The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [57]
Surely that cannot be so, Roshanak protested. Her long black hair was caught up in many lapis beads, and Tarsal found her too beautiful to look upon—even the long scars on her cheeks made her only more severe and lovely. Everyone wants something. Everyone desires.
And Tarsal allowed the truth of her words. In this country, she said, which we call Pentexore, we have a philosopher called Artavastus. He lives still, and has a very long coat, for he is a bear of great size, and the color of him is like pearl. He dictated to his amanuensis a long book, which I will summarize for you, for bears have little concept of brevity in literature, as they expect any book worth its weight to last through several hibernations. Artavastus said that the cosmos as we know it is always in a state of decay, hurtling toward dissolution, toward a kind of fire at the end of all things. He thought that we, by which I mean Pentexore itself, presented a kind of pin in the substance of the spheres that kept it all from flying too fast toward that end. And so it is natural that we should claim as our native land the same earth that gave life to our opposite. Gog and Magog, madam, are agents of that fire, that blackness at the end of everything. They work towards it, long for it; it is their mother and their wife and their child.
Alisaunder beamed with a fullness of pride. Do you mean to say that your war is against two men alone?
They are not men, Tarsal snapped. You do not understand. Every field they touch comes to serve them.
Have you seen them? What are they, if not men? This from Hefaistes, who spoke softly, and with much grace.
Tarsal considered for a long while. In the end one of her generals spoke. No one sees them, he said. We only see what they leave behind. And perhaps the wind of their passing as they strike us down.
Alisaunder took counsel with his own heart as the sun moved across its blue sphere. And just before the evening took sure hold, he asked for three things: a pass in the mountains, high on both sides and very narrow; a great quantity of diamonds, as many as could be gathered from every mine, every secret pool beneath a black rock; and several giants, if they could be had in this country of wonders that produced men with only one leg.
Such a pass Tarsal knew, but on the other side of it lay Simurgh, and many other wonderful cities, all besieged, but holding firm. Yet Alisaunder’s terrible plan could be accomplished nowhere else. With the help of the prodigious giants Holbd and Gufdal, long may their names be remembered, and the Great Dive, in which the diving boys and girls of the deep pools held their breath for four days and nights to pry diamonds bigger than camels from the darkest caves, the Gates of Alisaunder were built with a swiftness. This is why you will find any gem in Pentexore but diamonds, for they all went into the Wall, and there they stay. Upon the night the Gates swung shut, closing up not only Gog and Magog, but the beautiful cinnamon forests and Simurgh itself, the greater part of all the phoenix in the world—and perhaps also Heliopolis itself, that secret place. Adamant, as all men, even foreigners like Alisaunder know, repels wickedness as well as magnets and blades and possesses such light as to burn the hearts of the cruel. Gog and Magog remain trapped there, weakened, bitter—and in their frustration and rage they most surely have devoured the phoenix and their city, the grievous sacrifice made so the rest of us might live. But Ghayth, the historian who lived in the shanty-town below the Wall, said he could hear them singing at night