by J. S. Bangs
“Believe me, Mandhi, had I been in Davrakhanda none of the things which befell you and your child would have happened. I give you my deepest sympathy. And I do not hold the theft against you. I’d like to maintain my friendship with Virnas and the Heirs.”
Mandhi’s expression softened a little. She folded her hands together and spoke softly. “Then help me return to Virnas.”
“Is that what this is actually about?”
Mandhi raised her head and addressed Sadja in a tone that bordered on desperation. “I have over fifty Kaleksha here whom I need to see after. I brought them from Kalignas, and I intend to take them to the court of Navran-dar in Virnas. But after paying the last of the mercenaries and giving you the dhows, I have no money left to pay for their passage.”
“I see,” Sadja said. “But why should I help you with that? I’d rather have you here in Davrakhanda.”
“If you want me as a liaison to Navran-dar, then you won’t take me prisoner.”
“Oh, no.” Sadja shook his head gravely. “It’s clear that captivity doesn’t suit you.”
“Then you won’t attempt to keep me here in Davrakhanda.”
“I won’t force you to stay in Davrakhanda,” Sadja repeated. “But as I said, an imperial pardon isn’t free. Neither is the help you need to return to Virnas.”
“Then perhaps an arrangement can be made,” Mandhi said.
Sadja smiled. He ran his finger along the railing of the balcony and looked out over the city. “The Red Men are mostly lost to me, and in their absence I have been considering replacements. There would be considerable advantages to having the Kaleksha as a personal guard. They are, after all, plenty big, and their pale color and bright hair make for a striking sight.”
He couldn’t read anything on Mandhi’s expression. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her eyes were half-closed in thought. “Interesting.”
“They would, of course, be Uluriya. But this may not be a hindrance. It may, in fact, work to cement my ties with Navran-dar of Virnas.”
“If the Kaleksha men are guarding you, how could they ever return to Virnas?”
“Something could be arranged,” Sadja said. “Perhaps I’d release them after a period of service.”
There was movement behind the curtain at the entrance to the balcony. A messenger whispered something to Bhargasa, who was standing silently, then withdrew. Bhargasa bowed.
“What is it?” Sadja asked.
“Three Uluriya have requested entrance to the palace,” Bhargasa said. “Friends of Mandhi.”
“Let them in,” Sadja said. He glanced aside at Mandhi. “Do you want to speak with them?”
“They’re here to attest to Kest’s innocence,” Mandhi said.
Sadja nodded at Bhargasa. “Let them in. Mandhi and I will go to them.”
He strode across the balcony and took up step beside Mandhi. “And in the meantime,” he whispered to her, “perhaps you can consider under what terms we might make a mutually profitable arrangement.”
They reached the courtyard a few steps behind Bhargasa. Three people had entered through the white gated arch, and they waited next to the bruised Kaleksha. All Uluriya, judging by the styles of their hair, two of them in the saghada’s white, and the third a girl of about thirteen. There was something odd about the girl. He took a long glance at her as he descended the stairs from the palace to the courtyard.
The girl—
He felt a strange vertigo. The stairs seemed to shift. The stones were moving beneath him. The crowd of soldiers and khadir in the courtyard parted for the Uluriya, the two men approached, and between them—
The courtyard was flooded with red light and tilted perilously, as if it were sliding into a pit of coals. The girl approached, light falling around her, burning with flame. Wings and daggers glittered in her wake. His sister, his bane.
No, he thought. Not here.
But the spirit pulled him like a tidal current. He couldn’t turn away. The red light was everywhere. His tongue burned. His lips were wet with blood and salt.
Flames sprouted from the girl’s mouth. Blood flowed down her chin. The air around her was full of wings, red light like a forge fire, hammered copper shining in her eyes. She spoke.
“Hail brother, son of the open wound!” Her voice was like a thunder-crash and the blows of hammers on bronze. “Speak woe to the accursed land.”
He spoke. He couldn’t not speak. The words burned in his mouth, his tongue as hot as a live coal. “Hail, sister, daughter of the merciless stars! Speak deliverance to the afflicted people.”
The girl drew a step closer to him. “Weep, brother! Red fire burns in the heavens. Let the people tremble and wail.”
His hands shook. “Laugh, sister. The spear will pierce the serpent. Let the people rejoice and make glad.”
“Speak…” she began.
“Speak,” he repeated.
They spoke in unison, like a river bursting its banks in flood, a fire leaping from its bed to a bundle of dry sticks.
“Speak the forgotten name. Hold the forbidden feast. Join what was broken, and break what is whole. Burn the fields and scatter the seed.”
With a clap of thunder, the vision closed. The wings vanished, the fire died on her lips, the blood disappeared from her chin. For a moment he was aware of himself, standing in the courtyard with a young girl, little more than a child, rocking on her feet before him. The courtyard was silent in shock.
She fainted. His legs trembled, his vision grew white, then he, too, fell.
DALADHAM
“He’s stirring,” Amabhu said. “Is the girl still awake?”
“She’s fine,” the saghada replied.
Daladham sat on a stool between twin beds in the palace infirmary, in a room that had grown uncomfortably crowded. On his right lay the Emperor of Amur, and on his left an Uluriya girl. Across from him waited the two thikratta, Amabhu and Caupana, and the palace medic tending to the Emperor.
And there he was, the only dhorsha resident in Sadja’s palace. He had sprinkled the unconscious Emperor with blessed water and lit incense to drive off any lingering spirits. Now the burden of understanding why the Emperor and the girl had begun to prophecy upon seeing each other fell to him.
The girl’s guardian, one of the Uluriya saghada, sat at his niece’s side and stroked her tightly bound hair. She had woken up a few minutes ago, and had taken water and food that the saghada had blessed. Daladham had tried to question her, but her uncle had stopped him, begging him to wait until Sadja woke up. Another Uluriya woman sat at the girl’s feet.
“Remind me,” he begged them. “What are your names and relations? I need to know for the Emperor’s sake.”
“The Emperor already knows,” the Uluriya woman said sharply. Then, more softly, she added, “I am Mandhi. The saghada is Nakhur, and this is his niece Aryaji.”
“You’ve been here before,” Daladham said.
Mandhi nodded. There was some complicated history between Sadja and Mandhi that they hadn’t disclosed to him, but he gathered that Mandhi, Aryaji, and Sadja had previously known each other in some fashion.
“And did you…” He hesitated and pointed to Aryaji. “Did this happen when she saw the Emperor previously?”
Mandhi and Nakhur both shook their heads.
“I don’t know how often she saw Sadja-daridarya when she was my maid in the palace,” Mandhi said, “but she must have glimpsed him at some point. In any case, the amashi didn’t come to her for the first time until we had… until after we left Davrakhanda.”
“I’m sorry, but what is an amashi?”
The saghada spoke up. “The amashi are the Powers of the stars who serve Ulaur.”
“Ah,” Daladham said. “And you attribute the girl’s fits to one of those.”
“She prophesies,” Nakhur said, with an edge of offense in his voice. “They are not meaningless fits.”
“No, they aren’t,” Daladham agreed. “That’s why we’
re here.”
The Emperor was blinking and moving his limbs. The palace medic saw Sadja’s movements and rose from where he sat between Amabhu and Caupana, felt Sadja’s head and cheek with the back of his palm, and prodded at his throat and temples. Sadja submitted to the medic’s ministrations silently.
“He’s fine,” the medic declared after a moment, “aside from the affliction of the Powers that’s on him. But you, Daladham-dhu, should deal with that.”
Daladham worried seriously whether he could, but he nodded to the medic.
Sadja swatted the doctor’s hand aside and sat up. He looked at Aryaji sitting on the bed next to him. For a moment Daladham was worried they would both begin to prophecy again. But nothing happened. The girl turned her head and met Sadja’s gaze. Her eyes were free of fear. She was remarkably self-assured for a maid.
“So,” Sadja said to her, “I suppose I should know your name.”
“Aryaji,” the girl replied. “They told me, my Emperor, that you are Sadja-daridarya.”
“I am,” Sadja said pleasantly. He glanced aside at Daladham and the two thikratta standing beside him. “How long has she been awake?”
“Only a few minutes, my Emperor,” Daladham responded. “We carried you both in here…”
“Good,” Sadja said. He took a sharp breath and blinked several times as if clearing away the fog of sleep. “Water.”
Daladham handed the Emperor a silver cup and muttered a prayer over him. Sadja drank the cup to the bottom, then set it down on the bed.
“It seems that the time for subtlety with regards to our affliction is over.” He looked at Daladham and the two thikratta. “You knew that the spirit sometimes took me?”
Daladham swallowed. “I heard rumors, my Emperor.”
“They are true,” Sadja said. “I shall not hide them any longer. They began on the night that I took the Ushpanditya and the red star appeared. Aryaji, how long have you been troubled by these fits?”
“Since we left Amur for Kalignas,” Aryaji said. She looked aside at Nakhur. “I don’t remember the exact day…”
“On the forty-first day of our journey to Kalignas,” the saghada said. “The red star appeared suddenly in the sky—”
“It didn’t appear,” Mandhi said. “It had been there, but dim.”
Nakhur looked at Mandhi in surprise.
Sadja broke in. “My astrologer knew about it. I showed it to Mandhi on her very first visit to this palace.”
“I hadn’t realized that,” Nakhur muttered. “In any case, the star blazed, and Aryaji woke. The amashi took her, she spoke, and then she fainted. Rather like today.”
“The same with me,” Sadja said. “Probably on the same day. So, sister—I’ll call you sister, even when the spirit is not speaking through me, if you’ll allow it.”
The little girl smiled cleverly and hid her mouth behind her hand. “Sure, my Emperor, my brother.”
Sadja smiled. “Good, my sister. We have the same affliction, and perhaps now that we are together we can gain some insights. Daladham-dhu, have you written down what was said?”
“Not yet, my Emperor,” Daladham said. “I was unsure how to proceed. To protect you, I purified the room, burned incense, and sprinkled water with the name of Lord Am—”
He noticed Nakhur, the Uluriya saghada, shifting uncomfortably as he said this. “Is there a problem?” Daladham asked.
Nakhur spoke hesitantly. “If this place has been purified according to dhaur, then I should not be here.”
“Really?” Daladham said. He could not suppress his curiosity. He knew the Uluriya only by reputation and had barely any idea of their practice. “Then—maybe we should move to another place—”
“When did you perform the, ah, purification?” Nakhur asked. He glanced aside at the other Uluriya woman, who shrugged.
“Just before the Emperor was brought in,” Daladham said.
“Then it’s too late,” Nakhur said, a mixture of dejection and relief in his voice. “We can stay.”
“Oh,” Daladham said, piecing together what had occurred. “I hope I haven’t caused you too much trouble by rendering you unclean.”
“No,” Nakhur sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck with his arm. “I’ve been in a lot of unclean places lately. So long as I return before sundown my debt will be small—”
“Ah, so you, too, follow the sundown rule.”
The saghada paused. “What do you mean, you, too?”
“Your rule reminds me of our own,” Daladham said. He began tapping his fingers on his knee in excitement. “If rendered unclean, a dhorsha must purify himself by sundown if I intend to enter the sanctum of the temple or any other place holy to Lord Am. And impurity comes in three degrees—”
“Perhaps,” Sadja cut in, “we should continue the discussion of purity another time. So long as the saghada here is willing to remain with us.”
Daladham bowed his head and quieted.
“I’ll remain,” Nakhur said quietly.
“Now I asked whether anyone had written down what Aryaji and I said. Daladham-dhu?”
“No,” Daladham repeated. “I was not in the courtyard.”
“I was,” Mandhi said.
“So was I,” Amabhu answered. “I remember it pretty well.”
“And I believe that I remember most of it,” Sadja said. “You, my sister?”
The girl giggled at Sadja’s salutation. “Yes, I remember what the amashi told me.”
Sadja smiled. “Perhaps you should tell me some time about the amashi. I might like it’s presence better if I knew how to name it.”
Daladham heard a quiet groan of displeasure from the throat of the saghada. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps if he had time to question the man about Uluriya practice…
Caupana spoke, cutting of Daladham’s train of thought. “I’ll get a slate. We should write it down.”
Caupana returned with the large slate that Daladham and the thikratta kept in their room. Daladham hesitated a moment when Caupana handed him the slate and the rag to erase it. He had covered it with fragments from the secret book of Ternas, in a vain attempt to decipher the script. These were his notes and ideas, and he was loathe to abandon them.
But he hadn’t really gotten anywhere. With a sigh he wiped clean a portion of the center of the slate and prepared himself to record the prophecies of the Emperor and the Uluriya child.
They spent a few minutes repeating the fragments that each person recalled. There were some discrepancies over wording, and an argument about which order the statements had come in, but eventually Daladham had the following declarations laid out on the slate:
Speak woe to the accursed land.
Speak deliverance to the afflicted people.
Red fire burns in the heavens, tremble and wail.
The spear will pierce the serpent, rejoice and make glad.
Speak the forgotten name, hold the forbidden feast.
Burn the fields, scatter the seed.
Join what was broken, break what is whole.
He read them out loud to the group, balancing the slate on his lap. For a moment everyone was silent.
“It’s rather grim, isn’t it?” Amabhu said.
“Can you deny that these are grim times?” Sadja said.
“Well, if you think it’s about the Mouth of the Devourer—”
“Of course it’s about the Mouth of the Devourer,” Daladham said testily. “What else did you think it could be?”
“I don’t know,” Amabhu said sheepishly. “But nothing about it really says ‘peasant rebel who breaks the Dhigvaditya and overturns the Empire.’”
“The spear will pierce the serpent, obviously,” Daladham said. “As when Kushma slew the serpent by casting the stone down from heaven.”
“It was Ulaur who slew the serpent,” Nakhur said.
“Really?” Daladham turned toward the saghada again. “We should discuss Uluriya doctrine some time. I know next to nothing—”
“Yes, the prophecy,” Daladham said, embarrassed. “Putting aside the question of whether the serpent-killer was Ulaur or Kushma, it seems obvious to me that the serpent speaks of the Mouth of the Devourer, or perhaps more accurately, of She Who Devours, the Power that is his patron. And we have a prophecy of their destruction.”
“I’m not sure this is good news,” Amabhu said nervously. He held his hand against his cheek and chewed on a nail.
“Not good news?” Daladham said. “After the Mouth of the Devourer chased us out of Tulakhanda and Majasravi?”
“Yes, but read the rest of the lines,” Amabhu said. “Woe, burning, and breaking.”
“Woe, burning, and breaking may be the cost of defeating She Who Devours,” Daladham said. “Burning and breaking we’ve already had.”
The saghada Nakhur made a nervous noise in his throat. “I don’t know what your books say about Kushma,” he said, putting a contemptuous emphasis on the last word, “but the Uluriya remember what happened after the serpent was destroyed by the light of Ulaur. Perhaps we should avoid doing it again.”
Caupana spoke up in a low, even voice. He stood with his arms rigid at his side at the foot of Sadja’s pallet, and he watched Daladham carefully. “We remember. Kushma hurled down the stone and shattered the serpent. An earthquake shook the land, and three quarters of the people were crushed. Fires burned across the face of the earth, and three quarters of the remnant were burned. The sky was blackened for a year and a day, and three quarters of the remnant starved. It’s not for nothing that he is remembered with bloody feet and skulls hanging around his neck.”
“But out of the remnant,” Nakhur said, responding in a chant with a peculiar accentuation. “Manjur and the righteous were led by Ulaur to the place where the star had fallen to the earth. There Manjur found the cold heart of the star, and from the iron of heaven he fashioned a ring for himself and five for his children. The rings are kept by the Heirs of Manjur to this day.”
Everyone was quiet.
“Well,” Daladham said at last, “I don’t know about that last part.”
