Author's Note: This was a chance to get rid of a couple of pet plotbunnies which have been nibbling in my brain... I had a more thorough job done, from our side's point of view, on the origin of Tash: however, it decided to go poof in a computer error awhile back. And of course, the world and most of the contents thereof are Lewis's.
Chatter died around the fireside that night as an old man straightened himself and peered around with keen black eyes. He had that look on him which said that he was no longer merely resting himself in the heat and the children's company. He had a tale to tell tonight.
The man, called "Grandfather" by some of the youngest, and "honored sir" by those who were trying to imitate the manners of their elders, spread wide the palms of his gnarled hands for a moment before he began to speak.
"We were not alone." What was this? Not the normal way to begin a story.
"That is the first lie they would tell you of us, those pale barbarians with their winsome, happy-go-lucky ways and all of the demon-kin snarling behind them. They would tell you that our forefathers left their land alone and remained alone, solitary rebels against their chill-hearted lands and their domineering king. But they do not know all, or they have chosen to forget." He paused for breath, and brushed his fingers across his forehead below his turban.
"Forgive me—I do not employ the fine arts of storytelling in this tale, as I should. But it burns in me so, that among my friends and my kin, I cannot bring myself to veil it in dainty and well-wrought courtesies.
When first we came down from the north—pale, lonely men haggard by their journeying, seared with the Great Desert's heat—we thought ourselves alone. We were hardly more than barbarians ourselves, then." Some of the older ones glared when he said 'barbarian.' How dare even Honored Sir say such things of Caloremen folk, good servants of the Tisroc (may he live forever)—"No! Do not look at me, so. It is the truth I speak. For as we all know, it is not of man that our Great Ones have gained their noblesse." They settled down more comfortably. "We were met and taken in, dazed and weary and beside ourselves as we were, by a strange, old, inferior folk, small and swarthy and dwelling in slovenly shacks carved from the hillsides, but very cunning with their hands." This bit, they had not heard before…
"Our ancestors were led by them in time to sacred places. Places of power and beauty such as these little creatures had never dreamed. Places of richness and of blood, and great magic. One day we came into the High Hall above all halls, the Temple, the Hallow of the Horde—this was the mount which now our people name as Tashbaan." Tashbaan? Their own Tashbaan, home to the High Feasts? "And as I live, as blood pulses now through my veins, its name speaks truly. It is the very baan—the dwelling, in the ancient tongues of the little folk—of the Inexorable, the Irresistable, the One who is over all. It is the baan of Tash." Not a statue or a name to be spoken, but a being. Such thoughts were enough to give one chills.
"We sat at His feet, beloved ones. We sat beneath the very talons of the One whose statue you see in the temple on high holy days, and He introduced us to the panoply of His subjects—gleaming beacons of the sky in the shape of Man, self-exiled to the deserts to watch over its peoples, and sand-born brown and golden djinn-lords, and mistresses of the dark woods, the seeds of their trees come long ago from far-off parts. He was chief God, and they the gods and goddesses of His pantheon.
"Our ancestors became consorts of the divine folk, and we rose in their favor and supplanted our small inferiors as the sand and earth and bark of good Calormene nature turned our skin from its northern birch-and-river-demon pallor. Zardeena, the star at Tash's right hand, who in ancient times presided over the joinings of man and god, smiled benevolently upon us as our numbers grew great and we began to marry amongst ourselves, and our virgins brought her offerings in reparation for the loneliness of those godling-men whose loss they were to be." A girl-child, lingering outside the circle of listening boys, sighed. Her brother shot her a look.
"Our Tisroc of today—may he live forever—and a few of his close kin are descended from the Great One Himself, who in ancient days swept like an irresistible flame across fertile lands, burning them into sand as he descended from the skies. And thus he became the Destroyer as well as the Protector. And thus the Tisrocs gained first their divine right to rule, as sons of the God above gods." Now, this was familiar ground.
"Never pay any heed to the lies of the northerners, beloved ones." Though, what chance would children have of hearing those lies? Maybe he was only remembering his own encounters with the barbarians, in some strange and misty past time. "There is no virtue in their land that their fruits should be sweeter as goblin-beasts leer over them, or that they are a stronger land since demons walk their soil. For they are no match for our gods, the fathers of us all." A muffled cheer. "The very sand and stars watch over our sleep, to guide us in their power and godliness and to punish those who stray. For when our ancestors first came, men hardly better than the traders and princelings who descend upon us now, they found life and truth, and a pantheon standing demonless. They were no poor benighted refugees trying to carve a hole for themselves out of a desert-bounded land. They were not alone."
The storyteller's eyes grew distant, and he looked down at his hands.