Chapter One
A King and His Writing
With heavy, dragging steps that seemed to play a yawning, monotonous tune, Antar strolled through his lush garden, as he did every morning. He paused to admire the roses and flowers, breathing in their fragrance one after another. Then he walked two steps toward the fruit trees, especially the apple tree, and ran his hand over one of the apples the way a man might caress the body of an alluring woman. How beautiful it was. How delicious. How irresistible. And what a magnificent, blooming garden he owned!
Then, all at once, the words died on his lips, as though they had suddenly rebelled against him and raised a sad black flag of mourning. In a low, sorrowful murmur he said, 'And yet, despite all this, I am miserable. Miserable. Alone. Boredom eats at me, loneliness gnaws at me, and emptiness is killing me. Despite all this power, this palace on which I sit in royal splendor, I have never known contentment or happiness. I am always distracted, always alone. I feel lost, as though I am wandering blindly through my own kingdom, surrounded by my enormous court, my concubines, and my servants. They shine around me and are forever trying to make me happy, to bring some pleasure into my nights. But it is all in vain. What am I supposed to do? How do I fill this hollow inside me and heal the torment of my exhausted soul? Even though I am the one and only king, the supreme ruler who commands and forbids, there are times when I feel tiny... frail... no bigger than a mosquito! Or utterly insignificant. I feel as though I am empty-handed, like a vessel filled with nothing but nothingness, emptiness, weakness, loneliness, and that awful void that will eventually kill me.'
His minister, Qandil, approached quietly and cautiously and whispered in a voice like the hiss of wind: 'Didn't I tell you, Your Majesty, get married and smile at life? If you had listened to me, you'd be a father by now, with sons and daughters—and you'd have a companion to keep you company and chase away your loneliness.'
Antar roared in fury like a lion possessed. 'Didn't I warn you about this before? Don't you know how furious this particular subject makes me? I cannot stand this wretched, disgusting talk. Bring it up again and I'll kill you.'
'Forgive me, Your Majesty. I only want what is best for you, and...'
Antar cut him off angrily. 'Enough, you idiot of a minister. You never understand me. I've told you hundreds—millions—of times: what you're suggesting does not suit me. It is against my nature. I am free. I love freedom, movement, and having no one put a chain around my neck. And I will never tolerate anyone challenging me in my own kingdom. Impossible. It will never happen. I will not have a queen sharing my kingdom, my palace, or my gardens, nor a pack of troublesome children who might grow up to be just like me. No. No. That will never happen.' He moved closer to Qandil and said firmly, 'I am alone. I have no partner in my kingdom, nor in my majesty or greatness.' Then, in a tone heavy with despair, he added, 'And yet I feel terribly weak despite all my power. I feel I have never truly fulfilled myself or expressed what I want. I... I want to be the absolute master. I want unquestioning obedience—people to bow their heads to me and bend their backs before me.'
Qandil said, 'But we already do that, Your Majesty. We spend day and night praising your majesty, your greatness, and your glory.'
Antar seized Qandil by the collar so violently that he nearly choked him. 'It isn't enough. Didn't I tell you you're a stupid minister?' Antar paced back and forth through his lush garden, growling with rage. He was a huge man—broad-shouldered, tall, with thick eyebrows and a booming, cavernous voice. 'I want to feel my power more deeply. I want to crush everyone beneath the weight of my majesty. I know you obey me because you're my court, my loyal inner circle, and you profit from serving me. But that isn't enough. I want more. More loyalty. More blind obedience. I want to see more and more and more of them—an endless number. I want every one of them at my command, begging for my mercy. I want them to obey because they fear me. I want to see fear, humiliation, and pleading in their eyes. I want to hear their cries as they beg me to forgive them. That would satisfy me. Then I would truly be a king who is obeyed.'
Qandil said uneasily, 'But, Your Majesty, you know the rituals and customs of our planet, Antaruto. I don't believe the magician Samson will be able to—' Antar cut him off with an angry growl. 'You are always jealous of Samson. You resent him because he is better than you, because he performs every supernatural miracle I order him to perform, and because you are always trying to belittle him and weaken his powers.' Before Qandil could answer, defend himself, or offer any explanation for the words that had pierced his ears like sharp knives, Antar ordered him out. Qandil hurried away with hard, stiff steps that seemed to ring like the bells of some hostile procession.
Antar had imposed many strange customs on the planet Antaruto. The planet had acquired these peculiar habits because they had originally been his own. Being the dictator he was, Antar had simply imposed his personal habits on everyone around him. Whenever he became deeply absorbed in thought, for instance, he liked his servant to bring him a handful of burning embers and arrange them in a straight line. Antar would then walk across them as lightly as a feather in the wind, convinced that the ritual would make him the unquestioned ruler he was destined to remain forever. And so the servant brought the glowing embers, and Antar began walking over them, muttering magical words and biting his lips against the pain he refused to acknowledge, repeating the spells the magician Samson had taught him.
When he was finished, Antar ordered his guard to bring Samson the magician. Samson came running and appeared before the king at once. He bowed low, sensing that something was about to happen, and said in a trembling voice, 'Your command, Your Majesty. I am always at your service.' Antar approached him, placed both hands on his shoulders, and patted them with deliberate firmness. His smile contained far more mischief and mystery than openness or sincerity. 'And now, my dear friend, it's your turn.'
Samson said, 'Your command, Your Majesty.'
Antar ordered, 'Bring me the biggest bear in the country and have it slaughtered, as we do every year, so I can drink its blood and eat its flesh. You and my entire court will drink its blessed blood as well. As you know, the bear contains a part of my own spirit—my Antar essence. It is a sacred, blessed creature, and all of you must drink its blood so that it may bless you and its consecrated blood may flow through your bodies.'
'Yes, Your Majesty. As you command.' But before the magician could leave, Antar added in a commanding tone, 'And don't forget, Samson: every child born since the beginning of this year must be included. I will perform the annual ritual before my entire court.'
Samson hesitated. 'But, Your Majesty, as you know, the children of the court officials have not yet reached their first birthday. We still have three months before the year ends.'
Antar answered firmly, 'That doesn't matter. I want to perform the ritual today, before a great gathering of my court.'
Samson the magician had created his clay figures, burned his incense, and performed his spells and incantations. After blowing upon the figures, he transformed them into human beings, male and female, so they could marry and have children. The men of the court married the women as Antar had commanded, and soon the planet Antaruto was filling with children. Antar then indulged his narcissistic, sadistic desire: once the children reached their first birthday, he would line them up in a single row, put on a terrifying beast-like mask, and run and leap over them again and again. He believed the ritual would keep them permanently submissive—not only while they were small, but even after they grew up. They would remain at his beck and call forever, and, in his mind, the ritual would drive away any dangerous thoughts that might one day threaten his control over them. After receiving his orders, Samson left. As usual, he had come secretly and would leave secretly as well. No one in the court knew that the magician even existed—not the palace officials, not the men of the court, not even the little families that were beginning to form and have children.
Instead, they believed that Antar himself made the clay figures and that he had created them all as the supreme ruler of Antaruto—the king who owned everything and controlled everything. Naturally, such an extraordinary ruler, they reasoned, must have made them, caused them to multiply, and created them as men and women. This was precisely what Antar wanted them to believe, and he used the deception to control them as a tyrant. Over time, some believed it willingly; others were forced into believing it out of fear of Antar's brutal violence and the punishments he inflicted on anyone who disobeyed his commands or violated his prohibitions.
To make the deception complete and convince every inhabitant of Antaruto of his nonsense, Samson would arrive on the planet in disguise. He wore a magical mask that made his entire body disappear, along with his voice. Hidden from sight, he could move freely around the planet and enter Antar's palace without being seen, heard, or sensed. He removed the mask only when he was alone with Antar—with one exception: Minister Qandil, Antar's sole confidant, trusted servant, and keeper of secrets. Qandil was the only person in the court who knew Samson's secret. Even so, he hated Samson because the magician held a special place in Antar's favor and enjoyed privileges greater than Qandil's own.
Before each visit, Samson soaked the mask in a magical liquid for three full nights, chanting spells over it until it became a perfect instrument of invisibility. This had all been done at Antar's command. Antar had brought Samson with him when he secretly seized the planet and claimed it as his own, pretending that he had created it out of nothing. He relied on Samson for everything, large or small. Through the magician, who used ghosts and spells to uncover hidden matters and discover what happened behind closed doors and in forgotten corners, Antar learned every piece of gossip about his court and every detail about the planet's new inhabitants. Then he would falsely proclaim himself all-knowing and capable of anything. That was why he was so determined to keep Samson's identity hidden from everyone.
After their meeting ended, Samson slipped out of the palace, leaving Antar absorbed in the enormous book he called the Engraved Tablets. It was made of large, rectangular slabs fashioned from a hard material somewhat like plaster or cement, but suitable for engraving. Antar's hands were huge and powerful—far larger than those of the inhabitants of Antaruto and unlike their hands in every way. He held a long, sturdy instrument resembling a pen, which Samson had specially made so that he could carve his words into the tablets. He kept the tablets together between the covers of one enormous book. Every night, the tablets seemed to settle down and sleep quietly between those covers, as gently as a mother might tuck away her little child, protecting it from anything that might harm it.
Antar had made a habit of recording everything that happened to him and everything he intended to do. In fact, he went much further than that. He recorded every little thing any member of his court said or did, every glance, every word, as though he distrusted their motives and expected betrayal or deception at any moment. Perhaps, for all his boasts of being greater, stronger, wiser, and more perfect than every one of his subjects, he was also afraid of forgetting. Perhaps he feared that some event or some offense might slip from his memory, leaving him unable to hold them accountable when they denied it.
Every morning, as usual, Antar went out to wander through Antaruto. The strongest scent in the air was always that of golden paint—the smell he loved to breathe in, filling his lungs with it so that he could feel the intoxication and grandeur that pleased him. The roads, streets, and neighborhoods of Antaruto were all painted yellow-gold, as were the walls of its houses, because Antar adored the color. He was a materialist who acknowledged only what he could possess and who treated every form of closeness to him as a way of collecting more bright, clinking gold. He loved hoarding it day and night. He believed in only one language: give and take. 'Do what I want and I will reward you with my favor. I will spare you my anger and punishment. I will grant you my gifts.' That was what Antar repeated to his court until the words rang in their ears day and night. He even ordered them to carry his commands to the rest of the planet's inhabitants, to spread those commands everywhere and warn everyone to avoid his prohibitions—or suffer the consequences.
Antar wandered along the roads, gazing at the golden streets and the walls of the houses gleaming like sunlight. Even the trees in the gardens were golden, heavy with ripe fruit and flowers hanging in golden clusters, a feast for the eyes. Antar stared at them greedily, almost as though he wanted to swallow the whole planet and pluck every last blossom and fruit for himself from the trees growing in every garden.
But why? Why did he need to do that? Everything was already under his command, already in his possession. He was the ruler who ordered and forbade, who controlled everything around him, every small and every large event unfolding on the surface of this planet of Antar's. Then, suddenly, Antar stopped in the middle of a street. He looked around in anger and bewilderment. He spun in a circle, turning around himself as the question gnawed at him. 'But what was here before I came to this planet?' he asked himself. 'I arrived in secret, with the magician Samson. Without his magic—the magic he worked on me and on himself—we could never have hidden ourselves and entered this planet without anyone knowing! Yet everyone here believes, with absolute certainty, that I alone created all of this. They haven't got the slightest doubt about it. Why? Because they didn't exist yet. I hadn't created them. I hadn't made them human. Or, more precisely, Samson the mighty magician had not yet begun making his magical toys and casting his mysterious spells to turn them into living humans and animals after they had existed only as clay figures! Then who? Who did it? How? And when? How?'
Antar kept screaming those questions, laughing in a rapid series of hysterical bursts like thunder and lightning in a violent storm. His screams and laughter rolled through Antaruto, beating like drums and ringing like bells in its streets, alleys, lanes, and homes, warning anyone who heard them that a hidden battle had begun behind the curtain.
Chapter Two
The Shepherd and the Staff
The annual celebration began, as always. Decorations stretched across the planet and filled its streets. Banners were hung everywhere, covered with slogans praising and pledging loyalty to Antar, the shepherd and ruler of Antaruto. Red carpets were spread out and drums thundered through the planet, announcing the beginning of the celebration. Antar's footsteps landed on the carpet like iron hammers proclaiming the start of some great war.
Before him stretched a straight line of tiny children, about a year old or younger, lying close together on the ground, with only a small space separating one child from the next. The arrangement made Antar's ritual easier. He began running and leaping savagely over the children's heads as they lay there. The children looked drugged or unconscious. Of course, Antar knew this was Samson's work. The magician was there in disguised form, invisible to everyone else, ready to lend Antar a hand whenever necessary and serve as the staff he could lean on when he needed support.
Everyone cheered and applauded as Antar jumped, landed, and sprang over the children again and again, back and forth. He wore a terrifying magical mask that made him look even more grotesque and gave his carefully manufactured majesty an artificial aura of dread. Samson had taken great pains in making that mask. Everyone had to hear and obey. All the inhabitants of this planet, enchanted by Samson's magic, were so gullible that they believed Antar was the wise, all-powerful master who planned everything, knew everything, owned everything—and was a true god, worshiped in secret and in public.
They bowed before him day and night, more than once a day. Whenever his procession happened to pass through a street while he sat on his throne, servants carried him—four on each side—so they would have enough strength to endure the sheer bulk and weight of him, along with the heavy burden of his presence and his unbearable arrogance. They stood in rigid rows like golden pillars filling the streets and alleys of Antaruto, frozen in place and bent forward in reverence. The streets themselves seemed to freeze, like a raging flood struck motionless by snow and bitter cold on a stormy winter day.
Everyone had to follow Antar's path and imitate his way. Why wouldn't they? His path was, naturally, the straight path, the righteous path. He was the opener of all things, the one who knew everything, the one who could provide for a worm inside a stone—so surely he would shower them with his generosity and kindness. And if anyone dared to oppose him, surely he could crush them without a second thought.
That was the image Samson, the brilliant artist, had drawn and shaded for him. Samson's greatest secret was known only to Antar and his minister. When the annual celebration ended, the gullible believers—those who believed in Antar's supernatural powers—clapped and cheered. They believed in him simply because they did not know... I mean, because they knew that he was the One, the all-conquering, all-capable ruler who could do anything. Yet somehow, they still did not know!
The clowns and hypocrites among his followers, the people who benefited from their relationship with him, shouted his praises and celebrated his greatness. The more Antar's power and majesty grew, and the more love—pardon me, faith—grew in the hearts of the gullible, the more their own profits multiplied. Their interests flourished because their worship of him—or rather, their blind obedience to him—flourished.
And why not? To be true believers, their loyalty had to be blind, so that their faith would be stronger and more meaningful. Otherwise, what was the point if their minds ever woke up? No. A thousand times no. Reason had to fall, sleep, and go blind, while the banners of faith rose high and thundered: 'Antar is the greatest! Antar alone is the mightiest and most magnificent! Antar! Antar! Antar is greater and greater and greater!'
After the religious occasion—pardon me, the Antar occasion—was over, Antar summoned his minister and keeper of secrets, Qandil. He looked displeased, anxious, and deeply uneasy. His lips tightened with anger as he said, 'I cannot remain like this, Qandil. This cannot go on. It isn't enough, and it does not suit my status among the people of Antaruto.'
Qandil stared at him in surprise. 'What do you want, Your Majesty? I am at your service. Everyone is at your service. We are all at your command, ready to obey your every wish.'
Antar said firmly, 'I want you to write me a scripture—a scripture that everyone on this planet must follow, something that becomes the law they obey and the code they sing about.'
Qandil hesitated. 'But, Your Majesty, they worship you, glorify you, and fear you already, without any scripture or law, without a rule or threat to restrain them or frighten them.'
Antar rejected the thought with visible displeasure. It was as though a thick cloud had covered a ray of inspiration trying to emerge from his oversized head. 'No. No. That is no longer enough. Their fear is conditional on my being here. And that worries me. It feeds my fears.'
Qandil was stunned. 'How? Your Majesty, for the first time I feel completely incapable of understanding you. What do you mean? Please explain.'
Antar clenched his teeth with a grinding sound like the roar of an approaching storm. 'I want them to fear me eternally, forever, without end. Not merely because I happen to be among them or because I pass before them. I want them to fear me forever—even after they die! And that will happen only through a law, a scripture, a system that guarantees the continuity of their praise and their fear of me at all times, even when I am not there. Even if they hear that one day I have disappeared from existence, or departed, or whatever else might happen. The fear of my power and punishment must fill their hearts. They must never feel safe around me or certain that I am pleased with them. Their loyalty must remain chained to fear and terror. They must keep running after my approval, desperate to please me so they can win my reward and escape my punishment. Do you understand, Qandil?'
Qandil nodded. 'Now I understand, Your Majesty. You want to guarantee your survival and permanence through their endless fear—endless, limitless, without boundaries.'
Antar said, 'Exactly. I want endless fear tied to eternal craving, guaranteeing all the praise and loyalty I desire and producing blind obedience in which reason disappears and tradition alone rules the day.'
Qandil smiled with the slyness of snake venom dripping from beneath a hidden mask. 'Of course, Your Majesty. Tradition—tradition handed down from your gracious scripture. That will make them true believers. And to be true believers, they must become like the blind and the deaf: they hear, they obey your glorious scripture, and if they do not, misery will befall them.'
Antar sprang to his feet as though anxiety and fear had suddenly taken hold of him. He clung to the arm of his chair and leaned on it like a crutch protecting him from a fall. 'Misery upon them! Misery upon them, and then misery and destruction upon anyone who disobeys my laws and my scripture or even dares to think of stepping outside my commands.'
Qandil said thoughtfully, 'Let me think about this for a while, Your Majesty. Something like this requires deep planning. The order must be introduced to them gradually, step by step, so that our scripture can be divided into parts—just like the chapters of a novel. A novel in which you are the one and only hero. With every chapter, you will need a doctrine and a method to go with it.'
Antar was suddenly eager. The words poured from his lips like a waterfall after heavy rain. 'And why? Why all this, my dear Minister Qandil?'
Qandil leaned toward him and whispered in a voice like the hiss of snakes, with the cunning of foxes shining in his eyes like a wolf about to spring on its prey: 'So their confusion will grow stronger. We will keep them following every chapter of the novel to the very end. Their excitement will grow, their desire will burn hotter, and their fascination with their hero will become stronger. They will remain loyal to him, obsessed with him, devoted to him. And none of this can happen without division, confusion, and disagreement. Because if they ever became one group united by a single idea, they might join forces and become a threat to you someday—or, heaven forbid, Your Majesty, they might actually understand the novel. They might start thinking.'
Antar immediately grasped his meaning and was delighted. 'Of course. Their division and disagreement will keep them in constant conflict and endless arguments. That will only make each one of them more eager to win my favor and affection, and to earn the reward for obeying me. Each of them will imagine that he is the one closest to me, the only one who truly knows me, the only one who has explored the deepest regions of my soul. He will believe that he alone deserves me and deserves to be near me—because he alone knows me.'
Qandil threw back his head and laughed heartily. 'And in their disagreement and division, there is mercy.'
Antar joined in, their laughter shaking the walls of his vast palace. 'Yes. Yes... mercy for us, and profit for us.'
Their laughter rose until its echo rolled across the whole planet of Antaruto, as though everyone coming and going could hear it.