called him by our nickname for him, The Beneficent Whip. Long thought, worry, have always ended in the same thing: a message. This was correct, was protocol, no one could criticise us, criticise me. At first casual, almost insultingly casual, messages came back. And then silence. It has been years since he replied, either to me, who am after all a relative, or to The Twelve.
The Ruler he might be, but he has a Council, and in theory at least it is a collective responsibility. Hut so much has been theory that was meant to be substance and reality. Many tunes our cautious approaches to DeRod have seemed to me cowardice, but there was more: to feel the conviction that leads to good action means you must first believe in your efficacy, that good results may come from what you do. As the silence from DeRod persisted, and things went from bad to worse, there was a deadening of hope, of our hopes, which I secretly matched with the darkening mind of The Cities. A paralysis of the Will, I remember we called it in one of our gatherings. But we have met in the ones and twos of special friendship, as well as in the collective, we have met constantly - after all, we have known each other since we were born - and what have we always discussed, if not something which we refer to simply as The Situation. What we have slowly come to see as a kind of poisoning. What has been the constant theme of our talk, our speculation? We have not understood what was happening. Why? I suppose that word sums up our years-long, our decades-long preoccupation. Why? What is the reason for it? Why was it we could never grasp something tangible, get hold of fact, a cause? It is easy to characterise what has been happening. There has been a worsening of everything, and we have seen it as a deliberate, even planned, intention.
That word, analyze … one of our sobriquets (The Twelve) was The Analysers. It is some time since we would have dared use it, for fear of mockery And so much have I (until so recently I could have said we) become infected by the time, that I confess that to me now the wort! has a ridiculous ring to it.
Yet what have we always done, except try to analyze, understand? And since I wrote the above that is what I have been doing and as always coming up with a blank. My instinct is to send another message to DeRod. What is the use?
Something must be done. And by me …
When Koon, or Eleven, spoke last he said soon no one will be left to tell our story. That is how it seemed to him as he died. A story has an end. To him the story was finished. The story: well, our history was something told and retold - when we were still telling our history. And now as the familiar disinclination to do anything invades me I wonder if it is only a symptom of the poisoning. Poison? That was only one of the words we have used. But has our history all been for nothing? The excellence? The high standards? The assumption once shared by everyone in The Cities that the best was what we aimed for?
It is now seven days since Eleven died. I might die in any breath I take. So much I can do: record, at least in outline, our story.
Six lives ago we were conquered by The Roddites, from the East. We. But that has changed. Who were we before the Roddites? Along this shore were scattered villages, of poor dwellings, each thinking of itself as a town, lint they had no proper sanitation, or paved streets, or public amenities, had nothing of what we (we of after The Roddites) take for granted. They were fisherfolk, and the fishing is good, and a great many coveted our fishing shores. The Roddites were desert people, strong, hardy, disciplined, with bodies like whips, and their horses were feared almost as much as the people who rude them. They were taught to trample with their hooves and bite flesh from whatever enemy was before them. Their neighing and roaring and screaming was louder than the shouting of the soldiers or the sound of the trumpets. The Roddites and their horses swept easily over the sea villages, and soon had the fishing and the shore and the boats.
The leader we called Rod, but that was because their system of nomenclature was so convoluted and difficult for us. No one was simply Rod, or Ren, or Blok, or Marr, but to the core name was attached a multitude of suffixes and prefixes: To the Rod, of the Rod, by the Rod, with the Rod, from the Rod; and Rod with its start-sounds and endings could mean ‘Rod who is the third son of so and so has just arrived and is all powerful and commands …” It seems that the first Rod’s names, with its history and his situation and the honorifics, took a day to recite - so the old joke went. Whatever else, that Rod was a strategist of genius. Not that u needed much more than strength and will - and the horses - to make short work of the shallow little towns, but then he used his victories to build them into a whole, and call them The Cities. Flattery served him well. He made bis wild desert raiders into an army that was feared by all the lands we had heard of, and many that we hadn’t, and so, where once we had been at the mercy of every raider or band of thieves, The Cities were safe. This Rod was more than a conqueror. He created a rough but adequate system of laws. An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth was the spirit of it. If The Roddites learned from their defeated enemies how to catch fish, prepare it and eat it, The Cities who before then had owned a few goats, now learned the care and the breeding and uses of sheep, cattle, asses and horses.
So that was the first of the Roddite dynasty, Rod, and his son EnRod succeeded. He lacked his father’s wild energies. He was a consolidator, a preserver, one who sees a potential and develops it. He did away with nothing of his fathers rule, but he made vital changes. The law became gentler, and women were given the same property rights as men. The Cities, which so recently had been crude and primitive, an assembly of villages, were spreading, joining, and by then it would have been more accurate to call them The City. It was felt a mistake - EnRod did - to abolish the identity of places, when each prided itself on an individuality. The old names were kept and the idea of a multiplicity of cities was preserved. It was learned that the nearest city over the mountains, which we heard tales about from travellers, was smaller in area than our city, The Cities. Which was governed as if it were a whole, single, of a piece. You could walk half a day and never leave our streets, while crossing streets that announced, ‘Here begins the village of Ogon.’ Or Astrante. Or Ketasos. Whichever fishing village it once had been.
The rule of EnRod was beneficent. Already people were saying, My father, my grandfather, came with the Roddite invasion.
EnRod’s son was almost at once called by the populace, The Whip, and that characterised him well. He was cruel, easily enraged, arbitrary, and would have destroyed everything made by his father and grandfather. The Cities were saved by his bride, who came from the East, from a tribe kin to The Roddites, a beautiful girl who it was said had not wanted to leave the life of horses and desert and the songs for which they were famous, but it seemed that it had been put to her that it was her duty to marry a savage, The Whip, and civilise him. But in fact that would have been beyond her. The Whip was mad. He died. How fortuitous. Not really, she had him poisoned. The arts of the desert people in poisons and medicine were and are famous. The populace rejoiced. Of course there were mutters and threats, but as the rumours flew about that this smiling gentle beauty was a murderess, the people applauded. F very bod y knew what they had been saved from. There were tyrants in other towns in the peninsula and we heard news of them. Because of the laws introduced by En Rod, she could assume the throne on The Whip’s death and she did so. Soon The Whip was remembered only in tales and songs. The rule of Rod was remembered in epic style, thundering verses like horses’ hoof beats, all bravery and fine deeds, while his son’s reign, so salubrious, good for everyone and for peace, for progress, was less celebrated. Unfortunately a quiet competence is not as attractive a subject for a story or a song as conquest and heroism. Stories about The Whip gave rise to some uneasiness, for in those wiser days it was known that tales and songs could change minds and hearts.
It is from The Whip’s short reign that a whole genre of stories tame, and songs too, of cruelty for cruelty’s sake, of torture, of the screams of people from pits deep under the earth, the screams of horses, of animals, of demons whose task it is to torment people, of witches and witchcraft.
The new ruler was Destra, and it was she who first tried to ban these cruel and perverted tales and songs
