Throne of Ruins (The Powers of Amur Book 5)

by J. S. Bangs

“Most of it from the saghada, though,” Yavada said. “There is a substantial party opposed to any form of union.”

  Mandhi’s party, Navran thought. He had the position of authority, but she knew the Law better than he, and she was familiar to most of the saghada in Virnas.

  The trays of food were set out: a few peeled oranges, some cumin-spiced roti, and a dish of curdled, garlic-infused cream. It was a rather poor spread, but even in the palace they were barely staving off famine. Navran had instructed his cook Paidacha to save as much food as he could. Navran and Yavada, the Uluriya, were given separate platters from those served to Bidhra, so that he would not contaminate the Heir with his touch.

  Bidhra took a roti from his dish and dipped it into the cream. “I say, Navran-dar, it would be much easier to cooperate with the kings of Virnas if it weren’t for the peculiarities of your cult.”

  “I have tried to be easy to cooperate with,” Navran said stiffly.

  “Tried,” Bidhra said mildly. He gestured to the separate platters before them. “But the requirements of purity—”

  “We are not asking the saghada to make any modification to their existing laws of purity,” Navran said.

  “But you would allow the dhorsha who admit the lordship of Ulaur to retain their ancestral rites.”

  “That is what we propose,” Yavada said eagerly. “Because if the Powers we know are acknowledged as servants of Ulaur, similar to the five-winged amashi—”

  Bidhra cut Yavada off. “I don’t need to hear your justification. I just wanted to make sure I understand what is proposed.” He fixed Navran with an intense stare. “Because there are many who might acknowledge to the lordship of Ulaur if they did not also have to forsake the habits of dhaur.”

  Navran’s breath stopped for a moment. Was Bidhra referring to himself? He spoke cautiously. “There are plenty of khadir that I could come closer to.”

  “I would not think merely of the khadir,” Bidhra said. “Aidasa-daridarya knew the advantages of having the dhorsha unified under his own cult. You are not as strong as the great Emperor, but under the right circumstances….”

  “I know.”

  Bidhra nodded. For a heartbeat a knowing glance passed between him and Yavada.

  Navran took a piece of roti dipped in cream. “So let’s talk about the Emperor. Have you mustered all of your forces?”

  “I have. And thank you for your grant of passage.”

  Navran couldn’t dare refuse Bidhra the right to march his troops through the kingdom of Virnas, not when the whole muster had been ordered by the Emperor. He said nonetheless, “With pleasure. How many have you sent?”

  “Seventy thousand already,” Bidhra said. “And another ten thousand follow me.”

  “Kaudhara-kha, the Horn of Virnas, says we’ll muster about a hundred thousand in all.”

  “Peasants, mostly,” Yavada added. “But the khadir have sent sons to serve as officers.”

  “Peasants can swing a blade,” Bidhra said. “That’s all they need to do.”

  “Yes,” Yavada said, “and combined with what the Emperor and Gauhala-dar of Jaitha have mustered, we should have over two hundred thousand. That many can surely put a stop to the Mouth of the Devourer.”

  Navran shrugged. “I wonder.”

  “Then do you have another suggestion?” Bidhra put innocently.

  Navran was silent for a while. He had only eaten a little, but the discussion of conscription had spoiled his appetite.

  “I do not think this battle will be won by force of arms,” he said at last. “The Mouth of the Devourer is a vessel for the old enemy of the Powers. And the Powers will have to overcome him.”

  “And so we return to the topic of your council,” Bidhra said dryly. “You hope that Ulaur and the Powers of Amur will deliver us together.”

  “That is our hope,” Navran said.

  “We should be sure there are no surprises,” Yavada said eagerly. “Quite sure. I’ll talk to everyone I know.”

  And how many saghada did Yavada know? How far had he gone to ingratiate himself to the dhorsha and the saghada? Worry thrummed in Navran’s chest. Would Yavada push Mandhi and her saghada into schism just to ensure that Utalni’s child would become Heir over Jhumitu?

  He only had to ask himself the question. Of course Yavada would.

  Yavada was still waiting for him to respond. Navran managed to say only, “Thank you.”

  Bidhra rose to his feet. “Then I’ll return. I shall spend a few more days here in Virnas, Navran-dar, if I may intrude on your hospitality.”

  “Of course,” Navran said.

  “But I must go for now. Even here, duties do not end.” He gave Navran a knowing smile and excused himself.

  Yavada took his leave a moment later, leaving Navran alone with Dastha and the servants carrying the platters away. Navran motioned Dastha closer.

  “Follow Yavada-kha,” he said. “Tell Kaudhara-kha to set spies around him.”

  “Yes, my lord and king. May I ask why?”

  Navran took a deep breath. “I suspect that he is interfering in the council. And Jhumitu may be in danger.”

  “Interfering in which way?”

  Navran shook his head. “I want to hear the report of the Horn first. If Yavada-kha is innocent, then I have never said anything against him.”

  “I understand.” Dastha bowed and walked swiftly away.

  Subterfuge. Far from his favorite thing. But he had his own spies, and he was not afraid to use them.

  VAPATHI

  This village was different.

  It was nearly empty, to begin with. Vapathi had grown used to seeing crowds of desperate people in the villages, eager to be delivered from the jaws of famine, gathered by the heralds that Kirshta had sent before them.

  But here, Vapathi saw no one. There was only an empty street and a collection of a dozen slumping, mud-brick houses on either side of the road. A pair of skinny goats wandered lazily through a fenced yard, nibbling at the roots of dried grasses and bleating with hunger.

  Kirshta sat in the palanquin with his eyes closed and his head resting in his hand. He motioned for the Devoured carrying his palanquin to let him to the ground. He waved Vapathi closer.

  “As in the other villages,” he croaked in a gray, hoarse voice. “You know what to do.”

  “But where is everybody?”

  Kirshta started. He opened his eyes and raised his head, looking around for the first time.

  “I don’t know.” For a moment his face contorted into a mask of rage, but it passed. He closed his eyes. “Go find out.”

  Apurta stepped forward from the other side of the palanquin and motioned for Vapathi. “I’ll go with you. Something may be wrong.”

  Vapathi glanced back. Basadi stood next to Kirshta’s palanquin, and behind them marched a fat, winding column of the Devoured, stretching on the road until… Vapathi wasn’t even sure how far back their train reached.

  Apurta sidled close to her and put a hand on the hilt of his sword. “You talk,” he whispered. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “I doubt we’re in danger,” Vapathi said. But she looked at the empty houses with a feeling of foreboding.

  No—not empty. She saw a child’s face peeking at them out a window, but it disappeared into the darkness as soon as Vapathi and Apurta drew near. They walked into the village.

  The center of the village was a large whitewashed building, the only one whose bricks were painted. It stood twice as high as anything else around it. Vapathi would have taken it for the khadir’s home, except that a village this small and poor probably didn’t have its own khadir. The door was a high arch, and at the point of the arch a five-pointed star was painted in gray. Beneath the arch, a rail-thin man in white leaned against the door-posts.

  “Hey, there!” Apurta called out as they approached him. “Where is everyone?”

  The man studied them for a long time through squinting eyes. His hands were folded across his chest. The gen
tle breeze stirred the white folds of his garment. “You’re with the Mouth of the Devourer?”

  “We are,” Apurta said. He sounded a little annoyed. “We expected to find people here.”

  “Most of them fled,” the man said. He didn’t move from his place in the door.

  “Do they have food?”

  “Maybe. Do you?”

  “Come to the Mouth of the Devourer and you will not need to eat,” Vapathi answered. She felt ill saying it. At least these people had run away. “Did you not meet his messengers?”

  “We did.”

  “And? The Mouth of the Devourer is at the edge of the village. Come to him and he will receive you.”

  The man didn’t move. He stared at them for a long time.

  “Come with us,” Apurta said, more confidently than Vapathi. “Your village appears to be starving. You look like you haven’t eaten in a month. The Mouth of the Devourer will deliver you.”

  “We will not bow to the Mouth of the Devourer.”

  Vapathi blinked. This was the first time that had happened. “You will starve.”

  “Ulaur will keep us.”

  Uluriya. She finally pieced the clues together. She should have realized it a while ago, she thought sheepishly, but she had barely ever seen an Uluriya in Majasravi. The star over the door, that was one of their symbols. The Uluriya were much more numerous in the south, and if there was an entire Uluriya village here, then they must be getting close to the Amsadhu.

  Apurta looked at Vapathi in consternation. “What should we do?”

  Vapathi heaved a breath. “We could just leave them,” she said. “They certainly aren’t going to stop us.”

  “We should ask Kirshta.”

  They should, but Vapathi almost wished they didn’t have to. He had become so mercurial. She would rather let them go, to pass by silently rather than wrestle them into submission to She Who Devours. But Kirshta… no, they had to tell him.

  They walked back through the half-deserted village to where Kirshta’s palanquin waited. Basadi sat in the shade of a palm off the road. As they approached she called out, “Where are they? The Empress of the Devoured wants more subjects.”

  Vapathi made a noise of annoyance. She ignored Basadi and crouched in front of the palanquin. Kirshta breathed heavily. Black veins showed through his pale brown skin, and a sheen of sweat glittered on his forehead.

  “My brother,” she said softly. “Most of the village has fled.”

  “Why?” He didn’t look up.

  She hesitated. “They are Uluriya. We met one of their holy men at the temple in the village center.”

  His eyes flew open. A bestial growl rumbled in his chest. “I see. That explains it.”

  “Explains?”

  “This place.” He raised his head and looked around with an expression of fury and disgust. “It stinks. It itches. I hate it.”

  “Then let’s leave,” Vapathi said quickly. “Leave it behind. They’ll all starve soon anyway.”

  “Leave it? No, that won’t do at all.” He lifted his head and looked around. “Empress!”

  Basadi stirred from beneath the palm and strolled toward Kirshta’s palanquin. “Yes, my lord?”

  “Send out the Devoured,” Kirshta said. “Search every house. Bring the survivors to the center of the village.”

  “Certainly. More for my train?”

  “Food for She Who Devours,” Kirshta said.

  Basadi stuck out her lip in a pout, but at Kirshta’s snarl she went away. Her commands sounded through the mob of Devoured behind them.

  “Pick me up,” Kirshta said to the Devoured carrying the palanquin. “I want to see this holy man.”

  “What are we doing?” Vapathi said. She kept pace with Kirshta’s palanquin as they advanced through the abandoned village. On either side, the Devoured began hollering and searching the mud-brick homes. As they found people they dragged them out and herded them into a group following Kirshta’s palanquin.

  “Ruyam was right,” Kirshta said quietly. “I don’t know if he fully understood why he was right, but he knew.”

  Vapathi glanced aside at Apurta walking next to her. His face was contorted into an expression of poorly-concealed worry. He put a hand on Vapathi’s shoulder.

  “We’ll be fine,” he said.

  She did not believe him.

  When they reached the center of the village again, the man in white still stood in the doorway of the building. He seemed neither surprised nor disappointed when Kirshta’s palanquin was lowered to the ground and the captured Uluriya were prodded forward and formed into a crowd before the door. There were about twenty of them, most of them women and young men with skin drawn taut over their ribs. A few children with large heads and listless expressions. They formed into two small groups with an aisle between them leading to the man in white.

  Kirshta pointed to the man in white. “You. You’re the priest of this place.”

  The man nodded slowly.

  “Come here.”

  “My lord, I’ll stay here and protect the bhilami.”

  Kirshta’s eyes flew open. He pushed himself out of the palanquin. His legs faltered and he stumbled into the dirt, then rose to his feet, shaking. “Do you resist me?”

  “I serve Ulaur and protect the purity of this place.” The man did not move, nor did he show any kind of fear.

  “Curse Ulaur and live,” Kirshta said. “Or be food for She Who Devours.”

  “I will not curse.”

  “You will not?” Kirshta shook. “Do you understand that She will eat all of you? Your Ulaur, the killer in the heavens, he will not save you. Not for all your precious purity.”

  “We all stayed knowing we would soon ascend to the stars,” the man said calmly. “You may send us there more quickly.”

  “The stars? You think when She Who Devours has taken you there will be enough left of you for Ulaur to lift up? Curse the blood-stained Power and be done.”

  “I will not curse.”

  “You will all die.”

  The man shifted a little in the doorway and breathed deeply. The Uluriya drew together, their gazes turned toward their priest. The old man rested a hand on the shoulder of a young man standing near him, and he took a deep breath. He began to speak in a loud voice. “I bow my head to Ulaur—”

  The crowd began to pray with him, first one or two, then all at once. Their voices became a rumble of defiance. The whole village spoke as one, their prayer echoing off the whitewashed walls of the bhilami and over the parched ground.

  Kirshta howled. He put his hands on his ears and hurled himself forward. He hit the dust in front of the Uluriya, then he rose, shaking, and extended a hand toward them.

  “—the light unborn, the word unspoken, the fire of ages—”

  The prayer began to mingle with screams. The Uluriya nearest to Kirshta erupted in black acid blisters. Their flesh melted away. Their bones sank into puddles of putrid black oil. Others screamed and bolted away before melting in turn.

  “—who overthrew the serpent, who drives off the unclean Powers—”

  The second ranks of the Uluriya fell screaming. Black pus gushed from their mouths and eye sockets. Their faces dripped off their skulls, the words of the prayer turning to dying gurgles.

  “—who keeps Manjur and his children in purity and the good.”

  The priest stood alone in the doorway. Every other member of the village had been reduced to a rancid puddle strewn with bones, but Kirshta had stopped just before devouring the priest himself. The priest’s face was wet with tears, and he trembled. But he looked Kirshta in the eyes with an expression of defiance.

  “Take him,” Kirshta commanded, pointing at the Devoured behind him. “And tear down the bhilami.”

  A pack of the Devoured leaped forward and grabbed the man by his wrists, pulling him out of the building and hurling him into the center of the reeking muck. He cried out and began sobbing.

  Kirshta stepped up to the ed
ge of the black pool and looked down at the man with contempt. “I should have let Ruyam finish you off,” he said.

  Kirshta turned away. A gurgle sounded in the man’s throat, and a moment later he dissolved into putrescence.

  The Devoured poured into the bhilami. Vapathi heard cries of disappointment that there were no articles of silver or gold to be looted, but the disappointment abated as others began to bring kindling to burn the place down. She turned away. She had no need to watch this.

  Kirshta limped slowly back toward the palanquin. Vapathi reached out and touched his shoulder.

  “My brother,” she said. “Why did you do that?”

  “They wouldn’t submit,” Kirshta said, brushing her hand away.

  “Submit? Is that what you want, now? When we began this you said you wanted to liberate the weak of Amur.”

  “I did liberate them,” Kirshta said. “Liberated from their false worship and their servile doctrines. Ulaur,” he said with a snarl of disgust.

  “But they were starving. Women and children, even! They were no threat to you.”

  “The Uluriya are not a threat. They are contemptible. If they won’t accept the salvation of She Who Devours—”

  “But Kirshta—”

  He whirled, and with the speed of a serpent’s strike he seized her hand. He squeezed. Vapathi felt her fingers grow numb, then she screamed.

  Her fingertips were turning black. Bile erupted from beneath her nails. She screamed again.

  She heard Apurta’s cry. A moment later he bowled into both of them. Kirshta lost his grip on Vapathi’s arm and all three of them fell. Apurta’s arms closed around Vapathi and he dragged her away, leaving Kirshta on the ground.

  Kirshta sobbed and curled up into a ball. Apurta pulled Vapathi a few paces farther away, then stepped between them. He pulled out his sword.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he said. His tone wavered between demanding and pleading.

  Kirshta shook with sobs. “I won’t,” he said. “I won’t. I’m sorry, my sister. Forgive me.”

  “It’s all right,” Vapathi said. She felt dizzy and numb. The village square seemed to shake and swirl around her. “I slipped.” It was the first time that she had accidentally used his name in months.