The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  “It is like the cache Arundomu hiFershena discovered under the City of Sarku some fifty years back,” Jayargo breathed. “Perhaps more—”

  “More, much more,” Vridekka laid a tentative finger upon a graceful handle—and jerked away when it moved under his touch. “Things not from the Latter Times—not some piddling little pot of badly made ‘Eyes’ and crude copies made by decadent wizards crouching over the last glimmers of ancient wisdom— but originals: artifacts from before the Time of Darkness itself, holy and sacred things, Jayargo... !”

  “We cannot read their tongue—we cannot know . . Jayargo pointed to the square, harsh little symbols that writhed across the flattened end of the black sphere he held.

  The Mind-seer drew himself up. “We can learn. We can experiment. We can study until at least some of it is ours again.” He twitched his robe away from contact with a delicately designed couch. He was too late; the fabric crumbled away to dust even as he did so. Soft, sighing, tissue-tearing sounds from farther off told him that the air currents they had brought with them were doing similar damage elsewhere.

  “We know a little,” the Yan Koryani tanner—the Mihalli— spoke for the first time since leaving the hall of domes. “These caches of the ancients contain things of danger, as well as of great benefit. The rulers of the Latter Times secreted whatever they could salvage—whatever was important to them—from the age before the Time of Darkness: weapons, of course, but also tools, machines to shape the elements, others to feed and heal and construct—to fulfill most of the needs to which you humans are prey. Even to prolong life—perhaps for centuries... Your Llyani collected them, stored them, but they knew too little, your later nations still less. Yet we Mihalli possess some skill in these matters. We can aid you—in return for the right bargain.” Vridekka shook his head so violently that his grey locks flew out about his cheeks. “You remind me of our business. None of this is yours! None belongs to your master in Yan Kor! I claim these relics for the Temple of Sarku—and for the Seal Emperor of Tsolyanu!”

  The last clause sounded suspiciously like an afterthought. “Enough, Mind-seer,” Harsan said. “Squabble over your spoils later as you please. I tire of this game and would hand over your prize and be gone from here. Let me introduce you to the Man of Gold!”

  “Guard him!” Vridekka cried. “He must know of traps—!” The temple guards nervously hastened to obey, halberds and copper-trimmed armour clattering. The Qol glided forward.

  Harsan raised both hands, palms out. “Ohe, here are no ‘Eyes,’ no talismans, no magic wards, no demon guardians! Here is but a poor pawn who cannot for a moment stand against your master’s spells.”

  He ignored the soldiers, brushed past Jayargo, still cradling the black globe, the Mihalli and his rodent-faced little henchman, and all the rest. He strode down the long aisle toward another door dimly visible in the gloom at the end of the hall.

  “Come and reap the harvest of your labours!”

  Vridekka himself seized a lantern and scuttled after him. “Priest—priest, you value my powers too little! Not only can I bind you with spells, but I am able to see through any snares you may have learned from the Globe—or aught else you foolishly plan! Touch that door and your brain will be as curdled as milk left all day in the sun!”

  “La, my Lord, touch it yourself. Test it with your magics. Open it. Have your Undead do it for you, or better yet, let your expendable Yan Koryani comrades risk the throw!”

  Vridekka glared but halted in frustrated indecision. He signed to Jayargo, and the younger priest came to examine the door. The Mihalli shut his scarlet-glowing eyes, wavered between human form and the tall, furred thing Harsan had glimpsed beneath the Tolek Kana Pits, and did something as well. Both shook their heads.

  “You are satisfied? Open it.”

  “Hold him! Bind him!” Vridekka snapped. He waited until this was done. “Kill the physician girl if he moves.” He backed away cautiously.

  Two of the Mrur were brought forward to run skeletal fingers over the portal. At a gesture from Vridekka they pulled upon the plain, silver-gleaming handle. It swung open as though it had been oiled only the day before.

  Light, bright and sunny, sprang up within the room beyond. Something sighed and purred to life within the walls, and a breath of fresh air came to them, as clean as though newly drawn from the forests of Do Chaka’s Inner Range.

  In the centre of the chamber, upon a raised dais, stood the Man of Gold.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Whatever Harsan had expected, the Man of Gold was different.

  He had thought to see a towering statue: the wise, solemn image of Lord Thumis in the Temple of Eternal Knowing, or the awe-inspiring colossus of Hejjeka IV, “Restorer of Dignities,” the forty-fifth Seal Emperor, in the square before the governor’s palace in Bey Sii; something glorious of visage, crowned and anointed, bearing the insignia of divine authority and of omnipotent power over the mundane world and even over the Gods.

  He was disappointed, for it was not so. The thing was indeed golden, yet it was squat and only vaguely manlike. Two thick, cylindrical columns did bear a semblance of legs, but the torso was a gleaming, featureless box, as massive as the body of a Chlen-beast, the arms were short, stubby, and covered with glittering spurs and knobs and coils of silvery cable that bore no similarity to hands and fingers. There was no head, just a sleek, streamlined ball of dark glass from which tendrils and helixes and flat plates emerged in all directions. At the base, between the legs, a rounded metal housing extended out upon the platform. This resembled nothing so much as a gigantic phallus, like those the priests of Dlamelish wore on festival days to amuse and excite the worshippers of that Goddess. Harsan suppressed an impulse to laugh: the Man of Gold reminded him of one of the language models in the Hall of Mighty Tongues—and estheti-cally not a very pleasing one at that. The aspiring scholar who submitted it as a Labour of Reverence might be promoted to the next Circle, but it would be a near thing!

  One of the Mrur held him. His wrists hurt from the tight leather belt with which he was bound, but he wrenched himself about, nevertheless, and sought Vridekka’s face. The old man waited by the door, nervously rocking from one foot to the other. One of the grim Qol had Tlayesha there, a saw-bladed shortsword in its tentacled forelimb. Harsan shot her a glance of reassurance, but whether she saw or not he did not know. Taluvaz, Mirure, and Jayargo were visible in the midst of a clump of guardsmen behind her. The Mihalii and his companions moved into the chamber and spread out along the rear wall.

  “Here you are, my Lord,” Harsan cried. “Ask your Man of Gold to speak! Order him to walk with you to your temple! Inform him that his new master is mighty Prince Dhich’une, fourth son of the God-Emperor of all Tsolyanu! Make him bow to your Worm-Lord! Introduce him to your new northern friends—if such they be! He awaits your command, Mind-seer!” Vridekka peered about. The entrance was not large enough to permit the thing to be removed. A second door to the left was still smaller. The walls, too, were clearly not meant to be shifted or opened; they were covered with huge, overlapping scales of dull, silvery metal. The ceiling, from which a ball of yellow radiance depended like a miniature sun, was seamless and smooth.

  “A problem, Lord? Your Worm Prince must make a pilgrimage hither to meet his servant, not the reverse!” Harsan felt giddy, almost as if he had drunk strong wine or again tasted deadly Zu’ur. A myriad tiny voices sang in his head, whether from fatigue or from the effects of the Globe of Instruction he had no idea.

  “Ask your dead things to accompany me,” he cried, “and I shall lead you upon a tour of your new domain.”

  “I have warned you well, priest!” The older man stepped carefully into the room, stained brown robe flapping at his ankles. “You—and you—search this place. There must be guardians—wards. ’ ’

  The soldiers and the others made a cautious sweep of the chamber. They returned to report nothing.

  Vridekka approached the dais. The front of t
he metal housing displayed a series of slanted panels, placed invitingly as though for the comfort of a seated human operator; there was no chair. Each panel was covered with round glass plaques, black knobs, and little wheels of metal, all made to be manipulated by human hands, all unknown and unguessable. The middle panel somehow conveyed an air of special importance: a round hole occupied its centre, and a black bar or handle protruded portentously just below this.

  The Mind-seer squinted down into the hole, looked all around the dais. “The key, priest Harsan. There must be a key—a rod, a staff of metal—or glass—or some other substance.”

  Harsan did not answer, but Vridekka saw his eyes flicker toward the second, smaller exit from the chamber.

  “Take him and the girl to stand before that door. Anything that emerges will slay them first.”

  This was done; then one of the soldiers prodded the door warily with his halberd. It swung open, and light swelled up within the room behind.

  Unlike the bare and featureless hall of the Man of Gold, this place was a nest of opulence. Soft draperies, thick cushions of red and burnt orange, an expanse of dark russet carpet, tasteful tables of translucent ruby glass, ewers and flagons and statuettes of crystal and gold—all were visible for a moment before the air currents began their work of gentle decay. The tapestries whispered down into dust; the cushions slumped and lost their colour; a figure of carved black wood crumbled upon a bird-necked stand of topaz glass, bringing both chiming down into final ruin. The carpet rustled and rippled and seemed to move. What had been elegance became crumbled rubbish.

  Harsan had just time to glimpse two more things. The first was a shining box as tall as a man and perhaps twice as wide in the middle of this room. As he watched, this changed from dark to light, and five figures swam up from shadow within it. The second thing was a row of glittering golden warriors against the far right wall, silent statues each more than a man-height tall, each with a pair of hands that ended in odd-shaped tubes and claws.

  “Ru’un—automatons!” Vridekka’s voice cracked upon a falsetto note of warning.

  A metal-shod boot kicked Harsan’s legs from under him. He fell—and contrived to take both Tlayesha and the Qol who guarded her down with him as he went. Shouts eddied overhead, but all he could see was a chaotic view of the Mrur’s rusty greaves and grave-stained leather tunic. A stench of death mingled with the Qol’s diy, snake-like odour made him gag.

  Light—raw, naked, blinding—ravened and crackled above him. The Mind-seer—or perhaps Jayargo or even the Yan Koryani— doubtless possessed an “Eye” or some other of the weapon-tools of the ancients. The players had equipped their pieces—their blues and blacks—well!

  A smell of burning and wisps of blue-grey smoke drifted down. Bony fingers dug into Harsan’s shoulders and hauled him erect. Tlayesha pulled herself up to lean against his arm; she panted and shook her head as though she had been running. The Qol would have grasped her, but she dodged aside.

  Vridekka gestured the creature away. He actually seemed pleased. “So this was your trap! Clever little priest!—Nay, clever princeling of the Latter Times! Four Ru’un set to guard this chamber! Let the intruder into the outer hall, let him find this room of treasures, let him be lulled into avarice, and then let the automatons slay him!”

  Beyond a swirl of dark cloaks and brown-lacquered armour Harsan glimpsed the ruins of the golden warriors. Tiny flames spurted from the breast of one; a second lay kicking feebly on its side; the abdomen of the third was rent open to reveal a blackened tangle that still glittered and popped. The last of the Ru’un stood as before, but its carven, calm, inhuman face was empty and vacant. There was a ragged hole in its torso.

  The box, too, was charred but not entirely destroyed. Inside, against a backdrop of scarlet-flowering trees and green shrubbery, a tall, elderly man stood gazing out at them. A woman sat upon a blue-veined marble bench before him, and two children squatted at her feet. A portion of another, a youth in a tight-fitting suit of glittering amber fabric, was visible as well, but the right side of his body wavered and flashed with eye-dazzling jabs of light. A voice, fuzzy and strangely drawled, spoke words in an unintelligible tongue. The older man’s lips moved; he smiled and extended a beringed, gracious hand.

  “A picture-box,” Vridekka said. “The first lord of this place and his family, mayhap, as they lived during the Latter Times. How long after they had become dust did the savants of Llyan of Tsamra find this place, and how long after that was the secret of this treasure hidden within the Globes of Instruction?”

  The man in the box gestured and pointed in an authoritative fashion. The words dragged on, not at all matching the movements of his lips. He reached to take some unseen object from a stand beside him.

  “Jayargo—!” Vridekka shrilled. “No—!”

  The balding priest held something small between his fingers. Even as Vridekka cried out, a bolt of radiance sped from this to turn the images into flying, flaming shards.

  “He may have had a weapon, Lord—another trap!”

  “Such picture-boxes are harmless!” Vridekka tore at his beard in despair. “A thing that has survived for aeons becomes useless-trash in a moment because of your gutless, illiterate fear!” “Master ...”

  Vridekka whirled to face Harsan and the rest, fury etched in every line of his skinny frame. “As the Corpse Lord knows, men today are ill-trained—ignoble: naught but wet anuses dribbling childish terrors and superstitions! Thus is knowledge—history, science, the world of the ancients—lost, never to be regained!” The voices in Harsan’s brain sang an angry hymn of hatred now.

  “There is no help for it,” Vridekka shook his white staff at them all. “Listen, the rest of you! Destroy nothing else as you value your witless heads! Search the inner chamber for a rod that will fit the slot in that panel there. Open everything, look everywhere. It must exist. Unless we find it, our work is as futile as death without Lord Sarku’s afterlife!”

  He left them to stride back toward the Man of Gold.

  Taluvaz Arrio and Mirure came to stand beside Harsan. Neither had been bound, and the soldiers set to watch them seemed inordinately fascinated by the loot their comrades were finding within the room of the picture-box.

  Resignation and fatigue stained the Livyani’s patrician features. He gestured anxiously toward Mirure, but his words had nothing to do with the N’luss girl.

  “Priest Harsan,” he murmured, “not even a felon upon the impaler’s stake appears as hopeless as you do now. Nor do I believe that you have suddenly been converted to the faith of the Worm Lord to cooperate so gallantly with our foes. You must have yet another string for your bow. Confide in us. Let us aid you.”

  “Can you loose my hands?” Even as he spoke, he felt calloused, familiar, feminine fingers touch his wrists behind his back. Something tiny and very sharp sawed there briefly, and he knew that he was free. This Mirure had more daggers secreted about her person than a Zrne had teeth!

  “And now? Tell us.” Taluvaz touched Mirure tenderly, embraced her, made as though to support her. Had their guards paid heed to him, they would have known this to be a sham! The girl was a head taller than Harsan himself, making the slender, aristocratic Livyani seem almost a child beside her. She must be sufficiently recovered to act on her own.

  Tlayesha took a strip of her tattered skirt, dabbed at the N’luss girl’s forehead, and whispered something. No fool she, either.

  Harsan said, “I know not. I swear I speak the truth, as Divine Thumis knows my soul! Yet I feel elated, courageous—almost intoxicated, Lord Taluvaz.” He stopped, unable to say more.

  Something really was happening to him. The wash of tiny, fluting organ voices sang louder in his brain; the room dimmed and stretched and shrank. His vision blurred, and he sat down abruptly.

  Pain rushed in upon him: little round spots of agony, as though a skilled tormentor of the Legion of Ketl plucked with pincers at each nerve strand. Breath fled out of his lungs—and was
just as sharply sucked back in again. A fist closed around his heart, and his ribs became a ladder of aching flame. Was this a brain-stroke, such as had slain old Gnesumu, one of his preceptors at the Monastery so many years ago? He did not know, but he did not think so. Vridekka? No, the Mind-seer was far away, marshalling his followers from the dais. Jayargo was not in sight; he must be searching the inner chamber and wondering how to redeem himself in his master’s eyes. The Mihalli was there indeed, but he and his men stood grouped by the door, inspecting some discovery or other.

  Tlayesha’s face, lined with concern, swam before him. It coalesced with the sharp, bluffly pretty features of the N’luss girl, shaded off into Taluvaz’ tattooed brow.

  Voices gabbled, the air quivered and twinkled.

  Then the pain was gone. Harsan raised sweat-smeared palms to clutch at his temples.

  Tlayesha was saying, “—Some sort of seizure—the spell the Mihalli worked upon him—strain, weariness, lack of food—”

  One of the skull-helmeted troopers asked gruffly, “What’s to do with him then?”

  Harsan himself replied, “Nothing—nothing now.—My— instruction... Summon your master. I have a thing to give him.”

  Vridekka met the soldier half way. Harsan got shakily to his feet to await him, weak but still unaccountably jubilant. The Mind-seer looked him over with a dubious eye and cast a spell.

  He recoiled. “Your iron buckler is stouter than ever, priest,” he snapped. “You leave me no choice but to prod your willingness, twist your loyalties, give you more of what you endured in Lord Arkhane’s dungeons. The girl, then, Chaishru ...”

  One of the troopers moved toward Tlayesha, but Harsan held out his hands.

  “No need, Lord Vridekka. No need to harm her or any other. No more prodding or pushing or threatening!” He felt warm, excited, as full of wild joy as must a priestess of Hrihayal who achieves the climax of the Thirty-Second orgiastic Act! “Your questioning of Hele’a of Ghaton was incomplete, Lord—shoddy for one so skilled as yourself! La, did he not tell you of the other relic I had put ‘around the comer’? Not the Globe of Instruction which you pried out of me, but something other?”