But even to the beasts of the desert the Ila’s Mercy continually pours out her abundance.
Even the destroyers the Ila made for her use.
—The Book of Priests
In here,” the ila’s men said, and made Marak duck, shielding his head from a low doorway. He wiped his eyes as his hair fell across his face, and consequently had grit in them, compounded with the sticky filth that clung to his skin and his hair and his clothes.
Blinking tears, then, he prepared himself for soldiers’ rough handling, but saw no authority awaiting him, only four slaves, who stood holding towels and such in a little fountain courtyard dim with twilight.
“The Ila wishes not to be offended,” one of the guards said.
So the Ila had indeed heard the news of Tain’s misfortune in his son, and become, as he hoped, curious. He would have the audience, and with no need for him to seek it, his most extravagant hopes realized.
The officers of the household, armed and watchful, kept their distance from him, but in an act of leaden, ordinary compliance he began to shed the ruined boots, which brought away shreds of old white skin. New skin had grown, daily, to be worn away in blisters; it was his nature. It was the nature of all the mad, he had learned: they all healed well. Only the greatest injuries, like the boy’s, could overwhelm their bodies’ defenses.
The slaves took his filthy rags with disgust. With gestures—they did not speak—they wished him to stand beneath a device that poured down water, and pulled a chain. A flood rushed down on him, a chill rush that made his flesh contract. Between his feet, water that had passed over his body stayed not to bathe him, but flowed out a drain so rapidly the puddle never showed soil.
Perhaps that water flowed from the drain out under the wall, and perhaps it flowed down the streets to carry the waste of the holy city, or perhaps, again, it passed down clay pipes, to join the Mercy of the Ila, the drink of unknowing passersby.
{ Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices said, chiding him… or beckoning him to folly: he never knew.}
Meanwhile the slaves washed his body with soft clothes, scrubbing in their ignorance at his tattoos, at the mark he wore, the abjori emblem, in blue above his heart, scrubbed at the killing-marks on his right hand.
“They will not come off,” he said to them after enduring their efforts. Perhaps the slaves had never been outside the Beykaskh: at least they desisted when told. They loosed his hair and scrubbed it, and combed it with gentle fingers. The last of twilight was going. A slave brought out lamps and hung them in the open courtyard, providing a golden light.
They had him sit down, next, and by that light carefully shaved his face clean, a luxury he had not had in all the time of walking. They used a straight razor which if he had seized it would have been a fearsome weapon. But he waited. They were deft and quick, and even followed the shave with a soothing herbal, while he sat with his hands on his knees, the object of the guards’ indolent stares.
There was no reason for shame. The long walk had worn him, but he had healed. He was thinner than he had been, but he was still strong. He was still Tain’s son, no matter Tain had rejected him. He was still himself.
He expected clean clothes of some sort. It hardly made sense to waste so much water and clothe him again in garments foul with refuse. And indeed, they unfolded clothing from the protection of thick towels. They gave him a shirt of cloth as fine as a bride’s gown, shirt andtrousers that felt strangely oldand worn to comfort as they slid over his skin. There was a belt, which was foolish to give a prisoner, but they gave it, all the same. They carefully combed his hair, and bound it with soft leather. Instead of the galling rope about his neck, they wished to place a light chain of ornate links, common brass, such as common folk wore. That alone he refused, wishing no Lakhtani chain on his neck, no matter their custom.
“He wants one of gold,” the chief guard said to the slaves, mocking him, and added: “Let it be. It’s no matter of importance.”
That wasthe importance. But it was not important in the guards’ thinking, and he said nothing.
All these proceedings, he was sure, readied him to come into the heart of the Beykaskh, and near the Ila. It had fallen dark now, except their lamp. The slaves brought boots for his feet which fit amazingly well… so much care they took for his comfort. They must have measured his ruined ones, split seams and all. And where did one find an array of boots simply waiting?
And would he see the Ila tonight, and have his chance at this late hour? Or must he wait?
{ Marak, Marak, the voices said, damnably ill timed.}
He shut his eyes, pretending weariness to conceal his distraction. But worse than the voices, that swinging sense came over him, the one that could take a man’s balance.
“Come along,” his guards said.
{ Marak, the voices said. Marak. Get up. Walk.}
He made a careful, practiced effort against that swinging feeling. He gained his balance. Above all things else he wished no restraint, no impediment to the one chance he might have at the Ila, and he had no need, for a moment, to pretend helplessness for his guards’ sake. The structures of fire blinded him, and the world swung violently, always toward the east.
They led him by either arm, the captain and the guard, out that low fountain-court door and into the hallway.
More guards stood on duty here, men in the gilt-trimmed uniform of the elite of the Ila’s men. Now it was certain where he was going. Now his palms sweated and his heart beat hard. Be silent! he chided his voices, attempting to govern them, as he rarely could.
He succeeded. He faced stairs, and he climbed doggedly, at his guards’ orders. He knew how he wished to die.
Chapter Three
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The Ila descended to the Lakht and established the center of the earth. Outside was the wasteland. Until that time there were no villages anywhere and there was no cultivated field.
The Ila established the Holy City and from it went out appointed authorities to establish other centers throughout the land, to widen the habitable lands, to drive back the vermin, and to enrich the earth with gardens.
—The Book of Oburan, ch. 1, v. 1.
He hoped for single audience. In his wildest hopes he wished to come very near the Ila, and to have her guards far away.
But to his disappointment he was not alone. A group gathered in an upper hall outside a set of massive doors, a motley group of old and young, men and women, all dressed in the ordinary white and brown of the holy city. All the company had a haggard look. Some bore recent wounds. Were they the local harvest of the streets, Marak wondered?
But among them, along the edge, he saw the wife from Tarsa, the potter, the barber, and the rest that had come with him. Then he knew that he was not alone in this audience, only better dressed.
They must be all mad, the scourings of the Ila’s search, not only from the villages of the west, but from all the land. There were that many more of them, filling the hallway as far as the corner.
The metal doors sighed heavily and opened, no hand touching them.
Beyond them was a narrow, pillared hall. At the end of the hall was a dais and a high seat, and on that seat was a figure robed in red.
The Ila. The source of all authority… deathless, immortal, so some said. A god on earth, priests maintained, and the Ila did not refuse their worship.
If she was a god, Marak proposed to find out. Under his brow, head bowed among the herd, he measured the length he must go to reach that figure. He imagined to himself dealing one, just one strong blow to that fragile-seeming neck before they cut him down.