2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows (10 page)

“Go back.”

“Give up.”

“Turn aside.”

John kept his hands pressed over Fikiri’s ears and slowly Fikiri began to calm down. He looked up at John and then glanced from side to side as if he expected to be able to see if the disembodied voices were still there.

“Are they gone?” Fikiri asked.

John shook his head and slowly peeled one of his hands back.

“You will suffer.”

“Burn.”

“Bleed.”

“Scream for mercy.”

Fikiri’s lips trembled.

“If it was Parfir,” John said firmly, “could my hands keep his voice from reaching you?”

“Are they devils?” Fikiri whimpered.

“No.” John found that he was almost shouting now.

“Run from me!”

“I am death.”

“I am ruin.”

“It’s just a trick that the priests are playing to test you,” John shouted over the threats and insults. “You must not listen to them.”

“I will devour your flesh.”

“Rot your bones.”

“Eat your soul.”

“I’m scared.” Fikiri was trembling. “I don’t want to die.”

“You aren’t going to die! Just look at me, Fikiri.” John forced Fikiri to lift his head. “Just look at me and repeat what I say.”

Tears dribbled down Fikiri’s face but he didn’t look away.

John shouted out the words of the prayers. And slowly Fikiri began to repeat them.

“Parfir,” John led Fikiri as Pivan had led him, “the earth is your flesh, the rivers your blood, the skies your breath. Parfir, the earth is your flesh, the rivers your blood, the skies your breath. I honor you. I honor you. I honor you...”

Slowly Fikiri’s eyes drooped, his mouth relaxed, so that he was only whispering. He slumped into John’s chest, still muttering the prayer.

John continued chanting. He carefully lifted Fikiri onto his back and then pushed himself up to his feet.

Angry, resistant pain shot through his muscles. For a moment John’s legs trembled as if they might buckle. He stumbled, caught himself, and continued grinding the words of the prayers out. Slowly, he struggled up the steps. The hissed insults and whispered threats washed over him.

John ignored everything but the prayers and the steps. The weight, the cold, the pain—he refused to feel them. Staring down, he took gray step after gray step.

Gray step after gray step.

They seemed to go on endlessly beneath him.

And then there were only cobblestones beneath his feet. John lifted his head. A white stone wall rose up in front of him. It glowed a pale yellow in the early afternoon light. Only a few feet ahead of him, the last step stood before a broad iron door in the wall. The step gleamed brightly and as John drew closer he realized that it was made of gold.

John lowered Fikiri to his feet. The boy moaned and called sleepily for his mother.

“Wake up.” John could hardly get a sound out, his throat was so raw.

Fikiri opened his eyes. He looked like the nap had done him good.

He said, “The voices are gone.”

John nodded and pointed to the tall white wall and the iron door.

“We’ve reached Rathal’pesha.” John pulled the sheepskin of daru’sira from his shoulder and drank. The juniper-like bitterness felt good against his dry throat.

“You have to go through the door.” John still couldn’t get much more than a whisper out.

“But I don’t know—” Fikiri began.

“The word you must say is I-am-here-my-lord,” John told him.

Fikiri tried and failed.

“I-am-here-my-lord,” John repeated. “Say it.”

“I’yam herem’myl’ord,” Fikiri whispered.

“That’s great.” John sipped more of the daru’sira. The burning in his throat cooled to numbness.

“I already knew the word,” Fikiri confessed. “My mother will never forgive me if I go in.”

“I’m sorry,” John said.

He suspected that Lady Bousim might not forgive Fikiri for becoming a Payshmura priest. She despised the Payshmura absolutely, maybe even more than she loved her son. John entertained no illusion about parents and unconditional love. It wasn’t fair to put Fikiri in that position. But then, life wasn’t often fair.

And John had not climbed nine hundred and ninety nine steps to turn around and walk back down.

For a brief, exasperated moment he considered dragging Fikiri to the door, kicking it open and hurling the boy through. Pivan had probably had something like that in mind when he had told John the holy password. But John was exhausted and the big iron door didn’t look like it could be kicked open easily.

“Fikiri, you’re going to go in there one way or another.” John corked the sheepskin and swung it back over his shoulder. “You can either do it with pride and dignity or you can be thrown in on your ass, crying. Those are your options. Right now they are the only choices you have. So what’s it going to be?”

Fikiri sniffed.

“Look,” John said, “your mother isn’t going to know how you entered Rathal’pesha. As far as she knows, I beat you up, tied you in ropes, and you fought every inch of the way. But the men on the other side of that wall are going to be watching. And they’re who you’re going to have to live with.”

Fikiri wiped his eyes.

“What would you do?”

“If I were you?”

“If you were me,” Fikiri said.

Shove the big exhausted guy out of my way and run like hell down the stairs, John thought in all honesty. But then, he wasn’t Fikiri and he would never have allowed himself to be carried up the steps in the first place.

John said, “I’d walk in on my own two feet. I wouldn’t let those priests think that I was unworthy of them.”

“Are you coming in with me?”

“I am.”

Fikiri straightened his shoulders and then turned to face the huge white wall. He strode to the door, called out the holy word, and then walked through as the iron door was pulled open before him. John felt a little proud of Fikiri as he followed silently behind him. At least he’d managed to pull himself together at the end, when it had mattered.

Just past the iron door, hundreds of gray-robed priests had gathered to greet the ushiri candidate. They lined the walkway leading to the Great Temple and cheered as Fikiri stepped before them. Others stood on the high battlements that lined the great white wall and cheered.

Most of them were grown men in their forties or fifties. The rest seemed to be spread between mid- and late-thirties. Only rarely did John notice a boy as young as Fikiri or even a man as young as himself.

The uniformity in their slim builds, soft features, and dark hair implied some common heritage. Pivan would have blended into their midst flawlessly. Fikiri’s dark blonde hair stood out. But at least his build was small and slim. Aside from the slightly sharper point of his chin and nose, his features resembled those of the men around him.

John, on the other hand, stood out among them as utterly foreign. Nothing he could do would disguise his greater height and muscular build. Months of hunger hadn’t helped things either. The hard angularity of his face and body had only become more marked since he had been living out in the woods. With his bright blonde hair and light eyes, John guessed that the priests, like Lady Bousim, would think he came from an Eastern bloodline.

Still, none of the priests seemed unfriendly towards him. As he trailed Fikiri, they smiled at him and seemed to be cheering him as well. One hunched old man caught his arm briefly and pressed a tiny yellow cookie into his palm.

“Strength for the attendant,” the old man said and then he nudged John along.

The Great Temple rose up like a white mountain of its own. All the stone paths in the courtyard seemed to converge at the foot of its gray stone stairs and massive black doors. Arched over the doorway, silver moons caught and reflected the afternoon light. At the very top of the arch there was a single gold sun. It looked a little like the cookie John had been given.

Fikiri came to a dead stop at the foot of the Great Temple’s stairs.

A group of men in black coats and gray cassocks stood at the top, forming a line before the doors. John recognized the silver emblems of moons marking the collars of their coats. They were ushiri like Ravishan. He scanned the line of men for his friend’s face but didn’t find him there.

An old, skeletally thin priest stepped forward. His hair hung past his waist in white braids. The skin of his exposed face and hands was finely creased and folded, like paper that had been balled up and then spread flat.

Another priest, a man in his forties, stepped up behind the old man and steadied him. Though the action was one of servitude, John didn’t get that kind of impression from the younger priest’s face. He towered over the older man. Thick black braids cascaded down his broad shoulders. His bearing and expression radiated pride and self-assurance. John immediately sensed that it was not the dark priest’s obligation to care for his elder but his right.

“Candidate Fikiri, you have come a long way through hardship and danger but Parfir has reached out his hand and given you his protection.” The younger priest’s words boomed over them and John recognized his voice as one of those that had threatened and cursed Fikiri on the Thousand Steps to Heaven’s Door. “Now, Candidate, come this last small distance and know his will.”

The younger priest beckoned for Fikiri to ascend the stairs. Fikiri stole a glance back at John. John nodded and Fikiri went.

The old priest kissed Fikiri’s forehead and then whispered something over his head while tracing a symbol in the air. John waited at the foot of the stairs.

Then the old man turned. The assembled ushiri pulled the huge doors of the Great Temple open. The dark-haired priest led Fikiri by the shoulders and directed him after the old priest as they walked into the Great Temple. The black-clad ushiri followed behind.

Then the gray-robed priests who had gathered below cheered once more. All around John priests in plain gray robes surged forward, hurrying into the temple. Some cheered; others sang bits of prayers. A few seemed to be sneaking little conversations back and forth between refrains of prayers. None of them bumped him or jostled him but neither did they stop to talk to him. John felt almost like they didn’t see him at all.

Then a bony hand caught his arm—the old priest who had given him the cookie. His head was entirely bald and the wrinkles of his face so deep that they looked like they had been etched into him. His drooping eyelids nearly obscured his dark eyes.

“Ushman Dayyid is young,” the old priest told him. “It’s been too long for him to remember the last candidate who came to us with an attendant. Forgive him for forgetting you.”

“I don’t mind, really,” John said.

“Come.” The old man pulled him slightly towards the stairs. “Wine should be served to you. I remember these things even if these boys do not.” He indicated another priest, who looked to be about sixty.

John allowed the old priest to lead him up the stairs, though after the third step John found that the old man was clinging to him for balance more than leading him. Other priests passed them. Some stopped, but the old man waved them on.

“Save us a place,” the old priest told one of them and then waved him ahead.

“I have heard you are called Alidas.” The old man smiled. “That’s a southern name, isn’t it?”

“I believe it is, but I’m not Alidas,” John replied. “He was injured on the Holy Road and Rashan Pivan’ro’Bousim chose me to take his place. My name is Jahn.”

“Really?” The old man’s brows lifted high enough that John caught a clear glimpse of his brown eyes. “Because of your hair, I suppose.”

John nodded.

“I’m Ushvun Samsango.” The priest grinned and John smiled back. The old man had obviously outgrown the name and its meaning, ‘swift runner.’

When they reached the top of the stairs, the heavy black doors were beginning to swing shut, all of the other priests having already entered. In a way, John hoped that he might have the excuse of being locked out to escape whatever strange and alien ceremony he might be expected to take part in. Then John saw the look of hurt on Samsango’s face.

John rushed forward and caught one of the doors. It was heavier than he had expected and he had to strain to hold it in place.

“Truly, you were born an attendant,” Samsango commented as he walked past John through the door. John followed him, allowing the door to swing closed behind him. Hundreds of gray-robed priests knelt on the stone floor. They filled the space like paving stones, enclosing the bases of stone columns and stretching from wall to wall. Only a white walkway leading from the doors to the huge altar remained clear. Samsango sat down beside another priest but shook his head when John moved to join him.

At the foot of a carved stone altar far at the front, Fikiri knelt before Ushman Dayyid. The old, white-haired priest sat in a high-backed stone chair, while the rest of the ushiri formed a half-circle behind him.

In the absolute silence of the huge room, the door slammed shut behind John. It sounded like a thunderclap. For a moment every man in the temple looked up to where John stood.