The Awakened City Read online

  “Look.” He showed Diasarta the hexagon. “This was painted on the column of the Red Lantern. I thought it was a sign against spirits. It’s really quite clever—the symbols are distinctive, yet they look enough like warding signs that they wouldn’t attract special notice.”

  “It’s bloody ridiculous, if you ask me. All this secret mystery nonsense.”

  Gyalo set the paper aside. “Let me see your hand.”

  Diasarta extended it. Carefully Gyalo unwound the bandage. As in the pictogram, the cut had been made diagonally across Diasarta’s palm. Its edges gaped, still oozing blood. A dark substance had been smeared into it.

  “What’s this black stuff?”

  “An ointment, so it’ll be sure to leave a scar. A sign anyone can see—yet easy to hide as closing your hand. So the missionary said.”

  “And those who accept the sign do a thing they can’t take back. They’re bound to him beyond any oath that can be spoken—transformed, set apart from others.”

  A tremor, or a shiver, passed through Diasarta’s body. “I’m just glad it wasn’t something worse.”

  But if it had been, you’d have endured it, wouldn’t you? Gyalo looked down at the hand he held in his. It was Diasarta who had engineered his escape from Faal. It was Diasarta who had cared for him afterward, as he weaned himself off manita. It was Diasarta who had come with him to Ninyâser, and helped him learn the ways of secular life—as alien, to a man vowed from childhood to the Way of rata, as the language of a foreign land. Diasarta had given more than Gyalo could ever hope to repay, even if he had a lifetime to do it. And what he gave most was what Gyalo wanted least: faith.

  They never spoke of it, of what Gyalo knew Diasarta still believed: that he, Gyalo, was the Next Messenger. Yet it lay behind every word that passed between them. Gyalo hated it—hated it for the obligation it laid on him, for the rebuke it gave to his own inaction. Once he had grown comfortable in his secular life, he began to find excuses to avoid Diasarta. After Axane arrived, the distance between them became greater still; in the months since Chokyi’s birth, he had seen the ex-soldier only twice. Diasarta, who was more sensitive than he seemed, had not tested that distance. Yet seven days ago, when he found Gyalo waiting on his doorstep, there had been no surprise—as if Diasarta had been waiting for something like this, for Gyalo to have need of him again. Now, in the other man’s face, Gyalo saw the same faith that had been present four months ago, a year ago, two years ago—undiminished by absence, untarnished by neglect.

  “I’m sorry, Dasa.”

  “Don’t feel too bad, Brother,” Diasarta said drily. “You’ll have to have one of these as well. We’ve got to show it when we get there, or they won’t let us in.”

  Gyalo got up and went into the kitchen, where he dipped water into a bowl and selected from Axane’s healing supplies some rags, a roll of bandages, and the astringent-smelling salve she used for cuts and burns. Diasarta sat still while Gyalo cleaned away the blood, but snatched his hand back when Gyalo reached for the salve.

  “It’s got to scar. Burn it, Brother, d’you want me to have gone through this for nothing?”

  Gyalo sighed. “Let me give you a fresh bandage at least.”

  That Diasarta allowed.

  “Well,” Gyalo said when he was done, “I suppose there’s no reason to delay.”

  “Brother.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could go alone. I already have the mark.” He lifted his hand. “There’s no need for you to put yourself at risk.”

  “What? No, absolutely not. Dasa, I can’t believe you’d even suggest such a thing.”

  “All right, all right. I had to ask.” Diasarta got to his feet. “I’ll go home and get my pack. I’ll meet you in two hours at the King’s Gate.” He pointed to the slip of paper he had paid such a price to obtain, lying discarded on the path. “Don’t forget that.”

  Gyalo had already assembled his travel kit; it remained only to set the house in order. He got rid of the perishable food, swept out the kitchen, emptied the water cask, latched the shutters, stowed away the pens and ink stones and paper that normally sat on his desk. His last commission had been finished and delivered two days ago. Finally, he took the box that held his and Axane’s savings from its hiding place under the floorboards of the upstairs room and emptied the coins into a pouch. There was less than he would have liked. A few days earlier he had gone to the rental agent and paid the rent on the house for the next year. A foolish thing to do, perhaps, but it had seemed important, as a pledge of hope.

  He tied the pouch around his waist under his shirt, and heaved his pack onto his back. He glanced around the room, dim with its shutters closed. Already it looked abandoned. How long before I stand here again? he thought. And then: Will I stand here again?

  He shook the questions away. He would not allow Diasarta’s misgivings to affect him.

  At Ciri’s house, he knocked.

  “I’m going away for a while,” he told her when she answered. “To join my wife. Will you keep an eye on the house for us?”

  “Of course,” she said. “When will you be back?”

  “I can’t say. Not for a long time, perhaps. The rent’s paid up until next year.”

  Her eyes widened, but all she said was, “We’ll miss you, you and your wife. You’ve been good neighbors.”

  “As have you,” he said, meaning it. He held out the spare key. “I’d like you to keep this. For when we return.” In case she comes back, and I don’t.

  “rata’s blessing to you,” she said, taking it. “And safe journey, wherever it is you’re going.”

  “Thank you, Ciri. Go in light.”

  “Great is rata. Great is his Way. Go in light, master scribe.”

  He left the court. The city, with its vivid noise and jostle and stink that normally commanded his senses, seemed pale and distant; he could feel it dropping away from him, like a room into which he might never go again. Beneath his clothing, strung on a cord, was Axane’s bracelet; it lay against his heart as his simulacrum once had, the emblem of his new service. He felt the tidal force that bound him to her—fainter than it had been, stretched thin across the miles separating them, but hooked as firmly as ever into his heart. He was falling toward her at last.

  Part II

  THE BLACKENED MEN

  5

  Sundit

  WE STOP THIS night in a village whose name I cannot at the moment call to mind. Reanu has commandeered for us the house of the headman; it’s crude in its appointments but comfortable enough. The others are asleep; I sit up by candlelight, bringing my journal entries up to date, which I have not done since before we left Baushpar. I must not allow myself, on this most important of journeys, to grow lax.

  The day before departure was consumed by a predictable whirlwind of preparation: meetings with my aides, a final consultation with Drolma on the books and other items to pack and bring along, farewell visits to certain of my Brothers and Sisters. Of course there were also those I did not intend to visit. But the Evening City, labyrinthine as it is, can sometimes be a very small place. Midway through the afternoon, crossing the Butterfly Court on my way to call on Hysanet, I encountered Kudrâcari, with Okhsa scurrying along beside her like the weasel he resembles.

  “Great is rata.” Okhsa showed his pointed teeth. Kudrâcari’s smile was equally unconvincing. “Great is his Way.”

  “Go in light,” I replied.

  “Okhsa and I have been intending to visit you,” Kudrâcari said, “to offer blessings for your safe journey.”

  “Thank you.” I knew they intended no such thing. “Blessings are always welcome.”

  “The preparations go well, I hope? If there is anything you need, please, don’t hesitate to call on us.”

 
“That’s kind,” I said, imagining how they would react if I actually asked for their assistance. “But I have things well in hand. In fact, I was just on my way to see to some final matters.”

  I made to move around them. Kudrâcari stepped forward and put her hand on my arm.

  “Sister. We are alone here. Will you not admit, just once, what it is that you believe?”

  I pulled away. “You’ve heard me speak in council.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard you.” Her small eyes were narrow. “But you are not like Magabyras or Hysanet, Sister, pulled always between one view and another, never able to make up your mind. You have an opinion on everything. You affect impartiality, but I think you have come to a conclusion on this blasphemer, this pretender in the mountains, and I fear I know what that conclusion is. I can’t forget that you supported the apostate Gyalo Amdo Samchen, when he made his blasphemous claims.”

  “I did not support him, Sister. I simply did not agree with you and your supporters.”

  “Will you answer me, Sundit?”

  “I have answered, Kudrâcari. Many times. If you won’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Taxmârata is a fool,” she hissed. All her pretense of pleasantness was gone. She wore her true face, mouth as tight as a sithra string, eyes alight with the anger that burns so hot in her in this incarnation. “And this is a fool’s mission. But if two of us must go, it should be two whose minds are not already made up!”

  “What, like yours? Kudrâ, do you think I don’t see what’s really at issue here? You didn’t vote against this mission because you have any rational reason to be certain of the claimant’s falsity, but for the sake of your own pride. If you were to admit the necessity of investigating this so-called Next Messenger’s claims, you’d also have to admit you might have been wrong two and a half years ago when you condemned Gyalo Amdo Samchen as a heretic and a liar. And that, despite all evidence to the contrary, you cannot do!”

  I should not have said it. Kudrâ is not her own master in such things; she is ridden by her rage, which may aggrandize and exalt her, but cannot make her happy. But my temper was well and truly lost. She was too astonished to reply. Okhsa had edged behind her, as if for protection. I pushed past them both and left the court.

  I took the evening meal with Utamnos, who is greatly distressed at the prospect of my absence. At bedtime he did not want to let me go. But at last he succumbed to sleep, and I wrapped myself in a cloak and drew the hood down to hide my tattoo and left the Evening City, crossing the great square that opens at Baushpar’s center like a rivet fastening the city to the earth and entering the incense-scented dimness of the First Temple of rata. There I sat for some time, unremarked in my cloak, in contemplation of rata Eon Sleeper. Usually I am satisfied to perform my devotions in my personal chapel, but that night I needed more: the First Temple’s vastness, its silence, its ancient majesty. Its reminder of the glory and the permanence of the church.

  On my way out I paused, as most worshipers do, to brush my fingers across the words of rata’s Promise, incised beneath the painting of the Next Messenger. One of the council’s few unanimous decisions of recent years was to leave this image as we found it on our return to Baushpar, as a reminder of Arsace’s eight decades of suffering under the heel of the Caryaxist regime. The Messenger is obscured by Caryaxist graffiti: his face, his near-naked body, his hands, bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the Blood. But his dark eyes look through, clear and extraordinarily real. In the flickering lamplight, they almost seem to move to meet one’s own.

  As a meditation and a reminder, I write the words of the Promise here. For the Promise travels with me on this journey, as surely as do any of my human companions.

  You are only the first. Watch always for the next. He will be born out of a dark time. He will come among you ravaged from the burning lands, bearing my blood with him. One act of destruction will follow on his coming, and one of generation. Thus shall you know him. He will bring news of me, and he will open the way, so that my children may be brought out of exile.

  When I returned, Ha-tsun told me that Taxmârata had come, and was waiting for me in the moon garden. I needn’t say how much this surprised me; I confess that for a moment I was tempted not to go. I found him in the gallery, pacing in his restless way.

  “Brother,” I said.

  He turned. I was reminded of what a big man he is: broad of shoulder and deep of chest, his shadow wide enough to engulf me, had I been standing in it. The Blood of rata pulsed on his chest, an ember in the dimness.

  “Sister.” He gestured toward the garden. “Shall we walk?”

  We stepped onto the path. Around us the night-blooming flowers glimmered, shedding the fragrances called forth by darkness. By a shrub planted in a pottery urn Taxmârata paused, bringing his face close to the pale trumpets that hung among its leaves.

  “It’s called queen-of-the-night,” I said.

  “ ‘Beautiful is her face in the night / Shining on dark pillows,’ ” he said, and then, in answer to my look of inquiry, “A poem about the moon. I can’t remember the poet, but I have always loved that line.”

  “Moon gardens are an Isaran custom,” I said. “In Rimpang it was too dry and hot for most of these plants, but Baushpar’s climate is perfect.”

  “You’ve made a paradoxical beauty here, Sundit. In the dark, it’s easy to see rata’s light.”

  For some reason it did not please me that he saw the truth of my moon garden—that it is not simply a gathering of leaves and flowers and stone and water, but a devotion, like the beauties of my apartments, like the magnificence of the Evening City, like the glory of Baushpar. Like all the splendor and luxury with which we Brethren so lavishly surround ourselves, often forgetting that such impermanent things are not to be cherished for themselves but for the way they speak to us of rata’s bright substance, shining still through the world’s veil of ash.

  “Brother,” I said sharply, “have you something to say to me?”

  “I haven’t properly thanked you for your part in all of this, Sundit. For the help and counsel you’ve offered me. It has reminded me a little … of old times.”

  I did not think I owed him any response to that.

  “I know you have misgivings about Vivaniya,” he said.

  “You didn’t ask for my opinion when you chose him to go with me. I’m surprised you would raise the matter now.”

  “I’m aware of the rift between the two of you. But I was under the impression it was mended.”

  “That is not the source of my concern.”

  “Is it that you think as Kudrâcari and her supporters do, that he cannot be trusted to speak the truth?”

  “You should know me better than to imagine I’d ever share a thought with Kudrâcari.”

  Taxmârata turned abruptly, with that restlessness that will never allow him to stop too long in any single place, and began to pace again. “Vanyi is truly repentant. I believe he will work all the harder in service of the truth—harder perhaps than one who had not chosen falsehood, and learned the consequences of doing so.”

  “He certainly worked hard to persuade you of it.”

  “Do you mistrust his motives, then?”

  “No.” I sighed, annoyed at my own pettishness. “It’s his judgment that concerns me. I think his guilt has already more than half convinced him that this claimant is truly the Next Messenger.”

  Taxmârata nodded. “I see that, too. But how many among us can claim an open mind on this matter? Not Kudrâcari or Ariamnes or Okhsa, who not only voted against this journey but did all they could to persuade others to oppose it also. Not Dâdar, who even now will not admit he did wrong in withholding such a crucial part of the truth. Not Artavâdhi or Baushtas, who believed the word of the apostate Gyalo Amdo Samchen, and have been waiting for the Next Messenger ever since. Vimâta and Hysanet are too u
ntried to go; Martyas and Haminâser are too infirm. Magabyras is too indecisive—the only one of us who withheld his vote. Clearly, I cannot abandon my duties here. That leaves Vivaniya—who, if he is not an ideal choice, is at least a better choice than the rest.”

  “Concerns aside, I cannot disagree.”

  “And, of course, you. From the beginning it was obvious that you should be the one to go. You’re the only one of us who truly does possess an open mind. I know that when you reach this so-called Next Messenger, you will look on him with unclouded eyes.”

  “Kudrâcari doesn’t think so,” I said, remembering the afternoon.

  “Kudrâcari is blinded by her own bias. I only wish it were not so perilous. But risk or no, we have no choice. We must see this man, or whatever he is, for ourselves. We must know.”

  In this, at least, he and I have been of a mind from the start.

  We walked on. Now and then he reached to touch a blossom or a spray of leaves, or to run his fingers along the coping of a fountain. At last the circuit of the path delivered us back to the columned gallery where we had begun. Before its steps he paused, as if reluctant to move back into shadow. The Blood burned on his chest. The whites of his eyes, and his ivory stole, gleamed like the faces of the flowers.

  “These are dark times, Sister,” he said softly.

  I was silent.

  “Five years ago the future seemed so glorious. We stood ready to redress the Caryaxists’ persecution, to restore the Way of rata to Arsace, the god’s first kingdom. It was to be a new beginning—I and Santaxma, he with his Lords’ Assembly rebuilding the land, I with the Brethren rebuilding the church, both of us together bringing a new age of peace and tolerance to birth.” He shook his head. “And now look at us. The Arsacian people love the Way of rata, but we never knew till we returned to Baushpar how many no longer love the Brethren and condemn us for fleeing to Rimpang when the Caryaxists came. Santaxma has revealed himself as my foe, as the church’s foe, an impious man who has denied us the political voice he swore we should have, and commits daily blasphemy with his mining of the Burning Land. And we Brethren are divided, perhaps more than in all our centuries of rule, by word brought by an apostate Shaper out of the Burning Land and by the actions we have taken in response.”