From: ANDOVER@delphi.com
Date: Wed 25 Sep 1996 - 06:16:27 EEST
It's Not Easy Being Grim: Chapter One -- Part I -- The Bull in the Painting
In the pitch black, Gim Gim heard the young woman begin to scream.
Although he could not see directly, his second sight enabled him to
observe that the Krarshtkids climbing up the altar must have reached
her. As the six-legged monsters began devouring their sacrifice, Gim
Gim assumed what he thought to be the correct Krarshtian expression,
combining reverence and enjoyment. Although the blind priest that ran
this ceremony always held it in Darkness, (indeed the Altar was in
itself a Darkness spell) it was best to be safe. This Goddess,
certainly, might well be able to view his physical expression through
any veil of Darkness.
In truth, he found the ceremony both disgusting and boring. Why were
Gods so limited and predictable, he thought. Surely, if he knew that
life was something more than good and evil, the Gods should know it
too? Krarsht, evidently, was by far more intelligent than any other
Chaos God, but even She found pleasure in this silly business of
killing helpless creatures. Not that Gim Gim minded killing, but
killing peasant girls and trollkin on a regular basis served little
obvious purpose.
Of course, he felt, as the others in the room did, the presence of the
great Mother Mouth. Unlike them, however, he was not involved
emotionally in the ceremony. Being illuminated allowed him to assume
a spiritual mask even more effective than that assumed by his face, or
by the literal mask that he habitually wore above ground. While the
others were unmasked before this great creature, all She could know of
him was what he chose to allow Her. Gim Gim the Grim, the Masked One,
he thought. True enough, since his masks were more than physical.
As he gazed spiritually at the great creature that was (vicariously?)
participating in the ceremony, he thought about what She might be.
Unlike most of the other Chaotic Gods, she was not a relative of the
Orlanthi pantheon. Nor was she something good corrupted, as the
Crimson Bat or Vivamort were. She was from OUTSIDE.
Salonar Tarnaskil had written: "of high crown concerning the hordes of
the Divine Fear may be that the Four Horrors of the long night could
have been the Four Origins turned into and through themselves." If his
remarks were true, then the doctrine preached at the temple, that "the
Great Goddess as Glorantha created the world; as Arachne Solara She
preserves it; and as Krarsht the Devourer She will destroy it at the
end of Time" made some sort of sense: Krarsht must be the chaotic
parallel to Arachne Solara herself
Or, more correctly, he thought, all that Arachne Solara could seem
like to such worshippers as stood here. Would Krarsht's webs of
nothingness be shown to bind all Glorantha in some unimaginable way at
the end of Time as the Spider had swallowed entropy to create Time in
the first place?
The Krarsht worshippers believed that they would all become part of
The Krarsht priest's prediction was that this Third Age was an Age of
Her after their death. Personally, the relationship between Krarsht
and her worshippers reminded Gim Gim of the old tale of the meeting
between the bear and the hunter: the bear wanted a full belly and the
hunter wanted a full coat -- and after their meeting, both had
attained their goals!
Earth, which would end in Earth, but would be succeeded by an Age of
Fire. What that meant, Gim Gim could not tell. His thoughts drifted
again to this business of prediction.
About the only useful thing about these long sacrificial rites was
that they allowed time to think. On the basis of long experience, Gim
Gim could allow his body to chant, cry and participate in whatever the
rites of the various cults he belonged to without devoting even a
minute's thought to what he was doing, let alone whatever was supposed
to be the "inner meaning" of the ceremonies. Just as well, when this
ceremony involved such activities as drinking blood. Well, better the
blood of a human girl than of a trollkin, let alone a troll!
He knew the prophecy concerning the immediate future, as revealed by
his visit to Tanian's Grotto in the Puzzle Canal. He knew that the
painting was accurate, because all the evidence suggested that it was.
Unfortunately, it had not been entirely clear what would bring his
death, for the two new objects he had seen, unseen by previous
viewers, were a tiny cradle and a White Bull.
Thinking it unlikely that he was to be killed by a baby, he had
focused immediately on the second object as that most likely to be his
death. Indeed, the discovery of the Bull in the painting had help
propel him into membership of the Krarsht cult, for they were the
Bull's most effective enemies.
He could not yet figure out how to reconcile that with what he had
every reason to believe HAD to be an accurate prediction about his own
future: "you will meet the fate of a God." Crushed under the Block?
Defeated and skinned? Apotheosized INTO the bull?
He had taken the trouble to finance two more expeditions into the
Grotto, although neither party knew who their backer was. The single
man who had returned from the second expedition (the first had
vanished altogether) had reported the cradle and the small cloud in
the shape of a dragon floating toward the dominant Red Moon, both of
which Gim Gim himself had seen.
However, he had not seen the Bull, but rather a Mask. He probably
never knew why he died, or at whose orders, Gim Gim thought
complacently. It was too bad that his present powers forbade him
humor, but wit would have to do.
The cradle and the dragon cloud, then, were general predictions, or at
least predictions specific to Pavis. His years of study of the future
had taught him that the future of Glorantha would be decided in Pavis.
Else why was he in this backwater? The cradle might have some link to
the old name of Pavis, RobCradle. As for dragons, the idea that
dragons were a threat to the Red Moon seemed hard to believe. As far
as he could tell, they had done nothing since the Dragonkill, so many
years ago.
It was unfortunate that prediction, of its very strength, could never
be fully accurate. Not even the Gods could stand outside of Time, and
even if he was to end a God, neither could he.
Trying to balance all these events while grappling with the rotten
Lunar bureaucracy was a difficult task. Here, as elsewhere, disguise
was the best strategy.
The mutual interaction between the Krarsht worshippers, Black Fang,
and the Lunar bureaucracy was fascinating, he thought. Only the Black
Fangs had straightforward motives. He himself ran smuggling
operations through these tunnels, as much to hide his true motives as
to make money. Many years ago, Gim-Gim had learned that avarice was in
itself a useless trait, but also that the appearance of avarice could
cloak many other purposes. Knowing now what he knew of the cult whose
inner ceremonies he was observing, it was obvious just how this cult
used avarice to hide its deeper sins.
This was a secret he had learned years ago, though as an illuminate
himself, he was less sure than ever that it was possible to figure out
the relationship between good and sin any more than the perception of
Law and Chaos. Glorantha held more secrets than even Gim Gim knew,
unfortunately. As an illuminate, he could recognize that the Puzzle
Canal was itself a Riddle. But there were greater Secrets than that
around him in this place.
This business of knowledge, thought Gim Gim, was difficult. Knowing
too little was a sure path to death, but so was knowing too much. The
wrong kind of knowledge could drive you insane, as many of the members
of Chaos cults were, and, if the stories of the Godlearners were true,
there was knowledge that could lead directly to getting yourself
killed.
Gim Gim himself had long since learned to forget -- a valuable skill.
No one in this town knew who and what he really was -- and sometimes
he wasn't entirely sure himself.
But there was something he still needed to learn. He still hadn't
found all that was going on down here in the Devil's Playground,
although knowledge of the presence of both Krarsht and Thanatar put
him ahead of almost anyone else in the town. The undead standing at
the edges of this temple room were sufficient evidence of a degree of
cooperation between these two religions that could hardly be found
anywhere else.
Although the tunnels down here had mostly been dug by the Goddesses'
creatures, they had been occupied by other things over the years, and
the tunnels had impinged on oolder pathways and byways. Tonight,
however, he was to embark on a more difficult task, and it was
necessary to have the support of this temple to go safely where he
wanted to go.
The first stop on his way would be his first visit to a Thanatar
temple. But he knew that even worse things than Krarshtkids or
Thanatari lay beneath him. What they were, and what powers might be
secured by them, he did not know. Tonight would be the first step on
the road to discovery.
- --to be continued --
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