Paul Mcauley: Shrine of Stars

Yama laughed. “My love, I am twice as alive as any other man in the world.”

Derev’s expression suddenly changed. She vaulted the rail of the stair and floated down into his arms. Her height, her heat, her fierce gaze searching his. The staff fell with a clatter, unnoticed, as they took each other into their arms.

“You,” she said, leaning down into Yama’s embrace. “I knew it was you, but I did not let myself believe it.”

“You must believe it now, Derev. We have only a little time here.”

She drew away from him, still holding his hands. “But you are hurt.”

For a moment, Yama did not know what she meant; he had let the ship tend to the small cuts and bruises inflicted during the fight with Lud and Lob. Then he touched the ridges of scarred skin on the left side of his face and said, “These are old wounds.”

“I did not mean those,” she said. And then, “Yama. Yama!”

At first, she tried to hold him up. Then she eased him to the ground, and went to fetch her father.

It was almost dawn by the time Yama had recovered enough to be able to tell something of his story. He was bathed and perfumed, his hair and beard combed and trimmed. He was dressed in a clean shirt and trews, and had been fed with a salty beef broth and sweet fried shrimp. He sat with Derev and her mother and father, Calev and Carenon, in the roof garden of the godown. He told them of how he had escaped Prefect Corin at Ys and boarded a ship which had taken him downriver toward the war, of how he had been infected by Dr. Dismas and forced to fight on the side of the heretics, of how he had fallen beyond the edge of the world and traveled back in time through a shortcut.

He left much out. The friendship of Pandaras and brave, foolish Tamora, and all their adventures in Ys and the Palace of the Memory of the People; the miracle he had been allowed to perform; the destruction of Dr. Dismas’s paramour in the Glass Desert; his adventures on the great ship with the last of his people. There was not enough time for that now.

“There is not enough time,” he said, “because Aeolis will soon be attacked. I do not know exactly when, but certainly by tomorrow night.”

Derev’s father, Carenon, said, “We are still a long way from the heretics, I think. If an army or fleet is bent upon us, there would have been warnings, surely.”

“It will not be attacked by heretics, but by a warship out of Ys, a warship commanded by someone who wishes to do me harm.”

“Then we must prevent it. We will warn the Aedile, to begin with.” Carenon stood, very tall and very thin in his black jacket and leggings. For a moment it seemed that he would raise his arms and leap into the sky. He said, “I will take you to the peel-house at once, Yamamanama.”

“No,” Yama said. “No, you will not.”

Calev said, “How many will die, Yamamanama, when this warship comes?”

“The city will be destroyed. Many will escape and flee to the far side. I do not know how many will not.”

Carenon said, “And you will allow no warning of this?”

Yama bowed his head. All his dead. The thousands he had killed while under the spell of Dr. Dismas. Dr. Dismas himself, and Prefect Corin. The crew of the Weazel . The soldiers who had captured him in the City of the Dead, and their mage. The regulator, and the last of his bloodline in the deep past. Tamora. And in only a few days his stepfather would die of shame and exhaustion on the far side of the river, after he failed to prevent the sacking of Aeolis.

Derev took his hand in hers and said, “Don’t you see that he would save them if he could?”

Yama said, “I thought so long on this that it drove me mad. If I could I would save them all, friends and enemies alike. But then who else might die? And all those I tried to save might still die…”

The silence that followed was punctuated by the distant ringing of signal bells; fishing boats were turning into the channel toward the end of the New Quay, where they would tie up and unload their catches. It was almost dawn. The city was shutting down, getting ready for the long, hot, lazy day.

At last, Carenon said, “I will warn my workers, at least. If I know, then they deserve to know too.”

“No,” Yama said. “They have families here. They will want to take them, and the news will spread until all the city will know. It does not end. Do one thing and it branches and branches until you are far from where you began. No. What will happen must happen.”

Carenon gave him a sharp, troubled look. “Where did you hear that?”

“He knows about Beatrice and Osric,” Derev said.

“I can take you away from here,” Yama told Carenon. “You can come with me into the past, for that is where I must go.”

Derev said, “Where we must go, I think.”

His love for her returned in all its fierce wildness, and for a moment he thought that he might faint again. Calev said with grave astonishment , “Then you are—”

“We did not know,” her husband said. “I suppose it was for the best that we did not know, but it would have helped us. I hoped that you and Derev might make a match, Yamamanama, and perhaps things would not be as hard as has been foretold.” He laughed and said, “What a fool I have been!”

“You always knew it would be a hard road when we came here,” Calev said. “But you came here anyway.”

Yama had never paid much attention to Derev’s parents. They had always been formal and reserved, for all that they had encouraged Derev in her trysts with him. He had thought that it was because of his position. He had been the son of a high official of the Department of Indigenous Affairs, even if he had been an adopted son. Derev’s father had been mocked in the city for being ambitious and grasping, for pushing his daughter into a relationship that would bring him greater profit and power. Yama saw now that Carenon and Calev were no more than ordinary people who had taken up an extraordinary burden; that they were willing to sacrifice their daughter to help save the world.

He said again, “I can save you. I know that you will flee the city before the attack. I can take you to the safest place of all, into the past.”

Carenon ran his fingers over the leaves of one of the geraniums that grew along the edge of the roof garden, releasing a sweet dusky scent into the air. His fine white hair lifted in the breeze that had sprung up from the river. It was growing warmer. Light touched the rim of the sky.

Carenon said, “No, we will stay. I mean, we will flee the city, but we stay in this time. We built up one fortune, and we can take a little of that with us. Perhaps we can build another before the world ends. How long, before that happens?”

Yama lowered his head. He was ashamed and frightened. He had still to face that failure. He said, “I do not know.”

Carenon said, “But surely the end of the world is already set in motion. The Great River fails steadily, although the Aedile has calculated that it will not run dry for many years. If the end comes before then, we might live to see the new worlds we were promised.”

“Don’t you see?” Derev said. “Everything must happen so that he can come here again.”

Yama said quietly, “Besides, I have not yet done it.”

Derev said, “But the river is failing. And Beatrice said—”

“The first part, diverting the end of the river into the future, was easy. But I failed at the second part. I thought instead that I could change things, and find a new way…”

Derev smiled. “And destroy the heretics? You always wanted to fight them, Yama, never more so than after Telmon died. Yet if you destroy the heretics, then you would only promote the cause of the Committee for Public Safety, and I know that you could not allow that.”