The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  Prior Haringgashte sat alone upon the highest dais at the far end of the room. As with many from his native city of Tumissa, his physique had developed like that of the Choqun-plant: reed-slender in his youth, in his latter years he had become almost bottle-shaped. His small and delicate head joined his sloping chest with little pause for shoulders, and his rotund pot-belly overhung his rounded, almost feminine hips in testimony to his love of sedentary habits — and of good food. The grey vestments of Thumis did little to conceal his girth, nor did the black skullcap of the priesthood hide his bald and mottled scalp. He watched Harsan's approach with a steady and not overly baleful gaze, from which the latter derived some faint comfort. His first words took Harsan by surprise.

  “It is related, priest Harsan, that you have been anointed a Scholar Priest of the Second Circle. What was the Labour of Reverence that brought you to this exalted status?”

  “My—my Prior, it was a study of the language of the ancient Empire of Llyan of Tsamra ...”

  “Would you then become a grammarian?”

  “Languages come as easily to me, Sire, as swimming to a fish. I know not why. Yet I would also study history, doctrines, and other—’ ’

  The Prior put forth a soft hand, palm down, two fingers extended, to show that he wished to continue. “How go your studies of Llyani?”

  The younger priest swallowed, started to speak, and tried again. “My Lord, as is known to you, the Empire of Llyan perished some twenty-five thousand years ago — nay, more, if the Livyani scholars are correct. We lack material—I have studied rubbings of the one hundred and fifty-eight stone inscriptions in LIyani, and I have had access to five of the seventeen most authentic books in the language. Yet this is so little. As my Lord knows, the centre of Llyan's empire lay not within our own land of Tsolyanu but rather in the plains between Mu’ugalavya and Livyanu to the southwest. All that we have are the later records of the Three States of the Triangle, some works of the Time of the Dragon Lords...” He trailed off, cursing himself for a babbler, well aware that the Prior knew all that he was telling him. But what did the man want?

  Prior Haringgashte pulled himself to his feet and extracted a worn leathern case of map-symbols from the litter of documents on his work table.

  From this he took out a small pyramid of blue lapis lazuli. Tiny knobs and loops of gold had been affixed here and there upon its surface, and flecks of other minerals glinted from within. This, Harsan knew, symbolised the Empire of Tsolyanu, and each protuberance, curve, subtle shading, and texture told its tale of cities, roads and distances, populations, products, villages and towns, and other data, readable only by those skilled in High Cartography. Next emerged an oblong of sand-yellow jasper: the desert lands of Milumanaya to the north of Tsolyanu. Beyond this he set out a faceted rhomboid of smooth green serpentine; this stood for the hostile lands of Baron Ald of Yan Kor. Above this a tablet of wavy blue slate was placed to indicate the crag-coasted northern sea, each serration, curve, and change of texture marking a harbour, a cove, an island, a distant settlement—even reefs and tides. Three smaller polyhedrons of carnelian, agate, and red porphyry were arranged to the left of this to represent the little northern states of Pijena, Ghaton, and N'lüss. The Prior then brought forth a cloudy wine-red dodecahedron of bloodstone which stood for the sprawling empire of Mu’ugalavya, Tsolyanu’s sometimes hostile western neighbour beyond the Chaka Range. Below this he added a curiously twisted moon-shaped symbol of rippling fire opal: the far-off land of Livyanu. A final plaque of wavy slate to the right of the symbol for Livyanu and beneath that of Tsolyanu signified the southern ocean, the Deeps of Chanayaga. The rest of the symbols he left in the case.

  “Can you read these, then, priest Harsan?”

  “Only the rudiments, my Lord. I am more comfortable with the maps drawn upon paper by merchants—not with these of the High Cartography. ’ ’

  The Prior’s lips sketched a thin smile. “These tell much more. To see, to touch, to feel—so much more than flat lines upon a page. Come, show me where the Empire of Llyan of Tsamra once lay.”

  Wondering, Harsan put forth a tentative finger and touched the empty space between the symbols for Mu’ugalavya and Livyanu. “Here, my Lord.”

  The Prior reached into the welter of materials on the table, picked up a small casket of dun-red metal, and extracted another map symbol. With the air of a mother setting a morsel of sugary Dmi-root before a child, he laid this in the space marked by Harsan’s finger.

  “This was found in a tomb of the Bednalljan Dynasty near our city of Urmish. The casket is Fulat—steel—alas, now one of the rarest metals on Tekumel and one of the most costly therefore. Go ahead, examine it.”

  Slowly the younger man stretched forth his hand to caress the faceted crystal. The symbol was translucent, as deeply green as the Chakan forests; it resembled beryl, yet it was softer and somehow warm to the touch. Within it tiny motes of living gold and ruby-red and jet-black swam lazily like little fishes. Harsan’s fingers seemed to travel of themselves from knobbly protuberance to tiny gold boss to miniature intaglio. As he did so, he realised that he was hearing snatches of speech at the very outer limits of his hearing: diminutive pygmy voices talking, lecturing, reciting, shouting, declaiming, singing—all in a language he could not make out and so faint as to seem but the echo of his own blood beating within his temples.

  He snatched his hand away.

  “It is a thing of the old ones, priest Harsan.” The Prior reached out to take the symbol. “Once when I travelled with our late High Priest, Huketlayu hiTankolel (—may Thumis commend him to the gate-guards of Belkhanu’s paradise!—) to the Imperial citadel at Avanthar, I saw others of these things in the cabinets of Lord Qoruma, the High Princeps of the Omnipotent Azure Legion. Most of these map symbols are still and cold, like the poor copies made now by our artisans, but he had one or two which glowed like this and seemed to speak as this one does, though no one living knows the magic needed to bring the voices of these ghosts clearly to us.” Prior Haringgashte turned the map symbol over. “Look here, priest Harsan.”

  Harsan peered and then suddenly bent closer. The crisply incised characters on the symbol’s base were the convoluted whorls and ornate floral arabesques of the artists of Llyan’s empire, and in the midst of these were the squarish, squat characters of the LIyani syllabary. In an awed voice he read:

  “The Ever-Glorious and Most Puissant—three characters I do not know—Empire of Llyan, God — King, Ruler of Tsamra, and— another glyph I cannot read—Master of—hmm—and Holder of the Power of—” he paused and finished on a questioning note, “—the Man of Gold?”

  As he looked up his eyes met the hard gaze of the Prior. For a moment the silence held. Then the older man blinked, took the map symbol from Harsan’s hand, and said, “There is more, priest Harsan. —Tell me, is your analysis of the structure of the LIyani language complete?”

  Harsan wrenched his attention away from the green-glowing map symbol. “My Lord, it was accepted as my Labour of Reverence. I mean, Lord Thumis deemed it worthy—there are only details... Even now Chushel the Glassmaker blows the final matrices for the elaboration of the syntax ...”

  “Come, I will look upon it.” Haringgashte rose and slipped knobbly feet into worn sandals of woven reed.

  Chapter Three

  Prior Haringgashte led the way through the night—shadowed halls of the sleeping monastery to the north wing where the Scholar Priests had their quarters. Beyond this in what was called the New Annex, built half a millennium ago, was the Hall of Mighty Tongues. This was unique to the Monastery of the Sapient Eye, a showplace that even the Temple of Eternal Knowing in Bey Sü, the capital, lacked. Many learned pilgrims made the detour from the north-south Sakbe road to trudge up into the foothills and gaze up the marvels wrought by Thumis’ priests. Here, in keeping with the Tsolyani love of depicting everything visually, the Scholar Priests had striven to reduce the complex patterns of language itself to visible, tan
gible models, comprehensible to those who had mastered the symbolism.

  A single torch guttered in its bracket just within the door of the long L-shaped gallery. Inside in the place of honour stood Vringayekmu’s rendition of the phonology and syntax of Mu’ugalavya, the tongue of Tsolyanu’s mighty rival to the west. Twisting spirals of smoky red glass rose from a foliated plinth of black onyx; these were the features that made up Mu’ugalavyani’s twelve vowels. Farther up, these joined, separated, and joined again with convolutions of emerald, ochre, and violet, representing the consonants and the syllabic patterns of the language. Above this, skeins of other colours of glass, crystal, and precious metals danced in the torchlight; the complexities of the noun system and the Mu'ugalavyani verb. Then, like the boughs of some great petrified crystalline tree, these networks entwined, reached out, met, parted, rose and fell together, branched away, and interlocked far overhead to form the intricate patterns of the syntactic structure. Harsan had learned to read it all, could drink it in through every pore, could almost sense spiritually the final mingling of all of these many strands to form at the very apex of the model the first couplet of the Third Ode of Bi'isumish, the Blind Poet of Ssa'atis:

  “Wherefore seekest thou, O sage? Tarry, for lo,

  The spring, the autumn, the rains—all come round to thee again.”

  Beyond Vringayekmu’s creation stood a massive tower of soft, mottled, green stone, dark velvet, grating pebbles, and thin lacquered strips of Chlen-hide. This was priestess Fssu’uma’s analysis of Ghatoni, the tongue of the fisherfolk who dwelt along the western shores of the northern sea. Its three major dialects were each represented by a towering pinnacle reaching up into the gloom. Still farther down the gallery the long-dead priest Horri’s squat pyramid of black glass, set with winking garnets and looped with silver strands, symbolised the language of Salarvya, the great feudal empire bordering Tsolyanu to the southeast. In spite of his present concerns, Harsan could not help but feel a momentary twinge of envy: how beautifully had Horri treated the two hundred and fourteen conjugations of the obstreperous Salarvyani verb! No pilgrim from Salarvya had ever looked upon this masterpiece without gasping in admiration, and indeed, some scholars had even been known to shed tears before its perfection.

  More recent constructions lay around the comer of the room to the left, among them Harsan’s own analysis of Llyani. Now he saw that a stranger sat before his work, crosslegged upon a study-mat. A five-wick oil lamp flickered beside him, washing his right arm and his sharp profile with yellow-ruddy light. It was the messenger.

  The Prior stopped before him, sketched a bow of greeting. “Auspicious messenger Kurrune, this is priest Harsan, who made this.”

  The man seemed to unfold as he got to his feet. He towered over Harsan by a handspan, yet he was slender as a new sapling, fine-boned, of early middle years, with the axe-edged features of eastern Tsolyanu and the indefinable air of the far traveller about him. Now he wore a grey guest-robe of the monastery. His blue courier’s headdress lay beside him upon the flagstones.

  “I greet you, priest Harsan. I was pondering your creation.” His voice was deep, grave, and slow. Harsan recognised the flat accent as belonging to the desert city of Fasiltum in the northeastern comer of Tsolyanu.

  “It is insufficient, my Lord.” Indeed, Harsan’s truncated pillar of amber and gold filigree could never match the glory of Vringayekmu’s creation nor even the slighter work of Fssu’uma. Too little was known; there were too few sources, no living speakers of Llyani. The curving, spiralling filaments were bare, deficient in detail. The model’s amber spheres were simple, lacking the nuances of curve, colour, and texture which should have revealed the inner systems of the language: the relationships of its grammar and syntax to its semantics and thence to a depiction of the Llyani world-view. To the practiced eye the model was a good yet introductory sketch, clearly the work of a student, albeit one whose insights showed promise.

  The messenger paced slowly around the construction, looking, feeling, touching, gently rubbing. The smooth warmth of the amber and the russet-yellow highlights of the dark gold seemed to fascinate him. He paused finally before the two priests.

  This was no unlettered bearer of messages. Harsan ventured, “My Lord, you comprehend... ?”

  The other gave him a slight smile. “Who I am concerns you not. What you have made here does concern me. You may address me as Tusmiketlan, the ‘You of Polite Anonymity.’ In return I shall call you Tusmingaru, the ‘You of Honourable Youth.’ Let me look upon the creator of this work.”

  The messenger bent and lifted the lamp. Its light revealed a serious-appearing young man attired in the knee-length grey kilt, stiffened Firya-cloth collar, and reed sandals of a junior priest of Thumis. Harsan was perhaps twenty years of age, slim of build, yet clearly strong as a new tent-rope is strong, with light coppery-gold skin, high cheekbones set in a sharply triangular face, perhaps a bit over-long in the jaw, eyes set a trifle aslant above a typical Tsolyani eagle nose, yet with the wide and generous mouth of the peoples of the western Empire. Harsan’s brows were now a straight line of furrowed puzzlement beneath his cap of black hair.

  Kurrune considered. It was clear that the boy had not yet so totally committed himself to the temple as to shave his head and don the black skullcap. Two braids hung down to Harsan’s collar in front of his ears, their ends caught up with twists of silver wire, and the hair at the back of his head was cut to three fingers’ length, all in the rural fashion of the Chakas. A rustic. Yet a young man with talent—and some burgeoning skill.

  The messenger nodded and turned to the Prior. “Have you shown him the object I brought?”

  “I have. He read most of the inscription.”

  “Then I shall show him another item.” The courier took something from a wallet at his belt, unwrapped it, and held it out to Harsan.

  Wondering, Harsan took it—and almost dropped it. The object was a human hand!

  “Fear not,” Kurrune said in an amused tone. “What you hold is but a waxen cast of a piece of sculpture. The original is of gold. Have a care lest the heat of your fingers blur the writing upon the palm. That is what I wish you to see.”

  Harsan turned it over, holding it gingerly by the carven fingers. The hand was excellently modelled. At first glance it did appear to be a waxy-pale human hand, severed at the wrist, the thumb and four fingers extending straight out and touching one another. Yet it was clear that this was but a carving: the fingers were too long, the workings of the joints and the creases of the knuckles stylised. And strangest of all, there were only conventionalised depressions where the nails shouid have been. Holding it near the light, Harsan saw that the palm was indeed covered with script. Two writings were here, however, one horizontal band across the palm, and another, vertical column that led down from the finger-tips to the wrist.

  The vertical column was again Llyani.

  There was a long, intense silence. At length Harsan raised his head.

  “My Lord, this is a religious relic. A pilgrim’s copy of some powerful talisman. People can purchase trinkets like this at any of the great shrines.” He drew a breath and pulled at his lip. “There are two inscriptions. The horizontal one is in N’liissa, the tongue of the Dragon Warriors, that dynasty which ruled after the fall of the Three States of the Triangle. I am not much versed in it.” He shot an apologetic glance at the Prior, “but I did study it somewhat in order to use the Llyani grammar of Tlu’en of Ssa’atis, which is written in N’liissa. In any case the text is not difficult: prayers for the buyer of the talisman. It was added later, for you can see that it partially covers the Llyani writing. ‘High’ Llyani was nigh a forgotten tongue by the time of the Dragon Warriors.”

  “And you can read the Llyani inscription?” The messenger’s gaze was keen.

  “Not all, my Lord. I should consult my notes on the syllabary, and also the dictionary of Homon Tneqqu of Kheiris, which we have here in the library. It is an incantation, and i
t speaks of several things. This much I can read. There is mention of a ‘Place of Iron Scales,’ and there is the name of a Llyani goddess called Kuu Tep—followed by the classifier glyph for ‘original structure. ’ I cannot make much of that. Then comes the classifier for ‘tool’ or ‘instrument,’ and the words ‘cube of flint’—obsidian. Then it speaks of the defeat of this goddess and her—minions? —the—umm—He’esa, ‘Those Who Are Always Seen and Yet Remain Unseen’—whatever that means—at a city called Shoshche, together with the dismantling—or walling up?—or sealing off?—of her ‘cube’ by the ‘Man of Gold,’ the same glyphs as were upon the map symbol. Then there are two columns of incantations addressed to this ‘Man,’ but they are meaningless without the sorcerous skill to unlock them—and there are some signs here at which I cannot even guess.”

  ‘‘Is not this ‘Shoshche’ the modem Mu’ugalavyani city of Ch’ochi?” the Prior inteijected.

  ‘‘Even so, my Lord, or at least a site nearby in the jungle there. As for the name, as you know, the Llyani fricative ‘sh’ became a glottalised affricate ‘ch” during the Bednalljan dynasty, and though the Mu’ugalavyani no longer pronounce the glottalised series as such, they still write certain archaic names with those symbols. The medial ‘shch’ first became ‘chch,’ then this simplified to—”

  The messenger raised an impatient hand. “Peace! There will be time for such mysteries later! I am off to Tumissa at sunrise and require my sleep.” He paused, then said, “There is yet one important cask to be broached. Priest Harsan, the two items you have seen tonight are only a part of a trove discovered in the old Bednalljan cemetery at Urmish. I would describe the other pieces to you, but I was myself not permitted to see them. They are... important ...”