So the Kalif’s troops invaded and we all came out to lineAlbumuth Boulevard for the obligatory Parade of Conquerors. It was a bright, breezy day and the swallows flew through the sky like knives. The Kalif’s men formed a supposedly impenetrable wall on either side of the street, armed with spears, swords, and small cannons. It appeared they thought the local population might cause some sort of problem. Steen and I exchanged a meaningful glance. All we wanted to do was welcome the invading army to our city.
The Kalif’s general, the Great One as he was called, made for an impressive sight, with his emerald turban, white ostrich plumes, silver spurs, and the eight gray oliphaunts that lurched along behind him. At least, he was impressive until someone in the crowd sent a blade flying through his throat. My, what a lot of blood he had in him — and it certainly seemed as red as anyone else’s would have been in a similar situation. Alas, the assassin slipped away in the resulting turmoil.
When order had been restored, we crowded up the palace steps and watched as the mayor, the defeated Cappan at his side in chains, relinquished, in a formal ceremony, the keys to the city, and gave the sacramental sword to the new Great One (hastily recruited from among five resplendent if fiercely sweating officers). The Cappan performed these duties with a slight smirk and a conspiratorial wink to the crowd. The Cappan’s personal bodyguards, too, were in a particularly mirthful mood, considering the circumstances. Indeed, one would at times during the ceremony have had difficulty determining who was slave and who was victor… The Great One, as he looked out on the crowd, seemed discomfited by the applause, the ready smiles, as we showed our teeth. A flicker of fear flashed across the Great One’s face before tranquility once again overtook those fine, western features.
It didn’t last long, of course, although I shall, in the interests of saving my hands from gripping this pen for hours and you of reading into boredom, summarize the events of the next 100 days.
Inevitably, the second Great One was poisoned and the third found garroted in his palace, so the Kalif had no choice but to order the mayor of our fair metropolis hanged by the neck until dead.
I’m sure he did not expect what happened at the hanging: We all cheered as our mayor went to a better (or at least cleaner!) place. We’d never much liked him anyway, and would probably have done the deed ourselves in a few more months. But then, following the execution, we rioted and killed many of the Kalif’s soldiers because, after all, he was one of us, even if he had been an incompetent, embezzling bastard.
From then on, it was just a matter of time. Each dawn saw another set of foreigners’ heads on spikes down by various city fountains. Each sunset was occasion for mingled screams and pleas for mercy. Everywhere they turned: the confluence of fate and malice in the ancient stone face of the city. When they came to my establishment, why, I treated them like kings, using a slow-acting poison to kill several of them over a period of days. Some trickster they trusted told them that the red flags strewn across the city were flags of defiance, so the Kalif’s men tore them up, angering the gray caps, who stirred and clicked amongst themselves before “disappearing” the Kalif’s men in droves. The zoo keeper let the big cats free right into the barracks of the Great One’s personal guard. Store owners crept up to the Kalif’s cannon after dark and poured sand and glue in the muzzles. Priests in the Religious Quarter stoned patrols to death for violating obscure, out-of-date rules and then pleaded exemption from punishment on grounds of conflicting faiths.
Finally, one day, they simply left, cousin, and never returned. We boxed the bones they had left behind into the walls of abandoned buildings. We burned their carts. We appropriated their horses. We scrubbed the palace clean. We re-instated the Cappan. And, once again, we cheerfully settled down to govern ourselves, ever so refreshed by this little interlude, this experiment in occupation by a foreign empire… So you should come visit again soon, cousin. The cafe is doing well and we would be glad to have you. The city is beautiful this time of year.
Fondly,
David Ampers
See also: Banfour, Archduke of; Kalif, The; Oliphaunt; Peter son, Richard.
ODECCA BICHORAL WHITE WHALE. The most intelligent of sea-going mammals, venerated by the Church of the Fisherman, prized by zoologists, and possessed of a brain so large that its skull is lopsided. Odecca Whales must always swim at a diagonal, their heads preferably resting on the surface while their massive stern fins churn relentlessly. If they stop swimming for even a minute, the massive head will cause them to sink to the bottom and drown. By necessity, the whale is a surface feeder. See also: Church of the Fisherman; Daffed Zoo.
OLIPHAUNT. One of Tonsure’s favorite mammals, these great gray creatures almost ended Stretcher Jones’ rebellion at the outset. Their sudden introduction into battle, brought from the jungle plains of the far southwest, caused such panic at the Battle of Richter that Jones was lucky to escape with his life. Xaver Daffed found this usually gentle mammal so compelling that he devoted two volumes of his A History of Animals to it. Manzikert III found oliphaunts so succulent that toward the end of his reign he ate their flesh to the exclusion of all else. The Kalif, upon his temporary subjugation of Ambergris, planned to build a palace that would have represented the apogee of the oliphaunt motif in architecture: a vast structure in the shape of an oliphaunt. The plans included hindquarters fashioned to resemble a glen with its own running brook and a theater in the front. See also: Ambergris Gastronomic Association; Daffed, Xaver; Jones, Stretcher; Occupation, The.
— P —
PEJORA, MIDAN. The most famous architect in Ambergris’ history. He holds primary responsibility for the grandest buildings in the city, including the Cappan’s Palace. Pejora could best be classified as an “idiot genius.” From an early age, he erected incredible models of buildings out of wood, sand, and rock, but he could not even graduate from grade school. His parents eventually taught him as best they could at home, and many were the times neighbors would complain because Pejora had erected some new architectural monstro-city in the family’s front yard.
PETERSON, RICHARD. Founder of an unnamed faith that preaches the story of the little red flower that grows by the side of the road. The faith uses a calendar of 12 months comprising 30 days each. Each year ends with the five-day Festival of the Holy Little Red Flower, which includes the Day of Seed, the Day of Root, the Day of Stem, the Day of Leaf, and the Day of Bloom. (A splinter faction called the “Scientific Reformists” inserts the Day of Budding before the Day of Bloom every fourth year, rather than the universally symmetrical five-year cycle recognized by the true followers of the faith. Violent confrontations have been known to occur during this false celebration of the Day of Budding.) The Five Volumes of the Dodecahedron represent the only true written teachings of the Faith. Each volume is divided into twelve books (Petal, Sepal, Stigma, Style, Ovary, Pistil, Stamen, Pollen, Anther, Filament, Nectar, and Calyx). Each book is divided into 240 chapters with 30 verses each. Adherents are generally recognizable by their trademark red sashes and precise pentagonal tonsures. The Brotherhood of the Red Stamen, an order of the Faith, is famous for its scholarship and teaching. Specializing primarily in geometry and horticulture, the gardens which surround each of the five monasteries of the order are justly renowned and lead many thousands each year to join the faith. An unfinished cathedral devoted to expressing the Dodecahedron in physical form may one day supplant the gardens as a mechanism of mass conversions. See also: Holy Little Red Flower, The; Strattonism; Verden, Louis.