Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (22 page)

 
          
"Dropping
out a semester before graduation is bad enough, "Colin answered, still
thinking of Jonathan, "but it isn't only that. As far as I could gather,
Jonathan intends to sign over his trust fund to the Master as well. Granted,
Jonathan's a big boy now, and it's his money, and he's got a right to do as he
likes with it
—
"

 
          
"But
you think he ought to be a little more careful with it
—
and if he's planning to
underwrite the
Voice of Truth,
so do I," Claire said. "I
honestly don't like the sound of this at all. Why don't we pay a visit to
Thorne Blackburn and see what you make of him? I'm sure if I give Debbie a
call she can get us into the Presence."

SAN FRANCISCO
,
CALIFORNIA
, JUNE  1965

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a
fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in
the air appear.

—
ROBERT SOUTHWELL

 
          
THE
AUDITORIUM IN THE FILMORE DISTRICT HAD FIRST BEEN A VAUDEVILLE house and then a
movie palace. It had fallen on hard times and lain derelict for some years,
until a shift in the tastes
—
not to mention the age
—
of the audience interested
in live music had made its reopening economically possible. That the building
was undoubtedly in violation of a hundred building code standards was a matter
of indifference to the young audience
—
some teenaged runaways, some
Bay Area locals with steady jobs
—
that filled its shabby moth-eaten seats nightly.

 
          
In
the place of the movie posters of yesteryear, the outside of the auditorium
was plastered with bright, eye-hurting placards advertising upcoming
performances. The bands had names out of Disney cartoons and dope dreams. The
psychedelic iconography that accompanied them was as precisely surreal as a
Windsor McCay illustration, a sort of post-Apocalyptic Art Nouveau manque.

 
          
The
time was a little after
nine o'clock
. The show was supposed to
have begun at
7:30
, with
Blackburn
scheduled to come on at nine, but apparently several of
the bands who were supposed to appear had been late coming in or had run long,
and when Colin and Claire arrived,
Blackburn
had not even arrived at the auditorium yet.

 
          
They
could hear the music even at the box office outside, and when they entered the
auditorium itself, the sound became a solid wall, filling the space as if it
were a thing with form and weight. The air-conditioning had fought the good
fight and lost; the air was close and sweltering, charged with the scents of
tobacco, unwashed bodies, and drugs. The stage was lit intermittently by
flashing strobes and spotlights with colored gels over the lenses, their
colored beams in constant motion. Scenes that seemed to have no connection to
the music were projected on the screen behind the musicians, bathing them in a
shifting sea of form and color.

 
          
The
effect was as disorienting as a bomb blast, and Colin stopped dead, senses
reeling. He felt Claire clutch at his hand, whether to save him or herself, he
wasn't certain.

 
          
On
stage, five long-haired boys in velvet coats were playing, the distorted,
amplified sound assaulting its listeners like a physical force. The guitars
they carried looked like child's drawings, flat and brightly colored, and the
amplified sound of the drums echoed through the crowded auditorium like gunshots.

 
          
"Loud!"
Claire shouted in his ear, and Colin nodded.

 
          
The
crowd was packed into the old vaudeville palace as tightly as the hordes in a
Cairo
bazaar, sweltering in the
still air. Despite that, there were a few seats empty at the back, and once he'd
gotten his bearings, Colin moved toward two of them, Claire in tow. Once he was
seated, he took the opportunity to look around the auditorium.

 
          
The
balcony was blocked off as too rickety to support the weight of occupants;
despite that, it was filled with listeners who shouted and clapped and danced
along with the amplified sounds of music played so loud that the battering of
drums and basses shook plaster dust from the walls and ceiling throughout the
performance.

 
          
But
despite the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, Colin could tell that there was
a sense of joyous anticipation in the air, a sort of Christmas morning
expectancy, as though what was to come was wonderful, was worthy, was all those
things that had been absent from the world for far too long. Here was the
answer to the black mood that had possessed him so often of late, the
refutation of the sense of decay and despair.

 
          
He
hadn't gotten old, Colin MacLaren realized with a sudden rueful awakening.
He'd gotten tired.

 
          
When
was it precisely that he had lost his way into this sense of joy? When had life
become something to get through with as few mistakes as possible, instead of a
glorious adventure to savor? The Path taught that its disciples must risk their
lives as well as save them; when had he lost sight of that eternal truth?

 
          
"It's
just going to get louder," Claire warned, squeezing Colin's hand to make
sure he heard her over the wash of raw noise.

 
          
"I'll
survive," Colin promised her.

 
          
The
music was hardly the point, Colin was beginning to realize. Like some Dionysian
cult of old, the audience howled itself into ecstacy, battered by the music and
primed by expectation and the experience of a hundred previous concerts. The
band surged into a new number, and the audience roared enthusiastically and
began to clap, whether in time with the wailing, distorted noise of the
electric guitars, or simply as a commentary, Colin couldn't tell. He could not
follow the audience on their journey, but at last he began to understand where
it was they were going
—
on the path toward the Unconquerable Sun followed by the
seekers in every generation.

 
          
But
in this generation it was as if the trailblazers had determined that this time
no one was to be left behind when the journey was made. All must go. The doors
of perception would be opened to all.

 
          
Two
hours later Colin's insight was unchanged, though his temper was less sanguine
and his head ached from the constant battering of sheer noise and the
psychedelic light show that accompanied it.
Blackburn
had still not made an
appearance, and there was little to distinguish the sounds the performers made
onstage from those made by construction workers with jack-hammers, at least in
Colin MacLaren's opinion. His throat and lungs ached from the harsh smoke that
hung like a blue pall in the sweltering air. If he felt lightheaded just from
breathing, he could only imagine what those actually smoking the stuff felt.

 
          
The
performers on stage fell silent amid disappointed shouts from the crowd. The
musicians unplugged their guitars and wandered off the stage and a sheer scrim
dropped between the drumset on its platform and the apron.

 
          
All
the lights went out.

 
          
In
the darkness, the wail of a single amplified flute could be heard, and against
it, the sound of a voice chanting Aeschylus' "Hymn to the Sun" in
flawless classical Greek.

 
          
Then
a bright red spotlight snapped on, illuminating a figure in a fantastic
costume: a long black tailcoat over a tie-dyed T-shirt, blue jeans sewn with
rhinestones, and a shiny top hat displaying the Uraeus disk flanked by
glittering cobras.

 
          
"Dudes
and chicks
—
Epopts and Illuminati: The Magister Ludens of the New Aeon,
Thorne Blackburn!"

 
          
Thorne
Blackburn turned out to be younger than Colin had thought he would be
—
a young man barely out of
his teens, maybe even Claire's age. Long blond curls spilled over his
shoulders, making him look like a cross between General Custer and a dimestore
Jesus. His eyes were blue enough to retain their color even under the harsh
theatrical lighting.

 
          
What
Blackburn gave the crowd that night was an unholy mesalliance of genuine
Mystery School teachings, parlor tricks, Beat poetry, and pop history
—
promising his hearers that
by thinking good thoughts they could play St. George to a military-industrial
dragon of international greed and corruption. The claims he made for his
personal history and occult teachings were too outrageous for any sane person
to take seriously, and in general his audience seemed to take
Blackburn
's remarks in the spirit of entertainment.
His patter had the well-oiled ease of the stage illusionist's, and Colin was
possibly the only one who noticed that in the space of five minutes
Blackburn
had made his audience quiet
and attentive as he quickly explained about the four essential elements that
were also the four pillars of creation.

 
          
But
no matter how debased his pied and emended liturgy, what
Blackburn
did here had power; Colin
could feel it. It was foolishness
—
sloppy, undisciplined,
madness, like handing a flamethrower to a baby. But
Blackburn
made it work. Colin felt
the potency he summoned
—
and beside him, Claire did, too, shivering uncertainly and
clutching at his hand as if for reassurance.

 
          
"
—
so that as you become a part
of the Universal, boys and girls, the Universe becomes a part of you. So let's
invite the Universe to the party!"

 
          
While
Blackburn
had been speaking, other
figures, garbed in long hooded robes, had entered the stage. Four of them bore
the familiar Tools of the magician
—
sword and paten, wand and
cup
—
and
two of the others carried a lighted candle and a censer that put out a thick
fog of smoke, the smoke changing colors as the images of the light show hit it.

 
          
Quickly
—
the man was as aware as any
performer of how easy it was to lose the attention of an audience
—
Blackburn
summoned the Elements:
earth, water, air, and fire. His amplified voice boomed out over the crowd, and
mixed into his sideshow patter were the great Names that Colin had sworn to
keep secret, tossed casually against the ears of the hoi polloi like pearls
onto a seashore.

 
          
Lord
of Light, be knows what he's doing,
was Colin's first horrified thought.
This was no form of magick he had ever seen
—
it was magick without form,
without ritual, a casual elemental summoning of the primal forces of creation,
through nothing more than the strength of
Blackburn
's charisma. It was power
summoned without wards, without barriers, without limits, power called with
only love to build a bridge, as if between equals.

 
          
Outrage,
irritation, and shock momentarily threatened to overwhelm him, but Colin kept
his temper. He'd known before he'd come that
Blackburn
had some magickal training,
after all, and people weren't banished from the White Orders without good
reason. Like so many before him, Blackburn had obviously decided to turn the
use of the Great Secrets that he'd been taught to mundane ends
—
and, as with those before
him, the Order's greatest defense was simply to take no notice of him,
protecting the Secrets by misdirection.