The Broken God (30 page)

Later that morning, Danlo saw Hanuman li Tosh for the first time since their ordeal in Lavi Square. He came into the room with eighteen other chattering, raucous, boot-stomping boys. By good chance, he happened to have the bed next to Danlo's. He came over to Danlo and smiled nicely. 'I haven't thanked you for saving my life,' he said. 'I was afraid I'd never see you again.'

He stood shifting his weight from foot to foot next to Danlo's bed. His fingers were moving like spider's legs against one another; he seemed intensely kinetic and rest-

less, as if he were unsure what his new friendship with Danlo would require of him. Danlo thought that he must still be sick inside, though probably no one noticed this but him. Indeed, Hanuman seemed much changed. Gone was his racking cough, his fever, the deathly pallor of one who was ready to die. Gone, too, was the hair from his head; his shaved scalp was as white as an alaya shell. Like the other novices, he wore an informal robe with a casual grace, as if he had been born to the garments of the Order. Much of the delicateness seemed to have fallen away from his beautiful face, though with his head shaved, his cheek bones stood out more prominently, and his eyes appeared even more vivid and haunting than Danlo had remembered.

Shaida eyes, he thought for the thousandth time. And then he remembered that Hanuman was his friend, and he embraced him fiercely and cried out, 'Hanu, Hanu, I am glad you are alive!'

Danlo's open, unrestrained joy obviously pleased Hanuman, although from the stiffness of Hanuman's body, Danlo immediately understood that he did not like to be touched. It was this way with most civilized people, as Danlo well knew, and so, even as he let go of Hanuman, he paid too little attention to the look of alarm on Hanuman's face.

The other novices gathered around their beds, then. They had witnessed Danlo's feat of lotsara in the Square, and they were eager to meet him.

And Hanuman was quite proud to make introductions. 'Danlo,' he said, 'may I present Sherborn of Darkmoon?' And then there was a wariness in Hanuman's voice as he introduced a small boy with almond eyes and a quick, sardonic face. 'And Madhava li Shing? Madhava's uncle was a master akashic, and his granduncle as well.'

In turn, as Hanuman presented each of the novices, Danlo inclined his head and bowed in the proper manner. And the boys bowed to him, with too perfect a punctilio.

Each of them was new to Borja, but each, like Hanuman, had studied in the elite schools of the Order. Each boy took extreme pride in being of this elite; by duty and by training no one was obviously impolite to Danlo. But as a group, they were at once disdainful of him as a lowly petitioner and envious of his instant fame. They kept a distance between themselves and Danlo, a physical distance of bare floorstones and a psychic distance of suspicious glances, awe and a fragile, false superiority. No one wanted to exchange smiles with him or greet him eye to eye. He was popular, true, but his was the popularity of a strange new alien confined in fear and ignorance to a zoo. Only Hanuman accepted Danlo in friendship. He stood by Danlo's side, and he was unafraid to let the others know that he had nothing but contempt for their manner. It cut Danlo's heart, the way Hanuman stood apart from his peers, staring at them with his pale, icy eyes.

Because it was the beginning of the Academy's year, none of the novices had yet been assigned tutors, schedules, or duties. Danlo spent the rest of the afternoon in uneasy conversation with Madhava li Shing and others, fending off questions as to his origins. After an awkward supper in the first floor dining room (all of the novices, high and low, took their meals together), Danlo and Hanuman raced up the stairs to the fourth floor where they played chess together. Hanuman had a fine, old chess set made on Yarkona. The black pieces were sculpted of shatterwood, while the white pieces were of ivory, and the set was valuable and quite rare. Hanuman's grandfather had given it to him when he was only eight years old; Hanuman had always treasured it, and it was one of the few things he had brought with him to Neverness. When Hanuman set up the pieces for the first game, Danlo saw that the white god was missing. In its place, Hanuman had substituted a salt shaker, which was perfectly adequate for their games. But it troubled Danlo that the harmony of the set had been broken, and he was aggrieved to learn that the god had not been lost but stolen. As Hanuman explained – haltingly, choking on his anger – his father had never approved of the gift. To carve a chess piece as a god, his father claimed, symbolized the heresy that hakras (or humans) could become as true gods. It was a crime as well, pure blasphemy toward Ede the God, and on the night of Hanuman's eleventh birthday his father had confiscated the white god as a lesson in piety. 'My grandfather was a Worthy Architect, if not a reader,' Hanuman said. 'He saw nothing wrong with giving me the set. But my father always had his own interpretation of doctrine. He was always so strict.' After Hanuman had won three games in a row, Danlo returned to his bed to play his shakuhachi. Once, just after he had played a particularly sad passage, Hanuman shot a swift look at him. It lasted only an instant, this acid, apprehensive look, but Danlo immediately felt the deep understanding that flowed between them, as if they were the only ones in the room touched by his music.

Later that evening, in the bathing room just off the main chamber, an incident occurred that would further deepen the way Danlo and Hanuman saw each other. The boys were taking their nightly baths and shaving each other's heads; the room smelled of mildew, sweat and fragrant shaving soaps. Due to the continual jets of hot water piped in from the geysers beneath the City, the air roiled with steam. The small, arched windows were misted over, and drops of water wormed their way down the wall tiles. Danlo was sitting crosslegged by the edge of the hot pool, gagging on lungfuls of steam, while next to him, Madhava li Shing drew a diamond-edged razor across Hanuman's scalp. Suddenly, Madhava nicked Hanuman, and blood streamed from a cut on the side of his head. It was only a small wound, but Hanuman clapped his hand to it, and he gasped for air, and his eyes locked onto the black and white floor tiles as if he could discern a meaning to the pattern there that was lost on all the others.

'Excuse me,' Madhava said. He moved over to one of the shaving basins, where he held the bloody razor beneath a spout of steaming water.

'It's not your fault,' Hanuman finally said. 'No one here has been taught how to shave another properly.'

At this, Madhava stiffened up and said, 'I'm sorry. I'll get some glue.'

'Oh, no,' Hanuman said. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let my ill mood get in the way of my tongue. Please, won't you finish shaving me?'

Hanuman went on to explain that he detested the daily routine of head shaving because it reminded him of one of the rituals of his own church. All the Worthy Architects of the Cybernetic Reformed Churches were required to shave their heads, a practice called 'the little sacrifice'. Ironically, he had fled his parents' religion for the supposed sanity of the Order, only to discover that he must daily sacrifice his hair not to Ede the God, but to an arbitrary tradition whose beginnings no one remembered.

Just then, as Madhava began his work anew and Hanuman clenched his teeth at the razor scraping across his skull, Pedar Sadi Sanat and three other high novices stomped into the room. They were each bigger than any of the first year novices, and they were dressed in kamelaikas as if they had just come in out of the cold. They lined up in front of the hot pool, posturing their bulky bodies to intimidate Hanuman and Danlo. It was bad chance, for Hanuman's mood, already turbid and dark, fell instantly black, and he exchanged quick looks with Danlo. Pedar, of course, noticed this look, which seemed to enrage him. 'Stand up, won't you!' he called out. 'Hanuman li Tosh and Danlo the Wild – we've come to greet you, so you could at least stand and greet us properly.'

Together, almost as if their muscles were connected to a common nerve, Danlo and Hanuman stood up at the edge of the hot pool. Danlo was taller than Hanuman and, with his tendons and muscles twisting like snakes along his limbs, much stronger looking. In truth, Hanuman had yet to get his growth, and his body was small and undefined, more like a boy's than a man's. They were both naked and very aware of their nakedness.

'Welcome to Perilous Hall!' Pedar said. 'We've been waiting for you.'

Pedar apologized for missing the evening meal earlier; he cited his and his friends' exploits with four whores as reason for his absence from the supper table. Then he strode back and forth in front of Danlo and Hanuman, surveying their bodies. He glanced at his friends behind him, and shook his head. Of the four high novices (indeed, of all the boys in the dormitory) Pedar was the oldest, and his face was the most bepimpled. As he picked at his face, his little eyes were pointed like pustules at Danlo. There was a devoutness to cruelty in his eyes, a festering diligence and resentment. Danlo remembered Pedar's taunts during the ordeal in Lavi Square; he remembered Pedar kicking ice in his face and how Master Bardo had cuffed him in punishment, and he suddenly realized that Hanuman (and he, as well) had been assigned to Pedar's dormitory by something other than chance.

'Well, it's the Boy of Ice,' Pedar said. 'Welcome, welcome! The Head Novice was reluctant to assign you here, but we persuaded him that we'd be honoured by the illustriousness of your presence.'

Again, Hanuman looked at Danlo, and Danlo didn't like the way Hanuman's face emptied of all emotion.

Pedar stamped his boots against the wet tile. He snapped his fingers at Danlo and said, 'Can't you face me, Wild Boy? Soon enough, it will be the Day of Submission, and then you'll have to face me when I speak to you.'

Danlo turned to face Pedar squarely, and Hanuman did too. Behind them the hot pool gurgled and steamed, and Danlo felt drops of water spraying up against his legs.

'Please go away,' Hanuman said suddenly. His usually clear voice sounded grey and dead. 'When the Day of Submission comes, we'll submit. But now, please leave us alone.'

At this, Pedar bent his neck and began knocking at the side of his head as if he had water in his ear. To his friends he said, 'I'm not hearing properly. I thought one of these worms asked me to leave.'

'Yes, please leave,' Danlo said. He blinked at the steam irritating his eyes. Many of the boys, he saw, were wading in the cold pool nearby. Sherborn of Darkmoon and Leander Morven, and others, were frozen like snow hares, watching them, listening.

'Look at you!' Pedar shouted. He pointed at Danlo's loins, directing everyone's attention there. Despite himself, Danlo looked down at the long scar on his thigh, where the silk belly boar had once gored him; the scar glistened hard and white and looked like a spear of ice pointing upward towards his membrum. Everyone was now staring at his membrum, at the circumcized bulb and at the round ochre and indigo scars decorating the shaft. 'What have you been doing to yourself, Wild Boy?' Pedar asked. 'Or did a whore bite off your foreskin and tattoo the meat?'

Hanuman obviously couldn't bear for Danlo to be insulted this way, for he clenched his fists and eased into the first attitude of his killing art.

But Pedar just laughed at him and snapped his fingers in the direction of Hanuman's membrum. 'And look at you! You're just a little boy. Is that a noodle you have there or a worm? What do little boys do with their little worms, I wonder?'

Now Hanuman was trembling all over, his hard little muscles dancing along his arms and thighs. His teeth were clenched, and his belly worked in and out as he struggled to breathe. Madhava li Shing, who had prudently edged away from the hot pool and was swishing his razor in a water basin ten feet away, looked at him and called out, 'Be careful, Hanuman. It's immediate dismissal if you strike a high novice.'

Danlo, standing next to Hanuman shoulder to shoulder, could almost feel the sick heat of adrenalin shooting through Hanuman's body. He brought his hand up to his mouth and whispered, 'No, Hanu, no.'

These words seemed to cool Hanuman's heart, for he relaxed his hands and slowly turned around so that his back was facing Pedar.

'If you ever strike me, it will mean more than your dismissal,' Pedar said to him. 'Look at me when I speak to you!'

But Hanuman just stared at the hot pool, and he would not turn his head.

'Damn you!' Pedar screamed. Very quickly, before Danlo realized what was happening, Pedar lashed out and cuffed Hanuman on the side of his head. The blow almost knocked Hanuman over. It opened up the cut on his scalp, and blood streamed down his temple and dripped from his earlobe.

'No!' Danlo said. It was only the second time in his life that he had seen one person strike another. He was afraid that Pedar might strike Hanuman again, so he moved between Pedar and Hanuman, and he said, 'No.'

Pedar, however, must have understood that he had gone too far. He began picking at his pimply face as if he were regretful of his loss of control, if not actually ashamed of his actions. He bowed to Danlo and said, 'When the Day of Submission comes, what a choice I shall have: the Wild Boy or the Worm. I wonder – which one of you will submit to me? You may think about this during the next three tendays.'

So saying, he nodded at his friends and led them from the room. The sound of their boots seemed to echo through the adjoining sleeping chamber long after they were gone.

While Madhava and the other boys began speaking in hushed tones of the Day of Submission, Danlo turned to see Hanuman still staring at the hot pool. He stood perfectly still, and his eyes were like perfect mirrors turned inward upon himself.

'Hanu, your blessed head – it is bleeding,' Danlo said. As they stood there breathing steam, drops of blood gathered at the tip of Hanuman's earlobe; they built into large red beads that splashed down against his shoulder and rolled across his pale chest.

'Hanu, Hanu, if you are afraid of– '

'Go away,' Hanuman suddenly said. 'Please go away.'

'But your head is bleeding,' Danlo repeated. As a child, he had been taught that wounds must be tended to promptly, and so he reached out to examine the cut on Hanuman's temple. But the instant that his fingers touched the bloodstained skin, Hanuman jumped as if he'd been touched with lightning.