Blood and Lotuses

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Thanom turned to her with that. “You’re crying,” he said quietly. “And you are wiser than I am, once again. I won’t go without you. But please, don’t do your trancing until the sun’s full up. I know Pichitra loves the night—but not this night. This night is wrong, and without moon or stars, but it’s almost over.” He added, so quietly she almost didn’t hear, “Thanks be to Jananya.”

  Anchali realized that Thanom hadn’t really been looking away from her before, but watching the pale light starting to break up the darkness at the eastern horizon. For a few moments, they were silent, watching together. As the light shifted from pale to rosy, Thanom sank to his knees with a sigh. “I’m not sure I’m in any shape to pray, not with my mind going in circles and blood in my heart.” He hadn’t admitted to the blood before, even though it was clearly there.

  “That sounds like all the more reason to pray. Jananya will understand if you’re a bit muddled. She’ll just be glad you’re trying to find your way back.”

  While dawn was not one of the standard times for prayer to Pichitra, Anchali knelt beside him in silence and greeted the dawn, figuring that now, with so much at stake, there was no such thing as a bad time to pray.

  As she prayed, she remembered the kiss, and wondered if she had imagined it.

  *

  She was prepared this time. Frightened, but prepared.

  Slipping into trance, Anchali reached out empathically to Dakura, seeking signs of black magic, clues as to what might have changed since the last reports they’d heard. She also sought the mysterious woman who had begged for aid, but without any real expectation of finding her: one face among a hundred thousand, seen for mere seconds while most of Anchali’s own focus was on trying to escape the half-world. It ought to be impossible, but the woman felt somehow familiar, even though Anchali hadn’t been able to place the face.

  She prayed and opened her heart and senses, stretching her awareness. The half-world around her shimmered purple and gold, and she got the sense of flight. Not many a human soul between here and the city—a farmhouse full of folk moving about, getting ready to start their day; someone, a rice merchant, she thought, feeling expectant and a bit anxious as he approached the gates, but no way to tell what was on his mind.

  Then she hit the city and a great wall of gray.

  It was as if the city were filled with walking dead, or animated statues. A dull despair, rigidity, emotional coldness. No joy, no desire, not even ordinary sorrow. There were a few pockets of warmth, flaring red and gold amid the gray, but there she also found fear, terrible fear.

  One of the pockets of warmth and fear tasted familiar.

  Emjaroen. They had Emjaroen.

  The other Chosen had tried to get him to leave the city, but he’d refused. The High Chosen had still hoped he could protect his flock to some degree, could find a way to influence Iana, who had once been his friend. And for a little while, it seemed he might be right. But by the time Anchali had escaped Dakura, Iana’s madness had gone beyond his gentle persuasions. Anchali had hoped and prayed that he’d seen reason not long after she’d fled toward Baragarm.

  But he’d stayed.

  How much trouble was he really in? Her ability to read from this distance was erratic, good for general impressions more than for details. But Emjaroen was not only one of Pichitra’s strongest Chosen, he was also the one who had trained Anchali in using this particular gift. If she could get his attention, he could open to her, let her feel and see through him….

  Emjaroen, she mentally whispered, sending her love, her compassion, her courage.

  She felt a flicker of response, smelled the familiar jasmine tea that marked him even in the half-world.

  And then the face of a woman forced its way to her attention. An old woman’s face, one that had once been beautiful in the austere fashion typical of a Chosen of Jananya, but was now marked and marred by something that Anchali couldn’t name. Rage was too personal, too warm. Disgust, perhaps.

  Anchali had not known High Chosen Iana, but had seen her at ceremonies at both Jananya’s temple and Pichitra’s. Once she could have recognized the older woman in the street or, in theory, in the half-world, although they’d never had cause to encounter each other there.

  The woman she saw was barely recognizable as Iana. The old High Chosen had been controlled and gracious, the embodiment of the calm, thoughtful wisdom of Jananya that balanced and was balanced by Pichitra’s intuition and wisdom of the heart. Powerful, yes, as Emjaroen was powerful, but like Emjaroen well past a point of being fascinated with power for her own sake or needing to show the power off.

  This Iana was all raw power and barely controlled emotion. Iana was old and, as far as Anchali knew, celibate, but she’d always seemed as comfortable in her body as someone whose body didn’t always work properly could be. Yet now she seemed as neuter, or neutered, as the being from the half-world.

  Her face—the large eyes and delicate cheekbones accented by her shaved head—was the face Anchali remembered. But the fine lines that marked Iana’s face had been formed by a habitual serene smile, and now that face was distorted by a scowl.

  Anchali might think this version of Iana was a creation of her own fears or an illusion created by their enemy—except she had glimpsed that altered face, without recognizing it, in the half-world. There, Iana had pleaded for help. Now, though, she was on the attack.

  “Whore!” Iana raised her hands in a threatening gesture. Anchali prayed hastily, reinforcing protections around her, but the High Chosen did not seem to see her. Iana smiled maliciously and turned around, aiming the threat at a still-invisible target. As Iana did, Anchali could see the garments Iana wore were saffron with scarlet sun-rays, the proper robes of a High Chosen of Jananya, but they were ragged and stained with blood.

  That answered one question. Iana (or the part of Iana projected into Anchali’s dream world) believed the abominations she was committing were the will of Jananya. A deliberate apostate would not appear in the half-world in her clerical robes.

  But a faithful Chosen of Jananya should not, even in the half-world where many strange things were possible, be able to shoot black fire from her hands.

  In the distance, Anchali heard Emjaroen scream.

  Pain flashed inside Anchali’s skull.

  *

  Anchali blinked, half-blinded by the harsh light of the sun, unable to focus on the face wavering before her or on the low, concerned voice asking her, “Are you all right?”

  She tried to say yes, but instead she turned her head aside just on time not to vomit on Thanom.

  He stayed within arm’s reach as she retched, his face as distressed as her stomach. A few times, he brushed her hair out of her face, or stroked her back gently, but mostly he just hovered nearby. Even through her body’s misery and her rising panic, Anchali sensed his concern, his desperate wish to do something to help her even though there was nothing to be done.

  When her body had purged itself, he brought her water in their one clay cup. “You’re shaking,” he said, his voice soft, and put one hand on her arm. “And you’re cold as a mountain stream.”

  Anchali nodded mutely. The day was hot, but the sun’s heat was unable to penetrate and thaw the chill inside.

  Thanom put an arm around her and drew her close to his body’s warmth. “Lean on me,” he whispered. “The magic’s taken too much out of you. We’ll rest here a while, let you recover. Let me know if a bit of fruit will help you replenish what you’ve lost.”

  Every muscle, every nerve in Anchali’s body sighed its agreement at what Thanom said—sighed its pleasure at the feel of his hard, hot body against hers, at the safety he offered. He was replenishing what she had lost simply by being there, by being strong and vibrant and serene, and she wanted nothing more than to rest against him, to let him pamper her, to enjoy the soft arousal that he inspired, even worn and frightened as she was.

  To pretend that her sickness was just sickness and not the after-ef
fect of fear and a brush with dark magic.

  She wanted to sleep in Thanom’s arms. Failing that, she just wanted to sleep for a thousand years, knowing he was nearby, watching over her, keeping her safe.

  But instead she struggled to her feet, realizing as she did that she truly was shaking, depleted by magic and dehydration.

  “Sit down.” Thanom tugged at her skirt. “You must rest. Vision-travel is wearying—even I know that much—and so is being ill.”

  She shrugged him off, despite her body’s protests that Thanom’s idea sounded much cleverer than hers. “There’s no time,” she insisted. “It’s worse than we thought. Iana’s working black sorcery, or something is working it through her. I saw… Never mind. I’ll tell you while we walk. We need to get to Dakura, now. Emjaroen—the High Chosen, my mentor—is in danger. I think it’s gone beyond lives being in danger. I think souls are in danger.”

  “Black sorcery,” Thanom said dryly. “The most powerful Chosen of Jananya in the land is also practicing black sorcery. Or maybe she’s possessed, you’re not sure. Wonderful.” He remained seated where Anchali left him while she started cleaning up their little campsite.

  “We have to hurry!” The fear rose in her throat, thick and bitter.

  Thanom stood then, but only to grab her arm. “We are not going into Dakura by ourselves. We enough information to be useful to the Lord Commander, and we should take it to him and let him and his mages and his army take care of it. Black sorcery is beyond anything you or I know how to fight.”

  His hand felt like it belonged there, but she jerked away and kept moving. Over her shoulder, she said, “We’ll get word to the Lord Commander once we get into the city. He’s already got someone there with pigeons, if, Goddesses preserve us, the poor man’s not been taken.”

  She swung her pack onto her back and started walking.

  “Where are you…what are you…?”

  “Dakura, to try to save Emjaroen.” Hadn’t it been obvious? “He’s the only one alive who might know enough of the great rites to help us fight this menace until the Lord Commander arrives. We have to save him. It’s our best chance. Are you with me or not?”

  “Goddesses preserve me,” he replied. “I’m actually starting to think it’s a reasonable idea to invade a city as part of an army of two, the other a former courtesan. And we say the people who’ve taken over Dakura are the lunatics.”

  But he followed her.

  Chapter 6

  Iana looked through the bars of the cell at the semi-conscious prisoner, sighed, and shook her head. “He won’t repent for you, or break, Beyun, no matter what persuasions you offer.”

  Beyun’s face was hidden, but she could tell he was grinning under his hood. “He might. You can never tell. Always worthwhile to try to save a soul, ain’t it?” He corrected himself. “Isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed. But don’t waste your time on this one. He will not respond to simple force, or to fear. Pichitra has him well in Her snares. If there is any redemption for this one, it will be through me—although I fear all he will find in my efforts is pain.”

  Iana felt the power welling within her, the power that was one of Jananya’s new gifts, along with increased health and vigor. One of their most stubborn opponents had fallen into their hands, and it seemed Jananya was pleased. Iana only hoped that with the new means of persuasion at her disposal, she might be able to save him.

  Although she couldn’t say why it seemed to matter so much in this case, what made this man different from a thousand stubborn other sinners. (Flowers and a song about planting rice, and a gentle, brotherly hand clasping hers as they walked by the river. Where had that image come from?)

  She had Beyun unlock the cell door, stepped in, then shooed him away. She had nothing to fear here, she knew. (Nothing but sorrow, and where could that thought have come from? A soul lost was always unfortunate, but so many were hopelessly ensnared by the seductions of this world; what was one more?)

  The prisoner opened his eyes. Even with the bruises on his face, he managed a radiant smile. “Hello, Iana,” Emjaroen said, his voice soft and melodious. “It’s a pleasure to see you even now, although you’re scarcely looking well. I can see the taint, the dark magic that burdens you, but your eyes are still your own—not like that poor creature with you, who’s lost whatever soul he had to the darkness. The magic snared you because you’re a good person, not because you aren’t, and it hasn’t destroyed you yet. I still love you. Let me help you, my dear. It’s not too late.”

  Iana shivered inside her heavy robes.

  That deep, musical voice stirred something, something warm and tender and…

  Sinful. Obviously sinful. It felt too pleasant not to be.

  (Moonlight, and a bench in the temple garden, and a long night baring their souls to each other, when they were both thirty years younger, a memory gone quickly as it appeared.)

  “You have it all wrong, Emjaroen, as you always have. You are the tainted one, the one burdened by sin—and I’m the one who would help you, although the help I can offer now must be harsh, and I fear it will still not save you.”

  And then she went to work on saving his soul, wondering why this time the screams as his tainted soul and treacherous body fought back didn’t sound like victory.

  *

  The rotting heads on pikes by the city gate were the only bare faces in the crowd. Anonymous in hoods and baggy robes the color of bad curry with too much turmeric, Anchali and Thanom sailed with uncomfortable ease through the gate. Clearly something was afoot, something that had brought the pious and the curious in from the countryside, something that caused the gate guards to wave people through without asking too many questions.

  Anchali’s gut clenched with sickening knowledge, remembering flashes of a vision she’d been trying to forget. Once festivals, parades, market days, and fireworks would draw people in from the countryside like this—but even in Dakura-before-it-changed, executions always attracted a crowd as well. The atmosphere was charged, grim.

  They were too late. Goddesses help them—and Emjaroen—they were too late.

  They followed the crowd through a city transformed, where everything not gray was a hideous shade of dull yellow, where all ornament had been chiseled away, where even the flowering plants looked cowed where they had not been torn up altogether.

  “What have they done to our beautiful city? It was not so bad when I left, not so damaged,” Anchali whispered, leaning in speak in Thanom’s ear; they’d already discovered the layers of fabric over their heads muffled sound.

  A faceless, formless, anonymous someone, so disguised in fabric that even the gender was indistinguishable, smacked her with what looked like a walking stick.

  “None of that!” The voice was female, the accent of the streets broad.

  “I was only leaning in so he might hear me over the crowd.” She managed to find it in herself to sound sincerely contrite, instead of furious, which she was.

  “And who knows what went through your nasty head or his, being so close? Hustle yourselves along to the cleansing and pray for your own selves. Can’t even keep your hands to yourself on such a day!”

  The officious woman harrumphed and bustled along, leaving them both shaking.

  They arrived on time to see Emjaroen die.

  He was not the first that day in what had once been the main market square. Five headless, mutilated bodies were laid out in a row, their heads stacked in a basket. The men had been castrated.

  Those about to die were the only people in the square whose faces were uncovered, presumably to instill more fear in the crowd. But if that was what the executioners hoped for, Emjaroen wasn’t helping them. He was, Anchali recognized, in a prayer-trance, his eyes open but unseeing, a half-smile on his lips. His head had been shaved and he looked half-starved, but these things just brought out the beauty of his bones, transformed a handsome old man into an ivory carving. He was naked. His slim body was covered with bruises and w
hat looked, horrifyingly, to be scorch marks, but he held himself as if standing for the first time before a new lover.

  When he was mutilated, Emjaroen’s eyes seemed to focus, and he gasped in pain. Then he turned to the anonymous executioner, faceless and sexless under a mustard hood and robes, and said, in a voice that was startlingly clear and tender under the circumstances, still weighted with familiar music, “There is still time to become undeceived, my dear. Jananya and Pichitra will forgive much, especially that which is done when your will is not fully your own, but you must find your way back home.”

  Even through the shapeless, concealing clothes, it was obvious the executioner winced and stiffened.

  Gloved hands pushed him down onto the block, but their force was unneeded. Anchali had seen him kneel with the same serene grace many times before Pichitra’s altar.

  Anchali turned away, praying. For her old mentor, about to die, for his fellow victims, for Thanom, so stiff with outrage and the need for self-control that she could sense his muscles quivering from six inches away.

  And, after a moment, prayers for the fools who thought it mete to wipe out the gifts of Pichitra, for Emjaroen would say they were the most in need of prayer.

  The hood served one good purpose. It hid her tears.

  When they lifted his head before the roaring crowd, Emjaroen’s face was set in a calm, understanding smile, the smile of a Chosen of Pichitra.

  She thought that nothing could be worse than witnessing that death—until they brought the pregnant woman out.

  The woman could have been anyone: a noodle seller, a silk merchant’s wife, a noblewoman, a prostitute. There was no way to tell. All that mattered were her huge, terrified eyes and the swell of her belly.

  Anchali looked around frantically, hoping against hope to find a way to intervene. Emjaroen had gone to his death consciously, an offering on an altar. This poor girl, and the unborn child, were a different story.