The Library of Fates

by Aditi Khorana

  Nico was mere paces away from us, his men flanking him. My eyes met his as I realized we were the only ones in the entire temple whose faces were covered with scarves. I hadn’t thought that our attempt at hiding, at disguising ourselves, would be the very thing that gave us away.

  My mind went blank, but my reflexes were quick. I grabbed Thala’s arm and tugged her through the crowds, pushing past a wall of bodies, terror lunging at my heart, ripping violently at my nerves. I couldn’t bear to look back.

  “We need to get out of here!”

  Thala’s reflexes were quick too. She dodged away from Nico’s henchmen, but Nico’s hands grabbed for me. I ducked, squeezing myself between two monks, dragging Thala along with me.

  “Oh no, not this again!” Thala cried. We pushed through the bustle and jolt of bodies, a mess of arms and legs all around us, elbows digging into my flesh, sweaty palms on my back. Dozens of curious eyes turned to look at us. We were inadvertently starting a commotion, advancing in the wrong direction, pushing against the crowds instead of moving with them, and Nico’s leering voice was drawing attention to us.

  “You troublemakers!” he cried in Shalingarsh. “You can’t run forever!”

  “Watch yourself!” a woman snapped when I accidentally stepped on her foot. The rush of bodies and the heat was making me panic. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think straight.

  “Stay with me,” Thala yelled.

  But Nico’s rage competed with Thala’s desperation. “They’re criminals!” he cried. “Pickpockets! Thieves! Don’t let them escape!”

  His voice was a bellow, echoing around us, bouncing against the walls of the temple, and even if it wasn’t true, I could see his words registering within people’s hearts from the way they looked at us.

  I noticed it in the eyes of everyone we passed: terror, anger, rage. And it was directed at us. My legs shook with nervousness. We had seconds to get out of here, before someone blocked us or grabbed us, but how? In the distance, I could make out the doorway to the temple, but the crowds were so dense that getting out of here quickly wasn’t an option.

  “We’ll never be able to just walk out of here,” Thala said. “Look at these crowds.” She gestured to them. “Any minute now, we’ve got an angry mob on our hands, and they don’t even know why they’re angry, or whom exactly they’re angry at . . . and what happens when they get to you and rip your scarf off your face and see that—”

  She lowered her voice. “She looks exactly like you. Or you look like her—you are her. That’s why Meena sent us here. She wanted you to know who you are.”

  Her words rang through me, echoing deep within me. I was trying to piece it together through my panic, but it was all a nonsensical blur.

  “There’s no time for this,” I told Thala before I grabbed her hand, trying once again to squeeze through the throngs of bodies before me, to no avail.

  She shook her head. “No. That’s not going to work,” she said.

  “What can we do?” I asked her.

  Her eyes lit up, and breathlessly, she exclaimed, “They’re your devotees. They’ll want to help you.” She was slowly making sense of something in her head, a small smile across her lips, but I wasn’t sure what.

  Thala ripped the scarf away from my face, causing me to gasp.

  “She’s the Goddess,” Thala yelled. “She requires your aid in exchange for her blessings!”

  I looked at Thala, dumbfounded, as thousands of heads turned toward her voice, toward us, and audible cries filled the air around us. All of a sudden, people in the temple were dropping to their knees, and soon, a path to the exit was carved for us. For a moment, everything went still.

  As Thala and I began to walk, devotees touched my feet. I tried to hide the look of astonishment on my face.

  Thala pointed to Nico and his henchmen. They were the only ones who had remained standing, stunned still for the moment by what had come to pass. “Don’t let them through!” she implored the crowd. “They are trying to harm our beloved Goddess!”

  Concerned murmurs traveled through the crowd, and a mob descended upon Nico and his men.

  “Don’t look back,” Thala said to me as we swooped through the exit to the temple, cool air against my exposed cheeks. Instinctively, I pulled my scarf up with my free hand as I continued to hold on to Thala. I was speechless, shaken by what we had just experienced.

  I thought about the little boy on the hill calling me “Devi.” Goddess. I thought of my father taking annual pilgrimages to the temple, while keeping me safe within the palace. I thought about Meena Amba insisting that we stop at Mount Moutza. I thought about how Varun had looked at me when I removed my scarf from my face. Even Arjun, telling me about visiting a temple on top of a hill before he became quiet. My entire body went cold. They all knew.

  And yet an overwhelming sense of disbelief descended upon me. I had gone to the temple seeking help for myself entirely because I felt helpless. And if I was some sort of incarnation of Maya the Diviner, wouldn’t I feel it? Wouldn’t I have known it somewhere along the way? Instead, I simply felt lost and afraid. It had to be some sort of mistake, a misunderstanding.

  Thala had powers. She could see the future, even the past. But what powers did I have? I was a mere mortal. I had royal blood, but on the run, with no home and no throne to return to, what did that even amount to? What could I possibly do to help my subjects, to save them from Sikander?

  We rushed around the back of the temple, an empty stretch of the rocky cliffside overlooking the city.

  Before I could catch my breath, I felt the cold slap of metal on my wrist. I shuddered.

  “Got you.” It was a Macedon tongue. His voice was gruff and gleeful. He ripped my scarf away from my face and squinted at me. I was standing eye to eye with a large, burly man. He had thick eyebrows, a full beard, and a cruel mouth.

  I tried to scream, but he covered my mouth with his filthy palm before he turned to a group of men behind him and yelled, “We have the royal runaway in our custody.”

  “It’s her, isn’t it? Spiro, come here and take a look.”

  A young soldier with a wiry frame and hair that was so pale it was nearly white approached. He stood facing me, his visage expressionless.

  “It’s her,” he quietly said.

  “The master will be pleased,” the first man said. “He sent many infantry units out looking for you. And we’ve found the oracle too! Today must be our lucky day!” he said.

  I looked down at my wrists and ankles. They were bound in cold, heavy chains. My heart was beginning to race.

  “Only one way to get these two out of here without a fuss.” He gagged my mouth with a piece of cloth, and before I knew it I was being tossed in a large burlap sack. I tried to scream, desperation pulsing through my body like an electric charge.

  The last thing I saw before everything went black was the shock and fear on Thala’s face.

  Twenty-Three

  “THREE FORTNIGHTS, that’s how long before we’re the richest men on the Earth!” a voice boomed.

  A timid voice piped in. “Sir . . . what if it’s a trick?”

  “Again, Spiro? A trick?”

  The light was a searing white. I wiped the grit away from my lashes as I crawled out of the burlap bag. There was white sand everywhere the eye could see, and the sky was an intense, cloudless blue.

  I turned slowly and saw them. Dressed in plainclothes, they sat in a line with their backs to me. A sorry-looking infantry unit of Sikander’s soldiers made of a ragtag group of young boys. And just paces away from them, two men arguing: the burly man who had captured me and the pale, wiry one who had confirmed my identity.

  A hand gripped mine, and I snapped to attention.

  “It’s all right, it’s just me,” Thala whispered. She was covered in sand too, but she was sitting on top of her burlap sack, her
gaze fixed on the two men. Even though her hands and feet were bound in chains, there was a look of defiance in her eyes. Slowly, she raised her bound wrists and removed the gag from my mouth.

  “Thala! Where are we?”

  “Shhh . . . I’m trying to listen in. We’re in the desert. You passed out. We’ve been journeying for a whole day and night. Well, more like being kidnapped, thrown into burlap sacks, and carried around by these brutes.”

  My heart sank as I saw my satchel in the burly man’s hand. He pulled from it the map to the Janaka Caves.

  “Oh no,” I breathed.

  “This is a cause for celebration! A good day for us, no?” the burly soldier said as he shook the map in the air, his voice filled with glee.

  “But we have strict orders from Nico, coming directly from Master Sikander—”

  “Boy, Nico is gone, and Sikander doesn’t know. And you know what they say about the things people don’t know.”

  “What if he finds out that we captured his bride-to-be?”

  “How will he find out? We’re already a day’s journey out of that city. And once we find those caves, what do we need Sikander for?” He rifled through my satchel as though it were his own and pulled out my dagger.

  “No, no, no!” I whispered.

  Meena had insisted I keep the dagger safe, and now both the dagger and the map to the Sybillines were in the hands of this man with crazy eyes.

  “Spiro, stop your whining. You’ll thank me for taking matters into my own hands. All you have to do is ride this wave of good fortune that I’ve brought us,” he said. “Your job is to navigate, care for the horses, and cook our meals. You do that, and you’ll find yourself a very rich man in three fortnights. My job is to rally the men.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You can do that now, can’t you?”

  “Yes sir, Master Alexi.”

  “Good, now you hold on to this,” he said, handing Spiro the map, “and I’ll take this gift that the princess brought us.” He waved the dagger in the air as he laughed heartily.

  I wanted to stab him with the dagger. My dagger. My map. And yet I was helpless, tied in chains, held prisoner with no recourse.

  Spiro looked back at the man, defeat on his face. “Very well, Master Alexi. The sun will be setting soon. We should try to get as far as we can before dark.”

  “Come now, men! Let us be masters of our own destiny!” The burly man turned to his soldiers.

  The soldiers stood up, but without ceremony. I watched them closely. They were young—my age, many of them so gaunt that it was shocking they were soldiers at all. I thought about what Thala had told me about Sikander’s army of the unwilling soldiers, young orphans. Just looking at this group of men made me wonder about the unfortunate circumstances and conditions that had brought them here.

  And their silence suggested that they were afraid of Alexi, just as I could tell Alexi was afraid of Sikander from the way his lip quivered when he said Sikander’s name. Sikander’s entire army, his entire operation was built on men fearing the force of other men.

  “What say you?” he asked his men. “Do you want to return back to your homes in Macedon the richest men alive?”

  The soldiers looked ragged, starved, and exhausted. Some of them raised their fists in the air as though they had no choice, but the way they lethargically slumped their shoulders, the way their grim eyes stayed fixed on Alexi, made me wonder what they really thought.

  Only Spiro was silent, squinting into the sun. This wasn’t lost on Alexi. I watched as his eyes narrowed at Spiro.

  “Any other scared fools here?” he asked.

  Silence.

  Spiro approached me, wordlessly checking to see that I was still bound. He handed me a skin of water without making direct eye contact with me.

  I watched him carefully, taking him in for the first time. He was slight with pale green eyes. Too pretty to be a soldier. And timid, from the way he spoke. But his words were measured and thoughtful. In fact, he appeared too thoughtful, too considered to be one of Sikander’s soldiers.

  “You know you’ll never get away with this, don’t you?” hissed Thala. “She’s royalty. You can do whatever you want with me, but there will be a price to pay.”

  Spiro didn’t respond.

  But Thala’s hissing caught Alexi’s attention. He approached us and grabbed Thala’s jaw with his hand, making me gasp. “You keep quiet now and do as you’re told, or you’ll see what’s coming for you and your friend.”

  Thala’s eyes remained defiant as Alexi pulled his hand away, slowly, his leering face still looking at her.

  A wave of terror coursed through my veins, and I thought about the bitterness she must have tasted right then: to be bound in chains yet again, to be held captive by the same people who had tormented her half her life. She had been so close to freedom, to the possibility of returning home.

  What would happen to us now? Would they kill us? Take us captive for the rest of our lives? Would we be delivered to Sikander as gifts now, as slaves, the way Thala was once delivered to my father and me?

  ¤

  Before the sun descended behind the desert plains, Spiro hunted a dozen quail for our dinner. He found us a place to camp, and he was the one who built a large campfire to roast those quail and to keep us warm through the night. He tended and fed both Alexi’s horse and his own. And then he carefully inspected the chains binding our wrists, making sure they weren’t too loose or too tight, determining that we weren’t injured, giving us water to drink. All this, wordlessly. I could see that he was the best rider, the best shooter. And he was a workhorse.

  I wondered how he had ended up here.

  And then I wondered how Thala and I had ended up here too.

  Spiro set a piece of quail on a steel plate before me, and I hungrily scarfed it down before I lay back in the sand, thinking of Arjun. Had Varun sent him my message, informed him of my whereabouts? How would he ever find us now?

  Meanwhile, Thala spoke in whispers to some of the other soldiers in Persian. I watched the shadows of her elaborate hand gestures conveying a sense of urgency and, at times, sadness.

  “What are they saying to you?” I whispered to her. We were seated side-by-side in front of the campfire, the warmth it provided the only pleasure the desert, and our circumstances, could afford us.

  “They were kidnapped as children. They haven’t seen home in so long. They miss their families. They were forced to fight in violent battles. They’ve seen their friends die.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “But they’ve also gotten to see the world. They hope to one day buy out their own freedom.”

  “I hope they’re able to.”

  “I do too,” she whispered to me.

  “What do you think of Spiro?” I whispered.

  Thala closed her eyes. “He’s our age. Was taken from his family in Macedon when he was only five years old. His mother still hopes he’ll return one day.” She shook her head. “That’s all I can see. It’s harder for me now, without the chamak. Anyway, he strikes me as curious, quick, and capable, certainly more adept than that loudmouthed fool Alexi,” she added underneath her breath.

  “What are we going to do, Thala?”

  “We’re going to find our way out of this.”

  “How?”

  “You’re a goddess. Surely if these men knew—”

  “What happened at the temple was different. I can’t get us out of this!”

  Thala was silent.

  “What are you gossiping about, seer?” Alexi yelled at Thala. I could tell from the way he slurred his words that he was drunk. He pulled my dagger from his belt, holding it out so it was inches from her face. He inspected it carefully.

  “It’s a beauty. Not unlike you,” he whispered, pressing the side of the blade against her c
heek.

  I froze in fear. “Don’t touch her.”

  Alexi turned to me, a sinister grin on his face. “Are you going to protect her, Princess?” he jeered. He brought the blade of the dagger to my neck. “No way to get to the Sybillines, my arse. You’re full of treasures,” he said, stroking my neck with his thumb.

  I bristled at his touch. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out. I looked at the dagger as it sparkled in the light of the setting sun.

  “You want to know what we were talking about?” Thala asked Alexi. I could tell she was trying to distract him, and it worked. He turned toward her. “I saw something. Something in your future that you didn’t anticipate.” She smiled a secretive smile.

  “Well? Do tell.” Alexi grinned at her.

  Thala closed her eyes, then opened them. They sparkled golden in the night. She looked down. Her voice was calm. “Tomorrow, a sandstorm. And you’re woefully ill-prepared.”

  Alexi was silent for a moment. Then he vehemently shook his head. “I don’t believe you. It’s not the season for sandstorms,” he said.

  “Season or not, you’ll need to build an encampment.” She furrowed her brow. “Otherwise, you’ll never make it to the caves.”

  I turned to Thala, and from the look on her face, I knew she was telling the truth.

  “Your best bet is to let us go,” she said.

  Alexi laughed out loud. “You think I’m going to fall for that? So these imbeciles can rat me out and tell the emperor that I tried to run away with his bride-to-be and his magical seer?” He fell backward into the sand, laughing so hard that his belly shook.

  “I didn’t say you should return us to Sikander. Besides, Sikander’s got his mind on other things. He’s no longer in charge. His satrap Arjun is,” she said calmly, inspecting her wrists.

  My head whipped in Thala’s direction. When had Arjun become Sikander’s satrap? My heart raced in panic. Surely he wouldn’t have taken on this position voluntarily. He must have had to, under duress.

  “Seer, you must think me a fool!” Alexi roared. He turned to his men. “This seer thinks I’m a fool! What do you think I should do to her?”