I choked back the jet of emotion spouting within me. She’s just a girl, my age, in a condition that terrifies me, that no girl should ever be in. How could every type of control—over her destiny, her mind, her body—have been taken from her? I wanted to reassure her in some way, let her know that we had no intention of harming her, but I didn’t know what to say.
“We’re taking you to the Temple of Rain,” I said to her in Macedon. She squinted her eyes into the sun, a groan emerging from her throat. It was a despairing sound of resignation, as though she didn’t care where we were taking her.
I wasn’t even sure if she understood me, but I kept talking.
“You’ll be safe there,” I told her. “It’s . . . not a temple, exactly. Well, we’re not quite sure what it is. I suppose you’ll just have to see it to understand.”
She said nothing. It was only when we reached the mouth of the temple that she uttered the first words I ever heard from her.
“Theé mou!” she gasped in awe.
“Don’t be scared,” I whispered as we began to head down into the Temple of Rain, a stepwell made of stones. We descended a grand stairway, sinking through a series of carved corridors and pavilions until we could no longer see the light of day. The guards had brought lanterns with them, and the oily orange glow of fire lit up the subterranean friezes and colonnades that filled the cavern.
We quickly descended another flight of stairs, turning into a doorway. I watched her pressing her palms to the wall, feeling her way down the dark corridor.
“It’s all right. It’s dark, but you’re safe,” I said to her.
Nobody knew who had built the Temple of Rain, how long it had existed before us, or even why it had been built.
Once I had asked Shree about it, and she simply shrugged her shoulders. “The Ancients,” she had responded. “They must have known what they were doing. But I certainly don’t.”
In the current dry season, the Temple of Rain was a stony subterranean maze, filled with elaborately carved pillars, doors that led down twisting hallways, some that wound themselves in dizzying circles around the structure, others that dead-ended into walls.
There was folklore that the Temple was haunted by vetalas, immortal spirits who could enter and inhabit anyone’s body. It was believed that vetalas roamed the Earth freely for many years, inhabiting the bodies of humans after they died. Vetalas had all sorts of powers. Some of them could fly. Others had the ability to heal any wound. They were known for their trickery and brilliance, and also their loyalty and their beauty. But humans were mistrustful of vetalas and had wiped them out. Even so, some people, like Mala, believed that vetalas still existed, that they hid among us, pretending to be human.
“They’re the most loyal creatures; they’d do anything for those they care for,” Mala once told me.
“Except they don’t really exist,” I said to her, and she raised an eyebrow.
“They exist for anyone who believes in them. And you’d best not be creeping around dark places at night if you never want to encounter one.”
But we didn’t listen to her, Arjun and I. When we were younger, in the dry months we played hide-and-seek in the Temple of Rain. There were endless places to hide. Even now, I didn’t know where all the pathways and corridors led.
But when it rained, the entire stepwell—doors, stone rooms, pillars, and all—disappeared into a cistern, filling to capacity and submerging the Temple.
Thala was running her hands over the ornate columns and eroded reliefs, and even in the dark, I sensed curiosity in her eyes.
“We don’t know who built this, or why. Many of the carvings on the walls . . . they’ve been eroded in the rains or defaced.”
We arrived at a cell, and I asked the guards to leave us. They handed me the key, bowed, and took leave, placing a lantern at my feet so that I could safely return back to the palace. I hated that I had brought her here, to a dark, enclosed space, but it was the only place I would be able to speak to her alone that wouldn’t raise suspicion. When I turned to look at her, she didn’t seem surprised that I had stayed behind. I wondered if she knew what I wanted to ask her.
In the cell was a basin of water, a tumbler, a blanket, and another lantern.
I dipped the tumbler into the water and handed it to her. She slurped at it, thirstily, downing the entire thing, coughing violently before handing it back to me. I refilled it and placed it back in her hands.
Then, I tore a strip of fabric from the pallu of my sari and dabbed it into the water, reaching for her arm, making her flinch.
“It’s all right,” I told her as I began to clean her wounds. Her body tensed in fear. I knew I had to distract her, calm her. It was dark, but I could make out a relief of a giant face on the wall. I pointed to it.
“My friend and I . . . we’re always speculating about this place . . . Maybe it was a place of worship? Or a refuge? It could have been a prison. Or a subterranean city.”
“Why would anyone bother to beautify a prison?” she whispered in Shalingarsh.
It took me a second to make sense of what she had said. In the distance, I could hear the sound of insects chirping, and then their echoes. I took a deep breath, swallowing my shock. I placed my hand on the curved wall of stone beside me.
“You speak . . . my language?” I asked.
“I speak many languages,” she whispered. “Once upon a time, I was a person. Just like you.”
“You are a person,” I quickly responded. I looked up from her cuts and saw her face, illuminated in the lamplight. She was partially obscured by the shadows of iron bars in the door to the cell, but despite those shadows, I could make out her features, delicate and fine-boned.
“It’s been a long time since I was treated like one,” she said, watching as I cleaned the cuts on her ankles.
I thought about the chains and the ropes again. The scabbed cuts and burns on her arms. I thought about her trapped in that box. How long had she been in there? Just the thought of it made it hard for me to breathe.
“Why are you here?” I asked her.
“Because they brought me.”
“No.” I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure I believed in oracles, but I did know that offering Thala as a gift was a strategic move on Sikander’s part, maybe even a trick. He knew my father and I—our entire kingdom—abhorred slavery. He understood how much it would disturb us to see a small girl in a box, chained and beaten. But he still brought her to us. Why? Was my father right about it being a threat? Or was there something else? Something we didn’t yet know?
“You must know why you’re here,” I said to her.
But she ignored my question. “You have to help me,” she whispered. Her voice shook, but I could hear the determination in it. Slowly, carefully, she reached for me with her free hand, touching my shoulder. “They keep me chained day and night. I must return home.”
I nodded. “I’ll do anything I can to help you,” I promised her, and I knew I would. That I had to.
“I have a home, a family . . .”
Carefully, gingerly, I touched her hand to comfort her. She gripped my fingers tightly.
“I will help you, I promise,” I assured her. “But you must tell me—”
She cut me off. “You will release me,” she said. “I’m sorry for what it will cost you.” Her voice didn’t waver this time, and her eyes were resolutely fixed on me.
I was taken aback for a moment. “What do you mean?”
She pointed to the key in my hand. “There’s a key. But you don’t yet know where to go. I will show you the way.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. Her eyes were still hazy, and I wondered if she was even cogent. But I asked her again: “Why are you here? Why did he bring you?”
“It won’t matter. There are more important things. You’re about to go on
a journey.”
My heart sank. “To Macedon, you mean.”
She looked away. “He loves you, you know.”
“Who? Sikander?”
“The boy you kissed in the mango grove. He’ll save your life.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when she said that.
She closed her eyes tightly before she opened them again. “And what you’re desperate to know,” she said.
I waited.
“About your mother. Why they never spoke of her.” Her voice was low and conspiratorial. “I know the answer to this.”
The mention of my mother was so unexpected that I paused to take a deep breath. Had Sikander instructed her to say these words to me? Had he sent spies after me to catch me with Arjun? I wasn’t sure whether to believe her, to trust her. As it was, she was high on chamak.
I wore a mask of detached curiosity on my face. “You do?”
For a moment, Thala didn’t answer. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again to look back at me, I noticed that they had changed color. They were green now. I was startled at the sight of them.
Her voice was a frightened whisper. “He came bearing gifts,” she said. “Heed the warning in the gift.”
She paused and closed her eyes again, and this time when she opened them, they were the color of gold. The color of my father’s eyes that day when he looked out over the hills of Shalingar. The color of chamak in the light of the rising sun. Just the sight of them made me inch backward. I sensed a power in her that had been subdued by all the beatings, all the humiliations, all the assaults to her humanity, but it was there: She was one of the most powerful individuals I had ever encountered.
“You will recognize the signs of the attack,” she told me. “But it’s already too late. Your fate has been written. All you can do is go back and say goodbye.”
“Attack? Goodbye? What are you—”
“The animals will run loose. A fight will break out in the west. He says he wants friendship. He says he wants an alliance. Don’t believe what he says.”
My heart began to race. “Sikander? You mean he—”
“Once upon a time, I was just like you. A girl, free. You feel sorry for me now, but once upon a time, I had a family, a mother, a home. And then it all changed. You’ll understand what that feels like soon enough,” she said, and I felt the color drain from my face. “I’m sorry for it. I truly am.”
Seven
“IS ARJUN HERE?” I asked, trying to keep my voice measured and calm. Within minutes, he emerged from his quarters, dismissing his footman.
We walked the lofty corridors of the palace together in silence, our feet clicking on the marble. We observed parrots and bluebirds building nests on the rafters of the Durbar Hall, watched the way peacocks proudly wandered in and out of the interior courtyards. We pointed at the slippery movements of bright blue fish swimming across the pools in every verandah that Tippu the gardener lovingly watched after, traversing the terraced floating gardens that lined the balconies on the second floor of the palace. We ventured past the neem and walnut and lime trees that had grown into the palace compound, as though they were a part of the structure.
We pretended we had somewhere important to be, smiled and nodded to the footmen and cooks and gardeners and other members of the palace staff as we made our way past them, but the moment the door to my bedroom closed, he pressed me into a wall, his mouth on mine, the stubble of his chin nuzzling my neck, his palms on my waist, his fingers slipping up into my blouse. We kissed until I was dizzy and lightheaded. For however long it was, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think; there was nothing else I wanted but the heat of his body against mine, the feeling of closing any space between us.
It was dark outside when I finally slipped away from his arms to draw my curtains.
“Aren’t your parents expecting you back in your quarters?”
He shook his head. “They’re still in a meeting with Sikander’s advisors. I don’t think they’re going to let out till late tonight. Is Mala going to come check on you?”
“She’ll come by in the morning.”
“So . . . can I stay?” he sheepishly asked, and I took his hand, pulling him into the bed with me.
We lay there together silently, and I felt a contentment wash over me. His arm was wrapped around my waist, my head buried in his chest, his other hand grasping a fistful of the cloud of my hair surrounding us. My body was aflame with a euphoria I had never before felt. And then I remembered Sikander, and my stomach lurched.
Perhaps Arjun sensed it. Or maybe he felt exactly what I did. Still, I wasn’t expecting him to say what he said next.
“Run away with me.”
I choked out a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“I wish I weren’t.”
My heart began to race again, but not out of passion. I glanced around the familiar walls of my abode, the ceiling painted a bright cerulean, the white lacquered cupboards, the mosquito net over my bed. All of a sudden, it seemed like an entirely different world. I shook my head, overtaken by a fear that silenced me. A seesaw of terror, panic on both sides of an impossible equation: Losing Arjun and being Sikander’s bride was bad enough, but what if we were caught running away? What would Sikander do to us then?
And yet, I wanted desperately to flee.
“I’ve traveled the world,” Arjun told me. “I can show it to you. I’ve always wanted to; now here’s our chance.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he placed two fingers on my lips.
“Nobody in Shalingar knows what you look like. We could hide. It would just be you and me, together.”
“Sikander and his men know what I look like.”
“We’ll lie low. We’ll get help from people in Ananta. We’ll—”
“How would we even get out of the palace without anyone noticing?”
“There’s a way out through the Temple of Rain. I heard my mother talking about it once. It’s an emergency escape route.”
“But why didn’t I—”
“You’re not supposed to know. For your own protection.”
“And my father?”
Arjun looked back at me, but from the expression on his face, I could tell that he hadn’t yet worked out the answer to that particular question.
“Your father doesn’t want you marrying Sikander. He was right. The oracle was a threat.”
There was a protective note to his voice, but I found myself thinking about the oracle again. I promised I would return, but her words left me shaken; after I departed her cell, I fearfully locked the door, my hands shaking, and ran from the Temple of Rain as fast as I could.
“She told me that we shouldn’t believe Sikander.”
“Who?”
“Thala, the oracle.”
“What else did she say?”
“Something about an attack. Animals running loose, a fight in the west. That we can’t trust Sikander . . . It didn’t all make sense. I think she was hallucinating. And I don’t even believe in that sort of thing, but—she knew other things too.”
I didn’t mention what she said about Arjun loving me, about how he would save my life, but all of a sudden, I wondered if it was possible that he might. That maybe we could actually run away together.
“What could it possibly mean, Arjun?”
“It doesn’t matter, Amrita.” He was holding my face in his hands now, urgency in his voice, desperation in his eyes. “I can’t let you end up like her.”
“I can’t just run away and leave my father. Imagine what Sikander would do in retaliation!”
“Your father would want you to go. He knows you’d be safer with me than with anyone in the world.”
“You’re acting crazy because I snuck you into my chambers, and because everything is changing, and because we’ll be apart for the f
irst time in—”
“You’re right. I am acting crazy. But it’s not for any of those reasons. It’s because I love you, Amrita.”
He had said the words that silenced me.
So the oracle had been right on one count, at least.
“If you love me too,” he continued, “run away with me. Don’t think about the things that scare you. Don’t think about all the things that could go wrong. You and I, we’re a team. We always have been. If anyone can pull this off, it’s us. And I can’t possibly spend the rest of my life—”
But he didn’t need to say anything else—couldn’t, actually, because right then, I reached for him and kissed him, his mouth against mine, his strong hands clasping my waist. He pulled at the pallu of my sari, untwisting it around me, kissing my neck, my shoulder blades, his tongue tracing the exposed skin of my décolletage. I unbuttoned his khalat, pressing my face into his chest, till we were just skin on skin, just mouths and hands, till I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began, our arms and legs entangled, our eyes fixed on each other.
“All right,” I said, pulling away from him. “If we were to run away, how would we even—”
But Arjun already had a plan. “The morning after Sikander’s last dinner here, we can leave before dawn, slip out of the palace. Meet me at the mango grove, and we’ll go out the Temple of Rain. I’ll take care of everything. Just be ready,” he said, an intensity in his voice I had never before heard.
It was real, I realized.
He was right.
We could run away.
Maybe my fate wasn’t sealed yet.
Eight
“RISE AND SHINE!” Mala’s voice cut through the humid air in my bedroom like a scimitar, making me jump.
I had been plagued by nightmares all night: Mala coming in, drawing the curtains as she did every morning to start getting me ready for the day, only to discover Arjun in my bed, scandal registering on her face. Arjun and me running in circles through the Temple of Rain, lost and confused. Sikander tossing me into a box and locking me in there, while I screamed and banged against it with all my might.
The Library of Fates Page 5