The Princess got more worried when I told her I did not know anything about it, but I made a quick decision and urged her to try it with me anyway, putting our faith in the great Vilkonhis whom she had prayed to—surely moved by our trust in him, he would guide us and protect us wherever we went. The Princess, filled with religion, looked up to the Heavens and followed me, leaning on my shoulder. We left through the same door I had come in and entered the mausoleum room.
The Princess started crying bitterly when she saw the tomb. “There, Sir, is the height of inhumanity and the cause of my sorrow. The death of that barbarian Za-ra-ouf can hardly atone for the crime of having cut short such a precious life. Oh, my father,” she let loose a torrent of tears, “however innocent I am of this crime, I am still the fatal cause.” She turned to me. “This magnanimous hero is the great Lindiagar, my father, King of the Amphicleocles, whose tender love for me brought him here with the bold plan to take me away from the tyranny of wicked Za-ra-ouf. I can still hardly believe it.”
I took the liberty of interrupting the Princess to tell her that at the moment time was of the essence. After kissing the monument reverently she kept crying, but followed me. We sped up and were about to leave the dreary place when the passage was blocked by a crowd of people holding zenghuis and bustling toward us. I could not help feeling scared and wondering whether Falbao could save us this time from a seemingly inescapable danger. The Princess and I became even more desperate for our safety when Falbao, who had walked ahead of us at the sight of the monsters, stopped short and stood still. With his head raised he looked like he was frozen there by the size of the crowd and the danger, but I thought differently when I saw a man of my species coming toward us, armed. Keeping his eyes on him, Falbao slowly went to meet him and far from looking furious, he showed respect in his own way for this stranger and came galloping back to me as if I should congratulate him for his discovery.
The Princess and I, in our state of utter confusion, frozen in fear, could not fathom the cause or the effect. Falbao stared at me, waiting for me to do something. Soon all these mysteries were cleared up when I recognized the man coming toward us. “Ah, Boldeon!” I cried, leaving the Princess and running up to him. “Is it really you I see here at the head of my enemies?”
“No, Sir,” the kind minister replied. “Violence alone has forced me to take up arms. These monsters are frightened by the death of their King and scared of your faithful dog who they think is a horrible basilisk. They are convinced that he has no power over men of our species and their Council has decided that they will use me to chain the animal up and thus save them from his fury. They said that if I didn’t do as they asked, they would kill me, so I accepted, but, Motacoa, I don’t think that the arms they gave me are supposed to be used against you. How sweet it would be to prove to you right now the respect I have for my rightful ruler by risking a hundred of my lives, if I had them.”
He said this and turned around quickly, brandished his zenghuis and ran toward the monsters who looked like they were waiting for their plans to be carried out. The Princess tried in vain to hold me back. I followed my friend without the slightest fear of danger to stop me. But did I need to worry? Wasn’t Falbao there? The faithful animal got a whiff of my plans and passed me up running toward the monsters and barking so hellishly that the crowd turned tail and rushed away. Falbao wanted to go after them, but afraid of losing him I called him back and he came running. Sure of our escape now, I went back to get the Princess who was frozen in fear and could hardly stand up on her trembling knees. We passed through the room whose bas-reliefs I recognized from before, where several monsters lay trampled by their wild flight. It took us more than four hours to find our way out of the labyrinth. Boldeon, who was following Falbao, was the first to announce that we were out of the palace of darkness. After around two more karies without meeting any obstacles, we ended up in a place that was familiar to me.
I shouted out seeing the expanse of plain that I had visited a hundred times. “Thanks be to Vilkonhis,” and I congratulated the Princess. “Now we’re safe from the monsters that we were so afraid of. Soon, Boldeon, you will be in a familiar country. Yes, Princess, you are finally going to have a rest from your labors. Oh mother,” I cried with joy, “you’re going to be in bliss and you, father, Lodaï …”
“Just Heavens,” Boldeon could barely contain his joy, “are we finally going to be happy?”
“Yes, Boldeon,” I said, “nothing is more certain. I know this place perfectly. See that crystal rock over there with thick smoke coming out of it and purple fire—I often used to sit in wonder at how feeble mental theories are in the face of such wonders like the natural crucible inside that opening where the purest metals constantly boil, which the perpetual fire sometimes makes liquid, sometimes material and often permanent. I find the slanting light that passes through the crust of the earth here beautiful as it filters through the bitumen on the right, winding its way for a long time before dropping down next to the house that Lodaï built. We still have around three karies until we get there if the Princess, whom I fear is exhausted, allows me to carry her. The extra weight will be precious to me and make the thorny road shorter, especially if we will tell each other the strange events that have brought us together.”
The lovely Princess was calmer after I guaranteed that we were safe and seemed flattered by the attention I showed her. She hoped that she could follow us without any trouble, so Boldeon, to start the program I came up with to pass the time, told in his own way about the dangers he faced since the fatal moment when the worm man took him away.
Boldeon’s adventure in Inner Earth
You can imagine my distress when the monster grabbed me. The enormous leaps he made to avoid your faithful Falbao shook me up so badly that I thought I would die at any moment from the pain. But in spite of his agility and cleverness in avoiding his pursuing enemy, he would have been caught sooner or later if the far-sighted orders of the King, who warned his people that the basilisk (that’s what they called Falbao there) had shown up in their land, had he not had them dig trenches all over the place as traps to keep the people safe from the murderous effects that the dog naturally had over this species.
Falbao could not avoid being caught in one of these traps. The monster that had grabbed me stopped and went back to see. He was delighted to see that the spring in the trap had chained the dog by the neck. The poor animal was struggling as hard as he could to free himself from the restraint while the worm man looked on with pleasure, watching the animal watch me sadly. He twanged some words at me in a language that I recognized but that I did not hear. Thinking by my silence that I did not understand, he tried a different language that I did not understand at all and the clever monster ended up speaking so many languages that I finally heard my own and said so. He looked glad and asked if I knew the animal that had chased him and that was now chained up, believing that I was so calm because I was used to seeing his kind and if my country produced them (he added), as was rumored, we should be congratulated for not being in the same situation as his people who became mortally passive at the sight of one of them and died right away if they were unlucky enough to be touched by its drool. I answered the worm man’s questions by lamenting my fate and that of a friend who maybe had the same bad luck as me. The monster scowled hideously at this.
“Tumpingand,” he said, “bad luck depends on prejudices, what you’re born with. They make the little instinct that nature gives you wander off. Vile excrement of humanity, you are too happy with what happens to you by chance. Give thanks for this to the great Ver-fund-ver-ne65 and that your misshapen species, cursed by us, has a Princess that our emperor loves. On behalf of this beautiful Tumpingand66 our sovereign has granted life to the monsters of your country, when chance brings them down here. Otherwise at the time of your enslavement you would be led to the temple of Ver-fund-ver-ne where we would skin you alive and burn you on the altar. Give thanks also, I tell you, for the accident
that brought our ruler into the kingdom of the Amphicleocles. That is why the elders of Kin-zan-da-or,67 for the sake of the Princess Cleannes’ abduction, were exempt from the severe law I just mentioned. Instead it was decided that henceforth every Tumpingand who happened to be found in the kingdom would be mutilated in the body parts that are different from ours and these thighs and legs would be thrown away like the disgusting protrusions of humanity that they are, which is far better for them since these useless, shapeless limbs are the only reason they are rejected by the great Ver-fund-ver-ne.
“As for you, barely sufferable Monster, your capture came at just the right time because of the honor of being mutilated with the Princess whom we haven’t been able to convince to stay here peaceably and who, maybe to get out of it, with her awful stubbornness got the monarch to agree that the operation would only take place when two Tumpingands could serve as an example. She was clever because it’s been more than a century since a human came into our lands and it didn’t seem likely that it would happen any time soon. But Za-ra-ouf, being the King that he is, very easily got the elders of Kin-zan-da-or, the Council that counterbalanced his authority, to admit that they could not, in spite of their great respect for him, override the law that gave the Tumpingands a month to meet the terms of the mystical operation and that everything they could possibly do to beautiful Cleannes was ordained by the Fingaïd,68 the decree they resorted to only in the most urgent matters of state.
“Za-ra-ouf, who loved the Princess but according to the laws of his kingdom could only marry her after the mutilation, was not angry at the stubbornness of the elders of Kin-zan-da-or. The Fingaïd gave him hope because there were so many of his subjects taking part in the hunt that someone was bound to catch some Tumpingands for him to fulfill the promises that Cleannes made.
“So, what can I say? The Fingaïd is over today and a human monster has been captured for the King. Thanks be to Ver-fund-ver-ne. I’ve got you and for that I foresee that the Prince’s joy will be complete since I assume that your partner is the prey (or will be soon) of one of us. But an extra benefit that is a hundred times better than the prize, as valuable as it may be, is the great fortune to have the basilisk in our power so that it will no longer leave its mark of death on our lands. The elders of Kin-zan-da-or, who until now have kept a faithful tradition of everything that has happened since we owed our existence to divine Ver-fund-ver-ne, say that the last time this cruel enemy of our species appeared in our lands more than 20,000 of our inhabitants died and it took three hirzidos69 to catch it in a trap like the one you see here. Imagine, Tumpingand, everyone’s joy when they hear the news of the basilisk’s capture. Take comfort,” he looked at me with kindness, “because you are not unlucky to have fallen into my hands. I am respected by Za-ra-ouf—I am his Grand Bagdhaf.70 You seem to possess a purer instinct than an animal of your kind usually has. After the mutilation I mentioned, I will give you the esteemed privilege of going to the cages of the King’s menagerie, which is a wonderful benefit only given to the most admirable productions of nature.”
After saying all this to me, the monster resumed his normal step71 and we soon met a lot of his kind. Seeing me they gave signs of great joy, which became more and more excessive when the worm man talked to them. He was probably telling them (unfortunately I did not understand a word of their language) about the capture of the terrible basilisk. They got all excited and jumped higher and higher and made all kinds of strange gestures, too many and too confusing for me to describe. After celebrating in their way the common good luck, each of the monsters came and wiped their hand over my face and then went their separate ways to spread the news. Two of them stayed with us, one walking ahead and the other behind.
You can imagine, Motacoa, (Boldeon continued) how many thoughts were going through my head and the justifiable fear that should have alarmed me. But considering that it did me no good to torture myself and struggle against evils that could not be helped, I forced myself to resign to the will of Vilkonhis. Nothing calms the mind in adversity like religious sentiments. I found myself completely changed after this inner submission and was able to think about what was happening to me and about the conversation I had had with the monster whose slave I had become. I was not surprised at the names he called humans; everything that is different from us and our kind and our preconceived ideas usually acquire the title of monster or barbarian without seeing that these names are legitimately used only for those who act against reason and against their own principles. But what really did surprise me was to hear my language spoken in these places that were so different from where I was born. And I was even more astonished since the monster said that it had been more than a century since anyone of my species had been in their extraordinary world.
I certainly should have been worrying about more important things, but I could not resist the desire to learn more about this quandary. And the worm man answered, “How’s this? After I talked to you, you thought about what I said and used your mind! I never imagined that a Tumpingand could reason. Well, with this in mind I will try to answer some of your questions. The trip is still long from here to the capital so I will have time to give you a rough outline of our history. And I think I owe you this considering how we met and since you are curious I have no doubt that you will be pleased to hear it.”
Za-ra-ouf and the worm people
We owe our origin to Ver-fund-ver-ne, who illuminated a philosopher among us called Za-ra-ouf, who dictated our laws whose strict and religious observation promised the reward of passing from the inner world to the higher world where they revel in true light and really see the divine torches that are its principles.
The punishment for those who violate these precepts consists in the eternal deprivation of this promised light.
The wisdom that shines in these laws gave Za-ra-ouf such well-deserved respect among the people of Trifolday that they elected him King and submitted entirely to his power. He proved himself so worthy of this high rank that he wanted to counter-balance his authority, so one day he gathered his people on the plain of Kin-zan-da-or and there set up the elders, who still today keep their name from this plain, as preservers of the laws that had been made public and accepted, with such sovereign power that they can depose the King himself if it were agreed.
Za-ra-ouf was as great a philosopher as he was a wise lawmaker and foresaw that his species was not the only one that inhabited the inner world. To guarantee its preservation he said that if it happened that other peoples invaded the kingdom his people would unite to destroy them and never form any alliance with them.
To the privileges of the elders of Kin-zan-da-or he added that they would elect their rulers, excluding his own posterity in the hope that virtue and valor would win the kingdom’s vote.
When Za-ra-ouf died, his successors kept his name. But when the elders of Kin-zan-da-or were not satisfied with the third King whom they had elected, they published a decree whereby it was ordained that in the future everyone aspiring to the crown could not be admitted among the candidates unless they traveled three dikhados and brought back some positive proof of some unknown wonder that might be useful and beneficial to the country.
This new law not only gave us great Kings, but also through the discovery of one of these Kings we know today about the hideous immortal beast, the basilisk, who can single-handedly destroy all of this lower world. And by the experiments this King did on some subjects condemned to death we learned the ways not only to protect ourselves from it, but also to use it, after capturing it, to destroy others of its kind72 who might come after it.
The King who came after this one was elected over all the others because as proof of his labor he brought back two Tumpingands, an extraordinary wonder. Before that they were unknown. The story of his voyage was that these monsters had come into our country through an opening in the crust of the earth. They were let down by a rope in a basket that they clung onto. He chanced to be there when one of them fell and was surpri
sed to see loads of these monsters lying dead on the ground with coils of rope piled around, proving that these barbarians were planning to invade their states, but had not yet managed to find out how to succeed.
After this report the elders of Kin-zan-da-or held an important Council in which it was decided that the commissioners be elected to be brought to the place specified by the aspirant and after making an examination they would put many guards there so that every time Tumpingands showed up they would seize them and send them to the capital where they would be sacrificed to Ver-fund-ver-ne.
For the living monsters in their custody the Council decided that they would keep them and have two elders of Kin-zan-da-or study the monstrous species to try to understand what kind of instinct they had. The two chosen to study the Tumpingands up close found out that their crude instinct could reason, so they strove to learn their language, which they managed to do after a few dikhados. This knowledge led to more and more and the report they finally made to the Council was very worrisome to the wise men because according to the Tumpingands the place where they came from seemed to be the promised land of the Trifoldaysters since it was lit by the principles of light.
The elders of Kin-zan-da-or were divided on the matter and the findings of the report would surely have divided the kingdom and created a new sect had the High Council not been wise enough to foresee such consequences and order the Tumpingands to be put to death and that in the future no living specimens would be kept. However, they figured that it was of the utmost importance to learn to speak their language, but only for a few elders and the King. This was a political decision so that if the unheralded revolution of the monsters ever took place, they would be prepared to face it and crush it.
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