This was the first time Rian had been out of the First City. He had familiarized himself with the layout of Duvalpore by talking to the porters and servants at the Marai and the post house they had stayed in the first night. With the canals and the long avenues, and the Kushorit fascination with east-west and north-south axes, it wasn’t a difficult plan to commit to memory.
Kushor-An, the Principle City, had five major entrances, and Rian found the causeway that led to the nearest by going past the Marai and the smaller satellite temples beyond it. At one point he passed through a market where many of the stalls were still open and paused in front of a cloth vendor. The lengths of silk and cotton and brocade sparkling with gold thread were displayed to advantage in the light from dozens of brass lamps. He found himself wanting to buy something for Maskelle, though for a kjardin to give a gift to their lord was unthinkable. But then, he wasn’t kjardin anymore. And Maskelle made the Lady Holders of the Sintane look about as formidable as the frazzled elder at the other stall selling gourds. You don’t have the money, anyway, he reminded himself, and kept moving.
The causeway to Kushor-An turned out to be a sight worth seeing in itself.
Walking down its broad paved length in the cool damp night air, Rian passed between stone giants, each more than thirty feet tall. In the light of the torches mounted between them, he could see some were meant to look benevolent while others were grotesque six-headed monsters. In another place he would have thought they were meant to represent gods, but here, there was no telling. In the darkness beyond the barrier of the giants there was sometimes the water of a canal, sometimes marshy ground. It was too dark to see if there were any buildings there.
Even at this time of night there were still people out: porters with yokes over their shoulders, peddlers with exotic goods or food, idlers, guards, and servants forming processions for the palanquins of the rich. Even in Markand and the High Lord’s Belladira, the two largest Holds in the whole Sintane, the streets would have been dark as pitch and empty of everything but demons, thieves, and murderers at this time of night. Duvalpore still pulsed with life.
Rian wasn’t the only foreigner out late, either. He saw several Medara Islanders with clan marks painted on their faces and other travelers who could easily be from any of the outer provinces, though there was no one who looked Sitanese. A party of Mahlindi merchants in their brightly patterned robes stood under one of the giants, gesturing up at it and talking excitedly. Rian crossed to the other side of the causeway in case these were the same Mahlindi who had been on the Great Road with them, but they were too occupied to notice him. Then a procession escorting some noble from Kutura-clane came down the causeway guided by a Kushorit official and some men in city guard livery. The Kutura-clane wore bright-feathered cloaks and tall headdresses and even the Mahlindi stopped to stare at them as they went past. Rian felt less conspicuous every moment. Maskelle, fortunately, had not thought of the argument that there were not many Sitanese in Duvalpore and that she and Rian had been seen together all over Kushor-At, so he was just as likely to be recognized at this point as she was. And she thinks you’re not going to find anything, he thought. Just because Maskelle wasn’t likely to leave damning evidence strewn about didn’t mean the Lady Marada was as careful. People who thought they were clever enough to plot secret killings often made the same mistakes as half-witless petty thieves. And, he told himself, it’s been a long time since you caught somebody you didn’t wish had gotten away. His oaths had forced him to send dozens of men and women to traitors’ deaths for trying to kill the Holder Lord, something he had wanted to do himself, probably far more than any of them had.
At the end of the causeway was a gate guarded by two stone elephants, each large enough to do battle with any of the giants. Their tusks looked like real ivory, and on their harnesses gilt and gems glittered in the torchlight. Past the gate a wide avenue led up to another great temple, its lower levels hung with lamps, but most of it lost in darkness. That had to be the Baran Dir. From seeing it at a distance in daylight Rian knew it was a truly massive structure, larger even than the Marai, and that all the towers were topped by benign stone faces. The Palace was somewhere up there too, to the west of the temple. There were dozens of large buildings around the Baran Dir, some wood, some stone, visible only as lighted windows in shapeless masses in the night. The avenue leading toward the temple stretched between two canals where pleasure boats still drifted, the lamps on their bows revealing people in bright silks lounging on cushions and drinking wine.
He found the street he wanted halfway down the avenue to the Baran Dir and crossed a bridge over the canal to reach it. The street was lined by large palisaded houses, hanging lamps glowing golden on roofs ornamented with heavy carving and widely extended beams, shade trees and palms growing in their courts. Maskelle had been right, several houses were brightly lit and noisy, with richly dressed people and servants going in and out of the gates and small caravans of palanquins crowding the street in front of them. Rian counted down and found the one that should be Marada’s. It was dark except for a muted glow of light over the palisade, probably from the outdoor kitchen.
He went down the street cautiously, staying away from the lighted gates, his boots making little noise on the soft ground. There was another canal at the far end—he could glimpse reflected light on the water between the buildings fronting it. The width of the street and the flowering bushes planted along the palisades made stealth easy.
The house compounds were set apart from each other, with alleys between them leading over to the next street. Rian slipped down the alley next to Marada’s guesthouse and saw that behind it was what must be the manse of some high official or noble: it was three stories high, with lamps glowing and people gathered on all the balconies. He hesitated, but the noisy house’s courtyard was large, and a stand of trees blocked the direct view into the alley. If he waited and came back tomorrow there would be every chance the owner would be holding an entertainment then, too.
Rian jumped and caught the top of the palisade, hauling himself up to look over and scraping his hands on the rough wood. The court was empty, the house dark. On the far side there was firelight and a couple of lamps near the kitchen hearth, but if anyone was there they were keeping quiet. Marada only had a few maids and six or so menservants; considering the size of the processions that Kushorit nobles routinely dragged along to their entertainments, she would have most of them with her. If her servants were anything like those in the Sintane, any left behind would be dozing until their mistress returned. Drums and cymbals made a counterpoint to unfamiliar stringed instruments from the noble’s house as Rian scrambled over the top of the wall and dropped to the packed dirt below.
He crept toward the back of the house. On the lower floor the screens had been dropped between the pillars, closing off what should be storage and the bathing area and quarters for the servants. Rian didn’t mean to go up through the inside of the house anyway. He froze as a voice spoke softly from the kitchen area and another answered. Two at least, he thought. The words were incomprehensible but then according to the gossip Marada’s servants couldn’t or wouldn’t speak Kushorit.
Rian waited long enough to be sure the two weren’t about to jump up and investigate any suspicious noises, then he continued to the back of the house. There he climbed up the outside of the great corner pillar, feeling for hand- and footholds in the carving. The wood was slick with damp and it was hard going. It occurred to him that being caught sneaking into the chambers of a foreign noble lady who was a guest of the Celestial Emperor himself was a transgression likely to badly upset even the usually calm Kushorit. The explanation that he was only looking for signs that she was a poisoner and a murderess was not likely to be well received, either. Worry about that when it happens, he told himself.
He reached the railing of the veranda and climbed over, dropping down to a crouch. The house stayed quiet and dark, and the low mutter of voices continued from the outdoor kitchen. He slipped into the nearest doorway.
A small cage lamp had been left lit in the inner hall and Rian picked it up. If he stayed away from the doors and windows on the far side, the light wouldn’t be seen from the kitchen area just below. He skirted the edge of the common room, the light gleaming off the lacquered woodwork and the colors in the wall paintings. The room was bare except for the low table and the cushions that must have come with the place. He passed on into the sleeping rooms.
The house was larger than the one given to Maskelle but not so well laid out, the individual rooms bigger but not so many of them. The first few he looked into were also oddly bare. The bed cushions had been unrolled so he supposed they were occupied, but their owners had left little sign of their presence behind. The Ariaden had moved into their house in force with puppets, stage paraphernalia, children’s toys, dishes, and discarded clothing. This house looked like theirs had the day they had arrived.
Then he reached a large chamber at the back and paused in the doorway, baffled. It was anything but bare. The floor and the bedding were littered with silk wraps in jewellike colors, the wooden chests covered with scent bottles and tangled jewelry, jade and pearl gleaming softly in the light from the lamp.
He took a slow step into the room, by habit careful not to disturb anything, though it looked as though an ox had already trundled through. So she has the laziest servants in Garekind, or wherever she comes from. Funny that she let them get away with it. Rian had lived in the private chambers of both the Lady Holder of Riverwait and the Holder Lord of Markand, and been well acquainted with the personal lives of many nobles as part of his duties, and he knew people of that class didn’t live like this. The room smelled foul too, a sickly sweet, rotten odor.
He poked around in the fall of silk on the floor with the toe of his boot and uncovered another blaze of color. He knelt to look more closely, pushing the crumpled fabric aside to reveal a Berani carpet. It was a large one, almost half the length of the room, deep red trimmed with black, with figures of stags and big cats and a whole bestiary of mountain animals picked out in gold and silver threads in exquisite detail. Rian whistled silently in appreciation.
These carpets came from lands far to the north and had to be carted over miles of frozen mountains before even coming within reach of the Sitanese traders, who paid raw gold for them. The Holder Lord of Markand, the biggest pig’s ass in creation, had had one not a quarter this size and kept it properly hung up on the wall to prevent it being soiled. Rian knew what that one had cost, and this, with finer colors and so much larger, must be worth far more; it had to be one of those gifts from the Celestial Emperor they had heard about.
And she treats it like sawdust. Rian lifted aside a length of indigo silk to see a broken bowl and a large dried stain of brown sauce. That was the source of the foul odor. Ants had found it and a trail of them led away under the other debris. He stood, shaking his head. The Lady Marada was one thing on the outside and something else on the inside. That was worth notice in itself, but it still didn’t prove anything. It didn’t make her interest in the priest Veran anything other than sympathetic and it didn’t mean she had killed him.
He started to search in earnest, sifting through the scarves and robes and the other litter on the floor and the bed. He sniffed the scent vials and checked the scattered collection of jars of creams and colored powders, but they seemed to contain nothing harmful. He searched the two chests at the back of the room, but they held only folded linen. The chest at her bedside was next and he shifted double handfuls of tangled gold chains, hair ornaments, arm and ankle rings off it before he was finally able to lift the lid.
It held more crumpled silk, more chains and armlets, a headpiece with jade lappets, and in the bottom a wooden box, inlaid with polished stone. Rian lifted it out and opened it, expecting more jewelry or another neglected Imperial gift. Probably cracked sun-diamonds, or spilled godwine, to judge by what she did with the carpet. The box contained a ball of ivory or soft stone, carved with a complex design. It wasn’t Kushorit, oddly enough. Every available stone or wood surface in the Empire had carving on it, and Rian felt he would have been able to recognize Kushorit work now while drunk and under a moonless night sky. This was unfamiliar.
He turned it over thoughtfully. The lines were less elegant, the hand not as skilled as most Kushorit work. There were no flowers or people worked into the design, and it was strangely asymmetrical. The candlelight touched it, turning the dull surface to pearl, then to an opalescence that almost seemed to glow. Rian realized a heartbeat later that the light was coming from within the stone.
He closed the box and sat back on his heels. That’s … interesting. He hadn’t known what he was looking for when he had come here, but now he had the strong feeling he had just found it.
He started at a sharp voice from the front of the house. His time had run out. He dumped the box and a handful of jewelry into one of the silk shawls and wrapped it up into a makeshift bag. If the thing was as important as it looked, they would miss it quickly; let them think he was a thief and it might buy a little time.
Rian bolted down the passage back to the nearest door, then out onto the veranda. He heard running footsteps from around the front of the house and vaulted the railing.
He hit the ground and fell, rolling to help absorb the shock. Ignoring the pain that shot through his right knee, he scrambled to his feet and ran for the palisade. The bundle slowed him down on the climb; as he reached the top someone grabbed his leg.
He kicked backward, connected with solid flesh, and was free. He hit the ground on the other side and heard shouting and a gate banging open. He ran for the other canal, away from the torchlit street and the more crowded avenue. Rian wondered how quickly the thief-takers would respond; considering this neighborhood was so close to the Palace, they would probably be here with dismaying speed.
There were large buildings fronting this canal, and in the dark they didn’t have the elegant lines of the houses behind him. He ran between them and saw barges pulled up on the dirt under the pilings to the right. The place stunk of fish and tar.
As he reached the muddy edge of the bank, he heard voices and ducked down behind a piling. He eased forward enough to see the front of the building. Balconies overhung the water and another barge floated at a lamplit dock that extended out into the canal. There were three men onboard, but they hadn’t seen Rian. They stood around a lamp mounted on the side of the barge, passing a jug and discussing the unreliability of other boatmen not present.
Rian glanced back up the alley toward Marada’s house and saw figures with lamps and torches gathering in front of it. Marada might not have many servants, but she hadn’t hesitated to rouse her neighbors in the emergency. He needed to get away from here, far away, fast. One of the men on the barge stepped off onto the dock and started to untie the mooring rope. The barge was about fifteen feet long, piled with baskets and bales. It’s better than nothing, he thought grimly.
He opened the shawl and scooped out the jewelry, shoving it down into the soft mud near the beached boats for the boatmen or some lucky beggar to find. He wrapped the shawl around the box more tightly, then tied it around his neck.
The boatmen pushed the barge away from the dock with heavy poles, creating ripples and splashes. Rian crept through the straggly grass to the bank, slid over the stone embankment and into the water, the noise of the barge’s movement covering any sound he made.
He pushed away from the bank, toward the middle of the canal. The water was cool and at first he could touch the bottom, but it rapidly dropped off. The barge drifted out from the dock and the lamp wasn’t throwing much light over the sides. One man poled at the front and the second at the back. Rian took a deep breath and went under.
He came up slowly at the side of the barge, just his eyes and nose above the water, and caught hold of the slimy surface of a pontoon log. On the bank, dark figures searched under the pilings of the building next to the one the barge had been docked at. The boatman who had remained behind ran toward them with a lamp.
“What’s all that?” a voice from the barge above Rian’s head asked.
“Who knows?” was the philosophical answer.
Rian relaxed a little. The barge had been caught by the slow current in the center of the canal and it would have taken forever to turn it and bring it back to the dock anyway. The box was bumping into his chin. He hoped the water didn’t hurt it. Or break it. If the ball was like that gray glass bubble the enspelled boy had carried into their camp outside the city … Then I’ll be dead so fast I won’t know it, he thought.
The search party on the bank was left behind as the barge drifted smoothly down the canal. Buildings rose on either side, tall, some with lamps glowing in windows or on balconies. The barge reached the point where this canal met one running north-south, and both boatmen came to this side to pole off the bank. Rian clutched the box and ducked under the surface. He stayed under as long as he could, grasping the slippery logs and waiting for the barge to turn into the other canal. It did, just before he ran out of air, and he came up again as the barge was caught by the new current.
Just as Rian decided he had put enough distance between himself and the search, the houses lining the banks began to show more light and there were suddenly people everywhere. There were torches on the docks and water stairs, and pleasure craft with awnings and flowers tethered near the bank. Music and voices drifted out over the water and the light outlined the shapes of trees in lush gardens between the buildings. The barge passed one house with four levels of balconies, all crowded with people, and the lamplight sparked off bronze and gold and brightly colored silks. Rian sunk down until only his eyes and nose were above the water. Fortunately all the light on the bank would only make the center of the canal that much darker and the reflections on the water were sure to confuse the eye.
Rian thought of the wild river and the large number of dangerous things that inhabited it when he felt something twine around his thigh. He gripped the wet log and fought the urge to throw himself out of the water and up onto the barge. Then a large white flower bumped him in the head and he realized they were passing through a small underwater forest of lotus. Telling himself not to be an idiot, he shook his leg free and sunk down in the water again.
Then the buildings abruptly dropped away and the barge passed a short canal that seemed to lead into a vast area of empty water. Rian realized it had to be the western baray, the large square reservoir that was half water supply and half holy symbol of something or other. He let go of the barge and let himself drift toward the bank.
When the barge had passed on, he untied the shawl and set the box up on the stone embankment, then hauled himself up after it. The water weighted his clothes, making it an unwieldy process. Finally he was able to sit on the edge. The night breeze was cool and he pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then drew the Holder Lord’s siri to check the coating of oil on it.
There were stands of trees and several temple complexes around the baray, great dark mountains of stone in the night, only a few lamps or torches to mark doorways. Another temple stood on a stone island in the center, a round one with little towers topped by elaborate cupolas. It wasn’t lit and looked tantalizing and mysterious in the night, the water reflecting back the moon-shaped portal of its doorway. Rian made plans to come back some quiet night and explore. It occurred to him that dark magic, demons that crossed ancient protective barriers, and the chance of being taken as a thief all notwithstanding, he was glad he had come to this city with Maskelle. Especially with Maskelle.
He eyed the little wooden box, sitting innocuously in the sodden shawl. He just hoped they hadn’t come to it too late.
Much later, Rian was trudging down the street that paralleled the moat on the Marai’s east side, almost home. It was still an hour or so until dawn. He had avoided the whole area around the Baran Dir and the main gate into Kushor-An out of caution, in case one of Marada’s servants had seen him running across the court. Consequently he had gotten lost. The lesser gate he had chosen led out into one of the suburbs where craftsmen and laborers lived, where the houses were much smaller and closer together, though most still had room for garden plots and breadfruit or banana trees. The streets didn’t follow the even plan of the other areas, and the north-south canal he was using as a landmark was farther out than he had thought. By climbing a tree he had spotted the torches that burned high in the tops of the Marai’s five towers and gotten pointed back in the right direction.
As he rounded the large house at the top of their street, he stopped abruptly and sank back into the bushes next to the palisade. Three men in breastplates and helmets stood under the gate lamps of the house across the way. They were talking to a sleepy porter, who was shrugging and pointing to another house down the street. Our house, Rian thought. Constabulary he might have expected, but not this. The crests on their helmets resembled those of the men who had come to the post compound after the Celestial One’s entourage had arrived. Something else going on here.
On impulse, Rian ducked back between the houses, toward the canal. Near the stone bank was a small shrine dedicated to some odd little spirit with several arms and more heads. He had seen it in the daylight yesterday. It would have looked like a demon except that the faces on all the heads were smiling in far too friendly a way. Fumbling in the dark, Rian dug at the mud next to its base, making a hole. He worked the box into it, still wrapped in the damp shawl, and scooped dead leaves and grass over it.
Dusting his hands off on his pants, Rian started back to the street. He could have worked his way back along the canal and gone in through their back gate, but he didn’t know if Maskelle was still at the Marai, and if they really were after him, he didn’t want to lead them right down on top of her. He also knew from Markand that if they were after you, avoiding them temporarily never did you any good. The only way to dodge trouble permanently was to run for the outer city gates and not come back, and there were too many reasons he didn’t want to do that.
Rian went down the street without trying to conceal himself, stepping around the mud puddles left by the last rain. The night air was heavy with damp and the scent of wet greenery. The guards were gone from the gate of the house across the way, but a prickling on the back of his neck told him they hadn’t left entirely. Morning life was starting to stir behind the palisades, and through the occasional open gate he could see sleepy cooks stoking the domed bread ovens.
He was almost home, crossing in front of a dark house with a closed gate, when a man stepped out from behind the corner of the wall in front of him, flicking up the shield on a lantern. Rian stopped, reached for his sword hilt, but then hooked his thumb on his belt instead, pretending to just now realize that this wasn’t a footpad confronting him. He could hear two more coming up behind him.
The one facing him took a couple of steps forward, slowly, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He was no ordinary guardsman. He wore the wrapped silk trousers and open brocaded jacket that Rian had seen on the wealthier passersby in the streets, but over it he had a heavy leather swordbelt studded with figured gold. The lamplight struck glints off the gems in his rings and the archer’s wristbrace he wore. Rian read the combination of finery and utilitarian weapons and knew this man was of the warrior-noble class, who formed the officer corps of the Empire’s armies. The man said, “You are the Sitanese who came here with the Voice of the Adversary?” He spoke the Kushorit words slowly and carefully, obviously expecting the barbarian not to understand.
“Yeah. What’s it to you?” Rian folded his arms, not wanting to be stabbed from behind by some overeager recruit.
The noble said, “You will come with us.”
Rian sensed one of the guards behind him reach for his sword arm and he sidestepped, making the man stumble and curse. “Why?” Rian said, sounding startled. “What did I do?” Too many poor fools had given their guilt away to him simply by acting like trapped conspirators the first time they were confronted. He was startled, a little. He couldn’t believe he had been recognized at Lady Marada’s house. You carried evidence out of there that she was a sorceress, idiot. You should have expected this.
They stepped toward him again and Rian backed away. The odds were terrible. At the other end of the street he saw two more guards on horseback coming this way, moving at a slow walk until they were sure which direction their quarry meant to bolt. The noble lifted the lantern and said, “Cooperate and you won’t be harmed.” Something about the way he said it told Rian that he didn’t quite believe it, either. Then one of the guards slipped the bow off his shoulder and notched an arrow.
That made the odds even worse. Rian calculated the man could get off three bolts by the time he ran to either end of the street, and maybe two if he tried to go over the wall behind him. Deliberately, he pulled the sheathed siri off his belt. One of the guards shifted warily and the bowman took a step back. Rian watched them derisively, then tossed the weapon to the noble.
The man caught it one-handed, and nodded. “Good decision,” he said.
We’ll see about that, Rian thought, submitting mostly graciously as a guard came forward to search him. He knew there were enough of them to beat him unconscious and throw him over the back of a horse if they had to, and he didn’t intend to limit his already few options just to show them a good fight.
The court of the Marai was empty when Maskelle came out of the tower of the Rite again. She was bone-weary and her shoulders and back ached from leaning over. The searches of the other temples had so far turned up nothing. No suspicious activities, and certainly nothing so unusual as another Wheel. After much deliberation Vigar and the other Voices had decided to remove the unknown symbols from the Rite once again and continue.
Maskelle still thought it was exactly the wrong course of action, but couldn’t muster any argument good enough to convince the others. And it isn’t as if I’ve given them any good reason to listen to my advice lately, she thought, sighing wearily. Standing in the dark, looking up at the lamps flickering in the gallery windows, she considered lying to them and saying that the Adversary had told her it was a terrible idea. It wouldn’t work. The Celestial One would know if the Adversary started to speak to her again, and she couldn’t rely on him not to expose the lie.
What if the lie were true?
She walked out of the Marai, down the long flights of steps to the causeway and across the outer court, then the silent stretch of black water with only the moon’s reflection and the stone lions for company. When the causeway reached the plaza, she turned away from the streets that led to their guesthouse and instead went toward the Avenue of the Moon Rising. It led to the Illsat Sidar, the Temple of the Adversary.
There were still people on the plaza, some carrying lamps, some scurrying furtively in the dark. She supposed Disara might have sent someone to follow her again, if it was Disara who had sent the other one, but her mood was too fey to bother with that. And it was night, and the moon was on the wane, and the Adversary was strong. She could feel the city around her like a living thing, the beat of its heart in the stone under her thin sandals, its breath in the breeze over the water, its warm blood flowing through the canals.
The avenue led away from the plaza, past the smaller temples that marked the lesser sites of power and connection to the Infinite. She could feel them all in the dark, the ones set back from the avenue and separated from it by sacred and symbolic moats and flanked by libraries, the tiny ones of only one or two rooms, set low to the ground and close to the street where a passerby could easily leave an offering of fruit or flowers or tie a fragment of bright fabric to the pillars. There were no houses behind or between these temples, no markets growing up on the small plazas in front of the larger ones, only stretches of grass with wild mulberry and ilex and red jasmine. There would be quarters for priests, nuns, penitents, and the temple servants, but they were set far back from the street.
The avenue ended at the Illsat Sidar.
There was no ceremonial moat. The avenue narrowed to a walkway, passing between two long, low buildings enclosing pillared courts, the temple’s libraries. There was lamplight glowing from the windows of one, revealing late-night scholars, but Maskelle passed silently. The walkway became a broad stone stair that led up a hill that was part natural, part man-made, shored up with stone long ago when the city’s foundations had been laid. She climbed the stairs to a wide terrace edged with knee-high statues of blackhead snakes, one of the Adversary’s forms.
There were two minor shrines facing each other across the terrace, now only shapes in the dark. A second, steeper stair led up to the central shrine, a larger building that if viewed from above would be in the shape of a lotus.
Maskelle stood in the entrance, breathing in the scent of the place, of cool dank stone and old incense. She moved farther in, through the first court with its ceiling open to the dark sky, then to the inner sanctuary that lay just beyond.
A few candles had been lit in stone cage lamps, throwing gold light on the carvings and making the garuda birds and the other monstrous creatures seem to flicker with life. The effect was curiously like watching some of the Ariaden’s smaller puppets on their shadowbox stage. In the center of the floor was a round gold plate, etched with ancient symbols of the Infinite too worn to read now, rubbed away with time and the softness of the metal.
Maskelle could feel the pulse of the city, the Marai, the Baran Dir, and the other temples, but of the Adversary’s presence there was nothing. The temple had the feel of the Illsat Keo, an empty room, recently deserted. So recently she could almost sense the warmth of the departed body. Maybe anything else was too much to expect.
Except It gave you that dream. Dream, vision, warning. The Adversary’s messages weren’t usually so hard to understand. If you knew they were messages. She shivered, not from the dank air. I won’t make that mistake again. A misinterpreted prophecy was what had gotten her into all this in the first place. The rest had been her own fault, compounding her original error. I won’t make that mistake again, but I’m so damn tired of being sorry for it, she thought bitterly.
The figure stepped out of the shadows across the dark chamber, a solid darkness one moment, a man the next, the light touching dark-colored silk and gold. Ah, Maskelle thought, too used to the vagaries of the Ancestors to be surprised. So that’s what brought me here. She said, “Sirot. Come to say welcome home?”
The man walked toward her, stopping not ten paces away. There was no dust on the stone tiles to be disturbed, or not disturbed, by the passage of his feet, but she felt that his body was not warming the air and his breath was not stirring it, despite the apparent substantiality of his presence. Sirot said, “So you returned after all.”
He was exactly the same as he had been in life, an image caught in time without the mutability of memory. His long dark hair was caught back by a gold clasp, his sharp features harsh in the candlelight. His trousers and jacket were black, almost melding with the shadow except for the fine sheen of the fabric and the glint of gold armbands. Maskelle said, “It was only a matter of time.”
“To face the scene of your defeat?” He smiled, his lips a thin line.
“I may be defeated, but I’m not dead. Pity you can’t say the same.” Shades had no power to touch the living, but she had never feared Sirot even when he was alive. She had loved him once, when she had been too young for judgment but old enough to mistake willfulness for certainty.
He laughed at her, a curiously flat sound that seemed to travel no more than the distance necessary to reach her; it didn’t cast faint echoes off the stone walls as her voice did. He said, “My son has the throne. That’s all that ever mattered to me.”
“Yes, I found that out,” Maskelle agreed. That, at least, was true. Sirot had never wanted anything except the throne of the Celestial Empire for his son. If he had wanted Maskelle once, that had given way to his ambition long before her false vision had made them enemies. It had been later that she had killed him, when she was older and no wiser. Killed him for nothing, for his son had taken the throne anyway and her vision of disaster had not come to pass.
“And what other wisdom has time revealed to you? Enlighten me.” He spoke with that subtle edge of contempt that had once amused her when he had demonstrated it on others. He had been subtle and clever enough to hide his contempt for her until the final break between them.
Maskelle’s shoulders ached and she was suddenly too tired for this, tired of ghosts and memory. She said, “Is that what you’re here for? I’ve admitted that to the world, Sirot. I was tricked, fooled, lied to. The vision was false. You were right and I was wrong.” Saying it to a dead reflection of a soul long gone to the Infinite was nothing.
His smile died, and his eyes stared into hers, flat and opaque. He said, “Was I right?”
That wasn’t the answer she had expected. “What do you mean?” she asked, before she could stop herself. It was never a good idea to ask questions of shades.
If this was a shade. Maskelle felt something stir in the temple, a restless flow of power. The Adversary …
Sirot said, again, without expression, “Was I right?” In the next breath he was gone. Maskelle cursed, buried her face in her hands. The sense of the Adversary’s presence had gone with him. No, it wasn’t the Adversary, it was Sirot, she told herself. He came to destroy what little calm you’ve managed to attain, only that.
She lifted her head and sighed. The temple felt warm again, warm but empty. She looked at the gold disk in the floor. It marked the closest point in the temple to the Adversary, the carefully calculated point where this world came closest to the Infinite. Even people who had never explored the Path could receive visions by standing on it. Let’s test our resolve, then. If the Adversary wouldn’t speak to her there, she would know It would never speak to her again. Before she could think better of it, she stepped onto the gold disk.
Images struck her with breathtaking force. She saw the great stone buildings with their flicker of candlelight, the vast gray plain. But this time the dry cool air was suffocating, heavy with sharp fear and desperation so intense it choked her. Soon, soon, soon, her own voice whispered. They will move soon. They can’t afford to wait.
Maskelle opened her eyes. She lay on her back, on the cold stone floor of the temple, staring at the arches carved into garuda birds. She sat up and grabbed her head. “Ow.” She couldn’t have been unconscious long. It was still dark out and the candles in the lamps hadn’t guttered. No answer would have been answer enough. Now all she had was another puzzle.
The gray dawn light was filtering through the trees when Maskelle reached the gate of their house. She trudged across the muddy court to where Old Mali sat on a bench in front of the kitchen firepit, poking suspiciously at the oven. Maskelle picked up the pottery jug that was set to warm in the ashes, but it was empty. She asked hopefully, “Tea? Food?”
“In time,” Old Mali growled. “I’ve only got two hands.” One rheumy eye gazed at Maskelle critically. “You need a bath.”
“Thank you, yes, I know.” Maskelle started up the stairs. Old Mali snarled at her and, sighing, Maskelle stopped to take off her muddy sandals.
Upstairs, there were unconscious Ariaden strewn around the common room and she picked her way across them carefully. She paused in the doorway to her room, staring at the empty bed, until her mind, trapped somewhere back in the past amid the patterns and symbols of the Infinite, registered what was wrong. Rian wasn’t here. He should be back by now, she thought. It’s not that far to the west Palace district. Unless something had gone badly wrong.
She checked the other rooms first, just to make sure he wasn’t with anybody else, but Doria and Therassa were together and Killia was sharing a bed with her daughter. An unworthy impulse, she told herself. Perhaps seeing Sirot’s shade again had shaken her more than she had thought. She went back downstairs and did a quick turn through the lower level of the house, but the storage areas and pantry were empty and the tiled floor of the bathing room was dry. She came out again and went to the kitchen, where Old Mali was putting lumps of dough on the baking stones in the oven. “The water jars are full,” the old woman hinted again.
Maskelle ignored her. “Did Rian come back last night?”
“No.” Old Mali glared at her. “He’s with you.”
“He’s not with me.”
“What did you do with him, then?”
Maskelle started to reply sharply, then bit her lip and said, “I let him go to search the house of a woman who might’ve killed a couple of priests with magic.”
Old Mali rolled her eyes and shook her head. Maskelle snapped, “Well, now I realize that.” She paced, shoving her hair back out of her eyes. “Maybe he went back to the Marai and fell asleep waiting.” She couldn’t do anything until she looked there first.
Rastim staggered down the stairs, clutching his head as if trying to keep it from falling off. “What’s all the noise?”
Maskelle started toward the gate. “Sorry, go back to sleep,” she told him, then saw the gate at the back of the compound that faced the canal was swinging open. She stopped, frustrated. I don’t have time for this.
The Celestial One’s boat was docked at their water steps and the young priest-attendant was lifting the old man out. Maskelle cursed under her breath, but one couldn’t ignore the Celestial One when he came to your own house, no matter who or what one was. She crossed the muddy court to meet him.
The attendant set the old man down and he came toward her. Rastim hurried forward, trying to straighten up and not look half dead, and Old Mali was standing ready with a mat in case the old man sat down. As Maskelle reached him, she said impatiently, “I’m in a hurry—”
“Listen to me.” The Celestial One held up one hand.
Maskelle suddenly knew what this was about. Intuition or the Ancestors, it didn’t matter. Her throat felt tight. She said, “He’d better not be dead.” Rastim and Old Mali stared at her.
Deliberately, the Celestial One said, “I had a message from Hirane of the Baran Dir. Your friend was brought to the Celestial Home by the guard during the dawn meditation.”
Maskelle nodded, looking away. Rian was right, she thought. She could see it now, just as clearly as she could see the dark eruption in the Rite. “That’s all I needed to know.” It hurt to talk and she realized it was because her jaw muscles were so tight.
Rastim looked at Old Mali, baffled. She hissed, “The Sitanese.”
The Celestial One shook his head. “Let me deal with this.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled. “He’s gone to all the effort of having Rian brought to him, just to get my attention. I could hardly deny him what he has asked for, now can I?”
The Celestial One’s eyes narrowed. “You will let me deal with this.”
Maskelle’s rage crystallized into a hard knot in her chest. She turned and strode for the gate. Behind her she heard the Celestial One shouting for his attendant and his boatmen.