Wheel of the Infinite (35 page)

Maskelle was afraid for all of them.

The velvet purples and greys of the clouds were growing darker as she walked over the dusty stone in the shadows of the ruined city. She hoped she had judged the time right. The buildings rose high around her, blotting out much of the sky. The yawning entrances to some were dark, but there were others she could just catch glimpses of from between the dark grey mottled walls, lit by the dancing red-and-yellow light of those eternally burning fires. The dry air was unpleasantly sharp with the tang of smoke. She had left the Temple Master to explain to Raith about Mirak; she wasn’t sure how he would take it. The truth was that the Adversary had killed a foreign creature from this world. Mirak himself had likely been dead for months.

The path she followed wasn’t a straight one. The line between the Marai and where the Baran Dir had stood was occasionally blocked by buildings, some of very odd shapes indeed. She circled around one of the large bowl-shaped ones to find a tight group of five large circular pillars, stretching high up into the sky, all connected by open bridges, with what looked like balconies fringing the tops.
It must have been a beautiful city once, strange and wonderful instead of strange and dead
. They must have had art and philosophy and religion; how they had come to this, she couldn’t understand.

During the meditation rings, Koshans had to walk Kushor-At and Kushor-An’s power pathways by counting paces. Not being able to follow a straight line made it awkward, but Maskelle only had to find the approximate location of the Baran Dir, not its exact boundary. She reached what she was sure was the right place, now occupied by a bowl-shaped depression in the stone lined with rows of stone benches or steps that must have once been a theater or some sort of assembly area, and turned west.

From this angle Maskelle could see the top of a structure larger than the others, a dome with spires to either side of it. If she was judging the distance correctly, it was standing approximately where the Celestial Home should be. There were fires lit in the tops of those needlelike towers that glowed in the dusk, and she could see a haze of light around the dome, as though there were more fires burning below. She walked between the two low square buildings that blocked the rest of her view, and found herself standing at the top of a long avenue that led to the base of the dome. There were lit windows, bands of them, around the dome, and an open archway in the bottom that glowed from within. The building seemed to dominate this whole section of the city. Rian’s group had gone to the south. They would have found this place.
Well, that answers that question
, she thought.

Someone was lightly slapping his face. It didn’t do anything for his headache. Without opening his eyes, Rian swung a fist by instinct, felt a connect and heard a yelp. The yelp sounded a lot like Rastim.

Holding his aching head, Rian managed to sit up. Rastim was sprawled a few feet away, rubbing his jaw and glaring. The Ariaden muttered, “Well, thank you very much.”

Rian lifted his head. They were outside, on a stone surface set about a Kushorit house’s height off the ground. Looming over them was one of the domed buildings from the city. But the stone was lighter in color and the windows were square and undamaged. He stared around, knowing it was impossible. The sky overhead was blue, cloudless. The air felt cool and dry. He had lost his siri, though he didn’t suppose it would do him any good here. “How did . ..”

“We’re not actually here,” Rastim said nervously. He looked around and took a deep breath. “When we fell, we were in a large chamber, with the floor all rubble, and a sort of cloudy mist hanging in the air. Then this started to happen.”

“It’s an illusion.” Rian rubbed his eyes. This actually made him feel a little better. At least he knew he wasn’t crazy. “Did you keep track of which direction the door was in?”

“Ah, no.” Rastim sighed and wiped dirt and sweat off his brow. “I thought
I was, then things seemed to turn around and—” He shrugged, looking weary. “I’m not much use.”

Rian shook his head, instantly regretting it when a wave of nausea almost overcame him. He pressed his hands against his eyes until it subsided, then said, “No, they must have done that on purpose, to confuse you.”

“They.” Rastim looked around again, his expression uneasy. “They’re here, aren’t they? All around us.”

Rian nodded. “They must be.” He shifted to the edge to look down. He thought he could manage the drop without a broken leg, but he wasn’t sure Rastim could. “Wait, you said when you first woke up we were in a room surrounded by rubble?” He tapped the stone of the platform. “Was this here?”

“No, we were on the floor, such as it was.” Rastim’s worried expression turned thoughtful. “You mean, you think we can just walk out?”

Rian looked down again. He had heard about illusions that killed you anyway, even if they weren’t real, but he didn’t think they had any choice. “If we—”

Rastim drew a startled breath, pointing at the other side of the platform. The air was thickening there, colors growing out of nothing, swirling into an almost familiar pattern. Rian passed a hand over his eyes, but the distortion in the air didn’t vanish. “Uh-oh,” he muttered.

Rastim scrambled hastily back, moving as close to the edge as he dared. “It’s one of them,” he whispered. “Like those giant whirlwinds.”

Rian warily watched the thing. “I don’t think so.” The colors were the colors of the Wheel of the Infinite, brilliant and alive and constantly shifting. That was what was familiar; it made no sense at all, but his eyes insisted he saw the Wheel, though he couldn’t pick out any individual shapes or symbols in the growing mass. Then the colors swirled into a pattern that resembled a face. The form coalesced suddenly and Rian swore and looked away, blinking hard. Rastim clapped a hand over his eyes.

Rian tried to make himself look at it, but he couldn’t. Impossibly, he knew what this thing was. It was the original of the demon faces carved above Kushorit doorways, the thing that lived in the killing birds that were one of its symbols.

The words
Don’t leave this place
hung in the air, but Rian knew he didn’t hear them spoken aloud.

“It talked,” Rastim whispered.

“I know,” Rian said through gritted teeth. “I think it’s the Adversary.”

Images came then: the platform and death just beyond. The illusion was to confuse, to make them leave this protected spot, to expose them to the danger all around.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Rastim asked hopefully. When Rian didn’t answer, he persisted, “It’s warning us. That means it’s here to help us, doesn’t it?”

Help us, or keep us alive long enough to be bait in a trap
. Rian wasn’t sure what had sparked that thought, but he knew it was his own, and not something from the creature confronting them. What was it doing here anyway, in the middle of their enemies? “Are you evil?” Rian asked it. Rastim gasped and elbowed him and Rian motioned him to be silent.

There was a hesitation, long enough for Rian to wish he hadn’t asked the question and Rastim to fidget nervously. Then it said,
No
.

Why is that not reassuring
? Rian said carefully, “Now, when you have to wait and think about it, that worries me.”

Rian felt it drift closer, knew it was examining him thoughtfully, and resisted the sudden urge to throw himself off the platform.
I’m everything
, it said.
If evil is part of everything, I’m evil too. Like that answer better
?

It was gone, winked out like a candle.

Rian let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair.

Rastim sighed and stared at him accusingly. “If it comes back, do you think you can manage not to cross-question it?”

“If it comes back, I think what I do is going to be the least of our problems,” Rian told him.

Maskelle was a little out of breath by the time she drew near the strange building. She had stayed close to the shadows at the edges of the avenue, but there didn’t seem to be any circumspect way to approach the temple or palace or whatever the place was.
Just walk up to the front gate
, Maskelle thought ruefully,
it’s always worked before
. She could hear what sounded like wind howling wildly in the distance, strongly reminiscent of the air spirit creatures who had attacked them.
It’s probably full of the things
.

She paused behind a pillar at the edge of the avenue, near enough to see just inside the doorway. It looked like a large hallway, lit by bowl-shaped lamps set into the walls, going back toward a more brightly lit area.

“I told you whatever happened to stay in the Marai.”

Maskelle flung herself back against the pillar, swinging her staff at the figure that had suddenly appeared beside her. The staff passed right through it.

She looked carefully at its face and realized it was her first husband, Ilian, dead years ago from foolishly trusting her. She took a calming breath, and said to the Adversary, “You told me a lot of things, and I’d be a damned fool to listen to you.”

Ilian had only been in his second decade when he died. His face was handsome, free of the lines that trouble and character usually wrote, and his build was stocky and well muscled. He was dressed in a red funeral robe. She would have known that this was not him, even if the staff hadn’t passed through him, because this creature had a determined expression and the temerity to argue with her. It said, “You have to listen to me, I’m the Adversary.”

Maskelle sagged back against the pillar.
I trusted it. all this time, even after the false vision, I trusted it and thought the fault was in me
. She wasn’t sure she could understand the enormity of what was happening. “Are you sure you’re the Adversary?” she asked hopelessly. “You’re not Gisar’s demon, or an illusion, or one of these creatures in disguise?”

Its face was blank for a moment, then it shrugged and ran a hand through its hair in an achingly familiar gesture. Her memory of Ilian wasn’t that accurate; this thing could take his form so completely only because it had been with her at the time, had known Ilian as well as she had. It said, “I could pretend to be, if that would help.”

Maskelle covered her eyes for a moment.
Oh, Ancestors. For years I thought it was me that was mad
. “No, no, that’s all right.”

It watched her with Ilian’s worried expression, his concern in its eyes. “It knows you, the thing that’s waiting in there.”

“From Marada, or from you?” she asked wearily.

“Both.”

How can I do this when the Adversary is against me
? Maskelle thought in despair, then told herself angrily,
It was always against you, you were always alone
. Suddenly she heard voices, human voices calling out in Kushorit. She pushed away from the pillar, looking toward the building. Seven men ran out of the great archway. Bearing down on them from behind was a whirl of light and dust: one of the wind creatures.

Maskelle ran forward, reaching for power from the Marai. The link was tenuous, the pathway that had connected the temple with this location torn asunder by the second Wheel. The creature reached the last man in the running group, tearing at him, sending him falling and flailing on the hard pavement.

It’s going to get all of them
, she thought desperately, feeling it push aside her strike at it. Then she felt the Adversary meld with her, felt it take her feeble attempt to disperse the thing and . . . She was raw power, raw will. It showed her how to look into the heart of the creature, to see past the screen of dust and wind and power into the living soul beneath. There was fear in that soul, more fear than anger and bloodlust. Desperation, a fierce desire to live.
This is one of them
, she thought, startled. The thing that was Marada, the one that had taken over Mirak. This was its true being.
No
, the Adversary told her,
it was like you, it had a form. They built this city, lived here in contentment when this world was new. But they took their search for power too far, and the world started to die
. Then the Adversary reached in to that fearful, desperate heart, and snuffed it out.

She blinked, lowered her staff as the whirlwind dispersed and dust rained down on her, all that was left of the dead creature. The Adversary was no longer standing next to her, though she knew it hadn’t gone far.

The first of the fleeing men reached her. He was a young man, a temple servant, she saw as he stumbled to a halt. “Revered!” Breathing hard, he tried to explain, “We were tricked, it was a man sent by Mirak—”

“We know,” Maskelle said. Two of the others helped the wounded man to his feet and they all gathered around her in a panting, anxious group. Even in the dim light she could tell they looked glad to see her. Rian and Rastim were both missing, she had seen that as soon as the men had reached the avenue. “Where are the others?”

The man looked around, as if noticing for the first time that the two men were missing. He pointed back to the temple. “They must be still inside.”

Of course
. The Adversary had said what was waiting there knew her. “Run back to the Marai, run fast. You have to be there by sunset.” She nodded to the injured man. “Carry him.”

The men stared at her. The first one protested, “But—”

“Go. The Adversary demands it. If you don’t hurry, he’ll appear and tell you so himself.”

That did it. A few of them exchanged startled looks, then they gathered up their wounded companion and ran. Maskelle gave them time to reach the end of the avenue and get out of sight, then she started toward the temple again.

She felt a coldness pass over her skin as she crossed under the arch into the building, as if she had moved through some kind of boundary. The place smelled of dust and age and emptiness, like the rest of the city, but the air trapped here was dead and the scents were stronger. The lamps were high in the mottled stone walls, made of bowls of smooth pottery with the flicker of flame in their centers. What did they burn? There was no wood, no oil. It had to be power.
Their power is different
, she reminded herself. She had already seen enough evidence of that. Even the dark powers she had fought were all part of the Infinite, and used spirits and the force of water and earth, the forest, the mountains. What passed for power in this bare dying place would be like nothing she had encountered before.

She stopped abruptly, turning that thought over.
That’s what they use. Death
. The dead boy they had used against her outside Duvalpore, that had been the first clue. They had forced the village shamaness to use the old spirit magic, the death magic, against Maskelle. They didn’t use the Infinite. They moved through it, but perhaps they didn’t truly see it or understand it. They used the force released by the death of their world and themselves to make their power.

I see
, the Adversary said in her thoughts, an air of approval in the words.
Now we’re getting somewhere
.

Stop saying “we
,” she told it angrily, continuing down the hall. It was only parroting phrases back at her again, with no notion of what they meant.
You ‘re on the other side, remember
? There was another arch at the end, brightly lit. There were small branching corridors between here and there, but they were all dark and she passed them by. The sound of howling wind grew a little louder with each step.

She realized the Adversary was walking beside her again, and this time its form was Rian’s. She said, “Don’t take that form. I don’t want to be confused about who to save and what to leave behind.”

It shifted back to Ilian, apparently without taking offense. It said,
I convinced them to keep your friends as hostages against you and not kill them. Wasn’t that good of me
?

“Oh, that’s going to help a great deal.” Before she could say more, she reached the end of the hallway and saw what lay beyond. It was a huge round chamber, perhaps taking up most of the space left in the great building. Hundreds of the lamps dotted the walls all the way up to the top of the dome. Most of the vast space was concealed by a great cloud of mist and air, drifting in a circular pattern. The damp breeze of it touched her face, almost gently, despite the howl and moan of what should be a powerful wind. The floor beneath the cloud was torn up and the ground below that dug out to form a shallow pit. Broken paving blocks, fragments of carving that must have decorated the walls once, bits of broken lamps, raw stone from the foundation were all jumbled into a spiral pattern as far as she could see through the mist. It was as if the wind had tried to draw every loose fragment in the city to this spot, and the constant motion had worn down the ground.
This is where it made the creatures it sent against us last night
, she thought. The creatures the Adversary had destroyed with an annoyed thought.
Are you more powerful now that you ‘re mad
? she asked it.

Not powerful enough.

“You still speak in riddles,” she said aloud.

You assume you ‘re the only one who can hear me.

Maskelle knew she wasn’t alone here. After the Adversary had shown her the trick of it, she could feel the minds of the beings who inhabited this place, all of them bundled together, the beings who had built this city and lived and refused to die here. They were combining what was left of their power and their resources. Huddling together for warmth?
You have both one opponent and many
, the Adversary had said. When they were like this, they were one.

She could feel their awareness roaming the dead city, touching the Marai again and being repelled by the barrier. They didn’t know she was here yet. “Where is the second Wheel?” she asked softly, sure she already knew the answer.

In the center
, the Adversary said.

Yes, I thought so
. Maskelle looked into the cloud, then closed her eyes briefly, weary beyond measure.

I needed this. I had to get here
, it said, somewhat reproachfully.

“You’ve said that before.”

Then Maskelle felt the creatures’ perception growing, felt them sense her presence and turn their attention toward her.

A voice, human enough to be understood, spoke out of the cloud. “You’ve brought her. You’ve decided to help us after all.”

You taught me so much
, the Adversary answered them, sounding sympathetic.
You taught me how to lie. I needed to know that. For that, I’ll make your end quick
.

They didn’t reply.
They’re stunned to silence
, Maskelle thought. She started to laugh. “Your ally,” she said to them. “Are you happy with it? Is this triumph everything you imagined?”

“Do not mock us.” It didn’t sound angry, as Mirak had at the end. Perhaps it wasn’t human enough in this form.

“But it’s so easy. The Adversary says you’ve destroyed at least two other worlds, using their own powers against them. It’s your turn now. Try to accept it with a modicum of grace.”

There was a pause, then it said, “The Adversary needs our help. It wants more power; it wants to destroy the other spirits and rule as your only god.”

“Is that what it told you? It doesn’t want more power. It doesn’t need more power. The Ancestors can’t do anything with it, or they would have done it before now. It wants to kill. It used to want justice, but now it just wants to kill.” She laughed again, a bitter sound that startled even her. “It doesn’t want your help; it wants to destroy you and it was willing to destroy us to do it.”

The wind was rising, pulling at her braids.
You ‘re making them angry
, the Adversary told her. Its pleasure echoed through the thought.

The wind hit her and she staggered and went to her knees, trying to brace herself with her staff and grabbing for purchase among the rough stones. For an instant she felt the Adversary within her and thought it meant to help her, but it did nothing. Struggling to stay upright, she managed to plant her staff and pull herself up, but the sharp edges of the rocks cut her hand and the blood made her hold slip. Her staff snapped in two suddenly and she fell backward into the cloud.

She tumbled over the rocks, the breath knocked out of her. The minds of the creatures tore at her as she fell past them, angry, desperate, terrified. Then she landed on flat stone.

She heard a startled shout. A familiar shout.

Suddenly Rian and Rastim were standing over her. Rian took her arm and pulled her to her feet. As soon as he touched her, she knew it was really him. She leaned against him, relieved, and he supported her with an arm around her waist. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Where’s here?” Maskelle said, baffled, looking around. She rubbed at her eyes, wondering if she had struck her head.

“I was hoping you knew,” Rastim said nervously.

They appeared to be outside under a blue sky, standing on a stone platform perhaps thirty feet off the ground. Around them was the city when it was young. The sky was clear, the stone a lighter color, the buildings untouched by time. There were people moving among the buildings, at least she thought they were people. They were about the right size, but there was a distortion of the sight whenever you looked at them, so their forms were blurred.

“This is what their world used to be. They keep it preserved, inside themselves,” Maskelle said slowly. Even with everything that had happened, it gave her cold prickles all over her skin. This was a dead memory, held in stasis until it had lost its reality.

“Why can’t we see what they look like?” Rian asked her.

“Maybe they can’t remember anymore. Maybe they don’t want to remember.” She shook herself slightly and looked around again, biting her lip thoughtfully. “We need to find the Wheel.”

“You mean it’s here?” Rian looked around, startled. “In this room?”

She nodded. “It has to be. Mirak was one of them. They built the second Wheel in his quarters on the palace grounds.”