The Man of Gold

by M. A. R. Barker

  “I see, I see. My thanks for having unriddled the matter so clearly, wise priest. Henceforth I shall join you for meals, and you shall enlighten me further in questions of ethics and theology, areas in which I lamentably lack instruction.”

  The Lady Eyil clapped her hands, and Harsan had a fleeting glimpse of slender wrists encircled by golden bangles. One of the attendants rose—the woman Tsatla—and bowed Harsan back to his sleeping mat beside the greying coals of the cook-fire.

  All night long he kept seeing images of lithe wrists, tapering fingers, and narrow gold bangles.

  Thereafter the Lady Eyil graced their meals. Attired in a voluminous overcloak of blue Giidru-cloth, she sat demurely to one side of the circle, gruff and silent Tsatla ever just behind her. (As one of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers put it: “Like the demon Tusu’u, who hovers ever at the shoulder of the Goddess Dlamelish...”) Lady Eyil took little part in their conversations but listened with apparent interest to their recountings of profits and losses, goods and caravans, cities and peoples. She was unfailingly courteous, using the “you of perfect piety” to Harsan, as was fitting for a priest much more learned than he, and the “you of pleasant dealings” to the merchants, even including the Shen, upon whom such niceties may well have been lost. The thirty-four pronouns for “you” of the Tsolyani language made the maintenance of such social distinctions easy.

  None could dispute that the Lady Eyil was a Tumissan. She had the heart-shaped face, pointed chin, wide and mobile mouth, and long, heavy-lashed eyes of the women of the west. She was as long-legged and lithe as Harsan himself, small-breasted, and perhaps a trifle narrow through the hips for Tsolyani tastes. Her mane of black hair often escaped the confines of her cloak, and she restrained it with a headband of blue, proclaiming her allegiance to the goddess Avanthe.

  Day pursued day across the hot, fertile plains of the Tsolyani heartland. Harsan walked more and more beside the litter of the Lady Eyil, or, better yet, tramped with her upon the grey river of the Sakbe road. Their discussions grew ever longer. She knew little of theology and the arts Harsan had been taught in the Monastery of the Sapient Eye, but she bubbled like a cookpot with the doings of the clans and lower nobility of Tumissa.

  Harsan was intrigued. He was no stranger to women. The monastery contained both male and female clerics and acolytes, and there was no objection to friendly couplings, experimentation, or to marriage. Yet most of the girls of his experience had been fellow students involved in the same studies and pursuits, or else had been the village girls of the Chakas, unlettered, earthy, and quite unabashed before the mysteries of sexuality. Here, however, was a girl who cut her meat daintily with a tiny knife, who never put more than the first knuckles of her right hand into her food, who quoted romantic verses gleaned from the ladies of the governor’s court, and who chattered of etiquette and formalities as alien to Harsan as the sun is to the black depths of the sea.

  At times she asked Harsan questions which betrayed her ignorance of even the most fundamental matters of knowledge and religion. This unsettled him somewhat. Was her religious training then no more than a veneer? What was education in the Empire coming to? He put it down to the well-known apathy to abstract wisdom prevalent amongst the better clans and the aristocracy and answered her questions as simply and faithfully as he could.

  “Priest Harsan,” she asked one day, “in our great temple of Avanthe at Tumissa there are shrines to many of the Goddess’ Greater Aspects: Sunrudaya the Young Bride, Ngachani the Patroness of Mothers With Babes, and a score of others. Why is it that the Goddess appears in so many forms if She is but one person? Once, when I was a child, I asked our clan’s house-priest, but he replied with such weighty words that I understood him not.”

  “My Lady, it is because your Goddess holds sway over all that concerns women in their relation to society,” he replied. “She is the newborn baby girl, the innocent who suffers the first coming of the blood, the maiden in the ecstasy of love, the new-married girl who goes in to her husband for the first time, the wife, the mother, the sister, and finally the clan-mother wise in years and great in honour in her household. Avanthe is all of these and more: the fertility of the crops, the forces of nature, the creatures of the forests, the fish of the rivers. We who are unable to conceive of her oneness all at once can perceive her better through her diversity.”

  “Then what of Dilinala, her Cohort? Is she not ‘woman’ as well?”

  “Yes, but in different spheres. Dilinala does not participate in home, children, and clan. She is ever-virginal, ever-chaste, celibate, free from the eternal duality of woman and man. She is woman focussed inward upon herself. She is separate from Avanthe, yet a part of the whole.”

  “I am not intrigued by Dilinala.” Lady Eyil pushed back her thick, heavy tresses, a pleasingly feminine gesture that Harsan did not fail to note. “Further, then, if Avanthe and Dilinala make up ‘woman,’ tell me what functions are served by the Goddess Dlamelish and her Cohort, Hrihayal?”

  “My Lady, these are not of the illumined side but of the dark. Just as a silver mirror held to the sun blazes and reflects its light, so is the back of it in shadow. Dlamelish is woman as wanton, as destroyer, as the violence of the female soul; just as the Fire Lord, Vimuhla, signifies the cruelty and ferocity that dwell within the heart of a man. Dlamelish is woman as a selfish individual; Avanthe is woman as a builder of society and the smooth running of the cycles of life and of the world. So does Lord Karakan, the Brave God of Noble War, oppose Lord Vimuhla. Both stand for violence, but Lord Karakan represents violence in the cause of stability and the preservation of order; fighting for one’s home, for the Imperium, for the doing of noble actions and the establishment of glory ...”

  “And Hrihayal?”

  “She governs only lust, sensuality with no purpose beyond hedonism, the gratification of the body with no thought of what is beyond. All these things exist in every soul. If the balance tilts one way, then that person devotes herself to Avanthe or to Dilinala. If it tips the other, then she serves Dlamelish or Hrihayal.”

  “If these Goddesses are all ‘woman’ in some form or other, how and why, then, do men—priests and clansmen—serve them?” “Why, Avanthe requires both male and female for procreation and for the operation of the natural order of things. Dlamelish and Hrihayal appeal to the more lustful side of a man just as to a woman, and some of their Greater Aspects are said to be male—-I know little of their doctrines. As for Dilinala, she is indeed solely the patroness of females, and her hierarchy admits no males.”

  She gave him an arch look. “If all these qualities are found in some measure or another in every woman—and in men as well— then why not argue that all four of the Goddesses are naught but Greater Aspects of just one goddess? Nay, say even that Karakan and Vimuhla and all the rest are parts of one supreme godhead as well? Just as the front and the back of a mirror are only parts of the same object? La, priest Harsan, see how I have just reduced all the Gods and Goddesses of Tsolyanu to just one! What a saving on temples and priests!”

  Shock tumbled over horror to Harsan’s lips. “Lady Eyil, this is the gist of the Heresy of Chu’inur, discredited and refuted now for over three thousand years! The great Priest Pavar, who discovered the existence of our twenty deities—and who, it is recorded, spoke to them as I now speak to you—unequivocally states that these entities are separate and distinct beings. The Scrolls of Pavar—’ ’

  She did not let him finish but was off on another tack. “I have often wondered how it would be to serve Dlamelish or Hrihayal. I have seen the spring rites of our Lady Avanthe, and they are... very frank. But must the sensuality condoned by our Goddess always end in some dullard clan-cousin’s bed? A brood of brats for a husband who has other wives, and whose interests lie not in me but in his male pursuits: his friends, his enemies, his plots, his status, and his post-in some petty bureaucratic hierarchy?’ ’

  Harsan strove for an answer. At length he said, “My Lady— one ma
y serve the body and its lusts for perhaps a score of years. Yet what thereafter? Once beauty is fled, the priestess of Dlamelish or Hrihayal has naught to comfort her old age but her empty rituals—and an emptier bed. The clan-mother, on the other hand, is honoured by her children and those of her clan-sisters, and her last years are peaceful and secure.”

  Eyil made a face. “Many of the priestesses of Dlamelish and Hrihayal declare themselves Aridani. Under the law a woman may thus pronounce herself independent of clan and family strictures and enjoy the same legal status as a man. Though she retains her clan, she cannot be married off, as you see happening to me. Nor can she be commanded and cozened by her husband or her clan-elders. She may become a priestess, an administrator, even a warrior, as she wills. I have met one such: the Lady Aveya hiBurutla of the Clan of the Jade Diadem. In her youth she served Lady Dlamelish and became an Aridani. Later, through certain of her lovers, she obtained a post at the governor’s court, and now she is Magistrate of the Markets in the Palace of the Realm in Tumissa. She has five husbands and a score of slave lovers as well. What, then, of that life?”

  Harsan had regained his composure. Surely the girl was mischievously testing him. He said, “If she is satisfied, then she is blessed. But to give up the security of clan and husband is assuredly a hard step. And those who do often seem hard and uncompromising, different from other women, and yet not men. You do not seem such a person.” Two could play at word-games!

  “Oh, Harsan, you do not know me yet! I am serious! If I were an Aridani and held an Imperial or temple post, I could support husbands and do as I pleased!—Or perchance I could serve in the army. Are not my breasts small enough to squeeze within a soldier’s breastplate?”

  Harsan saw the perils of this question and struggled to change the topic. “There are many paths, and who are we to speak ill of the life-skeins of others? We of the Temple of Thumis see knowledge as the surest road to an understanding of existence. All things have purpose, and all help to maintain the balance beloved of our Lords of Stability ...”

  She would not be diverted and went on. “You are perhaps right about me. It would be difficult to become an Aridani and abandon the solace of my clanspeople. Yet the idea of becoming the bride of a man I have never seen, and whom I hear is thrice my age—and who probably has other wives and stinks of the cloying Puru-oil so dear to those of Bey Sii—!” She stopped, leaned upon the coping of the parapet, and turned to face him. “Oh, Harsan, I am not at all eager to follow my own Skein of Destiny. I long for my home and my own people. Already I am well into the age of marriage—I am almost eighteen summers— but yet I cannot take cheer from these pretty songs you sing me of family, children, household chores, and a-—a—a boring old age.”

  She appeared to be upon the verge of tears, and Harsan knew not how to console her. In an effort to distract her he began to describe his own strange childhood, at first haltingly, and then pouring out the story in a rush of words: his life with the Pe Choi, his loneliness and the bitter sense of loss and betrayal when gentle T’kek took him to the Monastery of the Sapient Eye, his misery in those surroundings, his boyhood friendship with Zaren, his slowly burgeoning confidence among his new human comrades, his pride in his model of the Llyani language, then the sudden wrenching separation of this mission—as grievous as hers, he thought—and over all else his yearning for a clan and the security of knowledge of his origins, more precious in Tsolyani society than gold and lands and slaves.

  When he had done, she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Then she wept indeed, and all he could think of to comfort her was to put an arm around her shoulders and to try, quite inexpertly, to stroke her hair.

  The brazen yellow afternoon had distilled itself into the ale-coloured twilight of midsummer before Tsatla finally found her charge, lagging far behind the caravan, hand in hand with the young priest and uncaring of the amused stares of peasant workmen and other passersby.

  Tsatla was properly irate, Lady Eyil appropriately contrite. Harsan, however, heard Tsatla’s acrid remonstrances no more than a boulder hears the rippling of the stream. Nor did he heed the banter of his companions at dinner that night—nor, for that matter, for many days thereafter.

  Chapter Seven

  The four hundred-odd Tsan from Tumissa to Katalal took them nearly twenty days. It was now the month of Langala, the first month of summer and the fourth of the Tsolyani year. Next would come Fesru, then Drenggar, and after that dread Firasul, “when the earth melts, and the air itself is aflame.” Mnesun hoped to reach Bey Sii before the first day of Drenggar, and in this he was abetted by Bejjeksa and the two Mu’ugalavyani, who planned to hurry on eastward to spend the hottest part of the year in Sokatis in the cooler Chaigari foothills.

  They thus took to travelling in the dim hours just before dawn, then resting in an unoccupied guard tower or in the shade of the great roadway itself while the sun blazoned its golden brand upon the fields. In the evening they moved on again until it grew too dark to see one’s footing. At first Mnesun marched whenever there was light from both the moons, but after a slave, confused by the double red and green shadows, slipped and went asprawl, breaking most of his load of glassware—a loss of seven hundred Kaitars—he resigned himself to a slower pace.

  At last Katalal lay before them, a splash of green upon a dust-yellow canvas. Its ornate gables, peaked roofs, and pyramided temples rose above a tiny blue lake, fed from an underground spring that nourished not only the city but also long avenues of Gapul-txees beyond the red-and-black-chequered walls. Katalal was justly famed for its roof gardens. As in many of the cities of the plains, it was customary to cultivate cool grottoes of exotic foliage in urns upon the flat roof of one’s house. From a distance, thus, Katalal looked like nothing more than some great jungle ruin, all overgrown with vines, creepers, shrubs, and garish flowers. In the midst of the city the governor’s palace shimmered pearl-white above the lake, and just beyond the temples of Vimuhla and Karakan faced one another across the square like two behemoths before a wrestling match. Here many folk espoused the faith of the Fire God and of his Cohort Chiteng, He of the Red-Spouting Flame. The Lords of Stability, too, had their shrines in Katalal, but of these only warlike Karakan and his Cohort Chegarra were popular.

  For all their militant gods, the people of Katalal seemed singularly peaceable. They wore knee-length kilts of red and black chequers and stripes, flat wide-brimmed hats of enameled Chlen-hide, and short cloaks of gauzy Thesun-cloth. This, Harsan was told, was woven from the silk of the Dnelu, a fierce six-legged insect-like creature half the size of a man. These predators built underground dens from whence they leaped out upon smaller game and occasionally even upon unwary humans. The eggs of the Dnelu came wrapped in skull-sized cocoons of flossy grey fibre, and the braver youths of the city vied with one another in provoking the creatures into an attack while others stole their eggs.

  The folk of Katalal were less receptive to a priest of Thumis than those of the Chakas, but Harsan found his way without difficulty to the unpretentious temple of his sect in a side street off the main plaza. Here his writ again got him food and lodging. That evening he carefully cut the stitching of his grey robe and brought forth the three gold Kaitars which Prior Haringgashte had advanced him. He then undid his bedroll and contemplated the farseeing device given him by Zaren. There were also his notes on the Llyani language, a painstakingly copied manuscript of the Llyani grammar of Tlu’en of Ssa’atis, and two leaves bearing reproductions of the glyphs upon Kurrune’s map symbol and the waxen hand. He kept the money out, but the rest he bound up in the roll once more.

  In the morning he found a merchant in the marketplace and surrendered half of a precious Kaitar for a delicate blue faience amulet of the Goddess Avanthe in her Aspect of Tahele, the Maid of Beauty. When Mnesun’s caravan set forth again on the following day he chose an occasion and presented this to the Lady Eyil. She received it with pleasure and kissed him for it, but she did not wear it much thereafter, mu
ch to his hidden disappointment.

  Now Harsan walked regularly with the Lady Eyil. Bejjeksa, the Salarvyani trader, made a wager with the Shen that Harsan would abandon his sleeping mat near the fire for another and more enticing bed before they reached Katalal. In this he was the loser, and he paid up with ill grace, muttering about inexperienced boys who could not see when a warm female bosom yearned to receive them.

  The Lady Eyil continued to plague Harsan with arguments about theology, but now more of her queries were purely personal, as was the way of a girl attended by an earnest suitor in Tsolyanu— and probably other lands as well.

  Her feet, she complained, hurt her and were a misfortune: “big enough to thresh out all the crops in the Empire in the harvest dances.” Harsan gazed upon the supple limb extended for his inspection and demurred strongly.

  The Lady Eyil smiled.

  The following day she said, “Harsan, think you that my eyes are too large for my face?” Harsan did not and said so volubly.

  Still later, she said, “My clan-sisters say my breasts are really too small for my height.” Harsan, who even now had one of these criticised objects pressed warmly against his side as they walked, disagreed.

  The next evening, after Tsatla had been summarily dismissed into a silently protesting huddle on the far side of the litter, the Lady Eyil used the “thou of heart’s desire,” as befitted the occasion, and whispered, “Harsan, think you my knees are too close together to accord with the Twenty-seventh Criterion of Beauty enjoined by my Goddess?” Harsan had never heard of these standards, but he knelt now looking down at the delicious length of her within the shadowed litter, and he gladly would have sung an ode to her knees or to any other part she cared to name, if only he had had even a smidgin of versifying. He berated himself for having studied ancient epics instead of love sonnets.