And so over the valley that was the kingdom the decree went out, all Tshai men were to be found, registered and exiled. This was to pass before the time of the calix moon. Soldiers rode from the center of the country out over the land, to the furthest lying provinces and mountain villages to ensure that this was done. Fear of a coming purge spread quickly and many Tshai left at once, taking with them their families. Bands fled away mostly to the south, over and past the lesser-heightened country to a nomadic life in the spreading desert. Some remained, unbelieving in the harshness to come and others refused to abandon their property and possessions. All these and those caught unwarned were separated at once from their own wives and begotten flesh and given excursion far past the kingdom’s borders. A census made at the passage of summer to fall proclaimed that no Tshai man or boy of more than ten years was at life in all the land. At this news the emperor was so pleased that he honored his priests, officials and high officers at a sovereign feast. The best musicians and dancers were entreated to perform that night in the royal garden and in all there was much unbridled carousing and merriment.

Yet even on the night of the feast, in the village of Daigar, not far from the citadel that held the king’s pleasure dome and palace, did still one Tshai man remain. This was Marsardu who had come while just a boy with a tribe of Tshai when they had fled the purges in their homeland. Long had he worked with the men who pressed mortar into brick. Before the soldiers had come to Daigar he had gone out to the ruins at the temple of Beth. There he hid, drinking from the water of the Seti and eating the plants that grew near there. When after four days it was safe he returned to Daigar. Again he began work with the masons and though the village’s people looked with wonder when they saw him returned, his presence was accepted. Instead of returning to the place where he had dwelt before, he found night shelter at the hovels where the remaining Tshai women and children had been driven. Already this existence had proven hard for them without their men to provide their lives’ sustaining needs. They mustered what they could of the edible wild vegetation sparsely indigenous to the valley and also took whatever alms the kindly Ghurkas provided. Furtively too, would they trap and slaughter the sacred goats that too freely wandered near the ruins that had become their new home. So wary were they that this transgression would be discovered that they did this only at times of greatest need, cooking always inside and burying at once the remaining carcass and hide.

So lived Marsardu for the next months among the women of his own people, the only man of his tribe throughout the land. At this time King Birenda held council with the diviners and holy men that were among his closest advisors. The grand Haruspek spoke first: “The danger that we augurs have forewarned of, the begetting of a child between Tshai father and Ghurka mother during the crossing of the calix moon, has passed with the timely removal of all Tshai virility. The fruit of such a mixture, as all here know, would by the prophecies of our books and our prognostic determination result in a line that shall challenge and fall the regal lineage of which you, your highness, are a representing link.” But another holy man named Devaynanin, who was the oldest of the ministers of the sacred texts, said: “One month yet remains before the first appearance of the coming calix moon. I fear believing the matter that lies before us to be safely in hand portends as great a danger to the present order of sovereignty as the original cause of our concern. Throughout the books that lend us our esteemed and enhanced vantage of the world is continual warning against temerarious confidence. Perpend how often it is their oversureness by which the immortals are fallen. The price of security is continual care and vigilance. Surely a danger that has called to itself such energy and attention is not to be dispelled with a mere quick scouring of the land for half the element that represents the danger. More is here than what immediately strikes our mortal vision. As I have said and as we know the time of the greatest focus for our consideration of this is now but one month at hand. It is to this calling that we must go at once without presumption of inevitable success. The slightest lesion in our safeguarding can be the grounds of our failure.”

“You speak most wisely,” said the King. “We shall employ all power and means in our possession to ensure against the foreboding we have received and tolerate no negligence until the moon of calix is past.” Yet even as the King spoke, Devaynanin, for he was the wisest that the land offered, saw and felt futility in his own warning and the words of the King and the others. He had spoken only out of his sense of duty and because he knew that his warning could only enhance his stand with King Birenda, who according to the prophets would never himself lose power. Plans were soon evolved by the royal council and a generous fetch of soldiers were dispatched at once to give guard along the country’s mountainous borders, allowing a limited proximity between them so that no part of the land’s hedging was unwatched. These served the purpose of turning back any Ghurka women that were attempting to leave as well as protect counter to the influx of not just Tshai men but any unsanctioned foreigners attempting access into the land. A hurried auditing was made of all existing records of all Ghurka women born from that time back fifty-five years and a tallying was made to measure those living and their location against those that had met death. The compilations were swift; a week before the dawning of the calix the registration of all women was complete.

At the same time a reward was offered for any further leads on lurking Tshai men and rumors of one such last remaining had begun to spread. A troop of soldiers was riding from village to village, raking over one by one the spots the Tshai women and children had been relegated to, for it was believed that if a Tshai man was at large still in the country he would be at one of these. One of the first places these soldiers had come was the hovel of the Tshai at the village of Daigar but this was during the day when Marsardu was away at work. The women walked about glaze-eyedly as if long frustrated in their search for edibles or merely crossleggedly sat in a defeated demeanor while the children cried in their fright and hunger, some pleadingly outstretching their hands for the paltriest of morsels contained in the leather sacks slung across the sides of the soldiers’ horses. The soldiers rode off, satisfied that no Tshai man was anywhere near.

Later toward the close of the mourning moon a Daigar villager, a worker of wood called Asjud, went forward to the palace. Having heard that a handsome reward was to be his, he told of the Tshai man who lived unhindered in his bustic. The guards laughed when they heard the ryot speak of a Tshai at so short a trek from the palace and one called across the courtyard the joke to his fellows. But the King, who was passing with his train of liegemen in the hall above, heard this and at the arch along the parapet called down: “Who is this that speaks of a Tshai man walking freely in my kingdom?”

Speaking then before all others could, the woodworker said: “It is I, Asjud of near Daigar. I see the Tshai daily. He works with the house and temple builders. He lives at night by the Tshai women at the old ruins and is called Marsardu.” The King sent at once twelve of his palace guards to find and bring back this Marsardu. Asjud was to stay and if the soldiers came back with no captive to mark their toil, he would die a slow and tortured death for mocking the King in his anxiety.

Marsardu had returned that day early from the clay quarry to the long neglected shrine that had become his home. He went a little distance out from the prostrate and crouching women who no longer saw him as their savior. Against a haggard wall he settled his back, and with a slowly steady and contented drawing on the glowing kif in his daryá he watched the late afternoon sun above the distant and jagged horizon. The guards came upon the women swiftly and silently and just as the stir at this made Marsardu’s attention so too was he seen by a quickeyed soldier. At once all twelve of the King’s men were around the Tshai man who had but barely moved to his feet. “What name are you known by and from where do you hail?” asked the highest ranked among them. “I am Marsardu, born in the region of Khal,” responded Marsardu. Unquestioning further, they brought him away.

It so happened that on that day after the King’s footmen had gone out to their search a sovereign far traveling from his kingdom in the west arrived with his wife and attendants at the palace of King Birenda. There had been much closeness and companionship between the father of this monarch and the father of Birenda. On this trip that would take him twice again as far east from his homeland as he had already traveled the traveling king knew that he could find a few days’ rest with fine accommodation at the palace of the Ghurkas. King Birenda called for a sumptuous feast to welcome his fellow Sultan and the whole of the court was set busily with hasty preparation. When the soldiers returned with Marsardu, the King wished not to mar the celebration with so official of a consideration and ordered that until such time that he should call the Tshai before him, the prisoner was to be kept under heavy guard. Three days remained before the first waxing of the calix moon. Before the sentence of death that he knew must be pronounced and fulfilled, the King wanted to speak with this Tshai who so audaciously had ignored and evaded his decree. At the fete that evening it was as much the holy man Devaynanin as the traveling royal party that was honored, for all members of the court knew that it was the wisdom of his warning which had prevailed in keeping alive the vigil for the remaining Tshai man who posed such a deep threat to their King and country.

Late in the morning the following day King Birenda called for Marsardu to be brought before him. While nearly all the members of the court looked on the prisoner was led to the forum that stretched in advance of the open entrance of the throne chamber. There was no sound but the footsteps of the prisoner and his captors and the dull rattle of chains. “So this is the he-Tshai that has stayed when all the others have fled or were captured,” the King announced. Marsardu merely stared out straight before himself. “I would have needed only yesterday to go to the parapet at the top of the citadel to behold you as one of the tiny milling figures in my vision,” Birenda said. “That was at once foolish and clever of you. I will not say that I do not admire your boldness, though it is known that the such of that cannot be accepted from one at a station in life so low as a mason, as they tell me you are, and especially from a mason that is a Tshai. Tell me, did you think that after my decree was made you could remain and be unrequited for your transgression? Or did you think in all we are so oblivious that you could remain unremarked by us, that we would not sagaciously and assiduously continue our search though our first search had closed with apparent success, that we were at jest and not serious in our undertaking?”

“I can only say that I thought nothing,” said Marsardu and then cast his vision down.

“You were born in Khal of Tshai parents, have you not already confessed this to members of our King’s guard?” a vizier of the King demanded.

For a time Marsardu was quiet but then he spoke calmly. “I have confessed to nothing. I have freely stated the truth as I know it,” he said. “Yes, my parents were Tshai. Yes, I came with them from Khal and yes, I am Tshai.”

“There is but one thing that we can make of this,” King Birenda stated. “It is now too late to do otherwise. After tomorrow’s moon will the season that is warned of by the prophets be upon us. Were it not for the near emergence of that season as well as your audacity which serves as a perfect mockery of the control here that is irrefutably mine, I should not make your penalty so harsh, for as I have said already your resolution is not totally unadmirable. But should I have you taken to the border and let go, how am I to know that you would not at the first opportunity return? No, my action in this is too clearly demarked. We must exact your life. From this pronouncement you shall have three day’s time yet to live, as by our law, and you shall be on public display in each hour of daylight. At this hour then, three days hence, on the second day into the moon of the calix, you shall be executed.” There was no visible reaction in Marsardu’s face. “I will allow you one last address to us and that is to come now, for on the day of your death, our action cannot be delayed. Speak,” commanded the King.

“I am Tshai as I am Ghurka,” Marsardu started. “This is the country of my youth as it is to you. I speak your language and no other. I look no different than you and am saddened and joyed by that which saddens and joys you. Our ancestors are of different lands but all sprang from the human tree. No matter your attitude or action now my progeny and yours shall in time join to be the same.” His head bowed. At the silence the King retired to his private chambers and Marsardu was remanded to a cage cart at the entranceway to the palace steps guarded round by six royal footmen, a scene well at view to all within the bazaar.

To the marketplace that day had come Sumaha, who was at the transition of girl into womanhood. With her was her brother, for so beautiful was she that it was unsafe for her to go out from home alone. When they had all the things for which they had come and were leaving, Sumaha saw the spectacle near the steps down from the palace and, made curious, she went closer to better see. She was struck at once with gripping sorrow at the sight of so stately a form as the man confined. She heard the taunts of the passing crowd, inspired by the mocking guards. When at the pressing of the rabble and her own heartening concern she drew closer still, she was turned aside by one of the guards. Still, when she was but steps from the cage away the imprisoned man looked out to her and she saw in the depth of his brown eyes pain and despair. When her brother, who had been separated from her by the jostling crowd, found her he had to retrieve the just bought goods she had dropped and forgotten and then talk her into coming away.

Sumaha spent the remainder of the day and the whole of the night in curiosity for the prisoner and what could have been his crime, for he appeared to her as misframed in the surroundings she had seen him in. Early the next morning she went out from her house by her family unnoticed and went straight to the bazaar where she wandered as a buyer but sent her eyes always toward the caged man at the foot of the marble stairs. Later when a crowd began to gather round she wandered over to its fringe, now closer and better able to see the object of everyone’s looking. She knew as she watched him in his spiritless and beaten posture that he could not be a truly bad man as his present station declared. Voices were astir in the crowd, and listening, she heard the rumor again and then again that he was a Tshai that had not left at the edict months before and was now sentenced for that to die. Such an assignment seemed so unfathomably cruel; she could not check the flow of her tears. She fled the crowd and made her way quickly home, stopping first to fetch water so her absence would go unquestioned. All the day she was virulently at unease, for nothing could be done to aid the condemned man. In the late afternoon she struck out for the district by the palace once more, again unaccompanied. She had dressed herself in her shortest white robe, so that she was as undistinguishable as could she be from the courtesans who freely walked throughout the palace. Unhesitatingly she went up the steps and through the gateway under the high dome that shielded the royal courtyard. She walked the corridors and halls as if she had purpose to be there and was stopped or questioned by no one. Near sunset she returned to the courtyard where she waited to see the prisoner led away for the evening. With stealth and quickness she climbed to a higher corridor that vantaged her to see one of the guards unbolting a large wooden door at the extreme end of the lower walkway. The shackled man was brought inside and the door shut behind them. But in her excitement Sumaha’s alertness was piqued and in the clarity of her keen vision she had seen that cells stood in the area just back from the doorway. She went down into the courtyard and waited for a time when she would be lesser noticed and then walked the stairs down to the bazaar-place. The sky’s lighting was diffusing about her and she knew that she should start for home before it grew completely dark. Nevertheless, at the bridge for the stream that now swelled with the spring season she sided its railing and walked over the large rocks and tree roots that traced the foundations of the citadel. From the corner of the citadel she walked a distance inclined slightly up she deemed the length of the hall of the prisoner’s passage. By where she stood was the hedge grown thick, so that she would not have been easily seen even were it full day. She ran her hand along the cool packed bricks. In the shadow of the day’s closing there was still light enough for her to see that there was no opening anywhere along the wall at a low height. There was though, straight above her at a height three times her own, a circular aperture of small dimension. She marked too, that she stood at the zenith of the knoll that nestled up against the wall. Sumaha knew that here she was as close to him as could she be. Despondently she turned away, the unclear hope in her heart having waned fainter, and she wafted her way past and through the overgrowth, then through the rocky sparse grove and finally crossing high boulders across the stream to the path that led her home.

For Marsardu there was a vague quality of unpleasant unreality covering all that had been his experience since his arrest, though the harshness of its actuality never left him. He suffered no illusion against the expectation of his imminent death, for he knew the Monarch would not revoke his sentence. Still at times during the days of his confinement did he lapse into an obliviousness, sensing only of all, he was at the center of it. In the hours of night there was only darkness, and meager offerings of unleavened bread and water for his sustenance. In the hours of light he was closely caged and on display. After only three days in captivity it felt a lifelong pattern. From the second day on he could see his on-lookers only as blurs but in his cold night dreaming would their faces appear to wake him. A sense of utter loneliness would compete with despair and then an acceptance of his fate until sleep would return with its dreams and the pattern would repeat itself. When the watch and guard came to retrieve him on the second and third mornings they did not need to wake him for he would be attentively watching the dawning through the high window above him.

When in the morning Sumaha awoke in the house of her family she could hear voices from a neighboring hasi speaking of the execution that would come the next day, the first for seven turns of season. She weathered the admonitions from her mother and brother for having foolishly wandered so late into the previous night. But when she went to bring water and passed still others who spoke of the coming death of Marsardu the Tshai, she dropped the jar she carried and broke it. Her family did not know what to make of her depression when she returned, but distantly kept watch upon her demeanor. With the day’s advancement into the afternoon she could remain idle no more. At the claim that she was going to gather wood, Sumaha took leave of the house. She ran the path toward the palace, where near the steps she paused to look upon the captive man again. The wretch sat round-backed and looked away and down from the swell of his tormentors. Sumaha turned away for she could bear to look no more and went back to the bridge. When she saw that no chance of observance was on her she dropped herself over the railing and skulked to where she had been the evening before. It was here that her only hope lay, she knew, and she felt herself drawn there as by some unaccountable force. By the afternoon sun all around her was far more visible then had it been when she had last been there and still she was by the hedge well protected from view. She began a close inspection of the area to see what was offered for her purpose. The ground on which she stood was hard packed. At her first effort she knew she could never burrow beneath the masonry. There was indeed an opening in the wall a good distance up, but even were she able to scale to its height it appeared too small to allow a body’s passage. A feeling of confoundment crept through her; that she should know how close she was and yet to be still at a loss for her problem’s solution was ineffably cruel; so heavy was her torpor of spirit it chilled her through and seemed to freeze her veins. She lay down upon the sparse long grass and gazed up to the blue and white swirled sky. For a time her mind was blank and then it filled with thoughts from her childhood, remembrances she had long not had. A butterfly flew across her vision, color in a looping path above her. A last scene of her childhood came: she was with her parents bathing in a river. It was then as if she had awakened. She sat up and stared into the bricks before her. Slowly, still dreamily she reached out and touched one. It was anchored solidly. She went on to the next and still another. Standing, she continued this. Each succeeding one was well wedged and mortared. Her hopelessness rekindled and her heart soared downward. But then, as she had checked nearly all before where she stood, one caught her eye. It was not even a full block, but filled in an uneven place. In the mortar around it were tiny cracks and its coloring was slightly unmatched with its neighbors. When she pressed against it hard, it moved ever so slightly. Digging into its hard baked clayness with the nails of her fingers, she struggled to pull it toward her. It did not seem to move at all. Soon a nail had cracked and others chipped and her fingertips began to bleed. She changed hands and continued her work at it. After an hour’s passage with hard sore pulling on the muscles of her hands and arms she at last liberated the carved stone from its place. Breathless and moist, she set her eye to the hole she had created. She needed to make a long adjustment to the poor lighting, which appeared to have its only source from the opening above her. Then still, only a portion of the chamber was open to her vision. At the very distant left of her sight she saw what looked to be part of a door closed into its portal and to the right and closer to her thick wooden bars, much the like of those she had briefly glimpsed the day previously. She inspected the dirt floor and all else as closely as she could and knowing then what she was to do she wedged the brick back just enough so it would stay. Near the bushes she crouched in so that there would be no chance at all of her being seen and she began her wait for the evening.

Marsardu’s mind grew weary and numb in the heat of the spring sun. The collage of voices and forms that had come to look and speak over him he tried but could not shut out. One after one they laughed and derided him for his foolishness. When he had asked a guard for water that he might drink, the soldier had proffered back to him soured and curdled goat milk without other answer and Marsardu had drunk and swallowed before he recognized the cruelty. This brought hearty laughter to all the guards and when it was told them, many of the crowd too. Marsardu had spat and spat and then threw himself face down at the bottom of the cart, covering his head with his hands. The ache in his head and the thirst in his throat grew greater as the day progressed and at last he was relieved when the sun began its slow daily death and he was taken back up the steps into the palace.

After his chains were unshackled Marsardu was cast with his food into his cell, it was sealed and then the soldiers went out from the dank chamber, closing and bolting the door, leaving him in near total darkness. He had dreaded his death but now wished it would quickly come for he knew his last night he would be unable to savor. The uses and effects of the world he felt for him as all flat and unprofitable. He was near to cursing his mother for having borne him when he heard a heavy sound as that of rock upon rock resounding about his cell. He lifted his head much amazed and then heard the call of his name. Marsardu was certain that there had been no sound but that his mind was at play with him for having driven away thought of his pending death. Again he heard his name called and the voice was soft and gentle. He sat up. “Who calls me?” he asked.

“I, Sumaha,” was the reply.

“Where are you?” the prisoner asked and came to his feet.

“Here at the wall,” Sumaha answered and when he wandered past her, “No here you have gone too far.” And sensing that the voice had come from lower, Marsardu bent over and felt across the wall until he came upon a hollow spot. “Here, yes,” Sumaha said and Marsardu felt her breath on his hand and into his face.

“Who are you?” Marsardu asked. “You are not here to mock me as the others?”

“No, I am Sumaha and I have come because the others were so unkind,” was the reply. Marsardu stared through the opening and barely made out in what there was of moonlight, for there was little moonlight indeed it being only the first night into the moon’s waxing, Sumaha’s face. She was so very beautiful that Marsardu felt tears welling within his eyes. “I am resolved to show you a last kindness before they can have you die.” At that she lifted her robe and applied her unfolded vagina to the orifice she had made. Marsardu hesitated but her voice called to him and he rose fully to his feet. She was soon taking into her warmness as much of his surging manhood as he could make protrude. His muscled flanks flexed and bucked, his chest and stomach brushed against the coolness of the wall and in the eternal moment of his release he looked up to see through the high window the tip of what in thirteen nights would be a golden chalice in the sky.

After the young maiden had drained from him all his physical energy, Marsardu sat propped against the wall with his ear near the opening while the voice from the other side speaking of comfort and peace lulled him into sleep. When Sumaha could hear the steady hum of breathing she replaced as quietly as she could the broken brick and crept off. For Marsardu was it his first restful night in captivity and he did not leave his dreams of goodness and love until two guards in the morning awakened him.

The execution was carried out with full royal heraldry at the foot of the palace stairway as the morning made its way into the afternoon. Ghurkas came from villages the whole kingdom over to the capital to see the King’s sentence fulfilled. Sumaha remained at home, in bed all day. Several months later her family needed to send her to live with the family of her mother in the distant village of Maráat. As one so young and still unmarried the striking visual evidence of her being with child could not have found an easy explanation to the questioning of those who knew and saw her often. At Maráat she was unknown and also was the social fabric less heavily knit there and she would not be so looked down upon. In the eighth month after the waning of the calix moon was a daughter, whom she named Koti, born to her. Mother and daughter lived together alone until Sumaha found a husband in a farmer, who was not concerned with and made no inquiries about her past. When Koti reached age she married under full and proper terms of Ghurka law and conceived and bore a son, Manjushri; Manjushri begat Mana Deva; Mana Deva begat Haransha Deva; Haransha Deva begat Lisui Mala; Lisui Mala conceived Yaksha Mala. Yaksha Mala’s firstborn was Prethi Yaksha who together with her husband led insurgents to topple Naragar Shah, the head of the house of the Ghurkas and a descendant of Birenda. With her second husband did Prethi Yaksha establish the Sardu Dynasty, which lasted 800 years.