The Man of Gold t-2 Read online

  Everywhere there were carvings and bas-reliefs and murals and images: Lord Thumis was here in all of his Forty-Seven Greater Aspects, and also in many of his minor forms: teaching, guiding, writing, aiding, admonishing, and contemplating. Bands of black porphyry glyphs, each over a man-height tall, proclaimed the greater glories of the Lord of Wisdom all around the upper flanks of the temple between marching rows of sculptured heroes and demons. Each carven and gilded gable, every blue slate roof, and each pavilion cornice and capital bore the intricate oval medallion of Lord Thumis, Knower of Arts and Sage of the Gods.

  Within, throngs of worshippers swirled among the ubiquitous grey robes of the clergy. Here one trod upon black and white marble mosaics, there upon hieroglyphs of glittering pegmatite set into tiles of greyish-blue riband jasper, there again upon tessellations of ashen steatite and pearly chalcedony. The devout moved in hushed groups from one shrine to the next, awed by the rich gold, the high dim altars, and the incense-heavy air. The peasant deposited his Tetel — flower or yellow Dziya — melon upon the altar tray and stood openmouthed to watch the passing of the daily processions and pageants and tableaux. The townsman offered a silver Hlash or a handful of copper Qirgal and had the satisfaction of hearing his presence announced to the God to the singing of a silver gong. Old women knelt in the cool silence of the shrine of Chaisholen the Imparter to plead for the success of an aspiring grandchild in the temple schools; occasionally a noble attired in pleated floor-length kilt, short overcloak of white Giidru-cloth blazoned with clan emblems, headcloth of light gauze bound with strips of iridescent brocade, and sandals of gilded Chlen — hide swept haughtily into one of the inner shrines to be admitted by bowing priests, there to offer a larger sum- and to receive proportionately greater favours from the Lord of Wisdom.

  The Temple of Eternal Knowing was a universe of its own, a world cut off both by walls and by function from the humdrum city without. It was a place Harsan understood at once and into which he fitted as a favourite hammer fits the carpenter’s hand.

  The last stages of the journey had been accomplished without incident. Harsan had ridden part of the way in the litter of the Lady Eyil (and often her panting bearers had had to carry a double load). When they camped for the last night on Berenanga Plain with the myriad lamps of Bey Sii a twinkling heap of red gems upon the dark silver throat of the great river, the Lady Eyil had wept and kissed him copiously. She swore that she would indeed become an Aridani and send her clan-cousin; Retlan hiVriyen, off to the Halls of Hell to beg for another wife. As they talked, however, grey reality, began to push in along with the cold light of dawn. If she abandoned clan and household how would she live? She had no profession, no training, no calling. She could, of course, cast herself upon the mercy of her temple and become an acolyte, but she seemed to have little patience with the cloistered ways of ritual and prayer. She was too slight to become a warrior, and too unlettered to become a scribe. The flame of this fancy had no more died than she began another: could not Harsan run away with her and the two of them find a new life in some distant land beyond her clan’s certain revenge?

  Yet even as they spoke of it both knew that this, too, was only another “rainbow bridge”: all beauty but without substance.

  At last the sun thrust up through the spires of the city’s pyramids and palaces. It was clear that nothing could be done. They bid one another a tearful goodbye, and Eyil promised to see him again if her new husband did not keep her mewed up too close. For Harsan’s part, he wavered between the pangs of separation and a surreptitious sense of relief. He told himself that he loved her, romantically and eternally, as the heroes of the epics always loved their paramours; yet mingled in this adoration he could sense little worms of ugly doubt: life with Eyil would be tempestuous at best, dangerous if her husband turned out to be a man of power and clan-pride, and certainly an obstacle to Harsan’s progress within the temple. For these doubts he hated himself.

  Thus they parted. Mnesun came to touch Harsan’s hand and wish him good fortune, and the others also bid him farewell, each according to his custom. To these merchants this was just the end of one journey and the start of another.

  To Harsan it was a return to reality.

  He soon found, however, that he was of little interest to the hierarchy of the Temple of Eternal Knowing. He showed his writ and was questioned by a bored scribe, who copied down his account of the incident upon the Sakbe road-and who also carried off Hele’a’s ‘Eye’ to see what wiser heads might make of it.

  Then Harsan was shown to a cramped stone cell in a dormitory at the rear of the temple, where he cooled his heels for four long days, besieged in the morning by odours of spices and roasting meat from the nearby kitchens, and assailed at night by redolences of latrines and midden-heaps emanating from ponderous Chlen-carts driven along beneath his window by masked members of one of the sweeper clans, the lowest of the low. Bey Sii indeed had its sewer system, but many houses were not connected to it, and all larger items of waste had to be carried beyond the walls to be dumped and burned.

  At length he was summoned to the Hall of the Diffusion of Radiance, a cluttered annex apparently added as an afterthought to the shrine of Chuharem the Diviner, the Thirteenth Aspect of Thumis. There he was directed to one Znaqiilu hiGurika, a peppery little bureaucrat entrusted with all those Labours of Reverence involving matters of the ancients. This person handed him on to a younger priest, a pasty-faced youth whose nasal drawl identified him as a native of Sokatis on the eastern frontier of the Empire.

  “I am Siyun hiDaigan, priest of the Fourth Circle.” Sharp eyes, set close beneath hairy black brows hinting at Salarvyani ancestry, flicked up and then down over Harsan. “So you’re the miracle of wisdom we were told to expect? You’re not as full of years as I had anticipated.”

  Siyun had employed the “You of Honourable Youth,” although he looked to be no older than Harsan. The latter was careful not to let his irritation show and replied carefully, “I am here because I have done some introductory study of the Llyani language.”

  The other turned away, picking a path between the crosslegged scribes, pencases, and documents that littered the stained floor matting. “Many have come and many have departed, all at the whim of some exalted high priest or other… You’ll probably be forgotten here for years-and then be hauled forth to deliver a report you hadn’t known you must prepare.”

  This was unpleasant news. Harsan said, “I thought my- mission-was of some interest to somebody. Else why summon me all the way from Do Chaka?”

  “How did you conclude that? — Oh, because someone told you that the high lords of the temple had seen fit to squabble over the Llyani relics with certain other mighty temples I could name? And the bickering ending with them being made as open as a prostitute’s parlor, all sorts of people wandering in to poke at them, and a handful of Legion bravos standing about picking their arses to boot?”

  Harsan had heard none of this and admitted as much.

  “Never mind, then. Keep out of the way of the priests of the Lords of Change. Give no information and leave nothing written for them to read!” They were out of the Hall of the Diffusion of Radiance, moving down a zigzag corridor. “The soldiers won’t bother you. They play at guarding the relics, play at Den-den, and play with our girl acolytes who bring them their food. I’ve laid a wager with one of the rogues that both he and I will be here to celebrate the Five Feast Days at year’s end together. Once the great lords have settled their wrangling, it’s easy to mislay the likes of us until we’re all ready to board Belkhanu’s barque for the Isles of the Dead.”

  Now they passed through a stout wooden door, descended a winding stone staircase, and emerged into a high vaulted room. This was lit by tiny brass oil lamps, set near clever ducts that took the smoke up through the massive heart of the temple above. They must now be well below the level of the pyramid that supported the upper structure.

  Two men wearing only light Firya — cloth kilts sat cro
sslegged on the flagging. An oblong Den-den board lay between them and a heap of counters beside it. A jumble of armour and rolled sleeping mats proclaimed this room to be a temporary guardroom. Siyun saluted the two soldiers, who muttered greetings in return. He then picked up an oil lamp from a niche beside the door, lit it, and plunged off again into another dim passageway. This was constructed of massive stone blocks, hand-hewn and fitted together with the meticulous precision of the ancients. Moisture ran from the walls and trickled silently along a runnel in the centre of the floor.

  The corridor wound downward, turned, branched, went down more stairs, and emerged into another lamplit chamber. Two more guards sat on their haunches by the door. These were attired in blue-lacquered Chlen — hide breastplates, the flaring shoulderguards of the Tsolyani regular army, and kilts like those of their comrades above. Two crested helmets bearing the insignia of the Omnipotent Azure Legion lay in a comer, and curved, scallop-edged swords leaned against a wall. One rose to greet Siyun, who said a word or two in reply and jerked a thumb at Harsan. The other guard seemed lost in some revery of his own.

  They passed through into the chamber beyond, where a table stood covered with a grey cloth. On it lay the golden hand and the map symbol. There were other items as well: three roundish lumps of crumbling red rust, a rod of some silvery-blue metal perhaps as long as a man’s forearm, and a heap of manuscript leaves. These last were obviously fragile with age, mouldering, stained, and rotten.

  A glance took in all of this. Then Harsan’s gaze shifted to the other occupant of the room and he stared.

  It was a Pe Choi.

  But yet what a Pe Choi! Instead of the sleek, dully-gleaming black nudity of the Pe Choi of Do Chaka, this specimen was decked out in an odd-fitting copy of a human’s kilt, a gorget of Chlen — hide all chaised and set with twinkling blue stones, and- most ludicrous of all-a hat! Rising up between the delicate grey-shadowed ear-ridges was a loaf-shaped bonnet of embroidered cloth-of-gold, a style currently fashionable among the young aristocrats of Bey Sii.

  Harsan repressed a wild impulse to laugh, then a strong surge of revulsion. No Pe Choi of the Chakas would ever have worn this foppish travesty of human costume! This was a parody, a caricature. It was like the Kiini — bird a trader had once brought to the monastery; it had been garbed in a tiny grey priest’s tunic and black skullcap, and the man had made it say preposterously pontifical things in its shrill little voice.

  Siyun was saying, “I can’t pronounce his name, but this is a priest of our Lord Thumis’ Cohort, Ketengku. Here is priest Harsan, the language scholar we were told to expect.”

  The Pe Choi minced forward on his two powerful rear legs, articulated tail swaying in unconscious imitation of a dandy’s walk. “I am Chtik p’Qwe, Scholar Priest of the Fourth Circle.” He spoke almost perfect Tsolyani with only a trace of a whistle to mar the sibilants. “I have heard that you come from near my home in Do Chaka?”

  Harsan had not yet recovered from his surprise and could only nod in affirmation.

  Siyun said indifferently, “I leave you to your tasks. Our great Tunkul — gong can be heard even at these depths, so you’ll probably know when it is dinner time.”

  The two were left to stare at one another. The Pe Choi almost certainly sensed Harsan’s distaste and reticence and was the firsi to break the silence.

  “Since our two temples are so close, we may find it profitable to work together. I can show you what my techniques have uncovered, and you in turn can aid by analysing the writings.” He bent his long oddly-jointed neck closer to Harsan. “Two more will return-they are gone to the midday rituals at their own temples. They serve the Lords of Change, and we are told to be wary of them. They are here only upon the direct permission of the Imperium, as you may have heard by now.”

  He led Harsan to the table and pointed to the relics. “This is a religious icon, a hand of gold made in imitation of that of some more ancient idol, named Tga’a Nmemsu, ‘the Man of Gold.’ ” Harsan gave no sign that he had heard of this before. “Next, there is a map symbol showing the Empire of Llyan of Tsamra. It cannot be used without certain devices now lost to us, and indeed, which we did not know still were workable as late as Llyani times.” The map symbol? Kurrune the Messenger must have run hard to carry it back, or perhaps he had sent it by some other courier.

  Chtik p’Qwe picked up a blob of rust. “These lumps also contain artifacts, but their iron caskets have rusted away. The manuscripts are in Llyani, but in a difficult and cryptic hand- perchance you can help there. And this rod may be a power source, similar in function to the ‘Eyes’ made by the servants who preceded Llyan’s empire, even as he precedes ours. I have not been able to puzzle out its use, and mayhap its force is now gone. As with similar devices, it probably drew upon the energies of the Planes Beyond, which fill the gaps between each bubble of reality.”

  “I have studied only the rudiments of that theory,” Harsan murmured.

  “It is so? The ‘Layers of Reality’ were my specialty in our temple, and I submitted a treatise upon the topic as my Labour of Reverence for the Fourth Circle.”

  “I fear I am not so far advanced.” He felt uncomfortable. “No matter. I shall explain.” The Pe Choi raised a thin hand in unwitting imitation of the statues of Feshmu’un, Tutor of the Gods, the Ninth Aspect of Thumis. “What we perceive is only the exterior of reality, like the bark upon a section of Mnosa- root. Beneath the bark run the fibres which contain the sweetness. Thus it is here: below the surface of the world we see, touch, smell, taste, and feel there are networks of invisible forces. Where these come together they create ‘nexus points,’ and there the power is stronger, mightier. Where no force lines run, there are ‘bare’ areas in which no sorcery operates. Long before Llyan of Tsamra the ancients learned to ‘reach through’ to this network with instruments and shape this power to their needs. Their wisdom created devices which pull, push, focus, and mould this energy to many purposes.”

  “I have heard that the devices of the ancients are similar in their powers to the magical spells employed by the higher Circles of the Sorcerer Priests within the temples.”

  “So it is. The ancients performed their wonders with instruments, but later our savants learned-to produce similar effects with no more than the strength of their minds. It may be for this reason that the arts of making these devices are forgotten. That knowledge was lost before the Time of Darkness, though a few maintained it even into the Latter Times which preceded all of our historical empires. Now those who have the talent use their minds to ‘reach through,’ employing such aids as mnemonic words, gestures, thought attitudes, and even substances. This is what is called ‘magic’ by those who know not the truth.”

  “I have seen such spells. On the day of the Visitations of the Wise the senior priests of our monastery create mighty illusions to entertain the populace: ancient sages who stride forth from the high altar chamber bearing books and scrolls and emblems. Some of these phantasms are even made to speak learned words and give moral instruction; 'others scatter fantastic flowers over the crowd, and these turn into bright Kheshchal-birds and fly away-”

  The Pe Choi opened his long, toothed beak in a copy of a human smile. “As you say. But all is not illusion. There are ways of ‘reaching through’ and turning energy into substance-or substance into nothingness.” He took up a reed pen from the table. “Observe.”

  The skeletal fingers made a twisting gesture, and the Pe Choi hummed a single sonorous syllable deep in his throat. The pen appeared to turn over in his hand. Then it was gone.

  Harsan was intrigued. The supercilious Sorcerer Priests of the monastery had performed such tricks, but he had not been considered advanced enough to study these arts. “Can you make it return?”

  “Certainly. It is just a sort of ‘reaching around the comer.’ ” The Pe Choi made a second gesture, and the pen was back in his hand again. Harsan put out a finger to touch it-and jerked back in surprise. The pen was now deathly
cold.

  “One must be cautious; an object thus brought back cannot be held long in soft human fingers! ‘Around the comer,’ as I call it, is not a place for the living. I have heard that certain sages have put their heads there to see what is to be seen, and have been dragged back with eyes burst and blood running from their noses and frozen upon their cheeks. Dead as stones, and all within a trice!”

  “Can you teach me to do this thing?”

  The lambent green eyes came near, and the yellow-slit pupils looked full into Harsan’s own brown eyes. “I can try, if you are so willed, and if you have the talent. Teach me Llyani, and I shall teach you this.”

  “Agreed.” In spite of himself Harsan felt himself warming to this strange travesty of a Pe Choi.

  They spent the better part of the afternoon at it. The two priests of the Lords of Change did not return, and none came to disturb them until they heard the evening guard detail clattering down the corridor to relieve their comrades. By this time Harsan had at least touched the terrible cold of “around the comer” twice or thrice, although he had no success at making anything travel to or from that curious, alien space.

  Chapter Nine

  Four sat together in a room that was not a room, in a place that was not a place, and in a time that was timeless. Sparks of colourless light swam lazily to and fro, fish in a pool that had never known water.

  The first was a man attired in the silver-chaised, engraved armour of the city of Dharu, the Forge of Yan Kor. He was in his early middle years, massive as the plinth of a fortress, heavy through the shoulders and upper arms, and almost without a neck, his shaven head seeming to sit directly upon his torso. His breastplate, pauldrons, and gorget of fine steel exaggerated this massiveness. His was an imposing figure of physical power, although if one looked closely, certain softnesses of cheek and jowl revealed concessions made to age. Two creases ran down from his broad-winged nose past shaven lips to a square-cut black beard shot with silver, as ravines run down from a headland to the foam-tipped waves of the sea. Yet his most arresting feature, perhaps, were his eyes: green-glinting black, level, stem beneath the jutting eaves of his brows-and possibly a trifle mad.