Before the Cataclysm, all inhabitants of the Lloroi Empire had to make
at least a formal obeisance to the guardian gods of the imperial race.
Their religion was sophisticated with a complex hierarchy of priests, centuried
ritual, and gorgeous accouterments. Public slight of the imperial
gods was tantamount to rebellion and the dignity of the official cult was
defended by the government. Even so, the faith of the Lloroi had
become so completely identified with the exercise of temporal power that
it eventually lost its capacity to inspire virtue in Lloroi people themselves,
much less in the inhabitants of the empire who were only moved to worship
by threat of fire and sword.
Each nation had its own gods, its own traditions. The Lloroi did
not try to take these away, but simply sought acknowledgement of the superiority
of the imperial cult, as the Lloroi race had superiority over all others.
But the Cataclysm swept all these faiths away and hardly an echo of them
survive, except in the unbroken traditions of the Temple of Kings and the
Order of the Hippogriff, and, to a lesser degree, in the cities of the
South Plains, where civilization was never entirely snuffed out.
But for most of the Minarians, even the living Lloroi themselves preserve
but little of the old ways but a few gods names whose attributes and purposes
have greatly changed.
In fact, what befell the Lloroi was the common lot of men and men-like
beings all over Minaria after the Cataclysm. Men too sophisticated
to believe in gods, plunged into chaos, privation, and barbarism effectively
had none. In the succeeding generations, the need for gods to fit
the time congealed into new ideas about the gods, and new gods. The
hunters worshiped the gods who gave success in hunt, the farmers worshipped
god as the giver of rich harvests, the goddess as a guardian of their animals'
fertility. Burnt offerings of meat and vegetables on high places
became a very general norm. In the darkness, the daemons ruled, and
men huddled close to the protection of the hearth, under the pictograms
or fetishes which protected them from evil.
In due course, mankind rose from primitive savagery and his gods reflected
his developing way of life. The Muetarans were typical of the process
which went on with many local variations all over Minaria. The Muetaran
peasant usually lived in a village. He rose early, as simple people
always do, before dawn. In the dusk of the morning he looked for
the stars which were beginning to wane at that hour. The stars were
for him only indications of the time of the year, not objects of worship.
He greeted the rising sun with a kiss of the hand, as he greeted the first
swallow or the first kite, but he did not pay it any reverence. He
needed rain and sometimes cool weather, more than he needed the sun.
He looked at the highest mountaintop in the neighborhood for clouds, which
was a good sign of the rain god. The latter might shatter the oaks
with his thunderbolt, but thunder and lightning were followed by the hard
splash of the rain, which benefitted the crops, the grass, and the fruits.
Where rain was plentiful, people took the god for granted and gave him
few festivals. In the dry South Plains many sacrifices and feast
days were given in his honor.
As kingdoms took form out of what had been free tribal land, mighty lords
came to control vast acreage, with wide powers over their fellow men who
lived on it. The gods whom the aristocracy worshiped seemed distant
to the common man, but poverty kept most men preoccupied with eking out
their basic needs, and when danger from marauders, both local foreign,
made them desirous of protection by the strong, a harmonious social hierarchy
flourished. But as time marched on and kingdom became more secure,
the great had less to offer for the good of the common man. Accordingly,
the heavy rod by which the peasant had always been ruled was increasingly
seen as something arbitrary and hostile to his best interests. Indeed,
in a way this was true. Once lords had dwelled shoulder to shoulder
with their humble retainers, but as riches accumulated among the noble
and the mercantile class, they grew class-conscious and associated inclusively
of persons of their own rank and breeding. The needful toilers were
looked on as a class apart, needed for his labor, but otherwise of no great
concern. The people were probably less poor than ever, but they resented
their lot even more.
In such conditions of social ferment, religious proselytizes who appealed
directly to the people made great inroads. Under repression people
lost faith in their long-demeaned local gods and were desirous of a great
god of their own, beholding to their interests, not their lords.
There were several cults that served this need, the post widespread being
that of the god Souza. But of special affection to the most down-trodden
was the cult of Huisinga and its plethora of benevolent, wonder-working
saints.
It is hard to reconcile the Minarian cult of Huisinga with the notorious
cult of the Gulsa, in which it ostensibly had its origin. The latter
has long been calumniated in Mivioran and Reikenan history as a society
of evil sorcerers, while the latter has always been associated with the
assuaging of pressing human need. The Miviorans allege that the Gulsa
cult seized power in Reiken about the year 250 A.C. and proceeded to enslave
the land with terrible sorceries, forcing their ancestors to cross the
Westward Sea to Minaria to maintain their freedom.
What we know of the origin of the Minarian Huisinga cult is largely restricted
to the cult's own legends, probably due to the fact that it appeared during
the time of chaos known as the invasion of the Abominations and its early
missionaries operated most diligently where these monsters held sway.
The cult's sacred book, The Lives of the Early Saints, tells the story
of how the savants of Huisinga in Reiken built a great ship which they
called The Ship of Huisinga, and sailed to Minaria in order to bring Huisinga's
message of healing and brotherhood to those who had never heard it.
The were three noble missionaries upon the ship, legend says: the
high priest Tanaro, one of the most righteous of the priestly-sorcerers
of Reiken, his pure-hearted follower Prayaga, and Prayaga's devoted acolyte,
Sankari.
But the lords of Mivior did not wish their people to hear the message that
the missionaries bore, and they sent their ships to destroy the Ship of
Huisinga. There numbers were great, and as they attacked the saintly
Prayaga was killed. The god Huisinga himself hid his sacred ship
from its wicked hunters and brought it safe to land. The Minarians
refused to repent of the murder of the pure at heart, and so the mighty
unleased the awful scourge of the Abominations upon the land. The
Minarians were sorely chastened and afterwards received Tanaro and Sankari
with humility and reverence an the savants did their best to bind the wounds
inflicted by the peoples' penance.
While it is possible that missionaries may have come from Reiken for proselytizing
work, we cannot take the cult legends literally. There are too many
internal inconsistencies. Tanaro is sometimes described as a tall,
strong man, sometimes as a man with the head of a sheep, and sometimes
as a small, thin man. Sankari is often described variously as a fox,
a half-woman, half-fox, and a beautiful maiden. Undoubtedly, the
lives of these saints is an amalgam of the lives of many different persons
involved in missionary work. We need also suspect that Huisinga theology
may no Reiken-derived at all, but is indigenous. The men of north-central
Minaria have long known of gods with animal attributes, and Tanaro and
Sankari my be an andromorphification of these. Further, the legends
of Sankari and Tanaro have them active at least a hundred years after the
onset of the Abominations. While the priests of Huisinga's cults
are attributed with long lives earned in service to their gods, it is more
likely that Tanaro and Sankari originated as pastoral gods whose bucolic
worship was assimilated into a sophisticated theology brought to the countryside
by Minarian priests who fled the cities in terror of the Abominations.
Be this as it may, the legends relate that Tanaro and Sankari went about
Minaria during the most terrible days of the Abominations' reign of terror,
caring for the needy, making food out of thin air, healing the injured
and sick, giving the message of the Gulsa's love to those in despair.
They apparently made many converts and the most venerated shines of the
Huisinga cult are located at sites which the holy ones are believed to
have visited.
Tanaro was a mighty miracle-worker, we are told. He could make food
appear from empty air and turn water into nectar. Yet, for all the
reverence such miracles earn him, he is seldom pictured in cult iconography
and there are few legends about him. Perhaps the holy man has taken
on the vagaries of a god himself and cultists see him only as an abstraction
devoid of human frailties. On the contrary, icons and statutes of
Sankari abound. To the Immerite common people, she is often called
"habrivka", meaning, "our little saint." The conventional depiction
of Sankari shows a half-woman, half-fox standing up straight with her hands
placed protectively on the heads of a slave in fetters and a crouching
child. This symbolically conveys the belief that Sankari's special
sympathy devolves upon the innocent and the downtrodden.
The origins of some peculiar customs are attributed to St. Sankari legendary
ministry. In eastern Hothior, for example, on the twelve of the month
of Taey, little village girls wear fox-tails pinned to their skirts and
hide behind corners or bushes, from whence they throw snowballs at their
most venerated neighbors, especially at the priests of Huisinga.
Then the girls leap up and run away, while the grownups pretend to pursue
them. The pursuit, never successful if carried out in piety, symbolizes
the inability of the material world to place its constraints upon the spiritual.
Undoubtedly, the white of the snow in conjunction with the chaste innocents
of the little girls represents the bestowal of a blessing.
Saint Sankari is herself attributed with the creation of many of the hymns
and the dances which are still observed by the cult. Few believe
that the missionary, if she ever truly lived, personally wrote so many
songs preserved to this day, but the traditionalists will not any continence
challenge to this convention. Many commentaries and analysis have
been applied to Sankari's hymns. They reason, for instance, that
the "Hymn of Dunderi" was written to celebrate the progress of the faithful
soul through the dangers of corporeal existence, until spiritual haven
is reached, symbolized by a journey through the wilderness beset by Abominations
and hunger. The heretical Huisingite scholar, Worobel, on the contrary,
contends that many of Sankari's songs are purely biographical and that
the famous "Hymn of Dunderi" simply commemorates an occasion when Sankari
and her followers got through the monster-haunted wilderness without starving
to death. Whatever the truth, the worshipers of Huisinga love to
sing and dance. Theological scholar Jayvadan of Kuong has said of
the cult: "Souza may have gotten most of the converts, but Huisinga
has all the good songs."
Huisinga has some good men, too. The most respected of all the god's
missionaries abroad in Minaria today is the man simply known as Nonnus.
From his meditative autobiography, we learn that Nonnus was born the son
of a minor Ponese nobleman who died in poverty. His more wealthy
uncle, Lelex, took him as a teenaged lad into his house where he was treated
as a fond son by his uncle and his uncle's second wife, a woman who was
not much older than Nonnus himself.
Gossip issues from all such arrangement, no matter how innocent.
But it may safely be said that they lived in mutual regard and propriety.
Alas, the Dukedom of their province had become vacant and two families
violently contended for the inheritance. Each hired mercenaries to
harry and intimidate the other and High Prince Luppi felt obliged to use
extraordinary means to keep order in the provincial capital of Culatus.
One in a contentious series of legal proceedings witnessed an eloquent
advocacy of one party's claim, to the general rage of the other party.
Prisco, a follower of the outraged party, led a group of mercenary toughs
on a street attack upon the too-skillful advocate. Though Lelex and
his nephew were of the party of the incensed nobles, they could not brook
such lawlessness and came to the defense of the assaulted pleader.
In the confusion, the leader of the mercenary band struck Lexel a fatal
blow in the back, then fled into the night as Nonnus' uncle died in his
arms.
Prisco's party were outraged at the injudicious act of violence and repudiated
the retainer, who fled Pon in fear of the gallows. Nonnus could not
countenance the escape of the murderer, so pursued him outside Pon.
Scurrilous rumor followed the youth's disappearance, and gossipers bantered
it about that Nonnus had himself slain his uncle, for lust of his property
and his wife, but in fear of certain discovery fled imminent apprehension.
Nonnus deigned not to return and clear his name. Instead he pursued
his uncle's murderer with obsession. When he learned the man had
changed his name and joined a mercenary band, Nonnus pursued. When
his means ran out, he himself took mercenary chores and, as a young man
of sense, courage, and some formal military training, he was quickly made
a corporal, then a sergeant, and soon a lieutenant.
His brooding hatred of the elusive murderer made the violent life of the
mercenary soldier congenial to the young noble. He fought for the
Immerites at Tanglefoot, where his commander cited him for daring on the
attack on the left wing of the Muetaran army, where Trouble, Minaria's
most famous female commander, barely held on before the arrival of succor
from Nithmere threw the Immerites and their allies back. Nonnus performed
with equal capability at Glamdicin, serving with the Miviorans against
the Elves.
He had become a hard and cynical warrior by the time of the siege of Fursten,
a fortified city resisting the advance of his Muetaran paymasters upon
Tadafat in northern Hothior. The Muetarans were serious about taking
the citadel and had constructed a wide assortment of siege engines.
Several assaults had been made against the city walls and had been resisted
with stubborn hand-to-hand fighting. It was a cold fall, and there
was a drift of snow in the air as the tired mercenaries of his camp retired
to bury their dead and nurse the wounded.
His book relates that Nonnus was introspective that night. How had
he come here? the wondered. What had this to do with the hopes and
aspirations of the boy he had been growing up in Pon? He had come
so far to find a killer, but had himself become the killer of many men,
strangers, like him fighting for pay, or better than him, fighting for
king and country. What sense did it make to fight at Tanglefoot in
the same cause as the Elves, and then kill their sons at Glamdicin?
What cause did he have against the Hothioran of Fursten that he must lead
green peasant boys to certain death against its bastions, against the green
peasant boys who did their best to hold it?
He was remembering a saying popular with the followers of Huisinga, who
were common in the north country: "We soon become what most we hate."
At that moment, he heard a whisper in the darkness beyond the picket fires:
"Prayaga...."
A name he did not know, but spoken perhaps a girl. It was not uncommon
for peasants to scavenge near a military camp, but it was dangerous for
them. "Where did that call come from?" he asked the soldier next
to him.
Just then the shouted, as if from a distance, came again: "Come to
me, Brother Prayaga."
"What shout?" the man answered.
"Are you deaf?"
"No, Sir!"
Disdaining to belabor the point, the captain went off in search of the
speaker, not sure afterwards if it was to drive her off for her own good,
or protect her while she went about her business.
He had not gone very far before he realized that already he had lost sight
of the lights from the vast solider camp behind him, and even from the
city's watchtowers. There was no moon or stars give light, but he
could see the eerie snow-dusted outlines of the tombstones and oaks of
the burying ground he had unknowingly blundered into.
"Prayaga," came the cry once again, but this time it had no direction and
seemed to come from all around.
Now Nonnus took dread, for evil spirits haunt strange boneyards.
He grasped his sword and thought for protective words, but realized that
he knew no such words, or at least believed in none.
"Avaunt, Spirit!" he shouted as he backed from the graveyard, "I want no
commerce with you! I am going!"
"Don't go," came the voice.
"Who speaks?" he demanded, with his hand on his hilt.
He espied phosphorescent mist one tombstone, like a will o' the wisp.
But the ground was dry and the weather so cold. The strange light
congealed into a shape, and suddenly he was looking at a creature half
a woman and half a fox.
There are two versions of what happened next. The "Life of Nonnus,"
by Brother Desmit of Vaugh, relates that the spirit spoke thus:
"`I am Sankari, sent to lead you into the fold of my Lord Huisinga.
Thou art chosen. My Lord bids thee eschew thy worldly ways turn thy
eyes to Heaven. You shall become a seeker of souls for the father
of Heaven, Huisinga.'
"And Nonnus, moved my the saint's prophecy said, `If you are truly our
Divine Lady, make a miracle so that I shall know you are Sankari, and not
a spirit come from below to deceive."
`"It shall be done,' said Saint Sankari. And it came to pass before
the sun again lit upon the field of war the Miracle of Fursten. After
that Nonnus fell down and worshiped Lord Huisinga, and dedicated his life
to the service of the Divine Lady.
Nonnus, abandoning his weapons and his armor, rode west alone, reaching
the Huisinga cult community at Oliverra in southern Muetar. A man
who did nothing in half-measures, he devoted himself to the study of cult
doctrine. After five years of religious retreat, he at last went
on upon the road to spread the word of Huisinga in his own right.
Nonnus has always maintained that St. Sankari visits him in his meditations
and that if he has done good work, it is because he has had better guidance.
Over the succeeding years Brother Nonnus has become a familiar figure in
the north of Hothior, where Sankari has many shrines and holy places.
But eventually Nonnus turned toward missionary work in Shucassam and Rombune,
where Gulsa-worshipers are few.
In the best tradition of the cult's missionaries, Nonnus first makes the
presence of his ministry known by going among the common throng and speaking
in simple words to the crowd in humble places, asking that the afflicted
or the distracted be brought to him, and these he heals with wonderful
efficacy. If hunger was the problem, he would cut weeds from the
vicinity and transformed them into bread, as persistent reputation insists
that the adepts of the Huisinga cult know how to do. The healed or
provisioned, or those who witnessed healing or provisioning, often accost
him later, or follow him from the scene of his miracles, saying:
"Tell me more of the god Huisinga, Teacher."
In his work in the South, Nonnus has enhanced the number of cult temples
greatly. Most recently he has made his abode in the port town of
Freeport, virtually outside the law of nations, a haven for thieves, pirates,
smugglers, and harlots. When admonished by the fastidious for keeping
such low company, Nonnus has said , "A saint does not disdain the company
the company of mercenaries and plunderers, so how should I?"
Nonnus' memoirs end at this point in his life, but by that time he was
a venerated figure whose activities were widely observed and reported.
He commanded great respect and was permitted free movement in every nation
where the god Huisinga was venerated. His immunity was extended to
all his traveling companions, though at times some of these sought to abuse
his protection with acts of lawlessness or black magic. Such a person
was admonished and expelled from his entourage, to make his way on his
own.
His mission house in Freeport is endowed by more than one rich patron of
dubious antecedents, and is kept by devoted followers when Nonnus is absent,
as he is for long periods. One who kept his quarters was a former
pirate with a rope-burn on his neck, another a harlot who had grown old
in the benighted streets of Port Lork before Freeport was ever built.
Then, among the various former cripples and orphan children, there was
a beautiful maid whom was known by no name but "Sesa."
For more than a year, Sesa seemed to be Nonnus' special ward and she traveled
everywhere with him, assisting him minister to the destitute and needy,
traveling with him all the way to the Maragonian province of Muetar.
Those eager to cast aspersions on the righteous whispered that the ascetic
was a hypocrite and had taken a lover. Nonnus explained nothing and
apologized for nothing.
The missionary had been there during the wide-spread revolt, at its very
cauldron, the disaffected province of Maragonia. He was sometimes
seen the company of the rebel leader Trouble, once his opponent at the
Battle of Tanglefoot. Whether he still bore resentments, he attempted
to quell the revolt by persuasion and many districts were spared cruel
retribution because of the holy man's activities as an intermediary.
Long before the end of the revolt, Sesa had failed from the story.
Whatever the truth, Nonnus returned from Muetar alone.
Perhaps because of his military background, Nonnus after Maragonia more
frequently ministered to battlefields, healing the grisly wounds which
come his way, and administering to the spiritual needs of the men.
It came to pass at a battlefield in the Thorn Flats that a wounded man
was brought to him, a man whose face he knew on sight. It was Prisco,
the murderer of Nonnus beloved uncle and benefactor. He might slay
the man where he lay and none would be the wiser.
It is said that Nonnus tended his wounds and spent the night in mediation.
Perhaps he was seeking the guidance of his patron saint, as he always had
in his moment of inner turmoil. He might denounce the man, but who
would take him into custody in the wastelands for a murder committed twenty
years before? It must be personal vengeance or not at all.
For many years he had obsessed himself with the dream of locating the man
who had destroyed his life.
Perhaps he came to realize that this low-grade of human being had determined
the course of his life -- at least he had before he had been saved from
his life of blood and hatred by the grace of St. Sankari. He thought
until this point that he had been free, but understood now that his true
freedom depended not upon the will of the saint, but upon his own will.
He had let this man pull him down into the mire of his own inequity like
a ball on a chain. Now his nemesis was offering him the easy road
to murder and confutation of all his light had come to mean since Fursten.
At dawn Prisco limped from his sick bed, dropped a coin into the missionaries
charity bowl and left the infirmary never to be a part of the missionary's
life again.
That part of Nonnus' life was over, but with Huisinga's blessing, let us
hope that such a man as the missionary is with his flock for many a long
year to come.