by Kate Elliott
The map room had grown since she was here yesterday. Buildings that had been chest high on her yesterday were now up to her chin. She smelled the faint scent of cinnamon. The air was warmer, humid.
“Where is Anatoly?” asked David, and she started and turned, flushing.
Beside him, Valentin was smirking. “Why don’t you have any flowers, Yana, huh?”
“Shut up, Valentin, or I’ll make your life miserable.”
“Can’t make me,” he taunted, dancing away.
“Can, too, you little worm.”
David cleared his throat. “Valentin, what is the difference between an arch and a vault?”
“I dunno. The buildings are bigger.”
“Yes, I had noticed that phenomenon. Yana?”
“A vault is a three-dimensional extension of an arch. Why do you think the buildings are bigger?”
“They’re eating our life force,” said Valentin in an exaggerated whisper. “And growing.”
“Gods, you’re a pig today.”
“No piggier than you. What’s wrong? Don’t have the courage to give flowers yourself?”
She grabbed for his arm, but he jumped back, spun, and sprinted toward the edge of the plaza, laughing. To add to her humiliation, Anatoly reappeared along the western avenue and halted at the edge of the plaza.
“Valentin!” he called out. “Come here at once.”
Valentin jerked to a halt, froze, and oddly enough walked obediently over to Sakhalin.
“Yana,” said David when they stood alone on the plaza, “why do I get the impression that something is going on of which I’m not aware? And that it centers around you and Anatoly Sakhalin? Has he bothered you somehow?”
She hated her complexion. She knew her cheeks were flaming red. Like the Chapalii, she couldn’t disguise her feelings. “No.”
“I know you’re upset about the flower night.”
Oh, gods, he did know. She wanted to sink into the ground, and pulled up that train of thought abruptly, since for all she knew it might begin to happen, here.
“I’m not sure that it’s fair that you kids haven’t been allowed to attend any of the performances yet. Goddess knows, it must be hard, being confined in the dome, separated from your neighborhoods and your school friends—there isn’t anyone else your age here….” He went on earnestly, but she lost part of it, she was so relieved that he had misunderstood her.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I’m a little lonely. I miss my friend Kori. And my other friends, too, but mostly her.”
“I know it’s difficult, Yana. Frankly, life doesn’t, in general, get any easier, although that doesn’t mean it necessarily gets worse. But you’ve had an incredible adjustment, you and your family, leaving Rhui and your whole life behind. That took a lot of courage.”
Yana cocked her head to one side and regarded him. “We left Rhui because that’s what my father decided to do. I don’t know what’s so brave about it.”
“Trust me, Yana. You’ve held up well. I think you’ve—well, never mind.”
“What?”
He hesitated, and to her surprise went on, though she felt that he thought he should not. “I think you’re the one who’s held your family together.”
She shrugged, uncomfortable, not sure if what he had just said was praise for her or an indictment of her parents.
“Sorry. It’s not my place to say anything.”
“Do you have any kids?” she asked, suddenly curious.
He shook his head and for an instant Ilyana felt like she could read him, felt as if she had picked up the words that he hadn’t spoken: regret mingled with wry acceptance.
“Were you ever, uh, married?”
“I had a partner for about two decades, and we discussed having a child but the time was never right and then we drifted apart. It happens.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Sorry for what? Losing her, or never having a child?”
“Uh, well, I guess both.”
He smiled a little. “I guess both, too. There’ve been a few other women but… well, one in particular, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
In jaran society, one never received a gift without giving something in return. This web of obligations and gifts held the tribes together. And anyway, Ilyana was flattered and amazed that David would confide in her.
“I’m supposed to have my flower night,” she said tentatively, and as if the words propelled her forward she began to walk. David kept pace beside her, not quite looking at her, hands folded behind his back. “But I don’t want to, even though I would be married by now in the tribes.”
David made a noise that signified that he was listening.
“So my mother gave flowers to Anatoly Sakhalin, but that’s not what she’s supposed to do, I’m supposed to, but I didn’t, so…” She couldn’t come right out and say it, and now she felt stupid. “Now I…feel funny, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know.”
“And the flowers signify…” He trailed off. Ilyana shot a sidelong glance at him and realized that he was blushing. It wasn’t obvious on him unless you knew what to look for, not like on her, but she was the one who was odd in being so light-skinned. “But he’s already married, Yana.”
“What does that have to do with it? Mama says that a girl is usually wiser to choose a married man for her flower night because he’s bound to be steadier and more experienced.”
“Oh, Goddess.” David clapped a hand to his forehead, now really not looking at her. “You’re not talking about…oh, I see. Umm, Yana, I’m not sure this is really an appropriate subject for us—”
“I know. I’m sorry. There just—isn’t anyone else to tell.”
There was a long silence.
“So what happened?” he asked finally.
“Nothing happened.” Immediately, Ilyana wished something had happened, then was relieved all over again that nothing had. “Except I told Mama not to ever do that again and Valentin told me that Anatoly Sakhalin told her not to ever do that to him again, that is, I mean, give him flowers and pretend I gave them to him.”
“Is this something they do in the jaran?”
She nodded.
“I can see that you might feel uncomfortable around him.” He cleared his throat. “And he around you, for that matter. Listen, maybe we should get on with our lesson. There’s a good set of barrel vaults down this way.”
They had walked partway down one avenue, the one David had named Palmyra Avenue for its rank of painted columns lining both sides of the road. Yesterday the columns had been about Ilyana’s height; now they looked twice as tall as she was. To her right a trio of low buildings stretched into a strangely elongated distance, bending away over the horizon although by all measures of distance they should have run into one of the other avenues radiating out from the central plaza. Banks of flowering plants flanked the buildings, claret and dusty gold and a pure, delicate orange, rows of color too diffuse for her to make out individual blooms.
Where the avenue, seamless and white as milk, picked up the gray stippling of granite, the columns gained lintels and evolved into a series of archways through which a new landscape beckoned: Wind skittered across a broad courtyard whose expanse was one huge mosaic of jewels. A scrap of white lifted from the ground and floated up, sighed down, and settled back on the ground, only to lift again as the wind picked up.
“What is that?” Yana darted through the archway just as David called after her, “Don’t go through there!” and she pulled up short and stared up, and up, and up, at the monumental palace that hulked before her, a vast building with two wings centered on a dome that filled the sky. Six slender towers soared up toward the heavens, ringing the great dome at equal intervals. Yana heard David’s footsteps, muted on the gloriously jeweled pavement.
“This isn’t a model at all, is it?” he said in a low voice. “It’s a gateway. I think… I would hypothesize, that we’ve entered the nesh palace, which has somehow become proportiona
l once we left the avenue.”
Ilyana gaped up at the palace. It was so huge. It was also gaudy, stuccoed and painted in bright primary colors with a trim of gold and silver lacework along the columns, rimming the grand doorways, surmounting the tiered arcades that made up the front of the wings, crawling like vines in gold relief up the towers.
“An arch rotated three hundred and sixty degrees produces a spherical dome.” She stared up at the curved expanse of the palace’s blue dome, reflecting the sky.
“True. I think we should go back to the avenue and catch our breath. I feel a little safer there.”
A feather touch brushed her ankle, and she bent and picked up a square of white silk. It fluttered in the wind, caressing her hand and twining in through her fingers. Unthinkingly, she lifted it to her face, brushed the smooth cloth along one cheek, and shut her eyes, taking in a breath. And felt a presence, knew that some thing was aware of her. She heard, like a whisper, the rustle of a robe shifting, the murmur of layers of starched fabric dragged over the ground, and the light but deliberate tap of footsteps, nearing her.
Her eyes snapped open, but she stood alone in the courtyard with David. “Someone knows we’re here,” she said. Her back tingled. She shuddered and turned all the way around, but there was only the courtyard, the palace, and the arcade that opened onto the avenue. She opened her hand, releasing the square of silk, and the wind caught it and lifted it up the stairs that led to the massive doors. She followed it.
“Yana!”
“No, let me just follow it. I won’t go in or anything.”
David came after her as she hurried up the steps—there were a lot of them—and the doors rose up before her, pale gray touched with lavender, framed by an inscription, letters in black stone in an alphabet she did not recognize which was itself contained within a mosaic trim of stars and hexagons. The door was not solid; it was a screen, riddled with holes, and Ilyana stopped in front of it and carefully set her hands on it and peered through. She saw nothing at first. Then her eyes adjusted to the dimness within and she saw a vast hall caught in twilight, shadows and light equal presences within, and in the center a person stood, frozen, ringed by a mandala of fire.
Not a person. A statue: a man, dancing, caught in the still heart of the hall, each of his four arms striking a pose, each hand framing a gesture, one leg lifted, knee bent, the foot swept forward.
She breathed as she stared and abruptly felt as if the hall within had captured the pulse of her heart, the cycle of her breathing, and breathed with her, waiting. The statue moved.
Except no, it hadn’t at all, that was a trick of her eyes. But she flashed on Kori’s Uncle Gus, and recognized who it was: It was Shiva, in his aspect as Lord of Dance, enthroned in a Chapalii gallery within a Chapalii palace.
A hand touched her back and she yelped and jumped back.
“Yana!”
“You startled me,” she said sheepishly. “Look in there.” David peered through the door, closing first one eye, then opening it and closing the other in an attempt to get a good look. “It’s too dark. I can’t see anything. I think we should go back and get the others and discuss this.”
Ilyana sighed and agreed, having no choice; however mildly David might phrase his orders, they were still orders.
They found Valentin in the plaza.
“Where is Sakhalin?” David asked him.
“I dunno. I came back here to look for you guys. He kept walking on down that way.” He waved vaguely toward one of the ten avenues.
“Valentin,” said David, “I get a little tired of your world-weary pose. Which one? We went off the avenue and this whole place seems to be changing. I want us all out of here.”
Valentin looked interested suddenly. “Oh, so I guess he shouldn’t have opened that door and gone in, huh?”
“What!”
Valentin snickered.
David swore in a language Ilyana didn’t recognize. “That isn’t funny.”
“No, no, he didn’t leave. But he was making me answer all kinds of questions, so—”
“So you thought you’d be better off with us?”
“He’s okay. I mean, I like him.” He shot a glance toward Ilyana. “And I’m not just saying that to make you mad.”
“I’m relieved,” said David. “Can you take us back to where you were?”
Valentin had many faults, but a lack of sense of direction had never been one of them. Nevertheless, they walked forever down the avenue Valentin indicated and did not find Anatoly Sakhalin.
“Maybe he went back,” Ilyana suggested, “and we missed him.”
So they went back to the plaza, back through the gateway, and came out in the gazebo in the courtyard, sunny and warm and glowing with afternoon light.
Anatoly still knelt at the latticework, eyes half shut, seeing some other sight, and his lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Damn it,” said David. “Listen, you kids stay here. I’m going in to look again.”
Even Valentin looked worried now. He sat patiently beside Ilyana on one of the benches for upwards of an hour, halfheartedly playing a Diathetics game on his slate while Ilyana mended a tear in one of Evdi’s shifts. Once, twice, one of the actors walked through, glanced curiously at them, and went on into the remodeled lavatories, but otherwise the faint scent of flowers drifted to them on the breeze and the planet sank in the sky, creeping below the walls, and Ilyana smelled supper cooking, some kind of meat stew whose aroma made her mouth water. She’d forgotten how hungry she was.
When David came back to them, he came back alone.
“Where is he?” demanded Ilyana.
David stared at Anatoly, who was clearly right there, fingers wrapped tight around the latticework, and yet was just as obviously utterly gone.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Anatoly knew very well that by conventional measurements a forest of towers that were clearly hundreds of meters high could not fit between the avenue he walked on now and the avenue that he knew lay beyond it. If the plaza was the center and the ten avenues the spokes on the wheel, it was simply impossible that those towers could be so distant. He stood with one hand resting on his saber hilt (he always wore his saber in nesh); he shaded his eyes against the sun with the other hand and studied the towers. Valentin had gone back to find David and Ilyana, but Anatoly had walked on, endlessly on it seemed, and finally the mosaic walls that lined this avenue gave out to a procession of buildings with fantastically curved roofs, all of them black or white, unrelieved by color. Then the buildings stopped, and he was left standing on a paved road that struck out onto a flat plain. To his left rose the towers. He estimated they were perhaps a kilometer away. If only he had Sosha….
To his surprise, she neighed and came cantering down the road toward him. Stay on the path, David had said. He hesitated as the mare halted before him. Then he swung up on her and headed out over the—well, it wasn’t grass, it was a gray-green plant with tiny, bulbous leaves that hugged the ground. The plants made little squelching noises under Sosha’s hooves and brought a tangy scent like seawater wafting up from the ground.
As he neared the towers he was sure that these were the same towers he had seen from the platform, when they had first arrived at Duke Naroshi’s planet, that they were the same towers he had glimpsed through the hazy barrier that surrounded their camp. They should have been underwater. But there was no river here.
Black, vermilion, and glass, they thrust straight up out of the ground, spears piercing through from some other place. Their shafts were pure and smooth; far above, each one terminated in a different form: a striped onion dome, a bright spire, a silver needle, a seven-storied pagoda. He counted forty-seven towers, then forty-nine, then fifty-one, then fifty, and finally gave up.
One tower stood a bit away from the others, like a sentry. He pulled Sosha up at its base, dismounted, hobbled her, and walked up to the wall. But the black surface wasn’t wall, it was darkened glass. Halfway
around the base stood an opening, no door, just an empty space that led inside into a corridor that spiraled in until it reached the base of the stairwell that itself spiraled up, and up. Anatoly climbed. He did not get winded, nor did his legs ache. The stairs were black and slick, like obsidian, and the walls slicker still, almost like they were wet. In the center of the stairwell a luminescent shaft of pale gray stone gave off light. He lost count of the steps, just kept ascending until he thought he must have climbed far higher than the tower itself was tall.
He came around the curve and it ended in an arch that looked onto—
He stopped dead, right before the threshold. The archway opened out onto a great hall, vast in silence, lined with statues of a hundred hues and textures: a pallid griffin; an armored warrior hewn out of wood polished to a satiny gleam; a double helix wrought in diamond; a creature like melted wax with six probing appendages; a human woman in a belled skirt and a fitted vest that revealed—Anatoly looked quickly on down the line, imagining what his grandmother would say about such an immodest display; a pattern of lights pulsing over a black base; a man with four arms, one leg frozen in a graceful sweep in front of him, the other balancing his weight on the back of a misshapen dwarf….
Anatoly stepped over the threshold and into the hall. Which could, of course, not possibly be here, at the pencil-thin tip of the tower. The hall was silent, except for a faint whisper, like the slither of a snake through grass, like the hiss of sand sliding down a funnel. The noise stopped, started again, and he saw a figure moving toward him from the other end of the hall.
His heart pounded. But because he was a Sakhalin, he stood his ground and waited.
As it neared he saw that it was a Chapalii, dressed in robes that left only the creature’s hands and head uncovered. Anatoly had seen few Chapalii; other alien races were more commonly seen in Earth’s cities. This one must be male, although its skin had the lustrous glow of a fine pearl, less like skin and more like a smooth shell. Its stiff robes rustled as it walked, flaring out in a complicated drapery.