The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (22 page)

XIII

Fallon asked, “Are you sure you want to go ahead with this? It’s not too late to back out, you know.”

“Of course am sure. How—how many ways in?”

“Only one, so far as I know. There might be a tunnel over to the chapel, but that wouldn’t do us any good. Now remember, we shall first walk past, to see in as far as we can. I think they have a desk beside the entrance, where one has to identify oneself. But these robes ought to get us in. We watch until nobody’s looking, then nip around behind the bulletin board and shed these rain cloaks.”

“I know, I know,” said Fredro impatiently.

“Anybody’d think you couldn’t wait to have your throat cut.”

“When I think of secrets inside, waiting for me to discover them, I do not care.”

Fallon snorted, giving Fredro the withering look that he reserved for foolhardy idealists.

Fredro continued, “You think I am damn fool, yes? Well, Mr. Consul Mjipa told me about you. Said you were just like that about getting back that place you were king of.”

Fallon privately admitted that there was justice in this comparison. But, as they were now entering the park surrounding the Safq, he did not have time to pursue that line of thought.

Fredro continued in a lower tone, “Krishna is archeologist’s paradise. Is ruins and relics representing at least thirty or forty thousand Terran years of history—eight or ten times as long as recorded history on Earth—but all mixed up, with huge lacunae, and never properly studied by Krishnans themselves. A man can be a Schliemann, a Champollion, and a Carnarvon all at same time . . .”

“Hush, we’re getting close.”

The main entrance to the Safq was lit by fires, fluttering in the breeze, in a pair of cressets flanking the great doors. These doors now stood open. There was a coming and going of Krishnans, both priests and laymen, in and out of these doors. Voices murmured and purple-black robes flapped in the wind.

As Fallon and Fredro neared the entrance, the former could see over the heads of the Krishnans into the interior, lit by the light of many candles and oil lamps. At intervals, the crowd would thin; and then Fallon could glimpse the desk at which sat the priest checking the register of those who entered.

Since the introduction of photography to Krishna, the priests of Yesht had taken to issuing to their trusted followers identification badges bearing small photographs of the wearers. Fifteen to twenty ingoing laymen stood in line, from the desk out through the doors and down the three stone steps to the street level.

Fallon strolled up close to the portal, watching and listening. He was relieved to see that, as he had hoped, priests pushed through the traffic jam in the portal without bothering to identify themselves to the one at the desk. Evidently for a layman to wear the costume of such a priest was so unheard of, that no precautions had been taken against it.

Nobody heeded Fallon and his companion as they sauntered over to the bulletin board and pretended to read it. A minute later, they popped out from behind the board, to all appearances third-grade priests of Yesht. The rain cloaks lay rolled up on the paving in the shadow behind the board. The hoods of the robes shadowed their faces.

Fallon, heart pounding, strode towards the entrance. Laymen deferentially sidled out of his way so that he did not actually have to push through the crowd. Fredro followed so closely that he trod on Fallon’s well-scuffed heels. Through the scarred bronze valves of the great door they passed.

Ahead of them, a partition wall jutted out from the left, leaving only a narrow space between itself and the doorkeeper’s desk on the right. On the left stood a couple of men in the armor of Civic Guards, leaning on halberds and scanning the faces of passersby. A priest fluttered just ahead of Fallon, who heard him mutter something that sounded like
Rukhval
as he passed between the watchers on the left and the identification desk on the right.

Fallon lowered his head, hesitating before the plunge. Somewhere a bell tinkled. A whisper of movement ran through the crowd at the entrance. Fallon guessed that the bell meant to hurry up for the service. He stepped forward, muttering
“Rukhval!”
and feeling for the rapier hilt under his robe.

The priest at the desk did not look up as Fallon and Fredro went past, being engrossed in a low-voiced colloquy with a layman. Fallon did not care to look at the guards, lest even in the certain light they discern his Terran features. His heart stopped as a growl came from one of them:
“So’í! So’í hao!”

So paralyzed was Fallon’s brain with fear that it took a second to realize that the fellow was merely urging somebody to hurry up. Whether he was speaking to Fallon and Fredro, or to the priest and layman at the desk, Fallon did not wait to find out, but plunged on. Other priests crowded after the Earthmen.

Fallon let himself be carried along in the current. As he passed into the Safq, he became aware of the curious sound that he had noticed when he had inspected the structure four nights before. It sounded more loudly inside than outside, but it also turned out to be a more complicated and more enigmatic noise than he had thought. Not only was there the deep rhythmic banging, but lighter and more rapid sounds as of hammering, plus grating noises as of filing or grinding.

The spate of Krishnans swept across the rear of the cella of the temple of Yesht that formed part of, or had been built into, the Safq, and that appeared as the large room in Kordaq’s plan. Peering cautiously out from under the edge of his cowl to the left, Fallon could see the backs of the pews—three great blocks of them, about half-filled. Beyond, as he passed behind the aisles dividing the pews, he glimpsed the railing that separated the congregation from the hierarchy. To the left of center rose the pulpit, a cylindrical structure of gleaming silver. At the rear of the center stood something black and uncertainly shaped. This would be the great statue of Yesht that Panjaku of Ghulindé, himself a Yeshtite, according to a story in the
Rashm,
had come to Zanid to make.

The lamplight glimmered on the gilding of the decorations and sparkled on the semi-precious stones set in the mosaics that ran around the upper parts of the walls. Fallon could not see these mosaics clearly from where he was, but he had an impression of a series of tableaux illustrating scenes from the myths of Yesht—a mythos notable even among the fanciful Krishnans for grotesquerie.

The stream of Krishnans coming in through the entrance sorted itself out in this space behind the rearmost pews. The laymen trickled forward into the aisles between the pews to find their places, while the priests, much fewer in number, pressed forward into another doorway straight ahead.

According to Liyará’s instructions, Fallon surmised that through this door he would find a robing room where the priests put on the over-vestments that they wore during the service. The lower grades, including the third, did not change their regular robes for this purpose. Only the highest grades, from the fifth up, donned complete special regalia.

With a glance back to make sure that Fredro was still following, Fallon plunged ahead through this door. But when he had passed through, he did not find himself in at all the sort of place that he expected from the nondescript little square that corresponded to this room on Kordaq’s plan.

He was in a medium-sized room, poorly lit, with another door straight ahead, through which the priests ahead of him were hastening. And then the clink of a chain made him turn his head to the left. What he saw made him recoil so sharply as to step on the toe of the following Fredro, who squeaked.

Chained to the far wall of the room, but with plenty of slack to allow it to reach all parts of the chamber with its snaky neck, was a shan. While not so large as the ones that Fallon had seen in Kastambang’s arena and the zoo, it was quite large enough to eat a man in a few mouthfuls.

At the moment the creature’s head lay upon the forward pair of its six clawed feet. Its big eyes steadily regarded Fallon and his companion, not two meters away. One lunge would have caught either of them.

With a stifled gasp, Fallon pulled himself together and pressed forward, hoping that none of the Krishnans had observed his gaffe. He remembered the shower of aliyab juice that he and Fredro had received earlier at the zoo. No doubt the shan would refrain from attacking them for this, if for no other reason. Could it be that all the priests sprinkled the stuff on their robes, so that any odorless intruders—disguised as Fallon and Fredro were—would be gobbled by the shan? Fallon could not tell whether the genuine priests smelled of aliyab because he had become habituated to it. But if this was true, their impromptu bath at the zoo had been fortunate.

The shan’s eyes followed them, but the beast did not raise its head from its paws. Fallon hurried through the next door.

Ahead, the corridor extended in a long, gentle curve following the outer wall of the building. There were no windows; and although jadeite is translucent in thin sections, the outer walls were much too thick to admit any outside light. Lamps were fastened at intervals to wall brackets. The left side of the corridor was formed by another wall pierced by frequent doorways. Around the curve, where the bulge of the inner wall blocked more distant vistas, Fallon knew from the plan that there should be a flight of stairs leading up and another one down.

To the immediate left, there branched off a large hallway or elongated chamber crowded with priests shuffling about before a long counter, on which were piled the outer vestments. The priests were picking these up, donning them, and straightening them before a series of mirrors affixed to the opposite wall. Though there was a murmur of talk, Fallon noticed that the priests were unusually quiet for a crowd of Krishnans.

Having been briefed by Liyará, Fallon walked—with an air of confidence that he did not feel—down the counter until he came to a pile of the red capes which distinguished third-degree priests of Yesht. He picked up two, handed one to Fredro, and put on the other before one of the mirrors.

No sooner had he done so when a bell jangled twice. With last-minute scurrying and primping, the priests formed a double file along the side of the hall where the mirrors were hung. Fallon dragged Fredro, still fumbling with the tie-strings of his cape, into the first vacant space that he spotted in the double line of priests of the third class. These followed those of the fourth class, who wore blue capes, and preceded those of the second, who wore yellow. Fortunately there did not seem to be any fixed order in which those of a given class took their places.

Fallon and Fredro stood side by side, heads bowed to keep their faces hidden, when the bell rang three times. There was a shuffle of feet. Out of the corner of his eye, Fallon saw a heterogeneous group of Krishnans hurry by. One carried, swung from a chain, a thurible whence poured a cloud of fragrant smoke, the fragrance cutting through the pervasive aliyab stench and the strong Krishnan body odor. There was one with a kind of harp and another with a small copper gong. There were several laden with gold lace and jewels, carrying ornate staves with symbols of the cult on top.

And Fallon could not repress a start as a couple passed towing between them, by a metal collar to which chains were linked fore and aft, a naked female Krishnan with her wrists bound behind her back.

Though the light was uncertain, and Fredro did not get a good look, he thought that the female was one of the small, pale-skinned, short-tailed primitives from the great forest belt east of Katai-Jhogorai, beyond the Triple Seas. The westerly Krishnans had but a meager knowledge of these regions, save that the forest folk had long furnished the Varasto nations with most of their slaves. But most Krishnans were too proud, stubborn, and truculent to make good slaves. They were too likely to murder their masters, even at the cost of their own lives.

But the timid little forest people from Jaega and Aurus were still kidnapped for sale in the western ports of the Triple Seas, though this traffic had declined since the suppression of the pirates of the Sunqar.

Fallon had no time now to wonder what the Yeshtites meant to do with the forest female. For the bell rang again, and the dignitaries sorted themselves out into a formal procession at the head of the column. The harpist and the gong-carrier began to make musical noises. The mass moved forward in a stately march that contrasted with their previous informal haste. As they marched, they broke into a wailing and lugubrious hymn. Fallon could not understand the words because the priests sang in Varastou—a dead language that was the parent of Balhibouu, Gazashtandu, Qiribou, and the other tongues of the Varasto nations, who occupied the lands west of the Triple Seas.