Pride of Empires (The Powers of Amur Book 3)

by J. S. Bangs

  Kirshta put his hands on his waist and stared to the west. Ternas monastery was nestled in the skirts of the mountains, and above them the slopes rose steeply through endless ranks of dark chir pines, toward the naked, snow-tipped peaks above. “Perhaps it’s farther up,” he muttered. “Maybe Ternas is just the gate.”

  Vapathi put her hand on Kirshta’s shoulder and leaned close to him. “We should go to the village. They’ll know if someone got away. Evening is coming, and I certainly don’t want to spend it here on the open mountainside.”

  Kirshta turned away, his thoughts still churning. “Fine,” he said. He depended on Vapathi for making practical decisions like that. She would force him to eat and take care of his basic needs, and then he would be free to let his mind churn and wonder. And she would give him the ideas he needed.

  They went through the broken gate in the outer wall and down the narrow footpath that descended toward Ternas village. In the village they went straight to the guesthouse, the largest building in the town. It was finely decorated with a large porch in front, its pillars painted with images of Am, Ashti, and Kushma. The housekeeper sat on the front porch and hailed them as they approached.

  “You come to stay, pay good money? I see you earlier, but you go up the hill too fast. Disappointed? No thikratta up there now.”

  “Disappointed,” Kirshta affirmed. “But we may still find what we’re looking for.”

  The housekeeper shook his head. “Not many come by here now the monastery burned. This big place here, stand empty most of the time. But you pay, I give you the best room. No one else to give it to.”

  “We have no money,” Vapathi said. “But my brother, he is a thikratta, trained by his master outside of Ternas. He came to make pilgrimage and offer remembrance. He might stay and tell fortunes for the village if you give us a room for the night.”

  The man scowled. “You don’t look thikratta. You look like a mountain boy. Somebody’s slave run off.”

  “I’m no one’s slave,” Kirshta said. “Let me show you.”

  He bent down and plucked a stalk of grass from beside the road. He brushed against the inner stillness—just a touch, a gesture of the mind that was nearly effortless by now—and the stalk burst into bright flame. It burned for just a second, then blackened into ash. Kirshta dropped it in the road and crushed it beneath his foot.

  The man laughed and clapped his hands. “Ah, a real thikratta! My brother and I used to sneak to the monastery and watch the young men learn to make fire. Could never do it ourselves.”

  “It’s very difficult,” Kirshta said. And it was more difficult here than in Majasravi. He should have been able to light the whole guesthouse on fire, but he found he was strangely pinched whenever he touched the inner stillness. As if the terror and darkness his farsight showed him were spreading to every other aspect of his discipline. He needed to take the grass in hand to burn it—and he doubted whether he could actually use farsight to give anyone a fortune. But he could pretend.

  “Fine, fine, you come in,” the man said. “Got no one else to sell the room to anyway. I tell the people in the village you’re here, they pay me, and you get room and food.”

  “Good enough,” Apurta said, jumping forward and clambering onto the porch. “What do you have to eat? I’m starving.”

  * * *

  “There were two of them,” the old woman said, in a low conspiratorial voice. “I don’t know how they hid from the Red Men, but I saw them pass through the village after the mad thikratta left.”

  Her eyes were wide, and she tugged constantly at her left ear. The sun had come up, and she crouched near the entrance of the guesthouse, eyes darting to both sides in search of eavesdroppers. Kirshta was not sure why the woman was so nervous. Did she think there were Red Men hiding in the shadows of the guesthouse, ready to leap out and impale anyone who knew there were survivors?

  “Thank you for coming,” he said nonetheless. “When we asked last night, no one seemed to think there were any survivors.”

  “Scared!” the woman said, her eyes wide. She gestured toward the mountain to the west, as if unnamed horrors were likely to descend from it at any time. “But I tell you. They passed through town and spoke to my husband. They went north. To Pukasra. On the coast, you know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, nodding rapidly, “you take the path to the north, follow four, five days, come to the ocean. They have boats in Pukasra. Not big ones, little ones, fishing boats and like. But sometimes sail to Tulakhanda.” She said the name Tulakhanda with grave seriousness, as if she could hardly imagine a place more distant and majestic.

  “Thank you,” Kirshta said. “We’ll probably head out later today.” It wasn’t much, but if the story were true, they might find traces of the thikratta in Pukasra. He had a very dim memory of the place from when he had passed through it ten years beforehand. The slaving parties which raided the mountains sailed out of there. He had no desire to return to those memories, but finding the survivors of Ternas was a more important goal.

  The woman curled her finger and leaned forward. “I tell you a shortcut, okay? You be careful.”

  “A shortcut?”

  “The main path goes through the fields, long ways to the east, avoids the mountain. But where the main path turns east, a hunter’s path goes straight. Cuts through the woods. Climb a little over the mountain, watch out for bandits. But you go through, come out the other side and follow the river to Pukasra. Save yourselves a day.”

  “Thank you,” Kirshta said again. “We’ll go.”

  The woman nodded, glanced to the side again to be sure no one had heard her, then hopped off the porch of the guesthouse and shuffled away down the street. Kirshta stepped into the dim of the common room.

  “What was that about?” Apurta said. He and Vapathi sat eating cold rice and roti from the night before.

  “Valuable secrets, apparently,” Kirshta said. “Survivors from Ternas, and a secret way through the woods.” He relayed what the woman had told him.

  “So are we going?” Apurta said. His hand lay casually on Vapathi’s knee.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Vapathi said. She put her hand atop Apurta’s. “There’s nothing here in the village, unless you want to go search in the ruins again.”

  Kirshta sighed. “No, there’s nothing there. We follow the survivors.”

  Vapathi and Apurta finished eating and took up the last of the roti that the housekeeper would give them before heading out on the road. Kirshta ate nothing. He fasted, in hopes his will would become strong enough to pierce the resistance of the mountains. They received warm farewells on their way out of the village—a single night of faked fortune-telling had evidently been enough to endear them to the villagers—but the daub-and-wattle huts soon receded behind them. They walked alone through dry meadows with snow-crowned mountains on their left and squares of brown unplanted fields and lone pines on their right.

  On the evening of the second day they came to the place the woman had described. A spur of stone blanketed by dark pines jutted out from the mountains, and the field path turned to the east to avoid it. But a tiny footpath, little more than a seam between the grasses, continued due north until it was swallowed by the pines.

  They took the shortcut.

  Under the pines, the evening gloom turned quickly to darkness. They walked only a half-hour up a gentle incline before Apurta said they should stop. There was a broad, level place under the pines with a bed of moss where they could sleep. Apurta set about making a fire. Kirshta saw Apurta’s hand brush against Vapathi’s thigh. He should probably give them some time alone.

  “I’m going to go meditate,” he declared, standing up from his place by the fire. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He turned to the west and climbed the gentle incline toward the mountains. Behind him, he heard Apurta’s indistinct voice and Vapathi’s laugh.

  Their mirth escaped him. There was a pressure against h
im whenever he tried to meditate here, growing since the time they first got in sight of the mountains. In Ternas, he could touch the inner stillness, but barely. So why would the monks build a monastery here? Why would this one, of all others, survive?

  Or perhaps this was the reason.

  The Red Men trained by running the length of the Dhigvaditya with sacks of rice on their back. No one would go into battle with rice on his back, but the strength you built doing so might save your life when you took up a spear. The thikratta of old had built Ternas, a training ground, where the inner stillness was buried deeper and its power was feeble. Those who trained here could build strength that would serve them once they left. He thought of elder Gocam, whom Ruyam always mentioned with a sneer, but who had come down from the peaks of the mountain, melted the stones of the Emperor’s Bridge, and turned Ruyam into a shell of fire.

  Surely Ruyam realized this. But if Ternas was built as a training ground, it only pushed the question further. What disturbed the inner stillness?

  He looked to the west, staring at the stony bulk of the mountains ahead of them. Something was there. The mystery that Ruyam had pursued, the answer that had eluded him. If only Ruyam hadn’t gotten sidetracked trying to purge the Uluriya, he might have learned the secret. Now it was Kirshta’s turn.

  Kirshta found a piece of bare stone and arranged himself on it in the Lotus posture. Directly overhead the evening sky purpled between the black peaks of the pines, and all around was darkness. He closed his eyes, shut out the world, and stilled his mind.

  He heard something.

  He opened his eyes. A twig had snapped. Overhead, the wind rustled the tops of the trees. Very distantly, he heard a voice from their campfire.

  He closed his eyes again. Distraction—he was supposed to shut out distractions, not to let his mind be derailed by every twitch of forest animals. He emptied his thoughts again, let his mind’s chatter reduce into silence, and dropped slowly into the inner stillness.

  Terror and darkness. A throat which never ended, teeth the length of the world. Vast movements in the roots of the earth.

  He tried to push the ever-present vision aside. In vain. When he engaged with it, it pulled him in, like roti covered in honey. Very well, he could sink into it. Terror and violence drew at him. He ignored them, let his fear dissipate into the inner stillness—

  A roar. The trance shattered.

  A weight hurled him back. For a blink of an eye he saw teeth and a black shape, a splintered shard of sky and a taste of blood. He thought the endless throat of his visions had come to life. But it was flesh, fur, and teeth. He kicked and screamed. Claws raked his back.

  His squirming got him free for a heartbeat and he bolted toward the fire.

  “Vapathi—”

  The beast leaped and pinned him. Claws gripped his sides. Teeth tore through his shoulder. He screamed. With a swipe the beast batted him to the side and leaped atop him again. Muscles and sinew held him down. The smell of hot breath, and the jaws clamped over his throat. His screams died.

  Shouting.

  A blazing pain cut through him, dizzying. He was spinning. Dark shapes moved around him, trees dancing. Fire moving like a drunken sun. Screaming and yelling. The weight atop him shifted. The jaws over his throat released. He drew a deep breath and choked on blood. Snarls. The thud of a cudgel into flesh.

  The animal moved off. For a moment he saw it clearly: stripes of iron on a coat the color of fire, jaw open in a roar, teeth like knives of ivory, eyes gleaming green in the light of the fire. A man stood with a club in one hand and a burning brand in the other.

  A final snarl, and the animal disappeared into the forest.

  “Kirshta,” Vapathi said. She was a black silhouette above him, orange lines around the rim of her face. He tried to speak, but his throat was full of blood.

  “Carry him to the fire,” Apurta said. Hands gripped his armpits and they lifted, pulling at the lacerations on his chest. He tried to scream but merely coughed a mouthful of blood.

  They dropped him. Vapathi’s face was like a death’s head lit in the firelight. She pressed rags to his throat and chest. Water washed his face. Overhead, the stars staggered from side to side, growing distant and dim, while the trees collapsed around them. He closed his eyes and fell into darkness.

  * * *

  At dawn shards of light cut through pines and ferns, slicing apart Kirshta’s sleep, tearing at his eyelids. The world swayed. He gasped, then shook in pain at the throbbing in his throat.

  “Stop it,” Apurta whispered. “Just a bit farther.”

  Apurta carried him. Vapathi held his feet. This was the swaying. The forest trees above him rocked with the rhythm of their footsteps. Their breaths sounded heavy and wet, hoarse with exhaustion. He wanted to tell them to stop. His tongue moved, his lips flexed, but it was impossible to form speech in his crushed throat. Only a moan escaped.

  “He’s waking up,” Vapathi said.

  “Fine,” Apurta said testily, “but we still have to carry him.”

  “Do we stop?”

  “No,” Apurta said. “We get to the river. It can’t be much farther.”

  Kirshta closed his eyes. Some time passed. Waves of agony, swaying motions, Apurta’s hands in his armpits, and Vapathi’s labored breath. He swirled in a miasma of pain and motion, a leaf carried along in a river. Light grew. Birds warbled overhead. Wind hushed in the trees.

  “Lord Am’s armpit,” Apurta whispered. “We made it.”

  “An encampment,” Vapathi said.

  “Set him down,” Apurta said. “Are they—?”

  “They’re coming.”

  Dewy grass pressed against Kirshta’s back. Jolts of pain as the prickles of grass touched the lacerations from the tiger’s claws. Apurta let go of Kirshta’s arms and bent over, hands on his knees, eyes closed, heaving. He was covered with sweat. Then Vapathi’s face appeared overhead.

  “You awake?”

  Kirshta nodded. A gasp of pain escaped his throat.

  “Don’t talk.” She glanced up to Apurta. “Someone’s coming. We’ll explain. Hopefully they can help us.”

  The swish of legs moving through tall, wet grass. Several sets of legs. Kirshta wanted to turn his head, but any attempt to move his neck prompted spasms of pain.

  “Who are you?” an unknown male voice called out.

  “Three travelers,” Apurta said. “Trying to get to Pukasra. Our brother was attacked by a tiger.”

  “A tiger!” the man said with alarm. “Where?”

  “Back in the woods. We carried him through the night, hoping to get to a village.”

  “That’s what you get, cutting through the forest,” the man said. “Most people go around—”

  “We were told—”

  “Told? By whom?”

  Apurta hesitated. Vapathi answered in his stead, “A woman in Ternas.”

  “Ternas?” A snicker passed between the men. “You come down from the mountains in Ternas?”

  “No, we came up from…” Apurta said, but balked before finishing with Majasravi.

  “This is a mountain woman,” the man said, cutting him off. “Looks like a slave. The man, too. You sure it was a tiger that got you?”

  “I swear—” Apurta began, then stopped. More movement in the grass. Kirshta heard Vapathi and Apurta move together. Fighting the pangs of agony, he tilted his head, inch by slow inch, until he could see what was happening.

  Apurta and Vapathi stood next to each other, Apurta a pace ahead of them, his arm outstretched protectively in front of Vapathi. The other men carried cudgels.

  “Escapees,” one of them said, not the one who had been speaking before. “What do we do with them?”

  “The woman looks nice,” their leader said. “We take her with the group. That one looks half dead. We leave him.”

  “You don’t take—” Apurta began.

  The lead man raised a cudgel and tapped it against Apurta’s chest. “This your woman? Yo
u like her?”

  “You won’t take her,” Apurta said.

  “We will. We were just getting ready to head into the mountains to get more.”

  Slavers. A wave of nausea and throbbing pain passed through him. He attempted to push himself upright, but his limbs failed after a few seconds of throbbing effort.

  “Eh, look at this one,” one of the slavers said. “Not as dead as he looks.”

  “Leave him,” their leader said. He tapped his cudgel against Apurta’s chest again. “You’re gonna give us your girl now.”

  “You cannot take her,” Apurta said. “Or Kirshta. I was in the Red Men—”

  A jag of laughter sounded through the men. “A Red Man! One of the Emperor’s own. But you got no sword and no spear, brother. No way to keep us from enjoying your girl all the way up the mountain and back—”

  Apurta lunged and left Kirshta’s field of view. Someone hollered, and the sound of cudgels meeting flesh prompted a grunt of pain. Apurta cried out, then his scream was strangled.

  “Let me cut his throat,” one of the men said. “The other man, too. The girl’s the only one worth anything.”

  “Not even much,” a gruff, leathery voice said. “Most buyers want ’em younger.”

  “No,” their leader said. He paused as if thinking. “I have a better idea. We’re down a man after Janda left. Get him up.”

  There was a swift kick, and Apurta grunted again. Someone pulled him to his feet, bringing him back within Kirshta’s vision.

  “As I see it,” the leader of the slavers said, “you deserted from the Red Men and are running through the ass end of Amur right now. You’re as good as dead anyway, if anyone ever finds out. That’s assuming we let you go and don’t kill you on the spot.”

  “You can’t—” Apurta said and got a club to the gut for his trouble.

  “No interrupting Langur,” the man said.

  “As I was saying,” Langur went on, “we have a slot open for a man who can handle a weapon. You’re already on the edge of the law. So I’ll give you a choice. You can do the honorable thing and try to defend your friends and wind up with your throat cut. Or you can take our mark, come with us up the mountain, and get to spend a little more time with your woman.”