Dreams of the Compass Rose (29 page)

“
The reason why I say the World has no End, my Lord,” said Vikenti, “is because I traversed the world in a straight line, heading to the left of the rising sun, while the sun remained on my right, and yet I arrived back in the same place I had started from. This is a miracle! How else to explain this?”

“
Your mind has gone mad, just like the others,” hissed the
taqavor.
“That’s how I explain it.”

“
And yet the same thing, the same exact madness, seemed to have taken over the minds of three of your men, my Lord,” said the woman with the knowing eyes, and everyone turned to stare at the source of her calm voice. “The fourth man, Rihaad, merely did not finish his journey after being deceived by the great mountain. For, if he and his men had ventured past the eternal whiteness of the abyss before him, it is possible he too would have eventually come back to the origin of his journey, this very city.”

The
taqavor
stared at her with dilated eyes. “What are you saying now, woman? What do you mean? What—”

“
Let me show you a miraculous thing, my Lord, and in the showing I will illustrate the mystery of the World and its End.”

Saying this, the woman turned to a servant and said in a voice of authority, “Go and fetch me four long hair ribbons.”

Everyone looked extremely confused while the servant ran to do as bidden. Soon he returned carrying four brightly colored ribbons of silk.

“
I am going to show you four journeys,” said the woman, taking the ribbons. She placed the first ribbon flat on the marble floor, and pointed at the end nearest to her. “This is the journey’s beginning, and this is your city.”

Next she pointed to the other end of the ribbon, saying, “This is the journey’s end, also in your city.”

“
Impossible,” said the
taqavor.
“Obviously, if the four expeditions had kept moving in a straight line they could not have come back here to the city!”

The courtiers made noises of acquiescence. Lirheas, standing a few steps to the side, looked on with growing intensity.

And then the woman with the knowing eyes smiled. She leaned forward and picked up the ribbon from the ground. She took both the ends of the ribbon in her fingers and placed them on top of each other, so that the ribbon formed a hanging loop.

“
Now look,” she said. “The journey’s beginning and end are in the same place. And look at the shape of journey itself. The line that you had thought all along to be on flat ground is in fact the surface of a great arc, a complete perfect circle.”

“
What does this mean?” said the
taqavor.

“
It means,” she replied, “that the earth, the very world is not what we think it is. But—before I name its nature, let me show you the rest of the journeys.”

She took out the three remaining ribbons, and also folded them in on themselves, so that all ends were held by her forefinger and thumb. At the same time, she also moved two of the ribbons to positions perpendicular to each other and two directly on top of each other, just like the four directions the expeditions had taken. And then, still holding the ribbons with one hand, she straightened out the hanging loops and raised them so that all of them approximated circles.

“
Look now, my Lord, and all the rest of you,” she said loudly. “This shape that is made by the four journeys. What do you see in its outline?”

It was Prince Lirheas alone who answered. “I see a sphere . . .” he whispered.

“
Yes!” said the woman. “For indeed it is thus. The journeys that traverse the world outline the true shape of the world, and we see it is round—a great ball suspended by the gods in the air, bathed by the winds which are indeed everywhere along the ball’s perfect surface. Being a sphere, the World has no End and no Beginning.”

“
That is impossible!” said the
taqavor.
“How can we walk upon the round surface of your sphere world?”

“
That I do not know,” said the woman softly. “Something, some divine force holds us in place. And yet, because the sphere is so vast, we cannot see the full curvature, only the nearest edges, which are the horizon, and which to us appear flat.”

“
There is no such force! What nonsense!” said the
taqavor.
He got up from his seat and began to pace the floor before the court.

“
This whole madness is giving me a headache,” he said eventually. “Begone from my sight, all of you, and I will not hear any more of this. And you, woman, finish the symbol for me, finish your wind rose. And speak not another word. Because of your previous wisdom, I forgive you. But not any more. Thus you will speak not a word, ever, to me or to anyone. Be silent, forever. Now, go!”

Those who yet remained watched in terror. But the woman smiled softly, and then she cast her gaze downward and bowed deeply. And in silence she left the
taqavor’s
hall.

T
he finished Rose was a great wooden four-pointed star of the lightest sandalwood and cedar. One of the four rays contained a slim rod of lodestone, and was counter-balanced on the three remaining rays by their thicker layers of wood.

Delicate resin was applied to seal in the wood and to protect it from rot, and then the object was placed carefully in the pool at the heart of the stone rose. And to everyone’s amazement, the four-pointed star turned a certain direction, and remained permanently aligned that way. No matter how many times it was rotated in the water, it would return to its original position—the lodestone ray would point to the left of the rising sun.

The
taqavor
was shown this oddity, and surprisingly it amused him, for he spent long hours entertaining himself by spinning the wooden Rose, and watching it return to its original orientation.

It was indeed a living symbol.

And yet it was a disturbing symbol, for in its functional silence it spoke and hinted of things that were just at the edges of the consciousness, things that warped the reason and forced it to start thinking along a dangerous line. . . .

Eventually it came to pass that the
taqavor
spent days staring at the Rose while he thought of things ordinary and familiar, thought of the winds and his
empirastan.

But he never dared think of edges. . . . Not in the beginning. Not of edges of things. But then edges began to obsess him, as always happens with little details in the beginnings of such madness.

The
taqavor
observed edges everywhere, fine lines or blurred lines, or even implied lines of visual illusory meaning. Edges that signified ends. . . .

Soon the
taqavor
wanted the edges marked and labeled clearly, even in places that had none. He called upon his artists and had them paint four distinct opposite edges in the stone of the pool that contained the floating Rose. Then, he decided to name the edges, in order to assign them even greater permanence.

Mumbling nonsense words for hours to himself, he finally decided to call the edge where the lodestone always returned “North” and its opposite ray “South.” The end that faced the rising sun he called “East” and its opposite “West.”

And he would ask everyone what they saw. Only—no one’s answer would satisfy him. Because the madness had grown deeper, riding in the back of his mind now in all things.

Eventually he knew he had to call
her
back. For she was the one who had planted this seed of insanity in him, who had expanded his thoughts past their mortal bounds and edges into a world of divine terror without a limit. . . .

The woman with the knowing eyes came wordlessly to him when called. In silence she stood and listened to his rantings about edges and lines and meaning—while he leaned over the stone petal pool and spun the Rose in the water, and his hands shook.

“
Speak, damn you!” the
taqavor
finally exclaimed, “I revoke my earlier command. Tell me what is the truth of all of this.”

“
My Lord . . .” said the woman, her unused voice cracking at the first note. “The truth is here before you, in part. You see it working in the nature of the Compass Rose. For the compass is an object that my people use to find directions, a thing of lodestone and wood floating on water in a simple bowl. That is all this is. A humble instrument of navigation that works according to the laws of the world.”

“
And what are the laws of the world?” whispered the
taqavor.

“
The laws are too many to mention. We see them all around us, simply with our eyes. Look!” And smiling she spread her hands wide to indicate everything.

“
Your eyes . . .” said the
taqavor,
looking at her. “They are not . . . like my eyes. You see differently from anyone.”

“
Not so, my Lord,” she retorted. “I only appear to see more because I choose to completely face what lies in all directions before me.”

“
No . . .” said the
taqavor.
“No, woman, you do not, and you may not. Indeed, now that I look upon you I see no difference in your eyes and mine. Or maybe, yes, there is a difference. I see in your face no eyes at all.”

And then the
taqavor
called his guards in the loud voice of a mad screeching carrion bird. “Her eyes!” he said over and over. “You must make sure that we see no eyes in her face. So that she will not see our eyes either, nor other things in the world.”

The woman made no sound at first, then only a muffled gasp escaped her as she was taken by rough hands, and a guard’s knife was plunged in her eye-sockets, one after the other, gouging out her eyes.

Prince Lirheas heard it in his mind, that soft gasp, a mere sigh, as he came running into the hall, a terrible premonition of sudden falling night upon him, upon her—for in that moment the distinctions of their entities blurred.

“
The world is a sphere,” she whispered, blood running down her face out of the empty sockets. “And I have seen it. It is too late for you to take that away—even from yourself.”

“
Ah, for that I forgive you, woman,” cackled the
taqavor
as he spun the Rose in the water. “I forgive you and grant you a life, only without your eyes. A life for a Rose!”

And then he added, “Who will take you now, ‘you
without
the knowing eyes’? What will you do, in order to see, in order to know?”

“
I will take her!” exclaimed Lirheas, his own eyes roiling with tears, clouded. In his vision swirled the form of the beast before him—the hateful monster who had fathered him—and of the woman who was more precious to him than his own vision or his own life. “She will be my queen, and she will see through my eyes. . . .”

But the
taqavor
did not hear him. He spun the Rose and stared at some distinct, precisely delineated point before him with his own eyes which had never seen truth, only its edges, and thus were vacant and blind.

And so it came to pass that, for a moment, truth was glimpsed up close, and then once again obscured.

Truth is like the wind. Not even eyes can reliably serve you.

The only corporeal evidence that remains is the Compass Rose.

“
O
nce upon a time,” said Annaelit, the Teller of Tales, “a wicked minor god—nay, a sarcastic puny god—decided that humankind in and of itself contained very little to amuse the divine Pantheon. And so, one godlike morning, this deity gathered a fistful of his beard shavings, and shook it out profusely over the universe.”

“
Aieee!”

The children gathered at the storyteller’s feet clapped and giggled and squealed in wicked delight.

“
You all know what happens next, don’t you?” said the young woman, feigning disgust. “How is one supposed to tell you anything when you already know all the best stories?”

“
Tell it anyway! Tell us the rest!” they cried while rolling around on their backs and flailing their limbs. There was much stomping of feet against the beaten floor of the hovel.

“
All right then, but I will make it short, since it is getting late, little goslings. Where was I? Oh yes, the divine beard shavings.

“
And so the god shook them over the universe, to all the four corners of the Compass Rose. And, wherever his stubble fell, little annoying creatures called fleas appeared. You all know fleas, right?”

“
I know fleas!” cried a boy near the front. “My sister Ikke has them!” And he screamed in hilarity as his older sister walloped him on the head with an old towel.

“
I do not, pig!” cried Ikke. “You are a filthy liar to say that, Joar! Pig!”

In reply, Joar made oinking noises, while the other children giggled.

“
All right, enough,” said Annaelit. “Now then, the fleas were put on this earth for a very good reason. Does anyone know what it is?”

“
For punishment!” piped up another child, a little grimy girl in the very back.

“
Why do you say that, Milae?” asked Annaelit.

“
Because fleas are nasty!”

“
Are you very sure? Not that they aren’t nasty, but—are you sure that is the only reason?”

“
Yes. No . . .” said little Milae, rubbing her sooty nose vigorously.