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 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!
The Krarsht priest's prediction was that this Third Age was an Age of 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.
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