The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (74 page)

She walked across the hall, her footsteps like the flutter of a bird’s wings in the hollow gulf of air.

Lord Shiva stood poised with his right foot balanced on the back of the dwarf Muyalaka, the Demon of Forgetfulness. He stared serenely into the air and a nascent smile touched his lips. Ilyana ventured closer. She could almost feel the heat of the ring of fire, the arch set with flames, that surrounded him. Except it was only a statue.

In his upper right hand he held the drum of creation whose rhythm brings the universe to life, and in the palm of his upper left hand a tongue of flame flickered. Ilyana started and stared at it, but when she looked straight at it, it was, like the statue, unmoving. By this flame would the universe be destroyed in the final conflagration, or at least, that was what she remembered from her report on the dance. She was close enough to touch him now. His lower right hand, palm out, puzzled her a moment until she remembered that it represented a gesture granting freedom from fear. She reached for it, suddenly wanting to touch his palm, to see if somehow that contact could bestow protection and peace oh her, but, reaching, her wrist brushed his wrist, of his lower left hand, which pointed down to his left foot.

The touch paralyzed her. Genji’s skin had felt hard, shelllike. His, smooth bronze, was warm. Then, brought to life, unable to help herself, she ran her fingers down the fingers of his hand and drawn down by their texture touched his left foot, which was lifted gracefully across his body almost to waist height. Bracelets ringed his ankle, little bells, and she handled them with her fingers, each one separate, separated from, tinkling softly as she touched them, as if she was bringing, them to life. She traced his toes. Release, that was what the left foot symbolized. Every least detail symbolized something.

Standing so close, she could not help but stroke back to the bracelets, proceeding higher, up to his knee and around the curve of his leg. Clothed in a tiger skin draped round his loins, he wore otherwise only ornaments, bracelets, necklaces, and a sash tied around his waist, blown away from the body as by a sharp wind so that it touched the arch of fire. It rippled in the wind, colored now blue like the sky and now blue like deep water and now the pale golden waves of grass shorn by the wind.

It was not an ordinary wind. It caressed her face and then, increasing in strength, it began to press against her like the storm winds heralding a gale.

Lord Shiva raised up on his toes and stamped his heel down on the back of the dwarf, the first beat, the drum, and the sound beat on as his fingers tapped the drum contained within his hand. Flame leapt in his palm, springing for the arch of flame which swelled in the tearing wind to encompass the air and the hall. So brilliant it brought tears to her eyes. He moved, the graceful turn of a hand on the wrist, the sweep of a leg, and spun, once around, and as he turned his gaze brushed past her, and she staggered back from the force of that glance, like the searing touch of a beam of red fire.

Stamping his heels, he spun, his slender limbs flashing in the air, his bracelets winking in the light of a thousand, a million exploding suns as here on the dancing ground of the universe the worlds were annihilated by fire. The bells rang down the shattering of the halls of history and the world of time, shorn by the wind that buffeted her while she yet stood her ground and watched, with terror, with a sudden blinding passionate yearning, the dance of Shiva.

The world came apart around her.

“Not yet,” said Genji. “The Kali Yuga has not ended.”

Ilyana was falling, standing on nothing. Terrified, she grabbed for the sash. Substance respun itself under her feet and the hall came back into being around her like threads woven into a great rug, the age of iron. There stood Genji, in her sable robes, not four paces from her. There stood the arch of flame. There stood Shiva, still now.

But he was no longer a statue.

Genji looked at Ilyana. “You are not yet old enough to tamper with the order of the universe,” she said, scolding, gentle, possibly amused.

Shiva looked at Ilyana. His eyes—she met his eyes—his gaze struck her like the resounding clap of a giant bell, shuddering through her, and she threw a hand up to ward herself but she was split with blackness, shattering her.

And she woke, clapping a palm to her forehead as if following the rest of the movement to its appointed end. She had a monstrous headache.

She lay on David’s cot. The room was dark, but the merest hint of dawn traced the window. Someone hissed her name.

“Yana! Ilyana! Wake up. We’ve got him.”

No
, she wanted to say. His glance will kill you. She was lying on David’s cot. She’d had a dream, or been in nesh. She struggled to get up, to roll off the couch.

Almost cried out loud. Tangled in and around her legs and waist was Shiva’s sash. Blue and deeper blue and gold. A wave of light-headedness swept her, so steep that she knew she was going to faint.

But she didn’t.

“Ilyana!” The whisper came again, more insistently, and the curtain stirred.

She clawed at the sash, bundling the fabric, as fine as spider’s silk, up into a ball and sticking it into the waistband of her skirt, hiding it. Staggered to her feet in time to fall forward into David, who came through the curtain and caught her and set her back on her feet again.

“Come,” he said in a low voice, evidently thinking she had just woken up.

I have just woken up
, she said to herself, not sure whether she was speaking aloud, but he did not tell her to be quiet. He took her by one hand and tugged her outside, where they stood within the dim arch of the corridor and peered out into the courtyard. A frail figure knelt before the latticework within the gazebo. From this distance it was hard to make out details of his appearance, just that his clothes hung strangely on him, too loose.

She found her voice. “Did he just get here?”

“No. We decided it would be easier to get him into nesh and then—”

Ilyana winced and a sound of protest escaped her.

“I know, I know. I went in after him over an hour ago, but I couldn’t find him.”

“I could have told you that!”

“Shhh.”

“Why bother! Valentin can’t hear us where he is.”

“No, but it’s getting late, and other people—”

Other people. She had forgotten about other people. She had forgotten about everything. If she closed her eyes the whirling flash of the dance raged against the darkness, the nimbus of his hair swirling out like a crown that stretched in ribbons into space, his beautiful limbs like strokes of lightning splintering the universe.

She opened her eyes. All remained as it was, the thin figure entwined with the latticework, David’s steady breathing beside her, the slow bleeding of light into the night air, presaging dawn. Someone moved back by the gateway, and then another person scuttled down the corridor toward the toilets. Water splashed softly in the cistern.

“Why, look,” said a young woman’s voice. “There’s Valentin!”

“Oh, hell,” said David in an undertone.

A shadow detached itself from the gazebo—Hyacinth—and moved to stand protectively between Valentin and the betraying voice. Light rose. Valentin’s face was filthy, his hair was matted, and one of his sleeves was torn. His head lolled back, and he wore on his face the same half smile poised within serene majesty, like a mockery of Lord Shiva, like an echo. Fear seized Ilyana’s heart, fear for Valentin. Fear propelled her forward just as three more of the actors came out of the bathroom and stopped to gawk, just as a single figure strode purposefully in through the gateway from outside.

He was furious. He hated bad reviews. He hated looking bad, especially in front of an audience. She knew him. She knew exactly what he would do.

“Father! Don’t!” she cried, but it was too late.

Vasil shoved Hyacinth away and grabbed Valentin by the shoulders and pulled. Valentin’s fingers had a death grip on the lattice. The whole structure swayed, but Valentin did not let go. Could not, because he wasn’t truly with his body, but Ilyana knew that her father did not understand nesh.

Instead, Vasil got a look of stark fury on his face and yanked with his full strength. With a wrenching snap that echoed like thunder resounding in the sky above, the lattice broke off by Valentin’s knees. Sparks flew up and vanished in a spray of brilliant light into empty air.

Looking stunned, Vasil let go of his son. Eyes still shut, Valentin sagged down onto the tiled ground, fingers still clutching the sundered latticework. Then he began to twitch violently, and within an instant was in the throes of a full-fledged seizure. Ilyana and David reached him at the same time, and David held him down, getting kicked several times for his pains, while Ilyana pried his fingers off the lattice one by one. When the last one came free, scraped down to blood, Valentin ceased moving and just lay there, limp, like one dead.

“Oh, gods,” cried Ilyana, looking up at her father, glorious in the rising sun. “You’ve killed him.”

F
OR SIX DAYS THEY
were left alone in the tower chamber. Food was brought to them—a pittance, bread and water—and once a day a servant took the chamber pot away and emptied it. Another servant brought wood up, just enough, if rationed properly, to get them through the day and evening. More than once the guards suggested to Jaelle what she might do with them to get a few scraps of meat or vegetables for herself; to her surprise, she refused. She was not sure why, only that it had something to do with the way Princess Katerina shared out the portion equally and ate her bread as if it were a feast.

Katerina wove, taught Jaelle to play khot, and in her turn learned the Yos language from Jaelle. She read the book of travels twice (it took Jaelle an entire afternoon to puzzle out five pages), and brooded over
The Recitation
, listening with the obsessed interest of a person who would go mad without something to focus on to Jaelle’s scathing denunciations of the apostasy of the northern church.

“Their copy of
The Recitation
does not include the ‘Gospel of Elia,’ or the ‘Testimonies of the House of Narsene.’ ”

“What is the house of
nar seen
?” Katerina asked.

“A merchant house with whom the Peregrina—the Pilgrim—traveled while she was searching for her brother. In those days whole families would move together along the trade routes, and one such house sheltered the Pilgrim. Their testimonies of her miraculous gifts were bound by the law of the anointed church into
The Recitation
.”

“Then why aren’t they in this copy?”

“Because the northerners are heretics.” Jaelle was getting tired of repeating herself. Princess Katerina could read like a scholar, play castles like a man, and learn languages with the skill of a merchant bred to the caravan routes, but she could not understand the simplest explanation of heresy and the apostasy of the northern church when it sundered itself from the true and anointed faith of the southern church. “They may call themselves the true church, but they speak with the Accursed One’s mouth.”

“Who is the accursed one again? Oh, yes, the older brother. ‘Fathered by an unholy man.’ But they came of the same mother, so I cannot see why they should be treated differently.”

Katerina sat on the window bench, as she often did, as close as possible to light and air, a stone’s width from freedom. The bruises on her face had mostly faded, and once her shock had faded she had stored her anger neatly away inside herself, as the caravan women learned to do when they were cheated of their pay or forced by a soldier. But she still paced the circumference of the chamber many times each day, and the pattern emerging on her loom was a pleasant blue and green that shot through with sharp red bolts of lightning.

“Because Hristain and the Pilgrim were the children of God, not of a man. The Accursed One’s father was merely a man, or even, some say, the Evil One himself, taking a man’s form.”

“I am also a child of the gods. But I cannot fly up to the heavens as your Hristain did, nor can I turn water into milk or sew a sundered body into a living one.”

“But God did not pour His essence into you.”

“But if God poured his essence into some body, then that body would be God, would it not? Not a true person anymore.”

“No, no. Hristain is both God and man.”

“How can one person be two things?”

“It is the mystery of two natures in one substance.”

Katerina giggled.

“It isn’t right to mock God’s holiest mysteries! Whole churches have been excommunicated for less.”

“I beg your pardon.” But Katerina didn’t look sorry, and Jaelle abruptly realized that the other woman was teasing her. “What does it mean,
ex communicated
?”

They both heard the guards come to attention below. Katerina leapt up from the window bench and ran to the arrow loop that overlooked the outside stairway, but she could not see the landing from there. Jaelle knew that well enough, having tried herself many times before. After a bit, a guard opened the door into the chamber, and Lady Jadranka entered. Three servants followed her, laden with wood, bags of yarn, a fur-trimmed cloak and several gowns, and a tray of meat and cheese and bread, and a jug of wine. The lady looked somewhat embarrassed.

“I beg your pardon for neglecting you, Lady Katherine.”

Katerina politely inclined her head. “I give you greetings, Lady Jadranka. I hope you will let me compliment you on your fine translation of the book of travels.”

Lady Jadranka allowed herself a smile. “But if you have not read the original, Lady Katherine, then how can you know that the translation was fine? I might have written anything.”

“If you had chosen to write anything, then you might as well have written a book of travels under your own hand, would you not?”

Lady Jadranka covered her mouth for a moment, hiding a second smile. “It would be unseemly for a woman to advertise herself in such a coarse fashion, unless she were a holy woman writing of God’s words to other nuns.”