by J. S. Bangs
“Oh, no, I meant something else,” Daladham said. His mind went to the book that Amabhu and Caupana guarded in Sadja’s palace. Sadja had ordered them to keep it hidden after fleeing Majasravi. “This… no, we would be better off leaving this alone. Avoid panic among the people.”
He turned toward the heavy copper door and put a hand on the handle. For the last time he looked at the ruined face of Am.
“Close this place,” he said. “There is nothing more to do here.”
Lejani nodded. The door opened, splitting the darkness with a pillar of late morning light, and then the heavy copper fell shut behind them. Lejani locked the door. Daladham blinked in the sudden brightness outside the shrine.
“What will you say to the rest of your lineage?” Lejani asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll tell them…” He shook his head. “I’ll think of something.”
They walked toward the north gate of the Ashtyavarunda. Lejani paused and looked toward the sanctum. “I have other duties. You will head to the gate and find the rest of your dhorsha, Daladham-dhu?”
“Yes,” Daladham said. His head was heavy. There was no suitable lie on his tongue, but he would have to come up with something. Maybe even the truth. That would certainly quiet the others down for a while. “Your leave, Lejani-dhu.”
She bowed to him and turned away.
The sunlight on the stones of the inner courtyard seemed dimmed. The sky was a cloudless sapphire overhead, swirling with the cawing hordes of gulls and the incessant sea breeze. He shuddered and pulled his bhildu around himself.
A shadow fell over him. “Honorable dhorsha?” someone asked.
He turned. A tall man with an oiled beard and long hair tied in a braid stood behind him, looking down with an expression of hopefulness.
“Do you need something?” Daladham asked.
“I watched you come in. You live at the palace where the Emperor stays.”
“I do,” Daladham said irritably.
“I would like to present a petition to the Emperor. Or at least a question.”
“Then go into the palace gate and wait with the other petitioners.”
“No,” the man said. “You see, I’d rather not perish if the Emperor’s answer is negative. I am here in the Ashtyavarunda with the protections of sanctuary.”
“Ah,” Daladham said. “What have you done? Banditry? Murder? The Ashtya dhorsha may give you sanctuary, but the Emperor is not in a mood to give out pardons.”
“Theft,” the man said bluntly. “A matter of personal interest to the Emperor. If I tell you, will you bring a message to him?”
Daladham hesitated, but his curiosity overcame him. He nodded.
“Tell him that Mandhi of Virnas has returned to Amur with her son. The Emperor will know who I’m talking about.”
“Mandhi of Virnas,” Daladham repeated. The name meant nothing to him.
The man bowed and pressed a coin into Daladham’s hand. It felt cold, and Daladham looked down surprised to see a silver eagle. A heavy coin to give someone just for bringing a message to the Emperor.
“The Emperor will know,” the man repeated. “We want to know if we can safely enter the city. Have him send us a message here in the temple if he will.”
“I’ll tell him,” Daladham started. He looked back at the coin in amazement. “And what is your name?”
The man shook his head. “The Emperor doesn’t know me, and I would prefer he not hear my name yet. The name of Mandhi is the important thing.”
“I see,” Daladham said suspiciously. But now he had an excuse to go straight to the palace instead of returning to the house of the Amya dhorsha in Davrakhanda. “I’ll take it.”
“Quickly, please,” the man said. “I’ll be here in the Ashtyavarunda for four more days. If I haven’t heard from you, I’ll be gone.”
VAPATHI
Vapathi stood at the Rice Gate, with a crowd of peasants before her. Their leader was a short, thin man with close-cropped silver hair and hollow cheeks. His hands clutched at the edge of a filthy kurta that had once been white as he spoke.
“We want to go to the Mouth of the Devourer,” he said. His eyes darted nervously up the long, stone stairs to the entrance of the Ushpanditya.
“I was told,” Vapathi said, crossing her arms. The peasants were all emaciated and filthy, with thin, poorly-fed faces and gray dust in the creases of their skin. The young men among them wore dirty farming clothes and carried hoes and scythes. Several were mothers carrying listless, skeletal children against their dessicated breasts.
But they could still stand. It wasn’t the worst starvation that Vapathi had seen.
“Why do you want to come?” she asked.
“We will join him,” the leader said, his voice creaking with desperation. His hands began to shake, and his jaw quivered. “He can take our names—and we will fight for him.”
“Be calm,” Vapathi said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder. His shaking stilled. “The Mouth of the Devourer takes anyone that comes to him. But what happened? Why are you here?”
The man looked back at the rest of his companions with a face tainted with guilt. “The monsoon failed. There was no harvest. And when the khadir came to collect his tax….”
“The khadir attempted to take taxes from you this year?” Vapathi asked, folding her arms over her stomach. Anger burned in her belly.’
The man nodded. “He did, but we….”
One of the young men standing beside the leader stepped forward and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We killed him and took the food in his household,” he said. “I did it, in fact. I held the scythe that cut him open.”
“Well, good,” Vapathi said. She looked at the trembling old man. Pity diluted the anger in her stomach. “He deserved no less.”
“It didn’t last long,” the elder said. He put his hand over the younger man’s resting on his shoulder. “The food, I mean. That’s when we decided to come here. We heard the rumors—”
“My daughter died on the road,” cried out a woman from behind them. “I had no milk to nurse her, and we couldn’t get here fast enough….”
“I understand,” Vapathi said. “The Mouth of the Devourer will take anyone that comes to him—I just wanted to know what brought you. You’ve suffered enough.”
She led them under the arch and up the stone stairs from the Rice Gate to the doors of the Ushpanditya. The Devoured formed a little aisle on either side of the stairs, listless games of sacchu interrupted to cheer for those who would join them. The peasants looked at the Devoured with perplexed, worried expressions. Vapathi heard muttering passing through them, and saw a few people straighten and pick up their pace.
It’s not so bad, she heard one say. They serve the Mouth of the Devourer, but they seem normal.
Vapathi winced.
Perhaps they were normal. The ones that Vapathi saw here on the stairs and in the entrance hall of the Ushpanditya weren’t obviously less alive than herself. But Kirshta had refused to take the names of her or Apurta. The remnants of the Red Men, too, still kept their names. And all the food that they could find in Majasravi was set aside to feed those that had not been Devoured. There was a reason, and Vapathi had begun to suspect what it was.
The peasants gaped at the interior of the Ushpanditya, even in its present state of disarray. The tall arches overhead, the echoing chambers of stone, the floors of emerald-colored marble, the gold on the caps of the columns, the silk curtains stitched with jewels hanging in the doorways. Only a few of these last remained, as the restless Devoured had torn down most of them and used them for blankets or lit them on fire out of spite. But the ones living in the Ushpanditya had grown bored, and a few remained hanging, forlorn remnants of former luxury.
The Devoured crouched in the niches and gathered in knots, chattering and growling and staring at the new arrivals. Ash, dirt, and refuse gathered around them.
They reached the Green Hall. Vapathi marched in and found
Kirshta in his usual place, slouched on the Seven-Stepped Throne. One of the captains of the Red Men was talking to him, with a group of languid Devoured gathered around.
“…can’t find them,” the captain said. “I don’t think there’s anyone left in the city other than us or the Devoured.”
Kirshta murmured. His head hung low, and he spoke in a hoarse, tired voice. “Start going to outlying villages, then.”
“I think most of them have already come in,” the captain said.
“Get as far out as you need to. You’ll have food or can take it. I don’t think you’ll see much resistance.”
“As far as Davrakhanda?” the captain asked. “Where Sadja-daridarya is?”
Kirshta shook his head. “Not that far. Stay in the kingdom of Sravi. Beyond that… when it’s time.”
He lifted his head and spotted Vapathi approaching across the green marble. The pain and weariness on his face lightened a little into a smile, and he heaved a breath. “My sister,” he said.
“These wish to join us,” Vapathi said, gesturing to the villagers behind her.
“Giving their names?” Kirshta asked.
Vapathi nodded.
“Good,” Kirshta said, and the hint of happiness that had brightened his eyes was swallowed by an expression of hunger and greed. “One at a time. Come up to the stairs.”
The old man who led the group approached the bottom of the stairs. He examined the seven steps leading up to the gold-inlaid chair, trembling, and he knelt.
“Get up,” Kirshta said. “I don’t need you on your knees.”
The old man bowed his head. He rose slowly to his feet. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Kirshta said and gritted his teeth. He was quiet for a moment. “Just tell me your name.”
“Sujaur,” the man said. And when he spoke his name a black mist came out of his mouth, like he had coughed up a cloud of dust. Kirshta opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. The mist curled toward his lips, touched the tip of his tongue, and disappeared down his throat. The old man shook for a moment and fell to a knee, but then he rose. He nodded to Kirshta.
“You will need neither food nor sleep,” Kirshta said. “Sword and spear won’t hurt you. Now go. Find any place in the city that you’d like. When I need you, I’ll call for you. Me or my sister.”
He gestured to Vapathi. The man nodded to her, his eyes wide. The trembling in his hands had disappeared.
Neither food nor sleep, Vapathi thought. The next peasant approached, but Vapathi slipped away through the pillars toward the orange garden.
She had seen enough people give their names to the Mouth of the Devourer that she understood the progression. They kept eating, if they had food, for a few weeks. She saw those newly Devoured with little handfuls of rice or dirty roti in the halls of the Ushpanditya or the streets of Majasravi. They ate and slept out of habit.
But they lost the habit. They no longer ate, but grew no thinner. They didn’t sleep. When Vapathi awoke at night she could hear them shuffling and muttering in the halls of the palace, restless and aimless.
She found the crushed stone path through the orange garden. The stones of the path were scattered, and the trees and bushes on either side were withered and abused. The Devoured had broken branches and scattered leaves, lighting fires and trampling ranks of flowers. Vapathi was repulsed, but she had come to recognize the type. Boredom was the chief characteristic of those who had been Devoured more than a few weeks.
Once they no longer ate or slept, the Devoured tried to lose themselves in pleasures. She saw them coupling in the halls and the gardens. Sometimes they formed great orgies, three or five or ten writhing together like snakes. Some challenged each other to duels, fighting in the streets in fierce, bloodless battles that would have killed anyone still capable of dying. Others sucked betel leaves until the red juice ran from their mouths like blood, or played sacchu for days at a stretch, or lit fires, or ruined the estates of the khadir for no reason other than that they could.
She reached the northernmost edge of the garden. A pair of Devoured were here, lying atop each other on the ground, grunting and grinding their hips together. Of course. Vapathi looked at their faces, slack and gray, barely showing any hint of passion despite the urgency of their movements.
The woman turned toward her. “What?” she asked. “You want some?”
“No,” Vapathi said. “I’m looking for….”
What was she looking for?
The ones longest devoured gave up sex and destruction. They sat motionless in the corners of the Ushpanditya, watching the antics of their comrades with indifference, or they wandered the streets of Majasravi in torpid loops.
And beyond that?
The discomfort she felt for the Devoured peasants resolved itself into a name. The ones who were Devoured lost their death, but they were hardly alive. And eventually…
What had happened to the first? The ones from Pukasra and Tulakhanda that Kirshta had devoured, the oldest conscripts into his army? Vapathi would recognize most of their faces, but she hadn’t seen any of them for weeks. They could have dispersed into the city—Majasravi was huge and was filling up with the nameless Devoured, and it would be impossible for Vapathi to find them if that is what had happened. But she thought that she had seen most of them when they broke the Dhigvaditya and poured into the imperial palace three months ago.
But not recently.
She turned away from the quiet panting of the Devoured couple and turned back to the palace. The desperate peasants were still in line waiting for Kirshta to devour their names. Vapathi shuddered and hurried past them, going into the Ushpanditya. If the Devoured of Tulakhanda were here, she would find them.
There were dozens of rooms in the Ushpanditya, but she had been in all of them at some point when she was a slave here. She took them one at a time.
She found Devoured of every type, men, women, and children, sleeping in ruined silks, playing with broken porcelain, engaged in listless sex or bored games of sacchu. One room at a time, one scene of ruin and filth after another.
She did not find them anywhere in the main floor of the Ushpanditya, nor in the apartments on the upper levels. The Emperor’s Tower was forbidden to the Devoured, other than the Empress, and the Dhigvaditya was closed except to Kirshta’s Red Men.
But there were still the cellars.
She found one of the hidden doors that descended into the bowels of the Ushpanditya, where the casks of rice beer, sacks of rice, dried figs, and corn meal were stored. The cellars were nearly equal in extent to the Ushpanditya itself, chamber after chamber hewed from the stone holding every kind of provision that the Emperor could require, with rough curtains over the doorways and hooks for the lamps. Vapathi carried a lamp and explored them alone, checking every chamber.
The storerooms were nearly empty. They were rapidly depleting even the stores of the Ushpanditya, and with no harvest…
Her lamp fell across a room full of man-sized figures. She gasped.
They were human, or had been. They looked liked statues, as unmoving as the stone, standing in perfect silence in the blackness beneath the ground. They crowded shoulder to shoulder, eyes open, seeing nothing. The light of her lamp glittered in their eyes. They did not move.
She walked forward and touched one. Cold gray skin, like clay under her hands. It didn’t flinch when she touched it.
“Are you alive?” she asked.
The heads turned toward her in unison with a single, jerky movement. She jumped and stepped back a pace. The hair on her arms rose.
“Who are you?”
They didn’t answer.
“Were you from Pukasra?” she asked. She wasn’t sure she recognized any of them. The gray bloodless faces had lost their distinctiveness, their features blunted and rounded like a stone idol’s face worn smooth.
“Yes,” they said in unison, their voices blended into a ghastly chorus.
“How long have you been
here?” she asked.
They didn’t answer. They didn’t blink. Their stillness was perfect. She looked closely at their chests and shuddered. They didn’t even breathe.
“Do you stay here all the time? In the dark?”
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
Her breathing grew heavy. She stepped back, her hands trembling in fear. “Did you have names once?”
“Our names were devoured.”
She took another step back. The light of her lamp cast long, inky shadows in the depths of the storeroom. Her skin crawled. She wanted to leave, but she had to ask.
“Will you obey me?”
They didn’t answer. The only sound was Vapathi’s labored breathing.
“Whom do you obey?” she asked.
“She Who Devours,” they said.
“Do you obey the Mouth of the Devourer?”
“He carries She Who Devours.”
They spoke in total unison, like a single voice. Her lamp shook in her hand, and with a sudden quiver of her wrist it fell to the ground. The sound of shattering clay echoed in the sudden darkness.
Vapathi swallowed a scream. One long, straight hallway back to the stairs. She turned to her left and groped forward, her feet feeling across the stones. Her heart thundered in her ears. No whisper of movement sounded except the nervous pattering of her own feet on the stones.
They did not follow. But in her mind’s eye she saw them, perfectly still in the total darkness, standing without hunger, sleep, or breath. Waiting for She Who Devours to command them.
MANDHI
Mandhi clutched the message she had received from Jauda. I petitioned the Emperor through a dhorsha. The Emperor holds you blameless and swears you may approach Davrakhanda without fear.
“Without fear,” she muttered. They hadn’t quite achieved fearlessness, but at least they had the bravery to approach.
The dhow rounded the northern arm of the harbor of Davrakhanda and slipped into the calm inner waters. Mandhi’s eyes scanned the docks. Her pulse quickened. Not apparently bristling with spears. Sadja wouldn’t be so direct. She glanced aside at Kest, who stood with his arms crossed and his gaze hard on the approaching city.