“Back to your barracks, warrior of Kaikama! He belongs to us and not to you!” Another face pushed forward, a girl’s. Harsan saw wide eyes, an open scarlet mouth, dishevelled hair cut straight across a low-rounded forehead. She wore a girdle of chain links and a skirt made up of many green and purple strips; tiny bells tinkled at her wrists, ankles, and throat: a priestess of Hrihayal, he thought. She bore a tray filled with little brass bowls. In one of these she dipped a finger, touched it to Harsan’s lips. He tasted something sweet, dark, and fiery.
“An offering to Thumis-from one who knows not wisdom but loves folly! Come, worthy priest, show me whether your god is as stiff and upright as he is said to be!” She threw an arch look back at companions still in shadow.
There was no sign of the Lady Eyil. Harsan found himself ringed by a circle of laughing faces, men, women, even an elegantly attired Shen, resplendent in copper-trimmed armour.
“Would you chew Hnequ- weed with me? — Or taste the delights of my white powders-or of my blue? Alas, I have no grey powder for a grey priest of the Lord of Wisdom!” Her perfumed breath filled his nostrils, and a sharp little tongue flickered against his ear. “I might give you a bit of my green powder as well!”
The slim fingertips grazed his mouth again, and this time he tasted a bitter, pungent substance, strangely aromatic and as sharp as new wine. He jerked his head away, and the finger left a trace of powder upon his cheek.
“Taste, Harsan, Priest of Thumis! It will not harm you but will prepare you for what I offer next!” Bare thighs wriggled urgently against his own.
“How-how do you know me?”
“Ohe! ‘The breeze knows many roads,’ as it is said!” She laughed. “Friends of mine have seen you in that underground dungeon where the soldiers play at Den-den — and other pastimes. But you prefer fumbling with musty books to putting your hand to better things.” Fingers caught his wrist and guided his hand down over the silken curve of her belly.
He would have let her have her way-was not this night devoted to all of those things that bespoke joy and the cycle of life? — but at that moment a great voice roared happily in his ear, “Harsan! Harsan! Is it not Harsan, the priest of our journey?” A black claw inserted itself between his jaw and the pretty face before him. It was a Shen.
“It is I, Harsan-” a guttural-sounding name hissed in his ear, but he could not catch it, “-I travelled with you to Bey Sii, with Mnesun-”
Memory came back. “You-?” The Shen merchant. “Where-?” The powerful scaled arm had him by the shoulder, pulling him around involuntarily, away from the girl. Why did the creature have to reappear now of all times? Harsan stammered, “How came you here? I had thought you’d be on your way back to Shenyu by now.”
“Not so, my friend. I await a cargo. It is delayed somewhere up north, in Milumanaya, between here and Yan Kor. Nothing travels on time in the summer because you humans are not like us, at ease in the heat.”
“Will you not come away, my priest?” The girl in the green and purple skirt swayed before him, her comrades a dark ring behind her.
“Leave him be, Sriya,” one of them called, “I just saw Misenla go by. Let us not be late tonight of all nights!”
“Harsan, I would speak with you.” The Shen’s hard grip did not slacken upon his shoulder. The armoured tail switched slowly from side to side.
“Await me,” he muttered to the girl, “there-where the dancers are. I shall join you in a moment.”
Something was wrong with his eyes. There were two Shen. He blinked and squinted to see who the newcomer was.
“Harsan, I have business to discuss.” Both Shen spoke marvellously in unison. “You humans buy our opals and our garnets, and a comrade from Thri’il tells me that other gems are popular as well.” Why were the Shen saying such irrelevant things? Why interrupt at such a stupid, inopportune moment? “Now, I have access to a shipment of cloudy green moonstones, down from the Dry Bay of Ssu’um in Saa Allaqi
…” The creature was babbling! “If I can find someone here whom I can trust to receive these gems while I make a trip south…” Something was assuredly wrong with the Shen: he (or was it they?) leaned forward at an impossible angle. It was taking him so long to say what he had to say. Each syllable took a month, each word a year…
Harsan pitched down a tunnel into blackness.
— And awoke to a blaze of red light.
Red light? Was he afire? Did he stare at the sun?
A voice whirled by on wings like those of a forest glider-fly. “-I t is not a large enough amount. Zu’ur takes as much as you can put o n the tip of a dagger to lock its hold upon the brain-” Harsan saw a s erpent-like dagger coiling itself around a helpless, struggling brain.
He giggled.
“He joins us again.” Another voice. But whose?
The scene snapped open as does a banner in the wind. The Shen was there, beloved friend that he was, and Eyil, hair loose upon her shoulders, wrapped in her dark blue street cloak. Someone else leaned over him: the funny Pe Choi! Harsan laughed outright. And could not stop. Something wet and sour was dashed into his face. He choked.
“Ohe, our adventuresome merrymaker honours us with his attentions again!” Chtik p’Qwe held another cup of wine ready to send it splashing after the first. Behind him stood the Shen and Lady Eyil, somewhat more real and solid this time. They were in the lamplit chamber beneath the Temple of Eternal Knowing. Two more puppet figures jigged and whirled in the flickering background: the two guards.
“Where-? How-?”
“You have played at Den-den with Missum, Lord of Death,” the Pe Choi replied. “And he held all the counters and made all the throws. This Shen says that you were given a dose of Zu’ur, a drug so pernicious that but a flick of it is sufficient to turn the mind into fungus pudding!”
“Zu’ur is forbidden in Shenyu as well as in your human lands,” the Shen interrupted. “It is said that it is supplied by the Hliiss, or possibly the Ssu, both of whom hate mankind and all other nonhuman species with almost equal fervour. Thus do they wish to destroy us all, for they believe this world was originally theirs and that we-the Shen, humankind, Pe Choi, Pachi Lei, Ahoggya, and some others-came from the Home of the Gods and usurped it from them.”
“We have the story too,” the Pe Choi added, “the ‘Round of Hkek Qten.’ ”
“But if it is known that this Zu’ur is meant for the harm of man, then who would be fool enough to take it?” That was the Lady Eyil’s voice.
“Certain of the more depraved servitors of the Lords of Change, particularly those of the voluptuary Hrihayal, acquire it somehow and employ it in tiny quantities. They say it heightens sexual prowess and ecstasy to a pitch not otherwise attainable.” “Pleasure indeed!” The Pe Choi sponged Harsan’s forehead with a damp cloth. “The other side of that coin is that it addles the mind of a human. It slays us Pe Choi and you Shen straightaway! I have seen human victims after a month or two of this sensual ‘joy’: they are good for nothing but propping up a wall. -Until they die, perhaps in two or three more months.” “I cannot understand why anyone would bring such a terrible thing to Lord Belkhanu’s festival,” Eyil said. “What a hideous trick to play upon an unsuspecting stranger.”
The Shen’s armoured shoulders rose in a shrug. “The mischief of those people is great-though they usually reserve it for those who have somehow offended their goddess. Harsan seems to have been unlucky enough to meet a woman who was just whimsically malicious. Had I not seen-”
Harsan opened his mouth to tell the Shen that the girl in green and purple had known him, had indeed called him by name. Instead of words, however, a stream of sparkling diamonds issued from his lips. Dazed, he watched them ascend lazily to the ceiling and vanish.
“Try not to speak now, Harsan. Rest. You will be as weak as watered wine for a time.” The Pe Choi unrolled his sleeping mat and shooed the two staring guards from the room. He turned to the Shen. “He will be much in your debt when he awakes.”
“I ask no favour in return. I shall come again when he is strong, for I really do have a matter of business to broach with him.”
“Let me stay-please!” The Lady Eyil took the dampened cloth from Chtik p’Qwe’s fingers.
“There is no need.” The Pe Choi’s voice was abrupt. “What of your family? Your clan?”
