The Cydonian Pyramid (6 page)

The next time Lia opened her eyes, she was lying on a pallet set into a small alcove in the same room. Although she had no clear recollection, her body remembered being probed and pinched. She had been examined thoroughly.

Lia sat up. Her limbs felt loose and weak, her thoughts stuttered and crawled, her tongue was fuzzy, and the roof of her mouth stung where the bladder spout had scraped it. How much time had passed? Hours, perhaps.

“Congratulations.” Sister Tah, standing beside the open doorway, spoke in an unemotional monotone. “You are a Pure Girl still.”

Lia ignored her. A meal of crackers and yellow bean curd had been laid out on the table, along with a water pitcher and a plate of candied fruit. She poured herself a glass of water, sniffed it cautiously, and touched it to her tongue. There was no bitterness. She drank.

“They will come soon,” said Tah, staring past Lia at the wall.

Lia did not reply.

“If you resist, they will drug you again.”

Lia remembered what Yar Song had told her:
You must remain aware.

“You must behave as a Pure Girl should,” said Tah.

“I no longer wish to be a Pure Girl,” Lia heard herself say.

“You have had a lifetime of wishes granted.” Tah’s mouth formed a sour smile. “You have been coddled and pampered. Now you must do your part.”

Lia stared at Sister Tah, who had been her closest companion ever since she could remember. Had she been simply going through the motions all those years? Had her hugs and smiles and comforts been an act? Perhaps. The seasons that made up Lia’s short life were only a small portion of Tah’s time on this earth. Tah had raised other Pure Girls, only to watch them die upon the frustum. She would become Sister to yet another, and another.

As she was having these thoughts, Lia wondered if it was the drug that allowed her to think so dispassionately. Without it, she might be reduced to a blubbering mess. She thought of Yar Song, of her calmness as she told of having her eyeball scooped out with a dessert spoon. Song’s composure had helped her survive in the city known as Spawl. If Song could survive, then so could she.

Lia ate a cracker and a slice of candied pear — not because she was hungry but because whatever was to come, she would need her strength.

All of it.

When the priests came for her, Lah Lia was lying on the pallet with her eyes closed. She heard Sister Tah say to them, “She pretends to sleep, but she is awake.”

Lia opened her eyes. A bearded priest — the one known as Master Gheen — was standing over her. The other priests stood near the doorway. One of them held the spouted bladder.

“Are you ready, Dear One?” Master Gheen asked.

Lia sat up. Master Gheen took a step back. He looked at Sister Tah and raised his eyebrows.

“You will want to keep an eye on her,” said Tah. “She questions her duty.”

“Is that true?” Master Gheen said to Lia.

“I know what I must do.” Lia looked at the priest with the bladder. “I will not trouble you.”

Master Gheen regarded her thoughtfully. He came to a decision.

“Come, then.” He turned his back and walked out of the room. Lia stood up. The effects of the drug were fading, though she still felt as if she were moving through a dream. With one priest on either side of her, she followed Master Gheen through the doorway and down a hall to a long, descending staircase, its limestone steps rounded by generations of footsteps. They continued down into the earth, then along a long damp passageway illuminated by flickering sconces. The air smelled of mold and hot wax. Lia guessed that they were deep beneath the plaza. She imagined the multitude of feet pressing down on the stone above her head.

The passageway ended at the foot of a spiral staircase made of black iron. Here they paused, and Master Gheen once again faced her.

“What is your name again?” he asked.

“Lah Lia.”

“Of course.” He produced a sickly smile. “You are a lovely child. As was your mother.”

Lia’s jaw tightened as she suppressed the urge to kick him.

He said, “Perhaps you would like something to help you relax? A sip of tea?”

Lia shook her head. “I need no tea.”

“Just a sip?” He looked at the priest with the bladder, who took a step toward her.

Lia’s mouth was still sore from her last encounter with the bladder.

“I will take a sip,” she said. The priest handed her the bladder. She put it her mouth and pretended to sip, but as she did so, the priest reached out and squeezed the bladder. Lia jerked it away, coughing. Some of the bitter tea went down her throat.

Master Gheen nodded, satisfied. “Let us ascend,” he said.

T
HE IRON STEPS WENT UP FOREVER, FOLLOWING THE
close walls of a cylindrical shaft, as the drugged tea in Lia’s belly spread through her body. Her hair was crawling; her limbs belonged to someone else. She followed Master Gheen up the winding staircase, the other priests following close behind. Feet struck iron with the regularity of a funeral dirge. Time stretched and flexed.

They reached the top of the staircase. Master Gheen worked a lever on the wall of the shaft. Above them, the ceiling slid aside with a labored, grating rumble. They lifted her up the last few steps and emerged onto the frustum. A yellow moon hung high in the sky, the shadow of the earth nibbling at its margin. The crowded zocalo spread out on every side. A sea of upturned faces pitched and wavered; torches flickered; the opening to the stairway juddered shut.

Above each facet of the pyramid there hovered a swirling disk of gray. Lia tried to figure out which Gate was which, but her drug-addled mind failed her. Not that it mattered — the priests would choose for her.

With a priest on each arm, Lah Lia was paraded around the perimeter of the frustum. Showing her to the crowd.
You must remain aware.
Aware? Her limbs were numb, her thoughts muddled. She felt herself being lifted and placed upon the altar, an impossibly large block of pure black obsidian. She tried to remember what Yar Song had told her to do. Twist to the side? She tried to sit up, but one of the priests pushed her back down with the butt end of his stun baton. She stared up at the moon, at the shadow biting into it. As the priests babbled their ritual phrases, the pale yellow of the moon deepened, then turned slowly to rust, as the shadow of the earth advanced across its surface. The blood moon.

A bright green flash erupted from one of the Gates, producing a startled shout from the nearest priest. Lah Lia looked in time to see a man fly out of the Gate and land face-first on the frustum. The man was oddly dressed in garments of faded indigo. He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked straight at her with eyes of blue. Lia had never seen a grown man with blue eyes. Male throwbacks were culled or given to the Boggsians as infants, never to be seen again.

“Who are you, and why have you blasphemed this holy place?” Master Gheen demanded of him.

The man, clearly confused and frightened, responded in some strange dialect and rose to his feet. Master Gheen looked past him to one of the other priests, who attempted to grab the man. The stranger dodged him and backed away around the edge of the frustum. The other priest came around from the opposite side and jammed his baton into the man’s back. The man’s arms flew out to the sides, and he fell, quivering, to the frustum. The priest applied the baton again, and again, until the man lay as if dead.

While the priests’ attention was on the intruder, Lia had climbed to her feet. The drugged tea slowed her, but her muscles did as she asked. Not that there was much she could do with them. There was no way off the pyramid other than to climb down the sides into the crowd, and this crowd had come to see her sacrificed. The priests were grouped around the fallen man. Lia looked at each of the shimmering Gates, trying to figure out which was which.

She was staring at the Gate the man had come through when it flashed green and expelled a small gray furry creature. It landed on its feet. A kitten! The tiny cat crouched and hissed.

The Gate flashed again. A boy tumbled out and landed on his hands and knees, facing away from her. He sat back, looking out over the zocalo, then stood up and turned around. He had blue eyes, like the man. Another throwback!

The kitten jumped from the frustum to the altar, then from the altar into Lia’s arms. Reflexively, she caught the small cat and hugged it to her chest.

“Mrrp?”
the kitten said.

The boy’s attention turned to the priests and to the blue-clad man. He ran toward them, shouting something. Master Gheen pulled a baton from within his robes. Lia knew she would never have another chance. The boy dodged Master Gheen’s baton thrust, grabbed one of the torchères, and pulled it from its base. The priests were coming at him from every side; the boy swung the torchère, hitting one of the priests and knocking him over the edge. The priest tumbled, screaming, down the side of the pyramid. Master Gheen struck the torch pole with his baton, snapping it in half.

Yar Song’s words came to Lia once again:
If you wish to live, you must take every opportunity, no matter how slim, to alter your fate.

The boy was swinging the broken pole wildly, trying to drive back the priests.

With the cat in her arms, Lia jumped down from the altar and ran to the nearest Gate. Which one was it? Aleph? Bitte? Heid? One of the Death Gates? She had no idea.

The kitten, staring at the swirling surface of the Gate, let out a yowl. Master Gheen looked over and shouted at her to get back on the altar. Lia looked from the priest to the Gate. Wherever it led, it had to be better than this.

Clutching the cat, she jumped.

D
R
. A
RNAY SAT BACK IN HIS CHAIR
. “L
ET ME SEE IF
I have this right. You say you’re from the twenty-first century, and this girl from the future shows up out of some sort of magic hole in the air, and —”