The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  Tlayesha was beside Harsan. There was no time to explain. He made himself thrust her aside and scrambled to seize the other half of the globe before Taluvaz or his N’luss woman could retrieve it.

  Neither paid him any attention. Taluvaz knelt beside the warrior girl, eyes wide and stricken, his black and red tattooes vivid against the pallor of his cheeks.

  “It is only a little cut, my Lord,” Mirure said in her soft, foreign voice. A line of red showed against the smooth curve of her breast where neck and shoulder joined.

  The Livyani reached for Simanuya’s dagger. Its tip was gone. He sniffed, and his head snapped back from the acrid odour of what the weapon had contained.

  “Physician—?”

  “I have nothing with me,” Tlayesha moaned.

  “What is the poison? How long—?”

  “Ajura, I think. A swamp-fruit, common in Purdimal...”

  “What does it do?”

  “I—I am not certain, Lord. It immobilises, numbs, almost at once. I do not know if it—kills—or how soon. I am not even certain that it does kill. Many merchants use it to ward off footpads ...”

  “At least it is not instant.” Taluvaz clenched his fists, beat them upon the stone floor. “We—we must surrender—call for terms.—No, we cannot!” He clutched at his greying hair in anguish. “If only—”

  Tlayesha supported Mirure, let her lean against her shoulder. The N’luss girl seemed dazed, confused. Beads of perspiration showed upon her upper lip and her forehead. She tried to smile but slumped dizzily instead.

  Harsan came to stand before them. He said, “It is quite all right, Lord Taluvaz. There is no exit through the sarcophagus. I am willing now to surrender. The game is done, and you may summon Lord Vridekka and his minions. But be assured that I shall bargain them a good bargain for your woman’s life.”

  They goggled at him uncomprehendingly. Harsan held the globe, both halves joined into a perfect sphere, in both hands. His face appeared as though lit from within, but by what strange emotion perhaps only Lord Taluvaz Arrio could guess.

  “Come, call to those outside. Let them break down the portcullis. Your Mirure must live—and I shall take Lord Sarku’s servants to the Man of Gold.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It took longer than expected. Mirure was only semi-conscious when the slow, skeletal Mrur battered down the portcullis and hauled the last fragments out of the doorway to admit Jayargo and a handful of copper-helmeted temple guards. Taluvaz Arrio refused to let them touch Mirure, and he and Harsan together carried the stricken girl out through the smoke-smelling anteroom to one of the shafts where ropes and a leather swing-seat dangled. Soon they stood once again in the upper cavern of the domes. More of the Undead and another half dozen guardsmen milled about here, together with two Qol and a miscellany of smaller creatures of the Underworlds that Harsan could not identify.

  There were others, too: five warriors, their leather tunics innocent of any clan colours or insignia, squatted on their haunches apart from Vridekka’s followers. They were visibly uneasy though just as unmistakably allied—or neutral—to Lord Sarku’s contingent. With this latter party was the man Tlayesha had known as a tanner and whom Harsan had once named a Mihalli. He sat, unconcerned and aloof, upon a fallen stela next to his assistant, the same vulpine-faced little rogue who had slain the young nobleman upon the Sakbe road platform. Tlayesha touched Harsan’s arm and pointed.

  He was looking at other things. The flaring light of torches and bronze lanterns silhouetted a party of Mrur and their Jajgi overseer. The creatures were collecting bodies, obviously dead; these they passed to others of their kind within one of the domes. What better hiding place than the bottom of a tomb-shaft? Armour glinted beneath a bloodied cloak: a military cuirass, Harsan realised with astonishment. The mantle, too, had a soldierly look about it, and it was scarlet with more than blood: the colour of Lord Karakan and Prince Eselne’s legions! These, then, were the opponents Vridekka’s monsters had defeated while Harsan and his comrades hid in the tomb chambers below! From the look of it, the Yan Koryani had been the allies of the Worm Prince’s servitors, too, and for the moment at least, they were clearly working together. He noted that Taluvaz Arrio also had not missed this connection.

  Vridekka came bustling up. He took the Globe of Instruction from Harsan but tossed it aside when he saw that it was blank and empty. The golden hand he ignored: a religious relic from an age much later than that of the Man of Gold itself.

  “Well, priest Harsan?” he said. “Good Jayargo here treats your warrior girl, whilst we make a quick tour of the further depths, eh?”

  “First the treatment, then the trip.”

  The older man motioned indifferently to Jayargo, who went to kneel beside Mirure. “Agreed, priest.”

  He looked beyond the girl to Taluvaz Arrio. “We must pay our respects to this noble visitor as well. What possesses a high envoy of a foreign land to overstep his welcome and explore our labyrinths at such an hour of the night?”

  Taluvaz gave him a small smile but said nothing.

  Vridekka eyed him narrowly. “Surely not a love of archaeology? Not a desire to make sacrifice at the tomb of some noble ancestor? Not the lure of funereal treasures—which you seem to have found aplenty.” He glanced down at Mirure’sface, empty and childishly innocent now as though she lay asleep. Jayargo touched her throat, applied an ointment, ran his long fingers over her temples, and cast a minor spell of healing magic.

  The N’luss girl stirred and opened her eyes.

  All of the Temples used healing sorcery, and in spite of its theological preoccupation with death, the Temple of Sarku was no exception. Such spells, Harsan knew, worked by drawing power from the Planes Beyond to cleanse the body of poisons and inimical substances, speed tissue and bone regrowth according to some mysterious blueprint inherent within the physique of the patient himself, and rebuild lost strength and energy. Whoever had devised this magic, long ago during the Latter Times or before, had possessed greater skill than all of the modem physicians and sorcerers of the Five Empires put together.

  Vridekka spoke again. “Your comrades are also unsuited to such a venture: a fugitive priest of Thumis for whom there is an Imperial warrant, a slaver’s physician doxy, a sometime glass merchant and tomb-robber, now deceased, and one poor N’luss warrior-girl as bodyguard! Really, my Lord, it appears that you were drawn into this affair by accident, as unready for your adventures as one of Lady Dilinala’s virgins for a harem!—At least I think it politic for us to say so. When we are done here, you will be escorted back to the mansion of the Livyani Legate in Purdimal—and you should consider making an extra sacrifice to your Shadow Gods that you are out of it so easily.”

  Taluvaz still made no reply.

  There had been no mention of Morkudz. Harsan bit his lip to keep from blurting out the question. Nor had Itk t’Sa been named, but their pursuers must surely know that she had been with them and that she was dead. Yes, dead. He still could hardly think the word.

  “—Ah? Ah. So. There will be time later for more of this one-sided discussion.—Yes?” Vridekka broke off to engage in a whispered and apparently acrimonious conference with the Yan Koryani tanner.

  “No, there will be no handing over of any of our guests!” he said with finality. “They remain together—and will be so taken above. All but this priest here, with whom we have our business.” “And to that I say no!” Harsan interrupted. “Where you take me, you take them. Else you may well slay them once they are apart from me!”

  “Crude fancies do you no credit!” The Mind-seer sounded sincerely offended.

  “It will be as I desire. You know that my secret is sealed to you, and you cannot come to it, save with great difficulty and waste of time.”

  “Let me—” the tanner began.

  “—And keep this scarlet-eyed shape-changer far from me— from all of us! Else I shall use my powers to put my own head ‘around the comer’ and destroy my value foreve
r! Nothing can be elicited from a corpse whose skull is lost in the raw energies that flow in the Planes Beyond!”

  He had no idea whether this was so, or even whether he could accomplish this feat if he chose. He only hoped that the ancients’ seal upon his mind was thorough enough to camouflage this bit of bravura.

  Tlayesha said, “We are slain in any case, Harsan, once we have given him the thing you conceal.” She shuddered, and he was suddenly conscious of her still-damp garments and of the fatigue and terror she had endured.

  “I think not, love. He cannot dispose of a high Livyani emissary without trace, and you and I are only insignificant pawns once my secret is gone. The Worm Prince is ruthless, but he is too clever to be selfishly vengeful. There is no reason to annoy my temple—and certain others—by killing us.” She surely suspected a lie, and he squeezed her hand to keep her silent.

  “Agreed, agreed, priest! It shall be exactly as you say. No need to plough the furrow after the seed is sown!” Vridekka waved the Yan Koryani tanner away irritably. “When we are finished here, priest Harsan, you and your comrades shall all go free. Return to your monastery, pick Tetal-flowers, travel to Tsamra with this parti-coloured foreigner—or go whithersoever your Skein takes you.” He took a staff of white Ssar-wood from one of the waiting Undead. “Are you ready, Jayargo? Let us depart. The cold saps my ancient legs, and the sooner done the sooner out.”

  Mirure stood up, leaning first upon Jayargo’s arm and then pulling away with distaste when she realised whose it was. She moved uncertainly towards Taluvaz, her mincing, faltering steps very unlike her usual stride, and he opened his arms to her. He would have fallen under her weight had it not been for Tlayesha and Harsan. The temple guardsmen surrounded them, together with Vridekka and Jayargo. Some of the Undead and the Qol took the lead and the rest followed. The Yan Koryani party brought up the rear in wary silence.

  The way was not long, but it was convoluted. Harsan realised that he never could have found it by himself, for it led downward through passages and intersections that they had overlooked or had passed all too hastily, into galleries and corridors where several possible exits opened yawning mouths, and eventually into an echoing, hoary cavern filled with more of Lord Vimuhla’s frozen fire-stone. Vridekka paused to catch his breath while the Mrur attached a rope to a ring set in the floor and raised a thick stone slab. There were stairs there, cut into the bubbled, ebon rock. At the bottom they came to an open gate still hung about with the remnants of lead seals inscribed with the flamboyant, graceful script of the Engsvanyali Priestkings. Beyond was another corridor, its walls not of stone but made of blackish, age-corroded metal.

  ‘‘This much has been told to me by our Temple, but from here I know not,” Vridekka muttered. “Hoi, Jayargo! A light—and some guidance!”

  The tall priest picked his way forward. “Lord, there is a larger chamber ahead.”

  “And beyond?”

  “We know not. Our creatures feared the guardians of the ancients too much to dare more.”

  “Guardians? What guardians?”

  Jayargo rubbed his bald pate and consulted with the skullfaced Jajgi, the cleverest of the Undead. “None, Lord. But bravery is not the hallmark of our comrades here. Those who have died once are not keen to surrender what passes for life a second time.”

  Vridekka made a humphing noise in his throat. In truth, though, this section of the Underworld was awash with an indefinable miasma of forboding. The air was stale and dead, its smell reminiscent of the chemicals in an apothecary’s shop. No ornaments adorned the walls; they were as darkly blank as the surface of a stagnant pond. There were no glyphs, no murals, no friezes and dadoes and carven pilasters. This in itself was ominous, for all of the Five Empires and all of those kingdoms and states that had preceded them back to the Latter Times were prone to flowery garniture and architectural embellishment. This place was alien. What manner of men—if men they had been—could live in a bare box?

  The hall Jayargo had mentioned was similar, but larger and cluttered with the flotsam of the unknown world of the ancients. Cylindrical tubes of metal stretched up out of sight toward the unseen ceiling, and housings, like Chlen-carts shrouded in grey robes, lined the buckled, littered floor. Other explorers had indeed dared to enter here; many of the cowled things along the walls had been tom open and artifacts removed. Fragments of metal and glass and bits of various softer, lighter, many-coloured substances lay strewn about amidst the rubbish.

  “Steel—! A fortune in metals!” Jayargo breathed in tremulous tones.

  “Not so,” Vridekka chuckled. “I have watched a smith heat and hammer a bar of this stuff for hours with no result whatsoever. If the thing is not already shaped to your needs, then you may as well throw it away. All that was usable is likely already gone, pillaged by those of the Latter Times, the Llyani, the Dragon Warriors, the Engsvanyali, and a dozen others since.”

  The other was unconvinced. He paused to lay a cautious hand upon a great metal plate from which protruded studs as thick as his thumbs. Then he peered into the enigmatic innards of a container as big as a small hut, felt of the brittle tubes of red and blue materials inside, and was rewarded when these casings crumbled away to reveal fine strands of red copper: the sacred metal of Lord Sarku himself! He turned to debate further with Vridekka, but a glimpse of Harsan’s face stopped him in mid-syllable.

  The youth was trembling. His eyes were shut, and his fingers made tentative, sorcerous movements in the air.

  Jayargo was no stranger to spell-wizardry. He had a magic-damping counter-spell up before Harsan could complete his own incantation. The young man continued his puzzling finger-gesturing nevertheless. From behind, Jayargo heard their Yan Koryani ally exclaim, “He still has the shaking sickness! He should have recovered... !”

  Harsan opened his eyes. He let his hands hang open at his sides. “Not so,” he said. “I am no longer prey to your tampering, shape-changer, nor am I in need of spells. I am directed by a thing of the ancients, as Master Vridekka knows well—a truly unsettling experience and one I could wish you both to suffer sometime—and this place is included in the instruction. Just now I was—commanded, oriented, by the Globe of Instruction. I know where I am, and I can now take you to the Man of Gold.”

  Vridekka signed to the temple guards and to the Undead, and these closed up around their captives. “Guide us, then, priest Harsan,” he replied softly. “It seems that we are strangers in your house.”

  Passages, corridors, shafts with oblong metal rungs, more rooms, all were traversed quickly. Twice they were forced to turn back and seek other paths because of the collapse of ceilings and the buckling of doorframes. Once they entered a chamber filled with frozen fire-stone, and Harsan spent long minutes searching for some way that did not end at a charred and blackened wall of solid rock.

  The Undead cleared away obstacles as Harsan directed. Eventually they opened a hemispherical metal hatch in the floor of one of the small chambers. This gave upon a cylindrical shaft that once must have been vertical but was now tilted and twisted, here crushed and squeezed as a boy twists a hollow reed, there ripped asunder to reveal charcoal-hued volcanic ash and layers of compressed rock. Then they were there.

  The shaft ended in a circular chamber. A tall, rectangular, double-leafed door barred their way, but Harsan went to this and touched the locking mechanism as the second Globe of Instruction had said to do.

  Beyond was a hall of wonders.

  No tomb-robber had ever set foot in the gritty dust upon this floor; nor had any party of explorers laid eyes upon these marvels since their last owner—some unknown lordling of the time of Llyan of Tsamra himself—had put his unreadable seal upon those doors and departed to face whatever destiny the Weaver of Skeins had chosen for him. He had not returned, but the treasures he had cherished still waited, exactly as he had left them so many centuries—millennia—ago. That owner had probably had nothing to do with the original building of this cache; no, that was lik
ely the work of some stili earlier possessor, one of the wizard-princes of the Latter Times.

  Tn any case, the petty warlords of the Three States of the Triangle had not reached this place, nor had the Dragon Warriors. The rulers of the First Imperium had found the secret, and they had passed it down from generation to generation until it ended, lost and buried, partially in the tomb in which the first Globe of Instruction had been discovered, and partially in the sarcophagus Harsan and Simanuya had opened. The Engsvanyali and those who came afterward had indeed pillaged the upper chambers of the labyrinth, but they had not come upon this cache! All was untouched, pristine, as though just set down by servants who know that their master will come to see his belongings and caress them one more time with his loving, greedy hands before going away.

  Cases of seamless grey material leaned against the near wall. Roundish black globes, each as large as a man’s skull, lay piled carelessly nearby; one of these had strayed out into the central aisle as though some careless servant had left it there. More chests and boxes and fat, tubular casks of metal filled the shadows beyond. Things that might have been works of art—or weapons, or implements, or spare pieces for mighty engines— occupied a bay to the right. Glass shimmered red-gold in the lantern-light; metal that was still bright after all of the intervening ages—uncorroded and probably uncorrodable—gleamed amidst spheres of coloured, transparent crystal, round plaques of shiny black stuff, angular levers and silvery wheels and bars and cylinders—there was too much for the eye to see. It reminded Harsan of the Hall of Mighty Tongues in the Monastery of the Sapient Eye.

  Awed in spite of himself, Vridekka slipped between his guardsmen to examine a creation of many shining rods, and Jayargo bent to inspect one of the black globes. Taluvaz supported Mirure, but his gaze was wide and rapt, his tattooed cheeks pale with excitement. Tlayesha held tightly to Harsan’s arm, their predicament forgotten for the moment. Even the Undead seemed dimly amazed.