by J. S. Bangs
At the break of dawn Nakhur had sacrificed the goat, blessed the tincture of blood and milk, and sealed it into this jar. They had all agreed that Vapathi should carry it.
Glanod looked down the empty street into the city. “No one guarding. Like yesterday. Looks even emptier, actually.”
“Do you remember how to get to the House of the Ruin?” Nakhur asked. He wiped sweat from his forehead.
“I remember,” Aryaji said quietly. “And so does Vapathi.”
Vapathi nodded. “Will you lead?”
“Yes,” Aryaji said. “Are we ready?”
Everyone rose. Aryaji took the lead, guiding them down the major streets of Virnas toward the place where the Mouth of the Devourer waited. There was no attempt at stealth.
In the Uluriya district, they saw the first signs of life. Men and women standing in the streets and looking down from the windows of the estates. They passed the first few without any sort of reaction. Vapathi wasn’t sure what to think—perhaps they were too decayed to act without Kirshta or Basadi directing them explicitly.
Then a voice shouted from one of the windows. “The Queen of Slaves!”
All four of them paused for a moment. Vapathi drew her breath in sharply.
“Aryaji, run,” whispered Nakhur. “Get to the Ruin.”
They ran. Vapathi’s calf flared with pain at every step. The jar bounced on its thread. And they turned a corner and saw it: a massive crowd around one of the estates, milling about in grim, directionless languor. The House of the Ruin waited in the center.
“Push through them,” Glanod shouted. “Go!”
They were followed by shouts of “The Queen of Slaves!” They plunged into the crowd.
At first the stares of the Devoured were surprised and bewildered, as if they couldn’t imagine why anyone other than their own would try to enter the Mouth of the Devourer’s home. Glanod elbowed people aside, making a path for the others to follow. But gradually the Devoured awakened to the necessity of movement. Their hands began pawing at her, grasping, clutching, pulling—
No, pushing. They parted for them. They were pushing them into the house.
“Nakhur—” she started to say, but Aryaji clasped her hand.
“It doesn’t matter,” Aryaji said. “Let them bring us in.”
The Devoured around the front door parted and shoved them through. The door was slammed shut behind them. The entranceway was crowded with blank, leaden faces, watching them with empty eyes. As soon as they recognized Vapathi they began to murmur.
“The Queen of Slaves. Come with us. Come to the Empress. Come to the Mouth. Come to us.”
She couldn’t tell which of them spoke. The groan passed from mouth to mouth like an echo. The Devoured formed an aisle, their hands pulling the four of them forward, through the darkened chambers full of water, through the curtain, and into the courtyard.
And Vapathi saw her.
Basadi sat atop a rattan chair at the edge of the courtyard. She was draped in a shimmering scarlet sari and wore bangles of gold up and down her arms, and she looked over a huddled crowd of skeletal figures with imperious pride.
Still alive, Vapathi realized. The edges of the courtyard were filled with the Devoured, but a crowd of starving Uluriya peasants were pressed up against the stairs which descended to the subterranean altar.
“That one next,” Basadi said, and pointed to one of the people in the crowd. The woman she pointed to whimpered, but three Devoured took her by her arms and pulled her down the stairs to the Ruin. Then Basadi rose to her feet, turned, and stared at Vapathi with a wicked smile.
“It really is you,” she said. She stepped closer to them, the bangles of her jewelry ringing like chimes. “When the Devoured began to murmur, I thought they might be seeing things. They’re so hard to depend on when they get… dull like this.”
“Empress,” Vapathi hissed. “You don’t seem to be dull.”
Basadi smiled. “I am the favored child of She Who Devours. Your brother is nearly all consumed, now, and She will take me as her right hand once she has taken flesh.”
“How many have you killed?”
“Oh, these?” She waved dismissively to the peasants crowded together at the other end of the courtyard. “Hundreds. Thousands. No one has counted. The Mouth of the Devourer says he is nearly done. He has been at the altar for three days.”
Vapathi began to shake. “Let me go to him.”
“Why?” Basadi said, smirking. “You finally decided you will join us? You want to give your names to She Who Devours before it is too late?”
“I want to see my brother.”
Basadi put her finger to her lips. “Hmmm. No.”
“He wants to see me.”
“Does he? But what he wants hardly matters now. She Who Devours is nearly born, and your brother is only Her servant.”
Vapathi stepped forward. She spoke in a low hiss. “Let me go to him.”
“Only if I’m going to put you on the altar, Queen.”
Vapathi looked aside at Glanod. He nodded.
With a bellow the Kaleksha giant rushed forward. In a moment he had wrapped an arm around Basadi and hurled her into the crowd of Devoured at the edge of the courtyard. Vapathi bolted forward. Nakhur and Aryaji followed her.
Basadi shrieked. The Devoured swarmed into motion. They pressed against Vapathi, and she shoved them back with all her might. She surged forward.
“Children of Manjur, servants of Ulaur!” she heard Nakhur shouting. “Help us! This is our deliverance!”
Aryaji swatted at the Devoured and raked them with her nails. Vapathi kicked with her uninjured foot. The Devoured were unarmed and—she realized with a thrill—they didn’t want to kill her. They pressed her arms to her sides and tried to pin her down.
Kirshta still protected her.
But a swarm of them dragged her to the ground. She fell. Their cold gray bodies buried her. She heard Glanod bellowing, cut off suddenly into a deathly croak. She couldn’t move.
Then, at once, the weight lifted.
All around her, the thin figures of the doomed Uluriya fought against the Devoured. They scratched and punched. Their bodies were shriveled and starved—but the Devoured were no better. Skeletal legs and arms fought back and forth. She couldn’t tell who was Devoured and who was alive. It didn’t matter.
She crawled toward the door of the Ruin. To her left, she glimpsed Glanod’s body lying in a puddle of blood. Two Devoured with swords stood by it, trying to subdue the Uluriya that swarmed them.
A patch of open floor. Nakhur and Aryaji were ahead of her. She struggled to stand on her wounded foot and staggered toward them. Aryaji threw her arm around Vapathi’s waist to help her, and they limped forward together.
They were too slow. The Devoured men with swords saw, and they left their charges and bolted to the entrance of the Ruin, cutting off their access when the others were still six feet away.
They hesitated a moment.
“We must…” Aryaji began.
Nakhur hurled himself at them.
A brief moment of struggle. One of the Devoured men was knocked to the ground. Bronze flashed. A sword sliced Nakhur’s gut.
He collapsed to his knees. Vapathi caught him as he fell backward.
“Uncle!” Aryaji screamed. She pressed herself into Vapathi, wrapping her arms around her uncle.
Blood gurgled out of Nakhur’s mouth. A red stain spread down the front of his white garment.
“Take it,” he groaned.
The jar. He held the jar hanging from Vapathi’s neck. “Go.”
His eyes grew glassy. His breath stopped.
The Devoured man who had stabbed Nakhur held his sword at the ready, but he didn’t swing it at Vapathi. He held the bloody tip a foot from Vapathi’s face.
Aryaji pushed Vapathi away. “Go,” she whispered. “Go down.”
The jar trembled in Vapathi’s hands. Just her and Aryaji—
The door was six feet ah
ead of her. She heard Basadi cursing, and saw the Devoured gradually pin the Uluriya down.
“Go,” Aryaji whispered again.
Vapathi clutched the jar to her chest and stepped toward the door. The Devoured man did not drop his sword, but he didn’t swing.
“You aren’t going to kill me,” Vapathi said, halfway between a question and a command. “I am the Queen of Slaves. You will let me reach my brother.”
The Devoured man watched her with cold, unblinking eyes. Vapathi hobbled a step toward the stairs. Blood dripped off of the sword.
Another step and she was at the entrance. She glanced at Aryaji, holding her dead uncle in her arms. The Uluriya fighting in the yard were nearly subdued. A moment longer, and Basadi would see her.
She turned and fled into the ancient darkness.
Mandhi
Mandhi awoke with Kest’s lips at her ear. “Quiet,” he whispered.
His hand was on her shoulder, tense. His finger pressed against her lips, and his eyes darted over her shoulder.
“What?” she asked.
It was early morning, a soft orange light just beginning to filter in above the river to the southeast. Aching muscles and too little sleep blurred her eyes. The urgency of Kest’s movements set her heart pounding.
“Someone’s coming,” Kest said. “I heard them a little ways back.”
Mandhi rose slowly to sit. Kest pointed to the north. “Voices and the sound of movement.”
They had not quite reached Uskhanda. Mandhi wasn’t sure how far they had to go, but knew they would reach it today—and not a day too soon.
“Devoured?”
“Don’t know.”
She crouched and listened. She heard the distant mutter of speech, the sound of rustling leaves, and the crackle of dried palms underfoot. She nodded to the east.
“Go,” she said. “Quiet. Get to Uskhanda ahead of them.”
“Think they’re Devoured?”
“Either way.”
Kest nodded. He rolled up the little scraps of blanket they had plundered from an abandoned village, the only bedding they had. Mandhi folded two half-eaten roti into a pouch, the last of their food, and tucked it into one of the drapes of her sari.
Kest gave a final look around their little camp, then took the lead. They crept to the east.
There was a footpath through the woods here, near the suburbs of Uskhanda, fifty yards to the north of the Maudhu. They stayed on the path but ran in a crouch making furtive glances over their shoulders, trying to step only on the pounded ochre dust and not in any of the crackling leaves. The sounds of footfalls filled the forest around them.
“They move faster than we do,” Kest said after a moment.
“Yes,” Mandhi said. “Not trying to be quiet.”
“Not sticking to the path, either,” Kest said. “Probably because—”
Mandhi silenced him with a gesture. They continued to creep forward as quickly as they dared.
Voices on the path behind them. Kest quickened his pace, but Mandhi didn’t think they could go any faster without standing up and running.
A shout.
“I think—” Mandhi said.
“Go,” Kest said.
She stood and looked back. Twenty yards behind them, a loose knot of men and woman, gaunt faces and rail-thin bodies, dressed in rags with a dim, lifeless stare in their eyes. They pointed.
Mandhi ran, and Kest ran with her.
Days and days of walking had made them both lean and swift. Kest’s long legs carried him away, but she sped up to match his pace. Her lungs burned, her chest thundered, her soles wailed with pain. It didn’t matter. She ran.
A blur of time passed. The shouts drifted farther behind them. The path descended a gentle slope through a sparsely wooded copse, then opened into a small village. Far away, at the edge of the horizon, there was a thin gray line that stretched from the north to the south.
The sea.
Kest slowed to walk. Mandhi panted beside him, their walk bringing them through the shabby remains of the village. Empty rice fields opened on both sides, ratty with brown weeds, dry mud cracked in the sun.
“Not much farther,” Mandhi said.
Kest glanced back. “Still need to stay ahead of them.”
When they reached the far side of the village, they started running again.
The trees grew thin, and Mandhi heard the cawing of a gull overhead. A suburb of peasant huts was scattered through the palms, then they emerged from the shade into a blazing open space of cut palms and burned brush with the river far off on their right. A line of brown buildings huddled against the river, and strange mismatched clutter choked the alleys.
“Halt!” a voice commanded when they came within earshot of the buildings.
Uskhanda had no walls, but men with bows stood on the roofs of the houses. A little closer, Mandhi could see what lay between the homes: every entrance into the city had been barricaded off with whatever the people of Uskhanda could find. Heaps of furniture, wooden crates, and stacks of jars, bricks torn from homes, hulls of dismembered ships, poles hacked from fallen palms and sharpened into outward-pointing stakes. Men with spears poked their heads over the tops of the barricades.
“The Devoured are coming!” Kest bellowed at them. He continued walking slowly toward the barricades. “Let us in!”
“Are you not Devoured?” one of the men asked.
“Do we look Devoured?”
A laugh from the city’s defenders. “Nice try,” one of them said.
Mandhi shouted, “We come from Virnas! Our comrades wait in a dhow in your harbor. Let us approach, and we may all escape destruction together.”
That caused a flurry of motion and discussion inside the barricade. So they knew about the dhow. Mandhi and Kest continued to slowly approach the walls. Finally someone asked, “Where are the others who went to Virnas?”
“They remained,” Kest said. “To delay the Mouth of the Devourer long enough that he may be destroyed.”
The sounds of an argument. Finally they heard the scraping of wood, and someone lowered a ladder down the far side of the barricade. Kest gestured for Mandhi to climb first.
On the other side of the barricade she found a man wearing a fine yellow kurta and a well-trimmed mustache, arms crossed over his chest and a suspicious expression on his face.
“I am Vendara-kha, majakhadir of Uskhanda,” he said. “Where are the Devoured?”
Kest clambered down the ladder behind her. “Just behind us,” he said, speaking between heavy breaths.
“We outran them,” Mandhi said. “They could be an hour behind us. Maybe just minutes. But listen, my lord, the whole city—”
“I see fire!” someone atop one of the roofs shouted.
The majakhadir spun around. “Prepare defenses! Arrows on your threads, everyone.”
“No, listen!” Mandhi shouted. “There’s no way you can defend Uskhanda against them. And when Ulaur strikes the serpent, everyone here will perish if we don’t flee.”
“Flee? Ulaur?” The khadir looked at them suspiciously. “What are you talking about?”
“Ulaur! He will strike down the serpent as he did once before, but Amur will perish with the blow. We have a boat here, and I know there are others in the harbor, if only—”
The khadir physically pushed her away. “Don’t speak madness to me, woman. I have a city to defend.”
“I see movement!” a lookout atop the roof shouted. “Still out of the range of our arrows.”
Kest pulled Mandhi to the side. “Find the dhow,” he said. “Get them ready to sail. I’ll help them defend.”
“Don’t you dare risk your life—”
He crushed her in his arms and pressed a long, hard kiss against her mouth. His lips brushed against her ear. “I won’t die for this fool. But get our family out of here. I’ll see you on the docks.”
Then he turned and faced the majakhadir. “Vendara-kha, give me a spear. Let us fight.”
<
br /> He gently pushed her toward the sea. She gave him one last glance of chagrin and regret, then she ran.
She had been to Uskhanda a few times and knew the way through the streets. The gray houses blew by, and with them the grim, worried faces of the city’s residents.
“Prepare to flee!” she shouted as she ran. Might as well save everyone else who had a chance. “Get to the docks! We must leave!”
People stared. She didn’t care. She ran past them, and then came out into the docks of Uskhanda.
The Maudhu let out into a shallow, silty bay on the south side of the city. A stone causeway guarded the harbor from the silting of the river, and inside the causeway the masts of the great dhows rose over flocks of fishing boats and lesser vessels.
She ran onto the deepest of the docks, shouting all the way. Prepare to flee! The Devoured are coming! Onto ships and away!
“Mandhi!” someone cried as she flew past. She turned.
It was the saghada Sudran from Davrakhanda, with a pair of the Uluriya of Davrakhanda with him. They had been sitting on the docks on a set of boxes, their backs to her.
“You’re here,” she gasped. “Get everyone on the boats—”
“Where are the others?”
“They stayed in Virnas to—”
“They stayed?”
“I’ll explain later!” She paused to get her breath. “Get everyone onto the ship and prepare to sail. The Devoured are coming, and Ulaur is going to smite the serpent, and we need to be as far as possible from Amur when that happens.”
Sudran and the others gaped at her. Then Sudran snapped to attention and shouted. “Get Mandhi on the coracle and out to the boat! Call in everyone on the shore!”
In a frantic moment Mandhi and a rower loaded into one of the little coracles tied to the dock, and they struck out for the great dhow anchored in the deep water. The men on the docks ran into rapid motion, shouting for their comrades and lifting sacks and jars, the last of their provisions, toward boats.
Mandhi looked toward the dhow. While they were fifty yards away a great pale figure appeared at the rail, and Mandhi cried out.
“Hrenge! Jhumitu!”
The Kaleksha matriarch waved a hand at them. In a few more minutes they reached the side of the dhow and clambered onto the deck. Her mother-in-law shouted her name, crushed her in a sweaty Kaleksha embrace, and pressed the squealing toddler into her arms.
