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IN ZACCARATH
"Come," said the King in sacred Zaccarath, "and let our prophets prophesy
before us."
A far-seen jewel of light was the holy palace, a wonder to the nomads on
the plains.
There was the King with all his underlords, and the lesser kings that did
him vassalage, and there were all his queens with all their jewels upon
them.
Who shall tell of the splendour in which they sat; of the thousand lights
and the answering emeralds; of the dangerous beauty of that hoard of
queens, or the flash of their laden necks?
There was a necklace there of rose-pink pearls beyond the art of the
dreamer to imagine. Who shall tell of the amethyst chandeliers, where
torches, soaked in rare Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a scent of
blethany?
(This herb marvellous, which, growing near the summit of Mount Zaumnos,
scents all the Zaumnian range, and is smelt far out on the Kepuscran
plains, and even, when the wind is from the mountains, in the streets of
the city of Ognoth. At night it closes its petals and is heard to breathe,
and its breath is a swift poison. This it does even by day if the snows
are disturbed about it. No plant of this has ever been captured alive by a
hunter.)
Enough to say that when the dawn came up it appeared by contrast pallid
and unlovely and stripped bare of all its glory, so that it hid itself
with rolling clouds.
"Come," said the King, "let our prophets prophesy."
Then the heralds stepped through the ranks of the King's silk-clad
warriors who lay oiled and scented upon velvet cloaks, with a pleasant
breeze among them caused by the fans of slaves; even their casting-spears
were set with jewels; through their ranks the heralds went with mincing
steps, and came to the prophets, clad in brown and black, and one of them
they brought and set him before the King. And the King looked at him and
said, "Prophesy unto us."
And the prophet lifted his head, so that his beard came clear from his
brown cloak, and the fans of the slaves that fanned the warriors wafted
the tip of it a little awry. And he spake to the King, and spake thus:
"Woe unto thee, King, and woe unto Zaccarath. Woe unto thee, and woe unto
thy women, for your fall shall be sore and soon. Already in Heaven the
gods shun thy god: they know his doom and what is written of him: he sees
oblivion before him like a mist. Thou hast aroused the hate of the
mountaineers. They hate thee all along the crags of Droom. The evilness of
thy days shall bring down the Zeedians on thee as the suns of springtide
bring the avalanche down. They shall do unto Zaccarath as the avalanche
doth unto the hamlets of the valley." When the queens chattered or
tittered among themselves, he merely raised his voice and still spake on:
"Woe to these walls and the carven things upon them. The hunter shall know
the camping-places of the nomads by the marks of the camp-fires on the
plain, but he shall not know the place of Zaccarath."
A few of the recumbent warriors turned their heads to glance at the
prophet when he ceased. Far overhead the echoes of his voice hummed on
awhile among the cedarn rafters.
"Is he not splendid?" said the King. And many of that assembly beat with
their palms upon the polished floor in token of applause. Then the prophet
was conducted back to his place at the far end of that mighty hall, and
for a while musicians played on marvellous curved horns, while drums
throbbed behind them hidden in a recess. The musicians were sitting
crosslegged on the floor, all blowing their huge horns in the brilliant
torchlight, but as the drums throbbed louder in the dark they arose and
moved slowly nearer to the King. Louder and louder drummed the drums in
the dark, and nearer and nearer moved the men with the horns, so that
their music should not be drowned by the drums before it reached the King.
A marvellous scene it was when the tempestuous horns were halted before
the King, and the drums in the dark were like the thunder of God; and the
queens were nodding their heads in time to the music, with their diadems
flashing like heavens of falling stars; and the warriors lifted their
heads and shook, as they lifted them, the plumes of those golden birds
which hunters wait for by the Liddian lakes, in a whole lifetime killing
scarcely six, to make the crests that the warriors wore when they feasted
in Zaccarath. Then the King shouted and the warriors sang--almost they
remembered then old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the sound of the
drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away backwards, and the drumming
became fainter and fainter as they walked, and altogether ceased, and they
blew no more on their fantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the
floor with their palms. And afterwards the queens besought the King to
send for another prophet. And the heralds brought a singer, and placed him
before the King; and the singer was a young man with a harp. And he swept
the strings of it, and when there was silence he sang of the iniquity of
the King. And he foretold the onrush of the Zeedians, and the fall and the
forgetting of Zaccarath, and the coming again of the desert to its own,
and the playing about of little lion cubs where the courts of the palace
had stood.
"Of what is he singing?" said a queen to a queen.
"He is singing of everlasting Zaccarath."
As the singer ceased the assemblage beat listlessly on the floor, and the
King nodded to him, and he departed.
When all the prophets had prophesied to them and all the singers sung,
that royal company arose and went to other chambers, leaving the hall of
festival to the pale and lonely dawn. And alone were left the lion-headed
gods that were carven out of the walls; silent they stood, and their rocky
arms were folded. And shadows over their faces moved like curious thoughts
as the torches flickered and the dull dawn crossed the fields. And the
colours began to change in the chandeliers.
When the last lutanist fell asleep the birds began to sing.
Never was greater splendour or a more famous hall. When the queens went
away through the curtained door with all their diadems, it was as though
the stars should arise in their stations and troop together to the West at
sunrise.
And only the other day I found a stone that had undoubtedly been a part of
Zaccarath, it was three inches long and an inch broad; I saw the edge of
it uncovered by the sand. I believe that only three other pieces have been
found like it.
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