The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  The cell was cold. He warmed her body with his.

  “I cannot, Eyil. I care nothing for who you are, or who you were. Now I cannot do your bidding, for you have wrought only too well with your arts.”

  Above them, in the darkness, a tiny aperture closed. Vridekka smiled to himself and rubbed skeletal fingers together. How very wise of his master to place these two together thus. The youthful, gallant bonds Harsan had forged with his lady-love were now reinforced a thousand times over by this exchange of confidences! A city defended by such strength would be impregnable! He chuckled and crept away down the winding passage to report to Prince Dhich’une.

  Chapter Twenty

  Time flowed silently by in the darkness of the cell, its eddies and currents uncharted, its depths unplumbed.

  Four Kiren had Prince Dhich’une said?

  One twelfth of a day: time enough to rise, to eat, to work, to sleep, to plough a field, to recite a cycle from the epics, to enjoy a repast with friends, to win a battle, to make love and then lie all warm and drowsy against one’s mate ...

  Yes, time enough, too, to prepare oneself to die, to confront the demons of fear and pain, to contemplate the mournful barque of Lord Belkhanu, the Final Arbiter of the Excellent Dead.

  Harsan lay wrapped together with Eyil in her cloak upon the hard flagstones. She dozed fitfully, for she was exhausted. He could not sleep. Instead, his thoughts wandered whimsically of themselves. A remembered story came to him: of the aristocrats of the high clans who affected to make only subjective distinctions between the measurements of time and space. Four Kiren? When one was in the company of one’s beloved, then a year could be counted as a single Kiren,-while one moment of boredom might be counted as more Kiren than a tree had leaves! The distance from Tumissa to Bey Sii was only one Tsan if one were happy, but that from one’s couch to the wardrobe might be a thousand Tsan if one were weary of life...

  He smiled wryly to himself, recalling chubby, argumentative Wareka hiSanusai and his lessons in philosophy at the Monastery of the Sapient Eye. Wareka affected the Doctrine of the Effulgence of the Now. Rejoice, Harsan, he would say. Enjoy! Do you not lie presently limb to limb with your beloved? The now is the all, the totality of being. As each second passes it becomes only a memory, whilst the future is naught but shadows and vague pathways yet unknown. Let the Weaver of Skeins anguish over the knots of your destiny!

  Damn Wareka! Would that he were here now to take their place in this dungeon ...

  Then there were the dogmas of Pamaviraz the Livyani, named the Canon of the Establishment of Blessed Memory, popular with the adherents of the war-gods of the Tsolyani pantheon. Ohe, there was a brave song for you! Let both your life and your death form a pattern of beauty, they preached; make your deeds a rich skein worthy of heroes; live well and die gloriously, for your total worth consists only of the “noble actions” inscribed upon your epitaph. The most praiseworthy being is that one whose name is sung the longest by the bards of generations yet to come...

  All of the God-accursed philosophers were welcome to Harsan’s present predicament!

  The hinges of the heavy door screamed, and torches thrust in to dazzle their eyes. Rough hands pulled them apart, put manacles of cold bronze upon their wrists, and sent them staggering out into the corridor where Vridekka waited, accompanied by a squad of soldiers of the Legion of Ketl. These were zealots of the Inner Temple of Sarku, he saw, for beneath their copper helmets their eye-sockets were blackened with Tsunu-paste, and their cheekbones had been daubed with white.

  “Put cloaks upon their shoulders, Jesekh,” the Mind-seer ordered. “The way is long, and the catacombs are chilly.”

  The old man led off at a rapid pace through the passages beneath the prison. Rows of cells, tunnels, dim chambers in which enigmatic engines of torment loomed upon pedestals, dark and dripping caverns full of movements and secret scuttlings, all were traversed without comment. At length they stood before a round grating constructed of many little metal bars. A soldier produced a long, lever-like key, and five men thrust the gate open to reveal a dank, black-mouthed corridor beyond.

  Once again Harsan entered the alien world of the labyrinths. Halls, porticoes, arcades, rooms, twisting stairs, narrow and rubble-filled tunnels, mighty chambers embellished with the ornate inscriptions of the Bednalljan kings of the First Imperium; then starkly bare crypts, improvised ladders; an oval court set about with slender columns and decorated with squarish, formalised motifs in a style Harsan did not recognise; the precise, geometrically perfect vaultings of the Engsvanyali Priestkings of the Golden Age... Stone demons leaned down to watch them pass, nightmares from the legends of the darkness, eyes that might have been carven—or filled with malevolent life—and mould-splotched, eroded bas-reliefs that kept them company as they marched.

  All at once they emerged into an open gallery. High balconies cut from the living rock hung over their heads on every side, and thick pillars of a circumference greater than twenty men together could encircle by extending their arms and joining hands held up the ceiling. Rows of webbed, knife-edged glyphs along the walls bespoke the immortal, ever-living majesty of Kaa Drangash the Third, ruler of the Bednalljan Empire, dead now these many long, dusty millennia.

  At the end of this chamber Harsan caught the glimmer of torchlight.

  “Are they Ssu, Master Vridekka?” the soldier named Jesekh hissed.

  “Not likely so close beneath the surface. Moreover, those monsters prefer bluish light. They do not see well otherwise.” The Mind-seer stepped forward and called out, “Ohe! Who is there?”

  “Who, indeed?” A high, mocking voice rang back from the shadows ahead.

  “Servants of Lord Sarku. He Who Coils.”

  A black-clad figure glided out from behind one of the monolithic pillars. The mask of a priest of Ksarul gazed upon them with its blank-eyed, meaningless smile, all silver stained with blood-scarlet in the flickering glow.

  “You go to your temple for the Giving of Praise?”

  “We do. We require only passage from you.”

  “Take it, then.” The figure stood aside, waved a graceful hand.

  Vridekka’s party started forward, halberds held high, watching all around. The Mind-seer reached out and jerked the cloak-cowls down over his captives’ faces. Harsan had only a momentary glimpse of many men: some in black, and some in the sable and purple of Lord Ksarul’s feared Cohort, Lord Gruganu, the Knower of Spells. There were others as well: naked slaves with torches, and still more who were chained together and who bore picks and mallets. A heap of rubble told where they had been digging.

  “So,” Vridekka said conversationally, “you Black-Robes would ' drive a tunnel from the Hall of Mettukeng into the Maze of Unretuming? I wonder what you seek there?”

  “On your way to your temple, servant of the Worm,” the pleasantly sardonic voice replied. “The Concordat does not hold down here.”

  Vridekka cackled. “Yet we are allies, eh? Slay us, and more than one pot will be shattered! We follow the same road this night, though your Doomed Prince loves not our Lord of Worms overmuch.”

  The other gave a derisive, rippling laugh but said no more.

  Could this be Kerektu hiKhanmu? It sounded like him, though the timbre of this man’s voice seemed higher. Harsan took a chance and suddenly shook his head as hard as he could. The cowl slipped down upon his shoulders, and he turned his face toward the Black-Robe, opening his mouth to cry out. The Temple of Ksarul was no friend to Lord Thumis, but if there were two rival players in this game, might there not be three—or more?

  A hard blow took him in the back of the head, and he would have fallen except for the rough hands of his captors. The cowl was jerked back down over his face. A fist caught him in the ribs so that the words he planned became only a grunt and a gasp for air.

  “La, it seems that one of your guests would not mind missing your feast!”

  Was the man coming toward them?

  “Perhaps becau
se he may sleep tonight with the One of Mouths.” Vridekka sounded matter of fact, almost bored. Iron-hard hands continued to propel Harsan on toward the far end of the chamber.

  “On your way, then, and may your great Worm crawl forth and kiss the backsides of the lot of you!” Again came the high, pleasant laughter. Someone barked a command, feet shuffled, tools clanged, and the echo of picks upon stone dwindled away behind them as the Mind-seer led on into the darkness.

  At length the hands upon his arms pulled Harsan to a halt, and the cowl was thrown back from his face. He blinked confusedly, at first unable to comprehend the kaleidoscope within the chamber at whose entrance they stood: swirls of brown and gold and black and russet and ochre, a thousand colours, a myriad shapes, seemingly boundless distances.

  Harsan had never before been inside a temple to Lord Sarku, Master of Worms. The Temple of Rising From the Tomb was one of the mightiest of these, renowned throughout the Five Empires.

  A tessellated pavement of smoky amber quartz and white marble swept away between legions of ponderous, demon-carved pillars to a broad staircase at the end of the nave. This led up to a colonnade on a higher level, the upper shrines of the temple. The in-curving, barrel-vaulted walls of the great hall displayed tier upon tier of sculptured figures: priests and kings and nobles and soldiers and slaves—and creatures who could only have been conceived in the dark, fearful race-memories of mankind. All were done in mosaics of red camelian, brown jasper, glittering tourmaline, and a host of other stones, with eyes of black onyx and secretive yellow topaz. Each figure brought offerings to the frieze of coiling worm-lords depicted in the upper registers.

  Still higher, under the painted vaulting of the roof, a narrow gallery ran along each side of the chamber in the grandiose, monumental style beloved of the architects of the Bednalljan kings. Chains of bronze, half again as thick as a man’s wrist, swung down from the ceiling to support massive chandeliers of branching oil lamps. All along the lower walls of this nave were niches containing images of the one hundred and eight Aspects of Lord Sarku: the fearsome monsters of the Undead, Ku’un the Corpse-Lord, Siyenagga the Wanderer of Tombs, Chmur of the Hands of Grey, and a score of others. He did not wish to look upon them.

  The nave teemed now with worshippers: men in brown vestments, faces painted with the skull-white of the Lord of Worms, others in ritual masks fashioned in the likenesses of beasts and demons, women in robes of dull russet and sombre earth hues, aristocrats in rich blues and reds and yellows, but always with the copper worm of Lord Sarku upon their breasts. Lesser folk, servants, and slaves circled about the outskirts of the throng or squatted patiently at the bases of the columns.

  Over all hung a sickly sweet fragrance: resinous, smoky incense compounded with the sad, funereal perfume of flowers, the oily stench of the lamps, and a submerged, subtle flavour of decay.

  Vridekka did not enter but instead presented himself to an officer in the brown livery and skull-helmet of Lord Sarku’s temple-guard. This man pointed them to a tiny door hidden behind the nearest pillar. A cramped, winding stair led upward from this to the balconies. Here Vridekka’s soldiers took careful hold upon their captives, for the balustrade was only of knee-height. One of the guards gripped Harsan’s wrist chains tightly, and another walked behind him with halberd butt poised to strike, should he display any urgent yearning for self-sacrifice. The groining of the ceiling leaned out into space at a frightening angle just above their heads, and the swarming worshippers below were like begemmed insects. Old Vridekka stepped out upon the narrow balcony with surefooted confidence, but the others hugged the wall. Once Eyil stumbled and gave a muffled cry, but one of her captors muttered a nervous oath, leaned into the wall, and dragged her back.

  At the far end, the balcony gave onto one comer of the upper colonnade. This level, too, teemed with devotees. Twinkling lamps provided unnatural life to the rows of images crouching along the carven walls; stony eyes shifted and stared; bronze lips writhed; and misshapen arms and tails and tentacles wriggled in the glimmering, smoky murk. Urns of incense and tall cult-standards of ebon and ochre plumes stood here and there amidst the crowds of devotees. On each side of a single central aisle sat groups of ritual priests, their faces ruddy in the glow of little braziers of coals, to chant the litanies of the Lord of Worms, Master of the Everlasting Life Beyond the Tomb.

  The odour of things dead was stronger here.

  A black-silhouetted Lector Priest pointed on across the front of the colonnade to where several senior hierophants stood with Prince Dhich’une upon the brink of the staircase that led back down to the nave.

  The Prince had exchanged his brown robe for the vestments of ceremonial office: a surplice of silky Gudru-doth the colour of dark humus; a collar of copper, engraved with runes; a golden pectoral set with topaz and chrysoberyl, from which two lappets of jewelled plaques hung down to his knees; a pleated kilt of rust-red brocade worked with iridescent threads of shiny black; and heavy armlets of massy copper, Lord Sarku’s favoured metal. Upon his head he wore an intricate headdress of little golden skulls intertwined with ebony serpents. Feathery Kheshchal-plumes towered above this and swept down behind him almost to his heels. His hands and feet were bare, painted with the bone-white of the Worm Lord.

  The Prince had seen them. He motioned Vridekka to have them wait beside one of the squat columns.

  “There are preliminaries,” the old man muttered to Harsan. “First must we satisfy those who have paid for the performance.”

  A distant, moaning thunder filled the cavernous hall, and in its centre Harsan glimpsed a figure upon a pedestal who blew into a mighty horn, some two man-heights long and hung by chains from a high tripod. He had heard of that horn, “The One Who Is Mournful of Life.” The echoing boom of the Tunkul-gong of the temple added its voice to the dirge.

  Prince Dhich’une went to stand at the head of the stair, and those below became silent. One earthen hand went up, and the Tunkul-gong roared again. He pointed, and a phalanx of copper-helmeted temple-guards advanced to clear the throngs from the centre of the nave. He made another sign, and now a rectangular area of the pavement there slid soundlessly down. A sloping rampway appeared, from which arose the dank smell of a sepulchre long sealed from the sun.

  Things milled and swarmed in the shadows of that pit: pale creatures who held up gaunt arms to shield themselves from the amber lamplight. Presently one ventured up, then another, and another. Harsan knew not whether he looked upon reality or upon an illusion like those cast by the adepts of his own temple. For the beings that emerged were the Undead: liches and corpses and cadavers, the withered husks of departed life, the dwellers in Lord Sarku’s myriad heavens—the hells of other Gods. Warriors clambered up the ramp, accoutred in armour of antique fashion, green with verdigris and corruption. Then came spectral beings wrapped in tattered cerements and graveclothes, clay-hued apparitions whose skeletal limbs yet glittered with funerary armlets and finery, all that forlorn wrack that men and women leave behind when they pass forth from this life.

  Others were there as well: creatures muffled in robes of charcoal black with the flat faces of serpents, towering monsters of pallid yellowish fungus, flying things with the heads of dead men and creaking leathery wings, bulbous Thunru’u, deformed and twisted crypt-dwellers with rodent snouts and razor claws—a thousand horrors of nightmare and beyond.

  The priests ranked along the aisles of the upper colonnade shouted out a litany. Drums thuttered, flutes shrieked, and horns brayed. The living flowed forward to greet the grey tide of the Undead. A woman rushed to clutch at a lurching corpse, to press her lips to its fleshless face, to cry endearments against its rotted winding sheet. A lover who had died? A husband who now spent eternity in this travesty of life? Another, a stout nobleman, embraced the grinning remains of a child and held it, weeping, to his breast. A young man threw off his mantle and took the greyed cadaver of a woman into his arms, to fall in tangled embrace to the floor where they were lost to v
iew.

  Some knelt and stretched out their hands to Prince Dhich’une above them on the stair. Some cried, “Life forever in the tomb, Oh Master!” and danced and jigged in a frenzied parody of joy. Some chanted and sang and dragged the relicts of the catacombs into their midst to be caressed and fondled. “Life forever!” they shrilled, “Life! To die and yet to live!”

  The vast hall was a spinning turmoil, a maelstrom of noise and light and music and shadow, a streaming glare of lamps and torches, a choking stench of oil and flowers and sweat and drugged incense... Above all hung the overweening redolence of death.

  The Tunkul-gong clamoured again. Prince Dhich’une turned and strode back into the darkness of the upper colonnade. Five senior hierophants arid five Lector Priests bearing lanterns of brown glass fell in behind him. Vridekka motioned for his captives and their guards to bring up the rear.

  In the far wall, a high-arched corridor led off away from the nave. They traversed this for some distance and halted before a great bronze valve of a door, guarded on either side by stone gargoyles who bore unintelligible symbols of gold. This gate opened upon a round tunnel that led down at a steep slant.

  The passage was rough and unomamented. Curious gobbets of frozen stone hung from its roof—a natural cavern created by the fires of Tekumel’s creation. They ended in an oval room, egg-shaped, entirely empty, stained with the white hoar of age. The Prince crossed this chamber to stand before the entrance to a still smaller tunnel that plunged almost vertically down into blackness. The five hierophants knelt behind him, and the Lector Priests arrayed themselves along one curving wall. Vridekka stationed his party at the rear of the room where they could see, signalling two of the men of the Legion of Ketl to stand by the entrance. The rest he dismissed to return to the great hall. Silence seeped into the chamber; not even the cacophony of the nave above reached them here.