“You can do this. You have the heart of a warrior. A rebel,” Thala said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I cried, but I thought about Sikander’s words at dinner. He had told me that my mother came from a family of revolutionaries.
Then again, according to him, they were the kind that don’t fight. The kind that talk.
Not to mention that none of them had survived Sikander’s father’s attack on their home.
But maybe she had.
“My mother . . . is she still alive?”
“Yes.”
“You promise you can help me bring my father back?” There was a desperate need for assurance in my voice.
“I promise.”
I imagined a reunion between my parents, the three of us together, happy. A sob escaped my lips.
“Okay,” I said, and I stumbled through the dark tunnel.
I closed my eyes, feeling my way through the dusty shaft with my hands. I landed on something furry and fought the urge to scream as it disentangled itself from my fingers, squeaking as it ran the other direction.
My whole body was trembling with fear when I felt something hard and square before me.
“There’s . . . something here.”
“What is it?” Thala cried.
I felt the flat surface of it—a box. No. A lantern! I felt around with my hands until I found a sulfur stick. I struck it against the wall and lit the lantern. But the light only illuminated a sight that sickened me with fear.
We were facing a dead end, a wall of stones. And there was no room to turn.
“No, no, no!” I shook my head, sobbing.
I was dizzy with fright now. We would be stuck here, starve to death in a space that was just barely large enough to hold me, balled up and covered with dirt.
“There!” Thala cried, pointing to the ceiling. “Look up! We’re here.”
I craned my neck and squinted to see what she was pointing at. It took me a moment to make out what it was: a golden triangle hung from the ceiling. A handle of some sort.
I reached for it, and as I did, a chunk of dried dirt fell to the ground before me, revealing a small corner of gold attached to the handle. I looked closely, running my hand over the surface of it.
“It’s a design of some sort,” Thala said, moving her palms over the surface to remove caked mud from hundreds of years of flooding.
I watched as an engraved tableau revealed itself to us with every stroke of Thala’s hand.
Next to the handle were three rubies, arranged in a triangle, mimicking the pattern of the rubies on the dagger Mala had given me. But there was more: elaborate carvings that appeared to tell a story. A fortress-like structure. It looked like the Temple of Rain with its grand stairway and elaborate pavilions. A forest full of trees. Some of the trees had faces chiseled into their trunks. Their branches looked like limbs. They were . . . alive.
“It’s just like the parable,” I whispered. “The Parable of the Land of Trees, it’s depicted here . . . ,” I said in amazement.
I was sitting up on my calves now, removing the dirt with both hands, trying to make sense of the discovery at the end of what was the most difficult journey of my life.
“There’s more . . . ,” I said as I noticed engravings of people flying through the air. A hilltop, with the sun rising just beyond it.
As I removed more dirt, I realized that the golden surface wasn’t just a work of art.
“It’s a door!” Thala said. But I was too mesmerized by the story before me to respond to her.
I traced my hands over the carvings: two people standing before a series of caves. Behind them, a large procession.
“Who did this?” I whispered to Thala. “Someone carved this door, they built this temple. What was it?”
But Thala wasn’t listening to me. She reached up and pushed the door open.
My eyes stung as they adjusted to the light. It was day. The sun was shining. After being in that dark, cramped space for so long, the very idea of light stunned me, made my eyes tear as though they were witnessing sunlight for the first time.
Thala reached for the lip of the doorway, hoisting her body up, crawling into a world that I realized terrified me perhaps even more than burrowing my way through a dark tunnel. And yet, I also knew I had to come out. All of it, all the sacrifices made on my behalf, crawling through that terrifying passage, it was for this: to come out the other end.
Thala reached her long, slender arms back down for me, and I noticed the tattoo on her shoulder again. It was an image of a tree, its branches and roots coiling around her collarbone. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,” she said, as though she were speaking to a skittish animal.
I reached for her hands, and she lifted me up into a small and empty alleyway. My breathing was heavy, ragged, my lungs screaming for air. But we had made it. We were free.
Twelve
I PRESSED MY FACE to the cold cobblestone beneath me, crying so hard that my entire body shook.
My thoughts were fragmented. Broken sentences sparked like fireflies from the recesses of my mind, barely registering before they flickered out again. All I could feel was pain.
Thala placed a gentle hand on my shaking back, but I barely took any notice of her.
I wished I had died right there in the palace with my father and Mala and probably Arjun too. I should have died, I told myself. I had survived all the people I loved. Worse than that, they had all perished trying to protect me, trying to help me.
I didn’t deserve to live.
Finally, I heard Thala’s voice. She spoke in careful Shalingarsh. “You can cry for another five minutes. And you can grieve. But then we have to go. We have to keep moving. We’re not safe.”
But where would I go without Arjun? I’ve traveled the world. I can show it to you, he had said to me. I know people who can help us, he’d told me.
Who did I know in this unfamiliar world? Where would I go now?
I watched as Thala closed the hatch door to the tunnel, and the moment she did, all evidence of it disappeared. The earth swallowed it up as though it had never existed. The only thing that remained was a row of cobblestones in the small covered alleyway where we had found ourselves.
There was a finality to it that made me want to claw at the ground with my fingernails, go back in time, go back to my father and Mala and Arjun, to the familiarity of my old life. I felt an ache so intense that it felt as though I had been gutted. I had been cut clean of my entire past, like a fish flailing on land, desperate for the safety of cold blue water.
But that same terminality appeared to put Thala in a completely different mindset.
“I’m free,” she murmured, laughing, though it sounded like a cough.
I resented the giddy relief in her tone, and then I remembered the box, the chains, the rope. I couldn’t fault her for feeling euphoric.
Her voice was softer when she spoke again. “Please. If anyone knows what it feels like to lose . . . everything, it’s me,” she said, touching my arm. I finally looked up at her face. She was covered in mud, just like me, but under all the dirt, I could see her russet hair, her delicate features. A sharp nose, fine cheekbones.
“I know how difficult it is,” she said, crouching down next to me. For a moment, there was compassion in her eyes. “But it gets easier.”
“Does it?”
Her voice was gruff when she responded, as though it was difficult for her to soften, even for a minute. “The truth is, it doesn’t get easier for a long time. No one tells you that. It aches less and less every day, but it never completely goes away. But we have to keep moving. They’re not likely to stop looking for you . . . Your Majesty,” she added, furrowing her brow with a formality that appeared ridiculous given the circumstances.
“You needn’t call me that,” I
whispered, still unable to take my eyes off the spot in the ground that I had just emerged from. “You saved my life. And besides, no one would ever believe me if I told them who I am. My father made sure to keep my identity hidden my whole life.”
“That might be a good thing,” she said, and I remembered what Arjun had said about keeping my face covered. I fished a scarf from the satchel Mala had packed and wrapped it over my face.
“Let’s go,” Thala abruptly said as she marched forward.
¤
I had seen the walled city every day from my window, but on my visits, I had walked only the main avenues and thoroughfares, and that in a rush, with a retinue huddled around me like a cocoon.
I had never known the sounds of Ananta.
Now I heard the metallic tinkling of wind chimes, hurried footsteps, unabashed laughter, the long, shrill wails of vendors advertising the best fruit or toy or fabric. I tilted my head to hear the whistle of wind rustling through the leaves of miniature banana and palm trees that lined the lane I was standing in.
Above us was a roof made of elaborately patterned indigo and white tiles. I looked at the whitewashed walls around us, draped in curtains of pink and purple vines. Weeds grew between the cracks in the stones under my feet. In the middle of the alleyway, a broken glass bottle, its green-blue shards shattered everywhere. Just behind me, someone had scrawled LIVE IN THE ZEPHYR OF SPIRIT in purple ink.
I looked out from the enclosed alley, and in the distance, I could see a tiled blue and white fountain, gurgling.
“Shoo! You’re blocking my path!”
Thala and I quickly scampered to the edge of the alley. A woman dressed in an orange and gold sari assessed us. There was pity in her eyes. She must have thought we were vagrants.
She pursed her lips together and reached into a gold satchel in her hand, plucking out a small silver coin with her fingers. She held the coin out to me.
“Come now, take it,” she said, impatience in her voice.
Slowly I reached for the coin, turning it carefully to inspect it. My father’s face graced one side of it.
“Now go on,” she said.
And something about that prompt, about her stern and instructive tone, made me stand up taller.
“Go, go, go! You must have someplace to be now, don’t you?”
Before I could respond, I found myself behind Thala, marching into the mandarin orange–colored light of a new dawn in Ananta.
I was startled by the sight before me: a cheerful redbrick town square, bustling with activity; groups of people chatting or playing games as they sipped their morning chai and shikanji under large green umbrellas.
Along one side of the plaza was an open-air market, with vendors selling globes of claret pomegranate, so ripe that their skins burst open with seeds. Tiny perfect green mangoes, the size of my fist. Sticks of dried chili and bunches and bunches of small yellow grapes, tumbling off the wooden carts that housed them. Fish with silver scales tiled one cart, and there were other carts and vendors still, hawking colorfully painted wooden dolls and animals made of bits of string and clay, earthen vessels for cooking, and brightly colored patchwork quilts dotted with mirrors that sparkled in the cantaloupe-colored light.
A woman peddling threads of jasmine walked by, barely taking notice of us. Their fragrance filled my nose, making me think of Arjun, of the ring he had given me. I still had it on my finger, and I looked at it longingly.
Arjun. Would I ever see him again?
“Keep walking,” Thala urged me, interrupting my thoughts. And so I did.
My eyes couldn’t take it all in fast enough. The buildings in the town square were a stark white, but they all had red tile roofs that they wore on their heads like low hats. A clock tower chimed and two small doors opened, releasing a dozen or so wooden birds, painted red and blue and yellow.
And in the distance were the lofty blue and silver minarets of Ananta’s temples, mosques, and churches.
A trio of musicians finished tuning their instruments and began to play a folk song, the cheery staccato notes contrasting with how I felt. A group of young girls in low-waisted yellow saris began to dance, twirling string of bells on their wrists as they moved, laughter escaping their lips as though they were deliriously happy for this new day. Even the sky—too clear and too beautiful to be reasonable—appeared to be taunting me.
“We should clean up,” Thala said, her voice slicing through my thoughts like the blade of a fan through heavy air. “And then I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Tell me now,” I insisted. I couldn’t wait.
She closed her eyes. When she opened them her irises were black.
“Your friend, Arjun. He’s safe.”
I exhaled a sigh of relief. “He is?”
“Yes. He’s been taken captive. Sikander plans to use him for his knowledge of the kingdom, and his knowledge of you.”
“And Bandaka and Shree?”
“They’ve been taken captive as well.”
I felt a fresh set of tears piercing my eyes.
Thala closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, they were lavender.
“Your eyes—”
She nodded. “It’s a characteristic of oracles. That’s how they hunt us down, how they enslave us. Our eyes change color whenever we have a vision. It’s usually subtler. The chamak enhances it. They’ve been lacing my food with it, force-feeding it to me for months now. An experiment,” she said. Her voice carried no emotion, and she looked away when she said this.
I remembered Shree telling me once that chamak was dangerous for an unformed mind, and I wondered about the toll it took on Thala.
“That’s why Sikander says he wants chamak. So he can see the future. And so he can control its trade and become the most powerful man in the world.”
“Isn’t he already?”
“There’s no limit to his greed, to his desire for power.”
But something else was eating away at me. “What did you mean when you said they hunt you down?”
Thala hesitated, looking away from me. Finally she met my eyes, her face immobile. “In Macedon, they treat us like second-rate citizens, and yet, they rely on us for our visions, our talent. They hunt us like animals, enslave us, trade us on the open market. Entire empires are built on our predictions. They run experiments on us, give us all kinds of concoctions to enhance our powers. And then, when they’re done with us, they dispose of us,” she said.
“That’s horrific.” I shuddered.
She went on. “Sikander couldn’t have built his empire without the aid of oracles. Or his army of slaves. One man’s will carried out by a regiment of the unwilling. And yet we all helped him. We had no choice. Death or a life in slavery.”
“His entire army is a mercenary army?”
Thala nodded. “The desperate, the poor, orphans, young men who have lost their families, their homes. Sikander’s empire absorbs them; they become a part of his machine. Most of us are so young when he takes us from our homes, we have no say.”
“How old were you when you were brought to Sikander?”
“I was nine,” she whispered, looking away. But I heard the hint of devastation in her voice.
To distract myself from the shock of her words, I dug my fingers into the satchel Mala had given me, pulling out a scarf and the skin of water and handing them to Thala. She drank thirstily and then offered the water back to me before she wrapped the scarf around her russet-colored hair, which would have made her stand out conspicuously as a foreigner in Shalingar. Once it was securely wrapped around her face, only her eyes exposed to the world, she looked at me. I wondered who, if anyone, she had shared her story, her words, with. I considered what her life must have been like before she became Sikander’s slave.
We continued to walk through the crowds, and I watched d
espondently as people around us went on with their day as though nothing had changed. Some of them exchanged and bartered goods, haggling with vendors. Elderly men and women hobbled with canes. Children played with marbles or drew patterns on cobblestone with brightly colored chalk. Monks clad in orange robes silently strolled the packed lanes just outside the square. Teenagers on their way to school, judging by the books in their arms, held hands and giggled, or quietly whispered secrets to one another.
Even though the palace was under siege, no one in the kingdom of Shalingar seemed to know this. But soon they would.
We should have known was all I could think. When Sikander attacked Bactria, there was a rumor that he did it so quietly and swiftly that the people of the kingdom didn’t even know it till days later, once the military had been turned, the granaries had been looted, and the royal palace overtaken.
“Are you going to return to Macedon now?” I felt a pang of panic in the pit of my stomach. Would she leave me too?
Thala shook her head. “I won’t leave you, don’t worry. I’m indebted to you.”
“For what?”
“I’m free for the first time in years.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Perhaps I had helped her, but I hadn’t been able to save those I loved the most.
She must have read my thoughts, because she took a deep breath and said, “It’s not over yet. You’re the heiress to the throne. As long as you’re still alive, there’s . . .” But she didn’t finish, as though the word hope didn’t exist in her vocabulary.
“I don’t even know how to navigate my own kingdom by myself.”
“I’ll help you. And there must be other people in Shalingar we can approach for aid.”
“I don’t know a single person in Shalingar.” I shook my head. “And look at me.” I gestured to my filthy clothes, my matted hair. “Who would ever believe that I’m Princess Amrita?” I whispered.
The Library of Fates Page 9