Wheel of the Infinite

  "They punished you for it?" Rian asked cautiously.

  "No, I made my own punishment too, my own curse. Now whenever I manipulate the Infinite, use the power that most people call magic, it draws the attention of the dark spirits and they can find me again. And I can't hear the Adversary. It's like being blind and deaf." Or worse, because no one’s made blind and deaf because of their own idiocy. She added tiredly, "At first I was evil, then I was an annoyance. Now I'm just pathetic."

  His voice serious, Rian said, "Not pathetic."

  "Maybe." A wind stirred the trees somewhere past the temple, the sound coming to them like the distant rush of water. Rian was watching her, a faint worried crease between his brows. She said, "But of all the things I've done, I've never given up anyone to an enemy." She leaned over, slid a hand into the soft warmth of his hair and kissed him.

  When she drew back, he said, "I knew that when I first saw you," and pulled her down to him again.

  Maskelle had time to remember that her bones weren't twenty anymore, no matter what the rest of her thought, and that the stone beneath them was unyielding, but none of it mattered enough to give her pause. It had been a long time since she had been with a man and longer still since she had been with one she wanted this much, one who wasn't afraid of her, whose humor and stubborn temperament matched her own. All thought dissolved into lean hard muscle under her hands, first through tight fabric and then only hot bare skin.

  At one point Rian managed to gasp, "Is the Adversary going to care that we're doing this on his moon-viewing platform?"

  "No," she told him, laughing, "it's a very ancient, very honored form of offering."

  ***

  Later, her head pillowed on Rian's back, Maskelle drifted into sleep. He didn't make a very good pillow, having no comfortable softness about him, so her sleep was light and the transition from waking world to dream was almost imperceptible at first.

  The dream landscape was much like the real one, though the moonlight seemed to penetrate the heavy shadows of the trees overhanging the wall to a greater depth, so that she could make out the rough knotted boles hung with moss and the vines entangling the branches. Her physical awareness of Rian's body was still intense; she felt she could have traced every line of muscle, every curve, every old scar. This melded with the dream until she could feel his breathing and his heartbeat as if they were her own. He lay on his stomach, his head pillowed on his arms, drowsing just on the edge of sleep and kept from slipping fully into unconsciousness by a need to listen for anyone or anything approaching. This gave her the freedom to move further into the dream, rising above the moon-viewing deck to a point near the top of the stepped tower, so that she could see the whole of the temple laid out below her in the dark. The three shrines were much as they were in the real world, as were the statues of the seated monkey men and the quarters for the attendants. But the lamps were not lit in the court and the wagons and oxen didn't stand outside the wall.

  I’m seeing it at another time, Maskelle thought. But is it later or earlier? Then she saw a figure step out of the second shrine and go down the steps, and despite the moonlit dark she recognized herself. She could see that her head was still shaved so that her rank tattoo was visible. Ah, so it's earlier.

  Then a wave of darkness like a silk drape covered everything and Maskelle found herself looking at an entirely different landscape.

  Intimacy on the threshold of the Adversary's shrine had been used as an offering for generations since the Koshan Order first battled the worship of blood demons for the hearts and minds of the people of the lowlands. Some later Koshan philosophers contended that it had been some wily priest's device to attract converts accustomed to the excitements of human sacrifice, that the spirits of the Infinite, not being anthropomorphized deities, were indifferent as to whether their followers had sex or not. But it appeared that those particular philosophers were dead wrong, because with Rian's help she had gotten herself a dream vision straight from the Adversary.

  The moonlight was the same, but the jungle and the canal were gone and in their place she looked down at a great dusty plain, limitless and vast, the purple-grey clouds of a recent storm overhead, the air dry and cool. The plain was empty except for strange small mountains that thrust upwards at intervals, towering several hundred feet above her. They were all oddly unmountainlike shapes, the nearest formed like a mushroom, with a round base supporting a domed top. And while her slow wits insisted that those couldn't be mountains, that there was no sort of stone that could take these forms naturally, she saw pinpricks of light on some of the farther ones. She focused on the nearest clump and suddenly her vision altered as her brain transformed the image into reality. They were buildings, as large as the greatest temples of the Kushor-At in Duvalpore, carved out of smooth grey stone. The plain under them was not grey sand but grey stone, seamed with the even shapes of paving blocks. Miles and miles of paving blocks.

  Then she was walking on those blocks, very near one of the buildings, her feet bare on the warm stone. She looked up at the great shapes towering over her, saw that the surfaces of them were rough and worked with strange unfamiliar carving, the shapes of the openings square and well-defined. There were balconies on some of them, or open galleries. A bridge high overhead connected two of them. She walked toward the door of the nearest, a round high opening in the base, wide enough to drive four or five wagons through side by side. She was too far to see anything of the inside but the flicker of yellow firelight.

  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.

  Chapter Five

  "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 co
me 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 corning 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 t
he Principle 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 Principle 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.