M. Barker - The Man of Gold

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 Mihalli 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.”