The Man of Gold
Page 20
Then another figure appeared in the tunnel through which they had come. It was Hele’a of Ghaton. He was alone.
Hele’a stood for a moment in the entrance, blinking almost apologetically and looking from the two groups of priests to Prince Dhich’une. He seemed not to see Harsan or Eyil, but moved slowly forward past them all to face the mouth of the smaller tunnel in the opposite wall.
“He knows and accepts his fate,” Vridekka murmured. “He cannot escape, and suicide or cowardice would give him no dignity in the afterlife. He has chosen the ‘Way of Nchel,’ the Yan Koryani path of resignation to an inexorable doom. He will let us do with him as we will.”
Hele’a now removed his simple tunic, folded it beside him on the floor. Then he knelt and unlaced his high boots, undid the waistband of his kilt, and finally stood naked before them, a stooped, ugly, bandy-legged, ordinary little man of middle years.
Harsan wondered how he could ever have feared him.
Two of the priests arose and laid the Ghatoni down upon his back, spread his limbs, and bound them apart to copper stanchions on the threshold before the farther tunnel. Hele’a’s eyes never left Prince Dhich’une’s face, and when the hierophants had finished their task, he spoke:
“Though I served Yan Kor—for reasons that you may not comprehend—yet never did I any harm to your purposes, mighty Prince.”
“In my game there are no counters which are both white and black.”
“When the unreality of games is laid aside, it can be seen that loyalty, like life and death themselves, is no one simple thing. Our Skeins are complex, of more than just one hue. What you do will have repercussions—a blow begets a blow in return ...”
Prince Dhich’une said no more but stooped and rearranged certain ceremonial objects before him upon the floor. The priests along the wall saw to their lanterns. Those who knelt swayed uneasily, shapeless shadows in their heavy robes. Harsan glanced at Eyil and saw that her lips were compressed as- though with pain. He contrived to reach out and take her hand in his, for which she threw him a look that was half of gratitude and half of terror.
The distant note of the Tunkul-gong trembled through the chamber, the last sobbing breath of a dying man.
Prince Dhich’une stirred now. He raised his hands and cried words in a language that Harsan did not know: great, rolling, hollow syllables that reverberated like the strokes of a drum. The kneeling priests took up the litany in a lower key, almost a whisper, and the air thickened with a susurrus of sound, a rising, falling, gently undulating ripple of eery voices.
The amber lantemlight seemed to dim, the air to flow and pulse. Hovering shadows crept down from the walls and twined before them upon the floor. The Prince’s figure grew indistinct, veiled in a sepia haze, and the skull faces of the priests, too, were lost in the gloom, save for a line of bone-white jaw here, a staring black eye-socket there. Harsan felt a pressure upon his eardrums, a soundless presence, a ponderous, purposeful coming forth...
To his horror he realised that his own heart now pounded in time to the rhythmic cadence of the chant! Worse, he understood the words, though he knew that he had never heard that archaic, alien tongue before!
“Worm Lord, Nighted One, Eater at the Tomb’s Repast,
Come forth, Lord, rejoice! Take sustenance from us who live!
Bright wings on high, pearl-dark sea; these are not Thine;
Mountain peak, forest vale; these are not Thy dwelling;
All return, all descend; each comes to heed Thy call!
What has lived must die; what has died is Thine
Crypt-Lord of the encompassing, all-enfolding dark ...”
Something moved there, within the farther tunnel. The room reeked with the suffocating odour of moist earth, the cloying fragrances of dissolution.
It was round and hollow, a black circle the thickness of a man’s waist. It grew, and a faint, oily slithering came to Harsan’s ears. The front edges of the thing were soft and pulpy, a mottled, ichor-gleaming brown-grey; they trembled in the tenebrous ochre light. It quested forward, feeling its way along the mucid walls of the passage.
Harsan looked upon the mouth of a great, blind worm.
Something else came squeezing up out of the shaft: another black oval, another eager mouth. And then another.
More of the worm-demon emerged into the chamber, streaked ashen and black and pallid white, delicately bristling cilia behind the shapeless lips wriggling in a dance of their own. The second heard curved up and swung toward the priests along the wall. Prince Dhich’une raised a globe of chiselled copper before it, and it withdrew, the soft mouth making tremulous sucking, gulping motions in the air.
The first head arced down to hover over Hele’a. Wetness dribbled from the worm-mouth to splatter upon the stones by the Ghatoni’s shoulder. There this spittle hissed and smoked and fumed like the deadly fluids of the alchemists. A drop of the liquid clung to Hele’a’s cheek, and Harsan saw the flesh there turn grey, then black, then begin to deliquesce and slough away.
Hele’a shrieked.
More of the slime drooled from the other heads—there were six of them now—viscous gobbets splashing upon the floor. An acrid stench arose, as of burning corpses, but when the liquid had boiled away no trace was left.
A thick drop fell full upon Hele’a’s breast and clung there, sizzling. He yelled another wordless cry, his body bucking and writhing against its bonds. Black liquefaction spread over his skin. His feet hammered the rough stone again and again and again, making the strangely gelid air shiver with the agony of his sacrifice.
One of the worm-heads bowed in horrid imitation of courtly grace. It touched the prisoner’s outstretched arm. There it fastened, pulsated, humped, and disgorged seething, turgid fluid upon the floor. Another mouth found Hele’a’s face, and the bulging, terror-glazed eyes disappeared forever beneath it. The third head sank down upon the Ghatoni’s abdomen. His body jerked, kicked, and then lay still. A stink of burst entrails filled the room, but then this too was gone, replaced by mingled stench of burning and corruption.
Now Harsan observed another terrible thing. Prince Dhich’une stood rigid before the worm-demon, arms outspread and head thrown back as if to receive the benediction of a master. As he watched, the Prince seemed to flicker, to flow, to shift from white-daubed skuil-face to a softer form: a satuminely handsome youth of delicately epicene features, a straight and well-modelled nose, a proud jaw, sallow cheeks, lips which were both full and sensual, a high rounded forehead. Then the image altered again; it became a looming, mighty worm, its gaping mouth swaying out from human shoulders to join in sucking sustenance from the wretched victim on the floor. All three of these seemings mingled and blurred and ran together, as a painter mixes pigments upon a palette, until at last Harsan’s eyes and brain could bear no more, and he wrenched his gaze away.
If the reality of Prince Dhich’une were that slender, studious-appearing youth, then the dry, brown stick-figure he and Eyil knew and this ghastly worm-thing were both aspects, signs of servitude, laid upon the Prince by his god.
Dhich’une had paid most dearly, it would seem, for the immortality he sought.
The taste of vomit and of blood from bitten lips brought Harsan back to himself. Eyil slumped against him, her face buried in his shoulder. He did not know whether she was conscious or not—he hoped not. Vridekka’s teeth were clenched, and the ritual priests held their lanterns with trembling fingers.
Prince Dhich’une alone appeared unmoved. His chanting rose to a final high note and then ceased. He raised the coppery globe again before the twining heads, then a staff of black wood, making convoluted gestures in the air. Reluctantly, affectionately, as a lover leaves his beloved, the worm-thing drew in upon itself, coiled, retreated. There was an ugly, glutinous, sucking sound as it sank back down into its lair.
Two hands and two feet still lay in the shackles upon the threshold, but these ended in blackened, grisly stumps. There was no body between them.
Eyil’s knees gave way, and she would have crumpled to the floor had it not been for Harsan’s supporting arms.
Prince Dhich’une motioned for one of the ritual priests to aid Harsan in carrying Eyil back up the passageway. He turned to depart, and the hierophants and the others followed.
Chapter Twenty-One
The upper nave was chaos. So thick was the press that the troops of the Legion of Ketl used their halberds to clear a way for the Prince and his entourage. They reached the brink of the broad staircase and looked down through swirling incense smoke into the packed mass of celebrants below. Prince Dhich’une stood for a moment to peer out into the shouting, chanting maelstrom, apparently seeking someone. Vridekka took up a position beside him.
Harsan looked around. The priest who had helped him carry Eyil up from the worm-demon’s shrine was gone, perhaps to join in the revelry. The Lector Priests and the other officiants had broken up into small groups and were scattered about behind them, talking. The guardsmen focussed their attention upon their master. No one was now nearby!
It was perhaps thirty or forty paces across the width of the upper colonnade to the entrance of the balcony by which they had come. If he could reach that, then navigate the dizzy gallery— then leave the temple, traverse the labyrinth, get out into the world above...
What was he thinking of? Improbable, to say the least! Yet there was no other way to cheat the Prince of the Man of Gold. If death came, at least it would be as a consequence of “noble action.”
He glanced down at Eyil. She seemed dazed and only half conscious, staring with tear-smudged eyes into the lamplit uproar below. What to do with her? She would hinder any escape. If he did the logical thing and abandoned her, the Prince might well let her go; why harm her once Harsan had flown from his net? On the other hand, he might well slay her, for now she knew too much of his scheming.
Harsan made up his mind. He shrugged out of the heavy cloak Vridekka had laid over his shoulders, pulled Eyil’s away as well. Such garments would only be in the way. With Eyil nude and himself attired only in his stained and crumpled kilt, they might pass as somebody’s slaves. He took Eyil’s arm in his manacled hands and half-dragged, half-guided her toward the inviting balcony entrance.
Thirty nervous paces later he looked back. The Prince and the Mind-seer were hidden now by a score of beast-masked worshippers bearing black and copper symbols upon tall poles. A few steps more. Now he was there... within... and out upon the narrow walkway!
Shadows clawed up from below. Plumes of oily yellow smoke enveloped him. He ducked involuntarily to avoid the ponderous ribbing of the ceiling arches. The reeling dance of lamplight and corpse-candles, the racking, rhythmic thunder of drums and chanting, the sick-sweet stench, all turned the long gallery before him into a swooping, undulating tightrope, hard enough to cross alone, much less burdened as he was with Eyil. He steeled himself and took a cautious look at the footing. He had often carried game along the lofty avenues of the trees of the Pe Choi forests, and now he could only pray that his childhood reflexes would not desert him. He set off as fast as he dared.
Someone approached from the other end: a temple guard by the gleam of his burnished copper cuirass! There was no retreat. He let Eyil go and saw that she had become fully aware of her surroundings. He motioned her to lean against the wall beside him.
The man came up, a broad-shouldered, thickset soldier with features that appeared carven of brown lava. He stopped a pace away and looked them up and down.
“Slaves? What do you here?”
“I—I return to my master,—With his bondmaiden,” Harsan improvised. “She ran away—afraid of those below. She is young and untrained.” He hoped he sounded credible.
The soldier peered. “You both wear manacles. How is this? To whom do you belong?”
“My master punishes me for—” Harsan began.
Eyil smiled then. Smoothly she broke in, “Sir, I—we—are taught to accept, nay, to prefer—punishment. And I admit to an enjoyment of the embraces of the living over those of the dead.” She ran her hands up from the velvety shadows between her thighs over her belly to cup her breasts.
The soldier stared. He reached past Harsan to touch a fingertip to one dark nipple. “Ohe, your owner must be more a lover of Lady Dlamelish than of the Worm Lord!” He grinned at Harsan. “Go back to your master, slave. I shall send this bit of property along to you presently. He—or she—will not miss her for a few minutes more.”
There was nothing to be said. Harsan could not return to the upper colonnade—nor did he really want to leave Eyil to the mercies of this stone-faced guardsman. (She might not mind all that much, a little thought whispered, since priestesses of Hrihayal were supposed to exercise good taste in such matters but little reticence otherwise...)
Harsan decided. His hand shot out to seize the soldier’s outstretched arm, to topple him over into the abyss below. Astounded, the man teetered, yelled, flailed with his other hand. They grappled for a long moment, swaying this way and that, struggling as much for balance as for victory. Then the guardsman heaved himself backward to fall with an audible crack of muscles upon the balcony floor. Harsan sprawled on top of him, rolled, tumbled, flung up a hand to clutch only empty space-—and fell head downward over the railing toward the nave far beneath!
Calloused fingers grasped at his calf, slid down to clamp upon his ankle. Harsan swung down to smash with blinding force against the frieze of worm lords carved on the outside of the balcony railing. The soldier shouted hoarsely, and his hand slipped but caught again. Harsan dangled by one leg, scrabbling with his hands at the stony eyes and pitted teeth of the bas-reliefs. He did not know whether he wanted the man to save his life or to let him fall to a quick and final death. The chandeliers whirled before his vision; the crowds of devotees were black and ochre beetles below. His shins scraped stone as the guardsman—and possibly Eyil—hauled his legs back up over the balustrade to safety.
A crunching crack sounded above him. Pebbles, crumbling mortar, and a fist-sized chunk of rock struck his shoulders and went plummeting on past him into the nave. The balustrade! He heard a curse, a panting cry, Eyil’s voice screaming. The hand on his ankle slipped away entirely, and he knew that he must fall.
A strange and easy peace overcame him. This was the last knot of his Skein. No more decisions, no more pain. No more desiring. Nothing was left but that last burst of agony before he joined the concourse of the Dead on their way to BeiVhanu’s Isles.
He fell free.
There was a clattering in the air all around, wind beat at his face, and he thrashed out wildly with his arms. Clbws dug into the flesh of his back, raked along his ribs, his thighs, encircled his waist. Something chittered in his ear, smelling of mouldy leather and death and carrion. He was lifted horizontally out over nothingness, drawn entirely away from the balcony to kick his heels above that fearsome drop! He must have screamed, but he could not hear his own voice. Blood pounded in his ears. A great bronze chandelier hurtled toward him. He snatched at it instinctively, only to have the claws drag him away again and carry him on upward, so close under the roof that he could see the peeling paint and the webbing of cracks in the murals there.
Behind him he heard a shriek. He caught a glimpse of a figure, arms windmilling, tumbling over and over to disappear amongst the little insects below. Was it Eyil? He could see no more. Blood rushed to his head. Wings of clammy leather flapped in his face. The stairs and columns of the colonnade swooped up at him. Tiny dolls there pointed and gesticulated as he was brought down to a jouncing, painful landing.
Prince Dhich’une waited upon the steps, once again skullfaced and rigid as Harsan had first seen him. The pupilless eyes glowed yellow in the fires of the lamps.
“So, little priestling, you have learned to fly? Were it not for our Vorodla here you might have joined the Worm Lord all too soon.”
Harsan rolled over and saw for the first time the things that had rescued him: three
tall, dingy:black, bat-winged beings with powerfully muscled torsos, elongated limbs, and narrow, triangular faces. They had never been spawned of living flesh, however; their eyes were the pallid white of the Undead. Somehow he knew that they—or parts of them—had been human once; now they were numbered among Lord Sarku’s legions. The Vorodla were mentioned in the Epic of Hrugga, but he had never dreamed that they existed in fact!
The Prince addressed the creatures. “Go,” he said, “and harry the girl to one end of the gallery or the other. I do not think she will find the courage to hurl herself down as this priest almost did.” He turned back to Harsan. “As it is, you have cost the Temple of Sarku a soldier this night. Perhaps I shall let you live long enough to pay Shamtla in kind for that offence! I grow impatient with you, priest, and I freely confess that you try my skills as a teacher. The lessons I can yet impart are severe ones indeed!”
“Mighty Prince,” he panted, “if you would let the Lady Eyil go free—”
“No. No more of your logicking and bargaining! I should make your Eyil our guest at the next Giving of Praise to the One of Mouths!” He leaned down over Harsan. “Note well, priest: not only will your priestess suffer if you again seek to escape or to betray me, but you have witnessed my power over the Undead. Even were you to succeed in suicide, I can resurrect your body and enough of your mind to make you guide me to the Man of Gold. You are not needed alive, only in somewhat undamaged form! Slower and less responsive would you be, but far more pliable if your soul were gone ...”
One of the Legion of Ketl approached and murmured something. Prince Dhich’une nodded and spoke again:
“My original purpose in bringing you here still holds. Since you shall soon journey to Purdimal in my service, I would have you meet your escort.”