5: The Holy Road (14 page)

“Pardon?”

“Ushiri Ravishan,” John said, “where is he?”

“With the Usho.” Ushman Serahn looked slightly puzzled. “Oh, you thought I summoned you on his behalf? No, nothing of the sort.”

“What then?” John managed to straighten. A nauseous tension still played through his stomach. He tried not to look at the two sweeping arches. Their yellow stones made him think of rotting teeth and rancid butter. The issusha’im’s voices scraped and whimpered at John.

It comes to cuts us open and cracks our bones.

It sucks our marrow. It burns us.

They must not brings it to us. Must not brings it to us!

Hates it. Hates it. Hates it. Hates it.

Get it out,
a childlike voice was almost sobbing
. Get it out. It hurts
.

John couldn’t understand how Ushman Serahn could just stand there looking so bland, reading. Not unless the man couldn’t hear the issusha’im.

He kills us
, one of the issusha’im suddenly howled.
They puts him in the fire and he kills us all!

“You are needed back in Rathal’pesha at once,” Ushman Serahn informed him offhandedly. He flipped a page in his book.

“Rathal’pesha?” John asked. The issusha’im were growing more agitated, their words breaking down into hoarse screams and thin howls. He had to concentrate to hear Ushman Serahn over them.

“Yes, Rathal’pesha,” Ushman Serahn replied with a self-amused expression. “It’s the monastery that you came from, the one up in the mountains.”

John ignored the ushman’s patronizing reply. “What’s happened?”

“Ushman Hann’yu only said that it was urgent and that you must be sent to him at once. He invoked the highest authority, so one imagines that it is rather important.” Ushman Serahn snapped his book closed. He stepped away from the yellow arch that filled the right side of the room and waved John towards it.

John felt his stomach clench into a painful knot at the thought of touching the obvious Gray Space within the arch.

“I can’t go through there,” he said. “The Gray Space will tear me apart.”

“Ushman Hann’yu seems to think otherwise. It’s a gate after all. It will transport you on its own. All you have to do is step in. I wouldn’t think that was too much for you.” Ushman Serahn stepped past John and opened the door. “The choice is yours. You can cross through or you can return downstairs where the guards will place you under arrest for disobedience of your vows.”

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO,
one of the issusha’im wailed above the noise of all the others.

They puts him in the fire
, another issusha hissed.
They puts him in the fire and he kills us all.

“As I said, it’s your choice.” Ushman Serahn leaned against the doorframe and opened his book once more. “I really don’t have all day,” he added without looking up.

John took in a deep breath. The air felt sick and weak in his lungs. It tasted of seared ozone. If Hann’yu had sent for him, it had to be important. John regarded Ushman Serahn. He didn’t want to entrust the man with anything, but there was no one else.

“Will you tell Ushiri Ravishan what’s happened?” John asked.

“I’ll explain when I appoint a new attendant to take your place.” Ushman Serahn barely glanced up at John. “It’s not as if he needs anyone to carry his bags at this point anyway. He should be fine without you.”

John couldn’t bring himself to thank Ushman Serahn, so instead he stepped forward into the arch. Instantly, he regretted his choice.

The sensation was not pain. Pain, at least, would have assured him that he was still alive. This was an absence, a terrible numbness that felt as though it had ripped him from himself, as if the Gray Space had devoured and digested him.

This was like dying. No, it was like being dead already—as if he were wide awake in a dead body. John could sense his thoughts building towards panic.

It made him think of the desperate thrashing of a drowning man, his lungs consumed by the absence of air. It was a feeling like that. It was as if he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t move. It felt as if he had been swallowed by an utterly alien environment.

He wasn’t dying, he told himself. It just felt like dying.

And he realized why. The Gray Space isolated him from the world that sustained him. No, sustained was too weak a word. No, the world defined him. He felt the earth, air, water, and stones of Basawar as deeply as his own flesh. Without them he became some excised organ.

A severed limb. A terrified self-aware amputation. He was the head on the wrong side of a guillotine’s blade. And he was dying. It didn’t just feel like it, John realized.

He was dying. This was what killed a Rifter. This was how his death could be opened like a door. There was even a key to lock him in. He remembered that from the holy texts.

He had walked right into it.

John wanted to scream with anger and fear. He wanted to thrash and tear the enveloping Gray Space asunder. But he had nothing to grab, nothing to rip or beat against. The Gray Space was a vacuum offering no opposition and no sustenance. Its embrace was a slow suffocation.

This was how every Rifter before him had died, John thought. After poisoning and bleeding, this last slow suffocation had destroyed them. They had died like kittens in a sack, sinking to the bottom of a lake. Later the Payshmura priests dredged the space for the Rifters’ bones and carved their keys to kill the next Rifter.

One Rifter after another would die, until the world of Basawar had been utterly bled to death. They would murder the whole world with these endless little amputations.

And John knew the shreds of his self-control were slipping away under waves of shock and horror.

He couldn’t die now, not like this. But he had no way to fight it. He had nothing but a desperate, overwhelming refusal.

“NO!” The word tore from his throat. Bile and blood followed it up. John staggered forward and then spilled onto the cold stone floor at Hann’yu’s feet. He had crossed through the Gray Space in just a matter of minutes.

Outside the infirmary window, dark clouds hung at the edges of the pale sky. Only a small circle of luminous haze betrayed the presence of the winter sun.

“I’m never doing that again,” John whispered hoarsely. He accepted the cup of daru’sira from Hann’yu and sipped it cautiously. His throat still felt raw. The deep, involuntary shuddering had mostly subsided. Earlier, he had been almost unable to make it down the stairs from the upper chamber of Rathal’pesha to the infirmary. John pulled the blankets closer around his shoulders. His body still felt as if his bones had turned to ice.

Hann’yu watched him in uncharacteristic silence. He looked terrible. His skin had a yellowish tone and the bags under his eyes were as black as bruises. Hann’yu seemed to have aged years in the month that John had been gone. He’d lost a great deal of weight. His once lithe, tanned arms looked desiccated and skeletal.

John sat his cup on the bedside table. “Why did you call me back? What’s happened?”

“So much.” Hann’yu shook his head. “I have nothing but bad news. It was like the whole world collapsed as soon as you and Ravishan left. I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Just tell me.”

“Your brother-in-law, Behr, is dead,” Hann’yu said quietly. “Rasho Tashtu murdered him. They were arguing and Tashtu shot him.”

“No.” The word came out like a reflex. John’s chest tightened unbearably. They were only days from escaping Basawar.

“No,” John repeated, feeling the terrible loss sweep through him. Distantly, he heard thunder crash through the sky. Droplets of freezing rain began to slap against the closed windows.

“I’m sorry, Jahn.” Hann’yu gently pressed a kerchief into John’s hand. As his fist clenched around the cloth, John realized that tears were slipping down his cheeks. He tried to wipe them away, but his hands were still clumsy and numb.

“There’s more.” Hann’yu’s voice was strained. “Your sister was there when it happened.”

Laurie, John thought suddenly, God, what would this have done to Laurie?

“She burned Tashtu to ash where he stood,” Hann’yu said. “Half a city block went up in the fire as well. The thatch caught sparks and just…just went. Two children were killed.”

John opened his mouth, but he could hardly make himself breathe, much less speak. This was like some kind of terrible nightmare. And he knew it had to get worse. He knew that Laurie’s reaction wouldn’t be defensible.

“They wanted to kill her right then and there,” Hann’yu said, “the neighbors, you know. It was the middle of the day and they saw it all. They were going to beat her to death, but one of the rashan’im, a man named Pivan, stopped them and sent word here.”

“Then she’s alive?” John asked in a desperate whisper.

“I did what I could, but the city judges were hardly willing to hear me out,” Hann’yu went on as if he hadn’t heard John.

“Is she still alive?” John asked with more force.

“Yes, she was with child.” Hann’yu looked up at John. “Did you know?”

John just nodded. Bill had been so happy. Laurie and he both had been. John wiped at his cheeks with Hann’yu’s kerchief. He couldn’t seem to stop crying.

“It saved her life,” Hann’yu went on. “She’s in Umbhra’ibaye now. We sent her through the gates. Once the child is born, she will be inducted into the issusha’im.”

“No.” John’s body was still clumsy from the effects of the Gray Space, but he managed to pull himself to his feet. “We have to go there. Get her out—”

“There’s nothing you can do for her now.” Hann’yu caught John’s hand. His fingers felt as cold and desiccated as dead leaves.

“I’m not going to let them flay her!” John swayed on his feet and Hann’yu’s grip fell away.

“Your sister is safe for the moment,” Hann’yu said with quiet urgency. “It’s Ravishan that we have to worry about right now.”

“What does Ravishan have to do with this?”

Hann’yu looked miserable. “You have to understand, things were such a mess. People in Amura’taye panicked and accused half the women in the city of witchcraft. It was like some kind of hysteria. After what had happened in the blood market, none of them wanted to be associated with an enemy of the priesthood. Accusations were made against everyone. No one up here knew what to do. If Dayyid had still been alive, he would have taken control of it, but…I honestly thought it might just die down on its own.” Hann’yu closed his eyes and bowed his head in silence.

John sat back down on the edge of the bed. “You have to tell me what this has to do with Ravishan.”

Hann’yu nodded. “It was after your sister was sent to Umbhra’ibaye. Suspicion immediately fell on other women in Lady Bousim’s household. And on you as well.”

“Me?” John asked.

“I told you people were coming forward with all manner of mad claims. Some old woman swore that she’d seen a blonde man dancing naked with a circle of wild animals.” Hann’yu rolled his eyes at the charge. “It turned out that she was blind as a stone and couldn’t describe you in any detail, save the color of your hair. Most of the allegations were of similar merit. They could be dismissed almost at once. The only thing that you could really be considered guilty of was being fair-haired. But one of Lady Bousim’s maids was not so lucky. They burned her on the Holy Road.”

Horror rolled through John’s gut at the thought.

Hann’yu took a deep drink of daru’sira. He turned the clay cup through his hands as if searching the surface to find out what his next words would be.

Behind Hann’yu, John watched the dark clouds growing and steadily enveloping the pale sun. A storm wind buffeted the highest branches of distant trees.

“It was after they burned the girl, Ohbi, that Fikiri began to act strangely. I tried to calm him, to reassure him that his mother would be safe. Not even the wealthiest merchant of Amura’taye would dare to lay an accusation against a woman of the gaun’im, certainly not without very solid proof, and his mother was blameless. But it did no good. He disappeared for days, came back torn up and fevered. He kept talking about your sister.”

Hann’yu scowled down at the empty cup in his hands.

“I don’t know why Fikiri did what he did. I’ve tried to reason it out but I can’t. If he had come to me, I think I could have reasoned with him, but he went directly to Ushman Nuritam. He claimed that he had been there when Dayyid was murdered, that it hadn’t been one of the Fai’daum that had killed him. He claimed that Ravishan had done it.”

“Ravishan?” John couldn’t believe it. This was some kind of nightmare. It didn’t even make sense. What could Fikiri possibly gain by accusing Ravishan of Dayyid’s murder? Then, sickeningly, an answer came to John.

“Fikiri wants to take Ravishan’s place as Kahlil.”

“I don’t know,” Hann’yu replied, but his expression made John think that he shared John’s opinion. “He was so distraught. I thought he might have gone mad.”

But John was sure Fikiri hadn’t. With Laurie and Bill both gone, and John himself accused of witchcraft, that left no one to ensure that Ravishan would keep his promise to take Fikiri and his mother to Nayeshi. Fikiri and Ravishan had never gotten along. Without John or Laurie’s pressure, Fikiri couldn’t expect Ravishan to save him or his mother. He needed to take Ravishan’s place as Kahlil.