--The Hakawati, historian and storyteller from the tribe of Ashem explains why the desert is made of sand.--
Many ages ago, in a time only the most ancient of magi remember, the desert was a paradise. The Garden of Shem. The oases that now dot the great desert are all that remain of the garden. And even then, the oases are just dessicated remnants of what was, wasting away like the fading memories of old men.
In the last age of the Garden of Shem there was a Pasha who from his gleaming citadel ruled all the tribes of Shem. Tribes that in time would become the Sons of Shem and the Zuagirs and the Ashimai and the Ribyat and all the other desert tribes we know today.
This Pasha had many wives but most of his wives bore no children. An unfortunate few gave birth to still borns. Those that carried no children he exiled as dispassionate women, unwilling to fulfill their duties as a wife. Those with still borns he beheaded, claiming they had murdered his child in the womb.
His one fruitful wife bled her life away in child birth giving the Pasha his only child, a daughter.
As she died, the wife spoke prophesy. She said a great sorrow would fall over the Garden of Shem if the daughter ever gave her heart to an unworthy man. The Pasha immediately summoned his guards and put to the sword the midwife and all the attendants that heard the prophesy. He alone would know the prophesy, protect his daughter and in doing so protect the Garden.
But like all the first born daughters of the Pashas before and since, she was to be the Al-Zahar, the Shining Star of Derketo. Though the Pasha wished to keep his daughter apart from men he could not risk angering the Goddess by denying his daughter to Derketo.
So he gave his daughter to the temple to be raised as the Al-Zahar. But he told the temple his daughter was not to have any contact with men until the time she was ready to perform the sacred duties required by the shining star of Derketo. The women of the temple did not know how they would train the Al-Zahar without her even touching a man but they agreed since disobeying the Pasha invited death.
His daughter grew and as the day approached when she would assume the duties of the Al-Zahar, the Pasha became worried. What if in her service to the Goddess his daughter fell in love and gave her heart to an unworthy man? He could not bear the thought that his inaction might bring about the prophesy. Distraught and not knowing what to do, the Pasha confided the secret prophesy to his most trusted advisor.
This advisor was also the Motwihamreed, servant of the immortal magi. When he spoke, he did so with the wisdom of his masters, the magi. The Pasha considered the Motwihamreed’s counsel as he would have considered the counsel of the magi themselves.
The Motwihamreed told the Pasha that his daughter must become the Al-Zahar. One cannot deny the gods or tradition. He said also that the Pasha could not restrict his daughter once she became the Al-Zahar. But the Paha might make being in the presence of the Al-Zahar impossible to all men save those the Pasha trusted. And the Pasha only trusted the Motwihamreed.
The Pasha did not know the Motwihamreed had already lain with the Al-Zahar many times. They tangled as lovers on the altars of Derketo under the watchful eye of the Derketi women training the Al-Zahar.
As the servant of the Magi, the Motwihamreed would one day become a magi and since the Magi are immortal they cannot be men. Thus the women of Derketo did not consider the Motwihamreed a man. And if he was not a man, they reasoned they were not breaking the promise that the Al Zahar would have no man before her training was complete.
They, however, did not tell the Pasha this.
The Pasha’s daughter, though, had the weaknesses of a mortal woman. Despite the Derketi conditioning against love, the Al-Zahar’s heart would flutter when the Motwihamreed came close. When alone, she found herself longing for his company and his strong hands roaming over her body.
And the Motwihamreed desired the Al-Zahar. Her beauty was such that the envious moon shown all the brighter in the Al-Zahar's presence. When the Motwihamreed heard the secret prophesy, he knew the Al-Zahar would be his.
In convincing the Pasha to punish all other men for seeking out the Al-Zahar, the Motwihamreed ensured only he might be near her. Only he would possess the Shining Star of Derketo.
The Al-Zahar, a woman desired by men and traditionally denied to none. Yet men could not gaze upon her or feel the warmth of her body under theirs. The Pasha would burn out the eyes of those he thought looked upon his daughter with lust. If a man touched her, the Pasha would have the offender’s hand sawed off. Men speaking flattery to the Al-Zahar would have their tongues gnawed out by rats.
This angered the emirs of the subject tribes. The Al-Zahar, by offering divine pleasures to the emirs of the tribes, helped ensure their loyalty. A Pasha might give away other daughters as wives to ensure familial loyalty but rarely did a Pasha have enough daughters to give to all his subject emirs. The Al-Zahar was not bound by marriage. She, in the worship of the Goddess, could please any man and the pleasures she gave helped maintain peace and the blessings of fertility in the garden.
The emirs decided to march their armies against the gleaming citadel and take the Al-Zahar by force. Then they would use her as they desired and in doing so maintain the ancient rites that kept the garden forever in bloom. But the Pasha had spies in all the courts and temples and he learned of the plot. He learned too of the secret meetings between his daughter and the Motwihamreed.
The garden had not fallen into ruin so the Pasha believed his daughter had not given her heart to the Motwihamreed. After all, the Motwihamreed betrayed the Pasha’s trust and that made him unworthy.
Betrayal demands blood. That is the immutable law of honor. But how might the Pasha preserve his honor against the Motwihamreed? One cannot simply kill the servant of the magi. The primeval magi are unpredictable. They might do nothing or they might wreak their terrible vengeance through magics that were ancient before Atlantis was even known.
The Pasha’s army could not stand against the emirs’ host in open battle. So it was that the Pasha summoned the Motwihamreed and told him of the plot by the emirs. The Pasha commanded the Motwihamreed to take one tenth of the army and march against the emirs. The Motwihamreed was to delay the emirati long enough for the citadel to be fortified against siege.
The Pasha knew even with the magic the Motwihamreed commanded, that this small force would be no match for the combined armies of the emirs. With luck, the Motwihamreed would die in battle. The blood debt would be settled, the wrath of the magi avoided and his daughter free of the Motwihamreed’s influence.
But the Pasha did not fully trust fate to end the Motwihamreed. In secret, the Pasha summoned his master archer, the Hashaseen, and told the killer to ensure the Motwihamreed died in battle.
The hearts of the Motwihamreed and the Al’Zahar grew heavy. They could not bear to be apart. The Al-Zahar pleaded with her lover not to go but duty to the Pasha could not be refused. With tears in her eyes she begged him for some token of love. Something she might keep to know he would return to her. And what man can resist the woman he covets when tears gleam like stars on her cheeks?
That night, the Motwihamreed entered the Necropolis. The deep crypts holding the bones of the long dead would not have the flowers he needed so he stalked about the newer graves for fresh cadaver blossoms. He found two of the pale white flowers on the mound of a shallow grave. The dirt was still wet and pungent with the rot of the body it covered. He waited for the flowers to bloom under the light of the crescent moon and cut them quickly.
As a servant of the magi the Motwihamreed had learned some of the magi’s timeless magics. He called upon the ancient powers and enchanted one flower with drops of his blood and the other with the tears of the Al-Zahar. The tear stained flower he kept and the blood stained one he gave to his beloved. Should either of them die, the other’s flower would crumble to dust and they would know their lover had perished.
The Al-Zahar watched from the temple of Derketo as the Motwihamreed rode off to war. Once the Motwihamreed passed out of sight, the Pasha and his royal guards stormed into the temple and seized the Al-Zahar.
The Pasha’s spies reminded him how the High Priestess broke her promise and allowed his daughter and the Motwihamreed to lay on the altar of Derketo. Enraged, the Pasha he ordered the High Priestess and her acolytes impaled.
To ensure his daughter would not be tempted by another man, he took the cadaver blossom from her and had her locked away in one of the citadel’s high minarets. There she could not give her heart to any man and the Garden would be preserved.
The Motwihamreed met the army of the emirs and fought as best he could with the few men he had been given. When his men perished he commanded their corpses to rise and fight on. Such is the power of the magi that their servant might shackle death with but a few words. But even this shambling, fearless army eventually fell to the fire and sword of superior numbers. Only by his magic did the Motwihamreed escape the same fate as his army.
When he returned to the citadel he found it besieged by the emirs. All around, the garden was being laid waste to build catapaults and all the other war engines. Day and night the emirati catapaults hurled man sized stones against the citadel walls.
Only the west wall of the citadel remained untouched by the angry flying stones. It faced a tall cliff, making it unassailable. The Motwihamreed knew of a small cave near the base of the western walls. He and the Al-Zahar had met there many times. From there he might scale the walls. His flower had not turned to dust so he knew his lover was still alive. He determined that in the confusion of the next assault he would climb the western wall and take the Al-Zahar away.
The next morning the Al-Zahar stood in her minaret gazing over the pristine western wall. She could not bear to look elsewhere at the ugly scars gouged by catapault missiles or to the carnage on the eastern wall where men butchered one another in the morning light. How her heart leaped seeing the Motwihamreed crawl over the western battlements. He held in his hand the flower and as he looked up to her minaret an angry black bolt like the flash of a striking falcon hit the Motwihamreed.
The Hashaseen had not forgotten his duty. An arrow drove into the back of the Motwihamreed’s neck and its jagged black point jutted from the front of his throat. The Motwihamreed toppled back over the wall his limp body bouncing along the rocks and falling into the secret cave.
Seeing her beloved killed, the light faded from the shining star of Derketo. Her fragile lover’s heart shattered and the Al-Zahar threw herself from the minaret.
Had she her flower, the Al-Zahar might have known her lover to be alive though he lay as if dead, his body broken and unable to move. With the arrow in his throat he could not call on the power of the magi to mend his shattered bones. In the forgotten cave he watched helpless as the flower in his hand withered to dust.
For three days the Motwihamreed suffered alone until the flower the pasha took from his daughter finally became dust as well. Except for one petal which turned to stone.
Scholars say this is because the Motwihamreed is still in that forgotten cave neither alive nor dead. Punishment imposed by the magi for the mortal desire that blinded the Motwihamreed to his part in the prophesy.
With the sorrows of war at the citadel gates, the lovers dead and the enchanted flowers now only ash, the Garden of Shem began to die. All fell into to dust and desolation. And the sand still spreads, suffocating the memory of what was.
That is why the desert is endless sand. And why to this day it is forbidden for the Al-Zahar and the Motwihamreed to ever lay with one another.
Some say theirs was a love so powerful the garden could not exist without it. Some say the Motwihamreed did not know the true power of the ancient enchantment he placed on the cadaver blossoms and that when they died so too did the garden.
But we, the tribe of Ashem, children of the desert and last of the old tribe, believe the prophesy. Because of her father, the Al-Zahar gave her heart to the only man she had ever known. A man who in his blind lust wanted the shining star only for himself.
Yet no man may own the stars.