your master had Yen-Wang-Yeh's position and his honor wasn't enough to keep him performing his assigned duties, it would all be over at the end of the year. The Celestial Emperor would call on him to make his report, judge him bereft of his duties, and boot him out. Someone else would be assigned to his position. Your master would be without a job… Well, here we are."
They'd reached the iron gate in the wall surrounding the palace. The gate stood wide open, but standing in the gateway, serving as guards, were a number of fearsome, bull-headed creatures that stood over eight feet tall. Some were orange, some gray, some purple. They wore polished armor and ornate robes and were armed with swords and spears.
"Those are the go-zu-oni," Jedidiah whispered. "Don't ever get them mad at you."
The go-zu-oni guards addressed each arrival in a tongue Joel had never heard and pointed out where they should go. One of the bull-headed creatures stepped in front of Jedidiah and addressed him in short bursts in the same foreign tongue.
Jedidiah bowed low and held out a strip of copper engraved with symbols and characters Joel could not identify.
The go-zu-oni took the strip of metal, examined it briefly, and said something else to Jedidiah, then handed back the strip of metal.
Jedidiah bowed again, then instructed the others, "Follow me."
They stepped through the gate. A few paces inside, beyond the press of the crowd, Jedidiah halted. His companions stopped beside him.
"Lo," Jedidiah said, gesturing with his arm. "The Palace of Judgement."
Joel looked at the scene that lay before them. The palace was the size of a city, with thousands of buildings. Unlike a typical city, everything was orderly. Every building was constructed of red brick and stone, and the people moving between the buildings did so in an orderly fashion. There was bustle, but no pushing or shoving or disturbances. There were throngs of the dead in the entry courtyard waiting to enter different buildings, guarded by the go-zu-oni, yet the spacious courtyard still seemed almost empty. Joel guessed the courtyard could have held more than a few armies. Officials dressed in brightly colored robes carried armfuls of scrolls from building to building. Joel spotted a party of tanar'ri and another of baatezu arguing heatedly, but not fighting. A creature like an elephant standing on its hind legs stood addressing a pair of foxes, who also stood on their hind legs. Everything about the scene suggested duty and harmony. Joel stood in silent awe.
"Have we stopped for a reason?" Walinda asked.
Jedidiah chuckled. "No. No reason. Let's go, Joel." The older priest led them across the courtyard to the far right. They climbed a stair, passed through the archway of a building, and came out beneath an archway on the other side. Then they descended another set of stairs into a smaller courtyard. There, across the courtyard, stood a building with four staircases leading up to four arched doorways. Intelligent beings stood in four separate lines leading from the doorways, down the stairs, and out into the courtyard. Most of the beings were human, but there were many nonhumans as well, from centaurlike creatures with ram's horns on their heads to odd creatures that looked like metallic boxes with legs. Some of the beings chatted amicably with others in line, some slouched or griped impatiently, while