Golden Daughter (40 page)

Up so close, the sense of holiness Sunan had felt while approaching the temple was lost. It was all so sad, so sordid. He saw poor beggars, Kitar and Chhayan alike, dropping coins they could not afford to lose into boxes hung upon the wall beside the shrines. Later on, Sunan did not doubt, fat young acolytes would sally forth and fetch those boxes, telling themselves that it was not thievery, for did not the poor wretches offer their goods willingly?

If Hulan and Anwar did indeed rule all from their heavenly thrones, they were cruel deities to allow their children so to suffer. They were cruel to have abandoned their chosen people.

This thought brought Sunan to an abrupt halt. He stood unseeing, hands folded, head bent. What did he care for Chhayan grievances? He was not one of them! He was the son of Juong-Khla’s stolen wife, and his inheritance was not from his father.

But he felt his Chhayan blood, so long suppressed, stirring inside him. In his mouth, upon his tongue, he tasted fire.

Suddenly he heard a sound that burst through all the clamor of the streets and even through the roaring of rage in his head. A sound like silver, like water. The sound of birdsong. Startled, Sunan looked up, some half-formed notion in his brain of discovering the source of that song. He cast his gaze around, over the heads of genuflecting peasants, up to the top of the high temple wall.

Instead of a bird, he saw a golden cat appear, having leapt up from the grounds beyond to perch above the street.

Something stirred in Sunan’s eye. He was aware again of the foreign presence in his head, of the imp lodged deep inside. He shook himself but could not shake free that sickening sensation of something moving behind his vision. There flashed across his brain the image he had seen: the temple girl—the dog—the golden stranger’s face.

And the cat.

The vision ended, and Sunan stood staring up at the cat on the wall. He knew it. He knew it was the same cat! How he knew he could not say, but he did not doubt it for a moment.

The cat gauged the distance, large white paws pressing into the wall, haunches upraised and tail quivering slightly as it prepared itself for the long drop. Then it sprang, landed in the street, and vanished in the crowd of peasants surrounding Chiev’s shrine. Sunan, for a heart-stopping instant, believed he’d lost it.

Then he heard a child’s voice exclaiming, “Kitty!”

Sunan elbowed his way past a wrinkled old man and a young, sobbing widow. He saw a little one of uncertain sex stroking the back of a purring cat, which received these attentions with solemn equanimity. Then, as though recalling its purpose, the cat darted away from the child and down into the squalor of Lunthea Maly below.

Sunan gave chase.

It would take a better hunter by far than Sunan to successfully pursue such quarry through the mazelike streets of that enormous city. Yet somehow he managed to keep pace with the cat. He would lose it in a crush or down a back alley only to catch sight of that plume of tail darting out from under a rickety cart or leaping up onto a windowsill. Several times the cat disappeared into houses through which Sunan himself dared not pass. He would have to go around, wandering the streets and ending up nowhere near his desired location. Those times, he believed for certain the cat was long gone.

Then, much to his surprise, he’d catch a flicker of white paws dashing between the hooves of an old donkey or out from under some street vendor’s stall. And so Sunan would give chase again. In retrospect, he thought it must have been a miracle, though a miracle of whose working he could not guess, not then and not later.

So intent was he upon his hunt, he did not even notice when he passed a certain shadowy door. He did not see the faces looking out at him, faces half-hidden by leather helmets and heavy fur lining. Had he seen them, his heart must have stopped with the same terror meeting a ghost might inspire.

For one of those looking out at him, watching him hasten past, was his own much-hated father.

But Sunan did not know, and he hurried on his way, his slippered feet slapping on the broken stones of the streets. The sun was high overhead and soon looking towards its descent in the western sky. Sunan, who had not eaten that day, began to slow his pace, exhausted. He knew he must now lose the cat for good.

And still he did not. Even as he reached the northern-most gates of the great city and passed from them into the villages beyond, he could see the cat ahead, trotting with tail upright down the middle of the road.

Sunan knew nothing of this territory. During all the twisting and winding of the last several hours, he had become totally lost. But then, he had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Finding that temple girl was his sole purpose, and the cat was the only possible link to her that he knew. So, though he desperately wished to seek out some comfortable ditch somewhere and fall into it, he trudged forward.

The outskirt villages of Lunthea Maly soon gave way to various encampments on the roadsides where merchants and various travelers rested before entering the city proper. Some of these were grand; most were humble. Sunan glimpsed pilgrims, farmers, priests, and lords. None of these paid any heed to Sunan, and he paid little heed to them. The cat trotted on, and Sunan trotted after, wondering where the creature would lead him.

He did not like the answer when he came face to face with it.

Steep walls enclosed those who dwelt within Lembu Rana, the Valley of Suffering. Once upon a time those walls had been lined with stone, but most of the stone had crumbled away ages ago. The paths leading down inside remained, however, for they were much-trod by those entering the valley and their chosen seclusion. A seclusion ending only in death.

The sun hung low in the sky, and twilight deepened upon the landscape. But Sunan could see the many huts shoved up against one another by the light of a hundred and more low fires burning outside the doors. And he could see the figures, phantom-like, swathed in rags and veils, moving among those fires. They moved slowly, with great pain, and a hum of pain that was as much a sensation of the heart as a sound in the ears rose up from below to touch Sunan with a haunting hand.

Lepers!

“They’re not cursed. They’re sick,” Sunan whispered. He was a learned man of Nua-Pratut, after all. He was a Tribute Scholar. He knew a little, at least, of various diseases and their treatments. “They’re not cursed. They’re not cursed. They suffer a sickness, nothing more.”

A sickness which, according to some of the scholars he had read, was not even truly so contagious as many believed. He could not, standing here high above the valley, breathe the poison of their skin, the corruption eating away at their limbs and innards, and become like one of them. He was safe up here.

But the superstitions and beliefs of ages were deep in his blood, and he trembled where he stood, trembled so hard that he feared he might faint. And he thought, with an analytical part of his brain now nearly suffused in dread:
If I were to hide from a Crouching Shadow, this is the very place I would choose.

For indeed, who would seek a beautiful temple girl among those monstrous forms?

“They’re sick. They’re not cursed. And they cannot hurt me,” Sunan muttered. He looked but saw no sign of the cat, who seemed to have finally given him the slip. He did not doubt that the cat had entered the valley, however. He could not say how he knew, but his certainty was clear and dreadful. He must follow. He must not go back upon his blood oath. He must—

“Oh, my dear boy! You don’t want to go down there!”

Sunan startled and turned, drawing a sharp breath. A hunched form, the face and body so covered in mismatched rags taken from who-knows-where that no one could tell whether man or woman hid beneath, hobbled toward Sunan, supporting itself heavily on a stout tree branch which served as a cane. The hand holding the branch was wrapped up to disguise the loss of most of its fingers. All that could be seen of the person’s face were the eyes and what was left of a mouth. The mouth seemed to smile, though the eyes were sad.

“You should go back to where you came from, stout young fellow like you,” the little creature spoke from a savaged throat. “Unless, of course, you’ve come seeking family? Kind of you, if so. Most of our families forget us once we come here.”

Sunan saw that over its back the figure carried a satchel bulging with stale bread and wilted vegetables, an offering, perhaps, from one of the more charitable sects of the Crown of the Moon. The sack was tied to a handless arm and slung over a thin shoulder.

Sunan stood perfectly still even as the leper drew near. “I’m right, aren’t I?” the leper said. “You’re looking for someone.”

“I—I am,” Sunan said, forcing himself not to cover his face with his sleeve.

“A mother, perhaps? A sister? A brother?”

“No,” said Sunan. “No, I’m looking for—”

He stopped. He’d almost said he was looking for a cat, and that sounded insane even in his head.

But the leper nodded as though understanding. “I know whom you seek.” The voice was rough with disease, but the choice of words and the cadence were those of an elegant, cultured individual. A man, Sunan thought now that he saw the form up close. Perhaps a former scholar, or a lawyer, or a man of business. None of that mattered now. But it was also a kind voice, and this did matter even here. Even in the Valley of Suffering. “Come. Come with me, dear boy, and I will take you.”

“Take me where?” Sunan demanded.

“To see our angel.”

It seemed impossible that angels ever came to this place, so deep, so dark, so lost in hopelessness was the very air down in the Valley of Suffering.

Yet Sunan was surprised, as he followed behind his disease-ridden guide, how often the little man nodded and called out to those sitting around the various fires. And how many voices, both young and old, raised the cry, “Granddad! Granddad!” as he passed, distributing loaves and greens as he went.

A distant part of Sunan’s brain, a part hidden even from the imp inside, whispered:
Perhaps there are more angels here than anywhere else.

The leper’s sack was empty by the time they reached a hut in the center of the valley. The leper tossed it aside to lie by the door and put out his stump of an arm to touch the head of a huddled child sitting with her back to the wall. The child looked up, grinning, and Sunan saw that the leprosy had already eaten away part of her jaw and her nose. But her eyes shone, and she whispered hoarsely, “Granddad!” even as the man ducked his head to enter the hut. Then she turned those bright eyes upon Sunan, and they clouded over immediately with distrust. She wrapped her arms over her head, hiding her face.

Sunan shuddered, hating himself for the loathing he felt, and plunged into the dark hut after the man. He was shocked to discover the room inside lit by three small lamps. The flames burned straight and tall up from the spouts, illuminating the dirt, the rags, the squalor . . .

. . . and the face of the most beautiful woman Sunan had ever imagined.

She sat in the center of the chamber, cross-legged, her hands folded before her. Her eyes were closed, her brow smooth and pale as the moon. She breathed lightly and, indeed, made so little movement that it would have been all too easy to mistake her for a statue. She was clad in the same rags as the lepers around her, but she wore them like a princess, like a queen.

Here in the midst of suffering, this form of loveliness looked far beyond mortal. It was an angelic face. One scarcely could notice the hand-shaped burn marring her cheek.

The leper guide bowed before her then turned and motioned for Sunan to do the same. “Is she the one you seek?” he asked.

Sunan nodded. She was the very likeness of the girl in the imp’s vision.

“It is good, is it not?” the leper asked. “To find beauty such as hers in a place such as this?”

“How long—how long has she lived here?”

“Not long. Not long,” the leper said. “And she will not stay, for she is not sick and her handmaiden makes certain she does not touch our water or eat of our food. She will leave us, yes. But she will remain in our hearts forever. We will speak of her amongst ourselves and pass on the memory of her for the generations to follow. The Angel of Lembu Rana.”

He spoke the name as one might speak a prayer, and from behind their rags his eyes gazed with great love upon the girl. Then he nodded to Sunan and inclined his head respectfully. “I will leave you to speak with her. Perhaps she will impart a blessing upon you, and if she does, perhaps you will speak to us in turn.”

He left, ducking out of the hut and leaving Sunan alone with the girl and the three lamps.

Sunan stood where he was, uncertain and afraid. He had found her, but he did not know what he must do. What was it the Crouching Shadow had told him? “I must return to the docks,” he whispered to the shadows. “I must return to the docks and . . .”

Instead he found himself kneeling before the girl even as he had seen the beggars kneeling before the shrines to the stars. But surely this was a purer obeisance, for this girl was real. She was no stone carving, no feeble mortal personification of celestial spheres. She was real, and she was lovely.

“Who are you?” Sunan whispered, gazing into her quiet face. He saw the scar but could not accept that it was really there or that it could in any way harm the beauty of this glorious creature. “Who are you? You are not truly an angel but a mortal, I know. A girl of the temple. But why are you here? Can you tell me?”

He knew she heard him. She did not move, and her breathing did not check, but he knew she heard him. He reached out to her, his fingers hovering above her two folded hands. “Please,” he said, “tell me your name. Tell me who you are.” He touched her.

Her eyes flew wide, and she gazed deep into his soul.