Sword of the Deceiver

by Sarah Zettel

  Hamsa looked at the Mothers arrayed before her. She felt the weight of the chains on her wrists and ankles, and the warmth of the blade against her curled fingers.

  “Please,” she said to the guard. “Let me make my prayers alone.”

  Taru nodded, but the taller of the other two soldiers looked uncertain. “And what will I do if you work some magic to escape?”

  She looked the man right in his eyes. His heart showed plainly in them. He might not like what was happening, he might even be Samudra’s man, but he was loyal to the Throne. He would not betray its servant, not without orders from a captain he trusted. She certainly did not qualify as that.

  “I am bound by the will of the sorcerer Yamuna,” Hamsa said quietly. She lifted her hands. “And these chains. I can do nothing.” It was true, and it was not true. Would he choose to believe? “I go to stand before the Mothers. Let me make the last sacrifice I can.”

  He nodded slowly. Did he understand what her words meant? Taru did, and she could see it was hard for him to hold steady. “Very well,” said the other. “But we can give you only a moment.”

  Taru led the others out, closing the door behind them, and Hamsa was alone with the burning fire, the Mothers, and her knife. She uncurled her fist. It was stiff. There was a hard red line on her hand where the blade had pressed, almost cutting her skin.

  Clumsily she knelt before the fire. She lifted the knife in her left hand and laid it against her right wrist. Her fingers shook, even now her heart wavered.

  No. There was no time for doubt. She would do this. Even if it meant only her death, it would be her hand and her own actions that brought her end, not Yamuna’s will and Divakesh’s arm.

  Hamsa exhaled. She called up the magic from inside her hollow heart and soul. She pushed the iron shackle up on her arm as far as it would go. She breathed onto her festering wrist. She leaned forward and kissed her wounded flesh, leaving a wet and shining circle on the blue vein visible just below the brown skin. She pressed down with the silver blade and cut a red line, long, swift and deep.

  The blood welled up rich and red-black at once. She stared at it, stupid and dizzy from the sight. The pain of the wound followed a moment later, and she bit her lips hard to keep from screaming. She squeezed her eyes shut, clutched her arm, and rose to her feet. Spilling out her life’s blood, Hamsa began to dance.

  She danced with wavering, drunken steps tracing a circle around the fire. She danced, expelling with the blood all the magic in her. She danced, weaving breath and blood, fire and pain and life. She danced in prayer and sacrifice. She danced in desperate silence as the hot blood ran down her arm and spattered onto the floor. She danced in her own blood and danced in silence.

  Mother Jalaja, Queen of Heaven, hear me, hear me. I am the least of your children. I do not deserve my single soul. But I beg you come to me, hear me. I have nowhere else to turn. This last thing I offer, I make sacrifice of all I am. Come to me. Hear me. Mother Jalaja, hear me …

  Her foot came down wrong in the path of her blood, and Hamsa crashed to her knees. She heard the hiss as blood met fire. The world swam and spun.

  Mother Jalaja, hear me … I am the least of your children … This last thing I offer …

  “I hear you, daughter.”

  Hamsa opened her eyes. The temple had faded away into blackness. There was only the fire, and herself, and the woman before her. She shone like the sun, crowned in gold and diamonds. A garland of lotus flowers hung around Her neck and flowed across Her bare breasts. Another garland girdled Her waist.

  Hamsa was still bleeding freely, but it did not seem to mean much now. Perhaps she had already died. Hamsa prostrated herself before the goddess.

  “Mother Jalaja, Queen of Heaven, I …”

  “I know.” She shook Her head, and Her face was stern. “You should have come before. You should not have waited for Divakesh to bring me here.”

  Hamsa was beyond shame, even in the face of the goddess’s reproof. “I know. I am unworthy.”

  “You think too much on what you are, daughter, and not on what you must be.”

  “Mother, it is only you who can make me what I must be.” She did not want to have to speak these words but there was only honesty left to her. Only truth would help this thing be done. “I have lived too long in my fear and now the wheel has turned and left me no time. I have come to beg for Prince Samudra. I plead with you. I offer up my life to you. Do not let my weakness doom him.”

  For a moment, Hamsa thought the goddess’s face grew gentle. “Samudra does not ask this of you.”

  Shame crawled out from Hamsa’s belly, draining the last of her strength. “He puts little faith in me.”

  “He knows nothing of your true power. But he is a soldier. If your power were fully at his command, he would use it. He will use up your power and life, and he will not regret that moment until it is done, for that is what commanders must do. Would you live long enough for him to give you such an order?”

  Hamsa remained silent for a long moment. She had been ready to die a moment ago, but this was new. Was it possible that she might live? The Queen of Heaven was here. All things were possible.

  Live in service to her prince, the service Yamuna mocked, that he rejected with such abhorrence that he would destroy empires to escape it. Live and serve, until Samudra ordered her death.

  Then Hamsa realized something was missing. The bond. The working that tied her to Samudra. It had vanished and no longer weighed on her heart. She was herself alone here in Mother Jalaja’s darkness, and it was only her soul that would decide.

  She spoke slowly and from her laboring heart. “If that is the way it must be, I accept.” Certainty grew in her. This was herself that spoke and none other. “I too am of the land and a child of the Mothers. I do not wish my home to fall because I refused to help it flourish.”

  Mother Jalaja nodded. “Then, so be it. You will have power now. The power that is your own, and the secrets your other half has learned watching the sorcerer Yamuna. But this is your doom. When you next look on us, it will be on your lord’s command. At that time, you will forfeit your place on the wheel.”

  Those words sank like lead into Hamsa’s soul. Mother Jalaja did not mean she would die. She meant that Hamsa would no more be reborn. This life, this time would be her last. If she accepted this she would have more than she had ever dreamed, but it would be an end more final than that of other souls.

  Hamsa made the salute of trust. “So be it, Mother.”

  Mother Jalaja nodded Her head, and Hamsa felt approval and sorrow wash over her. “Stand.”

  Hamsa stood, amazed that there was still strength in her limbs to do so. Mother Jalaja laid Her palm over Hamsa’s wounded arm. Her touch burned as if Hamsa had laid her arm in the fire, but Hamsa stood and she held and encompassed the holy pain.

  “Open is your heart. Open is your soul. Receive the power that is your gift, your right, and your doom.”

  The fire of the Mother’s touch sank through her skin. It ran into her blood, igniting her veins and her bones beneath them. It was pain, blinding white like the heart of a star. It was ecstasy. It was the pinnacle of hope and it was despair. It was the key to her soul. It was the seal on her future, and she felt the coming days close tight about her.

  Last of all, it was strength and understanding. All that she had struggled to learn, all that her mind had been unable to compass before, she now knew. She knew where her heart was and she felt the center of her soul. Never again would her own magics slip away from her. They were hers forever.

  Hamsa opened her eyes.

  Around her she saw the temple, and she breathed in the smoke and scent of the sacred fire, and she was alone. Her knife lay at her feet in a circle of her blood that was drying rapidly on the stone floor. Her arm was healed and whole, save for a red circle about the size of a woman’s palm that showed beneath the shackle. It was laid over the place where the veins ran closest to the surface, and she knew it wo
uld be there until the day she died.

  She did not know how long she had been gone. It did not matter. She must act swiftly. The blood already spilled gave her the beginning. She picked up the knife and knelt, steadying herself.

  She drew up the magic within and without. It surged in her, remembering the Queen of Heaven’s promise and Her touch. Words came to Hamsa, and she sketched them in the blood she had spilled. Singing softly under her breath, she brought the magic in and poured it out, weaving its pattern in blood and steel and song. She laid the knife blade, annointed with her blood and enchanted by her working, on the shackles at her wrist. They snapped open at once, and she caught them before they could fall. She treated the shackles on her ankle the same way and caught them too.

  “Mothers forgive me,” she said as she walked to the statue of A-Kuha the Deceiver. She no longer felt the fear of blasphemy. She had made her bargain. A holy life would not save her from it. Now she had power enough and more. This life was the only one she would ever know. There was a sharp kind of freedom in having neither reward nor punishment to consider, and it made her reckless.

  Hamsa snapped the shackles around Mother Destruction’s wrists, and wound the chain around Her ankles. With the last of her blood, she drew a symbol on the head of the statue, breathing on it and kissing it, tasting clay and iron as she did, breathing her magic out, weaving it into the magic without.

  Then she cast the knife onto the floor, grasped the shackled statue, and tipped it over.

  The crash was loud, and it brought her guards running, as she had known it would. They walked into the circle of her spell and saw the statues of the Mothers, all as they should be, caught in their dance. They also saw Hamsa, or what they took to be Hamsa, sprawled on the floor, weeping in her despair. They saw the blood and the knife, and Taru, tears shining in his young eyes lifted her to her feet, walking her slowly toward the door. Her chains rattled and dragged and her head sagged down from shame and weariness.

  They did not see they walked with a stone. They did not see Hamsa standing in the empty place left by the goddess’s statue. Nor would any other. Not even Yamuna. Not this time.

  The door closed behind her. She was free. She was dizzy, exultant, drunk with the proof of this new power. Oh, she would have to take care as she never had before. This was the lure of the sorcerer’s power, the bane on all of them, the one to which Yamuna had succumbed. Power they had and power they would scrabble for if they were allowed. She felt the taste of it now, wondering already what heights she could reach.

  Leave it for now. You are not yet truly free. Neither is Samudra.

  That thought steadied her and she stepped from her borrowed place. She would be visible now. Only speed would save her. She undid the red ribbon that bundled her braids and shook them out. She dipped her head down so they became a screen for her face, and calmly she walked out of the temple. The priests had preceded the guard to witness and bless her execution. There was none here to notice her. She snatched down several saffron mantles from their pegs by the door and folded them over her arms in an imitation of laundry to be delivered. She was filthy, but no longer bloody, so she would not attract much attention. Out in the corridor, she hunched herself over further, and walked with determination, one more servant in the palace of servants, invisible in plain sight.

  She must hurry. Her illusion would last until Divakesh’s sword came down. Fortunately, there was much dance and ritual, many blessings, and a reading of the charges to come before the sword did. She watched the corridor walls for a door that would take her down into the garrison tunnels and scurried ahead.

  In his private workroom, Yamuna lifted his head. He felt … something. A quiver in the air, a wrongness in the pattern that was the dance. It had a familiar touch to it.

  The fool. She’s trying again.

  With a disgusted sigh, he set aside the scroll he was studying and reached for the jar that held her shadow. Impatiently, he went through the ritual that would draw up the correct magic to make the working, and opened the jar.

  And nothing came forth.

  Startled, Yamuna drew down the magics more deeply. He faced the opened the jar and held his hand over it, concentrating all the force of his will on his silent command.

  And nothing happened. Before him stood an empty jar of dead clay. It held nothing, nothing at all.

  Yamuna stared, unable to believe what was before him for a long moment. Then, crying aloud in his fury, he flung the useless vessel across the room. It smashed hard against the wall, but before the shards fell, Yamuna was running down corridor and stairway.

  Hamsa had escaped. Somehow, pathetic, weak, cowardly Hamsa had escaped.

  In a small wardroom off the garrison tunnels, Makul paced back and forth. He should not be here. He should be up at the altar, standing witness to Hamsa’s execution, letting her know that there was at least one friend left to her. But he could not make himself go. Of all the things he had faced in his soldier’s life, this failure was too much for him. Samudra had fled, heading toward Sindhu and all that was there. To prevent disaster, Makul had to help the fool Pravan lead a holy war that would only mean the death of innocents and secure the Pearl Throne for an unworthy son.

  And there was nothing he could do but hide in the earth like a snake and curse himself.

  “Makul.” A woman’s soft whisper cut through his bitter self-castigation.

  Makul whirled around and saw Hamsa standing in front of him, a heap of saffron cloth in her arms. He felt his eyes start from his head and his blood run cold for a foolish moment, as if she were already a ghost. “Agnidh! How is this …?”

  She smiled. “There’s no time, Commander. If you would help the prince we both love, I need a favor of you.”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  “Thank you.” She came forward, looking over her shoulder to make sure none followed. “Listen.” She spoke softly, quickly. “They will soon discover what they execute is an illusion. There will be a great cry and a search. You must be the first to my rooms. There, you will find a black arrow. Do not let anyone take it from you. As soon as you can, you must shoot that arrow due south toward Sindhu. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Makul frankly. “But I will do as you say.”

  “Thank you.” She touched his hand, and in return he gripped her fingers for a moment.

  “What has happened, Hamsa? Your eyes burn. What demon …”

  She smiled a little. “No demon, Makul, I swear it. But I must go now. Remember your part and all will be well.”

  Hamsa was gone in an instant, her bare feet making no sound on the floor. Makul stared at the place where she had been, wondering for a moment if he had imagined the meeting. No. He still felt the warmth of her skin against his fingers. She was alive and had found a way to escape.

  Makul smiled and in an instant was running down the corridors, hope filling his heart and propelling him onward. The fight for Hastinapura was not over yet.

  Yamuna found the three soldiers leading Hamsa up to the great altar at the foot of Indu’s stair. Daylight streamed in through the open door that led from the courtyard.

  “Stop!” he bellowed. The three soldiers halted at once. Between them, Hamsa, filthy and trembling, ducked her head.

  Yamuna stalked up to her. “What have you done?” he cried. “You created a working to try to escape. Who helped you? What was done?”

  Hamsa remained silent.

  “Tell me!” Yamuna clouted her hard across the ear. Pain shot up his arm. Hamsa reeled backward but made no cry.

  “Tell me!”

  Hamsa only shook her head.

  Yamuna smashed his fist against the other side of her face, and again the pain was harsh.

  This time Hamsa sprawled on the floor. She struggled to her knees, her chains scraping and rattling. She bowed her head again, but still said nothing. Yamuna stood there, his chest heaving. Slowly, with the force of years of discipline, he collected himself. Silence in pai
n, hiding her face …

  He seized Hamsa’s chin and dragged her head up so she had to look at him, and he saw that the pupils of her wide and frightened eyes were not black, but they were red, red as polished stone.

  “Give me your sword,” he ordered the nearest soldier.

  “But, sir …” began the youth.

  “Give me your sword!”

  The youth gave way and drew his sword, handing it to Yamuna hilt first. He grabbed it and swung it over his head. The thing that wore Hamsa’s shape looked up at him with its red eyes, and grinned.

  Yamuna cried out again, and brought the sword down on her neck. The head rolled away and the illusion shattered, and the broken image of Mother A-Kuha lay on the floor at his feet.

  The guards gaped, first at the broken goddess, and then at Yamuna.

  “Find her,” he said, his fist tightening around the sword hilt. “Find her!”

  The soldiers scrambled to obey, running back into the heart of the palace. Yamuna stayed where he was, his hand clenching the sword and his teeth grinding together. It was not possible and yet it was happening. It occurred vaguely to him that Divakesh would be waiting for his sacrifice. Well, he could wait. He, Yamuna, had told Hamsa her place in the way of things and he would be the one to punish her for breaking the order he had set. When he was done, she would wish she had accepted the priest’s sword on her neck.

  When Hamsa felt her illusion shatter, she was already back in her own chamber in front of the dual-goddess altar where she had knelt so many times to contemplate her own despair. So. Yamuna had uncovered her deception a little early. She shook off the thought. She could not afford to dwell on it now.

  Hamsa opened one of her few chests of tools. Inside waited skeins of colored silks, cards of needles, and a pair of delicate scissors made of silver and bronze. She caught them up, and with her other hand she seized the bundle of her hair. She had a hundred braids. Each one was a spell, woven during her apprenticeship, woven with clumsy fingers and weak resolve. In the ordinary way, she would have released them one at a time as she received orders or found need. Now, instead, she lifted the scissors and she began to cut away at them, making her hair into a ragged cap, and filling her hand with the tightly made braids. When at last she held all her braids loose in her fist, she laid them on the floor. Her head felt strangely light. A breeze blew against her scalp and shoulders, making her shiver. She laid the scissors aside, picked up the shorn locks of hair, and began to weave them together. She drew her magic out and drew it in, and bound her braids together, making a great spell of so many weaker spells, taking the magic she had shaped so clumsily in her youth, and bending it to a new shape, burning up life and future, all the futures that could ever be. It was wonderful and it was terrible and she could not stop. Sweat poured down her forehead and her hands began to shake, but still she worked, concentrating on her breathing, focusing on each movement of her fingers, feeling the forces within and without slip into place and seal together.