Advent of Ruin (The Qaehl Cycle Book 1)

by Allene Lowrey

  That first tryst was the scene they practiced tonight. It had always seemed spare and inelegant before, set against music that was warm and heavy with percussion. Now that they knew what the scene was about, and now that they had begun to put on the grace of women, they could make it match much better. The scene relied on the flourishes of the dancer and her ability to walk the fine line between overacting and understatement. A great deal of both was seen on the dance floor that night, as none of them had any more to go on than their imaginations. Chandi’s movements grew wilder as her limbs limbered and she focused her attention more on the music than on the act. She opened her eyes at one point to see Gita; where Chandi’s movements were open and wild, Gita’s were closed and refined. So graceful.

  Chandi and her year-sisters dragged themselves off to bathe under the dappled shadows on the water, her legs and feet now as tired as her arms and shoulders. The branches of a young acacia tugged at her sari as they entered a small clearing where they could change in privacy. Her mother waited there, tying the girls’ hair up off their shoulders.

  The water was cool and perfect as the girls slipped in to wash away the sweat and dust of the day. Lotus and jasmine blooms alike seemed to glow faintly purple in the moonlight. Their aroma was stronger now. Chandi walked until the water covered the points of her shoulders. She let herself sink down for a moment so that the water lapped up against the hair at the nape of her neck before returning to slightly shallower waters and the other girls.

  “Granny Arvinda’s too nice to you,” one of them whispered in her ear.

  “Grandmother Arvinda’s nice to everyone, Gita.” Chandi smiled. “You’re just jealous ‘cause it was Auntie Kiran who caught you.” Chandi stuck her tongue out at her friend, scrubbing her left arm with a laver leaf.

  “You always did have all the luck. She made me help the uncles with the animals after we did the jugs.”

  Chandi laughed in sympathy. “Ouch. I bet she watched, too.”

  “Of course. She couldn’t let them go easy on me, after all.”

  “Did you get stepped on?”

  “No, but can you imagine?”

  “She’d have checked your feet over like she was a mama camel, all the while calling you a ‘clumsy girl’ and lamenting how far you still had to grow.” Chandi had seen Kiran’s face when the last class debuted: positively glowing. If that was pride, like Mama said, it was the finest thing Chandi had ever seen. Auntie Kiran was strict, but she cared about her girls.

  “She would.” Gita stopped chuckling over the image abruptly. “I think she’d have been right.”

  “Just means we need to work harder.”

  The two girls smiled at each other, and then Chandi sighed. Tomorrow would start early, and her skin was already starting to prune.

  They weren’t the first to make for the banks, but they were among them. Small clusters of other girls were still scrubbing each other’s backs or splashing around in half-hearted play. One girl, her face obscured in shadow, floated on her back, staring at the stars above and surrounded by the ones that seemed to glow from the banks and the surface. A nice idea, but it would make for a cold night and stiff muscles in the morning.

  * * *

  As the next day progressed, Chandi watched the grasses become sparser and the scrub begin to disappear as the edge of the savanna transitioned into desert. There had been no trees since they left the oasis that morning, and by midday they had entered the Qaehl proper. There was no oasis that night, nor the night after, but that excused no one from practice. Sometimes she thought the musicians and the craftsmen had it easier; the musicians practiced while they traveled, and even the craftsmen could do the majority of their work on the road rather than at camp.

  On the third night, as city walls were coming into focus on the horizon, the caravan arrived at another oasis. They were not alone here: this was home to one of the kalabazaar that always seemed to spring up outside the cities. After watering the camels, some of the uncles ventured off into the settlement for news and gambling while the others set themselves as guards around the caravan. In all, more men remained as guards than left. Chandi heard one of the uncles explaining to one of her year-brothers that the kalabazaar were no place for children.

  “Prepare yourselves, girls,” Auntie Kiran addressed them at practice that night. “Tomorrow we will arrive at Q’uungerab Pradesh and begin the season’s Carnival.” Excited chatter bubbled up among the girls on the floor.

  “I will now give each of you your assignment for tomorrow’s setup. Pay attention, because I will only say this once. Anyone who forgets where they are supposed to be will join the animal handlers or Nikita.”

  “Yes, Auntie,” they chorused. No one ever forgot their assignment more than once. Auntie Nikita was their head srani, and preparing the first aid tent was even more demanding work than helping with the stables.

  * * *

  The first sight of Q’uungerab Pradesh was dominated by a long curtain wall of red sandstone with a great arch passing over the road. This Stormbreaker wall was set perhaps a hundred yards beyond the city’s true walls. Drifts of sand were kept clear by an army of sand scavengers. As they stepped through the arch and over the crest of a real hill those massive walls, their sides carved and painted with vivid murals of the ancient gods, seemed to soar out of the dunes to touch the sky.

  The leftmost image Chandi could make out was of a beautiful woman in a sari riding a tiger. Both woman and tiger were haloed, and they led the eye to a many-limbed man with obsidian skin. In two of his hands the dark man held a book and a scale, a third held what appeared to be gold and jewels, and in the fourth he brandished a trident. That was Khubhranta; he was the best-remembered of the old gods. The other arms bore other items, but Chandi couldn’t tell what they were from here. A monkey sat by his right foot. To the right of this another beautiful, haloed woman danced with an androgynous man. Beneath their feet they crushed fearsome scorpions. They were probably Atrakhanti and Dhamar, if she remembered the stories properly. To their right a golden hawk soared, a serpent clutched in its talons. Beyond that, a pregnant haloed woman looked on in ecstasy as a man knelt before her in adulation, her hand cupping the back of his head. Chandi blushed and looked away. How did I miss before that she was their fertility goddess?

  The truly amazing thing about the murals, though, was the shadows. Each one had been carved in high relief, so at any time of day the figures looked lifelike under the scorching sun.

  They were close enough now that Chandi could see the city’s massive bronze gates. Those, too, were sculpted. As they entered the shadow of the wall she was able to see that the left side of the gate showed Khubhranta battling monstrous demons like none she had heard of elsewhere. Each had the body and tail of a scorpion, but the head of a man. On the right, Khubhranta held an open book in one hand, gesturing with the others as he spoke to a crowd kneeling at his feet.

  The caravan caught up with the rest of the line waiting to pass through the gates. Anticipation bubbled in Chandi’s breast: she was one of those chosen to go in and advertise the carnival.

  Only a fraction of their caravan gathered at the head of the wagons to enter the city, but even that fraction was larger than most of the merchant groups. They could fit in a caravanserai. Even Grandmother Chaitali, who was old enough the aunts called her grandmother, couldn’t remember the last time their clan had used a caravanserai. Chandi stepped into the group next to Talikha, her mother. Her father Korshed was still a little apart, speaking with the Elders. Papa was a tall man, even among the Chèin’ii, putting him a good head taller than the men in most of the city-states they visited. His curly hair was beginning to gray at the temples, but he was still the best acrobat among them. He would be Master of Acrobats if he hadn’t been chosen to succeed Elder Yusa, but he still helped with training. Once they were done conferring, those who would be setting up turned off to the north side of the road, leaving the smaller group to wait in line. Papa joined them, a
nd a grin split his broad goatee as he embraced his wife and daughter.

  Very few people spoke while waiting to enter the city, as though they were afraid of provoking the desert until they were safely beyond its reach, behind the bronze gates. Chandi looked up as the line crawled forward. They were close enough now that the city walls seemed to divide the sky as they waited in shadow.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, Papa stepped off to the side to speak with the guard at the gate. Chandi couldn’t tell what they were saying, but Papa shook his fist at the guard before paying their tariff, and threw his hands up as he returned to their group. Mama seemed to know what had happened just from the look they shared, but Chandi didn’t spare much thought wondering what it was.

  Thirty feet farther on she stepped from the shade of the walls, past the guards with their wrapped iron bands holding chafiye on their heads and their weapons relaxed and ready, and into the bright mid-afternoon sunlight of the western plaza. The difference that thirty feet made was akin to stumbling on an unexpected oasis in the heart of the Qaehl. Outside, the desert seemed to resent the intrusion of civilization, seeking weakness in the stone walls and storm breaks through which to destroy them. Inside the walls it was as though the world itself came alive under the protection of the city’s Prince. Chandi’s nose was assailed with the smells of roasted meat, frying bread, spices, perfume, people. Food vendors hawked their wares, each louder than his neighbors; children ran heedlessly underfoot; and the caravaners – carnival men and merchants alike – became fast friends. Here was the true beauty of a city – this gathering together of men of all stripes to push back against the desert. Chandi grinned. The approach to a city was always exciting: the payoff was not Carnival but the scintillating swell of life inside the gates.

  Her mother’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “Ready, sweetling?” A smile glittered in Mama’s eyes, and even when she spoke her voice was like honeyed milk.

  Chandi nodded.

  “Stick close, then. It won’t do to get separated before we reach the central bazaar.”

  Keeping together as a cohesive group was impossible, of course, but Mama began to sing as they wound their way through the throng, her powerful lilting voice providing a nucleus around which the caravaners could congregate. Chandi lifted her tambourine to accompany her mother. Later, in the bazaar, she would dance.

  The broad avenue of the Vidhyaji ran straight from the eastern to the western gate, intersecting the Rodhyaji at the square in the heart of the bazaar. The Vidhyaji was lined by local shops and stalls, covered by canvas awnings and set into the ground floor of three- and four-story carved sandstone buildings. From the painted shutters, to the potter and the carpet merchant hawking their wares under their awnings, to the middle-aged woman allowing the smell of her fresh fry bread to bring customers to her, cities like this were where life happened. Even the beggars, wretched as they were with their sunken eyes and their shriveled or missing limbs, had not given up on life; Chandi could see it in the set of their mouths and the hard glint of their eyes. There was an occasional empty shop front, but in the City of Trade that was sure to be temporary.

  As they walked, she realized there was another reason her mother was singing: they were attracting a crowd as they traveled the Vidhyaji, the faces both curious and entranced by Talikha’s famous voice. A thousand merchants calling out for attention, and a lone woman’s song was still enough to steal attention away from them. Chandi elaborated a little on her accompaniment. They were advertising, after all.

  The major difference Chandi could see between the Vidhyaji and the bazaar was that the bazaar was more crowded. She would hardly have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself. Stalls lined the edges of the square, with booths set up in haphazard rows throughout the center of the otherwise open space. Those with carts or wagons were forced to traverse the rim of the square, as those were the only paths wide enough. Even then there were frequent delays and much cursing as shoppers and travelers stalled each other’s progress. The sheer variety of goods to be had was staggering: silks and other cloths followed spices, ceramic and earthenware jars, a weapon merchant selling swords and spears from as far away as Masonterra across the sea; there were jewelers, antiquarians, dyers, and of course food stands, all scattered randomly together. It was a lively, almost jovial chaos when taken as a whole. Here and there were pockets of people who seemed to disagree, conversing in closed circles with nervous postures.

  Mama finished the song, and their little troupe huddled together to divide up the territory. Papa went south with Remu and Seirya, who would be playing tabla and bansuri as he made their corner of the bazaar into an acrobatics stage. The rest of the group was also peeling off in twos and threes to spread the news of the Carnival across the bazaar.

  Finally it was just Chandi and her mother, who had been granted the near area of the bazaar in deference to Talikha’s infirmity. It only took them a few minutes to find a suitable “stage” of unoccupied crates. Mama arranged herself in such a way that she could rest without appearing to as needed.

  “Ready to show off a little?”

  Chandi swallowed hard, but still nodded eagerly.

  “All right. Give me something upbeat at a middling tempo.”

  After a few beats – sharp! Jingle-jangle pause, sharp! Jingle-jangle pause – her mother began to sing a song about a pair of young lovers who become enraptured with the joys of Carnival. In the final stanza they bid their families farewell and join the Chèin’ii. Verse by verse their audience grew, and Chandi elaborated on both her accompaniment and her dance. Soon there were people clapping along with her beat as she incorporated a number of rolls and lengthy shakes. City folk seemed to find something romantic about the idea of running away with a Carnival. Almost no one ever did, though, and the few who got that far never stuck around long.

  Mama was reaching the final verse. Time to slow it down and quiet the beats. In the middle of a slow rotation, Chandi glanced over to see her mother surreptitiously leaning on one of the crates. Her back must be bothering her. Chandi smiled at her and began a series of long, languid flourishes meant to draw eyes away from the singer. Talikha straightened and stepped forward on the makeshift stage and Chandi began a long rattle with the tambourine, crescendoing to the final note as she moved to stand next to her mother. When the song finished, Mama stood for a moment with her arms raised above her head. Chandi struck a sideways pose with the tambourine upraised in bent arms. She turned to face forward and hold the tambourine in her right hand, clasping her mother’s in her left, and they bowed to a crash of applause. The crowd was raucous, even beyond what Mama’s performance justified.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Mama began, addressing the audience a little breathlessly. “Many thanks, friends. The Carnival of the Aranya Prasuuna Chèin’ii opens tomorrow outside the Ra-Vidhyaji gate. We hope you will come to see us again… that you have enjoyed this taste of our talents. We look forward to seeing you at the Ra-Vidhyaji!”

  Talikha and Chandi shared a grin as applause broke out a second time and they bowed once more. Their initial crowd began to disperse, and Mama allowed herself to sit on one of the raised crates.

  “You, sweetling, will be very good someday. Maybe better than I was.”

  “You really think so? I always feel so awkward in front of Auntie Kiran…”

  Her mother laughed, a cascade of notes tumbling like glass beads atop one another. “Did you know that Kiran had that effect on your Grandmother Nastaran when she was Mistress of Dance? It’s just part of who Kiran is. She demands perfection of herself, and that seems to rub off on people. It’s why we were rivals until the accident.”

  Chandi nodded, listening, as her mother’s smile turned wistful.

  “But when I lost the baby, she took turns with your Papa watching you so they could both sit with me sometimes. And you know, I think she was more upset than I was when we discovered I couldn’t dance any more. I still had my voice, after all.”
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  Chandi had heard bits of this before, although she had been too young to really remember any of it. There had been some sort of accident – she was fairly certain it had involved camels – when Mama was pregnant the second time. The srani said she was fortunate to still be able to walk, that dancing was out of the question, and that losing a baby was awful but still better than dying.

  “Come on, Chandi. Time to begin the next set. Give me something light and exuberant.”

  * * *

  When the other groups gathered again around their stage, her mother was just finishing a fourth set. This was a slow and somber tune bidding the day farewell, ending with a verse about how good it was to know that the sun would always rise again. Somewhere between the third and fourth sets Chandi had moved a barrel forward such that her mother could sit while singing without restricting her breath. At the end of the song, her mother looked down into the front of the audience and locked eyes with Papa. She smiled just for him, although the crowd would never know the difference. A fourth time she repeated her exhortation about their carnival.

  The crowd dispersed, and Chandi watched her mother walk slowly forward, stepping off the stage in front of her father. Talikha reached her arms up and draped herself from his neck, resting her head on her husband’s chest as she murmured a welcome.

  Korshed returned her embrace lightly, resting his hands on her shoulder blades. “Talikha. My nightingale is tired, it seems,” he said, just for her. “Come,” he added more loudly. “The evening wears late, and there is much yet to prepare. We shall return to camp, and the nightingale shall perch on my shoulder!” He laughed as he scooped Talikha up in his arms.

  Chandi smiled to watch her parents as she, too, came down from the stage. Even now, with gray in Papa’s hair and Mama nearly crippled, they were the object of envious glances from men and women alike. The men – mostly among the uncles – still could not understand why Talikha had chosen him from among all her suitors. The character of the women’s glances – and these came from all ages – was wistful.