Although I’ve Said Too Much, I Haven’t Said Enough

The flame was ceremonial; the room was not warm. The woman, wrapped in tattered furs, clutched a ruined silk tapestry woven over a woolen blanket, with delicate, ancient hands. Attendants pulled the blanket tighter around her. Her shivering, shrunken form draped by the golden silk peacock.

"Is it ready?" She asked with a regal voice.

The other men in the room stood with wet eyes.

"Yes, my lady, an Achaemenid tower has been found to serve as dakhma. It’s ancient, though it's small, not suitable for a woman of your stature." Sputtered one of the attendants standing in the temple. Silver femoral columns fenced in what creature comforts they could salvage. Dried fruits, stale wine, muted incense; all desperately offered, all politely discarded.

The matriarch of white hair and almond eyes chuckled warmly to assuage her sorrowful court.

"Oh, hush, it's a perfectly appropriate tower. It's fitting that my son’s dakhma should be taller than mine. A good leader - had Ohrmazd wished it."

The concubine told the same story with the same soft sigh. The attendants nodded along in the same soft way.

There was no grand arrival, no rush of wind or light; the young woman in white was simply there. Standing at the concubine's bedside, with an attendant and two elders behind her. The concubine looked at the youth who stood before her.

"And who are you? I never saw any damsel more elegant, and of a more beautiful body than thine, so radiant and beautiful?"

She asked as though liturgy. None doubted who she was.

Her golden hair was brighter than the ceremonial flame, and the golden threads on the concubine's blanket shone as she sang.

"Shirin, daughter of Shapur, I am your religion, made more virtuous by you. I am your good thoughts, your good deeds, and your piety. It is on account of thy will and actions that I am as great and good for in the world the Gathas were chanted by thee, and the fire tended by thee."

The sacred fire seemed to slow, in homage to the new source of light. All transfixed upon the radiant young woman. The concubine inhaled deeply the incense that seemed sweeter now.

She spoke in the rhythmic cadence of high Persian and sang her last gatha.

"O Mazda, grant me goodness as reward for prayers. Make my path wide. Protect me from the chasm below"

And with a soft exhale, she drooped to the makeshift cot. Her head hit the pillow with a thud, and her exhale ended.

Silence filled a now much darker chamber. Though the fire still burned.

The Daena in white was nowhere now. The concubine lay motionless upon the pillow. Her eyes closed as the attendants pulled the embroidered blanket over her face. Mummerings of those present served as substitutes for tears.

"Thus ends the Sassanid empire, for Persia's sake, let's move on!" The bark was a command from the far end of the temple.

The elders turned to the voice aghast, and the captains shook their heads. The figure who broke the spell of solemnity stood near the door of the temple, his silhouette blotting out the setting sun.

"We fed her sickly princeling to the birds in Nishappur, then the vizier's daughter in Marakanda, the head Eunuch in Merv. Now, finally, in Dehistan, we finally lay to rest the Shah's brother's 3rd favorite concubine."

The elders in attendance protested the man. He stepped away from the door and towards the sacred fire on the floor. The flames illuminated every scar and gash across the Old Commander's weathered face.

"They didn't keep the flame burning; I did.”

The attendants and the elders looked to each other, a vain prayer for a challenger. Once, the concubine seemed to have energy to counter him, but that was no longer her concern. The commander of a decades-long war for survival accepted their silence as acquiescence.

"A band of stepperiders approaches us. They are a third of our size. We will defeat them and from there, with their caravans, we rebuild.

A haggard, bent hand with diseased nails placed itself on the aged commander's mailed shoulders. The Commander turned to face the old hag dressed in dirty browns and greys.

"There is still the matter of her sky-burial." The crone croaked with a gravel voice.

The Commander's left eye flared, the other long covered in impenetrable film. He drifted to the elders and acolytes, who stood in agreement with the woman. The commander grunted, then laughed.

"Very well, give the last of the palace her burial. We will march to the Tower. A full military procession, and while she goes to meet Orhmazd, we shall go to meet the Turks!”

The assembled procession exited the temple into the surrounding fortified city. Soldiers dressed in white robes, worn holy by washing and bleach carried the wrapped body out of the temple. The Parthian outpost had walls high enough to keep out the sight of the grey-dark Caspian, but little else. The salty wind licked at their exposed, sun-dried faces.

The various shops and rooms of the ancient outpost had been made into barracks, though the women and children were nowhere. They had long been evacuated or left behind. Only the men now called this home and barely did so. No efforts were made in construction or repair, save for the temple. A silver ribbed dome with a golden feather thatched roof suspended over argentine columns.

There was no temple here; the Seleucids failed to build one suitable. The fire would have dwelt in an abandoned granary had Orhmazd, in his final mercy, offered a temple. Khvarenah, the Great Golden bird of Royal Providence and guardian of the sky, died in the center of the fort. The Huma carried his flesh up to heaven and left behind silver bones and golden feathers. Priests arranged bones as pillars and fenced in with what tapestries and cord felt appropriate. The dish holding the sacred flame was then placed on the floor. The commander was pleased. A temple that could be disassembled, and if necessary, sold.

​

The Processors exited under the silver beak with heavy steps, but could not avoid the splatters of mud hemming their white robes. The procession was five soldiers, three on the left, two on the right. The Commander said nothing about it as he assembled the tower procession. That was until he saw the missing soldier standing outside with wavering resolve.

"Priest's Son of Susa, why are you not at the procession?"

The Commander shouted, and the figure who would have normally flinched at the shout turned slowly to the Commander.

"I have other obligations; I wish to prepare for the upcoming battle."

The Commander smiled a sarcastic smile, showing gaps where some of his teeth once were.

"Preparing yourself to die, eh? Good! Get good and ready for it."

The young man walked with renewed purpose and shortened the step to his mudbrick hovel, which in Parthian times was once a workshop. He walked with hands clasped behind his back to hide the trembling. But he is stopped. A callous, yet undoubtedly feminine hand grabbed his shoulder with a firm grip. The young soldier pushed it aside, but the woman in unbleached white refused. Her hand slid down to his arm and grasped with what strength she had. The young soldier stopped, and she dragged herself towards him.

"Who are you, that you think you can stop me?" The young man asks, his face showing ferocity, his eyes showing fear.

"You know who I am, Mihrdad, Son of Mihrdad." Said the young woman with a weathered face and sunken eyes. A comely form made hardened by strife. "I am your piety to your father and the sacred flame. I am the noble actions of your defense of Susa. I am the faithful endurance of your priestly father's duties. I am your good thoughts, your good works, and good religion, and I beg you not to throw me away."

The priest's son tried to walk further, but his trembling limbs were ensnared by the mud. He looked down and away from the woman beside him. A woman who, while no longer a youth, retained a wifely softness.

"Why should I not? You do not need to tell me that I am near death. Whatever good I did in the past, it will be left here to rot with everything else."

"I speak of your great deeds now, because your planned transgression will render them rancid. Priest's Son of Susa, what you have made up your mind for is desecration."

The man refused to meet the woman's gaze. From a distance, it would seem like a young couple arguing. The priest's son kept his gaze focused on the Tower of Silence past the gate.

"It is not desecration, it is prevention. I have a roof upon which I can die; it is better there than in the mud of the battlefield, where my body will pollute the earth." The woman moved her hand to his and locked and pulled him towards her. He relented, but still refused to gaze upon her.

"I tell you now, it is desecration, and should you do this, you will not see me when the time comes to cross the bridge."

The man staring at the mud dares to look up to her.

"You would abandon me as well?"

"If you do this. If you abandon your religion...I will be forced to abide by what you say."

From a distance, the old hag in brown watched as the soldier broke down in the woman's arms.

"She's still beautiful,” said the old woman to herself.

As she watched. The Commander paid no notice, instead transfixed to a parchment as he reviewed his final message to the outside.

The Commander grunted in disgust as a pair of flies conspired in his ear and neck. He tried to brush it away with his pen.

"Priest's son, quit weeping like a woman, and either get back in the procession, or get back on your bird!"

The procession walked away from the temple and towards the rusted iron gate. The Commander snarked as he looked at the spearmen flocking to the front and back of the procession to form a parade.

"If we are going to have a funeral procession, it might as well do double duty and form a military deployment. The Enemy is coming, and we have no time for these ceremonial frills."

The old hag walked alongside his horse as he rode and looked up at the old commander.

"Your years of retreats from the followers of Mohammed have made you sloppy in symbolism, Commander." She mocked with a weakened voice, "But you are right, it is fitting."

The Commander turned from his letter to indulge in his favorite game of gallows humor. "Any slur in the steps of my liturgies is 'sloppy' to you! My decision is efficient; we march as one to bury the old, and march to the new."

The commander rode on one of the only horses in the entire cavalry. The others rode their great Huma, or manticores, or other great beasts. But the commander used a fine, deep brown Nisean, salvaged from one of the Shah's own stables. The commander complained that he was too old to learn how to ride one of those beasts and preferred to be more grounded. His men believed him.

Ahead near the gate, a soldier was whispering to a chained creature. Leonine body with feminine face.

"Will we succeed?" The guard asked his chained companion.

"Persia will be a mighty empire again."

"But will we succeed? Can I go home to Ray?​

"Over what ruins were made of Ray, will be a great city."

"That wasn't my question!"

"Please, accept my answer."

Both faces turned silent and stone-like when they saw the procession. Her massive harnessed lion's body marched towards the procession. It strained against the chains, its claws clutched the mud for friction, gasping as the rusted iron gate roared open.

“What I wouldn’t give for 10 oxen.” The commander muttered to himself. “At least, once they feed men when they die.”

The Commander shook his head as he saw the harnessed creature bow before the assembly.