Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [128]
Three hundred years before, this small country had tenaciously clung to victory through a long series of wars, and proceeded to slowly unify the entire continent.
“That’s when the first emperor, Gama Agrilius I, arrived on the scene, saying his family was directly descended from the old God. And the Goddess who said she received the world from the old God—the Goddess that we pray to—they said she was of a lower rank than even their own ancestors. She wasn’t even qualified to rule our world, they claimed, but she had deceived the old God and tried to steal the world away from its rightful owners: House Agrilius. Can you believe it?”
And that wasn’t all.
“When I first picked you up, remember I told you that the ankha were the first race created by the Goddess, and that’s why they look so much like her? Well Gama Agrilius I, he said that was a pack of lies. The ankha don’t look like her, he said, they look like the Old God. After all, according to them, he’s the one who made the world.”
This new emperor went on to claim that the true form of the Goddess wasn’t anything like the ankha at all, but was a crude, aged thing too horrible to bear looking at.
“That’s why she doesn’t tell us her name, and that’s why she hides in the Tower where none can see her. Because, if we could see her, then we’d know the truth. That’s what they say, anyhow.”
Wataru folded up his lunch while Kee Keema continued with his story. The lizard-man’s face was drawn tight.
“Like I said, the lands to the north knew war for years, and the people there lived on the brink of starvation. Oh, they had to struggle terribly just to stay alive. Gama Agrilius I, he said the endless wars, and the lack of food, were all the fault of the Goddess. See, she visited plague and hardship on the ankha because she resented them. She’d rather have ugly, twisted things, like her, to take their place. The long and the short of it was, the Goddess was trying to exterminate the ankha, and it was up to them to fight back.”
Kee Keema tilted his head and blinked slowly, deep in thought. “What happened next I can hardly believe. The ankha living in the northern lands—not only the emperor’s family, but them that lived in the other smaller countries as well—they all ate it up, every last word! Oh, they clapped and shouted and cheered him for saying it.”
There were many different races living in the northern lands, Wataru learned, but of them the ankha were by far the most numerous.
“They joined together and started exterminating the other races, and they were strong, real strong. If you lived in the northern lands and you weren’t an ankha, your house and fields’d be taken away, you’d be killed, or thrown in a camp and made a slave. The number of non-ankha dropped by the day. And then, the ankha had their glorious empire.”
It was clear to Wataru now why Kee Keema had said he was glad to have been born in the south.
“Now, three hundred years since unification, they say there’s hardly anything but ankha living in the north. If there are any other kinds left, why, you can bet theirs ain’t an easy lot. It’s enough to make you cry.”
It didn’t take much imagination to conclude that the Empire would like nothing better than to invade the southern continent with the excuse of strengthening ties with their kinfolk in Dela Rubesi. Then they would proceed to make an empire of the south as they had in the north, Kee Keema said glumly. “But, these three hundred years, not a single high priest of Dela Rubesi has made the slightest motion toward joining House Agrilius’s empire. They seem content to live in seclusion up in the mountains, with no ties to the world below. Us nonbelievers here don’t even know what the high priest looks like.”
The Northern Empire couldn’t make ties with Dela Rubesi if the latter had no contact with the outside world.
“We in the United Southern Nations are careful how we deal with Dela Rubesi and the believers, though. Wouldn’t want to rile ’em up and give ’em cause to look for friends