5: The Holy Road (5 page)

“Be careful. The Payshmura are gathering on the wall.” Saimura had taken John’s place, spying out through the cracked planks. “They come out of nowhere like fucking flies.”

John lunged out and grasped the woman. She was small and he easily scooped her up and pulled her quickly back behind the shelter of the wagon. She seemed incredibly delicate, more like a bird than a person. He wasn’t used to holding women.

A sharp pain burst through John’s forearm as she bit him.

“I’m trying to help you,” John said.

“Go to hell, priest,” the woman growled back. She rammed a tiny sharp elbow into John’s stomach. He released her and she dropped to the ground.

“Sheb’yu.” Saimura hunched down beside the woman. “He’s helping us.”

“What?” She eyed John with open disbelief.

“This is the same man who hid me in the forest,” Saimura explained.

She frowned at John. “Why are you dressed as a priest?”

“It’s a long story and I don’t think we have time for it.” John returned to the cracked planks. Saimura had been right. The black silhouettes of the ushiri’im and the ushman’im were appearing all along the city wall. They raised their hands in an eerie unison. John could almost see the air all around them shimmering with energy.

“They’re opening a God’s Razor,” John said. It was going to be huge. The thin edge of the Gray Space stretched nearly the full length of the city wall.

“How many priests?” Saimura asked.

“Forty or fifty,” John replied. He wondered if Ravishan was up there. He thought he recognized Fikiri’s blond braids.

“Ji can’t handle that many,” Saimura said. He looked to Sheb’yu. “She has to pull back.”

“She won’t leave without you,” Sheb’yu said.

“She shouldn’t have come for me in the first place.” Aggravation and frustration played through Saimura’s strained face. “None of you should have.”

Whatever reply Sheb’yu would have made was lost. A rending scream tore through the air as nearly a quarter mile of the Gray Space ripped open. Both Sheb’yu and Saimura hunched as though the sound were a physical blow. They clasped their hands over their ears and clenched their eyes closed in pain. All around, people and animals responded in the same manner, cowering in pain and fear. John found the noise grating but not unbearable. The open gash that gaped across the sky, however, seemed to wrench through his chest and sent a rush of intense repulsion through his entire being.

Flames burst up along the edge of the God’s Razor, forming a narrow ribbon of fire that hung in the air just above the city wall. The grounds were suddenly so quiet that John could distinctly hear a single lamb bleating in its pen.

Then the God’s Razor dropped. The flames extinguished, but John could see the deadly edge descending.

“Get down!” John shouted. Beside him, Saimura and Sheb’yu dropped to the ground. But the people gathered at the city gate continued to stare up at where the flames had been.

The God’s Razor descended, slicing through everything in its path. The limbs of trees instantly shredded to splinters. Then it cut through the crowd at the city gate. Bodies tore open. Arms, hands, heads were severed as people tried to run or shield themselves. The God’s Razor swept forward towards the blood market. It ripped through stalls, tearing apart the people and animals sheltered within as if they were paper.

John knew he should drop to the ground and hope that the God’s Razor would pass over him. He wanted to crouch down and just hide from clench sights and noise of the massacre surrounding him. And yet he didn’t move. He fixed his eye on the edge of the God’s Razor racing towards him. It had to be stopped. The people hiding in their tents and stalls couldn’t do it. The children crouching beneath carts and the animals trapped in their pens wouldn’t stand a chance.

John drew in a deep breath and lifted his hands. He had broken Dayyid’s Silence Knives more than once. The God’s Razor was just an extension of the same thing. Thousands of times stronger, but essentially the same. The wood of the wagon cracked and burned as the God’s Razor ripped through it.

“Jahn, get down!” Saimura gripped the hem of his cassock and jerked desperately, but John remained where he stood.

Tremors of fear shook John’s hands as he reached out to block the advance of the God’s Razor. The Gray Space bit into his palms and that sick, familiar pain flickered through him, but it felt like nothing compared to the rush of fury that surged through John at the contact. He burned with rage and the single desire to destroy the God’s Razor. He clenched his fingers down, crushing the thin expanse of the Gray Space closed. The length of the God’s Razor trembled and then collapsed.

John slumped against the wagon. Exhaustion played through his muscles in tremors and sweat soaked his cassock. His hands felt as if they were on fire. He didn’t want to look down at them and see how deeply they had been cut. Still, he forced himself to take in the extent of his injury. The gashes in his palms were deep but not the worst he’d endured.

“How did you do that?” Saimura stared up at him from the ground. Sheb’yu slowly lifted her head.

“He broke the God’s Razor,” Saimura told her.

“Can he do it again?” Sheb’yu stared past both Saimura and John to the city wall. John followed her gaze. The ushiri’im and ushman’im once again raised their hands and ripped open the Gray Space. This time the sound rang out like a monstrous howl. The flames shot feet into the air. John’s stomach flipped with sickness and he felt the blood draining from his face.

“You both need to run,” John said. “Now!”

Neither Saimura nor Sheb’yu argued. They bolted from the cover of the wagon and raced for the woods beyond the blood market. City guards let arrows fly after them but the arrows burst into dust the moment they struck the God’s Razor. All around, wounded and terrified survivors followed Saimura’s and Sheb’yu’s example. They ran, not for the security of the city wall, but away from it.

Behind them, the God’s Razor descended with terrible speed. John didn’t wait for it to reach him. He concentrated on the searing line it cut across the sky. He focused on the air around the God’s Razor, willing it to withstand the advance of the cutting edge. Suddenly a wind rushed up. The air seemed to thicken in John’s lungs. The God’s Razor slowed—sparks and flames skipping along its length. John’s skin felt hot, as if the fire were burning around him. Pain throbbed through his hands.

He felt the ushiri’im and ushman’im pushing the God’s Razor against him and once again anger flared through his chest.

He would not allow them to win this.

Massive geysers of flame shot up along the gaping edges of the exposed Gray Space. Scorching sensations blazed across his outstretched arms as if he were burning along with the searing air.

He forced the God’s Razor back, slowly, painfully. Narrow slashes split open across his skin. As he fought the God’s Razor, the cuts ripped wider. Pain rose to blinding intensity. Sweating and swearing under his breath, John felt another pulse of rage rush over him and he almost welcomed it.

Lightning crashed through the sky and the wind howled. Strength surged through John. He concentrated all of his remaining will into one action. He hurled the God’s Razor back from him. On the wall, the priests scrambled to collapse the God’s Razor as it swung towards them. Stones split and cracked. Priests and city guards braced themselves as the wall shuddered.

Then came a perfect silence. John waited. One after another the ushiri’im disappeared from the wall. They were done.

John fell to the ground. It seemed to catch him, gently. He closed his eyes, hardly aware of the light rain that pattered down on him.

Ravishan had found him among the dead and mutilated in the remains of the blood market. John remembered that but not the rest of his journey back to Rathal’pesha. Now he lay behind canvas panels, wrapped in warm blankets on an infirmary bed. He could hear Hann’yu grinding medicines. A bell rang out the hour of praise. John listened as Hann’yu set his pestle aside and went to join in the prayers.

John could have risen and followed Hann’yu. The wounds across his arms and chest were healed. The deep cuts in his palms were only scabs now. But he wasn’t ready.

He wasn’t prepared to meet the faces of his fellow priests. He didn’t know how he would react when they told him that Ushman Dayyid had been murdered. What would he say when they described their battle against the Fai’daum demoness, Ji Shir’korud?

Already, John had overheard ushiri’im talking about it to Hann’yu. The demoness’ ability to break the God’s Razor confused them. She had never done it before. They came into the infirmary with minor scratches and asked in lowered voices how Ji Shir’korud had unleashed so much power. What would they do if she returned to take the city? Had the Issusha’im Oracles known this would happen? Had it been Parfir’s will?

John clearly remembered Ashan’ahma’s cultured southern voice inquiring how it could have possibly been Parfir’s will that Ushman Dayyid deserved to die?

They asked questions that Hann’yu couldn’t possibly answer. Hann’yu responded in his usual gentle manner. He admitted uncertainty and ignorance. The ushiri’im seemed to leave more disturbed than they had been when they arrived. John realized that they weren’t really looking for information so much as they needed reassurance.

Dayyid’s murder had left a gaping hole in their society. Whether he had been a tyrant to them or not, his presence had been the certainty of their lives. From morning to night he’d been there training, punishing, and shaping them. He had told them what to do and how to do it. If they had a question, Dayyid had the answer. He had spoken with the assurance of a prophet. His cause had been their cause; his values had been their values. For many of them, he had been the embodiment of Parfir’s will. His faith had pervaded Rathal’pesha.

And now they had lost all of that.

John wanted to feel some sympathy for their confusion but he couldn’t. He had been down there on the grounds of the blood market. He had seen exactly where Dayyid’s regime of unquestioning faith led. Dayyid had taught the ushiri’im arrogant cruelty. He had made them unconcerned murderers, because for all the questions they asked Hann’yu, not one had wondered if using the God’s Razor against common bystanders had been wrong.

John recognized his own hypocrisy. He had become a murderer himself that very day. And yet he wasn’t sorry for it now.

The ushiri’im needed to have Dayyid torn from them. They needed to feel fear and vulnerability because those things were reminders of their humanity. They needed some incomprehensible force to rend their lives apart so that they might have some sympathy for the common people they so easily destroyed.

John sighed and glared into the white folds of canvas surrounding his bed. Or perhaps he just needed to feel that the greater crime of the ushiri’im justified his own actions. He wanted to reclaim that effortless sense that he was a just man—a good man.

In Nayeshi it had been so simple to think so. Decent was the default of an easy modern society. Atrocities occurred more often in the realm of fiction than in everyday life. Mass murderers were the monsters of the week on crime shows; they weren’t his friends.

But John’s clear distinction between a decent person and a vicious persecutor certainly hadn’t existed among the crowds who had gathered in the blood market. They had been victims, but they had been no more innocent than the ushiri’im. Most had been there to taunt a condemned man. Most would have cheered and laughed while watching Saimura writhe and scream as he burned on the pyre.

At least he’d kept that from happening. That offered him consolation.

John lifted his hands, feeling the air stroke and curl around his fingers.

If only he had realized what he was capable of, perhaps he could have saved more lives. John frowned at his bandaged palms. The Fai’daum would still have attacked. Could he have stopped them as well? If he had, then Saimura would have certainly been burned.

No matter what, someone would have died.

He couldn’t have saved everyone. In a way that idea was relieving. If he couldn’t have succeeded regardless of how hard he might have tried, then his actions couldn’t have been of that much importance. John wanted to believe that. It suited his idea of himself.

All his life he had cultivated insignificance. He had been quiet in classes, well behaved at home. Neither good nor bad, just bland. He had been that young man who could speak at length about lichens but was never asked to do so twice. He had perfected the presence of a potted plant, a form filling space where a void would have been too notable. He had taken pains to remain unremarkable. No one cared where a boring man spent his nights.

The persona he had refined from Sunday school through catechism had kept him free from invitations to games of spin-the-bottle as well as from the infidelities between professors and students. It had served him in Nayeshi and saved him in Basawar. Even as alien as he was to the priests of Rathal’pesha, he had lived among them, passing for nearly ordinary.

When Dayyid had offered him the curse blade, he had suppressed his response to it. When Ravishan had asked him how he could tear Fikiri out of the Gray Space, he had passed over it as if it were a quirk—something as happenstance as finding change in the street, just a little good luck.