by J. S. Bangs
Her left hand was numb. She couldn’t move it. She lifted her arm to look at the hand. It hung as limp and lifeless as a corpse’s limb, tinted black and dripping foul-smelling pus from beneath the nails. She touched it with her good hand. Cold and dead.
“Let me help you,” Apurta whispered. He put his hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet. She leaned into him. She was shaking, all except the dead hand.
“He was so close—” she said.
“I know.” He pulled her farther away.
She looked back once and saw Kirshta still curled into a ball in the road, shaking with silent sobs. Basadi crouched over him and caressed his cheek. She looked up and met Vapathi’s gaze.
The Empress’s eyes gleamed with hatred. Behind them, the Devoured lit the fires, and the bhilami began to burn.
* * *
Vapathi cradled her left hand in her lap and watched the blackness subside.
Feeling had gradually returned to her fingers. She couldn’t pick anything up, but she could move her hand at the wrist. Her skin tingled with the blood that trickled back into her dead flesh. The blackness in her fingertips had faded.
“By morning it should be fine,” Apurta said. “I hope.”
“I hope so too,” Vapathi whispered. She couldn’t stir up any feeling of hope.
She and Apurta were alone around their fire, built on the south edge of the abandoned Uluriya village. The Red Men had taken up all of the houses in the village, while behind them on the road, the column of the Devoured stretched as far back as the horizon. The Red Men built some cooking fires outside the abandoned hovels of the Uluriya, but the Devoured on the road were a black, murmuring mass. They lit no fires.
Vapathi shivered.
“Was it a mistake?” Apurta said.
“Everything has been a mistake.”
Apurta was quiet for a while. “Well, yeah. But I was referring to when you called your brother by name.”
“Maybe it was. I don’t really know.” She sniffed and wiped the corner of her eye clean. “Sometimes I think that if I called his name enough times, I could pull it back out of the throat of She Who Devours. So long as he didn’t kill me first.”
“That would be the tough part,” Apurta whispered. “He’s never even come close to hurting you before.”
Vapathi shook her head. She didn’t look up.
“We should have stopped in Majasravi,” Apurta said. “Things were fine there.”
“Things were not fine in Majasravi. Things have not been fine since….” Her words petered out into a sob. She choked it off in her throat and mastered her voice. “Not since we came down from the mountain. Maybe not even then.”
“Yes, but… at least in Majasravi we were in one place, and we could enjoy ourselves.”
“You enjoyed yourself with Basadi, at least.”
Apurta drew his breath in sharply. His eyes darted off to the left, toward the hut where Kirshta and Basadi rested. After a moment, hearing no reaction from either of them, he let out a long, slow breath.
“I’m not sure if it hurts them when they don’t hear it,” he said quietly.
“I don’t care if I hurt Basadi.”
“I know.” Apurta pursed his lips glumly. He paced at the edge of the circle of firelight, then slowly returned to Vapathi’s side. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry for what?”
“For the Empress. In Majasravi, surrounded by all those ruined luxuries, it seemed—”
“Don’t explain yourself to me,” Vapathi spat. “I don’t want to hear it.”
He knelt and put a hand on her knee. He opened his mouth to say something, shook his head, and looked down. For a long while he sat there, silent. Vapathi stared at him. Part of her wanted to lean close, to put her hand over his, to pull him into her arms. But she didn’t move. Let him suffer.
He withdrew his hand from her knee and sat himself on the ground a pace away from her.
“What are we going to do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is there any way we can help them?”
“I don’t want to help them. I want to help my brother.”
“I meant all of the Devoured. They don’t….”
Vapathi looked into the darkness where the black serpent of Devoured peasants stretched behind them on the road. A shiver of revulsion passed through her. “If we save him, we’ll save them.”
“You think so?”
“Or they’ll die. But they are nearly dead anyway.”
Apurta groaned and hung his head. “Can we—”
“Why are you such an idiot?”
He looked up at her, his lips drawn together in pain, as if she had stabbed him in the hand.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “You keep thinking we can save someone. Get my brother back to how he was, go back to being lovers swaddled in the silks of the Ushpanditya.”
“Can’t we? Isn’t that what we want?”
“Goat piss, Apurta. Since when has it mattered what we want?”
“I was just hoping—”
“Stop hoping.” She drew her knees into her chest and rested her head atop them. Her numb, half-dead hand fell into the dirt beside her.
“So how do we get out of this?”
She breathed heavily. Her hand twitched in the dirt beside her. “I’ve been a slave for more than ten years. My brother wanted me to be the Queen of Slaves, but it turns out the queen is not much different from her subjects. The Empress… at least she seems to get what she wants.”
“Vapathi, it’s not that bad.”
She laughed. “You know how we get out of this, Apurta? We die. I’ve been planning on it.”
“Listen, don’t be so—”
“What does She Who Devours take away from those she devours?”
Apurta paused for a moment. “Their names.”
“And their death. Death is the door through which She cannot go. The place where She cannot take you.”
Apurta glanced down at the sword he had placed by his bedroll. “Are you serious?”
“I am taking my brother with me,” she said finally. “That may be the only way to save him.”
“But how? You can’t—he doesn’t—”
“I know.” She closed her eyes. “But there has to be a way. That’s why I’m hoping to find Sadja-daridarya. If Sadja-daridarya’s book has something in it…”
Apurta clenched his fists together. He watched Vapathi, his face a warring blend of agony, fury, and grief. With a grunt he threw himself to the ground and extended himself on his bedroll.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you sure that Sadja-daridarya will be able to help you?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ll think of something.”
Apurta closed his eyes. Vapathi watched his chest rise and fall. His muscles were tense, his jaw clenched. He clearly wasn’t sleeping. But he didn’t open his eyes and didn’t make any movement.
Her numb hand began to tingle more strongly. She stood up, paced to the far side of the fire, and looked down at Apurta again. She sat down next to him.
“Rub my arm,” she said.
He opened his eyes. “What?”
“The blood is returning to it. Massage it. I want to bring it back to life.”
He sat up and took her deadened hand. He started pressing the soft flesh of her palm and rubbing her arm from the wrist up to the elbow. At first she felt nothing at all, as if she were watching someone dress a corpse. Gradually she started to feel the burn of blood returning to her fingers. Her thumb twitched. She could feel the calluses on Apurta’s fingers scraping her palm.
“Stop,” she said. Apurta let her hand go. She tried to squeeze. Her fingers quivered and curled feebly into her palm.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s something.”
“Enough for now.”
She looked down at her enfeebled hand. Kirshta did this, she thought. Her brother. The one she had always counted on, her only a
lly, her friend. Damn everything.
An angry urge struck her, half grief and half longing. She was tired of being sad and angry. She grabbed Apurta’s chin with her good hand and pulled him close. She kissed him on the mouth.
He pulled away, his face bright with pleasure and confusion. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“Shut up,” she said. “I am mad at you. But I want to think about something else for a while.”
She lay down next to him on the bedroll and pressed her body against his. She felt the warm length of him, comfortable and familiar, pressed against her as he had when they were happy. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his chest. Kisses touched her nose and cheek.
She turned her head to meet his lips with hers. And for a few minutes she let herself think of nothing but touch.
DALADHAM
There were still two months of summer left, and Daladham already felt like he was going to melt. The palms in Yavada’s garden were withered, their leaves drooping brown husks. A trellis carrying the spidery remnants of some kind of blooming vine offered the only shade in Yavada’s small garden. Daladham had set up a table and two chairs and sent Yavada’s servants away, and now he waited for the saghada to come.
The crunch of approaching feet on the leaves next to the rhododendrons. Bhudman appeared a moment later with a wooden message case in his hands. He bowed to Daladham.
“The stars upon you,” he said.
“And on your house,” Daladham responded. He gestured to the chair in the garden, and Bhudman sat down. Daladham glanced up to the open window above them and the listener he knew to be there.
“Is it always this hot in the summer here in Virnas?” he asked. His forehead was sticky with sweat, and his beard itched.
“Eh? Oh, not always… normally the monsoon cools things off. But you know how it’s been.”
Daladham grumbled. “I would curse the Mouth of the Devourer for that as much as for everything else.”
Bhudman rolled the message case in his fingers. “I believe the peasants who are going through their second year without rice curse him precisely for the loss of the monsoon.”
Daladham pursed his lips. “You’re right. But I didn’t come here to talk about the monsoon.”
“No we didn’t,” Bhudman said cautiously.
“We have four days,” Daladham said. “Navran-dar spoke to me. In four days he has to go to Jaitha with the armies of Virnas. If the council isn’t resolved by then, it never will be.”
Bhudman pulled his beard. “We could always call another….”
“It’ll be too late. And it would be useless. The Heir goes to Jaitha to meet the Emperor and face the Devoured. If Ulaur and the Powers will help us, then this is the hour when it must happen.”
Bhudman sighed. “Yes. I know that. I was merely hoping for more time. We both know what the problem is.”
“Praji-dhu.”
“Kushma,” Bhudman corrected.
“It’s the same problem,” Daladham said with a wave of his hand. “We have the Ashtya, the Dhashya, and the Amya. But without Praji-dhu’s support, the Chaludriya have been immoveable. And some of the others have wavered. Praji-dhu has been spreading the notion that any compromise which doesn’t address Kushma is rebellion against the Emperor, given Sadja-daridarya’s devotion to him.”
“What about the Jakhriya?” Bhudman asked. “You didn’t mention them.”
“There’s only two of them. And this far from their home temples in Gumadha, they hardly matter.”
“It matters if we desire unanimity.”
Daladham murmured. “How unanimous are the saghada?”
Bhudman bowed his head and gave an indistinct murmur. “Is that why you asked me to bring you a copy of the Law?”
“Just the excerpt,” Daladham said. “Do you have it?”
Bhudman rose and twisted off the cork that closed the end of the message case. Three palm leaves covered with Bhudman’s thin, dense handwriting slid out into his hand.
“You didn’t take those—”
“No, no,” Bhudman said chuckling. “I’d never take pages from the case of the Law. These are ones I copied for you, with exactly the portions of the Law you requested.”
He put the first one in Daladham’s hand. Daladham hesitated, trying to piece together the saghada script. He had gotten practice, learning to read the thikratta’s book and taking lessons with Bhudman, but understanding it was still like putting together a puzzle rather than simply reading. “In those days—” he began cautiously.
“I can read it for you, if it would be faster,” Bhudman said.
“Perhaps you should,” Daladham said, handing the page back to Bhudman.
Bhudman took the leaf and held it in both hands, turning to face the east. He bowed once and muttered a short prayer, then began to read.
In those days the serpent arose and went to the lords of men, and she corrupted their hearts so that they remembered not Ulaur. And they were rendered indestructible, for the serpent made their forms as lead, and they corrupted all of mankind to follow after their wickedness. And the serpent clothed herself in a body of flesh, and neither she nor the lords of men could be defeated by the sword or the spear.
But Manjur remembered the worship of Ulaur, and he went up to the mountaintop and offered the sacrifice of blood and milk, and Ulaur came to him.
And Manjur bowed his face to the ground and said, “O most venerable lord and king of the Powers, thou who commandest the amashi as a general commandeth his legions, who kindlest the stars with the unborn light, who burnest with the fire that hath no beginning, deliver us from the serpent who corrupteth the earth, for she cannot be slain by the spear or by the sword.”
And Ulaur said, “O venerable king, faithful servant, who hast tasted the sacrifice of blood and milk in purity and the good, hear me: I shall smite the serpent and destroy the men who follow after her, for she is abominable to me. For she neither dieth nor giveth birth, neither offereth sacrifice nor receiveth the honor of men, neither openeth the second door nor closeth the first. But I shall spare thee and thy children, for thou hast preserved thyself in purity and the good.”
And Manjur trembled, and he said, “Tell me, thou who speakest in the silence before time, when shalt thou perform this terrible act?”
And Ulaur said, “Arise and make sacrifice, most pure of the kings of men, and by thy hand I small smite the serpent with the iron of heaven. Be not afraid, for the earth and the seas and the sky will shake, and mankind will perish from the face of the earth, but not utterly, for thou and thy children shall be spared.”
And the amashi covered Manjur with their wings, and his children likewise, and they were enclosed in the wings of the amashi even as a pearl is enclosed in a shell. Manjur performed the sacrifice of blood and milk to them, in purity and exactness of ritual, and they struck the serpent with the iron of heaven, and the serpent was stilled, and Ulaur buried her beneath the earth. And the earth was shattered, and the seas were moved from their places, and the sun became dark, and the stars turned black, and all of mankind from across the face of the earth which had followed after the serpent was slain.
And the amashi carried Manjur to the place which Ulaur had chosen, and Ulaur showed Manjur the iron of heaven which had pierced the heart of the serpent. And Ulaur said, “Take this iron for thyself and thy children, as a sign of thine election, that thou shalt forever abhor impurity and cleave to the good, to trample down the serpents and the scorpions, to offer the sacrifice of blood and milk in purity and exactness of ritual.”
And Manjur took the iron of heaven which Ulaur gave to him, and he forged from it the rings which he kept for himself and for his children.
Daladham let out a long, slow sigh. Bhudman bowed and muttered another prayer, then he turned and took his seat again. He looked at Daladham with his eyebrow raised in curiosity.
“If only it weren’t Kushma,” he said after a moment.
“Come again?�
� Daladham said.
“Kushma,” Bhudman said with a scowl, the first strong emotion he’d shown in their meeting, “is the most detestable of the Powers. The blood on his hands, the skulls around his neck, his association with death—”
“For mine is the blood-taking, mine is the power of death,” Daladham said softly.
“Precisely.”
“But I observed something in your reading. Read again the part after the amashi cover Manjur with their wings.”
Bhudman looked down at the text and began to read again. “And the amashi covered Manjur with their wings, and his children likewise, and they were enclosed in the wings of the amashi even as a pearl is enclosed in a shell. Manjur performed the sacrifice of blood and milk to them, in purity and exactness of ritual, and they struck the serpent—”
“There,” Daladham said.
“There what?”
“It says they struck the serpent.”
“It certainly does,” Bhudman said, “but that plural is clearly a reference to the amashi.”
“And on the line previous, the text implies that Manjur offered sacrifice to Ulaur and to the amashi. Do the Uluriya normally offer sacrifice to the amashi?”
“No,” Bhudman said quietly. “What are you suggesting?”
“Perhaps Kushma is one of the amashi.”
Bhudman looked down at the leaf in consternation. “I see,” he said softly.
“It would be plausible,” Daladham said, rising to pace swiftly beneath the dried arbor. “You said the Uluriya do not offer sacrifice to the amashi, as they are the servants of Ulaur. But if the dhorsha once knew this—well, that might be why the dhorsha do not offer sacrifice to Kushma either. They remember the name of the amashi who strove beside Ulaur to slay the serpent, but they have forgotten the name of his master. Meanwhile, the Uluriya have remembered the name of the master but purged all memory of his servant.”
Bhudman tapped his finger against his lips. He did not look up from the palm leaf in his hand. “It seems rather forced.”
“Perhaps,” Daladham said, “but I have found a similar omission in the writings of the dhorsha. The chants of Kushma twice mention someone named Usha. But the person of Usha is otherwise forgotten by the dhorsha, and we have only a handful of speculations over who he might be.”