Prolog:
“…All our times have come…”
The man called Lu walked with a spring in his step, partly because Tompkins square was, by far, his favorite place in the entire universe. There were other reasons, and they were flocking through Lu’s head like mad sparrows as he skipped toward the center of the park. Then he saw his friend, and what his friend was standing next to and began to run.
The Storyteller had come a long way, but he wasn’t nearly so tired as he wanted the wetmaid to believe. He found that affecting a limp, a deeper voice than his own, perhaps an occasional puzzled stutter, would inspire trust when he came knocking. The story teller, old as he was, prized trust over all other things.
But at the Glass Palace, trust was no issue. The storyteller had been coming here since before the God-King had built his incredible underground fortress, and those who would receive him knew they had nothing to fear. Just the opposite in fact, by the time he entered the amphi-chamber, there wasn’t a seat to be had. The entire court had come out it seemed, for this event. Even with the kingdom under siege and rumors of the God King’s imminent demise, the public still demanded their stories.
The old story man looked out only a few seconds before beginning. There was no fanfare, no introductions or showmanship of any kind. Instead he stood still, waiting, like a tree that grown out of massive glass pulpit, until the entire crowd had gone pin-drop silent. Once he started speaking he would not stop until his story was finished.
***
The Slave they called Nesso knew how old he was on the last day of his life. He’d woken up the same way he’d woken up virtually every day: Screaming, or – more correctly – yelling. Yelling for all he was worth, yelling so his brother slaves, stacked around him like the perishable product they’d been reduced to by the God King, could wake up quickly, and begin yelling themselves. It was in this way, that the three guards who watched his Tet could rouse the entire scaffold – 500 slaves – with but one bucket of shit and piss.
Nesso was – of course – not this boy’s true name. He’d been taken as an infant, fodder for the Pharaoh’s ever-expanding war, before learning even so much as his people’s words for “War” and “infant”. Instead, the child would learn the only things the empire wanted him to know. His Name: (Nesso, meaning “Good Dog”), His Purpose (To clear the glass on the way toward the Blade and let the God King’s light), His king (The God King, Pharaoh Ramses, sixth of his name), and how many days he had left in his miserable life (None, as of his waking this morning). His Tet had provided the rest of his brief, but very important, education. They’d made odd teachers. Married, as they were, to the will of the King, they had no time to explain they why and how of things. Nesso would have to learn as all his people had learned: through vital facts, hurled in urgent nighttime whispers by fellow slaves stacked around him.
His job: “Clean the glass to deliver the God King’s light. Every morning ye rise, wake what needs waking, and then ask the guards to release you from the scaffold. They will send you into the desert towards the Blade. As you walk out onto the desert, an archer will sight you from the top of the Tet, and if you veer so much as a step, he will put a heavy bolt through your eye from behind. You will walk until you see the light hailing from top of the peak they call Blade, and you will fall to your knees and dig sand and clean glass, clearing the space around you as if to fit six of your size, lying side by side. You will do this. You will return, and ask the guards to permit you entrance back into the scaffold. Then you’ll thank the God King for your breath and your eyes.”
His people: “A village toward the coast, long gone. Your father was called Mix.”
His Age: “23 years, six months, two weeks, three days…”
The Rest: “Every day, when it is time to do the God-Kings work, last night’s guard will dump the piss bucket onto your head. You’ll yell. Just loud enough, and just long enough to wake enough of your brothers around you, so that they may yell, and so on, until this scaffold is awake, and ready to serve. When the Empire conquers new worlds, the healthy slaves will be placed in scaffold before you, to wake with the guards piss, and yell loud enough to wake you. The Scaffold holds five hundred, packed into small cages stacked ten by ten. It’s on wheels, and constantly roams the desert that separates the vast reaches of the God King’s domain. There are others, some with women, they say”
“Your job is important. The slaves who’ve been longest in this Tet tell of a vast glass palace, hundreds of leagues below the sands, built around a giant jewel called the Semix. A place where only the God King and those he favors can be at peace, and safe to rule their earth. The glass you clean will let the God King’s light into this Glass Palace and keep it aglow for the God King’s blessed affairs.”
“This is a sacred job, and only recently entrusted to slaves. For that reason, those his majesty selects for this duty are only made to serve for twenty years. On the last day of your service, you’ll speak up, saying to the last guard you see before you walk out toward the Blade:
Tonight is the last night of my service.
Thank him, in advance, for his assistance, so that he will find favor with you, and sneak up behind you when you are not looking, and slice your head from your neck in one quick chop, so there is but one moment of horrifying pain before you move on to serve the God-King in the next world.”
But Nesso never ended up reminding the guard. In the end, after everything had been decided, he never knew whether or not it had made any difference. He liked to think that it had.
***
It was cold, out on the sands. He’d cleaned the God King’s glass thousands of times, but Nesso never got used to the cold. It was always worst in these last minutes before the baking sun came up to roast everything under it. The slave could see it, gathering itself behind the Blade, making the gigantic spar glow like a sword in a forge. Even with all that roiling red light so close, the brittle desert cold riding him through the shadows made Nesso ache. He felt the cold fingers of the night invading him beneath his tunic, as he unsheathed his two silken brushes and took to his knees. He was over a spot in the sand known only to himself and very few others – friends and associates of the God king. A driver named Jint had told him where the glass was and how to find it, and over the years the job – as jobs will – became like a second nature to him. Jint had been gone a long time, and nobody after him had ever asked about how to find the glass.
Kneeling in the cold sands, Nesso stroking the desert back and forth in long arcs, until the crystal below began to glint and sparkle in the new light. He cleaned the surface delicately, so as not to scratch its finish. Jint had taught him how the glass was pure, ad that any blemish would darken vast reaches of the God King’s domain. Before long he finished. As he stood there, surveying his work for what he knew would be the last time, he looked across the sands at the Blade and thought – for the very first time – about running away.
He was supposed to ease his way back to the Tet, taking care to give his headsman guard plenty of time to come lop off his faithful head, and twenty four hours ago the idea made nothing but sense to young Nesso. Now, with the frozen desert turning welcoming-warm in the bright dawn, and the immense Blade glowing before him, another idea started to take shape, an idea of a life beyond the Tet and perhaps beyond the God King himself. They said the empire stopped at the Blade in the west, only because the very earth ended a few miles beyond it. Nesso knew better. He’d seen better every night of his life, gazing out at the Blade, and the craggy mountains stretching miles beyond. Then he saw the headsman, approaching in the dark, bearing death as a gift.
***
The God King…Is that what I am?
You could be…
Really? Where? When? I’m going to die here, soon, you too, and everyone in this palace, everyone in my kingdom. What kind of God is it, who can be brought so low, so quickly.
Zette was one wife, but she was important. She was the most beautiful woman in the empire, the smartest and most revered of the God King’s thousand wives. She was also the wife who’d plucked Moses from the river on that day so long ago. Her council would be heard weather her King asked or not:
There’s none that’s been brought low husband. Not yet. Whoever speaks for this man Am’Ram speaks loudly, and they mean to be heard. Even so, my dearest husband, this voice offers both the doom, and the deliverance.
You’d council me to release the boy? To just let him do as he pleases? Against my wishes? I see only doom in that…
Just weeks ago he was your son, and you’d have let him leave and return as he would by his own heart for the rest of your days. Now is the world so different?
She knew the true answer, but what else was to be said? Events precluded any but this argument. They kingdom had been visited by otherworldly catastrophe since the one called Lu had fled the kingdom. Frogs had fallen from the sky like raindrops, thousands of children had been slaughtered like cattle, and the citizenry were dying by the hundreds from a horrible wasting disease the locals were calling “the Rot”. Her God, Her King, Her husband…Each face of this man before her knew full well the only thing there was to be done. Yet here they were. She watched the stars flicker to life above them and hoped against hope.
***
Turn around boy.
Nesso did as he was told, although it puzzled him that his headsman would force him to look upon his face. The turning, however, solved his puzzlement.
You know who I am?
I do sir.
Go then. You will be fine.
As you wish, sir, Am’Ram…I mean…
Shhh. Be calm. Do as I say and you’ll be safe.
Things were moving a bit too fast for the slave called Nesso. He started back towards his Tet with his head swimming. A massive hand grabbed his side gently as he did, turning him again, pointing him at the Blade.
If you please, my brother. I have some friends there. They have use for a man who knows duty, will you make for them? Follow your path to the Blade and they’ll take you in before the sun is high.
More confusion, but Nesso agreed. He didn’t know if he should bow his head, or take a knee, and got caught somewhere between. The legend spoke again:
Go my friend. Save your bows for those who deserve them…Go!
This time Nesso went.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment