The Dark Star

The Dark Star
Robert Chambers

Chambers Robert W.

The Dark Star

TO MY FRIEND

EDGAR SISSON

Dans c’métier-là, faut rien chercher à comprendre.

    René Benjamin

ALAK’S SONG

Where are you going,
Naïa?
Through the still noon —
Where are you going?

To hear the thunder of the sea
And the wind blowing! —
To find a stormy moon to comfort me
Across the dune!

Why are you weeping,
Naïa?
Through the still noon —
Why are you weeping?

Because I found no wind, no sea,
No white surf leaping,
Nor any flying moon to comfort me
Upon the dune.

What did you see there,
Naïa?
In the still noon —
What did you see there?

Only the parched world drowsed in drought,
And a fat bee, there,
Prying and probing at a poppy’s mouth
That drooped a-swoon.

What did you hear there,
Naïa?
In the still noon —
What did you hear there?

Only a kestrel’s lonely cry
From the wood near there —
A rustle in the wheat as I passed by —
A cricket’s rune.

Who led you homeward,
Naïa?
Through the still noon —
Who led you homeward?

My soul within me sought the sea,
Leading me foam-ward:
But the lost moon’s ghost returned with me
Through the high noon.

Where is your soul then,
Naïa?
Lost at high noon —
Where is your soul then?

It wanders East – or West – I think —
Or near the Pole, then —
Or died – perhaps there on the dune’s dry brink
Seeking the moon.

THE DARK STAR

“The dying star grew dark; the last light faded from it; went out. Prince Erlik laughed.

“And suddenly the old order of things began to pass away more swiftly.

“Between earth and outer space – between Creator and created, confusing and confounding their identities, – a rushing darkness grew – the hurrying wrack of immemorial storms heralding whirlwinds through which Truth alone survives.

“Awaiting the inevitable reëstablishment of such temporary conventions as render the incident of human existence possible, the brooding Demon which men call Truth stares steadily at Tengri under the high stars which are passing too, and which at last shall pass away and leave the Demon watching all alone amid the ruins of eternity.”

    The Prophet of the Kiot Bordjiguen

PREFACE

CHILDREN OF THE STAR

Not the dark companion of Sirius, brightest of all stars – not our own chill and spectral planet rushing toward Vega in the constellation of Lyra – presided at the birth of millions born to corroborate a bloody horoscope.

But a Dark Star, speeding unseen through space, known to the ancients, by them called Erlik, after the Prince of Darkness, ruled at the birth of those myriad souls destined to be engulfed in the earthquake of the ages, or flung by it out of the ordered pathway of their lives into strange byways, stranger highways – into deeps and deserts never dreamed of.

Also one of the dozen odd temporary stars on record blazed up on that day, flared for a month or two, dwindled to a cinder, and went out.

But the Dark Star Erlik, terribly immortal, sped on through space to complete a two-hundred-thousand-year circuit of the heavens, and begin anew an immemorial journey by the will of the Most High.