Kay Kavus flying to the sky

At a Glance

• Central figures: Kay Kavus, shah of Iran and sovereign of the seven kingdoms; Rostam, the pahlavan of Sistan, who must retrieve his fallen king; and Iblis, the whispering spirit who plants the idea of flight in the shah’s mind.
• Setting: Iran, from the royal court to the skies above the earth and finally the forests near the border with China, as told in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
• The turn: Kay Kavus, swollen with pride after his conquests, has eagles yoked to a golden throne and launches himself toward the heavens to see what no mortal has seen.
• The outcome: The eagles tire, the throne plummets, and Kay Kavus crashes into a forest near the Chinese frontier, where he is found alone, broken, and stripped of his farr - his divine glory - until Rostam rides out to recover him.
• The legacy: Kay Kavus’s flight became the fixed example in Persian tradition of a king whose farr deserts him through hubris - the proof that sovereignty is borrowed, not owned, and that even the throne of Iran cannot carry a fool into heaven.

Kay Kavus had already been dragged out of one disaster by Rostam. He had marched into Mazandaran against every warning, been blinded and captured by the White Div, and waited in a dungeon while the champion of Sistan fought through seven labors to free him. A wiser king would have sat quietly on his throne after that and governed. Kay Kavus was not a wiser king.

He ruled the seven kingdoms. He had subdued demons. Tribute came from every direction, and the court at his capital blazed with gold and feasting and the music of harps. It was in the middle of this prosperity - when the drums beat every morning and the nobles bent double before his throne - that the voice found him.

The Whispering of Iblis

A stranger appeared at court. He was elegant, persuasive, and no one remembered admitting him. He spoke to Kay Kavus in private, and what he said was simple: the shah had conquered the earth, but what of the sky? What of the vault of heaven, where the sun traced its course and the angels moved? No king had ever seen it. No king had ever tried. Surely the lord of the seven kingdoms was greater than all other kings, and surely this last frontier belonged to him.

The stranger was Iblis - the deceiving spirit, the voice of Ahriman working in the world. He did not announce himself. He did not need to. He spoke to the part of Kay Kavus that had never once, in a lifetime of being rescued, believed he needed rescuing.

Kay Kavus told no one what he intended. He summoned his engineers and his falconers, and he gave them instructions that made them stare.

The Throne of Eagles

They built a frame of aloe wood, light and strong, and fixed to it a golden seat with armrests and a canopy. At each of the four corners they fastened a long spear, and on the tip of each spear they lashed a leg of raw lamb. Then they brought four eagles - great birds, the largest in the royal mews, raised on meat and hunger and trained to the fist.

The eagles were chained beneath the throne, one at each corner. The meat dangled above them on the spears, just out of reach. The design was brutal in its simplicity: the eagles would beat upward toward the meat, and the throne would rise.

Kay Kavus climbed onto the seat. He gripped the armrests. The chains were released. The eagles shrieked and lunged for the lamb, wings thundering, and the throne lurched off the ground.

It rose. Past the rooftops of the palace. Past the tops of the cypress trees. Past the towers. The courtiers below shrank to specks, and the rivers of Iran became silver threads, and the mountains became the color of dust. Kay Kavus laughed. The air grew cold. He could see the curve of the earth, the deserts and the seas laid out beneath him like a carpet, and he believed - in that moment, genuinely believed - that he would reach the sphere of the angels and sit among them as their equal.

The Fall

The eagles tired. They were mortal birds. Their wings had carried them higher than any eagle had ever flown, but the meat still dangled above them, unreachable, and the air thinned, and their great muscles began to fail. First one faltered. Then another. The throne tilted. Kay Kavus gripped the armrests and shouted, but there was no one to hear him and nothing to be done.

The throne dropped. It did not glide. It fell - wood and gold and chains and king and exhausted birds - tumbling through the empty sky. The farr, the divine radiance that legitimated Iranian kingship, had left him somewhere on the way up. He was just a man in a wooden box, falling.

He crashed into a forest near the border of China, in a thicket so remote that no road led to it and no village stood within a day’s march. The eagles survived the fall - they had spread their wings at the last - but Kay Kavus lay in the wreckage of his throne, bruised and dazed, the golden canopy crumpled around him, alone in the trees.

Rostam Rides Out

Word reached Sistan. Rostam heard it with the expression of a man who has heard this kind of news before. He saddled Rakhsh, his piebald stallion, and rode east. It took many days. When he found Kay Kavus, the shah was sitting on a rock in the forest, filthy and quiet, his robes torn, his crown gone.

Rostam did not say what he thought. He was the pahlavan - the champion - and it was not his place to lecture the shah. But Ferdowsi, who wrote the story, made sure the reader understood: Rostam had now rescued this same king from his own arrogance twice, and the set of his jaw suggested he was keeping count.

He put Kay Kavus on Rakhsh and led him back to Iran.

The Shah Returns

Kay Kavus re-entered his capital on foot, walking behind Rostam’s horse. The nobles lined the road. No one cheered. The shah went to the fire temple, as custom required after a king’s farr had departed and needed to be asked back, and he prayed for forty days. He wore no crown during that time. He ate only bread and water.

The farr returned - or at least the kingdom accepted him again, which may not be the same thing. Kay Kavus sat back on his throne and ruled, and for a time he governed with something like humility. It did not last. He was Kay Kavus. Other follies lay ahead, and Rostam would ride out again, and the drums would beat, and the harps would play, and the king of Iran would find some new way to need saving.

But he never flew again. The eagles were released back into the mountains, and the golden throne was broken up, and no one at court mentioned the sky.