It was a dull little speech, what Jorian could understand of it: "… auspicious occasion… glorious nation… gallant contestants… good sportsmanship… may the best team win…"
As the king finished, a man arose from among the Pants and shouted: "When will Your Majesty bring the slayers of Sefer to book?"
The king replied through his crier: "Pray, good sir, do not bring up this question now. The time is inappropriate. We are pursuing the matter…" But the voice even of the leather-lunged crier was lost in the chant of "Justice! Justice!" that rose from the massed Pants. In their turn, the Kilts began shouting in rhythm: "Down! Quiet! Down! Quiet!"
"Who's Sefer?" asked Jorian.
"An official of the Pants, who was found slain. The Pants swear he was killed by a gang of Kilts; the Kilts deny all knowledge of it."
The shouts of the crier, together with a threatening move on the part of the squads of gleaming guardsmen in bronzen cuirasses and crested steel helmets, at length abated the shouts of the rival factionists.
"They are putting the tortoise race first," said Karadur, "to amuse the mob and take the factionists' minds—if that be the word I wish—off their feud."
At the starting post at one end of the course, Jorian sighted through his spyglass four huge tortoises. When they stood up on their thick, bowed legs, the tops of their shells were the height of a tall man from the ground. On the back of each tortoise was strapped a saddle, similar to a camel saddle. On each saddle sat a man in motley clown's costume.
At the blast of a trumpet, the four tortoises ambled forward. It took them a long time to reach the part of the track directly before Jorian. In the meantime, bets flew thick and fast.
As the tortoises plodded past at a slow walk, the crowd roared at the antics of the riders, of whom two wore the colors of the Kilts and two, those of the Pants. They reached out to thwack one another with slapsticks, turned somersaults off their mounts and bounded back on, and indulged in a hundred zany gambols.
Jorian: "I feel a certain kinship for the Kilts, even though I wear trews."
"How so, my son? Are you becoming aristocratical-minded?"
"Not at all. Their colors, red and white, are those of the flag of Xylar. The Xylarian war cry, in fact, was 'red and white!'" Jorian sighed. "Betimes I regret that those lackwits wouldn't let me show what a good king I could be."
The tortoises passed on around to the other side of the course. A single circuit constituted their race. The good humor of the crowd seemed to have been restored.
Next came a race between two teams of zebras. Then a detachment of the Royal Guard, their metal polished to mirrorlike surfaces, marched around the course to the tune of a military band, stopping from time to time to perform a brief precision drill with their spears.
Six camels, ridden by brown-robed Fediruni desert men, raced four laps around the course. Then a float bearing a gilded image of the god Ughroluk, drawn by white oxen and preceded by a hundred priests singing a mighty hymn, passed slowly around the course. Many in the crowd joined the priests in singing. The god, crowned with ostrich plumes dyed scarlet and gold and emerald, bore a silver thunderbolt in one hand and a golden sunbeam in the other.
A pair of King Ishbahar's elephants, draped in purple and gold, lumbered around the track, not seeming to hurry much despite the yells of their mahouts and the whacks of their goads. Then two teams of unicorns raced.
"Now come the horses," said Karadur. "Being the fleetest draft animals, their race will decide the day as between the Pants and the Kilts."
Tension grew. A trumpet peal sent the four teams off. As the four chariots—two blue and gold, two crimson and silver—thundered past, the roar from the blocks of factionists drowned out all other sounds.
There were seven laps to the race. With each lap, the excitement waxed. As the chariots whirled past, men stood up, shaking fists, sobbing, frothing, and screaming.
When the cluster of vehicles rounded the first turn on the fourth lap, there was a crash and a glimpse of pieces of chariot flying. Two cars had collided. A detached wheel continued along the course on its own for half a bowshot before toppling over. When the dust had blown away enough for Jorian to see, he glimpsed a pair of stretcher-bearers trotting across the sand to pick up a victim. There was also a glimpse of an injured horse struggling to rise.
By the time the two surviving cars approached on their next lap, the service crew had largely cleared away the wreckage. The two survivors passed and repassed on the straightaway, neither able to gain a definitive advantage. On the last lap, they whirled to the finish line abreast. As they sped past the royal box, Jorian could not see that either had the advantage.
Officials huddled in consultation at the edge of the track. Then a pair of them hastened up the steps to the royal box. More consultation, and the crier shouted:
"Driver Paltoi, of the Pants, wins!"
The Pants applauded. Jorian noted that the Penembians applauded like Novarians, by clapping their hands, not by snapping their fingers like Mulvanians.
A growl arose from the Kilts. It grew, mingled with cries of "Foul! Foul!" The Pants shouted back.
"Was there a foul?" asked Jorian.
Karadur shrugged. "Alas, I am no expert on sports; nor are my old eyes up to detecting such irregularities. Natheless, methinks we had better make ourselves scarce."
"Why?"
"The races are over, all but the awards to the winners; but my spiritual senses tell me a riot is brewing. Besides, it looks like rain."
"All right," said Jorian, rising.
As he did so, a large beer mug, turning over and over in the air, flew from the bloc of Kilts towards the Pants. It struck Jorian's head with a crash and shattered. Jorian slumped back into his seat.
"My boy!" cried Karadur. "Are you injured?"
Jorian shook his head. "That does not seem to have split what few brains I have left. Let's go."
He rose again, staggering a little, and started for the exit. A trickle of blood ran down one side of his face.
More missiles flew over the central strip between the two blocs of factionists. As the gentry in this strip left their seats to run for cover, the two blocs rose and rushed at each other, drawing hitherto hidden daggers and short swords. Trumpets blew. The crier screamed. Whistles sounded.
Squads of glittering guardsmen clattered hither and yon, striving to beat the combatants apart with spear shafts. Others fought their way to the royal box to protect the king, who sat quivering and helplessly waving his fat hands. Fighting spread all over the Hippodrome, while the more peaceable members of the audience ran for the exits. The noise grew deafening.
Pulling Karadur by one bony wrist, Jorian forced his way through the crush at Entrance Four. In the concourse outside, knots of factionists were already hurling missiles, brandishing improvised clubs, kicking, punching, and stabbing.
Jorian tried to thread his way among the combatants to the main entrance without becoming embroiled. As he reached the gate, a fierce yell from behind made him turn.
"Kill the dirty foreigners!" shrieked a man. A flash of lightning revealed the man as Borai, the former director of the House of Learning. He was haranguing a group of armed Kilts. Beside him stood Yiyim, the former clockmaster. Thunder growled.
"The old witch cast a spell on our team!" screamed Borai. "That cost us our victory!"
"And the young one is his apprentice!" added Yiyim. "Slay them both! Tear them to pieces!"
The well-gnawed carcass of a chicken whirled through the air and missed Jorian; so did a horse turd. A paving stone, however, grazed Jorian's already bloody scalp and staggered him.
"Run, my son!" gasped Karadur.
"Whither?" shouted Jorian.
"The temple! To the temple of Nubalyaga! Demand sanctuary!"
The pair trotted across the street, just as rain began to fall. The gang of Kilts broke into a run behind them. As they reached the slope leading up to the temple, Karadur said:
"Go
on, my son. I cannot run up yon hill."
"I won't leave you—"
"Go on, I say! I am old; you have many years—"
Without further words, Jorian gathered up the ancient bag of bones in his arms and ran up the hill carrying Karadur, despite the Mulvanian's pleas. Jorian slipped on the rain-wet cobblestones and fell; Karadur's bulbous turban came off and rolled away. Jorian scrambled up again with his burden and ran on. The mob behind them gained.
At the entrance to the temple, a pair of eunuch guards, standing inside the gate, crossed their spears to bar the way. Jorian, his red face streaked with mingled rain, sweat, mud, and blood, was too winded to speak. Karadur cried:
"Admit us in the name of the lady Sahmet, sirs! I am Doctor Karadur of the House of Learning!"
The eunuchs lowered their spears. As soon as Jorian and Karadur were inside, the eunuchs clanged the bronzen gate valves shut. Other guards hastened from other parts of the temenos. In a trice, a dozen eunuchs, with cocked crossbows, stood in a line behind the gate.
"Begone, or we will shoot through the bars!" they shouted.
The mob milled and screamed but made no effort to assault the gate. Jorian and Karadur hastened towards the main temple building.
"I owe you my life," said Karadur.
"Oh, nonsense! Had I thought the matter out, I should probably have left you. You almost deserve it for assuring me that Borai and Yiyim were harmless. Where's this Lady Sahmet?"
"I will send in our names. If she be not engaged in ritual, methinks she will see us."
Despite the drizzle, the mob of Kilts, under the leadership of Borai and Yiyim, had spread out into a cordon, which seemed to be extending itself clear around the temenos.
"They're laying siege to the place," said Jorian.
"I am sure the king's men will clear them away. If not, belike Sahmet can solve our difficulty."
"If we had one of those flying things you have spoken of, we could flit over their heads. But then, if we had a carriage, we should have a horse and carriage, if we had a horse. Isn't that a fire?" Jorian pointed to a column of smoke and sparks, which rose above the nearby roofs.
"Aye; the fools will burn down the city if given a free hand."
High Priestess Sahmet received Jorian and Karadur in her chamber of audience. She was a tall, large-boned woman in her forties, handsome but too massive of jaw and beaklike of nose to be called beautiful. Qad in a gauzy robe of pale gray embroidered with symbols in silver thread, she sat in a chair of pretence and stared with large, dark eyes at the disheveled fugitives. A couple of lesser priestesses glided about.
"It is a pleasure to see you again, good Doctor Karadur," she said in a deep, resonant voice, "albeit one could wish the circumstances less frantic. And who is the young man?"
"I am Jorian the Kortolian," said Jorian, "presently clockmaster to His Majesty. I am honored to meet Your Sanctity."
The woman gave Jorian a penetrating stare. She snapped her fingers. "Inkyara! More light, if you please." When a branched candlestick had been set on a taboret and lit, Sahmet said:
"Master Jorian, methought I knew you."
"Madam! I misdoubt I have had the pleasure—"
"I mean not in the sense of knowing you on this material plane. But I have seen you in visions."
"Yes, madam?"
"You are the barbarian savior!"
"Eh? Oh, come now, Madam Sahmet. I am no barbarian! I learnt my letters when I was but five, in school in Ardamai; and I have studied at the Academy at Othomae. My table manners may not be up to courtly standards, but I do not make a pig of myself. I am only an honest craftsman, and in any case I am unqualified to save Iraz from any doom. But what mean you to do with us?"
"Not cast you to that slavering mob, certes." She spoke in an undertone to one of the lesser priestesses, who glided out and presently returned. After a whispered colloquy, Sahmet said:
"Fires have sprung up in several parts of Iraz as well as Zaktan, and the soldiers are too busy fighting them to control the mobs of factionists. The crowd of Kilts surrounding this temple has been reinforced, so you cannot leave by the streets."
"Neither have we magical power to fly over their heads," said Jorian.
"Let me think," said Sahmet. "I am loath to harbor you overnight, since for entire males to pass the night here, other than on the occasion of the Divine Marriage, would offend the goddess. Happily, there is another course. Ere I reveal it to you, howsomever, I must have your promise to do me a small favor in return."
Jorian's eyes narrowed. "Madam, I have been in and out of not a few tight places in my short life, and buying pigs in pokes is one thing I have learnt to avoid. If I can, I shall be glad to help you—but I must needs know about this favor."
"It amounts to little. I do but ask that you play a small part in one of our forthcoming observances."
"If you mean to make a eunuch of me, madam—"
"Bountiful heavens, nothing like that! I solemnly promise that it shall cost you not the least scrap of your splendid physique. More I cannot say now."
"Nor senses, faculties, and abilities?"
"Nor those, either. Well, sir?"
Jorian argued a little more, but no further details could he elicit from Sahmet. He exchanged glances with Karadur, but the old wizard was not helpful. Jorian did not like to promise anything under such vague conditions, but he saw no alternative.
"Very well, Madam Sahmet," he said, "I agree."
"Good! You shall not rue your choice. Now come with me."
An assistant priestess hurried up with a small lanthorn, which she handed to Sahmet. The high priestess led them out. They passed through halls and rooms and down steps until Jorian was lost. In an underground passage, dimly lit by a single sconce, Sahmet halted at a massive, bolted, wooden door.
"Master Jorian," she said, "I would not do this for any wight, even to save life. But, since this peril involves the barbarian savior, I have no choice." She slipped a massive ring off one finger. "Take this. When you come to the door at the far end of the tunnel, knock four times, thus." She tapped twice with a knuckle, paused, and tapped twice more. "When the peephole opens, show this ring—which, may I add, I wish returned when this peril has passed."
She drew back the bolt and opened the door. Then she held out a hand. "Fare you well, gentlemen." She gripped Jorian's hand longer and more forcibly than he expected. "I may see you again, Master Jorian—and sooner than you think."
She handed Jorian the lanthorn, whose single candle stub sent feeble rays through its windows of glass. The heavy door boomed shut behind Jorian and Karadur.
The passageway sloped down and down and down. The stones lining the tunnel became wet and slimy. Jorian said:
"This must be that tunnel under the Lyap I've heard of. I am sure we're below the water table."
"The what, my son?"
"The water table. Know you not how, a certain distance below the surface, water fills up all the pores betwixt the grains of soil? Hence, if one digs below that level, one gets a well."
"Nay, I did not know, having devoted my life to the spiritual as opposed to the material sciences. How learnt you such things?"
"I picked them up when I was surveying for the Syndicate of Ir."
"You are assuredly a versatile fellow."
Jorian grinned in the gloom. "I suppose I am." He recited:
"Oh, Jorian was a man of many parts;
He'd gallop on a fiery steed of war,
Cross swords with desperados, or
Purloin from maidens fair their gentle hearts;
Whip up a sonnet, rondeau, or sestine,
Discharge a deadly shaft, repair a clock,
Administer a kingdom, pick a lock,
Survey a road, or sail a barquentine.
"For all his many skills, this artful man
Could never reach the goal for which he played,
Which was to settle with a loving wife,
Become a quiet, bourgeois art
isan,
And prosecute some worthy, peaceful trade
Throughout a long and uneventful life."
Jorian hastened to add: "I'm really not so self-conceited as all that. Tis just that the rhyme amused me."
Karadur chuckled. "My boy, you are all that you say; albeit I doubt that you are really so determined upon a quiet life as you proclaim. Otherwise you would not—"
"Oh, yes? And who dragged me from my quiet, peaceful surveying job to this hotbed of intrigue and insurrection?"
"Ah, but in your last letter you said you would do aught to recover your Estrildis."
"Oh, well, so I did. But now I'm sure we are below the Lyap. What keeps the water out? I see no pumps."
"The water is kept from Hoshcha's Tunnel by a trio of wizards, spell-casting night and day. They are Goelnush, Luekuz, and Firaven, in my Department of Applied Thaumaturgy. Just now the House of Learning is embroiled in a furious feud, which I am supposed to resolve and compose. So high has partisan feeling run that the deans of my two schools will not speak to each other."
"What's this?"
"Goelnush, Luekuz, and Firaven form part of the School of Spirit. Now, engineers in the School of Matter claim that with pumps of the latest design, they can keep the tunnel as dry as my three wonderworkers, at less cost and with less chance of failure. The dean of the School of Spirit retorts that pumps are quite as likely to break down as a group of well-trained thaumaturges; that besides labor to furnish power for the pumps, we should require plumbers to keep the pumps and pipes in order; and that the pumping apparatus with its pipes would occupy so much of the tunnel that it would impede the king's monthly journeys through it."
"Is this the Divine Marriage whereof Zerlik told me?"
"Aye. You know of that, then?"
"I know what Zerlik told me. Is this ritual marriage consummated?"
"Well—ah—yes, it is. In sooth, when the king can no longer play his manful part, he is disposed of."
"Good gods, this is as bad as Xylar! How is it done?"
"When the king can no longer—ah—carnally penetrate the high priestess, she reports the fact to her nominal husband, the high priest of Ughroluk. Then the high priest, with a delegation of lesser priests, waits upon the king and presents him with the sacred rope, wherewith to hang himself."
The Clocks of Iraz Page 8
