Gods of Green Mountain (23 page)

Sharita met his eyes, delving deep into his, wondering if he could be serious. "Father, that is a very frightening theory, and are we near Gods?"

Could he tell her? "No! Definitely not yet!" Ras-Far thought; someday when she was older, he would tell her all he feared, and hoped wasn't true. Tenderly he brushed her satin-smooth cheek. He would give his everlasting soul to make everything perfect for this girl that was dearer to him than his life. He kissed her cheek and said good night, and told her not to dream, except perhaps of romance in the garden with some handsome young man--she did have a handsome young man to dream about, didn't she?

Color flooded her cheeks before she hugged him tight. "Good night to you, Father, and don't you dream at all. You looked so tired, and so worried. Go to bed and forget all your troubles. Haven't you always told me that tangled yarn has a way of unknotting itself if you just shake it up a bit?"

Shake it up a bit? Ras-Far smiled. Oh, she did have a way with her, better than ten sons! The exact solution!

He would shake up the whole of Upper and Lower Dorraine and give them something new to think about!

Book Three

The Journey

Prologue

T
here was a man, older than the hills, perhaps as old as the Green Mountain itself. He lived alone, the life of a hermit, on the topmost pinnacle of the crystal palace, just a wee bit taller than that of the Princess Sharita. Occasionally, when she was on her terrace balcony, and he was on his, they could just faintly see each other. The princess would always lift her hand and wave, just as he always did. Sometimes she blew him a kiss, and he would pretend to catch it and send it back to her. Sometimes if this old, old man listened most keenly, he could hear her voice as she called to him a greeting, but his voice was too small to reach her ears. The hand he lifted to wave to her was twisted and gnarled with age, with ugly raised veins, like a relief map of his life.

He was known to everyone as Es-Trall, the Star Drinker. For he was wise, as if he had drunk heavily of the wisdom of the stars. Once he had stood tall, in his youth; now he was small and wizened, with a white beard that almost touched his feet. But his eyes were as young and bright as the stars he studied and noted upon in his huge black book.

It was to him the king was going, as he trod the long bluish corridors of the palace until he came upon a secret place where the twisting stairs were, stairs so steep and spiraling, it was no wonder Es-Trall stayed up where he was. The king would have made a lift-shaft for his use, if Es-Trall wanted. But the wise old man thought it better to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to find him, and as difficult as possible for himself to resist the temptation that once in a while came--to be again a part of the life that went on below.

It was Es-Trall who could reach in the configurations of the heavens all that was foreordained for mankind. It was he who had first talked to Ras-Far of the "war" that was coming to El Dorraine: a civil war, the very worst kind of war.

The Challenge
of the King

T
he king found the old man crouched low before his telescope, leaving only to note down with practiced precision the paths of the stars. "Good light to you, Ras-Far," Es-Trall greeted without turning away from his occupation. "I heard your steps coming up my stairs--there is no one who walks quite the way you do."

This was the only person in all the lands, with the exception of the queen, who dared to use such familiarity with his royal majesty. But then, Es-Trall was already an old man when the king was but a child chasing bees from flower to flower.

"I can never take you by surprise," answered the king as he fell wearily into a chair. "As for me, I have surprises every day of my life."

"Of course, my son, your troubles are familiar to me, and unfortunately, here on this chart I have mapped out other surprises for you." He turned to give the king a toothless smile that twinkled his bright eyes, and lent his ancient face a kind of touching charm. "Do you care to hear about them now, or shall we save them for tomorrow?"

The king sighed. "Fire away, Es-Trall. Since I have already climbed those stairs, I might as well listen, or else I will stay awake all night wondering what you have to say."

Es-Trall perched himself upon a high stool so he appeared an old eagle, ready to fly, and when he had finished his long and very ominous prophecy for the future, Ras-Far sat very quietly, his long face pale and grim.

The wisdom of long years lay deep in the depths of the wise old man's rather remarkable eyes. There was love there too. He reached out to touch the king with his warped hand. "I am sorry I could not give you a better report, but many times I have gone over my charts, and always I come up with the same facts."

"Es-Trall, I believe you are an extremely gifted man. I always have. I suspect I always will. Perhaps the stars speak sincerely. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe men cannot alter their course and change their destination. Certainly we don't have to follow a path just because it is there."

"Ah, my dear son, that is not at all what I am implying. That is why I speak, else I would keep my forecast of doomsday to myself, and let it come about. When we know a drink is poisoned, do we have to lift the cup to our lips and swallow the contents?"

The king leaned forward, clasping his hands together above his knees. "All right, fate is handing us a poisoned cup. So it is written in the stars. If then we can alter the course of our destination by refusing to drink the wine, of what use then are your charts, what is the use of all your study? If we can avoid the foreordained, then what is written in the stars mean nothing."

"Oh, Ras-Far, you are tired and not thinking well. And you, my very best student! I am disappointed!" As old as he was, Es-Trall jumped down from the stool and bounced over to a huge chart on the wall. He picked up a long, slick white stick and pointed to a spot on the dark blue paper where two white stars were sure to collide!

"See there!" said the Star Drinker. "That represents Upper and Lower Dorraine headed on a collision course. But for every path marked out in the sky, there is always at least one alternative, for the winds of fate are fickle, capricious, and do not always blow with consistency. We always have a choice of paths to follow. Right now our people are choosing the wrong path. If they continue, this is the inevitable result." His slick white pointer halted on a burst of color--the collision point--the color of blood.

"The stars are our guideposts, if we allow them to point the way. But, as always, even guideposts can be interpreted in several ways. So that is why you and I have brains. We take what the Gods give us to see, and use what the Gods gave us to think with, and we combine what our eyes see with the knowledge our brains have stored, and we seek a solution to avoid the inevitable."

"How reasonable that all sounds," said Ras-Far with an ironic smile. "As one of us, Es-Trall, you know we are a stubborn race. We are not the kind to be easily diverted from a decision once made, but, I really don't believe a firm commitment has been made yet by either side. So there is some hope. I have resolved that war will not come to El Dorraine in my time, and I too am a stubborn man. So let us put our heads together, Es-Trall, and see what we can come up with. I am determined that Sharita shall sit on the throne in my place one day, for I can grow as weary of responsibility as anyone else, and she is young and more qualified than either you or I, or even she suspects."

"Ah, but she is too lovely to have brains as well," said Es-Trall somewhat cynically. "Often I watch her through my telescope, and never have these old eyes of mine rested on anyone as beautiful as she. She has combined in her the best in all of us."

The king smiled widely, knowing much better than Es-Trall just what his only daughter possessed. "In a few years, I'll bring Sharita up here with me, and I'll tell her who you are, and for yourself, you will find out that she is not just a pretty picture, with nothing behind that perfect face and exquisite form."

Es-Trall sighed heavily this time. "Ah, to be young again, with the prospects of having a girl like Sharita for a wife. It grows lonely in a tower, all alone." And here the old man's voice choked up, and he looked toward a picture of a woman he had once loved. "Death is a long time in coming for me," he almost whispered, "but I would see Sharita before that long-awaited day, so I will hold on until then."

Getting to his feet, Ras-Far went to the small, crooked figure and embraced him. "Es-Trall, if I have my way, you will hold on through all of Sharita's reign. You have been invaluable to mine, and you will be to hers, and those of her children."

Es-Trall gave the king a long and very troubled look.

"Don't worry," said Ras-Far with understanding. "I have my very best scientists working on that problem, and they are making some advances. If they but had a better thinking machine that they could feed with more complex facts. But our young men are bright, and there are a few who know the full truth about our future. They are as anxious as you or I to see it solved. So, do hold on, Es-Trall, as long as it takes. The pufars have supplied us with everything. They will supply us with the answer to our greatest riddle as well."

The first dawn was rosy over the Scarlet Mountains before Ras-Far descended the steep spiraling staircase and stumbled exhausted to his waiting bed.

He snatched a few hours of sleep before he was up and dressed and calling for a meeting of all the major and minor provinces of El Dorraine. The twenty bakarets met in the circular rotunda of the crystal palace two days later. It seemed, just viewing them, that both sides were determined to show defiance to the other. Never had the king seen his governors of the upper borderlands so richly dressed for an official meeting. They sported their very best clothing, as if going to a ball, glittering with jewelry. It angered Ras-Far just to see them, while he himself was plainly dressed, though on his bright red hair he did wear his crown.

In contrast to the rich, glittering clothes made of the pufar roots and spun into luxurious fabrics, the Lowers wore the old-styled clothes of El Sod-a-Por. Rough, coarse cloth, dun colored, homespun, and crudely made, and their costumes were topped off with coats made of puhlet hides or furs. He swore to himself, outraged that they could do this--grown men acting like children! And this was a momentous meeting.

He saw the way his upper governors looked sneeringly down their noses at the lower bakarets, clearly demonstrating their contempt for such crudeness, such barbaric behavior. The Lowers glared back at their disdain with hostile, challenging eyes.

Ras-Far scanned his eyes over all in a chastising way before he assumed his place at the head of the long, long table. Only for a moment did he remain seated, just long enough for all the bakarets to sit. Then rising to his feet again, he held his hand up, a signal that they were to remain seated.

In a calm voice, the king began his address, speaking with serious intensity. Despite themselves, the worst of his opponents could not fail to perceive his dignity and his strength, nor could they fail to see his great love and concern for all of his peoples.

Ras-Far spoke from his heart, forgetting the carefully plotted phrases he and Es-Trall had compiled until the wee hours of the morning. He began:

"That this meeting today is necessary distresses me greatly. It is not a fitting time for chastisement, since we are in the midst of our most fearful grief, and also in the midst of the most catastrophic trouble ever to have fallen upon our land. And we are not inexperienced with disaster and harassment. The Gods of the Mountain never inflicted on our most ancient ancestors a tragedy more devastating to our souls, or to the peace of our conscience, than this terrible and shocking atrocity that happened at Bari-Bar.

"We look now, you and I, from one to the other, and seek a place to lay the guilt--to rid ourselves of the responsibility. And we are, oh, so very ready to believe it was a fault of one side or the other. In fact, we want to believe it is someone's fault, not our own.

"But there is no one here, Upper or Lower, who can tell us what really occurred on that most infamous of all nights! None of us will never know the truth of that evil story--not you, not I, or our children, or our grandchildren, for all that could have answered are dead and destroyed.

"So, what happened at Bari-Bar is beyond recompense. We can cry, we can moan, and we can bewail--but it is over and done and will never be undone. Now, are we, the living, willing to destroy each other in revenge? Is revenge ours to take? Is not punishment of this most inauspicious kind reserved for the Gods alone to deliver? Do we not risk a greater retaliation from those same Gods if we presume upon what is rightfully theirs?"

The twenty important men at that table glanced fearfully about. Secretly many made the old thumb signal of benediction under the shield of the table, even those most sophisticated. Only one man was not disquieted. Ron Ka jumped to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at the king, and shouted out in a loud angry voice: "Do not try to turn us away from what we mean to do, with threats of retaliation from the Gods! Too long we have remained quiet and servile under your domination! We on the lower borderlands will be
free
men, ruled by no one! Mark this, King Ras-Far, from this day forward, we of Lower El Dorraine will be subject only to ourselves! We cut the tie, here and today; we are no longer one nation under your rule!"