Post by devilinthedetails on Jan 30, 2022 12:43:24 GMT 10
Title: A Coward's History
Rating: PG-13 for references to death and colonialism.
Prompt: A Coward's Part
Summary: Writing history is a coward's part, and Zahir isn't a coward. Or is he?
A Coward’s History
Zahir ibn Alhaz stood, cowed, in the doorway of his knightmaster’s study. Hesitant to venture any farther into a room dominated by bookshelves with thick, intimidating-looking tomes he cringed at the very thought of opening. Few things scared him as much as books, but the king apparently loved them enough to have developed quite a private, treasured collection.
“How many books do you have in here, sire?” Zahir fought to keep his tone steady. Disappassionately curious. Hoping that if he could put a precise number to his fear, it might fade. At least slightly. A known quantity was almost always less terrifying than an unknown one that invited endless speculation.
“Over a hundred.” King Jonathan glanced up from the volume–a treatise on the intricacies of Carthaki inheritance law if the dry title was any indication–he was reading by candlelight at his desk to answer Zahir’s question.
“Oh.” Zahir couldn’t imagine having a use for that many books. Surely, the king couldn’t have read them all. “How many have you read?”
“All of them.” A gentle smile tugged at the corners of his knightmaster’s lips as if he could read Zahir’s mind as easily as words written in ink on dusty pages. “Many more than once.”
“Why would you read what you have already read, Your Majesty?” Zahir’s forehead furrowed. Nothing sounded like a worst time waster than re-reading old books as if they might contain new wisdom.
“To learn things I missed the first time.” King Jonathan’s smile widened. Clearly he was not offended by the insolence of Zahir’s thoughts. “Each time I read the same book, I am different, and so my perspective shifts, allowing me to discover truths and insights I did not detect before.”
To Zahir’s ears, these words amounted to little more than a stream of nonsense. Attempting to change the subject, he asked, “How many books are there in the world?”
His knightmaster, he was certain, must have one of the largest private collections of books in the world.
“A difficult question.” King Jonathan stroked at his beard. “Every temple in Tortall will have copies of the Mithran testaments and the scriptures of the Goddes. Just as every court and magistrate’s office will have copies of the many volumes of Tortallan legal code–”
“That’s not what I meant, sire,” interrupted Zahir. Shaking his head as he struggled to articulate what he did mean. “I don’t mean copies of the same words repeated over and over. I mean unique words. Books that are different from each other. How many different books are there in the world?”
“That is perhaps an even harder question.” The king tapped at his chin meditatively. “There are five thousand books scattered throughout the palace libraries, but some of those are surely repeats, and do not count by your standards. The imperial libraries in Carthak are rumored to contain ten thousand books, and the Carthaki university libraries boast twenty thousand more, but, again, many of those volumes must be copies of books already in existence. The Yamani emperor has his own vast collection that must number in the thousands as well, and then there is Jindazhen to be taken into account as well.”
“Jindazhen?” Zahir’s ears perked at the mention of the mysterious land west even of the Yamani Islands.
“It is said that in Jindazhen, a magical device that prints books without the need of a scholar or scribe writing them by hand has been invented.” There was a faraway, almost dreamy expression on his knightmaster’s face now. As if such a device was marvelous beyond imagining. “That must mean far more books can be written and published. So I can only assume that there must be over a million books in the world, Zahir. Perhaps as many as two million books.”
Over a million books. Zahir couldn’t fathom such a number. Who would read all those books? Who would write all those books?
Zahir gaped at the king’s study again. Trying to wrap his mind around the concept that what was to him an impressive collection of literature was only a river flowing into an ocean wide beyond grasping of all the books in the world.
“How many books are about the Bazhir?” Zahir bit his lip. His people did not write their histories. Preferring to pass their legends and legacies along in tales told to children by firelight as silver stars shone down from a dark desert sky. Now, it seemed somehow sad that their stories weren’t recorded–weren’t known–to a larger world.
“Not many.” King Jonathan admitted and led Zahir over to a small set of books arrayed along a single shelf of a narrow, corner bookcase. “As Voice, I have made an effort to gather as many books about the Bazhir as I can, and you can see that even I have a palty collection.”
“They aren’t even written by the Bazhir.” Zahir scowled at the titles and their authors with their names that revealed an obvious, aching lack of Bazhir ancestry. Names that announced their utter ignorance of the Bazhir upon whom they had deemed fit to present themselves as experts. The presumption of northerners never failed to astonish him. To make him flush with fury. “Probably riddled with inaccuracies.”
“Yes.” King Jonathan sighed. Regret carved into his cheekbones. “History is often written by the victors, I’m afraid.”
A cliche Zahir had heard uttered a hundred times from Sir Myles lips. One that always made him grit his teeth and grind his jaw. Not only because of how casually it proclaimed the northerners as the eternal victors, and others–like the Bazhir–as the forever vanquished and forgotten, but also because it just wasn’t true. Glorious victors didn’t write history. Cringing cowards did.
“Victors don’t write history,” Zahir scoffed before he could think about and halt his own impudence. “Cowards called monks and scholars do. They are too afraid to venture beyond the safe walls of their libraries and cloisters. In their ignorance and fear, they criticize and misrepresent what they don’t understand until future generations regard their lies as the truth.”
“For centuries, northerners have written about the Bazhir in ignorance and fear. I won’t deny that.” King Jonathan squeezed Zahir’s shoulder before pulling a large volume from the shelf. “However, not everything about the Bazhir has been written by northerners. Ali Mukhtab wrote a great history of the Bazhir before he died. It has pride of place in my collection and a special spot in my heart, I assure you.”
“Ali Mukhtab.” Zahir eyed the book disdainfully. Wishing he could spit on it because he couldn’t spit on its author. “The worst traitor and coward. The Voice who surrendered us to the northerners.”
Bitter words he had grown up hearing from his father in their tent. Words that weren’t supposed to be spoken outside their tent. But he had a tempter too hot, a tongue too free, and a spirit too unbroken to be silent forever in the north. Cut off from his tribe. Severed from his true heritage and place beneath the burning sun and open sky.
“Do you think I am a coward, Zahir ibn Alhaz?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow. His expression suddenly cold and hard as a Scanran winter.
“No, sire.” Zahir shook his head because there was no other reply he could make. No coward would have dared to implement the changes and reforms his knightmaster had in Tortall, after all. King Jonathan could more accurately be called crazy than cowardly, and he wasn’t exactly crazy either. Just very passionate and determined about anything he set his mind and will to accomplishing. Downright obdurate but not insane.
“Then you must believe me when I tell you that he was one of the bravest men I ever knew.” King Jonathan’s icy blue eyes pierced into Zahir. “He had a vision of what was best for his people, and he was courageous and selfless enough to sacrifice how history would remember him to bring about that vision. He did the bravest thing a leader can do. Risked his own reputation for the future of his people.”
“And his people aren’t allowed to have their own ideas about the future he created for them without their consent?” Zahir couldn’t resist the mocking question. The northerners could keep their rigid hierarchies and doctrines of unquestioning obedience. The proud Bazhir were far more egalitarian in their approach to governance. Around their campfires, every Bazhir man had a voice and a vote, and every Bazhir woman could whisper from behind her veil into her man’s ear.
“You speak in ignorance about things you don’t understand.” Anger radiated from King Jonathan. The kind of anger that would have made any noble cower, Zahir told himself as he began to shiver and shake under his knightmaster’s irate glare. “You will educate yourself before you offer any more opinions on the subject.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Zahir didn’t know exactly what educating himself on the subject entailed but four years training under Lord Wyldon had taught him that sometimes acquiescence to things he did not understand was the better part of valor. Whether that was evidence of him learning prudence or cowardice in the north, he hadn’t yet decided. Nor had he decided if prudence and cowardice were the same thing. Flipped sides of a coin tossed in the air. A virtue transfigured into a vice depending on fickle circumstances.
“You will read this in its entirety.” King Jonathan thrust the massive tome Ali Mukhtab had written into Zahir’s arms. “And be prepared to report on it in three days’ time.”
Zahir stifled a groan. He had nursed the obviously vain hope that pointless classwork assignments would cease now that he was a squire. Trying to channel his negative energy into something productive, he sought to discover just how daunting the task before him was.
“Three days’ time.” Zahir turned to the final page in the volume King Jonathan had foisted upon him. His eyes threatened to fall out of their sockets when he saw that the last page was numbered one thousand and fivehundred. “There’s one thousand and five hundred pages in this book.”
A stunned, numb Zahir wasn’t even certain he had read one thousand and five hundred pages in his entire life. Now King Jonathan–as unreasonable as only a monarch could be–expected him to read that many pages in three days.
“I know.” King Jonathan was plainly not disposed to be merciful. “You would be wise to stop arguing and start reading, squire.”
A silent bow seemed the safest answer to this pronouncement, so Zahir did so. Retreating from the study full of hated and feared books afterward. Wishing he didn’t carry one written by a traitor Bazhir in his hands. Thinking that his knightmaster’s punishment would only make him loathe Ali Mukhtab–a man he had never met–even more.
He returned to his quarters where he lit a candle on his nightstand and sprawled on his bed with the dreaded book. Since he had no choice but to read it, he might as well be comfortable while he suffered through word after interminable word of it. Besides, it seemed only practical to make some use of his bed as it appeared unlikely he would have much time for sleeping these next three days. While he was at it, he could probably kiss the notion of dedicated meal times goodbye as well. Repeating his father’s insults of Ali Mukhtab in front of the king was starting to look like one of his least brilliant ideas.
Feeling immensely sorry for himself and resigned to his fate as only an adolescent could, he flipped to the first page of the volume spread before him.
Where he had expected to find a timeline, a table of contents, or a dreary introduction to the dull chapters of history to follow, he discovered instead a letter. A piece of private correspondence transformed into a matter of public record. Like most letters, it began with a date, but not a date written in the northern fashion. Rooting itself in how deep it was in the Human Era as northern correspondence inevitably did. Instead announcing its place in time as the Bazhir did on the rare occasions they felt the need to date anything.
Written in the 999th year since the foundation of the city, the letter began.
Since the foundation of the city. A strange way for a nomadic people often opposed to the urban to define and structure time. Or perhaps not so strange because no one born and raised among the Bazhir would have to wonder for an instant which city was referred to in the expression. To the Bazhir, there was only one inhabited city of life built to stand guard over an empty one haunted by nightmares and shadows. It was the sentinel city of life, Persopolis, whose foundation was the fundamental anchor by which the Bazhir established their perception of time in an ever-changing world.
To Jonathan, son of the northern king, the letter continued, and Zahir felt a shock ripple through him like an ocean wave as he realized the letter–and maybe the whole book–was addressed to his knightmaster back when he had been Prince Jonathan instead of King Jonathan.
This was a very Bazhir way of addressing someone, Zahir thought. Defining somebody by the identity of their father. That was how the Bazhir named themselves. Not by lands and titles held or occupation as was the northern custom. By family and blood. By father and son. Always and forever.
The salutation complete, the letter moved onto its meat:
When you visited Persopolis and we stood in the Sunset Room together, you expressed an interest in reading a history of the Bazhir. A history of the Bazhir that nobody–at the time we spoke–had yet written. I undertook, you will remember, to see if such a history could be found or written.
I still do not know if you understood the ambition of what you asked all those years ago. Wanting a comprehensive history of a people who remember when this desert was fertile. A people comprised of tribes that each have their own honored traditions and ancient legends. Such a history would span a vast, windswept desert and have a scope of centuries. It would feature a cast of hundreds of characters–some whose names are known and others whose identities have been lost to the hungry maw of time–and would describe many events that survive only in myth.
The young are often ambitious, but few are so ambitious as to want to hold in their hands or their minds the history of an entire people. Yet somehow I sense you are that ambitious. You do have a dream and a vision of the future you will build for all of Tortall, and to you, all of Tortall includes the Bazhir and the desert your grandfather conquered. So, for your dream and your vision of the Tortall that could be, I offer you this humble history of the Bazhir.
My words here only serve to emphasize that I appreciate the gravity and ambition of the task I assumed when composing a history. I am the Voice of the Bazhir (in time, you will be initiated more fully into the depths of what those sacred words mean) but it is still a presumption for me to speak on their behalf. To try to express the richness of all their stories in even a thousand pages. Each life alone deserves to be told in a thousand pages, but there is not time for me to write more as my own life ebbs. I am only a steward for the memories and stories of my people, and I never felt the resonance of that truth so much as I do now that death nears. Stalking me. Breath hot as sweat on my neck.
I will warn you that though I call this a history–because that is what I intend for it to be–it is not a history written in the northern fashion. It is not focused on facts but on truths. It does not revolve around the great deeds of a few powerful men and women, but instead seeks to capture the elusive experiences of the millions of Bazhir who have regarded this land as home since we first came here. It is the story of a people, and they will be the heroes and the villians. It is not about individual grains of sand so much as it will be about the dunes and desert those individual grains form when they gather together beneath the sun. It is not a history of single stars but of constellations and the black firmament between them.
You should also be aware that it is not laden with dates to be memorized as a northern history would be. The deities and spirits who shape the destiny of our world and lives do not perceive the universe in such a flat timeline. Neither do the Bazhir. To the Bazhir, the past and future are always interacting with the present. Embracing it as a lover might.
We are connected to past and future generations by an invisible thread that can never be cut. Our past shaped and created us, but we redefine and reimagine it with every breath and every thought. The future will remember us when we are nothing but the echo of ashes in the wind, and the future is born from us. Our will and our decisions give it life. Every step we take sets the path the future will follow. We live in the past and in the future. We move through time and space. Dance through dimensions. Yet, like all generations that have been and will be until the crack of doom we exist in an eternal now.
I hope you can find some wisdom–some hint of a worthwhile pearl or two–in the pages that follow. I write this history of the Bazhir with you in mind because you were the one who requested it be created, but I did not intend it only for you. It is my wish that one day more northerners and Bazhir might peruse these pages. Might immerse themselves in the legends and truths of the Bazhir shared here as though by a campfire. Might come to more deeply know and love the Bazhir because of the words written here.
So, I write this history for you, for all northerners, and for every Bazhir. I write this book for all the generations that make up our remembered past, for the generation that lives and breathes now, and for the generations yet to come that will build our dreamed of future stone by stone.
Everything in this letter and this book is written in the warm hope that an enduring friendship between our diverse peoples might be forged and a shared understanding might prevail.
Faithfully yours,
Ali Mukhtab
Riveted, Zahir stared down at the letter as it ended. Never had he been so captivated by a book or felt so linked to the author of words on paper. In the past, there had always been a sense of distance between himself and the writer, but this time it felt as if Ali Mukhtab were addressing him. As if even death couldn’t separate them.
Before he had believed that there was no need for the Bazhir to commit their history to paper. To record it in books when it was written in blood and bone. Etched into painful memory.
Now, he wondered if Ali’s voice–reaching him across death and time only through the book opened in front of him–could convince him otherwise.
Intrigued almost against his will, he turned to the first chapter. An account of the Bazhir migration to the land that would become their desert and home. Spellbound by the immediacy with which Ali spun this tale–made Zahir feel as if he were present as the Bazhir entered and explored this brave new world that confronted them–he raced through this chapter and rapidly progressed onto the subsequent one. A heartbreaking one that related how the Nameless Ones, the evil Ysandir, had tricked and enslaved the Bazhir.
Undaunted, Zahir perserved onto the third chapter, a harrowing recounting of how the Bazhir had revolted against the Nameless Ones. Scorching the green earth until it became dry desert. Confining the Ysandir to the shadows of the Black City until the end of the world with powerful magic.
It was only when he finished that chapter that he realized his eyelids were becoming heavy as slabs of granite. Yawning, he shut the book and placed it gently–almost reverently–on the nightstand. He blew out the candle and closed his eyes.
That night, he dreamed of the apocalyptic fury of the battle waged between the Nameless Ones and his ancestors. The war his people had fought for their freedom long ago. A memory of resistance that lingered in their blood. Never to be forgotten. To live on in legend forever.
Waking up as rays of dawn sunlight streaked through his windows, Zahir understood for the first time how scholarly souls like Neal of Queenscove might become as addicted to books as tavern drunks to their tankards of ale. He was eager to dive into the next chapter and the next. Swimming in the words. Submerging himself in them. Letting them soak into his skin like water flowing through his pores.
Very much to his own surprise, he met his knightmaster’s three day deadline with time to spare. Clutching Ali Mukhtab’s book to his chest as if he were reluctant to surrender it, he sought out King Jonathan, who was composing diplomatic letters in his study.
“I finished the book you ordered me to read, sire.” Zahir struggled to maintain a proper, stiff reporting posture and tone like a knight or a soldier, but it was hard for his confident facade not to crack beneath the pressure of the king’s frostiest, sternest scrutiny. Obviously, his knightmaster hadn’t forgotten or forgiven the calumnies against Ali Mukhtab that had resulted in the punishment assignment Zahir had completed.
“Good.” King Jonathan’s voice and nod were cool.
Zahir expected a series of curt questions to ascertain whether he had in fact read the book as claimed, but when none were forthcoming, he cleared his throat and commented awkwardly, “I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It felt personal and not merely academic. I could connect to it in a way I didn’t anticipate. In a way I never had connected with any book before. If every book, every history, was written like that, I’d like a lot more books and histories.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the book and found it educational, Zahir.” The frost was starting to melt from the king’s tone and face. That pleased Zahir more than he wanted to admit. Even to himself. His knightmaster’s approval and affection mattered more to him than he felt comfortable acknowledging. He wanted to be more independent. More uncaring.
“Why aren’t more books and histories written like Ali Mukhtab’s?” Zahir pressed.
“Because not enough books are written by the Bazhir.” King Jonathan’s response made Zahir’s heart clench like a fist on the cusp of punching. “The Bazhir have their own perspective on life. On legend, memory, myth, and truth. On how history should be told.”
“Oh.” Zahir shuffled his feet. Not wanting to think about how the Bazhir didn’t write enough books. Swallowing, he asked, “What I said about Ali Mukhtab made you really angry, didn’t it?”
“How would you feel if someone insulted me to your face? Accused me of being a coward and a traitor?” King Jonathan, frusturatingly, didn’t answer the question directly.
“I’d want to cut them to strips with my sword.” Zahir’s fingers flitted to the hilt of his blade. His swordsmanship skills were one of many things in which he took considerable pride.
“Because I am your mentor?” the king persisted. Apparently desperate for a declaration of the utterly obvious.
“Yes.” Zahir nodded, doubting he had been able to conceal his impatience.
“Ali Mukhtab was my mentor.” His knightmaster’s face had gone soft. Almost wistful. Lost to memory. Wandering in a desert instead of trapped in a palace study. “He was wise and always kind to me. Up to the moment he died, he never stopped showing courage and compassion that put lesser men–such as myself–to shame. His was a generous spirit, and I was blessed by all the gods to have known him. That is why I can’t let anyone call him a coward in my hearing without challenge.”
Zahir felt an overwhelming surge of loyalty to the man sitting before him and vowed without thinking, “I’ll never let anyone call you a coward. I won’t let history remember you that way.”
An impulsive oath. Spoken with all the arrogant assumption of youth that he could shape history. That he had the power to dictate the memory of others.
King Jonathan must have thought so because his lips quirked wryly. “How will you do so? With your sharp sword or incisive quill?”
“With my sharp sword.” Zahir flashed a quick grin. “My sword is far mightier than my quill whatever the oft-quoted aphorism says otherwise.”
Years later, he would defend that king’s honor with his sharp sword when he was named King’s Champion. He filled the role so well that he became the Champion of that king’s heir as well. Serving the son as he had the father.
Yet, despite the status he enjoyed for decades as the realm’s preeminent swordsman, among future generations he would not be most famous for his prowess as a knight. Instead, he would be remembered primarily as the chronciler he became late in life when his eyes dimmed and his limbs slowed.
When he returned to his tribe and tent in the desert. When he hunched over a low table and began to write to preserve the memory of a King Jonathan who was already starting to fade into myth and legend. Becoming both less and more than a man.
Since he knew King Jonathan would never want to be remembered that way, he dedicated his final years to creating a biography of the monarch so often called King Jonathan the Magnificent. He conveyed his admiration of the man without lionizing him. Captured his charisma, determination, unwavering sense of duty, and passion for change. Did not fail to offset those virtues with honest descriptions of his temper, his impulsiveness, his bull-headedness, and his tendency to create chaos by disrupting tradition.
Outlined the many reforms and achievements of an ambitious king but humanized the man with witty anecdotes that prevented too much of an air of grandeur and mystique from surrounding the king he had admired and served for so many years. Nor did he fail to humanize himself. To showcase and skewer his own flaws and foibles.
He was an old man by that point. Finally, old enough to not be a coward. To not be afraid to laugh at himself. To make himself a joke for the amusement and potential edification of others.
He was surprised by how well-received and even acclaimed among monks in cloisters and scholars in libraries the work was in his lifetime. After his lifetime, he would have been even more astonished to discover how it remained on Royal University syllabi for centuries. Became a keystone text for professors looking to discuss the reform-driven reign of King Jonathan the Magnificent and his Peerless Queen Thayet.
His offsetting sorrow–because there was always an offsetting sorrow–was that the work was not as well-received among some of the Bazhir. Including the Bazhir of his own tribe. Some of the Bazhir appreciated his effort to capture in words the essence of the Voice who had united them with the rest of Tortall and thus altered the winding course of their history, but other Bazhir were more scornful.
Approbation could never be universal. Especially among one’s own people, who were naturally and inevitably the harshest critics. The first to throw stones. Those Bazhir accused him of being a lickspittle. A cringing coward. A pathetic, feeble apologist for the king who had completed Jasson’s conquest of the desert.
History was never kind or just. No matter who wrote it. Could not be because someone wrote it, and, in the act of writing it, committed their cruelties and biases to paper to last until ink faded.
Deserts and memories could be lost. Regained and reclaimed. Then lost once more. Mostly, deserts and memories sought to endure longer than the beings who lived and breathed within them.
If Zahir’s life in sand and in snow, in tent and in palace, had taught him anything, it was that humans weren’t gods. They made mistakes. They did not live very long. Even in memory. They died and were consigned to the vagaries of history. To be remembered and forgotten at whim.
That was why he was remembered for his quill and not his sword. For writing a history when once he had believed that history was written only by cowards and not by all people. All generations trying to connect to the past and the future. Grasping for an out-of-reach infinity.
Rating: PG-13 for references to death and colonialism.
Prompt: A Coward's Part
Summary: Writing history is a coward's part, and Zahir isn't a coward. Or is he?
A Coward’s History
Zahir ibn Alhaz stood, cowed, in the doorway of his knightmaster’s study. Hesitant to venture any farther into a room dominated by bookshelves with thick, intimidating-looking tomes he cringed at the very thought of opening. Few things scared him as much as books, but the king apparently loved them enough to have developed quite a private, treasured collection.
“How many books do you have in here, sire?” Zahir fought to keep his tone steady. Disappassionately curious. Hoping that if he could put a precise number to his fear, it might fade. At least slightly. A known quantity was almost always less terrifying than an unknown one that invited endless speculation.
“Over a hundred.” King Jonathan glanced up from the volume–a treatise on the intricacies of Carthaki inheritance law if the dry title was any indication–he was reading by candlelight at his desk to answer Zahir’s question.
“Oh.” Zahir couldn’t imagine having a use for that many books. Surely, the king couldn’t have read them all. “How many have you read?”
“All of them.” A gentle smile tugged at the corners of his knightmaster’s lips as if he could read Zahir’s mind as easily as words written in ink on dusty pages. “Many more than once.”
“Why would you read what you have already read, Your Majesty?” Zahir’s forehead furrowed. Nothing sounded like a worst time waster than re-reading old books as if they might contain new wisdom.
“To learn things I missed the first time.” King Jonathan’s smile widened. Clearly he was not offended by the insolence of Zahir’s thoughts. “Each time I read the same book, I am different, and so my perspective shifts, allowing me to discover truths and insights I did not detect before.”
To Zahir’s ears, these words amounted to little more than a stream of nonsense. Attempting to change the subject, he asked, “How many books are there in the world?”
His knightmaster, he was certain, must have one of the largest private collections of books in the world.
“A difficult question.” King Jonathan stroked at his beard. “Every temple in Tortall will have copies of the Mithran testaments and the scriptures of the Goddes. Just as every court and magistrate’s office will have copies of the many volumes of Tortallan legal code–”
“That’s not what I meant, sire,” interrupted Zahir. Shaking his head as he struggled to articulate what he did mean. “I don’t mean copies of the same words repeated over and over. I mean unique words. Books that are different from each other. How many different books are there in the world?”
“That is perhaps an even harder question.” The king tapped at his chin meditatively. “There are five thousand books scattered throughout the palace libraries, but some of those are surely repeats, and do not count by your standards. The imperial libraries in Carthak are rumored to contain ten thousand books, and the Carthaki university libraries boast twenty thousand more, but, again, many of those volumes must be copies of books already in existence. The Yamani emperor has his own vast collection that must number in the thousands as well, and then there is Jindazhen to be taken into account as well.”
“Jindazhen?” Zahir’s ears perked at the mention of the mysterious land west even of the Yamani Islands.
“It is said that in Jindazhen, a magical device that prints books without the need of a scholar or scribe writing them by hand has been invented.” There was a faraway, almost dreamy expression on his knightmaster’s face now. As if such a device was marvelous beyond imagining. “That must mean far more books can be written and published. So I can only assume that there must be over a million books in the world, Zahir. Perhaps as many as two million books.”
Over a million books. Zahir couldn’t fathom such a number. Who would read all those books? Who would write all those books?
Zahir gaped at the king’s study again. Trying to wrap his mind around the concept that what was to him an impressive collection of literature was only a river flowing into an ocean wide beyond grasping of all the books in the world.
“How many books are about the Bazhir?” Zahir bit his lip. His people did not write their histories. Preferring to pass their legends and legacies along in tales told to children by firelight as silver stars shone down from a dark desert sky. Now, it seemed somehow sad that their stories weren’t recorded–weren’t known–to a larger world.
“Not many.” King Jonathan admitted and led Zahir over to a small set of books arrayed along a single shelf of a narrow, corner bookcase. “As Voice, I have made an effort to gather as many books about the Bazhir as I can, and you can see that even I have a palty collection.”
“They aren’t even written by the Bazhir.” Zahir scowled at the titles and their authors with their names that revealed an obvious, aching lack of Bazhir ancestry. Names that announced their utter ignorance of the Bazhir upon whom they had deemed fit to present themselves as experts. The presumption of northerners never failed to astonish him. To make him flush with fury. “Probably riddled with inaccuracies.”
“Yes.” King Jonathan sighed. Regret carved into his cheekbones. “History is often written by the victors, I’m afraid.”
A cliche Zahir had heard uttered a hundred times from Sir Myles lips. One that always made him grit his teeth and grind his jaw. Not only because of how casually it proclaimed the northerners as the eternal victors, and others–like the Bazhir–as the forever vanquished and forgotten, but also because it just wasn’t true. Glorious victors didn’t write history. Cringing cowards did.
“Victors don’t write history,” Zahir scoffed before he could think about and halt his own impudence. “Cowards called monks and scholars do. They are too afraid to venture beyond the safe walls of their libraries and cloisters. In their ignorance and fear, they criticize and misrepresent what they don’t understand until future generations regard their lies as the truth.”
“For centuries, northerners have written about the Bazhir in ignorance and fear. I won’t deny that.” King Jonathan squeezed Zahir’s shoulder before pulling a large volume from the shelf. “However, not everything about the Bazhir has been written by northerners. Ali Mukhtab wrote a great history of the Bazhir before he died. It has pride of place in my collection and a special spot in my heart, I assure you.”
“Ali Mukhtab.” Zahir eyed the book disdainfully. Wishing he could spit on it because he couldn’t spit on its author. “The worst traitor and coward. The Voice who surrendered us to the northerners.”
Bitter words he had grown up hearing from his father in their tent. Words that weren’t supposed to be spoken outside their tent. But he had a tempter too hot, a tongue too free, and a spirit too unbroken to be silent forever in the north. Cut off from his tribe. Severed from his true heritage and place beneath the burning sun and open sky.
“Do you think I am a coward, Zahir ibn Alhaz?” King Jonathan arched an eyebrow. His expression suddenly cold and hard as a Scanran winter.
“No, sire.” Zahir shook his head because there was no other reply he could make. No coward would have dared to implement the changes and reforms his knightmaster had in Tortall, after all. King Jonathan could more accurately be called crazy than cowardly, and he wasn’t exactly crazy either. Just very passionate and determined about anything he set his mind and will to accomplishing. Downright obdurate but not insane.
“Then you must believe me when I tell you that he was one of the bravest men I ever knew.” King Jonathan’s icy blue eyes pierced into Zahir. “He had a vision of what was best for his people, and he was courageous and selfless enough to sacrifice how history would remember him to bring about that vision. He did the bravest thing a leader can do. Risked his own reputation for the future of his people.”
“And his people aren’t allowed to have their own ideas about the future he created for them without their consent?” Zahir couldn’t resist the mocking question. The northerners could keep their rigid hierarchies and doctrines of unquestioning obedience. The proud Bazhir were far more egalitarian in their approach to governance. Around their campfires, every Bazhir man had a voice and a vote, and every Bazhir woman could whisper from behind her veil into her man’s ear.
“You speak in ignorance about things you don’t understand.” Anger radiated from King Jonathan. The kind of anger that would have made any noble cower, Zahir told himself as he began to shiver and shake under his knightmaster’s irate glare. “You will educate yourself before you offer any more opinions on the subject.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Zahir didn’t know exactly what educating himself on the subject entailed but four years training under Lord Wyldon had taught him that sometimes acquiescence to things he did not understand was the better part of valor. Whether that was evidence of him learning prudence or cowardice in the north, he hadn’t yet decided. Nor had he decided if prudence and cowardice were the same thing. Flipped sides of a coin tossed in the air. A virtue transfigured into a vice depending on fickle circumstances.
“You will read this in its entirety.” King Jonathan thrust the massive tome Ali Mukhtab had written into Zahir’s arms. “And be prepared to report on it in three days’ time.”
Zahir stifled a groan. He had nursed the obviously vain hope that pointless classwork assignments would cease now that he was a squire. Trying to channel his negative energy into something productive, he sought to discover just how daunting the task before him was.
“Three days’ time.” Zahir turned to the final page in the volume King Jonathan had foisted upon him. His eyes threatened to fall out of their sockets when he saw that the last page was numbered one thousand and fivehundred. “There’s one thousand and five hundred pages in this book.”
A stunned, numb Zahir wasn’t even certain he had read one thousand and five hundred pages in his entire life. Now King Jonathan–as unreasonable as only a monarch could be–expected him to read that many pages in three days.
“I know.” King Jonathan was plainly not disposed to be merciful. “You would be wise to stop arguing and start reading, squire.”
A silent bow seemed the safest answer to this pronouncement, so Zahir did so. Retreating from the study full of hated and feared books afterward. Wishing he didn’t carry one written by a traitor Bazhir in his hands. Thinking that his knightmaster’s punishment would only make him loathe Ali Mukhtab–a man he had never met–even more.
He returned to his quarters where he lit a candle on his nightstand and sprawled on his bed with the dreaded book. Since he had no choice but to read it, he might as well be comfortable while he suffered through word after interminable word of it. Besides, it seemed only practical to make some use of his bed as it appeared unlikely he would have much time for sleeping these next three days. While he was at it, he could probably kiss the notion of dedicated meal times goodbye as well. Repeating his father’s insults of Ali Mukhtab in front of the king was starting to look like one of his least brilliant ideas.
Feeling immensely sorry for himself and resigned to his fate as only an adolescent could, he flipped to the first page of the volume spread before him.
Where he had expected to find a timeline, a table of contents, or a dreary introduction to the dull chapters of history to follow, he discovered instead a letter. A piece of private correspondence transformed into a matter of public record. Like most letters, it began with a date, but not a date written in the northern fashion. Rooting itself in how deep it was in the Human Era as northern correspondence inevitably did. Instead announcing its place in time as the Bazhir did on the rare occasions they felt the need to date anything.
Written in the 999th year since the foundation of the city, the letter began.
Since the foundation of the city. A strange way for a nomadic people often opposed to the urban to define and structure time. Or perhaps not so strange because no one born and raised among the Bazhir would have to wonder for an instant which city was referred to in the expression. To the Bazhir, there was only one inhabited city of life built to stand guard over an empty one haunted by nightmares and shadows. It was the sentinel city of life, Persopolis, whose foundation was the fundamental anchor by which the Bazhir established their perception of time in an ever-changing world.
To Jonathan, son of the northern king, the letter continued, and Zahir felt a shock ripple through him like an ocean wave as he realized the letter–and maybe the whole book–was addressed to his knightmaster back when he had been Prince Jonathan instead of King Jonathan.
This was a very Bazhir way of addressing someone, Zahir thought. Defining somebody by the identity of their father. That was how the Bazhir named themselves. Not by lands and titles held or occupation as was the northern custom. By family and blood. By father and son. Always and forever.
The salutation complete, the letter moved onto its meat:
When you visited Persopolis and we stood in the Sunset Room together, you expressed an interest in reading a history of the Bazhir. A history of the Bazhir that nobody–at the time we spoke–had yet written. I undertook, you will remember, to see if such a history could be found or written.
I still do not know if you understood the ambition of what you asked all those years ago. Wanting a comprehensive history of a people who remember when this desert was fertile. A people comprised of tribes that each have their own honored traditions and ancient legends. Such a history would span a vast, windswept desert and have a scope of centuries. It would feature a cast of hundreds of characters–some whose names are known and others whose identities have been lost to the hungry maw of time–and would describe many events that survive only in myth.
The young are often ambitious, but few are so ambitious as to want to hold in their hands or their minds the history of an entire people. Yet somehow I sense you are that ambitious. You do have a dream and a vision of the future you will build for all of Tortall, and to you, all of Tortall includes the Bazhir and the desert your grandfather conquered. So, for your dream and your vision of the Tortall that could be, I offer you this humble history of the Bazhir.
My words here only serve to emphasize that I appreciate the gravity and ambition of the task I assumed when composing a history. I am the Voice of the Bazhir (in time, you will be initiated more fully into the depths of what those sacred words mean) but it is still a presumption for me to speak on their behalf. To try to express the richness of all their stories in even a thousand pages. Each life alone deserves to be told in a thousand pages, but there is not time for me to write more as my own life ebbs. I am only a steward for the memories and stories of my people, and I never felt the resonance of that truth so much as I do now that death nears. Stalking me. Breath hot as sweat on my neck.
I will warn you that though I call this a history–because that is what I intend for it to be–it is not a history written in the northern fashion. It is not focused on facts but on truths. It does not revolve around the great deeds of a few powerful men and women, but instead seeks to capture the elusive experiences of the millions of Bazhir who have regarded this land as home since we first came here. It is the story of a people, and they will be the heroes and the villians. It is not about individual grains of sand so much as it will be about the dunes and desert those individual grains form when they gather together beneath the sun. It is not a history of single stars but of constellations and the black firmament between them.
You should also be aware that it is not laden with dates to be memorized as a northern history would be. The deities and spirits who shape the destiny of our world and lives do not perceive the universe in such a flat timeline. Neither do the Bazhir. To the Bazhir, the past and future are always interacting with the present. Embracing it as a lover might.
We are connected to past and future generations by an invisible thread that can never be cut. Our past shaped and created us, but we redefine and reimagine it with every breath and every thought. The future will remember us when we are nothing but the echo of ashes in the wind, and the future is born from us. Our will and our decisions give it life. Every step we take sets the path the future will follow. We live in the past and in the future. We move through time and space. Dance through dimensions. Yet, like all generations that have been and will be until the crack of doom we exist in an eternal now.
I hope you can find some wisdom–some hint of a worthwhile pearl or two–in the pages that follow. I write this history of the Bazhir with you in mind because you were the one who requested it be created, but I did not intend it only for you. It is my wish that one day more northerners and Bazhir might peruse these pages. Might immerse themselves in the legends and truths of the Bazhir shared here as though by a campfire. Might come to more deeply know and love the Bazhir because of the words written here.
So, I write this history for you, for all northerners, and for every Bazhir. I write this book for all the generations that make up our remembered past, for the generation that lives and breathes now, and for the generations yet to come that will build our dreamed of future stone by stone.
Everything in this letter and this book is written in the warm hope that an enduring friendship between our diverse peoples might be forged and a shared understanding might prevail.
Faithfully yours,
Ali Mukhtab
Riveted, Zahir stared down at the letter as it ended. Never had he been so captivated by a book or felt so linked to the author of words on paper. In the past, there had always been a sense of distance between himself and the writer, but this time it felt as if Ali Mukhtab were addressing him. As if even death couldn’t separate them.
Before he had believed that there was no need for the Bazhir to commit their history to paper. To record it in books when it was written in blood and bone. Etched into painful memory.
Now, he wondered if Ali’s voice–reaching him across death and time only through the book opened in front of him–could convince him otherwise.
Intrigued almost against his will, he turned to the first chapter. An account of the Bazhir migration to the land that would become their desert and home. Spellbound by the immediacy with which Ali spun this tale–made Zahir feel as if he were present as the Bazhir entered and explored this brave new world that confronted them–he raced through this chapter and rapidly progressed onto the subsequent one. A heartbreaking one that related how the Nameless Ones, the evil Ysandir, had tricked and enslaved the Bazhir.
Undaunted, Zahir perserved onto the third chapter, a harrowing recounting of how the Bazhir had revolted against the Nameless Ones. Scorching the green earth until it became dry desert. Confining the Ysandir to the shadows of the Black City until the end of the world with powerful magic.
It was only when he finished that chapter that he realized his eyelids were becoming heavy as slabs of granite. Yawning, he shut the book and placed it gently–almost reverently–on the nightstand. He blew out the candle and closed his eyes.
That night, he dreamed of the apocalyptic fury of the battle waged between the Nameless Ones and his ancestors. The war his people had fought for their freedom long ago. A memory of resistance that lingered in their blood. Never to be forgotten. To live on in legend forever.
Waking up as rays of dawn sunlight streaked through his windows, Zahir understood for the first time how scholarly souls like Neal of Queenscove might become as addicted to books as tavern drunks to their tankards of ale. He was eager to dive into the next chapter and the next. Swimming in the words. Submerging himself in them. Letting them soak into his skin like water flowing through his pores.
Very much to his own surprise, he met his knightmaster’s three day deadline with time to spare. Clutching Ali Mukhtab’s book to his chest as if he were reluctant to surrender it, he sought out King Jonathan, who was composing diplomatic letters in his study.
“I finished the book you ordered me to read, sire.” Zahir struggled to maintain a proper, stiff reporting posture and tone like a knight or a soldier, but it was hard for his confident facade not to crack beneath the pressure of the king’s frostiest, sternest scrutiny. Obviously, his knightmaster hadn’t forgotten or forgiven the calumnies against Ali Mukhtab that had resulted in the punishment assignment Zahir had completed.
“Good.” King Jonathan’s voice and nod were cool.
Zahir expected a series of curt questions to ascertain whether he had in fact read the book as claimed, but when none were forthcoming, he cleared his throat and commented awkwardly, “I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It felt personal and not merely academic. I could connect to it in a way I didn’t anticipate. In a way I never had connected with any book before. If every book, every history, was written like that, I’d like a lot more books and histories.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the book and found it educational, Zahir.” The frost was starting to melt from the king’s tone and face. That pleased Zahir more than he wanted to admit. Even to himself. His knightmaster’s approval and affection mattered more to him than he felt comfortable acknowledging. He wanted to be more independent. More uncaring.
“Why aren’t more books and histories written like Ali Mukhtab’s?” Zahir pressed.
“Because not enough books are written by the Bazhir.” King Jonathan’s response made Zahir’s heart clench like a fist on the cusp of punching. “The Bazhir have their own perspective on life. On legend, memory, myth, and truth. On how history should be told.”
“Oh.” Zahir shuffled his feet. Not wanting to think about how the Bazhir didn’t write enough books. Swallowing, he asked, “What I said about Ali Mukhtab made you really angry, didn’t it?”
“How would you feel if someone insulted me to your face? Accused me of being a coward and a traitor?” King Jonathan, frusturatingly, didn’t answer the question directly.
“I’d want to cut them to strips with my sword.” Zahir’s fingers flitted to the hilt of his blade. His swordsmanship skills were one of many things in which he took considerable pride.
“Because I am your mentor?” the king persisted. Apparently desperate for a declaration of the utterly obvious.
“Yes.” Zahir nodded, doubting he had been able to conceal his impatience.
“Ali Mukhtab was my mentor.” His knightmaster’s face had gone soft. Almost wistful. Lost to memory. Wandering in a desert instead of trapped in a palace study. “He was wise and always kind to me. Up to the moment he died, he never stopped showing courage and compassion that put lesser men–such as myself–to shame. His was a generous spirit, and I was blessed by all the gods to have known him. That is why I can’t let anyone call him a coward in my hearing without challenge.”
Zahir felt an overwhelming surge of loyalty to the man sitting before him and vowed without thinking, “I’ll never let anyone call you a coward. I won’t let history remember you that way.”
An impulsive oath. Spoken with all the arrogant assumption of youth that he could shape history. That he had the power to dictate the memory of others.
King Jonathan must have thought so because his lips quirked wryly. “How will you do so? With your sharp sword or incisive quill?”
“With my sharp sword.” Zahir flashed a quick grin. “My sword is far mightier than my quill whatever the oft-quoted aphorism says otherwise.”
Years later, he would defend that king’s honor with his sharp sword when he was named King’s Champion. He filled the role so well that he became the Champion of that king’s heir as well. Serving the son as he had the father.
Yet, despite the status he enjoyed for decades as the realm’s preeminent swordsman, among future generations he would not be most famous for his prowess as a knight. Instead, he would be remembered primarily as the chronciler he became late in life when his eyes dimmed and his limbs slowed.
When he returned to his tribe and tent in the desert. When he hunched over a low table and began to write to preserve the memory of a King Jonathan who was already starting to fade into myth and legend. Becoming both less and more than a man.
Since he knew King Jonathan would never want to be remembered that way, he dedicated his final years to creating a biography of the monarch so often called King Jonathan the Magnificent. He conveyed his admiration of the man without lionizing him. Captured his charisma, determination, unwavering sense of duty, and passion for change. Did not fail to offset those virtues with honest descriptions of his temper, his impulsiveness, his bull-headedness, and his tendency to create chaos by disrupting tradition.
Outlined the many reforms and achievements of an ambitious king but humanized the man with witty anecdotes that prevented too much of an air of grandeur and mystique from surrounding the king he had admired and served for so many years. Nor did he fail to humanize himself. To showcase and skewer his own flaws and foibles.
He was an old man by that point. Finally, old enough to not be a coward. To not be afraid to laugh at himself. To make himself a joke for the amusement and potential edification of others.
He was surprised by how well-received and even acclaimed among monks in cloisters and scholars in libraries the work was in his lifetime. After his lifetime, he would have been even more astonished to discover how it remained on Royal University syllabi for centuries. Became a keystone text for professors looking to discuss the reform-driven reign of King Jonathan the Magnificent and his Peerless Queen Thayet.
His offsetting sorrow–because there was always an offsetting sorrow–was that the work was not as well-received among some of the Bazhir. Including the Bazhir of his own tribe. Some of the Bazhir appreciated his effort to capture in words the essence of the Voice who had united them with the rest of Tortall and thus altered the winding course of their history, but other Bazhir were more scornful.
Approbation could never be universal. Especially among one’s own people, who were naturally and inevitably the harshest critics. The first to throw stones. Those Bazhir accused him of being a lickspittle. A cringing coward. A pathetic, feeble apologist for the king who had completed Jasson’s conquest of the desert.
History was never kind or just. No matter who wrote it. Could not be because someone wrote it, and, in the act of writing it, committed their cruelties and biases to paper to last until ink faded.
Deserts and memories could be lost. Regained and reclaimed. Then lost once more. Mostly, deserts and memories sought to endure longer than the beings who lived and breathed within them.
If Zahir’s life in sand and in snow, in tent and in palace, had taught him anything, it was that humans weren’t gods. They made mistakes. They did not live very long. Even in memory. They died and were consigned to the vagaries of history. To be remembered and forgotten at whim.
That was why he was remembered for his quill and not his sword. For writing a history when once he had believed that history was written only by cowards and not by all people. All generations trying to connect to the past and the future. Grasping for an out-of-reach infinity.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!