The Man of Gold t-2

by M. A. R. Barker

  There was a pause. Rustling and scraping sounds filtered down to them.

  Vridekka’s familiar voice called, “Come up, priest Harsan. “Your comrades may depart unhindered. It is only you we want.”

  “They are short fighters,” Mirure gasped. She was out of breath, and her breasts and flanks shone with the gleam of perspiration. She did not appear to have been injured, however. “The Yan Koryani must have killed many; otherwise they would risk an assault at once.” She wiped ichor from her hands, cleaned her blade upon her leggings, and methodically began to braid her hair. It had come undone and would have been a hindrance in further fighting.

  “Say nothing, priest Harsan,” Taluvaz said. “Our foes prefer you alive* although they can still use you dead. We have a little respite, it seems. Let them wonder where you are and what you think.-All of you look about for any exit!”

  “Where is Morkudz?” Harsan asked. Only now did he have time to inquire.

  “Dead, I think,” Mirure said. “Or surrendered. This was never his cause.” She seemed indifferent, but Harsan felt a twinge of regret for the sly Heheganu.

  Whatever Morkudz’ fate, that was the end of their light, except for Simanuya’s fire.

  Indeed, the glassblower’s bonfire was spreading amongst the dry corpse-wrappings and shattered coffins. Smoke arose to choke them. Simanuya had not used all of the fuel available, but what he had would at least delay the Undead for a while; they, too, would bum.

  “Here!” Tlayesha exclaimed. “Behind these caskets… An opening!”

  Simanuya seized a brand, a painted coffin-board. The flames ate aw ay the glyphs of its owner’s rank and titles as he waved it. He plunge d into the doorway.-And stopped so suddenly that Harsan and Tlayesha b oth stepped hard upon his heels. “What-?”

  “Hold, priest! Look there-upon the sill!”

  Harsan let his eyes adjust. He saw only a scrawled, wavy mark in blue chalk upon the threshold just inside the door.

  “The argot of the tomb-robber clans! This place contains a trap. The ancients had as much love for underground visitors as your Lord Taluvaz!”

  Harsan backed out, then stood in the opening while Simanuya inspected the place. The man was thorough: he held his torch high to peer at the ceiling, at the walls, at the floor beyond the sill. He prodded and poked with all the care of a hunter who wakes a sleeping Zrne. At length he twisted about.

  “Ohe, Livyani!” he called. “We have a nice choice. These grooves in the doorway: a falling block, a portcullis. That sill-stone: a balance, a trigger. Whoever enters steps upon the trap; he is sealed into this chamber forever, while those in the entrance are crushed, and those outside cannot break through. Do you prefer to die of smoke, to surrender to the Worm priests, or hop over the sill and bring it down behind us once we are all inside? We can then suffocate in peace-a splendid tomb for our corpses until Lord Ksarul returns to illumine the world!”

  “Another exit-from within?” Mirure’s voice sounded muffled in the narrow space.

  “Possible. Not likely. The ancients provided tranquility for their dead, not a game of ‘your room or mine,’ like noble ladies in a palace!”

  “Well, priest Harsan?” Taluvaz asked.

  “Inside. Better unlikely than no chance at all. Show us what to do, glassblower!”

  Simanuya said no more but leaped clumsily across the threshold, avoiding all contact with the sill-stone. Harsan handed Tlayesha across; then he jumped, followed by Taluvaz and the N’luss girl. They gathered themselves, hesitated.

  Harsan himself placed a foot upon the trigger-stone. He pressed down firmly.

  For a moment nothing happened. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, the ceiling above the doorway slid groaning and rumbling down in its grooves to crash into place. The block was perhaps two handspans thick.

  There was no return; the play was made.

  The light of Simanuya’s brand brought forth glittering eyes, winking moons and planets, streaks of ruddy gold and scarlet-drenched silver. No robber had looted this place, afraid of the trap, perhaps, or pressed for time.

  This was the sepulchre of a great noble, one of the mighty of the First Imperium.

  All was crushed and ruined, nevertheless. Images of Queen Nayari’s dread gods leaned against one another in tumbled disarray; the shards of a delicate crystal pedestal reposed beneath the weight of an embossed casket from which gems spilled forth like fruit from a basket; fragile tapestries and draperies lay crumpled and tattered in the dust, tom by the currents of air and the weight of their own gold and silver thread. Beyond, in an alcove as large as the antechamber from which they had come, the sarcophagus itself loomed upon its bier, its comers guarded by time-blackened demon figures, its fallen canopy now no more than a gossamer coverlet for the carven face of the sleeper within.

  “As I am but a slave to the Lord of the Blue Room…!” Simanuya breathed. “Oh, for the chance-” He glowered, brought back to the present by the urgency of their problem.

  “An exit-search!” Taluvaz commanded.

  “There is air aplenty for now.” Mirure put up her sword and looked about for something to use as a light. She had lost the torch she had brought from the glassblower’s cache above. A dainty table caught her eye, and in a moment she was igniting one leg of this from Simanuya’s flame.

  They found nothing. The sepulchre had been cut into solid rock.

  “One last possibility, priest,” the glassblower wheezed. “I have-ah-heard of tombs in which there was a secret stair beneath the coffin itself, a way out for one who might have been drugged and entombed while he-or she-yet lived.” His expression held more cupidity, Harsan thought, than any interest in escape. The fellow might still survive, even if Vridekka’s minions managed to break through. Wealth beyond dreaming lay here; the Temple of Sarku would profit mightily; and what, really, did one wretched merchant of Purdimal mean to the Worm Prince? it was a chance. No other course seemed open to them.

  The remains of the canopy were swiftly brushed away as easily as swamp-spider webs to reveal the enamelled and gilded sarcophagus lid beneath. This, too, the glassblower inspected for snares. Then he gestured Harsan to the foot of the coffin and himself took its head within the narrow end of the alcove.

  “The lid is made to be lifted a finger’s breadth,” he grunted. “Then it slides.” He lifted two of the demon figures down from their pedestals, then began to strain at the frieze of golden figures that ran around the rim.

  “No!” Taluvaz cried. “There may be further deadly devices within-!”

  “Not so. This is not Engsvanyali. Those of the First Imperium put their trust in deep-buried catacombs, gates and portcullises, roofs that collapse, pits and stakes. No prettily poisoned spines or other frills here!” He gasped and sucked in air, the muscles under his leather vest cracking and bulging with exertion. “Now, boy!”

  “Desecration!” the Livyani shouted again. He made as if to rush upon Simanuya. “Leave the dead be, tomb-robber! Here sleeps a prince of the First Age, a devotee of Enome, the forbearer of your own Lord Ksarul-likely no more than another name for your same God!”

  “At this moment I am unconcerned by gods.” The glassblower’s fingers slid beneath his vest; probably he carried some small weapon there. Taluvaz hesitated. Simanuya continued to eye him shrewdly but positioned himself to heave again at the lid.

  Harsan glanced apologetically at the Livyani. “He may be right. I have myself read of such exits from tombs. And it is only a matter of a Kiren or two before Vridekka’s creatures smash through the stone block. We must do what we can.” He lifted hard, and was gratified to feel the massive lid rise a trifle.

  “Mirure, stop them!” Taluvaz broke off into slurred, rapid Livyani.

  The warrior girl stood undecided. Then she answered not in Livyani but in her throaty, accented Tsolyani:

  “Lord, I have always done your will. I am yours, as you are mine. Yet now I must disobey. You may slay me for it, but if this thief s
peaks truly, then we are out of here. If he is wrong, then naught but a handful of bones is disturbed. In my land we love life more than bones.-And I–I care too much for your life to think of bones.”

  She turned away, squatted down, let her hands fall to her sides, and bowed her head. Her braided hair tumbled down to shadow her face.

  The spring-dagger was in Taluvaz’ hand. For a moment he stood thus, his features convulsed and furious. Then he flung down the weapon, went to Mirure, and raised her. Before their astonished gaze he embraced her, kissed her, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. He turned to the others.

  “We are one,” he said. “She and I. A master enslaved by his slave-Look not so hard upon us, girl-priest-tomb-robber! As is my right, by the canon of our Shadow Gods, I shall free her and make her the mistress of my clan-house.” He shifted into Livyani, and only Mirure knew what he said after that.

  Tlayesha was the nearest. She went to them, but she had no idea what to advise. The matter was simpler in Tsolyanu than in theocratic Livyanu, where all social relationships were dictated from birth by the rigid strictures of the Shadow Gods’ temples. Here, such a slave as Mirure could be freed, declare herself Aridani, and wed her master all on the same day-and marry as many other men thereafter as she pleased. It was not frequent, but it happened.

  “Lift! Nay-hold fast! Halt it, you puling priest!” Simanuya yelped suddenly. “The whole weight comes upon me!”

  The ponderous lid rested upon an inclined rim and must have been mounted on rollers; once raised, it was designed to slide. As Harsan watched with horror, it rumbled majestically towards the glassblower, who vanished behind it. The lid finished with a thunderous boom against the rear wall of the alcove. There it balanced, tilted down, scraped along the wall, and came to a stop with Harsan’s end angled high above the head of the sarcophagus.

  They looked to see Simanuya mashed like a Chri-fly against the wall behind the thing. Then his voice arose, cursing and praying and wheedling, from the gap underneath the lid. He crawled, little the worse for wear, out of the dark triangular opening underneath, between the lid and the sarcophagus itself.

  “Kill me outright, you milk-sucking fool! Never would I have you upon any venture of mine!” Simanuya exploded into curses.

  Harsan heard but paid no heed. He stood gazing into the coffin.

  The face of the occupant had been covered with a mosaic mask. The wooden backing of this had crumbled away long ago, and the stones, red garnets and yellow zircons and brooding fire-opals, were scattered dewdrops upon the gold-laced cerements beneath. The arms and hands, sheathed in gauntleted vambraces of precious metals, lay folded upon the breast amidst collars, necklaces, and gorgets of enamel and filigree, all blackened by time and inevitable corruption. He could see nothing of the torso or the legs, so thick were the wrappings of what had once been lacy Thesun-gmz amp; and age-dimmed brocades.

  He saw all of this, yet he saw none of it. Instead, he stared at the three objects that reposed upon the sleeper’s breast.

  At first he had thought the corpse to be a woman. Then he realized that the metal breast-cups upon its chest were not such at all; they were really the two halves of a silvery globe, very like those he had examined so long ago with Chtik p’Qwe in the Temple of Eternal Knowing in Bey Sii!

  The third object lay between the engraved and inlaid gauntlets covering the arms.

  It was a golden hand, palm up, the fingers together, neatly pointing up at the corpse’s masked chin. From where he stood he could make out the column of Llyani glyphs as easily as though he knew them by heart.

  He had the golden hand and one half of the globe before any of the others could react. Simanuya scooped up the other silvery hemisphere, however.

  “Give me that!” Harsan reached for it.

  “Now, priest, you’ll not be greedy, eh? Not deprive your comrades of some profit!” The man stood tensed and ready. He had probably survived similar situations before.

  “No matter of greed. Take all the rest-the jewels, the gold!” “Har san, let him have what he would…” Tlayesha interrupted plaintively.

  She did not know and could not understand.

  “He can strip this poor corpse as naked as one of Dlamelish’ temple-boys-become rich as the Emperor in Avanthar! Give me the sphere-it is all I want.”

  It had taken Taluvaz only moments to size up the affair. “Glassblower, you have no use for that object. Come, surrender it. Take what you like of the rest-take all our shares!”

  “Something so valuable that all of these baubles are no more than dross?” Simanuya asked in bitter tones. “Something of sorcery, of ancient power? Something we could sell to our pursuers in exchange for our lives?” His voice rose to a barrelchested roar. “Something you must then take from me, priest, if you have more than buttermilk in your veins!”

  Harsan had lost all thought of himself. He began to sidle around the sarcophagus toward the glassblower. The other inserted his free hand into his vest, and a short, triangular dagger appeared. It was a wicked thing, a hollow glass blade. Bluish liquid sloshed to and fro within it.

  Simanuya sensed Mirure approaching from his right. He glided back around the sarcophagus, put beefy shoulders against the wall. The silvery hemisphere he carefully laid upon the coffin rim before him. He menaced the girl with the dagger and thrust out splayed fingers to fend off Harsan on his left.

  “So you would cheat me?” he snarled. “Pious chatter about despoiling tombs and the dead? Cha, how you priestly hypocrites raise the whore’s price after you’ve seen her dance!”

  “Look you here, man,” Taluvaz said. “None would rob you. It is as Harsan says. All is yours. All! Save for that sphere-thing. ”

  He gestured sharply, and as Simanuya’s one good eye followed his hand, Mirure leaped.

  Harsan moved almost simultaneously. He collided with what felt like a stone club, the glassblower’s fist. Momentum carried him on to crash into Simanuya’s brawny shoulder, and an arm encircled his back to crush the life out of him. He hammered Simanuya’s jowly chin with his free hand, but he could not see what transpired behind. Violent motion erupted there by his ear; the glassblower cursed, then shrieked. The arm fell away.

  Harsan dragged himself free to see Mirure’s blade, scarlet to the hilt, gliding back out of Simanuya’s ribcage.

  The wound did not even appear serious, a red-lipped slit no more than a finger’s breadth long; yet Simanuya’s good eye rolled up and began to glaze, and breath bubbled raggedly in his lungs. He opened his mouth to speak, waved a hand, and knocked the silvery hemisphere spinning and rolling out into the room. He wheeled toward Harsan. Slowly, with the face of a man who already knows he is dead, Simanuya crumpled, joint by joint, to the floor.

  Tlayesha was beside Harsan. There was no time to explain. He made himself thrust her aside and scrambled to seize the other half of the globe before Taluvaz or his N’luss woman could retrieve it.

  Neither paid him any attention. Taluvaz knelt beside the warrior girl, eyes wide and stricken, his black and red tattooes vivid against the pallor of his cheeks.

  “It is only a little cut, my Lord,” Mirure said in her soft, foreign voice. A line of red showed against the smooth curve of her breast where neck and shoulder joined.

  The Livyani reached for Simanuya’s dagger. Its tip was gone. He sniffed, and his head snapped back from the acrid odour of what the weapon had contained.

  “Physician-?”

  “I have nothing with me,” Tlayesha moaned.

  “What is the poison? How long-?”

  “ Ajura, I think. A swamp-fruit, common in Purdimal…”

  “What does it do?”

  “I–I am not certain, Lord. It immobilises, numbs, almost at once. I do not know if it-kills-or how soon. I am not even certain that it does kill. Many merchants use it to ward off footpads…”

  “At least it is not instant.” Taluvaz clenched his fists, beat them upon the stone floor. “We-we must surrender-call for
terms.-No, we cannot!” He clutched at his greying hair in anguish. “If only-”

  Tlayesha supported Mirure, let her lean against her shoulder. The N’luss girl seemed dazed, confused. Beads of perspiration showed upon her upper lip and her forehead. She tried to smile but slumped dizzily instead.

  Harsan came to stand before them. He said, “It is quite all right, Lord Taluvaz. There is no exit through the sarcophagus. I am willing now to surrender. The game is done, and you may summon Lord Vridekka and his minions. But be assured that I shall bargain them a good bargain for your woman’s life.”

  They goggled at him uncomprehendingly. Harsan held the globe, both halves joined into a perfect sphere, in both hands. His face appeared as though lit from within, but by what strange emotion perhaps only Lord Taluvaz Arrio could guess.

  “Come, call to those outside. Let them break down the portcullis. Your Mirure must live-and I shall take Lord Sarku’s servants to the Man of Gold.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It took longer than expected. Mirure was only semi-conscious when the slow, skeletal Mrur battered down the portcullis and hauled the last fragments out of the doorway to admit Jayargo and a handful of copper-helmeted temple guards. Taluvaz Arrio refused to let them touch Mirure, and he and Harsan together carried the stricken girl out through the smoke-smelling anteroom to one of the shafts where ropes and a leather swing-seat dangled. Soon they stood once again in the upper cavern of the domes. More of the Undead and another half dozen guardsmen milled about here, together with two Qol and a miscellany of smaller creatures of the Underworlds that Harsan could not identify.

  There were others, too: five warriors, their leather tunics innocent of any clan colours or insignia, squatted on their haunches apart from Vridekka’s followers. They were visibly uneasy though just as unmistakably allied-or neutral-to Lord Sarku’s contingent. With this latter party was the man Tlayesha had known as a tanner and whom Harsan had once named a Mihalli. He sat, unconcerned and aloof, upon a fallen stela next to his assistant, the same vulpine-faced little rogue who had slain the young nobleman upon the Sakbe road platform. Tlayesha touched Harsan’s arm and pointed.