The interview had taken on a surreal quality. “You would tolerate a free Shaper loose in your kingdom, Majesty?”
“Just one. With—if I judge right, and I usually do—no wish to live other than a peaceful life. Ah, do not look so amazed!” The King laughed with what seemed genuine amusement. “I have long had reason to doubt the Brethren’s pronouncements on a variety of issues, so is it surprising that I should also doubt their dire warnings about free Shapers? In the days before the Doctrine of Baushpar, kings had Shaper servants—yes, and Shaper guards and generals, too. I shall be like the kings of old! And you shall be like the Shapers of old.” His smile sharpened. “Make no mistake. I am a careful man. Though I am not often wrong, I am always prepared for the possibility of error.” He gestured with one gold-heavy hand to the guards in their corners. “As you see. So. What do you say?”
Within the watery currents of his lifelight, his face was both expectant and intent. The guards watched impassively, their crossbows held at easy angles. With what he hoped was convincing deference, Gyalo bowed in the formal Arsacian manner, putting his fingers to his lips and extending his hands toward the King.
“It is a generous offer, Majesty. I accept, with gratitude.”
“Excellent!” The King’s face broke into a smile—a real smile this time, and Gyalo perceived the warmth this man could bestow on those who pleased him. He raised his wine. “A toast. To cooperation.”
“To cooperation.” Gyalo touched his lips to the rim of his goblet. The King drank deeply from his.
“Tell me something. Apostate that you are, do you still believe?”
“I do, Majesty.”
“You set aside your vows, then, but not your faith. And the claim you made when you returned from the Burning Land, that the god has risen. Do you still hold to that?”
Gyalo hesitated. “Yes, Majesty.”
“So you are a heretic as well.” Santaxma nodded. “We’ve something in common, you and I. I, too, stand outside the laws of the church, with my mining of the Burning Land. Yet I, too, believe. It is only that I do not believe in a stupid god, a cruel god, a god who would capriciously deny the riches of his sacred resting place to the first and most beloved of his kingdoms, when its need is so profound.” Beneath the smooth mask of power, Gyalo glimpsed again the bitter, serious man who had spoken in the summerhouse of fanaticism and suffering. “Perhaps your god, too, is more forbearing. A god who tolerates unbound Shapers.”
“I don’t know, Majesty. I can only act as I feel is right, and trust I am not wrong.”
“And is that not the very meaning of faith? Not to know, and yet to trust.”
Gyalo sipped his wine.
“Before you go,” the King said, “I wonder if you might favor me with a demonstration.”
“A demonstration, Majesty?”
“Of your ability. Your shaping.”
Once again Gyalo was silenced—this time not only by surprise but also, sharply, by distaste.
“Come now, don’t tell me you are reluctant. Or perhaps you fear to alarm me? I assure you, I am not easily alarmed.”
“It’s your guards I fear, Majesty. You will forgive me, but I’d like to hear you tell them they are not to kill me.”
Santaxma laughed. He raised his voice. “You heard him. No matter what you see, you are not to kill him!” He looked at Gyalo, still smiling. “Will that do?”
Once again, Gyalo could see no wise way to refuse. He set aside his goblet. “What would you have me shape, Majesty?”
“Surprise me.”
Gyalo extended his hands and conjured flame upon his palms—illusion, not real shaping, but impressive to look at. He closed his fingers, quenching the blaze, then opened them again and with a puff of light, a sound like cracking twigs, filled his hands with cherries. He spilled the fruit across the map, then shaped a dozen rubies, reproducing the pattern of the stones in the King’s earrings so that they glinted an identical shade of crimson. These, too, he cast across the map. In quick succession he called into being a rose, a hill of grain, a chunk of spicewood, a knob of gold. With a sweep of his arm he unmade it all, except the rubies, which he scooped up and proffered to the King—a cheap gesture, he thought as he did it, like a street performer.
The King shook his head. “This is only a little different from what I’ve witnessed every day of my life in Communion and Banishing ceremonies. Show me something greater. Astonish me.”
Anger shook Gyalo, unbidden and intense. Turning, he flung his shaping will at the small table that held the food and drink, finding the patterns of its being, wrenching them apart. A burst of brilliance, a hollow boom, and the table was gone, its substance banished into the wider world, the items it had supported spinning to the floor.
“rata!” Santaxma’s face was avid; there was no fear in it at all. Beyond him the two guards Gyalo could see maintained their stiff positions. “More,” the King said softly. “Show me more.”
Already Gyalo regretted his loss of self-control. “Majesty, I fear to endanger you in this confined space.”
“We will go outside, then.”
“Majesty, if I may suggest … perhaps it would not be wise to allow my nature to become widely known.”
The King’s reluctance was obvious. But he was a shrewd man. “It’s reasonable advice. Once we are on our way, however, there will be no such concerns.” He fixed Gyalo with obsidian eyes. “When I make this request again, I shall not expect you to refuse.”
“I understand, Majesty.”
“We’ll depart within the week. I will send for you as soon as preparations are complete.”
The functionary was waiting in the hall to conduct Gyalo back to the palanquin. In its hot, curtained confinement, Gyalo breathed on his palms, which stung as if the illusion of fire he had conjured had been real. Understanding sat in him like ice: He and Sundit had failed. The plan Santaxma had conceived was doomed. He felt the weight of all the nights he had woken in a sweat of horror to think he had abandoned Axane and Chokyi, all the times he had painfully reconvinced himself that his choice had been the right one. How could he have been such a fool? So much time wasted on a pointless mission—all of which, every moment of which, could have been used instead to search for a way to set Axane and Chokyi free. He saw himself, standing on the ridge above the Awakened City as Sundit and her people walked away, struggling to decide whether to follow or remain. None of the reasons that had moved him so strongly then made any sense to him now.
By the time he reached the ratist complex he was in such a fever of remorse and urgency that he could hardly bear not to depart there and then. He forced himself to be sensible. He would wait until nightfall, when he could slip away unnoticed.
In his attic room, he took the blanket and the quilt from the bed and rolled them around the clothes Sundit had bought for him, tying the bundle with the sash the maidservant had left behind, then sat by the window as darkness came, with only his pearly colors for illumination. The throbbing in his hands would not abate. He thought, with dull humiliation, of the tricks he had performed at Santaxma’s request. If he had accepted the King’s offer in truth, and if they all survived, it would have been he, ultimately, who paid the price—for what were the odds that Santaxma, that self-described pragmatic man, would have used him only once? He imagined himself, the King’s pet apostate, held in reserve for urgent crises and looming disasters—or perhaps the King’s private treasury, creating gold to order. It came to him, in a burst of understanding, that he had not held his shaping captive for so long only in dread of what, employing it, he might become. He had feared also what that employment might make of it—that he would cheapen it, trivialize it, use it as a means to small and selfish ends. That he might, like the King, come to view the power in him, the god’s sacred and transcendent gift, as no more than an instrument, a tool. A resource, as the King had said.
> At last it was late enough. With his bundle he slipped out of his room and descended to the second floor. Reanu reclined on a pallet before Sundit’s door, his lifelight flaring wheat gold in the dimness of the hall. Perhaps he was sleeping and perhaps not; but he was on his feet before Gyalo had closed more than half the distance, his hands ready on his knives.
“I need to see her.” Gyalo had struggled with this. What he really wanted was just to go, without explanations or farewells. But something in him would not quite allow it.
“It’s late.” Reanu had relaxed when he recognized Gyalo, but he did not remove his hands from beneath his stole.
“I know. Please.”
Reanu’s eyes fell to the bundle, rose again to Gyalo’s face. Turning, he rapped at Sundit’s door. A pause; then footsteps, and the sound of a latch. “Yes?” Sundit said.
“The apostate wants to see you.”
Sundit pulled the door a little wider. Her eyes made the same journey Reanu’s had. “Come in.”
Gyalo slipped into the room. Sundit closed the door and returned to the window, where, like him, she had been sitting. She wore a sumptuous night robe of golden silk and her feet were bare, but lamps still burned on tables and in the corners of the room, and the bed, with its high carved head- and footboard and rich quilts, was undisturbed.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
“Yes.”
She seated herself, tucking her feet under her gown, folding her hands on her lap. Her lapis lifelight, alive with darker currents, shone half against the darkness of the unscreened window, half against the illumination of her chamber. “You refused the King’s offer, then. I thought you would.”
“He told you about that?”
“Yes. I could see he wanted me to call on my authority, to condemn him, so he could inform me how little he cares for the Brethren’s censure. I didn’t give him the satisfaction.” She shook her head. “Childish.”
“Actually, I accepted. It didn’t seem wise to refuse. But I have no intention of doing what he asks.”
“He’ll be very angry.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you can save them? Your wife and child?”
“I’m not Râvar’s equal. But I know myself better than I did when I left them.”
She nodded. Did she understand he owed some of that to her? He had not needed her to tell him that an unbound gift of shaping did not breed corruption. But he had only known it in himself, for himself. She had brought the knowledge outside him, made it general. It made more difference than he would have guessed—more, really, than he liked to admit. He was honest enough to suspect that it had played a part in the way he had responded south of Darna—not in the instinct to oppose the bandits’ attack, perhaps, but in his ability to answer it. He could not say that to her, of course. He could not inform one of the architects of the Doctrine of Baushpar that she had helped seal him to his power.
“Will you return to Baushpar?” he asked.
“Not yet. I’ll accompany Santaxma to Dracâriya. I’ll see it done.”
“No!” Gyalo stepped toward her. “It’s too dangerous. The King’s plan can’t succeed.”
“Why? Whatever his flaws, Santaxma is an excellent tactician.”
“He wants to take Râvar alive. It’s madness. Even if the ambush doesn’t fail, I don’t know if any quantity of the drug is enough to keep him powerless.”
She shook her head. “The preparation Santaxma will be using is specially concentrated. Far more so than the ordinary drug. I’ve spoken with the manita master myself.”
He saw that in her way she was as blind as Santaxma, unable to look beyond the world she knew, in which manita was an infallible defense against Shapers. “For safety, then,” he said, “when Râvar comes, keep well away from the King.”
“Of course. Râvar thinks me dead.” Her eyes fell to his bundle. “Is that all you’re taking with you?”
“I’d also planned to take a horse.”
“Call Reanu in, if you would.”
Gyalo summoned the Tapati captain. Sundit instructed him to escort Gyalo to the stables, and respond with her authority if challenged. He was also to give Gyalo thirty silver karshanas from her purse, which the temple treasury had replenished. “Come in to me after,” she said, “to tell me it is done.”
“Yes, Old One.” Reanu was as impassive as a pillar.
“Well, Gyalo Amdo Samchen. I wish you fortune.”
Surely she was conscious of the strangeness of it—a Daughter of the Brethren wishing fortune to an apostate. Yet no stranger than that she should freely let him go, knowing that if he survived he would remain unbound. No stranger than that he should bow to her, as formally as he had earlier bowed to the King.
“Great is rata. Great is his Way. Thank you for your generosity …” Her title, which he had not once used in all the time they had traveled together, rose naturally to his lips. “… Old One.”
He was at the door when she called after him.
“Wait.” The word was raw, as if torn from her against her will. He turned. She had gotten to her feet again. “There’s something more … something else I need to tell you. Reanu, leave us.”
Gyalo stepped back into the room. Reanu pulled the door closed, the latch clicking softly. Across the lamplit space between them, Sundit held Gyalo’s eyes. Her hands were clasped at her waist; her face held an expression he could not read.
“I told you that Vivaniya and I were sent to the Awakened City for the sake of the Brethren’s concern for heresy.” Her voice was low, so low he had to strain to hear. “That was not the truth, or not entirely. In the Burning Land … Vivaniya and Dâdar conspired in a lie. As they neared Refuge and its river cleft, they saw a … a light, a golden light, rising up at night above it. After the battle the light was gone, and when they came into Refuge and sought the place where you said the Cavern of the Blood would be, they saw no trace of it. They chose to ignore the earlier evidence of their senses, to accept that apparently solid cliff as the truth. They returned to Baushpar and told us they had found nothing, that there was nothing to find—that you had lied, and plotted with your companions to support your lie. They did not speak of the light. They made a pact between themselves to keep it secret.”
“I know,” Gyalo said.
It struck her speechless for a moment. She put one hand to her throat. “How? How can you know?”
“From Axane. She was caught in Refuge after the battle. When the army came up to destroy it, she hid. She heard the Sons conspiring. She heard every word they spoke.”
“rata.” Sundit closed her eyes, opened them again. “Did she tell him, too? Did she tell Râvar?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s how he knew. Oh, Vanyi.” She shook her head. She sounded as if she might weep. “Vanyi, you fool.”
“They wouldn’t have found the Cavern even if they had searched for it. Râvar concealed it. He shut himself inside. If your Shapers had tried to open the stone, he would have held it closed. Lie or truth, what your Brothers told you would have been the same.”
“But they would not have lied about the light. We would have known about the light.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“Perhaps.” She accepted his condemnation without a flicker. “Perhaps not. We believed what Dâdar and Vanyi told us. There was no reason not to. Word had already come that you had thrown yourself from your window in Faal. The last question seemed to be answered. Ah, Gyalo, you were right in so much of what you said to me the night you and I first talked—it was relief, blessed relief, to think those questions were finally behind us. And if Vivaniya had been as conscienceless as Dâdar, we might have rested secure in our false understanding. My Brother is not strong, in this life especially, but there is honor in his soul, and the guilt of what he did ate at him. Not ju
st the lie, but … the rest of it, the possibility behind the lie. When we received the first eyewitness report of the Awakened City, he could bear it no longer. He came to me and confessed everything. Together we informed the others. That’s why he and I were sent—for the sake of the lie, which meant we did not after all know the truth about the Cavern of the Blood, which meant—”
“That Râvar might have been real.” Incredulous, Gyalo laughed. “You feared he might truly be the Messenger.”
Sundit raised her hands, as if in supplication. “Understand. It was like an earthquake, the discovery of my Brothers’ lie. That whole abyss of question, yawning out before us again … It threw us into utter turmoil. Some few of us maintained their rejection—I think you can probably guess which ones. But the rest of us, the majority, agreed that the question had to be addressed. And so Vivaniya and I were sent. I myself... made every effort to keep an open mind. But Vivaniya was consumed by guilt, by guilt and the desire to atone. I saw it, but I never thought … and how was I to know that Râvar had the means to turn his lie against him? That’s how Râvar won him, by demonstrating knowledge of his darkest secret. A charlatan’s trick, but my Brother fell, he fell as Râvar’s followers fall—a soul twelve centuries old, undone by a single lifetime’s burden of remorse.”
“While for you, the abyss of question is closed again.” Gyalo could not keep the bitterness from his voice. Much as had changed between them, this still lay at the root. “Since you now know Râvar false.”
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