Free Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) by Tanith Lee Page B

priestesses, just as
they forgot that the city had been built by their own wealth, designed by their
own mathematicians and scholars, and imbued with sorceries by their own mages.
    When the
priestly servants of heaven approached them, they bowed and trembled pleasantly
with respect and awe.
    At the heart
of the golden temple, mounted on the backs of two vast golden beasts that had
the heads of hawks, the fore-bodies of lions and the tails of gigantic fish,
was an altar of translucent sky-colored crystal, in which opaline clouds and
constellations seemed to float. When the temple had been filled with people,
the doors were closed, and in the honey gloom, the astrological altar began to
blaze. The servants of heaven sang in sweet thin voices as they stood
fearlessly between the paws of the two beasts, which would then suddenly open
their beaks and cry, in a brazen resonance: Who loves the gods shall know
everlasting joy!
    Then a second
sun would seem to explode slowly outward from the altar, a glare which must
surely blind, yet did not, for in the midst of it were seen visitations which
came and went. None after could describe what they had witnessed. Some spoke of
the forms of the gods themselves passing luminously to and fro in a sort of
gorgeous fog. Others spoke of scenes of happiness from their own lives
reenacted, or prophecies of good things to come. Some coyly mentioned glimpses
of a paradise, or visions of other worlds. Many wept and many laughed aloud,
and a few collapsed on the mosaic floor where the tightness of the crowd
permitted.
    But when the
great brilliancy faded, they gathered themselves, moved dazedly to the reopened
doors, and filed away meekly to offer blood or precious gems or wine in the
glittering temples that stood everywhere about the lake. And through filigree
screens, to half-seen confessors beyond, they would recite their sins and their
apprehensions—which, in those moments seemed unmomentous, easy both of telling
and of future avoidance. For it appeared to them their souls had been washed
clean and sponged with glorious elixirs. So they sawed through the throats of
little lambs and burnt their flesh on blue fires, sobbing at their luck, that
they, and all things, were in the care of the merciful and gentle gods.
     
    The dunes of day drifted
over the sky and were blown beyond the edge of the western earth. The darker
sands of night piled up on the threshold of the sunset, and eventually buried
it.
    A young man
came walking slyly, with an oddly hesitant yet urgent step, between the clusters
of the tents. Fires and lamps and stars were blooming on the dusk, and the pale
ghost of the city, like the sail of some anchored ship, rested over the
many-ringed campments. The young man, a youngest brother, had come far from his
own camping place, across the makeshift byways, and far around the city walls,
though keeping always the prescribed one hundred paces out from them. A cloak
was folded around him, though the night was warm.
    Presently he
reached a grove of scented trees, where some girls were drawing water from one
of the ornamental troughs.
    One by one,
these girls caught sight of the youngest brother far from his own camp. They
saw him to be a stranger, and one or two, for the barest instant, held their
breath, for there had been another stranger who sometimes walked about the
camps by night, but he had been cloaked as if with inky
wings. . . . This one was no one of importance, his manner
diffident, his face muffled, and the maidens began to giggle at him somewhat
behind their sleeves.
    At length, the
young man beckoned to one of the girls, and when she approached him, said:
“Pardon my interruption of your duties, but I am searching for the tent of the
satchel-maker.”
    “Would that be
Grizzle-Beard the satchel-maker that you mean? Or the other, with the limp?”
    “Or,” chimed
in another of the girls boldly, “do you mean old Twisty-Nose, whose wife
resembles a goat?”
    The young