M. Barker - The Man of Gold

“Good, then. I must not tarry, for some may watch. What I give you now is the ‘Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes.’ Can you feel it-carefully now-the little stud on the back?”

Harsan fumbled the device in his fingers. It was of the size and shape of a river pebble-or of a human eye-a shallow, circular depression on one side, a tiny squarish protuberance on the other. “I feel it.”

“If you are endangered, face the iris-the circle-towards yourself and depress the square projection. No weapon can then strike you. The power does not last long, however. Do you comprehend?’ ’

“Yes, but-what does it do precisely? I-”

“We cannot speak further. It will keep you safe from any weapons not charged with enchantments of their own. Now I go, priest Harsan.”

Another figure was picking its way past the huddles of sleeping slaves. A foot grated against a chest of goods, and there was a muffled curse in some foreign tongue. Harsan turned back to Hele’a, but the Ghatoni had gone.

“Good evening to you, priest Harsan.” It was one of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers, the flute-player. “A night without moons is of good omen, eh?”

Harsan found himself sidling away along the parapet, the ‘Eye’ clutched tightly in his fist.

“Is there aught amiss? The Lady Eyil asks after you.” Was there sardonic malice in the man’s tone?

“I thank you for the message. I have just completed my evening devotions and must bid you goodnight.” Harsan’s eye had picked out an unobstructed path back to the comparative security of their campfire. The flute-player was left to stand gazing perplexedly after him.

The Lady Eyil teased him about his preoccupation, complained that the wine must have washed away his lovemaking, pouted, and ended sleeping with her back to him. All that night Harsan lay with the ‘Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes’ but a finger’s breadth away, hidden under a cushion of her litter. He slept little and was relieved when he heard Mnesun barking at his recalcitrant slaves to arise and begin the new day’s journey.

No attack came that day, or the next. Hele’a did not approach Harsan again, nor, for that matter, did anyone else in the party.

They were only a Tsan or so from the town of Hauma when it happened.

It was blazing midday, and a haze of dust hung hot and stifling over the land. Mnesun had chosen to press on, however, saying that the arcaded caravanserai at Hauma offered more relief than an awning spread by the side of the baking Sakbe road.

Harsan had stopped to pick at a blister on his foot. A slave bearing one of Mnesun’s tall baskets chanced to pass close to him, and before Harsan could react, twisted so as to dump his burden of red crystal ewers over onto the surprised priest.

As Harsan fell the man plucked a slender dagger from his breechclout and slashed at him. Taken unawares, Harsan could only sprawl backward into the welter of broken glassware. Biting streaks of pain told him that the jagged shards were taking their toll upon his back. The slave, a burly youth with the tattooes of the Mu’ugalavyani lowlands livid upon his cheeks, hurled himself upon Harsan again.

There was no time to dig the ‘Eye’ from his pouch. Harsan moved as he had learned in his rough childhood games with the nimble Pe Choi. Their chitinous arms might be weaker than a man’s, but they had four of them with which to grapple, and they were as graceful as dancers. He feinted to the left, rolled to the right, struck out with his left hand to seize the slave’s dagger wrist, and brought up a knee for defense.

The man was an experienced brawler. The wrist flipped out of reach, the roll was rewarded by a heavy kick to Harsan’s left side, and the upcoming knee was swiftly dodged. Harsan had to keep rolling, and a blazing line of white pain ran down his left shoulder toward his spine. Glass crunched beneath him. The next thrust would be fatal. He fetched up hard against the parapet, on his back, and kicked out with both feet. The slave took the kick glancingly and jumped back out of range. Time had been gained, and Harsan’s muscles cracked as he threw himself to his feet. He felt the sticky wetness of his own blood slide upon the scorching stones as his wounded shoulder scraped against the parapet.

The entire battle had been fought in silence. Other slaves had stopped to watch, but none made any effort to assist either fighter. Now, however, there was hubbub from behind..Harsan dared not take his eyes from the circling needle point of the dagger. The man feinted-and leaped.

There was a thin twanging sound. The slave opened his eyes and mouth wide, and a gout of blood spurted forth as though he shouted words of vivid scarlet. Then he fell, heavily, upon Harsan. A flanged, red-drenched rod of metal protruded from his throat.

Mnesun stepped forward from behind him, a stubby brown crossbow in his hands.

Harsan tried to push the slave aside, but the circle of openmouthed faces shimmered and danced before him. He felt hands grasping, supporting, proding at him, and somehow he was lying down. Then the babble of voices dwindled away and down a long, white corridor of pain.

He woke again to feel the cushions of the Lady Eyil’s litter lumpy and strangely sticky beneath him. Mnesun was there, and Eyil, and others whom he could not see.

“-He was my slave,” the caravan-master was saying, ‘‘but why he attacked the priest-? I never heard him speak a word to Harsan.”

The Lady Eyil said something unintelligible, and Mnesun replied, “Yes, against animals, brigands, runaway slaves-even disgruntled customers. We merchants must know a little of weapons…”

“I shall give him a drug, a pain-killer…” The voice sounded like one of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers. Something bitter touched his lips.

Harsan wanted to speak with Hele’a, tried to look for him, but then the long hallway unrolled before him once more, and pain reverberated along it like the drums of a temple pageant.

He opened his eyes to find himself looking up at a lacework of geometric designs. These resolved themselves into the ribbed and groined arches of a vaulted ceiling. Cords creaked, and a great sweep-fan swung to and fro overhead through the honey-thick, still air of the room. The pain seemed mostly gone, but when he would have risen a hundred daggers ripped at his shoulders, and he fell back gasping.

A pale oval of a face looked down at him: no one he knew. It said, “Be at peace, priest Harsan. Your wounds are not serious and have been tended. I am Nusetl hiZayavu, priest of Thumis of the Fourth Circle, and you lie in our temple at Hauma.” Something cool and damp touched his face. “Your companions are here and may see you presently.”

The long corridor stretched out before him again, however, and he slept.

It was three days before he could move about the little sleeping room he had been given, just off the temple dispensary. The Lady Eyil sat with him daily, bandaged him, exclaimed softly over the network of lurid but superficial slashes upon his shoulders (“like the back of a man who has been flogged,” she said, and Harsan thought to detect a thrill of fascination in her voice), and promised to wait until he was ready to travel again.

Mnesun also came each day when the temple’s sonorous Tunkul — gong had ceased to call the faithful to the midday ceremonies. The grizzled caravan-master was almost obsequiously apologetic. He insisted upon presenting Harsan with a new grey tunic, much finer than the one he had had, and vowed to make a triple offering to Thumis in the Temple of Eternal Knowing upon their safe arrival in Bey Sii. The two Mu’ugalavyani brothers, Bejjeksa, and even the Shen paid him visits as well, each offering some little gift and their commiserations. When Harsan asked after Hele’a, however, he was told that the Ghatoni had pleaded urgent business and departed for Bey Sii alone.