The Book of Fire (52 page)

After the Ritual of Welcome, the High Priestess is formally entreated to walk among the Faithful of the town. This is the part Paia has been dreading. The Faithful must be able to touch her directly. For that, she must remove her protective robe and expose herself in the flimsy Temple garments to the sun and the hot, dusty wind as she has never done before, as well as to whatever disease and impulse toward violence might lurk within the crowd. But this ritual is central to Temple doctrine and must never be denied. The health and physical perfection of the High Priestess is the miraculous proof of the God’s favor. The Rite of Touching, the God himself insists, brings the Faithful closer to him.

With a grand gesture, Paia tosses back her hood and shrugs the robe back into the waiting hands of her priestesses. An awed murmur rises and falls in the crowd. So far, she has not disappointed.

As the local priest falls in on one side and Son Luco on the other, Paia processes around the sides of the square, where the townspeople are gathered. They have washed and scrubbed and still they appear soiled, as if stained by
their toil in the parched earth and by the awful sun. Some kneel, some do not. It doesn’t matter. Paia is taller than any of them, and Son Luco appears among them as a giant. Their eyes are weary, yet hands reach eagerly for a touch of holy flesh. Paia usually endures the touching rites without response. But here, out in the open, with the sun slanting away toward the hilltops and the smoke from the cook fires tickling her nostrils, she is impelled to a more genuine contact. She stretches out her own hands as she moves down the line, grasping bony fingertips and brown wrists, worn and wrinkled elbows, scarred stumps and twisted limbs. The delighted crowd sighs its gratitude for this unexpected blessing. A step behind her, Son Luco clears his throat, either in disapproval or surprise. Paia does not meet his glance. She doesn’t want to know what the First Son thinks right now. Probably that she is taking too long, and holding up the next stage of the ritual. But she’s enjoying the smiles and wonder that her touch freely offered brings to the faces of these simple people. She is moved by the sense of connection. Perhaps this is how she can preach love of the God to them, not with words but action. Love given must be returned in some fashion, she reasons. If the God cannot love his Faithful, perhaps his High Priestess can do it for him.

She has completed three sides of her slow progress around the square when Son Luco deflects her with a murmured warning about overexposure.

“Please behave,” he says, then deftly whisks her into the waiting arms of her red-veiled chaperones. The two priestesses grandly fling her robe about her naked shoulders and use their grasp on its sleeves to maneuver her onward to the Confirmation of the Clergy, where Paia must anoint each priest and priestess of the local chapter with the God’s special blessing. This ceremony is plainly considered to be the more important one, at least by the clergy. After the blessing comes a recitation of the chapter’s history, and the honors bestowed on it by the God. After that, a long presentation by the head priest, detailing the duties of the Faithful in the Last Days of the World. He is not a compelling speaker, but Paia judges him as sincere verging on fanatical when he interprets the total lack of rainfall in
so many months as a blessing from the God to hasten the holy End.

Finally, just at dark, torches are lit and a grand feast is laid in the center of the square. Paia is surprised to find herself ravenous, despite a long day of discomfort, boredom, and nausea. There are not enough tables to offer the High Priestess the honor of a private one without seating the First Son among the locals. This was decided to be the more inappropriate, so Luco sits beside her at the high table, facing the rest of the clergy at a longer table set in front of them, all of them surrounded by the Faithful who must sit on the flagstones. To Paia, it feels too much like the hated Lunch at the Citadel. But at least there is food enough to go around.

Paia lifts a morsel of stewed rabbit on her fork. “Tastes just like home.” Though of course it doesn’t.

“It ought to.” Luco smiles graciously as a villager elder bows before them with a platter of fresh radishes. “Did you think we raised our food ourselves all these years?”

“Of course not, though it’s no thanks to you that I know any better. Even in my father’s day, our food came from the villages.” She nibbles at the rabbit pensively. “Luco . . .?”

“No. Don’t ask. I beg you.” He blots his lips and folds his napkin in a precise triangle. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

He looks more wary and tired than he has all day. Each dish that comes to the table, he tastes himself before allowing Paia a portion. He is in eye contact with each of the six men from her Honor Guard who are currently arrayed at a discreet distance from the table, and Paia catches him polling them regularly. But Paia cannot imagine what the First Son is so worried about. The humble little square is filled with the loyal Faithful, and their attention is mostly on the food. They are probably delighted to be eating better than they have in months. She sips gingerly at the odd wood-scented wine, sorry that the God’s intemperate death threats have kept Luco from enjoying his meal.

She tries a less sensitive subject. “How inspiring that this town’s deep faith impels them to such great generosity.”

Luco chews, nodding neutrally.

“It’s a miracle they can grow anything at all out here. It’s so much drier than I expected. Is it true what the priest said, that there’s been absolutely no rain at all?”

“None that I know of.”

“Is this a change, First Son? A sign that conditions are worsening?”

“It is.”

“Well, we must ask less of them for the Temple.”

Luco’s fork hesitates midway, then continues to his mouth. “The God will not agree with you.”

“Or we must help them somehow. In my father’s day, there were pipelines and . . . Luco?”

“You will excuse me, my priestess. Now that the formalities are done, I must see to Temple business while all are here assembled.”

He rises, and spends the rest of the meal working the lower table. He is clearly relieved when Paia, her servants, and the two Daughters of the Temple are ushered into the Chapter House to spend the night. It’s only one dingy room with a stone floor and an attached privy, but a high row of windows along each side provides good ventilation. Paia decides to let Luco do all the worrying, since he seems inclined to do it anyway. Resisting the fussing of the red-robed Two, she lets the chambermaid, who has been hovering nearby, prepare her for bed. When she lays herself out on the tall pile of sheep’s wool mattresses provided for her comfort, she falls instantly asleep.

And she dreams, oh, such dreams. So many and so rich. It must be the food, or being out in the open air. All her nights up till this one seem quiet by comparison, as if the bedrock of the Citadel somehow stifled her dreaming and now she is making up for lost time.

Images flash by, too many and too sudden to hold on to. Strange faces and places, and others she recognizes. Her father, for instance, lecturing her gravely about duty and responsibility. But he is surrounded by huge piles of books that topple and bury him before he can tell her what duty he’s talking about. The books all crumble into dust that swirls up in clouds like the dust on the road. When it clears, there is no sign of her father. She is standing in front of the painting, back at the Citadel. The landscape is as it was
when she first saw it, lush, green, inviting—in tragic contrast with the desiccated countryside she has been traveling through. It sits on a tall easel in a darkened room. A huge gilt frame surrounds it, overwhelming its simpler beauties with gaudy carvings of fruit and flowers. As she moves closer, the carvings resolve into the sinuous figures of dragons, intertwined, chasing each other around the frame. Tiny jewels sparkle in their eyes: ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond.

She moves closer, searching for the image of the God in the carving. Frame and landscape enlarge. She stands in front of the painting as if before an enormous window. A breath of wind tousles her hair, and the window becomes an open doorway. The frame is the stone portal that guards the entrance to the House Computer’s inner sanctum in the Citadel Library, but the Library is nowhere in view.

PAIA!

Someone is calling from outside the door, in a musical lilt that makes her very name sound magical, as if the wind itself were speaking.

PAIA!

The sweet voice resonates in the same place inside her as the God’s silent summons. Paia peers around the side of the portal, sees no one.

PAIA!

Perhaps the caller is just beyond those trees. Paia steps forward.

With a roar and a flash, her way is barred by a sudden curtain of flame. White heat sears her eyelashes and hair. Paia stumbles backward with a cry, and wakes.

At first, she thinks she’s in her own room, then she doesn’t know where she is. Then she’s sure she’s still sleeping.

The God is standing at the foot of her bed. The room is the same darkened room of her dream except for the God, who shimmers with his own angry glow. Paia waits for him to speak. But he just stares at her, for so long that the hot rage cools in his eyes, fading to gray. His light seeps out of the room like the end of day, and Paia is overcome by inexplicable grief. She bolts upright. Dream or not, she reaches for him. “My lord!”

The God eyes her bleakly, then shakes his head and turns away, a faint glow gliding through darkness like a fish through soundless depths, back and forth, back and forth.

“Do you find it beautiful, all that damp and green?”

Paia swallows. Yes is obviously the wrong answer.

“What about me? Am I not beautiful? Is not the kingdom I’ve created more beautiful than this?”

He gestures into the darkness, and the painting reappears, only to explode into flame. Even as it burns, Paia can see the trees dying and the landscape shriveling into desert. A sob rises in her throat, but she holds her tongue. The servants and Temple Daughters sleep on as if nothing could wake them.

“She seeks to win you to their cause, beloved.”

“She, my lord?” His enemies have never had a gender before.

“My sister.”

“Your
what?
” Now Paia is sure she is dreaming, though the tears on her cheeks feel real enough.

“My sister, who plagues me even from the confines of her prison.” He paces away. “Well. How goes your Visitation so far? Are you teaching the Faithful to love me?”

She absorbs his bitterness like a lash. “They will, if they follow my example. If only you would be there with me, the teaching would be simple.”

The God rolls his golden eyes at her.

“My lord, a dream means nothing! Why do you insist on doubting me?”

“THIS dream means everything! I wasn’t sure how deeply she had touched you. Now I know, even if you do not.” He paces back to stand beside the bed, then sits, though the sheep’s wool mattresses show no sign of added weight. He stares searchingly into Paia’s face as if into the farthest reaches of her soul. He traces the shape of her chin with his palm, millimeters from her skin, and the tears dry on her cheeks.

“Oh, my dearest lord,” she whispers.

He leans in as if to kiss her, but Paia feels only heat, little tongues of flame licking at her lips, curling into her parted mouth, seeking the back of her throat. It is both intense pain and deepest pleasure, but Paia smells no burning flesh so the only sensation she knows is real is her
overwhelming surge of desire. If only she could press herself against him, let his glorious heat fill her in all ways. But to grasp him now would be to grasp air. The pain and her hunger take her together like a whirlwind. Whimpers and groans mix deep in her throat.

Abruptly, he pulls away, leaving her gasping. Her mouth feels like it’s been stung by a thousand bees. She touches her tongue to her lips delicately.

“Have I damaged you, my priestess?”

Paia has never seen the God’s perfect face so taut with rage and tragedy. “I . . . don’t think so.”

“You see how it is, then.”

“Yes. I see.” What Paia really sees is their private ritual of Holy Ecstasy for what it is: the only way the God can pleasure her as a man would do. What, she wonders, does he get out of it? “Is there no other way?”

After a long moment, he replies, “I have managed much. This I cannot. And because of this, you will betray me.”

Returning grief stuns her, stealing the protest from her mouth. As she struggles to speak, the God holds up a gilded hand. “Do not make promises you do not understand.” When he sighs, it is like the magma rumbling at the volcano’s heart. “It is not your fault. You lack the means to resist them.”

“I will not believe it!”

“How would you know?” He sighs again, looks down. “Perhaps you are right. I should not have kept you so long in ignorance.”

“My lord Fire . . .”

“Do not speak.” He stands, insubstantial as air, as weighty as centuries. “I will have the painting destroyed,” he says, and vanishes.

And Paia wakes, this time for certain, amid the snoring of the other priestesses. Her fists and jaw are clenched, her pillow slick with tears.

How can this be?

If her father’s library holds the truth, if the long centuries of blood and history have truly decreed this indelible bond, why would it be shaped in a way that can only break both their hearts? What purpose would there be in it?

Surely history has gone wrong somehow.

For the rest of the long night, Paia ponders how to even think about putting it right.