They thus took to travelling in the dim hours just before dawn, then resting in an unoccupied guard tower or in the shade of the great roadway itself while the sun blazoned its golden brand upon the fields. In the evening they moved on again until it grew too dark to see one’s footing. At first Mnesun marched whenever there was light from both the moons, but after a slave, confused by the double red and green shadows, slipped and went asprawl, breaking most of his load of glassware-a loss of seven hundred Kaitars — he resigned himself to a slower pace.
At last Katalal lay before them, a splash of green upon a dust-yellow canvas. Its ornate gables, peaked roofs, and pyramided temples rose above a tiny blue lake, fed from an underground spring that nourished not only the city but also long avenues of Gapul-txees beyond the red-and-black-chequered walls. Katalal was justly famed for its roof gardens. As in many of the cities of the plains, it was customary to cultivate cool grottoes of exotic foliage in urns upon the flat roof of one’s house. From a distance, thus, Katalal looked like nothing more than some great jungle ruin, all overgrown with vines, creepers, shrubs, and garish flowers. In the midst of the city the governor’s palace shimmered pearl-white above the lake, and just beyond the temples of Vimuhla and Karakan faced one another across the square like two behemoths before a wrestling match. Here many folk espoused the faith of the Fire God and of his Cohort Chiteng, He of the Red-Spouting Flame. The Lords of Stability, too, had their shrines in Katalal, but of these only warlike Karakan and his Cohort Chegarra were popular.
For all their militant gods, the people of Katalal seemed singularly peaceable. They wore knee-length kilts of red and black chequers and stripes, flat wide-brimmed hats of enameled Chlen- hide, and short cloaks of gauzy Thesun-cloth. This, Harsan was told, was woven from the silk of the Dnelu, a fierce six-legged insect-like creature half the size of a man. These predators built underground dens from whence they leaped out upon smaller game and occasionally even upon unwary humans. The eggs of the Dnelu came wrapped in skull-sized cocoons of flossy grey fibre, and the braver youths of the city vied with one another in provoking the creatures into an attack while others stole their eggs.
The folk of Katalal were less receptive to a priest of Thumis than those of the Chakas, but Harsan found his way without difficulty to the unpretentious temple of his sect in a side street off the main plaza. Here his writ again got him food and lodging. That evening he carefully cut the stitching of his grey robe and brought forth the three gold Kaitars which Prior Haringgashte had advanced him. He then undid his bedroll and contemplated the farseeing device given him by Zaren. There were also his notes on the Llyani language, a painstakingly copied manuscript of the Llyani grammar of Tlu’en of Ssa’atis, and two leaves bearing reproductions of the glyphs upon Kurrune’s map symbol and the waxen hand. He kept the money out, but the rest he bound up in the roll once more.
In the morning he found a merchant in the marketplace and surrendered half of a precious Kaitar for a delicate blue faience amulet of the Goddess Avanthe in her Aspect of Tahele, the Maid of Beauty. When Mnesun’s caravan set forth again on the following day he chose an occasion and presented this to the Lady Eyil. She received it with pleasure and kissed him for it, but she did not wear it much thereafter, much to his hidden disappointment.
Now Harsan walked regularly with the Lady Eyil. Bejjeksa, the Salarvyani trader, made a wager with the Shen that Harsan would abandon his sleeping mat near the fire for another and more enticing bed before they reached Katalal. In this he was the loser, and he paid up with ill grace, muttering about inexperienced boys who could not see when a warm female bosom yearned to receive them.
The Lady Eyil continued to plague Harsan with arguments about theology, but now more of her queries were purely personal, as was the way of a girl attended by an earnest suitor in Tsolyanu- and probably other lands as well.
Her feet, she complained, hurt her and were a misfortune: “big enough to thresh out all the crops in the Empire in the harvest dances.” Harsan gazed upon the supple limb extended for his inspection and demurred strongly.
The Lady Eyil smiled.
The following day she said, “Harsan, think you that my eyes are too large for my face?” Harsan did not and said so volubly.
Still later, she said, “My clan-sisters say my breasts are really too small for my height.” Harsan, who even now had one of these criticised objects pressed warmly against his side as they walked, disagreed.
The next evening, after Tsatla had been summarily dismissed into a silently protesting huddle on the far side of the litter, the Lady Eyil used the “thou of heart’s desire,” as befitted the occasion, and whispered, “Harsan, think you my knees are too close together to accord with the Twenty-seventh Criterion of Beauty enjoined by my Goddess?” Harsan had never heard of these standards, but he knelt now looking down at the delicious length of her within the shadowed litter, and he gladly would have sung an ode to her knees or to any other part she cared to name, if only he had had even a smidgin of versifying. He berated himself for having studied ancient epics instead of love sonnets.
Then, when the fire had died away to a memory of redness, the Lady Eyil turned her head upon Harsan’s shoulder, touched lip to lip, and said, “There are those who might say my teeth are uneven and not worthy of the canon of the Goddess…” Harsan explored the matter for himself with his tongue and pronounced the unknown critics to be fools.
Thus did Bejjeksa win his second wager with the Shen.
Even so, the path to the Lady Eyil was not without its thomy patches. One of the Mu’ugalavyani brothers was an accomplished flute-player who often entertained the party in the evenings with the wistful melodies of his own land. He began to seek out the Lady Eyil’s company, and for a time she walked both with him and with Harsan, much to the latter’s pent-up despair. But then she made a clever pun upon flutes and flute-players, almost certainly within the man’s hearing, and he called upon her no more.
More troublous was the matter of the Livyani, Sa’araz, who fancied himself a courtier. He paid her elaborate compliments in his lisping, accented Tsolyani. One evening he showed her the contents of his leathern wallet: gleaming chrysoberyls, amethysts, camelians, and opals of milky pearl and green inner fire. Some of these, he hinted, might well grace the throat of a noble lady. She fingered them longingly, asked their qualities and prices, and spoke fair words to Sa’araz, who made her a gift of one of his smaller stones. The affair might have been more serious if the Livyani had not been a man of indefinite age and unprepossessing appearance. She smiled upon him and exchanged courtly banter, a game in which he easily outmatched her. But she admitted privately to Harsan that Sa’araz’ polished urbanities and his ageless, smooth skin did not enchant her. His eyes, too, repelled her, she said, being flat and expressionless, looking upon her as though she were but one more glittering gem. Sa’araz soon saw where this road led and contented himself with pretty words and an occasional subtle gibe at Harsan.
One evening, six days out of Katalal and two days before they were to reach the town of Hauma, they stopped beneath one of the watch towers. This one had a small garrison of soldiers. A broad, low, stone platform had been built out from the lowest level of the roadway, and half a dozen parties of merchants, townsmen, and other travellers were encamped upon it. There were several rude stalls where provisions and fuel might be had, a well of good water, and a gaggle of tents filled with singers, dancers, jugglers, and harlots. The caravan-master had his slaves pitch his dun-coloured tent near the wall on the platform.