Paia is still staring at the painting when the squat red sun clears the scrawl of mountains. Her tower studio burns with dusty light as the first traces of the daytime heat bleed through half a centimeter of armored glass. She can hear the morning gongs now, faint and rhythmic. If she lays her palms against the window wall, she’ll feel the heat and the dull reverberations from below, a metallic conscience calling to remind her that the day has once again begun and with it, her solemn duties in the Temple.
Of course, she’d much prefer to stay where she is, floating guilty and free among trees and rivers in this blue-green world of her imagination. But they’ll come looking for her eventually, her guards and chaperones. An alarm will be raised if her bed is found empty, and a crisis of such vast proportions will ensue until she’s found, that Paia hasn’t the heart or nerve to set it in motion.
She takes a step back from the painting, hoping this one brave move will break its spell. But the distance only sharpens her longing to be there, not beside it but in it. This is worrisome. She repeats to herself a few of the God’s stern admonitions about the danger of nostalgia, what he calls “the Green Heresy.” His catchphrase is Survive the day. He’s even worked it into the Temple litany. The God, in his own hedonistic way, is a pragmatist, and Paia sees the sense in it. So she steels herself and turns away, searching for a square of oilcloth to cover the still-moist paint, to hide the siren landscape from her susceptible gaze, or from anyone who might venture up here. For it is perilously subversive, this painting she’s made. It makes one yearn too piercingly to have what one cannot, and be where one can never go.
She roots out an antique plastic tarp, crackling with age. She had been saving it, as a relic of her childhood when plastic things were everywhere and still relatively functional. But opening it now seems the right thing to do—to risk a little shredding along the fold lines for the sake of her sanity, to properly blot out the demon image. She should paint it over, is what she should really do. But she can’t bring herself to do that. Already she’s planning how she can set time aside during the day to sneak back upstairs, to draw aside the faded blue tarp, and gaze once more on this forbidden landscape. Paia wonders if she’s having a crisis of faith.
She remembers a word from her studies, an ideal from a long time ago when an image of wilderness could embody paradise and perfection. It’s a name, a concept, really. She decides to title the painting “Arcadia.”
And once the concealing tarp is in place, it’s easier to pack up her paints, drop her brushes in oil, and head down the winding staircase, snatching a trailing silk robe off a handy hook to hide her undignified T-shirt and sweats. Traipsing along the empty corridor, like she’s just been for a walk, she surprises the dawn contingent of the Honor Guard as they’re settling into their watch. They snap to startled attention as she sails past them with an august wave, too fast for them to even consider her unkempt appearance, and shuts the door firmly in their faces. Oh, later they’ll remark on it, and there will be questions asked down below, about how she came to be outside her quarters when the retiring duty guards each have sworn—in the God’s name—that the High Priestess slept through the night, peaceful and undisturbed. No doubt there will be new faces outside her door tonight. Paia doesn’t care. Only that if a general alarm is avoided, the commandant is unlikely to inform the God of a few minor changes in personnel. She’s never tried keeping a secret from the God before, but lately he’s been railing harder against what he calls “sybaritic visions” of the lost green past, a subversive mythology encouraged by a few stubborn pockets of hereticism who, in order to sow unrest among the Faithful of the Temple, raise false hopes of a new “Greening.” There are even rumors, overheard only in whispers, of a Green messiah. So Paia knows if the God sees this painting, he’ll have it destroyed. And she’s not sure she could bear that.
Seconds after she’s shed her sweats and mashed them guiltily into a bottom drawer, her chambermaid is knocking discreetly at the door with the morning water ration and the breakfast tray, ready to draw her bath and lay out the appropriate Temple garments for the dressers when they arrive. One of the privileges of rank that Paia treasures most is her access, however intermittent and undrinkable, to hot and cold running water. The lower floors of the Citadel are without hot water these days: the God won’t allow them the energy to heat it. When he threatened to turn her own hot water off, Paia argued that she’d inherited the right to it. After all, it was her ancestors who’d chosen the site of their final retreat with enough prescience to build on top of a deep and integral aquifer, not to mention their subsequent protection of it with all the force and technology their considerable fortune could buy. Two hundred and fifty years later, the water still flows, though not with the purity or volume that it used to. Now the water is filtered and boiled for human consumption, and lately, the God has talked of it running out, perhaps within Paia’s lifetime. This could be his usual apocalyptic rhetoric, or it could be true. With the sensors deactivated, she has no way of knowing for sure. She does know that raising the water up to the surface has become consistently more difficult as conditions worsen. But for now, the God has let himself be convinced. So Paia has water to bathe in, though she’s not allowed to squander so much as a drop. From the drain in her tiny bathtub, the water falls directly into a cistern that feeds the Citadel’s water-starved kitchen gardens.
The only mystery in this neat system is the Sacred Well in the Temple yard, which remains filled to the brim even in the deepest drought and without encouragement from the aging pumps or the windmills that line the top of the Citadel’s ridge. The sacred water needs no purifying. It even tastes different, always icy cold, clear, and sharp as a gust from off the pole. This inexplicable wonder and the God himself are the twin foundations of Paia’s faith.
The chambermaid knocks again while Paia is searching for her discarded nightgown. She finds it, throws it on, and flops down in her favorite window alcove to calm her breathing before calling permission to the girl to enter.
The breakfast tray is laid before her on a cloth of gold embroidered with images of the God Rampant. Paia thinks he looks very handsome that way. She also thinks that the breakfast looks more than usually appetizing—one of the much pampered melon vines must finally be bearing. She’s grateful that today’s duties in the Temple are not ones that require fasting. Her long night’s exertions have left her famished. It would be a shame if the chambermaid does, as Paia suspects, subsist entirely on her mistress’ leftovers, because this morning, the High Priestess intends to devour everything put in front of her.
Paia lets her voice rise in the call to prayer, in the precise tone and pitch that the God has taught her. The intense heat in the Sanctuary rimes her body with sweat, and the metal band of her jeweled headdress itches intolerably. But the ritual is nearly over. This is the final prayer, where the Faithful are to echo the formal pleadings of the High Priestess for the God to lead them safely through the Last Days of the World. After that, there’s only the processional, a short march out past the Sacred Well to the Temple Plaza for the purification and sacrifice. Already the huge bronze doors have swung open as if by magic, and the lethal sun has laid a bright path between the paired columns of the inner court, straight down the center aisle between the shadowed ranks of kneeling Sons and Daughters of the God.
Yet this is the part that always frightens Paia the most: the moment when she must come down the seven holy steps from the raised and gated safety of the dais, and walk among the Faithful with only the God’s little gun for protection. To be sure, the side and rear walls of the Sanctuary are lined with well-armed members of her Honor Guard. But always at this moment, they seem a very long way away, certainly longer than the easy arm’s length she is from potential death with each row of celebrants she passes. But the God insists that she do this at least once in every ceremony. These are fearful and violent times, he agrees, and there is fear and violence in their hearts. But it’s a sign of her favor with him, he explains, that she dares to walk so freely among them. Besides, those lost in fear and violence have the greater need for her compassion. Her compassion, Paia notes, not his. Finally, he says, the Faithful need the actual contact with her “reality.” So, while Paia wishes that the God’s idea of priestly vestments allowed for a little more coverage, she’s grown used to them touching her, men and women alike, to the drawing of their worshipful palms and fingers across the bare skin of her arms and legs and back. It is, she reflects in her more profane moods, the only touching she gets, or will get, until the “right” Suitor comes along and is approved by the God.
Speared by the hot shaft of sunlight, Paia slow-steps down the aisle with her head held high and her eyes on the freedom of the open doorway. A low-ranking Daughter is leaning out into the aisle ahead, out of eagerness, not disrespect. An older woman, missing one hand. Not a likely threat. Paia glides by, feels the woman’s stub brush her back reverently. She must never rush, never show an inkling of fear. But she will feel safer when she reaches the shaded Inner Court, near the Sacred Well, or even outside in the sun-drenched but open Temple Plaza. Her favorite ceremonies end in the Inner Court. The Temple Sanctuary is the God’s domain, as is the Plaza. Her own holiest of holies is the Well.
She clears the mammoth doors with a private sigh of relief, pauses at the Well’s smooth dark oval to scoop icy water with her own sanctified hands into a golden bowl offered by one of her priestesses, then moves out onto the pale marble paving of the Plaza. She is trailed by the rest of her retinue, twelve thin First Daughters in red robes and red veils with whom she is not allowed to socialize. She’s never even seen them without their veils—would not know them if she ran into one of them in the hallways. The God says the High Priestess must declare her august stature and superior dignity by not mingling. For this reason, she is not a Son or a Daughter, but a Mother to them. Mother Paia. It makes her laugh. In truth, she is nobody’s mother, and she is not sure her dignity is best preserved by being always alone.
A contingent of the Honor Guard falls in behind the Twelve, and then come the Faithful, shuffling, eyes down-cast, crowding up against each other like herd animals, even in the stifling heat. Now there’s the sacrifice to be got through.
Paia turns left toward the huge Altar of the Winged God, an oblong ton of raw granite stained with the blood of countless prayers to the Deity. The usual complement of the lower priesthood awaits her there, ranged formally behind the tall and impressive figure of First Son Luco, Paia’s immediate subordinate. Of all the colorless functionaries the God has surrounded her with, this is her favorite. Paia almost likes Luco. He is kind in his own odd way and more often amusing than irritating. He’s uninterested in her sexually and ambitious for the Temple, which is no doubt why the God permits her a limited association with him. Perhaps he hopes the good examples set by Luco’s unswerving faith and devotion to duty will rub off on her. It is Luco who actually manages the day-to-day affairs of the Temple, so his avid claim on the giant sacrificial Knife is a favor Paia is only too willing to grant. He holds it crosswise in front of him now, its heavy golden hilt tucked to his hip like a favorite child. In front of him on the altar, a sturdy Third Son, stripped to the waist, restrains a young goat.
Paia suppresses the frown that would betray her surprise at seeing a sacrifice as major as a well-formed goat kid being offered at so inconsequential a ceremony. The God has explained the need for the sacrificial rite rather patiently, given how many times Paia has been bold enough to suggest that it’s a waste of valuable livestock. She falls back on this practical argument, knowing that notions of mercy will be lost on him. His reply is always the same: “For the true believers, only the spilling of blood is a proper recognition of the nobility of their sacrifices for the Faith.”
In other words, only blood will keep them quiet. Paia wonders if this goat has come from the Temple flocks, or if some merchant’s wife is finally pregnant and hoping for a healthy child. And Luco, she notes, is decked out in full makeup and all his best finery—his billowing and dazzlingly white Temple pants, clasped at the ankles with bands of gold and sapphire, his tallest headdress, his sandals with the heels. A crimson velvet vest—his favorite, sewn with winged images of the God in glittering gold—frames the shaved and oiled muscles of his chest. Sometimes Paia suspects that Luco dresses to look like the God in man-form, though this has to be unconscious. It would be, officially, a sacrilege. But First Son Luco is wily enough to know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, to which the God is famously susceptible.
Approaching, Paia nods to Luco in ritual welcome. She accepts the golden bowl from her priestess and takes her place to Luco’s right at the head of the altar to begin the Invocation of the Winged God.
She’s halfway into it, the vessel of sacred water raised above her head, when she feels the God return. Elation and terror churn in the pit of her stomach. She stumbles over a word, holds firmly to the bowl but leaves out an entire line of the prayer. She is waiting for that high, vast, swooping shadow to darken the sun over the courtyard. He is here. Her awareness of him is like the Temple gong sounding inside her. But he does not show himself. Paia blinks and steadies her voice. Her own belief in the God of the Apocalypse has less to do with his messianic promises than with her uncanny sense of connection to him. She fears him, often hates him, but she loves him, too. Until his arrival in the Citadel, she had never felt entirely whole. Even now, his return completes her, in a way no human ever could.
Paia finishes the Invocation, aware of the First Son surreptitiously readying the Knife as the sacred water blesses the altar with its precious moisture. Luco hates to be caught unprepared. He takes great—some might say, unholy—pride in finishing off each sacrifice with a single graceful stroke.
The young Third Son steps back, leaving the goat alone on the altar. Luco’s giant shining blade arcs skyward. All eyes follow but Paia’s. She has seen one too many small creatures bleed their innocence away on the rough, stained stone. For this reason, and for this reason only, she spots the brief flash among the crowd of priests and acolytes to the other side of her. She is already ducking away from the smaller knife when it slashes across the empty space where her throat has just been. The throng presses around her. She cannot see her attacker, only a robed arm and a moving blade, thin and deadly. Beside her, Luco swings his gilded curve of steel, down, down, and completes a perfect stroke. Blood sprays outward. Paia, fumbling for her hidden gun, falls against a First Daughter behind her. She thinks for a moment that the blood is her own, particularly when the young priestess screams and snatches at Paia’s stained limbs in horror. The formation at the altar breaks rank and erupts with shouting and outrage. Luco is jolted out of his post-sacrificial trance. He leaps to Paia’s side with the holy blade at the ready. Paia points. The attacker is spotted forcing a desperate path through the worshipers crowding the Plaza. He gets nowhere. The Faithful grab him, bring him down, sucking him into their maw with cheers and wild eyes and raised fists.
And then, a vast shadow sweeps across the hot sky, across and back, fleeter than any cloud, nearing, descending. The throng stills as the shadow circles and drops with a flare of scales and sun and golden wings onto the paving stones in front of the altar.
The throng of the Faithful draws back with a gasp of reverence, then spits out the attacker, sprawling and facedown. The terrified man mewls and grovels at the feet of the God, who pins him to the stones with a single golden claw at his neck, then lifts his great horned head and roars to the heavens until the air itself vibrates. The Faithful moan as one and fall to their knees. When silence has settled again, the God returns his attention to his groveling victim. He snarls and unleashes a sudden blue-white gout of flame that sears the man to a spasming cinder.
The crowd sighs. Their God has returned.
Paia’s knees buckle. Son Luco catches her.
“Look sharp, now,” he murmurs in her ear. “Everybody’s watching.”