The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  “So much came of it. Not just … the massacre. We’ve always disagreed on the issues of our rule, we Brethren, but now we are in factions. And the rift between us and the King … and the King’s blasphemy, his mining of the Burning Land …”

  “You forget,” I said with old bitterness. “The mines aren’t blasphemous—we Brethren have decreed it so. Vanyi, what’s the point of this? Why this dwelling on what cannot be changed?”

  “There’s something you don’t know.” He drew a breath.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Dâdar and I came back from the Burning Land, we told the council that we found no Cavern of the Blood where Gyalo Amdo Samchen claimed it was. We said we conducted a thorough search to make sure it wasn’t located elsewhere, or hidden through some Shaper trick. We said there was no question that Samchen had lied, that the cavern did not exist. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “Well—it wasn’t so.”

  I felt a prickling of all my skin, as if some huge presence had slipped up behind me. “What are you telling me, Vanyi?”

  “We didn’t find the Cavern. That’s true. But we didn’t search. We knew the Shapers might have concealed it, but we agreed to accept the evidence of our senses and turn away without looking further.”

  I stared at him. I could not speak.

  “As we drew near to Refuge, we saw a light rising above the cliffs at night. It was just as Samchen described—a great golden light, not like firelight, not like torchlight, not like any light I’ve ever seen. And yet I recognized it, Sunni, for it was the same light that burns inside the crystal of the Blood that hangs from our father’s necklace.”

  “Vanyi. Vanyi, what are you saying?” He and Dâdar had spoken no word, last year, about a light.

  “It was there the night we marched on Refuge. I saw it even through the smoke of battle, when their Shapers attacked us. But in the morning, when the battle was won and Dâdar and I went up into Refuge, the light was gone and there was no sign of anything that might have made it. Ah, Sunni, I’d dreaded finding the source of that light. I never wanted Samchen’s story to be true. I never wanted to find rata’s empty resting place in Refuge. When we reached the place Samchen had described and saw only a blank cliff, I was relieved. Relieved.

  “Dâdar said it was the light that had been the trick, an illusion or distraction created to confuse us. The Shapers had fled along with the rest of Refuge, so of course the light was gone. Obviously, he said, there had never been an opening in the cliff. Part of me understood what he was doing—he wanted Samchen to be a liar even more than I did. But the rest of me … the rest of me wanted to believe him. So when he declared that we had seen all there was to be seen and need do no more, I agreed. Do you understand, Sunni? I closed my eyes to the truth I knew and embraced the truth I wanted. Because it was easier. And I was afraid.”

  I said nothing. Even now, hours later, I can scarcely say what it was I felt.

  “So we came back, and told the council half the truth. We didn’t mention the light—why speak of Shaper tricks? By that time, I understood what I’d done. But I was too cowardly to stand against Dâdar, or to confess myself a liar before you all. I salved my conscience by telling myself that we might have been right. That if we were, our lie didn’t matter, because rata was still sleeping; and if we were wrong and he had risen, his Messenger would come, lie or no. But after yesterday—” He leaned toward me. “Sunni, I can’t stop thinking about it. We don’t know what’s in those cliffs, not for certain. If Gyalo Amdo Samchen told the truth—if there really is a Cavern of the Blood—then this pretender with his miracles and his act of destruction and his fiery crystal that our agent swore on his life was the true Blood, he may be—he may really be—”

  He caught his breath, unable to say it.

  For a moment there was silence. I sat like a stone, my mind refusing the implications of what he had just told me.

  “Sunni.” His voice was quiet. “What shall I do?”

  I swallowed. My mouth was like a desert. “You must tell the truth.”

  “Dâdar will deny it.”

  “You mustn’t involve him. You must go directly to Taxmârata.”

  “Will you come with me?” he asked, like a child.

  “Yes. Yes, I will come with you. We’ll go tomorrow morning, as early as we may.”

  All his features seemed to tremble. “How you must despise me.”

  “No,” I said, though I was not sure what I felt.

  “I despise myself.”

  “Ah, Vanyi.”

  He pushed to his feet. He came round the table and sank to the floor in front of me and laid his cheek upon my knees, as he used to when he was a boy. For a moment I could not respond, my mind still caught in the awful thing he had told me. Then my love for him rose up, bruised and angry but impossible to resist. I’ve always loved him best, my first spirit-ward in my present incarnation, who came to me when he was three and I was twenty-two. I bent over him; I kissed his forehead, and stroked his shaven scalp.

  At last he drew away, and rose.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. He was composed again. He looked drawn and weary, older than his thirty-one body-years.

  “Tomorrow,” I replied. “We’ll make it right, Vanyi.”

  “You are the best of us, Sunni. I don’t deserve your love.”

  He turned before I could answer and left the room.

  I don’t know how long I sat over the remains of our meal. At last I summoned Ha-tsun to clear the food, then went to look in on Utamnos. He woke at my step, disoriented and fearful, and I stayed until he slept again. How I miss him—Utamnos in his previous body, that is, my confidant, my friend. It is wrong, I know; the flesh-shell comes and goes, and we are not supposed to mourn it. When he is old enough in this shell, he will be my friend again.

  I sought my own chambers. There I have been sitting since, thinking, like Vanyi, of the apostate Gyalo Amdo Samchen. It was for his piety that we chose him, five years ago, to go into the Burning Land in search of refugees from Caryaxist persecution. We knew they might have untethered Shapers among them—how else could they have survived the harshness of the sacred desert? But we thought that Gyalo, with his pure faith, his shining devotion to the Doctrine of Baushpar, would resist all temptation.

  We were wrong. In the desert he cast aside his manita and broke his Shaper vows, using his shaping to call water from the earth. True, it was an unintended apostasy, born of the disaster that overtook the expedition, and he saved not just his own life but those of his companions. True, he voluntarily resumed the drug and the strictures of his vow on his return to Arsace—something only a handful of apostates have ever had the will to do. True, when he came before us he confessed the whole of his sin, sparing himself no condemnation. But apostasy is apostasy, and apostates, even unwilling ones, cannot be trusted. Even if he had not broken his vow, how could we have accepted his outlandish claim—that the people of Refuge, wandering deep into the Burning Land, had discovered rata’s empty resting place, this so-called Cavern of the Blood? That rata had risen; that the Age of Exile was at an end and the time of the Next Messenger was at hand?

  He did offer proof, of a sort: the testimony of Teispas and Diasarta, the two soldiers whose lives he saved; the word of a heretic of Refuge, a woman named Axane, who for reasons we did not entirely trust had chosen to return with him. And a crystal of the Blood—the true Blood, there was never any doubt—which he swore had been taken from the Cavern—where, he said, there were thousands of them, an ocean of them, as indeed there must be in the place where rata lay down to sleep. Some few of my spirit-siblings believed him utterly: Baushtas, Artavâdhi, Martyas. Others, Kudrâcari and what is now her faction (Vivaniya is right to name it so), were inflexibly certain that he lied. More—they claimed that because he had brought the Blood out of the Burning
Land, as rata’s Promise says the Next Messenger will do, he had come to believe himself the Messenger, embracing the same blasphemy as the people of Refuge, who, when he arrived among them out of the emptiness of the desert, mistook him for rata’s herald.

  I did not agree. I saw no sign that he believed himself the Messenger. Nor was I one of those who accepted the claims he did make. Even the Blood, which all our lore and scripture tells us exists nowhere but in rata’s resting place and in our father’s necklace, did not convince me. Yet it raised questions, that crystal, too many to be rejected out of hand. And there were other concerns: the need to cleanse the sacred Land of the taint of Refuge’s heresy, the threat of Refuge’s untethered Shapers, which even at such a distance we could not leave unaddressed. A second expedition was necessary—though had I been Blood Bearer, I would have found a way other than the one we took. I would not have chosen Dâdar to search for signs of rata’s awakening. I would not have sought Santaxma’s help—or if I had, I would not have paid the blasphemous price he demanded for his soldiers. I would never have granted him official sanction to mine the Burning Land, whose riches should be beyond the reach of human greed.

  Maybe then the heretics would still be alive. Maybe Vivaniya would not have brought back a lie. Maybe I would not be sitting in my chambers, writing the word “heretic” by long habit, thinking as I shape the letters: What if I should call them something else?

  Ah, there is a thought to chill the bones.

  We desire the coming of the new primal age, we Brethren. Of course we do. But it means the end of us, the extinguishing of our souls. That is what Gyalo Amdo Samchen told us when he brought the Blood of rata out of the Burning Land: that we would end. That’s the fear that lives in Vanyi’s and Dâdar’s lie. We all felt it, even Baushtas and Artavâdhi and Martyas, who believed. Even I, who waited judgment on my Brothers’ return, could not deny my relief when they swore the Cavern of the Blood did not exist. Or earlier, when we learned that Gyalo Amdo Samchen had died in imprisonment at Faal …

  Nothing is certain, I remind myself. As Vanyi said, we don’t know what was really in those cliffs. Nor does it necessarily follow from anything he told me tonight that this pretender in the mountains is the true Next Messenger. It’s as likely that he is precisely what we decided yesterday, on the evidence our agent gave us: a charlatan, a madman, an apostate Shaper with a cunningly crafted simulacrum.

  But … nothing is certain. If he is what he claims … Ah, I can hardly write it. If he is, what might that mean for us, who turned away from word of rata’s rising?

  3

  Gyalo

  “HOW MUCH FOR a letter, scribe?”

  Gyalo looked up from the box into which he was packing his writing materials. “A half karshana for each page for black ink on rough paper,” he said, shading his eyes against the late-afternoon sun and the questioner’s own lifelight. “A three-quarter if you want a fair copy. If you want colored ink or better paper, I’ve a stock for you to look at and we can agree on the extra price. For another half, I can see it goes into the temple’s mail pouch.”

  “Does that mean it’ll get to Yashri Province?”

  “Yes. Or anywhere else in Galea.”

  “You’re pricier than the others.”

  Gyalo shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

  The young man stood a moment, irresolute. “All right,” he said abruptly, and sat down on the stool Gyalo kept for customers, fumbling with the wallet on his belt. “There’s four quarters.” He held out the coins. “One page. No copy. And I want it delivered.”

  Gyalo put the coins away, then took what he needed from the box and prepared to write. “Just speak as you normally would,” he said, when the boy remained silent.

  “I’m thinking.” The boy shifted on the stool. His coppery lifelight sprang energetically out around him, shading to yellow at its edges. A grubby bandage wrapped his left palm; he cradled that hand in the other, as if it pained him. “All right. Greetings to Mother and Ansi and Soris and— No, wait. Just write … just write ‘Greetings to my family.’ ”

  Gyalo made the change.

  “I’m going away on pilgrimage—wait, don’t say that. Just, I’m going away for a while. Ummm … I don’t know when I can—when I will be back. But I’ll be in good company, so you’re not to worry. I’ll send word when I can. Read that back, scribe.”

  Gyalo did.

  “Ummm … This letter is for family, so when you’ve read it you must burn it. I’m not supposed—” He paused. “We aren’t allowed—”

  Again he stopped. Gyalo waited, pen poised above the paper. Faintly, from beyond the temple walls, the clamor of the city’s streets rose up—the great voice of Ninyâser, which even at midnight was never still. Here in the forecourt it was quiet, with only the murmuring of the scribes and their customers, and the whisper-sound of devotee-priests and worshipers passing to and fro in cloth temple shoes, to stir the air.

  The boy looked up. His face was set. “I’ve changed my mind. Tear it up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s my letter, scribe. Tear it up!”

  Gyalo set his pen in its rest and tore the paper in half and in half again. The boy held out his uninjured hand.

  “Give me the pieces.”

  Gyalo handed them over. “I want my money back,” the boy said, stuffing the scraps into his wallet. “You wrote, so I figure you earned a quarter, but it wasn’t a whole letter and now there’s nothing to deliver. So I want a quarter and a half back.”

  “A page is a page, no matter how many lines are written on it.” Gyalo opened his own wallet. “I’ll give you back the half for delivery, but that’s all.”

  The boy scowled, then snatched the coin. “You can’t tell anyone I was here.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You have to promise.” The belligerence was gone. “Please, scribe. We aren’t supposed to tell our families. I’ll get in trouble if anyone finds out.”

  Gyalo shrugged. “Very well.” Then, when the boy did not move: “Was there anything else?”

  A sly expression had come across the boy’s face. “Aren’t you curious? About where I’m going?”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to say.” Gyalo tapped the ink from his pen back into the inkpot, and cleaned the nib on a rag.

  “Only to families and friends and suchlike, if they’re not coming with us. Our oath’s like a knife, it cuts off our old lives, cuts ’em at the root. We can’t walk free on the path of faith if we drag our loves and hates and desires after us.” He was obviously reciting something that had been told to him. “But we can pass the word to strangers if they want to hear.”

  Gyalo put the cleaned pen with its fellows in the box, corked the inkpot, and stowed it in its slot. The nature of his business had changed over the past year; he had regular copying commissions now and could often work in comfort at home. But the small documents, the letters and wills and bills of sale, were still the foundation of his income, and at least three days a week he wheeled his cart to the temple of Inriku, Patron of learning and the arts, and took his place among the scribes and notaries who gathered daily under the portico of its forecourt. The people who used his services turned to the written word only in extremity; there was a tale, sometimes a terrible one, behind every document he produced, and they were often all too willing to confide it. It had been his duty to listen, when he was sworn to the Way of rata. But he was no longer a vowed ratist.

  “Well, I don’t want to hear,” he said, shutting the box and starting to close up his portable writing desk. “No offense.”

  “Not even if I told you”—the boy’s voice dropped—“that I was going to meet the Next Messenger?”

  The light of late afternoon seemed suddenly to dim. “The Next Messenger?”

  “Yes!” The boy leaned eagerly forward.
“Because he’s come to open the way for rata’s return, and he’s calling all the faithful to his side!”

  Gyalo drew a long breath. He latched the lid of his desk and folded his hands atop it, and said, quietly: “Tell me more.”

  A smile of triumph broke across the boy’s face. “I’ll tell you the whole story! I’m apprenticed to—well, never mind. A couple of days ago one of the other apprentices was talking about a conjurer he’d heard of. Some of us decided to go, but it turned out it wasn’t a conjurer at all, but a holy man. The others got angry and left, but I figured since I’d come all that way I might as well listen for a while. I’ve heard holy men before, who hasn’t? But this one—he had a way of talking. It made you listen. It made you believe. He said that rata had woken, and the Next Messenger had come. He said the fall of Thuxra City was the act of destruction that marks his coming, like it says in rata’s Promise—”

  “Thuxra was destroyed by an earthquake,” Gyalo said sharply.

  “No, no!” The boy shook his head, his long hair swinging. “That’s just what everyone thought. It was the Next Messenger who did it. He stood before it and told it to fall, and down it came. It made a noise so loud it was like the earth itself opened up its mouth and shouted rata’s name!”

  Gyalo felt a heaviness in his chest. Till that moment he had held a slim hope that the boy had only encountered some god-crazed itinerant prophet. Even now, six years after the Caryaxists’ defeat, there was no shortage of these. But the boy knew the truth about Thuxra. That made it certain.

  Râvar.

  “And then he said—the holy man said—that the Next Messenger was summoning the faithful, and anyone who believed could come to the city he had made, the Awakened City, and live in holiness. And it was like … like the world turned over underneath me! I don’t remember getting up, I was just there, in front of him. He took my face into his hands and kissed me, and told me what I had to do. And that night I did it. I swore myself to the Messenger’s service. There was—” He drew his bandaged hand a little closer against his body. “A ritual. Then they told me how to go to him in his stronghold.”