Sword of the Deceiver

by Sarah Zettel

  Samudra reclaimed his sword and reverently carried the arrow back to the dormitory. Natharie let him in when he called to her.

  “What is it?” she asked, watching him with wide eyes as he carried the arrow past her.

  “Hamsa.”

  He carefully laid the arrow down on the floor and with fingers that trembled with the wonder of it, he undid the knot in the red thread.

  As soon as the thread fell away, the arrow was gone. Instead, Hamsa lay before him, but not as she had been when he last saw her. Hamsa had always been a round woman. This Hamsa had not a spare ounce of flesh on her. The bones at her wrist and collar stood out stiffly. Her hair, all her braids had been shorn roughly from her head, leaving only ragged stubble behind.

  Despite this, Hamsa’s eyes opened and she saw clearly. “You are late, my prince.”

  “I have been told that before,” he whispered. His mind was dizzy with wonder and awe, and all he could give voice to was the least of sentiments. “It is good to see you, Hamsa.”

  Her gaze drifted over to Natharie. “And you too, Great Princess. I am glad. We may begin the last work.” She took in a deep breath and let it out again. “But first I fear you must let me rest a little.”

  “As long as you need, Hamsa,” said Samudra. But the sorceress’s eyes were already closed and her breath had slowed and deepened, carrying her into sleep.

  Natharie unrolled a second mat and Samudra laid Hamsa upon it.

  “You will grow bored with caring for weary women,” she said softly, lightly.

  Samudra grinned at her. “I think not.” He felt strangely buoyant, as if some new world had opened up in front of him. He could not have said why this was, and yet it was so. Perhaps it was finding life where he had expected only death, or perhaps that he had not betrayed Hamsa after all. It was much like the sudden joy in the midst of battle when he looked up and saw not the enemy advancing, but allies.

  Natharie looked down at the starved, sleeping sorceress.

  “How is it she is here?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. However she came, it was a great working she made. Mothers forgive me, I would not have believed her capable of such a feat.” He was grinning and he knew it, but Natharie was not. She rubbed her arms as if despite the sultry heat of the evening she grew cold.

  “I fear the morning, Samudra,” she whispered.

  He came to kneel beside her, wrapping her in his embrace and savoring his right to do so. “Do not. The wheel is turning that is all, and whatever comes we will meet it.”

  He held her like that until sleep came for her too. Then, Samudra laid his wife down and settled himself cross-legged between the two women sleeping on their mats, his back to the wall, his face to the door. He laid his naked sword across his lap and with a better will than he had known in so many bleak days, he set himself to wait, and to watch.

  Hamsa woke with the dawn and sat up at once. For all her starveling appearance and cropped hair, Samudra could not remember ever seeing her so filled with vibrant energy. Her eyes sparkled mischievously as she made formal obeisance to him.

  “None of that!” he whispered sharply, pulling her to him. “Embrace me as a sister! Mothers All, Hamsa! What have you done?”

  “Almost as much as you, I think,” she said, holding him at arm’s length and looking him up and down. “Yes,” she said with sudden sobriety. “You too have walked farther shores.”

  “We all have.” Samudra nodded toward Natharie, still sleeping on her mat, disheveled and utterly beautiful.

  “And I fear we are not done yet,” said Hamsa softly.

  Samudra nodded in agreement. “But that is not all you have done, Hamsa. I saw the arrow. How is it you could make such a working? Why have you never done so before?”

  Her mouth twisted into a tight and mirthless smile. “I couldn’t.” And she told him with careful words the story of how Yamuna had held half her soul captive in a jar of red clay. All the while she spoke, Samudra felt his eyes widen and his heartbeat grow heavy, like that of a child at a story of demons and ghosts.

  “Mothers All,” he exclaimed again, this time in a choked whisper. “I do not know where to begin to speak my apologies, Hamsa. You were right in so many things … and I could not hear.”

  She just shook her shorn head. “It does not matter, my prince. All that matters is what we do next. We have no time to waste.” He met her eyes and saw there the one he had missed for all the long years, the strong and steady counselor, the protector he was meant to have, and Samudra smiled, feeling the doubled strength, the safety that came only from knowing there was a loyal friend to guard his back.

  With some small guilt, Samudra shook Natharie’s shoulder. She quickly came awake, showing how much her strength had returned after a night of safety and a filling meal. In the small hours of the morning, Samudra had set about turning milk and rice into porridge, which was now ready, and before anything else, he insisted the women eat. They both had two bowls and Natharie laughingly vowed he would be the one in charge of the kitchen wherever they made their home.

  “Yes, wherever that may be.” Samudra laid his bowl aside. “Hamsa, we have had no news for days. What can you tell us of how things now stand between Hastinapura and Sindhu?” While I have fled down the sacred river and been the guest of the Mothers, what has my brother done?

  Hamsa crossed her legs and sipped at a cup of tea. “Some of this I heard from your soldiers, Samudra. Some … I came to understand through other means. Great magic was worked here across many years.” Her gaze grew dim. “Some is here still. The rest … it has left echoes.”

  She told them of the preparations for war, of Divakesh’s manic insistence that the fight go forward despite those who whispered that he, Samudra, was wrongly accused and that Hamsa’s disappearance was an omen. She told them that Makul had died ensuring her escape and Samudra wept unashamed at this hard news.

  Then she told them the story that had come to her during the slow, patient dreaming of her other form; how the monks had gathered all the people of Sindhu together and walked them beyond the borders of the world so they might be safe from the war to come.

  “It is a thing I never heard of, even in legend,” whispered Hamsa, clearly awestruck. “To walk even one divided soul … one who is not a sorcerer through the Land of Death and Shadow is a monumental task. To take thousands … it is a miracle.”

  “They are there now?”

  Hamsa nodded. “And safe as if they slept in their own beds.”

  “Is my family with them?” asked Natharie. She had clenched her hands together until her knuckles turned white.

  Hamsa only shook her head. “I do not know. I’m sorry.”

  “Where is the army now?” asked Samudra quickly. Neither of them had the time for sorrow anymore.

  “They are in Sindhu,” said Hamsa without hesitation. It was strange to hear so much certainty from her and yet it lifted Samudra’s heart almost as much as the prospect of action. “More than that, I cannot say.”

  This time it was Samudra who hesitated. Ordinarily, he would not have considered asking such a question, but there had been so many miracles in the past few days, what was one more? “Is there a way you can send me to them?”

  The sorceress considered for a long moment. “No. Not as you would wish. I fear, my prince, I must save my strength.”

  “For what?” cried Samudra, surprised, and a little irritated.

  “For Yamuna,” she answered. “Do you want to end this fight, Samudra? We must draw Yamuna from the battlefield.”

  “You are certain?”

  Hamsa nodded. “Yes.”

  She was watching him closely, waiting to see if he remembered his earlier words. How could he forget, when this utterly transformed Hamsa sat in front of him speaking with a confidence that he was used to in great generals?

  He said none of this. He only asked, “How may it be done?”

  “Easily enough.” Hamsa smiled grimly. “I
will let him know where I am.” Samudra opened his mouth to ask how that could be enough, but Hamsa anticipated his question. “I dared to crack his plans in two. In his mind there is no greater sin. He will come as soon as I call, and then …”

  “Then what?” asked Natharie.

  “Then we will see whether I have truly understood the way of things or not.” Hamsa’s eyes went distant, seeing something invisible to him. “But you cannot be here when this happens,” she went on and she unfolded her legs. “Come. We will go ask Liyoni if she will speed you on your way.”

  Samudra glanced at Natharie, and together they stood and followed Hamsa down to the dock. She stood at the end of the pier and raised her hands. She called out three words that Samudra did not understand, and then she stood still, close enough to touch and yet a thousand leagues away. Moments passed away and all the morning went still. Not even a mosquito sang.

  “Get in the boat,” said Hamsa, not looking at either of them. “She will carry you.”

  Natharie did not question, but climbed aboard and slipped the rope at once. Samudra stepped in beside her, but turned back.

  “Hamsa …” he began.

  “This is my fight, my prince,” she answered. The new light in her eye grew briefly dangerous, and for the first time in his life, Samudra felt his skin shiver as he looked upon his sorceress. “You must go to your own.”

  Samudra made the salute of trust to Hamsa, and then picked up the pole and pushed the boat into the current. It caught them up immediately, swiftly bearing them away.

  Hamsa stood on the long pier and watched Samudra and Natharie’s little boat riding on Liyoni’s great current until she could see them no more. Then she turned and walked back toward the monastery. She was tired. She wanted rest, but there was no time. This was the fight she had wished for, she could not refuse it.

  She did miss her walking stick.

  She reached the open gates and turned. The air was still and heavy with the scents of the forest. The insects chirruped lazily and the birds could not be bothered to call out at all.

  Hamsa lifted her face. “Yamuna? Yamuna, where are you?”

  As she spoke his name, in her mind’s eye she saw him. He was in the emperor’s pavilion, crouched beside the emperor’s throne. No one heeded him, least of all his master, who was watching the high priest in front of him with his lazy, dangerous gaze. Hamsa felt the emperor’s hate and fear of Divakesh vibrating through the world almost as strong as Yamuna’s working. The sorcerer hunched over a square of white silk drawn with inks, earths, and bloods. Beside him waited a jar of black glass. Her name had been woven into the circle nine times. Some of the earth was ash from things belonging to her burnt in special fires. The blood was his own. He sought her with every iota of his strength. His eyes burned with this intent and no other, and only the lingering protections of the monastery kept his malice from her.

  “It is time, Yamuna,” said Hamsa. “You want me. Here I am.”

  With those words, the invisible gates flew open wide. Away in that pavilion, Yamuna’s head jerked up. He saw her now, with the eyes of his own mind. He knew just where she was and he leapt to his feet, triumph blazing through him. He snatched up the glittering black bottle. Without stopping to consult priest or emperor, he strode out into the open air. While soldiers stared and shrank away, he cast the bottle to the ground. It shattered and countless pieces of night flew in every direction, but they did not fall. They whirled together like a swarm of black flies, buzzing and cutting through the wind. They swirled around Yamuna, lifting him up into the sky, making the wind visible with their shining blackness, and they bore the grinning sorcerer away.

  Her inner vision faded. The wind blew gently through her ragged hair. Hamsa turned and walked back into the deserted gardens to wait.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Pravan stared out at the the rice fields that surrounded Sindhu’s capital city. The land was so flat that by standing in his stirrups, Pravan could see the sacred river snaking through the countyside a quarter league away. The rice was green and waving in its flooded paddies, and these fields were as abandoned as all the others had been. The city walls were massive wooden palisades atop earthen banks rising up five times a man’s height, their battlements painted red, green, and gold. They looked sound, but the stout gates hung open, and beyond them Pravan saw no smoke rising. He heard none of the sounds that must come from a large city, no voices human or animal, no sound of cart or foot. Whatever had taken away the people of Sindhu had not spared this place.

  “Was it plague, Captain?” murmured his lieutenant, Vikas, who brought his horse up beside him.

  “I wish it was,” he said softly. If it was plague we could turn around and even Divakesh could not contradict us. “Is there word from the outriders yet?” He’d sent men into the forest, and into the fields, to search for ambush, for cowering farmers, for someone, anyone, who could tell them what was happening in this ghost of a place.

  Vikas, forgetful of proper respect, only shook his head, and Pravan could not find it in him to rebuke the man. “We will need to send others,” he said, his eyes scanning the country around them again, and again. “See to it.”

  And if they do not come back? We should turn around. We should go all the way back to the Pearl Throne. He pictured himself trying to say this to the emperor, and his whole being curdled with fear and revulsion. They had to find some witness to what happened here. It was the only way the emperor might hear reason.

  “They say,” Vikas began, then he stopped, looking around to make sure no one overheard. “Sindhu’s Awakened One is really a sorcerer and that he lifted them all into Heaven. They say he is even now readying an army of demons to rain down on us.”

  “Worry about the Huni, Vikas, not demons,” Pravan snapped with more confidence than he felt. He wheeled his horse around. “We will halt here while I get our orders from the emperor!” he shouted to the officers behind him. “I want good watch kept! Now is not the time to be caught napping!” Not with open gates and an empty city before us and the forest behind. “And when the outriders come back see they are brought to me at once!”

  Pravan gathered his nerve and rode back to where the imperial chariot waited.

  Divakesh, however, had beaten him to the emperor’s chariot. The man had walked all the way to Sindhu, like the lowliest foot soldier, preparing the way for the image of the Mother carried on her golden palanquin behind him.

  “Here comes Captain Pravan,” the emperor was saying as he approached. “You can ask him.”

  Pravan dismounted at once, making the salute of trust.

  “Why have we stopped, Captain?” demanded Divakesh. “Why do we not seize this city and carry Mother Indu to its heart?”

  Pravan licked his lips and prayed to Mother Vimala, who oversaw traders and others who lived by their tongues, to send him persuasive words. “The city may appear empty, Lord Divakesh, but this may yet be a trap. It may be the Sindishi and their allies have all withdrawn to some hidden spot within the walls and they are waiting for us to walk in. Caution will lose us but a few hours, perhaps as much as a day, but may gain us the victory.”

  “How dare you!” Divakesh stalked forward, his chin quivering with the force of his rage. Behind him, Pravan saw the emperor smile his lazy smile, and the fear he had been keeping at bay bit deep into his heart. “How dare you suggest the Mothers have not brought us victory!” shouted Divakesh. “How dare you suggest we have done wrong in their names!”

  Pravan took a step backward. “My lord, I did not suggest wrong, only caution.” All the rumors that he had heard about the high priest, the rumors which had cost men their lives, came flooding back to him now.

  “Caution!” roared the priest. “Cowardice! The Queen of Heaven has commanded this war and it is our duty to follow Her without hesitation or question!”

  “Divakesh,” said the emperor quietly.

  Divakesh turned in place, and for a moment Pravan thought the pr
iest meant to rebuke the emperor for interrupting him. Emperor Chandra handed his spear to one of his personal army of attendants, then lifted off his crown and gave it to another. He scratched his scalp vigorously and swung his arms over his head, stretching, and all the time watching the walls of the city.

  “You tell us it is the Mothers who created this victory, my lord Divakesh,” the emperor said at last. “Is it not then right and proper that you should take Mother Indu into the city and consecrate it to her before any of us enters? Would that not purify the confines and render them fit for the First Son of the Mothers?”

  Pravan felt himself tensing to hear what Agnidh Yamuna would say about all this, but the sorcerer was gone already and none knew where. Some said he fled in the face of a bad omen, and the men were growing more nervous because of it. Pravan tried to accept the story that Yamuna had gone to root out whatever curse emptied the country and hid the enemy, but his heart did not believe.

  Divakesh’s eyes gleamed. “It will be as you say, my emperor,” he bowed. “I will take my priests and a hundred of the soldiers, with trumpeters and drummers. The Mother of War must have a worthy escort.” Without waiting for Pravan to give counsel, let alone permission, the high priest strode off, bellowing his orders to whoever was nearest. Men scattered out of his path, to hurry to obey him, or just to get out of his way, Pravan could not tell.

  Beside him, the emperor whispered, “So now, you old devil, now we will see. If you truly know the will of the Mothers, you should have no trouble doing this thing.”

  “My emperor …” began Pravan carefully.

  “No, Pravan.” The emperor shook his head, his attention all on the city walls before them. “We must wait now and see.”