Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  The boats nearby were all pleasure craft, wide and flat-bottomed, guided by poles fore and aft, the passengers protected from the sun by the awnings. Watching the nearest glide by, Maskelle was struck by a memory with almost the tangibility of a vision: a long-ago afternoon on one of those boats, drifting in the heat of the sun down the canal that led past the palace complex to the western baray, the prow filled with flowers and the breeze playing through the bells. Annoyed, she shook her head, banishing the image.

  The wagon rolled off the causeway and onto the plaza in front of the terraces. It was even more crowded with other wagons, milling people, oxen, horses. Old Mali made worried grumbling noises.

  "We need to get the wagons out of here," Rian said, standing up on the perch to get a better vantage point.

  Maskelle dragged herself out of the past and said, "That way." There was a walled post house to the far right of the plaza, a huge one with room for dozens of wagons. They made their way to its gate without running over anyone and Maskelle climbed down to do the bargaining. Rastim hovered worriedly at her elbow while she spoke to the attendant at the gate.

  "We can only afford one night," he said after she had finished and handed over a couple of coins to secure their entrance.

  "We'll only need one night," she told him, and thought, one way or the other.

  As large as it was, the post compound was still crowded. Wagons of all shapes and sizes, from a light two-wheeled peddler's cart to huge two-storied wheeled houses with shuttered windows and roof platforms crowded the enclosure and oxen, onagers, and horses were tethered everywhere. The noise of the animals combined with the babble of voices speaking in dozens of languages to make a bewildering din. Rian seemed to take it in stride, though with him it was hard to tell. The Ariaden were in a state of bewildered excitement; the city was everything that had been promised and the variety of the people could only mean that some of them might want to see theater. Maskelle's presence as an apparent travelling nun gained them polite attention from the attendants, and with a little help from them they found a spot to draw the wagons up.

  The others ran around setting up camp and Maskelle stepped back out of the way, looking toward the Marai's towers, easily visible over the wall of the compound. Better get it over with, she thought sourly. Now that she was here, her nerves were making her stomach jump. The attendants were already bringing fodder for the oxen, and Rian and Firac were trying to figure out the system that filled the troughs with water from the channels crossing the compound. She caught Rastim's arm as he bustled past, and said, "I'm going to the Marai."

  "Oh. To pray?" he asked, looking up at her, nonplussed. "You could call it that." One of her braids chose that moment to fall in a lank length over her face. She pushed it back, thinking sourly, You can be sure no one will recognize you. "I won't be gone long." She turned away.

  "Ah, well, take care!" he called after her.

  She hadn't reached the gate of the compound when she realized that the person behind her was not another traveller on his way out. Rian was following her.

  She said, "I didn't ask you to come with me."

  "I know that."

  She stopped and faced him, giving him the look that had frozen the blood of lower-ranking priests and made her the terror of the Court, even before she had given them real reasons to fear her. She said, carefully, "I don't want company."

  He folded his arms and gave her a look right back, the expression of someone long accustomed to the powerful and who had become somewhat bored by their idiosyncrasies. He said, "After last night I'm not going to be easy to convince."

  Maskelle started to make a sharp reply, but took a deep breath instead. Well, that's a point. "None of this is going to be easy. We're here now. There will be plenty of people needing to hire guardsmen. You don't have to throw in your lot with me."

  He looked away, nothing but annoyance in his face. "Are you done?"

  Maskelle knew that in the Sintane this was probably all some terrible insult, but she didn't care. She said, "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," he said impatiently. "Are we going?"

  "Yes, yes. Ancestors help me," Maskelle snapped, "we're going."

  They left the compound. She had chosen the road and this gate because it would bring them into the city at the point most convenient for reaching the Marai; she had gauged the day as well, knowing the Celestial One would be spending this phase of the moon in the Marai for the Hundred Year Rite. But as she crossed the plaza toward the second set of inner gates, she found herself wishing that the Celestial One was in the Baran Dir and she still had half the city to cross.

  There were quicker ways, but she found herself lingering in the market that had sprung up at the inner gates. It was a small affair of carts and awnings, here to take advantage of the travellers entering the city, but even so it boasted bolts of colored silks and cottons, incense and spices and trade goods from provinces half the world away. There was food too—fruit, sweet confections, shellfish, and roast pork with honey, kept warm over braisers set up on the paving stones of the plaza, the odors thick in the air. She found her steps slowing almost involuntarily.

  Rian was looking at a display of metalwork, wary and watchful, though no one in the cosmopolitan crowd seemed to have more than a second glance for a Sitanese swordsman. She looked at the trader's wares, spread out on woven mats under an awning. Her eyes passed over the copper cooking pots and fancy knives and on to the goldsmith's work, beads, rings, and ear and belt ornaments.

  She knelt down for a closer look. Much of it was Sitanese, little figures of stags and mountain panthers, animals strange to the heart of the Empire, and winged figures and sea beasts and other creatures from foreign myths. She nudged an ear stud out of the glittering array. It was small, exactingly shaped into a hunting cat's head. She remembered that the Sitanese believed that decorated objects contained all the powers of the subjects represented. "How much?"

  The trader, a wizened old man with very bad teeth, seated cross-legged on the mat, bowed his head to her and said, "For the nun, two five-foil pieces, no more."

  "That's far too much." She had no idea of the proper price of gold or any other precious metal or stone; when she had last lived here, purchasing such things had been the province of servants. But the time on the road had taught her how to bargain. She flicked another ear stud, a plain gold bead, out of the pile. "For the nun, both these at one five-foil piece, no more." It was the most she could afford.

  He grinned and bowed to her again. "My apologies, I thought you a travelling nun, lady, newly come to the city."

  Maskelle grinned back, feeling that luck, and possibly the Ancestors, were with her just this once. "I'm travelling, but I've come—" home "—back." She handed over the coin.

  Getting to her feet, she found Rian watching the crowd. She handed him the ear studs. "I noticed you were missing some."

  He stared at her like she had suddenly grown another head, or a third eye. "Don't look at me like that," she said, pushing on through the crowd.

  She came out of the forest of awnings near the bridge across the Marai's moat and started up the wide flight of stone stairs to the causeway. From the top the view of the temple was wonderful, the multiple levels of pillared galleries clearly definable beneath the five stepped domes. More of the city was visible from this angle, a sight that would have probably made Rastim swoon. Small tile-roofed wooden buildings standing on pilings filled the gaps between the causeways and bridges and the bright silver surfaces of canals. Green belts of foliage and tamed plots of jungle wove in and out among the major temples, which towered above the other structures, some atop large platforms or stepped pyramids, some with graceful domed pinnacles. She could see the towers of the Baran Dir from here, though at this distance the details of the carving were lost. The small market had whetted her appetite for the city and she had the strong urge to postpone the visit to the Celestial One and go over to the far side of the eastern baray, where there were markets and pl
easure gardens and every other imaginable form of entertainment. Then she remembered she had only one or two coins left, and of all the things she needed from the Celestial One, a loan was not the least. She let out her breath and started across the bridge toward the Marai. She glanced back to see if Rian was still following her. He was. He had also stopped to put on the ear studs and the gold looked good against his skin.

  The entrance to the Marai was very near and Maskelle was forced to admit that the disturbance in her stomach was pure nerves and not a desire for dinner sparked by the odors of the market. The Temple of the Sare had reacted to her presence, but this was the Marai, one of the two pivotal temples in the Kushor-At and the Celestial Empire. Surely in a place teeming with life, at the center of so many lines of earthly power, she would go unnoticed.

  The broad bridge crossed the Marai's moat, a span of almost four hundred feet. It was a common spot for people to gather on their way to or from the temple, and they passed priests and temple servants or workers, and a few groups of wealthy nobles dressed in silk robes and shading themselves with parchment parasols. Back against the balustrades carved into the forms of guardian snake spirits there were even a few peddlers, selling plaques with temple dancers drawn on them for foreign visitors. They had passed the center point, where stairs watched over by stone lions led down to the water on each side, and were almost to the gate in the outer wall when Rian said, "Are they going to just let us in?"

  "Of course. The temples are open to everyone; what would be the point, otherwise?" She stopped at the bottom of the steps that led up to the first gate and bowed a greeting to the blue- robed doorkeeper priest, who returned the bow and went back to his discussion with two tonsured students. From the doorkeeper's mildly preoccupied expression, she doubted he recognized her, not unless he was a better actor than Rastim. Maskelle knew someone would recognize her soon enough, but she wanted it to be after she had seen the Celestial One. She wanted this quiet reacquaintance with the Marai first, before she dealt with its people.

  Through the gate was the Marai's outer court. The temple looked confusing from any distance, but the layout was really very simple: a series of squares, one inside the other. The innermost square had the giant mountain towers at its four corners and in the center. The outer court was as wide as the moat they had just crossed, but covered with soft green grass, still wet from the last rain so that Maskelle could feel the damp heat rising from it. A walkway crossed it, elevated some twenty feet above the ground, dividing the lunar court on the left from the solar on the right, and leading between the first two library buildings and the two reflecting pools, then reaching a terrace that bordered the outer pillared gallery. The court was mostly empty at this time of day, though she could see a few Koshans of different ranks scattered about in the shade of the library porticos, giving lessons to acolytes and whoever else wanted to listen.

  She reached the terrace and the shade of the tall pillars of the gallery and paused for a moment. The inner court just beyond was smaller, paved with white stone. Several sets of stairs in the walkway that crossed it led them higher and higher above ground level. There were a great many steps; to keep its bond with the Infinite, the temple's resemblance to the Mountain had to be more than symbolic.

  Rian was uncharacteristically silent. Maskelle started across the walkway, feeling the sun burn into the back of her neck. To distract herself, she asked him, "Are priests so feared in the Sintane?"

  He glanced at her. "They aren't feared. But they're powerful and they keep their secrets."

  "Secrets?" They reached the flight of steps up to the second gallery. So far so good, Maskelle thought. Her awareness of the temple was growing more intense. She could sense the diminishing of the solstice alignment with the end gateways, the growing nearness of the equinox alignment with the great domed tower in the center. "What secrets?"

  "Secrets about the sanctuaries. If too many people saw the inside of one, they might start to realize there's nothing there worth paying tribute coin to."

  They had started up the last flight of steps and the words of the meditation ring were passing through Maskelle's mind, drilled there by years of habit. There was a different meditation for each step in every temple. It was part of the Celestial One's duties to complete a meditation ring in every temple in the city, and the Marai was always done during the Year Rites. She said, "Why should that be a surprise? There's nothing in the Marai, or any of the other temples. Nothing of note, anyway. People, dust, bats, crickets, mosquitoes. The temples are just symbols of the different faces of the Infinite. It makes more sense to look at them from the outside than in. In fact, the further away you are, the easier the Infinite is to understand."

  Rian made a noncommittal noise. Maskelle smiled to herself. She knew his wits were too lively for him not to realize the Koshan were different, but he wanted more proof first, and behaving as the ultimate skeptic was probably a good way to elicit information. It was eliciting information from her. She asked, "Does no one believe in the priests, then?"

  "No one with any sense," Rian said, his voice dry.

  She laughed, surprising herself. They reached the top of the steps and the second pillared gallery. A breeze swept a little dust past the pillars and she could hear a sistrum somewhere inside. There was a priestess, a young one, coming along the gallery, and when they had passed the ritual of bows, Maskelle asked where the Celestial One was.

  The young woman gestured back toward the first solar tower, the one that sat in the upper right-hand corner of the square. "He's on the Sky Bridge, Sister."

  Maskelle thanked her and the priestess passed on, managing to be too serene and reserved to glance curiously at Rian, but only just. They came to the end of the gallery and Maskelle took a deep breath and stepped into the first solar tower.

  Carvings of mountain spirits spiraled up the inside of the dome, which was honeycombed with narrow bridges and balconies. It was thankfully dark, daylight coming in only through the entrances at the different levels, and empty.

  Empty of everything. The past, the future, the Infinite, like a hollow shell. Maskelle hesitated, really fearful for the first time in years. If such a powerful temple as the Marai was dead to her...

  Up on one of the narrow walkways a shadow passed. The shape was that of an older priest, a common enough sight in the temple, but his sandals made no sound on the stone. Maskelle breathed out in relief. She could feel the stirring of life in the Marai now, its link to the Infinite.

  She moved further into the tower. A passage led off from the opposite wall, becoming an open gallery washed in sunlight as it left the dome. Another shadow crossed it as she watched, this one a woman, dressed in an elaborate style of court dress a few decades out of date.

  She glanced back at Rian. He was standing in the doorway, looking around curiously. He hadn't seen the shadows; to see them one had to be fairly well along on the path of understanding the Infinite. She crossed the mosaiced floor to one of the interior spiral stairs, saying, "The parts of the temple are named after the corresponding parts of the Mountain. Sky Bridge is a pass on the eastern side."

  He followed her up the stairs. "Is this a real mountain or a Koshan mountain?"

  Maskelle smiled. "A real mountain, much further west. It's the symbol of power for the spirits of earth and stone."

  The stairs wound upward to an open gallery facing the east and looking out over the outer court, the outer gallery and the moat. She stopped to stand against the railing, the warm wind tearing at her braids. The view was magnificent. The spires of Alamein Kitar, impossibly light and insubstantial, more like a dream or vision than solid stone. Arkad, with its green copper dome. The towers of the Baran Dir, the second hub of the city, with the dark waters of the western baray behind it.

  Rian stepped up beside her. She thought he was looking at the Baran Dir, which was always what caught the attention of those newly come to Duvalpore. It was a forest of massive towers, larger than the Marai, all surmounted by
carved stone faces, so large they were visible even at this distance. The Baran Dir was a symbolic map of the heartland of the Empire, with each tower representing a temple or a Koshan hospital. But he said, "I didn't realize how big it was."

  He had been looking at the sprawl of the buildings, canals, gardens, causeways and tree-lined avenues that seemed to stretch to the horizon. She said, "It's been a city for a long time. Our records go back over seven hundred years, when the irrigation canals were first built, but there were people living here even before then. The records of the Rite go back longer." She glanced at him. "Why did you decide to come here?"

  He shook his head. "When I ran this was the only way I could go, and I had to get far enough away that they wouldn't bother to follow me. Then there wasn't much point in not going on."

  "Now I know why you wanted to come with me. You're almost as rootless as I am." She looked at the Baran Dir, the shadows crossing the stone faces. "You know we might be leaving here today with an angry mob at our heels."

  "Mobs are easy to get away from. No organization." Rian leaned back against the pillar and studied her thoughtfully.

  "I suppose attempts on the Throne happen more often in the Sintane?"

  "The Holder Lord executed two brothers, a sister, and a cousin for trying to take the Markand Hold, just in the time I was there, and that was a slow year."

  "I keep forgetting what savages you all are over there." Rian looked down at the city again, but a smile tugged at his lips.

  Maskelle let out her breath and looked again at the serene faces of the Baran Dir. So little had changed. That’s what I’m afraid of she thought again. She pushed away from the railing. "Let's get this over with."

  She turned back into the tower and followed the stairs all the way up to the top of the dome. The round chamber had windows looking out over the city in every direction. Framed in one was the Illsat Sidar, the only Temple of the Adversary within the city. Caught by the image, she didn't see the ancient little man, seated cross-legged on the far side of the room just below the window facing the western baray, until he turned his head.