The expedition made good time for the first few days. A considerable
body of men at arms was taken along to act as a bodyguard. Mearch,
Royal Armorer, stayed behind to keep the city garrison.
They marched parallel to the river through the midst of the gulf plains
for a good distance, and were able to travel with little danger through
the fertile lush vegetation.
Eventually, they left behind the last outpost of the Emperor's domain,
and it was with a lonely, forbidding feeling that Si'Wren watched the
trader urged his camel forward at the head of the long column. From now
on, he was to act as their only guide, and they were to put their trust
in him, as he lead them into an unfamiliar and hostile world in which
all men were to be automatically regarded as enemies until proven
otherwise.
The trader had traversed the entire distance himself, and had kept a
good record of his travels, which journal was employed now as their
only hope of locating the legendary Patriarch Noah. However, chance
encounters with various refugees fleeing in the opposite direction
later in the day, brought out the news from several independent sources
that a terrible war between two kings, rival brothers, had made their
chosen route impassable.
Borla finally called a halt and a short conference was held. He looked
deeply concerned, and for good reason. Although Si'Wren was called to
attendance, she was not asked to make a record of it because it was
felt that once they had decided which way to go, there would be no need
of further mention of their predicament. Borla was reluctant to see the
men caught up in some local squabble, and Emperor Euphrates readily
agreed that it was better to keep the troops fresh and in high spirits,
for they had a great journey ahead of them.
Hence, Si'Wren was able to learn firsthand of their deep-rooted fear,
as the fateful decision was finally made to turn aside. It was
something of an eye-opener for Si'Wren to learn that her mighty Emperor
could possibly be afraid of anything to the point of actually avoiding
a deliberate showdown, and taught her much about the immensity and
hostility of the world.
She could not help but share their fear, when they finally concluded
their impromptu conference of the leaders of the Captains of Fifty, and
with false bravado, announced to the men their intention of striking
out across-country into an uncharted domain, in a forced-march across a
profligate wilderness in which both men and beasts were so savage that
civilized souls did not venture forth unless they went in large,
heavily armed groups and then only with good reason.
To Si'Wren, it was readily apparent that they would no longer know for
certain how best to direct their path. The trader himself would only
have the most vague idea of which meander to take at every fork. What
with the unbelievable twisting of the various water courses and almost
complete impassibility of various forms of terrain they had encountered
so far, their journey had become a maze at which the most intelligent
and informed of them could only guess which way to turn. Even with
experienced scouts sent ahead on horseback to search out their route,
they were in a constant quandary over which way to go next.
After several days, their journey took them up out of the plains into
the humid highlands of a continuous jungle in which plants and animals
grew in a great profusion such as Si'Wren could not have believed
possible had she not seen it with her own eyes.
Each evening, the Captains of Fifty posted their outwatches, and
Emperor Euphrates summoned Si'Wren to him, and by the light of a
bonfire would question her at length about the Invisible God. Si'Wren
tried to instruct him as best she could using her clay tablets,
portions of which she sometimes hastily backtracked and obliterated
with the heel of her palm, to make way for better explanations. She
hardly knew what to write but seemed to make sense enough to please his
Majesty, if not herself.
For it was a bewildering contest in which the established deities stood
linked rank upon rank against her Invisible God, and the thought of
what the Patriarch Noah would have said weighed heavily upon her mind.
As a result she was frequently plagued by hesitation and confusion as
Emperor Euphrates waited patiently to read each reply from her, and
Si'Wren was thankful that scornful Borla was not a participant.
But always, upon retiring to her tent each night after yet another long
'discussion' with her Emperor, Si'Wren was left feeling wrung dry.
Then, surrounded by pitch darkness and the strange distant cries of
unseen night creatures both great and small, she would pray fervently
to Him in private, and finally slip away into sleep wondering yet again
what sort of a God could have produced such a far-reaching creation in
which man and beast alike so readily displayed such unbridled savagery
and madness.
* * *
One night, as they sat encamped on a broad hilltop clearing, Si'Wren
watched the thickening night mists roll over the land, swathing the
jungles of the hills and valleys in a gauzy white shroud, and she
considered at length what the Invisible God would have wanted her to
communicate to her Emperor, if she could but guess rightly even one
time what that might be.
But she was left, as before, with a wilderness of the soul like unto
that surrounding them, in which the elusive refuge of Divine Truth
seemed as remote as the tale of the Prophet Noah's mythical ark.
They were resting and warming themselves at fireside, having just
finished the evening repast. She had extra clay tablets stacked beside
her, with one in her lap, having just finished the dictations of
Borla's notes about the day's journey into this strange land.
* * *
A little earlier, right after making camp, one of Emperor Euphrates's
Captains of Fifty had approached and thrown himself down before Emperor
Euphrates, to complain loudly to the dust under his nose that Si'Wren's
beauty was exceeding distracting to the men because of the way they
could not help watching her while she consumed her food. He also
alleged she was coquettish in her manner and playing the flirt to his
men. They could not bear it, he said, and had voiced numerous and
bitter complaints to him about such an unconquerable distraction.
Further, he declared that they were justified in their protestations,
for behold, were they not all under enforced celibacy because they
could not bring along their accustomed camp prostitutes on the long
forced march to Noah's land?
Si'Wren, of course, could say nothing in her own defense, but expected
that her Emperor might, because he already knew that she was sworn to
such higher callings as precluded by their very nature the rottenness
of character necessary for her to act in the manner she stood accused
of. It was simply beneath her dignity, not to mention her calling.
Besides which, her suitably modest behavior did not seem to have
displeased Emperor Euphrates or Borla in the past, and this was the
first time she had ever heard of such complaints.
But after her Emperor had ordered the Captain to return to his men, to
her chagrin, he had commanded Si'Wren that she should retire to her
tent whenever eating.
To Si'Wren, it seemed ridiculous, but henceforth she knew that she must
comply obediently without question.
* * *
Now, the memory of her indignity was put aside as Si'Wren sat before
Emperor Euphrates and inscribed in her tablets her intuitions regarding
the Invisible God.
Tonight she was attempting to explain, out of her own ignorance, with
but her own trueness of conscience to guide her, that the Invisible God
was not the same thing as his creation, the world, and also that,
although he was also spirit, or 'wind', he also liked to compare
himself in some ways, although not all ways, to water.
For instance, one might venture to 'see' the Invisible God by a most
curious trick of the eye, as by the discovered reflection of one's face
when looking into the still, motionless surface of any pond or wash
basin of water, which was also, after a fashion, invisible. In the same
manner that might one 'see' all things by looking obliquely at their
reflection in the still water, so also was the Invisible God both
'seen' in his creation, as by reflection upon water, and yet not seen
at all, since water was itself invisible.
Emperor Euphrates read this upon her clay tablet, and smiled as he held
low before her eyes the mirrored surface of a golden goblet of red wine
and suggested, "This also, yes?"
Si'Wren hesitated long and contemplatively, as he held it low before
her eyes, so that she might study his grinning reflection in the deep
red of the wine. God was spirit. Wine was a spirit drink. This
perplexed her deeply, for she wished not to blaspheme. Finally, after
thinking it over intently, she bowed low and agreed with a brief
hesitant nod. Yes, she wrote, praying she would not offend Him; The
Invisible God might be like wine.
Getting back to her basic belief that He was like water, she wrote
further, begging the question; Who can make an idol to represent water?
Water flows like a living thing, and can bear no set shape, and how
shall the finest sculptor thus fashion copies of silver or gold to sell
and get gain?
The happenstance mention of the Invisible God's remarkable immunity to
the touch of filthy lucre, a truth conclusively established by the
impossibility of selling idols of him, seemed to impress her Emperor
beyond all measure. For he spent all of his days, dealing with the
contests and affairs of men who all wanted it, and who were all,
without exception, corrupted by it's touch.
Later, Emperor Euphrates sat staring out into the gathering dusk, and
appeared deep in thought, as if much affected by what she had written.
Si'Wren had long since come to learn that even when one conversed with
Emperor Euphrates, and seemed to have his entire, undivided attention,
part of his mind was ever awander as he considered all things in his
great kingdom. He had that look about him now. He had a marvelous mind,
that seemed to find clarity where others might perceive only the sheer,
blind face of an inner stone wall.
The advancing fog of eventide had already covered and obscured the
lowlands, giving one the exalt sensation of looking down as from heaven
itself upon all the world, and cloaking symbolically with the gathering
darkness it's all-encompassing evils as with some inscrutable divine
forbearance. A forbearance, Si'Wren reminded herself, which the
foreboding ark of Noah bespoke to be nearly at an end, and which
thenceforth would be turned to wroth.
She listened to the unseen cries of creatures in the jungle, while the
fire crackled and snapped, warming her. Basking in it's heat, she felt
lulled by the flickering flames.
"You are most obedient and dutiful," said Emperor Euphrates.
At this, Si'Wren looked up at him expectantly, waiting respectfully to
see if he would say more.
"Must you always wear your hair up in such dreadful braids?" he went
on. "You should let it out. You are a beautiful girl. You should
display your beauty, for your Emperor's glory and enjoyment."
Si'Wren looked up at him in involuntary surprise, and when he smiled
further encouragement, she bowed low, and raised herself again to full
upright sitting posture.
After a moment's awkward hesitation, she dropped her eyes shyly as,
unsmiling, she reached back with both hands, her countenance downcast
in deep modesty, and self-consciously undid the tie that held her long
braid secure at the end.
She played her fingers through her hair, unraveling it until it fell
loosely across her shoulders and she was able to shake it out in a
glossy reflective black that shone with red-orange highlights from the
dancing flames.
Tired from the day's riding, she gazed again into the fire pit, feeling
infinitely more relaxed by the loosening of her braid and secretly
gnawing a corner of her lip in unconscious self-doubt. First she was
instructed to eat in her tent so as not to unduly arouse the troops,
and now--this. She did not know quite what to make of it.
"The Invisible God who hates idols," said Emperor Euphrates. He paused
thoughtfully, before going on. "Is he not like unto this fire before
us, a 'living fire', as it were?"
Si'Wren frowned at this new idea. Then, after a long hesitation, she
finally wrote on her clay tablet, 'It is possible', and tilted the face
of the tablet so the fire itself could illuminate it.
"Then, is not the Invisible God the same thing as our very own Sun
God?" asked Emperor Euphrates quickly, as if pouncing on the winning
point of a most cleverly-worded argument.
'Not so', wrote Si'Wren, without hesitation.
She showed this to Emperor Euphrates. Then she turned the tablet
towards herself, and wrote further upon it. Finally, she turned it
towards Emperor Euphrates again.
'The Invisible God,' Si'Wren had now written, 'in Whom, like water, all
things are reflected, is the Creator of all things. But if He made all
things, then He must be higher than all things or idols.'
"I see," said Emperor Euphrates, when he had read this. "Tell me, then,
shall we see this Invisible God, when we die?"
Si'Wren thought at length, and finally, without writing anything more,
turned her tablet to him and indicated, using her ivory writing stick
as a pointer, her earlier line wherein she had written, 'It is
possible'.
Emperor Euphrates regarded the line for a long moment, and finally, he
said quietly, "So..."
He nodded thoughtfully to himself, and remained silent.
After a short time, during which interval he said nothing more, he
retired to his tent for the night, while an honor guard of four
spearmen stood outside of it's four corners in silent, constant
vigilance.
Si'Wren was left sitting before the fire, staring down at her
assortment of clay tablets as she thought intently about the true
nature of the Invisible God.
For, besides the parable of a reflection in water, she did not truly
know. There was so little to go on, certainly nothing written, whereas
others had such magnificent idols of wood, ivory, noble metals, and
fine gemstones crafted by the gifted hands of talented men. They also
had their ceremonies, their priests, their temple servants. It was so
easy for them to give an answer to any difficult question, and to
reassure one-another that they were so right.
But as for Si'Wren and her Invisible God, she could only feel a deep,
chiasmic remorse that there was no one to ask, and she knew of no other
living true believer in the whole wide world now, besides herself, and
the Patriarch Noah, whom she knew not.
* * *
That night the clouds gathered thick and dark, and the very air itself
seemed charged, and deathly still. It made the men grumble uneasily,
fearing what monsters or insanities their imaginations might conjure.
All of a sudden, there was a blinding flash in the black night as a
bolt of lightning struck the ground just outside the camp, it's searing
brilliance accompanied by an ear-splitting CRRRRAAACK!!! and an echoing
thunder that rumbled across the darkened heavens.
Terrified, the entire camp scrambled for cover.
It was the beginning of a terrible lightning storm. Far into the night,
coruscating bolts like living javelins of fire struck the ground again
and again with their blinding stabs of jagged light. Si'Wren hid also,
wondering as she cowered whether the Invisible God was angry with her
for giving such clumsy explanations to the Emperor, or so pleased as to
reinforce her mere clay words with divine, jaggedly brilliant writing
sticks of his own.
One foot soldier could suddenly stand it no longer, and ran off
screaming thin shrill cries into the darkness. He had just reached a
little hilltop, a mere rise in the land, when -still shouting madly and
hysterically- he was hit and blasted. His body lay in a heap, twisted
and blackened, the clothes shredded.
Thunder rolled across the darkened land. The camels, horses, and other
pack animals were already thoroughly spooked, and Borla gave orders
that the precious, irreplaceable animals be given hands-on guarding
throughout the night lest they break their tethers and run away.
But some of the watchmen refused to go out into the lightning-filled
darkness of this strange and foreign land at first. Then a new form of
thunder could be heard throughout the camp, the crack of whips as the
Captains of Fifty drove their fearful watchmen out of their tents to go
to their duty posts.
Si'Wren sat in her tent and fought hard not to cower or grovel before
the storm, and would have passed the entire night in prayer to the
Invisible God, had she not finally collapsed into an exhausted slumber
filled with tormented dreams and terrible, awful visions.
* * *
With the coming of the dawn, the world seemed a saner place again. The
sun rose, and the sky slowly brightened, and soon, except for a certain
sullenness in some faces, the soldiers were about their appointed tasks
almost as if nothing had happened. Si'Wren arose, and groomed her
horse, and saw to his provender. Only after she had taken care of the
glossy black stallion, whom she admired more than any horse in
existence, did she think of her own needs.
"Am I not," Emperor Euphrates said over a sumptuous breakfast, as he
sat gazing speculatively into the freshly fagoted flames of the
morning cooking fire, "Emperor Euphrates, ordained of a God who rules
even the lightning and sees fit occasionally to pass men through the
burning mantle, even as he struck down one of my subjects this past
night? And as Emperor, am I not able to do and command as I please,
that I might order a child to be passed through the fire, the better to
imitate and please this God?"
Si'Wren's eyes grew large in shock and alarm as she paused in preparing
her repast to look up at him suddenly. She was about to retire to her
tent, but all thought of nourishment was forgotten as she shook her
head vigorously in the negative. Then in response to his words she put
aside her breakfast and rose to her feet. Resorting to her tent, she
retrieved the clay tablet of the night before and emerged holding it by
it's bamboo-backed box frame.
'Not so', she wrote, and showed it to him.
Then, growing bolder, she turned it to herself, and underlined with
exaggerated slowness this direct refutation, and turned it again to
show him, regarding him eye to eye with a certain sense of somber
gravity. She was not talking so much with words now, but with her
entire physical posture for added emphasis.
He could have had her executed, for it was dangerously disloyal to
contradict him like that, especially with any question having directly
to do with the gods.
"Ah, so," said Emperor Euphrates, nodding. "Not to kill unnecessarily,
I suppose, eh? But, of a truth, we all know that without shedding of
blood, there can be no sacrifice. According to the old legends, was not
Adam himself covered with an animal skin when he was banished from the
Garden of Eden? Surely, if this Invisible God--"
He paused, looking obliquely past Si'Wren, as if searching for some
clue of more than passing significance, the better to pursue his
unusual chain of logic.
'To be merciful,' Si'Wren wrote, remaining carefully apropos of his own
words. Then she added, 'Kindness is better than cruelty.'
"You think so? But does not even this depend upon the circumstances?
Foolish men must be punished, and what the gods declare must be carried
out. Do you not agree?"
Si'Wren hesitated, and felt a great upwelling of truth that would no
longer be quelled. She paused with marking sticks held poised in
stilled fingers above the moist clay, and then made her first markings
in its smooth freshness. What she was about to write would be rank
blasphemy, but she could no longer contain herself.
'The smith', Si'Wren wrote, 'labors hard in the coals, using tongs. He
pounds his many gods with endless hammerings, working by the strength
of his arms. He is mortal, for he hungers, and his strength fails, and
if he drinks no water he soon grows faint, yet he has created his own
gods, which if they truly lived, would be battered witless anyways from
the noise of hammer and anvil, even as they are shaped to make them
ready to sell.'
That seemed a fitting beginning.
Seeing she had her Emperor's complete and undivided attention, Si'Wren
was emboldened to inscribe further, 'The craftsman measures with his
eye, and marks with his forearm; he whittles pegs to pound into the
holes he has made, and attaches a head and arms onto a graven block of
wood, making block-heads to bow down to. He marks eyes, nose, and mouth
with the dividers, and showers the ground with the unwanted kindling as
he fashions the figure of a monster man, to stand in the nook by the
front door and impress his visitors as they come in.'
Then, still dissatisfied, she took a deep breath, poised and motionless
with her marking tools in her fingers, and finally set to work as she
began to really spell it out, knowing she might not get another chance
if she were to be executed for her troubles.
'He plants trees which are watered by the hind leg of his own dogs.
Then he hews down the beautiful trees; cypress, oak, and ash.'
Running out of space, she laid the tablet before the Emperor and drew
another to her, and as he read and watched in benumbed astonishment,
she continued resolutely;
'Then shall his god warm him: for he will take the kindling and wood
chips to make his own fire, wearing down his gnashing teeth on coarse
stone grit bread baked with the coals made from the self-same trees,
and bowing down to the termite nests hidden in the hearts of his gods.'
Si'Wren felt she was on the right track at last, after so many doubts
in her own heart. Ever since the death of Nelatha, she'd had such
doubts, but no more.
The ivory stick-ends moved to an enchanting, arrhythmic tempo as she
marked on swiftly;
'He burns the cedar fleas of his god to begat roasted pig's flesh, and
says, Aha!, I am warm, my god is a wood fire. He falls down before such
and tearfully worships their acrid, stinking smoke, and licks dust,
crying loudly, Spare me oh gods!'
Si'Wren thought of the wrath of Master Rababull, long-dead, and what he
had done to poor defenseless Nelatha. Then she thought of the sudden
fate of Sorpiala, and how one never knew when one's time might come.
Si'Wren sensed a great consternation in Emperor Euphrates, though she
barely glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye as he continued to
read her words as fast as she could write them.
Then, she finished her statement as her sticks worked almost in a blur;
'Shall I bow my living face down and eat of the dust that not only
covers all things but also collects upon their dumb wooden heads?'
Si'Wren stopped and sighed, waiting, and expecting any moment for an
avenging sword to be loudly and vehemently called for, that she be
dispatched in no short order with the same gruesome fate such as
Nelatha had suffered.
But all she heard was the heavy breathing of her mighty Emperor
Euphrates, as he stared long at her clay words. She knew he was
especially fond of her personal manner of marking the clay, her
especially delicate but incisive 'writing style', which was as rare art
to the old monarch, but she knew also, that this former fondness of his
toward her would only serve to make him all the more angry, should he
finally pass the boiling point in his outraged idolater's heart.
The pale morning fire danced and flickered, the flames hot and
virtually invisible in the gathering light of day, and she remembered a
delirious dream from that terrible, dark night immediately following
her evil punishment by Master Rababull. Then, she had only imagined
demons--or had she? Si'Wren considered silently, reflecting upon events
in her mind. Were there not real demons round about them in the
wilderness, following them by day like an invisible cloud of spirit
gargoyles, and hemming them in by night, seeking the death of one such
as she by the hand of some mad possessed sword-wielder should her
Emperor but once command it?
"Truly, no mere idol-worshiper has ever spoken to me thus," Emperor
Euphrates nodded wryly, as she perceived that even as he read her
words, he was now thoroughly enjoying himself with the game of foolish
girl and divine Emperor. But which would he honor; the 'false truth' of
his idols, or the 'truth made foolishness' of her Invisible God? For,
far too often, her words did seem foolish, even to herself.
Then he looked up in grudging acknowledgment, a mighty Emperor's
honest tribute to a mere girl scribe's simple wisdom, and said;
"Si'Wren, oh my beautiful, literary one, I suppose if the same
spiritual laws were applied by this Invisible God to all without
exception, would it not be made obvious that God is no respecter of
persons, and that even Emperor Euphrates himself is but one more humble
subject before him?"
At this, Si'Wren, regarding her now-cooled wooden bowl of porridge,
hesitated a long time. She felt deeply overawed, that she should be
given such unprecedented favor in her Emperor's eyes as to blaspheme
his gods so freely and treat them all as false. Perhaps he was only
playing with her to mock her beliefs, before finally putting her out of
her misery. Any conversation with the Emperor was a matter deserving of
the most serious consideration, regardless of whether it be mere jest,
or otherwise.
Si'Wren sipped a little water, and considered what to write next,
whether to pursue the argument this way or that way. She did not want
to seem to belittle her Emperor, even by his own example. She was no
fulcrum of understanding. However, in her heart, she could only believe
that mere idols were most difficult to obtain a verbal reply from,
notwithstanding the obvious fact that the Invisible God had been
equally silent to her throughout her entire short life.
It was hazard enough to agree with the willing self-criticism of the
common man; how much more so that of one's own Emperor? But his
questions were unusually persistent this time.
"Is it not truly so, little one?" Emperor Euphrates inquired, trying to
give her encouragement. "See now; you have thrown down such a gauntlet
as no master swordsman has ever dared to hurl, in valiant challenge to
my gods and hence my own majesty and empire. Your marking sticks are
mightier than their swords, and as Royal Scribe, surely you are not so
afraid of what a few 'chicken scratches' in the clay on your part will
reap. For if you would share thoughts of majesty worthy of your
Emperor, you must consider that if you quit now like a coward, how
shall such stillborn beliefs bring any hope of a harvest of reason,
instead of the expected whirlwind?"
Si'Wren looked up at the dense, impenetrable foliage of the treetops
covering a steep forested hillside nearby, and considered this at
length. She finally lifted and poised her marking sticks over the soft
clay, her fingers hovering as she prepared to reply further.
But just then Borla approached, and so Si'Wren merely bowed low to her
Emperor and waited respectfully for Borla to speak.
Emperor Euphrates looked up at Borla and said to him without the
slightest preamble, "Borla, is not even the great Emperor Euphrates a
mere humble subject before God?"
Borla, put on the spot so directly, hesitated, and finally stammered
fearfully, "My Emperor, you are ordained of the gods."
"If God can ordain," Emperor Euphrates persisted, ignoring the
difference in their words, for Borla had said 'gods' whereas Emperor
Euphrates had said 'God', "can he not unordain what he has already
ordained?"
"God--is God!" said Borla, finally catching on to Emperor Euphrates's
unusual, singular form of referring to divinity. He had never heard his
Emperor refer to the gods in the singular like this, and seeing Si'Wren
present with her tablets, instantly suspected the truth and seemed to
shrink back visibly from Si'Wren's openly blasphemous notion of only
one God.
"God--is," said Emperor Euphrates, as if ruminating to himself.
An awkward silence ensued.
"Highness," interrupted Borla finally, "if I may speak of important
matters pertaining to the camp. I have made my morning rounds. A
foraging party was sent out, and has just returned with unfortunate
news. Two of the men in their group departed from the main party to go
off on their own in search of better fare. They were surprised and set
upon by a most fearsome-looking creature with great saber-teeth. Both
of them perished. Utterly torn asunder. Unfortunately," Borla
concluded, "it seems that the hunters became the hunted, for their lack
of vigilance."
He went on, "Nevertheless, they were only seeking provisions for the
camp, and I gave permission for an honorable burial to be made."
"Ah, yes. Is not vigilance ever and anon, a most curiously wanting
virtue?" pronounced Emperor Euphrates. "Well done, wise Borla."
"The wisdom of your judgements exceeds that of all men, Highness,"
Borla said in unthinking self-deprecation. "I also ordered a man to be
executed, a foot soldier who vowed he had forsaken all other gods, in
favor of the Invisible God who hates idols."
Si'Wren jerked to her feet suddenly and stood before them both, her
tormented eyes beseeching them disbelievingly that she had heard wrong
this accursed man's words.
At this, Borla turned his head toward her as if not realizing quite why
she had reacted so violently, whereas Emperor Euphrates merely observed
her with inquisitively raised eyebrows and a certain unexpressive
watchfulness.
Glancing away from Si'Wren, Borla inclined slightly to Emperor
Euphrates with a thin smile of the very finest and most cultured
cordiality, and said with an exaggerated mildness, "I only seek ever to
do your will, Highness, but it seems another has perhaps--found
fault?--"
Borla shifted his slyly conniving eyes innocuously back to Si'Wren's
grieving, outraged countenance.
She stared up at him, having just finished a quick inscription, and
held it up with no small measure of anger and impotence for him to read.
'Is the thing done?' read the newest line of her clay tablet.
For, above this, many wonderful messages about the Invisible God had
been written for the Emperor's benefit.
"Ah!" said Borla, nodding peremptorily.
He held out his hand, and after a moment of confusion, Si'Wren placed
the ivory writing sticks into his upturned palm.
Then, Borla insolently took her clay tablet, wrote mockingly upon it,
and handed it back with a contemptuous flourish.
'It is finished,' read Borla's new line.
Si'Wren looked down at the tablet, eyes full of anguish, and reached to
snatch one stick back from Borla to write quickly and far less
perfectly, 'Where have they laid the body?'
Borla looked into her eyes with a serpent's wisdom as he nodded at this
remark, and letting her hang onto the tablet, he merely inscribed the
even more carelessly written reply, 'In yonder field.'
Then he waited with his arm half-raised, until she had finished reading
this and looked up at him to see whence he pointed.
He raised his arm a little further and aimed a bony finger across the
camp beyond it's far southern boundary, past which could be glimpsed a
vast, sloping stretch of outlying fields, with the higher foothills to
the right, and the far lowlands whence they had all come, somewhere
beyond and to the left.
These were no level, cultivated fields, but were totally in the wilds,
as was most of the world. They were riddled by a network of deep,
almost impassable erosion gullies that were choked through their
centers by dense clusters of bamboo and great interwoven hoops of
enormously spiked, thorny vines, and bordered by dense copses of green
trees interspersed by tall grass.
"You may go and do with the body as you please," said Borla, half
deprecatingly. "I know it is a difficult place to search, but you will
find it in the nearest gully. I oversaw the entire unfortunate
business myself."
Borla turned to Emperor Euphrates, and continued, "As with all
dishonorable deaths, the body was left exposed, and not buried."
Angry tears in her eyes, Si'Wren stood there with the clay tablet in
her right hand and stared up at Borla malevolently for a long, frozen
moment.
"Highness," Borla said mildly, "it would appear that the great flood
has already arrived, if one would judge by this maid's cheeks. Perhaps
the messenger's story was but a clever parable pertaining to such."
Emperor Euphrates said nothing, and Si'Wren reflected that one's
Emperor could do as he pleased, with none to dare speak against him. On
the other hand, there appeared to be nothing to prevent her from going,
either.
Mindful of what her unaccustomed task would entail, Si'Wren turned and
gently laid the clay tablet with its marvelous truths, and terrible
last inscriptions, just inside the entrance to her tent.
Inside, her fingers trembling with every move, she turned and retrieved
a stone oil lamp and a sparking flint from her tent. As she did this,
she realized that one thing more was needful, to accomplish what must
be done.
She needed a tarp, and a woven blanket would not do. It must be
something strong and durable enough to serve it's purpose and not snag
on the weeds or rip open, that the burial should be fittingly
accomplished.
Looking up, her eyes fixed upon the leather door flap of her tent,
suspended across the opening.
Setting down the stone oil lamp, she reached up to one upper end of it
and tugged steadily while sawing at the thin strong threads of sinew
with a knife, until she popped the corner loose.
Ignoring the disapproving and contemptuous look of Borla as he watched,
and oblivious of the stares of the guards, and the Captains of Fifty
who had accompanied Borla to received their Orders of the Day, and the
Emperor himself, Si'Wren reached up to the lone dangling corner of the
tent flap for a fresh grip, and applied the knife to the binding
threads of sinew as she pulled steadily at it, until it also came loose
and dropped into her arms in a thin swirl of dried dust.
She folded the tent flap over and rolled up various items within it.
Then she went out resolutely to her horse, and tied the bundle behind
her saddle.
Then without so much as a backwards glance, she led the black stallion
to a nearby rock, which she climbed, and mounted, and turned and
galloped him across the compound toward the far perimeter of the camp,
with many a warrior's lusting eyes looking on as she rode out of camp
with the oil lamp in one hand.
Oil lamps were made for darkness. Plainly, seeing it was still but
morning, the men watching her ride away were not a little curious as to
her destination with a lamp at such an early hour.
* * *
When she found him, it was not yet as she had feared.
She quickly located the body by the sight of a large flock of vultures
wheeling and circling overhead. Nearby, a cluster of hyenas was already
sniffing around, still trying to find the body.
Hyenas, with their silly laugh and ugly, death's-head faces, could
crush ox bones with their powerful jaws. They usually ran in packs, and
she considered them -as did any decent folk- to be cowardly, dangerous,
and disgusting animals.
But they had not quite succeeded in locating the body yet, and the
man's motionless remains lay virtually unscathed, except for the mortal
wounds from his execution at the orders of Borla. His lifeless body had
been left lying face-down beside a series of downwards sloping, shaded
stretches near a gently banked, zig-zag ravine that meandered through
the broad field.
A wide ground covering of white-streaked, blue morning glory flowers
interlaced throughout with green leaves, adorned the banks of the
ravine, trumpeting silent praises to God. Their little green vines,
with their countless green stepping-stone leaves were outstretched like
a living carpet that extended away from her in an uneven boundary
restricted to the shade in a series of wide, irregular patterns,
patches, and grassy missed sections.
Farther from the ravine, tall sawtooth grass clumps fountained
perpetual white floral sprays into the air from shooting star sticks in
their centers. The clumps were surrounded by field grass interspersed
with bare sand and gravel patches. The field stretched away from the
banks of the crooked watercourse, in which the morning glories kept
mostly to the sheltering canopy of overhanging tree boughs.
If his body had slid or rolled just a little farther beyond where it
now lay, it would have gone down the side of the more steeply banked
inner run of the ravine and continued into the bottom, which ditched
down much more sharply into a pronounced drop-off.
The center of the ditch contained a profusion of spiked briars and
berry brambles of a size such as to give pause to the most determined
invader, and was undoubtedly rife with scorpions, spiders, flying
stinging insects, huge venomous vipers, and other unguessable horrors,
from which depths it would have been plainly hopeless for her to
venture the recovery of the foot soldier's body again.
But to her good fortune, the body had not gone too far, and the
impromptu pall-bearers -his former comrades-at-arms- had not bothered
to make a better effort of their thankless task.
Si'Wren knelt down beside an exposed rock, placing her little stone
lamp upon it. Pouring carefully from a small oilskin pouch, she filled
it with oil, taking care not to spill any. Then she took the flint out
of a pouch, together with a little bit of punk, or fine, dried grass,
and placed it beside the oil lamp, whereupon she contrived with several
deft strikes of the flint and a series of expertly aimed sparks to
start the punk to glowing with a single precious spark enmeshed deep
within its crushed dry bosom, and blow gently upon it, and soon had a
flame. With this in turn she lighted the oil lamp's pour spout.
Successful at last in doing this, she paused and somberly studied the
lighted lamp with it's pale flame wavering a little in the still
morning air.
Abruptly she heard a noise, and looked behind her in alarm to see that
the pack of hyenas she had passed while riding in, had already cut off
her escape route and was preparing to close in on her. The stallion
still stood his ground, but was already becoming spooked and would not
be manageable for too much longer. A few of the hyenas were already
trying to work up their nerve to make the initial charge.
Protectively, Si'Wren picked up the oil lamp and stepped forward
between the pack of hyenas and her nervously neighing horse.
The black continued stamping his hooves and neighing loudly, rearing
animatedly several times to show his readiness to defend himself from
all comers. It appeared that he might decide either to attack or break
and run at any moment if they continued to provoke him much longer.
That must not happen, for to Si'Wren the stallion represented survival
itself in a land like this.
She stopped and stood motionless, a puny figure of a wayfarer, with her
silly little oil lamp in her hand. Lamps were used to dispel darkness,
and to carry their blessed light into any place where evil might lurk,
but here was evil in the day.
The biggest hyena finally made a run for her. She stood her ground
until almost at the last, then with a deft side-step she shifted
lightly to one side and swung the lamp out in a quick little
semi-circle at the big scavenger.
Fire gouted from the lamp and engulfed the hyena. Immolated in living
flames, the surprised beast spun around and ran madly across the field,
squealing and howling shrilly as if demon-possessed and leaving a
series of burning and smoldering green vegetation patches that smoked
and roared and popped as they burned in the aftermath of it's wayward
wake. At it's approach, the other hyenas broke and ran, the whites of
their eyes rolling in maddened fear and squealing their weird frenzied
laughter as they scattered mindlessly in all directions.
Si'Wren wrinkled her nose at the stink of the hyena's burning flesh and
singed hoary hairs, watching the smoke from it's still-flaming hide.
The unity of the squealing pack had been thoroughly disrupted. After
watching a moment longer, Si'Wren set down the little clay lamp on the
rock, experiencing a grim sense of momentary relief. She had expected
hot oil to come out, not fire. Next, she turned resolutely to the
ravine.
It was a daunting task she had chosen, but she set herself to the job
with a deep, shuddering sigh and stepped in, her mere presence
sufficient to scare off any vulture that might have dared oppose her.
Behind her, the sounds of the scattered hyena pack could still be heard
as they screamed for their lives, with the burned one screaming
endlessly the loudest. The few visible remaining hyenas stood at a
respectful distance and watched in great agitation, but none
demonstrated the slightest tendency to challenge her authority a second
time.
She stood over the ruined body of the executed foot soldier, eyes set
to the task. With the scavengers safely backed off, she had a little
more time in which to consider what to do next, and returned to the
stallion and took a braided hemp rope from the saddle, and knotted one
end through a leather pack strap.
Then she untied the tent flap, and took down her little sewing kit in a
leathern bag, which consisted of a single thin bone needle, a
collection of fine sinew strands, and a flint cutting stone too small
to be called a knife, but more like a crude flaying tool.
Backing away from the blessedly stationary horse, which still neighed
and stamped his hooves at the distant hyenas, Si'Wren began to uncoil
the rope as she descended the broad, gently sloping shoulder of the
ravine again. It was not too steep where the body lay, and she did not
need to use the rope to keep her from losing her balance.
Nearing the body, which lay face-down, she waded ankle-deep through the
white-streaked blue trumpet flowers and little round green leaves of
the morning glories and positioned herself, before spreading out the
tent flap with a quick shake and a sudden snapping motion to lay it out
close beside the body. Because of the morning glories, the tent flap
did not fall immediately flat, but suspended itself just above the
ground, in a lumpy sheet that continued to settle gradually but more
slowly after the initial crush.
After a brief, distracted visual once-over to make sure the flap was as
well-positioned as she could get it, she bent over the man and
endeavored to roll him over onto the expanse of the tent flap, so that
he should come to rest lying squarely upon it face-up.
This she finally accomplished, although not without considerable
difficulty.
Weeping now, she pretended that she could not see what she could not
help but see and which only her tears could blur mercifully, which was
the terrible ravages of his torment in the final stages before his
death. She reached across to gently fold the two exposed edges of the
tent flap together full-length, and over the crossed arms of the man's
ruined body, covering all with the animal skin, and stopped suddenly to
bend low over him, eyes blurred and sobbing quietly and hopelessly.
She remained this way for she knew not how long, unable to go on.
Then, realizing that she dared not delay lest some other fierce
creature should happen to pass by and take notice of her activities,
she endeavored to continue. Her fingers trembling and shaking with
grief, she sewed together the two sides of the tent flap that met over
his criss-crossed forearms and waist, creating a crude shroud for the
man's body.
Somberly, she regarded the battered face within the shroud with a
terrible sense of foreboding. She was no longer able to obtain spices
so freely as she once might have done in the spice tent of Master
Rababull, in order to properly prepare the body for burial. So in place
of spices, she swept up a bunch of morning glories and gently laid them
about his head, framing his battered face.
Finally, she sewed up the ends, covering all.
Blinking back her tears, she turned to one side and reached for the
flint flaying tool, with which to cut off two short pieces of hemp
rope, measuring carefully. Then, one end at a time, she gathered
together the two ends of the shroud that extended one beyond the head
and one beyond the feet, folding each one over and tying it shut in
turn.
Lastly, she passed the loose end of the long tow rope, the other end of
which was attached to her horse's saddle, under the folded and knotted
end of the shroud, just above where the head of the man's body was.
This way, she could draw him, without actually tying onto his body,
which would have been too much like dragging a mere dead animal and a
thoroughly dishonorable act.
Finished at last, she stood up suddenly, and then swayed giddily,
almost physically overcome by everything for just a brief moment.
Regaining her composure and sense of balance, she turned to her horse.
Standing beside him, she began backing him up slowly, moving together
with him when he moved, his great clopping hooves stamping the earth
mightily one at a time like the sound of a giant's hammers, as he
backed away slowly until he progressively drew the rope taut.
Continuing with him in this manner, Si'Wren encouraged him until he
began to drag the shroud containing the lifeless man's body from the
gentle slope of the wide, shallow ravine and up onto level turf. The
shroud vaguely resembled the color and shape of a boat being dragged up
a dried-grass beach from a shadowy blue-white and green sea of morning
glories.
Although the land beyond the ravine was fairly smooth, it grieved her
in no small measure to have to treat the foot soldier's mortal remains
even so disrespectfully as this, but at least the tent flap could
afford some small measure of protection.
Spying a steep upjutting hill of fractured rock nearby, the base of
which consisted of jaggedly strewn loose shale and myriads of angular
rock fragments, she worked her horse like a draft beast and drew the
burden the remaining distance directly to it's base, until it came to
rest within the split of a rock, the split being just wide enough to
admit the shroud, so that it was closely sheltered on both sides by the
rock. There, she untied the tow rope from the saddle and shroud,
although she left the shroud entirely closed up with it's end-ties
intact.
She looked up at the pinnacle of the tall hill, and then down at the
field of broken rock around her. Much loose shale had fallen from the
slope, affording her with plenty of raw material.
She began lugging the heaviest stones she could possibly move one at a
time and building them up in successive layers in a protective barrier
around the shrouded body. Finally, she stopped to look around, and
realized that she was running out of the right-sized rocks. Dismayed,
she realized that she was nearing the limit of her strength, and had
not half-covered the body yet. What could she do?
The fact of the matter was, the rocks must not only be large enough to
keep the hyenas and other large animals from digging through, but in
spite of this, they must at the same time be small enough for her to be
able to physically move them. What remained to her now were stones
which were all either too large to lift, or too small to be of proper
use to her. She was left in a quandary, for much work remained if the
burial mound was to be properly constructed. The hyenas had gone, but
they were sure to return after her departure. Then, as she looked up at
the steep, uneven slope, she thought of a way that she might resolve
her dilemma.
First she walked her horse a safe ways off, and stood him there.
She knew he would remain wherever she left him until she returned, and
was extremely unlikely to simply run away. He was very loyal to her,
because of the way she dealt with him, being consistently sensitive and
gentle, but firm. Moreover, he had to be free to defend himself or flee
for his life, if necessary. Left to himself temporarily like this, the
most he might do would be to graze at successively farther locations,
which was only natural.
Then she climbed the slope, and began picking out more of the
right-size stones. These she dislodged, to send tumbling down near the
body, one by one, where they landed and lay scattered, providing plenty
of new material for the unfinished cairn.
Then, with the unintentional dislodging of an especially large boulder,
she watched aghast as it rolled with a monumental grinding, banging,
and crunching down the slope and quickly picked up speed and momentum.
As she watched it whacking and pounding it's way downhill like a
runaway battering ram, suddenly the entire slope below her gave way
with a huge roar, sending up the billowing wave of an immense rising
dust cloud as the slope below her began to disintegrate and collapse in
a great tilting-over cascade of grinding and smashing rock.
Helpless to stop what she had unleashed, Si'Wren watched in fear and
dismay as her horse neighed in terror and reared and galloped away. In
the distance, thousands of frightened, fleeing pure white birds arose
above the treetops to blacken the sky with their furiously beating
wings and filled the air with the sounds of their distant squawking
cries.
The short-lived avalanche seemed to be over almost as soon as it had
begun. When all was still again, the towering, choking dust clouds took
some time to clear. When she could finally see again, peering over the
swirling dust clouds, she discovered that the collapse had utterly
buried the body and all the ground round about it under an immense mass
of broken shale and great flat broken slabs of slate, together with
myriad smaller rocks.
She managed to climb carefully down without falling and hurting
herself, and was even able to retrieve her horse. Loyal to her, he had
only tried to run at first, but no more than a little ways off, after
which he had stopped and turned, remaining curious enough to linger and
watch.
However, he was understandably a bit more skittish and agitated than
usual, and although she approached him without much difficulty, she had
to resort to calming him by holding and stroking his head and breathing
on his nostrils. He tossed his head frequently at first, swaying her
bodily on her feet whole arm-lengths this way and that by the power of
his head alone as she sought to hold on and calm him down. But she
persisted, trusting him not to harm her, and when she had quieted him
sufficiently, she finally took hold of his halter and walked him over
beside the landslide.
One look had already informed her that no savage beast, no matter how
enormous, would ever dig down through that mass of broken rock and
great tilted slabs of flat slate to violate it's sanctity.
She knelt there, and prayed to the Invisible God, beseeching him to
welcome this lost soul into whatever comfort or rest he might be
pleased to grant.
Fitly was she garbed in black, the better to meet this unforseen hour.
She remained kneeling there throughout the entire morning, bowing
often, weeping in fits and starts, as she pondered the events that had
led her to grieve over this common foot soldier, whom she had never
known. This, so soon after losing Habrunt.
This poor man had obviously secretly admired and imitated Si'Wren's
beliefs, what little he could learn of her without arousing the
suspicion of his comrades-at-arms, without her ever even knowing of it,
and for only this, upon being finally discovered or found out somehow
in the matter, he had been miserably and wretchedly set upon without
her knowing of that either.
Now he lay buried under a monumental cairn of broken slate, the
enormous flat slabs of irregularly-shaped rock heaped up over his
mortal remains as by the hand of the Invisible God himself, never to
know with what grief that she, who had once been his shining example,
his supreme inspiration and witness before the Invisible God, or with
what intense longing and remorse that she, the one whom he had adored
from a distance, would eventually suffer as a result of his decision to
follow her in her beliefs.
Never had he attempted to speak to Si'Wren, to impose himself upon her.
He had evidently not so much as dreamed of taking it upon himself to
actually approach her, she -Si'Wren- the silent, literate female scribe
for whom he had no doubt secretly harbored such tender-hearted
sentiments of closely shared spiritual beliefs that he must have felt
at times as if his own soul were being rent asunder as he trespassed
unsuspected upon such starkly forbidden spiritual territory.
She could only guess how he must have felt, seeing how he dared not
presume himself upon her, lest any -including herself, for all he knew-
should object with a most self-righteous, vainglorious, and
presumptuous offendedness such as nearly all of humanity was so fond of
imitating and out-doing one-another in feigning. Would that he had
intruded, that she might have shown him otherwise!
Perhaps, he might even had ventured to court her as well, to which she
would not have objected, but rejoiced. But he -a common foot soldier-
had not so much as dared.
Certain others might have objected, if only out of spite, but not she.
Moreover, could she not write? Was she not in a position to petition
the very Emperor himself, personally, on any affair she deemed fit?
Surely Emperor Euphrates would have given her to him, and kept both in
his service lest he lose Si'Wren's valuable services as Royal Scribe.
Now, it was too late to tell this slain foot soldier how miserably she
felt. Perhaps he, like Habrunt, could have redeemed her vow. Perhaps
not. He undoubtedly could not read, and seeing she was sworn never to
speak, their love would have been something to marvel at, even to
themselves, all their days together.
How awful it now seemed, that now, he would never know that she should
come so soon to mourn and lament him, with his body not yet even cold!
That she should so soon bury him with her own fingers, and here remain
weeping uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands, kneeling over his
grave like the beloved wife of many years that she should have been.
Nay, more than a wife, a spiritual sister also.
Reflecting upon such an unfamiliar notion of spiritual kinship,
Si'Wren, an orphan from her earliest recollection, bent down low again
suddenly, before she could collapse from grief, and wept even more
bitterly at her fate.
This man, whom she had never been privileged to meet face-to-face in
life, lay now at the center of all her attentions, hopelessly beyond
her reach. How she longed that she might but one single time, have
revealed to him what his unintentional self-sacrifice meant to her. And
now, with what grief she must regard his brave act and cruel fate, all
merely for imitating her beliefs!
Who had he been? Would that she had been his wife! Seeing all would
have known that she could not speak, and that he could neither read nor
write, yet would they have remained but strangers to the world only,
but never in each others' eyes.
To think how he had finally found what was, to himself and her alone,
in this awful, accursed paradise, the true meaning of spiritual life.
That he had found it through the notorious persecutions and
back-bitings of others, preying viciously upon her nonidolatrous
beliefs.
For others had hated her, she knew, and talked behind her back. It was
by means of such spiteful, privily expressed hatred that the details of
her God had been so published abroad as to eventually reach his ears.
Others in their malice had spoken against Si'Wren for her beliefs, but
in their restless evil had only served God's good.
This was how, she was certain, that this lone man, this common foot
soldier, hearing of how evil she supposedly was, had dared to question
that spirit of unthinking hatred, and eventually believed also, and
paid the ultimate price for his beliefs while she had gone on about her
own business, blissfully unaware of his peril while she in her lofty
station had remained perfectly immune to all reproach.
This thought tore at her as nothing else. Now, she would suffer also,
for the sake of his memory and what he had believed and suffered and
died for. At least, she had made sure his cairn, that the largest of
wild beasts might never violate the grave. That little, she could and
had done for he who never knew her.
There was something between them now, spanning the spiritual chasm like
a bridge of their two kindred souls. She would mourn him forever in the
secret places of her heart. It was like gruel without milk and fruit
which, if one consumed nothing else, would eventually lose its slight
taste of bitterness and ground husks, and become at least indifferent
to the palate. Nay, worse. For the rest of her life, she would mourn
this stranger long after she had left behind this desolate far-away
place, in which he must forever remain buried.
But henceforth she would feel closer to him in her heart, than to any
living person or location. She could not forget the memory of this
place, though she might never return.
She rose up finally, looking cautiously about her. It was evening. The
thickening mists were rolling over the land, spilling their whiteness
across the hills into unseen, hidden valleys. Such beauty--such
emptiness. The gentle wind had a lonely, desolate sound.
The last of her tears had already dried, but she wept anew when she
finally turned to remount her horse for the journey back to camp.
She rode back to the campfire burning in front of Emperor Euphrates'
splendid tent, and near his tent was her own, where she halted and
dismounted drearily. Merely going through the motions, she groomed down
the stallion and staked him to a long tether rope so that he might
graze, roll on his back, or do practically whatever he pleased with
some measure of freedom.