The Faceless Man aka The Anome Page 5

  The bench held steady. Mur crossed and at the far end felt stone under his fingers. He grinned, this time in relief and pleasure.

  He was not yet free of the passage. He proceeded as cautiously as before, and presently came to the second turn. A few yards ahead glimmered a wan bulb. It shone on a door: the old timber door giving upon the unused under-room. Heart in throat once more, Mur stepped forward. The door was locked—not so much to keep him in, he suspected, but to prevent some unwary Chilite or Pure Boy from blundering upon the trap.

  Mur made a sad sound and went to look at the door. It was built of solid planks, doweled and glued, with hinges of sintered ironweb. The frame was wood, somewhat soft and rotten, thought Mur. He pushed against the door, bracing himself and thrusting with the trifling weight of his immature body. The door stood firm. Mur hurled himself at the door. He thought the latch creaked slightly. He battered himself again and again at the door, but other than causing a creaking of old wood he achieved nothing. Mur's body became bruised and sore, though the pain meant nothing to him. He stood back panting. He remembered the bench and ran back down the passage, around the turn, and slowly forward until he felt the end of the bench. He dragged it across the trap-section and carried it back to the door. Aiming it, he ran forward and thrust the end against the latch. The frame splintered. The door burst back, and Mur was out into the under-room, echoing and empty.

  He placed the bench along one of the walls where it would never be noticed. Closing the door, he pressed the splintered wood into place. It might well escape notice, and the Chilites would have cause for perplexity!

  A moment later he stepped out into the night and looked up at the blazing Skiaffarilla. "I am Gastel Etzwane," he muttered in exultation. "As Gastel Etzwane I escaped the Chilites; as Gastel Etzwane I have much to do."

  He was not yet free and away. His escape would be discovered in due course: perhaps in the morning, at the latest within two or three days. Osso could not call upon the Faceless Man, but he might well send up into the Wildlands for ahulph trackers. No trail was too old or too faint for the ahulphs; they would follow until their quarry mounted a wheeled vehicle, a boat, or a balloon. Gastel Etzwane must once again use his ingenuity. Osso would expect him to flee, to put all possible distance between himself and Bashon. Hence, if he remained close for a day, until the ahulphs had cast about fruitlessly and had been sent with a curse back to their master, he might be able to go his way unhindered—wherever the way might he.

  A hundred yards below and around the hill lay the tannery, its sheds and outbuildings with dozens of secure nooks and crannies. Gastel Etzwane stood to the side of the portal, hidden in the shadow, listening to the night sounds. He felt as strange and subtle as a ghost. Above in the temple the Chilites lay in the galga smoke worshiping Galexis; their gasps of adoration were stifled in the heavy darkness.

  Gastel Etzwane stood several moments in the shadows.. He felt no urgency, no need for haste. His first concern was the ahulphs, which almost certainly would be called on to track him by signs invisible to human senses. He slipped back into the temple and presently found an old cloak, that had been cast aside in a corner. Taking it to the portal, he torc it in half. Throwing down first one half on the stony ground, then the other, and jumping forward, he made his way away from the temple and down the slope, leaving neither track nor scent for the ahulphs. Gastel Etzwane laughed in quiet exultation as he reached the first of the tannery outbuildings.

  He took refuge under one of these sheds. Pillowing his head on the torn cloak, he fell asleep.

  Sasetta, Ezeletta, and Zael came dancing up over the horizon, to shoot shifting beams of colored light from the east. From the temple sounded a throbbing chime, summoning the Pure Boys to the temple kitchens where they must boil up gruel for the Chilites' breakfast. Into the eastern courtyard came the Chilites themselves, haggard and red-eyed, their beards stinking of galga smoke. They staggered to benches and sat looking drearily off into the wan sunlight, still somewhat bemused. The tannery women already had taken bread and tea; they trudged forth for roll call, some surly, others voluble. The task-mistresses called out names for special assignments; the women specified went off in various directions. A select few, all matriarchs of the Sisterhood,[§§] sauntered to the chemical shed to compound herbs and powders, dyes and astringents. Another group went to the vats to scrape, trim, soak, steep, drain. Others worked new hides delivered by the Wildland ahulphs: pelts of all the wilderness animals, ahulph hides as well. After sorting, they were laid out on circular wooden tables, where they were given a rough cleaning, trimmed and shaped, then slid down a chute into a vat of lye. To the cleaning tables Eathre had been assigned; she had been issued a brush, a glass knife, a small, sharp spoon-scraper. Jatalie, the work-mistress, stood over her, giving instructions. Eathre worked quietly, hardly taking her eyes from the work. She seemed apathetic. Etzwane's hiding place was no more than a hundred feet distant; he wriggled and squirmed to where he could peer through a niche in the foundation; upon seeing his mother, he could barely restrain himself from calling out. His gentle mother in such vulgar conditions! He lay biting his lips and blinking. He could not even offer consolation!

  From the direction of the temple came a small commotion. Pure Boys ran out in excitement to peer across the valley; Chilites appeared on the upper terrace, talking in some agitation, pointing here and there. Etzwane guessed that his absence had been discovered somewhat earlier than he had expected. He watched in a discordant blend of dread and glee. Amusing to see the Chilites in such perturbation; horrifying as well! If he were tracked down and captured . . . His flesh crawled at the thought.

  Shortly before noon he observed the arrival of the ahulphs: two bucks with red adept ribbons tied up and down the coarse black fur of their crooked legs. Great Male Osso, standing austerely on a pedestal, explained his needs in dadu[***]; the ahulphs listened, laughing like foxes. Osso dropped a shirt that Etzwane presumed to be one of his own. The ahulphs seized the shirt in their manlike hands, pressed it to the odor-detectors in their feet, tossed it into the air in a display of the raffish heedlessness that the Chilites found completely detestable. They went to Osso and gave him vehement, waggish reassurance; Osso at last made an impatient gesture. The ahulphs, after looking this way and that for something worth stealing, went to the Pure Boys' under-room. Here, detecting Etzwane's scent, they leapt into the air and called back to Osso in vast excitement.

  The Pure Boys watched in horrified excitement, as did Etzwane himself, for fear that some trace of his odor might waft itself to the ahulphs.

  The two cast about the temple, and Etzwane was relieved when they crossed his trail and discovered nothing. Somewhat dampened, with ear-flaps hanging dolefully low, they traced around Eathre's old cottage, again without success. Raging at each other in ahulph fashion, snapping, kicking out with the white talons concealed in their soft black feet, swirling their fur in spiral bristles, they returned to where Osso stood waiting and explained in dadu that the quarry had gone off upon wheels. Osso turned on his heel and stalked into the temple. The ahulphs ran south, back up Mirk Valley into the Hwan Wildlands.

  Peering through his cranny, Etzwane watched the community take up its normal routine. The Pure Boys, disappointed at being deprived of a terrifying spectacle, resumed their duties. The tannery women worked stolidly at the vats, tubs, and tables. Chilites sat like thin white birds on benches along the upper terrace of the temple. Sunlight, tinted noontime lavender, struck down at white dust and parched soil.

  The tannery workers went to the refectory. Etzwane directed urgencies toward his mother: Come this way, come closer! But Eathre moved off without turning her head. An hour later she returned to her table. Etzwane crawled back under the floor and worked up into the shed itself: a storage place for kegs of chemical, tools, and the like.

  Etzwane found a lump of sal soda and, cautiously approaching the doorway, tossed the lump toward his mother. It dropped almost at her feet. She seemed
not to notice. Then, as if suddenly interrupted from her thoughts, she glanced at the ground.

  Etzwane tossed another lump. Eathre raised her head, looked blankly around the landscape, finally toward the shed. From the shadow Etzwane made a signal. Eathre frowned and looked away. Etzwane stared in puzzlement. Had she seen him? Why had she frowned?

  Past the shed and into Etzwane's range of vision stalked Great Male Osso. He halted halfway between the shed and the table where Eathre worked. She seemed lost in another dimension of consciousness.

  Osso signaled the task-mistress and muttered a few words. The woman went to Eathre, who without comment or surprise left her work and walked toward Osso. He made a peremptory signal to halt her while she was still fifteen feet distant and spoke in a low burning tone. Etzwane could not distinguish his words nor Eathre's calm responses. Osso jerked back and turned on his heel. He stalked back past the shed, so close that had Etzwane reached forth, he might have touched the cold face.

  Eathre did not instantly return to her work. As if pondering Osso's words, she wandered over to the shed and stood by the door.

  "Mur, are you there?"

  "Yes, mother. I am here."

  "You must leave Bashon. Go tonight, as soon as the sun goes down."

  "Can you come with me? Mother, please come."

  "No. Osso holds my indenture. The Faceless Man would take my head."

  "I will find the Faceless Man," declared Etzwane fervently. "I will tell him of the bad things here. He will take Osso's head."

  Eathre smiled. "Don't be too sure. Osso obeys canton law—only too well."

  "If I go, Osso will abuse you! He'll make you work at all the hardest jobs."

  "It is all the same. The days come and go. I am glad you are leaving; it is what I wanted for you, but I must stay and help Delamber through her birth-times."

  "But soul-father Osso may punish you, and all on my account I"

  "No, he will not dare; the women are able to protect themselves, as I have only just put forward to your soul-father.[†††] I must return to my work. After dark go forth. Since you wear no torc, be careful of the work-jobbers, especially in Durrume and Cansume and in Seamus as well, where they will put you into a balloon-gang. When you become of age, get a musician's torc; then you may travel without hindrance. Do not go to the old house, nor to Delamber's. Do not go for the khitan. I have a few coins put aside, but I can't get them for you now. I will not see you again."

  "Yes you will, you will!" cried Etzwane. "I'll petition the Faceless Man, and he'll let you go with me."

  Eathre smiled wistfully. "Not while Osso holds my indenture. Good-by, Mur." She went back to the work table. Etzwane retreated into the shed. He did not watch his mother.

  The day waned; the women trooped off to their dormitories.

  When darkness came, Etzwane emerged from the shed and stole off downhill.

  Despite Eathre's warning he went down to the old cottage on Rhododendron Way, already occupied by another woman. He slipped to the rear, found the khitan, and went off through the shadows, down the road. He traveled west, toward Garwiy, where the Faceless Man lived—or so went the rumor.

  Chapter 4

  Shant, an irregular oblong thirteen hundred miles long and six hundred miles wide, was separated from the dark bulk of Caraz by a hundred miles of water: the Straits of Pagane flowing between the Green Ocean and the Purple Ocean. South across the Great Salt Bog, Palasedra hung down between the Purple Ocean and the Blue Ocean like a three-fingered hand or an udder with three teats.

  A thousand miles east of Shant appeared the first islands of the Beljamar, a vast archipelago dividing the Green Ocean from the Blue Ocean. The population of Caraz was unknown; there were relatively few Palasedrans; the Beljamar supported a few scanty blotches of oceanic nomads; most of Durdane's population inhabited the sixty-two cantons of Shant, in loose confederation under the rule of the Faceless Man.

  The cantons of Shant were alike only in their mutual distrust. Each regarded as Universal Principle its own customs, costumes, jargon, and mannerisms and considered all else eccentricity.

  The impersonal, unqualified rule of the Anome —in popular usage, the Faceless Man—exactly suited the xenophobic folk of the cantons. Governmental apparatus was simple; the Anome made few financial demands; the laws enforced, for the most part, were those formulated by the cantons themselves. The Anome's justice might be merciless and abrupt, but it was evenhanded and adhered to a simple principle, clear to all: He who breaks the law dies. The Faceless Man's authority derived from the torc, a band of flexite coded in various shades of purple, dark scarlet or maroon, blue, green, gray, and rarely, brown.[‡‡‡]

  The torc contained a strand of explosive; dexax, which the Faceless Man, if necessary, could detonate by means of a coded radiation. An attempt to remove the torc worked to the same effect. Usually, when a person lost his head, the cause was well known: he had broken the laws of his canton. On rare occasions, detonation might take a person's head for reasons mysterious and inscrutable, whereupon, folk would move with great care and diffidence lest they, too, excite the unpredictable wrath of the Faceless Man.

  No area of Shant was too remote; from Ilwiy to the Straits of Pagane detonations occurred and felons lost their heads. It was known that the Anome employed deputies, somewhat tartly known as Benevolences, who subserved the Anome's will.

  Garwiy, where the Faceless Man made his headquarters, was the largest city of Shant, the industrial node of all Durdane. Along the Jardeen River and in the district known as Shranke on the Jardeen Estuary were a hundred glassworks, foundries and machine shops, biomechanical fabricating plants, bioelectric works where the organic monomolecules of Canton Fenesq were stranded into null-ohm conductors, bonded to semi-living niters, valves, and switches, to produce fragile, temperamental, and highly expensive electronic gear. Bio-engineers commanded high prestige; at the opposite end of the social scale were the musicians, who nevertheless excited pangs of romantic envy in the settled folk of Shant. Music, like language and color symbology, transcended the canton boundaries, affecting the entire population.[§§§]

  In Canton Amaze a thousand, two thousand musicians took part in the annual seiach: a vast wash of sound swelling and subsiding like wind, or surf, with occasional tides, vague and indistinct, of clear little waif-bells. More general was the music played by wandering troupes: jigs and wind-ups; set-pieces and sonatas; shararas, sarabands, ballads, caprices, quick-steps. A druithine might accompany such a troupe; more often he wandered alone, playing as he fancied. Lesser folk might sing words or chant poetry; the druithine played only music, to express his total experience, all his joy and grief. Such a person had been Etzwane's blood-father, the great Dystar.

  Etzwane had never credited the account of Dystar's death as related by Feld Maijesto; in his childhood daydreams Etzwane had seen himself wandering the roads of Shant, taking his khitan to fests and gatherings until at last the two met; from here the daydream went in various directions. Sometimes Dystar wept to hear music so lovely; when Etzwane identified himself, Dystar's wonder exceeded all bounds. Sometimes Dystar and the indomitable youth found themselves opposed in a battle of music; in his mind Etzwane heard the glorious tunes, the rhythms and counter-rhythms, the clink of the jingle-bar, the gratifying rasp of the scratch-box.

  The daydreams at last had taken on a ghost of substance. Khitan slung over his narrow back, Etzwane trudged the roads of Shant, and all his future lay before him.

  Unless he were captured and taken back to Bastern.

  It was not beyond possibility that Osso would suspect the true state of affairs and call in the ahulphs once again. The thought put spring into Etzwane's steps. He jogged along at his best speed, slowing to a walk only when his lungs began to labor. Rhododendron Way lay far behind; he journeyed under the stars, with the great black hulk of the Hwan rising to his left.

  The night wore on. Etzwane, no longer jogging, walked as fast as his aching legs would car
ry him. The road climbed a hill, rounded a spur. Behind spread a starlit landscape, gray and black, with a few far lights Etzwane could not identify.

  He sat on a stone to rest and looked westward into Canton Seamus, which he had never seen be- fore, though from men who passed along Rhododendron Way he knew something of the folk and their habits. They were stocky, ruddy-blond, and quick tempered; they brewed beer and distilled poteen, which men, women, and children alike consumed without apparent effect. The men wore suits of good brown cloth, straw hats, gold rings in their ears; the women, who were stout and boisterous, dressed in long pleated gowns of brown and black and wore combs of aventurine quartz in their hair. They never espoused men larger than themselves; in the event that fisticuffs took place after an evening at the tavern, the husbands held no physical advantage.

  The North Spur of the balloon-way passed through Seamus, connecting Oswiy on the north coast with the Great Transverse Line; the road Etzwane followed met the balloon-way at Car-bade. As he looked off to the west, over the country he planned to travel, he fancied to see far away a red glimmer moving slowly across the sky. If his eyes were not at fault, the light marked the course of the balloon-way—though the time was late and the wind was still. He thought of his mother's warning against the work-jobbers; alone, without a torc, he had no identity, he had claims to no one's protection, and whoever so chose could do as they liked with him. The work-jobbers would clamp a torc and an indenture upon him, ship him off to a balloon-gang. In the morning he would contrive a torc of withe or bark or leather, which would help him evade attention.

  The time was late, and the night was still. So still that as he sat quietly he thought to hear coming down from the Wildlands a far, faint howling. Etzwane huddled down upon the stone, feeling clammy and cool. The ahulphs were at one of their macabre revelries, which came on them like a madness; in some remote valley of the Hwan they danced and howled around a fire.