Shrine of Stars

Chapter Eighteen The Trial

Once Pandaras was well enough to be able to walk about the house, the heretics provided him with a kind of uniform to replace his ragged clothes: gray silk tunic and trousers with silver piping; long black boots of some kind of malleable plastic; a belt of black, fine-grained leather, with a strap that went over his shoulder; a black silk glove for his right hand and a black silk stocking to draw over the stump of his left wrist. They did not allow him a weapon, of course, but gave him an ebony swagger stick tipped at either end with chased silver.

When he realized that he was not going to be killed, Pandaras’s fear turned to anger. He had rescued his master twice over, even though he had at last been forced to deliver him into the hands of the heretics, and now he was mocked. He broke the swagger stick in half, picked the silver piping from tunic and trousers, and threw the boots, belt, glove and silk sock out of the window of his room.

Yama and Pandaras were being kept prisoner in an ordinary house embedded in a complex of tents, domes and pyramids which had grown around it, linked by gossamer bridges and enclosed by huge plastic vanes in bright primary colors. The vanes glowed at night with inner light, like the noctilucent jellyfish which sailed the river in summer. They were set in the middle of the ruins of Sensch, the last city of the Great River. It was where Angel had fled after escaping from the other Ancients of Days. It was where she had begun to spread her heresy. The house in which Yama and Pandaras were imprisoned was the house where she had lived. The rest of the city—its narrow streets and markets, its palace and docks—had been razed after the Change War and rebuilt upriver. Apart from Angel’s house, only the ruins of the temple were left, enclosed within enfilades of silvery triangular sails like the maw of some monster rising up from the keelways.

Yama was taken to the temple a few days after arriving in Sensch, once the heretics were certain that he would not die of his wounds. He had to be carried on a stretcher, and was escorted by a maniple of soldiers. Pandaras was not allowed to accompany him, but heard about what happened from the warden of the prison house, who got it from one of the chirurgeons who attended Yama.

Yama had been manacled to a chair in front of the temple’s shrine, where he was to be questioned by the aspect of Angel in the presence of those who would later judge him. But although the shrine had lit up, the aspect had not appeared, and after several hours and a great deal of confusion Yama had been returned to the prison house.

“They want me killed,” Yama said wearily, when Pandaras was at last allowed to see him. “I know too much now.”

“Did you destroy the aspect, master?”

Yama smiled and said, “You are too clever, Pandaras. I fear that it will be the death of you.”

“I think that it already has been, master, and so I’ve earned the right to know what you did. Did you destroy her?”

“You are not going to die here, Pandaras, and this is no time for deathbed confessions. I will tell you what I did because you are my friend. No, I did not destroy her. She coded herself too deeply for that. However, I was able to turn all the shrines on the world against her. I do not think that she will able to find a way back.”

Yama was still very ill. He fell asleep and woke without noticing that he had slept, and added, “She was always a prisoner. She thought to conquer Confluence, but it had already conquered her. We are all of us prisoners of history here, forced to follow the paths of stories so old and so powerful they are engraved in every cell of our bodies. It is time to break the circle.”

“Past time,” Pandaras said, thinking that his master had some plan to escape the prison house. But Yama had fallen asleep again, and did not hear him.

It took the heretics many days to treat and heal Yama. In all that time, Pandaras expected that at any moment his master would come to his senses and call down machines to help them escape, and when at last Yama was well enough to be brought before the board of men and women who would pronounce judgment on him, Pandaras thought that he would surely work his miracles then, in front of the astonished heretics. But he did not, and seemed to pay little attention to the proceedings, except to smile good-naturedly and agree that he was guilty of everything of which he was accused. The only consolation was that this seemed to anger the heretics as much as it frustrated Pandaras.

The trial was held in a huge white bubble chamber. Its walls absorbed sunlight and translated it to a directionless glow, reminding Pandaras of the shrine beyond the edge of the world. The trial lasted less than a day, and was presided over by the most senior of the heretics, although much of the time he seemed to pay as little attention to the proceedings as Yama. This was Mr. Naryan, the former Archivist of Sensch, who had been changed by Angel herself. An old, fat, hairless man, he hung naked in clear, bubbling water inside a cylindrical glass tank. Machines studded his wrinkled, grayish skin: at his neck; across the swollen barrel of his swollen chest; over one eye. Years ago, while preaching to one of the unchanged bloodlines, he had been badly hurt in an assassination attempt. The machines implanted in his body kept him alive. He had been an old man when he had met Angel, and now he was older than any of his bloodline. It was said that the implanted machines would ensure that he would never die.

The decad of men and women on the judicial panel sat on either side of Mr. Naryan’s tank, staring down from elevated and canopied thrones chased with silver and upholstered in black plush at the plain bench on which Yama and Pandaras sat in manacles, with two rows of armored troopers behind them. Having no traditions, the heretics had invented their own, indulging in unrestrained expressions of ego untempered by any notion of taste. Most of the men wore fantastical military uniforms, crusted with braid and hung with ribbons, sashes and medals. One woman wore a white wig which doubled her height, with little machines blinking amongst its curls; another metal armor polished as bright as a mirror, so that her head seemed to sit above a kaleidoscope of broken reflections of the light-filled room. The majority of the panel were citizens of Sensch, of the first bloodline to have been changed by Angel’s heresy. They listened to the list of Yama’s crimes with various degrees of attention, grimacing each time Yama cheerfully assented to his guilt. Machines hovered in the air, recording and transmitting the event to heretic cities and armies along the Great River.

At the end, after Yama had agreed that he had been responsible for the failure of the Great River, Mr. Naryan finally stiffened. He pushed to the surface of the tank and spouted water. A decad of machines dipped down to catch the soft croak of his voice.

“The boy must die,” Mr. Naryan said. “He is an anachronism. The purpose of his bloodline was to make this world, and he threatens to use the powers of his kind to unmake it.”

Several members of the panel made lengthy speeches, although all they had to say was that they agreed with Mr. Naryan. Only Enobarbus spoke up for Yama. Of all the panel, he wore no finery. He was bare-chested and his red officer’s sash was tied at the waist of his white trousers. His mane of bronze hair floated around his ruined face as he prowled up and down in front of the panel.

“He has been crucial in driving the war against those who still serve the Preservers,” he told them. “He subverted their machines and in only a few days helped win vast new territories for our cause. Used in the right way, I assure you that he can deliver total victory before the end of the year.”

The old archivist surfaced again; water spilled down the glass wall of his tank. “The boy fought for us under coercion,” he croaked. “Enobarbus was allied with an apothecary by the name of Dismas. And this Dismas, who was working for one of the feral machines, infected the boy with a machine which subdued his will and assumed his powers. We almost lost him because of that, and many were killed in retrieving him.”

Enobarbus folded his arms across his broad chest. “The feral machines are our allies still. It is necessary that they are, for otherwise we would have to fight them as well as the loyalist troops, and I do not believe we could win on two fronts. Besides, Dismas’s master was not one of those, but a rogue. I believe that it is now dead. We have the boy, and yes, retrieving him cost many lives. Do not let those sacrifices be in vain. Let us use him to bring this war to a swift end. Kill him then, if you wish, but kill him now and you sentence millions to death who otherwise might have been spared.”

Mr. Naryan listed chest-high in the bubbling water of his tank. He said, “It is possible that the boy might save millions of lives if he is used against the loyalist troops, but it is certain that many thousands have already died because of him, first when Dismas tried to take him from you, and then when you recaptured him. Neither Dismas nor you, Enobarbus, could fully control the boy, yet everyone wants to own him. He is too powerful. I fear that if we use him to win the war we will then tear ourselves apart quarreling over him.”

The woman in the white wig said, “He defied and mocked the shrine. I understand that it may never be restored. Mr. Naryan is right. He is too dangerous.”

“She will return,” Enobarbus said. “She cannot be destroyed.”

There was a great deal of argument, and at last Mr. Naryan said, “It is clear that his powers proceed from the Preservers. How can we count ourselves superior to them if we must rely upon him for victory? No, he must die. We will vote on it.”

One by one, the panel dropped a pebble into a plain plastic basket. At the end a clerk tipped them out. There was no need to count. Only one was white; the rest were black.

Yama laughed when the clerk announced the result, and Pandaras feared that his master had lost his mind.

The sentence was not carried out straightaway. It was to be staged publicly, and many heretics wanted to journey to Sensch to witness it for themselves. And there was much dispute about the method of execution. By a tradition which had survived the Change War, the citizens of Sensch cast their criminals into the swift currents at the fall of the Great River, and because the trial had been held in Sensch they insisted that this was how Yama should be executed. Others wanted a more certain death, arguing that Yama might save himself by calling upon machines which would carry him to safety. The heretics had no central authority and the debate dragged on for days after the end of the trial. Usabio, the warden of the prison house, said that Yama might die of old age before it was done.

“Then all your plans for becoming rich would fall to nothing,” Pandaras said. He did not like Usabio, but the man was useful. He courted Pandaras because he wanted to get close to Yama, and Pandaras could sometimes get favors from him.

“I could sell tickets,” Usabio said. “People would come to see him, and the guards could be bribed to keep quiet.”

Usabio was of the bloodline of the citizens of Sensch, his pebbly black skin mottled with patches of muddy yellow. He bent over Pandaras like a lizard stooping on a bug and grinned hugely, showing rows of sharp triangular teeth. His breath stank of fish. He said, “It would be like having an animal no one else had ever seen, the only one of its kind in all the world. We could dress him in robes and let him babble. Or perhaps I could bring him household machines to mend. Think of my offer, Pandaras. When your master is dead you will have no employment. You are crippled. You will become a beggar, and we do not tolerate beggars, for they are parasites on those who strive to better themselves. Only the strong survive, and you are weak! But with my help you could at least be rich.”

“Perhaps we will escape. Perhaps my master will destroy your miserable city.”

“He is defeated, Pandaras. You must think of yourself.” Usabio meant this kindly. He was a selfish and greedy man, but not without pity.

Yama took no notice of the arguments which raged around him. He merely shrugged when Pandaras told him about Usabio’s latest scheme. As usual, he was sitting in the courtyard, in the shade of an ancient jacaranda tree. Soldiers stood at intervals by the wooden railing of the balcony that ran around the upper story of the house, looking down at them through leaves and branches.

“They will make up their minds eventually,” Yama said. “Mr. Naryan will make sure of it. He does not want the feral machines or some rogue element of the heretics to try and take me. He is right. There are many who want to use me.”

Pandaras lowered his voice, although he knew that machines caught and recorded every word. He said, “You could leave at any time, master. In fact, you could leave now. Do it. Confound their machines and walk away with me.”

“Where would I go, Pandaras? Now that I have traveled the length of the Great River, it seems to me that the world is a small place.”

“There are many places remote from men, master. And many places in Ys where you could hide amongst the ordinary people.”

Yama looked off into the distance. At last he said, “Beatrice and Osric knew about hiding. They hid an entire department in the City of the Dead. But I am not yet dead, and I fear that my enemies will always be able to find me.”

“Forgive me, master, but you will certainly soon be dead if you stay here.”

“Everyone wants either to use me or to kill me. When I was a boy, Pandaras, I dreamed that I was the child of special people. Of pirates or war heroes, or of dynasts wealthy beyond all measure. It was a foolish dream, not because it was wrong, for it seems that I am the child of special people after all, but because it is dangerous to be special. That is why Mr. Naryan wants to kill me.” Yama laughed. “When I left for Ys I thought that I would become the greatest of all the soldiers in the service of the Preservers.”

“As you are,” Pandaras said firmly. “And I am your squire, master.”

Pandaras still attended to Yama’s needs, even though they were both prisoners. Each morning and evening, he intercepted the soldiers who brought Yama’s food and carried in the tray himself. Fruit and sweet white wine, raw fish in sauces of chili and hot radish, onion bread and poppy seed rolls, flat breads stuffed with olives and yellow bean curd and watercress leaves, bowls of sour yogurt, bowls of tea, beakers of cool sherbet. Yama ate very little and drank only water. Each night, Pandaras helped him undress, and each morning laid out fresh clothes for him and drew his bath.

“I am not a soldier,” Yama said. “And that is the problem.”

“But they think that you are a soldier, master. And they will surely kill you for it if you stay here.”

“They think that I am an army, Pandaras. Or a mage, or a kind of machine. A thing to be used, a thing whose ownership is in dispute. They see only what I can do, not what I am. Where in this world can I find peace?” He shook his head and smiled. “Do not worry. They will not kill you. You are my servant, no more and no less. You are not guilty of my crimes. You could walk out of here now if you wanted to.”

“I have already seen something of the cities of the heretics. I didn’t much like them and I doubt that I’ll like this one much either.”

“There are the ruins of the temple,” Yama said. “And there are still orchards and fishing boats, and the shrines on the far shore, by the great falls at the end of the river…”

Yama fell silent. Spots of sunlight filtered by the leaves of the jacaranda tree danced on his white shirt and his long black hair. It would need cutting again, Pandaras thought. And realized that when he cut it, it would be for the last time.

Yama saw his distressed look and said, “Beyond the edge of the world there are floating islands that hang within the falling spray of the river. They are grown over with strange mosses and ferns and bromeliads that thrive in the permanent rainfall. Telmon found a book in the library about them: they are called the Isles of Plenty. Fish with legs live on them, and lizards bigger than a man glide from island to island on membranes spread between their legs.” He gripped Pandaras’s hand and whispered, “The people of the indigenous tribes which inhabit the snowy tundra at the head of the river sometimes find such creatures frozen in the ice flows.” He winked. “The indigenous peoples know much about the secrets of the world because they have not changed since it was created. They learn nothing new, but they forget nothing.”

Pandaras feared Yama at times like this. Something had happened to him when he had been connected to the thing in the pit. It had jangled his brain. All that he knew was still there, but it had been muddled up, as looters might sweep ordered rows of books from the shelves of a library and leave them in heaps on the floor. Pandaras asked the chirurgeons who checked Yama’s health each day to give him some potion or simple that would soothe his mind, but they were interested only in his body. They did not want him to die before he was killed, but they did not care if he was mad.

When Pandaras carried in the tray of food the next morning, setting it down on the floating slab of stone which served as a table, Yama was already awake and sitting by the window. Two soldiers stood outside. The leaves of the jacaranda tree rustled in the sultry breeze. It was an hour past dawn, and already hot. Yama’s shirt was open to the waist, and he was streaming with sweat.

Pandaras mopped his master’s face with a cloth, delicately dabbing around islands and troughs of tight pink scar tissue. He would have to burn the cloth. Presumably in front of Usabio, who had asked Pandaras to collect Yama’s sweat and hair and nail clippings so that they could be sold as souvenirs.

“A few drops of blood could be diluted in a gallon of ox blood,” the warden explained, “and sold a minim at a time. Perspiration can be diluted in water. Let his perspiration be your inspiration. I can arrange it, Pandaras, and make us both rich.”

Pandaras said angrily, “Perhaps we could sell his piss, or his shit.”

Usabio considered this. He said, “No. It is not a question of hygiene, but of myth. Heroes should not be seen to have the functions of ordinary men.”

Yes, Pandaras thought now, he would burn the cloth right under the snake’s nostril slits.

“Enobarbus came to see me,” Yama said. “It seems that they have decided upon a compromise.”

Pandaras leaned out of the window and told the soldiers to take their stink elsewhere. They both laughed, and the younger one said, “Going to plan your escape, eh? Don’t worry. We won’t listen. It would spoil the fun.”

“We’ll go and get some tea,” his companion said. “Might take a few minutes.”

As they sauntered off, the younger soldier turned and called out, “If you’re going to climb over the roof, watch out. The tiles are loose.”

Laughter as both men went down the stairs.

“No one takes me seriously,” Pandaras said. “I have killed men. I could kill those two easily.”

“Then their companions in arms would kill you. I do not want that. There are machines listening to us in any case, and more machines guarding us. The soldiers are bored. They know that they are here only for show.”

“Dismiss the machines. Destroy them.”

“I am done with that, Pandaras. Enobarbus told me that he is still pleading for my life. He wants me to fight alongside him. I refused to help him, of course.”

“It took your power from you, didn’t it? I’m a fool not to have seen it before. Well, I’ve been in worse places than this. I’ll get us out.”

“They will let you go free after the execution. You are here only because you are my servant, as a courtesy to me.”

Pandaras threw over the breakfast tray. It made a loud crash. Mango and pomegranate juice mingled and spread on the glazed blue tiles of the floor. He said, “I will die with you, master.”

“I am not ready to die, Pandaras. But I am ready to move on. You must stay behind. There is something I want you to do. It is a heavy burden, but I know that you are capable of carrying it.”

“I am ready, master.”

“I want you to remember me. I want you to go amongst the indigenous peoples, and tell them about me.”

“I will do it. And I will kill as many of these snakes as I can before they kill you. I will tear down this vile place…”

Pandaras was crying, breathing in great gulps as tears ran down his cheeks and dripped from the point of his chin. A wet patch spread across the front of his gray silk tunic.

“No. Hush. Listen.” Yama dropped his voice; Pandaras had to kneel beside him to hear his words. Yama stroked his small, sleek head, and at last the boy stopped crying. “Listen,” Yama said again. “I want you to live. You can do miracles now, although you do not know it. You kissed the blood from my eyes, and the machines in my blood have changed the machines in yours. I told you about the little machines in all of us, the breath of the Preservers. Those in my blood have been changed, as have those in yours. Just a drop of your blood, Pandaras. In water or in wine. One drop in enough liquid for a hundred people to each take a sip.”

“Usabio wants to sell your blood, master. Perhaps we should allow it.”

“We could not guarantee that it would be drunk,” Yama said seriously. “Do you remember the baby of the mirror people?”

“I remember that the fireflies found it.”

“Because it had been changed. It had achieved self-awareness. Caphis saved my life, but he could not think anything that his people had not already thought ten thousand times over. I did not know then that I could change him, and now I want to rectify that. I want you to do it for me. A drop of blood, Pandaras. Change the indigenous peoples. Bring them to self-awareness.”

“I will do it only if you save yourself, master. Or else I will die with you.”

“The Preservers had a purpose in everything they did. Often we cannot understand it, or we think we understand it, but we see only what we want to see, and do not see what is really there. The indigenous peoples are despised because they cannot change. Until my father put a stop to it, the Amnan hunted the fisherfolk as they would hunt any animal. But the indigenous peoples are more than animals even if they are less than men. You will redeem them, Pandaras.”

“Come with me, master. This talk frightens me. I am only a pot boy who fell into this great and terrible adventure by mistake. I am your squire. I bring you food and mend your shirts and keep your weapons in good order. Do not make me more than I am.”

“You found me, Pandaras. And you followed me to the worst place in all the wide world, you found me and rescued me, and dragged me from the pit. Make you more than you are? We are all more than we are, if we only knew it.”

Yama had that faraway look Pandaras dreaded. He was casting through the muddle of his thoughts—his memories, the memories of the thing in the pit. He said, “There are places where time and space do not exist. They form a bridge between the present and the time when they were made. They bridge distances that light takes years to cross. The star-sailors know about them.”

“Master, do not torment yourself by trying to understand the lies of that thing—”

Yama gripped Pandaras’s arm, just above the stump of his wrist. “I am sure that Prefect Corin is still searching for me, but there are places I can go where he cannot follow himself. Perhaps I do not go there for the first time. The river swallows its own tail. Soon, Pandaras, I will see how it is done.”