The Man of Gold t-2 Page 30

  Itk t’Sa raised her two upper arms in a shrug. Her segmented tail switched slowly from side to side. “This human was raised amongst us. He speaks our tongue. He knows us as no other of his kind can know us. I-sense-that he feels for us. He may even share something of the Ntk-dqekt, ‘the Sorrow of Remembering,’ an emotion which only we Pe Choi know-and suffer- from the moment of our birth.” She folded her four hands in front of her. “This man Harsan may be the best salve for our ills: one who at least reaches out to know the heart of another. Some of the distance he has travelled, but much remains. We would preserve him to complete his journeying.”

  The Heheganu turned his cup over and rose. “Then I shall come again for you four Kiren from now. The man shall see from hiding. He shall look upon the one who seeks him. Then he may choose a branch from the tree of the future.”

  He drew dignity around his lumpy shoulders as though it were a cloak of cloth-of-gold and Kheshchal-plumes. Harsan had not imagined that one of this race could appear so noble.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The shop of Simanuya the Glassblower, of the Clan of the Black Hand, lay just within the precincts of the Splendid Paradise. A ragged hole in the flank of what had once been part of the city wall in times long past, it now sported a striped awning, a raised floor of oiled and sanded wood, shelves, and mats of woven Firya-cloth for Simanuya’s clientele. Those who came here were quite respectable: travellers from other parts of Tsolyanu, sightseers and connoisseurs, nobles and clansfolk from New Town, and others who required the most elegant bottles and ewers and goblets for their Tsuhoridu. Simanuya had no real need to dwell here upon the outskirts of squalor, but the slight thrill of possible peril-really no danger at all-in the age-worn alleyways sent delightful shivers down the spines of many a jaded noble lady and gave an opportunity to their brave escorts to lay hand upon sword hilt and pretend to vigilance and knowledgeable courage.

  Simanuya was human. He held clan membership to prove it. Too strong a light would reveal a greyish cast of skin, however, and there were rugose patches upon his body that he took pains to conceal beneath a sleeveless vest of Vringalu- leather. A kilt of thick fabric, dyed with the black and yellow colours of his clan, and long strips of Chlen — hide wrapped around his arms from elbow to wrist protected him from broken glass, the chief hazard of his trade. He enjoyed the atmosphere of danger that prevailed within the Splendid Paradise, however, and this he enhanced by affecting a curious skullcap of leather that covered his missing eye, lost years ago to a sliver of molten glass. The hideous sight he presented probably added at least a silver Hlash or two to each sale.

  A tiny, winding stair led up within the wall at the rear of the shop and debouched into a storeroom. Harsan, Tlayesha, and Itk t’Sa negotiated their way past racks of ruby, emerald, and amber glassware, straw-smelling baskets, mounds of Hma- wool batting for packing, and bundles of dusty parchment- Simanuya’s correspondence and records, a deliberate nightmare for any tax gatherer, no doubt. Ormudzo clambered up after them and signed to two younger Heheganu who awaited them there.

  “Spells?” Itk t’Sa murmured.

  “None from without that we can detect,” Ormudzo wheezed. “Morkudz here has laid a damper spell upon all sorcery within this area. This will be detected, of course, but it is commonly done by merchants who would avoid eavesdroppers, and we should be long gone before anyone investigates.”

  Harsan held up his rush-candle. In the centre of the floor a pit half a man-length square opened into blackness below. He skirted the rim of this warily, Tlayesha clinging to his arm.

  “An easy way to dispose of broken merchandise,” Ormudzo whispered. “It goes all the way down to the waters of our Crystal River. What cannot be used-or hidden-goes there.”

  A battered wooden door opened from the shop, and Itk t’Sa drew back before Simanuya’s fearsome visage. Ruddy light, an odour of incense, the sweet-sour fragrance of Tsuhoridu, and the chatter of voices poured in after him.

  Over his shoulder, the glassblower grumbled, “A moment, noble sirs, and I shall find the very decanter you seek.” He made a complicated sign with his fingers to Ormudzo and pointed to the front wall of the chamber.

  The Heheganu drew Harsan up behind him and pushed aside a flap of thick, brown matting. Harsan found himself looking out into the shop through a smoke-yellow, distorted peephole, probably a nicely inconspicuous glass platter displayed upon a rack on the other side.

  What he saw told him nothing at all.

  There were three separate parties in the shop. Two plump clanswomen in longish northern cloaks and coifs of blue and green examined bowls of many-faCeted cut glass, while an escort, a lumpish youth in the livery of the same unknown clan looked on. Farther away, a balding, dignified gentleman in a squarish mantle and a flat hat that instantly identified him as a senior Mu’ugalavyani merchant chatted amiably with Simanuya’s shop-boy. Jingling golden flame symbols at his throat indicated one of the Vimuhla-worshipping clans of the war west, possibly that of the Red Sun or of the Red Sword.

  The third party was a middle-aged, genteel-appearing Livyani nobleman. Black and red tattooes covered his pointed features from his artfully curled and pomaded hair down to his collar of enameled plaques. His arms and legs, what Harsan could see of them beneath the dags and twists of his fashionably elaborate tunic and kilt, were similarly covered with tattooed scrolls, glyphs, and arabesques. With him stood a tall,'broad-shoulderd, young woman who wore the brief over-tunic, short skirt, and leather leggings of a N’liiss mercenary. The hilt of a sword protruded from beneath her arm. A traveller from abroad, it seemed, seeking curios and a whiff of adventure, accompanied by a hired bodyguard. A bureaucrat attached to the suits of some Livyani embassy or mission?

  Puzzled, Harsan pulled back so that Tlayesha and the Pe Choi could see as well. The Heheganu held up three stubby fingers and touched the third with his other hand: the group farthest to the right. The Livyani, then.

  What could this mean? The fellow could be an agent of almost anybody, Harsan knew, but somehow he sensed that the man was no emissary of Prince Dhich’une. If the Worm Prince had sent him, then why had he not used his power to compel the Heheganu before, when Jayargo had come here with Eyil?

  Could the man be from the Temple of Thumis? The Omnipotent Azure Legion? The Yan Koryani? Why use a Livyani anyway-a foreigner from a nation that was not involved in the matter at all, as far as he was aware? And what could possibly bring the Heheganu to surrender him to this stranger when they had not done so previously to anyone else?

  Harsan looked a question at Tlayesha and Itk t’Sa, but both made silent gestures of negation and perplexity. Ormudzo stood motionless, as did his two comrades.

  A decision had to be made.

  He made it. A nod of the head, and it was done. Whatever his Skein of Destiny was to be, the thread was now in the hand of the Weaver.

  Ormudzo signalled again to the glassblower, who took down a fat, saffron-hued decanter from a rack and departed. His voice came to them plainly through the half-open door. “Sire, I have others of this same type in various patterns and colours. Should you wish to step within..?”

  The Livyani entered. Sharp, black eyes danced over Harsan and the others from above a complex, bird-like glyph that stretched from the man’s right ear over his nose to dangle red and black plumage down his left cheek to his chin and beyond into the creases of his throat. His left eye was encircled by red curleques, while tiny black symbols swept away from the other in wave-like undulations back to the line of his black and silver-shot hair. These were the Aomuz of a highborn noble.

  “This one will do,” the Livyani said in the sibilant, blurred accents of Tsamra. At random he picked a ewer from a rack. His gaze never left Harsan’s.

  One of the Heheganu signed toward the shadowed entrance to the staircase at the back of the room. Ormudzo nodded, and Harsan and the others began to move back toward it.

  They never arrived.

  Glass chimed and
shattered out in the shop. Harsan heard a gasp and a muffled feminine cry; then the little storeroom erupted into light and motion. One of the lamps from without came crashing into the chamber to spurt burning oil over Sim^riuya’s racks.

  A figure followed: one of the middle-aged clanswomen, but now transformed. The clan robes were cast aside to reveal a muscled torso, undeniably male, and a short-muzzled object that Harsan could not for a moment identify. The thing twanged, and a slender white splinter stood out suddenly from the Livyani’s breast. The nobleman fell back and plucked the dart out of what Harsan now saw to be a thickish pectoral-a small but efficient breastplate.

  Tlayesha was at the stair. She whirled and shouted, “Betrayed, Harsan! The Heheganu are gone, and the way is closed!”

  Itk t’Sa was somewhere behind one of the racks where Harsan could not see her. More glass shattered.

  The heavy-set escort, plump and foppish no longer, appeared now at the door. Harsan found himself holding a long, blue bottle carved in the shape of a leaping fish. The neck of this vessel disappeared in a shower of splinters against the wall, and then the escort took the rest of the jagged cylinder directly across the eyes. Red exploded to drench the sapphire glass.

  The N’liiss warrior woman, weaponless now, almost received the next stroke, but the Livyani cried something in his own tongue, and her arm came up in time to knock Harsan’s impromptu sword aside. Her rough blue over-tunic was slashed, and her left shoulder was drenched in blood. Harsan had no time to inquire whose it was.

  “More come,” she gasped.

  Where was the false clanswoman, the one with the little crossbow? A glance told him that she-he-now faced Tlayesha. Some other weapon was in his hand, a claw-like dagger. with three curved blades. For a moment the fellow feinted and then made to strike. Harsan saw the blow coming and knew that Tlayesha had no skill to dodge it. He shouted, but his words were drowned out by a clashing, shattering roar. The foeman disappeared under a glittering cascade of fine glass bottles. Itk t’Sa’s bone-white face, jaws agape in a ferocious grimace, appeared behind the fallen rack.

  Tlayesha stooped, and when she rose Harsan saw that her iron physician’s needle dripped red in her hand.

  The room was chaos: noise, shouting, the crackle of flames, moans from the man buried under the terrible shards and slivers of broken glass. Feet pounded toward the shop from without, followed by yells, the clatter of Chlen — hide armour, a glint of red copper and the swirl of brown military tunics. No city guards these, but troops of one of the Worm Prince’s legions!

  They were trapped.

  Simanuya appeared at the door, leaped nimbly over the prostrate escort, who lay clutching his face, and jerked a thumb at Harsan, the nearest. Together with the N’luss warrior woman, they wrestled the body of the blinded bodyguard aside and forced the door shut. The glassblower dropped a thick bar of the black Tiu — wood into its slot and leaned against the door panting. Bodies thumped against it from without.

  Simanuya pointed. “Down!” he cried, “Down into the pit! The river is deep enough-torches, there, on a ledge beside the water!”

  The Livyani was the first to react. He made no protest but took one quick, appraising look, then leaped feet first into the hole. Harsan seized Tlayesha’s arm, yelled encouragement, and half pushed her after the man. The big N’luss girl, teeth bared in a grimace and clutching her wounded shoulder, went next. From somewhere under the wreckage of broken glass one of the younger Heheganu appeared and scuttled over to jump as well. Harsan had not known the creature was still in the room.

  Harsan motioned to Itk t’Sa and then stopped, appalled. The Pe Choi stood with all four arms limp at her sides, a stance he instantly recognised as utter defeat. Of course! She could not swim! Her chitinous exoskeleton contained little room for extra air, and the lung spiracles in her lower abdomen would fill and drown her in no more than hip-high water!

  “Go on, Harsan,” she hissed. “This is my death-place. I shall defy them as long as I can!” She snapped the end off a glass rod, making it into a lethal javelin, the favoured weapon of her people.

  “Jump! Jump!” The glassblower howled in his ear. Thunderous banging at the door gave urgency to his-words.

  “Better drown than guest with worms!” Harsan muttered. He reached out a hand to Itk t’Sa as though to touch hers in farewell. Instead, he seized her small upper limb and jerked her off balance! She teetered, eyes wide with terror, all four arms flailing, and then plunged over the edge into the pit. A wailing hiss came up, followed by a splash. Shouts echoed below.

  If only the promised ledge were handy! If only Tlayesha were safe and had the presence of mind to fish the Pe Choi out before she sank…!

  “Who will pay me for this ruin?” Simanuya moaned.

  “Ask it from Ormudzo!” Harsan grated. “Either jump with us or explain your folly to Lord Sarku’s soldiers!” He did not wait to see whether the glassblower took his advice; a final look around, and then he drew breath and plunged into the black abyss.

  Chapter Thirty

  Harsan spewed water upon cold, wet stones in total darkness. His feet had not touched bottom when he struck the river, but they had indeed passed through layers of soft, pulpy substances, and he felt nausea rising in his throat. At least the stream was deep enough to prevent him from striking any loads of broken bottles Simanuya might have previously dumped down the hole!

  A hand touched his thigh. Hoping that it was Tlayesha, he reached down to grasp it. The fingers were long and slender but heavily calloused. He sensed that the hand was that of a woman: the N’luss.

  “It is I, Harsan,” he managed. “The man your master came to meet. Can you make a light?”

  There was no answer, but a whisper of movement and the scratch of steel against flint told him that she had understood. Tiny sparks danced against the impenetrable mantle of darkness.

  Farther away, a ball of luminescence grew. It limned a squat, crouching figure. The Heheganu! The creature had enough sorcery, then, to be able to create light.

  From the comer of his eye he caught the gleam of a blade emerging from a sheath in the thigh-high leather legging the N’luss woman wore. “Don’t kill him!” Harsan exclaimed. “At least not until we have learned all we can!”

  “Harsan?” That was Tlayesha, her voice echoing with distance. It came from beyond the lip of the ledge above the black waters to his right. “Where are you? We-the Livyani and I-have Itk t’Sa here. She lives-”

  They must be on a ledge similar to their own but on the other side of the river. Harsan took a breath and glanced around. The Heheganu’s light revealed a long tunnel, the roof low and arched, through which the Crystal River flowed silently out to the swamps beyond Purdimal. There was a crumbling ledge no wider than a man-height on Harsan’s side, and pools of stagnant water filled gaps and fissures in the ancient stones. He could not see Tlayesha in the spell’s glow, but she could assuredly see him.

  The N’luss girl was on her feet, stooping beneath the rough blocks of the ceiling. A long, dark slash ran down her back from her left shoulder to the broad Chlen — hide cincture that wound about her waist below her heavy breasts. She had cast aside her bloodied tunic and sopping skirt and now stood mostly nude, feet wide apart before him, her knife menacing the Heheganu.

  Motion behind them brought the girl around, weapon ready in fighting stance. The colourless radiance turned Simanuya’s leather skullcap into a ghastly mask. So, the glassblower had taken his counsel and jumped after all!

  “Ohe, hold your dagger, woman!” The merchant spat out something unpleasant and edged forward, hands open and empty.

  “The torches?” The Livyani’s lighter, foreign voice came from across the Crystal River.

  “There, on your side, by the buttress,” Simanuya called back. To Harsan he said, “We must swim to them-or they to us. Better the first, since we-ah, certain comrades and I-have explored that side for some way. A few hundred paces and we come to a stair that leads back
up to the dwellings of the Heheganu”

  “I will not use it,” Harsan retorted. “One betrayal is enough.”

  The Heheganu spoke for the first time. “No betrayal at all, human. Ormudzo led only the foreigner-the Livyani-to you. The assassins were Yan Koryani, I think, and the soldiers, too, were not our doing. What transpired was not our affair.”

  “Let me peel the face from his ugly skull,” the N’luss girl suggested pleasantly. Her voice was rough and deep, the accent harsh and yet purring.

  “Do as you would with me. Yet know that only I can bring you forth from this place. The glassblower there has only knowledge sufficient to lead you back into Old Town. If your foes have raised a hue and cry, our people will take no action. They will rearrange the mat walls and let you wander until you are taken by your enemies. The Heheganu will want no part of this.”

  “We must decide, then, and act together.” The thought of diving once again into the mute, secretive waters of the Crystal River nauseated him. Yet Itk t’Sa might not survive a second wetting.

  “This bank of the tunnel-” the Heheganu was saying. “I have not seen them, but my elders have told me of other exits-some beyond the city walls-”

  Simanuya interrupted. “I have heard the tales. Mayhap we can get out into New Town, or outside Purdimal entirely. Then you can go your way, and I can return to see what remains of my shop! Oh, I shall demand Shamtla indeed! Come, young man, tell your comrades to come over to us. The torches are tied in a bundle with a length of cord. If your woman cannot swim she can hang onto them and kick with her feet.”

  ‘‘It is the Pe Choi who cannot live in water. She will prefer the mercies of the Heheganu-and all of Sarku’s legions-to another soaking.”