HEROES OF EARTH 27 The Seljuq Wars that erupted after the passing of the Usurper Khan saw many people of otherwise scant distinction rising to prominence in the minds of the populace. Alta Teverin [from Interviews Vol. 2] “I was the last person many of them saw before they died,” the white-haired woman says as she inhales the scented smoke from an ancient nosebowl with delicate scrollwork around its tarnished rim. “That confers a special responsibility. I don’t mean that I saw myself as a priest - I tried to save lives, not souls - but so many couldn’t be saved. If not, and if there was someone who could, I left them to die alone. But otherwise I would sit with them. It hurt but I had to do it, you see. Because when one of those desperate boy-soldiers looked up at me and asked, ‘Am I dying?’ they needed someone to tell them the truth. And they needed me to tell them that I would remember them. I couldn’t possibly remember them all, but I meant it every time.” [from Interviews Vol. 4] “When I met Derak ... It was towards
the end of the first war, just after Sivas was destroyed. We’d been tending victims
in the mopit [mobile hospital] for almost a week. I remember that when we got there, we
couldn’t believe our eyes. We’d already seen a lot, but Sivas ... where the city
once stood, there was only rubble and smoke. As your eyes moved outward from the centre,
you could make out shapes more clearly: what must have been a wall here, part of a
fuselage there, and further on you could start making out bodies. “I was asleep in a corner when Derak came into the tent. I’d hardly had any sleep during that time, but I woke up instantly because of the sudden way everyone stopped what they were doing. Of course he didn’t come in alone, his gaudy guards stomped in before him, milling about, trying to look as if they needed to protect their leader from dying Sivassians and a few exhausted physicians. He stopped by the tentflap. His face seemed expressionless, except for a slight twitch at the side of his mouth. He looked around him, and eventually he looked down to where I still sat in the corner. And I remember this very well: his hard clean face, looking down at mine, covered in days of dirt and blood. Then the Usurper's son said, ‘I never meant for this to happen to civilians.’ And I said, ‘Do you have any towels?’” Copyright (c) Rupert Neethling, 1997. All rights reserved.
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