Whatever that was, she didn’t want to get any closer to it. Most likely it was one more new Coronal with one more mob of hysterical followers. Millilain looked about warily, wondering if she dared go down Dizimaule Street and cut through the back alleyway to Malamola Road, which would run into her street a few blocks below the Voriax Causeway. The problem was that alleyway—she had heard some strange stories about what had been going on in there lately—
Night was coming on. A light rain, little more than a heavy mist, began to fall. She felt lightheaded and dizzy from hunger, though she was becoming accustomed to that. Out of the south, from the suburb of Hot Khyntor where all the geothermal formations were, came the sullen booming of Confalume Geyser, punctual as ever, marking the hour. Automatically Millilain looked toward it and saw its great column of steam rising heavenward, with a broad sulphurous mantle of yellow smoke surrounding it and seeming to fill half the sky. She had been looking at the geysers of Hot Khyntor all her life, taking them completely for granted, but somehow tonight the eruption frightened her as never before, and she made the sign of the Lady again and again until it began to subside.
The Lady. Did she still watch over Majipoor? What had become of her kindly sendings that gave such good counsel and warm comfort? For that matter, where was the King of Dreams? Once, in quieter times, those two Powers had kept everyone’s life in balance, advising, admonishing, if necessary punishing. Perhaps they still reigned, Millilain thought: but the situation was so far out of hand that neither King nor Lady could possibly cope with it, though they might labor from dawn to dawn to bring matters back under control. It was a system designed to work beautifully in a world where most people gladly obeyed the law anyway. But now hardly anyone obeyed the law. There was no law.
Yah-tah yah -tah yah-tah voom.
And from the other side:
“Sempeturn! Lord Sempeturn! Hail, hail, hail, Lord Sempeturn!”
The rain was coming down harder, now. Get moving, she told herself. March-men in the square, and the Divine only knows what madness ahead of you, and the Knights of Dekkeret cavorting behind you—trouble, any way at all. And even if Kristofon was among the Knights, she didn’t want to see him, eyes glassy with devotion, hands upraised in the new form of the starburst salute. She began to run. Across Malibor to Dizimaule, down Dizimaule toward that little alleyway connecting with Malamola—did she dare?
Yah-tah yah -tah yah-tah voom.
A line of paraders coming up Dizimaule Street toward her, suddenly! Walking like some sort of soulless machines, nine or ten abreast, arms swinging stiffly up and down, right left right left, and that chant bursting from them in an endless insistent jabbing rhythm. They would parade right over her and never see her. She made a quick turn into the alleyway, only to find a horde of men and women with green-and-gold armbands clogging the far end and screaming in praise of the new Lord Stiamot.
Trapped! All the lunatics were out at once tonight!
Desperately glancing about, Millilain saw a door half ajar on the left-hand side of the alleyway and ducked quickly into it. She found herself in a dark corridor, with faint chanting and the sharp scent of a strange incense coming from a room at the far end of it. A shrine of some sort. One of the new cults, maybe. But at least they were unlikely to hurt her, here. She might be able to stay until all the various demented mobs outside had moved along to another part of town.
Cautiously she moved down the corridor and peered into the room at the end. Dark. Fragrant. A dais at one side and what looked like two small dried sea dragons mounted like flagpoles at either end of it. A Liiman standing between them, somber, silent, triple eyes burning like smouldering coals. Millilain thought she recognized him: the street vendor who once had sold her a skewer of sausages for five crowns. But maybe not. It was hard to tell one Liiman from the next, after all.
A hooded figure who smelled like a Ghayrog came up to her and whispered, “You are in time for communion, sister. Welcome and the peace of the water-kings be upon you.”
The water-kings?
The Ghayrog took her gently by the elbow and just as gently propelled her into the room, so that she could take her place among the kneeling, murmuring congregation. No one looked at her; no one was looking at anyone else; all eyes were on the Liiman between the two little dried sea dragons. Millilain looked toward him too. She dared not glance about at those alongside her, for fear she might find friends of hers here.
“Take—drink—join—” the Liiman commanded.
They were passing wine-bowls from aisle to aisle. Out of the corner of her eye Millilain saw that each worshiper, when the bowl came to him, put it to his lips and drank deeply, so that the bowls had constantly to be refilled as they moved through the room. The closest one was four or five rows ahead of her just then.
The Liiman said, “We drink. We join. We go forth and embrace the water-king.”
Water-kings were what the Liimen called the sea dragons. Millilain remembered. They worshipped the dragons, so it was reported. Well, she thought, maybe there’s something to it. Everything else has failed: give the world to the sea dragons. The wine-bowl, she saw, was two rows ahead of her now, but moving slowly.
“We went among the water-kings and hunted them and took them from the sea,” said the Liiman. “We ate their flesh and drank their milk. And this was their gift to us and their great willing sacrifice, for they are gods and it is right and proper for gods to give their flesh and their milk to lesser folk, to nurture them and make them like gods themselves. And now the time of the water-kings is coming. Take. Drink. Join.”
The bowl was passing down Millilain’s row.
“They are the great ones of the world,” the Liiman intoned. “They are the masters. They are the monarchs. They are the true Powers, and we belong to them. We and all others who live on Majipoor. Take. Drink. Join.”
The woman at Millilain’s left was drinking from the wine-bowl now. A savage impatience came over her—she was so hungry, she was so thirsty!—and she was barely able to restrain herself from pulling the bowl from the woman’s grasp, fearing none would be left for her. But she waited; and then the bowl was in her hands. She stared down into it: a dark wine, thick, glossy. It looked strange. Hesitantly she took a sip. It was sweet and spicy, and heavy on her tongue, and at first she thought it was like no wine she had ever tasted, but then it seemed that there was something familiar about it. She took another sip.
“Take. Drink. Join.”
Why, it was the wine dream-speakers used, when they made their communion with your mind and spoke the dream that was troubling you! That was it, surely, dream-wine. Though Millilain had been to a dream-speaker only five or six times, and not for years, she recognized the unmistakable flavor of the stuff. But how could that be? Only dream-speakers were allowed to use it, or even to possess it. It was a powerful drug. It was to be used only under a speaker’s supervision. But somehow in this backroom chapel they had vats and vats of it, and the congregation was guzzling it as though it were beer—