The Awakened City Read online

  And now he had them. And what was he to do with them?

  He rose at last and left the windswept ridge. He returned to his rooms and unshaped the stone that blocked his night chamber. Axane was sitting on the bed. Beside her the baby, disturbed by the crack of power, began to cry.

  The room was transformed. Lengths of linen lay spread on the floor to dry, and the receptacles Axane had requested for washing—tight-woven grass baskets whose water Râvar replaced daily—sat seeping against one wall. Her own clothes hung across the fanciful malachite ornamentation of the bed. In this room as in others, Râvar had used the natural patterns of the stone to create fissures for air exchange, and sunk a small shaft in one corner for the emptying of his chamber pot. Still the air smelled foul.

  “I’ll take her now.” Impatiently, he beckoned.

  Axane obeyed, docile as any of his followers, and helped him settle the child against his chest, his left arm under her little rump, his right hand on her back. She felt natural in his embrace; he might have been holding her since her birth. His touch quieted her, as it nearly always did. She gripped a fold of his tunic and turned her face against his shoulder, making sleepy sounds. Growing up, he had never taken any special interest in children. No doubt this would have changed in the normal run of things—but he did not think he could have cared for any child of his the way he cared for this one.

  “The baskets need new water,” Axane said.

  “When I come back.”

  “Râvar.” She stood before him, small and dark at the center of her storm of light, like a hard kernel in a luscious fruit. “I’m going mad in this room. Please, won’t you let me out?”

  “So you can try to run away?”

  “No, I swear I wouldn’t do that. I could … I could leave the baby with you. You know I’d never leave without her.”

  “Ah. So you don’t fear anymore that I might harm her.”

  She dropped her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can see you love her.”

  “How kind of you to acknowledge it.”

  “Râvar, I have skills. I could be useful. Surely you need a healer here.”

  “We have many healers. We don’t need another.”

  “Râvar …” She sounded close to tears. “I was afraid when we came here, because … I didn’t know what you wanted of me. But I’ve had time to think about it, and I see how you are with Chokyi—”

  “Don’t use that ugly name! You know she’s called Parvâti now!”

  She caught her breath. “I’m sorry. I forgot. I know I’ve offended you. You may not believe it, but I understand—” Her voice shook. “I understand your anger, and I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry. If you’d just let me explain, if you’d just let me tell you why things turned out the way they did—”

  Râvar felt the clutch of rage. Against his shoulder the baby stirred and whimpered. “No.” He breathed in through his nose, mastering himself. “No.”

  She stared at him, her hands dragging at her stole. Tears stood in her eyes. He turned away.

  “I won’t block you in this time. I don’t want to disturb Parvâti. But I’ll be nearby. Don’t try to leave this room.”

  He went into the second chamber and sat down. He cradled his sleeping daughter, trying to take comfort in the feel of her. Still he saw Axane’s small tense body; still he heard her pleading voice.

  rata! he thought, for perhaps the hundredth time. What am I to do with her?

  He did not want to give Parvâti up. He had understood that on the first night. The love that had risen in him as he held her was absolute: the purest thing, apart from his grief, that he had ever felt. She was the only thing in the world that truly belonged to him; as long as he had her, he would never be alone. But Axane’s presence was an unbearable reminder of his own stupidity. And how would he deal with her once the time came to march upon Baushpar, and he could no longer keep her caged in stone?

  He could send her away, of course. It would be easy to do as he had threatened on the night she arrived, and find a woman to care for Parvâti. But he knew very well that Axane’s apparent meekness was pretense; he had not forgotten her stubbornness, her iron will. She would not go quietly. Nor would she stay away. She would strive until she got Parvâti back, or perished trying.

  That, of course, was the other solution.

  He did not want to think it. He despised her. Yes: despised her. But he did not want her dead.

  He closed his eyes, turning his face against the baby’s floss-soft hair. “Parvâti,” he whispered. Her little heart beat against his hand; he heard the flutter of her breathing. He sat listening, until the tapping of the announcement drum told him that Ardashir had come to fetch him to the afternoon audiences.

  8

  Râvar

  PARVTI CLUTCHED RVAR’S leggings and tried to hoist herself upright.

  “Clever girl,” he told her. “Clever girl.”

  She gurgled, delighted, then lost her grip and plumped down on the floor. Getting her legs under her, she crawled off after one of the toys he had shaped for her, a ring of bitterbark wood like the one he had had when he was a child. He watched her go, ready to jump up and deflect her if she showed signs of heading for the bathing pool; she was fascinated by the shaft of light that plunged into the water, and had several times attempted to slide into the pool in pursuit of it. She grabbed the ring and began chewing on it, her eyes as round as a bird’s. He laughed aloud.

  Except when he slept, he no longer bothered to close up his night chamber when he was in his rooms, and from where he sat he could see a slice of the chamber’s interior, bright with the ruddy light of the niche-flames. Axane waited out of sight, enduring the moments until he returned Parvâti to her. Yesterday, again, she had asked if she could come out; again he had refused. He glanced away, not wanting to spoil his pleasure with thoughts of her.

  The announcement drum sounded. He scooped up a wriggling Parvâti and carried her in to her mother, then settled the Blood around his neck and went out to the reception room. Ardashir was waiting, pacing back and forth, picking with one bandaged hand at the wrappings of the other. This was so untypical of his usual control that Râvar knew instantly something was amiss.

  “What is it, Ardashir?”

  “Beloved One.” Ardashir let his hands fall, bowed. “There is news. I … hardly know how to say it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Travelers have arrived. Not pilgrims.” He drew a breath. “A Son and Daughter of the Brethren.”

  Râvar felt as if someone had struck him in the chest. “What?”

  “It is so, Beloved One. When the news was brought to me I doubted it, and went myself to investigate. Of course I have never seen the Brethren, so I took with me a man who made pilgrimage last year to Baushpar. He confirms it. They have the sun tattoos of the Brethren, and they are escorted by armed guards who also wear tattoos, in the manner of the ratist ordinates from Kanu-Tapa who are the Brethren’s traditional guardians. They say they are the Son Vivaniya and the Daughter Sundit.”

  Râvar struggled to compose himself. The spy, he thought. It had be the spy; who else could have guided them here? Actually, there had been two spies; one had converted and betrayed the other, but not quickly enough to prevent the other from fleeing back to his masters in Baushpar. Râvar had not been pleased, though he knew it was inevitable that the Brethren discover him. He had anticipated other spies, or some action against his proselytizers. But never, not once, had he imagined that the Brethren would come to him.

  “Beloved One, they … demand … an audience with you.” Ardashir’s tone conveyed his outrage at such temerity. “I informed them that only rata has the power to demand anything of the Next Messenger, and told them that I would ask your will.”

  “I will see them, Ardashir. At once.”

  “Beloved One, if I may offer counsel … ma
ke them wait a day or two. Remind them they have no authority here.”

  “No.” Râvar shook his head. Excitement sparked in his belly. “I want to hear what they’ve come to say to me. Have the torches lit in the audience cave and conduct them there immediately. How many of these guards are there?”

  “Twenty, Beloved One. All armed.”

  “They have permission to bring six. But no weapons. This is a place of peace. We will not have swords here.”

  “Knives, Beloved One. The Brethren’s guardians carry knives.”

  “Knives, then.”

  “And if they refuse, Beloved One?”

  “If they refuse, they shall have no audience. Ardashir—”

  “Yes, Beloved One?”

  “I confess I am as surprised by this as you. I had thought the Brethren would wait for me in Baushpar; I did not imagine they would come all this long way. In this, it seems my father did not see fit to share his will with me.”

  A rare smile, as faint as his lifelight, curved Ardashir’s lips. “I shall tell them you’ve been expecting them all along, Beloved One. We’ll see how arrogant they are then.”

  “Go, Ardashir. See it done.”

  Ardashir departed. Râvar returned to the bathing room. Excitement sat in his throat, and something else, a pressure he could not swallow down. The Brethren. Here. A feeling of dream overwhelmed him. For just a moment, he was tempted to call Ardashir back and tell him to make them wait after all.

  How should he receive them? In his god guise, nearly naked and wreathed in light? No doubt they had heard about that from their spy. But the caves were cold, and he did not want them to see him do so ordinary a thing as shiver. No. He would go before them as a human Messenger, like the one they believed had fathered them centuries ago. The god-face he would save for later.

  He rummaged through the clothing strewn around his bed, searching for the embroidered overrobe he sometimes wore. His hands trembled, making him even more clumsy than usual. He found the robe and dragged it on, then took a comb and yanked it through his hair. Shaking the heavy tresses back over his shoulders, he crossed to his night chamber. Axane sat on a cushion, Parvâti crawling near her on the floor. She looked up as he appeared.

  “The two Brethren who traveled with the army to Refuge,” he said. “One of them was named Vivaniya, yes?”

  He could see how much she wanted to ask why. “Yes. And the other—”

  “Was called Dâdar. I remember.” He had been sure, but he wanted to be certain. It was not something he knew about firsthand, for he had been shut up in the Cavern when the Brethren’s army came into Refuge. Axane had told him—and also what she had overheard the two Sons say to one another, after the battle.

  “Shall I help you with that?”

  She pointed. He realized he still held the comb. Lately she had begun offering him assistance—mending his clothes, cleaning his rooms, or as now, dressing his hair.

  “No.”

  He closed them in, then went out into the passage, where a pair of Twentymen stood waiting with their staves and smoky torches. Near the main cavern, another passage branched to the right, opening, after a short distance, into the cave where Râvar held his audiences. It was little more than an oversized fissure, narrow at the front, bellying at its midpoint, with a drop-off into blackness at its back. Its walls were frosted with crystalline deposits that caught and magnified the light of a dozen torches, fixed to crystal rods that Râvar had planted in the floor. To one side, a slumping moon white pillar joined floor to ceiling. Râvar had shaped a seat into it and smoothed the rock around it to form a kind of dais.

  He arranged himself on the pillar seat. The Twentymen positioned themselves to either side. His pulse beat fast and high. Drafts roiled the substance of the air; the torch flames danced in counterpoint, sending up long tails of smoke.

  Light fell across the entrance. Ardashir appeared, a torch raised in one bandaged hand. After him came three large men in loose red gowns and trousers, with white stoles wound around their chests and shoulders. Sinuous tattoos disfigured their faces and their muscled right arms, left bare by the draping of their stoles. Behind them walked a man and woman, side by side. They, too, were shaven-headed, dressed in garments identical in cut and color to their attendants’, but, Râvar’s patternsense informed him, made of richer fabrics. On their foreheads a stylized rendering of the sun, rata’s symbol, was tattooed in red. The man checked when he saw Râvar, falling still all in an instant, like a startled animal; the woman took hold of his arm, urging him into motion again. Three more attendants followed, and, bringing up the rear, several Twentymen. The cave was barely large enough to hold them all.

  “Beloved One,” said Ardashir. “I present to you the Son Vivaniya and the Daughter Sundit.” He turned on the two Brethren. “Kneel,” he said harshly. “Kneel to rata’s Messenger.”

  “No.” Râvar held up his hand. “I do not command it.”

  He regarded them, letting the silence stretch. The Son looked to be in his early thirties, a narrow man with a pale complexion and eyes that swept upward at the outer corners. His lifelight was the color of a dying coal. His eyes were riveted on Râvar’s face; the folds of his elaborately draped white stole trembled with his rapid breathing. The Daughter seemed far more self-possessed. Her skin was pale like her companion’s, but she had the round eyes and high-bridged nose of an Arsacian. She was small, rising only to the Son’s shoulder, and sturdily built. Râvar guessed her to be somewhere in her fifth decade. Her lifelight was pure clear blue, with surges of darker color.

  These are my enemies, Râvar thought. This woman decreed Refuge’s destruction. This man walked among its ruins. Hatred shook him. He held himself motionless, letting it quake through him and away.

  “Children of the First Messenger.” His voice rang across the silence of the cave. “Be welcome in the Awakened City.”

  The Daughter Sundit inclined her head. “We thank you.”

  “You’ve traveled the Waking Road, as my faithful do. Yet I see you do not come to me in belief.”

  “We are here neither in belief nor disbelief.” Within her cool light, the Daughter’s face revealed nothing. “We are here to learn the truth.”

  Ardashir’s glare might have cracked stone. Râvar smiled.

  “I understand,” he said. “You are guardians of the Way of rata. You cannot simply embrace faith, as others do, for it is not only your own souls that are at issue. If you believe, the Way believes. The church believes. Is that not so?”

  He could see he had surprised her. “It is exactly so.”

  “Tell me, then.” He held her eyes. “How may I convince you?”

  “Show us what you have built in this place, this … Awakened City. Let us learn of you, and from you.”

  “Should I tell you of myself, then? How my father shaped me out of flesh and breathed into me the fire of his own divinity? Or shall I tell you of my father, mighty rata, of his beauty and his majesty, of his stern judgment and his infinite compassion? Shall I describe his resting place, where I first opened my eyes upon the world, the crystal ocean of his Blood blazing around me like the sun? Or perhaps I should speak of my wanderings in the Burning Land, of the terror and the ecstasy I endured in that sacred place.” He shifted his gaze abruptly to the Son Vivaniya. “You know of what I speak, Vivaniya of the Brethren. For you, too, have wandered there.”

  The Son’s eyes stretched. His mouth came a little open. The Daughter glanced at him, a small frown between her brows.

  “Or perhaps I won’t give you words at all. Perhaps it would be better simply … to show you.”

  A burst of blue-white light. A shuddering crack deep within the stone. The rock at the Brethren’s feet split like the rind of a fruit, opening a chasm as black as blindness. The Son shouted and staggered back; he might have fallen had not one of his guards caught him beneath t
he arms. The Daughter backtracked also, though she made no sound. The guards closed around them both, their tattooed faces like something out of nightmare.

  Once more Râvar extended his shaping will. The rock regenerated with an impact that shook the floor. The guards and the Son looked wildly round the cavern as if they expected it to collapse upon their heads. Râvar laughed; he could not help it.

  “You are all quite safe,” he said. “That was but a small demonstration of the power that accomplished the first act of rata’s Promise, and brought the walls of Thuxra prison down.”

  The Daughter said something too soft to hear. The guards moved back. Deliberately she paced forward, halting exactly where the chasm had been. Râvar felt reluctant admiration. She was formidable.

  “I see your eyes upon my necklace, Sundit of the Brethren.” Carefully he lifted it from around his neck. “Ardashir. Show the Blood to our guests. Let them see it close.”

  Ardashir’s face was like a mask. He brought the necklace to the Brethren, resting the crystal on one bandaged palm so they could inspect it. The Son simply stared, but the Daughter bent over it, peering into its fiery heart.

  “You may touch it,” Râvar said. “If you wish.”

  She glanced at him, then back at the great stone. She reached out, stroked it lightly with one finger. For a moment she stared at her fingertip. Then she closed her hand into a fist and straightened.

  “Thank you.” For the first time, she seemed uncertain. “I … this is …” She paused. “You understand. We must be sure.”

  He inclined his head, acknowledging.

  “What is your intent?”

  He heard the change in her voice. She was speaking not for the others’ benefit, but for her own. He leaned toward her, his eyes capturing hers.

  “I am the Next Messenger, Sundit of the Brethren. I have come to fulfill rata’s Promise, to bring word of his rising and open the way for his return.” He summoned illusion as he spoke, allowing light to bleed out around him, brightening briefly, flickering out at the final word. She blinked, uncertain of what she had seen. “I know the impediment of the authority you bear, which will not easily allow you to accept me. I do not fault you for this. I ask only that you watch, that you listen, that you learn. That you keep an open heart.” He raised his right hand and placed it on his breast. “I promise, if you do, you will find the truth.”