Latest revision as of 01:14, 4 June 2017

Author's Note: To this writer's limited knowledge, the original sources of information on Sashid el Hakim, the Radiant (or in some texts, the Veiled) Prophet, are but three: (a) the excerpts from the "History of the Pashas" by Balådhûrî, (b) the "Manual of the Giant, or Book of Precision and Revision," by the official historian of the Sabbalads, Ibn Abî Tahîr Tarfur; and (c) the Calishite codex entitled "The Annihilation of the Rose," which refutes the abominable heresies of the Rosa Obscura or Rosa Secreta, which was the Prophet's holy work.

To speak of the rise of Sashid el Hakim is to speak of the Deforming Rot, a magical plague that once afflicted all the lands south and west of the Sea of Fallen Stars, early in the 4th century DR. Like leprosy in its symptoms, the Deforming Rot decayed and twisted its victims. It was often the case that an affected cadaver would be beyond identification by even close family members.

Calimshan did not escape the plague, which respected neither wealth nor distinction. Sultans and viziers succumbed alongside paupers and slaves. When the Pasha of Manshaka was reduced to a pus-laden knot, the Syl-Pasha of Calimport withdrew himself from the nation and ordered that a wall of fire be maintained around his palace until the plague had passed.

It was in such an era that the Radiant Prophet appeared.

In the year 320 DR, there was born in Calim a man named Sashid el Hakim. His birthplace was Memnon, an ancient city whose worn lanes and olive groves gaze sadly out into the desert. During days when dust storms did not rush flood-like, the dawns were glorious affairs made shimmering by heat.

Sashid el Hakim was raised in that wearied city. We know that his father trained him as a dye-maker, and that he prospered, even during plague times. The inhabitants of Memnon sought out the most colorful and opaque of shrouds to hide the twisted forms of their deceased relatives.

This upbringing perhaps led to one of the first anathemas of the Radiant Prophet. "My face is gold," a famous page of the Annihilation says,"but I am steeped in purple dye. Thus did I sin in my youth, deforming the true colors of the creatures. The Angel would tell me that lambs were not the color of tigers, while the Devil would say to me that the All-Powerful One desired that they be, and in that cunning pursuit he employed my dye. Now I know that neither the Angel nor the Devil spoke the truth, for I know that All color is abominable."

In the year 346 DR, Sashid el Hakim disappeared from his native city. The vats and barrels of his shop were broken, as were a scimitar from Calimport and a brass mirror.

During the first eve of Alturiak in the year 358 DR, the air of the desert was very clear and a group of men were looking westward in expectation of the full moon of Sha'bad. They were slaves, beggars, horse sellers, camel thieves, and butchers.

From far out on the dizzying desert, they saw three figures coming toward them. The three figures were human, but the one in the center possessed the head of a bull. It became apparent that the man in the center was wearing a mask, while the other two were blind.

Someone asked the reason for this wonder. "They are blind," the masked man said, "because they have looked upon my face."

The historian of the Sabbalads relates that the man from the desert, whose voice was extraordinarily sweet, addressed the gathered crowd.

He was Sashid, son of Hakim, and in the year of Flight a man had entered his house. After the intruder had prayed and purified himself, he had cut Sashid's head off and carried it up to the heavens. Borne in the right hand of this visiting angel, Sashid's head was taken before the Almighty, who had bade him prophesy, entrusting him with words of such antiquity that speaking them burned one's mouth and endowed one with such glorious resplendence that mortal eyes could not bear to look upon it. This was the reason for his mask.

Sashid stated that when every man on Toril professed the new law, the Plague would end and the Visage would be unveiled to them. His message delivered, Sashid exorted them to holy war and the martydom that accompanied it.

The slaves, beggars, horse sellers, camel thieves, and butchers denied him - one voice cried sorcerer; another, imposter.

Someone had brought a leopard - perhaps a member of that lithe and bloodthirsty breed trained by Chultan huntsmen. At any rate, it broke free of its cage. Save for the masked Prophet and his two acolytes, all the men there made to flee, trampling upon each other in their haste.

When they returned, the leopard was blind. In the presence of those luminous, dead eyes, the men worshiped Sashid and admitted his supernatural estate.

The official historian of the Sabbalads narrates - with no great enthusiasm - the inroads made by Sashid the Radiant in the Calim. That province, greatly moved by the misfortune of plague, embraced with desperate fervor the doctrine offered by the Prophet.

Sashid el Hakim had by now exchanged his bull mask for a fourfold veil of white silk embroidered with precious stones. In each town he entered, he had put all victims of the Deforming Rot to sword and fire - alive or not. While the more enlightened objected, the fearful populace pledged to the Prophet their blood and gold.

The Pashas moved to stop the budding religion before it spread.

It is true that in "Book of Precision" it is the Pashas' pennants that are victorious everywhere. But when the most frequent result of those victories are the stripping of generals of their rank and the abandonment of impregnable castles, it is not difficult for a sagacious scholar to read between the lines.

Towards the end of the moon of Rajab in the year 361 DR, the famous city of Shamedar opened its iron gates to the Masked One; in early 362, the city of Manshaka did the same.

Where the Prophet's followers went, mirrors were shattered. In the cosmology of Sashid el Hakim, there was, in the beginning, a spectral god as majestically devoid of origins as of name and face. While immutable, this god threw nine shadows.

These shadows, condescending to action, ruled over a first heaven. That initial demiurgic crown spawned a second. The shadows of which founded another, lower heaven, which then reproduced itself in a fourth, and so on, to the number 999. The lord of the nethermost heaven - the shadow of shadows of yet other shadows - is He who reigns over us, and His fraction of divinity tends to zero.

The Toril we inhabit is an error, an incompetetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and reaffirm it. The Plague is the disgust and revulsion of the divine, given form.

In 363 DR, Sashid the Radiant was surrounded in Sanam by the Syl-Pasha's army. Great were the provisions, many were the martyrs, and aid from the angels of colorless light was expected at any moment.

Such was the pass to which they had come when a terrifying rumor spread throughout the castle. It was said that an adulteress within the Prophet's blind harem was being strangled by the vizier, and that she had screamed that the third finger was missing from the Prophet's right hand, and that his other fingers had no nails.

In the broad daylight of the noontime prayer, two captains rose up and snatched away the gem-embroidered veil.

The promised face of the Prophet, the face which had journeyed to the heavens, was indeed white. But it was white with Deforming Rot. It was so swollen (or incredible) that it seemed to be a mask.

Sashid's voice attempted one final deception: "Thy abominable sins forbid thee to look upon my radiance..." he began.

No one was listening; he was riddled with spears.

Committed to ink by Shäalira, the younger, on the 28th day of Eleint, 75 AR.