Throne of Ruins (The Powers of Amur Book 5)

by J. S. Bangs

  The gates of the city were draped with the banners of four kings: the sun-and-tiger of Gauhala, Bidhra’s porpoise, and the twinned banners of Sadja, who bore both the spear and rice stalk of the Emperor and the sea-eagle of Davrakhanda. Navran’s white pentacle standards passed beneath the arch, accompanied by the blast of ram’s horns and the bellowing of his heralds.

  “Navran-dar the King of Virnas and Heir of Manjur, Chosen of Ulaur, enters the city of Jaitha.”

  A closer glance at the city’s interior belied the gaiety of its appearance. The men beneath the banners were thin and mean-looking, shrunken by months of deprivation. The khadir who led their peasants were grim and humorless. There were no sounds of celebration. And once they reached the inner city, the shriveling of the great Amsadhu became apparent. The river should have been at its height, its muddy waters lapping the stilts which raised the houses of the inner city above the flood. But beneath the houses was nothing but dry mud.

  Navran and his entourage marched to Gauhala’s palace on the king’s causeway, a raised stone passage which crossed from the gates to the palace and the stone piers around it, where all four kings had been provided with apartments. His men had already run ahead and hung the pentacle of Virnas above the entrance of the palace, and when Navran reached it he found an army of servants ready to install him and his retinue.

  “The Emperor of Amur would speak to you at your earliest convenience,” a servant announced to Navran as soon as he had been greeted by the palace staff. “He regrets that he could not come here to meet you in person.”

  Navran was glad to be spared the ceremony of a formal reception. He nodded. “Kaudhara-kha, Dastha, come with me. Tell Sadja-daridarya that we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  They found Sadja in the largest and most luxurious of the apartments in the palace, with a balcony that overlooked the Amsadhu. Sadja stood on the balcony by a table covered with maps and jaha pieces, chatting seriously with a man in the imperial red.

  “Navran-dar approaches Sadja-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling,” the herald announced. Navran and his group prostrated.

  “Rise,” Sadja said quickly. He crossed through the bedroom and clasped Navran’s hand.

  “Navran-dar,” he said warmly. “I haven’t seen you since—”

  “Since you left Virnas,” Navran said. “Before you were Emperor.”

  Sadja laughed. “Yes, before all of that. What time has passed.”

  Navran murmured. He pointed to his right. “This is Kaudhara-kha, the Horn of Virnas, the captain of the muster of the kingdom. And this is Dastha, my personal guard. Perhaps you remember them from when you were in Virnas.”

  “I do,” Sadja said. He nodded to both of them. “And this is Bhargasa,” he said, pointing to the man in red waiting on the balcony. Bhargasa bowed to all of the others. “You knew him when he was captain of the militia of Davrakhanda. Now he’s the Emperor’s Spear, captain of all the Red Men.”

  What is left of them, Navran thought. Sadja didn’t show much hint of chagrin, but Navran remembered what the army of the Red Men in the Dhigvaditya had been like. The ones who had made it to Jaitha were a remnant of a remnant.

  “Follow me,” Sadja said. “I have been discussing our strategy with Bhargasa. Our spies report that the Mouth of the Devourer won’t reach the Amsadhu for another week, and we’ll need every moment of that time to lay out our plan for battle.”

  They all followed Sadja onto the balcony. The Amsadhu—or what should have been the Amsadhu—crawled through the mud flats beneath the balcony. The great river had been reduced to a muddy trickle in the heart of the old channel. A wide, dry plain of silt stretched out on either side, nearly a mile from the bluffs at one end of the floodplain to the other. The yellow grasses near the bluffs hissed in the dry wind.

  And in the dried riverbed, a curious construction was underway. A set of long trenches was dug about twenty yards back from the reedy channel, six feet wide, with their bottoms hidden in shade. Giant screens of plaited reeds hid the construction from the far bank, and behind the reeds were stacks of wooden poles with sharpened tops.

  “You notice our preparations,” Sadja said with a smile. He leaned forward and tapped the table on the balcony. The table held a sketch of the river with jaha pieces deployed around it to represent the locations of the armies they had at their command and long, narrow sticks for the pits.

  “I’m trying to guess what they are,” Navran said. “Not like any fortification that I’ve seen before.”

  “The Devoured are not an enemy like any you’ve seen before, either,” Sadja said. “Bhargasa can explain.”

  Bhargasa strolled around the table and pointed to the lines. “We know the Devoured do not die when pierced with a spear, which is the major weakness of any conventional battle plan. The pits are our answer: we set up our battle lines behind the pits and force the Devoured to cross through the narrows between them to reach us. The men on the lines will be equipped with shields and bludgeons, which they’ll use to drive the Devoured into the pits. The pits themselves are nine feet deep, and we’re planting stakes in them to impale the Devoured who fall in. The reed blinds keep the Devoured from seeing our construction, in hopes we will preserve some element of surprise.”

  “Bold,” Kaudhara said, approaching the table and taking a place next to Bhargasa. “Do we have enough men to accomplish it? Pushing men into pits is harder than simply spearing them.”

  “You’re the last of the kings to arrive,” Bhargasa said, walking around the map and gesturing to the armies deployed atop it. “But the muster of Virnas is the largest, and with your forces we expect to be able to do it.”

  “One hundred thousand,” Kaudhara said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. “We conscripted every able-bodied man below the age of twenty-five in the kingdom.”

  Bhargasa smiled grimly. “That gives us two hundred and fifty thousand in all.”

  Dastha let out a low whistle. “Such an army—”

  “Hasn’t been seen since Aidasa-daridarya’s wars of unification,” Sadja said.

  “Will it be enough?” Navran asked.

  Bhargasa looked glum. “That is the question,” he said softly. “We don’t know. The Mouth of the Devourer’s army….”

  “How many?”

  “My spies suggest he has a hundred thousand.”

  “We have double their number,” Kaudhara said. “And they are undisciplined peasants, from what I understand.”

  “So are most of ours,” Bhargasa replied. “But we are training everyone we can before the Mouth of the Devourer arrives, and we have the actual militias of the four kings. That is not the real problem.”

  “The real problem?”

  “Eventually the Devoured will fill the pits and find a way to climb out of them. We must finish the battle before that happens.”

  Kaudhara stiffened and pressed his lips together. “Is there no way to completely destroy them?”

  “They can be burned,” Sadja said with an ironic smile. “Nothing short of the total destruction of their flesh seems to end them.”

  A little look of panic showed on Kaudhara’s face. “That’s almost useless in battle. Will we build bonfires on the battlefield?”

  Sadja shook his head. “The battle will not be won by slaying the Devoured. The battle will be won when we slay the Mouth of the Devourer. And that is why I was most eager to meet with you Navran-dar.”

  “I knew him,” Navran said quietly. A strange, portentous certainty settled over him.

  “I thought you might have,” Sadja said. He grew serious. “What little we hear about him says he was a disciple of Ruyam. And you were with Ruyam.”

  Navran nodded. “The man’s name is Kirshta, Ruyam’s old slave. We spent time together in the Ushpanditya. He helped me escape after Ruyam burned me.”

  “Then you know more about him than anyone else here.”

  “But I don’t know if I can help.” Navran put a ha
nd on the map and picked up one of the black marble jaha pieces. It was heavy and cold in his hand. “We used to play jaha together. But even then, in the Ushpanditya, he was a mystery.”

  “What kind of mystery?”

  “I couldn’t tell what he wanted. He was Ruyam’s slave, but he encouraged me to rebel against Ruyam. He was loyal to his master, but he wanted to save the Uluriya.”

  “Curious—” Sadja began.

  “And he loved his sister. That, at least, I understood.”

  Sadja glanced over to Bhargasa. “His sister? Do we know anything about her?”

  “I suspect she’s the one they call the Queen of Slaves,” Bhargasa said.

  “Devoured, like the Empress?”

  Bhargasa’s brow crumpled. “I don’t know.”

  “If she’s mortal,” Kaudhara suggested, “then perhaps we can use her as leverage against the Mouth of the Devourer.”

  “If we can capture her,” Bhargasa said. “Does the Mouth of the Devourer send his mortal sister into danger for no reason?”

  “Her name is Vapathi,” Navran said. “Maybe someone has heard of her.”

  “Tell the spies,” Sadja said to Bhargasa. “Anything we can find out about Vapathi or the Queen of Slaves. Found out at least if they are the same person.”

  “I’ll see,” Bhargasa said. His expression grew dark. “So few who escape, though. In the villages everyone joins the Devoured.”

  Sadja leaned forward and rested his hands on the edge of the map-covered table. He breathed heavily and ran his fingertips through his closely-trimmed beard. “Very well,” he said softly. “Navran-dar, let the Horn of Virnas stay here and plan the deployment with Bhargasa. I would have a word with you privately.”

  Navran felt a twinge of fear, but only a twinge. He knew what Sadja wanted to discuss, but the hardest part of that bridge had already been crossed. He dismissed his men and followed Sadja into the farthest corner of the apartment, where black silk cushions were piled on the floor around a low table set with cold tea. Sadja sat on the floor and motioned for Navran to join him.

  “I heard the results of your convocation in Virnas,” he said.

  Navran nodded.

  “I support you. I don’t suppose that I’ll make any public pronouncement, but I’ve let the dhorsha in my retinue know they should accept the decisions of their brothers in Virnas and do whatever else is required by the agreement. The last thing I need is a conflict between dhorsha factions on the eve of the battle.”

  Navran sighed. “Alas, I have not fully avoided dissent in my own people.”

  “No?”

  Navran murmured. “Mandhi and Nakhur have led a portion of the Uluriya into separation. They will not accept the dhorsha unless they completely renounce the worship of the Powers, a condition which the dhorsha will not accept.”

  A groan of anger sounded in Sadja’s throat. “And those Kaleksha they brought with them?”

  “I assume they’ll stay with Mandhi”

  “That could be trouble. They are supposed to be part of my guard.”

  “I anticipated that.” Navran smiled slightly. “I got Mandhi’s promise that she and her men would remain with us until after the battle. None of us win if the Mouth of the Devourer overruns the south.”

  “And you trust her?”

  “Against the Mouth of the Devourer? Yes.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right. It is the first of the prophecies to be fulfilled.”

  “Mend what is broken, break what is whole.” Navran said. The words hung between them with a dark heaviness.

  Sadja gave Navran a mild smile. “I suppose it should comfort us.”

  “I’m not very comforted.”

  “Neither am I.” Sadja folded his hands and examined Navran carefully. “I don’t wish to surprise you after the battle, then, so let me tell you my own problems with the decision.”

  Navran’s nervousness deepened. “You said—”

  Sadja raised his hand. “I do not oppose it. But recognize the problem that it creates for me.”

  “Problem?”

  “Say that the Mouth of the Devourer is defeated and I regain the Ushpanditya. Lord Am is the patron of the Emperor of Amur, but Daladham-dhu declared openly in your council that the might of Am is broken, and the Amya dhorsha submitted to Ulaur. All of the dhorsha submitted to Ulaur.”

  “There were some Jakhriya dissenters—” Navran began.

  “Insignificant. The point is that I would reign in Majasravi while the dhorsha would honor the sovereignty of the Power of Virnas.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you.”

  “The only reason I supported you in the first place,” Sadja said, appearing to ignore him, “is because the Mouth of the Devourer is the greater danger. He wields the sorcery of an evil Power. We cannot defeat him with might of arms but with the glory of the Powers. And if the Powers must be united under Ulaur, then let them be united.”

  “The dhorsha and the saghada stand united.”

  “Which is a blessing for now,” Sadja said, “but may be a thorn in our side later.”

  Navran spread his hands in noncommittal deference.

  Sadja gave him a coy smile. “Perforce, I’ll let the matter rest for now. There are two women in your party that I need to meet. I know they’ve just arrived, but we have so little time.”

  “I told them to be prepared,” Navran said. He rose to his feet. “Lead on.”

  Sadja proceeded through the halls of the palace with swift steps. Servants prostrated as they passed. The halls were thick with people, the product of having three kings and the Emperor take up residence in the same building. They descended the stairs and at the far end of a long hallway entered a chamber with a heavy rose-colored curtain over the door. Sadja pulled it aside and slipped inside with Navran.

  It smelled heavily of incense and rose-water. Navran’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, then he spied Amabhu and Caupana standing with an oil lamp between them. Amabhu held a stylus and a wax tablet in his lap.

  “My Emperor, my lord and king,” Amabhu said when Sadja and Navran entered the room. He and Caupana bowed to the ground.

  “You’re ready?” Sadja said.

  “Are you, my Emperor?” Caupana asked. The tall, bald thikratta sat with his back as straight as a cane stalk, his fingers pressed lightly together.

  “I suppose,” Sadja said. Navran saw that the Emperor’s lips were taut with nervousness, his eyes hooded.

  “You have not been practicing,” Caupana said.

  “I have been preparing to fight the Mouth of the Devourer.”

  “So you have,” Caupana said mildly. “But Srithi and Aryaji have been under my tutelage. They are more prepared to bear the spirit’s presence.”

  “I’ll bear what I have to,” Sadja said. “Amabhu, you are prepared to write?”

  “Yes, my Emperor,” Amabhu said.

  “Then bring them in.”

  A moment later the saghada Nakhur appeared leading his niece Aryaji. The moment she entered the room, the air seemed to crackle. The hair on Navran’s neck stood up, and he felt a sudden hot presence. He blinked twice, certain he saw something from the corner of his eye. But no one was there.

  Aryaji stiffened a little when she saw Sadja, but she bowed and went to stand next to him. The air in the room stirred. Navran shifted uncomfortably atop his chair.

  Caupana rose and exited next. A moment later he returned guiding Srithi by the elbow.

  Sadja took a sharp breath when he saw Srithi. Srithi looked at Sadja, and her eyes grew wide. She bolted out of Caupana’s grasp and ran to the center of the room, where she stood, her chest heaving with heavy breaths.

  Navran began to shake. There was something in the room, something heavy and dark, writhing with power. The walls quivered. The floor seemed to move, pitching like the deck of a ship. He felt sweat bead on his forehead, and he gripped the arms of the rattan chair. It was terrifying and overwhelming, but it broug
ht with it a sweet smell. Was someone burning incense? The light in the room pulsed—dim, then bright. Flickers like glimmers of lightning shimmered over the clothes of the three prophets.

  Sadja, too, looked as if he were struggling against unseen hands. Aryaji and Srithi stood, their hands shaking. Blood ran from their mouths. Navran blinked, unsure of whether he imagined it, and the blood was replaced with honey. He blinked again, and once again the liquid was blood.

  “My sisters,” Sadja croaked.

  Amabhu began scribbling on the wax tablet. Navran didn’t know how the man still had the ability to write.

  “Hail brother, child of storms, harbinger of ruin,” Srithi said. Her voice came out as a hoarse rasp, but the room shook. “Hail sister, child of stars, proclaimer of sorrow.”

  “Hail sister, hail brother,” Aryaji said. Her voice sounded like thunder.

  There was a moment of silence. The air in the room seemed to grow cloudy. A mist stung Navran’s eyes. He closed them, and he felt the swaying of the chair beneath him intensify.

  Someone spoke, but the voices of the three began to run together. A single voice speaking in three mouths, a chorus of spirits speaking with one tongue. He could not tell who spoke and who was silent—they all spoke, they all were silent, the stones and the air spoke through them and in them, voices of humans and spirits like thunder, like a fire, like a whisper.

  Sister, give us your warning. Brother, speak us your doom.

  Burn the field, scatter the seed.

  But tell me, my brother, my sister, where will the seed be scattered?

  Not to the north. The north will perish.

  Not to the west. The west will wither away.

  The center shall be consumed with fire, and woe to the ones whom the fire consumes.

  But tell me, my brother, my sister, where will the seed be scattered?

  In the east, the dawn rises on a horned head.

  In the south, the fire burns in a vessel of gold.

  The center shall be consumed with fire. And woe to the ones whom the fire consumes.