The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  The Natural Order in those days walked the woodlands, needing no tools of stone or metal, and the spies and satellites of the Chimerae, their magnetic radar, found nothing to detect. Light was the footstep in the Earth of our first ancestors, camouflaged by their greenish cloaks, and leaving nothing behind when they camped, not even a scent trail. Not even fires, in those days, were built: the bear and the pard and the lumbering bison, packs of dogs feral to the Chimerae and tame to Nymphs, all came when called to huddle in playful furry mass for warmth.

  A time came of victory, and Rayura-Ah raised her hand, all the fruit trees gave forth fruit, and all of the slaves of the Chimerae who ate of them grew gay and giddy and flown as if with wine, and they forgot their sins and their chains and their rules and their lives—and so knew joy.

  The cities were empty, and the trees overgrew the towers, toppled the Chimerical war memorials, and broke the dungeon-walls with their roots. And the factories were pulled down by the thorny vines of roses. In the great square of the greatest city of the Chimerae where the ten thousand torture racks and impaling poles once dripped blood, now saw nothing but cherry blossom petals dripping.

  And one of the roots broke through the roof of the Tomb of the Judge of Ages, and tickled his nose, and woke him where he lay. He rose from his Tomb, blinking, and followed the path of rose petals to the surface, where the iron towers of the Chimerae were overgrown with mistletoe, ivy, and oleander.

  Sarmento i Illa d’Or the Necromancer saw him coming from afar through the many electronic eyes of the tyrants, and he stood in the shadow of the Dark Tower, and at his right hand was Rayura-Ah. And she was dressed in a robe of white petals, and anointed with oils and pheromones.

  From the Tombs came the Judge of Ages down the streets empty of people and full of grape leaves, and in each hand was a weapon, two pistols of corpse-white, for he is a Judge of death sentences only. And as he came, called out. “Is my time yet come? Is my bride yet here? Otherwise, wake me not, or you wake my wrath!” For the beauty of the trees, and the hypnotic scent of the blossoms, could not soften his heart.

  The Necromancer smiled and said, “Here is your bride. This is Rayura-Ah, the Second Rania, for I have read the books of necromancy beyond the stars, where your bride was described in exact detail, and I have made her to please you, and to read the Monument for you.”

  The First of Nymphs, clad in nothing but flower petals and her blush of native loveliness, now stepped forward to embrace the Judge of Ages, for she had been chemically programmed to love him.

  The Necromancer said, “Abandon your Tomb and live your days now in joy. Here is the woman mine arts have made for you: take her from my hand into the joyful bower, and relieve the shame of virginity from her.”

  To the First Nymph, the Judges of Ages asked, “What does the Monument say?”

  She answered and said, “The Monument says that Hyades cannot be defeated, or opposed, and that the children of men will be happy in their slavery, and spread among the stars. Now are the days of liberty, when we may feast and rest, but when the Armada arrives, it is the end of days of liberty, and the children of men must toil and die under the light of other suns.”

  But the Judge of Ages said, “This is not my bride.”

  The Necromancer cursed him, and said, “Rania read the Monument wrongly, for she was made wrongly, and her dream of vindicating the races of man is wrong. I counseled Del Azarchel to kill her and assume the Captaincy, but he loved her and refused, therefore she became Captain, and caused us all endless grief! She will use and discard you as she used and discarded us, her fathers and teachers, for she does not love, but fled to the stars to escape you. She will never return.”

  Everything but those last four words, he would have forgiven: but this is the one thing that can never be said to the Judge of Ages.

  The two agreed then and there to fight a duel, and weapons of the ancient days were brought. They stood amid the floating petals that fell from broken torture-poles, and amid the lovely scent of lotuses that wafted from wine-filled torture-pools, and legend says that of all the duels fought during the time when the Chimerae ruled the Earth, this was the very last of them.

  The Necromancer said, “You can never defeat us, Judge of Ages, for we are the Masters of all dark arts and dark sciences, and we are full of the understanding of the secrets of the world.

  “Your wisdom is of this world,” said the Judge of Ages. “My hope is not of this world.”

  They fired their guns, and some say these were the last gunshots heard anywhere on Earth, for the Nymphs use other weapons. The shot of the Necromancer struck true, and the Judge of Ages was wounded with a grievous wound, and fell as one dead, and voices came from the earth, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake. And the Necromancer grew frightened, and cast down his pistol, and fled: for by his art he summoned a flying machine such as flew in the air in days long ago. He commanded it to carry him away, and commanded the Mother of Nymphs to follow after.

  But Rayura-Ah, who loved the Judge of Ages with a helpless love, took him away to her secret island, and there nursed him of his great wound.

  He rose at last from deathbed and sickbed to embrace her, for was she not like Rania as Rania should have been, the perfected, the unmarred? And they dwell in love together in the lands of the dead beneath the mountains, and at times their lovemaking creates earth tremors, so vehement is he.

  A great compact and covenant between the Nymphs and the Dead was made, that any of the Natural Order wishing to find tomorrow and perish, and if they but renounce their names, may descend into the Earth, where it is cold.

  If you meddle with his coffin, the wrath of the Judge of Ages will come forth from underearth like burning rock and brimstone from a volcano, and he will call to his knights with these words: “Arise! Arise and slay! For they dare wake me when before the time appointed for my bride to return in triumph from the stars.” The knights will thaw and waken from their coffins, and don their arms and armor, and cry out, “Let no man wake him, He Who Waits, lest his wrath awake!” And their voices and trumpet will be so great, that the earth will quake and resound with the cry: and these are the last words trespassers hear.

  But these things do not concern the Nymphs, for we live only in today, and the things of yesterday are not our things, but belong to Chimerae and Witches, and the things of tomorrow are not our things, but belong to the Einheriar and Valkyrie, who will battle bravely, and bravely will fall and die, for the Hyades cannot be overcome.

  But I do not naysay them their vain deaths to come, for pleasure is whatever pleases, and if this pleases them, may they rejoice in it!

  O Nature, whose living breath inspires the world, we bless and thank you for your inspiration! And if my tale has pleased you, O my lovers, return to me that pleasure with the kiss of thanksgiving, and the caresses of delight: and let us quaff the wine of oblivion together, that this tale, and all other tales and pleasures, shall be fresh as springtide dew, shining and child-new, on some yonder and tomorrow-thither night!

  6. Questions

  Oenoe was in a kneeling position, her hands on her thighs, her hips over her heels, her back slightly arched and her shoulders slightly back, her head high and erect. Atop her head, creating an illusion of height, was an upright comb of tortoiseshell holding up a veil of lacy fibers and molecular-assembly webs, which hooded her head, fell down her shoulders, and flowed down to her left and right, so that the shining green fabric was spread in a half circle all about her. The garment did nothing to cover her prodigious breasts, but neither the Blue Men nor the dog things, nor the Nymph herself, seemed to find this in anyway distracting or uncouth.

  When she began her tale, and spoke her herself, the flowers growing in her mantilla were purple crocuses with stamen of gold, forsythia as fulvous as gold and fretted as airy filigree, with clovers greener than the emerald and sweetly scented.

  But as she spoke on, and told about the Nymphs who left thei
r age to become soldiers or Shieldmaidens for the Judge of Ages, the petals dropped to the grass around her, and a new generation, like a slow blush, spread from her slender shoulders downward and out toward her hem, like a ripple in a pool but moving too languidly to see: tansy round as the sun, and zinnia splendid as an emperor’s robe, red roses and white roses growing with thorny stems crossed like fencer’s foils, milfoil white as snow, and vivid Indian cress with orange petals freaked with bloodred.

  The flowers fell and grew anew, this time in somber hues. She spoke of the downfall of the Chimerae. Now flourished ice plants with leaves slimmer than white needles, hemlock whose puffs were sickly green, and the folded cloak rustled and brought forth Saint-John’s-wort, and amaranth like purple lace, nightshade, monkshood, and the curling reddish petals of the chiranthodendron that looked like claws of blood. A smell of pine needles came from her.

  Menelaus, while she spoke and while he spoke her words to the Blue Men, as if annoyed or lost in thought, would pick up flower petals or leaves that the mantilla of the Nymph was shedding and idly toss them, drifting, floating, back across the little pond to her. Her hand, as if in a dream, would catch each tossed bloom and either put it to her left side, or to her right.

  When she finished her tale, a coronet of Cape Jessamine that had formed from the veils of her brow she shook free with a laugh, and the flowers dropped white petals down her dusky locks, to rest upon her hands and thighs and knees, and the grasses where she knelt.

  The two Blue Men, sitting cross-legged, neither moved nor fidgeted no more than statues would have. They showed no change in expression during the recitation: Mentor Ull was sleepily reptilian and Preceptor Illiance was eerily serene.

  A silence that crawled minute after minute, slow as worms, passed once Oenoe was done speaking, and she pouted, and rolled her eyes, and tossed her hair, so that flowers and thistledown flew up from her mantilla, and she flung herself on her side, hips like the billow of a never-cresting wave, flowing toward her pointed toes; and she rested her cheek on her shoulder, and stared sullenly at the grass blades, which she plucked up with small and angry gestures of her red fingernails.

  Menelaus put his fingers in the pond and dashed the water into his own face, since the heat of the chamber made him sweat, and he was unwilling to open his heavy metallic robes. He turned his head and said in High Iatric, “I think you offended her. I am not sure, but I think you were supposed to applaud.”

  Illiance said, “I do not know this custom. How do the Naturalists applaud?”

  “Hell if I know. Masturbate and throw semen? Something like that.”

  Illiance gave him a look of surprise. “Do you denounce? It seems you have little regard for the Naturalist Oenoe! She has said nothing to offend, and her life is depicted as one of admirable unfussiness.”

  “Well, I like her more than I like you gentlemen, if that gives you a basis of comparison. I never knew Nymphs to meddle where they oughtn’t, or dig up danger better left buried.”

  Preceptor Illiance turned to Ull and said in Intertextual, “I note an undue similarity. The wording of the admonition not to wake the Judge of Ages was the same in this as in the prior account, even thought Soorm scion Asvid postdates Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah by seven hundred twenty years. Neither era was known for its literacy. I am humbled to admit that the diffusion theory is weakened by this: it is almost as if there were a Judge and he did speak those words.”

  Mentor Ull nodded sourly. “The persistence of that degree of specific cultural memories across the watershed of linguistic and psychological differences bears examination.”

  Mentor Ull raised a blue finger. As before, his right hand was hidden in a cast, wrapped to his midriff beneath his long coat, and one sleeve dangled free. “I detect a paradox in her testament. Ask her if she can happen to adduce clarity.”

  Menelaus said, “What’s your question?”

  Ull asked, “How is it she recalls the several things she herself says the members of the Order of Nature are prone by custom to forget? Example: she says when Valkyrie pass by, Naturalists obscure the memories, but in order to say so, she must remember such events.”

  Menelaus translated the question.

  Oenoe said, “My race is dedicated to perfect happiness, but such perfection is hard to achieve! I have varied from the customary wisdom, and so I am here, and I am very unhappy. If my people were not dead and forgotten, lo, these countless yesterdays of time, I myself could pass into song as an example. Pity my folly!”

  And when she closed her eyes, her face, now as solemn and dignified as that of a Queen of Egypt, showed the trail of two tears, clear as crystal, inching down her fair and blushing cheeks.

  The Blue Man sat silently for a long minute, and then two, while Menelaus drummed his fingers against his knee. Eventually, he squinted at Illiance. “Hey, sleepyhead! You are making her upset again.”

  “How so?” asked Illiance, his tone one of remote wonder.

  “She is waiting for you to ask her what she means.”

  Illiance touched the grass and touched the crown of his bald head, and then spoke to Oenoe in a halting, careful sentence of her language. “It would give me pleasure if your words would kiss my ears with knowledge, my beloved.”

  Oenoe laughed and hid her smile behind a fold of her green veil.

  Menelaus said, “That was not bad, but you were supposed to called her, my lover, not my beloved.”

  “What happens to be the distinction?” asked Illiance.

  “Ugh. I can’t explain it. It has to do with shades of meaning. The Nymphs don’t have a word for virgin, but they have formalities of address for people with whom you have not often had sex, and a different form for people with whom you have often.”

  “What of two people who have not copulated at all?” asked Illiance, blinking.

  “You have to use a circumlocution for that. They don’t have a separate word for it.”

  “Beta Anubis, do you exaggerate for the purposes of entertaining yourself with humor?”

  “Sometimes. Quite often, in fact. But not at the moment. Why?”

  “Surely no race could be as voluptuous and prurient as this!”

  “They did not have television or textfiles, and they didn’t have to do hard labor, and they kept themselves too drugged up to get into fights, so what do you think they did all night? Not to mention morning, noon, and dusk? They knew all the mechanisms of memory and infatuation, so that the next youth or maiden you met would be like your first love all over again, and they could change your glands to make a weary lover go into heat.”

  Oenoe straightened up, her weight on one arm, her hips and legs draped in shapely curves to one side, and she pointed regally at Illiance. “Tell the blue child he must promise to understand me if I speak, and cherish my words and delight in them! It will wound me if he hears me with his ears alone, and not his heart!”

  Menelaus said to Illiance. “Did you follow that?”

  “Yes,” said Illiance. “She imposes a moral obligation on me to have an emotive rather than an intellectual reaction to what she is about to say. But how can I promise to bind my emotional reactions before I know the topic of the data?”

  This created a flurry of chirps and hisses between the two Blue Men. Ull said to Illiance in the language of the Locusts: “Take care! Do not remove from the path of simplicity! To conform your emotions to her prescription is an artifice!”

  Illiance answered: “I must bring upon myself this risk. Otherwise, she might not speak.”

  Ull scowled: “Do you place the balancing network of passion, appetite, reason, and conscience in the hands of a relict from the unknown past? The risk is undue!”

  Illiance said: “The present is also unknown. I accept the risk.”

  The scowl of the elder Blue Man deepened. “I am no longer responsible for your education. I cannot mentor those who despise my advice.”

  Illiance bowed his head. “I am grateful and thankful to have followe
d in your wise footsteps for so long.” Then, taking a deep breath, he said in Iatric to Menelaus. “Tell her I accept her commission, and will allow myself to be moved by her words, whatever they may be.”

  Oenoe sat up straighter during this exchange and whispered in her own language to Menelaus. “Of what do they speak? Why such fluster?”

  Menelaus said, “I don’t know. Maybe the old one is afraid you are going to propose to the young one.”

  “Propose what?”

  “Sexual intercourse.”

  “Why would they think that?” Oenoe’s tone was scandalized.

  “I told them you wanted to fornicate with them.” Menelaus shrugged.

  “Such a lie! If you were a woman, I’d spank you!”

  “Um. Thanks. I think. Actually, I am not sure what to make of that comment.”

  “It means that I wonder at you! Where are your ethics? If one cannot trust the translator to translate truly, whom can one trust? I cannot seduce if my words are misspoken!” Oenoe pouted prettily.

  “Does that mean you don’t want to fornicate with the weird little blue men?”

  “Of course I do!” She waved her well-shaped hand at him, a dismissive gesture. “But they are unsuited. I do not sense the proper neurological-hormonal structures in them. I could not make them fall in love with me. Look at their eyes! There is something dead and evil in them!”

  “Be careful what you say. The younger one can understand us.”

  “I care not!” The eyes of Oenoe suddenly blazed. “He cannot look at me without knowing what he is! I am truly alive, and he is not. I would save him, if I could, but even love cannot reach the unwilling.” And, just as suddenly, her head was hanging, her shoulders hunched, sorrow sculpted into her every curve, and her shining black hair hung down before her face.