Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  Adri felt a rush of warmth for his brother. Shvate had been entertaining him since they left Hastinaga, speaking softly in his ear, informing him of the places they were driving past, sketching in details that Adri could not have guessed at from scent and sound clues alone. That act of kindness had enriched the journey considerably.

  Until this trip, Adri had hated traveling. It invariably meant a bewildering profusion of smells and sounds, most unrelated to one another, leaving him with disturbing mental pictures of what they might mean. And so Shvate’s commentary was extremely useful: it helped him make sense of the world. It was not just a meaningless jumble of smells and sounds; he could form a sensible image of what lay out there. Farmers harvesting crops. Grazing cattle. Clucking fowl. Timber being cut and prepared for transport downriver.

  But why were they stopping now? And what place was this? Shvate didn’t know either.

  “We have arrived.” Vrath said, his voice smooth and clear as always.

  Shvate’s hand on Adri’s arm advised him that they were to disembark from the chariot.

  “Jump down,” Shvate said, and Adri jumped from the chariot without hesitation, followed shortly thereafter by his brother.

  They stood before their uncle, awaiting further instruction.

  Vrath

  Vrath noted that the boys were standing close together, shoulders touching. He had observed Shvate whispering to his brother in the chariot, and dwelled momentarily on the wisdom of allowing Adri to grow up dependent on his brother’s eyes and presence. He pushed the thought aside. Such concerns would be the domain of their guru soon. Vrath had only a day or two remaining to spend with the boys; he did not intend to use that time correcting them. Let brother lean on brother. If Guru Kaylin wished to separate them, let him do so.

  “We shall take a short holiday before proceeding to Guruji’s hermitage,” he said aloud.

  The looks of surprise on both brothers’ faces were nearly identical. For once, even Adri’s usual slack-faced expression was replaced with something akin to a happiness.

  “You will both be away for a long time. As your uncle, I wish to spend time with you pursuing activities that bring you delight. Tell me, Shvate, Adri, what would you like to do?”

  There was a brief moment of utter silence. Then the responses clambered over each other, as enthusiastically as if he were confronting a whole squad of young boys, rather than merely two.

  “Hunt!”

  “Fish!”

  “Climb!”

  “Dive!”

  “Fight lions!”

  “Stay the night in the forest!”

  “In a cave!”

  “Track wild boar!”

  “Build a machaan!”

  “Climb Coldheart Mountain!”

  “The desert!”

  “Spear snakes!”

  “Drive the chariot!”

  “Hunt urrkh!”

  “Besiege a fort!”

  “Build a fort!”

  “Attack a—”

  Vrath laughed.

  The sound was unusual enough that it silenced both boys at once. He laughed and laughed, the rolling tones of his laughter echoing through the forest.

  Both Shvate and Adri watched and listened in astonishment. They had never seen or heard their uncle laugh before.

  In all likelihood, no one had.

  Vrath himself could not recall the last time he had laughed—not since he was a boy, probably. When he lived in the river, with his river friends, swimming and hunting and playing underwater like any fish, in his mother’s embrace, truly, completely happy. He had never been that happy since, and, he thought, would never be again. It was the way of life. Babes cooed, children laughed, men smiled . . . then learned to smile without meaning it, and finally, death laughed at men and ended their humorless lives.

  But death was not laughing yet; Vrath was.

  He was happy again. He had remembered what it was to be a boy again. To be innocent, carefree, the whole world before you, all of life lying ahead, unexplored, undiscovered, filled with wonders and treasures, adventures and secrets.

  He came forward, spreading his arms as he crouched down, startling them both, and he put his hands around both of them and swept them up into a great, happy, bone-crushing hug.

  The boys were surprised at first, then understanding washed over them, their uncle’s action speaking more eloquently than his words. Giving themselves over to him, both of them broke out laughing as well.

  Vrath stood up, still hugging the boys, carrying them as easily as a crane lifting a pair of young salmon, and laughed on.

  The forest filled with the sound of the three Krushan laughing.

  Shvate

  The next few days were a blur of activity.

  Shvate and Adri learned more in that time than they had in their entire short lives until then. They learned to track, to hunt and kill, to fish, to skin and clean and cook, to start a fire, to keep it going, to bank it so as to reduce telltale smoke. They cut sapling boughs, carved them into bows and shafts, cured and stretched strips of sinew to string the bows, then learned to use the weapons.

  They hunted deer, and in doing so, Adri learned how to still his body and senses and how to breathe until he became one with the jungle and its patterns, to distinguish the soft sounds of the deer snorting or stomping or chewing, to aim and loose by these sounds alone, and by the end of the trip, to regularly hit his target.

  Shvate learned to stalk the deadly but very delicious spiny boar, to corner and kill it without risking it ripping open his abdomen and spilling out his bowels—though it tried mightily, and came close enough to leave Shvate with a small crescent-shaped scar for life—and then to skin and clean and cut and cook the animal, wasting no part of it.

  They ate what they caught, and they ate very well indeed. Vrath did no hunting himself, restricting his role to that of a mentor. It was terrifying at first to the boys, but also exhilarating. To be given such responsibility, thrust into such an adventure, face-to-face with snorting, smelly, whiskery-faced death, yet knowing that if it came down to it, their uncle would surely step in and protect them.

  Or would he?

  He said he would not, and they took him at his word, which made them try harder, and perhaps that was what made the difference in the outcome.

  To play at hunting while Uncle watched over them was a challenge.

  To actually hunt while Vrath watched—but did not intervene—was a responsibility.

  They learned the difference in those days in the jungle.

  Shvate found it even more exciting because the dense jungle afforded him cover from the cruel sun that tormented his sensitive skin. Unlike in the open environs of Hastinaga, here he could roam and range at will under the shady canopy of the woods. He was overjoyed when he realized this at first. The sense of liberation from the tyranny of sunlight was thrilling. Even in the chariot, he had had to keep a burlap cloth over his head to protect his skin. Back home, he always dressed in attire that kept his entire body covered, even in the hot season. Now, for the first time in his young life, he could be free of such encumbrances. He could swim and play in a pool fed by a waterfall by day, the dappled patches of sunlight robbed of their intensity by the time they reached him; he could hunt and run and practice and play all day without having to wait for sundown. And when sundown did come, he could lie down to sleep like other people did, as people were supposed to do.

  The nights were a different matter.

  Accustomed to the soft silk cushions, army of servants, their every need catered to, the two heirs of Hastinaga had never experienced true survival.

  That first night, both were unable to sleep for hours.

  Their straw pallets were prickly and uncomfortable. The darkness was absolute, a living thing that pressed in around them, squeezing, throttling, suffocating.

  And the jungle was alive.

  It was on that night they realized that the jungle was, in fact, a city.

&
nbsp; Inhabited by countless denizens, each of whom had their own agenda, cutthroat ambitions, goals and targets, occupations and duties, all going about their work under cover of darkness. Not merely selling, trading, buying, serving, as in Hastinaga. But killing, hunting, raiding, squealing, roaring, growling.

  Oddly enough, Adri suffered more than Shvate. He had been born in darkness; it was his natural state of being. He did not fear it in itself. But the living jungle that enveloped him and its inhabitants were all the more terrifying because he could not see any of them, and was compelled to imagine their nature from their sounds and smells alone. To him, they were all monsters. He slept with his handmade rough-hewn bow clutched tightly in both fists, and he did not sleep deeply or long.

  Shvate, on the other hand, had been unnerved at first, but as the first watch passed and he grew more accustomed to the sounds of the jungle, he became intrigued, and then fascinated by the savagery of the life-and-death game being played out all around him. He knew what several of the animals looked like, and what sounds they made, and so even if he couldn’t see them, he could form mental images of what was transpiring most of the time, or make a reasonable guess at it. A lion bringing down a deer. Two spiny boars tangling tusks. A herd of deer passing through on their way to the pond. The mental pictures that formed in his mind were informed by the sights he had seen.

  Shvate slept eventually, and dreamed of the animal city going about its business, taking strange pleasure in the inevitability and unending cycle of life and death. To him, the jungle was a city of animals. Was that not why they called it the animal kingdom? Yet he felt more at home here than in his own princely chambers in Hastinaga. The jungle awakened some ancient powerful impulse within him, a race memory of a time when all creatures lived together in the forest, and the forest was their entire world.

  He slept and dreamed of a world where he roamed as freely as a lion, a tiger, a bear, a wolf, and ruled his own ranging ground armed only with his wits and brute force.

  In contrast, Adri tossed uneasily all night, unable to break free of the nightmare world where teeth, fangs, claws surrounded him, and only pain and agony lay in wait. He wanted nothing more than to go back home, to the seclusion and safety of his chambers in Hastinaga, to be able to call for a wet nurse and lose himself in her large, warm, soft maternal embrace.

  The jungle was one brother’s paradise, the other’s nightmare.

  Vrath

  By day, the brothers were as one being. They did everything together, as a team—Shvate communicating with his brother via a whispered word or a combination of sound and deft touch; Adri moving confidently, secure in his brother’s presence and support, allowing his instincts to guide him, catching sounds that Shvate could not even hope to hear, his acute hearing a tool that enabled him to “see” without seeing.

  Shvate’s hand was impressively steady, his ability to draw back a bowstring and loose in a single fluid motion markedly superior to Adri’s. By the eve of the third day, he could, if he desired, stalk, hunt, and down game entirely on his own. He had an instinctive understanding of the jungle that Vrath found intriguing. It was like Vrath’s own symbiotic relationship to water bodies: to Vrath a river was a living highway filled with teeming life. He knew every creature, plant, and rock that inhabited that bustling intercourse and could traverse that watery world as easily as any finned denizen.

  Shvate was like that in the jungle: it was as if he was home, had been born and brought up there, and knew it like the back of his hand. He knew things without being told: like which side of a tree moss grew upon in a season, or that a doe that grazed in a certain pattern was heavy with child, or that the claw marks on a sala trunk were not from a sloth bear but from an aging half-blind lion that used it to clean and sharpen his claws.

  The speed and efficiency with which he picked up the essentials and then graduated directly to far more advanced skills was astonishing even to Vrath. He had brought his half brothers Gada and Virya to the forest at around this same age, and while they had been fearless and eager to learn, they held no candle to Shvate. This young boy was born to the hunt. He was not merely highly skilled: he was a prodigy.

  Vrath took pride in the thought that his nephew could not be anything but a prodigy. By the second day, he had to acknowledge that what Shvate possessed was beyond normal mortal ability. As the son of a mortal man and a goddess himself, Vrath knew he possessed senses, knowledge, and abilities that were not within the reach of mortals, but Shvate, being born of a mortal mother, could not compare to Vrath. But he was definitely a notch or three superior to most mortals.

  Shvate was seeded by Jilana’s firstborn son, Vessa. The sage was a child of the forest himself, a being greater than mortal but less than divine. Born of a union between a sage who was in fact Shapaar traveling incognito and Jilana years before she met and married Emperor Sha’ant, Vessa grew to adulthood within hours of birth, and after taking his mother’s blessings, departed for unknown destinations. From his mother and his river relatives, Vrath knew that Vessa had gone into the deep woods, into the heart of the jungle, to a place where even the most self-flagellant tapasvi sage would not venture.

  There, in a place where the jungle itself did not permit mortal intrusion, Vessa abided. He subsisted on infinitesimal molecules of nutrition derived from air alone; inserted vines into his veins, merging sap with blood; inhaled the color of the leaves, the dark energy of moonlight, the sinews of the wind, the songs of the birds, the storms stirred by insect wings. From water drawn up through the soles of his feet he slaked his thirst. From the whispering of butterflies he came to know the intimate secrets of the forest. The jungle fed him as one of her own, and in return he fed the jungle with his own energies and fluids, forming a symbiotic bond that was beyond the capacity of human understanding or belief.

  Shvate had inherited his father’s intimate relationship with the jungle. Clearly the forest herself recognized her brethren and welcomed him, opening her secrets to his mind and senses.

  But that did not explain why Adri lacked the same bond.

  Where Shvate was completely at home in this verdant environment almost at once, Adri remained uncomfortable, anxious, even afraid. At crucial moments, he would err and fail to loose the arrow that would have downed his prey, or fail to follow through on an easy kill.

  His senses were no less acute than his brother’s. He possessed the same uncanny level of intimacy with the jungle as Shvate. But where Shvate thrived and reveled in this habitat, Adri did not wish to be there at all. Vrath could see the signs the very first night; while Shvate slept peacefully, all but purring in his sleep, Adri thrashed about, started at sounds, and was drawn into the clasp of nightmares that sucked his energy dry. So long as Shvate was beside him, guiding and encouraging him, Adri was in fine form—and he did his part exceedingly well, capable of matching any sighted boy his age. But time and again he sabotaged himself, hesitating at crucial moments, pulling back or otherwise disengaging when it came to the nub.

  Vrath felt sympathy for the boy. He clearly feared the jungle; even though he could have been as much at home as Shvate, he chose not to let himself trust the mother forest. Why or how was something Vrath could not quite fathom. They were both birthed from the seed of Vessa, after all, and possessed of similar skills and abilities. Yet they were developing in very different ways.

  He wondered if it was merely Adri’s lack of sight. Perhaps, but he sensed it was something more. He recalled that their mothers had reacted differently when Vessa had come into their respective chambers. Shvate’s mother had been horrified by the sage’s wild appearance and had turned ashen white. That seemed to have resulted in Shvate’s lack of skin color, as Vessa had prophesied. But after her initial fright, she had kept her eyes open and undergone the seeding. That showed great courage on her part: to have seen a man who physically repulsed her and still consented to take him to her bed, for the dynasty. Adri’s mother, on the other hand, had shut her eyes from the start, unw
illing to even look at the sage. Perhaps that accounted for Adri’s weakness: not the blindness itself, which did not diminish his ability, but his imagination. Like his mother at that crucial moment of conception, Adri feared the unseen, and because it was unseen and therefore unknown, it loomed as something far more terrible than the reality.

  That was it, Vrath decided. Adri suffered from his mother’s flaw: a last-minute failing of will.

  It was a dangerous flaw in any man, but a fatal one in a warrior or a king.

  It meant, Vrath mused sadly, that Adri could never rule as king. To be emperor of Hastinaga required fortitude. A king who hesitated at a crucial moment could cause the downfall of the empire.

  As the holiday drew to an end and he began preparing to resume their journey to Guru Kaylin’s hermitage, Vrath decided he would not judge the boys just yet. They were still young and about to be delivered into the tutelage of a great master. He would delay judgment until they had graduated from the hermitage and achieved manhood. A great deal could transpire in that period. Boys become men. Princes become kings. And life has a way of surprising you.

  But in his heart of hearts, he knew the die was already cast.

  Of the two brothers, only Shvate was fit to rule.

  All that remained was for time, and the guru, to prove his assessment right—or wrong.

  It was with this thought on his mind that he finally delivered his two wards to the guru’s hermitage.

  Shvate

  Guru Kaylin’s gurukul was nestled in a clearing deep within a forest even denser and lusher than the one in which Shvate and Adri had spent the past few days with Vrath. Here, the trees were so tall, Shvate could not see the top of them, however hard he craned his neck. Their branches formed a canopy so dense that the only light that filtered through was greenish in hue. Not a single bar of direct sunlight passed through here, except in the clearing, where, from the angle of the light, he guessed that the sun would shine down for a only few hours each morning. A brook they came upon was nestled between stands of trees that only gave a few yards of space, as if the wood was reluctant to let even the water pass.