Sunan gave chase.
It would take a better hunter by far than Sunan to successfully pursue such quarry through the mazelike streets of that enormous city. Yet somehow he managed to keep pace with the cat. He would lose it in a crush or down a back alley only to catch sight of that plume of tail darting out from under a rickety cart or leaping up onto a windowsill. Several times the cat disappeared into houses through which Sunan himself dared not pass. He would have to go around, wandering the streets and ending up nowhere near his desired location. Those times, he believed for certain the cat was long gone.
Then, much to his surprise, he’d catch a flicker of white paws dashing between the hooves of an old donkey or out from under some street vendor’s stall. And so Sunan would give chase again. In retrospect, he thought it must have been a miracle, though a miracle of whose working he could not guess, not then and not later.
So intent was he upon his hunt, he did not even notice when he passed a certain shadowy door. He did not see the faces looking out at him, faces half-hidden by leather helmets and heavy fur lining. Had he seen them, his heart must have stopped with the same terror meeting a ghost might inspire.
For one of those looking out at him, watching him hasten past, was his own much-hated father.
But Sunan did not know, and he hurried on his way, his slippered feet slapping on the broken stones of the streets. The sun was high overhead and soon looking towards its descent in the western sky. Sunan, who had not eaten that day, began to slow his pace, exhausted. He knew he must now lose the cat for good.
And still he did not. Even as he reached the northern-most gates of the great city and passed from them into the villages beyond, he could see the cat ahead, trotting with tail upright down the middle of the road.
Sunan knew nothing of this territory. During all the twisting and winding of the last several hours, he had become totally lost. But then, he had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Finding that temple girl was his sole purpose, and the cat was the only possible link to her that he knew. So, though he desperately wished to seek out some comfortable ditch somewhere and fall into it, he trudged forward.
The outskirt villages of Lunthea Maly soon gave way to various encampments on the roadsides where merchants and various travelers rested before entering the city proper. Some of these were grand; most were humble. Sunan glimpsed pilgrims, farmers, priests, and lords. None of these paid any heed to Sunan, and he paid little heed to them. The cat trotted on, and Sunan trotted after, wondering where the creature would lead him.
He did not like the answer when he came face to face with it.
Steep walls enclosed those who dwelt within Lembu Rana, the Valley of Suffering. Once upon a time those walls had been lined with stone, but most of the stone had crumbled away ages ago. The paths leading down inside remained, however, for they were much-trod by those entering the valley and their chosen seclusion. A seclusion ending only in death.
The sun hung low in the sky, and twilight deepened upon the landscape. But Sunan could see the many huts shoved up against one another by the light of a hundred and more low fires burning outside the doors. And he could see the figures, phantom-like, swathed in rags and veils, moving among those fires. They moved slowly, with great pain, and a hum of pain that was as much a sensation of the heart as a sound in the ears rose up from below to touch Sunan with a haunting hand.
Lepers!
“They’re not cursed. They’re sick,” Sunan whispered. He was a learned man of Nua-Pratut, after all. He was a Tribute Scholar. He knew a little, at least, of various diseases and their treatments. “They’re not cursed. They’re not cursed. They suffer a sickness, nothing more.”
A sickness which, according to some of the scholars he had read, was not even truly so contagious as many believed. He could not, standing here high above the valley, breathe the poison of their skin, the corruption eating away at their limbs and innards, and become like one of them. He was safe up here.
But the superstitions and beliefs of ages were deep in his blood, and he trembled where he stood, trembled so hard that he feared he might faint. And he thought, with an analytical part of his brain now nearly suffused in dread: If I were to hide from a Crouching Shadow, this is the very place I would choose.
For indeed, who would seek a beautiful temple girl among those monstrous forms?
“They’re sick. They’re not cursed. And they cannot hurt me,” Sunan muttered. He looked but saw no sign of the cat, who seemed to have finally given him the slip. He did not doubt that the cat had entered the valley, however. He could not say how he knew, but his certainty was clear and dreadful. He must follow. He must not go back upon his blood oath. He must—
“Oh, my dear boy! You don’t want to go down there!”
Sunan startled and turned, drawing a sharp breath. A hunched form, the face and body so covered in mismatched rags taken from who-knows-where that no one could tell whether man or woman hid beneath, hobbled toward Sunan, supporting itself heavily on a stout tree branch which served as a cane. The hand holding the branch was wrapped up to disguise the loss of most of its fingers. All that could be seen of the person’s face were the eyes and what was left of a mouth. The mouth seemed to smile, though the eyes were sad.
“You should go back to where you came from, stout young fellow like you,” the little creature spoke from a savaged throat. “Unless, of course, you’ve come seeking family? Kind of you, if so. Most of our families forget us once we come here.”
Sunan saw that over its back the figure carried a satchel bulging with stale bread and wilted vegetables, an offering, perhaps, from one of the more charitable sects of the Crown of the Moon. The sack was tied to a handless arm and slung over a thin shoulder.
Sunan stood perfectly still even as the leper drew near. “I’m right, aren’t I?” the leper said. “You’re looking for someone.”
“I—I am,” Sunan said, forcing himself not to cover his face with his sleeve.
“A mother, perhaps? A sister? A brother?”
“No,” said Sunan. “No, I’m looking for—”
He stopped. He’d almost said he was looking for a cat, and that sounded insane even in his head.
But the leper nodded as though understanding. “I know whom you seek.” The voice was rough with disease, but the choice of words and the cadence were those of an elegant, cultured individual. A man, Sunan thought now that he saw the form up close. Perhaps a former scholar, or a lawyer, or a man of business. None of that mattered now. But it was also a kind voice, and this did matter even here. Even in the Valley of Suffering. “Come. Come with me, dear boy, and I will take you.”
“Take me where?” Sunan demanded.
“To see our angel.”
It seemed impossible that angels ever came to this place, so deep, so dark, so lost in hopelessness was the very air down in the Valley of Suffering.
Yet Sunan was surprised, as he followed behind his disease-ridden guide, how often the little man nodded and called out to those sitting around the various fires. And how many voices, both young and old, raised the cry, “Granddad! Granddad!” as he passed, distributing loaves and greens as he went.
A distant part of Sunan’s brain, a part hidden even from the imp inside, whispered: Perhaps there are more angels here than anywhere else.
The leper’s sack was empty by the time they reached a hut in the center of the valley. The leper tossed it aside to lie by the door and put out his stump of an arm to touch the head of a huddled child sitting with her back to the wall. The child looked up, grinning, and Sunan saw that the leprosy had already eaten away part of her jaw and her nose. But her eyes shone, and she whispered hoarsely, “Granddad!” even as the man ducked his head to enter the hut. Then she turned those bright eyes upon Sunan, and they clouded over immediately with distrust. She wrapped her arms over her head, hiding her face.
Sunan shuddered, hating himself for the loathing he felt, and plunged into the dark hut after the man. He wa
s shocked to discover the room inside lit by three small lamps. The flames burned straight and tall up from the spouts, illuminating the dirt, the rags, the squalor . . .
. . . and the face of the most beautiful woman Sunan had ever imagined.
She sat in the center of the chamber, cross-legged, her hands folded before her. Her eyes were closed, her brow smooth and pale as the moon. She breathed lightly and, indeed, made so little movement that it would have been all too easy to mistake her for a statue. She was clad in the same rags as the lepers around her, but she wore them like a princess, like a queen.
Here in the midst of suffering, this form of loveliness looked far beyond mortal. It was an angelic face. One scarcely could notice the hand-shaped burn marring her cheek.
The leper guide bowed before her then turned and motioned for Sunan to do the same. “Is she the one you seek?” he asked.
Sunan nodded. She was the very likeness of the girl in the imp’s vision.
“It is good, is it not?” the leper asked. “To find beauty such as hers in a place such as this?”
“How long—how long has she lived here?”
“Not long. Not long,” the leper said. “And she will not stay, for she is not sick and her handmaiden makes certain she does not touch our water or eat of our food. She will leave us, yes. But she will remain in our hearts forever. We will speak of her amongst ourselves and pass on the memory of her for the generations to follow. The Angel of Lembu Rana.”
He spoke the name as one might speak a prayer, and from behind their rags his eyes gazed with great love upon the girl. Then he nodded to Sunan and inclined his head respectfully. “I will leave you to speak with her. Perhaps she will impart a blessing upon you, and if she does, perhaps you will speak to us in turn.”
He left, ducking out of the hut and leaving Sunan alone with the girl and the three lamps.
Sunan stood where he was, uncertain and afraid. He had found her, but he did not know what he must do. What was it the Crouching Shadow had told him? “I must return to the docks,” he whispered to the shadows. “I must return to the docks and . . .”
Instead he found himself kneeling before the girl even as he had seen the beggars kneeling before the shrines to the stars. But surely this was a purer obeisance, for this girl was real. She was no stone carving, no feeble mortal personification of celestial spheres. She was real, and she was lovely.
“Who are you?” Sunan whispered, gazing into her quiet face. He saw the scar but could not accept that it was really there or that it could in any way harm the beauty of this glorious creature. “Who are you? You are not truly an angel but a mortal, I know. A girl of the temple. But why are you here? Can you tell me?”
He knew she heard him. She did not move, and her breathing did not check, but he knew she heard him. He reached out to her, his fingers hovering above her two folded hands. “Please,” he said, “tell me your name. Tell me who you are.” He touched her.
Her eyes flew wide, and she gazed deep into his soul.
Wrapped in leper’s rags, Sairu passed almost invisible down the road. Not quite invisible, because while every eye did all it could to keep from looking at her, every man, woman, and child found her an object of fear and fascination and, even if they did not look, were keenly aware of her until she was gone on her way.
It was a good disguise. She had bound up her hands so that they looked as though she had lost several fingers on each. She walked with a limp, though anyone paying full attention would have noticed that she moved much faster than someone with such a limp should. Her face was wrapped in several layers of musty cloth, and the little bits that showed were caked with the most repulsive cosmetics she had ever applied, a display of great red boils and blisters.
She smiled grimly at her own disguise and the horror she inspired in all those she passed. But the smile faltered the nearer she came to Lembu Rana. Though she had spent the full three months of her journey down from Daramuti with this plan firmly in mind, when it came to it, she was terrified at the prospect of entering the lepers’ colony.
Even now, as she drew near once more to the Valley of Suffering, Sairu felt her footsteps faltering. If it weren’t for the knowledge that her mistress waited for her down below, she could not have brought herself to descend that path so many poor souls traveled to face isolation and lingering death.
“The Living Dead.” That’s what they were called within the sheltered walls of Manusbau. A deliciously gruesome name when considered as a distant story only. But now Sairu, as the stink of the valley rose up to greet her with a ominous foreboding deeper than the night’s own shadows, shuddered and wished she’d never heard of the valley or of those who dwelled therein.
Yet she knew it was the one place her mistress could be safe from all those who sought her. It was the one place she could hide Lady Hariawan and leave her, as she hunted down the answers to her many questions.
The glow of the lepers’ campfires rose up from the valley like the lights of any other village. But this light seemed ghastly to Sairu as she tottered, limped, and dragged herself to the lip of the valley, mimicking the walk of other lepers she had witnessed. In her heart she felt the same revulsion she had sensed from those she passed on her way out of Lunthea Maly. She would not dare judge those who shunned her, for she would do the same in their place.
The path down into the valley was well worn and broad. Few traversed it at this hour, so Sairu was surprised when, as she approached the bottom, she was jostled quite severely by someone hastening past. He must not have seen her in the darkness, and he nearly knocked her flat. She felt hands reach out and grab her, and a voice of unconscious politeness muttering, “Forgive me, I’m—”
The voice broke off as Sairu looked up. She saw a handsome, unscarred or sullied man’s face half revealed in the firelight, staring down at her as he realized that he held the arms of a leper. She saw the sickening fear wash over his eyes, felt his hands begin to tremble.
And yet he was a gentleman. He set her right on her feet before dropping his hold and hurrying on his way.
She stood a moment as though frozen in place, watching his shadow scurry up the valley wall after him. Her first thought was Why would a healthy man venture here at this hour?
Her second thought was He is so like his brother.
This thought brought her up short when she realized what it was. So like what brother? Surely not . . . not him! How could that be? And here of all places? She must have imagined the likeness in the midst of all her fear and worry and enormous exhaustion.
She shook her head and started into the village. Unable to bear looking at those wraithlike forms all around her, she kept her gaze firmly on the ground at her feet and hastened, against the roiling of her stomach and the lightness of her head, to that small hut in the center where her mistress waited.
The little old man who laid claim to the hut sat outside the door with a sick child at his side. He raised his covered head at Sairu’s approach and uplifted his handless arm in greeting. “Dear lady,” he said, “your angel is safe.”
“You have watched over her in my absence?” Sairu asked, fumbling under the heavy folds of her rags for something hidden. She withdrew a small purse of coins gained from the sale of those precious items she had removed from her trunk early that same morning.
“I have followed your instructions,” said the old man, nodding. “I have made certain that none of my poor brothers or sisters came near her and that she touched none of our food or drink. She has scarcely moved all day, but I do not think she is afraid.”
“No,” Sairu agreed, pouring the contents of her purse into the man’s lap. “No, my Lady Hariawan fears nothing I know of.”
The little girl, her eyes wide with fascination at the sight of the bright coins piled up in the man’s lap, put out a mangled hand, ugly with open sores, and touched them tentatively. Sairu’s heart lurched at the sight, and she felt shame for the abhorrence she could not repress at the stench and
destitution all around. The abhorrence she felt toward this poor, sad child.
She turned quickly to the hut door, slipping inside and away from the sight of the man and the girl. One of the lamps within had gone out, but by the light of the other two, Sairu could see her mistress sitting as calmly as she had left her, eyes closed, hands folded, wrapped in beggar’s rags.
“Prrrrrlt?”
“Monster,” Sairu breathed as the cat appeared from behind Lady Hariawan, his eyes bright, his tail twitching. “Did you find Lord Dok-Kasemsan?”
“No,” said the cat. “What’s more, I think I was followed here.”
“Followed? By whom?”
“I’m not certain. He’s gone now, though. I believe I lost him. It took me some time to find this hut, and I won’t lie”—the cat shivered from the tip of his nose down to the end of his tail—“this valley is the worst, most horrid example of everything mortal I have experienced in all my long life! Why you had to choose this, of all places—”
“Never mind,” said Sairu sharply even as she knelt before her mistress. “If you were followed, we will leave.” She bowed her head, suddenly so tired she thought she might fall to pieces. When was the last time she had truly slept? Slept without fear that her lady would wander off or try to kill her in the night? Slept without keeping one eye open for assassins and phantoms and dangers she had not yet even imagined? How she longed to lay her head down, even here in this sickening darkness, and close her eyes!
But no. They must go. She did not know where, but they must. If the cat had been followed, she must assume their position was compromised. “We will leave,” she repeated, as though to convince herself. “At once.”
“Not at once, for I have something else to tell you,” said the cat, placing a white paw on her arm. “I did not find your Lord Dok-Kasemsan as you asked, but I did find someone in the temple dungeons. Someone who might very well interest you.”
“Who?”
“Jovann.” The cat grinned at the expression that flashed across her face. “So you still remember him, do you?”