Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 31)

The clamorous mob led their three prisoners ever deeper into the Dragon’s Dungeon. The air was hot, stale and oppressive, and the never-ending twists and turns of the descent had a disorienting effect, so that Mishael, at least, began to feel as if he were not even on the earth at all, but in some macabre, surreal dreamworld, where the very fabric of existence was only swirling phantasm, a tortured simulacrum of reality. Finally, after what seemed an age of pandemonium, the mob of soldiers jerked their bound prisoners to a halt before a black iron gate, deep within the bowels of the earth. The crowd was already beginning to dissipate, and soldiers with leering grins and sadistic chuckles were making their way back to the surface of the city. Apparently, the unexpected excitement of the capture of these new and seemingly important prisoners was already beginning to lose its novel appeal.

After what seemed another age, a tall, stout man, who in his youth must have been well-muscled and imposing, but now had a little more paunch than brawn, stepped up to the gate, withdrew a bulky key ring from his belt, and with an air of thinly-veiled disdain for the jeering mob, he opened up the gate and pointed to a couple of the soldiers in the front, motioning them to bring the prisoners on in. Then, with a weary sigh, he pushed the rest of the mob back, slammed the gate, and at a lethargic pace began to walk back deeper into the Dragon’s twisted entrails. Every motion he made suggested that he was fed up with his job, weary of the dungeon, the prisoners, the soldiers, the endless locking and unlocking of gates and bars and prison cells. The prisoners seemed to have no more meaning to him than the iron gates forever barring his way; they were just another obstacle, another thing to try his patience and vex him yet the more in his thankless, meaningless existence. The thought struck Mishael, who had a knack for discerning such things, that in his youth he must have intentionally conditioned himself to think of his captives as impersonal objects toward which he had impersonal duties to perform, and that he had done so because otherwise the unspeakable atrocities he had seen and taken part in would have driven him absolutely mad. The guilt would at once become unbearable if he at all let himself remember that these were persons, living, sentient beings, that surrounded him in his dens of squalor and tortured despair.

After leading the captives a few yards down another dark tunnel, the prison guard paused, flipped through the keys on his great ring, and opened up a little cell.

“Put the two of them in there,” he commanded the soldiers who were escorting the prisoners, pointing to Carl and Gilead; “the other comes with me”.

After one more gate and another dark tunnel, the prison guard drew up again, and unlocked another little cell:

“Put him in there,” he commanded the soldier holding on to Mishael. “In this block, we keep those prisoners who are of particular importance to the Grand Proprietor. This is Mishael, of course, for whom we have been admonished to look out for some time now. The Grand Proprietor has just left on some business in the East, but he will want to see him immediately upon arriving. So I must take your name,” the old guard continued wearily, finally making clear why he had gone to the distasteful effort of conveying this information to the soldier following him; “for he will doubtless want to meet with the soldier who captured him as well.”

But before he had a chance to respond, the other soldier, who had somehow managed to follow along through all the shuttings of the gate, and had exerted himself most strenuously in order to be here at this point, called out in a panicked voice that was racked with hoarse, wheezing pants, “My name is Lenny! I found this intruder and stood him off singlehanded when my partner betrayed me! I sounded the alarm and withstood them all until help arrived!”

The prison keeper turned to look at this pitiful little man and seemed actually to see him for the first time, and a wave of revulsion washed over him, visibly contorting his countenance; but he quickly resumed his apathetic comportment, simply replying, “Well, then: the Grand Proprietor will see you as soon as he returns from the Desert of Salt”. Turning his back on the old soldier, he double-checked the gate behind which the first soldier had just locked Mishael, to make sure it was securely fastened. Then, the prison guard and the two soldiers walked back out of the serpentine tunnels, locking the gates behind them as they went.

Mishael, alone in his cell within the putrid bowels of the Dragon, sank down against the far wall, let out a dolorous sigh, and slowly lowered his head until it came to rest between his knees.

* * * * * * * *

For a few minutes, he remained in this attitude, lost in his own despair and dead to the world around him; but gradually, there dawned upon his consciousness an awareness of an audible lament that mirrored the sorrow in his own soul, but was not coming from him. He attuned all his senses to this audible complaint, which was composed of sighs, groans, and occasional spoken words and fragments, tumbling out something like this:

“Oh! why was I ever born in Fair Semblances? Why was I ever born at all? A curse on the day! A curse!”… “How long? Oh! how long?”… “And my own brother!”…

And with that final phrase, a realization flashed across Mishael’s mind. He leapt to his feet, banging his head on the low stone ceiling in the process, and sank back down to his knees. Then, shaking his head, which was no doubt beginning to form a nice lump already, he collected his wits again, drew in a deep breath, and cried out,

“Shashi! Is it really you? Can it really be you?”

There was a moment’s pause, and then the voice cried out in response, in a tone half credulous and half skeptical,

“Mishael?”

“O Shashi! How sweet it is to hear your voice! You have no idea what I’ve been through, the things I’ve seen! And I’ve missed you, I really have missed you and…and…”

Here, Mishael cut his phrase short, and Shashi, knowing how it ought to have been concluded, cried out dolefully,

“And my brother, my brother Javan! Oh, what’s become of my brother?”

And to this query Mishael had no response, but he lifted up his voice and wept, the two of them together, separated by a crumbling stone wall and yet nearer than they had been in many long months.

Eventually, Mishael called out again to his boyhood companion, through the stone wall of the dungeon into which they had been inexorably drawn, but by such different paths:

“Shashi, tell me what happened. What all has taken place since I left Fair Semblances?”

“But where do I begin?”, Shahsi replied, with a sad pensiveness. “So much has taken place, so much, so much; and yet when I come to tell of it, it doesn’t seem like so much at all. There’s really not much to tell. But such as it is, here is my story.”

“After you left, the whole place was thrown into confusion: the ministerium began patrolling day and night, barging into houses at all hours, interrogating anyone seeming at all suspicious. The Grand Proprietor launched a great campaign of propaganda, denouncing you and your so-called ‘brazen, irresponsible, and inexcusable treachery,’ and opining to the youth of Fair Semblances that this is why they have taken such pains to prevent any forays into the Impenetrable Thicket, that they were not just killjoys or spoilsports, but that they had a solemn and sacred duty to protect our souls from evil, and that the tragic outcome of your refusal to heed their reasonable demands, your having been utterly consumed by the evil forces of Vrak, no doubt, and thus having come to a very miserable end, should reinforce to them all the need for absolute submission to the counsel of the ministerium, and especially of the Grand Proprietor. Javan seemed duly penitent at once, but I kept wondering why they would speak of you with such venomous spite, if they really were just deploring your loss and grieving over your tragic fall.”

“Anyway, soon they were saying that, in light of the dangerous position into which your folly had placed us, they were no longer secure, and as Vrak had broken through to snatch up one wayward soul, he would doubtless be raging all the more, and hoping to snatch up many others; and so it was only prudent and reasonable that they bring in reinforcements, skilled in discipline and warfare, to help us live more discreet lifestyles, and ultimately, to protect us from Vrak.”

“Soon, these reinforcements arrived, and I was utterly shocked to realize that they were only sanguinors, of which all the Ancient Legends said that they were the servants of Vrak himself, trained by him and answerable to him. But the Grand Proprietor explained that their role was a very limited one, and pertained only to their area of expertise, namely, discipline and enforcement of policy; and that, even though we could not agree precisely with them ideologically, nor could we vouch for their loyalties in a broad sense, yet it was wise and necessary, in light of the present exigency, to employ the expert services even of those who are not Seekers, in order to ensure that those who truly are Seekers might continue to live according to the dictates of their consciences. I was amazed at how all the people, like so many stupid lemmings, immediately bought this egregious prevarication, and settled back down into a new form of life, directly and overtly controlled by Vrak through his sanguinors, without so much as a murmur of opposition. Of course, when it comes right down to it, they really did not have to change their lifestyle at all, and so it was an easy sacrifice to make.”

“I voiced my gnawing doubts to all our old friends, very subtly, mind you, for I was afraid of being interrogated by the ministerium, especially given my connection with you; but I found in absolutely no one else any hint of dissatisfaction with what had transpired. In fact, several of them undertook to lecture me (for my own good, of course) of the terrible treachery inherent in questioning the wise decisions of the ministerium. The foremost of these was my own brother, Javan, with whom I developed a terrible feud, so that we could no longer speak peaceably to each other.”

“Javan was poisoned by a dizzying rise to power, when, in turn for the stern denunciation which he everywhere breathed out against you, designating you a fraud and a deceiver, who was so clever as nearly to overwhelm even himself in his lies, Shimei Ahitub made him his right hand man, and took him all over the Consortium to promote the ministerial propaganda. Of course, I had been with the two of you all along and knew how utterly inaccurate his portrayal of the event was; in fact, it had not even been your idea to enter the Thicket, and you were the most reluctant of us all. That was the last straw, as it were. I realized that there was far more to commend your course of action, in the whole situation, than theirs; and so I determined to follow you, and break through the Thicket myself.”

“Only I was caught, and locked up in New Angelia. I had just been there for one night when they brought someone else into the same cell, a fellow named Tobiah. I heard from him how he’d helped you escape, and how you were on your way to Lebben-Or; but that was the last news I’d had of you until now, and I never knew if you made it safely or not. Well, the next day, the sanguinors brought the two of us down to Dolos, and cast us into prison, and I’ve been here ever since. Only one time has my brother Javan been down here, and that was to tell me that he is now the Grand Proprietor, to gloat, as it were. But I never could see why he would gloat about being so explicitly and undeniably in the service of Vrak. Could he not see how disgusting it was to make his rise to power by maintaining in such maudlin tones of condescending concern for the poor souls of Fair Semblances that he was protecting them from Vrak? That by means of that very lie he would rise to power in the ranks of Vrak’s own army? That the more he cajoled and flattered and consoled the people, the more he was leading them to their irreversible destruction? Ah, Mishael, what has become of my brother?”

And for the second time that evening, the two of them lifted up their voices and wept.

After a few moments, Mishael called out again through the stone wall, saying,

“But I haven’t told you my story yet; do you care to know how I came to be here? I did make it to Lebben-Or, I made it after many struggles, most of them of my own making – but I made it at last, and it has been worth it all. Even this is worth it all, for I have seen the High King, and that has changed everything. But let me tell you of my journey.”

And then, beginning with the map above the door of the Divertisement, he told Shashi of everything – of his passing through the Impenetrable Thicket, his narrow escape from wyrm-fire, how Tobiah rescued him, of meeting all the company and traveling with Gilead and Ariel through the Desert of Salt, and of how they had found the Springs of Elim and the ancient City of Zoar, how he had been lured to Lusk, had finally escaped and come to Lebben-Or, and had immediately set out to rescue Tobiah, and of all that happened along the way – in short, he spent a very long time recounting his tale, telling it in such detail that, if I were to reproduce it all word for word, I would utterly repeat this entire story so far, and vex the reader inexcusably in doing so.

When he had completely finished, there was silence for a few moments. Mishael felt very tired, and had no idea how long he’d been talking, or whether it was day or night; but still, he was so glad to have found some unexpected fellowship that he could not bring himself to give up the conversation and try to get some sleep. But he didn’t know any longer what to say, and even as he cast about in his mind for words of encouragement and hope, he found his own soul growing more downcast and fearful so that eventually, when he did speak again, he found himself crying out,

“O Shashi! My heart is so heavy down here, I am so afraid of what is to come! I don’t regret anything, I still believe it has been worth it all just to see the High King, and yet I am afraid, terribly afraid.”

“Do you remember how I met the High King? Well, I forgot to mention that he gave me something then, a mirror which shows what is true and what is false, even when deception is casting its confusion all around. But whenever I look into the mirror, wishing for a ray of hope, I just see black walls, endless tunnels, terrible beasts, fire, smoke, destruction. I fear that I may lose hope entirely. O Shashi! What will we do?”

“I don’t know,” Shashi replied, and his voice seemed small and far away. “I don’t know, but I know that you’re my brother now, my only brother, and you have come here on a mission of mercy, to save me from my own despair. I don’t wish you to be here, and yet where would I be without you?”

Again, there was silence.

In the meantime, far, far away in the bright and gladsome streets of Lebben-Or, Ariel was sitting alone on a bench, the same stone bench upon which she used to sit with Mishael and Gilead, and know the delights of their fellowship. All of a sudden, and just as Mishael felt his own heart fill with despair, she felt a soul-deep pang, and cried out audibly, with an inarticulate moan of pain.

“Why am I still here, when my heart is with him?”, she murmured under her breath. “Why could I not share his burden, be with him to help and comfort in joy or despair, in weakness and strength?”

Sighing again, she looked all around at the beautiful gardens and crystal walkways; but their beauty did not pierce her soul, and her eyes were downcast and dark. Slowly, without even realizing it at first, she began to sing, and the tones of her song were beautiful and sad, deeper than sea and calmer than a slumbering infant’s sigh; but soon, they grew strong and piercing and vibrant, and the heights of hoped-for joy and triumph danced with the depths of anguish and loss, pulling whole worlds, unspeakably vast, into a strangely harmonious tale of heaven and hell, victory and defeat. Finally, the joyful melody overcame, and a ringing peal of undying hope leapt up from the Beautiful City, and as a thing tangible pierced through the clouds, opening up a path for a diaugasmic ray from the hitherto hidden sun.

The song did not at once die, but sped out from its origin in Lebben-Or with the lightning-speed of a phosphor, leaving in its wake a brighter trail through the midst of the gloomy heavens. Even when it approached the dark city of Vrak it did not fade away, but leapt up the brighter and all the more fervent, only with a spiritual light that the eye could not behold, and it pierced the darksome city to its depths. Deep within the city, every soldier shuddered and glanced nervously about, as if some unseen presence had penetrated their gloomy fastness. But deeper yet, in the very bowels of the city, and just as inexplicably, Mishael and Shashi both felt at once an overwhelming sense of peace and impending victory.

“Shashi!” Mishael cried out one last time, in a voice that was irrepressible in its happy anticipation; “I see in my mirror an open door; and now, the walls of Dolos are falling, the very mountains are shaken, and Lebben-Or is swelled with a people who once had been enslaved, but now are set free. Be courageous, my brother! for victory is certain, if our strength fail not.”

The words of Ariel’s song went something like this:

The red flames on:
Gone are those hours that I spent with you, dear, when my heart was light;
Their laughter has fled on the wings of Time, like a bird they have flown;
And the leaf you caught up when it fell, the red leaf that flamed so bright,
It is faded away, its outward form is decayed and gone, –
But the red flames on.

Let the red flame!
The slow sands of Time still run, the ceaseless gears still move,
And all things are borne along in the never-ending tide:
Let us dance on the press of Time, dear, tread out the wine of Love!
We will drink the delight of that moment still when Time has died, –
And the red will flame on.

The red flames on:
They wandered away, that white hand, and ah! those bright-beaming eyes; –
They are gone, but they still haunt my mind like old familiar refrains,
And my heart, my heart leaps up, and my lonely spirit sighs,
And Time itself takes Love’s harp, and echoes the soul-deep strains, –
And the red flames on.

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