He already felt some of the effects of the drug in the sinking of his limbs, as if each part of his body were a candle, blowing out one by one. Soon he could no longer feel his legs, his hips, his fingers. His mind was calmer, yet still active, sights and sounds of the recent days still playing there, defying sleep: moon glimmer on an arrowhead, the grinding of wood against his skull, a fountain of blood from a man’s neck, Ashtan’s torn lips, the girl’s screams, Horned Saipha waxing in the sky. Blue Revlas fleeing.
His eyes closed at last – then opened immediately when the door was pushed in. He’d have to tell them to give him a few minutes. He truly didn’t want to be awake when he died and was born again.
‘Do you sleep?’
It was not the healer’s voice but another he knew. ‘Commander,’ he said.
‘No, do not try to rise.’ General Olankios stepped closer, peered down. ‘How are you, Ferros?’
‘Well enough for a dead man, sir.’
The general smiled. ‘Dead but alive. Dying to live. You have entered the world of paradox, young Ferros, yours to dwell in … for a long, long time.’ The smile faded. ‘I pity you, soldier. Some think that immortality is the gods’ greatest gift. In my experience, like any thing given, it comes with too many obligations to fulfil.’
‘You are? I didn’t know.’
‘No. Few do. I discovered that soldiers are less likely to obey a suicidal command on a battlefield if they are the only ones committing suicide.’ That faint smile came, went. ‘I only discovered I was immortal leading such an action. In the north, against the Wattenwolden.’ Olankios leaned into the lamp spill, the light reflecting from the dome of his head. ‘Could I not have found it out when I was young and handsome like you, rather than this old, bald, paunchy man?’
‘So it is true? We do not age?’
‘Maybe we do. It’s hard to tell. We certainly heal. This eye of yours will return, keener than before. It is one of the wonders of—’ He shook his head. ‘But I am not a surgeon. Nor am I here to tell you of the ways of immortality. You will learn those when you have recovered enough from these wounds to be sent on to Corinthium.’
‘The great city? I’ve … never been. Balbek, these deserts, this is the only home I’ve known.’ Ferros swallowed. ‘I thought I might stay here, in the army, learn what I need—’
‘You cannot. There are none here to teach you. Of duty. Of philosophy. Of … pleasure.’ He nodded. ‘All of which awaits you when you enter the Sanctum on the Hill.’
‘The palace of learning? A rough soldier like me? They will think me a Sarphardi raider.’
‘They will cure you of some roughness. They will leave some of it. They will use everything you are to shape you into what they need you to be: a true servant of the empire, under the gods’ special favour.’
One question had pressed Ferros above all others. He reached through opiate clouds to find it. ‘General, I was to marry in the spring. May I still?’
‘She’s not immortal, is she?’
‘Lara? No. I … I do not think so. Is that possible?’
‘It would be as unlikely as … as lightning hitting the same person twice. Which does happen – I knew a farmer in Otrano who—’ The older man smiled, yet there was no joy, only sadness in it. ‘No, Ferros. You have learned the first price demanded for the gift. If you choose to stay with her, she will age, you will not. At first it will seem a little thing, barely noticeable. Until she begins to run ahead of you, changing, greying. Claimed by time.’ He looked up to the wall, beyond it. ‘It is … awful.’ He focused on Ferros again. ‘And there is something else. That goes with Immortality. Perhaps I should not tell you but—’
Noises in the corridor. The general straightened. ‘But they come and I must go. The healer will chastise me for keeping you awake. Wait!’ he commanded, as the door half-opened. ‘I really only came to you for this.’
Olankios raised his left hand. The pale palm was blackened, covered in soot. ‘We burned Ashtan, with all the rites of a warrior. He is in the seven winds now – hunting, fighting with his clan, making love to a beautiful wife. He lives for ever in honour. And he travels with you always. Here,’ the general bent, drew a black circle around Ferros’s heart, ‘and here.’ He reached up, and drew a smaller circle on Ferros’s forehead. Ferros closed his one eye at the soft touch, then found he couldn’t open it again. But there was light behind the lid, and he smiled as he watched Ashtan vault onto his fastest pony, spit impressively then laugh before he galloped away.
‘Blessings of the gods for your journey,’ someone said.
He wanted to make the formal response, but sleep took him before he could form the words.
2
The Temple of Love and Death
In the Palace of Waters, all was ready. For a short time and for one purpose, it had been given over only to women.
Each one there had her task. Four tended the hot water that flowed from the mountain – the gift of Toluc, the fire god who ruled from his molten throne at the top of the world and for whom the city was named. They channelled his blessing through gates and stone sluices, maintaining the perfect temperature in each pool for its specific function – lingering, bathing …
… birth.
Three more women played music, two on wooden flutes, one on strings stretched over the shell of a turtle, sounds soothing as much as flowing water; whilst two others prepared cordials from the fresh fruit brought daily by runners from the fertile valleys below, mixing them with ground nuts and special herbs.
There was one woman who had a task yet did not move, just sat, in the farthest corner, in the shadows. The others knew she was there – but only a few looked at her, and never more than once. All knew she wore a mask and those who’d seen it hoped they never would again.
Only one woman in the palace had no task, though she was the focus and cause of all the others. Yet if most of them prayed, it was Atisha who prayed hardest of all.
‘Toluc, God of Fire, bless me, help me, guide me. Intitepe, King of Fire, husband, lover, bless me, help me, pity me. Alam, Goddess of Childbirth, bless me, help me, protect me.’
She prayed with her hands wrapped across her swollen belly. And though the words were spoken out, to goddess, god-king and god, the yearning of the prayer was all inwards, to that life within who kicked her even now. She knew that many of her prayers were useless, could not alter the child she carried. That had been decided long ago. Yet she could not stop. Stop and she’d think – and glance again into that shadowed corner.
It had been a while since her last contractions. They’d been going to move her into the birth pool but then the pain subsided, the hammering slowed and eased. Her back hurt so much, and the cushions they’d placed behind her on the couch were more comfortable than any submerged tile could be. Yet it was more than that – for from the couch Atisha could look out of the stone window arch at the next hill, at the palace upon it. If she stretched up she could even see the window where her chamber had been. Hers and his. Remember her life there.
Remember him.
‘Hurry, Atisha, hurry! Can’t you hear his horns? He comes. Why are you always so slow?’
Atisha looked onto the surface of the water in the bowl, away from her own eyes which she’d been painting, into the eyes of her friend. Even in the blurring of the liquid mirror, she could see that Asaya had overdone hers again. The purple stain circles behind them had the reverse effect than the one intended, making the actual eye look small rather than large. But there was no telling her. ‘This is how you catch a king,’ Asaya had said, compounding her errors with too much scarlet on her lips, the paint made from a certain crushed beetle, and too bright a dusting of gold on cheekbones – which, in truth, were too deeply buried in flesh to save anyway. But Asaya was her best friend and a sweet girl, full of easy laughter when she wasn’t preparing for her destiny, and Atisha wo
uld say nothing that would hurt her in any way.
‘You are a treat fit for a god, my dove. Go swiftly, so you can find a place at the very front. I will follow.’
Asaya took a step, hesitated. ‘I’ll be by the puma statue, at its left paw. It’s where he looks longest, old Gama says. Always.’ She bit her lip. ‘But the crowds! You’ll never push your way through to it unless you come soon.’
‘Then I will. Go! Go!’
Asaya went. When her friend’s steps had faded, Atisha looked back on the water’s surface, stuck out her tongue, picked up a wet cloth and used it to wipe all paint and stain away. Her mother, gone to watch the procession, would be especially annoyed.
Rising, she shed the little she was wearing. Old Gama had also said that it would be an especially fertile year – a year, in fact, of lust, advising that all should dress to emphasise their womanly youth. She had – so now she unwound the chest cloth that had bound and lifted her breasts, followed by the loin cloth that had emphasised the swell of her hips and concealed little else, and dropped both of them to the floor.
The music of the procession was drawing ever nearer. Swiftly dressing in her simple short skirt, her long-sleeved llama-wool shirt, and her scuffed knee boots, she thrust her obsidian dagger through her belt, and went out through the back door.
A growl greeted her, followed by a whine of pleasure. ‘Come, Fant,’ she said, bending down and releasing the hound’s leash. He gambolled about her legs, giving little barks. All dogs were meant to be tethered for the duration of the festival, the penalties for not restraining them costly. She was not going to the arena, though, but the opposite way, up into the hills. And since there had been sightings of pumas, prowling close, daring and desperate after a tough winter and lean spring, she would need her dog. ‘Fant,’ she said, grabbing him by the muzzle and staring into his velvet brown eyes, ‘shall we go and see a god? Shall we, puppy?’
The hills rose steeply from the back of her family’s plot of maize, gourds and potato. Deer paths crisscrossed the slopes, but Fant seemed to sense which one she had chosen today and Atisha climbed fast after him; breathing hard, she soon crested a small ridge, turning left along it. This trail ran parallel to her town’s main – only – road. She could not see it through its screen of thick brush but she could clearly hear the Fire King’s procession upon it: the deep bass notes of the hollowed logs, the wooden trumpets, the strum of thick strings on sea-turtle shells, the beat of sticks on huge hide drums, the drone of organs, their bladders expelling air. Under it all, the bird-like twitter of a thousand voices. She knew she could never distinguish a single one but fancied she could – Asaya’s. ‘Which one do you think he is? That one with all the muscles? Or him with all the gold? Here, Lord! Look here! Choose me!’
Atisha remembered some of what her friend would be seeing. The musicians, the men of the court, each of them masked and dressed as the ball players they also were, as if for the ultimate game. But she’d been five when the Festival of Choosing had last come to town twelve years before and her memories had blurred. She was looking forward to refreshing them.
Just as the procession began to enter the temple, she took another left path and swiftly reached her chosen spot – a rocky clearing, that directly faced the middle of the wide, many-columned white platform. The back row of stone benches was perhaps the height of twenty tall men beneath her, curving for about the same length, each row in front of it diminishing till the very last, which could seat only the elite of the village, the ten men of the council and their wives. The open space between them and the raised platform was crammed with all the maidens of the town, with still more shoving in. All but her.
The music had built to a huge, tuneless cacophony – which ended suddenly. The silence took her breath.
The craftsmen who had built the temple years before had known their business, had chosen the site partly because the hill on which she sat curved in such a way as to make any sounds performed, any ceremony enacted, wonderfully audible to all. She’d sat up there before and heard, with utter clarity, priests whispering the rites among the stone columns way at the back. Now, even though the dread of silent ceremony held all the people below, townsfolk and paraders, she still heard whispers, mainly from the maidens – ‘Is it him? Is it him?’ – as, singly, a group of masked men, one of whom had to be Intitepe himself, strode to centre stage. Each of them wore the ceremonial headdress, each face an animal mask – jaguar and puma, snake and eagle, others of fish, fowl, flesh, and all surmounted by a crest of the iridescent green and blue feathers taken from the osako bird; though under this magnificence they were dressed for the game, in simple brown tunics that reached to mid thigh and left the arms and shoulders, those muscular arms and shoulders, open to view and admiration.
All the men were tall, slim, strong – heyame, the game that was also worship, required the build. Well, she admitted to herself with a grin, peering from one beautiful bicep and muscled shoulder to the next, I suppose I wouldn’t have minded being at the foot of the stone puma now for a closer look.
The stage, the seats, the open area, all were filled. A settling came, a moment of held silence, not even a whisper now. Then at a signal from one masked man in the very middle of the athletes’ line – is that him? Atisha wondered, with the rest – noise burst forth from everywhere, music again from every instrument, ululation from every voice, from all upon the stage or before it, a great wave of sound that actually had her rocking backwards. Fant gave a little whimper, and took off into the bushes. He would scavenge around, not go far. He hated loud noise.
The athletes were tumblers too, the game demanded it. Removing their ornate masks – they wore simple, tight-fitting leather ones beneath, concealing their identity still – to strikes of drum and trumpet blast they rolled, leapt, tumbled, flew. Many used the waytana, the sacrifice stone in the very centre of the stage, as a vaulting place, springing from it to flip through the air, even through the dancing flames of the brazier that stood beside the stone.
Atisha gasped. She’d been too young to be taken to the temple twelve years before. Now she watched men soar like birds, defying the pull of the earth. She clapped her hands at each feat, stunned, delighted.
‘Have you guessed which one he is?’
The voice came from perhaps two arm-lengths away, loud because it had to be to top all that funnelled noise. She cried out, fell back, heels driving her away … from the man she now saw, squatting as easily as she had been, hanging from his knees, hands folded before him.
‘I am sorry to startle you. I did not know any way to make my presence known, other than speak.’ He smiled. ‘Are you all right?’
He gestured to her legs, which she’d dragged across the rock to get away. She stood, looked down, rubbed off traces of stone. There was one little scrape in three lines, colouring red. ‘I’ll live,’ she grumbled.
‘I am glad to hear it.’ His voice still had a smile in it though his face was serious. She studied that. It was ordinary, like his dress – a simple if well-made llama-wool tunic that reached to his knees and covered his shoulders halfway down his upper arm. It had a band of deep crimson around each edge, the colour denoting him as a scribe of some sort, a man of learning. A city man, for certain, with features that were leaner than those of the men of her lowland town, a smaller nose and his skin a lighter shade of brown. His hair was cut short in the city style, with a little grey at the temples and dusted through the black. His eyes were grey too, a thing unseen in the town, the province. Her father, his friends … everyone had brown eyes, including her.
She squatted again, keeping the new distance between them. ‘You are of the court,’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘Then why are you not below?’
‘I have taken part in so many ceremonies. To be truthful, I find them dull. I prefer to watch only a little – and look for plants. See?’ He opened his folded hands.
In them were five small prickly balls, the size of sparrow’s eggs. ‘Do you know these?’
She did. They were a muddy brown but as they grew and put out stems they would change into a range of vivid greens and blues. At this early stage, they were known by a rude name to do with a youth’s changing anatomy. She looked up, saw a smile in his eyes, as if he knew her thoughts. Frowned at the idea. ‘I do,’ she answered. ‘Paytaza.’
‘When the plant is older, its sap holds healing properties. At least that is what I think. I am experimenting.’
‘Are you a healer?’
‘Sometimes. It is more a pastime.’ He opened a small leather satchel at his waist, dropped the plants in. ‘Though I think—’
A deep-throated growl cut off his words – and the next moment Fant was there, teeth bared, hackles raised, eyes wide and filled with menace. The man’s own eyes widened – though, she noticed, did not fill with fear and he did not rise from his crouch. ‘My,’ he said, ‘but aren’t you the fierce one?’
He stretched out a hand towards the drooling jaws and Atisha wanted to cry a warning. Not for him so much – but it wouldn’t do her or her family much good when Fant took a finger, as he had done to someone who’d threatened her before. That had been a fellow farmer though, not a man of the court. The least this would mean was the dog’s death. But she found she couldn’t make a sound, held, as Fant was held, by the gesture the man now made – a swivel at the wrist and a slow unfurling of fingers, one at a time. ‘There,’ he said, reaching further, fingers fully splayed now as Fant gave a small whimper, stuck out his tongue – and licked.
She found words. ‘I … I have never seen that. Fant is not usually so friendly.’
‘Fant? A good name.’ He shrugged. ‘I have had many dogs over the years.’ The man turned his hand, palm up, and the dog stopped licking to lay his muzzle upon it.
Smoke in the Glass Page 3
