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| XX. Judgement |
One. Queen Mu is gone, centuries gone, but her Justified Children survive still in the most inhospitable of lands, its savannahs of bladed red grass, humid fields of red-grained rice, lethal rainforests and flat rusty plains almost deliberately doing everything they can to kill the interlopers who came here. Queen Mu seceded from Atlantis over the issue of slavery. The colonies had been founded many centuries before, and, due mainly to geographical distance, had experienced a series of social revolutions that ended with the abolition of the institution of slavery. The Atlantean histories, which are the most widely read, have it that the Queen Mu attempted to incite revolution in Atlantis and, though defeated, took her followers to exile in the inhospitable north of Lemuria. The Muvian histories, which are not read in Atlantis, have it that the Atlanteans, no longer able to exert economic pressure over the Muvians by withholding the sale of slaves, decided to come and take Queen Mu's four cities by force, only to be driven back.
Two. Suern on the Land-Bridge was the last of the Atlantean colonies in Lemuria to join the Justified Children of Queen Mu; her inhabitants consider themselves the most easy-going of the Muvians, the most open of the Justified Children to peace with Atlantis; the other Muvians think they're more or less Atlanteans still. The accent with which the Suerni people speak the Atlantean language is milder than that of the other Muvians, and among Southern Atlanteans especially, Suernis can sometimes pass as Northerners. Northern Atlanteans, however, can't tell Suernis from other Muvians.
Three. Suern was also the last Muvian city to face an Atlantean invasion, and to repel it, shortly before the death of Rai Gwauxin. The Atlantean accoounts tell of how the Suerni magicians raised legions of the dessicated, preserved dead from an ancient salt-caked battleground whose grasping fingers leached the life from the Atlantean infantry and caused the Sky-Chariots to plummet from the sky, lifeless. The pass of Suern now has more dead than ever, waiting for the Atlanteans to return. Suerni historians are silent, not even mentioning that the invasion ever happened.
Four. Mu is the hope of the human race; Mu is where men and women can be free, and equal, to love whom they love without the strictures of marriage, of patriarchy, of slavery. Mu is a land of blood, the blood of the hard-faced Children, the blood of a land carved from the flesh of the most ancient of the Lemurians. The last of the Sweat-Born lived here, colossal, rubbery, cartilaginous giants who loped through these iron-rich lands in small family units and fought with the invading Muvians. The Muvians finally exterminated the Sweat-Born without ever really understanding them to be human. Mu was built on blood and hope; the price of freedom was slaughter. You can taste the blood in the iron-rich waters of Mu, in the land's ugly, hardy root vegetables, can smell it in the air. Everything has the flavour of blood.
Five. Where the Atlantean buildings of the North are round and high, spired and decorated with pediments, steps and pillars, the intersecting faultlines that crisscross the Muvian territories have made such architectural styles impractical. The Muvians have taken advantage of the ziggurat as an architectural feature in every one of their territories, and these brutal stepped pyramids dominate every one of the four great Muvian cities. Many small Muvian buildings stand on isolation bearings, complex mechanical structures that allow for transverse movement, and the survival of all but the most severe of the earthquakes that rock Mu with increasing frequency.
