Dreams of the Compass Rose (50 page)

“
And the yellow sands in the distance,” she finished for him, speaking with a muffled voice, for her face was buried in his chest. “The sun rides halfway up, maybe less, the sky, and there is a shadow of lavender and indigo upon the right of the city walls. It all blurs into the distance. . . . And there is the fleeting shadow of a bird!”

“
Yes!” he exclaimed. “How did you know?”

And the queen without eyes raised her bandaged face to him. Her lips curved into a perfect smile, and spoke eloquently as though they were her eyes.

“
I can see everything now,” she said softly—so lightly that he had to draw near her to hear the caress of her lips. “I see through your eyes now, my Prince.”

T
he days were now languid and warm. Prince Lirheas walked gently at the side of the queen without eyes, along the sand-and-gravel path in the gardens. They passed by tall flowering blossoms, and when he looked the queen would smile and comment upon them, seeing exactly what he saw.

And yet it was clear that she saw even more.

“
That green prickly growth that you call cactus, see the tallest, oldest one,” she said. “Look upon its heart and see the flower that appears not once every seven years, as is the misconception of many, but only when, with the passage of time, it has reached its flowering age after which it will bear short-lived flowers every season. See the petals, colored a shade of rose and soft whiteness, see how the colors flow. They are more bright than any other living thing in the desert, because they have conquered time to appear and just as quickly fade away. It is a rare sight indeed.”

“
I never knew,” he whispered, taking her hand.

At that touch she smiled, her lips curving generously, speaking more eloquently than eyes. And as he watched her smile, it occurred to Lirheas, with a stab of worry, that if ever he were not to be at her side, if ever she were to be on her own, how would she see? Who would be her eyes?

But the question faded inside him softly, for that possibility did not seem a part of their reality, did not seem to matter.

They walked farther, passing the House of Wives and the gallery of marble that was the courtyard. Here the fountain pools were silent like mirrors, for these days the
taqoui
rarely came out to enjoy the sun, and the
taqavor
rarely came out to enjoy them.

As Lirheas watched the calm surface of the water in the pond, smooth and without a blemish, the queen without eyes said suddenly, “He is getting old, you know. His time is approaching.”

And the Prince nodded silently, knowing exactly what she meant, and not being sure how he felt about it. For the beast who was his father was an ever-present burden in the back of his mind. And yet pity now encroached in his perception, for Lirheas recognized madness and evaluated it in a different light.

But pity dissipated quickly, for the very next month there came a pronouncement that chilled his blood and the blood of many in the Palace.

Without any explanation, the
taqavor
had ordered a hundred and fifty-three coffins built—the exact number of
taqoui
and concubines that were left in the House of Wives.

P
rince Lirheas came before the
taqavor
as bidden in the great central hall of the Compass Rose. He stood silently, watching his father pace back and forth. The
taqavor’s
once blond hair was now streaked with whiteness, for it seemed that Cireive had aged overnight.

But his walk was undaunted and sprightly as he moved through the room, muttering.

“
There you are,” he said, seeing his son. “I want you to supervise the building of a marvelous structure. It is to have a great carved dome, marked North, South, East, and West, and within it, I will place their coffins.”

“
Whose coffins?” said Lirheas.

But the taqavor giggled, and said, “Why, the flowers, of course. The ones they burned in the gardens, the ones that were red and tall, and grew everywhere. I told them only to cut down the flowers, but they burned them too. And now there is no place to dispose of their ashes.”

“
My Lord Father,” said Lirheas, “why must we bury flowers? Can we not toss their ashes over the earth, and grow new ones?”

The
taqavor
approached him, turning on his heel, and leaned forward, so that his face was inches away from that of his son. “What an idiot you are, boy,” he said. “Any gardener will tell you that ashes improperly disposed ruin the fertility of the soil. As to why we bury them, I will tell you why. Because it is how it is done.”

And then he drew away again, laughing, and said, “Now, go and build me a mausoleum for the flowers! And if you do so I will tell you about your mother. Don’t you want to know?”

P
rince Lirheas attended the area in the heart of the palace gardens where rose granite and marble from a distant quarry were piled in blocks, in preparation for the building efforts. Architects of the
taqavor
came to make measurements, and they all stared at the woman without eyes who stood at the side of the Prince, and who spoke quiet words of knowledge.

“
You calculate the structural supports that will be required to erect the dome,” she said. “Let me help you measure the curves of the arches of wood needed, in proportion to the weight of underlying stones.”

“
Your craft is great. And yet how can you assist us, o queen, when you no longer have eyes?” said one artist engineer who remembered her, for he had worked with her before in the creation of the Compass Rose, the single object that defined the
empirastan.

“
She has the use of my eyes,” replied Lirheas. “And we will therefore proceed. I was told merely to supervise, but now I will also create.”

And the architects and engineers obeyed, allowing the queen without eyes to approach their work, and with her the man who never left her side.

Over days and weeks the structure of marble grew like an exotic flower, and at the apex that held the dome were constructed rows of skylights to allow in the celestial lights during the day and the night.

For there was to be no other illumination within, nothing to disturb the pristine brass of the coffins, and the peculiar ashes they were to contain. . . .

T
here were no more blossoms of any hue left in the gardens. While the domed structure was being constructed by the engineers, the gardeners shook their heads in regret and continued to harvest the flowers of all living plants, on a daily basis, in order to avoid the anger of the
taqavor
of the mortal world.

For the
taqavor
walked the grounds pedantically every morning. And the more he looked the more new shades of rose or red he found, even when in fact they were not. But who was to argue with him?

“
Amaranth,” he was heard to mutter. “It is everywhere, red abomination. . . .”

“
Of what does the Lord speak?” the gardeners said to one another. “What is this red flower that he names?”

“
It does not grow here, although it could,” spoke up one very old gardener. “And some think it is a weed, while others who know better plant it at the eve of summer and harvest it before the first cold for the wondrous grain and the leaves. It is a hardy plant that likes the burning desert sun and the cool forest and the mountains equally. Amaranth is sown and reaped in the land of my birth. Our Lord knows of it because the
taqavor
has traveled the whole world from end to end, which is his great
empirastan,
and in every place he must have seen it.”

“
You seem to know much of this amaranth,” the gardeners persisted. “Tell us then why the Lord hates this flower so much?”

But the old one shrugged at that point, knowing in truth only as much as anyone, and regretting that he’d opened his mouth in the first place.

And so they continued to purge the gardens, and to whisper in fear among themselves. The piles of harvested blossoms of all varieties grew to be so big that even burning them had become a major chore, and there was no place to put the ashes. The Palace itself became a madhouse of anguished confusion, reeking of smoke and felled blossoms and ashes that were carried to the rest of the city on the fiery desert wind.

T
he coffins of brass were wrought by the most skilled metal-workers, and placed one by one in the central chamber of the round domed structure which was now complete. Each one of the coffins had been decorated with fine etchings including patterns that resembled a certain flower, according to the descriptions of the
taqavor,
who insisted upon this peculiarity.

The workmen who carried in the coffins made frequent warding signs against evil, for it was thought to be bad luck to mock the gods and death itself by using boxes designed for the dead to dispose of other things.

But in the end the deed was done. Then for several days gardeners and other Palace servants carried bags filled with ashes and filled the open coffins to the brim, packing them down as was needed, before going to bring more ashes.

There was no end to them, the ashes of the flowers. The plants seemed to grow back as quickly in the gardens as they were being cut down and burned. Very soon there were no gardens left but stumps of trees and uprooted holes in the shallow earth where rose bushes had once flourished. Underneath the disturbed earth, sand was soon revealed, for the gardens had been planted on top of soil brought here to the heart of the desert from other places.

The
taqavor
continued to walk along the gravel paths, on both sides of which were upturned earth and sand and wooden debris. And yet he looked about him as though he saw growing things, and his lips continued to mouth words that only he heard. Sometimes he would raise his hand and point to somewhere just overhead where he saw ghosts of swaying leaves and feather-light crowns of blossoms of a mauve and scarlet hue.

They continued to grow all around him, tall and thick and boundless, fluttering in the wind and invisible to all.

D
awn came upon the desolate palace grounds, and upon its first precarious light there came from within the House of Wives cries of terror and despair. There was the clangor of metal, the yells of guards, and the shrieks of women roused from slumber and herded outside in their fine silk and satin shawls.

The
taqoui
and the concubines and all their female servants were taken by armed palace guards to the domed structure of veined rose marble, smooth granite and delicate enamel hues in the center of the ravaged gardens.

“
Why?” cried the first and oldest of the
taqoui
in anguish. “What have we done to deserve such treatment from our Lord, whom we love and worship with all our beings, and whose children we bear?”

But the guards who had brought the women here lowered their gazes and would not reply. Instead, the women were left alone in the semi-darkness of the structure while the doors were locked behind them.

And the
taqoui
and the concubines and the serving women cried and wept, many falling on the delicate tiled floor of cool marble, between the rows of open coffins filled with ashes. For hours they called upon the name of their Lord, the
taqavor
of the world, and they struck the doors with their fists. Others took the ashes that were everywhere and threw them over their hair and foreheads, wailing upon their knees, their faces turned to the floor, beating their chests and scratching their cheeks with their nails.

For that was the mourning ritual for the dead, and the women knew they must thus honor themselves since no one else would.

But the doors of the domed sepulcher remained shut, and no one came to heed their calls for mercy. Time flowed, and they watched through the skylights as the sky changed overhead from the whiteness of day to the indigo of evening and the ichor of night.

Thus ended their first day without food or water.

“
H
ow can this go on? Why do you endure him?” said the queen without eyes to the Prince, with barely controlled passion, as they stood in their usual place before the window.

Before them now lay a desolate world of burnt gardens and hazy air. From the distance came the weak moans and weeping of the women in the domed sepulcher. After three days the sound had become a constant, day and night, sometimes fading, sometimes resuming, as the voices of the slowly dying women were carried on the wind.

“
What else is the son of the
taqavor
to do?” said Lirheas after a pause. “The mad one is my father.”

“
But he is not mine,” she replied, her voice breaking. “And I must speak the truth, as I have spoken it always.”

And with those words the blind woman turned and headed for the door, opening it violently without a moment of hesitation, knowing exactly where the handle was placed.

With a sudden sinking in his innards, followed by blind terror, Lirheas exclaimed, “Wait!”

And then he was after her, suddenly feeling himself moving like molasses, while the world and time itself seemed to grow still and stretch all around him. . . .