Harsan and the Lady Eyil mingled with the crowds eddying through the outer gates of the governor’s palace. Inside, long tables were piled with Belkhanu’s saffron-dyed pastries, heaps of fruits, and wooden casks of wine and bitter Dna — grain beer. Roasts of Hmelu and whole haunches of the giant Tsi’il-beast sputtered aromatic fat into a dozen fires, and sweating cooks hacked off chunks of meat and thrust them into greedy hands. All was free, the largesse of Lord Khamiyal hiSayuncha, Imperial Governor of Bey Sii.
The gates of the second ring of crenellated walls were manned by halberdiers in the blue and gold livery of the Imperium. A plump chamberlain noted the Lady Eyil’s clan and status and pointed them to one of the daises that marched up the long slope amidst trees and shrubbery toward the lamplit towers of the palace. Holding tight to Harsan’s hand, she wended her way up through the swarming lower levels. Each step of the shallow staircase of daises was only a hands-breadth high, Harsan noted sardonically, yet it represented all of those jealously guarded distinctions that humankind makes between man and man: clan and class, rank and office, and wealth, and prestige. It took no more than the lifting of a foot to progress from dais to dais, but to gain the right to do so might well cost a man a lifetime of ambition, toil, and intrigue.
At last they halted, approximately a third of the way up the ladder of layered platforms. Harsan gazed at those still above them. There, many tiers beyond theirs, sat the chiefs of the mercantile clans; still higher were the places reserved for the old noble clans, those descended from the aristocracy of the Bednalljan kings and from the Engsvanyali Empire that followed: the Golden Sunburst, the Sea Blue, the Vriddi of Fasiltum, the Might of Ganga, the Citadel of Glory, the Cloak of Azure Gems, the Blade Raised High, and a dozen others. Still more elevated were the daises of the lords of Bey Sii, the generals of the legions, and the high priests of the temples. A row of armoured troopers stood below the even loftier station of the governor and his train.
At the very top, set higher than all the rest just below the frowning battlements of the inner palace, a single tall pillar draped with gold-banded blue brocade upheld the intricate, convoluted glyph which bespoke the invisible presence of the Seal Emperor, he who dwelt inviolate in the Golden Tower at Avanthar and who never set foot upon these vast lands over which he ruled as a god rules. For, as Harsan knew, once an Emperor was crowned, ancient law decreed that he might never again emerge from the Golden Tower. Provided with all he might wish by the deaf-mute Servitors of Silence, the highest branch of the Omnipotent Azure Legion, the Seal Emperor governed Tsolyanu as an omniscient but unseen presence until he, too, embarked upon Belkhanu’s ship for the Isles of the Excellent Dead.
They found space at a low table on their dais, and a servitor brought a platter of Hmelu meat, dishes of tiny fish cooked in vinegar and spices, a bowl of savoury grubs fried in batter, reddish Dna- bread, and wine.
“Oh, Harsan, look there!” He followed Eyil’s pointing finger to see a slender, young-old man climbing towards the governor’s dais. This person wore rich robes of black trimmed with azure and gold, but he was otherwise indistinguishable from the throngs of courtiers, warriors, and officials following along in his wake. For a moment the man turned to gaze down at those below, and Harsan caught a glimpse of a thin, ascetic face and the glitter of cool, appraising eyes.
“It is Mridobu, the third Prince of the Empire! Is he not splendid?” The Lady Eyil’s eyes were alight and her cheeks flushed. “They say it is he who will ascend the Petal Throne next-the Imperial Party at Avanthar prefers him to any of his brothers, or to his sister!” She stood to gain a better look, but further sight of the man was cut off by the governor’s retinue which had arisen to receive him.
“I would never have known,” Harsan said… and wondered briefly how she recognised the Prince. Another thought struck him. “I had heard that the Temple of Avanthe-and that of Dilinala as well-support Prince Eselne, the Emperor’s second son. Is not Prince Mridobu a follower of one of the Lords of Change? Lord Ksarul? Why so enthused?”
She gave him a very odd look and sat down. Any further reply was drowned by the sudden cacophony of drums and horns. The gates of the inner palace were opening. Yellow-clad priests and priestesses of Belkhanu and Qon bore forth a towering palanquin upon which stood an obelisk of gilded wood and paper, its sides inscribed with glyphs.
The drums went silent. The priests chanted a litany, censed the tall obelisk with the smoke of fragrant Vres-wood, and held up ritual emblems and insignia the meaning of which Harsan did not know. Two of the priestesses led out a naked girl, little more than a child. A masked officiant put a torch into the child’s hand, and with this she set the obelisk alight. It must have been soaked in oil, for it flared up at once. Two of the yellow-robes then came forward to drape the girl in vestments of shimmering gold, exchanged her torch for a jewelled sceptre, and lifted her up so that she might touch this to the face of the Imperial Seal upon its pedestal. Those on the highest dais arose to embrace the child and thrust rich gifts into her hands.
“She is the Virgin of the Gods,” the Lady Eyil said in Harsan’s ear. “Thus is death overcome and life renewed upon the land.”
All remained standing and silent until the great blaze had died down to embers. Then the drums clamoured again, strident flutes and shrieking horns shouted defiance to the tyranny of mortality, and all in that concourse cheered and rejoiced and embraced one another. “Existence ends not with death!” the yellow-robes cried in unison, and nude priests and priestesses of Avanthe, Goddess of Life, poured forth from the palace to dance before the Seal of the Imperium. Eager hands reached forth to dash the torches out against walls or shrubbery, or to douse them in bowls of wine, and the uproar became pandemonium. The brazen-throated Tunkul- gongs of the temples rent the air with their bellowing metal voices.
All joined in the revelry, devotees of Stability and Change alike. The Lady Eyil was in his arms, thrusting hard against him and seeking his tongue with hers. Then she was tom away by exultant youths wearing the scarlet and white of Chegarra, the Hero-King, Cohort of warlike Karakan. Harsan was caught up in the crush. A matron seized him, kissed him soundly, and then she was in turn caught and kissed by a soldier in blue-lacquered breastplate and towering Chlen- hide helmet.
Harsan looked about for Eyil, but she was gone. Hands snatched at him, and he stumbled over unseen bodies lying locked together in fierce embrace amidst the scattered goblets and dishes. A priestess of Avanthe fled by, laughing, her taut young body daubed with depictions of humanity’s oldest preoccupation, the organs of procreation, and Harsan was jostled aside by a throng of noble youths belling in pursuit. Faces swam up before him in the flickering gloom, bodies, jewelled ornaments, rich headdresses, dark robes pulled askew to reveal tawny-gleaming limbs. Over all hung the passionate thunder of the great drums, sonorous, sensuous, compelling, rhythmic, and as hypnotic as any drug.
Fingers found his lips, thrust a bit of sweet pastry within. He whirled to see a grinning face a finger’s breadth before his nose.
It was a young man, wirily handsome, attired in a kilt of overlapping metallic scales coloured in emerald and purple. An elaborately curved sword swung from a clip at the youth’s waist.
“Will you not dance the Round of the Return to Life with me,
O priest of mighty Thumis?”
“Back to your barracks, warrior of Kaikama! He belongs to us and not to you!” Another face pushed forward, a girl’s. Harsan saw wide eyes, an open scarlet mouth, dishevelled hair cut straight across a low-rounded forehead. She wore a girdle of chain links and a skirt made up of many green and purple strips; tiny bells tinkled at her wrists, ankles, and throat: a priestess of Hrihayal, he thought. She bore a tray filled with little brass bowls. In one of these she dipped a finger, touched it to Harsan’s lips. He tasted something sweet, dark, and fiery.
“An offering to Thumis-from one who knows not wisdom but loves folly! Come, worthy priest, show me whether your god is as stiff and
upright as he is said to be!” She threw an arch look back at companions still in shadow.
There was no sign of the Lady Eyil. Harsan found himself ringed by a circle of laughing faces, men, women, even an elegantly attired Shen, resplendent in copper-trimmed armour.
“Would you chew Hnequ- weed with me? — Or taste the delights of my white powders-or of my blue? Alas, I have no grey powder for a grey priest of the Lord of Wisdom!” Her perfumed breath filled his nostrils, and a sharp little tongue flickered against his ear. “I might give you a bit of my green powder as well!”
The slim fingertips grazed his mouth again, and this time he tasted a bitter, pungent substance, strangely aromatic and as sharp as new wine. He jerked his head away, and the finger left a trace of powder upon his cheek.
“Taste, Harsan, Priest of Thumis! It will not harm you but will prepare you for what I offer next!” Bare thighs wriggled urgently against his own.
“How-how do you know me?”
“Ohe! ‘The breeze knows many roads,’ as it is said!” She laughed. “Friends of mine have seen you in that underground dungeon where the soldiers play at Den-den — and other pastimes. But you prefer fumbling with musty books to putting your hand to better things.” Fingers caught his wrist and guided his hand down over the silken curve of her belly.
He would have let her have her way-was not this night devoted to all of those things that bespoke joy and the cycle of life? — but at that moment a great voice roared happily in his ear, “Harsan! Harsan! Is it not Harsan, the priest of our journey?” A black claw inserted itself between his jaw and the pretty face before him. It was a Shen.
“It is I, Harsan-” a guttural-sounding name hissed in his ear, but he could not catch it, “-I travelled with you to Bey Sii, with Mnesun-”
Memory came back. “You-?” The Shen merchant. “Where-?” The powerful scaled arm had him by the shoulder, pulling him around involuntarily, away from the girl. Why did the creature have to reappear now of all times? Harsan stammered, “How came you here? I had thought you’d be on your way back to Shenyu by now.”
“Not so, my friend. I await a cargo. It is delayed somewhere up north, in Milumanaya, between here and Yan Kor. Nothing travels on time in the summer because you humans are not like us, at ease in the heat.”
“Will you not come away, my priest?” The girl in the green and purple skirt swayed before him, her comrades a dark ring behind her.
“Leave him be, Sriya,” one of them called, “I just saw Misenla go by. Let us not be late tonight of all nights!”
“Harsan, I would speak with you.” The Shen’s hard grip did not slacken upon his shoulder. The armoured tail switched slowly from side to side.
“Await me,” he muttered to the girl, “there-where the dancers are. I shall join you in a moment.”
Something was wrong with his eyes. There were two Shen. He blinked and squinted to see who the newcomer was.
“Harsan, I have business to discuss.” Both Shen spoke marvellously in unison. “You humans buy our opals and our garnets, and a comrade from Thri’il tells me that other gems are popular as well.” Why were the Shen saying such irrelevant things? Why interrupt at such a stupid, inopportune moment? “Now, I have access to a shipment of cloudy green moonstones, down from the Dry Bay of Ssu’um in Saa Allaqi
…” The creature was babbling! “If I can find someone here whom I can trust to receive these gems while I make a trip south…” Something was assuredly wrong with the Shen: he (or was it they?) leaned forward at an impossible angle. It was taking him so long to say what he had to say. Each syllable took a month, each word a year…
Harsan pitched down a tunnel into blackness.
— And awoke to a blaze of red light.
Red light? Was he afire? Did he stare at the sun?
A voice whirled by on wings like those of a forest glider-fly. “-I t is not a large enough amount. Zu’ur takes as much as you can put o n the tip of a dagger to lock its hold upon the brain-” Harsan saw a s erpent-like dagger coiling itself around a helpless, struggling brain.
He giggled.
“He joins us again.” Another voice. But whose?
The scene snapped open as does a banner in the wind. The Shen was there, beloved friend that he was, and Eyil, hair loose upon her shoulders, wrapped in her dark blue street cloak. Someone else leaned over him: the funny Pe Choi! Harsan laughed outright. And could not stop. Something wet and sour was dashed into his face. He choked.
“Ohe, our adventuresome merrymaker honours us with his attentions again!” Chtik p’Qwe held another cup of wine ready to send it splashing after the first. Behind him stood the Shen and Lady Eyil, somewhat more real and solid this time. They were in the lamplit chamber beneath the Temple of Eternal Knowing. Two more puppet figures jigged and whirled in the flickering background: the two guards.
“Where-? How-?”
“You have played at Den-den with Missum, Lord of Death,” the Pe Choi replied. “And he held all the counters and made all the throws. This Shen says that you were given a dose of Zu’ur, a drug so pernicious that but a flick of it is sufficient to turn the mind into fungus pudding!”
“Zu’ur is forbidden in Shenyu as well as in your human lands,” the Shen interrupted. “It is said that it is supplied by the Hliiss, or possibly the Ssu, both of whom hate mankind and all other nonhuman species with almost equal fervour. Thus do they wish to destroy us all, for they believe this world was originally theirs and that we-the Shen, humankind, Pe Choi, Pachi Lei, Ahoggya, and some others-came from the Home of the Gods and usurped it from them.”
“We have the story too,” the Pe Choi added, “the ‘Round of Hkek Qten.’ ”
“But if it is known that this Zu’ur is meant for the harm of man, then who would be fool enough to take it?” That was the Lady Eyil’s voice.
“Certain of the more depraved servitors of the Lords of Change, particularly those of the voluptuary Hrihayal, acquire it somehow and employ it in tiny quantities. They say it heightens sexual prowess and ecstasy to a pitch not otherwise attainable.” “Pleasure indeed!” The Pe Choi sponged Harsan’s forehead with a damp cloth. “The other side of that coin is that it addles the mind of a human. It slays us Pe Choi and you Shen straightaway! I have seen human victims after a month or two of this sensual ‘joy’: they are good for nothing but propping up a wall. -Until they die, perhaps in two or three more months.” “I cannot understand why anyone would bring such a terrible thing to Lord Belkhanu’s festival,” Eyil said. “What a hideous trick to play upon an unsuspecting stranger.”
The Shen’s armoured shoulders rose in a shrug. “The mischief of those people is great-though they usually reserve it for those who have somehow offended their goddess. Harsan seems to have been unlucky enough to meet a woman who was just whimsically malicious. Had I not seen-”
Harsan opened his mouth to tell the Shen that the girl in green and purple had known him, had indeed called him by name. Instead of words, however, a stream of sparkling diamonds issued from his lips. Dazed, he watched them ascend lazily to the ceiling and vanish.
“Try not to speak now, Harsan. Rest. You will be as weak as watered wine for a time.” The Pe Choi unrolled his sleeping mat and shooed the two staring guards from the room. He turned to the Shen. “He will be much in your debt when he awakes.”
“I ask no favour in return. I shall come again when he is strong, for I really do have a matter of business to broach with him.”
“Let me stay-please!” The Lady Eyil took the dampened cloth from Chtik p’Qwe’s fingers.
“There is no need.” The Pe Choi’s voice was abrupt. “What of your family? Your clan?”
“What of them? It is the Night of the Fete of Boats, and all will be at the festivities. Who will complain of me?” Her words were fading, growing muzzy, dying away as does the chant of rowers from a galley passing by upon a dark and windy river.
Harsan rolled over and slept. The world whisked away to a glimmeri
ng spot in the unlighted void and disappeared.
Chapter Twelve
The smell of food awakened him. He opened his eyes to see Chtik p’Qwe setting a tray down next to his sleeping mat. Steam arose from a bowl of reddish Dna — grain porridge, and Chumetl dripping from an earthen mug made white puddles of buttermilk around a pair of bluish Dlel — fruit. The idea of solid nourishment did unpleasant things to his stomach, however, and he waved it all away.
The Pe Choi curled his articulated tail beneath himself to serve as a stool. The great green eyes gazed upon Harsan for a time; then he said, “ ‘The fish does not run in the same pack as the Zrne.' ”
Harsan tried to think of an appropriate adage in the Pe Choi tongue, but his head still seemed to belong to someone else. He replied in Tsolyani, “You are right, my friend. I shall forever abstain from all strange foods, drinks, substances-and maidens!” He reached for the mug of salted buttermilk, gripped it with fingers that still trembled, and sipped at it.
“Where is the Lady Eyil?” he asked.
“She stayed the night. Then she came again the next day. Your soul wandered for two days and two nights, and we nearly despaired of you. The Shen came once, too, but he is gone upon some commercial journey. He left a packet of gems for you to keep for him. I have had Reshmu lock them up in the cabinet with the Llyani artifacts.”
“When will the Lady Eyil return?” Harsan persisted.
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