He was enjoying every mouthful and savored morsels between swallows like each was a new experience.
Only when his bowl was emptied and his cup refilled did he and Mah Lin begin to freely speak. He was comfortable within our ancient walls, not like one who visited, but like an animal that after a life of wandering had finally returned home. I felt drawn to this beggar, but continued to study him from a respectful distance. His pale white skin was stretched to wrap his skeletal frame, and I saw that it was covered in ugly scars. Only those round black eyes spoke of his youth and vigor, those coal black eyes that spoke so loudly of life.
“Thank you,” he said to Selah through his toothless mouth, and turning to me like a proud grandfather, he added, “Arkthar, you have grown well.”
We four sat by hearth fire until the blackness melted from the eastern sky, and it began to glow red from the bellows of the coming day.
The Pattern In The Threads
The beggar spoke of many things. He told Mah Lin the terrible details of the Northern siege and of a bear-cloaked commander who Mah Lin seemed to know. He talked with admiration of a young rebel, and he spoke of death. He looked at me often, to see if I was following the conversation, and kindly he spoke slowly and clearly. I had almost forgotten the horrors of war, for that was another life, but now the rhythm of his words joined my past with the present, and it was not a welcome guest. I felt the barren coldness of the northland blow across my soul.
As quickly as the account of siege ended, the story of the plague began. The dark stranger wove words with the power of a carpet maker, their crossing threads and fibers bound me to my place, and I listened deeply. There was a great dying over the entire land. It seemed that there were few places still untouched.
Selah also sat quietly, and listened with the open mind of the healer. When silence settled, she began the questioning of a skilled physician. “There is no pattern to this plague?”
“None that I have seen,” was the beggar’s empty answer.
“You have walked in its shadow from its beginning, comforting the dying and burying the dead?”
“I have.”
“How is it that you did not fall?”
“Selah,” he ventured, “I do not know. I know only that I was young when the fever took me, and I have worn the scars of this illness ever since. I knew its touch, but not its embrace. Death did not claim me, for my fate it seems was with the living.” There was silence, as now we listened and she continued.
“Do you have any symptoms?” she asked.
“Only these,” he said as he rolled up a tattered sleeve to reveal two small boils on his skinny upper arm. “Usually there is nothing, but sometimes after I have been near the dying, I will get a small blemish on arm or leg. No fever, no pain, and no illness, just a small boil that bothers nothing and heals quickly.”
Selah was lost in deep concentration. Her mind examined all that she had ever learned about illness and affliction. She retraced and reviewed the process of healing, and the progression of disease. She chased after the solution but it remained hidden, cloaked in swirling mists at the farthest reaches of her mind. She strained at the work of drawing solid answers from miasmic thoughts. Mah Lin placed a concerned arm around his daughter’s tired shoulders and soothed her worried mind. “Sleep my daughter,” he said. With a faraway look in her eyes she bid us goodnight.
In her dreams she continued to thrash about. Beside her mother once again, she saw the healing of her near dead father, and watched from shadow a woman’s love wrestling life from the boney hands of Death. She struggled to pull clarity from the grip of chaos.
The truth arrived like a clap of thunder descending from the clouds of experience and intellect. The bolt on which it rode lit the darkness of her dreams. Awakened by this brightness, she opened her eyes and smiled the same calm smile as her beautiful mother, and said with certainty, “This is the pattern of the plague.”
The next morning as we sat for breakfast, Selah spoke her thoughts aloud. “It strikes with the random force of a storm’s lightning, and like the bolt it never strikes the same place twice. Once hit, your body knows the enemy and has built its permanent defense. It cannot ravish those who already know its touch.”
Guided by a healer’s wisdom and without any hesitation, she drew forth the needles that I had once feared so long ago. She held the tiny sword deftly between her fingers and scratched the surface of the beggar’s lesion. Without fear she passed its small sharp tip to her forearm and moved it back and forth until the blood came.
In horror I was frozen even as she moved close and did the same to me, and then smoothly to her father who had already rolled up the sleeve of his saffron robe and revealed his mighty arm.
He looked to our guest, and amid the terror of war and disease, he smiled peacefully at Death.
Departure
The following day we slept late, well past the roosters morning call, for we were not quite well. The beggar ministered to us with care, the scratches on our arms had grown to a hard and angry abscess, and we three shared a fever and discomfort. The boil puckered and took on the look of a navel; it scabbed as the fevers passed. They healed as a pocked scar within a half-moon’s passage. Selah carefully collected the fallen scabs, and we were sound once more.
When I awoke with the new dawn, I could not find my threadbare scholar’s robes. With bare chest I entered the main room. The scars of my warrior past were now my only clothing. On the table before me was the chain mail armor that Selah had selected for me from the great hall. It was the armor of my country, but through its interlocking links she had woven the silken strips of my scholar robe into an artful pattern of love, power, and protection. The deepest of blues shone from between the metal rings. On top of this she had carefully placed my sword of Five Elements.
Our appetites had returned, and our tattered guest served us a beggar’s breakfast. It was small, it was good, and it was enough. On the table before us he placed the open proclamation of the high chancellor. Its deep folds told of the time and distance over which it had been carried. There was no doubt, no hesitation, and no debate. We had our purpose and our direction. Mah Lin once again tucked the dragon’s compass beneath his shimmering robes.
By the morning light we outfitted four horses for our journey to the capital. Provisions were packed by Selah and equally distributed among us. Mah Lin’s freshly shaven head and many colored robe brought me back to the time of our first meeting. He adjusted his steel staff on the side of his mount. Selah was dressed in the simple brown robes of the desert’s caress, the same ones from that time so long ago, the only visible difference was the bow and full quiver she now carried.
I expected nothing. I was in deportment closer to the nature of our horses. They were pleased to be worked and ridden, and indeed seemed happy to share in each other’s company. The armored shirt was in itself a work of skill and wonder, and with the weavings of my silken robes it slid comfortably over my soldier’s frame. I was not sure of our mission’s duration, and focused instead on our task’s noble purpose.
The beggar by contrast seemed almost jovial. A traveler by nature, he was happy not to be walking, and pleased to indulge in the ease and luxury of horseback. He smiled as he stroked the pale grey stallion and quoted an ancient proverb, “If wishes were horses, than beggars would ride.” The simple wisdom of these words amused the priest and instantly lightened our load. With a movement that belied his great age, he was up in the saddle and steadied his horse with an easy redistribution of his weight and a gentle tug on its bridle.
Selah watched from atop her white horse as I strapped my blade to my back and secured my wooden sword beneath my waistband. I swung my leg over the red charger and we were off. The horses moved without command along the river that was theirs. I surveyed our land from the height of my mount and was once more impressed by its rugged beauty. Onward we rode, past my sacred oak, past the roaring falls, and once again out into the world of the wild and the unf
amiliar. The creatures of this place cast a glance at our departure, perhaps their gesture of respect.
I smiled inwardly, for I saw this now as profound but natural, far removed from former thoughts of witchcraft and sorcery. With our journey begun I felt at peace and comfortably energized. We four now moved as one. I saw the raven flash overhead as we left these ancient grounds.
With a subtle tipping of its outstretched wings it rose much higher, and looking downward a faded cry spoke its blessing.
From The Eye
We rode in single file, and for most of our journey the pale horse and its black rider led the way. Steadily by the monk’s compass and the beggar’s memory, we moved northward and to the west. Through villages and towns we rode, and there was no joy at the sight of us. In fact, there was no joy anywhere along our route. It was a path paved instead by suspicion, fear, and misery. We saw crops rotting in their fields. The pox was still a bigger problem than the hunger that had not yet arrived. Everywhere we saw the new markers of the recently dug and the freshly buried.
In contrast to the dying, I saw wonders of engineering; smooth straight roads and immense stone bridges that by great design hung suspended over wide rivers. On occasion, majestic pagodas of wood and brick towered higher than any building of my world amid the untamed beauty of forest and meadow. I knew that by these standards the world from which I came was primitive, but in the face of a plague, these wonders meant nothing.
I did not know that it was possible for the earth to mourn, but as we rode farther, I heard its wails and saw its many tears. We had left our peaceful home less than a week before, and now we were much farther than a world away.
We stopped briefly at an inn when we were perhaps one full moon into our journey. What used to be a place of shelter and hospitality was now cold and foreboding. At the prompting of his shy but stubborn wife, its keeper brought us into its dark back room. A child lay wet and red on damp and dirty sheets. It cried softly, weak from fever and listless in appearance. Selah approached it as we watched, and cradled the child lovingly in her arms. The innkeeper looked lost for words, and I saw the eyes of its mother, red and swollen from tears already spent.
Selah was in her realm as she sang the ancient songs of healing to the baby girl. They were songs that she had heard her mother sing on the full moon of winter’s longest night. I watched her put a trace of powder into the small nostrils, and with warm breath blow it gently into the weakened infant. The baby stopped crying and drifted into comfortable sleep. She spoke to the child’s mother in the hushed tones that only women know.
“The sores have not yet come, and she will live if she can fight the fever for three more days.”
Selah made a brew of herb and set it out before the mother as she explained its dose and schedule. There are not words to explain well the reaction of the innkeeper’s wife, so it must suffice to say that the sorrow we had felt follow us for so long, was at least here laid to rest.
The couple pleaded with us to stay the night, and I was greatly relieved when the monk accepted. Both we and our horses were road weary, and the chance to eat well and bed warmly was a blessing. We would soon enter the capital, and it would be well to do so refreshed and alert. The room they led us to was humble by most standards but was a palace spa by ours.
I lay my head upon its soft pillow and remembered little else.
The Awakening
Here there is no memory, and yet here there is all memory. Here memory is not merely a past event echoing through the mind of the living. It is a noise that rumbles from distant origin and fades only at time’s far end. From the dead through the living and to the not yet born, and it is a resonance that echoes not within the mind, but within the soul. It is a sound heard not faintly with my ears but loudly with my spirit.
I am not alone, the priest and the woman are with me. Like the snow, the river, and the mist, we are three as one, and we are not alone. Death is here, and Life is also here. I know now that Death and Life are not two separate beings but two separate parts of one whole. As long as Life remains, Death can only wait. It can touch but it cannot yet hold. I listen with all my senses, for Death does not always speak with the words of men.
From familiar ground, we look upon what was once a mountain. Time has whittled it to just a hill. I stand comfortably on a lush green highland. I see a solitary oak and a river’s falls, and in the great distance, a lion; a sentinel of standing metal.
From the north, the light cirrus clouds move over and past the peaceful highlands. The sky thickens. Their formations turn from wispy white to serious grey, and these move over me like the march of a great army. The dark northern sky lights up with flashes, and its low pitched growl reaches my ears in the time of three deep breaths. The rumblings move steadily closer, like the heavy weapons of siege drawn by the relentless cavalry of the advancing campaign.
I see in the ever-darkening sky that the approaching lightning cracks ever more destructive, and that it is no longer held by bonds of altitude but shoots down violently from the heavens to wound and scorch the earth. They flash like the jagged shapes of oaken roots, and I am afraid. I look for shelter, but the presence of Death steadies me, and in silent kindness, he bids me watch.
This I do, and as the celestial flashes descend around me, I feel the rain. Gentle refreshment at first, it builds quickly to a driving lash. Through my legs I hear the earth tremble, not from within like the mountain of fire, but from the surface and down. I see, with open-mouthed wonder, the ancient being that brings the rains.
It moves slowly in the measured steps of time. The sun-bleached bones that I once touched are now wrapped in the living flesh of muscle, sinew, and blood. Bones wrapped in the miracle of life.
The earth quakes with its every methodical step, and it comes to rest above the sheltered cavern, its size the measure of the shrinking landscape. The dragon rests upon its hollow nest and casts an eternal eye in my direction, it seems to implore me to release it unto Death and release it unto Life, so that it, too, can flow out to join the world and shape the destiny of all mankind. It wants only in death, to live once more.
I look away from its cold, all-knowing gaze, but am sternly guided back by Death who bids me once again to watch. One last flash in the blinding rain and my whole world goes white and rumbles. The noise obliterates all my senses. It expands within me, and in fear I fight my way to consciousness.
The explosion faded to an echo, and I woke safely within the comforting walls of this inn’s simple room. Shaken to my core, I trembled as I drew on my armor and flew to meet the others. Mah Lin, Selah, and the beggar sit relaxed and smiling before their warm morning meal.
They had chosen not to wake me, and decided instead, to leave me to my dreams.
The Capital City
In my world, towns and cities are a cluster of shelters that grow haphazardly around ports of commerce. They are a random assortment of stone and wooden hovels. Man and livestock all thrown together to survive as best they can. There is no order to the laying of road or walkway, and the population of their people is far outnumbered by pest and vermin. My capital is merely a wooden-walled fortress built upon the banks of a mighty river. While it is true that in my homeland there are great stone castles that impose their presence upon the landscape, all would pale compared to the vision that was now before me.
I strained both sight and imagination to take in properly all that I was seeing. I beheld a city that seemed impossible to be the work of mortal men. Its surrounding landscape dotted with thatched huts and hamlets and well-tended fields and canals gradually merged toward the mighty stone foundation. They provided scale for the vista, as did the measure of time needed to ride from first sight to final destination. I studied carefully the details of this splendor. The white walls of the city formed a rectangular shape and were higher by far than even my mighty oak. By my estimation, they spanned an enclosed length of seven thousand and a width of six thousand long paces.
As we drew
closer I saw that each of the three walls held four gates, and that the south facing wall, the one that we now approached, had only three. Around the entire structure was a moat wider than a strong man could cast a stone, and the banks of both sides were lined with willow trees. Although I could not begin to guess its depth, I could see that its surface reflected the turrets that sat atop every wall, evenly spaced at a distance of about one hundred paces.
The gate before us was an amazing structure. Its roof floated like a ship upon a ship, and its elaborate elegance hid well its defensive purpose. Before we had reached the bridge that spanned the moat, we were met by this capital’s military arm. For an instant their general seemed thinking to attack; I felt the sword speaking from my back, and wisely he decided not to. The beggar held up the tattered proclamation, and this secured our escorted passage through a humble passage in the monstrous gate and toward the heart of the palace.
We were not delayed or even questioned, this spoke of the power of the written word upon the beggar’s paper. We were accompanied at a steady pace through the outer city along an avenue of immense width and proportion. This street was lined by water furrows filled with the ephemeral beauty of the floating lotus. We were escorted through the gate of a second great wall and through the inner city. The size and expanse of the inner city was breathtaking. Our horses in single file did follow the beggar’s grey stallion. Its rider knew the streets like the raven knew our homestead.
We rode by lakes and fountains, parks and squares. Everywhere the air seemed full of fragrance, some the sweetness of flower and tree, some of pungent spice, and some just the normal stench of daily human life. We crossed canals on beautiful bridges, and rode on level streets and wide avenues laid in orderly fashion.
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