The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  During the days that followed Gyalo walked in the City’s wake, improvising the sash Sundit had bought him into a head covering that he could also wrap around his mouth and nose, should Ardashir ride back that far. At night he stole the length of the procession and settled opposite Râvar’s camp, watching for any chance to act, but mostly waiting for the morning and the brief moment of Axane’s and Chokyi’s passage between tent and coach. Each evening Râvar emerged, clad in his cloak of light, to provide for his faithful. Sometimes he gave a sermon or address. Gyalo could not always make out what he said, but the crowd’s responses were audible: Fulfiller of the Promise, he who opens the way! Beloved of rata, who sets our feet upon the Waking Road! Beloved One, child of rata! When he had finished speaking Râvar flung up his arms, causing a brief tempest of shaping to burst above the crowd; the pilgrims shouted and grabbed at the rain of small objects that followed. Gyalo thought of the man in Sardis who had bought a nugget of gold from a peddler, and the boy in the caverns with his handful of precious stones. It was longer than usual on those nights before the camp was still.

  On the other side of the Hatane, the mayor of Sardis and his staff were waiting with ten wagons piled with provisions, which they offered to Râvar in exchange for leading his pilgrims past the town. Râvar agreed, on condition that he might address those citizens of Sardis who wished to hear him. When the Awakened City departed, its numbers had swelled by more than a hundred converts. Gyalo, at the City’s rear, did not witness this, but he spoke with one of the new recruits, an older man who had abandoned his home and a large extended family to follow the Messenger. All his life, the man said, he had dreamed of making pilgrimage to Baushpar, but when the blockade was removed after the Caryaxists’ fall, he had believed himself too old. The Messenger, with his glorious news of rata’s rising, had made him see otherwise. “rata be praised,” he said, and made the god’s sign, his face alight with the fever Gyalo had seen in the caverns, in the faces of Gaubanita and his companions.

  The City moved on into the increasingly barren and elevated landscape of the Dracâriya region. Axane and Chokyi were never in the open except for brief moments at morning and evening, and they were out of Râvar’s immediate company only when he showed himself to the faithful, which never took him more than a few dozen paces away from the tent. Just once, two days north of Sardis, did he deviate from that pattern. He shaped the evening’s grain and water, then, accompanied by Ardashir and five of Ardashir’s staff-carrying Twentymen, moved down the margin of the encampment, pausing to greet and bless the pilgrims who crowded eagerly toward him. Hidden on a hillside, Gyalo knelt in an agony of indecision. It would take Râvar some time to walk the length of the camp and back. But Axane and Chokyi were certainly restrained in some way—otherwise what was to prevent Axane from simply slipping under the back of the tent?—and if freeing them required shaping, a hue and cry would be raised. How far would they get before Râvar came flying back? Unlike Gyalo’s modest light, Axane’s boiling radiance could not be hidden behind a boulder or a stand of brush. Could he defend them? Though he knew well he was not Râvar’s equal, he might not have hesitated for himself. But for Axane and Chokyi …

  Ultimately his indecision made the decision for him. Râvar’s cloak of light, which had vanished beyond a bend in the road, reappeared. Gyalo watched Râvar return, feeling a terrible sense of failure, even though he was certain he could not have succeeded. “I’m sorry,” he whispered later into Axane’s Dreams, trying not to think that he had sentenced her to another night of pain and terror. “I’m sorry.”

  More and more, it seemed likely that he would have to wait for what he had hoped would be a last chance, but now looked to be the only one: Santaxma’s embassy. If successful, it would draw Râvar away from the Awakened City. If not, Santaxma would attack, and in the attendant panic and confusion Gyalo could act. He detested waiting; the thought that there might be one chance, and no more, terrified him. But he could think of nothing else to do.

  He watched constantly for Diasarta’s green light, but never saw it. This was not really surprising in a gathering of such size, especially given Gyalo’s confinement to the rear and to the margins. He hoped for Diasarta’s safety and tried not to think the ex-soldier might have come to harm.

  Sundit, too, was often in his mind. After their final meeting, he had been angry; but once his feeling cooled, he was surprised to discover how little her confession of faith moved him. Once, the Brethren’s belief had been what he most desired: hers, Utamnos’s, all of them. It had been a long time since that was so, a long time since he had blamed himself for their rejection of rata’s rising. That she had come to believe it now, years late, changed nothing.

  On the night he left Ninyâser he had ridden past the temple of rata, hulking at the front of the ratist complex. He had not been tempted to go in, yet something had drawn him to rein in his horse and stand before it for a while, his eyes roaming over its domes and arches, its columns and galleries, its Aspect-sculptures and its intricate friezes depicting the deeds of rata during the primal age. Yellow lamplight spilled from the gallery’s entrance. In imagination, he traversed the gallery’s perfect circle; he entered the dim cylinder of the core and gazed up at the image of rata Creator, smiling in eternal bliss. He felt the press of some powerful emotion, yet he could not have said what it was.

  When at last he rode on, it was with a sense of finality—as if, rather than departing from a place he expected to see again, he was leaving a land to which he knew he would not return. It seemed, then, an awareness born of the possibility of death, of the dangers ahead. But in the time since, he had come to feel that the abandoned land was the temple, the temple and all it represented. Somehow, the last of his bonds to the church had dropped away—more than the vows he had renounced, more than the rituals and affirmations that had lost their meaning now that rata was awake: his acceptance of the very purpose and structure of the church, its very place upon the earth. Like the rituals, like the affirmations, the church had been built for the time of rata’s slumber, a temporary edifice never meant to last—just as the Brethren, who thought themselves immortal, had never been meant to live forever. Somewhere within himself, he had known this for a long time. But it was only now he fully comprehended it.

  It was another transition he owed to Sundit. In confessing her belief, she had made him see its irrelevance, and therefore the true irrelevance of the Brethren. Before, he had repudiated their authority; now he saw that they owned no authority to repudiate, not simply because rata’s rising had ended their time on earth, but because, by their failures of faith, they had forfeited their right to rule. Did she have any inkling, when she let him go, how fully she had cut him free? He remembered the dread he had seen in her face, the dread of a soul standing before oblivion—a familiar enough horror to a mortal, but to her an unknown country. Looking into his eyes, she had acknowledged her own ending.

  And more, perhaps. In the shiver of understanding that had passed between them, much lay contained. The part of him that feared choice shrank from it, recoiled from the recognition she had seemed to offer him. But at some point during their journey—he did not know exactly when—a new desire had been born in him: for resolution, no matter what the resolution was. He was tired of living under the shadow of question. He was tired of his own dread. He wanted to move forward—to confront, like Sundit, the unknown country. Though he knew that when he did, he might be forced to admit that her belief meant something to him after all.

  Not yet, though. Not until Axane and Chokyi were safe. Even rata must wait on that.

  Six days into the Dracâriya region, in a portion of the Way that cut through a narrow valley, the horsemen who governed the pilgrims’ starting and stopping called a halt in the middle of the afternoon. To those who questioned, they said only: “The Next Messenger commands it.”

  Gyalo, tramping as usual among the stragglers, felt everything in him spring to
alertness. He left the City and climbed the heights above the road, paralleling it along the broken ridgeline. Near the head of the procession he angled downward, dropping to his hands and knees among the boulders and the bushes and the tussocky grass. Behind a stand of scrub bamboo, he halted.

  He had been right. Santaxma’s embassy had arrived.

  Râvar stood before his coach, the wind molding his garments to his body and tossing his long hair out behind him like a flag. He wore no illusion. Ardashir waited nearby, with a contingent of his men. Facing this group across a distance of several paces were the King’s emissaries, a small man with a yellow aura and a taller man with an ivory one. They were accompanied by six armored and mounted guards and three attendants, one of whom held the emissaries’ horses. The other two supported between them a large wooden chest. So late in the day, the road lay fully in the hills’ shadow. Even Ardashir’s weak lifelight seemed bright, and the great crystal on Râvar’s breast shone like a torch.

  The small emissary was apparently just finishing a speech. He beckoned to the attendants with the chest. Ardashir raised his hand, clearly uttering some sort of prohibition; the attendants stopped short and set the chest upon the ground. Ardashir tipped back its lid and glanced inside, then spoke a command to two of his aides, who lifted the chest and took it to Râvar. Râvar gazed at its contents for a moment. Looking up, he said something to the emissaries, finishing with a spreading gesture of his hands.

  The emissaries bowed with every appearance of respect and returned to their horses. The party departed, riding north, vanishing around a curve in the road.

  Gyalo seethed with frustration. Had Râvar refused the embassy? Was he taking time to consider it? There was no answer below; but for the earlier-than-usual hour, things were proceeding as always, the horses unharnessed and staked out to graze, the tents unstrapped and pitched, the bundles carried inside. Ardashir knocked on the coach’s door, where Râvar had retreated to wait; he emerged, Axane behind him in a billow of jade and cobalt, Chokyi in her arms. Gyalo watched them hungrily. Three breaths, and they were gone.

  Night fell. Râvar came out and shaped and went in again. The pilgrims availed themselves of what he provided. When the camp slept, Gyalo crept down the hill to a closer vantage point. The tent had been pitched on the opposite side of the road, in a natural indentation in the hillside. If he could manage to get behind it without being spotted, he would be hidden as he crawled beneath the fabric.

  If Râvar went to Santaxma.

  Gyalo whispered what he meant to do, repeating it several times so Axane’s Dream-self would be sure to hear him. At last he retreated to the windswept emptiness of the ridge. In past days he had wondered if he might glimpse Santaxma’s men, moving into position above the road, but so far he had seen no one on the heights but a shepherd with his flock. He settled among some rocks and tried to sleep, without much success.

  At dawn Ardashir’s men rode along the encampment, calling the pilgrims to wake. They did not gather up their bags and bundles and douse their fires and dismantle their makeshift shelters; as the sun rose, they remained in place. In Râvar’s camp, food was brought to Râvar’s tent, but the horses were not saddled, nor the coach harnessed.

  The morning wore on. The hill shadow retreated. The camp simmered under the full weight of the sun. At last, near noon, a party came in sight from the north: the emissaries of yesterday with their guard. They halted at the roadside. Ardashir, fetched from elsewhere in the camp, came to receive them, then went to Râvar’s tent, evidently announcing their arrival.

  There was a pause—not a long one, but to Gyalo, watching tensely from above, it seemed to last forever. Then the tent flaps parted and Râvar emerged. He was clad in a flowing, many-colored robe, his black hair loose down his back. The usual cloud of illusion was absent. Instead, he seemed somehow to gather light, like a piece of polished metal. The tall emissary put up his hand to shield his eyes, while the other controlled his nervous horse.

  Râvar paused. Ardashir came to stand behind him, with six of his men, ranged in pairs and carrying their staves. Still Râvar stood, watching the emissaries. Gyalo could almost feel the contest of wills. At last the small emissary dismounted and approached. There was an exchange of words. By the emissary’s reaction, he was considerably taken aback. More discussion; then the emissary turned, with an abruptness that spoke of anger imperfectly suppressed, and called to the others. They swung off their mounts. Serenely, Râvar inclined his head: the nod of a king. Already, he had the upper hand.

  Followed by his escort, Râvar began to walk. The emissaries and their guards fell in behind, leading their mounts. The party dwindled northward. It reached the curve in the road and fell from sight. Except for the two men on guard before the tent, Râvar’s camp was deserted.

  Gyalo felt his body come alight.

  Now.

  He scrambled to the top of the ridge and ran toward the Awakened City, intending to cross the road under cover of the pilgrim throng, a sufficient distance from the tent and its watchful guards. He descended, forcing himself to slow as he neared the encampment, his body taut with the frustration of holding a normal pace. He threaded his way through the crowd, stray perceptions catching at his senses: the smell of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies, the slipperiness of a patch of mud, snatches of conversation: “Ori, watch your sister …” “… over there, curse you!” “… no, turn it that way …” “… swear, if you don’t believe me …” “… Brother! Hey, Brother!” None of it touched him. There was room in him only for intent.

  At last he was past the City. He began to run again. The hills were less steep than on the other side, but their slope was longer; he labored upward, feeling he would never get high enough. He reached the crest, a scrubby plateau broken by upthrusting rock, and turned back toward the tent. His heart was beating strangely; he had to pause once to get his breath, his hands braced on his knees and his head hanging. Even then his pulse would not slow.

  Below he saw the tent, snug in its indentation. Only a few more moments, and he would be there—

  And then it came: a great double percussion that rolled like thunder but was not. The ground jumped under his feet—once, twice, like an enormous beast twitching its hide. A deep rumbling shook the air, a building roar that filled Gyalo’s head, seized his bones, and vibrated in his flesh. It was like nothing he had ever heard, nothing he had ever experienced; and yet he knew it, knew it in the core of his Shaper soul, knew precisely what had happened, what was happening.

  Silence shuddered down at last. Gyalo found himself on his hands and knees, without any awareness of having fallen. The stillness held him. He could not make himself rise, could not compel his body to his will. His heart no longer raced. It felt as if it did not beat at all.

  Into the enormous quiet came a noise. It was a moment before Gyalo recognized it: the sound of approaching horsemen. The riders rounded a stand of tumbled rock, sunlight flashing on their helms and hauberks. For days Gyalo had watched for Santaxma’s men, and seen nothing. Now, suddenly, they were here.

  A shout. They had spotted him. He forced himself to his feet. His mind was strangely disordered—without even thinking about it, he turned to run. He heard a whining sound. Something struck him a terrific blow on his left shoulder, flinging him forward on his face.

  What …? His shoulder was numb, but there was a profound wrongness to the sensation that told him something terrible had occurred. He craned his neck, trying to see. A stick—no, a shaft. An arrow shaft. He thought, astonished: I’ve been shot.

  More sounds. Shadows fell on him. “Burn it, Orasa. We’re not supposed to harm them unless they engage us.”

  “He was running, Captain. He might’ve warned the others.”

  “Captain, he’s still alive. Should I finish him?”

  “No. Leave him, poor bastard.”

  “We should’ve heard the signal by now. Som
ething’s wrong.”

  “I’ve told you once already, Orasa, no more of that kind of talk.”

  “But it was close, Captain. That … sound. Maybe we should go back.”

  “This day is cursed—”

  “The next man to talk of curses will regret it. We have our orders. We’ll wait for the signal, then we’ll do the job we came to do. Now move on. Move on, I say!”

  The hoofbeats receded. Gyalo lay staring at the tussock of grass by his face. Though it was not near evening, the air seemed to be dimming. The numbness was yielding to an enormous, pulsing pain.

  Get up. There’s still time. He tried to get his arms under him, but his left arm would not obey. He reached with his right to grab at the grass, but his muscles had no strength. He could feel the warmth of his own blood, running over his shoulder and down his back, pooling underneath him.

  Oh, Axane.

  But for some reason it was Sundit’s face that came into his mind, as he had last seen it, alive with fear and recognition.

  I’ll never know now. I’ll never have the chance to choose.

  It was a regret as sharp as the knowledge of his unrescued family in the tent below.

  Another breath. Then nothing.

  Part IV

  THE TIME OF ASH

  18

  Sundit

  THE SUN IS setting, the darkness just closing in. We did not get far today. I am sick with horror; as the afternoon drew toward a close I began to feel so ill that I was forced to call a halt. Reanu made a bed for me with leaves and bracken, and he and Lopalo and Apui and Omarau unwound their stoles to cover me. I’m a little better now, though the ground still seems to sway underneath me, and there’s a roaring in my ears, as if I were still hearing that terrible collapse. I know I should sleep. But I want to write—now, at once, in the rawness of my shock.