Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (7 page)

At this point
in the story, a child interrupted from the crowd, asking fearfully and loudly
if the gods were terrible to behold. The storytellers smiled, and bowed to the
philosophers. One of these, a venerable elderly man, spoke gravely to the
child. “No, indeed. The gods are beautiful, and just. Those who reverence and
obey them need fear nothing from the gods. The gods reward those who adhere to
them. Those who stray, they punish. Then they are terrible, terrible in their
perfection and magnificence.”

“But,” said
the child anxiously, “what do they
look
like?”

The
philosopher was done, however, and the storytellers proceeded with their tale.
“Hush!” said the child’s nurse sharply.

“But,” said
the child, “if I cannot tell them from their looks, how am I to know them and
beware of offending them?”

Then a voice
spoke to the child, a voice which brushed the insides of the child’s ears,
wonderfully unexpected, like the sound of the sea inside a shell.

“The gods are
colorless as crystal for they have no blood in their veins. Neither do they
possess breasts or genitals. Their eyes are cold as their country where
everything is tinted by frost. But you will probably never meet them; they have
no liking for the world.”

“Oh,” said the
child, and looked up and saw the pale face of a man bending over it, a face so
astonishing it dazzled the eyes of the child like the moon.

Then the
child, dazzled, blinked, and in the little interval of that blink, the man was
gone.

The
storytellers were telling now of how some hundreds of years came and went
across the desert. Of how divination excelled prophecy, and omen excelled
divination, and visions excelled everything. A group of holy men, dwelling in
the ruins of Nemdur’s Sheve, began to exhort others that came there to build a
second city upon the wreck of the first, a city every stone of which was to be
laid in praise of the gods.

Men will do
much in hate. In love they will do more, much more.

They worked
under the lash of love, as the slaves had worked who built the tower of Nemdur’s madness, under the lashes of agony and death. What time had left of Sheve
was razed. From the broken stones, like a mirage, the second city bloomed into
the air. A strange city, a small city. A rare city, unlike all others. For this
was to be no home for commerce or domesticity. Along its colonnades, and
beneath its cupolas, the tide of men should pass only at one season of the
year, when the people came in to worship, and so lay down the fruits of their
year of life elsewhere. A city which was to be kept pure—a temple: Bhelsheved.

As they worked
on it, digging through the crusts of the antique streets of Sheve, they struck
water, the desert’s blue gold, a secret lake. And this turquoise eye, gazing
back into heaven, was, to the builders, a seal of the gods’ favor upon their
enterprise.

The crowd
drifted out a sigh. They began spontaneously to sing, one more song of their
journey. How, at this apex of each year, the peoples would turn toward
Bhelsheved. From the west, from the north, from the south and from the east,
flowing inward like sheep toward their pen, like wine into a bowl, as a tired
man into sleep, so naturally did they move toward the sacred city. And we, the
people cried, who come from the east into the west, follow every night the sun,
which itself flies to Bhelsheved to honor the gods, Bhelsheved, where all
sorrow is forgotten, all pain is healed.

When the song
ended, the crowd was happy and boisterous, and someone called for the story of
how the gods had saved the world when the Evil One, the Prince of Demons, would
have destroyed it.

The
storytellers chuckled, for this tale was well-thumbed in their minds, being
ever popular. They took it in turns to relate the legend. Night’s Master, they
said, the Black Beast who lurked underground (so hideous to look on that he
himself avoided at all times mirrors or any reflective surface) saw the piety
and comeliness of humanity, and geared a force of evil sufficiently gigantic
that the earth was overwhelmed. Yet, in its death throes, the gods heeded the
prayers and pleadings of men. They cast a golden bolt out of the sun itself
that scorched the demon so terribly that he was obliged to withdraw, and his
disgusting energies with him.

At the riotous
description of this singed monstrosity scrambling underground, the crowd roared
with laughter. There was only one in all the throng who did not laugh. At the
edge of the inner ring now, the man in the black cloak was standing. The glow
from the lamps of the storytellers caught him, and the fold of material had
slipped away from his face. He was not merely pale, at last, the stranger, but
whiter than chalk, and his mouth whiter yet. His eyes seared with a dry and
inextinguishable black fire. He was so still, so silent, that gradually
stillness and silence spread from him, through the circles of the crowd, as if
his immobility had become one resounding chord struck over and over against the
night.

Even the
storytellers came to hear this noiseless chord. They too fell quiet, turning to
gaze at him, shading their eyes against their own lamplight. Even the
philosophers stared.

Finally, when
the soundlessness had spread all through the congregation, the man spoke.

“It seems,” he
said, and his voice carried, as a wave will run across the sand, “that if the
creature you speak of is so vile as you insist, you had better beware of him.”

The crowd
muttered. The philosopher who had addressed the child now addressed the man.

“Sir, we need
not fear the Demon. We are but a day’s journey from Bhelsheved. Here, of all
places, the gods will protect us from him.”

“Will they
indeed,” said the stranger. Then, for the first time, he smiled. The eyes of
the philosopher briefly faltered, but he was on his way to the holy city, and
the appearance and demeanor of a man could not undo him.

“Should it
happen,” said the philosopher, “that the Evil One finds himself able to harm
us, then we should understand that we had in some way offended the gods—that we
had
deserved
any evil that thereafter came upon us.”

“Ah,” said the
stranger. He lowered his lids as if he mused. When he looked up again, it was
like a dawn, a sunless dawn, but of colossal radiance. “I, too,” said the
stranger, “will render you a story.”

So beautiful
he was, and his voice so beautiful, very few in the crowd were able to
recognize the extent of such beauty and such marvel. As a man would look at one
quarter of the night sky, and wonder at the stars, putting from his mind all
those myriads of stars his eyes, at one glance, could not take in, just so they
looked at and attended to the stranger, thinking to themselves that he was very
handsome, and spoke very well, putting from their minds that in every respect
he was beyond them, scalding them, drugging them, stunning them, with his mere
presence.

The man walked
straight into the center of the lampglow and the storytellers made way rather
nervously for him, envious of their trade. A little night breeze came and went
across the desert and the camp, fluttering the soft fires in the lanterns. The
stranger’s cloak blew back from his shoulders, as if the wind stirred it,
though it was not the wind. That cloak folded itself behind him like two black
wings, and the blue light of many distant stars was on his hair. A great pulse
seemed to beat through the atmosphere, the very ground. The wind lay down on the
sand at his feet like his dog, and he began to tell the story.

It was this: A
prince happened to be walking in the cool of the evening, along the border of
the country which abutted on his own estates. There was no law in this country,
and so the prince was not greatly amazed when he discovered that all the people
in the place were being slain systematically by a fearsome monster which had
evolved in their very midst. Now the prince had always been interested in the
antics of his neighbors, and seeing their trouble and that they were likely to
be annihilated, he took it on himself to seek out the monster and get rid of
it.

Accordingly,
he left his own estates, and wandered across the lawless land, through all the
ghastly disruption which the monster had caused. At length, he located the
creature’s lair, and standing on the barren rock outside, he called it forth.
Forth it came, and awful it was, obese and bloated with the blood and distress
of men, and swollen with its strength. But the prince did not falter. He drew
from its silver sheath the only sword he possessed. He went forward and began
to hack and slash at this grisly foe. Lightnings wailed and thunders bellowed.
The earth was riven and split. The monster exhaled poisonous fire and rains of
steel splinters. The prince was burned and torn, thin needles pierced him; his
eyes, which had been most beautiful, were put out. But blinded and in agony, he
did not forego the fight. For centuries, or so it seemed to him, in the
supremest anguish and horror, he battled, and at last, at last, the loathsome
beast lay dead. But, on its carcass, the body of the prince fell down, equally
lifeless.

At this point,
the stranger turned slowly about, looking at all the crowd, and into every face
it seemed, and into every pair of eyes with his own curious and unfathomable
glance. His voice had cast a spell on them. The story seemed quite real. It
hurt them to hear him tell it, as it seemed also to hurt him, though they could
not reckon how they knew so much, for his tone was harmoniously even, his face
clear of all expression.

It transpired,
the storyteller said, the subjects of the prince came to look for him, and
eventually they found his corpse. Then, knowing something of sorcery, they went
about the task of restoring him. But one ingredient of his restoration was
nothing else but tears. This appeared, under the circumstances, an easy element
to obtain. The prince’s subjects went instantly to the folk of the neighboring
country, for whom he had sacrificed himself, and asked them to weep for him.
But these good neighbors averted their faces, and declared: “We know who you
mean, and we do not credit you. We shall not shed one tear for the prince of
such liars.”

“And was that
not strange?” said the storyteller to the crowd. Some shivered as they heard
him. In some there came a bizarre welling of guilt, of shame and
fear. . . . “But the strangest portion of the story is to come.”

The subjects
of the prince shed their own tears, and these proved adequate to raise him at
last out of the gray limbo in which he had lain all this while imprisoned. But,
being restored, as he was traveling back to his kingdom, he chanced to look
over into the neighboring land. All was lawless as ever, but now a massive
festival was in progress. Moved by curiosity, the prince drew near, and
presently he saw and heard these things. His neighbors had erected a formless
stone, and were dancing around it to the joyful noise of pipe and drum, and now
and then someone would embrace the stone, or pour oil or wine or aromatics over
it. Fascinated—for he truly was fascinated—the prince inquired what rites were
in progress.

“We are
venerating this incredible and kind god,” the neighbors replied, “who saved us
from a fearful monster.”

The prince
observed the stone for some while, but that was all it was—a stone. Rugged,
passionless, insensible.

Presently, he
remarked, “Pardon my foolishness, but I had heard it was a lord from over your
border, who sought out the monster with a sword, and slew it.”

At this, the
neighbors spat. “We have heard that lie, too,” they said, “but that ugly and
misshapen fiend from the next estate is more foul to us than the monster
itself. Pray do not mention his name again.”

For a long
while after the stranger had ceased speaking, the crowd sat on in silence.
Almost every head was bowed, as if in deep thought—or in humiliation. Yet the
crowd did not comprehend what had come over it, this unpleasing doubt in the
midst of celebration.

Then the
philosopher spoke primly and loudly to the stranger’s back.

“A peculiar
notion, sir, if I have your drift. It seems you instruct us that the
Unspeakable One, the Lord of Shadows, was, at some time, savior of the world.”

The dark
storyteller did not look about. He said: “You have presumed the gods value man
so much that they will hurry to his rescue. I think you misjudge the gods.”

“And you,”
declared the philosopher sternly, “suggest that they are merely as stones.”

“There, I
admit, I have maligned them. For if you strike a stone, it may disgorge a
stream of water, or a precious jewel. Or you may build a house from it, or
scratch words on its surface with a knife.
Stones
can be serviceable to
men.”

“Your
blasphemy is uncouth,” said the philosopher, and the crowd began sulkily to
grumble and mutter, taking its cue from him. “You had best remember Baybhelu,
and how the tower was shaken down by the gods, to cure mankind of its pride.”

“Pride?” asked
the stranger caressingly. “What have you to be proud of? Your lives, which
perish in the blink of an eye? Your memories which are shorter still? Your
brains which are so empty of wits that spiders may spin there? Or is it your
religion which makes you proud, that sweet and succulent fruit of faith? A
fruit may sour. Whatever else, if any Lord of Darkness was unwise enough in the
past to have saved you from yourselves, he will not do it ever again.”