The Man of Gold t-2 Read online

  One evening, six days out of Katalal and two days before they were to reach the town of Hauma, they stopped beneath one of the watch towers. This one had a small garrison of soldiers. A broad, low, stone platform had been built out from the lowest level of the roadway, and half a dozen parties of merchants, townsmen, and other travellers were encamped upon it. There were several rude stalls where provisions and fuel might be had, a well of good water, and a gaggle of tents filled with singers, dancers, jugglers, and harlots. The caravan-master had his slaves pitch his dun-coloured tent near the wall on the platform.

  The mood was almost that of a village fair, and Mnesun purchased a bundle of Khaish, long white tubers as sweet as honey. Sa’araz then outdid him by obtaining three Jakkohl, small edible beasts indigenous to these plains and devilishly hard to catch. Hele’a of Ghaton contributed a clay jug of Ngalu wine, and the Lady Eyil added another. The Shen bought a basket of sugary blue Dlel- fruit, which he himself did not fancy but which he knew would please his human comrades. Bejjeksa and the Mu’ugalavyani brothers walked half a Tsan to the nearest village and returned with fresh-baked loaves of coppery-red bread of Dwa-flour. Harsan alone had no money to spare, but he contributed his forest-learned skills by skinning and dressing the Jakkohl, and no one grumbled.

  The feast in Mnesun’s tent was a pleasant success. Afterwards the squat trader would have sent for singers, dancers, and even for harlots to cheer the slaves. All of the entertainers had been reserved already by others, however.

  The evening seemed yet incomplete. The Mu’ugalavyani trilled a bright roundelay on his flute, and his brother sang the words in their own staccato language. Then, to the surprise of all, the Lady Eyil sent Tsatla to rummage through her baggage and bring a Sra’ur, a potbellied little instrument with six strings. She slipped silver plectra over nimble fingertips and proceeded to draw forth a Tumissan air. After a moment the flute-player joined in, and she sang the lyric in her low, throaty voice. Harsan would gladly have exchanged his life for the Isles of the Excellent Dead on the spot, had only mighty Belkhanu promised him an aeon or two more of the Lady Eyil and her singing.

  She finished, and all snapped their fingers in applause in the Tsolyani fashion. The Shen, whose forelimbs ended in scaled three-fingered claws, contented himself with hissing like a blazing iron plunged into water.

  Harsan’s pleasure was interrupted by the merchant Sa’araz, who had seated himself nearby on a bale of cloth. “Worthy priest,” he began, “during our days together you have enlightened us with wisdom and with tales of your Tsolyani gods. Yet never have we heard what you will do when we reach the capital.”

  Harsan hesitated. He had wondered when Prior Haringgashte had forbidden him to speak of the Llyani artifacts or of his mission in Bey Sii. Not even the Lady Eyil had been told. Now he replied, “I go to serve as Thumis wills.”

  Sa’araz was not satisfied. “I have friends in the Temple of Eternal Knowing and may assist you there. You, on the other hand, can introduce me to your colleagues and thus aid me. ‘Steel and flint make fire together.’ ”

  “I know little yet of my duties in Bey Sii.” That was true enough. “I do whatever the Weaver has woven into my Skein of Destiny. ‘A rock rolls downhill until it stops.’ ” He finished, answering Sa’araz’ proverb with one from the Chakas.

  “Perhaps Harsan goes to make water in the well of wisdom,” inteijected Bejjeksa in his gruff, guttural accent. He looked flustered when the group burst into laughter. “Is it not the idiom? Is it not to be said thus?”

  “Perhaps, Oh learned savant of Salarvya, someone should make water in your ear and thus inject wisdom into it!” This from Mnesun.

  “If someone would proffer me one more sip of wine,” Harsan laughed, “I would let the sleep-demons have my soul for the night.”

  The conversation turned back to the interminable talk of wares, brokers, and profits. Harsan wandered outside. He hoped that the Lady Eyil would follow, but she sat now on the other side of the fire, all ruddy with its light, eyes sparkling as she related something to Mnesun.

  He picked his way through the maze of tents, bundles, chests, and sleeping bodies towards the parapet. From inside a tent a woman giggled, and a man’s voice guffawed in return. Music shrilled from one of the encampments, and there came the rhythmic clashing of wrist and ankle bells. Slaves sat about a fire under the bored watch of a caravan guard. Some played at Den-den, moving the rough-cut wooden pieces from square to square of a board scratched in charcoal upon the stones. Others slept.

  He reached the coping at last, drew a breath of smoke-tinged air, and gazed down into the velvet darkness beyond the platform. A rushlight betrayed the presence of peasant huts at the base of the access ramp. Neither moon was up as yet, and the guard tower loomed black upon black, orange light sketching a window upon its massive flanks. From below a baby cried, and a woman’s tired voice sounded a plaintive reply.

  “Worthy priest…”

  Harsan started and turned to see the thin, bowlegged form of Hele’a of Ghaton behind him.

  “Good priest, I mean no fear to you.” The oddly accented syllables whispered forth in a breathy rush. “What you do is of peril, and there are those who are opposed. Do you know this?”

  Harsan stared. Hele’a was silhouetted against the campfires, and his features could not be seen. “What-?”

  “I am one sent. Be assured.”

  “What is this you tell me?” Harsan was still numb with surprise.

  “I perceive… feelings. I am-how is it spoken? — a sensitive. I lack the power to see minds, as some priests and scholars do, yet I can see feelings. When you spoke just now, I sensed hatred, worthy priest.”

  “From-from whom?”

  “In a group I cannot tell. My ability is not directional. But I know that hatred was there.” The shadowed head seemed to twist this way and that.

  “Of what use this warning, then, if you cannot see where the danger lies?”

  “The one who hates guards his mind. Only if you were to speak to each in turn, alone, might the enmity leak past the barriers and be plain to me.”

  A thrill of apprehension crept along Harsan’s limbs. Prior Haringgashte had never hinted that this mission could involve danger. For a moment he wondered if Hele’a’s warning had to do with the Lady Eyil: jealousy from Sa’araz or the Mu’ugalavyani. Moreover, who was this Hele’a anyway? A madman? One who would extract nonexistent money from him?

  Hele’a continued. “I feel your doubts. Yet I must protect you if I can. This hatred has naught to do with the girl. It is cold and without pity, a dagger in its sheath, hidden from the eye. Two days remain before we reach Hauma, and my feelings tell me that it will leap forth before then.”

  “I have seen nothing to make me think your words are true. But if so, I should go at once to the captain of the tower, sleep there this night, and continue on alone tomorrow.” He knew not whether he was serious or was simply humouring the man. But in his stomach a cold ball grew ever larger.

  “Not so. Again, it is only my… feeling. But I sense that this is not the path of safety.” Dry, skeletal fingers brushed his arm, and something hard, round, and cold was pressed into his palm. “What I give you now will protect you. Do you know what an ‘Eye’ is?”

  “I do. They are devices made by the ancient sages, long before Llyan of Tsamra ruled, and before the Time of Darkness which preceded him. I have seen an ‘Eye of Raging Power,’ as my tutor named it, in the vaults of our monastery. He. told me that its magic was gone, however-”

  “Good, then. I must not tarry, for some may watch. What I give you now is the ‘Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes.’ Can you feel it-carefully now-the little stud on the back?”

  Harsan fumbled the device in his fingers. It was of the size and shape of a river pebble-or of a human eye-a shallow, circular depression on one side, a tiny squarish protuberance on the other. “I feel it.”

  “If you are endangered, face the iris-the circle-towards
yourself and depress the square projection. No weapon can then strike you. The power does not last long, however. Do you comprehend?’ ’

  “Yes, but-what does it do precisely? I-”

  “We cannot speak further. It will keep you safe from any weapons not charged with enchantments of their own. Now I go, priest Harsan.”

  Another figure was picking its way past the huddles of sleeping slaves. A foot grated against a chest of goods, and there was a muffled curse in some foreign tongue. Harsan turned back to Hele’a, but the Ghatoni had gone.

  “Good evening to you, priest Harsan.” It was one of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers, the flute-player. “A night without moons is of good omen, eh?”

  Harsan found himself sidling away along the parapet, the ‘Eye’ clutched tightly in his fist.

  “Is there aught amiss? The Lady Eyil asks after you.” Was there sardonic malice in the man’s tone?

  “I thank you for the message. I have just completed my evening devotions and must bid you goodnight.” Harsan’s eye had picked out an unobstructed path back to the comparative security of their campfire. The flute-player was left to stand gazing perplexedly after him.

  The Lady Eyil teased him about his preoccupation, complained that the wine must have washed away his lovemaking, pouted, and ended sleeping with her back to him. All that night Harsan lay with the ‘Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes’ but a finger’s breadth away, hidden under a cushion of her litter. He slept little and was relieved when he heard Mnesun barking at his recalcitrant slaves to arise and begin the new day’s journey.

  No attack came that day, or the next. Hele’a did not approach Harsan again, nor, for that matter, did anyone else in the party.

  They were only a Tsan or so from the town of Hauma when it happened.

  It was blazing midday, and a haze of dust hung hot and stifling over the land. Mnesun had chosen to press on, however, saying that the arcaded caravanserai at Hauma offered more relief than an awning spread by the side of the baking Sakbe road.

  Harsan had stopped to pick at a blister on his foot. A slave bearing one of Mnesun’s tall baskets chanced to pass close to him, and before Harsan could react, twisted so as to dump his burden of red crystal ewers over onto the surprised priest.

  As Harsan fell the man plucked a slender dagger from his breechclout and slashed at him. Taken unawares, Harsan could only sprawl backward into the welter of broken glassware. Biting streaks of pain told him that the jagged shards were taking their toll upon his back. The slave, a burly youth with the tattooes of the Mu’ugalavyani lowlands livid upon his cheeks, hurled himself upon Harsan again.

  There was no time to dig the ‘Eye’ from his pouch. Harsan moved as he had learned in his rough childhood games with the nimble Pe Choi. Their chitinous arms might be weaker than a man’s, but they had four of them with which to grapple, and they were as graceful as dancers. He feinted to the left, rolled to the right, struck out with his left hand to seize the slave’s dagger wrist, and brought up a knee for defense.

  The man was an experienced brawler. The wrist flipped out of reach, the roll was rewarded by a heavy kick to Harsan’s left side, and the upcoming knee was swiftly dodged. Harsan had to keep rolling, and a blazing line of white pain ran down his left shoulder toward his spine. Glass crunched beneath him. The next thrust would be fatal. He fetched up hard against the parapet, on his back, and kicked out with both feet. The slave took the kick glancingly and jumped back out of range. Time had been gained, and Harsan’s muscles cracked as he threw himself to his feet. He felt the sticky wetness of his own blood slide upon the scorching stones as his wounded shoulder scraped against the parapet.

  The entire battle had been fought in silence. Other slaves had stopped to watch, but none made any effort to assist either fighter. Now, however, there was hubbub from behind..Harsan dared not take his eyes from the circling needle point of the dagger. The man feinted-and leaped.

  There was a thin twanging sound. The slave opened his eyes and mouth wide, and a gout of blood spurted forth as though he shouted words of vivid scarlet. Then he fell, heavily, upon Harsan. A flanged, red-drenched rod of metal protruded from his throat.

  Mnesun stepped forward from behind him, a stubby brown crossbow in his hands.

  Harsan tried to push the slave aside, but the circle of openmouthed faces shimmered and danced before him. He felt hands grasping, supporting, proding at him, and somehow he was lying down. Then the babble of voices dwindled away and down a long, white corridor of pain.

  He woke again to feel the cushions of the Lady Eyil’s litter lumpy and strangely sticky beneath him. Mnesun was there, and Eyil, and others whom he could not see.

  “-He was my slave,” the caravan-master was saying, ‘‘but why he attacked the priest-? I never heard him speak a word to Harsan.”

  The Lady Eyil said something unintelligible, and Mnesun replied, “Yes, against animals, brigands, runaway slaves-even disgruntled customers. We merchants must know a little of weapons…”

  “I shall give him a drug, a pain-killer…” The voice sounded like one of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers. Something bitter touched his lips.

  Harsan wanted to speak with Hele’a, tried to look for him, but then the long hallway unrolled before him once more, and pain reverberated along it like the drums of a temple pageant.

  He opened his eyes to find himself looking up at a lacework of geometric designs. These resolved themselves into the ribbed and groined arches of a vaulted ceiling. Cords creaked, and a great sweep-fan swung to and fro overhead through the honey-thick, still air of the room. The pain seemed mostly gone, but when he would have risen a hundred daggers ripped at his shoulders, and he fell back gasping.

  A pale oval of a face looked down at him: no one he knew. It said, “Be at peace, priest Harsan. Your wounds are not serious and have been tended. I am Nusetl hiZayavu, priest of Thumis of the Fourth Circle, and you lie in our temple at Hauma.” Something cool and damp touched his face. “Your companions are here and may see you presently.”

  The long corridor stretched out before him again, however, and he slept.

  It was three days before he could move about the little sleeping room he had been given, just off the temple dispensary. The Lady Eyil sat with him daily, bandaged him, exclaimed softly over the network of lurid but superficial slashes upon his shoulders (“like the back of a man who has been flogged,” she said, and Harsan thought to detect a thrill of fascination in her voice), and promised to wait until he was ready to travel again.

  Mnesun also came each day when the temple’s sonorous Tunkul — gong had ceased to call the faithful to the midday ceremonies. The grizzled caravan-master was almost obsequiously apologetic. He insisted upon presenting Harsan with a new grey tunic, much finer than the one he had had, and vowed to make a triple offering to Thumis in the Temple of Eternal Knowing upon their safe arrival in Bey Sii. The two Mu’ugalavyani brothers, Bejjeksa, and even the Shen paid him visits as well, each offering some little gift and their commiserations. When Harsan asked after Hele’a, however, he was told that the Ghatoni had pleaded urgent business and departed for Bey Sii alone.

  On the last day of his stay in Hauma the physician priest Nusetl hiZayavu sought him out.

  “Priest Harsan, you resume your journey tomorrow?”

  “I do. My companions have suffered enough delay awaiting me.”

  “It would be a shame to their clans if they did not.” The priest bobbed his long, shaven head. “Before your arrival, one came and left this for you with the guard at our gates.” Gravely he extracted a rolled tube of parchment from within the folds of his tunic.

  Wondering, Harsan unrolled it and saw two lines of vertical glyphs: the prickly, sword-edged curliques of ancient N’liissa! Each was printed in a careful, amateurish hand, as though by one who knew little of the language. Harsan recognised the text as a couplet from Tyelqu Dyaq’s “Song of the Sky-Singers of Nakome.” It read:

  ‘One has come, O Lord, to
grasp thy hand,

  From a foreign land, from the greater dark; more I know not.’

  Harsan studied the parchment in bewilderment. Was the glyph for “hand” not a little larger and bolder than the rest? He turned the scroll over. There was no signature, but on the back he saw a stylised sketch of a long-beaked, plume-tailed bird. He puzzled for a moment. Then he knew.

  The bird was the literal meaning of the archaic Tsolyani word Kurrune.

  He quite startled the physician-priest by demanding to see his bedroll and other possessions at once. Nusetl hiZayavu produced these from a chest near his sleeping mat, and Harsan tore the roll open. Zaren’s farseeing device was there, as were his notes and the Llyani grammar. And, yes, there were the two leaves with his copies of the glyphs upon Kurrune’s map symbol and the waxen hand.

  But these last Harsan had left folded. Now they were rolled, like a scroll.

  Chapter Eight

  The Temple of Eternal Knowing swallowed Harsan up as a minnow is engulfed by the Akho, “the Embracer of Ships.” The tall bronze-barred gates swung to behind him, and he found himself once more in a world like that he had left behind in the Monastery of the Sapient Eye. Within the blue basalt walls, three man-heights high, one first encountered a stone causeway; on both sides of this lay a veritable maze of geometrically perfect, formal gardens overflowing with the grey and green Tetel — flowers sacred to Lord Thumis. To the left, a ramp ran off towards the dim pillared halls and porticoes of the temple schools and colleges, and to the right, another, broader paved avenue led to the colonnades of the administrative offices. Directly ahead, the central causeway carried the worshipper on above the gardens to the temple proper, rising like some slaty leviathan of the forest, a sloping pyramidal platform surmounted by vertiginous crags of plinths and buttresses, with smaller domes, cupolas, and rotundas hugging its steep sides as foothills cling to the skirts of a mountain. Out of sight behind the temple were the dormitories, cookrooms, magazines, storehouses, workshops, and all of the more mundane periphera of sacerdotal life.