The Warrior is Tested

So the man and the maiden met her father:
the possessor
of her beginnings.
Counsel in courtship they received,
that their way might be pleasing in those days.
The father opened his lips with prudence,
and the warrior with right speech.
So the courtship blossomed
in the integrity of the man and the maid.

With a diligent heart he took her to see
where the mountains were settled;
With an honorable one she took him to see
where the fountains abounded with water.
With the primal dust at their feet
and the mist of high clouds in their hair,
all things most desirable to them fell away but for one:
the knowing of each other.
And as their wisdom grew sound,
their understanding strong,
then their prayers grew rich in the merging,
their hearts began to meld...
but they were, as yet,
untested.

Then one day, a crafty woman
called out to the warrior
in passing,
called out through the lattice of her cool dark house.

"Ask me what is to come..." she said,
and her voice was dead leaves, the ones refusing
to fall from the branch that, in life,
was their home.

Something in that voice took him back
to the day of the dragon...a day long gone.
"She prefers you," said the woman, her tongue
spread so neatly with reassurances
--like a doily--
perched on that voice's darkly polished surface.
"But...she will accept him.
First for lust, strangely come here while you are absent.
Then, for the sake of the people...and somehow, hmmm--"
the voice paused
"for you."

The man ran then on swift foot,
no longer prone to listen,
but to act.
With sure foot, he took the palace gates,
but found the throne room garishly altered,
gem and stone replaced
by a faded sort of plushness.
Two women sat on lesser thrones there;
Women whose soft whiteness made gleam
the eyes of milling captains caped in purple,
men who--even in the palace halls--
felt need of swords and spurs;
who loudly rattled bucklers, shields and helmets,
comforts of war slung under every arm
and across every shoulder.
The would-be warrior saw one of the women
...was his woman. Sepulchre though she was.
She and the one who was her sister
(he now realized)
held a central throne empty, preserved
for the captain of this horrific vanguard troop.
So the man hid behind a pillar,
staring, though the horror of the view
shredded his heart, then left its threads
to whip on the billows of despair.

But even now, that captain took the room
with pomp and swagger,
in flashing vermilion, his belt well-tooled
with weaponry of a pearliest golden,
but still flimsy to a knowing eye.
Nevertheless, the women stood and shouted to the company assembled:
"Behold, of all the desirable young horsemen on horses--
of all the choice men--
here is the finest, our governor and commander: Rehum Rahim II!
Call to remembrance, O people,
the glory of his youth
and the strength of these days of his manhood!"

So the assembly applauded this warrior
whose eyes shone brilliant, but not at the sounding of his name...
for they were, instead, well set to deliver hatred's inheritance,
to uncover the nakedness and shame of a perplexed people,
delighting in it even as one might
delight to uncover a dish of delicacies for a parlor guest.
This was Rehum Rahim, but the people did not see it.
For to some, a word
(in particular, a name)
is larger than any deed done, or yet to do.

In shock and dismay did the man leave the great hall.
In despair did he seek a face---any face--
still familiar in its affections.

Past nine rooms, then ten he walked
unnoticed--
Drawing little attention from the confident siege force
now encamped there.
Rebellions were not even a fleeting concern for these usurpers.

Now the would-be warrior--
so full of horror and distaste at all things war-like--
found the kitchen
where his gaze met familiar eyes.
His wandering feet halted; his outcast soul paused.
He entered the room.

The old sage (who never aged)
squatted there,
stoking a fire built of smoking peat
and bones.
"Bring that pot there, Lad.
I wondered when I'd see you..."
So the horror-stricken warrior--
knowing something of the nature of this old man--
brought the pot to the fire
without a word, without a gesture of urgency,
though many words begged the speaking.
Together they put water in that pot,
filled it with choice cuts of meat
and spices.
For slaves, the fare a master consumes
is nothing more than a working aroma.
Thus this bowed-down man appeared a slave
of the new palace order.
The younger man's heart ached at the thought of it.

As the boiling meat began to give up its savory steam,
the old man finally found a comment worth the making.
"You surely wonder why your love is so stationed
at the side of--"
"Yes! How is she given so whole-heartedly to that Vermilion Prince?"

"I'd ask how are you so fully escaped?
Ah well, your freedom is to me opportunity
to open this old mute mouth.
She'll recover her sanity, when deceptions fall away
and truth ceases to be prey to the likes of him.
But it will not return to her easily."
The old one drew his gaze around the stony walls of the gritty kitchen
like hands move around the face of a clock
until a view of would-be warrior was in his sphere.
"But what of you? What will you do with the Lord's sign?
With this grace of knowing how far you've come
from the days of your own arrogance and vain-glorious ambition?
What will you do with this Vermilion Prince--
so much the man you once aspired to be--
when he does think to take with one stroke, the desire of your eyes?"

The warrior sat on the floor then and stared into the flames,
even as the bones baked to powder
--like chalk dust--
and still, the old man stoked the flame.
The hapless warrior stared into those flames
as one out of mind, but in truth,
as one gone deeper still into mind,
to the recesses where, like secret rooms,
the heart goes to do its thinking.
He searched, and he sat.

And as he did, the pot's scummy water boiled off.
Its meat charred and burned away..
Still, the old man stoked the flame,
until the pot itself appeared as a hunk of rippling orange glow.
Waste
--that long-forgotten proof of the true condition
of the Need-less,
where even the act of wasting
is an act of grace,
and mysterious comfort to the slowly waking--
Waste found its voice in the hissing metal.

"I believe it is finished," said the old man, kicking down the coals.