by Troy Denning
The oldest girl nodded, and the younger one said, “Rishi is nice.”
“So is Yago,” said Seema, “and very brave.”
“And where will you be taking the good sir?” asked Rishi.
Seema turned to Atreus and said, “There is something I would like to show him before he leaves.”
“And this is something we are not permitted to see?” Rishi leered, then gestured at himself and Yago.
“I fear not,” Seema blushed. “Besides, you saw much of Langdarma while Atreus was recuperating. I think it only fair that he gets to see something special.”
Atreus bit his lip, torn between his desire to spend his last few days with Seema and to continue his search for the Fountain of Infinite Grace. “How long will this take? Perhaps we could meet Rishi and Yago after they return the girls.”
Seema winced, clearly stung by Atreus’s suggestion.
“You do not wish to spend your remaining time with me?”
“Of course I do!” Atreus exclaimed, realizing what a mistake he had made. “It’s just that … we all had our plans, and I didn’t want to let the sannyasi’s decision change them.”
“Oh, you must not concern yourself with Yago and me,” said Rishi, patting Atreus’s side. “We will see to the girls and continue on as before, but I think you should go with Seema and see this special sight”
Atreus felt something small and light drop into his cloak pocket Guessing that it was probably the empty vial Rishi had taken from Seema’s kitchen, Atreus realized the Mar was right. Perhaps Seema had decided to show him the Fountain of Infinite Grace after all. Atreus turned to Seema and took her hands.
“I would enjoy nothing more than spending all my remaining time with you.” Though he was speaking the absolute truth, he could not escape the hollow feeling in his stomach as he added, “I hope you’ll forgive me for being as foolish as I am ugly.”
“There is nothing to forgive.” Seema smiled. “I am glad you find my company inviting. Besides, in the weeks to come, I am sure you will be seeing more of your friends than you like.”
“Too much of us? He’s the ugly one!” joked Yago. The ogre took the youngest girl’s hand and turned down the mountain. “We’ll see you back at the hut?”
“Yes.” Seema smiled mischievously. “Sometime.”
She led Atreus along the base of the Turquoise Cliff toward the brink of the upper basin. Soon, they drew close enough to the edge to see down to the mottled floor of the main valley. Along the crimson web of streams and rivers stood scattered clusters of tiny figures, gesturing excitedly and peering toward the upper basin. Only a single stream, cascading down from someplace hidden around the shoulder of the Turquoise Cliff, retained its natural silver.
Atreus stopped and looked down the length of the immense valley, his eyes silently tracing a dozen scarlet waterfalls into the mouths of a dozen hanging basins like this one.
“Will the stain ever fade?” Atreus asked. “Or now that Langdarma has seen bloodshed, will its waters run red forever?”
“There is bloodshed in many lands, and their streams are not red. I think it will not take long for the beauty of Langdarma to wash the stain away.”
Seema guided Atreus to an immense fir growing along the cliff face. Beneath the crisp smell of sap hung the odor of musty stone, and there was a dampness to the air that suggested the cool breath of a cave. Seema ducked under the tree’s low-hanging boughs and disappeared on her hands and knees. Atreus followed, his huge shoulders and humped back scraping the branch thickets somewhat clumsily. Soon, he found himself sliding down a muddy chute into the mouth of a small cavern.
Seema took his hand and led him into the dank-smelling darkness. The floor was sometimes soft and level and other times hard and steep, but it was always slick. Several times Atreus slipped and nearly fell, and once the ground completely disappeared beneath his boot Seema always seemed to know exactly where she was, cautioning him to duck when the ceiling grew low, or warning him not to trip over some unseen boulder lying in the path. He was beginning to wonder if this was another mystical Passing when they finally rounded a corner and he saw a faint circle of light fifty paces ahead. When the passage grew bright enough to see clearly, Seema released his hand and led the way out onto a narrow ledge.
Atreus found himself standing many thousands of feet above the valley floor, staring down the length of the broad canyon at a hazy blue cloud he took to be the mountains at the far end. The tiny figures he had seen standing along the river banks earlier were mere specks, discernible from the boulders and trees around them only because they moved. The streams and creeks had become a mesh of red threads, and the main river was a scarlet rope snaking back and forth across the valley floor.
“You are not afraid of heights, are you?” asked Seema.
Atreus glanced down and found himself looking at a mottled carpet of green woods. He could discern nothing about the forest except its color—not the shape of the individual trees, nor whether their crowns were pointed or billowing, nor even whether they were conifers or deciduous.
“It’s too far down to be afraid.”
“Good,” Seema laughed. “I would not like having to blindfold you on this trail.”
She started along the rocky shelf. Atreus followed as quickly as he could, keeping one hand on the cliff and his eyes on his feet. The ledge had a disconcerting downward slope and an alarmingly smooth texture, and he had the constant feeling his boots were about to slide out from beneath him. If Seema felt the same way, she showed no sign, walking along as comfortably as on the balcony of her own stone hut.
At length, Atreus grew relaxed enough to tear his gaze away from his feet. He saw that they were curving along the valley wall toward the head of the canyon, where a glistening tail of water fell to the valley floor in a series of steplike cascades, plummeting from one pool to the next until it finally plunged into a small, gleaming lake. It was the outflow of this lake that Atreus had glimpsed earlier, a single silver stream in the web of scarlet.
“That stream is the source of Langdarma’s beauty,” said Seema. “It will wash away the stain of Tarch’s murderous heart.”
“But those are the sparkling waters,” Atreus said, pointing at the cascades. “I thought it was forbidden to bring me here.”
“It is. Of all the forbidden things I have done, this is most forbidden. But I cannot let you leave without bringing you here. It is the reason you came to Langdarma.”
She took his hand and led him along the curving wall to the end of the ledge, where a small slot canyon cut up through the cliff to a hanging meadow. Here, overlooking the entirety of the valley’s beauty, sat an alabaster palace flanked on both sides by lotus ponds. The building had an ancient, guileless beauty, with the lower story painted in bright horizontal stripes and the upper decorated in swirling reliefs. A second-story balcony room commanded one end, while the other was dominated by an elaborate open rotunda skirted by two domed gazebos. Connecting the two was a long gallery of scalloped arches and slender columns, with two streams of twinkling silver water joining halfway down a Y-shaped staircase, then draining into a large oval reflecting pond.
“I’ve seen something like this before,” Atreus gasped, “after the avalanche!”
Seema nodded and said, “Of course. Did you not say you had found Langdarma?”
“I did, but after—when I forgot—I thought it was a dream.”
“Langdarma is a dream.”
Seema took his hand and led the way across the meadow to the reflecting pool and knelt in the soft grass. Even with the tiny stream flowing into the upper end and draining out the lower, the edges of the pool were as still as glass. Its silvery surface reflected Atreus’s hideous face in perfect detail—every lump, every blotch, every gruesome deformity. He turned his head aside.
“No, do not look away,” said Seema. “Close your eyes and drink.”
“Drink?” Atreus avoided his reflection as he swung his gaze back in her dire
ction. “That is permitted?”
“Why not? Do you think we will run out?” Seema giggled. “Drink as much as you like.”
Atreus closed his eyes and cupped his hands in the pool. The water was as cold as a glacier, but he could feel its sparkling magic in his hands. It was a sweet effervescence that tingled down to the bone. A smile crept across his face, then he heard himself chortle in delight.
Seema’s palm touched his elbow, urging his hands toward his face. “What are you waiting for?”
Atreus saw the radiance of the water through his eyelids, silvery scintillations that popped inside his mind like bursting stars. He lowered his lips to his palms and drank, gulping the icy water down so fast it made his throat ache. The water filled him with an airy giddiness similar to the first time Seema kissed him, and he felt as if he would float into the air.
“Atreus, look,” Seema whispered as she pulled his hands down.
The face in the water was as unbalanced and misshapen as his own, with the same beetling brow and sunken eyes, the same enormous nose and twisted mouth, but it was not him. All of the disparate parts of this face fit together in a natural way that was sincere and unpretentious, noble in its casual warmth. This face was handsome, rugged, happy, and utterly at peace with its own uncommon character.
Seema peered into the pool beside Atreus, her reflection a likeness of her customary loveliness. “This is the way I see you. It has always been the way I see you.”
She turned to look at him, reached up behind his head, and drew his face down to hers. Her lips were warm and sweet and intoxicating, and now that she had given him freely what he had come to steal, he found it impossible not to respond. He slipped his hands under her cloak, felt the heavy softness of her breasts, and lifted the cloth over her head. She raised her arms, letting her silky hair cascade free as he undressed her, and pressed her nakedness to him, undoing his clothes as he had undone hers. She touched every part of him, running her warm hands over his burly shoulders and down his broad back, feeling the solidness of his stomach, the sinewy strength in his hips, the pent-up ardor of his loins, and Atreus thought he would explode.
What happened then became a blur. Seema pulled him on top and they melted together. They lay writhing in the meadow for an eternity, skin-to-skin, oblivious to the chill breeze or the gurgling water or the passing day, sometimes locked in embraces so tight Atreus could not tell where his body ended and Seema’s began, sometimes merely resting in each other’s arms, exhausted and content, their bodies drained and their hearts full. They lost themselves in each other, forgot the morning bloodshed and Tarch’s evil and the sannyasi’s verdict, and they became one. If only for a few hours, Atreus learned what it was to be beautiful.
At last, the afternoon light began to fade, and their strength with it. Seema curled into the crook of Atreus’s arm and started to breathe in a deep, steady rhythm. He pulled her cloak over her and lay holding her until his arm fell asleep and his back ached from lying so still. Using his free hand, he folded her clothes into a pillow and gently slipped them under her head and withdrew his numb arm. She curled into a tighter ball and continued to sleep but otherwise did not stir.
Atreus stood and pulled on his own cloak, then looked out over Langdarma. Long curtains of afternoon drizzle were beginning to fall from the icy sky, cloaking most of the valley in haze as gray as the canyon walls. Through the mist, Atreus could see little more than a sweeping swath of mottled green with the outline of a broad river snaking down its center. With Seema sleeping behind him, it seemed the most beautiful landscape he had ever seen.
Atreus stood breathing in Langdarma’s peace and serenity for a long time. Then he closed his eyes and kneeled beside the reflecting pool. At that moment, he was strong enough to accept whatever he saw, but he had to see it alone. If the image in the water was ugly, he wanted some time to swallow his disappointment, to put on a happy face so Seema would not think him ungrateful. Atreus leaned forward until he saw the water’s radiance twinkling inside his eyelids and opened his eyes.
The reflection was as handsome as before.
Atreus breathed a sigh of relief, then glanced over his shoulder. Seema was still sleeping, her lips curled into a dreamy smile. Atreus reached into his cloak pocket and found the vial Rishi had slipped him earlier. He began to feel guilty and disloyal, though he could not understand why. Seema had told him he could drink as much as he liked, and the whole flask would not amount to a single gulp. Whatever Sune wanted with the twinkling water, he did not see how taking such a small amount could harm Langdarma.
Atreus plunged the vial into the icy water and watched the air bubble rise to the surface of the pool, then inserted the cork while it was still underwater. When he lifted the flask from the basin, it was gleaming and twinkling just like the one Kumara had used to calm Timin’s delirious father. He checked his reflection one more time, just to be certain he had not broken the pond’s magic, then slipped the flask into his cloak pocket.
A low hissing sounded from the alabaster palace. Atreus glanced toward the sound and saw—or thought he saw—a trio of dark eyes peering out from within the second-floor gallery. A ring of black tentacles seemed to be writhing around the three eyes, and between the eyes was something that looked vaguely like an ebony beak. Atreus gasped and rose.
“There is nothing to fear,” said Seema.
Atreus glanced back to see her slipping her cloak over her shoulders. She pulled her silky black hair out of the collar and let it cascade down her back, then came to his side.
“It cannot escape the palace,” she said.
“What is it?”
Seema shrugged. “Only the sannyasi knows,” she replied, “and perhaps not even him.”
“Every beauty hides a greater ugliness,” Atreus said, recalling what Seema had said to him not so long ago.
Seema nodded.
“Every adage has its source.”
Atreus gave an involuntary shiver and asked, “How long has it been watching?”
Seema blushed. “Not that long, I am sure,” she said. “It has no interest in Devotions.” Despite her assurance, she glanced up at the sky and grasped Atreus’s hand. “Come along, now. It would not do for us to be on the ledge after dark.”
They returned to Seema’s house to find their friends fast asleep downstairs. Yago woke up long enough to mumble something about staying up half the night worrying, then rolled over and began to shake the entire hut with his snores. Seema giggled, then took Atreus’s hand and led the way upstairs, where he discovered he was not quite as tired as he thought.
The next morning, Atreus awoke at the crack of dawn, roused from a sound sleep by an alarming hollow in the pit of his stomach. At first, he credited his anxiety to the loss of waking from a blissful dream, but when he felt Seema’s warm body curled against his and looked over to find her smiling in her sleep, he knew this particular dream was not yet over.
Atreus lay there without moving for several minutes, trying to recover the peace he had experienced at the Fountain of Infinite Grace. Finally he realized that what he felt was guilt. As of yet, he had said nothing to Seema about the vial in his cloak, and he did not see how he could. To admit filling it was to admit that he had planned to deceive her all along. Even more than he wanted to be handsome, he did not want to lose her love. He slipped out from beneath the heavy blanket, collected his clothes, and crept downstairs to dress. Part of him wanted to empty the vial and return it to the cabinet, but another part whispered that Seema need never know what he had done, that if he could keep the vial hidden for just two days, he would have both Seema’s love and Sune’s gratitude.
On the bottom floor of the hut, his friends were already up, brewing a pot of the greasy buttered tea that Yago loved more than anything in Langdarma. Atreus stopped on the stairs to pull on his tunic, drawing a sly grin from Rishi.
“Yago, look at our master. Does he not look content this morning?”
Atreus could not help beam
ing, but his joy was quickly spoiled by the thought of what he had done to win the compliment The smile vanished from his lips, and he said, “I wish I felt as content as I look.”
Rishi frowned. “She did not take you to the Fountain of Infinite Grace?” the Mar asked.
“She took me.” Atreus tied his trousers, then added, “I filled the vial.”
“Then what’s your grumbling about?” Yago continued to stir his tea. “That’s what Sune sent you for.”
“I didn’t tell Seema about it”
Rishi’s eyes widened in alarm. “And why would you want to do such a foolish thing?” he asked. “If she knew—”
“Seema would only object if it endangered Langdarma,” Atreus said. He hung his cloak on a wall peg. “And if it endangers Langdarma, then I shouldn’t do it. That would be the worst kind of betrayal.”
Yago looked up from his stirring and said, “So you’d betray your goddess instead and go home empty-handed? After coming all this way, you expect me to believe that?”
Atreus hesitated, unsure of his answer and hating himself for it “Maybe it won’t come to that,” he said.
“I do not think that is a chance you wish to take,” said Rishi. “You saw the sannyasi’s power. Now, are you going to let us look at this marvelous water? I did not see it when Kumara used it on Timin’s father, and I am most curious about its glow.”
Atreus withdrew the vial from his cloak pocket, then scowled. The only thing sparkling in the flask was the reflection of the flames under Yago’s tea pot.
The ogre squinted at the glass. “Sure,” he said, “I can see something sparkling in there.”
“But not the way it should, I fear,” said Rishi. He eyed Atreus nervously. “This is not how it looked when you filled it?”
Atreus shook his head. “No.” He stared at the vial for several moments, then noticed his knuckles turning white from squeezing it so hard. He placed it on the table and said, “The sparkle is gone.”