The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  She stared at him, her small fingers still folded into a fist.

  “Ardashir.”

  Ardashir returned the necklace. Râvar put it on again, feeling the links settle back into the grooves upon his neck.

  “Sundit and Vivaniya of the Brethren, you are welcome among us for as long as you choose to remain. Ardashir, see to their accommodations. See that they are conducted around the Awakened City, that all their questions are answered. Nothing is to be closed to them, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Beloved One.” Ardashir was as stiff as stone.

  “In the evenings I speak to my followers. We would welcome both of you among us.”

  The Daughter had moved to take her speechless companion’s arm. “Thank you. We will attend.”

  “Great is rata. Great is his wakened Way.” Râvar saw her register the alteration in the traditional phrase. “We’ll talk again soon.”

  He sat watching from his throne as Ardashir ushered them away.

  He returned to his chambers. Triumph blazed in his belly, and he felt as if his blood had turned to light.

  He could not think of being still. He left his quarters by the passage that opened off the bathing room and plunged into the darkness of the caverns. He paid no heed to where he went, for the pattern of the caves was as clear to him as the sense of his own body. He swept his will across a gallery ranged with stalactites, bringing them all crashing down. He hurled a bridge of crystal across a crevasse, shaping its arch all in an instant. He transmuted the rough gray rock to opal and lapis and moonstone, veined it with copper and gold. He abandoned all restraint, mixing the patterns of one thing with the patterns of another, skewing patterns as he called them into being, shaping things not known in nature or imagination. The rock groaned with his thunder, and depths that had never known the smallest spark of brightness cowered beneath his light.

  The Brethren had come to him. To him. And he had spoken to them and shown them his power, silenced one with awe and the other with uncertainty. He would own them both before they left the Awakened City—by rata, they would be his, as completely as any of his followers. And he would send them back to speak their faith to the rest, and by the time he reached Baushpar they would all belong to him. He would stand before them and they would fall at his feet and pledge themselves to him finally and forever, and when they had done that, when their souls were black with blasphemy, he would tell them the truth: Who he was. Why he had come. What their fate would be. They would know him then. He would watch the faith burn out of them, as it had burned out of him on the banks of Revelation. And then he would open the ground and seal them beneath it, and bring their holy city down. And he would laugh as it fell—laugh as he laughed now, in the pitchy passages of the underworld.

  Do you hear me, rata? Do you hear me laughing?

  At last, exhausted, he returned to his quarters. He cast the Blood aside and fell on his bed, sinking instantly into sleep. There were no nightmares this time. The dream that came to him was kind. He was with his cousin Kâruvisya, strolling along the banks of Revelation where it flowed beyond the cleft. The fallen leaves of the bitterbark trees crackled underfoot. The sun struck sparks from the river as it whispered past, and the air was full of birdsong. Kâruvisya had his slingshot; he launched pebbles at the ripe heads of rushes, causing them to explode into clouds of downy seed heads, shouting each time he made a hit …

  Râvar woke. He lay with his eyes closed, holding for as long as he could to the feeling of the dream. Beneath him the bed seemed to sway, like the water of the river. The silence of his chambers held him like a hand.

  At last he sat up. It seemed an age must have passed since the morning, but the shaft of light above the bathing pool told him it was only midafternoon. His body ached as if with hard use, which he supposed it had had.

  He rose and unblocked the entrance to his night chamber. Its sour smell greeted him. Axane sat on the edge of the bed, combing her hair. Parvâti, folded into a nest of blankets beside her, woke at the sound of shaping and began to wail, but after only a few breaths subsided into silence.

  “She just got off to sleep.” Axane put down the comb.

  Râvar went to stand over his child. Her dark lashes fluttered; one small fist was thrust underneath her chin. He reached out and gently drew a crooked finger down her cheek, feeling the impossible softness of her skin. Aware of Axane’s observation, he stepped back and folded both hands inside the sleeves of his robe.

  “Râvar.” Axane’s tone was tentative. “Would you let me look at your hands?”

  It was her boldest offer yet. But to his surprise, he found he was not angry. “What for?”

  “I’m a skilled healer. I might be able to help.”

  No. He heard himself saying it, saw himself turning away. Instead, he took his hands from his sleeves and held them out.

  “Well?” he said when she sat motionless. It gave him a little amusement to see how taken aback she was.

  She reached out, tentative, and took his hands in hers. She turned them over, inspecting them, pressing at the scar tissue. Her touch was cool. Her lifelight, surging out around her, swallowed his arms to the elbow; it did not eclipse his own golden aura, which was much brighter, but transformed it, like the sun seen through water. Close to her that way, he could see that her hair was greasy and her dress stained. She smelled unclean.

  “Ah,” he hissed, as she pulled at his frozen thumb.

  Her eyes flew to his. “I’m sorry.”

  She released him. He stepped back, beyond reach of her surging colors.

  “Most of the trouble is the scarring,” she said. “If you’d had proper care when the injuries were fresh, your fingers might have healed straighter, and you’d have better use of them. There’s nothing to be done for that now. You may be able to get more strength in your right hand, if you work at it—the muscles have withered, but you could build them up again with exercise. Even so, I think you’ll probably only ever have limited use of it. As for your left hand, it’s possible that cutting the scars might give you some flexibility in the thumb, but I couldn’t say for certain. And it would be painful.” She paused, and said again: “I’m sorry.”

  She had, he realized, given him an honest assessment. It surprised him. False hope, counterfeit optimism—that was what he had expected. On the other hand, to promise what she knew she could not accomplish would be foolish. And she was not foolish.

  She sat quietly beneath his gaze. This was the face she had shown in Refuge: yielding, obedient, self-effacing. He knew it was not her real face, but the mask she wore to hide her secrets—whose mystery once had drawn him irresistibly to her, and now warned him to keep away. She was not to be trusted.

  “Do you ever think of Refuge?” The words were out before he knew he meant to speak them. “As it was?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Yes.”

  “What do you remember most?”

  She did not answer at once. “In the dry season,” she said at last, “I liked to go to the summit of the cleft and watch the Shapers calling storms. I remember how the clouds gathered … how the rain would come sweeping over the Plains like a silver curtain … and then the clouds would pass and the sun would come back, and the smell of the earth would rise up. Even from so high, you could smell it. And the scent of the bitterbark trees, when the wind shifted … It was always so hot under those trees, do you remember? And the way the leaves crackled underfoot, the way the wind fell at noon, and everything went quiet …”

  The images bloomed in his mind as she evoked them. For an instant he was in his dream again, with Kâruvisya and his slingshot. This was not wise. He knew it was not wise. But who else in the world could remember how the bitterbarks had smelled?

  “I’m afraid I’m starting to forget it,” she said. “I walk through it in my mind, along the ledge, through the spaces—Labyrinth, the Temple, the Trea
sury. I lean out over Revelation and listen to its song. I go up the summit and look down on the Plains of Blessing. But sometimes I can’t remember exactly how the columns along the face of the Treasury looked, or the sequence of the paintings in the Temple gallery. I try to hold it, but it’s fading, and I can’t stop it.”

  The grief in her voice sounded real. That was one loss, at least, he did not have to bear. He had a Shaper’s memory, trained to pattern. If he wished, he could walk through Refuge in his mind and see it entire, down to the last detail.

  “But you wanted to forget it,” he said. “You ran away.”

  “I came back, Râvar. I came back.”

  “Yes, with destruction following at your heels!” He felt the writhing of his own guilt. If she had tried to defend herself, if she had said a single word, he might have struck her to the floor. But she only bowed her head. The mantle of her hair followed the motion, sliding over her shoulders and across her breast.

  “Was it everything you hoped?” he demanded harshly. “Living in Ninyâser? Pretending to be a citizen of this world?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I didn’t know … I had no idea what it would be like.”

  “But you were there before. When you ran away from Refuge. How could you not know what it was like?”

  “I didn’t understand.” She drew a ragged breath. “The first time … the first time it terrified me, but still I thought I could find a way to live in it, to make a home in that city and use my skills to support myself. But I wasn’t there long enough. I didn’t understand how hard it would be to survive alone.”

  “You weren’t,” Râvar said viciously, “alone.”

  “But I was!” Her head came up. He saw, with a strange stutter of his heart, that her mask had slipped. Tears filled her eyes. Pain was naked in her face. “In my heart. In my soul. The night I got here, you asked me if I hadn’t longed for my own kin, my own kind. You asked how I could find comfort in a world I wasn’t born to. I was afraid, and I pretended not to understand. But I did understand, I did. Oh, Râvar, I’ve been so unhappy!”

  The words turned in him like an edge of crystal. He could not speak.

  “I stayed on at Thuxra City,” she said after a moment.

  “What? After—after—?”

  “Yes. There were survivors. They needed help. But then the relief party came, and there was no more use for me.” She lifted her hands to wipe her wet cheeks, folded them in her lap again. “I went to Ninyâser, because it was the only place I knew to go. I tried to find work as a healer. But healers in Ninyâser have to be registered, and I couldn’t register because I didn’t have the proper training. It’s hard to get work if you don’t have a registration, and the pregnancy was proceeding … Oh, Râvar, they are selfish in this world, they give nothing away. There is so little kindness. I thought I might starve to death. I thought I might lose our child. I didn’t know what to do. And then …” She paused. “I met him.”

  “The false Messenger.”

  “It was chance. He saw me in the street. I didn’t recognize him, but he knew me. He’d left the Brethren’s service and was working as a scribe. There are terrible penalties in this world for Shapers who … who slip away, who stop taking manita and let their shaping free. He was living in hiding, under a different name—”

  “Gyalo Timpurin Chok.”

  She nodded. “He offered me a place in his home. He offered me marriage. Râvar, what was I to do? It was shelter. It was food.” She swallowed. The knuckles of her clasped hands were white. “So I said yes. He … he was in love with me. I’d realized that before, the first time, when he brought me to Arsace. He knew I didn’t feel the same. He said it didn’t matter. I thought I would be able to bear it, for the baby’s sake. But every time I looked at him I saw my father’s face, my father who would still be alive if he’d never come to Refuge. And then, after the baby was born … she has your eyes, Râvar, your green eyes. I saw him looking at her, thinking she was another man’s child.”

  “Did he know she was my child?”

  She shook her head, her hair sliding on her shoulders. “We never spoke of it. Of you.”

  “So he knows nothing of me? You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth. He doesn’t even know I went back to Refuge. I never told him, and he never asked.”

  “Was he your lover?” he said convulsively.

  Her gaze was unflinching. “I was his wife. It was what he expected of me, after the baby was born. The barter for my shelter.”

  “Did you find it an easy trade?”

  “No!” She gasped. “No. I knew I had to find a way to leave, to get free. I’d learned more about how to live. I’d found some custom as a healer. I had some coins. I was gathering up the courage to try. But then your men came. Oh, I was angry—angry at you for taking me, angry still for … for what happened in the Burning Land. But I’ve been thinking about what you said to me the day I got here …” Her eyes beseeched his. “That you and I and our child are the last of Refuge. That we should be a family—”

  “You’ve already tried to bribe me with that. Do you think I’ve forgotten?”

  “No, and you’re right, I didn’t mean it then, but I’ve had time to think, to see how you are with her, with our little girl, and I mean it now, I swear I do. Oh, Râvar, I am ashamed. I’m so ashamed of what I’ve done.”

  Was there any chance she was not lying? Yet if she were not, what difference would it make? What would it change?

  “You should have died,” he said, speaking each word as if it were a stone. “Before you went to him.”

  “Sometimes I wish I had. But then our child would be dead too.”

  She bowed her face into her hands and sat motionless, a little hunched dark statue. The tresses of her hair still trailed over her breast. It was her one physical beauty, her hair—thick and waving, black without a trace of brown or red. The desire to touch it, to reach out and loop it back over her shoulders, was suddenly overwhelming.

  She did not call after him as he turned away. He went into the bathing chamber, and then, because that was not far enough, into the second chamber, where he sat down on the floor next to the fire, his hands—which still felt the press of her fingers—loose upon his knees. His weakness angered and shamed him. He told himself he had been weary, off guard from the dream of Kâruvisya. He would not make such a mistake again.

  How strange that she had been at Thuxra while he lay healing among his followers. What would he have done, if he had known she was so close?

  Gyalo Amdo Samchen. That hated name. Did he grieve to lose Axane, his willing or unwilling wife? Did it torment him not to know where she had gone, to think she had abandoned him? Almost, Râvar regretted that ignorance. It would have been satisfying to think he knew the truth, for the truth was much more painful.

  Once, he had wished death on Gyalo Amdo Samchen. But he had come to desire a more subtle punishment. He wanted the man who had been the ruin of Refuge to recognize the true nature of the ruin that Râvar meant to bring on his people, and how that ruin was sourced in his own actions. He wanted the false Messenger who had corrupted Refuge through its faith to watch as another false Messenger drew the kingdoms of Galea into blasphemy, and understand why. He wanted Gyalo Amdo Samchen to stand amid the wreckage of his world, with no company but his grief, and know that he was guilty. Oh yes. That was worse than death. Râvar knew.

  Maybe I’ll search him out when I reach Ninyâser. Maybe I’ll tell him then.

  His masters came to me today. The Brethren came to me.

  The fierce joy of it seized him, banishing the sour sense of failure. He rose and fetched the Blood. He settled the familiar weight of it around his neck, not looking at the entrance to his night chamber, and went to sit in his pink quartz chair, waiting for the drum to call him to the evening cerem
ony.

  9

  Gyalo

  “LOOK, BROTHER,” DIASARTA said. “Up there. Think that might be it?”

  Gyalo halted, shading his eyes against the sizzling glare of the midday sun. To the south, close enough to make out contour but too far to read pattern, a ridge stretched like a dozing giant across the flatness of the steppe. Heat haze distorted the air, but halfway up the tawny slope he could see a patch of darkness.

  “The location’s right,” he said. “Let’s keep to the track a little longer. It’ll be a while yet before we’re close enough for anyone to spot us.”

  They set off again along the narrow trail, one of hundreds printed on the steppe by the migrations of countless generations of nomads, whose travels had beaten the ground as bare and hard as iron. The wind, whipping constantly across the grasses, was like the breath of an oven; Gyalo’s hair was plastered to his scalp under his hat, and his clothes were soaked with sweat. Beyond the ridge, a line of bluffs marked the first of the great series of foldings and upthrustings that culminated in the mighty snow-wrapped peaks of the Range of Clouds; in all other directions there was nothing but steppe, a vastness of amber grass broken now and then by stands of scrub and, more rarely, an improbable splash of violet, where colonies of steppe gentian lifted their faces to the punishing sun. White clouds sailed overhead, their shadows pacing them like phantom armies, a constant interchange of light and shade.

  They had been traveling for nearly three months—a journey that would have been shorter had they been able to go by a direct route. The general trend was south, toward the Range of Clouds, but whether as a test of the pilgrims’ resolve or from concern for secrecy, the pilgrim way stations were in odd, out-of-the-way locations, which often took the companions far to the east or west. Almost at once Gyalo saw that they would not overtake Axane and Chokyi; the kidnappers, who—unlike the pilgrims—knew their destination, certainly would not bother with these diversions and byways. It was infuriating, but there was nothing to be done. He resigned himself to the tedious process of the journey, expending his frustration by setting a grueling pace.