City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(123)

“So this is what they fight to return to?” He casts his one eye over a half-mile-high tower tipped with a wide, golden bell dome. “I can see why.”

“This is just a piece of what it was like,” says Shara. “Much more was genuinely lost, along with anyone else in the buildings.”

A fountain carved to resemble stacks of jasmine blossoms percolates happily. Dragonflies flit from edge to edge, their green eyes sparkling.

“Thousands, then,” says Sigrud.

She shakes her head. “Millions.” Then she thinks. “Here. I want to try something. …”

She holds her hands out and begins murmuring things. Her first three attempts fail—“What are you doing?” asks Sigrud—but on the fourth …

A glass sphere the size of an apple appears in her hands. She laughs gaily. “It works! It works! Let me see if I can …” She maneuvers it so it catches a ray of sunlight: instantly, the sphere lights up, glowing a clear, bright gold. Shara cackles again, puts the sphere on the ground, and rolls it toward Sigrud. He stops it with his boot: its glow persists, lighting him from below.

“A miracle,” says Shara. “From the Book of the Red Lotus, of Olvos. One that never works on … well, in our Bulikov, I suppose. But here …”

“It works quite well.”

“Because this reality obeys different rules. Watch—roll it back to me.” Shara picks it up, tosses it high, and cries, “Stay and show!” The glowing sphere hangs ten feet over them, bathing the streets around them in soft light. “They had these throughout Bulikov, rather than streetlights. Much more convenient.”

“And a good way to tell people where we are,” says Sigrud disapprovingly. “Take it down, please.”

“Well … Actually, I don’t know how to do that, exactly.”

Sigrud, grumbling, picks up a stone and hurls it at the sphere. Shara shouts and covers her head. The shot is dead-on, and the sphere pops and bursts into a cloud of dust, which blows away down the street.

“At least stones still work here,” says Sigrud.

*

They wander Old Bulikov—as Shara has termed it—not sure what they are looking for. The city is completely abandoned: the gardens are barren, the courtyards empty. Everything is quite clean and white, though: Shara is happy to have the Kolkashtani wrap, as it helps reduce the glare. But though the city is beautiful, she cannot absorb it without thinking of Efrem’s theory: Did the gods make this place, she wonders, or did they simply make what the Continentals wished them to make?

Sometimes when they glance into windows of alleys in this empty city they do not see what they expect: instead of more alleys, or the inside of a building, they see muddled, filthy streetways packed with frowning Continentals, or a drainage ditch leading to the Solda, or just a blank brick wall.

“More reality static,” says Shara. “A connection to New Bulikov—our Bulikov.”

Sigrud stops and looks into one window, which gazes in on an old woman’s kitchen. He watches as she cuts the head off of four trout. “They do not see us at all?”

“Excuse me,” says Shara into the window. “Excuse me!”

The old woman mutters, “How I hate trout. By the gods, how I hate trout. …”

“I suppose not,” says Shara. “Come on.”

After a few blocks they come to a sprawling estate with a white-walled mansion, horseshoe arches, grass-floored courtyards (which are now clotted up with weeds), and dozens of reflecting pools, each of which is positioned to reflect the flower-shaped citadel.

“I wonder what esteemed person lived here,” says Shara. “A high priest, or perhaps one of the Blessed. …”

Sigrud points to one of the horseshoe arches: “Someone we know, actually.”

On the top of the arch are the words: the house of votrov.

“Ah,” says Shara softly. “I should have guessed. … Vohannes did say the original house vanished during the Blink. But I did not realize it was quite this nice.”

“What did you mean, one of the Blessed?” asks Sigrud.

“People who had interbred with the Divine,” says Shara. “Their progeny were heroes, saints … unusually fortunate and legendary sorts of people. The world rearranged itself around the Blessed to give them what they want.”

Shara remembers one of the last entries in Efrem’s journal, and the single word: Blessed.

“That must be nice,” says Sigrud. “And you think the Votrov family was one of these?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Those sorts of lineages were always well documented. If he was, I’m sure his family would have never let anyone forget about it. Wait. … Look.” She points at where the weeds of one courtyard have been parted. “Someone’s been here. Quite recently.”

Sigrud walks to the disturbance, squats, and reviews the markings on the ground. “Many people. Many. Men, I think. And recent, as you said.” He carefully steps forward into the weeds. “Most of them burdened. Carrying … heavy things.” He points ahead, toward another horseshoe arch that exits onto a descending hillside. “There is where they went.” He points to the citadel of the house of Votrov. “And there is where they came from.”

“Can you follow the trail?”