Chapter 2 - Flame and Shadow
Years before Darius was granted his Satrapy, during his time as a mercenary, he had an experience that would shape his future dreams. When it was announced that his commander Eskander would be given Tabriz and Tabaristan after the conflict, the emir who had been deposed by the rebels was furious. He was in exile from his territory, waiting out the hostilities in Persepolis under the assumption that he would be reinstated to his former position. Rumor reached the mercenary camp that the emir, Ahmed, was plotting to have Eskander killed, and to convince the Caliph that he could do the job he had so recently shown himself unable to do.
Eskander called Darius and Ramadan into his tent. When they emerged twenty minutes later, both wore serious expressions. They made their way to where their horses grazed, stopping at their own tents on the way to gather some supplies, and mounted up. They were bound for Persepolis.
On the way from Tabaristan to Persepolis lies Pasargadae, where a millenium earlier Iskander al-Akbar, Alexander the Great, had stopped several times on his campaign to subjugate the world. Like Alexander, Darius insisted that he and Ramadan stop there. That evening, after a fine supper, paid for with the ample coin Eskander had provided them, they approached a modest structure at the boundaries of the settlement. Darius knew what it was, and it was for this reason that he insisted they pay a visit. The tomb housed Cyrus the Great, founder of the ancient Persian Empire.
'1500 years this structure has stood,' Darius muttered, as much to himself as to Ramadan.
'What is this place?' inquired Ramadan, when he saw the look of reverence on Darius' face.
'The tomb of the father of my people,' Darius replied simply. Ramadan shook his head at the idolatry, but Darius could see that even he was humbled by the ancientness and weight of the place.
The structure was marked with the remains of an inscription. Between damage from aging and the antiquity of its language, it was unreadable to Darius, but he knew from the historybooks that Eskander, an avid reader of military history, kept in a baggage cart and had allowed Darius access to when he found he was one of the few literate men in their troop, what it said:
'Traveller: I am Cyrus, who gave an empire to the Persians, and was the King of Asia. Grudge me not, thereby, this modest monument.'
Darius unscrewed the top off his wineskin and poured a small amount into the dirt before taking a pull of it himself.
Ramadan reached out to stop him from pouring the wine, but too late. 'Why do you desecrate this tomb if you admire and revere the man so!?'
'It is not an insult. The wine in the ground is for Cyrus. I share this drink with him now, and many more when I pass into the afterlife.'
They returned to the settlement and spent the night in an inn. Ramadan slept soundly, but Darius was troubled by dreams in which he stood before Cyrus and Ahura Mazda to be judged, and thousands of men, all disfigured by brutal wounds, gave testimony against him. Both woke at dawn and rode the rest of the way to Persepolis.
That night, Ramadan silently climbed one of the walls of the fort at Persepolis, before lowering a rope to Darius. The two entered a tower by window. Silently, Darius entered Ahmed's chambers while Ramadan stood guard outside. Once the deed was done, they left as swiftly as the wind, and were ahorse and thundering down the road back towards Tabriz before the alarm was sounded.
---
Seven years after that trip, Darius was again sleeping in a tent, this time in Derbent.
Although he was ostensibly more important as al-Mansur's advisor, Darius found al-Mansur valued his command skills more, and he had been leading sieges in the Caucasus for over a year now. He had recieved unfortunate news from a messenger sent by his Steward, Shervin.
Back in Persia, his neighbor Yahya, the Barmakid Satrap and Emir of Mosul, had been given a grant of land by the Caliph, and doubled his holdings overnight. This meant that Darius would have to wait longer still as he attempted to form an army large enough to take Oromieh, and with it the Adur Gushnasp. Several days later another messenger arrived, this time as he was walking the siegeworks to inspect the forces he commanded for the Abbasid Caliph.
The Abbasid Prince, al-Fadl, wanted a favour, with the implication being that he would owe the same to Darius in the future. Darius was to vote as al-Fadl on all upcoming matters in the council. Sensing an opporunity, and seeing no danger in supporting al-Fadl, who was widely known to be an aggressive opponent of the Caliph in domestic matters, Darius assured the messenger he would be happy to follow al-Fadl's lead on the council. The messenger departed, and Darius finished his inspection of the siege before retiring to his command tent for supper.
Before Narin-Kala could fall, Darius recieved a third messenger, this time from the Caliph himself. The Uqaylid Sultan had died, and the war in the Caucasus had ended. The rebels, who had opposed his father, had fallen apart upon his death, with those who wanted independence from de facto Abbasid rule unable to continue the war without the support of those who merely wanted the previous Sultan Bakkar off the throne. Amir, the new Sultan, was for the time uncontested, and although Darius knew that would not last for long, the Abbasids could not continue their war against the Georgian and Armenian nobles in the Sultanate without the pretense of fighting to support the Sultan. Sighing, Darius sent out the word through the camp that the troops were to march back south to the Caliphate proper, where some would be allowed to return to their families, while others would be sent west, to fight al-Mansur's other war, to protect his Taid tributaries against their own rebel vassals. Darius himself was told he would be among the former of those, and a few weeks later he was back at his palace in Kalar.
Upon arriving at his palace, Darius was greeted by his steward Shervin, who had taken time from his work in Qwivir to take up another task on behalf of the Satrap. He had sent agents across the Satrapy to bring together some of the smartest unmarried women in the Caspian lowlands, and had brought back a half dozen, for the purpose of being taken by Darius as concubine, so that he might produce an heir without waiting until his middle age for his bride to come of age. And so he selected three:
But Darius' return home was not to last. Soon after returning home he was summoned to Damascus, to meet with the Majlis for the first time. Al-Mansur proposed a holy war in the East, to sieze Zabulistan from the Zunbil nobles in Afghanistan, who had refused al-Mansur's Muslim preachers in favour of their own ancient Zunist faith. When the time came to vote, Darius glanced at al-Fadl. A few moments passed in silence, before al-Fadl voted in favor of the war. Darius noted that one other councilor, the Grand Wazier Yazid, immediately voted in favor as well, almost immediately after al-Fadl. Darius waited, so as not to give away his agreement with al-Fadl as transparently as Yazid, as two other councilors voted against the war, with Darius' despised neighbour Yahya noting that the Taid armies had been shattered by the revolt there, and that situation required al-Mansur's support if he hoped to continue to enrich his Caliphate with their tribute, and that he had so far sent them no help.
In the end, despite Yahya's objections, the council largely voted to support al-Mansur's proposal. Darius was to depart in August to take part in that war. On his last evening in Damascus, Darius lounged in the gardens of the Damascus palace, enjoying sweet dates fresh from the trees that grew there as he digested his supper, a lavish feast put on by al-Mansur for his council while they discussed other issues following the vote on the war. Finally, after a stimulating discussion in the garden with al-Fadl about the relationship between Zoroastrianism, Islam, and the Sabians, a steward entered. The men were to depart the garden, which would be turned over to al-Mansur's wives to enjoy in the twilight hours. As Darius departed, he caught sight of Shahrbano, the youngest of the Caliph's wives. He remembered the rumours several years earlier that she intended to have him killed, and as he stepped back into the halls of the palace, he could have sworn he caught her eye and saw nothing but hatred.
That night in bed, Darius resolved that he had only one option in dealing with the situation with the woman. He would have to ensure that she died first.
When he arrived back in Mazandaran it was early July. Darius met with Sorkhab in secret, and they drew up a list of al-Mansur's courtiers and vassals. Finally, they selected the two people with the most access to Shahrbano who were likely to support Darius' plot - Emir Muhammad of the Taglibid Emirate in Jazira, and Sheikh Muhammad of Acre. Two wagons were loaded with gold, and while it pained Darius to nearly empty his treasury, he knew that all the gold in the world would do him no good if Shahrbano lived to see him dead. So the wagons left, and Sorkhab left as well, to further the plot in Damascus.
At the end of that month, Darius was visited personally in his palace by his vassal Vandad Hermozd, who had travelled from Dihistan. He asked Darius for a private audience, and the Satrap hesitantly agreed. Darius was furious when he learned the reason, but grateful to Vandid that he had requested to meeting be held in private.
'For too long, my Lord,' he began, 'you have restricted the political influence of your vassals. The time has come to give the council more power.' Darius understood the situation, and despite his anger, he could not help appreciating the irony of his situation. He himself had taken part in a similar situation against the Caliph not a year earlier. He knew what Vandad meant by 'restricting the influence of his vassals' - he was angry that he had lost the council position he held under Darius' departed predecessor.
'You...' Darius began, before biting his tongue. 'You expect too much.'
'On the contrary,' Vandad replied, 'I feel that my requests are simple and reasonable.' Darius could not help but disagree, but in the conversation that followed, Vandad let it be known that he was not alone in his sentiments, and implied he would back his 'requests' up by force if necessary. Between Vandad and any other of Darius' vassals, he would lose access to a third of his own army, and be totally outnumbered by the army he would be forced to fight, and Darius lacked the funds to use mercenaries to fight such a war. His only choice was to accept the demands.
A month later, Darius departed with the levy he would be supplying to al-Mansur's war effort. They began the long march East, past the boundaries of Persia, to spread the Caliph's faith, or, more cynically (or pragmatically, as Darius would have called it), to Afghanistan. But before they had crossed half of Persia, two more wars broke out in the Abbasid tributary states, wars they would be obligated to join, and Darius was reassigned to lead an army into the Indus river valley, where the Tagribid Sultan Hisam faced an invasion by his Eastern neighbors.
As he travelled through central Persia, he found himself talking often and long into the night with a fellow commander, a man called Revend, who was Sheikh of Oromieh. First they began with talk about the illustrious history of Persia, but after a few conversations it went to Zoroastrianism, and after a few days of that the conversations took a heretical turn. Yet Darius, always a cynic, was not dissuaded from continuing their friendship, and after a few such conversations, Revend pressed a small leather pouch into Darius' hands. Darius promised to keep it hidden. Finally, one night, after a more than modest amount of wine, the two talked until the morning twilight. After a particularly heretical turn of conversation regarding the origins of man and the promises that the priests offered the Zoroastrian faithful, revend suddenly pulled back the sleeve of his travel cloak to show a scar that was clearly the result of intentional mutilation - a five-pointed star in a circle. Darius was taken aback.
'What is this?' he asked hesitantly.
Revend smiled slowly. 'The mark of Ahriman,' he said.
Darius laughed, but the smile melted off of Revend's face. 'After all we've spoken of, you think this is a joke? Ahriman can give you what Ahura Mazda never would. The Lord of Light gives you vague promises of the afterlife, but we offer is temporal power.'
'Can you help me to destroy my enemies and augment my own worldly power?' Darius asked.
'We might.... If you offer yourself up to Iblis, he will grant you powers Ahura Mazda has kept from us humans.' With that, Revend rose and began to walk back to his tent.
Darius fingered the pouch in his pocket and began to think. After a few steps, Revend stopped and turned back. 'Oh, and I think you'll enjoy it....' He laughed as he walked away into the pre-mornng mists.
As Darius had predicted, he soon recieved word from soldiers in the camp that revolt had again broken out in the Caucasus, this time with the intention of splitting from Abbasid control and reinstating Armenia as a Christian kingdom. Darius knew he would soon be fighting in the Caucasus for the third time in his life, but first, he had business in India. Similarly, the Addauid Emirate was facing a popular Christian uprising, although this one lacked the support of any vassals, unlike the much more dire situation in the Abbasid tributary to its northeast.
By the time his armies arrived in India, after crossing through the Sulaiman Mountains, much of the northeast of the Sultanate had been occupied. Darius led his troops to the western bank of the Indus, where they liberated a series of fortresses and cities before crossing the river. During a siege there, as he drilled a group of troops, one of his soldiers approached him.
'Sir,' the soldier addressed him. 'I need to speak with you.'
'Soldier, you can see that I am busy! Where are you supposed to be?'
'My Lord, I just finished guard duty at the rear of the camp. It is important that I speak to you immediately, and in private.
Agitated, Darius turned to face the troops he was drilling. 'Dismissed!' he shouted. He turned back to the soldier. 'In my tent in five minutes.'
In his tent, Darius sat at his desk with a bottle of cold water that a porter had fetched from up the river. 'Now what is so important?'
The soldier was hesitant.
'I know you didn't just interrupt me, only to lose your ability to speak. None of my soldiers would be so willing to waste my time,' he said, anger entering his voice as he went on. Now
talk!
'I overheard a few other soldiers talking... a man paid them to look for an opportunity to kill you.'
Darius sat in silence. He didn't have to wonder who was behind it. After a few minutes, he spoke up. 'These soldiers... were they ours, or the Sultan's?'
'They were Hindi. The Sultan's soldiers,' the soldier replied.
Darius called for his guards, and had the Arab soldier lead him to the tent of the men he had spoken of. They were not there. Rather than search for them and risk them getting word that they were wanted, Darius instructed his guards to enter their tents, search their things, and wait for them and bring them to him after they returned from their duties. That night, the guards returned with three soldiers and a bag of gold. When he opened it, Darius saw just what he expected - it was Abbasid gold, undoubtedly provided by Shahrbano's agents. His suspicions concerned, Darius had the soldiers beheaded quietly outside the camp, so as not to antagonize the Hindu soldiers, many who resented their country's status as an Abbasid tributary.
The next morning, Darius awoke to find bloody scrawlings on the flap to the bedchamber of his tent. One he recognized - the pentagram from Revend's arm. He knew what he had to do, and pulled a knife from his belt. He carved the same mark into his own forearm, then bandaged it. He spent the rest of the day in his tent, first cleaning the blood from the doorflap, and then considering what he had done, intermittently worried about the ramifications and excited about what Revend had promised him, during which time his thoughts frequently centered on Satrap Yahya and the Caliph's wife, Shahrbano.
Almost two months later, Darius returned to his tent after a long, boring day in the siege camp to find a sealed parchment on his desk. He opened it to see just a short message.
'Brother Darius,' it began. 'We have recieved word of your dedication and desire to join the legion of the True Lord. Await the messenger. Let the Dark One guide you.' It was signed by Michael, a Priest of the Brotherhood. Darius looked around the tent with suspicion. How could they know of the mark on his arm? It was still bandaged. Had someone been in the dark corners of his tent that morning? Or was it something more sinister? No, Darius thought. That couldn't be. Revend must have just told them about our conversations, that's all.
It had been almost a year since he departed his court in Tabriz when Darius finished liberating the city of Kabirwala in Multan. Along with some other commanders, he visited to local lord, one Emir Ubayd, in his palace. There he met a beautiful diplomat called Asanet. The two talked at length about trade routes, before she carefully pulled back her sleeve to display the mark of Ahriman.
'You're the messenger?' Darius asked, surprised.
That night, June 17, on the banks of the Indus, Darius joined the secret circle of Lucifer.
After the ritual, Darius continued to liberate holdings around the northern Indus valley, and that September of 775AD he recieved word that his concubine Miryem had given birth to a boy she hoped to call Pujman.
