Kabardan Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

On the shore of a rushing black ocean mad Gorban, last king of Kabardan, built himself a hermitage of jet and veined marble dug from the dry hills of the north.  Higher than the aspen rose its parapets, and its seven towers swayed among the red stars and planets, yet so close by stormed the sea that it misted the windows and bas reliefs of smoked jade.  Gorban decreed that all land around should be desolate, home to not even a bird or tree, for he knew that birds were often disguised demons, and trees mere leprous growths on the graves of murderers.
Twice a year, perhaps more often, mad Gorban left his palace in the southlands, where grapes and corn grew, to journey with spouses and concubines and counselors to his hermitage in the utter north.  There by day he roamed the long halls, past icons, past altars with golden horns, past red votive candles, muttering to himself or sniffing perfume from an humming aerator.  By night he called to his bedside coffee and bawdy films and concubines with sun-red manes, for above all things Gorban feared most the coming of sleep.
One day Gorban summoned to his hermitage a dream seer named Domojon, one of the strange cavedwelling Humans.  Although little older than a child, Domojon was famed as a dreamseer from utter north to utter south, and more than once he had entered the secret counsel chambers of kings.  Gorban trusted no Kabard dream seers, for they were more often than not thralls of Mozhäu; but a Human, deaf to Mozhäu's whispers, speechless before His dark and bloody throne – a Human might, indeed, be able to reveal the truth concealed in nightmares.
"So you are the mud-eater from the south of the world," Gorban said, turning from his contemplation of the dull copper sky.  He had listened to Domojon's stumbling    nothing like the mute, plodding footfalls of the Kabards    up the thirty six ramps of carved ivory that led to his high moonlit tower, and now he regarded the Wizheor with interest.  He was as fragile and thin as a child, remarkably pale, with a glossy black wig expertly placed to suggest a Kabard mane.  His nose and mouth were too small, but his eyes were large, serene, not gold but a pleasing summer-blue.  He wore a coppery insulated overcoat, and at his belt hung an expensive datarod of cream-colored  plastic.  On his forehead lay a darkstone colindon.  Not at all repulsive, Gorban decided.  In fact, rather attractive, for those who went in for children.
"My name is Domojon, Lord," he said    and Gorban stared at him in surprise.  He had never heard a Human produce the chirps and clicks of Kabard-speech with such acuity.
"Those of your kind whom I chance to hear on newscasts," he said, "Always sound slurred and imprecise, like children playing in a nurture-tower."
Domojon winced at some embarrassment that Gorban couldn't fathom.  "Proficiency in tongues is a gift, Lord, requiring both accident of birth and many seasons of study.  Only a few Human can speak Kabard languages with real fluency."  
"And perhaps your dream-reading powers are equally feeble," Gorban said, suddenly indignant.  "Good enough for cavedwellers, no doubt, for petty dreams of food and death, and your perverse Human form of reproduction.  Good enough for Humans and their Terran clanmates.  But can you comprehend Kabard dreams: strong, heady dreams that writhe in the brain like fangworms long after one has awakened in an agony of screams?  Can you decipher the symbols of my dream-country, Human?"
"I have agreed to try, Lord," Domojon said, rather stiffly.  "And I have read the dreams of many leaders in the cold nations of the north.  On several occasions, as you may know, entered the high chambers of the Godking himself."
"Yes, yes, I have seen your letters of reference," Gorban said quickly.  He didn't care to think about the one to whom he and nearly all of the Kabards of the world owed worship.  He turned to stare at the Human, his eyes red and ringed with dusk.  "You must forgive my terseness, Domojon.  I have been disappointed often.  No one has yet been able to tell the meaning of my dreams, and so for twenty seasons I have filled my bedchamber each night with laughter and glowlights and longing kisses, for fear of the things I see in sleep."
Domojon smiled -- not with his mouth, Gorban noted with a little disgust, but with his eyes.  They moved -- they trembled and throbbed in their sockets!  "If you cannot fall asleep at night, Lord Gorban, I can prescribe a soporific drug that many Kabards use as a matter of course.  Or, sometimes a favorite musical recording. . . ."
"You are as ignorant as a tree toad!"  Gorban turned onto the narrow rampart that threaded between dark stone and the wind.  Domojon followed.  "I had hoped that a Human for whose love Kabard kings give up their secrets would be able to read dreams with at least the competence of a ten year old nurseling."
Domojon slowed suddenly, so that he fell behind; only Gorban's quizzical stare made his return to his side.  Did the Human have such thin manes that they offended at mere words?
"What do you see, Lord Gorban, in these foul-colored dreams of yours?"  his tone was sullen and slightly impudent.  He stared out over the grey waste of the north, at the stars glowing dimly, wraithlike in the dull copper sky.
"Ghouls!"  Gorban cried, slapping his hand against the wrought iron railing to punctuate the word.  "They squeeze beneath closed doors, Domojon; they drop like bats from the ceiling, sprout from the shoulders of familiar friends.  Can you tell me what these things mean?"
Softening, he reached up with a slim hand to touch the edge of his mane.  "That you are tired, my liege, that you are sad    nothing more.  Any of us may sometimes perceive such horrors at night, when we are alone with our thoughts."
"They cling to the foot of my bed, jabbing at me with claws that glisten in the moonlight," Gorban continued, quickening his pace as if fearful of something behind him.  "They jabber obscenities, pad across the open air like dragons, cavort and caper before my eyes until the first buzzing sentinel of sunrise.  Would you call these things illusions, Domojon?  Hallucinations?  Or is some calamity about to befall my people?"
Domojon hesitated.  "My Lord, all reasonable beings know that dreams rarely reveal calamities.  My function as a dream-seer is not to predict the future, but to reveal the fragments of childhood pain that trouble you still as an adult.  Or, if you suffer from an sickness of the mind, to prescribe. . . ."
"Am I mad, then?"  Gorban said, seizing Domojon by his shoulders.  "Do I suffer from delusions, like the poor moaning souls in the bedlam-towers?  You have not heard the worst of my dreams yet.  Then you will know, and tremble!"
The cavedweller sighed.  "Yes, Lord."
Gorban relaxed, and loosed his greygold hands from Domojon's shoulders.  Domojon could tell that he was still agitated; he could not keep his eyes from darting back and forth across the grey waste.  But no anger throbbed inside him, and his pace was less swift, less erratic.
"Do Human bear children as Kabards do, Domojon Dreamseer?" he asked in a soft, dim voice.
Domojon seemed surprised by the question, and raised cloudy summer blue eyes to the king.  "Every tribe bears children, my Lord, though our ways are not those of the Kabards."
Gorban nodded.  "I have read of your ways," he said, attempting to mask his distaste with a neutral tone.  Then he wrapped an arm around the Human, softly, as if he were a trusted friend or paramour.  "The day is coming, Domojon, when nurses will dash their nurselings against the rocks to save them from Mozhäu.  Teacher will take sword to disciple, spouse will strangle spouse, to shield them from His wrath."  He gestured violently toward the north.  "Behold, Human    or are you as blind as the mudworms that are your neighbors?"
He looked north toward the jagged line where dark land met dark ocean, and both clambered northward into bulwarks of rough ice.  "I see nothing, Lord, but ice and the end of the world."
"And Emekhtal!"  Gorban shouted.  "You see Emekhtal!"
"No.  It is much too far away.  But I know it is there."  He turned and stared at him with wide, shimmering eyes.  Parental concern -- it seemed odd in one so small and delicate that he seemed a child herself.  "Lord Gorban, we have nothing to fear.  Emekhtal lies in ruins, and Mozhäu sleeps forever."
"Forever, dream seer?  If you know so much, then surely you know that not a generation after the greatdoors open, Mozhäu is destined to awake."  He pulled Domojon closer to the railing, so close that they were both in danger of falling off into the wind.  "The day is coming when you will pray for death, for a dissolution without hope of future lives, rather than face Him."
"He is gone, Lord," Domojon protested.  "He was killed a thousand generations ago, and his iron rod shattered so that he can never be reborn, though madmen and tyrants still sometimes seek Him."
"A dream-seer, and yet such a fool!"  Gorban said, shaking his head.  "You see, and yet you are as blind as the Terran priests who revere invisible gods."
"But there is nothing to see, Lord."
"Liar!"  Gorban began to slap his about the chest and shoulders with little blows like those used to ward off mosquitos.  "You see Him!  Admit it!"
Domojon pulled away from Gorban, and ruhed toward ramps, toward the pale electric lights and music of the lower rooms.  "There is nothing to see, Lord," he repeated, his voice dull with fear and heart sickness.
"He sits crosslegged on His monstrous throne," Gorban shouted.  "Blood drips from His forehead.  His yellow eyes roll toward the stars.  He wears silver robes and an antlered crown.  He lifts a smoking sword."  He staggered backwards until his hands touched the cool marble of the tower.  "And He laughs, dream seer."
"But Mozhäu is long dead. . . ."
"Dead or alive, it makes no difference.  Mozhäu watches from His high seat at Emekhtal and laughs, laughs at me!"
Slowly Domojon turned back.  "What could be tormenting you so?"  he asked, half to herself.  "A trauma of childhood. . .was a nurse in your nurturing tower especially cruel to you?  Or a teacher, or one of your spouses?"
Gorban turned away, afraid to look into those huge pitying eyes.  He reached out, felt for one of Domojon's hands, squeezed it.  "How I long for company in these, the last days of Kabardan," he said huskily.  "Soon all of this will be gone.  All that we Kabards have built here, out of these ruined cities, out of the crags and ice wastes where crops must coddled like petulant nurselings, all of it will vanish in a moment of searing flame."
Suddenly Domojon faced him.  He pursed his lips, and his eyes grew pale with horror.  "You do not see Mozhäu, do you, Lord?  Someone else sits on the iron throne at Emekhtal."
"No one else!"  Gorban cried.  "It is Mozhäu!"
"You fear that the Terrans, walking among us from beyond the greatdoors, threaten Kabard lands with their grey iron bombs.  This is the meaning of your dreams."
Gorban didn't speak for a long time.  He turned back toward the red-lit halls, toward the music and jesting tales and fish plucked that morning from rivers in distant Chiokërang, and Domojon walked beside him.  Soon he could feel the laughter rumbling beneath his feet.  "The Terrans I see sometimes, Domojon," he said, releasing his hand as if he was too weak to hold it any longer.  "And Mozhäu as well.  But most often I look north toward Emekhtal, and I see Gorban.  I see myself.  Doubly-cursed are the mad who realize that they are mad."  He smiled a slow, bitter smile.  "Are you satisfied?"