Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  My, Lord of Birds, they did smell delicious.

  Crow looked about quickly, craftily, wary of being seen by a mortal.

  Or worse, being seen by a cat.

  Dogs were not a problem, silly funny creatures that cawed loudly but could never catch a crow.

  But cat? Oh my, Lord of Birds. Cats were deadly.

  Not as deadly as hawks, or serpents, or, above all, the mortal who could turn into a snake-animal-bird-thing.

  But still deadly enough.

  Crow stood still and waited for several long moments, making certain that no enemy was present and close by.

  When Crow was certain the coast was clear, Crow pounced.

  In a flash, Crow had the morsel in her mouth and was flying across the chamber, through the window, and out, out, out to freedom, away from the mortal house, across the mountains, and as far as she could get from that scary man-animal-bird-thing.

  The chunk was heavy, and usually Crow would have stopped and rested on one of the windows or ledges, shooing away those silly pigeons, perhaps even have tasted a bite or two of the delicious flesh. Easier to carry in Crow’s belly than in Crow’s beak.

  But so frightened was Crow of the man-animal-bird-thing that Crow didn’t stop until she had flown clear across the valley and the river that ran through it.

  A drop fell from Crow’s mouth on the way; it hardly mattered. It was not Crow’s job to clean.

  Crow didn’t slow until she was across the valley and in the safety of a grove she knew well. She had been birthed in this grove, and it was always the place she felt safest.

  She perched upon a high branch and examined the morsel briefly before tearing into it with great enjoyment.

  Oh my, Lord of Birds, mortal flesh was tasty flesh! Where could she get some of this every day? Oh my. Oh my.

  Crow raised her head high and cawed happily, not caring if any of her murder heard her now.

  Crow lowered her black head and feasted.

  Jeel

  River felt a drop.

  It was a single drop, fallen from the beak of a passing crow.

  That was common enough.

  What was unusual was that the drop was human blood.

  River disliked human blood, or blood of any kind.

  River tasted her share of blood, mortal and otherwise, especially during times of mortal war. Which seemed to be almost always. Sometimes, it came in great quantities.

  At those times, she avoided tasting it as best as she could manage. Too much pain, anguish, rage still lingering in that blood.

  But it had been days—perhaps weeks or even months, for River did not measure time as mortals did—since she had tasted any mortal blood. And a single drop was unusual. So when this drop fell, she couldn’t help but taste it idly.

  It intrigued her.

  There was information in this blood, something of import. Something new. Something frightening.

  She would convey it to her Mother. Not merely her mother.

  Mother of all Rivers, all water on Arthaloka.

  Jeel.

  She encased the drop in a bubble and put the bubble into the mouth of a fish.

  Fish swallowed the bubble, which did not burst inside its mouth because River had made it impossible to open except by Jeel.

  The bubble went into Fish’s stomach, where it remained as solid as a swallowed pearl.

  River pushed Fish up to her surface as a flock of cranes flew by.

  Sure enough, one of them swooped down greedily and snatched up Fish.

  River caught hold of Crane’s tail.

  Crane gave a cry of alarm, dropping Fish.

  Fish plopped back into River.

  River spoke to Crane, telling him her errand.

  Crane listened, wide-eyed, and did not argue.

  Crane gathered Fish in his beak and flew away.

  Over fields and forests and hills and valleys.

  Until Crane came to another smaller river, a tributary of Mother River.

  Crane dropped Fish into Smaller River, passing on River’s message.

  Smaller River carried Fish dutifully, passing Fish up through several other tributaries, streams, rivulets, until Fish was conveyed finally to Mother River herself.

  Jeel examined Fish, removed the bubble from Fish’s belly. (A simple burp was sufficient to accomplish this.) Jeel burst the bubble and tasted the drop of mortal blood carefully.

  Jeel neither liked nor disliked mortal blood. Part of her Krushan law was to absorb the mortal remains of all those who cast them into her waters. To cleanse and recirculate them.

  She knew how to read a mortal body and its secrets as well as a saptarishi could read a Krushan scroll.

  Jeel read the entirety of the information contained in that drop of mortal blood.

  When she was done, she knew what she had to do with the information.

  She had to go to her son and warn him.

  Vessa

  In the deep forest, Vessa opened his third eye.

  The jungle pulsed crimson.

  Every tree, trunk, branch, leaf, appeared to be suffused with the opposite of its natural verdancy.

  It was as if the green blood within their veins had turned red.

  A disturbance agitated the forest, coming from nowhere and going no place. It was not produced by wind or any natural force. It was the agitation of the forest itself, expressing its fear.

  It shook the high trees, caused the great trunks to shudder, made insects scurry out from their crannies, filling the air with a sense of chaos and terror.

  Vessa’s long white beard rippled.

  He smelled the fear of the forest.

  It was also the fear of She Who Birthed All Forests.

  She spoke to him in agitated voices of wind, leaf, insect, animal, all the beings under her protection and in her care.

  Vessa listened.

  Yes, Mother, he said. I felt it too. The Twice Born is at work.

  She said more to him, which he heard patiently.

  He is growing powerful, Vessa admitted. And will grow stronger yet as time passes. But it is not yet time to confront him.

  Trees swayed without wind, branches bent with no hand forcing them, leaves shirred of their own accord.

  The forest spoke to Vessa.

  He listened.

  But each time his answer was the same.

  Not yet, Mother. It is not yet time.

  The forest asked one final urgent query.

  Vessa mused on it a kshana or two.

  When the Five are born, he said. Until then, we must endure. It is all we can do.

  The forest stopped its agitation and was still for a moment. Then, with a single keening voice, it sang a song of sorrow and hope.

  It was a song not meant for mortal ears. Even Vessa did not comprehend its entire meaning. But he understood its emotion:

  The Great Mother of the Forest, of all forests, of Arthaloka itself, was crying out for help.

  Vessa listened for a great length of time. Eventually, he gave in reluctantly. Perhaps there is a way. Perhaps.

  The forest cried out in hopeful excitement.

  Vessa sighed.

  If Light and Dark unite. It is the only way. But, he cautioned firmly, it is nigh impossible.

  The forest waited, shirring, pleading.

  Vessa rose to his feet, took up his staff, and draped his anga garment over his arm.

  Very well, Great Mother. I shall make an attempt. I shall go to Hastinaga.

  He walked out of the hut, across the clearing, and into the dark woods.

  Jilana

  Sometimes Jilana thought that being a dowager empress was easier than being a mother-in-law. Anything was easier.

  Seated on a comfortable cushion in a silk merchant’s tent, she tried to get some relief from the heat by sipping a cooling drink while her attendants fanned her, as she watched her two daughters-in-law arguing over a length of silk.

  Ember and Umber were pretty girls. Beautiful e
ven, if one liked coy, petite girls with the bodies of women and the brains of sparrows. Jilana herself appreciated women who had some substance to them, both physically and mentally. But then, these two were princesses, and little more than that. What could one expect from the products of entitlement and royal privilege?

  Jilana herself had worked her hands raw as a young girl. First as a fisher, treated no differently than the other village children, all of whom were expected to earn their daily meals. It mattered not a whit that her father was the chief of the entire tribe. Fisher King to outsiders, but plain fisherman to his family. He worked hard alongside his people, cutting himself no slack. He believed that work defined a person. Not just fishing, anything one did to ensure one’s survival. Anything that made one useful to one’s family, one’s people, the world in general. To old Chief Jael, doing a job that mattered, doing it as well as it could possibly be done, and doing it for as long as one could do it, until the fishes ate your eyes, that was the only purpose to existence. That was the way of the fisherfolk and had always been, since the Jeel had descended to Arthaloka from Shaiva’s hair.

  Even when Sha’ant, king of Hastinaga, had first met Jilana, she had been working, ferrying travelers across the Jeel. The king of the greatest empire in the world, attracted to a fisherman’s daughter!

  She had once asked Sha’ant teasingly, years later, “Did you want to bed me because of my strong limbs and supple rowing? Because you had never had a fishergirl before?” He had surprised her by replying, “I wanted you as my wife, because I wanted a wife who was someone. More than just a daughter, a sister, a wife. A person in her own right. Watching you work, the pride you took in your ferrying, the way you spoke of your people, of what they did, pointing out the children doing the baiting of the nets as you had once done in younger days, I saw that woman. You had a life, an identity, a job that mattered, not only to you, but a real task, something that affected people, helped people, enabled them, added value to their lives. That was why I fell in love with you.” He then added, teasing, “It was only much later that I even felt any urge to bed you.” She had exclaimed, “Oh, really!” and slapped away his probing hand—but almost immediately, she had caught the same hand and put it back where it had been.

  She sighed now, handing off the half-consumed beverage to an attendant. It was refreshing, but no drink could slake the thirst she felt inside, the parched heart she carried within. She missed Sha’ant. She missed him as much now as she had the day he had died. Not just his probing hand and sly wit, but his authority, his wisdom, his keen insight, deep knowledge of people and cultures, and above all, his uncanny ability to immediately know what the cause of a problem was, and his ability to then divine a solution.

  She wished he was here now.

  She had no ill wish for either of her daughters-in-law—well, nothing that she would ever act on at least.

  But sometimes they could be so, so tiresome.

  Now, for instance.

  Here they were, in a traveling bazaar that set up its tents once every year or two in Hastinaga, conditions permitting. The bazaar was made up of merchants who traveled the length of the Masala Marg from one end to the other, endlessly. A polymorphous collection of men and women of all races, colors, creeds, cultures, they spent their entire existence traversing the rough route along which the civilized world sent its spices—masala, as it was colloquially known in the capital of the civilized world—silks, trinkets, and salable items of every description. They bought, they sold, they traded. Sometimes, they stopped while on their way back from the West, en route to the East. Other years, they stopped on the way from the East to the West. It depended on what they had to offer and where they thought those items would fetch the highest prices.

  This time they were traveling from West to East. Which was why they were almost out of silk. Silk came from the East and went West, where the lesser civilized kingdoms considered it to be a marvel or a miracle, depending on the culture and belief system. By the time the traveling bazaar returned from the West on its way to the East, all the silks were sold, and sold for small fortunes.

  The only reason they had any silk left at all was because Jilana’s daughters-in-law had given standing orders to bring them silks each visit. The merchants complied more out of fear than greed. Any price Jilana offered could easily be matched by the kings and queens of Western kingdoms. But the might and power of the Burnt Empire could not be matched.

  And so indeed the merchants did comply this time as well. The problem was, they had only a single bolt of silk left.

  It was exquisite stuff, the red of sealing wax, that deep rich shade that the Easterners achieved so brilliantly. The fabric felt like an upseer’s wings between Jilana’s fingers, the individual grains distinguishable to the touch. So diaphanous that she could see the whorls of her own fingerpads through the cloth. It was material to be caressed, desired, worn with abandon, the touch of it like a baby’s breath on one’s skin, the sensation as delicate and ethereal as the first cool touch of the Jeel when young Jilana had plunged in on a hot afternoon after a long day’s work.

  It was the most sensuous thing she had ever felt. It would look beautiful on any woman, and both Ember and Umber should be ecstatic to have it.

  Instead, they were fighting.

  Because there was only one bolt of red silk. And each wanted it for herself. Exclusively.

  Jilana had already suggested that they could both make garments out of the material. There was enough, considering these young ones barely used much anyway.

  But neither wanted to wear the same thing that her sister would wear.

  Naturally.

  Jilana sighed.

  Her daughters-in-law argued on.

  The afternoon grew hotter.

  The bazaar busier.

  The air dustier.

  The bickering louder.

  And she thought, for the thousandth time since the daughters of Serapi had come to her, that being a dowager empress was easier than being a mother-in-law.

  Especially this day.

  Jilana turned and saw the merchant standing beside her. He was a kindly fair-skinned middle-aged man with the high cheekbones and epicanthic folds above his eyes that were characteristic of Far Easterners.

  He bowed, speaking softly.

  She frowned and looked at him. “Here?”

  He inclined his head, indicating the rear of the tent.

  Jilana looked back, but all she could see was a partition separating the public area of the tent where all the goods were displayed from the merchant’s private space at the back.

  She looked at the merchant again, quizzically. He inclined his head again. Jilana frowned.

  This was quite unusual. It occurred to her that she was a target for enemies of the Burnt Empire, and that this could well be some kind of ploy.

  She glanced at her guards, indicating the rear as the merchant had. They went at once, returning with surprising quickness to bow their heads and confirm that there was no danger.

  Jilana stood and accompanied them to the rear of the tent.

  One of her attendants held up the fold of the partition so she could pass into the private area. Her guards took up unobtrusive positions to grant her some privacy.

  She saw the person waiting for her.

  Jilana’s face crinkled with a smile that lit up her entire middle-aged face, a smile that only appeared for one person in the whole world: her son.

  “Mother.” Vessa bent his wild-haired head and touched his mother’s feet.

  Jilana touched her son’s head, offering the ritual maternal blessing. She let her hand linger a moment, feeling her heart stir with a long-dormant emotion. She had never been able to raise Vessa as a mother usually raised a child. That was because of his supernatural nature: though born as normally as any mortal babe, he had matured to adulthood within the space of a few hours, before her awestruck eyes.

  She had always been aware of his extraordinary powers and abilities.
But somewhere within her heart, there still remained the secret yearning to have nursed her babe, nurtured, guided him on his first steps, gone through all the miraculous stages of growth and maturation. Vessa was a supernatural being, fathered by a great mage and endowed at birth with powerful magic, but Jilana was just a normal woman, a mother who had never had the satisfaction to watch her own firstborn child grow as mortal children grew.

  She buried her long-dormant desires, with an expertise born of years of self-control. “It must be important, for you to leave your meditation and come here thus.”

  “It is, Mother,” Vessa said. “I have a message of great urgency to deliver.”

  Vrath

  Vrath was bored.

  The court of Hastinaga was not officially in session. An official session would have required the presence of Dowager Empress Jilana. This was simply a conference of the kingdom’s ministers regarding sundry matters. The majority of these matters concerned administrative and procedural issues. The hows and whys of the actual business of political governance. There was a time when Vrath would have sought an excuse, any excuse, to recuse himself from such a conference. Such things bored him at best, infuriated him at worst. What was the point of making up endless rules and byrules for every single thing? Why not simply use one’s judgment as each matter arose?

  He knew the answer: a king overlooking a small kingdom could afford to be autocratic. A large kingdom like Hastinaga could not be overseen by any one man, even a man as omnipresent and sleepless as Vrath. And the Burnt Empire was a hundred times—nay, a hundred times a hundred—the size of an average kingdom. It required a small army of administrative staff just to keep pace with the endless procedural, diplomatic, and trade oversight matters that cropped up on a daily basis. Each of those many departments themselves required oversight, by a competent honest minister, and each minister had questions, doubts, problems, challenges, that needed to be answered and dealt with on a regular basis. For the entire empire to function smoothly—or as smoothly as any large juggernaut could manage—it required a system. Checks and balances. Protocols. Procedures. Rules. Byrules.