Wheel of the Infinite (31 page)

Rian scrambled to grab the fallen sword, then rolled up into a crouch. This couldn’t be Gisar, this was big, big as a man. The sentries from the gate had heard the fight and were running this way, one of them carrying a lamp. The shape dodged forward, back toward the temple, and Rian threw himself at it in a tackle. He caught it around the knees and landed on a tangle of wood and metal wire. Rian floundered for a moment, trying to tell by feel what this thing was. It suddenly contracted under him and threw him off.

Rian hit the ground hard and looked up as the guard arrived with the lamp. The creature was standing over him and he realized with a shock that it was Gisar. Or that it had been Gisar.

He remembered the puppet from when it had walked out into the middle of the Ariaden’s performance in the outpost. It had been a small thing, only waist high, with a brightly painted wooden body, the arms, legs, and head strung to the torso with wire, meant to be moved individually by the actor who worked it. Now the wood was distended and lengthened until it looked almost like diseased flesh. The wires had grown into a profuse tangle, standing out from its body like the spines of some sea creature.

Before they or Gisar could move, a howl roared over the court. It was the wind through the empty buildings, magnified to monsoon strength. Gisar whirled and knocked the lamp out of the astonished guard’s hand. Rian felt rather than heard it run past him and made a grab for it, but the wires slipped through his hands. He scrambled to his feet and bolted after it.

Gisar was heading for the outer wall. Rian ran blind, guided only by the jangle of the wires and the thump of the puppet’s feet. He hoped he didn’t slam into one of the palm trees that dotted this enclosure, but he couldn’t risk losing the creature. His dark vision began to return as he neared the low wall and heard Gisar scrabbling at the stone, climbing it.

With no moon or starlight and only the few lamps at the water gate further down the wall, Rian saw only an odd-sized shadow moving in the darkness about where he judged the top of the wall to be. He sheathed the siri and jumped, lost his grip on the weathered stone and fell back, then jumped again. He kept his hold this time, finding footholds in the carving and pulling himself up to perch on top, ignoring the tight pain in his side from his injured ribs. The wind had risen, tearing fitfully at his hair and clothes, and he couldn’t hear Gisar anymore.

He dropped to the ground outside the wall, landing on the uneven strip of packed dirt that was all that remained of the moat that had surrounded the temple. He braced himself, half expecting Gisar to leap on him, but there was nothing but the howl of the wind. It was impossible to see anything in the empty dark of the plain stretching out from the temple. The pinpricks of light still glowed in the void where the strange city lay, but there was nothing ...

Rian stared hard. The shadows had seemed to ripple, as if something moved out there, not far beyond where the priest’s barrier lay.

He took a few cautious steps forward until he met the barrier. After hearing Maskelle’s description of it, he had expected a solid invisible wall, but it wasn’t that simple. It didn’t feel different at all, it was simply a place that it was impossible to walk through unless you followed the directions of the priests. Experimenting with it earlier, he had discovered that if you pushed on it long enough it would start to push you back, but it didn’t hurt you. He stopped there, leaning on it, trying to listen for the slight sounds the wind might cover and make shapes out of the darkness.

“.. . this way . ..”

Rian stepped back, flattening himself down against the stone by instinct though surely whoever was out here couldn’t see him either. Catching only snatches of words over the wind, he could tell the voice was a man’s, the words Kushorit, but he couldn’t recognize the speaker. He heard what might be a reply, garbled by the wind.

He crept slowly along the wall toward the source of the voices, putting one foot in front of the other with utmost caution. There was no way to tell if the speakers were inside the barrier or out. They could be from the Marai, braver than their fellows and willing to investigate the outside world in the pitch dark, or even a couple of priests performing some sort of task necessary for the barrier, but somehow Rian didn’t think so.

He froze, hearing a clumping sound like heavy footsteps. He thought he could see movement in the darkness, but it was too jerky, too strangely angular. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t human. It couldn’t be Gisar either; for all that the puppet looked like an abomination, it moved lightly and naturally.
And this thing doesn’t jangle
, Rian thought. He started forward again.

He heard a scrabbling, as if clumsy feet tried to find purchase on the dirt and rock along the base of the wall.
It’s inside the barrier
, he realized with a shock, and pushed forward.

Six paces along the wall he ran into something heavy and sharp-edged, like a man wearing lacquered armor. It was halfway up the wall and he grabbed it, throwing his weight back to haul it down.

It was strong and clung like a monkey. He clawed at it, trying to find a head or a neck or any other vulnerable spot to injure, but it was armored all over and he couldn’t find anything that felt like flesh. It batted at him, then suddenly twisted and kicked, sending him sprawling backward.

Blinding light suddenly blossomed over the plain. Rian flung up an arm to shield his face, scrambling back against the Marai’s wall.

Spots flared before his eyes, but he made himself look. The light was coming from two swirling clouds that hovered above the ground on the other side of the barrier. They gave off a pearly, iridescent illumination that lit up the plain and cast the low wall into high relief.

It looked like their hosts had finally come to call. One of the whirlwinds moved forward, and in instinctive fear Rian pushed himself away from it until he felt the wall press into his back. But it stopped abruptly. He watched it try to press forward again, and again it failed. The barrier was holding.

The two whirlwinds began to move parallel to it, toward the front of the Marai and the corner solar tower. Eddies of that strange phosphorescence broke free with that motion, drifting down to lay in puddles against the stone.

He remembered the armored thing that had tried to climb the wall and looked wildly for it. It was gone.

The whirlwinds are a distraction
, Rian realized suddenly.
So the thing that got in .
. . He pushed away from the wall and ran along it toward the gate, past the glowing clouds. He catapulted himself up the steps and inside so quickly one of the Kushorit guards on sentry there almost took his head off with a bori club and Rastim leapt back with a short hysterical yelp.

“Sorry,” Rian muttered. Leaving the guards staring in alarm at the whirlwinds, he grabbed Rastim’s arm and dragged him toward the temple. “What now?” the Ariaden gasped. “What are they? Something to do with Gisar?”

“Gisar is the least of our problems,” Rian told him, breaking into a run once he was sure Rastim was following. “Tell Karuda to meet me where Maskelle is. Something’s gotten inside,” he called back to him.

He heard Rastim moan, “Oh, I didn’t want to hear that.”

Sitting in meditative silence in the quiet dimness of the little room they had made for the Celestial One, Maskelle thought she heard someone call her name. She opened her eyes.

The makeshift curtain over the archway was still closed, the dust caught in the folds undisturbed. The nun who was helping to watch over the old man lay curled asleep in her robe in the corner. Old Mali sat back against the wall, drowsing, but surely close enough to wakefulness to hear someone speak just outside.

Maskelle looked thoughtfully at the Celestial One’s unconscious form, hope stirring. Then she heard it again.

She came to her feet. This time she recognized the voice. She stepped to the door curtain and drew it back. One lamp burned low in the gallery outside. By its wan light she could see Killia and Doria asleep by the wall, and three of the temple servants on the other side. She could hear nothing but their quiet breathing. Nothing. Not even the priests’ chanting. The air felt dead and still, without a whisper of breeze.

Hah
, she thought, lifting a brow. A barrier of power surrounded them, isolating this little part of the temple from the rest of the world. Finally, the attack she had anticipated. At least it was something she could get her teeth into; faceless, formless enemies were impossible to fight.

Leaving the Celestial One’s side would be folly. She stepped back from the doorway to the center of the room. Making her voice mildly inquiring, she said, “Who are you?”

Old Mali and the nun didn’t stir, and she knew something must be keeping them unconscious. Then the curtain stirred and lifted and Maskelle took an involuntary step back.

It was Marada. She wore court finery, a gold-shot silk robe and pearls braided into her hair. Maskelle knew what ghosts looked like and this wasn’t one, but the colors of her costume, her features, seemed just slightly blurred. So it was only the host body Maskelle’s bird spirit had killed; Marada, whatever she was, had survived. Keeping her voice mild, Maskelle said, “Marada, how kind of you to visit.”

“I told you that you couldn’t stop us.” Wearing her odd stiff smile, she stepped further into the room.

Maskelle reached for the Adversary and felt nothing. It had picked a fine time to desert her.

Somehow Marada sensed it. She said, “Your spirits can’t help you here.”

Maskelle fell back a step, felt her foot knock against the white stone ball where it lay near the Celestial One’s pallet. That had been the focus for Marada’s power, though the lack of it hadn’t seemed to hurt her. It was the only weapon Maskelle had. “How did you get here? Did the second Wheel bring you, or did you travel here on your own? You must be capable of it; it’s how you got to our world in the first place, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t come to answer your questions.” Marada flexed her bands and Maskelle remembered the spirit-creature that had strangled Igarin.

“Let me guess, you came to kill me?”

Irony touched Marada’s opaque eyes. “How did you know?”

Maskelle picked up the stone ball. “Are you sure you didn’t come for this?”

Marada’s expression didn’t change. “That can do nothing to stop me.”

Maskelle tested the weight of it in her hand. “Really?” She took a step forward and swung it at Marada.

Marada fell back, throwing up an arm to defend herself, but the stone glanced off her head. Maskelle felt her arm jar with the impact. More proof the woman’s form was an illusion; whatever Maskelle had struck had been more solid than flesh and possessed of sharp edges.

Marada shoved her back, sending Maskelle crashing into the wall. She fell and rolled away, her shoulder aching from the force of the impact. She grabbed up the stone again. Marada started forward, reaching for her, and Maskelle leaned back to throw the stone.

Just before she threw it, she felt the Adversary’s power touch her. Lightly, as if it wanted to remain unobtrusive. She channelled the force of it into the stone and let it go.

The stone struck Marada’s chest and seemed to pass through her body, striking the wall behind her. Bouncing off the wall with a heavy thump, taking a chunk out of the Temple Dancer carved there, it fell to smash against the floor. Old Mali and the nun sat bolt upright with cries of alarm.

Maskelle looked up in time to see Marada’s form waver and collapse in on itself. She started back as a number of other objects struck the floor with thumps and crashes.

The nun stared and Old Mali cursed. Maskelle told them, “We were invaded.” She edged forward to examine the debris.

It was nothing but trash: fragments of flat building stones, rocks, shattered remnants of smooth dark-colored pottery. Litter, from that wreck of a city out on the plain, swept together to form a temporary shell for Marada’s spirit.
Did the woman
—
if she was a woman
—
ever have a body of her own
? Maskelle wondered. Or was she dead and her spirit lingering, seizing whatever form was available when she needed to be corporeal? Perhaps that was why Maskelle had sensed death in this place. There were still people here, life of a sort, but they were dead, only their spirits left behind.

Sound from outside washed over her like a wave as whatever barrier Marada had placed around the room faded away with her death. Maskelle heard the low murmur of chanting and a babble of frightened voices, then Rian burst through the curtain, stopping abruptly when he saw the collection of debris on the floor.

“Marada,” she told him. She lifted a twisted piece of the strange blue-tinged metal. “Her spirit was using this mess, working it like that demon worked Gisar.”

Rian looked over the odd fragments, dismissed them with an annoyed shake of his head. He said, “Gisar got out. It led me straight to the place where this thing got through the barrier. And there’s something else—”

Karuda shouldered his way through the others outside, casting a puzzled glance down at Marada’s remnants as he pushed his way in. “You’d better come,” he told Maskelle abruptly, looking a little startled at being inside the enemy’s headquarters. “There’s something outside.”

Maskelle made it to the first solar tower and careened up the stairs, Rian and Karuda beside her. She was breathing hard when she reached the top and pushed past a group of guards to see the Temple Master, Mirak, and the Celestial Emperor standing on the gallery, looking out toward the captive whirlwinds that hovered just on the other side of the barrier. A furious wind tore at their clothes and hair, keening among the openings in the tower above them. Past them she could see movement in the deep well of shadow on the plain.

At first she thought it was people, a large number of them, moving out there in the dark beyond the wall. But the movement was abrupt and inhuman.
More of them
, she thought. Creatures—constructions, perhaps, like Marada had been.