The Awakened City Read online

  Sundit led the way across a little bridge, passing into the shadow of the ancient bo tree that fanned its branches high above the summerhouse. Moss lay green and springy underfoot, ridged with massive roots. The Guard captain, a barrel-chested man with a milky lifelight much like Gyalo’s own, came forward and knelt.

  “Great is rata. Great is his Way.”

  “Go in light,” Sundit replied.

  The captain rose. “Old One, it is the King’s pleasure to receive with you not only this man”—he nodded toward Gyalo—“as you have requested, but also one of your guards. He bids me ask that any weapons they carry be given into my keeping.”

  Reanu reached beneath his flawlessly draped stole and withdrew his knives, which he tossed in the air and caught by the blades and offered to the captain hilt first, his eyes never leaving the other man’s face. The captain received them, matching him gaze for gaze, and handed them to a subordinate. He turned to Gyalo.

  “I carry no weapon,” Gyalo said. The thought came to him, irresistible: Except myself.

  “You will forgive me,” said the captain, “but I must be sure.” He ran his hands efficiently along Gyalo’s body, then stood back and bowed. “Please, Old One. Proceed.”

  Sundit stepped forward. Reanu followed, and Gyalo. In a few moments, for the first time since his release, he would voluntarily admit the truth of his apostasy to one who did not already know it. The inhibition of a fugitive tensed along his jaw. Anticipation coiled beneath his breastbone like hot wire. He closed his fingers against the throbbing of his palms, and to the silent god sent a silent prayer: rata, grant me eloquence.

  The summerhouse’s golden pillars gleamed against the dimness within; the ceiling was gilded also, hung with tasseled wind bells. At the precise center of the floor stood a massive carven chair, with two guards standing to attention behind it, amber and azure lifelights overlapping in an oily wash of green. In the chair, Santaxma sat waiting—Santaxma, who had conquered the Caryaxists, who had restored the Brethren to Baushpar, then turned their need against them, bending the immortal leaders of the church of rata to his will. Santaxma, the blasphemer King.

  Sundit halted. As was her right as a ruler of the church, she made no obeisance. Gyalo and Reanu sank to their knees and bowed their heads to the floor. There was a pause, underscored rather than broken by the chiming of the bells. Gyalo smelled the honey scent of the wax that glossed the floorboards; his eyes traced its patterns, layer upon layer, and beneath them the dense, grained structure of the wood.

  “Great is rata,” the King said. “Great is his Way.”

  It was a victory for Sundit: She had forced him to speak first. “Go in light, Majesty.”

  “Your men may rise.”

  They obeyed. Santaxma’s eyes, close-set and dark, assessed Reanu, then, more lingeringly, Gyalo. Gyalo’s skin prickled, but no recognition dawned in the King’s face.

  “You are welcome in Ninyâser, Old One.” Like most Arsacian nobles Santaxma was light-skinned, with handsome, fleshy features. He wore flowing clothes of sky-blue silk; gold clips held back his long, waxed curls, and jewels glinted at his wrists and neck and hung heavy from his ears. His lifelight was a silver cloud, shimmering like falling water. “And in my home. As you see, but for my guards and your men we are alone, as you requested.”

  “Your graciousness delights me, Majesty.”

  “Old One, you have indicated that this is a matter of some urgency. I suggest, therefore, that we dispense with the customary etiquette, with tedious pleasantries about your journey and my household, with time spent in the exchange of gifts and the consumption of refreshment, and come directly to the issue at hand. Will you agree?”

  Since there was no sign of servants, or any furnishing in the summer-house but his chair, it was obvious that this was not a suggestion at all. Sundit chose to ignore the insult. “Majesty, the matter is urgent indeed, and greater haste profits us all.”

  Santaxma smiled a small tight smile. A breeze swept through the summerhouse; the bells sang a silvery crescendo. “Speak, then.”

  “Are you aware, Majesty, that a man has lately arisen who calls himself the Next Messenger?”

  “There were rabble-rousers in the city a year ago who claimed to speak of such a man. On my order, they were expelled.”

  “Where those departed, Majesty, others returned, more circumspect in their proselytizing. We Brethren were concerned by the reports we received …”

  She described her and Vivaniya’s embassy to the Awakened City, Vivaniya’s conversion, and what had happened after, omitting only the details of how she and her men had escaped the cave in which Râvar prisoned them. Santaxma listened without interrupting. He had disposed himself with elaborate casualness, one leg stretched before him, his left elbow resting upon the arm of his chair and his chin supported on that hand—a pose that was as much a show of ease as ease itself, for there was nothing casual about his direct black gaze.

  “So this so-called Next Messenger is not a god-crazed madman, but a deliberate pretender,” he said when Sundit paused, crisply summing up. “An apostate Shaper, now traveling with his followers through Arsace, seeking to convert others to heretical belief and to depose the Brethren.” He nodded. “I am aware of his advance. My Dreamers have been tracking a large train of people moving up the Great South Way. At present it is some days short of Darna.”

  One of Santaxma’s great advantages during the war he had waged on the failing Caryaxist regime had been his corps of Dreamers—not ratist-style Dreamers, whose duties were chiefly mystical and who were trained to Dream in signs and symbols impenetrable to those not experienced in interpreting them, but Dreamers like Axane, who saw the world simply and directly through their sleep. In peacetime he continued to employ them, in the tradition of his royal ancestors, to keep watch over the land he ruled.

  “That he is apostate I suspected from all the reports I have received, but my Dreamers have not been able positively to confirm it. I thank you for the warning, Old One. I shall tell my commanders to be prepared.”

  “Majesty, do you plan some action?”

  “Of course. We cannot have a rabble of pilgrims overrunning Arsace, or a false Messenger stirring the people to heresy. The garrison at Darna will arrest him and disperse his followers. I trust the monastery there will oblige us with a supply of manita.”

  “Majesty, I wish it were so easy. This is no ordinary apostate. He is extremely skilled, extremely powerful. A conventional offensive, even with manita, may not be enough. And you cannot risk failure. It is not his intent merely to play out this charade of Messengerhood. He means to lay your kingdom waste.”

  “Lay it waste?” The King smiled, in the manner of a not-very-patient nephew humoring an eccentric aunt. “Forgive me, Old One, these are ecclesiastical matters, which you of course understand better than I. But a single apostate surely does not pose so great a threat, no matter how robust his strength or malign his ambition. Why in any case should he embrace so dark an objective? What has Arsace done to him, that he should detest it so?”

  “Majesty,” Sundit said, with a sharpness no ordinary mortal would have dared to show, “you have not heard the entire tale. This man I’ve brought before you has firsthand knowledge of the pretender, his power and his intent, and will confirm all I have said.”

  Even from where he stood, Gyalo saw the flare in the King’s eyes. “Indeed,” he said tightly. “Why is he standing silent, then?”

  “Majesty, this man freed my people and me from our confinement in the pretender’s stronghold, in which otherwise we surely would have died. Along the way of our journey he saved our lives again—”

  “Can he not tell me these things himself?” The King did not trouble to conceal his impatience.

  “Majesty, it is important that you know the precise circumstances that have brought him before you.”

  He
r words were more strategy. She would praise Gyalo, speak of the services he had done her and her people, hoping by this catalogue of virtues to soften Santaxma’s shock when he discovered a free Shaper standing not twenty paces from him. But to Gyalo it was already apparent that things were going wrong. In Santaxma’s subtle slights of etiquette, in his patronizing manner, in his narrowed eyes and tightened mouth, Gyalo read a pattern, clear as the world-patterns revealed by his Shaper senses: the King’s dislike of Sundit, his resentment at being manipulated into receiving her, his growing annoyance with her warnings of peril, which he clearly thought he understood better than she—all of which might turn, in the moment of revelation, not to shock but to rage. Instinct filled Gyalo; as on the track south of Darna, he let it carry him.

  “Majesty,” he said across Sundit’s words. He took a step forward and fell to his knees. “I beg a boon of you.”

  The King’s head snapped toward him. The guards tensed like puppets whose strings had suddenly jerked taut. Sundit pivoted, her lips still parted, her face a mask of surprise. For a moment there was no sound but the soft chiming of the wind bells.

  “It was my impression,” the King said, “that you were here to grant a boon to me. Namely, this information that the Daughter Sundit judges so very vital.”

  “Majesty, I will gladly give you that information—”

  “What you are doing?” Sundit hissed.

  “And I will tell you who I am to give it.” He raised his voice. “But first, order one of your guards to come to me, to draw his sword and set it at my back and stand ready to run me through without a second’s hesitation.”

  Santaxma’s plucked black brows rose. “That is your boon?”

  “Majesty, it is.”

  “I confess myself intrigued.” The King lifted one ringed hand. “Roas. Do it.”

  The azure guard strode forward, his sword whispering from his sash. He came up behind Gyalo; Gyalo felt the sword point come to rest between his shoulder blades, a pressure just short of pain.

  “Is that satisfactory?” A smile pulled at the corners of the King’s mouth. “Perhaps you should tell me under what circumstances he is to kill you.”

  “If at any point I take any action that imperils you or anyone in this room. As I speak to you, Majesty, I will know my life is forfeit if I do harm. As you hear me, you will know the same.”

  The smile widened. “Are you really such a dangerous fellow?”

  “You may judge for yourself, Majesty. You’ve not shown that you remember my face, but you have seen me before—two and a half years ago, to be exact, in the Pavilion of the Sun in Baushpar. My name is Gyalo Amdo Samchen. I am the Shaper the Brethren sent into the Burning Land. I am—”

  “The apostate.” Santaxma’s amusement had vanished. “The heretic. I remember. You were imprisoned.” He frowned. “You have been released?”

  “No, Majesty. I escaped my imprisonment and have been living free ever since.” The King’s face seemed frozen. “I am apostate once more, fully so. I kneel before you a free Shaper.”

  The guard behind him audibly drew in his breath. The pressure of the sword vanished for an instant, then returned, a deeper bite this time, on the edge of thrust. “Majesty?” the man said softly.

  “Not yet.” The King had abandoned his nonchalant pose; both hands rested on the chair arms now, and his feet were square on the floor. There was tension in his voice, but no apparent fear. “Do you mean me harm, Gyalo Amdo Samchen?”

  “No, Majesty. On the Blood of rata I swear it.”

  Santaxma’s eyes flicked to Sundit. “You know of this.” It was not a question. “It was the reason for your tedious introduction.”

  “Yes, Majesty. I have known it since he unmade the stone that imprisoned me and my servants.”

  “Perhaps I should perceive a mortal insult here, that you would bring an untethered apostate before me.”

  “Majesty, perceive instead the urgency of my warning. Think on what it means for me to ally with such a man.”

  “Indeed.” The King nodded. “I am aware of the anathema he represents to you and your kin. Though that can cut many ways. Yet if need explains your tolerance of him, what explains his of you? Tell me, Gyalo Amdo Samchen, why would an untethered Shaper keep company with a Daughter of the Brethren? Do you plan to submit yourself to the church again?”

  “No, Majesty.” The sword point had penetrated Gyalo’s skin; he could feel blood trickling down his back. “I am free, and mean to remain so. But the Daughter and I share a common cause. Like her, I have come to give you warning.”

  “Against your own kind. Against an apostate.”

  “Majesty, he is a Shaper, but he is not my kind. Nor is he apostate, as I will explain if you allow it. Majesty, the risk I take in revealing myself demands your belief. This is why I asked that your man set his sword at my back—to make that risk explicit.”

  “Not so explicit if you could shatter the sword before it pierces you.”

  “I don’t know if I could, Majesty. I’ve never before tried to unmake a thing I could not see.”

  It was the truth. The King regarded him with unblinking obsidian eyes. Gyalo’s heart drummed; the edges of his vision shimmered. His scarred palms burned.

  “If this is a ruse,” Santaxma said, “it’s too complex for credibility. I will hear what you have to say.” He pointed a gold-heavy finger at Gyalo’s chest. “But don’t think I do not take you at your word. If you try to rise, if you so much as lift your hand to wipe the sweat from your face, your life will be forfeit. Roas is admirably skilled. He can run you through twice in the time it takes to blink.” The sword point dug deeper; Gyalo clenched his teeth. Santaxma leaned back in his chair. “Very well. Proceed.”

  “Majesty, if you recall, I discovered a settlement in the Burning Land, a settlement called Refuge.”

  “I remember. What has that to do with this?”

  “It will become apparent, Majesty. The people of Refuge followed a heresy. They believed that rdaxcasa had risen and rata had woken to oppose him, and their renewed battle had destroyed the world beyond the Range of Clouds. Like true ratists, they waited for the Next Messenger—not for news of rata’s rising, but rather for word of his victory over the Enemy. This Messenger then would lead them back to the outside world, where they would remake the human race. When I arrived, many of them mistook me for that Messenger. Others thought me one of rdaxcasa’s demons—including one very powerful young Shaper called Râvar.”

  The King’s eyes flickered with comprehension. “Are you saying that the heretic on the Great South Way is one of the untethered Shapers of Refuge?”

  “Yes, Majesty. Râvar survived Refuge’s destruction, along with a woman named Axane.”

  The King’s eyes shifted to Sundit. “It would seem you and your spirit-siblings were not so successful as you thought.”

  “We did not know,” Sundit said quietly. “We had no way of knowing.”

  He watched her a moment, his face like stone. Then he turned back to Gyalo. “Continue.”

  “In his rage, in the arrogance of his power, Râvar swore vengeance for his people. He would come upon Arsace as a false Messenger, as he believed I had been sent to Refuge as a false Messenger. He would wreak havoc upon Arsace, as Arsace had wreaked havoc on Refuge. And especially, he would punish the Brethren, whom he blamed for his people’s death. He and Axane traveled back across the Burning Land. When they reached Thuxra City, he used his shaping to destroy it, claiming it as the act of destruction in rata’s Promise.”

  “You expect me to believe that? A single Shaper?”

  “Free all his life, Majesty, trained from adolescence in techniques devised by Refuge’s original Shapers to enable them to survive a hostile land. With my own eyes I saw their strength—and felt it, too, for it was a storm called by a Shaper that destroyed the expedition of which
I was a part. It was no ordinary gift that brought Thuxra down—Râvar’s ability is very great, far greater than any of his fellows’. But it was his power, and his alone. I know this is so. Axane, who is now my wife, witnessed it.”

  “This woman Axane is your wife?” For the first time, the King seemed taken aback.

  “Yes, Majesty.” Gyalo described how she had found him in Ninyâser, how Râvar had stolen her and Chokyi, how he had tried and failed to save them. How Râvar had captured him and taunted him and set him free. All the while he felt the pressure of Roas’s sword, the slow crawl of blood down his back. “Until I stood before him, I did not truly believe he could succeed. I believe it now, Majesty. I believe it utterly.”

  “Do his followers know this?”

  “His second may. Ardashir, the man they call the First Disciple. The rest know nothing.”

  “He will surely lose them when they learn.”

  “Majesty, they think he is half a god. What can a god do wrong? Whatever he tells them, they will believe it.”

  “He commands not just their awe, Majesty, but their love.” Sundit spoke again. “I saw it clearly while I was in his City. There is a fire in him. I felt it, my Brother felt it—yes, and fell to it, just as his mortal followers did. If he can win a soul twelve centuries old, what soul is safe from him? Majesty, you know the truth now. This is what you face—an extraordinary shaping gift wielded by a mind and heart steeped in rage and hate, by a soul so black there is no deed dark enough for it to fear. For the safety of your realm, you must stand against this man. You cannot let him pass.”

  The King sat silent. His chin was on his palm again, his eyes narrow. His lifelight flowed around him like rain on beaten silver. At the roof, the bells dropped clear notes into the air.

  “I should not be surprised,” Santaxma said at last. “The Caryaxists in their zeal sought to starve the Way of rata, as one might starve a fire by covering it with earth. Instead, it burned downward, into bedrock, and when the earth was dug away it blazed up again, twice as high as before. You and your kin”—his black gaze flicked to Sundit—“were supposed to contain it, this fever of released faith. You swore to put an end to the visions in the temples, to the false miracles and the mad holy men, to this damnable tide of apocalypteering. You swore you would eradicate this heretical rumor that it was not my skill and perseverance that wrought the Caryaxists’ fall, but the god working through me, using me as his instrument. But it has been more than five years, and still the miracles fester and the rumors boil, and a wild-eyed prophet rises every week to stir the people in the marketplace. You have failed your trust. No.” He leveled a jeweled finger at Sundit’s face. “Say nothing. And this is the culmination of your failure: this pretender, who survived your bloody desert massacre, whose followers are the very exemplars of the Caryaxist-bred fanaticism against which you and your kin have shown yourself helpless. And now you come to me, and expect me to set right what you have made wrong, and for the sake of my people, my poor beleaguered people, I have no choice but to agree.”