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Post by Fewms on Mar 1, 2008 3:34:42 GMT
Death in Klatchistan
CHEN-LIN: Yesterday, Gwydion led an army; tonight, that army bears him to the grave.
KHIP: Yesterday, Gwydion could enfranchise thousands; today, he cannot avoid the spear of death.
CHEN-LIN: Yesterday, Gwydion was a slave to the hopes and fears of political adventure; tonight, he cannot resist the worms' intrigues.
KHIP: He was like a guest in the place he dwelled in, like a traveller hastily departing for a distant land. Death has hurried him on his way.
CHEN-LIN: Oblivion has covered him with a garment; the earth has opened to receive him. The Demon is dispassionate to the dead.
IKNAY: Dead? Though wholly perished, the inconceivable power of Marxism would restore him to life.
CHEN-LIN: Marxism is neither a god nor a demon, but merely a divine philosophy. Only the gods can fortify with necromancy the rotting corpses of men. At best, Marxism has made a single mummy.
IKNAY: Nevertheless, on what premise do you anticipate his doom?
CHEN-LIN: Consider, Iknay. For three terms, the archpriest of Sek haunted the palace; rarely was his incarnadine robe not heard to sussurate as he wandered about the council rooms; like the song of the tawny-mouthed frog owl was the clatter of the gold he brought in perpetual caravan to the Treasury; his verbose rhetoric was emulated by the madmen of the bazaar. Where is he now? He could not sink from politics so suddenly; therefore, he is surely no more.
IKNAY: Are alternate endings not possible? Whenever someone is not seen for a while, you always assume the worst.
KHIP: Peace; we are basing our arguments on conjecture. But look - three spies come in to admire their god. Or have they been here a while? Let us consult them.
[KHIP gestures; a TSORTEAN SPY steps forward.]
TSORTEAN SPY: O cunning priests of Djelibeybi, at whose right hand the crocodiles are, I have little useful to report. The rumour of Gwydion's death reached us some time ago. A pretender soon stepped forward, whose sussrant robes and caravan-like clatter lent a very deceptive plausibility to his pretensions. The renown of the name attracted the ignorant, for the Tsortean mind eagerly fasten on what is new and marvellous. That was until some of his followers sought to test the claim that he was constantly enveloped in a shield of flames that could absorb any blow insufficiently forceful; he was gently hacked to death by his own supporters.
[Khip gestures a second time; an EPHEBEAN SPY steps forward.]
EPHEBEAN SPY: Rumour, being winged, quickly spread its wings over the deserts and gardens of Ephebe, and let fall, from a considerable height, the turtle-like rumour of Gwydion's death. The Tyrant was pleased, but disliked the rumour that Sek's archpriest had been crucified, preferring to give out that he had been torn apart by wild animals. Wretched was the courtier, then, who informed the Tyrant that he had seen in his sleep a vision of Gwydion, who seemed to turn his face toward him from one of Sek's hells. The courtier asked him, 'Did your crucifixion really happen?' Gwydion said, 'Yes, the crucifixion really happened.' The Tyrant asked the opinion of a dream interpreter, who said, 'The man who saw this dream shall be crucified. Gwydion was an agent of the historical dialectic, so his words must be true; yet the crucifixion he spoke of cannot refer to his own, because the Tyrant has stated that he perished otherwise. Accordingly, this must refer to the dreamer, and it is he who shall be crucified.' The Tyrant agreed, and the courtier met his doom.
[KHIP gestures a third time; an AGATEAN SPY steps forward.]
AGATEAN SPY: Not until recently has Gwydion been seem in Agatea, though long ago, from an Agatean seamstress' shop, he maintained the first foreign franchise of the People's Bank. When the noble houses of the Counterweight Continent opened their gates, Gwydion soon afterward appeared at the end of a pier that contemplated a striking view of the Tang's island-fortress. He stared at the beetling cliffs; he fingered the incarnadine cloth of his stole; until, at length, his Cortezian reverie found voice in the following Genuo-Djelian accented apostrophe: "O once great but now ruined pyramid, whose broad base is sunk in the sea, and whose summit has been worn into a fractured thumb of stone - you, O men-enhiving Memnon, are the very emblem of immortality unblessed by abiding youth! Had only you sought to recycle time, as Djelibeybi has, instead of trying to outlast it; for do you not know that time, left to its linearity, must win? O Gormenghast of Oriental masonry - we, the oldest masters of time, and you, its oldest sufferers, are similar in deepest nature, though unlike in degree. Although I may not divulge to you the awful secrets of Eternity and time, your poverty confirms that Lord Tang must be acquainted with Marxism as speedily as possible. Or should I call it Maoism...' At which point he stopped to step onto a rotting dragonboat that had just arrived, and was heard asking of the ferrymen the best translation into Agatean of "international expansion of the Warsaw Pact" as it drifted toward the island. He is said to have been the first non-playtester to enter among the adherents Lord Tang's court.
IKNAY: What is a playtester? Anyway, none of this tells us anything - was he alive or dead when he did all this foreign politicking? I'm not sure which the prevailing custom is in Agatea.
AGATEAN SPY: He was thought to be alive at first, for he implied to all by omission that he was so; but I believe his papers of birth were discovered to be a clever forgery made for him by a well-known pseudo-calligrapher of Fang. So, he is technically considered, by those that know him there, a Demon-worshipping, bloodsucking ghost; but I think he would be alive in our sense of the word.
CHEN-LIN: Typical. The worshippers of the Demon not infrequently die, but appear to lack the self-denial to remain dead. I preferred the scheming Gwydion of old.
KHIP: I don't. At least this means the next edition of Papyrus will be out.
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