M. Barker - The Man of Gold

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.

“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!”

Tlayesha gave him a sidewise smile. “It got you here, to Avanthar.”

“Not really. The cache of relics did that. They are more useful.”

They turned to look down the stair. Below the landing upon which they stood, arches set at angles to one another bore the staircase on down until it was lost to view in the amber twilight of the lamps and the coiling smoke of Wes-wood incense. Above, from whence they had come, were the aureate Gates of Sublime Visitation, the antechamber of the Hall of the Petal Throne itself. The warm, honeyed air pulsed with the cadenced chanting of praises to the God-Emperor, sung day and night throughout the centuries without end. When one venerable singer in the Gallery of Adorations tired, another was there to take up that self-same note. Thus, men said, not one syllable of the Paean of Exalted Glory had been missed for over a thousand years, not even when the armies of Mu’ugalavya had besieged Avanthar some three hundred years past. Continuity, custom, and tradition: these were the bonds of the Tsolyani Imperium. They were more lasting than any mortar or cement.

The blue-veined marble balustrade was cold and slick under his hand, polished by reverent fingers for over two thousand years. Each ample step was adorned with golden bosses and mosaic petals of chalcedony and malachite, like flowers strewn upon the threshold of a bridal chamber. At each end of every step stood pairs of guardsmen resplendent in the blue and gold livery of the highest sanctuary of the Imperium. Wealth, opulence beyond any dream of avarice, lay everywhere: camelian, porphyry, other semi-precious stones, and the omnipresent gleam of gold. Gold, gold, like honey upon a cake!

Tlayesha was looking at him, but Harsan had lost himself in some revery of his own.

They awaited Prince Eselne. He and his priests and officers had not yet come forth from their audience before the oblong, lacy screen of translucent green-white jade high up in the far wall of the throneroom. This screen hid the Petal Throne from view-or, as some said, it was a part of the Petal Throne itself. A single lamp was lit behind that screen to signal the presence of the Emperor, Hirkane hiTlakotani, styled “The Stone Upon Which the Universe Rests,” the sixty-first Bearer of the Seal of Tsolyanu.

Harsan had been within, too. The chamberlains had ushered him inside to prostrate himself before the God-King: the goal of every Tsolyani, the fantasy of his lonely childhood, the epitome of all desire. He had heard the Speaker cry his name aloud before the Petal Throne, and his head still reeled from the decree that had come forth from behind the screen: membership in whichever clan of medium rank he chose, promotion to the Fifth Circle of the Temple of Thumis, money-he did not remember how much-and mention with honour in the Sacred Book of the Leaves of Azure…!

It was all at Prince Eselne’s behest, ostensibly for discovering the cache of artifacts below Purdimal. There had been no mention of the Man of Gold.

The Gates of Sublime Visitation were opening. Prince Eselne himself appeared, followed by Lord Taluvaz Arrio and the senior members of their retinues. In the rear, a head taller than the rest, came Mirure. Her broad, sharp-boned face was nearly invisible beneath the headdress of saffron-dyed Chlen — hide scales that marked her as the personal bodyguard of a Livyani Legate. Only Harsan and Tlayesha had seen the red and black glyph the tattooers had already placed between her high breasts: the Aomuz of the proud Arrio lineage of Tsamra.

Prince Eselne wore the glittering court-armour of a High General of the Empire, appropriate to his role on the western frontier. The plumes of his flanged, gamet-inlaid helmet trailed behind him, almost to his feet, and these he thrust back with a brave gesture. His broad, bluff, heroic features were flushed; he was in high good humour.

“Hoi, priest Harsan!” he called. “Are you satisfied with my divine father’s generosity?”

He was. But his inner reservations still persisted. He made no reply but bowed low instead.

The Prince took his hand. “Come, there are many who would meet you-clanmasters eager to adopt you, sorcerers who would consult you about your musty relics, ladies yearning to test your manhood!” He smiled, a mite too handsomely, at Tlayesha.

“Mighty Prince-”

“Not now, not if you are still too addled. But one there is who will not wait.”

The Prince led the way down the staircase, through pillared corridors, into a portico of many arches and columns. Beyond was the night sky. A score of man-heights below, the Eridla River flowed beside the western cliffs of Avanthar, a mumbling torrent in the blue-velvet dusk. They were far too high for the spray to reach them here, but Harsan welcomed the moistureladen breeze; it blew away the somnolent thicknesses of incense and lamp-smoke and perfume from his brain.

Avanthar rose from the conflux of the Eridla and the Missuma Rivers like the prow of some gigantic ship, two hundred Tsan north of Bey Sii, in the midst of the eastern foothills of the Kraa Range. The citadel was the hollowed out mountain itself, pavilions and gardens and the Golden Tower adorning its summit like a crown. High, arched galleries opened out along its precipitous flanks from the labyrinthine halls and chambers within, and the only entrance was the Water Gate somewhere out of sight beneath them on the western side. To the rear, where the long promontory had once sloped down into the mountains to the north, a single mighty fosse had been cut away from one river gorge across to the other. Avanthar had defied all besiegers since before the Priestkings of Engsvan hla Ganga, before the arrogant masters of the First Imperium, before the ravaging Dragon Warriors from out of the northwest, and, indeed, who knew how many aeons before that. There were no records of the building of Avanthar. This Emperor or that had added to it, dug another gallery (though now the architects warned against this), and embellished it with ever-greater wealth and the spoils of captive nations. Yet no one knew who had created it.