5: The Holy Road

by Ginn Hale

  At last they reached the next tier of black iron walls. Rashan’im in dark uniforms stood guard at another gate. Unlike Wah’roa, none of them wore red Prayerscars on their brows or had sharpened teeth.

  “Here.” Wah’roa reined his tahldi to a halt. John’s own mount stopped as well, seeming to realize that Wah’roa was the one to obey, not John.

  Wah’roa dismounted. “We should leave the tahldi. They get nervous in the lift.”

  Alidas followed him. John took longer, fighting to loose his boots from stirrups that had obviously been designed for a man with narrower feet.

  “They belong to the Nassva Stable,” Wah’roa told the guard. “See that they get back there.”

  “It will be done, sir.” One of the guards bowed and took the reins of all three tahldi.

  The other two guards heaved the heavy gates open, exposing a corridor leading deep into the fortress.

  As John followed Alidas and Wah’roa into the gloom, he felt the weight and strength of the stone and iron closing in around him. Behind them the doors swung shut. It was dark but not pitch black, as John had expected. Instead, a pale phosphorescent light radiated from suspended glass lamps. John peered up at them in wonder.

  “Moon water,” Alidas told him offhandedly. “There’s a well of it near the temple.”

  John would have liked to examine the lamp more closely, but he reluctantly had to abandon his scrutiny when he realized Wah’roa was outdistancing him. Some kind of bioluminescent protozoan probably lived in the water.

  John hurried after Alidas and Wah’roa. The walls on either side were rough-hewn stone. It felt more like a cave than a man-made structure. But ahead John could smell veru oil. The air carried the humid warmth of steam engines.

  The three of them passed through another set of guarded doors and stepped into a cavernous chamber. Two huge columns of girders and chains shot up from the floor through a giant black shaft in the ceiling. Behind that, a group of men in work pants and leather aprons shoveled coal into the red glowing boiler chamber of an immense engine. Thick links of chain spun out from wheels as a black iron cage descended from the shaft. It screeched and hissed as pulleys and counterweights fought its mass down to an abrupt halt.

  It was an elevator, John realized, perhaps the most primitive, open, unsafe elevator he had ever seen. There was absolutely no sign of secondary brakes or fail-safe mechanisms.

  Alidas grinned at the sight of it. John felt his face drain of all color. An utterly alien device might have given John pause, but he could have imagined that some detail eluded him and taken comfort in his ignorance. But seeing something that he recognized—and recognized as lacking significantly—horrified him.

  “Come.” Wah’roa entered the black iron cage. Alidas went quick on his heels.

  “I could take the stairs,” John offered.

  Wah’roa laughed. “I know that this must look like the work of some foreign witchcraft, but it isn’t. The lift is perfectly safe.”

  “It is, Jahn,” Alidas assured him.

  John slumped in resignation. He wasn’t going to be able to take the stairs to avoid riding the substandard elevator. He didn’t even know where the stairs might be. He walked to the iron cage and stepped in. Wah’roa gave him a nod of approval, then turned to shout to the workmen behind them. “All the way up!”

  One of the men nodded and then cranked back a huge gear. There was a loud clanking sound and then a hissing noise. The massive chains surged forward, whipping around the wheels and rushing up past the black iron of the cage. John tensed himself for a burst of motion, but none came. The chains continued feeding past at a wild rate.

  John glanced to Wah’roa. “Shouldn’t we be—” The rest of John’s question died in his mouth. The cage shot up, with an almost explosive force.

  “What were you asking?” Wah’roa glanced to John.

  “Nothing,” John said. Wah’roa smiled knowingly. The eerie green light hanging from the ceiling of the cage swayed.

  “I suppose they need no machines such as these in Rathal’pesha,” Wah’roa commented. “The ushiri’im simply walk where they will.”

  “The rest of us use the stairs,” John replied.

  Wah’roa gave him a strangely piercing look. Alidas stiffened slightly and glanced between John and Wah’roa as if he expected some kind of a fight. John understood at once that he had provoked a subject of much greater importance than an elevator, but he wasn’t sure how.

  “You speak with the true humility of an ushvun.” Wah’roa inclined his head slightly to John, which lent him the air of a bird of prey eyeing a rabbit. “You may do well to guard yourselves from a machine like this, after all it does not know an ushman from a garrison commander and so treats them equally.”

  “You have to make allowances for Jahn,” Alidas said quickly. “Coming from Shun’sira, he’s still a little awed by shaving razors.”

  Following Alidas’ lead, John nodded. “It’s true. I saw my first one a little over four years ago.”

  Wah’roa’s expression softened slightly. “Really?”

  John nodded. “When I was first offered a bath in the Bousim house I tried to eat the soap.”

  Wah’roa laughed, giving John a brief flash of his sharp teeth. John guessed that Wah’roa hadn’t wanted to have an argument either; otherwise he wouldn’t have let John’s blunder go so easily. Still, he guessed that the discord between Rathal’pesha and Vundomu must be pervasive and deep to have flashed up so readily.

  “We just escorted him up from the first train he has ever seen or ridden,” Alidas went on.

  Wah’roa cocked his head and studied John. “And what did you think of it?”

  “It felt like I was flying over the land,” John said. “It was exhilarating.”

  Wah’roa appeared quite pleased with this response. “If the ushman’im of Rathal’pesha had had their way, none of them would have been built, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” John admitted.

  “It was long before your time, I suppose,” Wah’roa commented. He glanced to Alidas. “Long before either of you tender youths were born. Back then, the ushman’im argued that the trains would only allow tithe debtors to evade imprisonment and make peasants take on airs, thinking that they too could travel as far and fast as ushiri’im.”

  “That’s just asinine,” Alidas replied. But then his gaze jumped to John as if expecting him to disagree.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” John assured him. “I was relieved to get off a tahldi.”

  Wah’roa gave John an approving nod.

  John remembered noting before that Rathal’pesha, and most of the northlands, were nearly devoid of technological development. At the time he had thought it the result of Payshmura religious codes—part of their devotion to Parfir and nature. But if what Wah’roa said was true, then it had more to do with maintaining the hierarchy of priests, who could walk through walls and unleash divine weapons, over the common people whose lives they controlled.

  Machines offered power that the priesthood couldn’t strictly control. A rifle and an ushiri might both kill in an instant, but rifles could be mass-produced. They could fall into the hands of peasants, who, unlike ushiri’im, had no doctrine to keep them from joining revolutionaries.

  Clearly, though, this schism wasn’t just between the Payshmura and the Fai’daum. It was fueling an animosity between the priests of Rathal’pesha and the kahlirash’im of Vundomu. John felt certain that Wah’roa’s earlier anger hadn’t just been over an elevator or a train.

  Though now Wah’roa studied him with curiosity.

  “So you traveled from Shun’sira to Rathal’pesha on foot?”

  “All but the last few miles,” John told him. “And that was the first time I rode a tahldi.”

  “It was the night Jahn and I met.” Alidas looked to Wah’roa. “Jahn saved my life.”

  “Tell me,” Wah’roa said.

  “Jahn had been living in the forest when I first s
aw him. He smelled like a weasel nest and looked like one as well.” Alidas went on describing the night John had come to warn the Bousim convoy. Wah’roa relaxed, watching Alidas, smiling just slightly. Alidas described how John’s solitary life had allowed him to forget speech almost completely.

  “Jahn said each word as if he had just learned it,” Alidas commented.

  John nodded. It was a fair description. Alidas went on with the story.

  As they rose, darkness closed in around them. The shadows of chains rattled and hissed as they dropped past. The air took on the warmth and humidity of exhaled breath. John wondered how far up they were. Then, unwillingly, he considered how far they would fall if one of the chains broke. Would he be killed instantly upon impact?

  And that bought up another question: could he be killed by such a fall? Everything he had read about the Rifter implied that he was nearly immortal. According to Payshmura texts, he could only be destroyed through a ritual of bleeding, poisoning, and the use of a mysterious key. But John had scars from injuries. He’d been cut, beaten, and nearly frozen. He wasn’t sure how much credence he should put in the depictions of the Rifter’s invulnerability. He certainly had no desire to test it.

  “Jahn protected me while I lay there.”

  Hearing his name, John glanced to Alidas. Alidas smiled at him and Wah’roa offered an approving nod.

  “He took my place as the attendant to Fikiri’in’Bousim and then was chosen as the attendant to Ushiri Ravishan. Now he’s here, riding a lift for the first time,” Alidas finished.

  “Perhaps we should recruit more men born from Shun’sira’s soil,” Wah’roa said. “Or perhaps just those strong enough to have escaped their births.”

  Alidas laughed and John smiled.

  “Ah, Shun’sira, mountainous hell-hole, I hope you fall into the sea,” John said softly.

  Alidas laughed and then explained the joke to Wah’roa. He seemed to appreciate it.

  The soft yellow glow of firelight radiated down from above them. The movement of the cage began to slow. John could hear the low murmur of men’s voices. Then, at last, the cage came to a jerky stop beneath an archway of girders, chains, and pulleys. The air felt refreshing and cool as it brushed over John.

  They exited the lift and stepped out into a wide courtyard lined by stone barracks. Looking out, John could not only see the terraces of Vundomu spilling out beneath him, but the moonlit ribbon of the distant Samsira River.

  A group of eighty or more men awaited them. Like Wah’roa, they looked hard and lean and carried rifles. All of them bore red Prayerscars on their brows. Scarlet moons decorated the cuffs and collars of their black uniforms, and when they called out a salutation to Wah’roa, John couldn’t help but note the flash of so very many sharp white teeth.

  Though, he also noted that these men, like the guards on the terraces below, addressed Wah’roa with the formal honorifics normally reserved for the holiest of the ushman’im.

  Back in Rathal’pesha, Ushman Nuritam would not have been pleased with that. Yet the kahlirash’im presented such an intimidating presence that John couldn’t imagine anyone reprimanding them in person.

  “I’m afraid we have to part here,” Alidas told John quietly.

  “Where are you going?” John wished the words hadn’t come out sounding so startled; there was something about all those polished guns and sharp teeth that unnerved him. Alidas grinned as he’d been paid a compliment.

  “It’s where you’re going that matters,” Alidas replied. “I’m not ordained, so sadly I can’t enter the heart of the kahlirash’im sanctum along with you.”

  “Oh, I see.” And he did, at least enough to realize that it pained Alidas not to be counted among the kahlirash’im. “Well, you’ll just have to take some consolation at the feast that’s taking place, I suppose.”

  “That I will.” Alidas appeared to cheer up at the thought. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” John agreed.

  With that, Alidas stepped away and the kahlirash’im fell into two tight formations on either side of John.

  He and the rank and file of the kahlirash’im marched after Wah’roa. They passed beneath a raised portcullis and followed a narrow, paved lane towards the black silhouette of a strangely bristling building. It reminded John of a huge spruce pinecone in the way its edged scales seemed to armor the graceful symmetry of its curves. As they drew closer John saw that torches illuminated the brilliant red tiles that encased the entire surface of the massive structure. The doors, too, were red, though the steps leading up to them shone like gold.

  Their entire procession drew to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

  Wah’roa quickly stepped between John and the door, then turned to face him. He raised his hands to his forehead, touching his Prayerscar, and then briefly placed one callused finger to John’s brow.

  “Attendant, this night you are one of us. Raise your voice with us, so that our revered Kahlil may journey through the Palace of the Day to the Kingdom of the Night and return to us the divine destroyer. Pray with us for the cleansing wrath that will at last free his house of corruption and make us once again deserving of his blessings.” Wah’roa spoke sternly, all traces of ease and warmth drained from his countenance. He stared into John’s face with expectant intensity. In the silence, John realized that he was expected to respond.

  “The honor would be mine,” John managed. “Ah, thank you.”

  John caught Wah’roa’s brief look of amusement at his awkward reply. Then Wah’roa’s harsh expression returned.

  “Then come into the sanctum of the most holy incarnation and kneel with us in brotherhood.” Wah’roa turned to the large doors and pushed them open.

  The entryway was cramped and dark. Then Wah’roa pushed through another set of doors and led John into the vast central chamber of a wide, circular chapel. Except for a black statue at the altar, the chapel was completely empty. Only a few oil lamps hung from the ceiling, but the light reflected and gleamed off the gold-inlaid walls. Where the light caught, the sweeping curves of script blazed, as if the gold plating were turning molten. The floor had been tiled a deep, glassy red. It gleamed almost as if it were wet.

  John followed Wah’roa across the chamber to the foot of the huge, black iron statue. Looking up, John expected to meet Parfir’s benevolent gaze. Instead he found himself looking into wide eyes, an open screaming mouth, and barred black teeth.

  The pose was wrong for Parfir as well.

  This figure was arched forward, arms thrown out. The hair swirled out around the enraged face as if caught in a storm wind. At the statue’s feet, the tiles were cracked with black seams.

  “This is the Rifter,” John whispered.

  “Parfir’s most holy incarnation,” Wah’roa said softly. “The divine destroyer. God’s will given form.”

  John could hear the other kahlirash’im filing into the chamber behind him. They filled the space with the scent of tanned leather, veru oil, and sweat. The warmth of their bodies added a living heat to the blaze of the golden walls.

  Wah’roa bowed down and lowered his head in prayer. Slowly, John knelt down as well. He closed his eyes, listening to the prayers that whispered and rolled through the chamber. They called on the Rifter to lend them strength, to make them fearless, to defend their world. A pang shot through John as he realized that he was the god they so softly called upon and he could offer them nothing.

  John bowed his head, mumbling empty prayers in his own temple.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  They departed from Vundomu the next day, and after six more days of train travel, the trio finally reached Nurjima. The sun was just setting. Common men and women greeted their friends and relatives at the station. Work crews unloaded goods and animals. A party of Bousim rashan’im had arrived and one man waved through the crowd at Alidas. John found it odd, particularly after the huge display at Vundomu, that no one came to greet Ravishan. Not even a single lowly ushvun
awaited his arrival.

  Noting this, Alidas drew a simple map of the streets to take to reach the Black Tower. He assured them that the Black Tower could be seen from any point in the city, so they couldn’t get too lost. But it was a long walk, so he suggested that they really ought to take a carriage. When Ravishan asked if carriage drivers preferred blessed stones or wooden coins as pay, Alidas seemed deeply concerned.

  “Prayer stones won’t get you anything in Nurjima,” Alidas said. “Don’t you have any money?”

  “None,” John said, so that Ravishan would not have to.

  “Here, take this. It isn’t much, but it will get you to the Black Tower.” Alidas offered John his coin purse.

  “We can’t take your money,” John objected, but Alidas simply thrust the leather purse into his hand.

  “It’s the least I can do. And I’ll have pay waiting for me at the Bousim barrack. Please take it as my offering to your pilgrimage.”

  “Thank you,” Ravishan said. “Bless you.”

  “It was an honor meeting you—both of you.” He hefted his pack up onto his shoulder as two rashan’im in Bousim green came striding up. Noting their approach, he said, “Here’s my escort.”

  John and Ravishan both wished him well. None of them spoke of meeting again. Alidas departed with his fellow rashan’im.

  John hired a battered brown carriage, drawn by two surprisingly plump tahldi. The driver looked like he shared living quarters with his animals, but the interior of the carriage was clean, if cramped.

  They rode through the winding twilit streets, now and then glimpsing streetlamps and catching snatches of wild music. John felt the Black Tower long before he saw it. His empty stomach tightened. When they stepped out of the carriage, John looked past the massive stone wall that surrounded the grounds up to the black, corded height of the tower. He felt a familiar repulsion, which he suppressed immediately.

  Instead, he and Ravishan walked side by side to the massive, wrought iron gates of the entry. There, two ushvun’im, who had apparently been waiting for Ravishan to arrive, informed them that the Usho and several of his highest-ranking ushman’im had contracted some kind of sickness. Fai’daum witchcraft was suspected. The ushman’im throughout Nurjima were performing intense rituals of cleansing and healing as well as exorcisms. Whatever the cause, no one wanted to run the risk of exposing the future Kahlil to the illness.