Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra

by Stephen Lawhead

  “Those little cars, you mean?”

  “A Car is a veekle, yes?” the young magician asked. Treet nodded, despite her mispronunciation of the word vehicle, so she continued. “As a Reader, I am allowed to examine certain old records. I have read of veekles such as Cars.”

  “I see,” said Treet. “Doesn’t everyone read?”

  Calin tilted her head to the side. “What would be the use? Only Readers read.”

  “Oh.” Treet dropped the subject. He had decided that he would not offer the colonists observations about this world—even though he itched to point out the contrasts. In his travels, he had learned that such observations by foreigners were not only unwelcome, but most often had the effect of drying up the free flow of quality information—as if the host preferred not to toss his best pearls before the foreign swine. Who, after all, wants to risk himself, his country, or his customs to the ridicule of infidels?

  A sponge I am; a sponge I will remain, thought Treet; and sponges do not make waves. He changed the subject. “Where does this river go?”

  “It is called Kyan,” explained Calin. She turned to view it, her eyes sweeping its curves. “It flows throughout Empyrion, through every Hage. There is a very old story about the river.” She glanced at him tentatively.

  “Go on, I’d like to hear it.”

  “The story says that long ago, before the cluster was closed, before there were Hages even, the old ones traveled on the water. An old one called Litol built a very big boat and took half the people with him to find a faraway place. While they were riding the water, the boat caught fire and sank, and Litol and all the rest were lost.

  “Those left behind saw the red fire in the sky at night and knew that their friends would never return. They decided to make their own river, which they bent into a circle and filled with the tears from their eyes, for they wept over Litol and the lost. This is why the river flows as it does, so that whoever rides the water need never be afraid of getting lost since the river always comes back to its beginning.”

  Calin fell silent when she finished the story. To Treet’s trained ear the story sounded familiar: just like scores of other folktales he’d heard. The story hid as much as it revealed, but it nevertheless contained elements of historic fact—grains of verity served up in a soup of mythic fancy.

  “That’s a nice story,” remarked Treet.

  Calin stirred, sighed. “It is a very old story. No one knows how old. There are others like it—I know them all.”

  “You must tell me more of them sometime. I like old stories.” Yes, I do, thought Treet. Those old stories will help me piece together what happened here.

  The river swept around the feet of the terraced mountains and now came to a place of sculptured hillsides which rolled gently down to the seamless rock wall of Kyan’s banks. On a near hillside a dozen or so musicians, dressed in the turquoise and silver of Chryse, sat in a cluster playing for a small crowd of Saecaraz gathered below them. They were too far away to see or hear distinctly, but Treet caught a sense of the sound: light stringed instruments accompanied by dusky, low-voiced woodwinds.

  Treet strained after the music, hearing it in wispy snatches. What he heard puzzled him, until he realized that it was the tonal equivalent of Calin’s river story—pensive, possessed of a delicate melancholy. In fact, the music articulated the very atmosphere of the colony: brooding and old and tired, tottering to its fall.

  Beyond the hills he glimpsed white towers, graceful spires linked with arches, rising above trees thin as tapers. The boat turned abruptly, taking the towers from view before he had a chance to ask about them. He turned and saw that Calin had moved to the other side of the deck. She held the rope rail and looked out toward the opposite bank. Treet joined her.

  “You started to tell me about the Hages,” said Treet. “I’d like to hear about them now. You said there are eight.”

  She nodded. “There are eight. The number corresponds to the Greater Requisites of the Sacred Directives. The Hages are Saecaraz, Chryse, Nilokerus, Rumon, Hyrgo, Tanais, Bolbe, and Jamuna. Each holds its place, and thus the eternal balance is maintained. This is also from the Directives.”

  “I see. And what are these Directives?”

  Calin marveled at his ignorance. “You’ve never heard of the Sacred Directives? How do you live?”

  Treet shrugged. “I manage. Perhaps I know them by another name.”

  “That could be,” she allowed. “No one could live very long without them.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “Come from? The Directives have always been. Since the beginning. They were given—” She hesitated.

  “Yes? Given how?” Treet pressed.

  The magician’s dark eyes darted right and left. She lowered her voice. “There are some things we don’t speak of out of Hage.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “I can’t explain here,” she whispered. “Later—I’ll tell you later, when we’re back in your kraam.”

  Here was a puzzle. What was there about these sacred Directives that they could not be discussed in public? Presumably everyone knew about them—why the secrecy? Treet cast a glance to the others around them. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them. “All right, but don’t forget. I want to know.”

  Presently the river widened and a boat traveling the opposite way passed by them. This boat was larger and sported three full decks, all of them crammed with passengers. It was brightly painted in carefree splashes of color—scarlet, yellow, and violet. Raucous music came across the water, along with the clatter of voices, laughter, and song. People mingled on the decks in colorful yoses, large jars in their hands, drinking, singing, laughing loudly.

  “Some party,” said Treet. The scene reminded him of a Mardi Gras celebration he’d witnessed once in Trinidad: flashy, forced, frenzied.

  “It is a cruise,” offered Calin.

  “Oh, where are they going?”

  “Going? They cruise—it is …” she paused, searching for a word Treet would understand. “A happy making,” she said finally.

  “They look happy all right.” Treet watched the boisterous boatload pass. “What are they drinking?”

  “Souile. Some call it shine. It is an intoxicant.”

  “So I see. Every last one of them is skunked!” As the party boat plied its way around the bend, several drunken passengers relieved themselves with obvious delight into the river from the aft decks. “They just ride around in circles on this boat and get waxed?”

  “A very popular amusement. Once on board, the shine is free—also flash.”

  “Flash?”

  “Pleasure seeds.”

  “I thought so. Free drinks and drugs! Welcome aboard! Some pleasure cruise.”

  “Look,” said Calin, turning back toward the river bank, “we’re coming into Bolbe Hage.”

  Treet followed her gaze and saw that on this side of the river, the hills had blossomed with color. Every meter of hillside was wrapped in fabric of the most dazzling color and design: shimmering reds and violets, swirls of emerald and chartreuse, glistening blues and deep vibrant browns, pearly whites. The hills were checkerboards with multicolored squares. Treet supposed that the display was a sort of advertisement for the Hage’s handiwork.

  A little further on, the hills gave way to a waterfront area—a flat rectangular space ringed by banks of pale yellow mosque-shaped buildings. Two other boats were moored to posts beneath a long notch in the bank wall. Men in blue-hooded yoses were stacking bales on one of the boats, while men in green-and-yellow unloaded them from the other. The bales being unloaded were tumbled down an incline where they were picked up and trundled away on the bent backs of laborers. It was a scene typical of any waterfront on Earth—a thousand years ago.

  The boat drifted closer to the wharf, nosing toward a post; ropes snaked out as the boat was snugged into its berth and the gangplank extended. As passengers streamed off, Treet and his magician guide joined the crush
on the lower deck and eventually found themselves deposited on the wharf.

  “This is where the Hyrgo bring the ipumn,” Calin explained. “The Bolbe take it and begin making it into cloth.”

  “Ipumn is grown by the Hyrgo?” asked Treet. “They’re the ones in the green and yellow yoses, right?”

  “Yes, those are Hyrgo.”

  “And who are those in blue, over there—the ones with the medals around their necks?” He indicated a group of three Bolbe standing next to the growing mound of ipumn bales. One of the three held a flat clipboard object which he worked over with a glowing stylus. From a heavy chain swung a large blue-silver medallion which looked like the Greek letter pi with arms.

  “Those are Bolbe priests,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “They are recording the bring. All that comes and goes within the Hage, the priests record—as they record the dole.” She steered him by the priests toward the nearest of the mosques.

  “The dole? You mean handouts?”

  “I don’t understand handouts,” replied Calin. “The dole is given to all freely. It is the right of every Hageman to receive his tender.”

  “Food, clothing, shelter—that sort of thing?”

  “Food and clothing, yes—these are given in the dole. The rest a Hageman must buy with his own shares, which are given by the priests at allotment.”

  Treet grasped the set-up. Very ingenious. Make certain nobody starved or went naked, meet the bare necessities, and then let them work for the rest, earn the currency with which they could buy the extras. A variation of the old-style socialism. “These shares,” said Treet, “that’s what the poak is all about?” He touched his arm at the spot where he had been bruised. There was nothing to feel there now.

  Calin nodded, smiling at him. “You learn quickly. Traveler Treet. The shares are given according to a Hageman’s order and work record.”

  “The higher the order, the more shares you get. Slick. What’s the highest order?”

  “Six, I think, though I don’t know if anyone has ever attained sixth order. I am fourth order—most Readers are.”

  “So you get more shares than a third-order magician, right?”

  “Of course. But the allotment also depends on the stent of the Hage. Look there—” She pointed to several Bolbe before a low platform unwrapping the bales of stringy ocher ipumn. “They are perhaps third-order ipumn handlers. Those unloading the boats are first-order. These others,” she gestured toward the Bolbe on the platform who were sifting the ipumn and sorting it into piles, “are ipumn graders—second-or third-order. They will receive more shares than the material handlers—as much as dyers, but less than weavers.”

  “I see,” said Treet. “The only way to get more shares is to advance to a higher order or get a better job.”

  “Job is function, yes?”

  “Yes. But how do you change functions? I mean, what keeps everyone from wanting to be a magician? If magicians get the most shares, I’d think everyone would want to be one.”

  “It is difficult to change functions, but it can be done. You must petition the priests. They decide.”

  “How do they decide?”

  “I don’t know. This is not for us to know. Although sometimes a Director will request a function change for Hageman. Then the petition is always granted.”

  “The Directors run the show—isn’t that always the way?”

  “Please?”

  “Never mind,” said Treet. They wandered past the mosque-shaped buildings of the waterfront along a wide avenue bedecked with multicolored hangings and streamers and flags strung on wires across the walkway. At the end of the avenue, they entered a communal square where several work stations had been set up before flat-roofed sheds. Bolbe milled around the work stations, lugging bundles of ipumn. The air was filled with a fine ocher dust and the whine of high-speed machinery.

  “This is where they begin breaking down the ipumn fibers. Over there,” she gestured across the square, “they pull the fibers, there they separate them, and so on.”

  The air smelled of cinnamon—not unpleasant, but the dust was getting to Treet. He noticed that the workers wore no protective masks. “They breathe this stuff?”

  Calin appeared unconcerned. She turned away, striking off along another path. They walked through Bolbe Hage following the ipumn through the various processes of becoming cloth. They saw spinners turning the raw fibers into hanks of glistening thread, fine as human hair; dryers with poles stirring long, loosely braided chains of ipumn in large pools of bubbling colored dye; dryers turning the braided chains on racks under lamps; weavers threading huge looms, and folding finished material onto square bolts. In all, Bolbe Hage fairly bustled with activity.

  What impressed Treet most of all was the diligence and industry with which the Bolbe worked. Both men and women went about their tasks with quick precision; nowhere did he see any slackers or dawdlers. No one lingered over a job; no one sat with idle hands. “Everyone is so busy,” he remarked to Calin when at last they headed back toward the boat. It was long past time to eat, and Treet was hungry. “It’s remarkable. What keeps them at it?”

  “The priests record transgressions against the Directives. Anyone who deviates from the Clear Way will be punished at allotment.”

  “His shares are cut, in other words?” Treet nodded to himself. Yes, very tidy. Keep them at it with incentives and threats. Reward the good workers, punish the bad. “The priests watch everyone all the time, I suppose? They know who’s been naughty and nice.”

  Calin agreed solemnly. “The priests watch everyone.”

  They arrived at the waterfront in time to board for the return trip. As the boat pulled away, this time under the tug of a chattering engine, Treet turned for a last look at Bolbe Hage. “You know, we still didn’t see where they make the really fine stuff.” Treet gestured toward the glowing array of fabric spread on the hillside.

  “That is Hage cloth, made in deep Hage. No one is allowed to go there.”

  “Never?”

  Calin lifted a palm in that equivocal gesture which Treet understood to say, it all depends. She said, “The Bolbe guard deep Hage jealously. They allow no one from another Hage to enter. They don’t want the secret of their craft revealed. It is the same with the Tanais and Rumon, but the Hyrgo and Jamuna allow anyone to come and go in deep Hage; they don’t care. Of course, their craft has no art.”

  All the way back to Saecaraz and to his kraam Treet remained silent, digesting all he had seen and heard. Calin did not intrude on his reverie, and after seeing that food was brought for a late afternoon meal, she left saying, “I will come tomorrow the same as today, unless—”

  Her listener glanced up distractedly. “Yes … come tomorrow, same time. Fine …”

  Treet ate and lay back on his mount of cushions. Not bad for the first day, he thought. Innocent tourist—no surprises, no pointed questions, nothing to upset anyone. The Supreme Director will get a glowing report—he’s probably getting it right now.

  Treet knew that Rohee would be fully informed of his moods and movements, knew that he would be carefully monitored at all times. That was all right with him—let them watch until they got tired of watching. Then he’d make his move. Somewhere out there Pizzle, Crocker, and Talazac waited, and he meant to find them. One way or another he would find them.

  The priest rubbed his long nose and gazed at Yarden doubtfully. Bela stood beside her, his hand around her waist. Coming to see the Hage priest had been his idea. He’d said that perhaps her memory would come back more quickly if she bought a benefice.

  Together they’d walked through Chryse Hage, not to the temple, but to the Quarter—the place where the priests lived and held commerce with the populace. They waited in line for several hours as one by one the petitioners were admitted into a large mound-shaped structure built on a rise with steps leading up to a wide arched doorway.

  “The priests will know what to do,” he explained. “Very likely there
is astral interference with your aura. If so, they will see it and recommend a suitable treatment.”

  Yarden thought about this, not understanding it completely. “Will I have to pay them?” she wondered, thinking that she did not have many shares in her poak.

  “Of course.”

  “Is it… expensive?”

  Bela had laughed. “Never more than you have. But don’t worry. The priests understand. They will help if they can.”

  The room to which they were finally admitted was big and dark and sour smelling. Sweat, smoke, urine, and other unwholesome odors mingled together in a fetid perfume—as if whole generations of priests had lived and died in the room without ever cleaning or opening it to the light of day. The darkness and rank aroma were almost suffocating. Yarden gagged upon entering and would have turned back if Bela had not gripped her very tightly by the arm and urged her forward.

  The priest, a bloated, rheumy fellow with drooping eyelids and a chin that rested on his swelling belly, sniffed loudly when they entered the room. He was sitting on a high-backed stool, his voluminous yos spread out around him so that he appeared to be floating in the air. A dirty medallion hung around his neck, shining dully in the light from two candletrees of smudgy candles.

  “Step forward,” he said tiredly. “Let me see you. What do you want?”

  “Go on,” Bela whispered as Yarden glanced at him. “Just tell him what you want.”

  “Well?” The priest cast a baleful eye at her, sniffed again, and sneezed into his hand.

  “Tell him,” Bela whispered. “Just say what I told you.”

  “If it please you, Hage Priest,” she began in a tremulous voice, “I would like a benefice.”

  “A benefice,” he had repeated flatly. “Of course. And what is the nature of this benefice?”

  “My—my memory. I cannot remember things clearly. We—I thought a benefice …”

  When the priest said nothing, Bela had stepped up, put his arm around Yarden, and explained, “She has been in reorientation, Hage Priest. Her memory is unfortunately—ah, displaced.”

  “Hmmph!” the priest snorted. He put a thumb in his nostril and blew. “Reorientation.”