The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  They did as he commanded. He turned to Ardashir. The First Disciple stood like one of the columns that supported the portico, his arms folded hard across his chest. He held Râvar’s eyes, every feature tense. It was not a look of judgment, or thwarted will. Ardashir, Râvar realized, really was afraid.

  “Wait for me, my First Disciple,” he said, soft. “And be easy. All will be well.”

  “I cannot be easy, Beloved One,” Ardashir replied. “But I will wait.”

  “Now.” Râvar turned once more to the Son. “Bring me to your Brothers and Sisters.”

  “Beloved One, please.” The Son gestured to the palanquin. “I will be honored to follow at your side.”

  Râvar walked to the palanquin and arranged himself on the cushioned seat, engulfing it in incorporeal flame. The tattooed bearers strained away from him as he passed. Even the Son, coming to stand next to him, was careful to keep clear.

  The bearers bent their knees and hoisted. The horns blared again. The drummers took up their throbbing cadence. Slowly, like a fire-scaled snake, the column wound toward the gates.

  The street outside was choked with Râvar’s followers. They, too, held torches, and candles and lamps and lanterns; between real flame and lifelight, the street seemed to blaze as bright as day. They shouted as he emerged; he saw their faces, wild and ecstatic and greedy, and was glad of the tattooed guards, ranged on either side of the palanquin. The crowd parted to let the procession pass. Some fell to their knees; others ran alongside or danced in front, leaping and whirling to the insistent rhythm of the drums. They sang, their voices rising even above the procession’s din: the hymns that had drawn them from the caverns at the journey’s beginning and delivered them into Baushpar at its end. They shouted Râvar’s titles: “Beloved One! Walker in Light! Opener of the Way!” He raised his hands in benediction, holding them so his scars could be seen, his ghost-flames billowing. To his right, the Son Vivaniya walked like a man in a dream.

  At the top of the street, a great opening pierced Baushpar’s red walls—the Gate of Summer, Axane had told him it was called, though the actual gates had been removed after Baushpar was given to the church and nothing had closed the space in more than a thousand years. Râvar felt the chill of all those centuries as he passed beneath, a core of cold the seasons could not touch. Beyond, the same red granite walls enclosed a broad avenue, with fire baskets blazing all down its length. Here, too, spectators waited, their lifelights gaudy against the lightless stone. Some wore ordinary clothing, but there were also many vowed ratists, in crimson garments and white stoles.

  Boom boom boom boom. Boom boom boom boom. The drumbeat vibrated in Râvar’s bones. His first sight of Baushpar had been nothing like his dreams, but this mad celebration, this triumphal nighttime march, realized his dreams so exactly that he felt he had already lived it. In the penultimate moments of his deception, there was no longer any subterfuge at all. He was simply and precisely what he claimed to be: a creature more than human, gifted with divine power, possessed by godlike intent. As Baushpar burned before his eyes, Refuge burned inside his mind—not horrible, as in sleep, not agonizing, as in memory, but perfect, exquisite, as it had been when it lived. The sky, blue as turquoise above the red walls of the river cleft. The Plains of Blessing, furred with silver grass like the flank of a lounging beast. Gâvarti, his teacher, giving him stern instruction. His mother, her black hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, pounding grain upon a grinding stone. The great cool spaces of Labyrinth, with its cook fires and its balconies and its constant bustle of life and work. The dim reaches of the Temple, where he had spent so many hours in service and in meditation, where he had thought to spend so many more—all the days of his life. The sense of divine presence he had known there more strongly than anywhere else—sometimes a whisper and occasionally a shout but always with him, always with him. A warmth, a weight, a fullness … an immeasurable stirring … an awareness, as if far away some colossal intelligence opened a burning eye …

  Râvar’s heart leaped so violently that for a moment he thought the bearers had stumbled and pitched him to the street. With his entire soul he strained toward that spark of presence. It was there, he knew it, just past the threshold of perception—hidden again, veiled, but the veil had slipped, it had slipped, and he had sensed, he had felt …

  He was observed. Observed.

  For an instant he felt the red pulse of fear—for to be observed was to be known, and to be known meant that each step might be his last. Then triumph seized him and shook away everything but itself. It flung his head back; it dragged laughter from his throat. It swelled into a shout: “Refuge!” The word blazed across the city; it resounded from the walls, the roof tiles, the Temple’s golden domes. It tore through the braying of the horns, thundered in the hammering of the drums. It possessed the crowd. “Refuge!” they seemed to howl back at him. “Refuge! Refuge!”

  Boom boom boom boom. Boom boom boom boom. The drums swept the procession into the vast square at Baushpar’s heart, past the mountainous bulk of the First Temple of rata. They swept it into the Evening City, through halls and courts and gardens unreal in their magnificence. They swept it past a pair of massive vermilion-painted gates, into another immense space where seams of brass ran between the paving stones and a raised walkway bridged the distance to a red-roofed pavilion, its golden columns gleaming in the lamplight that spilled from within. Four great rata-images brooded by the walkway, each one taller than the tall walls that enclosed this place. “Refuge,” Râvar whispered into the high stone faces as his palanquin passed beneath: a secret only he and the god knew, but soon—soon—the Brethren would know it, too.

  At the walkway’s end, three tiers of shallow stairs rose up to the pavilion. The hornists and the tattooed guards split apart as they had at the villa, fanning out along the lowest step. The bearers lowered the palanquin. The Son Vivaniya lifted his hands. The instruments fell silent, as if a knife had sliced one note from the next.

  “Beloved One.” The Son gestured to the pavilion. “My Brothers and Sisters wait.”

  Râvar stepped from the palanquin. The Son stood aside; the bearers pressed away. The faithful sank to their knees.

  “Only the Son may accompany me,” Râvar said.

  The guards’ leader looked toward the Son. Vivaniya gave a small nod.

  Râvar gathered the skirts of his robe and began to climb. The embroidered fabric was too heavy for his crippled hands; briefly he regretted he had not chosen something less cumbersome. Then the thought was gone, and the pavilion flooded his awareness, rising before him like the sun. He slowed, spinning out the anticipation. It seemed to him that all of time had drawn down to this instant, all the world contracted to this place. All of life lay in the coming moment—all he was, all he had done, all he would ever do.

  Too late, rata. Too late to stop me now.

  The stairs terminated on a broad landing. Beyond the gilded columns, the pavilion lay open to the night. Its floor and walls and pillars were of some rich dark wood whose patterns Râvar did not recognize, its ceiling lavishly gilded. Light spilled from horn-sided lanterns suspended from brass chains, and also, glinting toward the pavilion’s rear, from a cluster of auras. The Brethren.

  For an instant, Râvar checked; he could not help himself.

  “They wait, Beloved One,” Vivaniya murmured.

  They were gathered before a dais, on which stood a wide golden chair. Smaller chairs, the same vermilion color as the gates, described an arc on either side. The Brethren did not stir as he approached; they were as still as the columns. Unexpectedly, two were no more than children, clinging to their spirit-siblings’ hands.

  Seeing this, Râvar saw something else.

  Where are the rest of them?

  A grave-faced man with a lifelight of intense clear amethyst broke from the others, drawing after him the little boy whose hand he held. He was followed
by an immensely fat woman with changeable colors, now silver, now azure; and, after a hesitation, by two teenage boys whose billowing tawny auras were almost exactly the same. The rest remained where they were: an elderly man with a bandage bound across his eyes, leaning on the arm of a third teenager; a younger man whose colors, bright and supple as new-shed blood, lay close along his limbs, his hands resting protectively on the shoulders of the other child. On his broad chest, this man wore a golden necklace more massive than Râvar’s, though the flame-hearted crystal that hung from it was half the size. The Blood Bearer. The Brethren’s leader.

  The five who had come forward knelt, the woman with some difficulty.

  “Messenger.” The amethyst-auraed man made the sign of rata. His expression was serene, his eyes half-closed as if in bliss. The child huddled against him, hiding his face in the folds of the man’s stole. “You are glorious, and my heart rejoices. I am the Son Baushtas. This is the Son Yarios.” Gently he urged the little boy to look up; the child whimpered, resisting. “Forgive his fear. His soul is old but in most ways he is still a child.”

  “My soul delights,” the woman said, breathless with the effort of moving her great bulk. She wore a look of transcendent joy. “I am the Daughter Artavâdhi. rata be praised.”

  “I am the Son Gaumârata,” said the boy beside her; his voice shook with fear. “rata … rata be praised.”

  “I am the Son Karuva,” said the other teenager firmly. “I bless your coming. rata be praised.”

  Râvar barely heard them. His eyes searched the reaches of the pavilion. Shadow masked the farthest walls; elsewhere there was light, pooling beneath the pendant lamps, refracting from the gold and gems of the sun-mosaic that spread across the wall behind the dais. But it was only ordinary light. The light of life he saw nowhere except before him. He felt the press of understanding, trying to take shape. He turned to Vivaniya.

  “Where are the others? Where are the rest of the Brethren?”

  “Beloved One.” Was it fear that flared in Vivaniya’s face? “I and these nine are all who remain in Baushpar.”

  “No.” The word was calm. It was not possible. The Son was lying.

  “Beloved One, I would rather tear out my own throat than acknowledge it, but many of my Brothers and Sisters proved faithless. They were afraid, Beloved One, afraid of the darkness we have gathered in our lives, afraid of ending, and in that fear they fled—”

  “They fled? And you allowed it?”

  “Beloved One, I could not stop them, their unbelief was like a wall, I spoke and spoke and could not break it down—”

  “You are their leader.” Râvar looked beyond the Brethren at his feet, to the man with the necklace. “Why did you not command them to stay?”

  The man held himself immobile, but his expression flinched. “I have not that power.”

  “You bear the Blood! You rule them!”

  “I lead them. And in this room only. Not beyond. We are individual souls, individual wills. It has ever been so.”

  “Beloved One,” said the grave-faced man with the amethyst lifelight, the Son Baushtas. “We who remain are yours. When you meet the fire, the Darxasa says, deny not that you know it, for it knows you. Our spirit-siblings denied, but we do not. We see the fire. We embrace it. We know you, Messenger. We know your name.”

  “Then why are you not all on your knees?” Râvar was trembling, the banners of his illusion shuddering. “You do not kneel!” He pointed at the Blood Bearer. “Nor does that one”—he stabbed his hand at the blind man, the child, the youth—“or that one or the other! Are you faithless, like the ones who fled? Or is your faith too weak to bear the sight of me? Do you fear me too much to bend your knees?”

  The man with the bandaged eyes slid to the floor. With a shaking hand he made the sign of rata. “Messenger, forgive us.” His voice broke; he swayed, and if the boy had not stooped to steady him would have fallen. Râvar rounded on Vivaniya.

  “You swore an oath. You swore you would bring them to belief—all of them, all of them. You promised you would do it.”

  “I kept my promise, Beloved One, I kept it to the best of my ability.” Vivaniya’s face was as pale as stretched parchment. “The others will come to you, they will come when they see your glory, when they see your deeds—we are only the first, Beloved One, they need only time—”

  “No!” Râvar shouted. “It was supposed to be all of you. Don’t you understand? It was supposed to be all of you at once!”

  They swayed back, as if his voice were wind. Their faces were alight with fear. Blind rage broke in him, a great red tide. He flung his shaping will like a spear, slamming it into the wall behind the dais. The wall exploded in a thousand fragments. Gem shards, splinters, flakes of gold came pattering down like rain.

  “I sent you to secure their hearts!” he shouted over the dying echo of his power. “To win their souls for me, all their souls! And instead you give me nine—two children barely old enough to walk, a woman who can hardly stand without an arm to lean on, a blind man, three pimple-faced youths, a fool who thinks he knows my name, a leader who cannot lead! What good are they to me, what good are they without the rest? For what else have I come all this long way, endured your foul world, your filthy cities, your ugly customs, the company of blackened men? And you show me these nine, these nine, and say you have done your best? Did you think I would be pleased there are so few? Did you think I would reward you for failing the task I gave you?”

  The Bearer and his companions had fallen prostrate when the mural shattered, the Bearer gathering the child into the shelter of his body. The Son Gaumârata huddled over the small Son Yarios, who, weeping with panic, had squirmed away from his guardian. Vivaniya, too, was on the floor, his arms clasped over his head. But Baushtas and Artavâdhi and Karuva still knelt, their faces ecstatic with dread.

  “We deserve your anger, Messenger,” Baushtas said. “We who have remained know this. We understand our fault, the betrayal we committed when as a council we turned from news of rata’s rising. I have long known we would be punished.”

  Râvar dropped to his haunches, bracing his hands on the floor. “You are a fool,” he hissed. “You know nothing. You have no idea what I truly am. Why I have truly come.”

  The Son did not flinch. “I know you are, a human man, Messenger, as our father Marduspida was. I know you have been raised up by rata from the calamity we Brethren made, the cruel fate we brought on those who first knew the god awake. I know you come on us in judgment—both your own, for the sake of your lost people, and rata’s, for the sake of our blindness, our many errors. I do know your name.” He paused, drew breath. From behind him came the thin sound of Yarios’s cries. “It is Râvar.”

  Râvar crouched motionless. It seemed an age before he could force his tongue to shape words. “How,” he said. “How do you know that?”

  “Our Sister Sundit came before us and revealed it all. She meant by her words to undo our belief—”

  “No.” All the air seemed to have left the pavilion. “I locked her. In stone.”

  “She was freed, by another’s hand—”

  And Râvar saw it, saw it all. “Gyalo Amdo Samchen,” he whispered.

  “Yes, Beloved One.”

  Impossible, impossible. A roaring filled Râvar’s ears, as if Thuxra City were falling again, as if the Dracâriya hills were collapsing a second time. Almost, he could smell the dust of those great destructions, feel the earth tremble underfoot.

  “You are the god’s instrument.” Baushtas’s head had tipped back; his eyes were half-closed again in that look of rapture. “Do with us as you will.”

  “Don’t mock me.” Râvar shook his head. “Do not dare to mock me.”

  “Messenger, we speak our faith,” Artavâdhi panted. “You are the Messenger rata made for us when we repudiated his first. You are the Messenger we deserve.”r />
  “You cannot believe in me. I am false. You know that I am false.”

  “You test us, Messenger,” Baushtas said. “And it is right, it is holy that you should, for we have failed so many tests. But this one we will not fail, no matter what the pain or the trial. This one we will endure.”

  “We’ve lived too long.” Reaching out, Artavâdhi took both her Brothers’ hands. “It is time for us to end. Let sleep come.”

  “Let sleep come,” Karuva whispered.

  “Let sleep come,” Baushtas affirmed.

  They bowed their heads. Their clasped hands trembled. Râvar felt a mounting horror. This could not be. He had meant them to believe, but only for as long as it took for him to reveal himself. What was important was that they understand: that they know themselves deceived, duped, made blasphemers; that they recoil in terror and revulsion from the truth of his nature, from the revelation of his real intent. But in embracing the blasphemy of his deception, the three had twisted it, turned his falsity into a kind of truth. How could that have happened? How could they have accepted such a thing? If he destroyed them now as he had planned, if he called fire on them or plunged them into the earth, they would die not in despair but in joy and resignation, his praises on their lips.

  No. It’s not what I want. It’s not what I want!

  “Let sleep come.”

  The Son Gaumârata was on his knees again behind the others, little Yarios huddled in his arms. He was trembling so hard he could barely speak.

  “Let sleep come.” It was the blind Son. The boy who had supported him still clung to his arm, his mouth open, his face a perfect mask of terror.

  “Let sleep come,” Vivaniya whispered. He crawled like a child to the Son Karuva and took his hand.

  It was like some awful dream. Was this the answer, at last, to his defiance? When he had taunted the silence, hurling angry words at emptiness, had rata been observing—and laughing—all along?