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  CHILDREN OF THE DRAGON

  FRANK ROBINSON

  Children of the Dragon

  Copyright © copyright: 1978 by Frank Robinson

  This edition published 2019 by Capricorn Literary

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

  To Virginia Kidd

  NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

  TWO DIALECTS WERE SPOKEN by the Bergharran people who are the subject of this book: Tnemghadi and Urhemmedhin. The dialects are similar, and identical rules of pronunciation apply to both.

  At the outset, it must be emphasized that the Bergharran language cannot be transliterated into the Roman alphabet with complete accuracy, since a few of the letters lack English equivalents. An example is the Bergharran letter Qai, which is pronounced somewhere between the sound of q and that of g.

  Most problemsome is the frequently encountered Hai or Chai, which is uniformly transliterated in this book as h, even though its sound varies somewhat depending on the adjacent letters. Generally this letter is guttural, between h and ch, as in the Hebrew Chanukah or Hanukkah. The Hai is never silent, even when appearing between consonants, as in Khrasanna, or as a final letter, as in Satanichadh,where it adds what amounts to a partial syllable.

  There is one compensation for the difficulty of pronouncing the Hai: it is often a useful guide for the accenting of syllables. In most cases, the Hai imposes the accent upon the syllable which it introduces. Examples: Berg-HAR-ra, Tnem-GHA-di, De-vo-DHRI-sha; I-raj-DHAN. (The sh, ch and th sounds are, of course, separate and should not be read as containing a Hai.) Occasionally, the Hai is weak and pronounced almost like an h; this usually happens when the Hai is an initial letter followed by a vowel, as in Henghmani.

  The Bergharran vowel system is quite simple. Vowels should be pronounced uniformly as follows:

  a as ah

  e as eh

  i as ee

  o as oh

  u as oo

  Often encountered are Bergharran words beginning with double-consonant combinations difficult to pronounce, as in Tnemghadi. There, for example, the T and n should be pronounced almost as a single letter, as though one started out to say a t but midway switched to saying an n.

  Table of Contents

  Note on Pronunciation

  Book One: Ksiritsa 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Book Two: Zidneppa 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Book Three: Arbadakhar 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Book Four: Naddeghomra 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Book Five: Ksiritsa 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Book One

  Ksiritsa

  An entry from the Public Auction Sale Catalog of the Gustave Hauchschild Collection, Munzen-Gallerie, Zurich, August 15, 1976:

  BERGHARRA—Tnemghadi Empire, gold hundredtayel piece of Emperor Sarbat, Satanichadh Dynasty, circa 1160. Obverse: Crowned facing portrait of ruler (youthful effigy) with Tnemghadi inscription in exergue. Reverse: Imperial dragon, crown mintmark (Ksiritsa). This is plate coin 1338 of G. R. Breitenbach’s The Coinage of Bergharra. 39 mm.; Extremely Fine, sharply struck and well centered, a beautiful coin and rare in such a splendid state of preservation.

  1

  TNEM SARBAT SATANICHADH looked out upon the world with glittering eyes.

  Everything was nothing.

  That was because it all was his. The world was Sarbat Satanichadh’s to exalt or curse, to fondle or lay waste. He shared the world with no god; Sarbat Satanichadh paid homage to no god at all.

  For Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh himself was god.

  He was the Emperor of Bergharra.

  Sarbat Satanichadh beheld his world glittering in his eyes, and he glittered back at it. Sapphires, diamonds, emeralds and even rarer gems twinkled like stars, set in his dome-shaped crown and black velvet robe—so thickly bejewelled, it was more carapace than robe.

  Long were the tines of Sarbat’s waxen black moustache, and his beard and fingernails. His nails were curved and colored, ten scimitars dyed purple like the claws of a beast that’s downed its prey.

  Long too was Sarbat Satanichadh’s reign. For half his forty years, this man had occupied Bergharra’s throne.

  That seat of power and magnificence, the ancient Tnemenghouri Throne, was wrought solidly in gold and sparkled too with gems. From a pedestal it dominated the cavernous throne room, and its high back was engraved in red gold with a fiery rising sun.

  Red too was the velvet staircase leading to the throne. And it was whispered in the palace corridors that this carpet’s crimson hue concealed the bloodstains of those who had incurred the Emperor’s wrath.

  Golden and jewel-emblazoned like the robe and throne was Sexrexatra, the dragon curled around the scepter brandished by Sarbat Satanichadh. The eyes of the dragon Sexrexatra were bulging, burning rubies, and his horrible face was rent by a huge maw, jaws open wide, roaring to show his ivory teeth. His talons gripped and tore the scepter’s golden flesh; the wounds bled shimmering precious stones.

  The Sexrexatra Scepter was a very ancient relic, passed down from emperor to emperor through many ages. But the dragon himself, old Sexrexatra, was the most ancient being in all the world.

  Before there were people in the world, there was Sexrexatra, the monstrous creature born together with the very earth itself, and retaining in his terrible jaws the fire of that creation. For eons Sexrexatra ruled the world all alone, snapping up into his jaws any other being who might dare to come there. Even his own children Sexrexatra would implacably devour.

  But finally there was born to Sexrexatra a brood of children who were endowed with special cunning, and they managed to escape his fiery jaws. These children of the dragon were the first people in the world.

  Sexrexatra was enraged by their escape, and for years he chased them across the mountains and deserts. Always these clever, resourceful children eluded him. But at last their monstrous father trapped them in a cave. They seemed surely doomed, and would indeed have been eaten were it not for the brave act of a girl named Pa-ma. This girl swallowed down a great quantity of poison, and before it could take effect, she ran from the cave and threw herself in Sexrexatra’s path. The dragon ate her up in one bi
te, but quickly realized his mistake as the poison began to thread through his body.

  “I will return some day,” he thundered at the others huddled in the cave, “And I will devour all you misbegotten children, and your children too, and your children’s children!”

  And then the great dragon Sexrexatra was no more.

  His children ventured forth from the cave. The whole country of Bergharra was their inheritance. Some of them journeyed north, and became the Tnemghadi people; the others went south, becoming the Urhemmedhins. But these people of Bergharra never forgot their cruel creator. They called themselves the children of the dragon, and awaited the fulfillment of his promise to return and destroy them.

  The Sexrexatra Scepter was a ponderous, ungainly thing, and Sarbat’s arm would ache when holding it aloft. This pain he deemed symbolic of his burden, a weight to counterpoise the glory of his power. No matter how it hurt his arm, Sarbat would hold the scepter high, for he knew that the image of the sun beneath which he sat could equally be a rising or a setting sun. To let the scepter fall from his hand would be an omen portending the fall of the Emperor himself.

  For twenty years the scepter had been wielded without a falter by Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh. Before him, it was held by his father, Tnem Al-Khoum, and by his grandfather before that, and once by his ancestor Tnem Sharoun—Sharoun the Sword, the founder of the Satanichadh Dynasty. Almost two centuries before, in the year 986, Sharoun Satanichadh fought, clawed, murdered, and betrayed his way from a backwater Tnemurabad village to the Tnemenghouri Throne. Ever since, his descendants had ruled the Empire.

  Today the people knelt before the idols of Tnem Sarbat as yesterday they had knelt before his father, Tnem Al- Khoum, and tomorrow they would do the same for his son, as Tnem Shayuq. The Satanichadh, and the great Empire of Bergharra, were eternal.

  Eternal too was the City of Ksiritsa, and its grandiose Tnem-rab-Zhikh Palace, where the Satanichadh ruled. They were but the latest in a string of dynasties. Before there had been the Tsitpabana. The last of them, Tnem Riyadja Tsitpabana, had been a decayed and foolish autocrat who had let the crown fall like an overripe plum into the eager hands of Sharoun the Sword. Before the Tsitpabana there had been the Ozimhedi, the Yakrut, and Ibarouma, and before them other dynasties too, all emperors of Bergharra.

  The first to rule the whole country—the first, that is, since the dragon Sexrexatra—was Tnem Khatto Trevendhani. He had led his armies forth from Ksiritsa on a grand crusade of conquest, and subjugated most of the Bergharran realms by the year 361.

  But even before that, the Tnem-rab-Zhikh Palace had housed Tnem Khatto’s fathers, the Kings of Tnemurabad. The origins of the Kingdom of Tnemurabad were lost in the dust of history.

  That ancient kingdom now formed the core of the Empire of Bergharra. Tnemurabad was the largest, richest province; and the pearl of Tnemurabad was Ksiritsa, the capital, the City of the Dragon. Legend had it that Ksiritsa was built upon the very cave where Sexrexatra died; and that if the monster ever did return, he would return here, at this city.

  The wall of Ksiritsa was the longest and the highest and the thickest in the world. It was built to withstand any attack, to insure that Ksiritsa would never be conquered. Begun in the fifth century by Tnem Qinimir Ibarouma, the wall consumed 300,000 Urhemmedhin slaves during the eighty years it took to build.

  Older than the wall was the incalculably ancient Palace of the Heavens. A fortress city in itself, the Tnem-rab- Zhikh Palace sprawled upon a hill in the center of Ksiritsa. Through the centuries it had expanded steadily, gobbling up rude adjacent dwellings and replacing them with towers of marble, copper-roofed and dazzling in their opulence.

  While the spires of the Palace snatched up at the clouds, deep below in dank caverns lay the dungeons. And while the rock-hewn cells overflowed with suffocating wretches, the Palace above was full of airy rooms that only gathered dust. The chambers of the Palace numbered well into the thousands, more rooms than Sarbat Satanichadh and his court could ever even visit, built with the blood and sweat of slaves who were forbidden to set foot there. And still the Emperor drove his slaves and taxed his subjects to expand the Palace even further.

  Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh sat upon the throne; his arm ached in holding high the dragon scepter. But he thought that was good, for it gave his face a fearsome grimace.

  All Bergharra knew that face, gleaming from the coins he struck. The Bergharran money showed on one side the snarling Sexrexatra, and on the other, the Emperor. Sarbat was portrayed full-faced with a scowl, his eyebrows formed into a sharp angle, meeting in the middle of his forehead, hallmark of the Tnemghadi people. The eyes were crescent slits, glinting out over puffy round cheeks. Tnem Sarbat’s thick lips were parted to expose his yellowstained teeth, framed by the drooping spikes of beard and moustache. And the great robe could not conceal the Emperor’s obesity. His belly was protuberant, and his fingers so swollen that his rings could never be removed.

  Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh was worshipped as the god of Bergharra. And he considered himself to be a very great ruler. His ego knew no bounds; he was cruel, tyrannical, opinionated, stubborn. He could decree the most ferocious and unjust punishments, and never be swayed from them. Never would he swerve from any path he had chosen, any design that became fixed in his head, any object for which he strove. Yet he did not surround himself with fawning sycophants, and took for his advisors men of independent mind and judgment, like the renowned old statesman Irajdhan.

  Sarbat was a voluptuary, unstinting of indulgence in rich, exotic foods, spices, clothes, and women. His harem of concubines was thrice the size of his father’s. But often the Emperor would leave the arms of his courtesans to indulge another love, the study of scrolls, for he was something of a scholar, and the author of innumerable poems and essays. If he tripled the harem, he also increased the imperial library many-fold, and added a collection of antiquities. The Emperor would always cast any other business aside to pore over some hoard of encrusted old coins and relics unearthed at a construction site. He was a devotee and patron of the arts, lavishly granting subsidies to poets, artists, and scholastics.

  This was the man who scowled down upon his world, all at the foot of the red velvet staircase. In one corner, sitting regally on a cushion, was the Empress Denoi Devodhrisha. Not far from her there sat a concubine, a languorous Albaroda woman.

  Sarbat allowed his eyes to dwell upon the Empress. She had once been Princess Denoi Vinga Gondwa, daughter of the Devodhrisha King of Laham Jat. Their marriage had been contracted by a treaty when Sarbat was a child of five. Denoi then was twelve; it was years before Sarbat ever saw her. By the time he was ready, she had grown into a grand beauty, soft and sensual. He had lain with her many nights. But now she was no longer soft, and it had been years since last they’d slept together. His consort was aging; besides, the Devodhrisha King of Laham Jat was dead, and his country had become a Bergharran client state of diminished importance.

  So Sarbat looked down upon the Empress Denoi Vinga Gondwa Devodhrisha and she, like all, was nothing. Perhaps he’d have her summoned to his bed this night, only to mock her withered beauty. Perhaps he’d do away with her.

  The Emperor remembered suddenly a girl whom he had fancied in his youth, an Urhemmedhin slave girl named Miretni. She was hardly more than a child, with large dewy eyes and creamy apricot skin. Willingly she had obeyed the summons to the then-prince’s bedchamber.

  Her lips and thin downy legs quivered when he entered her. With artful hands she drew him into her body. Prince Sarbat smiled and she tittered softly, birdlike, smiling back. In his hand he held her little budding breast, and he caressed her with the tips of his fingers.

  Accidentally, Miretni’s flesh was pierced by Sarbat’s fingernail.

  She raised the wound up to his lips; a pearl of blood appeared and the Prince tongued it off. For a long moment he rested with his cheek upon her breast while she stroked his
hair.

  “You are so unafraid of me,” he said.

  Prince Sarbat took her nipple between his fingertips and fondled it; and then his long nails suddenly closed upon it, and snipped it off.

  The girl’s whole body jerked and thin milky blood poured from the strange wound. She grimaced with pain; but did not cry out.

  Sarbat looked at her and realized that he himself was trembling. This was odd; but pondering, the young prince began to glimpse the reason. He trembled not at what he had done to Miretni—but at the fact that she was within his power. Freely he could pinch off her nipple, freely he could pinch off her life itself. The quenching of a human life would mean nothing to him. After all, were there not countless millions in Bergharra? Wasn’t every one of them doomed to die? A man might perish today, or in a hundred years, and in the end it wouldn’t matter which. All the people of Bergharra were doomed ultimately to be devoured by the dragon. The death of this little Urhemmedhin girl would not diminish the world any more than would the squashing of a fly. In a thousand years, would the girl be remembered any better than the fly?

  So Sarbat had trembled not because his hurting Miretni meant anything, but precisely because it meant nothing. Realizing this, Prince Sarbat ended his innocence.

  He stroked Miretni’s cheek with the backs of his fingers and kissed her forehead, and coaxed from her a wan smile. He kissed the wound he had made on her breast. He petted her face and hands, caressed her again and again, and then slowly drew his fingernail as a knife across her cheek.

  She did not scream, but began to cry.

  Again he pressed her down upon the bed and mounted her. And while he came, he gave her not his kiss nor his caress, but instead, his slashing fingernails. Over and over they cut her, on her arms and thighs and face and breast.