The Man of Gold Read online

  He retrieved the waxen hand from Harsan’s fingers. “Your analysis of Llyani was reported, of course, to the Temple of Eternal Knowing in Bey Sii. I imagine your good Prior Haringgashte keeps the High Council abreast of all that transpires here at the monastery, eh? Well, the bare bones of it are these: when this tomb was opened at Urmish, the High Council, only needed to poke into their records, and, ohe!—there’s a priest Harsan at our monastery in the Chakas who reads Llyani. I had business in Chene Ho, Paya Gupa, and Tumissa, and the High Council deputed me to pass by and sniff at you and your work. If you can read these ancient squiggles, then I am to ask you if you would undertake the study of the hand—and the other items as well?”

  Harsan could only nod. The successful completion of such a temple-backed project would open doors to dizzying heights within the hierarchy. For a young man with no clan and no wealth, this was better than the best!

  Kurrune hitched up his kilt. “I cannot claim to read your language-model well. It shows promise. Prior Haringgashte knows me from of old, and he’ll vouch that though I possess but a pinch of knowledge, I do own a handful of judgment.” He shot a half-humourous glance at the Prior, who remained impassive.

  The messenger dug again into his wallet and produced a scrap of brownish parchment. “I can thus complete my task here by handing this over to friend Haringgashte. It is a writ for the transfer of this priest Harsan to the Temple of Eternal Knowing in Bey Sii. You have a six-day to prepare, and then they want you there within two or three months: say, the first of Drenggar.”

  This opened one door too many and too fast. Harsan shook his head involuntarily as thoughts leaped to his lips. “My Lord Kurrune—this means leaving my service here, and—” he cast about for some objection that would make sense, “—and—but— why ME? I am not a known scholar of Llyani. What of Kurukten of Jakalla, the Arch Scholar Gruneshu, the Priestess Dlessuna of the temple of Hnalla, the Lord Buretl hiChuvren...?”

  Kurrune waved a hand, paim up to show that he did not know. “I am not privy to the doings of your High Council. It’s not my business. Gossip has it, however, that this Kurukten died some two months back. And Gruneshu is an ancient dodderer, as I can attest with my own eyes. I know nothing of the others. I was sent to look at your model and see if you’re really as clever as your kindly Prior keeps reporting.... And, as our proverb in Fasiltum has it, ‘the main course does not much care what else is for dinner.’ All I can suggest is that your youth and this,” he waved at the model, “make you more useful now than the fusty pedantry of all your other greybeards. You’d best get your feet hardened for a long journey. It’s twelve hundred Tsan or so to Bey Sii.”

  “Hold, now, Kurrune,” Prior Haringgashte interposed smoothly. “You come at the boy teeth snapping like a charging Zrne! Give us time to gather our wits, and then we shall see what reply to give the High Council. I, for one, do not wish to see Harsan leave his studies as yet. Even Zaren, Harsan’s comrade here, knows nearly as much Llyani as Harsan does. His talents have always been more practically directed, of course, but—”

  “My Lord Prior, the writ is there.” Kurrune leaned down to pick up his headdress and pinch out the lamp. Shadows leaped forth to take possession of Harsan’s model. “There is no answer other than compliance. You do have time—if you have both daring and high connections in the capital. Delay, then, and fire off such protests as you will. Or bargain Harsan for funds for a new image of Lord Thumis, or the rebuilding of the dormitory for your guests. The present one is full of biting Karai-beetles. Or as you will. The High Council is not immune to string-pulling. More than this I do not say.” He yawned. “In any case, the night demons befog my wits and whisper to me of sleep.”

  The Prior pursed his lips and bent to roll up the mat Kurrune had used. “Harsan, you may leave us now. We shall see what is to be seen.” As the younger priest turned to go, he added, “Sleep now, but do not fail to call upon Qumal tomorrow. He will supply you with five strokes of the ‘leather rosary.’ How else to repay you for failing to announce Kumme’s arrival before that ill-visaged and latrine-breathed Ferruga burst in upon my nap? As it is written, ‘the hide of a young man is like that of a Chlen-beast; peel it, and it grows back ever thicker and stronger.’ ” The Prior smiled lopsidedly and turned back to his guest.

  Chapter Four

  The two men waited in silence until the receding slip-slap of Harsan’s sandals and the click of the door closing told them that he had left. Above them the high clerestory windows were etched in the eldritch green luminescence of Gayel, Tekumel’s second moon. The torch'at the entrance, around the comer of the narrow L-shaped gallery, had long ago collapsed into dark coals within its sconce, and now only the faintest scattering of Gayel’s light dusted the ghostly upper pinnacles of Fssu’uma’s towering work and picked out veins of gleaming gold from among the twisted boughs of Vringayekmu’s masterpiece. At the far end of the chamber, behind Harsan’s model of Llyani, the wall tapestries fluttered in response to the “Silent Walker of the Night,” as the men of the Chakas named the chill night breeze from the Inner Range.

  The Prior rounded upon Kurrune and spoke with fierce intensity. “And now you can unravel me this skein, my friend! When you asked me to show the boy the map symbol I had no idea you came to take him from us! I had hoped to see him complete his work—attain the Third Circle at least, before sending him out to jig to the pipers of temple politics!”

  The other shrugged, held out a hand cupped palm up in mute deprecation. “Old friend, what can I say? I am but a talking ATiM-bird, fluttering here and there to squawk my simple words, and am gone again ...”

  The Prior snorted. “Nonsense. I know you from of old. Did we not sweat out a miserable ten years together in the temple school at Tumissa? Tell me, honestly, as Hnalla, Lord of Light, loves you: how many masters now do you serve?”

  Kurrune smiled, not in the least put out. “Currently I think it is six—three of which are here, here, and here.” He touched his stomach, his heart, and his forehead. “The remaining three are less troublesome.” He held out his blue courier’s headdress. “You know that I am a messenger for our good Lord, the sixty-first Seal Emperor of Tsolyanu. You know also that I favour our Lord of Wisdom, great Thumis. And the sixth of my masters you must guess at, for I may not reveal the name.”

  “Tell me what you know of this matter at least!”

  Kurrune sighed. “ ‘Sow seeds in the desert and reap only sand,’ as we say in Fasiltum. The High Council of the temple does not confide in such as I. But this, good Haringgashte, may be the shoot from which the tree sprouts: not only is Harsan young, not only does he unravel Llyani as easily as a maiden weaves garlands for her lovers, but is it not also true that he speaks the tongue of the insects—the Pe Choi?”

  “Ohe, I had guessed as much.” The Prior licked thin lips. “The boy is clanless, brought to us by the Pe Choi from the inner valleys. For Thumis knows what reason they had kept him instead of handing him over to the nearest human settlement when they found him abandoned in the forest. None knew his parents, nor had we any record of him. When he came to us, he spoke only Pe Choi, a language no human has ever learned before. He whistled, he hooted, he trilled, he snapped his fingers and clapped his hands—and the insects understood him. He lacked the organs needed to make all of their strange sounds, yet he had developed substitutes. It was three summers before he could speak freely with the other children here in the monastery. Even now there are times when he strikes me as odd: a difference of idiom, a sense of attitude, who can say?”

  The messenger glanced over to Harsan’s model. “You tell me that he is the only human ever to learn the tongue of the Pe Choi. Why did he not make it the subject of his Labour of Reverence? There are many who know Llyani.”

  “We had thought the same,” the Prior replied, “but he said that there are no symbols—in glass, metal, or any other substance—for the sounds of the insects’ speech. More, he denies that our symbologies can truly represe
nt their conceptual framework. Who knows, he may be right ...”

  “Perhaps he would keep his knowledge to himself? Later, when he grows more skilled, he may submit it as a Labour of Reverence for admission to a higher Circle?”

  The Prior made a sour face. “Another unanswerable riddle. In any case, Llyani has status, prestige as a ‘high tongue’ of the ancients. It is also likely that the other acolytes in our school had much to do with his choice—teased him about his jungle origins, his lack of clan, lineage, and parentage—and made him miserable enough to select the most noble, most difficult, and most esoteric of all of the ancient languages.”

  “La, friend Haringgashte, you now answer your own question.

  Why send for this one lowly novice, as fresh as a Dlel-fruit from the tree? Here is a reason as good as any: a clever young fellow, talent visible within him as light within a lamp, a love of picking apart your ancient grammatical puzzles, a background of alien strangeness—something that provides him with a new perspective upon his studies. Why should the High Council not whistle him up when a bagful of old bones and trinkets comes to light?” He tapped his wallet.

  “Because it is not enough! If there is one lesson I’ve learned in fifty years in the priesthood, it’s to follow a skein until I get back to the first knot. When Harsan spoke of Gruneshu and the others, his bolt did not miss its mark. Other scholars of Llyani exist, greater ones by far. Every temple of the twenty deities has some duffer or other who can riddle the language.” He scraped a hand across his small, shaven chin. “—And these relics have naught to do with the Pe Choi. There’s no hint of Pe Choi manufacture in the two you showed me. We lack a theorem sufficient to explain the data, as our old teacher Chayanu used to tell us in his logic lectures. The boy is clanless—not a good sign, for it means that he is expendable, and none to ask after him. He is naive, unlettered in the intrigues of the temple, vulnerable as a fish on the shore ...”

  Kurrune lowered his eyes. “Old friend, I really speak words of wind. I know nothing of this. About other matters I could fill you as a river fills a bucket. But not this. I swear it to you.” His tone softened. “My sources do bring me a drop here, a driblet there, and from all of these trickles I can often make a pond. They say of me that all gossip flows to Kurrune the Messenger, as a river enters the sea. Were you to ask, I could tell you how the Royalist Party fiddles and the priesthoods dance; how the Military Party sings sweetly in our Emperor’s ear of conquests in Yan Kor and the re-establishment of the halcyon days of the Bednalljan kings; how the Imperialist Party in Avanthar sulks and waits to pounce upon posts closer to the Petal Throne; how the royal Prince Eselne diddles and dallies with Misenla, High Priestess of Hrihayal in Bey Sii; how his brothers pout and glower, and the youngest, Dhich’une, yearns to call up all the undead demons of accursed Sarku and give the land over to the Mysteries of the Worm. I could whisper of certain heirs to the throne who are as yet unrevealed, kept secret by the Emperor and his Omnipotent Azure Legion until the time is ripe for them to be brought forth ... All of these things I can tell and more; yet of this present instance I have less knowledge than an eel-fisher in the swamps of Tsehelnu.”

  The Prior fixed Kurrune with a steady eye. “So you know not what dance is being danced, or which piper plays the tune? I would not have Harsan hurt, Kurrune. I know that you are not accountable for this transfer to the capital, nor can I exact the compensation of Shamtla blood-money if he is brought low through some scheming. Yet I do beg of you, as we both love the Lord of Wisdom, to keep ear clapped to earth and eye to door-crack, as I know you do in any case, and warn the lad of ill portents. This much I ask of you out of old friendship.”

  “You have my oath on it.” Kurrune solemnly stretched forth his right palm, and Haringgashte pressed his own to it. Together the two men moved down the aisle between the looming, black-shadowed shapes.

  Behind them a tapestry rustled. It might have been the “Silent Walker of the Night.”

  Chapter Five

  The Great Council of the Temples had been summoned to meet in the Palace of the Priesthoods of the Realm at one hour after sunrise. As usual, it began most tardily. The square-pillared portico at the eastern end of the chamber had first let in the cool, ruddy light of dawn to finger the blue and gold traceries of the ceiling. Now the hot, pale glare of midday pressed through the gauze curtains lowered by the attendants, and sunlight lay upon the flags nearest the columns like puddles of molten brass. The parched odour of summer hung upon the air, underlaid by the darker effluvia of the Missuma River. Here, high above Bey Sii, the breeze brought the clean smells of ripening crops from beyond Patyel’s Walls, and these mingled with the fragrances of woodsmoke, charcoal, cooking spices, incense, the vast markets, and the less-pleasing redolences of sewers and open gutters and crowded humanity, all baking together under the midsummer sun.

  Humidity streamed up from below, too, where the jumbled wharves on the western bank of the river extended out through the yellow mudflats like the fingers of a drowning man through quicksand. Legions of slaves toiled there upon their dredges, endlessly clearing the channels for the galleys and the many-sailed ships that brought trade—and life itself—down from Avanthar in the north and up from Jakalla and the great ocean far to the south. Even through the gauzy drapes the heat shimmered from the blue slate roofs of the city, from the high spires of the temples, each set upon its pyramid above the stews below, from the long colonnades and the offices of the Imperial bureaucracies, from the domes and cupolas of the mansions of the nobles and the high clans, and from the distant walls and turrets of the governor’s palace, set like a gem in a ring within its preciously cool trees and parks, outside the city to the north.

  Lord Durugen hiNashomai, the High Adept of the Temple of Thumis in Bey Sii, was already hot. The rustling robes of grey Giidru-cloth were stifling enough, but the ceremonial headdress of lacquered Chlen-hide and gold slowly drove a spike of dull pain down through his forehead. The Gods must love suffering to see their devotees tortured so! But, then, why involve the Gods? Man was marvellously expert at creating pain for himself.

  The stiff brocade of the coif of his headdress prevented him from turning his head unless he twisted his entire torso. He did so, hoping that his colleagues in the High Council were all present and ready for the business that had summoned them here. The sooner done, the sooner back within the cool depths of the Temple of Eternal Knowing. The sooner a cup of dewy, chilled Chumetl. The sooner a nap.

  Along the northern wall of the chamber stood five daises: stepped pyramids blazoned with the colours and insignia of the Tlomitlanyal, the Five Lords of Stability. There was the white of Hnalla, the grey of his own good Lord Thumis, the scarlet and gold of the war-god Karakan, the sky-blue of the goddess Avanthe, and the yellow of Belkhanu. Across the mosaic floor five identical daises lined the southern wall. These bore the blazons of the Tlokiriqaluyal, the Five Lords of Change, the counterparts of the Tlomitlanyal: the deep purple of Hrii’u, the flame-orange of Vimuhla, the black of Ksarul, the earth-brown of Sarku, and the emerald green of Lady Dlamelish. The High Adept of the Temple of Lord Ksarul, directly opposite Lord Durugen, had taken off his ritual silver mask in the heat. They nodded to one another with exaggerated courtesy. La, two rival suitors for the same maiden, Lord Durugen thought wryly.

  He shifted to look down at the lower daises of the Hlimekluyal, the “Cohorts,” lesser deities who each served one of the Great Gods. Directly below Lord Durugen the sunlight made a bronze helmet of the bald pate of Elkhome hiBriyenu, the High Priest of Thumis’ Cohort, Lord Ketengku. The priests and scribes of Ketengku’s dais wore grey and white. Those of the other Cohorts of the Lords of Stability similarly wore white bordered with the colour of the deity their master served—all except for Dra the Uncaring, Cohort of Lord Hnalla, whose dais was decked in an indifferent white and tan. The five Cohorts of the Lords of Change were blazoned similarly in purple joined with the colour of their particular divine Master or Mistress. />
  In the deeper shadows at the far western end of the hall a single dais rose above all the rest. This was draped with the royal blue and gold of the Second Imperium, the dynasty ruled by Hirkane hiTlakotani, the Sixty-First Emperor of Tsolyanu. A golden disc, the replica of the Seal of the Imperium, hung like a miniature golden sun near the ceiling there. Today the Imperium would be represented by Lord Muresh hiQolyelmu, Prefect of the Omnipotent Azure Legion in Bey Sii. Lord Durugen was relieved to see that this worthy was already in place. Trust that the special servitors of the Emperor were never late!

  A chamberlain sat on the topmost step of the Imperial dais, just below Lord Muresh. His duty was to speak for his superior, for Lord Muresh, like all members of the higher Circles of the Omnipotent Azure Legion, was a deaf-mute, made so in infancy in order that he might better devote himself to his Emperor—and speak no secrets of the Golden Tower at Avanthar. Thus had been the custom since the founding of the Empire some 2,358 years ago.

  Lord Muresh spoke with his chamberlain through an intricate code of finger gestures. The chamberlain turned back to the room and struck two clappers of wood together. Lord Durugen sighed and rubbed his long, ascetic fingers. Now, at the age of sixty-two years, his extremities sometimes remained cold even when the summer heat danced upon the land like the nimbus of fire above an alchemist’s crucible. The helmet was a crown of stones upon his skull.

  The susurrus of conversation died away. The scribes and functionaries on the lower daises ceased their gossip. Attendants and lesser priests moved silken-footed along the central aisle between the two rows of daises, down the narrow passages between them, and around to the back of the chamber where knots of lesser folk stood to listen and to ogle the mighty. Over all, high up under the inlaid roof beams, hung the hum of the ever-present Chri-flies.