Stupid Stone-Headed Son-Of-An-Ass!

[no date; entry mostly ruined due to sand/water --ed. Chronolectus]

... does not even, I can see now, tell his own story straight... I am bending over the Captain as he sleeps. It has now been days since we've been penned here in Klem, fighting the Glad-Glads, who murmur, "Bil mikal ubil mištia ulh bilmirmia riha," their chant to the Crimson (Daily) Tyrant, before they take to the arena, arms flailing swords, flails, rice-threshers (but they grow no rice!), camel-thwackers, and other oddities of combat, including the Bandicoot (illustrated) [original illustration missing; substitute provided courtesy ed.s private collection --ed. Pictolectus], the Angry Lemon (an almond-shaped yellow hand-shield with a single, needle-like dagger at either end), the Billy-Knows-Bad-Things (an upside-down Quran lashed to a live wolverine-o-th-sands), and the Vague Jennie (what is it?, who can say?, has she doomed us with her sweet smile?, by telling the Klemi crowds that we came to pillage?, which, knowing "Cap'n," we probably did?), &c.

...must be glad for small victories. But he tells them badly, too! Let me say it: We arrived in Klem with high hopes... Not of finding the djinn-blasted Gyrosphyrinx (which Mullah Shaj now conceives, in his black-bearded wisdom, to be a bird-coloured ball of rolling Hate, fueled by cactus/man-love/the songs of other birds, or, as the "Cap'n" now often calls them, "byrds"), but of finding a real city, with real women, real lentils, real cream, real spices, water, books, et al.

Instead, we found a veritable fortress of Women: The women here are not only "liberated" more than ours, in Istanbul, Damascus, Bucha-Resti, Baghdad, Qom, Torshiz, &c., but also are more... evil. They hunt men from other nation-states of the Land Of The White Apple, which they call "GREATER KLEM," and force them to do menial sand-work, construction, and bean-and-mushroom-farming ("and child-farming!" adds Fariz, who I know is trying to "suck the mental dugs" of both myself and "Cap'n" Tariq, which only annoys us both, except perhaps not Tariq, who does not realise...), &c.

Also, the Women here are fickle: Only two hours after inviting us to pass peacably through their territory, they arrested us and put us on "trial," which mostly consisted of ignoring us more than they already were--which was completely, perfectly. Thus, this new level of ignorance should not have affected us at all. Instead, we were wracked. The "Cap'n" began raving about his childhood, while several of the Shamzes took to hair-pulling and tooth-grinding, resulting in a bunch of tall, strong, toothless sailors--one of them now dead at the hand of that terrible Lemon...

...thrown in a dark pit after the long "trial" of ignorance, during which, at one point, thanks to Fariz's lusting after what might have been a very beautiful woman (or very well-dressed donkey--we didn't get a good look), we stumbled into the Empty Square and realised that, far from being ignored, we were being carefully watched...

...hauled up onto the Grayish/Dull Dais (just below the Dais Of Crazy Beautiful Marble) and asked to speak for the group, because Tariq was fuming/frothing, and unable to carry his Captainly duties and parley with the Tyrant's Radiant-Mouth, who spake:

"ADMIT YOUR GUILT:

NONE;

ALL;

SOME;

UNKNOWN;

or NONE OF THESE..."

I thought upon these options for a long time, finally choosing, "NONE OF THESE," though I did not shout as she the Radiant-Mouth did.

The Tyrant smiled (I think) under her red feathered Masque, and motioned to the Mouth, who asked if I knew of the Blue-Tooth'd Wyzard (she said it with a Y!). I said I had heard tales only... She said the Wyzard was the sole determinant of Guilt, but that she knew she would find me Guilty, especially so. We were all guilty--everyone was and is guilty--so it made no sense to choose any option but "GUILTY."

Silence dominated the Empty Square. Fariz picked his generous left nostril with a bit of mountain-Burdock he'd stolen from the White Sheep Huns we'd found on the coast of Quoz when we'd first arrived.

"What," I tried to bravely inquire, my voice faltering, sounding older and more bird-like (sphynx-like??) by the moment, "is the punishment, for the GUILTY ones such as we are...?"

The Tyrant Herself stood. She gestured to something in the distance, being hoisted by manlings up to the top of the Tower Of Penance. I have reproduced, to the best of my however meagre ability, the Dread Thing here:






















Notice its Teeth! It is the VORTEX, I am sure, of which we were lately so afraid...

...same that left Hot-Swabbing-Peter so shaken he can no long control his rectal function.

The Cap'n & the Mullah, of course, do not believe the Reaping Machine and the Teething Vortex are one in the same, but they are fools for not seeing what Al--h has placed just before their Eyes, and what our Natural Science and Philosophising has allowed us to grasp in our Hands.

(I remember, when I was at the Seljuk College Of Rayed-Configurations Of Natural Celestial Bodies Whose Mechanical Movements We Have Topographed, studying Astronomy, Bird-Watching, & War-Machines, one such fool who did not believe that the Bird was the most potently small Flyer, superior even to the Chiropterans, Vespertines, and Billowing Squirrels. To prove that fool wrong, my fellows and I conducted numerous flight-tests. The Bird, no matter the sort, was faster and/or more graceful than other animals, balls, and spears--though not, strangely enough--than a curious Flying Disc brought lately from Hellas by my nephew Afeef Of The East...)

But in my despair, my song loses its melody... We chose the other option presented to us, after we quaked for a sufficiently long time. Fearing the Reaping Machine and its dog-chomping Teeth, we would face deadly combat with the Glad-Glads. We would not, we were told, win. We would merely be brutalised in a more entertaining fashion. (Though the Radiant-Mouth seemed disappointed that we did not choose the Machine; she declared us, "Sissy-Pups" and bid us eat our own vomit rather than speak to her ever again, which last insult earned her a hilarious chiding from a superior member of the Klemizonian diplomatic corps.)

...to the cell for a moment, I must report that several of us of have died in the daily Gladiatorial Games, and that none of us, save Savage Robbert, have much of a stomach for Fighting any more.

Robbert, though, is particularly dreadful: Not only does he still fight; he wins. And not only does he win, he is going mad. He has what we call "Roman Glibness," or a continuous gabbering of the mouth and metaphorical gland. Only sometimes does his stream of curses, onomatopoeical ZANG!s & ZOTT!s, and Oaths to extinct deities (including Eostre, Queen Al-Lat, & Vague Jennie) abate or ease into real recitation. Only yesterday, he quoted:

"Never did he sing Camel Songs behind a Scabby Beast,
nor pierce the bitter Colocynth out of sheer hunger
nor dig a Lyzard out of the ground and eat it..."

Then he detoured into a pre-fight verbal essay on the Opusculum paedagogum, a pear Tariq has banned us from eating for "conservation" reasons, meaning that, if we come across one in this cell, we must conserve it... by letting him eat it.

...plan indeed. The escape could commence as early as tonight, if all is readied in time by... Shamz cannot, of course, make it himself, so...

[long rip in the page, followed by, in a different handwriting and ink, another snatch of poetry:]

"Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love."

Goodbye, Dear Friend ****; we knew you only too well!

BUT AT LEAST WE HAVE ESCAP--

[Here the MS devolves into ant-shit. Twas lamentably eaten, it seems, before it washed up on the shores of Boston, to be carried by crabs southward. We have reconstructed some pieces, of course, with liberality. One hopes, with never undo liberality! --ed. Histographix]

[blot of ink in the shape of the oblate, super-dense galaxy Al-Nahda]

Mullah Shaj And The Blue-Tooth'd Wyzard Of Klem

7 Raby` al-awal 1328 A.H.

When we arrived in Klem, at sun-up, we heard the local Zu-priests invoking the poisonous song of the Gyrosphyrinx; the local fish-sellers baking their day's catches of lung-fish and brown-tongues from the River Of Mud into fresh clay; the women of the city moving towards the Hall Of Nomination, to decide the day's Tyrant (which word, "b'kyari," here, means "Righteous Walking Stick Of Civilization" according to Obul); the one-eyed beggars turning, rustling to their beds in the wall-coves of the Lame Quarter, having just sold their catches of rats, rat-fish, and fishing-rats (brain-mouse) to the local fish-sellers, who re-sell the rats as "lung-fish," or even a nonsense fish called Fear Chode (always capitalised); &c. We arrived and heard these things--all people following one another, mouths following stomachs--all ignoring us, our tight metal-clanking machine of Death, come to steal their fish, if not their law, peace, and girl-children. [I myself, I should note--unlike most of the men, esp. the Captain--am celibate.]

That idiot Captain Tariq, or "Shah Tariq al-Tariq," as he now calls himself, honestly believes we are getting closer to the monstre. The rest of us know the truth. We are not only lost, but running out of supplies. We keep... fighting for some reason. We run into a new village, pillage it, or else debate with its famous & infamous Debators, then pillage it. Or we don't. But still we eat. The Bridge Of Anger--for example--when we passed it, the crumbling, wending, black-stoned way up the heath-mountains: We were made to strip to our waists, to let the "vapours" of the mountain cleanse us of hunger. The men ate rocks, and some of them became very sick. I spoke with my friend Mullah Shaj, who is too pious for comfortable talk, but a very smart man, and a friend of mine in Science, and said, "Mullah Shaj, don't let the men eat rocks!" We were silent for a long time. Then he said, quietly, "Viz Sabbatai, ours is a party of goats. They have to eat something!" We did not laugh as he gestured to the sickly, hungry men, who do not care of monstres or songs or new realms and new gilt.

Our strange leader's latest strange decision (our life, all our lives, a string of decisions, ill or no) is this: That when we finally do meet with the day's Tyrant of this huge, red city of Klem, we will not beseech her to turn over her maps, treasures, magicks, unseen beasts, beauteous courtesans, or hidden religio-philosophical (or, more likely, sophistrical) texts, but that we will only beseech her to reveal the identity of the city's Blue-Tooth'd Wyzard, a woman who has lived a thousand years in twelve thousand bodies, trapped every few eclipses (an eclipse is coming now, says both the Mullah and the astrologer, F. bin-Hussein the Younger, who wears brilliant hats) by some weird psycho-magnetic power that I've yet to study. Though I am interested in this power, I am not interested in witch-hunting. And why does she have blue teeth?

A few theories: 1 - She is made of blue chalcedon, or green-blue quartz-crystal, such as the famous Mostly Crystalline Cat and the very famous Great Crystal Duck of the Sultan were constructed from. 2 - She is a whale (this is Obul's theory--I include it to be complete with all suggested theories, drunken, unlikely, or otherwise). 3 - She is a blue-tooth'd djinn (can speak from its ears, and hear with its mouth), such as is mentioned in the lost book of The Story-Sea of Raqiq F.'z. This is only likely in the Captain's fantasy-world of monstres and treasures. Mostly, the people of the white-apple-bearing-tree-forested lands have been industrious barbarians, false witches, or true but earnestly republican seers, with no interest in the occult.

There is one other theory, Mullah Shaj's: 4 - The Blue-Tooth'd Wyzard (why does the Captain insist we spell her name that way? abominable antiquarian...) is really a Figment, a Fantasm, a sign-post (he loves the word "sign-post") meant to hurdle us closer to the Gyrosphyrinx, a thing that may or may not exist, and may or may not be capture-able, and may or may not have a killing-song that I can somehow ingeniously trap for the Captain to take back to Istanbul. Why would Shaj believe such a thing? He strokes his still-black beard (though he is very old--he should not stroke his beard, or he will have a bald chin, I have read) and says that he has heard the song of the evil 'Sphyrinx, as has, or so claims he has, our Captain. He says this with a straight face (crooked beard), and I am inclined to believe he thinks he has, whatever that means...

Between the tall, perhaps purposeless buildings that form the jagged skyline of red Klem, a sun purses its lips over us, and suddenly there is no traffick. The streets are clean of dust and swine-smell (common in the other cities of these lands). The men are hard at work, or so we've been told by the Amazonian-looking guardlady, cloaked toe to crown in little beads and shells, as armour or as decoration or both. She walks slowly, and so do we--the Captain, the Mullah, the crazed Scot, and myself. Where is the astrologer? The cosmologer died a few weeks back, and no one has taken his post. Was it hunger, or dysentery, or both? No one now remembers. He has no headstone. Or else I wrote it, and now forget. A rat wearing a green helmet shuffles forth to train his black eye (one huge one) on my two brown eyes, which train themselves back at him. Strangely, for whatever reason, I feel the universe looking at us in this same manner...