Faces of Deception (26 page)

Seema turned to look at him and said softly, “You are awake.” If his grotesque nakedness caused her any discomfort, she did not show it. “I hope it is not because I am hurting you.”

Atreus shook his head and started to say, “I heard a…” He did not want to call what he had heard a mere voice. He shook his head, then finally said, “I guess it was a song. I must have been dreaming.”

“It was not a song, or a dream,” said a male voice, the same dulcet voice that Atreus had heard earlier. “Though I thank you for thinking so.”

A milky-skinned man with a slender build and the appearance of youthful vigor stepped into view. Wearing nothing but a white cotton sarong draped around his hips, he was dressed almost as immodestly as Atreus, though he was immeasurably more handsome, with cascading silver hair and piercing silver eyes that riveted the observer in place. Nor were his stunning good looks the most striking thing about him, for a huge pair of feathery white wings arched up behind his shoulders, creating a sort of pearly halo that followed him wherever he went

Atreus let his head drop back to the pallet, convinced that he was looking at one of Sune’s divine seraphs.

“I must be dead.”

“Do not say such things!” said Seema. She stood and stared at Atreus as though he had uttered a blasphemy. “Not in front of the sannyasi!”

“Atreus is not to blame. He is only speaking what he believes to be so,” said the sannyasi, who motioned Seema not to be angry, then came to the sleeping pallet and lowered his hand as though to touch Atreus’s sloping forehead. “May I?”

Atreus nodded, and the sannyasi placed a milky palm on his brow. At first, it felt cool and soothing. Then Atreus’s scorched flesh began to sting again. His broken leg started to throb, and the throbbing worked its way up his leg into his hip. The tingling in his burns seeped deep down through his muscles into his blood and turned his veins into channels of boiling fire, and the searing heat began to rush up through his body toward the sannyasi’s hand.

All of Atreus’s pain reached his neck at once, filling him with such a fiery agony that he thought his throat would open like a boiled sausage. He screamed and thrashed at the sides of his pallet and reached up to tear the hand from his brow.

The sannyasi’s palm remained in place, holding Atreus down as firmly as it did gently, and even all of Atreus’s anguish-borne strength could not tear the milky hand from his brow. For a moment, his head hurt as it had never hurt before. His ears ached with the roar of a thousand thunderclaps, his nostrils burned with lava, and his eyes felt like they were melting. His brains boiled inside his skull, and his ears roared with the hiss of escaping steam, then the pain vanished, evaporating through the thick bone of his brow.

Without being aware that he had closed them, Atreus opened his eyes and found himself looking up at the sannyasi. Now, the milky face looked as old as the mountains themselves. His lips were drawn tight and his brow was furrowed, and Atreus saw in his expression all the pain that had been drawn from his own body.

Before Atreus could thank the sannyasi, Yago and Rishi rushed through the door, the ogre’s broad shoulders tearing out the door jambs and a fair section of stone wall. As soon as they saw the white-winged figure standing over Atreus, their mouths fell open in astonishment Rishi stopped to stare in gape-mouthed wonder. Yago crossed the floor in a single thundering step and grabbed a feathery wing.

“What you doing?” he said. The ogre drew himself up to his full height, knocking two ceiling planks out of the roof, and tried to pull the sannyasi off the floor.

He might as well have tried to lift a mountain. The sannyasi remained firmly planted on the rough-hewn planks, and nothing, not so much as a wing feather, yielded to the ogre’s strength.

Yago scowled, then responded as ogres do to unexplained things, by trying to smash it with his fist.

The blow would have caved in the head of any man, but the sannyasi did not even flinch. Yago howled in pain and clutched the offending hand. Rishi’s eyes grew wide and round, and he rushed from the room making occult signs and jabbering in Maran.

Atreus scowled at his friend. “Yago!” he shouted. “what are you doing?”

“Me?” the ogre boomed. The way you screamed, I thought he was tearing your guts out.”

The Sannyasi turned to Yago. “Do not be angry with your son,” he said. “He was in terrible pain.”

Yago looked horrified. “Son?”

The Sannyasi motioned at Atreus and said, “Your son Atreus. He will recover soon.” Oblivious to the insult he had just inflicted on the ogre, the Sannyasi turned to Seema. “Now you see what comes with strangers. You have brought violence and anger into our midst”

“It’s not Seema’s fault,” Atreus said, propping himself up “She was only trying to save—”

“Of course,” interrupted the Sannyasi, “but it is not permitted to bring strangers into Langdarma.”

Atreus’s jaw fell, and he wondered if he remained in the grip of his fever delirium. Certainly, the Sannyasi looked more like a hallucination than a real being, and refused to believe that Seema had lied to him about Langdarma being a myth.

After a moment, Seema said in a quiet voice. I had no choice but to bring them. They were in terrible danger, and to leave them behind would have been murder.”

The Sannyasi considered this, then reluctantly nodded “If that is true, letting them die would have been a terrible stain on your soul, but you are still to blame.” His white wings began to flutter ever so slightly. He gestured at Atreus and Yago and said, “This is what comes of visiting the outside world. You cannot escape its taint”

Seema lifted her chin. “Would my soul have been any less tainted had I not tried to save Jalil?” she asked.

The Sannyasi’s milky face grew sad. “Even here,” he replied, “death is the inevitable consequence of life.”

“Jalil was a child!” Seema protested, shaking her head. “His time should not have come for many years.”

“And you know this how?”

“By the pain in my heart”

“Ahh… then your heart has misled you.” The Sannyasi’s pure voice grew sterner as he continued, “It is not for you to say who will live any more than it is for you to say who will die. You left the valley to find a cure, and Jalil died anyway. The wisdom of a healer lies in knowing what can be changed and what cannot. To claim more is to usurp the powers of the Serene Ones.”

Seema’s expression grew apprehensive. “That was not my intention,” she said.

“But that was the result,” the Sannyasi said, then took Seema’s shoulders and pulled her close, folding her inside his wings. “Seema Indrani, your vanity has cast a shadow on your soul and brought anger and violence into Langdarma. Your magic has become a burden you can no longer bear. I free you of it”

When the Sannyasi opened his wings, Seema looked weary and dejected. Without raising her gaze, she nodded and stepped back.

“As you will have it, Sannyasi,” she said.

“No!” Atreus exclaimed, sitting up and facing the Sannyasi. “She did nothing wrong. You can’t punish Seema for saving us.”

The Sannyasi gently pushed Atreus back down and said, “I am not punishing her. Until Seema lifts the shadow on her soul, her magic is only a trap. It will poison her thoughts with vanity and folly, and she will bring more wickedness down on us all.” The Sannyasi turned to Seema will watch over Atreus and his companions during their stay in Langdarma. If they do no harm and come to none themselves, your magic will return.”

Seema bowed her head.

“Your wisdom shines like the sky, Sannyasi.”

The Sannyasi smiled benignly, turned to Atreus, and said, “You and your friends may rest in Langdarma until you are well enough to travel. I ask only that you observe our

customs, and that you speak no angry words inside Langdarma.”

Atreus nodded.

The Sannyasi folded his wings tightly behind his shoulders. This will be difficult for you, but I know you will try.” His silver eyes softened. He leaned down to touch Atreus’s shoulders and continued, “And I am sorry for the grief you will feel after you leave.”

“What grief?” Yago demanded from the corner.

“You will be tormented by the memory of paradise,” the Sannyasi answered, continuing to look at Atreus. “There is nothing I can do to ease this burden.”

“I wouldn’t want you to,” said Atreus. “Better to have the memory than nothing at all.”

“You will come to think differently.” The Sannyasi shook his head sadly, then laid his milky palm over Atreus’s eyes. Now sleep. You must rest if you are to heal.”

Atreus could not have disobeyed if he wanted to. Even before the sentence was finished, the Sannyasi’s dulcet voice had lulled him into a dreamless trance. Atreus’s eyelids fell, his breathing slowed, and he sank into a deep, vitalizing slumber.

Atreus passed the next three days on that same sleeping pallet, staring up at the plank ceiling or gazing out through the window at an unchanging panorama of looming cliffs and forested hills. Every morning he was awakened by the sound of groaning yaks and clanging bells as the herders

drove their beasts out to pasture, and every evening he was lulled to sleep by laughing voices as they returned. During the day, he occasionally heard someone talking out in the street, though his window faced the wrong way for him to see who they were. Seema came five times a day to feed him and change his bandages. Though she often lingered longer than necessary, Atreus found it difficult to make conversation, feeling at once guilty about her sacrifices on his behalf and angry with her for deceiving him about Langdarma’s existence.

At Atreus’s insistence, Yago and Rishi spent most of their time touring the wonders of the valley, returning each evening so weary they barely had the energy to describe their adventures. The explorations seemed to take a heavy toll on Yago especially, as Langdarma’s customary fare of grains, legumes, and yak cheese were poor substitutes for charred meat and sour mead. Although the ogre could easily have supplemented his diet with a few rabbits or deer, he observed his promise to the Sannyasi and refrained from hunting anything more lively than blackberries. Rishi also seemed to honor the hospitality of their hosts, if only because the people of Langdarma lived very simply and had nothing to steal.

On the fourth day, Atreus was strong enough to move out onto a small wooden balcony overlooking the tiny hamlet where Seema made her home. From his chair, he could look out across the stone huts down to the meadows where the villagers grazed their yaks and the terraced slopes where they grew their peas and beans. A small gully curled around below the terraces, marking the boundary between the village lands and the forested slope that led down to the stone-walled fields in the basin’s fertile bottomland.

Late in the afternoon, Atreus was staring out across the fields, trying to imagine where he might find the Fountain of Infinite Grace, when Seema came out and sat beside him. She was carrying no food or bandages, and her manner was unusually reserved. For a long time she simply sat there and followed his gaze across the valley until he grew -nervous and began to imagine she had somehow sensed

what he was searching for.

When she finally spoke, it was without looking at him.

“Truly it is a miracle how just sitting and gazing out at Langdarma can heal one’s soul. I was hoping it might also

heal what has come between us.”

The comment itself did not surprise Atreus nearly so much as his reaction to it. He suddenly felt bitter and resentful, and he heard himself say, “That is a strange thing hear from someone who tried to convince me Langdarma does not exist”

Seema recoiled from the acid in his voice, and said, “Did you not promise the Sannyasi you would speak no angry words here?”

Atreus felt another rush of anger well up inside him but managed to bite his tongue and say nothing until it passed.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, “that’s true, but you did tell me that Langdarma was only a myth.”

Seema’s golden cheeks darkened to a tarnished bronze.

“Yes, I lied to you. I had hoped by now you would understand why.”

“I understand.” Despite his promise to the Sannyasi, Atreus could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. He touched a finger to his hideous cheek and said, “I have understood my whole life. My mistake was in thinking you were different than people elsewhere.”

Seema looked at her hands. “I do not know how people are elsewhere,” she said, “but I did not lie to you because of how you look.”

“ Don’t insult me,” Atreus told her, then waved his hand at the lush forest below. “Everything is beautiful in Langdarma, and I am ugly. I know why you didn’t want me here.”

Now Seema’s voice took on an angry edge. “That is not so. You saw the Sannyasi’s anger for yourself.”

Atreus shrugged and said, “What’s the difference? Whether you found me too ugly or simply knew the Sannyasi would, the result was the same.”

“You are not ugly. It is only that you do not belong here. The Sannyasi’s concern is for your welfare and Langdarma’s.”

Atreus rolled his eyes and looked toward a swarm of scarlet butterflies dancing among the white blossoms of a plum tree.

Seema stood and came to his chair. “If you were ugly,” she asked, “would I do this?”

Taking Atreus’s cheeks in her hands, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his, and this time she was not trying to breathe for him. There was nothing friendly or modest in the kiss. Her mouth was warm and liquid and charged with ardor, and Atreus began to feel stirrings he had only dreamed of. His hands rose of their own accord and grasped her shoulders, drawing her down onto his lap. She did not resist. He pulled her close, mashing her body close to his, feeling her wonderful softness against his lumpy brawn, so lost in passion that when he heard a sudden peculiar hissing sound, he did not even recognize it as his own voice. Seema cried out and jumped out of the chair.

“Your burns!” she cried, staring down at his bandaged thighs.

Atreus blushed, realizing there was more to notice in his lap than burns. Seema paid no attention to his embarrassment. She pulled the bandages back, then winced at his torn and oozing scabs.