The Tenner

Thanks. Sorry for not doing the last couple of fills - it turns out that ‘School Starting’ was enough of a fuss that all my spoons have gone. Could I have chance to proof read anything of mine before it gets distributed?

To everyone who’s been writing and reading: kia kaha, kia ora.

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Count Nicolo Alberti stands in the garden. “I had thought of telling some tale of a renewed people rising up after this challenge, but others have taken that theme. Still, I do have a final story to tell - though it is more of an ending than a beginning. I give you”

The Risen Emperor

Many lands have a legend of “the king under the mountain”. In this legend, the land’s greatest king (or queen) slumbers, ready to rise and defend the land in its time of greatest need. Sometimes this king (or queen) slumbers with an army. Albion and far-off Bohemia have versions of this legend, and no doubt you have heard of others.

Almost always the king (or queen) stays asleep. Almost. There is one example I have heard of who did not. You will have all heard of Alexius, whose military genius (and army) was such that he conquered not one world, but three. It was very nearly four, but Alexius finally found an opponent greater than himself.

The world Alexius’ final pathway took him to was burned by some great conflagration. The cities were all ashes and ruins, their treasures all destroyed. The survivors were just a few scattered bands eking out an existence in the wasteland. Alexius’ army, the mighty force which had made him lord of three worlds, wanted to return home and seek some other target. But the survivors told Alexius that before the great burning, the last emperor of their world had shut himself, his army, and all his greatest treasures beneath a mountain, where he slept, waiting to wake when the time was right. Greedy for something to show from his expedition, and curious to learn how an emperor might sleep for so long (for conquering three worlds had taken many years, and Alexius was thinking that he too might wish to sleep until needed), Alexius led his army to the mountain. There, he found a monstrous door, marked with wards and sigils of protection. The army broke it down. Then, the Conqueror, his personal guards, his chief lieutenants and the chosen scholars and advisors of his court entered the mountain in search of the emperor.

What happened afterwards is unclear. The few people who left the mountain (having left the expedition early due to injury, cowardice, or some other reason) spoke of strange devices, hulking suits of armour, vast halls full of warriors sleeping in glowing beds, and mysterious traps that could burn a careless man to ash. But something happened inside, for the mountain shook, a voice cried out like thunder, and a cold mist issued forth which caused the guards posted by the doorway to collapse with palsy, or burned skin, or become weak and sicken and die. The survivors of the army waited, but neither Alexius nor any member of his party returned, and those seeking to enter died or were driven back by the mist; those brave enough to force their way through it were never seen again. The local guides told them that the emperor must have risen and destroyed Alexius, and without their leader, the army believed them. Eventually, Kratis, Alexius’ senior surviving lieutenant, led them homeward, empty-handed. And fearing whatever force had killed Alexius, he closed the path behind him.

Some say that Alexius was killed by treachery, or sorcery, rather than the sleeping emperor. I prefer to believe that the emperor rose. For what could be a greater threat than the greatest conqueror in history?

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Thanks, Malcom, that was nifty!

A link to the (incomplete) final document is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AdeizCasafHMfyh4Xod9PNn_9GpoFZLZjZc0fGwzSvQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

It’s been lightly edited for SPaG, though there’s more to do. Feel free to tweak your texts to your liking.

Cheers.

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[Here’s a final fill. Feel free to insert it before the end tale if you’d rather.]

Edward took off his spectacles and cleaned them carefully.

The Mountain
On Old Earth, there is a great range of mountains that divides nations, called the Cradle of Snow. Many of the mountains there rise up into the thinnest of airs, brushing at the sky; one is the highest known on Earth. Some who live near it call it the Holy Mother.

As such things go, men (rarely women) see something high and want to overcome it. They want to dominate it, and put their name on it. Such a one was the man who gave it the name that goes on maps, Everest. Such were the many men from all over the world who sought to climb it. For many years, this was a futile effort - in reputation - and yet every time someone climbed the Holy Mother and returned, more was known. More about the air, more about the ridges and lines and crevasses. With each climb just a few more steps were cut to ease the path of the next journeyer.

One day, a man called Ed and a man called Norgay were hired to try to make the climb. There were many others they travelled with, but after Ed fell down a crevasse to be rescued by Norgay, they were fast friends and always worked together. They come from utterly different worlds. Norgay had grown up in the shadow of the Mountain, and was a Prince of climbers, a Sirdar, who had climbed it six times before, who had reached the highest point any man was known to have reached. Ed was a beekeeper from a group of islands far away, a tall boy who had grown up in the sun, rafting on a great river.

The great mass of mountainers, and soldiers, and reporters, and porters climbed in stages. They built camps and ferried food to them. They gave each mountaineer time to grow used to the thin vasty air. When they were ready, the first pair of mountaineers left to attempt the final ascent. Their comrades watched carefully to see black dots crawling their way down, their heads hanging.

Then it was Ed and Norgay’s turn. They strapped on packs of a little food and great tanks of oxygen. They climbed. Oh, how they climbed, their breath straining, gaining a little sleep in a tent pinned down on the mountainside by oxygen tanks. They made their final climb on a diet of chocolate and hot lemonade. The higher the got, the more sky became the black colour of outer space. Some call this part of the Holy Mother the “dying zone.” But Ed and Norgay, Norgay and Ed, were the best climbers in the world. Near the top they found a great black escarpment wall, with no cracks or crannies that a cunning climber might jam his fingers into. Ed found an icewall at one end and jammed himself in the narrow gap and pushed himself up with his feet. He sent down a rope to his friend and they kept on climbing together. The rest of it was easy, a gentle stroll but for the thinness of the air, the Mother giving her pilgrims one easy walk to her summit.

They left sweets, a pencil, a gold cross. Ed took a photograph of Norgay, with prayer flags on his axe. And then they walked back down.

When they reached the base camp, they told their friends that they had climbed to the top together, just that, because without each other, and without the others of their expedition, and without the expeditions that had mapped and scaled and loved the Mountain, no one could have reached the top.

And that is my story, of the Mountain that brushes the night black sky of space, and of the first humans to climb it. Just because it is there.

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A fairly late reply to Majesty, but what the hey, the story wanted to be told. Content warning at the bottom.

Edward was in the attic. He had found a small sack of myrrh resin and was grinding the golden brown lumps in a deep brass mortar. One hand, its fingers traced with faint scars, spread over the mortar to guard the powder he was making, faintly smelling of wood and smoke and sweetness. “There is a tale,” he said, “of the myrhh tree. But it is a sad one.”

Who Weeps?
Long ago, poets told a tale that they claimed was a horrible one, that daughters and fathers should hold themselves aloof from or else disbelieve, and further, to believe more strongly in the punishment that followed the sin.

A long time ago there was a girl who fell in love with her father, the king. Are you not shocked? When a man desires his daughter, we sigh and shake our heads, and if we live just lives we punish him - but we are… less surprised than we should be. Even so, here was this girl Myrrha, and she desired her father the king - Cinyras, he was called. Such a desire is unnatural and she knew it well, but she sighed and took to her bed, and swore to her maid that surely she would die. She convinced her maid to help her in the ‘bed trick,’ to fool old Cinyras that some other fine young lady of good birth desired him. Randy old goat that he was, he consented.

We all know the tale of the monster bridegroom who appears only in the dark, who when a candle is brought is found to be beautiful before fleeing forever. When Cinyras wondered who was this fine youthful lady who wanted him so, who reminded him of his own youth, he brought a candle in the night, and his lover was, indeed, beautiful. In his rage he raised his sword to strike his daughter down and she fled from him. In her shame and her penance, young Myrrha walked nine long months through the dry lands of the Arabs, becoming heavier with child every day. On the last day when she could walk no farther, her mouth parched with thirst, the soldiers of her husband still pursuing her, weary of life yet terrified of death, she cried out to Aphrodite the goddess of desire to aid her.

It is an old saying for those who are surprised by their actions: “a god must have put the thought in my head” for the gods of the Middle Sea are capricious and change their minds often. The goddess Aphrodite transformed young Myrrha into a little twisted fragrant tree that split open to reveal the most beautiful baby the goddess had ever seen. She named the baby Adonis, which means Lord, except when it means Perfume, or even Lover. She kept the baby, but shared it with grave Persephone in her dark land for a part of each year. The boy grew and became a man, the most beautiful man, so of course Aphrodite would take him as her lover.

Adonis was fond of the hunt. Bountiful Aphrodite, the postponer of old age, found herself kilting up her gown and running through the woods with her young lover, leaping logs, dodging through the undergrowth and telling the young man who burst with life that by all means he must be careful.

Obviously we all know the ending. She found Beautiful Adonis sprawled beneath a tree, a wild pig snorting over the boy, a spreading wound in her lover’s thigh. She wept then as poets weep: for departed beauty, for the fragility of all things, for the idea of the dying god; she wept for worldly cares that Adonis had now left behind him. She wept until her tears and the clotting blood of her lover became the fragile anemone flower, light and frail and quick to die in its beauty.

She weeps, and we weep, for the beautiful Adonis.

But I ask you now - who shall weep for the gnarled and twisted myrrh tree that holds fast in the desert? Who shall weep for a young and silly girl whose tears are fit gift for kings?

Edward ceased his grinding and poured the fine fragrant powder into a wooden bowl, the better to dry in the sun. He breathed in deeply. “Her tears are beautiful, are they not?”


Content warning for a non-explicit story that starts with an act of incest. But honestly, it’s hard to write a story based on Ancient Greek myths without heading into some seriously hinky territory, so there you go.

Thanks. That’s a pretty cool story!