Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  A vote? Maskelle thought, bemused. The Ariaden were a strange people. "He died."

  Rastim and Rian both stared at her. "Died?" Rastim repeated.

  "To become the Celestial One you have to become so close to the Infinite, so at one with it, that you can merge with it and return at will. One morning he died, and later when they were preparing him for his funeral, he sat up and asked for tea." She smiled wryly. "There are probably at least one or two other Koshans in the city who can do it and some very advanced penitents hiding out in the jungle. They just aren't careless enough to let someone see them and force them to take on the duties of Celestial One."

  She could feel Rian and Rastim exchanging a look behind her back, their enmity temporarily forgotten. Then Rian asked, "How do you become Voice of the Adversary?"

  Rastim stirred uneasily, nervous of what her answer might be. Maskelle said only, "That's a long story."

  Abandoning the death issue and returning to the earlier topic of conversation, Rastim said slowly, "So, the chief priest stays in the city?"

  "Always in the city, usually in one of the temples. It's easier for him to travel on the canals than on the streets."

  After a moment, Rian said, "You're part of that too, aren't you? The temples and the boundaries. Is it the same for you, when you leave it?"

  The question was too perceptive by far. She ran a hand through his hair as a poor attempt at distraction and said, "Not anymore."

  Rian was still watching her, brows drawn together. Rastim said worriedly, "Then why is he here?"

  Maskelle saw the gates of the compound opening again, and her eyes narrowed. "That's an easier question. Look." She nodded toward them.

  There were three more men on horseback there, dressed in the lacquered iron breastplates and crested helmets of the Palace Guard. They saw the Celestial One's palanquin and the temple guards and stopped in the gate. One of them leaned down to question the compound's attendant, who shrugged elaborately. One of the temple guards spotted them and turned his horse toward them, so the interlopers would be sure to know they had been noticed.

  "Are they here to arrest us?" Rastim asked nervously.

  Maskelle shook her head. "They can't. Not unless they catch us stealing or killing someone. I imagine they were sent to ask us—me—politely to leave."

  After a moment, the Palace Guards turned their mounts and left, the attendant swinging the gate closed behind them. Maskelle said, "The Celestial One never travels in state. He came here like this so he could be seen here. To make it plain to certain people that I—we—have his protection."

  Rian was still looking grimly toward the gate. "Whoever sent them won't go against the Celestial One?" He looked at her again. "Not even for something they want very badly?"

  Maskelle started to reply, and for an instant thought she heard the whisper of the Ancestors across the outer edge of her consciousness. She hesitated, but if they had really spoken to her, their message had passed too swiftly for her to understand. She said, "No. No, they wouldn't. Not for any reason." Her mouth quirked at the irony of it, but she told herself it was surely true. "Not even for me."

  ***

  After the play, the audience hurried back to their wagons through the rain that now fell more lightly but from a steadily darkening sky. The Celestial One stayed planted on his mat, looking around at his hosts with a beneficent smile. Their purpose accomplished, he sent away the temple guards and the priests, with instructions to bring the palanquin back in time to return him to the Marai for the next meditation ring. When the Ariaden realized that the old man meant to spend the rest of the evening with them, they panicked. Rastim, quietly hysterical, practically dragged Maskelle behind his wagon to ask what they could possibly serve their guest for dinner.

  "The same thing Old Mali was planning on serving everyone else. Oh, I meant to tell you, don't buy anything from the post house; there's a market right across—"

  "We found the market! But he's a—A—" The little man gestured helplessly, speechless for once.

  "The Koshans are ascetics, Rastim. And he's over a hundred years old, there's not much he can eat anymore. Some melon or taro will do just fine."

  Rastim calmed slightly, peering cautiously around the wagon to where the old man sat. Killia's daughter, ordinarily wary of strangers, crouched next to him showing off her wooden dolls. The Celestial One was studying them with grave attention and the little girl looked about to climb into his lap. Rastim said, "The highest personage who ever came to our theater in Ariad was the Protector of Orad-dell."

  "All right." Maskelle had never understood the Ariad's hierarchy. "It's a good thing the Celestial One came tonight, anyway, whatever the reason. I need to ask him for money."

  Rastim stared at her, aghast.

  It took some time for the compound to settle down after all the excitement, but eventually the other inhabitants retired to their own wagons and makeshift shelters, and smoke from braziers and cooking fires mingled with the rain and the mist. The Ariaden hauled out all their mats and some rugs to cover the muddy ground around the fire, and the Celestial One sat down to dinner with them. Old Mali had been to the market, and relatively fresh melon and some papaws were added to the usual baked taro and rice. As Maskelle had predicted, the Celestial One found nothing unusual in the plainness of the fare and ate very little of anything.

  Maskelle finally managed to interpret Rastim's winking and brow-furrowing and realized he wanted her to bring up the subject of Gisar. Obligingly, she turned to the Celestial One and said, "My friends have a little problem. One of their puppets is under a curse."

  "Ah." The old man nodded, as if this was a problem commonly brought to his attention.

  "In Corvalent, by a magister named Acavir."

  "Corvalent," the Celestial One said, in a tone of mild exasperation. "They are very unwise in their use of power, in Corvalent."

  "And no sense of humor," Gardick muttered, from over by one of the wagons.

  "It was very active before we arrived in the city." Maskelle shrugged. "One lunar cycle in the outer gallery of the Marai, while you're present for the Rite, should take care of it." The Ariaden were all leaning forward in breathless suspense.

  The Celestial One nodded. "Bring it tomorrow and I will have it placed there." There were some gasps of excitement and Rastim buried his face in his hands in pure relief. The Celestial One added, "You will do me the honor of coming to a temple guesthouse tonight."

  All the Ariaden now looked at Maskelle. Rian, sitting at the edge of the firelight, shifted uneasily.

  Maskelle eyed him thoughtfully. She said, "All of us?"

  "Of course."

  There was a stirring among the Ariaden, mixed alarm and curiosity. Rastim rolled his eyes with weary resignation. Maskelle shook her head. "We've been travelling all day and we're not going to move again tonight. We'll come to the guesthouse, but tomorrow."

  The Celestial One raised his gray brows, frowning slightly. "Tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow." They eyed each other a moment, then the Celestial One sighed. "Very well. But I will leave some of the guards here, to make sure you are undisturbed."

  Maskelle couldn't tell what Rian's reaction was from her place near the fire, but she would bet that he wasn't happy. She said, "You think there's that much danger?"

  "Perhaps, perhaps not." The old man gestured impatiently. "This is too important. I don't want any...unresolved situations from the past to interrupt the progress of the Year Rite."

  Considering how the Year Rite is progressing, interrupting it could be the best thing, Maskelle thought grimly. "All right."

  Later that night, the palanquin and its attendants returned for the Celestial One. The priests departed with it, but the temple guards remained, one in the shelter near the post house gate and five others scattered through the Ariaden's encampment. Rastim pulled Maskelle aside and asked anxiously, "What is this place we're going to?"

  "A temple guesthouse. They're for Koshans trav
elling in from the provinces. Or anyone who comes to speak to the Celestial One and doesn't have anywhere else to stay." Rastim still looked worried. It finally dawned on Maskelle why. "They won't expect us to pay for the use of it."

  "Oh, that's all right then." Rastim looked relieved. "Can we give performances there?"

  "Probably. The court should be big enough."

  Rastim returned to the others to take them the good news, and Maskelle retired into her wagon to let them talk it out amongst themselves.

  The camp settled down gradually. After a time the wagon board trembled and creaked and Rian hauled open a shutter and climbed in, muttering under his breath.

  Maskelle steadied the swinging cage lamp. She was sitting on the faded blankets covering the bunk and had shed her wet clothes, wrapping herself in the last dry robe she had. It was from Meidun, neither white nor Koshan blue, but red with black embroidery on the collar and cuffs. The night had grown cooler as the rain grew harder, and she was glad for the robe's warmth. She asked, "What were you doing out there?"

  "I was making sure they'd let us leave," he said. He sprawled on the floor of the wagon, dripping muddy water onto the worn boards.

  "They're here to protect us," Maskelle said earnestly, though she couldn't quite keep her lips from twitching with amusement.

  Rian consulted the ceiling for a moment, apparently asking it for patience.

  "They will keep out any uninvited guests," she pointed out more reasonably.

  He sat back on his hands, looking sour.

  She eyed him thoughtfully. "You're getting mud everywhere."

  "There is already mud everywhere. There is nowhere, from the Rijan Pillars to the Gulf of Mais, that is not covered with mud."

  "There's no mud in this bed, and there's not going to be."

  That worked.

  Later, when Rian's clothes were a damp pile on the floor and he was stretched out next to her in the narrow bunk, she stroked his back and came to terms with the fact that she was not going to send him away. It was selfish of her, perhaps. Not perhaps. Acknowledging one's faults was an important step to the acceptance of wisdom, but she seemed to have stalled at that point instead of going on to do something about them. She asked, "Can you read?"

  "Read what?" His head was buried against her neck and his voice was muffled.

  "Anything. Anrin, maybe?" It was the written form of Kushorit, the everyday language of the Celestial Empire which just about everyone but the half-wild people of the deep forest tribes learned to read and write, either from their village priests or the travelling penitents. The outer provinces had their own written scripts, but she knew that few outside the noble or religious classes there had the skill.

  "What's that?"

  "You'll have to learn it." If they stayed long in Duvalpore, and it looked as if they would, he would need to know. You’re being overconfident again, a warning voice whispered.

  Rian groaned and nuzzled her neck, apparently in an attempt to distract her.

  "Reading is a skill required of personal guards here." His muffled snort was eloquently doubtful, but he didn't argue with her.

  She asked, "So what is Taprot in the Sintane?"

  He finally stirred enough to lift his head. His hair was tousled and his eyes wicked. He said, "It's the patron of justice, of catching thieves, punishing murderers."

  She ruffled his hair. That is...oddly coincidental. The Koshan Order taught that there were no coincidences. The Adversary and the other Ancestors put the pieces on the board, but they didn't give away the game.

  Rian sat up on his elbow, watching her thoughtfully. "Tell me how you got to be Voice of the Adversary."

  "That was a very long time ago," she said forbiddingly. He settled in more comfortably, apparently willing to wait however long it took for her to bring herself to tell the story. She sighed and gave in. "When I was a girl I lived in Rashet, a village some miles west of here. No one knew at the time, but a cult was growing in the area, centered around a man-witch who had learned dark magic from somewhere to the east. He had a galdani—"

  "What's that?"

  "A spirit of the Infinite that has become polluted and crossed back into our world. He was—"

  "A demon."

  "All right, a demon," she agreed, pulling at the blanket and shifting around in annoyance. "The witch was keeping it by sending his followers out to attack travellers on the Eastern Road and anyone else who was out after dark. It fed on hearts and kidneys." The memory was unexpectedly fresh; her first experience with violent death. She shook her head and went on. "No one knew why this was happening. There were just all these mutilated bodies found in the ditches and the rice fields. The governor had called for extra troops to patrol, but it took time to get them and people were starting to panic. Then the Adversary spoke to me for the first time."

  Rian was silent a moment, watching her. "What did he tell you?"

  She smiled. "He doesn't always speak in words. It's difficult to explain, exactly. And you have to remember, he's not really a 'he.' He's a spirit, a force. Spirits don't have language, they can't speak like we do, they don't even think like we do. He showed me the witch and the galdani, and what needed to happen for the galdani to die. I went there, and I made those things happen." She lay back and looked at the wagon's ceiling, the candle flame staining the hanging puppets with light and shadow. "I was very lucky that first time. Or maybe it wasn't luck. In Duvalpore, the old Voice of the Adversary had died. I didn't know that, either. I didn't know anything. But in searching for the new Voice, the Ancestors sent the Celestial One and the other priests to Rashet, and there they found me. And a lot of dead cultists."

  Rian drew his fingers through her tumbled braids. "That's how the Voice of the Adversary is chosen? The old one dies, and the Adversary picks a new one?"

  "Yes. We all agreed later that it would have been better to choose a Koshan who had come up through the ranks in the ordinary way. When I did my service as a penitent, I was not exactly in a humble frame of mind."

  "But what—" Rian started to say.

  "No more questions." Talking about it had brought everything back to her, more vividly than she had thought possible. She leaned forward and stopped his mouth with hers, and for once he obeyed her and proceeded to distract her from any serious thoughts.

  ***

  Another priest came early the next morning, waiting in the center of their camp with a couple of acolytes as attendants. The Ariaden had never been good at getting an early start, being more used to giving performances in the evening and travelling through the afternoon. After long association with them, Maskelle was starting to lose the trick of it herself. She found it easier to stay up for days on end than to rise early after a night's sleep.

  The rain had let up, as it often did in the mornings of this season, and the Ariaden staggered around packing the oilcloth and bundling their other belongings into the wagons. The priest, an old man who had a sixth level rank by his scalp markings and must be accustomed to the Celestial One's more unusual orders, watched them calmly.

  The guesthouse was not far and the streets not very crowded this early in the morning, so they managed to move the wagons with only a little difficulty. The temple guards were dismissed, leaving them escorted only by the aging priest. He walked beside Maskelle's wagon to show them the way, scandalizing the Ariaden and startling Rian. When they turned into the wide tree-shaded street lined with large houses behind wooden palisades, Rastim, who was riding up with Maskelle, muttered that they must have taken the wrong way.

  The priest stopped to open the gate of a house directly behind the Marai, the wooden palisade that surrounded the house backing up against the canal that enclosed the temple. Maskelle saw Rian eyeing that palisade, and knew he was noting the fact that it was meant for privacy and to keep out casual thieves; any healthy adult could easily scale it. Over the wall they could see the house was two stories, a veranda running along the upper level shaded by the high-peaked roof and
the tall trees in the court. The street was lined with similar houses, the homes of wealthy tradesmen and city or court officials.

  The gate opened on a courtyard of packed dirt, shaded and to some extent protected from the rain by the broad leaves of the trees. An open area in the back had space to park the wagons and a pen and roofed enclosure for the oxen, as well as a gate that opened out to the canal to what was probably the house's private water stairs. A wooden shelter to one side covered the stone oven and firepit of the outdoor kitchen.

  Maskelle climbed down from the wagon and stretched, letting the priest have the job of persuading the Ariaden that this was the place they were supposed to be and that it was all right to put their wagons in the back area and to feed their oxen on the bundled fodder stored in the roofed pen. She walked up the path of paving stones that led to the house.

  Thick pillars supported the upper part and divided the lower into pantry, storage, and bathing rooms. She climbed the staircase that led up to the veranda on the upper floor. The mats that hung between the pillars to shield the veranda from rain and sun had been rolled up, probably recently since the interior still smelled a little musty.

  There was a large main room for eating and socializing, then a number of smaller sleeping rooms to accommodate large groups or families. The appointments were those of a fine house, the carving on the doorframes and lintels precise and skilled, the colors in the lacquered wall paintings soothing and delicate. The subjects were all domestic, appropriate for any taste: elegant gardens, beautifully garbed ladies weaving cloth, children playing in courtyards, servants working in well-appointed kitchens, boats on the canals. Bronze lampstands would shed light over the mats and rugs and low tables in the main room, and the other rooms all contained large sleeping cushions rolled up for storage, with piles of extra cotton blankets and small wooden chests to hold clothes and belongings. It felt very odd to walk these rooms, even though she could sense that this was a place of temporary abode only, no one's permanent home. It had been a very long time since she had been in a house like this. Seven years.