Queen of Slaves (The Powers of Amur Book 4)

by J. S. Bangs

  The city with buzzing with activity. Doors bolted shut and windows covered with curtains, men standing with bronze knives in the doorways of their homes, women rushing with baskets of rice toward safety. Shouting everywhere. Clamor and rumors. Jairatu ran ahead of them urgently, waving Daladham and the two thikratta forward with impatient gestures. They crossed through the center of the city, across the rapidly emptying market square, and to the stone wall of the temple compound.

  A wall of three young dhorsha stood in the arched entranceway to the compound. They recognized Jairatu and Daladham and parted to let them through. Jairatu grabbed one of them by the arm as they passed.

  “Where is the temple mother?”

  “With all of the others,” the dhorsha asked. “On the steps before the high altar. Go, she’ll tell you what to do.”

  They ran beneath the carved stone arch and between the purification pools. The crowd of people on the front steps of the temple was large: the two dozen male and female dhorsha, nearly everyone who could be found in Tulakhanda, mixed in with the caretakers, servants, merchants, and assistants of the temple compound. They were a disorganized mass, except for the temple mother on the top stair with a knot of the other elder dhorsha around her.

  Jairatu and Daladham approached and bowed. “Kalbi-dhu,” Daladham said.

  “You came,” the chief dhorsha said with a little surprise. She wore a rich scarlet bhildu, fringed with golden thread, beneath which peeked a brilliant white sari. Her silver hair was tied in a perfect knot atop her head, framing her face in an expression of sternness and authority. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”

  “My nephew—”

  “I know. I sent Jairatu-dhu after you, but I doubted he’d dislodge you.” She glanced at the thikratta standing behind Daladham. “What are those two doing here?”

  “They wanted to come along.”

  “Will you fight?” Kalbi asked.

  Amabhu bowed. “Keeper of dhaur, we thikratta don’t take up arms—”

  Kalbi waved her hands. “Get to the back entrance of the temple. Maybe if you stand there it’ll look like someone’s guarding something.”

  The thikratta bowed and left. Kalbi pointed at Jairatu. “Join the young men at the gate. Don’t let anyone in. And you….” She gestured at Daladham with an expression of mild distaste. “Gather up the offerings to Peshali and Sathirvan, and put them on the side altar for burning. Then put the silver dishes away. Hide them in the rear rooms.”

  Daladham bowed. “Yes, my mother.”

  He jogged up the stairs and entered between the pillars into the shaded outer porch of the temple. Deep in the shadows of the holy place he glimpsed the orange flickering of the ever-burning flame on the altar of Am, with the shadows of the attendants moving around it. He’d rather be in there, where it was dark and holy and looters would not dare tread. Not out in the sunlight.

  But here he was. He came to the shrine to Peshali first, an alcove containing an image of the goddess under a stone arch. The alcove and its offerings were enclosed by an opaque curtain painted with images of ewes and pomegranates, and a gray-haired woman in a rose-colored bhildu sat in the Lotus position at the place where the curtains parted.

  Daladham bowed as he approached her. “Parthani-dhu,” he said. “Have you cleared out the shrine?” He pointed to the curtains, though which he could not enter.

  The woman looked at him oddly. “Why would I do that?”

  “Kalbi-dhu gave the order. The looters—”

  She laughed. “Our mother is that worried?”

  “The looters might try to take the silver dishes behind the veil. Gather up the offerings and bring them to the side altar. I’m going to Sathirvan. We’ll take the silver and hide it in the rear rooms.”

  The woman nodded. “I’ll clear it out.”

  He crossed the width of the temple and came to the shrine to Sathirvan, the mirror image of Peshali’s, minus the enclosing curtain. The small stone image of the seated Sathirvan sat upon a copper throne, and the alcove behind it was painted with images of spun wool and ground rice flour, with Sathirvan’s wheel most prominent. All around the bottom of the copper throne was a great heap of broken pottery, mixed with flour and oil in a sticky, rancid pile.

  Grumbling, Daladham ran into the storeroom behind the niche for a basket. This was a job for a junior dhorsha, for Jairatu or someone younger. Except that Kalbi had sent all of the younger dhorsha to guard the gates to the temple courtyard, and now he was sweeping Sathirvan’s broken pots in place of reading more of Audjam’s history. And Jairatu was in danger—

  No, do it quickly. Better see that his nephew was safe than grumble about doing cleanup.

  The shards of pottery and oily flour filled the basket twice, and he dumped the remains on the midden fire, muttering his way through the prayers as quickly as possible. It would take him two or three trips before he had the place cleared out. He was returning for his third basket-load when he heard a clamor in the front courtyard.

  Cursed pots. He grabbed the silver dish which lurked beneath the oil and flour, scratching his fingers on the shards of pottery around it, and left the rest of the refuse. A quick sprint into the nearest storeroom, where he found Parthani neatly stacking the clean dishes behind a heavy curtain. She glanced at the greasy, flour-smeared dishes in Daladham’s hands.

  “That’s all the better you care for Sathirvan’s offerings?” she said reproachfully.

  “Leave me alone,” he said. “Looters may have gotten into the front yard, and my nephew is there.”

  “Give it to me,” the woman said, and she snatched the dishes out of Daladham’s hand. “You’re worse than the looters. Go look after your nephew.”

  Daladham sprinted toward the front porch, his hands sticky from the offerings. He spied the courtyard filling with bodies, pouring in through all three gates, splashing into the purification pools. The shouts of looters and soldiers mingled with the booming voice of Kalbi on the top stair of the porch.

  “—the altar of Am, and the holy places of the Powers,” Kalbi was saying, her hands at her sides in fists. She spoke in a booming, angry voice, resounding off the steps of the temple and walls of the courtyard above the chattering of the looters that swarmed through the gates.

  Daladham pressed himself into the crowd on the steps. Where is Jairatu? He spotted him: on the lowest stair of the porch, his arms linked with the other young dhorsha who had been guarding the gates. Evidently they had fallen back from the gates to the porch of the temple itself, trying to prevent the mob from going into the holy places.

  Beside him, one of the other dhorsha chanted the litany for the victory of Am, barely loud enough for Daladham to hear. Daladham added his voice to the chant, and it spread throughout the crowd, becoming a quiet, droning hum beneath the mob’s angry muttering.

  “Stand down, old woman!” shouted a peasant from the crowd. Boos and curses sounded from the mob.

  “I stand here for the Amya dhorsha and the purity of the sacred Powers!” Kalbi shouted back. “Your fight is not with us! Shout your complaints to the majakhadir and the Emperor, but show your respect to Am.”

  “Am is the Power of the Emperor!” another voice shouted. The mob surged forward, those nearest the steps pressing into the young dhorsha, who shoved them back. For a moment the lowest ranks threatened to turn into a melee.

  “The Emperor gives his dhaur to Am!” Kalbi bellowed over them. “This place is sacred to Am Lurchati!”

  At the name of Am Lurchati the mob seemed to recoil, the front-most looters drawing back from the dhorsha on the lower steps as if struck. The fury of the mob seemed to abate, and for a moment it seemed like they might disperse.

  A stir began at the rear of the crowd, near the south gate of the courtyard. It spread like a ripple through the mob, and the men who had seemed hesitant a moment before stared up the stairs at Kalbi with jaws set and hateful eyes. The men at the foot of the stairs drew back a few paces from the chain of youn
g dhorsha. One of them shouted, “We will see how well Am fights. The Mouth of the Devourer is coming.”

  The other dhorsha were as confused and dismayed as Daladham. If the Mouth of the Devourer had defeated the garrison of the Red Men and overtaken the town of Pukasra, would they really be able to keep him out of the temple?

  He did not stop chanting, but he watched the entrances of the courtyard with dismay.

  A knot of men came through the gate marching tightly together. The crowd split, draping them in cheers and shouts. The dhorsha on the bottom stair drew closer together. Kalbi began to chant along with the rest of the dhorsha of the temple, and at her prompting the chant rose from a whisper to a shout. It became a counter-cry to the cheering which shook the mob, as if the dhorsha and the looters sought to battle on the basis of volume. Daladham chanted with them:

  Am Lurchati, Am Lord of all the Powers, Am who is never vanquished in battle, strike down your enemies, cleave in half your enemies, pierce the belly of your enemies.

  It did not assuage the pit of fear in his stomach.

  The little procession reached the foot of the temple stairs, and the tight knot of men split and revealed its heart: a short mountain native, wide nose and thin, crooked lips, wavy hair grown long and tied in a knot at the base of his neck. His clothes were a peasant’s clothes, a dirty white dhoti hanging down to his knees with an undecorated kurta clinging to his bony shoulders. A pair of asps slithered across the stones around his feet, matching every pace he took forward. He limped as he approached the stairs, and his face was drawn into a grimace of pain. His hand touched his side, holding an old injury. One of his ears had been cut down to a ragged stump.

  He stopped a few paces before the line of dhorsha. The serpents in his wake crept forward and draped themselves across his feet. Their tongues flickered.

  The Mouth of the Devourer looked up to Kalbi the chief. He took a deep breath and bellowed.

  “You are the servants of Lord Am?”

  A jolt of energy surged through the crowd of looters. They cheered. The volume of the dhorsha rose to match. The chant lasted a moment, then Kalbi broke off her chanting and shouted, “We are the Amya dhorsha of Tulakhanda. Are you the one called the Mouth of the Devourer?”

  The man smiled, though the wrack of pain did not disappear from his face. “You’ve heard of me. I wish to see Lord Am.”

  “You will not defile this temple.”

  The man looked at them with an expression of mild bemusement. “I don’t care about your temple,” he croaked. “I am here to free the slaves and unburden the peasants. And Am is on the side of the Emperor. So I wish to see Am in the place he is worshipped.”

  “This is a holy place,” Kalbi bellowed back. “The impious may not enter.”

  “I’m coming.” He whispered something to the comrades nearest him. A wave of muttered direction passed through the crowd away from him, and a heartbeat later, they rushed at the temple.

  “Jairatu!” Daladham cried.

  The rebels had seized him. Daladham pushed past the dhorsha nearest to him in order to get to his nephew. But it was useless. The crowd pressed against the stairs, and their numbers pushed back the feeble defenses of the dhorsha. Daladham descended two stairs before the crush of the dhorsha knocked him backward, and he fell into a tangle of limbs.

  The mob pierced the mass of dhorsha and pushed their way toward Kalbi. The chant was broken. The Mouth of the Devourer slowly advanced up the stairs, limping with weak, mincing steps, while his mob surged forward. The serpents crawled up after him.

  At the top of the stairs the mob pressed forward. Kalbi staggered back a few steps into the pillars of the porch, and men seized both her arms.

  “Very good,” the Mouth of the Devourer said calmly. “Now let us go see Am.” They entered the temple.

  Daladham struggled to his feet. He clambered up the stairs, pushing past the bodies of the other dhorsha. “Jairatu,” he shouted in response. “He has Jairatu.”

  He jostled his way past the churning dhorsha and looters on the porch and followed the Mouth of the Devourer’s crowd toward the sanctum. The pillars of the temple flew by him, and then he found himself in the loose crowd of looters before the altar.

  Someone grabbed his arm. “You stay back, dhorsha,” a man said.

  “My nephew—” Daladham began. He shook himself loose and pressed forward.

  The smell of blood and incense. The tang of smoke in his eyes. They had arrived at the altar. He pushed himself to the front of the crowd.

  The Mouth of the Devourer stood before the altar with Kalbi next to him. Kalbi was unharmed, but she watched the mob surrounding them with nervous glances. The Mouth of the Devourer studied the altar: a wide stone bed covered with ash and old blood, deep channels cut into the stone to drain the blood of the sacrifices. Rough beams of cedar were stacked to its left, with the smaller branches of sandalwood on the right. A low fire burned in a brazier behind the altar, the everlasting flame from which the sacrificial fires were lit, and behind the brazier rose the image of Am in sculpted stone. Am’s right hand held a wooden spear, his left a bundle of rice stalks. His hands and face were hammered in gold, giving his aspect a brilliant, stern expression, while scarlet clothes were draped around the stone shoulders and waist.

  The Mouth of the Devourer examined the figure with intense interest. He said nothing. An eerie quiet descended over those gathered.

  “Is Am mighty in this place?” he said to Kalbi, turning suddenly.

  “Lord Am is mighty in all of his temples.”

  “So a dhorsha would say,” the Mouth of the Devourer said. His expression was devoid of both anger and piety, like a cold bronze mask. He looked up at the image of Am again, peering intently as if he saw something beyond the cloth-draped statue, then chuckled.

  “Lord Am is mighty,” he said, “as the Powers are considered mighty. But he upholds the khadir and the Emperor. He enslaves my people as surely as if he kept them in chains. You may tear it down.”

  A shout of protest sounded from Kalbi and the other dhorsha in the Mouth of the Devourer’s crowd, overwhelmed in a moment by the bellowing of the looters. A swarm of men surged forward. They trampled past the altar and knocked over the brazier, scattering coals across Am’s stone feet. A horde of them grasped Am’s legs and arms. They pushed.

  Daladham gasped. The statue tilted. Jitters of laughter and mockery sounded from the mob. More men rushed forward. They pushed again. The statue leaned to the right, groaned, and fell.

  A crash of granite against granite. The arms of the image shattered, and Am’s head broke off and rolled across the floor of the temple. A scream came up from the dhorsha. The men of the mob ran forward for the gold on the head and hands. Kalbi’s mouth hung open in disbelief and dismay. A wail of anger and dismay rose up from the dhorsha in the circle.

  Jairatu. Daladham finally saw him, pinched between two looters at the far side of the circle. His mouth was open in a cry of anguish. He did not seem to see Daladham.

  A great hiss sounded from Mouth of the Devourer. “What is this?” he shouted. He pointed to the space where Am had stood a moment before.

  It took Daladham a moment to realize what they pointed at: the wall behind the image of Am bore a fresco, the backdrop to the gold-faced image that received their sacrifices. A man-shaped figure with long fangs protruding from beneath his lips, a necklace of skulls dangling to his belly, a reaper’s knife in both of his hands. Blood covered his legs up to his knees and dripped from the tips of his knives and teeth. His feet trampled upon a serpent, whose head was crushed and whose blood dripped on the ground.

  “That is Kushma,” Kalbi said quietly. Then, with a hint of mockery, “Since you speak so casually of Lord Am, you must know Kushma as well.”

  “I know his name,” the Mouth of the Devourer said, his teeth gritting together. “I asked….”

  He turned away from the image suddenly. His eyes were closed and his brows drawn together as if sup
pressing a great pain. “Deface this,” he said. Men began to move forward, then he shouted, “No! Wait.”

  The looters stopped. The Mouth of the Devourer turned to Kalbi. “Curse Kushma.”

  The dhorsha woman looked appalled. “I will not curse one of the Powers.”

  “Curse the Power you call Kushma, and curse his image.”

  “I will not.”

  With shocking speed, the Mouth of the Devourer spun toward Kalbi and struck her across the face. The dhorsha sprawled across the ground, and the Mouth of the Devourer leaped forward and put his hand on the old woman’s neck. He pointed at someone in the crowd.

  “Destroy her,” he said.

  The man moved forward without hesitation. A short copper knife was in his hand. Kalbi tried to speak, but the Mouth of the Devourer pressed harder on her neck and choked off her words. The copper knife plunged. Kalbi screamed. The crowd drew back from the widening pool of blood.

  The Mouth of the Devourer stepped back carefully. He glanced down at the bleeding body, then across the gathered crowd. He picked out a face. “You. Come here.”

  It was Jairatu.

  Daladham shouted. He shoved his way forward and shouted, “No! Leave him!”

  At the edge of the open space around the altar, two of the Mouth’s men grabbed Daladham’s arms. The Mouth of the Devourer gave him a glance. “What’s your interest?”

  “That’s my nephew. Don’t hurt him, I beg you—”

  “Uncle—” Jairatu began.

  “Silence.” The Mouth of the Devourer cut them both off. “Whether or not your nephew gets hurt is entirely his choice.” He pointed at Jairatu, then gestured at the image of Kushma. “Curse Kushma and his image, and you may live.”

  Jairatu’s mouth fell open.

  “Do it!” Daladham shouted. “This is no time for piety.”

  Jairatu looked at Daladham with a helpless expression. “Uncle, I cannot.”