Wheel of the Infinite (21 page)

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 and 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 further 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 He 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. 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 he 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 grey 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 grey 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, she 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. 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 Therasa 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 sat 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 could 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.

The guards took Rian back toward the gate of Kushor-An, down the causeway of giant guardians. His first thought was that they were going back to the Lady Marada’s house so someone could point and say, “It was him!” If she had used her magics to see who the intruder had been, there was nothing he could do about it. But they passed the way that led to Marada’s house and continued up the broad avenue toward the Baran Dir.

The guards didn’t know quite what to make of him. They had expected him to put up a struggle, so he had gone quietly. He had heard the man who had confronted him called Lord Karuda by the others, so he knew he was correct in his initial assessment. It was mildly annoying that they had found all his knives; Karuda himself still carried the siri. Like a trophy.
Careful, Kushorit lord; trophies like that come with high prices
.

As they walked, Rian saw Karuda half-draw the siri, examining the bare hilt and the ring, rubbing his thumb over the places where the figured gold had been removed. Rian eyed him warily. He suspected Karuda was too sharp for his liking. As they neared the great gate, the noble raised his hand, stopping them under a large brass lamp hanging from the harness of one of the giant elephant guardians. He stepped closer to Rian, looking him over thoughtfully, then said, “You’re a
kjardin
. Which lord do you belong to?”

He had the pronunciation as right as his Kushorit accent would allow. Rian rapidly weighed the merits of claiming Riverwait or Markand and decided on neither. “No one. Not anymore.” Let Karuda think he was a thief, an outcast, anything.
Just don’t let him think it would be a good idea to send me back
. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that that could be a possibility.
I’m not going back to the barrow. Not alive
.

Karuda’s brow lifted skeptically. If he knew enough to look at the remains of the caste marks in Rian’s ear and use a word which didn’t have an equivalent in Kushorit, then he knew how unlikely it was that a
kjardin
had been allowed to leave his Hold without catastrophe or scandal. Karuda asked, “The High Lord?”

Relief at the wildness of this guess made Rian look honestly puzzled. “No. I was from Sorde.” That was a small Hold even closer to the mountains than Riverwait and surely Karuda wouldn’t know it.

“I went to the Sintane once with the Kushorit ambassador,” Karuda said, eyeing him deliberately. “
Kjardin
don’t leave their Holds.”

Rian could have given him half a dozen ready lies, but Karuda would know them for it immediately. He said only, “This one did.”

Frowning, Karuda only looked at the siri again, sheathed it, and moved on.

The dawn light was beginning to illuminate the Baran Dir, the faces that surmounted its many towers gazing in massive beneficence over the smaller temples and the sprawl of wealthy homes and gardens that grew up just outside its moat. It wasn’t meant to look like an ever-rising mountain like the Marai, but it was built up on two high stone terraces that raised the central towers more than a hundred feet in the air. The stone was a lighter color than the other temples and glowed a rich gold in the dawn.

They couldn’t be taking him to the Baran Dir. As far as Rian could tell it had something to do with hospitals and healing. The Marai was really the main temple in the city, though the Baran Dir seemed to occupy the most central location. It was hard to remember that Duvalpore was organized according to the invisible geography of the Infinite and not the real world.

Near where the avenue turned into a causeway to cross the Baran Dir’s moat, they turned west on another wide paved street, skirting the edge of a large plaza which was nearly empty at this early hour. There were walls on the far side, all carved with elephants engaged in game hunts in the forest, the theme brought partly to life by the heavy band of trees and foliage visible just over the top. They were heading for a gate guarded by stone lions and some of the misshapen spirit creatures. Rian concealed his increasing bafflement; Duvalpore was laid out in a strange fashion, but he didn’t think a prison could be situated anywhere near here.

Past the gate was a short paved avenue, this one lined with walls carved with festival scenes, shaded by palms and sycamore. Stone latticework showed they were actually on a causeway, crossing a stretch of water too large to be a canal. In Duvalpore moats were considered spiritual rather than defensive barriers; it was as if they were going into a temple’s precincts.

At the end of the causeway they went up a set of steps to a large garden square. At the top Rian finally saw what had to be their goal. The square was enclosed on three sides by a rambling and complex arrangement of buildings. Sprouting long verandas and roofed balconies, some were as much as three or four stories tall and were built around enormous old trees. The peaks of the red-tiled roofs were ornamented with huge carved beams that pointed upward like horns at the ends.

As they led him across the garden, they passed plots all taken up with bright flowering shrubs, the vivid colors muted by the grey dawn light, and two large square pools, one deeply sunken into a stone basin with steps leading down into it. There were guards posted at intervals and a few workers fully occupied with cleaning a raised stone channel that watered one of the basins.

They were not going to the broad shaded portico of the main building, but toward an archway in the garden wall that led to an interior court with palms and other trees hanging over the wall. As they neared it he could see the arch was framed with polished and gold-tipped elephant tusks. Rian thought,
If it’s a prison, then the Koshans and the Kushorit really are crazy
. He stopped at the base of the steps that led up to it, planting his feet when one of the guards pushed him. He said, “What is this place?”

Lord Karuda glanced back at him, his expression closed, and didn’t answer. The biggest guard gave Rian another hard shove. He shifted his weight to keep his balance and stood his ground. Rian supposed that sort of treatment was always effective on the peasants in the market, though he would have thought any one of the porters who carried burdens yoked on their backs could have beaten the man into the ground one-handed.

Karuda pressed his lips together, annoyed. Rian had the feeling they didn’t want to make a disturbance here. The aggressive guard uncertainly fingered his sword, contemplating further persuasion, and looked to Karuda for instruction. Finally the noble said, “This is the Celestial Home.”

Rian just stopped himself from calling Karuda a liar. He looked at the large complex of buildings again, reluctantly admitting to himself that it did look a lot like a Kushorit palace.
All right, you only thought you were in trouble before
. The guard gave him another hard shove. Rian kept his balance and ignored it. Karuda shook his head, for a moment looking almost as puzzled as Rian felt, then turned and went up the steps. Rian followed without persuasion, much to the guard’s annoyance.

Just past the archway the lush garden court was shaded by palms and ilex and a massive cypress whose roots had dislodged many of the paving stones around the square pool. The scent of flowers mingled with sandalwood incense. On the far side of the pool was a pavilion with a red tile roof supported by stone pillars. There were cushions on the polished wooden floor, and courtiers on the cushions, three young men, probably of the warrior-noble rank like Karuda, but in their silks and gold they looked as soft as doves. Standing to one side was a Koshan priestess, robed in blue and clutching a silver-wrapped staff. She was a small elderly woman with thin lips and a grimly determined expression.

Another young man who didn’t look soft at all was pacing on the far side of the pavilion. His long dark hair was pulled back from a narrow face with sharp, handsome features. He was dressed in a simple open jacket and trousers of watered green silk, but his armbands, anklets, and pectoral were heavy gold. He stopped abruptly and turned toward them as Rian was brought in. Rian saw the man’s face was dark with anger.

Karuda bowed, and though Rian wasn’t practiced at interpreting the different levels of the Kushorit bow, he knew that one signalled an even greater degree of homage than the Celestial One normally received.
I know who this is
, he thought, feeling a shock that was like a punch to the pit of his stomach. The guard behind him kicked at his knee, and Rian knelt smoothly, back straight, sitting back on his heels. It was the proper etiquette for showing fealty to the High Lord of the Sintane, and even if they didn’t know
that, the gesture could hardly be interpreted as disrespect.

He hadn’t expected the Emperor to be so young. He had thought of him, if he had thought of him at all, as somebody like the Celestial One, if not quite so ruinously old. This man couldn’t be much above twenty, if that. “That’s him?” the Celestial Emperor said, his full lips curling with contempt.

Uh oh
, Rian thought. He hadn’t accused Lady Marada of being a murderer to anybody except Maskelle; the Emperor couldn’t have heard about that.
I’m either dreaming or dead
, he thought.
Probably both
. Even if it had been obvious that he shared the bad opinion of Marada held by the servants attached to the Marai, that couldn’t have found its way to the Emperor’s ears in so short a time, unless his spies had near supernatural abilities.

“It is, Your Majesty,” Karuda said. His voice was colorless, only the tension it took to keep it so betraying any opinion. Rian didn’t think Karuda was a possible ally, but he could tell the noble wasn’t entirely happy with his role in all this. Whatever all this was.

The Emperor said, “Stand up.”

Rian stood.

The blow caught him across the cheek. Rian saw it coming, rocked back on his heels to absorb the force of it. He felt one of the Emperor’s rings open a cut under his cheekbone.
He doesn’t hit nearly as hard as the Holder Lord used to
.

For just a moment the Emperor’s expression was disconcerted, possibly at Rian’s lack of reaction. He turned away, paced almost to the edge of the pavilion and stopped, fists knotted. He jerked his head at the courtiers and said, “Get out.”

All three immediately got to their feet, gracefully, though not wasting any time, and made their bows. When they had gone, there was quiet for a moment. In the trees birds sang, greeting the dawn, and the tension stretched.

Then the Emperor turned his head and asked softly, “Where did Maskelle find you?”

At least he’s not asking about Marada
, Rian thought. At least not yet. He hesitated, but he couldn’t think why the Emperor had the remotest interest in him.
If he really cares so much who Maskelle travels with, why aren‘t Rastim and the others here
? He said, “On the Great Road, two days south of Duvalpore, lord.” He had no idea what the Kushorit called the Emperor when addressing him directly and knew that making a mistake would be a serious tactical error, so he used the Sitanese honorific for the High Lord.

Fortunately no one seemed to care. The Emperor faced him, staring. “Two days ... Before she came to the city?”

“Yes.”

“The implication is obvious,” a new voice said. Another man stepped up into the pavilion from a hidden path through the foliage. Rian managed not to twitch at his sudden appearance. He was older, his dark hair greying and pulled back behind his head in an elaborate knotted braid, his face hard and calm. He wore enough gold to mark him as a noble, but there was no ostentatious display, and his air of power didn’t require the support. “Our information was correct. She has made foreign alliances.”

“What use would an alliance with the Sintane be?” the Emperor snapped.

True
, Rian thought, just managing to keep his face straight. The warring lords of the Sintane made terrible allies for each other, let alone for the Celestial Empire, which they regarded with suspicion and fear.
They suspect Maskelle of making a foreign alliance
? It was all part of her past, the mistaken vision, the throne and her second husband’s heir.
But they must have known she was here that first night, when the Celestial One came to the post house
. If they suspected her of treason, then why wait until today to fetch Rian in? Surely the Celestial One’s presence would not have been enough to stop men under the command of the Emperor himself.

The Koshan priestess, standing forgotten on the other side of the pavilion, said suddenly, “The Voice of the Adversary has no need of alliances. Chancellor Mirak knows this.”

That explained part of it, anyway. Rian remembered the priestess Barime, at the Illsat Keo, had mentioned Mirak as an enemy of the Koshans at court. Mirak gazed at the old woman with amusement and said, “This priestess has divided loyalties.”

“So, now Hirane makes a foreign alliance? The Master of the Baran Dir and the Celestial One conspire against me?” The Emperor snorted derisively.

At least he’s not a brainless lordling
, Rian thought. The Emperor seemed more than able to make up his own mind. Not that that was likely to help Rian’s situation. Though he had to admit he still had no idea what his situation was.

Mirak, wisely, didn’t argue, and the priestess Hirane simply stood silently, though a grim smile played about her lips. The Emperor stepped up to Rian again, his face dark but thoughtful.

Rian made himself relax, expecting another blow, but the Emperor only said, “You weren’t sent by the Sitanese High Lord, were you?”

“No, lord,” Rian said, keeping his tone even but willing the younger man to know it was true.

“Are you warming her bed?”

Rian’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t answer.

The Emperor studied him intently. “She draws men to her. Then she kills them. She’s done it many times before. She did it to my father.”

He was trying to sound mocking, but was too obviously taut with anger to be saying these things for his own amusement. Saying
I heard about your father and he was a power-hungry little shit of a lordling who should have been gelded and hung out for the birds to eat
was hardly likely to improve the situation any, so again, Rian said nothing.