The Kings of Tarshish Shall Bring Gifts

[Cord Hurn]

I have often wondered why there are tyrants, and I have come to the conclusion it is because some men remember their dreams. For what do we know of dreams? What is the truest thing to be said of them? Surely it is that we forget them. And therefore it is also sure that this forgetting must have a purpose. Hungers are conceived in dreams in order to be forgotten, so that the dreamer and his life may go on without them. That is why most men remember nothing--except the sensation of having dreamed.
But men who do not forget are doomed.
Such a man was Prince Akhmet, the only son of the Caliph of Arbin, His Serene Goodness Abdul dar-El Haj.

It's an intriguing beginning to this Reave the Just and Other Tales short story, for I suspect we've all found dreams mysterious and elusive. And this beginning made me curious to know how Prince Akhmet's excellent recall of these passing subconscious fancies doomed him. I'll grant you, his dreams are quite poignant, thus harder to forget.

..."The place was a low valley," he said, showing the angle of the slopes with his hands, "it's sides covered by rich greensward on which the early dew glistened, as bright in the sunshine as a sweep of stars. Down the vale-bottom ran a steram of water so clean and crystal that it appeared as liquid light, dancing and swirling over it's black rocks and white sand. Above the greensward stood fruit trees, apple and peach and cherry, all in blossom, with their flowers like music in the sun, and their trunks wrapped in sweet shade. The air was luminous and utterly deep, transformed from the unfathomable purple of night by the warmth of the sun.
The peace of the place was complete," murmured young Akhmet,"and I would have been content with it as it was, happy to gaze upon it while the dream remained in my mind. But it was not done. For when I gazed upon the running trance of the stream, I saw that the dance of the light was full of the dance of small fish, and as my eyes fell upon the fish I saw that while they danced they became flowers, flowers more lovely than lilies, brighter than japonica, and the flowers floated in profusion away along the water.
Then I gazed from these blooms to the flowers of the trees, and they too, changed. Upon the trees, the flowers appeared to be music, but in moments they became birds, and the birds were music indeed, their flights like arcs of melody, their bodies formed to the shape their song. And the shade among the treetrunks also changed. From the the sweet dark emerged rare beasts, lions and jacols, nilgai deer with fawns among them, oryx fabled mandrill. And the peace of the beasts, too, was complete, so that they brought no fear with them. Instead they gleamed as the greensward and the stream gleamed, and when the lions shook their manes they scattered dropltes of watwer which became chrysoprase and diamonds among the grass. The fawns of the nilgai wore a sheen of finest silver, and from the mouths of the mandrill let fall rubies of enough purity to ransom a world.
I remember it all...

I found it easy to feel contempt and disgust for Prince Akhmet the spoiled brat-turned-tyrant, especially once it became apparent that he despises his waking world and himself for the perception that it's inferior to his dreams, and takes it out on everybody else (especially women) like it's their fault.

This society, this caliphate of Arbin that Akhmet rules, is decidedly sexist. That influences me to be less inclined to care about what happens to it. Now, it's true that I love "Ser Visal's Tale" in Daughter of Regal & Other Tales despite that story having an aggressive Temple endorsed by its king that is repressive to women who seek roles outside of housekeeper, especially towards those women who devote themselves to healing magic. There I get the feeling that story's kingdom is about to rise up in rebellion, and here I feel the people of Arbin are used to holding women in lesser esteem than men. Which just makes me care less about them than about the people in "Ser Visal's Tale".

After newly-installed Caliph Akhmet revives the barbaric practice of suttee, the requirement that all his father's wives and odalisques be burned alive beside his father's corpse, our narrator states:

Nevertheless in the eyes of Arbin women were only women. Unthinking people began to believe that perhaps Caliph Akhmet's rule would not prove intolerable.
I did not make that mistake. I readied my arts and waited.

Further, our narrator concludes his tale with, "I am a man, and all men dream" rather than "I am a human being, and all of us dream." I dislike the exclusiveness of that tone, its suggestiveness that only men matter, and am inclined to dislike this entire story on that basis.
I found no particular value in this tale.

However, I should consider that I didn't catch the meaning in this tale that I was intended to harvest. That's one of the nice things about coming to Kevin's Watch, that I may gain insights from others about points I could have missed. With that in mind, I turn my attention to observations made in the "Unworthy of the Angel" topic thread where author "kastenessen", KW guest "arabisha", and this forum's moderator veered to discussion of this story.

Dragonlily: "...the suggestion that this is a description of the creative mind at work..."

arabisha: "In the end I could hear a 'be careful what you ask for...'"
"Maybe it just comes down to the fact that the wonder of the dreams for him was that he had no control. The fact that everyone placates him only aggravates him more because it shows how much control in life he actually has." "Maybe Akhmet's problem was that he was never satisfied."

kastenessen: "Yes, it was probably so. This is a personal trait. Something which is difficult to alter. And he never did understand himself. This becomes a dangerous combination."

arabisha: "So okay if a lesson from young Akhmet is to be learned it's probably gratefulness, humility, and restraint" (kastenessen agrees).

Well, perhaps. At least there's some potential value in this tale, enough to persuade me to upgrade it from "I dislike it" to "I'm neutral about it". I don't think I'll ever really like it, though.

[Cord Hurn]

The prince Akhmet demands that his father and all his advisors hear his second dream.

"It was," the Prince pronounced, "wonderful beyond compare."

Steadying himself as well as his excitement allowed, he said, "I stood upon a grfeat height, and below me lay the city of Arbin at night, unscrolled with all its lights as legible as any text, so that the movements of the least streetsweeper as well as the activities of the mightiest house were plain to be read. Indeed, the city itself was also alive, breathing its own air, flexing its own limbs, adding its own superscript to the writing of the lights. I knew that the truth and goodness and folly of all our people were written there for me to read.

"Yet as I began to read, the height on which I stood grew even greater, and the city itself expanded, and I shrank to a mote among them--a mote without loss or grief, however, but rather a part at once of the lights and of the darkness between the lights, much as a particle of blood partakes of all blood while it surges through the veins." The Prince spoke with a thrill in his voice which answered my skepticism, a blaze in his eyes which bore me with him. "Thus at the same time I rose and shrank, and the city grew, and the lights became stars and suns and glories, lifting every living heart to heights which we have never known. And the darkness between the lights was the solace in which every living heart rests from wonder.

"While I dreamed, I was among the heavens and the gods."

There he stopped. His chest rose and fell with the strength of his breathing, and the fever in his eyes abated slowly.

It is at this point in the story that I comprehended that Akhmet was crazy.

[Cord Hurn]

Remembering his dreams so vividly makes Prince Akhmet more of an insensitive soul, so that he demands to have his father the Caliph and his father's advisers hear the recounting of one of his dreams in the middle of the night as his father lays slowly dying.

At the Caliph's bedside, Prince Akhmet rose to his feet and told us what he had dreamed.

"In my dream, I saw a mighty suzerain, a nameless caliph in a land I had never known. He was in the time of his best youth, and though I did not know him and could not name him, his features were the features of the Caliph of Arbin, His Serene Goodness Abdul dar-El Haj, my father."

Had the Prince been more of a politician I would have believed this beginning false. But it was impossible to mistake the ardor of his stance, or the growing hunger in his gaze.

"His head was crowned with light," said young Akhmet, "and love lived in his eyes, and his limbs were of such beauty that all hearts were drawn to him. He was the center of the storm where peace lives untouched by pain. He was the pause between the beats of the pulse, the rest between respirations, and his gift to all who knew him was balm.

"Yet he was more than this. Indeed, when he spread out his hands, the world was shaped by his gestures, so that nature itself took on the form of his will. He stretched his fingers, and plains were made. He shrugged his shoulders, and mountains grew. Where he pointed, there were rivers. The seed of his loins gave birth to new peoples, and his caress left all women faint with pleasure."

While he spoke, I observed, as I should have observed weeks ago, that he had changed. His lips had grown pinched like a simoniac's, and his cheeks hinted at hollowness, and his form was as gaunt as his youth and beauty permitted. Regret is useless, but still I regretted that I had not turned my attention to him earlier.

"And in my dream," he continued, "the storm of pain which drives all men, but which could only run in circles of folly around the nameless caliph, took notice of him and grew wrathful, for it is not given to men that they should be free of pain, or that they should free others, or that the world should shap itself to their will. Therefore the storm moved against him. Great was its wrath, and terrible, and whole lands and peoples were bereaved by its power. The reach of his beneficence was constricted as pain bore peace away and his place in the center of the storm shrank.

"Then there was grief everywhere, for all men were hurt, and so all men believed that the nameless caliph could not endure against pain.

"At last, the storm withdrew, thinking itself victorious.

"And yet the caliph stood as he had stood before, with light upon his brow and beauty in his limbs. Nothing about him was changed, except his eyes. There love still shone, love for all peoples and all lands, love which healed all it saw. But with the love was also knowledge of pain, understanding for the injuries and losses which drive men to do ill, forgiveness for frailty. He had accepted pain into his being and searched it to its heart and taken no hurt.

"That was my dream," concluded the Prince. For a moment, he seemed overcome by sorrow. Then, however, he lifted his head, and in his eyes was a look which might have signified both love and the knowledge of pain. Or perhaps it was only madness. Softly, he added, "It was wonderful. It lives with me still, and will live always. I will forget nothing."

Ironic that Akhmet becomes a caliph who is nothing like the caliph in this dream of his. He remembers it all, he thinks, but he forgets the example the dream sets for him. And the chief interpreter who interprets this dream on the orders of Akhmet's father loses his head for his efforts, on Akhmet's orders. The sense of impending danger works well to enhance this story's pacing, keeping the readers' interest. I think this is especially true because it's hard to see just what bothers Akhmet that he should be so brutal.

[Cord Hurn]

The final dream of Akhmet's that he relates in this story to our narrator, the court wizard, gives a clue as to what Akhmet's problem is, though I did not see it until my reading of this story had concluded.

"Wizard, I will tell you what I have dreamed. Then you will tell me what to do."

I bowed my acquiescence calmly, although my mouth was dry with fear, and my heart trembled. I had not come to this crisis adequately prepared. I still did not understand.

"I dreamed of wine," said the Caliph, his gaze already turning inward to regard his dream, "of strange wine and music. There were colors in the wine which I have seen in no wine before, hints of black with the most ruby incarnadine, true gold and yellow among straw, regal purple swirling to azure in my cup. There were depths to the liquid which my eyes could not pierce. Its taste was at once poppy and grape, at once fermented and fresh, and all its colors entered my body through my tongue, so that my limbed body lived and burned and grew livid because of what was in my mouth. My member became engorged with such heat that no mere female flesh could cool it.

"And while my nerves sang with ruby and gold and cerulean, the music about me also sang. At first it was the music of lyre and tambour, plucked and beating. But as the colors of the wine filled my ears, the music became melody, as if strings and drum had voices full of loveliness, sweet as nectar, rich as satin. Those voices had no words for their song and needed none, for the song itself was as clean as air, as true as rock, as fertile as earth. And the music entered my body as the wine had entered it, came through my ears to live and throb in every muscle and sinew, transporting all my flesh to song. It was promise and fulfillment, carring comfort to the core of my heart.

"Then the heat of my member grew until it became all heat, all passion, and my whole body in its turn became a part of my member, engorged with the same desire, aching with the same joy. And because of the wine and the music, that desire, that joy, were more precious to me than any release. I knew then that if my member were to spend its heat, all my flesh would experience the climax as part of my member, and the sense of ecstasy and release which would flood my being would be glorious and exquisite beyond any climax known to men--and yet that ecstasy and release, despite their greatness, would be only dross compared to the infinite value of the engorged desire, the aching joy.

"Therefore I was not compelled to seek release, as men are compelled by the lesser passions of wakefulness. Transformed by wine and music, I hung suspended in that place of color and glory and song until the dream ended and left me weeping."

The Caliph was weeping now as he remembered his dream, and his voice was husky with sadness when he again addressed me.

"Wizard, tell me what to do."

He might have been a small boy speaking to his father. Yet his need was not for me, but for a father wiser than I or all the old men of Arbin.

Akhmet wants to stay suspended in the dream, and resents that he cannot. And takes it out on his subjects for the crime of their not equaling what he experiences in the dream. In the face of such unreasonableness, the wizard is right, though dangerously unwise, to tell his Caliph that dreams have no worth if they cannot be incorporated to improve the real waking world in some way. I'm not a big fan of this story, but I concede that the wizard is a likeable and sensitive character whose words make me relate to the dangerous situation with which he struggles.