Wheel of the Infinite (16 page)

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—”

“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 travellers 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.’ He’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. He 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 and looked at the wagon’s ceiling, the candle flame staining 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 travelling 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 house 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; any healthy 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 tradesmen 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 ladies 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 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 travellers are staying here with us.”

She smiled. “Tell him forty or fifty.”

Rian came further 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.

“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 facade 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 was sitting 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 trodding on Rian, who was standing at her elbow. “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?”

She shrugged. “Everyone.” There were a few Koshans of various ranks among the sick, but most of the patients were tradesmen from the markets in the area or people who lived 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. “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.

The young priest 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?”