The Mysteries of the Faceless King, page 19
All I could bring myself to utter was a startled, “Oh...”
“I fear that the god has revealed his demand quite clearly,” Uncle Zend said. “The image is still there. It is your right to see it for yourself.”
Then I wept, and embraced him, and said, “Dearest Uncle, how can you...? I know you would not lie to me. I don’t need to see any proof.”
He wept too. “I had hoped I would die before I ever saw such a thing.”
I broke away from him and leaned over the edge of the roof.
“Look,” I said, incredulous that I was struggling to hold back hysterical, terrified laughter. “There! There! There are the boundaries of the world! The mountains! All around us. Up there, Ragun-Temad waits. But down there, follow the river, out across the great plain, and where is Ragun-Temad? In the City of the Delta they do not worship him.”
“Do not even think it,” Zend whispered.
Even as he did, the valley began to fill with mist, like smoke.
I sat down, limp, exhausted. “No, I do not even think of it. Not really. I won’t run away.”
“I knew you would not.”
“When must I go to the black mountain?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Now I must leave you, and you and Marna must do what you must do.”
He went down into the house before me, and when I followed, he had already gone. Marna had put the children to bed. She waited for me. I do not think Uncle Zend had told her, but still, she knew.
She was too brave to weep. She was, I think, braver than I. She would have to be, I thought, to live through the empty years.
Later, we made love for the last time, desperately, clinging to the hope that some god more merciful than Ragun-Temad would allow her to conceive and bear a final child I would never see.
I tried to draw some meaning out of the number of our children. I had lived twenty-four years, and I would have sired perhaps four children. Four divided into twenty-four is six, the years of our marriage, and also the number of the five gods who dwell atop the Towers, plus Ragun-Temad, who dwells beyond, as both lord over them and outcast from their company.
But I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I was no priest.
Dawn came too soon.
In the morning twilight I stood outside the main gate of the town. Uncle Zend was with me, but clad in his blood-red cloak of feathers, and wearing his hawk-faced, golden mask. The other priests dressed me in many layers of robes, green and blue and white and golden. All of them, too, wore masks.
Marna was there, with the children. Already she wore the gown of holy widowhood. The children stood silently by her side, Nabi holding her infant sister. I looked to them once, but Zend took me by the chin and turned my face away.
The Satrap arrived, borne in a litter by his slaves, surrounded by his soldiers. He got down. The soldiers and priests parted for him, and I knelt, while he struck me lightly on either side of the neck with his staff and bade me leave Kadisphon forever.
Then Uncle Zend placed a necklace of heavy brass beads over my head.
“These are the sins of our people,” he said. “May they, too, leave Kadisphon forever.”
All the while, the people of the town watched from along the walls, and from rooftops.
Far over the mountains, a single black bird floated on an updraft, a speck against the brightening sky.
When the time came, the priests began to ring little bells, and we started walking, along the main road for a time, through the terraced fields, then up the first of many slopes, following a goat trail. Behind us, everyone stood silently. The Satrap’s slaves carried him back in through the gate.
It was so simple, just walking away from everything I had ever known—as simple, I thought, as dying.
But somehow it wasn’t like dying. It was like being born. I saw everything with miraculous clarity, as if for the first time: the blindingly clear sky, the gray, weathered stones of Kadisphon, the individual faces of the people on the walls, a bright red curtain flapping in a tower window. And I saw my wife and my children straining to follow my progress, Marna with her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes. Nabi had turned away, burying her face in her mother’s gown.
For a moment as I looked back on them, I felt the overwhelming urge to wave, but Zend turned me around roughly and pushed me on my way.
“No,” he whispered. “Do not.”
Soon the town was out of sight behind a curve of the land, and the priests put the bells in their pockets. We marched without a word. About noon, we rested. The priests pushed their masks up onto the tops of their heads and ate a meager lunch of bread and dried meat. No one offered me any, but Uncle Zend gave me a cup of water.
Then he took the golden robe off me and left it spread over a rock.
“So that you shall not see the sunrise,” he said.
We resumed our journey.
Throughout the afternoon the way became steeper. We had to climb in single file, clinging to ledges. Then we were among the Towers, and I gazed up among those forbidding stones for some motion, some sign, but there was only the sky and the wind.
Zend took the white robe off me, and laid it on the path behind us.
“So that you shall not see the snow,” he said.
By evening we beheld the high black ridge where Ragun-Temad chiefly dwelt. Again the priests ate, and I did not. Zend took the blue robe away.
“So that you shall not see the day sky.”
The air was cold and I began to shiver. The sun set behind the mountain of Ragun-Temad, and the black ridge-line rose before us like some vast, somber fortress.
We climbed beneath the brilliant stars.
Once I thought I glimpsed the single black bird I had seen in the morning, hovering above in the darkness, but I could not be sure.
Zend took away my final, green robe, and my shoes, and I stood naked in the frigid mountain air.
“So that you shall not see the green grass, nor walk upon the pastures of earth,” he said.
And still we climbed, I trembling with cold, gasping as each breath seared my lungs, banging shins and elbows as my numb fingers failed to grasp outcroppings. More than once, the priests took me by either arm and by the legs, and hauled me over some difficult part of the way, as they would baggage.
Then we reached the top, and it seemed to me that we had reached the edge of the world, with nothing beyond but darkness and stars. But a short ways down the further slope, the priests began to dig my grave, and when they had finished, Uncle Zend bade me sit in it. He joined my hands around my knees, and he put an eyeless mask on my face, and eased my head forward.
I closed my eyes.
Then he whispered in my ear.
“I am sorry.”
I wanted to stand up, to cry out, to plead with him, but I did not. I wept softly. The tears felt miraculously warm.
He went away and the other priests closed off my grave with stones and earth.
There was a long silence.
I began to dream that I was back home, working with metal in my shop, then playing with the children, then eating dinner, then lying with Marna in our bed. I dreamed, too, that the dawn had come, and warm sunlight shone through the window, onto my face.
I sat up in bed. Above me, in the loft, Nabi and Tagu whispered.
I touched my wife gently on the shoulder and turned her toward me, and I saw that she wore the golden, hawk-faced mask of Ragun-Temad.
She screamed with the voice of an eagle.
Then I was in the darkness again, and it seemed the earth around me was thundering. I felt both terror and relief at the approach of the god, for I was sure that those were his footsteps, as he walked in the mountain’s depths.
But it was only the beating of my own heart.
After a while I no longer felt the cold. But my body was cramped. I shifted slightly, scraping my shoulders against stone. The mask fell loose, down into my lap.
Once I had to empty my bowels. In the cold of the mountain, the stench did not last long.
I dreamed again that I swam naked in a mountain stream, and fell tumbling over rocks and down waterfalls until I came to the thundering source of the Great River. And I was hurled forth by the current, as if my body had no weight at all, and I went with the waters, down out of the mountains, across the plain, toward the distant sea. I was a part of the river then, like a wave, or a swirling of silt, and I felt the whole vast motion of the river as of my own body.
Then there was nothing at all, and I had returned to the darkness, as if my spirit had tried to venture forth yet again, but was always drawn back to this cold, cramped grave.
I called out to Ragun-Temad, gasping in the cold, close air, the echoes of my voice thundering all around me. I did not understand why he did not come to claim me.
Was I unworthy?
And then I thought that perhaps this waiting, too, was a part of death, and that this darkness was eternity, and there was nothing more.
It was becoming difficult to recall the faces of my children.
Then there was water on my face again, and some of it touched my cracked lips. It wasn’t salty. It tasted like mud and rock. How odd, I thought. I’m weeping mud.
I raised my head slightly. Sharp pain lanced through my neck and shoulders.
A faraway light hovered before me, and I felt terror again. I knew it was the lantern of Ragun-Temad.
The god was coming for me at last. I stared, but strangely it grew no larger.
I strained to hear the footsteps of Ragun-Temad, but there was only a slow drip, drip, drip.
I reached out, toward the light. The mask slid out of my lap.
I touched loose stones. They fell away, rattling. Then the light became the gray of clouds, and I stared up into the sky, and a gentle rain washed my face.
I pushed away more stones, hardly knowing what I was doing. Then I tried to stand up, but my joints were so stiff, the movement so painful, that I tumbled forward, out of my grave and down a little slope in a shower of mud and pebbles.
When I had stopped falling, I sat up, utterly bewildered. I thought I was dreaming, but the dream did not reveal anything. I sat there, teeth chattering, watching the rainwater running streaks down my muddy chest. I took off the heavy necklace and dropped it back in the hole in the side of the mountain.
Before me, black mountains rose like great monsters out of the clouds. I turned from them, rose to my feet, and began walking, over the top of Ragun-Temad’s ridge, then down the other side, back the way the priests had gone, toward Kadisphon.
This seemed part of the dream too. I listened long for the wingbeats and shrill voice of Ragun-Temad. Above me, dark clouds drifted in the wind.
I staggered and fell many times. I cut myself on rocks. I stood swaying on the edges of cliffs. The clouds and mountains swam around me, swirling like dark smoke. The wind amid the Towers sang to me, and I could almost make out the words of the song.
Then somehow, perhaps by the will of those other gods, directed by their singing, I came to the place where the priests had eaten their supper on the way up. My robe was still there, spread upon the ground, heavy now with mud and water. I fell down on it, fingering the cloth, gasping, shivering. I struggled to put it on, all the while searching about for my shoes. But I did not find them.
I tore the robe in my clumsy efforts, but the feel of it against my skin was intensely comforting. Slowly I became more awake, more aware, more returned to life. Still I did not grasp the enormity of what had happened, what I had done, but I began to rehearse in my mind what I would say to Marna, when I returned to her.
I was going home.
The rain stopped about sundown. I lay down in a dry place to rest. I dreamed again, that a great multitude of black-winged, black-robed, golden-masked figures stood all around me, whispering softly. One of them held an infant.
I found another robe farther down the mountain. The heat of my body had almost dried the first one. The second clung to me, cold and heavy.
Then, in the middle of the day, I heard goats bleating, and ran toward the sound with frantic eagerness, as if I had only to see them to make their sound and my return real, and not just another dream.
I stumbled once more, and somersaulted down a path, scattering stones. The goats ran in every direction, and a herdsman chased after them, cursing. He was a neighbor of mine. I had known him all my life. I called his name. But he did not seem to hear. I stood there for a while, watching him, then went away, puzzled.
When I came to the town, the gate was open. No one challenged me as I walked in. I thought that, perhaps, in my wretched state, with my robes tattered and muddy, and my feet and face smeared with dirt, no one recognized me. They took me for one of the poor, mad hermits who wander the mountains, preaching and prophesying for their bread.
The streets led me. My feet knew them. The familiar stones had a feel all their own. At last I stood before my own house. The sign I had fashioned with my own hands hung swinging over the door, advertising that I, like my father before me, was a tinsmith, and that my shop was within.
I fell to my knees there, weeping with joy, calling out in incoherent gratitude to whatever god had spared me and brought me home again.
But the door was locked. I shouted for Marna, then for the children. People walked by in the street. They did not even stop to stare.
I heard childish laughter from within, and I could no longer endure even one more minute of my strange exile. I was filled with a frenzy, truly mad if I ever have been, and I seized outcroppings in the wall, then a drain pipe, then a windowsill. I caught hold of the windowsill on the house opposite with one foot, and hung there an instant, gasping with the effort. Then I kicked off and hauled myself through, and fell face-first into the pile of straw on which my children slept each night.
The loft was empty. There were three blankets folded up to one side.
Again I heard voices below. Trembling, with anticipation now rather than cold, I climbed down the ladder into the room below, where my family sat around the table at their supper.
I was delirious with joy. I wanted to rush and embrace Marna and the rest.
But it was like something in a dream, and I knew a terrible dread then, and for a moment I was not sure if I had ever left the mountain at all.
Marna did not seem to see me, even when I sat down on the bench opposite her, beside my eldest daughter.
She looked older than I remembered her. I could not quite define how, but her face seemed perhaps more worn. She held an infant I had never seen before in her lap.
Nabi, too, was changed. Very solemnly she spooned out some corn meal for Tagu, and for a little girl who sat in Tagu’s lap, who must have been Julna.
Tagu’s eyes met mine, and he looked startled, then frightened. I waved to him gently and smiled. But my joy was gone. Already I felt as I had that night, just before Zend told me the news, like the warrior who knows his wound is fatal, even if the pain hasn’t started yet.
Tagu yanked on his mother’s sleeve.
“Look! It’s Daddy!”
“No,” said Marna sternly. “Your father has gone to the gods. You will never see him again.”
Then Tagu stared intently at his plate.
I began to sob. I pounded on the tabletop. I pleaded for them to notice me, to say something, but they went on with their meal. It was then that it truly came to me, the meaning of what I had done, the magnitude of it, and I knew that by returning from the mountain I had committed some sin far more terrible than all those I had borne out of the town around my neck and laid in my grave. So I would be shunned forever, by nature, by men, by the outraged gods.
But that didn’t make any sense. Ragun-Temad and all his priests, even Uncle Zend, could be that cruel, but surely my wife and children could not be.
When they had finished eating, Marna left a half-empty bowl of corn meal behind, and some goat cheese, and some wine. I did not attempt to follow when she and the children rose to go, but instead ate with a terrible frenzy, like an animal. Afterward, I was ashamed.
Later, I took off my muddy robes and washed myself as best I could with a cloth and water bowl. Marna was in the bedroom with me as I stood naked before her, but she sat spinning, humming softly. I spoke to her, but I might have as well been speaking to the fountains of the Great River.
My wardrobe was as I had left it. I took out warm clothing and put it on. And still I stood there, before her, and Marna would not acknowledge my presence.
I was almost angry then, as angry as my grief would let me be. I threw my muddy robes down at her feet. Her humming faltered, and her foot slipped from the pedal of the spinning wheel, but still she did not look up.
I turned to the window to go. I would not leave by the door, I told myself bitterly, because doors are for living men.
Behind me, the mattress-ropes creaked as Marna crawled into bed. She blew out the lamp and lay still in the darkness.
I turned again, and I could barely make her out by starlight, lying there as I had seen her in my dream, hunched up, her face to the far wall as if she were trying to hide.
I could not leave then. Very gently, I lay down beside her. I put my hand on her shoulder, and I held onto her ever so lightly, while I whispered to her of our life together, and of the children, and of my hopes for each of them. I spoke our most intimate secrets then, all the little things we shared between us, and I told her that my love for her was so great that no one, not even the gods, could make me leave her again.
Then her body shook, and she let out a low moan.
I turned her toward me, and saw that she was biting her hand hard to prevent herself from screaming. She stared at me wide-eyed, almost insane with terror.
I rose then, stumbling, muttering useless apologies. “I’ll go to Uncle Zend,” I said. “He’ll help us. He’ll know what to do.”
I climbed down the way I had come.
But I did not go to Uncle Zend, not right away. I think the gods thwarted me. The streets I had known all my life suddenly became a maze. I got lost, and in time, my exhaustion overwhelmed me. I slept in a doorway, dreaming of cold dark places, and of eagles’ wings. Then I rose and came to the market square. I shouted names and insults and absurdities, and no one seemed to hear. I think I was mad then. I stole food from the vendors, in sight of all. I overturned a leather-worker’s table. I snatched a hornpipe out of a musician’s hand. One of the Satrap’s soldiers stood on guard in the middle of the square. I twirled his helmet around, and drew out his sword and flung it at his feet. He made a sign with his hands, picked up his sword, and hurried to the other side of the square, but he did not arrest me.
