Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  It was what any young daughter of a decent noble household would have done.

  14

  Karni went through the rest of that month in a daze, unaware of when she ate or rested or slept or participated in the activities her friends managed to rope her into.

  She did everything expected of her, said all the right words, dressed the right way, but those close to her knew she was not herself, that her heart was not into anything she did.

  Her friends expressed concern for her. Her father showed sympathy for her “exhaustion” and suggested she might wish to visit her hometown, Mraashk, to recover from the ordeal she had been put through.

  Everyone was sympathetic and supportive, effusive with praise, but none of this what she wanted or needed.

  What did she want, then?

  She did not know.

  15

  It was a whole season later, in the spring, that she woke one night, to a mercifully dry pillow this time, and remembered the sage’s parting words.

  Memorize this mantra.

  She had indeed memorized it. Memorizing mantras by the rote method was something little toddlers were taught to do, and something Karni had been doing her entire life. It was the way all knowledge was learned, passed on, stored over generations. Memorizing one mantra was like storing a drop in that vast ocean of knowledge.

  But for the guru to call such special attention to it, the timing of his giving it to her, the solemn tone with which he had imparted it, the way he had stopped her from repeating it back to him—told her that this was no ordinary mantra.

  She mused on its possible purpose. She sensed now what she had not realized at the time: that this mantra was meant to be, in some way, a reparation for all that she had endured during her long service to the guru. A payment, a reward of sorts. She had heard stories of priests imparting mantras to hosts who treated them with special grace. Gifts from the gods, they were called.

  How a simple couplet of rhyming Krushan verse could be a gift, a payment, a reward, she did not know. But the stories said that reciting those mantras produced magical results. The results differed from story to story, but all concurred on the mantra being magical. The poor became rich. The sick became healthy. The lovelorn were united with their lost loves.

  She stopped herself short.

  She had been pacing her chamber, sweeping from end to end ceaselessly, a practice she had fallen into in the months since the guru’s departure.

  It was often the only real exercise she took. Her old habits of running, swimming, horse riding, hunting, archery, swordplay, and javelin had all fallen by the wayside.

  She had barely seen her friends for a whole season and a half. Two had gotten married, she had heard, and all of the others were now betrothed. Girls their age did not stay single long. Girls your age, she reminded herself. She knew her father had been showered with requests from kings and emperors, asking that she host a swayamvara and permit suitors to vie for her hand as was the custom of the land. She could still refuse them all at the end of the tourney, if none pleased her. But they all wanted a chance at impressing and catching the eye of the legendary Karni of Stonecastle, she who had served the irascible Guru Pasha’ar and kept her house safe from the ill favor of his cursing tongue. Because of that duty she had performed, she was the most desirable bride in fifty kingdoms.

  Her father had reminded her, gently, that the longer she waited, the more young princes her age would find other brides, less suitable than she but still good brides nevertheless. Princes must have wives, just as princesses must have husbands. It was simply the way of the world. But she didn’t care about age or availability. Though the thought of marriage once pleased her, now it sickened her to her stomach.

  King Stonecastle had sensed this, and also that somehow, her dislike of the topic of marriage was related to the sage’s visit. “Did Gurudev say something to you about your future prospects?” he asked her one day after she had staunchly refused yet another request for a swayamvara. “Did he perhaps foretell your husband-to-be and your life together?”

  She frowned at her father. “He said not a word of such things.”

  He blinked. “Then what is it, my child? What ails you? Do not deny it. I have seen you these past weeks. You take no pleasure in the things that once delighted you. You spend all day sequestered in the palace. You go nowhere, see no one, and have turned in against yourself. You are like the ghost of the laughing, active, happy Karni you were before the guru came here. I cannot believe that your change has nothing to do with the sage’s visit. If he said something to you that put fear into your heart, that made you dread marriage or your future husband, please, daughter, tell me now. Men such as he can often make stark pronouncements that terrify us mortals, but their intention is often to caution and help us prevent future calamities, not prevent us from living altogether.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Sage Pasha’ar said nothing about such things. Or about anything to do with me personally or my future, nothing at all.”

  And this was true. Guru Pasha’ar had barely paid her any heed except as a vehicle to serve his needs. Bring this, fetch that, go there, summon so-and-so. She was nothing more than a glorified servant to him. What did he care about a servant’s future prospects? All he cared about was having his needs fulfilled.

  “Then what is it, daughter?” King Stonecastle asked her, his face lined with anxiety. “Something ails your heart. I see it in your every aspect. It festers like a sickness in you. It is poisoning your zest for life. Tell me what it is. If it is within my power to give you what it is you desire, I will give it to you, no matter the cost and the effort. Speak but once, and you shall have your heart’s desire.”

  She hung her head in shame, for she heard the concern in her father’s voice. She knew he cared greatly for her and could not bear to see her unhappy. But even so, there was nothing he could do. “I am sorry, Father. Thank you for your concern, but there is nothing you can do.”

  “There must be something!” he said, and Karni could see in his face that he flailed about mentally, searching for something to appease her. “Would you wish to go home to your father’s house? Would spending some time with your birth mother and father set your heart at ease? Is that your plaint? Does your heart ache for home? Say the word, and I shall drive you there myself in my own chariot this very day.”

  “No, Father,” she said sadly. “I would love to go home someday, in the summer perhaps, when the orchards of Vrindavan are lush with fruit, and Mraashk’s markets are bustling with foreign traders after the ships return from western ports. I would love to see my beloved mother and father and my brother, Vasurava, again. But that is not what ails me.”

  “Then you admit something does ail you?” he said, grasping at this dangled thread eagerly. “Tell me, then, what is this canker in your heart that robs my beloved Karni of her happiness and youth day by day? Is it some bauble? A place? A song?” He could not think of anything further to suggest and threw his hands up in the air. “Speak! I beg you.”

  Karni bowed her head for a long time. “It is nothing within your power to give, Father. There is nothing I desire. I am content here in your house. You are a good father, and I bless the gods for delivering me here.”

  He clenched his fist in frustration. “There must be something.”

  She stood up, sighing softly. “Permit me to leave your presence. I am tired and wish to rest awhile.”

  As she departed, she heard him calling, irritably, for more wine. She wished she could tell him everything, to put his mind at ease.

  But she could not.

  16

  Memorize this mantra, the sage had said.

  Karni paced the floor of her chambers, tracing the same route endlessly, as she went over every detail of the guru’s last instruction to her.

  But what was the mantra? What did it do?

  She was certain now that it did something. But how to find out what that was without actually using it. From the w
ay the guru had stopped her from repeating it, she had understood that merely reciting the mantra aloud would achieve some result. But surely there must be a way to know what that result was before reciting it?

  Surely Guru Pasha’ar would know what the mantra did, of course. But he had not told her, and she had not thought to ask at the time. All she knew was that he had intended the mantra to be some kind of gift to her—that was the tradition, after all. Her father had not thought to ask her if the guru had given her any gift in parting because he had simply been too relieved that Pasha’ar had not cursed them. The thought that the rishi had actually attempted to reward her for her services had not occurred to King Stonecastle at all.

  The mantra was her secret. She had told nobody about it. She had spoken to no one about her ordeal, though many had asked. Everyone was curious and awestruck at how a princess of Stonecastle—a presumably spoiled, pampered, self-centered, rich, powerful, beautiful young woman—had served a notorious priest for so long and so arduously, enduring such hardship and deprivation, without once giving offense. It was the talk of fifty kingdoms, as evidenced by the requests from those realms for an opportunity to win her hand in marriage. There were stories and tales she had heard snippets of, most resembling the truth not even remotely; she had heard of them from the wet nurses, who had themselves been fishing for the true story. But even then, she had said nothing. The torture of those months serving the guru was locked in her heart, and she had thrown away the key. She did not intend to speak of it to anyone.

  Because speaking of it would have meant speaking of the other thing as well, the thing her adoptive father had tried so desperately to pry from her. The pain of what had happened on that fateful journey to Dirda. And that pain she could not bear to speak of to anyone.

  But now she thought that perhaps the mantra was the key. Perhaps the guru had given her the mantra as a means of appeasing her heart. Perhaps even, if she dared think it, the mantra would bring her that which she had lost.

  Now that would be a true reward. That would serve as reparation for all the hardship Pasha’ar had caused her.

  It would be a gift of the gods, truly.

  Could it be possible? she wondered.

  Could he really have been that insightful—and that powerful?

  He was a great guru, after all. She had seen him use his powers with her own eyes, the day he had risen from the lake. Surely he could do much more than simply control nature’s elements in order to travel from one realm to another. He must wield true power.

  Perhaps the mantra really was magical. Perhaps it really could set right what had gone wrong in Dirda.

  Bring back what she had lost.

  Repair the damage to her shattered heart.

  Reward her troubled soul.

  There was only one way to find out: she had to recite the mantra aloud.

  She paced for hours, trying to decide, to work up the courage to actually do it, and it was late that night by the time she arrived at a decision.

  The night watch had completed their rounds, and even the servants and staff had long gone to sleep. Except for the occasionally restless horse, hound, or elephant from the royal stables, the palace complex was quiet.

  She stood on her balcony, breathing in the cool, bracing air of early autumn, and—at last—recited the mantra, once, carefully, enunciating each Krushan syllable perfectly, without a single error or repetition.

  17

  The night blossomed with light.

  It began as a slow lightening, like the soft flush in the eastern sky at dawn, announcing the imminent arrival of the rising sun; except that it was near midnight now, and dawn was a whole watch away. The gloaming grew to a glow, and then suddenly the darkness was dispersed with a flash so bright, Karni was momentarily blinded. She felt a surge of heat so intense that she cried out, expecting to be seared to death. But the heat receded as quickly as it had arisen, reducing to the intensity of a crackling blaze in a fireplace across the room.

  Her eyes were still dazzled from the flash of light. She rubbed them and blinked several times, trying to regain her vision.

  When she did, she saw that there was a presence in her chamber.

  She took a step back, her hip touching the stone balustrade that enclosed her balcony. There was nowhere else to go.

  Karni blinked again, trying to focus her blurred vision. Yes, there was definitely someone there, and the figure—which she could now make out as a man—was the source of the intense, banked heat she felt, as powerful as any fire, that exuded from the man’s body. His face glowed, as if illumined by flame, making his features difficult to see clearly.

  “Who are you?” Karni asked, hearing the tremble in her own voice. Where was her sword? She scanned the chamber frantically. It was hanging beside her bed, behind the stranger. Her eyes searched the room quickly for a more accessible weapon, as she edged sideways into the chamber.

  You summoned me, the figure said.

  She started. The words had come not from his lips but from . . . his being. Like a thought projected into her. She felt the heat of his mind touch her own and then dissipate at once. It felt like a tiny pinprick of intense warmth had stabbed her in the forehead. She forgot her search for a weapon and clutched at her forehead, feeling sweat break out at once. She cried out from the pain.

  Have I caused you . . . discomfort? I did not intend to. I do not often assume mortal form.

  The pinprick was more painful this time, the heat more searing. She cried out again, and thrashed around until she found a staff she used for stick fighting. She took hold of it and pointed it at him. “Stay back. I can call for a hundred guards in a moment.”

  It is illogical of you to fear me. I am merely answering your summons.

  She cried out at the sharp pain in her head, clutching her temples. Sweat was popping out across her face now, rolling down in rivulets. “Stop doing that! It hurts!”

  He was silent a moment, then she sensed the heat emanating from his presence reduce in intensity, banking to a mere warm glow, like a fire that had burned down to the embers.

  When he next “spoke” into her mind, the sensation was like an uncomfortable warm prickling in her brain rather than the searing, stabbing pains she’d felt initially.

  Am I endurable to you now?

  She wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. He had the glossy ubiquitous appearance of all the gods and goddesses depicted in statuary and art, an almost inhumanly smooth, unblemished perfection of limb, symmetry, and facial features that made it impossible to describe exactly what he looked like except that he was a perfect specimen. “Who are you? How did you appear in my chambers?”

  Did you not summon me? I recognize your voice. It was you who recited the Mantra of Summoning.

  The mantra. Pasha’ar’s mantra.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He gazed at her steadily. “I am known by many names in your tongue. The most commonly used one is Sharra.”

  She stared at him. The intense searing emanating from him, the sudden appearance out of thin air, the ability to project thoughts into her mind. Could it really be . . . ?

  “Sharra?” she asked in wonderment. “The . . . the sun god?”

  He inclined his head. At your service.

  At my service? “I don’t understand. Sage Pasha’ar did not explain what the mantra does. I recited it expecting . . . something else.”

  What were you expecting?

  She hesitated for a second, then blushed.

  “A friend,” she replied.

  I sense turmoil within you. You were expecting a lover. Someone dearly beloved to you but now lost . . . Am I correct?

  She said nothing.

  I am sorry to have disappointed you. But you did summon me specifically.

  She frowned. “I did not! I was thinking of someone completely different.”

  The mantra summons any god of your choosing. But yet I am here. There is a reason for that: you inte
nded me to be the one.

  “I wished for my friend Maheev of Mraashk . . .” She stopped, her throat choking at the use of his name. She shook her head. “I was a fool. I should have known my wish would not be fulfilled.”

  This Maheev of Mraashk, he was dear to you. A lover, perhaps?

  She shook her head. “We never consummated our friendship. Any intimacy between us was only emotional. I was resistant to the idea of a permanent bonding. He wanted marriage. The last time we saw each other, he wanted to vie for my hand in a swayamvara.”

  And you did not give him this opportunity. Because you were busy serving the priest Pasha’ar at the time?

  “Yes. And in the interim, to uphold tradition and family honor, he was compelled to attend the swayamvara of another princess. In Dirda. By chance, I happened to be traveling through Dirda at the very time.”

  He moved across the room slowly, seeming to glide rather than walk. Why do you assume it was a matter of chance?

  She had no answer to that. It was a possibility that had never occurred to her, but now that it was suggested, it seemed obvious.

  Pasha’ar was the one who sent you to Dirda, was it not? And he sent you at precisely that time?

  He was right. It was an odd coincidence that she happened to be dispatched to Dirda at the very time that Maheev was also there for the swayamvara. In fact, when she heard in the marketplace that the princess was hosting her swayamvara, the first thing she had thought was Maheev must be here. He could not refuse the invitation because it would reflect badly on his house. And when she went to the tourney grounds, there he was, handsome and resplendent in his golden armor on his gold-paneled chariot, as beautiful and perfect as the first day she had seen him on his first visit to her father’s palace.

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” she said slowly. “It was as if Pasha’ar sent me on that pointless errand to Dirda only so that I could be there in time to watch Maheev . . .” Again she felt her throat choke, and she shut her eyes.