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Foreword to the Red Qalendu Manuscript
This is a copy of a book which is said to have been found in a place of Forn called Helad, one of the cities of the Thudun along the Incense Road that is inhabited no longer. It was unearthed from beneath an altar in a room once hidden, in the ruins of a villa; and the God that was worshipped at that altar was not such as the folk of Helad were accustomed to worship.
The binding of the book was graven with images of the nine birds, and ornamented with seed pearls. It was written in one of the promiscuous tongues of the south, which scatters its words to all languages, and takes up their words into itself, and has very many words for all things that are soft and luxurious - most unlike the language which the folk of Helad were accustomed to speak.
And it is said that the book was decorated within with the engraved likenesses of cities and heroes, strange beasts and temple ornaments, and tools whose use was unknown. But the copyists did not make copies of the pictures, for in the empire of Az-Gamar in those days images were held in disfavour, though the times had softened since the great days of Helad and the promiscuous tongue was spoken there.
Apology
I beg you to forgive me, gentle reader, for laying before you this poor collection of tales. Well aware of their innumerable flaws, I find myself nevertheless compelled to present them to you. I am afraid can only excuse myself by telling you one more tale, which is as follows:
When I was a youth I dwelt at a schooling hall in the city of Great Charn. I was not always attentive to my studies, and at morning and at evening sometimes I would make my way out by stealth to the wharves of the city. There I would watch the vessels of many lands that came to trade, and the business of the strange folk who crewed them. And I would watch also the business of the ships of Great Charn, which had returned from distant lands, or were setting forth to those places, where our city’s name was known as a place far-removed and marvelous. And within me there was engendered a love for distant places, as I watched the sea-craft coming and going, a bitter love for all that was distant and dangerous and spoke in strange tongues of spices and hurricanes. I loved the sea, and all those things that came and went upon it, but I also dreaded it, for at times ships would come back with tattered sails, and half a crew, or in tow, with none - for all had died of the sea-sickness. And there were ships that did not come back at all, and shipwrecked sailors fished from the sea more often dead than not. I saw one once, a Thudun, half eaten by the worms that live in the kelp, with nothing but red crusts in the sockets of its eyes. I used to dream of the sea, the green-black sea, the sea that could drown all the world, the sea that goes down and down to where it is always night, and monsters thrash about in the slime.
Nevertheless I was resolved to one day go forth myself, and see for myself the wonders with which all T’sai seemed to be liberally salted, though I was but a sickly youth, and often afraid.
The things of my home, which I saw every day, were become odious to me with familiarity. I longed to see things that I might see once in passing, and never again. I thirsted for those foreign place, and drank in those vessels with my eye - their proud banners where embroidered boasts coiled like silver vines, the golden birds worked by clockwork, the decks black with the blood of sea monsters butchered beneath merciless tropical suns. And the men who sailed those ships! What a marvellous world did it appear to me, that could hold such things and not burst.
It came to pass that I was watching one day a ship lately come to Great Charn from one of the havens of Mir, where the Thudun rule over slaves of many nations. And from the ship there came slaves of the race of Ashad, with iron collars round their necks, and horns cut away close to their skulls. They bore baskets of stones, which they cast down in a heap in a place near at hand. These stones had ballasted the ship as it sailed from a far place to Great Charn; and the slaves threw them into a field where once had stood a place for the working of glass, and where then the Nathians were used to camp on their peregrinations. I saw that the stones the slaves were casting down were worked stones, though many were broken. Some of the stones had squared corners, and on one face a carven fragment of some greater picture - here a part of a palm leaf, here a lordly hand, here a part of the head of a fierce man. Other stones were like wheels, and had once been parts of pillars, held together by iron rods through the middle.
At the sight of these things my lungs were filled with wonder, which intoxicated me like strong tea; and I began to clamber about on the heap of stones, picking them up in my hands and peering at them, deciding first to keep one, then another, and then wondering which one to discard when I found my hands full. I wondered how I could contrive to hide even one in my chamber - and there were enough to fill it nine times over. And I sought also to piece together some of the pictures - join sail to ship, and tail to hindquarters; but not one stone could I find that seemed to fit another.
My presence must have been an impediment to the stone bearers, for after a while they stopped coming, and huddled together speaking a little ways off. And a little while later I was startled by the harsh voice of an adult, roaring into my auricles from very near.
I returned from the far off land in which my thought was wandering, and craved forgiveness of my elder, feeling chastised and confused. I can still see her fierce yellow eyes, pinning me fast like a slith, and though in my later life I have met many great and terrible persons, I can recall no-one who has frightened me more. I abased myself, and made apologies for not hearing what she had said, which was something like:
“Get yourself hence from that rubbish heap, O youth of many recalcitrances! Truly, you have become a shame to your it-mother, and a stain upon the rolls of your clansmen. Begone, or I will chastise you with much vigour!”
Such was the way adults were used to speak, when I was a youth. I backed away from her, muddling through as many formulae of apology as I could half-remember. But even so I could not contain my curiosity.
“Many pardons, honoured ancestress. Before I go - I mean, as I am leaving - could you tell me, perchance, where these stones come from?”
And for some reason the ship-sailor did not thrash me, though she stared at me for a long moment before answering, and looked as though she would like to. Her colour faded, and she said in a less furious tone:
“If that is all you are seeking here, it is but the matter of a moment to end your seeking. These stones are ship’s ballast, of the Filial Piety, collected in Seloom where there is nothing of value with which to load a vessel. On every side of the harbour the fields are strewn with such, for a distance of many hours journey. So now you can depart, wiser and older.”
“But, your pardon-” I said, for I was burnt up with a longing to know things. “Who put them there? What were they?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “Someone. Who can tell?”
I left, and I forgot to carry with me even one stone. I barely saw the streets around me as I made my way back to the schooling hall, for my thought roared through my head like a great wind, and carried me with it, and my thought was of places that were farther away than any I had dreamed of. For it came to me then that the strange and marvellous places I had always longed for were, though far away, were places one could get to with time, and luck. They were places where rumours of Great Charn might have come, and travellers as well, and where I might find Kalamenish traders squatting in the streets hawking gaudy ornaments from the workshops of Great Charn, and liniments in jars marked with the seal of the All-Chandler. How much further away were the cities of the past! The places to which I could never walk, though I walked from now until I were ninety; the places to which no magic could transport me.
It was as though a hundred new T’sais had appeared before me. A thousand new worlds; the worlds gone by. And from that day onward it has been my passion to travel to them, in as far as I am able; to seek their spoor in old libraries, and guess at their likeness from the footprints they have left behind; a broken anklet, a fragment of cut stone, a whispered hexameter in a forgotten tongues. This I have not done for any good purpose that I can think of, but only because I have been compelled to.
I was a sickly youth, and even now am unsuited to travel. The small voyages I have made upon the sea have nearly driven me mad with terror. Now I feel myself growing old, and slow, and I am often sick. The weariness of centuries seems to have settled in my bones. So many millions of the dead, clamouring to me, demanding to have their stories heard again. I have never left the Principiate of Charn. But I have seen Uxmal. I have seen Yrsamon. I have seen Zoph, the debatable star, from the crystal observatory of Mnak. I have seen the Usurper cast down from the Red Tower of Bimbirizan, and the starlit pools of budding night-lotus that reflect the gold-green towers of Ashvangar.
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