Blood and Lotuses

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Still, both of them felt keenly aware of possible danger. They’d been traveling as stealthily as possible since crossing into this province, taking an inland route between sleepy farming villages instead of following the river, sleeping wherever they could find shelter.

  This night, it would be in the ruins of a large house that had been reduced to the stone foundations and one crumbling stone wall, scorched by a long-ago fire. A rich person’s home, once, perhaps some nobleman’s hunting retreat, but now home to small animals and to a pair of weary, wary travelers. The side road that led to it was overgrown but not quite invisible.

  Thanom had known it was there. “Found it coming to Dakura the first time with Sua. Didn’t have the money to pay for lodging and these country folk mislike anyone different.”

  “I thought Sua was Dakura-born.” One of the other soldiers had told her that much; Thanom hadn’t volunteered the information or much of anything else. It had taken most of their journey for him to admit that he had had a wife who was now dead.

  He nodded, his eyes glistening in the dusk. “She was. But her family were northerners, mountain folk, so she was a tall girl and fairer-skinned than most, and we still had our soldiers’ clothes—the striped pants and blue sashes, anyway, though we’d gotten rid of the hats and jackets as we came south. So we looked for other places to sleep, and Sua spotted the side trail. She was good at that. Been a scout in my unit under Lord Rak.”

  Sua had been in the army with him? That was a surprise. You’d think a man who’d been married to a woman like that would know that female didn’t mean fragile, but he acted like Anchali was made of glass.

  Then again, she still didn’t know how Sua had died. Something connected to the troubles in Dakura, that much was clear. Not that Thanom had said even that much, but when she’d first met the man, he seemed to be walking in a nightmare. The idea of bringing Iana down was the only thing that woke him, made him seem properly alive and focused. Oh, they all wanted Iana and her followers gone, for many different reasons, but everything about Thanom told her that his reasons involved revenge.

  He would tell her everything in his time, she supposed, or perhaps not. She suspected he’d always been a quiet man, contained in himself as many followers of Jananya were. Not a path that soldiers usually chose to follow; if they didn’t follow the Red God of Pandak, soldiers were drawn to Pichitra, craving the immediacy of Her gifts in the face of danger and possible death. Thanom was a killer with the soul and habits of mind of a scholar, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

  It was curiously attractive. Which was not necessarily a good thing, since this intriguing, damaged spirit was contained in a very good-looking form.

  Desire was the heartbeat of the world—such was the way of Pichitra—but there were times it was all too distracting.

  Especially when one was desiring someone who had, probably for good reasons, shut himself off from all such feelings.

  No fire, Thanom insisted, so they’d made dinner together from what they could gather from the countryside and eat raw: a salad with green mangoes from a tree in what had been the house’s courtyard, vine leaves, and wild greens and herbs, topped with a fish Thanom had caught in a nearby stream and dowsed with lime juice. It could have done with hot peppers and a dressing, and beer or rice wine instead of slightly duckweedy water from the old cistern, but it was tasty.

  Dakura was rich in Pichitra’s gifts. Even untended, the land bore forth food.

  Anchali said a prayer that it continued to be so, even if the people turned from Pichitra.

  Without a fire, the night blanketed them completely. Sunset came late, but once the sun was gone, everything passed quickly into a blue-blackness swirled with gray clouds. It was the dark of the moon, and the stars were mostly hidden.

  Thanom seemed very far away once darkness fell, his voice lost in the night on the rare occasions he spoke. Anchali found herself straining to hear him above the weight of the grief that almost drowned his voice.

  He was strong, tanned swarthy by years of training outdoors, and his hands were like leather. His features were hard, chiseled, but fine, and Anchali suspected he’d been an almost pretty boy. His eyes were still striking: great dark pools that, if he weren’t so sad, a woman could drown in. His full mouth was usually drawn into a tight line, as if he were biting it to hold in his emotions, but she could easily picture it, before his spirit was injured, laughing, kissing, moving down a woman’s body. And his body…well, to be honest she didn’t know why his body moved her so, but it did. As a general rule, she preferred a gentler line than his muscular, broad-shouldered, hard-thighed form—a dancer or male courtesan, trained for pliant-looking grace that belied hidden strength. But she liked watching Thanom move.

  In the dark, though, everything vanished except the things that her inner eyes could see. And that was worse. Desire and erotic curiosity she could smile at, use as a pleasant daydream to distract her from her fears of what was to come, but the call of his wounded spirit was serious.

  It cried out to her in the dark, so she wanted to peer into his heart and mind, to see what was festering there.

  She yearned to go to him, to try to lift his sorrow as she’d been trained to do, to detangle his living spirit from his dead love’s so they could both move on.

  Or, failing that, failing any of her more advanced training as a Chosen of Pichitra being of use, to offer her body and what solace that simplest gift of Pichitra might bring.

  For reasons that were not entirely selfless, she admitted, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t help him.

  In the darkness, they usually chatted of inconsequential things—food, most often, or memories of the city when it had been a place of light and color and beauty—or swapped tales and songs. Thanom had a decent voice, and his selections were either as bawdy and tasteless and silly as Anchali would have expected a soldier’s favorite music to be, or surprisingly thoughtful Jananyan teaching stories and songs.

  This night, though, neither of them seemed to have the heart for chatter or song to break up the silence. So Anchali took herself off to sleep, leaving Thanom, on his insistence, to stand watch.

  When the dream came, she knew immediately it was not an ordinary nightmare.

  In her sleep, she had entered the half-world, the place-between where sorcerers and the Chosen of the gods could travel to learn and to work certain types of magic. Conscious dreaming was one way to enter the half-world, but she had made none of the proper preparations and taken none of the proper precautions: She had not prayed and meditated upon a question before falling asleep, had not set up the ninefold protections around her bedroll, had not fallen asleep with her prayer beads in her hand, nor had told Thanom what he must do to call her back should she not wake normally.

  And this part of the half-world smelled wrong. No musk, no flowers, no holy basil and sandalwood. None of the ink and parchment and lotus smells she associated with Jananya, or her sharp medicinal camphor. None of the strange scents—sulfur, dragon’s-blood incense, forge-heated metal—that she had been told were the marks of sorcery, whether black or white. Instead, it smelled like nothing at all, except for a hint of ashes and dust, like a cold hearth in a deserted house that had long been sealed up.

  No, maybe there was a hint of parchment and ink and lotuses, very faint and old.

  Not a deserted house, but a deserted temple of Jananya. She seemed to be in a vast hall that reminded her of a poor sketch of a temple, with just the barest outlines drawn in. The light was grayed, and all the colors with it.

  And someone or something was behind her.

  Anchali wheeled around.

  A woman the color of bone stood behind her.

  No, not exactly a woman. A being, taller than a human and vaguely feminine in outline under baggy garments, but neuter in feeling. All the signs that normally marked a woman or a man, those of the spirit as well as the body, were absent. Strange. The form one took in the half-world drew on the inner s
elf, so it wasn’t always identical to one’s physical body, but usually it was recognizably male or female.

  Some people did think of themselves as sexless, though, or not belonging fully to either sex, and that self-image might have curious effects in the half-world. Or perhaps the person was a eunuch from the desert lands to the west, where she had heard their sorcerers often sacrificed their manhood so as to concentrate more energy on their dangerous work. She could imagine that a eunuch with the ability to travel in the half-world might read strangely in spirit form.

  Anchali, daring greatly, extended herself, trying to figure out what to make of this strange figure.

  She hit a wall, a cold wall.

  Anchali had never seen ice or snow, although she’d heard about them in travelers’ tales. Cold was a passing thing for one raised in tropical Benire, something that happened if you were caught in the rain on a windy day, or something you might experience if you were ill.

  This was cold that went to the bone and the soul, cold that scorched.

  She pulled back as if she’d been burned.

  “There is still time to change your life, whore of Pichitra,” the figure said, and its voice sounded like clashing metal. “Repent and turn to me and be saved. Pichitra fails. Jananya prevails.”

  It didn’t feel human, or not entirely human. A spirit? A sorcerer’s trick?

  Whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t Jananya.

  Anchali had been brought into the half-world by a Chosen of Jananya during a New Year’s ritual shared between the two temples. Jananya’s half-world smelled like a comfortable library set in the middle of a garden, and the light was blue-shifted and pleasant, and while she had not experienced direct communion with the goddess, she’d been told it was like being with a challenging but kind teacher.

  She could not imagine Jananya, or a Chosen of Jananya of high enough rank to manipulate the half-world this way, calling anyone a whore in that particular, angry tone. Jananya’s Chosen disapproved of prostitution for different reasons than those of Pichitra did, but like Pichitra’s, pitied and tried to help those who’d fallen into it as the best among bad options, and they were always polite, even to criminals. It was part of their teaching. Surely the goddess Herself would be no less compassionate.

  Therefore… “You are a fraud,” Anchali said confidently, wishing she felt half as confident as she sounded. “I do not know what you are, but you are not Jananya, whose wisdom is marked with reason and compassion. But I’m sure you are sent by the people behind what’s happening in Dakura. Begone!”

  The creature was cold, physically and emotionally. Warmth should dispel it, and one thing the Chosen of Pichitra had in abundance was warmth.

  She called forth heat as if she were regulating her own body temperature, but here in the half-world she could do so more strongly than in the world of the flesh. Her hands glowed like heated metal.

  She called forth warmth in her heart as well, compassion for this cold, broken, loveless being and for whatever twisted mind had done the magic behind it. (Iana? She couldn’t imagine the gifts of Jananya being shaped to this end, but she didn’t know all that a Chosen with Iana’s long experience and personal power could do.). She built a weapon of this compassion, the only weapon allowed her, and a shield of it as well.

  Then Anchali took a step forward and placed her glowing hands on the unresisting figure’s chest, where the heart would be if it had any fleshly reality.

  She was flung into the air as if caught up and tossed by a frigid tsunami.

  This is not my body, she repeated to herself as she bounced off walls and ceiling and floor. This is not a building. I have power here as well. Pichitra has power here.

  She envisioned rescue, prayed for it.

  A fragrant flowering vine grew from the ceiling and caught her, cradling her in its embrace.

  This was respite, though, not rescue. She might not be in her actual body, but she hurt all over, hurt as if bones had been broken while she jounced around. And the creature was coming for her.

  Time to wake up—quickly.

  She said the prayer that, had she prepared properly, should have awakened her. It didn’t work.

  The creature swelled, grew, reached out. Its hands were taloned like a bird of prey.

  What happened in the half-world couldn’t kill you directly, but if it hurt enough, the shock and pain might.

  Frantically, she repeated the prayer. The hand grabbed at her, its talons tearing into her flesh, and she began to scream.

  A sharp slap felt welcome by comparison; friendly, even loving. Hands on her shoulders shook her roughly.

  Anchali swore she saw another face pass in front of the creature’s, one that looked almost familiar, but that she couldn’t place in the instant she glimpsed it.

  The face breathed “Help me” in a way that would have been inaudible had Anchali been relying on the ears of her body.

  And then someone kissed her.

  Kissed?

  She jolted back into her body, woke shivering violently and aching in ways that she couldn’t have imagined until that moment. The person cradling her felt fiery hot, but that was only because she was so chilled.

  It was just before dawn, and the darkness had softened enough she could make out Thanom’s face. He was holding her like a brother, all brusque concern. His voice sounded brotherly, too, gruff to disguise tenderness. “The next time you decide to do something strange and magical in the night, warn me. And let me know if there’s a better way to help you get out of it than roughing you up.”

  “I had a bad dream, that’s all,” she said quickly. Maybe if she said it often enough, it would be true. Of course, a bad dream wouldn’t explain her aches and pains. She moved gently in Thanom’s arms. She hurt, but nothing like she had in the half-world. She’d tensed her muscles so hard in reaction to what was happening to her spirit-form, though, that she’d pulled half the muscles in her body.

  Thanom guffawed. It wasn’t a true laugh, more like good-natured mocking in keeping with the whole brotherly act, but it was closer than she’d heard from him, even when he was singing bawdy songs. “That was no ordinary bad dream. I’ve traveled with sorcerers and Chosen before. Chosen of the Red God, mostly, but some things are the same. Your spirit was off somewhere it shouldn’t have been, doing something unwise.”

  “More like something was being done to me,” she said. “There’s magic behind what’s happening in Dakura—foul magic, and strong. Not the gifts of Jananya, unless they’ve been perverted beyond measure, yet there was a smell of Jananya about it as well. I had not sought the half-world tonight. It sought me, and I met something there.”

  She told Thanom what she’d experienced. When he finished, he cursed, pulled her closer, then very gently detangled himself from around her in a way that suggested he’d rather shove her away and then run. He covered his face, clearly despairing.

  Aching and overwrought as she was, Anchali’s training as both courtesan and Chosen kicked in when she saw this. She put one hand on his shoulder.

  She didn’t ask what was wrong. Asking him that would be like talking to the wind or the water, except that the wind or the water would be more likely to answer. In any case, it seemed clear enough.

  Instead, she asked a practical question, “How does what I learned tonight change our plans?”

  “Change them? As far as I can see, it destroys them.” Thanom looked up again, but not at Anchali. “We thought our foes were people: evil people or mad people, but still simply people. But it’s not true. At best, they’re using a magic we don’t understand. At worst, at least one of them is something more than human, or less. We need to let the Lord Commander know so he can put the proper people on it. Sorcerers. Old, wise Chosen who have made a life’s study of supernatural evils. No insult to your skills, Chosen, but that’s more Jananya’s line or the Red God’s than Pichitra’s.”

  “No insult taken. I know my strengths. I’m not like the Chosen of ancient day
s, defeating demons with Pichitra’s gifts. If those great rites aren’t just a legend—and they may be—no one’s performed them in a thousand years. But will the Lord Commander believe us on the strength of something that even I may believe was a dream once day breaks? Wouldn’t it be better to try to bring him more information?”

  Thanom nodded tightly. “You stay here. I’ll go on to the city, check things out. Better that way, I think. Cleaner.” He seemed relieved and disappointed at the same time, but a weight seemed to have fallen off him, and he almost smiled.

  Cleaner because I would not be there to complicate the end he seeks. He fears this new information will make it harder to die to a good purpose, but he still means to do it. Not for the city or the Lord Commander, but for the woman he lost.

  That was against all of Pichitra’s teachings. You should live for love, not die for it. If your lover died, you carried on his or her name, living harder than ever so when you got to the land of the dead, you’d have plenty of memories to share with the beloved who left the mortal world prematurely.

  “I can’t let you go in blind,” she insisted, trying to find an argument that would sway him, “not when I may be able to get more information from here. The one who begged for help is linked to the thing somehow. I might be able to find her. At the very least, I can sense more of the city’s mood, get an idea of what’s afoot.” Her voice was shaking at the thought of entering the half-world again, even with the proper protections in place, but she’d do it. They needed the intelligence.

  It shook even more when she added, “And you’re not going to Dakura alone. I can go places you can’t go, can do things you can’t. Furthermore…” She took a deep breath to center herself, to find the warmth inside her fears, and the saving grace of humor. “I do not want to be the one sent back to Baragarm to explain to the Lord Commander why we changed his plan without consulting him.”