My Vacation with the Sorcerer Gaumata

http://www.extasybooks.com/sorcerers-daughter-2

My dear readers: I have been away for some time with a dear friend, the evil mage Gaumata. He enjoys his fame as an vicious sorcerer, and so I make no excuses for him. In any case, he is terribly old fashioned, and although he is fascinated with the idea of a blog to tell his story, he refuses to touch a computer. He has asked me to take his dictation and post his story. Perhaps he can be convinced to have his own page soon and leave me to my own musings. 

The great and powerful black-hearted sage Gaumata says:

First entry: My cursed birth, my whorish mother, and my sorcerer father.

My wonderful inscription at Behistun will tell my history in Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite.  I will be famous for all time, but you, the reader of this magical text, will know my true story.  I am Gaumata the Sorcerer, now known as Darius the Great of Persia.

It is my secret, but how can I gloat if I think that nobody will ever know?  This is my journal—my story, and I will have it interred with this body.  I have already enlisted the help of the best mage in the world.  He will make sure that this journal and my remains are protected from grave robbers, but later, perhaps in two thousand years, it will emerge and people will know the truth.  Do you think I really trust that mage with such a responsibility?  No indeed!  If he only knew!  I chose him because he is young and strong and his mind is devious.  I plan not to die, but to use my precious black sorcery to take his body, as I have taken the body of Darius as a vehicle for my great mind.  Maybe later another great man will emerge—a man perhaps greater than Darius the Great!  Ha!  But let us start from the beginning.

It all started as a happy accident. I was a miserable lad of five years living with that whore who gave birth to me. She was never a mother to me, but treated me like she would a stray dog. We lived in the town of Fugasa in the Sogdian outlands. I remember her, this mother of mine. She would scream, “Don’t look at me! You have the evil eye, just like that father of yours! What a demon sorcerer he is!”

Over and over she would tell the story. “I was only a child, just a girl. So tender and beautiful! My father died when blood ran with his piss. It was probably the doing of the sorcerer, for a sorcerer can put a curse on a man and truly he will die! Listen my son, for you cannot blame me for hating you! That evil man, after my father was dead and my mother left destitute, he came to us. He offered money and a home to my mother, and she, the weakling that she was, sold me to him. I was glad for what happened to her for that crime!

“Do you know, you craven scarecrow, that I later saw her body after it had been tossed into a refuse heap, and I wasn’t even grieved? How could I be? That man used me, a scrap of a little girl! He stuck that thing into me right here!” she would point to the place between her legs.

“Again and again for over a year he did this to me until finally I was round in the belly with child. With you! Then he stopped. One day he just disappeared and I stayed like a beaten goat in the place he had paid for. I stayed until the landlord took me by the hair and threw me out. Later, his wily wife came and got me out of the gutter. Why not sell her to the men who frequent our rooms? She said to her husband. After that I was forced to be a whore. Now do you know why I hate you? You have those eyes! The same eyes as him—a murky green with an ochre center. I said don’t look at me!”

That was what I had to suffer. I remember the bitter cold nights I passed without a blanket and with an empty stomach. Now I can eat delicacies of any kind, but as a child, I starved. Sometimes the men who pleasured themselves on my mother would come and beat me, as if their sexual scratching stirred within them hate and violence. Yes, I do think that was why.

My Favorite Demons and Monsters, Part 1

I draw from world mythology to create demons and monsters in my stories. Zohak is such a demon. His myth begins deep in antiquity in the tales of the early Iranians. When we look at these myths, we have to be aware that there are many variants, and that a myth develops in time.

Zohak is the villain in the Fire Chronicles (Son of Fire, Trial by Fire, Burned Dreams, and Banner of Fire), as well as the Fire Demon Chronicles (not yet published.) His story is one pieced together from the Indo-European dragon mythology. Azhi means a dragon or dragon snake in Old Iranian. The dragon was often depicted as hoarding water in mountains, causing drought.

Azhidahaka (Dahaka is a shortening of his name, and Zohak is a later spelling) is a three-headed dragon in Iranian myth. I use Dahaka as the name for Zohak’s wizard father). This dragon tries to steal away the Royal xwarnah, (in later Persian Farr).

Azhi Dahaka’s myth tells about how he ruled after the first king, Yima (Jamshid). He rules for 1,000 years, during which time he experiments with breeding half human, half demon creatures, and works sorcery of all sorts.

He is finally chained in Mount Damavand until the end of the cycle, when he will break out and terrorize the world, eating a full third of humans and animals in existence.

In the Fire Chronicles, I combine these motifs. Dahaka, the evil wizard brother of the Firestarter Anacharsis, wants glory and kingship, but he doesn’t have the power to overcome his brother. He steals Anacharsis’ love, Queen Cunaxa the Pure, and produces a son, Zohak. Anacharsis later has a son by Cunaxa, Atar, who is destined to be the next Firestarter and king of the Seven Kingdoms. Throughout the books, a giant boar with golden hooves and tusks follows Atar, whose name means fire. This boar represents the royal Farr, or power of kingship granted by the gods, in Persian myth.

Zohak covets power and longs to gain the throne, but finally, he does so only by selling his soul, unwittingly, to the demons. In one Persian myth, Zohak is an Arab who has as a mentor the Devil Iblis. Zohak starts out as a good son, but he has an evil seed in his heart. Iblis appears to him as a lovely boy who steals his heart. Zohak is irritated with his father, Merdas, who has a generous heart, and gives too much to the poor. Iblis councils him to kill his father, but Zohak can’t stand the thought of it. Iblis does it for him by digging a hole in a garden path Merdas takes in the predawn hours to pray in his garden. When the poor man falls in, evil Iblis buries him alive.

Now when Zohak goes to Iran and conquers the region, Iblis appears again in a different guise, as a comely young cook. He corrupts Zohak further. Zohak does not eat animals, for at this time, people were more civil. First Iblis introduces eggs into his diet, then meats of all sorts until Zohak is hopelessly hooked. Zohak is most pleased and offers Iblis a boon. Iblis asks only that he be allowed to kiss Zohak’s bare shoulders.

When he does so, a horrific snake-dragon breaks through each shoulder. They demand the brains of innocent humans as food. So, Zohak goes from being ambitious, to being a monster himself. Eventually, the only way to stop him is to chain him up in a cave in Mount Damavand, where he still lives today, waiting to be released.

The Fire Chronicles follow Zohak as he goes from being a jealous brother to a demi-demon who can’t be killed. He is a tragic figure, because he is tricked by the Devil, but only because he has the seed of evil in his heart.