Wheel of the Infinite (11 page)

Then she was on the Adversary’s moon-viewing platform again, her head pillowed on Rian’s back, the wall of the shrine and the trees and the nightbirds and her own sky above.

Maskelle lay there, the feeling slowly coming back into her numbed limbs, and knew that her spirit had truly left her body, that it had been a real vision, and not just wishful thinking. It was baffling, it was inexplicable.
It’s the first time the Adversary’s spoken to me since I left Kushor-At
, she thought.
Why now? What’s changed
? There were no answers in the night.

“I’ve had a letter from the Celestial One,” Barime said, pouring tea from the heavy pottery jug, “but he didn’t tell me about sending for you.”

“He hasn’t become less cagy in his dotage. He didn’t tell me why he sent for me either,” Maskelle said. She felt a little light-headed, as she always did the third sleepless night in a row, but they would be in the city by late this afternoon and she could sleep in the wagon on the way.

They were sitting under a vine arbor on a little terrace off the monastic quarters, on braided grass mats and soft faded cushions. The sun was just rising and the Ariaden were still asleep in their wagons, though the temple attendants had been awake for the past hour. It was cool and the air was fresh, birds and monkeys chattered in the greenery just past the low wall, and the day promised more sun than rain.

Barime had made them as free of the temple’s quarters as if Maskelle had still had the governance of this and all the other temples of the Adversary and had a real right to be here. This had included the use of the bathing room, and even though the water was pumped cold from the canal and there was no hypocaust, it had been quite civilized compared to the arrangements possible on the road. Rian had already managed to shed the dressing she had put on the bori club-cut on his arm, and she had replaced it with materials supplied by the temple’s infirmarian.

“I can see why he didn’t want to spread the word of your return, but I would have thought he could have trusted you with the reason for it,” Barime agreed. Besides the tea, one of the young monks had brought fruit, warm flatbread baked in the temple’s ovens, and spiced fish paste. It was a welcome change from taro and dried pork.

Rian was trying not to eat like a starving man, but Barime was hardly fooled and kept passing the bowls to him. He was sitting behind Maskelle and to the side, where he could watch the gates and much of the compound, and the door into the quarters. He had hardly gotten within three feet of Maskelle since Barime had come out, but she didn’t think Barime was fooled by that, either. It did give her an idea of the circumspection required by a Sitanese Lord’s personal guard, though.

“Maybe ‘trusted’ is the wrong word,” Maskelle pointed out.

“It must be the Hundred Year Rite,” Barime said, ignoring that serenely. “He wants your help with it.”

“There are so many others he can go to. The provincial Voices, the seventh-level priests. And he sent for me over five months ago, before the rite started.” She shook her head, watching the leaves settle to the bottom of her cup. The Celestial One had been her friend when she had left Duvalpore seven years ago, the only friend remaining to her in the city. But she wasn’t sure if that was still the case. So much had happened since then and the Koshan temples had suffered from the lack of the Adversary’s council.
And everyone knows whose fault that is
.

“Perhaps he simply wants to see you.” Barime watched her thoughtfully.

Maskelle looked away. It was a possibility, she supposed. She smiled a little wryly.
You were hoping for something more interesting, weren’t you
? She knew Rian was watching her too. “How have things been at Court? Is Chancellor Mirak still our best enemy?”

Barime made a gesture of annoyance. “He is as always, if not worse. I’ve never met the man, but I feel as though I know him from the descriptions I receive in my letters, and it isn’t pleasant knowledge. Kiasha wrote me of a new presence at court, some foreign emissary, who seems to have an undue amount of influence.” She looked at Maskelle seriously. “You know Mirak won’t welcome your return.”

“I would be disappointed if he did welcome it. Much of the attraction of it comes from the trouble it will cause Mirak. And the others.” She glanced back at Rian in time to see him look away, his jaw muscles tightening to suppress a smile.

Barime smiled. “You haven’t changed.”

Maskelle made a warding gesture, only half in jest. “Don’t say that.”

“You know what I mean.”

Some hours later Maskelle climbed out of the dim interior of the wagon and into the brilliant sunlight. She stood on the seat next to Old Mali and surveyed the road. Rain had come and gone throughout the morning, but the heat had set in with afternoon. The road had grown more crowded as the day had advanced and she had not been able to sleep much. She was covered with sweat and after being jolted in the wagon her head felt as if it was stuffed with straw. It hadn’t helped that Rian evidently slept in increments, waking up when no more than half an hour could have passed and getting out of the wagon, then coming back in not much later. He was a few wagons down the line now, walking beside Rastim at the side of the road. She couldn’t fault him for wanting to stay alert, or for the driving need to do so, but she knew they were already well within the active influence of the temples in Kushor-At and there was no chance of attack.
Or at least
, she amended,
no chance of attack from restless water spirits, even strangely powerful ones
.

She let out her breath and sat down on the wagon bench, resigned to being awake. Old Mali grunted at her and she grunted back. The road rolled on, hot and bright under the sun, the mud hardening in spots and wet and stinking still in others. There were more and more travellers, and they even had to stop several times and wait for the road to clear. They passed merchants, farm wagons, an Imperial courier, and a party of Imperial guardsmen escorting an embassy from Kutura-clane.

“I thought we were close,” Rastim said, for perhaps the third time. He had jumped down off his wagon and run up to hang off the running board of Maskelle’s.

“We are,” Maskelle said, not patiently. They were skirting the edge of Duvalpore now and had been for some time. To the west, past the rice fields and hidden by the band of trees, was a scattering of temples, canals, and a residential and merchants’ quarter bordering the giant western baray. They could have gotten into the city proper faster by taking any one of the several turn-offs they had passed, but Maskelle wanted to go directly to the Temple City.

Perversely, she said nothing when the road dipped down through stands of palms and fruit trees and they passed over the second dike. Past it the trees fell away to a stretch of open fields that led up to a belt of sago palms at the base of towering stone walls. They glowed golden in the sunlight, stretching for miles on either side. Someone in one of the wagons behind theirs shouted with excitement and Maskelle smiled tightly.

Rian swung up onto the wagon suddenly and Maskelle jumped so violently she almost fell into Old Mali’s lap. She ignored the quizzical look the old woman gave her; she hadn’t realized how tense she was. Rian settled onto the perch at Maskelle’s feet and didn’t appear to notice her nervous start.

I love this city
, she thought. Maybe she had forgotten how much. The huge gates stood open, heavy logs reinforced with metal cladding, and traffic swarmed through. There were five gates in this section of the city wall; this one was called the Gate of Reunion. Well, there were many reunions soon to come. She wasn’t sure what was unnerving her. There were no enemies within these gates that she feared.
Except yourself
, she thought, watching the walls loom larger.
Except yourself
.

Rian was watching the guards. “Will there be trouble getting in?”

“No, they won’t stop us,” Maskelle said. There were two guards dressed in the livery of the Imperial Constabulary, high buskins, loose trousers, and short red jackets open in the afternoon heat. One of them was swinging a bori club idly, but they appeared to be more interested in gossip with the travellers and traders gathered at the side of the gate than with stopping any wagons. The Hundred Year Rite would culminate at the Equinox, coinciding with the secular Water Festival and also this year with the annual lunar holiday. The celebrations would be huge and people were streaming into the city for it. She said, “This is civilization now, remember?”

Rian leaned back against her legs and looked up at her, cocking an eyebrow. “Does that mean they’ll let us leave, too?”

She ran a hand through his hair. The dampness in the air was making the ends curl. “It’s an open city.”

He looked unconvinced, but no one gave them any notice as the wagons trundled through the gate onto a broad paved area. Ahead the view opened up to the western approach to the Temple City.

Maskelle heard a loud startled exclamation from one of the wagons behind her. At the edge of the pavement a few hundred yards away was a wide moat. The afternoon heat shivered off the calm water, which was separated from the river by a system of canals. There were a few boats, some flat cargo barges, but most were pleasure crafts, with people in white gauzy robes shaded by colorful awnings or parasols.

At first, in the light and heat, the grey shapes beyond the water looked like a mountain range in small scale. Then the eyes resolved the mountains into giant stepped domes covered with carvings and statues, some topped with slender spires. The temples. Maskelle’s heart started to pound.

Past the moat, a long terrace with three gates made the formal entrance to the city. Beyond that was a vast open space of paved court, dotted with groups of brightly dressed people. Past that, dominating the view on a rising mound of stone, were the five giant conical towers and the long pillared galleries of the Marai, the Temple of the Mountain.

The road was dipping down toward a broad stone causeway lined with guardian stone lions that bridged the moat. Old Mali halted their oxen for a moment as the wagons in front of them slowed in rolling out onto the causeway. Travellers new to the city and inexperienced jostled other wagons and lost each other, and peddlers hawked their wares at the top of their lungs, anxious to separate the newcomers from their money before they saw the greater markets further ahead. Maskelle glanced down at Rian. He was shading his eyes, studying the view.

Rastim took advantage of the stop to come up and climb onto the running board on Old Mali’s side. His round face was shiny with sweat, but he looked more excited than anything else. “Is that the palace?” he asked.

“What?” Maskelle realized he meant the temple. “No, that’s the Marai, the Temple of the Mountain. This is Kushor-At, the First City, the Temple City. The Palace is in the Principal City, Kushor-An, over that way.” She pointed to where another great stone causeway led off to the west, bridging ground, canals, and another moat to reach the city’s second heart.

“The Celestial One lives in the temple?” Rastim persisted. He must be having visions of vast audiences. This was undoubtedly the largest city the Ariaden had ever seen.

“Close enough,” Maskelle told him. There were hundreds of temples spread throughout the First City and the Principal City, each with a precise role in the system that made up a network as complex as the canals and barays that provided water and transport, and she was in no mood to give a lesson in either architecture or history. “Just calm down. We’ll get there, all right?”

“I know that, but what’s—” The traffic in front of them started to move and Rastim was forced to run back to his own wagon.

They rolled onto the causeway, a breeze lifting the warm damp air. The odor coming off the water was as fresh as that of the wild river, heavy with nothing but the scents of the jungle vegetation creeping along the banks and the spices and incenses on the boats. It was often a source of amazement to foreign visitors that water carried in man-made channels remained so clean, and they attributed the phenomenon to the holy nature of the barays and canals. It had more to do with the skill of the original builders of Kushor-At and Kushor-An, who had learned everything there was to know about moving water from one place to another in building the dry season irrigation ditches for the rice fields.

The boats nearby were all pleasure craft, wide and flat-bottomed, guided by poles fore and aft, the passengers protected from the sun by the awnings. Watching the nearest glide by, Maskelle was struck by a memory with almost the tangibility of a vision: a long-ago afternoon on one of those boats, drifting in the heat of the sun down the canal that led past the palace complex to the western baray, the prow filled with flowers and the breeze playing through the bells. Annoyed, she shook her head, banishing the image.

The wagon rolled off the causeway and onto the plaza in front of the terraces. It was even more crowded with other wagons, milling people, oxen, horses. Old Mali made worried grumbling noises.

“We need to get the wagons out of here,” Rian said, standing up on the perch to get a better vantage point.

Maskelle dragged herself out of the past and said, “That way.”

There was a walled post house to the far right of the plaza, a huge one with room for dozens of wagons. They made their way to its gate without running over anyone and Maskelle climbed down to do the bargaining. Rastim hovered worriedly at her elbow while she spoke to the attendant at the gate.

“We can only afford one night,” he said after she had finished and handed over a couple of coins to secure their entrance.

“We’ll only need one night,” she told him, and thought,
one way or the other
.

As large as it was, the post compound was still crowded. Wagons of all shapes and sizes, from a light two-wheeled peddler’s cart to huge two-storied wheeled houses with shuttered windows and roof platforms crowded the enclosure and oxen, onagers, and horses were tethered everywhere. The noise of the animals combined with the babble of voices speaking in dozens of languages to make a bewildering din. Rian seemed to take it in stride, though with him it was hard to tell. The Ariaden were in a state of bewildered excitement; the city was everything that had been promised and the variety of the people could only mean that some of them might want to see theater. Maskelle’s presence as an apparent travelling nun gained them polite attention from the attendants, and with a little help from them they found a spot to draw the wagons up.

The others ran around setting up camp and Maskelle stepped back out of the way, looking toward the Marai’s towers, easily visible over the wall of the compound.
Better get it over with
, she thought sourly. Now that she was here, her nerves were making her stomach jump. The attendants were already bringing fodder for the oxen, and Rian and Firac were trying to figure out the system that filled the troughs with water from the channels crossing the compound. She caught Rastim’s arm as he bustled past, and said, “I’m going to the Marai.”