io9 is proud to present fiction fromLIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE.
Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEEDs current issue.
This months selection is A Sojourn in the Fifth City by P H Lee.
Illustration: Tithi Luadthong (Shutterstock)
you’re able to read the story below orlisten to the podcaston LIGHTSPEEDs website.
but an imposition nonetheless.
She did not know the dead man in the coffin.
Graphic: Adamant Press
He had not been one of the Dying, not from the Tenth School nor from any other.
He had lived and he had died far beyond this world, these stars.
She might have wept, even though it was a blasphemy.
But she did not have the water to spare for it.
Reflexively, she began to mutter a prayer beneath her mask, but cut herself off.
No prayers here, no sacraments.
Prayers and sacraments were for the dying, and this was the land given over to the dead.
And, regardless, there was no Master here to hear them.
Uncertain, she took another step into the scree, sending another cascade.
She shouldnt have, of course.
Even back in the Tenth School, back before her pilgrimage, stealing waterlife desires life!
and water was the root of life!
Even there, it was a sin.
But here, in this sacred land, it was doubly so.
(She had snuck water, of course, when the teachers werent looking.
But she had learned the habits of secrecy.)
She started to mutter a prayer for forgiveness, but stopped herself again.
She swallowed the last of the water before she reached the bottom, though.
To drink some water on a first pilgrimage, perhaps that could be forgiven.
At the very least, understood.
The furtive flask her teacher had slipped to her had run out long ago.
But in the City, no.
The Fifth City was for the dead, and she would not profane it.
She stepped towards it, out of the shadow of the mountain, into the glaring and white-purple thionlight.
Though it was still cold, she could feel the thionlight against her.
She had to will herself not to flinch away from it.
In the future, perhaps, the thionlights burning would grow into tumors.
It had happened before.
But there would be time enough for that shame later.
Right now, this moment: Not one step backwards.
Then, at last, a step, and then another.
On the outskirts of the city proper, there were tall mounds of irregular stones.
She had never seen bones before, except that once, and in the presence of the Master.
But here: the bones of the dead themselves, left beyond the city and unburied.
She felt her anger rising with bitter nauseous acid, but she swallowed it down.
She could not manage a run, but still loped over to the uneven pile.
This burden is all that you’re able to manage.
Take care you do not add to it, and fail the Dead therefrom.
He must have come here, when he was an apprentice on his pilgrimage into a journeyman.
He must have seen this.
He must have known what she would face, for he had faced the same himself.
She turned away from the pile.
Later, she told herself.
If I have the strength.
No great doors of the Fifth City, not from this approach, and not for this dead man.
The apprentice would have honored him soone of the Dead, in her arms!
Such were the customs of the Fifth City.
It was hard for her to understand her transformationthat it had already happened.
She washad beenan apprentice of the Tenth School.
She had always been an apprentice of the Tenth School.
(At some point, she must have been an initiate.
At some point, she must have joined the Dying.
But she could not remember even the barest hint of that.)
She had always been an apprentice, and now she was a journeyman.
She had always been an apprentice, and now she was not.
She squeezed her eyes closed, and felt the weight of the coffin on her back.
This was the Fifth City.
Surely, she can take that small indulgence in her service to the Dead.
It felt wrong, to her, to see ice growing in a City.
Even here, there were her small indulgences.
Master, she said aloud, beginning a prayer, but she stopped herself.
Before, on her journey, she had stopped herself from praying out of custom, out of courtesy.
It had felt to her a deprivation after her whole life praying for every moment.
It was another suffering to be borne, another sacrifice in service to the dead.
There was no Master here, no school, no orders.
This City, though, was not for the living.
It was for the dead.
She was a trespasser here, even in her service.
There was no law to guide her, no Master to oversee her.
The dead did not need such things, surely.
So she must decide for herself.
Was this what it meant to be a journeyman?
That she must decide for herself?
Then I must decide, she said, aloud.
Not a blasphemy, then, she corrected herself.
Blasphemy was a word for the Schools.
It was a word for the Dying.
The dead were beyond any such offense.
She reached, impulsively, towards the frost beside her, but stopped herself.
She must decide for herself.
She would decide not to.
She would decide to move on.
She should not yearn.
Life that yearned for water, for food, for children, above all for itself.
Without thinking, she reached for her knife that wasnt there.
But she had no knife, not on a pilgrimage.
No blood could be shed on this dead land.
She thought of the cancers that Thion was surely carving into her skin this very moment.
They, too, yearned for life and yearned for water.
She thought that she might abandon them: the coffin and the dead man within.
She was already in the City.
Instead, though, she knelt beside it.
She wanted to kiss the coffin, but even the scant waters of her lipsno.
Instead, she set her forehead against it.
No thirst, no hunger, no pain in death.
Only the end of doing.
Lend me, for a moment, your uncaring death.
Lend me, for a moment, your unending peace.
Your death is infinite; no loan shall diminish it.
It is not for myself I ask for this.
It is only for my service to you and all the myriad dead.
The dead man was not a Master.
She paused for a moment, waiting for some response.
Here, though, there was nothing.
Not even the familiar cold shudder of some distant will.
It was her fault.
It was impossible for him to grant her prayer or even to hear it.
Not one step backward but there were no prophets here, no Masters, no teachers.
I should stay, she blasphemed to herself, even as the thionlight burned into her skin.
I should run feral and fallen.
She stood, but she did not take a step.
She breathedin and out, three timesand hated the thing within her that demanded breath.
Then she knelt, shouldered the coffin again, and made her way towards the center of the city.
So there was no decoration, only plain stairs into hallways, only great blocks of ancient stone.
Impulsively, she reached out to touch a pillar as she finished her ascent of a side stairway.
She shook in fear and embarrassment, to have left the mark of her passing on this sacred place.
But what of it?
I have been here.
That is no less than the truth.
So let that be the mark of my passage.
It is as good a record as any history.
Still, she did not touch another wall.
It was only the silence that divulged her true location.
I love you, she said once to the dead, quietly, because she did.
It was not a sin, and yet she felt ashamed.
She wondered if these were the last two unhallowed dead of all the crystal war.
Until she did it, she did not realize how tired she was.
She closed her eyes, breathed in again, and leaned against the wall of coffins.
Sometime later, she will wake.
Sometime later, she will wake.
But for now, she is still.
For now, she sleeps.
For now, she is indistinguishable from all the other dead in this pure and ancient city.
Their work has appeared in many venues including Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Uncanny Magazine.
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