I turned slowly away from where Wagner had disappeared over the side of
the wall and faced my captors, the Zards. Chief among them was the King,
he being a foot or two taller than the others, with a graceful and
powerful pose that struck awe into the eyes of the beholder with its
innate command and dignity, both of which flowed from it as naturally as
water from a well. There were about twenty guards in the squadron that
protected the King, but it was not so much from the terror of them that
the Canitaurs fled, nor was it because of the guards that patrolled the
walls and were sure to join any fray attempted, it was instead an
apparent fear of the King, and rightly so, for his demeanor was fierce
and sophisticated, as if he were not just a warrior nor solely a
scholar, but a mixture of the two that gave him an aura that inspired
fear, some unseen presence that filled the air around him and sent his
neighbors into a reverencing awe reminiscent of a lover's sacred
euphoria, intangible yet undeniable.
As I turned to him, he smiled and greeted me softly and pleasantly, in
such a way that seemed contrary to his nature. Instead of being terrible
and glorious like the crash of thunder or the din of waves, his voice
was melodious, subtly so, like a soft summer rain affecting the dreams
of a slumbering child as it falls gently on his face. There was a rhythm
that ran through it, like poetry, yet not like average poetry, where the
rhythm is forced and the lines deformed to its ungainly warble, but like
heavenly poetry, where the rhythm is beyond the conscious and into the
subconscious, where it inspires a feeling of quaint remembrance of
itself, as if it were there and not there at the same time. And while it
was soft and pleasant, it was not feminine, for it was a strong
baritone, reinforced by its own superiority and strengthened by its wit
and sobriety.
"Greetings, o' chosen one," he said to me, "I see that you have arrived
safely."
"Yes, quite soundly," I replied, a little taken aback on two fronts:
firstly that he was not angry or indignant that I had attempted to
destroy his kingdom and take his life in the process, and secondly that
he seemed to expect me, as if I were his midday tea partner.
"I am glad, for I would wish you no harm, though your Canitaurian
friends obviously felt no such concern. But just as well, for they
always were unpredictable. I'm sorry that there is no one here at the
moment, or we should have a great welcoming parade for our newly arrived
kinsman redeemer, but they are off at the lake, inspecting the fire I
suppose. I must admit it caught me off guard for a moment or two, and at
first I was actually quite surprised. I soon remembered, though, that
our friends the Canitaurs would have gotten some notions in their heads
of a battle, at your arrival. It must be a grand sight in any case, and
not one to miss."
I gave him a strange look, for I was a bit confused myself at the
attitude he donned towards me, very friendly, as was Wagner, as I
recalled, though it seemed as contrary to his nature as it did to the
King's. He saw the expression of my eyes, and seemed to read right
through my thoughts and see my apprehension of punishment, for he
beckoned to his guards to leave us alone. They moved quickly and
uniformly, a well-trained unit, and positioned themselves in a line
formation along the street. The King and I then strolled down their
midst, they walking along with us at a distance of a few yards, which
was all that the closely built buildings would permit. In a moment or
two we reached the Temple of Time, which was on the far side of a large
square plaza that opened up between it, the palace, and the government
center. Once we reached it, he led me inside and the guards took up post
around its outside.
"You need not fear," he told me when we were alone, "You are among
friends here. You see, the Canitaurs were not the only ones waiting for
a kinsman redeemer, the Zards were as well. That day that you were seen
going into the Canitaur's outpost was a big disappointment for us, I had
almost begun to think that you were beyond our reach. I am sure you know
all about the conflict between us, and the circumstances of your time
that brought its beginning about?"
"Yes, I do," I responded as we walked through the great entry hall of
the temple, lined with bookshelves and a rich red carpeting. He was
silent for another moment as we crossed into another room that led to a
chamber with a long table in its center and a great many statues and
works of art scattered throughout its whole. There was an altar at the
far end, built into a giant statue of a White Eagle that graced the
entire wall, it holding the altar in its giant claws.
He saw me look at it and told me, "This is the Hall of Time, and that is
the altar to Temis, the God of Time. It is a very sacred place, to both
us and the Canitaurs, for it was built by Temis himself, before the race
of man inhabited the earth. By the time any men came to live on Daem, it
had been buried by the dirt and debris of thousands of years, but when
the Great War took place, the shock uncovered it and revealed it to men,
a sort of revelation that came only as it was needed the most. Daem's
war started over the control of it, and to a point still is. To a
certain extent is has helped us greatly, since the Canitaurs are afraid
to lay siege to us in the regular fashion, for fear that it will be laid
to ruin, and then our fate sealed in flesh and bone as well as earth and
stone. But come, there is something I want to show you," he told me.
With that he started over to a door in the wall adjacent to the
entrance, which, as there were only two doors, was the only other exit.
It led to a long, winding stair that went up to the top of the tower
that I had seen from below. We walked up it in silence, more from awe of
its magnificent construction on my part than fatigue in climbing its
steep stairs, which wound on and on almost indefinitely. There were no
windows in the tower, and only a few paintings to liven up the sparsely
decorated walls, yet they needed no adornments, for they were
beautifully constructed from a strange stone that split and colored in a
marvelous twisting pattern.
At last we came to the top. It was much like it had appeared to be from
below, for it was a large glass sphere that sat on the tower, like the
dome on top of a light pole. It was divided in two, and the stairs went
right through the bottom half and opened into a circular foyer that then
had a small flight of stairs running up to the main room. There were
little closets and such in the empty spaces on the bottom floor. The
upper room was a good thirty feet in diameter, and the walls and ceiling
were all made of glass, very sturdy and insulating, yet completely
transparent. On the floor was an odd carpet that was smooth and thin,
like a silk or fine linen, yet very strong. There was a rounded table on
the side of the entrance hole opposite the stairs, and a curved couch
that sat against the wall behind it, cut perfectly to its circular
outline. Two cushioned chairs sat at the table and a small end table
leaned up against the couch, on top of which there was a medium sized
spyglass, that is, a telescope.
The sun was just coming up and shining its golden hues on the
surrounding lands, which were beginning to darken as the fires of Lake
Umquam Renatusum died down to a faint glow in the center of the forests
of the near-north. It was the first time that I had gotten a bird's eye
view of Daem, and I was amazed at its beauty. The plains stretched on
one side of Nunami like a broad field of gold in the morning light, its
dew drizzled grasses waving in a solemn and dignified manner to and fro
like the constant beating of the earth's heart, and when looked upon
abstractly it moved as if one great beast of benevolence, holding itself
in unison as it chorused back the silent tones of life. Its edges draped
down to the ocean like a curtain of woven sunlight on the eastern and
southern sides of the island of Daem, and on the western side of Nunami
the great forest came up right to its edge. There was a little of the
forest between the ocean and the city on that side, while to the north
there was a great stretch of trees, all the way until the ocean again
came into sight in the far, far north. On the ground the trees of Daem
seemed like mighty towers and battlements of nature, and on the treeway
one felt suspended in air hundreds of feet above the ground on a cloud
of green and growing foliage, but from afar and above they were revealed
in their true splendor, shooting up from the earth as if they were the
arms of the ground itself, grasping huge clusters of leaves and branches
far above in their tightened fists. Some way into the forest, the ground
sprang up into mountains that were as fierce and behemoth as the trees
that clothed them. They were terrible to the eye and mind, as evidences
of the power that exists outside of oneself.
The city of Nunami was also revealed to me for the first time in depth.
As I have said, it was surrounded by a thick, tall wall made of stones
and precious jewels, with four gates, one at the furthest extreme in
each direction. It was a circular city, made mostly of the same
materials as the wall and temple, which were a plain, silvery stone; a
dark rock with inherent patterns; a mixture of cobblestone and a
colorful compositor rock; and a vast array of metals, everything from
brass to silver to platinum. Made in an ancient style, the buildings
were tall, the average being what was equivalent to at least a dozen or
two stories in the pre-desolation times, and they were close together,
built along roads paved with cobblestone and lined with trees whose
girth, though not as monstrous as those in the wild, was still great.
There were farm fields and vineyards and orchards and meadows for
grazing animals all within the city walls, and not just congregated
around the outside, for there were buildings all around the wall's
perimeter, but scattered among the other buildings in a natural and
pleasing way. In the southern part there was a lake that was of fair
size, and a fleet of fishing boats anchored at its shore showed that it
did its part to contribute to the city's well-being. Several of the
trees throughout the city were especially conspicuous in their grandeur,
for they rose hundreds of feet from the ground and had great waterfalls
flowing down from their tops, as if they were crying great torrents of
tears down from their aged faces, though if in sadness or joy, I
couldn't tell.
To the east there was land visible from the height at which I found
myself, though in the distance it became hazy and I could not make out
its distinct features. It was evidentially corrupted, however, for it
had an uneasy look about it, as did the ocean, which was a faint, pale
shadow of the rich blue it was in my childhood days. The sky as well was
tainted, and it looked to be filled with the accumulated atrocities of
countless generations. The clouds were thick and bluish, and the
spherical mural of the sky itself had been greatly dried, cracked, and
crumbled since my time, for it bore the marks of pain, the marks of the
labor pains of the earth's last gestating doom. And well they should, I
thought, for in the years since my natural life it had seen much
suffering and much destruction.
The King broke the silence, saying, "Lovely, isn't it, Jehu? And it is
all yours for the taking."
"What do you mean," I asked him.
"Exactly what I said, the whole world is yours, if you want it."
"But how?"
"All you have to do is join us, the Futurists, and we will reward you
with all the power and glory that you can imagine."
At that I sobered up and replied, "But what of Onan, of my quest to stop
the doom of humanity from materializing in this final juncture. He is
the one who sent me, and he is the Lord of the Past, whom the Canitaurs
follow. I am his agent, why would I turn from him to serve mere
mortals?"
He laughed a slight, sarcastic laugh, "Tell me, Jehu, to whom did he
send you, your ancestors or your offspring?"
"To my ancestors," I said slowly, "Though the Canitaurs seemed to imply
that my time was long ago. To be candid, I do not understand."
"Of course you do not understand, and how could you, when no one has
told you? You see, Jehu, the question of time is not so linear as you
would think. You know full well that the conflict between the Zards and
Canitaurs is over how to address the renewing of the earth: they would
send you, our kinsman redeemer, back into time to prevent the nuclear
wars, while we would send you to the future to bring back its
completion. They hold to traditions as if they were the foundation of
life, while our people have no traditions in the traditional sense, if I
may use that oxymoronic phrase, but we look to what will come instead of
what has passed. History is unimportant to the present, Jehu, because we
have advanced to the point that we do not make the same mistakes as our
ancestors. In the past, they waged war needlessly and did so in the name
of humanitarian deeds. But today, we are advanced enough that we use
peaceful and just means to reach our ends. In your day there were many
absurd beliefs, for example the so-called 'fats' that were so vehemently
avoided, are actually quite healthy, while on the other hand,
protectionism and socialism are quite absurd ideas, and yet they were
held dear. But today we have no such presuppositions, today we
understand the world and know justice where your society knew only its
shadows. We do not need to be bound by the mistakes of yesterday, for we
have the enlightenment of today, and while the Canitaurs cling to the
old time's ways, we have progressed to the point where we have no need
of such traditions."
He continued, "It may seem to you foolish to follow Zimri instead of
Onan, because Onan's realm has already been established and grows
greater everyday, while Zimri's doesn't exist and never will, but you
miss a very important point in the understanding of these matters. For,
as you probably know, time and matter are the foundations of physical
existence, and while the two components are independent, they are also
parallel. Matter is always revolving, from its simplest form in the atom
to its greatest in the universe, everything is revolving and rotating.
So is time. Imagine time as a galaxy, revolving continually around the
black hole at its center, that is, an enigma that is actually devoid of
all matter. Time is revolving around a great enigma as well, which is
devoid of time, that enigma being eternity. Eternity is not a place
where there is infinite time, but rather a place where there is simply
no time, it is the counter-part in the temporal realm of a black hole in
the material realm. And just as a galaxy in the material realm revolves
around the black hole at its center, in the temporal realm, the flow of
time itself revolves around eternity. That means that time repeats
itself over and over again, just as on earth a year is the amount of
time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun once, in the temporal
realm, an age is the amount of time that it takes the time continuum to
revolve once around eternity. Just as every year the climate on the
earth is similar, every particular day having its usual temperature and
weather, and every general period having the same seasons, so is time.
While every age is completely new and original, they all follow the same
pattern, and through every age the same general events happen, though a
few of the small details change from one time to the next.
"So you see, it is true that Onan sent you to both the past and the
future of your original time. The Pastites would say that you were sent
forward in time, because you existed in our past, while the Futurists
would say that you were sent backwards in time because you existed in
our future. While this would seem an unimportant question, it is not,
for we have to choose one or the other. You, the kinsman redeemer have
to choose one or the other. That is why you were sent, you have to
decide. Our fate must be decided by a mortal because the gods have vowed
to never interfere directly in our ways again. You must decide, Jehu,
for you hold the fate of humanity in your hands: in all the other ages
before us, the wrong decision was made, and every time some great
calamity came that somehow threw the earth into a great ice age that
destroyed all life for many millenniums. We know that the wrong decision
was made, but we cannot tell what it was that was done. Tell me Jehu,
will you join the Futurists? Surely you can see that the Pastites are
just that, stuck in the past, with their obsession with traditions and
legends. They are of the past, but we are of the future, we are the
progressive ones. Dear Jehu, choose the future, and when the earth is
spared from the great impending doom, we will set you up as ruler of the
world to show our gratitude. Will you join us, friend?" he asked me with
the most entreating eyes, though of somewhat doubtful sincerity.
There was a deathly silence that followed, for I was thinking long and
hard about what I should do, until at last I spoke, "Your majesty, I am
afraid that I will have to turn you down and remain with the Pastites.
Onan sent me, and it is Onan whom I shall follow."
The King shook his head and sighed dejectedly, for a moment he looked
disheartened and crestfallen, but then he again resumed his former
prideful pose and said to me, less humbly and entreating than before,
"Very well, I was afraid that you would do that. I have no choice now
but to keep you here indefinitely as a prisoner, until such time as you
realize the error of your ways and repent. It may seem improper to
refuse the decision of the kinsman redeemer, but I must, for I will not
allow my people to be destroyed by your ignorance."
With that he turned and walked quickly down the stairs to the door,
turning to me just as he reached it and adding with an almost spiteful
intonation, "But then again, what clarity of mind can be expected from
someone from the unenlightened past." He then left the room, closing the
door with a powerful thud, after which I heard a small metallic click
and his strong, commanding footsteps fading down the long stairway. As
soon as the sound had died away and he was no more to be heard, I ran
down to the door and tried to open it, but to no avail, for it was
locked. There was no way to escape: I was a prisoner of the Zards.