Shrine of Stars

Chapter Sixteen The Holy Slave

The facade of the temple had been carved into the face of a tall cliff of red sandstone, intricately worked and painted gold and white and ultramarine. It was approached by a long road that switchbacked up from the valley floor, ending at a single-span bridge over the narrow, deep gorge at the edge of the wide plaza spread in front of the temple. In the center of the plaza was a simple square altar ringed by tall, white, unadorned pillars, which had probably functioned as a day shrine where people had gone to ask small favors of the Preservers or to remember their dead. There was a string of flat-roofed little houses to one side, where the priest and other temple staff had lived, and a meadow by the stream which fell into the gorge, where penitents and palmers could have camped.

The meadow was overgrown with pioneer acacias and wild banana plants; now the gardens of the houses contained only dry stalks; weeds thrust up between the slabs of polished sandstone which paved the plaza. A window shutter banged and banged in the evening breeze, like an idiot who knew only one word. Turkey vultures had built untidy nests on the flat tops of the pillars around the day shrine; their droppings streaked the pillars, and the cracked bones of their prey littered the tiles below. But someone had swept the long flight of wide steps which led up to the entrance of the temple, and prayer flags and banners in bright primary colors fluttered from poles along one side of the plaza.

“The Mighty People killed the priest and the hierodules during their Change War,” Pandaras whispered. “They killed the Archivist and the Commissioner too. They burned the Commissioner and a maniple of soldiers in his peel-house, but they killed the others here. Yoi Sendar said that those who killed the Archivist ate his brains, because they wanted to gain power over the dead.”

He and Yama squatted in dry brush at the top of a pebbly slope that overlooked the plaza. Pandaras had taken out his stone blade, and was sharpening it on a bit of flint he held between his feet.

“I do not think there will be a need for that,” Yama said.

“It could be the Prefect. Or that doctor. You have powerful enemies, master. They are not easy to kill, and if they survived the fall of the gardens they will be searching for you.”

“Dr. Dismas would not wait for us in a temple—it is not his style. And Prefect Corin would not bother to set out flags or sweep the entrance. If it is someone we know, then it can be only one person. And if it is not, then I hope that whoever has appointed himself custodian of this place will do us no harm. Besides, this is the only way to the midpoint of the world which does not involve a hundred days of walking.”

Yama stood up, crabbed down the slope in a cloud of dust, and ran straight out across the plaza. Dry weeds crackled underfoot. A pair of turkey vultures took flight. Pandaras came down more cautiously holding the stone blade up by his shoulder, the stump of his left wrist tucked between two toggles of his shirt. He hurried to catch up with Yama, who was walking around the circle of pillars—someone had swept the altar and tried to scrub away the signs which had been scrawled there—toward the stair which led up to the entrance of the façade.

Pandaras said breathlessly, “At least we could have waited until after supper, master!”

“I do not think we should rely on the forest folk any longer. They have other concerns now. And please, Pandaras, put away that blade. Show that we come as friends.”

But Pandaras did not hear him. He gave a sudden yell and ran past Yama and scampered up the steps. A tall, pale-skinned figure had appeared at the entrance of the temple.

It was Tibor.

“I knew that you had survived the flood,” the hierodule told Yama, “and I am pleased that you found your way here.”

Yama smiled and said, “I will free you of your obligation soon, Tibor. We will sleep here tonight, but we have a long way to go, and must set off as soon as we are rested.”

“I have already found something else to serve,” Tibor said.

They were sitting cross-legged on the terrace before the entrance of the temple. The hierodule wore a white shirt left unbuttoned to display the two vertical scars on his chest, and trousers of a stiff, silvery material which he had slit at the waist and ankles because they were slightly too small for him. He had brought out a tray of food and beakers of wine and distilled water, and Yama and Pandaras ate hungrily, although the food had been too long in a freezer—the limp vegetables were crunchy with ice crystals at their cores, the flat breads were dry, and the sauces had lost most of their savor.

“The people of the valley killed the priest and the hierodules of this temple,” Pandaras said. “They have turned their backs on the Preservers. It isn’t safe for people like you, Tibor. You think only of serving, but this isn’t the place for it.”

“I know what happened here,” Tibor said. He chewed at a twig, rolling it around his lips with his long red tongue; he had lost his cigarette makings in the flood. “But that was many years ago. I am not afraid. Things will be different now.”

“The forest folk might want to come here now, I suppose,” Pandaras said, “but I still think that you should come with us.”

Yama asked Tibor how he had escaped Prefect Corin, and the hierodule explained that he had still been struggling with the Prefect when the tidal wave had smashed into the floating garden, knocking it from the air and washing the two men into the river. “We were torn apart,” Tibor said, “and then I was too busy trying not to drown to try to follow him. I was dragged down by a tremendous whirlpool, and I think I may have touched the bottom of the river, so deep was I drawn. Just as my breath was about to burst from my chest, I was shot up like a cork, and came to the surface near an uprooted tree. I clung to its sturdy trunk and was borne with it wherever the flood chose to take me. Many small animals had already sought safety there, and bedraggled birds alighted on its leafy branches to take refuge from the rain, so that I was not without food. I drifted for two days amidst a growing fleet of other uprooted trees, until at last the failing waters stranded them all and I could walk across them into forested hills untouched by the flood. This part of the world is mostly populated by indigenous peoples, and I knew that the only temple for fifty leagues all around stood beyond the hills. And so I made my way across them, and after many hardships I will not trouble you with at last arrived here.”

“You were looking for something to serve,” Pandaras said.

“I am a hierodule.”

Yama said, “You had food and drink ready for us. How did you know that we were coming here?”

Tibor spread his big, six-fingered hands and said gravely, “Why, she told me. If you had not come here, I would have had to fetch you.”

For the first time since he had escaped the Mighty People, Yama felt the Shadow stir. He said, “I thought it might be something like that. You had better show me the shrine.”

Tibor nodded. “She is waiting for you, Yamamanama. And do not be afraid. She forgives you for the time you tried to kill her.”

The long processional path still retained a feeble blue luminescence. It led them down wide corridors and through a nest of round chambers with intricate murals painted on their walls and ceilings to the naos at the heart of the temple, a vast dry cave that could easily have held a thousand petitioners. As Yama and Pandaras followed Tibor into it, like emmets creeping into a darkened house, tiny sparks whirled down from above to crown them. Pandaras laughed to see them: fireflies.

Yama said, “How far back into the plateau does the complex run, Tibor?”

“Further than I am allowed to explore,” the hierodule said. “She will answer all your questions.”

The floor was inlaid with a spiral pattern of garnet slabs; the reflections of the fireflies glittered underfoot as Yama and Pandaras followed Tibor toward a faint glow that curdled in the darkness ahead, flickering in the black disc of the shrine.

It stood on a dais raised high above the floor. A steep stair led up to it. Poles had been driven into the sandstone slabs of the dais and bodies clad in tattered robes were lashed to the poles with corroded wire. The dry air had cured the skin and flesh of the bodies to something like leather, shrunken tightly over the bones.

“I cleaned away the slogans,” Tibor said, “but she likes to see the remains of her enemies.”

“I think this one is the Archivist,” Pandaras said. “You see? They took off the top of his skull as if it were an egg.”

The coin hanging from his neck had begun to glow. He held it up for Yama to see; its light struck sparks in his eyes.

And then a green glow washed over him.

The shrine had become a window in which the aspect of Angel walked swiftly forward, fixing Yama with a confident and commanding gaze. As before, she wore a white one-piece garment that clung to her tall, slender body. The green garden receded behind her beneath a perfect blue sky. She stared silently at Yama for a long time. He returned her gaze and resisted the compulsion to say something, although his heart quickened with the effort and sweat soaked through his ragged shirt and trousers.

At last, she said, “You have lost your looks, my love. The world has been hard on you, but now I am here to help you. What, you have no words for me?”

“I serve no one,” Yama said. He tried to look beyond her, hoping that he could summon the hell-hound, but something stopped him looking very far.

She laughed. Yama thought of knives clashing. She said, “Of course you serve. It is what you were made for.”

“I suppose a feral machine was tracking me. They dare not visit the world they lost, except for brief moments, but they are compelled to watch what they cannot have.”

“You are very stubborn, I think that you know that you need my help. You know there is much you do not know. For instance, you thought that you had killed me, and you do not understand how you failed. Do stop trying to call that bothersome creature, by the way. This time it will not come.”

Pandaras said in a small but defiant voice, “You are the ghost my master told me about. The very ghost of a ghost, for I know my master killed you.”

“You speak more truly than you know, little creature. You are the one who looked in the book, aren’t you? I let you live then. Show gratitude for my mercy now.”

“If you have any mercy,” Yama said, “show me a token of it. Let the hierodule go. You use him falsely.”

“Is he not a servant of the avatars? And there are no avatars left, except for me. I should know: I killed them all.”

Yama said, “You are no avatar, merely the discarded aspect of a dead woman. You are lost in time. Your kind were overthrown more than five million years ago. Just as you use the hierodule, the feral machines use you.”

“We have an alliance. You can be a part of it still.”

Yama turned his face to show her his terrible scar. “One of the feral machines has already used me. It tried to do to me what it did to Dr. Dismas, but it no longer has power over me, and neither do you. You are just a memory, and not even a whole one.”

“With my help you can be so much more powerful than any of the feral machines, my darling.”

“We can only be what we are.”

The aspect smiled. “That is the philosophy which made your Preservers flee from the Universe. It is untrue. Animals can only be what they are, but humans can transcend their animal selves. The Preservers were fools. They raised up the ten thousand bloodlines from animal stock, but forbade them to rise higher than their creators. You and I will prove how wrong the Preservers were.”

“You have no power over me,” Yama said, and with an enormous effort turned away from the green light of the garden inside the shrine.

The aspect said, “I know why the Great River fails. I can help you save the world, if that is what you want.”

“You want the world for yourself.”

“I will have it, too, in a little while.”

“Then why should I save it?”

The aspect’s voice deepened. There was music in it and Yama could feel his muscles trying to respond; there was still much of the machine inside him. He fought against it, staggering against the Archivist’s dry, brittle body and embracing it for support.

Pandaras cried out, but Yama did not hear what the boy said. The aspect’s voice filled his mind.

“The world is a fabrication,” she said. “An artificial habitat twenty thousand kilometers long and a thousand wide, set in a nest of fields which mimic the gravity of an Earth-sized planet and prevent the atmosphere from dissipating into space. It is not well made. Machines must constantly maintain it; without them, the air would soon become unbreathable, the inhabited places would become deserts, and the Great River would silt up. Those are some of the functions of the lesser machines. But there are greater machines in the keel.”

Yama remembered the huge engines he had glimpsed in the keelways when Beatrice had taken him back to the peel-house. She had warned him not to waken them before their time; he had not understood her until now.

The aspect sang on, seductive, compelling. “There are many wormholes orbiting Confluence’s star. I suspect that they emerge at various points in the Galactic disc. But there is also a wormhole at the midpoint of this strange world. Something has altered it. Your people constructed this world, Yamamanama. You are the key. And you will serve. I have powerful allies. Tell me now that you will at least listen to one of them, and I will spare the boy. But if you will not continue this conversation then I will have my slave crush his skull and paint your face with his brains. A simple yes will be enough.”

Pandaras tried to run then, but Tibor caught him and lifted him up and closed one big hand over his head. The hierodule’s face was set in a horrible rictus. He began to shake. Muscles jumped in his arms and legs as if struggling against each other. Pandaras shrieked in fear and agony.

The aspect said, “Say the word, or I will have his life.” Yama started to move toward Tibor and Pandaras, but it was as if he were in a dream where gravity was much stronger or the air was as dense as water. He was breathing in great gasps.

“Say it!”

The aspect and the hierodule had spoken together. Pandaras slashed at Tibor’s arm with the stone blade, but the hierodule blocked the blow and knocked the blade into the darkness beyond the edge of the dais.

“Say it or he dies!”

“No!”

The hierodule lifted Pandaras above his head, as if to dash him to the floor. And the boy ripped the coin from the thong which dangled from his neck and thrust it edge-first in the hierodule’s eye.

Tibor and the aspect screamed at the same moment. White light blotted out the garden and beat across the huge chamber. The hierodule dropped Pandaras. With the glowing coin stuck in his eye and blood streaming down his face, he blundered into two of the staked bodies, smashing them to dust and fragments of brown bone, and pitched over the edge of the dais.

Yama and Pandaras ran down the steep stair. Tibor lay at the bottom, his neck broken. Pandaras pulled the coin from the hierodule’s eye and closed his lids and kissed his forehead.

“He would have killed me,” Pandaras said. He was crying.

“It was well done. She had made a link with Tibor through the shrine, and you shut it down. We cannot stay, Pandaras. She will soon find a way to return.”

They ran, chased by a flock of fireflies, their shadows thrown ahead of them by the white light which burned in the shrine. By the time the aspect had managed to reconfigure it, they were already descending toward the keelways.