Moontusk
A tale of Sexual and Spiritual discovery
Book One:
Rendezvous in a Ruined City
Bruce P. Grether
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright ©2011 Bruce P. Grether
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction.
The trade paperback edition published by
Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.
lethepressbooks.com / lethepress@aol.com
Cover art and illustrations by Bruce P. Grether
A dedication: “This one is for Pookie and Nookie, for whom I am more grateful than words can say.”
ISBN 1-59021-361-0 / 978-1-59021-361-2
__________________________________________________
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grether, Bruce P., 1953-
Rendezvous in a ruined city / Bruce P. Grether.
p. cm. -- (The Moontusk chronicles ; bk. 1)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59021-361-2
ISBN-10: 1-59021-361-0
1. Self-realization--Fiction. 2. Young gay men--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.R4987R46 2011
813’.6--dc22
2011004191
The Moontusk Chronicles
Book One: Rendezvous in a Ruined City
Book Two: Orchid of Awakening
Book Three: The Return of Othis
Book Four: Ivory and Gold
Book Five: The White Mammoth
For more information about
The Moontusk Chronicles
www.moontusk.com
Table of Contents
Chapter Two: The Road to Filen Heights
Chapter Four: The Farmer’s Husband
Chapter Eight: Hand River Goblins
Chapter Ten: Must Be the Underworld
Chapter Twelve: Meeting in Nangsong
Chapter Thirteen: New Departures
Chapter Fourteen: Appala’s Way
Chapter Sixteen: Rendezvous in a Ruined City
Chapter Seventeen: A Third Leg
Chapter Eighteen: Death in the High Hotal
Table of Illustrations
With a low grunt he drew the bow taut
Dusk seemed to filter up from the ground like indigo water filling a pool
He sat stiffly with closed eyes, hands clasped behind his back
…it was made of the one imperishable thing…
The Kemnoan Empire
One historical person gave rise to three legendary figures of ancient times: the infamous Prince Dare; the alleged Second Coming of Othis; and the holy man Vattsa Osshadim, Prophet of the Male Mysteries. All three can be traced to the High King Darrow Bardoon Miznevet III, the last ruler of the notorious Miznevet dynasty. The actual story of his life proves to be far more interesting than the numerous legends and outright fictions that this remarkable and enigmatic man has inspired. Original holographic manuscripts recently rediscovered in the basement of our university library also reveal many intimate details of his personal life. This changes forever how we regard the extraordinary world-transforming events in which he played a pivotal role. Even more, we will never view the man himself in the same obscure light, but clearly as the flawed, yet remarkable and very real human being that he was.
H. A. Lark,
Librarian Emeritus, Nôrian Archives
Ancient Times in a New Light
Chapter One: King of the Dead
Dare knelt on the lawn, shaking a dead partridge with one hand, while the chameleon cat pranced excitedly in circles before him, swiping at the bird.
The young man stood up suddenly and hurled the limp carcass across the garden. The cat streaked away after it, and then moments later charged back with the partridge in his jaws. Somewhat reluctant to release the catch, he dropped it at the young man’s feet.
Mikal Bastrobe smiled fondly. “You’ve trained Maumet well.”
“Of all the gifts I’ve ever been given,” Dare said quietly, “your gift of the retriever is my favorite.” Once more he heaved the bird as far as he could, and Maumet raced after it. “When I first saw the kitten only a year ago, I forgot everything else!” The dark-haired youth grinned at his aged tutor. Bastrobe twirled a paper sun umbrella resting on his shoulder. “Aside from you, Maestro, he’s the only real friend I have in this world.”
The elder’s tufty white eyebrows climbed his forehead. “As I’ve often told you, a dutiful ruler cannot expect a great deal of personal happiness. You’ll be too busy. Take such simple human pleasures as you can; enjoy them as fully as possible.”
Lush vegetation simmered in sultry quietude. Waves of insect voices bathed that sacrosanct space within the vast compound walls, like warm water lapping within the margins of a lagoon. Behind them sprawled the enormous length of the Great Palace with its long flat roofs.
The anvil eaves repeated endlessly, huge pylon gates towered, colonnaded porticos proliferated, courtyards and gracious terraces spread out like cards from a deck. The labyrinthine structures, though severe in their simplicity and grandiose in scale, captured through sheer immensity a tangible serenity and detached confidence. The palace resembled a small city of ancient classical style embedded within the vastness of the modern imperial capital.
“Maestro, I’m so much looking forward to Nôr, not only for the libraries,” Dare said, “but also as a chance for some real freedom. Yet only if you’ll come with me. I’ve never been farther east than the vineyards of Zorik Fields. Nôr—well, it’s the greatest city in the world! Everyone knows that.”
“Don’t let the nobles of Ulan hear you say so,” Bastrobe spoke only partly in jest. “Of course, you will have far greater teachers than me at the university. That’s one tradition I fully approve of: the Crown Prince finishes his education at the University of Nôr. There has been no exception to that for at least several centuries.”
This time when Dare threw the bird, it landed in the branches of a small myrrh tree. “I wouldn’t want to go without you, or if I couldn’t take Maumet.”
“You certainly can take the cat. However, I would only get in the way. Although, if you insist… the climate is extremely pleasant by that beautiful Gulf of Fors.”
Dare watched the cat go up a tree, nimble as a spider, grab the dead bird and spring down to the ground like a monkey.
“Then it’s settled.”
“Going to the East, you will encounter numerous opportunists seeking your favor by every means possible. Yet Maumet wants nothing from you except what you gladly give him. I can also see that he gives you much in return.”
“How does he do it?” Dare accepted the ragged bird from Maumet who rubbed against his shins, eager to continue to play indefinitely. “I mean, his talent for camouflage… ” Among tall grasses the cat’s sleek coat would assume narrow greenish stripes, then become spotted and gray in dappled shade. In light or dark his fur always took on matching tones and patterns almost instantly. “I wish I could do it, Maestro!”
The dear young man won’t need me much longer, Bastrobe considered sadly. Yet a similar talent for disguising his true nature may prove crucial for my dear pupil…
“It’s a marvel of Nature, indeed. The hairs of his fur are actually hollow and transparent, you see. In fact, they are extremely fine tubes that can be flushed full or drained of pigments from glands under his skin, in response to his surroundings. There’s really nothing supernatural about it.”
The Prince hurled the partridge again in another direction, and then he regarded the old man with deep affection. “Knowing that makes it no less a marvel, or perhaps even more of a marvel! I’m starting to wonder, Maestro: is what you call science is any less miraculous than magic?”
Bastrobe merely shook his head slowly, though the shade of his umbrella could not conceal the gleam of pride in his eyes—an almost paternal pride.
~~~
Hot midsummer arrived to bring the longest days of the year.
Fields of rice and barley shot up tall and emerald green around the capital city. Vast imperial armies marched on conspicuous practice maneuvers to assure that tributes and taxes would arrive from the intimidated provincial kingdoms. That great metropolis, often called the City of Othis, sprawled above the fertile delta of the mighty Nasapan River. At the heart of the Empire, the capital extended rule over the entire known world. Only the obelisk spires of the sixty-four temples of the god Othis rose higher than those ancient ramparts surrounding Ulan.
Inside the Great Palace, the royal nurse Agathar had seen Queen Connivla become entirely dependent upon a drug called iguana root. Supposedly iguana root was not a plant at all, but a mineralized reptile that burrowed underground during a season of drought to become fossilized while dormant. Legend had it that these curious objects dug from the sandy hills of coastal Neeth might revert to living lizards if stored above ground too long before being used as medicine. For this reason, Agathar kept her store of iguana roots safely buried in a box of dry sand in her own room of the royal servants’ quarters.
At any rate, the Queen remained withdrawn. She had gradually declined over the years following the death of her husband, King Donnis. Though she ruled nominally as regent on behalf of her only son—the Crown Prince Darrow—in reality Connivla’s council of royal ministers governed the Empire. She hardly knew young Dare, now grown into a handsome young man of nineteen years.
While the Prince had mostly outgrown his need of the nurse, the Queen’s need for Agathar grew correspondingly more extreme.
Agathar took to mixing large batches of the potent tincture infused from the precious roots. She sealed this foul and bitter infusion in jars and doled out the ever-increasing amounts required by the Queen.
Unknown to the nurse, on a sultry midday when Agathar had left the bedroom, Connivla arose like a ghost within the gem-studded veils that surrounded her bed. She parted the curtains and floated across the floor. She easily broke the golden clasp that locked the cedar medicine cabinet, and removed a full jar of the tincture. Her pale hair in disarray, faded blue eyes wide but blank, she cracked the seal, closed here eyes and inhaled the blessed stink of the drug.
By now accustomed to the rank odor and hideous taste of the concoction she craved, Connivla thrust her fingers inside the jar. Without a shudder, she consumed all of the potent paste. Her face grew smeared like that of a greedy baby.
Connivla swayed in place like a dried flower. The jar shattered on the floor. She wiped her mouth absently, and licked her fingers. Then she crawled blindly back through the glinting veils toward welcome oblivion.
No visions arrived for her, at this late stage of her addiction. The room dimmed around her as the brilliant void grew from within.
Radiance erupted beyond her boundaries.
~~~
With a low grunt he drew the bow taut
Stripped to the waist, Prince Dare knelt in the archery range of the south palace gardens, a leather wrist-guard on his left forearm; he gripped the ironwood bow.
Without thinking, he expertly fitted an eagle-fletched arrow of close-grained ash. Breezes thrilled through acacias as he sighted a copper target fixed to bales of straw. With a low grunt he drew the bow taut. He ignored the tickle of sweat down his ribs, and flexed the bow.
Scarcely a blink before he loosed the shaft, a royal herald cried out from the shade of the buildings: “Her Majesty, Queen Connivla is dead! Long live His Majesty, the High King Darrow Bardoon Miznevet!”
Dare jerked. The gut slapped his arm with a painful buzz despite the leather guard. His bronze-tipped missile soared high to hit the garden wall with a loud crack, then tumbled into shrubs below. A startled peacock emitted a raucous cry and indignantly strutted into the myrrh orchard.
Pages and soldiers watching the Prince at his archery practice suddenly churned into a confused host of awkward witnesses.
The young man bolted to his feet, face reddening. He whirled about and bellowed at the excited herald crossing toward him. “Look what you made me do, you idiot!” Dare shouted, hurled aside the bow and tore off the gauntlet.
The terrified servant fell down, and tried to kiss his feet, while everyone in the vicinity knelt and bowed their heads in honor of the new sovereign.
Dare evaded the groveling herald with a dance step to one side and strode into the palace.
~~~
“I hate funerals,” he insisted to Dr. Bastrobe, who stood at one end of the couch. Dare sprawled, still sweaty and half-naked from the target range. “I can remember my father’s funeral—like a nightmare! His mummy laid out as Othis Himself, all covered with gold leaf. It’s not the dead body that bothers me so much—it’s what they do to it. The whole thing is a morbid charade put on by the priests of Othis to flaunt their wealth and importance.”
The doctor sighed, hands clasped behind his blue scholar’s gown. The pet raven on his shoulder pecked at his ear. “I sympathize with your distaste for the gaudy spectacle. However, I fear that your own preference is beside the point in this case. Technically, despite your age, you are already High King and Lord of Temples. Still, unless you actively assume your duties, the royal ministers will attempt to appoint another regency until you attain the usual age of majority, at twenty-one.”
Silently the old man cautioned himself: I must not press him too hard! Particularly considering what I suspect concerning his sexuality. Such a nature will always prove a burden in this nation; it must remain a terrible secret in his position. Dare was already in a distraught and contradictory state. Plus, he’s basically far too intelligent for his own good!
Wistfully Bastrobe admired that lean, wiry young body, just now attaining the more muscular appearance of manhood. Such a beautiful young man, the elder mused, and so much like his father! The youth lifted his tousled head for a moment to stare with narrowed brown eyes at his teacher.
He abruptly dropped his head back, with a muffled thump on the cushion. He glared up at the gilded rafters inlaid with the gems of his ancestors’ wealth. “Why not let the ministers do that, Maestro? Then I could still go to Nôr for a while as a student. I’m not ready to be a king or an emperor.” He sounded like a petulant child. “I don’t want it. I really don’t!”
“Another regency could prevent the actual authority from ever becoming yours. As someone who knows you personally better than anyone else does, I have no doubt you’ve got the skills and the character required. You’ll do admirably.”
“I don’t think so!” Dare pushed up on his elbows, shoved the dark hair back from his brow and scowled. “How could anyone do it and remain human? You yourself taught me long ago: what’s in my own heart always matters the most.”
“In the long run—certainly. As an individual person that’s always true. Only you’re more than an individual. In the office of the king, it’s not always so. Your present situation is the perfect example of why not.”
A terrible impatience entered Dare’s voice. “There’s so much I’ll never be able to do living in this gilded cage! You’re the one who taught me to read—a terrible habit I’ve never been able to break. It has made me want to see every part of this world for myself. And I desperately want to do all kinds of things!
“You’re the one who told me about the sacred mammoths in your homeland of Loonapoore. And on those islands in the South Seas, there’s that fabulous Dream Orchid thing. You told me about enlightenment, which you called vattsa, or tusk of the moon.
“So many places I may never see.” The young voice cracked—he gave a raspy sigh. “So many things I may never do.”
Bastrobe gently stroked the raven. “I’ve done my best to teach you about the world. In order to prepare you to rule over the Empire—certainly I never intended to distract you from your duties. Perhaps I’ve failed to teach you as much as I should have… about yourself.”
Dare’s voice grew softer and husky in his throat. “What really bothers me is how little grief I’m feeling. Sure, a sort of bewildered sadness that my mother has died. Only it’s spread awfully thin because she took so many years doing it. In some ways, it’s actually a relief. I know she’s better off now in the Presence of Othis.”
“That’s a most sensible attitude.”
“Except I’m mainly just scared. My mother has always stood between me and this terrible responsibility. I don’t think it ever truly occurred to me that she could die. I believed she would always be there. Anyway, how can one person actually govern the Empire? The world out there isn’t real to me… only what you’ve taught me is real. And I’ve hardly ever been outside of Ulan. Most of my life has been spent inside the palace walls. Almost all of my life… ” Dare sat up suddenly, drawing his arms around his knees.
Bastrobe saw genuine dread in the shining almond eyes, a lost expression. The beautiful young man appeared vulnerably human, his flesh radiant. The old man’s heart went out to him. At the same time, Bastrobe admonished himself silently, wishful thinking must not be encouraged. He does not take criticism well, either.
“I have no choice, do I, Maestro?” Dare’s voice cracked even more desperately. “Not unless I should flee from the city in disguise—to live as a commoner.”
“The time has come for honesty, my Lord.” Bastrobe grimaced and sat by his feet on the couch of ebony and gold. The raven flew up from the old man’s shoulder: an eruption of black feathers. “Leaving here, you would be entering the unknown. All that I have taught you of the world is true only until you step beyond these walls.”
Puzzlement tilted the young face upward. “You lied to me?”
“Not at all. Only it’s second or third-hand information, regardless of the accuracy of my teaching. What you’ve learned from me will never perfectly match your experience. When you encounter the world for yourself, it becomes a different truth than mine. It becomes the truth of your own experience, for better or worse.”
Dare pondered briefly, his brow knit at the center. “I’m confused. Maybe I’m also angry. My mother’s left me alone in this world. How can I know what anything means if my soul remains in darkness? By that I mean ignorance! Except for the fitful glimmers of your wisdom, and your wisdom’s profound scope beyond my understanding, darkness is all I see right now.
“You told me that enlightenment, or vattsa as they call it in your homeland, means accepting things exactly as they are. No resistance. You said that the purpose of that is to transcend suffering. To detach from the need to change things. Well, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know how things are, because within these walls my experience remains so limited. Now, suddenly I’m not even sure of what I’ve learned from you!”
Bastrobe circled a hand over the dome of his own head. At a loss, he stood up slowly, flicked imaginary dust from his gown, and then folded his hands on his ample belly. “My Lord, your questioning in itself is admirable. I recognize its sincerity. Yet as you realize the importance of your position, and you see how greatly the Empire needs your energy and intelligence, you’ll accept—”
“You can’t understand,” Dare interrupted with unprecedented rudeness. “Even you!” The liquid brown eyes dismissed Bastrobe with petulant intensity. “I want to be left alone.” He flopped onto his back and folded hands together behind his head.
Bastrobe’s shuffling footsteps progressed to the door, hesitated briefly, and then Dare heard the old man opening the door, stepping through and closing it behind himself. The couch where the young man lay stood in a relatively small antechamber. This was a kind of waiting room where members of the royal family often rested until making their appearance in the large state dining room it adjoined.
Moments after his aged tutor had left him alone, Dare sat up on the couch, sprang to his feet and paced to the inner door of the room. He immediately slid home the bolt. Then he went to the outer door and likewise bolted it before returning to the couch. There he kicked off his slippers and flung himself down on the front of his body.
Heart thundering in his tight chest, blood rushing in his ears, Dare silently dissected his situation in his mind.
He only ended up with disparate fragments.
His felt guilty for not feeling more grief over the death of his mother—or was he actually still in shock? Am I truly evil for not wanting my inherited responsibilities? The guilt merged with other forms of conditioned shame. He felt both ashamed and thrilled by his fascination with his own body and the major changes it had undergone in recent years.
Eyes closed, he seemed to peer into the hopeless complications of a future not chosen. No, forced upon me by my breeding! The thought of breeding grew vaguely arousing, and then produced a specific sensation at the middle of his body.
His mind veered desperately toward a marvelous source of a total distraction and escape that he had discovered recently. Dare had heard that his father, the late King Donnis, acquired a common touch by bathing with the soldiers and guardsmen after his daily martial arts practice and drills. That had increased the king’s popularity, making him seem more human.
So within the last year, Dare had started doing the same thing.
His mind now filled with those forbidden yet exquisite images: the muscular bodies of the naked soldiers moving in and out of clouds of steam; their skin bronzed and ruddy where the sun touched it, paler skin elsewhere on their bodies. Some had hairy chests, others were smoother. Yet all these men bore a patch of pubic hairs at their belly’s base, from which swung mature male genitalia. Those dangling penises and the balls that swung behind them totally fascinated Dare, like nothing else in existence.
To his shame, he secretly admired the men’s nakedness, afraid to stare. He had to settle for numberless glimpses and later imaginings in his solitary bed at night.
The images felt like a sudden fever, a delirious heat that swiftly affected his body; an almost painful thickness at his groin demanded relief. Impatiently he rolled over onto his back, unfastened his trousers and pushed them down past his knees. His gaze came to rest upon his arousal, that part of himself that had grown so surprisingly big and stiff. He still felt wonderment at how he had developed in recent years, this rampant male organ and the soft, curly black hairs surrounding its base.
With a sigh of surrender he began touching himself. The recourse he took then did not last long, nor did it prove deeply satisfying, still the sensations swiftly overcame all else in his mind, a most welcome, if fleeting distraction.
To the stimulating visions of bathing soldiers he added a memory even more intriguing and terrifying. Only a few nights past, well before dawn, he had stirred from vague erotic dreams in his bed to a low groaning sound from nearby. It sounded like someone in agony! With great stealth, he tiptoed to the inside of his bedchamber doorway and obtained a furtive view of the hallway. First he saw only a winged helmet set on the floor by one side of the door. How curious! Then a motion caught his peripheral vision: his personal guards were both at the other side!
One stood; the other knelt before his comrade.
Even more amazing than their modified station, the standing man had lifted his kilt and the other’s bare head moved in a rhythm, face pressing forward upon some urgent endeavor there. Dare’s heart leapt into his throat when he abruptly understood—the lower man had the standing man’s penis in his mouth! A glimpse of that thick, glistening shaft! He heard faint suckling sounds.
He had never imagined such a possibility, only it struck him like a physical blow: How incredibly good that must feel! Not agony—unimaginable bliss! He retreated then, already on the verge of spilling his own seed. Within seconds he had done so.
Now on the couch in the antechamber, a mighty groan escaped him as he lost control. Quivering and spent, Dare pressed his shoulders back onto the couch, panting and blessedly blank of mind. After all too brief a span, his awareness re-gathered. Shame for the secret and self-indulgent pleasure he had taken descended over his bare skin like freezing drizzle.
Damn! he told himself harshly. I’ve made such a mess—can’t leave it looking so obvious. Oh, but this amazing thing I’ve been doing so often does feel indescribably delicious while it lasts! If only I could make it last much, much longer… perhaps forever…
Wistful and light-headed, he pushed himself upright. How can I allow myself to enjoy this? he wondered with a twinge of self-loathing. When my mother has just died… when my life as I’ve always known it is suddenly over!
He scarcely regained his breath when he heard a low, urgent knocking on the antechamber door. That brought a burst of panic. Then he recognized the Maestro’s concerned signal. At least he cares about me, as no one else does, except old Agathar. And Maumet, of course!
Maumet definitely loves me in his own mysterious way.
Despite such reassuring thoughts, as often happened when he had shot forth his seed, he felt a profound depression and listlessness that roiled up from his depths, as if to drag him back down.
“Please leave me alone for now,” he called softly, just loud enough to know that the doctor would hear him. “I’ll be fine, Maestro. I’ll see you at dinner. In my rooms.”
~~~
Dutifully and mechanically, Dare presided at the funeral of his mother, Queen Connivla Lan Tolar Miznevet.
As required by tradition, her royal son enacted the role of Othis, King of the Dead and Lord of Eternity. The priests painted his skin green to represent the promise of Connivla’s resurrection. They dressed him in the ancient regalia of a pointed miter, wide golden pectoral collar and bracelets, loincloth and sandals. He held the Sacred Scepters, the Axe and the Hammer, with forearms crossed at his chest.
Thus arrayed as the God, he led the funeral procession to the Miznevet tombs northwest of Ulan. The priests of Othis sang dirges in the ancient Kemnoan sacred language that no one else had understood for centuries. A huge unblemished bull with gilded horns and flower garlands around its neck hauled the sledge bearing the coffin. Some of the priests poured oblations of milk and blood before the runners of the sledge. Hundreds of invited mourners and thousands of hired mourners followed in the slimy ruts, where they moaned and sobbed and threw dust upon their head.
Dare had to close his eyes when the priests slit the throat of the bull before the entrance of the royal tomb. However he could not avoid its horrible wheezing, plus the sounds of kicking and the rhythmic gush of blood from the neck.
When the official month of mourning ended, at the insistent urging of Dr. Bastrobe, Dare submitted to the formal coronation festivals and feasts. Dare presided in the ritual role of Othis all through the tediously ornate sacred dramas. Eventually he poured oblations of milk and honey and wine and expensive scented oils over the Sacred Phallus of the God in every one of the sixty-four Othis temples in Ulan.
Personally he despised most of all his official engagement to Princess Llena Tovarz of Neeth, an extremely ambitious young noblewoman. He explained to Bastrobe that he simply disliked the young woman for personal reasons. He submitted to the engagement only at the demand of his royal ministers. His tutor had spent some days assuring him that the union need be no more than an official and political maneuver.
Since they were both small children, Dare had doggedly fended off the advances of Princess Llena. All along he suspected that she adored not him, but his office of Crown Prince. Llena’s general resemblance to the kind of blonde beauty his mother Connivla once had been only increased his distaste for the Princess from that far southwestern realm of harsh deserts. The idea of marrying her seemed to him like some kind of symbolic incest or unholy blasphemy.
Yet his abhorrence concealed far deeper fears.
To Dare the Princess now represented the love of women, an experience still unknown to him—which he found more frightening than interesting. At this point in his life, despite his privileged position, he had never engaged in any kind of actual erotic contact with anyone. He dreaded the expectation that he should perform sexually with Llena. Though in his heart he recognized his secret attraction to males, pride prevented him from acting on the desires that he had always heard were both unnatural and simply, morally wrong.
Throughout the kingdom of Kemnu and in Ulan in particular, men who loved other men were considered beneath contempt, the lowest of the low. Unfortunately, Dr. Bastrobe’s teachings on reproduction concerned the animal and plant kingdoms without providing more than the basic biology concerning human reproduction. On the finer points of human sexuality, Bastrobe begged off from answering his questions—the only topic on which he would not provide the curious youth with full and clear answers.
“It’s a cultural difference,” Bastrobe explained with uncharacteristic evasion, “due to my foreign upbringing—a mindset I cannot quite overcome. No library in the Empire has much in the way of useful texts on the subject of human sexuality, except perhaps the archives of the University at Nôr, in the Far East.”
One evening after a particularly tedious state dinner with the governor of Bandiz, that large island province in the Gulf of Green Whales, Dare returned upstairs to his own suite of rooms feeling somewhat drunk. The Eagle Knights with their winged helmets, who guarded his doorway, wore a smug, knowing expression on their faces. But those elite royal guards always maintained a distinct air of superiority to everyone else.
When he entered his bedroom, he jumped into the air in surprise and stumbled backwards.
The Princess pushed herself up on one slender arm, from where she lay naked at the center of his huge bed. She wore nothing but a pair of wide golden bracelets on her wrists. Her blond hair had been braided into hundreds of tiny plaits weighted with small golden balls at the ends, her sky-blue eyes heavily outlined by kohl, her lips and nipples gilded. Dare sidestepped from the doorway toward a filigreed window. As her smoldering, pouty face followed him, he noticed that the tuft of pubes between her legs had been trimmed into the shape of a small heart and powdered with gold dust.
“Othis alive!” he exclaimed angrily. “What are you doing here, Llena?”
“Well,” she purred, drawing out the word suggestively, “it’s only a matter of time until we’re officially married… why not enjoy the personal benefits of that arrangement right now? I’ve waited so patiently, for so many years.”
“It’s nothing more than an official arrangement.”
“Don’t you like what you see?” She lifted her arms high, which jostled her ample breasts into full view; the ludicrously gilded nipples danced. “Oh, I’m all yours darling! I’ve wanted you for so many, many years! You’ve really grown so—”
“You’ll have to wait a bit longer,” he growled, head down, as he retreated backwards.
“Wait,” Llena cried out. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m allergic to gold paint.”
Dare whirled about, strode into the vestibule and thrust his head through the outer doorway. He scowled at the sniggering Eagle Knights there. “If you value your lives, gentlemen, remove that young lady from my rooms immediately.”
But the expressions on the faces of the guards scarcely had time to lapse from mirth to dismay before Llena stalked past Dare into the hallway.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” she called over a bare shoulder, pulling tight the bedspread draped about her torso. “But any normal man would jump at the chance!” She raced away, the golden weights of her braids clicking behind her like a horde of angry scarab beetles.
“Your Highness—” one of the men began.
“Good night, gentlemen,” Dare said curtly and retreated.
~~~
When the royal nurse Agathar died not long after the Queen’s death, Dare shared his piercing grief only with Dr. Bastrobe. This loss proved emotionally devastating because Agathar was much more like a mother to him than Connivla had ever been. He felt as if an actual hole, an empty space had opened inside his chest.
His dear old nurse had bathed him every day of his life from birth, until a day sometime in his twelfth year. Until then, every day in the late afternoon she would capture him and submerge him in a tub of hot water. She let him soak, then made him stand up in the water and instructed him to lift his skinny arms away from his sides. She soaped and scrubbed all over his growing boy’s body from head to toes.
Then he discovered the first signs of puberty on his body. Since the time he detected those first downy hairs growing around the base of his penis, never again had another person touched him below the waist. From that day onward Dare bathed himself.
Now that Agathar was also gone, he depended more than ever on Dr. Bastrobe, the only person who had ever been like a real father to him.
~~~
Of a late summer night, young King Dare and the doctor talked until almost midnight in the lush gardens beneath stars like thousands of fireflies stuck to the heavenly vault. The two sat upon the lawn wrapped in light shawls. A yellow crescent moon topped the eastern walls, its shadow cutting across the tilted blue rings surrounding the lunar orb’s equator.
“My father had a year of mourning,” Dare said. “So why only a month for my mother?”
“According to Miznevet tradition, kings have greater importance than queens. This was not so before Bash-Heem the Conqueror swept down from the north with his ferocious horsemen and took this city. Before the founding of the Miznevet dynasty, Othis did not rule supreme by Himself; He ruled with His wife Imurna Nala beside Him. Much earlier, people actually venerated the Goddess of Goddesses as the primary deity. Then the God served only as Her consort. However this matter still cannot be discussed openly in Ulan. Such theology remains an extremely sensitive issue here.”
“I can’t honestly say I loved my mother so much… only it does seem wrong to me that her period of mourning ended so soon.”
“Even in your position, my Lord, you cannot challenge such a tradition without angering the priesthood of Othis. And that’s the last thing you would want.”
“I understand.” Dare gave a windy sigh of resignation, looked up and smiled wistfully at the eastern sky. “This is a most pleasant respite from the rigmarole I go through every day. It reminds me of all those nights we spent on the roof studying this same moon and the stars and planets with the telescope you gave me. You showed me that the moonrings are apparently made of ice particles floating in the space around the lunar orb. They inhabit a ring plane around its equator. That the moon shows a soft edge, and seems to have an atmosphere like the earth we live on… ”
Even so late, crickets and frogs still sang loudly all around them.
The doctor touched his shoulder. “You have absorbed knowledge like the proverbial sponge from the South Seas. I doubt that any of your predecessors ever came to power with such an education.”
“I only wish I could still go to the University of Nôr.”
“That insatiable curiosity of yours must now be tempered with some caution. In your circumstances it could become a liability instead of an asset. Your priorities must be modified. You need to keep your focus on the court and imperial politics.”
“Yet I still have so much to learn… about far more important things.”
Bastrobe emitted a long sigh. “I feel my usefulness to you has passed. You are better prepared for what lies ahead of you, than you think you are. I am only an old piece of furniture you are fond of, that may not bear your weight much longer. On your strength and resolve, the world’s future stability depends. So it is not wise to lean too much upon me. I’m an old man.” Like a piece of the night that detached itself from the sky the raven flew down to the doctor’s shoulder and settled its wings on its back.
“Maestro, that’s a terrible things to say!”
Bastrobe ignored his protest. “You can do anything you set your mind to. A human decency survives in your heart, my boy, despite your peculiar upbringing. You may be able to improve the lot of many people in the Empire.” Emotion weakened Bastrobe’s voice and underscored his words. “You are entirely capable of many great things.”
Dare scowled. “Actually, I’d just like a real friend of my own age. A male friend. Someone who knows me and appreciates me for who I am. Not because of my position. Is that too much to ask of life?”
“Your position makes it difficult.”
“I want you to stay with me for the present, Maestro. In fact, I’ll need you more than ever if I am to—”
Whee-loo! Whee-loo! a nightingale called from the acacias.
Bastrobe made a slight shrug. “I will never leave unless you bid me to go. I am too old to take any further teaching positions. I even lack the stamina to return to my homeland of Loonapoore. That’s a long hard journey.”
The raven made a low—Churr!—sound as if in agreement.
“I appreciate your loyalty.” Dare stretched out his lean-muscled arms and yawned. “Though you are not really so decrepit yet. Let’s go back to my rooms for one more cup of wine before we retire.”
“I’ve really had enough, dear boy.”
“It will help you sleep.”
“At my age I don’t require much sleep. But very well.”
The old man allowed the young King to help him rise. Arm-in-arm they crossed the moonlit gardens toward the rectangular bulk of the palace. While they passed a small shrine of Othis of the Springtime, Dare halted their progress. He stared at the tiny figurine with its erect phallus, and then he glanced aside self-consciously.
“Look, the leaves are already turning,” he said, and brushed fingers through the foliage of a small potted oblane tree.
Bastrobe nodded, and peered closely at the sacred plant. “Indeed,” he said. Of its trefoil leaves, the lowest ones had begun to yellow. “It could mean an early autumn.”
Dare chuckled. “Then again, it could mean nothing. Or the plant could be sickly.”
They entered the Great Palace, then climbed the loggia stairs and passed down a hallway to the King’s private suite, and entered between the rigid guards with winged helms stationed at the sides of the doorway.
In the bedroom, beside the huge canopied bed with its sheer mist of mosquito net, on a wicker stand stood a golden pitcher of wine. Without thinking, Dare poured two golden cups of the famous Zorik blue.
He extended a cup.
The doctor shook his head and wagged a finger. “No, no, no. That wine has not been tasted in your presence. Let me ring for the taster. Who knows! Since you were last here, anyone could have tampered with it.”
Dare frowned and glanced back toward the two Eagle Knights, his personal bodyguards, posted by the outer entrance. He whispered impatiently: “They would not have allowed anyone to come in here without telling me. Especially not since the Princess intruded that time. They’ve been extremely vigilant since then. If we summon the taster, we would have to await the results.”
“My boy, any king—particularly a Miznevet!—cannot afford to trust anyone! Not your own guards; not even me! You know very well how many of your ancestors were assassinated one way or another. Even your noble father’s death, well, his tragic case is not beyond suspicion, either. It’s a long, long legacy of trust betrayed.” Clearly the doctor himself struggled with the implications of this simple, yet frustrating matter.
Dare grimaced. “Well, I do trust you, Maestro. I truly hate the kind of suspicion I’m always supposed to feel. It makes me feel weak… weary… even a bit sad.”
“Despising such caution may be part of your character, which is fine, so long as you remain careful in your habits. Always pay attention to the matter of your own personal safety. I understand—there are plentiful frustrations in your unique situation.”
His tutor relented; he took both cups from the young King’s hands. A solemn look came into the old man’s faded blue eyes, one of unwilling complicity in a questionable enterprise. “Let me taste it then and we’ll know you’re safe. Only you must allow me to water this further. You know, the ancients considered un-watered wine to be a dangerously potent potion.”
Dare chuckled as the doctor went to the bedside table and made an addition to the cups. “I suppose it is, Maestro—or it can be.”
The old man returned with the cups. He began lifting one golden cup to his lips, then lowered it and raised the other. He sniffed and sipped. “Hmm, quite good.” Bastrobe gulped more.
Dare reached for the other cup, about to remark sarcastically on too much caution, when a spasm seized the doctor’s features. Both cups flew from the old man’s hands and he toppled back on the carpet with an awful crash. “It burns!” he gasped. “Oh Gods! It—burns!”
The raven circled the room cawing in alarm. “Ggaakk! Ggaakk!”
Dare dropped over his teacher and ripped open the collar of the blue gown. Bastrobe writhed in agony, bloody foam pouring from his nostrils. His eyes bulged like boiled eggs.
“Guards!” Dare shouted at the Eagle Knights who had clattered to attention behind him. “Call the Royal Physicians! Hurry!” He bent again to the fallen man, shook his shoulders fiercely, and wiped at the foam on his lips. “No, Maestro!” he pleaded. “Don’t leave me! Not you! Anyone but you! Speak to me! Not you!” His familiar world tilted toward bewildering chaos.
Bastrobe’s eyes stared up wide but blind. His jaw worked like that of a stranded fish. “Don’t… go… don’t.” the old man forced a rasp from deep in his throat.
“Who did this, Maestro?” Dare’s cheeks burned hot and wet with tears. “Can you guess? Who?”
An agonized gurgle: “I… did… not… I… ” The man’s legs kicked and the arms flopped uselessly.
“Aakk! Ggaaakk!” cried the raven.
Dare bent closer. “No. What I mean is—” A dire rumble of corrosion came from within the man’s belly, which silenced Dare. Then he heard a dull rattling sound from deep inside the chest. The eyes turned up under the brows.
Dr. Bastrobe stopped breathing.
Though no window was open, the raven and its cacophony of alarm were gone.
By the time the royal physicians trotted in only a few minutes later, appearing sleepy and disgruntled, Dare merely glanced up at them with utter disdain from where he knelt beside the corpse. “Too late,” he said.
White-hot anger exploded within him, a need to lash out, to destroy something precious and irreplaceable.
Then in an unexpected reversal that felt like sudden vertigo, his anger crystallized into a cool, hard emptiness scoured of all feelings for anyone or anything. This sticky web of obligation and duty has killed everyone I’ve ever known and loved, he considered coldly. Even Maestro! His last words… he was trying to tell me more. But what?! It can’t mean what it sounded like. That’s not possible…
So what should I do? Stay here and meekly submit to marrying Llena, toward whom I feel nothing but revulsion? Wait in my gilded cage until the assassins get me also?! The doctor’s admonition to stay in his position for the sake of the Empire backfired. Dare rejected this as he did any direct order, mostly out of stubborn pride.
Still, his reaction contained a strong element of simple fear for his life.
No, he decided, Llena will not have me after all—nor will the Empire. I have an option and I’ll take it. I will not be King of the Dead.
I’ll be no one’s king—and I will live!
A frosty excitement of resolve came over him, an emotional backwash from the shock of his latest loss. His awareness drew tighter, focused on immediate concerns in the lamp lit room where the tragedy had occurred. Quite a crowd of pale-faced, wide-eyed royal servants had already gathered.
“Place the doctor’s body on my bed,” he ordered the shaken servants in his most peremptory tone. “Wash it and lay it out properly.” He strode to a cabinet and removed a small heavy sack.
While they began the task he could not bear to watch, Dare turned away.
He spoke to no one inside the palace after that.
Grimly he made his way down to the first floor by dark corridors and servants’ stairs he had known all his life, and entered the armory. There he belted himself, affixed a short sword in a plain scabbard, and donned sturdy boots and a thick woolen hunting cloak.
His senses had gained a heightened clarity previously unknown to him. No need to explain or justify anything to anyone, he reminded himself. Just do whatever is necessary. I’ll never know what the world is like unless I experience it myself. How can I seek tusk of the moon—accepting things as they are—unless I know how things are? All I know for certain is that I can’t stay here!
He answered none of the unspoken questions in the wary eyes of the Eagle Knights at their posts along his way. The men dared not speak to him unbidden. He took a circuitous route at that nameless hour well after midnight, and decisively made his way to the stables by the west wall of the palace complex.
A dim figure slumped back against the doorway into the feed barn. “Gempo,” he called softly but sternly to rouse the dozing groom, a simple red-haired youth.
“My Lord!” cried Gempo, startled by the hand on his shoulder. He jerked to his feet. “Is that you, my Lord?”
“Hush, Gempo. Fetch my cat.” Though no one except for Dare could touch the chameleon hunter, he would answer to Gempo’s call; the groom often fed him fish from the royal kitchens. “Fetch Maumet, and you will have served me as well as you can.”
“Y-Yes, my Lord.” The young man regarded him doubtfully, then ambled away whistling and calling softly.
Soon Maumet loped from the shadows trailed by the groom who appeared baffled. The sleek, long-legged cat slowed, glided to his master’s boots and strummed across his shins. Dare bent to stroke the triangular head and tugged the tufted ears. Amber eyes gleamed up at him in feline adoration.
Something occurred to Dare just then. “Gempo, do you have a brother in the royal army?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“His name?”
“Gajayan.”
Something about that red hair against the milk white skin and freckles excited Dare. “I’ve seen him. So you’re from Bandiz. You and your brother.” The groom seemed quite plain in appearance compared with his handsome older brother; they shared only the coloring and the same basic stocky physique. Compared with Gajayan’s chiseled features, Gempo’s face seemed round, his nose large and blunt. Perhaps they share one other outstanding physical feature, Dare considered.
Gempo frowned. “My Lord—?”
“Tell no one you have seen me here tonight. Go back to sleep,” he said; and to Maumet, “Come with me, faithful friend.”
Scratching his chest, the red-haired youth watched the young King and his cat blend into the gloom by the western gate.
Dare drew the cowl of his cloak over his head. At the guardhouse, in mute answer to the Eagle Knight’s gruff challenge, he displayed his signet ring with the Miznevet griffin, like that of any nobleman in the royal family.
Rushing blood thundered in his head: Surely I’ll be stopped here!
“Aye,” the guard grumbled. “Pass.”
Another guard promptly unbolted a smaller door set into the main gate and opened it.
Maumet flashed through ahead of Dare.
Suddenly aware of how frantically his heart hammered in his chest, the young man stepped into the deserted predawn streets of the capital city.
Chapter Two: The Road to Filen Heights
The air of the sleepy city hung still and cool. On the sky growing pale, stars flickered out while the ringed moon dipped from sight behind the skyline ahead of him. Wide boulevards and shuttered buildings stirred from the dreams of night.
Dare felt unable to savor the new freedom of walking alone beyond the palace walls with only Maumet close to his heels. He felt nothing but a roaring and aimless vacancy where his heart should be. What chilled him more than the early hour, despite his warm cloak, was that Death stalked his steps. Everyone I have ever loved has died in sequence, he knew for a fact, and my turn is next, he concluded quite logically.
Almost as bad, the Eagle Knights will be searching for me in order to escort me back home like a truant schoolboy. Though officially King now, Dare remained under the legal age of majority.
The filth and squalor of the streets had not been disguised to protect the eyes of a royal visitor from such harsh realities. Beggars slept like piles of rags in dank, fetid alleyways. Garbage, hardly distinguishable from that human flotsam, collected in neglected corners. Wagons and rickshaws rumbled, hauling produce for morning markets. Drunken soldiers staggered and shouted. One of them fell on his knees and vomited. Waste showered from upper stories into the overflowing gutters.
Everything he saw portrayed a dark, hopeless futility and horrifying sadness, which only grew worse as daylight brightened. The growing dawn revealed nothing but the pathetic details and misguided hopes of the city’s far too-abundant humanity. He frequently stumbled, mesmerized by the mundane horrors, scarcely able to turn his eyes away from such sights.
As Dare approached the western side of Ulan, the squared precinct of an Othis temple loomed near, its obelisk a sharp sword of insistence against the soft underbelly of the daybreak sky. The carved roofline held mythical beasts, dragons and chimeras, sea-serpents and mermaids. He spied some woolly mammoths among them. Bastrobe had told him that mammoths actually existed, unlike some of the other fantastic creatures.
His tutor had often seen the sacred mammoths that lived in the highlands of northern Loonapoore. Our Loonapoori moon goddess Vata, Dare could hear his teacher say in the schoolroom, is said to have the form of a wise old mammoth cow. The ancient Poori word for ‘tusk’ is tsa and enlightenment is believed to be a gleam from Vata’s tusk. So ‘vattsa,’ or enlightenment means literally ‘tusk of the moon.’
It scarcely occurred to him how strange it was that he did not seem to feel great sorrow, only a kind of abstract sadness. I’m still in shock, I suppose! he reflected, staring up at the awe-inspiring mythic, yet blatantly solid forms of the temple. So where am I going?
Why not Loonapoore? he considered in what seemed a calm, unemotional manner. That’s where Maestro came from. And it’s the only place where I can see real live mammoths. I might even learn something more about vattsa! Maybe I can become one of those naked holy men who lives in a frozen cave! The mystical kingdom of high mountains in the remote northwest lay about as far from central Kemnu, as he could imagine any place. Or at least as distant as tropical Bar-Desh in the opposite direction, to the southeast.
Far Loon: almost as far away as the Dreamway Archipelago of the South Seas.
With the focus of a destination to give him confidence, however impulsive the choice had been, he hurried onward. Maumet paced importantly before him with his tail held high. The cat’s uncanny coat lightened with growing daylight. By the time they reached the towering pylons of the city’s western gate, a low rumble of activity filled the city like an immense kettle coming to a boil.
They had not long to wait before a squad of conch trumpets sounded the melodious and somehow primordial tones of a call to awakening. In watchtowers all over Ulan, iron balls dropped into huge bronze cauldrons with resonant bonggg! sounds. The mighty doors of the gate groaned as counterweights deep beneath the streets released to drag them open. This happened with a sense of cheerfully contrived magic, as if the gates opened by some kind of spell. Flat anvil roofs all over the city reverberated with the horrendous grinding sound, as drum-skins would vibrate during an earthquake.
Hooded and cloaked, Dare thought he should not be too easily recognized. Guards casually scanned everyone who passed in and out of the walls—soldiers of the regular Royal Army of Kemnu, not the elite knights. And yet he churned unpleasantly inside. With a staunch effort of will he checked his instinct to sprint through the early traffic, which would surely attract dangerous attention. Instead he forced himself to stroll along with the downcast hunch of a humble commoner.
Beyond the mighty ramparts as thick as they stood high, a zigzag causeway led downward from the city heights, through a series of earthen and stone switchbacks. A vista of riverside country opened before him. Below spread a clutter of shabby villages and slums threaded with winding lanes, polluted canals and rubbish heaps home to the poorest citizens claiming association with the imperial capital.
Dare almost forgot his own uncertainty and fears for a time, as he observed the poverty and destitution while he made his way cautiously through these neighborhoods. A rich and fetid potpourri of sewage and rotting garbage odors assailed him. These were supplanted by the cleaner scents of mud and vegetation as he began to surpass the slums that skirted the base of the ancient walls around Ulan.
He followed the main dirt road, which ran parallel to the Nasapan, grateful to escape at last from that sordid fringe of impoverished humanity that surrounded Ulan. Not far to his left the great river showed as a wide gleaming band within overgrown banks. The risen sun warmed his back as he walked into his streaming shadow.
He found it difficult to trust that no one recognized him, for which he should have been grateful. Part of him felt indignant instead. Yet the recurring dread of discovery reinforced his appreciation for the anonymity.
Fascination over the simplest things he observed absorbed him for hours on end, yet none of it seemed quite real to him as yet. This all seemed some kind of fantastic show or allegorical drama. He also felt a constant need to keep moving.
By early afternoon nothing much traveled the unpaved roadway except for commercial traffic. Dare knew that most transport over any distance in the western part of the Empire went via waterways—along the Nasapan and other river systems. For this reason, the Kemnoan Empire under the Miznevets had never developed a system of permanent paved roadways. The much drier Eastern Empire was served by overland caravan trails, as well as the longer, though faster, sea-routes along the coast of Bar-Desh and through the Gulf of Fors.
For his purposes it seemed just as well that, not far from the capital, the traffic dwindled. With so many interesting distractions, at times he even began to forget his worries. He took increasing pleasure in expanses of cultivation, the endless rice paddies with low earthen dikes, and fields of maturing barley. Clumps of woodland among the fields hosted chattering birds and other wild creatures.
He observed the preoccupied pastimes of the common people and enjoyed their total indifference to him. He saw bare-breasted old women with saggy, wrinkled dugs who cleaned fish while they gossiped; young men who wore nothing but loincloths, squatted and skillfully wove baskets, while they chattered and laughed raucously; hordes of naked boys jumped into a canal, shrieked, swam, and splashed wildly.
Not until the late afternoon glare invaded his eyes, did he realize how hungry and footsore he had grown. Feeling dizzy and weary he sat down on a dusty rock some distance from the road in the shade of a spicy-smelling willow tree.
He hauled off his boots, wriggled his toes and rubbed his feet, groaning softly.
Maumet stood lightly dappled before him. “Niaow?”
“Yes, now,” Dare smiled feebly. “Could you please find me something to eat?”
Maumet walked in a circle, tail switching, then halted and stared at him.
“I’m extremely hungry, faithful friend.” A growl from his belly confirmed it. “I’d eat almost anything right now. Anything but you.”
The cat’s ears swiveled back, the flat head bobbed once.
“That was a joke,” Dare added weakly, “if not a good one.”