Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  Golana nodded, and her lessons began.

  The southern tongue was not difficult to learn. As she had suspected, it was closely related to Tnemghadi in its script, vocabulary, and grammar, and Golana tackled it enthusiastically. Her progress was speeded by her impatience to plunge into this whole new realm, too. Mutsukh’s proviso that her knowledge remain a secret enhanced her pleasure in it. Within weeks, Golana had mastered the Urhemmedhin language.

  At first her readings in it were pedestrian: ancient poems and parables, and dusty histories of long-forgotten dynasties. This history, predating the conquest by Khatto Trevendhani, had been ignored in all Tnemghadi texts. It was with curiosity, but little more, that Golana read this old southern history.

  After some weeks of such books, she happened to remember a certain scroll that had intrigued her long before. It had a relatively modern casing, and embossed on the outside was the name of an insignificant Tnemghadi poet of Ozimhedi times. However, on opening that scroll, she found the parchment crisp and brown with age, and written in a script that was unreadable to her. Golana had shrugged and put the scroll away, assuming that it had accidentally been stored inside the wrong casing. But now she thought of it again, and decided to have another look.

  With her new knowledge, it took but a moment to discern the identity of this moth-eaten scroll, and the reason for its concealment in an innocuous Tnemghadi casing.

  This was the Book of Urhem.

  Golana’s heart thrilled when she realized what she was holding in her hands. This was the great forbidden book, the one book the Tnemghadi dynasties had tried for centuries to suppress. This was the most important book ever written, yet no one dared speak its name, and countless people had been burned to death for possession of it.

  It was no accident that this book was hidden in Eshom Mutsukh’s library. Golana’s respect for her husband waxed, to know that despite the danger and proscriptions upon the Book of Urhem, his wide-ranging intellect had led him to procure and preserve a copy.

  With infinite care, Golana spread the precious scroll upon the desk. Plainly it was centuries old. Probably some wretched fugitive in a hidden cellar had copied it onto this fragile parchment. Hungrily, she drank in the words.

  Written in a simple, clear, almost poetic prose, here was the story of King Urhem. From his palace at Naddeghomra, he and his Queen Osatsana had reigned over seven provinces. Detailed were the virtuous deeds and wise teachings of King Urhem, and his love for Osatsana.

  Riveted to the scroll, Golana read of how the Queen fell ill, and all the wise men despaired of saving her. But the girl smiled at this. Her reading of countless fables gave her confidence that soon, some miracle would be described, saving the heroine.

  King Urhem, according to the book, invoked the names of all the gods, and swore that if Osatsana were spared, he would forsake everything he had—including her! But the result was not at all what Golana had so blithely expected. The King was rebuked by the gods, for trying to exchange power and wealth for human life. Osatsana perished, and shattered by grief and guilt, poor Urhem fled the palace to become a beggar.

  Golana was stunned by the tragedy of this story. And for the first time in her life, she became aware of an alternative to the Tnemghadi emperor-worship which she so despised. Whereas the Tnemghadi held human life worthless, the lesson of King Urhem was that life was priceless. Queen Osatsana, for whose life Urhem had sinfully tried to bargain, was a great and good woman, but that was irrelevant. If every life is infinite in value, then all are equal, peasants as precious as queens. And finally, just as Urhem’s love for Osatsana had been the glory of his life, his scroll decreed that if human life is sacred, then love, the nexus of two lives, is their apotheosis.

  Golana devoted days in the library to studying this forbidden scroll, savoring every line and committing many passages to memory. But only obliquely did she ever dare to discuss it with Mutsukh. When years passed, they came to share an unspoken understanding that she must have stumbled upon it one time or another; but never did she confirm the fact, or speak openly of the profound impression the book had made on her.

  By now, she had studied enough books to read with vigilant skepticism. She knew there were discrepancies from book to book on points of history or science. Surely the truth about such subjects as life and gods and love would be an elusive thing, that no one book could ever monopolize. As for the Book of Urhem, despite her reverence for it, she could not be sure the story had happened quite that way.

  Thus, while she had spurned the Tnemghadi faith, she did not become a secret acolyte of Urhem. Much as it venerated human life, the Urhemmedhin creed was an abject failure at protecting life. The Urhemmedhins’ own lives had been treated as worthless, subhuman. They were demeaned, tormented, wantonly destroyed. The worst of all fell on those who actually worshipped Urhem. Their lives were not blessed with love at all, but dogged by the hatred and contempt harbored by the Tnemghadi against them, and by the hatred they bore for the Tnemghadi in return. The southern people were no better pupils of Urhem than were the Tnemghadi, when their mobs would riot and commit unspeakable atrocities.

  And yet, Golana kept the Book of Urhem in her heart. Its ideas had a power and a majesty. She understood why the Tnemghadi had so vehemently striven to stamp out that creed, so inconsistent with their own. And she understood the strength in that uplifting creed that had sustained it through eight centuries of suppression.

  3

  LIKE AN IRRESISTIBLE tide was Jehan Henghmani’s westward march across Taroloweh.

  Eight hundred years before, the conquerors had marched through this land, spreading terror and destruction, pressing the Tnemghadi yoke upon the people’s necks. Now came the liberator, lifting off that yoke.

  From town to town he marched: Sratamzar, Dorlexa, Anayatnas, and systematically on westward, on through Ravdasbur, Deb Rabotch, Yeruthsheri and Lahjama. It was a triumphant march, for the Tnemghadi army didn’t oppose him. At his approach the garrisons would close down, the officers hurrying their troops westward to Arbadakhar, there to make their stand.

  But the towns were left to Jehan, and in all of them the people came out to celebrate the arrival of the hero. Through their main streets he would march his army, and thousands would come, from miles around, to see the spectacle. They would gasp at Jehan’s gigantic frame and his gruesome face. They knew he was an illiterate brigand of raw ambition, but he was nonetheless their liberator.

  And so they danced and flailed the air with their salutes, and clapped their hands and waved their banners, and they screamed out their ecstatic cheers: Vahiy Jehan! Victory to Jehan!

  Yet this triumphant march, this jubilant euphoria, did not mean a cessation of the fire and bloodshed. As Jehan moved through new territory in the central and western portions of the province, the war against the barons followed him, like a fearful plague sweeping across the land. Word of the Ksavra decree had spread into these parts, stimulating no little unrest. Now, the coming of the peasant army was the matchstick that ignited the conflagration. It was war between the sharecroppers and their landlords, and by force of their overwhelming numbers, the peasants everywhere prevailed. The manor houses were sacked, the lands seized, the baronial class exterminated; but the peasants paid for their liberation with lakes of blood.

  It was desperation that made them throw away their lives so readily. They were squeezed white with hunger, and Jehan had exhausted his store of free food. But the rising, and seizure of baronial food hoards, was only a temporary solution. Jehan had to provision his army, too, and there simply was not enough to go around. If anything, the disorder would even further disrupt sources of food.

  But it was not full bellies Jehan was aiming at, it was revolution; and revolution is fed by empty bellies.

  And indeed, despite all of the suffering and death that Jehan brought down upon them, still the people cheered him on. They put all blame on the
eternal villains, the Tnemghadi, and their hatred for the northern race was sent into a vicious pitch by the burning of Zidneppa. The news of it shuddered through the province like a black cloud. Never before had any rebellious town been dealt so harsh a retribution. The city’s destruction was a chilling warning, and frightened as they were by it, the Urhemmedhins were not intimidated. Zidneppa had to be avenged, and the city’s name became a battle cry.

  And so, as he marched across Taroloweh, Jehan’s army swelled with thousands of inspired recruits. The heavy losses incurred to defeat the Tnemghadi at Zidneppa were more than replaced. And the more powerful his army grew, the more quickly he drove it westward, to administer the final blow—at Arbadakhar.

  At Arbadakhar, Assaf Drzhub was waiting for Jehan Henghmani.

  To wait was all the harried Viceroy could do. He paced the floors of the Vraddagoon, feeling himself at the mercy of events, maddeningly impotent. He had begged Ksiritsa for another army, but knew it would never come in time. Two proud armies had already been chewed up by this rebel, a feral opponent who abided by no civilized conventions. Hadn’t they burned his home base, Zidneppa? And what had Jehan done? He turned his back on the flames and marched. Monster! How could you fight a man like that? In time, of course, the rising would be crushed. But that was scant comfort to Assaf Drzhub, with the rebel army breathing down upon Arbadakhar.

  The Viceroy had already abandoned the rest of the province to Jehan. He had made an early decision that to fight it out in the hills and towns would be self-defeating. Instead, Drzhub pulled all his forces back to defend the capital. This way, perhaps he could at least save Arbadakhar—and himself.

  The entire city shared the tension of its Viceroy. Never had so many soldiers been seen in the streets, which itself was a provocative situation. And the Tnemghadi here were not alone in their fright. The Urhemmedhins also understood what the battle might be like. They were praying for Jehan’s victory, but praying too that they’d survive it.

  The rebel army, so much feared, came softly.

  There it was without fanfare one morning, arraying itself into an encampment surrounding Arbadakhar’s walls. There was no panoply, no martial noise, no attack. It had the air of a harmless gypsy band squatting unobtrusively.

  And so they remained for several days, the two sides seemingly ignoring each other. The city’s gates were locked, and no one ventured out. But from the ramparts the Tnemghadi sentries kept an anxious vigil, not knowing when the unnatural calm might explode. The waiting ground upon their nerves.

  Then one night Jehan’s force rose up all at once, gathering itself from all around the city into one dark beast that flung itself snarling at the gates of Arbadakhar.

  The Tnemghadi were surprised but not unready. Reinforced, the gates withstood Jehan’s battering rams. Meanwhile the Urhemmedhins were swarming up the walls on wooden scaling ladders, but this too the Tnemghadi had anticipated. Grappling the ladder-tops on big iron hooks, they shoved them back from the walls, toppling them over, and the Urhemmedhins clinging to the ladders like flies were plunged to their deaths. And the attackers were pelted savagely too with arrows, heavy stones, fireballs, and even flaming, boiling oil. Many trapped on burning ladders were roasted as on spits.

  Great numbers were mangled, burned, and killed, but they persisted almost until dawn. Then, at Jehan’s sudden order, they pulled back as quickly as they’d attacked, leaving the dead and dying alike piled up at the foot of the walls.

  Even the casualties were made instruments of the siege now. Strewn about beneath the walls, some of them were still alive, but there they would stay. When the gates opened and a Tnemghadi corps emerged to attend to these unfortunates, they were driven back inside by a barrage of arrows.

  A few of the wounded did manage to crawl back to Jehan’s camp, but the rest were left to die slowly in the sun. They could not be buried, and their stench rose and permeated half of Arbadakhar, a pungent miasma that nauseated those inside the walls.

  The night attack had caused the Tnemghadi comparatively light casualties. Still, the assault had been unmanningly ferocious, and they were not spoiling for another. The dead and wounded left so horribly outside the gates seemed proof that the Urhemmedhins were inhuman, barbarous. Furthermore, supplies within the walls were dwindling. What would happen when they ran out?

  The Urhemmedhin population of the city asked this question too. No one had slept the night of the attack, listening to the din of screams and crashes, watching the display of deadly fire. Jehan Henghmani was their champion, and yet, such a holocaust was hammering at their gates that they found themselves praying those gates would hold.

  They were caught between the two opposing forces, and their deliverance could come only if the city were peaceably surrendered to Jehan. Some of the leading Urhemmedhin citizens had begged the Viceroy to do just that, and save the city from destruction. Now, after the attack, with the stench of death polluting their nostrils, even many Tnemghadi were beseeching the Viceroy to relent. They argued that Jehan might, after all, be merciful. But Assaf Drzhub would hear none of this; he knew what his own fate would be, in the event of surrender.

  Nevertheless, despite the Viceroy’s resolve, the situation inside the city was crumbling rapidly. Bitter enmity between citizens and troops was a corrosive in the air; it crackled with violence. They fought over food. Hoarding became rampant; storekeepers were beaten and robbed when they withheld their wares. With nerves grated raw, order was disintegrating. Riots erupted on streetcorners, and suddenly the city was alive with pitched battles between maddened soldiers and bloodthirsty peasant mobs.

  The Tnemghadi troops were abandoning their patrols, and barricading themselves in their garrisons. Mutinous sentiment swelled. At night, one of the principal barracks was put to the torch by unknown incendiaries. Also anonymous were the assassins of Falor Jemiry and Yasiruwam Iohanidis, two of the top-ranking Tnemghadi officers. Apparently, some younger officers seized the Vraddagoon and arrested Viceroy Drzhub, but all was shrouded in tumult.

  Sensing this upheaval among the Tnemghadi, the mobs ran wild. In frenzy they attacked the garrisons and temple. The whole city was convulsed by rioting and looting. Fire and blood were everywhere. It was a night of terror in Arbadakhar.

  As the night waned, Jehan Henghmani watched the plumes of thick gray smoke snake into the dark sky above the city and guessed at the collapse within. He would wait while the mobs spent their fury upon the Tnemghadi, rather than waste his own army doing the same job.

  Let them die in droves to liberate their city, he told himself. Thus will they treasure its liberation all the more.

  At last, as morning broke, the huge gates swung open; and Arbadakhar was delivered to Jehan Henghmani, the deliverer.

  4

  THE WOMAN SQUINTED and sniffed distastefully at the foul air.

  She covered her face with her hands; the air stank so, she felt smothered. For days, there had been the rising putrid stench of the bodies left to rot outside the city’s walls. Now there was the acrid tang of smoke and fire close at hand, stinging her eyes. The early morning sky was blackened with smoke. And there was, too, the filthy smell of the mob, a pungent animal stink.

  The mob was, at this very moment, raging through her house.

  She knelt down, coughing, in the ruin of her garden. They had been here only seconds ago. They had tom up the garden, and with it the beautiful peacocks that she had adored so many years. Shrieking, the poor birds had been dismembered alive, their blood and feathers scattered all over.

  The woman lifted one long, delicate feather off the ground. She held it to her face, and turned it slowly, watching its iridescent colors change, from indigo to cool blue- green, and then to gold.

  She was alone; all her servants had fled. For a quarter of a century they had served her faithfully, no less devoted to Golana than to her late husband, Eshom Mutsukh. There had seemed a famil
y relationship among them, between the Tnemghadi aristocrats and their Urhemmedhin servants. But when the city fell into the throes of chaos, they scattered, leaving her alone in the house, probably to share the fate of her peacocks. Golana sadly shook her head. At least her servants hadn’t joined the mob in ransacking the house.

  All night she had been up, stalking through the house. When she found herself abandoned and alone, she did not know whether she would stand defiantly against the storm, or lie down and die. Her whole world was being extinguished. Some moments she was wracked with gales of grotesque laughter; some moments she wept piteously. And she remained within the empty house, strangely calm as morning broke. She was no longer laughing or weeping, but instead was gripped by a lassitude of dumbweight sadness.

  She could hear the wild cries of the mob, but stood quietly still. Only at the last possible moment, as they struck the house, did she rouse herself to hide under a stairway. They smashed down the doors, and in their frenzy swept out into the open courtyard, where they ravaged the garden, uprooting all the plants and shrubs and tearing the live peacocks limb from limb. Golana pressed her hands over her ears to shut out the birds’ terrified shrieks, but forced herself to stay hidden until the mob had passed from the courtyard to sack the house itself.

  Now, heavy with a syrupy inertia, she knelt in the wrecked garden, slowly twirling the feather. She sat quite still, listening to the screaming mob smash everything inside her house. Already flames were spurting. She listened with an eerie detachment, feeling no impetus even to save her own life. Completely, unrooted by the holocaust, she would sit here in the garden, awaiting its conclusion.

  But then with a sudden gasp she leaped up. Dropping the feather, Golana burst into the house, dashing upstairs two steps at a time.

  The scene at the library struck her like a blow on the face. Half a dozen rioters were tearing the shelves off the walls, ripping apart the books and scrolls, stomping on them. The floor was littered with heaps of shredded parchment.