The Legend of Broken (94 page)

Arnem quickly reads the thing, then passes it to his wife. “And what of it? It simply states the same information, in briefer form.”

“Sixt …,” Isadora says, her voice suddenly worried.

“Your wife sees the truth now as clearly as she did when she studied with the wisest woman in Broken,” Caliphestros declares, somewhat mollified. “My lady,” he goes on, putting a hand to his chest and bowing as much as he can from his place astride Stasi’s neck and shoulders. “Though I did not myself know you, then, I knew your mistress—a fact she doubtless withheld from you. She even suggested that you become one of my acolytes—an offer I refused, for your own safety. It required no great insight to see that you were destined for an important place, and should not risk your life in my service. The fate of Visimar—though he is, thankfully, with us today—and the even worse ends met by the others who followed me will attest to the wisdom of that decision.”

“My lord,” Isadora answers, with no little surprise and gratitude. “Praise from you is honor indeed—my mistress ever said so.” She turns to her husband. “And for this reason, Sixt, I must, as your wife, echo his concerns. This proclamation, issued before the conflict was decided, favors neither you
nor
Baster-kin. It is, indeed, so worded as to have made the citizenry believe that whichever side emerged triumphant, the God-King and the Grand Layzin had divined and approved the outcome.”

Reviewing the pronouncement, Arnem tilts his head in confusion. “That is one interpretation, surely. But it is the most cynical, to say nothing of the most sinister …”

“Cynical?”
Heldo-Bah declares. “
Sinister
? Yantek Arnem, we, too have seen this decree, and know that your wife speaks only good sense, by the bloody, piss-stained face of—”

“Heldo-Bah!” Keera is forced to order. “Do not worsen matters with your foul blasphemies—of
any
kind.”

“Blasphemies or no, Yantek Arnem,” Caliphestros says, “you reveal with the smallest statement that you give credence to all this royal … maneuvering.”

“A hard word, Caliphestros,” Arnem declares. “I may have doubts. But if this latest proclamation gives me the power to do the things I must, then this city and kingdom can be reformed. With your help, and that of Visimar, we shall find the source of the first pestilence—”

“From what I understand, your wife already understands the essential problem, and needs no advice from me,” Caliphestros replies. “The same can be said of the second ailment and Visimar’s diagnosis. Between the two of them, and backed by the authority that you yourself have been given, they can devise a pair of solutions. If permanent solutions truly do exist …”

“But we have
need
of your wisdom, my lord,” Arnem pleads. “I do not offend Visimar, I believe, when I say that yours is a mind without equal.”

“You offend me not in the least,” Visimar rushes to say.

“And you make a flattering plea, Arnem,” Heldo-Bah declares, throwing aside the piece of charred oak he had used to block the panthers’ path. “Save for one thing: with your wife and Visimar both here, you do not need my legless lord, as he says. While the Bane will require their own wise man somewhere in the Wood. And, although I am sure that this is not the main reason that Caliphestros wishes to go back, any arguments against his return—especially arguments made by
you,
who, of all people, has suddenly become the precious creature of that God-King who starves the poor and shits gold—are self-serving demands against which the two panthers, in particular, will prove deaf. So I would suggest that if you continue to fight their departure, you do so at your peril.
Yantek
.”

From where they stand and sit atop rubble, Veloc and Keera join their suddenly eloquent friend, and the three proceed to stand by the side of Stasi, her rider, and her daughter; and it is quite as clear from their expressions as it was from Heldo-Bah’s words that their opinions on where Caliphestros truly belongs have quickly changed.

“That we may fully understand one another—you continue to believe in the righteousness and honesty of the God-King and the Layzin, Yantek?” Veloc queries. “Because of two pieces of parchment that bear the ‘royal and holy seal’?”

“Do not presume to speak for me, Veloc,” Arnem warns. “My beliefs and reservations are well known. But I have the authority. It shall not be reversed—for I command the only power in Broken that
could
enforce such a reversal.”

“Ah,” Caliphestros noises. “So we come to it at last:
power
. Your power will put all things right. Tell me, Yantek: did it never occur to you that it was power that destroyed Rendulic Baster-kin—who was, I have told you, not doing evil, as he saw it, but obediently enforcing the will of the God-King?”

Arnem nods. “‘The last good man in Broken,’ you said.”

“As indeed he was—by your kingdom’s standards. Your wife knew him as a youth. Was he the same soul then, lady, that power would later make him?”

“In his essence,” Isadora answers, now wishing to defend her husband. “Later, when he had the ability, and was not troubled by pain—”

“Yes—when he had
power.
He planned the death of his wife—who died during our march—and thought to have rid himself of a belovèd daughter, while keeping an unfortunate and disowned son virtually enslaved. Power allowed him to do all this, yet he thought himself doing only right—for his God-King and the realm. Even when he both courted and threatened you, Lady Isadora, and attempted to arrange the death of your husband and his men, he believed that he did so for the good of Broken, with the power given to him by the
true
evil that inhabits this place. Well …” Glad in his heart to see that the three foragers have moved to the South Gate and have apparently decided to accompany him as he departs the city, Caliphestros finally says, “Believe it all, if you will, and if you must, Sixt Arnem. Do your very best, for remember”—and suddenly Caliphestros turns a look on Arnem that cuts the yantek to his very soul—“
you
are the last good man in Broken, now, and therefore the most dangerous. You will do all manner of evil in the name of good—and your first test will come immediately. For I swear to you, if you wish me to stay, you must kill me, as well as my Bane friends—who will, I suspect, advise Ashkatar and his men to take a similar view. We who belong in the Wood will return to it—and you interfere at your peril, less to your life than to your soul.”

“But, master,” Visimar says, as Caliphestros at last moves toward the gate. “You will not even
advise
us from afar?”

“Visimar, my old friend,” comes a more congenial reply. “You have learned to survive in this city—now you shall even thrive. But, once again, beware. The day will come when
each
of you will come to understand, in his or her own way, that Baster-kin was not the sole, or in many cases even the primary, source of Broken’s perfidy. You know such in your heart even now, Lady Arnem. But I will promise you this—” Caliphestros leans over to stroke Stasi’s neck, urging patience on the increasingly anxious panther. “If the day ever comes when you do discover and realize what that true evil is, and wish to confront it—then, if I still live, I shall return to assist you. But for now, I must bid you all farewell …”

The old man at last allows the panthers to move toward the gate, the resigned Arnem indicating to his own men that no last obstacle is to be put to either the rider, his mount, the second panther, or the three foragers; and, as Caliphestros finally passes through the South Gate, he laughs once: a complex sort of laughter, of a type Keera has come to know well. “Fear not, Visimar,” the departing scholar calls. “We shall be in contact by the usual means.” He gives his old friend a final, earnest glance. “For it would indeed grieve me not to know how you
do
fare …”

“But—where shall we find you, master?” Visimar calls.

“You shall not,” Caliphestros answers, passing out of the gate. “Only three humans know of my—of
our
—lair. And I believe—” He casts a glance at the three foragers. “I believe I may rely on them never to reveal that location.”

“The golden god may descend to Earth, and I shall carve him a new anus with my the sword you gave me, old man,” Heldo-Bah says with a grin, his disposition utterly changed, “before I will ever reveal any such thing.”

“The Moon’s truth,” Veloc adds. “I may compose the saga of our journey—but I shall never reveal just where we found you.”

“Trust in it,” Keera assures the rider gently. “Those two shall never reveal the location, nor shall I. But may we—may I—not visit you, from time to time?”

“
You
are always welcome, Keera,” Caliphestros replies. “As for your brother and the other?” Suddenly smiling gently, the old man seems to soften at last. “I suppose they may come, if they wish. But in the name of whatever
is
holy, make Heldo-Bah bathe. As to now—you must be away, to advise Ashkatar of all that has taken place. I will make directly for the Wood with my companions.” He glances down at Stasi and her daughter, deeply contented. “Yes—we shall make for home …”

And at that, the two panthers and the man who still, somehow, has the strength to stay astride the greater of the two, immediately begin to run at full pace, the foragers struggling to keep up. But it is not long before they have all vanished, into the last stands of trees on the high slopes of Broken and then amid the strange mist that continues to encircle the mountain.

Watching the group disappear from sight, Arnem, his wife and son say not a word as they walk to the ruins of the gate. Only Niksar breaks the silence:

“Yantek! Shall I detail a
fauste
of horsemen to pursue?”

“And what would your purpose be, Linnet?” Visimar asks, his eyes growing thinner, hoping for a last glimpse of his master. “You, your men, all of us, owe that little troop our lives, it would seem. Would you try to bring Caliphestros back, and break his will? This kingdom attempted that, once, and failed.”

“Failed rather badly,” Isadora murmurs, reaching inside her husband’s armor to ensure that the medallion she put there upon his departure remains in place.

“Yes—rather badly, indeed,” Arnem agrees, looking at her briefly.

“Yet having aided you thus far, Father,” says Dagobert, “they will simply—disappear?”

“I have never been given cause to doubt Lord Caliphestros,” Arnem answers. “Nor do I think that he has given me any such, now—he says that if and when a day comes that we discover a deeper evil at work in this city than has yet been discovered, we may contact him through Lord Visimar, who will now, I hope, take the position of high honor I offered to his master.”

Visimar bows, if only briefly. “I shall be honored, Yantek.” And with that his eyes turn to look down the mountain again, still hopeful for a last sight of the great philosopher he has been so proud to call friend.

“And so,” Arnem concludes, “he may be back, one day—but I shall try with all my being to ensure that there will be no cause. As for the Bane, our relations with them shall not only return to what they were prior to this crisis, but shall improve, now that at least two exceptions—the Baster-kin children—to the kingdom’s policy of exiling the imperfect have been made. And I intend to make those exceptions precedents. For, I confess, I ever found such rituals unnatural …” At that, the new supreme secular voice in the kingdom of Broken turns again to his wife and son. “Well, then? Shall we see how the rest of the children fare? I must inform Radelfer of his good fortune, as well.”

Pleased, for now, to have the moment of possible internal strife at last ended, Isadora and Dagobert gladly voice their agreement; yet it cannot be said that Lady Arnem is yet easy in her soul …

Visimar, for his part, scarcely seems to hear these remarks, so fixed are his eyes on the distance. Finally, however, he abandons the search; unfortunately, as it happens, for had he but waited a short while longer, he would doubtless have been most gratified to make out—emerging from the forests at the base of the mountain—the forms of two Davon panthers racing back toward their home within the Wood, with an agèd and truncated human attempting with all his strength to keep to the shoulders of the larger and more brilliantly white of the two …

TK

†
 Bernd Lutz, “Medieval Literature,” in
A History of German Literature,
Clare Krojzl, translator (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 6.

P
ART
O
NE

†
 
“… seat of unholy forces and unnatural rites.”
Gibbon did not live quite long enough to see his characterization of the mountain
Brocken
echoed by another great genius of the age, Goethe, who used the site in just the manner Gibbon describes—as a setting for unholy rituals—in his most famous work,
Faust.
The first of the play’s immortal
Walpurgisnacht
scenes, during which Faust meets unnatural creatures as well as characters from Greek mythology, takes place atop the supposedly cursed mountain. Because of the play’s great success and continuing influence, it both perpetuated and heightened the mountain’s notorious reputation. —C.C.

†
 
“… the
Bane.
”
Gibbon writes, “When we encounter the word ‘bane,’ here, we must understand it not as it is currently defined in English—that is, as a ‘spoiling person or other agent’—but rather in that sense in which it was originally intended throughout the Germanic languages:
bani
in Old Norse,
bana
in Old English,
bano
in Old High German (pronounced “
bahn
-uh,” and eventually spelled
bane
), which, in turn, translate as, ‘slayer,’ ‘murderer,’ and simply ‘death.’ Only in this way can we see how deep was the impression that this diminutive race made on the citizens of Broken.” [An
IMPORTANT
NOTE
, here: The reason for the shift in vowel sound, and later spelling, that Gibbon cites in the third of these examples is the famous “vowel shift” of Old High German, by way of which vowels in almost all unstressed syllables were reconciled (or reduced, the vowel shift sometimes being called the “vowel reduction”) to a uniform short “e,” which then became the most common vowel sound in Middle High German and finally in modern German. Along with the famous “consonant shift” in the same language, which is more arcane and of less concern, for our purposes, the vowel shift was responsible for transforming, from the sixth to the eleventh centuries, a language that was more phonetically akin to ancient German—as well as to the cousins of that earlier tongue, Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old Dutch, Old Norse, etc.—into one that was its own distinct branch of the Germanic family. That transformation would, in turn, eventually lead to modern German. —C.C.]

†
 
“… still deem the destruction just …”
Gibbon writes, “Here is the first of the puzzling temporal inconsistencies that seem either the careless phrasing of an undisciplined mind, or something far more mysterious: and any critical reader of the Manuscript who is possessed of even rudimentary insight will recognize and know full well that the narrator’s mind, while afflicted with many peculiarities, was far from undisciplined. Yet he speaks, in this statement, of destruction that is
to come
to his city and kingdom, and then of the destruction that ‘evidently’
has come
to pass, leaving us to wonder how, if he is writing before that destruction, he can know not only that it will happen, but what form it will take, down to the smallest details. On this, I shall elaborate in later notes.”

†
 
“… wars to the south …”
Gibbon writes, “Just what the narrator means by the ‘wars to the south’ is made unclear by his continued temporal ambiguity: He speaks of Broken in both the present and past tenses, suggesting that he may have been a visionary priest or some such; or that he was a later historian, assuming a guise for dramatic effect (which is my own belief). At any rate, for all of the period he discusses, the Western [Roman] Empire was, of course, in varying but constant states of distress, disarray, and, finally, dissolution, making employment as an auxiliary uncertain and irregular. It seems that his only secure posting there must have arisen out of his loyalty to the famed general Aetius, who, after defeating Attila and his Hunnish horde at Troyes in 451 A.D., was murdered by the jealous emperor Valentinian. It seems also that the similarly employed Oxmontrot, after participating in the vengeful murder of Valentinian, journeyed east to serve under the Byzantine standard, finding employ in the wars between the Eastern Empire and its various enemies, most notably the Persians, but also Oxmontrot’s own Germanic ‘relations.’ After some fifteen years of such service, the founder of Broken returned home to oversee the building of his new kingdom.”

‡
 
“… my voyage … across the Seksent Straits …”
Gibbon writes, “Here we may be more certain that the narrator is referring to a journey to either Celtic Britain, Celtic Scotland, or Ireland, the only places in Europe across any ‘Straits’ –certainly the Dover Straits, the narrowest point in our own English Channel and the most common point at which to cross from France to the British Isles, then as now—where he would have found monks capable of thus tutoring him. The contribution of British and Irish monks to the preservation of civilization during the period of Broken’s existence has always been underappreciated; cannot some one of your educated countrymen be prevailed upon to correct this injustice? Ah, but he should have to find a publisher in London, should he not?—and thus I answer my own question.…” One need only add that the term “Seksent Straits” takes its name from the Broken name for “Saxons,” who were considered the equivalent of peasants in that kingdom, despite the fact that, operating from their main base in the Calais region (the south side of the Dover Straits), the Saxons had already proved a formidable people, launching raids across the Dover Straits and into Britain, as well as in other directions; but they were still not, apparently, considered more than vagabond trash within the borders of Broken. Gibbon’s translator did not put the word “Seksent” in italics, here, perhaps because it was the proper name of a place. —C. C.

††
 
“Davon Wood”
The name betrays a Germanic origin, though it cannot of course be taken literally, in the modern German sense: besides the fact that we know Broken to have had its own dialect (mainly a mix of Old High German, Gothic, and Middle High German, although at times, as we will see, this can be a gross oversimplification), one finds it unlikely that the place was called “
Thereof
Forest,” “thereof” being the standard contemporary meaning of
davon.
But there is a secondary connotation to the modern word that is much more interesting, especially as it seems to have fallen out of use—and would have been more likely, therefore, to have derived from one of the ancient Germanic languages, and thus to have formed a part of the Broken dialect’s vocabulary. That connotation is “therefrom,” suggesting that
davon
was used to denote a “source” of things, including and perhaps especially evil and dangerous things. When coupled with the use of the word “bane” (see definitions in the note to p. 0), this seems all the more likely.

Judging by its location relative to Broken (assuming that “Broken” and
Brocken
are indeed the same peak, which seems, as Gibbon says, almost irrefutable), it appears that Davon Wood was simply a different name for the vast Thuringian Forest (as Gibbon concludes in a later note). Its hundreds of square miles of thick, rugged woodland, covering mountains and valleys alike, as well as its sudden and frequent drops into cascading waterways, match the narrator’s description of Davon Wood precisely—or rather, it would have matched it precisely, during the period under discussion (from the fifth to eighth centuries), when the forest was still primeval, and large tracts had not been cleared for lumber and firewood, and afterwards reforested with secondary growth that, while still impressive, does not have the overwhelming dimensions of those portions of the ancient forest that have survived. If we accept the proposition that the Thuringian Forest and “Davon Wood” are one and the same, then we can further conjecture that the mountains which the people of Broken knew as “the Tombs” were the same range that today is known as the
Erz,
or “Ore,” Mountains. Situated on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic, the Erz contained (as the name makes clear) a wealth of mineral deposits and forbidding, icy passes that conform closely to the narrator’s description of the Tombs. —C.C.

†
 
“marauders”
This word, used repeatedly throughout the text, may of course be a generic term for all nomadic tribes; but the emphasis on their appearing from the east, “out of the morning sun,” along with repeated later references to “eastern marauders” who attacked with the sun at their backs in order to blind and confuse their enemies, seems to indicate that it is a term applied primarily to the Huns, who did indeed prefer such avenues of attack—and who, despite their reputation as fearless and undefeatable warriors, may well have elected to bypass a kingdom as relatively small and capable of defending itself as was Broken. —CC.

‡
 
“… with this limitation, as with so many …”
It’s as well to establish early on that this sense of nostalgia on the narrator’s part for the “limitations” of the past fits with the nature of many Barbarian Age Germanic states. The word “barbarian” is often associated, in the popular consciousness, with a warlike, nomadic lifestyle, as well as with undefinable borders and anarchic governments; but the truth (or rather, what little truth we know) is that many if not most of the small, vanished kingdoms of central-northern and northeastern Europe occupied discrete, relatively well-ordered regions. This is particularly true of those kingdoms that, like Broken, retained heavy Gothic influences, although the Goths had long since moved on if, indeed, they had ever actually “invaded,” or were in turn invaded, which is one of those time-honored yet ultimately unproved theories of population migration that has of late been seriously questioned.

The standard notion of what has come to be known as (to use the phrase employed in one of the early twentieth century’s key works on the subject, written by the important if somewhat outdated British historian J.B. Bury) “the barbarian invasion of Europe” may represent less firmly grounded scholarship than it does the culmination of centuries of historical conjecture and pseudo-hagiography among academics across Europe, and even, eventually, in the United States, as well. But the central flaw in this notion of wave upon wave of non-agricultural, raiding tribes—pressed by the need to gain food for their people and forage for their ever-expanding herds of horses and ponies, as well as by a desire for wealth that they could not or did not wish to earn through settled hard work in trading towns and ports—has become suspect, in recent years (just as, during the same period, the supposedly irrefutable truth about the Indians of North America being the true “Native Americans” has been quietly called into question, as evidence of other, older inhabitants has emerged): in fact, the “barbarian hordes” theory may be a piece of
propaganda
that is far, far older than is that modern term for the deliberate deluding of whole populations. Indeed, it may be an unusually effective bit of fiction that dates back to imperial Rome itself, and especially to the western portion of that empire, which needed an explanation for why their proud legions were regularly repulsed and sometimes overwhelmed by the tribes north of the Danube and east of the Rhine.

Any emperor, much less a commander of a legion, who could allow himself to be fought to a standstill, to say nothing of defeated, by such barbarians would have had a great deal of explaining to do, both to the Roman aristocracy and to the larger group whose acronym the Roman legions bore into battle: “SPQR,”
Senatus Populusque Romanus,
“the Senate and the people of Rome.” Yet such defeats
did
occur, from time to time, especially at the hands of the Germanic tribes. In fact, the number of defeats only rose as Rome’s life as a republic became a distant memory and its transformation into an empire was consolidated. It became necessary, therefore, to concoct a more elaborate rationalization than the simple combat superiority of the Germanic tribes; and the theory of wave after wave of “barbarian invaders” may have been cut to fit this need. Such men (and women, too, for Norse and Germanic females often fought alongside the tribes’ male warriors) could be—indeed,
had
to be—portrayed as the worst of all possible dangers, if the indomitable reputation of the Roman legions was to be maintained on other frontiers. And so those tribes were widely declared to be not only every bit as wily as the leaders of those empires and kingdoms that lay beyond even Persia, but as treacherous as the Egyptians or the Carthaginians, and as savage as the crazed Picts in the northernmost reaches of Britannia—with the added attributes, of course, of being uncanny horsemen and expert seamen. Small wonder, then, that Caesar himself eventually declared that he would not campaign in or try to conquer Germania: to face “the Germans” became akin to engaging a semi-supernatural force, and the generally disastrous encounters that occasionally did take place, if they ended in temporary Roman successes, were characterized by punitive measures against German warriors and civilians alike that were unusually horrifying, even for such ruthless troops as the imperial Roman legions.