The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  Diasarta, bitterly contemptuous of everything to do with Râvar and the Awakened City, was less patient, and cursed the travel and the pilgrims until Gyalo grew weary of hearing him. He could not contain his fury when the map to the final way station revealed that it was near the village of Fashir, which lay right beside the Great South Way, the thoroughfare built by the Caryaxists to shuttle prisoners and treasure between Ninyâser and Thuxra City.

  “Ash of the Enemy! If we’d known, we could have gone straight down the Way, without all these ash-cursed detours!”

  “What if the way station keepers are making a record of who passes through, Dasa? What if they’re told to turn away anyone who hasn’t stopped at the previous station?”

  “Even so. What a foul bloody waste of time.”

  The Fashir station was a goat herder’s holding some distance beyond the village. A pilgrim band was resting there when the companions arrived. It was a typically motley group: a retired soldier, a number of peasant youths, a middle-aged woman who might have been a widow or a whore, a well-dressed merchant with his servant, and an entire family of husband, wife, two children, and a baby. The companions could not avoid taking the evening meal with the pilgrims, or kneeling with them afterward in meditation; but they refused the merchant’s invitation to travel on in company, as they had refused similar offers along the way. At first light they moved on, equipped by the station keeper with a pair of straw hats and the final map, crudely drawn on a square of linen, with water sources marked in red.

  The regions around Fashir, wracked by the struggles between local warlords in the chaotic final years of the Caryaxist regime, were plagued by bandits, but Gyalo and Diasarta were not accosted, and saw few travelers besides themselves. Once they reached the steppe they met no one at all—except, on the third day, a band of horsemen that overtook them from behind. Gyalo assumed at first it was a convoy heading for Thuxra. But well before the riders drew close enough for Gyalo to make out their tattoos, he recognized them, for with their red-and-white clothing they could only be vowed ratists, and only one kind of vowed ratist went mounted.

  He and Diasarta stepped off the road to let the procession pass: ten Tapati ordinates riding in pairs, their shaven heads and ink-marked faces bare to the punishing sun; two carriages without insignia, window covers laced shut, driven by tattooless monks; ten more Tapati bringing up the rear.

  Diasarta stared after them. “Where d’you think they’re going?”

  “To Thuxra, maybe. To observe the mines.”

  It did not make a lot of sense. But the other possibility, that the procession’s destination was the same as theirs, made even less.

  They set off again. Ahead, the convoy dwindled into the distance. Its light, the gathered brightness of the many lives that composed it, was the last thing to disappear.

  Three days later they reached the point where they were to turn west: one of the snaking nomad tracks, marked by a cairn of stones with a pictogram of an open eye painted in red upon the topmost rock. They had been following the track for four days when the patch of darkness came in sight.

  When the darkness had grown to the size of Gyalo’s palm, he halted again. He could read enough probability in the ridge’s contours to be certain that it was indeed a cave. The knot of tension beneath his breastbone, which with each day upon the steppe seemed to draw a little tighter, twisted tighter still.

  “The Awakened City,” he said.

  “Time to turn off, then.”

  “Yes.”

  They had decided not to approach the Awakened City at once, but to camp nearby and spend a day or two reconnoitering. They left the track, striking southeast. The ridge rose slowly larger, eating up the horizon. By dusk the Range of Clouds, which for most of the past two weeks had hung like a jagged gray dream across the southern sky, had sunk entirely out of sight behind it. The moon was up when they reached the place that Gyalo, surveying the patterns of the terrain, had picked for their camp: a relatively level spot halfway up the ridge, with a little stream springing out over a lip of rock. They laid out their bedrolls and set some of the dried meat and hard biscuit the Fashir station keeper had given them in a pannier of water to soften. They ate in weary silence, then rolled themselves into their blankets to sleep.

  Diasarta quickly began snoring, but Gyalo lay awake, listening to the breathing of the wind, staring out at the life-glimmering expanses of the steppe, where the patterns of the day’s departing heat breathed like smoke toward the luminous hemisphere of the sky. After a time he freed his arm from the folds of his blanket and reached up through the watery substance of the air, as if to grasp a hand held down to him. The wind dragged cloud across the waxing moon and chased it away again, filling his palm with silver.

  “Are you here?” he whispered. “Can you see me?”

  He had never prayed for Axane’s and Chokyi’s safety. Whether or not their abduction was rata’s will, he knew the god was indifferent to his desires; what would be would be, prayers or no. But one of the things that had made the journey bearable was to know that the distance between them meant nothing to Axane’s dreaming. It had become a kind of devotion to speak this way, to reach up this way. He did it every night. On the edge of sleep it almost seemed sometimes that he sensed her—her breath upon his cheek, her scent upon the air.

  So little divided them now: an hour’s walk, a few thicknesses of rock. As he lay waiting in the dark, so, somewhere, did she. He had disciplined himself, over the past weeks, to think only of the waiting. In the rest of it—in Râvar’s possession of her body, in the enormity of Râvar’s power—lay madness. It was not always possible to confine his thoughts so narrowly, of course, and in sleep he was defenseless. But he owned a lifetime’s rigorous meditation training, and it was more possible for him than it might have been for another man to fix himself in the present moment, to leash back his thoughts when they tried to rush down terrible paths of speculation.

  One thing he had sworn: When they were together again, he would never ask her to speak of her ordeal. He would never ask her to tell him what she had had to suffer or do. They would put it behind them, as they had before. They would go forward from that moment, as if it were the first.

  The grasses hissed. The water plashed. Clouds stole the moon and gave it back again. At last he turned on his side and, slipping his hand under his shirt, laced his fingers through her silver bracelet. He closed his eyes and slept.

  Diasarta left at dawn to scout the Awakened City. Gyalo waited, forcing himself to a patience he was very far from feeling. He tried to meditate. He paced back and forth along the ridge side. He scoured the pots they had used the night before, unpacked and repacked his travel kit, shook out his and Diasarta’s blankets and spread them to air. He simply sat, watching the cloud shadow race across the grasses, trying to open himself to the beauty of the sight. The world was veiled with the ash of Ardaxcasa’s destruction, but its substance was rata’s own, and it was important—no, essential—to remember that.

  He also inspected the supplies and shaped a variety of foods to supplement them. He had begun to use his shaping as soon as they left Ninyâser, knowing he would need it for what was to come. During his first apostasy, he had not had time to gain any true mastery of his gift; during his second, he had not shaped at all. He had expected, therefore, to be clumsy and inexpert. Yet almost at once he achieved a versatility and control beyond anything he had ever managed before. Initially he attempted only small shapings; in Arsace’s heavily populated central regions it seemed unwise to risk more. But when he and Diasarta reached the steppe and he began to try his hand at greater feats, he realized that not only was he much stronger than he recalled, but he was able to accomplish things he could not remember learning. It was as if the process of exploration he had haltingly begun during his first apostasy had been continuing all this time, somewhere invisible within himself.

  He knew he s
hould be glad. Instead, for reasons he understood too well, he found his unbidden mastery deeply discomforting. In the Burning Land he had believed his apostasy a sin—a necessary sin, the god’s will, for only by his shaping could he survive to reach the Brethren, but a sin nonetheless. Still he had embraced discovery, avidly pursuing the limits of his competence, snatching at knowledge like a man who had only just realized he was starving. Now he knew, or thought he knew, that apostasy was not a sin at all, that a free Shaper was not inevitably driven mad or corrupt by his unleashed ability, as he had been taught during his ratist training. Yet he searched himself daily for signs of change. If he felt himself drawn to any particular act of power, he chose to perform another. He did not prolong his practice sessions—nor did he, who once had loved the exercise of his gift with urgent and consuming passion, take any joy in them.

  Diasarta returned near dark. He had spent the day watching the Awakened City from various angles—not an easy task, for the ridge with its sparse vegetation did not afford much cover. There was little traffic in or out, he reported: Some women going down to the steppe to cut grass, a band of hunters with bows and arrows, a few people tossing rubbish down the hill, were all he had seen all day. On the crest of the path leading to the cavern was a constantly staffed checkpoint; it was some distance from the cavern’s entrance, but anyone trying to avoid the checkpoint by coming at the entrance from a different angle would likely be seen.

  “During the day, anyway. At night you could probably do it.”

  Gyalo shrugged. They had discussed the merits of entering the Awakened City secretly as opposed to coming to it openly as pilgrims, and had agreed that it made more sense to have official sanction for their presence, since it might take several days to learn all they needed to know.

  “There’s something else, Brother. Remember those coaches that passed us on the road? Well, both of ’em are sitting at the bottom of the ridge, with the horses staked out and fourteen of those tattooed monks camped alongside.”

  “The same coaches? Are you sure?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Brother. D’you think they’ve sent someone to parley with him? The Brethren, I mean?”

  “I don’t know.” The Brethren surely knew about Râvar, with his proselytizers and his pilgrims. If they believed the stories of his power, they would assume he was an apostate Shaper; that, and his heresy, demanded action. But sending high-ranking ratists to meet with him? Coaches or no coaches, Gyalo found it hard to conceive. “Well. Whatever it means, it’s nothing to do with us. Anything else?”

  “No. I think I’ve learned as much as I can from outside. We may as well go in tomorrow.”

  Gyalo braced himself. “Not us. Just me.”

  “Ah, no, Brother, not this again.”

  “My mind’s made up.”

  “Brother, we’ve talked about this! We’ve agreed!”

  “No. I just stopped disagreeing. Dasa, it only makes sense. If we go in together, we risk being caught together. This way, if I—” He could not bring himself to say the word fail. “If I don’t come back, you’ll be here to try in my place.”

  “I could try in the first place. You could be the one to stay.”

  “Can you open stone? Can you read patterns? I’ve got the best chance of succeeding.”

  “Burn it, Brother! You dragged me all this ash-cursed way, and now you won’t let me help you? What’s the point of me even being here?”

  “If they’re walled up somewhere and only shaping can free them, you won’t be able to do anything anyway. You can help me most by waiting on the outside. I need to know there’ll be someone else to try if I don’t come back. I need to know … that I’m not their last hope. Please, Dasa, try and understand.”

  “Maybe you think I’m stupid, Brother, but I’ve seen more of the world than you have, and I’ve done more, too. D’you think I don’t know what’s behind this? Ash of the Enemy, I’ve seen it from the first. This isn’t just about Axane and the baby. You think that because you know what he is, because you’re a Shaper, too, you’ve got to be the one to confront him, to stop him, just you by yourself—the same way you thought you had to stand up to the bloody Brethren and make them believe in rata’s awakening. We tried to stand with you then, but you wouldn’t let us. You had to do it all yourself. It’s the same now, so don’t try and deny it.”

  Gyalo had done little all day long but wait, but all at once he felt profoundly weary. “Dasa, I am going in there to rescue Axane and Chokyi. That’s all. If there is more …” Dread tried to rise in him; he pressed it back. “Then there will be more, as rata wills. But that’s not why I’m going in alone.”

  The sky was clear; the wind had chased all the clouds into the east. In the mingled light of the moon and his own green aura, the anger in Diasarta’s face was clear—and behind it, the injury. Gyalo suspected that Diasarta was aware of the fact that his stubborn insistence on offering faith to a man who did not want it was not so very different from Gyalo’s equally stubborn rejection of that faith—both of them refusing to yield to the wishes of the other. But occasionally, he could not quite conceal how much the rejection wounded him.

  “Did you ever think,” Diasarta said, “that maybe you don’t have the right to risk yourself this way?”

  Anger struck Gyalo like an open hand. “Don’t tell me what I have the right to do. Don’t hold me to the standards of your faith.”

  “It should be your faith, Brother.”

  “My faith is not your concern.”

  “Yes, and that’s the bloody problem, isn’t it?”

  “This discussion,” Gyalo said tightly, “is pointless.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Diasarta cried. “Don’t I watch you day after day, turning from the truth of what you are?” He hurled his water cup aside; it struck a rock, making a pinging sound. “Burn me, I don’t know why I bother. You’ve never walked the path that rata gave you. Not once, since we came out of the Burning Land.”

  It silenced them both.

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” Gyalo said at last. “Will you honor my decision?”

  “What if I say no?”

  But it was not a serious threat. Diasarta knew very well the consequences of refusing a man who could bend the natural world to his will.

  “All right, Brother. You win. You bloody win.”

  He got roughly to his feet and stamped over to the stream. Gyalo got into his bedroll and pulled his blankets over his head. After a time he heard Diasarta’s returning footsteps, then the rustle of bedding. Silence fell. Neither of them slept.

  Gyalo departed at moonset. He rolled up his blankets and attached them to his pack, which he had prepared the day before. Diasarta lay unmoving through these preparations.

  “Good-bye, Dasa.”

  “Three days, Brother.” Diasarta did not stir. “Three days I’m giving you. You don’t come out by then, I’m coming in after you.” Then, softly: “Go in light.”

  Gyalo walked northwest, watching for the subtle shifts of pattern that marked the track. He found it just as dawn began to break. The watchers at the checkpoint would see him on it as the light rose, as if he had been following it all along. He made a mark so he would find the spot again, twisting several stalks of grass together and bending them toward the ground—then checked a moment, on the edge of the end of his long journey. The world around him, the grass and the wind and the clouds and the fading stars, seemed extraordinarily clear. rata, he thought. Not a prayer: an acknowledgment. An announcement of intent. He no longer felt any apprehension, only readiness.

  The sun was well above the horizon by the time he reached the bottom of the ridge. For some distance the grass had been hacked to the ground, like a harvested wheatfield, a jarring man-made break in the smooth natural patterns of the steppe. The coaches sat in this cleared area, squat and black against the pale stubble.
Several of the Tapati were training, repeating a series of steps and turns in dancelike sequence; another squatted by the cook fire, his lifelight the same color as the flames. The rest tended the horses. The dancers paid no attention to Gyalo as he trudged past, but the cook and the horse tenders looked up, their tattooed faces masklike in the morning sun. Gyalo stared back at them, feigning the awe that an ordinary man would surely feel, confronted by the church’s legendary guardians.

  The checkpoint was four poles driven into the stony soil, with a plaited-grass awning stretched atop. Beyond it the track tipped downward to the cavern’s entrance, perhaps two hundred paces distant; it was even more gigantic than it had appeared from below, and obviously artificial, a smoothly regular arch. Two men lounged on grass mats in the awning’s shade. One got to his feet as Gyalo approached.

  “At whose call do you come?” he asked—the routine challenge made to all pilgrims, according to the station keeper in Fashir.

  “I come at the Next Messenger’s call,” Gyalo replied. “I’ve followed the Waking Road. I claim citizenship in the Awakened City.”

  “Have you accepted the mark?”

  “I have.”

  “Show me.”

  Gyalo extended his left hand, disfigured by a diagonal black scar. Diasarta had cut him the night after they left Ninyâser, and rubbed soot from their campfire into the wound. The man wet his finger and rubbed at the scar, presumably to test that Gyalo had not simply marked himself with charcoal, then tilted Gyalo’s hand to the light.