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MESCHIANE: How strong I would be still to search for him, if only I knew you would not follow me.
JAHI: I move with the strength of the World Below, and will follow you to the second ending of Urth, if need be. But if you strike me again you will suffer for it.
MESCHIANE lifts her fist, and JAHI cowers back.
MESCHIANE: Your legs were shaking worse than mine when we decided to rest here.
JAHI: I suffer far more than you. But the strength of the World Below is to endure past endurance — even as I am more beautiful than you, I am a more tender creature by far.
MESCHIANE: We’ve seen that, I think.
JAHI: I warn you again, and there will be no third warning. Strike me at your peril.
MESCHIANE: What will you do? Summon up Erinys to destroy me? I have no fear of that. If you could, you would have done it long before.
JAHI: Worse. If you strike me again, you will come to enjoy it.
Enter FIRST SOLDIER and SECOND SOLDIER, armed with pikes.
FIRST SOLDIER: Look here!
SECOND SOLDIER: (To the Women:) Down, down! Don’t stand, or like a heron I’ll skewer you. You’re coming with us.
MESCHIANE: On our hands and knees?
FIRST SOLDIER: None of your insolence!
He prods her with his pike, and as he does there is a groaning almost too deep for hearing. The stage vibrates in sympathy with it, and the ground shakes.
SECOND SOLDIER: What was that?
FIRST SOLDIER: I don’t know.
JAHI: The end of Urth, you fool. Go ahead and spear her. It’s the end of you anyway.
SECOND SOLDIER: Little you know! It’s the begi
He seizes JAHI, and as soon as he does so, MESCHIANE darts off into the darkness.
FIRST SOLDIER runs after her.
SECOND SOLDIER: Bite me, will you!
He strikes JAHI with the shaft of his weapon. They struggle.
JAHI: Fool! She’s escaping!
SECOND SOLDIER: That’s Ivo’s worry. I’ve got my prisoner, and he let his escape, if he doesn’t catch her. Come on, we’re going to see the chiliarch.
JAHI: Will you not love me before we leave this winsome spot?
SECOND SOLDIER: And have my manhood cut off and shoved into my mouth? Not I!
JAHI: They’d have to find it first.
SECOND SOLDIER: What’s that? (Shakes her.)
JAHI: You take the office of Urth, who will not trouble herself for me. But wait — release me only for a moment and I will show you wonderful things.
SECOND SOLDIER: I can see them now, for which I give all thanks to the moon.
JAHI: I can make you rich. Ten chrisos will be as nothing to you. But I have no power while you grasp my body.
SECOND SOLDIER: Your legs are longer than the other woman’s, but I’ve seen that you don’t move so readily on them. Indeed, I think that you can scarcely stand.
JAHI: No more can I.
SECOND SOLDIER: I’ll hold your necklace — the chain looks stout enough. If that’s sufficient, show me what you can do. If it’s not, come with me. You’ll be no freer while I have you.
JAHI raises both hands, with the little fingers, index fingers, and thumbs extended. For a moment there is silence, then a strange, soft music filled with trillings. Snow falls in gentle flakes.
SECOND SOLDIER: Stop that!
He seizes one arm and jerks it down. The music stops abruptly. A few last snowflakes settle on his head.
SECOND SOLDIER: That was not gold.
JAHI: Yet you saw.
SECOND SOLDIER: There’s an old woman in my home village who can work the weather too. She’s not as quick as you, I admit, but then she’s a lot older, and feeble.
JAHI: Whoever she may be, she is not a thousandth part as old as I.
Enter the STATUE, moving slowly and as though blind.
JAHI: What is that thing?
SECOND SOLDIER: One of Father Inire’s little pets. It can’t hear you or make a sound. I’m not even sure it’s alive.
JAHI: Why, neither am I, for all of that.
As the STATUE passes near her, she strokes its cheek with her free hand.
JAHI: Lover… lover… lover. Have you no greeting for me?
STATUE: E-e-e-y!
SECOND SOLDIER: What’s this? Stop! Woman, you said you had no power while I held you.
JAHI: Behold my slave. Can you fight him? Go ahead — break your spear on that broad chest.
The STATUE kneels and kisses JAHI’S foot.
SECOND SOLDIER: No, but I can outrun him.
He throws JAHI across his shoulder and runs. The door in the hill opens. He enters, and it slams shut behind him. The STATUE hammers it with mighty blows, but it does not yield. Tears stream down his face. At last he turns away and begins to dig with his hands.
GABRIEL: (Offstage.) Thus stone images keep faith with a departed day, Alone in the desert when man has fled away.
As the STATUE continues to dig, the stage grows dark. When the lights come up again, the AUTARCH is seated on his throne. He is alone on stage, but silhouettes projected on screens to either side of him indicate that he is surrounded by his court.
AUTARCH: Here I sit as though the lord of a hundred worlds. Yet not master even of this.
The tramp of marching men is heard offstage. There is a shouted order.
AUTARCH: Generalissimo!
Enter a PROPHET. He wears a goat skin and carries a staff whose head has been crudely carved into a strange symbol.
PROPHET: A hundred portents are abroad. At Incusus, a calf was dropped that had no head, but mouths in its knees. A woman of known propriety has dreamed she is with child by a dog, last night a shower of stars fell hissing onto the southern ice, and prophets walk abroad in the land.
AUTARCH: You yourself are a prophet.
PROPHET: The Autarch himself has seen them!
AUTARCH: My archivist, who is most learned in the history of this spot, once informed me that over a hundred prophets have been slain here — stoned, burned, torn by beasts, and drowned. Some have even been nailed like vermin to our doors. Now I would learn of you something of the coming of the New Sun, so long prophesied. How is it to come about? What does it mean? Speak, or we shall give the old archivist another mark for his tally, and train the pale moonflower to climb that staff.
PROPHET: I despair of satisfying you, but I shall attempt it.
AUTARCH: Do you not know?
PROPHET: I know. But I know you for a practical man, concerned with the affairs of this universe alone, who seldom looks higher than the stars.
AUTARCH: For thirty years I have prided myself on that.
PROPHET: Yet even you must know that cancer eats the heart of the old sun. At its center, matter falls in upon itself, as though there were there a pit without bottom, whose top surrounds it.
AUTARCH: My astronomers have long told me so.
PROPHET: Think on an apple rotten from the bud. Fair still without, until it collapses into foulness at last.
AUTARCH: Every man who finds himself still strong in the latter half of life has thought on that fruit.
PROPHET: So much then for the old sun. But what of its cancer? What know we of that, save that it deprives Urth of heat and light, and at last of life?
Sounds of struggle are heard offstage. There is a scream of pain, and a crash as though a large vase had been knocked from its pedestal.
AUTARCH: We will learn what that commotion is soon enough, Prophet. Continue.
PROPHET: We know it to be far more, for it is a discontinuity in our universe, a rent in its fabric bound by no law we know. From it nothing comes — all enters in, nought escapes. Yet from it anything may appear, for it alone of all the things we know is no slave to its own nature.
Enter NOD, bleeding, prodded by pikes held offstage.
AUTARCH: What is this miscreation?
PROPHET: The very proof of those portents I spoke to you. In future times, so it has long been said, the death of the old sun will destroy Urth. But from its grave will rise monsters, a new people, and the New Sun. Old Urth will flower then as a butterfly from its dry husk, and the New Urth shall be called Ushas.