The Ports and Portals of the Zelaznids Read online

  It was the presence of this Mongol, at the head of a train of more than fiftie strangers, which spurred the farmer to flee. He could not know, because of the language difficulties, what the intentions of these strangers might be. But he was determined that his village would not be caught unawares by a band of Mongols, however wearie and incapable of battle they might seem. And so the fellow made his way to the village with all speed, to tell the elders of what he had seen.

  In the end, of course, there was no need for alarm, for these were those same Zelaznids, led by the wise Qutughai, who had fled Salabad for the securitie of the mountains; those same Zelaznids who had numbered two hundred and half again, now reduced to sixtie and three; those same Zelaznids who had spent four months wandering through the mountains, desperate for food and shelter; those same Zelaznids who had, three weeks earlier, slaughtered the last of their goats, so that they had gone some ten days without meat or bread. What harm could such miserable souls visit upon a well-provisioned and rested populace?

  On the contrarie, the survivors had scarcelie reached the outskirts of the village before collapsing in relief and exhaustion before those elders who had, with no few arms, come out to meet them. At once it was determined that these were no invaders, but men and women (there were no children left among them) who were greatlie in need of aid. And so the people of Feyzabad transformed into a band of hospitalers, eager to mend the ills of the sad-looking souls who had dragged themselves through such treacherous countrie. The stunned visitors soon found comfort within the homes of the villagers.

  Some few days passed before the greater portion of the Zelaznids regained wits sufficient to relate the details of their ordeal to their rescuers. This they did with the assistance of Dalganj, an elder of the village who knew well the language of the land beyond the mountains. The storie came in fits and starts, first from one survivor and then another, until at last Qutughai regained consciousness and stood before the elders of Feyzabad. He told the tale in its entiretie; and a more devastating chronicle had never been uttered within the confines of the village.

  In brief, the storie ran thus.

  Reaching the end of the known path into the mountains, and choosing not to wait for otherworldlie beings to come to their aid as they had for Zelaznu in days of old, Qutughai had ordered the band to follow the path to the west and south, rather than following the river to the east. This route was slow-going, but quite straight, and found the partie making reasonable distance each day.

  But the nights were cold and food was scarce. At first the band survived on the provisions they had brought with them. But several among them, hoping perhaps that Zelaznu himself would descend from the clouds to save them from their fate, failed to ration their supplies and thus exhausted their stores of food much more quicklie than those more provident souls.

  It so happened that those who had planned poorlie soon turned to those who had provisioned themselves well, demanding food from those who possessed it. More than one such conversation ended in violence, with several persons falling by the wayside along the journie, the victims of fratricide borne out of desperation; while others, including all of the children in their midst, succumbed to natural deaths brought about by exposure to the elements. In such an environment, it became difficult to protect the goats, animals which had run out of food themselves. Thus, one by one, the herd was reduced for the purpose of providing food for the dwindling masses, until none remained.

  For ten days before stumbling into this valley, related Qutughai, the Zelaznids had subsisted on what few plants and roots they could find in the cracks and crevices of the mountain walls. With little to eat, they had walked on day and night, almost unconscious on their feet, desperate to leave the bleak purgatorie of the peaks.

  To this, the people of Feyzabad expressed much sympathie, pressing Qutughai for details of the Zelaznid people and why they had felt the need to flee into the mountains. The great governor-king thus related all that he knew of the Zelaznids, from the time the Ginyu left the great Gobi to their last days in Salabad. Once the tale had been told with some measure of completeness, the leaders of Feyzabad greeted the Zelaznids anew with much wonder, impressed and moved by the sad historie of these people.

  Calling for silence, the leader of the cittie, who was called Faraj, addressed Qutughai, saying, “There is great wonder in the words that you speak. Though I do not know the truth of the tales that you tell, I yet judge that you are a good people. Whatever reasonable thing that you might wish of us, I beg you to but speak of it.”

  To this, with great humilitie, the great governor-general replied, “Your people have served us well with food and shelter. There is nothing that we require except to find the descendants of those kinsmen who left Salabad so long ago, following that same Zelaznu from whom they take their name.”

  Once Dalganj had translated this into the language of the Arabs, Faraj expressed his understanding, for he knew well the importance of kinship, especially for such lost and rejected people as the Zelaznids.

  “I regret to say,” said he, “that I have heard of no people like as to yourselves. I would that I had, so that I might convey you to them. But if there are others of your kind who dwell yet in this world, then it is the warlords of Kabul who will know of it. These warlords, fighting as much with one another as with the Khanate,[35] send agents throughout the land once each year to collect tribute from those who are too weak to resist them. In Feyzabad we were last visited by such an official some three months past. If anyone should know of the peoples in this part of the world, it will be the bureaucrats in Kabul.”

  Qutughai expressed gratitude for this information. He did not know if the other Zelaznids had survived. Yet Qutughai was determined to follow this trail, whersoever it might lead, if the Zelaznids in his charge might someday be reunited with their lost kinsmen. And so it was that, after acquiring sufficient rest, the Zelaznids ventured out of the village of Feyzabad and down the valley.

  This they did with a strong sense of their own fortune, for the villagers had equipped them with what supplies they could spare. Dalganj, because of his abilitie to speak both the Mongol and Arabic tongues, agreed to accompanie them as far as Kabul. It was thus a joyous partie that began its journie to the south, for the Zelaznids felt certain that they would soon find the descendants of their lost kinsmen.

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  ith what sympathies, I wonder, might the most skeptical reader feel towards these ancient peoples, were I to convey the details of their harrowing travels from Feyzabad to Kabul - the hardship of the hills, the difficulties of the chill autumn desert, the endlessness of the plains. Would the reader, now filled with doubt, acquire an understanding of the truth, assured at last that the Zelaznids were in the right, that they were preserved by the heavens for some greater purpose? How else to explain their survival in a land of privation and war?

  To be sure, the journie was slow-going. And yet, within the space of some few months, Qutughai and the Zelaznids were encamped within sight of the walls of Kabul. Another night on the cold plains, this time along the shores of a frozen lake, was hardlie to their liking with their destination standing before them. But they had arrived after the cittie gates had been closed and locked for the evening, so the travelers had little choice but to sleep on the cold ground once more.

  The Zelaznids were not alone in this, for there were numerous other travelers who had reached Kabul too late to gain entrie this night. And there were others who, accustomed to making their way in the world with few valuables (who could not imagine the luxurie of a down-filled mattress), likewise slept aground out of a sense of economie. These varied groups, along with the Zelaznids, formed a grand camp filled with hundreds of souls.

  The Zelaznids soon found themselves the subject of much interest in the encampment, for they had by far the largest contingent. Qutughai, though suffering from a fever that had come upon him during the trip from Feyzabad, forced himself to go from camp to camp, asking (in a somewhat broken
Arabic tongue acquired through the efforts of Dalganj) if the travelers had ever heard tell of a people calling themselves the Zelaznids.

  To his inquiries, Qutughai received no positive answer until he met a group of travelers from distant Arabia. Within their midst, the governor-general encountered a mystic of middle age, a wizened fellow who kept apart from his companions and did not speak while Qutughai conversed with them. But once the leader of the Salabadi exiles took his leave of the Arabs, the strange mystic approached Qutughai.

  “Can it truly be,” the curious stranger asked, “that you seek the Zelaznids?”

  “So I do, as you no doubt heard me tell your companions.”

  The mystic beckoned Qutughai closer, so that they might speak in private conference.

  “Then I beseech you to hold close your counsel, for you will find none but enemies in the district of Kabul.”

  Hearing this, Qutughai begged the strange fellow to explain who he was and what he knew of the Zelaznid people. The mystic thus told his strange tale.

  “I am called Abdul Hazred. My home, when I was able to call it such, lay in the mountains of the Yemeni, far from this place. There I was reared amongst shepherds and fishermen, learning the old ways of our people. My tribe did not hold to the same ideas as those of its neighbours; though most amongst us had taken up the call of the Prophet,[36] we were not in full accord with his teachings. I am descended of a strange and varied lineage, one which holds as part of its bloodline a branch of those ancient Zelaznids that you seek. Sit close and I will speak of what I know.

  “Mine is an ancient familie and has trod the Yemeni hills for as long as man has walked this Earth. Before the great tribes crossed the desert of Arabia we were there, tending our flocks and harvesting the bounties of the sea. My people looked to the old gods, as they had for a thousand years and more before leaving the shores and crossing the mountains to dwell at the edge of the desert.

  “One hundred years before the coming of the Prophet, there appeared in the midst of these simple tribesmen twentie or more persons, men and women with some few children. No one knew from whence they came or how they had done so, for these people did seem to spring out of the Earth and descend from the high mountain of that ancient and revered Shu’ayb.[37]

  “These people called themselves Zelaznids and claimed to be part of an ancient tribe which had fled the world and whose generations had lived for centuries in a peaceful and emptie land, unreachable by either caravan or caravel.[38] Yet, according to these strange travelers, they had not been entirelie absent from the world of men, for they had, using means known to none but them, made passage from one world to another, in search of ‘ports’ more to their liking, using ‘portals’ that were scattered all over the world. One such portal, they claimed, was on the mountain from which they had appeared.

  “This news, coming as it did in such a strange way and resembling nothing that the people of Sanaá had ever heard, was rejected by most within earshot of the Zelaznids. Yet others welcomed the newcomers and sought to querie them in order to learn whether the Zelaznids spoke the truth or were but jesting.

  “And so the Zelaznids settled in the midst of my familie, and befriended them, and taught them, and learned from them, and wedded with them, and became one with them. And more than a few of the old tribesmen began to speak of other worlds and no longer thought of the old gods. In place of these deities, they imagined an all-powerful force or being, to whose wisdom and mercie all were subject.

  “When the Prophet came, speaking of one god, the people of Sanaá thus followed him readilie, eager for the gifts that accompanied his promise of protection. For the sake of securitie, my people, even those who held to the ways of the Zelaznids, converted and sent their daughters to wed with the Prophet and his advisors. These conversions, it may be said, were largelie in name, for there were those who yet held true to the old ways; and there were still others who gave to their children the teachings of the Zelaznids within the solace of their homes.

  “Two generations passed in this way, and my ancestors did much as they always had: paying tribute to those who controlled the cittie while secretlie believing whatever they wished. The Prophet, having met his end, left lesser men to follow in his stead. They kept their governors in place and maintained their hold on my people. But no sword could pierce their souls.

  Out of that curious line a peculiar person emerged, my namesake: Abd-al-Hazred.[39]

  “Hazred was reared of an intellectual father, one who knew well the old ways; and of a learned mother, one who was descended of that Zelaznid tribe. Out of this, Abd-al-Hazred became a soul in possession of much knowledge, one who did not fail, even from a young age, to question his elders concerning the inconsistencie of their beliefs.

  “This precocious spirit served him well in partnership with his intellect, but made of him an outcast in the cittie of Sanaá, a place whose residents had no wish to anger the representative of the Banu Umayyah.[40] Hence, when Abd-al-Hazred became a man, he ventured into the southern reaches of the Arabian Desert in search of that knowledge which he had yet to discover.

  “Ten years Abd-al-Hazred spent alone in the Roba El Khaliyeh[41] without speaking to another of his kind. Yet he was not without companionship, for the Roba El Khaliyeh is said to be the home of numerous spirits.

  “When he returned to Sanaá, he reentered the societie he had left, wedding a young girl and entering into the trade of a scribe. But serenitie in this life was not to be; for Abd-al-Hazred could not help but speak of those things which he had seen in the desert.

  “His words frightened the people of Sanaá. They would not hear him tell of crossing into another world, or of his visit to fabulous Irem, the Cittie of Pillars.[42] And when he spoke of the discoveries he made beneath the ruins of that forgotten desert place, which pointed to the existence of an ancient race of beings older than mankind, it was charitie that kept those ignorant folk from putting him to his death for such blasphemies.

  “Abd-al-Hazred thus was allowed to live, but he feared that this would not long be the case should he remain in the place of his birth. Therefore he took his wife and child away from the cittie of Sanaá by caravan. Together, they traveled to ancient Babylon and then to Egypt, where he explored the ruins of Memphis.

  “At last, Abd-al-Hazred settled his growing familie in Damascus, where he once more took on the work of a scribe. There, taking advantage of that anonymitie which a man might find in such a large cittie, he wrote the dreaded al-Azif.[43]

  “This work, misunderstood and reviled as it was, pleased the government not at all. Arrested for heresie, Hazred was determined to be a heretic and confined to a madhouse. For some few years, his wife waited for her husband to be returned to her, doing the best she could to support their children. Meanwhile, the authorities banned Abd-al-Hazred’s al-Azif. [44]

  “His reprieve came at last upon the hour of his fortie-second year. Destitute and shunned, Abd-al-Hazred rejoined his wife, but the man she had known was gone. One year they shared together before the coming of his death, an end too terrible to recount.[45]

  “Left to her own devices, his wife fled the cittie with her three young sons, returning to the home of her birth, the familiar comfort of Sanaá. But, while her relations yet remained in the cittie, she was startled to find few holding to the philosophies of the Zelaznids, for most of this group had fled into the mountains some months previous, never to be seen again.

  “Not to be undone, this strong woman settled amongst what remained of her tribe and raised her sons to have respect for their misunderstood father. Hazred, she explained, had not been mad; he had merelie suffered from an inabilitie to relate, in the words of men, all of the things that he had seen.

  “From this fount I sprung,” concluded the traveler Abdul Hazred. “Named for my great ancestor, I learned the ways of both Abd-al-Hazred and Zelaznu. And following this, I went into the desert in search of that cittie which my ancestor had seen. But this I did not find
. At last, I walked to the land of Kush, in hopes that I might encounter the lost Zelaznids. This is how I came to be at the gates of Kabul.”

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  o all of this, Qutughai had listened with rapt attention. Once Abdul Hazred completed his tale, the governor-general spoke to the strange Arab with some measure of excitement.

  “And have you discovered where the Zelaznid peoples have gone?”

  “They live not seven days journie west of this place, in the village of Sang-e, upon a high hill. This I learned from a band of Hindus who stayed for some time with the Zelaznids, in a friendlie comparison of philosophies. Yet, I have learned that the warlords of Kabul oppose the Zelaznids of Sang-e and seek to push them from their hilltop village. This is why I tell you to guard your speech whilst you are in these environs.”

  “Your guidance is most welcome, my friend,” replied Qutughai. “What is it that you mean to do?”

  “I shall enter Kabul with the dawn and outfit myself for the journie. Then I will quit the partie of fellows with whom I have travelled for some few months and set myself on the road to Sang-e. Will you lead your people down this same path?”

  Qutughai stated his intention to do so, but would not commit his Salabadi followers without first putting the matter before them. The Mongol leader agreed to meet the Arab beyond the western gate once he knew the minds of his people, though he felt certain that none would object to seeking out the Zelaznids of Sang-e.

  Returning to his encampment, the governor-general related to his excited people all that he had learned from Abdul Hazred. As expected, all assented to make the journie to Sang-e. Much relieved in his heart, Qutughai sought rest, for his fever had grown worse in the excitement.

  With the coming of dawn Abdul Hazred entered Kabul and equipped himself for ten days of travel, thus allowing for possible delays. Once in preparation, the Arab took himself to the western gate to meet Qutughai and those Zelaznid kin who would accompanie them to Sang-e.