The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  “Where are you heading, Brother?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  They made their way through the dark, rain-shining streets. Gyalo’s patternsense kept them moving east amid the maze of branching ways. That quarter of the city was given over mainly to commercial districts, and signs of fire and looting were everywhere. Pilgrim graffiti was scrawled on walls and doors, on paving stones and steps, in charcoal, in chalk, in red and yellow paint: rata’s sun-symbol, the several sigils of the Waking Road. As in a forest, they heard more signs of life than they saw—cries, shouts, snatches of song, the noise of things breaking—though several times they were forced to jump into doorways or dive down alleys to avoid bands of pilgrims. Once, turning along an east-running avenue lined with the shops of leatherworkers and basketmakers, they were met by a phalanx of staff-carrying men, materializing abruptly from the shadows.

  “No entry here,” the man in the lead told them, calm but firm.

  “We mean you no harm,” Gyalo said. “We’re just trying to get through to the Avenue of Dawn.”

  “Well, you’ll not use this street. Now move along.” The man gestured with his staff. “Try and come back this way, and you’ll go nowhere again in this life.”

  “No problem, friend. We’re going.”

  The Avenue of Dawn was clear all down its length. As they neared its end, the sound of voices rose, harsh and raucous, like the clamor of a marketplace. Passing into Temple Square, they found themselves in a bizarre amalgam of campground and fairground. Makeshift shelters had been constructed along the Square’s perimeter, made from scavenged materials, many of them open at the front, their inhabitants going about their lives without a care as to who might be watching. Craftsmen sold wares from portable booths. Vendors in umbrellaed carts hawked nuts and sweets and religious trinkets—at least some of Baushpar’s inhabitants, evidently, had found a way to turn invasion into profit. Litter and the discarded spoils of looting lay underfoot, and everywhere was fire: for cooking, for warmth, for trash, ceremonial fires attended by swaying prayer groups, celebratory fires circled by ecstatic dancers, communal fires for the roasting of pigs and goats and something larger that might have been a horse. The high wails and the damp and windless weather trapped the smoke of all these blazes, drowning the Square in a throat-scraping, eye-stinging fog whose acrid stench dominated, but did not entirely conquer, the odors of close-gathered humanity. Above it all, the massive bulk of the First Temple thrust up like a mountain, its domes shining even through the hazy air—the antithesis of the chaos that surrounded it, a perfect harmony of stillness.

  “Burn me,” Diasarta exclaimed, as they neared a large pavilion with lanterns strung along the outside and a man in gaudy clothing standing by its entrance, “it’s a brothel. Can you believe it?”

  It seemed to make no less sense than the rest of this seething spectacle.

  They skirted the fires and the rubbish, threaded their way between the knots of people. Mostly they were ignored; where they were challenged or urged to join the celebration, their pilgrim scars guaranteed both passage and escape. At last they reached the wall that bounded the western length of the Square—exactly like the other three, built of the same red-granite blocks, topped by the same golden tile. But here, instead of a tall, arched opening onto a ceremonial avenue, there was only a narrow vermilion-painted door. Beyond the deceptively modest entrance, the palace of the Brethren stretched more than five miles square.

  The vermilion door was never locked, for all who followed rata must have access to the home of those who led his Way; but it was always closed, so those who entered might recognize that they were passing into a separate domain. Now it stood half-ajar. In the courtyard beyond, debris was scattered across the ironstone paving.

  “They got in here, too,” Diasarta said.

  “He went in here. They followed.”

  They crossed the court and entered the stately pavilion that gave access to the Evening City proper. To the left lay the offices and workrooms and conference chambers and libraries and warehouses and artisans’ studios of the administrative wing; to the right opened the guest accommodations and the Tapati barracks and the personal quarters of the Brethren. Normally a cadre of Tapati stood guard, but now there was not a soul to be seen. The great red portals of the two entrances, which like the smaller door were normally kept closed, had been thrown back. Each was marked with one of Râvar’s sigils: the hexagon with its squiggle of flame.

  Gyalo chose the right-hand portal. He had spent most of his time in Baushpar in the administrative wing, and had not often visited the other side; his patternsense, which oriented itself to naturally occurring patterns and required knowledge of a larger context to read man-made ones, was of little use, and he was quickly lost amid the maze of hallways and galleries and open courts. He let light be his guide: dark corridors he avoided, illuminated ones he ventured down. The signs of looting were here, too—graffiti, breakage, and once a splatter of something that looked like brown paint, but which Gyalo’s Shaper senses identified as blood. They saw birds in the courtyards and rats in the halls and once a monkey, someone’s pet, which screeched and fled at the sight of them; but no sign of any human inhabitants.

  “D’you think the Brethren have fled?” Diasarta asked, stepping over a litter of smashed porcelain.

  “They were here when Râvar came. The Evening City is huge. We might wander for the rest of the day and never find them.”

  In a long hall with alabaster-screened windows all down one side, Gyalo paused in recognition. “This is—this was Utamnos’s residence.”

  “Your old master.”

  “Yes.”

  Utamnos’s door had been left locked, but someone had kicked it open, splintering the jamb. The rooms within were stripped, though the absence of debris suggested that the damage had not been done by looters. The companions moved from chamber to chamber, until they came to one with a floor of polished spicewood and coral-colored walls muraled with a design of ibises and reeds. Gyalo halted in me doorway.

  “This is where Utamnos and I ate supper, the night before I left for the Burning Land.”

  “Oh yes?” Diasarta came to stand beside him.

  “It was a feast. Oysters from the coast. Apricots out of season. He wanted to make a memory for me, something beautiful that I could carry with me.” His imagination re-created the room as it had been that night: the low table at which he and Utamnos had sat, the paper lanterns shining like little moons, an ash-fired vase filled with poppies. “He gave me a farewell gift, a book of poetry.”

  “I remember that book. You used to read in it every night.”

  “It went across the desert with me and back. They took it away when they imprisoned me … I’ve often wondered what happened to it.”

  Sadness tightened his throat. How innocent he had been that night, how untested. How strange it was to stand here, remembering that. Like turning a corner, and coming face-to-face with himself.

  He turned to Diasarta. “There’s one more place I want to go.”

  They departed the Evening City without difficulty, for they had left a trail that Gyalo’s patternsense could read: the traces of their footsteps in the dirt and dust, the lingering disturbance of the air. They emerged into the clamor of Temple Square and made their way toward the Temple. Around its vast circumference lay an area of calm—the only part of the Square that was free of pilgrims and their litter, as if there were some line of demarcation that chaos dared not cross. It was as if the Temple existed on a slightly different plane, a piece of one world somehow set down within another.

  It did not seem surprising that the lamps burned as always in the gallery, or that the floor was clean, or that the religious paintings on the inner wall, rich with gems and precious inlay, had not suffered any damage. It did not seem strange that the Temple’s core, shadowy and incense-scented, was also untouched, or
that the torches and the candle trays around the colossal cast-bronze image of rata Eon Sleeper were all alight. A pair of monks worked at rata’s feet, replacing candles that had burned down, rekindling flames that had gone out. There was even a cluster of worshipers on meditation mats, their lifelights starry in the dimness. It was in truth like stepping into a separate world. There seemed little connection between what was here and what lay outside.

  Gyalo and Diasarta approached across the polished expanses of the floor. The god was portrayed as a beautiful naked youth at rest upon his back, the surface under him scored with ripples to represent the ocean of his Blood. Both it and his long hair were gilded. His many wounds wept citrine and topaz and amber.

  “Great is rata.” Gyalo greeted the monks, his voice small in the stone-vaulted silence. “Great is his Way.”

  “Go in light,” one replied. The other watched, wary.

  “I’m surprised that anyone is still here.”

  “The Temple must be cared for,” the first monk said.

  “You don’t fear to stay, with all that’s going on outside?”

  “Those who have come will depart.” Within his soft gray lifelight, the monk’s face was tranquil. “The Temple will remain.”

  They turned back to their labor. Gyalo watched as they moved among the trays, performing their ancient duty. There was courage in their actions—but a futile, pointless courage. rata was not here—not in the great shadowed spaces, not in the beautiful image. It was like a cast-off garment, this place—a rich garment, long in the making and in the wearing, but threadbare now, outgrown.

  Was that why he had felt such a strong compulsion to come here? To complete the journey of memory, to acknowledge the distance between the man he had become and that innocent self he had encountered in Utamnos’s deserted rooms?

  Diasarta had paced the length of the image and was gazing up at rata’s face. Off to the side, the worshipers were getting to their feet. Gyalo had glanced at them as he crossed the core, seeing only a gathering of bodies, a scattering of lifelights. But, as they moved, he looked more closely, aware of something odd … too late, he recognized what it was. One man, standing in advance of the others, owned a light that was almost no light at all, the faintest blue flickering around his body.

  Ardashir.

  Ardashir had seen him. For a moment they stood, eye to eye across the distance, as immobile as sleeping rata himself. Then Ardashir said something over his shoulder, and strode forward, leaving his staff-carrying attendants behind.

  “You,” he said as he reached Gyalo, his voice gravel-harsh. “What are you doing here?”

  Gyalo cursed his inattention. But what were the odds, among so many people, that he would meet Ardashir and his men? “That’s my business.”

  “You were told never to approach the Awakened City again.”

  “This is not the Awakened City. It is Baushpar.”

  Diasarta, realizing what was occurring, came up behind Gyalo’s shoulder. Ardashir’s hot gaze jumped to him, then back to Gyalo.

  “Have you come to harm him?”

  “How could a mortal man harm the Next Messenger?”

  “Don’t defile his name with your blaspheming tongue.”

  Gyalo said nothing. Ardashir wore the clothing of a noble: a sumptuous embroidered coat, ornate gold-tooled boots. His chin and cheeks were cleanshaven, his cropped hair faultlessly groomed, and he smelled of scented oil. But he still wore those thick, stained bandages; and above his rich attire his face was shockingly weary, his small eyes bloodshot and rimmed with red.

  “Come with me,” he said abruptly.

  “You have no authority over me.”

  “You don’t understand.” Ardashir’s expression did not change, but under it some deep emotion seemed to heave, like fire under a rock. “He is sick. Not in his body—in his soul. There is something … he will not tell me what. He speaks of you. He speaks your name.”

  “My name?” Gyalo said, disbelieving.

  “I don’t know how to help him. I’ve prayed for guidance. Now here you are. It cannot be chance. You must come.”

  Gyalo felt as if the world had suddenly drawn in its breath. He thought of his hesitation before Râvar’s house. He thought of his progress through the ravaged city. He thought of the many steps, the many choices that had brought him precisely here, precisely at this moment.

  “I will come.”

  “Say nothing before my men,” Ardashir rasped. “I’ve told no one of his … disability. They believe he is only in seclusion.”

  “I’ll keep your secret.”

  Ardashir’s burning gaze acknowledged no gratitude. He turned and raised a bandaged hand to signal the waiting Twentymen.

  “Brother,” Diasarta said softly. “Are you sure?”

  “This is why we came here, Dasa. This is how it’s meant to be.”

  Diasarta, too, searched Gyalo’s face. Then he nodded. When Gyalo stepped forward, he followed without a word.

  They returned to Râvar’s residence by much the same route Gyalo and Diasarta had taken to Temple Square. The Twentymen walked ahead, their staves held at the ready; for the most part those they encountered yielded easily, but now and then they met pilgrims who questioned or challenged, or to the Twentymen’s cry of “Make way for the First Disciple!” responded with jeers.

  There were no taunts from the faithful gathered before the gates. They pressed aside, making the sign of rata and invoking blessings. Some called questions—when would the Next Messenger return to them? When would he take his place in the palace of the Brethren?—to all of which Ardashir gave the same response: “Be patient, citizens. Be patient.”

  In the villa’s large inner courtyard, Ardashir dismissed his men. “You must leave what you carry,” he told Gyalo. “I must also have any weapons you bear. Your companion may wait here.”

  Diasarta’s face was set. “Where he goes I go.”

  “You have no place above.”

  “His place is with me,” Gyalo said.

  Ardashir’s eyes flared. But whatever necessity he followed drove him more strongly than his pride. He nodded.

  Gyalo and Diasarta unshouldered their packs, and Diasarta pulled the long knife from his sash and the short one from his boot and laid both on the floor. Ardashir searched them, quickly and efficiently. Then he led the way up the stairs.

  The clarity, the sense of rightness that had seized Gyalo in the Temple was still with him. The world spoke to his senses: the smoky tang of the air, the misty drizzle against his face, the distant drone of chanting from the pilgrims at the gate, and everywhere the stir of pattern: wood and paint and stone and tile, earth and water and the immeasurable currents of the air, all folded within the larger structure of the house, which was itself embraced by the design of its grounds, which was in turn subsumed within the conformations of Baushpar … And greater patterns still—the patterns of Arsace, of Galea, of the oceans, of the stars. With each breath, each step, those configurations converged anew, a great weaving of being and possibility contained and recontained within Gyalo’s own singular awareness. In a room above his enemy waited, more powerful than any dream of power. He was not afraid.

  The rooms on the second floor were fronted by an open gallery running round all four sides of the courtyard. Ardashir led the way to a closed door. He rapped softly, then took a key from a pocket of his coat and inserted it into the lock.

  “You lock him in?” Gyalo said.

  “I lock others out. Wait here.”

  He pushed the door a little and slipped through, closing it behind him. A few moments passed. He reemerged.

  “He will see you. I will return in a little while to fetch you.” He looked deep into Gyalo’s eyes. It was as if he had scraped back a lid over a pan of coals. “Harm him, and apostate or no, I will kill you myself.”

 
He opened the door again, pushing it wide. Gyalo and Diasarta stepped across the threshold, into the dark. The door closed behind them. The key rasped. Then there was silence.

  The air stank, an overpowering odor of spoiled food, sweat, and chamber pots. All the window screens were closed. A little daylight filtered through the fretwork, and a brazier gave off a dull red glow, but otherwise the room was unlit. Râvar was near the brazier, lying in a welter of sheets and bolsters, one bare arm hooked over his eyes. But for the piercing gold of his lifelight, Gyalo might not have realized he was there, so still was he.

  Diasarta touched Gyalo’s arm and gestured to the wall by the door, indicating that he would wait.

  Gyalo approached Râvar as he might have approached a dangerous beast, placing his feet with care, breathing shallowly against the smell. His eyes were adjusting to the dimness; he could see that the room was as Axane had described it, with no furnishing but the brazier and Râvar’s bedding and, against one wall, an open chest with clothing strewn around it. A tray lay by Râvar’s pallet, the food on it untouched. On the other side, the chamber pot sat unpleasantly near.

  Râvar, who had given no sign he was aware of Gyalo’s presence, suddenly pulled down his arm and turned his head. Gyalo halted. Râvar’s tangled hair fell over his face; all Gyalo could see was an eye, a cheek, half a mouth. For what seemed a long time the eye held his, glittering even in the uncertain light. Then Râvar rolled his body in Gyalo’s direction, gathering another bolster under his head to prop himself up a little. He appeared to be naked. His knotted hair streamed around him like waterweed. A patchy growth of beard covered his cheeks. His eyes were swollen, as if with weeping, though it might have been from the acrid atmosphere inside the room. Even from a distance Gyalo could smell his unwashed odor.

  Râvar’s lips stretched in a ghastly smile. “Not quite how you remember me, eh?”

  Gyalo was too shocked to speak. Both Axane and Ardashir, in their different ways, had told him Râvar was changed, ill. Yet in his imagination Râvar had remained unaltered: the triumphant enemy who had taunted him in the caverns, the light-wreathed being he had spied on from afar as he followed the Awakened City along the Great South Way. That was the man he had been prepared to face—not this dirty, disheveled specter, burrowed into his sheets and blankets like a sick animal in its nest.