The
Zurb temple started losing worshipers, particularly the families of
the men who didn't make it back from Jorm.
"If that had been all there'd been to it, though, it still wouldn't
have hurt the mining operations, and we could have got by. But what
really tore it was when the rabbits started to die." Stranor Sleth
picked up a cigar from his desk and bit the end, spitting it out
disgustedly. "Tularemia, of course," he said, touching his lighter to
the tip. "When that hit, they started going over to Muz-Azin in
droves, not only at Zurb but all over the Six Kingdoms. You ought to
have seen the house we had for Sunset Sacrifice, this evening! About
two hundred, and we used to get two thousand. It used to be all two
men could do to lift the offering box at the door, afterward, and all
the money we took in tonight I could put in one pocket!" The high
priest used language that would have been considered unclerical even
among the Hulguns.
Verkan Vall nodded. Even without the quickie hypno-mech he had taken
for this sector, he knew that the rabbit was domesticated among the
Proto-Aryan Hulguns and was their chief meat animal. Hulgun rabbits
were even a minor import on the First Level, and could be had at all
the better restaurants in cities like Dhergabar. He mentioned that.
"That's not the worst of it," Stranor Sleth told him. "See, the
rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar.
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