Inhaltsangabe
A member of an oppressed society that is under the rule of a hostile enemy, a civil servant is ordered to penetrate the fortress-temple known as the Fastness of the Gods, where he is to assassinate the enemy's leader. Original.
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It was an infernal afternoon at the start of the swelter season, but the crowd racketing in the street outside the Vonahrish Residency in ZuLaysa appeared immune to heat. Of course, the crowd was Aveshquian, its members born to the climate. The steambath atmosphere so ennervating to foreign administrators damped neither native vitality nor native hostility. Whizzing rocks pelted the outer wall of the Residency compound, and the air sizzled with howling abuse. Some of the insults were wonderfully inventive, but their beauty was lost upon the Vonahrish recipients immured within, who comprehended little of the local dialect. The accusations were likewise unintelligible, but their menace required no translation and, behind the wall, the Residency windows were shuttered tightly.
Similarly shuttered and barred were buildings all throughout this section of ZuLaysa known as Little Sherreen, in honor of the distant Vonahrish capital. The houses, shops, and offices--all neoclassically symmetrical in de-sign, all constructed of imported cherry-colored brick, all seemingly lifted straight off the tree-lined boulevards of Sherreen--today appeared almost absurdly out of place under the glaring eastern skies. The streets ordinarily filled with pallid expatriates today belonged to golden Aveshquians alone. The natives--for the most part a docile lot, as their creed dictated--now displayed uncharacteristic fury, and a westerner afoot in their midst might justly have feared for his fair skin. Fellow countrymen went unmolested for the nonce, even those clothed in the livery of the Vonahrish overlords, but that could change in an instant.
The Aveshquian guards stationed before the Residency's big front gates were cognizant of peril. The uniformed figures stood motionless and upright, while the faces beneath the stiffened visors of flat-topped dhurlies were professionally blank. But the dark eyes in the bronzed visages shifted uneasily, and many a hand gripped many a carbine with unnecessary force. Still, for all flying rocks and dung, the only missiles hitherto aimed directly at the guards had been verbal, and even these consisted less of taunts than of pleas for racial solidarity.
A seething upheaval marked a point of fresh disturbance. Someone was pushing his way through the crowd. For a few moments, loud commotion marked the newcomer's progress, and then a lone figure stepped forth to conront the guards.
He was tall, by Aveshquian standards; lean, and graced with the fluid eastern ease of motion so foreign to the straight-spined, stiff-jointed Vonahrish. His voluminous tunic and baggy breeches of weightless, sand-colored qunne might have belonged to anyone. Equally anonymous was the pendant bronze ushtra, ubiquitous triskelion symbol of Triumphant Submission. But the embroidered insignia decorating the polychrome zhupur wound and intricately knotted about his waist identified him as a member of the moderately prestigious Order of Divergence. A wide-brimmed hat of woven waterfiber shaded his face, but couldn't disguise the glitter of keen eyes, their apparent blackness belied by green highlights. The black-green eyes, together with prominent facial bones and a long, thin, arrogantly aquiline nose, marked the newcomer as a northerner, possibly one of the mountain tribesmen. The lines etching the eyes suggested an age near thirty. But the mouth, chin, and jaw, which might have revealed so much, were shrouded in gauze dust-wards deng from the hat.
He made straight for the gates, and the exhortations arising in his wake failed to slow his progress. Pleas and reproaches soon gave way to vituperation. "Traitor" was the commonest term of derogation, followed by "lickspittle," "yahdeen-vomit," and others of far more exotic description. The northerner appeared deaf, but not blind. When a beetlebrowed graybeard sporting the gold-starred insignia of the professional Birthwitness attempted to trip him with an outstretched parasol, he effortlessly sidestepped the obstacle.
"Worm-prick! "
"Servant of chaos!"
"Nameless, prinked-up Nameless!"
The furious voices beat at his back, but the northerner ignored them. When the guards halted him, he drew some sort of paper from one of the folds of his zhupur. They scanned it briefly, and let him go in.
The wooden gates groaned shut behind him and the clamor subsided but the shouting remained quite audible. Before him rose the Residency, irreproachably elegant, restrained in design, alien to this place. The grounds were manicured but uniformly ochre in hue, for the sprinkler system, powered by native muscle, and required to maintain a Vonahrish-style green lawn, had recently failed. The ornamental shrubberies, clipped into ruthlessly regular form, were as yellow-brown as the grass.
The native guards patrolling the parched courtyard paid no heed to the newcomer; save for legitimate credentials, he would never have won his way past the gate. Thus he proceeded without incident to the front door, where his pass was reexamined. Again he was admitted, and now found himself in the formal foyer incongruously echoing the pretentious proportions of the Palace of Justice, in Sherreen.
The place was unusually empty. The petitioners, malcontents, and entrepreneurs of all varieties wont to haunt the premises were not in evidence today. He made his way unchallenged across the foyer. Nobody troubled him as he mounted the broad central staircase. He was halfway to the second story before the inevitable hand descended upon his shoulder, and the inevitable angry voice demanded, "Here--where d'you think you're going?"
The intruder turned innocent green-black eyes upon his interlocutor--a hefty Vonahrish corporal of the Second Kahnderulese Regiment of Foot, clad in the authentic Vonahrish buff and gray, none of your native hirelings--a real Esteemed. He gaped.
"You drunk? You stupid?" the corporal inquired. "None of your kind beyond the foyer. Go back. Understand? Forbidden." There was no response, and he spoke louder. "FORBIDDEN!You hear?"
Hearing was one thing, comprehension another. The native shrugged and waggled ingratiatingly, a course guaranteed to stoke the other's rage.
"Get out! You'll be whipped! You'll be written up in the book! You'll be locked up and notated! You'll take a number!"
"Number? Esteemed?" the intruder breathed.
"Number, Pissie!"
This last unflattering epithet referred to the subtle golden tone of the Aveshquian complexion, but the newcomer's ignorance deflected insult. Flexing another winsome shrug, he resumed progress up the stairs, and the corporal waxed wroth.
"HALT!" The bellowed command produced no result. The corporal roared upon a different note, and uniformed figures converged upon the intruder.
"Throw that thing out," the corporal directed.
"Esteemed--most Esteemed--" A fervent flapping of wrists conveyed Aveshquian distress. "This one seeks the ear of the august Protector--"
"What's that?"
"The most tremendous Protector vo Trouniere. If I might be admitted presence--"
"Damned brass!"
"Forgive your servant, Esteemed. This worthless one implores a moment--but a single, fleeting, insignificant moment--with Protector vo Trouniere."
"Listen, Pissie," the corporal suggested. "The Protector's time is valuable. Too valuable to waste on pig-shit like you. Now you just haul your sorry ass out of here while you can still walk."
"But I beg you, Esteemed--upon my very knees, if you desire it--for I bear a message of grave import--"
"Grave's the word--yours, if you're lying. What message? Who...
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