Change is a Strange yet Savoury Dish
Change is a Strange yet Savoury Dish[1], a short story relating to the Dromosker peoples, a primitive population indigenous to the Skerry Isles.
Part I: An Auspicious Homecoming
It was in the fourth cycle of the new advent that the En Lugal Enis, he that was, forwent the right to rule over the Askerr nation when he recklessly spilt the mana that was his sacred charge by recklessly dashing his head against a regrettably sharp rock after falling from a height that was, alas, precipitous.
And so it was that the headmen of the Askerr and the priests of the Angry God gathered together in the meeting hut of the great stilt-built city of Calēkhōpraksis to seek by their deliberations to identify one from amongst themselves in whom sufficient mana had been vested or accrued to sustain the dignity of lordship over all.
It was by all accounts a dignified meeting characterised by long solemnly consideration deliberation, where each speaker spoke once according to their seniority and whenever thereafter they thought they had something valid to contribute to the debate – which was punctuated by one knifing, two grievous woundings done with clubs, one mauling and an individual act of sodomy which remains unexplained to this day save that it was said the active partner felt he had a point to prove. It was nonetheless the most convivial meeting of the tribesmen and priesthood that any man could remember.
The eventual consensus as to the award of the sacred office fell upon he who had been the incense holder and intimate of the En Lugal Enis, he that was, because it was the considered opinion of those present that the moon-buttocked youth had over his years of service accumulated much in the way mana generously – some might say wantonly - shared by his predecessor. By acclamation therefore ‘he that was’ then was replaced by En Lugal Kel, optimistically referred to as ‘he who is’.
The first act of the new En Lugal was to take possession of the canoe of his forebear, the adept in the illustrious office of the sacred rites, and to then row across to the taboo island of the wizards of old. No sooner had the canoe touched that yellow shore then the En Lugal leapt ashore and hauled the vessel out of the water behind him. En Lugal Lek waved to the assembled priesthood who stood on the stilted huts surrounding the island before, under the awe struck eyes of all, he ascended vigorously the difficult path hewn from rocks of brimstone towards the jagged peak of the isle and the stone structure of the ancients which was hidden from the view of those below by an overhanging crag. Before long the En Lugal passed behind a rock, which was the last point from where the path he followed could be observed, and was not seen again.
Many hours passed and the dark ominous clouds of a storm previously unsuspected rolled down from the mountainous outer rim of Dromosker, flooding the valleys with darkness and eventually casting a shroud of gloom over the lake itself. The priests cast bones in order to discern the purpose of the omen whilst the village headmen, brave men to a fault, fretted like those timid children who always see the faces of meat famished Raskols peering out at them from the forest edge and licking their lips. In the minds of all was nurtured a mounting dread, had their deliberations – over all of six days – been too hasty? It was a worry though as to what the worst violation of taboo under these circumstances; to have chosen poorly or to attempt to choose another. Hours span out in to days and the days became weeks and although the temporal-spatial awareness of the Askerr was never especially acute it was generally reckoned that forty days was a rather long time for any man to be gone. What was particularly distressing was that the storm had not abated – normally this would have just been considered an early start to the rainy season but under the circumstances who would dare say so with any semblance of confidence? Rain was normally a blessing for the terraced plantations of the Askerr but such a persistent torrent began to wash away the very foundations of the huts of the villages and more crucially the palisades which deterred the predatory attentions of the Raskol began to lose their firmness. If the harvest and the villages were imperilled – what fate would befall Calēkhōpraksis itself? Would priests dedicated to the sacred task of accumulating mana be forced to break off their devotions to focus of mean unworthy activities – to fish and to forage – for no better purpose than to stay alive? And if so what prospect would there ever be of earning the forgiveness of the Angry God, who under such circumstances might be provoked into destroying the life-giving island, if he felt that his devotees were no longer sufficiently focused on his glory to be strictly worth keeping alive?
More and more it became a reasonable, indeed prevalent, assumption that the only explanation was that the Angry God who dwelt below had been displeased with their choice and devoured the unlucky En Lugal Lek. Such things were not entirely unheard of – but naturally it would be the grossest impiety to break taboo by rowing across to the island in order to verify the fate of their short-lived lord. It was an unfortunate predicament that they found themselves in.
It was Eggel, the Headman of the village of Hazahab, who had, on the forty-third day, plucked together sufficient courage to broach the tricky subject in the meeting hut. When we say courage it is important to qualify this statement, for the fact of the matter is that his paramount wife – the otherwise charming Lelifreida, had been rowed across to Calēkhōpraksis by her entourage, thinned somewhat by encounters with increasingly desperate Raskols, to make her opinions on recent matters decidedly known to her husband. In the modern parlance they had a full and frank discussion after which he felt that the lesser evil to depose the En Lugal – lest his nose piercing find itself lodged somewhere unsettling.
This second convocation followed a more traditional pattern than the first inasmuch as there was a heightened instance of skull fractures and singular acts of depravity when it came to settling knotty theological and political problems.
In the end, after the fiftieth day, a new consensus was thrashed out – almost literally – and En Lugal Eggel was duly acclaimed by all, with the approving silence of Lelifreida who had taken to sitting veiled in the meeting hall and screened off from the rest of assembly; a precaution based as much of primitive notions of delicacy as much as any respect for the illusion of male primacy as the deliberating priests and headsmen had become rather odourful of late – it being the custom to prevent any man from leaving the assembly hall until a decision has been reached when matters of such weighty import are at stake. Nonetheless, clutching a pose of fragrent herbs Lelifreida had cause to be finally satisfied with an outcome that ought by rights to have lifted the curse.
Instead this was the moment that En Lugal Lek chose to make his return – bursting into the meeting hut wearing an ochre coloured clay mask moulded in the style of a grinning demon and waving a firebrand in his left hand and clutching a bloodied war club in the other.
It was not the mark of an auspicious homecoming.
Part II: Love in a Time of Feasting
So it came to pass that at the feast formerly intended for the honouring of En Lugal Eggel the stilt dwellers of Calēkhōpraksis dinned exceedingly well upon the erstwhile En Lugal Eggel (subsequently known as 'he who was not to be'), whose flesh, scraped bloodily from the bone by the industrious application of razor like coree shells, had been rubbed with rare spices exuding a delicious fiery tang of exquisite flavour. All present felt obliged to cheer, especially when - one by one - the severed and bloodily shattered heads of the priests and village elders were fetched out of the meeting hut. These grizzly relics were paraded before the remaining members of the priestly caste who were rapidly calculating their odds of promotion and or survival. Having calculated those odds to the best of their ability, using a numbering system that as of yet was still hazy about what laid beyond the heady heights of one hundred (gala-yek-gal, 'ten of tens'. Two hundred was a decidedly speculative hema tal -gala-yek-gal, 'how can there be more than ten of tens'), they resolved to put on the outward semblance of cheerfulness at the return of En Lugal Lek (acclaimed now as 'he who is and shall ever be'). At the very least they had gained a good meal from the unexpected turn of events.
For poor En Lugal Eggel however whole the experience was rather more unpleasant. The feast, now celebrating En Lugal Lek auspicious return, ran to three days, and so too, alas, did the remaining span of the life of the unfortunate main dish. For his scrapped skin had merely been the entrée dish at the grand dinner. Served curried and wolfed down before his very eyes with exceeding gusto by those who - in some instances merely hours before - had hailed him as the saviour of the Askerr nation, Eggel groaned to see his mana disappearing into those who had served him so ill.
There was however no indication as to when Lelifreida, the spirited wife of Eggel, would be featuring on the mana redistribution menu. Indeed her escape was practically the only shadow cast upon the whole occasion. Screaming like a trapped mongoose, she alone had realised instantly the identity of the masked club-wielder who had burst in upon the acclamation of her husband as En Luggal. Her cry of alarm had been in vain however for the menfolk of the hall were seemingly mesmerised by the terrifying mask and the flickering flame of the firebrand brandished by the assailant who appeared as to be a spectral emissary from the Angry God himself.
None of the men had retained the wherewithal to resist when club first connected with skull and En Lugal Lek's dance of blood had begun within the hall. The floor was greasy with gore before the necessity of flight impressed itself upon the befuddled and terrified headmen trapped within the hall who at last made a desperate and slippery charge towards the faint light of the entrance. Lashing out with both torch and club, Lek sent one of the older men sprawling to the floor with a shattered jaw that was delivered deftly through an angled upward stroke with the club. The torch connected with the naked arm of one of the fleeing chiefs who shrieked in pain and horror like a damned soul lost in torment but dared not let his urgent stride slacken for even a moment. A despairing dozen or so attained the entrance and the hope of an exit into relative safety only for the three leading the charge to be brought low by a bushel of spears, savagely thrust by unseen hands, which now crowded the exit, barring all hope for escape. Now turned back, without hope and filling rapidly with the courage of desperation, the surviving headmen sought to grapple with their foe. It was however a hopeless struggle for the remaining nine were unarmed and practically naked before their demonic assailant and one by one they fell, variously burned or cudgelled, to the floor, whimpering in exhaustion and sullenly resigned to the inevitability of death.
The priests had been more obliging, having fallen to their knees they sought, with urgent fervent prayers and earnestly brandished fetishes to placate the wrath of the Angry God and turn away this avatar of his fury. Their piety availed them not for one by one they were laid low by a firm blow to the base of the skull that sent them sprawling forward onto their bellies. Not all the blows were fatal for En Lugal Lek was beginning to tire of his strenuous exertions. His work substantively done he called in his faithful dogs, the Raskol, to finish off any survivors.
Lelifreida was not found amongst them. Obscured from the horrors occurring in the hall by the flimsiest of veils she had, in spite of shrieking the warning, escaped notice and had used her time wisely to rent asunder the woven reed panels of the side of the hut, bloodying her bony hands in the process. She succeeded in tearing herself an exit just in time, with moments to spare, as at the very same moment a blood smeared Raskol tore down the threadbare curtain - just in time to witness the shapely rump of Lelifreida pitching outwards from the hut and into the stagnant murky waters of the lake below the stilted hut. She was last seen swimming like a water-dog, of the sort that provide an excellent meat for a curry whenever there is a shortage of goats or prisoners, towards the shore with her head bopping up and down upon the water, her voice to be heard shrieking the most terrible curses whenever she resurfaced for breath. One of the Raskol's attempted to spear her as though she were a fish, however his aim was off and she soon disappeared into the swrilling fog.
Eggel however remained. Having retreated into the furthermost recesses of the hut he had succeeded in gathering up a war-club of sturdy mahogany and knife fashioned from the claw of the wagga-bird. To his credit he fought well, the spears of the Raskol were unwieldy to use in a confined space and ducking beneath them artfully and stepping between spear-thrusts as nimbly as pubescent dancer he proceeded to deliver telling blows with his club against the torsos of two Raskol who were sent stumbling backwards into their fellows under the force of the hammer-blows, disordering them tremendously and throwing them back as they sought now to crowd in around him. Sensing this, Eggel spun about and dug his knife deep into the muscled thigh of a Raskol who stumbled away clutching the knife protruding from his bloodied side and whimpering. Here at this point the brave stand of Eggel ended for a Raskol at last managed to get a clean spear thrust in that punctured the putative En Lugal's right shoulder, with sufficient strength to push the barbed point through muscle and into bone. With a yell of anguish and fury Eggel turned to face his attacker with such tremendous speed and force that the shaft of the spear snapped, leaving the barbed spear-point embedded in his back.
"None of you are worthy of my mana, but let me die honourably in single combat, so that my worth might be consumed by someone who might have at least some hope of improvement."
These, the last reputed words of Eggel were improbably eloquent for an exhausted and despairing warrior who had just received what might well have been a mortal wound, but this is what has been attested to by those who were present and we have no reason to distrust them. In any event his request was denied by En Luggal Lek who ordered his loathsome allies to have him taken alive and bound. This they proceeded to do, dropping their spears they rushed at him in a mass. Eggel managed to kill one more of his assailants but they were soon inside the reach of his club so close that he was unable to wield it with any force and from that moment he was doomed. It took as many as twenty Raskol to wrestle him to the ground and that same twenty then proceeded to kick him without cessation until they were certain he would move no more. After that rope-vine was brought in to the hut and Eggel was trussed up like a wagga bird destined for the pot and left to contemplate the agonies that awaited him.
Agonies indeed they were aplenty for when the Raskol came back into the hut it was to perform the horrors with coree shells that were described above. Through sheer fortitude he survived, although often passing into the blackness he always revived - doubtlessly not to his great comfort - and in the first instance he found himself no longer in the hut but suspended from a beam held aloft between two huts where from he could witness those faithless subjects who had been his for a day ingesting his mana. It must have been when he first tried to speak that he realised that they had cut out his tongue, or perhaps he could taste the bitterness of blood in his mouth. In any event it was only once Eggel had alerted all to his revival through his most agonising groan that En Lugal Lek proceeded, in full view of all and with evident relish, to eat the grilled organ that had been presented to him. Now Eggel's spirit broke and he began to wail and sob like a child. A child of woe no less, and the superstitious began to clutch at their protective fetish charms. The Raskol however began to whoop and jeer, sticking out their tongues at him in mockery of the most dreadful mutilation. The corpses of Eggel's allies were removed from the hut and now prepared to provide the feasting meats for the greater force of Raskols who had remained at the shoreline. The butchered limbs and choice cuts were piled into those same canoes which had brought both they and En Lugal Lek in unseen under the cover of the most persistent murk that clung to the crater lake.
On the second day the Raskols had cut Eggel down from his perch and had great sport in cutting off his outer extremities and roasting them before his eyes that had spent so long in pain and horror that he had not a single tear left to shed. Eggel spent the greater part of the day lost in darkness and would seldom revive even when the Raskol applied firebrands to his naked flesh. That he persisted in his dreadful mockery of life at all was attributed to an unexpected skill on the part of the Raskol who bound each of his limbs tightly with vine-rope at a point above where the cut was to be made. Many remarked upon how this resulted in a great deal less blood being shed than might otherwise have been expected. The wounds were nonetheless dreadful and had to be sealed to prevent further loss of blood, this was done by the application of boiling tar, something which had never been seen before in Calēkhōpraksis, that was poured onto each ruined stump by a Raskol sharman, a type of person never known to the Askerr before, who muttered dark prayers to the Daevanam Daevo, something that was, at that time, quite unknown, but which has since become a dreadful familiarity even in these parts. Eggel was heard to make a very weak sound which some interpreted as begging for water. The Raskol lined up to urinate on him. Such was the nature of their wit.
On the final day En Lugal Lek announced his desire to consume the chief's portion of his erstwhile fleeting foe. His manhood was cut from him to be retained for use in ritual magic whilst he expired in the most unimaginable pain, his chest cavity being hacked open with a stone axe and his heart was torn out and thrown at the feet of En Lugal Lek, still visibly beating, who ordered it taken away and cooked in a soup so that he might savour the taste of it and drink deeply of the mana also. The body of Eggel, who died in this awful way, was thrown into the lake to be food for the fishes and water-dogs.
Kel, who had only ever been the incense-holder and 'mana-bucket' for his predecessor the En Lugal Enis, had not only dispatched his rival claimant, he had destroyed the power of the priesthood and the independence of the villages also. Some have wondered that it was being so ill-used by Enis that had inspired in Kel a hatred not only of his master but of the entire Askerr nation. Were that so, his anger led him to seek to destroy that which was bad and replace it with something that was indescribably worse. His absence, the opportunity for which had been presented by his obligation to visit the forbidden isle at the heart of the lake, had been used to conceive and put into place his most dreadful scheme. That he had gone so far towards achieving this at all was in itself amazing but it was his willingness to knowingly shatter the most absolute taboo in embracing the Raskol as allies that horrified the Askerr nation the most, since the single most important obligation placed upon the En Lugal was to wage war ceaselessly upon the Raskol. For the Askerr therefore the reign of En Lugal Lek was not so much a violent succession (these were commonplace) but the destruction and overthrown of their belief system, an affront and a challenge to their mental universe.
It surprised no-one in Calēkhōpraksis, miserable prisoners of the En Lugal and his Raskols that they were, when, no sooner had the evil broth been served, war-drums were heard to be resounding along the entire length of the valley leading back to the village of Hazahab. Lelifreida had escaped to her people and would have her revenge.
En Lugal Lek was not in the least perturbed for he told those about him that his victory was assured, that he had seen many wondrous things upon the taboo island and that the rocks themselves spoke to him. What the rocks spoke of appeared to be truly remarkable to those who listened to their chief, for he spoke of a gate in the heart of the mountain, and of a prophet who would enter this world through that door and restore the Askerr nation to greatness and the world beyond (of which then his listeners knew not) to the proper worship of the Angry God. The gate and the prophet were of one name and one nature, the name was Bab - and they were told that his name meant victory. The poor fools.
All this occurred in the fourth cycle of the new advent with consequences that live with us still in the horror that is unrelenting and has spread to neighbouring isles and might one day even extend beyond the great blue waters to who knows where.
