Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

“What happened?” Nicci’s hands dug painfully at her neck, but Amber didn’t push her off. If anything, she pulled her sister closer, so that Nicci’s next frantic shout rang out painfully right in her ear: “What happened? Oh God, what is this?”

“It’s the ship,” Amber croaked, even though she knew Nicci couldn’t hear her through her own panic just yet. There wasn’t much point in talking, but Amber said it all anyway, just to hear it out loud and know that it was real. The waiting was over; the worst had happened. “The ship blew up.”

BOOK II

MEORAQ

In the city of Xheoth, in the state of Yroq, in the world and the hour of Gann, a pillar of fire rose up in the east, reaching like a desperate hand to heaven. It was a cool night, but not a cold one, and rainless although the wind was strong over the city, and so there were many who saw this miraculous sight. Uyane Meoraq, Sword of Sheul and well-honored in His sight, was one of them.

He supposed that was a smallish sort of miracle in itself. He spent enough time under the open sky that, given his leisure, he preferred a closed hall for his evening meditations. But the hall was engaged this night for the young initiates of Xi’Xheoth to take their oaths of ascension and so Meoraq took himself to the rooftop courtyard instead. He saw the fire that he might otherwise have never seen and therefore, there must have been some significance to the vision meant only for him. He meditated upon that as he watched it burn.

The sky had been filled with omens for many years, they said, but this was the first Meoraq himself had seen and he was a Sheulek—God’s Striding Foot—who had spent most of the past twelve years in the wildlands. And this, this was far more impressive a sign than the occasional glimpses of light or colors that some claimed to have seen behind the ever-present clouds. For hours, that blazing arm strained upwards and its many fingers grasped at salvation, but though it fell with each strong gust of wind, it always rose again.

Behind the low walls that separated the temple’s courtyard from those of the city’s ruling Houses, Meoraq could see smaller flames spark to life as braziers were lit, until it seemed all Xheoth had come out to see. As a man who often went many days without seeing another living man or hearing any dumaq voice but his own, sights such as these still had power over Meoraq. He admired the city as he admired the fire in the sky. Walls a quarter-span thick, now alive with lights, formed a perfect ring around the protected fields where cattlemen and farmers labored. In the daylight, from this same vantage, he would be able to see the lush colors of living crop against the dead wastes of the world outside the city walls. But at night, on this night, the fires of so many braziers seemed a wondrous proof of life, a miracle in itself, and as precious as any burning pillar Sheul had sent to be seen.

Meoraq bore it a reverent witness, keeping his own company as the rooftop over the temple-district filled with on-lookers. Although they kept a respectful distance, every backwards glance showed Meoraq more priestly robes: acolytes, monks, scribes, oracles and even the young candle-wards came to stare until it seemed there could not be a man left in the rooms beneath his feet.

Hours passed, each one marked by the tolling of bells throughout the city, not quite in sync with one another. It began to rain, dampening not only the fields below—the sweet, green smell of freshly-wetted manure billowed up at once and Meoraq breathed it in, still thinking of fields, of farms, of life—but the enthusiasm of many of those watching. Braziers all across the city roof began to gutter and die, breaking the perfection of the ring they had so briefly formed, but some stayed regardless of the discomfort. Meoraq was one of these. There would always be rain and he would always have days when he had to walk through it and nights when he had to sleep in it, but this fiery arm might never come again and he still had not determined its meaning.

As he meditated, one of the acolytes was jostled suddenly forward by the crowd, stumbling hard against Meoraq’s back. Meoraq spared his immediate bows and apologies a distracted grunt, but the damage was done. With a few shouts and clapped hands, the courtyard was cleared of all but the highest members of the priestly caste. The next man who drew near to speak apology was the abbot, whose name escaped Meoraq for the moment, but who seemed an amiable sort, for one of his caste.

They watched the fire together in comfortable silence. The rain and the wind both grew stronger, making the gesticulations of the flame wilder and more desperate even as it began to die down.

“It seems to be beckoning,” the abbot remarked.

Meoraq acknowledged him with a grunt, but his interest intensified. It did look like a beckoning arm now, less like the clutching one he had first imagined it to be.

“How far away would you say the fire burns?” asked the abbot.

It was a fair question. Meoraq was one of perhaps a hundred men in Xheoth this night who had ever been beyond the city’s walls. To speak in measurements of distance had only the most abstract meaning to most citizens, but this man had surely made pilgrimages in the past to be in a position of such authority now and so Meoraq considered the question fairly.

“The shadow of the Stepped Rise stands before it,” he said at last. “And is not illuminated by it. It could not be less than thirty spans.”

The other man grunted thoughtfully. “To see a flame at thirty spans…What city lies in that direction?”

“Tothax,” Meoraq replied at once. He knew every city that fell within his circuit well, and quite a few others that did not. Tothax, he knew better than most. He had received an urgent summons to that city half a year back, a summons not merely for a Sheulek but for Meoraq himself, and refusing to name the charges. This had so annoyed him that Meoraq deliberately made Tothax his last stop upon his circuit and he made certain the courts of Tothax knew it. Indeed, upon his arrival in Xheoth, he had found another summons waiting for him, even more tersely worded than the last. And if there was a reason why he had perhaps overstayed himself in this city many days after the last dispute had been heard and the last trial judged, there it stood. He was a Sword of Sheul, greatest of the warrior’s caste, a Sheulek. He took orders from his father and from God and no one else. He would move on in his own time, and he fully intended to make himself obnoxious in the House of whoever wanted him so damned badly right up until the last lick of autumn.

Ah, but then it would be home, home to Xeqor and House Uyane. Familiar faces. A bed more myth than reality. His father’s company in the evenings, and perhaps his brothers’ as well, if they were home from their own duties. Well…Salkith would be there; he was a governor’s guard and entitled to a room in their barracks, but he preferred to sleep at home where he could punish those who joked about his infamously slippery brain instead of force himself to laugh along. Nduman was a Sheulek with his own circuit and his visits were infrequent enough, but he was also keeping a low-born woman and several children in Vuluth, outside of conquest and without formal marriage, although he thought it a great secret. Thus far, their father had seemed strangely inclined to tolerate this, but Rasozul was lord of Uyane and steward of the bloodline and could not ignore the scandal forever. As for Meoraq himself, he was what he was: the eldest son of a legendary man, the heir to a glorious name and a proud House of Oracle Uyane’s own lineage, a servant in the favor of great Sheul, and a man who was perhaps not as humble as he’d ought to be. He was working on that.

“Tothax,” the abbot mused, bringing him roughly back to himself.

“If somewhat to the north.”

“So it is not Tothax that burns.”

“No.” Regrettably. “There is nothing there that should burn for so long.”

“Without moving,” agreed the abbot, tapping the back of one hand broodingly with his fingertips. “A plains-fire would move in this wind.”

“And swiftly die in this rain,” added Meoraq. His clothing was now plastered unpleasantly to his scales. “And no plains-fire would ever burn so tall.”

“Yet still it burns. And beckons.”

Meoraq grunted.

“It is a true sign of Sheul, then.”

“So it would seem.”

They watched. Another hour was tolled and the fire waved, feebly but still with some life, as it slipped lower and lower.

“He has set a mighty banner,” the abbot remarked. “But for whose eyes, I wonder?”

Meoraq flattened his spines. The elderly priest gazed benignly straight ahead and did not acknowledge his narrow glance.

“I should have journeyed on to Tothax many days ago,” Meoraq admitted at length.

The abbot bent his head at a polite angle, flexing his spines forward with interest. “Perhaps the message is meant for you.”

“Perhaps.” But now he felt certain it was. Meoraq had trained a lifetime to hear Sheul’s voice and feel His touch. Now he saw His waving arm. It would be a foolish thing to pretend he did not know what it meant.

Or what he had to do.

“I leave for Tothax immediately,” he said. And naturally, it was raining. “I require provisions for the journey.”

“Name them and be met, honored one,” said the abbot mildly. “Shall you take a bed until the morning?”

“No.” Meoraq turned away as the burning arm, its work done, finally slipped behind the horizon and returned the night to uninterrupted black. “Sheul has lit His lamp for me at this hour. I can only trust it is the hour He wishes me to follow. It would seem I have lingered too long already.”

“We shall pray for you,” said the abbot, bowing. The other priests remaining on the rooftop bowed as well. “Go in the sight of Sheul and serve Him well.”

* * *

Meoraq descended the stair and beckoned indiscriminately to the crowd of youths and low-born priests still clustered in the upper halls hoping for a glimpse of the miraculous fires. Several came forward at once. He took the first to reach him for his usher, made his few demands to the others, and allowed himself to be led back to the room he had been given for his own upon his first night’s arrival. He did not have many preparations to make, but it was the polite thing to give the temple’s provisioner time to arrange his supplies so that they would be at the temple gate when he did leave. Rushing out at once only to wait around where all could see him would only embarrass Xi’Xheoth and those who lived there. Meoraq knew he was not always as patient as he ought to be, but he tried not to be rude. Sometimes he tried.

The boy bowed in ahead of him and lit the lamp, then waited, his small head pressed to the floor and back stiff with pride at being made usher for so prestigious a guest. Meoraq dismissed him with a silent tap to the shoulder and, knowing that little eyes would be on him and little ears listening, kept his back to the door until he heard it shut and catch.

He was alone.

“Fuck,” said Meoraq, and gave the cupboard where he ought to be sleeping even now a solid kick. He hit the supporting framework rather than the lower door as he’d intended, so that instead of a resounding thump as his boot struck home, he damned near broke a toe. He swore again, limping over to the simple chair provided for his simple needs.

It was raining. It would be raining. Thirty days he’d passed in Xheoth and it had not rained once in all that time. Thirty days, but now he was leaving and the water poured out of the sky as from a cattleman’s pump.

He sat there in his soaked leather breeches and the city-soft tunic the priests had given him while his own was laundered, dripping puddles on the floor, and cursed the rain, which did no good. He had dry clothing in his pack, but could see no point in donning it only to have it drenched ten steps out of the city gate. The rain fell and he would just have to walk in it as just punishment for staying so long in Xheoth.

“A refinement to my sense of humility, I suppose,” muttered Meoraq, glancing heavenward. “And I thank You for it, O my Father. It is so comforting to know that You take so personal an interest in the improvement of my character.”

Sheul did not reply. Not here, at any rate, although it might be raining even harder outside.

Meoraq tightened his bootstraps and loin-plate and finally glared at the table where his weapons awaited him. The abbot had requested, as all of them did, that he not go armed within Sheul’s House. Meoraq’s usual reply to this was that all the world was Sheul’s House and he went where directed ever-ready to do Sheul’s work, but having the right to be an arrogant ass whenever the whim took him did not make it an obligation and this abbot was a better man than most.

He put his travel-harness on over his wet tunic and clipped the great hook of his beast-killing kzung at his hip. Its weight was an immediate comfort to him. Next came the long, wide samr, sheathed and slung across his back to be drawn against those whose crimes either did not merit or could not wait for trial. Last of all, his honor-knives, the slender sabks, buckled high on his arms. They were meant only for the arena in the sight of Sheul and frequently used in the wildlands for all manner of menial work. If his years of service had taught Meoraq nothing else, it had taught him that one could not skin a saoq with a blade as long as one’s arm. If Sheul saw it as disgrace, He had never let Meoraq know.

A soft knock upon his door. A familiar sound these past many nights. Not a priest.

“Enter,” Meoraq called without turning. “And stand.”

She had already taken her first steps toward him. Now they faltered to a stop. Her voice was as hesitant as her footsteps. “Sir?”

“Sheul calls and I go to answer. You have done well in your service to me,” he added, damned generously. “Go in my favor.”

She retreated one step, but only one. Her hands clasped, trembling, at one another. “Have I offended you, sir?”

She had not. Nor had she gone to any great effort to please him. Indeed, she had done little to make any impression on him whatsoever. She hadn’t even told him her name.

Nor should she, in all honesty. She was not a friend to him, only one of the many women who came to the temple after being turned away by their husbands for want of children. They haunted the halls of the temples in every city, veiled shadows in the shape of women, offering themselves in solemn rituals in the hopes that Sheul’s sons would heal their wombs. She did not come to him for pleasure and he should not expect to find any in her.

She was neither young nor beautiful, but Meoraq had been compelled to have her all the same when he had passed her in the hall, returning from his first judgment in this city. As Sheulek, he had the right to any woman he was given to desire, but it was this one who lit the spark in him that night and every other night that she came to him. The marks of many Sheulek before him scarred her from neck to mid-arm, but she had not burned for Meoraq and his own did not stand among them.

He had not decided yet how this made him feel. His masculine pride was, in truth, somewhat insulted, although he knew it was Sheul who had the ultimate judgment over each mortal coupling and therefore His will that she not conceive of him, but only receive Meoraq’s fires. If that was enough to heal her barren womb, so be it. If not, well, Meoraq didn’t particularly want her haunting the halls at House Uyane anyway. Sheul had blessed him at each coupling, sometimes twice, but the sex itself had been as unpleasant as sex could be. Her way of bending silent and motionless beneath him disturbed him. He had given her permission to move, to speak, even to struggle, but she did nothing except to whisper her prayers and drift away when it was over.

Now she seemed dismayed at his leaving, as if it were some failing of hers that drove him out from the city in the dark hours of night. That if she had been more winsome, or if her worn flesh had just been fresher, he might stay and give her the children Sheul had thus far denied her. That she had displeased him, shamed herself, failed God.

Meoraq understood the situation well, but he knew no better how to extract himself from it than he ever had. He finished securing his travel-pack and slung it onto his back, then turned to face her at last.

She bent her neck at once, hiding her eyes from him as a proper woman learns early to do, but her hands grasped anxiously at one another, never entirely still.

Meoraq started walking, but stopped at the door. He sighed, rubbed once at his brow-ridges, then came back to her. He stood awkwardly before her while she cowered, then reached out and brushed the back of his hand gently across her well-scarred shoulder. Her short spines only flattened further, uncomforted.

“I thought surely it would be you,” she whispered.

“Mine is the same clay as any other’s. Look to no living man for your restoration.”

“He has forsaken me.”

Meoraq gave the door a glance, wishing it would be miraculously filled by a priest who would know better how to handle this. It remained shut. The woman before him continued to stare at the floor between her bare feet, even as silent tears welled in her eyes. He was Sheulek, a true son of Sheul, and he had felt His touch and heard His voice all his life, but for the sake of that same life, he could not think of a thing to say to her.

“We are all tested in our time,” he said at last and immediately regretted it. It was precisely the sort of lame and obvious non-answer that priests liked to give and which Meoraq himself had always found simply infuriating.

But she only brushed at her eyes and made a quiet sound of wordless acceptance. Living here, no doubt she’d heard such answers too many times to be moved by them any longer.

“Forgive me, honored one,” she said, sinking to her knees. “I have delayed you with a foolish woman’s unhappiness. Go your way in the sight of Sheul, I pray, and good journey to you.”

All spoken as heavy as the eternally overcast skies. He found himself wishing she would look at him, as wildly inappropriate as that would be, to show him her naked eyes and let him see some glimmer of a future in them.

But the burning arm beckoned. A Sheulek answered to God above his brothers, his teachers, even his own father. He could not spurn Him to linger with this woman, particularly since he could be of no comfort to her.

He touched her again, actually gripping her shoulder this time in a more direct farewell than he had given anyone else in Xheoth, but she cringed beneath his hand, understandably confused and dismayed by this intimacy. He left her, shutting the door behind him to give the first of her soft, broken tears some privacy.

* * *

His usher was waiting in the hall to lead him to the temple’s gate, trying—and failing—to disguise his curiosity at the sexual mysteries he knew to be unfolding behind the door once the woman entered. He seemed very surprised to see Meoraq so soon emerged and it took him some little time to remember the proper genuflections. Meoraq, brooding, waited out about half of them and then set off without him.

He regretted it within a few moments, knowing it was only the difficult scene with the woman and the prospect of walking in the dark and the rain that fanned the impatience in him, and knowing also that the boy would suffer the kind of poisonous insinuations that only one’s young peers are capable of making for his perceived failure to perform this very simple task. He’d been a boy once. He’d heard those insinuations. Hell, he’d made them.

When he reached the gate and the cluster of priests waiting to see him off with the right chants and prayers, Meoraq made a point of tapping the boy on the shoulder. “I have left my bedroll. You may have it, if you like.” And to the smiling abbot, ignoring the boy’s immediate outcry, “I leave Xi’Xheoth to you.”

“We thank you for your service, honored one, and pray we shall not soon require your return.”

His provisions were presented, exactly as he had demanded: Two waterskins sized for long travel, bread enough to see him to Tothax and cuuvash enough to see him right through and on to Xeqor, a fresh bedroll, and a good thick blanket to hold back the growing chill at night. Of his own will, the provisioner had added a candle-brick and a small pot of honey, doubtless from the temple’s own waxbeetles. Meoraq would not have asked for these things. He was entitled to whatever he was moved to demand, but Xheoth’s usual prosperity had been hard-tested this past year and he was loathe to take away even its most frivolous resources. Besides, he had every intention of making outrageous demands when he reached Tothax and the House of whoever dared to summon him without giving cause. Oh yes. Then, he meant to replace his tent, his travel-packs, his boots, his harnesses—both travel and battle—all his buckles, his various tools for skinning and scaling, and he thought he might even be up to feeling a strong need to acquire a mending kit with metal needles and every grade of stitch from sinew to fine thread. And a tea box. A nice one, not just another clay pot with pouches. He wanted to see some inlay after half a year of summons.

The abbot began to pray as Meoraq made himself ready, and since it was the custom for the prayers to continue for so long as the honored visitor was there to hear them, he did it quickly and moved on before the elderly man’s voice could tire.

Beyond the temple gates, the city moved and breathed. At this hour, on any other night, the inner passageways of the city would have been empty, save for the watchmen on their patrols and the beacons with their lumbering carts, measuring out dippers of oil to keep the lamps lit.

Now the walkways were choked with people and most of the food-stalls in sight were opened as merchants took advantage of the crowds. Looking around at all this activity, anyone would think it was full day outside.

A shifting beside him. The temple had sent for watchmen to escort him out of the city and they waited nervously for his acknowledgement, looking at him with eyes that said they knew as well as he did for whom the message in the sky had been written.

Meoraq beckoned and started walking for Southgate. He was recognized—in his battle harness, with blades hanging off every side of him, he was damned hard to miss—and hailed in many voices all at once. Each had a different turn of phrase, but it all came to the same question: What was the meaning of the fire?

As if any man could know the mind of Sheul. The fire had been for him, and even Meoraq did not know what it meant.

He kept moving. The temple watchmen fell in close beside him, warning back the crowd when they pressed too close, lest some overenthusiastic fool catch at Meoraq’s arm and earn himself a cut across the face from a Sheulek’s samr, or worse, catch at the samr itself and earn himself a cut across the throat. Such things happened far more often than Meoraq ever would have imagined in the days before his ascension. Fools forgot themselves easily. And thus there would always be a need for Sheulek.

It was a long walk to Southgate. Meoraq’s clothes were nearly dry when he arrived, having just reached that damp, clinging stage where they pulled at every scale. The doorkeeper was expecting him and, by the flat-spined sour-faced look of him, sorely offended by this upset to his routine.

“On your way,” he said, indicating the watchmen at Meoraq’s flanks with two fat fingers in a lofty wave. “To your work and leave me mine. Go on, I say! What are you waiting for?”

“My word of release,” said Meoraq.

The doorkeeper stood back, his head twitching downward with flustered ill-humor he tried to hide, and waited.

So did Meoraq.

One of the watchmen shifted, but only once.

In the stretching silence, the doorkeeper’s discomfort grew until it finally burst out of him in a grumbling, “Do you wait on something, honored one?”

“I do. I wait on your salute.”

For the second time, the doorkeeper gave ground, this time enough to bump his backside against the heavy door he guarded. His neck bent. He made a surly genuflection, and another, more formally, when Meoraq continued to wait. Then and only then did Meoraq dismiss his escorts. He didn’t look to see if they saluted before they went. He was not a man who cared about salutes; he cared about being pointed at by some unwashed doorkeeper as if he were a servant.

‘Patience,’ he thought, watching the doorkeeper work his keys in the impressive lock of Southgate. ‘Sheul, O my Father, give me patience, if not enough to get me through this life, at least enough to get me out of Xheoth without disgracing the name I carry.’

“Fire in the sky, they tell me,” grunted the doorkeeper.

Meoraq did not reply. Doorkeepers were born of the warrior’s caste, like watchmen and the slightly higher-ranked sentries and, for that matter, butchers and smiths and fleshers and even the lowly handlers whose job it was to stand watch in the kitchens and see that no man took up the bladed weapon in defiance of Sheul’s law, but instead used only those poor tools built for them. Yes, this man had been born in God’s favor, and Meoraq supposed they must have at one time stood some of the same training, but he was not a warrior, he was not a brother, and he was not a friend.

‘I am in a truly piss-licking mood tonight,’ Meoraq thought in a faintly wondering way.

They walked together down the long, damp passage through the wall of the city, feeling its colossal weight and age bearing down from every side. The doorkeeper, well accustomed to this walk and perhaps annoyed at Meoraq’s silence, lit no lamp. They walked in darkness until Meoraq could feel the cool air of the outside world blowing against his eyes and hear the rain above their own echoing footsteps.

The doorkeeper stopped. So did Meoraq, and he heard a low, irritated sound escape the man beside him, cheated of the peevish pleasure of hearing the high-born Sheulek walk into a gate. Meoraq smiled to himself in the dark.

Keys rattled. The scrape of metal in a lock. The heavy creaking of weathered hinges. “Stands open, sir,” said the doorkeeper sourly. “Watch your footing.”

Meoraq opened his mouth to demand a parting salute that he wouldn’t even be able to see, but made himself bite it back. A truly piss-licking mood. He deserved a long walk in the rain in which to meditate upon the Prophet’s many sermons on the subject of emotional restraint.

There was silence behind him as he went on ahead, out of the last length of the tunnel and into the full storm Sheul had waiting for him.

“Who walks there?” someone called. One of the sentries, huddled against the wall to wait out the last hours of his patrol.

“Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor,” he said, making a final adjustment to the many straps of his packs. “A Sword of Sheul. Challenge me or cry surrender.”

“I cry,” the watchman said, wiping rain from his face, and, the last formalities dealt with, added, “First rain of the season is treacherous enough without flying thunder and fiery towers. So good journey to you, honored one, but mind your footing as you go. A man can see a thousand miraculous things in his life and still be washed away by one bad turn on a stretch of bad road.”

Good advice. Meoraq raised him a brother’s hand in farewell and walked on as the gate of Xheoth slammed behind him and all the empty world of Gann waited in darkness for the dawn.

2

It stopped raining a quarter-span outside of Tothax, with the city walls looming black and tall before him and his clothing as heavy as another damned man riding about on his back. Meoraq cast a surly word of gratitude upwards, accepted the final mutter of far-away thunder for the rebuke it surely was, and walked the last length of road ankle-deep in mud. At least, it seemed mostly to be mud, although Meoraq knew the road could not possibly be so softened, even by days of rain, unless some prospering cattleman had driven his herd out to graze beyond the walls very, very recently.

“Perhaps I will demand my boots cleaned once I have answered my summons, eh?” Meoraq said to himself, spines twitching in a grim, self-indulgent sort of humor. “And once I am satisfied that they are clean enough for a Sheulek’s feet, by Gann, I’ll demand them replaced. I never much cared for these boots anyway.”

“Hail and stand fast!”

Meoraq halted and raised one hand in acknowledgement. He had been aware of the sentry circling him for quite some time and suspected he was being hailed now only because the man had finally met up with reinforcements. Tothax was hardly a city teetering on the undefendable frontier, but every city raised out of Gann’s flesh knew violence. Meoraq stood with his arms raised and hands empty, waiting for the sentries—and yes, now there were three of them—to nerve themselves for a cautious approach.

“I see Uyane, a Sword of Sheul,” said one of the sentries, bending his neck in swift apology.

The face was familiar, but Meoraq couldn’t scratch up a name, so he merely grunted and tapped at the man’s shoulder in what he hoped came across as casual and forgiving as well as wet and entirely out of patience. “Uyane Meoraq stands before you. I come to take Tothax. Challenge me or cry surrender.”

“We cry to you, conqueror.” The sentry raised his head, frowning. “Exarch Ylsathoc requests your audience immediately.”

A name at last. And an exarch, no less. Highest of the governing caste, they followed circuits of their own, moving from city to city to oversee the legal affairs of the most eminent Houses. This one was probably here about some oversight in the records of one of his recent trials, and wasn’t that just like one of the governing caste to sit around half a year sending summons just to have a handful of questions answered? Meoraq grunted again, less politely, and walked on toward the gate.

Behind him, the sentries conferred in uneasy mutters. The one who had called him by name now called out again, saying, “Have you a message for me to carry, honored one?”