“How can you tell?” Asha glanced around at the crowd quietly surging past them.
“Just a feeling.”
“Then let’s go.” Asha led the way through the market squares and market streets and found the way to the northern end of the city where the Jal Mahal appeared to float majestically on the surface of the lake. But the palace seemed dimmer and shabbier than she remembered it. Nothing had changed about it physically. It was just a sense. A feeling that this place had already seen its finest days and now was sinking into shadows and sad memories.
They walked on. “Are we still being followed?”
Priya nodded. “I’m certain of it now. A man with an uneven gait.”
Asha looked around again, but there were still too many people about and none of them looked like sinister killers with conspicuous limps. “Let’s just keep moving.”
They followed the main road north and soon came to the small shrine at the crossroads where the princess’s ashes had been placed only a few short months ago. Asha paused to stare at the little stone pillars and flickering braziers. Her memories of the long days and nights at the young woman’s bedside were still fresh. The long hours studying the dead cockatrice, the foul-smelling experiments, the ache in her arm from grinding and crushing one thing after another in her mortar.
“She was very beautiful,” a man said.
Asha looked sharply at the short fellow beside her. His limp black hair barely covered his scalp, and he squinted through filmy, cracked glasses. The shoes on his feet were Indian, but his dark blue robe was from Ming. She swallowed and turned back to the shrine. In a calm and even voice, she said, “Yes, she was.”
“But it wasn’t enough for her. It never is, for some people.” The man smiled. A black leather bag sat on the ground beside his foot.
“So you offered your services?”
“No, not this time,” the doctor said. “I merely sold the prince something that he thought he wanted. A wonderful creature. Very hard to breed, you know. A bird and a lizard. Tricky business. But then, I’m sure you appreciated all of that for yourself.”
“Not really. I was too busy trying to keep her alive.”
“Ah yes. A pity, to be sure,” he said. “I never thought she would eat the eggs.”
“Yes, you did.”
He smiled. “Well, maybe.”
“And the mandrake in Kasar? And the bitter fruits at the mountain hut? More of your little experiments, or were they just very bizarre coincidences?”
He nodded absently, his gaze still fixed on the shrine. Not once did he look at her. “The world is full of sad people looking for help, and the world is full of strange things that might help them. I am but a humble purveyor of miracles.” He chuckled. “As are you.”
“Your miracles kill people. And the ones who don’t die are hollowed out by false prophets and dreams. I’ve wasted more days than I can remember cleaning up your messes.”
The doctor clucked his tongue. “Now, now. We all have our roles to play. If not for me, we would not know that the prickled gurbir’s effects will disappear for exactly eleven and a half months before the patient dies, or that the swamp mandrake seed can survive cremation fires, or that the anti-venom of the cockatrice egg is nearly as dangerous as the mother’s venom itself. Such knowledge is more precious than gold.”
“Is such knowledge more precious than life?” Asha asked. She too kept her eyes fixed on the shrine, and on the dark red flames of the closest brazier in particular.
“Of course. Life is cheap. Toss a carcass to the ground and ten thousand creatures will feast and rut and grow strong upon it. Kill all those ten thousand, and a million more will rise in their place. Life is inescapable. It’s everywhere. And more often than not, it is squandered and wasted. Thus, where I pass, life is at least spent more profitably for the betterment of all men, for the deeper knowledge of life and death.”
Asha casually took a clear glass needle from her shoulder bag and shoved it into the man’s arm. He hissed and leapt away from her as he yanked the needle from his flesh and stared at the broken tip. “What was in that?”
“An experiment.”
“What was it?” he shouted.
“Qilin’s tears,” she said softly.
His eyes widened and he hurled the needle away into the tall grass behind the shrine. “You ungrateful bitch!”
“What’s the matter?” she asked quietly. “Surely a doctor like you has the antidote? The powdered horn?” She paused for him to answer, but he said nothing. “Oh, I see. You don’t have it, do you? No, you never were very good at keeping up your stocks of remedies and antidotes and cures. I suppose you got used to relying on me to do that for you.”
He glared at her. “But you must have it! Give it to me! Now!”
She held up a small paper envelope between two fingers. He reached for it but she flicked it through the air to land on the nearby brazier. The red flames quickly consumed the envelope and its contents.
The doctor gasped. “Murderer!”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration. You don’t look very dead to me. I would think a doctor could tell the difference.” The corner of Asha’s mouth twitched. “The qilin’s tears are a very slow poison. Painful, but slow. You have several weeks to find more of the horn for yourself.”
“Weeks? But the horn of the qilin can only be found in Ming!”
“Then I suggest you start walking very soon, and very quickly.”
“After everything I did for you! I saved your life countless times between Yen and Ming. I raised you. I taught you. I gave you everything you have!”
“You used me.” She turned slowly to look him in the eye. “Didn’t you? Eight years in a coma from dragon’s venom. Eight years? It should have killed me inside a week, or not at all. Instead you kept me on your table for eight years, and when I woke up you said all the tiny scars were from keeping me alive. But they were really from keeping me asleep, and taking my blood, and skewering my soul. I admit, it took me a very long time to put the pieces together, but I did. After all, you’re the one who taught me to unravel these little mysteries, doctor.”
“So what if we did use you? We woke you up in the end and trained you in our noble profession.” The little doctor clamped his hand tightly over his arm where she had stabbed him with the needle. “We gave as much as we took. But it was all your fault to begin with. It was all because you tried to take my dragon!”
Asha shook her head slightly. “No. It was all because you left a little girl alone in a room with a temptation, and with the cage unlocked for the first and only time. It was all just one more experiment, wasn’t it?”
The doctor started toward her and Asha turned toward him with two more needles in her hand.
“I could kill you,” she said. “But I won’t. Instead I’m giving you the chance to live, as much as I’ve threatened to let you die. Giving as much as I took, as you put it. So I suggest that you take this chance and go, before I forget that I’m a healer and not a doctor, like you.”
The small man sneered at her a moment with a dark hatred burning in his eyes, but he backed away, grabbed his black bag, and left.
Asha put away her needles and the two women stood before the shrine for a few minutes before the nun said, “Did you really poison him?”
“Yes.”
“Will he survive?”
“That depends on whether he can find the antidote.”
“And you destroyed the cure to torture him?”
Asha shook her head. “Of course not.” She held up another, identical paper envelope. “The real antidote is right here. What I burned was just a cure for baldness, which no one really needs, do they?”
“I heard you take the needle out of your bag. I almost stopped you,” Priya said. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. I trusted you. But now I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. You’re a healer, Asha, and you just poisoned a man.”
“He deserved it. And more,” Asha said quietl
y. She looked down at the shrine in front of them. “This woman, the princess, would be alive today if not for him. And Hasika’s family in the mountains, too. And who knows how many more?”
“I suppose.” Priya shivered against the cool breeze. “So is this why you left the temple in Ming? Because you figured out what they had done to you?”
“No, I didn’t figure that out until much later. No, I left because of something else.” The words stuck in her throat and Asha paused to swallow. The sudden tightness in her chest surprised her. After a moment she said, “When I was training at the temple, I met a boy from the nearby village. I suppose he was too old to call him a boy, really, but I always think of him that way. A boy. My boy. A carpenter’s apprentice. He was my first.” She paused to be sure the nun took her meaning. “One day he and his master came to the temple to repair the roof. The boy was up in the rafters where it was dark. He didn’t see what stung him, but it was so bad that he collapsed the moment he climbed down. He was gasping for breath. Shaking. Turning blue. I was there. I saw it.”
“What did you do?”
Asha shook her head. “I didn’t do anything. The doctors grabbed him up and took him to a room where they poked him and prodded him, and argued over him. They muttered about cutting him open, inserting tubes into his lungs, draining fluid, and pumping air into him with the fireplace bellows. I stood in the corridor, just outside, watching them. I could hear him gasping. He kept pounding on the table, struggling to breathe.
“Eventually they started to work on him. They cut him open. They inserted glass and rubber tubes. His blood ran down to the floor. And the boy screamed until he passed out. They worked on him for an hour or so.” Asha blinked. “And then they came out and told me that he was dead. My boy. My first. He was dead. I asked them why. What happened to him? A wasp sting, they said. Just a common wasp. I didn’t understand. I asked them, why didn’t they give him medicine? We had medicine for stings and allergies. I had made some of it myself. Why didn’t they give it to him? They said, because they wanted to see what would happen if they cut him open instead.”
Asha paused to breathe. “I remember how pleased they all were with themselves. Complimenting each other on their techniques. On their tools. On the measurements they took of him as he lay dying on their table. They were looking forward to examining his body again later.”
Asha felt the tears running down her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away. She didn’t shake or close her eyes, or cover her mouth, or move at all. She stood very still and felt the sick fire burning in her belly and her chest and her throat and her eyes. But she didn’t move.
“They were proud of themselves. They were proud of what they had learned,” she whispered. “But he died. He died in agony. For their pride. And I just stood there and watched it happen.”
Asha felt Priya take her hand. She gently but firmly pulled away. “That’s why I left.”
Priya nodded.
And then Asha stopped fighting. She let her face twist and squeeze together as the tears ran down and the sharp gasps burst out and she shook and sobbed, and sobbed. Eventually the pain and sorrow ran its course and she pushed her hair back, wiped her face, and cleared her throat. For many long moments, she just stood there, staring at the shrine, sighing and clearing her throat, and blinking her eyes dry.
“You can talk now,” Asha said.
“If you need to hear me say that they were wrong and you were right, then I’ll say it, because it’s true. But I know you don’t need me to say that. What do you need now?”
Asha shook her head slowly. “Nothing.” She blinked again. “I’m fine.” She heaved one last sigh and stood a little taller. “Really, I feel…better.”
“Let me do something, please.”
“Maybe a little sleep. I could use a little rest.”
“I think we can arrange that.” Priya took her by the arm and led her back toward the road, turning to the westward path. “And then some hot food and tea.”
Asha nodded. “You know, I thought if we went west far enough, then I could get away from them. But they were here. He was here. They’re everywhere.”
“Perhaps not quite everywhere,” Priya said. “Perhaps we simply didn’t go far enough. What would you say to a much longer journey into the west?”
“Into Persia?”
“Yes, into Persia.” Priya patted her hand. “Though I’ve heard that they call it Eran now.”
Asha shrugged. “I really don’t care what it’s called.”
Priya smiled. “I didn’t think you would.”
Asha smiled back, just a little.
Chapter 7
The Black Dragon
1
Asha paused at the top of the trail to look down on the valley below. The sun hung in a colorless sky, glaring down on high gray stone and low brown earth without a single glimmer of green in sight. She squinted back over her shoulder. There was a sound on the wind, something so faint and distant that it couldn’t be more than the last dying echo of some soul beyond the farthest horizon, and yet Asha heard it. A shudder in her ear. A thrum. “There’s something out there, somewhere.”
Priya shuffled up beside her, tapping the hard stone path with her bamboo rod in search of jagged cracks and loose gravel. Shaded within the folds of her flower-strewn hair, Jagdish slept on the nun’s shoulder twisted over onto his back in a precarious pose.
“Is it dark?” Priya asked.
“No. It’s noon, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“But it’s so cold.”
“I know. It’s these mountains. They remind me of home.”
Priya nodded. “You know, when I suggested that we journey into Persia, into the Empire of Eran, I was hoping to meet new people, to learn and teach and share with the strangers we would find. I don’t suppose you can see any strangers out here for us to find, can you?”
Asha sniffed. “No. But there is smoke rising from beyond the next ridge. Feel like walking a little farther?”
They descended the rocky path with the chill mountain wind whistling through the narrow ravines and crevasses gouged across the face of the slope. Small stones clattered down from time to time, but Asha never saw any other signs of life. No goats or sheep. No rabbits or mice. Only a lone vulture hovered high overhead.
“What if it isn’t real?” Priya asked.
“What?”
“Eran. Maybe it’s just a myth. Maybe when we left Rajasthan, we stepped off the map into some no-place beyond the edge of the world.”
Asha shrugged. “Maybe. But there is a path. And there is smoke.”
Priya smiled. “If you say so.” She daintily adjusted the cloth that covered her eyes.
They crossed a dry stream bed at the bottom of the valley and began climbing the far slope. Once again at the top of the trail Asha paused to survey the land ahead. She said, “I think we’ve found the edge of Eran.”
At the bottom of the next valley stood a small city of dusty brown tents clustering around large fire circles. Long latrine pits ran along the north side of the camp, and long wooden houses stood along the south side. But through the center of the camp was a strange road made of stone, wood, and metal. The bed of crushed stone rose above the level of the earth, and heavy square-ended timbers lay at regular intervals on the stones, and twin steel beams rested on the timbers. The strange road ran as straight as an arrowshot from the foot of the mountain ridge where Asha and Priya stood all the way to the western horizon.
And sleeping on the steel road bed was a dragon.
It was long and black, scaled in iron, with dozens of carriages resting on hundreds of wheels, and a thin column of white steam rising lazily from the pipe on its nose.
“What do you see?” Priya asked.
Asha shook her head. “I’m not sure. But I don’t like it.”
They descended the path toward the camp. Below them, hundreds of men trudged back and forth from the ridge carrying or dragging sacks of small stones an
d sledges of large stones. The sounds of shovels and picks cracking away on the hard stone echoed across the camp with the steady rhythm of falling hail, and from time to time a man would shout in an angry voice.
At the bottom of the trail Asha moved carefully through the streams of men carrying heavy stones and empty sacks. Only a few of them bothered to cast a weary glance at the tall woman in the yellow sari or the small nun in the saffron robe.
“Asha?” Priya paused. “I don’t recognize some of the languages I’m hearing. Do you?”
“Yes. I speak some Eranian. Or Persian, as they called it when I was a girl. But a lot of these men are speaking something else. Afghani, I think.”
A fresh chorus of shouts drew their attention to the row of wooden houses along the south side of the work camp. A man wearing dark green robes stood on a raised platform barking orders at several grim-faced brutes carrying whips and clubs. The man in green pointed at the two women.
“Trouble,” Asha said. Her hand went into her bag, feeling past little clay jars of ointments and paper packets of ground seeds to the steely tools at the bottom. Her fingers closed around a small scalpel.
Two of the men with whips strode toward the women. They scowled and spat as they crossed the yard, and when they came closer the tall one said, “You there! No women! No prostitutes! No women in the camp! What are you doing here? Where did you come from? No women in the camp!”
Asha held up her empty hands and spoke slowly and loudly in her best Eranian, “We are not prostitutes. I am an herbalist. A healer. This is a nun. We come from India.”
The men exchanged a look and a few muttered words, and then the shorter one jogged back to the man in green. The remaining brute ran his hand through his short beard. “A healer? From India?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
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