The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  The Vru’uneb-, the ever-efficient arm of the Livyani theocratic state, the iron dagger beneath the silken coverlet, apprehended them just after they had purchased passage on a round-hulled merchantman bound for Jakalla.

  Siyuneb never saw Chakkunaz again, nor was she told what had become of him. The heavy coins he had carried for her vanished as well. Yet she herself was treated with all the deference due a First Concubine, and no one touched the jewels she wore. A cold-eyed captain and a trio of ebon-robed hierophants questioned her politely but at length. Hours, days—months? —passed; she had no idea of time within the blind walls of Lord Quame’el’s inner temple. Her interrogators advised her not to return to Lord Ketkorez’ palace, not to meddle, never to seek to learn what had occurred. She should go back to her village in the Tlashte Heights and find her clansmen. Her gems would buy a little house, a patch of garden, and a decent husband; then she must make her peace with Lord Qame’el, devote herself to His worship, and grow old as gracefully and inconspicuously as possible.

  That was all. She was free.

  One thing she remembered from the dreary, anxious hours of her interrogation. It was just a word, one she did not know: He’esa. Her questioners asked her repeatedly and interminably about that, but she could only shake her head.

  What was a He'esal She never dared to ask.

  In Jakalla the city watch reported that one Dlamu hiTranukka, a rascal who dealt in gems and other curios, had disappeared. Only his much overworked staff thought to ask what the mess was that someone had thrown down upon the floor of his strongroom. He had no strong clan affiliation, no family, and hence his presence was not much mourned. His wealth, on the other hand, proved most useful: it provided the barristers of the Palace of the Realm with cases, claims, and counter-claims for years to come.

  Three scribes who served General Kadarsha hiTlekolumii, of the Tsolyani Imperium’s Legion of the Searing Flame, vanished as well. They were serious, conscientious, unassuming workers, and he briefly mourned their loss. He mentioned the matter to his master, Prince Mirusiya, one of whose adherents he was, but the Prince only remarked that some of his own people had suddenly become ill and died, too, quite unaccountably. General Kadarsha’s physician and sometime house-wizard, Eyloa, consulted his tomes and suggested the possibility of a new form of the terrible Ailment of Arkhuan Mssa. For several days thereafter Eyloa appeared more than usually grim and morose, which was odd even for an eccentric philosopher such as he.

  Several servitors of the Vriddi clan of Fasiltum perished mysteriously, as did a half dozen subalterns and junior officers of the Legion of Victorious in Vimuhla, one of Mu’ugalavya’s elite units. An Ahoggya village chief in Salarvya, a Shen egg-layer in Mmatugual, a handful of Pygmy Folk in the subterranean den-city situated on the eastern border of Yan Kor—all did the same. In Yan Kor itself, the clever young master of the Clan of the High Spires of Riilla was found to be missing, and the matriarchs of the clan hastened to marry his plump widow to his younger cousin, a simpleton far more amenable to decent female management than he had been!

  The Lord Staffbearer of the Palace of Effulgent Radiance in Saa Allaqi discovered raddled garbage, like the intestines of an animal, in the beds of three princelings of the blood. Frightened, he reported only that these youths had fled, perhaps apprehensive of some plot by their siblings. The Ssao, King of Saa Allaqi, sent forth a summons to the other thirty or so of his offspring—as many as he could remember. All responded save the Princess Vrissa, perhaps twenty-fourth in line, who was off seeing the world somewhere and could not be reached.

  Although no count was ever made, the diligent scribes of the Palace of the Realm in Bey Sii estimated that, all across the Five Empires, perhaps five or six hundred (a thousand, whispered some) persons—-human and nonhuman alike—died during the Night of the New Ailment of Arkhuan Mssa. There was anxiety for a time, but when the plague ceased and did not reappear, the matter was filed away. More important doings were afoot, and only a few of the presumed victims were anybody important anyway.

  Eventually the Omnipotent Azure Legion presented a thick sheaf of reports to Lord Chaimira hiSsanmirin, the High Prefect of the Chancery of Avanthar. In turn, that worthy laid these before the Servitors of Silence, who guarded the Emperor in the Golden Tower. An edict was subsequently issued commanding greater sanitation throughout the cities of Tsolyanu. A council of scholars and priests and physicians was later called into secret session, nevertheless, in the Hall of the Petal Throne itself.

  The results of this conference were not made public.

  A hundred lumbering Chlen-beasts pulled the wagon. The dust of their passing was a dun-coloured cloak spread over the sere wastelands of the western marches of the Desert of Sighs. Upon the cart rode the Baron’s “Weapon Without Answer”: a cube the size of a small house, swathed all in black cloth. Worked upon the fabric in silver and green were the insignia of Yan Kor, of the Gods of the north, and of the promise of death to all the Baron’s foes. Ten pairs of wheels, each two man-heights tall and a quarter of a man-height thick, groaned and screamed and jolted upon the rough stones. The wagon was far too large to travel upon the Sakbe road that ran from the city of Hlikku in Yan Kor southwesterly to Khirgar and thence into the rich Tsolyani heartland. A full thousand masons and carpenters and labourers toiled in advance of the column beside the road to make a way for it.

  Two contingents of green-clad troops flanked the march: the elite First and Second Legions of Mighty Yan Kor. Three more Legions preceded the grumbling wagon; still others followed. An auxiliary Cohort of Hlaka scouts, the little flying nonhumans from beyond Kilalammu in the distant northeast, swooped and soared overhead, their ribald chittering drifting down the wind.

  From a vantage point upon the highest level of the Sakbe road one could see all of the long serpentine columns: the scurrying insects around the ebon block that was the “Weapon”; the dark squares beyond that were phalanxes of marching soldiers, arms and legs flashing in jerky unison; the hordes of camp followers; the Chlen-carts laden with arms and supplies and waterskins; and the smaller bodies of scouts and stragglers and local tribesmen, all the way to the horizon; all rolling inexorably on toward Khirgar as the sea-tide rolls up onto the sand.

  The central column, that containing the “Weapon,” had halted. No one yet knew why. The flanking contingents continued to trudge on by, and clusters of officers and aides and General Ssa Qayel’s elite guardsmen leaned down from the Sakbe road parapets to see.

  The ponderous wagon that bore the “Weapon” now stood immobile in the drifting dust, surrounded by swarms of soldiers, Chlen-handlers, and hangers-on. The subaltern who had clambered up to the third tier of the Sakbe road to fetch Lord Fu Shi’i shouted, mopped the sweat from his brow, and waved his pennoned lance, but the crowd only milled about, muttered, and gawked. Their numbers grew by the moment.

  Lord Fu Shi’i pushed aside the flap of thick cloth that concealed the entrance to the little chamber within the “Weapon” and came out to stand upon the little platform at the rear of the great cart. His expression was bland and pleasant as always, but lines of strain showed around his clean-shaven mouth, and his eyes were cold and furious.

  The officer behind him in the passage held a comer of his mantle over his nose. He said, “Lord, the damage? Shall we summon General Ssa Qayel and Lady Mmir? The army—’ ’

  “Not yet. Go away. Leave me to assess the matter.—Yes, halt the legions, bivouac here for the night, and get rid of these people.”

  “There is no water here, Lord. We had planned to reach the village of Tnektla by sundown.”

  “Sink the village of Tnektla into the sand! Do as I say. And send me the scribe Truvarsh. A report must go this very day to Baron Aid in Ke’er.”

  The man sketched a tired salute and climbed down the ladder into the crowd. His emerald crest renamed visible above the cylindrical helmets of the troopers for a time, like a beetle surrounded by a horde of Drz'-ants. Lord Fu Shi’i stared after
him, then went back within.

  The damage was certainly done. It was far more serious than the legion captain could have suspected. Beyond the still-smoky outer corridor, in the control chamber that lay within the heart of the “Weapon,’ were five heaps of grey-white putrescence, puddles of thick mucus, and a smell that made Lord Fu Shi’i gasp. Worse, however, were the silence and the darkness. The soft humming of the “Weapon” had ceased. The banks of little purple lights, so deep in colour that one could hardly say when they were lit, were black and vacant. Some were charred. Sadly, Lord Fu Shi’i touched a slender hand to a lever, as those who had supplied the “Weapon” had instructed. Nothing resulted. “Lord.” It was the scribe, Truvarsh.

  “Come within. We summon a conference.”

  “Others may see.” The man’s eyes glinted ruby-red in the hot light reflected from the vestibule.

  “None dare enter here. And we will not be long.”

  The scribe wavered, flickered, and became a furred, longsnouted creature, a Mihalli. It drew forth a translucent sapphire sphere from within its mantle: a “Ball of Immediate Eventuation,” the special other-planar tool of its race. It concentrated.

  They stood upon a glassy plain.

  The sky was of no colour, the landscape flat and weirdly foreshortened. Myriad pale tendrils, vines of white that bore no fruit and had never known sun or rain, emerged from a single point beyond the horizon to writhe across this plain and disappear here and there into what might have been the ground. Every one of these filaments was withered, shrivelled, curled, and dead.

  “Not here,” said Lord Fu Shi’i, a trifle sadly. “Not where ‘Those Who Are Seen and Yet Remain Unseen’ have perished. The vines that bloom as men on other Planes are gone.”

  The Mihalli nodded and bent over its globe again.

  They stood in the place that was not a place, where little beads of light darted to and fro like fish within a turgid pool. A figure glowed before them, its edges brightening first, then its centre filling in with colour and detail, as dye seeps into a length of fabric. A second appeared.

  “My Lord Prince. Lord Baron.”

  “Four of my personal staff are gone. Others are missing,” Prince Dhich’une said curtly. “This means that the priest-boy has won through.”

  “So it is. Half a dozen of my people are piles of rotting curds too—not even the Dlaqo-beetles will eat the stuff.” Baron Aid sat down upon the dais that the Mihalli produced before him. He wore no armour but a hunting costume of green leather.

  Lord Fu Shi’i shrugged, gracefully. “All of the Goddess’ minions, her He’esa, are severed from our Plane. Without the umbilical cord that sustains them from Her Plane, they perish. The Man of Gold has wrought as its ancient makers intended. We came to the feast tardily and brought too little food.” He carefully forebore from mentioning that this had been the decision of his master.

  “Our agents—my Vridekka?” Prince Dhich’une asked.

  “We have heard nothing,” Lord Fu Shi’i cupped a hand and turned it over, a sign that any player of Den-den would recognise as one of surrender. “Our Mihalli in Purdimal—gone beyond this Plane, out of reach of contact. All of our people there as well. Some must be dead, others taken.”

  The Baron spat a string of crackling oaths in his own fierce northern tongue. “And my ‘Weapon’?”

  “Cut off as the He’esa were, master. All of the Goddess’ entrance points are gone, sheared away as a butcher cleaves the head from a Hmelu with his axe. No force penetrates now from Her Plane into ours.”

  “Cha! What’s to do?”

  Prince Dhich’une said, “Continue to advance the ‘Weapon,’ of course. Who is to know that it—temporarily—no longer functions.”

  “All too many know, mighty Prince. Half the army saw the smoke billowing from the door. The officer who entered it to investigate will tell his tale. It will be old gossip by nightfall.

  Spies in the camp—Tsolyani, Milumanayani tribesmen, and others— will carry it to Prince Eselne within the six-day.” “Repair it. Restore the access points.” The Baron clenched brawny fists upon his knees.

  “That can be done, master. But it will take time to find another path through the Planes Beyond, one that the Man of Gold does not block. Then will come the work of building connections, replacing the key people with the Goddess’ He’esa, as was done before.”

  “Do you tell me that it will again take as mamy months— years—as it did to progress this far?” The Baron thundered. He leaped to his feet, and the place that was not a place trembled and quavered. The Mihalli looked over at him in silent reproach.

  “We can still defeat the Tsolyani,” Lord Fu Shi’i murmured silkily. “We have the troops, the military skill—your own great skill, Lord—and your high determination.”

  “Gull me not, man! It was risky enough with the ‘Weapon,’ but well you know that the Tsolyani have thrice the legions we can muster—older, better trained, more cleverly generalled! Serve me no Ahoggya piss in place of wine!”

  Fu Shi’i bowed his sleek head before his master’s wrath. This, too, would pass.

  “And what of me?” Dhich’une broke into the brittle silence. “What of our plans—your promise to relieve certain of my siblings of life? Who now will smooth away my opposition in the Kolumejalim? Well you know that I cannot face my half-brothers in all of the tests that comprise the ‘Choosing of Emperors!’ The He'esa were to—”

  “The Gods know that you cannot surpass even your silly half-sister, Ma’in Kriithai! Not even if the sole contest were to get yourself successfully sodomised by a Shen!” The Baron paced to and fro. He threw off the fingers Fu Shi’i laid upon his arm. “Go! Resign the ‘Gold!’ Hide in your worm-riddled City of Sarku! Forget the Petal Throne or else learn swordsmanship and agility and those other arts that will be tested! Hire champions—!” He snorted. “Cheat!”

  The skull-painted face was unreadable. “I will hear no more, barbarian. Now will I let Eselne and Mirusiya crush you, defeat your puny armies, and skewer you upon a pole, just as General Kettukal’s man Bazhan did to your foolish fish-wife Yilrana! My half-brothers will slay you, and you will weaken them just enough to allow me to come forth again as the heir to my father’s Empire! When you are done chewing upon one another like an arena-pit full of Mnor, I shall be there, Baron, to claim my patrimony.”

  Baron Aid would have drawn the steel dagger that hung at his belt, but there was no substance here in this place that was not a place. He turned his back to conceal his rage.

  Prince Dhich’une gestured and was gone.

  “And you!” Baron Aid fixed his baleful gaze upon Fu Shi’i. “You are correct at least in one matter. Turn the ‘Weapon’ around, back to the City of Hlikku! Call up more troops, order the manufacture of weapons, build me more armies. My vengeance will not be gainsaid. Time it may take aplenty, yet indeed we shall defeat the Tsolyani, and it shall be by the victory of our arms alone! No more of these magical meddlings, no more pacts with slimy things from beyond our Plane! A pox upon the Goddess... !”

  “As you decree, my master.” Lord Fu Shi’i sighed. Halting the army and trudging back along the dreary road through the barrens to Hlikku would be a thorny conundrum in logistics and supply. There would be problems of politics and diplomacy as well. But there was no help for it.

  More, both he and Baron Aid knew that Yan Kor had little chance of defeating the ponderous might of the Seal Emperor. Armies? Weapons? A Tsolyani torrent against the petty rivulet of Yan Kor!

  No, now he must hone another sword, work another plan, set a different snare. His own masters, those of whom he did not like to think even in his sleep, would not be pleased, but they were more patient than this thick-brained Zrne of a man.

  They would wait.

  He signed to the Mihalli, and once again the place that was not a place was empty of all life—or at least of that which men might recognise as such.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “And still you
are unhappy?” Tlayesha chided.

  She leaned upon the sculpted marble balustrade, thoroughly aware of her newfound elegance, like Lady Avanthe herself, Harsan thought, in the simple tunic of sapphire Gudru-cloth she had chosen, her new veil of creamy Thesurt-gmze draped most gracefully over one shoulder to be tucked into her girdle of embossed silver plaques. Even now, even here, she must hide her blue eyes; people were superstitious, after all. The spray of Kheshchal-plumes in her hair set off her oval face and the dark waves of her tresses. It was as though Tlayesha had always belonged here, a princess herself, in mighty Avanthar.

  Harsan hesitated. To be honest, he could find no reply to her question, not one that really satisfied him.

  “ ‘A hungry man eats whatever the tree bears,’ ” he quoted, a little wistfully. “I am not sure—I shali never be sure—whether I have given my discoveries over to the best—the noblest—of the players of this game. At least Prince Eselne will use the cache for the good of Tsolyanu—as he sees it.”

  “And the Man of Gold?”

  That, alone of all, was the bitter rind to the fruit. He could not answer her.

  The damned thing had not worked! Oh, Lord Taluvaz had suggested that it might somehow be bound up with the New Ailment of Arkhuan Mssa that had so recently and mysteriously ravaged the land. But was that not most likely a sop for Harsan’s feelings? Who had ever heard of a device of the ancients that slew a victim in such a way, like a ghastly disease: randomly, with no purpose, one here, another there, as far away as Jakalla, Tsamra, Ke’er, or Tsatsayagga in Salarvya?

  Alas, so much for visions of glory...

  He pulled at his chin. “Why, let it stand there and blink its pretty lights for another aeon or two. High Prince Eselne may peddle it to Prince Dhich’une—or to the Yan Koryani—for a basket of rotten Die I-fruit for all I care! Old Vridekka is worth more in trade than any Man of Gold! To the Unending Grey with it!”