Everyone looked at Dasti. Xiaogu cut in resentfully: "The way you did it, you were plainly letting him go on purpose—right before Lord Landir arrived."
Before Dasti could answer, Gelie suddenly wheeled on Xiaomo: "Provincial Lord, this decree is still in force, is it not? No one should be blamed for faithfully executing a decree of the kingdom—and a scribe most certainly should not question his own superior in that tone!"
Xiaomo had governed the city-state of Xuya for many years and was of course a shrewd old hand at official life; he understood at once that Gelie meant to shield Dasti. As provincial lord of Xuya and high priest of its temple, Xiaomo would rather offend ten Landirs than one Gelie—and by rank, his own post stood a grade above Landir's. He had only been flattering Landir because the man was an envoy from the royal capital.
These past days, watching Landir preen and lose all sense of himself like a petty man drunk on his own little triumph, Xiaomo had long found him hard to stomach. Now that Gelie was dressing down Xiaogu and plainly taking Landir to task as well, he was only too glad to go with the current. He nodded quickly: "Yes, this decree is entirely lawful and valid. I never said Town Chief Dasti did anything improper in this. I merely asked him why—it is surprising, after all."
Dasti bowed and explained: "The truth is this: I was looking for an excuse to punish Amon. Not long ago I heard something from merchants out of Eju—a new holy maiden has appeared at the Isis Temple in Lower Eju, named Maria, and she received a Tears of the Gods here in Duke Town, presented by one of the miners. More than two months ago, Rod-Dick, chief administrator of Cape State, did indeed come here with a girl called Maria. I assumed he was only doing business; I never imagined anything like this would happen."
At the time, Xiaogu—the priest who oversaw the affairs of the Temple of Horus and the Muyun Temple in town, and who is also my scribe—knew nothing of it either, so no such godstone was ever entered in the town's records. My investigation later established that Amon dug out the Tears of the Gods and presented it on the spot to the goddess Isis in his own name, and that the man who carried the godstone away was Rod-Dick's scribe, Fayol-Judah.
Such conduct cannot be tolerated, and yet it gave us no pretext to take offense at the Eju Empire. To keep anything like it from happening again, Amon had to be punished, to overawe and warn everyone. So I thought of this decree from thirty years ago, and sent him into the deep mountains where the cave-dwelling wild folk live, to hunt down an evil mage—with orders not to come back until he finds him.
It amounts to banishment; he cannot possibly come back alive! As town chief I have no right to put a townsman to death at will, but I do have a duty to share the kingdom's burdens. I thought for several nights before I hit on this device. Lord Landir's purpose in coming was precisely to punish Amon. I am both gratified and sorry: gratified that from the kingdom's standpoint he should indeed be punished, and sorry that Lord Landir did not arrive three days sooner."
Dasti finished. Xiaogu, cowed by the scolding, did not dare speak again, and the others had caught on that the mood had turned; for the moment none of them rushed to take a position. Only Gelie nodded: "So that is how it was—a truly painstaking scheme! Dasti is a conscientious official, one who knows how to share the kingdom's burdens. Provincial Lord, Lord Landir, we ought to be glad that our jurisdiction holds such an outstanding talent—oughtn't we?"
Provincial Lord Xiaomo, High Priest Cosman and Finance Officer Morton chorused: "Yes—Town Chief Dasti is loyal and conscientious!"
Landir was rather thrown. He had come as the special envoy to punish Amon; with Amon gone, what was he supposed to do? How could his mission ever be fulfilled? He waved a hand: "Gelie, don't be in such a hurry to praise a country town chief. How is this envoy to complete his mission?"
Gelie gave a sudden cold snort, and the wine cup before Landir shattered without a sound, splashing bright red wine across his clothes. Landir leapt up from his chair in fright as Gelie said icily: "You are truly ill-mannered—to address me by my bare name, without a single word of respect!"
Landir came to his senses. The local officials all along the road had treated him with such respect that this minor bureaucrat of the Ministry of Law, leaving the royal capital for the first time in his life, had quite lost his head.
Gelie was an eighth-rank grand divine artist and a member of the council of elders of the Hatti Kingdom's Academy of Divine Arts; his standing was beyond compare. How could Landir have bawled at such a man over nothing?
If Gelie chose to make a mountain out of it and refused to let the matter drop—if he even impeached him before the Academy's council of elders for showing disrespect to the gods—the worst outcome could be the stripping of his title and office.
Gelie would of course never do anything so petty and so beneath his dignity, but Mise Landir had frightened himself with his own imaginings. He bowed at once: "Respected grand divine artist, Mise is profoundly sorry. I beg you to forgive my rudeness! I spoke out of turn only because I was in a sudden panic at the thought that the mission laid on me could not be completed."
Gelie's expression softened, but he did not tell Landir to sit down. He said slowly: "It is not impossible for you to complete your mission. Have Provincial Lord Xiaomo lend you a guard to escort you into the deep mountains on the borders of Assyria and Barron; when you find Amon and punish him, then return to the royal capital and report. I can bear witness for you, and carry word back to the Ministry of Law, and send men to inform your superiors and your family, so they need not worry."
Xiaomo and the others had to swallow their laughter. A fellow like Landir, who took other people's humility and courtesy as license for his own swagger, was truly odious—but their own positions made it awkward to say anything. And Gelie, a grand divine artist who had no need whatever to curry favor with Landir—if he really wanted to turn on him and cut him down to size, would that be hard? Even Landir's superiors in the Ministry of Law would not offend Gelie on Landir's account.
Landir looked on the verge of tears. He dropped to his knees before Gelie and bowed: "Respected grand divine artist, may I ask if there is anything else you would have me do?"
Gelie smiled and lifted him to his feet with an outstretched hand, without touching him: "It is simple enough, really. There are two ways. First, you issue Provincial Lord Xiaomo an order to have Amon brought before you, and wait in the city-state of Xuya. But that way may not work very well—ten to one Amon has already been eaten by beasts in the mountains. The second way is easier still: report truthfully what happened here, and do not forget to praise how Xiaomo and Dasti and the rest of the local officials truly shared the kingdom's burdens."
"Amon has already received the punishment he deserved; he was only a miner. The capital sent you as envoy to punish him for no other reason than to warn others, and that aim has now been fully achieved—no one will give it another thought. Besides, I was present and can bear witness for you; a word from me settles it. I imagine your superiors at the Ministry of Law saw how diligent you are and decided to send you out for a tour—eating, drinking and enjoying yourself the whole way. You have been enjoying it well enough, haven't you?"
Landir's face burned with embarrassment; he could hardly say "quite well" and hardly say otherwise. He could only mumble meekly: "Thank you, respected grand divine artist; thank you, colleagues. Then let it be done that way."
Amon climbed steadily upward, and it felt less like ascending a single isolated peak than walking out onto a plateau. The mountain path did not rise without cease; it rolled up and down through many level, open stretches overgrown with dense primeval forest. Vegetation here was lush, the rain plentiful and the wildlife abundant—a good place for hunting and foraging. No wonder tribes of cave-dwelling wild folk lived here.
He kept his guard up the whole way, leaning on the refined-iron branch, yet a whole day passed without a trace of the cave-dwelling wild folk; he saw only a few squirrels and wild goats. The mountain squirrels were not shy of people—they would even leap onto high branches and stare at you with open curiosity—but come too close and they whisked into the canopy and vanished. The wild goats were timid things, bolting far off at the least sound; they were nimble beyond belief, able to spring about on even the steepest rocks.
Tracks were not always to be found on the path. The climate in the high mountains was fickle: sometimes a single ridge separates sun from rain, two different worlds; some stretches are too dry to hold a print; and the path itself came and went.
As the light began to fail, Amon left the path and found a hollow backed by a rock wall with a small open space before it—his favorite kind of campsite in the mountains. He lit a fire and first cooked Schrödinger its dinner, then ate his own fill. The specially made meat floss he carried was running low; there was enough for him and Schrödinger for two or three days at most, and after that he would have to hunt.
While making camp, something occurred to him. By the Old Madman's account, a man who could combine two low-rank divine arts was already a qualified second-rank mage. I wonder whether the Old Madman left anything in the Eye of the Earth that I can read at my present level.
After dark Amon limbered up his limbs in the clearing. The movements resembled a kind of gymnastics but followed no fixed routine; it was the habit he had formed over the years after bathing in the cold spring—a warm current rising and spreading through his body as he stretched his joints and tendons, which brought the deepest relaxation and washed away the day's fatigue. Strange to say, even without the cold spring, this daily exercise now sent a glow of warmth through him, and it felt good.
Then Amon planted his staff before him, spread clean soft grass and sat quietly in meditation. The so-called "power bestowed by the gods" was more often called mana; in a state of focused introspection one circulated mana to commune with the things outside oneself. Divine artists might excel in different divine arts, but as a basic skill this state of focused introspection was the same for all of them; divine artists of different ranks could each reach a different depth of it.
Amon did not yet know the divine art of messages. Like the divine art of detection, it was a mid-rank divine art, and the ability to use a single mid-rank art on one's own was one of the standards by which a third-rank divine artist was judged. But the Old Madman had already sealed what he wanted to say inside the Eye of the Earth with the divine art of messages; once Amon reached a given stage, he would naturally "see" what belonged to that stage.
Amon entered the meditative state of focused introspection and used his mana to touch and summon the Eye of the Earth. Sure enough, a message flowed into his mind—as though words appeared before his eyes and a voice sounded at his ear at the same time. The message read—