Zamolxis
"The ruins of time build mansions in eternity." William Blake
In my eons of walking the Nether, I’ve known a lot of interesting characters, but few can come close to Old Zax. I first met him during the days of Burebista, a Thracian king who ruled below the Carpathian Mountains, an uptight man who burned all the vineyards under his domain. Old Zax, who was still even by human standards a young man, did not care for this policy. He was trained as a druid, learning this trade from an ancient Celtic order that persisted north of the Danube, and thus, he believed in the benefits of intoxication.
During a cold winter vigil, when the days were as short as they can be in those lands, Old Zax made his thoughts known to Burebista as they were resting by his hearthstone, all the warriors and ladies of his rustic court savoring mugwort tea and boiled vegetables.
“Your Highness, would it not have been better if now we would have warmed our cold bones with summer wine mulled with winter berries?” asked the young acolyte as he scratched his long black beard with a dozen white hairs.
“But the wine would have gnawed at our innards, and this thin stew of carrots, turnips, and onions would not have sufficed. Sure, we would have to slaughter a hog and break our fast, and what would that be? Didn’t your alien masters teach you the benefits of fasting from meat until the sun starts growing again?” said the King as he gazed into the fire.
“That may be, and my teachers sure made learn by practiced deeds the benefits of renouncing blood in the rising cold, but what about when we eat meat again? Sure, the wine would help our digestion and merriment,” said Old Zax and downed his bitter cup.
“Wines weaken the body, even though it makes the heart burn brighter for a little while. Sleep becomes deeper and more dreamless, and the blood and sinew waste. Wine addled the mind, and soon, the heart could not endure our cruel world without it. We are a small nation surrounded by many enemies, but we are born to be heroes. We are born the conquer,” and King Burebista rose to his feet and raised his cup. And all the men raised theirs as well, “and if we must relinquish wine and merriment, so be it, if it is the price that we must pay for our nation’s name to live on through the ages.” They all shouted, devolving into a guttural rough chant with barely any melody. Old Zax hummed out of politeness. But the King turned to him and said, “Young druid, won’t you teach what was handed to you by those bastard celts? Won’t you make my men a hard stone and our women bountiful as an apple tree planted not far from a river?”
“And to what purpose, your Highness? So that we can populate this land with more bores? So that our name might live on? A name that none of us asked for but for which we should be grateful to have, or so the mighty say? To dominate other poor souls not different from ourselves?” Old Zax thought these words but dared not speak them with his mouth, but so loud where they in their heart that I heard them from across the Nether. He only nodded with a smile full of meaning and raised himself from the seat by the hearthstone and, after some goodbyes, left the small royal hall, never to return.
In the dark, cold night, he left the capital and ventured further into the forest for neither hunger nor frost could pierce his skin, so masterful was he in the druidic arts. He found himself in a cave, where he saw me. Or I found him. Such things don’t matter in the Nether. The most powerful of the druidic arts is the power to dream, rivaled only by the power to speak. He fell into a deep slumber that lasted more than a century.
He walked the deserts of Carcosa and sailed the Sea of Mirrors, and on one of its abstract shores, he found me in a fishing hut where I was catching notions and reveries. His spiritual body was thin from the burning questions that are the stars of the Carcotic Wastes, and his lips were thirsting more than the meaningless water of the Sea of Mirrors on which he floated chasing the Anti-Sun that never sets only rises through the concaving mirrors that engulf the sea. I’ve never considered myself interesting, but according to Old Zax, I was better than even the oldest and wisest of his teachers. I was flattered for the first time in my existence.
We spent a timeless evening discussing all the rules of existence and parameters of being, interrupted only by knocks on the door of my hut, but neither of us could be bothered to answer. During dinner, we served roasted pondering and cooked poems, and Old Zax became melancholic and yearned for his home. Though I knew what he would see when leaving his chthonic dwelling would sadden him deeply, I knew he would return to my shores. When he awoke, he found himself sleeping on an altar and saw that his cave had been turned into an underground temple. From a young priest tending to his body, he learned that King Burebista found him sleeping in the spring that followed that fateful winter night. And because he was still alive, the King rightly thought he had become a god.
Outside, many years passed, and great King Coson ruled the Dacian Kingdom, which was as round as a full moon, and even the Romans feared them. They were not afraid of death, knowing that their ancestor Zamolxis did not die but became a god. Each year, a young man was chosen to be sacrificed so that he could get word to Old Zax through the Nether. His mouth babbled through his slumber, and they took his words for prophecies and believed in them. I don’t think they could have been right about anything, but the priests read some meaning in them, giving them power. Impressed by what he saw, Old Zax went to the capital, a circular city full of monuments and statues called Sarmizegetusa. King Coson awaited him, and a great feast was prepared; meat and wine were plentiful. Old Zax was amused to learn that Burebista, in his old age, asked for the vineyards to be replanted in the hope that Old Zax would return. At the feast, Zamolxis was asked once more to teach his arts to King Coson’s people, for there were no more celts in those lands or any lands, for Caesar slaughtered them.
Old Zax was tempted this time but knew he had to see me. I saw something burning in his old green eyes, mistaking at first for ambition. He assured me it was a desire for legacy created on his terms. For now, he was, by all means, a god to his people. The Celtic Druids warned him against such Luciferic temptations, reminding him that their creed was to work together with the forces that the folk call divine. Unfortunately, I could not counsel him and was so shy in those days. So, I guided him through the shimmering dunes of Carcosa, where the stars trembled in mirrored sands, to the Sphinx. It loomed above the silver wastes, an ancient enigma carved from the substance of dreams, its gaze fixed on horizons beyond time. Beneath the eternal bright night, its silence promised answers that only the brave could bear to hear.
Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall, for the end is always near,” intoned the Sphinx, its voice echoing through the mirrored wastes. “Even the blind man I met on the road to Thebes thought he could see. Yet all he grasped was the darkness of his imagining. He believed the sun shone upon him, but there was nothing there. Only the laws of blood, written long before men stumbled upright and claimed dominion over that dust.”
The words of the Sphynx emanated not from a mouth but from the towering structure itself, a colossus of stone and shadow, its surface etched by centuries of wind and whispers. What might once have resembled leonine shoulders were now indistinct protrusions, worn smooth by time, sagging under the weight of truths too vast and ancient for mortal comprehension. The countless windows that pockmarked its monolithic face and rectangular body shimmered faintly, each a silent witness to the rise and fall of forgotten lives. Its hollow eyes gazed into eternity, cold and unfeeling, full of something beyond authority but less than truth. Cracks traced its immense surface, not signs of weakness but symbols unknown to Old Zax and I.
“So it has always been and will always be,” said the Sphynx, turning its piercing gaze to Old Zax. The silence stretched like a chasm between them. Then, the Sphinx spoke again with a sigh heavy as mountains crumbling into the sea.
“You disappoint me, Druid. You went beyond the veil, so try to glimpse the truth. Yet here you stand, blinded by your questions, chasing reflections that shatter like ice in spring.
And who are you, creature, to speak to me of disappointment? Do you think I came here to listen to the trite drivel that I've heard from my Celtic masters back in school? Or would you impart some childish riddle and offer it as wisdom? All of you speak of how I fail to fit the mold, but none of you asked me about the form I am making in the sands of time," little Old Zax shouted, his words ruffling his shaggy white beard. I thought he wanted to hear some reply, but he threw his long beard over his shoulder and left as the Sphinx cosmic chortle echoed through the wastes.
With fire in his heart, Old Zax returned to his people. When he awoke, he found himself amongst corpses in a common grave. Trajan’s just finished ransacking Sarmisegetuza and the Temple of Zalmoxis was a ruin as skeletal as my friend became in his second century of slumber. Through burning streets filled with weeping, the ancient druid made his way unseen as a whisp. Distraught, Old Zax went once more into the woods, but he didn’t stop at his old cave but went further up the hills and climbed the mountain high. On a plateau, he saw a still young man which from afar looked like King Burebista.
“Your Highness, how come you came back? Have you come to see your people gnashing their teeth? Are you here as a revenant of vengeance? Or maybe some comforting daimon?” said Old Zax with arms held up hungry for an embrace. But the man wrapped himself deeper in his cloak searching for something.
“I do not find any humour in your mocking, old man. For I, Decebalus, last of my line, have lost all of Dacia to Great Rome. In vain I hoped that our divine ancestor would return to give me counsel, as he promised my grandfather Coson he would, but now I must die a fool. Still, I shall die free,” King Decebalus found the thing he was looking for, a small knife, and smiling his last smile he put the blade to his throat before Old Zax could even say “I only promised to ponder on such things,” and the sky grew black with sorrow and heavy raindrops washed muddied the blood and the sands and a cruel wind was howling drowning the wails of the old druid. After endless days of lament, Old Zax looked up to the mountain peak only to see the Sphinx mocking him in the stone.