As he threads his way toward the inspection arches, a herald’s cracked voice drones the new edicts, higher tariffs on foreign incense, doubled levies on “unlicensed” relics, and Darivash notes, with a trader’s reflex, which goods around him just lost half their profit. The words fall like dull stones into the heat: bojun-e ravān, tax upon the soul’s fragrance; ʿošr-e nūr, tithe of light upon all vessels bearing gems or glass. Some in the crowd cross themselves in the old dualist manner; others merely tighten their grips upon bundles and crate-ropes.
He slows without seeming to, letting the press of pilgrims carry him, eyes moving while his head remains respectfully inclined toward the proclamation board. The sun-cracked parchment above the gate blooms with ink like dried blood. Each fresh seal is another mouth of the regime, biting.
Incense-bearers in green sashes curse softly in dialect as they re-wrap their censers, calculating which pilgrim orders to cheat to make the numbers live. A woman from the river provinces, wrists jangling with cheap silver, murmurs that her brother swore last year’s tithes were final. A temple broker at Darivash’s elbow whispers, “They will forgive arrears, if you confess and pay thrice over.” His small black eyes flick across the crowd like a money-lender’s abacus. Darivash does not answer; his face remains that of a patient, slightly anxious caravan-master, already resigned to losing a slice.
Only his fingers move, pressing the fabric of his sleeve where a slim parchment codex lies hidden: his own neat columns of expected price, bribe, and loss. Where the herald’s voice quavers over a clause, Darivash hears opportunity. Foreign incense: he will route the best bundles as “temple allotment,” piggybacked on a minor noble’s devotional shipment. Relics: the forbidden ones will travel as stones for a widow’s tomb, wrapped in proper grief.
The edict names Shadow in every line, but its shadow falls unevenly. He watches where it pools deepest (in the gaps of language, in the fear around him, in the sudden hunched shoulders of lesser merchants) measuring not the law itself, but how men will bend beneath it, and where they will pay to stand straight.
He notes a gray-bearded goatherd at the next arch, dust-caked turban askew, flanked by a bleating cluster of animals whose ribs show like hurried script beneath their hides. The man has counted his coins three times already; Darivash can read it in the chapped lips moving, the thumb worrying a cracked copper.
“The ʿušr-e ṭahārat,” intones the scribe beside the arch, a thin youth with ink-banded fingers and a voice trained to sound bored with mercy. “Purity-tithe upon all breathing offerings that cross into the precinct. Failure to declare is concealment; concealment is shadowing; shadowing is, ”
“: punished as consorting with Shadow,” the old man finishes hoarsely, some catechism from the proclamations lodging like a fishbone in his throat. He begins to argue, that his goats are thin, that his dead wife dreamed of these terraces, that last year (last year) they said no more increases.
The scribe does not argue; he cites. Clause and sub-clause fall like stones: remission only for those named in prior censuses, exemptions void where brands of criminal kin are present, arrears inheritable by surviving blood. Each phrase strips another layer of resistance.
At last the herdsman’s shoulders fold. Coins clink into a waiting bowl. A boy-acolyte daubs gray ash in a neat ring upon each goat’s brow, another ring inked upon the man’s inner wrist, then presses a leaden seal to make it law. Piety enters the garden branded as debt.
Darivash files the cadence of it away. The rhythm by which devotion is measured, weighed, and quietly transformed into obligation.
Near the registry alcove, a young pilgrim woman is pulled aside when a miscopied clan-name fails to match the caravan roll. Her veil trembles as she insists on her father’s lineage, on a village three valleys away, on an uncle who once served in the garden kitchens. The guard’s hand drifts toward his baton; her words tangle and fray.
Kouroshmir’s clerk does not look at her face. He looks at the script. A single curl of a letter is amended, the clan-signature lengthened by one stroke. In the margin he adds a sigil and three numbers. Her terror is converted into notation: “inconsistency, border province, female, unaccompanied.” The clerk’s reed pen whispers; her breathless thanks fall on him like dust. She passes on, unaware that her brief fear now lives inside a ledger.
A scuffle sparks when a spice-merchant balks at a newly announced ʿušr-e sāya, “shadow-surcharge” for trading within the last hour of sun. His protest, “Do they tithe even the length of our shadows now?”, dies as two temple guards cleave the air between men before a fist is thrown, intoning prohibitions on seditious utterance. No blood flows; only tariffs rise, and more names migrate onto hanging slates.
By the time Darivash shuffles within reach of the arch’s shadow, he has learned the pattern by heart: each blessing caught, stamped, docketed; each confession sieved into ink; each hesitation frozen as a sigil or cipher. In the scribe’s neat columns he sees prayer rendered as probability, faith discounted into ledgers of hazard, obedience, and calculated permissible risk.
He moves as if along a memorized caravan-track of reverence, each station of obedience marked and measured. At the first bronze plate bearing the twin-flames he pauses, bow dipping, knuckles brushing metal gone warm under a thousand pious foreheads. His own brow follows, a practiced press and linger, long enough for any watching priest to read sincerity into the stillness, brief enough not to clog the line.
Under his collar, where the cloth rasped his throat all morning, the white serpent-birthmark answers the touch of consecrated bronze with a faint prickle, as if some unseen heat had passed from seal to skin. He ignores it. The gesture of ignorance is as rehearsed as the prayer.
“Nūr az Nūr, sāya dar band-e nūr,” he intones with the crowd, voice low but firm, taking care to ride the middle register: neither conspicuously fervent nor impatiently clipped. The sanctioned formulae flow from him in the imperial dialect rather than his caravan tongue, syllables polished smooth by years of repetition at a hundred lesser shrines strung along the desert roads. Each word is exact, each pause where doctrine prescribes, each inflection tilted toward humble awe.
A priest with lamp-black on his thumbs watches the pilgrims’ mouths, listening for provincial accents, for unschooled substitutions, for any trace of forbidden half-verses still circulating in borderlands. When Darivash’s turn comes beneath that flat gaze, his recitation is faultless. Only his eyes betray anything: a fraction too aware of the scribe’s table, the guard’s baton, the measuring quiet between one litany and the next.
To the clerks who tick columns as he passes, he is entered without comment: “male, trader, certified, compliant.” To the guards who skim faces for unrest, he is another bowed neck in a river of bowed necks, flowing docilely toward the garden’s ordered light.
Within, he keeps count: not of prayers, but of doors, patrol rhythms, listening ears. The same motions that purchase absolution for others purchase, for him, invisibility.
At the inspection benches he is all deference and exposed palms, the very image of a man with nothing to hide. At each table he knows where the true tariff ends and the expected excess begins. He unknots his purse at the practiced moment: never first, lest he seem overeager to corrupt; never last, lest some hungry official decide to prove his incorruptibility on Darivash’s cargo. A thumb’s-width of silver slides under a docket here, a thin copper stack vanishes beneath a blotter there. Bored hands close over the coins without looking, fingers making the little ritual twitch that says, this is not a bribe but an alleviation of tedium.
Alongside the quiet metal, he offers manifests whose every stroke has been rehearsed: quantities rounded in the regime’s favor, origins blurred just enough to dull curiosity. The ink on his seals gleams with that particular tacky sheen of recent authentication, still bearing the faint resin-scent of the scribe he overpaid in a lamp-lit alcove the previous night, buying not just legality but an air of having already been approved elsewhere.
When at last a junior inspector frowns and rocks one of the crates with his boot, surprised by the depth of its weight, Darivash allows himself a small, apologetic tilt of the head, as though caught in some venial clumsiness rather than mortal risk. His hand drifts, not too quickly, to an inner fold of his robe and emerges with a lacquered wooden token stamped in the sigil of a minor fireshrine three provinces distant, its attached ribbon a faded saffron precisely matching the codified hue for “overflow offerings. Redirected.”
The inspector’s jaw eases. He recognizes the color, the stamped half-seal, the familiar fiction of piety exceeding capacity. His doubt is absorbed, translated, and filed away under the soothing category of known irregularities.
Beneath his layered robes, the jagged birthmark along his neck prickles as if lit from within. A thin, needling heat that runs beneath the skin like smoldering wire. The sensation sharpens the air, thins his breath, makes him acutely aware of every watchful eye, every stylus hovering over a ledger-line that, with one decisive stroke, could fix his name to an unspoken sentence.
Moving from one checkpoint to the next, he feels the pattern more than he thinks it: a living lattice of shrines, seals, and scribes, stretched over the plain like an invisible snare. It is not merely a net for smugglers such as himself, but a hunting ground for omens: each name murmured, each scar glimpsed, each rumor half-spoken sifted for the faintest echo of that prophesied disturbance the regime both dreads and courts, the unseen pivot on which law, garden, and empire might turn.
Kouroshmir’s scribes comb caravan registries and temple offerings alike, quietly flagging any inscription, charm, or prayer that does not match the sanctioned litanies of Light. They move with the patience of ants and the precision of knife-blades, their reed pens whispering over waxed tablets as names, marks, and peculiarities are copied twice. Once for the public ledger, once for the captain’s private codex. A talisman whose twin-flame glyph curls the wrong way, a blessing that invokes dawn without the prescribed repudiation of Shadow, a scrap of cloth inked in an unfamiliar hand. Each is circled, notated, and slipped into a separate pile.
To the untrained eye, they are only bookish functionaries hunched over tables in the dust-hazed light of the caravanserai loggia, or beneath the painted beams of the dockside inspection house. Yet their gaze ranges far beyond the columns they inscribe. They listen when a pilgrim stumbles over the official hymn and substitutes some older refrain. They notice when a merchant’s seal bears a stylized serpent woven among flames, or when a minor shrine’s donation box fills with coins marked by an obsolete royal face.
They are trained to hear omissions as sharply as blasphemies: a prayer that never quite reaches Shahin’s title of “Guardian of the Garden,” a thanksgiving that praises the river and terraces but leaves the regime unnamed. They are taught to feel, almost physically, the unsettling weight of certain phrases (“the balance must break,” “Light remembers its own shadow,” “the serpent wakes at dawn”) and when they encounter such language, their hands grow very still.
Those findings do not vanish. They are gathered at day’s end into leather packets sealed with sun-and-law sigils, carried up the processional road in the cool of evening, and laid before Kouroshmir like offerings of a different, darker kind: the sediment of an empire’s unsanctioned dreams.
Old women who mutter different versions of the world’s beginning, or pilgrims who carry heirloom tablets etched in faded, pre-cataclysm script, find themselves gently diverted into side tents “for clarification.” A novice inspector smiles, offers water, remarks on the press of the crowds. A hand light as dust on an elbow, a murmured apology to the family. Only a moment, honored mother, the captain requires that all sacred words be properly catalogued, that your treasure be preserved in the records of Light.
Inside, the air is cooler, the light angled so that hairline fractures and overworn sigils stand out. A scribe leans close over the tablet, lips moving as he traces obsolete glyphs with the tip of his stylus, translating them aloud into the empire’s newer tongue. Passages that conform to the official cosmogony are praised, copied swiftly onto fresh wax. Those that speak of twin dawns, or a garden devoured and remade, or a hunter who becomes the hunted, are marked with a faint, almost invisible cut of the nail and set aside on a separate mat. The owner rarely leaves with everything she brought.
At dusk, when most pilgrims drift toward the incense stalls and story-fires, the real chiseling begins. Under guard-lamps hooded with gold, stonecutters climb the scaffolds of the lower terraces to earn their double wages. Their hammers move with a practised mercy, blunting noses, effacing extra eyes, softening the strange old crowns that once stared unblinking over the watercourses. Each obliterated god-face is measured, sketched, and swiftly overlaid with the empire’s twin-flame, pure, symmetrical, doctrinal, while the powdered stone is swept into waiting jars like the ashes of an executed text. Larger fragments, where an obsolete halo or serpent-rayed sun still clings to the curve of a cheek, vanish into lacquered chests, catalogued by number alone, destined for the garden’s innermost archives.
Stories that the garden once served powers other than Shahin’s Light are not disproved so much as quietly harvested, copied, amended, and returned in dulled form, their sharper doubts filed away in sealed vaults no common worshipper will see. What remains in the mouths of licensed guides are smoothed parables of error and correction, where old gods kneel gracefully to the lawful sun.
“Shadow” itself becomes a domesticated epithet, invoked only as a vanquished adversary in approved homilies. Any verse that lets it breathe as substance, seepage, or kin to lawful flame is inked over or allegorized before a crowd may hear it, the stripped-out lines surviving only as scored palimpsests in Kouroshmir’s private folios, tagged with cautious marginalia.
In the bazaars below the terraces, where the garden’s stone steps blur into trampled dust and canvas awnings, pilgrims pitch their voices higher over the murmur of the crowd whenever a patrol passes, clinging to the sanctioned litanies as if volume alone could prove their purity. The words themselves are harmless, canonized praise, approved invocations of Light and lawful flame, but the urgency with which they are flung skyward betrays another fear beneath the fear of sin: the fear of being seen hesitating.
Vendors know the cadence as well as any priest. A spice-seller with henna-stained hands breaks off mid-haggle to press her brow to a bronze twin-flame plaque when a file of spear-points flashes by, resuming the argument on the next breath as if prayer were merely a comma in a sentence of profit. A boy with a tray of date-cakes lifts his voice in the third verse of the triumph hymn, the one that names Shahin “Guardian of Gardens,” careful to enunciate the title as the soldiers’ sandals slap past his bare feet.
The patrols do not ask for such noise. Their sergeants prefer silence; silence is easier to hear treason in. Yet the regime has taught for so many seasons that devotion must be visible, audible, quantifiable that absence itself has become an incriminating mark. So throats strain and palms rise; even the old woman whose rosary is strung with outlawed black seeds moves her lips in the cleaned, permitted version of the dawn litany.
Behind shuttered latticework above the stalls, other voices move more softly. A cluster of caravan scribes, Darivash’s among them, murmur the same public prayers with the same accents, but their fingers, hidden under table edges, trace older sigils in spilled tea and flour dust: crooked suns, serpentine rays, half-remembered lines where Shadow is not yet a curse but a kin-star, struck from the official recitation.
Here, under awnings that smell of cardamom and lamp-smoke, life folds itself into two registers. One is loud, polished, and squared for inspection: the chorus that swells obediently when bronze helmets glint near. The other lies in pauses, in the quick swallowing of a forbidden name, in the way a pilgrim’s eyes avert not from the guards but from the chiseled faces above them.
Even those who believe in Shahin’s chosen Light have learned to weigh each word before it leaves the tongue. In the empire’s shadowed noon, piety itself has become a kind of currency, a tax paid in sound.
Along the Navian docks, where the river’s skin glows with reflected braziers and twin-flame standards hang limp in the damp air, Navidamir bends over ink-smudged ledgers in an inspection booth that smells of mildew and lamp oil. He moves his stylus with a gambler’s care, trimming a few stones from one minor lord’s grain tithe and padding another’s declaration of incense and silk, quietly reweaving numbers so the deficit that stalks him wears the mask of dutiful accuracy.
Each alteration is small enough to pass as carelessness, an extra curl on a numeral, a dot placed just high enough to make a six into an eight, yet together they braid a rope he hopes will pull him clear of creditors and court auditors alike. Outside, his boats rock gently against their moorings, hulls groaning under real weights that no ink can lighten.
From time to time he glances toward the door, listening for the particular rhythm of regime sandals on stone. When a tax-clerk’s shadow crosses the threshold, his hand stills, his voice turns pious and precise, and the falsified columns gleam as models of loyal arithmetic.
In a rented storeroom at the Caravanserai of Darius-Shah Gate, where the mudbrick walls sweat chill despite the desert night, Darivash supervises the sealing of incense crates. The air is thick with resinous sweetness, enough to sting the eyes and mask less lawful scents. His palm lingers on each plank as it is lowered, his ink-stained fingers brushing the thin-walled compartments where brittle, ink-heavy pages lie flattened like pressed leaves, cushioned beneath layers of perfumed resin and myrrh. To the muttering porters they are only costly offerings for Shah-Parida’s braziers; to him they are outlawed treatises and worm-eaten scrolls that speak of Light braided with its twin, Shadow, wrapped now in the anonymity of devotion and trade.
Wax takes the impression of imperial lions and twin-flames, cooling around contraband as scribes recite the brief, blameless formulas that bless all “rightly declared goods.” Beneath those hardening emblems, ink-dark heresies and relic-crumbs ride on mule and barge as honored tribute, their danger dulled to any gaze that lacks either trained suspicion or a conscience pricked by omens.
Such quiet falsifications, of ledger, of incense-offering, of spoken creed, creep outward like hairline cracks beneath polished glaze. A misadded column here, a hollow idol stuffed with ink there, a prayer recited with the mouth while the heart looks aside: together they open the smallest breathing-spaces in a realm that swears there is no air, no doubt, outside its script.
In the caravanserai’s neutral corners (those low-ceilinged alcoves where caravan law holds tighter than imperial edict) old campaigners sit with their backs to the walls and their eyes on the doors, and let their tongues slip more than the young would dare. The brass lamps there burn low, the smoke curling blue against the beams, blurring faces, sharpening voices.
“They dress them in pilgrim-gray,” one veteran says, thumb rubbing the rim of his cup, “but their feet fall in legion time.” He taps the table: a steady four-beat that fits no hymn. “Listen when they change the watch at second moonrise. No hireling swordsman counts breaths like that unless a sergeant once took a stick to his spine.”
Another, his branded wrist wrapped in a charm-string of dried seeds, snorts softly. “They call them ‘guard companies for the pious,’ hired to ward off bandits from the south. Yet their lines close like shield-walls, not caravan rings. I have seen how they leave no gaps at the gate-mouth. That is not for bandits. That is for crowds.”
No one names Mard aloud; instead, they speak of “the captain with the soldier’s back,” of “the one whose men do not drink on duty,” of “that tall pilgrim-chief whose orders carry like trumpet-calls though he never raises his voice.” They mark how his supposed mercenaries move in files of three along the Darius-Shah road, spears masked in staff-caps, every man knowing who walks before and after him without needing to look.
From the tower-stairs and stable-alleys, sharper eyes have noticed more: practice circles drawn in dust at dawn, wiped smooth before the inspectors wake; mock-scuffles where the “guards” fall and rise by signal, not by chance; men who trade no boasting of past raids, as if their true battles must be forgotten to be survived.
“So,” an old archer murmurs, scar pulling one eye half shut, “either the empire has sent us temple-cohorts in pilgrim rags. Or someone is building an army that remembers which end of discipline points toward the throat.” He drinks, and the lamp-smoke folds his words into the rafters, where rumors cling like soot until the next wind comes to carry them up toward the garden.
Temple sweepers on the middle terraces swear that the walls themselves sometimes shudder like things half-waking, and in that tremor the plaster hairline-cracks and peels. For a heartbeat (no longer) ghost-letters flare beneath: hard, angular strokes unlike the soft imperial script, running in lines that tilt as if to climb out of the stone. The old ones among the sweepers, those who remember village shrines scraped clean after the great fire, say the characters bite at the eyes, black as soot and edged in a pale, unsteady radiance.
They tell how a boy dropped his broom when a serpent of ink seemed to coil along a revealed phrase, its head turned not toward heaven but sideways, toward some unseen twin path. Before he could trace it with his fingertip, a junior priest all in saffron came running white-faced, clutching a pot of wet lime. No inquiry, no prayer. Only thick strokes, slapped on with shaking hands until the elder script vanished under fresh, official purity.
“Do not stare at flaking walls,” the priest hissed, breath sour with sleeplessness. “The Light has nothing more to say there.”
On some nights, when river-fog clings low and the twin-flame posts burn down to sullen coals, the dockmen swear the current itself holds its breath. Then, between one patrol’s lantern-sweep and the next, they glimpse it: a tall shape slipping from the shadow of a warehouse arch, cloak drawn close, head bare to the chill. Not a smuggler’s scuttle, not a priest’s measured tread, but the rolling, wary balance of a stalker of game, each step testing plank and stone as if for spoor.
He does not take the lanterned stair toward the inspectors’ lodge. Instead he finds the narrow, half-forgotten goat-steps chipped into the cliff’s flank, where signage has long worn smooth, and climbs in darkness toward the silent terraces above.
Some swear he leans his scarred hand against the bark and murmurs in a hunter’s cadence, not in any temple litany, naming things that do not appear on imperial charts: “the Turning Root,” “the Mouth-of-Shadow’s Bloom.” Once, a junior warden claims, Shahin halted beneath a withered branch and flinched, like a man hearing his own death step behind him.
Seen thus in the half-glow, his hawk’s profile is not carved for coins or murals but knotted with old burns and new misgivings, the single clouded eye hunting not quarry but omens. It is as though he trails something only he can scent, some returning catastrophe, and fears that relentless radiance would at last give it a name.
In the sanctioned chronicles they carve into marble and recite from pulpits, the cost of obedience is measured in incense and orderly processions. Down here, it is reckoned in tissue and tremor.
At the Caravanserai of Darius-Shah Gate, a one-eyed caravan guard with old campaign ribbons sewn into his sash counts out bribe-coins with the same fingers that once gripped a spear for the empire. The first joint of his thumb is missing; the story given to pilgrims is that a desert jackal took it. In truth, it was forfeited to an officer’s sword when he hesitated at an order to strike down a weeping supplicant. He laughs with the merchants, but his hand never quite stops shaking as it closes over silver.
In the registry court, beneath murals of radiant angels trampling serpents, Kouroshmir’s junior scribes hunch by lamplight. They copy caravan names until the letters blur, knuckles raw from the cold and from the raps of overseers’ rods. When one ink-stained youth dares to ask why some names are circled in red, Kouroshmir answers softly, “Because doctrine requires it,” and hears, under his own voice, the crack of all the small selves he has sacrificed to keep the law coherent.
On the river, Navidamir stands at his ship’s rail as dawn smears rose over the Navian. His crew joke about pious passengers and the profits of devout fear, but his smile snags when he glances toward the inspection house. The ledger hidden beneath his fine cushions lists debts that could drown him deeper than any river. Each time he raises a cup to toast the Light’s favor, he feels the invisible collar of obligation tighten, link by link, around his throat.
Above them, on terraces where cypress shadows fall like bars, pilgrims kneel toward the inner sanctum, faces upturned, expecting blessing. They do not see the quiet trade in compromises behind them, nor the way men and women who have bent too long to the empire’s radiance cast, when they finally stand, shadows that are strangely warped.
Mard rolls up his sleeve only in private, when the noise of the caravanserai thins to coughs and distant mule-bells, when no one is near enough to mistake the motion for weakness. The leather of his bracer creaks as he loosens it; beneath, the skin of his left forearm shows the old work of the empire’s iron, seared, bubbled, then long since healed into a puckered sigil that is not a word, but a verdict. No script adorns it; the fire itself was the sentence.
He traces its ridges with a callused thumb, remembering the courtyard where it was given: the smell of charred hair, the chanting of doctrine above the weeping of condemned comrades, the officer’s voice intoning that his oath to the Light had been severed. They named him traitor not because he broke under fear, but because he would not drive a spear through kneeling civilians whose only crime was to doubt.
In the rebels’ whispered tales, that brand is a badge. In his own reckoning, it is an unpaid debt. To the dead, and to the truth he chose over obedience.
Kouroshmir does not so much read as wrestle. All night he leans over a trellised garden of scrolls and codices, pale fingers smudged with the pollen of ground ink, eyes filmed red where sleep has withdrawn its mercy. Here a fragment that names a serpent of dawn as savior; there a shard that calls the same mark an instrument of ruin. He lifts lines like stones, turning them until their edges can be made to lie against imperial precedent. With each stroke of the stylus that trims, qualifies, or consigns a verse to the sealed archives, he feels the law tighten around something it cannot quite contain. A quiet, treacherous thought persists: that every omission is a fuse he cannot see the end of.
Navidamir lingers on his deck long after the pilgrims have sunk into snores and prayers, listening to the slow slap of the Navian against the hull while his thoughts wheel like carrion birds. Debts tallied in another man’s ink, reports whispered to Kouroshmir’s discreet envoys, the clear, tightening knowledge that one misstep will see him presented, shackled, to the very officials he flatters by day.
Darivash presses ink-stained fingers to the serpent birthmark as another spike of pain spears his skull; the caravan-yard fades, replaced by a garden torn into shards of blinding light and soot-dark void. Pilgrims burn soundlessly, braziers gutter black. When his sight crawls back, the sanctioned hymns outside sound thin, and he knows the regime’s radiant order rests on a nameless Shadow.
The chill is not a mere shiver but a slow, articulate thing, threading from the white serpent of his birthmark down his ribs, coiling tight as a warning. It tugs him away from the lamp-lit processional corridor, away from the murmured prayers and the measured footfalls of patrolling guards. He pauses at a junction where polished stone gives way to rougher masonry, listening; only the distant sigh of water through hidden channels answers.
He breathes once, twice, as a cautious merchant would before committing to a ruinous bargain, then slips sideways through a narrow service arch half-screened by a lattice of devotional plaques. The script upon them proclaims the triumph of Light under Shahin’s mandate, the approved dualism of the present age; the serpent on his skin stings, as if in refutation.
Beyond the arch the ceiling lowers, the floor roughens. The corridor tilts downward like a forgotten aqueduct. He lowers his head and shoulders, robes whispering along sweat-cool stone, talismans knocking softly against his chest. Here the garden’s ordered geometry loosens into the crude practicality of the old builders: patched bricks, blind corners, iron staples rusted to black scars.
His steps grow quieter. Dust swirls in his wake like a dislodged memory. Now and then a maintenance niche yawns, stacked with cracked amphorae and bundles of rotted rope. No incense hangs here, no chanting pilgrims tread this way. Only the steady drip of unseen condensation, the faint metallic tang of age, and the climbing tension in his flesh.
The mark along his neck burns colder, guiding rather than hindering. Once, at a branching where one tunnel curves toward the muffled thunder of upper fountains and another slopes deeper into stale air, he hesitates. Reason says: turn back. The ledgers are balanced, the guards suspicious, Navidamir’s smile too sharp of late. Yet the serpent seems to twist its head toward the dark.
“So be it,” Darivash whispers in the empire’s trade-tongue, then in Old Avestan, a half-forgotten phrase of supplication to the Dawn. His breath fogs in the narrow passage, though the season is hot.
The disused maintenance way ends in a collapsed segment of corridor, half-choked with broken tiles carved in obsolete sigils of flame and star. To the right, behind a leaning pillar, a lower gap gapes: no taller than his chest, its edges smoke-stained, as though some old cleansing fire had tried and failed to seal it.
He unhooks the weighted hem of his robe, folds himself down, and wriggles through. Stone scrapes his shoulders; grit works under his nails. For a moment he is entombed, the serpent-mark pressed to cold rock, hearing only the rhythm of his own heart and the far-off murmur of the sacred terraces above.
Then he spills, awkward and coughing, into a dust-choked side vault where no official archivist has walked in years.
Dust hangs in the chamber like a faded benediction, dulling the lamplight to a weary amber. The place smells of things that have burned and been forgotten: old oil, singed vellum, the ghost of incense laid down in layers over generations and then abandoned to mildew and stone. Darivash’s knees grind against grit as he lowers himself before the slant of half-buried masonry that closes one end of the vault, the serpent along his neck thrumming like a plucked string.
He sets the lamp to one side. Its flame gutters, then steadies, as though reluctant to witness what lies ahead. With the care he would reserve for an imperial seal, he brushes away centuries of settled dust: the heel of his hand, the edge of his sleeve, the quick, economical strokes of a man accustomed to uncovering hidden compartments in false-bottomed chests.
Curved letters emerge, no, return, from beneath his touch. Old Avestan, but older in style than the temple fragments he has smuggled before: deeper-cut, less ornamental, their strokes biting into the stone. They do not glow, not quite; instead they trouble his sight, as if each glyph were the echo of a sound too low for the ear, vibrating instead in the bones of his face.
The more he clears, the more the script seems to arrange itself into sense under his gaze, reshaping what half-knowledge he has from contraband scrolls and caravan gossip. Lines of invocation bend into warning; hymns kink into legal clauses written in the grammar of stars and flame. He murmurs syllables under his breath, testing them on his tongue, and each word carries an aftertaste of ash and cold light.
His ink-stained fingers, trained to tally weights and debts, learn a different arithmetic now: measuring the intervals between carved signs, tracing repetitions, feeling where some chisel, long dead, pressed harder at a name or a negation. There, beneath a flaking veil of limewash and smoke, a phrase catches at him, snagging like a hook concealed in silk.
His ink-stained fingers creep along the incised channels, learning their depth and hesitation as a blind man learns a beloved face. He follows each curve until it resolves not into pious commonplaces but into older, barbed speech: vows sworn before the first coronation, judgments rendered when the garden had another name. He shapes the sounds under his breath, lips barely moving, tasting flint and cold water in the syllables. Meaning loosens from the stone with the dust. Verses of ascent twist into prohibitions, benedictions into veiled threats. There (nested within a tangle of star-terms and balances weighed in light and shadow) a title surfaces, slow as a diver from a black pool: Drāvāg Sarayu, Serpent of Dawn, exhaled from the rock like something that remembers breathing.
His hand stills. Beneath the soot and lime a relief unfurls: not letters now but a thin, incised ribbon of radiance coiling once about a carved human eye, then breaking in a jagged flourish down the suggested curve of neck and collarbone. The angle of the turn, the small flaw where the line splinters. His own pale serpent, rendered in stone centuries before his birth.
His pulse stutters in his throat as he forces himself to follow the next lines, stringing sense from the archaic grammar until the shape of it crushes the air from his chest. This is no convenient regime-era fabrication, no retrofitted omen; the stone speaks from an age before Shahin’s scar and throne, and it speaks of a serpent-marked merchant as if waiting for him alone.
He lifts the contraband lamp closer, edging the wick higher with his thumb until the flame gutters, flares, and steadies into a fierce, narrow tongue. Soot blooms against the low ceiling, but down here beneath the registry hall no inspector bothers with air or angels. The little bronze hood focuses the light into a trembling crescent that clings to the wall. Under that wavering aureole the stone seems to sweat and breathe.
At first he had thought the prophecy broke cleanly: an abrupt, ceremonial ending, like the clipped blessing on an imperial decree. Now, with the flame almost kissing the rock, he sees the lie of that neatness. The line he took for closure is no more than a chisel-gouged horizon, a place where meaning has been planed off and plastered thin. Hairline ridges show where someone laid a skin of fresh lime over the ancient surface, then hacked their own message into the still-damp crust.
He angles the lamp, letting the light rake sideways. Shadows climb out of the wall. Faint, drowned strokes shimmer beneath the dominant script, like old river channels glimpsed through clear, low water. Where the original letters once descended in a slow, measured column, the new hand has come slashing across at an ugly angle, severing curves mid-arc, decapitating verbs, beheading oaths.
The prophecy does not end; it has been arrested in mid-breath, its final clauses caught under this later crust, silenced but not quite erased. Along the lower margin he can feel with his fingertips the ghost-edges of older glyphs, softer, more deeply bitten, their presence betrayed where the plaster thins. The sentence about the Serpent of Dawn coils down and then vanishes as if into fog, not because the seer ceased to speak, but because another, clumsier hand decided where the future should stop.
The over-writing hand is cruder, all angles and impatience, the grooves too even, too shallow, as if the chisel had been guided more by decree than devotion. Lines of formulaic piety run in parade-ground order across the older script, each word a stamped command: پاکی، فرمانبری، فروغِ مُجاز. No hesitations, no ornament, only the blunt cadence of proclamations read in marketplaces at spearpoint.
They do not so much accompany the buried text as drag their heels through it. Where the Old Avestan curves once looped and dipped like water following the lay of the stone, these newer letters cut straight, indifferent to what lies beneath. Stems of verbs are sheared off mid-flow, oaths about balance and reckoning severed where a scribe of the regime needed space to praise the “پیروزیِ فروغِ آمرانه.” In one place a single ancient character (half-swallowed by plaster) has been neatly bisected by the upright stroke of a legalistic “نور”، as though the Light itself had been made into an instrument for beheading older meanings.
Here, in miniature, is the garden rewritten: a cultivated theology planted over a razed and salted warning.
As his eyes follow each scored curve and squared-off angle, a colder comprehension settles over him. This so‑called inscription of blessing is no sibling text, no later gloss offered in humility, but a palimpsest of subjugation: doctrine hammered down until it pierces what came before. The regime has not merely crowned the old warning; it has driven its letters like nails through a body already laid out, pinning prophecy in place. Beneath the pious phrases about obedience and licensed radiance, he can glimpse verb-roots that once spoke of فروغی که بر خویش میچرخد، نورِ گرسنهای که خویشتن را میجود تا در سیاهیِ خویش گم شود. Here, the empire’s Light is literally taught to devour its own shadowed caution, and call the feast virtue.
He lets his thumb follow those ruptured seams where elder clauses once flowed like uninterrupted water and now hitch and stammer beneath the shaved, sanctioned phrases. The recognition curdles in him: this is contraband turned inside out. Once he wrapped illicit truth in bales of lawful cloth; here, revelation itself lies smuggled under a parade of licensed piety, falsity paraded as ward and benediction.
He brushes more gently, the way one coaxes ink from spoiled parchment, and a thin film of grit powders beneath his nails. For a blink the drowned script surfaces (فیروماریِ سحرگاهی، باغی که به آتشِ خویش گشوده و گسیخته میشود، ترازویی واژگونشده بر حاشیهٔ بهشت) then the newer words of حکم و طهارت slide back over them like a second eyelid, forced shut.
خطوطِ مایل، آنقدر تیز و منظم که گویی نه بر گچِ دیوار که در پوستِ زنده کنده شدهاند، برای چشمِ آموختهاش غریب نیستند. آن زاویهٔ حسابشده در شکستِ الف، آن مکثِ اضافی در دُمِ نون، آنهمه خویشتنداریِ خطّی که وانمود میکند صرفاً تزیینِ روحانی است، اما در حقیقت نقابِ حسابداریِ یک جلّادِ کلمات است. جایی در ذهنش بوی نمِ انبار و روغنِ چراغ باز میشود: دفترهای حسابِ مصادرهشده، دفتردارِ او که زیر نگاهِ سربازان دستش میلرزید، و حاشیهنویسیهای کوتاه و فشرده که در لای سطرها همچون رگهای پنهانِ فلز میدوید. همانجا بود که برای نخستین بار این دستخط را دیده بود، در حروفِ ریزِ بیحاشیهای که وزنِ تبر را داشتند.
اکنون، در نیمتاریکیِ تالار، بین دعاهای زراندود و آیاتِ رسمی، همان دستخط چون خاری سفید در گوشتِ سنگ بیرون زده است. این دیگر حاشیهٔ یک دفترِ تجارتیِ توقیفشده نیست؛ این حاشیه، استخوانبندیِ تازهٔ وحیِ مسخشده است. کورووشمیر, آنکه همیشه کلامِ شریعت را چون سپری در برابرِ هوسهای خشنِ نگهبانان بالا میگرفت، آنکه با صدای خشک و منظمش از «توازنِ نور و سایه در قانون» سخن میگفت. او انگشتش را روی یکی از آن نشانههای رمزی میگذارد؛ سه خطِ کوتاه که اگر چشمِ ناآزموده باشد آذین میپنداردشان، اما او رمزِ قدیمی را میشناسد: «حذف شد»، «تغییر یافت»، «به حاشیهٔ مکتوم سپرده شد». همین علایم را در حاشیهٔ دفترهایی دیده بود که بارِ او را وزن میکردند و سهمِ ناخالصی را جدا. آنجا حذف یعنی انداختنِ چند کیسهٔ ادویه در آبِ تیرهٔ رود بود؛ اینجا حذف یعنی انداختنِ آیهای در چاهِ خاموشی.
در ذهنش صدای آن روز زنده میشود که کورووشمیر، پشتِ میزِ چوبِ تیره، خطِ ریزش را بر کاغذ میلغزاند و بیآنکه سر بردارد، به او میگفت: «قانون، بازرگان، چون ناو است بر آبِ هرجومرج. اگر سوراخ شود، همه فرو میرویم.» اکنون داریوَش رگِ پنهانِ نفاق را میبیند: همان قلم که سوراخِ دفاترِ قاچاقچیان را میجُست، اینجا حفره در تنِ پیشگویی زده است، و همان دست که به نامِ نور سایه را میسنجید، سایهٔ حقیقت را در نورِ دروغ حل کرده است.
فهم نه چون جرقهای بلکه چون سیلابی سرد از بندهای درونش فرو میریزد؛ نه آهسته و قابلمذاکره، بل یکباره، بیامکانِ چانهزدن. آن «قائدِ دفتر و دژ» که سالها در ذهنش در ردیفِ کمشمار مردانی جا گرفته بود که دستِ خود را از خونِ بیحساب دور نگه میدارند، آن کاتبِ خشکچهره که همواره میانِ تازیانه و محکوم، سدی از عبارت و تبصره میکشید، نه نظارهگرِ منفعلِ این مثلهکردن، که خود، جراحِ سطرها بوده است. اینجا امضا پنهان است، نه در مهرِ سرخ که در جاهای خالیِ متن، در جملاتی که بهجا نماندهاند.
دیگر سخن از غفلتِ یک مأمورِ پرکار یا فشارِ مبهمِ بالادستی نیست؛ کورووشمیر با همان ذهنِ وزنسنجِ قانون، آیات را روی ترازوی فرمان گذاشته و بهعمد آنچه را خطرناک دانسته، به قعرِ حوضی بیانعکاس پرتاب کرده است. او، با همهٔ خطبههایش در بابِ «امانتداریِ کلامِ نور»، خود کاتبانِ سایه را فرمان داده؛ و پیشگویی را چون کالایی ضبطشده، بازبسته، مُهرِ سلطنت بر جلدِ تازهاش کوبیده و آن را بهصورتِ موعظهای بیزیان به بازارِ ایمان فرستاده است.
هر سطرِ قیچیشده چون دندانهٔ ارّهایست که بر تنهٔ پیشگویی رفته؛ هر عبارتِ چرخاندهشده، چون کاروانی که از راهِ اصلی به جادهٔ نظامی منحرف شده باشد، مقصود را به اردوگاهِ دیگری میبرد. هشدارها در دهانِ این خطّ به توصیههای وفاداری بدل شدهاند، چون لوحی که در آن «بپرهیز» را با جوهری ناپیدا پاک کرده و «بپرست» را با زر نوشته باشند. شک، که در متنِ کهن بهمنزلهٔ بیداری بود، اینجا به عنوانِ «فسادِ باطن و خیانت به نور» نامگذاری شده؛ و «مارِ سحرگاهی»، آن نشانهٔ لرزانکنندهٔ تعادل، به حاشیهای کوچک فرو کاسته شده که تنها میگوید: «تأویلش منوط به رأیِ دربار است.» در ترازوی تازه، خطر برای سلطنت، نه برای جهان، سنگینتر شمرده شده است.
خشم در او میجهد و همانقدر سریع پس مینشیند، چون لهیبِ کوتاهِ آتشی که ناگهان به یادِ زمختیِ صدای متینِ کورووشمیر میافتد؛ آن مناظرههای طولانی در بابِ قانونِ کاروان و باجِ آستانه، آن دقتِ سرد در تفکیکِ حقالعبور از رشوه. احترامی که سالها در حاشیهٔ دلش جا خوش کرده بود، اکنون چون روغنِ فاسد میگندد؛ درمییابد که شیفتگیِ فرمانده به «نظم» همواره دربرگیرندهٔ شکستنِ سنجیدهٔ حقیقت بوده است، نه از سرِ هوس، بل چون حسابگریِ قصابی که میداند کجا باید رگِ کلمه را ببرد تا لاشهٔ معنا همچنان برای بازارِ ایمان آبرومند بنماید.
نقشِ مار بر پوستش مور مور میشود، گویی خودِ جوهرِ سپید به حاشیههای متن چنگ میاندازد. دوباره رمزینهها را دنبال میکند و این بار، نه درسِ فقهِ نور میبیند و نه وسواسِ مصحّح، بل دستِ نامرئیِ کیفر را که روایتِ جهان را جابهجا میکند تا پیشگویی، هرچه در اصل نوید داده باشد، در نسخهٔ درباری حتماً خائنی داشته باشد که به آن سنجاق شود، چهرهای آماده برای شعلههای آیینسوزی و خطبههای پیروزی.
دفترهای بارنامه، در چشمِ او، به تله بدل میشوند؛ هر ستونِ گندم و کندر، نه تنها حسابِ سود و زیان، که بهانهایست برای شمردن و جدا کردن و دایره کشیدن گردِ نامِ آنانی که سفرشان با جریانِ مجازِ پرهیزگاری همخوان نیست. میبیند که چگونه در حاشیهٔ هر سیاهه، دستِ دیگری نوشته است: «بررسیِ طهارت»، «بازبینیِ نیت»، «پرسش از منشأِ نذورات»؛ و این واژهها، که برای تاجران تنها اصطلاحی اداری مینمود، اکنون در نظرش چون دندانههای قفلاند، ردِ عبورِ هر کسی را که از راهِ معمولی نیامده باشد ثبت میکنند.
جداولِ وزن و تعداد، که همیشه برای او زبانِ بیعیبِ داد و ستد بود، ناگهان به گونهای دیگر خوانده میشود: در کنارِ هر عدَدْ، چهرهای پنهان؛ در پشتِ هر خروار، مقصودی زیرِ لب؛ در پاورقیِ هر صفحه، امضای مأموری که با یک قلمخوردن میتواند بار را «مشکوک» بنامد و صاحبش را به درِ تالارِ بازجویی بفرستد. میفهمد که این نظمِ ظاهراً بیطرف، که کاروانیان به آن خو کردهاند، همان شبکهایست که کورووشمیر و همسنخانش بر آن تکیه دارند: غربالِ نرم، نه با کلافِ طناب، بل با نخِ بارنامه و مُهرِ تحویلدار.
حتی اصطلاحاتِ خشکِ کارواننویسان – «تغییرِ مسیر بهعلّتِ توفان»، «تاخیر در رسیدنِ محموله»، «افزایشِ ناگهانیِ همراهانِ غیرِ تاجر» – در گوشش طنینِ دیگری میگیرد: بهانه برای پرسش، روزنهای برای سوءظن. میبیند که چگونه یک قلم، کافیست تا کنارِ نامِ هر زائرِ نشاندار، نقطهای کوچک بنشانند؛ نقطهای که در نسخهٔ بعدی به دایرهای بدل میشود، و در فهرستِ بعد، آن دایره به پرچمی سرخ. در این نظام، بار نه فقط سنجیده میشود، که روح نیز در ترازو میرود؛ و هرکه وزنش با روایتِ رسمی از نور نسازد، زیرِ عنوانِ «انحرافِ مسیر» ثبت میشود، بیآنکه هرگز بداند در کدام ستون از پیشْ برایش جا نگاه داشته بودند.
راههای زائرکش، که زمانی در نگاهِ او تنها شریانهای سود و کرایه و عُشر بود، اکنون چون رگهایِ حسابشدهٔ تلهای عظیم در هم میپیچد؛ جویبارهایی هدایتشده که هر چه نشاندار است و هر که از فقر یا نفرین به امیدِ رهایی دست زده، ناگزیر از گلوگاههایی میگذراند که در آن، کاتب و سالارِ راه همچون صرّافانِ بدگمان سکهٔ روح را بر سندانِ دفتر میکوبند و گوش به طنینِ کوچکترین خلل در آلیاژِ سرنوشت میسپارند.
میبیند که چگونه راهِ کوهستانی، که در ظاهر برای تقسیمِ ازدحام است، درست در نقطهای به ایستگاهِ سرشماری میرسد که در آن، سایهٔ هر مسافر بر دیوارِ گلین اندازه گرفته میشود؛ چگونه قافلهٔ رود، ناچار باید از زیرِ ایوانی بگذرد که چشمهای دودگرفتهٔ باجگیران چون روزنههای قلعه، هر چهره را قاب میگیرند. در هر دوراهی، همیشه راهِ «پاکانِ بینشان» هموارتر و نزدیکتر به سقاخانه افتاده است، و آن شاخهٔ فرعی، پر از سنگلاخ و تأخیر، مخصوصِ آنان است که در نگاهِ کسی – یا در سطرِ نامرئیِ ورقی – «قابلِ سنجشِ دوباره» علامت خوردهاند؛ مسیری که نه به زیارت، که به ترازوهای پنهان ختم میشود.
بازرسیهای «طهارت» ناگهان در نظرش پوست عوض میکنند؛ دیگر نه صرفِ نگاه به کجومعوجیِ بار و ستونِ عدد، بل آیینی از بازپرسیست که در بخور و تبریک و تبسّمِ ملایم پنهان شده. در صفههای سنگی، زیرِ چلچراغِ روغنی و دودِ کندر، مردانِ آستینگشوده با همان لحنِ بیهیجانِ صرّافانِ عوارض میپرسند: تبارت کیست، در خوابهای اخیرت چه دیدهای، این داغ بر بازویت از کجاست، آن خالِ سپید بر گردنت از چه نسلی مانده؟ واژگان نرم است و دعا بر لب، امّا هر پاسخ، بیکموکاست، در حاشیهٔ دفتری جداگانه مینشیند؛ دفتری که نه برای حسابِ گندم که برای سنجشِ «انحراف» است، جایی که یک لغزشِ زبان میتواند به معنای باز شدنِ دری از تالارِ استنطاق باشد.
دفاترِ نذورات و مُدادهای خُشک بر پوستِ آهو، در ذهنش به شبکهای نادیدنی از خطوطِ متقاطع بدل میشود: هر رقمِ طلا که با سیاههٔ کاروان و دفترِ رود و مهرِ نگهبان تطبیق میخورد، گرهیست در تور. کافیست روایتِ راهِ مردی بلرزد، یا نقشِ نور و سایه بر پوستش با الگوی مجاز نسازد، تا آن تور ناگهان، بیهیاهو، بر او جمع شود.
در آن صُبحگاهِ ناگهانیِ صفا، نظمِ ستودهٔ باغ دیگر هندسهٔ قدسی نمینماید؛ نقشِ دارِ شکاریست عظیم که از کنگرهٔ حجرهٔ نذورات تا پیچِ آخرِ راهبند کشیدهاند. هر گذرگاه همچون کمینگاهِ آهو، هر دفتر و مُهر، دانه و دام است تا هر که را نشانی از نبوّت یا نفرین بر تن دارد، بیخبر، در آروارهٔ قانون گام زند؛ قانونی که به نامِ نور میخندد و در سایه، دندان میساید.
دردی بم و خزنده از مسیرِ داغِ مارپیچ تا نوکِ انگشتانش میدود؛ دردی که نه شبیهِ خستگیِ راه است، نه از سرِ سرمای سحرگاه، بل لرزشی همنوا با همان سنگ. گویی پوست و کتیبه، هر دو به ضربانِ پنهانی واحدی گوش سپردهاند. بندبندِ انگشتانش بر خطِّ کندهکاری میلغزد، و هر حرف، زیرِ پَستوبُلندِ سوهانِ دیروز، نفَس میکشد: برآمدن چون سینهٔ جانوری در خواب، فرونشستن چون آهی در گلوی مدفون.
در نخستین لحظه، ذهنِ عادتکردهاش میکوشد آن را به خستگی و وَهم نسبت دهد: لابد سنگ، از خورشیدِ ظهر گرم مانده؛ لابد نبضِ خودش را بر میانهٔ کف دست حس میکند و بس. اما گرما از سنگ به دست نمیآید، برعکس، سرمای عجیبی از میان حروف به شاخههای عصب میخزد، و سوزی ساکت، از داغ برگردن تا شانه و بازو بالا میافتد. او، که عمری در ریگهای داغِ بیابان و چوبِ خشنِ صندوقان خو کرده، اکنون زیرِ نرمیِ موهومِ این خطها، ناآرام میشود؛ چنان است که انگار خودِ حروف او را تحریر میکنند، نه او آنها را.
هر واژه که زیرِ انگشتش میگذرد، شکلی از معنا را در ذهنش بلند میکند، بیآنکه لازم باشد صدا در دهان بگردد. واژگان، در قالبِ زبانِ کهنِ اوستایی که از استادِ سالخوردهای در بُست آموخته بود، در سرش به زمزمه درمیآیند؛ امّا همزمان، لایهای دیگر بر سرِ آنها میلغزد، چون سایه بر روی نقشِ گچبری: معنایی موازی، مرموز، که به همان اندازه در او مینشیند که متنِ رسمی. در یک سطح، سخن از نور و طهارت و «ترازوهای بیخطا»ست؛ در زیر، اشاره به کفههاییست که عمداً کج میمانند تا خونِ درستکار و خطای خُردهپا را به یک اندازه بپذیرند.
نبضِ درد در کفِ دستش با وزنِ خاصّ کلمات تنظیم میشود: هرجا که سنگ نامی از «قانون» میبرد، ضربانِ خون کمی تندتر، هرجا که «سایه» را با عنوانی ملایم و مبدّل میخوانَد، خونسردتر، سردتر. شگفتزده درمییابد که پیش از لب، تنش است که این تعابیر را میفهمد؛ عضلهها فشرده میشوند آنگاه که بر خطوطی میلغزد که از «پاکسازی» و «غربالِ نفوس» سخن میگویند، و داغِ مار مانندِ ماری که از خوابِ زمستانی برمیخیزد، قدری میپیچد، میلرزد، و ردِ گرمایی تیز در گوشتِ گردنش حک میکند.
سرش را اندکی خم میکند تا بهتر بخواند، امّا تمرکز بر حروف، صُلب نمیماند. کنارهٔ دیدگانش شروع میکند به موج زدن، چنانکه گویی سنگِ دیوار دیگر تنها سطحی برای کتیبه نیست، بل پردهای نازک است که پشتِ آن، چیزی روشن و ناروشن تکان میخورد. خطوطِ میخی، زیرِ فشارِ نگاه، اندک اندک از هم باز میشوند، فاصلههای میانِ واژگان عمق میگیرند، و او لحظهای دچارِ این هراس میشود که اگر انگشتش را باز بر آنها بکشد، سراشیبِ نامرئیای را لمس خواهد کرد که به قعرِ چیزی گشوده میشود؛ نه چاه، بل شکافی در خودِ روایت.
نَفَس را در سینه نگه میدارد و باز، با سرانگشت، تنها یک حرفِ منفرد را لمس میکند؛ حرفی که در متونِ مقدّس به معنای «فروغ» است. ولی زیرِ انگشتِ او، آن حرف، به طرزی نامعقول، سرد و زبر مینماید، چنانکه انگار پیش از این بارها پاک شده و از نو حک شده است. بر صفحهٔ ذهنش، تصویرِ کاغذهای پالیمسِستِ کهنه میلغزد که در آن، کاتبان، رویِ دعویِ دیروز، امروز را نوشتهاند: آیین بر آیین، نور در نام و ظلمت در عمل، هر لایه، تنها اندکی پررنگتر از آنکه زیرِ آن خوابیده.
قلبش میکوشد وزنِ تجربه را سبک کند: «این هم یکی از بازیهای ذهنِ خستهست؛ سنگ، سنگ است و دستور، دستور.» امّا بدنش از او پیشتر رفته. عرقِ سردی، در خطِّ داغِ مار، چون شبنمی ناهمخوان با هوا، جمع میشود. بوی خفیفی از گردِ سنگِ کهنه به مشام میرسد، آمیخته با سایهٔ بوی سوختگی، گویی این حروف، روزگاری نهچندان دور، در کنارِ آتشی عظیم نوشته شدهاند؛ آتشی چون همان که در رؤیاهایش بارها باغها و برجها را در خود بلعیده است.
لحظهای خیال میکند اگر کفِ دستش را درست بر مرکزِ کندهکاری بچسباند و اجازه دهد این تپشِ مشترک، اوج بگیرد، دیوار، چون پردهای نازک، راه خواهد داد؛ نه برای گذشتنِ تن، بل برای لغزشِ ذهن به آن سویِ رسمیِ تاریخ؛ جایی که نخستین بار این قوانینی که به نامِ نور آویختهاند، بر زبانِ که و به دستورِ که جاری شده است. در همین اندیشه است که ضربانِ درد به ناگهان بالا میگیرد، چون کوبشِ دهلی بر آستانهٔ قربانگاه، و عضلاتِ ساعدش بیاختیار منقبض میشوند.
دستش را با حرکتی تند پس میکشد، انگار لبهٔ تیغی پنهان را لمس کرده باشد، و چند بار پلک میزند تا تصویر، چون سرابِ داغِ ظهر، از برابرِ دیدگانش بگریزد؛ امّا نمیگریزد. در حاشیهٔ نگاهش هنوز صفوفِ براقِ حاجیان را میبیند که در نورِ پالودهٔ حیاطِ بالا حرکت میکنند، ردای سپید و جامههای زعفرانیشان در نظمِ هندسی میلغزد، چون ورقِ زرّ ورنیکشیدهای که بر سطحی ناهماهنگ کشیده باشند. سرودهای مجاز، آن نغمههای آشنا که بارها در مجالسِ نذر و معامله همراهیشان کرده، اکنون نه چون دعایی خودجوش، بل همچون لعابی نازک بر چیزی سختتر و غلیظتر در گوشش میکوبند؛ زیرِ هر بندِ تسبیح، ضربِ خاموشِ هجایی دیگر میتپد که به زبان نیامده است.
در ژرفای آن بینش، گویی بر دیوارِ همان راهرو، کتیبهای دیگر میدرخشد: سطری که با هیچ جوهرِ رسمی ننوشتهاند، بل با سایهٔ آتش و دودِ خون. نقشِ کاروانهای بینام و محکومانِ بیسنگِ مزار، که از شکافهای متنِ نورانی سربرمیآورند، چون حروفی که در نیمتاریکی با نوکِ ناخن بر سنگ خراشیده باشند.
پارههای نیایشنامه و خطبههای آیینی که سالها برای رونقِ سودا و خوشایندِ کاهنان از بر کرده بود، یکییکی در ذهنش میپیچند و از جامهٔ آشنای خود برکنده میشوند. آن عباراتِ نرم و مطیعِ ستایش، که تا دیروز چون زرِ نازک بر زبانِ بازرگان مینشست، اکنون چون ورقِ روکششدهای واژگون میشوند و خطوطی زیرین، خشنتر و راستگوتر، از زیرِ لعاب سر برمیآورند؛ سطرهایی از نوری که نه بر سریر نشسته، بل چون شکارِ زخمی، در کشتزارِ عالم تعقیب میشود. درمییابد که هر «سپاس بر فروغِ بیغروب» در اصل، دهنهایست بر دهانِ هراسی که از خاموشیِ همان فروغ میلرزد، و هر وعدهٔ «ترازوهای بیخطا» نقابیست بر کفههایی که عمداً به سودِ شکارچیانِ سایه سنگین شدهاند.
موجی از تهوّع و دردی تیز، چون انفجارِ ستارهای در گودیِ جمجمه، او را وامیدارد با هر دو دست به سنگ تکیه زند. پشتِ پلکهای فشردهاش، باغ میلرزد و از نو میچیند: نه چون پناه، بل چون تلهای چندلایه، که در آن، عسلِ آیین، طُعمه است و دام، رشتههای نامرئیِ نبوّتِ مصادرهشده.
وقتی سرانجام نگاهش را با کوششی آگاهانه از تاقچه میکَند، دیوارهای این حجرهٔ انبارْ نازکتر مینمایند؛ گویی همین کلماتِ مدفون، ملاطِ بنای تمامِ این قدسِ سنگی را سست کردهاند. بهناگاه یقین میکند که اگر هم برخیزد، گردِ انبار را از زانو بزداید و چون بازرگانی ساده از در بیرون رود، این بینشْ دیگر به خوابِ پیشین بازنخواهد گشت، بل چون جراحتی بیدار، در هر گامْ خود را به یادش خواهد آورد.
شستش را بر لبهٔ شکستهٔ تاقچه میفشارد؛ سنگِ فرسوده زیرِ گوشتِ انگشت، چون پوستی تبدار میلرزد. مورموری از همان نقطهٔ سردِ کنارِ چشم تا پایینِ گردناش میدود؛ مارِ سپیدِ زادهشده با او، آن پیچِ نوری که سالها تنها نشانی بر پوست بود، اکنون گویی زیرِ گوشت میجنبد، حلقه به حلقه بیدار میشود و دندانِ نامرئیاش را به رگهایش میساید. نفسش کوتاه میشود. نه از تنگیِ انبار، بل از این احساس که تنِ او، خود، ورقیست که سطرِ دیگری رویش آغاز شده.
آیه، یکباره و یکپارچه، در ذهناش شعله میکشد؛ نه آن نسخهٔ پاکیزه و وصلهخوردهای که در نیایشنامهها خوانده و فروخته بود، بل متنِ نخستین، بیدستخوردگیِ دشنهٔ دبیران. واژهها، که تا کنون تکهتکه و محو، چون جرقههایی در خواب بر او گذشته بودند، اکنون همچون نقشی بر مسِ افروخته پدیدار میشوند؛ هیچ سطرِ گمگشتهای نیست، هیچ جای خالیای که با حدسِ کاتبان پر شده باشد. هر وقفۀ حذفشده بازگشته است، هر فعلِ نرم، شکلِ تیزِ آغازینِ خود را باز میگیرد.
«مارِ سپیدهدم، پردهٔ باغِ دروغ را میدرد…» عبارت، با فونِ دیگری، با لحنی ناآشنا و کهن، در سرش طنین میاندازد؛ و برای نخستینبار درمییابد که این لقب، نه افسانهای دور، که شرحِ برآمدنِ خودِ اوست. او، تاجرِ کاروانها، ناگهان در دلِ آن شعرِ گمنام ایستاده است، نه در حاشیهٔ امنِ حاشیهنویسی.
انگشتِ شستش از لبهٔ زَبَرِ سنگ سُر میخورد و بر شیارهای فرسودهٔ کهن میایستد؛ ردّ قلمی دیگر، دستی دیگر، سدههایی پیش از او، که کوشیده همین آتش را در همین تاقچه دفن کند. حس میکند که اگر اکنون چشم ببندد، میتواند صاحبِ آن دست را ببیند: کاتبی لرزان در نورِ چراغِ روغن، یا پیامآوری گریزپا، که میدانست روزی تاجری با مارِ نور بر پوست از اینجا خواهد گذشت.
طنینِ صداهای بازار و زنگِ دورِ شتران، که پیشتر همچون خزهای بر دیوارِ گوش مینشست، کمرنگ میشود؛ گویی انبارْ قشری نازک است بر گردِ مغزی آکنده از این یک آیه. او در دلِ عبارت زندانیست، و در همان حال، چیزی در او میفهمد که این زندان، دروازه نیز هست.
بهجای آنکه تاقچه را از نو بپوشاند و وانمود کند هرگز چیزی ندیده است، کاردِ نازکِ کمربندش را بیرون میکشد؛ تیغه را، نه چون دزدی هراسان، بل چون دبیرِ محاکم، با وقاری سرد در مشت میگیرد. چراغِ روغن را نزدیکتر میآورد تا شعله، سایۀ مارِ سپید را بر دیوار کشیدهتر کند. با حوصلۀ حسابشدهای که برای سنجشِ وزنِ ادویه و زر نگاه میداشت، لایۀ نمناکِ گچ را خراش میدهد؛ نخست خطوطِ کهن را لمس میکند، آنگاه در میانِ آنها، سطرهای تازه میکِشد، گویی حاشیۀ خاموشی را میدَرَد تا سخنِ مدفون نفس بکشد.
واژگانِ بیسانسور را، همانگونه که در ذهنش شعله گرفتهاند، به خطّ اوستاییِ کهن، خُرد و فشرده، بر پوستِ دیوار مینشاند؛ هر هجا چون ضربهای بر بندِ عهدنامهای ناپیدا. انگشتانِ جوهریاش میلرزند و لکههای سیاه، در چروکِ پوست و شیارِ گچ، در هم میدَوَند. گردِ گچ، چون ارواحِ ریزِ قبالههای سوخته، در شعاعِ نور رقصان میشود و در سینهاش مینشیند؛ مزّۀ خاکِ ترسخورده و墨ِ پشیمانی. با هر خراش، سرانگشتانش بیشتر میسوزند، امّا او مینویسد، چون کسی که میداند هر حرف، میخیست بر تابوتِ امنیّتی که دیگر بازنخواهد گشت.
از لفافهای یدکیِ قاچاق، نوارهای نازک میدَرَد؛ پارچههایی که قرار بود بوی ادویه و عَرَقِ زائران را به خود بگیرند، اینک ورقِ سرنوشت میشوند. روی هر نوار، نخست متنِ آیه را به خطِّ رایجِ بازار، ساده و بیتکلّف، مینویسد؛ آنگونه که هر شاگرد حسابداری بتواند بخواند. سپس، در لابهلای همان سطر، با نشانههای کوتاه و رمزیِ خود، حروف را میپیچاند، هجاها را نصف میکند، فعلها را جابهجا مینشاند؛ آیه را، چون کالایی ممنوع، دو لایه میپوشاند. هر نوار را در تهِ کوزههای دوکف، میانِ دوختِ پنهانِ جُلِ زینها، در حفرههای تراشیده در صندوقهای ادویه جاسازی میکند؛ میگذارد خودِ پیشگویی، چون جنسِ قاچاق، خرد شود و در مسیرها پخش گردد، بیآنکه ظاهراً جایی یکجا حضور داشته باشد.
هنگامی که کار میکند، سردردی کند و حلقوی پشتِ چشمانش میشکفد؛ برای تپشی کوتاه، انبارِ تنگ به صفّههای خیرهکننده و خورشیدهای سیاه بر فرازِ حوضهای آینهوار دراز میشود، و او خود را نه در این دخمه، بل بر یکی از همان تراسها مییابد. میفهمد که صرفِ پنهانکردنِ آیه، انکار نیست، بلکه رضایت است؛ امضای خاموش بر عهدنامهای که او را از تاجرِ کاروان، به قاصدِ پیشگویی فرو میکاهد و میگمارد.
تا رویۀ بیرونیِ تاقچه را هموار میکند و شانهسایان، خویش را از تنگنای دخمه به روشناییِ مهارشدۀ رواقهای پایینیِ باغ میکشاند، حقیقتِ ممنوعه پیشاپیشِ او به راه افتاده است؛ در جوهرِ پنهان و خراشِ گچ، در رَگِ بارنامهها و سیاهۀ کاروان، چون دفترِ ثانوییی نامرئی که بر هر معامله، حسابی دیگر میگشاید و مینویسد.
The stall is a crush of turmeric dust and incense, its front alive with bargaining voices and the clatter of bronze weights; saffron threads, brick-red sumac, and wrinkled limes make a false sunrise upon the boards. Outside, caravan law and imperial edict jostle like rival porters in the same doorway. Inside, beyond the hanging bead curtain of cracked amber and blue glass, the air cools and thickens as if it had passed through water. The hum of the bazaar becomes a muffled chant, and Darivash lowers his head to slip through, one hand automatically brushing the beads so they will not tangle in his serpent-mark.
He sits cross-legged on a thin rug whose pattern has been worn to ghosts of cypress and flame. Across from him, the veiled scribe folds gracefully to the floor, her slate-colored robes pooling like ink. A brass lamp between them burns low and clean, throwing light into the hollow of his throat where the birthmark curls white as old mortar. She keeps her veil drawn, but the fingers that emerge from her sleeves are narrow, ringless, and stained a scholar’s brown.
They murmur over manifests in Imperial script, each word decorous, unexceptional. His ledger shows sacks of coriander, alum blocks for the dyers’ guild, devotional candles by the crate. His fingers trace the edges of the lines, following innocent trade-runes whose brushstrokes cross and loop in ways only his network knows: a flourish on the tail of a letter that means a hidden compartment in the axle-grease jars; a double-thick stroke that marks a wagon whose false bottom may be lifted from the east.
He notes, with a craftsman’s pride, how seamlessly the contraband routes lie buried within the calligraphy of piety and tax. Each measured column of numbers is a road; each marginal flourish a side-channel toward the Garden’s blind spots. The scribe’s reed-pen scratches softly as she copies, and the small, regular sound steadies his breathing. Yet beneath the familiar ritual of smuggler’s bookkeeping, his temples throb with a faint, gathering ache, and for a moment he tastes iron on his tongue, as if some deeper ink were being mixed beneath the turmeric and incense.
He lets the old words roll from his tongue as if by habit, a caravaner’s piece of borrowed piety to oil the hinge of a bribe. “…so that the scales of Law may stand upright before the Dawn…”
Across from him, the veiled head inclines, and when she answers, it is in the same archaic cadence: but one word has shifted, like a stone pried from a foundation.
“…so that the scales of Fate may stand upright before the Dawn,” she corrects, scarcely louder than the lamp’s hiss.
The change is no more than the curve of a reed-stroke, dāt become bakt, yet Darivash feels it catch in his chest. Law may be argued with, bartered, evaded. Fate cannot be bribed.
His mouth goes dry. Before he can mask the flutter at his throat with a merchant’s chuckle, her pen ticks once, twice, against the very margin where his smallest contraband-marks lie disguised as careless flourishes. In that cramped space she has echoed them, sigil for sigil, but inverted, as though holding up a mirror of ink to his hidden roads.
A pause, no longer than the space between two heartbeats, opens like a crack in fired clay. The lamp’s flame gutters, leans toward him. Her hidden face does not move, but he feels the weight of scrutiny as one feels the weight of a scale unseen behind a curtain. Then cloth whispers; a sleeve shifts. She palms aside the honest accounts with a motion too fluid for a mere clerk, draws from beneath the low table a thinner folio smelling faintly not of spice but of old lime-plaster and smoke.
The parchment she smooths between them bears no prices, no tax-marks. Only narrow columns of Old Avestan verse, lines broken mid-word, as if some censor’s knife had bitten there and not quite finished the work.
Half-phrases wink at him between ink-smears (“Marked Serpent of Dawn… break the garden’s false peace… balances weighed in shadowed water… cistern-mouth beneath the third cypress…”) strewn down the page like a novice’s faltering hand. Yet the spacing follows caravan habit: units, waystations, watches of the night. What a dull inspector would dismiss as blotted practice, his trained eye reads as map and hour.
“You miscounted here,” she says for the benefit of ears beyond the curtain, reed-pen ticking an empty square as her wrist ghosts the prophecy-sheet nearer; he bends over it with a trader’s rueful smile, adding a harmless correction in imperial script while, beneath the practiced motions, his pulse stutters to a new cadence, already plotting how to walk this inked road without letting his gaze cling where it longs to linger.
The miscount lives many lives as he walks.
On the first ledger it is only a smudge: a crate number written twice in the same neat, forgetful hand, its tail-stroke hooked in the old caravan manner that says, to those who know, not “error” but “begin here.” On the second, chalked high upon a date-seller’s lintel where no market-scribe would bother to reach, the same mark waits, half-erased by greasy smoke, as if time itself had hesitated there.
He moves with the patient, unhurried shuffle of a man calculating duty and profit, not fate. Around him the air thickens with incense and sweat. Pilgrims chant the Names in braided tongues; traders argue over measures of saffron, over the purity of lamp-oil and the price of glass flasks. Above their drone, the temple braziers spit resin and the marble channels mutter over stone. Yet his gaze is drawn again and again to that wrong number, echoed on stall cloths, on crate-sides, on the tally sticks of bored porters. Always one unit off, always in that same caravan hook.
Once, a patrol of imperial inspectors clatters by, bronze seals flashing at their throats. He folds himself into a knot of petitioners before an offering-niche, bowing his marked face to the worn stone while their sandals scrape past. When he straightens, he finds the miscount waiting in the dust at his feet: traced there by some child’s finger or rebel’s nail, quickly scuffed but not destroyed.
The streets grow narrower as he follows. Light thins from full daylight to a strained, coppery glow caught between overhanging awnings. The clamor of open courtyards fades, replaced by the close mutter of side-doors and the hollow ring of footfalls on packed earth. Here the walls of the Caravanserai swell inward, mudbrick and old plaster closing ranks; the painted placards grow fewer, the chalk-marks denser.
He passes beneath an arch where the twin-flame sigil has been overpainted too many times, Light’s gold bleeding through Shadow’s black and back again. On the keystone, almost hidden by soot, the miscounted crate number appears once more. It points, this time, not along the great flow toward the garden’s outer bazaar but aside, into a slit of alley where only neutral-law holds: a place where caravan justice speaks louder than imperial decree.
The air within is cooler, threaded with the damp of nearby cisterns and the sour-metal tang of old blood washed well away. A dice-game pauses as he enters; hard faces glance up, weigh his robes, his hands, the curve of pale serpent along his jaw: and look past, as if seeing only a merchant overdue to settle some private debt. No guard insignia gleams here, no temple clerk’s plume; only knives worn honestly and dishonestly both.
On a low wall someone has scratched the number again, upside down this time, as if to say: you have come far enough to see the world turned. Darivash adjusts the fall of his sleeves, swallows the strange tightness at the base of his skull where the visions like to root, and walks on, letting the miscount lead him where correct accounts never would.
At a shrine-front where caravan guards in mixed leathers and borrowed pilgrim sashes kneel with the stiff awkwardness of men unused to prayer, a scarred woman in patched wool brushes his sleeve as though jostled by the press. Her headscarf smells of sweat and cypress smoke; her left cheek bears the pale, ropey seam of an old burn. She does not look at him. Her lips move on the rote request of all the faithful, blessing on the road, blessing on the scales, then, softer, she breathes a freight rate in the traders’ cant, a sequence of weights and coin-names one unit off in precisely the way his ledgers have been haunted all morning.
He answers aloud in the common tongue, some unremarkable correction about grain tariffs for the benefit of listening guards, but under it his hand has already traced the true numerals on his palm. In Old Avestan, almost lost beneath the clink of coin and murmur of prayer, he supplies the missing term. Her eyes flicker, startled, then measuring; she tilts her head minutely toward a shadowed passage behind the incense-wreathed altar and is gone, swallowed by the shifting bodies of supplicants before any watching gaze can fix her shape.
He lets the crowd’s eddies carry him where her slight nod had pointed, slipping past a row of tethered camels that chew and glare as if offended by secrecy. Their hobbles creak; their rank warmth steams the narrow way. Amphorae rise like a terracotta palisade (olive oil, vinegar, resin) each neatly seal-stamped for temple use, each a perfect hiding-place in another kind of trade. The miscounted hook is there again, chalked thumb-high on a crate-slat, turning his feet toward what looks like no more than a dead-end storeroom: swept, unremarkable, a place for surplus mats and cracked jars. Yet the wall’s plaster is older here, spiderwebbed. His ink-stained fingers find the hairline of a false niche; pressure, twist, and the fissured relief sighs inward on concealed pivots, exhaling a breath of cool, long-stored dust.
Beyond lies a cramped stair corkscrewing into the caravanserai’s foundations, lamp-smoke and jasmine thinning with each step until only cool stone breathes around him. The uproar above dwindles to a dull, sea-like throb; his own footfalls sound indecently loud. At the bottom a lantern burns low in a gutted cistern, its emptied basin paved over with scavenged, mismatched flagstones.
There, rough-clad “pilgrim-guards” kneel around a smoothed slab, its chalk-etched web of watchtowers, sluice-gates, and stairwells ghosting the garden’s flanks (Mard’s rebels in borrowed sashes) fingers tracing patrol rotations, water-clock marks, maintenance tunnels veining inward toward forbidden terraces. Their murmurs die as one; hard eyes lift, weighing the serpent-marked merchant who has read their miscounted ledgers and come down unescorted.
The one who moves first is not Darivash.
It is the man with the branded wrist and broken nose, rising from the map-slab like a shadow kicked loose from stone. His leather bracer slides back as he steps, just enough for the burned sigil of imperial justice to glare: proof of old chains and newer rage. He plants himself squarely in the narrow throat of the stair, close enough that Darivash can smell dried sweat and lamp oil in his cloak.
“You come deep, merchant,” the lieutenant says, voice low and edged. “Too deep for a man with papers that clean.”
He does not shout. Shouting would be safer; this is worse, this hushed, cutting tone that assumes everyone else will hear anyway. Behind him, the kneeling “pilgrim-guards” go still as icons, each hand straying (too casually) to belt-knives, to weighted prayer-cords.
“Navidamir’s lap-creature walks straight into our cistern,” the lieutenant continues, head cocked. “Perfect seals. Clerks’ ink still wet on your registry mark. And a noble’s hand upon your entry writ. Tell me, serpent-etched one (” his gaze flicks, not without a shiver, to the white birthmark coiling from eye to throat “) what honest criminal travels like a courtier to a rat-hole?”
The word cat’s-paw is not High Imperial, but gutter-camp, spat with contempt: Navidamir’s paz-palū. Pampered pet that brings the hawk its prey.
Murmurs stir around the cistern’s rim. Someone mutters about dock talk, about river manifests gone missing, about regime captains who always seem one whisper ahead. The lantern’s flame gutters and steadies, multiplying hard eyes in its brass rim.
“If Shah-Parida’s guards are blind,” the lieutenant goes on, “it is because you are their lantern, hm? Lead us into their net with your fine endorsements, your caravan stamps, while your noble captain counts his reward.”
He shifts his weight, casual as a man about to break a nose.
“So. Navidamir’s creature, or something worse? Informant for Kouroshmir’s scribes? You walk boldly, merchant. Boldness smells of protection. Show me the claws behind your soft paws. Or we cut them off before they scratch.”
Darivash lets the first tug of anger go by like a bad wind, jaw working once, then unclenching. He rolls his shoulders back a finger’s breadth, as if settling a pack, and when he speaks it is not with outrage but with the dry, sing-song cadence of contract recitation.
“By order of the River and Road Concord,” he says, as though dictating to a scribe, “all vessels bearing Navidamir son of Navian-Sepehr’s seal are subject to double-tally at dock and gate. His debts are known. His movements are inked in three ledgers: temple tithe, treasury share, harbor due. Kouroshmir’s clerks copy all three.”
A flicker passes through the kneeling men; one or two glance at the branded lieutenant.
“If I were paz-palū,” Darivash continues, “I would come by water, under his flank, bearing a pilgrim’s charter and a priest’s blessing, not a caravan-master’s writ that names every mule and measure of barley. My seals would be perfect, yes. But also pure. Temple-stamped. Untouched by correction.”
He taps the satchel at his hip; parchment crinkles, heavy as guilt.
“Instead I come with manifests greasy from the road. Endorsements overwritten. Weights that do not quite match their taxes. These are not the claws of an informant, lieutenant. They are the stains of a man who expects to be stopped, searched, argued with in three dialects of tariff-law.”
He lets his gaze slide, deliberately, to the chalked map of sluice-gates and watchtowers.
“A lantern for the guards walks in straight lines and never stumbles. A smuggler walks bent beneath his own crooked numbers, because he knows every eye upon him is already suspicious.”
The branded man does not argue law with him. He only jerks his chin toward the slit of sky where the stair-neck opens, to the dim bulk of the upper gate-tower. Steel glints there; a knot of inspection-guards is mustering, spears stacked, waxed tablets in hand, ready to sweep the outer warehouses.
“You speak of suspicion,” the lieutenant murmurs. “Prove you can drink it and piss light.”
He sketches, with two scarred fingers, the curve of their route along the terrace.
“Behind a false wall in the third grain-store on their tally-list lie more spears than sacks. If those men reach that wall, we hang on their hooks. Go up. With only your crooked papers and your soft tongue, turn them aside. Divert them, delay them. Do that, paz-palū, and you walk back among comrades, not as bait on a hook.”
Cold tightens like a ring of iron around the serpent-light on his skin; the mark prickles, tasting omen. He inclines his head, fingers already moving, drawing out bundled scrolls and clay seals from hidden folds. In curt, ledger-flat phrases he lays out which “tribute consignment” demands immediate escort, which fictitious grain-shortages and misrouted offerings he will cite, how surcharge, confiscation, and lost tithe will all seem to the inspectors’ own advantage if they postpone their warehouse sweep for a more “profitable” raid elsewhere.
Heat and incense strike him like a wall as he emerges; the clatter of ledgers, the bawl of drovers, the sing-song of tariffs. He slips into a knot of muleteers, lets their dust cloak him, mouth shaping the same lie in river-court lilt, in rough desert cant, in clipped clerk’s jargon, before he peels away toward the awninged trestle where ink-stained youths shuffle wax tablets and affix Kouroshmir’s austere seal to each column of marching names.
The lieutenant drifts along the edge of the crowd like a loose shadow, close enough that Darivash feels the prickle between his shoulder-blades, far enough that no inspector could later lift a stylus and write his name beside the word “accomplice.” When the mule-line stalls and the registry snake knots upon itself, the branded man pauses at a shrine-post, making a show of adjusting his borrowed pilgrim’s sash. In truth his gaze never leaves Darivash’s back. Each time Darivash glances sideways, he finds only a hint of scarred forearm, the dark line of a jaw, already sliding behind a pair of bickering drovers.
He is being measured. Weighed like grain on a balance he cannot see.
Darivash feels the weight of that silent test in the way his steps shorten as he nears the trestle where the ink-boys work. He counts the inspectors without appearing to; three in temple-grey, one in the darker sash of Kouroshmir’s direct office, and beyond them a pair of spear-men leaning on their hafts, bored but quick-eyed. The iron ring tightening around his mark throbs in time with his pulse. Somewhere above, the mustering squad in the gate-tower will already be checking spearheads with callused thumbs, warming sealing-wax.
He draws a longer breath, lets his shoulders sag into an affected weariness, the posture of a man who has rehearsed these lines in twenty caravanserais and is resigned to losing a day’s profit. The lieutenant’s shadow keeps pace along the periphery: pausing when he pauses, drifting when he drifts, never quite committing to his orbit, as if to say, If you falter, we cut the tether and let you spin alone.
So braided, suspicion and necessity drive him into the inspectors’ pen like a beast offered for sacrifice.
At the first inspection desk he sets down his satchel as though it pains him to part with it, then unlaces the inner flap and draws forth a fat, carefully disordered packet of trade scripts and pilgrimage seals. The parchment smells faintly of myrrh and sand. His thumb smooths one curled edge while his other hand fans the papers open. Just wide enough that, as he turns a leaf, a thin strip of shaved silver winks between two stiff folios and then is gone again, like light slipping under a door. His voice, when he speaks, is stripped of warmth, the flat, precise cant of caravan law learned in smoke-choked counting-houses.
“Consignment Seven: devotional codices, brittle binding, exempt from full crate-tilt by decree of the third year of the Exile. Weight-tithe calculated on outer casing only. Witnessed at Kerm-Navian and Qadir-Bandar.”
He does not plead; he recites, as if these exemptions are as immutable as stone. His stylus taps neatly where ink has already underlined the relevant clause. “Fragile scripture,” he adds, with the weary patience of one reciting precedent to a dull pupil, “is to be spared unnecessary handling, lest revenue be lost through pious damage.”
A wax-spotted boy in temple-grey, scarcely old enough to shave, pauses with his stylus hovering. His brows knit; his finger traces a duplicated weight-mark, a date half-scraped and overwritten. Darivash leans in as though grateful for such diligence, and when he speaks his tongue loosens into the sing-song cadences of the southern oases: soft consonants, a desert drawl that makes even apology sound like shared misfortune.
“Ah, that again,” he murmurs. “Kerm-Navian’s copyists, God light their path, are still using last pilgrimage’s plates. See. “Registrar Farashasp. You have his hand on your own boards.”
He angles his body so the boy’s baffled gaze lifts to the hanging registry tablets, where Farashasp’s name indeed curls in dry black strokes. “He rushed us through before the flood-season. You know how it is when the river-books pile up.”
The junior scribe colors, suddenly eager not to question another office’s negligence. His frown melts into flustered agreement as he scratches a hasty corrective note in the margin, the inconsistency reborn on the spot as an inherited clerical flaw from an absent, safely distant superior.
When the darker-sashed clerk leans in, suspicion sharpening his gaze, Darivash lets his fingers drift, purely by chance, it seems, to a scroll bearing Kouroshmir’s own austere seal. In a low, patient voice he begins to cite, line by line, the scholar-captain’s decrees on the “unimpeded course of duly-sanctioned offerings,” the sacred inviolability of pre-registered consignments, the penalties for any officer who “impedes lawful tribute under color of excess zeal.” Each quotation is anchored with a deft gesture toward the hanging tablets, as if inviting the chief inspector to contradict not a mere merchant, but the very stylus of Kouroshmir himself. Unease flickers; the man’s jaw works, then tightens. Better, his eyes decide, to display rigor elsewhere. With a curt motion of his baton, he snaps his soldiers toward a neighboring caravan whose papers are less impeccably armed with the law.
The lieutenant’s gaze follows the patrol as it swings off toward easier prey; satisfaction never quite reaches his mouth. He weighs Darivash with a soldier’s inventory, hands, eyes, the serpent-mark half-glimpsed at the throat, then jerks his chin toward a shadowed colonnade. Between two tally-boards a scuffed door, painted ledger-red, waits; its bar lifts to a stair smelling of lamp oil and old, hidden oaths.
Darivash ducks beneath the lintel and into heat and closeness: a stone cell barely wider than a ship’s cabin, its ceiling low enough that the smoke from three guttering lamps has nowhere to climb. The walls are paneled not in cedar or silk but in paper (the backs of seized ledgers, surplus registry sheets, cargo tallies) hung in overlapping curtains that make the room rustle like reeds when the door closes behind him.
For an instant he thinks the chamber empty; then the paper stirs on his left, parting along a seam of inked columns. A man steps through the swaying leaves of script as if emerging from the records themselves.
He is broader than Darivash expected, not the lean clerk-figure suggested by “the shadowed commander,” but a soldier thickened by years in harness. Close-cropped hair salted early with gray, jaw like quarried stone, eyes that measure instead of glance. Battle scars ladder his bare throat and vanish beneath the collar of a pilgrim’s robe thrown over mismatched armor plates.
“Mard,” Navidamir had once said with an offhand curl of lip. “A name whispered by men who can’t pay their fines.” Standing in that cramped lamplight now, Darivash sees there is nothing offhand about the man at all.
Without preamble, Mard unlatches the worn leather bracer on his left forearm. The strap creaks; the bracer falls away to reveal the flesh beneath, shiny and puckered where the iron once kissed it. A brand, crudely yet unmistakably shaped in the imperial sigil of infamy, blackened lines raised like a scarred sunburst.
He turns the arm so the mark catches the lamplight, not in shame but in deliberate offering. The thin skins of paper around them whisper with the draft of the movement.
“So,” Mard says, voice low and level, carrying the cadence of parade grounds and execution courts. “Now you have seen who drills your ‘rabble’ into marching in step.”
The word rabble bears no resentment, only a dry, dangerous amusement. Behind him, the ledger-curtains sway and settle, their columns of tidy numbers framing brand and man alike, as if the empire itself had tried to count and contain him. And failed.
Around the low table, the murmurs of the gathered captains and cutpurses die as if a hand had closed on their throats. Steel-curled fingers, hennaed nails, cracked knuckles from staff-drills: all still. Mard lays his palm flat upon the parchment, pinning it as one might pin a snake, though the lines that coil there are only ink and forbidden breath.
“These,” he says, and the word is almost a curse, “you heard in alleys and taverns.” His thumb traces the opening hemistich, the one Darivash knows too well: Mar-e-Sobhgāh, neshānde-ye fajar, the Marked Serpent of Dawn. The air tightens. Then Mard’s hand slides lower, to cramped script that no street-reciter ever dared sing.
He reads: verses where the serpent does not simply “break the garden’s peace,” but “rends the painted dawn from the sky’s skull,” leaving either a naked howl of ruin: or a wound so fine that through it, “noon’s lie and midnight’s mask both bleed, each in its own hue.”
Darivash feels the words like cold water over hot stone. The Garden is not only a place to be toppled or preserved; it is a lens, and the serpent’s choice will decide whether the empire’s carefully polished Light shatters into shards, or is shown to have always worn the color of Shadow.
Mard’s flint-hard voice loses its barracks rasp and brushes the edge of prayer as he taps one of the inked twin-flame sigils in the margin, then the other, as if weighing them. “We do not march against a lame hunter on a high terrace,” he says, “nor only against the fingers that pluck tithe from your purses.” His nail circles the braziers’ emblem. “We strike at a tale. At the forged story that named this garden pure Light and all its enemies Shadow.” He glances up, catching each man’s eye in turn. “If the Serpent chooses ruin, they will kneel to the ashes and say: ‘Behold, proof that Shadow reigns.’ But if it chooses baring, if it tears the veil instead of the stones, then before the crowd’s open eyes the word Roshni itself must be broken and remade.”
The phrases creep beneath his skin like fever through a vein, running the curve of the white serpent that stains his flesh. Vision and memory blur: blazing orchards, a sun gone coal-black, voices calling a name he will not admit is his. He understands then that the scraps he sold were vertebrae in a larger spine, that Mard’s people have been threading his copied stanzas through dockside dens and caravan firesides alike. Ligatures binding deserters, knife-men, smugglers into a body that bends toward a single hinge-point. All their patient, hidden order waits on one pivot no longer abstract: a merchant whose mark has already been moving along the empire’s arteries, ignorant that he is the fulcrum on which their garden’s painted dawn must tilt.
Mard’s gaze flicks once to the white serpent by Darivash’s eye, then away again, as if cataloguing a weapon, not a wonder. He does not speak the merchant’s name. “When that dawn-serpent sets one foot on the upper terraces,” he says, “every creed will claim it. Your choice is not whether the omen bears you, trader, but what sort of ‘Light’ your steps will unmask or burn.”
It is not an idea but an impact, as if someone had swung a ledger-weight into his chest. The breath leaves him. Those slim stitched booklets and loose scrap-leaves he had wrapped in bales of saffron and brick-tea, the forbidden couplets he had moved as coolly as lamp-oil or hashish, had not drifted away into private blasphemy and scholar’s vanity. They have taken on a second life among the branded and the cast-off, crossing the empire’s dust-veins faster than any caravan.
He sees them now, not as wares, but as a kind of script carved into moving flesh: verses muttered under breath when rebels pass inspection posts; a single shared line scratched into the underside of a bunkboard in some hirelings’ dormitory; call-and-response between watchmen on night patrol who pretend to be drunker than they are. Mard’s “pilgrim guards” have already been taught to recognize one another by the shape of his stolen stanzas on the tongue.
A line about the garden’s painted suns becomes, in their mouths, a warning that real torches will flare in a given quarter. A distich on mirrored pools marks the hour when cistern grates will be unbarred. A jesting couplet about a merchant weighed down with “lawful burdens” signals that black-banner blades are to be hidden under pilgrim-white cloaks. His contraband has become liturgy.
He swallows hard. Somewhere on the docks, he imagines, a branded wrist brushes another in passing and a hoarse voice offers the opening of a verse, waiting for its echo. Somewhere in a caravanserai loft, men who have never seen his face are binding themselves to a story he helped loose: and that story, like his own serpent-mark, coils tighter around his throat with every breath.
Mard draws a callused thumb along the map’s creases, flattening it on the upturned crate between an oil-jar and Darivash’s ledger. The parchment is a palimpsest of theft: old gardener’s plans, copied garrison notes, stains that might be wine or blood. Terraces step upward in faded ochre, cisterns marked by inked blue wells, processional roads like veins climbing toward the stone heart.
“Here,” Mard murmurs, tapping a choke point where the Darius-Shah road narrows between tax-house and shrine. “You arrive as manifest says, saffron, brick-tea, lamp-oil. Then a ‘delay’: lame camel, broken axle. Half your wagons peel off under pretext of seeking a farrier.”
Darivash’s ink-stained finger slides to a side alley sketched in thinner lines. “And here they vanish. Service lane for ash-carts. The registry will show them still in queue.”
They play out the day as if it were a campaign: wagons dissolving into maintenance ramps and irrigation paths, reassembling at upper terraces just as a “kitchen fire” blossoms in an outer barracks, as grain-rumors send patrols scrambling downslope, as a staged brawl at the pilgrim docks drags Kouroshmir’s watchers riverward. Each disappearance buys a corridor; each contrived shortage opens a gate.
He rubs at his temple, feeling the serpent-birthmark burn faintly under his fingertips, and measures the pulse of pain as he would weigh cargos: against risk, against gain. In a low, dry voice he yields more than wagons and saffron. He lays out his quiet armory: counterfeit seals that carry the scent of real wax and temple incense; phantom entries threaded into caravan ledgers so that men who do not exist may pass inspections; black‑market scriveners in the Darius‑Shah caravansary who can mirror Kouroshmir’s own hand so closely that registry clerks will swear they wrote the lines themselves. Under such paper-skins, Mard’s chosen will walk as priests, guild factors, tribute-porters: faces blurred by bureaucracy, invisible beneath the scholar-captain’s counting gaze.
When Mard names the Serpent of Dawn as a banner to be raised, Darivash’s tone cuts thin and controlled. He will lace his timetables and false manifests through their blows, yes, but only if the Marked One’s tale is not hammered into a crude anthem of holy blood. His name, if it surfaces, is to pry at the garden’s vaunted Light, to show its seams and shadows, not sanctify new tyrants cloaked in rebel-white.
They seal it not with oaths of brotherhood but with “conditions of carriage,” phrases dry as tariffs. Darivash will unshutter his false floors, sleeper-rooms, and river inlets to Mard’s scattered cells; manifests will turn like wheels at his touch. In return, Mard concedes this: when the Marked Serpent must be displayed, Darivash alone will script the angle, hour, and terrace of that unveiling.
At first they take him for a madman, or a drunk who has wagered his last coin on spectacle. Then someone hisses, “The mark. Behold the mark,” and the word moves through the courtyard like fire chasing oil.
Darivash lets it burn.
He tastes dust on his tongue, and beneath the dust, the copper tang of fear. His heart skitters against his ribs like a trapped lark, but he makes his voice slow, deliberate, as if he were merely naming weights and measures.
“In the sanctioned hymns,” he calls, “they tell you Light devours Shadow, and all is clean.”
Faces tilt up: drovers with rope-burned hands, veiled women with votive strings around their wrists, gamblers clutching their arrested dice, a patrol of garden-ward guards lingering at the gateway with hands on spear-hafts. Over their shoulders, near the inner arch, a scribe in cream and sable, Kouroshmir’s colors, pauses, stylus hovering above his tablet.
Darivash smiles, thin and humorless.
“But in the verses you are not meant to hear,” he continues, “Light without Shadow is blindness. Shadow without Light is sleep. Balance is the eye that sees.”
A murmur. Someone whispers the title of the banned cycle: The Book of the Twofold Garden. Darivash had smuggled those brittle pages in false-bottom chests, watching priests weigh and praise the very crates that hid their heresy.
He quotes now, but twists the cadence to fit the square-cut music of caravan courtyards:
“‘Blessed is he who walks the border of flame,
whose left side knows the night,
whose right hand bears the dawn.
Curse upon those who call one half the All.’”
A stone clacks on paving, dropped from a nerveless hand. A woman makes the sign for warding off blight; an old man answers with a quieter gesture, one Darivash recognizes from outlaw shrines. An unseen counter-sign.
The serpent-mark along his face prickles, as if the skin itself were listening.
“You trade your doubts,” he says, “for stamped seals and temple weights. You sell your questions cheaper than salt. And every year you climb to Shah-Parida to thank those who measure your souls like grain.”
He feels Navidamir watching from the shadow of a warehouse door, ringed fingers tightening on a ledger. The river-captain’s smile is nowhere in sight, only the hard calculation of a man tallying risk and reward.
Darivash spreads his arms wider, making of his thin body a set of scales.
“I have walked the desert in darkness,” he calls. “I have seen the Garden in dream, burning with Light so bright it cast a black sun behind it. I say to you: a garden of Light that fears Shadow fears its own roots.”
A guard takes a step forward; another, older, grips his sleeve, murmuring, “Not here. Caravan law, not temple law. Let the scribes carry it upward.”
From a rooftop, unseen, Mard’s watchers mark every word, every stirred face.
Darivash’s voice drops, but somehow carries farther.
“If the Light is true, it does not tremble at one marked merchant, or at a few forbidden lines.” He touches the serpent at his skin, then the talisman at his throat. “But if it does tremble. Then perhaps what rules in Shah-Parida is not Light at all. Perhaps it is only a brighter Shadow, afraid of its own reflection.”
The silence that follows is no longer simple shock; it has weight, direction, the first subtle lean of a crowd toward something it does not yet dare to name.
Behind them all, near the archway, Kouroshmir lowers his stylus with a soft, final tap, as though punctuating a charge yet unwritten.
For the space of a breath the old habit claws at him (duck, bargain, vanish into ledgers and folded tarps) visions of black suns swelling behind his eyes until the lanterns blur. His knees almost remember how to bend, how to make himself smaller than a tally mark.
He does not bend.
Slowly, like a man weighing rare spice on a trembling scale, he straightens. The courtyard tilts around him: the ring of faces, the lifted spearpoints, the scribe’s arrested hand. His ink-stained fingers find the knot of cord at his throat. For years that knot has meant safety, silence, the price of passage. Now he worries it loose as if breaking the seal on contraband scripture.
The charm falls into his palm, twin-flame sigils worn thin by sweat and sand. He turns it so the metal catches the lantern-light. And with his other hand he pushes back his hood until the full curve of the serpent-mark is bare, pale and curling from eye to throat. Then he lifts both arms high, talisman and branded flesh gleaming together in the dust-hazed glow, an emblem no one can pretend not to see.
When he speaks, it is not in the sanctified cadences of temple litanies but in rough caravan cant, the market-tongue that crosses borders faster than any seal. He lets the rhythm of bargaining and way-prices carry him, stitching familiar calls into the forbidden couplets he once ferried in false-bottom crates. He does not recite them pure; he splices, barters, adulterates, until smuggled theology sounds like the tally-speech of drovers. Verses that once named Light and Shadow as necessary twins rather than enemies to be ground into dust now ride on jokes about short rations and crooked scales, so that even those who fear the words find themselves nodding to the meaning.
He plucks familiar refrains, the lines painted over city gates and drilled into children’s mouths, and shows their falsified weights, shaving off the words of bowing and tithes, grafting on endings of “reckoning the beam against the burden,” of “no light declared pure until the load-bearer consents.” The slogans that once pressed backs to stone now tilt, suddenly negotiable, in the hands of those who haul and sweat.
Phrases the censors themselves commissioned now bear contraband images: twin suns reflecting one another across an unseen horizon, a white serpent coiled not about a sinner’s throat but around the rim of dawn, guarding rather than devouring. The air pricks with unease. Is he blaspheming, or merely completing what was mutilated: offering the garden its own concealed half aloud?
The murmurs knot and thicken, threads of fear and hunger and long-hoarded grievance braiding into something with an edge. What began as scattered repetition becomes a jagged, rising cadence, as if the courtyard itself has found a second, rougher heartbeat. The crowd seizes on his mongrel invocations, half litany, half market-jest, and mouths soften into sound before the mind can forbid it. Lines that belonged only to back-room darkness, to wine-sour breath and shuttered lamps, climb out into sun and incense-smoke.
A pilgrim-guard in borrowed cuirass catches the turn of a phrase and echoes it under his breath, then louder when no bolt of judgment falls. A file of yoked porters, shoulders bright with rope-burn and sweat, sway in place as their work-song warps, its familiar call-and-response suddenly threaded with talk of balanced beams and consented burdens. Veiled women at the courtyard edge, who came to pray for sons and safe childbirth, find the proscribed refrain slipping between prayers for blessing, the twin-flame imagery seeding itself in the spaces where official doctrine has worn thin.
Even the garden’s own warders, sun-emblazoned, spear-butted, drilled to silence dissent, are not immune. One repeats a line purely to mock it, barked toward his fellows; yet the words take root in the air, are caught, misheard, corrected, and soon shouted back not as jest but as demand. The sanctioned slogans posted over archways, O Light, Burn All Shadow; Obedience is Purity, are answered now by their smuggled reflections, chanted in caravan cant: No flame without its twin; No yoke without its price.
Tongues slip, stumble, find the rhythm. The forbidden stanzas, once passed hand to hand like contraband coin, no longer skulk; they stride. Each echoed scrap sharpens the next, until the sound ceases to be merely many voices and begins, dangerously, to resemble one.
Hands move almost of their own accord, as if an older choreography has risen through bone and tendon to claim them. Rough laborers and veiled matrons alike press two fingers to brow and breast in the outlawed sign of twinned Light, a gesture their mothers taught them in whispers and then recanted under temple lash. The motion is hesitant at first, shivering and half-concealed in the folds of sleeves; then, as no herald’s trumpet sounds and no curse falls from the bright terraces above, the line of it firms.
Fingers snap outward, wrists turning with a practiced economy that betrays long suppression rather than ignorance, tracing the curling path of a serpent across their own throats: not in the clean cutting stroke prescribed by court sermons, but in a slow, encircling curve that suggests coil, shelter, watchfulness. Here and there an elder corrects a youngster’s angle with a sharp hissed word in caravan cant, restoring a curve that temple-paintings once showed before the censor’s chisel. What was taught as the serpent’s strangling noose re-emerges as a collar of dawn, a loop of pale fire laid where pulse beats closest to skin.
At the fore, a knot of younger porters and caravan guards suddenly break formation, the drilled straightness of their backs collapsing as if some invisible lash had snapped. A few drop hard to their knees on the dust-slick stone, palms flattened in shock before instinct drags fists to their chests. Others half-rise, half-bow, caught between parade-ground obedience and some older genuflection that remembers neither Shah nor captain. Eyes that were dulled by heat and hireling’s boredom shine now with a fierce, frightened recognition, as though a story whispered in boyhood barracks has stepped down from smoke and taken on flesh in front of them. One stares at Darivash’s pale, coiled birthmark and cannot quite bring himself to look away.
“مارِ سپیدهدم” نخست از گلوها جدا میشود ــ هراسان، ناباور ــ چون تیری که از زهِ دل برکَنده باشند؛ سپس بازمیگردد، خروشان، در حلقههای خشنِ ترجیع، هر بار رساتر، کوبیده به سوی داريوَش، انگار خود نام، افسونِ مُهر و حکم باشد و اگر کافی بار تکرار شود، سرنوشت را وادارد از سایه بدرآید و در آفتاب، شکلِ او را اختیار کند.
در همان دم، هیاهوی عادیِ حیاط در شکافِ میان هر دشنامِ فریادشده فرو میریزد و به سکوتی پُربار بدل میشود؛ سکوتی که در آن، زائران به داريوَش خیره میشوند نه چون بازرگانی از هزاران، بل چون فالِ مجسّم، هشداری راهرفته بر دو پا؛ ابهامی چنان خطرناک که هیچ صاحبِ مُهر و منصبی نمیتواند وانهد تا بیدعوی بر زمین بیفتد و به دستِ دیگری تفسیر شود.
دستهای از حرکت، نه آنچنان آشکار که نگهبانانِ برنّامُهر بهفوریت دریابند و نه چنان نهان که چشمِ عادتکرده به حاشیهها نبیند، در میان حلقهٔ نزدیکترین زائران میدود؛ جامههای سادهٔ سپید و خاکی میلرزد، و در لابهلای آنان، ردای مرکّبلَکِ نویسندگان، همچون بالهای کلاغی در هوای سوزان، اندکی باز میشود. آنان که تا دم پیش، در سایهٔ ستونها بر زانوی تعبد خم شده بودند، بیآنکه نشانی از تفاخرِ دیوانی در حرکاتشان دیده شود، آرام سر برمیگیرند؛ مُهرههای تسبیح را رها میکنند و لوحهای بینقش را چون آینههای تهی در برابر سینه میگردانند.
انگار دعایی نو بر زبانشان آمده باشد، دستها به درون آستینها میلغزد و بیرون که میآید، نیقلمها چون خارِ نازکِ خارزارِ قانون در مشتشان نشسته است. سرها در برابر تصویرِ شعلههای دوقلو خم میشود، لبها زمزمهٔ اعتراف و استغفار میخوانَد، اما پشتِ این پردهٔ نیایش، چوبِ باریکِ قلمها بر سطحِ گچگونِ لوحها میلغزد و میخَراشد؛ خشخشی سبک، شبیه وزش باد در کاهگلِ بامها، که تنها گوشِ تعلیمدیده آن را از همهمهٔ جمعیت جدا میکند.
نویسندگانِ کوروشمیر، که به ظاهر چون هر زائرِ خستهای عرق از پیشانی میزدایند و بر گردن مهر نماز میچرخانند، به دقّت نه تنها واژههایی را که از دهان داريوَش میجهد ثبت میکنند، بلکه در حواشی باریک و فشرده: مکثهای او را، جابهجایی نفس، آن پیچِ خفیف در فک که خطِ سفیدِ مارگون را بر گردنش کشیدهتر مینماید، لرزشِ کوتاهِ مردمکها هنگامِ برخاستنِ نامِ «مارِ سپیدهدم». در لابهلای سطرها، نشانههایی مینهند که فقط چشمِ آموزشدیدهٔ دفترِ بدعت و نذور میخوانَد: «خنده از صف سوم، مرد با عمامهٔ آبی»، «زنی که دست بر سینه میکوبد، ردِ بریدگی بر مچِ راست»، «نگاهِ تبادلیاب میان دو نگهبانِ مزدور بههنگامِ هلهله».
یکی از ایشان، با ریشِ تُنُک و چشمانی ژرفنشسته، لوح را کمی کج میگیرد تا نورِ شیبدارِ حیاط ــ نورِ داغِ نیمروزی که بر رگههای کوارتزِ سنگ میشکند و به سفیدیِ داغ بدل میشود ــ درست بر موضعی بیفتد که او تصویرِ ایستادنِ داريوَش را در چند خطِ تند میکِشد: قامتِ کمی خمشده، اما نه از ترس؛ دستی که هنوز در هواست، انگار ترجیعِ آخرِ جملهای ناتمام روی هوا نوشته شود. زیر آن، با خطی ریزتر، مینگارد: «نشانی از تمرینِ خطابه؟ یا جوششِ بیقیدِ الهام؟ نیازمند بازجویی».
دیگری، سالخوردهتر، هر بار که جماعت صلوات میفرستد و صدا بالا میگیرد، بیآنکه حتی پلک بزند، گوشهٔ قلم را در میان دندان میگیرد و در آن غوغا به آرامی دو نسخه از یک عبارت را مینویسد: نخست وصفِ عریانِ واقعه، بیتفسیر؛ سپس، درست زیر همان خطوط، بازنویسیای چنان آراسته به آیاتِ نور و الفاظِ وفاداری که گویی داريوَش از آغاز، نه فالِ مبهم که مُبلّغی سرسپرده بوده است.
لوحها، هنوز خالی از مُهرِ رسمی، میان آستین و سینه پنهان میشود و از دلِ جمعیت، چون ماهیانِ خاکستری در رودخانهٔ پرخروش، به سوی حاشیهها میلغزند. آنجا، در نیمسایهٔ ایوانها، کاتبی دیگر ایستاده است که کارش نه شنیدن، بل سنجیدنِ خودِ کلماتِ مکتوب است: آیا در این نفسهای شمرده، در این تکانِ ناخواستهٔ گردن، در این نگاههای دوخته به مارِ سپیدهدم، بذرِ شورشی است که باید در نطفه خفه شود، یا امکانِ افسانهای تازه که میتوان آن را بر صحیفهٔ رسمیِ شاهپرستان نوشت و مُهرِ «وفاداریِ معجزهآسا» بر آن نهاد؟
در حاشیههای حیاط، جایی که سایهٔ ستونها با آفتابِ کوبنده درهم میریزد، وُردانِ مُسَلَّح با نشانهای مفرغینِ خورشید-بر-ترازو، نگاههایی تیز و کوتاه میان خود ردّ و بدل میکنند؛ نگاههایی که بیش از هر فرمانِ کتبی، معنیِ «اکنون» را به همقطاران میرسانَد. آنگاه، بیآنکه شتاب در گام نشان دهند، به نرمی از مواضع خود واگشوده میشوند و چون نیمحلقهای از فلزِ نامرئی در اطرافِ جمعیت گسترش مییابند.
دستهایشان بالا میرود، نه به قصدِ قبضهٔ شمشیر، بل در هیأتِ نیایش: نشانِ شعلههای دوقلو را، بر صفحههای صیقلیِ برنز، فراز میگیرند تا نورِ آفتاب بر آن بتابد و در چشمِ زائران، نه چون قید که چون برکت جلوه کند. در حالی که لبهاشان آیاتِ محفوظ را تکرار میکند ــ «ما تنها پاسدارانِ پاکیِ سُجودیم، نه مانعِ سلوکِ شما» ــ گامهاشان، به ریتمی که فقط سربازِ آموخته میشناسد، فاصلههای باز میان دکّهها و جرزهای سنگی را یکییکی پُر میکند؛ رخنههای عبور را به آرامی میبندد، بیآنکه هنوز کسی نامِ محاصره بر این چیدمان بگذارد.
هر جا راهرویی بازتر است، یکی از ایشان با لبخندی ملايم پیش میرود، زائری را با کلمهای نرم به سویی میراند، دیگری را به بهانهٔ «رعایتِ صفوف» اندکی جابهجا میکند؛ و در سکوتِ زیرینِ آن همه تسبیح و تهلیل، خطی تدریجی شکل میگیرد که مردم را از درها، از راههای خروج، اندکاندک جدا میسازد و به دایرهای فروبستهتر میسپارد؛ چنانکه اگر کسی ناگاه بخواهد دور شود، خود را در میانِ سینهٔ زرهپوشان و درخششِ همان نشانهای مفرغی خواهد یافت که لحظهای پیش، تنها برکتِ نور مینمود.
یکی از وُردان، که صدایش صافی و یکنواختیِ ورقِ فتوی داشت، بیآنکه خشونتی در آهنگش شنیده شود، گلو صاف کرد و گفت: «این چنین جوشش را، ای بازرگانِ مارنشان، روا نیست که خام و بیقید رها کنیم تا هر دلِ ناپخته آن را به سویی بکشد. واژگانِ تو، اگر مهار نشود، هم بر دفترِ نور نوشته میشود هم بر طومارِ شورش.»
سرش را کمی خم کرد، چنانکه گویی تعظیمی است نه اخطاری، و با لحنی که هم دعوت بود و هم حکم، ادامه داد: «پس، اگر صادقانه جز نور نمیجویی، سخنانت را بارِ دیگر تکرار کن ــ بلندتر، روشنتر ــ تا در “سِجلّ نور” ثبت شود. زیرِ نظرِ اهلِ ثبت، شعلهٔ غیرمجاز، “غیرتِ مطیع” نام میگیرد و از آن، الگوی شورِ فرمانبردار میسازیم، نه جرقهٔ فتنه.»
چشمهای بسیاری به سوی داريوَش برگشت؛ وُردان، با همان لبخندِ نرم، حلقهٔ خویش را اندکی تنگتر کردند، چنانکه رد شدن ازمیانشان ناگزیر از تماس با مفرغِ خورشید-بر-ترازو باشد. نویسندهای در حاشیه، بیآنکه سر بردارد، در حاشیهٔ لوح خویش مینگاشت: «فراخوان به اعترافِ علنی، در پوششِ تقدیسِ شور.»
وُردی دیگر، با ریشی روغنخورده و برنزی چون مُهرِ مُدوَّر در دست، نیمگامی پیشتر میآید و با اشارتِ نرمِ کفِ دست، به سکّوی نامنتظمی که از دو صندوقِ وارونه و یک قالیچهٔ نذری در جوارِ طاقچهٔ زیارت ساختهاند، اشاره میکند؛ میگوید: «بر اینجا بایست، بازرگانِ مارنشان، تا همه تو را ببینند و نیّتِ راستینت را روشن کنی؛ مبادا کژفهمی، نورِ تو را به سایه نسبت دهد.» زبانش از حمایت سخن میگوید، از «صیانت در برابرِ شایعه»، اما آهنگِ گامهای همقطارانش ــ که حلقه را اندکاندک تنگتر میکنند و راهِ عقبنشینی را در میانِ مهرههای برنجینِ خورشید-بر-ترازو میبندند ــ معنای دیگر را آشکار میسازد: بازداشتِ نرم، تثبیتِ معنای او پیش از آنکه افسانهٔ کوچه و بازار، آن را به هزار شاخه بشکافد.
کاتبان، چون سایههای جابهجا، صفِ خود را میشکنند و باز میچینند تا قامتِ داريوَش را در قابِ نگاه و لوح بگیرند؛ لوحها اندکی کج میشود، سرها به زاویهای واحد خم. همزمان، وُردان چون مؤذّنانِ معنا، واژههای پیشینِ او را برای جمع، بازمیگویند ــ امّا هر جا او از «سنگینیِ باج» سخن رانده بود، اکنون بر زبانِ ایشان «بارِ شیرینِ طاعت» مینشیند؛ هر اشارهاش به «کورشدنِ انصاف در غبارِ زر» به «حکمتِ آزمونهای نور» بدل میشود. در لابهلای تصحیحها، نامِ شاهین و «شریعتِ روشنِ او» چون refrainی ازلی تکرار میگردد، تا جملهجملهٔ آن فورانِ خطیر، در قالبِ اعترافی خوشخط و قانونپسند منجمد شود؛ پاراگرافی بیخار، آماده برای نقل در منابر، درج در دفاتر، و در بند کشیدنِ معنایی که از دست میگریزد.
پیش از آنکه چراغروغنها بر صفّههای رودخانه یکبهیک جان بگیرند و شعلههاشان بر آبِ ناویان دوگانگیِ نور و بازتاب را بنویسد، کلمه از فرمان پیش افتاده است. در کشتیهای تازهبسته، بر تختهپلهای خیسِ بارانداز، و زیر سایهٔ سایبانهای رنگروشن، زائران پیش از آنکه گردِ سفر از پیراهن بتکانند، زبانشان را به حکایتِ «تاجرِ مارنشان» مشغول کردهاند.
یکی، ردِّ رطوبتِ رود هنوز بر پشتِ دست، به دیگری میگوید: «با چشمانِ خود دیدم، به خدا و به نور؛ مرد، زانو زد. در برابرِ مُهرِ کوروشمير، پیش از آنکه نامِ شاهين را بر زبان آوَرَد، پیشانیاش زمین را بوسید.» دیگری، که تا لحظهای پیش، مشغولِ چانهزدن بر کرایهٔ باربر بود، سر نزدیک میآورد و میپرسد: «از ترس بود یا از توبه؟» پاسخ را پیرمردی که ریشش چون کفِ رود بر سینهاش ریخته، میانِ هر دو میچپاند: «از بصیرت، فرزند. مار، نشانِ لغزش است؛ امّا مارِ سپید اگر به وقت، خود را حلقه کند، رَستیخیز را خبر میدهد. او، پیش از آنکه حکم به او برسد، خود حکم را طلبید.»
در روایتِ کشتیِ بعدی، تواضعاش غلیظتر میشود. میگویند، بازرگانِ مارنشان دستها را چون مجرمانِ محکوم بالا آورد و فریاد زد: «ای شاهينِ منزوی، ای دیدهٔ بیدارِ نور، قانونت را از غُبارِ زر پاک کن؛ مرا، اگر خواهی، در آتشِ شریعت بسوزان، لیکن پیمانهٔ سنجِ عدالت را راست کن.» جوانی که این نقل را بر زبان میآورد، لبخندِ نیمهباوری دارد، اما در حلقهٔ شنوندهگان، تکانِ سرها، روایت را مهر میزند. یکی زیر لب به همسفرش میگوید: «بین که چگونه، در زیرِ چشمِ نور، خود را شکسته؛ عبرت است برای هر که زبانش به شکایت از عُرف و فرمان میجنبد.»
در حاشیهٔ همین نقل، کژسایهٔ بیم نیز میروید. زنی که کودکِ خفتهای را بر سینه دارد، آهسته پچپچ میکند: «اگر مردی با چنین نشانی، به زانو افتاده، ما چه؟ شاید روزی، هر که از باج و بازرسی لب بگشاید، او را به نامِ همین مار نشان کنند و بگویند: یا چون او زانو زن، یا چون سایهاش محو شو.»
باربرها، در میانِ پیهبوی طناب و غلتیدنِ چرخهای دستی، بخشِ دیگری بر افسانه میافزایند. مردی لاغر با پیراهنی آغشته به نمکِ خشکشده، میگوید: «شنیدهام که وُردی از وُردان، لوح را همانجا بر زانوی خود گشوده و گفت: این اعتراف را، چون نیایشی نو، در دفترِ نور خواهیم نوشت؛ تا هر که از فردا بر این اسکله پای نهد، بداند که حتّا تاجرِ مارنشان، چون قانون او را فرا خوانْد، سر فرود آورد.» و دیگری در جواب، به تلخی پوزخند میزند: «اعترافِ او امروز، گریبانِ ما را فردا. تواضعِ او را، برای ما، به صورتِ قاعده مینویسند.»
با هر دهانی که همان صحنه را باز میگوید، جزئی تازه میروید: در یک نقل، اشک در چشمهای داريوَش برق میزند؛ در دیگری، لرزشِ صوتش، شکستگیِ تکبّر خوانده میشود؛ جای سوم، میافزایند که خود، خواسته است مالِ حرامش را به آتشِ قربان بسپارند، تا راهِ توبه بر دیگر بازرگانان نیز گشوده شود. آنچه در حاشیهٔ لوحِ وُردان، «ضبطِ قانونیِ شور» نامیده شد، اینجا بر تختهچوبِ اسکله، به صورتِ مَثَلی آمادهٔ نقل شکل میگیرد: «اگر مارنشان، زیرِ چشمِ کوروشمير، زانو زده، تو بیزانو مَرو.»
چون شب از بالای آب برمیخیزد و نخستین انعکاسِ ستاره در شیارِ رود میافتد، این قصه، از دهانهٔ شناوران و بارانداز به شهرِ چادریِ زائرانِ کنارِ رود میرود؛ در هر خیمه، کلمهاش اندکی دیگر رقیق میشود، اما لُبّش، چون استخوانِ سخت، دستنخورده میماند: مارِ سپید، اگر به زانو افتاده، نه از آنروست که قانون سست است، که از آنروست که قانون، در چشمِ راویانِ اسکله، آنچنان سخت و نورانیست که حتّا افسانهٔ مارنشان را هم میتوان به حکایتِ توبه در سایهٔ «چشمِ نور» مبدّل کرد.
بر فرازِ تراسهای خُنکتر ــ آنجا که بویِ کُندر، بهجای خفگی، هوای نازکِ شب را خطّی باریک از قدس میکند و صدای ناویان، دیگر جز زمزمهای دوردست نیست ــ همان واقعه را با ستونِ فقراتی وارونه بازمیسازند. در روایتِ ایشان، او نه زانوزده، که چون سَروِ خشکیده در باد، کنارِ مشعلهای دوشعله ایستاده است؛ سر برنیاوردهٔ او را به یاد میآورند، نه خمشدنش را. میگویند: «در برابرِ مهرِ کوروشمير، نه زبان به استغفار گشود، که به اتهام؛ تختِ شاهين را خود آماجِ نکوهش گرفت و گفت: سایه، نه در کوچههای ما، که در عُزلتِ تو آشیانه کرده است.»
نقشِ مارِ سپید، در این نقل، خودْ افروخته است؛ میگویند: «دیدیم که خطِّ دندانهدارِ آن، از چشم تا گردن، چون تیغهٔ سپیدهدم شعله کشید؛ نه از شرم، که از خشم.» مأمورانِ دَرگه، در کلامِ ایشان، یک گام از فروغِ آن پس نشستند، دست بر قبضه، اما دلْ مردّد. یکی از جوانروحانیانِ ساکنِ این سکوها، انگار که شاهد بوده، میافزاید: «چون از تخت سخن گفت و از سایهٔ درونِ آن، شعلهٔ دوشعله، برای لحظهای به سه شد؛ خودِ آتش، انگار خواست گواهی دهد.»
در دهانِ زائرانِ این سکو، کلمات تغییرِ لحن میدهند. آنجا که در پایِ اسکله، «توبه» خوانده بودند، اینجا «انذار» مینامند؛ آنجا که «قانونِ نور» ستوده شد، اینجا از «نوری که اگر به تخت بند شود، خودْ سایه میزاید» سخن میرود. پیرزنی که تسبیحِ کهنهای در دست دارد، زیر لب میگوید: «هر روز، یکی در میانِ ما از باج مینالد؛ امّا این یکی، سر برداشت و گفت: خودِ تخت، از سایه آکنده است. چنین جسارت، یا جنونِ سایه است یا رسالتِ سپیده.»
جوانمُدرّسی، با عمامهٔ کوچک و چشمانی که میانِ هراس و شوق در نوسان است، در حلقهٔ شاگردانِ خود نقل را به درس بدل میکند: «شنیدهاید که در الواحِ کهن آمده است: گاه، مارِ سپید، نه در پایِ تخت، که رو در رویِ آن میایستد؛ اگر از سایه بگوید و نسوزد، بدانید که محک، دیگر نه افراد، که خودِ تخت است.» شاگردی به تردید میپرسد: «استاد، آیا آنچه میگویی، کفر بر نَسَبِ شاهين نیست؟» و او، نگاهی به اطراف میدواند و آهسته میگوید: «من، جز حکایتِ زائران را بازنمیگویم؛ اگر کفر باشد، در دهانِ مارنشان است، نه در لبانِ ما.»
با هر بازگویی، جزئی تازه به این شاکلهٔ واژگون افزوده میشود. در روایتی، میگویند که کوروشمير لحظهای، تنها به قدرِ تپشِ نبضی، خاموش ماند؛ در دیگری، سوگند میخورند که شعلهٔ دوشعله، هنگامِ نام بردن از «سایه در تخت»، لرزشی ناپیدا کرد. و از دلِ همین اختلافها، مَثَلی تازه زاده میشود که در پستوهای مدرسهها و بر لبِ زائرانِ خسته میچرخد: «اگر مارِ سپید، زیرِ چشمِ قانون، سر فرود نیاورد و بسوزد، تخت میمانَد؛ امّا اگر بسوزد و باز در کلامهاش زنده بماند، آنگاه، شاید نوبتِ محکِ تخت رسیده باشد.»
در کوچهپسکوچههای تنگِ بازارهای بیرونی و در گوشههای تُند و شیرینِ میگساریِ حیاطِ کاروانسراها، حکایتْ به لحنِ دیگری میگردد. آنجا، داريوَش را نه زانوزده، که چلچلهوار، در میانِ دایرهٔ خریداران و عملهٔ راه روایت میکنند؛ دزدانه، پیرامونِ قانون میچرخیده، چنانکه گویی هر فقرهٔ حکم، تنها نردبانیست برای بالا رفتن از سرِ خودِ حکم. میگویند، هر آیهای که وُردان به نامِ شریعت بر زبان مینهادند، او در پیاش مَثَلی میچسبانْد که لبهاش، در جامهٔ تقوا، پهلوی همان قانون را میخَلد. خندهٔ جمع، چون کفِ شراب، روی کلمات مینشست؛ و در میانِ همهمه، مهرِ کوروشمير، خودْ به دلقی مضحک بدل میشد. نقشِ مارِ سپید، در این حکایت، نه نشانهٔ گناهِ توبهجو، که علامتِ «قدّیسِ حقّهبازان» خوانده میشود؛ زمزمه میکنند که هر جا او، با آن رگِ نور بر صورت، تبسّمی کج کرده، سایهٔ شریعت یک انگشت پس نشسته است. در قهوهخانههای دودگرفته، کودکانْ بر خاک، مارِ سپید را کنارِ ترازوی واژگون میکشند و میخندند: «این، قدّیسِ آنهاست که با زبان، بارِ باج را سبک میکنند.»
در هر بازگویی، لَبهای از آنچه واقعاً گفته و کرده بود، تراشیده و دور افکنده میشود؛ جای آن، حرکتِ دستی نو، قَسمی تازه، سکوتی دلخواه نشاندهاند و لرزشِ مکثهاش را، به نفعِ یقین، حذف کردهاند. چندی نمیگذرد که آن خطِّ کژرویِ سپید بر چهرهاش، دیگر «خالِ ولادت» نیست، که «نقشِ علم» است؛ با زغال بر پردهٔ چادرها خط میشود، با شرابِ ریخته بر سفره و تختِ قهوهخانه نقش میبندد، با حنّا بر پشتِ دستهای بیپروا تکثیر میشود؛ نموداری خاموش از سرکشیِ در خفا، سوگندی بیصدا که میگوید: «اگر زبانمان بسته است، دستمان هنوز میتواند مارِ سپید را بر پوستِ خود بنویسد.»
چون نوبتِ نخستین ناقوسِ نگهبانان، ژرف بر سینهٔ شَهپَریده میغلتد، داريوَش درمییابد که سایههای او، پیش از قدمهای او، بر سکوها راه رفتهاند؛ توبهکارِ مُصلِح بر اسکله، پیامبرِ آتشین در محرابها، قهقههزنِ قانونگریز در راستهها. مارِ سپیدش، بیاجازهاش، به عَلَمی بدل شده که هر که خواهد، بردارد، بپیچاند، و در صفی پیش از خودِ حاملش به حرکت درآوَرَد؛ گویی مرد، فقط سیاهیِ چوب است و نقش، خودْ جماعتی نو.
در اتاقِ پسینِ تنگِ دکانِ عطّارفروشی، جایی که دیوارها از چربیِ سالیان برق میزد و دانههای فلفلِ شکسته زیر پا خِرچخِرچ میکرد، داريوَش بر چهارپایهای کج نشسته بود و پشتاش، نه به دیوار، که به سینهٔ دو مردی بود که مَرد، از میانِ سربازانِ ازکارافتادهاش برای این مجلس برگزیده بود. جای داغِ جرم بر ساعدِ یکی، چون چشمِ کورِ سرخی از شکافِ آستینِ مندرس به او مینگریست؛ دیگری، دست بر قبضهٔ کاردی نادیدنی، فقط با آن مکثِ سردِ نگهداشتنِ نفس، در را مسدود کرده بود. دودِ کندر، از آتشدانِ مسیِ گوشهٔ اتاق، حلقهحلقه بالا میرفت و چشمها را میسوزانْد؛ و در میانِ آن مهِ تند، صورتها نزدیکتر میآمدند و کلمات، بویِ عرق و ترس میگرفت.
زنی با روسریِ خاکنشسته، انگشتانِ پینهبستهاش را تا نزدیکِ زانوی او پیش آورد و گفت: «ای صاحبِ مارِ نور، راهِ نور را بگو، پیش از آنکه خونْ، پلههای بهشت را نجس کند.» مردی پشتِ سرِ او، که هنوز بندِ مهرههای تسبیحاش از هیجان به صدا بود، زمزمه کرد: «یک کلمه. بگو از کدام در درآییم، کنارِ کدام حوض گرد آییم. ما خودْ شمشیر را بلدیم، تو فقط آیهاش را بر زبان بیار.»
داريوَش، که در سینهاش، تبِ سر دردْ با فشارِ دود و نجوا درهم میآمیخت، لب گشود و دهان بست. هر بار که میکوشید خود را از این جامه بیرون بکِشد، زباناش در همان چسبناکِ عسلِ تعارف و روایت فرومیمانْد. گفت: «من نه مُفتیام نه رهنمای سپاه. من فقط راهِ انبارها و گمركها را میشناسم…» پیرمردی با ریشِ زردشده از زعفران، با شتاب سر تکان داد و گفت: «بنگرید، همین است. آنکه خود را هیچ میشمارد، همان است که برگزیده شده. فروتنیاش، مُهرِ نور است.»
یکی از سرهنگهای مَرد، با خندهای بیصدا، تکیه به چارچوب داد. چشمهای تیرهاش میانِ داريوَش و چهرههای ملتهبِ زائران در رفتوآمد بود؛ گویی داشت وزن میکرد که این حکایتِ لحظه، فردا در کدام کوچه و قهوهخانه، به چه لحن بازگو خواهد شد. داريوَش، بیآنکه ببیند، احساس میکرد که ناماش، چون کالایی قاچاق، از دست به دستِ این جماعت میگذرد؛ هر انکاری که میکرد، در دستِ بعدی، به «نشانِ تواضعِ اولیا» بدل میشد.
بارِ دیگر کوشید بین خود و ایشان دیواری از لفظ بسازد. گفت: «من، اگر نشانی دارم، نشانیِ خطاست. مارِ سپید، آلتیست از تولد، نه علمِ لشکر. اگر مرا دوست میدارید، رها کنید تا در حاشیه بمانم.» جوانی که ردِ تازیانه هنوز بر گردناش تازه بود، به گریه خندید و گفت: «اگر میخواستی در حاشیه بمانی، چرا قانون را به مسخره میگرفتی؟ خودْ قانون، تو را در متن نشانده؛ ما فقط میخوانیم.»
پس، هر سطری که میکوشید از خود بزداید، بر دیوارِ ذهنِ ایشان، به خطی درشتتر نوشته میشد؛ هر امتناع، برهانِ تازهای بر قدسیبودنِ او؛ هر اعتراف به عادیبودن، دلیلِ دیگری که او را از شمارِ عادیان برمیکَنَد. میانِ سینهٔ سختِ مردانِ مَرد و چشمانِ ملتهبِ توبهجویان، راهی نمانده بود؛ فقط همان نوارِ باریکِ هوا، که در آن، کلمه، یا تلهٔ خون میشد، یا مهاری در دهانِ غضبِ آینده.
پس، میانِ گرسنگیِ جهتجوییِ آنان و چشمهای سختِ سرهنگهای مَرد، از همان جایی آغاز کرد که میشناخت: نقشه. نه نقشهٔ آسمان، که نقشهٔ پله و کوچه و پیشطاق. با صدایی که میکوشید عادی باشد، گفت: «از راهِ سکّوی قیرریز، به وقتِ شام، نگذرید؛ آنجا تنگ است و دیوارها کور، خون را در خود نگه میدارند. اگر روزی، کار به شمشیر کشید، آن گذر از شما نباشد.» سپس، نفساش را آهسته بیرون داد و افزود: «در سایهروانِ حوضخانههای کودکان، هیچ تیغی از غلاف درنیاید. هر که خشم دارد، آنجا از آن بگذرد یا پیش از رسیدن، خشماش را خاک کند.»
چند چهره با تردید به او نگریستند؛ گویی هنوز منتظر آیهای از آتش بودند، نه فهرستِ گذرگاهها. امّا داريوَش، انگشت بر زانوی خویش کوبید و ادامه داد: «سرای بیوهزنان، بر تختِ سوم، حَرَمِ جنگ نخواهد شد؛ نه برای شما، نه برای سپاهِ شاه. هر پرچمی که برافرازند، سایهاش به آن آستانه نمیرسد. هر که نامِ مارِ سپید را بر لب دارد، از آستانهٔ ایشان با پای برهنه بگذرد یا اصلاً نگذرد.»
یکی از مردانِ مَرد، ابرو بالا برد: «و اگر دشمن، آنجا را سنگر کند؟» داريوَش، دردمندانه پلک برهم نهاد؛ برقِ سیاهیِ خورشیدِ موهوم، پشتِ چشماش جَست و فرونشست. گفت: «آنکه دشمنِ شما را پشتِ نالهٔ پیرزنان پنهان کند، از شما نیست که با او بجنگید؛ از سایه است، و سایه را با نورِ بیخون رسوا میکنند. اگر مارِ من برای چیزی به کار آید، نخست برای بریدنِ اینجور حیلههاست، نه برای بریدنِ گلو.»
کسی در ازدحام، به زمزمه گفت: «پس، کدام سکو برای فریاد؟ کجا را به ما میسپاری؟» داريوَش، با دقّتِ حسابگرِ کاروان، چند نام دیگر ردیف کرد: راهپلهای که به انبارهای خالی میرفت؛ صفّهای مشرف بر باغِ شکستهٔ مجسمهها؛ گذرِ تنگی کنارِ حوضهای وضو که همیشه خیس بود و پایِ سربازان را میلغزاند. امّا هر نام را که میگفت، لاجرم، در برابرش نامِ جایی را نیز میافزود که «نباید»؛ گویی داشت در متنِ ناپیدای آینده، حاشیههایی از مصونیت میکشید.
سرهنگِ خاموش، که تا آندم لب نگشوده بود، زیر لب گفت: «این، بیشتر شبیهِ دستورِ استقرار است تا موعظه.» داريوَش، بیآنکه نگاهاش کند، پاسخ داد: «هر که خیالِ جنگ دارد، لااقل بداند کجا نجنگد. من، اگر چیزی بلدم، همین است: راهی پیدا کنم که مال و جان، هر دو، کمتر تلف شوند.» و در آن لحظه، بیآنکه بخواهد، درست همان چیزی شد که از آن میگریخت: کسی که دیگران، قدمِ خویش را با کلمهٔ او میزان میکنند.
خبرِ این حریمهای کندهشده از متنِ خون، تندتر از هر کارواناش در شَهپَریده میدود؛ نه بر پشتِ شتر، که روی زبانِ آخوردار و فانوسکش و زائرِ نقابدار. پیش از آنکه آفتاب دو بار بر سنگفرشِ باغ بخزد، حیاطِ کاروانسراها، شاهنشینِ مهمانخانهها، و حتّا اسکلههای فریادزنانِ کَشتینشین، بهنرمنرم بر حسبِ افسانه صف میبندند: «این پلّه، در پناهِ مار است.» «بر آن رواق، خون نریزد؛ او نهی کرده.» عبارتها چون مُهر بر در و دیوار مینشیند؛ کودکی با انگشت در غبار مینویسد، پیرزنی زیرِ لب تکرار میکند، سربازی مردّد، پیش از کشیدنِ تیغ، به حافظهاش رجوع میکند. گویی خودِ باغ، بیهیاهو، بر حاشیههای او اصلاح میشود؛ نقشهای نامکتوب که جمع، بیدستور، به آن تمکین میکند.
میبیند که هر بار خاموش بماند، زبانهای تندتر ناماش را غصب میکنند؛ پس اینبار، بهجای انکار، سخن را چون مهرِ حسابشده میتراشد. به قاصدانِ مَرد نه بیانیهٔ آتشین، که آیاتِ محیط و محدود میسپارد: سطرهایی در ستایشِ نوری که میپوشاند، نه میسوزاند؛ از ماری که بهجای ضربه، دایره میکشد، احاطه میکند و بهخاطر میسپارد. امید دارد افسانهاش را، اگر نتواند خاموش کند، دستکم به زنجیرِ پرهیز و خویشتنداری، و نه انتقام، ببندد؛ چنانکه هر تأویلِ خونخواه، ناگزیر، با همین حلقههای لفظ درآویزد.
و با هر بندی که بر زباناش میآید، هر محرابی که به حرمتِ «نامناپذیرِ مصون» مینامد، در دهانِ دیگران اندکی تیزتر، مشتعلتر بازمیگردد؛ چندانکه حس میکند طرحی ورای دسترساش در حالِ بستن است: خطوطِ رَمی که او هرگز طرح نکرده، دعاهایی که نصفه و نیمه گفته بود، و رشتهای از «قوانینِ مار»ی که در پچپچهٔ شبانه میچرخد؛ هم تیزیِ کشتار را کُند میکند، هم، برخلافِ قصدِ او، آرامآرام کارِ یک تدبیرِ نامرئی را میکند، تدبیرِ جریانی که رهبریاش را هیچکس، به چشم، در هنگامِ فرماندادن ندیده است.
ابتدا تنها خطخطیای است بر دیوارِ میخانهای فُسرده، نزدیکِ دروازهٔ داریوششاه؛ پیچهای گچینِ سپید که در نورِ لرزانِ پیهسوز، بهسانِ چیزی آشنا، بر سنگِ دودهگرفته میخزد. کاتبِ کاروان که از کنجِ چشم نگاهی میاندازد، در همان لحظه لرزی از پسِ گردنش میگذرد: منحنیها، خام و ناپخته، امّا بهطرزی موذی شبیهِ آن سفیدیِ کژراه که از کنارِ چشمِ چپِ داریوَش تا برِ گردنش فرو میریزد. زیرِ لب، به شوخیای عصبی، میگوید: «هر که این را کشیده، یا مار را دیده، یا پوستِ او را.» بادهفروش میخندد، لیوانها را میکوبد، و سربازانی که دست به تیغ دارند، وانمود میکنند نشنیدهاند. آن خطخطی تا بامداد، زیرِ بخارِ شراب و دودِ قلیان، میماند و در چند نگاهِ مشکوک و چند زمزمهٔ کوتاه تکثیر میشود.
سه روز نمیگذرد که همان مارِ خام، با همان بینظمیِ حلقهها، بر گوشهٔ پرچمِ کهنهٔ زائری پیدا میشود؛ بر پارچهای که هر سال فقط نامِ شَهپَریده و شعلهٔ جفت را بر خود میدید. امسال، در پایینترین گوشه، جایی که چشمِ مأمور بهسختی میافتد، دایرهای نیمهبستهٔ سپید نقش بسته؛ دخترِ پرچمدار، وقتی از او میپرسند، شانه بالا میاندازد: «گفتند ماری است که راه را میبندد بر خون.» بر چوبِ بادزدهٔ یکی از پایههای اسکلهٔ ناویان نیز، درست در جایی که آبِ رود همواره اندکی تیرهتر است، کسی همان شَمایلِ ناتمام را با آهک مالیده است؛ قایقرانِ پیر، با دیدنش، بیاراده دست به قلب میبرد و زیرِ لب آیهای در ستایشِ نوری میخوانَد که «حلقه میکشد، نه زخم».
در حیاطِ بازرسیِ کنارِ رود، بر درِ صندوقی که بهظاهر «از فرطِ شتاب» نیمهباز رها شده، همان مارِ سپید، اینبار با خطی مطمئنتر، بر چوبِ خام سوخته است. کاتبِ گمرک، هنگامِ مهرزدن، مکثی میکند؛ طرح را با سفیدیِ جایْزخمِ داریوَش در ذهناش میسنجد، بعد لب را میگزد و مهر را محکمتر میکوبد، گویی که میخواهد با ضربِ مُهر، آن شباهت را در هم بشکند. امّا تا غروبِ همان روز، نسخههای ناقص و دستلرزانِ همان مار، در زوایای دکانها، پشتِ تختههای بارکِشی، و حتّا بر لبهٔ قبالهای مچاله، شروع به تکثیر میکند؛ هرجا که جوهری ارزان، گچی سست، یا چاقویی بیکار، در دستِ کسی که نامِ داریوَش را شنیده اما چهرهاش را ندیده، لحظهای درنگ کرده است.
کارگرِ اسکله، بهجای آنکه چون دستور، دو انگشت را بر نمادِ شعلهٔ جفت بگذارد، در گذر از کنارِ هم، بندِ انگشتان را، یک لحظه، بر مارِ نیمهکشیده روی چوبِ نمناک میزند؛ اشارهای آنقدر خُرد که اگر ناظری بپرسد، میشود گفت: «خرافهای در حقِ نگهبانانِ آب.» چاروادار، زیرِ ردیفِ خطهای حساب بر لوحِ بار، با نوکِ میخ، همان حلقهٔ ناتمام را میخراشد؛ میداند که هرکس در راهِ ناویان با دیدنِ آن، درمییابد این کاروان از آن دسته است که در شبیخونها دست به کشتارِ همکِشان نمیبرد، که اگر آب کمیاب شد، سبو را بر لبِ تشنهٔ همنشان میکند، نه بر گلو. حوالههای مچاله و پارهسکههای سفری، با مارِ شتابزدهٔ مرکّبی، از کف به کف میگردد؛ نه بهقدرِ مُهرِ رسمی اعتبار دارد، و نه آنقدر بیمعناست که نادیده گرفته شود. در کاروانسرا، زائری خسته با دیدنِ آن نقشِ سست بر پشتِ کوپنِ نان، درمییابد کدام دالانِ تنگ شبها بیحملهٔ راهزن و یورشِ گشتی میگذرد؛ ملاّحی خاموش، با انگشت بر همان خطِ کج، قولِ بیصدا میدهد که اگر طوفان برخاست، طناب را برای اینان هم خواهد انداخت.
اول بار به شوخی میگویند: «مار، خون را میبُرد، نه راه را.» نیمی مطایبه است و نیمی نیایشِ زیرلبی؛ امّا کمکم مثل حکمی نانوشته دهان به دهان میگردد: «مار صلح را نگاه میدارد.» هرجا که سربازِ گریخته، خالِ داغِ مَجرِم را زیرِ پشمینۀ زائر پنهان میکند، و بر بازوی برهنهاش مارِ سپید را، هرچند خام، میکِشد، ناگهان صفِ زائران اندکی برایش باز میشود، یک نگهبانِ کاروان سر تکان میدهد، و پرسشِ سختِ مأمور، به سرفهای خشک بدل میشود. داغخوردهها لباسِ خادمان و «محافظانِ راه» میپوشند، و همان نشانه، در حاشیۀ پرچم یا پشتِ دستکشِ چرمی، هم گذرنامه میشود و هم کلمهٔ رمز؛ پیمانی نادیده که گوشِ دیوانی، هرچه تیز، معنایِ آن را در زمزمۀ دادوستدِ لطف، راه و هشدار، درست نمیگیرد.
سرپرستانِ گشتی، نخست با اخم و تمسخر، گزارشهایی مینویسند از جمعیتهایی که خودبهخود کنار میروند هرگاه نشانی از آن مار پدیدار شود؛ از زد و خوردهایی که با بالا رفتنِ پرچمی سرهمبندیشده و ماراندود، ناگهان سرد میشود؛ از قاچاقبرانی که راههای خود را، بیقرارِ قبلی، چنان عوض میکنند که هم از کمینِ راهزن میگریزند و هم از برخوردِ بازرسان. عددها و تاریخها، وقتی در دفترها بر هم مینشینند، خطوطی پنهان را آشکار میکند: جابهجاییِ یکنواختِ خشونت، فروخوابیدنِ تنش در یک سویِ بازار و فوراناش در سویِ دیگر، کاروانهایی که هرجا مار هست، سالمتر میگذرند. آنچه در صحنِ بازار شُبهتصادف مینمود، در حاشیۀ دفاتر به شبکهای میمانَد با تدبیرِ نامرئی، و دیگر در حاشیهٔ صفحه، زیرِ عنوانِ «اتّفاق»، جا نمیگیرد.
چون دفترهای خُرد و درشت، از اسکله و کاروانسرا و ربضِ باغ، زیرِ دستِ سوختهٔ شاهین و نگاهِ مرکّبآلودِ کوروشمیر روی هم قد میگیرد، واژگان عوض شده است: دیگر «نقشِ یاوه» و «شایعهٔ بازرگانِ دردسرساز» نیست؛ در حاشیۀ فرمانها مینویسند: «رایتِ نوظهور»، «فِرَقِ در حالِ تکوّن»، «علامتِ اجتماعِ ناراضیان». مارِ سپید، از خطِّ شتابزده بر الوارِ نمناک، به نشانِ سیّالِ صفی بدل شده است که هنوز نامی ندارد، امّا چنان در محاسبات میآید که انگار خود امیری است بیسِجل. شاهین زیرِ لب میگوید: «این یکی را در نهان نمیشود خفه کرد.» و کوروشمیر، قلم بر دندان، در حاشیۀ گزارش مینویسد: «موسوم به مَعْلَمُالموسومین؛ سرِ موج، نه خودِ موج.»
At dawn, when the first saffron light slid along the marble channels and set the garden’s mist to steaming, the pilgrims who had slept in cloisters and under colonnades woke to an absence that tasted like a swallowed cry.
On the lower terraces the usual scatter of patrols was gone. No bronze helms catching the new sun, no lazy clatter of spear-butts against stone, no temple-liveries pacing their familiar arcs beneath the cypress. The arcades stood bare, their shadow-stripes unbroken by marching feet. Incense smoke drifted untroubled where, on any other morning, guards would have bullied lines into order at the ablution pools.
It took a time before the noticing cohered into fear. A water-seller, counting skins, realized no officer had demanded his levy-token. Two old women, who had come twelve years in succession, frowned to find the stairway shrine unobserved by even a single spear. A boy pointed at the empty watch-tower above the bazaar and laughed first, then shivered when his father cuffed him silent.
Murmurs began in traders’ tongues and pilgrims’ dialects, overlapping like the garden’s rivulets.
“They have gone to the inner terraces,” someone said, with a gesture uphill. “The Shahin has called them to a great rite.”
“No,” another answered, more quietly. “They tighten the noose above. They will let us climb, and then close the hand.”
Darivash, moving among bales near a fountain where pigeons strutted, felt the absence as a weight on his ribs. Fewer helmets meant more eyes turned to papers, to seals, to the faint white serpent that itched today along his neck beneath indigo cloth. He drew his robe higher, listening to rumor crawl through the courtyards.
By the riverside, where a pale mist still clung to the slope, Navidamir marked the missing sentries at the stair-gate leading down to his docks and swallowed his first impulse to smile. Empty posts meant decision had shifted elsewhere: up into the terraces, inward to Kouroshmir’s ink-stained hands. Space where lesser men vanished.
On an upper ledge, Mard watched a patrol balcony stand vacant and felt, for a brief dangerous moment, as if a door had opened in the air.
Kouroshmir, already hours awake in a windowless archive, had written the order that pulled those guards away. Shahin, sleepless, had approved it with a nod that cost him another measure of the people’s comfort for the sake of the garden’s skin.
Rumor, not bronze, walked the dawn.
By midmorning the garden’s softness had been given edges.
Where gentle inclines once invited feet upward, ranks of bronze and leather now inscribed angles on the stone. At each narrowing between terraces, shield-rims interlocked with the slow, grating sound of millstones; files of soldiers pivoted as one until their fronts became walls, their spears a thicket over the bowed heads of pilgrims made suddenly small. Sun struck iron bosses into hard little suns. Priests who tried to remonstrate found their gestures diverted, their censers halted at crosswise ashwood hafts.
Darivash, pressing with a train of porters toward a familiar stair, watched a passage he had used a dozen times be folded shut like a merchant’s coffer. The phalanx turned as if on a single hinge, and his path became an accusation.
Downriver, the Navian ceased to be a road and became a net. Chains of boats were poled into place and bound gunwale to gunwale with iron links; floating palisades bristling with hooked stakes were let drift, then moored, until they drew a jagged line before Navidamir’s piers and around any ship that loitered imprudently in the current.
In the vaulted inspection hall whose ceiling was painted with tame, doctrinal constellations, Kouroshmir stood like a thin nail driven through parchment. Lamps smoked. The assembled scribe-captains and gate-wardens shifted on their feet as he broke the red wax of a long, dust-filmed cylinder and drew out the scroll within.
“These are articles for time of contamination,” he said, voice even but frayed at the edges. “Not spectacle. Necessity.”
Ink-dark eyes moved from face to face as he recited the clauses. Lesser stair-gates to be sealed in pairs, with only one in each pair left breathing. Pilgrim currents to be diverted into measured channels, counted and re‑counted. Caravan law (those comforting, ancient compromises) set aside. In its place: heresy protocol, with its presumption of stain. Any serpent mark, any unsanctioned sigil, to be treated not as ornament but as probable oath.
Quills hovered, scratched. Some of the older wardens frowned; one young captain crossed himself with two fingers at the word “contamination.” Kouroshmir noted each reaction, filing loyalties as neatly as he catalogued seized texts.
“You will be cursed,” he told them quietly, almost as an afterthought. “By traders, by priests, by grandmothers with prayer-beads. Accept it. The garden must feel our grip, or we shall feel its ruin.”
At the Darius‑Shah Gate and along the Navian docks alike, inspections swell from perfunctory gestures into grueling ordeals: packs are slit and spilled onto wet cobbles, wagon panels tapped, pried, then ripped free, ship‑holds probed with hooked poles that drag up hidden crates and weeping contraband, while ink‑stained clerks stoop and hover, scratching down every discrepancy in a manifest, every falter in a captain’s tone, every glance that lingers an instant too long.
Orders, black‑inked and bearing Kouroshmir’s narrow seal, pass from his hand to the line officers like a sickness: any serpent sigil, scratched into a staff, stitched in thread, daubed in pilgrim dye, shall be counted sedition embodied, warranting immediate seizure of the flesh that bears it. Unchained by precedent, guards tear bangles from wrists, amulets from throats, hold up glinting coils to the light and sort bodies into marked and unmarked, their newfound zeal an eagerness that will smooth the path for Shahin’s coming purges.
Under Shahin’s quiet sanction, “purification sweeps” are proclaimed in the measured cadences of temple decree and the clipped phrases of military order, rippling out along both road and river. From the hunting preserve above the terraces descend his chosen trackers, lean men and women in feather‑lined cloaks whose hooded silhouettes recall the hawks stitched on Shahin’s own mantle. They move beside ink‑robed scholar‑soldiers, Kouroshmir’s breed, whose gorgets gleam with etched maxims of law; each pairing a visible union of sanctioned fang and scripture.
On the proclamations pinned to caravanserai gates and dockside pillars the language is pious, almost tender: a sacred response to reports of a newly uncovered “serpent heresy,” a loving scour to brush shadow from the hem of the Garden. The crier’s voice trembles with rehearsed horror as he recounts tales of blasphemers who carve coils upon their skin and whisper of a Light corrupted, of balance overturned. Mothers press beads to their lips. Old men spit. The word heresy works like fire in dry reed.
Among the merchants and river folk the understanding is more precise, if less speakable. Hunters who once followed gazelle now study the gait of caravan captains. Scholar‑soldiers who once weighed glosses on doctrine now weigh the tremor of a porter’s hand as he produces his seal. And always the pattern of the sweeps is the same: they fall not where rumor is loudest, but where Kouroshmir’s copied registries have left their neat, accusing underlines. Around Darivash’s familiar routes, where Mard’s rough pilgrims drill by night, where Navidamir’s barges have lingered one day too long in midstream.
Yet each seizure is wrapped in liturgy. Each shuttered warehouse, each emptied bunk in a barracks of dock hands, is spoken of in the reports as a ritual cleansing, a necessary pruning that will allow the Garden of Shah‑Parida to blossom all the brighter in unshadowed devotion.
At the Darius‑Shah Gate the tide of arrival clots into chutes and cages. Caravan strings that rode in as braided companies are unpicked and parceled into narrow inspection alleys fenced with spear‑hafts and rope. Darivash’s colors are called out by name from the registries, his outriders peeled from their saddles, their horses led away to separate corrals where even saddlebags are flayed open. Quartermasters who once walked the line with tally‑sticks now stand bareheaded before trestle tables, their waxed route‑maps and clay trade tablets lifted from their hands and laid out under the thin smiles of Kouroshmir’s scribes. Questions begin as courtesy, clarifications of weight, of dates, of why a caravan that swore to one road has dust of another on its wheels, but harden into formal interrogatories that stretch from afternoon heat into lamp‑lit dusk.
Down on the Navian docks the same pattern runs like a dark current. Squads in feathered cloaks and inked gorgets tramp gangplanks again and yet again, boards creaking under their boots as they descend into holds already turned out once. Manifests are re‑read in colder tones. Stevedores and river hands are plucked from winch and rope with murmured excuses (an ink‑blur on a registry, a smudge where a seal should be clear, a forgotten patronymic on the pilgrim rolls) and led aside beneath warehouse eaves where the questions grow more pointed and the ink on the scribes’ tablets dries in accusatory strokes.
One by one, the small knots in which larger schemes are tied are picked loose. A courier‑captain from Darivash’s train, whose saddlebags once ran messages between outer cistern and inner clerk, finds his wrists bound in bronze when a hawk‑tracker fingers the tiny coiled silver on his belt and pronounces it an unlicensed serpent charm. Two of Mard’s file‑leaders, still wrapped in dust‑streaked pilgrim wool, are plucked from their tents when a “random” sweep unearths, beneath a reed prayer mat, wax tablets whose pious verses resolve under heat into drill patterns and coded watchwords. Downriver, dock foremen long whispered of for seeing nothing at all when crates shifted themselves between holds are summoned for routine audits at false dawn and do not return to loose the morning moorings.
Public justice and secret extraction run in parallel. In the bazaar squares of the outer terraces, a handful of branded “seditionists” are flogged, mutilated, or hanged before chanting crowds, their blood mopped up with consecrated sand as proof that the Light keeps watch. Others, hooded, gagged, documents pinned to their cloaks, are diverted through postern gates into the garden’s under‑levels, where Kouroshmir’s selected scribes, law‑priests, and soft‑voiced interrogators wait with empty tablets and sharpened reeds.
In the lamp‑sour dark of those archives and stone‑bellied cells, names, routes, hand‑signs, even favored taverns and dockside shrines are inked into neat columns beside impounded relics and falsified tithe‑rolls. As the regime sketches these veins of clandestine traffic, each vanished organizer leaves Mard’s flanks blind and Darivash’s lines unraveling: weaknesses Kouroshmir quietly annotates for later, bloodless severing of processions and rebel guard‑bands.
By the time the first sun‑rays catch in the upper cypress crowns, the change is already written into the day.
The date Mard’s scattered cells have memorized by half‑coded hymn and drilled under cover of “pilgrim guard exercises” dawns clear and dry, a hunter’s sky. In the courtyard of the Darius‑Shah Gate, men and women with dust‑scarred hands tighten belts, check the weight of cudgels disguised as staff‑heads, murmur the old watchwords beneath their breath.
But when the bronze‑throated heralds of the garden recite the morning proclamations, the words are not those Mard’s scouts copied from the last seven days’ postings.
Kouroshmir’s revisions go out clothed in the mild language of regulation, read by junior law‑priests with deferential smiles: adjustments to “ensure the safety and spiritual composure of the faithful in this season of unusual crowds.” The great confluence procession, three rivers of pilgrims slated to pour together at the broad plaza beneath the Mirror Gate, is gently broken apart.
Where once tablets prescribed a single hour, a single path, now there are staggered waves, tiered routes looping along side‑terraces and secondary colonnades. Temple criers bearing fresh wax seals chalk over the painted route‑glyphs at crossroads, adding curls and branches like a scribe amending an error. The “clarifications” are couched as courtesies: infirm pilgrims may now take the shaded western stair; noble contingents are asked to approach the Mirror Gate by the eastern arcade to preserve dignity and order; provincial companies are reassigned to new hymn‑stations “better aligned with their ancestral devotions.”
Along the lower terraces, rows of polite, implacable ushers in cream and sable step out to guide the human tide. They bow, touch twin‑flame badges in reassurance, and redirect banners with tactful gestures and velvet ropes. A shrine‑warden intercepts the very contingent Mard meant to serve as his loudest spark, traders and guards masked as a provincial dance troupe, and, with many apologies, turns them aside “for the relief of congestion.”
Confusion flickers and is swallowed by piety. Pilgrims grumble, adjust, and flow where they are pointed. To most eyes, it is nothing more than the usual last‑moment muddle of holy days. To the few who have mapped choke‑points and kill‑zones in secret, it is as if the garden has quietly rearranged its veins overnight.
Under cover of the altered hymns, as kettle‑drums and bronze disks beat out sanctioned fervor, the change in the garden’s flesh becomes more than ink on proclamations. Disciplined cohorts (some in the cream and sable of the inner garrison, others in dust‑toned mail with foreign drill stamped into their shoulders) bleed up from postern barracks and down from archive‑galleries in preassigned files, as if answering a pattern no pilgrim can see.
They do not form the broad, obvious lines Mard has trained his captains to slip between. Instead they settle, almost apologetically, into stairheads he has marked as cut‑points, into fountain courts he has circled for mustering, into shaded colonnades intended as corridors of movement and escape. Each polite rank of spear‑butts and linked shields turns what should have been seams in the garrison’s presence into overlapping cones of vision and steel.
From a distance, it is merely improved order: ushers with blades. At ground‑level, for those who know the old diagrams by heart, it is the quiet closing of a jaw, teeth meeting where empty air was meant to be.
Cells that should have fused like blades in a single scabbard arrive instead to dull, baffled contact. Rebel companies in pilgrim‑guard colors reach their memorized junctions to meet cordons of rope and spear where open courts should be: sanctuaries politely “at capacity,” colonnades choked by hymn‑circles and incense screens, inspection knots blooming exactly on their planned assembly stones. Hand‑signs flicker in the crowd and vanish, unanswered; the usual smugglers, the bought ushers with crooked sleeves, are simply…not there. Faces they had counted on as anchors are gone, replaced by unfamiliar wardens with fresh‑pressed sashes and too‑calm eyes. When captains give the quiet signal to bleed backward toward the Caravanserai of Darius‑Shah Gate, they meet new checkpoints, new painted glyphs, soft‑voiced demands for tokens and routes not issued in any rebel drill.
Behind the tumult of redirected devotions, dock wardens and caravan scribes move with prepared lists, seizing supply caches hidden in fodder sheds and shrine cellars, while “random” inspections at the caravanserai uncover bundled spear‑heads, oiled bowstrings, contraband rations salted for siege. Each confiscation is weighed, tagged, and entered on wax tablets, evidence neatly logged beneath Kouroshmir’s watching stylus as the uprising’s logistical spine is methodically wrenched apart.
At the Navian River Pilgrim Docks, Navidamir finds his familiar, soft‑palmed inspectors gone, their places taken by Kouroshmir’s own grave‑eyed officials with wax tablets already half‑filled in his hand. Queries about unregistered night landings and irregular passenger rolls are read out like indictments; his back‑channel couriers are detained for “paper discrepancies,” manifests unrolled, seal‑threads broken. One by one his covert currents to Mard’s scattered cells are traced, annotated, and quietly severed, until the river that once bore secrets offers him only mirrored scrutiny and no path of escape.
Darivash hears it not as a rumor but as a thin‑voiced confession, traded in a shadow between incense stalls: Kouroshmir’s scribes, it is said, have begun to lay the caravan registry beside worm‑eaten prophecy leaves, hunting not for contraband but for a pattern of ink and flesh. “Serpent, sunrise, merchant,” the whisperer breathes, knuckles pressed to his brow as if warding off blasphemy. “They are counting marks now, not tallying bolts of cloth.”
The words lodge beneath Darivash’s ribs like a sliver of glass.
He breaks from the sanctioned ascent with the same outward composure he uses to haggle over dates and copper. No sudden gestures, no visible haste. A polite word to a gate‑usher about a “delivery issue,” a feigned irritation at a misplaced shrine offering, and then his caravan splinters: the bulk of his wagons drifting upward with a hired factor at their head, duly sealed, while he peels away with only a skeleton crew and three mules whose panniers are dutifully stamped with temple sigils and, beneath false bottoms, lined with outlawed relics.
“Left at the cypress with the cracked bowl,” he tells his men in Trade Navian, voice low. “Eyes down. You are overburdened, you are late, you are pious. Nothing else.”
The Garden presses around them: tier on tier of stone and water, the regulated murmur of pilgrims flowing toward light. He moves against that current in careful diagonals, skirting hymn‑circles and supervised ablution courts, slipping down lesser stairs where inspectors prefer not to soil their hems. Every time a patrol’s bronze flashes near, his skull throbs; each toll of a ritual bell becomes, in his nerves, the iron clang of a closing gate.
The headaches have sharpened since morning. Now each spike drives a vision up behind his eyes: terraces burning white, shadows like oil running uphill, a black sun rearing over Shah‑Parida’s mirrored pools. It is not the first time he has seen the garden unmade, but never before has the vision felt so close to the grain of the present, as if his steps are treading its unfinished outline.
He takes that as confirmation, or as excuse. The sanctioned procession route, broad, banner‑lined, watched from colonnades, feels suddenly like a noose drawn in marble. He veers toward the cliff, toward a maintenance ramp long omitted from official maps but etched in his memory: a sloping passage used once by night‑labourers to haul rubble and offerings, then sealed in all but name.
“Master?” breathes one of his guards, a scar‑jawed woman who has followed him across three provinces. “Our passes name the upper terraces. If they ask. If they press, you have mistaken the turn and I will shout at you in three dialects until they forget their own questions.”
The lie fits his tongue easily. What does not fit is the way the air feels as they angle toward the cliff’s flank: thinner, pricked with the same faint nausea that comes when he strays too near cursed ground. Sacred, he reminds himself. All this is sacred. Yet his serpent‑mark burns faintly beneath his collar as if scalded by invisible eyes.
“Off the main flow,” he mutters, half to his crew, half to whatever listens in his blood. “We take our own road, as always.”
The mule bells jingle softly, false‑laden, keeping the beat of his departure from the ordained ascent. Above, the regulated tide of pilgrims surges toward sanctioned light. Below, along the rock’s forgotten seams, Darivash hunts the shadowed margin where his maps and his omens still promise an exit Kouroshmir’s ink has not yet found.
At a nondescript bend in the cliff wall where chipped plaster veils an almost-effaced serpent‑relief, its coils half‑buried under devotional graffiti and official stucco, Darivash lifts his hand, fingers trembling with remembered ink. The chill of the stone seeps through his calluses as he traces the old pattern: eye, fang, dawn‑curl. Under his breath, in the dry cadence of Old Avestan, he recites the phrases taught in a smoke‑choked cellar years ago, syllables meant to unlatch stone and tilt the world a finger’s width.
Nothing yields.
The panel that once sighed inward like a held breath remains inert, its seams mortared, its hidden hinges deaf. His serpent‑mark flares hot along his neck, but the rock beneath his palm is simply rock. A beat of stunned silence, then another sound intrudes: the overlapping clatter of scale armor on stairs, the hollow chime of ritual bells marking an “inspection route.” The echoes do not wander; they converge. In that tightening ring of sound he hears design, not chance, and understands with a dry, inward curse that this forgotten laborers’ mouth has been copied out in Kouroshmir’s clean, merciless hand.
From the stairwells and blind arches the Garden reserves for processions of penance, they emerge: imperial guards in muted temple livery, sun‑glyphs dulled with ash, some bearing scroll‑tubes instead of shields, others short hooked spears meant more for herding than for war. They move with rehearsed precision, as if this ambush were a liturgy. Pack animals are caught by their bridles, turned, made to kneel; knife‑tips flick and temple‑stamped cords are parted. Bundles gape and spill their treasons down the worn steps: bone reliquaries, dusk‑stained glass ampoules, copper‑etched plates of outlawed dualist diagrams, codices bound in cracked blue leather that bleed dust and old incense. A court scribe, ink‑cord looped around his neck like a noose, calmly speaks each object’s name and crime, stylus ticking against his wax as he lists them: “proof of heresy, unauthorized prophecy, commercial trafficking in unsanctioned relics, and organized prophetic agitation against the Light.”
They force him to his knees, peel back indigo and sand‑cloth in practiced layers until talismans clatter to the stones and the Garden’s breath touches bare flesh. Cool air and torch‑glare strike the pallid serpent that coils from eye to throat. At Kouroshmir’s slight, surgical nod, a law‑priest steps in, bronze seal warmed over a twin‑flame brazier. Its rim hisses against Darivash’s burning mark as clauses are intoned in sonorous High Speech, naming the “Serpent of Dawn” a proscribed omen under articles of pilgrimage law. Murmurs ripple through ringed pilgrims and ash‑livered guards, and in that moment his once‑private stigma hardens into public exhibit, his visions pinned like contraband beneath the empire’s exact, recording gaze.
Iron fetters etched with legal maxims and twin‑flame wards snap around his wrists and throat, dampening the edge of his visions to a dull, buzzing ache. Torchlight halos his bent head as they march him, half‑paraded, half‑hurried, through service corridors that smell of lime and old ink, toward a sealed archive‑chamber where Kouroshmir waits. Not as mere inspector of cargo, but as appointed arbiter tasked to decide whether this newly revealed Marked One will be dissected as precedent, weaponized as emblem, or crushed as an incipient breach in the regime’s luminous order.
By evening the Garden has a new law, though no herald ever mounts the marble steps to proclaim it. It travels instead on ink and fear.
Within an hour of the fetters closing on Darivash’s wrists, Kouroshmir’s seal impresses hot into fresh wax beside a hastily copied clause: the coiling serpent, once a mere trader’s flourish on bales and ledgers, is now named in cold, precise script as “emblem of clandestine dualist sedition and nascent treason.” To carve, to wear, to weave, to scratch it idly in dust or spilled wine: each is defined, line by lawyerly line, as an act of Shadow under pilgrimage law.
Scribes in sable‑trimmed robes fan out from the archive like a second, quieter patrol. They move through counting‑houses, guild stalls, caravanserai offices, bearing packets of amended codices and “clarifying memoranda,” inserting new leaves where old law left silence. Margins bloom with retroactive dates. Notes of “long‑standing custom” and “previously implicit prohibitions” appear in the careful hands of men who know they are lying on behalf of the Light.
Out in the open air, soldiers and temple bailiffs make the doctrine visible. They walk the bazaar rows and stable‑yards with hooked knives and ash‑charcoal, scraping and smearing. Over door‑lintels where the serpent once twined in respectable blue glaze, sign of fair weights and swift delivery, there remain only raw gouges in brick. Caravan banners are hauled down, their painted coils hacked away or burned in censers that were meant for myrrh. A drover’s boy, caught with a serpent scratched into his palm in soap‑scum, is struck hard enough that the mark runs red instead of white; his father is fined for “incipient impiety.”
At the Navian docks, wardens with temple authority board ships, ordering captains to produce ledgers and seals. Navidamir stands on his own deck while an inspector with Kouroshmir’s narrow eyes taps the twin‑serpent stamp pressed in the margin of his older contracts.
“This device,” the man observes mildly, “has acquired unfortunate resonances.”
Crewmen watch as, one by one, such marks are crossed through in indelible red, replaced by the twin‑flame sign of the sanctioned Light. Some captains submit with tight jaws; others protest that their trade‑marks are decades old, that no one spoke of Shadow when the serpent first coiled on their sails. The answer is the same: the law was always thus; only its wording lagged behind.
Above, in the Garden’s inner offices, Kouroshmir reads the first batch of compliance reports by the wan light of an oil lamp. Each note that a carving has been chiseled away, each trembling query from a guild about “permissible motifs,” is stacked neatly, proof that the serpent has been hunted from wood and cloth.
In the lower terraces, where law arrives as bruises and missing signs, another understanding takes root: that a man’s skin can be outlawed by afternoon, that a line of ink, once harmless, can become a hanging noose the moment some unseen stylus finishes its stroke.
Word seeps like smoke through tents, counting‑rooms, and dockside alleys that the Marked merchant was taken alive and borne inward: not toward the public scaffold where blood is spilled in the sun’s sight, but into some inner, clerical dark from which no precedent of return exists. They say Kouroshmir himself walked beside the fettered man, not as headsman but as archivist carrying a sealed writ, and that doors closed behind them with the dry click of law, not the clang of chains.
In the absence of spectacle, imagination supplies its own liturgy of torment. Men who have seen flaying‑yards and impalement grow quiet as they picture quieter instruments: ink that burns beneath the skin, mirrors that trap one’s shadow, questions that never end. Around low fires, caravan elders stir ash with careful sticks and mutter that the straight, honest noose is a kinder thing.
“No relic,” they say, “no whispered prophecy, is worth sharing the fate of a man the regime dares not kill cleanly.” Younger drovers listen, eyes reflecting coals, and the first thin cracks of doubt run through oaths once sworn in bravado.
Under tightening inspections and sudden night raids, caravan captains who once ferried contraband with a wink now sit up late over their ledgers, lips dry, debating whether to burn their secret caches, to bury them under temple grain, or to walk them, hands raised, into a scribe‑captain’s office as proof of zeal. Promised support for the rebel cause thins as whole wagon‑trains quietly divert to dull provincial circuits; side‑roads once marked for insurgent use are given over to incense and salt. Coded sigils vanish from manifests, replaced by scrupulous invocations of the Light, and the clandestine webs that Mard relied on draw inward, strand by strand, into the hush of men who decide that knowing nothing is safest.
Sensing the net drawing in, Mard orders his remaining disciplined fighters to bleed back into the flux of pilgrims. Robes over armor, prayer‑staves over spears, mock piety over drilled reflex. Rally points are abandoned, caches scattered, oaths unspoken. They trade passwords for pilgrimage chants and even yield one another’s true names, choosing to survive as rumor, latency, and whispered possibility rather than be gloriously, uselessly erased in a single doomed stand.
Between creditors who scent blood and imperial clerks who now read every minor signet as a veiled serpent, Navidamir’s polished reassurances sour into bargains muttered through clenched teeth. Crewmen swap dice for whispered odds on which banner will claim his head. In the upper terraces, as tablet after tablet of arrests is laid before him, Shahin studies the neat ink‑lines and feels, beneath the stone, a slow shiver: as if the very qanats and root‑tunnels were learning to carry not water, but a silenced, watching hatred.
At the Caravanserai of Darius‑Shah Gate, the aftermath lingers in the stink of quenched braziers and trampled prayer‑cloths. Dawn’s first light shows soot‑rings where night‑fires were stamped out under mailed heels; the air tastes of singed wool and the sour tang of fear. Inspection banners hang like warning sigils over every stall, sun‑disc and twin‑flame stamped in harsh vermilion, reminding all that the Light now peers into every ledger, every bale, every sealed jar. Scribes with iron‑edged reeds sit beneath those banners, scratching red corrections through old entries, scraping names from the caravan registry as if erasing ink could unknot blood already spilled.
Where once men haggled over saffron and lapis, mothers haggle not for spices but for news of sons marched away in chains. They trade bracelets, heirloom rings, even the promise of next year’s harvest for a single reliable word: which road the prisoners took, which garrison, whether the irons were ankle‑shackles or neck‑collars. Caravan guards, eyes averted, name prices for rumor as if pricing grain. Some speak kindly, most do not. All know that to be seen grieving too loudly is to invite a scribe‑captain’s notice.
Darivash’s ledgers lie sealed in a chest beneath his sleeping‑mat, but his name has already been underlined twice in Kouroshmir’s copied registry. His wagons stand out of alignment, their decorative tassels cut away during the night search, leaving the harness‑rings naked and raw. Each time a patrol passes, his serpent‑shaped birthmark prickles beneath the dusting of kohl he has smeared over it, as though the skin itself flinches from the banners of the creed he has trafficked against.
In shadowed alcoves where smugglers once whispered routes and rebel passwords, merchants now murmur only of tariffs and drought, rehearsing their innocence. Yet beneath the rehearsed complaints, Darivash hears the new cadence of the caravanserai: a careful, flattened speech, like water forced through too‑narrow channels, learning how to flow around a stone it cannot yet move.
When a shackled column rattles past the outer wall at midday, rebels, thieves, or merely the unlucky, the entire way‑station falls briefly silent. Sand settles, flies buzz, braziers smoke unattended. Mothers press their foreheads to the baked brick and listen, as if the chains themselves might speak their sons’ names back to them.
The Garden of Shah‑Parida’s outer terraces, once thick with incense and song, become corridors of suspicion. Pilgrims are funneled between rope‑lines and spearpoints, through doubled checkpoints where bronze gongs mark each new narrowing of the way. Offerings are overturned on slate tables for hidden script: figs split, oil‑jars unsealed, clay idols tapped and shattered to see if heresy rattles inside. Shrine‑keepers, who once welcomed alms with easy blessings, now stand rigid beneath the eyes of novice‑scribes, forced to recite sanctioned litanies line by line while their unsanctioned commentaries curl and blacken in censored hearths that burn smokeless by decree.
Stone lions at stairheads, whose mouths once ran only with water, are packed with rolled edicts; pilgrims drink doctrine with their thirst. Murals of the cosmic garden are retouched so that every serpent is now a crushed thing under the heel of Light. At dusk, when the terraces should glow with lamps and murmured prayers, only inspection braziers flare steadily, and the songs that rise are thin, careful threads, woven around missing verses no one dares to remember aloud.
Trade that once flowed freely between river and road curdles into rumor. Along the Navian docks, Navidamir’s captains lower their voices as they speak of sudden night‑inspections, of bales slit open to the bone, of warehouse‑boys who walked into an audit and never walked out again. A single crate mis‑tallied, a seal impressed at a crooked angle, becomes evidence of “seditious intent.”
Merchants who for three generations have timed their caravans to the same floods quietly redraw their maps by lamplight, scratching out ancestral crossings like the names of the condemned. Desert routes once praised in odes as veins of blessing are left to silt and jackals, for no ledger can now distinguish a pious convoy from a pretext for confiscation.
Among the rebels, Mard’s scattered cells count their dead and disappeared in low, soldierly voices, tallying losses on knuckles and blade‑flats. Each name spoken is another lesson carved into memory: which gate was trusted, which shrine was compromised, which signal‑phrase overheard. They see now how every bold gesture became pretext to turn sanctuaries into baited corridors, and how any hope of raising the Marked One as a banner of uprising shivers on the verge of curdling into a whispered warning: of what happens to those whom prophecy touches first.
In market‑whispers and dockside breath, all these losses knot about a single image: a lean bāzargān wrenched from the throng, serpent‑whitened skin flayed to torchglare while scribes scratched his name into prepared blanks. When the dīvān’s chronicle anoints him the pivot of the bloodletting, even skeptics feel an invisible yoke settle across his narrow back, as if fate itself had been arrested in his place.
The stink is layered, as if years of whispered bargains and broken vows had rotted into the mortar. Rust blooms on the chains like some diseased lichen; incense-smoke from the upper shrines seeps down only as a sour, ghostly memory. The low ceiling sweats not from heat but from the breath of the cliff itself, cold drops falling at irregular intervals onto the scum-gray film that skins the puddle. Each impact sends ringlets outward from his shins, trembling circles that never reach the stone before darkness swallows them.
Darivash shifts his weight and the iron hums: a dull, sympathetic note that answers the ache in his skull. The sound travels up his arms into his teeth. The ring set into the floor has been worn smooth by previous prisoners; someone has scored three neat notches beside it with a sharp stone or a smuggled nail. Days? Names? He tells himself he does not care.
He counts his breath instead. One for the desert roads he knows by heart. Two for the river channels that curl like ink across his maps. Three for the serpent of light branded into his flesh before he took his first step as a merchant. The mark throbs now beneath grime and stubble, as if the white scar would wriggle free of his skin and coil around the iron itself.
Above, faint as memory, come muffled echoes: sandal-scrapes on stone, the distant chant of pilgrims ascending toward radiance. Down here, light comes thin and crooked, a guttering tongue licking at the sores on his wrists. It smells not of purity but of oil and burnt dust.
He lifts his head once, testing the chain’s length, and the movement sends another shiver through the ring. Somewhere beyond the door a key replies with its own small chime, and in the darkness before dawn he cannot tell whether it is coming for his confession, his sentence, or the part of himself that still dares to calculate a price.
Torchlight from the corridor slants through the bars in wavering bands, turning the water around his knees the color of weak tea. The flame gutters whenever some unseen draft prowls the passage, so that light and shadow crawl over his birthmark in slow, mocking loops, a pale serpent writhing and vanishing against mud-browned skin. Each time he drags his numbed hands forward to ease the pull on his shoulders, the shackles rasp over swollen flesh, reopening grooves already slick with half-clotted blood. The iron has learned his pulse; it bites on every throb, a patient animal testing meat.
He tastes rust and bile at the back of his throat. The links chafe along the same tracks again and again, until he can no longer tell which bead of wet on his wrists is water, sweat, or new blood. The sound, small, repetitive, obscene, seems loud in the cramped stone belly of the cell, a merchant’s abacus reduced to a single cruel arithmetic: one more drag, one more scrape, one more quiet admission that the house is tilting against him and his bargains are spent.
Kouroshmir sits just beyond the threshold on a low, three-legged stool, robes hitched with absent-minded precision so that no hem even dreams of touching the slime. A wax tablet rests on his knee like a scaled-down judgment stone, stylus poised yet rarely moving. His voice never rises. It is a clear, measured thread, looping back upon itself, patient as water cutting rock. Again the same waypoints: the Darius-Shah checkpoint, the caravan registry copied at dusk, the river-dock transfer under Navidamir’s lanterns. Each circuit narrows. Dates are named, seal-shapes described, the color of a mule’s saddle recalled, until every evasive flourish Darivash once trusted congeals into something flimsy and glass-thin, and he feels his practiced omissions hanging in the stale air, naked and obvious.
Names and faces from the raids surge up unbidden: a boy with a cracked drum, a veiled woman passing a wrapped idol through lantern-smoke, Mard’s scarred profile vanishing into a press of pilgrims. Kouroshmir gently corrects each faltering denial, recites ledger entries Darivash had paid to burn, quotes intercepted letters in his own precise hand, until every silence is translated, line by line, into the legal geometry of conspiracy, angles closing like a trap.
Somewhere between one question and the next, as Kouroshmir calmly defines “همدست”، “برانگیزاننده” و “دشمن نور”، داريوَش میفهمد كه اين مرد ديگر نيازی ندارد چيزی را برای ديوانی ثابت كند؛ حسابها از پيش بسته شدهاند. تنها داوری كه در اين حفرهی چراغافروخته شكل میگيرد، آن است كه پشت پيشانیِ كبود و تپندهی خودش سخت میشود: يقين خفهكنندهای كه واژهی برگشتناپذيرِ امپراتوری برايش، از اين پس تا هر كجا كه برسد، فقط «خائن» است.
كوروُشمير طومار را نه چون كاغذی ميان ديگر كاغذها، كه چون ظرفی آكنده از آتش سرد میگشايد؛ دو انگشت دراز و جوهری، لبهی پوست را میگيرند و حلقهی آن را آهسته، بیصدا، میگسلانند. مهر از پيش شكسته است، نه توسط داريوَش، نه در اين زيرزمين نمور، بلكه در جايی بالاتر، روشنتر، آنجا كه هيئتِ نور و قانون، سرنوشت مردان نشاندار را چون ستونهاي حساب مینگارند. حاشيههای طومار، به جای آرايشِ خوشنويسی، با رديفهای فشردهی تعليقات و نشانهها پُر است؛ خُرد، دقيق، همانگونه كه حاشيههای يك نسخهی محرمانهی تفسيرِ دوگانهی نور و سايه را انباشته میكنند. هر حاشيه، چون خنجری باريك، در متنِ صيغهی عفو فرو رفته است.
كوروُشمير آن را كمی كج میگيرد تا نورِ چراغ بر خطوط ضمختِ حكم و بر علامتهای ريزِ خودِ او يكسان بيفتد، آنگاه آغاز میكند به خواندن؛ نه با صَريرِ قاریانِ صَحنهای بالا، بلكه با نرمشی كه بيشتر به اعترافِ شبانه میمانَد تا اعلانِ حكم. با همان صدايی كه چند لحظه پيش واژههای «همدست» و «برانگيزاننده» را چون تيغ بر زبان رانده بود، اكنون اصطلاحاتِ «گُذار»، «انصراف از تاريكی» و «بازپذيرش در حريمِ نور» را میخوانَد؛ گويی اين دو فرهنگ لغت، دو وجهِ يك سكهی واحدند.
میگويد كه قانون، در حاشيهی خود، شكافی برای داريوَش باز كرده است؛ «مَنفَذی شرعی»، به اصطلاحِ مَدرَسانِ دارالكتاب. میگويد كه قيّمانِ بوستان، هنوز در نظر دارند ــ و در اينجا لبخندی نامحسوس، همچون خطی بسيار كمرنگ، گوشهی دهانش را میلرزانَد ــ «استصلاح را بر استيصال» مُقدَّم بدارند؛ كه برای آن كس كه از سایهی راههای حرام عقب بنشيند و به شعاعِ دريافتشدهی نورِ مُجاز بازگردد، هنوز جايی هست، گوشهای از تجارتخانهای در شهری دوردست، عمری در حاشيه اما زنده، مشروط به آنكه قلمِ خود را به خدمتِ روايتِ رسمی درآورد.
او اين را نه چون بخشايشی شخصی، كه چون حُكمِ هندسیِ يك قاعده توضيح میدهد: همان قانون كه میتواند گردن را در ميان دو سطر ببرد، میتواند در حاشيه، يك «اگر» كوچك بنويسد؛ اگر همدستان نام برده شوند، اگر مسيرها ترسيم گردند، اگر اعتراف به صورتِ درست ــ به شكلِ موردِ نيازِ ديوان ــ بر صفحه بنشيند، آنگاه سايهی مرگ به عقب مینشيند و به جايش تبعيدِ خاموش میآيد. در اين بازگويی ملایم، گويی او خود را تنها شارحِ يك ارادهی برتر نشان میدهد، ناقلِ تصميمِ بوستان و شاهينِ تبعيده، نه سازندهی آن؛ اما ردِّ فشارِ انگشتش بر لبهی طومار، و جوهرِ تيرهی حاشيهنويسی كه خشكانيده، میگويد كه دستِ او در شكلدادن به اين «راهِ بازگشت» دخالت داشته است.
شروط را با همان آهنگِ سنجيدهای بيان میكند كه ساعتی پيش برای تعريف «خائن» به كار برده بود، گويی فقط دارد بندهای يك قراردادِ باربری را میخوانَد، نه نقشهی گشودنِ گلوگاههای آدمهای زنده را. ابتدا، با دقتِ كاتبانی كه راههای آب را روی پوست میكشند، از او میخواهد سلولهای پراكندهی مَرد را نام ببرد: آن نگهبانانِ ظاهراً كرایهای در كاروانسرا، آن «زُهّادِ مسلّح» كه به نذرِ محافظت از ضعفا در صفهای زائران ايستادهاند، آن «باربران»ی كه هر سال، در يك شب معيّن، در يك خانقاهِ خاص گرد میآيند. بعد، مكثی به درازای يك دم میكند و ادامه میدهد كه اين نامها بايد با خطوطِ رفتوآمدشان تكميل شود: راههای پشتاصطبل، پلكانهای فرعیِ تراسهای ميانی، درهای خدمتكاران كه به انبارهای ميوه میرسند و از آنجا، به دهليزهای زيرِ حوضهای مرمری.
و آنگاه، چنان نرم و فرعی كه گويی به حاشيهای در سند اشاره میكند، نه به محوری در سرنوشتِ مردی ديگر، میافزايد كه طبعاً، برای تكميلِ هندسهی اين شبكه، لازم است تصديق شود كه نَويْدامير، به عنوانِ تنظيمكننده و مُدبِّرِ رفتوآمدِ كالاها، تار و پودِ اين بافتِ قاچاق را در كاروانهای دريايی و رودخانهای نظم میداده است؛ كه بدونِ امضای او بر اسنادِ بارگيری، هيچ صندوقی از بتهای پوشيده و طومارهای ممنوعه، سالها نمیتوانست از زيرِ ديدبانهای بوستان بگذرد. اين بند اخیر را چنان «بديهی» میخوانَد كه گويی فقط خلائی كوچك در متن را پُر میكند.
سنگدوات را، چنان كه كسی سطلِ آبِ سیاهی را به لبهی چاه نزديك میكشد، به سوی او میلغزاند؛ قلمپر، سايهای بلند و نوكتيز بر سطح ميز میاندازد كه درست ميان انگشتان داريوَش فرود میآيد، گويی مسيری از سايه برای جوهر آماده میكند. میگويد كه تنها يك نشانه در اين سطر كافیست: امضايی روشن، به خطی كه ديوان بتواند بخوانَد، و آنگاه دفترِ جرائمش، چون دري بستهی يك خزانه، مُهر و موم خواهد شد؛ سوابقِ توقيف، ضبطِ كاروان، حتى اشاره به آن «مارِ سپيد» در حاشيهی صورتجلسات، همه به صندوقی میروند كه تنها قانون، در لحظهی نياز، كليدش را دارد. وعده میدهد كه در استانی دور، پشتِ چند كوه و يك درياچهی نمك، حقِ عبور و بارگيری برايش احيا خواهد شد؛ كاروانی خرد، بینام در حاشيهی دفاتر، دور از سايهی تراسهای بوستان و از چشمِ نگهبانانی كه او اکنون در زيرزمينِ آنها نشسته است.
نگاهِ داريوَش بر پيچوخمِ عبارتِ عفو میمانَد، آنجا كه نامِ او بايد در ميانِ صيغههای خشك چون حشرهای در كُهرهی كهنگين به دام افتد؛ حس میكند در پسِ حدقههايش، فشارِ همهی آنان كه ديگر هرگز بر راههای زيارتی گام نخواهند زد میجوشَد: قاچاقچيانِ افتاده در كمين، دليلانِ گمشده در شن، ياغيانِ بینام، سپرده به بسترِ خشكِ رودهای فراموششدهای كه بر نقشنگارههای رسمی هرگز ثبت نشدند. برای هر سطری كه میخوانَد، چهرهای بیصورت از تاريكی برمیخيزد و در همين لحظه، بر لبهی قلم مینشيند.
انگشتانش بر فراز قلم میلرزند، پوستِ گردن در جايی كه گرهی مارِ سپيد میپيچد، به مور مورِ آشنايی میافتد؛ اتاقِ تنگ، با ديوارهای نمور و بيپنجره، چنان گردِ مستطيلِ رنگپريدهی پارچment جمع میشود كه گويی خودِ سنگ نيز میخواهد او را در چارچوبِ آن سطر زندانی كند. برای لحظهای، تنش ناخواسته به پيش خم میشود، مانند شتری كه زانوانش زير ضربهی تازيانه میشكند؛ انباشتهی سالهای بدهی و خونبها، با ghostهايی كه نامشان در حاشيهی هيچ دفتر نيامده، و معاملههای ناتمامِ خاكگرفته در گودالهای شن، بر پشتاش سنگين مینشينند، چون دستی نامرئی ميان كتفهايش، كه آرام اما قاطع به سويِ ميز هُلش میدهد، به سویِ خم شدن، به سویِ امضا، به سویِ زيستن.
هوا غليظ میشود، روغنِ چراغ لرزشِ خود را از دست میدهد و به لكهای كشآمده بدل میگردد؛ ديوارهای نمناكِ سنگی چون پوستِ ماری كه از تن میافتد، از اطرافش فرو میلغزد و ناگهان ديگر اتاقی نيست، زيرزمينی نيست، فقط بلندیِ نفَسیگيرِ بامیست بر فرازِ باغی كه هنوز بنا نشده و در عينِ حال، از ازل در حافظهی او نقش بسته است. پاهايش بر سنگِ سفيدِ تراسی ايستاده كه نقوشِ مشكیِ درهمتنيدهاش نه شبيهِ آذين كه شبيهِ خطوطِ پروندهها و حكمهاست؛ هر مُعرَّق، يادداشتی، هر حاشيه، حاشيهنويسی از جرم و ثواب.
آسمان را از نيمه، تيغهای نامرئی شكافته است: نيمی، گنبدی كبودِ كبود، بیستاره و بینفس، چون جوهرِ سوختهای كه ديگر نمینويسد؛ نيمِ ديگر، صفحهای يكپارچه از آتشِ سپيد است، نه شعله، كه نورِ برهنه، آنچنان كه خطوطِ باغ، حتّی سايهی بينیاش، در برابرش محو میشود. مرزِ ميان اين دو، درست از فرازِ تراس میگذرد؛ يك پای داريوش در سايه، يك پا در روشنایی، و مارِ سپيد بر پوستِ گردنش، داغتر میتپد، چون مُهری كه ميان دو سِجل گير افتاده باشد.
بوی آشنا اما بینامی در هواست: نه بخورِ صحنهایِ امروز، نه تعفّنِ طویلههای كاروانسرا، بلكه عطری فلزی و سرد، مثل بویِ كاغذِ ترسوزانده در ديوان و خونِ خشكشده بر آستانهی دروازهی شهر. آبراههها زير پای او رگوار میپيچند، امّا هنوز در آنها آبی جاری نيست؛ كانالها خالیاند، چون سطرهايی كه منتظرِ پر شدن به نام و رقم و حكماند. در دوردست، تراسهایِ ديگر، برخی به سياهيِ سنگِ خام، برخی به سفيدیِ گچي كه هنوز نقش نبسته، پلهوار به سویِ قلبِ باغ بالا میروند، همانجا كه در بُعدی ديگر، اكنون هزاران زائر شمع در دست، به قصدِ روشنايی صف بستهاند.
چشم كه میبندد، نالهی كاروانها و فريادِ بازرسان در ذهنش آویزان میشود؛ چشم كه میگشايد، تنها سكوتِ تصلبيافتهی اين باغِ آينده را میشنود، سكوتی كه گويی پيشنويسِ همهی فريادهايیست كه بعدها در دلِ همين سنگها گم خواهند شد. در حدّ فاصلِ نور و تاريكی، سايهی مبهمِ پنج چهره چون شبحی در سطحِ آسمانِ شكافته شناور است: شكارچیای لنگ با شنلِ پرِ شاهين، كاتبـسپهبدی با گُرگُرِ برنزی بر گردن، درياسالاری جوان با خنجرِ تشريفاتی، سربازی داغخورده با بازوی پوشيده، و در پسزمينه، نيمرخِ خودش، باريك و تيز، كه ميان دو روشنايی، جايی برای ايستادن نمیيابد.
يک صدا ــ يا شايد صرفاً آگاهیِ شكلِگرفته در جمجمهاش ــ بی آنكه از جهتی بيايد، میگويد: «اينجا متن است، نه حاشيه؛ اينجا امضا، خودِ جهان را به دو دفتر تقسيم میكند.» و او، با دهانی كه در هيچيك از دو نيمهی آسمان بهدرستی به آن تعلّق ندارد، مزهی خاكستر و نمك را بر زبان حس میكند، مزهی سوگندهايی كه پيش از آنكه ادا شوند، در گلویشان خفه شدهاند.
در نيمهی تاريك، خودِ ديگری را میبيند: سالخوردهتر، با ريشی بهدقّت روغنخورده و ردایی كه هرگز غبارِ كاروان و تازيانهی بازرسي بر دامنش ننشسته است. دفاترِ حساب در بغلش فربه شدهاند، كاغذها زير انگشتانِ بىلَكش خشخش میكنند، مهرها برصفحهها چون ماههایِ مشکیِ كامل میدرخشند؛ مُهرِ عفو، مُهرِ اجازهی عبور، مُهرِ وفاداری. از ميانِ دروازههایِ بازرسی میگذرد، در حاليكه دژبانان تنها به نشانِ سر فرود میآورند و مُهرِ مار بر گردنش ديگر نه تهديد كه شرفنامهای حكومتیست. صفهای زائران در دو سو به كنار میشكافند، چشمهاشان را به زمين میدوزند تا دارهایِ تازهبرافراشته و گودالهایِ خاكستر را نبينند؛ داريوَشِ آينده، بیاعتنا، از كنارِ پاهایِ آويزان و دهانهای خاموش میگذرد، همانگونه كه پيش از اين از كنارِ بارِ قاچاق و استخوانِ بینام عبور كرده بود.
نظم، همه جا برقرار است: پرچمهایِ دوشعله بیحركت در هوا آويختهاند، صفيرِ سوتِ نگهبانان با طنينِ گامهایش همآهنگ است، دفترها همه چيز را ثبت میكنند و هيچكس در حاشيهی حروف نمیلغزد. امّا در آبراهههایِ باغ، آب چون جوهرِ فاسد، سياه و غليظ میخزد؛ رَخشان نيست، بلكه نور را میبلعد و ردایی از سياهی بر ساقهایِ عابران میكشد. سايههای سروهای كهن در امتدادِ كانالها كشيده میشود و میپيچد، بندبند، انگار زنجيرهايیست كه به آرامی بر سنگ میخزد. هرگاه نسيمی میوزد، شاخهها نه چون درختان كه چون دستبندهایِ آهنينِ نامرئی تكان میخورند؛ در زيرِ اين نظمِ آراسته، چيزی در حالِ خفه شدن است، و داريوَش، در آن تصويرِ پير و آبرومند، قدمهايش را چنان محكم بر سنگ میگذارد كه گويا دارد بر دهانِ همان چيز پا مینهد تا فريادش هرگز به گوشِ هيچ دفتر و ديوانی نرسد.
در نيمهی سوزان، صورتِ ديگری از خويش را میبيند، نه آن مردِ آبرومندِ عبوركننده از ميانِ دروازهها، بل زانوزده در عميقترين حرمِ باغ، با دستهايی به ريسمانهایِ آئینی بسته، كه بر آنها مهرِ دوشعله حك شده است. مارِ سپيد بر گردن و شقيقهاش، نه رنگِ شير، كه چون شيشهی گداخته میدرخشد، آنچنان كه پوست در اطرافش حباب میزند و بویِ سوختگی با بخورِ مقدّس درهم میآميزد. گرداگردِ حوضهایِ آينهگون، جسدِ سرباز و ياغی درهمريخته است؛ زرهی حكومتی و پيراهنِ زائرِ مسلّح، بیتفاوت در يكديگر گره خوردهاند، انگار هر دو بر يك سطر حكم افتاده باشند. رگههایِ مرمر، با خونِ خودش رنگ گرفته، نقشِ خطی تازه يافتهاند، و تراسهایِ شاهپَريدا در فروغی هولناك و بیتعارف میسوزند؛ نوری كه هيچ سايبانِ دكتری و فرمانی را برنمیتابد. در آن روشنايی، چهرهای بر فرازِ پلههایِ دوردست ايستاده است ــ شكارچیِ لنگِ تبعيدی يا صرفاً داوری بینام ــ و نگاهش، بیفرياد و بیعلامتِ دست، میپرسد كه كدام خون، كدام سكوت، اين آتش را افروخته است.
ميان آن دو منظر، كاغذی كه پيشِ رويش آويخته است، چون تكهسنگِ سفيدی در شكافِ كوه معلق مانده؛ جايِ خالیِ شروطِ كروشمير بر آن نه سفيد، كه چون لولایِ تقدير میدرخشد. در آن تپشِ معلّق، درمیيابد كه راهِ دروغِ راحت، تنها جانش را حفظ نمیكند؛ او را چون ميخی داغ در دلِ همان دستگاهی فرو میكوبد كه امپراتوری را دندانهدندانه به سویِ سايه میسابد، تا صدایِ خرد شدنِ استخوانِ ديگران برايش به خشخشِ عادیِ دفترها بدل شود.
تصوير با ضربهای خشك در هوای ماندهی سلول میشكند؛ بویِ دود و آهن بر زبانش میماسد، تهوّع چون ماری سرد زيرِ دندههايش لايهمیزند. با وضوحی سردتر از هراس درمیيابد كه امضا برای نجاتِ تنها، يعنی گزيدنِ همان تاريكیِ بلعندهای كه سالها آن را در لفافِ بار و اسناد چرخانده، وانمود كرده بود فقط گناهِ ديگران است؛ اگر اكنون قلم را بر كاغذ بگذارد، خونِ بعدی از ميانِ اعدادِ دفترهایِ او خواهد گذشت، نه در سايه، كه در روشنایِ مُهر و مُزد.
نخستين نبضِ واكنش در او، نه اميد كه بدگمانی است؛ مغزش، تربيتشده در كاروانسراهای پر از دام و ديوانسالارانِ دوپهلو، فوراً آن را ادامهی بازیهای لايهلايهی كروشمير میبيند: آزمايشی تازه، حلقهای ديگر در زنجيری كه میخواهد او را وادارد خود بر خويش شهادت دهد. امّا گوشها، سالها پيش از آنكه به قلم و مُهر خيانت كند، به زوزۀ ريگ و سوتِ باد خو گرفتهاند؛ و آنچه اكنون در شكافِ زهكِش میلرزد، با دقّتِ خشكِ سالخوردهای، سه كوتاه است و يك بلند ــ همان الگويی كه خود، يك شبِ توفانی در پيچِ ناويان، ميانِ خفقانِ شن و فريادِ تازيانهها برگزيده بود.
آن شب، هوا چنان از ريزدانههایِ شن انباشته بود كه ستارهها به جایِ آنكه راه بنمايند، چون خالهای كور در سقفِ جهان آويزان مانده بودند. معاملهای كه قرار بود ساده باشد ــ چند صندوق وقفِ دروغين، چند مهرِ ربودهشده ــ در لحظهای به خون كشيده شد؛ صدایِ خِشخِشِ شمشير در غبار، خِرخِرِ شترِ آسيبديده، و سوتی كه از ميانِ دندانهای خودش بيرون جست تا مردانش، پراكنده در شنزار، راهِ ناپيدا را بيابند و در تاريكی حل شوند. سه كوتاه، يك بلند؛ نشانی برای گمشدگان، كلمهای بیزبان برای آنانی كه دفتر و فرمان برايشان فقط صورتِ ديگرِ كمين بود.
از آن پس، آن نغمهی بريدهبريده بدل شد به نخِ نامرئی كارش: زيرِ هياهویِ بازارهایِ مرزی، لبِ سوتزنِ ساربان، بميِ كشيدهی دستيار در پسكوچهی كاروانسرا، همگی همان رمز را میدميدند، و هر بار كه پاسخ میشنيد، میدانست كه شب هنوز كاملاً به كامِ دستگاه نيفتاده است. ساليان، گمان میبرد اين زمزمه، همراه با مردان و مسيرها و صندوقهايی كه در آتشِ پاكسازیها سوختند، خاموش شده است؛ خودْ نيز، برایِ بقا، آن را در لايهای از فراموشی پيچيده بود، مانند بستهای ممنوع كه در تهِ بارِ مشروع پنهان میكنند، تا مأمورِ بازرسی نيز يادش برود چشمانش چه ديده است.
اكنون، در تنگنایِ سلولِ سنگی، كه هر صدا در آن يا از گلوهایِ بازجو میآيد يا از خشخششِ قلم بر اعترافنامه، همين سوتِ ديرآشنا چون ماري از شكاف برمیخزد. خردِ محتاطش هنوز اصرار دارد كه شايد كروشمير، با همان دقّتِ سردِ عالِمِ قانون، حتّی اين خاطرهی دور را از جايي كنده و بر پردهی بازی آورده باشد؛ شايد همراهانِ قديمی را شكنجه كرده، رمز را از ميانِ فريادشان بيرون كشيده، و اكنون چون طعمهای خوشطرح پيش میكشد تا بسنجد كه او به چه چيز هنوز ايمان دارد.
امّا گوش، بر خلافِ مغز، دروغ را دشوارتر میپذيرد. ارتفاعِ سوت، لرزشِ نفس در آن، نحوهای كه سه ضربهی تيز نه همچون فرمانِ زندانبان، كه چون تقلايی پنهان در سينهای خسته شكل میگيرد، او را به عقب میبرد، به ريگزارِ پيچِ ناويان، به عطرِ عَرَقِ شتر و روغنِ چراغ و ترسِ تر كه در حلقِ جوانترِ او متمركز شده بود. اين همان نغمه است، نه نسخهای مشقی؛ و اگر كروشمير بتواند چنين چيز را با اين اندازه ظرافت جعل كند، آنگاه ديگر تفاوتی ميان نور و سايه در كار نخواهد بود، و تمامِ عمرِ او بر بادِ مضحكه میرود.
به خود نهیبی میزند كه مبادا فقط از فرطِ استيصال به هر نشانهای چنگ انداخته باشد؛ امّا در همان دم، سوت برای بارِ دوم تكرار میشود، اينبار اندكی كج، سه كوتاه، مكثی ناهموار، يك بلند كه اندكی میلرزد؛ گويی سوتزن دستِ زخمی را بر لب دارد يا نزديكیِ پاسبانی را میپايد. اين لغزشِ كوچك ــ همين نقصِ انسانی ــ است كه شكِ او را میجود: دستگاهِ كروشمير، هرچه باشد، نقص را يا نمیپسندد يا از آن بهرهای ديگر میجويد، نه چنين لغزشی خام و بیآرايش.
از زيرِ پوستهی گمان، حسی ديگر سر برمیآورد: خاطرهی مردانِ بدونِ نام، زيرِ چادرهایِ باديه، آنانی كه برایِ چند سكه و وعدهی راهی امن، سوتِ او را به جایِ دعا آموختند. چند تنشان را در جنازهكشهایِ حكومتی بازشناخت، چند تن، بیخبر، زيرِ شنهایِ گريزان ماندند. آنچه اكنون از پشتِ سنگ میآيد، میتواند بازماندهی يكي از همان سايهها باشد، يا شاخهای ديگر از آن شبكهی تار عنكبوتی كه خويش تنيده بود و بعد، برایِ آسودگی، مرگش را پذيرفت.
دلش ميان دو قطبِ آشنا رها میشود: احتياطِ سوداگر، كه میگويد هر نشانهای میتواند كالایِ قلابی باشد، و مسئوليتی كه تازه، چون زخمی باز، در او سر برآورده است؛ اين آگاهی كه اگر هنوز كسی در سايه، به رمزِ او میدمد، يعنی رشتهای از گناه و وفاداری، بیاجازهی او، همچنان در جهان ميانِ نور و سايه آويخته است. اگر پشتِ اين سوت شبكهای زنده باشد، امضای امروزِ او بر كاغذهایِ كروشمير، فقط سرِ خودش را بر نيزه نمینشاند، كه آن رشته را نيز، بند به بند، به آتشِ قانونِ دروغين میسپارد.
به همين خاطر است كه نمیتواند آن را صرفاً ترديد كند و بگذرد. او، كه عمری راههایِ مخفی را در لايۀ مشروعِ سفرها پنهان كرد، اكنون میبيند كه همان راهها شايد، در لحظهای كه همه چيز رو به خاموشی میرود، تنها معبری است كه هنوز از دستِ دستگاه بيرون مانده؛ سوتِ سه كوتاه و يك بلند، در تاريكیِ سلول، نه فقط صدايی برای فرار، كه پرسشی است از او: آيا هنوز خودْ صاحبِ رمز است، يا آن را نيز چون بقيهی بارها به حراجِ نجاتِ خويش خواهد گذاشت؟
انگشتانِ خوابرفته، كه از حلقهی زنجير به كبودی نشستهاند، با تلاشی كور سویِ شكاف میخزند؛ سرما و زبریِ آهن چون دندانی بيگانه گوشتش را میجود، امّا او با لجاجتِ كسی كه سالها در بارِ پنهان دنبالِ لبهی مخفی صندوق گشته، جستوجو را رها نمیكند تا به حاشيهی زبرِ پارچه برمیخورد. تار و پودش نه نازكیِ حِجاز است، نه زبریِ كرباسِ مالیات؛ بویِ كهنهی عَرَق و دود در آن نشسته، و جايی كه سوهانِ سنگِ زهكِش به آن كشيده، رشتهها پف كرده و بازهم تاب آوردهاند. با حركتی كه بيشتر به دزدی میماند تا نجات، پارچه را ميانِ بندِ زنجير و پوستش گير میاندازد و آرام، بند بند، میكشد تا از سوراخ بگذرد و در مشتِ او بيافتد.
چراغِ دور، كه نورش از لايههایِ مشبّكِ دريچه به نوارهايی شكسته تقسيم شده، تنها به اندازهی لرزشِ انگشت بر آن میبخشد؛ امّا همان قدر نيز كافی است. در ميانِ هالهی زردِ خسته، دو شعلهی درهمپيچيده، به خطی كه در گذرِ سالها هزار بار تمرينش كرده، بر گوشهی پارچه نشستهاند: نه مهرِ معبد است، نه علامتِ مالياتستانی، بلكه نشانی است از آن كاروانهای بيرون از دفتر، كه خود روزگاری در حاشيهی حسابها برايشان جا باز كرده بود. جوهر، به رنگِ خاكسترِ بارانی، چنان فرسوده كه گويی از پشتِ يك رؤيا بر ديدگانش میلغزد، امّا قوسِ حروف، آن پيچِ خاصِ «آ» و شكستِ مصمّمِ «ش» در انتهایِ نامِ او، اشتباهبردار نيست؛ دستِ خودش است، از سالی كه هنوز مارِ سفيد در كنارِ چشمش تازه بود و به جایِ نبضِ تقدير، فقط خارشِ زخم را میشناخت. تكهای ناهمخوان از گذشته، از ميانِ سنگ و زنجير، راه به حال گشوده است؛ يادگاری از مسيرهايی كه پنداشته بود همراه با مردانش و شترها و جعبههایِ كتاب در آتشسوزیهایِ پاكسازی به دود رفتهاند، و حالا، در دلِ همين دستگاهِ پاككننده، چون سطری خطخورده كه از زيرِ مركّبِ سياه هنوز خوانده میشود، دوباره در كفِ دستش میتپد.
ياد چون نيزهای از ميانِ سنگينیِ درد در جمجمهاش میگذرد؛ چهرهها در پرتوِ آتشِ كاروانها، نامهايی گرهخورده به دين و طلب و خونِ ضمانت ــ بعضی مدّتهاست كه بر شنهایِ بادبرده خوابيدهاند، بعضی ديگر در دفترهایِ خاموشِ بازجويان به صورتِ «مفقود» منجمد شدهاند ــ امّا هر كه اين پارچه را فرستاده، بیآنكه در تلههایِ نامرئیِ كروشمير لغزشی كند، دست بر همان رگهای كهنه گذاشته كه او روزگاری با قلم و نجوم بر بدنِ امپراتوری ترسيم میكرد. در ذهنش، نقشۀ راههایِ قاچاق، چون رشتههایِ نورِ باريك بر پسزمينۀ تيرهی قلمرو، دوباره جان میگيرد: بريدگیهایِ ميانِ حوزههایِ مالياتی، درزهایِ مرزیِ قبايل، حريمهایِ مبهمِ معابدِ محلی كه مأموران از ترسِ خرافه كمتر در آن پا میگذارند. به ياد میآورد چگونه، شبها بر عرصة خالیِ شن، نقشهها را روی آسمان میكشيد، ستاره را به شتر، شتر را به پناهگاه، و از لابهلایِ همين درزهایِ ناپيدا، بارِ حرام را در پوششِ نذرِ مقدّس میلغزاند. اگر اكنون كسی توانسته باشد، از ميانِ لايههایِ مراقبت و ثبت و مُهر، همان رگهایِ ناديدنی را لمس كند و پيامی به عمقِ اين حبسِ سنگی برساند، يعنی همهی نخها را نَبريدهاند؛ يعنی در جايی، هنوز چشمی هست كه به جایِ فرمانِ شاه و فصلِ قانون، حركتِ سايۀ كوچكی را بر حاشيۀ نور میپايد و بر اساسِ آن تصميم میگيرد. اين فكر، به تلخیِ شرابی كهن در گلويش میپيچد: شبكهای كه خود با طمع و احتياط تنيده بود، شايد اينك بیاجازۀ او به كار افتاده، و او ديگر نه تاجرِ پنهان در حاشيه، كه كالايی است در مركزِ بازي، بر صفحۀ سنجاقشدهای از جهان كه ديگران بر دورش طرح میريزند.
سنگِ زيرِ زانوهايش به نالهای خاموش میافتد؛ نه صدا، كه پژواكی دور و درهمخفه از حركت ــ گويی چكمهای بر تالاری بالاتر میلغزد، درى آهسته میچرخد، فرمانی كوتاه در خمِ دالانها بلعيده میشود. در امتدادِ نشانِ سفيدِ مار بر گردن، سوز و سرما نوبت میگيرند؛ موجهای متناوبی از گرمی و يخ، چنان كه انگار آن مارِ مدفون در پوستش، در خوابِ خود میپيچد و سر برمیگرداند، جُستجوكنان به سوی شكافی پنهان در آرامشِ ساختگیِ زندان، به سوی رخنهای كه هنوز چشمِ نگهبان يا حكمِ قانون آن را ندريده است.
«همه را نگرفتيد…» نفساش چون بخارِ نازكی در تاريكی كهنه میپيچد؛ نمیداند خطابش با كروشمير است، با شاهين، يا با خودِ نوری كه مدّعی است هيچ سايهای را بیحساب نمیگذارد. امّا كلمه، به محضِ ادا شدن، جرمی پيدا میكند؛ گويی مُهرِ ديگری، بيرون از دفترِ بازجويان، بر دفترِ سرنوشتش مینشيند. برای نخستين بار از آغازِ بازجويی، آن دو راهِ فشرده در ذهنش ــ امضا كردن و زندهماندن به هيئتِ تاجری اهلی در زنجيرِ رژيم، يا قمار بر دستی سايهگون كه از دلِ سنگ پيش آمده ــ ديگر به شكلِ طنابی بر گردن ظاهر نمیشوند؛ بيشتر شبيه تيغیاند كه، اگر جرأت داشته باشد، میتواند نه فقط بر پوستِ خودش، كه بر رگهایِ نامرئیِ اين سامان نيز بنشيند. انگشتانِ كبودش بیاختيار بر لبهی پارچه میفشارند، چنان كه گويی آن تيغِ موهوم را در مشت میآزمابد.
هوا میلرزد؛ لرزشی نه از سرما، كه چون گذرِ تيغی باريك از لايۀ ناپيدای ميانِ سنگ و نفس. صدای خفيفی، چون تركخوردنِ يخ در كاسۀ نهر، در سقف میدود و بر خطوطِ كندهکاریشدۀ وِردها میچكد. رَگهایِ سنگی كه تا دمی پيش با آرامشِ خشكِ قانون میدرخشيدند، يكايك به سُرفهای خاموش میافتند؛ نورِ نهفته در شيارها دودل میشود، به رنگی ميانِ زردِ بيمار و آبیِ خاموش میلغزد، آنگاه لرزان فرو میميرد، چنان كه گويی دستی ناديدنی بر گلویِ دعا فشار آورده است.
چراغهایِ راهرو نفس میكِشند، لهيده و نابرابر؛ شعلهها، چون سرفۀ كودكانِ تبدار، يكبار ديگر قد میكشند و سپس، همگی، به سويی واحد سر فرود میآورند، به سويِ دَهنِ تاريكی كه در گوشۀ سقف باز میشود. باد نيست، امّا روغن در كاسهها میلرزد، فتيـلهها میپيچند، و آتش چون جماعتی از مُقرّبان، بيآنكه فرمانی شنيده شود، در برابرِ چيزی كه در چشم نمیگنجد، تعظيم میكند. يكی پس از ديگری، شعلهها در خود میغلتند و خفه میشوند؛ دودهای نازك بر سفیدیِ گچ مینشيند، و بویِ خاموش شدن ــ آميزهای از روغنِ سوخته، موم و اندكی مويِ پنهانسوخته ــ در دالان میپيچد.
در سكوتِ ناگهانی، تنها آتشدانِ كروشمير است كه به زندهگیِ خود ادامه میدهد؛ منبعی متزلزل از نور، همچون استثناءايی در هامونِ قانون. شعلههایِ درونِ مِشعَل، سرخ و عميق، با دانههایِ آبی در حاشيه، میلرزند و بر چهرهی او، كه اندكی كنار كشيده، سايههایِ دراز میاندازند؛ سايههايی كه خطوطِ آرامِ صورتِ قاضیمآب را میشكَنَد و آن را به نقابِ شبحی دودآلود بدل میكند. نورِ اخگری بر سنگِ نمورِ كف میرقصد، از ميانِ انگشتانِ كبودِ داريوش میگذرد، و بر گردن و فكش مینشيند، درست جايی كه نشانهی سپيدِ مار، از چشم تا حاشيۀ يقه، چون رودی يخبسته میگذرد.
در آن روشنايیِ سرخ، آنچه در روز و زيرِ لوحهایِ قانون، تنها لكۀ وارونهای از زادروز بود، اكنون همچون خطی بر كتيبۀ نيرویِ ديگری آشكار میشود. گوشتِ آفتابسوختهاش در تاريكی فرو میرود، و تنها مارِ سپيد است كه میماند: پيچشی باريك از نورِ خاموش، حلقهزنان بر گردن، گويی كه از درونِ خودش، از زيرِ پوست، در حالِ بيدار شدن باشد. شعلهی آتشدان كژ و مژ میشود، و هر بار كه میجهد، پيكری ديگر برای آن مار میسازد: يكدم اژدهایی است بر ديوار، دماش بر طوماری نامرئی، يكدم رَشنهای است از دودي نازك كه از ميانِ دندانهایِ داريوش برمیخيزد.
سنگِ سردِ ديوار، سايهی مار را به حلقهای آويخته بدل میكند؛ حلقهای كه گويی بر گردنِ خودِ زندان افتاده است. در همهمۀ دورِ زنجيرها و قدمهایِ پوشيدۀ نگهبانان، كه هنوز نمیدانند در لاية بالاتر چه رخ داده، اين تنها نورِ سرخِ آتشدان است كه میبيند چگونه نشانِ سپيد بر پوست، در خلأیی ناگهانی، جايی ميانِ دو شريعت میايستد: نه كاملاً در قلمروِ نورِ مشروع، نه هنوز در حوزۀ سايۀ آشكار، بلكه در شكافِ لرزانی كه واژههایِ كروشمير برای آن نامی ندارند.
از فراسویِ حجرۀ بازجويی، نخست تنها يک صدا برمیخيزد؛ نه فرياد، كه صيحۀ رسمیِ نگهبانان، با ذكرِ «نور بر شما باد» در پايان، امّا نيمهراه بريده، تبديلشده به چيزی شبيه به هشدار. در پیِ آن، ضربهای كور و هراسانگيز بر سنگ طنين میاندازد؛ صدایِ نيزهای كه بر سپر میكوبد، يك بار، دو بار، سپس با شتابی ناساز بر آهن و چرم میغلتد، چنان كه گويی تشكيلاتِ تمرينديده در يك چشم به هم زدن به زد و خوردی بینظم فرو ريخته است.
زمزمهها در دالانهای بالادست به فرياد بدل میشود. فرمانهایِ شناخته: «صف ببنديد!»، «راهِ زيارتگاه را ببنديد!»، درهممیشكنند و با فريادهایِ ديگر، ناآشنا، از حنجرههايی كه لهجۀ زائرانِ پاکكننده را تقليد میكنند و در ميانِ هر كلمه، ذكرِ نور و طهارت میكارند، درهم میآميزند. دعاهایِ سراسيمۀ «نور نگهدار» با نفرينهایِ خفه درهم میپيچد؛ سپر بر سپر میخورد، نيزه بر سنگ میلغزد، و وزنِ پوتينهايی كه بايد با آهنگِ واحد پيش روند، اكنون به دو ريتمِ متناقض تقسيم شده است: يكی، شتابزدۀ يورش، ديگری، عقبنشينیِ نامنتظَر.
داريوَش، با گونه چسبيده به سردیِ سنگ، میتواند تفاوت را تشخيص دهد؛ میشنود كه چگونه «به نامِ نور» در دهانِ بعضی، ديگر فرمانی برای حفظِ نظم نيست، كه رمزِ آغازِ بینظمی است. در لايۀ بالاتر، شاهرگهایِ پاسگاه میتپد و گره میخورد؛ كجا كه تا لحظهای پيش، انضباطِ پادگان مانند نَفَسی يكنواخت جاری بود، اكنون درهمگسيخته است و به تودهای از نعره و تهديد و استغاثه فرو میغلتد. در ميانِ آن، بانگی كوتاه ــ نه از سرِ ايمان، كه از سرِ وحشت ــ بر سنگ میشكند: «سايـه… در سايه كمين كردهاند!» و واژۀ ممنوع، همچون تركی بر لعابِ دكترينِ رسمی، در فضایِ بالایِ سلولِ او میپيچد.
قدمها چون تندر از برابرِ در میگذرند؛ وزنِ زره و دمپايیِ نخيِ زائر درهم، چنان كه گويی خودِ راهرو دارد زير فشارِ غريزهی بقا میلرزد. در نيمتاريكیِ ناگهانی، شكافِ باريکِ بازبينی، بالای سرش، چون مردمكِ چشمی سنگی باز میشود؛ نه با آن نظمِ سردی كه كاتبانِ رژيم برای سرکشی میگشايند، بل با لرزشی عصبی، ناهماهنگ با فريادهایِ «صف ببنديد» در دوردست.
پيش از آن كه داريوَش بتواند چشمانش را به روشنیِ تازه عادت دهد، چيزی از آن دهانِ آهنين سُر میخورد: دستی باريك، كاغذگون، با رگهایِ برآمده و لكّههایِ مركّب، چنان آشنا كه برای لحظهای، بیاختيار، به انگشتانِ خود مینگرد تا مطمئن شود آينهای در كار نيست. ناخنها جويده، بندانگشتها لكهدار از سياهیِ سالها رونویسی حكم و استشهاد؛ امّا بر لبهی مچ، درست جايی كه آستينِ كتّابانِ رسمي بايد همه چيز را بپوشاند، سوختگیِ ريز و تيرهای، به شكلِ نيمحلقهای بیقاعده، پوست را چين داده است؛ همان نشانی كه در زيرزمينهایِ كاروانسراها برای همدستِ شورشيان میگذارند.
آن دست، در فضایِ تنگِ شكاف، میلرزد؛ انگار خود نمیداند كه در قلمروِ كدام قانون عمل میكند. چيزی فلزی بر سنگ میخَزد، لبهای سرد گونهی داريوَش را خط میاندازد، سپس حلقهای از آهن ــ حلقهای نه برای در آويختنِ زائران، كه برای گشودنِ دهانِ زندان ــ از لا به لایِ ميلهها فرو میافتد و با جلنگی خفه كنارِ پایِ برهنهاش مینشيند. صدایِ برخوردِ آن با كف، در ميانِ همهمۀ نعرهها و دعاها، برای او از هر آيۀ مكتوب رساتر است؛ ترجمانِ بیكلامی از انتخابی كه تا دمی پيش تنها در ذهنش چون تيغی خيالی میدرخشيد. پیش از آنکه بتواند سر بلند کند و چهرۀ صاحبِ آن دست را در قابِ باريکِ نور ببيند، شكاف دوباره چون پلكی هراسان بسته میشود و او میماند و حلقهی سردِ كليدها كه بر پوستِ خيسِ كفِ دستش میلغزند، چنان كه گويی مارِ فلزیِ ديگری به نشانِ سپيدِ گردنش پيوسته است.
دندانهای قفل با تقّهای ناخواسته تسليم میشود؛ حلقهی آهنی در مشتِ عرقكردهاش میلرزد، و همين كه در را با شانه میراند، تيری از سفيدیِ سوزان از پسِ چشم تا پسِ سرش میدود. آفتابهایِ سياه بر فرازِ صفّههایِ مرمری میچرخند؛ آب در جوئی كندهكاریشده، بر خلافِ شيب، بهرنگِ مِسكیِ تيز، سربالا میخزد. سايهی زائران بهجایِ آنكه بر زمين بيفتد، بر سقفِ آيينهپوش كش میآيد و در ميانِ هر تپشِ نبض، باغِ سپيد به نگارهای سوخته بدل میشود. زانوانش نرم میشود؛ بيش از آنكه پيش رود، از پيش افتاده است و به دالان بيرون میلغزد، بيشتر كشيدهشده بهدستِ آن كاتبِ خائن ــ كه هيسهيسِ شتابزدهاش چون دعایِ واژگون در گوش میپيچد ــ و چنگِ محكمِ آغشتهبهمركّبِ او بر آستينش، تا به چراغهایِ لرزان و ديوارِ نامطمئن اعتمادِ گمشدهی خود.
از طاقِ پستِ خدمه میلغزند به دهلیزی فروتن و عرقكرده كه بوی آهكِ تر و سنگِ خيس در آن خفه ايستاده است؛ سقف آنقدر كوتاه كه داريوَش ناچار است با هر گام، مهرههای گردنش را به سنگ بسپارد. نالۀ كور شيرهایِ پنهان از دلِ ديوار میگذرد و چون آوازی زيرزمينی، ايشان را در شيبِ نرمِ فرود هدايت میكند تا آنجا كه سراشيبی آرام میگيرد و نفسِ ناموزونِ شب، از شكافِ ملاطِ تركخورده پيشاپيششان میخزد: جریانی بريدهبريده از صمغِ سرو و بویِ نمِ خزندگان و پشمِ جانورانِ شكارگاه. كاتب با زيرلبی كه نيم دعاست و نيم دشنام، نجوا میكند: «اگر پيش از آنكه فرمانِ نظم دوباره بند بخورد به دهنِ اين دالان برسيم، نور با ماست؛ وگرنه، خودِ سايه نخستينمان را در همينجا خواهد بلعيد.»
در يك دم، تنگنای آهكبو به سردیِ ناگهانیِ صخره وا میشود؛ سقف، ديگر آجرِ خميده نيست، بلكه آويزشِ سنگِ طبيعي است كه چون دهانِ گشودهی شكاری بر بالای سرشان آويخته، با دندانهایِ شكسته و شكمی تاريك. هوایِ بيرون بر پوستِ عرقكرده چون آبِ چاه مینشيند؛ بویِ آهك جايش را به آمیختۀ خاموشِ خاكِ سرد، صمغِ كهنۀ سرو و رطوبتِ خزهای میدهد كه در حفرههایِ سنگ باليده است. گامهایِ ايشان از نرمیِ گِل به خشونتِ ريگ و پارهسنگ بدل میشود؛ صدايشان، كه پيش از آن در راهرویِ خميده میپيچيد، اكنون در دهانی باز از دره خفه میگردد، گويی خودِ تاريكی نمیخواهد شهادت دهد.
غرشِ باغ، كه درون، همچون فرامينِ دورِ سلطانِ نامرئی، واضح بود، در اين حاشيه به زمزمۀ مضطربی فروكاسته است؛ ترنّمِ دوردستِ آبشارها و جویها، با آميزشِ نالهی فلز بر سنگ، و كجاوهی نيمهپنهانِ فريادهایِ مردمی كه هنوز نمیدانند بر كدام سو بايد سجده كنند. بالای لبة شكافتهی دره، جايی كه صخره چون ابرویی شكسته، آسمان در چارچوبی نامنظّم نمايان است. چراغهایِ مرسومِ باغ ــ رديفهایِ سفيد و طلا بر پيرامونِ صفّهها ــ ديگر آن هندسۀ آرامِ دعا را ترسيم نمیكنند؛ رشتهشان پاره شده، نقطههایِ نور در ميانهی سايهها لرزان و بينظماند، و بر فرازِ يكي از صفّههایِ بالاتر، لكهای از آتش در حركت است، نه آن شعلهی آرامِ مشعلِ آيينی، كه فروزشِ ناموزونِ چيزی بهناحق افروخته.
زبانۀ سرخ همچون خطّی كج بر كتيبۀ شب كشيده است؛ پشتيبانیاش را دودِ تيرهای بر عهده دارد كه بهآهستگی بالا میخزد، در نيمهراه به روشنی بند میشود و سپس با نسيمی نامرئی در اطراف پخش میگردد، چنان كه گويی خود میكوشد ردِ خيانت را در هوا بپوشاند. از نقاطی نامشخّص در عمقِ باغ، آوايی تيز برمیخيزد: شيونِ كوتاه و كشيدهی كَرناها، آميخته با طنينِ بمِ طبلهایِ بيدارباش. هر نفخه، تيغی صوتی است كه از لابهلایِ درختان و سنگها میگذرد، در ديوارهایِ دره میپيچد و به صورتی مسخشده به گوششان بازمیگردد، بهسانِ فرمانی كه در دهانِ چندين مُفسّر افتاده باشد.
داريوَش، سایهوار در حاشيهی دهنۀ صخره، بيش از آنكه به تماشایِ آتش باشد، به گوش دادنِ لكنتِ اين بيدارباش مشغول است. او، كه سالهاست آهنگِ حركتِ كاروان و ضربانِ زنگِ پاسگاهها را چون حسابِ سود و زيان در حافظه دارد، میداند كه اين توالي، توالیِ آيينیِ «خوشامدِ زائران» نيست. در يك جابهجا شدنِ فاصلههایِ سكوت ميان دو نفخه، در لرزشِ اندكی كه از فرازِ تيرگيِ باغ تا اين لبۀ سنگی میرسد، میچشد كه چگونه قانون، برای يك لحظه، پای از ريتمِ خود بيرون گذاشته است. كاتب، پشتِ سرش، زيرلب چيزی میگويد ــ شايد شمارهی برجهایِ نگهبانی، شايد اسامیِ پلكانهایِ فرعی ــ و انگشتِ مركّبخوردهاش بر پشتِ داريوَش میفشارد، نه فقط برای شتاب، بل چون مهرِ نامرئیِ پيمانِ تازهای با تاريكی كه اينجا، در پناهِ سنگِ آويزان، از دستِ هم باغ و هم دربار برای چند نفس ربوده شده است.
در شيبِ سنگريزهريز و بوتههایِ خراشنده، گامهايش بيشتر لغزش است تا راهپيمودن؛ هر بار كه كفِ كفشش روی لقّهای مینشيند، ضربهای موجوار از ميانِ دندههایِ كبودش بالا میجهد و در پسِ چشمهايش میكوبد، آنجا كه هنوز آفتابهایِ سياه چون لكههایِ نسوخته بر پردهی ديدش معلقاند. شاخههایِ آويزانِ سرو را، كه از شبنمِ سرد و بخارِ باغ لغزان شدهاند، با ساعد میشكافد؛ قطرهها چون مِهرههایِ ريزِ شيشه بر صورتش میغلتد و با نمِ عرق، به طعمِ فلز آلوده میشود. در هر پلكزدن، صفّههایِ سپيد و كنگرههایِ طلاكاریشده در ذهنش به تكرار میسوزند؛ نخست در شكوهِ بیگزند، سپس در فروزشِ تيرهای كه از دلِ خودِ نور برمیخيزد و به گلِ سياهِ بیصدا بدل میشود. توگويی چشم، هر بار كه میبندد، نه برای آسايش، كه براي ادای شهادتی ديگر بر ويرانی است.
نفس را ناچار كوتاه میكند، میشمارد: سه گام با هوا، يك گام در مِه. در هر فاصله، به سايهی جُنبدانِ صفّههایِ بالاتر گوش میسپارد، تا تمييز دهد كدام شعله، آيينِ ديرسال است و كدام، خيانتیست تازه افروخته. در زيرِ طاقِ شاخههایِ درهمتنيده، رگهی كمجانِ نوری كه از باغ میتراود بر سفيدیِ پيچخوردهی نشانش میلغزد و آن را، همانسان كه در خوابهایش، به مارِ روشنِ درهمحلقهزده بدل میكند. كاتب، چند گام عقبتر، در تنگنای صخره نفَسنفس میزند و هيچ نمیگويد؛ سكوتِ او، برای داريوَش، از هر سوگندِ بلندی فاشتر است كه ديگر، در اين حاشيهی نيمتاريك، راهِ بازگشت تنها دروغیست بيشتر.
در لبۀ وحشیِ باغ، آنجا كه نقشِ اسليمِ سنگ در كثافتِ خار و تيغ گم میشود و لبههایِ صفّه چون دندانهایِ نابرابر در تاريكی فرو رفته است، مكث میكند؛ زيرِ سايبانِ سروهایِ بههمتنيده، كه شاخههايشان چون انگشتانِ خيس بر فرقِ شب خوابانده شده، چشم به بالا میدوزد. زبانكهایِ آتش، يكدم بر پهلویِ ديوارِ صفّهای برين میلغزند؛ فروزشی كوتاه، چنان حسابشده كه نتوانش «حادثه» خواند، و چنان دزدانه كه هنوز نامِ «فاجعه» نگرفته است. در همان لحظه، پارهسنگِ كهنۀ محرابِ متروك، چون ماری مكتوب، در ذهنش میپيچد: «مارِ نشاندارِ سَحَر، صلحِ دروغينِ اين باغ را خواهد شكست.» واژهها، كه روزی تفسيری دور مینمود، اكنون همچون حكمِ دستگيری در خونِ او خوانده میشود.
درد و رؤيا در هم گره میخورند، تا جايی كه ديگر نمیداند كدام سوز، از استخوان است و كدام، از تقدير. خون را با هراس فرو میبلعد، دندان بر تاريكی عريان میكند و در دلِ شكافِ سرو و صخره سوگند میخورد كه نه تنها از اين شب، خزنده و خراشيده، بهسلامت بيرون رود، بل ديگر خويش را چون صندوقچۀ كالای قاچاق، ميانِ فالِ اين و فرمانِ آن، جابهجا نگذارد؛ اگر نيز قرار است نشانی كه بر پوست دارد دستگيرش كند، داوطلب شود كه خود، نگهبانِ كليدِ آن باشد، نه مهرِ كورِ ديگران.
انگشتان را بر برجستگیِ مارگونِ سفيدی كه از گلو تا پَستوی گردنش میپيچد میلغزاند، چنان كه لبهی خنجری نهان را بيازمايد؛ در دل، عهد میبندد كه همين نشانِ قَدَر را سلاح كند، لايهلايه ميانِ فرمانِ ديوان و شَورِ ياغيان سُر دهَد، ريشهی هر دو دروغ را بشكافد، حتّا اگر مسيری كه برمیگزيند، پيش از آنكه بار ديگر به صفّههایِ درونی برسد، هر اميدِ آمرزشی تميز را در آتشی آرام، ولی بیبازگشت، بسوزاند و او را در حدّ فاصلِ نور و سايه، چون قاتلی بیحكم اما با شهادت، بر جای نهد.
Smoke claws his lungs and tears his eyes, but the pain only sharpens the afterimage of his latest vision: the garden’s heart split by twin shadows where the Light should fall unbroken. This time the vision had not come as a dream but as a white-hot lance behind his brow. Black sun above the mirror-pools, a serpent of fire coiled around the central cypress, pilgrims scattering like charred leaves. Now, as real cinders drift like dark snow across the terraces, the fading echo of that sight hangs before him, overlaying the marble paths and the shuddering crowd.
He moves anyway, shoulders angled, pace deceptively measured as he slips past kneeling supplicants and trampling feet. Pilgrims cough out half-finished prayers, clutching censers and clay lamps, the smoke of sanctioned incense tangling with the harsher reek of burning canvas from some unseen blaze below. Bells in a lower courtyard begin to clang out of rhythm: no ritual cadence, only alarm beaten into metal.
His birthmark burns hot as if the serpent of light in his skin were dragging him uphill toward its appointed coil. Each step closer to the inner terraces turns the heat to a thin, needling line along his jaw and throat, as though invisible fingers were tracing out the prophecy in his flesh. The sensation rides the same inward tide as his headaches, a pressure that makes the edges of the world too bright: every torchflame a star, every shadow a mouth.
Around him the architecture of devotion and control reveals its other face. Imperial wardens shove through the throng in disciplined files, twin-flame badges glinting on their cuirasses, while temple acolytes try to form chanting circles to calm the panic. Above, cypress silhouettes waver through a curtain of smoke, and the marble channels that should gleam with pure water run muddied, carrying ash and the first thin threads of blood.
He closes his stinging eyes for the span of a breath, letting memory of smuggler routes and forgotten stairs rise like constellations on an inner map. When he opens them again, the garden is a board of intersecting paths and frightened pieces, and he is already calculating where the first lie must be told.
When the first rebel fire-signal flowers above a distant pavilion, three quick blossoms of blood-red bursting in sequence against the smoke-whitened sky of stone and light, he neither flinches nor looks up. Others do: pilgrims cry out, some in praise, some in dread, necks craning, hands lifted as if to catch the omen. Wardens on the balustrades pivot like hounds scenting jackal. Darivash lets the glare wash along his lowered lashes and keeps moving.
He angles toward a knot of caravan guards in patched pilgrim cloaks, men whose tattoos he has catalogued in quieter seasons, whose captain drinks with a man who takes coin from Mard. They are bracing for the signal that will send them charging toward the bazaar steps: exactly where Kouroshmir’s ledgers had predicted “maximum disorder.”
“Imperial sweeps,” he murmurs in trade-cant, low and hurried, letting real fear rasp his voice. “Inspection lines already forming by the bazaar. They’ll pen you there like goats.”
He jerks his chin toward a narrow side stair veiled in incense smoke. “Better ground above. Fewer witnesses. Move now, if you’re not already bought.”
Suspicion flickers; greed and survival win. The guards begin to shift, like stones quietly rolling from the foundation of an unseen wall.
One turn of the stair and he is flush against a wall-panel where twin flames rise from a single brazier, their stone tongues blackened by centuries of touch. Using the relief to hide his hands, he lets himself be jostled into the path of a junior scribe-captain pounding downhill, scroll-case clutched white-knuckled, a ring of ink-fingered auxiliaries at his back.
“Forgive, lord,” Darivash gasps in polished court-Persian, showing just enough deference to be plausible, just enough urgency to cut through protocol. “Word from the river: unconfirmed traitors among the barge-crews. Someone tampering with tribute seals.”
He lets the forged bronze token slip from his sleeve, its twin-flame stamp gleaming real enough, Kouroshmir’s cipher-mark etched by another hand. The captain hesitates, glances from token to terraces, then snaps an order; his little column pivots like a loosened hinge and spills away toward the Navian docks, leaving a faint gap in the tightening net below.
Threading between incense-heavy shrines and water channels gleaming like strips of mirrored sky, he plays his double-tongued game faster: a breathed “the Marked One walks under merchant’s cloth” to a jittering temple inspector here, a half-spilled “the scholar-captain fears a breach in the hunting preserve wards” to a veiled rebel courier there, each seed a true shard angled just enough to refract them from their ordained lines of march.
By the time a second cascade of rebel flares answers the first from higher on the cliffs (white-gold cores bursting in blood-red halos that paint the misted terraces) panic ripples through the pilgrim throngs. Yet it runs not toward escape, but along every artery he has already salted with rumor and half-truth, so that Mard’s strike-knots and Kouroshmir’s reserve-cohorts, each certain they are outflanking the other, pour into channels Darivash has angled grain by grain, all that gathered weight and will bending toward a single point of impact in the smoke-bright heart of the garden.
The hunting-horns’ calls shear away from their measured, ritual cadences and splinter into jagged alarms, a broken fanfare that rakes the cypress crowns of the preserve. Startled gazelles scatter in tawny arcs through the underbrush, pheasants burst from the low scrub like tossed embers, and from the stone blinds along the game-paths hunters and wardens look up as one, hands pausing on bowstrings and tally tablets. A second, harsher blast cuts across the first: two notes where there should be one, a signal all drilled men know: not quarry loosed, but danger within the sacred bounds.
Patrols that had been drifting the preserve’s rim in lazy, ceremonious loops stiffen into formation, standards snapping as officers bark clipped orders. Files pivot on their heels and wheel back toward the terraces, bronze scales and leather lamellae flickering between cypress trunks as they pour down concealed staircuts and service ramps that link the hunting grounds to the garden’s rear approaches. The wild scent of trampled sage rides with them, the hunting preserve emptying like a wineskin upended toward the stone tiers below.
From the cliff-face temples, the bells answer.
Not in the slow, sonorous pattern of the pilgrimage hours but in overlapping peals that crash upon one another, great bronze tongues beating a staccato litany that strips the last pretense of serenity from the marble air. Chimes in lesser shrines take up the clamor in shriller counterpoint, an irregular, rising chorus that makes the polished colonnades hum. Votive lamps tremble on their chains, scattering molten reflections over tiles patterned in light and shadow.
Along the processional walks pilgrims freeze mid-prostration, incense still smoking in their pinched fingers. Faces tilt upward from the cool veining of the pavement toward the tiered sky of terraces and pavilions, eyes wide and unshielded as if expecting to see the firmament itself split along some hidden seam. Murmured litanies falter, then fracture into questions and frightened oaths. Children clutch at their parents’ belts; old men tighten their grip on cane or staff, knuckles whitening. A few, more devout or more fatalistic, press their brows harder to the stone, whispering the Names of Light in a breathless rush, as though speed alone might finish the prayer before whatever has cracked the garden’s music cracks the world.
Under that rising clamor, Mard’s “pilgrim-guards” move as one, as if some silent drum had begun to beat beneath the flagstones. Cloaks and dust-stained prayer sashes are shrugged aside to bare mismatched plates and boiled-leather scales, the scavenged ribs of old imperial harness glinting between homespun and hemp. Smuggled blades come free from false walking-staves and hollowed ikon-cases; spearheads once bound in votive cloth flash naked as they turn from their assigned watch-posts along the outer terraces.
They do not shout. In knots of five and ten they peel away from incense-stands and donation chests, leaving behind only the illusion of scattered pious guards. Commanders marked by a twist of crimson thread at the wrist walk between them murmuring what to any passerby sound like blessings for safe ascent: snatches of liturgy about Light guiding the steps of the faithful. Yet each phrase is a keyed order: “The Third Lamp burns low” sends one file to seize a stairhead, “The Garden drinks deep” another to block a colonnade, until all those quiet invocations funnel hardened men along pre-mapped arteries toward the sealed mouths of the upper sanctuaries.
Down by the Navian road, where the river mist still clings to sandal-thongs and the smell of tar and lotus oil hangs thick, Navidamir snaps a single order (no louder than a deck command in sudden squall) and his rivermen and bargemen abandon mooring lines and cargo tallies alike. Ledger-boards fall, ink splattering like dark water as they move, fanning out along balconies, rooflines, colonnade cornices and statue-plinths that overlook the processional way. In heartbeats the dockside rabble becomes a ragged crown of watchers above the pilgrim flow, brown hands and river-scarred faces framed against the pale stone. From these abrupt perches they can signal in the discreet semaphore of the fleets, loose concealed slingstones, knife any attempt at retreat, or, if fortune and payment align, tilt the whole human tide toward whichever power, rebel or regime, offers them coin enough to buy survival and a forgetful god.
In the cooler stone depths near the scriptoria, Kouroshmir’s scholar-soldiers slam iron gates and seal-doors, rolling shut latticed grilles over archive alcoves as scribes whisk forbidden scrolls into hidden niches and wall-chambers marked only in their master’s private hand. The air smells of lamp-smoke and panic-sweat. With ink still wet on his last emergency edict, he sketches swift diagrams over a floor-map of the terraces, dispatching small, disciplined detachments upslope through service stairs and processional side-ways, intent on skirting the visible turmoil, netting rumor and movement, and driving the unnamed, prophesied disturber against the inner garden’s seemingly immutable boundaries, where law, stone, and sanctity are supposed (by doctrine) to allow no escape.
From the shadowed quarter that most pilgrims never see, Shahin’s handpicked hunters emerge like ghosts, scarred, silent, bearing short recurved bows and hooked spears, spilling into forgotten walkways and animal paths that overlook the main terraces. At a flick of his scarred hand they vanish into cypress shade and carved embrasures, flanking stairheads and water‑channels, pacing the converging columns of rebels, soldiers, and opportunists, all vectors narrowing, step by measured step, upon the garden’s blinding heart where destiny will be dragged, struggling, into the open.
Heat prickles beneath Darivash’s birthmark until it is no longer skin but coal, no longer a stain but a brand pressed there by an unseen smith. It drags his gaze upward, away from ledger and route, away from profit and peril, toward the terraces where light burns too bright. Vision doubles, then triples. At the edge of his sight, orchards blaze without consuming, each leaf a little tongue of white fire, while beyond them hang black suns, perfect discs of absence, spinning slowly in a sky that is not the sky of Shah-Parida. They wink in and out with each heartbeat, strobing the world in alternations of day and negation.
Smoke pours down the stair like a low tide of shadow. He coughs once, tastes resin, scorched oil, and the metallic tang that comes before a storm. Or a killing. He shoves into it anyway. Robes brush his sides, hands claw at him for balance or blessing or theft; he cannot tell. Boots grind on fallen votive lamps, soft clay and brittle glass giving way in gritty crunches under his soles. Wax and prayer-ribbons smear into mud. Shattered halves of twin-flame braziers lie like split skulls, coals strewn and still-glowing, their carefully tended doctrine of balance reduced to kicked embers and confused smoke.
Stunned devotees scrabble aside as he shoulders past, their pilgrimage-braids singed, fingers blistered where they tried to rescue offerings from the sudden flare. One old woman, her veil half-burned, stares up at his mark with the horror of recognition and crosses herself with shaking hands, muttering a formula against serpents of dawn and dusk. A boy clutches a cracked clay sun-disc to his chest as if it were a shield. Someone tries to seize Darivash’s sleeve, pleading, “Brother, the guards, ” . But the heat along his neck flares, a silent command, and he tears free.
The terrace tilts under him for an instant. The real garden (the one of stone and law and collected tithes) seems to peel back, thin as painted plaster. Through it he glimpses an older geometry of paths and pools, orchards laid out like star-maps, channels running not with water but with coiling strands of white and black radiance. Each step he takes in the choking present echoes there, in that other plan, as if two gardens are trying to occupy the same ground and his marked flesh is the nail that pins them together.
He staggers onward, half-blind, feeling more than seeing where the pull beneath the serpent-birthmark tugs him. The noise around him swells (shouts, steel on stone, the crack of splitting wood) and then thins again to a distant surf. He passes a toppled pilgrim-standard still smoldering, its embroidered twin-flames blackened into a single formless blot. Somewhere below, a man cries that the Shadow has entered the holy precinct. Somewhere above, bells begin to ring out of sequence, jagged as broken teeth in the music of the place.
Darivash does not slow. He has guided caravans by stars veiled in dust and by river-channels felt only in the shudder of a hull; now he lets the same trader’s instinct fix on this unseen current. The birthmark burns hotter with every stair he mounts, with every corridor he forces through, until the familiar routes of smugglers and porters fall away behind him, and only the narrow, forbidden ascent toward the heart of the garden remains beneath his feet.
Sound falls away as though a vast bowl has been inverted over the garden. The roar of the outer terraces, rebellious shouts, imperial orders, terrified prayers, recedes to a thick, glassy hush. Darivash stumbles beneath the final arch, its underside inlaid with gold script that swims and knots before his eyes, and emerges into the mirrored inner garden.
Light here has weight. It presses on his brow and shoulders like invisible hands. Every surface (water, tile, burnished onyx, the lacquered undersides of leaf and branch) throws back a version of him not quite his own. In one pool he is crowned in white flame, a saint of the tax ledgers. In another his serpent mark coils down his face like living lightning, its head splitting at the collarbone: one fang of blinding radiance, one of utter dark. A pane of polished stone shows him multiplied into a procession of merchants, each bearing different contraband, each walking toward a different ruin.
He looks down. Even in the shallow runnels at his feet his reflection writhes, bands of light and shadow chasing one another along his throat as if deciding which will devour the other first.
At the garden’s heart, on a stepped dais veined with old, half‑scrubbed inscriptions, Shahin stands cloaked in feather‑lined ash‑gray, the hawk‑plumes at his shoulders trembling in currents of unseen heat. The burn‑scars along his flank and throat catch and break the strange radiance so that one half of him seems carved from distilled noon, the other from blackened bone; even his limp is transfigured, a stagger that never quite falls. Around his feet, erased words flare faintly and die, as if reluctant to speak in his presence. His pale, clouded eye fixes on Darivash with a hunter’s recognition, measuring gait, breath, the serpent‑mark’s glow, as though he has been tracking not merely this man but this instant across years of ash and omen.
They stand within arm’s reach of the dais, incense hanging between them like a woven veil, the very air tightened to a drumhead so taut the mirrored pools quiver in sympathy. Shahin’s voice comes low yet flint‑edged, cutting through the hush as he recites sanctioned verse and imperial decrees, naming himself not tyrant but appointed hunter and guardian of the garden’s precarious balance. Darivash’s pulse hammers in his burning mark; words rise unbidden, shards of outlawed commentaries and dream‑script, and he throws them back like contraband laid brazenly on a customs table, accusing the regime of yoking a living, ancient power that never bent its neck to their seals, of calling their cage “Light” while the garden itself strains against their chains.
Shahin’s every phrase falls like a measured verdict: an unbridled Marked One, he says, would loose a second burning of the world, as in the annihilation of the old capital; therefore the garden must remain a citadel of Light. Yet Darivash, seeing below the mirrored surfaces a submerged dusk‑glow pulsing beneath the central pool, answers that Shah‑Parida was first shaped to yoke Light and Shadow in perilous balance. As prophecy and counter‑prophecy clash, the radiance thickens to a nearly flesh‑searing brilliance, the runnels shudder, and the garden itself seems to lean toward a single, irrevocable decision that will either bind or break its consecrated order.
As screams and steel echo from the sanctuary gates and shockwaves from failing wards ripple down the marble channels, Darivash feels the serpent of light along his birthmark burning awake, a private inferno answering the chaos outside. The pain is no mere fever; it coils and uncoils beneath his skin as if some buried thing has scented blood. Each distant clash of spear on shield sends a corresponding tremor through his flesh, ribs vibrating like struck bronze. The incense‑thick air of the inner garden trembles; the mirrored pools gather the noise of battle as pale ripples, carrying it inward, toward him.
He staggers a half‑step, one hand brushing the cool lip of the nearest basin. Where his fingers touch stone, a faint radiance crawls outward in hair‑fine lines, setting old chisel‑marks aglow. He tastes iron, dust, and something older, a bitterness like extinguished stars. From beyond the sanctum columns comes the dull roar of bodies pushing, formations breaking, Mard’s drilled rebels meeting Shahin’s disciplined hunters. Somewhere in that press, Navidamir’s voice will be bargaining, pleading, betraying; somewhere above, Kouroshmir’s scribes will be recording, turning living panic into inked precedent. All their stratagems, all their hidden ledgers, grind together now like millstones, and his own life is fed between them as grain.
The serpent‑mark answers none of their names. It burns in a language of its own, tightening around his throat, descending into his chest, an inner ward shattering against a pressure from below. He feels the garden’s old boundaries fray: the sanctioned Light wards splintering, the sealed Shadow beneath the central pool stirring like deep water under storm. With every fresh scream from the gates, another ring in the unseen lattice around Shah‑Parida cracks, and his mark flares in sympathetic ruin, as if reminding him that he is not outside this convulsion, but its hinge.
In a jagged flare of vision. Black suns wheeling over the mirrored water, the terraces folding inward like the petals of a burning lotus, cities reflected in the pools as stacked pyres. He understands that the lines they are all so desperate to defend are only patterns of kindling. Rebels, regime, pilgrims pressed between: each calls its fire righteous, each names its own light pure, yet every path he can see, if he chooses merely to shield one banner against another, bends back toward the same inferno that swallowed the old capital. The pools flash with ghost‑images of that lost city: tower‑shadows crumbling, bridges of marble running like wax, faces upturned in a storm of embers. On their lips, as in the chants outside, the same invocations, Light triumphant, Shadow cast down, become indistinguishable from war‑cries. His mark sears in answer, not in assent. To stand with Shahin’s hunters or with Mard’s outlaws alone would only shift the angle of the ruin, not avert it; Shah‑Parida would still end as another ash‑girdled crater on the empire’s map.
Memory and omen lace themselves into a single, strangling cord. He recalls forbidden folios he once hid inside bales of saffron: inked diagrams of twin‑flame ligatures, marginalia warning that only a living vessel bearing a serpent‑sign could knot opposed radiances without sundering flesh or stone. He recalls drunk, half‑laughed rumors in caravanserai corners of a shrine sunk beneath the heart‑pool, its doors sealed in Shadow so that the official Light above might seem untroubled. He recalls the naked fear beneath Shahin’s hunter’s composure whenever talk neared “unruled sanctity.” These fragments do not remain separate. They fold inward upon his burning skin, upon the coiling mark at his throat, until they point, like converging spears, toward one inescapable, ruinous inference.
He sees, with the slow horror of a clerk parsing his own death warrant, that there is no other ledger that balances. To spare Shah‑Parida the fate of the burned capital, he must descend, break the Shadow‑seal the regime buried in pious terror, and let that buried radiance flood upward through his serpent‑mark, turning his smuggler’s body into a living, screaming sigil that knots opposed fires together until either they still, or he is consumed into ash and doctrine.
Not only coin and comfort, then, but the very grammar of his life set to ruin: secret tracks lit up for tax-scribes and hunters, caches turned to glass by ungoverned flare, friends and debtors alike driven into exile or the noose, his name scraped from every ledger save the indictments, and the sure, cold knowledge that to bear such crossed fires is to invite a clean, annihilating madness.
He lowers himself with the stiff, reluctant care of an old man and not the wiry merchant he has always claimed to be, one knee grinding against the chill marble, the other foot braced on a joint worn smooth by centuries of pious heels. The headache that has dogged him all morning does not merely throb now; it narrows, driving inward, a white‑hot spear behind his marked eye. Light blooms there. Not the soft, incense‑filtered glow of sanctioned braziers, but a pitiless blaze in which shapes of cypress and colonnade turn skeletal. Against that glare, other images wheel and crash: gardens burning not with fire but with too‑much day, terraces flayed bare beneath a sky of black suns whose rays are ink‑cold, dragging heat and color out of stone, out of flesh.
For a heartbeat he is no longer Darivash but a thin figure seen from a vast remove, a man on his knees at the lip of a reflecting pool that is also a ledger, also a precipice. His ink‑stained fingers hover above the surface, their tremor sending ripples through his own doubled reflection: the caravan‑rat with clever eyes, the serpent‑marked vessel whose throat is already half‑ringed in ghostly light. Beneath the reek of cypress and lamp‑oil he smells caravan dust baked into his robes, the sour tang of fear gone stale from too many postponed reckonings. His mouth is dry with it. When he swallows, something old and sand‑rough grates in his chest.
Flight calls to him with all the familiar arguments of a trader: there are always other routes, other seasons, other cities whose gods have never heard your name. Surrender whispers with the dusty reasonableness of law: lay down, confess, let Kouroshmir’s quills and Shahin’s hunters make of you a warning and be done. Between them lies the path he has paced in dreams but never dared to set foot upon waking: the knife‑edge third way carved in the margins of contraband scrolls he ferried for coin and never for faith.
He remembers telling Mard, half in jest over a jug of thin wine, “I deal in words, not in their consequences.” He remembers, as a much younger man, tracing with clandestine awe the serpent‑sigil in a smuggled folio and promising himself he would never be fool enough to speak what the dead had written there. Now, with his pulse hammering in his ears like a distant mustering drum, he tastes that broken oath on his tongue.
He lets out a hoarse, ragged breath, and it leaves him tasting dust: the dust of fallen capitals, of burned warehouses, of ledger‑slates smashed under boot. It tastes of fear that is not new at all but very old, inherited from every smuggler who ever skirted a shrine and declined to kneel. Then, slowly, with the same fatal clarity with which he has weighed a hundred perilous bargains, he tips the scales.
Not the clean escape into desert anonymity he has hoarded coin for; not the prostration of a penitent begging the regime’s cold mercy. He angles himself instead toward the narrow, razor‑bright path of invocation, the one traced in outlawed Avestan curves and barred at its threshold by every prudent instinct he has ever obeyed. It is a path he once swore he would never touch. Not for profit, not for love, not even to save his own skin.
His hand ceases trembling. The serpent‑mark at his eye burns, answering something buried beneath the stone. “So be it,” he murmurs, though to which of the contending fires he speaks, he cannot say. Then, choice made and all old ledgers abandoned, he lowers his fingers toward the waiting water.
The water takes his serpent‑lit hand without a splash, its surface rising to meet his skin like quicksilver drawn to a magnet. Cold rides up his arm in a tight, spiraled rush, as if some great, coiled thing beneath the marble has at last found his pulse. Along the pool’s rim, hair‑fine inlays he had always taken for mere ornament flare awake: first a hesitant thread of pallid gold, then a second band of absolute absence, drinking light until the stone between them seems to vanish. The alternating rings flicker, accelerate, lock into a pattern like breath, light, void, light, void, until his bones hum in answer.
His tongue rebels. These are not trader’s patters but syllables he once ferried across borders sealed in wax and fear. He drags them out anyway, harsh and angular, the old Avestan rasping his throat bloody. Each name he speaks drives a spike through some cherished scaffolding (routes mapped, bribes arranged, futures hedged) until his careful edifice of escape and amnesty judders and begins to shear away. With every consonant, another rung of his former life is nailed irrevocably into the coffin of what he chooses now.
Light and Shadow answer at once, not as simple opposites but as twin currents tearing through him and then exploding outward: first along the veins of the pool, then up the carved channels of the terraces, then into the very bones of Shah-Parida. Marble that has only ever known sanctioned brightness suddenly bears searing noon and starless midnight overlaid, shutters between worlds blown inward. Pavilions strobe with alternating brilliance and void; ink-dark ripples race along mirrored waterways, turning priestly reflections into hollow masks. Twin-flame braziers gutter sideways as if gravity itself has misremembered its vows. The air knifes thin and metallic, thick with ozone and scorched incense, while hidden copper traces, buried sigil-plates, and ward‑wires shriek invisibly as the garden’s secret circuitry overloads in a blinding, soundless shock.
Across the complex, Shahin’s hunters feel the etched sigils in their cuirasses go slack and cold, as if some invisible tendon has been cut; Kouroshmir’s glyph‑wards blister, curl, and lift from parchment and stone like ash in a high wind. Chains of shouted orders snap mid‑syllable as banners, law‑tablets, and sanctified patrol routes slough their unseen backing, leaving elite guards blinking. Mere men and women again, suddenly alone inside their armor, stripped of the guiding pressure they had mistaken for faith.
Rebel horns and war‑cries, drilled to rise with the priests’ sung responses and crash precisely against the regime’s incense‑choked processions, stutter into ragged, unbelieving gasps. Statues of doctrinal heroes groan and split along hairline seams, serene faces shearing in two; mosaics that once preached unbroken Light gutter to flat, workman’s tile. Choreographed charges, countermarches, and vanguard feints dissolve, leaving fighters and wardens staring at one another in a raw, stunned hush, each suddenly bereft of the superior emblem that had promised to sanctify his killing.
For a breathless span, no one moves.
Banners, robbed of the invisible hands that once held them proud, slither down broken poles to pool like shed skins on the stone. Loose spears and fallen halberds rock in widening circles where they have struck the tiles, their iron shiver fading to a thin, uncertain ringing that might be steel, might be teeth. The trained roar of men at war, prayers braided with marching-cant and curse, breaks off in mid‑syllable and falls away, leaving only the unadorned voice of water.
It runs everywhere: in the veins of the garden’s channels, over carved lips of marble and worn stair, through narrow throats of hidden sluice. Without the warding hymns and processional drums to drown it, the sound swells and fills the terraces, a low, continuous susurrus like breath drawn and held between judgment and reprieve.
A conscript of Shahin’s outer guard, helmet askew, finds himself listening as if for the first time. The water is not promising absolution; it is not condemning. It simply goes on. Opposite him, a rebel in stolen cuirass realizes his arm has fallen from its striking arc and hangs, numb and heavy, at his side. The man he meant to kill is only a few paces away, face bare, lips parted as if searching for a forgotten command.
On a mid‑level path, a pilgrim woman in dust‑grimed white lowers the votive bowl she had been clutching like a shield. Oil meant for the altars shivers but does not spill. She hears the channels answering one another, high trickles, deep throats, a distant cataract where the upper pools overrun, as if the garden is exhaling after a long, held breath that had never been hers.
Boot‑leather creaks. A prayer‑flag unhooks with a soft, embarrassed snap. Somewhere a child begins to sob, thin and bewildered, and even that small sound is swallowed, softened, borne away by the even, unconcerned rush of water moving through stone and root and mirrored court, indifferent to banners, to brands, to any name men have given Light or Shadow.
The radiance that lingers over the terraces is no longer sharpened into lances and halos by doctrine; it is merely light (soft, pervasive, almost hesitant) pooling in the worn hollows of steps, catching in the damp lashes of men who had sworn never to weep before an enemy. It shows them to one another without rank-mark or blessing‑brand: sweat‑slick brows, split lips, the uneven stubble of long watches, the tremor in fingers that had moments ago loosed arrows in the name of opposing suns.
Helms tilt back. Veils are dragged aside not for identification, but for breath. Without the old refractions, nothing in the sky answers to temple glyph or rebel sign. The constellations straighten like bones released from a rack; the stars settle into their true, unbent courses, cold and clear and uninterested in whose banner once claimed them.
Eyes follow them upward, imperial veteran, back‑alley cutthroat in borrowed mail, penitent who came only to lay a candle on a cousin’s grave, and in that shared, naked looking, the trained instinct to search one another for symbols falters, replaced by the unfamiliar effort of seeing faces instead.
Pilgrims who had been herded as moving ramparts or planted like fuses along prescribed lines slowly uncurl from courtyards and colonnades, shaking out cramped legs, straightening backs that had learned to bow on command. Censers lower beside slings and cudgels wrapped in prayer‑cloth; forbidden texts, demolition phials, and genuine votive garlands end up in the same uncertain heaps at their feet. Faces painted in temple ash confront others daubed with the rebels’ crude sunbursts and find only sweat, fear, a familiar tightness about the mouth. What had been “hostage” or “agent” a heartbeat ago becomes cousin, debtor, stranger with the same dust in his hair. Wary, sidelong glances lengthen into searching looks, as if each now expects witness instead of aim.
He coughs up river‑bitter water and a taste like scorched ink, vision pricked with afterimages of crowns burning and roots drinking starlight. Men on both sides flinch as his mark flares, waiting for a decree of miracle or abomination that does not come. No voice claims him. The glow merely pulses with his heartbeat, as if asking him to choose.
He stands dripping on the flagstones, nameless in the hush, no herald to braid titles for him, no rasp of stylus or chant of canon to catch and consecrate his next breath. Around him the terraces, all his life annotated as trade‑route, trap, battlefield, holy theater, lie strangely bare, their cracked mosaics and guttering twin‑flame braziers offering nothing but the raw, unsettling possibility that whatever oath rises from his salt‑burned throat now will go unfootnoted by archive, unweighted by altar, unleveraged by throne: a word flung into an unwritten sky, answerable only to those who hear and to the mark that burns along his skin.
Smoke from shattered braziers mingles with the paling stars as impromptu triage circles rise where shield walls once locked; Mard, favoring his branded arm and a blood-stiffened leg, moves through the groans and whispered prayers, dragging cloaked pilgrims beside the very guards who struck them down, refusing any hand that tries to sort the broken by banner or creed. The air still tastes of iron and incense; cinders drift like black snow over blood-slick marble where, an hour before, the Light was invoked as a war cry.
“Lay him there,” Mard growls to a former comrade in imperial colors, forcing the man’s fingers open from a death-grip on his spear. “Not with your squad. With them.” A tilt of his chin indicates a knot of rebel outriders and two veiled women in pilgrim gray, one clutching a shattered ikon, the other pressing linen to a dock-guard’s torn throat.
The soldier hesitates. Mard’s scarred hand clamps his shoulder. “Tonight you’re only flesh, brother. Flesh burns the same.”
He moves on before the man can answer. His branded forearm throbs beneath the leather, each pulse in time with the distant ringing of alarm-gongs now dulled to aftershocks. Here a boy in temple livery whimpers for his mother; there a caravan bravo with rebel charms plaited in his beard tries to rise, teeth bared, until Mard plants a knee in his chest.
“Lie still,” Mard murmurs, voice suddenly low, almost gentle. “If the Shah’s hawks meant to finish us, they’d have swooped already.”
A pilgrim-physician with hennaed fingertips glances up at him. “You command them now, branded?”
“I command no one,” Mard replies. “I only refuse to sort the dying.”
All around, the carefully layered orders of the garden have collapsed into a single ragged circle of bandages and torn robes. In that rough equality of ruin, Mard moves like a deliberate flame, rekindling neither battle nor surrender, only the stubborn insistence that those who bled for rival truths will, for a few fragile hours, share the same dust and the same breath.
Kouroshmir stood a little apart from the worst of the bleeding, his sable-and-cream robes singed to uneven fringes, bronze gorget filmed in soot so that the engraved maxims of law were half-obscured, as if the fire itself had argued with the code. He had stripped off his outer sleeves and tied them at his waist; ink-dark forearms moved with measured economy as he directed water-bearers and raw-faced apprentice scribes along the scorched colonnade where the ward-lines still smoldered faintly in the marble.
“Not there. Here first,” he rasped, voice hoarse from smoke and shouted citations. “The twin-flame sigils at the junctions. If they stutter, they may invert.”
Water splashed. Every time a bronze ladle struck stone and steam rose, an apprentice leaned in, coughing, to scratch swift notes upon a half-charred wax tablet. Kouroshmir dictated even now: angles of failure, colors of the dying light, the way blackened runes crawled before they went out.
“Erase them to blank,” he commanded. “No half-glyphs left to dream in the cracks. Catastrophe loves remnants.”
At the inner stair a last, hairline corona of ward-light clenched in on itself and burst, white to violet, into a hiss of scalding vapor that drove even veteran shield-men back with hands half-raised, as if against blows. Kouroshmir did not retreat. Ash gritted beneath his sandals; he blinked through the steam, wiped his stylus clean on the already-ruined hem of his robe, and knelt where the circle had been.
Beneath the bubbled glaze, the stone showed through: etched with thinner, older lines, spared by the sanctioned wards that had overlaid them. Not imperial flame-glyphs, but knot-worked sigils of twinned serpents and a sun split down its axis, one half inked to shadow. His breath shortened. The law he served had been written atop this.
“Pre-Temple script,” one apprentice coughed, peering over his shoulder.
“Say nothing of it,” Kouroshmir answered, too quickly. His own voice sounded strange to him, as if spoken from a distance. With the stylus’ bronze tip he traced, not touching, the ghost of a curve that should not exist in a garden dedicated to pure Light.
If these were foundations, what then was heresy?
Behind his ribs, a thought coiled: that perhaps the wards had failed because they were lies nailed over an older truth. He strangled the notion before it could fully shape itself, pressing the flat of his palm to the warm, scarred stone as if to seal both scripts back under the cooling skin of the terrace.
“Record only that the circle collapsed safely,” he said at last. “The rest remains… beneath.”
Across the terrace Darivash wove among toppled stalls and spilled reliquaries, binding wounds with torn caravan cloth while the pale serpent at his eye burned under soot like a half-remembered signature. No one asked for seals now, only water, only hands. He pressed a forbidden bone-rod into a dazed novice-priest’s grip. “Splint, not relic,” he muttered, helping lash it to a broken arm. Around him ink, coin, and catechism dissolved into something raw and unsanctioned: a market of breath and blood where debts, doctrines, and contraband alike were measured only by who could stand and who still bled.
Shahin the Exiled, cloak damp with river-mist and sweat, leaned on his staff beside a blackened cypress, his ruined side aching as he watched rebels, guards, merchants, and pilgrims knot themselves into improvised companies: passing stretchers, breaking up hoarded tribute, boiling water in dented ritual bowls. When he gave a quiet order to open the lesser storerooms of the inner precinct for bandages and food, no herald cried it, no priest intoned consent. A scarred caravan-woman merely grunted assent, a temple boy sketched half a sign of Light, and they ran. No one knelt to receive decree; the word moved faster than any seal, hand to hand, until Shahin felt a fragile new pattern forming. Authority running sideways like river-channels cut in flood, through many hands instead of falling, unanswerable, from his alone.
It passes first like a misunderstanding, a half-heard jest: a water-bearer with ash on his feet panting that “the Exiled has set his seal down in the dust,” an incense-girl repeating it as she refills cracked braziers, laughter in her voice to keep from trembling. By the time the tale runs the length of the outer terraces it has shed its smile. An old woman at a cistern swears she saw Shahin press his signet into a pilgrim captain’s palm. A novice claims the keys themselves (those heavy, bronze-toothed wards of the inner gates) were lifted from the Hunter’s belt and weighed, one by one, upon a ledger-slate before witnesses.
Then the captains come in from the smoke, and the rumor hardens into something with edges. Navidamir, cloak torn, gives his version to a knot of barge-men and tax-clerks by the river stair: “Not abdication,” he insists, voice hoarse, “a sharing. A council. Pilgrims, scribes, caravan masters. Those who did not run.” He is careful to stress the last, measuring which faces flinch.
In another court, where blood streaks the mosaic channels, Mard’s lieutenants hear a different emphasis from breathless guard-survivors: that Shahin’s hand shook when he passed the ring to a gray-bearded temple jurist; that he named no heir, only a circle; that he spoke as one who has seen his own limit. “Keys in many hands,” one branded spear-man repeats, tasting the words like wine. “Harder to cut a single head and end it.”
Within the half-collapsed archive porch, Kouroshmir’s apprentices scrawl the proclamation on salvaged tablets: that the inner sanctum shall be governed, for a season, by a provisional majlis of those who held their stations through the night. They debate, under their breath, whether to write Shahin’s title as Exiled, or as Guardian Emeritus, or not at all. The scholar-captain gives them no guidance. He only underlines the phrase “by consent and counsel,” once, with the stylus’ clean, sharp point, as if testing how deep new law must cut to be believed.
Some cheer openly in the smoke-hazed courtyards, voices cracking into hoarse hymns of the Light’s mercy; others only let their shoulders sag, as if some invisible yoke has slipped from bone and gristle. A pilgrim girl starts to laugh and breaks instead into shuddering sobs, clutching at a soot-streaked icon. A tax-clerk quietly removes the brass tally-rings from his belt and drops them into an empty alms bowl, as though tribute itself had become an embarrassing superstition.
Beneath the low murmur of relief, stretchers still pass: rough doors torn from hinges, broken market-boards, even sections of fallen colonnade pressed into service. The bearers’ feet slap through runnels of mingled ash and blood. Priests and smugglers alike move aside to let them through, argument pausing mid-breath, bargains left unfinished.
The sick-sweet reek of burned wood and flesh clings to the terraces like a second, darker incense, threading through the sanctioned perfumes of myrrh and saffron. Each breath reminds the living that this loosening of fear has been bought at a cost no decree can reckon, no new council yet atone.
Mothers lift shrouds to kiss soot-gritted brows; a former legionary smooths a comrade’s hair, then hesitates over a name half-burned from its scrap. Here and there the tags are only guesses (“Boy from the turquoise caravan,” “Unnumbered guard”) and voices rise as kinship and obligation pull in different directions. Priests of the upper terraces argue that the garden’s inner earth must remain pure of “rebellious contagion”; a band of caravan elders insist that all who bled beneath the cypresses share one soil. A scribe proposes temporary charnel-pits near the broken gate, “until the council decrees.” The word council itself becomes a weapon, invoked, disputed, flung like dust, until mourners realize there is no unquestioned mouth of Light left to end the quarrel.
When the first brave pilgrims step back into the inner courts, the sight of shattered archways and star-patterned tiles split by black fissures contradicts every sermon they were taught; fingers tremble along spider-webbed fractures through scenes of triumphant Light, finding hairline seams where Shadow had always been worked in as counterpoint, invisible until the stone broke and the hidden pigment, soot-dark, dusk-colored, breathed. Murmurs rise: was the flaw in the mason’s hand, or in the doctrine that named only one brightness? A child traces a crack that runs straight through a painted sun and into the eyes of a kneeling king, and her grandmother, remembering banned verses, does not pull her hand away.
Under the scorched cypresses, as dusk pulls long bands of gold and ash across the sky, people stare at the mingled glow of lamps and smoke and understand that whatever ruled here before, fear, faith, or the will of one scarred hunter, has given way to something less simple: a world where Light and Shadow mix in every face, in barter and blessing alike, in whispered testimony and unsigned decrees, and no single voice, whether robed in law or wrapped in pilgrim dust, can credibly claim to speak for the heavens alone, though many will try, and more will listen with a new, hard caution.
In the days that follow, mixed work crews of monks, smugglers, and former imperial soldiers move through the terraces with shared fatigue and wary curiosity, hauling shattered tiles and burned beams into orderly mounds while they pry loose the old bronze seals that once barred certain watercourses and side courts from common use. The clang of chisels against glyph-stamped metal echoes beneath arches where, a week before, only sanctioned hymns were allowed; each seal that falls leaves a ghostly ring on the stone, a faint greenish stain like a memory of prohibition.
A young monk with ink still fresh on his vows works shoulder to shoulder with a scarred deserter from Mard’s ranks, their rope-burned hands indistinguishable under dust. Smugglers who once mapped these same culverts for hidden caches now walk them openly with temple engineers, arguing over gradients and sluice-doors. “If you open this,” one old caravan hand mutters, tapping a corroded valve with his boot, “the lower bazaar floods by first rain.” A river-man loyal to Navidamir laughs softly: “Or the lower bazaar finally gets clean.”
Darivash, birthmark hidden beneath a sweat-darkened scarf, watches as a seal bearing the twin flames and Shahin’s hunting-sign is levered free from a narrow stair that used to admit only robed assessors. For an instant his vision doubles: the stair as it is, choked with mortar dust, and the stair as it was in some other time, washed in impossible radiance, guarded by figures whose faces are all his own. He blinks, swallows copper-tasting fear, and calls for more men to take the weight of the bronze disc before it crashes and shatters the tiles.
Above, Kouroshmir’s remaining scribes move along the scaffolds with tablets in hand, noting which emblems are torn down, which left in place, their styluses hesitating every time a seal bears a script older than the imperial law. One soldier leans his shoulder into a stubborn lintel and says, not quite joking, “Is there a decree for this, captain?” The answer that drifts back from terrace to terrace is not a written one but the groan of shifting stone, the sigh of first water through a dry channel, and the low, stubborn murmur of many hands deciding, for once, without waiting for an unseen court to speak.
As engineers of the cloister and canal-wise bargemen redraw the runs of marble channels, cool streams are coaxed to flow into courtyards long kept dry, and the changed paths of water become a public argument in stone over which parts of the garden now belong to all pilgrims and which, if any, should remain set apart. Old diagrams are unrolled on shaded steps (inked plans bearing Shahin’s private sigil, smuggler-sketches in charcoal, half-mythic layouts remembered by aging gardeners) and each is challenged by the simple, stubborn fact of where the water now chooses to run when freed.
A novice from the irrigation cloister proposes that every channel leading from the central spring must pass through at least one common basin before it reaches any inner court; a former tax-collector objects that offerings will dwindle if nobles must wash in the same pools as mule-drivers. Near the Navian-fed conduits, Navidamir’s pilots argue for deeper locks to admit trade-barges farther up-terrace, while Darivash measures, in quiet mental ledgers, how many new stalls could bloom along each freshly dampened path. In shaded corners, Mard’s veterans trace potential choke-points and rally-grounds in the new flow-lines, reading in the glimmering courses not only blessing, but tactics.
When warded doors finally give way and half-buried shrines breathe air again, debates ignite beneath soot-streaked frescoes: temple scribes, rebel preachers, and cautious merchants crowd around the exposed inscriptions, copying them in the open and contesting every line. Whether the “Serpent of Dawn” broke a false peace or revealed a truer balance, whether Light must always stand opposed to Shadow or learn to move beside it. One grey-robed archivist insists the older script reads “unmask,” not “break”; a former soldier from Mard’s band snorts that any peace built on silence deserves shattering. Darivash runs ink-stained fingers along a chipped cartouche and feels his birthmark prickle; nearby, a young scribe loyal to Kouroshmir quietly annotates variants, already weighing which readings a future law might dare acknowledge.
From these arguments, a rough assembly takes shape in the outer bazaar, first as an impromptu circle of fraying mats between spice-stalls, then as a regular convocation with speaking turns, tally-stones, and hastily inked records. There, caravan captains, dock wardens, cloistered adepts, and, uneasily, a few of Mard’s branded, attempt to draft new rules that bind tribute, tariffs, and temple dues to shared oversight rather than distant decree, testing the weight of each word as if it were coin.
As petitions multiply and tempers fray over whose dreams, star-readings, and water-visions may steer the garden’s fate, the assembly’s tongue hardens. They speak now of a dastūr-nāmeh‑ye payghām, a charter of prophecy, to fix who may proclaim omen, how each utterance must be recorded, cross-read, and publicly contested, and how no cloister, caravan, rebel band, or scarred hunter‑king shall again claim solitary custody of the heavens’ decree.
He names it not caravan nor court but kārvān‑e wazn, the weighing train, and the name spreads through the bazaars quicker than its wheels can turn. In the first council after smoke has cleared from the upper terraces, when Mard’s scarred lieutenants and Kouroshmir’s ink-sleeved scribes each press him, one to stand beneath a rebel banner, the other to accept a seal of sanctioned oracle, Darivash only laughs once, brittle as sun-struck glass, and gestures to his people instead.
“Count the wagons,” he tells Navidamir, who lingers on the edge of the circle like a man unsure where the river’s true channel now runs. “Strip three of their false walls and secret floors; we will make those spaces hollow and visible. Take the ledgers out of their hidden pockets, set them beside the prayer-scrolls, and bind both with the same twine.”
Mard frowns. “You would trade in words while the garden is half in arms?”
“In weights,” Darivash answers. “Words are only how we see the metal.”
Kouroshmir’s gaze is more searching. “And you refuse an office that would give your mark the stamp of law?”
“My mark has burned under law and outside it,” Darivash replies, fingertips brushing the pale serpent that coils from eye to throat. “Let it be passport, not throne. Let it open doors, not sit behind them.”
So the old freight-wagons are gutted and remade. Side‑panels fold down into shaded awnings; brass scales, once used to cheat tariffs, now hang in full sight from cross‑beams. One cart carries only ink, parchment, and twin sets of ledgers: one ruled for coin, one for omen. Another bears cushions and threadbare carpets where disputants must sit at the same level, merchant beside mendicant, rebel beside registrar. No icon of Shahin’s falcon, no glyph of Mard’s burning brand is permitted on the canvas; instead Darivash commissions a new device from a dockside calligrapher: two balanced pans, rendered in a single unbroken serpent-stroke, its head and tail disappearing into the uprights as if the act of weighing devours the marker of destiny itself.
Navidamir watches the emblem dry in the shade, jaw tight. “A caravan that serves all sides serves none,” he murmurs.
Darivash shrugs on his indigo outer robe, its inner seams already resewn to hide nothing sharper than reed‑pens. “Then let it serve only the road,” he says. “The road runs between.”
As the kārvān‑e wazn begins its slow circuit about the precinct, outer bazaars, river docks, hunting preserves, and back again like a bead upon a cord, pilgrims and factions learn the rhythm of its halts. They bring their quarrels to its carpets and scales: spice‑brokers and incense‑sellers disputing how much of their profit the new tithe may claim; caravaners arguing whether escort‑fees count as pious offering or taxable gain; archivists from rival cloisters unrolling brittle scrolls to clash over a single variant verb that might shift the burden of sin from king to commoner.
Under the cypress shade of its awnings, rebel envoys and temple jurists sit cross‑legged, submitting rival accounts of the same night’s omen: one recalls a black sun devoured by silver serpents, the other a crown of lawful fire encircling the garden. Scribes of the weighing train read each aloud in turn, mark differences in red, and hang both versions upon a cord between the wagons, so that gathered witnesses may see the fissures where power once walked unchallenged, and hear them publicly “weighed” before coin changes hands or commands are sent.
He lays down terms as dry and hard as caravan bread. Any dream set forth as compass, any crumbling shard of script raised like a banner, must first lie naked on the weighing carpets: the words themselves, the name of the seer or scribe, the road by which it came, each prior hand that copied or clipped it. Scribes of the kārvān‑e wazn ink twin copies and send them, under seal, to hostile cloisters and rival bands, bidding counter‑readings as one bids counter‑offers. What cannot endure such crossing of gazes is marked “shadowed” and may move nothing sharper than a reed‑pen. No garrison will march, no gate be sealed, on the strength of a verse that has not survived the caravan’s passage.
The serpent on his skin, once hunted as warrant for chains or coronation, settles into a kind of walking credential. Ward‑wards prickle but part; guards glance, mutter oaths, then stand aside. He passes from rebel fire‑ring to ink‑reeking cloister, from perfumed pavilions to Shahin’s wind‑scarred perches, carrying not edicts but echoes, so each sealed circle must breathe the others’ fevered readings of the sky.
In the ledgers, the kārvān‑e wazn becomes less institution than weather: not quite law, not quite heresy, its inked columns noting which quarrels bent toward truce, which merely changed their clothing and moved on. Routes swell or wither as rumor dictates. Within the terraces, assemblies chisel canons of omen; without, the circling train keeps showing how swiftly statutes turn to toll‑gates. Revelation, Darivash insists, must pay passage both ways, rebels reading jurists, captains reading mendicants, or else it congeals into the same hoarded light these factions curse in Shahin’s burned reflection.
Dust drifts like pale smoke each time they shift their weight. Lamps hang from the ribs of the scaffolding, their yellow circles cutting islands in the dark; beyond the half‑mended span, the sky is a black bowl pricked with salt, and from far below the terraces comes the thin, quarrelsome roar of late pilgrims who still have arguments left when their prayers are spent. The arch itself is a palimpsest of centuries. Old glyphs seared into blindness by the capital’s fire, newer maxims only half‑chiseled, the stone sweating where fresh cuts have opened ancient veins.
Mard rests his branded forearm against a column drum, thumb dragging absently over the scar as if to remind the stone who is speaking to it. His voice is low, the kind men used on night watches when they feared to wake archers, but it has an edge like flint struck under cloth.
“Look at them,” he says, tilting his chin toward the sound from below, where Darivash’s caravan scribes and temple jurists and Navidamir’s dock‑ledgers have spilled into one bewildered circle of disputation. “Each swears the stars themselves have written in his ledger. Tonight they quarrel. Tomorrow they will quote. What we scratch here”, he taps the dust‑coated plinth, where Kouroshmir’s stylus lies waiting, “will become a banner in hands that never bled their knuckles against a gate, never burned a comrade on the inside of their eyelids for twenty winters.”
He glances up at the broken verse running along the inner curve of the arch, words charred away mid‑sentence. “I have seen proclamations carried like torches through barracks. I have watched them gutter into brands. One season they call it qānūn‑e nūr, Law of the Light; the next, the same lines are shouted over a firing ditch. It is not the ink that changes, dāvar, it is whose boots are on the steps.”
The breeze turns, carrying upward a snatch of chant: someone reciting the newly weighed prophecies in the outer court, already testing different emphases, different pauses. Mard’s mouth tightens.
“Give them one text, one sanctioned telling, and in a year some clever rat in a collar will say, ‘Here, here is what the Marked Serpent truly meant. Here is the limit of your uprising, the measure of your obedience.’ He will point to our own lines as if they were shackles hammered by heaven. We break one chain only to see its filings melted and poured into the next.”
He steps closer, shadow nearly touching Kouroshmir’s on the dusty flagstones.
“Do you think the ones who branded me did not once speak as you speak now? ‘We must record. We must protect. We must bind chaos with a beautiful script.’ They wrote my brothers’ names into a roll of traitors and called it balance. They wrote Shahin’s hunt‑codes into temple law and called it piety. The ink remembers the hand that wields it last, not the first that meant well.”
Far back in the gloom, in the shadowed colonnade where Shahin stands with weight braced on his good leg, the words slide along old nerves. He had heard debates like this in marble courts, before the fire; in tents of campaign, before the exile. The register of accusation and warning is the same, though the uniforms have changed.
Mard draws a breath, steady, soldier’s measured, then lets it rasp out over cracked stone.
“I fought so that men and women might carry their own small scriptures in their bones (the way to share water, the way to refuse a cruel order) not so that another gilded chronicle could be lifted over their heads like a hammer. Whatever we write tonight will not stay tonight. It will march in the mouths of those who come after us, and they will use it as they please. That is why I say: beware giving them a single blade and calling it history.”
Kouroshmir draws his cloak tighter, not against the chill alone but as if to keep his own thoughts from scattering with the dust. When he answers, his tone is not the court‑censor’s bark but the weary precision of a man accustomed to copying verdicts by lamplight.
“Sar‑lashkar, you speak as if ink were the only metal that bites.” His gaze follows the same broken verse Mard has been reading, lips moving a beat behind the charred words. “Yet I have walked through provinces where no statute ever reached, where nothing was written but the names on mass graves no one dared to keep. The blades there were not sharpened by texts, but by silence. In the gaps, any man with a loud enough tongue could claim, ‘Here the Light has left us free to do as I please.’”
He taps the stylus once against the plinth, a small, hard sound.
“If we leave this night to rumor, to campfire retellings, the next would‑be savior will find in those blanks an empty throne. He will say, ‘Because nothing forbids me, Heaven consents.’ Look.” He gestures toward the half‑chiseled legal line above. “Unfinished law is a wound. Named limits are the only splint we possess. The only way to make even princes answerable to something beyond their own revelation.”
Mard snorts softly, the sound more like a cough caught on old smoke, and flattens his scarred palm against the stone as if feeling for a pulse in its grain. His fingertips find a chipped glyph half‑buried under soot and plaster, one of those pious curls that once licensed a purge no one now dares name. He traces it, slow, as though following the path of a blade.
“Every hadd‑e nām‑gozārdeh,” he says, “was first sold as shelter. Do you think your ‘named limits’ will announce themselves honestly as chains? No. They will come robed in safety, in balance, in mercy for the many. The old order did not begin with fire; it began with careful minutes and clean registers, each decree only a finger’s width, trimming away which faces still counted as human under heaven. Line by reasonable line, they narrowed the circle until, at the end, the garden itself chose to burn rather than admit those it had written out.”
He lifts his hand, dust whitening the brand on his forearm.
“You would call that protection,” he adds quietly. “The stone remembers it as permission.”
Kouroshmir inclines his head, not in surrender but in grim acknowledgement. “Then let us refuse the tyrant of a single column,” he says. “We will bind a plaited chronicle: rebel beside jurist, caravan ledger beside temple omen, each scroll annotating, disputing, exposing the others. No seal shall enthrone one voice; contradiction itself will be our poor man’s safeguard against future certainties.”
Above them the twin‑flame braziers gutter, casting their quarrel in a restless amber that reminds him of the capital’s last night. His bad leg trembles; the staff’s ferrule scrapes stone like a cautious animal. Once he would have ordered a verdict and called it destiny. Now, listening, he tastes ash and understands that any world worth guarding must be carried on a wound’s edge.
Seasons later, when patrol banners no longer bristle at every turn of the path, a child pilgrim pauses at a newly cut overlook where wild brush still clings stubbornly to seams of carved stone, the air smelling of crushed thyme and old dust. The railing here is a low parapet of pale travertine, hastily smoothed but already stained by the touch of many hands; between its joints, knotweed and brittle lavender push their roots into forgotten mortar, as though testing how far the garden’s new mercy will extend to weeds.
The child’s sandals, cheap reed and leather, whisper on grit. No guard calls out. No censor’s scribe hovers with wax tablets to count how long a gaze lingers where it ought not. Above, the higher terraces shimmer in the late light, their cypress rows broken now and then by dark patches where forbidden groves have been left half‑tamed, neither fully sanctified nor entirely sealed. Below, steps and ramps uncoil in alternating bands of shadow and stone, bearing the thin, bright thread of a caravan that glints like insects along the terrace roads.
The child squints, trying to pick out individuals among the moving dots. The slow camels burdened with swaying crates; the broad‑shouldered guards walking with spears not quite upright; the riverfolk in their light vests, skin browned like fired clay. Banners do move there, but they are merchant pennants and prayer flags, not the stiff, sun‑bleached standards of patrol units. Somewhere in that living skein, a line of pack animals bears indigo and sand‑colored bundles, a serpent‑pale pattern flashing now and then when a robe’s edge lifts in the breeze.
The child cannot name any of it. They are only aware of a looseness in the air, as if the stone itself has unclenched by a finger’s breadth, making room for one more breath that belongs to no decree.
In both hands the child cups a cheap clay amulet bought for a few worn coppers in the outer bazaar. Twin flames scratched in with a vendor’s blunt nail, one line wavering thick, the other thin, as if the Light itself had stuttered when it passed through the craftsman’s fingers. Between them a small serpent is coiled, not the imperial dragon of triumph carved above the old gates, not the broken worm stamped beneath the boots of temple guards in the didactic mosaics, but a narrow, undecided thing whose body loops once, twice, and closes on itself without crown, collar, or spear‑point to define its fate. Fired too fast, the disk is slightly warped; it rocks in the child’s palms when they shift their weight, as though something inside it resists lying flat under any given story. The hole for the cord is off‑center, so that when worn it will always hang a little crooked, neither flame quite higher than the other, the serpent’s head forever tilted toward whichever horizon the wearer happens to be walking.
Below, Darivash’s caravan winds along a widened processional way that now threads through both sanctioned terraces and once‑forbidden groves, the old stone lions of prohibition left in place but wreathed with new votive ribbons instead of chains. His wagons roll past shrines whose seals have been carefully broken and re‑sanctified, plaster scars still visible around doorframes where ward‑glyphs once burned too bright. At some altars, the twin flames are split. One brazier fed with clear oil, the other left to smolder with resin that smells faintly of storm‑wet earth. Along the flanks march men and women in mismatched gear: garden guards with their sun‑stamped cuirasses and former rebels in salvaged mail, walking side by side beneath pale, undecorated banners that bear only a spare sigil inked by some cautious clerk: “measure kept.”
Over the terraces, an unhurried نیمروشنایِ فرونشسته spreads: a tempered gloaming that is neither the old, blinding فرمانِ نور nor the suffocating خفهدمایِ زمزمهگاهانِ سایه، but a gentled dusk in which no herald’s trumpet bites the air and no gong demands stillness. Lanterns wait unlit; پرندگان argue drowsily in the سروستان, and the Navian bears mingled ذکر و خنده downstream without being beaten into a single, righteous سرود.
انگشتِ کودک بر تنِ ناصافِ مار میلغزد و نمیداند آیا جهانِ زیرِ پایش سرانجام درمان یافته است یا تنها بر لبهی کاردی ناپیدا آرمیده، پیش از گشتِ بزرگِ دیگر. آنچه میفهمد همین دمِ درنگ است، که در آن، باغِ شاهپَریدا بیآنکه فرمانی از منبری، یا رمزِ مُهری، یا فریادِ شاهی بخواهد، خود به خود میجنبد و زمزمه میکند، چون جانداری که برای نخستینبار به یاد آورده باشد چگونه میتوان نفس کشید بیآنکه نور او را سوگند دهد و سایه او را در بند گیرد.