“What creatures?” said the taqavor, stopping himself halfway in a yawn. “Go on, for today I feel magnanimous and I am willing to listen to your imbecile tale—but not exceedingly long. So make it good, soldier.”
“Yes, my Lord. As I was saying, there are peculiar creatures that have the bodies and fins of great fishes and yet breathe mortal air. The greatest of them have thick water-repellent hides, and they are known to grow to be the size of a ship, and blow tall fountains of water from the nostril holes. The lesser ones can grow to be the size of a man and have smooth rounded heads with long narrow snouts.
“The lesser of these creatures with long snouts accompanied our ship for many days, sailing alongside us in the calm waters while we rowed, and then would disappear for days. Then they would return. It was as though they knew how to find us, and knew their way around the endless waters. Maybe the gods had given them the knowledge of directions. But no matter—the reason I speak of this is because, upon more than one occasion, these creatures saved us by showing us the true direction when the sun was not to be seen in the sky, and the sea mists had grown so thick that the land and sky mixed into one. At such terrifying times, afloat on the great water, all alone, we were oddly reassured to hear the creatures’ wild cries, and we followed them, having no other choice.
“When finally the sun came out, and the days changed to clear skies and sailing wind, the creatures left us. Surely they knew we would now be safe and could be trusted to find our way.”
“Marvelous, these sea creatures of yours,” said the taqavor. “Too bad I could not send them on an expedition in your stead.”
“My Lord. . . .” Mareid’s face was drawn and he was stiff as a column from the growing fear. For he had known the taqavor to laugh and mock cruelly before he doled out the most severe punishment.
“All right,” spoke the taqavor. “After you made your way over this interminable ocean, what then? Did you reach land and proceed to chase the horizon, or did you simply turn back after a good rest and come home the way you left?”
“Both, my Lord . . .” whispered the poor man. “Let me explain! For we did not at any point turn back, and yes, we continued to move in the direction of the setting sun, and when we reached land, as you correctly surmise, we continued our journey on solid ground.”
“And?”
Mareid’s gaunt form trembled as he bowed once again, and this time he remained thus bent. His speech meanwhile became more hurried. “And then, as we moved through wide expanses of sparse lands covered not with sand but with sharp pale grass, terrain turned into forest and marshes, for water was in the ground, making it rich like mud. As we waded our way out of the swamps, there were many rivers with waters gold and blue and opaque with mud—first small gentle rivulets running though grassland, then wider streams, then rivers which we had to swim, building rafts for our belongings. And then, my Lord, the lands again grew warmer, and there came an end to the river country.
“For several long moons we moved through drier forest, then open land, passing some human settlements where the people could not speak our tongue, nor we theirs. And then, at last, the earth grew rich with sand, and we were in a desert . . .”
“And did this desert, by any chance, look particularly familiar?” said the taqavor.
“Why yes it did, my Lord!” exclaimed Mareid, straightening. “You may find it unbelievable, but we were soon at the gates of your glorious city! What I am about to say, my Lord, may sound insane, but it appeared we had come in a great circle around the sun!”
“Either that, or you had lost your minds from the sun’s heat, since it shone on you for so many days,” said the taqavor.
“I am so sorry, my Lord . . . I know it sounds mad, but one thing I am sure of is that we kept going in the right direction!”
“All right, I allow this much—maybe at one point you ended up at the End of the World and you did not even know it . . .” mused the taqavor. “For what if the World ends suddenly, and then flips over, and you continue walking on the underside, upside-down in relation to the rest of us?”
“Why, yes, it is possible, my Lord!” said Mareid with excitement, picking up on the scenario. “It could be that the world has its exact opposite on the bottom, including land and mountains and oceans, and even a sky! Maybe other peoples and nations fill its nether regions, and they walk upside-down and underneath us even now, and neither we nor they know it?”
“This would imply that there are in fact two worlds of mortal men . . .” whispered the taqavor. A darkness once again obscured him and took away all traces of levity. “No, I do not like this thought at all. . . . For then my empirastan might be comprised only of the world on this side, and not that of the under side. And in that case. . . .”
As the thought completed itself at last, the taqavor screamed in rage, so that everyone in the hall trembled at the terror of his voice. And, screaming, he arose from his high seat and struck down the poor soldier before him with a powerful blow, so that Mareid lay flat on the cold marble, his face bleeding from the force of the anger. His lifeblood fell in a random splatter pattern of red upon the marble.
“No!” screamed the taqavor in fury. “For I am the ruler of the whole world! It is all mine, my empirastan! There is no one and nothing underneath, and the earth has no opposite side! I say it and thus it is, before all gods!”
After that, it seemed the taqavor had become a changed man. If it were possible, he was even more feral. As the days flowed, he spent more time in seclusion, more days walking lone galleries in his gardens or else locked in his private chambers, where he was heard pacing endlessly, muttering to himself, his footsteps making echoes upon the stone floor.
“One more!” he was often heard to say. “One more left! When the last one comes back I will have the true news of the World and its End, at last! One more!”
In the meantime the woman with the knowing eyes continued with her immense task of creating the one object that would capture in it the essence of the wind rose and thus the world. Under her directions, a hall was selected—one which stood in the very center of the palace structure—and within it were placed great blocks of fine polished marble stone. Once arranged, these blocks were carved by the taqavor’s own sculptors into a statue of a great flower blossom, a many-petaled rose. From the distance of the hall entrance, from all sides it looked like nothing but delicate lifelike petals, but, if observed from the top, in its middle could be seen a great round carved hollow filled with water, forming a shallow pool.
Once, the taqavor himself passed by as the sculptors and artisans were working in the hall, and he noticed the woman standing there, directing their work, and almost did not recognize her. For a moment a frown filled his features, a frown to see a female creature whose face was unobscured—and then he remembered who she was.
“You,” he said. “When will I have the living symbol of my empirastan? Is it ready yet?”
And the woman, dressed plainly like a servant and wearing the same demure shawl as always bowed before him and said in a familiar, strong, calming voice, “Behold, my Lord, this is its cradle being built. When it is done, the symbol of the wind rose will lie within the heart of the rose of stone, floating upon calm waters.”
“Then I await its completion.” The taqavor nodded.
The Prince Lirheas, standing as always to the side, noticed as he observed the taqavor discreetly that his father’s eyes were fevered. And his father’s gaze was unfocused and dim. Then the taqavor was again on his way, forgetting the whole thing, it seemed, like an old man.
Indeed, it was a tangible relief to have his heavy presence out of the hall. Lirheas once again turned his unyielding gaze to watch the woman as she moved in her artistic energy and fluidity. For, more and more, she was the only thing he saw.
The taqavor was preoccupied in the House of Wives when he was delivered the news that the fourth and last expedition to the End of the World had returned.
The news was rela
yed from the other side of a gauze curtain in a luxurious bedchamber that hid the taqavor and one of his taqoui moving in the carnal act. The information had such an effect on the sovereign that he grunted in triumph and immediately spilled his seed. He then removed himself prematurely from within the woman underneath him, while she moaned and continued to grind her loins in unrelieved lust.
Back in the palace, a tired and gray-haired man awaited the taqavor, the soldier called Vikenti who had been directed to follow the rising sun’s left hand.
“We have returned at long last, my Lord,” said Vikenti, his voice hoarse and dry as though he had not spoken for all these seasons since he had last been here.
“Tell me, have you seen the End of the World, of my empirastan? ” asked the taqavor. “For I must know it at last, and you are the only one left of the four who might give me a proper answer. . . .”
Vikenti was indeed an old soldier, and far from a fool. “What happened to the others?” he asked carefully. “What news did they bring, Jimor and Rihaad and Mareid, my old comrades in arms?”
In response the taqavor laughed. He sat in his high seat and shook with paroxysms that resembled dark fury and pain and madness.
“They brought back nothing,” he said at last, quieting into a dark sobriety. “One by one they came back. And their tales were filled with lies and delusion. For they had been lost, all of them, deviating from their true purpose in one way or another. And now there is only you. All hope rests on you. What news have you to tell me?”
And the old soldier Vikenti sighed, for at that point he suddenly knew the exact nature of the fate unfolding before him like a carpet of twilight.
“My Lord, what I have to tell you is a thing of wonder. And yet I am afraid this thing will not please you to hear it. You may also consider me mad and lost and full of delusion. For I am now convinced that the World, the great boundless empirastan of yours, has no End.”
“What?” whispered the taqavor. “Not you, too. . . .”
“Father . . .” Prince Lirheas suddenly spoke out. “Maybe this man does indeed say only what he has been given to see by the will of the gods? For I am beginning to suspect either that the gods do not want mortal men to know what the End of the World is or the answer may be beyond our meager understanding.”
“The reason why I say the World has no End, my Lord,” said Vikenti, “is because I traversed the world in a straight line, heading to the left of the rising sun, while the sun remained on my right, and yet I arrived back in the same place I had started from. This is a miracle! How else to explain this?”
“Your mind has gone mad, just like the others,” hissed the taqavor. “That’s how I explain it.”
“And yet the same thing, the same exact madness, seemed to have taken over the minds of three of your men, my Lord,” said the woman with the knowing eyes, and everyone turned to stare at the source of her calm voice. “The fourth man, Rihaad, merely did not finish his journey after being deceived by the great mountain. For, if he and his men had ventured past the eternal whiteness of the abyss before him, it is possible he too would have eventually come back to the origin of his journey, this very city.”
The taqavor stared at her with dilated eyes. “What are you saying now, woman? What do you mean? What—”
“Let me show you a miraculous thing, my Lord, and in the showing I will illustrate the mystery of the World and its End.”
Saying this, the woman turned to a servant and said in a voice of authority, “Go and fetch me four long hair ribbons.”
Everyone looked extremely confused while the servant ran to do as bidden. Soon he returned carrying four brightly colored ribbons of silk.
“I am going to show you four journeys,” said the woman, taking the ribbons. She placed the first ribbon flat on the marble floor, and pointed at the end nearest to her. “This is the journey’s beginning, and this is your city.”
Next she pointed to the other end of the ribbon, saying, “This is the journey’s end, also in your city.”
“Impossible,” said the taqavor. “Obviously, if the four expeditions had kept moving in a straight line they could not have come back here to the city!”
The courtiers made noises of acquiescence. Lirheas, standing a few steps to the side, looked on with growing intensity.
And then the woman with the knowing eyes smiled. She leaned forward and picked up the ribbon from the ground. She took both the ends of the ribbon in her fingers and placed them on top of each other, so that the ribbon formed a hanging loop.
“Now look,” she said. “The journey’s beginning and end are in the same place. And look at the shape of journey itself. The line that you had thought all along to be on flat ground is in fact the surface of a great arc, a complete perfect circle.”
“What does this mean?” said the taqavor.
“It means,” she replied, “that the earth, the very world is not what we think it is. But—
before I name its nature, let me show you the rest of the journeys.”
She took out the three remaining ribbons, and also folded them in on themselves, so that all ends were held by her forefinger and thumb. At the same time, she also moved two of the ribbons to positions perpendicular to each other and two directly on top of each other, just like the four directions the expeditions had taken. And then, still holding the ribbons with one hand, she straightened out the hanging loops and raised them so that all of them approximated circles.
“Look now, my Lord, and all the rest of you,” she said loudly. “This shape that is made by the four journeys. What do you see in its outline?”
It was Prince Lirheas alone who answered. “I see a sphere . . .” he whispered.
“Yes!” said the woman. “For indeed it is thus. The journeys that traverse the world outline the true shape of the world, and we see it is round—a great ball suspended by the gods in the air, bathed by the winds which are indeed everywhere along the ball’s perfect surface. Being a sphere, the World has no End and no Beginning.”
“That is impossible!” said the taqavor. “How can we walk upon the round surface of your sphere world?”
“That I do not know,” said the woman softly. “Something, some divine force holds us in place. And yet, because the sphere is so vast, we cannot see the full curvature, only the nearest edges, which are the horizon, and which to us appear flat.”
“There is no such force! What nonsense!” said the taqavor. He got up from his seat and began to pace the floor before the court.
“This whole madness is giving me a headache,” he said eventually. “Begone from my sight, all of you, and I will not hear any more of this. And you, woman, finish the symbol for me, finish your wind rose. And speak not another word. Because of your previous wisdom, I forgive you. But not any more. Thus you will speak not a word, ever, to me or to anyone. Be silent, forever. Now, go!”
Those who yet remained watched in terror. But the woman smiled softly, and then she cast her gaze downward and bowed deeply. And in silence she left the taqavor’s hall. The finished Rose was a great wooden four-pointed star of the lightest sandalwood and cedar. One of the four rays contained a slim rod of lodestone, and was counter-balanced on the three remaining rays by their thicker layers of wood.
Delicate resin was applied to seal in the wood and to protect it from rot, and then the object was placed carefully in the pool at the heart of the stone rose. And to everyone’s amazement, the four-pointed star turned a certain direction, and remained permanently aligned that way. No matter how many times it was rotated in the water, it would return to its original position—the lodestone ray would point to the left of the rising sun.
The taqavor was shown this oddity, and surprisingly it amused him, for he spent long hours entertaining himself by spinning the wooden Rose, and watching it return to its original orientation.
It was indeed a living symbol.
And yet it was a disturbing symbol, for in its functional silence it spoke and hinte
d of things that were just at the edges of the consciousness, things that warped the reason and forced it to start thinking along a dangerous line. . . .
Eventually it came to pass that the taqavor spent days staring at the Rose while he thought of things ordinary and familiar, thought of the winds and his empirastan. But he never dared think of edges. . . . Not in the beginning. Not of edges of things. But then edges began to obsess him, as always happens with little details in the beginnings of such madness.
The taqavor observed edges everywhere, fine lines or blurred lines, or even implied lines of visual illusory meaning. Edges that signified ends. . . .
Soon the taqavor wanted the edges marked and labeled clearly, even in places that had none. He called upon his artists and had them paint four distinct opposite edges in the stone of the pool that contained the floating Rose. Then, he decided to name the edges, in order to assign them even greater permanence.
Mumbling nonsense words for hours to himself, he finally decided to call the edge where the lodestone always returned “North” and its opposite ray “South.” The end that faced the rising sun he called “East” and its opposite “West.”
And he would ask everyone what they saw. Only—no one’s answer would satisfy him. Because the madness had grown deeper, riding in the back of his mind now in all things. Eventually he knew he had to call her back. For she was the one who had planted this seed of insanity in him, who had expanded his thoughts past their mortal bounds and edges into a world of divine terror without a limit. . . .
The woman with the knowing eyes came wordlessly to him when called. In silence she stood and listened to his rantings about edges and lines and meaning—while he leaned over the stone petal pool and spun the Rose in the water, and his hands shook.
“Speak, damn you!” the taqavor finally exclaimed, “I revoke my earlier command. Tell me what is the truth of all of this.”