The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  Owald pointed a finger at the tower.

  “There’s the Spire of Dreamers, and—”

  The southmost island, somewhat to the west of the tower-isle, like the northmost, presented a disorganized jumble to the eye.

  “The Palace of the Sun Incarnate, residence of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl,” Owald shouted with hoarse excitement, “the seat of government for the Empire of Han-Meshika!”

  The fourth, and second-largest, island possessed an edifice which glowed softly as the last rays of the sun shone through it. The airship made directly for it. Beneath them lay what appeared to be a mountain of ice, a solitary pyramidal glacier standing in the midst of a bay which was itself a veritable inland sea.

  Ayesha gasped in half-recognition, the uneasy feeling she had seen this place before.

  Unlike the moldering Egyptian pyramids she had visited as a girl, this monumental object was table-flat at the summit, entirely constructed of the purest of transparent crystal, each man-height block crafted into an eye-disturbing, irregular shape, mirrored within its depths where it met, in a flawless seam, with neighboring blocks.

  “One thousand seven hundred sixty paces!” Owald shouted, the wind of the great ship’s passage slapping at his cheeks. He pointed a finger, swinging it horizontally.

  Thinking she had failed to understand what Owald said, Fireclaw translated for him.

  “Deep paces,” Owald added, “those of a big man! From base to top, a diagonal span of eleven hundred seventy-four paces, it’s the height of four hundred fifteen men. Tall men. If you could walk it—or wanted to—there are twenty-five hundred steps!”

  At the flattened summit, there was what appeared to be an elaborate temple, open to sky, its floor consisting of what looked to the girl like a giant pool.

  It was not its color alone—a deep and brooding red—which spoiled this illusion. Because she knew, despite appearances, that the pyramid was not made of ice, she reasoned that this “pool,” in reality, was as solid and glassy as the rest of the gigantic edifice.

  It was even more transparent.

  As it fooled the eye, it terrified the mind. Its depths seemed to exceed even the great height of the pyramid, to plunge downward to the very center of the earth itself.

  “It must have taken centuries to erect!” commented the Princess, devoting only half an ear to what the man was saying. Stunned by all she had thus far seen, she was beginning to believe that, setting her irrational fears aside, the fate her father had wished upon her was not quite the end of the world she had imagined it to be.

  This was, indeed, a mighty civilization.

  Hovering above the glassy mountain, they spied another airship, not unlike the one which carried them. From beneath its hull there was suspended a gigantic disk, itself not much smaller than the craft which held it in place.

  “Practice,” Owald told them enigmatically. “You can’t see it, but upon that hill, yonder, is a crew projecting a thin light-beam at the disk. From thence it is reflected to the pyramid-top.”

  His father asked, “Toward what purpose?”

  An odd look flickered briefly across Owald’s features, as if he realized he had said more than he ought, but, having introduced the subject, he would not be let off without saying more.

  “If all circumstances fall aright—if the ship’s steady, and in the correct place at the correct time—if the beam runs true from hilltop to pyramid, then it will work the other way as well. Pray do not ask me more, Father, for I am oath-bound not to reveal the secrets of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, the Sun Incarnate, at least until the one to whom they are revealed has earned his trust.

  “The top’s a hundred paces square...”

  Unable to say more about the airship to his father, nor to understand Ayesha past a barrier of wind and foreign language, Owald continued with his statistics.

  “...occupying a space of ten thousand square paces, of which near unto eight thousand are taken up by the temple floor, which is called by the people the Eye-of-God.”

  Of a sudden, he seized her by the shoulder, the roughness of his grip surprising her. What surprised her more were the teardrops whipped from his face and splashing upon hers.

  “Five thousand people at a time can be made to stand there, Ayesha! And five thousand and five thousand more! Over and over and over again! Tis the heart of the world we live in, girl, the world we can never quit! It is the soul of the Crystal Empire!”

  He turned then and in Helvetian demanded of his father, “I brought you out here so that we’d not be overheard! How can I make her understand? Everything in, nothing out—the sole exception’s those entrusted with Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s safety!”

  Suddenly the young officer had Ayesha’s full understanding, whether he knew it or not.

  “Neither of you asked me what befalls the remainder! Ask me now! They worship that, here, Father!”

  He pointed to the setting sun.

  The other airship had begun standing off, the great reflecting-disk beneath it slowly, by some unknown machination, being drawn upward, parallel to its hull.

  The flying machine turned tail toward them and sped away.

  “Not merely Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, its human aspect, but an incandescent orb which they believe requires sustenance! One outsider in ten thousand joins the guard, Father—nine thousand nine and ninety die a death too terrible to speak of!”

  He pointed to the pyramid again, glowing in the twilight. The “pool” in its center was by now an inky black. “Your Saracen Princess, Father, ’tis here, in the heart of the world, that she shall be joined in wedlock to the real Sun!”

  XXXIX: The Enlightenment of Oln Woeck

  Believers, turn to God in sincere repentance; it may be that your Lord will acquit you of your evil deeds, and will admit you into gardens underneath which rivers flow.—The Koran, Sura LXVI

  “Get up, fool!”

  Naked limbs trembling, the old man lifted his face from the grimy deckplates. He blinked, eyes watering. Some moments passed before he could tolerate even the moderate quantity of light entering the small room he occupied from the clattering spaces beyond the door which had just been opened without warning.

  His breath created little puffs of vapor when he exhaled.

  Before him he saw a pair of elaborate-tooled boots beneath the embroidered hem of a brocaded robe. Pushing himself to his bony knees, he let his eyes follow the robe upward, past the decorative sash—a pair of T-handled daggers had been thrust into it—past the arms, folded across the chest, resting in voluminous sleeves opposite one another, past the glittering medallion, a miniature of the solar mask he’d seen in the audience chamber, to the smooth-skinned boyish face of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl, the Sun Incarnate of the Han-Meshika.

  The dark hair was concealed by a quilted cap whose untied ear-coverings flapped when the Sun moved his head. His youthful face set itself in an expression of tolerant amusement. Speaking in well-accented Helvetian, the voice fell softer now, almost gentle.

  “I said, get up, Oln Woeck.”

  Trembling with strain, Oln Woeck attempted to comply with the demand. He discovered his unclad limbs had locked, from fear, from cold and old age, into the humiliating position of obeisance he’d assumed the instant the door had slid aside. What disturbed the old man was that his self-abasement had been automatic, a reflex performed without the slightest conscious consideration.

  From behind the rich-garbed boy-ruler there stepped a copper-kilted guard, who seized the Cultist leader by one elbow and lifted him to his naked feet. Scarcely noticing the way the icy metal stung their soles, the older man gasped in the momentary belief his bones would shatter in their brittleness. Otherwise, he bit his tongue, suppressed both pent-up fear and mounting fury, and held his silence.

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl nodded dismissal at the soldier, who bowed, departing from the room.

  The light still dazzled aged eyes. It was Oln Woeck’s first opportunity to see the place himself. He’d been dragged from the airship’s audience chamber
some unreckonable time ago, force-marched along endless decorated corridors, up and down numerous spiral staircases, until he and his animal-helmeted escort had come to a huge, noisy kitchen, deep within the volume of the alien vessel.

  A hundred menials had he glimpsed, milling about in the glaring light, as cookware clattered, steam hissed, unfamiliar odors assailed his already terrified senses.

  There, the Sun Incarnate’s guardsmen had opened a thick and heavy-latched metal door, stripped him to the skin without leave or ceremony of aught he wore, thrown him inside. He’d almost been relieved, considering this unknown land with its unknown customs, not to have been tossed straightaway into a cooking-pot. Instead, he’d fetched up against the opposite wall, losing consciousness. They’d slammed the door, casting the dazed Cultist into uttermost darkness.

  Where they’d left him.

  Now he could look about, the room was larger than he’d believed. He hadn’t spent much time or effort exploring it, so uncomfortable and afraid had he been. Upon one wall countless ranks of drawers or lockers did he see, each with its polished metal hasp and hinges, each with a labeling plate upon which foreign characters had been painted.

  The wall opposite couldn’t be seen, hidden as it sat behind rows of frozen yellow-pink carcasses suspended by hooks from shining rails which crossed the ceiling.

  Grateful he was not to have encountered those in the dark!

  Skinned, limb-chopped, gutted, and headless, it was difficult telling what sort of animal they’d been, what sort of meat they stored in this place. To Oln Woeck, long accustomed to leaving such matters as the sustenance of his body to inferiors, they appeared to be hogs. But something gibbered at the back of his mind that his initial fears, upon seeing the kitchen, hadn’t been altogether without basis.

  Now the Sun Incarnate Zhu Yuan-Coyotl swept one brown, jewel-bedecked hand from the satin sleeve it rested in, indicating a small bench—an unadorned metal shelf suspended by a pair of chains—fastened to a third wall.

  Upon it lay a huge, curved butcher knife.

  “Seat yourself, old man. You appear surprised. Did you suspect We’d leave you here to die?”

  Oln Woeck avoided answering by limping backward to the bench—for a dozen reasons he felt he daren’t turn his back—lowering himself into mortifying contact with the metal. The shelf was hard, his bones unpadded by much flesh. The bench was cold. His shivering was, by now, quite beyond his control.

  “The Sun”—Zhu Yuan-Coyotl passed slender long-nailed fingers across his own chest, refolded his arms; his breath, too, formed little clouds of steam—“is the sole source of light and warmth in Our World, thus the wellspring of all life.”

  He stepped closer to Oln Woeck.

  “’Tis an impressive object-lesson to be deprived of its manifold blessed attributes. ‘Let the bastards freeze in the dark’ is a common curse among the Han-Meshika, as well as the crudest, most demeaning form of corporal or capital punishment—which, of course, depends upon its duration—We practice.”

  Another step forward.

  “In the minds of Our subjects, to be put to death by freezing in the darkness isn’t just to be denied humanity—a quality all forms of punishment possess in common—nor is it just to be denied the dignity of existence itself.”

  Huddled with his knees against his chest, his arms wrapped about them, Oln Woeck blinked. What was this maniacal child trying to tell him? If they intended to kill him, by the Suffering of Jesus, let them do it without all this talk!

  “’Tis to be denied,” the Sun Incarnate stated, “in life’s uttermost moments, the oneness with the source of life—which is the aim, We’re certain you’ll agree, of all one’s strivings here upon earth—and thus the cruelest fate imaginable.”

  The Sun stepped closer once again until Oln Woeck, had he been capable of movement, not frozen where he sat, might have reached out, touched the rich, brocaded robe. As it was, the moisture from the Sun Incarnate’s breath condensed in a light film upon the Cultist leader’s upraised knees, which, to their owner, appeared as bloodless and transparent as if they’d been fashioned out of candle-tallow.

  “Upon some concentrated study of the matter,” the boy continued, “We’ve arrived at an understanding that this theology isn’t alien entire to your own beliefs.”

  Here the Sun Incarnate Zhu Yuan-Coyotl paused, as if to let some profound lesson sink in. Oln Woeck was fervent in the wish it would, but in this he was disappointed.

  At length, the Sun spoke again.

  “There elsewhere flourishes an entire family of languages with which Our Dreamers have familiarized Us, in which the word for Sun also conveys a secondary meaning, ‘provider of opportunities’—somewhat of the same spirit in which your people, the Helvetii, are wont to say, ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’”

  Zhu Yuan-Coyotl turned his back, gazing in absent idleness as he spoke at beads of condensed moisture trickling down the tarnished metal wall beside the heavy-hinged door.

  “’Tis an appropriate turn of phrase, howe’er esoteric its origin. An auspicious one. We enjoy to think of Ourselves as such a beneficent provider of opportunities, Oln Woeck. Observe how We’ve provided you with an opportunity to sample, in a small wise, existence without the benefit of Our effulgence—”

  He craned his neck about, pointing to the butcher knife which Oln Woeck hadn’t touched.

  “—or to attack Us whilst Our back was turned.”

  He laughed.

  “Likewise, We’re certain you heard Us explain e’er now to your traveling companions how upon occasion We provide certain opportunities for Our subjects to sink themselves in vice, that they who can’t resist its blandishment might be weeded from Our, er, garden.”

  Oln Woeck remembered well enough, but just now he was more preoccupied with the wish that he could cease shivering. He was no longer certain whether the cold was responsible for it.

  Aught about this boy-child frightened him.

  “We provide other opportunities, as well, for measured advancement, unmeasured greed, dutiful obedience, self-aggrandizement, assiduousity, betrayal...”

  He turned about again, to face the old Helvetian. Oln Woeck hoped the boy might come at last to the point of this otherwise meaningless lecture. Its meaninglessness—he was discovering—was the principal terror of the thing.

  “But We didn’t visit you to prattle of philosophy or linguistics. We observe that you grow more uncomfortable, thereby less attentive, each minute. Here—”

  In a single, liquid motion, the Sun Incarnate Zhu Yuan-Coyotl unfastened his sash—the paired knife-scabbards clattered upon the deck—flung the colorful quilted robe from his lithe, athletic body, snugged it about Oln Woeck.

  He helped the old man tuck it into place beneath his frozen buttocks. In an instant, warmth began to wash across the old man’s body, penetrating his flesh as if the robe itself radiated heat and were more than just its preserver.

  Relief was to be followed by shock. He watched with widened eyes and wider mouth as Zhu Yuan-Coyotl retied the weapons-sash about his now-naked waist. Beneath the robe, the boy had worn nothing. Despite his sudden exposure to the cold, he showed no sign of discomfort. Oln Woeck confronted half a dozen conflicting feelings: relief, uncertainty, wonder, the first faint tinglings of something else. Lean, hairless, well muscled, the boy he looked upon was beautiful.

  Showing no awareness of thoughts Oln Woeck feared written bold upon his features, the Sun went on.

  “Howe’er, We did come to spin for you, Oln Woeck, the tale of an illustrious ancestor of Ours, one Zhu Yuan-Xiang, who lived some six and one-half centuries ago, also with whom We’re honored to share both a given and a family name.

  The boy glanced at the railed ceiling, eyes half closed, as if summoning long-unexamined memories.

  “When he was a young man—he was known, at the time, by the name ‘Hung Wu,’ a humble monk not unlike yourself, born of a poor family of farm laborers, wiped out in one of many ep
idemics when he was but seventeen—his homeland languished in the iron grip of a savage foreign conqueror. Thus it had been for as long as anybody could remember. These barbaric dogs had perpetrated many terrible acts, the worst of which was opening the land to adventurers from e’en further regions, contaminating it with unsettling customs, unproven ideas, alien pestilences.”

  A small noise came at the door, a timid knocking which interrupted the Sun’s narrative. A plump-cheeked, red-gold, oval-eyed face peeked round the metal frame.

  The Sun nodded.

  Many additional distractions followed as an endless parade of linen-jacketed servitors entered the tiny room, one by one, depositing numerous rich and fascinating burdens within it before departing once again to return with even more.

  A floral-decorated screen-curtain, depicting, the Sun explained to Oln Woeck, wisteria and plum blossoms, willow and oleander, they placed before the hanging carcasses. Beside it, sandalwood incense smoldered in a vase of jade upon an ebony tabouret.

  The cold tile floor the servants covered with a thick layer of carpeting. Over this they laid a reed mat upon which the servants placed a lacquered rosewood tea-table, its blackwood top inlaid with alternating bronze and copper tiles. Upon this they placed, to begin things, towels in a polished copper basin of hot, scented water.

  Vapor rising from the vessel all but obscured Oln Woeck’s view of Zhu Yuan-Coyotl.

  The boy-ruler selected one of the towels, cleansed both face and hands. He invited the elderly Helvetian—to whom cleanliness was no deep-grained habit—to follow suit.

  Yet he obeyed.

  The steaming towel scalded the old man’s frozen face and fingers, but refreshed him. The soiled towels they threw back—with some reluctance upon Oln Woeck’s part—into the copper basin, which the servant removed with promptness from the room.

  As the servants continued with their tasks, Zhu Yuan-Coyotl took up his topic once again.

  “Yet, as Our Dreamers assure Us, naught there is which lasts eternal, Oln Woeck. Harsh oppression strengthens the weak. The most disciplined conquerors grow corrupt, bloating themselves into helplessness upon the places and people they plunder.