The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  “What?—No—”

  Harsan brought his brows together in fierce concentration. All else he thrust aside, all thoughts and feelings and emotions. He shut out the sights and sounds and smells of the great hall of the Man of Gold, let the alien tendrils of Other Planar power seep into his consciousness.

  He groped in the dark that was not dark. Something lay there.

  “Why, then, here you have the key, Lord!” he gasped. He held out his hands. The Mind-seer instinctively held out his own in return.

  An object, white and shapeless, dropped from nowhere into Vridekka’s palms. Wisps of vapour arose; the thing actually smoked! A wave of deadly cold smote them all.

  It was the silvery-blue rod, all coated now with ice!

  Vridekka shrieked, flailed, fell backward. It seemed that he could not let go of the thing! He howled, danced, waved the rod like a glittering sword, and stumbled into one of his guardsmen. The noise brought everyone in the hall around to stare.

  The nearest soldier snatched at Tlayesha. “This girl dies—!” he snarled.

  She reacted in a way Harsan would never have guessed. Instead of struggling, she threw both arms about the man’s neck, drew him close, and held up her face almost as though she would make love to him.

  She opened her eyes wide.

  “Ohe, man, would you then slay one who wears the curse of the Goddess Avanthe!” Her eyes were very blue in the light of the artificial sun of the hall.

  The trooper yelled wordlessly and jerked aside to sketch the protective sign of the Worm Lord in the air with two fingers. He fumbled for his weapon. Two very hard hands pulled his head back from behind, and Mirure’s powerful, practiced, leather-shod knee snapped up against his spine just below his copper-trimmed backplate. There was a satisfying crack, and he crumpled. She had his sword almost before he struck the floor.

  The Mihalli raised his blue-glowing ball, his men fanning out beside him. Vridekka knelt upon the pavement and clutched his hands to his breast in a contortion of agony. There were shouts from the inner chamber, and Jayargo appeared at the door there to stare forth openmouthed.

  Soon—soon, now...

  He realised that he had no idea what was to happen “soon.”

  Harsan reached “around the corner” one more time. Had not Chtik p’Qwe said that other sages had experimented with this strange place, stored their secrets, their artifacts, and possibly their victims therein? He let his mind swim in the unimaginable tides and eddies beyond his own bubble of familiar reality. Another object emerged to drop upon the floor in front of him: a round ball of blackened ice within which he glimpsed the shrivelled remains of a body, a creature that had many limbs and a face more grisly than any demon carven upon Lord Sarku’s temple walls!

  He lacked the power, magical or physical, to throw it. But a kick sent it skittering and smoking across the floor to scatter the agents of Yan Kor like goblets from an overturned tray.

  Unperturbed, the Mihalli lifted his blue globe and sighted.

  A thunderous roar from the room of the picture-box made the creature miss. The beam of twinkling blue light snapped soundlessly over Tlayesha’s head. Both Harsan and the Mihalli turned to stare unbelievingly.

  Soldiers, the Undead, the remaining Qol, a half dozen of Vridekka’s small Underworld monsters—all came boiling out of the narrow door. The living fled toward the anteroom, the Mrur stumbled and rose sluggishly to fall again under the feet of comrades behind; the Jajgi was visible for a moment, and then it, too, disappeared under the press. Jayargo dragged himself free to scramble up by the wall just outside of the inner chamber.

  Something brown and huge loomed just within the door to the room of the picture-box. It flowed forth, a low and massive wave of crusted, stained reddish leatheriness borne along upon a myriad tiny greyish cilia—a thing like a many-legged flatworm, but with a thousand wetly gleaming, soft tendril-legs for every one that any normal worm possessed! The upper integument was smooth, undulating, glistening russet—like a great carpet carried along by a horde of Dri-ants.

  A living carpet, Harsan thought.

  Yes, that was it! A carpet! The brown carpet he had glimpsed within the chamber of the picture-box! The thing must be some sort of guardian!

  Taluvaz Arrio shouted in his ear, “A NgoroV'

  “A what?”

  “One of the beasts of the ancients—kept to guard their tombs and treasures!” The Livyani seized Tlayesha’s wrist, pulled her and Mirure back around behind the dais.

  “Hurry,” he panted, “for it slays all! In Livyanu—”

  Harsan did not wait to hear what a Ngoro might do in Livyanu. He must stop both this monster and Vridekka. A glance told him that the old man was no obstacle now. He was either dead or unconscious—perhaps he had used some trance-like spell to prevent his mind from feeling pain. His hands were white and shrivelled, as though long immersed in ice water.

  Harsan bent. A jerk and he had one of Vridekka’s scuffed leather sandals in his hand. This he used this to scoop up the silvery-blue rod, still streaked with moisture and lacy white crystals.

  Whatever else, whatever the consequences, he had one more thing to do. The cold of the rod made him curse, but he staggered across the chamber and up onto the dais.

  He thrust the rod down into the hole in the central panel.

  The black handle moved this way and that under his hand. He felt it engage, and sensed the throb of ancient power building somewhere inside. Many tiny lights sprang up to dazzle him with reds and blues and yellows. Harsan fell to his knees and prayed that the Man of Gold still operated, that it would do what the Globe of Instruction had claimed against the Goddess of the Pale Bone, “She Who Must Not Be Named.”

  He prayed that it would somehow make all of this death and blood and pain worthwhile.

  The organ voices poured forth again within his brain, rose to a crescendo, then dulled to barest audibility. The spots of pain reappeared upon the inside of his eyelids, but they were not as excruciating as before. Indeed, there were words written within each pulsing circle, words in a script that he could not read, words that shifted and changed to vocal, musical notes within his mind. He knew that they had nothing to do with the Man of Gold.

  He understood the words.

  “Our duty.” The organ voices sang. “Our task.” A cascade of trebles and basses and shrieking flutings poured over him.

  He sensed rather than saw the sweep of the great carpet-creature—the Ngoro Taluvaz had named it—as it rolled inexorably forward over the Undead, over the Qol and the others, and towards himself.

  “Our duty,” the organ rumbled in a lower, minor key. “All those who come without permission. All—”

  He could see nothing now but the tiny circles of light, glowing orbs that had no colour and no substance.

  “Who—? Why—?”

  “Our duty,” the mighty orchestra boomed in measured cadences that shook Harsan’s universe. “Placed here to guard the secrets of—” There was a name, but it did not translate into sound. “To slay those who disrupt the house of him with whom we are allied ...”

  “We did not come—we are not—”

  “So it is. You brought the key, the rod. You could not have that unless you have permission. That is why we strive to speak to you, to read the patterns of your mind.” Harsan felt the vibration of the creature’s ponderous movement through his shins, pressed against the floor of the dais. “Death must come to those who are here but who are not with you. They are interlopers. Wait.”

  Harsan dared to open one eye. The sweeping brown carpet filled one side of the hall. There were lumps and unidentifiable objects beneath it. Jayargo cowered against the wall nearest the door. The Mihalli, his bandy-legged assistant, and two of his bravoes crouched in the opposite comer. The blue globe flashed and flashed again, and seared black spots appeared upon the surface of the carpet-thing.

  It flowed forward, swept down upon them.

  “Priest, priest!” the Mihal
li howled. “Call it back! Stop it!”

  “I cannot, even if I wished,” Harsan cried.

  “If they are friends, followers, servants,” the organ blared in his head, “then are we empowered to spare them.”

  Harsan hesitated.

  “Priest—! Oh, Harsan!” It was Eyil who stood there, terrified, nude save for her flashing blue jewellery, her high, dark-tipped breasts heaving in terror. She was lovely. A pang of yearning struck him.

  “No friends of mine!” Harsan snarled.

  The russet carpet reared, a great ocean wave, oily-smooth, brown as dried blood on top, red-grey wriggling cilia beneath.

  A muscled, snarling, many-fanged Zrne rose to face it; then a snake-like dragon-thing; then a furred, feline beast—the same that Harsan had glimpsed before.

  The carpet swept over them all. There were screams and crunching sounds.

  Harsan blinked; his eyes told him that the Mihalli had vanished just slim moments before the carpet-thing struck. If the creature had the skill to transport itself out along the lines of Other Planar force into some other bubble of reality, then so be it. Something—the Ngoro or his own mind—told him that it would not return.

  Ponderously the Ngoro reversed itself, turned, and made for Jayargo. The skull-faced priest gaped, then fumbled within his ochre robe. He drew forth the black globe he had picked up in the anteroom.

  He clawed at the device, mewling in wordless terror. Something inside the globe clicked, and the top came off. Jayargo drew back his arm and hurled the sphere at the Ngoro as a soldier throws a fire-pot from a wall!

  It landed directly before the carpet-creature, rolled, and stopped. A black-brown ichor oozed out upon the floor.

  The stuff was very like the grease the carter clans used to lubricate the exles of their Chlen-carts. The Ngoro rolled on, undisturbed.

  Jayargo squawked, threw up his arms, and fled back toward the anteroom.

  The Ngoro began to pick up speed, rolling toward Taluvaz and the rest of the knot of figures just below the dais.

  “No—! Friends! Not them!” Vridekka, who was certainly no friend, lay there too, but he was still immobile, a sprawled and ridiculous heap of stick-like limbs and ragged brown robes. Mirure stood over him, sword in hand.

  The carpet-thing halted. “You who possess the key—your body is like those others, but we are unsure. Within you we perceive differences.” The organ notes were wistful, restrained, as though yearning for an excuse to complete the work of slaughter.

  “What?”

  “We see you as a four-limbed-one, a human. But your mind shows one who has six limbs, a segmented tail ...” Harsan sensed confusion and a threatening surge of hostility.

  “No, I am no Pe Choi! Look again! Look into my mind—see, I open it to you!”

  The answer was an indescribable ruffling: a shaking, sifting sensation reminiscent of an old pedant shaking out a dusty scroll. He found himself on all fours upon the dais.

  “You are not. But yet you are.” The Ngoro humped and rustled. “In one form your thoughts are muddled: this ‘Man of Gold,’ the many objectives of your species—too much and too disordered. In your other sKape you bear a message ...” The deep-throated chorus became one of wonderment. “A message— for the ‘Underpeople’—for those who dwell in thrall to humankind, your other, original species... ?”

  Itk t’Sa! Somehow she still lived then, within him! She had impressed him with her mission, however she had managed it.

  The Ngoro reared up, a full two man-heights tall, rust-hued cilia coiling and twining beneath its sleek upper surface. “Return to the Pe Choi, then, you who are both! Tell them that some there are who dwell with humankind but who are not ‘Under-people’! Nay, some are ‘Overpeople,’ if you like either of those two terms! We have lived amongst the soft four-limbed-ones by choice, and we do as we will. None holds us in slavery, none is our master—he whom we served here paid well and in coin for our own choosing for the services we render.”

  “You would not come forth—to live upon the surface of Tekumel, to dwell in places of your own?” The words were not Harsan’s but Itk t’Sa’s.

  “Not so. Not all who inhabit the world of mankind are downtrodden, yearning to be free—and ‘free,’ indeed, of what? We do not covet your forests, nor are we eager for the sight of the sun and the moons. We dwell in our chosen places; you in yours. We are not pleased by the neareness of many fellows, by edifices, by the elaborations of manners and customs and societies that busy your minds. If you seek the will of us, the Ngoro, then know that we seek only solitude, the privacy of our own company. Know that we are not one entity; we are composed of a million, a billion, tiny minds, all alike, all with the same needs and goals. We are already a community, a polity, a metropolis in every sense of your word.”

  “Do you never desire the nearness of other species? Communion with beings different from yourself—selves?”

  “That we have aplenty—within our own bodies.” The organ sang down to a final dark, wailing chord. “We know too much—we have seen too much, and we have wandered too far. We no longer possess that one quality which gives you younger races your life, your animation ...”

  “And that is... ?”

  “That which no spell, no mage, no revolt or conflict or new confrontation can revivify: curiosity. The desire to experience more.”

  The music died away to a last whispered echo of Harsan’s own heartbeat. Then it was gone entirely.

  The creature flowed around the central dais toward the room where the shattered picture-box lay. It left a trail of broken helmets, weapons, armour, bits of clothing, and bones.

  “The—the Man of Gold,” Harsan called. “Tell me what it does! Why—how? The reasons for it... !”

  “You have set it in operation already. As to what it does, you should have waited for him to tell you—he whose instructions and picture-box your fellows have destroyed.” The Ngoro humped up again, folded itself, pushed through the door into the inner chamber.

  There was little sign of its passing. Debris here, stains there. A gentle slithering noise from the inner room sounded like the opening of a wall-panel. There was probably some secret exit from that room through which it would go to feed—upon what, one could only surmise.

  Harsan rose upon aching legs and went to the console. Winking lights welcomed him: a row of red dots, circles of yellow, square boxes of glowing green within which tiny lines merged and diverged to create alien patterns.

  Nothing made any sense.

  He looked up to find Tlayesha and the others beside him. They had heard nothing, not one word of the telepathic conversation between him and the Ngoro. He related it to them briefly.

  “You have done more than any wizard since the Time of No Kings,” Taluvaz said admiringly when he had done. “Not Subadim, not wise Thomar, not Chirene Bakal—no mage or hero of the epics could match this.” He gazed about the chamber enviously. “These boxes, those mechanisms—whatever the Man of Gold may do, it will be a century before all of this can be studied and put to use! I only wish this place were in Livyanu! Oh, I should have made Prince Eselne include a share of any finds—’ ’

  He broke off, embarrassed. Harsan pretended not to notice. The Livyani began again in urgent, businesslike tones. “Come away, young man. Still must we find a path out of this labyrinth.”

  “Jayargo? The Undead? The rest?”

  “Crushed or fled.” Tlayesha touched his forehead. He was hot and feverish. She looked at the lights and knobs and wheels with undisguised awe—and not a little fear. “What does it do, my love? Does it live? Will it march forth to destroy demons?”

  “The ‘Weapon Without Answer’ of Yan Kor... ?” Taluvaz added anxiously.

  “I do not know,” he answered. He concentrated, but the voices within his brain were mute now. He frowned, and puzzled over the flat panels for many minutes. Tentatively he touched the controls. Then he kicked the metal console, slapped a hand down across a row of black butt
ons. He was rewarded by a dance of coloured lights.

  “I see nothing; it does nothing. I command it to rise and take us hence from here, but it does not reply. I tell it to go forth to slay the Yan Koryani and—and a certain terrible Goddess and Her He’esa—but it does not move.” He knit his brows and concentrated again until perspiration dripped down into his eyes. “Nothing. Oh, it makes pretty designs—a veritable treasure trove for a jeweller or one who delights in magical playthings! Our learned priests could exhibit it to awe the gape-mouthed rustics on feast days. Perhaps it is broken—too old. Perhaps—”

  “You saw nothing—sensed nothing?” Taluvaz urged. “No powerful forces, no beams of light? No pressures upon your psychic self?”

  “Nothing! Nothing! The carpet-thing, the Ngoro, either did not know or would not tell me! The .Globes of Instruction said only to do this much! I have done it. As you can see, this much is nothing at all. It glows and twinkles. It does not even make a sound.”

  “This does not mean that it does nothing. The ancients—”

  “Thumis hurl the ancients into the Unending Grey! See for yourself, I have enough psychic sense to know when the powers of the Planes are active close by—and so do you, I warrant. Lord Taluvaz Arrio! Some of its parts must have corroded away or become defective over time ...”

  He kicked the Man of Gold again in frustrated disappointment.

  Mirure climbed onto the dais to report that Vridekka still lived but remained unconscious. Either the freezing wounds dealt him by the silvery rod were more terrible than they appeared, or else the Mind-seer’s trance-spell was very powerful indeed. Tlayesha joined with the N’luss girl in suggesting that they cut the old man’s weazened throat before he could awake. Taluvaz urged that they bind him tightly instead, blindfold him so that he could not cast spells with the power of his gaze alone, and leave him to be collected—or to die—later. If they could send a party back for him, Prince Eselne would be very grateful for a scholar as learned in the inner workings of the Temple of Sarku—and as knowledgeable in the doings of his brother, Prince Dhich’une—as Vridekka. The Concordat did not hold down here, and what had happened tonight would not bear scrutiny in the light of day. No, the Skull Prince would not dare complain to the Petal Throne over the disappearance of his house-wizard.