The Clocks of Iraz

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  "On the' night of the full moon, the temple of Nubalyaga celebrates the wedding of Nubalyaga to Ughroluk, the god of the sun, of storms, and of war. The king plays the rdle of Ughroluk and the high priestess, that of Nubalyaga. Chaluish, the high priest of Ughroluk, and High Priestess Sahmet are nominally husband and wife, as required by their offices; but they have long been at bitter enmity, each trying to rape away some of the other's power. They fell out over the Prophecies of Salvation, a decade agone."

  "What prophecies were these?"

  "Oh, Sahmet announced that Nubalyaga had revealed to her in a dream that the salvation of Iraz depended on a barbarian savior from the North." Zerlik looked sharply at Jorian. "Would you qualify as a barbarian savior from the North?"

  "Me? By Astis' ivory teats, no! I'm no barbarian, and I have all I can do to save my own hide, let alone a city's. But the other prophecy?"

  "Well, not to be outdone, Chaluish proclaimed that all this about barbarian saviors was nonsense. His god Ughroluk had appeared to him in a trance and avouched that the salvation of Iraz depended on keeping the clocks in Kumashar's Tower running. And there things rest—albeit 'rest' is not the word I want, since the twain have continued to plot and intrigue against each other from that day to this."

  They sailed past the mouth of the Lyap, where scores of ships, large and small, lay at anchor. There were high-sided merchant galleons, smaller caracks and caravels, little coasters and fishermen, barges and wherries, and the long, low, lethal, black-hulled forms of war galleys. Preeminent among these were several huge catamarans, capable of carrying thousands of rowers, sailors, and marines in each twin-hulled ship. The sun gleamed on the gold-plated ornaments of the galleys. The Penembic flag, with a golden torch on a blue field, flew from their jacks taffs.

  "I shouldn't think Algarthian pirates would venture near Iraz, in the face of that fleet," said Jorian.

  Zerlik shrugged. "It is not, alas, so formidable as it looks."

  "Wherefore so?"

  "The costs of labor have been rising, so that His Majesty has been unable to afford full crews. And one of those monster double-hulled battleships, if its oars be not fully manned, is too slow and unwieldly to cope with pirates. There have in fact been several piracies within a few leagues of Iraz during the past year. Now there is talk of ships of black freebooters from Paalua, across the ocean, joining in the game. They once invaded Ir, did they not?"

  "Aye, and not so long past."

  The cries of sailormen came faintly across the water as some ships furled sails and were towed to their anchorages by tug-wherries. Others were towed out, broke out their sails, and put to sea.

  The Flying Fish sailed past the river mouth and reached the waterfront of Iraz proper. Here, ships pushed off from the piers and quays, while others sought places at them, with much shouting and cursing.

  Along the shore, wooden cranes slowly rotated and raised and lowered their loads, like long-necked water birds. They were powered by huge treadwheels, which in turn were manned by convicts. Behind them rose the sea wall guarding the city, and over the wall could be seen the domes and spires of Iraz. The hot sun flashed on roof plates of copper, or of copper plated with silver and gold. Beyond the city, on a ridge of higher ground, a row of windmills turned lazily in the gentle breeze.

  "Where should we dock?" asked Jorian.

  "I—I believe the fishing wharves are at the south end," said Zerlik.

  The Flying Fish passed the Tower of Kumashar, soaring up over a furlong. Halfway up, on all four sides, the circle of a clock face interrupted the sweep of the buff-colored masonry. The single hand of all four clocks showed the Hour of the Otter. Jorian took out a ring with a short length of fine chain, held it suspended, and turned it slowly against the sun. A pinhole in the upper part of the ring let a tiny shaft of light through to illumine the hours marked on the inner side of the lower half of the ring.

  "As I thought, 'tis past the Hour of the Turtle," said Jorian.

  "If that be designed for measuring times in Ir," said Zerlik, "you must needs correct it for the distance you have come southward."

  "I know that; but even with such a correction, 'tis plain that your clocks are out of order."

  "They have not run for months. Old Yiyim, the clockmaster, kept saying that he would get them fixed any day. At length His Majesty lost patience. Doctor Karadur had been pressing him to let him take over the task, and now the king told him to go ahead. So the good doctor requested His Majesty to dispatch me to fetch you to Iraz. And behold, here we are! Excuse me whilst I don more seemly garb."

  Zerlik vanished into the cabin, whence he presently emerged with a complete change of clothes. He wore a silken shirt with full sleeves and over it a short, embroidered, sleeveless vest. A knee-length pleated skirt clad his legs; slippers with turned-up toes, his feet. On his head sat the cylindrical, brimless, felt Irazi cap, like a small inverted bucket.

  "You had better don your more respectable raiment, also," he said. "Even though you disclaim the status of gentleman, it were well as a practical matter to look like one."

  "I daresay you're right," replied Jorian. In his turn, he got out his one decent suit of shirt, jacket, hose tights, and soft boots.

  "You are obviously a foreigner," said Zerlik, surveying him, "but that is no matter. Iraz is a cosmopolitan city, and the folk are used to exotic garb."

  The Flying Fish came abreast of the fishing wharves, where nets spread like gigantic bats from house to house to dry. Jorian guided the little ship to within a score of yards of the first empty quay, then hove to and lowered the sails.

  "Why sail we not right up to the mooring?" asked Zerlik. "It would make a better impression than laboring into shore by our oars, like a pair of base lumpers."

  "If I knew the ship and the waterfront better, I might. As it is, I might miscalculate. Then we should smash into the quay and damage our ship. That would make a far worse impression than rowing."

  As the Flying Fish touched gently against the quay, Jorian and Zerlik scrambled ashore and made fast to the bollards. While they were tying up, an official-looking person with brass buttons on his dark-blue vest and a short, curved sword at his side bustled up and spoke in Penembic. Zerlik answered. Although he could now make up a few simple sentences in the complex Penembic tongue, Jorian could not understand the language when spoken rapidly.

  "He is a deputy port inspector," said Zerlik as the man climbed aboard the Flying Fish. "He will collect the harbor tax and issue you a temporary pass. Then you must apply at the Bureau of Travel and Immigration for a permit as a resident alien."

  "Can we leave the ship tied up here?"

  "I do not believe we are supposed to leave it overnight, but for a small bribe I think I can arrange it. He will not make things difficult for one of my rank."

  "How shall I find Karadur?"

  "Oh, I will take care of that. Instead of lugging our gear to our quarters like navvies, let you remain with the ship, guarding it, whilst I go to inform Doctor Karadur of our arrival. He will send transportation suitable for persons of our quality."

  Jorian was not much taken with this plan, fearing being stranded in a strange city where he neither knew his way nor spoke the language. While he pondered his reply, the inspector sprang ashore again and chattered with Zerlik. Next, the inspector produced writing materials, including several small sheets of reed paper.

  "He wants your name and nationality," said Zerlik.

  With Zerlik translating, Jorian furnished the needed information,

  while the inspector filled in blanks on his form in duplicate. At last Jorian was asked to sign both copies.

  "Will you kindly read this to me?" he said. "I like not to sign my name to aught I can't read; and your Penembic script looks like a tangle of fishhooks."

  Zerlik translated the text: a statement of Jorian's identity, the purpose of his visit, and other elementary matters. At length he signed. The official handed him one copy and departed. Zerlik shout
ed across the waterfront street, and a donkey boy came running with his animal behind him.

  "Farewell for the nonce!" cried Zerlik, swinging aboard the ass. "Guard well our impedimenta!"

  He jogged off along the waterfront street, with the boy running beside him. Then he turned and vanished through one of the huge fortified gates in the sea wall, which rose behind the row of slatternly houses on the landward side of the street.

  Jorian shaded his eyes against the low westering sun and gazed out to sea, which had become an undulating carpet of golden flakes. Then he examined his surroundings.

  Men came and went along the waterfront. Most were Penembians in felt caps. Some wore a pleated knee-length skirt like Zerlik's, while others encased their legs in baggy trousers, gathered at the ankle. There was a sprinkling of Fedirunis in head cloths and robes, and an occasional Mulvanian in a bulbous turban. Now and then came a black man —a Paaluan with wavy hair and beard, wearing a feather cloak, or perhaps a kinky-haired, scar-faced man from the tropical jungles of Beraoti, swathed in animal skins or in a loosely-pinned rectangle of cloth. A train of laden camels swayed past, their bells chiming.

  Jorian waited.

  And he waited.

  He took a turn along the waterfront, peering in the doors of the taverns and lodginghouses that backed against the sea wall and looking in shop windows. He tried to ask a few Irazis the way to Doctor Karadur's dwelling. He had put together the words comprising a simple question; but each time, the native came back with a long, rattling sentence, too fast for Jorian to understand. He stopped a man in a head cloth and queried him in Fediruni, but all the reply he got was:

  "I am sorry, good sir, but I am a stranger here, too."

  Jorian returned to the Flying Fish and waited some more. The sun set. He prepared a dinner from the supplies on the ship, ate, waited some more, and went to sleep in the cabin.

  Next morning, there was still no sign of Zerlik. Jorian wondered whether the young man had fallen victim to an accident, or to foul play, or whether he had deliberately abandoned his companion.

  Jorian would have liked to stroll about the neighborhood, to learn the layout of the nearby streets. On the other hand, he durst not leave his gear unguarded aboard the Flying Fish. Although the cabin door had a lock, it was of the sort that any enterprising thief could pick with a bent pin. To prove that this was the case, Jorian took out of a leathern inside pocket in his hose one of several pieces of bent wire and opened the locked door with ease. He had learnt to pick locks in preparing for his flight from Xylar.

  To find a man in a strange city, without guide or map, where one did not speak the language, was a formidable task. (If he had known about street signs and house numbers, he would have added their lack to the hazards facing him. Never having heard of them, he did not miss them.) The task was perhaps not quite so hazardous as slaying a dragon or competing in spells with a first-class wizard, but it was still one to daunt all but the boldest.

  When a merchantman pulled into a neighboring berth and several travelers stepped ashore, a tout hurried up to offer his services. Jorian, however, had a profound distrust of such gentry. The more eager one of them seemed to take the stranger in tow, the more likely he was to be planning robbery or murder.

  The Hour of the Hare came, and Jorian still turned over plans. For instance, if he could accost a port official with whom he had some speech in common, he could then ask advice about trustworthy guides. Of course the fellow might hand him over to some cutthroat with whom he had an arrangement for sharing the loot…

  As Jorian, seated in the cockpit of the Flying Fish, thought about these matters, a familiar figure appeared in the distance, ambling towards the Flying Fish on the back of an ass. It was a thin, dark-skinned old man with long white hair and beard, clad in a coarse brown robe and a bulbous white turban. He was followed by a youth mounted on another ass and leading a third.

  Jorian bounded out of his ship. "Karadur!" he shouted.

  The oldster drew rein and stiffly dismounted. Jorian folded him in a bearlike hug. Then they held each other out by the arms.

  "By Imbal's brazen balls!" cried Jorian. "It's been over a year!"

  "You look well, my son," said Karadur, on the middle finger of whose left hand shone a golden ring with a large, round, blue stone. "The sun has burnt you as dark as a black from the jungles of Bcraoti."

  "I've been conning this little tub for ten days, without a hat And by the way, Holy Father, she's yours."

  "What mean you, O Jorian?"

  "The Flying Fish belongs to you. You furnished the wherewithal to buy her in Chemnis."

  "Now, really, my son, what should I ever do with a ship like that? I am too old to take up fishing as a means of livelihood. So keep the ship; I relinquish her to you."

  Jorian chuckled. "The same impractical old Karadur! Well, I'm no fisherman, either, so perhaps your feelings won't be hurt if I sell her… On second thought, perhaps I had better keep her. When one becomes involved in one of your enterprises, one never knows when a speedy scape will be needed. But tell me: Where in the forty-nine Mulvanian hells is that ninny Zerlik? He was supposed to fetch me away yesterday."

  Karadur shook his head. "A light-minded wight, I fear. I encountered him by happenstance this morn at the palace, whither he had come to deliver his report to the king. When he saw me, he clapped a hand to his forehead and cried: 'Oh, my gods, I forgot all about your friend Jorian! I left him awaiting me on the waterfront!' And then the tale came out."

  "What had he been doing?"

  "When he left you, he hastened home to greet his household and to see whether his charioteer had yet returned with his car and team. As it fell out, they had come in the day before; and so excited was Zerlik by the reunion with his beloved horses that he forgot about you."

  "And also, I daresay, by the pleasant prospect of flittering his wives all night," said Jorian. "If I never see that young ass again, 'twill be too soon."

  "Oh, but he greatly admires you! He talked me deaf about what a splendid comrade you were in a tight place: so masterful and omnicompetent. When you have completed your work here, if you embark upon another journey, he would fain accompany you, to play squire to your knight."

  " Tis gdod to know that someone esteems me, but he'd only be in the way. I suppose he is not a bad lad; just a damned fool. But then, I doubtless committed equal follies at his age. Now whither away? I need a bath."

  'To my quarters, where you shall lodge. Put your bags on the spare ass, and we will deliver Zerlik's at his house on the way."

  Over lunch at Karadur's apartment, in a rooming house near the palace, Jorian said: "As I understand it, you wish me to fix the clocks in the Tower of Kumashar, and this will somehow free Estrildis from Xylar. What's the connection?"

  "My son, I have no instant method of recovering your spouse—"

  "Then why haul me a hundred leagues down the coast? Of course, if the job pay well—"

  "But I confidently expect to obtain such a method as a result of your success with the clocks. The little lady has not become some other's wife, has she?"

  "I'm sure not. I got word to her by one of my brothers, who traveled through Xylar, selling and repairing clocks, and smuggled a note in to her. The note urged her, if she still loved me, to hold out; that I should find a way to bring her forth. But how will my repairing Irazi clocks do that?"

  "It is thus. The high priest of Ughroluk once uttered a prophecy, that these clocks should save the city from destruction, provided that they were kept running on time. Last year the clocks stopped; nor could Clockmaster Yiyim prevail upon them to function again. This is not surprising, since Yiyim was an impoverished cousin of the king, who had been appointed to this post because he was in penury and not because he knew aught about clocks."

  "What's the state of the horological art in Iraz?"

  "None exists, beyond a few water clocks imported from Novaria and the grand one that your father installed in the tower. In the House
of Learning, several savants strive to master the art. They have attained to the point where one of their clocks loses or gains no more than a quarter-hour a day. In a few years, methinks, Iraz will make clocks as good as any. Till then, the Irazis must make do with sundials, hourglasses, and time candles."

  "What's this House of Learning?" asked Jorian.

  "It is a great institution, set up over a century ago under—ah—who was that king?" Karadur snapped his fingers. "Drat it! My memory worsens every day. Ah! I remember: King Hoshcha. It has two divisions: the School of Spirit and the School of Matter. The former deals with the magical arts; the latter, with the mechanical arts. Each school includes libraries, laboratories, and classrooms wherein the savants impart their principles to students."

  "Like the Academy at Othomae, but on a grander scale," said Jorian.

  "Exactly, my son, exactly; save that the Academy—ah—devotes itself mainly to literary and theological studies, whereas the House of Learning deals with more utilitarian matters. I have a post in the School of Spirit."

  "Come to think, I heard of this House when I was studying poetry at the Academy. Wasn't it they who developed the modern windmill?"

  "Aye, it was. But the House of Learning is not what it was erst-whiles."

  "How so?" asked Jorian.

  "Hoshcha and his immediate successors were enthusiasts for the sciences, both material and spiritual. Under them, the House received lavish subsidies and achieved great advances. But later kings discovered that, for all the achievements of their laboratories, they were still bound by mortal limitations. A more efficient draft harness did not keep the king's officials from grafting and peculating and oppressing the people. A spell against smallpox did not cure the king of lusts, follies, and errors of judgment. An improved water wheel did not stop his kinsmen from trying to poison him to usurp the throne."

  "If you fellows are given your heads, you'll have this world as mechanized as that afterworld, whither our souls go after death and where all tasks are done by machinery. You'll remember that I glimpsed it in my flight from Xylar."