The Wyzzard Kings of Wailes

By William John Watkins

The power of the Light surrounded the land with a wall of mist that turned away merchants and spies and the armies that would follow them. No one from the outside came in, no one from the inside went out. Death was a stranger who could never find his way across the barrier. And so it was that for the whole of the first age of man, the Wailisch lived peacefully and long, with their green hills for riches, and their magic for power, and their children for laughter and to keep them from losing their memory of the Lost World. Their women were as beautiful as their land, and as wise as they were beautiful. When they laughed, there was no need for music. And when they loved, there was no need for anything else. Everything the Wailisch said was poetry, and poetry was the basis of their magic. When the wyzzard kings began to turn in their magic circles, the light of the Lost World rose around them, and the glory of Paradise rang everywhere like audible sunlight.

Time was nothing to wyzzard kings, and they crossed and re-crossed the centuries a thousand times. They knew what had been and what would be, they knew all things but one. And even that one great secret would eventually be known to them.

But the wyzzard king who would know the great secret that lay hidden from the rest had not yet been born to them. They knew that he would be, just as surely as they knew he would be the first of the Wailisch to die, as surely as they knew he would not be the last. His death would give them the knowledge. It was the basis of their sadness, and their chief consolation for the knowledge that their kingdom would not last forever, and the last glimmer of the Lost World would pass with them.

They knew that the Light would fail, and the world go dark, and the Great Lie would swallow the minds of man. The glory of the Lost World still glowed all around them, but they knew it would not last. It was the knowledge they had carried out of Eden. They waited for the sign of the coming of the end, and eventually it came.

It came in the form of Llewayden, the last of the wyzzard kings. Of all the Wailischmen, he was the finest. When he danced in his magic circle, the darkness moved back and the Light went everywhere. The Lost World rose again and the glory from which they had fallen shone all around them. On the day Llewayden was born, there was born another, the most beautiful of Wailischwomen, Gwynnara. And because beauty seeks beauty the way good seeks the Good, Llewayden and Gwynnara loved each other from the moment of their births. But from the moment of their birth also, the mist began to thin, and the darkness beyond it in which Death moved came always closer to the green hills of the Wailisch. And from the darkness, the towers of the Wyzzard kings grew more and more visible.

By the time, Llewayden and Gwynnara had reached their majority, the mist was barely a curtain of vapor, and the dim, drab contours of the outside world were visible from the towers of the wyzzard kings. From the highest of those towers, Llewayden and Gwynnara looked out, and what they saw was the end of the world.

Out in the mist, Death moved inexorably toward the land of the Wailisch, and Llewayden knew that it was his time to go and meet his destiny. He kissed Gwynnara good-bye and went down from the tower, through the green shadows of the forest, and out into the mist. He did not look back, and the Wailisch watched him go with tears in their eyes because they alone had kept even the memory of the Lost World alive and without them, it would be gone forever. Death was almost out of the mist, when Llewayden went in. It was too thin to hide either of them and they moved straight toward one another. When they stood face to face, Death asked Llewayden if he was ready to learn the secret, and Llewayden said he was. He looked into the emptiness of Death's hood, and what he saw was horror. In it, he saw, the world as it would be, darkened by greed and hatred, and the all-swallowing power of the Great Lie. He saw billions of human beings tormented by a great longing for something they could never quite articulate even to themselves, and he knew that what tormented them was the absence left when the last memory of the Lost World died with the last of the Wailisch.

Then Death asked him if he was ready to know the secret, and Llewayden said he was, and Death asked him if he was willing to die to know it, and Llewayden agreed. Then Death laughed and said, "The secret is that you will know the secret but never understand it." Llewayden felt the knowledge like a blow. The strength went out of him. "I", said Death in a voice ringing with triumphant laughter, "am the Great Lie."

Llewayden felt sadness come over him like a shadow and the will went out of him, and then the breath, and then the Light. Death turned and went out into the world that was finally completely his.

But Gwynnara did not stay behind in the tower. She had watched it all from the edge of the mist, and when Llewayden fell, she ran to him and bent over him and kissed him. In her arms, Llewayden understood the meaning of the Great Lie. He was not dead because Death was the Great Lie, there was no death. He began to laugh. And Gwynnara, the moment hed his eyes, understood it too. The Wailisch could never go back to Eden, because they had never left. That was the Great Lie, that they were not still, immortal as ever, in Eden.

They stood and walked hand in hand back out of the mist. All around them, the land of the Wailisch shone with divine light. The mist, had become a wall of radiance, and the even the world beyond shone with the glory of Paradise all around them.

In the Eden for which we long, the wyzzard kings dance in their magic circles, and the Light flows out from them like waves of joy, and it shines, immortal as we are, from the Eden all around us, the Paradise only the Great Lie makes us too blind to see.

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