The Prior rounded upon Kurrune and spoke with fierce intensity. “And now you can unravel me this skein, my friend! When you asked me to show the boy the map symbol I had no idea you came to take him from us! I had hoped to see him complete his work-attain the Third Circle at least, before sending him out to jig to the pipers of temple politics!”
The other shrugged, held out a hand cupped palm up in mute deprecation. “Old friend, what can I say? I am but a talking ATiM-bird, fluttering here and there to squawk my simple words, and am gone again…”
The Prior snorted. “Nonsense. I know you from of old. Did we not sweat out a miserable ten years together in the temple school at Tumissa? Tell me, honestly, as Hnalla, Lord of Light, loves you: how many masters now do you serve?”
Kurrune smiled, not in the least put out. “Currently I think it is six-three of which are here, here, and here.” He touched his stomach, his heart, and his forehead. “The remaining three are less troublesome.” He held out his blue courier’s headdress. “You know that I am a messenger for our good Lord, the sixty-first Seal Emperor of Tsolyanu. You know also that I favour our Lord of Wisdom, great Thumis. And the sixth of my masters you must guess at, for I may not reveal the name.”
“Tell me what you know of this matter at least!”
Kurrune sighed. “ ‘Sow seeds in the desert and reap only sand,’ as we say in Fasiltum. The High Council of the temple does not confide in such as I. But this, good Haringgashte, may be the shoot from which the tree sprouts: not only is Harsan young, not only does he unravel Llyani as easily as a maiden weaves garlands for her lovers, but is it not also true that he speaks the tongue of the insects-the Pe Choi?”
“Ohe, I had guessed as much.” The Prior licked thin lips. “The boy is clanless, brought to us by the Pe Choi from the inner valleys. For Thumis knows what reason they had kept him instead of handing him over to the nearest human settlement when they found him abandoned in the forest. None knew his parents, nor had we any record of him. When he came to us, he spoke only Pe Choi, a language no human has ever learned before. He whistled, he hooted, he trilled, he snapped his fingers and clapped his hands-and the insects understood him. He lacked the organs needed to make all of their strange sounds, yet he had developed substitutes. It was three summers before he could speak freely with the other children here in the monastery. Even now there are times when he strikes me as odd: a difference of idiom, a sense of attitude, who can say?”
The messenger glanced over to Harsan’s model. “You tell me that he is the only human ever to learn the tongue of the Pe Choi. Why did he not make it the subject of his Labour of Reverence? There are many who know Llyani.”
“We had thought the same,” the Prior replied, “but he said that there are no symbols-in glass, metal, or any other substance-for the sounds of the insects’ speech. More, he denies that our symbologies can truly represent their conceptual framework. Who knows, he may be right…”
“Perhaps he would keep his knowledge to himself? Later, when he grows more skilled, he may submit it as a Labour of Reverence for admission to a higher Circle?”
The Prior made a sour face. “Another unanswerable riddle. In any case, Llyani has status, prestige as a ‘high tongue’ of the ancients. It is also likely that the other acolytes in our school had much to do with his choice-teased him about his jungle origins, his lack of clan, lineage, and parentage-and made him miserable enough to select the most noble, most difficult, and most esoteric of all of the ancient languages.”
“La, friend Haringgashte, you now answer your own question.
Why send for this one lowly novice, as fresh as a Dlel — fruit from the tree? Here is a reason as good as any: a clever young fellow, talent visible within him as light within a lamp, a love of picking apart your ancient grammatical puzzles, a background of alien strangeness-something that provides him with a new perspective upon his studies. Why should the High Council not whistle him up when a bagful of old bones and trinkets comes to light?” He tapped his wallet.
“Because it is not enough! If there is one lesson I’ve learned in fifty years in the priesthood, it’s to follow a skein until I get back to the first knot. When Harsan spoke of Gruneshu and the others, his bolt did not miss its mark. Other scholars of Llyani exist, greater ones by far. Every temple of the twenty deities has some duffer or other who can riddle the language.” He scraped a hand across his small, shaven chin. “-And these relics have naught to do with the Pe Choi. There’s no hint of Pe Choi manufacture in the two you showed me. We lack a theorem sufficient to explain the data, as our old teacher Chayanu used to tell us in his logic lectures. The boy is clanless-not a good sign, for it means that he is expendable, and none to ask after him. He is naive, unlettered in the intrigues of the temple, vulnerable as a fish on the shore…”
Kurrune lowered his eyes. “Old friend, I really speak words of wind. I know nothing of this. About other matters I could fill you as a river fills a bucket. But not this. I swear it to you.” His tone softened. “My sources do bring me a drop here, a driblet there, and from all of these trickles I can often make a pond. They say of me that all gossip flows to Kurrune the Messenger, as a river enters the sea. Were you to ask, I could tell you how the Royalist Party fiddles and the priesthoods dance; how the Military Party sings sweetly in our Emperor’s ear of conquests in Yan Kor and the re-establishment of the halcyon days of the Bednalljan kings; how the Imperialist Party in Avanthar sulks and waits to pounce upon posts closer to the Petal Throne; how the royal Prince Eselne diddles and dallies with Misenla, High Priestess of Hrihayal in Bey Sii; how his brothers pout and glower, and the youngest, Dhich’une, yearns to call up all the undead demons of accursed Sarku and give the land over to the Mysteries of the Worm. I could whisper of certain heirs to the throne who are as yet unrevealed, kept secret by the Emperor and his Omnipotent Azure Legion until the time is ripe for them to be brought forth… All of these things I can tell and more; yet of this present instance I have less knowledge than an eel-fisher in the swamps of Tsehelnu.”
The Prior fixed Kurrune with a steady eye. “So you know not what dance is being danced, or which piper plays the tune? I would not have Harsan hurt, Kurrune. I know that you are not accountable for this transfer to the capital, nor can I exact the compensation of Shamtla blood-money if he is brought low through some scheming. Yet I do beg of you, as we both love the Lord of Wisdom, to keep ear clapped to earth and eye to door-crack, as I know you do in any case, and warn the lad of ill portents. This much I ask of you out of old friendship.”
“You have my oath on it.” Kurrune solemnly stretched forth his right palm, and Haringgashte pressed his own to it. Together the two men moved down the aisle between the looming, black-shadowed shapes.
Behind them a tapestry rustled. It might have been the “Silent Walker of the Night.”
Chapter Five
The Great Council of the Temples had been summoned to meet in the Palace of the Priesthoods of the Realm at one hour after sunrise. As usual, it began most tardily. The square-pillared portico at the eastern end of the chamber had first let in the cool, ruddy light of dawn to finger the blue and gold traceries of the ceiling. Now the hot, pale glare of midday pressed through the gauze curtains lowered by the attendants, and sunlight lay upon the flags nearest the columns like puddles of molten brass. The parched odour of summer hung upon the air, underlaid by the darker effluvia of the Missuma River. Here, high above Bey Sii, the breeze brought the clean smells of ripening crops from beyond Patyel’s Walls, and these mingled with the fragrances of woodsmoke, charcoal, cooking spices, incense, the vast markets, and the less-pleasing redolences of sewers and open gutters and crowded humanity, all baking together under the midsummer sun.