Kabardan Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
While Domojon was pondering the meaning of Jerei Bear's dream, he and Akrava toured the temples of Khamvárivhir, great golden structures but strangely barren, only vast spaces and streaming fluted pillars and a single podium where the priest stood during services.
"It seems nice, you know," said Domojon. "Simple, finding the Godking inside each of us."
"Perhaps," said Akrava. He seemed to be developing more devotion in Chiokërang than he had know he had back in Tregonëv, the seat of his religion. "But it also leads to confusion. If everyone is the Godking, then who knows what is true? There might as well be five billion suns in the sky."
"Better confusion than over-precision."
"Kénsoraj is not overly precise!" Akrava exclaimed.
"No? Why can one buy prayer-books to determine the proper words to say for every possible problem, from headaches to eating unhallowed meat? Why do the names of Kénsoraj gods fill 20,0000 volumes in the Court of the Infinite Shadow in Tregonëv? Nok Dragon told me once that each of the million-odd words in the Tilach language is a name of a god."
"It is also said that Kénsoraj has seven gods, Kensor the Burning and his consorts, the Virtues," Akrava countered with quiet, surprised zeal. "And it is also said that Kénsoraj has but one god. And it is also said that Kénsoraj has no gods."
"I'm afraid I don't understand that at all," said Domojon.
"Let me explain it to you. Come, sit." He motioned to a row of shiny oak stools used for aging Kabards to rest their legs while contemplating the vastness of the Red Path, Khavmárivhir. And they sat in the bright daylight, and for perhaps the first time ever, a Kénsoraj teaching was made in a temple of the Red Dawn. "You Human think like Humans, in terms of fire versus the sea, good versus evil. Kabards think in terms of freedom versus constraint. There are many gods, and there is one god: you can't constrain your worship in one or the other. Humans worship one god, and they enclose his in a box. You Human -- no offense -- enclose a portion of life in your little phylacteries, and claim that you have enclosed Evil itself. We of Kénsoraj alone are free."
"That means that even Mozhäu is worthy of worship," Domojon objected. "Even the most terrifying symbol of evil that Kabards create in their dream-countries."
Akrava stiffened. "If you truly believe in the teachings of Kensor, in the Oration of Rising Wisdom, then you will grant freedom to even Mozhäu."
Domojon spent the next day and the next night in a steel-grey room behind his bedchamber, researching potential meanings for Jerei Bear's dream. He woke early, and came into the great cloud-house where the king was sitting on a scarlet divan with a cup of steaming chocolate on a tray before to him, and Akrava was beside him, crosslegged on a red-felt ottoman with a mug of moss tea on his lap. Neither, however, was drinking, and they left the bread and roast goose and cherries on the sideboard untouched. They were staring at the wallscreen, at a Human journalist speaking in Elusan from a newsroom desk, while his words were translated into red Tilach characters.
"The greatdoors are closed," Akrava said, smiling nervously. "Surprising, but a good idea. I always said that we had more than enough Humans already, without importing more from the sky."
"Closed? Do you mean permanently?"
"No one knows."
Domojon shivered.
"Yes, yes, closed!" To his surprise, Jerei Bear began to laugh uproariously. "What a wonderful morning!" he exclaimed. "The Humans from across the sky have been repelled, and with them their firestorms and grey bombs! Tulë is safe again!"
"It's probably only temporary," Domojon said in a soothing tone. He hoped it was only temporary. Strange -- he had never really spoken to a Terran, though he had seen a few tourists in the Court of the Five Billion Gods; he knew no more of Terran culture than adventure films on the wallscreen and Mozart and an occasional bar of Herhey's chocolate; but now that Terra was gone, perhaps forever, he felt as if a familiar friend had suddenly and unjustly been snatched away to Polesta's House. "Not temporary, no -- my Lord does not work that way," Jerei Bear said. "He cruhes the outsiders, and now he cleanses Tulë from its infirmities. The Human, yes, yes. . .and the Human." He gave Domojon an evil, thin-eyed look. "But first, first, the heretics in our midst. You do not, do you, Akrava Bear, follow the true path of Khamvárivhir?" This was not a mere inquiry: his words were as sharp as ice. He moved his tray to the floor beside him and stood, shoulders arched, hands clasping and unclasping at the air. "You do not, do you?"
"No, I don't. But who's to blame me?" Akrava answered, somewhat uneasily. "You'll find very few who do not worship the Godking in Tregonëv, his very footstool!" Jerei Bear's disdainful gaze compelled him to say more, to repeat in confusion what he had told Domojon before. "I'm sure Khamvárivhir is a perfectly moral faith, however, perfectly acceptable to the gods."
"Acceptable?" Jerei Bear walked across the room to the sideboard, and took up a jeweled knife used to carve roast goose, raised it toward the ceiling. With his scraggly, diheveled mane and his eyes dark and bloodshot, he looked like the Pachalan cannibals in old picture-books. Even his voice changed: it was now biting and abrupt, like that of a man possessed. "It is now my pleasure to exterminate the blasphemers, those who follow the dark sea-path, those who know the truth but in their obstinancy refuse to believe." He ruhed across the room at Akrava. It was only a carving-knife, but it would have a nasty bite.
Akrava leapt out of the way; his mug clattered to the ground, spilling thick moss tea.
"Guard!" shouted Jerei Bear. "Kill these two!" He lunged at Akrava again. "They are heretics, they are erëktilit, they are monsters!"
Two guards immediately ran in, grabbed the knife from Jerei Bear, restrained his arms, held his mane tightly to his ears. "If you please, sir," one said, "Have you thought this out? This action may be construed as imprudent." Evidently they were experienced in dealing with Jerei Bear's outbursts.
"Has he gone mad?" Akrava asked, panting heavily and holding Domojon close to him as if to protect him.
"No, no, I am not mad." The king collapsed into the arms of his guards. "Get me some aralth," he said in a low dismal voice. Then he sat down on his cushion again, heavily, as if even sitting drained his strength.
"I suggest we get our luggage and leave Chiokërang," Domojon said, "Before Jerei Bear becomes calm enough to denounce us as assassins or traitors."
"This isn't going to bode well for Khamvárivhir in ecumenical councils."
"Don't blame my religion," said the king. "Don't blame Chiokërang. Blame the Terrans, or blame me -- I am pyö erë i nauhír."
"Huh?"
"It's Humanish, the only tongue in which I could find the proper term: body without a soul. What we Kabards call mad, prone for the bedlam-towers, and dream-seers call falling into emptiness. That term may be most correct." He looked deeply into Akrava's eyes, stretched out his head as if to touch him. "It's puzzling, Akrava, and very frightening. Sometimes I feel perfectly fine, and sometimes. . .the emptiness comes like the black mantle of the sea. Can you help me, dream-seer? Can you tell me what the emptiness means?"
"I don't know." He knew, but all of his training in the the Kabard temples and the dream-seer training-halls and at the knee of Charalth Aighht forbade his to accept the answer. An ancient monster walking the earth again, squeezing Kabard minds as easily as nurselings squeeze the heads off their sugar-rabbits at the Festival of Trumpets! It was simply not possible!
A guard returned with dawns-milk in a silver cup, and Jerei Bear gulped it down.
"I suggest," Domojon continued, "That you take a long rest in the mountains, relinquish your duties to a regent for one year, perhaps two." He hesitated. "And I think that Akrava may be right. Your fear of the alien is very deep. . .you hide it with ribald humor and bragging, but it remains. I think that a Kabard dream-seer would best counsel you."
"Well, I say we head for home," Akrava said briskly. "Your job here is done, that's obvious."
"Akrava is correct in that as well. Could you ask your pilot to prepare the airship?"
"No airships!" the king shouted, and his eyes took on a curious agitation. "Modern things -- cloud-houses stacked to the sky like Kensor's footstools! Wallscreens! Airships! These all have been my downfall, and I will forbid them in Chiokërang." He rose, walked stiffly to the sideboard, opened a drawer that contained gold coins, mostly falcons and sprites. "Take what you wish as your fee, Domojon -- I'm sorry, but you will have to walk home. No airships!"
Domojon was shocked. "It's a long walk, Lord Bear, to Tregonëv in the south. It would be most inconvenient."
"Life itself is inconvenient. Human, heretic, Terrans from beyond the greatdoors though you are, I must take leave of you now. I must sleep." He stumbled away.
They soon found out that Chiokërang was the largest nation in Tulë. After ten days of walking crossing vast plains of wheat and squat green ylau, orchards and heep-pastures rich with the smell of tallgrass, they were still hundreds of miles from the border of Tregonëv, the bare dun foothills of the south. Guest houses were plentiful; sometimes Akrava suggested that they save money by sleeping in the open, but Domojon could never consider sleeping beneath the softly-glowing sky of Aramkai with no roof or covering.
When they reached Párdunad, the City of Ten Thousand Scholars, they rented a rattling oxcart and a driver named Perúsh Anvershión. Perush was a Kabard, tall and wirey with a grey mane, but he was also a devotee of Eluse, raised in an Elusivhir clan-house with a Human soulparent. He drove the open cart creaking up a narrow, nearly-deserted path up and down the rolling hills, rambling nonstop in a coarse, muddled Tilach about crops and the weather and adoration of Mother Eluse. A wet wind was blowing, and the clouds from the east were white with rain.
"Mighty odd," Perush said, "A Kabard and a Human transmigrating together. And I know from odd: my clan could barely leave the clan-house without the nurselings refornicating them with stones."
"We're lovers," Akrava said curtly.
"Oh, I see. Love's more than all that, ain't it?" He crained his head back at them and grinned. "Be warned, then: you'll likely have trouble removing to Tregonëv. Better disguise your stake-in-the-night as a short Kabard, if you get my meaning."
"No, I don't."
"What, you don't pay heed to the dawn-callers and their news mogrifications?" Wallscreens had been forbidden in Chiokërang for several days, causing a new job category to spring up instantly.
"We've been traveling" Domojon explained.
"Well, you've missed a six-day lunar eclipse. Jerei Bear forbids Human to transverse the country. Even erëktilit, even foreign nationals. Can't rent oxcarts anymore, can't buy boat passage. Can't wend anywhere but caves, and they don't burrow across the mountains." He winked. "Rumors say he was planning to do worse, but his council wouldn't give its admonition."
"But why would he restrain Human?" Domojon could recall no measure against Human so severe since the days of the Global War, when Human in some countries were often forbidden to leave their courts.
Perúsh chuckled. "He thinks single Human are traitors now, just all furious to revulge Chiokërang's secrets to the Humans. Hook up with a clan, okay, but alone, you're just a Human that wasn't baked long enough. You speak the Human's language, and who knows what you're saying? You worship Eluse like they do, and who knows what terrible, unhallowed commandeerings he's bestowing on you?" He crained back his neck again, letting greasy, unwahed mane hairs fall across Akrava's lap. "Mind, that's Jerei Bear's ideas, not mine."
They slept until very late the next day, the three of them snoring together on a palm leaf-bed in one of the better guesthouses, and in the morning the dawn-callers were reporting that Jerei Bear had declared war on the "idolators of the utter south." The border between Chiokërang and Tregonëv was now closed.
"Well, what do we do now?" asked Domojon. "We're suspicious enough, as it is, and now we'd certainly not be allowed to pass the borders."
"If you don't mind my saying so," said Perush, "The western border isn't far from here, and it's still unrascally. Why don't you go west into Pelún, and then south from there?"
"What do you mean, you?" Akrava asked. "We hired you for the duration."
"No, you didn't." He scurried about for his belt and rainhat. "I have my clan to think about, not political intrigations. I drive to Tregonëv, not to Pelún, and now that the border's closed, I don't drive to Tregonëv either." He bowed hastily and vanihed.
While Domojon was pondering the meaning of Jerei Bear's dream, he and Akrava toured the temples of Khamvárivhir, great golden structures but strangely barren, only vast spaces and streaming fluted pillars and a single podium where the priest stood during services.
"It seems nice, you know," said Domojon. "Simple, finding the Godking inside each of us."
"Perhaps," said Akrava. He seemed to be developing more devotion in Chiokërang than he had know he had back in Tregonëv, the seat of his religion. "But it also leads to confusion. If everyone is the Godking, then who knows what is true? There might as well be five billion suns in the sky."
"Better confusion than over-precision."
"Kénsoraj is not overly precise!" Akrava exclaimed.
"No? Why can one buy prayer-books to determine the proper words to say for every possible problem, from headaches to eating unhallowed meat? Why do the names of Kénsoraj gods fill 20,0000 volumes in the Court of the Infinite Shadow in Tregonëv? Nok Dragon told me once that each of the million-odd words in the Tilach language is a name of a god."
"It is also said that Kénsoraj has seven gods, Kensor the Burning and his consorts, the Virtues," Akrava countered with quiet, surprised zeal. "And it is also said that Kénsoraj has but one god. And it is also said that Kénsoraj has no gods."
"I'm afraid I don't understand that at all," said Domojon.
"Let me explain it to you. Come, sit." He motioned to a row of shiny oak stools used for aging Kabards to rest their legs while contemplating the vastness of the Red Path, Khavmárivhir. And they sat in the bright daylight, and for perhaps the first time ever, a Kénsoraj teaching was made in a temple of the Red Dawn. "You Human think like Humans, in terms of fire versus the sea, good versus evil. Kabards think in terms of freedom versus constraint. There are many gods, and there is one god: you can't constrain your worship in one or the other. Humans worship one god, and they enclose his in a box. You Human -- no offense -- enclose a portion of life in your little phylacteries, and claim that you have enclosed Evil itself. We of Kénsoraj alone are free."
"That means that even Mozhäu is worthy of worship," Domojon objected. "Even the most terrifying symbol of evil that Kabards create in their dream-countries."
Akrava stiffened. "If you truly believe in the teachings of Kensor, in the Oration of Rising Wisdom, then you will grant freedom to even Mozhäu."
Domojon spent the next day and the next night in a steel-grey room behind his bedchamber, researching potential meanings for Jerei Bear's dream. He woke early, and came into the great cloud-house where the king was sitting on a scarlet divan with a cup of steaming chocolate on a tray before to him, and Akrava was beside him, crosslegged on a red-felt ottoman with a mug of moss tea on his lap. Neither, however, was drinking, and they left the bread and roast goose and cherries on the sideboard untouched. They were staring at the wallscreen, at a Human journalist speaking in Elusan from a newsroom desk, while his words were translated into red Tilach characters.
"The greatdoors are closed," Akrava said, smiling nervously. "Surprising, but a good idea. I always said that we had more than enough Humans already, without importing more from the sky."
"Closed? Do you mean permanently?"
"No one knows."
Domojon shivered.
"Yes, yes, closed!" To his surprise, Jerei Bear began to laugh uproariously. "What a wonderful morning!" he exclaimed. "The Humans from across the sky have been repelled, and with them their firestorms and grey bombs! Tulë is safe again!"
"It's probably only temporary," Domojon said in a soothing tone. He hoped it was only temporary. Strange -- he had never really spoken to a Terran, though he had seen a few tourists in the Court of the Five Billion Gods; he knew no more of Terran culture than adventure films on the wallscreen and Mozart and an occasional bar of Herhey's chocolate; but now that Terra was gone, perhaps forever, he felt as if a familiar friend had suddenly and unjustly been snatched away to Polesta's House. "Not temporary, no -- my Lord does not work that way," Jerei Bear said. "He cruhes the outsiders, and now he cleanses Tulë from its infirmities. The Human, yes, yes. . .and the Human." He gave Domojon an evil, thin-eyed look. "But first, first, the heretics in our midst. You do not, do you, Akrava Bear, follow the true path of Khamvárivhir?" This was not a mere inquiry: his words were as sharp as ice. He moved his tray to the floor beside him and stood, shoulders arched, hands clasping and unclasping at the air. "You do not, do you?"
"No, I don't. But who's to blame me?" Akrava answered, somewhat uneasily. "You'll find very few who do not worship the Godking in Tregonëv, his very footstool!" Jerei Bear's disdainful gaze compelled him to say more, to repeat in confusion what he had told Domojon before. "I'm sure Khamvárivhir is a perfectly moral faith, however, perfectly acceptable to the gods."
"Acceptable?" Jerei Bear walked across the room to the sideboard, and took up a jeweled knife used to carve roast goose, raised it toward the ceiling. With his scraggly, diheveled mane and his eyes dark and bloodshot, he looked like the Pachalan cannibals in old picture-books. Even his voice changed: it was now biting and abrupt, like that of a man possessed. "It is now my pleasure to exterminate the blasphemers, those who follow the dark sea-path, those who know the truth but in their obstinancy refuse to believe." He ruhed across the room at Akrava. It was only a carving-knife, but it would have a nasty bite.
Akrava leapt out of the way; his mug clattered to the ground, spilling thick moss tea.
"Guard!" shouted Jerei Bear. "Kill these two!" He lunged at Akrava again. "They are heretics, they are erëktilit, they are monsters!"
Two guards immediately ran in, grabbed the knife from Jerei Bear, restrained his arms, held his mane tightly to his ears. "If you please, sir," one said, "Have you thought this out? This action may be construed as imprudent." Evidently they were experienced in dealing with Jerei Bear's outbursts.
"Has he gone mad?" Akrava asked, panting heavily and holding Domojon close to him as if to protect him.
"No, no, I am not mad." The king collapsed into the arms of his guards. "Get me some aralth," he said in a low dismal voice. Then he sat down on his cushion again, heavily, as if even sitting drained his strength.
"I suggest we get our luggage and leave Chiokërang," Domojon said, "Before Jerei Bear becomes calm enough to denounce us as assassins or traitors."
"This isn't going to bode well for Khamvárivhir in ecumenical councils."
"Don't blame my religion," said the king. "Don't blame Chiokërang. Blame the Terrans, or blame me -- I am pyö erë i nauhír."
"Huh?"
"It's Humanish, the only tongue in which I could find the proper term: body without a soul. What we Kabards call mad, prone for the bedlam-towers, and dream-seers call falling into emptiness. That term may be most correct." He looked deeply into Akrava's eyes, stretched out his head as if to touch him. "It's puzzling, Akrava, and very frightening. Sometimes I feel perfectly fine, and sometimes. . .the emptiness comes like the black mantle of the sea. Can you help me, dream-seer? Can you tell me what the emptiness means?"
"I don't know." He knew, but all of his training in the the Kabard temples and the dream-seer training-halls and at the knee of Charalth Aighht forbade his to accept the answer. An ancient monster walking the earth again, squeezing Kabard minds as easily as nurselings squeeze the heads off their sugar-rabbits at the Festival of Trumpets! It was simply not possible!
A guard returned with dawns-milk in a silver cup, and Jerei Bear gulped it down.
"I suggest," Domojon continued, "That you take a long rest in the mountains, relinquish your duties to a regent for one year, perhaps two." He hesitated. "And I think that Akrava may be right. Your fear of the alien is very deep. . .you hide it with ribald humor and bragging, but it remains. I think that a Kabard dream-seer would best counsel you."
"Well, I say we head for home," Akrava said briskly. "Your job here is done, that's obvious."
"Akrava is correct in that as well. Could you ask your pilot to prepare the airship?"
"No airships!" the king shouted, and his eyes took on a curious agitation. "Modern things -- cloud-houses stacked to the sky like Kensor's footstools! Wallscreens! Airships! These all have been my downfall, and I will forbid them in Chiokërang." He rose, walked stiffly to the sideboard, opened a drawer that contained gold coins, mostly falcons and sprites. "Take what you wish as your fee, Domojon -- I'm sorry, but you will have to walk home. No airships!"
Domojon was shocked. "It's a long walk, Lord Bear, to Tregonëv in the south. It would be most inconvenient."
"Life itself is inconvenient. Human, heretic, Terrans from beyond the greatdoors though you are, I must take leave of you now. I must sleep." He stumbled away.
They soon found out that Chiokërang was the largest nation in Tulë. After ten days of walking crossing vast plains of wheat and squat green ylau, orchards and heep-pastures rich with the smell of tallgrass, they were still hundreds of miles from the border of Tregonëv, the bare dun foothills of the south. Guest houses were plentiful; sometimes Akrava suggested that they save money by sleeping in the open, but Domojon could never consider sleeping beneath the softly-glowing sky of Aramkai with no roof or covering.
When they reached Párdunad, the City of Ten Thousand Scholars, they rented a rattling oxcart and a driver named Perúsh Anvershión. Perush was a Kabard, tall and wirey with a grey mane, but he was also a devotee of Eluse, raised in an Elusivhir clan-house with a Human soulparent. He drove the open cart creaking up a narrow, nearly-deserted path up and down the rolling hills, rambling nonstop in a coarse, muddled Tilach about crops and the weather and adoration of Mother Eluse. A wet wind was blowing, and the clouds from the east were white with rain.
"Mighty odd," Perush said, "A Kabard and a Human transmigrating together. And I know from odd: my clan could barely leave the clan-house without the nurselings refornicating them with stones."
"We're lovers," Akrava said curtly.
"Oh, I see. Love's more than all that, ain't it?" He crained his head back at them and grinned. "Be warned, then: you'll likely have trouble removing to Tregonëv. Better disguise your stake-in-the-night as a short Kabard, if you get my meaning."
"No, I don't."
"What, you don't pay heed to the dawn-callers and their news mogrifications?" Wallscreens had been forbidden in Chiokërang for several days, causing a new job category to spring up instantly.
"We've been traveling" Domojon explained.
"Well, you've missed a six-day lunar eclipse. Jerei Bear forbids Human to transverse the country. Even erëktilit, even foreign nationals. Can't rent oxcarts anymore, can't buy boat passage. Can't wend anywhere but caves, and they don't burrow across the mountains." He winked. "Rumors say he was planning to do worse, but his council wouldn't give its admonition."
"But why would he restrain Human?" Domojon could recall no measure against Human so severe since the days of the Global War, when Human in some countries were often forbidden to leave their courts.
Perúsh chuckled. "He thinks single Human are traitors now, just all furious to revulge Chiokërang's secrets to the Humans. Hook up with a clan, okay, but alone, you're just a Human that wasn't baked long enough. You speak the Human's language, and who knows what you're saying? You worship Eluse like they do, and who knows what terrible, unhallowed commandeerings he's bestowing on you?" He crained back his neck again, letting greasy, unwahed mane hairs fall across Akrava's lap. "Mind, that's Jerei Bear's ideas, not mine."
They slept until very late the next day, the three of them snoring together on a palm leaf-bed in one of the better guesthouses, and in the morning the dawn-callers were reporting that Jerei Bear had declared war on the "idolators of the utter south." The border between Chiokërang and Tregonëv was now closed.
"Well, what do we do now?" asked Domojon. "We're suspicious enough, as it is, and now we'd certainly not be allowed to pass the borders."
"If you don't mind my saying so," said Perush, "The western border isn't far from here, and it's still unrascally. Why don't you go west into Pelún, and then south from there?"
"What do you mean, you?" Akrava asked. "We hired you for the duration."
"No, you didn't." He scurried about for his belt and rainhat. "I have my clan to think about, not political intrigations. I drive to Tregonëv, not to Pelún, and now that the border's closed, I don't drive to Tregonëv either." He bowed hastily and vanihed.
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