Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (10 page)

“How dared
you,” cried the philosopher, “abuse this holy object in which the gods are
resident!”

The grinder
toppled from his stool, and the philosopher strode on, finding next a young
woman baking cakes on a flat stone before her fire. The philosopher beat her
also, and flung the food into the flames.

“Blasphemer!
You must not cook cakes on the breast of heaven.”

And stepping
back from her, he turned his heel on a pebble, at which he knelt stiffly, and
cupped the pebble in his gnarled old hands, all bruised from striking the faces
of men and women, and he entreated the pebble’s forgiveness.

As the moon was declining,
a tan-haired girl lay in the back of a tent, her sister sleeping nearby, and
she dreamed.

It was her
wedding night, and her cousin-bridegroom, whom she had seen no more than three
times, brought her inside their chamber, and shut and bolted the door.

A depression
settled upon the girl, for though she did not mind the man’s looks, she did not
favor them either. And though she loved no other instead, she did not love him.

“Come, dear
Zharet,” said he, “let us lie down together.”

So they lay
down on the divan among the cushions, and he unknotted Zharet’s girdle
clumsily, and fumbled at the embroidery of her bodice, and drew the polished
crystal pins from her tan hair.

As he was
doing all this, and her vague sensations of aversion and mistrust intensified,
her eyes strayed to the narrow window. There, beyond the iron lattice, sat a
black velvet cat which gazed at her with eyes like pools of water. In these
eyes like pools she read a message, clear as if painted there in symbols.
Only
take up one of these sharp pins, with which the dolt has just scratched you,
and thrust it through his skull. Do this, and you shall have another, better,
lover.

And Zharet
recalled a dark man passing between the tents in the nights before the people
had come to Bhelsheved.

Her bridegroom
pinched and plucked at her breast, and lay astride her like a fallen mule, and
the girl thought to herself:
Imagine if that stranger were a god, a dark god
from the snow-pale city. And that he had selected me for his bride, but here is
an impediment. To be rid of it is only an act of faith and worship.

Just then the
bridegroom put his unsubtle fingers to work on another part of her, and with a
grimace, the bride snatched the nearest pin and thrust it through his head. He
died without a sound, and his body rolled immediately away from her, and she
forgot it entirely, for next second the black cat dropped, light as a velvet
glove, upon her breast.

A moment only
did the creature remain feline. Then it changed into a man, or into the form of
a man. Only a glimpse she caught of the face, which was transcendently beautiful,
and framed by the long black curlings of its hair, and lit by two black pools
of eyes. Even so, she knew it was not the face she had glimpsed among the
tents, not the face of that amazing stranger, but another, a little less
amazing. Yet he was beautiful enough, this other visitant, beautiful of form
and body, and like a pale shadow he covered her, and even his breath was
marvelous, drugging her . . . and she tipsily reasoned the god
had assumed this mortal aspect in order not to smite her with the energies of
the divine one.

Then the demon
of Zharet’s dream (demon indeed, one of the Eshva, those that were the servants
of the Vazdru princes of Underearth, at whose caress even the locks of doors
would melt and open) began to caress her, and all her flesh seemed melting and
the locks of her womb pulsed. Her body was altered as he touched it, strands of
a fiery weakness coursed down her arms beneath his fingers, her breasts budded,
her belly, receiving the impress of the silvery musculature of his, became a
stream of lights. When he pierced her, though she was a virgin, she felt no
pain, only a shaft of exquisite rightness, as if two portions of a severed
whole had come together in wondrous healing. He moved upon her first as slowly
as a river, but, like a river, gained momentum. His body was all she knew, his
eyes all she could see. The river bore her on toward these eyes, these
depthless pools, as if finally she would be dashed into them and drowned there,
and how she yearned for her drowning, and herself began to swim toward them,
and plead for them and for their waters to close over her head.

Almost in
another moment, she felt the land, the very world give way, and cleaved the
cleft itself to find the vortex of ecstasy. But this ecstasy was of a
specialized kind.

The first
moments of the ecstasy were searing green and sapphire, and in them she
struggled, blinded and sobbing. But this was the first stage, and after these
moments, she broke through into a second ecstasy.

The second
ecstasy within the first was the color of wine, and here all her senses became
one, and that one shot through her like the spindle of some revolving star, so
that all about herself she spun. But this spinning drove her, thrust her, again
into a third stage.

The third
ecstasy was white, far whiter than any city. And here she was transfixed, and
her frantic writhings, her gasps, her cries, even her breathing, stopped. Here
on this summit she became a silent shriek. She could neither change further nor
return to what she had been. She could not move. Her spasms were one single
master spasm, frozen in molten whiteness, without beginning or end.

In this third
ecstasy she was suspended for a thousand years.

And then her
demon lover let her go, and she fell back through a violet cloud and into her
body, or so it seemed, as if her soul had known orgasmic rapture rather than
her flesh.

Opening her
eyes, Zharet saw the tent in the desert, and that in darkness. She was alone,
save for her sister sleeping not far off, and all was quiet, even her own heart
beat softly. Then, in the gloom, she savored the fading taste of her dream,
trembling. And in her fingers, she turned a quite illusory, and quite
murderous, pin.

The people continued to
pour into the holy city, to experience sacred joys, to sacrifice, to pray, to
confess sin, to come out again, with unfocused eyes.

In the camps
all about Bhelsheved, the songs went on, and the feastings began, and the
contests with bow and spear, the racing for prizes.

Days passed
like flames, and nights like black leopards, running from world’s edge to
world’s edge.

Something was
not as it should be. What? An uncanny influence lay over the region, a cloud, a
smoke. There was dissent. There was quarrelling. There were
accusations. . . .

“Someone stole
my little singing bird from its wicker cage. Was it you?”

“Someone
blighted my rose in its pot. Was it
you
?”

“Who spilled
my wine?”

“Who let out
my sheep from their pen?”

“Who spied on
me as I bathed?”

“Who told lies
about me in my absence?”

“Was it you,
or you, or
you
?”

And at the
contests, there was cheating, and when the cheating was brought to light,
blows. There was adultery, too, and rape. There was theft.

The
storytellers forgot their myths and legends, losing the thread of a tale
between one word and the next.

Lamps would
not light. Fires lit and exploded, and tents went up like scarlet trees in
blossom.

Animals pined
and died, as if for some master they had loved.

The corpses
from a series of gruesome murders were discovered, the victims both male and
female, both adult and child, horribly mutilated by a whip. One was suspected,
a kinless carpenter, and he was stoned. A mad old philosopher, about whom a
wild mad sect was gathering, screamed curses at the mob, declaring the
bloodstained stones were deities.

Girls who were
soon to be married were come on, at odd times, playing menacingly with little
clay images of their bridegrooms. In some of these images, long pins had been
decisively stuck.

All this
occurred about Bhelsheved, the holy city. All this which day by day, and—more
definitely—night by night, grew stronger and more fearsome, like a contagion,
getting a hold, like plague.

Vague reports
filtered into the city, into the sacrosanct precincts, were whispered by
nervous worshippers, through the filigree screens to the priests or the
priestesses, who would bend limpidly and attentively to listen. But if the
Servants of Heaven paid any heed, drew any inference, was hard to tell. Seldom,
if ever, did these chosen ones speak directly to the people. Hearing of murder,
arson, thuggery and upheaval of all sorts, their translucent faces never
altered. They made the sign of a blessing or a protection through the screen
over whomever had related the events, and then drifted away like gauze scarves.

A new malaise
fastened on the people ringed about no less than a hundred paces from the moon
city. A malaise of doubt, too faint, too inchoate as yet to overwhelm them, but
which, given sufficient space for brooding, would undoubtedly do so. At some
juncture they must come to consider that their elected priests ignored, or were
incapable of sympathizing with, their trouble. And since these persons were
said to resemble the gods, could it be that the gods, also, were indifferent to
the plight of mankind—just as a particular stranger had recounted?

No doubt, this
fault in the priests was due only to their ordered and protected lives. They
had lost, or never even known, a valid conception of human beastliness and
despair. Told over to them, it must have sounded like the story of some other
world. Perhaps they thought they were being jested with.

CHAPTER 3

Night Works

It was the last night at
Bhelsheved. In the shining afternoon, the sublime priests and priestesses had
emerged from sanctuary, and moved about the camps, scattering aromatics,
sequins and blossoms, blessing the crowds. But the hymns which were sung had a
limping quality to them now. Once a man spat, explaining hastily that the
sacred names had caused him to choke. Once a girl averted her eyes, tearing the
holy flower, which had fallen into her hand, in shreds.

Did the
priesthood notice? It seemed not. They floated by in their filmy garments,
their filmy hair like sorcerous metal-work of the Drin, those lowest, almost
obscene but cunning artisans of the Demon City. . . . But who
would dare compare the tresses of heaven’s servants to such stuff? Here and
there, a few were doing so.

When the
priests retreated back into their fortress, their isolated cold virgin of a
shrine, where common men, being gross and vile, were not permitted to live but
only humbly to visit, the sun also abandoned the scene.

Day’s golden
eye closed its black lid, and it was night.

Presently an
awful commotion broke out. News spread like locusts across the campments.

“A band of
robbers has stolen the Magic Relic which was to have been awarded to the most
worthy among us, the winner having been chosen by popular vote.”

“Sacrilege! In
which direction did the devils flee?”

“Eastward. Let
us pursue.”

Strange
indeed. Each year this wondrous trifle had been awarded. It was nothing less
than a gold-encased bone, said to have belonged to the skeleton of Nemdur’s
virtuous queen, she who had implored the gods’ pardon and been saved from
Baybhelu. Just as the last spilled drop of the sun had been wiped away in the west,
two or three shade-like figures had been seen, darting light as air from the
vicinity of the Relic-containing pavilion. Reliable witnesses deduced they had
perceived the gold bone glintingly passing back and forth between the thieves’
pale slender hands. A curious notion had come to the witnesses—that the robbers
laughed at them, even mocked and insulted them, though they made no vocal
sound. Whatever else, the fiends had sped eastward, and somehow they left a
clear trail on the sands behind them—not of footprints, more like the track of
a single huge serpent. Possibly, long cloaks might have formed the marks, as
their owners ran.

The pursuit,
which began in trickles, mounted into a flood of people pouring from the camps,
with lamps and torches in their hands. Something like the joyous arrival at
Bhelsheved. Not quite.

And over the
twilight sands, all blue from the sky’s deepening blueness, the crowds,
thousands upon thousands, hurried, almost all who had come to Bhelsheved,
cursing and yelling, toward the east. An unfortunate direction, conceivably,
for in the east Nemdur’s Tower had been blasphemously raised, when Sheve had
been only a city.

Which may have
occurred to them, for as they rushed on, it began to seem to the people that
they could see the terrible blasphemy of the Tower, rising up again from the
desert plain.

Seven miles
east of Sheve that Tower had stood, and of yellow brick had that Tower been
made. Seven miles east of Bhelsheved, the second tower, (if it were more than
some bizarre configuration of cloud), was black. A shadow, then, of Baybhelu.
Maybe a ghost? For if there might be ghosts of men let loose on occasion to
walk the world, why not the ghost of a building revived to stand up there?