and several layers of sympathetic strings. Two persons were needed to play it: one to press the frets, and the other to pluck the melody. Accompanied by tiny drums and gongs, the instrument was perfect, Harsan thought, for the evocation of the deep, slow compositions of the classic modes. Indeed, it often served as the background for slave singers who wore masks and costumes representing the legend-cycle being performed. A new world opened out before Harsan when he discovered that musical and dramatic presentations of the epics were infinitely superior to reading or chanting them by oneself. He took much pleasure in attending performances of the Epic of Hrugga, the Hymn of Mu’iikane, and the majestic Lament to the Wheel of Black, as well as many of the modem classics, some less than a thousand years old.
In these things he easily overmatched Eyil, for she had no training in the music and literature of the past. For her part, she made no secret of the fact that the gaiety and exhilaration of the festivals were more to her liking than the solemn atmosphere of the private musicales. Therefore, when the Feast of Boats was celebrated on the seventh day of Pardan, she cajoled and teased Harsan into attending.
This night commemorated the Going Forth from Death into Life. The canine-masked priests of Qon, the Guardian of the Gates of Hell and Cohort of Lord Belkhanu, sailed in a splendid torchlit regatta down the Missuma River to portray the journey through the Underworld to the Isles of Excellent Dead. Children lined the banks of the river to push little yellow paper boats out into the current, each bearing a waxen candle and a carefully penned letter to some deceased relative or friend. The mighty voices of the Tunkul — gongs boomed and roared up and down the river, dancers filled all the market plazas, and the streets overflowed with celebrants.
Harsan and the Lady Eyil mingled with the crowds eddying through the outer gates of the governor’s palace. Inside, long tables were piled with Belkhanu’s saffron-dyed pastries, heaps of fruits, and wooden casks of wine and bitter Dna — grain beer. Roasts of Hmelu and whole haunches of the giant Tsi’il-beast sputtered aromatic fat into a dozen fires, and sweating cooks hacked off chunks of meat and thrust them into greedy hands. All was free, the largesse of Lord Khamiyal hiSayuncha, Imperial Governor of Bey Sii.
The gates of the second ring of crenellated walls were manned by halberdiers in the blue and gold livery of the Imperium. A plump chamberlain noted the Lady Eyil’s clan and status and pointed them to one of the daises that marched up the long slope amidst trees and shrubbery toward the lamplit towers of the palace. Holding tight to Harsan’s hand, she wended her way up through the swarming lower levels. Each step of the shallow staircase of daises was only a hands-breadth high, Harsan noted sardonically, yet it represented all of those jealously guarded distinctions that humankind makes between man and man: clan and class, rank and office, and wealth, and prestige. It took no more than the lifting of a foot to progress from dais to dais, but to gain the right to do so might well cost a man a lifetime of ambition, toil, and intrigue.
At last they halted, approximately a third of the way up the ladder of layered platforms. Harsan gazed at those still above them. There, many tiers beyond theirs, sat the chiefs of the mercantile clans; still higher were the places reserved for the old noble clans, those descended from the aristocracy of the Bednalljan kings and from the Engsvanyali Empire that followed: the Golden Sunburst, the Sea Blue, the Vriddi of Fasiltum, the Might of Ganga, the Citadel of Glory, the Cloak of Azure Gems, the Blade Raised High, and a dozen others. Still more elevated were the daises of the lords of Bey Sii, the generals of the legions, and the high priests of the temples. A row of armoured troopers stood below the even loftier station of the governor and his train.
At the very top, set higher than all the rest just below the frowning battlements of the inner palace, a single tall pillar draped with gold-banded blue brocade upheld the intricate, convoluted glyph which bespoke the invisible presence of the Seal Emperor, he who dwelt inviolate in the Golden Tower at Avanthar and who never set foot upon these vast lands over which he ruled as a god rules. For, as Harsan knew, once an Emperor was crowned, ancient law decreed that he might never again emerge from the Golden Tower. Provided with all he might wish by the deaf-mute Servitors of Silence, the highest branch of the Omnipotent Azure Legion, the Seal Emperor governed Tsolyanu as an omniscient but unseen presence until he, too, embarked upon Belkhanu’s ship for the Isles of the Excellent Dead.
They found space at a low table on their dais, and a servitor brought a platter of Hmelu meat, dishes of tiny fish cooked in vinegar and spices, a bowl of savoury grubs fried in batter, reddish Dna- bread, and wine.
“Oh, Harsan, look there!” He followed Eyil’s pointing finger to see a slender, young-old man climbing towards the governor’s dais. This person wore rich robes of black trimmed with azure and gold, but he was otherwise indistinguishable from the throngs of courtiers, warriors, and officials following along in his wake. For a moment the man turned to gaze down at those below, and Harsan caught a glimpse of a thin, ascetic face and the glitter of cool, appraising eyes.
“It is Mridobu, the third Prince of the Empire! Is he not splendid?” The Lady Eyil’s eyes were alight and her cheeks flushed. “They say it is he who will ascend the Petal Throne next-the Imperial Party at Avanthar prefers him to any of his brothers, or to his sister!” She stood to gain a better look, but further sight of the man was cut off by the governor’s retinue which had arisen to receive him.
“I would never have known,” Harsan said… and wondered briefly how she recognised the Prince. Another thought struck him. “I had heard that the Temple of Avanthe-and that of Dilinala as well-support Prince Eselne, the Emperor’s second son. Is not Prince Mridobu a follower of one of the Lords of Change? Lord Ksarul? Why so enthused?”
She gave him a very odd look and sat down. Any further reply was drowned by the sudden cacophony of drums and horns. The gates of the inner palace were opening. Yellow-clad priests and priestesses of Belkhanu and Qon bore forth a towering palanquin upon which stood an obelisk of gilded wood and paper, its sides inscribed with glyphs.
The drums went silent. The priests chanted a litany, censed the tall obelisk with the smoke of fragrant Vres-wood, and held up ritual emblems and insignia the meaning of which Harsan did not know. Two of the priestesses led out a naked girl, little more than a child. A masked officiant put a torch into the child’s hand, and with this she set the obelisk alight. It must have been soaked in oil, for it flared up at once. Two of the yellow-robes then came forward to drape the girl in vestments of shimmering gold, exchanged her torch for a jewelled sceptre, and lifted her up so that she might touch this to the face of the Imperial Seal upon its pedestal. Those on the highest dais arose to embrace the child and thrust rich gifts into her hands.
“She is the Virgin of the Gods,” the Lady Eyil said in Harsan’s ear. “Thus is death overcome and life renewed upon the land.”
All remained standing and silent until the great blaze had died down to embers. Then the drums clamoured again, strident flutes and shrieking horns shouted defiance to the tyranny of mortality, and all in that concourse cheered and rejoiced and embraced one another. “Existence ends not with death!” the yellow-robes cried in unison, and nude priests and priestesses of Avanthe, Goddess of Life, poured forth from the palace to dance before the Seal of the Imperium. Eager hands reached forth to dash the torches out against walls or shrubbery, or to douse them in bowls of wine, and the uproar became pandemonium. The brazen-throated Tunkul- gongs of the temples rent the air with their bellowing metal voices.
All joined in the revelry, devotees of Stability and Change alike. The Lady Eyil was in his arms, thrusting hard against him and seeking his tongue with hers. Then she was tom away by exultant youths wearing the scarlet and white of Chegarra, the Hero-King, Cohort of warlike Karakan. Harsan was caught up in the crush. A matron seized him, kissed him soundly, and then she was in turn caught and kissed by a soldier in blue-lacquered breastplate and towering Chlen- hide helmet.
Harsan looked about for Eyil, but she was gone. Hands snatched at him, and he stumbled over unseen bodies lying locked together in fierce embrace amidst the scattered goblets and dishes. A priestess of Avanthe fled by, laughing, her taut young body daubed with depictions of humanity’s oldest preoccupation, the organs of procreation, and Harsan was jostled aside by a throng of noble youths belling in pursuit. Faces swam up before him in the flickering gloom, bodies, jewelled ornaments, rich headdresses, dark robes pulled askew to reveal tawny-gleaming limbs. Over all hung the passionate thunder of the great drums, sonorous, sensuous, compelling, rhythmic, and as hypnotic as any drug.
Fingers found his lips, thrust a bit of sweet pastry within. He whirled to see a grinning face a finger’s breadth before his nose.
It was a young man, wirily handsome, attired in a kilt of overlapping metallic scales coloured in emerald and purple. An elaborately curved sword swung from a clip at the youth’s waist.
“Will you not dance the Round of the Return to Life with me,
O priest of mighty Thumis?”
