Chapter Twenty Four
A
decade and a half had passed since Ragarian, the last Priest of Priests, had
surrendered the Holy City of Ka to the Army of the Khan. The old gods were
already being forgotten, their temples converted to the new One and Only God
throughout the land, and the old order of priests and bishops who had once been
the privileged class of Khanlar, had been replaced by a kinder legion of holy
men who lived far more frugal lives. The monastery towns, with their
orders of Warrior Monks, had also disappeared quietly into history, leaving
fewer legends than the millions of nameless slaves who had once toiled across
the land. Slavery had ended almost without a murmur, owners and ex-slaves
being swallowed up in the concourses of commerce, to deal or labor as their
talents permitted.
Like the calm after the storm, or the satisfaction after a feast, Khanlar had quietly succumbed to a quiet life of building and expanding its grasp on true civilization. The City of Ka had subsided into being a quiet university city, while Asiga had doubled in size to accommodate the new administration. After the Khan, Perigan Marlinger was perhaps the best known man in all of Khanlar, and his quest for order had moved the continent into a well adjusted machine that ran everything that constituted life these days within the Nations. However, there really were no Nations anymore, they were little more than provinces, without power or independence of any kind. A craftsman from Vanzor might just as well find himself working and living in Navis as he might in his own home city.
The
Director General's vision of a united Khanlar as a single Nation was complete.
New roads connected the country like ribbons of stone, built by laborers from
every land and paid for by a single currency that had turned the old Nation's
coin into collector's pieces. Today every ship that sailed the oceans or
the inland waterways had a hull that was painted the uniform Khanlarian black
and no longer did it have the name of it's Nation painted on it's stern, but
rather the port from which it sailed.
The
Guilds had reassumed their control of Commerce within Khanlar with the Director
General's backing and support. No man worked a trade or a profession
without papers from the relevant Guild Master, and Perigan Marlinger controlled
the Guilds and the appointment of their Masters and Councils with a careful
political hand. For those who would try to cheat the Status Quo, there
were the Work Legions, an institution that Perigan had defended and nurtured
since the end of the War. Strike an anvil without papers from the Metal
Smith's Guild and you would find yourself lost in a forest work camp for twelve
months, sail on a ship without Seaman's Papers and you might not see the sea
again for five years. There was no underground economy in Khanlar, for
seven thousand ex-soldiers of the Khan's Regiments now served as the Khan's
Police, and the General of the Khan's Police reported directly to the Director
General.
Prince
Jarin was the Khan of Khanlar, yet since his wife's death he had become a
besotted drunk, quite often not able to remember the year, let alone the day of
the week, and General Sandar who commanded the Khan's Armed Forces was a
soldier, who always looked to the Director General for direction.
Despite
the obvious dictatorial power that Perigan Marlinger enjoyed, Khanlar had never
known better times. It was truly a golden age. The granaries were
full, employment was easy to find and well paid. Crime was all but
unknown, for there was no escape or haven for anyone who was stupid enough to
revert to it as a career. Work
hard and prosper, oppose the system and suffer had become the code of
the day and Khanlarians throughout the land knew that it would be unwise to try
to oppose his system.
Ragarian,
the last Priest of Priests, suffered from being almost completely forgotten by
those he had once ruled, neglected in his lifetime sentence to isolation on the
island of Pazor. The once proud color maroon that had been the uniform of
the Army of the Church was now reserved for those who cleaned the streets and
maintained the sewers, as a color it was held in as much disrespect as a color
as the old gods were given compared to the Almighty One and Only God, no one
would use it for clothing, no more than they would smear cow dung on their faces
as make-up.
Khanlar had gone from one extreme to the other in a decade. Anarchy had been replaced with Order. Self serving individual preservation had been replaced by an overpowering need to be part of the ordered and tidy whole. And in the Director General's Palace in Asiga the diminutive Perigan Marlinger wore his power with conviction.
* * * * * * *
Epilogue or Prologue?
The
years had gone by very fast and this evening Prince Jarin dismissed the servant,
who had just cleared the plates from the table, with a quiet word of thanks and
turned back to face the others at the table. The occasion for the dinner
was his own birthday and the meal had as usual been beyond complaint of any
kind. As his guests talked amongst themselves, Jarin thought of those who
were not sat at the table and for a moment suffered great sadness.
Kirene,
his wife and the mother of his sons, had been taken from him before he had
achieved his greatest triumph and the pain still lived with him, but it was
Manator, his greatest advisor, who had died before they had finally overcome the
evil Church that had sent his murderers to his home, that Jarin missed dearly
this night. None of the men in the room tonight would have been in their
situation today, had not the Guardian General almost single-handedly put into
motion the events that had swept away the Old Order. Quietly suggesting,
advising, chiding yet rarely using to the full extent the power and authority
that were his to use, diplomacy and guidance had always been Manator's way.
This
night of all nights Jarin would have given almost anything to be able to spend
with his old friend and mentor, for these days the Khan often felt the malaise
of frustration and discontent. Like a horse kept in the stable, Jarin felt
as if he were all but unemployed these days, for there is little for a Warrior
King to do when there are no battles left to fight. Khanlar all but ran
itself these days, like a big efficient machine tended by an army of clerks and
managers, directors and deputies too numerous to know, whom his loyal Director
General managed with the ultimate of efficiency.
Jarin
had visited Lunza only a few weeks before to be present for his eldest son's
graduation from the University there. The place had been restored, as far
as any visitor would notice, from it's destruction by an army of fanatics during
the War, but behind the smart new facades Jarin knew that almost all of the
knowledge that place had once proudly stored was gone forever. A few of
the books had survived, to be stored with almost religious reverence in the new
library, but all of the machines had gone. The miracles would not return
to Khanlar either. The Belt of Power that had once protected him, had no
power today and the Guardian's staffs, still carried as symbols of authority,
would never again pulse with energy to protect their bearers. No lights
burned in the vaults these days when someone opened the doors. The vaults
were dead, and almost all the ancient knowledge had died with them.
Thinking
of his younger son Volan, Jarin also saw Kirene again in his mind. Not the
drunken peasant falling around the room and shouting insults, but the kind and
shy young Kirene whose love he had taken so long ago in a beautiful forest in
Natan. He had left his apartments the night Kirene had died giving him his
youngest son and he had never returned. All these years later guilt still
plagued him and the last coherent words his wife had taunted him with still
ended many a nightmare, even today.
Both
of his sons had been with them earlier, two intelligent handsome young men of
whom Jarin was more proud than he could ever tell them. They were
different from each other in many ways; Jatrin was sophisticated and
academic, yet no slouch in his military training and as fine a swordsman as any
man in Khanlar, whereas Volan was more out-going and adventurous. Larger
than his brother in size Volan had a voracious appetite, be it for food or
action and there were many times when Jarin had needed to take him to task ever
since the boy had been able to walk. Volan carried his mother's coloring,
in that he was blond like her, but both of his sons had Jarin's gray eyes.
Tamerin,
the greatest strategist Khanlar had ever known had died only a few months after
his mother, a year after the victory he had masterminded. History
mentioned the little Guardian often, but it gave Jarin the place of hero and
conqueror and credited him with the victories. Jarin knew however, that it
had been the brilliant mind of the sometimes absent-minded tactician that should
have been awarded the victor's laurels. It had been his nimble mind that
had discovered the weaknesses of their enemy and had countered them at every
turn, often to the complete bewilderment of his Lord who would eventually be
credited for the events that followed. Yet Tamerin would have seen no
problem with the way History had recorded the events, for to him the War had
been no more than an elaborate game of Khanlar, where he had used living beings
instead of play pieces.
Even
the seemingly invincible Colonel Zavir had quietly slipped away to meet his
maker during his sleep a year ago. Admiral Kovis had died a sailors death,
when his ship had gone down during a storm off Goja, two years after he had
taken the surrender of the Church Fleet in the Bay of Rangar and Razarian had
passed away only a few months back, after assuming Manator's role as Guardian
General for the last years of his life. The last Priest of Priests still
lived on, confined to the island of Pazor and many of the men who had assisted
in his downfall were gathered about the table that evening.
"I
sometimes wonder how long our dream will survive us my friends."
Jarin said quietly, almost to himself and yet the whole table went silent and
Perigan Marlinger, his loyal and efficient Director General, who was sat on the
Khan's right, lent over and answered the unasked question.
"Sire,
our dream will survive for all time, provided that we make provision for it to
be protected for that long, by those who are able to do so."
Said the Director General.
Jarin
looked at his most able administrator and yet again he was amazed at the man.
To look at Perigan was to see a gray haired and frail old man, yet within that
unimpressive body was a spirit that could not even contemplate the concept of
defeat, in anything he had ever attempted. Somewhere in the palace,
Perigan's wife Liana would be waiting for him even now. They had had four
children together and yet even today when they were in the room together, anyone
present soon found thoughts of romance leaking into their minds. The years
had been as kind to Liana as they had been unkind to her husband and her beauty
was enhanced by the obvious air of contentment that surrounded her. Often
those who did not know them, assumed immediately that Perigan was her father,
yet Jarin knew there was no man better loved by his wife in the whole of
Khanlar.
"Aye
Sire." It was the middle-aged Admiral Kamir, who had taken
old Kovis's place as commander of the fleet. "The
people will never allow themselves to be enslaved again and as long as freedom
survives, so shall our dream survive."
"Yet
less than half of our brave citizens even bothered to vote at the last elections
Kamir."
The Khan replied, "And
Perigan's new Order to force those who do not vote to pay a fine will only bring
more to the polling stations, it will not increase their ability to choose the
right advisors to serve on my Council."
The
conversation ebbed and flowed and the Khan's followers watched again as he
slowly sank into the depression for which he had become famous these last few
years, continuously refilling his glass until he was obviously the worse for the
drink. They were not to know the real cause of their Lord's discontent
however, for none of them had come to the play without a background and
experience to draw upon, as Jarin had.
Only
a few weeks ago he had taken a small party of his Guards and had returned to the
swamps of Mang, for the first time since he had awoken there, which was the
nearest thing to being born that he could claim. He had found the island,
where he had opened his eyes to discover that he had no memories and he had all
but stroked the tree that had supported him all those years before. It was
as if the years after that moment had never been. In the silence of the
swamps, with his men keeping a courteous distance and silence, he had stood on
that sorry spit of sand and thorn bushes for two hours and he had finally left
it feeling for all the world as if he had been no more that a puppet all those
years; moving from situation to situation upon the advice or direction of
others, until in the end he was the most powerful person in all Khanlar.
Yet if all of those people who had in fact molded and guided his life had not
arrived in it, he might today, still be building charcoal fires in the forest of
Natan.
An
hour or so later the gathering broke up and Jarin left the table for his bed,
staggering little as the result of the alcohol he had consumed, and most of the
others had soon gone to their own homes. Only Perigan Marlinger, General
Sandar and a few others remained at the table.
"What
do his doctors say Sandar?" Perigan asked, when only the
inner circle were left at the table.
"What
they always say. . ." The abrupt soldier answered.
"That
he is suffering a depression which no medicine can cure and for which no-one has
yet been able to find a cause. Seems his great-grandfather suffered the
same illness and in his case he finished up killing himself."
"Gods
protect him." Peran Vanquestor said, touching his heart and
forehead in the old country way of warding off evil spirits. "I
think it is the inactivity that is doing for him. He has nothing to do
that interests him any more. He has achieved all that he set out to
achieve and he feels like a race horse would feel if it were confined to pulling
a cart."
"Gods
protect us." Perigan said quite seriously.
"The
people see Jarin as almost divine, they see him as the keystone to everything we
have achieved and I have long wondered how they will react when he dies, God
knows what they would do if he committed suicide."
"Change
the subject." Sandar ordered, pouring himself another glass
of wine. "How
goes the Country?"
"Far
better than any of us dared even hope when we started out."
Replied Perigan, bringing a chuckle or two from those around the table. "If
we have a real problem it is that by improving the standard of life and wiping
out war, we seem to have a population that is growing far faster than we
expected. If I have any worries at all, it is that we shall have too many
people for the land to support a generation or two from now."
"I
concur." Peran Vanquestor agreed. "We
are already supporting twice as many people as we were when the Great War broke
out. We have replaced and doubled the population that were wiped out in
the Wars already and many of the children born after the Great War are now
having children of their own. We have not had a famine or a plague since
we put down the Old Order. Thirty years from now we could have doubled, or
perhaps even tripled, the number of people we will have to feed."
"What
happened to the ships we sent out looking for the fabled lands?"
Sandar asked Kamir. Interest around the table increased with Sandar's
words, for all of them had heard since children of the legendary lands across
the oceans, which were the basis of many of the oldest Khanlarian fairy tales.
"They've
only been gone a few weeks." Kamir replied,
"Yet
with every day I begin to
"Does
anyone know how this fairy tale idea of finding other lands across the oceans
ever came about." The questioner was a large red haired man
called Kapolar, who had turned the old Royal Courier Service into a civilian
mail carrying service after the war.
"It's
no fairy tale idea Kapolar." Replied Kamir,
"The
marble slab we found in the Palace at Ka showed several land masses other than
Khanlar on our planet. The slab was very old, so there is every
possibility it predates even the books that were destroyed when the Church
troops sacked Lunza. Also we have enough stories of strange clues washed
up on our beaches over the centuries. I myself have seen the beaded sandal
they found in Rigan fifty years ago."
"So
when are your ships supposed to return Kamir?" Sandar asked.
"They
carried provisions for three months, so if they do not find land they should be
back about five to seven weeks from today." Kamir replied.
As
Fate will sometimes do, the moment was too opportune for it to miss. Even
as Kamir finished the sentence, the door to the room opened and a flustered
sergeant ushered a young officer into the room. It was obvious that the
man had traveled some distance and he reported his presence with a smart
salute.
"Gentlemen. I am Lieutenant Tamason of the of the Lions Regiment. I come to report that the Khan's Expedition has found the fabled lands of the East and we have returned with two natives of those lands as captives. Our ships are anchored at Dang and we await orders."
* * * * * * *
A New and Uncharted Future
Perigan
Marlinger returned to his offices in Asiga, from the coastal port city of Dang,
in a troubled state of mind. Peran Vanquestor, General Sandar, Director
Materian and Admiral Kamir had traveled back with him and their moods were all
different. Materian, as Director of the Royal Treasury, was concerned
about the expenses the others were already committing the Treasury to spend.
Sandar and Peran were excited as they saw the opportunity for some action and
Kamir was already talking of increasing the size of his fleet. For the old
Director General it was a possibility for instability. Their expeditionary
force had sailed from Khanlar with a fleet of twelve ships, carrying a full
compliment of sailors and the full one thousand men of the Lions Regiment.
After three weeks at sea, they had sighted land and had sailed along the coast
for another few days, until they had come to the mouth of a great river.
There they had cast anchor and gone ashore. A week later they had taken
the savages' settlement there and with a safe base established, six hundred men
had marched out to explore the countryside. They had been attacked by a
large group of savages, not three hours from the settlement, which some clever
Captain had named after General Sandar. They had won the engagement and
had taken two prisoners.
It
was those prisoners that the five men had just come from questioning. They
were indeed savages, if looks were anything to go by, for their skin was darker
than that of any Khanlarian Perigan had ever laid eyes upon and they wore their
hair almost to their waists. Their faces had been ceremoniously scarred
and their language was vastly inferior in vocabulary and very different to
Khanlarian, even though it seemed to be derived from the same original language.
However,
the Khan's officers had managed to learn that the land that their expeditionary
force had discovered was not quite as large as Khanlar and although their
population seemed numerous, it was not as large as the twelve million people who
called Khanlar their home. There were not cities to talk of, the savages'
settlements being merely crude gatherings of huts within a wooden stockade.
Neither were there any roads or bridges, that the explorers had seen, and the
largest vessel they had come across would have scarce been called a canoe in
Khanlar. In all, their neighbors in this new land to the northeast were
truly savages, living little better than animals in a land that the Khan's
forces reported to be abundant in everything.
The
savages were armed only with crude bows, spears, clubs and stone knives when
they were taken and had had nothing to compete against the Khanlarian crossbows
and firebombs, which by all accounts had taken fearful numbers of the savages
during that first engagement. The captives' clothes were also of primitive
manufacture, being mostly made from animal skins, although the chief amongst
those taken had worn a roughly woven woolen tunic.
The
five men most trusted by the Khan, had talked all the way from Dang back to the
Royal Palace, where they went immediately to counsel the Khan and although
Perigan tried to temper the obvious optimism of the others, Prince Jarin became
excited for the first time in many months, as they talked well into the evening
and at the end of it he slammed his fist on the table in pure delight and
laughed out loud.
"Thank
God my friends. We have now found enough land to accommodate our wildest
dreams for Khanlar. Sandar you will recruit, or conscript if you have to,
enough men to replace the four regiments I will take with me to conquer this new
continent. Kamir, you will place orders for fifty new blackships
immediately. Materian you will handle the details of financing and Perigan
my old friend, you will provide me with people to form the administration to
govern my new domain." Jarin was obviously still excited when
he left the room.
Perigan
watched his sovereign leave the room and wondered how this new turn of affairs
might end. Khanlar today enjoyed it's highest standard of living in
history. They were enjoying a golden age of plenty, in a civilization that
had all but forgotten the violent and controlled lives men had lived in the
past, yet there was control, a great deal of it as he realized, because he
wielded much of it, and it was that control that gave them the abundance and
safety. He felt as if it were the end of an era. This new adventure
changed all the rules. He thought to pull General Sandar aside to confide
in him, old friend that he was, however he could see that it appeared that the
old soldier shared none of his misgivings.
"Here
we go again." General Sandar said with a smile, as he picked
up his helmet and set off home to get enough sleep to be able to carry out his
orders the next morning bright and early.
The End
* * * * * * *