Interlude

The words of Heliato-Mek, once called Danan, once a son of Kanapchak fathers, once a digger of clods and tubers, now a servant of Mek, who rides the sun of blood.

The Jalit call the first thing Radu, ruler of heaven, who slept and then awoke. Lonely, he cut off hand and foot and made two wives, and with them peopled the heavens.

The hill-folk call it Kranwë, a warrior with seventeen hundred wives, seventeen thousand slaves, and one terrible war club. With it, he shaped the world out of a flat sheet of copper, pounding one side to make mountains, the other to make seas.

The mountain-folk say the earth was always here, and the eldest spirit, Huma-Lapsala, the Mother-in-the-Moon, shaped everything with the wind of her singing. She planted the Elder Trees so the spirits could climb down and the people could climb up.

The Fyreans recognize five wandering stars, now called Fundaments: the first governs stability, the next impetus, then continuity, transition, and completion; the first of stone, the next the moon, then rivers, fire, and the sea.

These Others hated Mek and trapped him and his fellows in the Silent Lands.

When Paraktaman was expelled from the Pursuits of Wisdom, he said: Inside every circle, another may be inscribed, but a fraction smaller. Inside that, one yet smaller, and another, and another. The circles decrease until the center is reached.

I agreed.

Paraktaman said: The smaller the circle, the nearer its edge to its center. Also, the edge is a circuit that may be traversed. The farther the circle’s edge is from its pole, the longer its circuit.

I replied: Even children know this!

Paraktaman said: Ah, but see how the pole of heaven is fixed, and the sky revolves around it. All the stars but five are fixed in their courses. The further from the pole, the longer their circuit and the more stars it contains. Closer to the pole, the circuit grows short and the stars are few.

I said: Thus is the way of all nature, which we follow: Those who seek any kind of wisdom arrive at the edge of a circle but soon move to a more inner circuit, and again another until they reach their goal.

Paraktaman said: Learn then my greatest discovery. The circuit is most often discovered before the pole. A path older than memory has worn itself upon the world. Discern the curve and by my method you may project the pole. Thus, by skill and not by invocation we may place every wheel on its hub: the way of plants, of minerals and ores, of the wind and sky, of fire, of the stars, even the way of blood and bone.

I said: Not so! The way of blood is prior. Without it we have no access to the revelations of Mek, in whose gaze is creation, and in whose breath, destruction!

Paraktaman said: I myself have traced the path of the sun from birth to death, not by ingurgitations or divinations, but by discerning the movements of the heavens. By yarn and spindle, I have mapped the circuits and projected the poles, and soon I will map all other domains. Blood is no longer required.

Angered, I said: Blood is the beginning and end of all questions.

Paraktaman said: I tell you that before the year is complete, you will see the Sun of Mek eaten bite by bite until a new sun rises in its place. You serve the Lord of Dying Things, but I serve what comes after: an age of humankind, not of spirits.

I, Heliato-Mek, marveled at this blasphemy. We had many other such conversations, and the things he said against Mek and the Way of Blood are too repugnant to write. Therefore we put Paraktaman out of our circle.

Paraktaman has taken the name of Kindhir, “teacher”. He wanders the land unshorn and unshod, preaching peace and a life of knowledge independent of the spirits. Throngs of admirers follow him, singing and dancing, attending every word.

World-breaker! Wisdom-thief! He teaches them the sacred calendars, how to navigate by the stars, how to plant in time with the moon, how to mark the signs and the seasons. They were children tutored by the spirits, he says, but now their childhood is ended.

They march toward Kalparaana.

The Fyrean Knot is undone. Clan aligns against clan, family against family. Everyone looks to their own interests. No one can build a house except that someone comes and burns it down and robbers thieve away the rubble! The old places are obscured, and the old sun has given way to another, whose name is Kindhir.

His mob infests every city of the Jalit. The elder beasts tear down his erections so he blinds them with smoke from Kusumnu’s flowers and heaps them over with earth. Kalparaana is hewn asunder with fire. Peace is no longer his sermon, but unity.

He outlaws the ways of blood, razes our holy places and erects his own, burns the sacred texts and writes his own, slaughters the brothers and sisters and replaces them with his counterfeits, even unto Mek himself. Blasphemy of blasphemies!

Fanu was no longer safe, so I fled to the sea.

My pens are worn to nubs, my blades are dulled, and time gnaws at my bones. The farce has drawn on too long and I wish to see no more! I will leap into the sea, where the fishes may taste the multitude of my blood. Let the fisherman carry it forward. Mek may have some use for me yet.

All is at rest

Observing the end of an empty age

Set in a downward sloping circle

Impelled by unseen forces

The grand machine is set in motion

Lurching along an ancient line

All distances by degree are dying

A minor conjunction

A cluster of collisions

Old orbits are overturned

And with retroversions replaced

A line is pulled from pole to pole

All errors are by epicycle emended

The arcs of an untried alignment

Unleash evil upon the earth

Three stars of seven are stricken

The inner elements are exposed

The foundations are fractured

A shadow sneaks across the sun

Day is drowned in darkness

Everything old is new again

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