The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  How many of them had he injured? How seriously? He wondered what the consequences would be. He could compel them to do anything; but could he hurt them and still make them believe he loved them?

  He closed his hands into fists. He felt filthy, soiled. He longed for his chambers in the caverns, for the gold-veined pool where he had washed away the residue of so many ceremonies.

  He got up at last and pulled off his torn robe, and used the edge of the stair as a lever to remove his boots. In the room beyond, Axane and Parvâti lay on the floor in a tangle of blankets, the child’s light shining through her mother’s like a jewel seen through water. He opened and remade the barrier, removed the Blood of rata, lay down on the bed. It was very quiet in the room, but from outside, muffled, came the clamor of the Awakened City. All night it continued. When dawn grayed the sky beyond the window screens, he could still hear it.

  22

  Râvar

  A LITTLE PAST noon, as Râvar was amusing Parvâti by calling illusion in various forms, Ardashir brought his horse alongside the moving coach and knocked at the door.

  “Beloved One,” he said, when Râvar drew aside the canvas window cover, “Baushpar has just come in sight. The emissaries ask permission to ride ahead and inform their masters of your coming.”

  “Call a stop,” Râvar said. “I want to see.”

  Ardashir gave the order to the driver, then rode back to instruct the Twentymen to halt the pilgrims. Râvar gave Parvâti to Axane and climbed down, pulling his quilted coat tight against the chill. For the past two days they had been mounting into hill country; the coach had halted at the crest of a long slope. Before it the road descended into a shallow valley, at whose bottom ran long fields inexplicably crosshatched with wooden posts, then rose toward an eminence on which a red-walled city crouched amid a tumble of outlying streets and buildings, like a tawny beast with its litter at its feet.

  Baushpar.

  The clouds had pulled aside the night before. In the crystalline air every detail of the distant scene was clear: the patterns of the terrain bunching toward the hilltop, Baushpar’s own patterns wreathing the summit and trailing downward, knotted as a mass of cord. Even with its sprawling suburbs, it was surprisingly small—less than half the size of mighty Ninyâser. The inward-sloping walls were the color of old blood; the thin winter sunlight both lit and shadowed the variously tilted planes of a thousand red- and yellow-tiled roofs. Thrusting above them all, a dozen domes like tight-furled flower buds shone blindingly gold: the domes of the First Temple of rata, the oldest temple, so Râvar had been told, in all Galea.

  Ardashir, returning, reined in his horse nearby. “Baushpar,” he said softly.

  Râvar glanced up. The First Disciple was gazing toward the holy city, one hand raised to shade his eyes.

  “It was blockaded during the time of the Caryaxists,” he said. “Anyone caught trying to get in was arrested and sent to Thuxra. Still, people tried—thousands of them, all through those terrible years. There were guides who’d bring you through, some for faith, some for a fee. It was a sacred thing to say you’d walked Baushpar’s streets, that you’d knelt at the First Temple’s core, that you’d left offerings at the empty Aspect-shrines. I always hoped to make pilgrimage one day …” He paused, then made the sign of rata. “And now I am here. rata be praised.”

  Râvar stared at the high red walls, the burning domes. So many times he had imagined this moment, this first sight of the stronghold of the Brethren. Surely he would be filled with triumph to stand before it at last—or with rage, or with righteousness, or with some other great passion. He had even thought he might be overcome, that he might fall to his knees and cry out or weep—actions perfectly appropriate for his faithful to witness, for was he not rata’s Messenger, looking for the first time on the holy city he would rule? But here he was, and there Baushpar was, and he felt … nothing. Or at any rate, little beyond his curiosity as to what sort of stone composed the walls and a certain puzzlement at all those wooden posts.

  This is Baushpar, he thought, trying to stir his strange lethargy. Baushpar! Where I will vanquish my enemies!

  Some sort of gesture seemed advisable, for authenticity’s sake. He got down on his knees and bent to kiss the surface of the road. “Holy Baushpar,” he proclaimed, rising. “My father’s city, in which my City shall dwell.”

  Behind him, there was an answering murmur from the pilgrims. Ardashir made the god’s sign.

  “We’ll move on now, Ardashir.”

  “And the emissaries, Beloved One?”

  Râvar glanced beyond the First Disciple, to the two tattooed monks who sat their horses just ahead of the coach. They had intercepted the Awakened City three days earlier, and presented him with a message of welcome sealed and signed by the Blood Bearer. It had thrilled Râvar to hold the document in his hands; he had read it many times since, savoring the ornate phrases, the scriptural references written out and annotated in red ink. If not exactly a profession of faith, it was confirmation that the Son Vivaniya had fulfilled his promise. Not, he told himself, that confirmation was needed. Like his arrival, it had been inevitable.

  Since then the monks had ridden with the pilgrimage. Their taciturn demeanor spoke neither of belief nor the lack of it. They used Râvar’s title and bowed to him with every appearance of respect, and whenever he emerged, as now, their eyes followed him.

  “Tell them they can go,” he said.

  He turned back toward the coach. Behind it, the Twentymen had formed a cordon to restrain the eager pilgrims; since the disaster of the last ceremony, Ardashir had made every effort to keep Râvar and the faithful apart. They cried out to him, straining against the Twentymen’s linked arms, reaching past the Twentymen’s shoulders. Abruptly, he felt a little of the expected triumph.

  “Rejoice, children,” he called. “Tonight we sleep in the holy city.”

  “Praise rata!” they cried. “Beloved Messenger! Guardian of Interim!” The Twentymen were starting to have trouble holding them. Râvar turned away and climbed into the coach.

  In Axane’s lap Parvâti wriggled and held up her arms, but he did not feel like taking her. He sat down by the window, peering through the gap in the cover as the coach lurched and began to move. Over the noise of the wheels he heard something else, soft at first, rising louder. It was a moment before he recognized it, a sound he had not heard since the first days of the journey: the voice of the Awakened City, raised in song.

  According to Ardashir’s scouts, a good portion of Baushpar’s population remained within the walls, in the old districts where the monasteries and nunneries and shrines lay. But as with so many of the towns and villages lately, the suburbs were deserted—the streets vacant, the houses shuttered, the gates of the larger estates chained closed. The packed ash and gravel of the road became a broad, paved avenue, winding through a district of substantial villas with elaborate porches and fanciful roof tiles, each generously embraced by its own walled garden. Here the scouts had claimed a residence for Râvar. The wooden gates already stood open. Preceded by Ardashir and followed by the Twentymen, Râvar’s coach turned ponderously aside. The Awakened City marched on into Baushpar, still singing.

  The villa was shaped like a double-walled box, with two floors surrounding an open central courtyard. Galleries ran along all four inner walls. The residents had obviously departed in haste; the exquisitely tiled floors were strewn with debris, and many of the chambers still held nearly all their contents. In one of them, a bedchamber on the second floor that smelled faintly of some flowery perfume, Râvar placed Axane and Parvâti. For himself he chose the plainest chamber he could find, an empty room at the front of the house with unmuraled walls and an unornamented plaster ceiling, entirely bare of furnishing—much to the distress of Ardashir, who wanted him to have the luxuriously equipped suite at the villa’s rear.

  He needed to be magnificent for what
was to come, so he swallowed his pride and sought Axane’s assistance. He sat stiffly on a stool as she combed oil into his hair, careful of the still-painful scab where his followers had torn his scalp, and pulled it back from his face with intricate knots of cord. She outlined his eyes with kohl and tied the laces of the sumptuous robe he had chosen, whose hanging sleeves nearly brushed the ground. He spoke no word, nor did she. Since the day he had so foolishly let down his guard, they had addressed one another only when it could not be avoided. Across the room, on the wide bed, Parvâti slept.

  She finished, and he rose to go. When he was halfway to the door, she spoke.

  “Râvar.”

  He paused. She stood by the stool, her fingers twined together at her waist. “Well?” he said, when she did not continue.

  “It’s not too late.” She drew a breath. “To stop.”

  It did not surprise him: one last effort, one final attempt to turn him from his course. He watched her a moment; like the city earlier, she seemed very distant and yet very distinct. She returned his gaze in a way that suggested it required all her will. At last he turned and left the room.

  He locked the door, and for good measure barred the opening with stiffened air, as he had earlier barred the windows. Then he went to his own chamber and stood looking out across the villa’s grounds. There was a paved court just below; beyond it, a broad, graveled thoroughfare led down to the gates. From the surrounding parkland, trees thrust up a lacework of bare branches. He could still hear the sound of his followers’ singing; the air, which had been clear when they arrived, now carried the faint tang of smoke. Braziers, he thought. Surely the pilgrims would not set their own holy city to the torch.

  He reached up, gently fingering the wound on his scalp. No one had died in his instinctive act of self-defense, but many had been injured. Over the objections of Ardashir, who if he could would have kept Râvar completely sequestered from that moment on, Râvar had gone the next day to visit and pray over them, demonstrating love in the wake of punishment. Ardashir had dubbed the incident the Chastisement of the Greedy, and had done his best to drive home the lesson of that name, at least within the portion of the pilgrimage over which he still exerted tenuous control. Nevertheless, the incident had cost Râvar followers—well over a hundred to date, by Ardashir’s estimate. Those who remained seemed to love him with undiminished fervor—proof, if proof were needed, of the invulnerability of his deception.

  But he had learned what their love could do. He would never again go among them alone.

  Someone knocked. “Enter,” he called.

  It was Ardashir, shadowy in his shadow light. “Beloved One, there’s still no word. Shall I send a message?”

  “No. They must come to me.” From the start their coming had been important: The Sons and Daughters must approach him, thus soliciting their own doom.

  “Beloved One—” Ardashir hesitated. “I beg you to reconsider. Let me assemble a proper escort for you.”

  Râvar shook his head. “You know my will.”

  “But you should go to them as a general, with your guard at your back! You should stand before them as a king, mighty in rank and power! You should confront them as a god, with the faith of your followers to bear witness, their voices to cry your glory! Not alone, not unattended, as if—as if—”

  He bit off the words. Ardashir had long known the intention he protested, that Râvar meant to go before the Brethren unaccompanied. Of course, this had not prevented him from trying to change Râvar’s mind. Perhaps he really believed, as he claimed, that his objections sprang only from his long hatred of the rulers of the church, and from his sense of protocol, his desire that his Messenger always be attended by fitting pomp and ceremony. But Râvar knew that in this as in other things, it was the First Disciple’s own desire that most truly spurred him—his driving need to force himself into the crucial moments of his Messenger’s life, his inflexible conviction of the privilege due him as the first of Râvar’s followers. Ordinarily, confronted with that aspect of Ardashir’s character, Râvar felt annoyance or distaste. But, entirely unexpectedly, he was touched by pity.

  “I am who I am, Ardashir,” he said gently. “What difference does it make who or what surrounds me?”

  “Beloved One. I fear for you, alone in that nest of vipers.”

  Râvar sighed. “I will not change my mind.”

  Ardashir opened his mouth as if for further protest, then closed it again. Since the burned village, he had been more hesitant to dispute. “Yes, Beloved One.”

  He bowed and departed. First Axane, Râvar thought, trying in the final moments to change his mind. Now Ardashir. There was a kind of symmetry to it—a necessity, even, like some final preparation that, once completed, need not be thought of again.

  He felt a thrill deep in his belly.

  He left the room. He paced the galleries as the sun set and darkness fell. In the courtyard below, the Twentymen lit torches; food was prepared and brought up. He paused to eat, then paced on. As earlier, he was aware of no great passion. But it was not the blankness of before. Rather, he was possessed by a deep and powerful calm, similar to the inner stillness he had once found in meditation. The coming confrontation stood before him like the division between night and day, a point of absolute transition beyond which all lay changed. Around him, huge significances breathed. This is the last sunset I will know before I meet the Brethren. This is the last meal I will eat. The last moonrise I will witness.

  The last night on which Refuge goes unavenged.

  He heard the noise first, an outlandish braying underscored by a deeper, pounding rhythm. Louder it grew, closer. The Twentymen left the courtyard. Râvar returned to his chamber, standing to one side of the window so he would not be glimpsed from below. Above the walls that separated the estate from the street he saw the leaping flames of torches, streaming the patterns of their heat.

  Two Twentymen pulled wide the gates. Four men marched in, side by side, blowing on enormous instruments that encircled their chests and curved over their shoulders. It was from these that the discordant braying came. A column of tattooed guards followed, each with an upraised torch, then four more guards bearing a magnificent open palanquin, in which sat a shaven-headed figure in red-and-white ratist garb. By his lifelight, ember-orange and steady as a stone, Râvar recognized the Son Vivaniya. Behind the palanquin walked several men in ordinary clothing—the First Faithful whom Ardashir had sent to guard the Son’s conversion. After them came more torch-carrying guards, and finally a band of drummers, hammering out a cadence on shoulder-borne drums: Boom boom boom boom. Boom boom boom boom.

  In front of the villa, the procession split down the middle as neatly as if it had come upon the blade of an invisible knife, the musicians and the guards moving left and right to flank the palanquin. The bearers set their burden down. The Son Vivaniya held up his hands. Instantly, the cacophony ceased.

  Ardashir emerged from beneath the entrance portico. Behind him the Twentymen marched in four ranks of five, as disciplined as the tattooed guards. They halted before the palanquin. The Son Vivaniya stood waiting, no doubt for Ardashir to kneel. Ardashir stood like a pillar; he did not even incline his head. The silence drew out. It was the Son, at last, who spoke.

  “I have come to greet the Next Messenger.” His voice rose clearly from below. “And to conduct him to my Brothers and Sisters in the Evening City, if he wills it.”

  “He wills it,” Ardashir replied, harsh as two stones grinding together.

  It’s time.

  Râvar stepped away from the window. He smoothed his hands across his face, touched the heavy necklace where it dragged upon his neck. The strange calm of the past few hours had vanished; his heart was a hammer in his chest, and heat and chill traveled together across his skin. Closing his eyes, he wove illusion—not his usual coils of white or multicolored light, but fluttering banners of g
old and red and twilight blue, like living flame.

  He opened his eyes. His chimeric brilliance boiled around him, chased shadow across the floor. He lifted his face to the ceiling, seeing not the patterns of painted plaster but the black, unreadable vault of the sky.

  rata. rata, curse you, look down on me!

  Only the thunder of his blood answered.

  He left the room. On the stairs he encountered Ardashir, come to fetch him; he passed the First Disciple without a word, illusion leaning out behind him as if he really burned. Into the night he walked, into the sight of the gathering. His men fell to their knees. The vowed ratists did not kneel, but he saw how their eyes stretched, how their fists tightened on the shafts of their torches, how some of them made the god’s sign. A dark joy shook him.

  “Child of the First Messenger.” His voice rang out, powerful and true. “Have you kept your promise?”

  The Son Vivaniya’s lips had parted, as if on a word he did not know how to utter. He left the palanquin, stumbling in his haste, and prostrated himself on the paving stones. The others followed—all of them, even the drummers, awkward with the great discs of their instruments.

  “I have kept my promise, Beloved One.” The Son’s voice shook. “To the best of my ability.”

  “Then all is well. Rise. All of you, rise!”

  They obeyed.

  “Beloved One, here are your pilgrims who traveled with me.” The Son beckoned the men who had walked behind his palanquin. “I’ve brought them home to you.”

  “Have they served you faithfully?”

  “Most faithfully, Beloved One.”

  “Come to me, children.” The men obeyed and knelt before him, raising their hands so he could see their marks, which as First Faithful they bore on both palms. On each of their foreheads, he set a point of light. “You’ve done well. You will be rewarded, in this life and the next. Rise and join your fellows.”