by Martha Wells
He was a very old man, with a once strong frame emaciated by age, wrapped in a blue Koshan robe. The rank tattoos on his scalp were faded and obscured by wrinkles, but his dark eyes were still bright. He said, "My daughter."
To anyone else the mask of his beneficent expression would have been impenetrable, but Maskelle knew him better than that. She thought she had surprised him, and she wondered if he had not expected her to come after all. "My father."
"Your journey was arduous?"
She stepped further into the room. He wasn't alone; seated on grass mats nearby was another old priest and a young woman in dark green court robes, with strings of amethyst and opals braided through her hair. "It was agreeable enough, once we passed the boundary."
His brow lifted, and he turned to the others. "I must ask your indulgence while I greet my friend who has travelled a great distance to meet with me."
"Of course." The priest stood immediately and reached down to help the courtier to her feet. The upper rank of priests were all considered equals, so they used no honorific with the Celestial One. And since the Celestial One always gave up his names when he assumed the office, the priests called him nothing at all. "We will return at some later day, at your convenience."
The woman stood a little awkwardly, obviously not used to the spare comforts of the temple, and obviously not as anxious to leave as her escort. But she bowed her head and said only, "Celestial One." The priest escorted her to another doorway, and Maskelle felt her glance rake them.
When they had gone, the Celestial One smiled wryly and gestured for her to sit.
Maskelle took a seat on one of the mats, laying her staff down behind her, fighting down that sense of too-powerful familiarity again. Most of all she was conscious of an overwhelming sense of relief. She had dreaded this meeting and now, at least, she would be free of that anticipation. She noted Rian, correctly guessing that to remain standing while they sat would be judged rude, had taken a seat on the floor a few feet behind her and to the side. She hid a smile. The number of doors in the cupola had given him an instant's pause, but he had still managed to pick the spot where he could see all of them at once.
The Celestial One, she thought, had noted it too. He said, "Who is your companion?"
"He's Rian, from the Sintane. They're mostly agnostics." She felt Rian glaring daggers at her back.
The Celestial One smiled at Rian. "Then why does he wear the sigil of Taprot?"
Maskelle turned to look at Rian. His expression was wary. Considering that the amulet was currently tucked inside his shirt, it must have at least some presence in the Infinite for the Celestial One to be able to sense the traces of its presence. Resigned, she turned back to the old priest and asked, "And what is Taprot?"
"A spirit of protection, who casts favor on those whose duty is to protect others, to lay bare falsehood, or to pursue criminals. The Sitanese depict it in the form of a hunting cat, the Gildane as a monkey, and the Versatin as a crocodile. There are other forms, but those are the main ones of interest."
That was enough of that. The polite conversation, as if she had gone off on a retreat or a meditation ring and had just now returned to the city, had to stop. "Well, you've got me here. Now tell me what you want."
His eyes narrowed. "The Voices have spoken of danger to the Hundred Year Rite since the beginning of this year, but there was nothing specific, only vague warnings. I wanted your help with the interpretation of their warnings."
He’s not telling me everything, Maskelle thought. She widened her eyes ingenuously and said, "All the other Voices and the seventh-level priests have all gone incompetent? The ones that weren't already, I mean."
"No." He frowned. "But I suspected there would be interference with the Rite."
The silence stretched. Maskelle gave in and said, "What do you mean, interference?"
He betrayed a moment's exasperation. "If I knew the source of the interference, I should have related it in my letter."
"Oh, I doubt that. Then you would lose the upper hand." Maskelle propped an elbow on her knee and rested her chin in her hand. "I suppose you realize what it cost me to come here."
His gaze softened. She wished she could tell if it was sincerity or acting. He said, "That I realized. I would not have asked you if I had not thought it serious." He sighed. "But I wish I had asked you sooner."
She frowned and said slowly, "I believe you think it's serious, but that's all."
The Celestial One let out his breath, and stared grimly into the distance. This she knew wasn't acting. He said, "Then I will show you, and let you judge for yourself."
***
Rian wondered how the Celestial One would negotiate the way through the Marai and for that matter, how he had got up into it in the first place. The steps were too steep and some of the passages too narrow for a palanquin or a litter. It turned out to be a simple solution; a large young priest came in at a summons and picked the fragile old man up to carry him easily down the stairs.
Rian wasn't sure what to think of the Celestial One. He had never met such an exalted religious before, but he had the feeling that in this case even prior experience wouldn't have helped. The Koshans weren't like anybody else, and the Celestial One even more so. The sigil of Taprot, which he had only kept because it wasn't worth selling, thumped him in the chest as he started down the stairs after them, and he wondered why the Celestial One had mentioned it.
Following Maskelle and the priests through these narrow halls that opened unexpectedly into galleries with sweeping views of the city, Rian thought again how strange this place was, built not for human convenience but to some other design. It was a design alien to the fortresses of the Sintane, which were built for defense and to withstand long harsh cold seasons, but the overall affect was not unpleasant. There was no surface that wasn't carved and not all the subjects were religious. Just in the stairwell there were rows of lotus buds, sinuous dancers, a forest hermit being chased up a tree by a tiger, a market scene.
They passed several men waiting in a wide pillared hall, some dressed in elaborately draped and colored silk robes, two with the swordbelts of guardsmen, though they had the bearing of high rank. They all made gestures of respect as the Celestial One passed. Rian wished he had bothered to learn more about the Empire—he wasn't even sure of the Celestial One's real status, if he was a secular as well as a religious power. But this place had always seemed more than half myth, even in the more cosmopolitan Markand. And he had had other things to worry about.
They entered an inner courtyard that must be raised some thirty or forty feet from actual ground level, considering all the stairs they had climbed in crossing the two outer courts. In the center was the fifth tower, an even larger imitation mountain than the ones which stood at each corner. Rian gave up even looking at the carvings; the detail was too much to absorb and he didn't want to be distracted. Four covered passages crossed the court, wide pillared corridors each extending from one of the long galleries to the base of the middle tower.
Clouds had covered the sun, and though the reflection off the polished stone was muted, it was still temporarily blinding after the murky dimness of the tower. The young priest set the Celestial One on his feet as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs and the old man crossed the wide paved court under his own power, leaning on his staff, his fragile body bent forward determinedly. There were several other priests standing in the shade of one of the porticos, who bowed to the old man as he passed.
He was going toward an open archway in the portico around the base of the central mountain-tower. Maskelle made no move to follow him, muttering, "What does he think he's doing...?"
"Trouble?" Rian asked her.
She shook her head impatiently. "That's where the Year Rites take place. I'm not supposed to...Oh, damn it."
Rian glanced at the watching priests. He read more curiosity than hostility in their bearing, but perhaps they didn't realize who Maskelle was. Yet. He wished he knew enoug
h to sort the truth from the self-deprecating exaggeration in everything she had told him, but that would come later. The only sensible course now was to look on everyone as a potential threat. That shouldn’t be difficult, he thought grimly. It was a habit that he should have no trouble falling back into.
Maskelle hesitated another moment, apparently oblivious to the curious eyes of the other priests. Then she shook her head at herself in annoyance and followed the Celestial One. Rian trailed after her, cursing his fate. If she had qualms about entering the place, then he should stop her, but doing the thinking was not usually the place of a kjardin, no matter how witless or stubborn the person to be guarded. Not that Maskelle was witless. But he had seen enough of her to know that her idea of what was dangerous was different from that of sensible people; it didn't mean she couldn't be killed by a dagger between the ribs from some mad but lucky enemy.
They entered the tower through an archway that led into welcome shade. Like the other towers, spiral stairs curved up the inside walls to reach the other levels, but at first it looked as if there was nowhere else to go on this floor, though he knew from the size of the place this couldn't be the only chamber. There seemed to be nothing except for a massive carving on the far wall, a stylized ocean populated by strange creatures. Then Rian's eyes adjusted to the sudden dimness and he realized there were two walls, one in front of the other, their designs interlocking, so the smaller barrier seemed to fade into the larger one behind it. The Celestial One crossed the room and went around the edge of the smaller wall. His attendant priest was standing in the archway, apparently ready to wait patiently, but Rian followed Maskelle.
Once around the wall there was a wide doorway, framed by more of the large carved snakes. Rian knew they were guardian spirits like the lions, but their resemblance to demons was hardly reassuring. As Maskelle started to step through the doorway, she stopped abruptly and whispered something under her breath. Then she stepped inside.
Rian started after her, but found he had stopped in the doorway too. The air in the large chamber was hot and still and something in it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He made himself move forward.
The floor was carved of one very large, very flat stone, its grey surface almost as smooth and soft as pearl. The reason for this extravagance was apparent when he saw what lay in the center. It was a round, complex, colorful design, about twenty feet across, obviously incomplete. At first he thought it was being painted onto the stone, but then he saw it was three dimensional, raised as much as an inch off the floor. Colored sand, he thought. Or powdered shell or glass. The only break to the floor's seamless stone surface was a raised lip that enclosed the section where the design lay.
Maskelle circled it to the right, still swearing under her breath, and Rian followed her automatically, hanging back a few steps to keep out of her way. It's a map, he thought, though he had never seen a map that wasn't flat lines drawn on parchment or hide. But in the ridges and depressions and flat stretches marked with tiny dark green protrusions he was sure he could see mountains and lakes and the jungle on the lowland plains. It was a more complete map than any he had ever seen, showing things that in the Sintane were only trader's tales. Then a closer look showed him these weren't lakes and forests but complex designs, like the carved arabesques and patterns of lotus buds on the temple walls outside.
He shook his head, a little dazed. There was something strange about being in the same room with the thing. Or maybe breathing the same air as it; there was something about it that seemed alive. It gave the impression of taking up all available space in the large chamber, as if walls, any walls, were too small to contain in it. Rian realized a moment later that it was a map again. He could see the mountain borders of the Sintane, a deep blue ridged depression that must represent the waters of the Inland Sea.
The waters were moving, waves crawling up the white sand beach...
Rian rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was just meaningless shapes now, nothing but complicated patterns in sand.
He swore softly. He didn't need to be told this was a powerful magic. Frustrated by the elusiveness of the thing, he tried to follow the pattern with his eyes, starting at the incomplete areas and following the spiral of several layers of built-up colored powders, all with intricately sculpted symbols. He resisted the urge to make them into towns and valleys and roads and hills. He made it past several turns, ignoring the branches that led off to more complex arrangements towards the center, but as the spiral neared another incomplete section, it dissolved into dark sand, the designs ceasing to resemble those on the temple walls and becoming something ugly and dark. Rian looked away, a sudden constriction in his chest. When he looked back at it, it was a map again, and the section of dark sand was a living storm, worse than any rainy season monsoon, tearing up the terrain that lay helplessly under it. With a sudden, bone-deep certainty, he knew that whatever this magic was, something was terribly wrong with it.
Maskelle stepped carefully back from the edge of the design, taking Rian's elbow and drawing him after her. Even a step or two away from the thing, the air was a little easier to breathe. Her voice shaking just a little, Maskelle said, "How did it happen?"
The Celestial One's voice sounded resigned. "We don't know."
Rian started guiltily. He had had no awareness that there was anyone else in the chamber at all. He looked around and saw there were three other priests in the room, all older men, the complexity of their scalp tattoos denoting high rank. They carried carved staffs like Maskelle and they didn't look pleased to see her. "You don't know," Maskelle repeated, sounding as if she was hovering in some state between utter stupefaction and disgust. "Haven't you tried to remove it?"
The Celestial One sighed and leaned on his staff. One of the other priests said, "We have removed it every time."
She turned to stare at him.
The man, a grim-faced priest with hard eyes, nodded. "Since the twentieth night of the Rite when it was first placed there. Every day we remove it, every day it forms again. Sometimes in the same area, sometimes elsewhere."
Maskelle shook her head and turned away, almost fleeing the chamber. Rian gathered his scattered wits and went after her.
The Celestial One's attendant stared worriedly as Maskelle stormed past and they came out in the inner court between two of the covered passages. The sun had appeared again and the reflection and heat coming off the white stone was temporarily blinding, but at least the air was fresh. "So what happened?" Rian asked impatiently. "What is it?"
"It's supposed to be the Wheel of the Infinite, the most important part of the Hundred Year Rite." She ran her hands through her hair, completely undoing her braids, and stopped with double handfuls of hair, as if she was contemplating pulling it out. "What it is now, I don't know." She shook her head, biting her lip. "The End of Year Rites—Each year the highest Koshan priests, the Voices, make a...a model of the world. Through it the world is remade in its own image. The culmination takes place at the rainy season Equinox, and the sand that was used to make the model is collected and dispersed to wind and water, which strengthens the bonds that hold everything together."
Rian looked at the tower. Everything? The utter stillness of the air in that chamber, so different from the wind-cooled passages in the rest of the place, the raised lip of stone around the center portion of the room, made sense now. "That design, that was the model?"
"Was, yes."
"The black storm-looking...thing. It comes back all by itself?"
She nodded grimly. "What I want to know is how it got there in the first place."
The Celestial One hobbled out of the covered walk and over to them, raising his hand to shade his eyes against the glare. He said, "That was why I wanted your advice."
"How did this happen?" Maskelle demanded again.
"On the twentieth night of the Rite, Master Igarin fell suddenly ill." He looked at Rian and added, "The rite must end on a certain day and delay can't be allowed,
so if one of the Voices can't continue, someone must take his place. A young priest called Veran, who was training to be elevated to Voice, took over the duty while the others present carried the sick man out to the court and summoned healers. Veran was alone in the chamber for perhaps a quarter hour, no more. When the others came back to return to their task, it was as you see it. This was eleven days ago." He shook his head. "I should have obeyed my first impulse and written to you earlier. If I had, you would have been here in time."
"Veran, Veran," Maskelle muttered to herself. "He's a new one. Where is he now? What explanation does he give?"
"He is in the care of the healers, under watch. He is ill himself now and can tell us nothing of how this happened."
Maskelle's expression was dubious, as well it might be. Ignoring the fact that he probably shouldn't be cross-questioning the Celestial One, Rian asked sharply, "What happened to the other priest, the one he replaced?"
"He is dead."
"Poison?"
"There was no sign of it." The old man's face was wry. "The convenience of his indisposition had occurred to us."
Maskelle grabbed handfuls of her hair again and paced rapidly up and down the court. The Celestial One watched her hopefully, which worried Rian more than anything. The old man really had no idea what had happened to their Rite, and no idea how to fix it. Maskelle stopped and said finally, "The disruption that forms every day...It's the same size as the first one, that Veran made."
"Yes."
"There's more there than one person could do in a quarter hour."
The Celestial One winced. "We realized that."
Rian asked, "How is the Rite made?" Since no one had bitten his head off for asking questions, he didn't intend to stop.
