The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  Taluvaz kept glancing at the walls. He came up behind Harsan and pointed. “There is mould here—damo. We must once again be below the marshes.”

  “There is no other way to go. Not unless you would return to the hall where our Undead pursuers lie beneath the roof stones. Or unless you have some magic to pass through Lord Vimuhla’s river of rock.”

  “I speak only as a warning. Get your woman back here and give over the lead to my Mirure. She has experience. Many species of creatures live where mould dwells, some not very pleasant. And certain moulds are themselves deadly.”

  “Cha! I know of this,” Harsan retorted a bit testily. “My tutors did indeed tell me that mould does more than ruin one’s bread!” Nevertheless, he called to Tlayesha, who returned reluctantly to join him. The N’luss girl and the Heheganu now led their party.

  The walls took on a splotchy appearance, parti-coloured and almost gay beneath tapestries of yellow, pallid white, and dusty blue. They passed a niche to their left, a dead end, constructed perhaps to permit parties of labourers to bypass one another in the narrow tunnel. Morkudz said something to Mirure, and she sent word back to touch nothing and to move carefully without disturbing more than was necessary. The air grew close, and there was a smell as of a root-cellar long shut away from the light.

  Mirure stopped. Harsan heard the whisper of her knife emerging from her thigh-sheath.

  “W'hat—?” Simanuya exclaimed, but the Heheganu reached back with surprising adroitness to clap a pudgy hand over his mouth.

  Harsan inched past the glassblower in time to hear the warrior girl hiss, “A man! A soldier awaits below!”

  Before them, ghostly faint in the waning light of Morkudz’ globe, the corridor descended a little further, then levelled out, heaps of shapeless mould almost choking it from side to side. More festooned the walls and hung in rags and tattered banners from the ceiling.

  A man did indeed stand there. He gazed toward them from under the visor of a heavy helmet, one that had cheek-pieces with lappets of mail that draped down upon his breast. Armour gleamed dully beneath a cloak of scarlet material. He held a weapon, a sword, its point buried in the mould at his feet.

  “Back—!” Harsan murmured.

  “No,” Mirure answered curtly without turning her head. She had her back to him, only the sheen of her bare shoulders and plaited black tresses visible in Morkudz’ dim radiance. “He has seen our light and now sees us as well.” In a louder voice she cried, “Lord Taluvaz? What would you have me do?”

  Harsan did not wait for the Livyani’s reply. No other course seemed sensible. “Ohe!” he called to the warrior. “We would pass! We mean you no harm.” He could hear rustling as Taluvaz moved up behind him.

  The stranger stood immobile, silent.

  He tried again. “Name yourself. If you stand aside, we will leave you in peace.” What was the fellow doing down here? He was apparently alone, who knew how far beneath the warrens of the Splendid Paradise, armed only with a simple shortsword.

  There was no response. Mirure edged forward, torch held out like a duelling weapon, dagger ready in her other hand.

  “Come now,” Harsan almost pleaded. “Let us by. We wish no altercation, nor should you.”

  The armour was like none that he had seen before. Was the fellow a foreigner? Did he understand their language? It made no sense for such a person to be in this place.

  The N’luss woman advanced another pace, lips drawn back, tension rippling over the muscles of her long limbs.

  Another step. Then another, until she stood only a pace or two from the man facing her. She peered.

  And struck.

  Harsan had his mouth open to prevent her, but the blow surprised him, and he got out only one syllable of her name before it connected.

  The results were even more astounding. The torch, a stout stick ending in a lump of coarse fabric smeared with pitch, smashed into the side of the warrior’s head at ear level. The head turned, stared regretfully—and almost comically—sidewise at them for a long instant, and then bounced free to roll in the spongy white mould at its owner’s feet!

  Both Mirure and Harsan yelled. The girl plunged backward into Harsan’s unready arms, and both lurched still farther back to stumble into Taluvaz and the Heheganu.

  It was this that saved them. The scarlet cloak seemed to unfold, jerking and emitting tiny, horrid plopping noises. The warrior’s skeleton appeared beneath, filled now with patchy, coloured fungi as it must once have been with flesh and organs in life. A fine, pinkish haze surrounded the figure.

  “Spores!” Taluvaz screamed.

  Harsan found himself shouting too, and the others joined in, unable to help themselves. They all struggled back, helter-skelter, in a tangle of limbs and bodies.

  They fled, retreating back to the alcove they had passed, some distance up the shallow staircase. From there they watched as the red cloak slumped and writhed amidst the ghastly mess. Rotting bones crackled, the ancient breastplate heaved and vomited puffs of bluish dust, and the sword and helmet disappeared into folds of sickly, doughy white on the floor.

  Tlayesha wept and shuddered, and Itk t’Sa went to comfort her. The glassblower begged loudly and devoutly for aid from his God, mighty Ksarul. None came. Mirure’s harshly pretty, aquiline features were ashen pale, and even Taluvaz appeared shaken. Morkudz curled himself into the farthest reaches of their niche, dimmed his light to a shadowy glow, and turned his face to the wall.

  Amidst all of these horrors Harsan alone found himself unmoved. There was a limit to what one soul could bear; beyond this one could only become numb, immune, almost uncaring.

  The soft popping of spore pods continued for a time and then died away. They were too far, and too high, here, to be much endangered.

  What they needed now was rest. And food—and water—neither of which they had.

  But after resting, what then? They could not pass through the moulds. The terrible fate of the ancient warrior loomed as a signpost of almost certain death. Should they return to the chamber filled with solidified flowing rock and try the only passage left, that which would take them back toward the great hall and Lord Sarku’s Undead minions?

  Harsan stood up. It was their only remaining course. He gentled Tlayesha with words of encouragement, laid a comforting hand upon Simanuya’s thick shoulder, and helped Taluvaz to his feet. Whatever the Gods willed; whatever the Weaver of Ail chose to weave...

  He went to the mouth of their alcove. Faint bluish phosphorescence shown from the heaps of mould down the stair to his left.

  He heard something! Sounds of movement, he thought, a slow and prolonged grating, dragging noise.

  It did not come from the moulds. It approached from his right, back up the tunnel!

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Whatever it was, it took its time coming. They crouched at the rear of their alcove and armed themselves as best they could with chunks of jagged stone from the floor. Harsan wished for the sword the ancient warrior had carried, but it was lost beneath the deadly moulds in the corridor below. He thought of having Morkudz extinguish his little ball of radiance, but then he realised how stupid it would be to fight any foe in almost total darkness! And some of these creatures of the Underworlds could see without light!

  There was a ponderous crunching on the stair above them. Then a panting, whistling sound, as of an old crone negotiating a steep hill. Pebbles bounced and rattled down past them.

  Better dead than unready. Harsan put his head around the comer.

  At first he could make out nothing but velvety blackness. Then something glinted iridescent greenish-purple; more glimmers appeared: reflections from polished surfaces. Armour? Those surfaces moved and rotated in a curiously mechanical way, almost like the paddles of a millwheel ...

  They were mandibles. Behind them was a forest of legs, claws, and what might be feelers! Above these, three circles of round, faceted, amber light must be eyes.

  The thing was as big as
Lord Thumis’ sacred altar! It filled the narrow tunnel from side to side and almost from top to bottom. There was no room for it to turn, no way that they could rush up past it.

  “A DlaqoV' Morkudz gasped. Harsan had not felt the Heheganu come up beside him. “A carrion-beetle, like those that emerge in the corpse-pits outside the city where the dead—slaves and paupers—are thrown!”

  “How do we fight it?”

  “Are you mad? We cannot. Its carapace is as sound as a targe of steel, and its mandibles are like scissors! They will snip you in two!”

  “Then we die here. Make noise!” he cried to the others. “Scream, bang on something—yell! It may retreat—or go on past.”

  It did not. Three pairs of bottle-green legs pushed the beetle down the tunnel toward them as inexorably as any conquering army. A saw-toothed proboscis twisted to probe into the niche, the blade-edged mandibles just behind.

  They huddled against the rear wall of the alcove. The proboscis scraped and clattered against the stone, and the Dlaqo slowly twisted its bulky body over until it lay almost on its side, one set of legs twisted underneath it, the others scrabbling against the rocky ceiling. Another pace or two and it would be in upon them.

  It struggled, then stopped.

  The Dlaqo could not turn far enough to get into their refuge! They were safe for the moment.

  The monstrous carapace, as big as a small boat, rolled this way and that, the plates on the creature’s belly visible, stretching and sliding over one another. Its smaller front claws struggled for purchase. The proboscis attempted to withdraw. As it did so, Mirure whacked it with her torch-club; one might as well beat Thenu Thendraya Peak with a twig!

  The monster squirmed and emitted hissing,.chirruping noises. The stench of rotted meat nauseated them. It halted. An impasse.

  , The three eyes glared at them balefully. The limbs ceased to chum.

  “We could always wait until it starves to death,” Simanuya suggested in a tremulous voice.

  “We would be skeletons before that happened,” Morkudz retorted scornfully.

  “What else? We cannot go either way.” That was Tlayesha.

  “La,” Taluvaz panted, “Mirure, light your torch!”

  Wondering, the girl knelt and did so. Ruddy light filled their niche, and the smoke made them cough.

  “Now reach around the comer and throw it there, underneath the thing’s hindquarters!”

  The wisdom of this immediately became clear. The powerful rear legs kicked and jerked as the torch blazed up beneath the Dlaqo's abdomen. It whistled, then screeched in an eery, almost human voice. Then it pulled itself over and blundered forward, down the stair.

  Mirure shouted something in her throaty N’luss tongue. She waited only until the beetle was past and then ran out to retrieve her torch. Before anyone could stop her, she danced up behind the creature and applied the flame again from behind to its blunted, atrophied wing-casings. These did not burn, but they did smoulder, and a cloud of greasy smoke arose from the Dlaqo's offended posterior. The N’luss girl yelled something that sounded like a joyous war-whoop and pursued the behemoth down the stairs, torch waving. It ploughed into the piles of mould, carried all before it like the prow of some mighty ship, and plunged on out mto the dank corridor beyond.

  Mirure stopped, retreated precipitously to avoid the cloud of angry spores, that poured up after her. Her eyes sparkled, and Harsan saw that she was laughing. Truly, the N’luss might be barbarians, but they did have a certain style!

  They stood together, arms about one another’s shoulders, and rested. Harsan found that his legs were shaking; he sat down. The others joined him. Taluvaz said something in sibilant Livyani to the warrior girl, and she replied in kind, still repressing giggles that were probably more of relief than of amusement.

  At length Harsan managed to soothe his shuddering limbs back into obedience. “What now?” he asked. “The path back up is open.”

  “About that I have doubts,” Morkudz said slowly. “If you are indeed pursued by Lord Sarku’s minions, I question whether the crushing of a few of his Undead soldiers will deter them. There will be many more—and other beings as. well.” He did something, and his little globe of radiance rekindled upon his palm, a trifle stronger than before. Mirure put out her torch; it served better as a weapon than as a source of light.

  “Then?”

  “The Dlaqo will have cleared the corridor yonder of much of the mould. When the spores become quiet we can still travel that way.”

  “And when the beast finds room to turn about and come back?” Simanuya sneered. “Its outrage will know no bounds!”

  “I hear nothing now. My hearing is better than that of any human. The moulds will do their work upon it as well as upon us. It lives and hence must breathe.”

  “How can you urge that we go on down—into that place?” Tlayesha seemed close to tears, and Harsan moved to comfort her. She let him embrace her, but she would not be still. “No. No, let us go up! If we must fight, die, then let it be where there is a sky—air—” Behind her, the glassblower and Itk t’Sa murmured agreement.

  “I know more of this place than you,” the Heheganu continued in his soft, patient voice. “The regions near the great hall that you collapsed are familiar to us. I do not think that the path that leads to the exit by the Mouth of the World is there—or if it is, then it can be reached only by one who knows its secret. Instead, near the Crystal River one soon comes to the precincts of the buried shrines of Lord Sarku, Lord Hrii’ii, and Lord Ksarul, maintained by those hierarchies after the levelling of Purdimal during the last rite of Ditlana a thousand years ago. There will be priests, warriors, temple servitors...”

  “You did not speak of this before,” Harsan accused.

  Morkudz raised sloping shoulders in a shrug. “None inquired,” he said simply. “And there was then a chance for us to pass them all by before any serious pursuit could be organised. Now I believe it is too late. If we are to live, then our choice is apparent.” He said no more but arose and began to descend the shallow steps outside of their alcove.

  They followed him, watching both for spore clouds and for the return of the Dlaqo-beetle. The corridor was empty and silent, a swathe of pallid mould ripped from the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, as though Chlen-beasts had been harnessed to a plank to clear a roadbed through mud.

  The flagging was still ankle deep in mould, cold, viscous, as slippery as the organs of a corpse. It was quiescent now, its spores spent. All but Tlayesha and Itk t’Sa wore closed footgear of some sort. The mould would not affect the Pe Choi, but an act of iron will was needed for the girl to plunge her open-sandalled feet into the stuff. Harsan offered to carry her, but she waved him away. He promised himself that once this was over—if it ever was—he would praise her, make love to her, kiss her for her courage, tell her how much strength he had drawn—and continued to draw—from her. He would have spoken now, but that in itself might undo her precariously balanced calm, he thought. Tlayesha was delicate, slender, and nowhere as strong as the tall N’luss woman, but she possessed the stamina of mighty Hrugga of the Epics himself! Still, even she could bear only so much.

  Another thought came to him: would Tlayesha have surrendered to the blandishments of Prince Dhich’une in the Tolek Kana Pits as easily as Eyil had done? He much doubted it.

  Taluvaz removed his loincloth entirely to tie it over his nose. The rest copied him as best they could, although he himself made no claims for this precaution. Simanuya stumbled upon something hard, perhaps the weapon of the long-dead warrior, but no one wanted to reach into the mould to retrieve it. Holding hands and balancing like gymnasts to avoid the splotched walls, they picked their way along the passage in the wake of the monstrous Dlaqo.

  The corridor of the moulds was not long. A sullen reddish glow lit the ceiling ahead. The moulds were thinner here, patchy, brownish, and stunted. The walls gradually became bare again: sombre basaltic rock and no more. They took counsel, the
n approached with all the caution they could muster.

  The light streamed up out of a jagged fissure in the floor, Rags and shreds of mould caught upon the stones announced the passage of the Dlaqo, but there was no sign of the creature. If the Gods willed, the monster had fallen blindly over into the pit!

  Harsan went to peer down but could not see the Dlaqo. Shattered fingers of stone reached up along a precipice coated with sooty grey ash. Far below, scarlet mingled with black, the embers of Tekumel’s deep-buried inner hearth-fires. A whiff of something sulphurous came to his nostrils; were Lord Vimuhla’s blazing hells this close to the surface, then?

  The right wall of the tunnel gaped open: the fiery chasm ran off there, roughly at right angles to their passage, to become no more than a tortuous slit a hundred paces away. That direction was impassable. The other wall promised more: part of the original flooring extended along the brink of the abyss. The corridor continued beyond, a black mouth in the far gloom.

  They scouted the edge of the chasm. Mirure murmured something about being hampered by Tlayesha’s makeshift bandage; this she pulled off, lower lip clenched between strong white teeth, and advanced to reconnoiter.

  When she returned she said, “We can cross, I think, there on the left. Face the wall, cling with your fingertips, feel with your feet, and watch for sliding stones.”

  Harsan was glad to have her take charge. If anyone could negotiate cliffs and mountains, she could. The home of the N’luss tribes lay amongst steep gorges to the northwest of Mu’ugalavya.

  She removed her leather leggings and boots, as well as the slashed remains of her brief tunic, slung them all upon the empty weapon-belt at her waist, and went first. She extended a long leg, dug bare toes into cracks and rough places in the rock, and brought her other foot over to find purchase beside the first. She repeated this, smoothly and efficiently, until she stood in the opening of the passage on the far side.

  Itk t’Sa followed. The Pe Choi had the advantage of four hands, and her segmented tail added balance. She apparently found littje challenge in the feat and returned to guide Tlayesha, Simanuya, Morkudz, and Taluvaz over the abyss. Harsan brought up the rear.