local settlement date 35,993
The mightiest weapon of all is the word.
King Namor Zujahrah
25 road to castle city
By dawn, the high priest's ship had taken them beyond the horizon.
Namor had slept only moments at a time since they had come to Gadavida.
He still was not ready to sleep. Alone he stood at the front of the ship and watched the water.
He heard, or felt someone approaching him and thought Barbaralba had come. But it was the high priest.
"King Namor. May I join you for a moment."
The priest looked old and tired but very happy. He caught the first rays of the sun and Namor thought he was looking at an angel.
"It is a wonder, being here."
"Yes, that it is. This is for you."
Namor took the book.
"It has been copied by hand by high priests since before the beginning of time. Which up until last night made no sense to me. But now there is a space ship. The original was obviously brought on the space ship. And we still have it because it is God's word."
"God is a lie."
"Yes, of course. But it is written. The book is God."
With that, the high priest, still smiling, turned and left Namor with his book. Written before time. He was certain by tyrants for tyrants from a tyrannical age.
He considered for a moment to throw the book overboard but Barbaralba had come and taken his hand.
"Did you get another book."
"I've God. In the word."
"I would like Namor, in the flesh."
It was neither order nor request. The word was made. The flesh still hungered.
It ended up being a resurrecting sleep into the late afternoon. When they awoke, the ship was no longer moving across the water. The crew had gathered the sails and anchored in a small cove of one of the metal islands.
Other than gentle lapping on the side of the ship, there was little sound. The ship crew went about their work quietly.
The priest greeted Barbaralba and Namor when they came on deck.
"This is a good place to collect shell fish."
"I am dying to eat a shark."
Barbaralba took up her weapons and requested the use of a spear and a sword. Namor wanted to see what a metal island looked like up close.
"I want to see the island."
"Allow me to show you."
Rowboats were set out and the island was reached quickly. There was a sandy beach. The sand was purple black and was hot under the feet.
On the rock were bits of moss and small plants. Birds, bugs and flies were the lords of the little island.
The soil was like none Namor had seen in all his travels. He was certain that the island had been dropped there. The rock dug into, the metal ripped out and taken away. Leaving a ring of rock rubble around a hole that was almost as big as the island. The island was a ring of rock rubble with a salt lake taking up most of the area of the inner island. The salt lake was warmed in the dark rock by the hot sun.
Around the protected still salt lake was a thick ring of salt.
It made Barbaralba thirsty, looking at the big bowl of salt water. Cardinal Saharah walked into it. The other visitors from Snow City also went into the thick water. Barbaralba followed them in and flopped down on her back. The water was so full of salt that it was possible to lay on it without sinking. Without swimming.
"Will you do me the honour, King Namor, to join me for a smoke, while we enjoy watching angels sitting on the water."
"On an island that we dropped from the sky."
The priest nodded. Not quite certain what Namor meant.
A few pieces of driftwood that a storm had blown over the ring of rock made a comfortable place to sit in the shade of the high priest's cloak.
"Is it not a wonderful freedom, King Namor. Here now. Not killing one another."
Namor laughed. And took the pipe offered him.
"If you ask a hundred priest what God is, you would get a hundred explanations. Same if you asked the servants. Or the free workers. They all believe. Believe or die. It's quite simple. No one knows what they believe."
"We were not so different in Castle City. Our resources and methods were a little different than the ruling priests. But I can not say that we have been better at conducting our lives. Just different symbols. Different manipulation methods."
"How will you control the masses. Now that this method of ours has been called into question."
"Obey or die. Is there any other way, Old Priest."
The high priest laughed.
"I like that. Old Priest. I am Priest Myast. High Priest of Gadavida."
"Priest Myast, I am very glad we met."
They both laughed.
"Yes, me the more. You have inspired me to be guilty of high treason. According to our law."
"I am King Namor of Castle City. Also guilty of high treason. Inspired in part by that little angel sitting on the water. But that was before we decided to revoke the law. Treason is a word used most often by the tyrants of terrorism."
"I want to help you in any way I can to make a new law. Maybe a new God."
"Help us find a way to end ignorance. It has been a tool of governing far so long that it is killing us."
The high priest laughed.
"End ignorance. What a most brilliant idea. And I suppose it must be possible. All things are possible, through God."
The priest laughed again. He found it continually ironic that a space ship circled their planet.
"King Namor, we have sold a lie for thousands of generations. The ruling class wanted the masses controlled and lying to them, ruling with terror, was the easiest way. It was and is a unforgivable crime to enslave them and ultimately."
"What, Old Priest."
"We stole and plundered paradise."
The priests looked like he was a thousand generations gone before he popped back into sitting beside Namor. He looked at him and laughed again and refilled his pipe.
"It's brutally funny. There are some very vague hints in the original book that there was a time before the War Lords and the Priests. But nothing you can really understand or picture. I really can't imagine what it is without terrorism. It has always been our way to rule."
"I have seen without terror rule in Snow City. And I think they manage without because they are a small well informed and very social community. I think we have to bring up the standard of awareness, wakefulness and most important participation. We need to touch the would we live in. We are far to far away in a fantasy and have not even noticed that we are not only threatening our own survival. But even the fish are in danger because of our disassociation from physical reality. Which, Old Priest, if brutally absurd."
The high priest wondered about those he had had burnt. To please the crowd. And to remind them of the dangers of disobedience. Terror rules.
"You, King Namor, you are not normal. You are like the someone in the story they had written in to the lie law to give the people hope and here you sit and you don't believe the story. Which I'm afraid only makes it more true. You are what you are and not who you are. The lie gave me a good life. I knew it was a lie. I knew that even you were a lie. But I can see what you are the writers must have known you were inevitable and now I am simply in this new world where the story becomes real and makes fools of its perpetrators. I have fallen back to the earth and have seen it for the first time. This is the bloody salvation the book tells us of. But it is not the who. It is the what. Not the one, the many. And the many starts at the one. It started at the one so many generations ago. And it is the same thing. The one was buried and we believed the one to awake the many to be dead. I can't believe I lived to see the day when I left my temple to sit on a barren island with the one who came to tear down the false one to allow for the many. I love it. Do I talk too much, King Namor."
"You have a fine voice, Old Priest. And be assured, I would have held to luxury of the castle had I not seen that it was killing us."
"Yes. It is killing us. We can see that but refuse to look at it. And know it can no longer be avoided. It must happen that someone sees it and it has to be someone who can bust all the barriers and not fear for his own life."
"It has to be someone who is so in love that that someone sees that love is a thing that has survived death. And that should that someone die walking his or her part in the war against the tyranny of terror law."
Barbaralba walked by them carrying her weapons to the ocean where the priests were gathering shell fish.
Namor and the high priest followed her with their eyes and Barbaralba smiled with the confidence of a fisher on her way to do what she had grown up doing.
"She is a wonderful and frightening creature. You are right to love her. It would be the ugly job of any high priest to have to burn her publicly to protect the laws of terror."
"She is like a bird. Oblivious to depravity. A celebration of movement. Beast and angel. Loving and brutal."
"Love, it is a wonderful thing. You truly are blessed. I have been blessed to have lived long enough to see this day."
The high priest laughed again.
"You were publicly burnt today. Guilty of my death among many other crimes."
Barbaralba shot a fish that she quickly hacked apart.
"Bloody heavens."
"She is baiting a shark."
"Oh. Then I will assume she isn't simply a mad creature."
"I said only that she is baiting a shark."
The priest laughed again. Namor laughed with him. It was funny to sit on extraterrestrial rock and watch a creature with simple metal technology bait a shark and drive her sword through the back of its head and out its belly.
Barbaralba jumped over the thrashing shark using the sword to flip over the fighting fish. The she slid into the water and swam away to let the shark fight itself to death.
By the time it had, there were three priests wading toward the shark. With spears.
"That, I have never even imagined."
"I think, Priest Myast, there has to be less governing of people. We are selling ourselves short. Making a game out of our lives by inflicting obedience."
"There is still the question."
"What's the question, Old Priest."
"Why are we here."
"Why is a question for children. And it almost always means how. Why we exist, likely because we can exist. How we got started existing we are still working through those questions. But we know that we came here. We made the world be what we wanted it to be. Because we had the means. We obviously were myopic in our arrogance. And we fucked up."
"A few moons ago I did not believe in magic, King Namor. Let us take the shark to the ship and set sail for knowledge and technology. Deadly sins for terror rule with ignorance. It has come time; we must listen to the snake."
"Knowledge and technology without wisdom will kill us. Just as quick as ignorance and terror Gods."
"If you were not right, I would have burnt you."
The high priest laughed.
Namor swam out to meet Barbaralba.
"Swim with me to the ship, Drave King."
Barbaralba kissed Namor to keep him from fighting the ocean's surface. She dove under him and reappeared to help him rest.
"You are getting better, Namor. Move slowly. It is happening. Anyone looking can see it."
When Namor reached the deck of the ship, he lay on his back and watched the dirty white sails unroll and fill up the darkening sky. He felt the anchor being pulled up out of the water. He felt the wind grab the ship and pull it into the ocean waves.
"King Namor. Will you join us for some shark."
Namor sat up to see Cardinal Saharah. She was glad in an erotic skin tight dress, something Namor had never seen her wear. It demonstrated that she was a strong and healthy woman. It was more than naked.
"You are a wonderful creature."
Cardinal Saharah lent Namor her hand to assist him in standing to his feet. He kept her hand for a short time before touching her bare shoulder and taking a kiss from her lips. And biting into her bare shoulder.
She pressed herself against him before pushing him away and sending him to prepare for their first meal together with the priests.
Namor was surprised to find Barbaralba wearing a dress like that of the cardinal. Barbaralba did not have to ask Namor what he thought. She smiled and watched him dress in a robe the high priest had left for him.
"This is all a bit like being in the castle again. A comical party."
"Comical and fun. I like how you look at me. I will wear a dress like this when we go to the theater in Adrone. And you will sit with me an smile like you do now."
"I will."
On the fifth day, Adrone was sighted. Shortly after, many fishing boats. They were coming to meet the ship. Barbaralba and Namor knew they would be prepared to set the ship into flames.
"Gather in the sails and lower a row boat."
Namor had given the order to the high priest. He bowed and passed on the orders with a big grin.
When the ship was with anchor, Namor took Barbaralba and two priests into the row boat and went forth to meet the fishing boats.
Barbaralba stood at the front of the boat like the soul owner of everything in her domain.
"Drave King."
"Angel Fisher."
"Tonight you can take me to the theater."
The first fishing boats had recognized Barbaralba. They had all served under her command when the first ships from Barbancor took anchor in their harbor. Now she had obviously returned on a Barbancorian ship.
They called out her name from boat to boat.
"We can turn around now."
By the time they had returned to the ship, the sails had been dropped and the anchor raised.
"They seem pleased to see you."
"As pleased as I am to see them."
"If I must die today, the best thing I ever did in my long life was not to burn you."
Barbaralba smiled at the priest. She put her arm around Namor and watched Adrone growing before them.
Thousands crowded the harbor front.
Barbaralba kissed Namor.
"It looks different. The world looks different."
"It is different. Many worlds are coming together."
Karnalana was on the dock to meet them. With her were people pointing boxy looking glasses at them. Others were taking notes.
"Welcome home King Namor. Barbaralba and."
"What are these."
"Cameras. For making photos. Pictures for the morning news."
"The things one finds buried under a castle."
There were many questions. Namor introduced their guest from Barbancor and found them quarters for the night. At the evening feast, reporters took photos and notes. Barbaralba told of their travels. Namor told of their discoveries. He explained about the variations on totalitarian plundering of resources and lives. He explained the necessity of governing systems that taxed the environment and people less. He explained about the rivers and conditions of the cities.
Cardinal Saharah told of Snow City and what and how they perceived and approached life.
High Priest Myast raved on about the history of God and how God had formed the minds of most of the citizens of Barbancor. He explained how their God varied from other Gods, all really the same God but written in different books. And which book tended to make what kind of soldier. That even with the threat of war from the island of the Damned, there were three major wars, almost always, on their homeland.
The reporters ignored their meals to write and take photos until enough had been told, the meal eaten and drinks drank.
The high priest filled his pipe and lit it.
"This is a very different world. King Namor."
"Even for us. From what it was a year ago."
"From what little I have seen so far, I can assure you, this is a land of sorcery. I still believe that. I just don't believe anymore in burning it."
"Namor. Drave King. If you will."
Namor looked up from his conversation with the Old Priest to see Barbaralba in a dress Karnalana's dress maker had made for her.
"Ah. Yes. We are in Adrone Priest Myast. A city of fine culture. Decide on something you want to do then ask someone where to find it. Take someone with you. Barbaralba and I must ignore protocol for the rest of the evening. We have tickets for the theater. Karnalana will find entertainment for her guests."
"I will find someone to listen to me, King Namor. That is more than enough entertainment for me tonight."
"I am certain you will someone to listen to your stories. We will meet again for breakfast. Tomorrow we start our journey to Castle City."
chapter 26
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