This, Jehan would change radically. He would appoint no mayors at all!
He and Golana had been deeply impressed by the example they had seen at Ganda Saingam, with its council of elders and citizen committees. Since the council had arisen from the people, its edicts had remarkable moral force. The townsfolk cooperated fully, with a sense of their own personal stake in the city and its future. Save for this, Ganda Saingam might have remained a broken city. Instead, it was pulling itself up by its bootstraps.
Such was the model that would be adopted for all Urhemma. From Naddeghomra down to the tiniest hamlets, they would set up their own autonomous councils.
The idea that ordinary people might thusly govern themselves was revolutionary, but it fit perfectly with the new nation’s guiding creed, the creed of Urhem. It was yet another thing for which the people would be moved to fight, but not for the sake of any ideology alone did Jehan and Golana embrace it. What concerned them equally was success, and if the success of Ganda Saingam could be duplicated throughout Urhemma, that would justify any political expedient.
Such was the framework of the government of Prasid Urhemma, as Jehan and Golana began to rough out the structure. And holding that structure together, as its nails and mortar, was Jehan Henghmani himself:
The Emperor Jehan.
Long had he shied away from a royal title, but it could not be gainsaid any longer. Jehan Henghmani, having taken for himself the name Ur-Rasvadhi, was soon being called by everyone the Emperor of Urhemma. There was no fanfare to it, no coronation ceremony, nothing formal at all, but his rulership was by now such a settled fact that it was simply natural for his underlings to regard him as Emperor. And he accepted it. There was no point to coyness, for the nation needed an emperor now. Likewise did Golana become the Empress, so they would rule jointly, in the tradition of Urhem and Osatsana. And so too, at last, to her unbounded delight, Jehan’s daughter had become the Princess Maiya.
In six years Jehan had made himself from a dungeon prisoner into an emperor. Indeed, he was more than that; he was virtually a god, not merely obeyed by his subjects but loved and worshipped by them too. He had achieved more than he’d dared to dream in that dungeon. His dreams had been of power, but not of veneration and certainly not of love. Yet now he found love the greatest prize of all: Golana, his love.
He was certain that his love for her was greater than any man’s love for someone merely as a woman—it transcended the sexual. He respected her profoundly. On a deeper level she was part of him, of his very flesh and blood and bone. Inarticulate though it was, there was in him a sense that his relationship with Golana was a perfect symbiosis, with each giving to the other what the other needed, with both enriched and completed by the exchange. Individually they were nothing; together they were everything.
Golana as well was flushed with an abiding sense of how far they had come. “We sought power and got it,” she said to him, “but we deserved it. No name is more to be honored than liberator, and we have freed millions, amply earning it.
“Yarushkadharra. It is such a big word for such a simple thing, really. People living their own lives, the way they want to, without being ordered about, without their self-respect being trampled.
“In a way, isn’t it just what Urhem taught? The sanctity of human life. You know, in Kuloun they have sacred goats that are allowed to wander free wherever they please, and it is sacrilege for anyone to interfere with them. Well, here in Urhemma, we are making people the sacred goats.
“That’s what our Ganda Saingam system is all about, Jehan. The people of every town and village will for the first time have their lives in their own hands. They will be their own masters, free to steer their own course. They may choose wisely or they may choose badly; freedom carries with it the responsibility for one’s choices.
“The only certainty is that none of our people will do things exactly the same way. We have planted the seeds so that diversity can bloom throughout Urhemma, with different people thinking different thoughts and choosing different paths. Not drab conformity but diversity—the exhilarating vigor of diversity! Diversity is the child of freedom; and it is the mother of progress, too, for out of all those different people thinking differently and seeking different solutions will bubble up the best thoughts and the best solutions.
“You see, Jehan, we have fought our way to power, but the real struggle is only beginning. We have earned the privilege of ruling; what we must strive for now is the wisdom to rule well.”
Jehan could not help nodding in agreement to Golana’s flights of eloquence; he was almost mesmerized by her lofty concepts. But he himself found it difficult to emulate her in this. The hardness of the world always tugged at him.
Now he pulled his eyes away from Golana’s and went to the window. Spread out below was the bustle of activity —carts clattering through the streets, gutted buildings being torn down, the rubble dragged away, and everywhere the scaffoldings of new construction. But Jehan’s eyes drifted northward.
“I fear that you are right,” he said, “I fear that you are right.”
10
GAFFAR MUSSOPO YAWNED and rubbed his eyes. For long hours he had been at work, by candle light, at his chamber in The Maal.
Gaffar had just turned twenty-five; he was the youngest of Urhemma’s leaders. Yet he no longer thought of himself as young, and felt instead quite aged, as though he’d been through a full lifetime already. His life on the farm with his parents seemed in the remote past; it was a strain even to remember what they’d looked like. His memories of them were static pictures, stiff, frozen bits of time. His father was pictured gazing across the fields; or riding on the gaar; or handing shokh baskets over to the Tvahoud. But it was difficult to recall an animate, living Samud.
Gaffar had come a very long way since those days. There had been hardship and starvation, and the heady excitement of triumph. He had lost his left hand, a permanent badge of heroism on the field of battle, fighting for freedom. Now, finally, he had come to Naddeghomra, and here he hung up his sword and shield. The implement of warfare that he wielded now was the pen.
He had realized his most swashbuckling boyhood dreams, and had grown beyond that. Instead of the clandestine vendetta he’d envisioned as a youth, now he was a high official of a new nation, helping to build it. The freedom once thought impossible had gained a foothold. The sun had managed to pull itself up into the sky; it was struggling to survive there, and Gaffar Mussopo was in the very forefront of that struggle.
He had left the field of battle for a desk, but the headstrong youth who’d once assassinated a Ram-Tvahoud was not restless. He knew the importance of his work; he regarded himself still as a warrior for the freedom of millions, and took fierce pride in this.
Gaffar pushed himself, working to exhaustion. He was responsible for provisioning the far-flung Urhemmedhin army, keeping it armed and clothed and fed. This was a staggering burden in such times of poverty and scarcity. Only by ruthlessly putting the army’s needs above all else was Gaffar able to function at all; a weak or compromising man would have failed. While Gaffar Mussopo was Quartermaster, many were the peasants who starved so that the army could eat.
It grieved him to cause his own people want, hunger, even death, but he never wavered in his single-minded dedication to the priority of the army. When all else failed, he would order food stores seized by force. Nothing would stand in his way. It was clear to him that only a stern and strong Urhemma might survive. The freedom that was purchased at such prodigious cost still stood threatened, and it was worth tremendous sacrifices to preserve.
The war of independence was far from over. While the enemy was temporarily disarmed by Jehan’s victories and distracted by economic woes and Akfakh aggressions, no one at The Maal was making light of the Tnemghadi threat. The Sexrexatra dragon was still very much alive.
So vigilance was the watchword. Diorromeh and T
aroloweh had to be bolstered to fend off an eventual Tnemghadi invasion. Likewise, the ports were guarded against a sea attack. Meanwhile, although the Tnemghadi were holding back from any major assault, this didn’t mean the front was quiet. Incessant skirmishes plagued the northern frontiers of Urhemma, with the enemy constantly probing for weakness.
Also occupying Jehan’s forces was the job of spreading the revolution into every comer of Urhemma. When its capital was first established at Naddeghomra, Prasid Urhemma existed more as a grand conception than as a political reality. Proclaiming a nation is only the first step down a very long road. Jehan had really pressed his stamp only upon Taroloweh, and to a lesser degree, Khrasanna. He had cut a swath through Nitupsar, Diorromeh, Prewtna, and Bhudabur during his marches, but only a small fraction of that territory had been affected. In one province, Ohreem, his armies had never even set foot.
The exciting part was done; now it was time to roll up sleeves for the real work. Most of the towns and cities were being governed on some makeshift basis as independent little states. Some were being run by rebel warlords who had sprung into the power vacuum left by the Tnemghadi fall; some were being fought over between rival gangs; in some places complete anarchy reigned.
Into this maelstrom of confusion and disorder, the Urhemmedhin army fanned out to forge stability. The undertaking was multifaceted: to extirpate the last Tnemghadi vestiges, to unhorse the warlord usurpers, and to put civil government into the hands of locally elected councils modeled upon the Ganda Saingam plan.
It was quite a task. Not only were those toughs who had grabbed power unwilling to relinquish it, but self- government was not an idea readily embraced by the peasants. Autocracy had prevailed for thousands of years, and many people did not grasp what it meant to run their own affairs. It was bewildering for them to choose their officials and make their own decisions—and to be responsible for them. Whatever its drawbacks, tyranny had at least made life simple. Now, in many places, democracy had to be imposed by force upon recalcitrant citizens!
While all this was going on, land reform was also far from a fait accompli. The landlords proved to be a hardy species. Entrenched for centuries, they were not to be uprooted overnight. Many had ostensibly yielded their lands peaceably, but then they sat back and waited, hiding the gold they’d hoarded—and as soon as the peasants ran into trouble, the old landlord was ready to move in again and even to repurchase his land. As long as there were men with enough money to buy up large tracts, the ancient estate system kept recurring.
So the army of Urhemma had to guard the borders and the ports; pacify the provinces; root out the petty warlords; install self-government; and continue battling the landlords. All of this required a huge army spread out across the seven provinces.
To provision such an army, to keep track of all its movements and ensure that supplies arrived when needed, was an enormous undertaking. Gaffar Mussopo was in charge of a considerable bureaucracy doing that job, but his personal burden was nonetheless heavy. That was why he burned his candle into the small hours of the morning, reading dispatches from all over the country, writing replies, inquiries, memoranda, and instructions to his subordinates. It was a bone-wearying job. Gaffar’s writing hand would often cramp, his shoulders ache from bending over his desk, his eyes blur. To add to these strains, the stump of his left hand had never healed properly, and often shot lances of pain through his arm.
But Gaffar bore up. He never lost sight of the fact that his work was of paramount importance—unglamorous yet indispensable—and he felt an exhilaration in performing it.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes. It was very late at night, it was a strain to go on reading under the yellow light of a candle. The chair felt hard against his bottom, as though his tail bones had broken through the skin, and his stump was starting to hurt again. He decided that he would examine just one more dispatch and then go to bed.
Gaffar sometimes wondered whether he would be able to keep this up indefinitely. And the answer, it soon developed, was no.
It was the month of Elgheber in the year 1187. This happened to be the month in which a certain Tnemghadi sailing ship was blown off course by a tempest, as a result of which it happened to beach on the Urhemmedhin coast, near the ruins of Zidneppa. This ship happened to be transporting a pouch full of official correspondence, which consequently happened to fall into Urhemmedhin hands. Ordinarily the local commander receiving such an intelligence windfall might have forwarded it to Minister Ubuvasakh, but on this occasion, the officer in question thought it best to transmit the documents directly to the Emperor Jehan.
Among these documents there happened to be a certain letter from one very high Tnemghadi official to another, alluding obliquely to a certain plot being arranged by the Lahamese ambassador to the Court of Urhemma. The discovery of this letter prompted the surreptitious surveillance of the said ambassador. It developed that the ambassador was meeting at unusual times and places with Nattahnam Ubuvasakh, the Urhemmedhin Minister of Foreign Affairs and War.
The scheme under discussion was apparently a grotesque one in which Jehan would be delivered to the Tnemghadi and Ubuvasakh would seize power in The Maal. Its full details were never actually brought to light.
There was considerable discussion as to whether the Leopard ought to be placed on trial for his treason. However, it was finally agreed that this would ill-serve their regime, which was still new and feeling its way along. Instead, the culprit was presented with the evidence of his crime, and given the opportunity to take his own life. This was an opportunity of which he availed himself with no small degree of outward gallantry. The alternative would have been torture.
Minister Nattahnam Ubuvasakh was accorded the lavish funeral due to one of the great heroes of the Urhemmedhin revolution. His body lay in state for three days on The Maal’s plaza, while a queue of citizens filed solemnly past. The cause of his death was not announced.
On the day following the funeral, it was decreed that Ubuvasakh’s post as Minister of Foreign Affairs and War would be filled by Gaffar Mussopo.
11
SCARCELY HAD HE donned the minister’s robes when Gaffar Mussopo decided that the Urhemmedhin army— whose many thousands of soldiers he had had to work so feverishly to provision—was not, in fact, large enough at all. There had been no mass recruitment since the march on Naddeghomra, and in the interval the attrition of casualties and desertions had taken its toll. Meanwhile, the country was far from pacified.
Accordingly, to replenish the forces now under his command, Gaffar ordered recruiting proclamations drafted up and sent out among the seven provinces. But the response was distinctly lackluster. In truth, the country had been drained by the widespread strife extending over so many years, in which probably millions were killed. Urhemma was simply becoming sick of the continual fighting.
Kirdahi, Yahu, and Ontondra all joined Mussopo in urging that, as volunteers were insufficient, conscription be inaugurated. The proposal received intensive discussion, only to be rejected by Jehan. “Conscription,” he said, “is tantamount to slavery,” and he insisted that they would have to make do with whatever troops they could raise by noncoercive means.
This would probably suffice if the army’s functions were limited to defending the frontier and imposing order on the countryside. But Gaffar Mussopo had more ambitious plans.
The Tnemghadi, he argued earnestly, remained a potent threat to the fledgling Urhemmedhin Nation. The northerners were temporarily distracted by the Akfakh war, but the day would surely come when they would try to recapture their southern empire. Thus, Prasid Urhemma could not hope to bask in the sunshine of freedom and peace as long as there remained a Tnemghadi cloud on the horizon.
Accordingly, in Mussopo’s view, the Tnemghadi Dynasty would have to be annihilated. The southern nation could not coexist with a Tnemghadi Empire of Bergharra.
It was obvious and simple: The wa
y to keep the North from ever again ruling the South was for the South to rule the North. The enemy was weak, pressed harder than ever by Znarf the Akfakh, and its economy was coming apart at the seams. Ksiritsa itself seemed ripe for attack. Gaffar Mussopo proposed that such an invasionary expedition be launched as soon as possible.
Jehan firmly resisted the idea. “There has been enough war,” he said. “What our nation longs for now is peace. We must lick our wounds and repair the devastation which years of conflict have brought upon us. Let there be an end to war and killing. We are so weary of it!”
“But this,” Gaffar persisted, “is our great chance to deal the Tnemghadi a conclusive blow. It is in our power now to conquer all of Bergharra! And we must do it if we are to secure a genuine, lasting peace.”
Jehan shook his head. “ ‘Conquer all of Bergharra!’ Such fire-eating words. Are we to turn around and enslave the Tnemghadi, just as they enslaved us?
“No, Gaffar; we will have no invasion. For too long we have fought against the hateful idea of oppression. I will not see us become the new conquerors, the new oppressors. Let the North alone; there remains more than enough to occupy us yet in the South.”
Mussopo reluctantly agreed to shelve his grandiose scheme for an invasion of the North. But many in The Maal had supported the plan, and were chagrined at Jehan’s newfound pacifism. The issue would arise again and again, every time there was a report of further Tnemghadi deterioration. But Jehan remained adamant: He refused to invade.
Few among his councilors were capable of understanding, but conquest and military glory were the furthest things from Jehan’s mind now. Always in his thoughts were Golana’s words: power had been won, and what was wanted now was wisdom. It was not an invasion that he and his Empress were planning, but something far more daring.
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