The Usurper's Crown

by Sarah Zettel

  We ask you to appeal to the filial responsibility of your nephew to stop this unwarranted and unjust attack on our lands and peoples. Whatever are the lawful quarrels of our empires one to one, to break and reform the power of the North must lead to a war so complete that powers will fall and be broken under its wheel. As a man of prudence and martial wisdom, you surely see this and will not desire such an outcome.

  Samudra felt the blood draining drop by drop from his cheeks.

  “What is this?” he whispered. “What is this!” he shouted, staring at the letter as if it had burst back into flames. “War, war with Hung Tse, and Isavalta and Kacha at its head! What is this!”

  “The truth,” said Hamsa before Makul could even open his mouth. The sorceress lifted her head. Even across the room, Samudra could hear her breath wheezing in her lungs. “The Mothers forefend, Majesty, but it is the truth.”

  “How did we not know? Why did Kacha’s bound-sorcerer not write to me or to the queen?”

  Hamsa had to take several rattling breaths before she was able to answer. “I don’t know. The Agnidh Harshul may have been corrupted.”

  “Or he may have been killed,” said Makul grimly.

  “And the letters forged?” demanded Samudra. “How? By who? I know Harshul, and Kacha does not have the mind for this, let alone the skill.” At least I believed he did not, I believed he was safe to send as pledge and prize. Oh, Mothers, what have I done?

  “Those are questions that should be put to Prince Chandra,” said Makul. “I cannot believe that the son acts without his father’s blessing.”

  “Yamuna,” breathed Hamsa. She coughed, and reached a trembling hand toward the water bowl that had been placed out for her. She dipped her fingertips in the water and sucked them dry. “I saw … as I saw the history of the missive, I saw … Ah, forgive me, Majesty.” Coughs wracked her, shuddering her bony frame. A servant knelt beside her, lifting the bowl to her lips that she might drink. Samudra waited. He had seldom seen Hamsa so drained. The effort it was costing her to speak was as great as if she had been wounded to the heart in battle. As much as his blood wanted immediate answers, he held himself in check.

  “The missive came from the Heart of the World to the Pearl Throne,” rasped Hamsa. Her head drooped. The wheezing in her chest did not lessen. “The First of All Queens saw the seal and sent it on, unopened, with a courier. But Yamuna’s spies … Yamuna saw …” She shuddered again, and again the servant held up the bowl, and Hamsa drank deeply. “Yamuna laid a curse on the pass, and his servants hurried to the spot to find the courier dead and they burned the missive. They should not have.” She smiled weakly. “They should have left it whole. If it had remained separate from the element of fire, I would not have been able to call it forth.”

  Yamuna’s spies? Yamuna saw? Samudra stared at the sorceress. Not Chandra? Yamuna was but a servant in this matter, and a foolishly loyal one at that. He detested his service, and yet would not take freedom when it was offered in a sanctioned bargain. Samudra had to admit himself completely unable to understand why the sorcerer’s answer had been no.

  Yamuna’s spies. Yamuna saw.

  An almost unthinkable, and certainly unwelcome idea stole slowly into Samudra’s mind. Could it be that Yamuna already had such freedom as he desired?

  Could it be that Chandra had come to allow himself to be ruled by the one who was bound to serve him? Could this plot be Yamuna’s rather than Chandra’s?

  It went wholly against the order of the world. It was worse than treason, it was sacrilege, a defiance of the patterns laid down by the Seven Mothers. Jalaja herself declared it was only by observance of the sacred dance of life that Hastinapura would remain safe. Such reversal, such removal …

  And yet there were those who said that Samudra himself had done exactly the same thing. He was the younger brother. It was not his place to rule, not while Chandra lived. Had he not removed himself from his proper place in the dance in search of a higher position?

  No. Hastinapura would have been nibbled away by the Huni under Chandra. The Mothers meant this for me. All the signs portend …

  This was Samudra’s private agony. He feared that in badgering Chandra into relinquishing the Pearl Throne he had truly saved Hastinapura for the Mothers, but that he himself had truly violated the order of the world. What could this be but another consequence of his transgression?

  “Rest now, Agnidh Hamsa. Surely you have earned it,” said Samudra aloud.

  “Thank you, Majesty.” Hamsa’s head sunk onto her breast as she fell into her meditations again, or perhaps it was only that she fell into simple exhaustion.

  “Make up a pallet for the Agnidh that she does not have to be moved,” Samudra ordered the servants. “And stay by her in case she wakes and has need.” Beside him, Makul opened his mouth. Samudra held up his hand to keep the general silent. “Have your scribe craft a message to the Huni asking for a parley. Choose us a reliable courier, a reliable scout and the most reliable shepherd you can buy. If you have need of me, I will be out walking in the night for a while.”

  “Majesty.” Makul bowed with his palms pressed over his eyes, and then hurried away to carry out his orders, shouting for his scribe Ikshu as he went.

  Samudra did not stay long after Makul had gone. He left the servants scuttling to take care of Hamsa, left the soldiers standing at attention waiting for any orders he or Makul might give, left the maps and the copper counters, and emerged into the dry, chilly air of the mountain evening. The sky blazed orange and copper, and the land falling away from the cliff where the temple city perched was nothing but a carpet of shadows.

  This was one of the luxuries when he was campaigning. There were times he could be alone, as he never could when he was only the emperor. Samudra stood for a moment on the steps of his borrowed house and breathed in the thin mountain air and the smoke from both profane and holy fires. He listened to the shouts and clatter that were as much a part of a soldier’s camp as the patrols and the tents. Then, he strode up the narrow way to the temple of the Seven Mothers.

  The temple stood at the highest point of the city. Seven narrow, tiered domes surmounted the building, stretching like searching fingers toward heaven. Seven broad, shallow steps led up to arched doors carved all over with scenes from the great epics, scenes of gods and heroes and the Mothers’ intervention in their deeds. As this was not the hour for any rite or observance, the doors were closed. Samudra pushed them open and entered the temple.

  The way to the sanctuary was not straight. The progressively larger chambers and the narrow corridors that connected them were precisely measured and laid out according to the ancient formulas. As the paths in the Palace of the Pearl Throne caused all to constantly reweave the patterns of protection and prosperity, here the pilgrims and the priests alike walked the patterns of generation that were the mortal representation of the Mother’s eternal dance.

  The sanctuary opened before him. Its chamber stood under the largest dome, creating a ceiling that rose tier upon tier over the circular chamber. Dominating all the carvings, and all the altars to lesser gods and their many aspects, were the statues of the Seven. Carved four times a man’s size, they danced eternally around a central fire that smelled of the heady herbs that might set a man to dreaming if he stayed too long in his meditations. Summer blossoms in many colors draped and crowned the Mothers, and petals lay scattered around their feet.

  Samudra dropped to his knees, prostrating himself before the images.

  I am sorry. I am sorry. I truly believed I was only doing what you desired.

  Chandra had played at ruling as if it was a garden sport. He had ordered lavish palaces built. He had filled the women’s quarters with skilled and exotic beauties and opened them freely to his favorites. He had feasted himself and them liberally, and had ordered the ministers and administrators about like a petulant child giving orders to slaves. Through it all, Samudra had stood by and watched. It was not his place, he told those wh
o came to him to speak of taking the throne. His place was to be a soldier, to defend Hastinapura. That was his role.

  He had held to that, until the day the Huni moved. They marched unimpeded down from their holds in the northern mountains, occupying first a few valleys, then a few cities, then three whole provinces, and Chandra refused to let Samudra take his armies north to meet them. They would not be able to hold such vast tracts, Chandra said with a wave of his scented hand. They would soon withdraw.

  But they did not, and at last Chandra was forced to act. But he still did not send Samudra, who had trained all his life for this fight, and who was adept in the arts of war. No, he himself would be carried to the fight, an umbrella over his head and a naked sword at his side.

  He was captured three days after the ridiculous, limping battle was joined, and immediately sent word back to the Pearl Throne that he should be ransomed, whatever the cost.

  Samudra could not stand it anymore. He consulted the best astrologers; he spent long hours with Hamsa, making her draw him out fortune after fortune. All said the same thing; if Chandra were allowed to rule, Hastinapura would collapse. The thought of the Pearl Throne falling to ruin inflamed him. It could not be permitted.

  Samudra traveled in secret to Chandra’s camp. He dressed himself in women’s clothes and went to the Huni commander, begging to be allowed to see Chandra, “my dear husband.” His plea was granted, and Samudra killed the Huni duke with a hidden dagger and escaped, slinging Chandra over his saddle bow when Chandra would not move quickly enough.

  When he had Chandra safely back in the camp, and had made sure the story of the rescue was spreading fast, he presented Chandra with his demands. Chandra would leave the camp, Samudra would pursue the war. When Samudra returned to the Pearl Throne, Chandra would turn over the rule over to Samudra. In return, Samudra would not rise up against him, and he would grant Chandra his life.

  Chandra snarled, Chandra barked, Chandra threatened. Samudra stood silently before him while the shouts of praise bearing his name, not Chandra’s, rang through the camp, more than loud enough to be heard in the imperial pavilion. In the end, Chandra tried to bribe, and then he begged, and Yamuna stood to one side in the pavilion and watched it all. Chandra finally agreed and Samudra marched away to his own quarters. Hamsa did not sleep that night, nor for many nights afterwards, waiting, wary, for whatever attack Chandra might order Yamuna to launch.

  But from that quarter, no attack came.

  Or so he had thought then.

  After a time, Samudra sat back on his heels, gazing up at the Mothers whose images had been before him all his life. Jalaja, Queen of Heaven; Daya, Queen of Earth; Ela, Queen of Mercy; Harsha, Fertility; Indu, War; Chitrani, the Rains and Waters; Vimala, Destruction.

  “Yamuna,” he whispered to them. “I did not look for him. I looked long and hard at my brother, but Yamuna is a servant. He vowed to serve you, and us. How could I believe he had come to rule? Even Chandra could not permit himself to be so ruled. It never even crossed my mind.” He bowed his head. “And I believed myself to be such a fine soldier, a great planner, and I failed to take the true measure of the traitor in my own house, and now his son has begun a war I do not know if I can stop.” He lifted his eyes. “We cannot have chaos in the north. We cannot have Hung Tse uncontained. My brother is days away with his master, I am committed here, and his son is out of reach in the north. So many pieces so far away. Mothers, how do I guide the patterns on this board where all the players are out of my reach?”

  Samudra sat in the silence of the temple, alone with the Mothers and the heat and scent of the sacred fire. If the priests came and went, he did not hear them, sunken as he was in his own thoughts. At last, slowly, the layers of anger, worry and reproach peeled themselves away, and he saw into his own memories, and found the answer waiting there.

  Samudra prostrated himself once more to the Mothers, and got stiffly to his feet. He had no idea how long he had sat in his meditations. But it was cold now, and when he stepped outside, the moon was well up. He breathed in the air made chill by the deepening night and returned to his borrowed residence.

  Hamsa had been carried to a side chamber and laid on a pallet of blankets. A fire smoldered in the hearth, and her body servant slept beside her. Samudra looked down on his sorceress and noted how drawn her face was from the day’s exertions. Still, he was not surprised when her eyes fluttered slowly open. She had ever known when he needed her.

  “Majesty,” she croaked, and reached for her staff to help her stand.

  Both Hamsa and the servant, who was also now wide awake, struggled to rise. He waved his hand to keep them both down on their beds. Hamsa obeyed, lying back on her pillows, but her servant scuttled backward, moving herself off to a polite distance so her presence might not intrude on their conference.

  “Hamsa.” Samudra settled down cross-legged next to her. “You have done me good service today.”

  She bowed her head humbly, but he saw the deprecating twinkle in her tired eyes.

  “I am afraid I will have to ask yet more of you.”

  “I stand, or lie,” she gestured toward her pallet ruefully, “ready to serve however I can.”

  “I was taking council with the Mothers,” he said, rubbing his hands slowly together. “And they reminded me of my coronation, when you told me certain things. You told me that you could curse an enemy of Hastinapura, no matter how great the distance.”

  Hamsa shook her head. “I cannot,” she said. “But you can, Majesty.”

  “I am no sorcerer.”

  “No, but you are lord, bound to the land and the heavens through your anointing and your sacrifices. I can make a working that will give your will force and weight in the ethereal realms, but it must be your will, and your words must form part of that working.”

  Samudra considered this in silence for a long moment. “It is a difficult undertaking then?”

  Hamsa nodded.

  “Will there be a price?”

  Again, the sorceress nodded. “Normally, it would be mine, but, in this case, my price will only be partial payment.” She met his eyes, her face set and serious, an expression he knew well from his childhood, when she was trying to drum in some particularly difficult lesson. “Because it is your will that sets this thing in motion, you too must pay. Some day, in the future, you may lose what you hold dear because of what this curse sets in motion.”

  Again, Samudra turned over her words silently. “Will it be Hastinapura I lose?”

  “I cannot say, Majesty. I think not. But it could be a child, or your queen, or your life. It will be a high price, that much I can be certain of.”

  Samudra continued to rub his palms slowly together, as if he could feel the shape of the truth between them. “I do not like magic,” he said at last.

  Hamsa smiled. “I know.”

  “It is imprecise, and it has too many hidden costs, and the powers play their own games in the Silent Lands, and no man may know how their dice are cast.”

  “These are true things, Majesty,” Hamsa agreed soberly, but he could still see a ghost of a smile on her face. These were matters they had spoken of often before.

  “But even if I sent a missive to the queen this instant and bid her act against Yamuna, even if I sent to Kacha in the north and bid him stop this nonsense, it would be tens of days before any action could be taken.”

  “Even with my help, yes, Majesty.”

  He was talking himself into an unpleasant task, and he knew it. Hamsa knew it as well, and she, as usual, simply let him do it.

  “Hastinapura itself is at stake,” he said. “If Isavalta is fractured, the Huni and Hung Tse will begin seizing territory in the north. With new men and new resources, the Huni will be bolstered and we will never root them out, and they will expand again, like the poisonous weeds they are.” He growled the last words, letting anger shore up his resolve. “I do not have time to deal with Chandra myself, yet he must be dealt with, and now, and your
magics are all I have to cross such distances in such times.”

  “I can have all ready in two days, Majesty,” was all Hamsa said. Her voice held no tremor or hesitation, but all Samudra had to do was look at her to see how close to utter exhaustion she was. Neither of them spoke of that. Neither of them ever would.

  “Thank you, Hamsa.” Samudra stood and bowed to her, giving her the salute of trust, with his palms over his eyes. She returned the gesture, and he left her to go seek his own bed, although it was a long time before he found sleep there.

  Two days later, Samudra received a message from the Huni saying they would deign to meet him, and an additional message from Makul’s chosen spy saying there was a break in the mountain pass that might be exploited by a small force of men as part of a larger attack. Both missives were highly welcome and allowed Samudra to spend time with his maps and his generals, deep in thoughts and plans that he understood well. This, in turn, kept his thoughts diverted from the Temple of the Mothers. Hamsa had disappeared in there the morning after he had laid out her task, and he had not seen her since.

  Hamsa had been a part of his life since he was an infant. She had been chosen by the most learned sorcerers and astrologers his father’s court held as the one who would best be able to serve and support him in his life, as it was thought, as high prince. She had cared for him alongside his nurses. She had taught him alongside his other tutors. She had saved his life more than once with her art when he was a young and reckless warrior, chafing at watching Chandra, spoilt, spineless and careless on his father’s throne. She, even more than the priests, had presided over the horse sacrifice that had bound him to throne and land, and set the seal on his rightful claim to the throne.

  He had set old and dear friends to tasks that might take their lives before, but not like this. Never like this.

  It was evening again, with the dim, orange sun just balanced on the rim of the world when Hamsa’s woman servant knelt in the map room and said, “It is time, Majesty.”