Chapter 5

THE WISDOM OF KHIN.NOM

At the command of my royal hostess, a gorgeouslyappointed suite of apartments was reserved for me, and a squadron of guards-warriors vied for the honor of serving me, led by the hard-faced captain who had been the first of all to hail me. His name was Panthon.

My own name I first mistook to be Kyr-Chong, for thus I was addressed by all who spoke to me, including Panthon and his warriors. It was only later, as I became familiar with the oddly musical language spoken by the Laonese, as the folk of Phaolon term their race, that I came to understand the phoneme kyr was a prefix of honor, denoting something like “Lord Chong” or perhaps “Sir Chong”; as for “Chong” itself, it was an affectionate diminutive, used in a blending of respect and love, as the Englishmen of old referred to Richard the Lionhearted as “stout old Rick” or as those of a later age spoke of Henry V as “Hal” or “Harry.”

My full name, it seemed, was Chongaphon tai-VenaVena, and the allusions above to the Lionheart and the victor of Agincourt are not far off the mark. For Lord Chong had been a warrior hero of mythic fame, a doer of legendary deeds. No doubt existed in those who clustered about me on my rare public appearances but that I was that mighty man, reborn again in my original body, which had been perfectly preserved against just such an eventuality. An ancient prophecy had been made that someday in great time of need I would return again to lead the warriors of Phaolon the Jewel City to victories and triumphs

as of old, and to save the realm from doom in its hour of ultimate peril.

I am certain that my total ignorance of the Laonese, of their history, their language, and their ways, was carefully kept secret from the courtiers and the commonfolk. The most embarrassing element in my “amnesia”-for thus it was regarded-was my lack of any familiarity with the language. This was first on the agenda of my education.

My tutor in all things was the same elderly sage who had addressed me across the frozen throng on the day of my revivification. His name was Khin-nom and he was one of the chief advisors of the princess. I am at a loss to find an office relative to his in terms of Terrene history. It is not that he was premier or prime minister or secretary of state or a politician of any kind, such offices being thoroughly unknown among the Laonese, who place all authority and power in the hands of the monarch alone. He was simply a man of great age and wit and learning, with experience in every field of knowledge: call him a philosopher and you will not be far from the truth.

Khin-nom treated me with the utmost deference during our linguistic sessions, but he was too shrewd, too intelligent, to regard me with the awe and veneration others displayed toward me, which amounted virtually to worship. For several hours each day he practiced with me in the Laonese tongue, and his method of teaching was strikingly practical. The first such session opened with him calling my attention to his lifted forefinger; he pronounced in clear tones the word phos, which I repeated aloud, immediately catching onto the idea that this was to be a language lesson.

Next he opened the fingers of his closed fist one by one, and spoke the word phosa, which I assumed correctly to he the plural. Then, indicating his entire hand, he pronounced the word ephosa; he then gave me the Laonese words for the wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, neck, chin, and so on, indicating each bodily part and speaking the relevant Laonese word in clear enunciation. That first session lasted all of one afternoon, and once I had been introduced to a dozen or fifteen words in this manner, we relaxed and he refreshed me on what I had learned by pointing to random parts of his anatomy and eliciting from me its name in Laonese. I made few errors.

Thereafter we met every day, immediately following the

noon meal. Each subsequent lesson opened with a quick review of what I had learned in the last, before continuing on to a fresh group of words. These early sessions were quite easy. Parts of the body, colors, garments, the names of substances like stone, wood, crystal, and metal, these I mastered with surprising ease, almost as if I were merely remembering a language I had once known, rather than attempting to learn a new one. The sessions gradually became much more difficult, as we passed beyond physical objects into abstractions such as verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.

I have always had a knack for languages, and in my youth had taught myself, or had learned from private tutors, not only German, Latin, and a sketchy familiarity with Tibetan and Hebrew, but also Greek and Sanskrit. However, I had never before had any reason to master a language so quickly, and without already sharing a common tongue with the man who was teaching me; so my Laonese lessons were simultaneously easier and more difficult than my previous linguistic studies, if you see what I mean.

However, working steadily away at it for hours at a time, day after day, I learned the language in what seems a remarkably short time —enough of it to be able to handle myself in casual conversation, at least. My tutor seemed quite satisfied with the progress I was making, and I was quite impressed with it myself.

This Khin-nom was a dignified, aristocratic man of elderly years. He looked about sixty, but actually this is only a guess on my part and I have no idea as to his precise age, for among the Laonese it is considered poor manners to inquire into the subject, which is taboo with them for some reason I never learned.

He was rather tall for his race, three or four inches under six feet, and of slender build, with long beautiful hands, expressive eyes, and a lean, bony face the color of old parchment. I believe he was bald, as is commonly the case among those of the Laonese who attain to a dignified old age, but as he habitually wore a tall, five-sided hat of stiff brocade, I cannot be certain. He had a long, pointed chin which was adorned by a narrow beard he kept dyed in prismatic colors to match the high-necked, long-sleeved

robes he wore. The colors he favored were generally indigo, rust, chartreuse, and a virulent shade of green.

I have said that Khin-nom approached the task of instructing me in the Laonese tongue in a practical manner. By this I mean that we plunged at once into our language lessons and did not deviate from them into other areas of discussion. Every afternoon he appeared in my suite, bowed gracefully with both hands pressed together, seated himself on a stool of carved ivory, and proceeded at once with the lessons. Later on, as I became steadily more proficient in the Laonese tongue, I attempted to make halting conversation with him several times, in order to learn the answers to some of the many questions which tormented my curiosity. But to each of these conversational overtures he gracefully declined comment. I assumed that either he had been ordered to answer none of my questions, or that he preferred not to for reasons of his own.

As I gradually became able to understand the language and to make myself understood in it, however, I sought answers to some of the mysteries that plagued me from the warriors who attended me, principally from grizzled Panthon.

He was a stern-faced soldier of about forty, his thin hair cut short and grizzled at the temples, his bearing stiff and martial, and there was about him none of the daintiness or languor which lent most of the male Laonese, regardless of age, a certain elfin effeminacy.

“Panthon,” I would ask him, when we were alone, “who do your people think me to be?”

“Chong the Mighty come again, lord,” he would reply

lay.

“Is it a precept of your religion that the dead are reborn and live again?”

The question seemed to baffle him, and he fumbled for a reply. I eventually gathered that my case was without precedent and that the Laonese religion had no especial teaching on the matter of rebirth: but, as it was selfevident that I was Chong the Mighty, and as my rebirth had been witnessed by the entire court, the fact of it was obvious.

“Does it not puzzle those who think me Chong the Mighty returned to life, that I need to be taught your language all over again, that I need to be instructed in

your language as if I had never before known it?” I asked. Again he did not seem to know how to answer me. A simple man of few words, my honest, faithful Panthon, and not very much given to thinking things out on his own. I gathered from his halting reply that my seclusion kept very many from knowing that I had to be taught the language; and, anyway, I was Chong. If Chong wished to be taught something, who could question it? My reasons, doubtless, were my own: and that was that.

Simple, loyal Panthonl

Once in a while, on formal occasions, I dined in state before the assembled court and in the company of the exquisite young princess, in the grand banquet hall of her palace,

These feasts were ceremonial functions, performed periodically, to which members of the various ranks of the aristocracies were invited on a sort of rotation system. The Laonese culture was very ancient and had been stable for millennia, until by now it had become so encrusted with tradition that formalities and precedents governed every detail of dress and deportment, every facet of daily life. Such banquets, stiff with punctilio, elaborately ceremonious to the point of boredom, were virtually unendurable. But en route to one of them, accompanied by the sage Khin-nom, I encountered something which moved me deeply.

We had descended a coiling staircase of carven alabaster and were about to enter a long, high-roofed corridor lined with an honor guard of bejeweled and beplumed Laonese chivalry, when I stopped short, my gaze caught by a most imposing monument.

There was a huge rotunda at the base of this spiral stairway from which the corridor branched off, and rising from the exact center of this rotunda was a colossal statue of a heroic youth shielding his breast with an arrowstudded buckler, lifting his face defiantly to heaven, thrusting skyward with the hilt of a broken sword.

The substance from which some Laonese Michelangelo or Canova had carved this heroic colossus was a sparkling crystal which resembled diamond in its purity and multicolored fire, but which was in fact, as I later learned, organic. The crystalline substance, however, was enormously rare and valuable, in that respect also not unlike diamond.

And the statue was thirty feet highl

I stared up at it in amazement, struck not only by the fabulous richness of the thing, but by the brilliance of its artistic genius.

As I paused, old Khin-nom halted, and eyed me shrewdly and with a touch of humor in the sly expression of his eyes as I stood gaping.

“Does my lord recognize the figure?” he purred.

I admitted that I did not-which must have amused the wise old philosopher, although he was too clever to show it.

“It is yourself, my lord, in the fourteenth of your Deeds, the time you battled against and slew the Great Ythid of Diompharna,” he said casually.

I knew enough of the language of this strange, mist veiled world of the Green Star by now to recognize the word. To the Laonese, the ythid is a monster so dread as to have become symbolic and mythological, save that such reptiles, though rare, do indeed exist.

We walked on in silence. As for myself, I was somewhat shaken. It is, after all, not every day that a man finds out he is a dragon slayer!

I began to entertain doubts as to the wisdom of continuing my imposture of a legendary hero miraculously returned to life. It is all very well to be the reincarnation of a famous dragon killer of yore, but what if my royal hostess suddenly called upon me to repeat my celebrated deed?