The God has given her a day to get ready, and she’s been at it since the previous noon. Now it’s getting on toward six in the morning, and Paia sits cross-legged in the middle of her bed, defiant in her sweat suit as she directs the swirl of servants packing and repacking her luggage. It had not occurred to her, as she worked so hard to sell the notion of her Visitation, that her greatest concern would be having nothing to wear.
She hasn’t been past the Temple’s outer gates in fourteen years. Even her ceremonial forays into the open air of the Temple Plaza have been kept as brief as possible, for the sake of her safety and her health. But Paia recalls the elaborate precautions taken whenever she went out as a child. Over the multiple layers of sunblock creams went the long sleeves, the high collars, the thin reflective gloves and hat. All made of the lightest possible materials, but still they were stifling hot. The God always says Paia should daily thank her mother and nannies: to those strict precautions she owes her flawless skin. Even then, going out was rare. Usually she was on her way to some special local event that the landowner’s family was expected to attend, a christening, or a funeral. Leaving the house was less a pleasure than a duty.
But right now, Paia is thrilled by the prospect, even though the sunblock has long since dried up, and all that protective clothing, even if it could still be found, would no longer fit. Even though her extensive wardrobe of revealing Temple garments is woefully inadequate for a trek across the open countryside. Paia has been improvising all night.
And then there’s the issue of something to put it all in. There hasn’t been a thorough search of the storerooms in a long time. Paia was shocked to discover how much has vanished from those rooms where the locks are disabled. Her immediate response was to storm off to Luco in a rage over this silent and systematic looting. The God would hear of it! The First Son took time to soothe and calm her, but she sensed an unusual impatience beneath his dutiful concern, as if such invasions and inconveniences are only to be expected. She’d pouted. If it didn’t involve the God, he didn’t care about it!
Now, looking over the bits and pieces she’s been able to gather, she’s more intrigued than outraged. They have a motley, rough-and-tumble aspect, laid out on her mother’s fine Turkish carpet: a black nylon duffel, one boxy plastic trunk, two big blue satchels, a silvered metal case, and an ancient but well-preserved mountaineer’s pack in leather. Leather is an absurd luxury, but the pack bears her father’s initials. Paia unearthed it in one of the unransacked storerooms and fell in love with it instantly. That storeroom, keyed open by her palm print, is a virtual time capsule. She could have spent a whole week in there, revisiting her life before the God. But that would have been a lonely exercise. She has no one to share these memories with.
The God is right, she decides. Nostalgia is a useless luxury.
The chambermaid spreads another armload of clothing on the bed. Paia allows her to display each garment for inspection, nodding a yes to this, a no to that. The chambermaid hands off the single yes to a packer, sweeps up the rejects, and goes back for another load. Paia wonders if there is time to have a few more sensible items made up: long-sleeved shirts and pants with handy hidden pockets for the God’s little gun.
Out in the hallway, the red-robed Twelve are gathered in a weepy cluster, mourning her departure from their sight for even a moment. Paia has forbidden them entry. No doubt they’re convinced that this trip is a forced order. Why would anyone leave the Citadel willingly? A contingent of Honor Guard is milling about as well, relieved that their watch hasn’t been chosen for escort duty. The moist chanting and murmuring of the Twelve breaks off briefly as a brace of Luco’s Third Sons shoulder them aside importantly, bearing through the doorway a shrouded rectangle. Paia has had the mutating landscape brought downstairs, to be hung on the wall opposite her bed, another expression of her newly assumed autonomy, though no one will read it that way but herself and the God. She hopes it will be like having a new window cut into the room, a mystical kind of window where the view changes each time you look out. She’d take the painting with her if she could. She’d like to know that it’s safe. But she suspects that even the suggestion might render Luco, in his present state, apoplectic. Paia waves at the young priests to lean the covered canvas against the wall. What vista would it reveal to this room full of servants? She will wait until she is alone again to unveil it.
Son Luco has been in and out at least twice this morning, in high gear and at the earliest hint of dawn. First he came to remind her of their schedule of departure, then to describe the instantaneously devised ceremony slated for 0800 sharp in the Temple Plaza. He was at his most abrupt and efficient, but beneath the official mask thrummed true eagerness. His bronzed skin was almost luminous, as if lit from within by suppressed anticipation. His subordinates whirled around after him, basking in the glow of his energy. At one point, Paia glanced through her open door to discover him in a one-way consultation of gestures with the chambermaid—whom, as far as she knew, he had never before even noticed. Why should Luco be so charged up, she’d wondered a bit sulkily. He gets to go out all the time.
An unfamiliar kitchen servant hesitates in the doorway, balancing the breakfast tray. Paia bites back an urge to snap her fingers and yell at the girl to hurry. The child’s confusion suggests she’s never ventured so high in the Citadel before. Paia gestures her over to the bed, studying her as she approaches. Paia has resolved to be more observant of those around her, either servant or priest, especially since she’s discovered how hard it is to remember to do so. This girl looks decently fed, but her eyes are dull and she is ghostly pale. Her cheeks have almost a blue cast, no doubt due to a life spent entirely in the Citadel’s subterranean levels. She walks with her shoulders crooked, struggling to hold them straight as she weaves a cautious path across the crowded room to the High Priestess’ bed. Despite a concealing sleeve, Paia sees that her right arm is withered, just managing to steady the heavy tray. Again Paia controls a tart response. It is the God’s stated policy to forbid deformities within the priesthood and among the Citadel workforce, but even Paia knows exceptions must be made, or the housekeepers would have trouble filling their staff. Only the high frenzy of preparations has brought this child out of the concealment of the kitchens.
Unable to repress her reflexive shudder, Paia reminds herself that she will have to observe much worse when she gets outside. Best to practice ignoring things now. She nods neutrally at the girl, then terrifies her with a brisk thanks when the tray is set down without mishap. The girl bows clumsily and flees back through the crowd.
An hour later, Paia is dressed and fed. The little gun is tucked against the small of her back. The luggage has been fastened and sent downstairs. She has followed Luco’s advice in her choice of a Leave-taking outfit: the softest and most comfortable of the glittery Temple garments underneath a long hooded silk robe that can be worn open for the ritual, then fastened up tight for the road. The chambermaid is offering up for her approval a belt of jewel-studded gold mesh, when a relay of shouted orders echoes down the hallway and the disconsolate mutter of the priestesses goes suddenly silent.
Paia shivers with the usual thrill of fear, but she cannot repress a prideful grin. He is out there, filling the whole length of the corridor with his heat and speed and magnificence. What is he doing here? The God has never accompanied her in any sort of procession. All the rituals dictate that she must come to him. Paia waits. His approach is noiseless. Not a sound but the Honor guard snapping to shocked attention, followed by the soft flopping of twelve terrified young women flattening every possible inch of their bodies against the threadbare rug. The chambermaid has her back to the door and cannot sense the God’s entrance. When he sails through the door, it’s only the shifting of Paia’s eyes that alerts her.
Paia tries not to look at him and fails. He is as tall and broad as the corridor will reasonably allow, and caparisoned in gold and flashing jewels, like a barbarian emperor. His vest shimmers with thousands of tiny sun-disks that ring like breathy cymbals as he moves. Luco may have seemed to glow, but the God actually gives off light, and he brings with him a hot, crisp scent, as if he’s just charged through a furnace. The chambermaid nearly strangles on her own swallowed squawk and collapses into the tiniest ball she can manage. But even she is sneaking a peek.
Paia bows deeply, as the God expects her to do when the Faithful are about. Their relationship may be evolving all of a sudden, but it would be folly to air the process in public. “You look absolutely splendid today, my lord Fire.”
And he does. He has taken extra care with this manifestation. His nod is faint and lordly. “I have come to grant my priestess the honor of my presence at her Leave-taking.”
In other words, time you got going. Paia bows again, wondering if this gesture was his idea or Luco’s. “A grave honor indeed, my lord.”
His brief ironic glance answers her question. He turns away abruptly, beckoning with a gold-tipped finger, and sweeps grandly out the door. Paia tosses a quick regretful look at the still-shrouded painting leaning against the wall. Something else that will have to wait. She has been summoned and she must follow. The chambermaid scrambles up and scurries after her.
On the stairs, Paia holds herself the ritual five paces behind, but somehow—with a trick he’s never offered before in man-form—the God’s voice is at her right ear, not in her head but just outside it—intimate but noninvasive, like a whisper from inches away. And she is able to answer him in a murmur.
“You have remembered the gun.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Go nowhere without it. You have packed sufficient ammunition?”
What does he consider sufficient? “Yes, my lord.”
“The sun is your deadly enemy, remember. You’ve brought protective garments?”
“Of course.” Paia is not fooled by his rough, clipped tone. The God is anxious. Perhaps he is not so eager to be rid of her after all. “Lord Fire, you are mothering me.”
“You are reckless, my priestess.”
“All in your service, my lord.”
He snorts. “Has it not even occurred to you to wonder about this restlessness of yours, where it has come from all of a sudden?”
Paia cannot think of a clever response. Nor does she know the answer.
Ahead of her, his broad shoulders shift beneath their rich cloth-of-gold. “No matter. Go your way. Perhaps you will lead me to them. Meanwhile, I have ordered the First Son to pack safe food and water to last twelve days. He is charged to bring you back in eight. Not a day past, or his life will be forfeit.”
“His life, my lord?”
“I have said so.”
“But some delay might occur that Luco has no control over . . .”
“The First Son has agreed to the terms. Therefore, he will be extra vigilant to prevent such delays. My Word must be enforced, or chaos is upon us.”
Chaos, again. Lately, all the God’s anxieties seem to focus on the potential breakdown of his carefully ordered system. Paia’s childhood history studies included the macabre dance of shifting political structures that played out during her father’s lifetime. Considering that example, Paia thinks the God’s obsession with chaos might be too narrow. For all this paranoia about his enemies, he never seems to allow that the real threat might come from a different brand of order.
The Ceremony of Farewell, hastily invented by one of Luco’s trusted underlings, is held in the Sanctuary and is mercifully brief. It allows the Twelve to weep copiously and publicly beneath their red veils, then dry their eyes for a prayerful dance begging that their beloved priestess be soon returned to them. Paia, who has regarded them with increasing dislike and suspicion since they’ve begun dogging her every footstep, imagines the hot little seeds of hope her departure must be planting in each of them. Such as, perhaps the God is punishing her with this trip for some secret transgression. Perhaps disaster will befall her. Perhaps she will not return. Perhaps the God, in his infinite wisdom, will make one of them High Priestess. It’s just as well, Paia decides, that she does not know their faces or names. Less need to be civil to them.
The Formal Progress from the Sanctuary to the Plaza includes a quick stop at the Sacred Well, where Paia sips the crystalline liquid from the scoop of her own palms, the only vessel deemed pure enough by the God to convey the sacred waters. She savors its chill perfection. It is the expression of an ideal. She wishes she could slip a bottle or two into her luggage. But for once, the God is standing there watching. The Twelve are so overcome by his sustained presence among them in man-form that they can barely manage their part in the ritual.
At last, the God leads the procession out into the blinding sun, past the stained sacrificial altar to where the First Son waits, with the full ranks of the priesthood lined up to left and right. Behind, a dust cloud rises as servants and bearers race about among the high-wheeled wagons and piles of packing crates, frenzied with last minute preparations. Luco’s blue gaze is eager, though his jaw is set and serious. He bows abjectly to the God, then gestures him toward the towering bejeweled and golden throne that’s been dragged out of the Sanctuary for the final Leave-taking. Off to one side, two of the elaborately decorated sedan chairs sit side by side. These are usually reserved for the Temple’s most lavish and formal ceremonies. Virtually overnight, they’ve been refitted for the rigors of outdoor travel. The High Priestess and First Son of the Temple will ride. The goods will be hauled in the wagons by hand. Everyone else will walk.
The God ascends his throne, and under Son Luco’s brisk direction, the ceremony begins. Paia always prefers it when Luco officiates. He’s so much better at it than she is, with his grand manner and melodious voice. The First Son is a different man in public performance. He loses his fussy edge, becomes smoother, less self-conscious. Grateful to be only a passive participant in this unrehearsed production, Paia lets her mind wander, past the looming Temple gates, out into the valley, into the ruddy, stony hills ringing the Citadel, hills she will soon be crossing. Her sedan chair glitters in the sun, a tall gold box on sturdy gilded legs, the God Rampant embroidered in red on either side. She is relieved to see the chambermaid scurrying into an appropriately abject position beside it, suddenly and miraculously dressed for the road. She is far less relieved when two of the red-robed Twelve detach themselves from the processional with all indications of joining the escort party. Paia sighs. The God—in his wisdom, of course—has made sure to supply her with chaperones.
Later, Paia will be unable to recall a single detail of the elaborate ceremony. It assembles the total populations of Temple and Citadel, and goes on for entirely too long, praising the God’s wisdom and perfection, beseeching him to see to the safety of the High Priestess as she goes about her holy duties among the Faithful out in the world. There is chanting and motion, and eventually the crowds murmur aside. Paia comes out of her daze to find herself facing the outer gates, a direction that for so long has been forbidden even to consider. As the long bolt shafts are drawn back into the wall, reality at last takes hold. Her awareness irises in to a pinpoint of concentration on the great central locking mechanism with its polished, God-shaped escutcheon plate. She is finally leaving the confines of the Temple. Will anything out there be as she remembers?
After another eternity of chanting and prayers, the God stands and spreads his golden arms. The First Son sweeps forward to hand the High Priestess into the curtained door of her chair. As the gauzy metallic drapes swing loose to veil the shaded interior, the four bearers lift and steady. The God vanishes from his throne in an explosion of flame and light. The throng falls to its knees as a vast shadow of wings passes in threat and benediction over the sun-baked courtyard. The gates roll open. Across the upper landing, the Grand Stair lies waiting. The caravan starts forward.
A twelve-man contingent of the Honor Guard leads the way, followed by the First Son with as many of his Seconds and Thirds as could be spared from the day-to-day running of the Temple. Paia is surprised by the number of them: twenty at least, if she hasn’t counted the same one twice. Her own two chaperones pass through the gates next, then Paia in her chair with her servants behind. Behind them, more Honor Guard, more servants, and finally, the supply wagons. Overhead, the God flies long, swooping figure eights etched in flame. Inside the chair, a fiery night descends each time he passes. Paia approaches the Grand Stair. Abruptly, she is terrified.
What have I done?
But this is the sort of terror she is used to, like her terror of the God, mixed with exhilaration. She is practiced at dealing with it. And turning back, she has decided, is not an alternative.
The steps are low, six meters wide and a meter deep. The chair tilts forward only gently, and the bearers fall into a mildly rocking rhythm to manage the descent. The chair looks light enough, but there’s a reason it takes four strong men to carry it. It’s become a self-contained mini-fortress. Luco has explained to her how it carries extra food and water, and is hardened to deflect knife blades, spear, axes, arrows, even a small caliber bullet, though the God has promised Paia there won’t be any of those around, except in her own hands. She tells herself she’s safe, but she’s certainly not comfortable. It’s hot and airless inside. Already her skin is slick, and her fine silk robe is soaking up the damp. As the rocking continues, Paia begins to doubt the steadiness of her stomach.
She parts the curtains, only a crack. The outside air is no cooler, but at least it’s in vague motion and she can fix her eyes on the steadier horizon. A thin crowd lines either side of the stairs, sun-toughened men and women from the village at the bottom. She should know some of these scarred and withered faces. Living so nearby, they will have made the long climb to the Temple most often. But Paia has endured her years of ritual specifically by not looking at the faces of the Faithful. She vows to change this practice when she returns.
As her chair passes, the villagers shove their few scrawny children forward to wave at her. There is maybe one child for every fifteen adults. Paia had thought the God’s repopulation efforts had been going better lately, but she sees no toddlers or infants at all. Perhaps the mothers will no longer risk exposing them to the sun and crowds, even for such a special occasion.
A glance behind, back up the stairs, distracts Paia from her nausea. The gates are still open, as the last of the supply wagons clatter through and gather on the broad upper landing to be unloaded for transport down the steps. The gates are each four meters wide, double-walled steel taken from the hangar where Paia’s father stored his armored vehicles. They are set into stone walls two meters thick by seven high. Since the God ordered these walls built, no force has bested them, though Paia has heard that during the Wars of Conversion, several respectable attempts were made. She has always thought that Luco’s readiness to bore her with the old war stories is one of his few personal weaknesses. But gazing up at those scarred and sunbleached walls for the first time, she wishes she’d done more than just humor him. If she’d also listened, she could have learned. She thinks how much the House Computer would approve of this insight, and then, how useful it would be to have House along. This Visitation will make her a student all over again, except that, this time, she has some idea of how little she knows.
That vow again: to be a more intent observer.
From the central gates, the wall runs off about thirty meters to either side, then turns back toward the cliff and the Temple. A tall slender watchtower marks each corner. Through the open gateway and over the crenellated top of the wall, Paia can see the Temple’s elaborately carved façade, and the bland natural rock face of the Citadel rising behind it. Reality takes hold again. Impulsively, she shoves aside the curtain and leans out into the sun, ignoring the villagers’ pious stares. She cranes awkwardly around the hard edge of the doorframe to count the windows glimmering high on the cliff. She is seized with an urgent need to identify her own, before all that’s familiar is behind her and out of sight.
But it’s only eight days!
Paia is shaken by a sudden intimation of a chasm crossed, of an irrevocable step taken toward a new life, at the moment she passed through the gates. She counts and searches as her chair rocks downward, until she picks out her level, her room, her very own window. Only then can she grasp at her dignity again, and withdraw into the shade of her tiny mobile fortress, obscurely comforted.
In Paia’s father’s time, big carpeted elevators transported Citadel guests and residents up from the valley floor. They were fitted with solid brass and lined with polished hardwood. When the God came, he proclaimed them an unreliable luxury, even though they were powered by the windmills up on the cliff top and hardly ever failed. Paia suspects they were simply not magnificent enough for his purposes. He built the Grand Stair to really impress, with its five hundred massive steps and carved railings. The climb to Paia’s tower studio is a mere hop by comparison. But the Grand Stair is not just decorative. It serves also as a first line of defense against attackers, and further, as a test of a worshiper’s devotion. For it is the God’s opinion—shared (Paia believes) by his loyal general, Son Luco—that anyone who gives up before they’ve reached the top can’t be counted on for much anyway.
At the halfway point, where the cliff is sheerest, the stairs level out into a shallow landing, then split to left and right to move across and down the face of the rock. The chair is set down, and the bearers are given a brief breather. Paia has a view through the parted drapes of the valley below, and the bright meander of the dry riverbed crossed by the straight line of road that once led to her father’s airstrip and thus, back to civilization. Leaning out a bit farther, she can just see the roofs and chimneys of the village huddled at the bottom of the steps.
Each night at the Citadel, most often shrouded from Paia’s high window view by darkness, but now and then glimpsed by moonlight, a human chain five hundred steps long transfers food and goods from the Temple’s dependent villages up to the Citadel. Paia is not supposed to know about such things. Once she questioned Luco about it, just casually, and he pretended she’d spotted the rare occurrence. At the time, she reasoned that the chain was easier than requiring each bearer to walk all the way up and all the way down. But surely it’s a bit foolish that all the supplies for this trip were hauled all the way up, only to be brought all the way back down again. Paia approves of the rigorous safety inspection that anything slated for her consumption must pass, but out here in the broiling sun, with half the stairs looming high behind and the other half, like a drop into nowhere, still to descend, the waste of energy seems, well, irresponsible. Not a concept Paia has thought much about before.
As her bearers hoist the stout carrying poles onto their shoulders and set off again on their rocking descent, Paia muses over the possibility that the God prefers this hard show of human labor over the mysterious ease of a mechanism he does not understand.
The village at the bottom began its life in her father’s time, clustered around the entrance to the elevators, as housing for service and maintenance personnel, for the tenant farmers and their families, and for anyone in his employ who, despite the obvious security disadvantage, could not bring themselves to live tucked away in the bowels of a cliff. Paia recalls it as a sizable, tidy gathering of tight stone houses and fenced garden plots. She recalls attending a birthday celebration down there, dressed in a new outfit sewn by her mother’s seamstresses, who also lived in the village. Her mother brought the cake, and her nanny brought a bundle of clothing that Paia had outgrown. These were passed among the children at the party to be tried on for size, and everyone went home happy. Except perhaps Paia’s mother, whose natural generosity was encouraged by the sure knowledge that she could never have another child. Paia also remembers a wedding, somewhat later, where she carried a bouquet of patchwork flowers lovingly sewn from the fabric of some of those old outfits. The bride carried real flowers, from Paia’s father’s greenhouses, but Paia preferred the patchwork ones. She still has one somewhere, she thinks. Odd that she should recall such detail, after so long. It must be looking down on those blue slate rooftops that brings it back so vividly.
But when the last stair is behind her and her chair is at last traveling on level ground, Paia does not find herself in the quaint village of her memory. The stone houses still stand, but the slate roofs are cracked and patchy. Red dust is caked into every seam. The once-colorful doors and windows have gone unpainted for decades. Their storm shutters are missing or broken, and where the neatly fenced gardens once struggled but grew, ragged clusters of hovels and shanties have sprung up, filling all the spaces between. Apparently, for many, living within the safer shadow of the Temple is worth any sort of discomfort.
Here also, along the barren main street, villagers are lined up to greet their High Priestess. They pray aloud for her safe journey and swift return. One woman calls out a fervent wish that the Last Days not come upon them while the Priestess is away from the Temple. Paia sees several soldiers of the Temple moving roughly among them. She would like to believe that the villagers’ good wishes are genuine, but she can’t help but notice that where the soldiers are, there also is the crowd’s most passionate response. She considers her rash promise to the God. How will she speak of loving to these desperate folk who are taught only fear?
She is glad that, because these Faithful have daily access to the Temple, the procession does not stop for a formal Visitation. She is not yet ready to face them directly. Soon her chair has passed down the main street and is headed out across the valley floor.
Once, before even her father’s time, this was fertile bottom land. There was water in the riverbed and trees along its banks and rain enough to grow grain, to pasture livestock without irrigation. Current agricultural information would never be offered to the High Priestess, but in the Citadel, Paia habitually eavesdrops. She has learned from her Honor Guard how the fields are now sized by how much water can be spared from the village’s shrinking wells, and then by how far that water can be transported without being stolen. Even pipes can be surreptitiously rerouted, and the best-armed parties ambushed.
Leaving the last group of hovels behind, the procession passes among the high stockade fences surrounding the vegetable plots. The livestock are similarly contained. Paia hears chickens and goats and the occasional sheep, but sees nothing but walls of weathered timber patched with bits of sun-brittled plastic. Soon, even that is behind them and there is only untilled, uninhabited ground ahead. Overhead, the God executes a final glittering omega over the line of wagons. His cry shakes the ground like the thunder of an avalanche, but Paia hears his farewell inside her head, terse, resentful, full of longing. Could he not just come with her, and delight the villages with the honor? She sighs. Surely there has never been a more complex being than the God.
The valley seems wider, far more open than she recalls, though Paia doubts that she’s recalling trees from her own memories. Those were already rare enough when she was young. Through the slit in her curtains, she can see a few softening patches across the valley, gray-green, tucked away in the shaded rocky folds of the hills where a bit of dew might regularly collect. She thinks of the shrouded painting in her room, the way it first appeared to her, ripe with foliage and moisture. She hopes the road will lead the caravan through one of those distant greening patches. She would like the chance to walk among real trees, not one or two but a whole gathering, a grove, tall and cooling. There must be a few left out there . . . somewhere. Out on the baking flat, irrigated fields give way to parched wasteland. Paia feels exposed and vulnerable, breathless, as if the very air were being evaporated from her lungs. Her view through the draperies becomes mobile, blurring and dancing with the rising heat. The stained sky looms like a weight, endlessly falling in on top of her. Nausea returns, stirred by agoraphobic panic. Paia shivers and draws the curtains tight.
It is too soon to be so out of control. As the caravan crawls across the valley floor, she gives herself a stern talking-to inside her hot golden box. She knows how to live with fear. She must now learn to live with discomfort. The heat is so much worse than she’d imagined, and the landscape so much more desolate, even though she has painted it for years. But that was from a distance. She has taken the cooling effects of the Citadel’s bedrock too much for granted. But she has asked for, no, demanded this trip. Therefore she must suffer it gladly, for the honor of the God and the Temple, as well as for her own self-respect. Calling up the meditative state that gets her through the longest and most tedious of the Temple rituals, she settles into a heat-drenched trance.
This holds her steady until the rhythm of the bearers’ pace alters suddenly, shaking her awake. The chair tilts backward, rising raggedly. Paia bolts upright in her padded seat. She fears they’ve turned around, that they’re fleeing back up the Guard Stair to the Temple. The bright sun on her curtains fades as the chair passes into shadow. A shouted order rings out from up ahead. The caravan straggles to a halt. Paia reaches for the God’s gun. Are they under attack?
She parts the curtains, and is assailed by clouds of dust. Settling, it reveals a sheer stone face, but no sign of mayhem or panic. The bearers set down the chair, releasing their cramped muscles with exhausted groans. Paia peers ahead. They have entered a narrow defile, barely wide enough for the wagons to pass. Wind-shaped rock walls tower on both sides. Dusty clumps of bushes cling to cracks and spring up between the boulders where landslides have breached the sides of the canyon. The dry, rising ribbon of road is treacherous with loose stones and gravel.
Dust swirls up again as Son Luco strides toward her along the length of the caravan. He has put off his ceremonial trappings, leaving only the loose white pants and shirt, and a red robe that floats gracefully open behind him. He has, Paia thinks, an odd look on his face, as he checks in with each wagon and contingent, even the servants. Odd, that is, for Luco. He looks . . . relaxed. More at ease out here in the heat and grit than she has ever seen him in the Citadel, as if he has shed a part of himself along with his Temple finery. Disconcerted, Paia withdraws into her protective shade. Luco arrives and peers in at her. She cannot hide the hints of panic in her hooded eyes.
“Mother Paia. How are you managing?”
She knows he’s used her title as a reminder to set a good example for the rest of the caravan. As always, his officiousness piques her, which was perhaps intended, for her panic recedes.
“Less well than yourself, First Son . . . apparently.” Paia coughs as the dust he has brought enters her sanctuary.
“It’s good to be out and about,” he replies. “In the air.”
What air? She tries for banter. “Very much the handsome captain, aren’t you now? Is this what it’s like going to war? I think you must have enjoyed it more than you’re willing to admit.”
He smiles blandly. “Once a soldier, always a soldier.”
She can feel his concentration diffusing beyond her, up and down the line of wagons and farther, out into the surrounding hills. Alert and listening, even as he converses with her casually. Paia is reminded that every step away from the Citadel leads them farther into danger.
“We’ll rest here a bit,” he says. “It’s safe enough in the hill shadow. Come out and stretch your legs. Are you drinking your water as advised?”
“Water. What a good idea.”
The well-used canteen from her father’s backpack waits on the seat beside her, full to the brim and even a bit cool. Paia downs several gulps, then swings the strap over her head and shoulder as she steps down from the chair. The water hits her stomach hard and threatens to rebound. Her legs have no strength. She staggers, grasping at the doorframe.
Luco catches her arm and steadies her. He sends the bearers off to refresh themselves. “You haven’t been drinking.”
“I will from now on,” she murmurs.
“We’re not tucked away safe anymore.”
“I know that.” Snapping at him revives her slightly. “You needn’t treat me like an idiot.”
“Then don’t act like one. For all our sakes, if not for your own. Drink some more. Slowly.”
She knows he will stand there till she does. The God has charged him with her safety. She is out of the Citadel, but she is still not free. She takes little sips, then wipes her mouth on her sleeve as unceremoniously as possible. “Where are we?”
Luco looks away, as if toward the valley, but his eyes seem to gaze on a far greater distance. “I fought a great battle here. In the service of the God.”
“Does the place have a name? Perhaps we should name it after you.”
After a moment, he says, very quietly, “It already has a name, my priestess.”
“And what is that, my priest?”
“Whose answer would you prefer, mine or the God’s?”
Paia swallows a gasp. Sacrilege from the First Son? “Are they different?”
His mouth quirks at some private thought. “The God calls it, rather eloquently, I think, The Sunrise Passage. But to me, and those who live around it, this is Cauldwell’s Clove. The only negotiable road out of the valley.”
She stares at him. “But that’s my name! Or it was.” She has almost forgotten she had a family name. She hasn’t heard it spoken in years. She hesitates even to repeat it, for fear she will burst into tears.
He looks down at her. “Is that so?”
The God has outlawed any history of the Citadel or its former owners to all but herself. Still, knowledge persists. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
Luco’s expression grows odder still, rich with nuance that Paia cannot interpret. Squinting up at him, she is rocked by sudden intuition that she at first denies and then accepts entirely. But it’s not possible! Surely he would have said something, even though it would put him in danger of heresy. For the same reason, she has never thought to ask him.
“Luco!” she hisses. “Did you know my father?”
“I did not say . . .”
“Luco, please? I won’t tell anyone!”
His face closes. “The God does not permit . . .”
“Luco! Did you?”
“This conversation is in violation of the laws of the Temple, my priestess.”
“Oh, Luco! You started it.”
He nods, lips pressed tight. “And I greatly regret my lapse.”
“But we’re out in the middle of nowhere! Who could possibly . . .?”
He touches her arm in warning, then booms jovially, “Ah, here are your Faithful, come to see to their mistress at last.”
Instantly, Paia smoothes the urgency from her face. The red-robed Two, still veiled as if at the Temple’s highest ritual, are bearing down with water and food and a damp cloth to bathe their Priestess’ sweated brow. Their postures seem to exclude Luco from this women’s privilege. It occurs to Paia that the First Daughters might be reporting to someone other than the First Son.
Luco bows. “Mother Paia, with your permission, I leave you in these devoted hands. See that they find you a good spot in the bushes.”
You knew my father?
She cannot call him back, or allow herself to stare after him as he strides briskly away. It would draw undue attention to a conversation the God would not look well upon. And after that, Luco keeps his distance. All during the difficult climb through the rock-strewn gorge, at the many rest stops or in the several places where the twisting path is so precipitous that even the High Priestess must leave the comfort of her chair and proceed on foot, for her own safety, Luco avoids her. Or if he does appear, he comes in the company of at least two of his acolytes. Paia is hurt by his reflex paranoia. Does he really think she would report so minor a heresy to the God? Or even carelessly refer to it, especially when it would mean so much to her to know for sure, to be able to talk to someone who knew her father? And, if he’s so fearful, what moment of weakness brought the name out of him in the first place?
Late in the day, the upward path levels into a wider sort of road and crosses an open plateau toward a notch between two hills. The road disappears into the notch, but a village nestles at the mouth of it, sunk in afternoon shadow. Paia spots the livestock before she sees the village, tired-looking cattle and thin sheep grazing fitfully among the thornbushes and scrub. They are guarded by small crowds of men armed with knives and spears, plus a few big dogs who stare sullenly at the caravan as it passes. The dogs catch Paia’s interest especially. Her family always kept dogs, but the God banished all animals from the Citadel when he came.
Along with people’s family names.
Cauldwell. The sound of it rings in her mind as if Luco had just spoken it. Paia shoves away the thought. These dogs are scruffy and half-feral, and do not waste their energy barking, but still, she’s encouraged. If this village can feed dogs, they must be feeding themselves well enough.
In the village outskirts, the caravan passes vegetable plots surrounded by stone walls wide enough to walk along, as Paia sees three women doing. They patrol the garden perimeter, using their sharpened poles as walking sticks. They stop and draw together to watch the procession go by. They seem more apprehensive than excited. Paia would like to think they’re simply unaware of who their visitor is, but she cannot help but notice the tallest one’s quick and anxious scanning of the sky.
Inside the village, a less ambivalent welcome has been prepared. A party of local clergy awaits them at the head of the dusty main street, and the caravan proceeds grandly into town, past several clusters of dilapidated stone houses and barns, to pull up in a semicircle on the flagstones of the central square, which appear to be freshly swept. Paia peeks invisibly through her draperies. She has been set down at one side of the square, facing the Temple Chapter House, so that she has a perfect view of the image laid in reddish lavender stones, crude but recognizable, and dark against the paler gray: the Winged God Rampant.
She looks about for Luco, hoping for a chance to speak in private. But the local Temple does not wish to be thought lackadaisical or unprepared. The caravan is immediately swept up in a fervent and lengthy Ritual of Welcome. And from there, the evening progresses much as Paia might expect, in fact, more or less as she had envisioned when she came up with the idea of this trip, at least until toward the end. The joyous welcome is led by the head priest of the chapter. There are several priestesses as well, all properly veiled like Paia’s own Temple Daughters, but vested in dark purple, as befits their lower rank. None of the local clergy attempt to converse with the High Priestess, and Paia guesses from their nervous but practiced manner that all are well versed in the appropriate behaviors. They are whole, well fed and healthy, the cream of the village crop. Each has doubtless paid many visits to the Mother Temple and would not wish to appear provincial.
After the Ritual of Welcome, the High Priestess is formally entreated to walk among the Faithful of the town. This is the part Paia has been dreading. The Faithful must be able to touch her directly. For that, she must remove her protective robe and expose herself in the flimsy Temple garments to the sun and the hot, dusty wind as she has never done before, as well as to whatever disease and impulse toward violence might lurk within the crowd. But this ritual is central to Temple doctrine and must never be denied. The health and physical perfection of the High Priestess is the miraculous proof of the God’s favor. The Rite of Touching, the God himself insists, brings the Faithful closer to him.
With a grand gesture, Paia tosses back her hood and shrugs the robe back into the waiting hands of her priestesses. An awed murmur rises and falls in the crowd. So far, she has not disappointed.
As the local priest falls in on one side and Son Luco on the other, Paia processes around the sides of the square, where the townspeople are gathered. They have washed and scrubbed and still they appear soiled, as if stained by their toil in the parched earth and by the awful sun. Some kneel, some do not. It doesn’t matter. Paia is taller than any of them, and Son Luco appears among them as a giant. Their eyes are weary, yet hands reach eagerly for a touch of holy flesh. Paia usually endures the touching rites without response. But here, out in the open, with the sun slanting away toward the hilltops and the smoke from the cook fires tickling her nostrils, she is impelled to a more genuine contact. She stretches out her own hands as she moves down the line, grasping bony fingertips and brown wrists, worn and wrinkled elbows, scarred stumps and twisted limbs. The delighted crowd sighs its gratitude for this unexpected blessing. A step behind her, Son Luco clears his throat, either in disapproval or surprise. Paia does not meet his glance. She doesn’t want to know what the First Son thinks right now. Probably that she is taking too long, and holding up the next stage of the ritual. But she’s enjoying the smiles and wonder that her touch freely offered brings to the faces of these simple people. She is moved by the sense of connection. Perhaps this is how she can preach love of the God to them, not with words but action. Love given must be returned in some fashion, she reasons. If the God cannot love his Faithful, perhaps his High Priestess can do it for him.
She has completed three sides of her slow progress around the square when Son Luco deflects her with a murmured warning about overexposure.
“Please behave,” he says, then deftly whisks her into the waiting arms of her red-veiled chaperones. The two priestesses grandly fling her robe about her naked shoulders and use their grasp on its sleeves to maneuver her onward to the Confirmation of the Clergy, where Paia must anoint each priest and priestess of the local chapter with the God’s special blessing. This ceremony is plainly considered to be the more important one, at least by the clergy. After the blessing comes a recitation of the chapter’s history, and the honors bestowed on it by the God. After that, a long presentation by the head priest, detailing the duties of the Faithful in the Last Days of the World. He is not a compelling speaker, but Paia judges him as sincere verging on fanatical when he interprets the total lack of rainfall in so many months as a blessing from the God to hasten the holy End.
Finally, just at dark, torches are lit and a grand feast is laid in the center of the square. Paia is surprised to find herself ravenous, despite a long day of discomfort, boredom, and nausea. There are not enough tables to offer the High Priestess the honor of a private one without seating the First Son among the locals. This was decided to be the more inappropriate, so Luco sits beside her at the high table, facing the rest of the clergy at a longer table set in front of them, all of them surrounded by the Faithful who must sit on the flagstones. To Paia, it feels too much like the hated Lunch at the Citadel. But at least there is food enough to go around.
Paia lifts a morsel of stewed rabbit on her fork. “Tastes just like home.” Though of course it doesn’t.
“It ought to.” Luco smiles graciously as a villager elder bows before them with a platter of fresh radishes. “Did you think we raised our food ourselves all these years?”
“Of course not, though it’s no thanks to you that I know any better. Even in my father’s day, our food came from the villages.” She nibbles at the rabbit pensively. “Luco . . .?”
“No. Don’t ask. I beg you.” He blots his lips and folds his napkin in a precise triangle. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
He looks more wary and tired than he has all day. Each dish that comes to the table, he tastes himself before allowing Paia a portion. He is in eye contact with each of the six men from her Honor Guard who are currently arrayed at a discreet distance from the table, and Paia catches him polling them regularly. But Paia cannot imagine what the First Son is so worried about. The humble little square is filled with the loyal Faithful, and their attention is mostly on the food. They are probably delighted to be eating better than they have in months. She sips gingerly at the odd wood-scented wine, sorry that the God’s intemperate death threats have kept Luco from enjoying his meal.
She tries a less sensitive subject. “How inspiring that this town’s deep faith impels them to such great generosity.”
Luco chews, nodding neutrally.
“It’s a miracle they can grow anything at all out here. It’s so much drier than I expected. Is it true what the priest said, that there’s been absolutely no rain at all?”
“None that I know of.”
“Is this a change, First Son? A sign that conditions are worsening?”
“It is.”
“Well, we must ask less of them for the Temple.”
Luco’s fork hesitates midway, then continues to his mouth. “The God will not agree with you.”
“Or we must help them somehow. In my father’s day, there were pipelines and . . . Luco?”
“You will excuse me, my priestess. Now that the formalities are done, I must see to Temple business while all are here assembled.”
He rises, and spends the rest of the meal working the lower table. He is clearly relieved when Paia, her servants, and the two Daughters of the Temple are ushered into the Chapter House to spend the night. It’s only one dingy room with a stone floor and an attached privy, but a high row of windows along each side provides good ventilation. Paia decides to let Luco do all the worrying, since he seems inclined to do it anyway. Resisting the fussing of the red-robed Two, she lets the chambermaid, who has been hovering nearby, prepare her for bed. When she lays herself out on the tall pile of sheep’s wool mattresses provided for her comfort, she falls instantly asleep.
And she dreams, oh, such dreams. So many and so rich. It must be the food, or being out in the open air. All her nights up till this one seem quiet by comparison, as if the bedrock of the Citadel somehow stifled her dreaming and now she is making up for lost time.
Images flash by, too many and too sudden to hold on to. Strange faces and places, and others she recognizes. Her father, for instance, lecturing her gravely about duty and responsibility. But he is surrounded by huge piles of books that topple and bury him before he can tell her what duty he’s talking about. The books all crumble into dust that swirls up in clouds like the dust on the road. When it clears, there is no sign of her father. She is standing in front of the painting, back at the Citadel. The landscape is as it was when she first saw it, lush, green, inviting—in tragic contrast with the desiccated countryside she has been traveling through. It sits on a tall easel in a darkened room. A huge gilt frame surrounds it, overwhelming its simpler beauties with gaudy carvings of fruit and flowers. As she moves closer, the carvings resolve into the sinuous figures of dragons, intertwined, chasing each other around the frame. Tiny jewels sparkle in their eyes: ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond.
She moves closer, searching for the image of the God in the carving. Frame and landscape enlarge. She stands in front of the painting as if before an enormous window. A breath of wind tousles her hair, and the window becomes an open doorway. The frame is the stone portal that guards the entrance to the House Computer’s inner sanctum in the Citadel Library, but the Library is nowhere in view.
PAIA!
Someone is calling from outside the door, in a musical lilt that makes her very name sound magical, as if the wind itself were speaking.
PAIA!
The sweet voice resonates in the same place inside her as the God’s silent summons. Paia peers around the side of the portal, sees no one.
PAIA!
Perhaps the caller is just beyond those trees. Paia steps forward.
With a roar and a flash, her way is barred by a sudden curtain of flame. White heat sears her eyelashes and hair. Paia stumbles backward with a cry, and wakes.
At first, she thinks she’s in her own room, then she doesn’t know where she is. Then she’s sure she’s still sleeping.
The God is standing at the foot of her bed. The room is the same darkened room of her dream except for the God, who shimmers with his own angry glow. Paia waits for him to speak. But he just stares at her, for so long that the hot rage cools in his eyes, fading to gray. His light seeps out of the room like the end of day, and Paia is overcome by inexplicable grief. She bolts upright. Dream or not, she reaches for him. “My lord!”
The God eyes her bleakly, then shakes his head and turns away, a faint glow gliding through darkness like a fish through soundless depths, back and forth, back and forth.
“Do you find it beautiful, all that damp and green?”
Paia swallows. Yes is obviously the wrong answer.
“What about me? Am I not beautiful? Is not the kingdom I’ve created more beautiful than this?”
He gestures into the darkness, and the painting reappears, only to explode into flame. Even as it burns, Paia can see the trees dying and the landscape shriveling into desert. A sob rises in her throat, but she holds her tongue. The servants and Temple Daughters sleep on as if nothing could wake them.
“She seeks to win you to their cause, beloved.”
“She, my lord?” His enemies have never had a gender before.
“My sister.”
“Your what?” Now Paia is sure she is dreaming, though the tears on her cheeks feel real enough.
“My sister, who plagues me even from the confines of her prison.” He paces away. “Well. How goes your Visitation so far? Are you teaching the Faithful to love me?”
She absorbs his bitterness like a lash. “They will, if they follow my example. If only you would be there with me, the teaching would be simple.”
The God rolls his golden eyes at her.
“My lord, a dream means nothing! Why do you insist on doubting me?”
“THIS dream means everything! I wasn’t sure how deeply she had touched you. Now I know, even if you do not.” He paces back to stand beside the bed, then sits, though the sheep’s wool mattresses show no sign of added weight. He stares searchingly into Paia’s face as if into the farthest reaches of her soul. He traces the shape of her chin with his palm, millimeters from her skin, and the tears dry on her cheeks.
“Oh, my dearest lord,” she whispers.
He leans in as if to kiss her, but Paia feels only heat, little tongues of flame licking at her lips, curling into her parted mouth, seeking the back of her throat. It is both intense pain and deepest pleasure, but Paia smells no burning flesh so the only sensation she knows is real is her overwhelming surge of desire. If only she could press herself against him, let his glorious heat fill her in all ways. But to grasp him now would be to grasp air. The pain and her hunger take her together like a whirlwind. Whimpers and groans mix deep in her throat.
Abruptly, he pulls away, leaving her gasping. Her mouth feels like it’s been stung by a thousand bees. She touches her tongue to her lips delicately.
“Have I damaged you, my priestess?”
Paia has never seen the God’s perfect face so taut with rage and tragedy. “I . . . don’t think so.”
“You see how it is, then.”
“Yes. I see.” What Paia really sees is their private ritual of Holy Ecstasy for what it is: the only way the God can pleasure her as a man would do. What, she wonders, does he get out of it? “Is there no other way?”
After a long moment, he replies, “I have managed much. This I cannot. And because of this, you will betray me.”
Returning grief stuns her, stealing the protest from her mouth. As she struggles to speak, the God holds up a gilded hand. “Do not make promises you do not understand.” When he sighs, it is like the magma rumbling at the volcano’s heart. “It is not your fault. You lack the means to resist them.”
“I will not believe it!”
“How would you know?” He sighs again, looks down. “Perhaps you are right. I should not have kept you so long in ignorance.”
“My lord Fire . . .”
“Do not speak.” He stands, insubstantial as air, as weighty as centuries. “I will have the painting destroyed,” he says, and vanishes.
And Paia wakes, this time for certain, amid the snoring of the other priestesses. Her fists and jaw are clenched, her pillow slick with tears.
How can this be?
If her father’s library holds the truth, if the long centuries of blood and history have truly decreed this indelible bond, why would it be shaped in a way that can only break both their hearts? What purpose would there be in it?
Surely history has gone wrong somehow.
For the rest of the long night, Paia ponders how to even think about putting it right.