Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  “And then, what of the South? I consecrated myself to the crusade to make Urhemma free. But we have drifted away from that noble struggle. We originally came north only to secure the permanent freedom of the South. Yet now we are a thousand lim removed from our homeland, fighting an enemy our people never knew, over land they don’t need. Instead of lifting tyranny from our people’s shoulders, we are pressing it upon another people. And in doing it we are draining ourselves, bleeding ourselves white. To prosecute this insane war, we have even sunk to enslaving and starving our own people.

  “Yes, it is insane.” Jehan shook his head sadly. “How could it have happened? We have reached too far away from our true goals. Too far away from home.

  “But the time has come for sanity to be restored: for us to go home.

  “We shall go home now, home to our own city. Naddeghomra, in the bosom of our people. We shall breathe the pure air of Naddeghomra, and there we’ll be regenerated. Home at Naddeghomra we shall bind our wounds, and go forth to fight the true enemies, lawlessness, tyranny, and hunger. Nevermore need we fear the Tnemghadi. Prasid Urhemma can thrive in freedom now, yarushkadharra will reign; as we envisioned so long ago, we shall come to the nation of peace and love and bliss.

  “We shall come home.”

  Jehan’s hoarse voice finally became silent. This speech had greatly taxed his weakened body, and with difficulty he caught his breath in gulps. But despite the strain, his face was almost beaming in a calm, as though his words had carried him home already.

  “Your Majesty,” Gaffar Mussopo said firmly, “it cannot be done. Kirdahi would never succeed in holding the Akfakh back. They’d overrun the whole North in months and then they’d come right after us in the South.”

  “Then let them! I would far rather fight them on our own territory, fight them for our own homeland. Then we can beat them.”

  Gaffar shook his head. “What you propose is out of the question. Perhaps your mind has become muddled by your illness. Not only do you ignore the obvious military consequences that would ensue from abandoning the North, but you seem to be caught up by some ethereal vision of the South. ‘Breath the pure air of Naddeghomra,’ you say. The South today is a snakepit, the air is the air of death! The bandits and warlords are running riot, people are starving to death by the millions, so fast they’re not even being buried. It’s a jungle, a nightmare. All right, abandon the North you say, and fight the hunger. But right now the only food with which to fight it happens to come from the North.

  “After what the damned Tnemghadi did to us for centuries, I will hang before I see them get back an inch of their land. We will stand and fight if we all must perish doing it.”

  Jehan coughed and struggled for breath. “Gaffar, Gaffar, my dear friend,” he said, in a voice that begged indulgence. “I have given you a free hand up to now. Admittedly I’ve been in no condition to interfere much. But I must tell you that on this decision, my mind is set, and I must insist upon it.”

  “You may insist all you like. It won’t be done.”

  “Gaffar, if you will not cooperate I’ll have to find myself another Grand Chamberlain, and that would be most regrettable.”

  “No, sire, I will not cooperate with your mad scheme, and I will not relinquish my position either.”

  Jehan’s face had been growing increasingly red with consternation; now he was seized by another violent fit of coughing, and when it was over, he spoke with a barely audible croak. “You seem to forget that I am still the Emperor. I shall call the ministers together.”

  “They will not come. They won’t obey you any longer; they are my men now. The fact is, everyone in the Palace believes by now that you’ve gone off your head. It’s become a lamented but accepted fact. This scheme of yours to return to Naddeghomra will only be seen as evidence of your madness.

  “Bergharra needs a strong ruler now,” the Grand Chamberlain said, rising from his chair. “And that is why you are no longer ruling.”

  8

  WITH A CLOUDED eye, Jehan Henghmani looked upon his grandson.

  The vision of his one eye had been impaired by his illness, but Jehan knew that standing before him was the living reminder of his most hideous memories. The boy bore the face of Nimajneb Grebzreh, who had begotten him that night of horror in the dungeon. And it was for the sake of this boy that Maiya had murdered beloved Golana and her newborn son.

  Pained by the very thought of this grandson who grotesquely bore his own name, Jehan had seen little of him in the past seven years. Despite his being the Crown Prince, Jehandai was barred from the Court at Naddeghomra. There were no friends for him as he grew up, his position was too exalted, and at the same time, too accursed. So Jehandai grew up alone.

  He kept to himself, playing endlessly with his toy soldiers, and later, reading to pass empty hours. He was quiet, secretive, almost furtive. Rarely did he even show his face outside his room.

  Jehandai had come to Ksiritsa only through Gaffar Mussopo’s acquiescence. But he hadn’t stayed there long, and followed Mussopo to the northern front. It was only in the life of a common soldier that the boy found any satisfaction. That’s what he was, a soldier in the ranks. But Mussopo kept him close at hand, as a part-time aidede-camp, and when he became Grand Chamberlain, Jehandai was among those who returned with him to Ksiritsa. Mussopo made sure the boy did not revert, however, to a sullen confinement. With the Emperor bedridden, Jehandai was free to roam the Palace under Mussopo’s aegis, and even to consort with the other ministers.

  Now he was almost eighteen years old, grown to manhood. He stood erect before the Emperor wearing a military tunic.

  Hello, Jehandai,” the old invalid said, trying to smile.

  “Hello, Garpaban.”

  “I am deeply pleased that you agreed to come to me.”

  Jehandai nodded, but did not otherwise respond.

  “I summoned you, frankly, because I am dying. The doctors keep talking optimistically, but I am not fooled. There isn’t much time left to me.”

  Jehan paused, and coughed, intentionally giving Jehandai an opportunity to make a profession of sympathy and concern. But the youth said nothing.

  “So very soon now, Jehandai, you will become the Emperor of Bergharra.”

  This time, Jehan thought he could detect a smirk of satisfaction in the boy’s face, but he ignored it. “I want us to be on good terms before I die. I want us to forget the past. I am willing to admit that my conduct toward you has been cold and bad. It was unfair to you. But perhaps too, you can understand what made me act that way. So let us be reconciled before I die. Please say so, grandson.”

  “All right,” the youth said, revealing nothing of his attitude.

  Jehan blinked his one eye firmly in acceptance, and said, “I am glad. I am very glad. I bear you only good will now, and I earnestly wish you the utmost success in your reign.”

  “I will try to achieve it.”

  “I am sure you will. But would you permit this old man to unburden himself of some advice, upon which he has thought much?”

  “I will listen to what you have to say.”

  “Once I am gone, once you’ve become Emperor, there is only one possible course to be followed, only one plan that can save you. This thing you must do, or else reap a whirlwind of disaster.

  As soon as you take the crown, Jehandai, you must quit Ksiritsa. You must leave the North, leave off fighting the Akfakh, leave off fighting Kirdahi, leave all of that morass behind you, and repair homeward to the South. It is a troubled land, but it is our homeland. You must take us to Naddeghomra.”

  Jehan repeated all the arguments he had given Gaffar Mussopo for abandoning the North. And then, he had one further piece of advice: Gaffar Mussopo must be unhorsed. This man, Jehan said, had gotten too much power into his one hand; he was a cruel fanatic and a despot. The old Emperor warned that unless Jehandai de
stroyed Gaffar, Gaffar would destroy Jehandai, and the whole nation with him.

  “Please Jehandai, I beseech you to heed my words, for the good of our people and for your own good too. Tell me that you will do it. Then I can die in peace.”

  Jehandai stuck his chin out. “No, old man. I will not get rid of Gaffar. He and I are of one mind. He warned me to expect this last-minute plea from you. But I agree with him, not you. You are wrong, indeed, you are mad.”

  “How can you speak to me this way?” Jehan stammered in confusion, his face turning livid.

  “What do you expect, old man? For years you treated me like a cursed creature, a criminal, all on account of other people’s crimes. For seven years you wouldn’t even see me. Only now that you’re dying, and everyone else refuses to listen to you, have you come to me in desperation.

  “You say you want our reconciliation, but what you really want is to use me, to reach beyond the grave and accomplish through me what you’re too weak to do yourself.”

  “Jehandai—”

  “But I won’t let you. I will not go back to Naddeghomra—the wretched place where your curse was branded upon me. Naddeghomra was your city, but it won’t be mine. This is my city, Ksiritsa, the city where my seed was planted. Here I shall rule, I shall be the Emperor of all Bergharra.

  “After all, who is better apt than I to rule the whole of Bergharra? The Empire is half Tnemghadi, half Urhemmedhin, and the two have always been at each other’s throats. But I myself am half Tnemghadi and half Urhemmedhin! That is why it always was my destiny to rule Bergharra. I will not give up half the Empire, I will not give up half my birthright—not when my mother sacrificed herself to save it for me!

  “So may Naddeghomra bum, as far as I’m concerned. And the same goes for you, old man. I won’t forgive you. To hell with your reconciliation!”

  Jehandai spat at his grandfather and stalked out.

  Jehan Henghmani looked out upon the world with a dying eye.

  All had come to nothing.

  The last embers of his life were dimming and sputtering out at last, but he was not aggrieved, not at that. If anything, his grief was coming to an end.

  His life had been an odyssey of pain. It had known high moments, but more persistent was the pain—in the dungeons and now in his lingering death. And physical agony was the least of it. Love, it seemed, had been vouchsafed him only to inflict pain when it was taken away. All the people he had loved were lost to him; some had even betrayed him. Perhaps, he thought, he had not loved them well enough. But that provided no solace. He was dying all alone.

  Not only for his personal tragedies was Jehan full of grief. His own travail would soon be buried with his ashes. Not so the tragedy of his people.

  On his deathbed, Jehan Henghmani wept not for himself, but for his people—the Urhemmedhins and the Tnemghadi too. The distinction seemed immaterial. They were all people, regardless of their eyebrows. The wrongness of suffering did not depend upon the race of people who endured it. And Jehan, who had labored to relieve suffering, had actually brought more misery to the world than perhaps any other man in history. He had struggled to end starvation, but more people were starving now than ever. He had worked himself into an early grave trying to give men freedom, but more than ever they were tyrannized. He was like Sexrexatra, chewing up his own children. Indeed, was Jehan Henghmani the Ur-Rasvadhi—or the prophesied return of Sexrexatra?

  How could this nightmare have descended? How could all Jehan’s works have turned out so perversely?

  His thoughts turned to the Book of Urhem, the creed that was the guiding light of his whole movement. Jehan had put an end to the Tnemghadi emperor-worship and had given the religion of Urhem its day at last. So noble a thing this had seemed! So good and right and rational the Urhem creed had seemed!

  Only now did Jehan suddenly see the ironic truth. He had been wrong, the whole religion was wrong. When he thought about the Book of Urhem now, he could only laugh bitterly at it.

  King Urhem had not been a saint, but a fool. When he had prayed for Osatsana’s life, his only mistake had been to imagine that any god might hear his prayer at all. Neither Urhem nor any god could have saved her, any more than it was a god that took her life.

  Stupidly though, Urhem blamed himself for her death. Supposedly he had sinned against the sanctity of life. But what sin was it to pray for life against death? And how could it have upheld the sanctity of life to extinguish one person’s life for the sin of another?

  Yet, in penance for his wholly imagined sin, King Urhem renounced his throne and died a beggar. Jehan now saw this as ridiculous and contemptible. What did Urhem’s act accomplish? This asinine renunciation left his kingdom leaderless and directly paved the way for the Tnemghadi conquest. That was what sainted Urhem had done for his people.

  The Book of Urhem vaunted the sanctity of human life. And at this, too, Jehan could only laugh bitterly.

  His own life now was passing from the world. And even he, who had molded that world in his hands, was dying in humiliation, labeled mad and abjured by everyone. Not even great Jehan Henghmani’s life was held priceless now, it would not fetch a copper falu any more.

  And if an emperor’s life was devoid of value, what about the life of a peasant? What could it mean, when millions of them had died for a man who himself proved worthless? When millions starved to death because of what that worthless emperor had done?

  It was in a very different light now that Jehan could reassess the old Tnemghadi religion. They had accounted life valueless, existing for no purpose save the pleasure of the emperor. To him they prayed, and yet were told they couldn’t know the pleasure of such a being. His whim was always a mystery, and his reasons for taking or sparing lives were always locked behind his mask of inscrutability. It was as though there were no reasons at all.

  For worshipping such a seemingly absurd god, the Tnemghadi were mocked by the Urhemmedhins. But the Tnemghadi religion had never been properly understood. They had not believed in the existence of any god at all. That was the heart of it: Their enigmatic emperor was merely the symbol of the fact that there is no god.

  There is no god at all, no god to reward the good and punish the wicked, no god to bestow order, justice, or rightness on the world.

  There is no god. There is no justice. There is no salvation.

  That was the Tnemghadi creed.

  And it was true.

  Moreover, this truth underscored the basic valuelessness of life. How could the playthings of such an unfathomable fate be considered at all sanctified? With no god having put them on earth, human beings had arisen out of the muck by sheer happenstance and for no particular purpose. It defied logic to hold something priceless when the earth was teeming with it, when it had no purpose, when it was so despised and wantonly destroyed. That was human life: the cheapest commodity in the world.

  People had not been put on earth for any reason at all, and the human race was not pursuing any goal, save perhaps that of survival—and the ultimate purpose to be gained by their surviving was an open question. And yet, Jehan could see that this was not a negation of all purpose to a man’s existence.

  The fact that people are not ruled by any god frees them to rule themselves. The fact that fate is blind frees people to take their fate into their own hands. The fact that the race has no purpose frees its individual members to pursue their own purposes. And so the fact that bare human life is without intrinsic value does not mean human endeavor is pointless.

  Just as a worthless chunk of stone can be sculpted into a precious work of art, so too can a raw, common life become great by what its owner makes of it. And that endeavor is the key to life—with no god, no other value to existence—a man’s own endeavor is everything.

  Having gained, at last, this vantage point, Jehan Henghmani could now look back and assess his own life. It was neither wholly bad no
r wholly good; filled with accomplishment and failure, it was not wholly wasted. To grasp the truth of life was itself a great achievement, perhaps the greatest of all. But Jehan could only lament that he had reached it on his deathbed.

  BERGHARRA—Urhemmedhin Empire, billon tayel of Emperor Jehan II, 1195. Obverse: Crowned portrait of ruler, facing, with inscription in exergue. Reverse: portrait of the Regent Mussopo, facing, and showing his missing hand; crown mintmark (Ksiritsa). Breitenbach 2087, and the plate coin in the Breitenbach reference. A most unusual double portrait issue, and excessively rare. Very fine. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  9

  AT THE TNEM-RAB-ZHIKH palace at Ksiritsa, Jehan Henghmani, the Emperor of Bergharra, died quietly in his bed on the seventh day of Nrava in the year 1195.

  Except for servants and guards, there was no one with him when he died. It happened that Urhemma was in the midst of preparations to celebrate the fourteenth anniversary of the start of its revolution; and now, as the news of Jehan’s passing filtered through the country, it was accompanied by a proclamation from the council of ministers that declared the Empire to be in mourning for a full year.

  Jehan Henghmani’s final instructions stipulated that his funeral would take place at Naddeghomra. Nevertheless, there was a full-scale, day-long memorial service at Ksiritsa to send him on his way. This ceremony took place in the Heaven Palace, and was closed to the Tnemghadi population of the city. When it was over, with a blast of drums and bugles, the oakwood sarcophagus containing his body was borne away from Ksiritsa. His remains, upon a bier drawn by eight white stallions and followed by a procession numbering nearly one hundred, were borne southward under the protection of an Urhemmedhin army division. Through the gates of Ksiritsa they carried him, through Tnemurabad and Kholandra, through the Jaraghari Hills and the Usrefif Mountains, through Taroloweh past Arbadakhar, across the River Qurwa, down through Nitupsar and Khrasanna, and finally, to Naddeghomra.