The Awakened City Read online

  By each area of activity, he paused to allow the workers to demonstrate work in progress and show off work completed. He gave them praise; he let them kiss the scars upon his palms; he touched their foreheads and left little sparks of blessing, causing some to fall swooning to the ground. The bolder ones reached out to stroke his clothing or his hair, kissing their fingers afterward. He despised them, his sheeplike faithful; but it was impossible to be indifferent to their adoration, impossible not to be thrilled by his power, by their surrender, by the way those things fed back and forth between them, a brilliant tension that sparked in his belly and drew tight within his chest.

  When the tour was done he returned to the cavern’s entrance and extended his hands, calling illusion above his palms so that flames seemed to leap there—an intentional echo of rata in his guise of Risen Judge, ruler of the time of cleansing.

  “Children, your industry pleases me. I thank you for your endeavor, which sustains our community of the faithful. You do this labor now, that you may labor no more in the time to come. Blessings be on you.”

  “Messenger,” they chorused. “Blessings be on you.”

  He closed his fingers, quenching the false flames, and left them.

  Supplicants still waited at the edges of the encampments. This time, he paused to speak to them and dispense blessings. As he turned from one of these groups, there was a sudden flurry of motion. A woman came thrusting forward and flung herself to her knees in front of him, clutching at the hem of his tunic.

  “Beloved One,” she gasped. With her free arm she held a dirty bundle to her breast. “Please. My little girl.”

  The Twentymen stepped toward her, ready to drive her back, but Râvar held up his hand.

  “Release me, child.” She obeyed. “What do you want of me?”

  “My baby, Beloved One.” She had that starved, stunned look all new arrivals seemed to wear at first; her lifelight was a pale and lovely amethyst. “She’s sick. Beloved One, please heal her!”

  There was a murmur from the pilgrims. Healing was an issue Râvar had been forced to confront early on, for many of his followers had expected him to display powers he did not possess. It still cropped up from time to time, fueled in part by his missionaries, who told those they recruited that the Next Messenger could do miracles and let the pilgrims draw their own conclusions.

  “I cannot do that, child,” he told her. “The power to heal the sick is the power of life. Only gods possess it.”

  “But you are a god.”

  “Only partly, child. Half of me is human. My power is beyond any mortal’s, but I cannot shape life. Even to me, my father did not give that ability.”

  She gasped, and sobbed. “You cannot heal her?”

  “No, child.”

  “Will you bless her, then, Beloved One?”

  “If you wish it.”

  With tender hands she laid the bundle down and pulled aside the cloth. The child stared up at Râvar with the unnatural apathy of prolonged illness or starvation. Her lifelight, grass green, stabbed him unbidden with the thought of his own little girl.

  “Her name is Vikrit, Beloved One.” The woman wiped her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  Râvar stooped and touched his fingers to the small hot forehead. “I call rata’s blessing on you, Vikrit, in hope that he will make you well and strong again. Abide in my father’s love and in the promise of the age to come.”

  He began to draw away. Before he could prevent it the mother seized his hand and pressed it to her lips.

  “Thank you, Beloved One. Thank you.”

  Her tears fell on his skin. He pulled away, repulsed. “Don’t thank me, child. rata is the god of love and light, but sometimes he demands our suffering. Your daughter may yet die.”

  “But she will rise into the light of the new primal age. And I’ll rise, too, when the way is opened. I’ll be with her again.”

  He saw the hope in her face, the blind faith. It was impossible even to be cruel to these people. Whatever he said to her, she would only blame her own unworthiness, and search for signs of rata’s will in the Next Messenger’s harsh judgment.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’ll rise.” He got to his feet, beckoning Ardashir. “See she gets a healer.”

  “Yes, Beloved One.”

  Râvar strode down the thoroughfare, ignoring the faithful who humbly waited for his attention. He plunged into the ancient darkness of the passage, charting his steps by his lifelight and by the torches burning beside the opening to his rooms. He mounted the short flight of steps, the Twentyman on guard bowing low as he passed, and entered with deep relief into the warm colors and soothing patterns of his own domain.

  He flung himself down on a bench in the second chamber, leaning toward the warmth of the floor-fire. In pausing for the woman and her child he had meant to demonstrate the compassion his followers believed he possessed, but he wished now that he had allowed the Twentymen to remove her. He did not often pity his followers, these souls he had stolen from rata by blackening them with false belief; if they were fools enough to embrace the fraud he offered them, they had only themselves to blame. But that small green lifelight would not leave his mind. He could still feel the dying child’s papery skin under his fingers. He rubbed his hands together, trying to banish it.

  A tapping on the announcement drum let him know he had been followed. Sighing, for he knew who it must be, he returned to the reception chamber.

  “Beloved One.” Ardashir clasped his hands—one of which he had left un-bandaged that day, as he did sometimes so the pilgrims could see his wounds—and bowed. He was a blocky, dark-skinned man, with bulbous features that seemed somehow unfinished, like a sculpture that had been abandoned just short of completion. Râvar guessed him to be somewhere in his fifties, but his hair, which he wore cropped close to his scalp, showed no gray, and he carried himself like a man at least a decade younger. He was faultlessly controlled, rarely smiling or frowning or raising his voice—a master of the telling stare, the speaking silence. Râvar had seen him bend men to his will simply by looking at them.

  “I sent the healer, Beloved One.” In contrast to his unhandsome face, Ardashir’s voice was remarkably beautiful, a resonant baritone, an orator’s voice. “Though I think the child will die. You mustn’t grieve too much. You cannot save them all.”

  Râvar turned away, and seated himself in the pink quartz chair. “Have you come to make your report?”

  “With your permission, Beloved One.”

  Ardashir took up his reporting stance—hands behind his back, body punctiliously straight, feet placed with precision—and began, as he did each day, to speak of the affairs of the Awakened City. The population had been swelled by a party of new arrivals, nine in all. The task schedules, intricate plans of Ardashir’s devising that rotated workers between cavern duty and the hunting-and-gathering bands, were running smoothly. There were the usual petty disputes between the pilgrims, none needing immediate resolution. More seriously, there had been another confrontation between a hunting group and a nomad band. The nomads, who had had the steppes to themselves for uncounted centuries, were alarmed by the influx of new inhabitants, whom they suspected of plotting to poach their horse herds.

  “It’s time we sent gifts again, Beloved One. Gold, some gems—I will draw up a list for you.”

  “See to it,” Râvar said. These administrative matters bored him. Long ago, in Refuge, he had resented the customs that bound Shapers solely to religious duty, for in his impetuous ambition he had wanted not just the office of Principal Shaper, but Refuge’s secular leadership as well. When, by a series of chances he could never have anticipated, that leadership actually fell to him, he had discovered that the pleasure of being able to give orders was outweighed by the tedium of the endless details involved in overseeing a community.

  He recognized how fortunate he
was to have found a man like Ardashir, who took satisfaction in both. Ardashir’s skills had been honed on one of the immense communal plantations the Caryaxists had created in Arsace’s heartland, as part of their effort to abolish the evils of private property. Born into a family of field hands, his brilliance and his implacable will had lifted him first to work leader, then to section chief, and finally to headman. For nearly ten years he had been the ruler of his own small kingdom, managing the plantings and the harvests, governing every aspect of his workers’ lives. Those skills and qualities had served him also after he was sent to Thuxra City, for even in that bleak environment amenities could be bargained, favors traded, life made a little less wretched. Ardashir’s facility for such maneuverings had won him first respect, then power. In time, in a strange mirror of his former life, he had become a leader among the imprisoned men.

  “Do you have any instruction for me, Beloved One?” Ardashir had finished his recital.

  “No. You’ve everything perfectly in hand, as usual.”

  Ardashir inclined his head; the praise was his due, and he knew it. “How fares the woman, Beloved One? And the child? Do they require anything for their comfort?”

  Râvar suppressed his annoyance. Ardashir had asked this question almost daily since Axane and the baby had arrived. “You need not worry about their comfort, Ardashir.”

  There was a pause. Râvar waited. Eventually, he knew, Ardashir would not be able to resist his need to probe; his sense of entitlement would get the better of him, his driving desire to be admitted into every aspect of the life of the Messenger he served so passionately. If Râvar had allowed it, Ardashir would have waited on him hand and foot, as he had done in the beginning. It was a constant, unspoken tension between them: Ardashir’s compulsion to draw close, Râvar’s aversion to such closeness—which he must always balance with the need not to test Ardashir too far.

  “Beloved One …” Ardashir hesitated, and Râvar knew the moment had come. “I know there are things that must remain closed to me. But I cannot deny the question in my heart, and I would not dishonor my service to you by concealing it. Will you not tell me why you shelter them, the woman and the child?”

  “I’ve already answered that question, Ardashir.”

  “Yes, Beloved One. But I ask not just for myself, but for your faithful. They will wonder—” Ardashir’s gaze dropped. “If you’ve taken a consort.”

  “And what if I have?”

  “Beloved One, you are human, and human flesh has needs … rata knows, there are many here who would tempt those needs if they could. But if she is your consort, should you not reveal it?”

  Râvar shifted on the hard quartz seat. If things had turned out as he had hoped, he might indeed have introduced Axane as his consort. He had even half planned the ceremony with which he would present her. Obviously that was no longer possible. The day after her arrival he had ordered Ardashir to dispatch Zabrades and the other kidnappers back into the world at once as missionaries; the fewer people who knew of her, the better. But that was as far as he had gone in deciding what to do. Frustration twisted in him at the complication of it.

  “She’s not my consort,” he said. “If such a person exists, I have not yet found her. But she and the child are souls my father in his compassion desires me to protect. If I do not tell you more, Ardashir, it’s not because I wish to keep his purpose hidden from you, whom I trust beyond any of my followers, beyond any mortal on this earth. It’s because the moment is not yet right. I ask for your patience. I promise that in time all will be made clear.”

  A beat of silence. Then Ardashir bowed his head. “Thank you, Beloved One.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “One last matter, Beloved One, if I may beg your indulgence.”

  Râvar resisted the impulse to sigh. “Go on.”

  “You know how eagerly your faithful look forward to the Awakened City’s emergence. They are aware that there must first be a time of waiting, of gathering. But they can’t help wondering when the great work we have pledged to undertake will commence.”

  “I’ve told them. When I receive the sign my father promised.”

  “Yes, Beloved One. But time, for mortals, is a heavy burden.” Ardashir, who believed that Râvar was still learning to be human, never lost the chance to provide instruction. “They find the waiting difficult. Could you not tell them when the sign will arrive? Or let them know what it will be?”

  Râvar frowned. “Is there question about this?”

  “Yes, Beloved One, growing question. Growing impatience. The Awakened City has become very large, and in large populations such feelings take greater hold, have greater impact. Also, there are certain citizens …” Ardashir paused, selecting his words. “Who are more inclined than others to discontent. Beloved One, you’ve decreed that the Awakened City must be open to all who seek it. My love is a palace without walls, an empire without borders, rata says in the Darxasa, and so it is for you. But this has drawn to you not just good and honest men and women, but those whose lives, whose pursuits have not been so clean—”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Râvar said with some irritation. It was an old disagreement. Ardashir had long urged that pilgrims of questionable character should be excluded from the body of the faithful—counsel Râvar had no intention of following, for it suited his purpose to populate his pilgrim army with such people. Given that almost all the First Faithful, and of course Ardashir himself, had been prisoners at Thuxra, Ardashir’s insistence might have seemed hypocritical; but Râvar knew it was not, or not entirely. Blackened man that Ardashir was, blackened men that all the First Faithful were, they had been exalted by their witness of Râvar’s emergence from the Burning Land, by the fact that they were the first to acknowledge him—or so Ardashir believed. Their sin had not been removed, but they had been given a means to transcend it that other sinners, arriving later, could not possess. In his own way, Ardashir adhered to as rigid a moral code as any priest. “Just as you’re aware that I’ll deny no one who wants to follow me.”

  “Beloved One, I must be blunt. I don’t say these people are not faithful. No one could take the mark and make the journey otherwise. But a thief who believes is still a thief. A prostitute who believes is still a whore. Such people are fertile soil for the seeds of rumor and discontent, and if those weeds are not pulled out, they will overrun the garden we have planted here. Give only for the grace of giving, the Darxasa tells us of the Foundation of Compassion, but it is also written, Poverty of the flesh may be relieved, but poverty of the soul is a well that is never filled. This may seem strange to you, Beloved One, who in your innocence are not familiar with the depth of human baseness. Nor should you be—that is what I am for, to shield you from such things. I beg you, therefore, accept my advice. Speak to the questions. Let your faithful know their waiting will have an end. Give them something to hold, to look toward! Only thus can you ensure that question does not grow into something more troublesome.”

  He held Râvar’s gaze. Ardashir could be deferent to the point of obsequiousness (though there was not the least insincerity in it), but he took with fierce literalness his role as adviser, and never hesitated to put forth his opinions or to argue in support of them, even where they contradicted Râvar’s.

  “Very well.” Experience had taught Râvar that in matters of this sort Ardashir was usually correct. “I’ll speak to it.”

  “Thank you, Beloved One. You are wise.”

  “Are you finished? I’d like to be alone.”

  “Yes, Beloved One. Remember, there are audiences this afternoon.”

  Enemy take the audiences, Râvar thought. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  He stretched out his hands. Ardashir came forward and knelt to press a kiss into each scarred palm. He closed his eyes, like someone receiving Communion marks, brushing the backs of Râvar’s hands with his own fingers. Râvar
glimpsed the swollen scabs and weeping cuts crisscrossing Ardashir’s right palm, the stains on the bandages that wrapped the left. Ardashir was fastidious to the point of mania; even in the first days of the Awakened City he had been less dirty than the rest, less wild. The bandages were the sole exception. After Thuxra’s destruction, he had been the first of the prisoner-witnesses to reach Râvar’s side; he had caught the Blood of rata as, drained nearly to death by that enormous act of shaping, Râvar collapsed into unconsciousness. The crystal’s facets had sliced him to the bone. In the time since, the injuries somehow had never healed. It was assumed by Râvar’s followers that human flesh could not bear the touch of the divine Blood; Râvar, who had grown up with the Blood, knew very well this was not so, and guessed that Ardashir opened the cuts himself—whether as penance for his sins or as an incomprehensible act of devotion, Râvar did not care to guess. Or maybe Ardashir had a shrewder reason. He had been a powerful man among the prisoners even before Râvar came, but his wounds conferred on him an echo of divinity. His right to call himself the First Disciple, to function as the de facto ruler of the Awakened City, had never been questioned.

  Ardashir departed. Râvar rose and went into his bathing room, where the sun admitted by the roof opening plunged a shaft of gold into the pool. He had intended to take his daughter for a little while. But as he approached the wall behind which Axane and the baby were confined, an image of the dying child’s green lifelight returned to him, and he was abruptly possessed by the need to escape the caverns, to breathe open air. He removed the Blood and prisoned it beneath its bowl, then caught up a blanket from his bed and left his quarters—not by the exit in his reception room, but through the passage that led off the bathing chamber, which ended on the precipice where he began the daily ceremonies. Branching off this corridor was another, winding a circuitous upward route through, and ultimately beyond, the caverns.

  He passed through perfect darkness without stumbling, for he carried his own illumination with him. It was cold in the inner caves, a chill that did not change no matter what the season; the air smelled wet, metallic, and very, very old. He traversed passages that were level and others that rose like stairs, edged through fissures barely wide enough to admit him and jumped crevasses that seemed to have no bottom, crossed galleries filled with fantastical formations: pillars glistening with minerals, ceilings fanged with sharp stone daggers, walls where the rock seemed to have melted and flowed down. Even in these deep places there was life, thriving in the clammy dark, throwing off the light all living things possessed—pale molds and mosses, sticklike insects, and in the pools, strange eyeless water creatures.