by Lord Dunsany
IN THE LAND OF TIME
Thus Karnith, King of Alatta, spake to his eldest son: "I bequeath tothee my city of Zoon, with its golden eaves, whereunder hum the bees.And I bequeath to thee also the land of Alatta, and all such otherlands as thou art worthy to possess, for my three strong armies which Ileave thee may well take Zindara and over-run Istahn, and drive backOnin from his frontier, and leaguer the walls of Yan, and beyond thatspread conquest over the lesser lands of Hebith, Ebnon, and Karida.Only lead not thine armies against Zeenar, nor ever cross the Eidis."
Thereat in the city of Zoon in the land of Alatta, under his goldeneaves, died King Karnith, and his soul went whither had gone the soulsof his sires the elder Kings, and the souls of their slaves.
Then Karnith Zo, the new King, took the iron crown of Alatta andafterwards went down to the plains that encircle Zoon and found histhree strong armies clamouring to be led against Zeenar, over the riverEidis.
But the new King came back from his armies, and all one night in thegreat palace alone with his iron crown, pondered long upon war; and alittle before dawn he saw dimly through his palace window, facing eastover the city of Zoon and across the fields of Alatta, to far off wherea valley opened on Istahn. There, as he pondered, he saw the smokearising tall and straight over small houses in the plain and the fieldswhere the sheep fed. Later the sun rose shining over Alatta as it shoneover Istahn, and there arose a stir about the houses both in Alatta andIstahn, and cocks crowded in the city and men went out into the fieldsamong the bleating sheep; and the King wondered if men did otherwise inIstahn. And men and women met as they went out to work and the sound oflaughter arose from streets and fields; the King's eyes gazed into thedistance toward Istahn and still the smoke went upward tall andstraight from the small houses. And the sun rose higher that shone uponAlatta and Istahn, causing the flowers to open wide in each, and thebirds to sing and the voices of men and women to arise. And in themarket place of Zoon caravans were astir that set out to carrymerchandise to Istahn, and afterwards passed camels coming to Alattawith many tinkling bells. All this the King saw as he pondered much,who had not pondered before. Westward the Agnid mountains frowned inthe distance guarding the river Eidis; behind them the fierce people ofZeenar lived in a bleak land.
Later the King, going abroad through his new kingdom, came on theTemple of the gods of Old. There he found the roof shattered and themarble columns broken and tall weeds met together in the inner shrine,and the gods of Old, bereft of worship or sacrifice, neglected andforgotten. And the King asked of his councillors who it was that hadoverturned this temple of the gods or caused the gods Themselves to bethus forsaken. And they answered him:
"Time has done this."
Next the King came upon a man bent and crippled, whose face wasfurrowed and worn, and the King having seen no such sight within thecourt of his father said to the man:
"Who hath done this thing to you?"
And the old man answered:
"Time hath ruthlessly done it."
But the King and his councillors went on, and next they came upon abody of men carrying among them a hearse. And the King asked hiscouncillors closely concerning death, for these things had not beforebeen expounded to the King. And the oldest of the councillors answered:
"Death, O King, is a gift sent by the gods by the hand of their servantTime, and some receive it gladly, and some are forced reluctantly totake it, and before others it is suddenly flung in the middle of theday. And with this gift that Time hath brought him from the gods a manmust go forth into the dark to possess no other thing for so long asthe gods are willing."
But the King went back to his palace and gathered the greatest of hisprophets and his councillors and asked them more particularlyconcerning Time. And they told the King how that Time was a greatfigure standing like a tall shadow in the dusk or striding, unseen,across the world, and how that he was the slave of the gods and didTheir bidding, but ever chose new masters, and how all the formermasters of Time were dead and Their shrines forgotten. And one said:
"I have seen him once when I went down to play again in the garden ofmy childhood because of certain memories. And it was towards eveningand the light was pale, and I saw Time standing over the little gate,pale like the light, and he stood between me and that garden and hadstolen my memories because he was mightier than I."
And another said:
"I, too, have seen the Enemy of my House. For I saw him when he strodeover the fields that I knew well and led a stranger by the hand toplace him in my home to sit where my forefathers sat. And I saw himafterwards walk thrice round the house and stoop and gather up theglamour from the lawns and brush aside the tall poppies in the gardenand spread weeds in his pathway where he strode through the rememberednooks."
And another said:
"He went one day into the desert and brought up life out of the wasteplaces, and made it cry bitterly and covered it with the desert again."
And another said:
"I too saw him once seated in the garden of a child tearing theflowers, and afterwards he went away through many woodlands and stoopeddown as he went, and picked the leaves one by one from the trees."
And another said:
"I saw him once by moonlight standing tall and black amidst the ruinsof a shrine in the old kingdom of Amarna, doing a deed by night. And hewore a look on his face such as murderers wear as he busied himself tocover over something with weeds and dust. Thereafter in Amarna thepeople of that old Kingdom missed their god, in whose shrine I saw Timecrouching in the night, and they have not since beheld him."
And all the while from the distance at the city's edge rose a hum fromthe three armies of the King clamouring to be led against Zeenar.Thereat the King went down to his three armies and speaking to theirchiefs said:
"I will not go down clad with murder to be King over other lands. Ihave seen the same morning arising on Istahn that also gladdenedAlatta, and have heard Peace lowing among the flowers. I will notdesolate homes to rule over an orphaned land and a land widowed. But Iwill lead you against the pledged enemy of Alatta who shall crumble thetowers of Zoon and hath gone far to overthrow our gods. He is the foeof Zindara and Istahn and many-citadeled Yan, Hebith and Ebnon may notovercome him nor Karida be safe against him among her bleakestmountains. He is a foe mightier than Zeenar with frontiers strongerthan Eidis; he leers at all the peoples of the earth and mocks theirgods and covets their builded cities. Therefore we will go forth andconquer Time and save the gods of Alatta from his clutch, and comingback victorious shall find that Death is gone and age and illnessdeparted, and here we shall live for ever by the golden eaves of Zoon,while the bees hum among unrusted gables and never crumbling towers.There shall be neither fading nor forgetting, nor ever dying norsorrow, when we shall have freed the people and pleasant fields of theearth from inexorable Time."
And the armies swore that they would follow the King to save the worldand the gods.
So the next day the King set forth with his three armies and crossedmany rivers and marched through many lands, and wherever they went theyasked for news of Time.
And the first day they met a woman with her face furrowed and lined,who told them that she had been beautiful and that Time had smitten herin the face with his five claws.
Many an old man they met as they marched in search of Time. All hadseen him but none could tell them more, except that some said he wentthat way and pointed to a ruined tower or to an old and broken tree.
And day after day and month by month the King pushed on with hisarmies, hoping to come at last on Time. Sometimes they encamped atnight near palaces of beautiful design or beside gardens of flowers,hoping to find their enemy when he came to desecrate in the dark.Sometimes they came on cobwebs, sometimes on rusted chains and houseswith broken roofs or crumbling walls. Then the armies would push onapace thinking that they were closer upon the track of Time.
As the weeks passed by and weeks grew to months, and always they heardreports and rumours
of Time, but never found him, the armies grew wearyof the great march, but the King pushed on and would let none turnback, saying always that the enemy was near at hand.
Month in, month out, the King led on his now unwilling armies, till atlast they had marched for close upon a year and came to the village ofAstarma very far to the north. There many of the King's weary soldiersdeserted from his armies and settled down in Astarma and marriedAstarmian girls. By these soldiers we have the march of the armiesclearly chronicled to the time when they came to Astarma, having beennigh a year upon the march. And the army left that village and thechildren cheered them as they went up the street, and five milesdistant they passed over a ridge of hills and out of sight. Beyond thisless is known, but the rest of this chronicle is gathered from thetales that the veterans of the King's armies used to tell in theevenings about the fires in Zoon and remembered afterwards by the menof Zeenar.
It is mostly credited in these days that such of the King's armies aswent on past Astarma came at last (it is not known after how long atime) over a crest of a slope where the whole earth slanted green tothe north. Below it lay green fields and beyond them moaned the seawith never shore nor island so far as the eye could reach. Among thegreen fields lay a village, and on this village the eyes of the Kingand his armies were turned as they came down the slope. It lay beneaththem, grave with seared antiquity, with old-world gables stained andbent by the lapse of frequent years, with all its chimneys awry. Itsroofs were tiled with antique stones covered over deep with moss, eachlittle window looked with a myriad strange cut panes on the gardensshaped with quaint devices and overrun with weeds. On rusted hinges thedoors sung to and fro and were fashioned of planks of immemorial oakwith black knots gaping from their sockets. Against it all there beatthe thistle-down, about it clambered the ivy or swayed the weeds; talland straight out of the twisted chimneys arose blue columns of smoke,and blades of grass peeped upward between the huge cobbles of theunmolested street. Between the gardens and the cobbled streets stoodhedges higher than a horseman might look, of stalwart thorn, and upwardthrough it clambered the convolvulus to peer into the garden from thetop. Before each house there was cut a gap in the hedge, and in itswung a wicket gate of timber soft with the rain and years, and greenlike the moss. Over all of it there brooded age and the full hush ofthings bygone and forgotten. Upon this derelict that the years had castup out of antiquity the King and his armies gazed long. Then on thehill slope the King made his armies halt, and went down alone with oneof his chiefs into the village.
Presently there was a stir in one of the houses, and a bat flew out ofthe door into the daylight, and three mice came running out of thedoorway down the step, an old stone cracked in two and held together bymoss; and there followed an old man bending on a stick with a whitebeard coming to the ground, wearing clothes that were glossed with use,and presently there came others out of the other houses, all of them asold, and all hobbling on sticks. These were the oldest people that theKing had ever beheld, and he asked them the name of the village and whothey were; and one of them answered, "This is the City of the Aged inthe Territory of Time."
And the King said, "Is Time then here?"
And one of the old men pointed to a great castle standing on a steephill and said: "Therein dwells Time, and we are his people;" and theyall looked curiously at King Karnith Zo, and the eldest of thevillagers spoke again and said: "Whence do you come, you that are soyoung?" and Karnith Zo told him how he had come to conquer Time to savethe world and the gods, and asked them whence they came.
And the villagers said:
"We are older than always, and know not whence we came, but we are thepeople of Time, and here from the Edge of Everything he sends out hishours to assail the world, and you may never conquer Time." But theKing went back to his armies, and pointed towards the castle on thehill and told them that at last they had found the Enemy of the Earth;and they that were older than always went back slowly into their houseswith the creaking of olden doors. And there they went across the fieldsand passed the village. From one of his towers Time eyed them all thewhile, and in battle order they closed in on the steep hill as Time satstill in his great tower and watched.
But as the feet of the foremost touched the edge of the hill Timehurled five years against them, and the years passed over their headsand the army still came on, an army of older men. But the slope seemedsteeper to the King and to every man in his army, and they breathedmore heavily. And Time summoned up more years, and one by one he hurledthem at Karnith Zo and at all his men. And the knees of the armystiffened, and their beards grew and turned grey, and the hours anddays and the months went singing over their heads, and their hairturned whiter and whiter, and the conquering hours bore down, and theyears rushed on and swept the youth of that army clear away till theycame face to face under the walls of the castle of Time with a mass ofhowling years, and found the top of the slope too steep for aged men.Slowly and painfully, harassed with agues and chills, the King ralliedhis aged army that tottered down the slope.
Slowly the King led back his warriors over whose heads had shrieked thetriumphant years. Year in, year out, they straggled southwards, alwaystowards Zoon; they came, with rust upon their spears and long beardsflowing, again into Astarma, and none knew them there. They passedagain by towns and villages where once they had inquired curiouslyconcerning Time, and none knew them there either. They came again tothe palaces and gardens where they had waited for Time in the night,and found that Time had been there. And all the while they set a hopebefore them that they should come on Zoon again and see its goldeneaves. And no one knew that unperceived behind them there lurked andfollowed the gaunt figure of Time cutting off stragglers one by one andoverwhelming them with his hours, only men were missed from the armyevery day, and fewer and fewer grew the veterans of Karnith Zo.
But at last after many a month, one night as they marched in the duskbefore the morning, dawn suddenly ascending shone on the eaves of Zoon,and a great cry ran through the army:
"Alatta, Alatta!"
But drawing nearer they found that the gates were rusted and weeds grewtall along the outer walls, many a roof had fallen, gables wereblackened and bent, and the golden eaves shone not as heretofore. Andthe soldiers entering the city expecting to find their sisters andsweethearts of a few years ago saw only old women wrinkled with greatage and knew not who they were.
Suddenly someone said:
"He has been here too."
And then they knew that while they searched for Time, Time had goneforth against their city and leaguered it with the years, and had takenit while they were far away and enslaved their women and children withthe yoke of age. So all that remained of the three armies of Karnith Zosettled in the conquered city. And presently the men of Zeenar crossedover the river Eidis and easily conquering an army of aged men took allAlatta for themselves, and their kings reigned thereafter in the cityof Zoon. And sometimes the men of Zeenar listened to the strange talesthat the old Alattans told of the years when they made battle againstTime. Such of these tales as the men of Zeenar remembered theyafterwards set forth, and this is all that may be told of thoseadventurous armies that went to war with Time to save the world and thegods, and were overwhelmed by the hours and the years.