The horizon, p.13
The Horizon, page 13
And when the story ended, on the last page, she saw the words, all of them familiar.
And you who read this in the Time of the Evening: we have left you our words and our worlds. We know you have the eyes to see. We are waiting for you.
Mithila let slip the book from her hand, and watched it fall to the ground. She rubbed her eyes, wearied to the bone. It was evening. Sunrays slanted into the courtyard.
Hours had passed.
They could not have come back up while she had been reading. She would have seen them. They would have seen her.
We have left you our words and our worlds.
She picked up the book, which had fallen open to its earliest pages. The words that had brought her here.
In old Gumfraude, beside Geroun
Come back and wander out with me
To find our way beneath the moon
West of the river, South of the sea…
She was here, she had come, she had followed every direction, but they were gone, in sleep underneath the Council Hall, never to be woken. But then, as she read on, her eyes paused, and stopped, upon a word.
Remember what I said to you
Of all that was but could not be
By Mati’s side, my words renew
West of the river, South of the sea …
Tefnakth’s voice came back to her.
‘Istar? What are you doing up there? Weren’t we going to meet by the Mati?’
Mithila stood. She shouldered her pack. In the declining light, she walked back into the courtyard, and to the black tree.
By Mati’s side my words renew …
She closed her eyes.
You asked if we would conquer death
I said there was a galaxy
Bring back my words upon your breath
West of the river, South of the sea …
And in those words, the open vein
Will bring you on the road to me
We’ll speak the old days back again
West of the river, South of the sea …
Before a black curtain, the words danced before her, like actors coming onto a stage, words that she had heard a few days ago and a world away, in an underground chamber filled with blue light.
‘Red sprites over the troposphere in Tannor. I wanted to show you the Aurora, dancing in the sky, beyond the Reinmar Gate.’
We have left you our words.
She opened her eyes.
‘There was a galaxy.’
She spoke the words that had followed, Ghada’s words to Samir, as they stood and watched their sleeping selves.
For a moment in time, nothing happened. Then, with a low rumble, a section of the ground lifted, like a trapdoor.
Below her, there was a ramp. It was aglow with pale white phosphorescence.
Mithila did not hesitate. She stepped inside and onto the ramp.
Above her, the trapdoor closed again. She spun around. Too late.
She turned back. The ramp sloped downwards gently. The floor was the smooth white stone of the Council Hall. The walls of the passage were straight. The ceiling was swiftly lost to darkness. The pale glow threw her shadow behind her, and lit up her way.
Mithila walked on.
The passage ended at a ledge that overlooked a vast cavern, stretching as far as she could see.
The ruined towers above the ground had been nothing more than gateways, the broken shadows of a dream.
Before her was the lost City of Gumfraude.
She kneels by her father’s bedside, holding his hand.
‘Speaker for the Eleventh.’ She looks at him, dry-eyed. ‘You wouldn’t have liked that. But then, I don’t think you’d have been surprised.’
Amrit makes no reply. But she has broken the silence, and cannot stop now.
‘Remember that time you took me up to the tower balcony, and showed me Sumer? You said that every time, for years, whenever you’d needed clarity, you’d come here. Sumer is always on the move, you said, the Circles turning, things shifting. Sometimes, you said, you need to see it—all the City—to understand.
‘But you never prepared me for this. Mithila tore a gap in the world, and now everyone wants to stitch it back together with their own flag. Minakshi thinks she can take things back to the way they were. But that’s not going to happen. The Union has returned, the farmers are angry, and this time the same old answers won’t work, because they know the world has changed. In Wallshadow, the Dooma stirs. They will see this as their chance to shatter the Circles. They are moving, all of them, and soon, this City will not be able to contain them.
‘This will be no second Savarian. This will be much worse, a City riven into so many fragments, broken edges. Sumer cannot hold.
‘I would turn to Hansa. But Hansa is worn, like a stone rubbed too smooth, too long, by the Rasa. Did you ever need someone to tell you how to—what to be, what to do?
‘Everything is different now, since the morning you left.’
She squeezes his hand with a fierce urgency.
‘No, father. You can’t leave like this. You promised me. You promised to answer a thousand questions. Now I have just one. Come back so I can ask. Please?’
Does Amrit’s breathing quicken? Rama’s head jerks up. She puts an ear to his chest, and listens greedily.
She is wrong.
‘Give me a sign. Tell me what to do.’
She pulls his elbow around her shoulder and buries her face in the crook of his arm. She stays there until a vague awareness of time begins to burrow into her.
Rama takes a deep breath. She pulls away, and stands. ‘I’ll do it. I wish you could have known. But you’ll be proud.
‘And before the end,’ she adds in a whisper, ‘I will smoke Savarian out of that dead tower. This time, he will die. This I promise you.’
Seven
The Bard’s Song
Alvar awoke to a tapping sound. He opened his eyes to see Mankala’s face at the window.
He scrambled out of bed and hurried into the hallway. When he opened the door, she shoved past him. Her breathing was ragged, and she smelled of wet clothes and sweat.
‘Mankala—what are you—’
‘Moving in.’
‘What?’
‘I’m moving in, Alvar,’ she turned and almost snapped at him. There were dark circles around her eyes and creases on her forehead. ‘Why—are you going to kick me out?’
‘No, of course—Mankala, what’s going on?’
She shoved past him to his room. Alvar stumbled after her. Inside, she slumped upon on the edge of his bed. ‘Fucking Builders.’
‘What happened?’
‘Someone, last night …’ Her voice trembled.
Alvar sat beside her. ‘Take a breath. You’re here. You’re safe.’
She took a deep breath and let it out, shuddering.
Alvar waited.
‘Someone burned my house down. I don’t know how. I got out—and they were waiting for me. Took me to the Dooma. There was a knife—shit.’ She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.
‘Fuck. What. Who?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never seen them before!’
She glanced at the window. Alvar wrapped an arm tight against her shoulder. She huddled up against him. ‘There’s no one outside,’ he said gently. ‘You’re safe.’
She breathed in again.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘I went for a swim. Not by choice.’
Alvar felt her trembling subside by slow degrees, until she was still, only an odd spasm traveling from her shoulders to his arms.
‘You came walking all the way here to the Ninth?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you have just gone to your parents’—oh shit—’ He broke off, biting his tongue. ‘I’m so sorry, I forgot.’
She grimaced and waved it away. ‘Happens.’
Alvar blushed. ‘Was it,’ he said at last, timidly, ‘was it because—’
‘The Wall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, I guess. They couldn’t have me there at midnight.’
‘Shoortans.’
‘Who else? Must’ve been Temple acolytes who never come out.’
Alvar sighed. ‘Checks.’
She turned to him. ‘What happened at the Wall? What did I miss? That red sky …’
‘Minakshi came.’
‘Bloody fucking Builders. Of course she did. And?’
Alvar paused. Darkness lingered before his eyes. Darkness broken by a thousand little pin-pricks of light, and a voice that swirled around him like a cloud of dust, choking him.
And you will die alone.
A voice affirmed by the silence around them, the Carnival’s mockery of the Shoortans a distant memory, wiped away by the red sky.
‘She’s brought back Ostracism.’
Mankala turned to him.
‘What?’
‘Yes.’
‘They let her?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘They did. Nobody said a word. As if they wanted it.’
He saw her stare into the distance.
‘Well,’ she said at last. Her voice was quiet, tired. ‘This changes things.’
‘Changes?’ he said. ‘We’ve lost. She’s smashed us. She has the power to make us die alone. They gave it to her, so gratefully. They wanted to. And with the sky—’
Mankala turned to him and held his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin.
‘Alvar,’ she said, ‘the Shoortans do not control the bloody sky. There is some—some—science behind this. We don’t know it, but it’s not Minakshi.’
‘How does it matter if that’s what it feels like to them?’
They looked at each other. Mankala dropped her hands. ‘It was there,’ she said softly, looking away. ‘We had it in our hands. The time of the Wall was over. We were going to remake the world. And Minakshi’s taken it all from us. Builders, I hate her.’
She breathed hard. ‘Everything we’ve done is going to be for nothing. Mithila did what she had to do. She brought us all the way here. She flew. All we had to do was take a few more steps. To tell them that we’d broken the circle of Time. But we couldn’t. And now we’re stuck here. We’ll always be stuck here.’ Her voice lowered. ‘We’ve failed her.’
Alvar closed his eyes. ‘What are we doing this for?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I feel so lost, Mankala. I thought it was all going to change. She would change everything when she left. But now she’s gone and things are worse. Maybe Lamon had the right idea.’
Mankala hugged her knees. ‘You really think that?’
‘Well, no, but I … I’m not going to do it, but Builders, you can’t deny it would be easy. To just walk away. Stop fighting, just become normal again. No more Young Tarafians, no more Wall, just doing my thing with the Carers, and you with the Encyclopaedia, the things we love and—would it be the worst life, you think?’
‘Normal.’ Mankala was silent for a long time, forcing Alvar to open his eyes. He saw her looking past him once more. Just when he thought she wouldn’t speak again, she did.
‘Remember geometry class, Alvar?’ said Mankala.
He was thrown. ‘Geo—’
‘When they first taught us how to find out the area of a circle, before we learned the formulas?’
‘Yeah, we filled the circle with squares,’ said Alvar. ‘Then we made the squares smaller.’
‘And smaller, and smaller,’ said Mankala. ‘They called it the vanishing point.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I thought, you know—I thought how true it was. To fit in the Circle, you needed to vanish. If you didn’t, your edges would bump against the sides. You’d bruise. And I knew then that bruises would make me.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m not vanishing, Alvar. I’ve bruised too much for that, and you have too.’
He knew she was right.
Rama left her father’s chamber and came down the stairs. Sunlight poured in through the wide windows of the living room. She walked across the room and entered Amrit’s—her—study.
Mankala stood. ‘Good morning, Speaker for the Eleventh.’
‘How,’ said Rama, her voice flat, ‘did you get in here?’
‘Why would your guards stop Councillor Malati’s secretary?’ Mankala grinned. ‘Can you ask them not to brandish their swords so much next time?’
Rama walked to her desk. Her papers were there, and the Bill she’d been drafting last night, half-finished. ‘Next time, you will ask before you look at my papers.’
‘Oh, is that so? I’m from the Eleventh, remember? You speak for me.’
‘No, I represent you. According to my best judgment. You don’t own me.’
Mankala threw up her arms. ‘Builders, Rama! Can’t we even make fun of you anymore?’
‘Oh.’ Rama was still. ‘Yes, fine. Idiot,’ she said, rolling her eyes. She turned the papers blank side up nonetheless. ‘You’ve come about the Temple, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why, but?’
‘I don’t yet know. I have a lead—’
‘Eesh, but this is not good enough, Mankala,’ Rama said. ‘You know that I can’t just act for myself now? These things have consequences. If I’m going to invent an excuse to land up at the Temple with you, I need to know what I’m inventing for.’
‘Can I just—okay, Councillor. The Eleventh asked you to put this Bill into Council today, didn’t they? The one proposing a Special Committee to explore options for going beyond the Wall? I read it. Listen to me: don’t do it.’
‘What? Why?’
‘You don’t know what happened last night?’
‘Carnival? I don’t stay up late. What happened?’
‘You need to have your own advisors, Rama. While you were sleeping, the sky turned red again, and Minakshi brought Ostracism back to Sumer. Do you want to cross her today?’
Rama tapped her fingers on the desk. ‘I see,’ she said.
‘It takes a lot to rouse the Farmers’ Mandalas, Councillor. It takes a lot to overturn a thousand years of—what’s that phrase?—social life, that’s been encrusted in ideology. And once roused—it’s so fragile, you know. A gust of air can scatter it to the fields for another thousand years. Pick your moment. You’ll get one chance. But you know it’s not now.’
Rama nodded. ‘Yes. And thanks. You’ve saved me from a disaster in the Council.’
‘Will you trust me now?’
‘Ugh, fine,’ said Rama, a small smile at the corner of her eyes. ‘Come, secretary. We have an appointment at the Temple.’
‘How much time do you need?’ said Rama, as she grabbed the knocker and sent it echoing through the innards of the Temple.
‘Fifteen minutes?’
‘Yeah, okay. No more, though. Minakshi and I—we’re not exactly friends—’ she broke off, as the door opened.
‘Councillor Rama,’ she announced herself to the Acolyte who stood before them. ‘I’m here to meet the Matriarch.’
‘I—is she expecting you?’
‘Yes.’ She stared him down. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Oh—no no, I wasn’t told there were visitors this morning.’ He wilted. ‘But please come with me.’
Rama walked beside the Acolyte through the hall of pillars. Mankala stepped a little distance behind, a respectful secretary. He took them up and into the Audience Chamber.
Minakshi was on her high chair, crownless.
‘Councillor?’
Rama inclined her head. ‘Good morning, Matriarch. I came to continue our interrupted conversation.’
‘Oh? Of course.’
Minakshi signalled. The priest that she had been talking to quietly left the room. Mankala followed suit, leaving them alone.
Minakshi rose and came to her. They faced each other on the floor of the Audience Chamber. Rama noticed the lines etched into her forehead, the way she held herself erect.
‘Long night?’ The words she spoke were not the words she intended.
‘Aren’t they all?’ The Matriarch stared into the space beyond Rama’s shoulder, her voice spare as withered leaves.
‘Did you really have to?’
Minakshi screwed her eyes shut. ‘It’s done now,’ she said.
Rama caught her gaze as she opened them again, and did not let it go.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘What do you think it will bring you? Peace? Unity? Reconciliation? What did Ostracism ever bring Sumer in the old days?’
‘I never said I’d use it.’
‘A sword that hangs over our necks by a thread, waiting for you to snap it. Is that any better? For you, to hold that power—and for us, to wait?’
‘Builders, Rama, I’m not going to use it on you—’
‘That’s not the point. You brought it back into Sumer, after centuries. The memory of our worst days. We just don’t do that sort of thing any more, we’ve—we’ve progressed. And I don’t understand why …’
Minakshi raised a hand.
For a while, the Matriarch said nothing. Then she lifted her head and looked at Rama.
‘You’re Council,’ she said. ‘You’ll understand. Will you hear me out?
‘Go on.’
‘Circles,’ Minakshi let the word drop between them.
‘What?’
‘Circles,’ Minakshi repeated. ‘They keep things in place, within the Wall. They allow us to go on. But you know, Rama, nothing really wants to move in a circle. Remember when we were children, the slings we used to whirl above our heads, and how they used to fly when we let them go?
‘You need force to keep things in a circle, Rama. The tension in the sling. And the Select tell us—Garuda told me—that in the sky, it’s gravity that keeps planets in orbit around the sun. Without that, the planets would fly—but the system would collapse. We would collapse.
‘In Sumer, I am gravity.’
Her words died upon the silence between them.
You are delusional, Rama almost screamed out, but bit her tongue. ‘You need Ostracism to hold Sumer together?’
‘I don’t know. I might.’ Her voice hardened. ‘And if I have to—I will use it.’
‘And you’ll be the one who decides that. Do you think we’re going to see this as anything but a power grab?’
