“I came by the road, not the river.”
“And yet you are the Child of the River, and the end of the world seems near. The departments have been perpetually at war with each other since the Hierarchs fell from power, and now one department threatens to destroy the rest in the name of the war against the heretics. If it wins, then such a tyranny may rise that could hold the world in its grip forever, wielding power in the name of the Preservers, but serving only itself. I have feared this for a very long time, but now I know, dominie. Now I know! How glad I am that these terrible days are the last!”
Lupe’s milky eyes shone with tears. Magon crept from the bed and with his long, crafty fingers tenderly blotted the tears from his master’s withered, rouged cheeks. “It’s true,” the gambler said, looking boldly at Yama. “Everything Lupe says is true. He remembers more than anyone else. It is why he is our king.”
Lupe composed himself and said, “I weep from joy, dominie, that you have come again. There will be new songs and dances made out of this wonderful moment.”
“I understand,” Yama said, although it seemed to him that he had mistakenly stumbled into the middle of a myth.
Lupe’s story had set a hundred questions tumbling through his head. Who was the anchorite? Was it the same man who had given him the coin? Why had he been set adrift on the river in the first place?
He said, “I am grateful for your hospitality, Lupe, and for your help. But you know that I cannot stay.”
Magon said, “They have business with one of the fading flowers, Lupe. I told them that they need not concern themselves with it any longer.”
“Forgive my servant,” Lupe said. “He is young and eager, but he means well. If you have business to attend to, dominie, then that is what you must do. My servant will take you where you need to go.”
Eliphas said, “Then you will let us go?”
“Wherever you are in the Palace, we are with you,” Lupe said. “But before you go, walk with me. Show my people that you are my friend, and so the friend of us all.”
Lupe led Yama and Eliphas through the kingdom of his cavern. A hundred brightly costumed clowns, dancers, and whores followed at a respectful distance while Lupe gravely introduced Yama to each of the elders who stood in shabby finery outside their painted shacks.
Yama asked many questions, and although Lupe answered every one, often at length, he learned little more, except that much was expected of him. Lupe was too polite, or too cunning, to state exactly what this was, but Yama slowly began to realize that there was only one thing these people could desire. For they were indigens, and unlike the changed and unchanged bloodlines they were untouched by the breath of the Preservers. They were creatures which had borrowed human form; perhaps even their intelligence was borrowed, a trick or skill they had learned like tumbling, fire-eating, or prestidigitation. Everything they possessed had come to them from other hands, and they accepted these gifts without discrimination. Fabulous treasures were tipped carelessly amongst the rubbish that had formed great drifting piles in Lupe’s apartments; a beautiful boy carrying nightsoil to the gardens at the edge of the caverns might be wearing a priceless dress; a dancer made up as fabulously as a courtesan might be clad in a glittering costume that, on close inspection, was constructed of sacking decorated with a magpie’s nest of scraps of plastic and aluminum.
The only thing which was truly theirs was the art of simulation, which they used without guile to enhance the pleasure of their clients. Watching closely, Yama saw that the three girls who attended Lupe were not beautiful at all—or rather, that their beauty was a trick of poise and muscle tone and expression, sustained by constant vigilance. They could become passable imitations of most bloodlines by synthesizing and exaggerating with a little makeup the two or three features by which each was distinguished from the others. And so with beauty, for beauty is only an exaggeration of the ordinary. Just as a transvestite exaggerates those features which make a woman attractive, Lupe’s people achieved beauty through burlesque. These people could, through their art, appear to be anything that their clients might desire.
The only thing they could not be was themselves.
Many, like Eliphas, believed that the indigenous races were no more than animals. Yama thought otherwise. For if everything in the world had proceeded from the minds of the Preservers, then surely the indigenous races had not been brought here simply to be despised and persecuted.
Surely they too had their place.
It was almost noon by the time Yama and Lupe finally completed the circuit of the cavern and returned through the gilt frame to Lupe’s chambers. Somewhere high above, the Gate of Double Glory would be admitting those who wished to participate in the public inquisition at the Department of Vaticination. The two pythonesses would soon appear before their clients, arrayed in ancient splendor.
“I do not forget that you have business elsewhere,” the dignified old man said. He covered Yama’s hands with his own. “You can leave by a hidden way, and the people will think you stay here to talk with me. The more important they think I am, the easier it is to keep order. We are a fractious people, dominie. We get too many ideas from others.”
“You have been very generous,” Yama said.
“We have done all we can, but I fear that it is little enough.”
“You have given me my life, and hope that my people still live,” Yama said. “I will try to return when I can.”
“Of course you will return,” Lupe said. “And so I will not say farewell, for in reality you will not have left.”
As they followed Magon up a long stairway, Eliphas said, “This is a day of wonders, brother. I had not known that the mirror people stored up their loot. Amongst all that rubbish is an edition of the Book of Blood that I had known only by repute. It is badly damaged, but a man could live for a year from the sale of only a few intact pages. Will you return?”
Yama shook his head, meaning that he did not know. Yet he did feel a prick of obligation. Not because Lupe’s people had saved his life; Lupe had made it clear that there was no debt to be paid, and Yama was ready to take him at his word. But there was the other matter. There was Lupe’s impossible dream, the promise of the anchorite, the prophecy fulfilled.
No wonder my people have hidden themselves, he thought, for the world holds a store of their unpaid debts and I seem to be fated to redeem them all.
He said with sudden bitterness, “I wish I had never come to Ys! I only hurt myself, and those who expect things from me. I should have gone downriver with Dr. Dismas and accepted my fate!”
But as soon as he said it, he knew that the words came from his dark half, the part of him that dreamed of easy glory and power without responsibility. The part that had been touched by the woman in the shrine, the aspect whose original had begun the heresy which threatened to consume the world.
Magon glanced over his shoulder, his pale face thrown into sharp relief by the lights cast by the fireflies of Yama and Eliphas. There was no other light in the long stair, and Yama wondered how those who lived in the Palace could stand it. Except in places at the edge of things, they inhabited little bubbles of light surrounded by vast expanses of uncharted shadow; Lupe’s people, who possessed only the dimmest of fireflies, if any, must navigate the maze of passages and tunnels in near darkness.