Back | Next
Contents

The Spiral Road

Louise Marley

 

Alhasa

Gray smoke curled from the beaten copper censer and rippled gently up to the high ceiling, filling the sanctuary with the spicy smell of pursil smoke. It made Romas's nose tingle.

Angkar Rinposh, the blind lama, sat crosslegged beside the censer. He bent over the glowing coals to breathe the smoke, and his dark face shone with reflected light. Novices knelt around him, crimson cowls thrown back, shaven heads bent, topknots pointed at heaven. They hummed in perfect unison. Romas supposed each singer must occasionally stop to breathe, but he heard no interruption. Sound flowed around him, deep and monotonal, resonating against the stone walls and vibrating in his bones.

Romas fingered his own long braid, and shifted his feet. He felt overlarge and out of place, but a little giddy with pursil smoke. Pursil was Alhasa's treasure and its pride. It grew only on their high plateau, with its cool salt air and unobstructed light. Suspensions of pursil leaf healed wounds, defeated infections, eased pain. And to Angkar Rinposh, its smoke brought visions.

Romas straightened, tossing his braid back over his shoulder. He must not be tempted by the chant, nor besotted by the smoke. The crimson cowl was not for him. Romas had devoted his life to Alhasa as a courier. He wore a brown dolman over black leggings, thick-soled sandals laced to the knee. He carried no dagger. It was the pride and the sacrifice of couriers that they went unarmed, so that no one would question their purpose. They carried messages, letters, sometimes goods. To be a courier meant to be both strong and patient and swift. Romas folded his arms, and dropped his chin. Patience, of course, was the hardest of all.

At last Angkar Rinposh lifted his head, and rubbed his sightless eyes as if he were waking from sleep. When he raised one bony dark hand the humming faded and ceased, one voice at a time. When there was silence, the lama dropped his hand, and then extended it, palm up. One of the novices hurried to help him to his feet.

Angkar Rinposh, leaning on the arm of the young monk, hobbled across the sanctuary to stand before Romas. He was bent and frail, and could weigh not half as much as Romas, but his blind gaze was commanding.

Romas pressed his hands together before his chest, and bent his head. "Holiness," he said quietly. "Do you have a message for the Chamber?"

"I do." Angkar's voice was as thin and high as the wind over the cliffs. "But I sorrow to say it." He gestured to the door of the sanctuary, and began to hobble toward it. The novice walked with him, but Angkar Rinposh led the way as surely as any seeing man. Romas followed down the long aisle and out, coming to stand beside Angkar on the steps of the sanctuary, to look down over the terraced city.

The pastel houses of Alhasa nestled in layers on the steep slopes of the plateau. Narrow lanes twisted between them like the elaborate braids of young girls. Slender streams of smoke rose from kitchen stoves to disperse before the sharp morning breeze. Tiny figures moved among the vineyards and gardens, and below everything was the sheer drop to the sea. The water was almost always shrouded by a layer of cloud below the great cliff. On rare occasions, the clouds would part to allow the Alhasi a brief and dizzying view of distant green water.

In the days of the flyers, people had sailed above the oceans, but those days were lost. The Alhasi had learned to be content with their hilltop city, their terraced farms. Pursil grew on the heights, and snow grapes, and gisko berries, and a dozen other herbs to soothe, to heal, to nourish. The herbs of Alhasa were prized by the lowland people, who traded grain and tools and cloth for them.

But now, it seemed the Callistans were no longer content with the system of barter. Threats had been made, speeches and rallies had been stated. Alhasa's Chamber had sent Romas to the blind lama to discover what he could see.

Angkar Rinposh pulled up his scarlet cowl to block the bite of the wind from his bare head. "Courier," he said.

"Yes, Holiness."

"It is not good news."

"What shall I tell the Chamber, Holiness?"

"Tell them they are coming. The Callistans are coming, with their shou dan and their spears. They are going to block the Spiral Road."

Callis City

Irlen braced her hands on the pitted iron balustrade and leaned forward to see past the gray-tiled rooftops. The dry wind stung the tip of her nose and chilled the rusting rail under her fingers. Fronds of hair whipped across her face, and she lifted one hand to hold them out of her eyes. "Do you see that, Old Man?" she said. "It grows smaller every year."

Her shadowy companion nodded. "Like a stale cake being eaten by rats," he said. "Crumbling away."

The skeleton shapes of the ever-diminishing spaceport loomed just beyond the city, its collapsed platforms and broken passenger tubes jutting into the twilit sky like the limbs of a massive dead tree. For years scavengers had been carting off bits of it, raiding the carcass to make cart tongues out of tower struts, chimney pots out of storage cartons, water pipes out of conduits. Irlen had never seen the Callis Spaceport before its terminals had been gutted, its observation decks toppled, but there was a vintage picture at Li Paul House, an actual photograph, from the days when such things were possible.

"What are you thinking, daughter?" her companion said.

"That we remember our history, yet fail to learn from it."

"Not so many remember, now."

"I suppose not. They're too busy surviving."

"That is human nature, my daughter."

"Does it never change, then, Old Man?"

His gesture was so familiar, the graceful lifted hands, the elegant tilted head, that a spasm of loneliness twisted in her breast. He said, with a laugh, "Perhaps when the ships come back."

She could not bring an answering smile to her lips. "That's such a stupid saying."

"The General says it all the time."

Irlen rolled her eyes, and he gave her a sympathetic look.

"You should go home, daughter. You're no good to your patients if you're exhausted."

"But it is exhausting," she said tiredly. "The wounded come back from the Spiral Road every day now, and we are stretched to the breaking point. There are few enough physicians in Callis City. I'm the only one these children have, and I'm about to lose a patient."

"Doctors lose patients. I taught you that much, surely."

"This one is so young—and we don't even know her name."

"You're doing all you can, daughter. I know that."

She gave him a sideways look. "You know everything now, I suppose."

His smile twisted a little, rueful and wise. "Not always a blessing."

Her throat tightened. She had not been able to shake a pervasive sense of isolation, ever since his death. "I wish you were here, Old Man."

He shrugged, and his image wavered before her weary eyes. "Here I am," he whispered. "Here I am."

In the ward behind her, a child began to wail. Irlen turned to leave the narrow balcony, her black vestment whipping around her legs until she closed the balcony doors.

The matron met her, rubbing her hands on her long apron. "Doctor Li Paul," she said. "The girl is worse—she's so hot."

"Did you rub her with grain alcohol?"

The matron nodded, her eyes weary, her face lined with worry.

"Did you ask the apothecary for pursil leaf?"

"I asked. He says he needs what little he has for the wounded from the war."

Irlen pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead in a helpless gesture. "War," she said bitterly. "Young men wounded, maimed, killed—and for what?"

The matron pursed her lips, and looked disapproving. "Doctor," she said, "we had no choice. Those Alhasi, they're barbarians. They practice all sorts of abominations. Do you know what they do with babies they don't want? They throw them over that cliff into the sea!"

Irlen dropped her hands and fixed the matron with a hard gaze. "How do you know any of that, Matron?"

The other woman shrugged. "Everyone knows it. The General told us."

Irlen went to the sink and began to wash her hands. "I would be happy if half what the General says is true," she muttered, but fortunately the matron didn't hear.

Irlen took a fresh cloth and the bottle of grain alcohol, and crossed to the child's bedside.

There were a dozen beds in the children's ward, and every one was full. Murmurs and whimpers filled the darkness. Often a parent came with their child, if they could be spared from home, and the matrons were grateful for their help. But this child, the one Irlen knelt beside now, had come alone, carried in the strong arms of one of the General's Guards. He had found her lying in the doorway of a bakery. Irlen had been grateful to him for bringing the girl to the hospital. Many another man would have left the child to die where she was.

They called it crystal fever, and a urine sample soon confirmed that the nameless child had it. Tiny crystals shone in the beaker, showing that the girl's kidneys had already failed, that septicemia had set in. The little one appeared to be about four years of age, and she was the classic example of a crystal fever victim, poor, young, undernourished, and abandoned.

Irlen reached in the pocket of her vestment for her ancient stethoscope, the one that had been her father's, and his father's before him, all the way back to the ships. She carefully unwound its cloth wrapping, and put its earpieces in her ears.

The silvery metal of the earpieces and the cup never degenerated, which was a blessing, since the forges of Callis were incapable of such fine work, and the necessary metals were rarely available. Irlen kept the tubing of her heirloom functional by using pond reeds. Some used finely split leather, which lasted longer, but was not as flexible.

Irlen bent her head to listen to the little girl's faltering heartbeat. Gently, she pinched the skin on the child's hand. It formed a tiny tent that collapsed only slowly, evidence of the dehydration that came with crystal fever. There was nothing to be done about it. Without a dose of pursil leaf to suppress the fever and ease the pain, the child's jaws grew tighter and tighter, until she could no longer swallow the fluids Irlen and the matron tried to trickle into her mouth.

Irlen sat back on her heels to rewrap her stethoscope, and then stayed there, watching the child try to breathe. At one time physicians could replace lost fluid in their patients, pump it directly into their veins, but Callis had lost that technique. The arid plain of Callis held sulphur and graphite, but no iron, no copper; the Callistans could make their nasty little shou dan, hand bombs; they couldn't make needles.

Irlen wished with all her being that she could think of something else to do.

One of the things Callis wanted from Alhasa was free access to pursil leaf, to the sweet wine made from ice grapes, to the other herbs the Alhasi cultivated, and that would not grow on the dry plains. The General could claim that the war was about the "reunion" of their peoples, that he had a moral imperative for attacking Alhasa; Irlen had no doubt he had simply decided trade was too slow, and too costly. Morality had nothing to do with it, and profit everything. There was no profit, naturally, in saving the life of a nameless child of the streets.

Irlen thrust these useless thoughts aside. She put a hand on the sick girl's tangled hair. "It won't be long now, little one," she whispered. "I'm sorry. But I'll be right here. I won't leave you, I promise."

As she waited, she let her gaze stray to the window that looked out on the balcony and the dark night. Her companion was there, a foggy form watching through the glass. Irlen nodded to him, tucked away the stethoscope he had left her, and waited for the girl to die.

 

The nightly caravan of wounded soldiers arrived an hour after the child drew her last breath. Irlen was called to the trauma room, and spent hours trying to mend arrow wounds, crushed bones, lacerated skin. It had been a long day and a longer night, and she was stunned to exhaustion by the weight of the work and the weeping of young men in pain. The last of the pursil leaf was gone before the Guards stopped carrying in stretchers. Irlen had to send away her blood-stained vestment before the night was out, and work on in a long apron like the one Matron wore.

As she trudged back up the stairs to the children's ward, her companion returned, a faintly gray figure in the dimness of the stairwell. She grimaced at him. "It troubles me, Old Man. They go off to war expecting glory, and they come back shocked at how much glory hurts."

"There is no good war," he said. "And no bad peace."

"You're quoting again," Irlen sighed. "As usual, I remember the quote but not the author. From the time of the ships?"

He gave her a ghostly smile. "The quote is much older than that. Benjamin Franklin, some pre-Industrial philosopher."

"Ah. Well, he was right."

"Every physician knows that," her companion said lightly. "It is politicians who don't believe it."

"All I know," Irlen said wearily, reaching for the handle of the door to the ward, "is that without pursil leaf, and the other herbs we can get from Alhasa, this will be a primitive kind of medicine. We'll be cauterizing wounds with hot irons next."

She went through the door, leaving him behind in the dark stairwell. She saw that the vacated bed had already been filled. Against the far wall of the ward, two parents stood with sick children in their arms.

Irlen gritted her teeth against the wave of despair that swept her. If only . . . just a basket of pursil leaves, and a day in which to make the medicine . . . but the General had seen to it that wasn't possible.

Alhasa

"Romas," his mother called. "There's a message for you."

Romas turned away from contemplating the ruin of the stone arches that had protected the Spiral Road for years. It made his heart ache, that ruin. Early in the days when the Alhasi had parted from the Callistans, when they had determined to live in harmony with their new world, rather than yearn for their lost technology, they had carved the Spiral Road out of the living rock of the cliff, a great ribbon of road that wound up and around the immense plateau. To protect travelers on the middle reaches of the Road from the high winds blowing from the sea, and from toppling over into the abyss, the carvers had made tall, broad arches out of the rock, at the cost of thousands of hours of labor and not a few lives. And now the arches had been destroyed. It felt to Romas, and to all the Alhasi, like a betrayal of their ancestors.

The city was quiet now, but throughout the night the sounds of war had shattered the darkness.

"Romas!" his mother called again.

"Coming, Ama la."

He trailed his fingers across the pursil vines that grew over the door as he went in. His mother, her profusion of braids tucked neatly beneath her round linen cap, held out a small scroll marked with the seal of the sanctuary. "It's from him," she said, her eyes as round as her cap. "From Angkar Rinposh."

Romas took the scroll, wondering at it. Why would the blind lama send a message to his home?

"Open it!" his mother urged, her voice tight with anxiety. All the Alhasi were anxious these days, since the first Callistan assault on the Spiral Road had sent sparks and explosions high into the night sky, and collapsed the ancient arches. Bits of rock had gone crashing over the great cliff, bringing the Alhasi out of their homes to stare fearfully downward into the night. The Chamber had positioned archers to protect the city, but they could not stop the destruction of the arches. They shot their arrows at the Callistan soldiers, and the Callistans answered with spears and hand bombs. The screams of the injured carried up the twisting road to the city, and the Alhasi braced for a siege. A demand had been sent to the Chamber, some nonsense about setting the Alhasi "free"—a euphemism, every Alhasi knew, for taking control of their resources, the herbs and grapes that wouldn't grow on the plains. And the labor to harvest them!

Romas unrolled the scroll. "The lama wants to see me, Ama la."

"Go quickly, my son."

Romas kissed her, and then dashed out into the steep street. He ran, hurrying toward the top of the city, where the sanctuary crowned the plateau. His sandals thumped on the hard ground, and his braid bounced over his shoulder. One or two people lifted their eyebrows at his swift passage, but most were in their houses, their doors and windows shut tight, preparing for the siege.

Callis City

By the time Irlen left the children's ward, she was staggering with fatigue. Two more children had died, their mothers wailing over them as their ragged breathing ceased. Matron, and several other parents who had come to help, had struggled to comfort them, had wrapped the small bodies, tried to calm the other patients.

The sun had risen on this chaos, red and dry. At least, for the moment, the flow of wounded soldiers had ceased, and the ones who had died were carried away. Irlen crept down the stairs to find a rickshaw, and almost fell asleep as it carried her to Li Paul House. She refused food, wanting only to collapse upon her own bed for the first time in thirty-six hours.

Her companion was not there. He usually followed her home, to haunt the old halls and the library where he had spent so many hours. They were empty now. No one lived in Li Paul House but Irlen and her housekeeper.

Irlen was too tired to notice his absence. She fell immediately into a heavy, hot sleep.

When her housekeeper woke her, it was almost dark again. She ate a hasty meal, and set out again for the hospital, grateful for the coolness of the night air. In the distance, the abandoned spaceport hulked beneath the stars. Oil lamps glimmered here and there in the city.

Irlen climbed wearily out of the rickshaw, feeling as if she had hardly rested at all. She moved slowly up the stairs, reluctant to face the renewed tragedies, the ceaseless need.

Not until she pushed open the door, and reached for her vestment, did she remember that she had not seen her companion since the night before. She stopped, the vestment in her hands, and looked back at the stairwell. "Where are you, Old Man?" she murmured. "You wouldn't abandon me now, surely?"

There was no answer.

Alhasa

This time, when Romas came into the presence of the blind lama, the two of them were alone. The novice who escorted him into the sanctuary pressed his hands together before his chest, bowed, and was gone. Romas walked alone down the aisle to the center of the sanctuary, where the censer smoked beneath the dome. Angkar Rinposh sat there alone, crosslegged, his blind eyes following the sounds of Romas's footsteps.

Romas knelt before him. "You sent for me," he said, a little hoarsely. The pursil smoke hung heavily in the air, a cloud of gray tinged with brown.

"I had a vision in the night," the lama said. He squinted at Romas as if he could see him through the smoke.

Romas fidgeted. It was said the lama saw more than any sighted person. It was said that he could see into your soul. His eyes, milky blue and ghostly, made Romas feel small and transparent. "Yo—your Holiness," he stammered.

"Yes, a vision," Rinposh said again. His blank gaze wandered away from Romas and up to the dome above the sanctuary. "I saw a tunnel—little more than a fissure, really—running through the ruin of the arches. And I saw you there. With a woman."

Romas felt his cheeks flame. "Your Holiness," he said, his voice quavering a little. "I am a courier. I would never take a woman—not to the arches—there's a war, Holiness."

Rinposh showed his teeth, white in the mass of brown wrinkles that was his face. "I know there's a war, Romas," he said lightly. "I can see it perfectly well."

Romas opened his mouth, and closed it again.

"And I can hear it, of course," the old lama went on. "Such a waste." He waved one hand in a gesture of irritation. "Still. Men make war until they learn its futility. There is nothing I can do about that." He took a deep breath, pursil smoke filling his nostrils. He breathed it out again, whiter and lighter than when he had drawn it in. "This vision came to me by way of a visitor. It's not a vision of something that has happened. It is an invitation to make something happen."

"Vi—visitor?"

The old man's eyes returned to him. "Do you have a speech impediment, Courier?"

Romas set his jaw, trying to regain his composure. "No, Holiness," he said firmly. "But I am nervous in your presence."

Rinposh showed his teeth again. "Of course," he said amiably. "And so you should be."

He chuckled, and then linked his hands in his lap, and lowered his head as if to stare into the rising smoke. "I have had such visitors before," he said after a time. "But this is the first from Callis."

Romas almost stammered "Ca—callis?" but caught himself.

"He is a ghost," Rinposh said, as calmly as if he were ordering tea. "A Callistan ghost."

Callis City

Irlen went for days without sleeping more than four hours at a time. Some patients she lost, both in the trauma room and in the children's ward. Some of the soldiers she could patch, though she did her work while they screamed in pain.

The children didn't scream. As they got sicker and sicker, they grew more and more quiet. Once or twice, they died without anyone noticing, slipping away in silence, small heartbeats slowing, shallow breaths growing less and less frequent until they ceased altogether.

Irlen lost track of time. She couldn't remember when her companion had last been at her side. On one clear, starry night, she left the trauma room and trudged slowly up the stairs to the children's ward. Evely was sitting between two cots, murmuring comforts to the children there. Two mothers hovered over their children, whispering, sponging them with cloths. Irlen went to the sink to wash her hands again, though she had done it before leaving the trauma room. She looked around at the ward, quiet for the moment, and then went out onto the balcony to breathe clean air for a few moments.

She turned her gaze, as she so often did, to the skeleton of the spaceport. A ruin, like the beautiful and ancient arches spanning the Spiral Road had been ruined, blown to bits by the General's explosives. "Everything is falling apart," she murmured into the night. "Nothing lasts."

"We do," came a soft voice at her shoulder.

Irlen turned her head. "There you are, Old Man," she said tiredly. "Where have you been?"

"I'm always with you, daughter."

"Are you? I feel like I'm always alone." Irlen heard the bitterness in her voice, and shook her head sharply. "It's just that I'm so tired, Old Man. And it all seems pointless. The crystal fever, and then this damned war—pointless."

His image wavered beside her, glimmering in the starlight. "Trying to save the children isn't pointless."

"Except I can't do it," she said. "I have nothing to work with."

"Because you have no medicines?"

"Yes. The General cut us off from our medicines with his stupid war."

She saw the familiar, gentle smile on her companion's face. "Why not go and ask for what you need?"

"Ask whom, Old Man? I have asked the apothecary, I have pleaded with the General—it does no good."

"Those people don't have what you need. You must ask those who have the medicines."

She gave a sour laugh. "That would be the Alhasi. Our enemies. I hardly think they will be feeling generous toward us."

"Perhaps not with all Callistans. Certainly not with the General. But a physician, struggling to save innocents . . ."

Irlen put one hand to her temple, as if the thought had struck her with some physical force. "Go myself," she murmured. "And ask."

"They can only say no."

"But would I . . . could I find someone to ask?"

Her companion gave the old, elegant shrug. "You will never know unless you try."

She stood there, on the balcony, her vestment whipping about her ankles, for a long time, thinking. Pondering. She stared at the ruin of the spaceport, and then turned to stare up at the distant silhouette of Alhasa's plateau. She had never been there, but the traders who brought the Alhasi medicines down the Spiral Road had told her of the beauty of the city, the colorful houses jumbled together on steep streets, the dizzying cliff falling away to the sea, the ancient and glorious stone arches, carved by hand out of the living rock.

It was the spaceport that caused the Callistans to build their city here, on the dry plain. The Alhasi had alienated Callis with their belief that the ships would never return, after one of their visionary monks had pronounced it. The Alhasi had moved all of their people to the high plateau, where the sun and the sea mists made gardens and fields richly productive. The Callistans had refused to adapt, but were happy to use the treasures the Alhasi found on their plateau. Pursil leaf in particular was prized for its opioid effect.

Irlen wondered if the Alhasi thought of the Callistans as barbarians. She wondered if the Alhasi threw unwanted babies into the sea. A fire rose in her mind, a flame that burned away her restraint.

She made a noise in her throat, one of acceptance. She whirled about, and left the balcony, leaving her companion hovering in the starlight.

Alhasa

Romas moved down the Spiral Road at dusk the next evening. Over his shoulder he carried a woven bag, carefully sewn shut by his ama, whose faith in Rinposh's visions brought immediate obedience to anything he might say. As Romas stepped carefully along the steep, twisting way, he wished his own faith were as strong.

To his right, and far below the precipitous road he followed, he heard the distant crash of the sea. Ahead, and almost as far below, the flashes and explosions went on, a barrage of noise and violence. The pile of rock that had once been Alhasa's pride had become its protection, and its prison gate. He heard faint cries from the archers, and from the soldiers on the other side. It was a sound as monotonous as the tides of the sea, the noise of men making war.

The descent took two hours in the growing darkness, Romas placing his feet with care on the narrow, twisting path. He had made the full descent often, passing beneath the great arches and on, all the way to the foot of the plateau. He had once carried a message all the way to Callis City, a journey of a full day's run each way. In the days of peace, Callistan traders had moved easily back and forth, unloading their carts at the bottom of the Spiral Road. The Alhasi would descend with their bags of herbs and grapes, make the exchange, then hoist the cargo of grain and tools and cloth, Callistan goods, on their backs. It had seemed an adequate arrangement to the Alhasi. Angkar Rinposh said the Callistans lacked patience.

As Romas drew close to the toppled arches, the noises grew louder. Alhasi archers had found perches in crannies and splits in the cliff. They waited, bows at the ready, for any Callistan who dared climb to the top of the ruin. The Callistans hurled spears and shao dan over the ruin, and the Alhasi archers did their best to dodge them. Rock and rubble crashed down on both sides.

The problem, Romas knew, was that the Callistans could hold their position indefinitely. There were many, many more of them. This war could last a long time. The Alhasi would have to do without grain, and the Callistans would have no pursil, or gisko, or ice grapes. What both sides would have, in abundance, was spilled blood.

Romas tightened the bit of scarlet ribbon around his arm that was Rinposh's token, a sign to all Alhasi that he was on the sanctuary's business. He adjusted the sack over his shoulder, and rounded a corner.

The ugliness of the battle scene shocked him to a standstill.

He was no more than a spear's throw away from the crumbled first arch. As he stumbled to a halt, a flash and a blast of sound erupted a little way to his right, throwing him off balance so that he almost fell. He saw the Alhasi archers dive for cover behind smashed blocks of stone, saw some on the ground dashing up the road toward him. As gravel and dust fell across the scene, Romas saw that one archer, a gray-haired man he recognized from Chamber gatherings, lay still, his face covered in stone dust, one leg at a nasty angle. As the dust settled, and the rocks stopped rolling, two of his fellows hurried to him, lifting him between them and carrying him past Romas and to the left, in what he saw now was a bivouac snuggled close against the cliff wall. Off to his right, unprotected now that the arches had been destroyed, the precipice fell away in the darkness. The unobstructed wind blew hard, tugging at his hair and his leggings, making him lean inward, away from the drop. Ahead of him, the noises of battle continued, the archers scrambling back to their posts, loosing their arrows, the Callistans on the other side shouting, hurling spears almost at random over the pile of stone.

Anger darkened every face he could see, and fury sounded in the voices from the other side of the tumbled stone. Peril vibrated in the air, threatened with every flying rock, every spear, every hand bomb. And Rinposh wanted him to walk through all of this as if it didn't exist.

The blind lama's scarlet token seemed almost to burn his arm.

He forced himself to take a step forward, and then another. Some of the Alhasi caught sight of him, and turned to call out. He saw their faces when they saw the token, watched them catch back their words, then turn away to hide their sympathy. There were many who could not understand the commands of the lama. No one disobeyed them.

Romas pressed on, putting one foot in front of the other. He winced as another blast shook the ground beneath his feet, and a flare of sparks shot past his head, but he had set his goal, now, and he kept moving. A spear flew above him, and he ducked, but it rattled uselessly against a chunk of rock. One of the archers shouted, and stood up to loose an arrow. Romas watched in horror as an answering spear nearly caught the archer, just missing his head as he ducked. It sailed past him into the darkness, over the precipice.

Romas forced his eyes forward, and kept moving.

Rinposh had described his vision, a channel through the chaos, a corridor created by the tumbled stone. Romas scanned the ruin ahead of him as he drew closer, but it looked impassible, a jagged mass of rock, huge tumbled blocks of stone footed in rubble of every size. Romas tried to suppress his fear that Rinposh's vision was more pursil smoke than prognostication. It didn't seem possible that there was a passage through the ruin, that a slender, wide-eyed woman would be waiting for him there.

The Spiral Road

Irlen was given a tent with the camp followers, the only other women in the encampment at the foot of the Spiral Road, but she spent no time there. The moment she stepped off the caravan, she was swept into the hospital tent, where she labored for hours with the medics. It was unbearably hot, with the great plateau blocking the wind from the sea. When she stepped outside as evening approached, a tantalizing whiff of salt carried on the still air, and made her long to be on the other side, where the road wound up the cliff above the water.

All the wounded had been either treated and sent back to their barracks, or shipped back in the caravan to Callis City. And now, as darkness approached, Irlen saw that the fighting would begin again. She knew it was dangerous, she had seen the damage done to the Callistan soldiers. But compulsion drove her. What she needed for the children in her ward was on the other side of that pile of blasted rock, and that was still an hour's walk away. The fighters were already on their way, marching up the twisting road, disappearing around the curve as they climbed.

Her companion hovered beside her in the dusk as she hesitated. "You've come this far," he said. "You won't give up now."

"I was crazy to come," she muttered. "But the General couldn't accept my offer fast enough."

"No, of course not," he smiled. "A real doctor, a volunteer . . . a patriot."

She snorted, the sound lost in the clatter of boots on rock, of orders being called, of conversations around campfires and in the cooktents. "I'll probably get myself killed."

"Oh, no," he said. "You'll find a way through."

His was the very voice of her compulsion. "Well." She straightened her long jacket, dusted her palms together. "Now that I'm here, I'm going to try."

The last of the soldiers had already rounded the curve in the steep road above her head. She set out after them with a determined step. She had nothing with her, deliberately. Her plan—inasmuch as she had one—was simply to arrive with empty hands, to find someone to ask for what she needed, to beg for help for the children in her care. Her head buzzed with the odd drive that had brought her here. It was not like her to act on impulse, and she had never done so before. But now . . . she put one foot in front of another, and climbed.

One of the medics spotted her before she had gone far, and came running after her, his boots clacking against the stone. She turned to face him.

"Doctor," he cried breathlessly. "Don't go up there! Those barbarians—they shoot arrows and throw huge stones—you've seen the damage!"

"And what do we throw at them?" Irlen asked.

His look of concern transformed instantly into a scowl of disapproval. "They are Alhasi," he said, sternly, as if she were a child. "Godless. Immoral. They are our enemies."

Irlen spun away from him, her long coat flaring. "Enemies," she muttered to herself as she resumed her climb.

"The way to destroy our enemies is to befriend them," her companion said, at her shoulder.

"Ah, I remember your saying that, Old Man. Quoting again. Lin Chu, I believe."

"You remembered this time, daughter! Good for you."

She didn't answer. The climb took all her breath.

 

The opening was slender and irregular, a corridor of stone formed by two great chunks that had fallen at angles to each other, frighteningly close to the precipice. Romas found that once he had inched along the base of the ruin, he was beneath the trajectory of the Callistan spears, but the explosives were still a danger. Something fell near him, and rolled across the rubble. Instinctively, he turned his face to the rock and covered his head with his arms. The hand bomb, blessedly small, blew up with a popping sound, and bits of gravel stung his back and bounced off the walls. He held still, more afraid of the drop than the bomb.

An archer above him cried, "Khu bo! They'll kill you!"

Romas looked up at him. He gave a slight shrug, and held up his arm.

The man nodded understanding, and touched his own arm, acknowledging the lama's token. Romas turned around, his back to the rock, and sidestepped toward the opening. When the next bomb fell, he simply closed his eyes. His fate was no longer in his hands.

 

Irlen, after climbing for half an hour, rounded a sharp turn. To her left, the cliff fell away into utter blackness. Ahead, the battle was in full spate. Callistan soldiers stood in lines, braving the arrows of the Alhasi, and threw spears and shou dan with all their might over the ruin of stone. There were already wounded, lying on stretchers in the road. Piles of the nasty-looking hand bombs lay in wagons, and bundles of spears with barbed tips waited in racks. The men shouted orders and questions at each other over the noise of the detonations on the other side. The explosions lit up the night, and Irlen could see how beautiful the arches must once have been, crenellated edges and scrolled lintels now decorating jagged fragments. As she approached, one of the captains caught sight of her.

"What's a woman doing here?" he demanded.

Someone else glanced around, and said something to the captain Irlen couldn't hear. The captain whirled, and stamped toward her through the noise and confusion.

She stopped where she was, but it was hard. The impulse that pushed her on burned in her mind. Her companion wavered, frowning, looking ahead. He lifted one arm, only faintly visible in the starlight, and pointed at the jumble of broken stone ahead. She tried to see what he was pointing at, but at that moment the captain reached her.

He stopped abruptly, his hard boots spitting bits of rock at her ankles. "What do you think you're doing?" he said harshly.

The burning in her mind became an inferno. She could hardly think how to answer the man. "I—" she faltered. "I—I'm a doctor," she said, not knowing how else to persuade him.

He gave her a hard look. "There are wounded on those litters, there," he said, pointing back the way she had come.

"I know," she said. Her eyes strayed past him, raking the ruin for a way through. Her feet inched forward of their own volition. "I know, but—"

And there it was. She knew, distantly, that the captain shouted something at her, but the compulsion in her mind allowed nothing but the awareness that her goal was just ahead, perhaps thirty yards away. She strode forward. The captain's hand grasped at the back of her coat, but she was already gone. He shouted, but her mind would not permit her to hear it. She started to run toward the cliff's edge, where she saw the break in the pile of rock. She ran directly into the path of the arrows and stones from the Alhasi side of the barrier.

 

"Stop!" came a shout above Romas's head.

It was the archer, but Romas knew he was not shouting at him. He was ordering the others, the fighters, to stop their barrage.

And a moment later, the hail of spears and shou dan from the other side stopped, too. A strange, tense silence fell over the blasted arches. Romas drew one surprised breath, and then dashed for the opening into the ruin.

 

Irlen was only faintly aware that the arrows had stopped falling before she reached the breach she had spotted in the tumbled rock. It was little more than a darker rectangle in the dark face of the ruin, but it was there. She stood for a heartbeat in the opening, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. The space was irregular, and close, but big enough for her to wriggle through. She slipped off her coat, to show that she carried no weapon, and dropped it on the ground. A gust of wind caught it, and it sailed out into the abyss like a great bird, its panels flapping like wings. In a heartbeat, it had disappeared into the night. Irlen cried out, shocked by a sudden dizziness, and clung to the nearest chunk of rock with both hands. When she had calmed a bit, she let go of the rock, and sidled into the break in the ruin. She began to creep forward into cold, cramped darkness.

When the torch flared, she exclaimed, and shielded her eyes with her hand. Her voice sounded dead in the narrow space.

"It's all right," came another voice, a deep one. A real one. "Nu mo, don't be afraid. Everything's all right."

Cautiously, Irlen opened her eyes, and let them adapt to the dancing light of a small oil torch. Her companion had left her alone with a tall, dark Alhasa. He wore a thick black braid hanging over one shoulder, and a piece of red ribbon twined around his bicep. Her heart pounded in her ears, but the compulsion that had drawn her all the way from Callis City released its hold, and she could think clearly for the first time in two days. The situation was bizarre, but she could think of only one thing to do.

She took a step forward, and held out her hand. "Ni hao," she said. "I am Irlen Li Paul."

Her new companion smiled, showing very white teeth. It was hard to see him well in the flickering torchlight, but he was tall and well-made, with muscled shoulders and clear eyes. His hand was hard and strong against hers. "Romas Battu," he said. "I am ashamed, now, that I did not believe Angkar Rinposh."

She dropped his hand, and stood back. "Who is Rinposh?"

"He is our lama."

"Oh—you mean the blind monk? I have heard of him. Did he tell you I would be here?"

"He had a vision, he said. Brought to him by a ghost—a Callistan ghost."

Irlen released a trembling breath. "It may be the same ghost who brought me. I can't think why else—I hardly know why I am here, Romas Battu."

"His Holiness seemed to know." The tall man smiled again, and swung a bag from behind his shoulder. "He wanted me to carry something to you." He held the bag out to her, a handsewn burlap sack, tightly filled.

She took it in her hands, surprised to find that it weighed almost nothing. She put her nose to the burlap, and sniffed. "Pursil leaves," she breathed. "And so much!"

"It was all my ama—my mother—had in her garden."

"But—how did you know? Why did you come here, and why . . ." Irlen hugged the fragrant sack to her, shaking her head, mystified, moved.

He pressed his two hands together before his chest, and bowed. "Angkar Rinposh sees truly," he said gravely. "I doubted him, but he was right."

Involuntarily, Irlen glanced back over her shoulder. Was he there, the Old Man, laughing? She lifted her eyes again to Romas Battu. "A vision," she said wonderingly. "You would come here—bring me this gift—because of a vision."

"Why did you come, nu mo? Did you have a vision? It was perhaps even more dangerous, and a further journey, for you than for me."

Irlen laughed a little. "I had no vision," she said. "But I had a compulsion. There are sick children in Callis City . . ."

"Rinposh knew this."

Irlen searched Romas Battu's eyes, trying to comprehend what had happened. She pushed away her awareness of the closeness of the stone corridor, of the peril that awaited them outside. Her skin tingled with the nearness of him, dark and tall and strong, smelling faintly of smoke and sweat and fragrant salt air.

When she found her voice, she spoke softly, her eyes stinging with emotion. "Children will live because of you, Romas Battu. I thank you. And I thank your lama, and your mother."

"They will try to take the pursil from you for their soldiers."

She lifted her chin. "They will not succeed," she said. "I will threaten to throw it over the cliff if they threaten me."

"They will try to come through this corridor."

"Block it, Romas Battu."

He nodded. "We will. Go now, while I light your way."

Irlen hesitated. It was difficult to take her eyes from his face. It was hard to return to the loneliness of Callis City, where she had only a ghost for company. But she had something, now, that she could do to help the children.

She wriggled around, holding the sack closely in her arms. He raised his torch, and its light glimmered on the constricting walls of stone.

She looked back over her shoulder, once. "Romas Battu . . ." she said hesitantly. "What do you—the Alhasi—what do you do with unwanted babies?"

He frowned. "We do not have unwanted babies here," he said. "Someone always wants a baby."

Irlen smiled, and hugged the sack closer. "If this ever ends, this stupid war . . ." she began, but her voice trailed off, weak and wistful. She looked ahead, to her side of the corridor, to the war waiting outside.

"They will tire of it," he said, behind her. "It will end. Someday."

"When peace comes, then."

"Yes, Irlen Li Paul. When peace comes."

Irlen didn't look back again. She worked her way forward, through the cramped space, finding her way back to her own side, and out into the night.

 

The silence lay across the ruins of the arches like a blanket. As Romas emerged, he saw that the archers still waited on the heights, their bows at the ready, but their arrows unstrung. Nothing moved. No spear fell, and no hand bomb flew into their midst.

Romas turned his head up to the nearest archer. "We must block this corridor," he said. "Now they know it's here."

"What happened to your sack?" the man asked.

"It's gone." Romas smiled. "Rinposh has given a gift to the children of Callis," he said. He paced away from the ruined arches, up the Spiral Road toward Alhasa. The silence behind him lasted long minutes before another shou dan exploded in the darkness.

Back | Next
Framed