And the taqoui and the concubines and the serving women cried and wept, many falling on the delicate tiled floor of cool marble, between the rows of open coffins filled with ashes. For hours they called upon the name of their Lord, the taqavor of the world, and they struck the doors with their fists. Others took the ashes that were everywhere and threw them over their hair and foreheads, wailing upon their knees, their faces turned to the floor, beating their chests and scratching their cheeks with their nails.
For that was the mourning ritual for the dead, and the women knew they must thus honor themselves since no one else would.
But the doors of the domed sepulcher remained shut, and no one came to heed their calls for mercy. Time flowed, and they watched through the skylights as the sky changed overhead from the whiteness of day to the indigo of evening and the ichor of night. Thus ended their first day without food or water.
“How can this go on? Why do you endure him?” said the queen without eyes to the Prince, with barely controlled passion, as they stood in their usual place before the window. Before them now lay a desolate world of burnt gardens and hazy air. From the distance came the weak moans and weeping of the women in the domed sepulcher. After three days the sound had become a constant, day and night, sometimes fading, sometimes resuming, as the voices of the slowly dying women were carried on the wind.
“What else is the son of the taqavor to do?” said Lirheas after a pause. “The mad one is my father.”
“But he is not mine,” she replied, her voice breaking. “And I must speak the truth, as I have spoken it always.”
And with those words the blind woman turned and headed for the door, opening it violently without a moment of hesitation, knowing exactly where the handle was placed. With a sudden sinking in his innards, followed by blind terror, Lirheas exclaimed, “Wait!”
And then he was after her, suddenly feeling himself moving like molasses, while the world and time itself seemed to grow still and stretch all around him. . . . The queen without eyes walked with all the urgency of the sighted, and was soon within the central hall of the Compass Rose, which had become the taqavor’s living place.
“My Lord taqavor! ” she said to the hunched figure who huddled near the stone pool in the center. “Do you remember me, my Lord? You blinded me once for speaking things you did not want to hear or see, but I am again before you!”
The figure turned, fingers dripping from touching the water in the pool, and he was looking at her, at this woman with a bandage across her face. He remembered in a flash who and what she was, the memory surfacing out of the normal haze of his thoughts.
“You!” said the taqavor. “Oh yes, I know you now, woman! You built this Compass Rose for me, my very own Rose. But you spoke things that were not right. And thus I had your sight taken from you, for your will cannot go beyond mine, ever.”
“Father!” said Lirheas, approaching from the back. “This woman is now mine; I claimed her in that moment when you said no one would. You may no longer harm her, for she is my queen.”
His forceful tone imbued his voice with ringing echoes, was almost unreal. For never had the Prince previously raised his voice before his Lord Father.
But his father laughed.
“No longer harm her? Why, I can do anything I like, idiot boy. But—what difference does it make?” said the taqavor, continuing his odd sequence of clarity. “She is a blind weight upon you, and you are impotent, boy. Not unlike your mother.”
“My mother! Tell me of her, once and for all!” exclaimed Lirheas, approaching the older man, and standing taller and more threatening than he’d ever been in all of his life. The taqavor took a step back for the first time, almost cringed, for he had to look up to meet his son’s face, and he felt the invisible pressure from his thoughts. And then clarity was gone.
The taqavor began to giggle, and he looked back and forth from his son to the woman without eyes.
“Those women of the House of Wives,” said the queen softly, oddly drawing out her words, so great was the intensity she was holding back. “Why did you imprison them in a tomb for your . . . flowers? Even now, they live and they weep, and they call out your name. Let them out, show them mercy, for they are the mothers of your children.”
The taqavor watched her sightless face, watched the expression of her lips. “I want to preserve them. While they are still like flowers.”
“Nonsense. Your mind wanders,” said the queen without eyes and without fear. “For the flowers are like ashes and not at all like women. Where is the logic in that? Ashes, flowers, women? Tell me why you do this. What do you plan? You are taqavor of the world, and your empirastan is boundless, and your truth is boundless also—is that not so? Then why make a mockery of it?”
“Stand away from me!” he cried then, Cireive the old man, in the voice of a dark petulant child. And then he began to chuckle, mumbling, “Come along, both of you, and I will release them. . . . Come with me. . . .”
He called his guards to him. The hall trembled under their running footfalls.
“I do not trust him,” whispered Lirheas, “He—”
“He plans to make ashes of the women, that is clear,” said the queen without eyes. “And then he plans to make ashes out of us.”
But in the saying of that her lips curved into a smile.
Cireive walked along the desolate gravel path toward the domed tomb. At his sides came arrowstraight rows of Palace guards, surrounding him from all sides like stalks of tall plants with swaying crowns of red feather-lightness—no, he must not think that way. A few steps behind walked his son, Prince Lirheas, and next to him the queen without eyes. They passed what had once been lush gardens seething with flowers but were now sparse stretches of empty earth and felled shrubbery, while the intermittent moans and cries from up ahead grew louder, carried here on the wind. And soon he was before the building. The taqavor stopped in front of the ornate doors, and turned to face the others. In the fading daylight of this, the fourth day, his white hair was the color of dusk and his features were crenulated with lines. Only his sky-blue eyes remained young and sharp and brilliant with intensity.
“Enough, then. I will let them out,” said Cireive, with a simple smile. “I will allow them to live, but you must promise to tell me the truth of the world, woman, for I know that you are the only one who knows it.” He stared at the queen without eyes.
“What?” whispered Lirheas. “What do you mean by that, my Lord Father?”
But the queen smiled and raised her hand in a gesture to stop the words of the Prince. “I will do this, Lord taqavor, for I know this is what has been eating you always.”
“Yes,” whispered Cireive. “I knew you would understand. Now, tell me things. For each answer you give me, I will let one of them go. Guards, open the doors, but stand closely and do not let them run out in a crowd. Allow one only to pass at a time upon my signal.”
“What madness is this . . .” muttered Lirheas. “Will there be a hundred and fifty-three questions and a hundred and fifty-three truths to impart? How in the world—”
“Silence, impotent humorless boy! Not madness but a game!” cried the taqavor in a high womanish voice. He began again to giggle, and pointed to his guards and the doors of the sepulcher, saying, “Proceed.”
The Palace guards unbolted and unlocked the ornate doors of the domed structure, and then stood to block the dark entrance, from beyond which came wailing,. Many agonized female faces could be seen.
“Ah!” said Cireive, “I almost forgot. If there is but one question that you do not answer to my satisfaction, you will have to take the place of these women inside.”
“No!” said the Prince. “Please, my Lord Father!”
The taqavor glanced at him briefly. “Oh, don’t be afraid. I promise, you will join your blind queen inside. That is, unless you deny her now, and give up her worthless husk, and take another proper queen worthy of the Prince Heir. Do not think me daft, boy, that I have allowed yo
u this nonsense of a marriage. I allowed it only to amuse myself at the spectacle of a blind beggar being made into a temporary queen.”
“Enough! What is your first question?” said the queen without eyes. Her voice was strong and she was smiling.
And in response Cireive let out a peal of insane laughter and rubbed his hands gleefully. “At last, I’ll see how truly clever you are,” he said. “Tell me, why does the sun shine?”
“The sun shines because it can,” replied the woman ruthlessly. “Now, let one of the prisoners out.”
“Very well,” said the taqavor, nodding to the guards. They in turn moved aside, and one trembling woman was taken by the shoulders and pushed out past the row of soldiers.
“Go quickly!” exclaimed Lirheas. “Go while you can!”
The taqoui took several tentative steps and then instead of running, came down on her knees, weeping in gratitude before the taqavor who ignored her.
“What is the purpose of dreams? What are the things that I see?” said Cireive to the queen without eyes.
She did not hesitate for a moment. “Dreams are created by you to protect yourself from the harsh truth, my Lord. Unlike the merciless reality of wakefulness, in dreams you see only that which safely shields you.”
Cireive thought for a moment, then smiled. “Agreed,” he said, and pointed once more to the doors of the sepulcher. Another of the taqoui was shoved into the fading daylight, as though she were a sack of bones. She came out swaying in weakness, and like her predecessor lowered herself on her knees.
“Ah, for goodness’ sake, begone quickly, woman,” said the queen without eyes in exasperation, seeing through the eyes of the Prince how the woman hesitated.
“Now then,” continued Cireive, “tell me what is the number of directions from which the wind blows in my empirastan? ”
“Simple,” said the queen without eyes. “It equals the number of destinations where the wind arrives.”
“What?”
“That would be your next question—for this one, you owe me another prisoner.”
Cireive frowned, then opened his eyes wide, and nodded to the guards, and the third woman was released.
“Well then, explain,” he muttered.
The queen smiled.
“When you speak of the wind, you speak of movement. Air moves from one place to another. For every point of its origin there is an end point of destination. Draw a line from the origin to the destination, and it will represent the direction. But it is rather useless to discuss it unless you have a specific stationary point in mind, because the wind never sits still but changes direction constantly and thus changes its point of destination. Thus, what starts out as a simple straight line ends up as an infinitely meandering sequence of ever-changing points. . . .”
“And what point is at the very middle of the world?” said the taqavor suddenly.
“From your relative perspective, it is you, of course,” she replied. “But, in the absolute sense, every point on the surface of a sphere is the middle point.”
“So then,” the taqavor mused aloud, obviously pleased, “if I move, the middle of the world moves with me?”
“Of course,” she replied, smiling softly once again. “If you choose to look at it that way. Cireive chuckled, and motioned for the guards to release another taqoui from the prison of the tomb.
He never gave the taqoui a single glance, but immediately asked another question.
“I want to know the size of the world and thus the size of my empirastan, once and for all.”
At this the queen sighed. “It is a very great number,” she said carefully.
“Naturally it is a great number, I know that! But what determines this number?” the taqavor persisted. “Tell me, woman!”
“The gods determine it by designating for it a great place,” she replied.
“How? And where is this great place that my empirastan is located? I would know!”
“Your empirastan is located on the surface of a sphere,” replied the queen. “But that is the next question, so you need to release another one.”
Cireive nodded to the guards absently, and continued to muse outloud, while an agonized woman rushed forth, and bowed before him like the other released prisoners.
“Tell me how is it that my empirastan covers a sphere? I would hear more of this impossibility,” the taqavor continued.
The queen paused. After a moment she said, “The empirastan does not cover the whole of the sphere. It is great indeed, possibly the greatest of all. But it is less than the whole world, my Lord. I cannot lie.”
In the growing twilight, Lirheas watched this insane game, and for the first time he knew that here was the end.
“I do not like your answer,” muttered Cireive. “No, I do not. . . .”
“I did not think you would,” replied the woman. “However, before you decide to be done with me, I offer you one more question and answer. Only this time, I raise the stakes, and offer a challenge. But first you must release all the rest of the women, and then you must enter the tomb alone with me.”
Hearing that, Cireive let out another giggle. “Oh, you think you are clever enough to deceive me?” he said, shaking with laughter. “You want to lure me inside and shut the door? Is that so?”
“Of course,” said the queen without eyes. “But I will come with you into the darkness. Are you afraid of being alone with me, a pathetic blind beggar, oh great Lord of the greatest empirastan? ”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed the taqavor, no longer laughing. “I do not trust you for a moment, woman. I would never go inside with you alone. Oh, no, not ever. . . .”
And then he spoke to the guards, “I am tired of this game. Now take them both, this socalled queen, and my fool of a son, and put them inside. And take these women that I have just
‘released’ and put them back inside also. I had no intention of freeing them in the first place—”
“A pity indeed,” said the queen without eyes. Moving preternaturally fast, she was at the side of the taqavor, and then she was at his back. She grasped him from behind and in the next instant, there was a long needle-sharp dagger of pale steel in her hand, and she was holding it at his throat while its razor-sharp edge was directly over his carotid artery. Cireive went still in her hold.
The guards who had barely began to move, froze also, for it seemed she had moved outside of time itself, so fast she had been, so inhuman. They stood petrified, watching her. The taqoui, still on their knees, stared upwards in terrible wonder.
Lirheas felt an impossible cold intensity overcome him, and this moment crystallized, became the most violently urgent and yet stretched out moment of his life. . . .
“Lirheas,” she said loudly, calmly, while the sun set on the horizon behind them. “Come to my side and open the doors of this prison wide. Release all of the women who are within. If anyone else moves, I will plunge this knife into your Lord father’s neck.”
There was a terrible fury in the face of the taqavor. But he felt the sharp point biting at his neck and so he hissed to the guards, “For now, do as she says. You will pay for this, bitch, and you also, Lirheas—”
The women of the House of Wives came forth like funereal shadows into the twilight. In the distance torches were being lit in the Palace itself and along the garden paths. When the last of the women has been released, the queen without eyes directed Lirheas to stand between her and the guards. Then she moved, backing, taking the taqavor with her into the orifice of night that was the gaping doorway of the domed sepulcher.
“Close the door behind us,” she said. “And do not unlock it unless I tell you so.”
“What will you do? Let me come with you, my queen,” whispered Lirheas. But she made no answer, and for some peculiar reason he had no strength to follow her. Prince Lirheas shut and locked the door behind them, and stood outside surrounded by a ring of guards while darkness fell completely upon the world.
In the darkness they wer
e both equally blind, the taqavor and the woman whose eyes he had taken from her.
Cireive felt the sharpness of metal against his neck and he barely breathed, for fear had crept into him and then engulfed him, and he felt time dripping in precious globule moments, felt silence except for the blood rushing in his temples.
And then the terror increased.
For suddenly he sensed the rising sea of growth everywhere, the soft fluttering of leaves and the filaments of flowers rising from their desiccated ashes in the open coffins of brass. The ghosts of the flowers were all around them, clamoring loudly in the silence, scarlet and vermilion and magenta in his memory, seething around him, amaranth. . . .
“Who are you?” he whispered, needing to hear the sound of his own voice, forgetting the fear of death and the biting steel—indeed, holding on as a consolation to the awareness of the sharp prick of pain and the grip of her hand against his neck. For these were mundane things, in contrast to all that was rising around them.
And then the moon came forth, and shone bright and pale through the skylights. Cireive blinked, and thought he saw the ghosts of the flowers recede momentarily, but instead he saw her shadow behind him, the woman without eyes.
She had released him and moved out of his way, allowing him easy freedom. He could have bolted for the door in that moment, could have taken the sharp dagger from her hands and used it on her. . . .
But he stood frozen with the passing of time, and watched her stand there him in the brief illumination of the tomb. Without a word she raised her hands to remove the binding of cloth that covered her blind eye-sockets.
Untying the cloth, she let it drop to the ground, fluttering gently. He saw her face made soft and smooth by moonlight, and the pits of her ravaged wounds, still unhealed after all this time, her eye-sockets that refused to close, were deep with darkness in the twilight, seeming in their incidental shape suddenly to be like crowns of heavy blossoms, familiar to him, oh so familiar. And suddenly, for a moment out of time, he recognized her.
“Mother . . .” sobbed Cireive, an old man in the voice of a little boy. “It is you, isn’t it? Why did you come back now? Why did you leave me then?”