Sorrowing Vengeance

by David C. Smith

  “Yes, I do.”

  “My men and I are stopping only to refresh ourselves. We’re transporting a prisoner to Mustala. Would you serve us your coldest beer and whatever meat you have?”

  The proprietor nodded, and to two young women who stared out from the storage room in the back, he said, “Beer. Bring cups for the travelers.”

  From where they sat in a dim corner, two farmers as old as the hotelman scraped dirt from beneath their fingernails with splinters of wood and watched the Emarians.

  Outside, two other Emarians unhooked the four cart horses and led them, along with their lieutenant’s mount, to water troughs that sat alongside the tavern. The remaining two badges stood guard at Cyrodian’s cage.

  The giant, covered with dust that dripped like mud down his sweaty face, sat in the center of his cage, legs crossed, body hunched forward. Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed around him in a cloud, and Cyrodian occasionally picked up fistfuls of straw in futile attempts to swat the insects away. He heard the splash of water in the troughs behind him and grunted to one of his guards, “Get me a swallow of water!”

  The young man took his time considering it, then moved lazily to the water cask roped to the rear of the wagon. He unfastened the metal cup tied to the cask, unplugged the wooden cork on the bottom, and let the water splash freely into the container When the cup was full, the soldier bent over and lapped some of the draining water, as though he were a dog, and rubbed the excess over his hot face. He corked the cask again, turned around, and reached the cup of water through the iron bars of Cyrodian’s cage.

  The giant took it in two hands and, chains dangling and clanking, sipped. He kept his eye on the soldier. He had formed a plan. Cyrodian knew that because Nutatharis had already contacted Elad, these Emarians must deliver him alive and unharmed to an Athadian escort in Mustala. He suspected that he could manage some means of escape; but while waiting for that potential avenue of freedom to present itself, Cyrodian might remedy the boredom of his captivity by murdering one or two of these soldiers. What could the commander do about it? Kill him for it? Hurt him?

  As he finished, the prince stared at the water soldier and perceived that the man was so sleepy and fatigued that a moment of surprise would finish him. Cyrodian could hand him the cup and, when he reached for it, grab his hand, snap the wrist, and yank him forward to the bars, then clutch his throat and break his neck before the other three could do anything about it.

  But as he nodded to the young soldier to take back the cup, voices coming down the dry road caught his attention. He turned quickly to see who was approaching. The Emarians, moving into poses of alertness, straightened and readied themselves.

  What they saw, however, hardly unnerved them. It was a middle-aged man, a farmer, dressed in a worn robe and worn boots with a staff in one hand. He was a big man, and as he advanced slowly down the dirty road, his head bobbed above the twenty or so people around him. They were mostly women, although some farmers, young men, and a few children followed him, as well, and a few stray dogs besides.

  As he approached the Emarians, the tall man stopped and looked carefully at Cyrodian. He stared, then lifted a hand and said in a low voice to those with him, “Please, my friends…wait here, won’t you?”

  The Emarian guards, stepping into the road and shielding their eyes with their hands, faced him as he came forward. When he reached them, the robed man spoke to them in the same low tone he had used with his followers.

  “Please…I won’t interfere with you. But I wonder who your prisoner is. May I ask?”

  One of the young badges replied cautiously, “He’s an Athadian. We’re transporting him through this village.”

  “I think I know him.”

  “I doubt that, sir. Will you please keep back?”

  The tall farmer regarded him with an honest look. “There wouldn’t be any problem in my speaking with him for a moment, would there?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, sir. Now will you—”

  “I say to you again, I know this man.”

  His eyes were compelling, his low voice reassuring. The guard, despite regulations, decided that there could be no harm in allowing this Ithulian to speak to Cyrodian for a moment.

  “Well, since you say you know him.…”

  The robed man stepped forward and approached the cage.

  Cyrodian, watching him grimly, uncrossed his legs and leaned into a crouch. The long chains manacled to his wrists clanked and squeaked. “What the hell do you want?” he growled.

  Tall and dignified, the robed farmer gave an impression of immense self-worth despite his worn attire and unkempt appearance. In the same controlled tone he had used with the guard, he said, “You are a prince in your country, and you have brought desolation and hardship and mighty sorrow upon your family.”

  Cyrodian fought back his surprise. How could word of his humiliation have come so quickly to this end of the world? And to reach this farmer dressed as pathetically as some worthless wandering priest? “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  “I am Asawas. I have been given the sight, and I know who you are, Prince Cyrodian of Athadia.”

  The Emarian soldiers glanced nervously at one another. One gave a look toward the tavern, indicating that it might be a good idea to fetch their commander. But none of his companions moved to do it.

  “You’re a priest,” Cyrodian grumbled. “Where did you find out about me?”

  “I am far more than a priest, my friend. I have sensed you for some time, now, and I foresaw that our paths would cross. You must listen to what I have to say, Prince Cyrodian. You are a warning to the world.”

  “Get away from me or I’ll—” But he quieted himself abruptly as he looked into the priest’s eyes, crooked his shaggy head to one side, and whispered, “Tell me who you really are.”

  “I have told you.”

  “Athadian? What are you? A spy sent by my brother?”

  Asawas smiled sadly. “Prince Cyrodian, you are a cursed man. Know this: that On, the one true god, speaks to me in dreams and visions. He sees the ways of the world, and he sees into every heart that lives in the world. He knows your heart better than you do yourself, for his power is within everything that lives. You were born into a house of love and with a name of consequence, and you were taught well as a boy, taught good things to respect and pursue and believe in. Why have you forsaken these things, Prince Cyrodian?”

  The giant was appalled. How dare this dusty beggar address him in such a fashion? Who in the name of the hells did he think he was? “Now you listen to me,” he growled at Asawas, his huge voice trembling with contained rage. “You turn around and you take your litter of pups back to whatever den you found them in, and you—”

  “You bring pain into the world, Prince Cyrodian. I condemn no man to death, yet On has pronounced your days at an end. You move forward to justice, Prince Cyrodian, and nothing can alter that course now—not anger, not prayer. You marked the route yourself. You have turned your strength against yourself, you have allowed your passions to command your soul. You die in shame, prince of Athadia, because you condemned yourself long ago.”

  “You…dog!” Cyrodian gasped, breathless with hatred. He tried to rise, to move forward to lash out at this man. Yet he did not. More than chains held him back; more than the heat weighed on him. What was it? The eyes? The soft manner? The truth of the words? The—ideas? “Priest! You speak too much!”

  “I am not a priest. I am unschooled. I am a man. It is a man who confronts you now. A man, as you are a man, Prince Cyrodian. Deep within you, where your sun meets your private night, you cannot deny what I say. The pain you suffer is the most awful a man can know: to be alone, and not to know oneself, and thus not to know of the one god. You are alone and you will always be alone, in this life and in the next, and in your lives to come. You have shown how greatly you hate yourself, through your hatred for others.”

  “Farmer!” the giant yelled at him, as though the word
were an epithet. “Damned—”

  Asawas lifted a hand. “I have told you that On speaks to me, and he speaks through me. You, Prince Cyrodian—you will not witness the world’s destruction, although you have helped to make the world die. But I tell you this, so that it may comfort you or torment you: Your mother’s spirit, Cyrodian, still screams out her love for you, despite all that you have done.”

  The giant lost all breath.

  Asawas bowed his head to him, turned, and made his way back across the road to his followers.

  “Farmer!” Cyrodian screamed. He tried to stand, he yanked on his chains, he grabbed the iron bars. “Come back here, damn you! Come back here! You dog, you foul thing! You have no right to say that to me!”

  One of the Emarians whipped out his sword and slapped the cage with it. “Silence, Athadian! Silence yourself!”

  Cyrodian, snapping his teeth, growled at him and stared after Asawas. “Farmer! You can hear me, damn it! Come back here! Damn you!”

  But Asawas, having said what it had been necessary to say, ignored him, and with his small crowd of followers moved away to the cool relief of the shadow of a tall wooden building.

  “Farmer! Farmer!”

  The tavern door was loudly pushed open, and the squadron lieutenant stepped into the bright heat and dust. “What the hell’s going on out here? You! What the hell is he yelling for?”

  “Lieutenant, sir, we tried to—”

  “Never mind! Prince Cyrodian! Silence! Quiet!”

  “Come back here, damn you!”

  But the prophet was nowhere in sight.

  * * * *

  As evening came down, Asawas sat in the welcome coolness with his followers. They had walked to a small hill just outside Orukad, where they could see the sunset and watch the fieldmen return in long dusty clouds of brown. The Emarian escort and its prisoner had long since gone down the southeast road. Now, as hot faces were laved by breezes, as children played in the grass and their parents listened to the prophet, Asawas said to them:

  “I cannot speak to everyone in the world; therefore, you must relate to everyone you meet what I say to you. But live these words, don’t just speak them. Be sure to tell them that it is On that asks you to do these things, to act in the way that is best. It is not right to say that you believe in justice and fairness and then act in an unjust or unfair way. That only prolongs the agonies humanity suffers.”

  A young mother took a whining baby into her arms and lifted it to her right breast to nurse it. She asked Asawas, “Sir, you say the world is going to die. Why must we suffer? We have not led evil lives.”

  “You are only one part of the great soul of humanity,” the prophet told her. “You have done good, others have done evil. You are not being punished for doing evil; neither have the wicked been allowed to profit by their ways, although to us, it may often seem so. To see with On’s eyes is to see all lives at once, all that these lives have been and all that they will become. Shall we judge? Shall we judge the one god only by those portions he chooses to reveal to us? And when I say the world is going to die, I do not mean that it will disappear forever. Death is change; it is a renewal; it is a sleep that comes before the new awakening. When you were born, you were not as you are now; can we not say that what you were then is now dead? You are no longer a baby in form, yet that baby still is within you. So it is with the world and its death; what it was has changed, and what it is now will change.”

  “Why is it dying, Chosen One?”

  “Because we are the earth, and we are On, and On is the earth and all things. It is necessary for things to return to what they were, so that they may continue. Sometimes, what we think is evil is good disguised, but sometimes good is only evil disguised.”

  “How can we then tell the difference, Asawas?”

  “See what the result is. Does it achieve a balance? Does it create harmony? Does it help life, or does it harm life? If a thing is harmful to life, then it is not a good thing. Many times you will hear some people say that what they are doing will be harmful for a little while, but ultimately it will create good. They are deceptive people.”

  Someone asked, by way of example, “But…must we not sometimes hurt the body to help it mend itself?”

  “That is so. And we must punish the child so that it learns right from wrong. And we must kill an animal so that we may eat the meat of it and stay alive. But these things are part of the balance. Ask yourself next time someone wants to hurt you because he says it will help produce good: ‘Will it produce good only for him, or for me and everyone else?’ If it will help only him, then it will not create a balance. When we learn to see the wisdom of harmony, then we are apt to lead harmonious lives.”

  “Our leaders make us suffer;” someone said, “and they say that in time it will do us much good. They prosper, we suffer; yet they say that the time will come when we too will prosper because they prosper now.”

  “This is an old lie,” Asawas replied, “told by those who command others but have never learned to master their own hearts. The good person cannot prosper if his neighbor does not prosper. Can any one of us profit by doing harm to another, or by taking advantage of another, and still believe that he has done good or has achieved success? Remember that some of us are often jealous and arrogant: these ones love to hurt others so that they may feel powerful and superior. But they are wounded with deep wounds, and hurting others will never heal those wounds. This desire to hurt others is reckless, and it happens because we allow these people to isolate themselves. Is there not enough grain to feed everyone? Then why do some starve? Is there not enough money for everyone to use in barter? Then why are there rich people and poor people? It is because we have allowed some to isolate themselves, and when they are isolated, they come to believe that they are superior to those with whom they do not live.

  “Show me where any aspect of nature lives in isolation. You could not show me, my friends, because the harmony and perfection of nature is in the graceful wholeness of all its parts. Therefore I say this to you: To believe that each of us is alone and isolated is an impermanent illusion created so that we may learn our greater purpose. My flesh is not your flesh, yet my spirit belongs to On, as does yours. All men and women prosper when they live in harmony; all aspects of society must be balanced. Who possesses all skills? No one does. Who can sing all melodies, or do all of the work that needs completed? No one person. Yet if we take a number of us, then we can work together or share a melody.

  “If you listen only to your own heart, then you will see only one color, you will face only one direction, and you may commit evil, you may not lead a good life. But if you listen to the hearts of others as well as to your own heart, you will lead a good life, and you will not commit evil, because what you do will be shared by others, what you earn will be shared by others, and what you believe will be respected by others. Only when we understand how much alike we are, and what we share in common, can we appreciate the differences in color and direction in each of us.”

  As Asawas and his friends sat on the hillside considering these things, a man and woman walked down the road toward them. The woman was supporting the man, who could feel his way only by the use of a long walking stick. The prophet watched them as they approached, and one of the women on the hillside told him, “That man is blind. He has always lived in our village, and he is blind.”

  Asawas stood, stepped down to the road, and waited silently as the man and woman came forward, their long sundown shadows quivering on the ground before them. When they reached him, the woman bowed her head and asked, “Are you the prophet who brings word of the one god to the people, and creates miracles?”

  “I am,” he replied. “I am Asawas.”

  On the hillside behind, the small crowd watched, hushed.

  “Sir, my husband has been blind since birth. He has never blamed the gods for this, but he wishes to see. What curse has been laid upon him? Or is it some sin of his parents that caused him to be bo
rn without sight?”

  Asawas assured the woman, “Your husband has committed no sin, neither have his parents. He was born thus so that I might show to the world that I am what I say I am, and that On is the light and the true god of the people. Man, cast down your staff and step to me.”

  Silently, the blind man handed his stick to his wife and came forward with halting steps. He stared toward Asawas with open, blank eyes.

  The prophet lifted his hands to the man’s face, closed the man’s eyes, and pressed his fingers upon the eyelids. “On wishes you to suffer no more. Believe in the power of the one true god, and see what he has done.”

  He lowered his hands.

  The blind man flickered his eyelids, opened them only a little, and screamed. “It is too bright! It is too bright, it hurts me!”

  Shrieking, his wife jumped to him and hugged him strongly; tears rolled down her face. “He can see, he can see!”

  Cheers and exclamations of joy lifted from the hillside as the people began hurrying down into the road.

  “You will learn to see,” Asawas told the man, “and the world will be bright for you, as it is with sleeping men just waking to the dawn. Believe in On, and you will see all things and know the truth.”

  The man’s wife moved to Asawas and dropped to her knees, took up the hem of his dirty robe, kissed it several times, and touched it to her forehead. “O Chosen One, O Prophet! Tell me what I should do to thank the great god for this favor! I will sell myself to his Church! I will put gold in his coffers! I will travel the earth for him in thanks!”

  Asawas reached down and lifted her to her feet. “Accept what is given,” he told her, wiping the tears from her face. “The one god does not wish such things from you. Do not serve him as you would serve the men who rule the earth, with money or from pride or out of fear. On requires from you no ceremonies and no rituals, and he has no church. Celebrate this gift and celebrate On by treating a stranger as you would your friend, your friend as you would a beloved one, and your beloved husband as though he were born of your own mother. In this way will all of us be as one. This is all that On asks in return for his gift. Celebrate your humanity.”