Jaran

Tess hesitated. Ilya was looking at the priestess, not at her. He had a slight, satisfied smile on his face. 'No,' she said abruptly, suspicious, 'no, I don't.'

'You do not know the Laws of the Avenue?' she repeated, with a sharp glance at Bakhtiian.

'No.'

'Is he your kin?'

'Yes,' said Tess, on firmer ground here. 'By his aunt's gifting, he is my cousin.'

Ilya glanced at her and swiftly away, looking startled.

'This grows interesting,' said the priestess, but she did not look amused. 'By gift but not by birth?'

'No, not by birth.'

'By two questions, young man,' said the priestess sternly, 'you have gambled with the Laws.'

'Ah, but my name is known here.' To Tess he sounded infuriatingly smug.

'I know very well what your name is, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. Do not trifle with me when the stakes are so high. What is your name, child?'

'Terese Soerensen.' Tess looked from one to the other, bewildered by this interchange.

'You see, Bakhtiian, her name is not known here. Thus am I forced to act rather than accede.'

For a moment, silence reigned. Behind the priestess, the high walls of the palace rose up into the twilight sky. Fading reliefs embellished them, vague shapes that seemed to move in the failing light.

'No,' said Ilya. 'I have accepted responsibility for her under older laws than these.'

'Do not correct me. Here there are no other laws but those of the Avenue. In this place, she alone accepts that responsibility.' She paused. He stood utterly still, as if only now absorbing and measuring some threat. 'That she does not know what this journey has brought her does not, I fear, release her from its consequences.' They both looked at Tess. The priestess examined her with simple appraisal, but Ilya-Ilya looked afraid, and that dismayed her. 'Consider what it is that you have done, Bakhtiian. Consider it well. Now, Terese Soerensen, you will come with me.'

'No!' cried Ilya. His sudden movement up one step alarmed Tess, but the priestess did not move. The light in her hands shone full on his face. He seemed very pale.

'Do you threaten me?'

'She is not jaran,' said Ilya hoarsely. 'I am responsible. You can't take her.'

'Do you presume to tell me what I can and cannot do? Your own aunt gifted her into your tribe. If you regret now whatever rashness led you here, it is too late. The ceremony is completed. But her name is not known here. Thus, she must be tested and then released, one way or the other.''

'Take me in her place.' He made it an order not a request.

'You are presumptuous.' Her voice cracked over them with all the harshness of a person used to complete rule and utter obedience. She lifted a hand. A door opened in the wall, and four white-clad men came out. Before Tess could react, the men surrounded Ilya. She put a hand on her saber. Then she realized none of them was armed with so much as a knife.

'You know the penalty for violence in this shrine,' continued the priestess. Ilya stood stock-still, rooted to the stone, as if he were too stunned to react. The old woman moved her light to shine equally on all of them. Tess saw that the lines on her face were gentle and much marked about the eyes and the mouth. 'Give your horse to one of the priests, child. Then come with me.'

'Oh, gods,' whispered Ilya, shutting his eyes. 'I didn't think-' He broke off. Tess had never seen him with his emotions so uncontrolled. When he opened his eyes, his expression was clearly one of desperation.

'Clearly you did not think,' responded the priestess caustically. 'A man of your reputation. Have you anything whatever to say for yourself?'

He looked like a wild animal at bay, gauging its trap, as he examined the four men surrounding him, each in turn. But the cage was firm. To break out, he would have to use force, and here, in this shrine…

'The penalty is death,' said Tess, without thinking. 'Wait. I don't understand. Do you mean to harm him? Is this all because of the Laws of the Avenue?'

'No. No physical harm will come to you or to him because you rode together down the Avenue at sunset.'

Tess handed Myshla's reins to one of the priests. 'Well, then,' she said, seeing that Ilya had been pushed to the edge and would in a moment do something-something very final, she feared. 'I will go with you. Willingly. Freely.' She looked at Ilya as she said it.

'Tess.' He turned his head in one smooth movement to look at her. She stared at him, bereft of words.

'Yes,' said the priestess. 'The penance the gods have put upon you, Bakhtiian, will be far harsher than any punishment I could devise.' Up beyond, a single faint light winked into life in one of the high towers, a sentinel to whatever beings dwelt in this valley. 'We must go, child.'

Tess found that she was grateful to the priestess for this command. Too many things happening at one time: the ride, his face, the sudden kindling of fierce love only to face those simple, awful words, the Chapalii writing, the priestess, Laws, penance, his face…

'But we can't let the khepelli come here,' she said, grasping at the one thing she did understand.

The priestess had already turned away, assured of Tess's obedience. Now she turned back, and her white robe swelled out briefly with the turn. 'Khepelli? What is this, Bakhtiian? Are there others in your party?'

He turned his head slowly to look at the priestess. 'My jahar, and the pilgrims we escorted from the issledova tel shore.' His voice was so even that it betrayed his agony.

The priestess shrugged. 'Do not worry for them, child. They will come by the usual road.''

Ilya shut his eyes and took in a deep, unsteady breath.

'This is not the usual road?' Tess gestured toward the Avenue behind them, now faded into the obscurity of dusk.

'That is a most unusual road. Come.' She turned and with a marked limp made her way toward the great doors.

'Ilya,' Tess began. He would not look at her. And she remembered what he had said, there at the ruby arch, with her whole heart revealed before him: Now you are mine. 'You bastard,' she said, and she strode away after the priestess.

On the level, Tess was a head taller, but the old woman's authority diminished the disparity in height between them. 'How might I address you?' Tess asked, mindful that on this occasion formality was called for.

The priestess smiled. 'For now, child, you may simply follow me. Later, if the gods say it is fit, you may ask questions.' At the great doors, they halted, and she examined Tess for a moment by the light of her bowl. 'You are not jaran, and yet you are. This is a strong wind that blows, your being here.' She touched a gnarled hand to a panel, pressed it, and the door swung open onto a long, high hall.

A hall distinctly Chapalii in shape and decoration. Stark, abstract patterns lined the walls. They seemed to form pictures, until you looked at them directly; then their form slid away, revealing nothing. Torches lit the hall. Soot and ash shadowed the floor although a wide path lay clear down the center. There was not enough of the black grit to account for long use. How could they keep such a huge place clean without machines?

'Enter, child.'

Tess glanced back to see Ilya staring after them as dusk grew at his back. The horses shifted restlessly behind him. The door shut behind them and she was within the shrine.

They walked down the hall in silence. Nothing disturbed their progress. No doors shut, no feet sounded but their own, no voices pierced the heavy air. Yet beneath her feet, Tess felt that the stone itself was alive, a bewildering sensation after so long in the open. She walked on her toes, cautious and ready, a hand on the hilt of her saber. It took her almost the entire length of the hall to sort through her thoughts and let her old self emerge above half a year's journey with the jaran.

The answer was so simple it was laughable. The palace must still be alive: with machines. Hidden, of course. Silent. Meant, like servants, to do their work unobtrusively, successful only if they went entirely unseen. The jaran priests, having no such conception of technology, had almost certainly never noticed any machines, had probably felt this strange trembling life to be the touch of the gods on their greatest temple.

Shadows mottled the scalloped ceiling. Reliefs lined the upper walls. It was the epitome of Chapalii architecture: breathtaking, ornate, and utterly useless, built for the sole purpose of having people walk from one end to the other. To be wealthy enough to spend money on things that could only be used once was to be wealthy