Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  They lined up in an orderly queue, shuffling slowly toward the altar, where Jehan and Golana stood handing out the vegetables and pieces of fruit. Most would receive just one piece, but the very poor and dirty-looking would be given several. All of them bowed deeply and murmured thanks.

  And as Jehan, the lord of Taroloweh, stood doling out gifts, already his thoughts were leaping far away.

  Thirteen hundred and twenty-seven lim away: to Naddeghomra.

  BERGHARRA—Nation of Urhemma, gold twenty tayels, circa 1182—83. Obverse: Ancient god-king Urhem, right, inscription “Urhem Nation.” Reverse: large radiate sun, inscription “Jehan Henghmani, Sainted Savior,” Arbadakhar mintmark. Breitenbach 1997, 27 mm.; according to legend, minted from gold taken from an idol of the Emperor Sarbat. Extremely rare, as most of Jehan’s early coinage was copper or silver. Perhaps half a dozen known. Extremely fine and almost the equal of the Farouk specimen. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  Book Four

  Naddeghomra

  1

  THERE WAS A time, perhaps a dozen thousand years ago, when there were no cities. Civilization was embryonic; people were nomads, shifting from camp to camp, living in hide tents or in the open, following the herds of goats and wild sheep and gaars. Man was just on the threshold of mastering these beasts. Nor had he yet mastered the secret of agriculture—he could do no more than search for grain and rice growing wild. He would stop and harvest the crops thus chanced upon; and then he would move on.

  In time, it dawned upon Man that the crops which he could reap, so also could he sow. The discovery of this great miracle—that he could plant in the spring and harvest in the fall—enabled him to escape dependence upon the luck of finding what nature had left. He would shape the very processes of nature and tame them to his own use.

  And once he had done that, no longer need he wander. He could stay in one place the year-round, planting and harvesting; and on this spot there would rise a village, and a civilization.

  The land was vast, and the primitive towns were like tiny islets clinging bravely to the surface of a great sea. Buffeted by waves and storms, the little towns could endure only at favored locations. For example, there is a lazy river called the Amajap snaking westward through the heart of the Bergharran subcontinent; and there is a place where the Amajap twists into a half circle, inside which the banks rise steeply to a plateau, the result of some primordial convulsion of the earth. The land surrounding this uniquely formed plateau was rich and fertile, and it was here that a tribe of prehistoric nomads brought their journeys to an end. In the lowlands, irrigated by the Amajap, they planted their crops; but for protection against raiders, it was upon the bluff that they raised their crude homes.

  In this ideal location they thrived, and so the name they gave it was Fruitful Table:

  Naddegh Omra.

  It grew to be a great walled city, a major center of commerce and culture, and the king who reigned there was lord of all the lands around, the region called Khrasanna. In time, more and more power accrued to these kings of Khrasanna, and at its height, the dominion stretched across seven provinces: Khrasanna itself, and Bhudabur, Nitupsar, Ohreem, Taroloweh, Diorromeh, and Prewtna. Of this sprawling kingdom Naddeghomra was, of course, the capital; and it reached its grandest flower during the reign of Urhem and Osatsana.

  Then, Queen Osatsana died, and in a sense, this was the death knell too of the grandeur of Khrasanna. Not one, but two wise rulers were lost, for Urhem threw down his crown and fled into beggary.

  All of their surviving children were girls. The eldest princess ascended the throne as Queen Xalxe, and she tried to emulate her parents’ good rule. But the court grumbled to be governed by a woman, and eventually forced Xalxe to accept abridgement of her authority. Now the palace was the scene of incessant squabbling, with every minister intriguing for power, and one strong-man following another. Unfortunately, none was strong enough, and the kingdom fell apart. By the end of Queen Xalxe’s unhappy reign, it had broken into a dozen pieces.

  For a few centuries, these remnants survived as independent fiefdoms. Then came the dreadful year 361, and Tnem Khatto Trevendhani.

  Through the streets of Naddeghomra the arrogant Tnem Khatto rode on horseback, parading his warriors before the sullen eyes of the people he had conquered. Already the city had been looted, subjected to brutality and rape, its houses of worship burned-out hulks with the charred bones of their priests buried in the ashes. The stately palace where once Urhem and Osatsana had reigned was stripped of all its finery, of all its art and historic relics. Thus gutted, the beautiful building, together with Urhem’s famous library, was put to the torch. Finally, even its blackened stone shell was pulled down to the ground, into rubble. No trace of Urhem’s palace was permitted to remain. On its site, the invaders built The Maal.

  Maal was the Tnemghadi word for temple. However, when one spoke of The Maal, it was a reference to one temple in particular: the temple at Naddeghomra.

  It was the greatest temple ever built. The only structure in the world larger was the Tnem-rab-Zhikh Palace, but not even Ksiritsa boasted a temple rivaling The Maal. And it was by design that the Tnemghadi chose to build their greatest temple not at Ksiritsa, but at Naddeghomra. Its calculated purpose was to grind humiliation into the conquered Urhemmedhins.

  One hundred fifty thousand of them were harnessed into slavery to build The Maal. Whipped and driven like horses without mercy, they died by the thousand under the massive marble blocks. Their broken bodies were cast aside as offal, and more thousands were shackled to replace them. All of the people of Naddeghomra were pitched to the task. No one was exempt from dragging those marble blocks, not the sick or lame, not old women or young children. According to Khatto Trevendhani, the more Urhemmedhins that suffered and perished to build The Maal, the better. That was just why he was building it.

  And there, they would be forced to worship him. Their backs were broken to erect a shrine to a detested god whose will was a savage caprice. For that god they were compelled to forsake Urhem. Surely the world had turned black.

  The Maal was built of the largest blocks of stone ever quarried by human beings. It was built to last forever, so that the Urhemmedhins would never forget the tyrant Khatto Trevendhani. Indeed, lying like beached whales in the quarries outside Naddeghomra were cut blocks of marble so cyclopean that all efforts to move them had failed. There they remained, mute witnesses to Tnemghadi challenge against nature’s limitations.

  The Maal was actually a complex of buildings, all rising from a broad, square, white plaza. In a row along its west side were four pairs of towers—four soaring tapering white towers. Flush by each of them was a shorter, darker, squatter structure. On the eastern side of the plaza facing this phalanx like an officer with his troop, was the most gigantic building of all, of hellish gray and black stone. Standing as though at the head of the tower pairs, this massive sentinel pointed them in the direction of Ksiritsa, and it housed the grandest of The Maal’s nine golden idols of the Emperor.

  This was Naddeghomra. If there was one focal point for the agony of the Urhemmedhin people, it was Naddeghomra, where once their dreams had flourished, and where they now lay buried beneath the colossal, hateful towers of The Maal.

  This was Naddeghomra, toward which Jehan the Savior would march in the month of Fekhor, late in the year 1182.

  From the seven provinces of Urhemma, they came to join the march on Naddeghomra.

  Some came driving wagons, a few came riding on the bare backs of horses and gaars and donkeys, but most came on foot. They were poor men, most of whom had lost everything, including their carts and their animals— and that was partly why they came. Impoverished, hungry, with nothing left, they had made a decision: that to risk death in a noble cause was better than starvation.

  So they left their homes, left the soil of their ancestors, and on foot they trudged down the dusty dirt r
oads. Most of them left little behind. Some had a few belongings slung in sacks over their shoulders, but many carried nothing save the clothes they wore, and even those in tatters. A few had the great luxury of sandals, but the vast majority were barefoot. The soles of their feet were calloused, cracked, and broken, and they left bloody footprints in the dust, but still they walked to join the march on Naddeghomra.

  This was the great crusade, the great adventure of the age. Led at last by the true Ur-Rasvadhi, they would take Naddeghomra or die trying. For some of them, it hardly mattered which. They were fathers who had lost their children, husbands who had lost their wives to starvation and disease. They were people with nothing left to live for, but now they had something to die for.

  One way or another, they would gain the blessing of yarushkadharra. Either the tyrants would be overthrown, or else the rebels would achieve the truest freedom of all: freedom, at last, from the agonies and struggles of their lives.

  Down the roads they trekked toward Arbadakhar, coming there from every province, every town and village, heeding the Ur-Rasvadhi’s call to arms. So many thousands came, there wasn’t room enough for them within the walls of Arbadakhar, and so tents were pitched to house them outside the city, a sea of tents for the flocking pilgrims.

  Absorbing all these thousands of new recruits, in preparation for the great march south, Jehan effected yet another reorganization of his army. Adding to the roster of veteran Generals Kawaras, Yahu, Ubuvasakh, and Ontondra, Jehan appointed two new ones, and created two new divisions under their command. Rodavlas Ilhad was a weaver from Zidneppa who had been Ontondra’s chief aide; the other new general was Rimidal Vokoban, an old country peasant in his sixties who had nevertheless fought with great distinction and sagacity in the war against the land barons. Meanwhile, Jephos Kirdahi remained as the deputy commander of the whole army.

  Four divisions would prosecute the march southward, and two remained stationed at Arbadakhar, those of Rodavlas Ilhad and Leopard Ubuvasakh. The Leopard was designated to act as Governor of Taroloweh.

  It was decided that Golana would accompany Jehan on the invasion. They both recognized the dangers, but Jehan was reluctant to leave Golana behind without his personal protection. More important, he cherished her affection and counsel, and would not abide a separation from her. And Golana’s personal choice was to go with the army whose fate would determine her own.

  Both of them, however, begged Maiya to stay behind with her son, Jehandai. Her father strove powerfully to impress upon the girl what hardships the journey could entail, and that she would be much better off remaining at Arbadakhar.

  “But your Tnemghadi is going with you,” Maiya countered. “If she can make this journey, so can I.”

  The stubborn girl could not be dissuaded. Her resolve was strengthened by her belief that Golana’s influence was responsible for the southern invasion. Maiya herself had argued for attacking Ksiritsa instead of Naddeghomra, and her defeat on the issue had deepened even further her hatred of Golana.

  She would never permit her father to go off alone with his wife. Maiya would follow them all the way to Naddeghomra, doing her chores of cooking and washing. And she was strengthened, too, in her vigil by her certitude of ultimate victory. For Maiya knew that in all the years of marriage to Mutsukh, Golana had been barren.

  Southward they marched, through the gates of Arbadakhar festooned gaily with flowers. The people waved flags and shouted slogans to cheer them on their way, many of them weeping with joy at the launching of this blessed army. Southward they marched, a gaudy caravan of men and horses and wagons, swaying along the rutted streets and roads to the music of tambourines and flutes and drums, their colored banners flouncing in the wind, their long spears scraping the blue sky. Southward they marched out of Arbadakhar, down through the Taroloweh hinterlands until they reached the River Qurwa.

  Here they encamped, but only long enough to lash logs into rude barges, to ferry their horses and wagons across the river. And when Jehan’s army reassembled on the south bank of the Qurwa, it had entered another province: Nitupsar.

  Already, legend of Jehan Henghmani had spread throughout the South, and Nitupsar was not excluded. The people of Nitupsar had known that the coming of Jehan, the Ur-Rasvadhi, was imminent. Even before he’d crossed the Qurwa, the province was in ferment. Violence was rife in the towns against troops and priests, and peasant uprisings were toppling the land barons. Taroloweh’s story was being repeated in Nitupsar.

  It was evident that what the people needed was not a savior, but merely the spark that his coming provided.

  And so Jehan Henghmani marched through Nitupsar, to cap the revolution already well in progress. Cadres of Tnemghadi troops, isolated in towns with their relief cut off, gave bitter-end resistance. Nowhere in the province did Jehan encounter an army of any consequence. Although the fighting was often bloody, the Urhemmedhins fought with passion, and the long-feared Tnemghadi power was broken like a dry twig.

  And as his army cut its swath through Nitupsar, Jehan found it not diminished by the casualties sustained. In fact the army grew steadily, for wherever it marched, the farmers would drop their plowshares and would run to join it.

  It was not just the Tnemghadi army that was trundled over by the southward march. As in Taroloweh, the Ksavra Land Decree was enforced against the barons, and their stranglehold upon agriculture was smashed. Some of them yielded without bloodshed, others barricaded themselves in their manor houses and fought to the death. But all of them were drowned in the surging peasant tide.

  Through the towns and villages, too, Jehan carried the relentless war of liberation. Here it was the merchants, the officials, and of course the priests who were the targets of enflamed mobs. Temples would be set ablaze, the priests brutally slaughtered.

  Red and black with fire and smoke was the sky above Nitupsar, evoking the tumult eight centuries before when Khatto Trevendhani marched here. Tnem Khatto had been reviled as the enslaver of the people, but Jehan was cheered as liberator. Through the towns he would ostentatiously parade, and the people would come out to hail him. They would throw flowers from the rooftops, while girls and children would strew bouquets in Jehan’s path, and others would bang on tambourines and dance in the streets. Not even his ugliness could dampen their ardor; they had waited eight centuries for this. And so they clapped their hands and danced and sang and screamed and shouted.

  “Vahiy Jehan!” they cried with tears in their eyes, screaming themselves hoarse. “Victory to Jehan!”

  They screamed it endlessly: “Vahiy Jehan! Vahiy Urhemma! Yarushkadharra, O Yarushkadharra!”

  And in three months it was done:

  Nitupsar was free.

  2

  FIRST TAROLOWEH; THEN Nitupsar; and then Khrasanna.

  It was not prudent to display converging eyebrows in these provinces. The Tnemghadi were simply being extirpated, with no nice distinctions being made. Not the littlest shopkeeper, not the humblest scribe, not women nor children were spared. The Urhemmedhins had suffered long enough, and now the time had come for vengeance.

  They were not squeamish in exacting it. Tnemghadi homes were ransacked and burned, their occupants put to death with hideous tortures, their women raped by ruffian gangs, dragged naked through the streets, their breasts cut off. They watched their babies torn apart by dogs and trampled under horses’ hooves. The vengeance was merciless.

  “Jehan,” Golana pleaded one night in their tent. “You must do something to curb all this brutality. It is bestial, inhuman.”

  “Does it bother you because they are your people?”

  “No! Because they are people. Oh, yes, some of them do deserve what they’re getting, but most of the victims are innocent. What is happening to them is barbaric!”

  “But it is necessary,” Jehan answered coldly. “History demands it.”

  “No, Jehan, history does not
demand torture, it does not demand rape, it does not demand the butchering of babies!”

  “Then nor did history demand the enslavement of the Urhemmedhin people, the torture of their patriots, the rape of their women, the starvation of their babies. But it happened, and it can be neither changed nor forgotten. Perhaps we would not be here today if the Tnemghadi had been more humane. Don’t you understand, Golana? Even a little dog will bite if you kick him enough.”

  “A dog is just a senseless animal. But maybe those who torture babies are animals too. Oh, Jehan, I do understand, I know that retribution is inevitable. But this barbaric savagery cannot be condoned. Some innocent people may have to die, but let it not be said that no finger was lifted to save them, let it not be said that more died than necessary. All I ask is that you speak out, and tell your followers that the creed of Urhem abhors barbarity.”

  “That won’t stop them.”

  “Even if it saves the life of just one poor baby, don’t you see that you must do it?”

  Jehan shook his head. “A few might heed what I say. But most will revile me for it. I am not their leader because of the wisdom of my words, but because it is what they want to hear. If I start saying things they don’t want to hear. I may not remain leader very long.