Far away,
beyond the Mountains Of The Moon which touch the sky, lies the land of Eternia.
A great and ancient land it is, and from its iron-hard soil empires have risen
and crumbled to dust, only to rise again.
Two nations now ruled in Eternia; one was
the mighty Kingdom of Light, with its soaring white-walled cities studded with
towers blue as the sky, great and prosperous cities which clung to the
mountains and stood sentry over valleys and rivers. And in its halls and
markets was delight and enjoyment, for the people knew that they were mighty
and good, and that they had the wiles of the mightiest of mages at their beck
and call; and, more, that they had the gods themselves on their side.
On the arid plains around the fringes of
eroded plateaus clung the Shadow Land. Its towns were festering mazes of
mud-bricked walls and streets of rammed earth; and in them teemed its people,
short, broad, and ugly, with their grunting language and barbaric manners, so
unlike the tall, graceful citizens of the Kingdom of Light. And so savage were
they that they acknowledged not the gods of the Light, and indeed had turned
their backs on them for all time to come.
On the Crystal Throne in the Great Palace
in the Capital of the Kingdom of Light sat the King Naftali. Young and
handsome, gifted as a genius from mythology, he held the favour of all the
gods, and his people loved him almost to the point of worship; but he was a
troubled man.
So he called his advisors around him,
white-bearded men and silken-tressed women with skin smooth as porcelain and
eyes filled with the light of knowledge, and he told them that he was sore
troubled.
“What ails you, O King?” they asked.
And the King Naftali responded: “Last night
I had a dream, in which I was carried out of my body and to the highest peak of
the Mountains Of The Moon, Taviv, whose tip pierces the sky. And there I saw,
seated on its summit, the gods of the Light, dressed in blue and white, and the
blaze of glory from them was so strong that I had to avert my eyes. There were
Burion and Mayan, Geir and Megin; there were Seres and Yabin; and, between them
all, there was the great Father God, Terzl himself.
“ ‘What do you want of me, gods?’ I asked,
and they replied, in unison:
“ ‘The barbarians of the Shadow Land are
offensive in our sight. They do not acknowledge us, and they do not acknowledge
you, who stand in our favour and who are our chosen to rule over them. Go you
forth and destroy them, for if you do not, we will withdraw our favour from
you, and in time the Shadow Land will destroy you.’
“Then the Father God Terzl spoke alone: ‘There
will be those among you who think that the Shadow Land barbarians are not your
enemies; this is folly, and folly is insupportable in the sight of the gods.
Act without mercy against such folly.’ And in a trice I found myself back in my
bed, and the morning light was streaming into my eyes.”
So spake the King Naftali; and the advisors
murmured among themselves. “It is true, O King,” one said eventually, “that the
barbarians grow more numerous by the day, and that they refuse to acknowledge
our divine right to rule over them, just as they reject the gods of the Light.
Long ago we sent armies against them, and drove them from the mountains and the
verdant valleys to the fringes of the arid plains; but there they have stood
fast, and, try as we might, we can drive them back no further.”
“And,” added a woman advisor, whose name
was Ayet, “there are those among the people who have lost sons and brothers,
fathers and sweethearts, in these wars, and who murmur that those lives have
been thrown away. They say that the barbarians, ugly and uncouth and repugnant
though they be, are no danger to us, and that we should leave them alone to
their destiny as we pursue ours.”
“That is folly in the eyes of the Father
God himself,” the king replied. “And he ordered me, in his own words, to act
without mercy against such folly. Go now with soldiers and make an example of
these people. Cleanse their sins with their blood, so that the Kingdom of Light
should see no more such as them till the end of time.”
“The problem remains, O King,” the other
advisors continued, after Ayet had departed on her holy mission. “Try as we
might, our armies can drive the barbarians back no further. Although our
soldiers are the finest the world has ever seen, and the barbarians are only a
rabble, they still hold out against all we can do.”
“The Father God and all the gods will help
us,” the King Natali declared. “This time, we will send our armies against
them, and they will sweep the barbarians from the land until only their blood
is left drying on the stones.”
And so the armies of the Kingdom of Light
set forth, the sun glinting on their helmets and off the blades of their spears;
the earth trembled under their marching boots and the iron-clad hooves of their
horses; and many a maiden thrilled with joy to know that her sweetheart was
among them, gone to fight a holy war on behalf of nobody less than the gods.
And the armies of the Kingdom of Light fell
upon the Shadow Land, and they turned the sky red with fire; but instead of
fleeing or begging to surrender, the barbarians rose up in vengeance from their
festering towns and their teeming slums. And when it was over, the blood was
indeed drying on the stone; but most of the blood was the Kingdom of Light’s
own. And many were the flowing tears of maidens whose sweethearts would return
to bed them no more.
Then the advisors returned to the Great
Palace, where King Naftali sat on his Crystal Throne; and deep was their gloom,
because they had failed the command of the gods, and the failure meant that the
favour of the gods would forever be forfeit.
But the King Naftali rose up from the
throne and chided them. “Do you give up so easily?” he asked. “Our armies have
failed, but they have only had steel and fire on their side. Go now to my
mages, and see what their magic can create. Go now to them, and have them forge
for us a hero, one who can scatter the hordes of the Shadow Land as so much
chaff before the blowing wind.”
So the advisors went to the mages, with
their steaming cauldrons and their astral charts, their waxes and their potions,
and they put to them the king’s command.
And the mages took their magic, and from
among them created a Hero.
Tall he was as the mightiest oaks in the
mountains, and mighty as the rocks that made the walls of the cities of the
Light. His face was as a crag of granite, his eyes as twin stars blazing in the
night. When he walked the ground trembled as at the tread of warrior hosts; and
his strength was such that he might tear asunder the earth and let it swallow
up the waves of the sea.
And the magicians came to him, and forged
for him armour from the endless vaults of their magic; it was white as the
snows, light as the air, and yet strong as the very towers of the Light, which
had stood for a thousand times a thousand years. They forged for him a helm
that was like unto an eagle’s countenance, with a visor hooked like the
predator’s beak, and with gloves that were supple as leather yet strong enough
to be unharmed by the hottest fire. For his feet they made boots that bit into
the hardest stone and turned it to dust, so that he might never fear to tread
on the most treacherous of surfaces. They gave him a shield, which was as big
around as a chariot wheel, and which could turn aside the thrust of the strongest
spear, and shatter its tip beside. And then they made for him a sword, so huge
that only one as he might ever wield it. It was blue as the ice and sharp
enough to cut the northern wind; and they called it Eitan. And so Hero was
born.
And the King Naftali and the mages and the
priests of the gods came and blessed Hero; and he saluted them and left the
cities of the Light the mountains and the valleys behind, and stalked out on
the arid plain, to bring to the Shadow Land the wrath of the gods. And the
people of the Light rejoiced to see him go forth on his mission of vengeance.
And Hero fell on the barbarians of the
Shadow Land, and began to lay their cities to ruin; the streets ran with their
blood, and though their armies sallied forth in their multitudes, they were as
nothing to him.
And in the dark and noisome Hall of Peoples
in Azag, their capital, the chiefs of the Shadow Land came together to confer,
and worry and despair was in their eyes.
“We have little enough,” they said, “and we
would be content to live on that little; but it seems that even that is too
much to allow us. For this Hero the Light has thrown against us destroys our armies
with no effort, and then lays ruin to our cities, and crushes our women and
children under his boots. We have done all we could, but we can do no more.”
But one of them, a young chief called
Hollah, spake out: “There is still one thing we have not tried, that is open
for us to do; the Black Woman who lives on the shores of the Lake of Despair
can help us.”
“The Black Woman is a witch,” the others
objected.
“The Light is working magic against us,” Hollah
replied, “and our flesh and blood, no matter how valiant, is powerless against
magic. The only way to save our people is to use magic in return, and but for
the Black Woman, magic we have none.”
So the chiefs sent Hollah to the Black
Woman who lived by the Lake of Despair; and after a perilous journey he arrived
at that dreadful place, ringed by hills black as night, with water so deep that
no bottom had ever been found to it.
The Black Woman lived in a hut on the
shore, a hut that was as though part of the living rock; and, humbly touching
the earth before the door in obeisance, he begged her leave to enter.
Nobody had ever seen the Black Woman’s
face; her body, from her head to her feet, was draped in black; only her pale
hands, restless as the winds, moved ceaselessly as she listened impassively to
the young chief.
“You will have what you need,” she said
eventually. “Go back to Azag, and tell the other chiefs that help is at hand. Go
now, and until you enter the gates of Azag, do not stop, and do not look back,
no matter what. Go.”
So the chief Hollah touched the ground
before the Black Woman’s feet once more, left her and the Lake of Despair
behind, and made his perilous journey back to the city. And all the way he
heard another set of footsteps behind him, almost at his shoulder, so that it
was all he could do not to look behind him. But he remembered the words the
Black Woman had said, and not once did he stop or look back, until he had entered
the gates of Azag; and then for a moment he could not look back even had he
wanted to, for Hero was striding towards the city, his mighty sword Eitan in
hand.
And the chiefs came to Hollah, their eyes
filled with hopelessness. “Our nation’s destruction is upon us,” they cried. “If
Azag falls to the Hero of Light, all is lost for us.”
But the chief Hollah entreated them not to
lose hope. “The Black Woman promised us that help is at hand,” he said. “Indeed,
something followed me all the way from the Lake of Despair, and now waits
outside the gate.”
“Let us go and see, then,” said the chiefs,
and followed him to the gate of the city; and there they saw what had been
following Hollah all the way from the Black Woman’s house on the shores of the
Lake of Despair.
It was in the shape of a man, but a man of
a sort as none of them had ever seen; of only a little above medium height, he
was clad in a tunic of white that fell to his knees, and a short jacket of
ochre. His head was swathed in cloth, so that of his face only his dark eyes
were visible; and he had no weapons that they could see, not even a spear; all
he had was, in his hand, a strange instrument of wood and metal.
And the chiefs looked at him with
astonishment and despair; for Hero had destroyed entire armies, and this was just
a man, and not even a warrior in armour, or a giant as big as the one coming
across the plain. “Hero will destroy him without a thought,” they said. “The
Black Woman played us for fools.”
But Hollah, although as filled with doubt as
any of the others, touched the ground before the strange man in salute. “Do as
we requested the Black Woman that you should do,” he said.
And the man looked at him out of his dark
eyes, and looked at Hero striding at Azag across the plain; and then he went
out to meet Hero.
And Hero saw him coming, and laughed loud
enough to shake the sky and bring stones tumbling down from the hills. “The
barbarians of the Shadow Land have run out of armies,” he taunted, in his voice
loud as thunder. “They can only send one man out to fight the gods of Light.”
And he lifted his visor, like the beak of
an eagle, and peered at the man walking towards him across the plain; and,
laughing once more, he raised the mighty sword Eitan towards the sky. The sun
flashed on it as bolts of lightning, and the wind hummed and sang around it as
in the broken sockets of dust-smeared skulls; the sword sang of death, of all
the blood it had split, and in promise of the blood it would drink now; and
Hero’s boots crushed the plain to dust, as onward he came, roaring a song of
battle that would make the blood thrum in the most placid heart.
And then the man in white and ochre with
the cloth-swathed face calmly raised his rifle and shot Hero, once and
precisely, right between the eyes.
***********************************************
“What was it like?” the Black Woman asked afterwards, when the man in
ochre and white had returned. “Did you have any trouble?”
“Did you expect me to?” the man asked, with
a smile.
“No,” she replied, with a smile in return. “If
I had, I’d have gone with you.”
“Exile in this time and place does have its
benefits,” said the man, and held out his arms. And the woman came to him, and
held him tight.
***********************************************
And,
meanwhile, the vengeful armies of the Shadow Land, Hollah at their head, fell
upon the Kingdom of the Light, and laid it to waste. And the Crystal Throne was
broken and its fragments ground to dust that blew in the wind through the
emptied halls of the Great Palace of the Light.
And the favour of the gods was forever
undone.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2017
[Based on a dream of the author’s.]
[*Yes, the man in white and the Black Woman are Colin and Rose. Yes, they are.]
