The clouds had returned and a light rain had begun by the time they left the Marai. Crossing back over the causeway, Maskelle still wasn’t quite sure how things stood between her and the Celestial One, if he was really serious about expecting her to stay here and help him. She thought he had hoped, somehow, that she would look at that … thing that was forming out of the sand in the Year Rite and tell him how to fix it. Fond hope, she thought sourly. But she didn’t suppose he had really believed that she would solve his problem so easily.
As she and Rian reached the end of the causeway, she realized she had forgotten to ask the Celestial One for money. Well, he had said he would send someone to the post house with word for her tonight; she would ask then.
She stopped at the end of the causeway and took a deep breath of the warm damp air. Darker clouds now streaked the gray sky and the foot traffic had increased as people hurried to finish their errands before the rain turned heavy. More awnings and cheap oilpaper water shades had sprouted over the little market while puddles formed in the paving. She looked at Rian, who stood with hands on his hips, surveying the passersby at the base of the steps with a disgruntled air that was increased by the rain soaking his hair and sticking the thin fabric of his shirt to his chest. They exchanged a look. He said, “The Rite … It really remakes the world?”
She nodded, gathering her sodden robes around her. At the edge of the market there was an open-sided wooden building where water steamed in copper pots over braziers and a rough stone oven smelled strongly of sweet bread. Having breakfast with Barime that morning had awakened a craving for real tea, not what passed for it in the provinces or among the Ariaden, and she led the way under the building’s shelter.
Maskelle went to the back, away from the other customers, and sat down on the damp matting that covered the pavement. Rian took a place where he could watch her back and the approach from the market. The Kushorit didn’t believe in eating out in public streets and avoided it whenever possible; except for the woman preparing the food and the boy helping her, the few other customers under the shelter were foreigners. They stared curiously at the old nun and the young Sitanese, until Rian unhooked the siri’s scabbard from his belt and laid it within easy reach, then gazed meaningfully back. That made them shuffle nervously and go back to their food and conversations.
The boy brought them tea in brown clay cups and a banana leaf full of little buns rolled in palm sugar. Maskelle gave him the last silver bit she had. She watched Rian taste the tea and wince. Kushorit tea was an acquired taste. “I don’t know how to explain the Rite without using ritual language,” she began slowly.
“I could see it was making a map.” Rian frowned, rolling one of the buns around in the scattered sugar. “But I could also see that’s not all it is.”
“The symbols are the reality. When I was first learning the Koshan way”—An eon or so ago, she reminded herself—“there was an old story that, back when the Kushor-An was still being built, before the Celestial Court moved here from Tel Adra, word came to the Voices from the outlying islands that the Emissary of Sakkara had sent an invasion fleet.”
Rian’s brows drew together in puzzlement. “Sakkara?”
“I’d never heard the name before, either. No one has. When the Voices heard of the invasion, it was near the Equinox when the culmination of the Rite occurs. They were still constructing the Wheel of the Infinite and they hadn’t yet reached the Aspian Straits, where the fleet would have to pass to reach the Rijan Gulf and the delta, to sail up the river to Duvalpore. The armies of the Empire were very small then, barely enough to protect the villages and the roads from bandits. They knew the Sakkarans were sending hundreds of ships. So, when the Voices built the symbols for the Aspian Straits into the Wheel, they changed the symbols, just slightly, so that the Aspian Straits were closed. And that’s what made the Inland Sea.”
Rian’s expression was justifiably dubious. “What happened to the Sakkarans?”
“No one knows.” Maskelle took another long drink of the strong tea. “One story is that the Voices didn’t build the Wheel fast enough, and they closed the Straits with the fleet inside it. The Sakkarans were so struck by the loss of all the ships and people that they never recovered, and dwindled away to become nomads, or went north to join the Batiran Cities. I’ve heard the Celestial One say that he thought it more likely that in changing the shape of the land, what they actually did was change everything about it—its shape, its history, its reality.” Its reality. Could the alterations to the Wheel already be affecting the world, even before the Rite was culminated? It might explain the monstrosity the Priest of the Sare had shown her, and the power of the water spirit. The thought was not comforting. She continued, “They changed the whole region to someplace else, that looked a great deal like the places where the Sakkaran cities used to be, and they sent the Aspian Strait and the cities somewhere else, that looked the same, but with no Celestial Empire to attack. Which is why we don’t try to do that anymore.”
She studied the dregs of her tea. “We don’t know what all the symbols in the Wheel mean. The ones that show the bottom half of the world aren’t even visible unless you look at them through the Infinite, and we don’t even know what geography half of them are meant to represent except what we can see in the Wheel itself.”
“There’s a bottom half to the world?” Rian sounded skeptical.
She nodded. “The lower ranks of Koshans travel and make maps and bring them back here, so the librarians can record them and the Voices can try to identify what the still unknown symbols might represent. It doesn’t always match exactly. The theory is that the Wheel shows us what the world would look like if we could see it from the Infinite.”
Rian considered that. “The Holder Lord thought the Koshan monks were spies, though he was never stupid enough to kill one.”
“That would have been stupid,” Maskelle agreed. “That was the kind of thing I used to be sent to deal with.”
Rian looked out at the dingy market again, the rain splashing on the pavement, the stalls and awnings, and the gray walls and towers of the Marai floating above the rain-mist in the distance. He said, “If that story is true, then the Kushorit rule the world.”
“In a sense. If you can destroy a thing, I suppose you can be said to rule it.” Maskelle should have realized he would see it that way. The Sintane might be behind the rest of the civilized lands in many ways, but in understanding the uses and abuses of secular power it might well be ahead. Her mouth twisted at the irony. “It’s not called the Celestial Empire for nothing.”
She could tell Rian was reassessing some assumptions. He frowned a little. “But no one knows.”
She shook her head. “The Voices know. That’s the last part of the elevation to Voice, the revelation of what the Rite is actually capable of. The entire Koshan priesthood is based on locating the people who can be trained and trusted to be Voices. It’s safer if no one else knows.” Maskelle took a deep breath. “Though it’s not as if anyone could build a Wheel of the Infinite, even if they knew how. It takes years of learning, not just to know how to make the symbols, but how to weave them in and out of the Infinite. And you have to learn how to listen to the Ancestors of the Marai, so They can guide you if you go wrong.” She glanced up at him and demanded, “Why are you smiling?”
“I was thinking of how the Holder Lord would have shit himself if he knew.” Rian cocked an eyebrow at her. “You had that power in your hand, but instead you tried to take the throne?”
Maskelle snorted. “I didn’t want the world. I had a reason for trying to take the throne. Besides, one person can’t build the Wheel, or bring the Rite to a culmination at the right time.” She added wryly, “In the Infinite, timing is everything. For a long while now, mine has been terrible.” She set her cup aside reluctantly. “I suppose we’d better get back.”
They went outside and started down the steps to the lower plaza. As Maskelle reached the bottom, her gaze was on a stand in the other section of the temporary market. Piles of gourds and melons lay on wicker mats and the market woman was looking around as if gauging the crowd and the possibility of packing up early. Maskelle saw the woman glance her way, saw her eyes widen in shock. Her own self-consciousness almost betrayed her, and it took her an extra heartbeat to realize the woman was staring not at her, but at something just behind her.
Maskelle swung around and belatedly lifted her staff. She was in time to see a raggedly dressed man only two steps above her, raising a short club. Before she could move, Rian melted out of the group of traders hurrying down the steps around them and caught the upraised club. The man managed a strangled yell before he met the steps face-first.
The crowd scattered with startled exclamations. Maskelle stepped up and leaned over the attacker as Rian held him pinned to the wet stone, one of his arms twisted into an easily breakable position. The man glared up at her with nothing but wholly human malice and fear in his eyes. She glanced up at Rian. “He’s not under any influence”—she looked down at the captive speculatively—“except political. Are you Mirak’s? Or did Disara send you? Or Raith himself?”
The man sneered at her but said nothing. Rian said, “Do you need answers?”
A little more fear crossed their captive’s face. Rian’s matter-of-factness was more threatening than any amount of shouted threats. “No.” Maskelle straightened and leaned on her staff, the wood and silver slick from the rain. “It doesn’t matter. Let him go.”
Rian looked exasperated, but hauled the man up and shoved him away out toward the plaza. The man fell, rolled, and bolted off through the crowd.
“A thief, Sister?” one of the men from the market asked. A small, somewhat bemused crowd had gathered. Parts of Duvalpore could be rough going after dark, where wine flowed freely and encouraged aggression and bad decisions, but not here, in the Temple City and at the very base of the Marai. And a Koshan nun should be safe anywhere. These people would find it difficult to believe that a Koshan could be attacked in their own city; even if they had seen the man about to deliver a blow obviously intended to be fatal, they might discount the evidence of their own eyes. Maskelle said, “Yes, a thief.”
With narrowed eyes, Rian watched the spot where the man had vanished into the crowd. “You have a lot of enemies here,” he commented.
“Well, yes,” she admitted.
The crowd, seeing that nothing else seemed likely to occur, began to disperse back to their business. Rian said, “They were quick to find you. Somebody at the post house might have recognized you and warned them.” He looked at her and added thoughtfully, “But it’s more likely it was at the temple.”
Maskelle started to deny it, then realized she knew nothing of how the currents of power had shifted in the past years. “Maybe. Maybe not. Did you see where he came from?”
“He was clumsy. I saw him as soon as we got to the causeway. He was waiting on the other side of the wall between the grassy court and the moat.”
Maskelle nodded to herself. If the man had been that close to the Marai, then he couldn’t have been under any kind of influence. It was barely possible to work dark magic within the boundaries of Duvalpore, but the power sink in the Infinite that the Marai formed would overwhelm any lesser force. She turned to go through the market, where the people huddled under the awnings and shades watched them and discussed the matter animatedly as they passed by. That should discourage the man’s friends, if he had any. “Didn’t he see you?”
Rian nodded. “I hung back at the top of the stairs so he’d think we were splitting up. He was anxious and went for you right away instead of waiting to be sure.” He rolled his shoulders, shedding tension like water. “That he came for you here might mean they don’t know where we’re camped. If we’re lucky, they won’t have a chance to follow us back, but don’t count on it.”
“Oh.” Well, you could have told me he was there. It didn’t appear to have been any of her business. Rian was drawing more attention now; it wasn’t usual to see a nun with a guard attending her, especially one who was obviously from the outer provinces. It occurred to her that she might have stopped and thought a moment about the logistics of having a Sitanese kjardin who was also her lover. She hadn’t asked for the guard, but she had wanted the lover. Or maybe she had just wanted a friend. No, let’s be honest. I definitely wanted him as a lover. Everything else seemed to have come with the territory. If I had stopped and thought, I’d still be here in Duvalpore, in the same circumstances, but with a nice lump on my head and lonely into the bargain.
They reached the posting house to find that the Ariaden were already giving a performance. Inhabitants of Duvalpore typically went to ground during the hard rains of this season, but the travelers in the post house hadn’t learned that kind of resignation. Walking up on their camp, Maskelle saw the wagons had been arranged in a semicircle and they had taken the giant oilcloth that could be draped on posts to form a mountain backdrop and stretched it from the top of Rastim’s wagon to Firac’s. Under this shelter, a small group of travelers and their children crouched on the muddy ground watching Gardick, Therassa, and Doria doing an abbreviated version of an Ariaden comedy play. Lamps hanging from the wagons made it an almost cheerful scene.
Rastim sat on the tailboard of his wagon, watching the performance with a self-satisfied expression. As Maskelle made her way over to him, he said, low-voiced, “This is a good place for theater. We only passed the word within the compound, and look how many people came, even with the rain.”
Maskelle sat next to him. It wasn’t dry, but the oilcloth deflected the worst of it. “That’s good, because the rain isn’t going to stop anytime soon.”
Rian, leaning against the wagon and surveying the camp, muttered darkly to himself in Sitanese. Rastim gave him an annoyed look. On the makeshift stage Gardick was making an elaborate pantomime of pretending to sneak up on Therassa, who was doing the same to Doria. The audience laughed appreciatively. Rastim asked, “How do we approach the chief priest about”—he lowered his voice cautiously—“the curse?”
Gisar had been quiet since the Illsat Keo and wouldn’t have any opportunity to make trouble within the city boundary. Maskelle had been planning to draft Rastim and maybe Firac to help haul the cursed puppet to the Marai tomorrow to get the Ariaden’s problem taken care of. She started to say this, but caught sight of indigo silk, visible even through the drizzle and mist, coming in through the gate of the post compound. It was a large palanquin. Rian had seen it too, and gave her a worried glance. She said, “No, blue means it’s from the temples.”
As the palanquin approached, they could see it was attended by temple guards on horseback and a number of priests, all clutching oilcloth parasols. The traders and travelers who hadn’t ventured out of their wagons for the entertainment peered out now as the palanquin passed.
The play stumbled to a halt as the Ariaden caught sight of it and their audience turned to watch. The temple guards spread out, forming a loose barrier between the camp and the rest of the compound. Beside her, Rian stirred purposefully and Maskelle leaned over to take his arm and pull him toward her. He came reluctantly, and she felt rather like a handler hauling on the harness of a two-hundred-pound hunting cat and hoping it chose to pay attention. He settled against her, watching the guards warily.
The curtains of the palanquin stirred and the priests gathered around it, two of them helping the occupant out. It was the Celestial One.
He shook the priests off, leaned on his staff, and picked his way through the mud to the oilcloth shelter. The awestruck audience shifted to make room for him. Undoubtedly many of these people, newly come to Duvalpore, did not know just who the old man was, but it was obvious from his attendants and method of arrival that he was important. Carefully, the Celestial One made to sit down, one of the younger priests hurrying forward to whisk a rattan mat under him before his robes touched the mud. The old man settled himself comfortably, then gestured to the actors. “Continue.”
After a moment, the Ariaden rose to the occasion. Doria stammered her next line and the play continued. “Who is that?” Rastim whispered.
“The chief priest,” Maskelle told him.
Rastim stared at her in horror. “This play isn’t fit for him!” he whispered tensely.
“He won’t care.”
Rastim moaned, then subsided into a choked silence.
After a time, when the temple guards did nothing but stoically sit their horses in the rain and the other priests huddled uncomfortably under the edge of the oilcloth, Rian leaned against her and she felt some of the tension in him uncoil. He said, “Does he do this often?”
“No,” Maskelle said. She saw Rastim was listening alertly, too. The Celestial One watched the play with polite attention, though he didn’t react to anything the actors said or did. He was probably deep in meditation and had no idea what was happening on the makeshift stage. “It’s uncomfortable for him to go too far from the temples and the connecting canals.” She hesitated, not knowing how to explain without using the Koshan words that neither man would understand. “Here in Kushor-At, the symbol is almost the same as the reality, and the temples are very powerful symbols. The Celestial One is a symbol too, and after being a part of that for so long, it’s not easy to be just a person again.”
Rastim scratched his chin thoughtfully. “How did he become the Celestial One? Was there a vote among the other chief priests?”
A vote? Maskelle thought, bemused. The Ariaden were a strange people. “He died.”
Rastim and Rian both stared at her. “Died?” Rastim repeated.
“To become the Celestial One you have to become so close to the Infinite, so at one with it, that you can merge with it and return at will. One morning he died, and later when they were preparing him for his funeral, he sat up and asked for tea.” She smiled wryly. “There are probably at least one or two other Koshans in the city who can do it and some very advanced penitents hiding out in the jungle. They just aren’t careless enough to let someone see them and force them to take on the duties of Celestial One.”
She could feel Rian and Rastim exchanging a look behind her back, their enmity temporarily forgotten. Then Rian asked, “How do you become Voice of the Adversary?”
Rastim stirred uneasily, nervous of what her answer might be. Maskelle said only, “That’s a long story.”
Abandoning the issue of the Celestial One’s death and returning to the earlier topic of conversation, Rastim said slowly, “So, the chief priest stays in the city?”
Maskelle nodded. “Always in the city, usually in one of the temples. It’s easier for him to travel on the canals than on the streets.”
After a moment, Rian said, “You’re part of that too, aren’t you? The temples and the boundaries. Is it the same for you, when you leave it?”
The question was too perceptive by far. She ran a hand through his hair as a poor attempt at distraction and said, “Not anymore.”
Rian still watched her, brows drawn together. Rastim said worriedly, “Then why is he here?”
Maskelle saw the gates of the compound opening again, and her eyes narrowed. “That’s an easier question. Look.” She nodded toward them.
There were three more men on horseback there, dressed in the lacquered iron breastplates and crested helmets of the Palace Guard. They saw the Celestial One’s palanquin and the temple guards and stopped in the gateway. One of them leaned down to question the compound’s attendant, who shrugged elaborately. One of the temple guards spotted them and turned his horse toward them, so the interlopers would be sure to know they had been noticed.
“Are they here to arrest us?” Rastim asked nervously.
Maskelle shook her head. “They can’t. Not unless they catch us stealing or killing someone. I imagine they were sent to ask us—me—politely to leave.”
After a moment, the Palace Guards turned their mounts and left, the attendant swinging the gate closed behind them. Maskelle said, “The Celestial One never travels in state. He came here like this so he could be seen here. To make it plain to certain people that I—we—have his protection.”
Rian hadn’t taken his grim gaze off the gate. “Whoever sent them won’t go against the Celestial One?” He looked at her again. “Not even for something they want very badly?”
Maskelle started to reply, and for an instant thought she heard the whisper of the Ancestors across the outer edge of her consciousness. She hesitated, but if They had really spoken to her, Their message had passed too swiftly for her to understand. She said, “No. No, they wouldn’t. Not for any reason.” Her mouth quirked at the irony of it, but she told herself it was surely true. “Not even for me.”
After the play, the audience hurried back to their wagons through the rain that now fell more lightly but from a steadily darkening sky. The Celestial One stayed planted on his mat, looking around at his hosts with a beneficent smile. Their purpose accomplished, he sent away the temple guards and the priests, with instructions to bring the palanquin back in time to return him to the Marai for the next meditation ring. When the Ariaden realized that the old man meant to spend the rest of the evening with them, they panicked. Rastim, quietly hysterical, practically dragged Maskelle behind his wagon to ask what they could possibly serve their guest for dinner.
“The same thing Old Mali was planning on serving everyone else. Oh, I meant to tell you, don’t buy anything from the post house; there’s a market right across—”
“We found the market! But he’s a … a…” Rastim gestured helplessly, speechless for once.
“The Koshans are ascetics, Rastim,” Maskelle explained tiredly. “And he’s over a hundred years old; there’s not much he can eat anymore. Some melon or taro will do just fine.”
Rastim calmed slightly, peering cautiously around the wagon to where the old man sat. Killia’s daughter, ordinarily wary of strangers, crouched next to him, showing off her wooden dolls. The Celestial One studied them with grave attention and the little girl looked about to climb into his lap. Rastim said, “The highest personage who ever came to our theater in Ariad was the Protector of Orad-dell.”
“All right.” Maskelle had never understood the Ariad’s hierarchy. “It’s a good thing the Celestial One came tonight, anyway, whatever the reason. I need to ask him for money.”
Rastim stared at her, aghast.
It took some time for the compound to calm down after all the excitement, but eventually the other inhabitants settled quietly in their own wagons and makeshift shelters, and smoke from braziers and cooking fires mingled with the rain and the mist. The Ariaden hauled out all their mats and some rugs to cover the muddy ground around the fire, and the Celestial One sat down to dinner with them. Old Mali had been to the market, and relatively fresh melon and some papaws were added to the usual baked taro and rice. As Maskelle had predicted, the Celestial One found nothing unusual in the plainness of the fare and ate very little of anything.
Maskelle finally managed to interpret Rastim’s winking and brow-furrowing and realized he wanted her to bring up the subject of Gisar. Obligingly, she turned to the Celestial One and said, “My friends have a little problem. One of their puppets is under a curse.”
“Ah.” The old man nodded, as if this was a problem commonly brought to his attention.
“In Corvalent, by a magister named Acavir.”
“Corvalent,” the Celestial One said, in a tone of mild exasperation. “They are very unwise in their use of power, in Corvalent.”
“And no sense of humor,” Gardick muttered, from over by one of the wagons.
“It was very active before we arrived in the city.” Maskelle shrugged. “One lunar cycle in the outer gallery of the Marai, while you’re present for the Rite, should take care of it.” The Ariaden were all leaning forward in breathless suspense.
The Celestial One nodded. “Bring it tomorrow and I will have it placed there.” There were some gasps of excitement and Rastim buried his face in his hands in pure relief. The Celestial One added, “You will do me the honor of coming to a temple guesthouse tonight.”
All the Ariaden now looked at Maskelle. Rian, sitting at the edge of the firelight, shifted uneasily.
Maskelle eyed him thoughtfully. She said, “All of us?”
“Of course.”
There was a stirring among the Ariaden, mixed alarm and curiosity. Rastim rolled his eyes with weary resignation. Maskelle shook her head. “We’ve been traveling all day and we’re not going to move again tonight. We’ll come to the guesthouse, but tomorrow.”
The Celestial One raised his gray brows, frowning slightly. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.” They eyed each other a moment, then the Celestial One sighed. “Very well. But I will leave some of the guards here, to make sure you are undisturbed.”
Maskelle couldn’t tell what Rian’s reaction was from her place near the fire, but she would bet that he wasn’t happy. She said, “You think there’s that much danger?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.” The old man gestured impatiently. “This is too important. I don’t want any … unresolved situations from the past to interrupt the progress of the Year Rite.”
Considering how the Year Rite is progressing, interrupting it could be the best thing, Maskelle thought grimly. “Very well.”
Later that night, the palanquin and its attendants returned for the Celestial One. The priests departed with it, but the temple guards remained, one in the shelter near the post-house gate and five others scattered through the Ariaden’s encampment. Rastim pulled Maskelle aside and asked anxiously, “What is this place we’re going to?”
“A temple guesthouse. They’re for Koshans traveling in from the provinces. Or anyone who comes to speak to the Celestial One and doesn’t have anywhere else to stay.” Rastim still looked worried. It finally dawned on Maskelle why. “They won’t expect us to pay for the use of it.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then.” Rastim looked relieved. “Can we give performances there?”
“Probably. The court should be big enough.”
Rastim returned to the others to carry the good news, and Maskelle retired into her wagon to let them talk it out amongst themselves.
The camp settled down gradually. After a time the wagon board trembled and creaked and Rian hauled open a shutter and climbed in, muttering under his breath.
Maskelle steadied the swinging cage lamp. She was sitting on the faded blankets covering the bunk and had shed her wet clothes, wrapping herself in the last dry robe she had. It was from Meidun, neither white nor Koshan blue, but red with black embroidery on the collar and cuffs. The night had grown cooler as the rain grew harder, and she was glad for the robe’s warmth. She asked, “What were you doing out there?”
“I was making sure they’d let us leave,” he said. He sprawled on the floor of the wagon, dripping muddy water onto the worn boards.
“They’re here to protect us,” Maskelle said earnestly, though she couldn’t quite keep her lips from twitching with amusement.
Rian consulted the ceiling for a moment, apparently asking it for patience.
“They will keep out any uninvited guests,” she pointed out more reasonably.
He sat back on his hands, his expression sour.
She eyed him thoughtfully. “You’re getting mud everywhere.”
“There is already mud everywhere. There is nowhere, from the Rijan Pillars to the Gulf of Mais, that is not covered with mud.”
“There’s no mud in this bed, and there’s not going to be.”
That worked.
Later, when Rian’s clothes were a damp pile on the floor and he was stretched out next to her in the narrow bunk, she stroked his back and came to terms with the fact that she was not going to send him away. It was selfish of her, perhaps. Not perhaps. Acknowledging one’s faults was an important step to the acceptance of wisdom, but she seemed to have stalled at that point instead of going on to do something about them. She asked, “Can you read?”
“Read what?” His head was buried against her neck and his voice was muffled.
“Anything. Anrin, maybe?” It was the written form of Kushorit, the everyday language of the Celestial Empire that just about everyone but the half-wild people of the deep forest tribes learned to read and write, either from their village priests or the traveling penitents. The outer provinces had their own written scripts, but she knew that few outside the noble or religious classes there had the skill.
She felt Rian’s brow furrow. “What’s that?”
“You’ll have to learn it.” If they stayed long in Duvalpore, and it looked as if they would, he would need to know. You’re being overconfident again, a warning voice whispered.
Rian groaned and nuzzled her neck, apparently in an attempt to distract her.
“Reading is a skill required of personal guards here.” His muffled snort was eloquently doubtful, but he didn’t argue with her.
She asked, “So what is Taprot in the Sintane?”
He finally stirred enough to lift his head. His hair was tousled and his eyes wicked. He said, “It’s the patron of justice, of catching thieves, punishing murderers.”
She ruffled his hair. That is … oddly coincidental. The Koshan Order taught that there were no coincidences. The Adversary and the other Ancestors put the pieces on the board, but They didn’t give away the game.
Rian sat up on his elbow, watching her thoughtfully. “Tell me how you got to be Voice of the Adversary.”
“That was a very long time ago,” she said forbiddingly. He settled in more comfortably, apparently willing to wait however long it took for her to bring herself to tell the story. She sighed and gave in. “When I was a girl I lived in Rashet, a village some miles west of here. No one knew at the time, but a cult was growing in the area, centered around a man-witch who had learned dark magic from somewhere to the east. He had a galdani—”
Rian interrupted, “What’s that?”
“A spirit of the Infinite that has become polluted and crossed back into our world. He was—”
“A demon.”
“All right, a demon,” she agreed, pulling at the blanket and shifting around in annoyance. “The witch was keeping it by sending his followers out to attack travelers on the Eastern Road and anyone else who was out after dark. It fed on hearts and kidneys.” The memory was unexpectedly fresh; her first experience with violent death. She shook her head and went on. “No one knew why this was happening. There were just all these mutilated bodies found in the ditches and the rice fields. The governor had called for extra troops to patrol, but it took time to get them and people were starting to panic. Then the Adversary spoke to me for the first time.”
Rian was silent a moment, watching her. “What did he tell you?”
She smiled. “He doesn’t always speak in words. It’s difficult to explain, exactly. And you have to remember, He’s not really a ‘he.’ It’s a spirit, a force. Spirits don’t have language, they can’t speak like we do, they don’t even think like we do. It showed me the witch and the galdani, and what needed to happen for the galdani to die. I went there, and I made those things happen.” She lay back. On the wagon’s ceiling, the candle flame stained the hanging puppets with light and shadow. “I was very lucky that first time. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. In Duvalpore, the old Voice of the Adversary had died. I didn’t know that, either. I didn’t know anything. But in searching for the new Voice, the Ancestors sent the Celestial One and the other priests to Rashet, and there they found me. And a lot of dead cultists.”
Rian drew his fingers through her tumbled braids. “That’s how the Voice of the Adversary is chosen? The old one dies, and the Adversary picks a new one?”
“Yes. We all agreed later that it would have been better to choose a Koshan who had come up through the ranks in the ordinary way. When I did my service as a penitent, I was not exactly in a humble frame of mind.”
“But what—” Rian started to say.
“No more questions.” Talking about it had brought everything back to her, more vividly than she had thought possible. She leaned forward and stopped his mouth with hers, and for once he obeyed her and proceeded to distract her from any serious thoughts.
Another priest came early the next morning, waiting in the center of their camp with a couple of acolytes as attendants. The Ariaden had never been good at getting an early start, being more used to giving performances in the evening and traveling through the afternoon. After long association with them, Maskelle was starting to lose the trick of it herself. She found it easier to stay up for days on end than to rise early after a night’s sleep.
The rain had let up, as it often did in the mornings of this season, and the Ariaden staggered around packing the oilcloth and bundling their other belongings into the wagons. The priest, an old man who had a sixth-level rank by his scalp markings and must be accustomed to the Celestial One’s more unusual orders, watched them calmly.
The guesthouse was not far and the streets not very crowded this early in the morning, so they managed to move the wagons with only a little difficulty. The temple guards were dismissed, leaving them escorted only by the aging priest. He walked beside Maskelle’s wagon to show them the way, scandalizing the Ariaden and startling Rian. When they turned into the wide tree-shaded street lined with large houses behind wooden palisades, Rastim, who was riding up with Maskelle, muttered that they must have taken the wrong way.
The priest stopped to open the gate of a compound directly behind the Marai, the wooden palisade that surrounded the house backing up against the canal that enclosed the temple. Maskelle saw Rian eyeing that palisade, and knew he was noting the fact that it was meant for privacy and to keep out casual thieves, but any active adult could easily scale it. Over the wall they could see the house was two stories, a veranda running along the upper level shaded by the high-peaked roof and the tall trees in the court. The street was lined with similar houses, the homes of wealthy traders and city or court officials.
The gate opened on a courtyard of packed dirt, shaded and to some extent protected from the rain by the broad leaves of the trees. An open area in the back had space to park the wagons and a pen and roofed enclosure for the oxen, as well as a gate that opened out to the canal to what was probably the house’s private water stairs. A wooden shelter to one side covered the stone oven and firepit of the outdoor kitchen.
Maskelle climbed down from the wagon and stretched, letting the priest have the job of persuading the Ariaden that this was the place they were supposed to be and that it was all right to put their wagons in the back area and to feed their oxen on the bundled fodder stored in the roofed pen. She walked up the path of paving stones that led to the house.
Thick pillars supported the upper part and divided the lower into pantry, storage, and bathing rooms. She climbed the staircase that led up to the veranda on the upper floor. The mats that hung between the pillars to shield the veranda from rain and sun had been rolled up, probably recently since the interior still smelled a little musty.
There was a large main room for eating and socializing, then a number of smaller sleeping rooms to accommodate large groups or families. The appointments were those of a fine house, the carving on the doorframes and lintels precise and skilled, the colors in the lacquered wall paintings soothing and delicate. The subjects were all domestic, appropriate for any taste: elegant gardens, beautifully garbed women weaving cloth, children playing in courtyards, servants working in well-appointed kitchens, boats on the canals. Bronze lampstands would shed light over the mats and rugs and low tables in the main room, and the other rooms all contained large sleeping cushions rolled up for storage, with piles of extra cotton blankets and small wooden chests to hold clothes and belongings. It felt very odd to walk these rooms, even though she could sense that this was a place of temporary abode only, no one’s permanent home. It had been a very long time since she had been in a house like this. Seven years, she thought. Seven long years.
Maskelle was in the main room looking out over the court when Rian came up the stairs. He said, “Rastim wants to know how many other travelers are staying here with us.”
She smiled. “Tell him forty or fifty.”
Rian came farther into the room, looking around with wary approval. “This is a guesthouse?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “The different temples all have several.” Which he already knew from their conversation last night.
“There’s a carving of the Adversary’s demon face above the door.”
Maskelle sighed. She didn’t see what he was getting at. “That’s just one aspect of the Adversary, and it’s not a demon face. Most buildings have that carved somewhere, for luck.” That the Adversary’s mark was so prominent on this house’s pediment was perhaps the reason it had been chosen for them.
Rian hesitated. “So this wasn’t your house?”
“What? No.” Now she knew what he meant. She turned away. “My house burned down.”
Firac’s son Thae came bounding up the stairs, then stopped in the doorway to gaze around in awe. Recovering, he saw Maskelle and said, “That old man is here again.”
That, she supposed, means the Celestial One. She went out to the veranda and down the stairs, Rian behind her. The water gate stood open to a view of the canal and the back façade of the Marai. A passenger boat was docked at the base of the steps. It was a wide flat-bottomed craft sheltered with a white awning and hung with white silk side panels. The breeze played the tiny bells in the fringes. Several boys—acolytes or servants, it was hard to tell the difference when they all wore grubby breechclouts—leapt down from the boat and began to roll up the panels.
Maskelle went down the steps into the thick damp warmth rising off the canal. The Celestial One sat in the boat, clutching his staff. She leaned on one of the support poles for the awning and said, “I don’t suppose you’re here to help us greet the sunrise.”
“I came to bring you to the Marai. There is much to do,” the old man said, glaring at her.
Maskelle didn’t recall agreeing to spend the day staring hopelessly at the ruined Rite, but it was as good a plan as any. She stepped back, nearly treading on Rian, who stood at her elbow. She said, “Rastim, get Gisar; we’re going to the Marai.”
Rastim and Firac ran for Gisar’s box while the other Ariaden jumped for joy and the Celestial One sighed and rearranged his robes. Maskelle leaned on the boat, trying to think constructively. Starting at the beginning would be good. She ducked her head under the awning again. “There’s something I want to do first.”
“What now?” the Celestial One demanded.
“I want to see Veran, the one who started all this.”
The young priest was not in the Marai but in the hospital attached to the Gila Stel, a smaller temple that stood about two streets over from the Marai and formed part of the interconnecting web of canals and temples that concentrated its influence. With some grumbling, the Celestial One had taken Maskelle and Rian down the canal to the Gila Stel in his boat, then sent word to Niare, the priestess in charge of the small temple, to meet and accompany them. He had then taken a nervous Rastim and Firac to the Marai to see to the disposition of Gisar’s box.
The hospital occupied three levels of a long stone building that stood just to the west of the Gila Stel. Koshans had always believed that the free movement of air was almost as essential as the free movement of water for the health of the body, and the hospital’s walls were lined with windows, their cloth panels standing out at angles to keep out the rain and the sun’s heat but still allow in the breeze.
Niare met them outside on the lower gallery, near the square fountains on either side of the entrance that brought in drinking water and fed the channels that surrounded the building and aided the healing power of the place. She was a young woman for her office, and Maskelle supposed she had still been a nun or a lower rank when Maskelle had left the city. Niare greeted her with a wariness that showed she knew exactly who her visitor was, however.
Inside was a large room, cool and quiet, the pillars carved with the plants that medicines could be made from and the names of the Ancestors and spirits associated with healing. The sick lay on pallets near the walls, with a brazier beside each bed for warmth during the night. In the area near the entrance many of the patients were sitting up, talking or playing at diceboards. Others toward the back of the chamber lay quietly, wrapped in blankets, sleeping or silent with pain. One of the blue-robed attendants came to greet Niare and lead them toward the stone stairs at the far end of the chamber.
Following their guide, Maskelle realized that Rian was looking around as if he doubted his sanity. Finally she asked, “What is wrong with you?”
“Who is this place for?” he whispered.
She shrugged. “Everyone.” There were a few Koshans of various ranks among the sick, but most of the patients would be people who lived or worked nearby. Some were probably beggars, but since daily bathing was required and clean clothing supplied to those who didn’t have their own, it was difficult to tell.
“It doesn’t even stink,” Rian muttered.
The place was hardly immaculate; one attendant was collecting dirty crockery and another was dealing with the soiled bedding of someone who had been messily ill. There were many temple-run hospitals in the city, this was just the most convenient to the Marai. “I’m beginning to be very glad I never went to the Sintane,” Maskelle said as she started up the steps.
The chief healer waited for them at the top of the stairs. He was an old man, though not nearly so old as the Celestial One. She had known him once, years ago, when he had first been made chief healer here. His expression was grim as he nodded to Niare. Maskelle wasn’t sure if the grimness was for her presence or the state of his new patient.
Veran was at the far end of the second level, separated from the other patients by some painted wooden screens. There was an attendant with him, a young monk who squatted patiently beside the pallet. A jug of water and a basin of soaked cloths stood nearby, giving off the scent of ivibrae and saffron and other healing herbs. The brazier was full of coals and the young priest wrapped in cotton blankets, but he still shivered and tossed his head. His eyes were open and staring and his breath came quick and hard, as if he was running a desperate race.
Maskelle knelt beside the bed. Niare asked the chief healer, “Is there any improvement?”
He shook his head. “He seems the same. He is so fevered that he shivers and seems to be cold. But he doesn’t have the other symptoms of any of the illnesses that usually cause such fevers. None of the usual remedies for such things seem to help. He speaks, but much of the time we can’t understand him, and it is hard to tell if he is even aware of what he says.”
Maskelle looked up at him. “What does he speak of?”
The chief healer frowned. “Of being pursued by something, some creature. Also of the Year Rites.” He gestured helplessly. “Nightmares are often caused by these fevers.”
Maskelle laid a hand on Veran’s forehead. His skin was dry and hot to the touch, as the healer had said. His eyes turned to her, bloodshot and vague. Hair pricked her palm from where it had already begun to grow over his shaven scalp. She felt nothing of the darkness about him, nothing of that restless power that had taken the farmboy’s mind and soul and sent him to their camp with death in his hand. But if it was there, it wouldn’t stay. It couldn’t, not in this place, Maskelle thought. But before this she would have said that it was impossible for such a thing to enter the city at all, let alone the Marai or any other temple. And the powers that stalked her hadn’t the conscious wit to attack the Hundred Year Rite. Circle a myrrh tree three times for luck, she thought, I hope they haven’t grown wits. Then she shook her head at herself in exasperation. Not everything is about you. Examine the problem from all the paths.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked Veran softly.
His eyes darted aimlessly, then focused on her. He whispered, “The Marai.”
That’s interesting, she thought. Was it delirium or something else? “What day is it?”
“The twentieth day of the Rite. The Hundred Year Rite.” Veran tried to sit up suddenly and Maskelle grabbed his shoulders and held him down. The attendant monk moved to help her and she shook her head at him, telling him to stay back.
“It’s coming,” Veran whispered. “I have to be here. But I shouldn’t … It’s not my time—it must be a dream.”
It’s not his time. Veran had replaced the Voice whose turn it was to work on the Rite. “I think he’s reliving what happened,” Maskelle said. Perhaps over and over again?
“We thought so too, but he won’t answer questions,” Niare said, sounding weary. “The Celestial One tried for hours.”
Veran tossed his head and muttered, “I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t … It’s coming…”
Maskelle leaned forward and caught Veran’s chin, turning his face toward her. She waited until the bloodshot eyes focused. “What do you see?”
He gasped, tried to pull away from her.
She said, “The Adversary commands you to speak.”
She ignored the shocked stirring behind her; this was what the Celestial One had brought her here for. She had no right to invoke the Adversary, but in the state Veran was in she doubted he knew that. The young priest’s eyes locked on her; his dry bitten lips tried to form words.
She said evenly, “Tell us what happened when you were alone in the chamber with the Rite. Tell us and accept the Adversary’s protection.”
He opened his mouth, but his voice was a choked exhalation. She said, “The Adversary defends the just. It—” Watching him intently she looked, really looked, into Veran’s eyes. It was then she realized he wanted to speak. He wanted very much to speak. She saw past the veneer of fevered delirium to awareness, and intelligence, and overwhelming desperation. He knew what had happened and he wanted to tell them, but something prevented him. She heard a whisper of the Ancestors, but again it faded before she could understand the words.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The instant of clarity was passing and Veran looked like just another man tormented by some illness of the brain, but she knew better now. “I see it. I know. You’re trapped and you can’t get out.”
He slumped back with a strangled cry, but it was a cry of relief. She said, “Try to rest. Don’t try to talk anymore. We’ll think of some way to help you.”
Maskelle stood slowly. Niare watched her, worried and still shocked. The chief healer and the attendant just looked appalled. Maskelle said, “It’s not fever or any natural sickness. It’s possession.”
“Possession?” The chief healer was incredulous. “Here?”
“Here,” Maskelle said grimly. “Use tamarisk, sandalwood, myrrh—”
“I know what to do for possession,” the healer interrupted. He looked down at Veran, his face troubled. “Are you certain? How—”
“I’m certain,” she said. “But if I’m wrong, it won’t do him any more harm, will it?”
Niare lingered to speak to the chief healer, and as Maskelle and Rian made their way out, Rian asked, “Will he do what you ask?”
“Yes. He doesn’t like the idea, but that won’t stop him.” She added wryly, “He wants the boy to get well more than he wants me to be wrong.”
“I thought demons couldn’t get past the city boundaries.”
Maskelle stopped just outside on the hospital’s portico, out of earshot of any of the patients. The sky was lightening a little and it looked like the morning rain might hold off for a time. The Gila Stel stood across a square of grass and shade trees, its golden stone a little dulled by the weather. It was a small temple compared to the Marai, only about a fourth the size, with two stories of galleried courts supporting a three-level stepped pyramid, and five small, elegantly proportioned shrines atop that. Birds called in the trees and Maskelle could hear the bustle of a market just beyond the street wall. “They can’t. So whatever caused this isn’t a demon.” She looked at the morning mist rising from the canal behind the temple. “The Voices who are conducting the Rite would like to believe that whatever Veran did to the Wheel came out of a madness caused by illness. I think that’s a fond and foolish hope. It’s far more likely a deliberate act by something that used Veran like a tool.” She started along the path toward the temple. “But I’m more used to looking for evil than they are.”
“That’s why the Celestial One sent for you,” Rian pointed out.
That, she thought, is true. She added, “And the problem with looking for evil is that you then have to do something about whatever you flush out.”
There were two women coming up the path from the Gila Stel, both dressed in casually draped robes, though the richness of their jewelry marked them as Court Ladies, and probably High Court. Pearls hung in garlands from their belts, gold draped their necks and banded their arms and ankles. Their hair was elaborately dressed, plaited and wound up in buns, held in place by gold pins. There were people sitting under the trees near the far side of the temple, probably the women’s attendants and servants.
One woman was young and very lovely, with high cheekbones and skin so fine it was almost translucent. After a moment Maskelle recognized her as the Court Lady who had been with the Celestial One when they had arrived at the Marai yesterday. She would have been an extremely beautiful woman, but there was no warmth to her beauty, no spontaneity in the gestures in her conversation with her companion. The spirit dancers carved on the temples have more life to them, Maskelle thought.
The second woman was older, gray woven through her hair, her robe more modestly draped. It had been seven years and Maskelle had managed to stop searching every face she saw for old enemies, so it took her a long moment to recognize the second woman as Disara. Maskelle stopped where she was on the path. Disara’s gaze passed over her without recognition; she was speaking to the other woman, and foreigners and other strange people were always to be found near the hospitals.
Rian watched her closely. “What’s wrong?”
Maskelle shook her head minutely. Disara might not recognize her, with her hair grown out and her face and body hardened by seven years of travel. She wanted to see if Disara would know her and how the older woman would react.
The two women reached the portico, just as Niare and the chief healer stepped out of the hospital. There were polite bows and greetings back and forth, then the chief healer stepped back inside, gesturing the women to follow him.
As Disara stepped up to the portico, her gaze met Maskelle’s. Maskelle saw the shocked recognition in Disara’s face, saw her expression harden to revulsion and anger an instant later. She swept on into the hospital, leaving the other woman behind.
Sounding relieved, Niare said under her breath, “That went as well as could be expected.”
Maskelle almost smiled. So she wasn’t the only one who had been curious about Disara’s reaction.
Instead of following her companion, the young woman was looking Maskelle and Rian over frankly. Since they hadn’t been introduced and no one was making any effort to do so, Maskelle stared back at her, hoping she looked as rude as she felt. Undeterred, the woman said calmly, “You are the Voice of the Adversary, lately returned to the city?”
Niare shifted uncomfortably and started to speak, but Maskelle said first, “No, I no longer hold that title. I lost it when I was cursed and exiled from the Empire.”
“Ah,” the woman said, unruffled. “I was misinformed.” Her gaze went to Rian again with a detached curiosity, as if she was examining a statue and not a person.
Maskelle said, pointedly, “I think your presence is required somewhere else.”
The woman stared at her, expressionless, then made a sixth-degree bow that might be intended as a subtle insult and continued into the hospital. Maskelle shook her head and Rian muttered something under his breath in Sitanese. Maskelle guessed from the disgruntled tone that he didn’t approve of the young woman either. She turned to the path that led past the Gila Stel to the canal.
Niare sighed and turned to walk with them. Maskelle asked her, “Who was that High Court flower?”
“That is the Lady Marada. She comes from the Garekind Islands and is visiting at Court.” Niare hesitated. “She has the Celestial Emperor’s favor.” She eyed Maskelle. “It is even rumored that he may make her a consort.”
Maskelle’s brows rose. “Really,” she said dryly. Perhaps manners were different in the Garekind Islands, then, and the woman had not intended rudeness. It was far to the south, a long and difficult voyage across the Rijan Sea, and few of its inhabitants ever visited the capital. “And she visits the sick when she isn’t astonishing the High Court?”
“No.” Niare’s voice was amused. “She only visits Veran.”
“Veran?” Maskelle frowned.
“She had asked for instruction in the Infinite, and Veran was teaching her. Informally, of course. She has a great curiosity about the Path, but I don’t think she fancied the required service as a penitent.”
Well, that’s common enough, Maskelle thought. And Veran must have many friends who visited him in his illness. There was no reason why she should feel uneasy at the thought.
Niare left them at the Gila Stel. There were a few boatmen, dicing on the stone bank near where a boat, its white silk awning trimmed with flowers, was tied up. Four women, dressed well but without the profusion of pearls and gold, sat on the benches under a stand of palms, fanning themselves and talking animatedly. Maids or waiting women, their eyes slid curiously toward the strange travel-worn nun and the Sitanese outcast.
Maskelle could see the Celestial One’s boat coming down the canal toward the temple’s water steps. Waterfowl took flight, disturbed by the boat’s passage, and she saw the Celestial One had come for them himself. She gazed upward in mute appeal to the Ancestors. Does he think I mean to try to escape?
Rian asked, “Who was that other woman, who looked daggers at you?”
Maskelle glanced at him. He was ostensibly relaxed, but not without that edge of watchful tension. She said, “That was Lady Disara, my husband Sirot’s mother. The husband I killed.”
Rian stared at her. “You could have told me before.” He looked sharply at the people who had come with the two Court Ladies and managed to lower his voice. “How can I protect you if you don’t tell me these things? What is wrong with you? Were you run out of the Empire for being reckless?”
“That was one of the reasons.” Maskelle sat down on a bench under one of the trees to wait for the boat. She sighed and rested her arms on her knees. “I think maybe I might need a kjardin after all.”