The Tale of the Myrmide

As told by Llian in Dark is the Moon

My tale begins almost at the time of the Forbidding. And the subject of my story are an entirely different people; not great, not proud. Their vision had a smaller compass. There’s was to serve. Duty, loyalty, honour; that was what their lives were made for. And they were called Myrmide, a word which in their tongue meant to serve and to obey without question.

Where they came from no one knows. They settled in the southeast of Lauralin, beyond the land of Ogur and the Black Sea. A small, slender, black- hair people they were, and at first the cold trouble them terribly, for the place they had been driven to was under snow for six months of the year, and the sea covered in for four. The Ghash peninsula, that place was called, and still is.

The full name was Ghas-ad-Nash, that is to say, fume-and-fire, for the long extension of that land into the Kara Nashal (the Smoking Sea) was dotted with vents from which liquid rock flowed, and sea, smoke and ash blasted into the sky. But later they found this place much to their liking, for there were secret valleys where the springs stayed hot even when the sun had set for the long winter and the ground froze as hard as iron.

One peculiarity these Myrmide had, and that was this; they must have a master and a purpose, else they were nothing. Their whole lives, pride and worth were invested in such service. Their master at the time of my tale was Bandiar, a minor necromancer but an important person on the peninsula, though the world would never have heard of him if it had not been for Shuthdar.

After Shuthdar fled to Santhenar with the stolen flute he was ever hunted. Eventually he fled to backward places where the people were uncouth and spoke strange languages but the result was always the same. Towards the end he ended up in the Ghash Peninsula, and even there he was harried. Shuthdar was old, tired and crippled now. His life had been one bitterness piled on another until he came to hate all things, including life. The only thing in his life was his beautiful flute.

He took refuge in a cave on that frozen shore, where one day Bandiar found him and brought him back to his fastness. Why did Bandiar do so? He too lusted after the flute, though he was clever enough not to show it. If he treated Shuthdar kindly, asking nothing of him, Shuthdar would in the end come to rely on him utterly.

But Shuthdar, though decrepit beyond imagining, had a mind as mad and sharp as a pin. In his life he had known many kinds of people, but they had all wanted the one thing. He knew that Bandiar was no different.

From the moment Shuthdar arrived he caused trouble. He was paranoid and cunning, wicked and malicious; a creature of perverse and deadly lusts. In the dark corners of the castle none was safe from him; neither girl nor crone old man no boy, nor beast neither. Though he was crippled and most with a crabwise scuttle, when hot in his lusts he could scuttle with frightening speed, and those withered arms were strong as spring steel.

But Bandiar would not stay Shuthdar in any way. He excused all these crimes as the small failings of a genius, so that Shuthdar took delight in each new and sordid escapade that went unchecked. His excesses became marvels of theatre and exhibitionism, and soon all learned to keep clear of the dreadful thing.

The Myrmide were a people inclined to melancholy. Outside duty their only pleasure was music. Their music was beautiful but doleful, like dry wind among ruins; like tapping on icicles. Apart form music they wanted but one thing; to meet their master’s purpose as best they could, and never question it, not even when it became clear that the one Bandiar fawned upon was a malicious creature who considered nothing but his own desires; who took all and gave nothing.

Time wore on and still Shuthdar stayed, for Bandiar had power to protect him from the wolves that had tormented him in every other place, and wealth to gratify even his most sordid whims. But the absence of any check and the gratification of every whim gave Shuthdar licence to think of excesses so abominable that eventually not even the most degraded would come to him.

What can Bandiar have thought each time Shuthdar came whining and accusing him? Let us be charitable and imagine that he though; “Just this once will I indulge him, and surely he will give me what I want.” Whatever, events took a nasty new turn. Young people began to disappear, taken by force. At first they turned up again afterwards, after day; a week; or a month. Some told tales of unspeakable degradation, but others could not speak at all.

Bandiars subjects beat on the great doors of the stronghold, demanding Shuthdar’s head. Bandiar refused them, coldly. The Myrmide, who were servants, soldiers, spies all, remained loyal to their master. They drove the peasant away with fire and terror, out into the snow. Even little children they struck down, for this showed best how committed they were to their master’s purpose.

Then the people did the only thing they could. All power and wealth resided with Bandiar, while they had none. They would not risk their children any more. Weeping and wailing they abandoned their lands and homes and withdrew into the mountains, and many died there in the winter. But theirs is another tale.

Now the Myrmide began to feel an agonizing doubt – that the master they had served so loyally was a fool who was made a fool of. But this doubt, this disloyalty, they suppressed.

All Bandiar’s ends were now directed to getting the flute, or the secret of it, from Shuthdar, and in this Shuthdar played with him most cunningly, and took much amusement from his game. Every now and again he would give Bandiar a clue – a word, a scroll, once a lengthy book full of strange diagrams and descriptions of alarming or abstract processes. But the clues only led into a maze of intersecting puzzles and paradoxes, for Shuthdar had made them all up. When Bandiar complained, Shuthdar would insult him or mock him for being a fool, and then, apparently relenting after days or weeks, would give another teasing clue that seemed to offer a resolution of the puzzle, but in face led ever deeper into the morass.

The Myrmide were caught up in their master’s great project. They saw the researches, the collaboration (as they thought) with Shuthdar, the steady accumulation of work, the ever more intricate models and devices that Bandiar made, all having the appearance of working, with parts that moved and even the production of strange though transitory effects. But in the end – nothing!

Then in their innermost minds a little germ of doubt flowered – that they were made fools of. And this led to heretical thought, that is was not right to use such mean to gain his end; that Bandiar was corrupt. But after all he was their master, and without him they were nothing. And he had a good and noble purpose, this secret of the flute, worth and sacrifice. They put aside their doubts and continued to serve.

Now among the Myrmide was one called Nassi, a young woman, and she was accounted the least of them, for she was neglectful of her duty, and this brought shame on her and on all the Myrmide. She was not wicked, though they said that of her; nor lazy – they accused her of that too. She tried to be a good Myrmide, a good servant, but her work was never done for dreaming, or fretting about right and wrong, or just sitting in a warm hide-hole reading the stories of other lands and other peoples.

She had a ready smile and a warm heart; she was generous and laughed a lot. In short, a thoroughly wicked, willful and unpleasant Myrmide. The others set a better example: they were very stern. Occasionally one or other of them would smile a thin smile but they never laughed. Yet they had a duty to her too, and they never tired of beating her, to teach her her duty. This went on even before she became a woman taller than many of them. But she was big and plump, with a cheerful round open face, and though the beatings hurt her they did not curb her spirit.

One task she did well, and that was maintaining Bandiar’s workrooms, though there she found an interest in his work that went beyond the duty of a servant. The Myrmide rebuked her for this, the, realizing that Bandiar was pleased to have her help and liked her for her good humour, they saw that it was, on the whole, a good thing. Bandiar often talked about his project to her with barely a hint of condescension, for she had a quick mind.

As time went by the two became closer than may be wise between servant and master. Nassi came to revere her master, yet she would never share his bed. The Myrmide took her aside again. Was there nothing she could do right. She treated Bandiar as a friend, and that was wrong, but when he wished her to do her duty in his bed she refused. There were more beatings, which Nassi endured with good grace, and life went back to what it had been before.

Shuthdar disliked Nassi, for she was the one person he could not fool, and his suggestions to Bandiar that he be given her had been curtly rejected. Even Bandiar would not agree to that. Shuthdar began to lurk in dark passages thought which she might pass, hoping to waylay her, but after he first escape she kept to the lighted ways and took great care of herself.

There came a time when Bandiar had to go away for a month, and as Nassi by now had few other duties, she spent most of that time in his workrooms, for he had asked her to put in order all the papers related to his great project. Nassi first read enough of each to understand where it belonged, but she began to see a different pattern to the one Bandiar had derived. Doubtless she had made a mistake. She was just a Myrmide, and a lazy one at that.

Nassi went over the collection again, carefully, sitting by the fire in Bandiar’s study, a big jar of his sweetmeats beside her, or a box of pastries lifted from the kitchen during the night. Days of reading and eating went by and still it would not fit together the way Bandiar wanted. But it began to fit all too well another way.

She lay in the darkness of her room, unable to sleep, turning the pieces of the puzzle over in her mind. More days passed, in which she scarcely slept, pulling the models and machines apart and remaking them in new arrangements. Finally there was no doubt. The purpose that had sustained Bandiar for years, into which he had put his labour and intellect and most of his wealth, that he had pursued at the expense of his subjects, the Myrmide, and all honour and decency, was revealed to be a cruel hoax whose only purpose was to expose his folly.

Nassi was struck to the core. Her life and the lives of all the Myrmide were undermined. They had corrupted themselves for nothing. Like Bandiar, they were nothing; a hollow people!

Nassi called the Myrmide to a meet and told them what she had discovered. The Myrmide were shocked, for what she had said found an echo in their own fears. But they were outraged too, and humiliated. They stopped their ears against her words, beating her for the betrayal of their master’s honour, the dereliction of her own duty, and her meddling, and threw her into a dank cell at the bottom of the stronghold until Bandiar’s return.

These dungeons were a place much to Shuthdar’s liking. He often came down to cling to the bars and cackle at her, for though she discomforted him with her clear sight, he was secretly delighted that someone had seen his joke. She seemed more worthy of his heritage than any other he had met. She understood the complex dimensions and secrets that his mind encompassed, yet she wanted none of them. Perhaps he could corrupt her too.

He came night after night, whispering the dark secrets of his trade to her, hoping to make more mischief between her and her master. This place wearied him now.

At last Bandiar returned and called the Myrmide to account. Nassi’s crime was so unspeakable that the Myrmide would not tell of it, only pleaded for her death. Bandair however, called another meet and bade her say what she had done.

She told her story. The papers were brought down; the models too. Nassi showed the way Bandiar had put them together, how she changed them, what they did now. She drew it all together, revealed the plan and the malicious joke that it showed. Their master, their whole lives and purpose: nothing!

There was an agonized silence. The terrible humiliation was plain on Bandiar’s face. The Myrmide prayed that he would deny it.

“Master,” they cried. “We do not hear this. Tell us that it is not true. Allow us to punish her for this vile deceit.”

They knew it was true. They could read it in his eyes. What could he say? A word, even a gesture would have been enough. Bandiar hesitated. He could scarcely bring himself to utter the lies they wanted to hear. His face looked about to crack apart along the seams of mouth and nose and eyes. Finally he spoke.

“My dear Myrmide,” he said, smiling a false smile. “How could...?”

Then Shuthdar lurched in, whooping, gobs of rusty slime dripping from his iron teeth.

“It’s true!” he cackled in unholy glee. “What a joke! The best I’ve had in a thousand years! And when it comes to the register of fools, the tale of Bandiar and the Myrmide will stand for another thousand.” He gasped and wheezed, a peel of mad laughter echoing off the walls.

Bandiar could hardly deny it. He shuddered and stood up. “Yes, it is true,” he said, and his face showed the contempt he felt for himself and for the Myrmide too. “I am a fool, and you are fools for serving me.” Putting his weapons on the table, he walked among them.

They could ignore the truth no longer. They fell on him and hacked him to death, every one of the Myrmide having a hand in it, save Nassi. She stood to one side, staring at the bloody corpse, shocked into immobility. She had cared for Bandiar. Surely he did not deserve this.

The Myrmide turned to the other two and would have done the same to them, but Shuthdar had seen what must come next. With his nails he slashed Nassi’s bonds and cried, “Come with me, child. There’s no place for you here anymore.”

She looked at the Myrmide and then at Shuthdar, and put out a plump arm. Shuthdar gripped it in his iron-hard claw, and with the other hand brought out the golden flute and put it to his lips. The Myrmide drew back in fear. Then Shuthdar blew one-handed a haunting melody, a tune that lived forever in those that heard it, and then he and Nassi vanished.

The Myrmide looked down at the red rags that had been their master, sickened at what they had become through serving and obeying without question. They had committed the ultimate betrayal.

“We take no master ever more,” they cried. “We are Myrmide no longer. We are Nunst now and forever. From nothing we came; to nothing do we return.”

Then they went back to the Ghash-ad-Nash, crouching among the rocks and snow, the fire, fumes and ice, and that is what they became, Nunst. Nothing! Creatures of shame and guilt and fear, no longer having the will even to be, and now they are gone to nothing. The Myrmide are no more. The only trace of them – a curious custom that still lives in that part of the far south – is that before each meal the people make their Atonement, though for what none remembers any more.