Explorers, page 16
“Siett and Balant are inner satellites of Tambur,” I rehearsed, struggling for comprehension. “Vieng, Darou, and the other moons commonly seen at home have paths outside our own world’s. Aye. But what holds it all up?”
“That I don’t know. Mayhap the crystal sphere containing the stars exerts an inward pressure. The same pressure, maybe, that hurled mankind down onto the earth, at the time of the Fall From Heaven.”
The night was warm, but I shivered, as if those had been winter stars. “Then,” I breathed, “there may also be men on … Siett, Balant, Vieng … even on Tambur?”
“Who knows? We’ll need many lifetimes to find out. And what lifetimes they’ll be! Thank the good God, Zhean, that you were born in this dawn of the coming age.”
Froad returned to making measurements. A dull business, the other officers thought; but by now I had learned enough of the mathematic arts to understand that from these endless tabulations might come the true size of the earth, of Tambur, of sun and moons and stars, the paths they took through space and the direction of Paradise. So the common sailors, who muttered and made signs against evil as they passed our instruments, were closer to fact than Rovic’s gentlemen, for indeed Froad practiced a most potent gramarye.
At length we saw weeds floating on the sea, birds, towering cloud masses, the signs of land. Three days later we raised an island. It was an intense green under those calm skies. Surf, still more violent than in our hemisphere, flung against high cliffs, burst in a smother of foam and roared back down again. We coasted carefully, the palomers aloft to seek an approach, the gunners standing by our cannon with lighted matches. For not only were there unknown currents and shoals—familiar hazards—but we had had brushes with canoe-sailing cannibals in the past. Especially did we fear the eclipses. My lords can visualize how in that hemisphere the sun each day must go behind Tambur. In our longitude the occurrence was about midafternoon and lasted nearly ten minutes. An awesome sight: the primary planet—for so Froad now called it, a planet akin to Diell or Coint, with our own world humbled to a mere satellite thereof!—became a black disk bordered red, up in a sky suddenly full of stars. A cold wind blew across the sea, and even the breakers seemed hushed. Yet so impudent is the soul of man that we continued about our duties, stopping only for the briefest prayer as the sun disappeared, thinking more about the chance of shipwreck in the gloom than of God’s Majesty.
So bright is Tambur that we continued to work our way around the island at night. From sunup to sunup, twelve mortal hours, we kept the Golden Leaper slowly moving. Toward the second noon, Captain Rovic’s persistence was rewarded. An opening in the cliffs revealed a long fjord. Swampy shores overgrown with saltwater trees told us that while the tides rose high in that bay, it was not one of those bores dreaded by mariners. The wind being against us, we furled sail and lowered the boats, towing in our caravel by the power of oars. This was a vulnerable moment, especially since we had perceived a village within the fjord. “Should we not stand out, master, and let them come first to us?” I ventured.
Rovic spat over the rail. “I’ve found it best never to show doubt,” said he. “If a canoe fleet should assail us, we’ll give ’em a whiff of grapeshot and trust to break their nerve. But I think, thus showing ourselves fearless of them from the very first, we’re less likely to meet treacherous ambuscade later.”
He proved right.
In the course of time, we learned we had come upon the eastern end of a large archipelago. The inhabitants were mighty seafarers, considering that they had only outrigger dugouts to travel in. These, though, were often a hundred feet long. With forty paddles, or with three bast-sailed masts, such a vessel could almost match our best speed, and was more maneuverable. However, the small cargo space limited their range of travel.
Albeit they lived in houses of wood and thatch, possessing only stone tools, the natives were cultivated folk. They farmed as well as fished; their priests had an alphabet. Tall and vigorous, somewhat darker and less hairy than we, they were impressive to behold, whether nude, as was common, or in full panoply of cloth and feathers and shell ornaments. They had formed a loose empire throughout the archipelago, raided islands lying farther north, and carried on a brisk trade within their own borders. Their whole nation they called the Hisagazi, and the island on which we had chanced was Yarzik.
This we learned slowly, as we mastered somewhat their tongue. For we were several weeks at that town. The duke of the island, Guzan, made us welcome, supplying us food, shelter, and helpers as we required. For our part, we pleased them with glassware, bolts of Wondish cloth, and suchlike trade goods. Nonetheless we encountered many difficulties. The shore above highwater mark being too swampy for beaching a vessel as heavy as ours, we must build a drydock before we could careen. Numerous of us took a flux from some disease, though all recovered in time, and this slowed us further.
“Yet I think our troubles will prove a blessing,” Rovic told me one night. As had become his habit, once he learned I was a discreet amanuensis, he confided certain thoughts in me. The captain is ever a lonely man; and Rovic, fisher lad, freebooter, self-taught navigator, victor over the Grand Fleet of Sathayn and ennobled by the Queen herself, must have found the keeping of that necessary aloofness harder than would a gentleman born.
I waited silent, there in the grass hut they had given him. A soapstone lamp threw wavering light and enormous shadows over us; something rustled the thatch. Outside, the damp ground sloped past houses on stilts and murmurous fronded trees, to the fjord where it shimmered under Tambur. Faintly I heard drums throb, a chant and stamping of feet around a sacrificial fire. Indeed, the cool hills of Montalir seemed far.
Rovic leaned back his muscular form, clad in a mere seaman’s kilt in this heat. He had had them fetch him a civilized chair from the ship. “For see you, young fellow,” he continued, “at other times we’d have established just enough communication to ask about gold. Well, we might also try to get a few sailing directions. But all in all, we’d hear little except the old story—‘aye, foreign lord, indeed there’s a kingdom where the very streets are paved with gold … a hundred miles west’—anything to get rid of us, eh? But in this prolonged stay, I’ve asked out the duke and the idolater priests more subtly. I’ve been so coy about whence we came and what we already know, that they’ve let slip a gobbet of knowledge they’d not otherwise have disgorged on the rack itself.”
“The Aureate Cities?” I cried.
“Hush! I’d not have the crew get excited and out of hand. Not yet.”
His leathery, hook-nosed face turned strange with thought. “I’ve always believed those cities an old wives’ tale,” he said. My shock must have been mirrored to his gaze, for he grinned and went on, “A useful one. Like a lodestone on a stick, it’s dragging us around the world.” His mirth faded. Again he got that look, which was not unlike the look of Froad considering the heavens. “Aye, of course I want gold, too. But if we find none on this voyage, I’ll not care. I’ll capture a few ships of Eralia or Sathayn when we’re back in home waters, and pay for the voyage thus. I spoke God’s truth that day on the quarterdeck, Zhean, that this journey was its own goal, until I can give it to Queen Odela, who once gave me the kiss of ennoblement.”
He shook himself out of his reverie and said in a brisk tone: “Having led him to believe I already knew the most of it, I teased from Duke Guzan the admission that on the main island of this Hisagazi empire is something I scarce dare think about. A ship of the gods, he says, and an actual live god who came from the stars therein. Any of the natives will tell you that much. The secret reserved to the noble folk is that this is no legend or mummery, but sober fact. Or so Guzan claims. I know not what to think. But … he took me to a holy cave and showed me an object from that ship. It was some kind of clockwork mechanism, I believe. What, I know not. But of a shining silvery metal such as I’ve never seen before. The priest challenged me to break it. The metal was not heavy, must have been thin. But it blunted my sword, splintered a rock I pounded with, and my diamond ring would not scratch it.”
I made signs against evil. A chill went along me, spine and skin and scalp, until I prickled all over. For the drums were muttering in a jungle dark, and the waters lay like quicksilver beneath gibbous Tambur, and each afternoon that planet ate the sun. Oh, the bells of Provien, heard across windswept Anday downs!
When the Golden Leaper was seaworthy again, Rovic had no trouble gaining permission to visit the Hisagazian emperor on the main island. He would, indeed, have found difficulty in not doing so. By now the canoes had borne word of us from one end of the realm to another, and the great lords were agog to see these blue-eyed strangers. Sleek and content once more, we disentangled ourselves from the arms of tawny wenches and embarked. Up anchor, up sail, chanties whose echoes sent sea birds whirling above the steeps, and we stood out to sea. This time we were escorted. Guzan himself was our pilot, a big middle-aged man whose handsomeness was not much injured by the livid green tattoos his folk affected on face and body. Several of his sons spread their pallets on our decks, while a swarm of warriors paddled alongside.
Rovic summoned Etien the boatswain to him in his cabin. “You’re a man of some wit,” he said. “I give you charge of keeping our crew alert, weapons ready, however peaceful this may look.”
“Why, master!” The scarred brown face sagged with near dismay. “Think you the natives plot a treachery?”
“Who can tell?” answered Rovic. “Now, say naught to the crew. They’ve no skill in dissembling. Did greed or fear rise among ’em, the natives would sense as much, and grow uneasy—which would worsen the attitude of our own men, until none but God’s Daughter could tell what’d happen. Only see to it, as casually as you’re able, that our arms are ever close by and that our folk stay together.”
Etien collected himself, bowed, and left the cabin. I made bold to ask what Rovic had in mind.
“Nothing, yet,” said he. “However, I did hold in these fists a piece of clockwork such as the Grand Ban of Giair never imagined; and yarns were spun me of a Ship which flew down from heaven, bearing a god or a prophet. Guzan thinks I know more than I do, and hopes we’ll be a new, disturbing element in the balance of things, by which he may further his private ambitions. He did not take those many fighting men along by accident. As for me … I intend to learn more about this.”
He sat awhile at his table, staring at a sunbeam which sickled up and down the wainscot as the ship rocked. Finally: “Scripture tells us man dwelt beyond the stars before the Fall. The astrologues of the past generation or two have told us the planets are corporeal bodies like this earth. A traveler from Paradise—”
I left with my head in a roar.
We made an easy passage among scores of islands. After several days we raised the main one, Ulas-Erkila. It is about a hundred miles long, forty miles across at the widest, rising steep and green toward central mountains dominated by a volcanic cone. The Hisagazi worship two sorts of gods, watery and fiery, and believe this Mount Ulas houses the latter. When I saw that snowpeak afloat in the sky above emerald ridges, staining the blue with smoke, I could feel what the pagans did. The holiest act a man can perform among them is to cast himself into the burning crater of Ulas, and often an aged warrior is carried up the mountain that he may do so. Women are not allowed on the slopes.
Nikum, the royal seat, is situated at the head of a fjord, like the village where we had been staying. But Nikum is rich and extensive, being about the size of Roann. Many houses are made from timber rather than thatch; there is also a massive basalt temple atop a cliff, overlooking the city, with orchards, jungle, and mountains at its back. So great are the tree trunks available to them for pilings, the Hisagazi have built here a regular set of docks like those at Lavre—instead of moorings and floats that can rise or fall with the tides, such as most harbors use throughout the world. We were offered a berth of honor at the central wharf, but Rovic made the excuse that our ship was awkward to handle and got us tied at the far end.
“In the middle, we’d have the watchtower straight above us,” he muttered to me. “And they may not have discovered the bow here, but their javelin throwers are good. Furthermore, they’d have an easy approach to our ship, plus a clutter of moored canoes between us and the bay mouth. Here, though, a few of us could hold the pier whilst the others ready for quick departure.”
“But have we anything to fear, master?” I asked.
He gnawed his mustache. “I know not. Much depends on what they really believe about this god-ship of theirs … as well as what the truth is. But come all death and hell against us, we’ll not return without that truth for Queen Odela.”
Drums rolled and feathered spearmen leaped as our officers disembarked. A royal catwalk stretched above highwater level. (Common townsfolk in this realm swim from house to house when the tide laps their thresholds, or take a coracle if they have burdens to carry.) Across the graceful span of vines and canes lay the palace, which was a long building made from logs, the roof pillars carved into fantastic god-shapes.
Iskilip, Priest-Emperor of the Hisagazi, was an old and corpulent man. A soaring headdress of plumes, a feather robe, a wooden scepter topped with a human skull, his facial tattoos, his motionlessness, all made him seem unhuman. He sat on a dais, under sweet-smelling torches. His sons sat crosslegged at his feet, his courtiers on either side. Down the long walls were ranged his guardsmen. They had not our custom of standing to attention; but they were big, supple young men, bearing shields and corselets of scaly sea-monster leather, flint axes and obsidian spears that could kill as easily as iron. Their heads were shaven, which made them look the fiercer.
Iskilip greeted us well, called for refreshment, bade us be seated on a bench little lower than his dais. He asked many perceptive questions. Wide ranging, the Hisagazi knew of islands far beyond their own chain. They could even point the direction and tell us roughly the distance of a many-castled country they named Yurakadak, though none of them had traveled that far himself. Judging by their third-hand description, what could this be but Giair, which the Wondish adventurer Hanas Tolasson had reached overland? It blazed in me that we were indeed rounding the world. Only after that glory had faded a little did I again heed the talk.
“As I told Guzan,” Rovic was saying, “another thing which drew us hither was the tale that you were blessed with a Ship from Heaven. And he showed me this was true.”
A hissing went down the hall. The princes grew stiff, the courtiers blanked their countenances, the guardsmen stirred and muttered. Remotely through the walls I heard the rumbling, nearing tide. When Iskilip spoke, through the mask of himself, his voice had gone whetted: “Have you forgotten that these things are not for the uninitiated to see, Guzan?”
“No, Holy One,” said the duke. Sweat sprang forth among the devils on his face, though not the sweat of fear. “However, this captain knew. His people also … as nearly as I could learn … he still has trouble speaking so I can understand … his people are initiate too. The claim seems reasonable, Holy One. Look at the marvels they brought. The hard, shining stone-which-is-not-stone, as in this long knife I was given—is that not like the stuff of which the Ship is built? The tubes which make distant things look close at hand, such as he has given you, Holy One—is this not akin to the far-seer the Messenger possesses?”
Iskilip leaned forward, toward Rovic. His scepter hand trembled till the pegged jaws of the skull clattered together. “Did the Star People themselves teach you to make all this?” he cried. “I never imagined … . The Messenger never spoke of any others—”
Rovic held up both palms. “Not so fast, Holy One, I pray you,” said he. “We are poorly versed in your tongue. I couldn’t recognize a word just now.”
This was his deceit. His officers had been ordered to feign a knowledge of Hisagazi less than they really possessed. (We had improved our command of it by secret practicing with each other.) Thus he had an unimpeachable device for equivocation.
“Best we talk in private, Holy One,” suggested Guzan, with a glance at the courtiers. They returned him a jealous glare.
Iskilip slouched in his gorgeous regalia. His words fell blunt, but in the weak tone of an old, uncertain man. “I know not. If these strangers are already initiate, certes we can show them what we have. But otherwise—if profane ears heard the Messenger’s own tale—”
Guzan raised a dominator’s hand. Bold and ambitious, long thwarted in his petty province, he had taken fire today. “Holy One,” he said, “why has the full story been withheld these many years? In part to keep the commoners obedient, aye. But also, did you and your councillors not fear the whole world might swarm hither, greedy for knowledge, if it knew, and we then be overwhelmed? Well, if we let the blue-eyed men go home with curiosity unsatisfied, I think they are sure to return in strength. Thus we have naught to lose by revealing the truth to them. If they have never had a Messenger of their own, if they can be of no real use to us, time enough to kill them. But if they have indeed been visited like us, what might we and they not do together!”
This was spoken fast and softly, lest we Montalirians understand. And, indeed, our gentlemen failed to. I, having young ears, got the gist; and Rovic preserved such a fatuous smile of incomprehension that I knew he was seizing every word.
In the end they decided to take our leader—and my insignificant self, for no Hisagazian magnate goes anywhere quite unattended—to the temple. Iskilip led the way in person, Guzan and two brawny princes behind. A dozen spearmen brought up the rear. I thought Rovic’s blade would be scant use if trouble came, but set my lips firmly together and made myself walk beside him. He looked as eager as a child on Thanksday Morning, teeth agleam in the pointed beard, a plumed bonnet slanted rakish over his brow. None would have thought him aware of any peril.
