The Urhemmedhin army neared the city and camped for the night just three lim away. The next day dawned clear, and when the sun was well up, Jehan Henghmani mounted his white stallion. Following him rode his generals all abreast: Jephos Kirdahi, Nattahnam Ubuvasakh, Hnayim Yahu, Revi Ontondra, Rodavlas Ilhad, and Gaffar Mussopo. Then, in an open horse-drawn carriage were Golana, Maiya, and Jehandai.
In stately cadenced dignity, Jehan led them and his whole army up the flowered path through the open gates of Ganda Saingam. Flanking the gates stood lines of men at attention, members of the Saingamese citizen constabulary. Inside, on a platform a band was playing, a band of drums and horns and tambourines and cymbals, playing repeated pulsing martial beats, setting a rhythm for the prancing of the army’s horses.
Jehan and his generals upraised their right hands in salute. His expression was rigid, his mutilated face showing only cool acknowledgment of all this homage. His huge body was held stiffly, except that he would nod his head and dip his hand to the people thronging him.
With almost dour sobriety, the city’s council of elders stood in white robes on an elevated reviewing stand, their arms also lifted in solemn salute. But the commonfolk of the city were unrestrained in giving vent to their enthusiasm. They had all come out this fine morning, from the smallest tots to the oldest graybeards; even the sick and the lame had left their beds to come out and see the legendary Savior and to scream their adulation.
Barely parting to let the horses by, the people clogged the streets, climbing on wagons and chairs and tables, fathers holding up their children to see over the heads of the crowd. They hung on balconies and out of windows, they stood looking down from rooftops. On every side the scene was a tumult of motion, of people waving arms and banners and jumping up and down; the air was full of flowers and the bits of cloth and paper that were tossed like snow; and the cacophony of cheers almost drowned out the steady beat of the band.
“Vahiy Jehan!” they screamed their lungs out in a transport of rapture and with tears flowing down their flushed cheeks. “Ur-Rasvadhi! Vahiy Jehan! Yarush Saingam! Vahiy Urhemma! Yarushkadharra, O Yarushkadharra!”
Their exultation knew no bounds. Even Golana, to her pleased surprise, found herself the object of adulation. Either they overlooked her Tnemghadi brows or forgave them since she’d come with great Jehan; but they cheered Golana as they cheered her husband. And from her open carriage she laughed and smiled at the people, waved her hand enthusiastically and blew them kisses. Finally, she reached down with both hands out of the carriage, touching them and letting them touch her, thousands of them straining to pull at her hands and sleeves. Her cheeks too ran wet with joyful tears.
Through this wild demonstration Jehan continued his stately ride, the people mobbing him at every step along the way to kiss or just to touch him, like a talisman. They kissed his feet and his horse, prostrating themselves in worship before him. Jehan Henghmani was the Sainted Savior of Urhem; he came to Ganda Saingam as a god.
And he wondered what still grander reception would await him at Naddeghomra.
BERGHARRA—Local issue, City of Ganda Saingam, copper ten falu, overstruck on a worn imperial copper of the same denomination. Year 1184. Obverse: Radiate Sun, Urhemmedhin legend “G. Saingam.” Reverse: “Yarushkadharra” (Roughly, “liberty”). Breitenbach 2021, 32 mm.; sloppily struck, so that the original designs show through clearly. Fine or better, light green verdegris. Quite a scarce issue of the Urhemmedhin rising. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)
8
IN THE MONTH of Okhudzhava in the year 1185, Jehan Henghmani looked once again upon the City of Naddeghomra.
It was morning when he saw it first: the tips of the great towers thrusting over the horizon to catch the sunlight, glowing like torches. Jehan had vowed destruction to those towers once. This time, his hand would not be stayed.
With his eye fixed on those beautiful, hateful towers, Jehan Henghmani led his army toward them in an undeviating course. Once more they had assumed parade order, decked out elaborately with the generals prancing in a row followed by Jehan’s family in an open carriage. They were buoyed with excitement. For months they’d been looking forward to the heroes’ welcome they would surely receive at Naddeghomra.
As the city perched upon the bluffs came fully into view, its skyline was quite familiar to these men. But a peculiar detail was noticed: the main gates were not open, nor were they shut; in fact, the colossal wooden doors were half ajar.
And there was more strangeness. No flowers adorned the road to Naddeghomra. There was no honor guard to greet the liberation army. There were no gaudy banners to be seen, no strains of music to be heard except the wind.
Jehan and his followers could not help being struck by all this, but none would make any comment. Silent, they trekked the last mile to the silent city.
Naddeghomra was a derelict.
It was the empty shell of a city, like the rotted hull of a sunken boat washed up on the shore. The life that had flourished here since the dawn of history was gone.
Hardly a building stood intact, and whole rows of them had fallen down, blocking the streets with rubble. Many of those houses still standing had been gutted by fire; the yellow-white stucco and gray stone was everywhere scorched black with ash and soot. There was no living greenery, only drab brownish weeds, and pasty vines creeping everywhere like fungus.
But the city was not entirely dead. Making their homes among these dismal ruins were a few scattered stragglers. The only ones still here were those lacking enough sense to crawl away. Most of them were old and crippled, and most of them were mad, driven out of their minds by the horrors they had witnessed. Of course, most of those left behind after the siege soon perished in the wasteland of Naddeghomra, but somehow, a few managed to eke out a grim existence here, scratching food from the weeds and vines, killing rats and even gnawing on the dried flesh of the dead who littered the city. They lived mutely, secretively; they were terrified even of one another.
But these poor human survivors were few. The true heirs of Naddeghomra were the rats and flies.
Once Tnem Khatto Trevendhani had marched through these same streets. He was met with silence, the eyes of the inhabitants stared coldly at him, hating him.
It was silence of a different kind that met Jehan. Tnem Khatto had enslaved Naddeghomra, but it had endured. Jehan had liberated the city, and he had destroyed it.
Through the eerie silent streets, Jehan led his column. The only sounds were the clopping footfalls of their own horses like stones dropped down a well, the wind blowing debris against broken walls, and the scampering of rats and of the wretched survivors, cowering in their madness. None even stood to watch the spectacle; they cringed in the shadows or fled, wondering wildly what new horror might be coming.
The ones who did not run away were dead. Almost a year after the siege had ended, thousands of its victims still lay in the streets where they had fallen. Some were Tnemghadi soldiers, mauled and blood-browned bodies that had been clawed or stoned to death by mobs. But most were Urhemmedhins, wrapped in stiff rags or naked, their clothes picked off by scavengers. Many were mutilated, but many were simply victims of starvation and disease. The corpses of children were most numerous. The remains of mothers lay propped against walls, holding their dead infants to their breasts.
There was no stench of death. The bodies hadn’t putrefied, but were cured like smoked meats in the hot dry climate. They were yellow, dusty, leathery mummies, with the skin shriveled back and molded tight upon their skeletons. But many of the bodies had been pulled apart and gnawed, leaving only the powdery white bones strewn about.
These were the people who welcomed the Savior to Naddeghomra.
Everything was nothing.
They marched through all this, returning the city’s silence. Not until reaching The Maal did Jehan rein his horse and stop. But even here, he still said nothing.
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He sat in the saddle of his white stallion, in the middle of the broad white marble plaza, in the shadow of the great white towers, staring up at them. Their incredible size could be grasped fully now. They bulked in the sky like cliffs and seemed to press down upon the men as though they were insects.
Behind them, dominating even these huge towers as a father looking down over his children, was the final black one. It reached up magnificently into the clouds. Surely here was a place that touched the powers of the heavens.
The Maal alone was unstained by the death that choked Naddeghomra. On the vast white plaza there was no rubble, no corpses, no weeds growing. There was silence, but it was a majestic soundlessness, as though this place had been consecrated to silence and a noise would mar its sanctity. And whereas the rest of the city was clogged with filth and crumbling, the tall towers and the broad plaza floor gleamed as brilliantly as ever, their milk white and crystal black surfaces retaining their polished mirror-smoothness.
One could detect the jointure lines between the marble blocks, but barely, for the honing of these blocks approached perfection, the measurements exact and the lines plumb-straight. And the building blocks were gigantic. Jehan was astounded. He could scarcely believe such blocks of stone could be moved by human beings, let alone fitted together so perfectly. The Maal was a stunning triumph of architecture and engineering.
It had been built as a hateful symbol of conquest and enslavement, but it had to mean more than that. There was something more that its builders were saying, to all the generations who would look upon their work:
The Maal was a monument to their refusal to limit their dreams, to their will to realize the full breadth of their imagination, a human will that could triumph over any obstacle. The Maal was a monument to the greatness of the human race.
Jehan cantered his horse around to face the troops. With the towers at his back, he let them look at him, so that the significance of this moment in history would penetrate upon every one of them.
And then, in a firm voice ringing like a bell through the silence, he spoke to them.
“This is the most hallowed spot on earth. On this spot, King Urhem and Queen Osatsana reigned. Their palace was here, at the peak of the ancient civilization of our Urhemmedhin forebears. Its center was at this very spot.
“We came here to give rebirth to that civilization— and we have arrived to find a dead city.
“Yes, Naddeghomra is dead, but verily, death must come before rebirth. It cost countless lives to give rebirth to the Nation of Urhem; and now that Prasid Urhemma has come into being, Naddeghomra will be reborn as well. Here we will stay, to resuscitate this city, rebuild it, repopulate it, make its streets teem with people and the fields around it lush again with crops.
“Naddeghomra will be our capital, once more to take its place as the center of the Urhem Nation. Naddeghomra will be the glorious sun that will shine over our Prasid Urhemma.
“And here, on this spot, the towers of The Maal will stand. It will remain, this awful symbol of oppression, so that our people may never forget the suffering out of which their nation was forged, and how precious is the liberty they’ve won.
“And The Maal, built of tyranny and hatred, will instead become a monument to love and freedom. We shall consecrate here within these towers a new temple, and here our people will pilgrimage, to worship sainted Urhem and to celebrate yarushkadharra.”
9
FROM THE SUMMIT of the high tower, Jehan looked out over all Naddeghomra.
Everything was his. He could see the whole city and far beyond spread out before him. The city was alive with activity.
So much work confronted them that Jehan and Golana were occupied from dawn until after dark overseeing all the various projects. Of course the chief one was the conversion of The Maal.
The nine golden idols of the Emperor were removed and smelted, their gold to finance the reconstruction. In their place, new statues were commissioned. The first would be a monument of King Urhem, modeled upon the one at Arbadakhar, only much larger. This statue would preside within the great black tower.
Then, in the head white tower would be a statue of Osatsana, and this would become her temple. The next tower would hold a statue of an Urhemmedhin peasant, and this would be a memorial to all who had died in the eight centuries’ struggle for freedom. The third tower pair would house the second-rank offices of the developing Urhemma government; and finally, the last pair would become the palace of Jehan and his leading officials.
He had come to destroy The Maal; instead, he would live there!
Meanwhile, not just the temple complex, but the entire city was being rebuilt. The first order of business was, of course, to clean it up—to clear the streets of debris, to demolish those buildings beyond rehabilitation, and to rid the city of its dead.
Although they were, in a sense, honored casualties of the war of liberation, it was not feasible to identify the bodies or even to give them a ceremonious burial. With so many heavy demands upon resources, time and sweat could not be wasted on the dead now; they were stacked on wooden biers and burned in the open air. The dried corpses burned quickly and cleanly; and the ashes were used to fertilize the fields, where crops were planted anew. Thus the dead would help to feed the living.
Restoration of the surrounding lands to cultivation was a key point in Jehan’s program for returning Naddeghomra to its ancient status as the hub of a prosperous land. The other key point was, naturally, repopulation. From throughout the province families were exhorted to come and make new homes at Naddeghomra. Young people were wanted, women were wanted, patroits were wanted, people of strength, people of drive, people of vision, tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen, laborers, artisans.
Naddeghomra was to be not just a great city, but a city of great people. Those who would come to Naddeghomra now would not be ordinary men and women. Its earlier population had been destroyed so that something finer could take root in its place. It would be a city of great people, of diverse people, of strong, bright, self-reliant people, with the courage to pick up stakes and emigrate to a new place, to help build a new idea.
Inspired by Jehan the Ur-Rasvadhi and his vision, sharing that vision, the new people came to Naddeghomra.
The new start was an exuberant one, but there were still tremendous problems to cope with. Throughout most of the Urhemmedhin provinces, the war of revolution was still very much in progress. There were still Tnemghadi troops about, and plenty of skirmishes and battles. The war to free the land from the barony was still underway too. The upheaval left many areas floundering in anarchy, and millions of people dislocated.
In a similar class were the new emigrés to Naddeghomra. There were urgent problems of assimiliating all these people, of integrating them into the new structure, of finding homes for them and work to occupy them, and even of feeding them. The revivified farmlands had barely been started, and tremendous exertions were required to ensure that Naddeghomra would not starve a second time.
And in the midst of all these pressing challenges, only now did Jehan and Golana finally come to grips with the need to establish a permanent government. They decided to build it from the top down, first sketching its broad outlines and then later filling in the details.
Jephos Kirdahi was invested as the Grand Chamberlain of Urhemma, despite many counseling against it. Leopard Ubuvasakh assailed the former dungeon guard as a stupid dolt, incompetent for such a high position. Revi Ontondra and Gaffar Mussopo were loudly critical too, begging Jehan to consider the public reaction to bestowing so great an honor upon a Tnemghadi. It was certainly incongruous that the first prime minister of the Urhem Nation should be of the other race.
The arguments of these men and others were heard respectfully by Jehan, but he rejected them. The Leopard, Ontondra, perhaps even Yahu, fancied the honor for themselves. Only by appointing Kirdahi, who had been his deputy thr
oughout, could Jehan dampen the jealousy that would inevitably attend his choice.
It was obvious, though, that Kirdahi would be a figurehead chief minister, merely carrying out Jehan’s bidding. In this, his Tnemghadi eyebrows were a plus: they shackled him to Jehan. Kirdahi’s life itself still depended on Jehan’s protection.
The other key assignments followed more or less naturally. Ubuvasakh’s keen intelligence was put to use in his investiture as Minister of Foreign Affairs and War, which gave the handsome ex-bandit responsibility for the deployment of the army. Rodavlas Ilhad and Gaffar Mussopo were made his deputies, Ilhad to oversee recruitment and strategy, Mussopo as Quartermaster General in charge of provisioning the army. Hnayim Yahu, crude and unimaginative but solid, was given command over agriculture and land reform, a program which Jehan actually expected to run personally. Similarly, while Revi Ontondra took the Treasury portfolio, financial matters were really under Golana’s supervision.
Governors were also commissioned for each of Urhemma’s seven provinces, but these were bereft of real importance in the emerging political schema. The old Bergharran system of administration had been threetiered: the throne, the provincial viceroys, and the local officials. Now the middle tier was to be phased out. Power would be shared between the Palace at Naddeghomra and the local city halls, with the provincial capitals reduced to little more than communications links.
And, as Prasid Urhemma began to take form, the innovation was more fundamental than merely increasing the authority of local government.
Under the Tnemghadi, the mayors of every town and village throughout Bergharra had been appointed by the throne. Almost never were they chosen from among the local citizenry. Even Tnemghadi cities were run by outsiders, usually career bureaucrats, military officers, or palace politicians from Ksiritsa.
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