The Great Sultan was furious. Fuming he paced deliberately back and forth across the centuries old mosaic pathway tucked deep within the inner sanctum of his private residency.
Ringing his hands and rubbing his chin as if to wash his frustration away, his body was rigid and his jaw tense.
Although his thoughts were varied and subtle, his emotion rendered his articulation simplistic, almost elementary.
“There was No Time. No Time At All,” he stammered.
Talking to himself as he had long since silenced and dismissed his closest and most trusted advisors. But he was desirous to reprimand the world, the forces of present circumstance, this newfound reality in which he had found himself. He was determined to be heard.
His steps along the pathway became more deliberate and volatile with each passing moment. Every motion a jab or a kick at an unforeseen enemy either past or present.
“No time,” he snarled with increasing volume and conviction.
The impeccably manicured courtyard said nothing in response. The tiles of the great mosaic held their ground beneath his feet and kept their silence.
The Chamber of Council as the courtyard had come to be known in backroom parlance had witnessed this spectacle before. The arguments and events forever remained the same: obtuse and oblivious to the tides of power. Only the main character changed. The perceived lead role. The so-called head of state, ruler of unforeseen horizons. The true political marionette if the truth be told. The one destined, doomed, to pace the mosaic maze.
And change, change he did. Swifter than one would think.
“No Time!” the Great Sultan erupted. The echo of his words reverberated through the covered colonnade. “No time to marshal the forces, recoup the advantage, to mount a counter attack…” his words trailed off. But thoughts of an emperor, well, they never cease.
Reaching the edge of the walkway, he stopped, turned and kicked a loose tile from its inlaid dwelling. The kick was forceful and altogether damning. The tile, hand crafted and set in place in a long forgotten age, was abruptly propelled into an awkward arc of motion.
Centuries of perfection dislodged with a spiteful strike. Years of shaded symmetry upset due to the ill-tempered nature of a self-professed king.
As the tile skid across the worn and uneven surface, tink, tink, tink, the Great Sultan’s comportment changed. Anger subsided, overtaken by a fiercer sense of urgency. An urgency that coupled together an uneasy mixture of fear and realization. Deep within the emperor’s own heart and mind, there was a growing comprehension of the shortcomings of his design.
The Great Sultan stood stock-still. The tile had come to rest upon pieces of similar style. Imperceptible to the naked, unobservant eye but fixed upon intently by the author of its destruction, the tile remained motionless. Silent and pathetic, there it sat, an outcast and orphan.
The Sultan snapped to and glanced down toward the tiny but seemingly infinite black hole that he had just created. A man made ripple, a deliberate imperfection, punched into the serene mosaic sea.
“A single year,” He changed his invective, examining the dark cavity more closely. The rebounding echoes off the burnished tile the only thing to take notice.
The hole stared back at him with the constancy of death. A chink in the armor, a hole in his woven masterpiece of power he could not help but ponder.
In a single year he had risen like a storm out of the west. Seizing the imagination of peasants and princes alike, cities and countries.
Like a bolt of lightning followed by a torrential rain upon a scorched and barren earth thirsting for change, he moved swiftly into power. The timing was his and he would fulfill the mandate.
A single year he had reached out with open arms to enemies and allies.
Only to discover that now, after the crushing and unexpected defeat of a far-flung vassal state, his own hands were tied.
His adversaries, by no means worthy or even indefatigable, had cut to the chase and curtailed his maneuvers. The stage was set for action, he ruminated, grand action. But the fire had gone out before it could catch.
The Great Sultan’s eyes smoldered with intensity. The choice was before him.
To yield to a chastened form of governance or to yoke the discordant, dissident factions under a single degree of discipline.
To resign to compromise and cooperation or to reign mightily in the face of opposition and adversity.
No Time. There was no time for further thought. The Great Sultan stomped deliberately on that unblinking black hole and strode forcefully out of the courtyard across the variegated tiled walkway.
The mosaic remained silent but diminished. Another piece was no longer interlocked in its original place. The luster of it kiln fired glaze covered once more with the dust, grit and grim of the footsteps of ephemeral emotion, power, want and desire.
“The Mall of Missteps,” the tiles sighed as day gave way to twilight.
