by J. S. Bangs
“Because it hurts him,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The center is guarded by the Red Men, the ones who defected. They have actual arms, and armor, and training, but they aren’t Devoured. You can actually kill them. If you concentrate your forces there, pierce through the center, you can get a few people to the Mouth of the Devourer and the Empress. And then you use their names.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Their names!” Vapathi said. “My brother was changed when he gave his name to She Who Devours, and the Devoured gave their names up as well. If you say their name, it hurts them. They react with pain, with anger. I’ve seen it. Say it enough, and he may be incapacitated.”
“Kirshta,” Navran mused. “We are supposed to attack the Mouth of the Devourer and destroy him by calling him Kirshta.”
“She Who Devours eats their names and their death,” Vapathi insisted. “Bring their names back to them, and their death comes as well. You’ll still need swords to kill him, of course, but without the name it won’t even be possible.”
“You’re sure it will work?”
No, Vapathi thought. But she had no better idea. And if it didn’t work, then she and Apurta and her brother had no more hope.
“Apurta and I will be there,” Vapathi said. “Destroy the Mouth of the Devourer and the Empress. Have pity on me and Apurta if you can.”
“The men will have orders to spare the two of you,” Navran said. “But it will be a battle… if you’re close to the fighting, I cannot promise.”
Vapathi laughed a dry, desperate laugh. “If we die, at least we’ll be delivered from She Who Devours. If I have to perish with my brother, it won’t be more than I deserve.”
Navran fixed her with a look of pity. For a moment he seemed about to say something, then he shook his head. “And what about the Devoured?”
“Once my brother is gone, the Devoured will collapse.”
“Are you sure?”
Vapathi sighed. She sat up and touched her wounded shoulder. “No. But I have to assume. I have to. He’s the vessel of She Who Devours. If he no longer carries Her, then She returns to sleep.”
The king stood and offered his hand to her. She stood, wincing a little at the pulling in her shoulder. Navran stared at her, intensely and sincerely. He folded his hand around hers.
“Thank you,” he said. “This must be hard.”
She laughed. “You have no idea.”
“You’re doing right.”
She shook her hand free from Navran’s grip. “Just free us. You can thank me later when She Who Devours is safely asleep.”
They left the pavilion together. Vapathi put a hand on her wounded shoulder, but she held her head high as she crossed the creek to the shouts of the Red Men and the Devoured. Basadi greeted her with a nod.
“The king of Virnas treated you sufficiently?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Vapathi answered.
“Well,” Basadi said, glaring at Sadja, standing with his sword drawn on the far side of the creek. “You’ve gotten our offer. If you’re too foolish to give your names to the Mouth of the Devourer, then you’ll have to suffer when he devours your flesh.”
“We’ll see whose flesh survives,” Sadja said. He saluted them with a cold glance at Vapathi.
Basadi turned away and stamped her feet. “Let’s go,” she said. “I guess we get to tell the Mouth of the Devourer that he’ll be eating the Emperor.”
Vapathi’s gaze crossed the trampled mud of the Amsadhu’s river bed and up to the bluff where Kirshta waited. He would devour the Emperor—or he would finally be delivered.
DALADHAM
The full moon shone like a coin of silver in the west, tinting the eastern horizon with its bony light. The stars were dim, choked by haze, and in the east the sky turned gray with the threat of dawn. Daladham stood on the stony pier and watched the moon sink moment by moment toward the darkness beyond the horizon.
It would be an hour still before the first sliver of the sun’s disk would rise above the empty valley of the Amsadhu. Time enough for sacrifice.
He heard a soft footstep behind him. A hand rested on his shoulder.
“Are you ready?” Caupana’s soft, mellow voice said.
“Yes.” The Emperor would lead the battle against the Mouth of the Devourer today. The hour for second thoughts had passed.
The bottom of the full moon touched the shriveled branches of the trees in the west.
The dark of the moon, the full splendor of the stars… that is when we offer our sacrifices to Ulaur. Bhudman had explained it to him before he left Virnas. If you must make a sacrifice to Kushma, then make it at the full moon. The furthest day from the new.
It was solid ritual logic. He had convinced Sadja to delay the battle until this day. If they were going to make a sacrifice to the blood-spattered Kushma, they’d best do it on the day most favorable for him. And it gave Sadja and the other kings a few more days to prepare. Supplies were stretched thin and the kings were worried about desertion, anxious to come to a conclusion—but by the end of the day they would know.
He sighed and turned. “Is the Emperor ready?”
“He sent me to you.”
“Then let’s go.”
He followed Caupana down the ladder which descended from the stone pier to the mud floor of the Amsadhu. The shadow of the palace of Jaitha passed overhead, and for a moment the moon hid behind the crenellations of stone. On the north side of the palace, the tabernacle glowed in the gloom before the dawn. Black and red fabric was draped over a skeleton of cane, like starving flesh over bones, lit from within by the light of a dozen lamps. A whiff of incense as they approached.
The door was open. Daladham stepped in.
The Emperor was there, kneeling before a painted image of Kushma fixed to the far wall of the tabernacle. The ferocious Power looked crazed in the lamplight, the blood on his hands and feet almost black, his wild eyes and sharpened teeth shining with gold. Four dhorsha, two on each side, sat on cushions forming an aisle from the entrance to the image. They chanted softly, holding bowls of incense, murmurs in the temple dialect washing over Daladham with droning familiarity.
The tent flap fell closed behind him. Amabhu pressed his hands against Daladham’s and Caupana’s. The Emperor pressed his forehead to the ground before Kushma, then rose and faced Daladham.
“Come, Daladham-dhu,” Sadja said. “Come, chosen of the destroyer.”
Daladham knelt before the Emperor, laying his hands on the top of Sadja’s feet. Sadja put his hands on Daladham’s head.
The rite had been finalized in the last few days. A variation of the initiation that all young dhorsha men went through, when they were dedicated to the service of the altar and the Power of their lineage. Daladham had done it himself almost fifty years before, when he had been sworn to Lord Am.
The Power of Am is broken. Today he would swear to a new power.
The dhorsha around the room began to chant, a long invocation which named Kushma in every formula which the dhorsha had been able to find. Daladham’s knees began to hurt. He had been a much younger man last time he’d knelt for this long.
Finally, Daladham’s comrades finished their invocation. Daladham heard the slosh of water, and he felt a warm liquid trickle down his head and into his beard.
“Come Kushma, come destroyer,” Sadja said. “As your chosen child, the agent of ruin, I implore you. As the lord of the khadir and the kings, I implore you. As the protector of temples and priests, I implore you. Bless now this man to bring you sacrifice. Bless now this man to speak your name, that you will hear him. Bless now this man to mingle the blood and the milk, that you will make your power known. Swear, child.”
“I swear by the name of Kushma,” Daladham said.
“Swear, child,” Sadja repeated.
“I swear I will mingle the blood and the milk in ritual purity and the reverence due the Powers.”
“Swear, child.�
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“I swear I will pray before the destroyer, that I will burn ephedra before his image.”
“Swear, child.”
“I swear I will light incense in the holy places, that I will purify the vessels of silver and gold.”
It went on. He remembered the oaths without any trouble. It had been decades since he’d said them, but he’d attended the consecration of more dhorsha youth than he could count in the meantime. His nephew Jairatu had only been dedicated a few years ago—
The memory pierced his heart like a dagger. For a moment his breath caught, and he stumbled over his words. He saw Jairatu in his mind, flesh turning to rotten oil, bile erupting from under his skin. Anger and sadness slowed his tongue.
The Mouth of the Devourer. Today was their chance to destroy She Who Devours, to put an end to whole rotten catastrophe. His heart hardened. He finished the oaths.
The rest of the rite was brief. When it was done, Daladham rose to his feet, and Sadja embraced him.
“I prepare for battle,” Sadja said. He looked at Daladham with a fierce, proud look. “We have two weapons in this fight: the Power Kushma, and the name which the Queen of Slaves gave us. Make the sacrifice when you hear the trumpet blast, that we may strike with both weapons at once. Kushma the Destroyer will be with us.”
“Come Kushma, come destroyer,” Daladham said. His blood thrilled with the words.
Sadja smiled. He squeezed Daladham’s hand, and then he marched out of the tabernacle.
Daladham took a moment to look at his comrades, the other dhorsha who sat in the tabernacle. None of them could directly make the sacrifice to Kushma—that honor would fall to him alone. But they would be his helpers, chanting the hymns, burning incense, blessing the water, purifying the ritual knives. He bowed to them solemnly.
“My brothers,” he said. “We will have only a few hours, as the Emperor said. We have a lot to do.”
They murmured. A grim look of satisfaction and determination showed on their faces. Daladham looked briefly at the two thikratta sitting in the back, and he strode across the tabernacle toward them.
“Amabhu, Caupana,” he said. “Will you stay?”
“We’d planned on observing the whole thing,” Amabhu said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t think the Destroyer is overly concerned with the presence of two thikratta,” Daladham said. “I was hoping that you would. Everything here is, in some sense, your fault.”
Amabhu laughed, though the sound seemed discordant and incongruous in the grim atmosphere of the tabernacle. Caupana pressed his lips together and glanced up at the image of fanged Kushma.
Daladham stepped outside the tabernacle for a moment. The air was muggy and warm, and it smelled of dust and river water. The sky was yellow overhead, but the east blazed with white where the sun had breached the horizon. He heard a bleat. The ram was tied to the rear corner of the tabernacle, watched by a young girl from the palace.
And on the banks of the river above him, he saw the banners of the khadir moving, with the shadows of tens of thousands behind them. The line stretched along the banks of the Amsadhu to the east and the west as far as Daladham could see, hundreds of flags hanging limp in the heavy dawn air, myriads of voices mingling on the shore. The clatter of arms. The stamp of feet in the dust. The crackle of fires. The stain of smoke in the sky.
And to the north, on the far shore of the river, the same. Huddled in crooked and undisciplined lines, bearing weapons scavenged from farms and broken tree limbs, a hundred thousand Devoured. Feeble but deathless. Daladham shivered. Today they would be destroyed and delivered.
Weep for your salvation and bless the hour of your death.
He returned to the tent. A ewer of clean water waited by the entrance, and he washed his hands and face with the prayers of purification. The other dhorsha waited in the room, a few of them washing themselves or consulting palm leaves scratched with their notes for the newly designed rite.
“Are we ready?” he asked one of them.
“I believe so,” his colleague said. “Whenever you are.”
He went up to the image of Kushma. A stone table was placed before the image, supported on both ends by pillars of uncut stone. A dish of silver to catch the sacrificial blood lay on one end. Daladham bowed his head to his new patron and began to chant.
Come Kushma, come destroyer.
The full rite of sacrifice lasted hours. Most of it was rote for him by now: every sacrifice to the Powers had the same basic shape, the same prayers of consecration and dedication, the same spiral of ever-increasing sanctity as the dhorsha ascended to the moment of sacrifice itself. They burned incense before Kushma and sprinkled the image and the table with sanctified water. They invoked Bhila, the eternal ram, who performed sacrifice and was himself sacrificed on the heavenly altar. They washed the ritual vessels with water, then smudged them with the ash of the burned ephedra, then washed them again. And at every pause, Daladham repeated the litany for Kushma, one of the few prayers to the blood-spattered Power which the dhorsha knew.
Come Kushma, come destroyer.
Time crawled on. Daladham lost himself in the billows of incense and the droning noise of the chants. Outside the tent, he heard the movement of the armies. The lines of the khadir closed around the tabernacle to protect it from any attack by the Devoured. Shouting and rustling as the armies prepared for battle.
Come Kushma, come destroyer.
The girl who had waited outside brought the ram to the entrance of the tent. The other dhorsha bound its feet and carried it to the stone altar. The ram bleated and raised its head, but Daladham put his hand on its neck and quieted it. He felt the warmth of its flesh and the pulse in its neck under his fingers. He took the silver knife in his hand and listened for the signal that Sadja had given him.
The ram’s horn blasted three times.
Every dhorsha lineage had secret prayers they said at the altar, prayers which the priests of other lineages were not allowed to hear or say. The prayers of Kushma were forgotten, if they had ever existed, so where the secret prayer would go, he instead remained silent. It seemed a fitting offering to the forgotten Power, his lineage extinct, dedicated to death and rebirth.
The other dhorsha stilled their chanting. He put his knife to the ram’s throat.
The first blood spilled hot and fragrant onto the stone surface of the table. It filled the little channels cut into the rock and began to drip into the silver dish between his feet with an insistent patter. The ram kicked once, and its eyes grew wide. The warm, steaming liquid poured out into the dish.
Daladham’s thumb touched it, and his breath caught in his throat. He hissed and withdrew his hand.
The blood was hot. Not warm the way the ram’s lifeblood should be. Scalding, like boiling water or a live coal.
He couldn’t breathe. Black blood poured out of the sacrifice in the Majavaru Lurchatiya, the stone eaten away, the presence of She Who Devours blotting out the brightness of Am. It happened again—it couldn’t happen again—this was their last hope—it wasn’t black bile, rather it burned with fire—and yet he couldn’t touch it.
A scream sounded outside the tent. The other dhorsha stumbled for a moment in their chants. The flap of the tent opened. Daladham could not look away from the blood pouring from the ram’s throat. He tried to touch it again, and his fingers recoiled. As hot as molten copper. Steam rose from it. Heat scorched his face.
Heavy feet sounded behind him. The shrieks of battle sounded far off. The dhorsha in the tent called out in terror, and the sound of frantic scrambling filled the tent. The chants ceased.
“Stop, unholy priest,” a woman’s voice commanded. “You were not called.”
The blood dripping into the silver basin began to give off a white smoke. Daladham backed away from it.
“Stop, unclean servant,” the voice said again. “You are not blessed.”
A groan of surprise slipped out of his lips. He turned around, shrieked,
and fell to his knees.
It was Srithi. She stood in the entranceway of the tent, advancing slowly toward him, trailing blood behind her. Her legs were soaked in blood up to the thighs. Blood ran down her elbows and dripped off of her fingers. Her eyes were wide, their whites shot through with veins of red.
She raised a gory finger and pointed it at Daladham. A chain of skulls hung around her neck. Her teeth were fangs, and when she spoke blood gushed from under her tongue.
“Stop, disfavored child,” she said. “You were not loved. This altar is not yours to serve, and this blood is not yours to bless.”
The scalding heat of the ram’s blood behind him kept him from backing away. He dropped to his knees. “What… what do you want?”
“Cease this defiling sacrifice,” she said. A drunken warble sounded in her tone, and her hands began to shake. “Touch not this ram. Flee this tabernacle. I do not accept your sacrifice. Let the serpent swallow this unwanted carcass. Speak the forgotten name, hold the forbidden feast, and the servant whom I have chosen will bring me sacrifice that I may stir from my long silence.”
Her volume and tone rose as she spoke, and at the last word her voice split into a rending scream. Daladham covered his ears and closed his eyes. Her scream went on and on. It seemed to shake the earth, splitting the fabric of the tabernacle and drilling into Daladham’s eyes. His hands shook.
And then it stopped.
Srithi lay unconscious in the center of the tabernacle—clean of blood, no fangs in her mouth, and only a little foam dripping from the corner of her mouth. The track of blood that had followed her across the carpets was gone. The other dhorsha lay cowering against the walls of the tabernacle. Their eyes were wide. One of them wept softly, and another cursed.
“What happened?” one of them asked. “Where did she come from?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Daladham said. “Let’s get her out of here.”
“And the sacrifice?”
The heat of the ram’s blood behind him had disappeared. He was sure that if he turned and touched the silver bowl, he would find it as warm as the ram’s flesh, and no warmer. But he had no desire to touch it.
