001. The Purest Summoning ()
"Great, majestic, and benevolent Isis, Mother Goddess who grants the earth its abundance and gives all living beings hope; Horus, King of the Gods, whose divine might shelters Eju and whose never-extinguished radiance illumines the world; Father Nun, born of the primordial lotus and creator of all things; the Nine United Gods who dwell at the source of the Sacred River, and all the gods who rule the earth and the sky! ...
Hear my prayer, and hear the oracle of the gods: only the purest heart of devotion can win the mercy of the gods. I would give all that I am to Isis. Grant me the Tears of the Gods..."
Aikou-Maria was praying to the gods. The place was Duke Town, a remote little town on the border of the Hatti Kingdom, a vassal of the great Eju Empire. For so desolate and out-of-the-way a region, Duke Town was already no small settlement: several hundred households, two thousand inhabitants. The mayor, Dasti, was a nobleman bearing the title of Hatti lord, and he also held citizenship of the great Eju Empire, enjoying a citizen's privileges under it.
That so remote a town should have so distinguished a mayor was, of course, because of its special standing. Duke Town belonged to the southernmost edge of the Suya city-state, which answered to the Hatti Kingdom. Suya was famous for three products, which were also the Hatti Kingdom's most important goods of foreign trade and its most precious tribute to the Eju Empire: iron, godstone, and snow-cedar.
Iron could be forged into the sharpest of weapons; the fine refined iron that skilled craftsmen drew from it made armor and blades both keen and tough, a symbol of power, and a tool for defense and for the seizing of wealth.
Many countries on this continent produced iron, but the yield was still very limited, and the production and trade of iron were strictly monopolized by the state.
Hatti's iron was the most famous of all; Duke Town's output was not large, but it produced a highly scarce grade of fine refined iron, and nearly every adult in town was at once a miner and a blacksmith.
The snow-cedar grows on the western Hatti plateau, in the towering ranges along both banks of the Yudi River. Soaked in cold water, sun-dried, then steeped in oil and baked, it becomes the finest of shipbuilding timber.
Ships built of it could roam the inland lakes, the rivers, and the open sea, and they were needed not only by armies on campaign but by merchants traveling between nations.
Duke Town did not produce snow-cedar; the cedar-clad mountains rose just east beyond the town, but to fell those giant cedars and haul them down out of the mountains was hard to imagine.
Duke Town's most important product was not even its fine refined iron, but godstone. This substance was very rare on the Celestial Pivot Continent; the Suya state of the Hatti Kingdom was one of the important sources of it, and the godstone from Duke Town accounted for nearly half of Suya's entire output. Every country on the Celestial Pivot Continent needed godstone, and above all the noble priests in the temples, masters of the supreme divine arts, craved it beyond measure.
Most commoners and slaves had no idea what godstone was actually for. They had only seen it set into priests' staffs or into the armor and weapons of noble warriors; it seemed to be a symbol of rank, of wealth, or of divine power. Godstone itself was also the most expensive currency in circulation on the continent: one godstone was worth twenty times its weight in gold, and it could not be divided.
The godstones that served as noble currency were the common standard ones, identical in substance, size, and shape, with not the slightest variation among them. Their weight was also the standard of weights and measures on the Celestial Pivot Continent: the zhu, the unit of weight in common use on the continent, was the weight of a single godstone. Word had it that luxury-loving priests even used godstones directly as standard weights on their scales.
This time Aikou-Maria had come to Duke Town with Rod-Dick, chief administrator and high priest of her home city-state, and what she prayed to the gods for was of course no ordinary godstone, but the legendary Tears of the Gods.
Only by obtaining it could she be acknowledged by the high priests of the Isis Temple in Mengfeisi and become a holy maiden guarding the goddess Isis.
Legend held that only the purest summoning could commune with the gods and win the Tears of the Gods as their gift, and that would mean her station had been recognized by the gods themselves.
Aikou-Maria's prayer was utterly devout. Yet in fact, not one godstone produced on the Celestial Pivot Continent — the incomparably precious Tears of the Gods included — was ever bestowed by the hands of gods. They were all dug out by the hands of miners.
Maria's residence stood at the south end of the little town, close by the Horus temple; it was one of the finest compounds in Duke Town, and had originally been the mayor's home. As in other towns on the continent, the most important building in any settlement was the temple, where the local guardian deity was enshrined and worshipped; whether a temple was grand and magnificent was likewise the sign of a city-state's strength.
Duke Town's temple could not, of course, compare with those of the great city-states, but set against those of other ordinary little towns, the Horus temple here was grand enough: raised from tall blocks of white stone and inlaid with blue-black stone carvings. The white marble of the columns had been hauled in from elsewhere, while the lapis lazuli that gleamed with a dark blue-green luster was a local product of the nearby hills — perhaps costly in other places, but here the commonest of building stones.
Duke Town had two main temples of comparable scale. One was dedicated to Horus, guardian god of the Eju Empire, a sign that this land submitted to the Eju pharaoh; it stood at the south of the town, its main body built of white marble. The other belonged to the guardian deity worshipped here since ancient times, the goddess Muyun, who was widely revered in Hatti, in Assyria to the northeast, and in the kingdom of Barun to the southeast.
The Hatti Kingdom was a league of several dozen city-states. The great Eju Empire had conquered the place, but in order to govern it better and make the Hatti more docile in their submission, the Eju pharaoh had graciously permitted them to keep worshipping their own guardian deities and had not destroyed the old temples — while at the same time ordering that the Eju guardian Horus be honored as well.
Maria prayed in her chamber on the second floor. Every day, after rising and washing in the morning, before the midday meal, and at nightfall, she prayed like this. She had been in Duke Town three days now, devout and scrupulous, never a detail out of place; even Gabriel, a temple warrior trained to the strictest standard, could not help secretly approving as she looked on, and said to herself that the girl ought to satisfy a holy maiden's requirements — perhaps the gods would take pity on her.
In the territory of the Eju Empire, along the sacred River Roni, lay two broad stretches of fertile land, known as Upper Eju and Lower Eju. Gabriel was a warrior sent from the Isis Temple in Mengfeisi, capital of Lower Eju, to protect Maria, in answer to the report and request of Rod-Dick, high priest and chief administrator of the Cape State of Lower Eju. Whenever someone passed the test of the gods and was deemed worthy to be a candidate holy maiden guarding the goddess Isis, the Isis Temple would send someone to protect her.
While Maria prayed, Gabriel stood below, at the gate of the compound. A heavy longsword hung at her waist, a godstone set into each face of its guard at the center. Even with no danger anywhere about, she still wore her silver armor in flawless order, her expression solemn and severe. From where she stood, the blue-gold dome of the Muyun temple at the other end of town was in view; her lips were pressed together, and in her eyes was a trace of cold laughter, hard to notice.
Plainly this guardian warrior of the Isis Temple had little fondness for the gods of another people; but since the Eju pharaoh had graciously allowed the old temple to remain, she could say nothing about it. Her duty was simply to protect Aikou-Maria; she need not meddle in other people's business.
Gabriel was tall, slender, and straight-backed, with a sensuous, athletic beauty. Her face bore the clear features of the northern peoples: fair skin, a very straight nose, and charming sky-blue eyes. Golden curls fell over her silver armor, softness and resolve in perfect harmony. She was young and beautiful, and yet the children of the town, who threw stones at one another in play, instinctively kept well away from the compound and did not dare frolic at its gate.
When people saw her, the first thing they noticed might not be a very beautiful woman: around her hung, intangible, an air of confidence and proud majesty, as though brimming with power, not in the least concealed.
Only Gabriel guarded the compound; the Isis Temple had sent just this one warrior to protect one of the candidate holy maidens, Aikou-Maria. But Gabriel also knew that in the Horus temple of Duke Town, not far off, was stationed the personal guard Rod-Dick had brought with him: sixty picked warriors in full armor.
Evidently Lord Dick did not believe that she alone could protect Maria. Crossing the desert between Eju and Hatti was full of danger, but bringing so many elite warriors was plainly excessive. Out of a nobleman's good breeding Lord Dick said nothing, yet Gabriel could sense that he was dissatisfied.
Gabriel did not mind in the least — and that was owed to breeding, but even more to a noble pride.
At the other end of town, inside a small building near the temple of the goddess Muyun, Rod-Dick held a cup of wine and, through the window, was also watching Gabriel's compound from afar, his brown eyes somewhat deep, silently turning something over in his mind—
It seemed this temple warrior from Mengfeisi was not accustomed to holding herself back, and always let the aura of her power blaze out. Small wonder — one of her duties was to proclaim the majesty of the gods. But to Rod-Dick, born into the hereditary nobility of a city-state, this was not a good habit. People always needed to keep something hidden; a man should not expose the whole of his strength to a potential rival, and should display true power only at the proper moment.
The contest for worldly power and wealth is always cruel. One must be ready at every moment, show the proper deterrence, and keep a card in reserve for the shifting turns of fortune.
The small building he was in stood close beside the temple of the goddess Muyun, and Lord Dick did not find this at all improper; the people of this continent had always honored gods of every kind, great and small — some gods of legend, some guardian deities that local folk claimed for their own.
The pharaoh of the Eju Empire styled himself the incarnation and spokesman in the mortal world of Horus, son of the gods, the god-king who ruled Upper and Lower Eju. The traditional guardian deity of Lower Eju was the goddess Isis, said in legend to be Horus's mother, whose chief temple stood in Mengfeisi, capital of Lower Eju.
Nearly every country on the Celestial Pivot Continent was ruled by a union of kingship and priesthood; every monarch claimed to be the spokesman of a god, and the Isis Temple in Mengfeisi was the most important center of power in Lower Eju.
This time the Isis Temple had sent only a single warrior to protect the Cape State's candidate holy maiden, and Lord Dick was plainly displeased at heart, taking it as a slight to himself and to the Cape State he represented. The Cape State lay at the northeastern corner of the Eju Empire, on the frontier, at the point nearest Barun and the Hatti Kingdom; beyond the border stretched a vast, desolate desert, and it could not compare with the fertile, wealthy city-states.
Yet its position was important — though that importance had not brought the Cape State only benefits. Once war broke out, the Cape State would be the first to be trampled by the flames of battle. And in outwardly peaceful times it was an important port of trade with the countries of the northwest, full of countless opportunities.
Now the Hatti Kingdom submitted to Eju, but Lord Dick had also vaguely heard that the lords of many Hatti city-states were unwilling to accept their present lot as vassals, and were forever seeking to band together in secret resistance. It happened that the Isis Temple was choosing a holy maiden; Dick naturally hoped this holy maiden would come from the Cape State. That would mean glory for the city-state, and in the future, should conflict arise, he hoped the Isis Temple and all of Lower Eju might lend the Cape State more protection.
Dick certainly did not want anything to happen to Maria, and so he had brought the finest of his personal guard. A force like that, for the protection of a single person crossing the desert, was plainly superfluous — and Dick had plans of his own besides.
He had become chief administrator and high priest of the Cape State at a young age, holding in his hands the united powers of church and state; that was owed not only to his illustrious hereditary rank, but also to his own ability — to draw the greatest possible advantage out of any affair, and put it to use.
The Isis Temple had sent only one person. That was just as well; it saved a great deal of bribery. Seeing Gabriel, Dick had the feeling that this temple guardian warrior was unlike the many greedy priests: she was like a proud little rooster, too proud to stoop to taking a bribe, and from the look of her she seemed to have no notion of wealth at all.
Gabriel seemed not to know how expensive the longsword she wore really was, and hung it at her waist for all the world to see. If she traveled alone, that sword would likely do nothing to protect her and would first draw robbers down on her. And so Gabriel had come all the way from Mengfeisi to the Cape State alone, with that longsword at her side — even Rod-Dick was astonished. How lucky she was to have arrived safely! Perhaps the bandits along the road knew who she was and did not dare offend the Isis Temple.
Having brought so many guards and attendants, in the name of protecting the holy maiden and serving the lady Gabriel, the great caravan naturally carried every kind of provision — chiefly the wine and fine food most welcome in Duke Town. With Lady Gabriel along, the border posts between Eju and Hatti naturally waved them through without inspection, and of course collected no taxes either.
The godstone the people of Duke Town mined had to be handed over to the city-state as tribute; the city-state's law stipulated that one of every ten pieces belonged to the state, and the rest was their due reward. At the same time, Rod-Dick well knew that Mayor Dasti, who held the power to levy tribute in Duke Town, would not be so selfless; the man must have held back a good deal in his own hands.
Godstone was a currency of exchange worth twenty times its own weight in gold, and in Duke Town it was the same. But Duke Town's produce was at once rich and poor: apart from godstone and iron, its barren soil grew only a little barley to fill bellies, and every other necessity, every luxury, had to be hauled in from elsewhere. And the place was so out of the way that everything brought here cost many times what it would elsewhere.
The people of Duke Town probably did not realize that they might be the wealthiest inhabitants of the Celestial Pivot Continent, and that this was also the most expensive place on the continent. Though the taxes levied on the trade roads were heavy, a single successful deal still left a handsome profit.
To provide cover for the goods he was shipping to Duke Town, Dick had also gathered a merchant caravan from the Cape city-state to travel there with his party.
The merchants were naturally glad to go along with Lord Dick's caravan: it amounted to an absolute guarantee of safety, and saved them the cost of hiring mercenaries; and with Lady Gabriel and Lord Dick present, the tax collectors at the posts along the way would not extort them maliciously but would simply do their duty.
They were full of gratitude to Lord Dick for his care of the people under him — many noble officials would show merchants no such consideration.
At dinner, Lord Dick had just had a pleasant talk with Mayor Dasti, and pleasanter still was the business between them: both parties were well satisfied. Besides godstone, Lord Dick had also bought precious fine refined iron from the mayor. This was smuggling, a secret not to be spoken of to outsiders, and over good wine and fine food the two understood each other without a word.
Pleasant as the bargain was, Rod-Dick did not like this place — especially the foul, smoky, scorched smell that hung over everything, which made him thoroughly uncomfortable. He was growing anxious, and wondered how much longer he would have to wait.
He had brought Maria here partly to use the occasion as cover for a piece of business, and partly for one more aim: to obtain the Tears of the Gods. The high priests of the Isis Temple had proclaimed an oracle to the world — one Tear of the Gods would be bestowed upon the mortal realm, and whoever obtained it would be the holy maiden guarding the goddess Isis.
Rod-Dick had his own ideas about this. The Tears of the Gods were nothing more than a rarer sort of godstone; if it truly did appear, the likeliest place was where godstone was found in greatest concentration. So, by using the advantage of geography to hurry to Duke Town and lie in wait, he would have the best chance of getting there first. This was of course a gamble, but a gamble that stood to profit him whether it succeeded or failed, and if he chanced to succeed, everything would be perfect.
He told Maria that he had been guided by the goddess Isis in a dream, and Maria passed this on to Gabriel, and so persuaded the temple warrior to cross the desert frontier and come along.
Since arriving in Duke Town, Maria had prayed devoutly every day, while Rod-Dick, who had invented the lie, was growing impatient. In this little town, where blacksmiths' furnaces burned everywhere, the wretched conditions were more than Lord Dick could bear; he did not want to stay a single day longer. And he found himself thinking again of the legend of the Tears of the Gods.
He was a little drunk already, and cursed under his breath: "The gods grant their mercy? Is it truly the will of the gods, or a lie cooked up by the priests? Since when has this ancient oracle been handed down among us? It's a stone, nothing more — however precious, a stone with a use. Praying to the gods is worse than asking a miner for help. Obtaining the Tears of the Gods makes you a holy maiden, does it? Then what is the man who digs it out — a filthy old fellow, most likely!"
He had barely finished the thought when a gust of wind blew in through the window, carrying the hot breath of the furnace fires. Dick shivered for no reason at all, his drunkenness gone, and he hastily pressed a hand to his chest and prayed: "Great goddess Isis, the thoughts in my heart mean no disrespect to you; I was only speaking frankly."
Just then Rod-Dick suddenly froze. He seemed to sense something — a ripple of mysterious power, both strange and unfamiliar — and the unpleasant furnace heat and the unaccountable chill alike seemed somehow soothed. Tracing the ripple back to its source, he found it came from a certain household at the edge of town.
Rod-Dick immediately set down his cup and called out, "Fayol, come in at once! The Tears of the Gods may have appeared — go and do as I instructed, this instant!"
Gabriel, standing at attention, suddenly raised her head and turned her face toward a certain direction in the town. She felt a ripple of power, mysterious and yet familiar, trembling faintly in the air — so subtle it could not be measured, and yet so clear. An unaccountable light of gladness stirred in her eyes, and she glanced back at Maria's window.
There was a crisp ding, and then a fine humming that echoed through the room and lingered on and on. Amon gripped a heavy mining hammer and brought it down on a fist-sized round stone that gleamed with a dark, glossy light.
The iron hammer looked so very heavy, and it came down with a fierce whistle of wind, yet the moment it met the stone's surface it went light as a feather, giving only a single clear ding.
Amon's grip on the great hammer was a little comical: he held it far up the handle, his whole forearm from wrist to elbow pressed against the shaft. He was not yet very tall — fourteen this year, after all, not yet grown to a man.
Yet his muscles were firm and sturdy; when he braced them and swung the great hammer, it was as though little snakes darted and wriggled beneath the swelling muscle. By Duke Town's immemorial custom, a child of his age was not yet entitled to mine godstone on his own. Opening the ore core, won through such bitter labor, with Duke Town's own peculiar hammer technique was the last and most crucial step in obtaining godstone.
But today he had no choice but to do it at home, because his father had drunk too much again and his hands trembled so badly that he could not control the mining hammer — and tomorrow they had to hand in a godstone.