William Nicholson - [Wind on Fire 02]

by Slaves of the Mastery (epub)

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘No.’

  Bowman said no more.

  ‘You don’t ask the nature of the particular duty.’

  ‘You’ll tell me, when I need to know,’ said Bowman. ‘I must do it, whether I want to or not.’

  Ortiz glanced at him, and for a few moments they went on in silence, their footsteps sounding softly on the boardwalk.

  ‘You hate me, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bowman.

  ‘I burned your city. I drove you from your home. I enslaved you. Why would you not hate me?’

  They were now close to the great gates in the city walls. In one corner of the left gate there was a small door, of a size to admit people entering singly and on foot. Ortiz now rapped on this door. He turned his handsome young face to Bowman and said,

  ‘But I’m also your liberator. I’m the man who has set your people free. One day you’ll understand this.’

  The small door opened from the inside. Bowman said nothing, but secretly he was astounded by what Ortiz had just said. He had assumed this brutal young warlord was no more than a fighting machine in the service of a cruel state. Now here he was speaking aloud the belief that he shared with his mother and father, but which even they had not dared to put so plainly: the destruction of Aramanth, and this time of enslavement with all its cruelties, was somehow necessary. The Manth people had to leave, in order to arrive. But where?

  Ortiz had gone through the low door into the city. Bowman followed. The door closed again before the cat could reach it.

  The first and strongest impression was the sound of music. From all sides came the jaunty melodies of fiddles, and the sweet lament of pipes, and the carolling of voices in song. It was the time of evening when the people have done with their day’s work, and have not yet settled down to sleep; when night has fallen, but every lamp is shining. The clustered buildings that crowded the alleys before him all glowed from within, the soft lamplight making the many-coloured glass with which the walls and roofs were set shine like jewels. Through and behind and before these splashes of red and amber moved the people of the High Domain, paying their evening calls, meeting in groups to talk or to dance, making music and singing. A sweet confusion of sound filled the air.

  Bowman looked round in a daze. Could such cheerful kindly people know that across the lake, on the night just gone, others had been burned alive? If they knew, surely they would rise up in horror and overthrow the Master who commanded it. Ortiz was ahead, beckoning Bowman to follow him up the broadest alleyway. They passed a small food market, where stalls displayed sweet cakes and wines, outside the entrance to a tea house. From within the tea house came eager laughing voices, raised in debate. A little further on, the windows of an upper room were thrown open, and inside a choir could be heard practising a set of harmonies. Bowman heard the conductor rapping on his music stand, and calling out, ‘Keep in time, please, ladies! Once more!’ They passed a little piazza surrounded by lime trees, where old men sat playing chess in the night air. Beneath the arches of a covered arcade a dancing master was leading a class in an intricate series of steps. ‘You must concentrate, please! Give your mind to your feet! Think with your toes!’

  The alleyway opened up suddenly into a wide space, on the far side of which stood, or floated, an immense exquisite building, roofed by four domes. Each dome rested a little way above the next, with a poised lightness that seemed impossible in so great a structure; each fashioned out of a delicate filigree of stonework, each glazed in a different colour, pale gold and orange, rising to red and violet, so that the many lights within its different levels caused it to shimmer like a sunset sky.

  ‘Oh!’ said Bowman. ‘How beautiful!’

  Ortiz watched him, nodding with approval.

  ‘This is how men were meant to live,’ he said.

  He led Bowman through arches into the great hall. Here, in the centre of the pillared space, a fountain played.

  ‘Look at the fountain,’ said Ortiz.

  The fountain represented a platform of rocks on which stood a cage, all carved from the same single block of translucent grey-white marble. The door of the cage stood open, and from beneath it, up through its marble bars and out of its open marble door, there burst a rising gush of water. At the point where the arching water fell back to earth there hung three birds, seemingly sustained in midair by its power alone. Their wings were spread in upward flight, to show that they had just, mere moments ago, sprung from the imprisoning cage. The birds were carved from the very same block of pale stone, but the ribs of stone which supported them were concealed by the flow of water. The spray that broke beneath their wings created the illusion that they were in motion, forever on the point of flying free.

  ‘The man who made that,’ said Ortiz, ‘had worked all his life as a stonemason before he came here. All he had ever cut was square blocks for buildings. And all that time, this was locked up inside him, waiting to be released.’

  ‘Is he a slave here?’ asked Bowman.

  ‘Of course.’ He gestured around him, at the great glowing vaulted space. ‘Everything here is the work of artists. This whole city is a work of art. There’s nothing like it in all the world.’

  Bowman was awed, and confused.

  ‘What’s it all for?’ he said.

  ‘For us who live here. The Master says men were made to live in beauty.’

  ‘Except for the slaves.’

  ‘The beauty exists for the slaves as well. You’re a slave. You feel it.’

  He set off across the hall, followed by Bowman. On the far side, a series of arcaded passages led to a smaller hall, where several people sat on tiered seats watching a training session. Sixteen fighters from the manaxa school were being drilled by their trainer, in a display that was designed both to hone their skills and entertain spectators. The half-naked manacs glistened in the lamplight as they executed their crouching turns and sudden high springs, working in matched pairs.

  Ortiz and Bowman lingered a few moments to watch.

  ‘There’s to be a festival manaxa on the day of the wedding,’ said Ortiz.

  ‘Will they kill each other?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Bowman found it hard to believe that these graceful movements could be the prelude to brutal death. But he had seen it for himself. When the manacs entered the arena, they danced to kill. It was all part of the riddle that was the Mastery: beauty and slavery, civilisation and terror, dancing and death.

  Suddenly Bowman realised he knew one of the manacs.

  ‘That’s Mumpo!’

  ‘Don’t call to him. He won’t hear you.’

  Bowman knew Mumpo had gone away to be trained: but how was it possible that so quickly he had been so changed?

  ‘But it’s Mumpo!’

  Mumpo, whom he had known since he was five years old, whose nose had dribbled, who had always been at the bottom of the class, who had followed his sister Kestrel like a pet dog, who had grown tall but still spoke with that same slow look of bafflement – how could he have turned into this sleek dangerous manac, who was scissoring the air with his limbs just below him?

  Ortiz knew none of this. But he did know how the Mastery found and exploited the talents of its captives.

  ‘Everyone changes when they come here,’ he said. ‘Even you will change.’

  He moved on, and Bowman followed.

  Now they were in a passage off which opened many smaller halls. From each came the tap-tap-tap of dancing feet, and the brisk commands of dancing instructors. Ortiz paused outside one set of doors.

  ‘I’m to have a lesson now,’ he said. ‘The dance called the tantaraza.’

  ‘A dancing lesson?’ It was all so unlikely. This soldier, this conqueror, this destroyer, evidently cared how well he danced.

  ‘The Master has taught us that we come closest to perfection in dance.’

  He entered the room. A slender lady was waiting inside, talking quietly to tw
o musicians, a pipe player and a drummer. She rose at once, and made Ortiz a delicate curtsey.

  ‘My dance teacher, Madame Saez,’ Ortiz told Bowman. ‘How old do you think she is?’

  Bowman hardly knew how to answer without giving offence. The lady wore a tight-fitting slip and light skirt, that revealed clearly a lissom body in its prime; but the lines on her neck and face told a different story.

  ‘Under or over forty?’ prompted Ortiz. The dance teacher dimpled with pleasure.

  ‘Perhaps around forty?’ said Bowman.

  ‘She’s sixty-eight!’ Both Ortiz and the lady enjoyed Bowman’s surprise.

  ‘And I’ve never danced better in my life,’ added the lady. ‘But come, we have work to do. Remove your outer garments.’

  Ortiz stripped off his cape and his jacket, and prepared to dance. Bowman realised that he was to watch. Ortiz had still said nothing to him about why he had singled him out, or what he was to do.

  Madame Saez adopted the opening posture of the dance.

  ‘Play! Acha!’

  The musicians played, and the dancers danced. Bowman knew nothing of the tantaraza, but he could see at once that Ortiz was an excellent dancer, and extremely well practised in the steps. They spun and parted before him, following the intricate patterns of steps, slowly increasing in speed and variation, until –

  ‘No, no, no!’ The teacher stamped her elegant shoe in irritation. ‘How is it possible that you miss that turn? If you truly know the tantaraza, such mistakes are unthinkable! You speak words in the order that makes sense, don’t you? So dance the steps in the order that makes sense. Acha!’

  The musicians began again at the beginning, and the dance unfolded once more. Bowman watched, and allowed his feeling mind to enter the dance. Without knowing anything of the steps, he could tell where the problem lay: the teacher was dancing without premeditation, as if her body was a spring that was unwinding of its own volition. Ortiz was dancing by following a script in his mind. Inevitably he was falling behind his partner, following where he should lead, if only by a fraction.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ The lady was not pleased. ‘You do not improve. You must take more care.’

  ‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘He must be careless.’

  Madame Saez stared at him.

  ‘Well!’ she said. ‘You are the dance teacher now? I have been instructing pupils for nearly fifty years. But no doubt you know better.’

  Ortiz was amused. ‘He may be right, you know.’

  ‘Careless, indeed! You will be precise. Exact. Perfect. When you leave my class you may be as sloppy as you choose, but here – precision! Acha!’

  They danced again. Ortiz danced better. He had understood Bowman, even if his teacher had not. Against his will, Bowman felt himself warming towards Ortiz. That hawk-like face, that head of tawny hair, presently so absorbed in the complex dance, was like the Mastery itself: cruel, but beautiful. And harder yet to understand, Bowman sensed that his young master believed himself to be doing, to the best of his ability, what was right and good. There seemed to be no guilt in him when he let his eyes meet Bowman’s eyes. As he danced, he seemed almost innocent.

  Bowman himself did not feel innocent. He didn’t know yet what duty he was to perform for Ortiz, but he sensed it would lead him to his greater duty. Beautiful though this city was, it must be destroyed. Bowman was certain of it. And somehow, he was to be the destroyer.

  Hanno Hath sat at the library table, holding the brittle cream-coloured pages in his trembling hands, reading and re-reading the line of text that ran across the top of the first page:

  For the child who bears my name, and must complete my work.

  For generations, Manth scholars had known of the existence of the Lost Testament, but no record had ever been made of its contents. All that was known was who had written it, for whom, and why.

  The author was the first prophet of their people, Ira Manth. It was known that he had written it for his seven-year-old granddaughter, who was also called Ira Manth. His purpose had been to leave an account of all that the prophet had learned. Some even said that the prophet had foretold the future of his people in the Lost Testament.

  And here it was, on the table before him: a few small sheets covered with line after line of carefully-penned old Manth script. Beneath the opening line, the blocks of handwriting were divided at irregular intervals by lines drawn across the entire page. These blocks were numbered, using the old Manth hand-signs, which counted in fives. At the end of the document the author had sketched the looped-over S that was the symbol of the Singer people. Hanno was astonished to see it on so early a document.

  He steadied his hands to hold the paper to the light, as he read the first page.

  The time of the consummation has come. Now I and those who have travelled with me must sing the song to the end. Out of our stillness, out of our love, out of our song, will come the wind on fire.

  In the first generation after the consummation, there will be a time of kindness. In the second generation, the mor will rise, and there will be a time of action. In the third generation, the mor will fill the people, and there will be a time of cruelty. Then the song must be sung again.

  I charge you, my child, to carry my knowledge through the time of peace, which is also the time of forgetting. Let the unwritten song be passed on to the next generation. Let there be singers. Let them live in stillness, and know the flame. They will lose all and give all. In the sweet moment before the consummation, they will be tossed in the storm of bliss. This shall be their reward.

  14

  Ortiz falls in love

  When the great caravan of Gang reached the borders of the Mastery, it came to a halt. Here the seventy-seven carriages, the royal court, its officials, its servants, and its enormous retinue of guards, pitched camp and settled down to make final preparations for the wedding. There was a great deal to do. The bride’s wedding dress must be taken out of its travel trunk and assembled. The Johanna’s regalia must be polished. The ceremony must be rehearsed. And in general, everybody began to bustle about and become anxious.

  Kestrel knew that she was now close to her brother, because the feeling of him came to her strong and clear: but she didn’t realise just how close she was, until all at once, she heard his voice. She was in the Johdila’s carriage with Sisi and Lunki when there came a flurry of moving air, a tingle of warmth, and then, far off but recognisable, Bowman calling to her.

  Kess! I’m coming!

  She stood absolutely still, and forced all other thoughts out of her mind.

  Kess! I can feel you! You’re there!

  Yes, she called back to him. I’m here!

  At once she felt a wave of joy flow out from him to embrace her. She couldn’t see him or hear him, but she sensed that he was coming nearer all the time. Her own dear brother was coming!

  Are ma and pa –

  All well! came the joyful reply.

  Are you slaves? Are they hurting you?

  Not free, he answered her. But not hurt.

  Tell them I love them.

  She wanted to cry, and knew he could feel it.

  Love you, Kess. We’ll all be together again soon.

  Shortly after this a messenger arrived from the Mastery, to announce that a party was on its way to welcome the travellers. With them rode the bridegroom, the Master’s son, coming to view the bride.

  The Johdila received the news with fury.

  ‘Coming to view the bride!’ she exclaimed. ‘What does he think I am? A menu? He can’t pick and choose, you know.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ pointed out Kestrel, ‘you will be veiled.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The Johdila had forgotten this. ‘He can view me till his eyes pop, but he won’t see me.’

  ‘But you’ll see him.’

  ‘I will! Serve him right!’

  ‘What if you don’t like him?’

  ‘I’ll run away. Will you run away with me, darling? We’ll live in the trees like squi
rrels, and never marry anybody. Or do squirrels get married?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see what happens. After all, who knows? Something may happen to stop the marriage taking place.’

  Kestrel could feel Bowman coming closer all the time. She realised he must be riding with the bridegroom’s party. This coincidence, that her brother was accompanying the bridegroom while she accompanied the bride, first astonished her, and then gave her renewed confidence. It couldn’t be chance. Somehow, it must have been arranged. Someone was watching over them. And soon now, very soon, they would be in each other’s arms –

  No! They mustn’t give each other away.

  Bo! You’re not to show you know me.

  Don’t worry. I won’t.

  He understood. Of course he understood: he always had.

  Zohon came striding by, followed by a stream of armed men. He was engaged in positioning soldiers in hiding places on either side of the road. Kestrel saw this, and was disturbed. She sought out the Grand Vizier.

  ‘Should the Johdila be better protected, sir? If there’s to be fighting.’

  ‘Fighting? What fighting?’ exclaimed Barzan. ‘This is a wedding party.’

  ‘It’s just that, when I saw the soldiers hiding in the bushes –’

  ‘Soldiers hiding in bushes!’

  This had the desired effect. Barzan stormed up to Zohon, and demanded to know what he was doing.

  ‘Defending the Johanna,’ replied Zohon curtly. ‘If they think they can creep up on me, they’ll learn their lesson soon enough.’

  ‘They’re not creeping anywhere, you great baboon! They’re coming to view the bride!’

  ‘How do we know that?’

  ‘Because a messenger was sent to tell us.’

  ‘They’d hardly send a messenger to say, “We’re coming to attack your camp and kidnap the Johdila”, would they? Really, Barzan, I do sometimes wonder if you’re up to the job.’

  ‘Kidnap the Johdila? What for? We’re giving her to them!’