I have often thought that the greatest weakness of our Goddess Sedenya is that She is marked by magnanimity and kindness in equal proportion to her selfishness and cruelty. When she defeated the older gods at Castle Blue, what she extracted from them was an expansion of the universe to create a place for her and for those of her kind. She did not displace anything, she did not demand the forcible incorporation of the remnant Blue Moon, she did not remake the Air, she did not demand submission, only acceptance of her existence.
Oh, tyrants can never prosper for long, in the grand scheme of things. Her reign would have been foreshortened as those of Orlanth and Yelm the Second were. But if, as now seems increasingly likely, all that we have been, all that we have made over the past four hundred years and change, shall be obliterated from the world, made as if it never were, and its remnants perverted and despoiled, would not it have been better if She had ruled in justice that transformed to injustice, and left behind remnants undeniably Hers? The luscious bright amaranth scattered across the landscape, rather than left blanched and dissipated.
But by following those thoughts, I came to the Major Classes from a quiet life and I left the Major Classes quicker than I came to them, and I walked into the Void and I only just barely walked out. The scarlet light that we all bathe in reminds me of my shame, and of the moment of realization, of the ruby thread I climbed out upon.
Our enemies, of course, do not exist. There are no true enemies. But those that momentarily oppose enlightenment understand our very existence as a problem to be solved. And it is a long moment in which their opposition exists. I have heard that not far to the south they have begun dying red hair to erase the mark of Her, to appease the folk of the countryside. I have seen with my own eyes the aftermath of one raid. They dragged the workers out from a cathouse that was popular with visitors from the heartlands, set fire to the building, and stripped them all down to "check for the signs of mutation". Then, so one of the survivors said, his eyes staring off at infinity, they began to shave the hair on people's heads, to make them look more like their "harlot goddess".
But as they were halfway through, a man rode up on a white horse, and called out to them, saying they were fools and idiots, that there was no way to tell for sure whether someone was Chaotic or not just from looking at their bodies. He gave a lengthy speech on the undetectability of Chaos, the way in which Chaos erodes reality, the nature of Her as a "Chaos Goddess", and then summed up by saying, "Only by your intuition may you know whether someone is human or a Chaotic beast, an acidic tapeworm burrowing through your flesh, a bestial ogre hungering to devour you all, a puppet for a malevolent succubus who wants to degrade your souls. What does your intuition tell you, good men, good women?"
What happened then... there are only survivors for two reasons. Firstly, they were so caught up in the particulars of the bloodshed that they couldn't kill everyone at once, and secondly, a horse-drawn caravan was mistaken for a cavalry patrol and they fled.
I asked how many had come into the town and the survivor I was interviewing said, "ten or twelve, and then two others came with the man on the white horse", and when I looked confused, for I knew that there had been more than a dozen in the cathouse, he explained that many of the people of the town had joined in, had eagerly played their part in the orgy of violence. I thanked him. I held my voice steady, I think. I told him that we would continue the interview later, tomorrow or the next day, and asked if there was anything I could offer to him.
He said no, and I stood up. I walked outside. I went from house to house in the town, and I opened up my soul, and I brushed my hand against the door at each one, and I knew that I had but to chant the words, to navigate through the sacred diagrams, to call up and awaken, and from each mirror in the town the malicious deeds of the townspeople would step out, wearing their own shape, and torment them until they died. I wrote the name of the tricornate demon that could aid me in this task in the dirt with my finger, and then-
Well. I stopped. I thought about life and death, victory and defeat. I thought about doors and windows. I thought about vengeance and balance. I drew the symbol of Natha in the dust as well, and I sat in uneasy silence for an hour or more. And then, with a sigh, I knew that I wouldn't do it, but that I would nevertheless take some action. I called up another demon, this one bicornate, and I sang a different tune, and I danced a little jig in the middle of a heptagon, and the town was cursed. For all who partook in the massacre, the names of their victims shall be writ in their flesh, and all who look upon them shall know what they have done and who they have done it to, and the names shall be all the more livid and obvious the more they deny their role.
Is that justice? Is that balance? Is it the appalling righteousness of someone who had no involvement with any of it? Is it the craven fear of a woman who received Her gift three or four times and now has plates under her skin, as tough as bronze, obvious to the touch? Who knows what might happen to her? Oh, absolutely, I'm sure of that and more. I'm sure that, as my old friends from Holay-Fort might now say, that this event didn't happen, that it was the product of morbid imaginations, that it was unrepresentative elements, that I, too, as a being marked by Chaos, simply dissolve reality every time I breathe with corrupted lungs. That I have no real soul, not really, and that the words that I write are simply the product of a carefully prepared script by-
Regardless, I have also begun carefully recruiting spies who tell me about the upcountry. The rivalries, the hatreds, the loves and the lusts. The people who I can destroy by backing, the people who would be grateful for any hand up. The map I have drawn of it all so far looks like a beautiful glass castle. What will it look like after I'm through?
Comments
Post a Comment