Post by devilinthedetails on Jul 7, 2022 12:12:59 GMT 10
Series: Son of Carthak
Title: Tombs of Emperors
Rating: PG-13 for references to death and overall creepy mummification details.
Event: The Last Straw
Words: 589
Summary: Binur and his father visit the tombs of long-dead Carthaki emperors.
Tombs of Emperors
Binur was nine when his father took him across the Zekoi. Into the desert. To the windswept vastness of the Valley of the Dead Emperors where the limestone pyramid tombs of emperors who had reigned so long ago that their names had been swallowed by the sands of time stood. Casting shadows at high noon.
Making Binur shiver because he knew what curses were carved over the entrances. Designed to ward off looters. What chambers of horrors awaited any intruders who did manage to penetrate the tomb. What dried mummies–impervious to decay–were wrapped in linen laced with amulets. Mummies whose stomachs, livers, lungs, and intestines were buried alongside them in canopic jars. Whose brains had been removed by hooked instruments inserted up the nostrils.
Binur was aware of all the gory details. Having heard them from his best friend Mequen, whose father was chief of the Imperial healers. The gory details were supposed to be glorious. Proud proof of how superior Carthaki understanding of anatomy and physiology had been dating back to ancient times shrouded in myth and mystery.
“Do you want me to build such a tomb for you when you die, Father?” Binur’s mouth was dry as dust. As sand and ash. As mummified flesh. He didn’t want to think of death but it dominated this place. Haunted it.
“No.” Father shook his head. “Over a thousand slaves and conscripted laborers died erecting each of these tombs, son.”
“Oh.” Binur tested this thought. Let it ring hollowly in his skull. A thousand deaths. He couldn’t fathom that figure. It was too large a number, and he had always been rubbish at mathematics. Just ask Mequen. Tried to imagine what his tutor would say if offering a lecture in history. Ventured, “But they have stood for over a thousand years.”
He wasn’t certain what that signified if anything. What any monument built out of human suffering could be said to mean. He was nine-years-old. Not supposed to know such things.
“Standing as monuments to pride and excess.” Father seemed to understand what these tombs of long-dead emperors signified even if Binur did not. “Each of these tombs cost enough money to feed entire cities for years. Citizens were taxed into poverty funding these extravagent structures that can only be enjoyed by the dead. Sometimes revolts arose.”
Revolts. Father had a fear of those. His early reign marked and marred by rebellions he had struggled to put down. To conquer. That would have to shape an emperor and his empire, Binur supposed. Considering his own father as if from a distance. As if studied in some future history lesson by people Binur had never met. Would never meet. The generations that would live after he and his father were gone from the world. Faded into memory.
“The tombs were the last straw then.” Binur tried to bring the conversation back to the past. A past that was somehow easier to think about than the undefined present and future. “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
A common expression in Carthak. An Emerald Ocean away, the Bazhir, he had heard from his mother, used the same phrase. Maybe all desert people–all cultures who rode camels–did.
“You could say that.” Father cracked a smile. Not a happy one. A sad, grim one. Befitting the Valley of the Dead Emperors. “You are wise, Binur. Perhaps that is the final lesson of this place. That one straw can break a camel’s back if it is piled on top of a thousand other straws.”
Title: Tombs of Emperors
Rating: PG-13 for references to death and overall creepy mummification details.
Event: The Last Straw
Words: 589
Summary: Binur and his father visit the tombs of long-dead Carthaki emperors.
Tombs of Emperors
Binur was nine when his father took him across the Zekoi. Into the desert. To the windswept vastness of the Valley of the Dead Emperors where the limestone pyramid tombs of emperors who had reigned so long ago that their names had been swallowed by the sands of time stood. Casting shadows at high noon.
Making Binur shiver because he knew what curses were carved over the entrances. Designed to ward off looters. What chambers of horrors awaited any intruders who did manage to penetrate the tomb. What dried mummies–impervious to decay–were wrapped in linen laced with amulets. Mummies whose stomachs, livers, lungs, and intestines were buried alongside them in canopic jars. Whose brains had been removed by hooked instruments inserted up the nostrils.
Binur was aware of all the gory details. Having heard them from his best friend Mequen, whose father was chief of the Imperial healers. The gory details were supposed to be glorious. Proud proof of how superior Carthaki understanding of anatomy and physiology had been dating back to ancient times shrouded in myth and mystery.
“Do you want me to build such a tomb for you when you die, Father?” Binur’s mouth was dry as dust. As sand and ash. As mummified flesh. He didn’t want to think of death but it dominated this place. Haunted it.
“No.” Father shook his head. “Over a thousand slaves and conscripted laborers died erecting each of these tombs, son.”
“Oh.” Binur tested this thought. Let it ring hollowly in his skull. A thousand deaths. He couldn’t fathom that figure. It was too large a number, and he had always been rubbish at mathematics. Just ask Mequen. Tried to imagine what his tutor would say if offering a lecture in history. Ventured, “But they have stood for over a thousand years.”
He wasn’t certain what that signified if anything. What any monument built out of human suffering could be said to mean. He was nine-years-old. Not supposed to know such things.
“Standing as monuments to pride and excess.” Father seemed to understand what these tombs of long-dead emperors signified even if Binur did not. “Each of these tombs cost enough money to feed entire cities for years. Citizens were taxed into poverty funding these extravagent structures that can only be enjoyed by the dead. Sometimes revolts arose.”
Revolts. Father had a fear of those. His early reign marked and marred by rebellions he had struggled to put down. To conquer. That would have to shape an emperor and his empire, Binur supposed. Considering his own father as if from a distance. As if studied in some future history lesson by people Binur had never met. Would never meet. The generations that would live after he and his father were gone from the world. Faded into memory.
“The tombs were the last straw then.” Binur tried to bring the conversation back to the past. A past that was somehow easier to think about than the undefined present and future. “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
A common expression in Carthak. An Emerald Ocean away, the Bazhir, he had heard from his mother, used the same phrase. Maybe all desert people–all cultures who rode camels–did.
“You could say that.” Father cracked a smile. Not a happy one. A sad, grim one. Befitting the Valley of the Dead Emperors. “You are wise, Binur. Perhaps that is the final lesson of this place. That one straw can break a camel’s back if it is piled on top of a thousand other straws.”
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!