Ten Days Upon The Wheel

[Erudiche]

Ten Days Upon the Wheel

Part One: The Day of Blood and Ash

And so it was beneath the blistering sun that the Pilgrim set out in Tabbah. The Pilgrim carried forth from the peaceful land, carried on the back of a great Tortoise, over great dunes, frozen waves of dust centuries in the making. And emerging from the dust and sand were the towers, the very highest parapets of alabaster and cyclopean jewels of ancient time, and the words and very shadows of words and things which had gone before in the nameless centuries before the White Spear and the time of history. And did the Pilgrim ride from the peaceful slumber of the water's stony sleep in his Oasis to this lost antiquity, and find himself assailed on all sides by the viciousness of the burning Ash, and harried and hastened by the emerging revenants and desert ghouls and brought fear to the Pilgrim's heart, and broke the sacred circle of his mind and meditations.

And in that grim storm of terror and corrosion, amid the ancient spires, did the Pilgrim see the First Sign. A light split the darkness, a light which owed nothing to the cruel light of day, and the revenants did tremble before it. The Hero Tortoise, rejuvenated, went forward with great haste despite itself, and found both embraced by that light, which took them in safety to the greatest of the buried towers, which stood in ancient and faded grandeur, and whose name was known to none yet living. And did the Pilgrim then look upon the countenance of his savior, dressed in rotten rags, with a bear crawling with insects and maggots, dripping with crusted honey and milk. Atop his face was a mask of petrified bark, with blind eyes contorted in fury. And the Pilgrim did take his gnarled hand and offered him meagre blessings.

Pilgrim. O, champion of champions, you have rescued me from certain death, and in this have my eternal thanks. Mother's kindness be forever upon you. My protector, would you see fit to provide me with a name to which I might offer thanks.

Kulamet. He snorted, a sneer beneath his beard. No, he said, for names are no domain of mine. Such traditions take men from his nature, and nature from men. Call me what you like, Kulamet if you must.

Pilgrim. Kulamet, nameless hero, savior of men and beast alike, a thousand titles I shall lay at your feet as royal garlands. What displeasure do you take with such prizes, awarded with love to offer glory to good deeds?

Kulamet. Good deeds are their own reward. The lamb nurtured with mother's milk offers no praises, the dog fed sings no prayers, yet it is a simple good that they be nurtured. It is only those who should tread upon two feet who are afforded the vanity of the word and should require such praise. The treachery of names is that of discrimination. The humble ant recognizes no individual, but offers its life for the good of any and all. Men, in their infinite wisdom, should offer only to their personally beloved, or else their perceived better, or else none at all. Fie, I say, fie and rot upon them! Let curdle such wretchedness, to make food for the worms and maggots who silently cleanse this world.

Pilgrim. Need it be so, brave Kulamet, that the word should bring such division, such cruel and fell curses? What of the time of the True Language, before the scourge of the idiolect?

Kulamet. Worse yet, O Pilgrim, for it is not the simple word which is our gaoler and curse. Nay, it is the mind itself which is the plot upon men. For in the mind exists all anguish and bitter awareness, all deceit and treachery. Look about and tell me what it is that you see, traveler.

And indeed about them, in that ruined tower, was the night and the moon shining above, whose pale glow illumined the sands. Reaching up, trained on the heavens, were towers which appeared as white spears, lost in centuries of ash. And rising among them were the faint remnants of all the glories of the world, which now languished in obscurity and decay and gave no life nor glory, only sadness and quietude. And such words did the Pilgrim furnish to the Kulamet, who nodded satisfied at them.

Kulamet. Sic transit gloria mundi. The glories of the world, inventions in the minds of fools cursed with the power to equivocate, to invent illusions and false deities. Bel-Ishun might've been eternal, and a land without boundary, until cursed it was by such things. War, history, language, nations, all of them but curses on the suffering land and the suffering beasts within it, most of all they who believe themselves men. These are the last shackles of a rotten world, O Pilgrim, and shall be what takes it down to the great deep darkness of sorrow.

And the Kulamet did gesture with great passion and intensity, and between the crumbling shadows of this place upon the tower did vanish, the last echoes of his voice ringing out. And so the Pilgrim sat in contemplation of the words, before speaking at last again.

Pilgrim. It is as you say, then, that the mind is the source of discrimination between persons, and is thus the source of those evils. It is the source of suffering and the knowledge of suffering. Of the perfidious word and of vainglory. In its absence no such thing would exist, and indeed a paradise of Bel-Ishun would thus exist again in the world.

But another voice did speak out, and emerging from the darkness came a figure clad in the gray robes of mourning, with a death mask upon his face, staring with placid serenity.

Twindari. Indeed, perhaps so, yet then, for the absence of the mind, of the word, of names for things and their remnants and glories, nothing at all would exist. And all that might remain would be hunger and depravity and trial, without reward nor attainment.

Pilgrim. Ho! And who is the one that now stands before me?

Twindari. I too go without name, yet not for the hatred of the word. Nay, it is a sacrifice that I have given, for the dead need names if their memories are to be written in the holy book and upon the face and mind of those who follow them in life. I have offered myself up to those without names, and take theirs as mine and mine as theirs. Call me Twindari, for the eve, until I shall bear another title.

Pilgrim. Twindari, you speak of attainment and existence? How is it that the word is a guantry of the existence of the things of this world?

Twindari. Do you believe in the eternity of the soul? Of the persistence of life past even death?

Pilgrim. Indeed so.

Twindari. The present life of man upon earth, Pilgrim, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a bird through the hall where you sit at supper during the Ash storm, with your comforts and friends, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is secure, but the foul storms of burning are raging abroad. The bird, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from ash to ash again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.

Pilgrim. What do you mean to say by this?

Twindari. We know nothing of the soul, and less of that which waits beyond. All that we know is, yes, what we see and feel, but also the word. We may not see them again, these souls, once they have departed us. We may never feel their tender touch again, except in our most deep of dreams or lasting of deaths. But we might know them in memory, we might know them by the word, and by what we have spoken of them, and to the songs we raise in our love of the departed. If the word is the poison which is delivered unto us, it is also the cure, the path to eternal life.

There was a silence for a moment.

Twindari. If you love those who live today, who yet shall die; if you love those who are unborn, who yet shall live; if you love those who are now dead, yet once did live and shall live again, you shall honor their memory. Where the Kulamet directs you to see idiot ruin, I implore you to look around. Around us lies the remnants of innumerable, unnamable dead eons past. Yet they, through this, still endure. Their hands, which fashioned this world, still remain. The messages, teachings, and feelings which these structures endorsed remain, are studied, and continue to inspire, forever. That is life eternal. To kill thought is to kill history, to kill history is to kill the soul. And without that unknowable soul, we are nothing more than meat and bone. Such things rot. Such things perish. But these bonds which I offer you shall never die.

And the Pilgrim did contemplate the words of the Kulamet and Twindari atop these dizzying heights, cloak fluttering in all colors in the night's breeze. And at last did he speak.

Pilgrim. The Path of Blood. The Path of Ash. To regard only life as it is, to reject discrimination and baleful knowledge of things, or to embrace the particular and to carry forth for all time their words and messages. To reject these sorrows or to embrace them, to tend to the living or tend to the dead. I say that both paths are the Path of Love, yet Love is the domain of painful, secret expression, and no two souls might Love the same way. Neither Path might I walk. It is time for you to turn your gaze, dear teacher.

And so the Teacher did turn his gaze, but upwards, to the stars and to the Celestial Disc.

Pilgrim. Among the stars reside paths without number, charted in the stars and the twisting shapes of the cosmos. Such things are studied by many learned men, and traced by sailors and desert wanderers. But which path is true? Should it be those of the Stonefolk, or the Astronomers? The sailor, or the scholar? Those of the Temple, the Academy, or of the lone Waradim? None are, and yet all must be. I say to you that it is the path which guides that is true, and each man is cursed to walk alone in this. Yet he may look among the starry field, to see the manifold journeys cast across its endless expanse, and by their works chart his own.

And a star did cross the sky, whose name was Aldebaran. And Aldebaran did descend to give speech, crested in the glories of rarified and celestial light, wreathed in a crown of fire, and bearing five gifts, greatest among then but a mere phial of Ephia's sacred water. Consumed, it sent great tongues of enlightenment upon the assembled. Aldebaran intoned, in this great peace.

Aldebaran. WALK THY PATH, CHOSEN ONE. ALL CHOSEN. ALL PATH. AND GO WITH LOVE. AND BEAR LOVE. AND DO LOVE. AND IN ALL THINGS, AND IN REGARDING ALL THINGS, BRING FORTH GREAT LEGIONS OF LOVE. LOVE WHICH NURTURES AS A MOTHER, LOVE WHICH CRUSHES LIKE A MACE. ALL THINGS ARE DESCRIBED IN THIS. BLOOD AND ASH ARE AS ONE IN RECKONING. WHEN I COME AGAIN, THERE SHALL BE NO DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN YOU. WHEN THE AGE IS DONE, YOU SHALL BE COMMINGLED AND THERE SHALL BE UNION OF ALL THINGS. IN UNION THERE IS MEMORY. IN MEMORY, EVEN IN ITS MOST HATEFUL, IS LOVE. FONDNESS.

Aldebaran. BOTH PATHS ARE VIRTUE. IN THE LORD'S CHEST STIRS REBELLION. IN THE REBEL'S STIRS AULD TRADITION. IN THE BEAST, DESPITE ITS BLINDNESS, IS LOVE WHICH NOURISHES. IN THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD IS A CALL TO LOVE WHICH MAINTAINS. THE MARTYRS STIR THE LIVING. THE LIVING INTERPRET THE DEAD. REJECT ILLUSIONS OF DIVISION. EMBRACE THE PATH. ALL IS SUBLIMATED. ALL IS ORDER. ALL IS BALANCED. ALL IS ONE. ALL IS ONE. ALL IS ONE.

Aldebaran. WALK IN PEACE. THE MOTHER'S LOVE IS UPON YOU.

[Erudiche]

Part Two: The Day of Sound and Fury

On the second day the Pilgrim left the ruins of antique time, and the brothers and star within, and set out upon the back of the great tortoise to her next destination. Cast out of the False Land for the pursuit of truth and walking in the blindness of the gods, 'neath the malevolent gaze of the Sun, she had but one objective, this seeker: wisdom, and its emanation, virtue. For as she rode through the waste, the words of the poet would fail and falter and died sand-choked in the throat. The mind fails and recoils in horror at the full and endless expanse of desert horror, which is the world. As vast and deep and terrifying as the distant and salty seas, the ignorant would call it error, exception, blight, upon the world, which is perfect.

But the Pilgrim, who went forth with serenity, was not fooled by such impressions. And there was a man astride the road, dressed in garments of finest gold and silver, and untainted silks as though woven by starlight. And the man gave speech to the Pilgrim, who listened.

Man-in-Starlight. The world is dying. The King is dead.

And indeed, both things themselves were true.

Man-in-Starlight. The world requires a redeemer. One anointed to set right what has gone wrong. To correct and purify.

Pilgrim. And the Pilgrim did respond, intoning the question: and what is it that is wrong with the world?

Man-in-Starlight. Turn your gaze to the wretched scene, only down the road. Corpses piled for a mile, impaled on spikes, throats still wet and running with gore. The remnants of a heated contest between the Melek and refugees seeking sanctuary. Such horrid scenes are the law of the desert, this cursed realm, and offend the world's soul.

Pilgrim. I bid you walk with me, so that we might contemplate the dead and offer mercy to the living.

Man-in-Starlight. I shall walk with you, but know that none shall live after such a battle.

They did walk, and they walked among the dead. Bodies festering beneath the brutal heat, stench rising from their full and bloated stomachs. A grim harvest for the beasts, which carried away bodies or pieces of bodies to their dens. The Pilgrim watched this, countenance horrified, and the Man-in-Starlight looked on with stoicism.

Man-in-Starlight. The orc has perverted the Warrior's blessings. The Melek the meaning of Kula's life. The evil man advantages the Mother's mercy. The desert expands at the will of Pra'raj, and its appointed adversary gave himself too early. There is madness and perversion of this world.

Pilgrim. I see the field of battle and its vicissitudes and vagaries and I weep.

Another voice did intone.

Crestfallen. Battle? No, slaughter.

The travelers turned their gaze upon a dead man, a dwarf and son of Kulkund, who lay pierced with many blades, whose words gurgled from his cut through. Yet this crestfallen soldier bore his fate with dignity, and despite his melancholy conducted himself with great grace, as if the wound upon his spirit had eclipsed those mortal gashes across his flesh.

Pilgrim. Slaughter, then. I should like to give you care.

Man-in-Starlight. It is as I have bid: none shall survive. This dwarf is dead and merely awaits the summons of the Martyrs.

Crestfallen. Aye, aye. Such is sooth. The Hearth awaits, shrouded in stars, but it does not await me.

Pilgrim. Why?

Crestfallen. Umbar, the Earthquake, has called me. I have set aside warmth and love, and home and hearth and all kinds of joy. I am given to my blessed hatred and to the blood of criminals. You know him as Urazzir. A solemn oath I made on these fields, or what once were fields: hunt the Melek, who took from me my love. Do not rest until all are dead. So when I die I shall not know rest, but shall go on killing until none remain. Now and for a thousand years, through all the turns of the Wheel, I will kill. I will take what is mine.

The man in his fineries did walk the battlefield, hem of his gown stained in blood. He looked across the wreck of wasted lives, observing it carefully, before speaking.

Man-in-Starlight. You were sworn to the Warrior in life. You were the vanguard of this force, who took up the standard as divine blessing. You fought valiantly, slaying scores of the Melek, offering up opportunities for egress for the faster of the refugees. Yet as the fight turned, and your comrades fell, you faltered.

Crestfallen. I did. It lost us the day, and me this wretched life.

Pilgrim. Why did you falter?

Crestfallen. Because I no longer fought for myself, or glory, or others. I stood knee-deep in guts and when the knowing came I was struck low, as if by lightning. I fought only for the sake of killing. I was lost to the blood. The Murderer had become me. And I could not bear it any longer. The sight of blood revolted me. I ran. The battle became a rout. Many died as a result of my failure. My love of battle, glory, and honor, was taken from me, and I can now scarcely imagine the love of them. To redeem this failure, so I have given myself to Vengeance. My redemption and penance, to spend the remainder of time in the service of what now terrifies me, without ever thinking of my own glory or legacy. I see nothing noble in this, but blood is on my hands and blood is now owed.

Man-in-Starlight. When battle's glory is gone, all that remains is slaughter. Glory exists in service and purpose. Fight for a cause, for the lives of the innocent, or for simple love. Lose purpose, and battle becomes murder, warrior becomes brigand, and glory becomes shame. From darkness and shame are born great horrors and atrocities. May your Vengeance be soothed, and the span of your bloody eternity be merciful.

With those words did the Crestfallen perish at last. The Pilgrim and her companion did enact final rites upon the massed dead, even upon the wicked and vile Melek, that in the turning of the Wheel their souls might be scrubbed clean and given life in nobler station. And they did pray for the dead, that they should not emerge in their next lives as serpent or worm. And in the great expanse of the desert did these souls return to the darkness before time, watched over by the man in starlight silk. Onward went the Pilgrim along the back of the noble Tortoise who had brought her safely thus far and would take her safely further.