The Usurper

20

“This is Telnar!” said a girl.

The vehicle, a carrier, rumbled down the street, on its treads. Fuel was more plentiful on Telnaria than in many other sectors of the empire.

A shadow raced on the street, cast by a passing hoverer.

“What has happened here?” said another girl.

Cornhair hooked her small fingers into the chain-link webbing.

“Fire,” said a girl.

There lingered, even days later, a smell of smoke.

Fire, incidentally, was always a hazard in the large cities of the empire, given widely spread poverty, squalor, and crowding. Certain districts, of course, would be more at risk than others. Many streets were too narrow to admit a wagon, scarcely allowing the passage of a sedan chair, should any choose to dare such streets. In some places, leaning forward, a lamp could be handed from a window on one side of the street to a window on the other side of the street. In many areas, there was no running water except in local fountains. Many availed themselves of public latrines. Wastes were often disposed of in the streets. Construction in such areas was often inferior. Buildings were often torn down and rebuilt. A wall, or a floor, might collapse. Repairs were endemic. Interior furnishings, stairs, walls, and such, and roofs, were usually of wood. Most heating was in the form of fire, contained in bowls or braziers. Most individuals lived in apartments, generally small, of a single room, and most windowless, many without smoke holes, on upper floors. The higher the apartment the less the rent. More well-to-do tenants in these buildings lived on the first floor, or that directly above the numerous open-fronted shops which lined many streets. In this way, they could avoid climbing dark, narrow stairwells, where brigands might lurk, and, in the case of fire, had a more immediate access to the street. Many times a building was afire, flames quickly spreading, climbing and raging, through rickety construction, before those on the upper floors became aware of the situation.

In any event, it seems there had not been so destructive a fire in the capital city in four hundred years. As the annals have it, between a tenth and a fifteenth of the city was destroyed. To be sure, in distant millennia, greater portions of the city, from time to time, had been ravaged by flames. Certainly fire was not unprecedented in Telnar. As the records have it, the fire began in one of the Floonian temples, an Illusionist temple, which doctrine, it seems, was to the effect that Karch, in his benevolence and perfection, in speaking to diverse species, would not have permitted grievous harm, or, indeed, any harm or pain whatsoever, to come to an actual, feeling, living individual doing his will, bearing his message, and such, whether an Ogg, a Vorite, or whatever. That would be unworthy of the goodness of Karch. Accordingly, he had chosen to communicate his word to the many worlds not by an actual person, but, rather, by means of a seeming person, a simulacrum, an image, or illusion. Anything else would be unthinkable, casting discredit on the moral character of Karch.

In any event, as might be expected, the Illusionists were blamed for the fire. Had it not begun in their temple? What better evidence of the bitter fruits of heresy? Naturally, there were numerous, spontaneous demonstrations against the Illusionists. Many were hunted down by gangs and either beaten or slain. In the senate there were claims that the Illusionists constituted a danger to the state, and should be sought out and sacrificed to one god or another, or be exiled to barren worlds. Nothing came of this, however, first, perhaps, largely, because there was no reason to believe that the traditional gods and goddesses, Orak, Umba, and so on, would welcome such sacrifices, seeming to prefer, at least according to tradition, those of cattle, and small animals and birds, and, second, because most Telnarians were unclear on the doctrinal differences amongst the many sects of Floonians. It is suspected they could not, for example, tell the difference between an Illusionist and an Emanationist. In such a case, any retaliation, state-sanctioned or not, as was pointed out by Sidonicus, Exarch of Telnar, in both public pronouncements and private interviews, might affect not only Illusionists, but, tragically, Floonians in general. In any event, the Exarch of Telnar pleaded for mercy, at least for reformed heretics, and implored their conversion to the true faith, which, it seems, was his own. His prayers, it seems, were answered, for the fire, and its consequences, broke the back of the Illusionist doctrine, now generally understood to be mistaken, if not pernicious, and many fled to the more orthodox, or more general, view, the identical-but-different view, so to speak. Some, of course, remained unrepentant, proclaiming their innocence, as one would expect.

“Smoke,” said one of the girls.

It is true that the smell of smoke lingers. Indeed, if one were to prod about in the rubble, one might, here and there, even now, have stirred some embers alive, uncovering a dully scarlet residue, a subtle recollection of falling walls and flaming timbers.

“See the buildings,” said another.

“It is a whole district,” said another.

The carrier rumbled on, and soon the blackened rubble, the projecting, half burned ribs of buildings, the trash, and debris, were left behind.

To be sure, the stink of the fire, given the direction of the wind, would continue to be evident, here and there, for days.

“What will become of me?” wondered Cornhair, on her knees, unclothed, collared, continuing to cling to the linkage of the chainlike mesh.

The Telnarians were not noted for their consideration of slaves.