Through Darkest Zymurgia!

The following morning we were awakened by the sound of shouts and many feet. The houses on all sides had been stripped of the only occupants they had ever known; the Zymurgian forces were marching on the heart of the Holy City. We had not been consulted, nor were we officially informed, but the inference was unavoidable. Only our guards and ourselves remained at the edge of the city.

There was an uneasy silence at breakfast. Asha and Mukden had assured us that there was to be no violence, but Asha and Mukden were confined with the rest of us. Would the Keepers choose to fight? If so, I failed to see how bloodshed could be avoided. Eventually they would return for us and escort us to the Temple; what would we see? Blood in the streets? Rooms of maimed and dying men? I shook off the scenes of carnage that crept upon me like a vision. The Zymurgians were not violent people, of that we could be sure. And yet, was the alternative better? I pictured masses of frightened men, women and children rounded up like cattle, and herded into small, insanitary chambers. I thought of the Foreign Office, and of my Royal Warrant, and groaned. Like as not I'd never be allowed to leave Angland again. Hundreds of men and women, starving, thirsty....

"Oh, dear," said Philpott, who was staring into space. I shook off my dark broodings, and focussed my attention upon him. "Oh, dear."

"What is it, young Thad?" Trust Carbuncle, I thought.

"Thomas, you don't suppose....they won't forget to keep Basenis well fed, will they?"

Now there was an unpleasant thought. Basenis stepping down from his place, howling, whining with hunger, loping through the streets of his city....Basenis, in his divine wrath, consuming the cream of Zymurgian manhood....

"I shouldn't think they would be so foolhardy, Thad. Still, if we hear barking I suppose we should go downstairs."

Carbuncle's calm voice was like a splash of cold water. Of course. While the rest of us were stewing and fretting over the the wrath of Basenis the God, Carbuncle was contemplating Basenis the beer-and-brick-making phantasm. Silently I cursed myself for having lost my scholarly objectivity. Then the possible fates of Basenis' Keepers rose again in my heart, and I cursed myself again.

It was a most unpleasant day. Carbuncle remained calm, quiet, and aloof, and I judged it best to leave him with his thoughts. For my part I was restless, pacing back and forth along the balustrade that encompassed the roof deck and pausing at intervals to stare at the temple in the distance, a brown hummock on the horizon. Philpott and Asha sat quietly talking in a corner; Hodgins, Cadbury, Fox and Mukden played innumerable games of whist. The monotony was broken only by lunch and dinner; the conversation at either meal was conducted largely in monosyllables. After dinner, tired of pacing, tired of waiting, worn out with worry (the curse of an active imagination) I settled down with my back to the balustrade and cradled my head in my hands. There was nothing to be done; the Keepers were dead or imprisoned, and I was imprisoned, and there was nothing to be done. I sat there for what seemed like (and almost certain was) hours on end, and was about to retire gratefully to bed when there was a stir in the chambers below. The donkeys were snorting and stamping, and then Norfolk (or Suffolk) stuck his head up out of the stairwell and called for Mukden. With an effort I remained in my seat; I knew from experience that I was not wanted, and that the messenger would not speak to Mukden in my presence. Shortly thereafter Mukden reappeared and called us all together. I nearly stumbled on rising; my muscles were stiff and sore.

Quickly and concisely, Mukden gave us the news. The city had been taken without bloodshed. The Keepers were fewer than expected, and had been rounded up quickly and without struggle. When at last they had been made to understand what was happening to them, they raised a great outcry, not on their own behalf but on behalf of their god. Basenis must be fed, Basenis must be constantly attended and cared for. Let them remain in captivity, so long as they could minister to Basenis. The Bandekuns, as I have observed before, were no fools, nor were the other Zymurgians who had joined with them. The plea was granted, and a small, rotating group of Keepers were allowed to carry out their duties. Under guard, of course; for the first time in memory, perhaps for the first time ever, non-Keepers were allowed into the Holy of Holies, the sanctum of Great Basenis himself. I shuddered, thinking of the terrible sanctum of Basenis' gullet, and the numbers of non-Keepers Basenis had consumed in his wrath.

The following day we would be escorted to the temple to work our magic.

"What," said Carbuncle, "Do they think it is that simple? They waltz us up to the temple, we mutter a few choice incantations, and all is well?"

"I don't know, Thomas," I said. "Is it that simple? You haven't told us, as I'm sure you'll recall." Carbuncle snorted, but otherwise ignored me.

"Mukden," he said, "when they come for us tomorrow I want you to explain to whomever is appropriate that the magic will likely take some weeks. Lord, man, the beastie has been waiting for thousands of years, give or take a day, it can surely wait another month. I need time to study it."

"You spoke before of an inelegant solution," I reminded him.

"So I did, and as I said before I am not yet ready to unveil it. I'm sorry, Leon, but it could be disastrous to our plans. Or to mine, at least." Carbuncle paused a moment, and then turned back to Mukden.

"Tell them that I will need a large room in which to work, preferably in the Temple itself, but not directly in the presence of Basenis. Also, I presume there is some store of as-yet-unused bricks; tell them to find it, but not to do anything with them. No, I don't need to see any; I've seen lots, thank you, and I am sure I can wangle a few more from Basenis himself." Mukden looked a trifle shocked at that last remark. "Finally, our party will need lodging somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the Temple."

"I will tell them, my friend. They may not listen; because of our failure with Nabili, Asha and I are not highly regarded."

"If they do not listen and obey," said Carbuncle, "then they have wasted their time, as we won't do a stitch for them. Tell them that if you must."

Our escort came for us in the morning, as we had been told, and waited impatiently as we finished our breakfast and broke camp. We were lead through the maze of streets to the boulevard, and so on down to the Temple district.

I may as well take this opportunity to record my first impressions of Basenis Basor. The boulevard ran in a straight line from the north edge of the city to the temple; I recalled that it continued on the far side to the south edge. It and its east-west companion were the only proper streets. The rest of the city was a mass of individual buildings of all shapes and kinds, and of wildly varying sizes. No two buildings butted up against each other; rather, each was surrounded by a lane or alley of paved ground three to four yards in width. Thus, once away from the boulevards one could not walk in anything like a straight line for longer than the side of a single building. One could only try to meander around this edifice and beside that one, and so progress by stages in the desired direction.

The buildings changed as we drew closer to the Temple. I hesitate to say that the architectural style changed, for it was enormously variegated throughout the city. One saw low, bench-like buildings such as the one in which we had camped cheek-by-jowl with pyramids, towers, triumphal arches, massive oblong blocks of many stories, and other, less easily characterized constructions. Yet at the outskirts of Basenis Basor the buildings had a uniform simplicity. If they had pilasters, the pilasters were squared off and unornamented. If a roof or terrace had a balustrade, the uprights were mere stacks of single bricks, with a double stack at intervals of ten or twenty feet.

By the time we reached the halfway point, that pleasing if stark simplicity was gone, and ornamentation ran riot. I was reminded of the statue of Basenis in the temple near Tomar, with its carefully shaped and carved bricks. Similar work had been done here. Where before a wall might be lined with square pilasters, here the pilasters were larger, carefully rounded, and surrounded by many narrow pillars. Walls that would have been flat and featureless a few miles back became heavily carved. Towers that would have extended nobly into the air were covered with gingerbread and spires. I observed the trend with interest, and amused myself with speculating on the reasons behind it. Then I realized that the buildings were the same; the ornamentation had clearly been added at a later time, as the same simple lines were visible beneath it. I imagined a wave of ornamentation starting at the center and washing out, and finally spending itself before the extreme limits of the city had been reached. When we stopped for lunch, I was able to verify that the ornamentation was on the outside only. Clearly Philpott and Mukden were right; the buildings of Basenis Basor were works of devotion only, terribly over-decorated, but showing great care and love on the part of their makers. I wondered what delights awaited further in.

In the event, I was disappointed. The outer ring of buildings had been built to use up bricks simply, quickly, and efficiently; in the middle ring the builders had invested considerable effort (too much, in my view) to make them beautiful; in the inner ring the ornamentation was overlain by yet a third wave of construction, and here the effort, all too clearly, had been to consume bricks as quickly and as close to the Temple as possible. The buildings looked confined, overweight, like a man wearing too many sweaters. Where noble pillar-flanked entryways had once stood, one saw a facade of solid brick with one man-sized opening. Balustrades were filled in, and topped with row after row of additional brick. Windows were but slits. The lanes between the houses shrank to two to three yards from three to four, and the average height had increased. We began to feel as though we walked in the bottom of a canyon, heading ever deeper into the mountains. Before us, drawing ever nearer, at the end of the boulevard was the vast bulk of the Temple of Basenis.

In my mind I had been expecting, illogically enough, something like the Tomaren temple: a courtyard, and past that a hall open to the north. Basenis, ten feet high at the shoulder, would stand in the center of the hall, and his Keepers would rush back and forth, constantly feeding him and carrying away his products. The reality was staggering.

The Temple of Basenis rose like a mountain from the center of a great plaza, the only open space we had seen all day. It was at least two-hundred yards from the line of houses to the temple wall. The temple might once have been ornamented like the buildings in the middle ring, but now it was more an amorphous mass of brick rising steeply up from the plaza, here rising in crags and obelisks, there flattening into terraces, and everywhere dotted with windows. There were many doors at the base as well.

The most notable feature was a broad staircase of brick leading to a vast opening about halfway up the side of the temple. As we approached, I soon realized that it was a staircase for giants; the steps were easily five feet high and as many feet deep. The opening to which they lead was too high to see into, and also was in shadow, but I readily guessed that Great Basenis stood within.

We were met, at the base of the stair, by representatives of Bandeku and the other villages. I do not know what Mukden said to them, but they bore their disappointment calmly enough. We were taken to a place where we were given food and drink, and then to a large dwelling which fronted on the plaza some distance from the boulevard. I use the word "dwelling" with precision, as it had clearly been inhabited in recent memory. We were assured that the previous occupants were well and were being taken good care of, guards were posted at the exits, and then we were left for the night. Tomorrow Carbuncle's research would start. Tomorrow we would set eyes on Great Basenis.