Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  Chapter Seven

  As the Celestial One's boat slid up to the water steps, Rian scanned the boatmen and the others near the canal, alert for betraying tension, a body deliberately held to conceal a weapon, any abrupt movement. Markand had been good training for this; everyone there, no matter how long in service or close in relationship, could be a potential assassin. Compared to that, looking for threats in a place where everyone was a stranger and he had no idea of the alliances, factions and undercurrents was almost easy.

  Again, the Celestial One was unaccompanied except for the boys who poled the boat and the young priest who helped him up and down steps. Maskelle grabbed one of the support poles and swung easily down into the boat. Rian followed her.

  "You didn't have to come after us," she said to the Celestial One with some asperity. "Did you think coming here was a ruse for me to escape?"

  "It crossed my mind," the old man said grimly.

  Water gurgled as the boys pushed the boat away from the portico. Rian saw Maskelle glare at the old priest and he automatically gauged the distance to the bank, which was lined with terraced wooden buildings with carved gables and pediments, in case they had to leave the boat suddenly. There were children playing on the water steps they passed, so the canals must be free of the predators that made the rivers so dangerous.

  Still watching the Celestial One almost angrily, Maskelle said, "I'm an outcast. The upper ranks are going to object if you try to include me in the Rite, especially in a Rite as important as this one. Especially a Rite this...damaged."

  "That's why you must no longer be an outcast." The Celestial One was looking away, at the gardens along the opposite bank. He said quietly, "You've been punished enough."

  She said, "That's not your decision." Her hands were gripping the bench tightly, the blood draining from her knuckles.

  The Celestial One frowned, showing a hint of the crotchety old man Rian suspected lurked just under the serene surface, and said, "It is my decision as far as the Order is concerned."

  She turned a sardonic gaze on him. "I took that road and I can tell you it doesn't lead where you think it does."

  The Celestial One pressed his lips together. "Don't lecture to me, child."

  Maskelle leaned forward, and this time the edge in her voice was dangerous. "I'm not your child."

  Rian shifted his weight unobtrusively. The boys poling the craft were far up in the bow and the stern and couldn't possibly reach them quickly enough to interfere. He braced himself to dump the young priest, who was watching the confrontation with open astonishment, over the side.

  The moment stretched. The Celestial One sat back, smiling slowly. "You have not lost your fire."

  "Don't pretend that was a test, old man." Maskelle eased back on the bench but didn't relax. The young priest was saved from a swim in the canal, but Rian didn't relax, either. Sounding more peevish than angry now, she added, "There's always the chance my intervention would just make things worse."

  "I can't think how," the Celestial One said frankly. And unnervingly, Rian thought.

  Maskelle shook her head in exasperation. "Why didn't you just tell me what had happened when I got to the Marai yesterday? Why take me in to see it unprepared? Did you think I had something to do with it and you wanted to see if I looked guilty?"

  The Celestial One sighed. "I wanted you to see it for yourself." He looked at the far bank, rheumy eyes narrowed. "I wanted your conclusions to be untainted by any preconception. I have looked at it so much in these few days since it happened I no longer trust my own judgment."

  I must have heard wrong, Rian thought, that sounded almost rational. Maskelle must have agreed, because she grumbled, "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

  "You wouldn't have listened to me then. You wanted an argument. Now you've had one. Perhaps you can be content now that you understand my reasons for all this."

  Maskelle just looked at the old man. Rian was a little reassured by the fact that the Celestial One could evidently be a real bastard when he set his mind to it. Maybe the Koshans aren't that strange after all.

  ***

  At the Marai, the Celestial One led them straight to the inner court, where the central tower stood. In the portico around the base of the tower, Maskelle paused to tell Rian, "You can't come in this time. We're going to be doing some things that can't be disturbed." As an afterthought, she added, "And arguing. But mostly alterations to the Rite. You should go home."

  Rian ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. There were some servants sweeping the court across the way and a few priests talking in one of the colonnades, but no one was within earshot and no one was paying more than the ordinary curious attention to them. "Who else is in there?"

  "Just the Voices, a few other priests, probably." She smiled at him, somewhat fondly.

  Rian swore under his breath. "This isn't a game. You know something's trying to kill you and you have enemies here." He suspected that was a mild estimate of the situation.

  "Yes, I know," she said, glumly regarding the polished stone under their feet and dragging the toe of her muddy and travel-worn sandal over the edge of the step. "I'll be with the Celestial One."

  "What's that worth?"

  "If violence takes place in the Celestial One's sight, the whole Order and anyone outside it who follows the Path will have to go through a purification ritual."

  To the priests-shamans, at least the ones in Markand, "purification" involved fire, iron, and screaming, usually by a nonpriest. "Does that involve pain?"

  Maskelle snorted. "No, worse. Fasting, abstinence, complicated meditation rituals. No one wants to go through that, not even to get rid of me."

  I’ll never understand these people, Rian thought. He looked at the entrance into the tower. He hadn't had a chance to explore it yesterday. "Is this the only way in?"

  "No, there are a couple of others at the upper levels. I think." At his expression she shook her head. "Rian, if anyone is going to make trouble, it will be me. Really. I'm the most dangerous person here." Her mouth quirked wryly. "Especially to myself."

  "That I already figured out," he muttered. There didn't appear to be any other choice. "Fine. If you get killed, don't send your shade crying to me."

  "I promise, on what's left of my honor, not to haunt you." Rian didn't think much of that promise, but the Celestial One, who was waiting in the archway, thumped his staff impatiently and glared. He let out his breath. "All I'm saying is just watch your back."

  "I will, I will." She made shooing motions at him. "I was nursemaiding myself a long time before you came along to do it."

  She and the Celestial One disappeared inside the tower and Rian paced the court for a while, trying to judge how safe the temple really was. It wasn't a bad place to wait, all things considered. The clouds had settled in and a light rain fell off and on, steaming off the smooth grey stones of the court and dripping from the figures of the Ancestors and spirits and hero priests and priestesses of the past carved into the walls and galleries and columns around him. A variety of people seemed to come and go in the court for various purposes, and few except the Koshans approached the central tower. It gave him time to think about what they had heard at the hospital, about poor spell-maddened Veran and the dead Voice Igarin.

  Something or someone had assuredly poisoned the Voice. Rian mortally hated poisoners. It was an indiscriminate weapon and he had seen too many innocents fall victim to it. The worst time had been when poisoned must cakes meant for the Holder Lord had accidentally been sent to the rooms of his favorite concubine. The young woman had shared them with all the servants who happened to be with her that afternoon, and it had killed all of them, including an adolescent lamp girl and two pageboys so young their voices hadn't changed yet.

  Rian had smelled a poison murder as soon as the Celestial One had spoken of Igarin being so conveniently taken ill. People never took ill at convenient moments, and all these priests seemed to live to vast ages and be as ha
rdy as cart horses. The Celestial One had said there had been no sign of poison, but Rian wondered how much these people really knew of such things, for all their herbs and magic. They didn't seem much interested in killing each other.

  Rian stopped, watching a group of priests walk along one of the covered colonnades that divided the court, the dark blue of their robes flicking in and out among the grey pillars. He had been shocked to realize that the temple guards the Celestial One had brought with him to the post compound really had been for their protection, that the highest priest in the Celestial Empire apparently went anywhere he pleased without guards, with only the boys who paddled the boat or the young priest whose main duty seemed to be to help him negotiate steps. It's not the Sintane, he reminded himself again. That observation was a triumph of the obvious. Maybe no one in the city wanted to kill the old man. It was remotely possible. Maybe Rian had just been too long at Markand, with a lord whom most rational people looked for chances to murder.

  A young Koshan woman was coming across the court with an armload of some kind of wooden packets. Rian watched her with idle curiosity, until it became apparent she was heading directly for him. She stopped a few paces away. Rian didn't know how to read the rank tattoos yet, but hers looked fairly new on her shaven scalp. She cleared her throat, looked up at him uncertainly, and said, "My name is Sister Tiar. I was sent to give you instruction in reading Aurin."

  Oh, really? On close observation he saw that the things she carried were books with wooden covers. Rian shot a glance at the entrance to the Rite's tower. "Sent by who?"

  "By—" She hesitated, then finished less confidently, "The one who was the Voice of the Adversary."

  Rian made a noncommittal noise. So Maskelle had remembered her threat to make him learn to read. He just stood there and stared at the young nun, hoping to scare her away.

  It didn't work. More determined than she initially appeared, she stepped briskly past him to the shelter of the tower's portico, sat down on the step, and awkwardly deposited her armload of books. She picked one up and opened it, saying brightly, "Shall we begin?"

  "Women," Rian muttered under his breath in Sitanese, then gave in gracefully and went to sit next to her.

  While she was explaining the basics of what she meant to teach him, he listened with half his attention, picking up one of the books and paging through it to look at the drawings. These Koshan books were strips of very thin smooth wood, written on with a variety of colored inks and then lacquered over to protect the surface, the strips then bound together with cords. They were kept in oilcloth cases to protect them from the ever present damp, though it seemed only the binding cords suffered from it. The drawings in this one were the same sort of scenes that were carved on the walls of the Marai. He hoped every book in the pile wasn't about religion.

  The nun Tiar was looking past him toward the archway into the tower. Now she said, "Do you know if there's any progress? Everyone is very worried and no one will tell us anything."

  If such a thing had happened in Markand, there would have been panic and bloodshed in the corridors of the Hold. Here, everyone was "very worried." From what he had heard, the Koshans hadn't made much effort to conceal what had happened, but they hadn't tried to spread the word, either. The knowledge was probably still confined to the upper ranks of the temples and the lower who were attached to the Marai. Rian said, "They don't tell me anything either."

  She turned the pages of the book, running her thumb along the wooden edges, biting her lip. If she was trying to decide where to begin, it was evidently a taxing decision. Then she said slowly, "We've been wondering...Not many of us who are in the lower ranks now knew the Voice of the Adversary before she left, and..."

  Rian waited unhelpfully. He wasn't sure what she was getting at.

  She finally looked at him, her face worried, and said in a rush, "Are you with her voluntarily?"

  He stared at her, surprised. So what did they think? That I was kidnapped, under a spell? He grinned slowly. "Yes. She's tried to get rid of me a couple of times, but it didn't take."

  Her cheeks darkened and she looked away, embarrassed. "It's just that there are so many stories about her and... Some of the others speculated that she had..."

  "Trapped me?" Rian finished, fascinated. There were a lot of questions itching at him that he couldn't possibly ask a strange Kushorit woman who was a nun and barely out of girlhood into the bargain. And anyway she probably had no idea how many men Maskelle had had in the past and if any of them were better to look at than he was.

  "Yes," Tiar said hurriedly, and grabbed another book off the pile at random and launched into the lesson.

  Rian sat pretend-patiently through what the various symbols in the written version of the Kushorit language meant. After Tiar had gotten over her attack of self-consciousness, he asked her, "Do you know Veran?"

  "Yes." She selected another book, troubled. "I hope he'll be all right. He worked so hard. He would have advanced to the seventh level this year and many thought that eventually he would be made a Voice."

  So the disaster had ruined Veran's chances for advancement, even if he did recover. It didn't sound like the man had much reason to act against the Rite on his own. "That's why they let him near the Rite?"

  "Yes, there are always a few initiates to the seventh level who are given the opportunity to participate in the Rite in a minor way. The Voices perform the most important parts, but the others are allowed to take their places occasionally, to add to their knowledge." She shook her head. "Veran was the youngest who had ever been given that honor."

  Rian leaned back against the pillar, watching Tiar sort through the books. If Maskelle was right, then something had gotten to Veran at some point before he had entered the tower to take the dying Voice's turn at the Rite. If Veran was an involuntary participant, then it must have caught him unawares; if he had made some sort of deal with it, then regretted it later or been betrayed it might make things more difficult. A guilty man would take steps to cover his trail. "He was teaching a lady from the Court named Marada?"

  "Yes, the foreign lady." Tiar shook her head, as if recalling something she found baffling. "He said she was very strange. He thought at first... Well, he thought she was more interested in him than in learning the Path. But he told Nasir later that he must have been mistaken." She colored again and added, "I imagine I'm not supposed to know that but things do get around. Veran told the others that it was very hard to understand what Marada meant by the things she said and did. I suppose that's because the people of the Garekind Islands have very different customs."

  He thought Marada wanted him, but he was wrong, Rian wondered. Or she tried to seduce him and he refused. Or the young priest had been just as confused as Rian had by that strange, direct way of looking someone over that Marada had. "So she really did want to learn?"

  "Yes, she came to study with him quite frequently, every day as arranged. He gave the lessons on the terraces outside the library of the Myad Keo."

  "When was the last lesson?"

  "Not long ago." She frowned. "Only a day before he became so ill, and all this happened." She gestured back toward the tower.

  "Are you certain?"

  "I saw them there myself." Tiar was not stupid. Rian didn't suppose one could get through all the learning it took to be a Koshan and not have wits. She frowned, watching him carefully, and said, "Does that mean something?"

  Rian shrugged. If Marada was a poisoner, he didn't want to see Tiar in the hospital on a pallet next to Veran's. "It could, but probably not. He must have seen dozens of people that day." Yes, dozens of people. Family and friends and other Koshans and market vendors and servants, people he had seen every day of his life without coming to harm, and none of them foreign visitors with suspicious manners who had quickly managed to place themselves close to the Celestial Emperor. He pointed to the book. "What does that one mean again? The one with the bird's head..." By getting half the symbols she had shown him wrong, he ma
naged to distract her back into the lesson.

  ***

  "Are you ready to try now?" Vigar asked. Kneeling awkwardly on the floor, eye level with the Rite, Maskelle knew that no one else but another ninth-level Koshan could have heard the tightly restrained annoyance in the man's tone. It was buried under layers of training, discipline, and meditative calm. Dryly, she said, "Yes, I've just been standing on my head all this time for the joy of delaying you."

  Vigar didn't swear, didn't sigh, and probably didn't even twitch an eyelid. He and the other Voices did not want her here, but the Celestial One's word was law where the Rite was concerned. They had not spoken one word of their disagreement and would not; they were all too far down the Path of the Infinite to express such petty sentiments. Maybe that's why she preferred the Ariaden, who expressed petty sentiments with a refreshing forthrightness. The Sitanese aren’t bad at it either, she thought, smiling to herself, remembering Rian's outburst at the Gila Stel.

  She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The many lamps made the chamber even warmer than usual and the still air felt stale in her lungs. The patterns of the Rite existed both in this world and the plane of the Infinite. Following the design as it wove in and out through here and there made her eyes ache all the way down to her toes. In building the Rite all it took was an awareness of the Infinite and the Rite's shape both in it and this world. Untwisting that complexity was a far greater task than building it in the first place. She said, "It's actually intersecting with the edge of the First Mountain. I don't like that."

  "You don't? I find it delightful that the excrescence is almost touching one of the focal points of the power of earth," Vigar said, his tone just as arid as hers.

  Maskelle looked up at him, surprised at the show of temper. Smiling, she said, "Really, Vigar, I didn't know you had it in you." The other Voices, standing or kneeling around the chamber, all gazed at him in mild shock. There were fourteen of them here. With all the confusion, Igarin had not yet been replaced, and though the others had been summoned when the disaster occurred, most were still en route from the Temple Centers in the rest of the Empire.