Crystals of Air and Water

Chapter 2: The Path to Conquest

Chapter 2: The Path to Conquest

The continent of Fricaz had long been considered the most primitive and unknown region in all of Parsina. With the exception of its northern coast, which bordered on the Central Sea and had trading contacts with the rest of the world, Fricaz was a place of mystery. Geographers had not mapped its contours, nor had naturalists cataloged its animals and plants. Most inhabitants of Parsina thought about it little if at all, and when they did it was simply as a faraway place where nothing of importance ever happened.

True, great things had once happened here. The emperor Rashwenath had founded his farflung state in Fricaz and used its soldiers to launch his expeditions against the rest of the world. But that was in another time far divorced from the present, and no one thought of it now. For all the rest of Parsina cared, Fricaz was simply a hole in the map, a place to fill up the emptiness on the bottom of the navigators’ charts.

Fricaz was considered a place of strange and exotic animals, and indeed there were creatures here that lived nowhere else in the world. Traders would occasionally bring out cheetahs, crocodiles, strange monkeys, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, and other bizarre beasts, as well as stories of even stranger creatures left uncaptured. There were rumors, too, of great treasures, and plants that produced medicines to cure all diseases. Storytellers told tales of vast empires ruled by the black men who lived exclusively in this region of the world. But ultimately, Fricaz was of more interest to the storytellers than to the rest of the populace, for few ever bothered to learn of these things for themselves.

In truth Fricaz was a richly varied yet very simple land. Its climatic regions included both deserts and vast fertile plains, mountains and jungles, farmland and grazing land. It was a place of such abundance that its people never faced the same challenges as the rest of the world, and as a result they had never risen above a simple level of civilization.

Most of the people of Fricaz lived in small tribal units, each totally autonomous and independent of the others around it. A few of these had banded into loose nations, mostly to simplify the trading of wives and other goods. Each tribe had its own customs, its own rulers, its own language, its own way of life. Other than in the nations, trade occurred on a limited basis, as each tribe was usually self-sufficient; wars also occurred occasionally when one tribe tried to expand its influence into the region of another.

Most of the people still used implements of wood, clay, bone, or stone the way their ancient ancestors had done. Knowledge of metalworking was almost nonexistent except for the soft, easily worked copper and bronzes, but the rare contact with traders from more advanced parts of Parsina had brought some steel knives and other utensils into the region. These items were regarded as objects of great magic and power, and highly valued by the tribesmen.

Religion, too, was in a much more primitive form than in the rest of the world. Though knowledge of Oromasd had spread even here, the tales and the legends were garbled, and the practices adapted to suit the local needs. The fire of Oromasd was regarded with awe and reverence, but the individual tales of the Bounteous Immortals and the yazatas had been embroidered to the point where they had become deities in their own right independent of Oromasd, and were worshiped separately from him. Though all the people technically subscribed to the principles of performing good deeds, thinking good thoughts, and speaking good words, different tribes had different definitions of what was good and proper. Still, the infinite benevolence of Oromasd ensured that the truly good among the people would not be condemned unjustly at the Bridge of Shinvar, no matter what their definitions or beliefs were.

Such was the state in a certain village on a fateful day in late summer of this momentous year. The village had no name; it was simply “the village,” the only one that mattered in the life of its inhabitants. They knew there were other villages in the lands around them, but those were outsider places not even worthy of names. The people referred to themselves as the K’lona, but that word simply translated as “villagers.” They had names for their neighbors, too, which were far less complimentary.

The K’lona arose expecting this day to be no different from the one preceding it. The men would tend the herds of cattle, while the women would work in the home gardens or mend the simple huts. The men and boys carried spears and slings to protect their herds from the maraudings of lions, jackals, and other tribes; other than that they wore only loincloths and ornamentally carved pieces of bone in their ears and noses. The women wore simple skirts woven of grass and leaves, and necklaces of feathers, lions’ teeth, and ivory. They had no defense against the disaster about to befall their village.

Shortly after the sun came up, a hot wind swept through the village, seeming first to come from the south and then from the west. It blew so hard that tall trees snapped and the huts shook with its force. The hot wind carried with it the sulfurous stench of the Pits of Torment, and it whipped up the dust so fiercely that the people had to cover their eyes and shield their faces from its fury. Women shrieked and men fell victim to fits of coughing, and the beasts in the fields fell over in a faint as though dead. The howl of this savage wind pierced through the peoples’ ears like a spear, scattering reason before it like so many bits of straw.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the wind died again and the air became still. The men and women of the village shook their heads to clear the dust from their eyes and the ringing from their ears. When again they could see and hear, they were stunned by the sight that greeted them in the open center of their village.

Standing there was Hakem Rafi the thief, master of the daeva Aeshma—a small, wiry man dressed in a rich kaftan of deep purple and a turban of violet, in the center of which was an enormous canary diamond. Even without his fine garments the sight of Hakem Rafi would have caused a stir within the village because none of the K’lona had ever seen a man with skin so lightly colored.

“I am Hakem Rafi, your new king,” said the blackhearted thief, and the invisible Aeshma translated his words so all the villagers could understand him. “Bow down and pay me the homage you owe your master.” Hakem Rafi’s words rang loudly through the open air with a timbre that bespoke power and dignity.

The chief of the tribe stepped forward defiantly. He was an older man, powerfully built, with scars across his chest from the time he had fought a marauding lion armed with nothing but a stone knife. He had seen much in this life and feared little—especially not the rantings of some stranger whose skin was so pallid he must obviously be ill.

“We know you not,” said the chief. “Why should we bow to you?”

In response, Hakem Rafi merely clapped his hands together, and suddenly there appeared behind him the fearsome apparition that was Aeshma, king of the daevas. His hideous figure, with skin blacker even than the villagers’, towered over the buildings and people standing before him. Some of the locals fainted dead away at the sight of him, while others shrieked or wailed in fear, certain the end of the world had come upon them. The bravest of the men grabbed their spears and hurled them with all their might at the giant standing before them. They could scarcely have missed, but Aeshma deflected the oncoming missiles and the spears landed harmlessly on the ground in front of him.

“Bow down before me,” Hakem Rafi repeated, “or my servant and I shall visit death and destruction upon your village such as has never been seen by any of your ancestors. Your houses will be razed to the ground. Your women, children, and old men will be killed, and only your warriors will be left alive to serve as soldiers in my army of conquest.”

Most of the women and some of the men, not daring to doubt the power of this stranger with the hideous giant for a servant, did indeed bow to Hakem Rafi. But the chief and the bravest of his warriors stood their ground. “The K’lona bow to no outsiders,” the chief said bravely, even knowing the hour of his death might be at hand.

“Then the K’lona are fools,” said Hakem Rafi. “Since some of them have bowed to me, O Aeshma, just destroy the village as a warning to those who would disobey my orders.”

“I hear and I obey,” Aeshma said. The king of the daevas waved his hand before him and the devilish wind sprang up once more, stronger than before. It swirled around the people standing in open ground and hardly touched them at all, but no building could withstand its force. The village collapsed to a heap of rubble, and then the wind passed. The K’lona blinked in stunned silence at the devastation around them.

But the chief of the K’lona was a good man. He sensed powerful evil in this haughty stranger and his huge servant, and he was determined not to yield to it whatever the price. Even though he had little knowledge of Oromasd and the judgment at the Bridge of Shinvar, his instincts told him that to accept this horror would damage him, his tribe, and the entire world.

“You may kill me if you can,” he told Hakem Rafi, “but I will not accept you as my king.” Several of his strongest warriors gathered behind him to support his decision.

Hakem Rafi said nothing, but made a slight gesture with his right hand. In obedience, Aeshma lifted his arms and a new terror was unleashed.

The ground shook and a fissure opened at the chief’s feet. Out of the hole flew a horde of Aeshma’s offspring, the hairy demons, moving so quickly their forms were scarcely more than a blur. They shrieked and jabbered in their high-pitched voices, so fearsome that most of the villagers fell to the ground cowering in fright. The hairy demons circled the village three times, laughing hysterically into the faces of the terrified K’lona, before finally centering on their real target.

First one, then a second, then a third of the hairy demons flew at the chief of the K’lona. The first one flew directly at the man’s face and disappeared up his nostrils; the second flew into his mouth when he tried to scream; and the third flew into his ears. They vanished into the body of this valiant man and began working their evil magic within him.

The chief screamed a scream that no mortal voice should be able to produce. His body shook with uncontrollable tremors, and he danced around for a moment as though trapped amid a swarm of angry bees. Then he fell to the ground, still shaking, and writhed in the dust. As his horrified people watched, his eyes were eaten away from the inside until his skull showed empty sockets. His tongue stuck out from his mouth, swollen and black, and the skin of his lips dried, cracked, and split apart. His belly swelled and suddenly burst open to reveal a mass of wriggling maggots oozing from the wound. His skin sprouted red, festering sores, and pus began to seep over his limbs. Still his legs kicked and his arms waved about in his agony, even though he could no longer make a sound to convey his pain. In some ways that was more merciful to his people.

His body shriveled a bit, the skin becoming as dry and wrinkled as a raisin in the sun. In less than a minute the ordeal was over and the chief lay dead on the ground, mummified with a ghastly expression on his face that, for months afterward, haunted the nightmares of all who saw it.

After witnessing the gruesome death of their chief, the rest of the K’lona offered no further resistance. Those who had not yet made obeisance now knelt on the ground before Hakem Rafi, and all the villagers proclaimed him their king and total sovereign. Hakem Rafi the blackhearted smiled and accepted their vows, and as a token of his benevolence and magnanimity he ordered Aeshma to rebuild their village, with houses larger and grander than they’d been before. So relieved were the people to be spared further tragedy that they cheered their new king and praised him for his kindness and generosity.

The women, children, and old men of the village were allowed to stay behind to tend their herds and their garden crops. All the warriors, though, were conscripted as soldiers into their new king’s army, to fight such battles as he would direct—and die, if necessary, in his cause and his name.

Thus did Hakem Rafi, the one-time petty thief who had chanced to steal the urn of Aeshma, begin his campaign of conquest across the face of the world. He chose first the easiest victims, the tiny settlements in primitive Fricaz, going village by village and terrorizing the inhabitants into submission with such tactics as he had used against the K’lona. Although his army grew as each new village came under his dominion, he did not have his troops fight just yet, preferring to let Aeshma and his hairy demons do the initial work. There would be plenty of combat ahead, and Aeshma advised Hakem Rafi not to waste his soldiers in foolish campaigns when other methods would work faster and more efficiently.

Aeshma had told Hakem Rafi that these tricks would be most effective in the primitive lands, where knowledge of Oromasd was slight. In the civilized nations, where the priests of Oromasd held sway and worship was stronger, the hairy demons would be more limited in their powers. It was there that an army would prove more useful, and there would Hakem Rafi’s forces meet their true tests.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the empire of Hakem Rafi grew until it covered the plains and jungles of southern and central Fricaz. Nor did Aeshma and the hairy demons have to terrorize every village and town throughout the region in order to gain obedience. Word of their existence, and of the sorceror who used their powers to hammer all opponents into submission, swept before their advance like a grass fire in summer. Many were those people who fled their homes in terror at the news of the new emperor’s approach; and of those who stayed in their villages, most simply yielded to his authority the instant Hakem Rafi appeared without needing demonstrations of his vast and terrible powers.

With each village he captured, with each people he subjugated, Hakem Rafi’s army grew in size. Soon he had a force of well over two thousand warriors at his command, all ready to obey his slightest order lest they taste his displeasure. Initially they were armed only with spears, slings, and blowguns, but Aeshma provided them with more modern weaponry. Each soldier had a fine steel sword, glittering armor, and a shield on which was embossed the symbol Aeshma had designed as the insignia of Hakem Rafi: the initials of his name, ornately calligraphed in silver and set in the center of the circular adarga. The troops had well-crafted leather boots and helmets, and were fed regularly on better provisions than most of them had known in their lives. At Aeshma’s suggestion, Hakem Rafi instituted a training program to drill the warriors into an efficient troop of combat soldiers, readying them for the day they would have to fight against live opponents rather than depending on Aeshma and his demons to conquer new territory.

At the end of a month, the empire of Hakem Rafi reached from the southmost tip of Fricaz all the way to the southern edge of the great deserts in the north of the continent. This marked the transition between the first and second phase of Hakem Rafi’s campaign of conquest. The cities lying along the northern edge of Fricaz, between the desert and the Central Sea, had well-developed trade routes with the rest of the world. Their priests knew the ways of Oromasd too well for them to fall easy victim to Aeshma’s demons. Such lands as Libayy and Sudarr were sophisticated centers with armies well versed in the skills of war. These nations would not submit to Hakem Rafi without a battle—though, with Aeshma’s help, there was no doubt they would eventually succumb.

Aeshma provided the army of Hakem Rafi with horses, camels, and food for their trek across the great Fricaz desert. Most of the warriors had never seen a horse before, much less ridden one, and most of them preferred to walk, saving the beasts for carrying their supplies and equipment. Even though Aeshma provided clouds to shade them from the ravages of the desert sun, the heat was still oppressive. Many warriors complained—though none so loudly that the words would reach their emperor’s ears.

Walking across the desert was hard work; the shifting sands provided a treacherous footing that the jungle and plains tribesmen were unaccustomed to. Even though all were in good physical condition, their legs ached at the end of each day’s march from fighting against the unsteady terrain.

Aeshma provided large skin bags of water for the troops, and gave them food every morning and night to keep them strong. Although many in the army were tired, no one became sick and no one died on a trek that would otherwise have killed at least half the men attempting it.

Since Hakem Rafi’s troops came from many different villages, most of them spoke dialects that were unfamiliar to the others. Aeshma translated Hakem Rafi’s orders so each man could understand them, but other than that he left the languages alone. If the men couldn’t speak to one another, they couldn’t conspire against their emperor. As a result, the warriors congregated in small groups with others from their own village or nearby areas, and developed a simple sign language for dealing with everyone else.

But despite the problems with communication, the northward trek was not a silent one. Each tribe had its own songs, and the men were constantly singing to take their minds off their terrible plight. The desert air rang with conflicting, yet interweaving, music as Hakem Rafi’s troops marched ahead, its pattern of march constantly changing to the many different rhythms of the singers. After three weeks in this wilderness—during which many despaired of ever seeing grass or trees again—they reached the fertile lands of the kingdom of Libayy.

A caravan of desert traders had warned the Libayyan king about a vast army approaching his borders, and he rallied his own forces to face them. An army of two thousand men had never attacked Libayy from the south before—the desert had always formed a natural barrier to safeguard the southern border—and the soldiers of Libayy were well impressed by the stamina of the opposition they were now facing. Nevertheless, as loyal sons of their homeland they were prepared to fight bravely to defend their king and their country against the oncoming army that slightly outnumbered them.

The defenders, knowing the territory better than the warriors from the south, picked the spot for the battle carefully—a narrow pass between some tall, steep hills and an unfordable river. It was their intention to lie in wait for the invaders at the top of the hills, thus catching them between the slopes and the river and decimating them with arrowfire; with their numbers cut severely, the enemy would either retreat or try to run ahead out of the fire—but in either direction they would find fresh Libayyan troops ready to cut them off. Thus would the Libayyan general deal with these invaders.

At first the plan looked as though it would work. The invading army, as though with supreme arrogance, sent no scouts ahead of it to check the territory it was approaching. The Libayyan bowmen waited patiently at their positions, prepared to launch a storm of arrows the instant the enemy marched through the valley below them and into their range.

From that point, however, the situation changed dramatically. The ground shook and the very hill beneath the archers began crumbling away. Suddenly, instead of holding their bows, the men were scrambling merely to stay upright as the earth around them went through a violent upheaval. And even through the sound of the earthquake, they could hear the deep rumbling of inhuman laughter.

Before the Libayyan archers knew what was happening, the enemy soldiers were running at them with swords drawn, yelling their battlecries. Many of the Libayyans were slaughtered, and many others fled for their lives. The rest, seeing the hopelessness of their position, threw up their arms and begged for mercy. Hakem Rafi accepted their surrender generously—not because he felt any trace of compassion, but because he wanted as many trained soldiers as he could get to serve in his own growing army.

After losing the element of surprise and his elite unit of archers, and with the rest of his army split into two sections and now vastly outnumbered, the Libayyan general had little choice but to surrender to Hakem Rafi in the hope his men would not be massacred. Hakem Rafi made the general swear allegiance to him on pain of death and took command of these new forces.

Hakem Rafi now commanded the largest army in Fricaz. Despite the rearguard action of the king’s finest, most loyal troops, he marched easily into the seacoast capital of Tropil, executed the king, and extended his own realm. He lost less than a tenth of his men, and those were the untrained Fricaz tribesmen. In exchange he had gained three times that number in new, well-trained soldiers. The entire land of Libayy lay at his feet, and he scarcely rested here before turning his forces eastward to march against the kingdom of Sudarr. With Aeshma’s help, that kingdom, too, fell before his advance.

Hakem Rafi had now done what no man before him had ever accomplished: he had united the entire continent of Fricaz under a single rule. With Aeshma’s aid, the vast distances were no problem; Hakem Rafi could issue a command from wherever he happened to be, and word of it would be carried wherever in his realm it was needed. No ruler in Parsine history had ever had an administration this efficient, but Hakem Rafi accepted it as the norm and turned his vision elsewhere.

Aeshma had advised Hakem Rafi to begin his conquests with Fricaz, since it would be the easiest continent to capture and hold, supplying good soldiers and a base against which no rear flank attacks could be mounted. All Parsina lay ahead of him, and his army grew in size with each new land he conquered. Soon, Aeshma assured him, Hakem Rafi would rule all the land between the Eastern and Western Seas—and there was nothing, not even the power of Oromasd himself, that could stop him.