Chapter 4

“You were the master of masters,” Kanner said as they downed their second shot of the clear, sweet liquor the kingdom called Pahtash. According to Kanner the bottle was a fair to middling representation of the national drink. Borner found it had a slight bit of an alcohol aftertaste under the sweetness but nothing of which to complain. “I know Arimas did not believe in hierarchies of leadership after the four brands, but no one was fooled.” Borner was the one to ask, in the end, when no one else could answer.

“‘Was the one’ is an apt description,” Borner said. He twirled the small glass on top of the table between his thumb and middle finger, an old habit. “Everyone is dead, and every temple is destroyed. One set of scrolls lies hidden under the altar in Andamathea, probably buried under tons of rubble - unreachable. The followers of the Mystery are wiped from the face of the earth. Besides, Arimas ... never mind.”

“Arimas had his revenge,” Kanner said as he poured a third glass. “The pox was in the city when the Cormoran overran her walls. They had no protection against the disease, never encountering it in their own lands. Since the pox needs two weeks of incubation, they did not know until it was too late. The plague spread through their armies and even back to their homeland. The fields, towns and forests were full of bloated, festering corpses that the scavengers would not eat.”

“Their deaths are cold comfort,” Borner said, sitting up straight and looking at his drinking companion in the eye. “Why? Why did the Cormoran hunt us down with such bloody intent? Do you know why?”

Kanner shrugged as if the question were a painful memory. “Some say that a follower scorned the advances of the crowned prince with public humiliation. Some say the king had a seer who prophesied the kingdom’s demise by the hand of Arimas. Superstitious barbarians and all that nonsense. The most intriguing rumor, though, is the charge that the Arimas Scrolls contained an ability, a teaching that could topple kingdoms and destroy the earthly realm. Hmm.”

The Void called out and Borner had to turn his head and look away. ‘Arimas brought about the death of his followers though it took centuries,’ it whispered. ‘Did he have to take tens of thousands of innocents with him with his foolishness? Hundreds of thousands? Was any truth worth so many innocent lives?’

If Borner put himself down now, no one could possibly die of the foolishness again. Or did he have the foolishness backwards – there were too few teachers and too much barbarity? Did Arimas attract the barbarians or did his scrolls plant the seeds of his followers’ destruction? He forcefully pushed the Void back, leaving the questions unanswered.

“Hmm, indeed,” Borner said, taking a deep breath. “I know those scrolls almost by heart; there is nothing of the sort in them unless one wants to play absurd metaphysical games. I wished, I even prayed for such knowledge in my escape. If the fall of Andamathea taught me anything, it is that nothing, nothing but idealistic, fluffy-cloud, never-could-be kingdoms of philosopher kings were in those scrolls. Arimas, the real Arimas, was either a dreamer or a power-hungry scoundrel building temples to glorify his name.”

“Careful there with the liquor,” Kanner said. “You are speaking heresy.”

Borner laughed softly at the joke before taking a sip of the third drink, glad for a distraction from his bitterness. “I only wish there was heresy to speak. Let us speak of other things, of issues of this day and time. You left Arimas for the god of Sojourning.”

“I never felt entirely comfortable with the values of the Mystery,” Kanner said. “To always seek and yet never see the entirety sounded too much like a futile exercise.”

“A common criticism that does have some merit,” Borner agreed. “The emphasis is supposed to be that we never stop learning, always growing and expanding our experience of the world. The Mystery is, or was, a task without an end point. The idea of a never-ending task can be overwhelming when one’s search is for something more concrete.”

“Yes, but,” Kanner said as he shifted in his chair. “The source idea of the Mystery always appealed to me, but the Sojourner spoke to the Mystery in a manner that sparked my imagination. I wanted to see what was beyond the next horizon, or over the mountain, or in the next city. Accepting the oath of the Sojourner, my life became full of people excited about life and the world. For five years I traveled this world, and not just from temple to temple. I walked from the eastern duchies of Andamathea fame all the way to this town, down the length of the Westerlies as we called them, across their marshy breadth and halfway up the other length.”

“What caused you to stop here?” Borner asked, taken with the man’s journey.

“Names and faces were starting to blend together into a tangled mass,” Kanner said. “I was forgetting stories, conversations, and lessons that I did not want to lose. I needed to sit down and write, even if writing was the lesson of Arimas. The Sojourner here was old and growing frail. I put down my travel sack here and just never had the inclination to pick it up again - until recently, that is.”

“Regime change,” Borner said. “Violent regime change, so I heard. Who is the Princess Salomet?”

Kanner choked on his drink, spraying his liquor as he tried not to fall backwards in his leaning chair. “Where in the name of the sun and the star did you hear that name?”

“I met her on the road, outside of a closed town, one where people cannot get out,” Borner said. “At least not for more than a few minutes.”

“So, you can vouch that she is still alive,” Kanner said as a question, as much as a statement. Borner nodded and threw the rest of his drink down his numbed throat. The two men sat in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.

“She is King Ganvanir’s sister who should have been the reigning monarch,” Kanner said finally, staring at his glass. “A coup of some sort, a spurt of violence, occurred upon the death of their father; none outside the palace knows what happened. However, now the high priest of Urutu, who was not in favor in the palace under the father is now a chief counselor to the young King Ganvanir.”

“That sounds sinister,” Borner said. “Snakes and swords, priest and a naïf king. Perhaps I would be happier in a friendlier clime.”

“All of us commoners, guests and citizens alike, thought that Salomet was slain in a grab for power,” Kanner said. “Yet she is alive and well. This only deepens the intrigue at the palace. Who is protecting her?”

“If her brother deposed her, then not him,” Borner said. “If the Urutu priest backed the brother, then he is also a threat to her. I don’t know enough about the other characters in this sad drama to speculate more. I can report that the people in the countryside are ranting dangerously loud that crime is becoming worse in the city and that taxes have been raised too high. Maybe there is another hand behind the throne, disposing of one sibling at a time.”

“You sure you saw the ugly sister?”

Borner snorted. “Not particularly clever repartee, Kanner. Her naturally curly hair falls down her back and cascades over her shoulders. She is not petite but rather shapely. Her bosom is quite delectable, peeking out from behind her green fabric and lace.”

Kanner had the decency to blush, Borner noticed. There had been moments when he questioned his sanity, wondering if he spoke with the woman astride her panting horse. He had not rejected the notion that delirium had been a shadowy companion since he descended those steps into the Mystery and that talking to voluptuous women on horses would have been a typical fever dream. Had he really spoken with the source of the Mystery and drunk the life-giving waters out of a stone cup? Madness still threatened, and the Void tempted with its seductive call.