The Awakened City

by Victoria Strauss

  At the margin of the gathering he slowed. Breathless, he passed through the broken gates. In the street the pilgrims knelt, holding one another, wailing. They chanted broken prayers. They came running from the old city, calling on the god. With the last of his strength, he sought the dark recesses of a neighboring gateway. He sank down on the paving stones, the wet of the recent rain seeping through his clothes. He felt hollow at his center, and drained, as if of blood. His pounding heart refused to slow. His palms and his bad shoulder throbbed, and his face felt like raw meat.

  Sometime later—he did not know how long—he saw a familiar green nimbus.

  “Dasa,” he called, hardly able to get the word past the chattering of his teeth. “Dasa. Over here.”

  Diasarta came running.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” He crouched in front of Gyalo. His voice was unsteady, in the way of someone trying to control overwhelming emotion. “I didn’t know what had happened to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Were you in there?”

  “Yes.”

  Diasarta pulled off his own coat and folded it around Gyalo’s shoulders. He took Gyalo’s freezing hands and chafed them between his own. “Did you see what happened?”

  “Yes. It’s gone. The house. Everything.” Somewhere, a man was chanting the same words, over and over: rata, spare us. rata, forgive us. rata, spare us. rata, forgive us. “They were throwing themselves into it. Into the fire.”

  “rata!”

  “I put it out. I told them to go home.”

  “Is he dead, then?”

  Gyalo looked down the street, where the sky above Râvar’s house was still lit by the burning trees. A pall of smoke hung overhead, darker than the cloud-mantled sky. Powerful as he was, Râvar could stand at the center of any conflagration and walk away unscathed. But in Gyalo’s mind hung the image that had come to him when he saw the red glare of burning and realized its source: Râvar, nested in his dirty sheets, weeping without noticing his tears.

  “Yes. I think he is.”

  Diasarta nodded once, sharply. “rata’s will, then.”

  “Dasa—”

  “Yes, Brother?”

  “Before this … I was thinking. I thought … he might really be the Messenger.”

  “What?”

  “I thought I saw a pattern … I thought perhaps … since I had turned away … that rata chose him instead.”

  “No.” Diasarta shook his head. He looked appalled. “Never. Never, Brother.”

  Râvar is dead. There was no pattern, just a chance assemblage of events around which Gyalo’s overburdened mind had spun a web of significance. He recognized that, or thought he did. Yet the significance, stubbornly, refused to vanish. The arc of deeds, ending in Baushpar. The destruction of the church. Among other things, Gyalo’s struggles with the matter of Messengerhood had foundered on one particular mystery: What did it mean to open the way? In Râvar’s dark trajectory he thought he had glimpsed an answer, as he never had in the passages of his own life. Though Râvar was gone, the answer remained, lodged in Gyalo’s understanding with the unassailable rightness reserved only for the most instinctual of truths. He had known that rightness at other times in his life: When, still a child, he had understood that he would vow the Way. When his shaping woke. When he knelt before the Cavern of the Blood. When he recognized his love for Axane—a love he could not follow or accept, but which, even in denial, could not be undone.

  “Dasa, I think—” He stopped. Diasarta waited, still chafing Gyalo’s hands. Some warmth was returning; his teeth had stopped chattering. “I think I’ve seen what it means to open the way.”

  Diasarta’s green-lit gaze was steady. “Then you must open it, Brother.”

  “But you don’t know what I’ve seen.”

  “You’ve seen it, Brother. That’s enough for me.”

  The certainty in Diasarta’s voice was absolute. And that simply, there it was: the choice. Not abstract, not theoretical, not something for the future. Right in front of him. Right now, this instant.

  Terror surged in him, a panic of question. What if he were wrong? What if that soul-deep sense of recognition were illusion? If he were to do it, how must it be done? Did he possess the strength—of will, of faith, of shaping? And afterward … if there were an afterward … would he know he had chosen rightly? Or was the rightness in the choosing? Must he make the choice to know?

  And if he turned away—for he knew he could turn away, as he had turned away before. If he refused to choose …

  Hours earlier, sitting in the dark, he had imagined with horror that Râvar was the consequence of his refusal, a dark Messenger chosen in his stead. All at once he saw another possibility—that there was no one else, that there had never been and never would be. That if he turned away, the choice would come again—and again, and again, and again, until at last he surrendered, yielded up his dread and his resistance, accepted a destiny that had been decreed for him and yet still must be elected, still must be willed. What if Marduspida had refused rata’s dream a seventh time? he had asked himself. Perhaps finally he knew. There would have been an eighth dream. A ninth. A hundredth. As many as were necessary.

  The world around him seemed to shudder. He felt a pressure in his chest, as if the god’s own hand were closing there.

  “Dasa.” He gasped. “What if I’m wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong, Brother.” Diasarta dropped Gyalo’s hands and gripped Gyalo’s shoulders—hard on the uninjured right, gentle on the wounded left. He looked into Gyalo’s eyes, his own eyes fierce. “I have no doubt, and never have had. No doubt at all.”

  From Râvar’s house came an earsplitting scream of rending, then a crash—one of the trees, cracking apart. A gust of flame showed briefly above the walls. A tide of sparks swept up, spiraling as the air currents seized them. Among them perhaps danced some of Râvar—turned, like Ardaxcasa, into ash.

  rata, Gyalo thought. Show me your will. Once, just once, let me know what it is you want.

  But rata would not answer. That was the point. The choice must be a true one.

  He looked into Diasarta’s face, and saw his companion’s utter certainty. He looked into himself, where understanding shone, defiant of all his doubt and question. One last time his soul rebelled; like the sparks from the ruin of Râvar’s house, the whys surged up in him, the whats and hows and maybes. Anger roared through him like a wall of flame, white-hot and futile. And then it was gone, burned out. Just that simply, he yielded. Not only in acceptance of the need, in recognition of the inevitability of the burden; but in weariness. He was tired of resisting.

  He was still afraid. But it was a different fear. Perhaps that was the most that could be expected of any choice: the exchange of one dread for another.

  He felt wetness on his scorched face. The rain had started again, fat drops pattering on the cobbles of the street. He tilted back his head and closed his eyes. The incongruity of it struck him: to make such a momentous decision in such a place, in the rain, in the dark. But Marduspida, too, had chosen Messengerhood in the dark, alone in his bed.

  At least I’m not alone.

  “Dasa.” He opened his eyes. “Come with me.”

  He had thought he would feel the difference—that there would be some sense of shift, of transformation. But as he and Diasarta climbed the hill to the Summer Gate, there was only himself, aching and profoundly weary, his chest sore from the smoke he had breathed and his skin raw from the heat he had endured, wet to the bone and frightened of what was to come. Would it always be this way? Would he ever feel holy?

  Yet he knew exactly where he must go, exactly what he must do. The rightness of it was something he could sense, an incorporeal pattern.

  Later, he remembered only flashes of that long walk. The terror in the faces of the faithful rushing down the Avenue of
Summer, drawn out of the old city by news of the blaze. The darkness of Temple Square, its makeshift habitations deserted, the pilgrims’ fires extinguished by the pouring rain. The lamplit arch of the Temple’s entrance. The echoing vacancy of the Evening City—where, either by inspiration or some buried memory, he found his way unerringly to the Courtyard of the Sun. In the pitchy corridors, he and Diasarta were their own torches; Diasarta, blind, held Gyalo’s good shoulder. That was the most vivid memory of all, the light pressure of Diasarta’s hand—his protector, his conscience, his only follower. His friend.

  The gates to the Courtyard of the Sun were barred from the inside. Gyalo slipped his will through the hair-thin space where the portals lay together and sliced the bar in two. The crash as the two halves fell was only a little louder than the crack of his shaping. They pushed the gates open and set out across the long tongue of the walkway, the brass-seamed flagstones below gleaming faintly with the rain, the rata-images huge shadows against a sky only a little less black. Ahead, the Pavilion of the Sun rose like an obsidian mountain, its gilded pillars the vaguest shimmer across its front.

  They mounted the stairs. On the wide landing at the top, Gyalo paused. The rain sluiced down. He was so cold he could not feel his fingers or his feet. Between the dim shafts of the pillars, the Pavilion’s interior was as dark as the inside of closed eyelids—except for a single point at the back, where a paper lantern rested on the floor, throwing around itself a soft circle of illumination. Nearby, in the Blood Bearer’s golden chair, someone sat—a big man, bulky with muscle, his lifelight crimson as new blood. His shaven head was bowed upon his hand. His face was hidden.

  Gyalo had expected to find the Pavilion empty. But he felt the rightness of the man’s presence, like the sound of a bell only he could hear. He started forward again, Diasarta at his shoulder. The sound of the rain receded.

  “Who’s there?” The Blood Bearer lifted his head, squinting at the darkness.

  Gyalo reached the limit of the lanternlight, stepped into it. For a long moment the Bearer looked at him. The Blood throbbed on his breast. His chair shone, ancient wood under new gilding. At his back, where the jeweled sun-mural should have glittered, was a jagged hole.

  “You,” he said.

  “Yes,” Gyalo agreed.

  The Bearer’s gaze took in Gyalo’s burned face and dripping clothes, slipped to Diasarta at his back, returned.

  “Perhaps I should be surprised,” he said. “I find that I am not.”

  “Râvar is dead.”

  The Bearer blinked. “How?”

  “He burned.”

  The Bearer’s eyes fell. “rata forgive us.”

  “How many of you are still here?”

  “Ten Brethren. Our servants and aides. A few hundred Tapati.” His gaze came up again, somber. “Have you come to judge us?”

  Gyalo shook his head. “Only rata can judge.”

  “We did not all have the same reasons for staying. Baushtas and Artavâdhi and Vivaniya and Karuva and Gaumârata waited because they believed. Haminâser wanted to believe, and Idrakara stayed because Haminâser did. The two little ones had no choice; it was their guardians’ will that kept them. And I—I stayed because I could not find a way to choose. Because I feared to choose wrongly. I thought that if I saw him, I would know. I thought my heart would speak to me.” The Bearer paused. “He came to us, clad in light, more beautiful than any human man should be. He was awesome in his glory and his anger. I believed we deserved that anger—that we deserved his judgment. I was prepared to receive it. But I looked at him, and my heart said nothing. Nothing.”

  “Do the others understand?”

  “Idrakara. Haminâser. The rest still wait for his return. They fast, they meditate, they seek to call him with their spirits, as once we summoned rata to bless our Covenant.” He lifted one big hand, closed it round the cage of golden wire that held the Blood. “Instead you have come. I did not know until this moment that it would be you. But now it’s as if I’ve always known.”

  “You must leave Baushpar,” Gyalo said.

  “Leave Baushpar?”

  “And never come back. rata has risen. His old Way, which was made for the time of his slumber, is no longer the true Way. It is finished, and so is your rule. Travel anywhere you wish, settle anywhere you choose. But not together. The Brethren must disperse. For twelve centuries the Sons and Daughters have never been apart, but you must await the time of rata’s return alone. The lives you live now must be the last in which you know yourselves.”

  The Bearer’s broad face tightened, as if with pain. “I don’t know if I can make my spirit-siblings obey such a decree.”

  “You must.” With part of himself Gyalo stood apart, marveling. To speak such words! To give such orders! Yet the rightness was overwhelming, the awareness of design—the same vision he had so briefly achieved on his way to Râvar’s room, now fully fledged and present in him.

  “What will become of the holy city?” the Bearer asked.

  “It will cease to be holy. Perhaps it will fall to ruin. Perhaps it will survive. But it will not hold the Brethren. It will not hold the church. The church’s age is done. A new age dawns.”

  The Bearer caught his breath. “Is there no alternative?”

  “None.”

  “So this is what it means to open the way.”

  “Yes.”

  One word. A single syllable. A puff of breath. Yet as Gyalo said it the whole of existence seemed to split, all reality cracking open like an egg, a hot white flash of infinite totality. It was gone at once, too huge to hold, leaving behind only the recognition of profundity and the core-deep ache of perception forced beyond its limits. But Gyalo knew, like a seal upon his soul, that the god, at last, had answered him.

  Perhaps the Bearer sensed some echo of this. There was a look of wonder on his face. “We will obey,” he said.

  “Take the rest of this night and the day to prepare. By sunset the Evening City must be empty. By sunset, you must be gone.”

  “I understand.”

  The Bearer got to his feet. He put his hands to his neck, lifted over his head the thick links of his necklace. The Blood swung from it, a tiny captive sun.

  “This was my father’s,” he said. “Three times, across the centuries, it has been mine. Now it is yours, you who come at the end of things.”

  He stepped from the dais. Gyalo had never stood before him face-to-face; always he had been at a distance, or on his knees, looking up from below. He was surprised to discover that the Bearer, who seemed such a massive man, was no taller than he. The Bearer raised the necklace and slipped it over Gyalo’s head, settling it on Gyalo’s shoulders. It was heavier than Gyalo expected, warm with the Bearer’s body heat. Abruptly and vividly, he recalled the dream that had come to him in Ninyâser, the night Axane first confessed her own Dreams: Teispas, offering him his lost simulacrum, ordering him to take it.

  “I pray each day,” the Bearer said, “that we may be forgiven for our blindness.”

  “You must teach your spirit-siblings to do the same. rata hears us now. Prayer is possible.”

  The Bearer nodded. Turning, he moved into the darkness. The supple crimson of his aura shimmered. There was the sound of an opening door; it closed, and he was gone.

  Gyalo turned toward Diasarta, feeling the weight of the Blood around his neck. The ex-soldier sank to his knees, his scarred face slack with awe.

  “Messenger,” he whispered.

  Gyalo looked down at him. “You know now what it means to open the way. Are you still willing to follow me?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Diasarta made the god’s sign. “Always, I will follow you.”

  His face, his voice, held dread and joy.

  “Listen, Dasa. The rain has stopped.”

  Gyalo crossed to the Pavilion’s front. The Courtyard shone with
water. The clouds had begun to pull apart, revealing pinpoint stars. He was aware of his wet clothes, of the chill in his body—but distantly, as if those sensations did not truly belong to him. At the bottom of his vision the Blood pulsed fire. He lifted the lattice that contained it—examining the crystal’s shuddering heart of flame, so like and yet not like the light of life; reading the patterns of the gold, which had been old when it was made into this ancient necklace. For so long he had begged the god in vain for signs; now, at last, they had been given—this necklace. The god’s voice, still echoing at the root of perception. He was grateful for these gifts. Part of him, the same part that had marveled at his own stern words, felt an almost suffocating wonder at receiving them. Yet with much more of himself, he was aware that he no longer sought such confirmation. He no longer needed it.

  Was this holiness?

  “Brother.” Diasarta had come to stand beside him. “What will happen at sunset?”

  Gyalo set the Blood back on his chest—where by chance it rested exactly above Axane’s bracelet, on its cord around his neck. “I’ll destroy the Pavilion of the Sun, and pull down the images and the walkway and the walls of the Court. This is the center of the Brethren’s power, the heart of the church. No one must be able to return here. And then—”

  “Then?”

  “Then I shall see.”

  The destruction of the Courtyard was necessary, but it was not enough. Baushpar itself must be marked—the Evening City, the Temple, the streets and monasteries and shrines. Râvar could have destroyed Baushpar in a moment, in a single act of will. Even if Gyalo had been capable of such a thing, he would not have done it, for the city was still full of people who must be made to leave. How much was he capable of? He knew what he had done in the past; beyond that he had no idea. But he would accomplish it. He had no doubt.