by Sarah Zettel
“Yes, my emperor.” A hundred men. It won’t matter, he told himself. Even if the Sindishi had somehow managed to bring every Huni out of the mountains, the Hastinapurans still would outnumber them three to one. “But … should we not withdraw, just in case?”
Emperor Chandra reclaimed his crown, settling it back on his head to cover his oiled curls. “In case the high priest Lord Divakesh is mistaken about the holy will of the Mothers?”
“Forgive me, I meant no …”
“But you did.” The emperor gestured for the attendant to hand him his gilt-tipped spear, which he cradled in the crook of his arm. He measured the city walls with his gaze once more. “Yes. We will withdraw until we hear the priest’s bells ring out joyfully over the city.”
Pravan gave the salute of trust. A rush of relief flooded through him. He reclaimed his mount and returned to his officers to give his own orders. Slowly, as it did all things, the great army gathered itself, turned, and began to back away, withdrawing toward the treeline. All except Divakesh’s priests and his hundred men. They marched in a neat double column through the rice paddies, on the narrow raised roads that ran between the pools thick with tall, green grain, across the arched bridges over the irrigation canals, carrying Mother Indu on her palanquin. The great drums thundered, the conchs and ivory horns blared, and the little troop marched through the city gates.
Pravan stood in his stirrups, shading his eyes. He imagined Divakesh’s eyes blazing in triumph, his priests carrying Mother Indu directly to Sindhu’s royal palace where the main temple of Anidita surely lay. Would he stop and behead all the images of the Awakened One on the way? Pravan wondered idly. Or would he save that exercise for later, once the city was reconsecrated?
A distant flash caught his eye, but it was gone before Pravan could focus his attention on it. Then, there came another. It arched up from the rice paddies and fell inside the city walls. It was followed by another.
Pravan stood in his stirrups “The fields!” he shouted. “To the fields!”
Runners scattered. Men surged forward. Pravan kicked his horse’s ribs and the beast leapt onto the road, galloping full-speed to the nearest dike.
Before him, the Huni rose up, water sluicing from their black, lacquered armor. Their spears and axes were bright and their orders were clearly given, because they stepped onto the roads and the bridges.
Behind them, the first flames rose up in the city, and Pravan heard the war horns blow behind. Wheeling his horse in a tight circle, Pravan looked about him wildly, to see the army of the Sindishi pouring from the forest straight into the still disordered camp.
They were trapped. Burning city and enemy before, river to the right, and yet more enemy behind.
I was right, thought Pravan ridiculously. This once, I was right.
It didn’t matter, for he was also dead. There was nothing to do. Pravan raised his sword and cried out, madly, wordlessly, and charged.
And so the rout began.
Chapter Twenty-six
The river current propelled the little boat forward at undreamed-of speed. The rushing air stung Natharie’s eyes and blew her hair back. It was like riding the wind itself. She did not even attempt to raise the sail or hold the tiller. Liyoni carried them, and she would trust the river. Natharie stayed on the bench, clutching Samudra’s hand with one of hers, and the rail of the boat with the other. She did not try to speak. Even if she could have found the words, the wind around her ears was so loud she did not think she would be heard.
All the world around them was a blur of greens giving way gradually to browns as they left the forest lands for the open plain. Only the sun overhead was unchanged, patiently tracing its course across the cloudless sky. Gradually, though, the blue above them dimmed. At first, Natharie thought it must be the evening beginning, but no, the sun was still a good hand span above the horizon. Still, the sky darkened.
Then, the rough wind of their passage took up something new. It was the scent of burning, and Natharie realized that what dimmed the sky ahead of them was smoke.
Reflex jerked Natharie to her feet, but the speed of their passage knocked her back down. Samudra caught her and she saw he had smelled the smoke as well. Sindhu was burning. The battle had begun.
As if the river realized their fear, the unnatural current that carried them fell away. Once more they were just a small boat on Liyoni’s broad back. They had left the fields behind and now the gently sloping banks were covered only with brown reeds. Natharie’s heart constricted as she stood to raise the sail. They were almost to the place of her womanhood ceremony, the place where she had first seen the horse, and Samudra, where this turn of the wheel had begun.
She looked past that place, toward the city walls. Something was very wrong. The air was full of the scent of burning, and it stung her eyes. The distant walls of the city were … wrong, empty, smudged black by the smoke. There was something else too, a sweet smell that brought the taste of corruption.
Samudra at once leapt onto the tiller platform, shading his eyes from the sun, staring out across the shore. “Mothers All,” he breathed. “We’re too late.”
Natharie scrambled up beside him. Bodies sprawled on the top of the bank where the sacrificial horse had once stood. Tufted arrows stuck out of their throats and the blood had already dried on their faces.
Natharie sat down, turning her face away for a hard moment, willing herself not to be sick.
“Hastinapuran,” said Samudra beside her, his voice flat and cold. “They are all Hastinapuran. And the arrows are Huni.” He paused. “I see the Huni flag. I see Sindhu’s. I do not see ours.”
Natharie’s heart skipped a beat. She had been so terrified of the Hastinapurans in their might overrunning Sindhu, it had not occurred to her that Hastinapura might be defeated by Sindhu. She saw how grim and white-faced Samudra had become and realized he had not truly believed it could happen either.
What now? She stared out at the river. What now?
A bump appeared in the river’s rippling brown surface. She thought for a moment it was a log caught in the current, but then she saw the arm curve over and the feet kick up.
“Samudra!”
He turned, crouching low, instantly, his hand on his knife hilt. The swimmer came closer, flailing in the water. He lifted his head, and saw them both staring at him.
Then Samudra cried, “Taru!” He lunged forward so far Natharie feared he would tip the boat. Samudra grasped the swimmer with both hands, hauling him over the rail and, coughing and gasping, onto the deck.
“My prince!” the swimmer, Taru, cried, trying simultaneously to wipe the water out of his face and make some kind of salute. “I knew it was you! I saw … I … Oh … Thank the Mothers you are safe!”
Samudra crouched beside him in the bottom of the boat, helping him sit. “Taru, what happened here?”
Taru turned his face away. He was young, Natharie saw as he pushed his black hair back from his face. Little more than a boy.
“What happened, Lieutenant?” Samudra snapped.
His prince’s barked question swung the boy’s head back around. He struggled to speak clearly. “We came to the city plain in the midmorning.” He turned his face toward the smoke rising from the darkened walls. “It … they were waiting for us. They were waiting in the forest and in the rice fields. Divakesh took a hundred men into the empty city, saying the Mothers had already won the battle for us but … they had soaked the streets with oil, we think, and they set fire to it, the whole city. The men inside burned. Oh, Mothers …” he wailed. “We heard them scream, and we could do nothing. We were caught between the fire and the forest and they rose up from the rice paddies.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes distant, seeing it all again.
They set fire to it. Natharie sat and gaped at the boy. They set fire to it. It wasn’t Hastinapura that had burned the home she dreamt of and prayed for. It was her father, for he would lead the army. Her father had destroyed their home.
“Captain Pravan had warned us to keep good watch, but he did not watch the patrollers well enough, and they were lazy and we … it never would have happened if you were with us, my prince,” Taru was saying. Water still ran down his face and he angrily wiped it away as if it were tears. “Never. But, we were unready and they cut us down. Captain Pravan died defending the emperor, I saw that, before … before …” He bowed in his shame. “Before I ran. A few of us made it to the river, but the current was so strong, the others were swept away. I held on to a tangle for a time …” He gulped. “And then I saw you, my prince, and I knew I had to try to reach you …”
But Samudra was not listening to this. Natharie doubted he heard anything after Taru spoke of the soldier who died defending his brother. “Where is the emperor now?” Samudra asked. “I don’t see his flag.”
“The emperor is captured. The Huni have him.”
Samudra sat back hard, as if he had been struck. “He is alive?”
Taru hesitated. “He was taken alive. That is all I know.”
The boat was still rocking on the current, carrying them closer to the city with every heartbeat. Natharie shook herself. She picked up the anchor stone and heaved it overboard. Samudra didn’t even glance up at her movement. “And where is Yamuna who was supposed to keep him safe?”
“He fled,” murmured Taru.
“What!”
“I did not see it, but I heard. It was early in the day, just as Divakesh and the others were walking toward the city. I heard Agnidh Yamuna give a great shout. ‘She’s here! She’s here!’ They say he leapt up in the midst of his workings, and rose into the sky and vanished.”
Hamsa. She had called Yamuna, and he had gone to her, as she said he would. But it was more than that. She had lured him away when his protection was most needed. Natharie wondered if Samudra thought of that at all. His face was flushed and his hand still clutched the hilt of his knife. Feeling a coward, she looked away from the murder in his eyes, scanning the shore, telling herself she was looking for soldiers, for Huni who might spot their boat and decide to loose a few arrows into it, in case the crew was Hastinapuran.
As we are.
“That is all I know,” Taru said again. “I am sorry, my prince.”
Samudra laid his hand on the boy’s arm. “It’s all right, Taru.”
But Natharie had questions of her own. “What of Sindhu’s king?”
The glance Taru flashed her was pure poison. “He can rot in hell for all I care,” he muttered.
Samudra, control stretched to breaking by all this news, lifted his hand to strike the boy, but Natharie caught his wrist. “No. He is only heartsore.” Samudra grunted, acquiescing if not agreeing, and let his arm fall.
“What shall we do then?” he asked, bitterly, almost mockingly, his gaze on the shore.
“It is plain, my husband,” answered Natharie, keeping her own voice calm. “We must go to the camp and do what we can.”
Samudra twisted around, disbelief plain on his face. “You would have me walk up to the Huni?”
“No. To the Sindishi. You must go to my people and my family, as I went to yours.”
He laughed once, anger still clouding judgment. “What will your father say when he sees who you bring him?”
“I do not know,” she answered. “But what can you do floating on the river here?”
Samudra stared at the shore yet again. She watched him weighing and judging all that he saw, considering the situation with his soldier’s eyes, calculating cost and gain. He wanted to find his broken and scattered army, she was sure. He wanted to rally his men to to his side and sweep down on the Huni like divine vengeance, but his shoulders began to slump slowly, and she knew he saw no way to do so.
“Very well,” he said. “But we wait until dark. This is more than I can do in daylight.”
“As you wish.”
“I will come with you,” said Taru at once.
But Samudra shook his head. “You must go find our men, gather them in the forest. Tell them I am here, and they must wait on my orders.” It would not do to renew the battle while he was in the enemy camp, Natharie realized, especially while he went to negotiate with the enemy king.
Taru accepted his orders with the soldier’s salute, touching heart and brow. Now that he had purpose, he was calmer, his fears wiped away by the prospect of useful action. It no longer mattered what the danger was. Here was something he could do. Natharie knew exactly how he felt.
Taru slipped once more into the river, and silently swam away. Keeping as low as she could, Natharie picked up the oar, ready to ease them toward the shore, but Samudra shook his head and instead hauled on the anchor rope. Natharie saw what he meant to do, and nodded her agreement. If the boat was found, it should be well away from them.
When the boat was floating freely again, they both slipped over the rail into the cool silty waters. I salute you, Liyoni. Do you remember the woman you made? thought Natharie as she swam against the now sluggish current to the mud and the reeds of the shore. With Samudra beside her, she stretched herself out in the blood-warm mud. They watched the smoke rise over them, and waited for darkness.
Yamuna came to the monastery on a hurricane wind, broken glass making his train upon the tempest. His storm bent the treetops down. It whipped Hamsa’s borrowed robe tight against her legs and breasts.
Hamsa stood in the middle of the open pavilion, in the place where she had landed in her arrow form. She had found a white staff very like her own. As she watched Yamuna arrive like one of the gods, she clutched it as if it were an anchor. Fear and doubt assailed her, old habits of her old self, not yet quite washed away. She felt Jalaja’s sign on her wrist and calm purpose returned, though Yamuna’s glass shards fell like hail, clattering and clinking as they rained down around her. They slit the cloth of her robe and sliced her scalp, stinging like flies.
It was nothing. A show of power, meant to distract and distress; meant to make the girl whose soul he had divided be afraid.
Arms spread wide, Yamuna landed on the garden lawn as neatly as an eagle on its perch. He grinned like death itself. Memory of long years of weakness made Hamsa tremble. Fear and anger washed through her, but neither would serve her now. She must be calm. She must remember the truth and the blessing of this place, and of the temple. If she forgot, he could still be her demise. Summoning all the discipline she had, she pushed that fear away.
“Little Hamsa,” Yamuna said in a soft voice that might have been a lover’s greeting.
She watched the death’s-head grin that spread across his face. He still thought he owned her. He had seen her escape, but he did not know how much her soul had taken when it fled him. He did not know how much she had seen: all his sweating and planning and cursing, all his striving and his own fear. He did not know she could see his weakness here and now, as if he was nothing more than a dark shell hollowed out by his own constant plotting.
He stalked toward her, a tiger moving up to wounded prey. “I did not think you would be so foolish as to send for your death.”
Hamsa simply shrugged. “You did not think I could escape you, either, Yamuna, but here we are.”
Anger contorted his face, but he remembered he was supposed to be above the taunts of such as she and he smoothed his expression out swiftly. “Yes. You will tell me how you managed this remarkable thing. Then, you will die.” He spoke with utter certainty. He could not be wrong. He had held her life in his hands for so long, it must still be there. A ripple of strange emotion ran through her, and to her shock, Hamsa recognized it was pity.
“No, Yamuna,” replied Hamsa. “You are mistaken. I will do neither.”
She thought this would provoke another of his mad outbursts, but Yamuna just cocked his head. He studied her for a long moment, looking at the way she stood and the place she held.
Looking for the working she might have laid down against his coming.
“There was great power here,” he remarked. “But it i
s almost drained away now. Perhaps you thought to use it against me.” He stepped onto the edge of the platform.
How is it you do not feel the threads around you? She had thought him blind before, but now she knew that was wrong. Yamuna was numb. He had wrapped himself so tightly in his own cloak of power and pride, he could feel nothing beyond it.
“There is still great power here,” said Hamsa. “It was laid here by generations of sorcerers following the teachings of the Awakened One. It’s quite amazing. It is as strong as the magics laid in the foundation of the Pearl Throne.”
“Is it?” Yamuna arched his brows, and took one more step forward. “Well, they had so little to do, these exiled sorcerers.”
“I must disagree, Agnidh. I believe they kept themselves very busy.”
Yamuna sighed. “It will be a point of contention between us then. Now. Tell me how you escaped now, Hamsa. Spare yourself the pain before you die.”
Before you die. The words slid through her mind. Her spirit remembered its confinement, all the time in the dark, unable to fight, unable to act, unable to do anything but wait for the next command. If he had told her to die, she would die. So many years of commands and helplessness. She should lie down now. She should do as she was told.
Oh, no, Yamuna. Not anymore. “You cannot kill me here, Yamuna,” said Hamsa quietly. “Feel the air around you. Touch the workings. They’re in the boards of the floor and the shadows of the garden. You cannot kill me.”
His brows arched higher yet. “You think to frighten me with the old workings of absent monks? Hamsa, I preferred it when you screamed.”
He raised his hand and she felt the chill that came as he drew up his power. She knew she witnessed the rarest of sights as his arm circled wide. Yamuna could weave a working of air and will and nothing more. It was the greatest display of power there was. She could not do such a thing, even now.
“Listen to me, Yamuna,” Hamsa said, feeling little more than regret as the air trembled around her and grew thin with cold. “You are in a sacred place. Violence is not permitted here. Not by knife or sword. Not by magic. You cannot do this.”