Salome and other Decadent Fantasies by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford [Stableford, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: fantasy, horror, literature, art, decadence
Publisher: Ingram Distribution
Published: 2011-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

THE LIGHT OF ACHERNAR

As the Earth neared its end and the sun grew weary, the baleful light of stars more virile and virulent shone ever more brightly upon the southern continent of Zothique. Among these fiery potentates, which no longer waited for sunset before displaying themselves in the purple sky, none blazed more keenly than vile Achernar, whose flagitious rays visited plague after plague upon beleaguered Zothique. The Silver Death, which devastated the mighty cities of Tasuun and Yoros and slew the torturers who followed their vocation in Uccastrog, was neither the least nor the last of these.

The astrologers who had foreseen the advent of the Silver Death and mapped its devastation had anticipated that the contagion would, in time, be removed by the etheric winds to other worlds. No sooner had their prophecies been vindicated, however, than they became busy with further divinations, eager to know what malefice would next be visited upon Zothique by the uncanny radiance of Achernar. None labored harder in this regard than Giraiazal, who had been fortunate enough to be exiled to the isle of Cyntrom a year before the Silver Death laid waste to Yoros.

Cyntrom had long paid tribute to the kings of Yoros, and was regarded by them as a useful place of exile for nobles and magicians whose presence had become inconvenient. Its convenience in this regard was partly determined by its relative remoteness and small population—which numbered less than twenty thousand—and partly by the violent tendencies of the native families, who could always be trusted to make sure that any exiles who threatened to make further trouble in Yoros would wind up dead in alleyways, on payment of a very reasonable fee.

As a scholarly man who counted Fate his one and only mistress, Giraiazal would not have been inclined to make trouble for his former masters even if they had survived. He was quite content to be installed in a lonely turret in the largest edifice in Cyntrom Port, from which he could make his observations of the changing constellations and calculate their influence on the fortunes of his consultants. The edifice in question was still known as the palace, although a thousand years had passed since the last king of Cyntrom had been deposed and replaced by a baron who lorded it over the islanders in the name of Yoros. Giraiazal was not among those who hailed the destruction of Yoros by the Silver Death as a blessing, but when the heads of the oldest and most prolific families of Cyntrom, Orlu and Viragan, consulted him as to whether the time was ripe for them to obtain control of their own political destiny he was glad to confirm that the baron had outlived the favor of the stars as well as his utility.

There was much that Giraiazal might have said that might have tempered the revolutionary zeal of his clients, but he had learned enough from his condemnation to exile to be convinced that a popular prophet ought to be generous in his disposition of the good news and miserly in hoarding the bad.

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