The giants had brought the Muradoc and the Murdágua, his train of followers, like a giddy saltant serpent, through the passes of the mountains of the East. Holy Shesátas had sunk from sight as around them appeared new mountains, new gods, sinister cones, that seemed to share in the trailing clouds that ran between their majestic heads suspicions about these galavanters that passed below them through their sparse pine forests. In time the Murdágua journeyed away from the foreign mountains and empty woodlands and entered into a terrain of plateaus, gray and brown, and here the Muradoc and his followers made their camp, as the deserts stretched out before them like the bed of the Moon.
From this ledge, under a cloth of stars, Gulxán the Mœgla looked over lands of bitter fragrance and saw near the horizon a gleam in the poor light of Moon: the long Lake of the East where over three hundred years ago he had been a human being. Gulxán knew what would come with the dawn: the Muradoc would descend to the Lake and Gulxán would be forced to watch as his people fell for the pretty blandishments of the Last God. They would not understand it as submission, but as the consummation of the Old Tales, the end of the world and time. But it was no consummation, but an invasion, and there was nothing a lone phantom could have done to either foresee or forestall it. The Muradoc and his tavanávas had ruined already the people of Ithládhis, that deceived, possessed, desperate, greedy, and satisfied tribe. Gulxán had come to see that time had readied the Ithládhiuhn to become greater than a mighty tribe, to swell and rise as a nation, to expand and deliver their gifts up the river valleys to those men more beast than human, and conquer them with the willow buds of civilization. But just at that moment they had turned up the broad, flat trail that ran into a wasteland. Had his tribe of the Úvu-Úbu raised walls and crops, instead of huts, Gulxán might have remained among the human race and passed into the ranks of ghosts by the orthodox route. But to escape the rubes and inbred thugs of his reedy village he had turned to the spirit realm. The mystery had seduced him, and first had become a shaman; then the pleasure of the mystery proved greater than the peace of the mystery, and imagining that he heard an echo, “More,” sound through his mind he had become a mœgla.
“Coming home to die…?” asked a voice like a frigid finger at his ear.
He had escaped nothing.
Out of the old night and gathering belligerently before him in the air off of the cliff came wraiths, selfish, sycophantic, gross, and malevolent, the sergeants of the Muradoc. “The water is pretty in the moonlight, isn’t it…?”
Gulxán said in fatigued tolerance, “But how can I stagger down memory lane with this in tow?” Gulxán bent down and picked up a rock the size of a human head that, tied to supernatural ropes, allowed him only the freedom to hobble or shuffle.
“You’re a flight risk…”
“Where am I supposed to run to?”
“The whole world is open to you…”
“Not with your kind about.”
“Indeed…”
“And why should I?”
“You shouldn’t. You appeal to him. You are his storyteller and his lady friend needs a pet…”
“You are pretty vile if you can despise her.”
“Don’t get a nose bleed taking the high ground…”
“After all, Gulcu, you hate your master…”
“You hate your master, too.”
“He is not our master…”
“And I do not hate him. I hate that he is my master. But you hate the man himself.”
“But he is not a man…! He is Dagahlas! The Last God…”
“The inordinately stupid Last God…”
“He does not know any better. You, however, do, don’t you?”
“We know best…But who’s going to cause us trouble…?”
Gulxán suggested, “The Nameless One?”
“Best left unnamed…”
“I know that your superiors disliked muddying themselves in the Ground of Being, but we poor and weak should have a little more reverent fear.”
“We’re not poor, phantom, and we’re not weak. You will see…”
“I bubble with anticipation. What is the point of this visit?”
“A summons…”
“Mister Muradoc has been doing inventory…”
“He has some questions…”
“You were far more fawning towards the Black God.”
“Thula was a true master…”
“But you were afraid of him.”
They chuckled. “Come along, puff…”
So the wraiths marched the mœgla through the Muradoc’s caravans to the god’s gleaming tent.
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