Tales of Toulaban

CHAPTER TEN They walked for fifteen days through Pelun, rising long before dawn but retiring while the sun was still high, following the course of the Tong Dau River, the Shimmering Eastern Lake, through the Seven Bright Cities of the Red Earth: Dzoráng, Mithonaí, fabled Storao "of the Ten Thousand Pleasures," the twin cities Truhin-Madiro, Markad on a lazy bend in the river, the stern fortress Taishryá, and finally Rikáng.  The fields of millet and beans were brown, bare with coming winter, but there were fields of white winter rice, patches of violet gorse and dry orange lovesbalm, thickets of larch and elm and lin with yellow branches.  The roads were broad, and loaded with travelers, a few steamcars but mostly carts and horses and hearty mountain camels. Akrava had seen only a few Humans during his life, and none in such profusion, so he stared. "It's as if they own the world," he exclaimed. "They are owning the world. This world, anyhow,"...

CHAPTER NINE Domojon soon discovered that for all of Chiokërang's pretense at Human-style modernity, steamcars were feasible only in the environs of major cities such as Tregon, Sarkón, Pardunad, and Uteraí; the route east, to Pelún and Human lands, was near-wilderness, dirt roads that quickly became gluey mud, cold rain with small biting hailstones, a bracing cold of mountain air that forced Akrava to buy a woolen cloak and a warm doeskin kilt, and later a small heating coil.  Small, biting snowflakes fell sometimes in the late evening, but much worse was the cold thick rains of noonday.  Tiring of surviving on the week's salary Jerei Bear had given them, Domojon tried to call to his friend Hajat Donluun, and then Nok Dragon, but Human were no longer allowed access to the public telephone offices.  Akrava called some of his friends in Tregonëv, but though they waited three days, the money never arrived.  Finally, he had to advertise his services as a professional...

CHAPTER EIGHT While Domojon was pondering the meaning of Jerei Bear's dream, he and Akrava toured the temples of Khamvárivhir, great golden structures but strangely barren, only vast spaces and streaming fluted pillars and a single podium where the priest stood during services. "It seems nice, you know," said Domojon. "Simple, finding the  Godking inside each of us." "Perhaps," said Akrava.  He seemed to be developing more devotion in Chiokërang than he had know he had back in Tregonëv, the seat of his religion.  "But it also leads to confusion. If everyone is the Godking, then who knows what is true?  There might as well be five billion suns in the sky." "Better confusion than over-precision." "Kénsoraj is not overly precise!" Akrava exclaimed. "No?  Why can one buy prayer-books to determine the proper words to say for every possible problem, from headaches to eating unhallowed meat?  Why do the names of...

CHAPTER SEVEN Afterwards Domojon slept under blue-embroidered quilts in the Court of Immanent Mercy, while healers burned loosestrife and acrid-smelling camphor pellets under his nose, and Kabard priests waved gourd-rattles toward the four corners of the earth to ward off the spirits of the dead who had not yet been reborn.  Domojon slept on and on, a strange comatose sleep, while Kabard women poured tea down his propped-open mouth.  He suffered no wounds -- none that could be seen.  Yet he could not be awakened, not through foxflame or ammonia or the pricking of pins into his flaccid shoulder. After three days he awakened, but he would only stare at the ceiling and moan "Aramkai! Aramkai!"  Each dawn heavy blankets were taped to his room's clear-glass windows and skylights of cruhed seagreen mica, but at dusk the blankets were thrown off so that Domojon might see the daily birth and dissolution of the goddess Aramkaí, with the red and green glimmering stars an...