Kalpa Imperial (12 page)

Since it had been made clear that he was to go as fast as possible, he set out for the mountain city. Foreseeing that he might be observed, he arrived as a redeemer, a pilgrim, on foot and poorly dressed. So much so that some gave him alms and others bowed their heads as he passed. When an ancient, poverty-stricken woman called him to come in and share her midday meal, he wouldn’t sit at the table, but ate humbly crouching in the doorway. That was when he discovered that he liked this job, not as much as the job of emperor, maybe, but it was all he had. That same evening he preached for the first time.

He didn’t himself know very clearly what he was preaching about, and at first he had to be careful not to get mixed up or contradict himself, but so what?—if he couldn’t be an emperor he’d be a saint. Chance certainly favored him; he’d found the perfect stage for his sanctification. The city was full of petty little people who had nothing but their little jobs and their little superstitions all ready to be set in order and pigeonholed. There were the invalids, too, trying to get well or trying to die, and their relatives, hoping the invalids would get well or would die, according to the closeness of the relationship and the quantity of money involved. And all of them welcomed piety and preaching.

The emperor’s cousin struck it rich. Not in gold, for as he won converts and began to believe he really was the mouthpiece of Truth and Goodness, he didn’t need to fake it any longer but embraced poverty with all his heart; but in prestige, fame, respect, that’s to say, in power of a certain kind. And power is what he’d been looking for. He preached in the streets, lived frugally, went barefoot, walked with his hands joined and his eyes downcast, never raised his voice or indulged himself in bad temper or anger or impatience. He wasn’t a saint, but he seemed one.

Now let me tell you, sanctity is catching, much more so than vice. Obviously, Heldinav’Var never converted anybody nor even tried to, since those who succeeded in getting close to him were already convinced, but his cousin converted multitudes of unbelievers and persuaded many to pray, to live frugally and chastely, to fast and sacrifice, and other idiocies of the genre. And he induced even more to take up preaching.

A year after the precipitate departure from the capital of the Baron of the Towers, now the Servant of the Faith, the mountain city had become the most pious, holy, and overwhelmingly prayerful city the Empire had ever known. A hundred religions and a thousand sects sprouted and thrived as, in other times, painting and poetry had sprung up, or the curative waters, or the curfew, or luxury, or fortune-tellers’ tents. Going out in the street you weren’t pounced on by people selling baskets, jewelry, carpets, crockery, or herbs, but by people selling eternal salvation, which is a treacherous bit of merchandise, believe me, requiring wit and prudence in the handling, since even when you can sell it for a good price, once the bargain’s sealed it can always turn against the seller. But like baskets, crockery, and carpets, religion offered plenty of choices. The priests revealed to the people that the roads leading to bliss were almost infinite in number and followed the most surprising routes. From frugality and abstinence to the unbridled exercise of every passion and perversion, by way of spiritual and bodily disciplines, the study of arcane texts, contemplation, renunciation, introspection, prayer, you name it, everything was a means of reaching a paradise which, according to the divinity-peddlers, could be attained by just a little effort and, of course, a little donation, usually directly proportionate to the client’s—I mean the believer’s—bank account.

Yet those were the years in which the face and body of the city changed the least. This really isn’t surprising, given that religion doesn’t take up much room; some people say it requires no room at all, at least not externally. A space about the size of a dining room was big enough for a good-sized family, with a platform or pulpit, or a column, or a niche, or a well, or some cushions, or nothing, depending upon which route to heaven was being followed. And a lot of people held their services outdoors, perhaps with the idea that without a roof to interrupt them the prayers would get aloft faster. Change, what there was of it, occurred on the roofs and rooftops and terraces, from which rose the symbols of the innumerable religions—images, stars, crosses, spheres, shafts, some of them fancy, some of them humble, all competing for the most followers in the shortest time. For there were feuds, battles, even wars between the sects, over a forgive-my-sins here or an absolve-me there, over a dozen renegades or a half-dozen apostates, over a ritual murder or a tonality in the dogma. But that brought no changes. That people were arguing over religion instead of politics or money didn’t change the direction of streets or knock down old buildings or get new ones built. It merely increased the population. No longer did people come from afar seeking a cure for their ills in the water that bubbled from the depths; but they came seeking in the signs and symbols erected on the rooftops a cure for other ills, not so very different from the first ones, may I remark.

The Emperor Heldinav’Var died, and his cousin who had been Baron of the Towers and Walls died. We know who the vicious emperor’s successor was, but the preacher had no successor. His sect split and split again until it was lost in the sea of creeds and soon forgotten. The city reached its apogee as a religious center, in fact, some hundred years later, under the reign of Sderemir the Borenid, a soldier of fortune in the west who, having attained the throne by unspeakable means, became a good ruler, much better than many who had royal blood and a right to sit on the throne.

To get from the western provinces to the capital, the Borenid certainly had no need to go via the city of the religions, but to understand his devious itinerary, one must remember what his intentions were. And he never forgot the generous welcome and the favors shown him, most of them quite disinterested, when he encamped at the gates of the city. So, three years later, when he took the throne of Empire, he presented the city with gifts and authorized special subsidies for it, proclaiming it Mother of True Religion.

A fine name. And a clever one. Let us recall that the Borenid, that apparently brutal man, that deceptive warrior who knew the souls of men even better than he knew swords and shields and chariots, always distrusted any power attained by inexplicable forces. Thanks to his subtlety disguised as benevolence, every creed, every church of the mountain city was convinced that it was the owner of the True Religion, and swelled up with pride, and pride is an ill counselor. Every creed and church looked down with placid condescension on its rivals. So many donations, so much official recognition could only be the perdition of the thousand sects. It’s much more stimulating to be marginal, to act without recognition, than to receive public thanks; it’s through struggle and polemic that the True Religions grow robust, invent new ways of drawing people, fabricate saints and prophets, apostles and popes, sharpen their wits, freshen up the merchandise and advertise it cleverly. But what do they become if all they do is repeat today and tomorrow and next year the same thing they said yesterday, the same words, the same gestures, the same expressions of piety and conviction, without risks, without competence, without ups and downs, without, in a word, martyrdom? What they become is boring. The priests got tired, the gods got tired, and the faithful got very tired. Fewer and fewer pilgrims traveled north. Since the city still had from its years as the capital all it needed to support itself without relying on goods from other places, the highways leading to it fell into disuse, got cracked, grassy, full of ant hills and badgers’ holes, and the Empire, this time, really forgot it. It was remembered only by the drivers of the cargo-caravans going to and from the port, but that’s very few out of the huge population of the biggest empire known in human history. At best it was a subject of a little interest to the men who drank and smoked in the bars of the seaport; to the other cities, the other ports, the other states, and the capital, it was nothing. The Borenid ruled for many years. Since he was an exceptional man, many say he was the worst emperor ever to occupy the throne and others say he was beyond all comparison the best. Be that as it may, he didn’t forget the city of the true religions; they say he never forgot anything at all, and that may be true. He didn’t forget the city, but he didn’t worry about it either, and, without entirely neglecting it, since at least once a year he sent a confidential agent to look about and sniff the air and listen to what was going on, he classified it as a harmless place.

So it was throughout the Borenid’s life and that of his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. The city lived on, silent, obscure, with its merchants, its rich and poor, its courts of law, its women of the streets, its officials, kids, madmen, its holidays, schools, theaters, professional societies, with everything a city should have, isolated, deaf and dumb, its back turned to the Empire, alone. Since it had been solid, rich, great, it still had the public buildings and mansions that had been built to last, but it was all getting covered with moss and lichen and vines. Abandoned pools filled up with water-lilies, wild varieties of drahilea grew in the marble hair of the statues. Everything was yielding, fleshy, full of leaves and green stalks swollen with lazy sap. Many say it had never been more beautiful, and they may be right. It was absorbed into the mountains and all that grows on the mountains, becoming part of the earth within which it had been born deep down in the caverns. Maybe it would have been all right if it had gone on that way; today it would be a vegetable city inhabited by willowmen and palmwomen, a city swaying in the wind and singing and growing in the sunlight. But human beings are incapable of being still and letting things happen without interference. Some say this is how it should be, since restlessness and dissatisfaction are the basis of progress, and that’s an opinion that has to be taken into account, though it’s not really worth much consideration.

To explain what happened next, we have to go back to the Borenid. That extraordinary man, strong as an ox and clever as a fox, frugal as a saint although there was nothing saintly about him at all, that conqueror risen from the mists, that king engendered in a plebeian womb by a nameless vagabond, not only knew how to keep the Empire unified and satisfied, peaceful, prosperous, active, and proud throughout his whole reign, but also managed to make his achievement last. What’s more, his heirs didn’t try to undo it. Generation after generation of emperors and empresses benefited from the legacy of the Borenid, and though not one, except perhaps Evviarav II, the Drakuvid, had his strength or his vision, all of them were sensible, just, and prudent. What more can one ask? Then the dynasty of the Eilaffes, also remote descendants of the Borenid, but in whom the traces of his blood were slight and dubious, came to the throne, and with them came catastrophe.

This time the South played no part. The South remained tranquil and disposed to sneer, half amused, half hopeful, at their northern brothers tearing themselves to pieces. And their northern brothers as if to please them put on a great show, violent, tumultuous, filling earth and sky with battle-cries and screams of pain. Yes—I’m talking about the Six Thousand Day War. Which didn’t last six thousand days, nowhere near it, and nobody seems to know why it got called that, except some obsessive collector of historical curiosities who might explain that it took about six thousand days for the Empire to recover from the war of the three dynasties and to re-establish order, peace, and its borders. Or so say the academic historians. Maybe the true truth is something else, but I only say maybe. Maybe the true truth is that it took six thousand days, more or less, for Oddembar’Seil the Bloodthirsty to seek, locate, and exterminate the members of the other two dynasties and all their followers. What we do know is that the whole North was one great battlefield, and that since fighting was the sole occupation of the time, the northern seaport was paralyzed, and no freight-caravans passed by the mountain city. The war itself was far away; the city continued to be draped in moss and ivy, with flowers in the water tanks and on the cornices, bright-colored beetles hiding in the stone eyes of the statues and the fountains, and so it went on almost until the end, and all might have remained the same, maybe right on up to now, if Bloodthirsty, who fully deserved his appellation, hadn’t been betrayed by an ambitious general.

Oddembar’Seil had to flee, but had nowhere to flee to. The South was still neutral, but not safe; the South was never safe for power-seekers. And Oddembar’Seil sought power. He fled northward. Not alone, to be sure. He divided his men into groups which blended in with the various groups fighting each other in every region they had to cross through, and pushed them on northward, far north, in a desperate and not very rational effort to reach the sea, to find ships in which they could sail down the coast on the old shipping route and disembark and attack from the east. It looked as if he might succeed. Most of his troops caught up to him in the foothills, and on a summer morning they marched off again and came to the gates of the city. I don’t know, nobody knows, whether Bloodthirsty cursed or grinned; I don’t know whether he looked at the unknown city with greed, or scratched his head in puzzlement. I do know he entered it peacefully, his men carrying their weapons handy but not brandishing them, and that the inhabitants of the mountain city watched him with curiosity. I know that they even approached him and offered food and shelter. He needed both, but did not accept them. I know that the enemy army caught up to him there, striking at the rear guard while it was half in the city streets, half still on the plains. Good-bye ships, good-bye shipping route and hopes of a surprise attack from the east. Everything was lost, but when you have to fight, you fight.

There have been hideous battles in the long history of the Empire. It’s even possible there have been some, a few, crueler than the one that was later called the Battle of the North, as if there was only one north, one battle. But it’s hard for anyone to imagine what happened, and I don’t know if I can give you any idea of it. I’ll try, that’s all I can do. Oddembar’Seil the Bloodthirsty gave a great shout when he heard that the enemy was advancing and his men were in a vulnerable position, unready, some of them crowded into the narrow city streets and others scattered out through the fields around it. Concerning these men of his, you can say anything that’s usually said about soldiers and warriors, but not that they were cowardly or undisciplined. They heard him shout and they regrouped, took arms, fell in as best they could, and tried to repel the attack. Bloodthirsty leapt across the fallen and ran to fight in the front rank, shoulder to shoulder with his men. He was no coward either.