After his second fuck on the roof of the castle, Mahdek took out a cigarette and began to smoke. He rolled ten of them every morning and kept them under his coat in a special compartment. He rolled his cigarettes with Yhungoosian gods-grass from the great fields in Eastmere. When he traveled there years ago, the tribalmen smoked the gods-grass in great quantities, and they burned the fields in great bonfires and danced to the gods while they took the smoke in. The smoke was thick and blue. The Yhungoosian tribes mixed the gods-grass into their wine as well, making the wine twice as strong, and giving them longer, more profound dreams. Mahdek had been smoking the gods-grass ever since, noticing beyond its strange flavor, was the unlocking of a deeper part of the mind. It helped him relax and tap into a more primordial understanding of what he wanted; how things were supposed to be before men corrupted them. His thoughts flowed like the wind over those great fields in Eastmere, and every time he took a smooth drag from his cigarette he felt like he was there, standing on a great blue hillock of lushes gods-grass, and the whispers of the gods in the wind telling him what he needed to do; that what must be done had already happened in the mind of the gods and the esoteric dreams of men and the encrypted world beyond; he must only follow the path to make them clear in this world. As the great Lord-Monk Xhyllyus had once told him, destiny is already decided… all you have to do is arrive.
As he smoked, he looked over the other side of the castletop, watching the water running toward a great black mouth in the earth. It was the lake they called The Great Toad’s Mouth, and there was a great hole in the middle of that lake; a hundred leagues or more below the surface the water ran through channels carved by the ancient toadage, according to the legend. The mad-black toads were the great builders of underground channels across The Land of the Real.
The Great Pillar was the tallest thing in the world. They could be seen from everywhere, so high they reached above the clouds. They seemed to grow larger every year, spreading out of sight in each direction. In the sky above them, the Great God floated in the heavens as a red cloud, looking down with unblinking eyes.
“What is your name?” he asked the whore, blowing smoke into the cold castletop air.
“Cindy,” she said, her twinkling emerald eyes looking up at him in a kind of playful submission, her mouth twisting into a cute contortion that passed as her own seductive smile.
“You’re educated,” he said. “I haven't met a whore outside of a citadel who could read as well as you.”
“Lord Ohmen is kind to his whores,” she said, the same erotic expression on her face.
He wanted to see what her lips looked like sucking on a cigarette, so he gave her one. He struck the match and held it under her face. The fire flickered in her eyes, brighter than the moon in the night sky above them, and he realized then that she had red freckles around her nose.
When he was done with his cigarette, he flicked the burnt stump of it off the castletop. Perhaps if it rained soon gods-grass would grow where it landed. Over the years, with no more work than a single flick after each smoke, he had been plating the exotic grass all around The Land of the Real, as it needed no seed to grow, only a single blade to sprout another.
He left Cindy the whore on the roof, and went back to his chambers.
By the time he could see the great blue moon of the Real outside his window, Ser Mahdek was brought to the great feasting hall of the Lords and Ladies of Edenfell. At his arrival, he was prompted to eat from the Basket of Dreams, a small gathering of assorted pastries baked with the dreamspices of the gods; in order to feast one must be willing to dream a god's dream.
The sound of jumping trumpets and the ting-clank of sticks against bottles and the strange shuttering of unknown instruments filled his ears; a great mess of sound which enchanted the men and women into a chatter of their own voices that mixed with the esoteric turbulence of the cacophonous rendition in the air, morphing into a sort of strange mist of sound, setting the mood of the shadowed feast hall which by its own aesthetic invited the men to indulge as if they were in one of their own comfort dreams in a hazy slumber.
The feast hall held both the stone-walled charm of a dungeon and the natural complexity of a jungle; torches lined the walls, and there was a vague sense of being under the earth, but plants and vines grew from strange places, shrouding corners with green-things and offering a sense of something beyond the walls. Vines hung from the ceiling, girls danced in caves above them, their shadows jaunting around in the torchlight.
The smell of cooking bread filled the air; roasted lamb, mutton, and goat meat too, with onions and garlic, and more than one cook had been known to try saffron, or even ginger.
Lord King Ohmen and Lady Queen Vienna sat together in great throne chairs under a large chandelier made of green sea stones hanging amidst the vines and jungle-things growing out of the stone ceiling. And Lady Vienna wore green as well, a light green dress that allowed her giant bosom to display the biggest gem anyone had ever seen between a woman's breasts. This gem appeared to contort the light into different colors beyond the base-green of the stones complexion.
At least fifty men and a dozen women were feasting. The women—besides the Lady Queen—sat in the laps of men, or were being grabbed and fondled by them. They were only there for this reason. Besides the naked women dancing in the caves above, there were some scantily-dressed servers moving around, but really they were just whores. Mahdek noticed one of them was one of the girls he had fucked. The blond one with two long braided ponytails and the over-sized egg shaped tits. He had enjoyed them very much. But he didn’t see the other girl, the one with the voice of velvet snow and the teasing smile he couldn’t stop thinking about. She was probably reading alone in her room, he thought. But he knew that wasn’t true. Even though she could read, she was still a whore. She wasn’t here because she was up stairs somewhere in the castle being fucked in one of the thousands of rooms of the great moon palisade. Even if he wanted to storm into her room right now and pull off whatever fat man was on top of her so that he could have her all to himself, he wouldn’t even be able to find her.
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There were faces that he recognized. Great men he had met from all around. And not so great men, according to his learned judgment of men and their ideologies. Most of the men were Lords and Knights and Scholars. All important or respected men. Lord Command Harkin sat near the King on the right, and Lord General Ghrohves sat on his left. Both large men. Lord Command Harkin wore a big scare over his face from the Battle of Ohmascus more than a decade ago. Lord General Ghrohves wore no scars that were visible, but he had fought in more battles than anyone there.
The Divine Light Workers of the Palisade of the Blue Moon were there too, of course, and the High Lord of the Citadel of the Palisade of the Blue Moon, and so on. Lord Kehlvin sat close as well, the brother of Lady Vienna and Lord of Coin. And many other important men Ser Mahdek did not recognize.
Ser Mehlvin Hays sat beside his brother Ser Oahborne Hays, and he sat next to his wife Lady Uqllid. Lord Pyrogohtt was with his cousin Lady Perni and cousin Ser Meryus. The servers led off with the boar's head, followed by the fish, roast chicken, stuffed duckling, and goose stuffed with apples. As a sweet ending, there was honeyed fruit cake and tarts filled with sweet cream. Ser Oahborne Hays and Lady Uqllid had brought a large flock of sheep, so there were several whole ones on the table, each carved into legs, breasts, and loins, and laid out in their own gravy. There were mutton pies, as well, and a whole lamb roasted in its own skin, served on a bed of vegetables. The smell drove away the memory of his hunger, for which he was grateful, for he had eaten nothing since midday yesterday but dried salt-pork from his travel bag. The meat was excellent, but the guests were too full to enjoy it. Wine came cheap from Qhymere, men could drink it like water.
Ser Orthrohdrax stood beside him at the end of the table where the food was served, wearing the blue cloak of a highborn knight. "You're looking well," said Ser Orthrohdrax. His nose looked like it might break any moment; the bridge seemed ready to collapse. And if he leaned forward too far, his head might fall off from its weight.
"You also, Ser Orthrohdrax." Mahdek glanced across the table toward Ser Orthrohdrax. He had always liked the old man. There was something about him, something noble. He remembered when he'd first come back after the War of the Crossing, how everyone had treated him as if he were a hero. A few years later, people started calling him a traitor. The old man had helped the King of Naypher purge his ranks of corruption, and people called him a rat and a traitor to the higher class. It was men like this who were truly good in a world of greed and fetishization of the material world. In his coming revolution, Ser Mahdek would do a similar type of purge, ridding the world of these ugly-minded men and their wretched ideologies of wealth hierarchy. Corrupt men would form at the top, and they would not let honest men gain ranks, because an honest man would always put the truth above anything else, and this was the biggest threat to men who had to lie in order to keep their power. It created a system where honest men had to hide their goodness, as if it was them who were doing something wrong. And that was the sickest possible world that Mahdek could imagine. Corruption was a disease that had inverted the true nature of men.
The dreamspice was starting to take effect. A strange feeling coming over him, his mind and the room around him meshing together as one oozing entity, the junglized charm of the room blurring into something akin to a dream.
Suddenly the strangeness of his own mad thoughts were beginning to surface, his mind seeming to take the same shape as the junglized feasting hall, his thoughts dancing around in his mind like the shadows of the naked girls dancing in the small caves around them. Suddenly he was lost in time.
“The gods have blurry vision from dissociating for uncounted years,” a voice said.
A sudden chill swept over him, as though one of the gods had spoken through a mortal mouth. Perhaps it was the dreamspice taking hold of his mind, but he suddenly felt like he had stumbled upon a hidden place; this learned wiseman showing him a truth he was not supposed to see. It was a man with a long white beard, his body closed in the black of an Elder Maeson. He was sitting beside him to his left. He tried to recall if he had been there a moment ago, but couldn’t remember anything after a few seconds.
“From before there were even men and beasts,” the voice continued. “The God’s existed with their own god-minds in their own god-dreams for so long that they became mad, old, tired, and blind.”
Mahdek looked into the eyes of the Elder. His eyes were dark, and somehow they had great depth, as if he was peering into the earth, into an endless chasm.
“In any case,” said the man, “it is for those certainties that the gods at least prefer the phenomenal contextualization through the shadow world.”
“What are you saying?” Mahdek asked. Normally his voice was strong and stentorian, but here it was only as faint as a shadow’s whisper, as weak as his understanding of the man’s bizarre words. If it wasn’t for his large stature he could have been mistaken for a boy.
“Aren’t you listening?” another voice said. It came from across the table. “The old wise man said the gods have become blind.” The voice began to laugh, and more laughter came from around the table.
“I believe that is why we call our world The Land of the Real. Perhaps the gods can only see us now through a strange looking-glass.”
“What is your name, wise sir,” Mahdek said. He did not have to ask the man if his words were that of the godspice. Everyone at the feast had eaten from the basket. And did not need to ask the man if he had drunk the mad-black ooze of the toads either; he already knew the answer.
“Eshmeel,” said the wiseman. “From the furthest regions of Eastmere.”
“Are you a Maeson?”
“From the Citadel of Canntohn,” he said.
Mahdek looked sternly into the man's eyes. “If you were ever called upon to seize a righteous victory, would the great wise Eshmeel of Eastmere rise to the occasion?” he asked.
“I am not a fighting man,” Eshmeel said. “But I would bleed for any righteous victory if I saw it to be worth my life.”
Mahdek knew this man to be wise, but not whether he would find a rebel's cause if he came to name him as a Kingless Lord after he returned to take the city and the head of the King. But he would remember the name, and he would name this man to bleed nonetheless. Truly wise men were hard to find. Men like Eshmeel would be the life of the rebelhood, truly the most intellectualist movement. He had also decided, in this moment, that no man would be a Lord without having drank the mad-black ooze.
It had been months since his last dream from the toadage, but the dreamspice was reminding him of the true importance of the achromatic processes of the mind and shadow world and their profound impact on a man's intellectual ability.
After dessert—a trifle of cakes topped with white curds, a dish of strawberries, and a platter of dried fruit and nuts—they all retired to the sleeping quarters. Most of them slept well into the night, but some remained awake until dawn, talking about the things that mattered in life, like the meaning of the gods, how best to live one's days, and what was important about having honor and loyalty to the Kingdom you serve.