“But my Lord, this object is the Sun itself! Isn’t its acute golden glory and uniform sharpness a fair representation of your realm?” asked one naive master of sculpture. There came mocking laughter from the sovereign. “You call this a fair representation?” he said. “Look—as your golden pin-cushion rests upon the ground with its fine sharp needles, already the bottom-most points have broken off and have crumpled into gold razor dust, since they are unable to maintain the weight of this sphere. My empirastan, on the other hand, sits on the most solid firmament of the earth underneath it, and nothing can undermine its foundation.”
“You are indeed wise, my Lord . . .” whispered the chastised artist, and bowed in shame.
“Maybe we can suspend the sphere from the ceiling,” put in another artist, “and thus relieve the burden of its weight? Maybe we can set it on fire from within, just like the Sun itself, by creating a hollowed out replica and filling it with burning torches, so that the light would seep out through tiny holes—”
“Maybe I can have your tongue suspended from the ceiling and your anus set on fire from within, idiot?” said the taqavor.
The master artist blanched and retreated, and the prickly golden sphere was quickly taken away.
In the days following, the artisans watched the night heavens and considered replicating the full moon or its half-crescent shape, or even the tiny pin-points of stars. But when the taqavor was told of this next scheme, he again voiced his displeasure.
“The Moon is round and dull and is surrounded by darkness. The Crescent is a weakling and its concave shape better resembles the blade of a farm implement than a royal treasure. The stars are puny spilled droplets of light. None of these are true Symbols of my realm. Go, and find me something that is!”
And the craftsmen and artists scattered forth from the palace, driven by terror and by the promise of immeasurable honors from the sovereign of the world.
The taqavor was left to walk his marble halls and the cultivated gardens, brooding in silence, and waiting. When no one was nearby, only then would he allow his gaze to lose its energy, and his eyes to grow dull with apathy and relentless depression. Not even the inferno of the brilliant sun overhead shining upon the luxurious greenery of his gardens and the rainbow of blossoms could lift his internal darkness.
For here, in the natural peace, above all places, old memories would start to surface—the ancient turmoil of wars that he had fought, the endless campaigns through the desert, and to the outer rim of the colder lands, to the island places beyond the great cerulean ocean, and the long days of nothing. . . .
He would stop and stare at delicate fountains circulating water and see instead the spray of sea foam upon the oars of boats filled with soldiers. He would blink and look away to rest his eyes upon a frieze of marble, and instead would see the blanched walls of cities before which he had sat in siege. . . .
Sometimes, the wind rustled jade-colored leaves in thick trees, and he would hear his name spoken, as though in a dream.
Cireive.
The speaker was a woman, and yet her voice was muted, most distant of all, and her shape was a blur. He remembered the woman looking down at him, knew the vital importance of her, and yet could not see her face, only vaguely remember an affiliation, or maybe even intimacy. She had looked at him, a small boy, holding him against her, warming him, humming a song that was not so much a lullaby as it was a keening cry of the ancients that had been sung for as long as he could remember.
My Cireive. . . .
And yet the wind would blow from another direction, or recede in silence, and her voice would recede also.
Then, in the remaining silence, something would catch him unaware, and he would suddenly hear screeching echoes of thunder, and a red bleeding sky in a cold land. In that instant a blazing form of another, no longer human, would speak through his very skull, and he would remember the words of a mortal woman whom he had destroyed, and thus re-made into a goddess.
The Skies heard you, Cireive, I am Damned.
And in that moment of inner rending the taqavor would close his eyes, squint tightly, with madness rapidly closing in, while shuddering pangs of terror slid down his spine. He would turn and walk back inside, sometimes moving at a run . . . just as he had run that time. . . . The taqavor’s son, the quiet studious Prince Lirheas, had long since noticed an oddity—it seemed there were never any women nearby. In fact, when his father walked the palace, the female servants were either absent altogether or retreated quickly and discreetly, lowering their eyes, and drawing the dark cotton shawls closer about their faces. And in the taqavor’s spacious House of Wives, it was rumored, the women had to put on face masks every time their Lord was due for a visit. But Lirheas, as the sovereign’s son, was spared, and was never to hear even darker rumors about the details of his father’s intimacies. For, within the palace, the highest-ranked Servants of the Wives would whisper to each other and to occasional others that the taqavor refused to address by name the twelve beauties who had been designated his royal taqoui, and the remaining two hundred concubines. Instead, he would single out his evening’s companion by saying, “You,” and pointing at any given one of the women who stood lined up before him, their features completely masked and their voluptuous bodies nude.
And then the taqavor would walk ahead to his bedchamber in the House of Wives, and the chosen taqoui or concubine would follow, walking a designated number of steps behind him in resigned deathly silence.
What went on in the actual bedchamber was also unclear, but rumors would not fall quiet. It was thought that the women who serviced the taqavor were tormented and forced to endure unspeakable pain during the carnal acts; that he would rip out clumps of their hair, and draw gashes with a dagger in the skin of their breasts and buttocks; that he would strike, would draw blood from their throats with his teeth like a demon, in that same violent instant as he spilled his seed. . . .
The taqoui were thus pitied, and none would wish their fate upon any noble’s young daughter. And yet the honors and riches bestowed upon the chosen women’s families were great, and the taqavor’s House of Wives was continuously replenished with virginal newcomers from all the corners of his boundless empirastan.
Most recently, the taqavor had been so preoccupied with waiting for his artisans to present him with the symbol of his realm that his visits to the House of Wives—already infrequent and prompted only by occasional flareups of lust—seemed to cease altogether. Many days went past, flowing like slow molasses, several moons waned and grew full again, and the royal women started to forget the pain and humiliation that their Lord had caused them, for the old wounds and lacerations on their flesh had long since healed, and their spirits had rebounded. Abandoned, they had regained a joy of life, albeit limited by their perfumed prison. It is said that human memory for pain is not strong and is easily replaced with complacency. Thus it was now, vague and ephemeral, and the old pain seemed not to belong to them, in retrospect.
Some of the taqoui were so relieved, and then so bored, that they stopped playing mindless games of chase and wargames of glitter-stones upon gameboards with one another. They stopped splashing in the bathing pools, and instead spent their solitary days learning the sciences and the arts, having bribed the servants to bring them appropriately learned teachers. Others turned to each other for physical intimacy, and spent their own unrelieved energy practicing truer acts of carnal love than they had ever experienced with their sadistic Lord. Altogether, it was a time of respite and seething urgency for the House of Wives. And this time lasted until one day a new young woman was brought in.
She was brought in neither to be an exalted taqoui nor a lesser concubine. For she was plain, and she had no name—or at least she would not divulge it. In truth, the taqavor did not even know of her existence, nor would he have cared.
The young woman had ebony-dark hair, pale skin, and extraordinarily intelligent eyes. She was brought in to serve and cook meals for the chosen roya
l females, but ended up the one to entertain them with tales of the outside world, and of the colder lands whence she had come. Since the taqoui had a sense of humor and some of them sharp sarcastic tongues, they soon took to her. And, since names were not to be used, she was referred to as “you with the knowing eyes.”
The young woman would peel vegetables and tell them impossible stories of her native land. She would come in to brush a taqoui’s hair, and would make her laugh all the while, until the royal wife would cry with the effort. In the evenings, just before bedtime, she would serve the women sweets and warmed wine, and would half-sing dreamlike stories. . . . And indeed, many of the taqoui would dream her tales that night, and would wake up flushed with wonder. And that was not all. The young woman had an odd ability to draw. In her brief free moments, she sat down with sticks of eye-kohl and drew upon silk the faces of the royal women of the House of Wives, drew them everywhere, in fact, and drew them from memory. When she was in the kitchens, she would use ashes to trace patterns and outlines of faces upon bread-cloth. On the mosaic floors of the terraces that led into the gardens, she would be found on her knees sketching peculiar human shapes with charcoal, pictures that would be soon washed away by running overflow and spray from the nearby fountains, and the remainders swept by gardeners.
And one morning, as the Prince Lirheas took his walk upon the sandy beaten path of the Palace gardens, just near the House of Wives, he noticed on the ground at his feet a beautiful carved etching of a woman’s face, traced deeply into the sand, sculpted almost like a shallow relief.
He stopped his foot just before it crushed the remarkable image. And then, as he stared, he saw a thin female shape in a dark shawl crouching another ten paces ahead of him on the path, and using a short dry stick to trace another image, this one in profile. Seeing him approach, the creature in the shawl scrambled to her feet, and bowing quickly started to back away from him, allowing him to pass.
Lirheas walked past her, and then curiosity got the better of him. He turned around, but the woman was already moving quickly down the path, back to where he had come from.
“Wait!” he cried. “You, come back!”
The shawled one halted in her tracks.
Lirheas walked toward her, and said, pointing back at the drawn images, “Did you draw these, woman? Who are you?”
She nodded in silence, her face lowered, her eyes downcast, all obscured by the shawl.
“You draw very well,” said Lirheas.
“Thank you, my Lord.”
He was rather surprised to hear that her voice was steady, confident, and that there was a warmth coupled with humor, so that for a moment he thought she might have been actually holding back her speech not from fear but because she was laughing at him. And wanting to know that, to make certain, he said, “Look at me.”
She looked up, and with a pang he knew he had guessed right. A thin pale face met his, and the corners of her lips were dancing with a suppressed smile.
And then he saw her eyes.
They struck him with a pang of intensity, something oddly familiar, something intimate—
like coming home to ancient wisdom.
And Lirheas was made mute. He stood there, speaking nothing, unable to formulate a sentence, because in that instant a peculiar thought passed his mind, a thought that here was something momentous taking place.
A moment rich with fate.
And she was the one to speak first, to dispel it. “I serve the House of Wives,” she said.
“Forgive me, but I must get back, since my mistresses are expecting me.”
And then she bowed again, curtly, almost as an afterthought, and did not wait for his dismissal, as she started back on the path.
Lirheas remained like a dumb thing, staring in her wake. He then glanced back to where, a few steps away on the ground, was the image of beauty that she had wrought out of nothing. And before her, in his mind, the image paled.
After three moons had waxed and waned, the taqavor got tired of waiting. And he called his advisors and four of the bravest soldiers of his army, and he also called the most talented of his artisans to come before him.
They gathered before his lofty throne, in a hall of great gilded columns of mauve marble and carved stone blossoms.
“Have you found for me a true symbol of my empirastan? ” he asked. In response, trembling, they cast their gazes down.
“I see,” said the taqavor. “You are all just as I thought, idiots with the imaginations of dumb beasts and the artistic craft of monkeys.”
“My Lord,” whispered one advisor. “The task you set before us is almost impossible, for how can we find something to fairly represent your empirastan when we have yet to span it?”
“True,” muttered a soldier, a decorated hero of the old wars. “I have campaigned with you in all the directions of the horizon, and yet, my Lord, I have not seen an end to your empirastan, have not seen the true End of the World.”
“Indeed,” said another, “I have not either. Does the End even exist? The thought is so vast, it is beyond me.”
“That would not be such a difficult feat, with your poor set of brains,” quipped the taqavor once again in sarcasm, as he was wont to do with his advisors and those most near to him. And then he added, “Of course the world has an End. Surely it must, for I have seen all of it in my conquest, and it rims the horizon.”
“Then, my Lord,” put in a courtier, “surely it would be a fair task to find out the nature of the Shape of the World that is your empirastan, before we can compress it into one Symbol. Is the world a round circle, or a square, or another odd shape?”
“But how can we find out?” said an artisan. “How many men would it take to line up around the rim of the world? An impossible feat!”
The taqavor laughed. “Your vision is even more narrow than his!” he exclaimed. “But I have anticipated all of you, and that is why I have brought my four bravest warriors here. It will take only four fearless men to find out. Four strong men, the four of you. You will each one of you go in the four opposite directions, taking whatever caravans, horses, and supplies you may need on your journey. You will take ships, if you must, to sail.”
And then the taqavor pointed with his index finger at each of the four veteran soldiers in turn.
“You, Jimor, will travel facing the rising sun. You, Mareid, go in the opposite direction, facing the setting sun. You, Rihaad, take yourself to the right hand of the rising sun. And, finally, you, Vikenti, follow the rising sun’s left hand.”
“How far are we to go, my Lord?” asked one of the four.
The taqavor smiled. “You will go as far as it takes, unto eternity if needed. You will keep going, until you reach the End. And when you return, you will describe to me what the End is like. Does the world stop at the edge of a bottomless abyss? Do the oceans spill their waters into that same abyss? Or, maybe, it is an abyss of fire and the realm of the gods? I want to know if my empirastan borders upon the land of the gods, and in what manner.”
“But my Lord,” spoke the most venerable of the soldiers, Jimor, “how are we to know what the End of the World is like? How are we to know it when we see it? In our conquest travels we came to many places which had mountains the height of heaven, and had boundless oceans. We came to a stop before deserts ending over cliffs, and before other wonders, none of which we could surmount easily, and so we went around them.”
“Well then, you’ve answered your own question,” replied the sovereign. “For, in all such cases, you remember that we continued going, we found a way to move beyond or around these natural barriers. For none of these was the End. And thus I say now, you will know it when you come to it. Therefore, waste not another moment, and be on your way! I do not expect you back in many moons, even in many seasons. But if you fail, or perish on the way, your families and your honor will suffer greatly. So, do not fail me, and do not fail yourselves.”
The men bowed before the taqavor and left his prese
nce.
And he stood alone in the hall, all except for the self-effacing Prince Lirheas.
“Will they find it, father?” the young man asked unexpectedly, for he hardly ever spoke at all. “Or will they all perish needlessly on this impossible quest?”
The taqavor glanced briefly at him, with a measuring gaze which held in it mostly disdain.
“Only the weak will perish. If they do not come back after five summers, then I will send others in their place.”
And the Prince lowered his gaze before his Lord father.
Several moons passed, after the four expeditions had been sent off to find the End of the World. The taqavor found himself walking one morning along the pale marble terrace of his sunlit gardens in the palace that was the middle of the mortal world. He paced, his mind in meditation, while from afar the parched desert wind came to wash over his pale hair—once the color of wheat, now all silvered like old steel. The wind reminded the taqavor that his Palace and his great city had been built around a great oasis, and only a little beyond the lush gardens stood empty desolation.
At this, his thoughts took a dark turn, and he felt a buildup of old fury, a decentralized hatred, and with it a surge of old lust.
The House of Wives was only a little away, at the other end of the gardens, and it had been a while since he had touched a woman’s tender resilient flesh. And so he allowed himself the slow burning rise of anticipation as he walked toward the House, taking the quickest way possible, along a narrow sandy path.
As he approached the structure of exotic painted marble he could hear a strange din, and a noise of many female voices. There were also sounds of drums and the sweet wailing of zourna, and the strumming of strings, and, most surprising of all, the stomping of many feet. The taqavor stopped, frozen in his tracks. In that instant his mind was inundated with a seething flood of thought-shards and all manner of images—all swirling in disorder, all wrought of doubt, fear, mistrust, and an underlying murk of jealousy.