The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  I went out half an hour before noon. I was not surprised to find Reanu waiting in my antechamber. He fell to his knees; behind his crossed arms his face was as fierce as it had been the night before, and I knew that if I tried to dismiss him, I would have a battle on my hands. It is not the custom to bring personal guards to a meeting of the council. But at every step of this long journey he has been at my side, and it seemed to me—seems to me—that he had the right to be present.

  The vermilion gates to the Courtyard of the Sun stood open when we reached them. The rain had passed in the night; sunlight flooded the vast court, refracting blindingly from the brass seams between the flagstones. Despite the chilly air, the yellow granite of the walkway was warm under the soles of my indoor shoes. The shadows of the colossal rata-images, which at morning and evening stretch farther than the width of the court, were inky puddles at the images’ feet. I looked up into their great stone faces as I passed, each in turn—World Creator, Primal Warrior, Eon Sleeper, Risen Judge—rata in each of his four roles, contemplating eternity as we living creatures scurry underneath.

  I left Reanu on the Pavilion’s broad porch, and passed between its gilded pillars into the dimness of the council chamber. I was early; only servants were present, lighting lamps and arranging braziers. I took my customary place and waited as my Brothers and Sisters arrived, many with their spirit-wards in tow. All came to greet me, with shows of affection both real and feigned: Baushtas, serene as a well of dark water; Artavâdhi, doing me the honor of heaving her great bulk out of her sedan chair to kiss my cheek, young Gaumârata at her side; Magabyras, clearly not yet recovered from his illness, leaning heavily on Karuva’s arm; Dâdar, scowlingly speaking the barest words of courtesy; Okhsa and Kudrâcari, making a better show of it, though Kudracari’s mouth was tight and Okhsa’s black-bead eyes darted everywhere in his effort not to meet mine; Martyas, showing all his snaggle teeth in welcome as he took my hands in his small crooked ones; Ariamnes, pompous as a pigeon, Sonrida trotting at his heels; Hysanet, embracing and kissing me exactly as if we had not met last night; Vimâta, apprehension clear on his handsome face; Haminâser, wiping at the tears that seep always from his blind eyes, his solemn spirit-ward Idrakara at his elbow.

  Vivaniya was among the last to arrive. He strode between the pillars with his eyes on the floor. I had wondered what he would do; I was prepared for anything, even an immediate denunciation. But he chose to ignore me—he alone, of all of them—and crossed directly to his chair, misjudging in his awkward way and sitting down too hard. I saw my spirit-siblings take note.

  Taxmârata entered from the tiring rooms at the Pavilion’s rear. He took his place on the dais and opened the council with the customary phrases, then seated himself in the Bearer’s gilded chair and turned toward me. The Blood of rata shone on his chest. At his back, the gems and gold of the sun-mural on the chamber’s rear wall caught fire from the lamplight.

  “Welcome, Sister. It’s joy beyond describing to have you among us again.”

  “I rejoice in my return, Brother.”

  “We are eager to hear what you have to say to us. And also”—there was an edge in his voice—“to know why we have heard nothing of you for so long.”

  I rose. Until that moment, I had felt no apprehension. Urgency, yes; but a focused urgency, an urgency of purpose. But as I drew breath to speak, a powerful strangeness seized me. I cannot say why it suddenly seemed to me that I stood not in the Pavilion, but in the hall of my dream of mirrors. For just an instant, I saw the shadows of my spirit-siblings’ previous lives pressed close behind them. I felt the weight of the box in my hands.

  “Sister?”

  Taxmârata’s voice seemed to travel across a great distance. The strangeness was gone. But my composure had gone with it. My heart raced. My limbs were cold.

  “Brothers and Sisters.” I heard the unsteadiness in my voice. “I know what you have learned from our Brother Vivaniya. I know also that many of you have assumed I share his belief.”

  They watched me—all but Vivaniya, his gaze resolutely turned upon his knees.

  “I do not share it. The man who claims the title of Next Messenger, who wears around his neck the Blood of rata—which is indeed the true Blood, I will confirm that—is an imposter, a pretender. An unbound Shaper, as we originally suspected. Though not, as you think, apostate.”

  Vivaniya whispered something, too soft to hear. Kudrâcari cast him a sharp look, then turned her gaze on me.

  “What other sort of unbound Shaper is there, Sister?”

  “The sort who has never been bound at all. His name is Râvar, and he is a Shaper of Refuge. That is why the Blood he wears is real: He got it from the Cavern of the Blood.”

  Vivaniya’s head snapped up. Someone, I could not tell who, cried, “What?” Haminâser turned his blind eyes toward me, tears slipping slowly down his cheeks.

  “All of Refuge’s Shapers perished, Sister.”

  “Or so we were informed,” said Martyas. “Another falsehood, Sister? Another lie to add to the list?”

  “Not an intentional one. No one could have known that Râvar survived. He closed himself up inside the Cavern when our army came. That’s why Dâdar and Vivaniya saw nothing. Had they searched, had they ordered our Shapers to probe the rock, he would have held it closed against them. In falsehood or in truth, our Brothers would have brought back the same tale.”

  “On what authority do you make this claim, Sister?” Baushtas’s smooth brow had creased in the faintest frown.

  “Râvar himself told me. And it was confirmed by one who knew him.”

  “What, more survivors?” Kudrâcari exclaimed.

  “A survivor, yes, but not of Refuge.”

  “Enough of these riddles!” Ariamnes’s moon face was swollen with irritation. “Say what you have to say, Sister, and say it plain!”

  “She has nothing to say.” Vivaniya gripped the arms of his chair. “She is lying.”

  “I would like to judge that for myself,” Kudrâcari snapped. “Though I say now, as I have said before, that I do not admit the existence of this Cavern.”

  “Come, Brother,” said Martyas, with sly malice. “Can’t your conviction stand a little testing?”

  “All of us have the right to speak in council,” Taxmârata said mildly. “All of us have the duty to listen. Sister, continue.”

  “First I must tell you why my Brother and I did not return together from the Awakened City. He told you that when he departed, I was invited to remain. This is not true. I was forced to remain, held captive by the pretender, who saw that I doubted his claim and did not want me to speak against my Brother in Baushpar. On the night before the start of his long march, he came to me and gave me one last chance to bow down to him. I refused. The next morning, after all his followers had gone, he walled me and my people inside the rock and left us to perish.”

  Vivaniya shouted: “You lie!”

  “No, Brother. It is true. I know you didn’t know he meant to kill us. But you did know he kept me against my will. You did know that, Vivaniya.”

  “But why should he want your body-death, Sister?” Baushtas asked.

  “He wants all our body-deaths, in payment for Refuge. That is his desire: vengeance. He told me so before he shut me in, told me the whole of his intent. He marches on Baushpar to disbody us all, and bring Baushpar down upon us.”

  Vivaniya practically leaped from his chair. “That is a filthy falsehood! The Next Messenger has come in love and joy to guide the world and all in it to perfection! He marches to Baushpar to take his place at the head of the church and reign gloriously in the holy city through the time of Interim! Can you not see what she is doing, Brothers and Sisters? Can you not see how she means to undo my work—”

  “Brother, be silent!” Taxmârata’s deep voice rang across the Pavilion. “Our Sister will speak, and you will listen.
Or I will banish you.”

  For a moment I thought Vivaniya would not obey. Then he subsided back into his chair. His frustration and his fury spoke in every line of his body. But I had been watching his face when I spoke of Refuge. For just that moment, I think he glimpsed the way it fit.

  “You say he intends to destroy the Brethren,” said Kudrâcari. “The Brethren cannot be destroyed.”

  “If all of us are simultaneously disbodied, Sister, who will search out our new incarnations and teach us to recognize ourselves? And our body-deaths are not his only wish. He wants our souls as well. Before we perish, he wants us to bow down to him in faith, and through that blasphemy extinguish any light that may remain in us after all these centuries. It’s for that reason he allowed Vivaniya to return—to prepare his way. He believed that on the word of one of us, all of us would believe.”

  Martyas laughed, drawing angry looks from Kudrâcari and Okhsa. “Clearly he knows us very little.”

  “If he intended you to perish, Sister,” Baushtas said, “how is it you got free?”

  “There was another unbound Shaper in the Awakened City—a true apostate. He found us and unmade the stone that confined us. Brothers and Sisters, I know this will seem incredible, but that apostate was Gyalo Amdo Samchen.”

  Eyes stretched. Mouths dropped open. Dâdar, silent till now, barked an incredulous laugh.

  “The man is dead, Sister.”

  “No, Brother. One of his companions freed him from imprisonment in Faal, making it seem he had fallen from his window. He has been living as a fugitive ever since.”

  “rata!” Kudrâcari’s sallow face was flushed with anger. “Did I not warn you all that imprisoning him was not enough? Now see! Free for more than two years to corrupt others with his apostasy, to spread his blasphemous claim of Messengerhood!”

  With difficulty I held my patience. “If that were so, don’t you think we would have heard of it, just as we heard of Râvar? In fact, he has been spreading nothing. So he said, and I believe him.”

  “Rather than disputing the past actions of this council,” Martyas suggested, “it might be useful to know how he came to be in the Awakened City.”

  I told them all Gyalo had told me—of Râvar’s theft of Gyalo’s wife and child, of Gyalo’s failed attempt to rescue them, of Râvar’s deeds and his enormous power.

  “Another Shaper War,” said Magabyras, speaking for the first time, his voice husky with his recent sickness.

  “This is no Shaper War,” Ariamnes declared. “Unbound Shaper he may be, but there’s no Shaper army at his back, only a rabble of barefoot followers.”

  “His power is immense,” I said, “as is his skill in wielding it. I bear witness to this. I did not see him bring down the walls of Thuxra City, but I saw him create the disaster at Dracâriya.”

  “You are mistaken, Sister,” Dâdar growled. “The Dreamers affirm that what happened there was natural.”

  “Their interpreters affirm it. And only two of them—the third, I understand, disagrees.”

  Kudrâcari smiled an insufferably condescending smile. “You know no Shaper has so much strength, Sister, not even one unbound from birth. The third Dreamer is wrong, and so are you.”

  “There is another question,” said Baushtas, with his imperturbable, cool-water calm. “How, Sister, did you come to be at Dracâriya?”

  “After we were freed, I traveled with all haste to Santaxma. Only he had the strength to make a stand against Râvar and his army. I brought Gyalo Amdo Samchen with me—”

  “You traveled? With an apostate?” Kudrâcari’s voice scaled upward in her horror.

  “With a witness, Sister, a man who of his own experience could confirm Râvar’s identity and the magnitude of his power, and so help me to convince a King who had no wish to heed any word spoken by the Brethren.” I told them, as briefly as I could, of our flight to Ninyâser, of our meetings with the King and of Santaxma’s flawed plan. They wanted to know why I had not seen fit to inform them of my actions; I gave them the truth, which did not please them, though I saw Martyas nod in understanding. I told them of Dracâriya. In my mind’s eye the disaster unfolded again, images whose vividness I will never need to consult my journals to recapture.

  “Preposterous,” said Ariamnes, who for the last part of my account had been shaking his head with increasing vehemence. “I can believe the King’s men mistargeted their assault, or that the blasphemer was able somehow to avoid it, but I am in agreement with Kudrâcari. No single Shaper could accomplish such destruction. There’s no historical precedent for such a thing.”

  “The Next Messenger is not bound by history,” Vivaniya said, but quietly.

  “Can any of us declare with certainty that we would recognize unfettered shaping if we saw it?” Kudrâcari asked. “It has been many incarnations since we have witnessed any shaping beyond the transformations of Communion and Banishing. Sister, you are certainly in error.”

  Anger sang in my head. “Will you not set aside for one moment your desire to contradict every word I speak, Sister, no matter what it is? Has it entirely escaped your notice that the news I’ve brought supports your own position? Besides, eight centuries may have passed since you saw unfettered shaping, but given the manner of my escape from the caverns, you’ll admit it hasn’t been quite so long for me.”

  Kudrâcari looked at me with open loathing. Martyas grinned, enjoying the conflict.

  “What of the apostate?” Ariamnes asked. “Where was he in all of this?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “He left us in Ninyâser.”

  “You let him go?” Kudrâcari demanded.

  “And how exactly was I to stop him, Sister?”

  “The church is not without resources,” Ariamnes said. “You know the procedures that are followed in such situations.”

  “The circumstances were extraordinary. I made the decisions that seemed expedient.”

  “In other words, you failed your duty to the Doctrine of Baushpar,” Kudrâcari said harshly. “Now he is free again, and we have not the slightest idea where he may have gone.”

  “In the circumstances, Sister, I think we have more pressing concerns,” said Hysanet, speaking for the first time, with a sharpness entirely uncharacteristic of her.

  “Indeed.” All trace of humor was gone from Martyas’s face. “Brothers and Sisters, it’s clear we face a threat, even if we cannot agree on exactly what manner of threat it is—”

  “Enough.” Vivaniya surged to his feet, with such force that his chair tipped back and crashed upon the floor. “Can none of you see the truth? Our Sister is afraid, afraid as my Brother and I were afraid when we went up into Refuge—afraid of change, afraid of ending. In her fear she has done what we did—she has invented a lie. She took her lie to the King, who marched upon the Messenger in hatred, but rata’s glorious will cannot be so easily thwarted, and instead of the destruction she intended, the god’s judgment fell on Santaxma. Now she brings her lie to us. I beg you, Brothers and Sisters, do not make this same mistake. Reject her words. Close your ears to her denial of the Messenger.” He rounded on me. Ah, there was such loathing in his face! “I’ll tell you what part of your tale I do believe, Sister, and that is that he left you to perish in imprisonment. He saw the true shape of your soul. He weighed your faithlessness, and he judged you, he judged you as rata will judge you in the time of cleansing. You escaped him, you and your apostate, but you shall not escape the god!”

  “Brother!” cried Hysanet, horrified. I stood speechless. As angry as I’ve been at him for his betrayal—and oh, I have been so angry!—my love for him endures, my Brother, my foster child. I’d hoped it was the same for him—that somehow, at the end of this, we might be reconciled. In that moment I understood that it cannot be so, not in this life. And thus, perhaps, not ever. It turned my heart to stone.

  He turned
back to the others. “When our father brought the Regent of Ko to rata, and members of the Regent’s council rose against him in his new faith, the Regent called the councillors and ministers who believed as he did to form a new council, an Assembly of Truth. I call now, as he did. Come with me, those of you who believe. Let us abandon this false council and make another. When the Next Messenger comes we will be waiting. He will know that there are some at least among the Brethren who are worthy.”

  There was an appalled silence. There’s not one of us who has not refused, at one time or another, to answer a summons to the Pavilion of the Sun—sometimes for many months, like Kudrâcari and her faction over the issue of Gyalo’s exile. But even in our most terrible disagreements, which splinter us from one another, no one has ever seriously sought to split the council.

  “That is enough, Brother.” It was Taxmârata, intervening at last. “I have no more patience with your disruption of this council. Be silent, or be gone.”

  “I will go,” Vivaniya said bitterly. “And I will not come back. If I ever had any doubt that the oath he asked of me was necessary, I have none now. Not one of you is fit to guard the Way of rata.”

  He turned and strode from the Pavilion, his head high. For once his clumsiness did not betray him. His steps were firm and true as he passed from shadow into sun, and vanished down the steps.

  A terrible hush had fallen. None of my spirit-siblings seemed to wish to break it.

  “We must flee,” I said. “For our survival, we must abandon Baushpar, as we did when the Caryaxists came. I’m told the pretender is south of Ninyâser, which puts him perhaps a month from our gates. We can be well away by the time he arrives.”

  “Flee?” Kudrâcari repeated, as if it were a word in an unknown language.

  “Where would we go?” Hysanet said.

  “One of the remoter monasteries, where our presence can be kept secret. Somewhere in Isar, perhaps. Once we are there, we can decide what to do.”

  “I will not run from this rabble,” Ariamnes declared. “We’ve subdued apostates before. We can subdue this one also.”