by J. S. Bangs
Kirshta hadn’t eaten anything in the five days since Ruyam had fallen.
The hunger in Kirshta’s stomach gnawed at him. His hands trembled and his legs felt weak. He needed food and rest—but more than that he needed an ally. And he needed to reach Majasravi.
Vapathi is waiting.
He repeated the mantra to himself. For ten years as slaves he and his sister had never allowed themselves to be separated. He had sworn on the day of their capture that he would never leave her, that he would discover a way to protect both of them. And if he were to have any hope of getting back to her, he needed to travel with the Red Men.
He knew the camp’s nearness by the smell of dung smoke and the murmur of the soldiers’ chatter. Ahead, firelight glimmered, and two dark shapes stood by a sentry torch in a slouching, lethargic imitation of the Cane posture.
When they heard his footsteps, one of them stepped into the road and said, “Stop, by order of the imperial guard.”
Kirshta stopped. “My name is Kirshta,” he said. “I need to travel with you.”
“Go home, peasant,” the soldier snapped. “You’ve got no reason to go with us.”
“I’m not a peasant. I was Ruyam’s servant.”
The soldier made a noise of surprise. Kirshta smirked. He had been looking forward to bewildering the sentries with that remark. The man sputtered, “You weren’t in Virnas. You wouldn’t be here.”
“I stayed with Ruyam until he met his demise. Captain Chadram will want to see me.”
The sentry in the road glanced at his partner. “If you’re lying, I’ll ask the captain if I can cut your throat myself,” he said. He motioned for Kirshta to follow with a jerk of his hand.
A feeling of elation flooded through Kirshta. Finally. All he had to do was convince Chadram, and he would have a place to sleep and food for the night. And convincing the captain of the company of Red Men would be the easy part. He only had to tell the truth.
The captain’s tent was in the center of the camp, with its own cordon of guards and a bright, crackling fire right outside its door. The postures of the captain’s guards suggested that their own march hadn’t been much easier than Kirshta’s. The smell of boiled rice and charred lamb wafted from the kitchen tent, sending a throb of desire through Kirshta’s gut. Saliva flooded his mouth, bitter with hunger, but he cut off the impulse.
Discipline, he reminded himself.
There was a brief exchange at the door of the captain’s tent, and then Kirshta was admitted. The interior of the tent was dim, lit only by a butter lamp on a camp stool, and it took Kirshta’s eyes a moment to make out Chadram crouched next to a platter of rice and a half-eaten shank of lamb. Exhaustion showed in Chadram’s drooping eyes and the beard which was overtaking his well-trimmed mustache, but his posture was a rigid crouching Moon that refused to betray his lack of sleep. Kirshta bowed deeply and swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth.
“You,” Chadram said. “I did not expect to see you again.”
Chadram was the one person in the Red Men who would recognize Kirshta on sight, as he had been the only one admitted to Ruyam’s personal tent. His gaze raked Kirshta from head to toe, as if to assure himself that Kirshta was not some kind of revenant raised by Ruyam. His eyes lingered on the dried blood on Kirshta’s knees.
“When we heard that Ruyam had failed to seize the Heir,” Chadram said, “I assumed that you were either dead or fled. But you are here. Why?”
He had spent long hours on the road anticipating this question and considering his answer. The truth seemed to be the safest thing in the end. “My sister Vapathi is in the Ushpanditya. I want to get back to her.”
“And if we don’t return to the Ushpanditya?”
This, Kirshta had not expected. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Chadram grumbled. “Because as fast as we may march, we won’t reach Majasravi ahead of the news of Ruyam’s death. When that news reaches Majasravi, the city may become a very dangerous place, and the Ushpanditya most dangerous of all. We may be turned aside before we get that far, or called into some other action.”
“Oh,” Kirshta said. His heartbeat quickened, and he tried to quench the fear burning in his veins. Calm. Worry will not get you there any faster.
“And you want to come,” Chadram said. “Why should I take you? I don’t require a servant. You’re too thin and small to be much use with a spear. The only thing I really want from you is the full report of what happened in Virnas, and I don’t need to bring you to Majasravi to get that.”
“I’ll tell you what happened in Virnas,” Kirshta said. “But also…” His thoughts raced. There was one thing, and he said it before he could regret it. “Ruyam taught me the arts of the thikratta.”
Chadram raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know that. Ruyam never said any such thing.”
“He taught me when he meditated and practiced his disciplines. I do not have his skill, but I may be of use.”
This was not precisely true. Ruyam never meant to teach Kirshta anything, but nonetheless Kirshta had learned. He had studied Ruyam’s techniques in secret for years, reading the old thikratta’s books and copying his meditations. He had learned a little—enough to awaken his farsight and taste the power of the inner silence. The inner silence, if he could master it, had power enough to keep him and Vapathi safe forever.
But he would never be anything like Ruyam if he couldn’t return to Majasravi and get his old master’s books. Now that Ternas had burned, Ruyam’s personal library was the greatest store of thikratta learning in all of Amur. Those books were the other reason he had to return to Majasravi.
Chadram studied Kirshta for a moment, tapping his finger absently against his unshaved cheek. Then he reached for the butter lamp on the stool, brought it close to his lips, and blew it out. The tent plunged into total darkness.
“I don’t believe you,” Chadram said flatly. Kirshta heard the scrape of pottery against canvas as Chadram set the lamp back on the stool. “But I’ll give you a chance to convince me. Mastery of fire is one of the thikratta’s disciplines. So light the lamp.”
“I have never….” Kirshta began. There was a lump in his throat. “I can’t. I never learned that art.”
“Likely,” Chadram said in a disparaging tone. “I’ve been called to a meeting with Sadja-dar of Davrakhanda, and I have no time to interrogate you now. In the morning I’ll question you about Ruyam and throw you out—”
“Wait,” Kirshta said. His heart hammered in his chest. “Let me try.”
“Try?” A dry laugh. “Try, then, but I don’t have long to wait.”
No time to think about it. Though it was dark, Kirshta closed his eyes. Time to summon fire. Where did he begin? Ruyam could do it in an instant, but he had sixty years of study behind him. And Kirshta had no teacher, and only a moment to spare.
He tried for a moment, thinking of the lamp, and attempting to summon the elemental heat to ignite it. A few seconds of effort convinced him that it was hopeless. He didn’t even know if his approach was correct. He opened his eyes and sank to his knees in despair.
“I see,” Chadram said after a moment. “As I suspected.”
“I can do something else,” Kirshta said desperately. “I have farsight.”
Chadram made a doubtful murmur.
“No, I swear. My farsight was clearer than Ruyam’s at times. When Navran came to the Ushpanditya, I saw that he would be the undoing of Ruyam if he stayed.”
“And you didn’t tell Ruyam this?”
Kirshta shook his head. “Could a slave foretell his master’s death? And it sounded insane to say that Ruyam would only live if he failed to subvert the prisoner. But that is what I saw. Instead I tried to help Navran resist Ruyam, to escape so that Ruyam could live and I could keep learning from him. But Ruyam assured his own doom by breaking Navran. I was right about the whole thing.”
“Easy enough for you to say now,” Chadram said. “Get out.”
“No, please
. Let me try.”
Chadram didn’t answer. The dark silence was the best chance he would get.
He closed his eyes and cut off every sensation from his mind, like slamming shut a wooden gate. At first, his thoughts would not quiet, and he couldn’t feel anything except the tumult of his own mind. The mind like a net, he repeated. The mind like a net.
The start of the thikratta’s discipline was to simply ignore the chatter of the mind until it drifted off on its own. His terror burned in his chest, but he let it go. It dissolved. His thoughts stilled. His heart slowed, and his breath faded to nearly nothing.
And he was there: knowledge without thought, language without speech, being without movement. He had never reached this place quite so quickly, he realized, but this fact presented itself as did every other aspect of the world, as something external and contingent, which did not touch him where he floated in the pool of eternity. This was the place of farsight, where time and place disappeared, where future and past could be seen alike as transitory ripples upon the deep.
Fire, he recalled. He did not know how to make fire. And he would not learn it, not today. He knew this with utter certainty, the way all things were known within the trance. This disturbed him, and almost drew him out of his meditation. Hadn’t he come here trying to find the secret of fire? But he stayed. Perhaps there was something else. Another aphorism of the thikratta: The pomegranate falls into the hand of the one who does not strive for it.
He looked. Fragments and whispers of the past and future brushed up against him, most of them too weak to leave any permanent impression in his mind.
A man lay facedown in a pool of blood on a red carpet. The blood spread across the marble floor.
A hole like a mouth of stone opened in the earth. Teeth of obsidian pierced him. He fell into the throat which went down forever.
Ashes and arrows fell into the churning water.
The bowstring was drawn and loosed. Kirshta carried the arrow in his hand, flying as fast as the wind, and planted it in Chadram’s thigh.
That last… was it enough? It would have to be. He let that fragment of a vision fall into his hand. He peered at it, let his mind explore its edges, breathed at the image until he was sure what it implied. Then, when he knew what he would say, he clutched the hard-won words in his memory and fell back into his body.
He opened his eyes, though the tent was still dark. “In twenty days we will reach Jaitha,” he said. “The king of that city will attempt to prevent us from crossing the river with his boats, and there will be a battle. You will be injured by an arrow in your thigh. But we will cross, and the injury will not be severe.” He let out his breath. “I cannot light the lamp, but I can give you this.”
“Farsight,” Chadram said with annoyance. “Conveniently for you, I can’t determine if you’re a liar for twenty more days.”
“If I’m a liar, you can kill me when we reach Jaitha,” Kirshta said.
He was a liar, of course. He hadn’t told Chadram that he himself would guide the arrow. But in the lingering numbness of the trance, he could lie without fear—and he had twenty days to figure out how to avoid death.
“I’m glad you understand the consequences of failure,” Chadram said. “As I said, in the morning you’ll tell me everything you know about Ruyam’s death, and then you’ll be under guard as far as Jaitha. If your vision is good, then maybe I’ll see about taking you farther.”
He paused a moment. “It wouldn’t hurt to have a farseer when we get to Majasravi, if things are as bad as I suspect.”
“No, sir,” Kirshta said. His emotions were beginning to return to him, and there was an unfamiliar thread woven among them: hope. He was suddenly aware of his body, and with it the sudden pain of his hunger. “May I get some food?”
Chadram shoved the platter with his half-eaten dinner at Kirshta. “Take this. And then the guard will bring you to a place to sleep, where we’ll keep a good eye on you. I’m going to Sadja-dar.”
He disappeared out the door of the tent.
Kirshta scooped up a handful of rice with total abandonment to his hunger. The grains tasted like honey on his tongue, and his stomach twinged with the sudden influx of food. He took a bite of the lamb and collapsed onto his knees. Very undignified, and not a great example of discipline, but he had already passed the test. And if he could survive the next twenty days with Chadram, he might even make it to Majasravi.
Vapathi, I’m coming.
Sadja
The field was not yet a battlefield, and Sadja hoped that it would not become one. Overhead the stars hung like figs around the crescent moon, and below them glittered the torches and campfires of three armies, scattered like sparks which had fallen from the splendor above. As yet, the scene was bloodless. There was still a chance it would remain that way.
A trio of torches split away from the fires on Sadja’s right and slowly advanced across the darkness between them. Sadja glanced at Bhargasa, his army captain, who nodded to acknowledge he had seen it. Bhargasa whispered an order, and the honor guard fell in place around Sadja. Sadja rose to his feet and let his open kurta fall off of his shoulders, enjoying the breath of the night air on his skin. It was too damn hot here in the south, so far away from the coast. He wished he could get back to Davrakhanda where the ocean air would do him good.
Only a little longer.
There was a quiet murmuring as Sadja’s outermost sentries accosted the approaching party of Red Men, and names and ranks were established. A moment later the torches of the Red Men mingled with Sadja’s own, and Sadja could see the face of the man who had come to meet him.
The leader of the approaching party wore the white dhoti and red scarf which gave the Red Men their name, with a simple undyed kurta beneath the scarf. His arms were well-muscled beneath the short sleeves of his kurta, and the torchlight reflected off of scars criss-crossing his arms. A veteran. Not wearing armor, which would have been a bad sign indeed, but he had a sword strapped to his waist. He had the trimmed mustache and shaven cheeks of an officer, though the stubble starting to show on his chin suggested that their martial discipline was starting to slip. He reached Sadja and spread his hands, then bowed deeply from the waist.
“Chadram, captain of the second company of the imperial guard,” he said.
Bhargasa stepped forward and touched the man’s shoulder. “Your sword, captain.”
The man shook his head matter-of-factly. “The captains of the Red Men do not disarm themselves except before the Emperor himself.”
“You stand with the king of Davrakhanda, whom I am sworn to protect,” Bhargasa said. “Give me your sword.”
“Let him keep it,” Sadja said with a wave of his hand. He sat back down on the carpet spread before his tent and folded his legs. “Who knows, before a year is passed you may disarm before me after all. You got my message?”
“It was very vague,” Chadram said.
“There are things I didn’t want to entrust to messengers.”
Chadram nodded with studied indifference. The man had clearly spent time in the imperial court to learn such perfect impassivity. “I can imagine, Sadja-dar.”
“Let me begin with bluntness. What are you going to do with your division of the Red Men? Ruyam who commanded you is dead, and you are very far from Majasravi.”
Chadram hesitated. “Are you sure that Ruyam is dead? So the rumors have said, but I know better than to trust rumors. This would not be the first time that Ruyam’s death has been prematurely announced.”
“I’m sure,” Sadja said. “I have spoken with the man who crushed his bones into ash.”
“Ah,” Chadram said, raising an eyebrow. A complex mixture of terror and relief appeared on his face. “Ash? If that’s true, we’re better off without… whatever Ruyam became.”
“You are certainly better off,” Sadja said. “But you’re still here, many weeks of marching from the capital, with Thudra-dar of Virnas encamped beside you and the city of Virnas just
a half-day away.”
“We are not planning on attacking Virnas,” Chadram said. He touched the hilt of his sword as he said it, and Sadja wondered if the gesture meant that Chadram was lying or if it was merely force of habit.
“Then the first object of our meeting is accomplished,” Sadja said. He would have to pretend to take Chadram’s statement at face value. “My main reason for coming out with my own forces was to forestall any counter-attack on Virnas and the Heir who now rules there.”
“Is that really all you came here for?” Chadram said, his voice indicating flat incredulity.
“Well, I was interested in knowing where you’ll go from here. And I’m interested in knowing whom you’ll serve when you get there.”
Chadram rubbed his finger gently against his mustache and studied Sadja. “To Majasravi,” he said. “We march back to Majasravi.”
Sadja smiled slightly. “Why don’t you sit down?” He gestured to the carpet in front of him, and waved for one of his aides-de-camp to bring out a dish. Chadram glanced about suspiciously, looking over his shoulder to be sure the other soldiers who had accompanied him still watched, then he cautiously lowered himself and crossed his legs. The aide set down a tray with figs and pomegranates between them. It had required a bit of searching to find intact pomegranates in Virnas given the parlous state of the city after the battles and the siege, but he had found them, and the fact of their presence was enough.
“I was hoping for some detail,” Sadja said, picking up a slice of pomegranate. “Perhaps something that I could plan around.” He plucked a pip from the pomegranate and crushed it beneath his teeth.
Chadram took his own slice from the tray. “Information about military movements isn’t free.”
“I think a trade would be mutually profitable.”
“What sort of profit do you foresee?”
Sadja crushed another pip of the pomegranate in his teeth and wiped away a drop of ruby liquid that escaped to the corner of his mouth. “How is your supply?”
“Adequate.”
