James Gardner: The Reckoning of Gifts

Schemers among the bishops try to sway the gods’ decision, and several believe they have succeeded…but the gods are in a mood to demonstrate they speak only through Vasudheva, while upstart bishops should devote themselves to prayer instead of powermongering.

A soft knock comes at the door and Bhismu is there. Vasudheva catches his breath, as he always does when Bhismu enters the room. Sometimes the high priest thinks he has two hearts in his chest: the withered heart of an old man and the bounding, pounding heart of a youth who feels the fever of love but not the complications. If he only has one heart, it must be attuned to the hearts around him—when he’s surrounded by crabbed and ambitious bishops, his heart shrivels; when Bhismu is near, his heart expands and expands until it’s as large as the sky.

Bhismu asks, “Are you ready to attend the ceremony, Your Holiness?”

“If they’re ready for me. Are things under control?”

“Father Amaran says we have encountered no more trouble than usual, but everyone feels a strong disquiet. There have been rumors of demons.”

“Rumors of demons are like mushrooms,” Vasudheva says. “They spring up overnight, and the peasants feed on them.”

He hopes Bhismu will laugh, but the young man only nods. He’s slow to recognize jokes. It’s a failing that can be overlooked.

They begin the long journey down the tower’s corkscrew stairs. A month ago, Vasudheva found it awkward to descend holding onto an arm instead of the balustrade. Now he’s completely comfortable with it. He doesn’t need to concentrate on his feet anymore; he can devote his full attention to the strength of Bhismu’s hands, the faint smell of his sweat, the beard so close it would take no effort at all to kiss.

“Have you ever been in love?” Vasudheva asks.

The young man’s thoughts seem to have been elsewhere. It takes him a moment to collect himself. “Love? I don’t know. A few times I wondered if I was in love, but it wasn’t like the minstrels say. It wasn’t intense. I’d spend time with a girl—this was before I was ordained, of course—I’d spend time and I’d feel very fond and I’d wonder, am I in love? But my father was determined I would enter the priesthood, and if he saw me becoming attached to someone, he ordered me to give her up. And I did. I always did. So I guess it wasn’t love. If it really had been love, I wouldn’t have…I don’t know. It’s wrong to disobey your father, but if I’d really been in love…I don’t know.”

“So you’ve never had strong feelings for a woman?” Vasudheva asks. He is very close to Bhismu; his breath stirs wisps of the young man’s hair.

“Not as strong as love. Not as strong as love should be.”

“Have you ever had strong feelings for anyone?”

“I don’t understand. You mean my family? Of course I love my family. You’re supposed to love your family.”

Vasudheva doesn’t press the matter. It took him forty years to rise from an acolyte in the most crime-ridden quarter of Cardis to the supreme office of high priest. He has learned how to bide his time.

But Bhismu’s beard curls invitingly. Vasudheva’s demons will not wait forever.

Bishops lounge on divans in the vestry that’s adjacent to the outer hall. Each wants a whispered word with the high priest; each wants to overhear the other whispers. Vasudheva forestalls their jockeying for position by sweeping past them and throwing open the thick outer door.

Screams. Shouts. Feet stamping and glass breaking.

On a night so rife with demons, the riot is no surprise to anyone.

The door opens onto the front of the room; the stampede is surging toward the public entrance at the rear. That’s why Vasudheva isn’t crushed instantly. The only people nearby are two men grappling with each other, one dressed in velvet finery, the other in bloodstained buckskins, each trying to dig fingers into his opponent’s eyes. Here and there within the crowd other fistfights thump and bellow, but most people are simply trying to get out, to escape the trampling mob.

Things crunch under their feet. They could be Gifts dropped in the panic; they could be bones. No one looks down to see.

Vasudheva stands frozen in the doorway. A priest staggers up to him from the hall, squeezes roughly past into the refuge of the vestry, and cries, “Close the door, close the door!” He bleeds from a gash on his forehead.

Behind the priest comes a woman, doing her best to walk steadily though her clothes hang in shreds and blood oozes from wounds all over her body. Where her arms should be, she has wings. Wings. Vasudheva steps aside for her to pass, his mind struck numb as a sleepwalker’s. Bhismu drags both the woman and the high priest back into the vestry, and slams the door shut.

The noise of the riot vanishes. There is only the whimpering of the injured priest, and the heavy breathing of several bishops whose fear makes them pant like runners.

“Sit down, sit down,” Bhismu says. Vasudheva turns, but Bhismu is holding out a chair to the woman. Who shouldn’t even be here—women are forbidden to enter the temple beyond the outer hall.

She’s a Northerner, her hair black and braided, her skin the color of tanned deerhide…young, in her twenties. Bhismu’s age. Vasudheva can’t believe anyone would find her attractive—she’s too tall and bony, and her nose is crooked, as if it was broken, then set haphazardly.

Vasudheva keeps his eyes off the wings. There’s no doubt they’re beautiful, exquisite—slim as a swift’s, abundant with feathers. For a moment, Vasudheva has a vision of the bird kingdom parading past this woman, each presenting feathers for these wings: eagles clawing out sharp brown pinions, hummingbirds poking their beaks into their chests to pluck soft down the color of blood; and crows, doves, finches, jays, each offering their gifts until the woman faces a heap of feathers taller than her head, and still the birds come, geese, falcons, owls, wrens, adding to the motley pile, all colors, all sizes, herons, plovers, swallows, larks, all bowing down like supplicants before an angel.

Vasudheva shakes his head angrily. A high priest can’t afford to indulge his imagination. This is no angel. This is just some woman from a tribe of savages. She killed a lot of birds, sewed their feathers into wings, then brought those wings to the Reckoning. No doubt she started the riot in the first place. Pretending to be an angel is blasphemy; the people must have attacked in outrage as she came forward for blessing.

Bhismu kneels beside her and dabs the hem of his sleeve at a wound on her cheek. He smiles warmly at her and murmurs soft encouragements: “This one doesn’t look bad, this one’s deeper, but it’s clean….”

Vasudheva finds the expression on Bhismu’s face unbecoming. Must he simper so? “You can help her more by getting a proper Healer,” the high priest tells him. “The sooner the better. Now.”

Reluctantly, Bhismu rises. For some moments, he stands like a man bewitched, gazing at the specks of blood that mar the whiteness of his sleeve. “Now,” Vasudheva repeats. Suddenly the bewitchment lifts and Bhismu sprints out of the vestry, off down the corridor.

“We must make the woman go back to the hall,” says a voice at Vasudheva’s ear. “She shouldn’t be in this part of the temple.”

The words echo the high priest’s thoughts. When he turns, however, he sees the speaker is Bishop Niravati, a man who loves to wield his piety like a bludgeon. Niravati has always been too quick to proclaim right and wrong; he conducts himself as if he were the voice of the gods on earth.

“She may stay as long as necessary,” Vasudheva says. Bishops must never forget who makes the decisions in this temple. “Sending her back to the hall now would be close to murder. And she’s injured. Tivi commands us to minister to the sick, Niravati; did you skip catechism class the day that was discussed?”