The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

Râvar nodded.

  “Beloved One—” Ardashir hesitated.

  “What is it, Ardashir?”

  “He will not trouble you again. By rata I swear it.” His face and voice were fierce, as if this were an oath of great significance. “I and my men will keep watch. If he comes near the Awakened City, he will die.”

  “I know you will do your duty.”

  Ardashir departed, and still Râvar sat. The blazing triumph he had felt to have his enemy before him, to taunt him with the truth and torment him with lies, had dwindled. Had he been wrong to let Gyalo Amdo Samchen go? Would it have been better to kill him after all? Or rather, to have him killed—for Râvar, who had killed invisible thousands from a distance, was not sure he had the stomach to take a life face-to-face. Yet this was what he had wanted. It was what, only a few days ago, he had explicitly imagined, without ever really thinking it could actually come to pass. What threat was this man, this enemy, now that he believed Axane was dead? Râvar summoned up the memory of how his enemy’s face had changed when he spoke those words, the eyes closing, all the muscles going slack. He felt an echo of the cruel pleasure it had given him.

  When he emerged onto the precipice above the ceremonial cave that evening, he saw the Brethren at once, standing at the edge of the bright gathering of the faithful, squinting up at him like mice looking at the sun. The Son and Daughter were arm in arm; at their sides were the two aides they had requested be brought up from the steppe (Shapers, both of them, crippled with manita in the manner of this world). At their backs the six guards formed a tense half circle. As he had each night since their arrival, Râvar directed his progress through the crowd so that it brought him last to where they waited. He paused a moment, testing them with his gaze, which the Daughter could not break and the Son and the two aides could not hold; then, satisfied, he whirled around, his garment of illusion billowing, and flung himself upward through the air. When he turned, his bare toes even with the precipice’s lip, the roaring of the faithful seemed enough to crack the rock.

  His sleep that night was disturbed by dreams, not all of them, mercifully, nightmares. He woke with an aching head and heavy limbs. He fetched Axane’s bowl and cup and unblocked the night chamber. She was nursing Parvâti, turned from the entrance with a stole draped across her back to hide her bare skin. He set the food on the floor and stood watching, thinking of what she had told him five days ago. He knew for certain that she had lied, for Gyalo Amdo Samchen had not, as she claimed, been ignorant of him. Had she been trying to protect the husband she had sworn she despised?

  “There’s water in the pool,” he said abruptly, surprising himself. “You can use it if you like.”

  She did not turn. “Thank you.”

  “Call when you’re ready, and I’ll take the baby.”

  He carried Parvâti, sleepy after her feeding, into the second room and sat down against the wall, out of any possible sight of the bathing chamber, listening to the faint sound of splashing and trying not to think of Axane, naked in the pool. At last she called that she was finished. He returned Parvâti to her, and unmade the water that had touched her body.

  A little while later the announcement drum sounded. It was Ardashir. Outwardly he seemed composed, but to one who knew him his fury was apparent. In the beginning Râvar had often looked at his First Disciple—this upright, contained, fastidious man—and wondered where in him lived the violence that had ended the lives of his wife and her lover. Over time, though, he had come to see that Ardashir’s formidable control was like a stone over a fire pit. The fire did not shift the stone, but sometimes, when it burned high enough, the heat seeped out around the edges.

  “For five days, Beloved One,” Ardashir said, “I have tended to the Brethren as you bid me. From the living quarters to the work spaces, there is not a corner of the Awakened City they have not seen. There is not one of their questions I have not answered. But it is not enough for them, Beloved One. This morning I discovered them preparing to go unescorted among the faithful. When I instructed them to halt so I could summon my men, they refused and went forth without me.”

  “I have no objection to that.”

  “Beloved One, I do not trust their intentions. You must be aware of where they go and what they say. They should not be allowed to meet with the faithful outside your sight.”

  “What do you think they will do, Ardashir? Speak against me? I think you are wrong. Besides, do you suppose our faith here is so frail that it can be weakened at a word?”

  “Not just any word, Beloved One. They are the leaders of the Way of rata.”

  “Of the old Way of rata. Of the Way of rata sleeping. Which my faithful have left behind.”

  “Beloved One.” Frustration snapped in Ardashir’s voice. “Faith is all very well, but caution sometimes is an equal virtue. You cannot simply let them go about alone!”

  “Cannot, Ardashir?”

  Even through his fury, Ardashir realized he had gone too far. “Forgive me, Beloved One. I misspoke.”

  “Indeed you did.”

  “It is only that I cannot bear their arrogance, Beloved One. This is your domain. They have no authority here. Yet they behave as if they can command us!”

  Râvar suspected that it was the challenge to Ardashir’s own authority that rankled most. Ardashir’s loathing of the Brethren went deep—like many of Râvar’s followers, he believed that the Sons and Daughters had grown corrupt over the centuries of their reincarnation, their flight from the Caryaxists being the final demonstration of that failing, proof that they were unfit to lead the church. When, still imprisoned, he had learned that the Brethren ruled again in Baushpar, he had been incensed. Of the many items of faith Râvar had given him, one of the most difficult for him to accept had been that the Messenger would come to the Brethren in love rather than in punishment. Râvar was sometimes tempted to tell him the truth—though always, at the last moment, he drew back.

  “I know the cause of your anger, Ardashir. It clouds your judgment. In this, you must trust that I am wiser than you.”

  A painful flush rose into Ardashir’s dark cheeks. “Beloved One, your wisdom is rata’s own—I never meant to imply—”

  Râvar held up his hand. “I acknowledge, however, that caution is never unwarranted. If the Son and Daughter don’t want an escort, they do not have to have one, but you may assign some of your men to follow them and question the pilgrims they approach.”

  “Beloved One.” Ardashir bowed low. “Thank you.”

  Râvar went to take Parvâti back from her mother, and sat with the baby on the floor of his bathing room, coaxing her to play. But for once his mind was not on his daughter. Was he really so confident of the Brethren’s hearts? For nearly a week they and their people had been in the Awakened City, and as yet there was no indication that any of them were turning to belief—not even the Son, who had seemed so awestruck at the initial meeting. No doubt he was influenced by his hard-faced Sister, whose apparent softening on that first day had been illusion, for she had shown no sign of it since. They will be wholly mine, he had told Gyalo Amdo Samchen, believing it utterly; but as he searched for that certainty, he could not find it.

  At last, unable to bear his restlessness, he gave Parvâti to Axane—whose hair, clean now, rippled like a black river down her back—and climbed up through the dark of the ridge to his high ledge, where he sat for the rest of the afternoon, gazing across the sweep of the steppe and wondering where Gyalo Amdo Samchen was at this very moment.

  The next morning, the Brethren requested an interview. Counting the audience on the day of their arrival, it would be the third. Râvar ordered them brought to his audience chamber and went to them alone, without Ardashir. They stood like supplicants before his pillar throne, their aides kneeling at their sides, industriously taking notes. The guards waited at the chamber’s rear, tattooed faces fierce, arms clasped beneath their st
oles.

  As before, Vivaniya was silent, staring sometimes at Râvar and sometimes at his hands, which played continuously with the tassels of his stole. Sundit did all the talking. There was not the least humility in her questions, or in the crisp directness of her manner. During the previous interview, she had asked about Râvar’s emergence from the Burning Land, about rata’s Promise and the destruction of Thuxra (not troubling to hide her skepticism), about the building of the Awakened City. Today she wanted to speak about doctrine. He answered her openly and fully, smiling as beguilingly as he could, willing toward her the power of his charm and beauty. She might be a religious leader, and elderly, but she was still a woman. It had no discernible effect.

  “You say that the Next Messenger will lead the church during this time of Interim,” she said. “That it will be a new church, a new Way of rata.”

  “In fulfillment of the second portion of my father’s Promise, yes.”

  “But in the Darxasa, rata said to Marduspida, Cast all else aside, for it is ash: This is the one path, the one foundation, the one Way. One Way. Only one.”

  “And there will be only one. The Way of rata awake.”

  “Still, that is a second Way. Is the Darxasa in error?”

  Râvar met her narrow brown gaze, reminded oddly of his teacher Gâvarti, who had interrogated him on theological matters with equal sharpness. “In elision, perhaps. The Darxasa is rata’s word, but it was given to a mortal man. There is much that might be lost in such translation.”

  She pounced. “Do you not teach that you are mortal? So cannot the same be said of you?”

  “I am half-mortal, Sundit of the Brethren.” He forced himself, again, to smile. “Half of me is divine fire. In that fire rata’s word is contained, received by me infallibly and entire.”

  “So you yourself are the proof of what you teach.”

  “What can be proven, Sundit of the Brethren?” Râvar spread his hands. “That is why we have faith.”

  “An interestingly circular argument. Even so, I find it curious that there is no mention whatever in the Darxasa of this doctrine of Interim, on which you place such weight.”

  “The words of the Darxasa were given to the First Messenger. I am the Next Messenger. I speak the word that was given to me.”

  Frowning, she began another question, but Râvar had had enough.

  “I have duties to attend to,” he said, getting to his feet. “If you wish it, we will speak again.”

  He returned to his rooms, where Ardashir was waiting to fetch him for an afternoon of personal audiences. These were held every other day, with pilgrims chosen according to a lottery system that ensured each citizen a turn alone with the Next Messenger at least once every three months. Unlike the rituals or his periodic progresses among the faithful, Râvar found the audiences actively unpleasant—for while many of the petitioners simply wished to receive his blessing and kiss his hands, others wanted, as the First Faithful had, to confess their sins and wrongs and evil thoughts, while still others tried to offer him their bodies. If he had wished, he could have had a different lover every night, sired a legion of children to carry his blood into this alien world. But even if he had been willing to pollute himself by such congress—and he had sometimes been tempted, not just out of body-need but because it would have been so easy—he recognized the danger that lay in that particular form of self-indulgence. So he ignored the gestures and the hints, and gently turned aside the bolder propositions—an abstinence that, far from discouraging his followers’ attempts, seemed only to make them more persistent.

  After the evening ceremony he drifted for a time in the bathing pool, then fetched food for his captives and ate his own meal. When the announcement drum sounded he assumed it must be Ardashir, come to report on the activities of the Brethren. He donned the Blood and went out, barefoot, his damp hair hanging down his back.

  But it was not Ardashir. It was the Twentyman on guard.

  “Beloved One,” he said, bowing low. “The Son Vivaniya is outside your chambers with two of his men. He asks urgently to see you. In fact, Beloved One, he would hardly be restrained. It was all I could do to stop him from coming in unannounced.”

  Râvar felt his pulse leap with premonition. “I’ll see him. Without his guards.”

  “Yes, Beloved One.”

  Râvar crossed to the quartz chair and sat, feeling the chill of the stone along his back and legs, aware of the beating of his heart. Beneath the humming quiet of the room, he heard the low sound of voices. Then silence.

  Vivaniya appeared in the chamber’s entrance. He paused as if struck, falling utterly still, as he had the first time Râvar had ever seen him.

  “It’s late, child of the First Messenger,” Râvar said. “What is so important that it could not keep till morning?”

  The Son took a step into the room, then checked again. His ember-colored lifelight was a perfect oval, its edge as sharp as flint. “I had to speak with you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You said … the first day … that you knew I had wandered in the Burning Land.” His voice was not quite under his control. “Tell me how you knew.”

  Râvar smiled. “I know because it is so.”

  “The river cleft. The red cliffs below the Cavern of the Blood where you were—where you say you were born. You speak of them as if they are … only cliffs.”

  Râvar felt a fierce thrill. “Is there another way I should describe them?”

  “If there were … something in them. Something … not naturally formed.”

  “Ah. Now I see. You mean the city carved in stone.”

  The Son audibly caught his breath.

  “I did not speak of the city,” Râvar said, “because it no longer exists. It was destroyed.” He let the smile fall from his face. He leaned toward the Son, pinning him with his gaze. “But you know that, don’t you, Vivaniya of the Brethren? You saw it happen.”

  “Tell me. Tell me what you know.”

  “Are you testing me, child of the First Messenger?”

  The Son shook his head. “Please understand. I must be sure.”

  “I think you are already sure. But you cannot yet accept your certainty, and so you ask for proof, as if proof meant anything to faith. You ask me to prove myself, as if rata’s divinity, as if this”—Râvar gestured to the Blood around his neck—“needed to be proven. But I am not angry, Vivaniya of the Brethren. I’ve hoped you would come to me like this.”

  The air hummed. In the shadowless light of the wall-flames, the Son’s face looked utterly bloodless.

  “A little over two years ago, you and your Brother Dâdar set out across the Burning Land with an army that included twenty-five Shapers, secretly unbound by the Brethren’s order from the tether of manita.”

  The Son’s mouth opened, though no sound emerged.

  “You marched in search of a secret known, so you thought, to none but you—a hidden city at the heart of the Land, a city cut into the walls of a river cleft. A city its people called Refuge.” Râvar paused, letting it sink in. “You feared Refuge and its people, for they had among them Shapers not bound to the strictures of your church, and you and your kind detest free shaping above all else. So you destroyed the city and slaughtered all who lived in it. And then you did worse. You and your Brother Dâdar stood before the truth Refuge had been made to guard, the Cavern of the Blood, rata’s empty resting place, and you denied it.”

  The Son looked as if he were about to collapse under the weight of this apparently godlike knowledge of a secret only he and his Brother should know.

  “The Cavern was hidden, protected by the last of Refuge’s Shapers. You knew this. You knew the rock that concealed it was not the truth, for you’d seen the Cavern’s light, the light shed by the Blood inside it, rising up at night as you and your army approached. Even so, you chose to a
ccept the rock as truth. With your Brother Dâdar you undertook to persuade your Brothers and Sisters to accept it also, so that they, like you, would turn from the truth of rata’s rising.”

  “How is this possible?” the Son whispered. “How can you know this?”

  “That is a foolish question, Vivaniya of the Brethren. Have I not told you that I know what my father knows? What, then, can you imagine is hidden from me?”

  Then the Son did collapse, falling to his knees. The neat oval of his life-light halved, like an egg sliced in two.

  “rata forgive me.” His eyes were closed. He swayed, as if he might faint. “It’s true, it’s all true. We feared rata’s rising, Dâdar and I. We feared what it meant for the Brethren. So we deceived ourselves, deceived our spirit-siblings. I knew I sinned. But I did not understand how I would grow to hate my sin. How it would eat at me, like a cancer. Ah, I am sick with it.” He caught his breath in a sob. “Sick with it.”

  Râvar was astonished. Guilt. He would never have suspected it.

  “I cannot free you of your sin, Vivaniya of the Brethren.” He schooled his voice to a gentleness he could never feel toward this evil and perfidious being. “Only my father has such power. But I can give you something to set against it. Something that may balance it.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “In your fear you chose to turn from the truth. Now, in repentance, turn toward it. Acknowledge me. Speak my name.”

  “I knew,” the Son whispered. “Even before we reached this place, I knew who you must be. I was afraid, but I am afraid no longer. rata has risen. You are the Next Messenger.”

  The words took Râvar by the throat. Briefly he seemed to lose himself, returning with a shock that was like falling. He clutched the arms of his chair. Across the room, Vivaniya waited on his knees, his face slack with surrender.

  “Come to me, child of the First Messenger.”

  Clumsily the Son got to his feet. He stumbled to the dais and sank down again.

  “Look at my hands.” Râvar leaned forward, extending them. “They are ugly, yes? Crippled. Yet I love my scars, and so must you, for they are the marks left by my father’s Blood. Kiss them now, as my followers do, to pledge your faith.”