“He could not lie. At least, not then.”
Pandaras rubbed his hand over his face and yawned and said sleepily, “Did you really change them, master?”
“The machines changed them. In time I hope that they will change all the indigenous peoples.”
The mirror people and the husbandmen of the Palace of the Memory of the People. The fisherfolk of the Great River and all the tribes who lived in the wild parts of its shore, the forest folk and all the strange races of indigens the forest folk claimed to know, the horsemen of the high plains and the mountaineers and the rock wights, and many more. Yama tried to remember them all, and fell asleep, counting them still in his dreams.
In the morning, Yama and Pandaras woke to find fruit and fresh, juicy pea vine pods in a string bag hanging from a stick thrust into a cleft in the trunk of one of the parasol trees. They looked for a long time, but found no other sign of the forest folk.
“Remember what I told you!” Yama shouted into the trees. “Let others drink a little of your blood! Then they will be free too!”
The green silence of the forest swallowed his words. Yama and Pandaras walked all day along the edge of the ridge above the valley, at the margin of the forest. And at sunset, just as Pandaras had predicted, they came to the temple.
Chapter Sixteen
The Holy Slave
The facade of the temple had been carved into the face of a tall cliff of red sandstone, intricately worked and painted gold and white and ultramarine. It was approached by a long road that switchbacked up from the valley floor, ending at a single-span bridge over the narrow, deep gorge at the edge of the wide plaza spread in front of the temple. In the center of the plaza was a simple square altar ringed by tall, white, unadorned pillars, which had probably functioned as a day shrine where people had gone to ask small favors of the Preservers or to remember their dead. There was a string of flat-roofed little houses to one side, where the priest and other temple staff had lived, and a meadow by the stream which fell into the gorge, where penitents and palmers could have camped.
The meadow was overgrown with pioneer acacias and wild banana plants; now the gardens of the houses contained only dry stalks; weeds thrust up between the slabs of polished sandstone which paved the plaza. A window shutter banged and banged in the evening breeze, like an idiot who knew only one word. Turkey vultures had built untidy nests on the flat tops of the pillars around the day shrine; their droppings streaked the pillars, and the cracked bones of their prey littered the tiles below. But someone had swept the long flight of wide steps which led up to the entrance of the temple, and prayer flags and banners in bright primary colors fluttered from poles along one side of the plaza.
“The Mighty People killed the priest and the hierodules during their Change War,” Pandaras whispered. “They killed the Archivist and the Commissioner too. They burned the Commissioner and a maniple of soldiers in his peel-house, but they killed the others here. Yoi Sendar said that those who killed the Archivist ate his brains, because they wanted to gain power over the dead.”
He and Yama squatted in dry brush at the top of a pebbly slope that overlooked the plaza. Pandaras had taken out his stone blade, and was sharpening it on a bit of flint he held between his feet.
“I do not think there will be a need for that,” Yama said.
“It could be the Prefect. Or that doctor. You have powerful enemies, master. They are not easy to kill, and if they survived the fall of the gardens they will be searching for you.”
“Dr. Dismas would not wait for us in a temple—it is not his style. And Prefect Corin would not bother to set out flags or sweep the entrance. If it is someone we know, then it can be only one person. And if it is not, then I hope that whoever has appointed himself custodian of this place will do us no harm. Besides, this is the only way to the midpoint of the world which does not involve a hundred days of walking.”
Yama stood up, crabbed down the slope in a cloud of dust, and ran straight out across the plaza. Dry weeds crackled underfoot. A pair of turkey vultures took flight. Pandaras came down more cautiously holding the stone blade up by his shoulder, the stump of his left wrist tucked between two toggles of his shirt. He hurried to catch up with Yama, who was walking around the circle of pillars—someone had swept the altar and tried to scrub away the signs which had been scrawled there—toward the stair which led up to the entrance of the façade.
Pandaras said breathlessly, “At least we could have waited until after supper, master!”
“I do not think we should rely on the forest folk any longer. They have other concerns now. And please, Pandaras, put away that blade. Show that we come as friends.”
But Pandaras did not hear him. He gave a sudden yell and ran past Yama and scampered up the steps. A tall, pale-skinned figure had appeared at the entrance of the temple.
It was Tibor.
“I knew that you had survived the flood,” the hierodule told Yama, “and I am pleased that you found your way here.”
Yama smiled and said, “I will free you of your obligation soon, Tibor. We will sleep here tonight, but we have a long way to go, and must set off as soon as we are rested.”
“I have already found something else to serve,” Tibor said.
They were sitting cross-legged on the terrace before the entrance of the temple. The hierodule wore a white shirt left unbuttoned to display the two vertical scars on his chest, and trousers of a stiff, silvery material which he had slit at the waist and ankles because they were slightly too small for him. He had brought out a tray of food and beakers of wine and distilled water, and Yama and Pandaras ate hungrily, although the food had been too long in a freezer—the limp vegetables were crunchy with ice crystals at their cores, the flat breads were dry, and the sauces had lost most of their savor.
“The people of the valley killed the priest and the hierodules of this temple,” Pandaras said. “They have turned their backs on the Preservers. It isn’t safe for people like you, Tibor. You think only of serving, but this isn’t the place for it.”
“I know what happened here,” Tibor said. He chewed at a twig, rolling it around his lips with his long red tongue; he had lost his cigarette makings in the flood. “But that was many years ago. I am not afraid. Things will be different now.”
“The forest folk might want to come here now, I suppose,” Pandaras said, “but I still think that you should come with us.”
Yama asked Tibor how he had escaped Prefect Corin, and the hierodule explained that he had still been struggling with the Prefect when the tidal wave had smashed into the floating garden, knocking it from the air and washing the two men into the river. “We were torn apart,” Tibor said, “and then I was too busy trying not to drown to try to follow him. I was dragged down by a tremendous whirlpool, and I think I may have touched the bottom of the river, so deep was I drawn. Just as my breath was about to burst from my chest, I was shot up like a cork, and came to the surface near an uprooted tree. I clung to its sturdy trunk and was borne with it wherever the flood chose to take me. Many small animals had already sought safety there, and bedraggled birds alighted on its leafy branches to take refuge from the rain, so that I was not without food. I drifted for two days amidst a growing fleet of other uprooted trees, until at last the failing waters stranded them all and I could walk across them into forested hills untouched by the flood. This part of the world is mostly populated by indigenous peoples, and I knew that the only temple for fifty leagues all around stood beyond the hills. And so I made my way across them, and after many hardships I will not trouble you with at last arrived here.”