The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  On his left, as he faced the audience, rose the great statue of Yesht, standing on four legs in the form of tree-trunks, wearing a mountain on his head and holding a city on one of his six outstretched hands and a forest on another. The remaining hands held other objects: one a sword, others things less easily identified.

  Past the pulpit Fallon could see the altar between the statue and the congregation. He observed with some shock that the hierarchs were shackling the forest female prone upon the altar by golden fetters attached to her wrists and ankles.

  Beyond the altar, he now noticed, there stood a brawny Krishnan with his head concealed by a black cloth bag with eye holes. This Krishnan was setting up and heating an assortment of instruments whose purpose was obvious.

  Fallon heard Fredro’s appalled whisper: “Is going to be tortures?”

  Fallon lifted his shoulders in a suggestion of a shrug. The chanting ceased and the most gaudily bedecked hierarch climbed the steps to the pulpit. From somewhere nearby Fallon heard a whisper in Balhibouu, “What ails the third-grade section this Rite? They’re so crowded one would think there was an extra man among ’em . . .”

  Another whisper shushed the complainant, and the head hierarch began to speak.

  The beginning of the service was not very different from those of some of the major Terran religions: prayers in Varastou; hymns, announcements, and so on. Fallon fidgeted, shifted his feet, and tried not to scratch. During the silences, the little whimpering moans of the forest female were heard. The hierarchs bowed to each other and to the statue, and handed symbolic objects back and forth.

  Finally the chief hierarch ascended the pulpit again. The congregation became very quiet, so that Fallon felt that the climax was not far off.

  The hierarch began in modern Balhibouu: “Listen, my children, to the story of the god Yesht where he became a man. And watch, as we act out this tale, that you shall always be reminded of these sad events and shall carry the image of them engraven upon your liver.

  “It was on the banks of the Zigros River that the god Yesht first came in unto and took possession of the body of the boy Kharaj as the latter played and sported with his companions. And when the spirit of Yesht had taken possession of the body of Kharaj, the body spake thus: ‘O my playfellows, harken and obey. For I am no longer a boy, but a god, and I bring you word of the will of the gods . . .’ ”

  During this narrative, the other hierarchs went through a pantomime illustrating the acts of Yesht-Kharaj. When the high priest told how one of the boys had refused to accept the word of Yesht and mocked Kharaj, and the latter had pointed a finger at him and he fell dead, a gaudily clad priest fell down with a convincing thump. The pantomime became grimmer when the high priest came to the story of the youth of Kharaj, and how he had used his six wives; for at this point the man with the bag over his head proceeded to demonstrate upon the forest female just what Kharaj had done and how he had done it.

  At long last, the high priest came to his climax: the story of the imprisonment and torture of Yesht-Kharaj on the orders of his own son. This time the masked one took the part of King Myandé’s torturers, with the forest female as Yesht-Kharaj.

  Anthony Fallon was not a man of high character. But though he had been responsible for a certain amount of death and destruction on his own account in the course of his adventures, he was not wantonly cruel. He liked Krishnans on the whole—except for this sadistic streak which, though usually kept out of sight, came to the surface in such manifestations as this torture sermon.

  Now, though he tried to retain his attitude of cynical detachment, Fallon found himself grinding his teeth and driving his nails into his palms. He would cheerfully have blown up the Safq and everybody in it, as the obnoxious Wagner had suggested. Had Mjipa’s missing Earthmen ended up on this bloody slab, too? Fallon, who did not much like the Bákhites either, had long discounted their accusations against the Yeshtites, attributing them to mere commercial rivalry. But now it transpired that the priests of Bákh had known whereof they spoke.

  “Steady,” he whispered to Fredro. “We’re supposed to enjoy this.”

  The smell of burning flesh made Fallon cough. The screams kept on and on; it seemed incredible that any higher organism could be used in this manner and still live. But at last the sounds diminished little by little and then ceased.

  The high priest called for another hymn, during which a collection was taken up. Then, after prayers and benedictions, the high priest came down from his pulpit and led the priests, chanting, down the aisle along the route that they had entered. When Fallon and Fredro, marching with the sacerdotal procession, passed back into the robing hall, Fallon heard the general scurry of feet as the congregation departed out the main entrance, where the clink of coin told that another collection was being taken up. Watching the authentic priests, Fallon tossed his cape on the counter and strolled off with Fredro, still shaken by what he had witnessed.

  The unexplained noises now came to Fallon’s ears again more clearly, since there was no more singing and haranguing to drown them out. The other priests were either standing about in groups and talking, or drifting off about their own affairs. Fallon jerked his head toward the corridor that ran around the outer wall of the building.

  Fallon and Fredro walked along this curving hallway. Above the level of the doorways on the left ran a series of inscriptions, at the sight of which Fredro became excited.

  “Maybe in pre-Kalwm languages,” he whispered. “Some of those I can decipher. Must stop to copy . . .”

  “Not tonight you shan’t!” hissed Fallon. “Can’t you imagine what these blokes would think if they saw you doing that? If they caught us, they’d use us at the next Full Rite.”

  Some of the doors to the left were open, revealing the interiors of miscellaneous chambers used for storing records and transacting sacerdotal business. From one door came the smell of cookery.

  Fallon could discern as he walked that the walls of the structure were of enormous thickness, so that the passages and rooms were more like burrows in a solid mass than compartments separated by partitions.

  Nobody had yet stopped or spoken to the Earthmen as they rounded the gentle curve of the hall to the stair that Fallon was looking for. The noises came more loudly here. The stair took up only half the corridor; priests went up and down it.

  Fallon walked briskly up the stair to the next level. This proved to be that on which the hierarchy had its living and sleeping quarters. The Earthmen snooped briefly about. In a recreation room, Fallon recognized the high priest, his gorgeous vestments replaced by a plain black robe, sitting in an armchair, smoking a big cigar and reading the sporting page of the Rashm. The mysterious noises seemed fainter on this story.

  Fallon led Fredro back down the stairs and started along the corridor again. Underneath the upgoing stair was the entrance to another stairway going down. At least so Fallon inferred, though he could not see through the massive iron door that closed the aperture. In front of this door stood a Krishnan in the uniform of a Civic Guard of Zanid; he held a halberd.

  And Anthony Fallon recognized Girej, the Yeshtite whom he had arrested for brawling two nights previously.

  XV

  For three seconds, Fallon stared at the armed Krishnan. Then the gambler’s instinct that had brought him such signal successes—and shattering failures—in the past prompted him to go up to the guard and say, “Hello there, Girej!”

  “Hail, reverend sir,” said Girej with a questioning note in his voice.

  Fallon raised his head so that his face was visible under the cowl. “I’ve come to collect on your promise.”

  Girej peered at Fallon’s face and rubbed his chin. “I—I should know you, sir. Your face is familiar; I’ll swear by the virility of Yesht that I’ve seen you, but . . .

  “Remember the Earthman who saved you from being run through by the Krishnan Scientist?”

  “Oh! Ye mean ye be really not . . .”

  “Exactly
. You won’t give us away, will you?”

  The guard looked troubled. “But how—what—this is sacrilege, sirs! ’Twould mean my . . .”

  “Oh, come on! You don’t mind playing a bit of a joke on those pompous hierarchs, do you?”

  “A jest? In the holy temple?”

  “Certainly. I’ve made a bet of a thousand karda that I could get into and out of the crypt of the Safq with a whole skin. Naturally I shall need some corroboration that I’ve done so—so there’s one-tenth of that in it for you in return for your testifying that you saw me here.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what? I’m not asking you to do anything irreligious. I’m not even offering you a bribe. Merely an honest fee for telling the truth when asked. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, good my sirs . . .” began Girej.

  “And have you never wished to prick the pretensions of these conceited hierarchs? Even if Yesht is a great god, those who serve him are merely human like the rest of us, aren’t they?”

  “So I ween . . .”

  “And didn’t you promise me help when I needed it?”

  This went on for some time; but few, Terran or Krishnan, could long resist Fallon’s importunities when he chose to turn on the charm.

  At last, when Fallon had raised the ante to a quarter of his winnings, the bewildered Girej gave in, saying, “ ’Tis now near the end of the fourteenth hour, my masters. See that ye return ere the end of the fifteenth, for at that time my watch doth end. If ye do not, ye must needs wait until noon of the morrow, when I come on again.”

  “You stand ten-hour watches?” said Fallon, cocking a sympathetic eyebrow. As Krishnans divided their long day into twenty hours beginning at dawn (or, more accurately, halfway from midnight to noon) this would mean a watch of considerably more than twelve Terran hours.

  “Nay,” said Girej. “I have the night trick but once in five nights, trading back and forth with my mates. Tomorrow I’m on from the sixth through the tenth.”

  “We’ll watch it,” said Fallon.

  The Krishnan leaned his halberd against the wall to open the door. This door, like many on Krishna, had a crude locking mechanism consisting of a sliding bolt on both sides, and a large keyhole above each bolt, by means of which this bolt could be worked by a key thrust through from the other side. The bolt on the near side was in the home position, while that on the far side was withdrawn, and a large key stood idle in the keyhole giving access to the latter bolt.

  Girej grasped the handle of the near bolt and snapped it back, then pulled on the fixed iron door handle. The door opened with a faint groan. Fallon and Fredro slipped through. The door clanged shut behind them.

  Fallon noticed that the mysterious sound now came much more loudly, as from a source just out of sight. He identified these sounds as those of a metal works. He led his companion down the long, dim-lit flight of stairs into the crypt, wondering if he would ever succeed in getting out.

  Fredro mumbled, “What if he gives us away to priests?”

  “I should like the answer to that one, too,” said Fallon. “Luck’s been with us so far.”

  “Maybe I should not have insisted on coming. Is bad place.”

  “A fine time to change your so-called mind! Straighten up and walk as if you owned the place, and we may get away with it.” Fallon coughed as he got a lungful of the smoky atmosphere.

  At the bottom of the stairs a passage of low-ceilinged, rough-hewn rock ran straight ahead, with openings on both sides into a congeries of chambers whence came the growing clangor. Besides the yellow glow of the oil lamps in their wall brackets, the labyrinth was fitfully lit by scarlet beams from forges and furnaces, the crisscrossing red rays giving an effect like that of a suburb of Hell.

  Krishnans—mostly tailed Koloftuma of both sexes—moved through the murk, naked save for leather aprons, trundling carts of materials, carrying tools and buckets of water, and otherwise exerting themselves. Supervisors walked about.

  Here and there stood an armed Krishnan in the gear of one of Kir’s royal guard. Civic guards had replaced them only in the less sensitive posts. They shot keen looks at Fallon and Fredro, but did not stop them.

  As the Earthmen walked down the corridor, a plan transpired out of the confusion about them. On the right were rooms in which iron ore was smelted down into pigs. These pigs were wheeled across a corridor to other rooms in which they were remelted and cast into smaller bars, which were turned over to smiths. The smith hammered the bars out into flat strips, beat them into rolls around iron mandrels, finally welded them into tubes.

  As the Earthmen passed room after room, it became obvious what this establishment was up to. Fallon guessed the truth before they came to the chamber in which the parts were assembled. “Muskets!” he murmured. “Smoothbore muskets!”

  He stopped at a rack, wherein a dozen or so of the firearms stood, and picked one out.

  “How to shoot?” asked Fredro. “I see no trigger or lock.”

  “Here’s a firing pan. I suppose you could touch it off with cigar lighter. I knew this would happen sooner or later! It just missed happening when I tried to smuggle in machine guns. The I.C. will never put this cat back in the bag!”

  Fredro said: “Do you think some Earthmen did this, having—ah—having got around hypnotic treatment, or that Krishnans invented them independently?”

  Fallon shrugged and replaced the musket. “Heavy damned things. I don’t know, but—I say, I think I can find out!”

  They were standing in the assembly room, where a couple of workmen were fitting carved wooden stocks to the barrels. On the other side of the room three Krishnans were conversing about some production problem: two men with the look of overseers, and one small elderly Krishnan with bushy jadepale hair and a long gown of foreign cut.

  Fallon strolled over toward these three, timing his approach to arrive just as the two foremen went their ways. He touched the sleeve of the long-haired one. “Well, Master Sainian,” he said. “How did you get involved in this?”

  The elderly Krishnan turned toward Fallon. “Aye, reverend sir? You queried me?”

  Fallon remembered that Sainian was a little hard of hearing, and it would not do to shout private business at him in public. “To your private chamber, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, aye. Hither, sirs.”

  The senior Krishnan led them through the tangle of rooms and passages to a section devoted to sleeping accommodations: dormitories for the workers, crudely furnished with heaps of straw now occupied by snoring and odorous Koloftuma of the off shift—and individual rooms for officials.

  Sainian led the Earthmen into one of the latter, furnished austerely but not uncomfortably. While there was no art or grace to this cubicle, a comfortable bed and armchair, a heap of books, and a plentiful supply of cigars and falat-wine were in evidence.

  Fallon introduced the two savants in languages that each understood, then said to Fredro, “You won’t be able to follow our conversation much, anyway. So if you don’t mind, stand outside the door until we’re finished, will you? Warn us if anybody starts to come in.”

  Fredro groused but went. Fallon closed the door and pushed back his hood, saying, “Know me now, eh?”

  “Nay, sir, that I do not . . . but stay! Are you verily a Krishnan or a Terran? You look like one of the latter disguised as the former . . .”

  “You’re getting close. Remember Hershid, four years ago?”

  “By the superagency of the universe!” cried Sainian. “You’re that Earthman, Antané bad-Faln, sometime Dour of Zamba!”

  “I say, not so loud!” said Fallon. Sainian, because of his infirmity, had a tendency to bellow an ordinary conversation.

  “Well, what in the name of all the nonexistent devils do you here?” said Sainian in a lower voice. “Have you truly become a priest of Yesht? Never did you strike me as one who’d willingly submit to any cult’s drug-dreams.”

  “I shall come to that. First,
tell me: are you down in this hole permanently, or can you come and go at will?”

  “Ha! Then you cannot be an authentic priest, or you would know without the asking.”

  “Oh, I know you’re clever. But answer my question.”

  “As to that,” said Sainian, lighting a cigar and pushing the box toward Fallon, “I am as free as an aqebat—in one of the cages in King Kir’s zoo. I come and go as I please—as does a tree in the royal gardens. In short, I roam this small kingdom of the cellar of the Safq without let or hindrance. But so much as a motion toward escape is worth a pike in my chauldron, or a bolt in my back.”

  “Do you like that state of affairs?”

  “ ’Tis a relative matter, sir. To say I like this gloomy crypt as well as the opulent court of Hershid were tampering with the truth. To say I mislike it as ill as being flayed and broiled like one of those wretches the Yeshtites employ in their major services were less than utter verity.

  Relativity, you see. As I have ever maintained, such terms as ‘like’ are meaningless in any absolute sense. One must know what one likes better than . . .”

  “Please!” Fallon, who knew his Krishnan, held up a hand. “Then I can count on you not to give me away?”

  “Then it is some jape or masque, as I suspected! Fear not; your enterprises are nought to me, who tries to look upon the world with serene philosophical detachment. Albeit such traps as this wherein I presently find myself do betimes render difficult that worthy enterprise. Did a chance present itself of dropping demented Kir into some convenient cesspool, I think mundane resentment would overcome the loftiest . . .”

  “Yes, yes. But how did you get caught?”

  “First, good sir, tell me what do you do in this cursed mew? Not mere idle curiosity, I trust?”

  “I’m after information. So . . .” Fallon, without going into the reason for wishing this information, briefly told of the methods by which he had penetrated the crypt.

  “By Myandé the Execrable! Hereafter I shall believe all tales I hear of the madness of Terrans. You had perhaps one chance in the hundred of getting this far without apprehension.”