The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  “Welcome,” he said in his light quick voice, and smiled. He has an odd accent, flat in the vowels and soft on some of the consonants, as if Arsacian were not his native language.

  At my back, I felt Reanu’s and Apui’s tension. I did not want to thank him for receiving me, so I simply nodded. His smile deepened, as if he perceived what I was thinking. Turning, he stepped gracefully up onto the dais, and seated himself in the enormous chair. The pink stone gleamed, as smooth as water. Every surface in the room showed that same slick gloss, those same softly rounded contours, as if an army of jewelers had gone through it with polishing cloths. The chamber next door was also faced with gleaming banded stone, a collection of stone benches sprouting from its floor as if they had grown there. Beyond lay a third chamber, empty but for a shaft of light spearing down from above—for all the world like sunlight, though I am sure that cannot be—and a shadowy fourth, whose details I could not make out.

  “What do you want of me, child of the First Messenger?”

  He looked down on me, as regal as a king. I had gone to him in towering anger. But, beneath his gaze, the signs of his power all around me, it struck me with renewed force that I did not know the truth. This dazzling young man might be an imposter, an unbound Shaper of huge ability. Or he might be exactly what he claimed: rata’s herald, harbinger of the god’s return.

  For the first time it occurred to me that by rushing so impetuously to confront him, I might have put my men and me in danger.

  “Perhaps you’re testing me,” he said into my silence. “As your Brother did. Perhaps you want me to reveal the truth that is in your heart. But I don’t need any special powers of perception to guess that you are here because your Brother has spoken with you.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I am listening.” He cocked his head, conveying interest. His twisted hands lay along the arms of the chair.

  All my anger had left me. I called upon my pride instead. “You know that we have come here in question. By your words when you first received us, I believe you understand our concerns. The Brethren’s concerns.”

  He nodded, his eyes—which from a distance seem dark but in fact are cloudy green—steady on my face.

  “You realize, then, that we are only ambassadors, my Brother and I. It is not our task to decide. We are here only to observe, to gather facts and carry them back to our spirit-siblings.”

  “Do your hearts not come into it at all?” he inquired.

  “It is not our hearts that are at issue.”

  “No?” He watched me as if he knew exactly what was going on inside my mind. It’s one of the most disconcerting things about him, his air of knowing. “I think, Sundit of the Brethren, that you speak only for yourself.”

  “I am not here to discuss myself. My Brother tells me that he has acknowledged you.”

  “It is true.”

  “Apart from the fact that it’s premature, I must tell you that this is not a considered choice. My Brother labors under a burden of guilt for an action undertaken in his present body-life.” I had to force myself to say it. Stringently as we Brethren chide one another for our failings, never, never do we confess them to outsiders. “He is … preoccupied with the desire to expiate it. Understand that I make no judgments, on you or on your claim—I say only that the allegiance he has given you rises not from deliberation or doctrinal study, not from the store of wisdom he carries in his soul, but from his own individual need and desire.”

  The claimant raised perfect eyebrows. “Is faith not wisdom? The wisdom of the heart?”

  “My Brother has not given you faith,” I said. “He has given you remorse.”

  “Remorse.” He shifted on his throne, crossing one leg over the other, flexing his bare foot. Like all of him but his hands, they are flawless—slender, high-arched, the bones fanning elegantly beneath smooth skin. “One would think that twelve hundred years of living would have cured the Brethren of such frailties.”

  “If you are willing to accept the gift of my Brother’s human heart, you can hardly dismiss the weight of his human guilt.”

  He smiled his enchanting smile. “I suppose I cannot argue that.”

  “Will you help me, then?”

  The smile vanished. “What are you asking, Sundit of the Brethren?”

  “Release my Brother. Tell him you cannot accept his pledge.”

  “No. In my father’s sight he acknowledged me. It is not for me to undo such a thing.”

  “But I’ve told you it’s not a true pledge. Surely you cannot want that.”

  “He spoke his faith. He spoke my name. Those things are their own truth.”

  “Then free him of the promise he made you. Tell him you do not need an … an emissary.”

  “I do not choose to free him.”

  His voice was flat. His face had hardened. I saw, as certainly as if I had already lived these moments, that no further word of mine would move him.

  Within such a weight of rock, silence is a profound thing. I could hear nothing at all in the pause that followed except, behind me, the whisper of my guards’ breathing. Perhaps it was the utter quiet that made the sound, when it came, so startling—a rising wail, unmistakably a baby’s cry. All my muscles jumped. My eyes followed the direction of the cry, which seemed to be coming from beyond the shaft of brightness, from that shadowy fourth room.

  The wailing stopped. I turned back to the claimant. He was sitting straight in his chair, both feet on the floor. Nothing else had changed, but somehow, indefinably, he seemed less like a king and more like a young man.

  “Is that all?” he said, and his voice, too, had lost some of that exalted quality.

  “I shall speak to my Brother,” I said. “I shall remind him of his duty.”

  I thought then that something flared in his face, some intense dark emotion; but it was gone almost as I perceived it. “Do as you choose,” he said. Then: “I’ll send Ardashir to bring you to the ceremony this evening. I don’t want you to miss it.”

  I did not trust myself to respond. I turned. As I did, I saw a thing I somehow had not perceived before: The little flames in the wall-niches sprang not from lamps or from candles, but from … nothing. They burned directly on the stone, without oil or wick to sustain them. I don’t know why this should have struck me so, with all the strangeness I’ve seen in this place. A freezing shaft of dread went through me. I might have stumbled if Reanu had not reached out and smoothly caught my arm.

  We returned to our little cave. Vivaniya was still absent. Drolma was at her writing desk; she rose when I entered, but I waved her back to work and went to my tent, where Ha-tsun plumped a cushion for me and brought me tea. I had her tie back the tent flap so I would be sure to see Vanyi when he arrived. I would talk to him, I told myself. I would present him with his duty. I would exert my authority as his elder, not just in this body but in the original order of our births. I would accomplish what the claimant had refused to do. I would turn him from his oath.

  He never returned. And at some point during the long afternoon, I realized that a pair of Ardashir’s staff-carrying aides had come to stand before the entrance to our cave. I glanced toward the Tapati, who were sitting together and playing one of the portable board games of which they are so fond. Any of them, unaided, could have overcome the two Twentymen. But that was not the point. The claimant had decided that we—that I—needed to be watched.

  Did I suspect then what was to come? I think I did. But I could not allow myself to admit it.

  At last our sentinels stepped aside. My heart leaped, but it was only Ardashir, followed by two more of his Twentymen. I came out of my tent to meet him.

  “Sundit of the Brethren.” He did not bow, but stared, insolently into my face. He has quite a stare, this so-called First Disciple—I imagine the people here quail before it. But in my lives I have matched gazes with
worse men than he. If he thought to discompose me, he was mistaken. “I’ve come to escort you to the evening ceremony.”

  What would he have done if I had refused? Did he know that his thuggish aides had no chance against my Tapati? But I had no intention of refusing. I knew that something awful waited for me in that ceremony. I also knew I had to see it.

  I stepped firmly toward him, so that he either had to allow me to collide with him or give way. He chose to give way, his mouth like a knife cut.

  “Reanu,” I called. “Omarau. Lopalo. Drolma. You will accompany me. Apui—you will remain here, with Ha-tsun and Yailin.”

  Ardashir turned, flanked by his aides, and stalked off. We followed. In the main cavern, the little settlements were deserted, their inhabitants already gathered for the ritual. Two more Twentymen were waiting by the passage, torches in their hands; one went ahead to light the way, while the other fell in behind my guards. Down the passage we went, past the claimant’s quarters. As the incline sharpened, I began to hear the noise of the crowd. We reached the steeply plunging stairs, emerging abruptly from beneath the hood of the passage’s ceiling. The dim spaces of the cavern sprang out before us. Below, the faithful formed a shifting insectile mantle across the floor, studded with the flare of torches. The sense of entrapment that has seized me each time I’ve entered here took me again, closing up my throat. I could feel the leaning pressure of the ridge above me. I could feel the fragility of this little space, a bubble in the rock.

  We descended. Ardashir did not chivvy us to the side, as on previous days, but led us to the cavern’s midpoint, positioning us directly below the ledge on which the claimant makes his appearance at these ceremonies. The pilgrims pressed away from us. Reanu and his companions closed tensely around Drolma and me. I took Drolma’s arm—for my comfort as much as hers.

  The claimant’s light preceded him, a sudden luster on the darkness of the ledge. Abruptly, he appeared above us—a man of inhuman beauty clad in light, the Blood of rata blazing a different sort of fire at his chest. The faithful shouted, a cry that seemed to rise from a single massive throat.

  “People!” He spread wide his shimmering arms. His voice was like a bell; it is hard to believe such a sound can come from a human mouth. “People of the Promise!”

  “Fulfiller of the Promise!” the crowd howled back. “He who opens the Way!”

  “People of the new age!”

  “Guardian of the Interim, who speaks the word of the risen god!”

  “People of rata!”

  “Beloved of rata, who sets our feet upon the Waking Road!”

  I cannot deny the power of the calls and responses. I cannot deny the strength of the faith written on all those upturned faces. I cannot deny that if rata were to send a divine Messenger into this world, he might look, and sound, exactly thus.

  The claimant stepped to the precipice’s edge. I expected him to launch himself into empty air and drift like a burning leaf to the cavern’s floor, as he had before. Instead, he raised his hands for silence, and waited while it fell.

  “People of the Promise.” His glowing garment writhed like a living thing, here flashing prismatic color, there parting to reveal an expanse of naked skin. “Tonight I offer you a different ritual.”

  A murmur of surprise.

  “I have long promised that rata will send a portent, a sign to mark the proper moment of our emergence. You have been patient in your waiting, my people, patient in your faith. I am grateful.”

  All around us, his followers sighed. “Messenger. Beautiful One. Beloved of rata.”

  “Tonight, my people, my faithful, your patience is rewarded. Tonight, the sign my father promised will be given! Tonight, tonight, you all shall know it!”

  The thunder of jubilation that followed seemed to shake the ridge; I swear I felt it in my bones. He let it continue for a time, then signaled again for quiet.

  “The sign comes to us in the form of a pledge and a promise—a pledge and a promise unlike any that has been made since the First Messenger came out of the Burning Land.” He turned toward the darkness behind him and extended a blazing arm. “Come forward!”

  I already knew. I knew the moment he spoke of a pledge. And there was Vivaniya, for whom I had waited in vain all the afternoon, advancing toward the edge of the precipice. His face was … how can I describe his face? He looked as if he were dreaming with his eyes open. He moved like a dreamer, stiffly, stumbling as he came to the claimant’s side.

  The gathered faithful did not know what to make of it. They stirred and muttered. They looked toward me and Drolma and our guards—wondering, no doubt, why we were not up on the ledge with Vivaniya.

  “People of the Promise,” the claimant called. “Last night the Son Vivaniya came to me in my chambers. This is what he said to me: ‘Beloved One, I arrived in uncertainty, but in you and in the joyous faith of those who follow you, I have seen the truth. I name you the Next Messenger, herald of rata’s awakening, and yield to you my place as guardian of the Way of rata. The Age of Exile has ended. The time of Interim has begun.’ People of the new age, when I heard those words I knew them for the sign my father promised. The time has come at last for us to leave our sanctuary, to take the Awakened City to the world. The time has come to set our great work in motion!”

  The faithful erupted, throwing up their arms, leaping in exultation. They bellowed triumph at the daggered ceiling. Drolma clutched me in terror; Reanu and Omarau and Lopalo linked their arms, making a wall of their bodies against the chaos that surrounded us. Firelight and shadow swept the cavern’s fissured walls; so dizzy was I with dread and horror that it seemed to me the stone itself was moving, swinging in and out of the light.

  The claimant gestured. The throng stilled. He turned toward my Brother, who all this time had been gazing at him, rapt as any pilgrim.

  “Child of the First Messenger.” The claimant’s voice had dropped. His light trembled, coalesced, parted. “In sight of the faithful, kneel to me now and repeat your pledge. Swear as you did when you came to me. Let those who follow me see, as I have seen, the absoluteness of your surrender.”

  Did Vanyi know this would be asked of him? Perhaps not—I thought I saw him hesitate, and for a moment, wildly, I thought he might refuse. But he obeyed, dropping to his knees so awkwardly that he overbalanced and had to fling out a hand to catch himself, his fingers curling over the precipice’s very lip. My heart seemed to stop. For the space of a breath he remained in that pose, his body tilted out above the drop; then he straightened and sat back on his heels.

  The crowd appeared to understand the significance of what it was witnessing. Utter silence fell.

  “rata is risen.” Vivaniya’s voice shook, but he could be clearly heard. “You are the Next Messenger. The Age of Exile is ended. I pledge my faith to you, and yield to you the guardianship of the Way of rata. I shall go as your emissary to my Brothers and Sisters. I shall speak your word to them, and prepare them for your arrival.”

  “Your promise is accepted,” the claimant said. “Now kiss my hands, as a seal upon your word.”

  He held out his scarred palms. Vanyi leaned forward and pressed them with his lips—the right, then the left. The claimant bent, the Blood of rata swinging forward, his black hair sliding over his shoulders, and set his own lingering kiss on my Brother’s forehead. The radiance that wrapped him tore from heel to shoulder; for a moment the whole of his near-naked body could be seen.

  He stepped away, shaking back his hair. Looking down on my kneeling Brother, he smiled. I had not been sure, earlier, that I had really seen the harsh dark emotion that had seemed to flare in his face just before I left him. But I was certain then. It was there, that same darkness, fully present in his smile. And I understood, beyond any possibility of question, that he is false. It was such a wholly human smile. It held such triumph, such cruelty. No god could smile thus, nor any
man who did a god’s purpose.

  “Rise, Vivaniya of the Brethren,” the false Messenger said. “Rise, and take your place at my side.”

  Vivaniya obeyed. The pretender gripped Vivaniya by the wrist and raised both their arms high. The faithful roared.

  “We will march!” Even over the incredible tumult, his voice somehow carried clear. “In rata’s name! To rata’s glory! To the dawning of the new primal age!”

  “rata!” the crowd howled, surging around us like the ocean. “rata!”

  I turned to Reanu. It’s difficult to read expression behind his branching tattoos, but I thought he looked afraid. “Get us out of here,” I mouthed. “Now.”

  He signaled to the others in the sign language of their order. He and Lopalo took my arms; Omarau took Drolma’s. Swiftly they bore us toward the stairs. Ardashir and his men did not appear to note our departure—or at least, they did not try to stop us.

  At our camp, Apui waited with Ha-tsun and Yailin.

  “We’ll leave at once,” I said. “Don’t bother with the tents or any of the rest of it. All I want is my books and papers.”

  “The Son …?” Reanu said.

  “For the moment, my Brother and I walk different paths.”

  He nodded. “They have our weapons, Old One.”

  “It can’t be helped. Now go, get ready. Drolma, gather the papers. Ha-tsun, fetch my journal and my writing desk. Yailin, I wish I could take you, but I cannot. You must wait for your master.”

  There was fear in his face, and his eyes spoke a thousand questions. But he is a good servant. He bowed, and returned to his mat.