The Book of Fire Read online

  And he does. He has taken extra care with this manifestation. His nod is faint and lordly. “I have come to grant my priestess the honor of my presence at her Leave-taking.”

  In other words, time you got going. Paia bows again, wondering if this gesture was his idea or Luco’s. “A grave honor indeed, my lord.”

  His brief ironic glance answers her question. He turns away abruptly, beckoning with a gold-tipped finger, and sweeps grandly out the door. Paia tosses a quick regretful look at the still-shrouded painting leaning against the wall. Something else that will have to wait. She has been summoned and she must follow. The chambermaid scrambles up and scurries after her.

  On the stairs, Paia holds herself the ritual five paces behind, but somehow—with a trick he’s never offered before in man-form—the God’s voice is at her right ear, not in her head but just outside it—intimate but noninvasive, like a whisper from inches away. And she is able to answer him in a murmur.

  “You have remembered the gun.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Go nowhere without it. You have packed sufficient ammunition?”

  What does he consider sufficient? “Yes, my lord.”

  “The sun is your deadly enemy, remember. You’ve brought protective garments?”

  “Of course.” Paia is not fooled by his rough, clipped tone. The God is anxious. Perhaps he is not so eager to be rid of her after all. “Lord Fire, you are mothering me.”

  “You are reckless, my priestess.”

  “All in your service, my lord.”

  He snorts. “Has it not even occurred to you to wonder about this restlessness of yours, where it has come from all of a sudden?”

  Paia cannot think of a clever response. Nor does she know the answer.

  Ahead of her, his broad shoulders shift beneath their rich cloth-of-gold. “No matter. Go your way. Perhaps you will lead me to them. Meanwhile, I have ordered the First Son to pack safe food and water to last twelve days. He is charged to bring you back in eight. Not a day past, or his life will be forfeit.”

  “His life, my lord?”

  “I have said so.”

  “But some delay might occur that Luco has no control over . . .”

  “The First Son has agreed to the terms. Therefore, he will be extra vigilant to prevent such delays. My Word must be enforced, or chaos is upon us.”

  Chaos, again. Lately, all the God’s anxieties seem to focus on the potential breakdown of his carefully ordered system. Paia’s childhood history studies included the macabre dance of shifting political structures that played out during her father’s lifetime. Considering that example, Paia thinks the God’s obsession with chaos might be too narrow. For all this paranoia about his enemies, he never seems to allow that the real threat might come from a different brand of order.

  The Ceremony of Farewell, hastily invented by one of Luco’s trusted underlings, is held in the Sanctuary and is mercifully brief. It allows the Twelve to weep copiously and publicly beneath their red veils, then dry their eyes for a prayerful dance begging that their beloved priestess be soon returned to them. Paia, who has regarded them with increasing dislike and suspicion since they’ve begun dogging her every footstep, imagines the hot little seeds of hope her departure must be planting in each of them. Such as, perhaps the God is punishing her with this trip for some secret transgression. Perhaps disaster will befall her. Perhaps she will not return. Perhaps the God, in his infinite wisdom, will make one of them High Priestess. It’s just as well, Paia decides, that she does not know their faces or names. Less need to be civil to them.

  The Formal Progress from the Sanctuary to the Plaza includes a quick stop at the Sacred Well, where Paia sips the crystalline liquid from the scoop of her own palms, the only vessel deemed pure enough by the God to convey the sacred waters. She savors its chill perfection. It is the expression of an ideal. She wishes she could slip a bottle or two into her luggage. But for once, the God is standing there watching. The Twelve are so overcome by his sustained presence among them in man-form that they can barely manage their part in the ritual.

  At last, the God leads the procession out into the blinding sun, past the stained sacrificial altar to where the First Son waits, with the full ranks of the priesthood lined up to left and right. Behind, a dust cloud rises as servants and bearers race about among the high-wheeled wagons and piles of packing crates, frenzied with last minute preparations. Luco’s blue gaze is eager, though his jaw is set and serious. He bows abjectly to the God, then gestures him toward the towering bejeweled and golden throne that’s been dragged out of the Sanctuary for the final Leave-taking. Off to one side, two of the elaborately decorated sedan chairs sit side by side. These are usually reserved for the Temple’s most lavish and formal ceremonies. Virtually overnight, they’ve been refitted for the rigors of outdoor travel. The High Priestess and First Son of the Temple will ride. The goods will be hauled in the wagons by hand. Everyone else will walk.

  The God ascends his throne, and under Son Luco’s brisk direction, the ceremony begins. Paia always prefers it when Luco officiates. He’s so much better at it than she is, with his grand manner and melodious voice. The First Son is a different man in public performance. He loses his fussy edge, becomes smoother, less self-conscious. Grateful to be only a passive participant in this unrehearsed production, Paia lets her mind wander, past the looming Temple gates, out into the valley, into the ruddy, stony hills ringing the Citadel, hills she will soon be crossing. Her sedan chair glitters in the sun, a tall gold box on sturdy gilded legs, the God Rampant embroidered in red on either side. She is relieved to see the chambermaid scurrying into an appropriately abject position beside it, suddenly and miraculously dressed for the road. She is far less relieved when two of the red-robed Twelve detach themselves from the processional with all indications of joining the escort party. Paia sighs. The God—in his wisdom, of course—has made sure to supply her with chaperones.

  Later, Paia will be unable to recall a single detail of the elaborate ceremony. It assembles the total populations of Temple and Citadel, and goes on for entirely too long, praising the God’s wisdom and perfection, beseeching him to see to the safety of the High Priestess as she goes about her holy duties among the Faithful out in the world. There is chanting and motion, and eventually the crowds murmur aside. Paia comes out of her daze to find herself facing the outer gates, a direction that for so long has been forbidden even to consider. As the long bolt shafts are drawn back into the wall, reality at last takes hold. Her awareness irises in to a pinpoint of concentration on the great central locking mechanism with its polished, God-shaped escutcheon plate. She is finally leaving the confines of the Temple. Will anything out there be as she remembers?

  After another eternity of chanting and prayers, the God stands and spreads his golden arms. The First Son sweeps forward to hand the High Priestess into the curtained door of her chair. As the gauzy metallic drapes swing loose to veil the shaded interior, the four bearers lift and steady. The God vanishes from his throne in an explosion of flame and light. The throng falls to its knees as a vast shadow of wings passes in threat and benediction over the sun-baked courtyard. The gates roll open. Across the upper landing, the Grand Stair lies waiting. The caravan starts forward.

  A twelve-man contingent of the Honor Guard leads the way, followed by the First Son with as many of his Seconds and Thirds as could be spared from the day-to-day running of the Temple. Paia is surprised by the number of them: twenty at least, if she hasn’t counted the same one twice. Her own two chaperones pass through the gates next, then Paia in her chair with her servants behind. Behind them, more Honor Guard, more servants, and finally, the supply wagons. Overhead, the God flies long, swooping figure eights etched in flame. Inside the chair, a fiery night descends each time he passes. Paia approaches the Grand Stair. Abruptly, she is terrified.

  What have I done?

  But this is the sort of terror she is used to, like her terror of the God, mixed wi
th exhilaration. She is practiced at dealing with it. And turning back, she has decided, is not an alternative.

  The steps are low, six meters wide and a meter deep. The chair tilts forward only gently, and the bearers fall into a mildly rocking rhythm to manage the descent. The chair looks light enough, but there’s a reason it takes four strong men to carry it. It’s become a self-contained mini-fortress. Luco has explained to her how it carries extra food and water, and is hardened to deflect knife blades, spear, axes, arrows, even a small caliber bullet, though the God has promised Paia there won’t be any of those around, except in her own hands. She tells herself she’s safe, but she’s certainly not comfortable. It’s hot and airless inside. Already her skin is slick, and her fine silk robe is soaking up the damp. As the rocking continues, Paia begins to doubt the steadiness of her stomach.

  She parts the curtains, only a crack. The outside air is no cooler, but at least it’s in vague motion and she can fix her eyes on the steadier horizon. A thin crowd lines either side of the stairs, sun-toughened men and women from the village at the bottom. She should know some of these scarred and withered faces. Living so nearby, they will have made the long climb to the Temple most often. But Paia has endured her years of ritual specifically by not looking at the faces of the Faithful. She vows to change this practice when she returns.

  As her chair passes, the villagers shove their few scrawny children forward to wave at her. There is maybe one child for every fifteen adults. Paia had thought the God’s repopulation efforts had been going better lately, but she sees no toddlers or infants at all. Perhaps the mothers will no longer risk exposing them to the sun and crowds, even for such a special occasion.

  A glance behind, back up the stairs, distracts Paia from her nausea. The gates are still open, as the last of the supply wagons clatter through and gather on the broad upper landing to be unloaded for transport down the steps. The gates are each four meters wide, double-walled steel taken from the hangar where Paia’s father stored his armored vehicles. They are set into stone walls two meters thick by seven high. Since the God ordered these walls built, no force has bested them, though Paia has heard that during the Wars of Conversion, several respectable attempts were made. She has always thought that Luco’s readiness to bore her with the old war stories is one of his few personal weaknesses. But gazing up at those scarred and sunbleached walls for the first time, she wishes she’d done more than just humor him. If she’d also listened, she could have learned. She thinks how much the House Computer would approve of this insight, and then, how useful it would be to have House along. This Visitation will make her a student all over again, except that, this time, she has some idea of how little she knows.

  That vow again: to be a more intent observer.

  From the central gates, the wall runs off about thirty meters to either side, then turns back toward the cliff and the Temple. A tall slender watchtower marks each corner. Through the open gateway and over the crenellated top of the wall, Paia can see the Temple’s elaborately carved façade, and the bland natural rock face of the Citadel rising behind it. Reality takes hold again. Impulsively, she shoves aside the curtain and leans out into the sun, ignoring the villagers’ pious stares. She cranes awkwardly around the hard edge of the doorframe to count the windows glimmering high on the cliff. She is seized with an urgent need to identify her own, before all that’s familiar is behind her and out of sight.

  But it’s only eight days!

  Paia is shaken by a sudden intimation of a chasm crossed, of an irrevocable step taken toward a new life, at the moment she passed through the gates. She counts and searches as her chair rocks downward, until she picks out her level, her room, her very own window. Only then can she grasp at her dignity again, and withdraw into the shade of her tiny mobile fortress, obscurely comforted.

  In Paia’s father’s time, big carpeted elevators transported Citadel guests and residents up from the valley floor. They were fitted with solid brass and lined with polished hardwood. When the God came, he proclaimed them an unreliable luxury, even though they were powered by the windmills up on the cliff top and hardly ever failed. Paia suspects they were simply not magnificent enough for his purposes. He built the Grand Stair to really impress, with its five hundred massive steps and carved railings. The climb to Paia’s tower studio is a mere hop by comparison. But the Grand Stair is not just decorative. It serves also as a first line of defense against attackers, and further, as a test of a worshiper’s devotion. For it is the God’s opinion—shared (Paia believes) by his loyal general, Son Luco—that anyone who gives up before they’ve reached the top can’t be counted on for much anyway.

  At the halfway point, where the cliff is sheerest, the stairs level out into a shallow landing, then split to left and right to move across and down the face of the rock. The chair is set down, and the bearers are given a brief breather. Paia has a view through the parted drapes of the valley below, and the bright meander of the dry riverbed crossed by the straight line of road that once led to her father’s airstrip and thus, back to civilization. Leaning out a bit farther, she can just see the roofs and chimneys of the village huddled at the bottom of the steps.

  Each night at the Citadel, most often shrouded from Paia’s high window view by darkness, but now and then glimpsed by moonlight, a human chain five hundred steps long transfers food and goods from the Temple’s dependent villages up to the Citadel. Paia is not supposed to know about such things. Once she questioned Luco about it, just casually, and he pretended she’d spotted the rare occurrence. At the time, she reasoned that the chain was easier than requiring each bearer to walk all the way up and all the way down. But surely it’s a bit foolish that all the supplies for this trip were hauled all the way up, only to be brought all the way back down again. Paia approves of the rigorous safety inspection that anything slated for her consumption must pass, but out here in the broiling sun, with half the stairs looming high behind and the other half, like a drop into nowhere, still to descend, the waste of energy seems, well, irresponsible. Not a concept Paia has thought much about before.

  As her bearers hoist the stout carrying poles onto their shoulders and set off again on their rocking descent, Paia muses over the possibility that the God prefers this hard show of human labor over the mysterious ease of a mechanism he does not understand.

  The village at the bottom began its life in her father’s time, clustered around the entrance to the elevators, as housing for service and maintenance personnel, for the tenant farmers and their families, and for anyone in his employ who, despite the obvious security disadvantage, could not bring themselves to live tucked away in the bowels of a cliff. Paia recalls it as a sizable, tidy gathering of tight stone houses and fenced garden plots. She recalls attending a birthday celebration down there, dressed in a new outfit sewn by her mother’s seamstresses, who also lived in the village. Her mother brought the cake, and her nanny brought a bundle of clothing that Paia had outgrown. These were passed among the children at the party to be tried on for size, and everyone went home happy. Except perhaps Paia’s mother, whose natural generosity was encouraged by the sure knowledge that she could never have another child. Paia also remembers a wedding, somewhat later, where she carried a bouquet of patchwork flowers lovingly sewn from the fabric of some of those old outfits. The bride carried real flowers, from Paia’s father’s greenhouses, but Paia preferred the patchwork ones. She still has one somewhere, she thinks. Odd that she should recall such detail, after so long. It must be looking down on those blue slate rooftops that brings it back so vividly.

  But when the last stair is behind her and her chair is at last traveling on level ground, Paia does not find herself in the quaint village of her memory. The stone houses still stand, but the slate roofs are cracked and patchy. Red dust is caked into every seam. The once-colorful doors and windows have gone unpainted for decades. Their storm shutters are missing or broken, and where the neatly fenced gardens once struggled but grew, ragged cl
usters of hovels and shanties have sprung up, filling all the spaces between. Apparently, for many, living within the safer shadow of the Temple is worth any sort of discomfort.

  Here also, along the barren main street, villagers are lined up to greet their High Priestess. They pray aloud for her safe journey and swift return. One woman calls out a fervent wish that the Last Days not come upon them while the Priestess is away from the Temple. Paia sees several soldiers of the Temple moving roughly among them. She would like to believe that the villagers’ good wishes are genuine, but she can’t help but notice that where the soldiers are, there also is the crowd’s most passionate response. She considers her rash promise to the God. How will she speak of loving to these desperate folk who are taught only fear?

  She is glad that, because these Faithful have daily access to the Temple, the procession does not stop for a formal Visitation. She is not yet ready to face them directly. Soon her chair has passed down the main street and is headed out across the valley floor.

  Once, before even her father’s time, this was fertile bottom land. There was water in the riverbed and trees along its banks and rain enough to grow grain, to pasture livestock without irrigation. Current agricultural information would never be offered to the High Priestess, but in the Citadel, Paia habitually eavesdrops. She has learned from her Honor Guard how the fields are now sized by how much water can be spared from the village’s shrinking wells, and then by how far that water can be transported without being stolen. Even pipes can be surreptitiously rerouted, and the best-armed parties ambushed.

  Leaving the last group of hovels behind, the procession passes among the high stockade fences surrounding the vegetable plots. The livestock are similarly contained. Paia hears chickens and goats and the occasional sheep, but sees nothing but walls of weathered timber patched with bits of sun-brittled plastic. Soon, even that is behind them and there is only untilled, uninhabited ground ahead. Overhead, the God executes a final glittering omega over the line of wagons. His cry shakes the ground like the thunder of an avalanche, but Paia hears his farewell inside her head, terse, resentful, full of longing. Could he not just come with her, and delight the villages with the honor? She sighs. Surely there has never been a more complex being than the God.