A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire

by Michael Bishop

  “You see, Magistrate, Kieri priests forbid the development of the Evashsted Sea and its islands because they regard these places as Gla Taus hell. Only demons would wish to go there, and only the vilest would use its products. My isosire was murdered for proposing the development of the area to Lady Turshebsel, a progressive ruler who regrets the opportunities being squandered because of the backwardness and superstition of the aisautseb. Opening the Feht Evashsted to the Sh’gaidu is only an interim solution to a much larger problem, but the aisautseb have grudgingly approved this plan because they regard this coastal region as only an antechamber to Hell rather than as Hell itself, and because no Kieri will be required to go there. At present, only misfits and exiles live in the Feht Evashsted.”

  The Magistrate peered past Seth at the image of Gla Taus on the rippling panel. “For which reason you believe the Sh’gaidu will be at home there, too?”

  “Oh, no, Magistrate; not because they’re misfits. Lord Pors tells me that the Sh’gaidu thrive in an environment similar to the Feht Evashsted’s.”

  “The land they hold,” said the Magistrate, standing erect, “lies about a thousand kilometers northeast of Ardaja Huru. At one time it was considered worthless, though the protogosfi of Trope’s prehistoric past may have found the basin hospitable. There’s some evidence to support this conjecture. No matter. Seitaba Mwezahbe didn’t approve the basin as a site for one of the Thirty-three Cities of the Tropish state, and the Sh’gaidu inherited it by default.”

  “The land is no longer considered worthless?”

  “The Sh’gaidu made it otherwise. In doing so, they’ve earned the envy as well as the disapproval of many Tropiards.”

  Seth’s nervousness fled. The Magistrate’s words had rekindled his enthusiasm: “Magistrate, all would benefit by the removal of the Sh’gaidu to Gla Taus. The Kieri find new allies in their assault on the Obsidian Wastes, Trope is disencumbered of an embarrassment, and the Sh’gaidu escape the persecution of their fellow Tropiards.”

  Magistrate Vrai—Seth noticed to his chagrin—winced at the world persecution, but did not rebuke him for using it.

  “What of the Latimer isohets, Seth and Abel?” he asked instead. “How do they benefit?”

  “We earn our passage home by succeeding in our mission to you. At present, you see, the Dharmakaya is effectively in Kieri hands.”

  “You gain nothing in the way of material wealth?”

  Seth was startled. “No, Magistrate.”

  —You gain nothing in the way of material wealth?

  Again, the gentle, uncanny mind rape that simultaneously warmed him and made him feel petty.

  “No,” Seth said again. “I get to go home. Nothing more than that, Magistrate, but it’s everything.”

  The Magistrate absentmindedly played his console keyboard—whereupon the bronze panel in front of Seth closed like a book, collapsed upon itself, and settled back into the table’s surface. Then Vrai walked to the far end of the room, his fine dark hands clasped at his back.

  “What material would you require, Kahl Latimer? Assuming, of course, that the Sh’gaidu accept our offer.”

  Seth stood. “Our offer,” the Magistrate had just said. That meant that he, the younger of Günter’s two isohets, had singlehandedly carried the first phase of their mission to Trope to a successful conclusion! His nervousness returned. His gloves were wringing wet.

  “For the initial evacuation from their basin—” Seth stumbled, thinking through what Pors and Douin had drilled into him were their likely needs.

  “They call it Palija Kadi,” the Magistrate said, misinterpreting his hesitation. “It means the Great Wall. Nonetheless, Palija Kadi is what they also call the basin itself.”

  “For the evacuation of the basin,” Seth said, virtually ignoring this, “we’ll need trucks or vans and drivers to operate them. The Dharmakaya is large enough to transport all three hundred Sh’gaidu to Gla Taus. Once there, the Kieri government will provide them with everything necessary to become self-sufficient in Feht Evashsted.”

  “Trucks. Drivers. That can be arranged. We also have transcraft to convey the evacuees to your light-tripper.”

  “Good,” said Seth, elated.

  The Magistrate crossed his office’s plum carpet and paused at the head of the stairs. “Come. Let’s see what arrangements have been made for your friends.”

  Together Seth and Magistrate Vrai descended into the vast cathedral of the J’beij, where the young isohet marveled again at the clear hanging scaffolds, the ornamental tapestries and banners, and the strange radionic cabinets and equipment banks manned by silent Tropiards.

  SIX

  Somewhere amid the crossing pathways of the government building, Magistrate Vrai introduced Seth to another Tropiard who spoke Vox. This person was attired in a jumpsuit the color of day-old cream and a pair of glinting white goggles. He stood at least a quarter of a meter shorter than Seth, and although his body appeared a weak and breakable thing, his movements had the punishing rigor of an ineptly handled marionette. He bowed, nodded, and gestured as if too tautly strung.

  “Seth Latimer, this is my administrative deputy, Ehte Emahpre.”

  A jerky, birdlike nod.

  Deputy Emahpre was wearing an amulet similar to the Magistrate’s: a pouch of dark brown embellished by a tiny amber gem. Seeing another amulet, Seth was reminded that he had not yet given the Magistrate the dairauddes that Pors had repeatedly told him to present at once. This realization stung and befuddled. His answering nod to the Deputy was awkward, without follow-through, and his attention to the little man disintegrated into the fragments of his broken pledge to Pors. Still, this was not the right time to remove the ceramic weapon and hand it to his host. . . .

  “Deputy Emahpre,” the Magistrate was saying, “is the most incorruptible and self-confident of my advisors.”

  This testimony failed to focus Seth’s concentration. He wanted to be free of the moment, but hoped, too, that Pors and Douin would not appear before he could hand over their bothersome gift. Günter Latimer had understood the mechanisms of such trifling protocol. So, perhaps, did Abel. But, for him, the demand on his patience was a minor horror. Hadn’t he accomplished the first phase of their mission without any such meaningless formality?

  “The most annoying thing about our relationship,” the Magistrate was saying, snapping his fingers, “is that Deputy Emahpre’s incorruptible thinking almost inevitably leads him to conclusions different from my own.”

  Emahpre politely demurred. “Not inevitably, Magistrate.”

  “But often. Quite often.”

  Although the Magistrate continued snapping his fingers banteringly, Seth slowly awoke to the fact that conflict as well as respect bound the two administrators. Wasn’t it true that Abel often laughed as he filtered a relationship of grudges? Apparently gosfi psychology permitted a similar tack among Tropiards.

  Seth was alert again. He wished to survive.

  He listened as the Magistrate explained to Deputy Emahpre what had just occurred between Seth and him. He listened as the Magistrate declared his intention to accompany Seth and the two Kieri envoys to Palija Kadi to speak with Duagahvi Gaidu’s Pledgechild about the proposed removal. And he listened as Emahpre, taken aback by this declaration, began expostulating with Vrai in their native tongue.

  “For our visitor’s sake,” the Magistrate interrupted his deputy, “I would prefer you to speak in Vox.”

  The Deputy glanced at Seth, as if surprised to find him still there, and then obeyed the Magistrate: “You needn’t go to Palija Kadi yourself,” he said more composedly. “The decision of the Pledgechild may be secured through me or some other intermediary, Magistrate. The danger to you is such that—”

  “I’ve decided to go, Deputy Emahpre.”

  “Why?” Emahpre asked.

  “It’s my word that determines in which direction Trope moves, and the Sh’gaidu are Tropiards—even if they sometimes seem to disown us, and we t
hem.”

  “Sometimes!” Emahpre said. “They reject both union with us and repatriation as enfranchised citizens.”

  “My responsibility requires that I go to them directly with this proposal, Deputy Emahpre. My position requires it.”

  Seth watched Emahpre strut away along a bank of consoles as if to regroup his wits. Even if he walked like a marionette, he was obviously far from being the Magistrate’s puppet.

  Jerking about and jabbing a finger at Vrai, he said, “Your word need not arrive in the Sh’gaidu basin in your own person in order to be implemented. If you’re killed there—”

  “I won’t be killed.”

  “If you’re killed there, Magistrate, you will have sacrificed yourself—the leader of Trope—not to state ends, but to private ones I’m totally unable to fathom.”

  Seth asked, “Are the Sh’gaidu prone to violence, then?”

  “Precisely the opposite,” Vrai said.

  “Precisely what they’re prone to is a matter of conjecture,” the Deputy rejoined. “Which is precisely why they remain under state surveillance.”

  The Magistrate approached his deputy with his hands spread, but halted an arm’s length away and dropped them to his sides. “Alone among our magistrates, I’ve dealt humanely with these people. Why should they wish to kill me? I don’t fear them, Deputy Emahpre, and I intend to go.”

  “Why?”

  To Seth the question had the ring of insubordination. The Magistrate, he saw, reacted almost as if he had been slapped, turning his face and then walking a step or two aside.

  Still, Vrai did not resort to Tropish: “I’ve come to my position”—a strange, gravid pause—“honestly, Deputy Emahpre, and I intend to fulfill its responsibilities to their most exacting letter. Tomorrow morning, I accompany our visitors to Palija Kadi. No more about this, please.”

  “Very well,” said Ehte Emahpre crisply. “But it’s my intention to go with you. Until the morning, then, Kahl Latimer.”

  He performed a bobbing bow and stuttered off into the open labyrinth of the J’beij.

  Outside, it was far colder than Seth recalled. The sky was a dolorous purple behind the massive red-brown planes of the buildings, and a wind came careering along the plateau from the northwest. Seth saw that their transcraft was no longer on the landing terrace. His heart misgave him, and he grasped the Magistrate’s sleeve.

  “We’ll go to Palija Kadi in a Tropish aircraft!” the Magistrate shouted in response to his unspoken query. “Yours has been towed away to clear the landing terrace for other vehicles!” He pointed to the east.

  Among the silver-strutted remotes on a distant landing field Seth saw the Dharmakaya’s transcraft. It was too big for the playmates it was grouped with, even though it looked alien-seeming and tiny because of the distance.

  Relieved, Seth shouted, “Where are we going?”

  “Our dormitory for state visitors! Your seconds are already there!”

  The dormitory on the eastern edge of Huru J’beij didn’t much resemble the J’beij itself. It was faceted like an enormous piece of garnet, with tall rectangular windows resembling the panels in the Magistrate’s command table. Following his host, Seth entered a foyer glassed about like an aquarium. He turned around to find that the sky was not discolored by the dormitory’s tinted windows. He could see out without hindrance, but no prying Tropiard could see in. Nor could the wind rattle the immense panes visoring the front of the dormitory.

  Anja, Trope’s mercurial sun, hovered above the J’beij. A deepening purple spread over everything as it descended beyond the acropolis.

  “Here,” Seth said, removing the dairauddes and handing it to Magistrate Vrai. “I’ve been remiss in failing to give this to you before now. Once it belonged to Lady Turshebsel. Her chief advisor among all the aisautseb, Narthaimnar Chappouib, placed it in my keeping the day before we left Gla Taus as a gift to you and an emblem of our cooperation in the endeavor ahead.” The phrasing was Pors’s, but Douin had rehearsed Seth in its delivery a hundred times.

  Magistrate Vrai accepted the dairauddes and turned it in his hands as if it were a flute and he an inexperienced musician.

  “Is it true, then,” he asked, “that the administrative head of Kier is perpetually sh’gosfi and that her shamans are exclusively male?”

  “The priests are men,” Seth replied, puzzled. “And Lady Turshebsel is of course a woman. Is that what your question means?”

  The Magistrate, without answering, hefted the dairauddes. He took a sighting through it as if it were an abbreviated telescope. He inserted his finger in the wider end. He tapped it in his palm. He blew, to no purpose, across the smaller end. He plugged the wider end with the tip of his thumb and again blew across the smaller opening, this time producing an ear-splitting whistle. He shook the dairauddes like an old-fashioned thermometer. He twirled it gently on its chain, as if it were a winding tool. He pointed it at Seth.

  “What is it?” he finally asked.

  “A dairauddes, Magistrate. That’s what the Kieri call it. A literal translation is—” Seth caught his breath. The Kieri had played a vicious trick on him. Or, if not the Kieri, then Chappouib and all the aisautseb. For an entire E-month he’d been carrying about with him, almost unquestioningly, a specimen of instrument that—in bloody orchestration with others like it—had slain his isosire. Was he buying his trip home in the coin of Kieri mockery?

  “Yes?” the Magistrate urged him.

  “A literal translation is demon killer, Magistrate Vrai.” He was too confused to weep, but the impetus was there somewhere, biding its time. “It’s a spiritual weapon, they say.”

  The Magistrate handed it back to Seth. “I’m sorry, Kahl Latimer, but the statutes of the Mwezahbe Legacy don’t permit me to accept such a gift. The Magistrate of Trope never goes armed.”

  “Not to carry, then, sir; to keep as a memento among your other possessions. As I say, this is a spiritual weapon.”

  Seth looked despairingly across the tablerock at the J’beij. Trope’s small, orchid-blue sun was balancing on the northern end of the building’s long entablature. The sky around it seemed to be in a state of lush, organic rot. To return to Pors without having presented the dairauddes . . .

  “But it’s wounded you, this weapon, hasn’t it?”

  “Magistrate?” Seth asked.

  “Never mind, Kahl Latimer. I can’t accept it, not even as a memento to put in a museum case. Not only does the Legacy forbid me the possession of weapons, it likewise prohibits me from collecting or wearing the products of superstition or religious ritual.” Vrai suddenly grasped the amulet hanging at his breast. “With one exception, that is, and by this we all acknowledge the ultimate mystery of origins.”

  Seth started to replace the dairauddes about his own neck.

  The Magistrate’s cool hand checked him. “No,” he said. “Wear this in its place.” Fumbling briefly at the chain, Vrai slipped the amulet over his head and placed it in Seth’s free hand. Then, gesturing, he urged Seth to don it, which the young isohet did bemusedly.

  —Being men of one mind, we may safely share what’s most important.

  Seth closed his eyes. He had registered the Magistrate’s cerebration as a series of piquant, encephalic pin pricks—even though he knew full well that the brain has no nerve endings.

  “Magistrate, what have you given me?”

  “This ornament we call dascra gosfi’mija. It means treasure of the birth-parent. I wish you to wear mine. Perhaps its bestowal will atone in some small way for the insult your seconds are likely to perceive in my refusal of their Liege Mistress’s spiritual weapon.”

  “I can’t speak for their possible response, Magistrate.”

  “Of course you can’t. In the meantime, wear this. I must have something from you in exchange—not the dairauddes—and you must agree to keep my gift with you at all times until your departure from Trope, when you must give it back into my keeping. Our exchange will betoken the bond betwe
en us during our mission to Palija Kadi. We are men of one mind.”

  Discomfited, Seth replied, “Magistrate, I don’t know what you mean when you say that. I don’t feel it as you seem to, and I believe you should know my confusion. What we have in common, I think, is a desire to settle our own private concerns through the Sh’gaidu. That’s all.”

  —I must have something in exchange, the Magistrate cerebrated sharply, as if Seth hadn’t even spoken.

  “But I—”

  “This will do, I think.” The Magistrate stepped forward and with quick fingers unclasped still another chain at Seth’s neck. Was he retrieving the amulet he’d just given? No, not that. Seth saw that clutched in Vrai’s right hand were the collapsible eye coverings that Abel had told him to wear on Trope.

  “But those are for the sun, Magistrate. I may require them tomorrow in the Sh’gaidu basin.”

  “If you do, we’ll provide you with anjajwedo—slit-goggles, you might say—like our own. Yours I must have in exchange for the amulet.” He put Seth’s goggles around his neck.

  The sky’s orchid rot had quickened to a kind of overarching bruise. Deeply melancholy, this hurt stained the entire twilight landscape.

  “I trust you, Kahl Latimer. I’m sensitive to emanations. I know you for a good man. Moreover, we have at least one thing else in common besides the Sh’gaidu.”

  Seth waited for clarification.

  “We each wish to go home,” the Magistrate cryptically obliged. “We each wish to go home.”

  SEVEN

  The first-floor “room” in which Douin and Pors had been lodged was in reality an elevated platform with a pair of papery screens for walls. Another side was open to a corridor, and the fourth and final wall was glass: a prodigious dormitory window that the Kieri envoys had opaqued by some subtle interior fine tuning. Bronze in color, this window shimmered against Trope’s mournful twilight.