“‘Areyakhrakan yaqled Anhi. He who has lost his way should consult Anhi.’ This is what the Lost Book teaches us in its laws. We forget that leadership is a form of sovereignty, and that sovereignty is as haunted a place as the site of a treasure.”
Imaswan Wandarran cried out, “Did you call sovereignty a haunted site?”
“If the Spirit World’s tribes seized control of gold in the first age, and forbade its use by anyone else in the ancient covenant our forefathers discussed in our lost Law, the jinn had already seized control of leadership long before that. They singled out sovereignty as their homeland before they ever seized control of gold dust.”
“Reports of an irrevocable gold-dust covenant between our forefathers and the people of the Spirit Word have reached us, but we have never previously heard of a group seizing control of sovereignty.”
More than one voice moaned appreciatively in support of their comrade’s clarification. So the chief merchant continued his struggle to reveal the secret of leadership with the keys provided by talismans he had drawn in the dirt.
“It is right for a merchant to discuss haunted homelands, because merchants are the only community that uses a haunted currency for their transactions. Yes, yes: treasures are our currency, and leadership is not merely the mainstay of treasure, which is what the masses imagine, but actually the secret of the treasure, the mate of the treasure, and the head of the treasure.”
He buried legions of talismans beneath a pile of dirt and plucked from the earth a handful of pebbles of different colors. He heaped these in his palm and gazed at them absentmindedly.
From an unidentified cavern a voice called out, “In the time when rocks were moist and the earth was inhabited only by the people of the Spirit World, Grandfather Mandam descended to it after he was exiled from his unidentified homeland. Dressed in the rags of desert nomads, the jinn went out to meet him. They had decided to offer a little secret to this migrant, who was exhausted by the curse of interminable travel. They told their guest that they were the desert’s masters and that if he wished to enjoy living in their kingdom, he merely had to obey their Law and accept a covenant whereby the son of the desert lands would become lord of these lands but leave the affairs of the spiritual worlds to the inhabitants of those worlds. Then curiosity gnawed on the human being’s heart. So he asked these people what the spiritual worlds hid. Their leader’s cryptic reply has been passed down through the generations. It is said that the jinn’s leader declared to our ancient ancestor on that day, ‘Our distinguished guest errs if he asks this, but we should excuse him, since we understand that his curiosity was the sole reason for his banishment. So know, then, that should you learn this, your knowledge would not increase but decrease and what you learn would harm you. The spiritual worlds we inhabit are the abode of the wilderness that the desert and the desert people, who will descend from your loins, occupy. The spiritual worlds are not merely a home for the empty land; they stand supreme over its head. So you must entrust your affairs to the spiritual worlds forever and never raise your head — if you want to enjoy your stay in your new homeland. If you are arrogant and wish to impose yourself as sovereign over the sovereignty of the spiritual worlds, evil will track you down, and you will suffer. So beware!’ The immigrant, who was footloose by nature, did not merely dare to raise his head and walk proudly in the desert, thinking he would reach as high as the mountains, but began to strive to devise a path for himself to the heavens. He whispered, hinted, and searched for a secret that could convey him to the spiritual worlds so he could seize control of them, because he realized that human beings would never be able to possess the wilderness if they didn’t find a way to seize control of the spiritual worlds. The people of the Spirit World thought they would punish this upstart for his violation of the covenant. So they allowed him to fall asleep. Then they excised his heart, which they replaced with a different one. They removed his brain and substituted another one. They amputated his hand and grafted another in its place. When the upstart woke, he found that the compassion in his heart had fled and been replaced by cruelty, that wisdom had quit his head and left in its stead stupidity and delusion, and that his right hand — which had been loath to reach up to chase a fly from his face — now rushed to slay everything in the desert. His tongue declared blasphemously that day: ‘I am sovereign over the earth. I am lord of all creatures. Haven’t the people of the Spirit World left me in the desert as their lieutenant? Didn’t the lords of the spiritual worlds install me as lord over the wilderness?’ On that ill-omened day, the upstart did not merely lift his head to boast before the heavens but also used his hand to slay. He killed — for the first time in the history of the desert. Since that day, killing has become one of the laws that rulers follow. Since that day, replacing leaders has become a favorite pastime for inhabitants of the Spirit World.”
The chief merchant leaned over the pebbles, which had colors that people of the desert usually found only in beads, and covered this pile with the palm of his other hand. He began to crush the pebbles together between his two hands as if this were a ritual associated with some magic spell.
The members of the council fell prey to despondency, but Amasis the Younger waddled toward the chief merchant, dropped to his knees, and stuck out his neck to scrutinize his neighbor with a very long, inquisitive look, which not only suggested curiosity but also the suspicion that leaps from the eyes of people when they converse with individuals of dubious mental acuity. Finally Amasis, as if whispering a blandishment into the ear of a girlfriend, asked, “What are you trying to say?”
Stillness overwhelmed the council, and the members’ fingers ceased furrowing the dirt, fiddling with pieces of stone, or fingering the hems of their garments. This time the men held their breath — not to quench the thirst of base curiosity, which can never be quenched, but from a desire for the wisdom hidden in the folds of a proverb and from their yearning to acquire the truth to which the Law’s counsel alluded.
At that hour, the cunning strategist realized that the time had come, because his slow deliberation had realized its goal and hearts had emptied of the markets’ babble and of worldly whispers. Purity had washed their hearts and prepared people to learn. So he spoke.
As he clenched his fist around his amulet and gazed at the elders even more mysteriously, he said, “Beware of binding the cord of insanity round the neck of anyone you love!”
As if waving his protest in the face of the man seated there, Imaswan Wandarran sprang into the debate: “What does this mean? What are you trying to say?”
“If you allow one among you to go there, you should realize that you will lose him forever — just as you lost poor Aggulli.”
“Aggulli was stubborn, arrogant, and duplicitous.”
“Everyone who goes to sit on that ill-omened throne will be stubborn, arrogant, and duplicitous.”
“What’s the secret reason for that, I wonder? Is it reasonable for one of us to lose his reason when he gains that title, even though he knows the whole affair from start to finish is nothing but a game within a game?”
“We will find an excuse for the wretch when we learn that he acts involuntarily.”
“Did you say ‘involuntarily’?”
“Our life in the desert lands is a game, but life in the spiritual lands is never a game. The man who goes to sit on the sovereign’s throne is possessed by inhabitants of the Spirit World. He must see things with the eye of the Spirit World, not with the eye of the wasteland’s people. This is where the calamity starts, because the wretch must believe a matter that we see by the Law of this worldly life to be a lie. So from the day the haunted piece of cloth becomes part of him, he becomes a puppet in the hand of the Spirit World, which does not see that life is a game, that the sovereign is a puppet, or that there is no place in its Law for anything besides a seriousness that surpasses by many times the seriousness we boast of. Our error comes from treating the sovereign as if he were the person we knew yesterday. We do not realize that he isn’t merely another man — who bears no relationship to the man we used to know — but that he retains no relationship to any part of our world. From today forward we must be aware that the man we choose to command us is not simply lost to us forever but becomes another creature who never knew us and whom we haven’t previously known. For this reason, we shouldn’t expect compassion or any good from him. Indeed, we ought to expect evil. So will you insist on turning one of our peers, whose presence with us in this council delights us, into our worst enemy?”