“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 glimmering 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.
“She said she would make some excuse to her clanspeople and come again in the evening.” The dry, whispery voice held no enthusiasm.
This was a matter that seemed to demand plain speaking. Harsan said, “I think you do not approve of her.”
“Who am I to approve or disapprove? ‘The tree profits nothing from cursing the clouds.’ Your human couplings are of no concern to me. Sleep with a Ssu if you wish! But—”
“But what?”
“Perhaps I have said enough.”
Both were silent. Again Harsan was surprised to find that he did not want to look directly at his relationship with Eyil. It seemed to be a tightly closed little packet within his heart, bound about with the cords of Tsolyanu’s traditions of romantic love and sealed with the wax of youthful attitudes appropriate to such things as pretty girls. In some way he felt afraid to open this parcel. The more he let himself ponder it, the more he was disturbed by niggling little suspicions to which he could put no names: things she had said, things she had done ... He needed reassurance. He put the empty mug back on the tray and looked squarely at Chtik p’Qwe.
“I have never had anyone for whom I cared as much, my friend. Do you think she does not care for me?”
“It is clear that she does. She wept with remorse at having left you alone at the feast. But—”
“Another ‘but?’ ”
The Pe Choi waved all four hands helplessly in the air in a gesture that instantly took Harsan back to his childhood in the Do Chakan forests. “A great many ‘buts.’ I am not sure—I sense ... You know that we Pe Choi possess powers of empathy ...”
“I know,” Harsan said in the Pe Choi tongue.
“Ah, so you do speak my language; thus the priests told me before you arrived here! You can follow me and it will be easier to explain,” Chtik p’Qwe replied in kind. “You have lived amongst us; you know us as well as any human has ever known us; and you are aware that we sometimes sense things for which there are no words—in any tongue. To be a Pe Choi is to be cursed with thoughts that can never be uttered. As the Teachings of Tku Pnii say, ‘Can the mountain know of the diamond hidden within its heart?’ —Oh, Harsan, I feel there is something amiss. But—”
“Again a ‘but’?”
“Yes. Another. But this: I would lay this topic aside until I know more—or know that I know nothing.”
Harsan gave up. “What of the girl, Sriya, or whatever her accursed name is?”
“No trace, as one might expect. The priesthood of Hrihayal says it has a Sriya in Katalal and another in Hekellu, in the eastern mountains. The Temple of Thumis wants no confrontation with those people now, and you have no clan to go banging on their gates demanding Shamtla.”
“They lie, all of them. She was here—”
“I know. The Shen saw her, after all. But unless you have a powerful clan, a good reason for your superiors to get involved, or money to hire one of the assassins’ clans, you can only sing in the wind.”
“Oh, how I’d like to see some of their temple records for myself—or apply a spell or two to the heads of some of those deceitful pimps who pass for priests...! ”
“Nothing is to be gained from wishing. We Pe Choi are a practical race, and my council is that you give the matter up—for now. I have another and more urgent issue to chew over with you.” He scraped his four hands lightly over the ebon-gleaming chitin of his haunches. “I am not concerned with your female, nor really with the incident of the other night. They are clouds that drift past me in the sky. Instead, I think of the work we do here. I would have you prosper, just as I myself would prosper. And I tell you that the priests of the Lords of Change make strides that will leave us behind in the dust. Your skills are needed, Harsan. Now. No more of girls and feasts, but work.” He uncoiled himself gracefully. “Let me show you something.” He went into the inner room and returned with a lump of whitish metal. “This is what was within the second rusted container.” Harsan turned the object over in his hands. It was hemispherical, like one half of a Dziya-melon. A small circular hole occupied the centre of the flat side to the depth of a finger-joint. The rounded exterior was pockmarked with tiny, squarish depressions.
“I can make nothing of it, though I am familiar with many of the artifacts made by both your ancestors and mine.” The Pe Choi ran a hard, jointed finger over the stippled depressions. “These may be some form of writing.”
Thus they seemed to be, although Harsan did not recognise them. They were aligned in neat rows all around the convex outer surface of the object, and they were of uniform height and width and depth as well. Some were the same, while others differed. Letters? Magical runes? Harsan held the artifact tightly, but no miniature voices whispered in his brain. It was therefore probably not a map symbol, or at least not an active one.
‘ ‘Can you see the little ridges and whorls on the flat surface as well?” Chitk p’Qwe asked. “They are almost invisible unless one slants the half-globe toward the light.”
Harsan peered. Then he thought of something. He arose, shakily, and brought his packet of personal belongings from the storage chest. From this he took out a cloth-wrapped object. “Let me try this.” Zaren’s farseeing device was quickly set up to face the enigmatic white hemisphere. He adjusted it this way and that, but ail he saw was a pale blur.
“A friend made this,” he answered Chtik p’Qwe’s unspoken question. “It brings far away objects nearer. I had hoped it would do the same for a little thing seen from close by.”
The Pe Choi examined the contraption. “I have seen pieces of curved glass used to enlarge things. There is a priest in my temple whose sight is as weak as a babe’s. He has a broken piece of a Mu’ugalavyani bottle which he uses to magnify the letters of books. But it distorts everything. Still—something might be made of this.”
“Zaren spoke of a text that gives the principles underlying this phenomenon.” Harsan struggled with his memory. “I think it was the ‘Book of the Visitations of Glory.’ ”
“Not a common treatise. Yet I have heard of it,” Chitk p
’Qwe mused. “Your temple may have it here, or mayhap it will be in my temple’s library?”
“Or perhaps in mine.” They both jumped and whirled to see Kerektu hiKhanmu standing in the doorway, smiling silver mask in hand. “May I see the artifact, please?”
The Pe Choi pushed it reluctantly across the table. Harsan moved to conceal Zaren’s farseeing device behind himself, surreptitiously dropping its cloth wrappings back over the box and its lenses. Kerektu hiKhanmu either did not see or affected not to notice. Instead, he took up the preferred artifact, inspected it as Harsan had done, felt it, shook it, smelled it. At length he laid it down again.
“ ‘A worthy treasury is not opened easily,’ ” he quoted ruefully. “What of the third container?”
Chtik p’Qwe hesitated. “I am still at work upon it. Extreme care must be used in order not to break anything fragile inside.” “Of course, colleague.” Kerektu hiKhanmu turned smoothly to Harsan. “You may be interested in a piece of news, my friend. I have learned that our library contains a copy of the Llyani lexicon of Ssumunish Kra of Ch’ochi.”
“I had heard that it was a lost book.” Harsan could not repress a flare of interest—and envy.
“A thing is only lost until it is found again.” Small white teeth flashed in a generous smile. “If you would consult it, I can have it copied for you.”
This was a major temptation. Ssumunish Kra was almost contemporary' with the end of Llyan’s empire! “My Lord, you offer a great boon. What would you have in exchange?”
“Nothing that would distress your superiors, or mine. We could join in reading the manuscript texts. A copy for you and a copy for me, and knowledge—and perchance promotion—accruing to us both.”
Harsan found words of agreement ready upon his tongue but thought better of it. “I will think upon this.”
The long-lashed, almond-shaped eyes turned regretfully downward. “Ponder not too long, dear colleague. Both our superiors grow bored with us. Rumour has it that if we do not soon set the Empire agog with the wonder of our discoveries, we shall all be sent packing. You might like to return to your monastery, of course, and eke out your days scrambling for coppers from nose-picking peasants, but I would be grieved to find my Skein of Destiny woven of such drab stuff. ’ ’
Chtik p’Qwe raised his head from studying the whitish metal hemisphere. He surprised Harsan by saying sweetly, “Alas, for your Skein of Destiny! That such a fabric of beauty might be transformed into a country bumpkin’s soiled breechclout! Lyricists shall compose laments upon this tragedy for generations to come! On the other hand, the bucolic life is said to have its compensations ...”
The gently passive gaze focussed upon the Pe Choi. “Gibes ill become you, colleague. What I say is of benefit to all of us. How much will your scraping and scratching excite the High Council of the Temple of Ketengku? Any good jeweller can do as much—and carve those wretched blobs of rust with bas-reliefs of the Thirty-Two Unspeakable Acts of Hrihayal at the same time! I urge only that we pool our talents.”
“Indeed. ‘The lair of the Mnor is comfortable, but it is no place to sleep!’ Had your Lord Ksarul been willing to work together with the other Gods—even those of His own party of Change—there would have been no Battle of Dormoron Plain, and He’d not now be imprisoned in the Blue Room!”
This banter was verging upon acrimony, and Harsan interrupted, “Peace, colleagues, peace! Leave religious disputation to the marketplace orators! How am I to work?”
Kerektu hiKhanmu’s expression did not change. He said politely, “I only ask for a modicum of cooperation. Time is short. ‘The worm who sleeps too long upon the rock is fried by the sun.’ You must have heard that Chakan adage?”
Harsan nodded courteously in return but said no more. He motioned Chtik p’Qwe toward his toolchest, and himself picked up one of the manuscript leaves. The priest of Ksarul smiled, bowed, and brought out his penbox. The discussion was apparently over, for now. The priest of Wuru did not appear.
At length Kerektu hiKhanmu sighed graciously, put aside his copying, and arose saying something about lunch. Harsan would have followed after, but Chtik p’Qwe put a restraining hand upon his arm.
“I have heard you humans say that after love and fear, the next greatest torment is temptation. Do not be hasty to aid this black-robe, Harsan. Who knows whether he speaks the truth? It is possible that he would deceive you with some later, garbled recension of the lexicon of Ssumunish Kra. Be assured that the followers of Change wish neither of us well.’’
“Yet what if he does not lie? The Temple of Ksarul is known for its ancient, secret libraries. They may well possess a copy of the lexicon. Oh, how I could use it!” He held up two manuscript fragments. “I am so close to the meaning of these pages. I have discovered that there are two separate books here. One is a common text of funerary invocations and rituals, but the other is almost certainly the ‘Book of Sunderings,’ which has not been seen since Engsvan hla Ganga’s libraries sank beneath the southern sea! Oh, Chtik p’Qwe, what an achievement if it be true! What a prize! I only need to separate these two books and complete my translation—”
The Pe Choi showed his excitement by wobbling his great head from side to side. “Splendid! I, too, may have something at least as important. Let me show you what I accomplished this morning—something I did not wish our black-robed friend to see quite yet.” He picked up the third lump of rust from the table, held it in his delicate upper pair of hands, and gently pulled in opposite directions. It separated into two pieces, coming apart as prettily as two halves of a shellfish. A few crumbs of rust pattered down onto the table.
Nested inside was a second hemisphere of white metal, identical to the one that lay upon the table. Chtik p’Qwe removed it and handed it to him.
Wondering, Harsan took the object. It was the same as the first, save that instead of a hole in the flat side there was a circular peg.
The Pe Choi forestalled him. “I have already fitted the peg into the hole. The two halves fit together to make a neat fistsized sphere. But nothing else occurs. See for yourself.”
Chtik p’Qwe was correct. Harsan put the two hemispheres together, twisted and prodded them this way and that, but could see no purpose to them. The ancients were not simple with their puzzles!
Nothing seemed to make the matter clearer. At last the Pe Choi hissed to warn him of the return of the priest of Ksarul, and the second hemisphere went back into its shell of rust and metallic accretions.
Chapter Thirteen
The remainder of the afternoon passed slowly. The Pe Choi silently went about his picking and scraping, while Kerektu hiKhanmu copied glyphs onto a scroll. Harsan set out several manuscript fragments and juggled them this way and that to see if any fitted together. No one wanted to resume the previous conversation.
Eventually Chtik p’Qwe threw down his tools and left. An hour or two thereafter a temple slave brought Harsan’s dinner on a tray, sent, apparently, by the Pe Choi. Harsan started up at every little sound in the outer corridor, thinking that it might be the Lady Eyil. But she did not come. Kerektu hiKhanmu finally wiped his pen nibs and departed, leaving the two guards to seal away the artifacts for the night.
Harsan had thought of one more experiment, however. This must be tested when neither of the priests of Change was present.
“Would you not leave the relics with me for a little longer?” he asked Reshmu. “I am in the midst of something.”
The guard shrugged, and black-browed Gutenu yawned. Neither made objection.
Out came Zaren’s farseeing device, and Harsan pried at one of the larger lenses with impatient fingers. It came free of its wax, and he carried it to the table where the first hemisphere lay. A moment of fumbling and adjustment, and then strange lines appeared in the glass, though much twisted and blurred. The tiny grooves on the flat side were circular, and his eye followed them dizzily from one edge of the glistening whitish surface to the other. There was something about them...
He saw what it was. The grooves nowhere crossed one another but ran in an ever-narrowing spiral round and round to a central point—which would have been in the very middle of the round hole. He followed them back again in the opposite direction and came to the outer rim of the hemisphere. Just there, on the convex exterior, below the starting point of the grooves on the flat side, an almost invisible triangle had been incised into the metal. The rows of squarish symbols seemed to begin at this triangle too, marching away around the outer surface until they ended in a glyph of some sort at the deepest point of the curved hemisphere.
Excited now, he pulled the third lump of rust apart. Bits of corrosion flaked away, and he would have some explaining to do to Chtik p’Qwe in the morning. A glance through the lense told him that the second hemisphere was identical: the same concentric circles on the flat side, the same spiralling to a central point. This, however, was marked upon the summit of the protruding peg with a triangle. Another triangle on the outer edge indicated the entrance to the whorl. There was one more difference: the concentric grooves ran in the opposite direction to those of the first hemisphere.
He held the two pieces gently, positioned them so that the two little outer triangles lined up, and pushed the pegged half down into the other’s hole. Then he twisted them together in the direction of the concentric circles. The two halves revolved easily, moving almost of their own volition in his hands. Then they stopped. He could rotate them no further.
And he knew.
HE KNEW!
It was as though a fiery dagger slashed a path through his brain. Knowledge poured in, echoed, roared, broke down barriers of language and intellect and memory...!
He knew where the Man of Gold was! It was not in Ch’ochi; it lay beneath the ancient city of Purdimal in northwestern Tsolyanu, some eight hundred Tsan from Bey Sii.
He did not know exactly what it was, but he knew how to find its aeons-old tomb, how to operate it, how to make it do what it had done before in a time so remote that not one whisper of it had carried down into any of the living mythologies of Tekumel.
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