The Man of Gold t-2 Read online

The Goddess of the Pale Bone was still known in Tsolyanu- Harsan had heard tales of her, both from his Pe Choi tutors and from the lector priests in the Monastery of the Sapient Eye-but her worship had been stamped out ruthlessly over the centuries, driven underground, purged, and exterminated as no other sect had ever been. There was excellent reason for this.

  Much was still unclear-or perhaps incomprehensible to creatures with limited intellects, such as men, even with the burst of knowledge imparted by the white metal globe. Pavar’s Gods seemed to desire a cosmos in which matter and energy and being (for want of a better term) existed, whatever forms these might take. The Goddess of the Pale Bone-and certain others like her-sought to suck the universe empty of all being, to take its force and substance into themselves, to render all of the many Planes Beyond empty and lifeless and void in a way that could not be imagined! The Gods might be harsh, imperious, and uncaring; They did as They did; but at least They permitted other beings to co-exist, and They did grant a measure of dignity, personal worth, and the self-realisation upon which the morality of all sentient races must be built. The Pariah Gods would have none of this; they would deny these things to any Plane in which they dwelt. Once the Goddess of the Pale Bone had gained a foothold within the cosmos, none could stand against her. Indeed, none could exist at all. She made death itself ignoble, meaningless, an end that held no glory.

  Why would anyone worship such a being? For immediate, transitory gain, of course, for the splendours and pleasures she permitted in order to gain access to this Plane. Her gifts were transitory, dust and dross, nothing but tempting baubles held out to fools.

  The globe told Harsan of the battle waged by mankind-and certain allies-so long ago. All of the goals, all of the ideals, all of the aspirations he had ever had were as toys of clay beside the single, urgent, desperate need to vanquish the Goddess of the Pale Bone and to keep her from entering the universe of man ever again!

  He could not think. The white metal sphere rolled from his hands to come to a stop against the silvery-blue rod. He now knew what that was, too: the key with which the powers of the Man of Gold were unleashed.

  Images whirled through his head like leaves in a storm. Vast armies of men and nonhumans and unknown creatures toiled toward one another over landscapes that were tapestries of destruction. Enigmatic machines moved there as well. Faces of men and other beings in strange costumes glared and shouted. Leaves of books in alien languages rose before him: maps, plans, diagrammes, charts that changed even as he glimpsed them. Over all, there were the ravages of death and dying and blood and ruin. Towers toppling. Seas boiling. Dust rising into a flame-driven sky. New, raw wounds gaping in the faces of the very mountains themselves.

  Then there was the sky-tall figure of a golden being, manlike yet not a man, who brushed aside the machines and scattered the armies and reached through the wrack and desolation to seize and crush the He'esa, the minions of the Goddess who dwelt not on this Plane but in some other, awful universe and who came hither as spies and assassins, indetectable by sorcerers or any. other means until they chose to strike. The golden being reached forth also to seal off the great black cube from whence the Goddess drew her powers into this Plane, silenced it, and rendered it useless. When it had done, there were no entrances left for Her here. Judging from the Goddess’ objectives, this was a result that would be desired by all of the creatures of this Plane: all of the creatures, and indeed, all of the Gods… And there was Evil’s face, too…

  Eyif?

  Harsan struggled to free himself from these awful visions of the dead and uninvited past. He clutched his forehead, threw himself backwards against the chamber wall. Dazed, he looked up to see that it was indeed Eyil, night-blue cloak over one arm, a net bag of foodstuffs dangling from her other hand.

  The fruit and loaves of bread scattered, and a jug of wine made a plocking sound upon the flagstones, purple stains spreading out all round. She was beside him, eyes fear-wide, fingers to his brow.

  “Oh, Harsan! The drug-?”

  “No,” he got out, “not the drug. Something else-”

  She held him to her. “Not the Zu’url Then-?”

  “Nothing. Nothing to fear now…” Strange after-images still danced before him, but they were receding. “I’ll be all right.”

  His eyes went to the sphere upon the table, and her glance followed.

  “What is that, Harsan? Is it dangerous? Did it-was it-?” He dared not tell her of the Man of Gold. That knowledge was for his superiors, and for Chtik p’Qwe. “No, no danger, I–I had just made a discovery.. ”

  “A discovery? When I entered your face was like the visage of Shu’ure, the Eighth Aspect of Dlamelish! What frightened you so?”

  A knot of puzzlement formed in Harsan’s breast. He rose. Carefully, he said, “And when did you ever see Shu’ure? She is never carried in procession outside of the temples of the Emerald Goddess?”

  Was that wariness or just concern upon Eyil’s face? “Why, at the house of the Aridani lady in Tumissa, she of whom I spoke when we travelled upon the road. When we were little she used to frighten us, my clan-sisters and me, with stories. She showed us her house-gods.”

  It was possible, nay, plausible. He temporised, “I was not really afraid-more surprised by my-discovery.” What to do but plunge into a lie? “I learned something from-from the manuscript. It was too powerful, too far advanced in sorcery, for a student of my Circle.”

  The lines of worry softened around her lips. “By your expression, it was very advanced indeed, my love! Your face-no great beauty that it is-was like a temple gargoyle.”

  He bent to pick up the shattered jug, holding it carefully to save whatever wine was still inside.

  “I am only a grammarian. Sometimes a mastery of nouns and verbs does not qualify one to cope with what those words denote.” He had now regained full control. He said, “Come, great lady, speak no more of my dry and dusty work. All will wait until tomorrow. We shall eat and drink, and then, mayhap, I shall show you some other magic more appealing to our liking.”

  They lay together upon his sleeping mat, but the acts of love did not come easily to him. Every time he closed his eyes he saw again those terrible visions of ancient death.

  At length she rose, nude and supple in the lamplight, and glided over to the table. Before he could intervene she had picked up the white metal sphere. It came apart in her hands, and she made a surprised sound.

  “It breaks in two! Oh, I hope I have not ruined it, Harsan!”

  He saw from her face that she had received no message from the sphere. He made a reassuring gesture, and she put it down to examine the silvery rod. The manuscripts she did not touch, for it was plain that they had been carefully arrayed upon the table, ready for final ordering. She came back to him, knelt, and rubbed a rounded breast against his shoulder.

  “You were holding that globe when I entered, Harsan. Did your manuscripts tell you what it is?”

  Was she prying now, or just curious?

  “Ah-not entirely.” That much was true. “The powers of the ancients are not so easily unravelled.”

  She stretched around to kiss him, and desire for her rekindled. “Oh, Harsan, this thing that you have learned-it will be worth a great Labour of Reverence, will it not? They will initiate you into some high Circle! Will they give you money as well?” Delightful fingers sketched caresses along his body. “If so, then you could pay compensation to my clan for me. Lord Retlan cares little about me, and he would let me go. I have lands of my own near Tumissa, and we could go there and live.” This was the first Harsan had heard of her personal lands, but it was not unlikely. She took his face between her palms. “Oh, my love, let me help you! I long to see you out of this dingy place. Together, we-”

  There was a noise in the corridor beyond the anteroom.

  They both leaped apart. Harsan snatched up his kilt, and Eyil her street-cloak.

  “The guards,” he began.

  But it was not the guar
ds. The door opened a crack, and a hand came through, open and reaching, as though feeling for the latch.

  Then, to Harsan’s thunderstruck surprise, the hand slid down the edge of the door. The fingers clutched spasmodically and lay inert upon the flagstones.

  He flung the door wide. A figure huddled there upon the threshold. It wore neither the grey of Thumis nor the blue armour of the guards.

  A blue and gold headdress rolled at his feet.

  “Reshmu! Gutenu!” he shouted. There was something terribly wrong here.

  He shot a swift glance up the corridor but saw no one. Then he bent and turned the body over.

  He looked down into the sightless eyes of Kurrune the Messenger.

  A bit of parchment protruded from the dead hand. Automatically Harsan retrieved it, opened it. His eyes refused to focus upon the words written there. He was stunned. Who had done this thing? Who dared to violate the temple? Where were the guards?

  He threw a wild look back at Eyil. She stood against the far wall of the inner chamber, wide-eyed, her cloak crumpled about her naked shoulders.

  A weapon. He wanted a weapon. His eye fell upon the silvery metal rod. Better that than nothing. He snatched it up.

  Now he heard a step in the corridor outside. A figure lurched toward him from the shadows, and he backed away. Then came a surge of relief, for it was the older guard, dark-visaged Gutenu.

  Yet there was something amiss with him. He seemed to drag himself along the wall as though swimming against an invisible current. Wetness trickled from his hand and left a splotchy trail upon the stones. Blood? No, it was transparent. Water-?

  The man staggered forward, looking all the while at Harsan with huge, wondering eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but pale, frothy, pink fluid gushed from it instead. Then he seemed to collapse inward upon himself, as a Hmelu — bladder filled with water is pricked by children. His features deflated, wrinkled, shrivelled…

  Gutenu fell, still spewing liquid. He lay still.

  Eyil screamed and pointed. Harsan looked down at the body of Kurrune beneath his feet to see the man’s mouth slowly opening. Perhaps the Messenger still lived? Then his tongue protruded.-But no, that was no tongue, for it glistened brown and waved this way and that, questing, in the air.

  It was a great worm!

  Another appeared in the man’s eye-socket, pushing the staring eye aside as though it were a stopper in a bottle. Pustules burst forth here and there upon his limbs, and other ugly, blind heads emerged. The body seemed to dance with a macabre life of its own as one and then another flat, glutinous creature wriggled forth to lie gorged and squirming upon the flagging.

  Harsan gave a wordless cry and leaped back. His teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering, and the silver rod shook in his fingers.

  Now he saw another terrible thing. The body of Gutenu lay sprawled where it had fallen, but all of the liquid from it had run together into a viscous pool. Before his horrified eyes this seemed to coagulate, congeal, and rise up into thin, reaching tentacles of translucent, pink-dripping water.

  He slammed the door of the antechamber, smashed with the rod at a slimy brown worm which had somehow got through, rushed back into the inner room, and shut the door of that as well. The work table he dragged over as reinforcement. Eyil huddled terrified in the comer.

  He shouted, hoping that the little ducts that carried away the lamp smoke would bring his voice to those in the temple above. He knew even as he did so that this was useless. The place was as solid as a tomb.

  He heard the outer door go. Then the inner door bulged inward as something ponderous thudded against it. A sheen of water seeped beneath, and a liquescent tentacle felt along the wall. Harsan seized one of the lamps, dashed its oil down upon the floor matting, and set it ablaze with the lamp wick. The tentacle withdrew. The door bulged in again, splintering and screeching.

  The fire crackled along the doorsill, and for a moment there was silence. Eyil stared at him with fear-wide eyes. Nothing moved.

  Then the door bowed in again with an explosive crack. Harsan held the table against it with all his strength, but his feet slipped backwards as inexorably as if he pitted himself against the rising of the sun.

  The door gave at last. The ancient hingeplates screamed and then snapped off. The thick Tiu — wood panel crunched in against the table.

  “Eyil-help me! Help me hold the table!” Her strength would add but little, yet what else was there to do?

  “Give them the relics, Harsan! The relics! That is what they seek-otherwise it is our lives!”

  He flashed her a dark look. “How do you know what ‘they’ seek?”

  “There is no time for that now. Believe only that this is no sending of mine! Give them what they desire or we are dead!”

  Any reply was cut short. The top of the door leaned in, and then the whole panel was dragged backward out of its frame. The table, Harsan and Eyil behind it, was sent skidding across the room.

  They looked upon a creature of nightmare.

  It was tall and manlike, but never had it been spawned by humankind. Rolls of mottled, pasty-white skin hung about its arms in doughy folds. The head was round, hairless, marked with blotches and nodules. Two huge, saucer-like eyes glared from beneath deep ridges of waxy-pale cartilage, and lappets of tissue hung down its cheeks like curtains of oily pudding. Instead of a nose, a greyish-white beak opened and closed in the middle of the thing’s face, emitting a stench of nauseous decay.

  “A Thunru’ul" Eyil squealed. “The servants of the Master of the Undead!”

  The creature filled the doorway. Behind it was another being, smaller, manlike-

  Hele’a of Ghaton!

  Now the tendrils of the water-thing crept into the room again, past the smouldering matting on the floor. The creature Eyil had named a Thunru’u advanced silently upon creased, pudgy feet.

  There could only be seconds left. Harsan never knew whether his next actions came from within himself or whether he was commanded by the powerful imperatives of the white sphere. All he knew was that the Man of Gold should never fall into the hands of those who sent forth such emissaries! His mind was icily clear, as happens sometimes in moments of mortal peril.

  But was there time?

  He strove to concentrate, to ignore the death that lumbered across the chamber. He had the metal rod in his hand. There, beneath a scattering of manuscript pages, was one half of the white sphere-and there on the floor by the table was the other half! He scrabbled for them. The rest of the relics he could not see. These were what mattered.

  He shut his eyes, struggled for calm. And failed. A false start! He tried again-

  — And reached “around the comer!”

  The two halves of the sphere and the silvery rod flickered from sight.

  Hele’a of Ghaton must have seen, for he cursed and shouted something in an unintelligible tongue. The Thunru’u's thick, moist hands were upon Harsan, and his struggles were as nothing.

  Pain shot through his wrists as the spongy fingers closed upon them. Hele’a was at the other side of the table, Eyil writhing in his arms.

  Two more entered the room. These were human, however, hard and efficient men in brown-lacquered mail of Chlen- hide.

  “Get the relics,” Hele’a panted.

  One hurled the table aside. The other snatched up the golden hand and the map symbol, thrust handfuls of crackling manuscript pages into a cloth bag. He began to ransack the storage cabinet.

  “The rest?” Hele’a snapped at Harsan.

  “Gone-where you shall never see them!” Harsan managed. The Thunru’u began to bend him backward as a man bends a sapling.

  “Lord-! Someone comes!” the first man cried.

  “There is naught else here,” the other said. The cabinet and the chest where they had kept their notes were empty, contents strewn upon the floor. The man had found the gems which Chtik p’Qwe had extracted from the first lump of rust. Now he tore open the packet left for Hars
an by the Shen, exclaimed joyfully, and stuffed all into his belt-pouch.

  “We must leave,” Hele’a grated. “If my eyes served me aright, priestling, then I know what you have done with the other gewgaws. You shall suffer the more for that! Take them along!”

  They were dragged out into the corridor and up the stairs. Near the top the body of the other guard, Reshmu, crouched in a shrivelled mass against the wall. Water still dripped from his gaping mouth. Hele’a hurried them on into one of the branching passageways that Harsan had never entered. They passed musty boxes of temple vestments, the wreck of an ancient palanquin, tall standards from which the Kheshchal-plumes had rotted away. At last they stopped before a broken section of wall. A black tunnel mouth yawned there, and fragments of stone lay all about, half dissolved in puddles of water as though melted into sand by the washing of the sea.

  The ghastly water-creature stood there, looming almost manlike in the shadows.

  Behind them came voices, racing footsteps, wildly dancing torchlight. Harsan had a glimpse of an ebon whirlwind of arms and legs: Chtik p’Qwe, closely followed by the priest Siyun and two of the guardsmen from the upper chamber.

  Harsan cried out, and Eyil screamed too. The Pe Choi drew up short, facing the two brown-mailed soldiers. The monstrous Thunru’u did not pause but gathered Harsan up effortlessly and plunged forward into the dank, dripping tunnel. Hele’a followed with Eyil. The two armoured men scrambled into the hole as well, the last holding his short, barb-edged sword back to menace the Pe Choi.

  It profited him nothing. Chtik p’Qwe knocked the blade aside with one of his upper limbs, jerked it out of the man’s grip with his lower pair of hands, and reached in with his other upper arm to drive chitinous claws into the warrior’s face. Red splashed down over the brown armour.

  Something glinted burnished gold in Hele’a’s hand. He called, “Oh Nshe, One of Water! Flow into the stones and bring down the roof upon those who follow!”

  There was a damp, sucking sound, and the water on the floor seemed to flow backward toward the tunnel entrance as the tide ebbs from a sandy shore.