A Dirge for Prester John

“I know now,” he rasped, “that this is part of God’s great scheme, this place. I think perhaps there was never an apple here, nor a snake.”

“We have many snakes and apples. And I never liked that story. I don’t think it’s true at all. Nothing in it is right.”

“Not right for you, not here. But the men in my world, they can be so wicked, Imti, so wicked. You will live so much longer than me. They will hurt you, because that story is true for them, and they cannot help the terrible instincts in them, to eat everything, and know everything, and destroy whatever is not like them. If a man should come walking over the sand, treat him carefully. Be wary, like a wolf.”

“I will,” I promised.

And after we had lain together thus for many hours, I said: “Let me bury you here, Tau’ma. You do not have to go a Heaven for men who are wicked. Let me bury you, so that we need not be apart.”

And though he had always refused, in dying he yielded to me. The temptation, when a man from that world stands at the black door, is too great.

“All right, Imtithal. Bury me deep.”

Houd, Who Was Also Wicked: And did anyone else come? Did they bring swords?

It has been many centuries since. Perhaps there is no other world, and my friend was only a bit mad. Perhaps he wasn’t, but it is just too difficult to get here from there. But it is wonderful to think about, isn’t it? Another world, right next to ours, filled with such fantastical things?

THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED

Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, meta-collinarum, cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white and red lions, white bears, white merules, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen, and wild men—men with horns, one-eyed men, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell high giants, cyclops, and similar women. It is the home, too, of the phoenix and of nearly all living animals.

We have some people subject to us who feed on the flesh of men and of prematurely born animals, and who never fear death. When any of these people die, their friends and relations eat him ravenously, for they regard it as a main duty to chew human flesh. Their names are Gog, Magog, Anie, Agit, Azenach, Fommeperi, Befari, Conei-Samante, Agrimandri, Vintefolei, Casbei, and Alanei. These and similar nations were shut in behind lofty mountains by Alexander the Great, towards the north. We lead them at our pleasure against our foes, and neither man nor beast is left undevoured, if our Majesty gives the requisite permission. And when all our foes are eaten, then we return with our hosts home again.

—The Letter of Prester John, 1165

THE CONFESSIONS OF

HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

The nail in my candle plinked onto the tin plate, and I stirred myself from that terrible tale. I could not believe, not quite believe, that Imtithal’s friend had been Saint Thomas lost in India, the answer to a riddle older than Prester John. How many secrets did you hide in one small country, Lord? I did not want to think of him beneath that alien storyteller—bold and shameless it was to touch an animal thus, and it dredged silt from my soul to read of it. It did not seem chaste, even if it did not seem lustful, either. I was disquieted, in my still, dark cell, its earthen walls close and warm.

I rubbed at my eyes. The book before me, Imtithal’s book, all scarlet and thick, had gone deep brown at the edges. The smell of it had sweetened as I read, and the creases showed dark, softened. I knew then that I had little more than that night to read and to copy—the books would rot, would die as a body dies, and their words would vanish as

the soul. No wonder I could only take three—in one night even I could manage no more, and probably not even this.

I called for Brother Alaric, my closest friend in our troupe. He is old enough to jealously guard his stories of youthful vigor, which is to say he is near enough to forty, and his mind is swift, severe and sharp. He came silently, and his presence comforted. He brought with him a mug of some thick, fortifying tea and something like a yoghurty beer, a rough plate laid with a slice of fowl the woman in yellow had cooked in her lord’s hearth, and a clay bowl of flat red leaves.

“She says they are stimulating, and will help you to stay awake. She bade me ignite them, thus,” Alaric said, and he took up my candle, holding the flame to the leaves until wax spattered them and finally, they lit, releasing a savory smoke into the room which did indeed rouse me somewhat. I drank the draught and chewed the dark meat gratefully, while Alaric looked over my copying, exclaiming over this and that thing.

“Of course we cannot credit that the Priest-king had a wife!” he marveled. “Nor this nonsense about Thomas Judas and some kind of elephant.”

I inhaled the smoke deeply, and took up the role of the worldly advocate, thinking to draw out Alaric’s thoughts and to help order my own. “You think so? Many holy soldiers did worse in the Holy Land than taking a lawful wife or making friends with a child.”

Alaric touched the browning pages. “It must be a fiction,” he said firmly. “You know how writers love to sully the reputations of the saints. It is a fiction written by Abbas the king, or worse, that woman with her awful eyes.”

“Perhaps,” I said, savoring the last of the beer. “I no longer know what to think. For all we are here seeking a man no one has met, and whose deeds are preserved only in an ancient letter.”

“But Brother Hiob, many have met him! Many doctors of learning and soldiers of fortune have returned from the east with tales of Prester John, and stones from his throne, branches from his orchards.”

“I have not finished my inquiry, Brother Alaric, I could not possibly say.”

And thus settled, we sat for a time, enjoying the scented smoke as I allowed my old eyes to rest.

“As I read, I have been thinking on what has befallen us here, Brother. Do you know, the woman in yellow allowed me only three books from her marvelous tree?”

“Certainly, Brother Hiob,” said Alaric dubiously. Do not blame him, Lord. He was not there; he did not see the beautiful tree, overflowing with books. I would not have believed me, either. But my thoughts whirled too quickly, one after the other, making connections and chasing after them. I hurried on, feeling alive as I had not for years.

“Poor man. Incredulity is not a virtue in your line of work. But can you not see what I see? Seth, too, was granted but three grains from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life entwined in Paradise. He ate them and a bush grew from his mouth, all aflame, and from the wood of that sapling came the wood of the doors of Solomon, and even the Holy Cross that bore our Lord Christ.”