The Burning Land

Chapter 3

Gyalo woke at dawn, as he always did, even now that there were no bells to mark the time.

The room in which he lay was a wreck. The plaster ceiling was gone; only the lath remained, tacked precariously to the beams that supported the floor above. The walls had fared a little better, though their original white was faded to the color of spoiled milk. One window-screen was intact, a lovely filigree of twining vines, its long-unoiled wood desiccated and brittle; the others had broken or fallen out. Debris covered the floor--chunks of plaster, bits of wood, scraps of fabric, and, everywhere, the litter of birds: guano, feathers, animal bones.

The monastery of which this room was part stood on the desert side of Thuxra Notch, the pass that gave access through the Range of Clouds to the Burning Land. Like other small monasteries in remote locations, it had survived the Caryaxist takeover without dispersal of its religious population, and for ten years after the fall of the old government carried on more or less as always, maintaining the track through the pass and providing lodging for the pilgrims who came to see the sacred desert for themselves--not many, in those anti-Âratist times. It might have been left alone indefinitely, to die slowly by attrition, had it not been for the construction of Thuxra City, which brought it to the Caryaxists’ attention. It was targeted for closure, Caryaxist-style. Soldiers came to execute the monks; their bodies were left unburied on the ground outside, and the monastery’s salvageable goods were hauled away.

The monks’ bones had been collected by the Exile army soon after the liberation of Thuxra City, and brought to Baushpar for interment. The Caryaxists had burned the monastery’s papers, and the monks’ names would never have been known had the soldiers not found, inscribed in still-legible red paint on the wall of a third-floor chamber, a message: Remember us, followed by sixty names. Gyalo had searched it out the previous evening, and stood before it for some time.

The Dreamers, repelled by the aura of death that hung around the building, had argued against camping here. Kai-do Seiki had been especially vehement. In the end she had given in, but her complaints and exhortations annoyed and tired everyone--especially Gyalo, from whom, as usual, she demanded support.

Thinking of Seiki, Gyalo sighed and rose.

Shivering, for it was early autumn now and the mountain nights were cold, he took his meditation square from his travel pack. Settling himself cross-legged, he meditated for the space of two thousand breaths. Then, rising to his knees, he crossed his arms before his face and spoke the Affirmations with which every Âratist, vowed and secular, greeted the day:

“Ârata is the one god, now and forever. Ârata is the bright god, and darkness does not touch him. Ârata sleeps, but one day will wake. I affirm my faith in Ârata, deny my ash-nature in his name, and rejoice in the promise of his rising. Great is Ârata. Great is his Way.”

Returning to his travel pack, he dug out a large leather pouch and a flat silver box. The pouch, lined with several layers of waxed silk, held two years’ supply of manita--far more than would be required for this journey, but he liked to err on the side of caution. Inside the box, each cradled in its own felt-lined compartment, was a tiny silver scoop, a silver tube slightly flared at one end, and a disc of beaten silver about as big as his palm.

He removed the items and arranged them before him on the meditation square. Opening the pouch, he spooned eight measures of fine brownish powder onto the disc, then bent and used the tube to inhale them--four in one nostril, four in the other. The drug struck him immediately, a burning at the back of his throat, a flare of light before his eyes, a buzzing in his brain. It passed almost at once, leaving his mind and vision clear. So accustomed was he to these sensations that he scarcely noticed them.

He put the manita equipment away, wadded all his spare clothing and undergarments into a bundle, took his razor, and descended to the ground floor, where the rest of the party slept. The soldiers, who had laid out their pallets with military precision in what had been the monastery’s dining room, were already stirring. Avoiding them--not out of any particular aversion but because he had had enough of human interaction after the disputes of last night, and wanted to bathe, as he had wanted to sleep, in peace--Gyalo slipped out the back.

The arid hills that made up this portion of Thuxra Notch spread out before him, bracketed to the east and west by towering snow-capped peaks, glowing pale apricot in the light of the rising sun. The dry earth was broken everywhere by rock, like skin worn down to the bone; it supported only short tufted grasses and the occasional scrubby bush. Nevertheless, the monks had made gardens, enclosing areas and building them up with manure from their goats and chickens. In addition to the food crops, they had grown a small supply of manita--the shade posts still stood, though the gauze that had covered them was long since rotted away. Only a handful of Shapers could ever have been needed here, for ritual and supervision, but there was not a monastery anywhere with a patch of ground and a reasonable climate that did not grow manita plants and maintain a preparation specialist to dry and process the leaves. There was still some manita here, in fact, in a zinc-lined box in the storage cellar, alongside heaps of desiccated root vegetables and dried-up crocks of salt meat. Out of curiosity, Gyalo had tested it: even after all this time, it had the burn and flash of fully-effective drug.

At the stream that ran in a rocky channel a little distance from the derelict gardens, Gyalo stripped and squatted on the bank to wash his clothes. He was careful to measure his movements; the Notch was lower than the peaks around it, but still well above the tree-line, and he had discovered how easy it was to lose his breath even in the most ordinary activities. The water was snowmelt, rushing down from higher elevations, and his hands quickly grew numb. He spread the garments to dry and, gathering his resolve, waded into the shallow flow and knelt there, splashing water on himself until he could no longer endure it. He returned to the bank and waited for his shivering to diminish, then shaved his face and scalp by touch, a trick he had mastered long ago.

He was warm by the time he was done, for the sun had risen high enough to flood the floor of the Notch, and there was no wind today to chill the air. He set the razor aside and closed his eyes, raising his face to the light. A sense of well-being possessed him, composed of many small awarenesses: the sun on his flesh, the pleasure of being clean, the morning hunger in his belly.

Travel suited him. The daily promise of new sights and experiences, the novelty of passing each night in a different place: he loved these things, and beside them the monotony of travel rations and unbroken days of riding and even the tiresome demands of the Dreamers seemed inconsequential.

He had walked the crowded streets of Ninyâser, Arsace’s capital, with its brick-paved streets and graceful multi-storied dwellings, so different from the low buildings of earthquake-prone Chonggye or the massive granite structures that dominated Baushpar. He had sat in meditation in the shadowed core of Ninyâser’s temple, where a newly-gilded image of Ârata Creator gleamed like the sun glimpsed across a void of night. Just outside the town of Darna, he had laid offerings before the representation of Ârata Warrior rock-cut into a cliff, and paid his respects at the adjacent religious complex, whose administrator, with whom he had corresponded about issues of staffing and refurbishment, received him with great cordiality. He had made several detours to visit the holy sites that lay near the expedition’s route: the forest clearing where King Fârat first embraced the Way of Ârata; the Cave of the Steadfast, where a group of early Âratists were walled in alive for proclaiming that Vahu, then worshipped as a separate deity, was only an Aspect of a greater god; the hill above the River Hatane, where the First Messenger had stood so long and proclaimed the Way so passionately that his feet had left imprints in the stone. Here Gyalo was disappointed, for the shrine built around the imprints was being restored, and wooden scaffolding had been placed over them for protection.

Of course, he had also seen things much less inspiring. Santaxma was less than two years restored to the throne; in many ways it was astonishing what had been accomplished in that time. Yet the shadow of eight Caryaxist decades still lay long across Arsace. For every shrine or temple or monastery restored and repopulated, two more lay vandalized and empty. For every Âratist hospital or orphanage put back in operation, half a dozen stood vacant. Even now Caryaxist slogan banners could be seen, and many people still wore the dull peasant garb the Caryaxist government had imposed as part of its campaign to abolish the distinctions of rank. In the south, where there had been civil war upon the Voice’s death, whole villages lay in ruins; in Arsace’s fertile center fields lay fallow, grown up in weeds. There was little land that had not been at least preliminarily reclaimed by its pre-Caryaxist owners, but putting it back into use was a complicated and contentious task. The Caryaxists had done away with most forms of ownership, freeing serfs and combining farms and peasant holdings and private estates into vast agricultural plantations; now boundaries must be resurveyed and conflicting claims sorted out one by one. There was also the question of what to do about the plantation workers, who believed they too had a claim upon the land.

Yet even these sober sights did not diminish the pleasure Gyalo took in the process of the journey. He was aware that his enjoyment was unlikely to survive the Burning Land, which would bring at last the trials he had wondered about, and feared, in Baushpar. Still, he was no longer haunted by dread. There was a timelessness to the constant motion that soothed his soul. He felt, if not precisely severed from his ordinary life, suspended somewhere beyond it, weightless and serene.

The sound of voices roused him. He got up and began to pull on his still-damp garments.

“Playing washerwoman, Brother?”

It was one of the cavalrymen, Haxar, with his companion Sauras and several others. Santaxma’s Exile Army had included men from all the kingdoms of Galea, but expatriate Arsacians were its core; Haxar and the rest were pure-blood Arsacian, born and raised in the refugee communities of Haruko. Their military pedigree was more distinguished than most, for they had been among those who rode with Santaxma through the streets of Ninyâser after it fell, and followed him on his famous pilgrimage through the Hundred-Domed Palace, as he reclaimed his heritage room by room.

“I thought I’d take the chance while there’s still running water,” Gyalo replied.

“Why bother, Brother?” Sauras inquired with a grin, dumping an armload of waterskins on the stream bank. “It won’t be long before we’re desert-bound. You’ll be caked so stiff with sand and sweat you won’t even remember being clean.”

“Well, I’ll be clean today at least,” Gyalo retorted. “You might profit from my example. I can smell you from here.”

“He hasn’t let a drop of water touch him for two weeks, Brother.” Haxar pulled the stopper from one of the skins and plunged it into the stream. “Ârata’s thousand wounds, that’s cold! How’d you stand to get in it?....He thinks if he lets the dirt pile on thick enough, he won’t be burned in the desert sun.”

“If he doesn’t die before, from the bloody stench,” said one of the other soldiers, amid guffaws from his fellows.

“You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your faces soon enough,” Sauras said. “Meantime, I’m taking bets. Care to wager, Brother?”

“I’m not a gambler, Sauras. But if I were, I think I’d bet against you.” Gyalo finished gathering up his clothes. “Are the Dreamers awake yet?”

“Awake and making trouble.”

Gyalo sighed. “I’d better go, then.”

“Rather you than me, Brother!”

Their laughter followed him as he made his way back.

The moment he entered he was confronted by Rikoyu, the Forceless monk who provided dream interpretation for the two Dreamers. Gyalo did not particularly like Rikoyu, a stolid, humorless man whose literal-mindedness completely belied his delicate and subtle profession; but it was impossible not to feel sympathy for him, for the Dreamers treated him dreadfully, and he bore the brunt of their many petty dissatisfactions and angers.

“She wants to see you.” Rikoyu’s face and voice, as always, were impassive; only his use of the pronoun betrayed his agitation. “Can you come?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Gyalo set his laundry aside and followed Rikoyu to the room the Dreamers, after some argument the night before, had chosen. Inside, the litter of the floor had been swept into one corner, and the Dreamers’ portable beds set up: long boxes made of boards held together with removable pegs and strung with rope lattices, into which thick cotton-stuffed mattresses were fitted. Posts were thrust into brackets at each corner, supporting drapes of diaphanous crimson silk. Senri-dai Tak’s drapes were still closed--Gyalo could just see him through the translucent fabric, lying on his back with his hands crossed on his chest, as composed as a corpse--but Kai-do Seiki’s had been looped aside, and she was sitting up amid a welter of red coverlets.

Unlike shaping, the power of dreaming had not been given by Ârata at creation, but was born into humankind after the god lay down to sleep--a final gift perhaps, a solace for the years of exile. Through special visions of their slumbering minds, which in their vividness and complexity were not at all like ordinary dreams, those with dreaming ability were able to travel out across the world in sleep. With training, Dreamers could learn to set their destinations and control their actions, to call in Dreams at will and send them out with precision. Mystic Dreamers drugged themselves to unconsciousness, striving to touch the edges of Ârata’s own slumber. Working Dreamers sold their ability to rulers engaged in espionage, or to merchants who wanted to track the progress of trade caravans. Charlatan Dreamers (and charlatans who were not Dreamers) sold nonexistent services to the gullible, claiming they could dream the future or influence what was to come.

To the First Messenger, Ârata revealed a greater truth. The Dreams of human Dreamers touched the earth, as Ârata’s did. Human Dreams might thus be made into a tool to combat the evils and disasters that Ârata’s dreams of pain brought into being--to fight these things on their own terms, as the dreams they were. Thus the Path of Dreams was born. Where there were droughts, Âratist Dreamers dreamed of rain. Where there was plague, they dreamed of health. Where crops were blighted, they dreamed of growth; where there was famine, they dreamed of abundance. In this way the chaos of existence was held, if not at bay, at least in equilibrium, so that Ârata’s agony could not overwhelm the world as it had in the dark centuries before the First Messenger’s coming, when plagues and tempests and monsters had stalked humankind without respite.

Âratist Dreamers avoided contact with the outside world, whose hard, unmalleable reality they found distasteful. They spent their lives cloistered in monasteries and nunneries, sleeping fifteen hours at a time and rarely leaving their beds even when awake, existing in a silent, rarified universe of opulent rooms and dim light and soft foods, where devoted servants waited on them hand and foot, and every whim was instantly gratified. Most were pale, languid creatures with little physical strength and no practical skills, incapable of fending for themselves in even the most basic ways. During the mass secularizations imposed by the Caryaxists they had died in droves, unable to survive without the special care to which they were accustomed.

“I dreamed last night of death,” Seiki said. Like most Dreamers, she was fat, with smooth unweathered skin that made her seem much younger than her true age. “Dead monks, dead bones, dead rooms, dead gardens. Dead, all dead.”

“I’m sorry, Seiki,” Gyalo said. “These weren’t summoned Dreams, were they?”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t be so stupid as to summon a Dream here. Even so, all that death, all around me...” She shuddered. “This is your fault. I told you this place would trouble me. As a Shaper, you should have supported me.”

It was clear to Gyalo that this was more than just peevishness at work: sleeping in the monastery really had made her suffer. Being who she was, however, she was incapable of simply saying so. Nearly three months of dealing with such situations had drained him of patience, and he was sorely tempted to make a sharp reply. But it was his duty to smooth feathers, not to ruffle them; in any case, he needed to pick his battles, for there were a lot of them. The coming day of travel would be easier for everyone if he allowed Seiki to browbeat him a little.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, soothingly. “It must have been very distressing for you. Did Tak have trouble too?”

Seiki clutched at her red coverlets. “What do I care about Tak?” The two Dreamers disliked each other only slightly less than they disliked the other members of the expedition. “It’s me we’re talking about.”

“Well, we’ll be leaving in an hour or two. The bad influences will be behind you. You’ll be able to put it out of your mind.”

“Yes, but what if this place has clouded my dreaming?” Effortlessly she switched from accusation to anxiety. “What if I can’t call in my Dreams? I need to call in my Dreams. Everyone is depending on me.”

“You won’t be clouded,” Gyalo said firmly, as if to a child. “You’re too powerful a Dreamer, Seiki. You have the skill to dream true, no matter what the circumstances. That’s why you were chosen to guide us through the Burning Land. There aren’t many who would be capable of that.”

“Or of whining so much while they’re about it,” interjected Tak, with sluggish spite, from behind his crimson draperies. Gyalo ignored him.

“Once we reach the Burning Land, you’ll dream just as you always have. Everything will work out for the best--you’ll see. We all have faith in you. We are all so very grateful you are with us. I promise to make sure we never stay in a place like this again.”

“I could report you for this, you know. Even if you do serve the Brethren.”

Gyalo drew a breath. At such times it required real effort to remember that he did not actually detest Seiki, that in her helplessness and arrogance she was pitiable rather than hateful.

“Was there anything else you needed?” he asked quietly.

Seiki’s eyes moved around the room, as if searching for some reason to keep him. “I suppose not.”

“Then I’ll be going. I’ve a Communion service to prepare.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved a plump hand. “Go if you must.”

He turned away. Her voice followed him out.

“Well? What are you standing there for? Go see why my attendant hasn’t brought me my breakfast yet.”

“Yes, Sister,” Rikoyu said. There was not a trace of emotion in his voice.

#

The expedition departed an hour later.

The road they traveled was broad and well graded. Before the building of Thuxra City, it had been a simple horse track; nothing else was needed, for only pilgrims sought out he Burning Land. But with the opening of the prison a proper road became necessary, and the track had been widened and improved so it could comfortably accommodate large wagons or several prisoners walking abreast.

The party made good speed, riding from just after dawn to just before dusk, camping on the road, strung out in the order of travel: the soldiers first, led by Teispas, with their grooms and spare mounts and packhorses; then the enclosed coaches of the Dreamers, in which their attendants also traveled; then Gyalo and Rikoyu; and finally the two additional Forceless, Sittibaal and Zabdas, who had joined the party in Ninyâser. Gyalo could sometimes hear them as they rode, talking in the language of Yahaz, their native land. They were not Perpetuals, put to Âratist training since childhood, but Second Lifers, who had vowed the Way as adults--former military men, both of them, who kept to themselves. They were cooperative travelers and required little supervision.

It was Teispas’s habit to ride the length of the column three or four times a day, to make sure all was as it should be. A little over a week after they left the ruined monastery, he reined in at Gyalo’s side.

“How goes it, Brother?”

“Well enough, Captain.”

“That’s sensible.” Teispas nodded at the cloth Gyalo had wrapped around his head to protect his shaven scalp. “The sun’s fiercer than you realize. The air’s different this side of the Notch, have you noticed?”

“Yes. Drier. Sometimes I think I can smell the desert.”

“You should get your first sight of it soon.” Teispas wiped the sweat from his forehead. Each day of the descent had been a little warmer than the last; the captain still wore his scale hauberk, but like the other soldiers he had removed his helmet. “I’m told there are a number of overlooks.”

They rode on in silence. Teispas was a formidably competent organizer, and under his direction the journeying had run as smoothly as a sand clock; he was an efficient soldier as well, as Gyalo had learned in the lawless regions south of Ninyâser, where the party had twice come under bandit attack. Over the weeks they had established an amicable relationship; there was respect between them, even a certain liking. Yet Gyalo could not say he knew the captain better now than on the first day they had met. Even at his most cordial, Teispas was separated from others by an impenetrable wall of reserve.

“I’ve been given orders,” Teispas said abruptly. “We’re to keep close while we’re at Thuxra City. We’ll be barracked in the custodians’ compound--it’s separate and enclosed, and we’re not to go out of it. We’re not even to go about within it unless we have an escort.”

“Ah,” Gyalo said, surprised; Sundit had not mentioned this. “Very well. I’ll warn the others.”

“I hope she won’t be a problem.” Self-disciplined as he was, Teispas could not quite hide his loathing for Seiki, who had driven him to distraction with her demands and whims on the way to Baushpar. His gratitude to Gyalo for relieving him of this duty had made the first bond between them. “It’ll be very awkward if she decides she must go sight-seeing.”

“Well,” Gyalo said wryly, “since she invariably wants the opposite of what she’s offered, perhaps I’ll tell her that sight-seeing is a requirement of our stay.”

“And that not to do it will insult our hosts.” Teispas grinned, a wide, wolfish expression. Gyalo had thought him entirely humorless when they first met, but in fact the captain possessed a fierce dark wit, which emerged infrequently, like flashes of light from a well-curtained room. “Then she’ll be sure to stay indoors.” He sobered. “This is important, Brother. I’m counting on you to manage it.”

“I can’t imagine why any of us would want to go about. Thuxra City isn’t exactly the sort of place one wants to tour.” He studied Teispas’s hard profile, which as usual revealed nothing. “Why is it so important?”

“Just manage it.” Teispas’s voice was flat. “Will you do that?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Good.” Without further word Teispas pulled his horse aside, and spurred it toward the front of the line. Gyalo was left puzzled, and unaccountably uneasy.

A few days later, the Burning Land came in view. Beyond a steep curve in the road the cliffs dropped away, and the Land was there--a stunning immensity of flat red ground and patchy green-and-yellow scrub, sweeping without variation all the way to the horizon. There was more red in some places, and more green elsewhere, and here and there a scrap or strip of brown or gray or amber; but in essence wherever the eye fell the view was the same, a monotony as astonishing in its way as the gargantuan scale of it. The horizon was lost in a lavender haze of distance; above this, the sky paled, then deepened to the purest blue Gyalo had ever seen--and the most barren, for it was empty of birds, empty of cloud, empty of everything except the harsh brilliance of the sun.

The others checked their pace to look, then rode on. But Gyalo pulled his horse out of line and urged it toward the edge, and sat gazing down until he felt he might spread his arms and soar outward, like the birds that did not fly here. He had formed images of what the Land might be like, based on his reading, but the reality of it banished them utterly. He had not expected it to be beautiful; but beautiful it was, in the burning color of the ground, the green haze of vegetation, the blinding sapphire of the sky--alienly, forbiddingly, breathtakingly beautiful. He thought of the First Messenger, crossing the Notch twelve centuries before: had he paused on this very precipice, perhaps, looked out over this very vista?

He became aware that someone had drawn up beside him: Rikoyu. The interpreter stared down at the Land, an odd expression on his usually stolid face.

“It’s so flat,” he said.

“Not completely.” Already, Gyalo’s eyes were adjusting to the contours of what lay below; he could see that it was not as unvaried as he had first thought. “I think that’s a fold of hills, over there.” He pointed. “And there too, to the west. And perhaps something higher, toward the southern horizon...but it’s not easy to tell from such a distance.”

“So flat,” said Rikoyu, as if Gyalo had not spoken. “I can’t...” He drew an audible breath. “It’s hard to believe we’ll really travel there.”

Gyalo looked at him, stiff in the saddle, hands clenched upon the reins. Rikoyu, he realized, was afraid. Of the trials of crossing such an alien land? Of the presumption of treading on holy ground?

“We’re well equipped and well prepared,” he said, gently. “We go in Ârata’s service. There’s nothing to fear.”

Rikoyu did not reply. After a moment he turned his horse and rode off after the others. Gyalo remained a little longer, his eyes moving on the wastes, drinking in their immensity. The air against his face was hot; he could taste its dryness. Beneath this land, he thought, Ârata slept--invisible, concealed. Yet in every particle, the soil spoke his presence, for it was the color of his skin: the color of the fiercest flame, the color of the hottest coal.

“Great is Ârata,” he whispered. “Great is his Way.”

The wind seized the words and bore them up into the endless sky.

#

They came down at last onto the parched red flatlands where Thuxra City stood. Because of the way the foothills rose and the road curved, the prison had been hidden as they descended, and so Gyalo’s first view of it was face-on, from a distance of about half a mile: a great ribbon of black wall, quivering and distorted with heat. A pair of gates was set two-thirds of the way along its length, closest to the right-hand edge. Along the longer, left-hand side, changes in the masonry testified to Thuxra’s several expansions, as its ever-growing population outstripped the existing walls’ ability to hold them. Gyalo found it extraordinarily ugly--not just in itself but in its harsh man-made presence in this untouched land. He thought he would have seen it so even if this had not been a sacred place, and the walls a terrible defilement.

Atop the walls, guard enclosures curved outward at regular intervals. They were empty, for Thuxra was no longer an active prison: Its captives had been sent back to Arsace soon after its liberation, its mining operations terminated. The only work that went on here now was the reclaiming of equipment for reuse elsewhere, preparatory to Thuxra’s complete dismantlement; the only inhabitants were the Exile soldiers in charge of that task, and, for some of the officers, their families.

Someone was watching, though, for as the party neared the gates began to swing inward. Beyond lay an immense paved courtyard, itself bounded by high walls. Directly ahead, a wide opening gave onto the complex of stables and workshops and warehouses that had once kept Thuxra running. The wall on the right was pierced by a latticed gate--the entrance to the custodians’ compound. The wall on the left was set with four wooden doors. Every captive brought here--by cart or on foot, in long trains or in groups of two or three--had passed through one of those doors: first stripped naked, then set to wait as custodians recorded their names and physical characteristics, then herded away according to their crimes: political prisoners through the first door, religious offenders through the second, civilians through the third, violent criminals through the last.

The party halted where the prisoners had stood, while Teispas dismounted and went to greet Thuxra’s military administrator, who was approaching with several of his aides. It was breathlessly hot. The thick walls seemed to swallow sound; an odd dead silence filled the courtyard, muffling the voices of the men, even the noise of the horses’ hooves and harness. Still, distantly, Gyalo thought he could hear a rhythmic booming, like a battering ram against a metal gate, and, behind it, the babble of voices--Thuxra’s workers, engaged in the task of dismantlement.

He looked toward the doors--closed forever, the prison spaces behind them empty. He had prepared himself for this experience, as he prepared himself for most experiences, by reading: studying a plan of Thuxra drawn up by its liberators, scanning many of the liberators’ accounts. The scrim of that familiarity lay across this strange place. But it was only a surface familiarity, and his knowledge was only paper knowledge, and as days ago above the Burning Land, he found himself forced to acknowledge its limitations. He had believed himself prepared to enter this place, where so many horrors had been done; but in what he felt now, he understood he was less ready than he had thought.

At last the signal was given to dismount. Grooms came to take the horses. The baggage was unloaded, the Dreamers helped from their coaches and settled into their litters. The administrator and his aides ushered them toward the custodians’ compound.

Beyond the gate lay a different world. A broad graveled thoroughfare ran between graceful villas with pillared porches and pastel-hued walls, each set within its own lush garden. Everywhere was greenery, and astonishing quantities of water--leaping in fountains, running in artificial streams, cascading into gazing pools. The air smelled of grass and wet. Gyalo, staring around him, felt as if he were dreaming. The awful heat was the same, as were the walls of Thuxra, rising dark above the green; beyond that, there was not the smallest sign of prison, or of desert.

The soldiers were led away to barracks, and Teispas and the vowed Âratists were conducted to the administrator’s house, which was larger than the rest and enclosed within a bigger garden. Gyalo’s room was lavishly appointed, with a high Arsacian-style bed and choice carpets on the floor. Bowls of flowers had been set upon the windowsills. A manservant stowed his travel pack and the boxes of his ceremonial equipment, then conducted him to the bath house, where yet more water, piped in and heated by some invisible method, steamed in round wooden tubs.

They gathered for the evening meal on the wide porch at the house’s rear. The air was cooler, touched with the scent of flowers from the garden. Both Dreamers had chosen to sleep, but Teispas, Gyalo, and the two Forceless monks were present, as was the administrator and three of his aides, and a woman whom the administrator introduced as Kaluela, his wife. She bowed to Gyalo, then took his arm and drew him to the chair by hers.

“There’s plenty here, below the ground,” she said, in response to his question about the abundance of water. “More than enough for all Thuxra’s needs, even when it was full.”

“Yes,” said the aide seated opposite. He was Tapati, and wore the full-skirted red surcoat and wide gold sash of Exile dress uniform. Like many non-Arsacian Exile personnel, he affected the aristocratic Arsacian styles that had been current before the coming of the Caryaxists: Gold rings hung in his earlobes, and his hair fell to his shoulders in carefully waxed ringlets. “Say what you will about the Caryaxists, they were clever engineers. The irrigation methods they worked out are quite extraordinary.”

“One wouldn’t know there was desert here at all,” Gyalo said.

Kaluela smiled. She was Tapati also, plump and handsome, with slow-blinking amber eyes discreetly enhanced by cosmetics and golden skin that looked as if it had never felt the touch of the desert sun. Like the aide, she was dressed Arsacian-fashion, in a high-waisted gown of green and purple silk, her black hair coiled atop her head and the backs of her hands painted with delicate designs. There was a calmness about her, a kind of placid grace; in other circumstances Gyalo might have enjoyed her company. But he was not comfortable in this tiny mock-paradise. Its dishonesty repelled him, its denial of the environment that surrounded it; it disturbed him to see Exile personnel so easily ensconced, as if they had forgotten what Thuxra had been. He was distracted also by the impression that he could hear distant shouting, as in the courtyard this afternoon. He knew it was only the sound of workers, laboring into the night; but in a small, irreducible part of himself it seemed that what he heard must be the crying of Thuxra’s victims, as if Thuxra’s walls had absorbed their suffering like the desert heat and still breathed it back.

“Water transforms everything, Brother,” Kaluela said. “This desert soil is actually very fertile, once you irrigate it. We cultivate much of our own food here, outside the walls, though not on such a scale as the Caryaxists did. And inside there are the gardens.” She gestured toward the dim green tangle beyond the lamplit porch. “Of course you have work to keep it wet--in this heat you can’t neglect it even a day.”

“That must require a lot of labor.”

“Yes. Fortunately we were able to keep the servants who were here originally.”

“You employ the Caryaxists’ servants?”

“Not servants,” the aide said. “Prisoners. The Caryaxists used every resource they had. They took men and women from the prison population and trained them to domestic service. As you can imagine, it was considered a desirable assignment.”

“They’re free now, of course.” Kaluela looked uncomfortable. “And we pay them a wage. But it did seem sensible to keep the people who had been here, since they knew how to run things.”

Gyalo found himself unwilling to imagine that anyone who had been imprisoned in this place would choose to stay, wage or no. Unless they had not been given a choice? He glanced at the two middle-aged women who stood a little distance away, waiting to spring to the service of anyone who dropped a napkin or needed more wine. They wore neat, well-made dresses; their quiet faces bore no mark of suffering or reluctance.

“They came to a place where there was nothing, the Caryaxists,” the aide said. “And they built an entire self-sustaining community. They used everything that could be used--people, space, materials. Because of the conditions here, they invented things that had not been known, used methods that had never been tried. It’s extraordinary, some of the things they did.”

“Really, Dorjaro,” Kaluela said. “Sometimes I think you actually admire them.”
Dorjaro shrugged. “Hating what they did doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge their ingenuity.”

“I confess I feel pity for them,” Kaluela said. “Not the men, of course, but the wives and children. They weren’t responsible, surely. They left everything behind when they fled, even their clothing, even the children’s toys. The other wives and I packed it all up and shipped it back to Ninyâser, to be given to the poor.”

“That was compassionate of you, lady,” Gyalo said.

She leaned toward him, enclosing him in her perfume. “I’m so glad you’re here, Brother. I’ve often thought about them, those poor Âratists sent out to die. I’m so glad you’ll be setting their bones to rest in Ârata’s bosom.”

That was what those at Thuxra had been told of the expedition’s purpose; only the prison administrator knew the truth.

“You have a kind heart, lady.”

“I’ll pray for you while you’re gone, to Jo-mea and Dâdarshi. For luck, and safe return.”

She brushed her fingers across the Âratist charm she wore at her neck, a sun-symbol made of gold. She was devout: Gyalo had seen the Aspect shrines, a dozen or more of them, in a shadowed room at the back of the house.

At the other end of the table, the administrator leaned forward. “We were hoping, Brother, that we might ask a favor of you while you’re here. Some of us have been at Thuxra for close to a year, and in all that time we haven’t had a chance to take Communion. We’d be grateful if you’d conduct a service for us.”

“That’s no imposition at all,” Gyalo said, sincerely. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

The administrator smiled. He was stout and handsome like his wife, though considerably older. Alone among his colleagues, he eschewed Arsacian fashion: His ears were unpierced, his hair cropped short in Tapati military style. “I’ll make the arrangements. Would midday tomorrow be acceptable?”

“Yes. It would be helpful to know how many might attend.”

“Well, that’s the imposition, I’m afraid, Brother. As many, perhaps, as four hundred.”

“Four hundred?” Gyalo could not conceal his astonishment. “I had no idea there were so many people here.”

“There is much work to do at Thuxra, even now.”

The dinner finished soon afterward. The aides departed, and the guests sought their rooms--all but Teispas, who remained behind to speak with the administrator on some private matter.

The bedchambers led off an open gallery at the back of the house, running the length of the second floor. Gyalo paused by the balustrade, gazing out over the garden and trying to clear his head, which ached fiercely. The night had grown almost chilly. The sky was studded with an astonishing number of stars, and the moon, half-full, seemed brighter than on the other side of the Range of Clouds. The air smelled moistly of grass and flowers, and, intermittently, of something less pleasant, reminding Gyalo of the odor of Baushpar’s back alleys where the sewers were yet to be repaired. The sound that had distracted him at dinner--the noise of shouting, the calling of Thuxra’s ghosts--was no longer audible.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?”

It was Teispas, coming up silently as he often did, so that it almost seemed he had materialized out of thin air.

“Ârata!” Gyalo pressed a hand to his racing heart. “You just frightened me out of a night’s sleep.”

“I’m sorry.” For an Arsacian, Teispas was tall, but still he had to look up to meet Gyalo’s eyes. “It wasn’t my intent.”

“It’s extraordinary. I’ve never known anyone who could move so quietly.”

“Too many years spent surprising sleeping sentries, I suppose.”

Gyalo glanced out again at the moonlight. “It is peaceful. If I didn’t know where I was, I’d never guess.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Teispas grinned his fierce grin. “To inflict pain and misery every day, and turn your back on it every night. The best of all possible worlds--for a torturer, anyway.”

“So I have been thinking also, more or less. It disturbs me to see our people so comfortable here, as if they had forgotten the history of this place. Omarau...the aide who sat across from me at supper...seemed to regard it all as little more than a fascinating exercise in engineering.”

“Well, it is that, you must admit.”

Gyalo shook his head. “Soon enough it will be nothing. I have been reminding myself of that.”

Teispas turned toward the garden, resting his forearms on the wide sill of the balustrade. He had removed his sash and draped it around his neck; his surcoat hung unbuttoned, and his hair, released from its normal tightly braided club, fell loose across his shoulders. He was absolutely still. It was one of the first things Gyalo had noticed about him, this capacity for stillness--not a tranquil settling or a watchful readiness, but a halting, a closing, as if he had abandoned his body and gone elsewhere.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

“Yes?”

A pause. Teispas drew a breath. “There are still prisoners in Thuxra.”

The first thing that sprang to Gyalo’s mind was the two women at dinner. “Prisoners,” he repeated.

“Yes.” Teispas stared steadily down at the garden. “Not everyone who came here was accused of religious or political offenses. There were real criminals, guilty of real crimes. They can’t be set free, obviously, and the Arsacian prisons don’t want them. No one knows what to do with them. And we Exiles aren’t like the Caryaxists, are we? We don’t just kill the people who offend us.”

“You’re telling me there are people still locked up here?” Gyalo said, disbelieving. “That Thuxra is still operational?”

“A portion of it, yes. Until an alternative is found.”

“But...” For a moment Gyalo lost the words. “But Thuxra was emptied before the salvaging began. I’ve seen the reports. I’ve read the letters.”

Teispas did not reply.

“How do you know this?”

“I was briefed before we set out.”

“So that’s what I heard tonight.” The ghosts of Thuxra, Gyalo thought: not ghosts at all, but real. “I suppose it explains why there are so many people here. They need jailers.”

“Partly. As the administrator said, there is yet much work to be done. I understand the prisoners have been useful in that regard.”

“Who is responsible for this? Does the King know of it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Teispas said nothing.

“How long will it go on, then?”

“Until a disposition of the prisoners is made.”

“But until they’re disposed of Thuxra cannot be dismantled!”

“Exactly.” Teispas smiled a little, wryly. “I wouldn’t recommend you hope for a quick resolution.”

Gyalo turned back toward the garden. His shock was beginning to yield to anger. Dismantling Thuxra meant not just tearing it down, but completely eradicating it: The materials of which it was made were to be hauled away, so that not a chip of stone, not a crumb of mortar, not an iota of Thuxra’s being might remain to defile Ârata’s resting place. On this matter church and state had spoken with a single voice--or at least, they had done so just after the Caryaxists’ fall.

But obviously at some point secular expedience had taken precedence over faith. The Brethren would never have tolerated such a decision--they would have insisted that Thuxra be emptied even if it meant setting bandits and murderers free to roam Arsace. So the secular authorities had undertaken deliberately to deceive the leaders of the church, even, it seemed, to the production of false reports. The audacity of it took Gyalo’s breath. Distant as Thuxra was, its personnel confined as securely as its inmates, there was little risk the deception would be uncovered--unless, as now, by vowed Âratists inconveniently present. Teispas’s stern warning, on the way down into the Land, suddenly made better sense.

But that raised another question.

“You obviously weren’t meant to reveal this, Captain--”

Teispas made a sound that was not quite a laugh.

“--in fact, that was probably why you were briefed, wasn’t it? So you could assist in keeping it from me and the others. Why would you tell me, then? Why would you take such a risk? You could lose your career.”

“At the very least.” Teispas shook his head. “I don’t like the political game that’s being played here. I don’t see why I should play it too. I’ve gotten a sense, these past weeks, of the sort of man you are, Brother--I think you’ll use the information wisely. Besides....” He paused. “Isn’t it what any good Âratist would do?”

There was something very odd in the way he said this. “It’s what any Âratist should do,” Gyalo replied. “I can’t think of many Âratists who would do it, however. If that’s really your reason, you are truly a man of steadfast faith.”

Teispas pushed himself away from the balustrade and turned to meet Gyalo’s gaze. He was not a handsome man: His features were too harsh, his skin too weathered, for that. But his was an arresting face, with its hooked nose and arrogant mouth and perfect arching brows above the blackest eyes Gyalo had ever seen. Normally it was controlled, watchful, remote. Now, though, it was alive with feeling. Teispas’s lips parted; for a moment it seemed he would speak. But then he closed his mouth again. His face smoothed, the animation vanishing back into the deep place from which it had briefly emerged.

“Goodnight, Brother.”

 He departed as silently as he had come, passing out of the moonlight and into the darkness of the gallery. A few moments later Gyalo heard the soft sound of a closing door.

#

A servant came the next morning to guide Gyalo to the hall the administrator had chosen for the Communion ceremony. A crowd was already waiting: Exile personnel, their families, the Dreamers in their litters, Rikoyu. All carried meditation squares and strings of Communion beads. They made way for him, their voices following him: “Great is Ârata. Great is his Way.”

Inside the hall Gyalo dismissed the servant and began to set up his equipment at the dais that rose at one end: a small gong to announce the ceremony, a red-and-gold kneeling cushion, a collapsible wooden altar draped with a yellow cloth, a folded square of linen, and five polished brass bowls. Into the first four bowls he placed a ball of copal amber, a pyramid of red onyx, a cube of black granite, and a heap of rock salt. Into the last, set behind the others, he poured a small amount of consecrated oil.

He knelt on the cushion and closed his eyes, preparing to summon his shaping ability. He had not slept well the night before; the shock of Teispas’s revelation was still with him. But as he turned his mind to the familiar discipline he felt that care, and others, slip away. It was one of the blessings of ceremony, this transition into timelessness, this journey beyond the mundane.

He could not say--no Shaper could--exactly what he did. The release of a shaping ability was something that could not be described, only grasped. Nevertheless his human mind, enslaved to the concreteness of words and images, struggled for comparisons. It was a loosening, like shedding a constricting garment. A searching, like scanning a crowd for a single face. A shifting deep within himself, drawing every facet of his consciousness into new alignment. A widening, as of an infinitely indrawn breath. And finally, an equilibrium, a weightless point of balance. Training focused a Shaper’s skill, and manita bound it: a Shaper functioned on the knife edge of symmetry between these two opposing principles.

Gyalo opened his eyes. His Shaper senses were free, as much as the tether of the drug would allow. The world seemed wider, more dimensional, pulsing with forces and currents invisible to ordinary senses, alive with shadings and textures imperceptible to ordinary vision. To see as a Shaper did was to awaken to the true reality of being: that the apparent solidity of things was in fact a complex illusion of force and light, that below every apparently fixed and permanent entity lay a wholly different truth of flux and change. And yet it was not random, this unending dance of process; there was pattern in it, pattern in each thing that was, from the moment of its origination to the moment of its dissolution. The gift of the Shaper was to perceive those patterns. The skill of a Shaper was to manipulate them.

Many Shapers found the altered mode of perception uncomfortable or frightening or even sickening, and spent as little time with it as duty would allow. But from the first, Gyalo had loved it--this brief glimpse of a truer truth, this tiny, metaphorical resurrection of Ârata to active life within him. This was how Ârata himself had looked upon the world in the moment of creation--or at least, as near an equivalent as the human mind could manage. The only indulgence he had ever allowed himself, since the age of eighteen, when he had formally and forever renounced his youthful penchant for transgression, was to summon his shaping earlier than was strictly necessary, before the ceremonies he conducted rather than in their midst.

Picking up the small baton that lay beside the gong, he struck six slow strokes. The crowd flowed into the hall. To Gyalo’s Shaper senses, each individual trailed light, auras of shimmering color as varied as their faces. All living things owned such an aura. There was pattern in it, as there was in everything, but it was not a pattern a Shaper could read, for Ârata in his wisdom had not granted human beings the power to shape living things.

When all the communicants had entered and the doors had closed again, Gyalo began. “Praise Ârata, lord of this world.”

“Great is his dominion,” the communicants responded.

“Praise Ârata, who made the lands and seas, the plants and creatures, the sun and moon and all other things.”

“Great is he who creates, and sets things in their place.”

It continued, a series of statements and responses designed to recall to the worshiper the might of the god, the beauty of the world, the origin of all things in perfection and their ultimate return to that state. The Banishing, the other major Âratist ritual, was a reminder of humanity’s separation from the god; lamentation accompanied it, a bitter litany of loss and exile. But Communion was a celebration of closeness, of connection. With each statement and response, the communicants told off a bead; absent a Shaper, it was possible for any Âratist to perform this much of the ceremony him or herself.

The responses done, Gyalo spread his hands above the altar.

“In praise and in remembrance, we come together in this place to take upon ourselves the signs of Ârata and of our faith in him. In praise and in remembrance, I, his vowed servant, invoke the power that was his gift to humankind, the power with which the world was first brought to form. Through me, Ârata opens his eyes once more within the world. Through me, he touches it again, in change and in creation. In praise and in remembrance, I call the light of Ârata to being within me, within the substances I transform, within you who offer yourselves to receive them.”

Gyalo focused his shaping will on the brass bowls one by one, grasping the patterns of their contents, drawing them delicately into new alignments. The amber became a pool of honey. The onyx became a little hill of russet sand. The granite became a drift of black soot. The salt became clear salt water. In the energy of transformation, bits and pieces of substance flew off and were consumed: each change was accompanied by a flash of light, a puff of sound like an outblown breath.

“Come forward.”

The Dreamers were first. Assisted by Rikoyu, Seiki knelt before the altar. The blue-white of her lifelight was a bare margin around her body, but it was almost too bright to look upon. Her eyes were closed, her habitual scowl smoothed away. Angry as the Dreamers sometimes made him, Gyalo could not doubt the purity of their faith, for he saw it daily in this ceremony.

“Who receives the marks?”

“Kai-do Seiki,” she whispered.

Gyalo dipped his right index finger in the honey and marked her left cheek. “The blood of Ârata.” He dipped up the sand and marked her right cheek. “The earth under which he sleeps.” He touched his left index finger to the water and marked her forehead. “The tears of exile.” He touched the ash and marked her chin. “The stain of sin. Remember.”

Seiki crossed her arms before her face. “Great is Ârata, the one god, the bright god, the god who sleeps, the god who will wake. I affirm my faith in Ârata, deny my ash-nature in his name, and rejoice in the promise of his rising. May it be soon.”

“May it be soon. Go in light, daughter.”

Next was Tak, his lifelight bluer than Seiki’s and not as strong, but flaring out a great distance around his body. After Tak came the administrator--his light was pale amber, run through with darker currents--then Kaluela with her little daughter Eolani, both mantled in the softest rose. Sittibaal and Zabdas were next, and those soldiers of the expedition who were present, then the rest of the communicants, beginning with the administrator’s aides. One by one, Gyalo spoke the words and marked them all. He had to stop, once, to transform more materials.

Last, he administered Communion to himself. Then he dipped his fingers into the consecrated oil to cleanse them of all residue of change and used the linen cloth to wipe the oil away.

“By the grace of Ârata and in remembrance of his creation, I, his vowed servant, have transformed these substances in his name. Now I banish what was changed, so it may be his again.”

Again he held his hands over the bowls, unmaking all they held. He unmade the oil as well, and the linen that had cleaned his hands. With vanishment, as with transformation, came a pulse of light and sound.

“Go in light, all you who have gathered in Ârata’s name.”

“Great is Ârata,” they chorused. “Great is his Way.”

The communicants rose and left the chapel. For a moment after they were gone Gyalo sat unmoving, watching the world with Shaper senses; then he closed his eyes and let go of the equilibrium he had achieved, allowing manita’s tether to pull his shaping back into latency. When he opened his eyes again, the world looked as it always did. As many times as he experienced it, it was a shock, this return to unaltered perception. There was always, for just an instant, a desire to flee back into himself and recapture what he had let go.

He had arranged to divide the communicants into two groups, so they would not have to wait so long and he might have a chance to rest. Toward the end of the second ceremony he recognized Teispas--who, characteristically, had chosen to lose himself among Thuxra’s personnel rather than precede them as was the privilege of his rank. The captain’s face showed nothing as he received the marks; his dark eyes, as usual, were remote. His lifelight was deepest indigo, shading toward azure at its edges.

At last it was over. With the servant’s help, Gyalo packed his equipment and left the hall. He was hoarse from hours of speaking, light-headed with the fatigue that always followed a protracted release of his shaping ability. But he felt cleansed. Within this monument to hatred, he had sown a seed of holiness--a promise, it seemed to him, of Thuxra’s final dissolution.

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