Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  The noble said, "You will come with us."

  Rian sensed one of the guards behind him reach for his swordarm and he sidestepped, making the man stumble and curse. "Why?" Rian said, sounding startled. "What did I do?" Too many poor fools had given their guilt away to him simply by acting like trapped conspirators the first time they were confronted. He was startled, a little. He couldn't believe he had been recognized at Lady Marada's house. You carried evidence out of there that she was a sorceress, idiot. You should have expected this.

  They stepped toward him again and Rian backed away. The odds were terrible. At the other end of the street he saw two more guards on horseback coming this way, moving at a slow walk until they were sure which direction their quarry meant to bolt. The noble lifted the lantern and said, "Cooperate and you won't be harmed." Something about the way he said it told Rian that he didn't quite believe it, either. Then one of the guards slipped the bow off his shoulder and notched an arrow.

  That made the odds even worse. Rian calculated the man could get off three bolts by the time he ran to either end of the street, and maybe two if he tried to go over the wall behind him. Deliberately, he pulled the sheathed siri off his belt. One of the guards shifted warily and the bowman took a step back. Rian watched them derisively, then tossed the weapon to the noble.

  The man caught it one-handed, and nodded. "Good decision," he said.

  We’ll see about that, Rian thought, submitting mostly graciously as a guard came forward to search him. He knew there were enough of them to beat him unconscious and throw him over the back of one of the horses if they had to, and he didn't intend to limit his already few options just to show them a good fight.

  ***

  The court of the Marai was empty when Maskelle came out of the tower of the Rite again. She was bone-weary and her shoulders and back ached from leaning over. The searches of the other temples had so far turned up nothing. No suspicious activities, and certainly nothing so unusual as another Wheel. After much deliberation Vigar and the other Voices had decided to remove the unknown symbols from the Rite once again and continue. Maskelle still thought it was exactly the wrong course of action, but couldn't muster any argument good enough to convince the others. And it isn’t as if I’ve given them any good reason to listen to my advice lately, she thought, sighing wearily. Standing in the dark, looking up at the lamps flickering in the gallery windows, she considered lying to them and saying that the Adversary had told her it was a terrible idea. It wouldn't work. The Celestial One would know if the Adversary started to speak to her again, and she couldn't rely on him not to expose the lie.

  What if the lie were true?

  She walked out of the Marai, down the long flights of steps to the causeway and across the outer court, then the silent stretch of black water with only the moon's reflection and the stone lions for company. When the causeway reached the plaza, she turned away from the streets that led to their guesthouse and instead went toward the Avenue of the Moon Rising. It led to the Illsat Sidar, the Temple of the Adversary.

  There were still people on the plaza, some carrying lamps, some scurrying furtively in the dark. She supposed Disara might have sent someone to follow her again, if it was Disara who had sent the other one, but her mood was too fey to bother with that. And it was night, and the moon was on the wane, and the Adversary was strong. She could feel the city around her like a living thing, the beat of its heart in the stone under her thin sandals, its breath in the breeze over the water, its warm blood flowing through the canals.

  The avenue led away from the plaza, past the smaller temples that marked the lesser sites of power and connection to the Infinite. She could feel them all in the dark, the ones set back from the avenue and separated from it by sacred and symbolic moats and flanked by libraries, the tiny ones of only one or two rooms, set low to the ground and close to the street where a passer-by could easily leave an offering of fruit or flowers or tie a fragment of bright fabric to the pillars. There were no houses behind or between these temples, no markets growing up on the small plazas in front of the larger ones, only stretches of grass with wild mulberry and ilex and red jasmine. There would be quarters for priests and penitents and the temple servants, but they were set far back from the street.

  The avenue ended at the Illsat Sidar.

  There was no ceremonial moat. The avenue narrowed to a walkway, passing between two long low buildings enclosing pillared courts, the temple's libraries. There was lamplight glowing from the windows of one, revealing late-night scholars, but Maskelle passed silently. The walkway became a broad stone stair that led up a hill that was part natural, part man-made, shored up with stone long ago when the city's foundations had been laid. She climbed the stairs to a wide terrace edged with knee-high statues of blackhead snakes, one of the Adversary's forms.

  There were two minor shrines facing each other across the terrace, now only shapes in the dark. A second, steeper stair led up to the central shrine, a larger building that if viewed from above would be in the shape of a lotus.

  Maskelle stood in the entrance, breathing in the scent of the place, of cool dank stone and old incense. She moved further in, through the first court with its ceiling open to the dark sky, then to the inner sanctuary that lay just beyond.

  A few candles had been lit in stone cage lamps, throwing gold light on the carvings and making the garuda birds and the other monstrous creatures seem to flicker with life. The effect was curiously like watching some of the Ariaden's smaller puppets on their shadowbox stage. In the center of the floor was a round gold plate, etched with ancient symbols of the Infinite too worn to read now, rubbed away with time and the softness of the metal.

  Maskelle could feel the pulse of the city, the Marai, the Baran Dir, and the other temples, but of the Adversary's presence there was nothing. The temple had the feel of the Illsat Keo, an empty room, recently deserted. So recently she could almost sense the warmth of the departed body. Maybe anything else was too much to expect.

  Except He gave you that dream. Dream, vision, warning. The Adversary's messages weren't usually so hard to understand. If you knew they were messages. She shivered, not from the dank air. I won’t make that mistake again. A misinterpreted prophecy was what had gotten her into all this in the first place. The rest had been her own fault, compounding her original error. I won’t make that mistake again, but I’m so damn tired of being sorry for it, she thought bitterly.

  The figure stepped out of the shadows across the dark chamber, a solid darkness one moment, a man the next, the light touching dark-colored silk and gold. Ah, Maskelle thought, too used to the vagaries of the Ancestors to be surprised. So that’s what brought me here. She said, "Sirot. Come to say welcome home?"

  The man walked toward her, stopping not ten paces away. There was no dust on the stone tiles to be disturbed, or not disturbed, by the passage of his feet, but she felt that his body was not warming the air and his breath was not stirring it, despite the apparent substantiality of his presence. Sirot said, "So you returned after all."

  He was exactly the same as he had been in life, an image caught in time without the mutability of memory. His long dark hair was caught back by a gold clasp, his sharp features harsh in the candlelight. His trousers and jacket were black, almost melding with the shadow except for the fine sheen of the fabric and the glint of gold armbands. Maskelle said, "It was only a matter of time."

  "To face the scene of your defeat?" He smiled, his lips a thin line.

  "I may be defeated, but I'm not dead. Pity you can't say the same." Shades had no power to touch the living, but she had never feared Sirot even when he was alive. She had loved him once, when she had been too young for judgment but old enough to mistake willfulness for certainty.

  He laughed at her, a curiously flat sound that seemed to travel no more than the distance necessary to reach her; it didn't cast faint echoes off the stone walls as her voice did. He said, "My son has the throne. That's all that ever mattered t
o me."

  "Yes, I found that out," Maskelle agreed. That, at least, was true. Sirot had never wanted anything except the throne of the Celestial Empire for his son. If he had wanted Maskelle once, that had given way to his ambition long before her false vision had made them enemies. It had been later that she had killed him, when she was older and no wiser. Killed him for nothing, for his son had taken the throne anyway and her vision of disaster had not come to pass.

  "And what other wisdom has time revealed to you? Enlighten me." He spoke with that subtle edge of contempt that had once amused her when he had demonstrated it on others. He had been subtle and clever enough to hide his contempt for her until the final break between them.

  Maskelle's shoulders ached and she was suddenly too tired for this, tired of ghosts and memory. She said, "Is that what you're here for? I've admitted that to the world, Sirot. I was tricked, fooled, lied to. The vision was false. You were right and I was wrong." Saying it to a dead reflection of a soul long gone to the Infinite was nothing.

  His smile died, and his eyes stared into hers, flat and opaque. He said, "Was I right?"

  That wasn't the answer she had expected. "What do you mean?" she asked, before she could stop herself. It was never a good idea to ask questions of shades.

  If this was a shade. Maskelle felt something stir in the temple, a restless flow of power. The Adversary...

  Sirot said, again, without expression, "Was I right?" In the next breath he was gone. Maskelle cursed, buried her face in her hands. The sense of the Adversary's presence had gone with him. No, it wasn't the Adversary, it was Sirot. He came to destroy what little calm you've managed to attain, only that.

  She lifted her head and sighed. The temple felt warm again, warm but empty. She looked at the gold disk in the floor. It marked the closest point in the temple to the Adversary, the carefully calculated point where this world came closest to the Infinite. Even people who had never explored the Path could receive visions by standing on it. Let's test our resolve, then. If the Adversary wouldn't speak to her there, she would know he would never speak to her again. Before she could think better of it, she stepped onto the gold disk.

  Images struck her with breathtaking force. She saw the great stone buildings with their flicker of candlelight, the vast grey plain. But this time the dry cool air was suffocating, heavy with sharp fear and desperation so intense it choked her. Soon, soon, soon, her own voice whispered. They will move soon. They can't afford to wait.

  Maskelle opened her eyes. She lay on her back, on the cold stone floor of the temple, staring at the arches carved into garuda birds. She sat up and grabbed her head. "Ow." She couldn't have been unconscious long. It was still dark out and the candles in the lamps hadn't guttered. No answer would have been answer enough. Now all she had was another puzzle.

  ***

  The grey dawn light was filtering through the trees when Maskelle reached the gate of their house. She trudged across the muddy court to where Old Mali sat on a bench in front of the kitchen firepit, poking suspiciously at the oven. Maskelle picked up the pottery jug that was set to warm in the ashes, but it was empty. She asked hopefully, "Tea? Food?"

  "In time," Old Mali growled. "I've only got two hands." One rheumy eye gazed at Maskelle critically. "You need a bath."

  "Thank you, yes, I know." Maskelle started up the stairs. Old Mali snarled at her and, sighing, she stopped to take off her muddy sandals.

  Upstairs there were unconscious Ariaden strewn around the common room and she picked her way across them carefully. She paused in the doorway to her room, staring at the empty bed, until her mind, trapped somewhere back in the past amid the patterns and symbols of the Infinite, registered what was wrong. Rian wasn't here. He should be back by now. It's not that far to the west Palace district. Unless something had gone badly wrong.

  She checked the other rooms first, just to make sure he wasn't with anybody else, but Doria and Therassa were together and Killia was sharing a bed with her daughter. An unworthy impulse, she told herself. Perhaps seeing Sirot's shade again had shaken her more than she had thought. She went back downstairs and did a quick turn through the lower level of the house, but the storage areas and pantry were empty and the tiled floor of the bathing room was dry. She came out again and went to the kitchen, where Old Mali was putting lumps of dough on the baking stones in the oven. "The water jars are full," the old woman hinted again.

  Maskelle ignored her. "Did Rian come back last night?"

  "No." Old Mali glared at her. "He's with you."

  "He's not with me."

  "What did you do with him then?"

  Maskelle started to reply sharply, then bit her lip and said, "I let him go to search the house of a woman who might've killed a couple of priests with magic."

  Old Mali rolled her eyes and shook her head. Maskelle snapped, "Well, now I realize that." She paced, shoving her hair back out of her eyes. "Maybe he went back to the Marai and fell asleep waiting." She couldn't do anything until she looked there first.

  Rastim staggered down the stairs, clutching his head as if trying to keep it from falling off. "What's all the noise?"

  Maskelle started toward the gate. "Sorry, go back to sleep," she told him, then saw the gate at the back of the compound that faced the canal was swinging open. She stopped, frustrated. I don’t have time for this.

  The Celestial One's boat was docked at their water steps and the young priest-attendant was lifting the old man out. Maskelle cursed under her breath, but one couldn't ignore the Celestial One when he came to your own house, no matter who or what one was. She crossed the muddy court to meet him.

  The attendant sat the old man down and he came toward her. Rastim hurried forward, trying to straighten up and not look half-dead, and Old Mali was standing ready with a mat in case the old man sat down. As Maskelle reached him, she said impatiently, "I'm in a hurry—"

  "Listen to me." The Celestial One held up one hand.

  Maskelle suddenly knew what this was about. Intuition or the Ancestors, it didn't matter. Her throat felt tight. She said, "He'd better not be dead." Rastim and Old Mali stared at her.

  Deliberately, the Celestial One said, "I had a message from Hirane of the Baran Dir. Your friend was brought to the Celestial Home by the guard during the dawn meditation."

  Maskelle nodded, looking away. Rian was right, she thought. She could see it now, just as clearly as she could see the dark eruption in the Rite. "That's all I needed to know." It hurt to talk and she realized it was because her jaw muscles were so tight.

  Rastim looked at Old Mali, baffled. She hissed, "The Sitanese."

  The Celestial One shook his head. "Let me deal with this."

  "Oh, no." She smiled. "He's gone to all the effort of having Rian brought to him, just to get my attention. I could hardly deny him what he has asked for, now can I?"

  The Celestial One's eyes narrowed. "You will let me deal with this."

  Maskelle's rage crystallized into a hard knot in her chest. She turned and strode for the gate. Behind her she heard the Celestial One shouting for his attendant and his boatmen.

  Chapter Ten

  The guards took Rian back toward the gate of Kushor-An, down the causeway of giant guardians. His first thought was that they were going back to the Lady Marada's house so someone could point and say, "It was him!" If she had used her magics to see who the intruder had been, there was nothing he could do about it. But they passed the way that led to Marada's house and continued up the broad avenue toward the Baran Dir.

  The guards didn't know quite what to make of him. They had expected him to put up a struggle, so he had gone quietly. He had heard the man who had confronted him called Lord Karuda by the others, so he knew he was correct in his initial assessment. It was mildly annoying that they had found all his knives; Karuda himself still carried the siri. Like a trophy. Careful, Kushorit lord; trophies like that come with high prices.

  As they walked, Rian saw Karuda half-draw the siri, ex
amining the bare hilt and the ring, rubbing his thumb over the places where the figured gold had been removed. Rian eyed him warily. He suspected Karuda was too sharp for his liking. As they neared the great gate, the noble raised his hand, stopping them under a large brass lamp hanging from the harness of one of the giant elephant guardians. He stepped closer to Rian, looking him over thoughtfully, then said, "You're a kjardin. Which lord do you belong to?"

  He had the pronunciation as right as his Kushorit accent would allow. Rian rapidly weighed the merits of claiming Riverwait or Markand and decided on neither. "No one. Not anymore." Let Karuda think he was a thief, an outcast, anything. Just don’t let him think it would be a good idea to send me back. It hadn't occurred to him until now that that could be a possibility. I'm not going back to the barrow. Not alive.

  Karuda's brow lifted skeptically. If he knew enough to look at the remains of the caste marks in Rian's ear and use a word which didn't have an equivalent in Kushorit, then he knew how unlikely it was that a kjardin had been allowed to leave his Hold without catastrophe or scandal. Karuda asked, "The High Lord?"

  Relief at the wildness of this guess made Rian look honestly puzzled. "No. I was from Sorde." That was a small Hold even closer to the mountains than Riverwait and surely Karuda wouldn't know it.

  "I went to the Sintane once with the Kushorit ambassador," Karuda said, eyeing him deliberately. "Kjardin don't leave their Holds."

  Rian could have given him half a dozen ready lies, but Karuda would know them for it immediately. He said only, "This one did."

  Frowning, Karuda only looked at the siri again, sheathed it, and moved on.

  The dawn light was beginning to illuminate the Baran Dir, the faces that surmounted its many towers gazing in massive beneficence over the smaller temples and the sprawl of wealthy homes and gardens that grew up just outside its moat. It wasn't meant to look like an ever-rising mountain like the Marai, but it was built up on two high stone terraces that raised the central towers more than a hundred feet in the air. The stone was a lighter color than the other temples and glowed a rich gold in the dawn.