Llyani relics. But he was quite expendable. There were others who could perform that task, though perhaps not as well. Prior Haringgashte had submitted very enthusiastic reports. The original plan had been to summon a scholar who would attract no attention, squeeze all useful information from the relics, and spirit them off quickly to some remote temple treasury. This was no longer feasible; half the Empire seemed to know the fellow was coming!
Another possibility made Lord Durugen pause, and his entourage dutifully halted behind him. the young man might lure any who wanted trouble into the open, a juicy haunch of Hmelu-meat to snare the Zrne. The priests of both Ksarul and Sarku had been suspiciously silent throughout this morning’s proceedings. Lord Vimuhla’s people had also sat all too snugly upon their flame-orange dais. Whoever was not satisfied with Lord Muresh’ decision might attempt to alter it by various extraordinary methods. Much could be made of a captured spy; a breach of the Concordat and the culprits’ ensuing disgrace alone were worth a dozen young priests!
Lord Durugen grumbled a ritual catechism to himself. The long staircase was hard on his legs, and the lappets of his heavy golden pectoral banged against his thighs. All of these matters required more information and study. For now, however, he must be satisfied with the thought that each laboured step brought him ever nearer to his midday cup of thick Chumetl. He pulled off his towering headdress, heedless of the breach of traditional propriety, and plodded on.
Chapter Six
From the Monastery of the Sapient Eye the Sakbe road wound south through familiar country. The rumpled green foothills of Do Chaka lay like old friends along the way on the right hand, the west, and the dun-coloured patchwork fields of ripening grain swept off to the horizon and beyond to mighty Bey Sii and the centre of the Empire on the left. This was the landscape Harsan knew well.
The first two days produced the expected crop of aches and blisters, but thereafter Harsan found his muscles hardening and his body becoming road-wise. Farmers and women might ride in the agonisingly slow Chlen-catts, and the aristocracy sat high in palanquins borne by trotting slaves; aside from one’s feet these two were the only methods of transportation on Tekumel. Harsan needed neither. Being able to march at the same rate as the booted traders and hard-faced soldiers somehow exhilarated him. This was the first time he had really used his limbs in all the years since the Pe Choi had brought him to the monastery, and he began to luxuriate in the rhythmic cadences of walking.
The Sakbe road thrust out before him like a triple-tongued blade of grey stone. Harsan perforce used the lowest level, a paved thoroughfare wide enough for fifteen men to march abreast. The eastern parapet stood a good two man-heights above the sunbaked fields below, while the western side was a solid wall that rose up to the next higher level, five handspans beyond Harsan’s tallest reach. The second level was narrower but smoother, and its western wall in turn ascended another spear-length up to the third and highest tier. The lowest roadway was used by anyone: merchants, peasants, work-gangs, caravans of slaves bearing the goods of the Empire, the great trundling Chlen-caits which creaked their leisurely way from city to city laden with heavier items, and common travellers such as Harsan. The middle level was reserved by custom-and by harsh Tsolyani law- for members of the aristocracy, troops, officials, and priests of the higher Circles. The uppermost level belonged to the great nobles, the highest clergy, and couriers upon the Emperor’s business.
Every few Tsan these triple roadways were blocked by a squat guard tower. Many of these were dark and empty in these days of relative peace, used by sojourners as convenient places to unroll sleeping mats and spend the night. Some were occupied by detachments of blue-armoured soldiery. These paid but perfunctory attention to a lone, grey-robed priest, and after a bored glance at Harsan’s writ, they let him be off upon his way. It had not always been so. There, where the mist-wreathed peaks of the Inner Range actually lay within the borders of Mu’ugalavya, the outer parapet of the third and highest level, buttressed and embattled like a fortress, always faced to the west, a line of defensible fortifications stretching from north to south along the frontier of the Empire. There was no war now-and had not been for over three hundred years-but there were rumblings along the border and whispers of an alliance between the “Red-Hats” of Mu’ugalavya and Baron Aid of Yan Kor.
At first he met few travellers. Most of these were peasants or townsmen, carrying goods on their backs or in Chlen — carts to some nearby market or fair. They saluted Harsan respectfully and held out a hand for him to touch in blessing. In these parts it was thought good luck to meet a priest of Thumis, or one of Thumis’ Cohort, Ketengku, the Patron of Physicians.
On the second day he passed a tax collector, a thin-lipped old man, borne in a litter by ten slaves. This august personage ignored Harsan’s greeting, though some of his retinue of scribes, record-keepers, and guards called out jocular salutations. On the second day, also, two parties of merchants overtook Harsan, their heavily laden burden-slaves jogging along at a fast trot that he could only envy.
On the third morning he encountered two cohorts of soldiers in blue-lacquered Chlen — hide armour. Some of these leaned down from the middle roadway to shout obscene but friendly greetings, and a junior officer, resplendent in helmet and breastplate, tossed down a small skin of Tumissan wine for good luck. These were troops on their way north to reinforce the Tsolyani forces on the Yan Koryani border near Khirgar.
He even met a party of Pachi Lei. This was another of the eight friendly nonhuman species which shared Tekumel with humankind. Harsan had not been this close to one of these creatures before. They were pear-shaped, soft-skinned beings, greyish-green in hue, a hand taller than a man, with four curiously articulated lower limbs for locomotion and four more, longer upper limbs for swinging in the trees of the forests of the Pan Chakan Protectorate that lay to the south of Harsan’s own Do Chakan hills. The Pachi Lei wore little more than cross-belts of untanned hide, and their leader carried a thick, short spear tipped with a barb of white bone. Harsan stared at them, and they stared back from round, platter-sized eyes, greeting him pleasantly enough in oddly accented Tsolyani and chattering amongst themselves in their own burbling tongue.
On the sixth day, footsore but nevertheless pleased with his growing stamina, Harsan reached Paya Gupa-not PA-ya Gu-PA, as the Tsolyani called it, wrongly accenting the last vowel, but PA-ya GU-pa. The name meant “Red Mountain” in the older dialect of Do Chaka, and thus it appeared: walls and towers of rufous sandstone heaped along the summit of a low hill spurring out of the Chakan forests. The houses behind the walls were whitewashed, tiled with reds and tans, and scattered like children’s blocks around the summit upon which the palace of the local governor stood.
Harsan’s writ obtained lodging at the temple of Thumis. The sect of the Master of Wisdom was very powerful here, and Lord Gamulu hiBeshyene, the Grand Adept of the Temple, made his summer headquarters in the old, grey shrine that clambered down the hill to the west.
The Proctor of the Dormitories arranged for Harsan to continue on to Tumissa and thence to Bey Sii in the company of a party of merchants. This was in itself somewhat daunting, for the capital still lay over a thousand long Tsan away. Even though Harsan felt himself capable of making thirty to forty Tsan a day, he wondered if he could keep up.
He need not have worried. Much of the cargo carried by the thirty-odd slaves of the little caravan consisted of fine pottery and the crimson crystal goblets and ewers of Mu’ugalavya. Mnesun hiArkuna, the chief of the party and owner of most of its merchandise, fussed over the packing of each reed basket and the balancing of every slave’s burden in the morning and then again over its unloading at night while the other merchants dawdled over their food and the tasks of the camp. They made little more than twenty-five Tsan a day. Harsan guessed that it would take seven days to reach Tumissa, one day more than if he had travelled alone. Yet he found the bustling routine comforting and the company of the others a reassurance.
Besides Mnesun, squat and thick-set as a river Ghar- beast, there were six in the party, not counting the slaves. Two of these were twin brothers, Mu’ugalavyani, whose goods included rare earths, perfumes, and scented oils from distant Kheiris. The third, a Salarvyani named Bejjeksa, was a trader of much experience and self- proclaimed cunning. He was now returning home with bales of finely-figured cloth and chests of soapstone carvings, products of Livyanu, the land to the south of Mu’ugalavya. The next, Hele’a of Ghaton, brought wares concealed within stoppered jars. Of these he said nothing, nor did he speak much otherwise: a small, tight, hard, little man as grey as the seas of his northern homeland. The fifth man was Sa’araz, a Livyani who affected all the airs and niceties of that nation’s aristocracy, though none could actually attest to his antecedents. He had neither chests nor bales but carried whatever it was he sold in a worn leather wallet affixed to his belt with a stout chain of rare
