Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  He didn't nod, didn't indicate that he had seen her signal, but he suddenly dropped to the platform and kicked the kneecap of the raider who held the captured siri. The man collapsed with a shriek, his leg giving way with a sharp crack. The prisoner came to his feet, taking the sword easily from the raider's shaking hand, ducked a deadly swipe from a bori club as he passed Maskelle and vaulted over the gallery railing.

  She leaned over it in time to see him catch an old net that hung over the side and swing down to drop into the water washing over the lower floor.

  The gallery audience roared, the leader and her lieutenants shouting and cursing as they ran for the railing.

  Down on the floor below, the waving mass of combatants broke into little whirling eddies. In the instant of stillness she saw several rivermen with knives or bori clubs surrounding the one man armed with a sword. The blade flashed and the rivermen scattered.

  Perhaps it was the rivermen who were trapped now and not the traveller. Bemused, Maskelle watched the leaping, dodging figures. It was like a game, or an entertainment so primitive it looked like violence to eyes long accustomed to the sophistication of Ariaden or kiradi theater. The prisoner wasn't wielding that blade with deadly intent yet; the plank floor below was awash in dirty water as the rising river encroached on the lower level of the outpost, but not high enough to conceal the dead bodies that would surely be sprawled there if he was. Maskelle knew if he killed some of them that would only fire the others to more fury; it was all or nothing. She was a little surprised he recognized that as well. The crowd pressed in again, trying to rush him, but their nerve failed and they splashed away.

  "Well, Sister, where's our blessing?" the leader demanded, trying to recover her control of the situation.

  Maskelle tried to decide just which invocation would annoy the Ancestors the most. The Great Opening, the signal part of the Year Rite, would get their immediate attention and hearing the words of it on her lips should elicit the quickest response. She turned away from the railing and stepped up onto the platform, clearing her mind.

  As Maskelle faced the room and lifted her staff above her head, the raiders' leader called out, "Attend to the nun, you bastards!" She grinned derisively around at her companions. "She's going to give us a blessing!"

  Some of the raiders turned toward this new diversion, but most were too occupied by the fighting to listen. A man almost too drunk to stand on his feet staggered up on the platform muttering, "Kill the Koshan bitch—"

  Maskelle swung her staff down and around, slamming him in the chest and sending him crashing backward off the platform. That got their attention.

  The shouts and drunken roaring died away. Into the relative quiet Maskelle said, "I am the Voice of the Adversary."

  She hadn't spoken loudly, but her words carried across the room. There were gasps and outcries, proving that some of the raiders at least were among the devout. One quick thinker turned and dived out the nearest window. The leader stared around, baffled and angry.

  Maskelle spoke the first words of the Great Opening. This was too much presumption for the myriad forces of the Infinite to ignore. All the lamps in this half of the chamber flickered and died.

  In the sudden darkness Maskelle swung around to the cargo doors and with the end of her staff threw the latch up.

  The doors flew open and wind-driven rain rushed in. There were shrieks and shouts as the rivermen began to panic, shoving and pushing. Maskelle stepped quickly to the crane's counterweight, drawing the little knife she used for cutting fruit. It was too small for the job, but she slashed at the half-rotted ropes until suddenly the counterweight dropped.

  The reaction was more violent than she had anticipated. The counterweight smashed right through the floorboards, knocking her backwards. The arm swung and toppled, taking the railing, part of the gallery, and a dozen yelling rivermen with it.

  "I meant to do that," Maskelle muttered to herself, stumbling to her feet. The raiders must think the post was under attack by hostile river spirits. They were pouring out the door Maskelle had entered by, blocking it, fighting and snarling like rats. Then a figure tore away from the over panicked, shoving bodies and charged toward her, bori club upraised.

  It was the leader. Maskelle met her with the end of her staff, catching the woman a hard blow in the stomach and pushing her away. She staggered back but didn't fall; she must have some sort of leather or lacquered wood chest armor under her silk vest. Maskelle couldn't see much in the half-light, but she assumed the razor-edge of the heavy wooden club was aimed toward her. She kept the staff pointed at the leader, braced to move. The other woman shuffled to the side, trying to get past Maskelle's guard.

  Then Maskelle saw that the ropes still attached to the broken crane arm and hanging over the gallery were jerking and twitching; it had to be the rivermen who had gone over the rail with the crane, still trapped in them. Then a head popped up over the edge.

  She knew who it was. The trapped traveller had had hair cropped at his shoulders while the river raiders either shaved their heads to avoid lice or grew wild waist-length manes. Grinning, Maskelle angled sideways, making poking motions with the staff, as if she meant to try to break for the door across the gallery. Her opponent, thinking to catch her between herself and the packed door, obligingly stepped backward, closer to the edge.

  The traveller hauled himself further up, and when the raider stepped back into reach, he swung his sheathed sword around and struck the back of her knees. The woman toppled backwards with a choked-off cry.

  Maskelle turned immediately for the cargo doors, using her staff to trip a flailing, foul-smelling shadow that tried to stop her. Rain and wind poured in, drenching the boards under her feet. She found the ropes for the winch, but they didn't move when she tugged on them. The other counterweight must be broken, damn it, she thought, and tossed her staff out, hoping it struck the dock, not the river. She grabbed the heavy rope and swung out after it, getting a confused view of the river below with what little light there was from the cloud-covered moon reflecting off the angry surface. She hoped the traveller had the sense to follow her.

  She scrambled down the rope, not quite as agile as a monkey, wishing she was ten years younger. The raiders must have had the outpost longer than she had initially thought, or it had been abandoned before they had ever found it; the rope was beginning to rot, so soft in most places her grasping fingers went right through the strands. But her feet thumped down on the dock before she knew it.

  Cursing, she felt around on the scarred wood, feeling holes and splinters, but not her staff. There were shouts from above and the lamps were flaring back to life inside the outpost. She stood, the wet wind tearing at her hair, took two steps toward the bank, and fell flat on her face. She had tripped over her staff.

  "Thank you for nothing, Ancient Lineage," she muttered, her own abbreviated version of the proper Thanksgiving. She grabbed up the staff, staggered back to her feet, and ran for the bank.

  Once in the bush she slowed, knowing a fall would only make more noise, though the rain covered most of the sound of her passing. When she had gone some distance, she stopped and crouched in the dark shelter of a dripping tana bush. She heard the thrashing of several people fighting their way through the foliage near her. The raiders wouldn't stay long in the jungle; it was a different realm than the river and they would fear it. Superstitious idiots, she thought, squatting in the mud. It was the river that would harbor the evil spirits tonight.

  The raiders following her thrashed away and she started to stand. Someone touched her shoulder lightly, a caution not to move; she froze where she was and an instant later heard one more passage through the bush. There was nothing but the rain after that and the tingle of shock through Maskelle's skin and the hackles rising on the back of her neck. Someone crouched in the mud next to her; the air was alive with the warmth and breath of a living body. How she could have missed it before, she couldn't think. No thanks for the warning, she thought sou
rly to the Ancestors. In the thirty years of her apprenticeship and mastery as Their Servant, They had seldom been around when she wanted them. She wished she could say that was the reason she had turned on them in the end, but that was a lie she wouldn't tell herself. Experimentally, she whispered, "Are they gone?"

  There was the briefest pause, then he said, "They are now."

  Maskelle didn't move and for a moment neither did he. Then a great glop of water from the tana bush struck the back of her neck and she twitched. He flinched, stood suddenly and was gone, though this time she heard him brush against the leaves as he passed.

  She shook her head and got to her feet, her knees protesting the movement. He must have climbed out the cargo hatch behind her and followed her into the jungle. He had returned her favor with the warning, anyway. She slogged further into the bush, wondering why a Sitanese swordsman had travelled this far into the Celestial Empire. The problem tickled her brain all the long way back to the road.

  She came out of the jungle just where the road broadened out into the Sare. The Ancestors, perverse as usual, had now seen fit to grant her prayers about the rain and it had slackened to a bare drizzle. It was too dark to see much of the Sare now, but morning light would reveal a broad green plain, cut from the jungle in a perfect square, the grasses as clipped and civilized as any park in Duvalpore.

  In the center of the plain was a massive rectangular baray, a reservoir of water bordered by broad stone walks. In the center of the baray stood a temple of the Koshan Order, reached by a stone bridge, its conical towers meant to resemble the Mountain of the Infinite, a symbolic meaning in every element of its design, every portal, every inch of carving. Lamps glowed from its many windows and lined the galleries and bridges. To the west of the baray there were three groups of less orderly lights: the campfires and torches of travellers camping here in the safety of the shadow of the temple and the patrols of its guards. In the glow of one campfire she recognized Rastim's wagon and felt her heart unclench a little. She hated to leave the troupe, even though she knew they had been caring for themselves long before she had ever met them. I’ve failed others before. Perhaps that’s why.

  She found most of them huddled damply in the wagons, with Rastim trying to keep the fire lit and Old Mali grumbling while she stirred the supper. Voices called greetings from the wagons and Rastim watched her with ill-disguised relief as Maskelle walked up to sniff suspiciously at the cooking pot. Old Mali grumbled something inaudible. From the lumps bobbing in the stew, they had arrived in time to buy some pork from the priests' servants to add to the rice and there was taro root baking in the coals. "Boiling water?" she asked.

  Old Mali wrapped a rag around one calloused hand and fetched a steaming kettle out of the coals. "Knew you'd be back," she muttered.

  "There was doubt?" Maskelle asked, taking a seat on one of the woven straw mats laid out on the mud. It squished unpleasantly under her.

  "Just Gardick again," Rastim said, and gestured disparagingly. "Nothing."

  "Hmph." Maskelle took the ivibrae and ground it up with the mortar and pestle used for cooking. Together, and muttering curses at each other, she and Old Mali got the stuff strained into a pottery cup. Old Mali carried it off to Killia's wagon, leaving Maskelle and Rastim to stare at each other tiredly.

  "So we'll be there in two days, will we?" he asked.

  "Yes." She flexed her hands in the firelight. Her back hurt from the damp and she felt old. More than a half decade over twice twenty years wasn't that old for the Ariaden or the Kushorit. But it was old for a Court Lady, and her hands were almost as calloused as Old Mali's.

  "And there'll be good crowds to perform for?" Rastim was uneasy.

  "Oh, yes." Though "good" was a matter of perspective. "The best of the best. And generous, too."

  "Ah." Rastim nodded, looking out over the dark wet plain beyond the boundary of firelight and wagons. "And the audience with the great priest?"

  "He'll speak to you." Maskelle was taking the Ariaden to Duvalpore to see the Celestial One, the highest religious office in the Celestial Empire.

  "Two days. If the rain doesn't slow us down."

  "It won't," she said, knowing it was true, a Word whispered in her ear by the Ancestors. They were good for something, occasionally.

  "Ah."

  Old Mali came back from Killia's wagon, a stooped figure on stumpy legs, and thumped her chest and nodded. From long acquaintance with Old Mali, Maskelle took this to mean that Killia's daughter had drunk the posset and it had already relieved some of the congestion in her lungs. With luck, it would help the fever too and Maskelle wouldn't even have to summon the healing spirits.

  Maskelle stood and eased the kinks in her back. She wasn't hungry anymore, even for tea, even for rice wine. And she didn't want to answer all the same questions from the others, once the smell of supper permeated the wagons and they began to creep out. She nodded to Rastim and Old Mali and limped toward her wagon. It stood slightly apart the way she liked it, the two oxen unharnessed and dozing over fodder. Old Mali drove it for her during the day, and had opened the light wooden side panels when the rain had stopped, so the interior could air out. Maskelle paused at the dropped tailgate, looking into the dark. She could see the temple from here.

  The massive domed spire was black against the lighter shade of the sky, the moon shape of the portal below it barely visible; male and female phallic symbols woven together. The detail of the terraced carvings were entirely lost in shadow. They had passed small sanctuaries along the way, but this was the first time in too many years that she had been so close to a true temple.

  She moved away from the wagon, one of the oxen snuffling at her as she drifted past. The temple was calling to her, not the stone shell, but what it represented, and the power that likeness gave it.

  She walked through the sodden grass until she came to the edge of the baray and stepped up onto the stone bank. The Koshan priests had the custody of the temples, but they were only static forms. It was the End of Year Rite that remade the universe in its own image, and that was only performed by the Voices of the Ancestors. The End of Decade rites were even more crucial.

  This year would be the End of a Hundred Years rite.

  Maskelle lifted her staff, holding it above her head. An echo whispered through her, a reflection from the Infinite through the structure of the temple. After all these years, it still knew her. "I helped another stranger tonight," she whispered. "I didn't kill anyone to do it. Not intentionally, at least. Is that enough for you?"

  A slow wave of darkness climbed the temple wall, the lamps in the windows winking out one by one.

  She lowered the staff and let out her breath. No, it wasn't enough. And now they will all know you’re back. Oh, the delight in the power never died, that was the curse, and her true punishment, whatever the Adversary had decreed. She shook her head at her own folly and turned back to the camp.

  She reached the wagon and climbed up the back steps, closing the panels that faced the campsite. She sat on the still damp wooden floor, looking out at the temple and the silver surface of the baray in the distance.

  She was facing the right direction for an illusion of privacy, though voices from the other campsites, oddly distorted over the plain, came to her occasionally. The night breeze was chilly on her wet clothes, the drying mud itchy on her legs. And someone was watching her. She knew it by the way the oxen, caught in the firelight from behind the wagon, cocked their ears. She found his outline in the dark finally, about twenty feet away, sitting on his heels just out of reach of the light. She might have walked within ten feet of him on the way to the baray. Again, the shock of being so taken by surprise was like ice on her skin. She waited until it drained away, then quietly she said, "Come here."

  The breeze moved the short grass. He stood up and came toward the wagon.

  Her staff, as much a part of her as her hands or feet, lay on the wooden bench of the wagon. He stopped just out of arm's reach. Her arm's
reach. She was within easy range of his sword.

  He stood in the shadow where the wagon blocked the firelight, but the moonlight was strong. The heavy siri rested easily on one lean hip.

  Maskelle stretched out her foot, her toes finding the staff where it lay on the rough planks and gradually easing it toward her hand.

  "What did you do?" he said.

  He couldn't be asking her what she thought he was asking her; after a moment she realized he meant the lamps in the temple. "I'm a Voice of the Ancestors." That was still strictly true, if it didn't actually answer the question. "What were you doing in the outpost?"

  "Getting killed. Did it look like anything else?"

  Instead of taking the bait, she said, "That's a fine way to say thank you."

  "I was going up river and walked into them."

  "That's still not 'thank you.'" Though it could well be the truth. If he had come up the Western Road from the Sintane, he could have crossed the river at the fords at Takis. But why move along the bank instead of going on to the Great Road? Well, the Great Road has regular patrols; the river doesn't, not in the rainy season.

  He didn't take the bait, either. He said, "You're a wizard?"

  "No."

  Silence, while the damp breeze made the water in the baray lap against the stone banks and the temple cattle lowed in the distance. Why did she suspect it was the silence of disbelief? Almost against her will, she added, "I receive the Ancestors' Will, when they have any, and translate it for others. In return, They allow me to manipulate the power of the Infinite." An enormous simplification of the process, but she didn't think he wanted an hours-long philosophy debate.

  More silence. The disbelief was so thick it was practically dripping off the wagon. Finally, he said, "Are all the Koshan priests wizards?"

  Ancestors help me, Maskelle swore under her breath, then gave in. "To some extent. But none of the others are like me."