Kate Elliott - Jaran

The wind moved in her hair. "And yet you killed a man for your gods. Are other gods as worthy?"

"I remember. But I have learned that the world is a delicate thing, and the gods-all gods-are as one with it, are the keepers of that balance. And since the world is within me as well as outside of me, if the balance is disturbed and not righted then I am also left in discord, and if I do nothing to correct this imbalance, then we, the world and I, shall never return to harmony. And if this is true for me alone, how much more true it is for an entire people."

"But Yuri said that-" she hesitated- "that you gave him a merciful death, compared to what-what he was meant to receive."

Bakhtiian looked away from her, his expression shuttered. "I am not a savage," he said almost inaudibly.

Tess fell silent. The wind brought to her a sharp, rich fragrance, like vanilla. "It's true," she said finally, "that the world forces us to make bitter choices. I suppose that makes it hard to search for the truth, especially if we believe that truth can only be found along the path that is familiar to us."

He tossed his knife up. It caught the sunlight and flashed. For that instant, as he watched the knife reach its peak and begin to fall again, his face opened somehow, giving her a glimpse of the boy, twenty years ago, who had played with such dangerous toys with the same unself-conscious joy and absorption with which a child plays with building blocks. Then the knife fell, and he caught it.

"God, isn't that dangerous?"

He laughed. "Of course." He sheathed the knife. "How can any one of us claim to know which paths the gods walk? How can we hope to walk on their path at all? Except for philosophers like Newton, of course."

"Newton walked many strange paths. I have to suppose that all paths have gods of one kind or another. But I think we are responsible for finding our own way."

"We must do what we can with what we have?"

Tess pushed herself to the edge of the wall and jumped down. Bakhtiian put out a hand to steady her landing, a momentary touch, no more. "Is that what you believe?"

"What I believe?" Leaning back against the wall, he folded his arms over his belt. Wind caught a strand of his hair and blew it up away from his forehead. "I don't know where the sun and the moon came from, how the grass and the hills came to be. I suppose they came by themselves. But I believe that there is truth to be found, and I'm not always certain that it is only to be found in the gods. Or in what we call the gods."

"You've been reading too much philosophy."

He smiled. "Is philosophy dangerous?"

"Very dangerous."

"What do you believe, then?"

"I believe that there is truth to be found inside every person, but that very few people find it because it is dark inside, and deeply hidden, and the trees grow thickly."

"But you forget, there are always springs one can drink from." He looked toward the plains. "Ah, there are our fellow mortals."

"Come to bask in the fragrance of immortality, however fleeting?"

"Bask in the fragrance? I think you mean bask in the warmth."

They walked down to the grazing horses to wait for the approaching riders. The jahar splashed over the ford and halted beside them. Most of the riders wandered aimlessly around the ruins, curious. A few drank at the spring. Ishii and Garii and Rakii made the most cursory of inspections before returning to their horses.

Ishii came up to Bakhtiian. "We have seen what we need here. We can go on."

If this surprised Bakhtiian, he concealed it very well. The entire company set off westward, Tess and Bakhtiian waiting till the rest had gone.

"So it is a temple. I knew it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The khepelli asked to see the zhapolaya, didn't they? Did they ask to see this place as well?''

He blinked. "I am beginning to think the prince has curious concerns. What do you mean?"

"Oh, hell," she said under her breath, but she had no one else to ask and she needed to know. "Specifically, by name."

"Ah," said Bakhtiian, meaning by that breath of a comment nothing Tess could fathom. "Yes, they did. Why do you ask?"

She grinned. "I'm searching for the truth."

He smiled. "Have it your way. For now. I'm patient, and our journey is a long one." He reined his horse out, over the ford.

Tess lingered a moment, staring up at the cliffs. The touch of the gods. She was glad that this place had nothing to do with the Chapalii, that it did indeed have gods, that it existed for itself alone. And she was relieved that the Chapalii didn't know everything there was to know about Rhui, that they had believed these ruins might be of interest to them. In which case, did that mean they had known that the transmitter was a transmitter, or not? Neither prospect was reassuring. She sighed and followed Bakhtiian.

They rode southwest through low hills. In the early afternoon the ground broke under them, the uniformity of the plain disturbed as abruptly as a pebble breaks the still surface of a pond. At first, steep hillocks and low sheer slopes radiated out, and then the earth itself fell away on either side, a few rivulets descending past curves, lost to her sight. Coming around the last of the little hills, they pulled up.

Tess saw the lake first, a pale jewel at the center, before her gaze fanned out to the huge basin that cradled this circle of blue. It was an ancient crater; nothing else could form such a distinctive shape, could be so unnaturally round. Or could account for the strange hills, flung out like debris from some massive impact. A meteor, surely-and then

Myshla shied away from the bright wink of sunlight, glancing off a smooth surface embedded in the ground. Bakh-tiian, ahead of her, had not noticed.

Tess pulled up Myshla and stared down. Dirt had eroded away from a plate of metal. It gleamed, uncorroded. A shock of grass obscured most of the plate. In days, Tess thought, the entire patch would be grown over. She dismounted and tried to pry it out, but it was too thick. Where the grass ended, the plate disappeared back under earth. She drew her knife and dug down, working quickly. A third of a meter down there was still no break. This was not the artifact of a primitive culture. Bakhtiian called back to her, and she mounted and urged Myshla forward to catch up with him.

Staring around at the steep slope of the crater, down to the flat-bottomed basin below, she wondered how big a ship, crashing or purposefully blown up, would make such a mark in its leave-taking.

At the same time, she realized that it was not the deepness of the crater but the pall of smoke over the land below that gave the bottom an indistinct tinge. She saw neatly laid out fields, some still green. Others looked strangely altered, as if they had been trampled.

It was the town that was on fire, flames licking up from some of the houses huddled inside the earth wall that from this height seemed pitifully insignificant. In another quarter, a whole street lay blackened, smoking like cold breath on an icy afternoon. Figures ran and labored under the sun. A broken line extended out to the lake, a tenuous string to the water.

"Curse them," said Bakhtiian. "Come on." He turned his horse to ride along the edge of the crater.

"We're not going down there, are we? I didn't know there were settlements out here. What do you think happened?"

"I don't know." His voice, like his shoulders, was as taut as a strung bow. "But see, there are vultures."

She saw the birds, circling near a few squat trees. Below, none of the hurried figures took any notice of the pair far above them.

"I'm sorry," said Bakhtiian suddenly, "that you have to see this."

They weren't trees. They were posts, driven into the ground. Six posts stood in a semicircle just above the well-trodden path, marked by a solitary seventh post, that led down into the valley. The birds cried out raucously and flapped away as Tess and Bakhtiian approached. The stench hit, fetid, overwhelming.