In the Hall of the Mountain King
By Asso
Chapter Tenth
(The tenth, after the Prologue - The eleventh, counting the Prologue)
Slowly, I know and I beg your pardon, the story goes on, and slowly before our eyes the whys and wherefores have started to unfold and are keeping on unravelling, so as to make us understand, to allow us to extricate ourselves through this tangle of myth and reality in which our friends of Enterprise have plummeted and, above all, in which our beloved Trip and T'Pol were sucked.
Well, at least I hope it is really so, namely that truly you, my dear friends and readers, have had a chance to begin to glimpse a little light in the midst of all this darkness.
Okay, let's see. We broke up while speaking of the devil and, be patient, we must continue to speak still of him.
Yeah, because, in addition to that tiny query I asked you in the previous chapter (do you remember, my friends? The question was: In your opinion, of what colour is devil's blood? And I am sure you know now perfectly the answer, that's: red; red, no doubt about that), there is another question that must be answered, a question hung in the air from time immemorial.
The question is: what colour are his eyes?
"Eh? Again? Enough Asso, enough now! Stop it!"
I seem to hear you, my friends, and you have every reason, really.
But, believe me, it's not a question of little importance, indeed, it is a central issue in the whole affair.
So, once again, my friends, be patient to be patient.
I assure you that you will not be disappointed (well, at least I fervently hope!)
So, follow me, my readers and my friends. Come along to find out what colour are the eyes of the devil.
And - who knows? - possibly we will find that it may be really true that sometimes (sometimes, be careful!) the devil is not as bad as he is painted.
Ah, one last thing, if I may. By talking of central issues, I must thank one more time my dear friend and Beta, Linda, who once again was willing to smooth my language and my writing.
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Chapter Tenth
Too much time is passing.
A weird feeling, a feeling unusual, unfamiliar, something that looks like apprehension, reverberates into the nothingness with which it is made the essence of the King, in His bodiless mind, now a hair's breadth away from having a body again.
But what is that body doing? Why does it not move? What is it doing, sitting, legs crossed, on the burning sand of the desert, which He has created? With the eyes closed? Why does it seem not to suffer because of the heat?
What is plotting that body, that mind, taking advantage of the temporary leeway granted them? In the last moments that they can enjoy being one?
The strange feeling makes its way in the King.
It does not make sense. In any case He will be the winner, what that body and that mind are doing is nothing else than the consequence of His will, of His malignant and derisive play. So, why this odd feeling? There's no reason.
Yet ...
Another ancient sense, another dormant faculty, a faculty important, indispensable to every sentient creature, takes form in the formless Being.
Curiosity.
The King's unfathomable senses approach the Human.
His face.
They look at it.
Scrutinize it
See it.
They observe that visage, really. With a far greater attention than they have done so far.
They examine its features.
The hands of the Bannerda have stopped moving.
Once again, an image has been formed in the air.
A face.
I glance sidelong at Mal.
I'm going to see with my eyes, to touch with my hands.
I know who the face represents.
The face of the man, of this Human, is… pleasant, yes, that's the term. And it appears strong. The chin is… sweet?... Yes, sweet, and yet mighty and firm; the mouth is determined. M… mi… mild, exactly. Mild. But resolute.
The forehead is high.
This visage… this visage…
The bodiless mind's concentration gets deepened; to the curiosity gets added something else, another unexpected sensation and decidedly unusual, for a Being so ancient like the King.
The surprise, just this, even if it is to be admitted that it is certainly not the first time that this man managed to surprise Him. But this time it comes to a kind of surprise really peculiar, special, in itself and for what it can mean.
It is the surprise that the King's disembodied brain sees, now, and that He hadn't been capable of seeing earlier, and that was just there, ready to be seen, if He just had paid a little more attention.
But before it was before. His awakening at the carnal call of the splendid body - and of the soul, of the essence of life - of the Vulcan woman offered to Him, as so many times it had happened in the course of the countless millennia of His imprisonment, with so many beautiful women, in compliance, in a sense and ultimately, of His own dictates in themselves, so as to keep Him in life - to keep Him in His suspended life-not life! - had been the same as all the other times it had happened, just time enough to keep him in His existence of unawareness, of unclean, foul parasite.
A few moments of frantic, ravenous delight.
Then, again, the nothing.
The gray mist of the non-being.
The blind, unconscious waiting for another useless awakening.
These, this way, it had been all the previous so-called returns to life He had had, before this time.
No reason ability, no understanding capability. Nothing. Nothing! If not...
Hunger! Starvation! Unreasonable, unconquerable, mind-blinding and raging famine!
But then ... this man ...
THIS MAN!
He had awakened Him. For real. He had ... forced Him to think, to try to understand.
To wonder.
To remember.
And to observe.
Just as now.
The man's face… his visage's features…
His appearance…
Are they… are they, by chance, a bit resembling... yes, a bit resembling to His, no ... to those He had had, if it were not for a sort of irritating and annoying diffused - what's the word? - mildness on them, and for an all in all not great number of some not too big differences here and there?
And the hair…
It is dirty and dishevelled, but shines however in the merciless light of the sun.
Thick and bushy.
Blonde.
And the eyes? How are the eyes?
They are closed. The lowered eyelids hide their colour.
It is impossible to see clearly how it can look, that face.
A black helmet, in the form of some sort of a big medieval helmet, covers its hair and goes down to cover up the forehead and eyebrows, continuing with a metallic band between the eyes to cover and protect the nose. The helmet covers also the ears as well as a large part of the visage, whose features appear, thus, practically almost fully concealed, even in the skin appearance, also in reason of the dark that wraps the face.
Not even the chin and mouth are clearly visible, because of the way they are hidden in the indistinct shadow where the face is submerged and because they are covered, both, by a large and dark brown chin-guard, made with what seems some kind of leather and connected with the helmet.
But the eyes… they are perfectly visible.
And they appear absolutely human.
*Human. Human. Human like ours!*
Human, yes. Even if…. maybe, one should say that they look perfectly human, except for…
They are open. Are fixed on us.
They look distant, contemptuous, chilly.
Dangerous.
Inhumanly scary.
And they sparkle, just under the border of the black and big helmet, at the two sides of the metal shield covering the nose.
They glitter by a dark light.
A blue dark light.
The man's eyes open.
They are blue.
"Unlike for Lil, there is no reproduction of the King's features, before he got transformed in… the Devil."
Malcolm and I turn around at the voice of His Excellency. He used the term "Devil". He used our term, our "human" term, to describe the unclean thing that the King had become, whose appearance before this transformation was shown to us, if I do not deceive myself (and I do not think so), but whose real face, whose exact features, remain still unknowable.
He used that term and by doing so, he practically said all.
He said of whom this visage is.
The Bannerda nods, looking at me. May it be really true, by chance, that he knows how to read minds, this Being? That he may have, in some way, something more than the mere and not too much distinct touch-telepathy that our friends, our dear missing friends, Trip and T'Pol, told us clearly, as the best friends, that the Vulcans have? After all, now this was said clearly, the Bannerdas are the source of the Vulcans, their distant origin.
"Yes, it's him, Ensign. But how you two can see, how I have just said, we have no way to know how his visage was, for real. In effect, there are hundred of images that portray him, but no one shows his face entirely and with clarity, as if the horror and the fear were too great to reproduce in all evidence the features of the arch-enemy, almost that the portrayal of him could evoke his real presence. But this one, this, that you can watch, is very peculiar, that's why I chose it. See, Lieutenant, Ensign, it is the only one that shows, clearly, one thing."
The Bannerda advances toward us and passes between us without stopping, until he halts before the face of the King.
We turn around back, following his movements, without moving, toward the shadowed face.
The Bannerda is at a standstill in front of it. He's staring at those eyes. Human. And inhuman.
Darkly blue.
He folds his hands behind his back, giving us his shoulders.
His voice rises again, deep and pensive.
"He was beautiful, the King. He was gorgeous. Tall, athletic, strong, puissant. Evil, for our meter, odious, foul, inhuman, ruthless. But was handsome. Our legends ... sure, our legends ... tell us that no man was more winsome than him. So beautiful outside, how bad inside. It is said that he was conscious he was handsome, and someway proud of it, especially in reason of some particularities that his beauty had. Two particularities."
The Bannerda turns to us, still with his hands crossed behind his back.
"The first, you cannot see it here, because the helmet hide totally the hair."
*There we are.* "The hair?"
"Yeah, the hair. The King's hair had a very rare characteristic as in his as in our breed, such as to be considered a sign of beauty in itself."
The Bannerda stares at us intently.
"The King was blond."
*Yes. There we are. Really.* "And the second?" Mal preceded me.
"The second… it comes to something that made him unique."
His Excellency stops talking and turns back toward the face of the King, before he resumes speaking, as if he doesn't want to watch us as he reveals to us the second peculiarity of the Great Enemy. But it isn't difficult to understand what it is, as well… as well as why the Bannerda is ill at ease in telling us plainly this peculiarity that made the King unique.
"As far as it is narrated, only he possessed this characteristic, among his fellows and, as it is still handed down, nobody else had it, not even among us, by that time, remote beyond any cognizance."
The Bannerda raises an arm toward the image.
"This image is the only one that shows this characteristic, daring to show what was said being the unfathomable mirror of his unfathomable soul, one and only in its aspect, just as one and only it was the nefariousness of his obscure heart."
A little hesitation. Then: "Obscure, as obscure it is the deep blue of the icy-cold and lifeless depths of oceans."
His Excellency makes pause for a brief moment. Only a fleeting instant, but enough to make me twist inside, waiting for what I feel, know, fear, that he will say.
"Look at his eyes, my guests and friends. They are beautiful, aren't they? It's amazing how the unknown artist to whom we owe this, managed to make it all the mysterious and fascinating splendour of that look, all the unfathomable wickedness of that splendour. You know, our legends tell us that no one wanted to portray those eyes, because their mysterious beauty, the bewitching light of their colour, of their one and only one colour, was able to suck your soul, to make you become evil, to make you his slave forever. It is said in effect that the one who made this portrait, an artist enslaved by the King and forced by him to do it, ended up to kill himself, not to succumb to the siren call of those eyes, not to vanish forever into the light of their evil and mysterious colour."
His Excellency turns around once again. He looks at us. Fixedly.
"A colour that only his eyes had."
*There!*
"The blue."
Blond hair.
And blue eyes.
In the soulless Being, now the faculties have all returned. How did He not realize it earlier?
Blond hair.
And blue eyes.
Blue eyes!
Only He - He, the King! - had had, together, blond hair and blue eyes!
Above all, the blue colour of the eyes had been of Him alone! Only He had had this eye colour! No one else, except Him, had possessed such eyes colour!
It had been His brand and the damnation of His enemies.
It was the genetic characteristic, unique, with which He was born so long ago that not even He has cognizance of how much time is passed since His birth, from parents who were devoid of this genetic trait, also born, in their turn, from parents lacking of it, in their turn fruit of parents who were without it, and so on, backwards in time until the beginning of all, when His breed and that of the Others had appeared on the scene of the universe, the only two breeds, so similar to each other and yet so different, that there were at that immensely far away time.
And between which the war for the predominance had begun since the first time they had met.
Because there couldn't have been room for both the breeds, in the whole cosmos.
Those stupid opponents and cowardly and ridiculous! Ridiculously full of strange concepts of justice, friendship, brotherhood! They could not be anything else than slaves of His people, as well as all the other breeds appearing afterward, because His people were the greatest, the only ones really worthy, the ones for whom, for whose service, had been made the whole of creation!
The universe was theirs!
And for this, for the assertion of this imperative, vital right, intrinsic to the nature itself of His people, to its very essence, to its existence, it had burst the endless war that He had inherited.
Three times His people, the monarchs who had preceded Him, had been forced to retreat, almost to surrender, in the face of the overwhelming forces of the Others, who set no limits to their births, didn't return into the repugnant sewer, whence they sprung, the daubs of nature that arose between them, as His people did, instead, to preserve, proudly and rightly, the purity of their race.
Three times, before it had appeared He.
He.
And His eyes. His deep blue eyes, unique, such as unique it was His deadly strength, His pitiless intelligence.
He had re-lifted up the fortunes of His people.
He had led it to the rescue.
He had become the scourge of their enemies, their implacable persecutor, more, much more, infinitely more than they had been able to be all the sovereigns who had preceded him, including those who had managed to rise up their people again, His people, from the darkness in which they were about to sink, when that had been about to happen.
He had become the King.
And his blue eyes had become legend. Like Him. A legend horrible and fearful for His enemies.
At the point that among some of them the idea had been born that He had always been, that He and He alone, was - all along - the cause and origin, the source and essence of all their evils.
At the point that some of them had begun to work, secretly, for Him, even to adore Him, by having ended thinking that in Him lay the creation's primordial essence itself, something that He had taken care of fostering, which had been very useful, ultimately, for the planning itself and for the possible success of His "resurrection program".
Stupid, stupid little men! Unworthy of life! Unworthy to exist! Good only to serve Him!
Even if... - Memories, remembrances. Lacerating remembrances! -... even if from that other breed had born Lil.
Lil.
So similar to that Vulcan female, that the two of them could be practically the same person.
Just so.
While, in the same time, this man has His blond hair.
AND HIS BLUE EYES.
The mighty brain without substance takes to work with frenzy.
He knows perfectly well that the genes of His race, in view of the many, countless mergers that there had been before His birth and before His… transformation and that of course there should have been after it, have had every opportunity to be handed down in very different ways, everywhere, in each of the younger races that have appeared on the stage of the universe during the innumerable eons that have passed. Not all the creatures born from those matings had found their death, as it had been the custom and the law of His breed, and it is highly probable that after His disgrace, this had happened even more frequently. So, why could it not be possible that the hair blonde colour could appear, now, in the breed of this man? In him?
And as for Him… as for the colour of His eyes…
An image ... confused ... distant in time ... and nevertheless clear and ... and yearning in a heart that He no longer possess.
But that once he had had and that had beaten for something He had not been able to understand, but that had prompted Him to do... to do…
The memories come back. All of them.
Uncompassionate.
More uncompassionate than Him himself.
A child, given him by Lil.
A child, hidden to everyone, in one with a pregnancy and a delivery carried on without anyone being aware, unbeknown to all, in the secret of His ... of their rooms in His palace, taking advantage of His absolute power, that granted Him to do whatever He wanted.
A child whose existence, whose birth itself, had to be hidden from everyone, because, otherwise, that child would find death, as the law, His law, had required.
As He had decided it to happen every time in His long life He had granted himself the pleasure of the flesh and this had given its fruits.
Before Lil.
He did not understand why - He could not - but the son of Him and of Lil could not, should not, die.
Lil was different from those other women who had given pleasure to Him, before her. She was special, she had given something to him that He should have avoided, even cursed, because substantially it had ended up to provoke the counter-attack of His opponent, the Great Monarch, to cause, ultimately, His end itself.
But it was something of which He could not have done without.
Something that He had never had in His long, lonely existence, made just with violence, hatred, force. Blood.
Lil ... Lil had not yielded to His charm, to the hypnotic light of His blue eyes, because forced; had not given herself to Him for fear, necessity, duress. Lil had given herself to Him ... why? Why had she renounced everything she had, her race, her creed ... any thing ... for Him?
Why had she smiled, glad, happy in His embrace?
Why?
Why had he felt her within Him, tied to Him in a bond that He did not understand?
And why ... why! WHY! - when he had perceived what they were doing to her the women - those faithless, treacherous,damn women of her own race! – had He not managed, had not had time to go back to her, to save her?
Why?
And why had He decided the child, due to their union, had to live?
Memories. Memories! MEMORIES! Uncompassionate memories!
Lacerating remembrances!
Their quarters. Lil and her growing belly. His… His care for her, without anyone knowing what was happening.
She alone with Him.
Expecting, together, the birth.
She, He. And His machineries, His science, His knowledge. That allowed Him to handle everything well.
While the war raged outside, the war that had started not to go good for Him, after He had found Lil, after He had begun to savour what Lil was capable of giving Him.
But He did not want to... could not ... concentrate himself in the war.
He wanted to... had to... savour Lil.
An endless time. An endless war. That He had been finally about to win.
But He had found Lil.
And He had forgotten the war.
And she had gotten pregnant by him.
And He had decided that the fruit of their union, of that strange, incomprehensible thing that had born between them, that thing that Lil called... that Lil called love, had to live.
What had become of their child? Of the child Lil had finally given Him, and whose existence only He and His machineries had been aware? The child for whom He hadn't wanted death and of whom He no longer had known anything, after that distant, cursed night; after that He no longer had been able to be what He was and… to use His brain the way He had done before?
Maybe that child had not died that night.
Indeed ...
A look, if it can be called so, a thoughtful look at the deep blue eyes of the man, who now seems to rouse from his state. And, at the same time, something strange, unknown; some sort of feeling, of a relieving sensation.
… indeed surely the child had not died, he had lived and been able to have children in his turn, because, since all the genes present at this time in all the breeds populating the present-day universe can't be anything but the genes of His own breed and of that of His enemies, even granted that, inevitably, a very large amount of gene variations have occurred in the passing of eras, the only explanation for the blue of the man's eyes is that he has inherited this characteristic from his ancestors.
From the one only who, among all the ancestors the man has, possessed this genetic characteristic.
From the son Lil had given Him, whom He has been able to see for too short time, but enough to allow Him to realize that - among all the genetic traits the child had, coming from his mother: the pointed ears, the skin colour, the green blood and lot of others, that unavoidably He had no time to notice – the undefined colour of the eyes that is proper to the newborns and that also their son had, was turning into the colour of His eyes.
The blue.
Consequently the blue colour of the eyes of this man comes directly from Him.
This man, his breed, just as, most likely, a lot of the other breeds living now, even if bastardized by the merges occurred in the time, are descendants of His own breed; the red colour of their blood comes from His breed; and the eyes blue colour they have – rather, can have - comes directly from Him.
This man comes directly from Him.
Nothing strange, after all. Nothing impossible.
But… if so, couldn't the man have something else, something more, of His gene pool?
Why not?
Why not?
This man seems to be linked to that Vulcan female just as He had been linked to Lil. This man has been able to follow that woman where nobody could do it. This man seems to have a strength, inside, that resembles the strength He had.
And, by using this strength, this man is fighting for his woman just as He would have wanted ... just as He would have wanted to fight for His Lil.
His Lil. Of whom that Vulcan female is the perfect image.
And if...
Sure, Lil had died. She was gone.
But may it be possible that the similarity between Lil and that woman is more than just a simple, although amazing, likeness?
May it be possible that in that woman, in that Vulcan woman, it is reappeared, shuffled, of course, but practically in it entirety, or, at least, in the more important elements, the genetic heritage of Lil? Lil's father, that damned, had had other children besides her, from her mother, He knew it, and both that cursed man and her mother weren't only sons.
So, why not? Why could not it be possible that, in the endless recombinations of the genetic material coming from the father and mother of Lil, occurred over the eons, without forgetting that their genes had been present in an infinite number of other individuals, it could have happened that one of these rearrangements had given rise, again, to her? To Lil?
Unlikely, but not impossible. Anything is possible, if there is time enough for the improbable to become possible. And feasible, realizable, achievable. And of time, there had been in plenty. After all, on such a similar sort of probability calculus it had been based His revival plan.
But in this case ... that woman, that ... that T'Pol... may be ... may be that she is so because in fact, she is really Lil? Because in her His Lil is really living again?
And, to bring things to the extreme, in reason of what this man, this Human, has been able to do and considering the link between him and that Vulcan woman who COULD BE Lil, may it be that he, who has His blond hair and above all His blue eyes because he has inside His genetic heritage; this man who has, and it is not an illusion, something in his features that remind His ... may it be that he might be...?
The unknowable senses scrutinize more closely, almost spasmodically, the man's face.
Those features ... if in them it were made a bit of minor adjustment - for example, the lips a little fuller, the cheeks a little more hollowed, the eyelids a little heavier; a little, just a very little - … if they were harsher, tougher, if the skin colour were darker, if the dark blue of the eyes were different, more glittering by that light that had been of the blue of His own eyes ... could they be… really… His own features?
May it be that the opportunity that He has expected and waited for, even unconsciously, in the impotence that had gripped Him, for immeasurable eons, has now occurred well beyond all rosy forecast?
May it be that that body, which will become His, is already His own body, in a sense? And that with that body He will have again, for real, not only His essence, His power, His vengeance, the realization - at last, after such an infinite time - of His legitimate aspirations of domination, but also Him himself, what He had been, the himself that He had been?
And, together with this himself, also His Lil?
It's a matter of fact: the case exists.
It's a matter of fact: there are forces, in the Universe, unknowable and unfathomable, playing unknowable and unfathomable games.
It's a matter of fact: sometimes what seems being a case is the result of the unknowable and unfathomable games played by these unknowable and unfathomable forces.
It's a matter of fact: it's not impossible that this kind of so-called case may be exactly what is happening now.
IT'S A MATTER OF FACT: whether it is a mere case or not, all this can not - and must not! - be ignored.
Just so. Because - after all – it may be not a case.
And He would want ... He wants! ... it not to be a case!
The man is getting up.
Behold, now he is standing.
He looks around.
He starts to walk, determined, in a definite direction. Without hesitation. Without in the least caring of the hot sun that beats down on his bare skin, nor of the burning sand under the soles of his feet, which advance resolute, precise, sure.
The bodiless essence withdraws, rapidly, resisting the temptation to enter the mind of the man, to know.
Now things have changed. It is not simply to keep the word or not, which is the last thing He, the King, could worry about. It is no longer simply to verify, having at the same time a wicked fun, if that man, that body, possess the strength to house Him, fearing contemporaneously that it could be not so, since that in any case He must now take hold of that body and of that mind, that this is the only thing He can do, now.
It is not anymore merely this.
Now it comes to…
Words.
Words, for the first time true words.
They are formed in the mind of the almost resurrected King.
Of the truly almost resurrected King, if it is true what He suspects.
The man doesn't hear the words, he can not and must not hear them, which, on the other hand, are pronounced in a language that he couldn't understand.
But they are addressed to him.
And they have a weird tone, amazing, considering from whom they come.
A threatening tone, but, together, even a tone of hopeful desire, almost of request.
*Come on, show me what you are capable of doing. Save her, save her as I would have wanted to do with Lil. Show me WHO you are. Prove that it is true that when I will take hold of you, I SHALL BE REALLY ABLE TO BE WHO I WAS.*
And, almost a sigh of a soul that there is not, just a few other words…
*And that I can have back again, really, my Lil.*
End of chapter tenth
TBC
So, my friends? Was I right? This one, of the eye colour of the devil, was or was not a central issue?
And, in addition, I think that you, after reading this chapter, may agree with me that, really, sometimes, the devil is not as bad as he is painted.
But, my friends (and I am persuaded that the just finished reading can definitely confirm this statement)...
As much as he can sometimes seem a little less ugly, the devil remains still damn ugly!
Damnedly, damnedly bad!