The Conqueror - Part 2

It is said that when Karzan the Conqueror was in the 7th decade of his life, he looked upon his image in a looted looking glass and grieved.

“I despair”, he would say, “For even though I have built the greatest Empire that man has ever seen, there is a far greater conqueror than me. One that even I and giants must yield to”.

“Oh but great and mighty Karzan”, his sycophantic administrators would say, “Surely there is no conqueror greater than you. The whole world knows and trembles at your name. You are a god among men”.

But the great Karzan would only weep when he heard the words of these dishonest men and would growl, “All your words mean nothing , for I hear a deafening voice inside me, the voice of a black limitless chasm as deep as if it were dug to the bottom of the universe itself and the voice says to me, “I am coming, Karzan. I am coming to put you in chains of darkness. I’m coming to take you to my dungeon of the endless, starless night”.

And then, legend tells us, a priest came to the palace with robes of white bearing , he said, a gift for Karzan and when he had been searched for the weapons of an assassin he was permitted an audience with the Emperor.

“What gift have you brought me? What could you possibly give to a man with as much wealth as I?”, he said, “I, who own more than half of the world and possess more riches than any man could want”.

“You own nothing and your many riches slip through your fingers”, he replied, “For the world will not be kept a prisoner. She is far older than all of man and will long out live the grasp of any empire.
But you are afraid of what lies behind natures veil. I know. You listen to the hourglass and hear a waterfall”.

“What do you know?”, said the vile tyrant, exploding into anger, “What can you possibly know of me?”.

“I know that you have searched for many years for the secret of eternity. Given away much wealth to many charlatans in exchange for worthless talismans and revolting elixirs that have done nothing but make you feel more desperate and hopeless. But I have not come to you offering unlimited breath or an endlessly beating heart. I have come to make a peace offering between you and life”.

And, saying this, the priest opened his hand and, in it, the Emperor saw nothing more than the seed of a sunflower.

“Too long you have been a servant of the thing you now fear. You have been a harbinger of death rather than a servant of life”, said the priest, “But the man who serves life is not afraid because he knows that he is not separate from life but part of its eternal body. Go now, Karzan and be truly great. Help to spread life and do good”

But then, we are told, the vile Tyrant snatched the seed out of the priests hand and threw it upon the stone floor of his throne room, grinding it into dust beneath the heel of his iron boot.

“You presumptuous worm!”, said the tyrant, his eyes blazing as he knocked the priest onto the floor with a single blow from the back of his hand, “You have spent too much of your life contemplating airy ideas while I have been fighting all of my life in the hard, real world. Man is born to savagery; the world is a wilderness where the weak are devoured and only the strong have a right to live. That is the only truth there is”.

Then, it is said, that the cruel Karzan ordered for the priest to be shut inside a box which he himself had designed specially for executing those who dared speak out against him.

In the walls of this death box were several holes through which his soldiers would thrust spears and all heard the sound of the priests screams from inside the box and saw his blood pour out from the holes.

But then was heard a loud, slow, portentous knocking upon the great iron door of the throne room and, when it was opened by a servant of the Emperor, a priest dressed in jet black robes entered and, lifting up his cowl, all saw that this priest looked the same as the priest who had just been executed within the box.

“I offered you a chance to be a part of the eternal life, to be a flame within the eternal sun but you still long to be a part of the darkness of this world and so, let the darkness have you”, he said.

Then the evil Karzan, we are told, felt the bony hand of death gripping his heart tightly and, because he had not given himself to the light, so the spirit of darkness devoured him.

It is said however, by some, that in his thoughts he repented, swearing that should he be reborn he would use his life to serve life and that the eternal light, taking pity upon him, wrestled his soul free from the hand of darkness.

After he died, however, all those generals who, out of fear or misguided loyalty, had served him faithfully, now fell into fighting over his empire, tearing it apart like ravening beasts fighting over a corpse and thus, the empire that he had spent his life building died with him.