Path of the Eclipse

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “How?” she asked helplessly.

  The man sobbed roughly, deeply, and then lay still. At first Padmiri thought he had died, but then she heard him murmuring, “I didn’t know. For Kali, they said.” The words grew more jumbled. “Kali sacrifice. No. No. Another one. Skulls. Arms, Lord of Fire! All foreigners. Two others.”

  “What others?” Padmiri asked sharply.

  It was with considerable difficulty that the maimed man was able to speak now. “Others. Two. One first. Then another. It was the second one…” His voice became much softer but the words were clear. “The second one was the one they wanted. Once they had him, they took me away from the temple. They got out their knives. Lord of Fire, the knives! They would not kill me here on the road.” The voice trailed off and the man moaned. Then he made one last effort. “Reverend Lady, help me. The others are lost. They are given to Kali. Help me. Help me.”

  “How did you get here?” Padmiri was trying to decide whether or not the two foreigners were Saint-Germain and his servant. Rogerio had been taken by guardsmen, but not his master. She did not want to believe that Saint-Germain had been caught. She reminded herself that there were other foreigners in Natha Suryarathas. The man lying on the road was a foreigner. It must be someone else who had been taken for sacrifice.

  “They took me away from the temple.” He seemed to doze a moment. “They didn’t kill me. They cut me. They left me. There was a … a shrine. Shiva. They said … his creature…” The voice faltered again. “I’m … cold.”

  The mare snorted, whickered and then sprang forward. One of her hooves struck the figure in the road as she began a headlong plunge down the narrow dark pathway.

  Branches lashed at Padmiri’s arms and face, and no matter how she tugged on the reins, the mare did not respond. Had she been less terrified, she would have screamed, but fear robbed her of her voice, and she would do nothing more than hang on until the mare stopped from exhaustion.

  When that finally happened, Padmiri knew she had come a considerable distance from where the maimed Parsee lay, but she had no sense of where she was. The foreigner had mentioned a shrine to Shiva or one of Shiva’s creatures. She drooped in the saddle, not wanting to think anymore, the aftermath of her ordeal flooding her with shivering weakness. It was full night now, and the moon had not yet risen. She let the mare pick her way down the track as she regained her wind. Padmiri did not want to wander in the forest all night—she knew too well the fate of many of those who became lost—nor did she want to encounter the Rani’s guards. Fatigue was rapidly draining both fear and judgment out of her. She longed for sleep.

  “Ah!”

  The startled cry brought Padmiri fully awake and until that moment she had not realized she had been dozing. There was someone on the path ahead of her. Her first inclination was to demand of the speaker who he was, but she mastered that. She brought the mare to a halt.

  “Who is here, brother?” asked a voice out of the gloom.

  “Another worshiper? You are late, brother,” said a second voice.

  “Where are you bound, brother?” The third voice was distinctly malign. “Answer us.”

  Padmiri did not know what to do. She must answer the men or come to harm, but if they learned she was a woman, she might risk greater hurt. Almost before she actually realized she had done it, she responded in the fluting accents of her own eunuchs, “I am not worthy to attend the sacrifice. My master, however, is there.”

  The men on the trail chuckled. “And you wanted to see done what you cannot do,” the third voice suggested.

  “I have seen that,” Padmiri answered with the petulant quality she had heard Bhatin use when speaking of the men she had taken as lovers.

  “Not this way, you have not. Tonight,” the voice grew boastful, “a creature of Shiva will—”

  “Quiet!”

  “Impious one!” The two voices hissed at once, and the third one said in an undertone, “The eunuch might find the Pars—”

  “Don’t!” the second insisted.

  There was a slight pause, and then the third voice said with overelaborate casualness, “How far have you come along this road, brother?”

  “Some distance,” Padmiri said truthfully, and her mouth was dry.

  “Was there anyone else on the road?” the first voice inquired.

  “Men from the village bringing sacrifice. It grew dark soon after that.” She was finding it more and more difficult to speak in imitation of a eunuch.

  “Brother,” said the third voice, “dismount and walk a way with us.”

  “It would please me,” she said, and was shocked to hear a tremor in her words, “but my master would … beat me if he learned of it.” She hoped that they might assume her fear was not of them, but the fictitious master. Eunuchs as a group, she knew, had the reputation of being cowards.

  “Not tonight. Your master will have more than enough of beating if he is at the sacrifice.” It was the first voice again, pride making the man speak more loudly.

  “Who is your master?” the third voice demanded suddenly, and the three unseen men waited for her answer.

  Padmiri paused an instant too long. “Bisla Ajagupta,” she said, disasterously uncertain, selecting a wealthy upper-caste scholar as her abusive master in the hope that he would not be known to these men.

  “He is not among those at the temple,” the second voice said in an undervoice that Padmiri was not intended to hear.

  “My master left at a late hour. He bade me follow him as soon as I finished my assigned duties.” No, that was not the way a slave would speak, not even a high-ranking household slave.

  There were a few muttered words, and then the third voice spoke again. “Is it that you wish to see the temple, brother? Do you wish to make sacrifice? We will assist you.”

  Padmiri felt rather than saw the two other men move toward her in the darkness. She wanted to flee.

  “Tamasrajasi herself will offer a creature of Shiva on the altar to Kali,” the third voice went on insinuatingly. “There will be other sacrifices before that.”

  With an abrupt, angry scream, Padmiri clapped her heels to the mare’s sides and slapped her with the ends of the reins. The mare lurched once, then broke into a gallop.

  There were shouts and oaths and the third voice yelled, “A woman! It was a woman!” before the forest around them erupted in sounds from the animals disturbed by this sudden outbreak of noise. Padmiri did not stop to listen. She urged the mare to a run, and only when the way grew suddenly steeper did she let her mount trot, and then walk. The mare was panting, and though Padmiri was inexperienced with horses, she knew that the mare was near the limit of her strength. As they crested a rise, Padmiri brought the mare to a stop as she listened for any pursuit. The three men had been on foot and she knew she had long since outdistanced them. But there had been others on the road and she did not want to meet with them. The silence reassured her and she allowed herself to relax in the saddle for the first time since she got onto the mare’s back, which now seemed to be days ago. She was growing stiff and the ache in her legs and back fatigued her. How did the guardsmen do it, day after day? How did they grow accustomed to saddles and horses? She chided herself for triviality, and admitted that she did not want to think about what the three men had said. Yet she must. There was no one else to do it. If what the dying man—he must have been the Parsi the three men mentioned surreptitiously—had told her was correct, there were two foreigners who would be sacrificed. The three men as well as the Parsi had spoken of a creature of Shiva. She did not think of Saint-Germain as such a being, but there was reason to designate him that way.

  All her life Padmiri had been taught that the world followed the course made for it by the gods and the Wheel. Nothing she or anyone could do would change that. She had learned at an early age that interference was always disastrous. And she had been taught that as a member of the ruling military caste, she had certain absolute rights that could not be denied. She had s
een sacrifices offered to Kali when she was eleven years old, and the recollection made her wince. Nothing she could do would change what the gods had ordained. She looked up sharply. Anything she did must be the will of the gods. Her face lightened to a half-smile, and she began to feel strength return to her. The sacrifices would be offered at the temple on the Kudri. Somehow she would have to discover where she was, and quickly, for she had much to do before the middle of the night.

  It was by accident that she came upon a clearing some little time later. Untouchables lived there, in huts that were little more than earthen dens. Two old men tended a fire. One was a leper and most of his face was gone; the rags around his hands covered the stumps of missing fingers. The other was skeletally thin. Both abased themselves profoundly as Padmiri approached.

  “Exalted One, forgive us for speaking, but you must not come here. We are Untouchables.” The emaciated old man had a voice as thin as his body.

  “I have lost my way,” Padmiri said, shocked at herself for telling anything so degrading to an Untouchable. “Tell me where I am.”

  The Untouchables were still; then the leper said, “There is a river nearby. You call it the Chenab.”

  “How far is it to where the Kudri joins with it?” It was most inappropriate for her to ask directions of these people, but now that she had begun, Padmiri was filled with an odd exhilaration.

  “Not far,” the leper said after another considerable silence. “It is a distance walked from dawn until the sun stands at the crown of the trees. The Exalted One, having a horse, will get there more quickly.” Never in his life had the old leper said so much to one of such high caste. Perhaps this was not an Exalted One at all, but a demon come to bring more misfortune.

  “What track shall I follow?” Padmiri asked.

  The leper wanted to lie to her, but the vengeance of demons was worse than their pranks. “The path is there.” He pointed with the rag-wrapped stump of his hand. “It leads to a wide road. Go up the road and there will be another path on the unclean side. That is where the Kudri is.” He knew, as did most of the Untouchables living near the temple, that there were ceremonies and rituals being performed there this night, and that it was wisest to stay away from them. It was not for those of the Untouchables to question what those of higher castes did.

  Padmiri pressed her mare onward, relieved to be away from the presence of the Untouchables. She began to hope that she might arrive in time.

  By the time she reached the road, new doubts had assailed her. How could she simply enter the temple and end the ceremony? Not only would the act be sacrilege, she no longer thought it would be successful. There were guards around the temple, men such as the three she had found on the road, who would be pleased to serve the goddess with her suffering. The mare plodded up the road, as tired as the woman on her back. It was near the middle of the night and chill. One woman, alone, unarmed, what could she do against those gathered in the temple of Kali? She was near the turning at the Kudri; she heard the rush of the water plainly now. Padmiri no longer knew what the gods required of her. It was tempting to listen to the water and let what had been destined from the birth of the gods and the first turning of the Wheel come to pass. The splash of the Kudri was now a muted roar. It would run red in the morning, she thought. When the rites of Kali’s temple were over, the river would still be tainted by the refuse of the sacrifice.… The Kudri. Padmiri brought her head up. Surely elephant-headed Ghanesh, intelligent and wise, had touched her! The Kudri, which her brother had ordered be dammed so that a pleasure lake could be built. Oh, most certainly the Kudri would run red in the morning!

  By the time she reached the camp of the builders, her mare had foundered and was panting as she limped up the trail. Had Padmiri been less exhausted herself, she would have dismounted and left the mare behind, but she was afraid that once out of the saddle she would be unable to move. Her one fear remaining now was that the builders themselves had gone to the temple and there would be no one to put her plan into effect.

  The huts of the builders were hide-covered wooden frames and many of them were empty. There were six fire pits in the camp but only four of them held smoldering embers, and Padmiri directed the mare toward them.

  “Arise!” she shouted, remembering how her father had ordered his men. She did not question her actions anymore. Ghanesh had shown her what the gods had intended her to do.

  At first no one responded to this summons, and she felt her apprehension flicker a last time. Then an arm came around one of the hide flaps of the nearest hut and a surly voice demanded to know who had come there.

  “I am Padmiri, sister to him who was your Rajah, Kare Dantinusha, and father to the Rani Tamasrajasi!” It was impossible that she would not be believed. There was no one in this country who would be so foolish, so presumptuous, as to claim that rank unless it was genuine.

  One of the men emerged at once and abased himself. “Reverend Lady,” he said as he rubbed his face in an attempt to waken.

  “I am here with orders for you,” Padmiri informed him. “Have two of your men lift me out of the saddle.” There was nothing odd in this request, where those of high caste often had slaves whose sole function was to sleep at the foot of their beds in case they should happen to cough in the night and need someone to wipe their lips afterward.

  “At once, at once,” the builder said as he gathered his thoughts. He raised his voice and bawled, “The sister of the Rani’s father is in our camp! Acknowledge her!” If he thought it odd that a high-caste woman should come unaccompanied to a builders’ camp, and on horseback, he said nothing. Padmiri was glad now that she had long had a reputation for eccentricity.

  Slowly men came from the huts. They were dressed roughly and most of them were filthy. All of them abased themselves to her, and then the first man she had spoken to pointed out two of the others. “The Reverend Lady wishes to dismount. Assist her.”

  As the two men came to aid her, Padmiri wished that they were slaves of her own household, not artisan-caste workers unknown to her. She bit back a yelp as one of the men took her foot from the stirrup and swung it over the mare’s back. When she finally stood on solid ground again, Padmiri was seized by a kind of vertigo. Her legs no longer seemed the right length and when she started to walk she almost lost her balance. That would not do. She had much to accomplish before she returned to her house.

  “Why have you honored us, Reverend Lady?” asked the camp leader.

  Padmiri had invented an answer to that question as she had ridden up the twisting path to the builders’ camp, and she said with authority, “My father’s child and heir is known to you. Doubtless you are aware that she makes sacrifice this night, this hour, in the temple to Kali below the first falls.”

  “Yes, Reverend Lady, we know of that.” The builders had decided that the rituals boded ill for their work. When they had petitioned the Rani, they had hoped for other results, but it seemed now that the pleasure lake would not be made.

  “I have the honor to bring you word of her wishes in this regard,” she announced, pleased when the builders gave her their utmost attention.

  “What does the Rani require of us?” the camp leader asked.

  “It is the nature of Kali,” Padmiri said grandly, “to take pleasure in destruction and fecundity. Those who worship her and offer her sacrifice do it in the hope that there will be great fertility and complete oblivion. Therefore, it is suitable that those who sacrifice their bodies with lust should also do so with destruction.” Several years before, one of the great scholars who had visited Padmiri had spent much time discussing the merits of the worship of Kali. At the time Padmiri had listened and questioned, but now she dredged up all that she had been told. “It is therefore most appropriate that as the sacrifice proceeds and the rituals are enacted, that the worship itself should be extinguished.”

  “You tell us that?” The leader of the camp wondered what the Rani wanted of him and his stoneworkers. Surely even she would k
now that they could not destroy a temple in a few hours.

  “It is the wish of my father’s daughter that the dam you have made here be destroyed at once, so that the water it holds back innundate the temple and thereby consume all within it while it cleanses the stones of the blood which Kali desires, so that nothing remains. There is no better sacrifice than this.” Padmiri knew enough of the devotions given Kali to be convincing now. “It will earn you much merit to do this thing, for you will offer the greatest sacrifice and enable those in the temple to reach the full consummation of their rituals.”

  The men heard her out patiently, and then the leader held out his hands. “But, Reverend Lady, we cannot do it.”

  “Cannot?” Padmiri repeated in her most imperious manner. “You will tell your Rani that this cannot be done when she has already said that it must be?” The builders were her last hope! She had no other. “In the morning, must I inform her that her will was denied by builders?”

  Tamasrajasi had not ruled long, but already it was known that she would not be thwarted in anything she desired. The builders exchanged uneasy glances.

  “At the least you will finish on the elephant’s foot,” Padmiri said coldly while her thoughts raced. She did not know how she would get back to her house if the men here refused to carry out her orders. And what would become of her afterward, she dared not consider at all.

  One of the men who had assisted Padmiri off her mare spoke up. “At the base of the dam, Mihir, there are blocking stones. They are not mortared. If we take sledges and braces, we can knock them away, and then the water will do the rest.”

  “Yes,” the camp leader agreed unhappily: though it was the will of the Rani, he hated to see the dam destroyed. “That is one way, of course. It is dangerous.”

  The man who had spoken lowered his head respectfully. “There are those of us who will undertake this work for the merit it earns us in the next life.”