Kthaahthikha
One man, a word-processor, and too much free time.
28 June, 2005
At the Gates of Eternity
It was a long and winding morning in the sunshine of the sea. The streets, narrow and broad, seemed to twist at there own volition. The urchin, named Siloi, attested this to be a common fact, and spoke of times passed when the Caliph first came to power. Riots, he said, and untold civil discord, had wracked Khahir from every quarter.
The Caliph had settled upon the city in a flier made of bronze, and declared his right through the display of various basalt marques which scribes attested the veracity of upon the alter of Revelation. As time passed, and the Caliph sought to reassert this ancient, uncertain dominance, sages and saints upon the altar had denounced him as a false prophet, a sower of dark epochs, and from the altar had risen-up a translucent emerald sprite - this ghoulish, necrous, nacrous fire that enshrouded the soothsayers and consumed them to fine white ashes in refutation of their lies.
Sects had formed, cults of doom-sayers proclaiming the Caliph some dark enchanter from untold realms. That such was a possibility I well knew, and listened as Siloi told of the battles that had raged in the streets, and the fires and famine and riots until the very walls themselves encircled crowds and refused to let them pass.
'And ever since that time, the roadways change endlessly, so that one might walk forever along the same road and never reach its end'.
Thus were the rumours of the nature of Kahir confirmed. The swirling, inconstant map of the formulae of Ish, transcribed in mutable characters upon the very face of the city. Such sorcery was strong beyond any that I had encountered, spawned no doubt of some strange source that I must unearth if my mission were to be successful.
The path we took was a tree-lined avenue, broad and airy with fountains at the heart of crossroads. The sun, hanging away to my right, brought sweat out upon my forehead and left me feel rather tired. Eventually, I hailed a rickshaw, and asked the runner to take us to the palace. He set-off with good speed, and i am sure that he took us several miles before I noted that the sun now appeared hanging on my right.
I looked along the avenue. In the distance were the tips of the palace domes and spires. Some enchantment was afoot and I, far from my laboratories and with my tools despoilt, was forced to bear it as the rickshaw-man continued along the road, the sun turning almost imperceptably overhead.
'It's no good,' I said in time. 'It appears that we will never make it at this rate.' I gave the man his fare and we set-out again by foot. Now Siloi and I made steady progress, the sun having begun to dip with the later hours of the afternoon. The shadows stayed upon my right as the spires slowly rose above the horizon, and after what seemed hours we stood alone amidst an enormous quartz-pathed square.
Over us, looming, was the palace. Siloi murmured something fearful about the emptiness of the place, that the bazaars would never clear so early and that the sun had ceased to fall. I observed this also, and turning I made for the palace gates, a portal of oak sheathed over in gold-leaf and inlaid with platinum.
There were no guards, for a magnate such as this had little need of them. Twin towers of carven stone hung ready to fall over us, shaped in mimicry of the totems of one of the ancient polar tribes. My fist fell towards the panel, but as it did the gates swung wide and before me stood a figure of uncertain features. This shadowed, shifting form, opening its mouth and speaking in a tone that seemed to bipass sound, greeted me in the ancient and near-forgotten tongue of Yar.
'Welcome,' spoke the figure. 'The Caliph awaits you with great eagerness. It has been some time since an individual of purely-intellectual curiosity came to call upon the treasure-hordes of Khahir.'
It beckoned me in, mtioning for Siloi to follow also. We entered a garden of twisting amber paths, and took turns at angles seemingly incorrect, almost impossible, along a gracefull curve that provided a view, when I turned to look, of infinity spread-out across a glittering, star-draped field.
'Not for all, this passage,' spoke the figure. 'Emissaries and emirs, all pass through the gates in the realm above, that which is formed of illusions by my master to provide a shell within which the delicate clockwork of reality might run its couse.'
I took heed of his words. Uncertainty beset me at every turn. It seemed asthough we had entered some prism, a multi-faceted globe, and every turn of feet or head set us tumbling through a portal into another such place, being drawn ever onwards through infinite chambers to a single point of azure light that somehow showed itself above these flickering images of places, times, thought, emotions and matter.
Tom Meade, 6:58 pm
