Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  And then the celebrations began.

  The celebrations were still ongoing when the team charged with disposal of corpses gathered up the final batch of bodies. If they could even be called bodies: they were mostly bits and pieces, severed limbs and grisly parts, left to rot in the unrelenting Reygistani sun. The stench from these gathered bobs and bits was even more offensive than from the whole corpses. From across the city, sounds of revelry filled the air. The Maatri tasked with this duty were eager to finish the chore, clean up, and join the celebrations.

  As they approached the pile, the volunteers made various sounds of disgust, mostly imitating retching.

  “Let’s just throw on as much oil as we have and burn the whole lot where it lies,” said one Maatri, her voice deeply nasal due to her pinching her nose to avoid the stench.

  “Can’t do that,” said another woman apologetically, wincing as the wind changed, bringing the full richness of the aroma to her. “Our orders are to bury them. Oil supplies are short enough as it is.”

  The women looked at the pile doubtfully. “We could bring dry brush and wood and use that to burn them.”

  The Maatri in charge snorted. “Do you know how much it would take to burn this lot? A hundred wagonloads! Maybe more. And without oil . . . Besides, the smoke and ash would carry across the whole city.” She gestured at the city behind them and indicated the direction of the wind. “And the outer ones would burn, but it would be a putrefying mess on the inside.”

  They were all silent for a moment, considering the idea, then, one of her companions said in disgust, “Oh, thank you, Suverya, for that wonderful thought. Excuse me while I go relieve the contents of my belly.”

  “Get to it, then,” the Maatri in charge ordered. “Let’s start digging a pit. And remember, we have to make it large enough and deep enough to take the whole of this sorry bunch. Maatr intends to plant an orchard over it afterward.”

  “An orchard?” someone asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” said the woman in charge sourly. “To commemorate the siege. Besides, fresh corpses underground give good fruit. Come on, get to work, you lazy bunch!”

  The pit was dug and almost all the body parts thrown in when someone exclaimed loudly.

  “Maatri!” she called out. “Come take a look at this.”

  The Maatri in charge and several of the others within hearing range came out of curiosity. They looked down at the male body split perfectly from the center of the bald crown of its head right down to the waist. The cut was blade-smooth, immaculate, as if it was an apple that had been sliced into two halves rather than a grown man.

  The Maatri in charge frowned and wiped the sweat and grime from her brow before asking irritably, “And what great vision am I supposed to be looking at, Naranito?”

  “It’s as good as new,” replied the young woman who had discovered the anomaly. “It hasn’t rotted at all. How is that possible?”

  And it was true. Apart from the fact that the body was split down the middle, it was pristine. No decay had occurred as yet, nor were any maggots or putrefying flesh visible. The women examined the body curiously and all agreed that its skin and flesh resembled that of a living man.

  “It’s almost as if . . .” Naranito said, then stopped.

  “What?” asked Agmindesh beside her.

  “Well, it’s almost as if you could put the two halves together and they would fit perfectly, with barely a seam visible.”

  “What do you know about seams, Naranito?” her wife called out. “You’ve never touched a sewing needle since we were married.” That drew a burst of laughter. It was good to have something to laugh about after the miseries of the past months.

  Out of sheer curiosity, three or four of the women actually picked up the two halves of the severed corpse and placed them together.

  “Look! They fit together like a whole body!” said Naranito, the one who had thought of it.

  One of the Maatri holding the halves together felt movement beneath her fingertips. She frowned, assuming she had only felt some reverberation or other movement, and looked down.

  The eyes of the severed corpse opened.

  The Maatri screamed and let go of the body, backing away, scrambling away. She tripped and fell over another body. “It’s alive!” she cried out.

  The erstwhile severed corpse got to its feet, causing the other women around it to back away as well. It looked around. The thin red line running down the center of its bald head all the way down its naked chest and body glowed brightly for an instant, then faded away.

  The severed body was now a whole man. A living man. With no trace of a seam, as the wit had remarked.

  As they stared in stunned incomprehension, the Maatri in charge reached for her sword. “Kill him!” she cried. “Kill—”

  That was as far as she got. The severed man’s tongue shot out of his mouth and lashed out at her with whiplike ferocity, covering a distance of over two yards to strike her across the chest and waist from shoulder to hip. The Maatri in charge felt a moment of scalding heat, as if she had been struck by a red-hot scourge. Then the acid saliva from the figure’s tongue ate through her armor, garb, flesh, and bone with instant efficacy, and her body split into two at the diagonal cut. She fell open like a ripe fruit and instantly perished. The two halves of her body hissed and sizzled as they parted, the exposed flesh and organs corroded by the acidic saliva.

  Stunned but stalwart, the other Maatri recovered quickly and began marshaling their forces against this unexpected enemy. But the severed man moved amongst them with lightning speed, swinging around in a half circle to strike cobra-like at the more than half a dozen Maatri in rapid succession. He would be here one instant, his whiplike tongue lashing out to sever one’s arm before she could slash out with her sword, then there in the next, yards away, decapitating another woman. Many died screaming in agony and without even lifting their weapons; others, shocked and stunned, died not understanding what had killed them.

  It was an astonishing display. Within moments, the entire burial crew lay butchered, the dissected bodies of its members steaming and hissing.

  Then the figure moved into the city. And then began the slaughter.

  There, he met a great deal of resistance. Relaxed and reveling though they were, taken by surprise, caught off guard—the Maatri yet were fierce fighters.

  But it made no difference. The devil was in the gates and nothing could stop him.

  The severed man passed through Reygar all like a force of nature, like a hurricane through a sugarcane field, like a tiger through a flock of lambs. By the time he was done, there were many, many more corpses to cremate and commemorate, but no one left to do the needful.

  3

  When he was done with Reygar, Jarsun turned toward his true goal: the Burnt Empire.

  Jilana and Vrath had denied his daughter, Krushita, her rightful legacy, while insulting his wife, his father-in-law, and the people of Reygistan. They had denied him, Jarsun, a born Krushan, his claim to the bloodline of the Burning Throne. Even stonefire had screamed in protest at the injustice; he had heard and felt it in his Krushan bones. The people of Hastinaga would have accepted him. The army too. It was only Jilana and Vrath and their newly minted heirs, Shvate and Adri, who stood between his daughter and the Burning Throne. Once he eliminated those two boys, he could take Hastinaga by force. Jilana and Vrath would have no pompous arguments or legal citations to hurl at him then. His beloved Krushita would be the only rightful heir capable of sitting upon the Burning Throne. Whether they liked it or not, the Reygistan Empire and the Burnt Empire would be allies, linked by blood.

  And the world would be his to command.

  Part Two

  * * *

  The Guide

  1

  The conspirators came from every direction.

  The marg each traveled converged at the great kingsroad of Madhya Desha, where all roads united. With their entourages, they were the size of a small army and co
uld have been mistaken for an invading force. Their demeanor was grim enough, but after further observation, it was evident that they were here on a cooperative venture, not at loggerheads.

  As they joined together and proceeded farther north, approaching the jagged rises of the mountain ranges, the marg they now traveled dwindled to a path and, before long, was nothing more than a fading scar across the stony face of the land. Nothing grew easily here, except small game and predators. There were shapes moving in the gathering shadows as dusk fell, and a peculiar odor in the air. On the tiny scratch of a path, the company trundled along together until even that unwelcoming trail dwindled away to terrain dotted with rocks large enough to break the hooves of any carriage horse. A ridge rose steeply from this point, cutting off the view of the mountains that lay beyond.

  The irritated travelers dismounted and then debated how best to proceed. Their awkward pleasantries were interrupted by a piercing whistle from above. Several of them reached for their weapons. They were foreigners here, after all, and the mountain folk were notorious for their lack of love for outlanders.

  A wizened old woman looked down on them from the peak of the ridge.

  She leaped down from her perch, hopping and skipping as easily as if she were playing a child’s game, all the thirty yards down to where the company stood.

  Landing with a broken-toothed smile, she rattled off a stream of words in the mountain tongue. A few of the travelers understood enough to translate for the others. But it was hardly necessary to know the language to understand her message: she was to be their guide; they were to follow her.

  She instructed them to leave their valets and accompanying guards and, without waiting to see if they had heeded her instructions, disappeared behind a cluster of large boulders nearby, reappearing shortly after with a pack of ugly-faced mules with too-large ears. She handed each traveler the reins of a mule.

  The travelers looked at one another, then at the flea-bitten, ragged-eared creatures with open repulsion.

  “We are royalty,” one of them pointed out haughtily. “We expect royal treatment.”

  Their guide looked up at him—she was short enough that the withers of the shortest mount reached as high as the top of her grey head—and chattered a comment in her tongue.

  The two or three travelers who knew the language sniggered or laughed in response.

  “What did she say?” demanded the pompous one.

  “To put it in more polite words: she said you could park your royal ass upon a mule and follow her or you could bugger it royally for all she cared.”

  The pompous one glared but said nothing further.

  There was much grumbling and some cursing from the others as well; the indignity of riding a mule was something few of them had suffered until now. But their own selectmen and valets advised them that it was in their own best interest to endure this minor indignity. These mountains were notorious for claiming more lives than any enemy they had faced in battle. The mules were the only way to navigate the harsh and dangerous pathway to their destination.

  The cursing and grumbling continued. But the wizened old guide led the way and the company followed, their royal asses mounted uncomfortably on the ugly mules. The woman cackled in her own tongue that it was hard to tell which were the bigger asses, the ones riding or the ones being ridden! The pompous one stared at the others who knew what she meant, but they stifled their laughter and did not translate.

  As the path wound steeper, the ridge grew more brittle, and the chance of falling more likely. Even the protests died out. It is a peculiarity of mortals that only when confronted by their mortality do they realize life’s value. After a few hours of teetering over sheer falls, the only sound on that knife-edge pathway was the chuffing of the mules.

  Apparently unconcerned with the mortals astride them, the mules would deign to pause wherever the fancy took them, here to chew on a tiny patch of weeds, there to fart noisily and violently, or a few yards farther, to defecate the well-digested remains of an earlier meal, without any consideration for the royal noses and constitutions being assaulted by these frequent bodily purges.

  The wizened guide glanced back from time to time, and chuckled at the discomfort of her unlikely followers. Occasionally, she would pause to stroll back, walking as easily on an inch of dubious ridge as a royal carriage rolling by on the kingsroad of Hastinaga. The travelers could hardly bear to look at her as she went past, swinging out over a sheer drop without a downward glance.

  A touch of a saddle here, a stirrup there, a twitching tail further on, and she was by, handing out savories suitable only for mule constitutions. The animals made gleeful chuffing noises at each of these feed stops, and the travelers grew accustomed to a marked increase in the passing of wind and feces for the hour or so following this ritual. The woman winked at the pompous one as she went by, slapping his mule’s backside affectionately. The creature chuffed happily in response; the pompous traveler remained as stony-faced as the cliff beside him, not with his customary arrogance but with stone-cold fear. He had discovered in the course of the journey that he was terrified of heights, but his royal pride prevented him from admitting it. And even if he had confessed, surely he would not relish the thought of turning around and going back the way he had climbed, alone.

  The guide fed with the mules, chewing at regular intervals on the odd-looking (and odder-smelling) contents of her hemp sack. She did not offer a share of her repast to her followers, nor did any ask for it. Accustomed to their every need being met the very instant such a need arose, none had thought to bring any nourishment for the journey.

  By the midway point in their trek, around the time the sun began declining on the late afternoon of the first day, the grumbling and whinging had ceased altogether.

  Now only the mules spoke. Chuffing, breaking wind, doing what they did routinely. The mortals mounted on their back endured silently.

  There was absolutely no doubt who was in command.

  Viewed from a great height, as by one of the floating silhouettes high in the sky above the snowcapped peaks, the procession appeared as nothing more than a worm wriggling its way up the mountain. It proceeded with agonizing slowness, reminding the travelers at every curve in the narrow pathway why the Mountain Kingdoms had never been successfully invaded by any mortal army.

  The pathway was barely narrow enough for a large man to stand facing forward—and only just sufficient for the mules to remain afoot with all four hooves pressed close together—there was no room for privacy or modesty. Though the royals protested even more vociferously, they all ended up relieving themselves in like fashion. If you wished to survive the mountain, dignity was an unaffordable luxury, no matter who you might be. They rested on their mounts too, sitting on those high, windy, bone-chilling mountain path ridges, one misstep away from permanent sleep. Most were barely able to doze more than a few moments at a time; for all, it was a harrowing night.

  By dawn of the second day, they were almost as indifferent about falling as about reaching their destination: they just wanted this nightmare on hooves to end.

  It was with a great sense of relief that they came into sight of their destination.

  The late morning sun illuminated it as they rounded yet another curve, all but hugging the mountainside with fingernails to aid their mounts, some of whom, at long last, now displayed signs of tiring. With bleary, sleep-deprived—yet irritably curious—eyes, they gazed, finally, upon the place that they had endured such hardship to reach.

  The remote, desolate, snowcapped, stony peaks of a place so rarely visited and perpetually feared by all who had heard tell of its terrors, that none dared but whisper of it in the dark watches of the coldest winter nights.

  Darkfortress.

  2

  The mountain fortress bore the ravages of a recent siege and assault. Toppled towers, demolished ramparts, great gouges and pits in the sides of the stony slopes themselves, all marked the terrible conflict that had been wag
ed here not long before.

  Yet despite these ravages, the keep was still magnificent. A haunted capital city of a kingdom of mountain fortresses ranging for hundreds of miles in an interweaving maze of stone and rock and black ice. Its rugged rough-hewn beauty, carved from the very rock of the mountain with chiseled artistry, was an achievement to be admired. All of the travelers had heard of the great city. None had had the pleasure, dubious though it might seem at this moment, of having visited. Its very remoteness and inaccessibility was its strength. But what none of them had expected was its extraordinary beauty. Beauty of a piece with the mountains that it stood astride. Not a thing made by mortals that had been set upon this landscape, but a thing drawn by mortals, inch by painfully carved inch, out of the landscape itself. It was organic to the mountain, as much a part of it as these mules were to these impossibly narrow pathways. That was its true beauty.

  There were fewer abuses and insults voiced during the remainder of the journey. As each hooved step took them closer to that vaulting masterpiece of stonecraft, their thoughts turned finally from the discomforts that had plagued them the past day and a half, and toward the invitation that had summoned them here.

  When the visitors finally reached the sloping paved approach to the gate of Darkfortress, they heaved a sigh of relief. Some had traveled for the better part of a fortnight to reach this remote keep. Even the closest had been on the road for several days. And then the tortuous path up the mountain on the backs of the mules, to whom their rear ends now felt wedded after all these painful hours.

  All swore a silent vow they would never visit this wretched place again. Some swore not-so-silently, not caring if they offended their hosts. The king of Darkfortress was just a mountain lord, after all. Not true royalty like themselves. None of the Houses they represented would ever think of making a marital alliance with him or his family.