Mangku said, “Listen only to me now, men of the Jath tribe. You will forget any cunning words that Semar the priest has spoken, forget them entirely, and go and kill that old worm now. Kill him. Do not harm the Rain-Bringer’s Staff but kill the old man. Go.”
Whatever control Semar had exerted over the Jath was gone in an instant. Blown away like smoke in a storm. The black-clad guards seemed to awake from a trance. They shook their heads, hefted their scimitars and began to move toward Semar.
Jun leaped for the Obat Bale.
Ongkara saw him coming and lunged protectively for the Kris. Jun landed with both feet on the Bale and lashed out at the King of Singarasam. A solid, two-knuckle punch with his left fist, all his weight behind it, which struck Ongkara full in his froggy little face and tumbled him off the back of the throne. Jun seized the Kris, pulled it from its sheath in one movement, and placed the pitted blade against his left palm. The blood flowed; the blade bloomed into life. A tongue of rippling red flame.
And the Prince of the Wukarta, Khodam in hand, turned to face his enemies.
He saw Ketut, still crouched beside her dead lover, and Semar backed up against a pillar trying to fend off the Jath with his old wooden staff. Mangku looked on with arms folded comfortably round his own staff and a complacent smile adorning his dark face.
Jun attacked. He leaped off the Obat Bale and brought the Khodam down on his foes. He sliced through the back of the first Jath, dividing him into two parts in a shower of red, and slashed straight through two others in the same heartbeat. He hurled himself at a group of three guards, who were just turning toward him. Cut left, cut right. Lunge. He punched the burning blade easily through a man’s skull, the tip bursting out the back of his head in a sizzle of frying blood. He took one man’s leg clean off, and another’s arm. He was moving smoothly, unthinkingly following the patterns that War-Master Hardan had instilled in him over many years of arduous training. He employed the figure of eight that destroyed two men, one on each side of a pillar; the difficult roll and thrust that brought him up under another man’s guard. The blade cut like a straight razor through stretched silk, smooth, deadly, untroubled by sinew, spine or even steel. The Jath were all aware of him now and, abandoning their mission to destroy Semar, they all converged on the slim youth with the whirling red blade. A dozen trained professional killers. A dozen deadly slicing scimitars.
Jun killed them all.
He slashed and hacked the Jath to bloody ruin, dodging their blows, swiping off limbs and splitting skulls. He felt the splashes of their hot blood on his chest and face and arms, but his heart was singing, his soul was filled with a burning joy; the blade of flame leaving beautiful red trails in the air, and nourishing his Wukarta soul. He stabbed and sliced: he danced through the lumbering bodies and the blood fell like rain in the Audience Hall. Suddenly there was Ongkara himself, borrowed scimitar in hand, slashing up at him awkwardly. Jun sucked in his stomach and the steel hissed past; then he chopped through Ongkara’s thick blade as if it were a slender reed, and with a twist of his wrist, he cut once laterally with the Khodam and sent the Lord of the Islands’ head rolling across the floor.
Jun stopped. The blood mist cleared before his eyes and he saw that he was surrounded by the dead and fallen wounded. Semar was still by his pillar, unharmed, still clutching his staff in front of him. Mangku was staring at him awestruck from the far side of the room.
He was aware that there was a foul stench in the air, the stink of rotting, corrupted flesh—and yet the dark bodies he had made were fresh; some were even still feebly moving.
Mangku said, “Wukarta blood. Like father, like son.”
Jun took a step toward him, lifting the Khodam high, small scarlet flames still flickering along its wavy, blood-clogged edge.
“And the son shall die, in the same manner that his father did,” said Mangku. He gave a high, harsh cry, a word of timeless power; there was a creaking-cracking noise and the sorcerer’s body disappeared; the long, steel-and-jewel-topped staff clattered to the marble floor. And where the tall man had stood was a large buzzing, pulsating, amorphous mass, glinting black and green. A swarm of tiny, angry flies.
The flies formed into a sphere bigger than a bull buffalo, rose in the air high above Jun’s head, brushing the high ceiling of the Audience Hall, filling the whole vast chamber with their angry, sawing whine. The mass of flies hovered above Jun, who raised the Khodam, pointing it at the center of the swarm, yet knowing it would be useless against these thousands of tiny green-and-black bodies.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, on the very edge of vision, he saw something move. Something huge. Something horrible. Something utterly terrifying.
From the spot by the wall where the cooling remains of Tenga lay, Dargan the Witch Goddess, consort of Vharkash, Queen of Fire, rose up to her full height.
She was a gigantic figure, twice as tall as a man, with huge bulging red-and-black-ringed eyes, with curled, protruding fangs and claws of an enormous tiger. The rotting smell grew stronger and Jun saw the glistening pink necklace of human entrails around her neck, and at her waist a belt of skulls knotted together with flaps of rotting skin. Dargan took one huge stride toward Jun and he instantly forgot the looming cloud of death above his head and could do nothing but stare mesmerized as the she-monster advanced on him. He dropped the Khodam with a clatter and felt the hot, shameful spurt of urine down his thigh.
Dargan roared, louder than a thousand lions, a noise to break the sky. The fat, blood-red pillars of the Audience Hall shook like saplings under its power. And with that mighty roar came flame: a great, searing, belching tongue of fire, red, orange, yellow, which surged out of her opened jaws and licked deep into the mass of flies.
The insects exploded, popping in bursts of iridescent green and scarlet, indigo and coal black, like the burst of a Han firework high in the heavens. Dargan breathed again and another blast of fire rippled through the depleted swarm. The noise of the tiny, exploding bodies continued for a time, a string of distant firecrackers now, growing fainter. And with a thump, the body of Mangku the sorcerer fell out of the air on top of his abandoned staff.
It was clear that the sorcerer had been mauled. His skin was blackened by the flames almost as badly as poor dead Tenga’s, and his body was diminished, too, smaller in form as if a quarter of his flesh, bone and fat had been burned away by the blast of Dargan’s breath.
The Witch Goddess stood over the body of Mangku, stooped and slashed once with her tiger-clawed hand, the strike lacerating the crusted, blackened flesh of the sorcerer’s back, cutting four bloody channels through the living meat. For Mangku still lived despite the fiery punishment he had endured. He turned one red-raw blistered cheek up toward the she-monster above him, and mumbled a single ancient word.
There was another loud crack. And Mangku’s mangled body transformed once more—a chittering horde of cockroaches, shiny brown with grease, appeared where his prone body had been, and they scuttled in every direction, slipping under the corpses of the Jath, scrabbling through holes in the skirting boards and out of the wide-open doors on each side of the Hall. Dargan gave one last gigantic roar and her flame-breath blasted the marble floor, catching a single slow-moving cockroach and vaporizing it in an instant.
But the rest of Mangku was gone.
CHAPTER 47
He was woken by a soft knocking on the door. It was full dark and for a moment Farhan was frightened by the sound. His whole body was aching, his hand was throbbing and he felt shaky and weak as he climbed out of the cot in the tiny bedroom he had been allocated in the rear of the Governor’s Palace and made his way to the door. He peered out into the courtyard outside. A dark, slim shape slipped through the crack as he opened it, brushing past him. And Farhan found himself staring in the light of the crescent moon that gleamed through the narrow window into an intense pair of dark eyes. The man was dressed in soft black clot
h and only the upper part of his face was uncovered. A long, curved sword in a black-lacquer sheath was strapped to his back and protruded above his black-cloth-covered head. Far too late, Farhan thought: Assassin! And fumbled on the desktop for the unsheathed sailor’s knife he had been using the day before to open his correspondence. The moment his groping hand touched the handle, the man’s palm slapped down on top of his, snake fast, pinning it to the table.
He said, “You don’t need a weapon, lord. I come as a friend.”
Farhan gaped at him. The man pulled down the mask that covered the lower part of his face with his left hand and Farhan saw that he had the features of a Celestial or someone from those northern regions. But it was not that which shocked him. The man had spoken to him in the Khevan tongue. He understood the words perfectly—he had painstakingly learned the language during his stint in the Imperial city of Khev.
“Who are you?” he said, his voice unreasonably, girlishly high.
The man frowned. “I am a friend. I told you. But I have a message for you. Are you listening? This is the message, ‘It is cold tonight. Cold enough to make an ice-bear shiver. Come to me and warm my bones.’”
The night was balmy, warm even. Farhan gaped at him.
Then all the memories came tumbling back.
“She is here? She is in the palace?”
“The Lady is outside the walls.”
“Katerina is with the Celestial Legion?”
“The Lady commands the Legion.”
Farhan stared at him. It did not make any sense: why would a Khevan princess be thousands of leagues from her home—in Istana Kush, of all places, and attacking the city with a Celestial Legion that she commanded? Was he still asleep? Was he dreaming?
“Let us have a little light at least while we talk,” said Farhan. His brain was racing.
The exchange about the ice-bear had been an old signal between them. Back in Khev, she would send a messenger with those words to invite him to come to her bed. Oh, how he remembered those magical words, the joy they used to bring when he heard them. He fumbled for flint and tinder. Clumsily, he struck a spark from iron and flint, coaxed the glowing tinder into flame and encouraged the lamp to produce a flickering yellow light.
* * *
• • •
As the man in black began to talk, his voice soothing, his Khevan impeccable, Farhan struggled to follow the extraordinary twisting turns of events that had brought his princess-lover from the snow-lands of Khev to this war-torn citadel at the gateway of the Laut Besar.
He realized that part of his comprehension problem stemmed from the fact that he was badly hungover. A little before midnight Mamaji had sent her terrifying little servant Lila to his room with two bottles of Rhonos wine from the palace cellars, as well as a small, velvet case that contained a large gold coin on a black-and-red stripy ribbon: the Order of the Elephant. The wine was a gift, Lila mumbled, from the Federation. A reward for his loyal service. Much more likely, Farhan knew, Mamaji wished to check that he had not escaped from the palace, or killed himself, or anybody else, for that matter. It was a routine check on him, that was all. He had drunk both bottles of wine as swiftly as possible in an attempt to quench his rage and disappointment, and now, an hour or so before dawn, his much-battered body and wine-shrunken brain were taking their revenge on him for his excesses.
“She gave away the Principality of Ashjavat to the Celestial Empire? Just gave it away? A gift? How on Earth did she expect to get away with that?”
“The Lady is an extraordinary person, as I think you know,” said the man—who had told him that his name was Ari Yoritomo, and that he was a Niho knight in her service.
“Oh, she is, she is,” said Farhan. “But, please, continue with your story . . .”
He went over to his dresser, where his gun case was, and opened the long box. He fumbled inside and found a screw of paper containing a white powder, poured a little of it into an empty water cup, refilled the cup from the jug, stirred it with his finger, and drank it down. It was an obat-based preparation made from the crumbled dried leaves of the young trees and a salt made from clarified resin. He could feel it fizzing in his belly and had to grip the desk to stop himself from immediately vomiting.
Some moments later, though, he did begin to feel a little more human. The aching in his body, his sore head and cut hand ceased to trouble him and he listened spellbound as the knight told him the tale of the long voyage from Ostraka, the Martyrite assassination attempt and the brutal march along the Barat Cordillera.
A few moments later, he said again, “And she is here now, outside these walls.”
“She is, lord. And she requires your help.”
“I find that hard to believe. She seems to be almost superhuman. Capable of any task that she sets herself to.” He could feel the obat glowing in his veins.
“Nevertheless, she asks for your help. She told me to tell you that she asks for it in the name of the love that you once shared.”
“What does she want from me?”
Ari Yoritomo told him.
When he had finished, Farhan goggled at the black-clad man with his mouth open. He was not, perhaps, as shocked as he pretended. But he needed a little time to think.
Farhan was not a fool. He knew that Katerina was seeking to use him. He was nearly forty and plump and his hair was not as thick as it had once been—and most significantly he was also very poor. All he had to his name was the promissory note signed by General Vakul for five hundred ringgu in his pocket. And she did not promise her love to him, she did not promise him anything, only asked him to do this deed in the name of what they had once shared. But whatever they had shared in the past: she could not want him now, could she? Old, fat, and penniless? He realized then, in a blinding moment of clarity, that whether she wanted him or not, whether she loved him or not, it made no difference at all to his calculations. He loved her. That was the point. She was still his angel; his light in the darkness. During all the rackety traveling he had done, all the dangers faced, all the difficult tasks accomplished, she had always been there in his dreams. A shining vision of future happiness. And if it was a delusion, so what? He loved her. To the voyager in him, the man ever among strangers, sometimes lost and always homeless, she was his home.
Farhan thought about the Federation. It had once been his homeland, his cause, the repository of his first loyalties—but was that still the case? Had it ever truly been the case? He thought about the Amrit Shakti—and what vengeance they would take if they knew he had betrayed them. What rage he would spark in Mamaji. He thought about the way he had been cheated and tricked by her—not once but twice. He thought of Katerina, pictured her face smiling up at him, grateful. Fuck Mamaji. Fuck the Amrit Shakti. Fuck the Federation.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
* * *
• • •
Colonel Farhan Madani strode into the wheelhouse, a long, narrow, dusty room directly above the main gate. He wore his best black uniform, sponged and pressed as well as he could manage in his cramped apartment, his black peaked cap with the golden badge of the Amrit Shakti on the front. The medal of the Order of the Elephant was pinned to his double-buttoned breast and highly polished, knee-length riding boots adorned his feet. Behind him came his servant, or bodyguard, or whatever he was, a Celestial-looking fellow all in black, too, with a long sword strapped to his back. “Who is in command here?” Farhan snapped.
A sleepy Dokra roused himself from the pile of old sacks where he had been resting, took in this vision of martial splendor, jumped to his feet and made a crisp salute.
“Me, sir, Corporal Ranjan, sir.”
“And these are your brave men?” Farhan indicated four soldiers who had swiftly formed a small line, muskets held at port, standing between a pair of the huge wooden spoked wheels that controlled the massive iron-and-oak drawbridge and portculli
s below.
“Yes, sir, this is Trooper Dengu, this is Trooper Banjit . . .”
“I don’t need to know all their names, Corporal.”
“No, sir.”
“Where is your officer?” Farhan said.
“Lieutenant Tush, sir? He’s resting, sir, upstairs in his quarters.”
“Right, yes, Tush. So he is resting, is he? Hmm. Well, you will send three of your best men to arrest Lieutenant Tush immediately. He is not to be unnecessarily harmed but he is to be confined to his quarters until further notice. By order of the Amrit Shakti.”
The corporal looked doubtful. “We have orders, sir, not to leave the wheelhouse during our shift, under any circumstances.”
“I am countermanding your orders, as of now. I am Colonel Farhan Madani of the Amrit Shakti, you may well have heard of me, and I order you to send three of your men to arrest Lieutenant Tush and confine him to his quarters. Do it, Corporal, immediately.”
“Sir?”
“Do you know, Corporal Ranjan, what the Amrit Shakti does to people who do not obey their orders?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, hop to it.”
The corporal gave him one last searching look and then nodded at three of his men. As they filed out, Farhan noticed that the wheelhouse door had a locking bar, which allowed it to be sealed from the inside. He looked out of the greasy oblong window at the town of Istana Kush below the main gate. It was a landscape of shattered houses, shops, burned-out taverns bisected by a cobbled road, now much potholed, that led all the way to the Red Fort on the other side of the bay. There were piles of rubble everywhere, mounds of broken timbers, too, from the bombardment two days ago. He could see the line of trenches a few hundred paces away and the shiny helmets of a handful of Legionnaire sentries just showing above the parapet. There was no sign of her, no sign of any assault troops. Gods, he hoped this was going to work! The timing was crucial. Dawn was breaking and Farhan could hear the distant sound of a cockerel pointing out that fact to the world.
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