The Book of Visitations of Glory

Issue Eight | May 2005

The Shadows of the Gods

by Nick Bogan

Chapter I

Aíjom¹ hiKharsáma woke up late, grinning hugely. The celebrations last night at the clanhouse of the Green Bough and, later, at his own clanhouse of the Golden Dawn had been wonderful, and not so exciting that a still-recovering young hunter couldn’t enjoy them without collapsing. Today he would set forth for home; in little more than two weeks, with luck, he would be safe at home, telling tales that, even properly altered, would frighten his nephews and nieces so badly that his clanbrothers and clansisters would never forgive him. Aíjom thought on his homecoming for a few moments before he left the guest chamber, made a short brunch in the crowded dining hall, and went to meet with his clan’s elders, to properly thank them for their hospitality before leaving Chéne Hó.

He walked through his clan’s hall, favoring his left leg that had been wounded only days before battling a Pé Chói warrior. He was unable to believe his luck in surviving the past few weeks’ events. His step was light as he passed faded murals and basreliefs depicting the Golden Dawn’s honorable, if modest, history: here, a Tirrikámu, commander of a semétl of twenty troops, who won distinction battling the invading Mu’ugalavyáni legions in the War of 2020; there, a follower of Hnálla, Lord of Light, who had attained high status as an administrative priest by exemplifying his clan’s characteristic attention to detail and accuracy in their records. He wondered, with a touch of immodesty, if his own deeds, which were of a somewhat different nature than the orthodox paths to recognition shown in these murals, might someday be recorded in the annals of his clan.

He presented himself to the formally clad boy who met visitors outside the clan’s meeting-rooms, where already some of the elders were conducting business, and waited contentedly for an audience. He was surprised when one of the elders came forth shortly to greet him. He made obeisance; the short-bearded man gravely returned the honor, then fixed him with a stare. “You have been sent for,” he said, distaste evident in his voice. “You are to report to the temple of Vimúhla, and ask for a man named Sikún². A messenger was here early, and asked that you report promptly.”

A wave of unease shook Aíjom, but he made little sign of it. He thanked the elder for his hospitality, which was politely received, and walked back to his chamber, to gather the few possessions he had carried from Khirgár. Am I to be sent on Imperial business already? Lacking an answer to his question, he was sorely frustrated. He quickly left his clanhouse and stepped out into the bustling streets.

Aíjom moved as quickly as he dared and kept close to the walls he passed. He was fearful of assassins sent by the Íto or Golden Sunburst clans as revenge for his recent setback of their schemes to dominate the rich lands west of Chéne Hó through the use of raiding parties of Pé Chói and sérudla mercenaries. Last night, Sikún had promised that the local hunter Tsókalon, the strangely-wise Shén Chhkk, and Aíjom would have the protection of the Petal Throne against such vengeance, but Aíjom knew that such tiny drí as themselves could easily be crushed without notice from their guardian tlékku high overhead. It was too long a walk through the crowds, full of potential killers in Aíjom’s eyes, before he saw the high-combed temple of Vimúhla, its sloping walls alive with workmen who carved, patched and painted the temple of the fiery patron God of the new Emperor Mirusíya.

He could not help but feel foreboding as he passed through its ornately decorated, fortified walls; he had never set foot in a temple of the God of war in the service of Change, who was set in opposition to his own Lord Karakán. Once within the walls, he walked through a crowd of babbling worshipers, all sporting red on their garb and all hungry for audience or favor. He spotted a priest who was less beset with petitions, a grey-haired, grandfatherly man who to Aíjom seemed out of place here, and asked for Sikún. The priest’s placid features rippled into attention at the name, and he assessed Aíjom sharply. “Follow me,” he rumbled, and spun around, his heavy robes swinging about him. Aíjom could feel the envious gazes of the worshipers in the entrance room as he walked deeper within the temple with his own escort, past an antechamber filled with a sumptuously clad array of chanting red-robed priests, a hierarchy of voices raised in praise “to the Great God Vimúhla, Lord of the Singing Flame!”

Aíjom was led to a small door, elaborately worked with glyphs that presumably glorified the Flame Lord, and was left by the priest. He felt uncomfortable here, deep in a temple of one of the grim Tlokiriqáluyal, the Gods of Change, who stood eternally opposed to the Lords of Stability whose teachings Aíjom followed. He waited for a yóm, then the door opened, and Sikún, clad in a priest’s rich garb, looked at him from within. If he had seemed commanding when Aíjom had met him yesterday in the clanhouse of the Green Bough, here in the heart of his domain he looked as mighty and fell as a sérudla. Aíjom quavered inside.

“Come in, Aíjom,” Sikún said pleasantly. Aíjom ducked into the room. He was surprised to find it filled with books and scrolls—he had half-expected a terrible inner sanctum full of leering masks and bloody sacrificial knives—and to see a large, impossibly intricately graven, lustrous blue stone on a desk. In the rear of the long room, small torches burned, their smoke wicked away by cunning vents in the walls.

“Be seated, and take your rest,” Sikún said, proffering a sweat-beaded cup of chumétl. Aíjom sat carefully on a flame-red, richly detailed ceremonial mat that was probably worth more than a village’s harvest, and sipped slightly at his chumétl; its cold sweetness did little to calm him.

Sikún gazed piercingly at him. “As I told you last night, our Emperor occasionally employs men such as yourself to ensure the well-being of the Empire. Today, I give you such a charge.” He sat behind the desk, grasped a sheaf of papers, and stacked them atop another heaping harvest of the bureaucracy. On one splendidly worked document, Aíjom spied a line without meaning to: “they do not advance, but run like lean and desperate tlékku”. He was trying to make sense of this when Sikún spoke again, his voice grave. “The naval commerce of the Empire, far to the south, has long been vexed by the piracy of the Hlüss. Their depredations have worsened in recent years.”

Aíjom shuddered at the mere mention of the hideous foes of man, whose great floating island-ships were said to wander the waters, ever eager for prey to devour. He had never been anywhere near the ocean, but every Tsolyáni heard of these monsters in their childhood. I am to be sent immediately on business of import—maybe far away, he thought morosely. I was a fool to accept Sikún’s commission.

“There is a monastery of Lord Chiténg, the Reaper of Cities, the God of Pain, and Cohort of my Lord Vimúhla, in the hills a few days south of Chéne Hó. The priests of this monastery have offered the use of an ancient device that is said to be effective against the Hlüss. Your task is to carry it in safety to Penóm. There you will board a ship that will bear the device to the enemy. You will be accompanied by a priestess of Chiténg who has studied the device and who will instruct you in its use. Chhkk and Hájit have already gone south to the village of Purússa; you must meet them there three days from now.”

Confusion now gripped him. What had he or Chhkk to do with Hlüss? The Shén might well be familiar with the ocean—his people mostly lived south of far-distant Livyánu, and traveled to Tsolyánu over the waves—but he knew nothing of it. Aíjom felt as trapped as when he had huddled in the dark below the earth, at the mercy of the Pé Chói of the forest. He was to march to Penóm, at the other end of the Empire, which would take a whole season if the stories of traveling merchants were right; then he would board a ship and sail out to face the dreaded Hlüss, a task at which the mighty hero Hrúgga would have quailed.

Sikún smiled slightly, seeing his dismay. “It is indeed a heavy task that I set before you. Yet know that an Imperial servant’s reward is commensurate with his service.” He assumed a more serious manner. “This matter must be dealt with as speedily as possible. You may spend today arranging your affairs and sending letters to your family, as you wish. But you must not mention the particulars of your mission to anyone else. Tell your clansmen here that you return to Khirgár. These papers will describe your mission and identify you to the priests of the monastery.”

Aíjom nodded numbly. He slipped the papers into his beltpouch, bowed to Sikún, and walked slowly back to his clanhouse. Being of a merchant clan, he needed no scribe to write his letters for him. He composed them in a formal style, both to help him sustain an optimistic tone and because he thought it fitting for the seriousness of his mission. He wrote to his wife and parents that he was bound for Penóm on military business, that he would soon return to them, and that he hoped to bring honor to the Golden Dawn. He glumly rolled the letters, sealed them with wax, and entrusted them to a clansman he had met last night, who seemed honored to be of service to such a notable figure.

As instructed, he told his elders that he was headed home, and was gratified that they did not trouble him with questions. He packed his hunting armor, traveling food, and clothes, and then headed for the quiet of his guestroom. He fell asleep early, though his mind was a roiling river.

***

He awoke in the dark, grabbed his pack, and left his alreadywakeful clanhouse. The streets were silent, though some noises of the morning’s chores could be heard from the dimly seen clanhouses, as he limped southward through the rings of the city’s inner walls. If I do not work through this injury soon, my journey will take a year, he thought, and forced himself to quicken his pace. Soon, he walked through the city’s cavernous southern gate, which opened to the great south-faring Sákbe-road and the commerce of empires, and the buildings of Chéne Hó fell away. Even now, a thin stream of people passed through the gate; it was as though they walked under a mountain.

In a kirén, the dawn glowed over the rich plains. Aíjom was happy that the terraced, fortified Sákbe-road stood between him and the endless Chákan jungle. His stride faltered, but it was already improving. He wished for someone to talk to about what he faced. The pain was a constant drain, and worse, it reminded him that he was bound for the temple of awful Chiténg, Cohort of fiery Vimúhla, who delighted in suffering and torture. Aíjom resolved that he would give the priests of that horrid God no satisfaction by showing his injuries, and walked yet faster.

The road soon was busy with farmers, legionaries, and Karakán knew who else, including shining black and white Pé Chói; Aíjom watched them lope by with ill-concealed wariness. As the sun rose to the center of the sky, the heat grew quickly, and Aíjom knew that tomorrow was the first day of Firasúl—it would get much worse. He stopped before noon and rested in the shadow of the tall west side of the Sákbe-road, looking west, where the forest of Dó Cháka shimmered in sinister silence through the haze. He had a small lunch of local sweetbread, melon, and hmélu; he had been offered smoked hmá by his clansmen that morning, but refused it, as he still remembered the stink of hmá on the long wagon-ride back to Chéne Hó. Aíjom couldn’t stay awake in the heat of summer with a full belly; it was a full ténmre before he arose and again walked to the south.

Fortunately, the Sákbe-road now shaded him; every traveler was visibly happier and more energetic. His leg had stiffened with rest, and his shoulder, which had been pricked by an arrow as he fled from malevolent Pé Chói, itched terribly under his pack strap, yet he walked on well after sunset had faded into gloom, along with many other travelers who preferred cool to light. Aíjom finally stopped at a guard-tower when he found that he could not see his feet clearly. He ate somewhat, drank like a chlén, and fell asleep as fast as a child.

The next day was the same, although Aíjom had to slacken his pace slightly. A swell of rocky hills rose to the east, and he learned from a sweating fellow traveller that they were the Vrí- Mkét Highlands. “Acrawl with vicious sérudla at night, they say,” the old man panted, and Aíjom shuddered, fearing that he might be found by a band of the poisonous dragons who remembered him from the Chákan forest. He felt only a little better that evening, with the massive, torchlit fortress of Tón-Zhú above him, towering atop the Highlands and staring west toward Mu’ugalavyá, Tsolyánu’s ancient enemy.

On the third day, Aíjom felt his leg strengthening with time and the journey, but the rising midsummer heat slowed him as much as his injuries had. It was late when he finally sighted the rude buildings of Purússa from the road. He went to the village’s tiny market, already closing up its shops, and had a delicious stew and a wonderful cup of cool chumétl. As he drained the cup, he saw Chhkk, standing still as an Aílur-statue of a lordly warrior of old in a temple of Karakán, in shadow outside the market, watching him with a hunter’s eye. He looked around for any obvious trouble, then worked his way over to the Shén.

“You are late,” Chhkk growled. “We had begun to despair of your arrival. I am glad to see that you had an uneventful journey.” He strode off quickly, and Aíjom struggled to keep pace as Chhkk led him to a boardinghouse, an unfortunate necessity as the Golden Dawn had no clanhouse in this village; it was simple but clean. Chhkk had taken a private room for them there, rather than simply renting cots in the common hall. This would not be seen as unusual, since few Tsolyáni felt comfortable bedding down with a Shén. The rényu Hájit waited within, looking out the door as they entered as though he expected sérudla to storm down the hallway.

Feeling secure at last, Aíjom related his orders to Chhkk. Chhkk nodded. “Tomorrow morning, we set out to the east, toward the monastery of Chiténg.” East! Where noble Khirgár stands tall amidst the mountains!, Aíjom thought sadly. “We are fortunate that the Zhemré lineage, who hold all the lands around us, do not appear to have been involved in the power struggles to the northwest. We may yet leave this place with our skins intact.”

Aíjom confessed puzzlement. “Why did you leave first? I would have felt safer with the two of you at my side.”

“Then your feelings deceive you,” Chhkk stated coldly, as the last rays of the sun faded from the high slit in the wall that lit the room. “Sikún was wise to separate us. There were survivors of the battle that had seen us approach the valley, and others at the Temple of Karakán who knew those who had set forth with their supplies. Neither the Golden Sunburst nor the Íto know much about us, but either clan would pay well for our heads in spite of the Empire’s decrees. We were far less recognizable apart than together. Hájit walked two tsán ahead of me for much of the trip.” Aíjom was disconcerted by the look Hájit gave him; it was strange to see eyes he suspected to be as intelligent as a human’s look forth from a tlékku’s face.

Chhkk settled into a crouch, aided by his powerful, coiling tail. “From here, we will travel together until we arrive at the monastery. We must take care to not exhaust you—I can see that your leg has not yet healed, and we will need our strength and wits when we meet the priests of Lord Chiténg. We should arrive at the monastery in two days. For now, rest.” Chhkk unceremoniously rolled to the floor and was silent. Aíjom found a bedroll and lay down carefully, finding that he had pushed himself harder today than he had realized. The sounds of other boarders hummed through the plastered walls, and Aíjom reflected that he had felt more at ease sleeping beneath the canopy of the Chákan forest on his way back to Chéne Hó than he did now, with naught but uncertainty ahead. Despite his exhaustion, he awoke thrice in the night to sounds from without the room. Each time, though it was pitch black, Aíjom knew Hájit was awake, staring blindly at the door, listening for danger.

The morning broke with a knock at the door; a boy brought a broad platter, balanced on his head, of fresh-baked bread, butter, sliced fruit, and a mound of grilled, steaming hmélu meat cut in thick strips, with a pitcher of clear well-water swinging heavily from one arm. Aíjom gave the boy a full handful of Qirgáls and dug in. He felt that his skein was finally looking better, although he got little enough of the hmélu with Chhkk and Hájit attacking it as well. With only a small grunt, he shouldered his pack and left the clanhouse with his strange companions. The morning was crisp, as it had been clear last night, and the three travelers set a strong pace. It was good to walk the rich fields of Tsolyánu and get away from the overcrowded Sákbe-road— not to mention the threat of assassins sent by the Íto and Golden Sunburst clans. And although Aíjom knew that he was not walking home, it felt good to travel toward the rising sun.

The fields here were well kept, with smooth-trampled dirt roads threaded through and a sprinkling of huts. Aíjom saw groups of children reaping dná-grain, still energetic enough to sing in the morning cool. It was a very pleasant scene. Even the breeze from the west felt good, smelling of rainfall behind them. Eventually, they left the fieldhands behind, and walked alone through the grain.

“It is strange to me that the priests of the God of Pain should establish a monastery in this happy land,” said Aíjom, eager for some conversation. “It does not seem meet for them.”

“Do not misjudge them,” Chhkk rumbled. “They are not madmen who ceaselessly whip beasts and burn captives to please their God. Indeed, they are very subtle. Did it never occur to you why they might have agreed to grant the Emperor a boon?”

“I admit that I have been concerned with other matters,” replied Aíjom lamely. “But now that you mention it, I suppose that they hope to curry favor, as the Emperor worships Vimúhla, the master of their God.”

“And the gift of a weapon of the Ancients is a great favor indeed,” Chhkk continued. “But I have learned that the Zhemré lineage, who own all the lands between Purússa and our destination, are great benefactors of the monastery. It is also notable that the whispers I have heard do not implicate the Zhemré or their Red Sword clan in the Chákan power struggles which we… interrupted. I believe that the priests did not act purely to ingratiate themselves to the Emperor. The old competitors of the Red Sword clan for power in the Chákas are now humbled and impoverished, their secret armies gone, and the Vimúhla-worshiping Red Sword clan is more to the liking of the Emperor. The Red Sword may soon become lords to the west of the Sákberoad as well as here, to the east.” Aíjom was once again humbled by the Shén’s superior grasp of their situation, and said nothing.

Chhkk paused, and then bared his teeth. “I am concerned that the priesthood of Chiténg may yet regret their deed, while they have ample time to undo it. Not lightly are such gifts given. It is for this reason that we were sent to accompany the priest of Chiténg—the monastery has guards aplenty, but we must guard against the guards. We must be ever watchful, and ever mindful of our task.” With this, Chhkk broke off, seeing farmers pulling a cart high-piled with wheat toward them. Aíjom hailed the men and exchanged pleasantries, while vowing to himself that he would learn more of the perils that confronted them.

The tsán passed, stubborn as ever, and the heat grew. Ahead, the steep, bare sides of the great hill called Kú-Zhém, crowned by a low, dark-walled fortress held in fief by the Zhemré, filled the eastern horizon. They paused for only a kirén, and pressed on. “We should reach the foot of the hill before we rest,” Chhkk said with an enviable ease of breath. “We will have hard walking on the morrow.” Aíjom was healing, but his stamina was not yet the equal of the hulking lizard’s, and when Kú-Zhém loomed over them, blocking the horizon and glinting at its top with the last glow of sunlight, he gratefully bedded down. The farmer’s huts and outbuildings were behind them, as was the fortress, and although this was still farmland it had a feeling of emptiness that was disconcerting. Aíjom looked above, where he thought to see the sparks of torches. There, he knew, stood their destination: the monastery of Lord Chiténg.

Return to Start of Chapter | Return to Top of Page

Chapter II

The next day they climbed Kú-Zhém, and it was slow going. There was a hind breeze, ascending the slopes more quickly than Aíjom could hope to, but the sun was intense. There was a path, but it had seen little use in recent years. The pain that Aíjom thought he had escaped returned with doubled force, cutting him with each heavy step. The view of the fields and the Sákbe-road beneath them was breathtaking, though, and Aíjom took an ignoble joy in Chhkk’s difficulties with climbing. Only Hájit seemed comfortable, even jumping shortcuts across switchbacks occasionally. They rested well before noon, and had a lean meal; their supplies were running low, as they had meant to travel light. I hope that the priests of Lord Chiténg are hospitable, Aíjom thought, and chuckled. He resented the pain that hampered him; the mountains were his element. He felt like a küni-bird surveying its domain and watching for prey. Then he thought that fiercer predators roosted above them, and he swallowed.

All too soon, they resumed their climb. The flinty hillside was barren and treacherous, and the already-uncertain path was gullied in several places. After two kirén, Aíjom saw an orangered building, and looked at Chhkk.

“The monastery?” he asked with a wheeze.

“Yes, or at least an outbuilding,” Chhkk replied tiredly, his every breath a reedy hiss. “Let us hurry.”

They found the strength to walk faster, and soon they surmounted the slope, to stand atop a plateau of massy rock outcrops bound by the questing roots of gnarled trees. Near the plateau’s edge, a large complex of jagged-roofed buildings stood proudly. The buildings were close-set, connected by high stone walls, with only narrow windows, and Aíjom realized that the monastery was very defensible—if any army ever marched up the hill to attack it! They walked up to a weathered black door, carven with glyphs of orange and red and flanked by bas-reliefs of fearsome monsters that Aíjom did not wish to contemplate closely. A faint noise, as of chanting, could be heard from within, just audible over the wind. Chhkk struck the small, pitted gong that stood beside the entrance. In a moment, the door swung slowly open. Aíjom could not see inside, for the sun was fierce.

“Enter if you will,” said an annoyed voice. “I won’t hold the door open for halfwits.”

Aíjom strode in, and found it much cooler. The narrow foyer in which they stood was not nearly as richly decorated as the temple entrances that Aíjom was accustomed to; he was reminded of the smaller, rural temples of Karakán that he occasionally visited while traveling among the villages south of Khirgár. He hoped that his assessment did not show on his face.

The door boomed shut, and the doorman was now visible: a grey-haired, stoop-shouldered man clad in rough, simple robes of orange and purple. He looked like a clan-uncle of Aíjom’s, and this resemblance made Aíjom inclined to like the man. The feeling withered when the man looked them over with küni’s eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked with a voice obviously accustomed to quick and respectful replies.

“I am Aíjom hiKharsáma of the Golden Dawn clan, from Khirgár. This is Chhkk and his rényu, Hájit. We have traveled from the Temple of Vimúhla in Chéne Hó on the business of the Petal Throne,” Aíjom said, feigning confidence. He produced Sikún’s papers, as did Chhkk, and the man squinted at them with interest.

“So… you come to escort our weapon to the sea.” He guffawed. “It is quite a trip!” He looked at the three again. “I trust that Sikún sent bearers worthy of their task? You look a sorry enough lot to me—a lizard, a tlékku and a Khirgári grainmerchant.” This last item was said with the most disdain, much to Aíjom’s displeasure.

“We are proven servants of the Emperor,” Chhkk hissed. The man assessed the tall, powerful Shén with a more respectful look than he had favored Aíjom with. Aíjom, annoyed by the disparity and determined to regain the initiative, cleared his throat. “We hunger and thirst, for your eyrie is difficult for wingless travelers to visit. We ask for your hospitality.”

“Indeed. We do not entertain many guests here, and I have forgotten my manners.” The man bowed with the sarcastic air of a superior. “I am Dogéngor³ hiBeshyéne, the prior of this holy place. Come with me, and you shall dine and rest. We have much to discuss.”

They followed Dogéngor through another door, just as stout as the first, and entered a low, broad room with doors in every wall. Here, the decorations and sculpture were more familiarly ornate, albeit unpleasant to look at overlong. A recurring image was a reptilian figure that Aíjom remembered was the primary image of their God. I forgot that they worship a great Shén, he thought with a carefully repressed surge of irrational humor.

“This is our Room of Reflective Obeisance,” said Dogéngor, a tendentious love of his fell God alive in his voice. “You may not pass any further within until you have paid your respects in silence to Lord Chiténg. Do not worry—we do not expect you to denounce your own Gods, only to honor ours.”

Aíjom was relieved at this, yet was still uncomfortable. He knelt, stared at a mural of the lizard-God wielding His great sword Bloodsong against hideous demonic enemies, His eyes alive with expertly painted fires, and tried to clear his mind, then thought simply, Lord Chiténg, I mean no disrespect by visiting Your holy place. A shiver, whether from heat, cold or simple fear he did not know, suddenly passed over him, and he was intensely grateful to see Dogéngor give a barely perceptible nod signifying his satisfaction.

They passed through the left door into a low-ceilinged refectory, in which a few similarly clad monks picked over the last bits of their noonday meals. Dogéngor merely nodded to a younger man as he left them, and they were presented with mugs of water, cups of chumétl, and plates of meats, cheeses and vegetables, wonderfully prepared. Aíjom devoured his share like a fierce, spiny-backed hyahyú’u. He recognized the light seasoning as a Chákan touch, and found it remarkable that the priests of Chiténg did not chew throat-searing hlíng-seed for their nourishment. As they finished their meal, a young priestess of severe mien approached them on silent feet, her short-cropped hair so black it was almost blue.

“I am Jalésa hiChunmíyel of the Red Stone clan. You have come to bear our gift to the sea,” she said, her voice as uninflected as a hmá’s bleat. “I have studied the device, and shall travel with you to ensure that it works its purpose.”

Aíjom felt a quick jab of antipathy toward the acolyte; her utter seriousness reminded him too strongly of the never-silent priest of Thúmis on his long walk to Chéne Hó whose orations had filtered into his nightmares. Yet I should not be so quick to judge, especially not a woman who will travel with us for many months.

“I am Aíjom hiKharsáma of the Golden Dawn,” he said after swallowing his last precious bite. “We appreciate your monastery’s hospitality.” “It is good to have gracious guests,” said Jalésa in an unmistakably Chákan monotone. “I am glad that the Empire has sent such renowned functionaries to assist us.” She swept them with a short glance and walked off.

A young boy with a face as unmoving as a board, wearing similar robes, silently approached; he gestured for them to follow and led them through the refectory to a bare-walled hallway of many doors.

“You will stay here until we call you,” he said with an awful gravity belying his few years, and glided away. Aíjom did not care for the depths he saw in the boy’s eyes, or for what he thought he saw flickering there.

They entered the small guest room, and as a sense of uneasiness bound their tongues, they simply slept in shifts. The same strange-eyed boy returned later and left a dinner platter without a word, which they again dispatched quickly. The whole monastery seemed as quiet as a tomb.

In the late evening, as the sun burned through the window slits, the boy came to their door and beckoned. They followed him out into a completely silent hallway; even the wind had muted its voice. Jalésa stood beside a large double door leading further inside the compound.
“You must now meet with the elders. Be silent unless you are asked to speak.” She swung open the doors, and Aíjom saw that they opened upon an inner courtyard, lit by two broad bowls of flaming oil upon a low, grooved, blackened central altar. Inside the walls, the shades of night already gathered. Five elderly priests, looking like statues of old, sat upon mats on the cobbles; one of them was Dogéngor, looking more fearsome than before. The workmanship of the carvings and gilded bas-reliefs set in square panels along the walls here was superb, outdoing the Room of Reflective Obeisance as an artisan’s crafts outshine his childrens’ imitations. Aíjom stared wide-eyed, amazed that such a terrible cult could produce such beauty.

“We are flattered that you appreciate our sanctum,” one of the five said croakingly. “We have few visitors, and far fewer whose skeins bring them to this courtyard. It is beneath the open sky that we show our finest works, for Chiténg’s approval. Approach the altar.” The three did so, Aíjom wondering what horrid rites took place upon it, and how recently some poor Tsolyáni had screamed his last words here. He saw that the bowl in the center of the altar also held oil but was unlit, and that a small brass bowl sat beside it. The two larger bowls sent bright, smokeless flames up in smooth, sweeping columns, swaying slightly in the faintest of breezes.

“It is our custom that visitors here feed the flames.” Aíjom looked at the priest for further guidance, but his face was as hard as a chlén-hide mask. He dipped the small bowl in the oil; it held perhaps a tsértse. He knew somehow that if he allowed any oil to spill, he would have failed whatever test this was, but he was afraid of being burned. He turned to his left, where the flames seemed perhaps a trifle calmer, and willing himself to be steady, he quickly poured oil into the burning bowl near its rim, then snapped the bowl back. The stream of pouring oil flared sun-bright, but his bowl did not catch fire. Much relieved, he turned to his right and poured the remainder into the fire; although this time it flared more sharply and singed his hand, he made no sound. He stepped back in silence as Chhkk and Hájit in turn fed the flames, Hájit with understandably greater reticence. At no time did any of the five watchers evince a reaction.

“You know the Flame,” the priest pronounced solemnly. “You know how to feed it, and how it rewards its benefactors. You may be seated before us.” The three walked around the altar and sat upon the cool stone. Aíjom set his burned hand against a smooth cobble and tried to ignore the pain. “We have offered the Petal Throne a device of the Ancients, and you are to help bear it to the sea. But so that we might not think our gift wasted on the weak, we must know of you. We are not disconnected from the world; even here atop Kú-Zhém, we hear much. There has been a great unrest in Dó Cháka, and I understand that you three were involved. Tell us your tale.”

For over a kirén Aíjom and Chhkk spoke of the secret war in the Chákan borderlands. Shadows grew about them like climbing ivy, filling every crevice, but the light of the flames did not abate. The priests’ faces looked more and more like masks as the sky darkened. They did not speak, only nodding or giving questioning gazes. At last, Dogéngor cleared his throat.

“It is as Sikún wrote, though he left much behind his words for your stories to coax forth. You are indeed worthy of this purpose.” He motioned with an arm, and two strong warriors, one an Aridáni woman, emerged from a side door, bearing a long, narrow casket of light wood without ornament of any kind. “As you can see, the box bears the waxen seals of our priesthood, to warn of any attempted openings. Be watchful of it, and of Jalésa, who shall accompany you, for she alone knows how to employ the device. You shall depart in the morning for Páya Gupá. Go now, and rest; you have much ahead of you.”

Excitement, dead for many days, awakened in Aíjom’s mind. He would see the cities of the West! And he would be undertaking a mission of great honor. He nodded deferentially to the priests, rose, and departed with his companions. Behind him, the warriors carried away the casket, but the priests did not move, and Aíjom felt that a strange rite, unwatchable by any save the priests and their God, would soon begin.

They returned to their guestroom and lay down in the dark. As the sleep-demons began to cast their nets, Aíjom could hear the priests’ voices echoing from the courtyard, chanting a chorused, melancholy litany. He only caught a few words, many of which he did not understand. Thrice he recognized the same threnody chanted; then he heard, or felt, something from below, something that seemed like an answer. It was deep as a mountain valley, and wordless, but Aíjom thought it was the voice of some great, halfslumbering thing deep beneath the hill. It seemed to echo—or was it many voices in unison? He looked over at Chhkk and Hájit; they were nearly invisible in the dark, yet he knew that they had also heard the sound. He lay as stiff as a chlén-hide shield for nearly a kirén, but did not hear any more from below; nor did the priests continue their chanting after the shuddering cry.

It was long before the sleep-demons returned to favor him, and they brought barbed gifts that pulled him gaspingly awake twice in the night, cursing as he struck his still-tender hand on the cot’s side. Indeed, Aíjom’s dreams—and his nightmares—had been more vivid since his adventures with the wild Pé Chói of Dó Cháka.

The second time, he heard a humming whisper not of the wind from outside the wall. He peered forth from the narrow window slit, and saw the rough flanks of Kú-Zhém limned by pale light from a line of floating balls of blue fire. They slowly, inexorably marched down the hill and through the fields toward the Sákbe-road beyond. Aíjom prayed to Karakán that the terrors he would face on this venture be mortal; though they were as cruel as sérudla, he would embrace them as brothers before facing the things he had heard and seen that night.

***

The morning came early, it seemed, and breakfast was not the equal of their previous meals here, but this was fine for Aíjom; he had had enough of this place, and could not depart quickly enough. Hájit’s eyes had seen terrors last night too, if he was not mistaken. Chhkk was much less subdued; he sang to himself in low, gravelly tones and ate on a scale Aíjom had never seen before, tiring the servant-boys with his demands for more hmá steaks. This was confusing until Aíjom remembered, from his few past experiences with the huge lizard-men, that today was the first day of the new year in their calendar. Breakfast would be Chhkk’s only chance to feast today.

This morning, they were joined in the refectory by Jalésa and the two warriors who had carried forth the casket last night. They again bore forth the mysterious box, now fitted with palanquin-poles. The warriors, splendidly outfitted in their polished, fearsome heavy armor, introduced themselves as Fyérik hiPurushqé and Nikána hiChiréngmai, both from the Pán Chákan city of Butrús far to the south, of the Black Pinnacle clan, and members of the famed Legion of the Givers of Sorrow. They were part of a unit on assignment to the monastery in recent months at the request of the Zhemré lineage, who had girded themselves and their allies against trouble as the Pé Chói and sérudla raids worsened. Aíjom wondered numbly if the Zhemré knew just how unnecessary their aid was.

“We shall carry the box in shifts,” Fyérik said brusquely. “There are five of us to bear it, so each shall have four kirén to walk free. We should make it to Páya Gupá in three weeks.” He and Nikána were clearly mates; each looked at the other without the martial hardness they reserved for all others in the hall. Aíjom was grateful that he knew Chhkk and Hájit, at least, then laughed at himself; they were hardly ideal companions for conversation! Yet their talents may prove more useful than we wish.

Their leave-taking was unceremonious, perhaps because last night’s discussion had said all that was needed. Dogéngor gave them papers stating their business and forbidding the confiscation of their cargo on penalty of imperial and ecclesiastical wrath, then saw them off. He looked peaked and drained in a most unmonastic fashion; Aíjom could guess why.

For the trip down the mountain, Fyérik and Chhkk, the strongest, took the fore of the casket, and Nikána and Aíjom took the rear. Chhkk used both hands, but Aíjom knew that this was purely out of politeness; he could have carried the casket himself if need be. The box was very heavy, and it was a perilous thing to bear such a load down the loose-sided hill. Aíjom recalled carrying dead vringálu down mountainsides, careful to avoid scraping their prized wings, while on more than one occasion, servants of their hunters had borne the bodies of unfortunate beaters who had felt the vringálu’s poisonous sting. But at least the weather was kind; it was clear, with a light wind, enough to cool but not strong enough to unsteady their feet. Hájit walked before them, watching for obstacles or snares, and Jalésa lagged behind. Aíjom wondered how long it had been since she had set foot beyond Kú-Zhém’s peak, or even outside the monastery’s walls.

It was not quite noontime when they stopped at the base of Kú-Zhém to rest and eat. Fyérik and Nikána appeared unwearied despite their armor and load, while massive Chhkk and stillhealing Aíjom were glad to stop. Jalésa stood apart from the group; Aíjom could not tell how she had fared. Though he had fought to moderate his breathing and seem relaxed, he doubted he was fooling anyone.

“We should make the Sákbe-road tonight,” Nikána said with a satisfied air. Aíjom thought he heard a groan escape Jalésa’s lips, but he was not sure. It would certainly be a long walk for Firasúl!

Predictably, with the challenge of negotiating the steep trail behind them, conversation began, with Fyérik sounding the first theme. “It will be good to return home. I have always disliked the weather in the north. You will love Pán Cháka,” he said expansively. “It is fair and lush, not a drab expanse of brown fields with lumps of bare rock like warts upon the land.”

Aíjom saw the bait, and felt loquacious enough to take it. “And I suppose that we will be won over by the splendors of your mold-encrusted, overheated province, with bugs the size of overfed tiúni to keep us company!”

“Cha, you know not of what you speak,” Nikána replied. “You describe Penóm, far to the south. Pán Cháka is the most splendid region of the Empire. But I do not expect a Khirgári merchant to look up from his scrolls long enough to notice the beauty of our land. And why should you notice the world beyond your clanhouse, when your home is nearly as barren as sand-swept Fasíltum!”

Their less than scintillating exchange of provincial stereotypes continued for a kirén, as each side castigated the deplorable shortcomings of the other’s cuisine, entertainment, and civic life. It was, Aíjom thought, rather a better way to pass the time than in silent brooding, or hushed contemplation of the many dooms that might befall them. Unsurprisingly, Jalésa played no part in defending the honor of the north, preferring to walk apart, a near-smile occasionally pulling at her lips. She looked to Aíjom like a troubled young clansister worrying about making a name for herself in trading or being wed to a suitable spouse. But this was as he expected. The device they bore may well have been the subject of her priestly Labor of Reverence, and they were going to wield it against the horrid Hlüss, with a chance of losing it forever. Meanwhile, Chhkk affected what Aíjom had come to recognize as a stoic snarl, and Hájit followed them absently.

Of course, the small talk died out, as even the hardened legionaries grew weary of tromping through the fields. The heat worsened as the afternoon grew late, until Aíjom could think only of the cool antechambers of his clanhouse. At length, the Sákberoad shimmered far ahead through the heat and vapors rising from the grain, and Aíjom was ecstatic. They did not reach the road until after sunset, long after Aíjom was ready to drop. Their papers granted them the privilege of a small but private berth inside a guard tower, which Fyérik and Nikána looked over sharply before accepting. Aíjom thought, or at least hoped, that their concern was premature; he slept much better that night, both from weariness and because he had walked so far away from Kú-Zhém, now a distant swelling behind them.

The next day, thunderstorms struck, and their pace was lighter—a good thing, for Aíjom awoke with muscle spasms in his legs and realized that he had not yet been ready for yesterday’s exertions. Still, he worked through it, and over the next few days found himself growing accustomed to the burden of the casket, though ever grateful when it was his turn to walk free. Jalésa was taciturn to a fault, Fyérik and Nikána were gratingly provincial, and Aíjom became less and less talkative as the tsán passed. It seemed to him, based on updates from fellow Sákbe-road travelers, that they should arrive in Páya Gupá in less than three weeks.

As always among travelers, the mood lightened at night, when the best meals were had and there was rest at last. Aíjom was interested to watch the legionaries and Jalésa conduct nighttime rituals in honor of their God of Pain. They were surprisingly dignified: the three would stare into the night’s fire— always lit, even if the evening was still too hot—for two or three yóm to focus their minds, then chant melodic poems in Classical Tsolyáni, in two voices and a vocalized melody, apparently from memory, though Aíjom did not hear any repeated and they were long. The poems were somber yet beautiful, if one ignored their occasionally graphic revelations of the sanguinary nature of Lord Chiténg’s faith; they spent much time recounting the deaths of cities and nations under the heels of the ancient Dragon Warriors, who worshiped Chiténg and His fiery master Vimúhla, with too great an enthusiasm for his tastes.

Hájit seemed to be acting more bestially than Aíjom had ever seen; Chhkk had also changed, lapsing into silence since the monastery. Aíjom worried that they may have seen reason to conceal their intelligence from their current companions. But Chhkk’s silence was swallowed up by Jalésa’s loquacity; having recovered from the shock of leaving the monastery, she had apparently decided that theological debate with the group was the best way to pass the hours. Aíjom wished at first that Lord Karakán’s lightning would smite all such jars of ill wind; yet he had to admit that once again, he was interested in such discourse as a way to adorn the passing tsán. Surely I have missed my calling—I was meant to be a scholar priest!

One such exchange stuck out in his memory. Jalésa seemed almost affable, if a bit strident, as she related her teachings. “What my faith teaches us is that individuals, in perfecting themselves, are able to perfect society—and the road to perfection is a painful one. Pain does not kill, but rather hardens us, as chlénhide is hardened to become arms and armor in the service of the Empire. If the chlén-hide be weak or flawed, then the curing will destroy it as it should, but none will emerge unchanged.”

“No one will argue that we should forego development into lán citizens,” Aíjom replied, feeling at once outmatched in rhetoric and bemused by Jalésa’s fervor. “Yet I fail to see why pain is so vital to our development.”

Jalésa gave him an acid glance. “Pain is a signal—the purest form of communication from the Gods to mortals—that our skein is flawed, and that we must change it. To embrace pain is to embrace Change, in its splendor and its power to bring ablaze the banked fires of our pedhétl.

“The greatest civilizations that this world has ever seen embraced the power of Change as they conquered and built their mighty cities and monuments on the backs of defeated peoples. It was in their senescence that they became stolid, averse to growth and to pain—and hence, change and pain came to them, as ruination.”

“You speak of the greatness of empires,” said Aíjom severely, “yet your God is the Hliméklukoi⁴ of Vimúhla, Lord of Fire, who would consume all the universe to feed His hunger. I am unconvinced that you are as concerned as I for the endurance of Tsolyánu.” “We seek to forge the Empire into an instrument of perfect power, for the glory of the Flame—and this can only be done by forging its people into such instruments.”

“People are not instruments. Lord Karakán does not teach us to strengthen our nation in order to heap the bodies of our enemies to the heavens, but because that is the path to safety and security. And pain does not speak to our best nature, to the part of us that wishes to protect our clans and families; it tries to turn us into frightened beasts that would do anything to avoid its touch. I cannot see growth emerging from pain alone.”

Jalésa sniffed at this, and said no more. Aíjom knew that proselytization was not the way of the priests of Tsolyánu, but it seemed that something more was at work here. Jalésa had the sputtering fire of a person whose convictions shifted within her like an overheavy grain-bag, too unwieldy to lift, that sought to settle back to the ground.

Aíjom was at last feeling freed from his burdens; he had lost most of his pains by the side of the Sákbe-road somewhere, and with every step south he was farther from the sources of his fear. Yet he could not forget that he was also farther away from his wife, family and clan, and he rued the day that the jájgi Kuréshu had called him forth from his homeland. It was little help to have to listen to Fyérik and Nikána’s low evening conversations and think of Tsunúre lying alone with countless tsán between them. She will probably take a second husband soon, he thought, then laughed to himself. She will not choose so poorly next time. Indeed, Aíjom never had determined just what had drawn the usually practical Tsunúre to a slightly out-of-place huntermerchant, nor did he ever hope to.

As they bore their charge south, the land grew greener, the weather hotter and more humid still, and the villages more open. The tension Aíjom had felt around Chéne Hó faded; the troubles of northern Dó Cháka had not visited here. Just as Aíjom had trained in Dedarátl with Srúma while walking to Chéne Hó, he now spent a kirén or more each evening in swordplay and wrestling with Fyérik and Nikána, improving his never-impressive ripostes and developing his balance. They showed him a whirling style of constant movement that seemed showy to Aíjom; but their greater talents were indisputable, and he had many bruises to show for it. They praised him as a quick study, and he began to feel prepared for what lay ahead.

Jalésa seemed to have hardened to the pace, and her spirits rose as the outlying villages grew larger, more well-built, and prosperous, signaling that Páya Gupá drew near. One morning she deigned to speak to Aíjom of the matter.

“In Páya Gupá, we shall visit the temple of Sárku, Master of the Undead, where a scholar-priest named Jagétl⁵ hiHarisáyu resides. He and I share an interest in this device, and we have written one another of what we know of it.”

Aíjom was dismayed at the news that they would be entering a stronghold of the faith of the Worm Lord. The horrid doctrines of His religion—the supremacy of death and the desirability of continued existence, with only two of the five selves, through all the long ages of the world—were surely the very antitheses of those of his own Lord Karakán. Worse yet, he feared discovery of his role in the destruction of the jájgi Kuréshu, who had infiltrated the temple of Karakán in Chéne Hó and sent him to die in the Chákan jungle, and his undead warrior minions. Kuréshu might well have come from Páya Gupá, if what he had heard from Chhkk and the priests of Karakán in Chéne Hó was true. He had little doubt concerning the fate of those who slew the Worm Lord’s chosen ones.

Return to Start of Chapter | Return to Top of Page

Chapter III

For sixteen days they trudged along with their weighty charge, until Aíjom’s thoughts, disturbed by a mixture of dread and simple weariness from the endless trek over the Sákbe-road through unbearable heat, sounded like a hmá’s complaining bleating. It was the 19th of Firasúl when they finally spied the bastions of Páya Gupá, brazen in the sunset; not until the next afternoon did they pass through its redoubtable gates of rough red sandstone and walk toward the high, jagged-roofed temple of Sárku, visible throughout the city, without pausing to rest or visit their clansmen.

Jalésa’s manner became authoritative; now they dealt with the temples, which were her domain. “Fyérik, Nikána, Chhkk and Hájit—carry the box to the temple of Chiténg and wait for us there.”

Jalésa clearly expected Aíjom to accompany her into the temple of Sárku, and Aíjom did not see any means of politely or quietly avoiding the situation. His stomach roiled as they left the busy street and joined a cluster of the brown-clad faithful who approached the temple of the Worm Lord, ascending the steep, glyph-incised stairs of the monstrous dun pyramid atop which stood the temple of Lord Sárku. It was larger than any other construction in Páya Gupá, save the great grey temple of Thúmis, Lord of Wisdom, that stood silently yet seemingly in fierce opposition, with half the city between the two megalithic complexes. Along the stair’s sides, rows of carven, painted figures, from peasants to elaborately costumed lords, stepped timelessly toward the summit that Aíjom would soon reach. He surmounted the stairs and passed slowly through the forbidding doorway atop them, with neither a backward glance at Páya Gupá sprawled beneath them nor a sidelong glance at Jalésa, and squinted in the inner dark as the worshipers filed past them.

The entrance hall was so broad that it felt oppressively low, and all around them was assembled a great panoply of nightmare. A dozen corpses wrapped in ochre windings lay on basalt biers set into niches in the sculpture-strewn walls, attended by grieving relatives with faces painted white. The dun-robed priests of the Worm Lord were everywhere, speaking softly with the laity or tending the huge, fuming censers that filled the hall with coils of brown smoke. On the other hand, it was refreshingly cool, a virtue not lost on Aíjom. A priest walked toward them through the clouds, spoke briefly with Jalésa, then smiled and turned to Aíjom.

He was round-faced and pallid, like a great grub that had fattened on the flesh of the faithful of the Worm Lord. “I am Jagétl hiHarisáyu of the Dark Moon clan, a scholar-priest of great Lord Sárku. In my studies amongst my temple’s libraries, I have discovered some references to the device you bear south. Jalésa and I have recently corresponded regarding this matter, as it became clear to us that our glorious God-Emperor would require its use. She and I have much to discuss.”

Jalésa bowed respectfully, in deference to Jagétl’s hospitality and high clan. “We appreciate your assistance, Jagétl. This is Aíjom hiKharsáma of the Golden Dawn, a servant of the Emperor who has accompanied me from Chéne Hó.” Aíjom wished strongly to flee this place, yet he was still and wore a calm face.

“We are all servants of the Emperor,” Jagétl said, smiling just a bit too broadly. Aíjom had no trouble seeing why the temple of Sárku would volunteer its services in the service of Emperor Mirusíya, in the wake of the collapse of the short, bloody reign of their beloved Dhichuné, ironically throne-named ‘Eternal Splendor’. “Come with me. We must consult the temple libraries together, to see what may be of value. As we will be traveling, it would not be practical—or safe!—to bring all works of our temple that reference the device.” Jagétl swung around and floated away into the swirling smoke. Aíjom was surprised that they would be taken within to such a place, but perhaps this was also part of the facade of willing cooperation that the hierophants of the Worm Lord wished to present. Surely he would not speak of anything within, for fear of Sárku, or at least of His minions.

They were led to the back of the great hall and through a squat, heavy door, a panel of fabulously finely carven basalt that swung on thigh-thick, grease-blackened posts, watched by a bored temple guard in stunningly ornate armor that gleamed even in the smoky darkness of the cavernous chamber. They walked down a narrow stair, its steps of crusted stone bellied by the tread of innumerable priestly feet over countless years. Aíjom suspected that they were already in a portion of the temple that predated the last ditlána⁶ of Páya Gupá, now surely centuries past.

A dim grey light sifted down from the receding ceiling like dust in a granary, perhaps through unseen lattices in the combed roof. They met a priest ascending the steps, smelling unmistakably of carrion, and Aíjom could not repress a shiver of fear. Down they walked into the gloom, into a twisting, lamp-lit hallway that was cool enough to bring shivers, and they followed a winding path that Jagétl alone knew; surely he had crawled it many times. Jalésa exuded unease, noticeable to Aíjom after the last three weeks spent in her company, and Aíjom saw that Jalésa had wanted his company not only as a proclamation of her prestige, but as protection. Apparently, Aíjom thought with the sorely needed relief of a silent chuckle, the cold caress of the Worm was not a kind of pain that Jalésa would exult in.

After many steps, they came to an especially ornate door, inlaid with glyphs of amber and copper, and Jagétl opened it to reveal the libraries of the Temple of Sárku—or at least, those that they would show to visiting unbelievers. Aíjom had expected a more impressive hoard of books and scrolls, but only a few lightly laden shelves stood here and there. Mostly, the smallish room was full of priests, older men and women in simple garb, softly chanting prayers. There were only a few lanterns, and they did not shed enough light for Aíjom to read by. Jagétl approached one of the priests slowly, and slowly he looked up at them.

“Master, these are members of the delegation from Chéne Hó. We wish to speak of the device of the Ancients that they have brought with them.” Aíjom detected a note of reverence in Jagétl’s voice; perhaps this priest was a mentor of his, or a holy man of note.

“Sit, and we shall speak thereof. Thus do we serve when called.” The priest had a low note of annoyance in his high voice, and Aíjom thought that elder, more secluded priests like him were perhaps less amenable to this scheme of servile cooperation with the Empire than the more worldly younger generation.

For over three kirén, the elder spoke of his knowledge of the device, which was apparently great, if assembled from fragmentary and conflicting sources. He occasionally sent Jagétl to fetch scrolls from the walls, a duty which he performed as eagerly as a schoolboy, an amusing sight. Mostly, however, their discussion was from the elder’s memory. Aíjom gathered that their cargo was a mighty weapon, capable of destroying the Hlüss’ huge ships. The device, or one like it, had been used by Mshúruish, “Killer of Akhó⁷,” a great admiral of long-drowned Engsvanyálu— or perhaps by one of his near-contemporaries, no more than a few centuries distant in time; Jagétl seemed to favor this viewpoint. None of the priests were clear on the fine details of its use, though they hotly disputed the meaning of a description of the device from a work penned during the Time of No Kings that they had clearly all committed to memory. Neither could they agree as to when it had been made: Jalésa insisted that the Great Ancients had crafted it uncounted eons ago, while Jagétl and the elder gestured at agefaded scrolls and swore, heads bobbing sharply, that it had been made later, during the still-inconceivably-ancient Latter Times when the Time of Darkness was new to Tékumel. Aíjom remembered learning as a child of this beginning moment, when the sun set for the first time and Night came to the world. He could not believe that they bore a relic from that mythical age.

Aíjom greatly wished to learn of the nature of their cargo, but he did not understand many of their terms, and had not so much as sipped from the fonts of wisdom from which they had slaked long years of scholarly thirst. What was more, he could not focus well on their discourse when all around him muttered and hummed the high priests of the deadly faith of the Worm, perhaps even now discerning his thoughts and his sins against their church. At length, he felt the need to make water, a minor matter under other circumstances but torture here, where he dared not excuse himself, did not know where the privy was, and would not risk asking one of the grim priests about such a base matter. Slowly, it became a pain, then an agony; coupled with his slowly growing fear of discovery of his crime, it was seemingly worse than the ache of his leg had been three weeks ago. At last, he gained Jagétl’s attention, and asked for directions in a voice lower than the floor. Jagétl glared at him, then broke off from the discussion and led him to one of the other priests, a grandmotherly figure in soilbrown robes heavily worked with symbols of her awful God, with a pleasant face and long, straggling locks of grey hair drawn up like dry grass cut in autumn.

“One of our guests needs to leave us, mother.” Jagétl clearly used the term as an honorific, rather than a statement of kinship. “Perhaps you could assist him?”

“Surely,” she said, unexpectedly sweetly for a priestess of the Worm. “It is past time that I go up and see the gardens in any case. Perhaps our guest will enjoy them as well.”

***

As if by a miracle of the Gods they left the library, wound their way back through the deep-burrowed halls of the temple, back up the stair, through the chamber of smoke and death, and out into the sweet air of Páya Gupá. The heat was shocking after kirén in the cold of the bowels of the temple, but Aíjom could have wept at the splendid, burning afternoon light that brought good, clean sweat, the sweat of the living, to his brow.

‘Mother’ led him down the steep stairway, to a rest hall in the temple grounds, where the brown-wrapped faithful ate wafers of flat bread and drank draughts of a beverage Aíjom did not know—perhaps a variety of beer—from smooth, small, unglazed cups. It appeared to his hurried eyes to be a ritual. At last, he relieved himself in the privy behind the hall, almost as great a relief as escaping the temple’s library.

‘Mother’ stood outside, looking around the grounds. Aíjom saw that she was to be his guide, or his watcher. He joined her beside a long, low-walled plot of ground covered with variegated rocks that had been raked into swirls and tracks, often parting around protruding boulders of darker stone. A still, silent, small family in vestments of earthen hue stood at the far end, staring along the grooved trails in the rocks. Aíjom thought that the parents looked somewhat familiar, but could not place them.

“It is beautiful,” Aíjom said, and he meant it. He had not seen such decoration before. “Who does it commemorate?”

‘Mother’ looked at him with pursed lips. “This is not a memorial. Do you think that we who follow Sárku think of nothing but building tombs, piling up corpses, and raising up demons to terrorize our enemies?” He did not nod outwardly, but her expression showed that he might as well have done so. She gestured sweepingly about them. “Many who do not know our faith and but see its trappings think, as you do, that we are devotedly morbid; but it is not so. We love Death because it embodies Change, the endless gift of our Lord, without which we would be bound more hopelessly than any prisoner could imagine.

“This is a garden,” she said in the tone of a tutor. “I used to tend it myself, but these days I leave its care to the younglings. It is interesting to see what they have done.”

“A garden of stones? Many southerners I have known joked that my home city of Khirgár must have only such gardens, with its cold nights and dry days, but never have I seen one in person.”

“Khirgári.” This word, Aíjom knew, was a complete story to her. “You come highly recommended by the priests of Lord Vimúhla in Chéne Hó, as I understand it. Your travels have taken you west. And now they have carried you south.”

“Yes.” Aíjom hoped to avoid springing the trap, if trap there was. The family at the other end of the ‘garden’ had left at some point, and now they stood alone in the shade of the temple, a dark mountain that split the bright sky.

“I did not hear your name,” she said in a friendly tone, and Aíjom breathed again.

“I am Aíjom hiKharsáma of the Golden Dawn clan,” he said with a smile. “And you are…”

“Prazhúri⁸ hiDaishúna of the Glory of the Worm clan.” She again turned to stare at the raked lines of pebbles. “I suppose that it is the farmer in me that has always drawn me here to the gardens.”

“I do not wish to offend, but I do not understand what these plots of stones have to do with gardens.”

“You are of a grain-merchants’ clan,” Prazhúri said amusedly, “and further, you do not know the teachings of my Lord Sárku. You judge a garden by what it grows, by what you remove from it; if it look the same from year to year, from generation to generation, you are well pleased. I do not judge a garden by its produce—at least, not by the produce you take from it. I watch for its changes in itself, as it is sculpted by time, which slowly perfects the garden as it does all things. Do you see that swirl of granite in the center?”

“Yes,” said Aíjom, looking at the chips of glittering stone, not sure where she led him.

“Those stones were among the rest when I first tended them, but not gathered together in the center as they are now. They were moved there—but not by picking them, as you would pick fruit. They were moved there with the rake at times deemed worthy by the astrologers: a vastly slower process, but vastly more rewarding, as it shows the true development of the garden. Perhaps later, the granite will be drawn out into a long line or curve; perhaps it will again be dispersed amongst the other stones. Or perhaps it will remain at the center, tended by generations of young aspirants, until ditlána forces us to rebuild the garden elsewhere. The gardens show us much, if we are wise and humble enough to learn. Of course, there are always fools who see a quicker path to their small goals, and meddle in the garden; but it is always to their detriment.” Her hands worked at her sides, as if in anger, but Aíjom was distracted from his observations by a sudden sense of vertigo and a wavering of his vision. The day’s heat had evidently affected him more severely than he had known, yet he would not seek to quench his thirst with drink from the Worm Lord’s cellars.

The strange feeling passed, but Aíjom remained nonplussed and not minded to discuss the foul teachings of Sárku through strange metaphors of gardens of stones. Momentarily, he had an idea of how to right the foundered cart of their conversation. “I was… honored… by being admitted to your temple’s library. Surely all the wisdom of the long ages of the world is stored within its works.”

“You are kind,” Prazhúri said drily. “But of course, it was not as impressive as you had expected, here in the great city of Páya Gupá, famed for its dedication to wisdom.” She made a dismissive gesture at the walls of the compound, toward the city and presumably toward the temple of Lord Thúmis. “You anticipated endless antechambers filled to bursting with all the works of the Engsvanyáli. Perhaps we showed you only a study room, full of drowsy old priests like me, rocking on our prayermats, and hid away our real treasures.” Aíjom had the sense to not respond to this.

“You see a library as a place of wisdom, and a book as a record of the past,” Prazhúri said lightly. “Have you read many books?”

“No, not since my school days,” Aíjom said unashamedly. “Most of my reading is part of my work—reviewing contracts, military records, bills of sale and the like.”

“And you believe that these things tell you the truth.”

“Yes, unless their authors lie.”

“But think, Aíjom! The words you read are nothing but marks on paper! Their authors are not there to tell you of their purpose. It is only in reading them that you decide what they mean, and this meaning exists only in your mind. Consider the differences in interpretation between two people, the reader and the writer, each with their own skein of destiny. Now consider how great the differences are when the writer comes from a different time when thought and custom were not as they are now, or uses a different language that the reader understands but poorly.” Prazhúri snorted. “The priests of gentle Thúmis hoard books like drí, piling rotten seeds in their burrows without noticing that they have already gone bad. We who follow Lord Sárku know that the ‘meanings’ they draw from their moldering tomes are nothing but fantasies from their own chusétls⁹. We build our libraries of better stock.”

“What would one fill a library with, if not books?” Aíjom felt uneasy, as if he anticipated a yet-unseen drop on the high, crumbling path ahead.

“Our libraries walk, and talk, and think. They are the jájgi, the favored ones of Lord Sárku, whose memories span many brief mortal lives. We do not blasphemously pretend that one can bind the hlákme¹⁰ with pen and parchment, and weave it into a book like a helpful demon, to communicate its secrets whenever summoned by a gaze. Our records are the ever-living minds that have witnessed history themselves, some for many hundreds of years.”

Aíjom’s mind was clouded by fear as she continued, a genuine fervor glowing in her eyes. “The priest with whom Jagétl and your companion confer is a great scholar. He does not speak of it often, but he remembers the provincial rebellions at the beginning of the first millennium ‘after the Seal’, as you Tsolyáni measure time. He has seen the celebrations of the accession of every Emperor of Tsolyánu since Nríga Gaqchiké, ‘the Spider’, and the carefully organized weepings at their deaths. Through all this time, he has watched, and his memory is vast as the Chákas… What is wrong, Aíjom? You look ill!”

“It has been a long day, madam. May I sit?” At her amused nod, he swayed down beside the garden of stones, watching her as a mouse might watch a tiúni. One of his selves— his hlákme, ever cold and sardonic—was surprised at her distaste for Tsolyánu; it was easy for him to forget that for many Chákans, Tsolyánu was an occupying country, not their homeland. It was further surprised at her willingness to admit this distaste to him, as he was on Imperial business. His other selves decided that he had best say something to cover his still-burning fear. “So why, then, do you have any books at all?”

“Because the High Ones are not available to tutor each budding scholar. And because it is only through studying books that the pupil will one day learn of their ultimate emptiness.” Prazhúri sat down beside him with a smile. “Once I knew a priest of the Grey Lord, named Khirengá hiKurúsme, who was accounted the greatest scholar of the Chákas by his fellow bookmongers. He came to the monastery of Yakhishán¹¹, where I stayed before I came to Páya Gupá, in a state of great excitement.

“He was a student of all books concerning art and science and nature, and for a week he regaled us with his great theory, the work of his life. He believed that he knew what Change would bring, by virtue of his long reading of his Temple’s huge pile of books ancient and modern, and set out to describe what he expected in the time to come. He was convinced that he could describe the effects of time so well that the priests of the monastery would leave off their watching of Change, as our Lord has commanded us to do, content that their efforts were in vain, as he had already foreseen all. But of course, he convinced none of us that his folly was true; nor could we dissuade him.

“Years later, we brought him back to the monastery, and saw that though time had brought Change to him, yet was he still obdurate. We brought him into the courtyard at the center of the monastery. There stood a small tree in a stone pot, in a garden like this.

“He was confounded. ‘Why do you bring me here, within your walls?’ he asked in a haughty voice. ‘Why do we not travel the land and see how well the Eye guided my predictions of what should happen in the world?’ ”’Have you not yet learned wisdom?’ I asked him. ‘Attend, and you shall see that which you could not see before.’ I pointed down at the stone pot. ‘Your predictions did not touch on this tree. Did they tell you how its leaves would spread in this indescribable pattern with the rains, and how they would wither and curl in the drought of summer? Did they speak of how this branch would be chewed by devouring worms, and fade, and become woven in the worms’ nests, or of the paths that the worms would choose to walk over the branch? Did one of your scrolls show how the raindrops would shift the pebbles that cover the pot, or how the shadow of the tree breaks upon these pebbles in uncountable ways with every rising of the sun?’

Khirengá looked in wonder at the tree, and said nothing for a while. Then, slowly, he said, ‘I did not. Yet if there were ten thousand scholars armed with the puissance of my Lord to consider such matters, I think that they could have predicted this.’

”’But they could not have foreseen”—Aíjom noted how she struggled with the word, distaste plain upon her face—“all that could be seen of this tree, which endless words could not describe. The world imagined by your scholarship is bare and dead; you seek to paper over all that you see, but you succeed only in shrouding your eyes. You cannot foretell Change, because words cannot tell of it: only the power of witness is given to us, who cannot speak with the words of the Gods.’

”’But if all my learning was not capable of describing even a single tree,’ said Khirengá, ‘then why did you not argue this when first I came to you?’

”’We tried, but you did not understand us then,’ I said. ‘Each tree, each rock, each insect, each person is such a thing. There is no sure knowledge of the present that can be told; still less can we replace the witness of Change with our dim fantasies. And it is folly to imagine otherwise.’

“In that moment, Khirengá was enlightened, and ever after he stayed at our monastery, forsaking the grey world of Lord Thúmis for the unspeakably richer one our Lord Sárku hath gifted unto us.”

Prazhúri sighed, as Aíjom’s elder clanswomen did after long remembrance. “But enough of stories and arguments; they are as pallid and false as books to their receivers. It is enough— nay, better—to sit here and watch the garden.” Aíjom agreed wholeheartedly, and they sat in silence, staring at the patterns of the stones, watching as the afternoon started to let shadows crawl out of their burrows between the ridges of rocks. As he grew calm, he wondered what message they were meant to convey, and what the garden’s purpose was, if the conveyance of messages was as difficult as Prazhúri suggested.

The sun sank low, and the shadows fattened and flowed together in the garden; the sounds of the nearby rest hall died away, and the last few worshipers left the grounds, gesturing reverently toward the steep pyramid behind them. Prazhúri was silent, visibly content to sit in the cooling air and watch the sky burn into embers and streaks of reddened clouds. Aíjom was afraid to sit here in the dying light with only a priestess of Sárku for company, but preferred the gardens of the temple to its inner sanctums, where dwelt undying monsters that looked like men, praying to their God of Death as they had for hundreds of years.

After a time, he heard approaching footsteps, and Jagétl and Jalésa strode toward them, animated and excited. Apparently, Jalésa had overcome her fear of the Worm and regained her earlier enthusiasm; the lure of new knowledge was obviously not only a temptation to the priests of Thúmis or subtle Ksárul, His counterpart among the Lords of Change.

Jalésa spoke, happier than she had been since their descent from Kú-Zhém. “Come, Aíjom. We should rest, for tomorrow we begin our march to Tumíssa.” Jagétl nodded, and Aíjom knew then that they would have the grub for a traveling companion. “We thank you, Prazhúri, for watching him. Often it has been that priests’ orations have driven away the laity, but he looked like a pardoned criminal when he left!”

Aíjom nearly shuddered at this, but Prazhúri merely laughed. “He has been better company than many I have known. I always enjoy seeing the garden with one who knows the fruits of the earth.” She drew herself up, slowly yet more smoothly than Aíjom could manage after sitting so long, and bowed slightly to him. “We wish you luck, Aíjom hiKharsáma. Do not lightly regard the gift we have given you.” She glanced at Jagétl with this.

Aíjom bowed back. “Your courtesy to guests is admirable. Perhaps when I return, I shall see your garden again.”

Prazhúri arched an eyebrow, an ungrandmotherly gesture. “Perhaps.” She turned and headed back to the high stairs of the temple of the Worm, and Aíjom, Jalésa and Jagétl walked out of its quiet, carefully tended grounds.

Return to Start of Chapter | Return to Top of Page

Chapter IV

Fortunately, as far as Aíjom was concerned, they avoided the center of the temple of Chiténg altogether and headed directly to its surprisingly elegant outbuildings, built in an airy style of brightly lacquered wood. Their guest quarters were generous, if garishly decorated. Fyérik, Nikána, Chhkk and Hájit had already taken supper, but more was brought for them—again, underseasoned for Aíjom’s taste, but refreshing, centered around a light stew of sweet potatoes and river fish served in heavy red bowls that were much like cooking-crocks. Soon, the others settled down, enjoying the most comfortable accommodations they had been granted so far.

Aíjom was also exhausted, but he needed to speak to Chhkk of what he had seen. He declared his desire to see the city by night, left the temple of Chiténg, and waited in shadow outside. After a kirén, Chhkk, subtle as always, wordlessly joined him, signaling in hunter’s sign: They are asleep. They would have all night to talk and plan if they wished. They left the grounds and wandered the broad streets for a while, watching for followers; a tracker would have been difficult to spot amidst the swarms of children out to play in the cool, moonslit night, not exhausted as their rural counterparts would be after the labors of the day.

After some considerable walking, and after the children had vanished inside at the undeniable summons of their mothers, the temple of Thúmis towered above them, a ghostly peak in the dark, graven with dozens of huge eyes symbolic of the God’s omniscience. Chhkk hissed, a short, snapping sound. “I believe that we can talk now. I know somewhat of this city from past years, and this should be a safe place. Tell me of your visit to the temple of Sárku.” Aíjom recounted his experiences, and Chhkk listened in silence while the trees flanking the street rattled in the evening breeze, until he mentioned his leaving the temple with Prazhúri. At this, Chhkk bristled, spines rearing on his head like a human’s hackles, and hissed sharply.

“You are sure of her name?”

“Yes,” Aíjom said, confused by Chhkk’s interest in the anticlimactic end to his overexciting visit, and related his discussion with her by the garden of stones.

Chhkk snarled something that sounded very much like invective, and looked around as though he expected zrné to leap from the scalloped, high-railed balconies of the clanhouses. “You have walked into a sérudla’s den this day, Aíjom. Prazhúri surely knew Kuréshu, for he came from this city and was a priest of the same God.”

Aíjom was reminded yet again that this Shén knew more about the paths they now walked than he did, and sensed a story about to bubble up from his deep voice and unplumbed mind.

“I have heard her name only once before: over three years ago now, while hunting chólokh at the feet of the Átkolel Heights.” Aíjom recalled long-ago bedtime stories of the huge flying insectthings, and was once again surprised to find that the nightmares of his childhood were real and waiting, somewhere out in the darkness.

Chhkk continued, quietly yet tensely. “I hunted by Imperial command, with a group of trackers from the village of Sechín, west of here, and of the Broken Reed clan. They were fine companions for the hunt—brave, silent, and careful. But two among them, Arkútu and Giriktéshmu, were as notable as hyahyú’u amongst tlékku. They were cousins of the Nokór lineage, and old hunters. They knew the dangers of hunting chólokh, and of the cliffs of the Heights, yet wished nothing more than to test themselves against both enemies.

“It was the last day of our hunt, and the bearers complained that our ropes would break as we lowered the chólokh’s carapaces down the cliffs. They had been hard-won, for the beasts had taken three of our number: a bad way to die, as the chólokh kills by ripping loose the extremities with its tentacles, interspersed with dropping its prey from a height as a bird drops a snail, to break it. One man survived this for yóm before he was silenced. Two other hunters had lost their climbing holds and fallen many dháiba onto deathbeds of broken rock. The mood of our camp was foul; the men picked at their last trail-meal and glared up at the Heights that were now mostly behind us.

“Giriktéshmu was well pleased by the success of the hunt, but wise enough to hide it from the others. He spoke of returning to Chéne Hó, which cheered the men somewhat. He was anxious for the festivals of the summer solstice, as his eldest son was coming into manhood, a proud time. He was a worshiper of Sárku, and mentioned that he hoped to have words with a visiting priestess of Sárku whom he felt had shown inadequate attention to his family’s mausoleum near the end of the ceremonies of the Touching of the Worm of Copper, in which those ordained by Sárku honor the graves of his dead. ‘I will teach that detestable hag Prazhúri that our clan is not to be trifled with,’ he said, and the camp went silent. I wondered why, until Arkútu spoke.

“’You have brought doom on our clanhouse, cousin,’ he said, fear filling his face for the first time since I had known him, and I had seen him win free of a chólokh’s embrace two days ago. ‘If I had known of this, I would have foregone the hunt and begged pardon from Prazhúri! Why have you done this thing?’

“’Why do you fear her?’ Giriktéshmu’s temper, the worst of the group’s, burned hotter than our campfire’s coals. ‘She did not respond when I challenged her! She is only a withered old gardener who wanders the temple grounds and chases the children out of sacred places. She is demented, and holds the duties of her office too lightly.’

“’You say she is old, and you are more right than you know,’ Arkútu said, and the silent group nodded like scared children. ‘I know the tales that the folk of Páya Gupá tell of her, and I have seen reason to believe them! She is the greatest of Lord Sárku’s jájgi, the most powerful of His sorcerers. She is as old as death, as old as the world, and you sport with her as though she is some Úrmishite¹² dandy whom you will challenge to a duel at the hirilákte¹³! You have surely slain us all with your arrogance!’ At this accusation, Giriktéshmu jumped up and tried to attack Artuku, but I prevented it; we would need all our strength to carry back the carapaces.

“The Empire was well pleased with the results of our hunt—chólokh attacks on the villages and Legion outposts near the Heights were greatly reduced—but six months later, I was ordered to return to the Heights, as the chólokh had grown numerous on the carrion of your endless wars with Yán Kór and were troublesome again. I began by going to the clanhouse of the Broken Reed in Sechín and asking for Arkútu and Giriktéshmu hiNokór, but was met with terrified silence by their clansmen, even those I had hunted with only a half-year before. It was as if the Nokór lineage in their clan had never been. They refused to speak of them to me, and begged me to leave, even trying to bribe me to go, as though my questions alone would bring them to further harm. They were a haunted folk, and their clanhouse stank, as if they no longer bothered to remove their chamber pots. The Broken Reed no longer maintains a clanhouse in Sechín, or anywhere within many tsán of Chéne Hó.

“I do not know that she was responsible for this,” Chhkk said, and Aíjom leaned closer to catch his sibilant whisper. “But I will say this: if you can choose your path, do not let it lead back to Prazhúri’s garden. I doubt you would leave it again.”

They were silent for a while, walking around the sprawling temple of Thúmis in a blackness lit only by its high-set torches. Them Aíjom spoke. “You have been mute since Kú-Zhém. Have you wished to appear as a dumb beast to the others?”

Chhkk nodded, concern somehow showing through his demon’s face. “I trust neither Jalésa nor Jagétl, for each has reason enough to prevent us from carrying our cargo to the sea: what priest in your land wishes to give an artifact of old to the Empire? Neither do I trust the soldiers; they might well make common cause with Jalésa, as they have a common God. I think the instruction they have given you in swordplay is poor, though it is difficult to judge such a thing unless you are engaged in it.”

Aíjom reviewed his memories of his training with the pair, fearing that Chhkk’s concerns might be well-rooted, as they drifted back through the quiet city, breezes floating down the streets behind them, until they returned to the guestrooms of the temple of the God of Pain. Aíjom did not want to remember the sendings of the sleep-demons that night, but he knew all too well of their fanged courtesies, and he knew they would bring these wares again.

***

The next morning, Aíjom learned that Jalésa and Jagétl were both busy conferring with the senior curates of their temples, and thus that they would not be departing until well after noon. Aíjom did not mind the delay, so long as he did not have to speak with any more thrice-cursed priests of maleficent Gods. With time at his disposal, he visited the local clanhouse of the Golden Dawn, a rather ramshackle complex of buildings, roofed with dull red tiles, that lacked the tidy precision of his own. He intended to call on a clan-cousin named Urúme hiZhnáyu, who had moved here from Khirgár in pursuit of an ecclesiastical career in the service of the Grey Lord, but he was told that Urúme was at his post. This was acceptable to Aíjom, as he thought that he might seek knowledge of the device he carried from the famous library of the city’s temple of Thúmis. He had not been swayed by Prazhúri’s dismissal of the value of the inherited words of the dead.

Urúme had grown, gained weight, and proudly wore the insignia of the Fourth Circle, a high rank for a young man. He appeared much happier than the disinterested junior recordkeeper Aíjom remembered from years gone by, and long changed from the boisterous boy who had lobbed rotten dlél-fruit at him when they were children. He embraced Aíjom warmly and helped him gain access to the jealously watched storerooms of the God of Wisdom.

After some thought, Aíjom saw a way to stalk his quarry without revealing his intent. “I am interested in learning of the naval exploits of the noted captain Mshúruish, as one of our clansmen in Chéne Hó is an avid listener to all tales of the distant sea, and wishes to hear of his great deeds.” Urúme complied unquestioningly-apparently he had grown used to odd requests- and called over a scribe to copy any notable passages for the enjoyment of Aíjom’s phantom clansman. Unfortunately, no text that they could find in over a ténmre of searching and consultation made any reference to the device, though Aíjom read such voluminous choruses of praise to the genius and heroism of Mshúruish that he thought it a wonder that the man did not have a shrine within the martial temple of Karakán. At last, he resigned himself to ignorance.

“I will have tales to tell of Mshúruish until my voice fails,” said Aíjom with false good humor, as he paid the scribe and gathered up his transcriptions. “Even now it is parched. Shall we seek refreshment?”

Urúme happily agreed to this, and they took a pleasant, if too-rich, lunch in the city square. Afterwards, Aíjom told Urúme of how his clansmen fared in Khirgár, and told hunting-stories, which Urúme enjoyed surprisingly well; his last and best such tale he kept to himself, as it would be unwise to advertise his hand in those events. In turn, he learned of Urúme’s marriage and children (two, with a third being discussed, likely for next year), and heard endless talk of his struggles for autonomy and resources within the temple of Thúmis. It seems that the intricacies of temple politics are more difficult to understand than the swirls and flourishes of the seals of the great clans!

There was another topic that Aíjom wished to broach, though he had little time to do so after Urúme had given his autobiography. His hours of burdensome marching had given him plenty of time to mull over personal concerns, and he wished to be prepared for them. He turned to Urúme with a conspiratorial look.

“I am traveling to Tumíssa, and will of course be staying in the southernmost of our clanhouses. I am minded of an old dispute concerning missed payments between the Tumíssan branch of his clan and our own, in which our branch claims grievance.”

Aíjom could see that Urúme knew what he would say before he spoke. “The problem from 2352,” he sighed. “My father was plagued by that as though he had personally squandered the sum on dissolute entertainment at the temple of the Goddess Dlamélish! He tried to obtain redress, but was thwarted by silence; it was as though he argued with a wall. No one here in Páya Gupá will admit to any knowledge of the matter.”

Aíjom could well imagine why. Their Tumíssan clansmen were wealthier merchants; his clanhouse in Khirgár was regularly bled dry by bidding wars for harvests or poor sales after a bumper crop, without the huge markets of Tumíssa, ‘the gateway between the Chákas,’ to palliate their losses. His clanhouse was thus dependent on trade with Tumíssa for its ongoing survival, and their Tumíssan ‘cousins’—at this, Aíjom thought ruefully of the Chákan Pé Chói—exploited this, making forgiveness of the debt a condition of ongoing business. This had worked doubly well because members of the two clanhouses had not seen each other in over a generation, and as Urúme had noted, their clansmen in the intermediary cities wisely forbore from involvement in the dispute.

“In my estimation, you should not waste your time sorting pebbles on the road,” Urúme said in an annoyingly priestly tone. “The Tumíssans will not change their stance. I suspect it is due to pride, but who is to say?”

Aíjom gestured angrily; his frustration over his conscription for this mysterious mission had found a target that at least seemed vulnerable to attack. “We will see if they find a representative of the Khirgári branch at their doorstep as easy to fan away as a chrí-fly. I am no stranger to the record-book, and I will make them prove their innocence or pay.” If I have time to address the issue when we are in Tumíssa, he thought bitterly; but I may well not.

Urúme laughed. “I always admired your righteous fire, Aíjom! My pedhétl burns for wisdom, not battle or business, but I can understand how your skein looks to you. I wish you luck in bringing the Tumíssans to heel.”

“I thank you for your priestly blessing,” Aíjom said, and the two laughed together as they had years before. “There is one more tidbit for us to nibble at, and then I must be off. Have you ever heard tales of a priestess of the Worm Lord named Prazhúri hiDaishúna?”

Urúme’s face curled reflexively in disgust at the mention of Lord Sárku, but it showed no recognition. “Should I have? I am too busy to listen to the deluded whispers of those who long for the tomb.”

“I have heard that she is a notable sorcerer.”

“From whom? A local villager who chews grass-stalks and believes that anyone who knows entertainer’s sleights is as puissant as a God? There is much baseless superstition in the land, Aíjom; in particular, there is far too great a dread of the priests of the Worm and their disgusting parlor-tricks. Do not let these rumors confuse you.”

They parted, and Aíjom headed back to the temple of Chiténg, weighing the wisdom of Urúme’s advice. He was stopped by a well-groomed man in dark, middle-clan dress, whose muscleroped arms swung easily at his sides.

“Are you Aíjom hiKharsáma of Khirgár?” The question was asked with grave respect.

Aíjom trusted the man as much as he would trust a zrné, and felt that lying would not be bússan under the circumstances. “No, nor do I know the man.”

“Are you sure?” The man looked solicitous as his hands moved for the folds of his robe, but stopped as Jalésa walked up to them.

“I doubt that my friend’s memory is so poor as to forget his own name,” she said, and the man stepped back a pace. Aíjom slowly breathed in. Who would wish to suffer pain at the hands of a priestess of Chiténg?

“I apologize for the confusion,” the man said, and left, quickly yet without the impression of hurry.

“He has stalked our outer courtyard for at least a kirén,” she said. “I understand that you may have made some enemies in Chéne Hó.”

“I fear you understand rightly,” Aíjom said reluctantly. The man had almost certainly been sent for revenge by the Íto clan—although the Golden Sunburst clan might also stoop to such means, if they could not have the courts work their will on him.

“We have been waiting for you for two kirén,” she said. “Our discussions were shorter than anticipated. I do not want to wait for you again.”

Aíjom nodded, resentful of her arrogance but still grateful that she had kept him from being neatly butchered before the temple of her God. He wondered if Lord Chiténg approved of such clemency.

Return to Start of Chapter | Return to Top of Page

Chapter V

The group set out from Páya Gupá in but a few yóm. Jalésa may have seemed unaccustomed to the rigors of the road at first, but round, corpse-pale Jagétl seemed to be surprised that he had legs, and their way was often blocked by chlén-cart caravans that moved slower still. Despite longer days, and Fyérik and Nikána’s best efforts and worst threats, their pace was slowed yet further, yet Aíjom was not disappointed. Some film of the charnel temple of Sárku had been wrapped around him, like an old peasant’s winter shawl of dirty, tattered hmá-wool. He watched, oddly amused, as his feet moved down the Sákbe-road, able to avoid the thronging crowds of farmers and merchants on their own. Thunder rumbled around them every evening, yet no cooling rains fell.

For four days, it was all Jagétl could do to keep breathing as they walked, and he was silent, save for wheezing. Aíjom bore his heavy pack of scroll-cases when he was not helping to carry the casket, with its unknown weaponry from the unknowable past. But by the fifth day, it was clear that the road was starting to cure the ills of Jagétl’s bákte, as Srúma had spoken of so long ago. By the seventh day of marching, the Sákbe turned and walked beside the broad Turín river, and Jagétl had begun to talk, in a hollow voice like the night wind through the Turín’s reeds.

If Jagétl’s gasping silence had been awkward, his return to oratory was intolerable. Aíjom and the others were ignorant of, and indifferent to, the finer points of theology and philosophy, and thus had made poor sparring partners for Jalésa; but Jagétl, who shared a wealth of knowledge of their cargo and a devotion to the proper understanding of the Gods, was a perfect traveling companion for her. At least, Aíjom thought wearily on the third day of debate, the elder priest of Thúmis who had walked beside Aíjom on his journey to Chéne Hó had not argued his theses, but had simply stated them, knowing that his meek priestly companion would accept them as if Lord Thúmis Himself had spoken the words in a voice like a túnkul-gong from the roof of His temple. Where Jalésa had failed to press her discussions with Aíjom, who was not a rhetorician, she reveled in arguing with a fellow child of endless temple lectures and debates for their own sakes. Jagétl responded promptly to each feint and thrust, though it seemed that his temper threatened to spoil his rhetoric; he bore even the slightest concession with a singularly ill grace.

As fiercely as Jalésa and Jagétl had sparred with each other, the group’s religious arguments grew fierce and loud as battling love-crazed tsi’íl when they chanced across a young ritual priest of Thúmis named Bashán¹⁴ heading to Tumíssa, an ideologue who did not compare favorably in Aíjom’s eyes to his clan-cousin Urúme. He, Jagétl and Jalésa sank into a veritable orgy of disputation that threatened to rend the ancient Concordat of peace between the Temples into shreds. Fortunately, they were amongst a comically bucolic crowd of Dó Chákan woodsmen on a short, inter-village trip to hew lumber for new barns and granaries. Some of these peasants, by their occasional, confused glances at the arguing priests, seemed only passingly familiar with the doctrines of Thúmis or Sárku, let alone Chiténg. If they had been in a city, amidst a better-educated crowd, violence might well have been the fruit of their heated ploughing of the barren fields of religious dispute.

“Memory is a useful servant,” Jagétl was saying to Bashán, his voice now strong as a chlén’s, “but a servant it is, and a servant it must remain. We are not made of our memories as a house is made of mudbricks. We are, first and foremost, our hlákme, which acts and chooses from the sacred First Principle of Lord Sárku Himself, that will is all. Still less are we made of things”—Aíjom was surprised by the hate and contempt ringing clear in his voice— “outside ourselves, such as books and scrolls.” The priest of Thúmis launched into a counterattack that reviled the idiocy of conceiving of self and thought apart from memory; his fury and copious spittle reminded Aíjom of a sérudla on the attack. He glanced down again at his feet, now accustomed to the poorly surfaced Sákbe-roads of the south, and watched as the group’s shadows flickered and wavered over the shamefully uneven cobbles, now long and angular, now soft and uncertain. It would be a long walk to Tumíssa.

***

That night, their march ended with no village in sight, and the Sákbe tower’s guest chamber was occupied by a large party of well-connected Tumíssan merchants whom they had no hope of displacing. Their little group made a campfire outside the tower, and the woodsmen joined them, trading smoked, rich cutlets of jungle fowl for some of the heavy bread they bore. As their consequently much-improved supper ended, the woodsmen began telling local tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, old stories they had learned as children, that had been polished like a treasured heirloom shield of steel by each generation. Aíjom had heard some of them, or at least Khirgári variants, but many were new, and he enjoyed them greatly; they distracted him from his lingering aches and, far worse, his frustration over walking this dangerous trail in the dark.

A talkative woman masterfully told a harrowing tale of the gruesome demise of a curious young man who had secretly entered the fabled and jealously guarded First Temple of Vimúhla, deep in the jungles of Pán Cháka; it was well received, particularly by Fyérik and Nikána, who seemed to approve of stories of their homeland. The storyteller then called to Jagétl, her voice light with long-delayed rest and company. “Tell us a tale of terror, priest of the Worm! Surely you must have a myriad stories of death and despair with which to regale the little grubs of the faithful!”

Jagétl stiffened, and Aíjom was surprised that he had not before seen through Jagétl’s corpse-paint and dolorous demeanor to realize just how young he was; he seemed a child abashed before his peers, but only for a moment. “I will tell you a tale, but not some child’s story of rotting corpses and ghostly malefactors. Instead you shall hear an old tale told amongst my priesthood, of the horrors that Lord Sárku can visit upon those who truly displease Him.” Aíjom sat up a bit straighter; this sounded interesting, if too personally relevant for his liking.

Jagétl cleared his throat. “Long ago, there was a priest of Sárku who betrayed Him; the years do not let us know how, except that it was horrid beyond the petty offenses we know of today. One night, he awoke from a troubled sleep to an awful sight. His room was filled to bursting, stacked to the rafters, with the dead that he had been closest to.”

“I would think that a priest of Sárku would be happy to have his clan’s dead resurrected by his Lord, and brought back to him,” Jalésa interjected curiously. “What sort of punishment was this?”

“You do not understand,” Jagétl said, his voice cold with what Aíjom would have sworn was genuine horror, a strange emotion to see in a priest of Death. “These were not the bodies of dead clansmen or lovers or friends. These were the bodies of himself, at every moment of his life, staring at him with judging eyes. Dozens of children, the children he had been years before, squatted by his cot. Scores of young men, afire with the transitory ambitions of his youth, stood in ranks and stared wonderingly at him. He leapt from his bed and ran forth into the night; they did not hinder him, but everywhere he ran, he saw them gathered in their hundreds. Many were preoccupied with the fancies he had clung to in the past, but always the bulk of them stared coldly at him—and always, he knew what they thought. He flung himself into the pursuit of the Green Lady’s pleasures, drinking and taking powders enough to drop a chlén, yet always could he see them, always was he surrounded by them, and always could he almost feel their clammy touch, so close did they cluster. He soon ended his miserable life, pleasing Lord Sárku. For none defy the Worm Lord in the end.”

This was a strange tale, and its effect on the group was mixed; it was not the sort of story they had expected from him. Finally, one turned to Jalésa. “Priestess of Chiténg, dread Lord of Pain, tell us a story of woe! Do your priests whisper of secret terrors that you do not reveal to the faithful, as do the priests of Sárku?”

“I seem to remember such a story,” Jalésa said distantly. “We also have an old tale of a traitor priest, who knew the doctrines of our God as well as any other, yet rejected them utterly in secret. Yet Chiténg did nothing, and the priest died in his sleep at a ripe old age, attended and honored by his family.

“In the next moment, he opened his eyes, and saw a new place, a peasant clanhouse, barely more than a hut. He looked down at his hands, and saw that they were strange, twisted as with many years of labor, and dull as raw chlén-hide. A woman walked in and spoke to him in a strange tongue, yet to his wonder he understood it. It was Mu’ugalavyáni. In confusion and despair he dashed outside, and saw his dominion—a patch of dirt, newplowed, ringed with gnarled trees. He was a farmer, as deeply rooted in the soil as his másh-trees.

“He tried to kill himself, but his pedhétl¹⁵ was cold ashes, and he could not use his short, worn knife to do so much as pierce his skin. He could not even bring himself to leave his hut and see the lands beyond the trees. It was as though he was a statue, unable to act. Many years of gruel and warm days and cold nights went by, yet always was he conscious of despair, and though he prayed to Chiténg, earnestly for the first time in his memory, he found no relief. At last, with the years piled high on his stooped back, he fell ill, and lay gasping for many days on the floor of his room, his grey-haired wife listlessly removing his wastes and watering him like a plant. He could feel nothing at this point; no pain pierced the shroud of his living tomb. He glimpsed the Isles as if from afar, and then the mists, cold and numbing, closed in around him, and all grew dark.

“When he awoke, again his body was strange, a basketweaver and a woman, young yet already burdened with her toils, and he lived in this sad role for many more years; when she died, he awoke again in another place. It is said that the priest’s báletl15 still wanders Tékumel, traveling from life to life, each more cold and lifeless than the last.”

This seemed to satisfy the woodsmen’s taste for fear. More terrible to them than the beasts of the jungle is the thought of becoming Mu’ugalavyáni, or a woman, thought Aíjom with no little amusement.

He then heard Bashán harrumph. “The temple of Thúmis also knows tales of horror. But I will not tell of dull-eyed priests who scaped their callings. My tale is of a priest who performed his duties too well, and was struck down for his genius.” Jagétl’s great globe of a head swung up from a bored contemplation of his lap at this; it seemed he knew somewhat about the imminent tale.

“Many years ago, when I was new to my studies, I chanced upon a near-forgotten shrine in the back of our mighty temple, raised long ago to a saint of the faith of the Eye. There was a dedicatory inscription in Classical Tsolyáni to the man, hight Chirringgá hiKurúshma.” Aíjom started at the name; it was surely similar to that of the priest that Prazhúri had told him of in Páya Gupá. “I had never heard of the man, and asked the temple’s librarians to tell me of his service to the Grey Lord; they told me the tale of woe that I am about to tell you.

“Long, long ago, during the reigns of the great Engsvanyáli Priestkings”—the simple mention of such awesome antiquity set the woodsmen to gesturing and glancing about—”Chirringgá hiKurúshma, a great disciple of Thúmis, lived in Páya Gupá. Sagacious beyond the fallen standards of these latter days were the mandarins of the Grey Lord in the millennia of the rule of mighty Gánga, but Chirringgá saw far beyond his fellow scholars, as the küni sees beyond the worms of the field.” Jagétl twitched at this analogy, but Aíjom scarcely noticed, so horrified was he by the implications of Bashán’s tale. Surely Prazhúri merely recounted an old folk-legend to me. Yes, it was but an old story she told; surely she could not have witnessed the rule of the Empire of the Gods.

“Chirringgá studied the effects of water on the land: how it washed away soil and smoothed stone. He read the records of weather that his temple had amassed for a dozen long lifetimes of men. He learned of the nature of the rocks and plants of Dó Cháka from a score of preeminent experts.

“Finally, armed with a pack filled to bursting with his scrolls of notes and maps, he went far outside the city to the Sárkuite monastery of Yek-hishúna, wherein were said to dwell the oldest of the Worm Lord’s Undead servants. Six times he banged the great green copper door-gong at the entrance to the compound, and one of the gruesome Undead opened the black doors.

”’I have a message for you and your kind,’ Chirringgá said calmly, and the thing gestured for him to come in. He walked through the fetid darkness of the monastery, led by the shambling doorman, and was brought before the council of the Undead.

“Horridly they squatted there, rotting and foul of aspect, yet Chirringgá showed no fear. He sat down before them and took off his pack. ‘I know that you Undead are Watchers, staring endlessly at the world around you. I have here a message for you: I can free you from this burden! I know what is to come! My studies have showed me what will happen to the fields and hills and rivers of this land for the next thousand years. You need not wait a millennium to see it come about: only give me a week, and I shall show you.’

“For six days, from before the dawn till the deep of the night, he showed them his scrolls and maps, only pausing briefly to sleep or to break his fast from the orchards and wells of the Undead. He told them how the population of the land would grow and change, in what places the people would build up new villages and new clanhouses, and how their styles would vary. He told them how the local streams and rivers would turn and cut deeper into the land. He told them what trees would wax and wane, and the schedules of their growth and decay. He told them how the huge rocks in the fields around the monastery would slowly crumble and sink into the loamy earth, even to the rate at which they would subside. He told them all that anyone could imagine to consider about the land and its coming changes for centuries to come. All throughout this, the terrible Undead made no comments, but watched him as they might have watched a field of grain in a rainstorm. At last, the eldest of them spoke through its dry-rotted throat, as the dust of its body sifted down onto its Bednálljan cerements.

”’You are arrogant, scholar. We watch the world to see Change, as our Lord has commanded us to do. We do not presume to know what will come, nor do we believe that you know. Leave your scrolls and maps with us, and we shall see if you are right, even if your descendants of the fiftieth generation shall crawl toward their deathbeds by the time of our decision.’ Chirringgá nodded and left that house of walking death.

“Time came, and Chirringgá died at a ripe old age; his descendents multiplied, and were fruitful, and brought forth no end of useful and noble works. And for century after century, the Undead watched, and compared the changes they saw with those foretold by Chirringgá long ago. And they saw that he had been right in every particular. The trees rose and fell, and the rivers shifted, and the habitations and numbers of men changed and grew, exactly as he had predicted. And a terrible despair came over them, as they saw that they watched in vain; for all that was to come, they needed but to read from his now-ancient scrolls.

“After over six hundred years, in the thirty-third¹⁶ generation of the progeny of Chirringgá, their despair overwhelmed them. In a fit of terrible fury, the Undead marched forth from their monastery, and commanding all the fell powers of sorcery that their Worm Lord could grant, they stalked the land tirelessly, slaying even to the last babe every descendent of Chirringgá hiKurúshma; and when their bloody work was done, they sank down into the earth, moaning in dread that their Lord’s great purpose was dross, and that a mortal man, blessed with the vision of the Eye, had seen that which they had dumbly waited long aeons to witness. And so was the line of a great man brought down by hate of my Lord’s gifts.”

Jagétl had been silent throughout the tale, but as Bashán ended, Aíjom expected that one could as soon stop a rushing chlén as check his rebuttal. Indeed, Jagétl immediately sat upright, assuming the pose of the orator and speaking in curt, clipped tones.

“Your story is entertaining, priest of the Grey Lord. I have heard it before—or rather, I have heard the true version. I should note that five knocks only¹⁷ did Chirringgá make upon the door to the monastery before the jájgi opened the way to him. But more importantly yet, the jájgi felt no despair. They saw Change shape the world, and that sight is a thing that cannot be replaced by the predictions of your Temple. How strange it is that those who worship the Eye of Thúmis are so eager to blind themselves!

“Indeed, in the eleventh generation of the children of Chirringgá his predictions were overturned beyond all recognition: for then it was that proud Gánga fell, and the world burned, or drowned.” This, predictably, brought more gesturing from the woodsmen. “After this, the land was torn by war, wasted by plagues, reshaped by the movements of men this way and that; and the jájgi watched all.

“In the thirty-third generation of the children of Chirringgá, the jájgi did come forth from their monastery, but they were not wroth. Solemnly did they journey to the low and sunken stone that was the monument of the Kurúshma lineage, who were farscattered by the wreck of Gánga and heedless of the honors due to their dead. With bloodless hands they unearthed the remains of the priest Chirringgá, and they bore them back to their stronghold. There, with the mighty spells that are of the purview of the Lord of Death, they remade his body, and recalled his báletl from its centuries of wandering among the Blessed Isles. Chirringgá gasped and shivered on a bed of stone, his newly re-fleshed frame coated in the sacred anointing oil of our temple, as the jájgi watched all around him.

”’I have slept for a while, I think,’ he said.

”’Yes; even unto the thirty-third generation of your children have you slept,’ said the eldest of the jájgi. ‘And we have witnessed Change, as our Lord has commanded us to do. Come now, and see what Change has given us.’ Wordlessly the jájgi helped him from his bier, and brought him new robes of dark grey and his scrolls and books of old. Together they left the monastery, and walked the land for five days, seeking out the places and features that Chirringgá had spoken of in the overweening pride of his first life. Everywhere his predictions were seen to be false; nothing had elapsed as he had foreseen, though the term of his prophecies was far from over. Frantically, Chirringgá stirred through his writings day after day, looking for something he had said that agreed with what he could see, but he found no consolation; in every place, his words turned upon him like epéng vipers.

“How could I not have foreseen this?” he cried in his despair. “Did my Lord Thúmis not grant me the fullness of His vision, as it seemed to me and my colleagues? Did He not show me what would happen in the world?”

“For those who have not learned how to watch Change, the world is error,” the eldest jájgi said. “You thought to instruct us in the ways of the world; look how it has repaid you.”

“Then Chirringgá sank to the ground and moaned, and not the jájgi, as in your curious corruption of the tale. Then he arose, and begged the pardon of the jájgi, who pitied him as they pity all who are blind. They elevated him to their ranks, and it is said that in that long-hidden stronghold of our faith, Chirringgá still watches the world from a high window, and from time to time marvels that it should ever have spoken of foretelling.”

“And with this,” said Fyérik quickly, his voice creaking with weariness, “we must leave off our propitiation of the sleepdemons, and hope we have summoned up enough terror to make their sendings unneeded tonight.”

This staved off Bashán’s incipient objections to Jagétl’s version of his story. Aíjom could have embraced Fyérik; no mere fear could long keep him from sleep now.

But Aíjom’s sleep-demons were, of course, not to be deterred from their duty. He dreamed that he was in a moonless dark, and that he battled a grey shape, many-limbed like a spider, that struck faster than he could see. He collapsed to the warm, wet floor, and looked up at a turbulent sky. Nikána’s face fell before him, rage and horror warring to control her visage, and he knew that everyone around him was dying. Pain filled him as smoothly as a bowl is filled with oil.

He turned away—this was nearly impossible—and saw Prazhúri sitting beside her garden, looking down at him curiously. The family he had glimpsed briefly that day stood beside her. Their faces were indistinct, obscured as if by fog, yet Aíjom realized with wrenching fear that the tallest figure was himself, Tsunúre stood beside him, and the children they had not yet had were gathered before them, all silent, none moving. Prazhúri moved closer, and the world wavered.

“Do you know what has brought you here?”

Aíjom tried to scream, but no sound came, and he slashed at them with the great dagger-like claw, smooth and heavy as stone, that lay in his hand. Space split into tubes and banners, whirling about him as he sliced it, and again the question spiraled down a thread that bored through his body: “Do you know what has brought you here?”

Return to Start of Chapter | Return to Top of Page

Chapter VI

On the 4th of Pardán, over a month after Aíjom left Chéne Hó, they saw a great promontory ahead