The Emperor
The Emperor
Long, long ago, when the Tower was merely a protrusion of black crystal growing from the Earth, long before the Sorceress arrived, there lived an Emperor.
He crossed the sea a million moons ago, long before it was so vast and stormy, and he brought with him a whole culture of people; women, children, soldiers, beasts, and men. All of his empire flooded into the Far Shore, passing the Tower and thinking nothing of a small mass of black crystals growing in a valley.
The Emperor was a pale man, and in terrible need of musculature; he was not endowed with energy of the body, but of the mind. Indeed, even as a young man, his body was as frail as a wizened old fool, thin and pasty, almost skeletal, wrapped in fine cloth and jewels - befitting an emperor - but almost seeming unable to lift his head under his own power.
The citizens of his empire carried him upon a throne held up the armoured soldiers of his army, for they could not ask the frail Emperor to cross the wide plains under his own power, or even on the back of a beast, for he would not have the strength to keep his grip on the back of a horse.
He slumped on his throne as they carried him out of the valley of the Tower, the earth there still quite barren, and back onto the grassy plains of the Far Shore.
At long last, they came upon a verdant land by the shore of a great sea, a land covered in forests where ancient tress grew, and a plains where game animals frolicked without perdition, and cliffs make of soft stone, untouched by the pick or the chisel.
The Emperor gave his consent to settle this land with a wave of his hand and a nod of his head, and, so, his people began to fell the great trees, and to drain the corpses of animals, and to pick out fertile patches of land for ploughing.
Within a few years the limp emperor sat upon a fine throne of polished stone, a great hall hewed from logs and adorned with fine tables and the hides of many animals. Upon the cliff he ordered the construction of a castle for his dynasty to rule from, but this would take decades and then Emperor did not even live to see it's completion.
His people were used to fighting and so they built walls of wood and stone around their lands, and posted solders and watchmen along the boundaries of the their then-small settlements and the then new-fields where their people planted their foreign seeds.
All was well in the Emperor's new lands, and three winters passed before the children of the Emperor encountered more denizens of the Far Shore.
And the first soldiers who reported to the Emperor about these others found themselves quite unable to render a description fitting of the people of the Far Shore.
"They are... beautiful." Was all that one soldier could say.
And this was agreed upon by all others who saw them.
The men and the women... they were beautiful.
They were a nomadic people, wanderers of the land, returning to the land which the Emperor had claimed in a cycle of years, the land - as with all the land of the Far Shore - was sacred to them.
The Emperor was not threatened by such disorganised, tribal peoples, but his citizens found themselves enthralled by them, and, even without the Emperor's assent, broke bread with them and learned to speak in a mutual language. This did not displease the Emperor, and nor did it seem unwise; the people's of his land ought to have allies who knew what lay beyond the reaches of their new kingdom.
It was not until he was asked the Nomads might attend his royal banquet that he even saw a few of them in the flesh.
And, indeed, they were more beautiful even than had been described to him; the women were tall and strong, with proud faces and shapely bodies. The men were lean and nimble, with full, handsome faces, and soft, sleek features.
Even the Emperor found himself quite taken with them, but he had his wives and his mistresses and so he simply smiled weakly and broke bread with the guests, some of his people able to translate the words they spoke.
The Emperor was wise, and so he spoke little and listened much to the words of his guests.
The name of their ruler his citizens translated to mean "Red Queen", but it was unclear even to them if she was merely a legendary figure or a real person who resided somewhere in the Far Shore, or once did.
They worshipped her as a de facto god none-the-less, they spilled the blood of their quarry in her name and followed her teachings, which they saw in the entrails of animals, and the flights of the local red birds.
They did not consider that their people had once crossed the ocean, but they spoke of a darkness below their feet, a great living sea of blackness which created things, including them, at least according to their legend, and so the land was also an expression of this darkness, and they were part of the land, keepers of it, their duty to welcome guests to this living land and to teach them, in time, the secret of the darkness below.
The Emperor listened carefully to all of this and he turned it over in his mind.
The Nomads were not a bodily threat to his people, they possessed no army worthy of note, but they were strange, beautiful, and they were compelling storytellers and myth-makers, even through a translator.
Their beliefs in the darkness below, and the Red Queen, were compelling enough to be shared among the people of the Emperor's lands, and such ideas would easily lead to superstition, which would lead to division, which would lead to a loss of shared purpose. Surely many of his people would be tempted to go with the Nomads, to marry their beautiful men and women, and that would be complex and fought with torn loyalties; such children would be torn between life under the Emperor and the life of the Nomads.
The Emperor's new kingdom was too young to suffer such schisms, and without a sure foothold, without a solid population, he could not afford to lose people to the enchanting Nomads, not until the foundation of his kingdom was finished, at least.
But how to bar his people from such friendships and marriages as would surely happen in time, without seeming to over-legislate on this harmless, and welcoming group? Surely banning them from his lands would lead to ill-feelings and discontent among his citizens?
And, perhaps in another cycle of the Nomadic travels, his kingdom would be ready for true integration with the Nomads, and he would be prepared to lose some of his men and woman to their allure?
"In the land we are from." The Emperor said weakly, to his translator, "A great light shines bright in the sky, and, at night, a great orb hangs among glittering stars. Below our feet is not living darkness, but soil and rock. We left behind the gods of our land, knowing that we would encounter new gods on this far shore, but we will not worship this Red Queen, not until she hangs an orb in the sky to light up the dark nights in this land."
It took some time to translate the reply from the handsome Nomads, and, in that time, the Emperor looked his weary eyes with them gauging their every look.
For the gods in their homeland had hung the moon in the sky to give them light in the nighttime, and though the Emperor had no real desire to challenge the Red Queen, he felt that the best course of action was to show her weakness, and make her less enticing.
But the reply which came was not what the Emperor had anticipated.
The Nomads said that when they next moved on that they would beseech their Goddess to send a light to light up the night sky. All that they asked was that they be allowed to finish their sacred rites in the Emperor's land and then move on before the winter arrived. They would return within seven winters, to once again visit this part of their sacred lands.
True to their word, they were determined to be helpful, just as their Goddess commanded.
"Until your Goddess proves herself to us," The Emperor said, weakly, "Then you may only say your final prayers and then begone, and, in seven winters, if we see the light in night sky, then we, too, shall worship the Red Queen and build a temple for her upon our high cliffs."
And the beautiful Nomads were... pleased with this arrangement, which the Emperor supposed was a good thing; he hoped that in seven winters his kingdom would be ready to mingle with the Nomads proper.
And so the Emperor was returned to this throne of polished stone, and the Nomads said their final prayers to the land and left with the promise to return.
And time passed as it always does, the Emperor's children carried on their work on his castle, and on their farms, and they build fine homes for themselves.
But children are slow to grow, and even slower to educate and train, and the Emperor grew worried that the return of the Nomads would unavoidably break the cohesion of his society.
One winter passed, and then two, and after the third winter the Emperor received a dream from the Red Queen; she appeared before him as a fox with a fine red coat, and she lead him to a clearing in a great forest, and showed him the moon in the sky above his new land.
The Emperor was bemused by this dream, and another soon followed wherein the Red Queen appeared to him as a bear with a red crown and she showed him a bloody altar on which a boy lay, naked, and upon the sacrificer driving a knife into his chest he did cry out and from his mouth rose the moon into the sky.
But the sacrificer in the dream had been the Emperor himself, and the sacrifice of the boy had been carried out in the hall where he had his throne.
The dreams left the Emperor troubled, for her knew that they were not ordinary dreams, as they did not seem to come from his own mind, and he feared that the Red Queen really could fulfil his demand for a moon to light up the night. He supposed that, on the one hand, such a powerful god would be useful to worship, but, on the other hand, such a show of power would surely increase the allure of the Nomads.
Another winter passed as the Emperor's children continued to build, and yet another dream came to the Emperor. In this dream the Red Queen appeared as a human, in a dress soaked with blood, and she said to the Emperor, "My child approaches you, he carries a salver mark. Feed him, bathe him, clothe him, crown him, and, when the darkest night comes, spill his blood in the forest, and his soul will light the night forever."
And the Emperor awoke, and at first he felt worried because if this Red Queen really could deliver on his impossible demand then he would be forced to build a temple, as he had promised, and to worship the Red Queen.
But then, on the other hand, this interesting development lead to potential advantages; if the Red Queen could hang a light in the night sky then it's possible she could do other things, and, in that sense, worshipping her only made sense.
Truly, there was no path by which the Emperor could fail to prosper; either the Red Queen failed to deliver and the Emperor continued to refuse relations from the Nomads, or her gained a very powerful ally.
The Emperor was carried to his throne that morning feeling quietly confident, but still maintaining his normal caution in the face of things uncertain.
The Emperor had begun to think that his dreams were just that, dreams, until one day in late Autumn when a band of four Nomads sought entry to his kingdom. Curious, the Emperor allowed them entry, and he was soon greeted by a gang of four Nomads: one man, two women, and a boy in his early teens, naked as the day he was born, bearing a silver mark on his chest.
The adult Nomads threw him, rather unceremoniously, on the floor and he looked up at the Emperor,
with rather beautiful eyes,
and the Emperor found himself unable to speak for what was probably about a minute or so.
His court and the Nomads assumed that he was deep in thought, as he always was, but, in truth, he found himself quite unable to think at all... for the first time in his life.
The boy was just so... perfect... so luminous... so
beautiful.
And, when the Emperor did finally come back to reality, he remembered, through the strange fog in his mind what he had been told by the Red Queen: "feed him, bathe him, clothe him, crown him and -"
"- spill his blood in the forest?"
The Emperor ordered the boy to be given the finest food in the kingdom, and for him to be washed in the purest water in the land.
The Nomads seemed please with this, perhaps glad that the Emperor was obeying the instructions of the Red Queen, and the boy was given a seat at the grand table and foods of all kinds were put out for him, still naked, and the Emperor couldn't take his eyes off of him, and he did not hear the questions from his courtiers.
The boy seemed pleased with his food, but he was aware that the Emperor was watching him very closely, and it seemed to make him uncomfortable somewhat, though he ate like he had been starved.
The Nomads spoke a little to those who understood their language and requested nothing but to be allowed to stay until they could rejoin their people.
Once again the Emperor found himself unable to reply, though he did give a nod, in the end.
Eventually the boy was washed and clothed in the finest fabrics that his people could spin, fit for the Emperor himself.
The boy looked unspeakably beautiful in his fine clothes, and he picked up a few words of the local language in a few weeks, but the other Nomads would take nothing to do with him, telling the Emperor, via translation, that the boy was "forbidden", and "belonged to the Red Queen and the Emperor."
... "When the longest night arrived, spill his blood in the forest?"
The boy was given a crown, like the Emperor's own, and given a stone seat to sit in, beside the Emperor, but the people began to notice that the Emperor was distracted and they began to grow frustrated with his mumbled guidance, which once was what guided their lives.
But the Emperor's mind was fogged, and his heart felt stronger than ever, as did his body, as if invigorated by some new energy.
The Emperor could not make sense of it; he had his wives and mistresses but none of them even came close to the beauty of the sacrificial boy.
He was soft and had a pretty smile, with a noble bearing and such deep, thoughtful, pondering eyes.
In a dream the Emperor saw the Red Queen once again and she breathed the words to him: "The longest night approaches, grand Emperor, let the boy scream out his soul and let his light hang in the sky."
But the longest night came and went.
And the Nomads came again to the Emperor's lands, to find that sacrificial boy still sat by his side,
in a ruined hall,
in a kingdom starving,
and an Emperor sitting on a small throne,
with a boy seated on the high stone seat,
smiling.