The Man of Gold t-2

by M. A. R. Barker

  A thunderous roar from the room of the picture-box made the creature miss. The beam of twinkling blue light snapped soundlessly over Tlayesha’s head. Both Harsan and the Mihalli turned to stare unbelievingly.

  Soldiers, the Undead, the remaining Qol, a half dozen of Vridekka’s small Underworld monsters-all came boiling out of the narrow door. The living fled toward the anteroom, the Mrur stumbled and rose sluggishly to fall again under the feet of comrades behind; the Jajgi was visible for a moment, and then it, too, disappeared under the press. Jayargo dragged himself free to scramble up by the wall just outside of the inner chamber.

  Something brown and huge loomed just within the door to the room of the picture-box. It flowed forth, a low and massive wave of crusted, stained reddish leatheriness borne along upon a myriad tiny greyish cilia-a thing like a many-legged flatworm, but with a thousand wetly gleaming, soft tendril-legs for every one that any normal worm possessed! The upper integument was smooth, undulating, glistening russet-like a great carpet carried along by a horde of Dri — ants.

  A living carpet, Harsan thought.

  Yes, that was it! A carpet! The brown carpet he had glimpsed within the chamber of the picture-box! The thing must be some sort of guardian!

  Taluvaz Arrio shouted in his ear, “A NgoroV'

  “A what?”

  “One of the beasts of the ancients-kept to guard their tombs and treasures!” The Livyani seized Tlayesha’s wrist, pulled her and Mirure back around behind the dais.

  “Hurry,” he panted, “for it slays all! In Livyanu-”

  Harsan did not wait to hear what a Ngoro might do in Livyanu. He must stop both this monster and Vridekka. A glance told him that the old man was no obstacle now. He was either dead or unconscious-perhaps he had used some trance-like spell to prevent his mind from feeling pain. His hands were white and shrivelled, as though long immersed in ice water.

  Harsan bent. A jerk and he had one of Vridekka’s scuffed leather sandals in his hand. This he used this to scoop up the silvery-blue rod, still streaked with moisture and lacy white crystals.

  Whatever else, whatever the consequences, he had one more thing to do. The cold of the rod made him curse, but he staggered across the chamber and up onto the dais.

  He thrust the rod down into the hole in the central panel.

  The black handle moved this way and that under his hand. He felt it engage, and sensed the throb of ancient power building somewhere inside. Many tiny lights sprang up to dazzle him with reds and blues and yellows. Harsan fell to his knees and prayed that the Man of Gold still operated, that it would do what the Globe of Instruction had claimed against the Goddess of the Pale Bone, “She Who Must Not Be Named.”

  He prayed that it would somehow make all of this death and blood and pain worthwhile.

  The organ voices poured forth again within his brain, rose to a crescendo, then dulled to barest audibility. The spots of pain reappeared upon the inside of his eyelids, but they were not as excruciating as before. Indeed, there were words written within each pulsing circle, words in a script that he could not read, words that shifted and changed to vocal, musical notes within his mind. He knew that they had nothing to do with the Man of Gold.

  He understood the words.

  “Our duty.” The organ voices sang. “Our task.” A cascade of trebles and basses and shrieking flutings poured over him.

  He sensed rather than saw the sweep of the great carpet-creature-the Ngoro Taluvaz had named it-as it rolled inexorably forward over the Undead, over the Qol and the others, and towards himself.

  “Our duty,” the organ rumbled in a lower, minor key. “All those who come without permission. All-”

  He could see nothing now but the tiny circles of light, glowing orbs that had no colour and no substance.

  “Who-? Why-?”

  “Our duty,” the mighty orchestra boomed in measured cadences that shook Harsan’s universe. “Placed here to guard the secrets of-” There was a name, but it did not translate into sound. “To slay those who disrupt the house of him with whom we are allied…”

  “We did not come-we are not-”

  “So it is. You brought the key, the rod. You could not have that unless you have permission. That is why we strive to speak to you, to read the patterns of your mind.” Harsan felt the vibration of the creature’s ponderous movement through his shins, pressed against the floor of the dais. “Death must come to those who are here but who are not with you. They are interlopers. Wait.”

  Harsan dared to open one eye. The sweeping brown carpet filled one side of the hall. There were lumps and unidentifiable objects beneath it. Jayargo cowered against the wall nearest the door. The Mihalli, his bandy-legged assistant, and two of his bravoes crouched in the opposite comer. The blue globe flashed and flashed again, and seared black spots appeared upon the surface of the carpet-thing.

  It flowed forward, swept down upon them.

  “Priest, priest!” the Mihalli howled. “Call it back! Stop it!”

  “I cannot, even if I wished,” Harsan cried.

  “If they are friends, followers, servants,” the organ blared in his head, “then are we empowered to spare them.”

  Harsan hesitated.

  “Priest-! Oh, Harsan!” It was Eyil who stood there, terrified, nude save for her flashing blue jewellery, her high, dark-tipped breasts heaving in terror. She was lovely. A pang of yearning struck him.

  “No friends of mine!” Harsan snarled.

  The russet carpet reared, a great ocean wave, oily-smooth, brown as dried blood on top, red-grey wriggling cilia beneath.

  A muscled, snarling, many-fanged Zrne rose to face it; then a snake-like dragon-thing; then a furred, feline beast-the same that Harsan had glimpsed before.

  The carpet swept over them all. There were screams and crunching sounds.

  Harsan blinked; his eyes told him that the Mihalli had vanished just slim moments before the carpet-thing struck. If the creature had the skill to transport itself out along the lines of Other Planar force into some other bubble of reality, then so be it. Something-the Ngoro or his own mind-told him that it would not return.

  Ponderously the Ngoro reversed itself, turned, and made for Jayargo. The skull-faced priest gaped, then fumbled within his ochre robe. He drew forth the black globe he had picked up in the anteroom.

  He clawed at the device, mewling in wordless terror. Something inside the globe clicked, and the top came off. Jayargo drew back his arm and hurled the sphere at the Ngoro as a soldier throws a fire-pot from a wall!

  It landed directly before the carpet-creature, rolled, and stopped. A black-brown ichor oozed out upon the floor.

  The stuff was very like the grease the carter clans used to lubricate the exles of their Chlen- carts. The Ngoro rolled on, undisturbed.

  Jayargo squawked, threw up his arms, and fled back toward the anteroom.

  The Ngoro began to pick up speed, rolling toward Taluvaz and the rest of the knot of figures just below the dais.

  “No-! Friends! Not them!” Vridekka, who was certainly no friend, lay there too, but he was still immobile, a sprawled and ridiculous heap of stick-like limbs and ragged brown robes. Mirure stood over him, sword in hand.

  The carpet-thing halted. “You who possess the key-your body is like those others, but we are unsure. Within you we perceive differences.” The organ notes were wistful, restrained, as though yearning for an excuse to complete the work of slaughter.

  “What?”

  “We see you as a four-limbed-one, a human. But your mind shows one who has six limbs, a segmented tail…” Harsan sensed confusion and a threatening surge of hostility.

  “No, I am no Pe Choi! Look again! Look into my mind-see, I open it to you!”

  The answer was an indescribable ruffling: a shaking, sifting sensation reminiscent of an old pedant shaking out a dusty scroll. He found himself on all fours upon the dais.

  “You are not. But yet you are.” The Ngoro humped and rustled. “In
one form your thoughts are muddled: this ‘Man of Gold,’ the many objectives of your species-too much and too disordered. In your other sKape you bear a message…” The deep-throated chorus became one of wonderment. “A message- for the ‘Underpeople’-for those who dwell in thrall to humankind, your other, original species…?”

  Itk t’Sa! Somehow she still lived then, within him! She had impressed him with her mission, however she had managed it.

  The Ngoro reared up, a full two man-heights tall, rust-hued cilia coiling and twining beneath its sleek upper surface. “Return to the Pe Choi, then, you who are both! Tell them that some there are who dwell with humankind but who are not ‘Under-people’! Nay, some are ‘Overpeople,’ if you like either of those two terms! We have lived amongst the soft four-limbed-ones by choice, and we do as we will. None holds us in slavery, none is our master-he whom we served here paid well and in coin for our own choosing for the services we render.”

  “You would not come forth-to live upon the surface of Tekumel, to dwell in places of your own?” The words were not Harsan’s but Itk t’Sa’s.

  “Not so. Not all who inhabit the world of mankind are downtrodden, yearning to be free-and ‘free,’ indeed, of what? We do not covet your forests, nor are we eager for the sight of the sun and the moons. We dwell in our chosen places; you in yours. We are not pleased by the neareness of many fellows, by edifices, by the elaborations of manners and customs and societies that busy your minds. If you seek the will of us, the Ngoro, then know that we seek only solitude, the privacy of our own company. Know that we are not one entity; we are composed of a million, a billion, tiny minds, all alike, all with the same needs and goals. We are already a community, a polity, a metropolis in every sense of your word.”

  “Do you never desire the nearness of other species? Communion with beings different from yourself-selves?”

  “That we have aplenty-within our own bodies.” The organ sang down to a final dark, wailing chord. “We know too much-we have seen too much, and we have wandered too far. We no longer possess that one quality which gives you younger races your life, your animation…”

  “And that is…?”

  “That which no spell, no mage, no revolt or conflict or new confrontation can revivify: curiosity. The desire to experience more.”

  The music died away to a last whispered echo of Harsan’s own heartbeat. Then it was gone entirely.

  The creature flowed around the central dais toward the room where the shattered picture-box lay. It left a trail of broken helmets, weapons, armour, bits of clothing, and bones.

  “The-the Man of Gold,” Harsan called. “Tell me what it does! Why-how? The reasons for it…!”

  “You have set it in operation already. As to what it does, you should have waited for him to tell you-he whose instructions and picture-box your fellows have destroyed.” The Ngoro humped up again, folded itself, pushed through the door into the inner chamber.

  There was little sign of its passing. Debris here, stains there. A gentle slithering noise from the inner room sounded like the opening of a wall-panel. There was probably some secret exit from that room through which it would go to feed-upon what, one could only surmise.

  Harsan rose upon aching legs and went to the console. Winking lights welcomed him: a row of red dots, circles of yellow, square boxes of glowing green within which tiny lines merged and diverged to create alien patterns.

  Nothing made any sense.

  He looked up to find Tlayesha and the others beside him. They had heard nothing, not one word of the telepathic conversation between him and the Ngoro. He related it to them briefly.

  “You have done more than any wizard since the Time of No Kings,” Taluvaz said admiringly when he had done. “Not Subadim, not wise Thomar, not Chirene Bakal-no mage or hero of the epics could match this.” He gazed about the chamber enviously. “These boxes, those mechanisms-whatever the Man of Gold may do, it will be a century before all of this can be studied and put to use! I only wish this place were in Livyanu! Oh, I should have made Prince Eselne include a share of any finds-’ ’

  He broke off, embarrassed. Harsan pretended not to notice. The Livyani began again in urgent, businesslike tones. “Come away, young man. Still must we find a path out of this labyrinth.”

  “Jayargo? The Undead? The rest?”

  “Crushed or fled.” Tlayesha touched his forehead. He was hot and feverish. She looked at the lights and knobs and wheels with undisguised awe-and not a little fear. “What does it do, my love? Does it live? Will it march forth to destroy demons?”

  “The ‘Weapon Without Answer’ of Yan Kor…?” Taluvaz added anxiously.

  “I do not know,” he answered. He concentrated, but the voices within his brain were mute now. He frowned, and puzzled over the flat panels for many minutes. Tentatively he touched the controls. Then he kicked the metal console, slapped a hand down across a row of black buttons. He was rewarded by a dance of coloured lights.

  “I see nothing; it does nothing. I command it to rise and take us hence from here, but it does not reply. I tell it to go forth to slay the Yan Koryani and-and a certain terrible Goddess and Her He’esa — but it does not move.” He knit his brows and concentrated again until perspiration dripped down into his eyes. “Nothing. Oh, it makes pretty designs-a veritable treasure trove for a jeweller or one who delights in magical playthings! Our learned priests could exhibit it to awe the gape-mouthed rustics on feast days. Perhaps it is broken-too old. Perhaps-”

  “You saw nothing-sensed nothing?” Taluvaz urged. “No powerful forces, no beams of light? No pressures upon your psychic self?”

  “Nothing! Nothing! The carpet-thing, the Ngoro, either did not know or would not tell me! The. Globes of Instruction said only to do this much! I have done it. As you can see, this much is nothing at all. It glows and twinkles. It does not even make a sound.”

  “This does not mean that it does nothing. The ancients-”

  “Thumis hurl the ancients into the Unending Grey! See for yourself, I have enough psychic sense to know when the powers of the Planes are active close by-and so do you, I warrant. Lord Taluvaz Arrio! Some of its parts must have corroded away or become defective over time…”

  He kicked the Man of Gold again in frustrated disappointment.

  Mirure climbed onto the dais to report that Vridekka still lived but remained unconscious. Either the freezing wounds dealt him by the silvery rod were more terrible than they appeared, or else the Mind-seer’s trance-spell was very powerful indeed. Tlayesha joined with the N’luss girl in suggesting that they cut the old man’s weazened throat before he could awake. Taluvaz urged that they bind him tightly instead, blindfold him so that he could not cast spells with the power of his gaze alone, and leave him to be collected-or to die-later. If they could send a party back for him, Prince Eselne would be very grateful for a scholar as learned in the inner workings of the Temple of Sarku-and as knowledgeable in the doings of his brother, Prince Dhich’une-as Vridekka. The Concordat did not hold down here, and what had happened tonight would not bear scrutiny in the light of day. No, the Skull Prince would not dare complain to the Petal Throne over the disappearance of his house-wizard.

  The others wrangled on, but Harsan paid no heed. Whether they lived or perished here was unimportant. Damn the Man of Gold! It might be arrogant to think oneself a blue or black piece upon the Den-den board, but to win through to the Sun Circle and then find that one’s crown was no more than gilded paper! To use one’s hard-won powers only to discover them as impotent as a child’s toy sword! It was more than one ought to have to bear!

  A mighty mage, a hero of epics indeed! Cha, it was enough to sour the sweetest wine!

  He smashed his hand down again and again upon the black buttons, turned wheels, pressed knobs. The Man of Gold made no response. It did not speak as the picture-box had done: it emitted no sound at all. The flicker of coloured lights and the wavering lines within its many little transparent panels told him nothi
ng.

  At last he put his head down upon the cold metal of the console and wept.

  It was thus that Prince Eselne’s scarlet-armoured soldiers found them a Kiren or two later. They had Jayargo, bruised and much chastened, with them, and to the surprise of all, Morkudz. The little Heheganu babbled out a tale of using a spell of invisibility- really a sort of camouflage that worked best in semi-darkness-to befool the Undead in the tomb chamber. He had then pretended to be a corpse, his greyish skin and lumpy features enhancing that masquerade greatly. When everyone had gone from the upper cavern, he escaped. His adventures amused the others, but they were lost upon Harsan; he had gone once more to kick the Man of Gold and to urge it into life-something, anything, that would make all of this meaningful.

  Nothing availed. Tlayesha and the others almost had to drag him away from the glittering console. They bore him forth, still cursing the poor Skein the Weaver of All had woven for him.

  Chapter Forty

  Arjuan hiDaranu of the Clan of the Victorious Globe was neither young nor handsome. He was certainly no match for the likes of Mrika, his new wife. His clan-elders had warned him against the marriage: the girl came from Hekellu in the far northeast, as far across the Empire from Tumissa as one could get, and her own Clan of the Barren Peak was unknown here. It was possibly not even a decent Tsolyani clan but one from the barbarous mountain tribes of Jannu or Kilalammu. Not a proper marriage at all, they said. But then Aijuan thought to detect a tinge of jealousy in their objections, just the sort of mix of envy and respect and recognition that made him suddenly stand out, no longer a balding, faceless scribe in the Palace of the Realm in provincial Tumissa, but someone to whom pretty women were attracted, a man whose talents were not all to be seen on the surface.

  His clan-brothers told him he was a fool to wed one so young and so pretty. Mrika was Aridani, and once she had settled into Tumissan society-and tired of Aijuan-she would certainly go on to marry other, higher-placed, better looking, and younger husbands. Arjuan had no illusions; he was only a stepping stone-a fact he knew would one day cause him great pain. For now, however, Mrika was indisputably his bride. Men Looked after them and whispered admiringly. They attracted attention on the street, in the official receptions of the Palace of the Realm, in the temple of Lord Thumis, and everywhere they went together. For. the present he was happy to have her.