by J. S. Bangs
She sat as quietly as a flower in a still pool, unmoved through all the violence. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her head was bowed so he could not see her face. The silence roared.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Ten days,” Navran said. “Not long before we came here.”
“You never told me.” It wasn’t a question but a flat, bitter announcement.
He wanted to say I couldn’t bear to. But why should he protect himself with that feeble excuse, as if he were too weak to bear up under a little pain? He hadn’t said anything because he had been afraid, which was no excuse at all. So he said simply, “I didn’t.”
She sniffed, then rose to her knees and gathered together the silver coins that lay strewn across the table. She did not look at him. She said nothing else.
“I had to,” Navran said. “You understand. It was….”
“I understand,” she said. Her voice was high and quavered on the edge of a sob. “I understand very well.”
“I tried to find a better way. But when Sadja didn’t reply….”
“I know,” she said a little more forcefully. “You had to humiliate me here, let me hear the news from the mouth of the treacherous enemy who’s marrying his way into your court. Oh, I understand, Navran-dar.”
The knife was in his heart now, and he didn’t deserve to pull it out. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The sob she had been holding back broke. She laid her head atop the table and wept, her shoulders shaking with tears. Only the smallest sounds of crying escaped her throat, like the chirps of a bird with a broken wing.
Navran closed his eyes. The knife twisted in its wound. He knelt and lay a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Josi swatted his hand away. Her face was a ruin of tears and mucus. Her eyes were bleary and red. Her jaw trembled with sobs.
“You’re sorry?” she said. “Well I’m sorry, too.”
She stood and wiped her face with the loose fabric at the top of her sari. “Congratulations on your marriage, my lord and king.”
She fled the room.
Kirshta
For twelve days, Kirshta walked through a gradually solidifying memory. The mountains around him slowly turned and assumed the remembered shapes of his childhood. The valley took on familiar contours, and he saw individual houses whose stones he recalled. The smell of the trees was a well-known friend, a key which reached into long-buried depths and dredged up hateful memories.
And the crying.
He heard the children crying as the slavers took them. They were the echo of Vapathi’s voice. The echo of his own voice.
Yesterday he had crept close to the slavers’ camp in the night and saw the tent where the children were kept. The door opened for a moment and he caught a glimpse: twenty of them tied together, huddled and weeping. Vapathi comforted them as a mother, as no one had been there to comfort him and his sister when they had been taken. Then the flap fell closed and his sight was cut off.
He crawled away, aching with pain, and collapsed near a bank of late-melting snow to weep.
Today they had arrived. At the south edge of the village was a hole in the ground like an ice-rimmed throat, surrounded by six cairns, strewn with filthy flags and the remnants of offerings.
The Holy. This was his village.
The slavers would go no farther.
Darkness fell. He crept into the village and hid himself behind one of the stone huts, then folded himself into the shadow out of the light of the crescent moon. The stones under his thighs bit into his flesh with their cold edges. Just as he wanted it.
He closed his eyes and plunged into the inner stillness.
There was no stillness here in the mountains and had not been since he began to climb. Instead there was an insistent buzzing, a fierce drone underscored by the grinding of distant stones. Hunger and fear welled up incessantly, warring against the passionless impassivity that was the thikratta’s weapon. But his will was an obsidian knife. He cut through the drone and found the power beneath it, like chipping through a layer of ice to find water in a frozen well. He had grown strong. Nothing would disturb him tonight.
He meditated and waited to kill. A timeless span passed.
Someone stepped onto the road. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the slavers, but it was only a young man dressed in a long coat, carrying a torch. He moved to the south, toward the Holy. The priest, Kirshta realized. Tonight he would offer his blood to She Who Devours.
He held his grip on the inner stillness, through the storm of his fury, through the hunger and the grinding of the mountains. He sublimated his anger into strength of will and prepared to bring down fire.
This must end.
A few minutes later the slavers came.
The first of them bore torches and held swords at their sides. About a dozen followed, their eyes open, looking for the houses they were to plunder.
Kirshta stepped out of the darkness. They heard his movement, and their eyes turned toward him, gleaming spots of yellow in the guttering torchlight.
“Who’s there?” one of them called in Amuran.
“I am,” Kirshta said, and he stepped forward.
They raised their torches to get a look at him. “It’s that young man who was bitten by the tiger,” one of them said. “How did he get up here?”
“Doesn’t matter,” the other one responded. “We should’ve killed him then. Take care of him now, then go get the slaves.” He pulled out a sword.
Kirshta called up the element of breath on the fire of their torches.
The flames surged and poured down the bodies of the men who held them, like fire eating dry sticks. They burst into flames, their flesh boiling away in an instant. A moment of screams, and they were reduced to blackened skeletons.
The men scattered away from the flames. Kirshta’s eyes were closed. He saw only with the inner sight. He plucked flame from one body and planted it on the next, grabbing at their clothes, their hair, their skin. Flames licked over flesh, cooking muscles and blackening bones. Screams, screams everywhere.
A prick of pain in his shoulder. His will held, and he ignored it. He consumed another man with fire, then another prick in his arm. A stabbing in his gut, and suddenly he wavered. The pain was furious, and in the pressure of the grinding hunger which covered the stillness, his will failed.
The inner stillness slipped away from him. He was himself, in his body, and wracked with pain.
A man with a sword stabbed him in the gut again and kicked him to the side.
“Filthy slave!” he screamed. “You killed him! You killed Jakhritu!” He kicked Kirshta again.
Pain lanced through his belly. He was bleeding from his shoulder and his gut. He coughed blood. The man kicked him. Another stab through the stomach.
“Run!” A far-off voice said.
“He’s almost dead,” the man over Kirshta said.
“He’ll bring more fire down in a moment. Let him bleed out and suffer.” Someone spat on his face.
“We have to get our dead out of here. Run!” another said.
No.
Kirshta couldn’t move. He reached for the inner stillness, but it was gone, useless to him. Not with these wounds, not through the resistance of the mountains. A sob shook him. He stopped his voice to quiet the pain that the movement provoked.
They will not get away.
His will might not cut through to reach the inner stillness, but he could still make himself stand. He pushed himself upright. A groan escaped his throat.
They must never come again.
The slavers were retreating. He took a step forward, then fell to the ground. He couldn’t reach them. He was dying—he could feel it, could feel the deep wounds in his gut, could feel the rot spreading from his intestines to his blood.
He collapsed to the ground. His strength left him. His vision began to swim, the stars and sliver of moonlight blurring together overhead.
He was going to
die, unless, unless…
He looked toward the Holy.
There is another power.
The hunger, the grinding, the throat of stone which descends endlessly.
She Who Devours sleeps endlessly beneath the hills. For a thousand years the priests of the Holy have prolonged her slumber with their blood.
Perhaps there was a way.
The hunger which chokes off the inner stillness.
The cairns stood at the edge of the village. Bits of ice on the stones glowed in the moonlight. His strength to stand was gone. So he crawled.
Stones cut his hands, and ice entered the wounds in his belly. He did not care. He would die one way or another. He crawled forward, blood on his hands, dust beneath his fingernails. Past the cairns. To the lip of the Holy, where the crude ladder waited.
He put a hand on the first rung and attempted to pull himself down. He couldn’t catch himself. His falling body wrenched his hand off the rung and he fell, ribs bashing against the steps of the ladder. He landed with an anguished grunt on the debris at the bottom of the pit.
For a moment, he wept in the entrance of the Holy. Above him, the black sky swam with stars.
This is not the end.
He had passed through the dungeons of the Dhigvaditya and the mouth of the tiger. He would not die here.
Roll over. Push yourself onto your elbows. Crawl forward.
The tunnel was pure blackness, a throat descending into the earth, ringed by teeth of ice. The only light was the reflection of the feeble starlight. Fangs of stone cut his hands. Darkness, darkness, continuing endlessly. The murmuring of the priest’s prayers sounded ahead of him. He crawled.
Dim torchlight, casting impotent rays in a vast cavern of darkness. The black silhouette of a priest, the lamp set on the corner of a stone table. The drip drip of blood accompanied his muttered prayers. Kirshta tumbled down the slope to the floor of the cavern. The landing was agony, but the pain of his body barely touched his mind anymore.
Where the inner stillness had been Kirshta felt only a bottomless hunger, sucking at his marrow and drawing him forward. The hunger drove him onward.
The priest flinched at the sound of Kirshta’s fall, but did not interrupt his prayer.
For your slumber, for your sleep Now and forever, you drink, you thirst Be satisfied, be filled Awake no more forever
Kirshta crawled toward him, grunting helplessly. The priest did not move or look aside from his rite. Kirshta reached the end of the table and put a hand on the lip of the stone. He pulled himself up to his knees.
“You fool,” Kirshta said. He retched the words from the bottom of his wounded gut, speaking through thorns of pain.
At last, the priest paused. His eyes grew wide. He only waited a moment before he remembered the duty of his rites. So important, to assure the slumber of She Who Devours. The ritual could not be interrupted, or else—
The priest nicked his palm and held his bleeding hand over one of the stone cups. Blood dripped in, drop by slow drop. For your slumber, for your sleep….
Kirshta put his hand over the ritual knife. “You sell your children for peace,” he rasped. “You prolong the stupor of the one that could save you.”
“Stop it,” the priest hissed. A moment of fear passed over his face. He resumed the rite where he had left off, and he tried to twist the knife out of Kirshta’s hand.
“I’ll stop it,” Kirshta said. He lunged at the priest.
Not the quiet of the inner stillness, but a mad grinding hunger propelled him forward. Kirshta glimpsed the priest’s face contorted in fear. They both collapsed atop the stone table.
The priest was beneath him. Kirshta found the knife and wrenched it from the man’s hand. He stabbed once. A cry of anguish from the priest, a furious thrashing. Kirshta’s hand found the man’s throat. He brought the knife up.
A gurgle. Blood spilled over the altar. The priest held a hand to his throat, a voiceless scream on his lips. His throat gushed blood, dripping down the corners of the stone table and blackening the floor.
“A thousand years we sacrificed to her slumber,” Kirshta said. His voice was wobbly and uneven, hoarse with pain and madness. “I sacrifice to her awakening.”
And he spoke in a dreadful voice, words bubbling up unbidden from the depths of his gut:
For your stirring, for your rise Now and forever you drink, you thirst Be not satisfied. Be not filled. Awaken and devour.
The pain and sickness of his dying body rushed over him, and with a cry of torment he fell forward over the altar. A darkness like boiling smoke rose from the depths of the Holy. For a moment Kirshta saw the curling of smoke around him and smelled the stench of rot. The lamplight flickered and died. A groan stirred in the throat of the Holy.
“Awaken now and devour,” he whispered.
The Holy shook. A mist like the breath of winter enfolded him. In the darkness he felt teeth and hunger, blood and emptiness. A vast darkness beneath the stones stirred and uncoiled. A grinding in the inner stillness. The eternal quiet of inner stillness replaced with cacophonous howling.
The writhing darkness touched him. His will was sharp as obsidian, as hard as bronze. Anything less and she would have devoured him in an instant. The question burned like ice.
Who are you?
He knew with the stony certainty of farsight what it would mean if he answered. Beyond lay the promise of power and destruction.
“I am Kirshta,” he said.
His name descended into the wailing emptiness and was devoured. A spasm shook him, banishing pain, cutting away mortality, choking off the inner stillness.
He trembled. He rose.
He was changed.
Sadja
Sadja held a place of honor at the wedding of Basadi and Lushatha, standing alongside Yasma of Gumadha as the only two vassal kings in attendance. Behind him a crowd of majakhadir and khadir, notable dhorsha and the wealthy merchants crammed into the temple. The assembled guests filled the pavilions of the Majavaru Lurchatiya like a flood, silks of every color lined by silver and gold, a murmuring, churning mass which overflowed the gates of the temple complex and spilled into the streets.
Tedium, Sadja thought, as he smiled warmly at the bride and groom, at Praudhu, at Yasma and his wife Jasthi.
The bride and the groom were resplendent in acres of silk, silver, and gold. Their hands glittered with rings, and their faces shone with oil. The offerings to the Powers were piled in great heaps before the central temple of the Majavaru Lurchatiya: oranges, mangoes, and pomegranates, petals of rose and rhododendron, bowls of pepper, cumin, cinnamon, anise, nutmeg, and mace, baskets of rice.
No offerings of blood, not for a wedding. The fearsome, renowned image of Am was brought from its resting place in the heart of the temple and placed before Basadi and Lushatha, with Sathirvan on one side as the guarantor of wealth and security, and Peshali on the other as the patroness of fertility.
The dhorsha who performed the rite were the highest-ranked priests in the city, dressed nearly as sumptuously as the bride and groom, intoning the droning rite in slow, pompous tones. The bride and groom were sprinkled with milk and holy water, adorned with flowers, anointed with myrrh and oil, smudged with ash from the sacrificial fires. They fed each other rice on a golden spoon. The blessings of Sathirvan and Peshali were invoked over them in ornate, near-incomprehensible elaboration.
They gave each other the customary gifts: a knife and a bowl of rice beer from Basadi to Lushatha, and a mortar-and-pestle with a bolt of cloth from Lushatha to Basadi. Both of them were useless: the knife had a handle of ivory and a blade of silver set with rubies, and it would snap the moment you tried to cut something with it. The mortar and pestle were of porcelain and painted with domestic images in pink and turquoise, and they would never grind a single corn of pepper.
But the ritual exchange between the bride and groom was the signal for the guests to bring their gifts. One of their gifts, anyway. Sadja would give Basadi he
r true gift at the wedding feast.
Yasma had the pride of presenting first. He gave a banal and forgettable string of treasures, the sort of gold and silken frippery the bride and groom were already swimming in, ending at last with the only item of real interest: a caged tiger captured from the hills above Gumadha. It roared obligingly as soon as the veil over its cage was torn away, shaking its head and jangling the silver rings in its ears. Basadi laughed and clapped her hands.
Sadja followed. He did not have a live tiger, he thought with chagrin, but he had a pearl as big as an egg, silver-rimmed shells meant to be used as drinking cups, and the most fantastic piece: a fan of pink coral as wide as his outstretched arms, pulled up whole from the reefs beyond the harbor of Davrakhanda.
After presenting the gifts, he bowed to Lushatha, then took Basadi’s ring-covered hand and kissed it. He met Basadi’s eyes for a moment.
She looked straight at him. Her expression did not change, except for the intensity of her gaze.
“Is this everything you have for me, Sadja-dar?” she asked.
He smiled at her.
The rest of the guests came with their gifts. This took a very long time and was every bit as dull as Sadja had expected it to be. Fortunately, the Emperor had deployed an army of servants to circulate through the temple courtyard with trays of food to keep his guests from dying of hunger.
It was nearly evening before the gift-giving was completed. The last blessings were spoken over the bride and groom as they descended the stairs from the Majavaru Lurchatiya, and they processed to the Ushpanditya preceded by the blasting of rams’ horns and the ululations of heralds, followed by the train of elite guests invited to that evening’s feasting.
Sadja and Yasma walked together in the procession, forcing Sadja to endure more of Yasma’s uninspired attempts at conversation. The kings of Gumadha had been formidable once, but Yasma didn’t seem to share the better qualities of his lineage. Sadja shot a sympathetic glance at Jasthi, who caught his eye and covered a silent laugh with her hand.