CD-ROM Today - The Disc! 1/CD-ROM_Today_-_The_Disc_1_April-May_1994.iso/books/dunsany/zaccrath.txt

Text File | 1993-05-30 | 7KB | 136 lines

                        In Zaccarath

                       by Lord Dunsany


"Come," said the King in sacred Zaccarath, "and let our
prophets prophesy before us."
   A far-seen jewel of light was the holy palace, a wonder
to the nomads on the plains.
   There was the King with all his underlords, and the
lesser kings that did him vassalage, and there were all his
queens with all their jewels upon them.
   Who shall tell of the splendour in which they sat; of the
thousand lights and the answering emeralds; of the dangerous
beauty of that hoard of queens, or the flash of their laden
necks?
   There was a necklace there of rose-pink pearls beyond the
art of the dreamer to imagine.  Who shall tell of the
amethyst chandeliers, where torches, soaked in rare
Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a scent of blethany?
   (This herb marvellous, which, growing near the summit of
Mount Zaumnos, scents all the Zaumnian range, and is smelt
far out on the Kepuscran plains, and even, when the wind is
from the mountains, in the streets of the city of Ognoth.
At night it closes its petals and is heard to breathe, and
its breath is a swift poison.  This it does even by day if
the snows are disturbed about it.  No plant of this has ever
been captured alive by a hunter.)
   Enough to say that when the dawn came up it appeared by
contrast pallid and unlovely and stripped bare of all its
glory, so that it hid itself with rolling clouds.
   "Come," said the King, "let our prophets prophesy."
   Then the heralds stepped through the ranks of the King's
silk-clad warriors who lay oiled and scented upon velvet
cloaks, with a pleasant breeze among them caused by the fans
of slaves; even their casting-spears were set with jewels;
through their ranks the heralds went with mincing steps, and
came to the prophets, clad in brown and black, and one of
them they brought and set him before the King.  And the King
looked at him and said, "Prophesy unto us."
   And the prophet lifted his head, so that his beard came
clear from his brown cloak, and the fans of the slaves that
fanned the warriors wafted the tip of it a little awry.  And
he spake to the King, and spake thus:
   "Woe unto thee, King, and woe unto Zaccarath.  Woe unto
thee, and woe unto thy women, for your fall shall be sore
and soon.  Already in Heaven the gods shun thy god: they
know his doom and what is written of him: he sees oblivion
before him like a mist.  Thou hast aroused the hate of the
mountaineers.  They hate thee all along the crags of Droom.
The evilness of thy days shall bring down the Zeedians on
thee as the suns of springtide bring the avalanche down.
They shall do unto Zaccarath as the avalanche doth unto the
hamlets of the valley."  When the queens chattered or
tittered among themselves, he merely raised his voice and
still spake on: "Woe to these walls and the carven things
upon them.  The hunter shall know the camping-places of the
nomads by the marks of the camp-fires on the plain, but he
shall not know the place of Zaccarath."
   A few of the recumbent warriors turned their heads to
glance at the prophet when he ceased.  Far overhead the
echoes of his voice hummed on awhile among the cedarn
rafters.
   "Is he not splendid?" said the King.  And many of that
assembly beat with their palms upon the polished floor in
token of applause.  Then the prophet was conducted back to
his place at the far end of that mighty hall, and for a
while musicians played on marvellous curved horns, while
drums throbbed behind them hidden in a recess.  The
musicians were sitting cross-legged on the floor, all
blowing their huge horns in the brilliant torchlight, but as
the drums throbbed louder in the dark they arose and moved
slowly nearer to the King.  Louder and louder drummed the
drums in the dark, and nearer and nearer moved the men with
the horns, so that their music should not be drowned by the
drums before it reached the King.
   A marvellous scene it was when the tempestuous horns were
halted before the King, and the drums in the dark were like
the thunder of God; and the queens were nodding their heads
in time to the music, with their diadems flashing like
heavens of falling stars; and the warriors lifted their
heads and shook, as they lifted them, the plumes of those
golden birds which hunters wait for by the Liddian lakes, in
a whole lifetime killing scarcely six, to make the crests
that the warriors wore when they feasted in Zaccarath.  Then
the King shouted and the warriors sang -- almost they
remembered then old battle-chants.  And, as they sang, the
sound of the drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away
backwards, and the drumming became fainter and fainter as
they walked, and altogether ceased, and they blew no more on
their fantastic horns.  Then the assemblage beat on the
floor with their palms.  And afterwards the queens besought
the King to send for another prophet.  And the heralds
brought a singer, and placed him before the King; and the
singer was a young man with a harp.  And he swept the
strings of it, and when there was silence he sang of the
iniquity of the King.  And he foretold the onrush of the
Zeedians, and the fall and the forgetting of Zaccarath, and
the coming again of the desert to its own, and the playing
about of little lion cubs where the courts of the palace had
stood.
   "Of what is he singing?" said a queen to a queen.
   "He is singing of everlasting Zaccarath."
   As the singer ceased the assemblage beat listlessly on
the floor, and the King nodded to him, and he departed.
   When all the prophets had prophesied to them and all the
singers sung, that royal company arose and went to other
chambers, leaving the hall of festival to the pale and
lonely dawn.  And alone were left the lion-headed gods that
were carven out of the walls; silent they stood, and their
rocky arms were folded.  And shadows over their faces moved
like curious thoughts as the torches flickered and the dull
dawn crossed the fields.  And the colours began to change in
the chandeliers.
   When the last lutanist fell asleep the birds began to
sing.
   Never was greater splendour or a more famous hall.  When
the queens went away through the curtained door with all
their diadems, it was as though the stars should arise in
their stations and troop together to the West at sunrise.
   And only the other day I found a stone that had
undoubtedly been a part of Zaccarath, it was three inches
long and an inch broad; I saw the edge of it uncovered by
the sand.  I believe that only three other pieces have been
found like it.