The Pe Choi pushed it reluctantly across the table. Harsan moved to conceal Zaren’s farseeing device behind himself, surreptitiously dropping its cloth wrappings back over the box and its lenses. Kerektu hiKhanmu either did not see or affected not to notice. Instead, he took up the preferred artifact, inspected it as Harsan had done, felt it, shook it, smelled it. At length he laid it down again.
“ ‘A worthy treasury is not opened easily,’ ” he quoted ruefully. “What of the third container?”
Chtik p’Qwe hesitated. “I am still at work upon it. Extreme care must be used in order not to break anything fragile inside.” “Of course, colleague.” Kerektu hiKhanmu turned smoothly to Harsan. “You may be interested in a piece of news, my friend. I have learned that our library contains a copy of the Llyani lexicon of Ssumunish Kra of Ch’ochi.”
“I had heard that it was a lost book.” Harsan could not repress a flare of interest-and envy.
“A thing is only lost until it is found again.” Small white teeth flashed in a generous smile. “If you would consult it, I can have it copied for you.”
This was a major temptation. Ssumunish Kra was almost contemporary' with the end of Llyan’s empire! “My Lord, you offer a great boon. What would you have in exchange?”
“Nothing that would distress your superiors, or mine. We could join in reading the manuscript texts. A copy for you and a copy for me, and knowledge-and perchance promotion-accruing to us both.”
Harsan found words of agreement ready upon his tongue but thought better of it. “I will think upon this.”
The long-lashed, almond-shaped eyes turned regretfully downward. “Ponder not too long, dear colleague. Both our superiors grow bored with us. Rumour has it that if we do not soon set the Empire agog with the wonder of our discoveries, we shall all be sent packing. You might like to return to your monastery, of course, and eke out your days scrambling for coppers from nose-picking peasants, but I would be grieved to find my Skein of Destiny woven of such drab stuff. ’ ’
Chtik p’Qwe raised his head from studying the whitish metal hemisphere. He surprised Harsan by saying sweetly, “Alas, for your Skein of Destiny! That such a fabric of beauty might be transformed into a country bumpkin’s soiled breechclout! Lyricists shall compose laments upon this tragedy for generations to come! On the other hand, the bucolic life is said to have its compensations…”
The gently passive gaze focussed upon the Pe Choi. “Gibes ill become you, colleague. What I say is of benefit to all of us. How much will your scraping and scratching excite the High Council of the Temple of Ketengku? Any good jeweller can do as much-and carve those wretched blobs of rust with bas-reliefs of the Thirty-Two Unspeakable Acts of Hrihayal at the same time! I urge only that we pool our talents.”
“Indeed. ‘The lair of the Mnor is comfortable, but it is no place to sleep!’ Had your Lord Ksarul been willing to work together with the other Gods-even those of His own party of Change-there would have been no Battle of Dormoron Plain, and He’d not now be imprisoned in the Blue Room!”
This banter was verging upon acrimony, and Harsan interrupted, “Peace, colleagues, peace! Leave religious disputation to the marketplace orators! How am I to work?”
Kerektu hiKhanmu’s expression did not change. He said politely, “I only ask for a modicum of cooperation. Time is short. ‘The worm who sleeps too long upon the rock is fried by the sun.’ You must have heard that Chakan adage?”
Harsan nodded courteously in return but said no more. He motioned Chtik p’Qwe toward his toolchest, and himself picked up one of the manuscript leaves. The priest of Ksarul smiled, bowed, and brought out his penbox. The discussion was apparently over, for now. The priest of Wuru did not appear.
At length Kerektu hiKhanmu sighed graciously, put aside his copying, and arose saying something about lunch. Harsan would have followed after, but Chtik p’Qwe put a restraining hand upon his arm.
“I have heard you humans say that after love and fear, the next greatest torment is temptation. Do not be hasty to aid this black-robe, Harsan. Who knows whether he speaks the truth? It is possible that he would deceive you with some later, garbled recension of the lexicon of Ssumunish Kra. Be assured that the followers of Change wish neither of us well.’’
“Yet what if he does not lie? The Temple of Ksarul is known for its ancient, secret libraries. They may well possess a copy of the lexicon. Oh, how I could use it!” He held up two manuscript fragments. “I am so close to the meaning of these pages. I have discovered that there are two separate books here. One is a common text of funerary invocations and rituals, but the other is almost certainly the ‘Book of Sunderings,’ which has not been seen since Engsvan hla Ganga’s libraries sank beneath the southern sea! Oh, Chtik p’Qwe, what an achievement if it be true! What a prize! I only need to separate these two books and complete my translation-”
The Pe Choi showed his excitement by wobbling his great head from side to side. “Splendid! I, too, may have something at least as important. Let me show you what I accomplished this morning-something I did not wish our black-robed friend to see quite yet.” He picked up the third lump of rust from the table, held it in his delicate upper pair of hands, and gently pulled in opposite directions. It separated into two pieces, coming apart as prettily as two halves of a shellfish. A few crumbs of rust pattered down onto the table.
Nested inside was a second hemisphere of white metal, identical to the one that lay upon the table. Chtik p’Qwe removed it and handed it to him.
Wondering, Harsan took the object. It was the same as the first, save that instead of a hole in the flat side there was a circular peg.
The Pe Choi forestalled him. “I have already fitted the peg into the hole. The two halves fit together to make a neat fistsized sphere. But nothing else occurs. See for yourself.”
Chtik p’Qwe was correct. Harsan put the two hemispheres together, twisted and prodded them this way and that, but could see no purpose to them. The ancients were not simple with their puzzles!
Nothing seemed to make the matter clearer. At last the Pe Choi hissed to warn him of the return of the priest of Ksarul, and the second hemisphere went back into its shell of rust and metallic accretions.
Chapter Thirteen
The remainder of the afternoon passed slowly. The Pe Choi silently went about his picking and scraping, while Kerektu hiKhanmu copied glyphs onto a scroll. Harsan set out several manuscript fragments and juggled them this way and that to see if any fitted together. No one wanted to resume the previous conversation.
Eventually Chtik p’Qwe threw down his tools and left. An hour or two thereafter a temple slave brought Harsan’s dinner on a tray, sent, apparently, by the Pe Choi. Harsan started up at every little sound in the outer corridor, thinking that it might be the Lady Eyil. But she did not come. Kerektu hiKhanmu finally wiped his pen nibs and departed, leaving the two guards to seal away the artifacts for the night.
Harsan had thought of one more experiment, however. This must be tested when neither of the priests of Change was present.
“Would you not leave the relics with me for a little longer?” he asked Reshmu. “I am in the midst of something.”
The guard shrugged, and black-browed Gutenu yawned. Neither made objection.
Out came Zaren’s farseeing device, and Harsan pried at one of the larger lenses with impatient fingers. It came free of its wax, and he carried it to the table where the first hemisphere lay. A moment of fumbling and adjustment, and then strange lines appeared in the glass, though much twisted and blurred. The tiny grooves on the flat side were circular, and his eye followed them dizzily from one edge of the glistening whitish surface to the other. There was something about them…
He saw what it was. The grooves nowhere crossed one another but ran in an ever-narrowing spiral round and round to a central point-which would have been in the very middle of the round hole. He followed them back again in the opposite direction and came to the outer rim of the hemisphere. Just there, on the convex exterior, below the starting point of the grooves on the flat side, an almost invisible triangle had been incised into the metal. The rows of squarish symbols seemed to begin at this triangle too, marching away around the outer surface until they ended in a glyph of some sort at the deepest point of the curved hemisphere.
Excited now, he pulled the third lump of rust apart. Bits of corrosion flaked away, and he would have some explaining to do to Chtik p’Qwe in the morning. A glance through the lense told him that the second hemisphere
