The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Fallon had heard a rumor that a plan to substitute the more efficient bitumen lamps for these cressets had been blocked by a magnate who sold firewood to Zanid.

  Now and then, Fallon and his “men” halted as sounds from within the houses attracted their attention. But tonight, nothing illegal seemed to be in progress. One uproar was plainly that of a woman quarreling with her jagain; another racket was caused by a drunken party.

  At its east end, Ya’fal Street bent sharply before opening out into the Square of Qarar. As Fallon neared this bend, he became aware of a noise from the square. The squad increased its gait and burst around the corner to find a crowd of Krishnans about the Fountain of Qarar and others hurrying up.

  The Square of Qarar (or Garar to use the Balhibou form of the name) was not square at all, but an elongated irregular polygon. In one end lay the Fountain of Qarar, from the midst of which the statue of the Heracleian hero towered up in the moonlight over the heads of the crowd. The sculptor had portrayed Qarar as trampling on a monster, strangling another with one hand, and clutching one of his numerous lady-loves with his other arm. At the other end of the square rose the tomb of King Baladé, surmounted by a statue of the great king himself seated in a pensive attitude.

  Steel rang from the crowd’s interior, and the moons glinted briefly on blades appearing over the heads of the mass. From the crowd, Fallon caught an occasional phrase:

  “Spit the dirty Yeshtite!” ‘“Ware his riposte!” “Keep your guard up!”

  “Come on,” said Fallon, and the four guardsmen strode forward, bills ready.

  “The watch!” yelled a voice.

  With amazing celerity, the crowd disintegrated, the dueling fans running off in all directions to disappear into side streets and alleys.

  “Catch me some witnesses!” cried Fallon, and ran toward the focus of the disturbance.

  As the crowd opened out, he saw that two Krishnans were fighting with swords beside the fountain—the heavy, straight cut-and-thrust rapiers of the Varasto nations.

  Out of the corner of his eyes Fallon saw Qoné, one of his Krishnans, catch one runaway around the ankle with the hook of his bill and pounce upon his sprawling victim. Fallon himself bored in with the intention of beating down the fighters’ weapons.

  Before he arrived, however, one of the two—distracted by the interruption—glanced around and away from his antagonist.

  The latter instantly struck the first man’s sword a terrific beat and sent it spinning away across the cobbles. Then he bounded forward and brought his blade down upon the head of his antagonist.

  There goes one skull, thought Fallon. The Krishnan who had been struck fell backwards on the cobbles. His assailant stepped forward to run him through; the fatal thrust had started on its way when Fallon knocked the blade up.

  With a wordless cry of rage, the duelist turned upon Fallon. The latter was being forced back by a murderously reckless attack when Cisasa, the Osirian guardsman, caught the duelist around the waist from behind with his scaly arms and tossed the fellow into the fountain. Splash!

  Qoné appeared at this point, dragging his witness by a fetter which he had snapped around the Krishnan’s neck. As the dunked duelist rose like a sea-god from the waters of the fountain, Cisasa took hold of him again, hoisted him out of the water, and shook him until his belligerence subsided.

  “This one iss trunk,” hissed the Osirian.

  The remaining Krishnan guardsman appeared at this point, panting and displaying a jacket dangling from the hook of his bill. “Mine slipped from my grasp, I grieve to say.”

  Fallon was bending over the corpse on the cobbles, which presently groaned and sat up, clapping hands to its bloody head. Examination showed that the folds of the fellow’s stocking-turban had cushioned the blow and reduced its effect.

  Fallon hauled the wounded Krishnan to his feet, saying: “This one’s drunk, too. What does the witness say?”

  “I saw all!” cried the witness. “Why did ye trip me? I’d have come willingly. Always on the side of the law am I!”

  “I know,” said Fallon. “It was just an optical illusion that you were running away from us. Tell your story.”

  “Well, sir, the one with the cut head is a Yeshtite and the other an adherent of some new cult called Krishnan Science. They fell to disputing at Razjun’s Tavern, the Krishnan Scientist holding that all evil was nonexistent, and therefore the Safq and the temple of Yesht therein had no reality, nor did the worshippers of Yesht. Well, this Yeshtite took exception and challenged . . .”

  “He lies!” said the Yeshtite. “I spake no word of challenge, and did but defend myself against the villainous assault of this fap rascallion . . .”

  This “fap rascallion,” having coughed the water out of his windpipe, interrupted to shout: “Liar yourself! Who cast a mug of falat wine into my face? If that be no challenge . . .”

  “ ’Twas but a gentle proof of my reality, you son of Myandé the Execrable!” The Yeshtite, dark blood trickling down his face, blinked at Fallon and turned his wrath upon the Earthman. “A Terran creature giving commands to a loyal Balhibou in his own capital! Why go not you scrowles back to those enseamed planets whence you came? Why corrupt you our ancestral faiths with depraved, subversive heresies?”

  Fallon asked, “You three can take this theologian and his pal to the House of Judgment, can’t you?”

  “Aye,” said the Krishnan guards.

  “Then take them there. I shall meet you back at the armory in time for the second round.”

  “Why take me?” wailed the witness. “I’m but a decent law-abiding citizen. I can be summoned any time . . .”

  Fallon replied: “If you can identify yourself at the House of Judgment, they may let you go home.”

  Fallon watched the procession file out of the Square of Qarar, the chains of the prisoners jingling. He was glad that he did not have to go along. It was a good three-hoda hike, and the omnibus-coaches would have stopped running by now. Moreover he was glad of a chance to visit the Safq by himself. He could do so less conspicuously in his official capacity; and to be able to do so without his fellow guards was better yet. Luck seemed with him so far.

  Anthony Fallon shouldered his bill and set off eastward. When he had gone a few blocks, the apex of the Safq began to appear over the low roofs of the intervening houses. The structure, he knew, stood just inside the boundary separating the Juru from the Bácha district, in which lay nearly all the other temples of Zanid. Religion was the business of the Bácha, just as manufacturing was that of the Izandu.

  The Balhibou word safq means any of a family of small Krishnan invertebrates, some aquatic and some terrestrial. An ordinary land-safq looks something like a Terran snail, spiral shell and all, but instead of slithering along on a carpet of its own slime, it creeps upon a myriad of small legs.

  The Safq proper was an immense conical ziggurat of hand-fitted jadeite blocks, over a hundred and fifty meters high, with a spiral fluting in obvious imitation of the shell of a living safq. Its origin was lost in the endless corridors of Krishnan history. During the city-state period, following the overthrow of the Kalwm Empire by the then-barbarous Varastuma, the city of Zanid had grown up around the Safq, huddling against it until it could hardly be seen except at a distance. King Kir’s great predecessor, King Baladé, had cleared the buildings away from the monumental edifice and put a small park around it.

  Fallon entered this park and walked slowly around the huge circumference of the Safq, ears peeled and eyes probing the structure, as if by sheer will-power he could force his vision to penetrate the stone.

  It would take more than eyesight to do that, however. Various marauders had tried to bore into the structure during the last few millennia, but had been baffled by the hardness of the jadeite. As far back as historical records went, the priests of Yesht had held the Safq.

  Nor was the Safq the only building owned by the cult of Yesht; there were smaller temples in Lussar, Malmaj, and ot
her minor Balhibou cities. And beyond the little park to the east, across the boundary of the Bácha, Fallon could discern the onion-dome of the Chapel of Yesht. This was used for the minor services, to which the general public was admitted. Here were held classes for the instruction of prospective converts and other such activities. But the priests of Yesht allowed laymen into their major stronghold only on significant occasions, and then only tried and established members of the sect.

  Fallon came around to the entrance, corresponding to the opening of the shell of a living safq. The beams of Karrim showed the immense bronze doors which, it was rumored, turned upon ball bearings of jewels. They still showed the marks of the futile attack by the soldiers of Ruz, hundreds of Krishnan years before. To the left of these doors something white caught Fallon’s eye.

  He strode closer. No sound came from inside, until he put his ear against the chilly bronze of the portal. Then something did come to him: a faint thump or bang, rhythmically repeated, but too muted by distance and thicknesses of masonry for Fallon to tell whether it was the sound of a drum, a gong, or a beaten anvil. After a while it stopped, then began again.

  Fallon turned his attention from this puzzle—whose solution would no doubt transpire once he got inside the Safq—to the white thing, which comprised a number of sheets of native Krishnan paper tacked to the temple’s bulletin board with thorns of the qulaf-bush. Across the top of the board appeared the words DAKHT VA-YESHT ZANIDO. (Cathedral of Yesht in Zanid.) Fallon, though not very skilled in written Balhibou, managed to puzzle it out. The word “Yesht” was easy to pick out, for in the Balhibou print or book-hand characters it looked something like “OU62,” though it read from right to left.

  He strained his eyes at the sheets. The biggest said PROGRAM OF SERVICES; but despite the brightness of the double moonlight, he could not read the printing below it. (When he had been younger, he thought, he could have read it.) At last he took out his Krishnan cigar-lighter and snapped it into flame.

  Then Fallon leaned against the board, got out a small pad and pencil, and copied off the wording.

  IV

  When Anthony Fallon walked into the armory, Captain Kordaq was sitting at the record table—his crested helmet standing on the floor beside him and a pair of black-rimmed spectacles upon his nose—writing by lamplight. He was bringing the company rolls up to date, and looked up over the tops of his eyeglasses at Fallon. “Hail, Master Antané! Where’s your squad?”

  Fallon told him.

  “Good—most excellent, sir. A deed of dazzling dought, worthy of a very Qarar. Take your ease.” The captain picked up a jug and poured an extra cup of shurab: “Master Antané, be you not the jagain of Gazi er-Doukh?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Something you said.”

  “Why—do you know her, too?”

  Kordaq sighed. “Aye. In former times I aspired to that position myself. I burned with passion like a lake of lava, but ere aught could come of it, her only brother was slain and I lost touch with her. Might I impose upon your hospitality to the extent of renewing an old acquaintance someday?”

  “Surely, any time. Glad to have you around.”

  Fallon looked toward the door as his squad trailed in to report the prisoners, and witness duly delivered to the House of Justice. He said: “Rest your bones a minute, boys, before we start out again.”

  The squad sat around and drank shurab for a quarter-hour. Then another squad came in from its round, and Kordaq gave Fallon’s crew its orders for the next round: “Go out via Barfur Street, then head south along the boundary of the Dumu, for Chillan’s gang of rogues infests the eastern march of the Dumu . . .”

  The Dumu, southernmost district of Zanid, was notorious as the city’s principal thieves’ quarter. Those from other sections were loud in the accusation that the criminals must have corrupted that district’s watch to operate so freely. The Guard denied the charge, pleading that they were sadly undermanned.

  Fallon’s squad had turned off Barfur Street, and was heading along a stinking alley that zigzagged toward the district boundary, when a noise ahead made Fallon freeze in his tracks, then motion his squad forward with caution. Peering around a corner he saw a citizen backed against a wall by three characters. One covered the victim with a crossbow-pistol, another menaced him with a sword, and a third relieved him of purse and rings. The holdup had evidently just started.

  This was a rare chance. Ordinarily a squad of the Guard arrived on the spot to find only the victim—either dead on the cobbles, or alive and yammering about the city’s lawlessness.

  Knowing that if he rushed directly at the criminals, they would duck into houses and alleys before he could reach them, Fallon whispered to Cisasa: “Circle around this little block on our right and take them from the other side. Just come on at full speed. When we see you, we’ll jump them from here.”

  Cisasa faded away like a shadow. Fallon heard the slight click of the Isirian’s claws on the cobbles as the dinosaurian guard went like the wind. Cisasa, Fallon knew, could outrun two normal Earthmen or Krishnans; otherwise he would not have sent him. The holdup would have been over by the time a man could have circumambulated the block.

  The click-click of claws came again, louder, and Cisasa burst into view around a bend, heading for the miscreants with Jabberwockian strides. “Come on,” said Fallon.

  At the scud of feet, the robbers whirled. Fallon heard the snap of the pistol’s bowstring, but in the dimness he could not tell who had been shot at. There was no indication that the bolt had struck anybody.

  The robbers leaped for cover. Cisasa gave an enormous bound and came down with his birdlike feet on the back of the crossbowman, hurling him prone to the ground.

  The tall, thin robber with the sword, in a moment of confusion, ran toward Fallon, then skidded to a halt. Fallon thrust at the fellow with his bill, heard the clank of steel, and felt the jar down the shaft as the robber parried. Fallon’s two Krishnans ran past him after the fellow who had been frisking the victim, and who had bolted past Cisasa toward an alley.

  Fallon thrust and parried with his bill, pressing forward, but watching warily, lest his antagonist catch his bill-shaft with his free hand and then close in. By a fluke, he got a jab home on the fellow’s sword-arm. The sword clattered to the pavement and the man turned to run. Seeing that he would have little chance of catching this lanky scoundrel in a chase, Fallon hurled his bill javelinwise. The point of the weapon struck the fellow between the shoulders. The robber ran on a couple of steps with the bill sticking in his back, then faltered and fell.

  Fallon ran after him, drawing his own sword; but by the time he came up with the robber the latter was lying prone, coughing blood. The two Krishnans of the squad now reappeared from the alley into which they had chased the third thief, cursing the fellow for having given them the slip. They had recovered the citizen’s purse, which the robber had dropped, but not his rings, for which he loudly berated them for inefficiency.

  ###

  Roqir was rising redly over the rooftops of Zanid when Anthony Fallon and his squad returned to the armory from their final round. They stacked their bills back in the rack and lined up to receive the nominal pay that the municipal prefect paid to members of the Guard for watch-duty.

  “The stint’s adjourned. Forget not Fiveday’s drill,” said Kordaq, handing out quarter-kard silver pieces.

  “Something tells me,” murmured Fallon, “that a mysterious malady will lay our gallant company low the day before the drill.”

  “Qarar’s blood! It had better not! I shall hold you squad-leaders responsible for turning out your men.”

  “I’m not feeling too well myself, sir,” said Fallon with a grin as he pocketed the half-kard due his rank.

  “Saucy buffoon!” snorted Kordaq. “Why we tolerate your insolence I know not . . . But you’ll not forget that whereof I spoke earlier, friend Antané?”

  “No, no. I’ll make arrangements.” Fallon walked
off, waving a casual farewell to the other members of his squad.

  Fallon was, he supposed, foolish to spend one night out of every ten tramping the streets for a half-kard—pick-and-shovel wages. He was too self-willed and erratic to fit into a military machine, having considerable talent for command but little for obedience. And as a foreigner, he could hardly hope to rise to the top of the Balhibou tree.

  Yet here he was, wearing the brassard of the Civic Guard. Why? Because a uniform had an invincible if childish fascination for him. Trailing his bill around the dusty streets of Zanid gave him, if only fleetingly, the illusion of being a potential Alexander or Napoleon. And in his present state, his ego could use all of such support that it could get.

  Gazi was asleep when he plodded home, his tired brain picking at the knots of the Safq problem. She awoke as he slid into bed. “Wake me up at the end of the second hour,” he mumbled and fell asleep.

  Almost at once, it seemed to him, Gazi was shaking his shoulder and telling him to get up. He had had only about three Earthly hours’ sleep; but he still had to arise now to work in all the things that he meant to do this day. Knowing that he had to appear in court that afternoon, he shaved and put on his second-best suit, gulped a hasty meal, slouched out into the bright mid-morning sun, and set out for Tashin’s Inn.

  ###

  The A’vaz District ranged from plain slums, where it adjoined the Juru near the Baladé Gate, to slums sprinkled with studios as it abutted upon the artistic and theatrical Sahi to the north. Tashin’s, near the city wall on the west side of the A’vaz, was a rambling structure built (like most Balhibou houses) around a central court.

  This court was filled, this morning, with the histrionic characters who made up the inn’s regular clientele. A ropewalker had rigged up a rope stretching from one bit of architectural foofaraw diagonally across the court to another, and was slinking across, waving a parasol to keep his balance. A trio of tumblers were tossing one another about. On the other side of the inclosure a man rehearsed a tame gerka in its tricks. A singer practiced scales; an actor recited, with gestures.